Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Takeshi and I bob up and down on the deck of a restored, aluminium dingy. The air is cool and the odour of dead fish is wafting through the boat. We huddle together for warmth, but it’s not yet dawn, and I have to squint to try and trace the outline of Takeshi’s face. But it’s futile in this darkness. I am deprived of all my senses and all I can feel is the relentless swaying of my body as we drift over the black saltwater that heaves and swells underneath. I capitulate to the darkness – to the emptiness of the open sea. There is a subtle and strange peace when everything of unimportance and irrelevance is rendered black. As we bob up and down on the waves, I start to feel a bit queasy. Take holds me tightly, so tight that I can feel the heat of his body. A radiating, pleasant heat. Out here, we are just two animals surviving – rocking and swaying on the waves.

The darkness is penetrated by the first rays of morning sun that trickle into the boat. Through the narrow beams of radiating light, I see the tip of Take’s fishing rod start dancing – and right on cue, the fish start biting, as if playing their part in nature’s orchestra. Accepting his cue, Take is jolted into action. He clasps the cold, rubber handle of the fishing rod and steadies his body for the battle ahead. It is still dim. But now there is enough light that I can vaguely make out Take’s silhouette as he fights the fish. His hand moves mechanically as it controls the reel, winding and releasing. The tip of the rod, bending and straightening, like an obedient puppet, yielding to the will of the puppeteer.

The fish must be nearing the surface now, but it’s difficult to say – peering into the black depths provides no clues. I lean over the wobbly boat with a net, ensuring the fish doesn’t make a lucky escape. Abruptly, the blackness is pierced by a shiny, glowing creature that flails and fights to escape. But I am too quick. I haul the creature onto our boat. It thrashes about on the deck but stands no chance now. Take secures the shimmering, slippery body with one hand, and with the other, mercifully drives a sharp blade through the magnificent creature’s head.  It stops flapping. It simply stops still. With a cursory toss, Take flings the corpse into the cool esky. I steal a glimpse of the whiting’s face as she lies in an icy morgue. She stares at me – the shock of being hooked still lingering in her eyes – or is that my shock simply reflected back at me? Cruel I think to myself. Or is it? Caught locally from the middle of Port Phillip Bay, she is a decent size and would have led a good life for a fish. She will be our lunch later, and we won’t bag more fish than what we can eat. In the darkness I muse: perhaps the world would be a less cruel place if we all engaged in this type of honest cruelty.

 

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

I am vigilant as I scan the room

And extraordinarily quick to assume

That other people want and need my help

It’s kind of something I’ve always felt

 

So when I see that someone is about to sneeze

I seize the opportunity to people please!

I pass him a tissue but he shakes his head

And pulls out a hanky to use instead

 

I smile at a woman but she looks away

Because she doesn’t feel like being social today

I sit there incredulous until I start to see

That my perception of people’s needs are just a projection of me

 

Oh shit. Do I really have the audacity

To think that no one has the capacity

To take care of themselves without me?

That’s definitely an uncomfortable thing to see

 

Maybe all the needs I perceive and pre-empt

Are simply my ego’s masterful attempt

To masquerade my own desperate need to be needed

Yep, this stuff is pretty deep-seated

 

In the past I’ve found love by being nice

But avoiding conflict has a price

Because discomfort and everything that makes me squirm

Are actually what I need to grow and learn

 

If I am really going to change

Two things in my mind need to rearrange

First I must trust people to ask for what they need

And wait for an invitation before I intercede

 

The second thing I must learn

Is that love isn’t something I have to earn

I don’t have to pay compliments, placate or please

I can be loved just for being me

www.ariamala.com

 

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Grief’s hand can be felt like a slap to the face.  A shock.  A surprising jolt to the head that disturbs the everyday as the world spins out of control.  Her hand can be hard, constantly pushing against your back, fingers digging in and reminding you that the world will never be the same.  Even when life brings you joy, her hand still has you firmly in her grip.  She may push you down until you connect with a deep sadness, lost in the abyss.  But she is not only tough – her hand can be soft and gentle.  She may clear a seat for you so that you may sit in amongst the pain and remember the beauty of what was been lost.  She can hand you a kind of acceptance, a way to move forward in the new world and a strength that creates a changed you.  She delivers her payload with no pattern or logic but her touch reminds us that we have loved.

 

 

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

 

This Christmas, my partner, Leslie, gifted me the ultimate expression of love in the form of a firm and not-very-subtle kick up the arse. It was wrapped beautifully, with ribbons and flourishes and unusual attention to detail that disguised the firm, uncompromising message it contained inside. It appeared the time for gentle encouragement and soothing support of my writing aspirations was about to be over quicker than I could say ‘Deck the Halls’. He’d brought in the big guns to re-educate this recalcitrant writer – inside was a gift voucher to attend Catherine Deveny’s acclaimed Gunnas Writing Masterclass. I simultaneously loved and hated him so much in that moment that I’ve no idea what kind of expression crossed my face when I realised what he’d done, and what I’d have to do now.

