Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time there was a crazy fabulous wild and wonderful woman. Her hair was a maze of curls and colour and she was dressed always in the fashion of the day which was lace and satin, girdles and bustiers. She was from the late 1800s. She was not a puritan or a good woman of means looking for a comfortable marriage.

 She was an actor and a poet, a burlesque queen who mesmerised the minds of men escaping women they had married who were the opposite of her. Her name was synonymous with Trash and Treasure, in the heady days of the Empire of Kings and Queens and the Aristocracy.

They ruled the day with fashion, food, wine and debauchery carried out in mansions, dance halls, horse drawn carriages and some had the latest modes of transport called automobiles.

Our lady was a Burlesque Queen. She danced in golden halls and rode in carriages cloaked by night with men of reputation. Their wives at home surreptitiously cavorting with the staff in an effort to assuage the knowledge of their duplicitous husbands. Cobbled streets and smatterings of rain created a certain echo of horse drawn carriages as they trotted their cargoes home to pillared homes and grandiose mansions. She was left behind to find her way back from where she came.

As she awoke one morning, fully dressed with her hair billowing unbridled on the stained feathered pillow, she felt as if she was drowning in an aching loneliness which had finally enveloped her like a cancerous disease.

She stood in front of the long extravagant gilded mirror to face herself for the first time naked in her despair. She saw the image of herself wailing back at her. She saw her face contorted in an ugly cry, her heaving and dishevelled shoulders shaking her voluptuous breasts.

This image was one of a woman in torment knowing her life was over. She was too old. The Empire no longer would want or need her charms. Her feet hurt, her girth was thick and the lines on her face were etched so deeply, no sleep or amount of war paint could help her regain her youth.

 Because of that it was as if overnight, she knew her raisin d’être had been extinguished.

She was dead to herself. She was no ones treasure and she had become her own trash.

She knew it was time to wash herself, feed herself and redress herself. Call for the carriage and go to work. As she stepped into her worn satin shoes, she looked up and the daylight was brazen in its criticism of her. The light was cold and bare and excruciatingly accurate that no make up or smile could erase the vision of herself caught in the window.

This was the moment to step into the old world or step out all together. Such thoughts were paralysing until now….

A cataclysmic thought attacked her and she knew what to do.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

If you were to chuck me in a time machine and send me to my happy place of choice, 70s Australia is it.
There was a naïveté and innocence then that I really miss, life was simple, free and happy.
My parents worked extremely hard. There was only ever enough money to make ends meet. Dad drove earth moving equipment in the beating sun and howling rain. Mum worked as whatever she could, at one point in a wool factory, scouring filthy bales of wool and sorting them to be cleaned.
Looking back I feel bad for the moments where we didn’t appreciate this as kids. I’d beg to be taken out to the movies or the drive in, or to the beach on a hot day and couldn’t understand why one or both would scream in exasperation to “go and jump over the fucking sprinkler to cool down”. We would and we enjoyed it because there was nothing else to do.

Summers in Perth are stinking and maddeningly hot. We didn’t have an air conditioner in our car so trips to the beach after school or on the weekends usually meant a burning bottom on the vinyl backseat of the Kingswood , with the windows down and the hot air searing our skin like a hairdryer. We would song along to Kenny Rogers, Bob Marley or the eurythmics on the tape deck and were occasionally allowed to have a Giant Sandwich ice cream as a special treat. It would be a race to cram as much in to our mouths whilst cold without freezing our brains, and licking the sticky melting rivers that ran down our salty hands. The measure of a good day at the beach would be the size of the pile of sand that fell out of our bather bottoms as we stripped off in the bathroom. Mum would have to sweep up half of Coogee Beach by the time we finished showering.

We didn’t have enough money to have family holidays, so days out were activities like fishing. I couldn’t stand it, I was happier inside reading or riding my bike til the sunset. We would go to South Mole or Robs Jetty, neither of which turned me on. The smell of Robs Jetty was unmistakeable on the approach. Meaty, rancid and metallic. The jetty was next to an abattoir , which made it a great fishing spot. The fish were attracted to the blood that tinted the Indian Ocean red until the tide went out, and the odour hung in the in air and stuck in my throat. Little wonder I chose to be a vegetarian for nearly 30 years.

