I’m suffering from a brain freeze and I haven’t even had a Slushy drunk incredibly quickly. Today I finished NaNoWriMo.

I have now partly written a novel called Riven which I placed in the horror/thriller category when I signed up for NaNo. Interestingly enough, the book has turned out to be less about werewolves and more about life.

For those of you who wonder if it’s possible to write 50,000 words in 30 days that aren’t just 50,000 words of crap – the answer is YES, but you need to plan.

I have done NaNo twice before. In 2007 I wrote something which was readable but nothing special. I didn’t really think about the plot beforehand or even consider the characters. Last year I abandoned the whole thing half way through. I wrote about 15,000 words and gave up.

This year I planned the whole thing. Plot, characters, setting, everything. It made it much easier to write. I didn’t have to miss a few days figuring out which direction to take or spend hours thinking of names for characters and so on.

They tell you at NaNo HQ that if you want to succeed in writing 50,000 words in 30 days that you have to write 1,667 words per day. If you can write more than that – fantastic. If you write less consistently you get to the stage where you can’t catch up.

It’s tiring writing that much per day. It is an incredible exercise in self-discipline. Along with working and housework and helping with homework it leaves you feeling pretty fried. I am not sure I can actually string a coherent sentence together at the moment. I have completely neglected my blog and all the blogs in my reader.

So I’m going to sleep and recharge. And let my brain wind down.

And hope that this time my 50,000 words turns into something more.

Carry On Tuesday used an excerpt from Keats’ Ode to A Nightingale this week as their writing prompt..

My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my senses

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Keats and that I would never even dream to include words written by such a great man in any of my lowly pieces. But the quote stuck in my head and a little story formed.

If they have the internet in heaven, I hope Keats will forgive me….

It still may be a dream. This pain. I still might be about to wake and be able to rejoice in the knowledge that the pain occurred in my dream and not in my waking life. Only in my dream.

The leaves of the great oaks in the woods brush my window. They are paring down the glass. Soon it will shatter and they will intrude into the house. There is already a sliver on my eiderdown, shining like a fragment of the moon.

My mother thinks me insolent. A fool. She chides me for my weakness. I am one of the lucky ones, due to inherit the riches of family tradition; the power of foresight and wisdom and grace. She will not let me cast those jewels aside like vegetable scrapings from the kitchens.

Keep up your studies, Cerise, she says.

Fine tune your magic.

Open your mind.

I did what she said. I opened my mind and in walked Armel.

Armel had no magic. Only the power of his smile and his heart. And, of course, his voice. The sound of his voice in song was like the cleansing wind coming in from the sea when it is still early morning and the webs of sleep cling.

His voice was laughter, a caress, a kiss. I could have walked the world from end to end without complaint as long as I could hear his voice. I could have forgotten terror and hatred and pain. When I heard Armel’s voice I knew the answer to the question of my life. So this is love, I realised.

My mother found Armel in my bed. Her horror shook the room. Her anger formed clouds of blackened breath.

You are the one of great promise, she shouted. And you waste your time on this piece of insignificance.

I had broken the rules. Witch and human ne’er shall mix. We are taught it from birth.

To talk to a human is just acceptable. But to love…

There is no going back from love.

My mother was merciful. It was a surprise. I had expected death for both of us. She turned him. A creature closest to him in spirit.

Now he comes at night, flitting through the trees, hovering at my window as the oaks do, grey-brown in the changing light.

He sings. Two notes ringing. A flute and an oboe in duet.

I cannot bear the silence before or after his song. It summons him to me then sends him back again. My cry stretches through the night. My love. You are with me but you are gone from me at the same time.

And my heart aches.

And the clouds whiten the dark.

And this is life.

And I am thrown into the fire.

And this is love.

For three nights I have drunk hemlock. It is less bitter than I thought. It fills my throat with fear and hope.

It is mixed with angelica and heart’s ease to protect my spirit so that only my physical body dies.

I have cast a spell so that at the moment of my death my spirit transforms and I can join my love.

The final draught is strong. A drowsy numbness pains my senses. My vision spirals to the stars. The world is larger than it was. The world is smaller. I am afraid the magic I have cast will fail me and I will plummet to the underworld alone.

The walls close in. All at once I am falling, falling, a rock thrust from a wall. I try to scream but I have no voice. I try to stop myself but I have no arms. I am dead or I will be soon. I will be gone from this world for good.