It seemed Santa’s elves had been watching me these past few months and they were, quite frankly, fucking sick of what they saw – a crabby unfulfilled, hypocritical sycophant who built her small child’s dreams by day (‘you can do anything you set your mind to, you just have to try!’) while systemically destroying her own by night (‘don’t try anything because you will FAIL so it is POINTLESS’)

“This is too much – you’ve spent too much,” I started.

“Please. It’s all I want”.

“It’s all you want?”

“For the love of that sweet baby Jesus lying in his manger, I don’t want any other gift. All I want for Christmas is for you to stop torturing yourself and just fucking write!”

I knew this wasn’t entirely true. What he really wanted was a copy of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and seven expectation-free days to play it, but he’d called my bluff and invested $290 doing it. I had to put out or shut up. He’d stitched me up with love, support and financial obligation. ‘God I love this clever, scheming bastard,” I thought. “He’s really played me this time and there’s only one way I’m going to get off the hook.”

Attending the master class would be just the first step in Dev’s patented two-step program to actually getting ‘off the hook’, of course – the second being the very small fact that you had to actually just write some stuff. This, obviously, should not have been real news to me, but still, the delivery of this magic bullet, when it inevitably comes, is like a miraculous revelation every single time! This time I would write that shit down with my good fountain pen in my best notebook as unassailable fact to slap myself in the face as often as necessary.

There are a thousand reasons I do not or cannot write, even when it is the thing I want most in the world to have done. Some of them are valid, but none hold up when subjected to any real kind of outside scrutiny – by best friends, professional mentors or probing therapists. There are a million holes letting the air out of all of my excuses and they’re all so obvious I’m sure there are astronauts in space rolling their eyes at my predictability as they look down upon me.

 

 

 

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

She opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom.  Everything seemed pretty much the same.  The faint morning light creeping in through the small openings of the drawn curtains.  A pile of yesterday’s clothes on the floor, most of it having fallen off the velvety wingback chair she picked up at a garage sale somewhere.

Everything was the same.  She looked down her doona covered body as she lay in bed; the same doona she always had; the same doona that used to warm his body as well; the same one they often hid under avoiding sunlight, prolonging the blissful state of darkness.   The same doona that was quickly thrown off in their moments of passionate love making.

She reached to the bedside table silencing the alarm clock before it even went off.  She couldn’t stand alarm clocks.

Slowly, she sat up, still in bed, cross legged, surveying the room, suspicious of its sameness.   Two windows, one view.  She fixed her eyes on the tall boy blocking the second window, trying to see through it.  She can’t even remember what part of the garden that window looked out to.

Thoughtlessly, she got up.  Puts both hands on the tall-boy and tries to move it.  But it doesn’t budge.  It’s her grandmother’s, antique tall boy, stuffed with god knows what.  Must weigh a tonne.

She is angry; angry at the tall boy, angry with all the stuff in it, angry with her grandmother who burdened her with its care.   It must be removed.  She must free that window.   Insanely she starts pulling out drawers one by one, not caring what falls out, what breaks.

She pushes again, and it slowly gives way.  She pushes more and more until it’s as far away from the window as she can push it.  She pulls the blind up and there is the window.  The glass hasn’t been washed in a while and the view is a bit cloudy.  But she can see.  There is more to see from the two windows.

The room is different.  She is not sure how, but it’s different.  She knows it’s her eyes.  For the first time she is seeing things she’s never seen before.  Different light, different shadows, a different view.  Sadness suddenly overwhelms her.  Her own eyes had been betraying her without her knowing; so many things remained unseen for so long.   But the sadness is quickly replaced by the joy of newness.  Freeing the window, has given her new eyes.

Her room is very different.  No tall-boy and no alarm clock.

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Carolyn was a working artist during the 1980s and 1990s. Even though she works as a professional librarian these days, Carolyn the artist still occasionally walks the streets of Carlton in the early hours looking for materials to use for projects. She was able to buy a house in Carlton before it became impossible to even rent a studio space within a five km radius of the CBD. She travelled widely too. Spent a lot of time in India, Turkey, the UK. That was young travel though, when she was skint and just wandering. When meeting people and having experiences was the only purpose to the whole thing. She wants to go to Europe again, this time as a grown up with some hard-earned professional wage behind her. Hotels instead of hostels, first class trains instead of 12-hour $8 bus journeys. She wants her niece Lear to come to Europe too. She’s only ever been on some awful Contiki thing, probably hung over and asleep through most of it. To Carolyn, Lear is a substitute child, except they get along, they never argue, and they have a friendship that Carolyn suspects is unlike a traditional mother-daughter relationship. They can talk, about intimate things, without the hesitation and second-guessing that one or both is about to cop some barrage for a perceived wrong or past neglect. She’ll speak to Lear this weekend about her idea for a trip.

Lear is monitoring the slow development of her tiny, off the plan apartment, being built in Northcote. Something fun or useful was bulldozed to make way for the apartment block – a bowling alley? She can barely remember even though it was only three years ago. She signed the contract a year ago after a failed relationship that she’d given too much of herself to and it had nearly destroyed her. It was ridiculous really. She moved in with Sam too soon, not long after the ex had left. Then Sam decides she wants the ex back and Lear has to move out. Her little sister managed to get married and have a kid in the time it took Lear to resolve to finally abandon the same things.

