Introducing the THREAD

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Books, creativity, music, Musings, Travel and Trips, Trips and Travels, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged 2023, A Cast of Falcons, A Murder of Crows, A Narrow Door, A Solitary Walk on the Moon, Allegra in Three Parts, Alone With You in the Ether, Amy Betters-Midvelt, Atticus Finch, Auckland, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, books, Christchurch, Christmas, Crossroads, degustation, dolphins, Elvis, Exiles, Felix the Cat, freedom, Front Left, Harry Styles, Hilde Hinton, Hobbiton, Hot August Nights, icebergs, Indie Folk, Jane Harper, Joanne Harris, Jonathan Franzen, Kaikoura, Katy Hays, lakes, Lana Del Ray, Libby app, Marvel Girl, Matamata, Midnights, Milford Sound, Miss Malaprop, Mt Cook, music, Nagi Maehashi, Napier, Neil Diamond, new school, New Year's, New Zealand, Nigella Lawson, NZ, NZ roadtrip, Olivie Blake, parenting, Pier Hotel, pool, Queenstown, RecipeTin Eats, road trip, Rotorua, Sarah Yarwood-Lovett, seals, Shotover River, Spotify, summer, Suzanne Daniel, swimming, Taylor Swift, teenagers, The Beatles, The THREAD, THREAD, Toshikazu Kawaguchi, U2, Wellington • Leave a comment

It’s been a long while since I last posted here. Christmas has come and gone, and New Year’s too.

Since our family finally ventured overseas for the first time in years at the beginning of January 2023, my year in review posts for 2022 never eventuated. And, although I often have a multitude of ideas for posts, I frequently don’t have the time to execute them — mostly because life. So between my last post and this, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how to make this blog more relevant to my life as it is now.

When I started making a list of what I wanted to write about — things I’d been thinking, reading, eating and doing — I realised I had the beginnings of a workable acronym for all I wanted to communicate. A couple of minutes of tinkering later, I had a plan in my notebook and a smile on my face.

And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the THREAD.

I’ve been thinking about this post by Amy Betters-Midvelt, which someone shared to the Chat10LooksTeen Facebook group recently. It’s called All Parents of Teenagers are Liars, and examines the way we speak about — OK, lie about — the lives of those she refers to as “tall kids”, or teenagers. It reminded me of the old saying, which I may have heard myself imparting to my own tall kids of late, that everyone is dealing with something. You might be privy to someone’s situation. Perhaps, to you, it seems trivial, perhaps not. Or maybe you’ll never know what a person is going through, and it’s something truly ghastly. Or maybe it’s not. But the fact remains: everyone is dealing with something.

My two main takeaways from this thought-provoking piece were, firstly, that regardless of how tall they are (and believe me, Marvel Girl has well and truly passed me, and Miss Malaprop’s not far behind her), teenagers are still kids. And secondly, that just about every parent of a teenager I know is more likely to respond as cheerily as they can to a query about how their tall kid is doing rather than launching into a ten minute diatribe about whatever it is they are dealing with at that time, whether it be school refusal, bullying, slipping grades, vaping, porn, alcohol, general slothfulness, or their insistence on publicly wearing a bikini so miniscule it would make a Brazilian blush. We’re all doing our best, with varying degrees of success, and sometimes as unsure of ourselves as parents as our tall kids are of the almost-adults they’re becoming.

Everyone is dealing with something. But focusing on the good bits when we’re asked? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

Since I live in a house with two tall kids, I’ve been hearing a lot of their music lately. Our summer days have been filled with songs from Lana Del Ray, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles. Marvel Girl got a record player for Christmas, so there have been numerous trips to various music stores in search of specific titles on vinyl. (I suspect I did clock up more than a few brownie points for presenting her with the Moonstone Blue edition of Midnights to start off her collection, but that may have been more good luck than good management on my part).

The Bloke and I have made sure Marvel Girl has added a few classics to her record collection too, making sure she’s got some Beatles tunes, and some U2, and even dug out some old vinyl we’d been hanging on to since forever and introduced her to Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights. We even found some Elvis records that had belonged to her great grandmother, and the theme song to Felix the Cat, just for good measure.

