All posts by Princess Sparkle

What I wrote today – Amanda Wilson

Saturday, February 17th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Next minute she’d hiked her dress up, kicked her leg high and rested her stiletto on her new husbands shoulder. The reception cheered and roared and the glistening red garter could be seen by all. The music pumped on high, the crowd started dancing to a slow, slow song ‘Lady in Red’ by Chris De Burgh. Suzie and I watched together as we held hands. I whispered in her ear that the song playing should be ‘You can leave your hat on’ by Joe Cocker.

If only I hadn’t had so much to eat, we could get out on the dance floor. Suzie didn’t eat much and I had shovelled in her left over entrée, main course and wine into my gullet and I could feel my stomach pushing so hard against my pants, the zipper bulging.

Out of interest I love food, wine and dancing – all in that order. My moves generally involve gliding on my knees across the dance floor and very seductive dancing, on my own of course with the odd pylon or pole involved, keeping so still as I get my groove on.

The first time Suzie and I went away for a weekend as a real couple, we organised a romantic weekend away for Opera in the Vineyards. Suzie wasn’t a big drinker and had not told me that champagne when straight to her head! The music was outstanding, the conductor a comedian, the evening so romantic under the stars and I knew this was the first time I was truly in love and could be me.
This was the first time for Suzie as well, not being in love but with her head in the toilet bowl for most of the night after we had sipped our way through three bottles of champers under the starlit sky.

It was brilliant to spend time away together. Harry was looking after the children for the weekend, there was no TV in our room and we were in the peaceful countryside. The birds tweeting and singing at sunrise, not that we heard them as we were fast asleep. No young children outside trying to bash the bedroom door down with their trunkies after hooning at full speed down the hallway on a mission to bust open the locked bedroom door.

Until finally life had returned to reality. Back to school and work tomorrow. Shopping to organise, lunches to be made, dinner to prepare for the week. The same, mundane weekly tasks that can make life feel so robotic, routine and totally boring. Why does it have to be this way? How could I inject spontaneity into our daily lives so it would feel as if there was a moment of a holiday in each and every day?

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Fire – Lisa Joy

Saturday, February 17th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Next minute a shooting star shot across the night sky. It interrupted a sea of stars so numerous that it looked like a salt- shaker had spilled across the dark inkiness of the night. Make a wish, they say, but what to wish for? Wishes are like shooting stars, fleeting and misnamed. While a shooting star isn’t a star it’s perhaps just a chunk of rock, then again it could’ve been part of a planet, or an asteroid that had traversed the galaxy for 6 billion years… That shooting star had quite a history!

While I wrote about the day, David sat by the fire occasionally poking it with a stick. It had been lit earlier in the night with a pink lighter that had been gifted early in the trip by other campers, who seemed pleased by the clip on koala given to them in thanks. The lighter had lit many a fire on this trip, but this fire had a special majesty. Away from all signs of civilization it was a beacon that in a way protected and formed a home in the vast space of the wide valley. A primordial thing warming, life giving and protective.

If only a fire could warn of the future, I think looking back. The peace and calm of that night in a valley called death, where the only thought on my mind was telling the story of the day and where we would travel the next. The luxury of choice and a world to explore. Out of interest we had been travelling for 2 weeks at this stage. Putting up the tent was automatic and simple, the rhythm of the days a pleasant routine. The only worry finding a camp spot and which direction to head next. At the time it did not feel life changing. It was part of a simple plan for my life. The plan, which like the fire warming the night, within a year would be ashes. Looking back now this simple night holds a space that is extraordinary.

I can’t remember the first time I was entranced by fire. It had been a feature of my childhood that made my parents worry I would turn into a fire-bug. Mesmerized by the flames of the bonfire or the spinning Catherine wheel sparks on Fire Cracker night. The smoke and smell of my father burning off rubbish and the almost religious experience of burning candles, dripping wax, molding that warm wax into shapes.

It was brilliant to be able to take a year off to travel. An amazing privilege that we worked hard for. Sometimes, despite the hard times and trauma I’ve experienced in my life, I think “aren’t I lucky”. Like fire there are many elements needed to bring that life into being that eclipse simple luck though. A fire needs clear ground- (opportunity), it needs fuel (work) and it needs a spark (imagination). Until finally the fuel is used up and the fire dwindles to embers that only need more fuel and a breath of wind to bring it back to life.

