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A hole is to dig

Sometimes you don’t know what you want, you don’t know what things are for and you certainly don’t know what you are actually doing. I have been in this place. I’d been working and writing, with some mothering on the side, but none of it was going well, except the mothering, that was pretty good. I wasn’t working at full capacity and I’d convinced myself that it was freeing me up to write. Except I wasn’t. I wasn’t writing at all. My heart wasn’t in it. I hadn’t felt like it. Such a cop-out. It is a disciple after all. It is a calling after all. It had called me, and I had turned my face into the wind, to drown the calling shout.

The philosophical view of this could be that my purpose wasn’t clear. There was a lack of clarity about what I was becoming. There are many philosophers for whom this is an entire life’s work and writing. There are many people for whom this never becomes clear. For me, I wasn’t sure it wasn’t clear. I thought I knew. I was entirely wrong. As a philosopher, and after a month’s reflection, I now know this isn’t good enough. I can’t halfheartedly do anything.

A hole is to dig

Buttons are to keep people warm

Children are to love

A book is to look at

Ruth Krauss’s work A hole is to dig with Maurice Sendak’s beautiful illustration has stayed deep inside my mind since childhood. It is sub-titled ‘A First Book of Definitions’. From a philosophical point of view, this beguiling children’s book provides a breathtakingly simple and elegant example of what are called ‘artifacts’ and their functions. ‘A hole is to dig’, ‘a face is for making faces’. What something is for, what it is good for, is sufficient to explain what it is. This is, a rather computational, rational and logic based sort of philosophy. However, this little book is the perfect example of the theory of ‘artifacts’, or things are defined by their function. I have been unable to shake the fragment ‘a hole is to dig’. It has been rising to the surface of my mind almost daily.

It has caused me to wonder over and over, what am I for? What is my purpose? What am I doing?

I had found myself boxed in. Unable to see how my own thinking was limiting me. This is the great value of philosophy, and of children’s books, whether written by philosophers or not, they show you what you are. They also show you that your own nature can be concealed from yourself, but only for a little while.

Hands are to hold

A hand is to hold up when you want your turn

I am in danger of dislocating my shoulder my arm is so far up.

All references in italics from,  A hole is to dig, Ruth Krauss – words and Maurice Sendak – pictures, 1952. You can buy a copy for the child within who needs reminding of what holes are for here:

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End of an era … good buy red stripey thing

End of an era

My red and cream Remo stripey thing has been my constant companion for the past 16 years. I was wearing it when my first nephew was born. I wore it soon after my own baby was born, it was the first piece of clothing I wore at home after Benedict was born. I’ve worn it for all occasions, almost, for all of those years. I own a Remo stripey thing bought during the “Good Buy Sale” of 1996. I’d wanted one since 1988, but before 1996 I was too student poor to own one, as modestly priced as they were, if you price them per wear.

Now both elbows have worn through, just in the past week. First one, and then the other.

The tragic part is that during the past three years I bought two new blue and white versions, one regular size and then one larger size to accommodate my expanding pregnant self, but I don’t love them nearly as much. I’ve tried but they are just not the same. The wearing of the red and cream one was rationed, judicious during the first year of Benedict’s life, as I saw it ageing, it wearing thin. I did break out from my own strictures occasionally.

Stripey and stripey show

I tried to routinely wear the blue and white versions, to wear them to the same stretch, to the same amount of ‘lived in’ as the red and cream, but the blue two were never the same, no matter how much I wore them. They were never exactly the same size, length or weight as the original. They were great, but not the same, the weight and the length were not quite the same as the original ‘one size fits all’ version. The red felt like a second skin.

Now it is so worn, its seams are coming apart. Its elbows worn out by leaning, by resting on tables, while reading the paper, drinking coffee, cooking the dinner and much more besides. It was always my weekend garment of choice. It was my after work first choice. And now it is worn out. Soon, it will just fall the pieces out of the wash. I will pull it out of the machine and it will just rent, from the sheer exhaustion of being loved to collapse.  I can’t get a new one. Remo General Store is now no more.

That’s it for my favourite piece of clothing of all time. It’s now to be retired in case it tears any more. I will keep it, carefully, stashed away, because sentimentally, I can’t part with it.

 

 

Nevermind the blogging, I’ll be at work

It is Friday again tomorrow. I will be going to work, again.

Footpath Closed

The full time working gig is still in progress. There is still another week to go.