Our house didn’t have an air conditioner  either and there was a daily dance of courting and spurning the breeze. Closing the curtains and windows in the late morning to keep the hot easterly desert breeze out, and opening everything up in the late afternoon to let the Fremantle Doctor in, the sea breeze that brought relief from the heat.
During a heatwave my brother and I would have to sleep on towels on the floor of my parents bedroom under the single  lazy and squeaky ceiling fan for relief. He had ADHD so it was never very relaxing being in such close proximity.

There was always a love of music in our house and I didn’t appreciate how cool my parents were until my 30s.  They had me very young, at 19, and we cut our teeth on bowie, the stones, bobs Dylan and Marley, Fleetwood Mac and AC/dc. I was an awkward and shy kid, and would die inside when I brought friends home after school if I could hear the music pounding out of the house when we were at the end of the driveway. The windows would practically bow from the volume and the bass.
My friends would exclaim they wished their mums were as cool as mine. She would dance, head bang, air guitar and crank the volume up another notch whilst yelling “this is good shit man”.

It was impossible to take yourself too seriously in our house. Any loving of oneself sick would invariably lead to a taking down of a peg or two. My choice to become vegetarian was seen as imperiousness , and ridiculous. To prove this, one evening I was served one of my mums incredible soups. She’s famous for them in our family. After I polished off my bowl and sat there full and happy with my rotund belly she took great delight in telling me I had enjoyed it because she had puréed the meat. To this day her outrageous and shifty audacity, as wrong as it was, fills me with admiration. I shouldn’t admit it but I aspire to her levels of great, cunning shiftiness.

My most treasured memories are those from simple, suburban Australia. It kills me that I’ll never have to work hard to replay a song I love again, rewinding the tape deck, doing the frustrating stop, start, false start, rewind some more. Or siting with my cassette player, waiting for songs I loved to come on the radio so I could record them. That I’ll never again have the vinyl backseat dance, moving from  (bum) cheek to cheek to alleviate the burning and that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever cool down by spending hours hopping back and forth over the sprinkler in the front yard. I know that technically I could, but it would be a community service not to.
To me there is nothing lovelier and more endearing than daggy suburban Australia.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time there was a tractor with ten wheels. Some of the wheels were straight and some of the wheels were wonky. It had been around as long as anyone could remember—big hunka junk in the ramshackle shed along the M52 highway. Bruce Wilder owned it. Drove it everywhere. No road was too pot-holed or too wet or too slippery. He gave kids rides on it. Charged them a dollar. Bloody dangerous, the parents said. Because it was rough as one of those mechanical bull things people rode in America.

Once, Billie, son of William Williams, the village doctor, fell right off it. Suffered a severe concussion and was never quite the same afterwards. Secretly, Mary—the village sweetheart—worried she’d broken her hymen riding it. And every day, Bruce fractured a bone as he drove it. First it was his coccyx. Next it was his pelvis. Once it was his big toe when he got it caught in a gap between the tyre and the chassis. Finally Doctor William Williams forbade Bruce from driving it. Diagnosed him with osteoporosis. Said he should be at home, watching TV, in his dressing gown. But Bruce refused to stop. Even when he broke both arms he begged Tim, the village mechanic, to hoist him into it. Threatened suicide if Tim didn’t. Which was ironic. Because that was Bruce’s last ever tractor ride. Half a mile down the road he fell and smashed his skull into a hundred pieces. But Tim the mechanic never forgot the old man’s last words to him. ‘Mate, remember to always fail while daring greatly.”’ He winked and waved his plastered arm, “The chicks love it.”

melaniechengwriter.wordpress.com

Twitter: @mslcheng

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Frank’s hands shook as he raised the glass to his lips and his body gave an involuntary sudden jolt, shaking loose the walking stick that had been precariously, thoughtlessly placed on a slight angle on the edge of the table, which made an almighty clatter as it hit the floor. This was just something that happened many times a day, a moment of Parkinson’s-related clumsiness that ended in noise, so he didn’t think much of the event itself. But he did notice how the people around him noticed. There was the attractive waitress at the café, who seemed nervous that he might drop something more or make more noise, causing more disruption to her perfectly manicured workplace; the young mother in the nearby booth, with her two preschoolers, who looked like she was worried that he was intoxicated or medicated, or perhaps insane, that he might do something uncomfortable that she would have to explain to her children; the businessman who didn’t actually seem to take in anything around him, but had glanced in Frank’s direction, who seemed inconvenienced in some way by the disturbance.

