“Dear all,

The other day, while I was perusing an online dating site, I realised that I owed all of the important people in my life an apology.

Every New Year’s Eve my Auntie Maureen and Uncle Fred would have a great big party around the big kidney shaped swimming pool at their house. The ladies wore maxis and kaftans and the men safari suits. The end of one year and the start of the next was the best opportunity there was for a big celebration.

Us kids would stay up in the house most of the time, hanging in front of the television in the family room or playing games in the room next door. From there we could dart out to the kitchen where the maids were preparing the trays of food for the waiters to take out to the adults. We’d sneak a patty or vol-au-vent and beg for a glass of kool-aid. The maids would make a play at shooing us away but they were always good-natured and let us have whatever we wanted as long as there was a steady flow of trays making it out of the kitchen. Every now and then one of the waiters would bring a half empty tray back from the garden into the family room and we’d all greedily grab at whatever goodies were left on it. Even a cold patty was good when it was fancy cocktail size and you could eat heaps of them.

It was 1973 and I was 13 years old. This year, my mum and I had matching maxis. I was pretty excited about that because she was always so glamorous and getting to wear a long dress was an acknowledgment of my growing up. It felt like a real marker that I wasn’t just one of the little kids any more. Mum and I had chosen the style together from a magazine and she’d had her dressmaker recreate it especially for us. Loose and kaftan-y and ever so chic. The neckline and cuffs of mum’s were trimmed in three tones of blue. Mine in three tones of my then very favourite fashion colour: brown. I didn’t appreciate it then but now, in hindsight, I recognise it as the layers of a really good macchiato. You get the idea.

This year was different to all the others in so many ways. This year there was a boy I’d met for the first time just the week before. His family was out visiting auntie and uncle for the holidays. It was a big deal because they lived in America. But not just any America; they’d come from New York. I didn’t know hardly anything about New York, except it was some magical fantasy land that was somehow the most important and exciting place in the world. I knew that I really had no idea what it was about except that it was amazing and different to anything I’d ever known.

This year was different because I got to wear a maxi dress. Because at the party when I went down by the pool with the grown ups one of my uncles asked me to dance. It had never happened before. And when it did it was absolutely the single best and most important thing that had ever happened in my life. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was, well, not a grown up yet, clearly, but a person who was going to be a grown up. And that was thrilling. I felt I’d stepped into the foyer of the adult world and that beyond it was full of promise and new games and a new sense of being.

When another uncle asked me to dance, I knew that I had truly crossed a threshold and I would never be one of the kids again. Now I could boogie with the adults under the moonlight. I tossed my head and felt at once wild abandon and very serious responsibility.

And suddenly, as one track came to an end, at my shoulder was Jason and everything changed in ways I’d never even imagined before. His presence awakened in me something I’d had no concept of. Sure, I’d noticed boys before. But the guys my swim coach would have race against us girls to push us always seemed arrogant and obnoxious in their attempts to assert their physical superiority. And the older brothers of my brother’s friends were remote sporty or drama heroes.

Jason was real and close and interested in me. I’d never felt a boy interested in me before. That he was older and taller and handsome and New York-sophisticated made it all that more exciting.

We danced, apart, to a couple of whatever tracks were big that year. I don’t think I’ve ever remembered what they were. I was consumed by sensations of flying, tingling, excited confusion.

When a slower track started up, another uncle materialised beside us, asking me about school or something, pulling me into everyday reality. As I answered politely, I realised that Jason had slipped away.

We didn’t get close again that night. But as I crawled into bed I reflected on all the ways in which I’d grown up in the space of a few hours. I knew I was no longer the girl who had got dressed for the party. I knew this was the start of a new me. I fell asleep in awe of how different I felt and how full of full of promise this next stage of my life was. And of the excitement of Jason and his smile and his accent and the way he leaned forward when he talked to me.

Sometime in the early afternoon of the next day, my mum, dad, brother and I piled out of the car, back at auntie and uncle’s house. I’d fussed with deciding what to wear in a way I don’t think I ever had before. I’d chosen a favourite halter neck top and striped flares. I was quite sure I wasn’t carrying off the casual chic I was aiming for but I knew I had no idea what would be groovy in New York. I felt a bit of a try-hard klutz but I’d done the best I could with what I had and I was looking forward to seeing Jason.

We all wandered into the house, open as usual, through the entrance hall and into the big lounge room. Auntie and Uncle and a group of other adults were scattered around the room in animated conversations. I joined in the polite hellos as my parents settled in and then wandered outside as I usually did, always wanting to be near the pool.

My breath caught. Jason was in the water, face down, swimming intently. I wanted to wander away before he saw me. I wanted to stay and talk to him. Would it be awkward?

I watched as he got to the end of the pool, stretching out a muscled arm, then pulling his feet up under him and into standing position. He flicked his head and turned around, catching me eye.

I smiled. Nervous.

Languidly, seemingly with no effort at all, he swam over to just below me. He put his hands on the edge of the pool and pushed himself out of the water.