So far the tally is one last kid at child care pick up, two blackouts, three lots of takeaway, four million coffees and about fifty seven personal freak out moments, and one shamefully self-indulgent cry-baby melt-down about stationery (yes really). I have spent the month at the very bleeding edge of my comfort zone. For me work is all about competence. Actually my whole life is about competence. I like, no I love, being good at stuff. I hate feeling less than on top of my existence. Feeling like I know what is happening, what I need to do, what is expected, who everyone is, what they know and how to get stuff done. That’s my comfort zone, that’s what I like.

When stepping into someone else’s job in an organisation not my own, I have none of these things. I have my inbuilt qualities, my learned patterns, work experience, personal traits; but little of the complete competence which I like to always show the world. There is no time to learn how, there is only action and completion of tasks. There is no time to find out the history, work with the issues, there is only one option, just do it. And then do some more and then on top of all that doing, the phone will not stop and email will flood in and it will only sometimes make any sense and yet, I have to write, well, and quickly and check other people’s writing. And talk about issues, with command of detail on topics I have only had the merest whiff of a briefing on in passing while in the lift on the way to the meeting, where I will be doing the talking.

And the part I actually like about all this, is that everyone knows who I am, but I have only a hint of who they all are. Makes it simpler. At least the confusion is only in one direction. They know what I can do for them. At least for the short time I will be there.

It has been testing. I have flexed all my emotional intelligence. I have been exercising the full extent of my capabilities. Using skills I have been in touch with for a few years at least. And I am better for it.

What do you like to be good at?

 

On disappointment and insouciance

Disappointments have been creeping in. Stealing quietly through the cracks and taking up residence. Under my skin.

The chicken is a bit boring. The tea tastes ordinary. Will the sun ever bloody shine this winter? Can we have a decent political debate in this country? The work’s a bit too hard. The washing never ends. My god it is cold. Could I really be sick again? Really?

Even though I have tried to foster insouciance, cultivate it, nurture it; it won’t come.

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On the sick list: where too much snot is barely enough

We’ve been on the sick list this week. It’s been a joyous week of coughing, sneezing, snot, tissues and chasing a two year old around waving a vial of medicine he won’t take. It is about as much fun as it sounds. Actually, it’s not. It is totally and utterly like beating your own head against a brick wall, while a two year old shows you his bottom, which as we all know, is lovely when it stops.
We have had an ok run since the last lot of childcare bugs descended. I, myself, managed to remain unscathed through the plague of April. But I felt this one coming for me from a long way off. So, so tired, and then down like a bag of spuds.

There was one tiny piece of joy in all this gloom and snot. I managed to start Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears, I am about to finish it and then write to a review for Australian Women Writers Challenge.

Farewell then, on a pollyanna sort of note. My silver lining was an excellent book.

 

There are no accidents

I don’t believe in fate, in destiny, but I do believe there are no accidents.

This week there were a lot of blog posts written about the troubles in blogworld. Posts about the jealously and the waves of hatred emanating from strangers, hiding behind their laptops. Other posts approached this question from an appreciation of the work that goes into blogging. How hard writing is. Read More

Filled with wrath

I have spent the past few days full of anger. Literally, brimming over with wrath.

It is not directed toward anyone. There is no smiting of enemies to be done. I have been furious in a way I haven’t felt for a while.

It started on Monday night. I watched 4 Corners. It was about people smuggling. It was about people having their loved ones taken away from them, about men, women and children dying, it was about criminals robbing people of their futures and all their money. At one point during this story, it became apparent that one of these smugglers had sought asylum in Australia, and was detained. During the detention, this person continued to conduct his business. Then suddenly Robert said, I bet they end up in Canberra. I couldn’t believe my ears. What do you mean? I asked him. He explained that all the behaviours added up to amazing audacity and the most audacious place you could end up after entering the country in this manner, was the National Capital, seat of power, and place where the policies and legislation were made.

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No more tears

I made a comment on twitter today (yeah, I know, what’s new?) and it flew directly out of my heart into cyber-space.

@ I haven't got any tears left. They are all gone. @
@stellaorbit
Stella Orbit

It caused a ripple of consternation. What do you mean you can’t cry? Did it mean I was happier than I’d ever been, or that I was exhausted? Are tears finite? Like heartbeats are rumoured to be. You have an allocated quota the romantic notion goes, and then you have no more. Your heart stops. Your tears too, could be finite? Read More

There be monsters – in praise of wild things and the darkness of childhood

‘Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!’