When the kids are not around, I’ve been listening to a weird mix of Indie Folk and whatever happens to be on Spotify’s ever-changing “Front Left” playlist. And when I’m working, it’s all instrumental…no words, because lyrics have a tendency to get in the way of the words I’m writing.

I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading this summer, have have been on a bit of a Jonathan Franzen kick after reading Crossroads just after Christmas. I was happy to hear Crossroads is intended as the first of a trilogy, and I enjoyed it so much I decided to read Freedom. Franzen writes about family so well — the weird, somtimes stilted, inter-generational dynamics of living with people purely by accident of birth — and often in a darkly funny way.

I also plowed my way through several holiday reads via the Libby app (Jane Harper’s Exiles, and two very British mystery novels by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett called A Murder of Crows and A Cast of Falcons). In various airports and armchairs I read Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel, Hilde Hinton’s new book A Solitary Walk on the Moon, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold and a couple of entertaining thrillers: The Cloisters by Katy Hays and A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris. I also read and found myself frequently reflecting on the tragically beautiful portrait of love and mental illness in Olivie Blake’s novel Alone With You in the Ether. I enjoyed them all, some more than others, but mostly because each was exactly what I needed at the time.

Eating is something I am eternally grateful for. I am one of those people who lives to eat, not one who eats to live, so good food — whether prepared by me or for me — is something I truly relish. We ate some fantastic meals during our road trip around New Zealand, discovering some great restaurants. To this end I highly recommend Atticus Finch in Rotorua, Pacifica in Napier (where our kids enjoyed their first ever degustation dinner), and the Pier Hotel in Kaikoura.

Since we’ve been home and school has resumed, we are back to far more routine offerings, such as Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Banana Muffins (my copy of her book Kitchen automatically falls open at the page featuring this recipe, not least because it is a very effective way of using up over-ripe bananas). Like most of Australia — OK, half the world — we’ve been singing the praises of Nagi Maehashi, of RecipeTin Eats fame, whose cookbook Dinner has been a source of many a home cooked meal at our place this summer. We are particular fans of the Asian Glazed Salmon, not only because it’s insanely delicious, but also because it is super quick to prepare. We tip our collective hats to Nagi, a Northern Beaches local who creates amazing recipes and gives so much back to our local community via RecipeTin Meals.

I know it might seem like a peculiar thing, but one thing I have been admiring lately is the bottom of our new swimming pool. Yep — the bottom! You know how the light hitting the water creates those mesmerising moving patterns? The ones that make you think you might be swimming over the top of a gigantic turquoise-shelled sea turtle (if such a thing existed)? Or some kind of weirdly warped honeycomb-like tessellation? OK…maybe it’s just me. But I do love watching it, floating on the surface, gazing down into the blue.

I am also admiring my kids, who both started at a new school this year. It’s not been entirely plain sailing, but they’re both doing all those hard things that stand you in good stead later in life, as well as in the here and now: making new friends, finding their way in unfamiliar territory, remembering (after a long summer) how to be punctual, showing up to things they’ve signed up for, speaking up for themselves when they need to. I’m struck by their courage, their tenacity, their humour. It was truly gratifying to see their care for each other after their first day, checking in and making sure their sister had survived their first day before regaling me with tales of what they’d experienced. And I’m grateful — beyond measure — that after four years at separate schools, they are finally together again.

And finally, we find ourselves at doing! We’ve been doing so much, but the standout highlight would have to be our New Zealand road trip. We flew into Auckland, and drove — via Hobbiton, of course — to Rotorua in all its (stinky) geothermal glory, then onto Napier before heading down to see very dear friends who have made their home in Wellington, at the tip of the North Island. A particularly exciting moment for Marvel Girl was watching her godfather flying a plane out of his “office”, Wellington airport: she had requested he do a barrel roll but apparently such aerobatics are frowned upon on domestic flights, so we settled for seeing him take off instead. We might even have cheered.

From Wellington we made our way across to the South Island via the Interislander Ferry to Kaikoura, saw hundreds of seals including about fifty pups at O’hau, then made our way via Christchurch to Aoraki (Mt Cook). There we were blown away by mountain views, icebergs and glaciers, and even swam in the very cold but still refreshing Lake Pukaki. We finally wended our way to Queenstown, made a magical day trip to Milford Sound and saw a bunch of bottlenosed dolphins put on quite a show, before finishing up with a hair-raising jetboat ride on the Shotover River. We flew home tired but happy, pleased with all we’d been able to do and see but also glad to be back in our new house.