The softest wind beats at my back, at my throat. The ground looms, black, sharp-eyed.

A song lifts me, carries me. I am the air. I am the light. I am small but immense.

The song calls and I follow. I will follow forevermore.

I fly. We fly.

Two nightingales in the dark.

* Image by LonesomeAesthetic at DeviantART.

When you live in a reasonably large city like Sydney (4.34 million people and counting) you get used to a lot of things that people from less densely populated areas would probably find unpalatable. Things like reckless driving, overcrowded public transport, pollution, impatient attitudes, lack of consideration. Sadly, these things and many others are becoming the norm in urban environments.

There is one thing above all that gets on my goat. Every day I can’t stand it more and more. It drives me completely bonkers. That thing is other people’s garbage.

It’s everywhere. On the pavement. In the gutter. In the parks. In the waterways. Plastic bottles. Cigarette butts. Chocolate bar wrappers. It goes on and on and on. It amazes me constantly how easy it is for people just to drop their rubbish and move on. Without a second thought.

To compound this problem I have with other people’s garbage I have a laneway at the back of my house which is frequently the dumping ground for all sorts of broken, useless, filthy items. It makes me angry when people leave stuff in the back lane because not only are they not being responsible for the proper disposal of that item, they are not taking into account the impact their dump may have on other people.

On Friday afternoon someone dumped approximately thirty litres of used motor oil in the back lane. It started at the back of my house and ran all the way down to the cross street. The smell was acrid and pungent, made worse by the fact that it was 33 degrees C with a hot wind.

I fell ill on Friday afternoon with a severe headache, blurred vision, nausea and an upset stomach. I didn’t realise straight away that the oil had been dumped or that it was making me sick. It was only when I got so bad that I had to call a doctor out that he alerted me to the funny smell at the back of the house.

The Council came and cleared it all up. They use detergent and absorbent sand to get rid of the residue. They will be doing an investigation because dumping oil is a serious offence which attracts a huge fine. I hope they find out who did it because I would like that person to know how sick he or she made me. I was in bed all weekend. Three days later I still feel slightly unwell.

One of my neighbours also fell ill. Another lady was walking her dog and he became ill after trying to lick the oil off his paws.

What I don’t understand is why someone would do something like that in a residential area. The Council offers free pick up and disposal of any type of oil, why would someone feel the need to just pour it into the street?

Sometimes the actions of others are simply inexplicable.

There was a man crossing the road today who was carrying a bunch of flowers. A group of kids crossing from the other side of the road weren’t looking where they were going and bumped into him. As a result they dislodged the head of one of his flowers which fell, spiralling onto the grate on the stormwater drain. It stayed there for an instant, like an adornment on a birthday present before slipping into the murky water below.

If I were writing a play about my life this week one of the acts would be called The Flower On The Grate. The thing you want that is just bound to slip away.

Jillian and I haven’t spoken for six years. We parted ways due to her abusive, drunken husband. I watched for years as he abused her emotionally, but mostly physically. I took her to hospital more times than I can remember, packed up her things for an escape more times than I care to remember. But she wouldn’t leave him.

It led to the break down of our friendship. I ended up not being able to take her taking it anymore. It made me ill. It made me angry. I prayed every night for years that her husband would die in an accident or just simply die. But he kept on living. And drinking. And beating her.

Six years. That’s a long time to pretend you don’t know someone when you see them in the street. I used to walk past her house sometimes, listening, straining my ears for any sounds of conflict inside. I used to get my son to spy on her son in the school yard for any signs of bruising or abuse.

Even when you say something is over it is hard to end it completely.

Jillian rang me for my birthday back in May. It made me really happy to hear from her. I know it took her a lot of courage to call. All the worries I had harboured for six years melted away with that phone call. I thought that maybe we could give our friendship another try.

We’ve had coffee several times over the last few months and it has gone well. We have chatted and laughed just like the old days. But…..

There has to be a but in this situation because Jillian’s husband is still very much in her life and we hedge around him and hedge around him, pretending he isn’t there but knowing all the while that he is. He is the literal blight on the landscape, fly in the ointment, thorn in our sides.

If we are to re-establish our friendship we can’t keep ignoring him. We have to talk about him, but it was the talking about him that got us into difficulty in the first place.

How can you be friends with someone if you don’t accept some aspect of their lives? Imagine if you were someone who didn’t like children so you stipulated that every time you saw your friends with children they weren’t allowed to bring their children or talk about their children.

