Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
MEMORY JOLT 1 : WRITING SUCKS
Oh My God! What in the fuck am I going to write about for a full five minutes? Life sucks. Writing sucks. Thinking sucks. The fear of it all sucks. This was the very thing I did not want to do today, so it sucks. My memory sucks. It’s all to do with my memory or the fear of my memory-blanking out. Forgetting, remembering, focus, drying up, pulling out, and making sense. Making no sense at all. Nonsense sucks. Sense sucks. Free fall ridiculousness.
It all sucks. The need to spell, hell that sucks. What, what, what? Slow down for fucks sake! The pen, the pen, the pen has taken over and I’m just watching the pen move rapidly across the page. I am imaging the ink flowing out through the ballpoint. The ink slowly, inkingly (is that a word) sliding down the inky plastic insert of the pen shaft, (is that a metaphor) onto the papery page. I think my writing sucks. I think I am in a panic, that sucks. It’s not a black blank panic though. Like when I had to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at the end of year recital. Back in Lawson, back in 1967 (perhaps). Was it 67 or 66, not important Gary, not important? The black, the pitch-black panic. That sucked. So did the recital, There was no moonlight, just black, black, black! God it sucked. Why did I bring such a small journal to write in today? The lines are too close, that sucks. I have to write really small, tiny, don’t scrawl, that sucks.
Tiny little baby letters linked with tiny little bay letters linked with tiny little baby letters. A tiny little attempt at writing, that sucks.
Limited though that the space is and the fact that it sucks I must continue cause that’s the drill, fucking write something in five minutes. God that sucks! It really sucks! I did not expect to be writing at a fucking writing master class. (Well what did you expect, carol singing, book singing techniques, someone to write for me?) I call it panic writing, writing out of blackness, afraid of the fucking dark writing. It sucks. Gobbledygook, misty, mushy, mashie, murky, swishing gobbledygook. Words free falling from the backspaces of an erratic unreliable memory, Mush. Mush, mush. It sucks! Remember to write legibly, slow down, and clear up the slurring. It’s like slurring when the words end up illegible. Too much wine, (bubbles darling, don’t mind if I do!) What was it I was trying to say, indiiiscribbable… that sucks! It’s like when I jot down a thought at three in the morning, wake up in a flash and jot it down on the bedside jotter, in the dark. What the fuck? Gobbledygook, indiiiscribbable, indesyyypherable, gobbledygook.
Now that sucks. Or I wake up cant get back to sleep and switch the transistor radio on making sure I have the earphone in my good ear, Radio national of course repeat program of course. That sucks!
Sunday Extra with Jonathan Green. No longer, that sucks!
So you think you can write? Yeah I am now wide-awake listening, no way going back to sleep, that sucks. But clarity hits at odd times! Great discussion, engaged totally, then doze off and wake to radio buzz off station hiss. Recall recall, recall jot jot jot!
Great, loved it, it was fabulous I don’t recall the names but scribble SEXTRA Jomathlen Geen, goooogle. I look back at the jotter, not the next morning but when the erratic brain jerks a post midnight scribbled memory and I read the scrawl. Attempt to read the scrawl. That sucks!
Listen again to the program, you know download audio, yeah listen again. Great stuff. Love it.
Later when sober I buy Sian Prior’s memoir, Shy (great read) and later when drunk (tipsy) book into Catherine Deveny’s Gunnas Writing Masterclass. Forgot that I have done this (that sucks) until Catherine confirms.
Doesn’t suck!
MEMORY JOLT 2 : A POEM OF SORTS
Large white wrapped table
Butcher’s paper galore
Arty in its arrangement
Just like the painting on the wall
(She has her work everywhere!)
I am such a jealous bitch
I think it’s a take on Leda and the Swan
Leda looks in charge, no victim here
Stories abound
Around
Not about Leda, the painting is inconsequential
But I gaze at it all day long
On and off
So many stories
So many stories
They unfold
They sway and ricochet
Across the room
Subliminal, liminal
On a threshold
Memories flow
They freak out
And argue with themselves
They battle to be in the here and now
My gaze drifts
Thoughts go back in time and then move forward
I look into the street
The trees, lush and the sky dry blue
Everyone is writing
There is so much silence
The sound of a myriad of pens is a hush
Traffic below hums a low slow Saturday rush
And the bus whines with a high engine pitch to the stop
Air makes a light whoosh from the high ceiling vent
And the soundlessness of the stories
The soundlessness of the stories
The pens in the room.
