Paisley didn’t particularly care for wash day, especially in late October. By the time she hauled the bedsheets onto the line her hands were chapped, bright red against the white linen, and her face felt much the same. The wind had picked up already, whipping the prairie grass into a writhing sea of grey green.
Winter was well and truly on its way to Milk River.
Snow already capped the Sweetgrass Hills across the border. Kátoyissiksi, the Blackfoot called them. Paisley caught glimpses of the peaks between gaps in the sheets as she pegged them steadily on the washing line, the point of West Butte rising high above the others. In her fifteen years, she had never known any other view.
Paisley’s mother had gone into Milk River township for groceries, and her father was working one of the further flung fields of their farm. The canola had just been brought in, and her dad was finishing up the harvest before the snows began their inevitable fall. Her younger brother, Tyson, had begged to go along with their mother, to watch the harvest being loaded into the massive grain elevators on the outskirts of town.
There was no question Ty would take over the farm when he was old enough. The only reason her brother had learned to read was so he could consult the Farmer’s Almanac and join in conversations with his father and grandfather about weather predictions, crop rotations and soil quality.
Paisley had learned to read for a very different reason.
She eased one last crumbling wooden peg onto the line, securing a pillowcase against the whipping wind. A novel was already tucked into the deep pocket of her pinnafore, an Agatha Christie mystery whose worn pages Paisley had already read several times before. Death on the Nile was preferable to the Farmer’s Almanac any day of the week.
Grabbing an apple from the wizened tree at the back of the farmstead, Paisley stowed the wicker washing basket back in the wash house and latched the gate on her way out. Guessing she had less than an hour before her mother’s battered brown Oldsmobile lumbered into the garage, she took off at a run. Paisley’s favourite place to sit was inside a clump of juniper bushes overlooking a bend of the Milk River itself. There she could hide herself away, observing the off-white waters of the river rushing by, surrounded by hoodoos and cliffs which — if you knew where to look — were inscribed with ancient petroglyphs.
Paisley knew where every last engraving was, knew the outline of the rocky outcrops as well as she knew the back of her own hand. But today, just for a while, she was about to rejoin Hercule Poirot as he approached Abu Simbel, and the Milk River suddenly looked very much like the Nile…
This has been one of Blue Jai’s Vignettes — where I play with words to provide a pop of fictional colour in your day. If you have enjoyed this post, feel free to click the follow button at the top of the page. I’d also love to hear your comments, or for you to tell me how you would have responded to the picture prompt intsead.
Or, more accurately, I have been revising my novel — filling in plot holes, teasing out unnecessary words, working on phrases and sentences and paragraphs and pages and chapters until…now.
I am in unchartered waters.
I have revised and rewritten until I have caught myself up, and what lies ahead is unborn and unwritten.
It is a strange place to be, this liminal world in between the creation and the act. It is a shadowy space, where the voices in my head begin their whisperings, where I listen until one of them suggests something that sparks an idea that takes hold and forms itself into something on the page.
I have a rough outline in my head of how my novel will end, but I have listened to the whispers for long enough to know that they have minds of their own, and that they fashion what they will, when they want to. When I am quiet and still enough to let them, they tell me things I do not expect, take me places I did not know existed, and reveal truths I had not excavated.
Sometimes a single blank page appears to be infinitesimally small, adrift upon a great heaving ocean of unformed creations.
Other times words come slowly, drip by drip.
But when I allow myself to settle in that liminal space, sentences often come in streams — flowing out in descriptions and dialogue and drama — and I know I have sat long enough to be allowed the privilege of navigating that wild and watery world, hoping against hope that before too long, I will sight land.
Folks, it has been a considerable amount of time since I have put fingers to keys and tended to my tiny patch of cyberspace. I have been waiting for the right moment to dive back into this blog after the longest hiatus I have taken from it since its inception in 2014, and now seems as good a time as any.
Much of my life is incredibly structured. There is a substantial part of me that relishes rigour and routine, swoons over spreadsheets, fancies fitting every last thing into a clearly and carefully labelled box, and is obsessed with order and organisation. This is the part of me that gets all of the things done.