So there you have it, folks: the inaugural edition of the THREAD, which I hope you’ve enjoyed.

I’d love to know what you’ve been getting up to over the summer and how life is treating you now school is back in session for another year. I’d also appreciate any thoughts you have on tall kids and how to manage being a parent (I’ve just about given up trying to “manage” the tall kids at this point, but I think that’s also kind of the point at this stage in their development?!), or anything else that has got your brain turning over lately. And feel free, as always, to use the comments for recommendations for any music, books or recipes you’re into as well.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

And They’re Off!

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Moments of Delight, Musings, Parenting, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged being present, braces, happy dance, life is short, Marvel Girl, Mary Oliver, nostalgia, orthodontist, parenting, paying attention, poetry, saudade, Smile • Leave a comment

No, this is not a post about a race.

Or strip poker.

Or a bucket of prawns in the sun.

It’s about Marvel Girl’s braces — which came off last week. (Please feel free to do a happy dance at this juncture, even though they’re not your braces.)

Except it’s not exactly about Marvel Girl getting her braces off, but about the fact that even though it has been more than seven and a half years since I wrote this post about her losing her very first tooth, my sense of saudade remains.

Back then, when she was ever so much smaller (and definitely not taller than me, which she is now), I expressed it like this:

I feel saudade most acutely in those moments when part of me recognises, at some deep and otherwise undetected level, that after this, things will never be the same. These are the occasions when I feel that I am bearing witness to life — most frequently, for me, to the lives of my daughters. These are the moments that are captured by my heart’s camera, imprinted between heartbeats, indelible impressions of life most raw and pure.

That same feeling hit me all over again when Marvel Girl’s braces were removed, except this time I was also ready with my phone camera, to photograph the first glimpse of her beautiful new smile — a smile that reached all the way to her eyes and truly made them twinkle.

The smile that had never been seen before, hidden as it had been behind carefully positioned chunks and bands of metal for so long.

The smile that had not been gained without more than a year’s worth of careful teeth cleaning, diligent application of tiny rubber bands multiple times a day, and — let’s be honest — a decent amount of pain.

The smile that somehow made my Marvel Girl look three years older than she did when she sat down in the orthodontist’s chair less than an hour earlier.

The smile that made me think of the wise words of the American poet, Mary Oliver, who was so good at capturing in scant, succinct lines the sentiments that came rushing through my brain and body that afternoon.

Of how ridiculously precious — and short — life is.

Of how clinging to the past is pointless, and possibly perverse.

Of how pining for the future always denies us the present.

Of how important it is to pay attention to the here and now, since it is all we truly have.

Of saudade, all over again.

Where the Streets Have No Name

Posted on November 13, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in creativity, music, Musings, Parenting, Uncategorized • Tagged Adam Clayton, Asia, Boy, call to prayer, Constantinople, deprivation, Dostoevsky, favourite songs, Greece, Guns N' Roses, I Will Follow, Istanbul, Joshua Tree, Larry Mullen Jr, Marvel Girl, memory, Mount Temple Comprehensive, muezzin, Nabokov, pandemic, Pasternak, poverty, Radiohead, Rattle and Hum, REM, Russian literature, Song for Someone, Songs of Innocence, stadium concert, surrender, Swifty, Taylor Swift, The Edge, The Verve, Tolstoy, Turkey, U2, Where the Streets Have No Name • Leave a comment

“It’s the one with the guitar in it,” says Marvel Girl, a dreamy look on her face.

I burst out laughing.

“Well, that would be every last song of theirs,” I reply.

We’re talking about U2, a band whose songs have formed the soundtrack to my life. A band my elder daughter — a dedicated Swifty who also possesses an unexpected penchant for Guns N’ Roses era glam rock — is now discovering. And wanting to add to her playlists. Except she doesn’t know the names of the songs whose lyrics I can recite without even having to think.

Where the songs have no name?

Ironically, the tune Marvel Girl has stuck in her head is Where the Streets Have No Name.