Thinking back to that night, I’m glad I knew nothing of what was to come. For if I did, I would probably still be out there wandering the desert…

www.cherrylush.com.au

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Writing Prompt – Sarah G Williams

Saturday, February 17th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

The windows blocked most of the sounds of the late evening out, so she sobbed in silence for a minute. The crumpled up plastic money notes sat on the coffee table where she had tossed them, emptying them from her jacket pocket when she walked in the door. Too shamed to give the money to the taxi driver. Instead she paid for the ride home with her credit card.

They had gone out for dinner, and had sex afterwards.

When they were done, he had checked the time on his Mickey Mouse faced smart watch, and politely made the excuse that he had to get up for work early the next morning. She took the hint and said, ‘I’ll guess I will get a taxi home.’ He jumped out of bed in a hurry putting on the sweat pants conveniently hung on a hook near the bed with his dressing gown. Who hangs up track pants anyway? She had thought, while scrambling for her own pieces of clothing laying in the sheets and on the floor.

He left the room, and her to her re-assemblage of her carefully picked out outfit for the evening, when he returned he informed her that the cab was on its way.

She hadn’t expected to stay the night, she wasn’t really sure what her plans to get home were, they had wine with dinner and cocktails before, and she didn’t bring her car because she expected to be drinking. She hadn’t really planned on going home with him and ending up in a Cab to some random place on the outskirts of the city where his apartment was though.

If only she had asked where he lived before they got into the Taxi. She may have thought a little bit harder, or longer about going back to his place for just one more drink.

She walked out of the bedroom with her heels in her hand, and sat on his couch to put them back on her feet. He was in the kitchen drinking a glass of water. She wanted him to offer her a glass, something. Anything other than this perfunctory process he was undertaking now that the deed was done.

She tried to make some small talk about the trip home being a little longer then she thought it was going to be. Where they had dinner was close to the train station – and she had the option on catching one of the late trains, but now she was too far away to justify going back. When he didn’t respond she asked him directly, wanting to break this silence and out of interest, ‘What are your plans during the week next week? Maybe we should have dinner or go to a movie?’

She didn’t want this to be the first and the only time, she didn’t do one night stands, and this was quickly morphing into something that felt like she had just been used a little.

“I’m pretty busy” he said ‘but I’ll text you or something.’

Her shoes now on, she stood up. The ‘ or something ‘was going to be him likely ghosting her. She knew, but she didn’t really know, because she didn’t want to think negative things before it had even ended, but this didn’t feel like the parting of respectful lovers.

‘I had fun’ she said – reaching into the last moments of his company before the Cab came, and looking for reassurance ‘ Yeah, it was’ he said.

The headlights of a car stopped outside, and he glanced out the window ‘Cab’s here’ he said, opening his front door, and lead her down the building stairs, and she followed in her dress and coat, clutching her handbag.

They approached the taxi, and his presence on the street with no shirt and shoes announcing to the world that they had just had sex, and he was sending her home in a taxi.

‘It was brilliant’ he said, thrusting some plastic cash at her. ‘For the cab’ She looked down at the notes in her hand, she wasn’t sure if it would cover the whole cab fare home but it was enough to make her feel like she was being paid.

‘Oh, I didn’t expect ‘ she started

‘Look no worries, we went halves on dinner’ he cut her off.

‘I guess this is bye then’ she said, now even more uncertain, and feeling worse.

He kissed her coolly on the cheek – and she stood there wanting more, a touch, a hug, some kind of reassurance that what she had just done – they had done, wasn’t cheap and dirty.

In the Cab back to her place she checked her Facebook and Instagram posts to see what everyone else had done that night, until finally she clicked on his Instagram looking for a photo they had talked about over dinner and a food festival he went to, so she could get a better look at this fantastic dessert he had flashed at her on his screen. They had followed each other over dinner while eating and talking – getting to know one another through telling the stories behind their pictures, learning about each other.

“No posts yet” appeared on his profile page, she was puzzled, no posts yet, but she had seen them. He had hundreds, she tried clicking again, and nothing changed. She googled on her phone ‘ how can I tell if I have been blocked on Instagram’ and it explained the screen she was looking at now.

She had felt in her jacket pocket for the money and crumbled it up.

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Lucky – Nichola Garvey

Friday, February 16th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I thought, “it’s broken!” Panicked I pressed the button to unlock the car door and … nothing. A glitch, surely. I tried again and the dull sound of nothing made my heart skip a beat. No. Fucking. Way! No way! “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” I said aloud, still pressing the button, doing the same thing and hoping for a different result: the lunacy of panic settling in. Cursing the work of fobs when a simple bloody key would do!