I remember now the rippling muscles in his arms, the droplets of water glistening in the midday sun. I bent down towards him as he pushed up towards me.

And I turned my head just as he pursed his lips. They brushed my burning cheeks just as uncle  called out “Happy New Year, young people” and materialised beside me, an outstretched hand proffering an icy glass of Kool-Aid.

Don’t think I don’t know. How dare you. Don’t think I can’t see what’s happening here. I know exactly what you’re all doing.

Monday. Every one of you mentioned the weekend. Little jabs. A dig here and there. All in on it together. Weekend this, weekend that. Pretending you’d all done separate activities. Avoiding each other’s stories and smiling with that dumb, open look on your faces. I know better than that – you think I can’t see through your lies?

Tuesday. Every single person wearing black shoes except me. Message received, loud and clear. Footstep by footstep. All fucking day. Pushing me around with your shiny fucking shoes.

Wednesday. You were all quiet. You knew I was on to you. You knew I was watching. You were all so fucking careful. But I got it! I saw. Café fucking lattes every single one of you, while offering to make me a cup of tea. Tea! As if.

Thursday. Or should I call it whisper-day. Hush hush. Eyes averted. Think I can’t hear you? Think I don’t know? I know exactly what you’re thinking. Exactly what you’re doing. Before you even mutter it to each other under your stinking fucking breath.

Friday. Today. My day. You’ll see. You’ll learn. You can’t shut me out like that. You can’t shut me up. I’ll give you something to gossip about. Not long now. Friday. My day.

Title: Letter from a goblin

Dear Lexy

Remember me. It’s Gobbledangle. You made me into a very scary goblin in 1999. That’s my opinion. Thanks.

(I pay no heed to the humans who labelled me cute. They knew nothing of my talents!)

 I always thought I was your favourite creation, but you sold me without even a thought at Mullum Markets!

 By the way, that the poem you wrote about me 15 years ago is outdated. I have adapted with the times. Speaking of time, in this small window of time, I am typing this on your phone hoping you don’t catch me at night here.

There are just a few points I want to make before you conjure me up again. Firstly, the fears of humans of the city in 2015 are different. Notice them!. Secondly, My friends Lightning Feet and her girlfriends and the others miss you that’s all.

 P.S I am thinking of a colour change, can you give me purple and blue sparkles? The usual batwings,  boots and cape would be most appreciated.

P.S.S A big red heart stitched into my chest or ..on my sleeve is essential. I have feelings you know. That’s all.

Yours

Once

Gobbledangle Goblin of The Night

Dee was shrieking at him again and he watched her face with a detached fascination at the rapid draining of beauty, followed by the suffusion of red fury and resentful wrinkles. He stood, square-on, facing her vitriolic outpouring, and wondered at his own calmness. Where was the smiling, vivacious, laughing woman he had met two years ago? Where was his own angry response?

He tilted his head a little to the side, like a curious bird. He realised that he had become more focussed on his own mental wonderings than on any of the accusations being spat at him through hard lips. Then, he registered vaguely that an extraordinary thing was occurring. She was getting smaller, smaller. Fading into the distance, her words becoming merely a series of sounds, high pitched, clanging, but fading. And she was receding further and further away…away. He reached up his arms, or at least tried to hold his hands out to her, but they seemed not to obey his wishes. He was falling, falling backwards…and a dimming darkness was closing in…He was dimly aware of a sudden silence and the perfect, silent O of her mouth. The back of his head hit the floor with a crack.

A floating, and a wonderful, welcome warmth spread through his limbs. So he felt no concern that he could not move. He drifted to another place and time. Was it real or imagined? He could no longer tell. Where was he? Dee was with him. He had his arm around her slim shoulders. He had his earphones on and was listening to This American Life. He was laughing quietly to himself.  Dee shifted a little and snuggled her face into his shoulder. He felt happy, warm and proud.

Sumatra…they were in a taxi in Sumatra. A momentary confusion caused his prone body to twitch violently, but he surrendered to his injury and once more he departed the reality of the cold kitchen floor, his bleeding head, and his panicking wife. They were back in the taxi, on the way from the volcanoes to Lake Toba. They had climbed one of the steaming mountains that morning. They had taken some hilarious photos up the mountains at the steaming vents. He had bent forward, bum out, arms spread like aeroplane wings, while Dee positioned herself with the camera so it looked, for all the world as if he was about to take off..driven by the power of his own steaming fart! They laughed. They loved each other and the world. He laughed at the memory and his eyes flickered open a fraction at the sound of a sob. His or hers? Impossible to tell. Eyes rolling backwards behind lids.

They had, since that day, imploded and exploded. Mount Sinabung had erupted, blowing out the side of the mountain in an enormous, destructive blast of fire and ash. And tonight, an eruption of his own, smaller, but just as destructive and full of burning, searing power as the volcano.

