Wuffling Heights

Woman in Transit

2009-03-05T01:18:00.000-08:00

Three times in the past week I have left my home with the possibility of never seeing it again.
Everyone in Australia and many people elsewhere will know about the fires: a 46 degree centigrade day, winds of up to 80 kilometers an hour, 2000 homes lost, 210 dead and many more still missing. In the very small country town where I live it has been the only topic since February 7th.
We were very lucky on that day. There but for the grace of cigarette butt, lighting strike or capricious arsenist go we.
The only fire that threatened us came two weeks later and could be seen from the town up over the hills sending a column of smoke like a frozen tornado up up into the sky. That day was still and hot. No wind, thank goodness to speed the fire that consumed the candle-barks at the end of the many thousands of hectares of forest between us and it.
Rufus was safe. He was evacuated with the family who baby-sit him on a Monday. Tim and I waited in Greendale for word that it was safe to go in and get the dogs.
We are good at this now. We have a list and don't even need to check it twice. Decisions have been made - what stays, what goes. On that Monday though, it was our first time and I couldn't think clearly. Tim had to stop me walking around with a carved Chinese bone in my hand to say " Did you get formula for the baby?"
Now all the practical items fit neatly into the trailer: fire-kits, chainsaw, rake-hoe, clothes, formula, water, nappies and so forth. All of the things that for some reason or another I have decided I can't live without are packed in a ute box: photographs of course, the carved Chinese bone, a small package of 19th century medicine labels that say "It is dangerous to exceed the stated dose", a glass embossed jar "Pink Pills for Pale People", the egg that I etched for Tim with four hands in an ambulance carry grip with a ribbon moniker- 'Hold Fast', my favourite bunsen burner, a limited edition leather bound copy of 'The Morbid Anatomy of the Human Body'...
As I hitched the trailer this last time I did what I have done each time we leave - I mentally burned everything that was left behind. All the books, art, clothes, the hat collection, Rufus's funny wooden toys, the bedside cabinet with trick drawer handle that says "This is not a drawer...". All of it black ash and blobs of melted plastic and metal.
What was odd about that experience was how empty it felt. No emotion, no tears. Just a simple exercise in possibility.
"Maybe this is what will happen" I seemed to be telling myself to see how it would feel.
"And maybe it doesn't matter one jot" was the surprising answer.
I was reminded of a song by Peggy Lee:
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then lets keep dancing
Lets break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all
There is.
Now I am home again and I can feel the connections casting out around me like skeins of spider thread. The handmade quilt, the portrait in oil, that dress - the one with the jet beads - how could I have thought I wouldn't miss them?
I'm a collector. I always thought it was in my blood. I suspect now though it is the objects that own me, not the other way around. When I am near them I fall under their spell and I think - "Ah, yes.. this is who I am."
Without them to moor me what do I become?
It occurs to me that I could be anybody.
I could be just somebody towing a trailer. I could be just another traveler.
I could just be a woman in transit.

Terra Incognita

2009-02-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

I don't remember many of my dreams. I am sure that a large proportion of them are not worth remembering, being the bubble-and-squeak re-hash of the days' detritus.

Two nights ago, however, I had a corker:

I am a policewoman - an investigative officer. I have just finished a grueling case, the pursuit of which caused a fellow officer to be injured. I have decided I need a career change.

I arrive at the office of a career counsellor. The office looks like triage at a hospital. I tell the staff that I am here for career counseling. They tell me I am mistaken - I am really here for a 'healing'.

This dismays me. I don't like that voodoo hoodoo, chanting, hippy rubbish. I want some sensible advice.

Despite my protestations I am led to a white ward room, stripped of my clothes and laid out on what is unmistakably a dissecting table. Two men who look suspiciously disheveled and hairy for doctors enter the room. They lay wreaths and bouquets of flowers on all the parts of my body. They place my hands and my feet in water.

The healing begins and I am swept into a fog. Just before I wake from the dream I hurtle out of the fog into the stark ward where I am doubled over, vomiting uncontrollably and staring into the image of a giant and malevolent octopus.