I had three hours until the plane took off. Time was tight. But I can do it, I thought to myself. I threw my handbag on the ground and began rummaging from my phone. Next minute, I am googling where to find a locksmith, someone close.

“Lucky Locksmiths,” answered a droll voice down the line.

“Lucky, I need you here like ten minutes ago. Can you do it?”

My heart was in my throat and then instant relief in my gut a moment later.

He was quick, I’ll give him that. And now I’ve got two and a half hours before the plane takes off, which makes less than an hour to get there, drop the rental car and check the bag in.

I get to the check in area and am greeted by a woman behind the desk with a wide perfect smile, hair perfectly coiffed and lipstick perfectly shiny, which is in direct contrast to how scruffy I feel.

“Good morning. Destination and passport please.”

My face drops. I don’t even need to open my bag to know that I’ve forgotten my passport but I do it anyway. As I’m throwing my hand around the bottom of the bag, in my mind’s eye I can see my passport clearly still in the hotel room safe. Miss perfect smile continues to look at me with wide unblinking eyes, pretending to be patient but really not that patient. Around me I can feel anxious passengers waiting their turn for check in, luggage moves obediently along the travelator to destinations I know I won’t be going to today.

I blame it on the night before. Sure, it was Brilliant! But right now I was cursing the sweaty dancing, the carafes of cheap wine, cigars! Uggghh. As soon as I puffed on one of those I should have known to abort mission, get the hell out of Dodge. But, no. Whatever sensible, right-minded person who thought like that in the heat of a fun filled night, of random snogs and table dancing, that person wasn’t me.

“Would a licence do?” I offered up weakly.

The saccharin smile grew more taut around the edges.

“I’m sorry … blah, blah blah…”

What I really missed right now, needed with every fibre of my body was a good old Melbourne coffee. But stuck here, in Heathrow, the best I could hope for was a Starbucks large warm milk with a vague coffee flavour

Fuck it, I think to myself. I’ll just go to the bar and have a coffee and Baileys while I work out just what the fuck I am going to do.

A few sips of the hair-of-the-dog later, feeling slightly better, I look down at my bag and spot the Aussie-flag keyring, a tiny, proud beacon of nationalism. I couldn’t believe I had just missed my flight home. But, this was an adventure after all. There was another flight leaving same time tomorrow. So I checked my luggage in to the 24-hour lockers and caught the Heathrow Express to London. This could be a really stupid move, I think to myself, but it sure as hell is not going to be dull.

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The Sensation of Grass – Jayne Pirola

Friday, February 16th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I thought it was broken by the crack that I heard as I landed badly with my legs over my head. Gradually the realization began to hit that I couldn’t feel my legs. There was no pain, just a total lack of sensation. Life seemed to go on hold, everything was in slow motion. I tried to look around at everyone else. Faces filled with shock and horror, looking at me, concerned voices asking if I was okay. I lay there looking at the clouds scudding past in that impossibly blue sky. Is that it? I thought. I didn’t move because I couldn’t. I just lay there, looking up and waiting, for what I didn’t even know.

Next minute the face of my mother leaned into view. The first thing she said “What the hell were you thinking you bloody idiot?’ Then the noises came back into my ears. Kids still laughing and shouting, the typical noises of a Sunday afternoon in a sunny suburban Australian backyard. I heard the ambulance arrive. All bells and whistles, flashing lights, the siren blaring. I felt a strange surge of excitement. Hey I was the centre of attention, my favourite place to be. A sweaty face appeared above me. “Fuck’ he exhaled and looked me up and down “Don’t move love”.

It was instant. They had the board under me but I didn’t feel anything. Together they moved my body toward the ambulance. I was floating up above the trampoline with the ambo’s sweat trickling down his face. I smelt his sweaty armpits as he got me into the ambulance but I can’t even tell you what his assistant looked like, I couldn’t strain my neck to see. My mum got into the ambulance as well, her face drained of colour, anxious hands wrapping together as she tried not to take up too much room in the cramped space.

I lay there wondering what was to become of me. I so hated being a bother, but then I did like attention and drama so I was conflicted in my emotions as we headed to the hospital.

It was brilliant when we arrived. The bright lights, the hoards of people all surrounding the trolley, but those interminable questions, asked over and over, the same things, can you move your toes, can you feel this, what happened? It seemed like every doctor and nurse had come out of the woodwork to ask me the same question and none of them was able to share the answer. Hours passed and I answered these bloody questions a thousand times. I was over it. Finally it settled down and I was put into a proper bed. Not that the bed meant anything to me, everything felt the same. No feeling. I knew they had moved me on the board to prevent further damage, but there was nothing, no feeling, nothing, I was numb in my body.