And yet, in all likelihood, these were not the thoughts going through the minds of those around him. The waitress was likely just trying to remember the order of the businessman, who looked as though he was stuck in his own preoccupations, but who would pounce on any slight mistake that was made on his order, requiring perfection in everyone around him. The mother of two was more than likely more concerned about whether her two energetic boys would make a scene in the time it took for her to drink her much-needed morning coffee, like the little time bombs that she always felt that they were, and whether they would get to their weekly music class in time, and whether they’d manage to get bread on the way home before the little one got too tired to be manageable in a crowded supermarket filled with shiny, colourful things to want and need. In all likelihood, nobody was taking any more notice of him than they were anyone else. Everyone trapped in their own microcosm, too consumed to worry about insignificant happenings around them.

Who would know.

And yet, Frank often wondered. He often felt conspicuous. Watched. Judged. Misunderstood. Pitied. He often felt like he had to explain himself to people, explain his unexplained lurching movements, his apparent clumsiness. Explain that he wasn’t always like this.

Perhaps he wanted to be noticed, to feel part of society again, to feel noticed. Was this the reason Frank persisted in making the often-monumental effort to venture out of the house every day, getting away from those four walls that were so comfortable, so secure, so familiar, and yet so very lonely, so very restrictive, so very different from the life that he had known? The life prior to Parkinson’s disease, when he still had full control over his body, a sense of control he never truly appreciated until it was lost.

Frank rose slowly from the uncomfortable wooden chair, suddenly cautious, moving with exaggerated care, trying to overcome the shuffling that otherwise took over. As he got up, smiled at the waitress and paid for his coffee, he felt energized. He was ready to navigate the short trip back home, suddenly thankful for life’s small mercies.

At least he had this walk.

At least he could still look forward to feeling the sun shining on his bare forearms.

At least he had his thoughts to sift through, clear and plentiful. Giving at least some sense of control.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

SuperMum. She is that lady in the daytime ads for paper towels and other household products. Her home is immaculate,

her hair always done,

her kids are neat,

and when little Timmy comes in caked in mud she simply tilts her head to the side and smiles, hands on hips. Ah, Timmy. She sits on her sparkly white couch in her white pants  (a sure sign of a meticulously kept calendar) drinking tea and swapping organic baby food recipes with her SuperMum friends. You know her well, perhaps you even aspire to be her, but you know what? That bitch ain’t even real.

In the western world, we are fed this idea of motherhood. That a good mother is someone who willingly gives up her life and sacrifices her own wants and desires to be in service to her family. Mums who go back to work “early” or getaway on long vacations sans kids are often labelled as selfish. But if you can work from home, and tend to the kids, and keep a clean house for guests while serving up home-baked goods – all with a smile – then, congrats, you have reached SuperMum status. All praise be to SuperMum.

Seriously, have we even moved on from that painfully idyllic depiction of the 1940s housewife? The truth is, no one is SuperMum.

This is an image we see blaring at us from every television ad, every billboard, every magazine. Even if we ignore the SuperMum image she lives in our peripherals and influences our perception of motherhood. If you want a closer look at such depictions check out the hilarious It’s Like They Know Us. You won’t regret it.

So what is wrong with aspiring to perfection? Well, for one it is an unattainable goal. So many mums struggle with the drastic changes that becoming a parent brings to the everyday; to sleep, to your body, to your role in society, your life goals, your finances, to your very purpose in life. There is enough changes to stress you out without this pristine SuperMum image reminding us of how parenting life should look and how ours completely does not.

At the least this causes exhaustion and stress trying to keep up, at worst it causes depression. The next thing you know we are perpetuating the sickeningly sweet language that accompanies such imagery, talking about every smile being a miracle, and how life has never been better when in reality parenting is so often messy, tiring, and thankless. Not that there aren’t moments of joy, but there are also moments of despair. A realistic depiction of parenthood is desperately needed.

Having SuperMum around doesn’t leave room for the rich diversity of real motherhood experiences. Instead we find ourselves all putting on airs, trying to play at perfection while sweeping our struggles beneath the rug.