It doesn’t surprise me that the opening track of the iconic Joshua Tree album has become her gateway into U2. I had the same experience myself, though at a much younger age, with their post-punk anthem I Will Follow.

That song came from U2’s debut album, Boy. But I also have very clear memories of seeing the words U2 I WILL FOLLOW in fading red spray paint on the wall of an overpass near my childhood home. We would drive past those words most days when I was small. I hadn’t been able to read for very long, so the words stayed with me. I felt a weird sense of satisfaction when I finally understood what they referred to, and what they really meant.

I’ve been reading Bono’s autobiography, Surrender, a journey through his life via forty different songs, so music and memories have been occupying a lot of my headspace. I’ve also had U2 songs playing as we go about our business, finding our way in the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar space that is our new home. I now know that Bono connects I Will Follow with what they called the Yellow House, a rehearsal space they used in the early days of the band. Where the Streets Have No Name, on the other hand, takes him back to his first experiences in sub-Saharan Africa.

But I’m wondering what memory Marvel Girl might attach to this particular song, at this moment in her life.

Will she associate Where the Streets Have No Name with moving house? With us dusting off the old DVD player, getting it going, and then watching a battered copy of Rattle and Hum together? Of me struggling to explain the euphoric, visceral, all-consuming experience of going to a stadium rock concert featuring one of the biggest bands in the world to a teenager who — thanks to a global pandemic — has never had the opportunity to attend one?

I wonder…

I wonder whether the music I listened to, danced to, sang along to when I was pregnant with Marvel Girl (U2, REM, Radiohead, The Verve, alongside…ahem…Guns N’ Roses era glam rock) has somehow informed her own musical tastes? I wonder whether such a phenomenon exists, and whether it explains why I love the words of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak and Nabokov so much, given my mother spent time reading Russian literature when she was pregnant with me?

But I digress.

My own memory of Where the Streets Have No Name dates very specifically back to August 1997, of an early morning bus ride from the Greek resort town of Kavala to Istanbul, Turkey. The sun was rising as we entered the city limits of what was once known as Constantinople, a golden orb lighting up a skyline of square concrete dwellings, tangled electricity wires, TV antennas and satellite dishes, with muezzin-filled minarets rising above them all.

I could not hear their call to prayer.

My ears were already filled with words and music of a different kind:

I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside
I wanna reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name, ha, ha, ha

I wanna feel sunlight on my face
I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I wanna take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name…

I’d already run about as far as I could from where I’d grown up, in the affluent northern suburbs of Sydney, all the way to the other side of the world. And I could already feel the sunlight on my face, as it began lighting up a city where I could literally stand with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. A place which felt steeped in history and religion and conflict and renewal and mystery.

Searching for a picture that might capture that specific sunrise on the outskirts of Istanbul I stumble across one, on the page of another blogger who made the reverse journey — from Istanbul to Kavala — in 2014. More than fifteen years later, it seems the road has not changed so much, and their impressions of it were very similar to my own.

Those travellers also witnessed the many and various indications of deprivation and poverty. They saw what they described as the bleakness of the peripheries but, unlike me, they had not seen them tinged with golden light, accompanied by the crescendo that is Where the Streets Have No Name, by the music of U2.

I will be forever grateful that in the year I was born, Larry Mullen Jr stuck a notice on the wall at Mount Temple Comprehensive in Dublin. He was the drummer seeking musicians who have now been his band mates for over forty-five years, providing the music I have been playing all my life. I will always smile at Bono’s bluster, get caught up in the rock solid rhythms of Adam Clayton’s bass, and lose myself entirely in The Edge’s hypnotic guitar sounds and sparkling harmonics, all while knowing deep down it’s the drummer who is not just the foundation, but the true rock star in this band.

Larry Mullen Jr always has been — and always will be — perfectly, completely, and impossibly cool.

As I write this, Marvel Girl has U2’s Song for Someone from the Songs of Innocence album playing on repeat downstairs.

She says it’s her new favourite song.

I am filled with quiet pride, knowing I have raised a child who is not afraid to find something new (to her) and stake a claim to it.