What is she doing with her life? She hates her day job and has been working at a swimming pool and a dance studio to save extra money for her mortgage. The first time Lear was peaceful enough to seriously consider Carolyn’s idea was after work on the Monday after they’d spoken. Summer workdays are long and a brain drain. She turned the tv on to the latest test match. She doesn’t really follow cricket, but it’s perfect to sit in front of when you don’t want to think too hard. She has no idea who these commentators are, but it’s no ball-by-ball commentary from Richie Benaud, that’s for sure. He’s dead. Her immediate reaction to the idea of Europe was no, of course no. Europe? With a mortgage coming once this apartment is complete? But now that the idea is planted she can’t think of anything else but getting the fuck away from Melbourne for a while. Take a break from work, from exes, from friends and their drama.

“I should take the dog for a walk”, she says.

Man’s best friend my ass. Lazy shit needs to get off the couch for a while. Lear got up and put her runners on and got the leash down from its hook. The universal dog language symbol that it’s time for a walk. Most dogs go ballistic, but not her greyhound Goose, frontrunner for the laziest dog ever to walk the earth.

“Come on lazy doodle, get off the couch”, she said to the sleepy grey.

She mindlessly picked up her handbag as she headed down the hall, but it was the wrong bag. It was the day’s workbag, which she was done lugging around and did not want to touch again until 8:25am the next morning. She dropped the bag, left her phone and wallet where they were and just picked up her keys as they headed out.

“I lost my phone once”, she said to Goose as they were strolling towards the park. “I thought it was the end of the fucking world and I actually cried.” Goose glanced up at her to show interest.

“Perspective is what I actually lost”.

She did this a lot. Talked at the dog, even in public, looking like a dickhead. Goose often looked at her as if to say ‘good grief woman, can we not just walk in peace?’

They walked laps around the park until finally Goose decided it was time to go home. He does this by going off the track where there’s an exit gate – he’s not stupid – and this evening he’s not in the mood for the other dogs in the fenced off-leash area. Most days he just likes to look at them for a few minutes then gently pulls away, back to the track.

They were in the lift going up to the flat because Goose doesn’t do stairs, when Lear’s mind found its way back to Europe and the offer to accompany her beloved aunt. By the time they were back in the flat Lear decided she’d go. 

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

The words escaped me. Or they were never there to begin with. Do they already exist somewhere, fully formed, waiting to be found? No, they never come pre-assembled. Each sentence needs to be roughly built, one after the other. Word by word. How pm earth do we even know how to put them together? So many words to choose from. Ambiguous meanings and uncertain usage and positioning. Faltering, floundering. Is that the fish or the failing? Is it failing or just struggling a bit, with a possible consequence in either direction? One can always recover from a bit of flailing and floundering. Flounder the fish is quite nice. Anyway, that’s seven minutes and I am done and dusted for now.

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Excitement tinged with apprehension surged through me as my long planned destination came into view. Miles and hours of rice fields, tall green sugar grasses and water buffalo slowly gave way to dusty roads traversed by many more bicycles than trucks piled perilously high with produce, people and farm animals. As we slowed, happy smiling children ran alongside offering food and trinkets for sale through the open window.

‘Do you want to go to passport office’? he asked. Silently out of nowhere and standing beside me was a young muscular man, brown skin gleaming in the hot, sticky air. Glancing along the crowded carriage I could see other young men shimmying agilely through the windows, alighting next to weary travellers who had endured the slowest of night trains.

I looked back at this man. His green and blue striped longi was gathered in a twist at his navel, dark bare feet splayed broadly out below. His black hair was wet from the early morning heat and exertion, his dark eyes sparkling. Grinning largely he extended his hand and nodded at me to take his tatty note book. ‘Please look quickly’, he said. His book was crammed with faded polaroid photographs of him alongside others, comments written in pencil and faded colored inks. By all accounts this man was friendly, knew the best places to go and had great local knowledge. I didn’t need to read them all to get the gist – here beside me stood Zaw Zaw who would cheerfully attend to anything I wanted while I was here.

Throughout the carriage tourists were looking at similar books as other young men solicited their work for the next couple of days. ‘I can be your tour guide’ said Zaw Zaw, ‘but first I must take you to passport office’. ‘Do I need to go there?’ I asked. ‘You must’, he replied earnestly, ‘all tourists must report to passport office for registration as soon as they arrive. It’s at the Mandalay hotel, I have rickshaw and will take you there’.

As the train slowed to stop, Zaw Zaw leaned in close towards me. ‘I must go now, I will see you at your bags’ he whispered conspiratorially, his breath hot in my ear. As quickly as he had appeared, he moved to the open window, turned to face me and swung himself out and upwards to an outstretched arm. He dazzled one more infectious grin at me and I watched as his feet disappeared upwards onto the roof of the train.

@Jofood999

Go Back

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER

Go Back