How can you impose terms and conditions upon a friendship and expect it to work? How can I say to Jillian : I’d love to see you and your son anytime, but your husband is virtually dead to me?

And then there is my husband to consider. He is not happy about me seeing Jillian again. She caused both of us a lot of stress when her husband’s drinking was at its worst. Her husband even took a swing at me one evening when I was helping Jillian get her things together in one of her bids to leave him.

Despite the buts I thought things might be OK. I was willing to give our new friendship a try. Until I saw him.

I saw him coming out of the pub on Tuesday as I was waiting for the bus. Drunk at 11 in the morning. Filthy drunk. I actually looked around for a weapon to defend myself with in case he saw me but all I could find was a plastic bottle and an old bus ticket. I could imagine the headlines – Woman defends herself against rampaging drunkard with a discarded plastic bottle and a bus ticket.

It’s not even funny to think of it.

I saw him and I knew that if I let Jillian back into my life I would let him in too. And I just can’t do it. I can’t go back to that place. Watching in the wings. It’s a play you’ve seen a hundred times before, that you keep hoping will end differently, but it never does. And the fact that it never ends differently destroys you more and more each time.

So I’ve had to let Jillian go. Again. I feel selfish. I feel sad. I feel guilty for feeling relieved.

Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be. It’s the only consolation I have. Perhaps it was like the flower on the grate, slipping away before I could grasp it.

*Image by Aegis 13 at DeviantART

I feel like I’m in an action movie where I’m trapped in a room and the evil genius who is after me has a device that is making the walls close in. Inch by inch.

My next door neighbours, to the right of me, to the left of me, have complained about the jacaranda tree in my garden. At this time of year jacarandas drop their bell-shaped lavender blossoms that actually look like little fairy bonnets all over the ground. They fall and they fall until the ground is carpeted in purple.

The drop of the thousand blossoms lasts for about a month. I will admit that it can be a bit of a hassle, particularly if it rains because the blossoms make the ground very slippery, but it is still a joy to see all that purple in the garden.

My neighbours don’t think so. They have complained to me and my landlord about the tree. They are tired of sweeping up the blossoms. They feel they shouldn’t have to do it as it wasn’t their choice that the tree be planted there in the first place. The thing is that neither of them were there when the tree was planted because it’s at least forty years old.

I have encountered some petty nonsense in my time but this really takes the cake. The jacaranda is about six or seven metres tall. Its branches spread about ten metres. None of them hang directly over either of my neighbour’s gardens. It is the wind that carries the blossoms over the fences. How can I or my landlord control which way the wind blows?

My landlord, uncharacteristically, told my neighbours to get stuffed and to keep sweeping.

I stood in the garden at twilight when the sky was purple white and the jacaranda was purple dark and the grass that was free of blossoms was covered instead in shadows. Old, old shadows.

And I prayed.

That the next day would bring wind.

Today we hired this ute and drove down to the suburbs to help my Dad move around some furniture. My Dad has a new, enormous 52 inch TV, so he needed to make space for it. My sister got a lovely display cabinet and a few other items, and Nick got a leather recliner chair for his bedroom that is more comfortable than any bed I have ever slept in. I am, in fact, thinking of sleeping in that chair from now on.

My Dad got a quote from a professional removalist who said it would cost five hundred dollars to move all the stuff around. There were less than ten items all up and no fridges, pianos or boxes of encyclopedias so we all thought the quote was tantamount to daylight robbery.

So we hired a ute for the day for $75.00 and moved it all ourselves.

Driving in a ute along the highway is a very funny experience. A lot of people speed past you, many try and avoid you but just as many when they have a look at you and see you are a mother, father and son laughing because they are being bounced around so much by the ute’s shocking suspension, wave at you, or beep the horn or try and engage you in conversation at the lights.

There is also an unspoken code of solidarity that develops between you and the other ute or van drivers. You are acknowledged at the lights or along the highway by these other drivers. By the time we got to my Dad’s house we had the baseball cap tilt we used to greet the other ute drivers down pat.

When you drive a ute that is obviously being used to move things you develop a VIP status in the eyes of other drivers. When we stopped to get some gas a number of people asked us what the roads were like today or asked us directions.  How much we charged. We were even asked for a weather forecast. Winds light to variable, we replied.