If there is a light
You can’t always see
And there is a world
We can’t always be
If there is a dark
Now we shouldn’t doubt
And there is a light
Don’t let it go out

And this is a song
A song for someone
This is a song
A song for someone

Living the Dream and Donna Summer

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged Brian Eno, building, David Bowie, disco, Donna Summer, electronica, future, home, I Feel Love, Living the Dream, Marvel Girl, Miss Malaprop, sound of the future, Take Five, Tauriel, The Bloke, Tony Armstrong • Leave a comment

I’m typing this in my new kitchen.

It’s light and bright and the ceiling is double height. It looks new. It still smells new.

More — no most — importantly, it feels like HOME.

The Bloke and I dreamed of building a house for a decade before we had the knowledge, funds and chutzpah to pull it off. Physically occupying the place we have been imagining for so long is gratifying. It also feels strangely familiar – we designed this home, right down to the last detail, and it has been a pleasure (and a relief) to see the final form take shape exactly as I had pictured it would.

We’re beyond happy with the result. And we’re all happy to be here.

Even the cat.

But the best thing is, it’s home.

Did I mention that already?!

The past few weeks have not been without their challenges, but they have also been filled with good things. Like curling up on our new couch with Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop, watching Zan Rowe’s Take Five. The Tony Armstrong episode rocked (as does Tony Armstrong), and it reminded me just how great Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love is.

Incredibly, Summer recorded the vocal in a single take, ushering in a new age of disco and electronic music. It still sounds amazing, with its driving rhythms and floating melody. The legendary David Bowie told the story of how Brian Eno heard I Feel Love for the first time while they were recording in Berlin, and come running in to say he had heard “the sound of the future”.

If you haven’t already clicked on that link and started listening to it, do it now!

This house sounds and feels like my future.

I’m content, even though there are still a few boxes lying around (mostly of books, because my library shelves have not yet arrived).

We dared to dream and now we’re living the dream.

And, as I might have mentioned, it feels like home.

An Oasis in Time

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged coincidence, conscious choices, house build, oasis, Oman, rain, space, space between, Sydney, time, universe, wadi • Leave a comment

It’s been ages, folks…I’ve been keeping a lot of balls in the air (which does make me happy), but it’s nice to find a moment or two on yet another rainy day in Sydneytown to tend my tiny patch of cyberspace.

Our house build is ever-so-nearly complete, and it has been truly gratifying to see my castle in the air take shape in solid form, particularly since my mental image and the finished product match.

Now, with the finish line in sight, my mind has turned to packing things up and turfing things out, to sorting out insurance and utilities, and to booking removalists and deliveries and cleaners and all manner of other bits and pieces.

It’s a lot, but it’s all good.

I’m at a point in my life where I am far better at making conscious choices about how I spend my time, and I was grateful today to find a few moments to read a novel at the hairdresser (instead of drafting interview questions for my next article), and to tap away for a few brief moments here (instead of packing yet another box).

It’s these small oases in time that allow me to fill my cup, and enable me to keep all the balls in the air.

I’m learning to pay attention to the little prompts from the universe which, by coincidence — if you still believe in such things — presented me with a picture of a beautiful wadi in Oman when I switched my laptop on today.

I understood the message.

Find time, find space.

What did the universe tell you today?

Mind yourselves,

BJx

Write Like You’re Running Out of Time

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Books, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged characters, first draft, Glennon Doyle, inner critic, novel, persistence, plot points, time, writing • 4 Comments

I’ve not been posting much here lately.

It feels like my patch of cyberspace is looking a little desolate: far more like a wonky pavement with weeds spilling from between the cracks than a verdant, carefully tended garden. That said, there is a good reason why I have neglected this space, despite my various attempts to nurture it over the years, and that is I’m trying to finish the first draft of my novel.

Writing is one of my great true loves. I love the feeling of sentences pouring forth from my fingers, pooling themselves paragraphs and flowing into pages of prose. I savour the feeling of selecting precisely the right words and placing them in a specific order to bring a particular scenario, emotion, or plot point to life.

But it takes time.

It takes time to enter the headspace of the character whose perspective you’re writing from, to inhabit their skin and to bring their inner life and backstory to the forefront of your own mind so you can produce a believeable, genuine response to what is happening in the story at any given time. And to achieve that, you need to possess a clear understanding of exactly where the tale you’re telling has come from and where it will end up — because you’ve had to create all that too, not to mention the world in which it takes place.