But there is also an insubstantial part of me, which loves nothing better than immersing myself in ideas and imaginings, adores making something out of nothing, savours stories and fictions of all kinds and favours following meandering thoughts to unanticipated places and taking time to feel and remember and notice…stuff…all the stuff. This is the part of me that is creative, unconfined, and sometimes unconventional — despite (or perhaps because of) the other part of me that gets all of the things done.
So, with those two strange bedfellows in mind, I decided during my break from this blog to take it back to where it began a decade ago — to making this a place where I come to make sense of it all (whatever “it” happens to be on any given day), a space to accommodate the musings of the Daydream Believer (as incongruent and eccentric as they may be).
I’m not planning on trotting out my monthly THREADs any more, or posting with any regularity either. I’m taking this patch of cyberspace back to its roots, which were barely grounded in whim and whimsy back then, and are likely to be just as flimsily planted now. Despite all the gardening imagery I might use when describing this place, it was never intended to be a formally cultivated space. It was meant to be a space where mere wisps of thoughts and imaginings could expand in the ether, and end up wherever their vapourous trails unfurled.
As Rick Rubin says:
No matter what tools you use to create, the true instrument is you. And through you, the universe that surrounds us all comes into focus.
So, I’m diving back in, folks. If you’ve stuck around since the beginning or just been here for a single post, I thank you — and I invite you to ride the wave with me and find out where we end up next.
Huzzah! It’s the last day of winter here in the Antipodes, and there is already a hint of spring in the air.
I’m pushed for time today, so welcome to a rather express Edition of the THREAD – let’s jump in!
THINK | HEAR | READ | EAT | ADMIRE | DO
Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about time management, and specifically about distractions. I’m one of those people who has been working from home since before the pandemic, and time management is something pride myself on being pretty good at. I think it’s also fair to say I’m experienced at navigating pathways between those devious, pesky things we call distractions — which can include anything from finding yourself suddenly possessed by an unscratchable urge to perform a chore you would otherwise find mind-numbingly boring, playing games on your phone or laptop (I’m looking at you, Wordle), or gazing blankly into the refrigerator until the annoying door alarm starts going off. Been there, done that, sent them all packing.
But when the first glimmerings of spring appear, I often want to get out amongst it instead of sitting at my desk. So this week, when my schedule was unexpectedly upended by a cancelled work placement, I’ve concentrated on putting all the things in all the boxes so I can create spaces in between where my writing can flow. I find that if I can plan out and “Tetris” all the stuff — from personal training, to kids’ extracurricular activities, to menu planning, to lunch with a friend, and even the many and various things seeking to distract me — the time I free up becomes…well, free. And when I’m free, the words can come in waves. I guess what I am trying to say is if you know yourself well enbough to identify your patterns of behaviour you can conquer any distractions, and my way of doing that (however incongruent it may sound) is by using boxes and waves.
Except sometimes things don’t go willingly into a box, which is where hearing comes in handy. Most parents know that if you sing something to a child, it becomes somehow more palatable — or maybe more like a game. Either that, or we’ve all been looking like complete loons while walking around messy living rooms singing “now it’s time to pack away” in happy, hopeful tones to our offspring. I’ve written before about how hard it is to stay cranky with your kids, for example, when you’re listening to disco music. Please give it a try if you don’t believe me — and remember, no matter how small or large, all kitchens are for dancing in.
Anyway, the same principle works for me when I’m struggling with adulting and feeling rather petulant (OK…I”ll admit it, downright childish) about it. If I’m not in the mood to go to personal training during the precisely allocated box I have timetabled for myself, for example, I put Madonna’s Ray of Light on in the car on the way to the gym and turn it up LOUD. If I can’t get into the right headspace to write, I try Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. It’s still boxes and waves, really — just in musical form.