What I really miss is feeling grass between my toes. Itchy, wet, even dry grass with bindies in. Sensation is so under rated in our lives. Every day I can look at the grass and the way it changes from wet to dewy in the morning to dry and crisp in the afternoon and every day I wake up knowing that is something which I will never experience again.

I couldn’t believe that it had happened to me and that now this life was my new normal. Christopher Reeve was wrong. Stem cells were not going to save me. I was never going to feel anything with my limbs again. My life was forever going to be dependent on another person. I was never going to able to walk on the grass and feel its texture on my feet again. I was going to live my whole life depending upon someone else. Maybe it would be my mother or maybe it would b a carer, but forever it would always be me and someone else. Forget solitude, but stuff that forget partnership, love, meaningful relationships, love….The only relationship that I could think about was with a black dog and that dog haunted my every moment. For one bad fall on a trampoline, here I was, stuck, alone.

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Writing Hurts – Kaz Davis

Friday, February 16th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Writing is painful. This is normal. Its not that you are a shit writer – its just really hard to write. Well here’s the thing: life is painful (at times). Choose a high quality form of pain. Choose the pain that is going to move you to where you want to go. There’s the

pain of avoiding where you want to go, or there’s the pain of taking the steps. You get to choose – no one is making you do this. Writing is like a long haul flight in an economy seat. Its not comfortable. But if you want to see new places, the economy seat on the plane will get you there. If you want to create something using the medium of words – ACTUALLY writing is the way to do it. If you want to create anything, actually making the thing is the way to do it. Waiting for the right conditions is like waiting until you can afford to travel first class before you decide to go to Paris.

If you want to be sure that it will be worth it – forget it! Writing is uncertain – there are no guarantees. Maybe what you make actually won’t be very good. Maybe it will just be a bunch of words. But so what! Perhaps you will find a new place and you will see something new.

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Moving On – Fiona King

Friday, February 16th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I have to wonder where my kids are. Are they on track or stuck in the Lost Boys /Girls zone, living life as endless backpackers and doofers, opting out of the mainstream. Given the examples set by both parents who have worked hard consistently and diligently their whole lives, why does it seem their actions towards establishing long term careers, stability and employment seem a bit vague and slow to crystallise. Or is my fear ill founded, simply based on my unreasonable expectations of them measured unfairly against my compatriots children……of largely high achievers. Has my willingness to encourage and support them to find their own path come back to bite me as they forge a route I had not even considered?

I genuinely thought I knew and liked them all and of late I realise I really hardly know #1, he’s verbose, opinionated, well read, so strong willed and combative. #2 is a complete mystery to me, as she and I have really only had an adversarial relationship much of her life. I mostly only get the pineapple, the extremes of sadness, despair, angst and aggression as if every failure or disappointment now and always was largely my fault. #3 is living in the twilight zone, so being a man of mystery describes him well, he’s kind and quirky but I wish I saw more of that side of him as some aspects of his persona I think are largely governed by excessive pot smoking. And #4, is the eternal optimist, possibly the most ambitious and communicative of them all, if only his arrogance and self confidence of his own skills and social prowess was not so infuriating. He’s not a conformist – fuck none of them are – not a one, but he does give of himself and engage with me and that makes me happy.

I still worry about them all, I know this is now their life and as adults I must let go, but in truth I don’t think parents ever really do, they just get better at looking like they are happy for their spawn to be master of their own destinies. Parents behave like the duck on the pond, smoothly sailing across the glassy surface seeming without a care in the world, while paddling like hell underneath.

This recent house move challenged me to the core as it made me look at them and myself with fresh eyes. Do I always have expectations that are wildly in excess of what is fair and reasonable. Or did they genuinely toss me aside like an unwanted school lunch, left to fend for myself, as after all, its all my fault there is so much shit in the house and I chose to move on that date without consulting anyone first if it suited them!

Fuck any real benevolent effort that may have been offered from them, towards tasks I unfortunately inserted into their leisurely exit plan ahead of a 3 month holiday, no date was ever going to suit them… I interrupted them and they made me pay in the worst possible way, they didn’t help and they watched me grapple with 21 years of theirs mine and their dads detritus… Oh they occasionally offered some random assistance… a tip run here or a garden weed there and yes they did sort their own stuff, but that at no time represented help towards the enormity of the task of sorting culling and packing the greater collective, a lifetimes mountain of family’s momentos and shit.