And sometimes you need time just to sit with an idea.

For the past two days I have been allowing a scene to germinate in my head. I’ve got some writing done, sure, but writing is not always about how many words you’ve got on a page. I’ve needed time to flesh out a new character in my mind, to understand where they fit into the action and how they relate to the other characters who already populate my world. I have needed time to figure out what they look like, how they move, and what makes them unique. And then I have needed time to turn my attention to the first impressions the character whose point of view I am currently writing from might have of them, and what knowledge these characters possess about themselves, each other and the wider plot of the novel as a whole. Only then could I map out how these characters might interact, and to decide what information I needed to hide or reveal to build suspense and drive the story towards its climax.

And that’s just for one small scene at the end of Chapter Thirteen!

Writing is hard, sometimes, no matter how much you love it.

It’s hard to find uninterrupted time to let the story unfurl in your head in the way I have just described.

It’s hard to admit you’re writing a novel in the first place.

It’s hard to answer questions about when your book will be finished, or where you’re up to, or whether it will ever be published.

It’s hard to silence the ever-present and insistent voice of my inner critic, who frequently tells me I am a fool for attempting to write a novel, or I’m arrogant to assume anyone would want to read it, or I’m any number of other negative things. (Then again, I’m yet to meet a writer whose inner critic does not persist in making a multitude of unhelpful comments and suggestions, usually at the most inopportune times).

It’s hard to keep believing in yourself and your story, knowing it might never make it onto the printed page.

But since I have started creating my characters and the world in which they live, I feel a strange sense of duty to make sure I see them through to the end — even if it means my patch of cyberspace suffers from benign neglect in the meantime.

As Glennon Doyle says, we can do hard things.

So I wish you well with whatever hard things you’re doing.

I’m off to write that scene.

Mind yourselves,

BJx

The Thrifty Fictionista Feels Nostalgic…

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Books, Thrifty Fictionista, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged Anna Karenina, Annabel Crabb, Anne Lamott, building, childhood treasures, Donald Penobscott, Dorian Gray, Ed Ayres, Helen Garner, Hilary Mantel, hummingbirds, hurricanes, Leo Tolstoy, M*A*S*H, Maine, Margaret Houlihan, Nigella Lawson, Oscar Wilde, picture books, Poh Ling Yeow, Roberty McCloskey, sailing, space, T E White, The Once and Future King, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Thrifty Fictionista, Time of Wonder, Trent Dalton, Ursula Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, Yotam Ottolenghi • Leave a comment

“Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day . . .”

These are the opening lines of the Thrifty Fictionista’s favourite picture book, one I have loved since I was a child: Robert McCloskey’s Time of Wonder. Telling the story of a girl and her younger sister spending their summer holidays on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, it follows them as they explore the natural world around them. They swim, they sail, they laze in the sun — they even survive a hurricane that blows in one night.

I still love everything about that book: the beauty of the painted illustrations, the cadence of the sentences, every last carefully chosen word. I often wished, when I was little, that I could go on holidays just like the girls in the book, even though I lived on the other side of the world from Maine.

Like the girls in the book, I spent a lot of time on boats when I was a kid. My grandfather, who had served in the navy, was never one to be without some kind of seafaring craft, so my brother and I enjoyed time on a succession of yachts, one of which had sailed the Sydney to Hobart race multiple times, and later on an old Halvorsen cruiser. The sights, sounds and smells of moorings and marinas still make me happy.

What reminded me of Time of Wonder most recently, however, was something equally nostalgic, but completely unexpected. I was watching M*A*S*H with my kids (having got them hooked on that golden oldie after they had watched so many episodes of Brooklyn 99 I thought I was going to scream), and we came to the part of Series 5 when Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan gets engaged to Lt Colonel Donald Penobscott — and at the first mention of his name, there I was: right back in the middle of Penobscot Bay, exploring the Time of Wonder island and all its natural wonders.

At the moment, all I would like to do is dive between the pages of my old, battered copy of Time of Wonder and relive it all once again. Or even the shiny new copy I got for my own kids when they were old enough to read it.