Reading is something I don’t usually have to put in a box, because I tend do it at the end of the day when I’m all snug in my PJs and ready for bed. But when I’m really busy and just want to hit the pillow at the end of the day, I find other boxes that allow me to fit my reading in — like when my daughter has her flute lesson. In this way, I’ve managed to read R F Kuang’s Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History, which is a fantastical historical novel my language loving father would have loved back before dementia robbed him of the ability to read. It’s a complex book dealing with equally complex themes (imperialism, colonialism, revolution, and how all of these intersect with academia), but at the centre of it all is the concept of translation. I wanted to love this novel, but found it kept me somehow at arms length — possibly because of the extensive use of footnotes (which may or may not be historically accurate, as it is a work of fiction after all), or maybe as a result of it’s scholarly tone. Did it remind me of the way I had to read when I was at university (which often for anything but pleasure)? Perhaps. That said, while I didn’t love it, I did enjoy it, and was glad to have read it.
Since then, I have started reading Pip William’s latest offering, The Bookbinder of Jericho. It is much easier going but so far it hasn’t engaged my attention to the point where I want to pick up the book instead of laying my head on the pillow…though I suspect says more about the nature of my life lately, rather than about the novel itself.
Our next topic — and also a great form of distraction — which is eating, and the simple story here is that I have been trying not to eat when I shouldn’t. As in I am still working on eating sensibly and only at mealtimes (after my peviously-reported tropical island gluttony), and so far this approach is working well.
Tonight we will have chicken schnitzel with a roast pumpkin salad, which involves not only the aforementioned pumpkin spiced up with some cumin and coriander, but also corn and black beans, toasted pepitas and a lime crema dressing. It’s delicious, and full of flavour. Tomorrow night it’s meant to be cold again — because spring is always a bit of a tease — so we will have roast lamb with baked vegetables and greens. Beyond that our meals are a bit of a mystery, but I’m sure all will become clear once I reach the appropriate box in which menu planning has been scheduled?!
When it comes to admiring, I managed to find time to watch Netflix’s latest offering in the Bridgerton franchise Queen Charlotte last week. It has all the usual Bridgerton fancies and follies: over the top costumes in riotous colours, wigs so resplendent they would make any self-respecting drag queen swoon, a smattering of sex scenes, and classical musical renderings of pop songs. But Queen Charlotte also has, at its heart, a beautiful and moving story of a couple living with and divided by mental illness. As someone who has witnessed the various ways generations of my family have dealt with living with bipolar disorder, I was genuinely moved by the depiction of the relationship between Queen Charlotte and King George III — and I am grateful that the producers of Queen Charlotte chose to tackle the subject matter rather than shying away from it. Mental illness can affect anyone, from commoners to kings, and I’m glad to see it being presented on screen rather than hidden away.
And finally, that brings us to doing. I’ve been doing rather a lot, hence all the boxes (and hopefully plenty of waves in between), but like rest of the Australian population there is one thing I have stopped everything else to do in the past month: watch our mighty Matildas play in the World Cup. While my knowledge of anything soccer-related is similar to that of Ted Lasso when he started out at Richmond FC — as in I can’t explain the offside rule but I think I know it when I see it?! — like most Australians I love sport (generally) and am now completely in love with the Matildas (specifically). And I do mean ALL of them, though I do have a particular soft spot for Mackenzie Arnold and think Hayley Raso’s hair ribbons are the bomb. I will never, ever forget the way I felt when Sam Kerr scored that amazing goal against the Lionesses, and I am inordinately proud — along with the rest of the country — of what the Matildas have done not just for women’s sport but for women in Australia and beyond.
Anyhoo, there’s no real topping the Matildas is there?
So best to wrap this up and attend to the next box full of “stuff”.
Nothing makes me happier than hearing my children say these words — particularly when we’ve just spent the school holidays, in their entirety, at home.
I mean, we have left the house every now and then, because good old Sydneytown has turned on a run of truly spectacular winter days. It’s wonderfully warm in the sun, and even though it’s been windy the skies have been mostly clear of clouds. Staring skyward has been like looking up at a shimmering swathe of pale blue silk, stretching high into the heavens.
But the best bit has been the freedom.
For me, there is nothing more liberating than turning off all the alarms on my phone, knowing that we are — blissfully — not bound by routine for two whole weeks.