O-Kay...

Now, we could all get excited and run away with complex theories about my troubled psyche (which I've already done, believe me) but what really interests me about this dream is the artistry of it.

It's going to sound a little conceited but WOW!

What confidence! What symbolism! What deft economical brushstrokes that have realized a creation which leaves the audience with such rich material to work with and the space to be the artists of their own meaning and interpretation.

There's the police officer (power? control? Concerned only with evidence?)

The dissecting table and the flowers (cutting below the surface? death? a wake for dissociated limbs and skin?)

Then there's the octopus... (Do any of you happen to know Hokusai's 'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife' ?)

The most bizarre thing about this dream for me is that even though it emanated from my brain, I AM the audience.

I have no idea who made that dream, but I'd love to meet them.

For a while I was obsessed with Philosophy of Mind, which is about mental events and functions and how they relate to the body (as distinct from Theory of Mind which is about understanding that other people have different thoughts and experiences to yours). I read lots of different books about how the brain vector maps faces and where memory is stored in the body. It occurred to me that an interesting project would be to map my own mind as a web page using Versalius illustration of the nervous system as the navigation (please do not use this idea- I WILL get around to doing it)

For the most part, I think this project would be an exercise in narcissism- memories, thoughts, ideas - I mean its all about me. The genuinely investigative and interesting part of the project will be trying to map the part of my brain that dwells to a large extent beyond my waking ken. It's the artist in the dark I am interested in -the bell diver who can sink to the black recesses of my brain and drag barnacled objects to the surface, the investigative officer who can see patterns in the scattered evidence, the anatomist who slices into the skin to see what lies beneath.

Who that woman is and where her country lies I haven't the faintest clue.

Seven Wonders

2009-02-16T00:18:00.000-08:00

1. I adore and miss my beloved Nana. She married, had kids and welcomed grandchildren on the same farm where she was born. She knew what was important and which things just didn't matter. On meeting my friend Sam, who at the time had hot-pink hair, Nana said "Oh! - its just the colour of my bouganvillea" When I showed her photos from the wedding of two lesbian friends of mine she said " Aren't they beautiful girls. Did they make those dresses themselves?"

2. I met my husband, Tim, in my scientific curiosity shop. He was looking for Warburg vessels – obscure laboratory glassware – it just so happened I had some. We discovered over a couple of dates that we both had embroidered smoking hats, were vegetarian and that neither of us had ever owned a television. After our second date, Tim asked me what my favourite film was. I answered Dr. Strangelove. He then asked if I would marry him, which was a joke, but, having an under-developed sense of irony, really freaked me out at the time. We were married about a year later.

3. Using Drake’s equation of diminishing probabilities- which divides the number of stars in a portion of the universe by the number that are likely to have planetary systems; divided by the number of planetary systems that could theoretically support life; divided by the number in which life, having arisen, advances to a state of intelligence and so on- even using the most conservative figures the number of advanced civilisations just in our galaxy still works out to be in the millions.

4. The number of times I think something is probably a bad idea but then go ahead and do it anyway still never ceases to amaze me.

5. The best meal I ever cooked included a terrine of savoury baked cheesecake wrapped in grilled vegetables, followed by home-made pumpkin, roasted garlic and pistachio agnolotti in orange and parsley oil, with pressed chocolate soufflé cake and honey marscapone for desert. Vegetarianism and ‘low-fat’ bear no relationship to one another – at least not in any of my cook-books.

6. The Venus Fly Trap can count. If one of its’ trigger spines were touched once it will not close. The spine must be touched two or three times in quick succession for the trap to wager its precious energy on the likelihood that it is an insect, not a leaf falling, and snap shut.