Maurice Sendak died this week. As a child, his books were like sacred objects, which to me, is against the spirit of his work completely. Not only did I have to wash my hands before I touched them, I was not allowed to pore over these books without supervision. This is because almost all the copies we had were hardbacks, neatly covered in opaque library plastic, carefully hoarded by my teacher-librarian mother and protected by her from the sticky, dirty, page bending hands of children. They are even now, more than 30 years later, still in pristine condition; withstanding three children and five grandchildren.

As an adult, with my own sticky, dirty, page bending, book chewing child, this makes me incredibly sad. So I let him have them, all of them. And they are all paperbacks, and if we have to have two copies of each to see us through his childhood, then so be it.

Of course, being forbidden, only increased their cachet. More than once, I read them on the quiet, hoping I wouldn’t get sprung. Aside from being well looked after, they were also beautiful and subversive books, featuring imagery and themes, seldom dealt with in children’s literature.

I still remember the mild scandal that erupted about In the Night Kitchen, which features Mickey’s naked bottom, not to mention the rest of him. This was the cause of some consternation among librarians, although it was fair to say not my mother, who had bought it for the school library. In The Night Kitchen deals with falling into the dark, and indeed the bakers all have strangely even, square and short moustaches. The oven imagery is thinly veiled, in my opinion, and Sendak confirmed in interviews, that the references are indeed a comment on the Holocaust. Much more concerning you would think, than a naked bum or the full frontal Mickey.

A baby is snatched away by goblins in Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There. The beloved author and illustrator — who took a darker approach to children's storytelling — died Tuesday at the age of 83.

A baby is snatched away by goblins in Outside Over There. Image: Harper Collins.

Outside Over There, less well-known than Where the Wild Things Are, features incredibly distracted parental figures, who so preoccupied with themselves and their love, leave their eldest daughter in charge of her younger sibling. Young Ida is initially no match for the goblins who kidnap her baby sister while she plays her wonder horn. An allegory for children everywhere, that sometimes you just have to fix it yourself and be courageous and brave. Rescuing your little sister, what higher achievement could you wish? The dark themes of this book have so far washed over my toddler, although he recognises that the baby is in trouble and needs saving. In the middle where the illustrations are of all the crying babies the goblins have kidnapped, he shouts loudly about how sad they are.

I let him have Higglety Pigglety Pop! too. Subtitled There must be more to life, it tells the story of a dog called Jennie who has everything, but is desperately unhappy. It is the story of how having everything handed to you can make you unhappy, and that to be fulfilled, you need to pursue your own dreams – even if that means saving baby from being eaten by the lion and joining ‘The World Mother Goose Theatre’. This book too, features distracted, ill-attentive adults. In Higglety Pigglety Pop, the parents of the baby move house, and forget to take her with them. It is a book for older children, and yet despite the density of the text, the story carries Benedict along, just not in a single sitting, yet.

Sendak understood how frightening childhood could be, how images and ideas, without comprehension of context, could loom large; being considered wild, being naked and having grand plans, could all get you into trouble with adults. Could lead to being sent to bed, which for some children was a blessing, as it meant getting out of eating your dinner, a torture all of its own. The sadness a child feels when she realises that these adults have no idea what they are doing, is a sadness that never leaves a person. What Sendak’s books give you is a sense that it doesn’t matter if the world is a confusing mess, you can work it all out for yourself and that sometimes the monsters are just that little bit closer than you imagine.

Amanda Katz writes in an essay for NPR books, that it is the adults who are scared of Sendak’s books, not the children. She writes:

‘Meanwhile, he [Sendak] reminds adults — even those of us who were once those young and fascinated readers, but who are grown now — to trust our children, who may in the end be less fearful of climbing outside than we are to watch them do it.’

Fortunately, while my mother was over-protective of the precious books, she let us climb out of the windows and be wild things. Sendak reminds us, and we need reminding, that children need to be wild, they need to allowed to express themselves, and tell their stories, even when these stories are too difficult for adults to hear.

‘I knew terrible things, but I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew … it would scare them.’

Cooking and Love

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10, 000 hour rule. No matter how clever you are, if you really want to be good at something, you have to practice. And practice. And practice. In short, according to Gladwell and others, you need to accumulate 10, 000 hours of time at a task to really master it. 10, 000 hours is over 400 days straight. So by ordinary application, it’s full days for a few years. Or some practice, every day, over several years.

My 10, 000 hours are accumulated in two things. Cooking and writing.

First to the writing. It is the easier to account for. Two degrees one after another, both involving a great deal of writing. One involving a ‘substantial contribution to scholarship’ and a big fat dissertation. Collectively, this took over 12 years of writing every day, almost. There were a few days when I didn’t write, but not many.