Being winter, we have slept in, relishing being able to get up with the sun at seven rather than scurrying out of bed in the dark. Even better, there have been days when we have stayed snug beneath our bedcovers, reading books or revelling in the very real pleasure of not having to be anywhere at a specific time.
We have enjoyed other simple things, too. We have walked in the winter sun, sometimes with a destination in mind and other times just because we can. We have watched Captain Marvel and endless episodes of The Adventures of Merlin, reminding ourselves that magic should be part of everyday life. We have planted flowers to brighten the back yard. We have played board games and card games while sipping hot chocolate and even hotter coffee. We have baked more muffins than it’s sensible for humans to consume.
From time to time I have marvelled at my children’s creativity, partciularly when they took it upon themselves to transform a large cardboard box into a Viking longboat in the back yard. I have smiled to myself in wry amusement when they protested having to scrub paint out of their pants when their artistic endeavours haven’t gone entirely to plan. I have admired their generosity when they have gone through old books and clothes and toys and worked out what they wanted to pass on to other kids.
And in the evenings, when the winter darkness falls so fast, we have heated our home by making stews and coming up with new spice blends to season homemade chicken nuggets, all while listening to Miles Davis and other jazz greats, or The Bad Plus working their own kind of wonder with instrumental versions of long-beloved songs like No Woman, No Cry. I’ve probably drunk more wine than I meant to, stirring pots on the stovetop and peeling sweet potatoes and parsnips to bake, not because the kids are driving me crazy, but because I am relaxed and happy — and because these are my holidays, too.
We’ve had the best time.
And I have, too.
…and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Ollivanders…where the wand, as we know, chooses the wizard.
I’m writing this at my kitchen table, listening to a beautiful Ólafur Arnalds track he recorded with Nils Frahm. The music, with its high-pitched, bell-like tinkling, has an ethereal quality that sounds unmistakably like…Magic.
And then it occurs to me that this piece, relatively obscure as it is, has conjured up the memory of the opening bars of a much more famous musical score: John Williams’ overture to the original Harry Potter film, a movie filled with mystery and wonder, and more Magic than you could poke a stick at — particularly if that stick should be a wand.
Ah, Magic.
It’s such a powerful thing — such a potent, creative force.
Even though I know quite well that the Harry Potter novels and films are works of fiction, I also recognise them as works of wonder. Of a fantasy that I can — and do — quite readily buy into. And, as I’ve said before, I encourage my children to do so as well. I think that the late and ever-so-great Roald Dahl, who definitely knew wonder when he saw it, probably explained why best:
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
Hogsmeade Village, Hollywood style…please respect the spell limits.
For me there can be as much Magic in a well-crafted sentence as there in a beautifully realised fictional world — complete with its own myths and history. But when The Bloke and I had the chance to take our girls to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Hollywood during our recent trip to the US, we both knew this was a opportunity to see some real Magic.
And it was.
We explored Hogwarts Castle, drank butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, bought sweets at Honeydukes, visited the Owlery, and browsed through the broomsticks at Dervish and Banges.
And then we went to Ollivanders.
Ollivanders, as all self-respecting Harry Potter fans know, have been makers of fine wands since 382BC. Being a Ravenclaw myself, I could spend hours discussing the importance of the Ollivander family in history of European wandmaking or introducing you to the finer points of wandlore but that, one suspects, would be better done at another time. The most important thing to know, for the purposes of this post, is that the wand chooses the wizard.
Our Wands, each pointing to the Hogwarts houses we most identify with: Gryffindor, Slytherin and Ravenclaw.
Or the witch, for that matter. Because when we came out of Ollivanders, the wands had well and truly chosen: Ivy for Marvel Girl, Oak for Miss Malaprop, and Ash for me. Not surprisingly, my wand is lying beside me on the kitchen table as a write. It is beautifully balanced, it is perfectly weighted, and it feels like it was made just for me.
And that’s the truly Magic thing, isn’t it?