7. I sometimes think I may have hallucinated this: One beautiful summer evening I had plans for a date with a circus clown. He called and stood me up, so instead I caught a tram to South Bank. A trapeze duo happened to be performing for free in the atrium. While I was watching them a man approached me who looked like he had just stepped out of a canoe in the Amazon. He said he knew me. I said I thought he was mistaken. He suggested that if he could tell me exactly where we met, I let him buy me a beer. I agreed.
“Queensland.” He said.
“Yes, quite possibly” I said.
“West End” he said
“I used to live in West End” I replied.
“You served me coffee in the Sitting Duck Café on Boundary Street three years ago”.
I was too flabbergasted to reply. He suggested that instead of a beer I might like to have a cup of Russian Caravan tea on his boat. It turned out he had arrived at South Bank by canoe.
His boat was called the Red Bill. It was a river boat- a pearl lugger. His name was Simon. He said he had just returned from doing work in the Amazon planting fruit trees with tribes-people.
After tea, he offered to walk me home through the (then) derelict Docklands.
We passed the place where all the seagulls go to roost and caravans where people lived illegally on the fringe of the city. As we were walking up one of the dark and narrow laneways of town another couple walked towards us. As they came closer I could see it was the circus clown and his date. Simon, the jungle explorer and Derek the circus clown knew each other- although it was apparent there was no love lost between them.
If I ever found out what their grudge was I can’t remember. In fact I have no idea what else happened that evening. Perhaps the brain, when faced with too many miraculous events, ceases to function. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I HEART Weevils

2009-01-29T03:27:00.000-08:00

Really - they are very cute. What's that I hear you say?- a sneaky flour-eating little pest that deserve to be fumigated? Hush your mouth!
I'm not talking about that sort anyway. I'm talking jungle weevils, weevils as big as your thumb, weevils in spangly colours, Saturday-Night-Fever weevils, weevils that could put a mirror ball to shame.
The breadcrumb eating cupboard weevil is to these guys what Julie Andrews is to Boy George.
The jungle ones are a pest too but you wouldn't want to find one of these in your breadcrumbs. They wipe out fields of crops.

You know what I really love? Their noses. They have these big great hooters that can be almost as long as their bodies.
For a while I started collecting them. I was already purchasing papered butterflies and carded beetles from an ethical source in the States and the option of adding a Mr. Sparkles weevil to my order was just too tempting to resist. I built up a modest collection that ironically was eaten by museum beetle. A friend who found out I was collecting them and who is an origami obsessive made me a beautiful origami weevil which I still have (and which is included in the photos of favourite things).
Now I just draw weevils. I draw them the way they actually look (as best I can) and then I sometimes draw them in knickerbockers and wearing a smoking jacket.
The little guy above is called Eupholus. He's from Papau New Guinea.
I'm meant to be finishing roughs for a children's book about him. I got a mentorship with an editor from a publishing company and one of their illustrators. My story-book weevil doesn't live in the jungle. He lives in a Chocolate Wheaten Box mansion and is a food obsessed fop.
I guess what I'm doing right now is procrastinating writing about and drawing weevils when I should be writing about and drawing weevils.
It's amazing the lengths to which I'll go, really.

Delicates

2009-01-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

I used to own and run a scientific curiosity store called Wunderkammer, which means 'wonder chamber'. It was designed to look like a Victorian era museum with wooden shelves, lots of small drawers to open and cabinets that could be reached by a stepladder. The drawers and shelves were filled with scientific and medical instruments, fossils, models, butterflies and beetles, taxidermy and other ephemera. My friend Igor -yes, that is his real name- and I built the business including all the fittings and fixtures ourselves from cash earnings that we deemed surplus to requirements -the requirements being food, rent, booze, and cigarettes.
After a few years of the brief but heady financial highs and the long and dispiriting financial lows of retail obscurity we sold the business to a regular customer - an energetic and entrepreneurial older gentleman called Ray. Whenever Ray was in the store customers would approach him- distinguished, silver-haired gent that he was- to ask the price of this or that, or to request information about an item. Ray would shrug his shoulders apologetic and embarrassed and point them in the direction of me - the unlikely young red-head girl.
That business is still going (see www.wunderkammer.com.au).
I have no regrets about selling Wunderkammer. When that door closed a whole batch of other doors swung open and now I'm making art, writing and illustrating books, managing a small arts company and have become a mother.
What I do miss about Wunderkammer is this: when you sit in a curiosity shop all day, chances are that something curious will happen.
Odd things, wonderful things, unpredictable and sometimes downright bizarre things happened in Wunderkammer if not on a daily basis, then at least once a week. Surprising things still happen to me now, but I am convinced that being in Wunderkammer probably tripled or quadrupled the odds.