Dammit, let’s kill SuperMum. Let’s gather together with our torches and pitchforks and bury that ridiculous image of female perfection. We don’t need her. We don’t need any idyllic goal for inspiration. All we need is a mirror held up to the realities of motherhood: the chaos, the mess, the joy, the fun. The fuck-it-I’m-sure-it-will-all-work-out-eventually nature of parenthood in general. The more we share our honest stories of motherhood, the more SuperMum melts. Oh, what a world, what a world! Good riddance.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Practicing law can harden you against life’s vicissitudes. Through the vicarious exposure to the lives of others, a lawyer’s survival depends on developing a carapace to insulate us against others’ misfortune. After a while, if we find we are suited to legal practice, we may develop an appetite for dealing with life’s difficult issues. Dealing with death is one of these difficult issues which has both hardened me and given me an appetite for dealing with the difficulties death presents.

When our clients share their frailty or death with us, we want to ‘fix’ the fall out. We see the consequences of human behaviour and we begin to believe, that with foresight and planning, problems can be avoided. Perhaps this is a delusional belief. Perhaps instead life is not to be ‘fixed’ and that difficulties are integral to life’s journey. But lawyers have the benefit of having shared many experiences of things going wrong. Through hindsight we can be seduced into thinking that there is a ‘right’ way to do things, and that lawyers know what that ‘right’ way is. Having a ‘cark file’ is one of those tools which uses the experiences of others, to avoid future difficulties.Hele

The ‘cark file’ is one tool which lawyers use to forestall disaster. The cark file is a practical approach to getting your affairs in order. In one place, you gather the information which will guide your friends and family, when you are no longer able to tell them your wishes. The cark file contains all the information your family or friends need. The cark file helps both before and after death. Under what circumstances would you wish your life to cease? What do you want to happen to your body, and your possessions when you ‘cark it’? What would it take for you to ‘have the conversation’ with your family and friends? Get ready for the conversation, write up your Will, nominate an enduring attorney as your ‘responsible person’ to make decisions when you are unable to do so and save your loved ones some trouble.t of coping with.

Helen practices law in Beechworth and Yackandandah.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Netball skirts and tracksuit pants. A match made in heaven. To my eight year old self they symbolised community, domesticity, vitality and motherhood.

It was the uniform of suburban mums back in the 1980s. Active mothers moving from drop offs to shopping centres to netball matches to pick-ups to after school sports. To me it was a uniform for the majority, a majority that I so desperately wanted my mother to be a member of.
Much to my dismay my mother never donned a pair of track suit pants. Or a netball skirt. Let alone together. My mother has a serious aversion to trainers, sneakers or flat soled shoes of any kind. On the one (short lived) occasion she wore a pair of shiny white, cushioned Reeboks (it was the 80s), she declared that the shoes were the most uncomfortable things she had ever worn and quickly retreated back into the apparent comfort of her pointy ended, high heels, never to return to a shoe with a mild incline again.

My mother rarely picked me up from school because she ran a jewellery shop in a quiet suburban shopping centre. It was small but glittered with its sparkling jewels and affordable time pieces, in sharp contrast to its fluorescent lit neighbours. But when she did I’d anticipate her arrival with nervousness and a degree of dread. Amongst a sea of netball skirt and track suit wearing mothers,  she would arrive like some sort of Chinese Joan Collins – bold matte red lips, black sweeping eye liner, a freshly coiffed perm, patent pointy high heels, a replica Chanel suit and then layers upon layers of sparkling, eye catching merchandise from her shop.
As one of the few Asian children at my predominantly white suburban primary school, standing out wasn’t something I prized. I wanted to move with the crowd unnoticed, be one of them, to conform, to fit in, to be less Chinese. But her arrival was akin to watching a peacock amongst a sea of pigeons and her conspicuous arrival drew unnecessary attention to me.

For years I tried to sell the virtues of pairing a netball skirt with tracksuit pants to my mother. I’d preach its versatility, how its unique combination of elasticised waist with gentle pleats was the height of sophistication and comfort. But she never budged, never to be familiar with leisurewear let alone active wear.

30 years on and facing the prospect of my first school run next year, I can finally appreciate the stubborn determination of my mother to maintain her red lipstick, weighty jewels and Dynasty-style outfits. It was her way of maintaining a sense of self, of identify, of carving out an image of motherhood that reflected her pre-child self in the face of routine and predictability.