But there are, as I discovered once again that day in Hogsmeade Village, many kinds of Magic…
After our visit to Ollivanders, Miss Malaprop strode purposefully towards Gladrags Wizardwear, where she proceeded to demonstrate her own considerable powers as she persuaded The Bloke to buy her a full set of Hogwarts robes (Slytherin ones, naturally) complete with house insignia and wand pocket, and some for her sister (Gryffindor, of course) as well. How does she do it? I wondered, as I struggled to calculate the cost of purchasing two sets of robes, plus tax, plus the exchange rate, plus the inevitable excess baggage cost associated with getting two large bundles of heavy black fabric back home…and I knew the answer in an instant: Miss Malaprop was utterly certain that we would let her have them before she even entered the shop, because she knew that deep down, we wanted them too.
Basic Wand Motions…I think Arresto Momento would be one of the most useful spells I could have in my kitchen.
We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, bigger than all of us. We all know that there is real Magic to be found in shared experiences, particularly when they involve mutually suspended disbelief.
I know it’s not real.
And my kids know that, too.
(Really!)
But there is much to be said for the transformative joy that is produced when you allow the fictional to enter the everyday. It’s why my kids have the words Nox and Lumos on their bedroom lightswitches. It’s why I’ll tell them I would love one of them to play Quidditch for Australia one day. It’s why Miss Malaprop and Marvel Girl got their Hogwarts robes (or they will on Christmas Day, at any rate).
And it’s also why our wands, which individually and specifically chose us, sit in pride of place in the rooms of our house that we use the most. Our wands are tangible reminders that our differences make us as strong as our similarities, that our words and actions are powerful and must be wielded well, that there is Magic in us all.
Especially the sort of stuff that goes on inside human heads. In fact, thousands of years ago, they had sorted out more stuff than I can even imagine (and, as Han Solo once said to Luke Skywalker, I can imagine a quite a bit).
And they also had words for things to explain just how well they understood stuff — amazing words like eudaimonia. Sure, it might be a bit of mouthful to the average English speaking Joe or Jai, but when I discovered the word (this morning, straight after the courier delivered a parcel of books to my front door), I felt those teeny tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise. In a good way, people.
Eudaimonia translates as “human flourishing”, and was used in ancient Greece to describe the highest degree of happiness, a state of being characterised by not only by happiness itself, but also by health and prosperity. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
But it’s the etymology of the word that gives my inner geek the tingles: it comes from the Greek words eu, meaning ‘good’ and daimon, meaning ‘guardian spirit’. And the exciting part, as Elizabeth Gilbert explains in her book Big Magic, is that when you put those words together you get “well-daemoned”, or “nicely taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide”. (And, yes, you now have to imagine me delivering my best Molly Meldrum impression when I tell you to do yourself a favour and get a copy of Big Magic…it’s an absorbing read).
But, as usual, I digress — let’s get back to eudaimonia. The idea that creative inspiration is something external to one’s self is not unique to the Greeks. The Romans, those other giants of the ancient world, also externalised the concept. As Gilbert says:
The Romans had a specific term for that helpful house elf. They called it your genius — your guardian deity, the conduit of your inspiration. Which is to say, the Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.
In this ego-driven twenty-first century world, the ancient perspective is remarkably refreshing: that creativity is bestowed, by a genius the artist might be obliged to thank for the inspiration. Or, conversely, should the artist’s work be found somehow lacking, the same genius could be called upon to take some of the blame. Takes the pressure off, doesn’t it, creative types? Pesky old ego is removed from the equation…and, in Gilbert’s words once again, the artist is protected: “Protected from the corrupting influence of praise. Protected from the corrosive effects of shame.”
But there is a catch.
(You know there always is).
In order to get close to anything resembling eudaimonia, this highest level of human happiness, you have to do the hard yards too. It’s not as simple as having some Jiminy Cricket-like muse sitting on your shoulder telling you what to do — there’s not much point in having an external creative spirit guiding your creative pursuits if you don’t actively pursue them. Not surprisingly, human flourishing doesn’t just happen: it demands that we show up, that we find time, that we live authentically — in alignment with those things that make us our best selves.