Some examples:
Two regular customers meet - Conrad, the man in black, a wry and sometimes inscrutable mathematician and 'Very Impressive' whose name (changed by deed-poll) is utterly appropriate -a rainbow garbed giant, booming, jovial and queer as all get out.
'Very' develops an instant crush and asks me if Conrad is available. I tell him Conrad isn't gay but Very is undeterred until I mention that he is also colourblind.

A man walks into the store. He is loathsome. He offers to sell me the head of a Turkish soldier that he has in a velvet-lined box. He tells me that his great-grandfather shot the Turk during the war and smuggled the head back into the country as a souvenir. I assume he is delusional and tell him that even if he did have such a head not only would I not sell it, I would consider calling the police and reporting it. The next week the papers are abuzz with the scandal of a World War I Turkish soldier's skull that has been anonymously sent to the war museum. The papers allege that an Australian soldier had taken the skull as a souvenir and kept it in a velvet lined box in his wardrobe. The Turkish consulate are making a lot of noise and the department of vetrens affairs desperately trying to hose down the media frenzy around our 'digger's dirty laundry.

An elderly woman comes into the shop. She is clearly out of place and nervous.
" I'm sorry to bother you" she says. " I wasn't sure where else to go. My mother died recently - she was very old. We, our family that is, have been going through her things and.. well.. I found this in.....in her delicates drawer. Do you know what it is?"
This happened often. People brought things in to be identified. Sometimes they then sold me the objects. Other times they went away pleased with their newly identified curiosity.
The object fits in the palm of my hand. It is a very delicate little device that looks like a wishbone on the end of a spring. It is made of pure gold.
I give the woman a receipt for the object and tell her to come back in a day or two.
When she comes back I tell her that it is her mother's contraceptive device - a wishbone pessary - one of the very early forms of IUD. This is one of the most beautiful medical collectibles I have every seen. With every ounce of my being and every covetous collector's bone in my body I pray for her to sell it to me.
" Oh." she says. " Dear me - well, I can't have that"
" Would you like me to find out what the gold is worth?" I ask. " Lucky next door is a gold and silversmith."
"That would be very kind of you" she says.
I am reminded of Sei Shonagon who, in the tenth century, wrote in her pillow book of ' Things that make one's heart beat faster".
Be still my beating little greedy heart.

No Smoking, No Drinking, No Candy

2008-11-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

I was looking the other day for the lyrics to a song I wanted to sing to my son. I sing a lot. It is a prophylactic against talking to myself. I still talk to myself, but lately it looks as though I am talking to my baby. Babies are fabulous listeners - you can tell them anything.

Here are the lyrics to the song I like. It is the version recorded by Harry McClintock:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

There is a satisfying irony to singing this song while engaged in manual labor like doing the dishes or pegging nappies. It's the knee-slapping, Yeehaw! lilt to this song that I adore, as well as the wonderfully evocative lyrics.
Rufus loves it.

Of course if I followed the advice on the web page where I found these lyrics, I would first sit down with my son and remind him of the terrible moral and physiological dangers of drinking. Also I would impress upon him that smoking is a filthy habit with potentially troublesome consequences such as death from cancer. I would remind him that being itinerant actually isn't fun at all, instruct him on the pitfalls of vagrancy and show him the linked website where we could both learn about homelessness. Perhaps while we were looking at the website on vagrants I would gently tell him about foot hygiene and the importance of changing ones socks every day so as to avoid tinea. Lastly I would lecture him on obesity, diabetes, tooth cavities and on the disadvantages of eating foods low in nutritional value.