MEMORY JOLT 3 : LONG DISTANT CALL
The first time I was turned on and understood what that meant was… turned on… hmmmm to music, drugs, sex, literature? Lets say it was in the 60’s. It was all wound up in physicality.
It gets murky. I was disturbed as a child, deeply disturbed. With that opening prompt I was immediately taken back, back, back.
First significant childhood memory:
When I was three my mother was bathing me in an enamel bowl on the kitchen bench, I looked out the widow. Being on the bench gave me a good view out the window all the way to the distant ridge where the train line is. A goods train was on fire. It’s a vivid memory I’ve never forgotten and I know when it was cause mum confirmed it for me. The 1956 fires in the Blue Mountains when I was three.
I work in a memory support unit supporting those living with dementia. Molly lives there.
Molly often says, “Everything changes”. She says it with a smile and a sort of sad wisdom.
Long distance:
It’s a spooky thought, what first turned me on, I find it loaded with darkness.
I had a long, long, long-distance phone conversation, the night before.
With a close long standing friend, Sandy.
We drank wine and talked and talked and drank wine and talked.
We talked about the recent coverage of the current public hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
I was gutted, we were both gutted.
Conversations can be so complex, complicated, confronting, and so deep with sadness. Some of us slip through the cracks. We know, we are unsure, we don’t know for sure all that has occurred.
From whose hands did we suffer?
Molly often says, “Everything changes”. She sort of says it with a smile and a sad wisdom.
Second significant childhood memory:
The door opened. It opened very wide to a raw place. To distant memories of uncertainty.
I was six, I was naked, I was standing in my parent’s bedroom in front of the dressing table mirror, I was alone and doing my very best Marilyn pose. Hand on hip, head to the side, elegant, poised enthralled at the image I saw.
Molly often says “Everything changes”, sometimes with a wry smile and sometimes with a sad glint.
My father came into the room unexpectedly, my very private world invaded and every thing changed, forever. “Jesus Fucking Christ” he exclaimed as he turned and left the room to get my mother.
All I could think of was disgust.
All I could think of was disgust.
All I could think of was disgust.
Bitch slap! Great drag name.
Molly often says in the evenings after supper “Everything changes”. Sometimes she says this with sadness and sometimes with wry wisdom.
Moving on:
I changed the subject and we talked about teeth. We had both been having teeth problems of late and this seemed to be a really great diversion from disgust.
My best buddy went to the dentist this week. He had a toothache.
It’s the wrong one he told the dentist as he sat there with his mouth open wide and full of a gloved hand. Too late, it had already been extracted. Seems that x-rays can lie and toothaches can persist.
How could this happen. I thought the story was hilarious, my friend did not, so I poured another glass of bubbles and we moved on.
“What about America”? Donald Trump was also a depressive subject so we got onto music. Phew!
Italian music, recent music, beautiful music.
Everything lifted.
The conversation moved onto pets.
This is not my dog.
That’s what I said the other night when I got home.
He (the dog that is) suffers from separation anxiety.
Anyway he had managed to climb over the side gate next to the outside toilet. He landed in the shade cloth above the fishpond ripping it down and ending up in the fishpond! The pot in the pond smashed in the process the fish remained intact. He then attempted to dig under the house and uprooted the newly laid water pipes bursting them! Currently he is at the dog minders for a couple of days. They sent a text stating how placid he was, asking what had happened to the usual quivering whippet that was now so chilled out!
Molly often says, “Everything changes”, and she says it with a mixture of sadness and wry wisdom.
Next minute the clock in the lounge room chimed. Yes Sandy, I said we have a clock that chimes!
It’s three am; three am can you believe it.
We have been five hours on the phone.
Goodnight.