But, since we’re in the process of building our house, that dear old book is somewhere in storage, along with many other treasured possessions of the paged variety. It has been hard not having my book “friends” around for the past nine or ten months, but now that build is drawing to close up stage I am itching to get my fingers on volumes I have wished for while living here in our tiny rental.

The Thrifty Fictionista could not do with out ALL her books, however — so old favourites and new have found their way up the 49 steps to our front door. Anna Karenina is here, rubbing shoulders with Lolita and Dorian Gray, and even The Once and Future King. There are books by authors whose writing I can’t live without: Helen Garner, Trent Dalton, Ed Ayres, Ursula Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, Hilary Mantel, Anne Lamott. And there are cookbooks, of course, too, thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, Poh Ling Yeow and Annabel Crabb.

Before too long, however, it will be time for us to pack these few books that did wend their way up all those stairs into boxes and take them to our new house. In Time of Wonder the girl is a little bit sad about the place she’s leaving, a little bit glad about the place she’s going to. The Thrifty Fictionista, on the other hand, is a little bit impatient to get out of the place I’m leaving, and tremendously excited about the place I’m going to — not least because it will have a library.

There will be space for books, space to watch endless re-runs of M*A*S*H, space to cook and space to dream, and even space to wonder where hummingbirds go in a hurricane.

And I can’t wait.

The Art of Hoping

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, creativity, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged ageing, aphorisms, Black Dog, Emily Dickinson, home building, hope, Hope is the thing with feathers, Inigo Montoya, La Nina, life is short, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, patience, patience is the art of hoping, Reflections and Maxims, Restlessness, steadfastness, success, Voltaire, Winston Churchill, writing • Leave a comment

Nearly three hundred years ago, a young French nobleman by the name of Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues was encouraged by his friend Voltaire to publish an assortment of essays and other writings, appended to which was a collection aphorisms called Reflections and Maxims (1746).

Among these sayings was one I stumbled across the other day:

La patience est l’art d’espérer.

This short phrase translates, very simply, as “Patience is the art of hoping”.

Finding this shiny little gem of a sentence was helpful to me, particularly as I am currently working on two long term projects: building a house and writing a novel. Both of these ventures require abundant quantities of patience, not least because La Niña has been persistently wreaking havoc with the weather and head colds have been stubbornly interfering with my children’s health and school attendance.

For much of my life, patience has been a virtue that has often eluded me. I have written before about being stalked by the Grey Cat of Restlessness, which I freely admit is much easier to live with than Churchill’s Black Dog, but which also presents challenges of its own — especially when longer tasks are involved.

It’s not that I’m not prepared to do the work or put in the hard yards. Watching our new home slowly emerging beneath the scaffolding is exciting, and writing makes my soul sing even on the dreariest day.

But, like Inigo Montoya, I hate waiting.

I think that is why I appreciate de Clapier’s aphorism (number 251 of 700, no less) putting such a positive spin on patience. By highlighting the role of hope in being patient, it becomes far more aspirational rather than temporal.

I like hope!

As Emily Dickinson said: Hope is the thing with feathers. It allows us to take flight.

I like steadfastness, too. It allows us to persist.

In fact, I’m a fan of a whole raft of great qualities that can help you when things — especially creative endeavours like building houses and writing novels — feel like they’re taking forever.

Because even when things feel interminable, it is worth remembering that life is short, and ageing is a privilege.

Just ask Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, who died at the tender age of 31 the year after he published his collection of essays and other writings. Because he did it…he finished the book, and published it, even if he did so anonymously and he didn’t become famous for it until a century after his death.

The art of hoping allows us to persist, even when our patience cups feel depleted, or leaky, or empty.

Maybe especially then.

Because we never, ever know what is just around corner.

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes been the cause of remarkable success.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Mind yourselves,

BJx

The Thrifty Fictionista Is Cranky

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Books, First Principles, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged A Room of One's Own, angry, Becoming, cranky, destiny, fate, gender roles, Glennon Doyle, hypocrisy, living bravely, misogyny, patriarchy, reading, sexism, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, Thrifty Fictionista, Untamed, Virginia Woolf, Young Adult • Leave a comment

Readers, the Thrifty Fictionista is cranky.

Seriously cranky.

Not with herself, nor with anyone else currently living, but with Thomas Hardy — who died almost 100 years ago.