I grew up reading Roald Dahl - an author who inspired in me confidence that nasty adults and greedy children would get their comeuppance and who instilled in me a taste for healthy mischief. Life in Dahl's books was not always fair but it was always fairly lively.
'Charlie and the Whole Wheat Salad Sandwich Factory' just doesn't cut it for me - excuse the pun.

I have imbibed many unwholesome substances in my time from lollies and chewing gum to good whiskey, the occasional hand-rolled stogie and potions and powders of the less than legal variety. Yes, there were potentially dangerous dalliances - but none of them inspired by books or songs!

When did we become such killjoys?

Perhaps when people got so greedy they ate franchise hamburgers and fries until their arteries burst.

Perhaps when cigarette companies decided to make fags filled with carcinogens and market them as image enhancers and health products endorsed by doctors. Smoking has always been a vice - and is portrayed as such in novels from the early 20th century. At least then nobody was kidding themselves that smoking soothed your throat.

Booze - the regurgitation rite of passage for every teen in Christendom. Teenagers will drink.
To me that is a reliably comforting fact and frankly much less frightening than the spectre I see of brain-addled children on the train home from school inhaling chrome from plastic bags.

Young people who run away from home are escaping crushing poverty, neglect and emotional and physical abuse. I used to work for a youth centre for the homeless. None of those young people left home for a lark because they had romantic notions about riding the rails or sleeping out under stars.

What can I say?
I'm a clean living girl now. My days of mind expanding substances are behind me. I swim laps.
I haven't had a cigarette for what seems like an age. Breastfeeding has limited my alcohol consumption to homeopathic quantities.

Please, don't take away my candy.

Milk

2008-10-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

At the risk of clubbing you over the head with facts you already know, human beings are mammals, which means we drink milk - our milk - not milk that comes in cartons of the cold section in the supermarket.
Here's a puzzle: Why, then, in English and many other languages, does the word 'milk' first connote the milk of cows? or of sheep or goats? Why doesn't 'milk' immediately conjure warm, sweet and creamy sustenance fresh from the breast? Why, when we think of dairy-maids, are we not imaging rosy-cheeked lasses tweaking the last of the cream from their plump bosoms?
We accept that it is normal to drink milk intended for the young of other mammals. It isn't hard to see the benefit of consuming such a rich and readily available food. Isn't it strange though that we have forgotten that first and foremost 'milk' comes from us?

When my son was born he was placed on my chest to find his way to the locus of his nourishment for the next twelve months. I was reminded of a picture of a newborn kangaroo I had seen in a nature book when I was a child. It looked like a little pink jelly baby that someone had sucked and spat out, stuck to a fur coat. Blind and with a gaping, searching mouth it was less than a centimeter away from the nipple. That picture had made me feel so frustrated, like I wanted to give the baby joey a prod towards its goal with my finger and shout "To the left, dammit! Just a little to the left!"
Rufus was exactly the same. He clawed at my breast and, desperate for something to suck, thrashed his head blindly from side to side like Stevie Wonder.
To anybody who hasn't attended a prenatal breastfeeding class, you would think getting a baby to drink milk from its mother's breast was straightforward: place object A (baby's mouth) on object B (nipple) and voila! - all night milk bar. Instead I had been shown a far superior technique that involved trying to hold the baby like a football and position his head with my elbow while trying to manipulate my nipple into the proper configuration to get as much of it into his poor little gob as possible.
It was far more frustrating than the baby kangaroo photo.
Thankfully my sister-in-law came to visit the next day and said " I don't want to give unsolicited advice, but have you tried holding him comfortably and putting his mouth in front of your nipple?" Bless her and bless the bleeding obvious.
My little mammal knew what to do.

The Wellcome Museum in London has a wonderful collection of milk related objects including a teat cut from the udder of a cow to be used with a bottle for feeding. In its day the surrogate teat wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, let alone a shudder.