The second of my 10, 000 hours, cooking has taken longer to accumulate. I started when I could reach the bench. My first cook book was a large format 1979 Ladybird book called We Can Cook it featured animal character cartoons as illustrations. It had a fruit cake recipe, which I made and foisted on people.

We Can Cook (Board Book)

I wish I still had that book. I cooked often for my whole family and by my early teens could be relied upon to turn out dinner for us all when required. We had a fuel stove, so before you could cook, you had to attend to the fire. This taught me a lot about preparation.

Yesterday, I was reading Charlotte Wood’s food blog How to shuck an oyster and I read two great pieces that I wanted to comment on, but was concerned about essay length blog comments. The first is about a book I really want to read by Julian Barnes and the second, is about Conflict in the Kitchen and power struggles between couples when cooking for other people. These two pieces resonated with me together as much as separately.

Cooking as Conversation is a ‘review’ of sorts of Julian Barnes’ book entitled, Pedant in the Kitchen. Charlotte quotes from the book;

‘The result of all this…is that while I now cook with enthusiasm and pleasure, I do so with little sense of freedom or imagination. I need an exact shopping list and an avuncular cookbook.’

What is interesting to me here, is as Charlotte says, he is expressing his true nature. Barnes is a pedant, a nick picker and a bit not self-sensoring. It struck me right there that this what Robert is like when he cooks. This is how he cooks. Not so much the lacking in imagination, but more the requirement for precise instructions, and everything exactly as it says in the book. Almost always, when he cooks, it looks precisely like the picture. It is delicious and wonderful. But it is not fast, it is not spontaneous and there is always a mountain of washing up.

It is also, the complete opposite of how he does almost everything else. And it’s not like he doesn’t have his 10, 000 hours up. After all, years of working in cafes, sandwich shops and making pancakes for a living, as well as cooking for his family, have easily seen him meet the challenge. Perhaps it is this experience of cooking on a large scale, of the necessity of getting it right to earn money, that lead to his technique and approach.

In fact, in the kitchen, it is like we both are our mirror selves. Robert gets precise, and adheres to a script as if the meal depends on it. Even recipes he has made hundreds of times, he nearly always looks it up. I am completely the opposite. And this is in some way the opposite of myself too.

I make it up. If you open the fridge and want something for dinner, I am your woman. I can pull stuff together out of seemingly thin air. Robert would be off down the shops, with a list in his hand. And in that time I could have made the pasta. Spontaneous, making do, cutting corners to get a more efficient result, adapting recipes as I go to shorten the time taken, to chop out the faffing around.

This brings me to a second piece from How to shuck an oyster, Conflict in the Kitchen. We have, as a couple, had some conflict about who is going to cook when, who cooks the show pieces and who does the work-a-day meals. In our house we have very difference approaches and different skills, most of them complementary. I never have to make pastry again, for to do so would be a total waste of time, so good is Robert’s. But when it comes to the crunch of churning out weekday meals, it is just easier and faster if I do it. I am fond of spending a relaxing few hours on a Sunday making dishes for the week to keep things easy. Robert would just head to the shops every day.

Dinner parties cause conflict, especially in the planning phase. We fight over what to have. We disagree about the menu. We argue about the tried and true versus the opportunity to make something new or different. It would be nice if we could work together, share, make love on the kitchen floor, but our competitive natures won’t let us. Our egos fight it out. We argue. We clutch our favourite books, shouting menu suggestions across the house.

And then Robert trumps me. ‘I’ll get the fish kettle out.’ As soon as he says that, I opt out. I go and find candles and polish glass ware. ‘What am I supposed to make if you are going to poach a whole bloody salmon?’

All of it comes from love. All of it comes from the joy of making something delicious. But make no mistake, it’s a fight to the death. Whose cuisine will reign supreme?

9 February 2008 - Party Salmon photo Robert Gotts

To buy Charlotte’s new book Love and Hunger click here

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Soup’s on – Tuscan bean soup

It’s true, I am blogging another recipe. I am sharing this firstly, because it is totally delicious and you should immediately make it as soon as the weather gets cool, Canberra I am looking at you, and secondly, because nice people asked me to.

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Work together; just add salt.

I just used the last jar of preserved lemon that Robert and I made in 2008. We made maybe 10 size 20 Vacola jars of preserved lemon. We had kilos and kilos of lemons. It was our first large cooking project together. In 2008 I rented a house in Curtin. It had an old garden that was full of treasure. Read More