Why? I hear you ask.

The answer is simple: I have just finished reading Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and the whole book made me fed up and furious.

I never even planned to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but it turned up in one of those brilliant bargain boxes of books the Thrifty Ficionista falls prey to every now and then, this time a Young Adult collection purchased for my elder daughter. I nabbed Tess before she got hold of it, thinking it would be an entertaining read — which, for the most part, it was — but I was not prepared for how angry the novel would make me.

Especially the ending.

Without spoiling the story (or its ending) for anyone who has not yet read it, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a novel exposing the sexual hypocrisy, entrenched misogyny, and overbearing patriarchy of the period in which it was written. Even though the book was first published in 1891, many of the themes and abhorrent behaviours depicted in it remain all too relevant today — and this realisation was a substantial contributor to the Thrifty Fictionista’s current crankiness.

I’m now faced with a dilemma: do I give the book back to my (early teenaged) daughter to read or not? Would she find some of the characters’ conduct as offensive as I did? Would she dismiss the behaviour I found so repellent as simply being fusty and of its time, or would she also recognise it — repackaged and more than likely digitised and/or broadcast — in her own experiences of the current century?

I can only imagine, given she has been raised by me, that my daughter would respond to Tess of the D’Urbervilles in a similar fashion to the Thrifty Fictionista. But does she really need to read a fictional account of how lousy things were for women back in the day? Or am I better off giving her books like Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, which may give her the headspace and the tools to forge her own way as a woman in the world?

You see, getting cranky is a good thing.

It might make the Thrifty Fictionista uncomfortable, but it also makes her think.

Hard.

About what’s important. About what influences — fictional, historical or otherwise — I want my daughters to be exposed to. Even about the possible effects of reading the works of a novelist whose female characters generally appear to be subject to fates they can neither change nor challenge.

Honestly, I want my kids to get cranky if they read books like Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

But — more significantly — I want them to focus on becoming the incredible human beings, and not being circumscribed by history or sex or gender or labels of any kind.

Most importantly, I want my daughters to understand life as Glennon Doyle describes it:

I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.

So: thank you, Thomas Hardy.

The Thrifty Fictionista read your book and is cranky.

But she’s also a whole lot clearer on what she wants for herself and for her children.

Rescued

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Blue Jai • Posted in Blue Jai Creative, Musings, Uncategorized, Writing • Tagged cat, feline, pet adoption, rescue animals, Tauriel • Leave a comment

Three years ago today, a small furry bundle of joy made her way into our hearts and lives. She was underweight, a bit skittish, and had been looking for a place to call home for some time.

From the moment we adopted her, Tauriel — our truly magnificent feline — has been an important part of our family.

I remember the day we got her well, and particularly recall her following cautiously at my heels as I showed her around the house she would call home. She was alert, interested, and seemed to trust me from the start.

Needless to say, I was smitten from the moment I saw her.

Even now that we have moved house, I still find it inordinately comforting to know that she will be there when I get home. Her previous life as a stray has resulted in her being a strictly indoor cat, but she is an adaptable sort, and I appreciate her presence in the house when no one else is here. It is lovely to find her waiting for me at the front door when I get home, or — now that the weather is getting colder — curled up on top of my doona.

She is never far from my side or my thoughts, and is a gracious and graceful companion.

I am grateful beyond measure for the morning three years ago when The Bloke, knowing exactly why I was awake so early, rolled over and uttered a single sentence that filled my heart.

“We can get her, if you want”.

I’m so glad we did.

Thanks for being the best cat ever, Tauriel.

	Blue Jai’s Vignettes… on Blue Jai’s Vignettes…
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	Blue Jai on Blue Jai’s Vignette…
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Blue Jai:

Musings of a Daydream Believer

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Introducing the THREAD

And They’re Off!

Where the Streets Have No Name

Living the Dream and Donna Summer

An Oasis in Time

Write Like You’re Running Out of Time

The Thrifty Fictionista Feels Nostalgic…

“Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day . . .”

The Art of Hoping

The Thrifty Fictionista Is Cranky

Rescued

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“Out on the islands that poke their rocky shores above the waters of Penobscot Bay, you can watch the time of the world go by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day . . .”

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