We buy the milk of other mammals in bottles at the supermarket. Our strange customs lose their strangeness with the familiarity of the everyday.

Madness Slowly Creepeth

2008-10-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

Great Aunt Freda was notable for her inimitable style, her wavy auburn hair (which loitered in our family's genetic recesses until I came along) and her poison pen letters.
She was an excellent writer of poetry and prose but unfortunately her letters, typed in black and red, although well reasoned, were redolent with the whiff of madness.
She over punctuated. The exclamation mark key on her typewriter was worn to a blank. Underlining scarred the page - red dashes punched out like angry Morse under unlikely words like "because" and "although". She capitalized at least twice in every sentence - a sure sign of impending lunacy.

She was a prolific writer of letters. Not one well-meaning Aunt or hapless Second Cousin in our large Irish Catholic family was spared. The letters were fat, with typed addresses and footnotes on the outside of the envelopes that caused raised eyebrows from the postman. I had seen these letters arrive, only to be whisked away and the key turned in the study door.Of course I feigned indifference as though my curiosity were not aroused by my mother and father's furtive hissing and stifled cries of outrage. As soon as the opportunity arose I would ransack my father's desk and read the letter by penlight in a cupboard.

The problem was Catholicism - at least superficially. Freda and my grandmother, Claire, were of stout Protestant stock. When Claire married a Mick and converted she and Freda fell out. They didn't speak until one or two months before Claire died. Claire was in her eighties and a great-grandmother. Freda, two years younger, was unmarried and lived alone.

Freda's letters laid out with deliberate and powerful logic all of the reasons why every member of the Catholic Faith would be damned to an exclusive circle of Hell to be prodded by impish demons for all eternity. Eventually the letters came to include all Christians and became a heretical thesis on the hypocrisies of a faith that had borrowed most of its rites from Pagans because it was easier to change the name of a feast than stop the peasants from having their party.

By the time Freda's 'eccentricity' attracted the notice of the local health authorities the only person in the family on speaking terms with her was my father.
He visited her home and was unnerved to discover it uncannily similar in decor to Claire's. Despite their having lived more than one hundred kilometers distance from one another and having never visited or seen each others house in photographs, the sisters homes were almost a mirror image. The layout of the house was perfectly matched from the porch right through to the position of the lavatory. They had the same taste for Chinoiserie - ginger jars and figurines. They both collected carvings and castings in metal and plaster of the 'three wise monkeys'. They had absolutely identical wallpaper.
Freda's home differed from Claires in that it was shrouded in a thick layer of dust and that almost every item - tables, chairs, knick-knacks, soft furnishings - had a small piece of paper pasted or pinned to it that was black with miniscule wobbly writing. Freda had labelled her possesions.

Freda herself was regal in a long nightgown and bed jacket with her henna'd hair, uncut for over thirty years, wound piled on her head and contained by a knitted cusion cover worn like an bulging beret.
She offered Dad tea and as they sat sipping a large insect crawled out from underneath Freda's hair cosy.
"Good Gracious!" exclaimed my father. "Freda- there is an insect on your forehead! What is it?"
" How should I know" she answered peevishly. "I'm not an entomologist"

Among Freda's possessions, which I helped my father to sort, I found a bottle of perfume that she had labeled "This perfume must have come from poor old Leonard- a fortune! I think it was for my 21st". Leonard was my Great Uncle, my grandfather's brother. Freda and Len had dated at the same time that grandpa and Claire were courting. They were to be married in a double wedding, but something changed Freda's mind. She and Claire had done everything together until then.

The Smoking Cat and the Grey Felt Fedora were Freda's.
Every winter Freda traveled interstate to purchase hats, shoes and gloves for the coming Spring. She had extraordinary taste in hats. They all fit me perfectly.
I have many of the little notes that she pinned to the drapes and glued to the furniture. Each one tells a little story.
I collect Chinoiserie and the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys.
I'm working on reducing my punctuation.