Sometimes there are days that make you sigh as they start, as you imagine the physical work, the possible logistical problems involved. It is a pleasant surprise when those days run smoothly, when you feel like a well-honed cog in a machine, doing your part as you should, gliding effortlessly through the day.

Nothing went wrong.

The furniture fitted.

It wasn’t scratched.

Nothing was broken.

Nothing was left behind.

Nobody argued.

Gratitude was expressed.

Nothing went wrong.

So we drove back home, squealing as we leaned around corners, chanting I think I can, I think I can as we crawled up hills, tipping our caps to fellow ute and van drivers as we did so.

As we ate our fish and chips after a day of intensive physical work we pondered what it must be like to spend each day battling the Sydney roads as a professional driver of some sort – back and forth, back and forth. Lifting and hauling. At war with the heat and the dust. Driving so long and so often that even in dreams all you see is an endless stream of traffic.

And we decided that in spite of our successful run, our laughs over the terrible suspension, and the experience of ute driver solidarity; we could only be removalists for just one day.

I didn’t get the chance to post this yesterday on Remembrance Day but I was walking through the park by the creek the other day and came across this plaque.

For some reason it reminded me of my Great Great Uncle Johnny who served in the First World War. His wife was named Alice, although she wasn’t a Murphy, she was a Hamilton.

Great Great Uncle Johnny died when I was about 8 or 9. I didn’t know much about war or soldiers back then, but I wish I had known so I could have asked him what it was like to serve in the war. I wish I could have asked him if he was ever homesick or scared. I wish I could have asked him how he got through it.

I know Uncle Johnny was proud of being a soldier. He had an oak box full of medals. I don’t remember what they were but I remember there were a lot of them and they were heavy and well made. I felt proud when he brought the box out and let me look at them because he wouldn’t let the others kids look. He let me because he knew I was careful. We used to sit there for ages, Uncle Johnny drinking his whisky, me holding the medals. We didn’t speak at all. The room was full of reverence.

Great Great Uncle Johnny drank. Even I knew that. The family muttered about it behind their endless cups of tea and their slices of ginger cake. My aunts, uncles and grandparents rolled their eyes and shook their heads when Uncle Johnny was mentioned as if he was a hopeless case. The war was never spoken of, just his drinking.

Thinking about things now – with hindsight – it was probably because of the war that he drank. No one knew what his experience of the war was like. I suspect no one asked. Maybe that disinterest alone was enough to make him drink. Or maybe it was something worse.

On Remembrance Day I wore a poppy for Great Great Uncle Johnny and for all the men and women who have served in war. I wish I could have thanked him. I wish I could have told him that men like him make it possible for people like me to still believe in peace.

Thank you Great Great Uncle Johnny. It was an honour to hold your medals and sit with you.

I won’t ever forget.

There are days when angels can be found in unexpected places. We would expect to see them basking in beams of sunlight, cavorting beneath blue skies, not clinging to the sides of buildings, draped like black cloth in shadow light.

Sometimes the weariness of the world descends, clinging to hair, clothes and skin like wet leaves and it is natural to retreat under cherry trees or the farthest corner of the verandah where the dimness droops.

It is comforting to sit in the cool where our eyes are not strained by the heat, where bands of ash slant across our fingers, where stone grows rich as amber.

The faces are there. Those who seek to guide us. If you listen very carefully you can hear the rustling of their wings, such a delicate sound it could be mistaken for trees flexing their leaves in the wind.

The shadow light offers solace without being asked. It covers our skin with such gentleness. Airborne, suspended, yet resting. And for the briefest of moments we sit, dreaming of different days, enfolded in the arms of an angel.

[Image by cichutko at Deviant Art.]

I live with my head in the clouds a bit. I’m the first to admit it. I could quite happily walk around all day staring up at the sky, making up little tunes and stories.

When I was younger people found this quirk of mine quite charming, referring to me as eccentric or fruity. There was a tolerance for my idiosyncrasies because I had time. It was expected that with all the time that I had in front of me I would mould my quirks into something productive, something that would earn me money.

I even tolerated myself. I remember dreaming about becoming a famous writer, thinking how good it would be to earn a living doing what I really love except that the problem is I don’t love doing it as much as I love thinking about it. Writing a book is bloody hard work.