Contact: amanda.fong@gmail.com

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

As I start the engine I catch the start of the ABC five pm news. I feel like I have been locked away from the outside world for the day while at work when they are discussing the major announcement by our Prime Minister that morning. According to the report, the Federal Government has decided to allow in an additional few thousand refugees from that latest humanitarian crises overseas. ‘About bloody time! Why in hell is it so difficult to make a decision that is the bleeding obvious right and decent thing to do for once!! ?’ I yell at the radio. This issue has really upset me over recent days. I even fought with Stu about it on our way to the movies on Sunday night. The night before he flew off. Bloody bureaucratic decision making. After sitting through a staff meeting where it took an hour to finalise a new pro-forma for incursions, I have a head ache. I have drunk too much coffee, haven’t drunk enough water and forgot to change that tampon before I rushed out of the office in my flurry to get Sam from day care in time and get the big boys to basketball. I realise, once again that I am getting angry about a whole lot of stuff lately. While some of it is valid and I know it is all well and good to care deeply about some of these big issues in life, I am tired. I’m tired of feeling angry about so many thigs going on around me that I feel I have no control over.

I sense something that jolts me out of that contemplative zone and pull up for the red light just in time. I haven’t hit the Subaru in front but it as close. I realise that I’m not concentrating and really need to focus on what I’m doing. With a good half hour of the trip left, I decide that I need to relax a little. I turn the radio of and switch to an old CD.

My shoulders relax and my breathing slows down as the smooth tone of The Waifs envelops me. Slowly but surely, it takes me back. Freo. Through the music I almost catch the scent of those sticky sweaty evenings that comes with the feeling of carelessness and freedom that only Western Australia seems to offer.

I truly love my job and could not think of any other work I’d run out the door for so eagerly each day. However, it drains me. Stu is away at the moment on one of his long term contracts out of Kalgoorlie and it just adds that bit of extra pressure that makes the start and the end of the day so much harder to manage. I’m pretty sure so many judge us for ‘doing it for the money’ and think the strain during these stints away is something we selfishly choose at the expense of our children. But why should I have to stay at home all day each day while he pursues the job he needs and enjoys? Why should one of us choose? Our kids are more independent and resilient than many others I know and they know and understand that both of their parents work hard because they each enjoy their jobs and contribute to the family. I feel the stares when I occasionally make it for school pick up or assembly. Maybe they are just in my head and an inaccurate perception but I’m pretty sure the ‘I just don’t know how you do it?’ comments do often carry a double meaning.

I eventually come around the corner past the kids’ school before I turn off to day care and see the road lined with cars. Shit. What are they all here for still at 5.45? My mind races back to that blur or school emails. Was there something about an information session or was it parent teacher evening today. Oh shit, shit, shit. I pull over and ring Stu in WA.

‘Honey, can you please check the old school emails and check to see if there was something about parent-teachers’. He’s on site in an office and reluctantly logs on to our home emails, while filling me in on the latest mix up with dozers and overestimated tonnage for the day. He tells me his mate Richard looks like he’ll be heading off to a site further north soon.

‘Honey’ I interject, ‘Please check your email’.

‘For fuck sake Julie. You want me to just drop everything to check my email? Why didn’t you look after work? What’s wrong anyway…?’Rolling my eyes and turning the music down, I decide to save my breath and just wait.

He breaks the silence and confirms my suspicions. ‘Yep, parent teachers are tonight. It says cut off for making appointments was last Thursday’.

Great. I’ve missed them. The teacher who doesn’t even make it to her own kids parent teacher interviews. I remember he’s on the line still and quickly say goodbye. I don’t have the energy and time for more at the moment. I drive off feeling and fear the wheels are starting to fall off. I can’t let myself contemplate how exactly and when that will happen and what the fallout would be. With two minutes to go until closing time I pull up at day care.

Sam sees me from behind the cubby house and comes running over with his usual enthusiasm. He grabs me around the legs and smells of sunscreen and day care food. Somehow it permeates through their pores. It was a smell that made me cringe ten years ago when Billy started there but now I find comforting. I feel my eyes well up and blink back the tears while asking Billy about the painting I see drying on the clothes horse beside us. I can almost make out what I’m told is a face next to the purple dinosaur. I quickly bid my thanks to the lovely Lisa and clasping that precious hand, lead my chattering and beaming little man over to the counter to sign out.

By Jemma Morris

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.