Anyone who creates regularly and deliberately will tell you that yes, there are those fabled golden moments when whatever you are creating flows from you effortlessly. They are magical moments, and I do mean that literally. But the point is you have to be there, already creating, for those moments to happen. And no one can do that for you. You have to have the courage to do it for yourself.
It’s about following your passion, in whatever small moments are available to you. It’s about discovering, as Aristotle suggested, where the needs of the world and your talents intersect, and finding your vocation. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not advocating chucking in your job, leaving your family or withdrawing from society to pursue the creative: my strong suspicion is that you can’t get close to eudaimonia unless you’re actively involved in all those things, and in whatever you are inspired to create.
So find the time, if you can, to do what makes your soul sing.
Listen to that funny little guardian spirit — the one who has either been waiting patiently for you, or has been yammering away at you to dosomething for so long that it might just fall off your shoulder in shock when you finally pick up that paintbrush, or write that poem, or sew that dress.
Let’s honour creativity and make it an essential part of our lives — for our happiness, health and prosperity.
Perhaps it’s the slightly manic time of year. Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop have been veering wildly — and not always simultaneously — from being whingey and tired to such dizzying heights of raucous excitement (provoked, no doubt, by the impending arrival of a certain Mr S Claus) that I have already instituted a household-wide ban on the consumption of candy canes. The Bloke is trying to get it all done before the office shuts down over the holidays, all while contending with the whirl of Christmas parties that is now in full (and sometimes drunken) swing. I’ve been making and revising endless lists and menus and timetables in preparation for hosting The Big Day for the second year running thanks to my brother’s late-running house renovations, and trying to recall exactly where I have stashed all those presents…
Or maybe it’s the weather. The drooping humidity. The cracking thunderstorms that have rolled through from the west every day or night for the past week, jarring me out of sweaty slumber into an electrified state of high alert: will the kids sleep through, despite the sky being filled with such incandescent light and percussive rage? I suspect I greeted the southerly change that finally blew in so sweetly yesterday evening with more reverence than I’ve shown to just about anything else since the season of Advent began.
And then I realised that in the midst of all the atmospheric disarray and my attempts to wrangle organisation from impending chaos, to keep two children provided with proper nourishment and uninterrupted sleep, and to assist a husband who — with his business partner fighting cancer since February — has experienced one of the most challenging years of his career, that I had completely overlooked something that, for me, is really important: I had forgotten to write.
So here I am again. Showing up on the page.
Making sure that today, I have gone back to my First Principles: words, music, food. To pay homage to my own holy trinity of creative pursuits and their sustaining presence in my life.
I made chocolate walnut fudge while listening to the Foo Fighters’ fifth album, In Your Honour. It seemed like an appropriate soundtrack to my seeking refuge in what Nigella Lawson calls “the solace of stirring”. After all, making fudge is a calming, mellowing, meditative process — even if I did, perhaps perversely, choose to play the heavier of the album’s two CDs while the sugar slowly caramelised in the saucepan. (Watching an episode of Sonic Highways recently I was startled to realise that after all these years The Bloke is still coming to terms with the fact that he married a girl whose musical tastes could be best described as disparate, and who genuinely likes it loud.)
And so, this afternoon, my kitchen became my cathedral. I stirred and sang along with Dave Grohl to “The Last Song” and sorted through my thoughts before sitting down here at the keyboard:
This is the sound The here and the now You got to talk the talk, the talk, the talk To get it all out…
The jangling has gone, and I’m grateful. Not just because I finally went back to how I roll.
The Ancient Greeks, it seems to me, knew stuff.
But there is a catch.
Anyone who creates regularly and deliberately will tell you that yes, there are those fabled golden moments when whatever you are creating flows from you effortlessly. They are magical moments, and I do mean that literally. But the point is you have to be there, already creating, for those moments to happen. And no one can do that for you. You have to have the courage to do it for yourself.
Listen to that funny little guardian spirit — the one who has either been waiting patiently for you, or has been yammering away at you to do something for so long that it might just fall off your shoulder in shock when you finally pick up that paintbrush, or write that poem, or sew that dress.
Blue Jai: 