It’s like living in exile in Siberia without adequate heating, where your only nourishment is borscht, three day old bread and vodka which you eat and drink for every meal so that eventually you not only think you are in exile hanging out with Dostoyevky, you know you are in exile.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo at the moment. I’ve written 15,000 words of a novel in one week. My dearest friend Jules who is the only member of the cheer squad I have left (the others dropped out because I just kept not delivering) says it is one of the best things I have written. I don’t know if she’s right, but it is certainly the book I have written with the heaviest of hearts.

I am drinking my final whisky in the Last Chance saloon with this book. I am Scheherazade trying to ward off execution with her 1001 tales. I am watching the Titanic go down knowing I can’t swim for it.

I’m telling you this not so you will say Oh no, no, no, you are brilliant. You’re going to make it, you really are. You are kind if you do say that even though you and I both know it is not necessarily the truth. Because I don’t deliver. It’s been proven.

I could give you every excuse in the world as to why I either never finish books I start.  Or leave them sitting in my desk after three drafts. Or why I dump them after one rejection. And you would hear those excuses and offer your sympathies and feel bad for me for a moment, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I would still not deliver.

Many people have tried over the years to get me out of this mindset. They have harassed me, cajoled me, begged me, killed me with positive reinforcement, but to no avail. I still cannot deliver. This is the fatal flaw in my character that even the most successful life coach in the world would not be able to address.

Is it lack of self belief?

Is it a fear of success?

Is it laziness?

Is it apathy?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t take the advice I give to others and I perplex and annoy myself in equal measure.

In my time on this planet I have learnt that there are only two ways to get what you want – put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis and work hard.

That’s it.

Should be easy enough even for me to follow.

Yet my head remains in the clouds.

But there comes a time when even the greatest daydreamers among us give in to the forces of gravity and land with a splat in their middle of their lives. When we realise that we shouldn’t leave the things we really want to do until it is too late.

Elvis is singing on my iTunes selection. It’s Now or Never. Couldn’t be more timely.

There’s no time like the present is what the King is saying.

Tomorrow will (might) be too late.

It’s now or never. My books won’t wait.

Do what you want to do. What lies deep in your heart. Find a way. That really is what life’s about.

Don’t leave it too late.

I saw a little girl in a red tutu at the shops today. She would have been about three or four years old. She had a teddy in a little toy stroller who was also wearing a red tutu.

It’s funny how you can see things that remind you of something else. Almost exactly.

My sister, Shelley, about the same age had a tutu in non-traditional colours. It was grey.

Her grey tutu, was grey by accident. It had been a white tutu a neighbour had washed with a black leotard that wasn’t colourfast. Her little ballerina decided she would not settle for a grey tutu so it was passed on to my sister.

Shelley wasn’t a ballerina but she liked the outfits the ballerinas wore. She wore that grey tutu everywhere. It was a soft kind of grey like the fur of a cat, but everywhere she went people would say :’ Oh look at you and your grey tutu, you poor, sad, little ballerina.’

I remember Shelley glowering at all these people who thought it was unfortunate to have a grey tutu. I used to hide the magic wand I had been given for Christmas, fearing that if she got hold of it she would use that glower to curse someone.

When I saw the little girl today in the red tutu I got a catch in my throat for more reasons than one. That little girl reminded me so much of my sister who was a non-conformist of the glowering sort as a child and remained that way as an adult.

I had friends and cousins who dressed as ballerinas and fairies in the more traditional pinks, whites and sometimes (daringly) lilacs, who even today follow a more conservative way of dressing. And living. It got me thinking that it might be possible that our character is formed from a very young age. Our steadfastness. Our strength. Whether or not we are forthright. It is easier to follow the pack as a child. To not follow puts you in danger of being whispered about behind cupped hands or pointed out in a crowd. I wonder why a child would willingly encourage those whispers.

Seeing the little girl in the red tutu also made me think of when I was a little girl. My non-traditional ways. I didn’t like ballerinas with all their primping and posing. I certainly didn’t like fairies, at least not the good ones.

I used to dress up as Merlin or as a Knight of the Round Table, devising strategies to save the world on old sheets of butcher’s paper taped to my bedroom floor.

I was the way I am now from a very young age. I wonder what made me that way and not the ballerina type of girl with her beautiful posture and perfect mannerisms. Why was I a clumsy, plodding wizard or a Knight destined to never find the Holy Grail? Would my life have been different if I had worn pink tulle and had rosebuds in my hair?

The things you see at the shops sometimes bring the past back so rapidly it is as if current existence is completely imagined. And the little girl I used to be remains.

* Image sassypantstutus.