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Pleasure – Sally Low

Saturday, February 10th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Which elements can be grouped..
Which ever ones give you pleasure.
But what if I don’t know.
Group them any way
And create a new pleasure.

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Balladeer – Edie Kay

Saturday, February 10th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

It was hard to imagine how she’d grow. The red choker that had been slipped over her head and onto her neck as a baby was brittle and seemingly unbreakable. She was certain, by the age of 6, that it was the only way her head could stay on.

But she kept growing, albeit, slowly. By 13, her best friend looked like her babysitter, towering over her by two feet, and putting her words in front of her with a zest and confidence that Tiny hadn’t found.

She didn’t take up much space, which made her a low maintenance guest, visitor, tagalong, sidekick, groupie, whatever it was that people needed, but maybe didn’t know that they needed. She was more of like a ‘plus half’ than a ‘plus one’, and for that reason she was able to experience so many of the things that others who were too loud, opinionated, and proud, only wished they could do.

Tiny took snapshots in her mind, and secured people’s private thoughts and actions like a vault. There were a select few who had cracked the code though. She was a memory hoarder. But were her memories real or imagined?

There were four eggs left in the fridge. How many could she eat this morning without having to be the one to go out and buy some more? Carrying eggs gave her anxiety. Too delicate, and couldn’t be handled precariously, like many of the things she typically carried: a notebook, a pen, hand sanitizer and a tape recorder, and something to eat in case of emergency. No matter where she tagged along, these things gave her stability, as did the thick, red circle around her neck.

“Ouch!” Her friend tugged at the loop, and he asked her if she’d ever taken it off. She’d couldn’t imagine it. “I don’t know where it came from.” People had asked her before, what it meant, how she got it, if it hurt. Growing typically happens without one noticing it, so if it did hurt, she must have been living with the pain for a while. “Sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s all there is to it,” an invasive crystal healer had once offered to her. She’d laughed uncomfortably in response, wishing he’d get out of her head, and that she could politely walk away. “Would you look at your lover with disgust? No? Then why do you look at yourself that way?” It wasn’t her fault, he’d assured her. Was it that easy? Take herself out of the equation, and the choker would have been someone else’s burden to bear. It didn’t have to be a burden though. She knew that other people had been in the wrong place and wrong time too. She’d heard about them in the news, seen them commended for talking all about it.

“That is brilliant,” the drummer told the lead singer. She watched them exchange laughter, energy and ideas with abandon. How can I be more inside myself, she wondered, rather than sitting here, with my thoughts in front of me while the words that should come out of my mouth stay sitting in my brain? Until finally, someone turned the attention to her. “What do you think about it Tiny?”

“I think it could have been deeper. A bit lower, maybe even a darker for a moment. You know when you hear a song that makes you yearn for something but you don’t even know what? That makes you think of a lost opportunity for love, feel a desperate need that you feel has to be immediately met?”

The bassist started laughing. “Holy shit. I feel like I might have to be high for something like that, but yeah, cool.”

How come they never asked her to play too? They had said it in passing, but it never seemed the right time. She contemplated asserting herself with a tone of entitlement – that seemed to be the difference between people getting what they wanted and not – but opted to continue being good company and breathed in second-hand inspiration.

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There Were Four Eggs – Violet Kieu

Saturday, February 10th, 2018Gunnas-MastersPrincess Sparkle

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

‘There were four eggs.’ Catherine Deveny issues the writing prompt to the group at her 197th Gunnas Writing Masterclass, and we begin…

There were four eggs. Not exactly, but at a regional hospital, anything is possible. At morning handover, a midwife had left an ice-cream bucket’s worth of home grown produce from her vegetable garden. There were the largest cherry tomatoes I had ever seen, palm sized rubies, bordered by forest green cucumbers. I thought to myself, surely the grass is greener, the roses redder, in the countryside. I’ve seen plastic bags over-flowing with sunburst lemons. Big enough to challenge those giants from the Amalfi. So. I imagine that someone, someday, might bring in chicken eggs. Free-range, from the backyard.

There were four eggs. I work in obstetrics, so human eggs have a different meaning. Human eggs can be ultra-sounded, counted, collected and fertilized. Female humans are born with all the eggs they are ever going to have. Girl fetuses have all their reproductive potential bound within them. This knowledge lurks in the back of my mind, until suddenly a friend, a colleague, a patient, comes in with an inability to get pregnant. Then, we can do clever things. We can induce ovulation through clomiphene stimulation, ovarian drilling, IVF. Eggs are precious, but not predictable. And there are no guarantees. So. We try, and wait, and hope, and pray. And be there for the journey, wherever it may grow.

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