 

It’s as if writer and funny person Catherine Deveny designed her Gunnas course with me in mind, I’m a classic Gunna, all talk and very little action, in all aspects of my life. I don’t tell people I’m a writer, mainly because I’m not one, oh and also because I figure to be a writer you probably should be putting pen to paper at some point, to write more than tea leaves, coconut oil, AAA batteries, I mean. So Gunnas is a writing workshop for people like me who are always gunna write but never quite get round to it. I have a house to clean, for goodness sake. I signed up for inspiration, and it worked. Among others, Catherine quoted Carl Jung who observed that “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents,” which I have to say struck a chord. Part of why I am exploring writing is because I feel like I’ve spent a fair proportion of the past five years consumed by parenting small children and now I’m furiously grabbing back some of the more important bits of me that were left by the wayside, and trying to figure out my own future at the same time.

 

It pains me to admit it but in some ways I feel like I’ve wasted the time I had before kids. I mean, it was fun, of course. I developed somewhat of a career, travelled, saw plays, learnt a language and forgot it again, but it’s not like I really achieved all that much, more than the odd spectacular hangover. Perhaps that’s when I should have been writing more, because I had the time, but, and I’m cutting myself a major break here, maybe I was waiting until something – or someone – worth writing about – or for – came along.

 

These two little people, at once so vulnerable and so strong, have turned my world upside down and inside out and back to front and every which-way and forced me to look at who I am, who I was and who I would like to be.

 

They have brought out the best of me and absolutely also the worst, I never knew I was capable of giving so much, I never realised I could be so tired, so happy, so angry, so content. They have heightened my emotional range and they challenge me every day. But I do sometimes wonder if I should have fulfilled some kind of potential before they were born, before they enriched and depleted me, before I was too tired to think.

 

But why worry about that? What I don’t want is for my kids to be burdened with my frustrations of a life unlived so – guess what? – I’m gunna live it. Today I was asked what I would do if I had six months left to live. For starters, I would find joy in the everyday. I wouldn’t waste precious time on the boring bits, if I could help it, and I would definitely employ a cleaner, possibly full time, but even so some of life’s boring bits would still need to be done by me so I would do them with joy. I WILL do them with joy. Remind me of that next time I am on hold negotiating a better insurance deal.

 

So often, at home with squabbling under fives, I find myself just going through the motions, some less-than-inspired afternoons I catch myself watching the clock, calculating the hours until the kids’ bedtime or, gulp, until I can drop them off at childcare the next day. Surviving but hardly thriving. I’ve realised I need to use our time better, get off Facebook, give my kids more positive experiences and to hell with the mess! Keep them busy, run them ragged and stop beating myself up for occasionally letting them be bored (while I quickly check Facebook). I will enjoy the time we have at home together because soon, whether I have six months to live or sixty years, it will be gone. I will stop killing time and start spending it wisely. Because the next six months could be my last, and if they’re not I’m gunna do my best to live them like they are.

Roshan Sahukar is not a writer and doesn’t have a website. Or a blog. Yet. Find her on Twitter, but not tweeting much @mrsyeo 

Once upon a time there was a sad and lonely woman who lived alone with 15 cats and lots of rats and mice and moths and spiders and cockroaches.  She lived in a creaky wooden house down a little lane filled with holly and jasmine.  She loved all her animals very much, even when they would sometimes eat each other.

Everyday she would go to her boring job in data processing where she sorted out lots of numbers in a way that meant something to someone, but nothing to her. She ate lunch at her cubicle desk and spoke to no one.  At 5pm she would walk home through the rainy streets of the town, and down the jasmine scented lane to her little house where the cats and rats and insects and spiders were waiting for her. After everyone had eaten dinner and settled for the night, she would most nights play music and dance around her lounge room. She would dance the song of longing and loneliness. She didn’t know what else to do with this pain in her heart.

Sometimes, if she felt more calm, she would let the cats comfort her. As they snuggled and purred on her lap, she felt their gentleness and warmth seep into her bones and her heart would soften and purr with them. But around people, her heart remained locked behind rusty iron gates.

Her heart had been open once, many years ago. She had come into the world full of wonder, and she had danced and sung in a chorus of others. And there was a special love once too. They had busted each other open with joy and tenderness and the golden light of love. She had not felt truly alive til she met this man.

But one day he left. And never returned.  Many months later she discovered he had gone away with another woman. He had broken their golden bond. Her heart was ripped open and crushed. Still today, many years later, she feels pieces of their broken love in her heart, like shards of shattered glass.  She never cleaned the wound. She left the glass inside and let the grass grow over it. And put a big iron fence around it so no one would ever come poking around in there again.

One wet windy day, when she was walking home, she saw a small child sitting in the gutter in her yellow raincoat and yellow rain hat. Her little yellow body heaved and sobbed and shivered with sadness. Her head was in her hands and her cries pulled at the heart.

The woman wanted to keep walking. She didn’t want to talk to this miserable child. “I have nothing to offer anyone. What can I say to this wretch? I am so full of sadness myself.”. But as she went to pass by,the child looked up.. In that instant, the woman felt a shock go through her body, like an electric current.  Looking back at her from under the yellow rain hat, were billowing blue eyes washed clean by thousands of tears. She knew these eyes, there was something so familiar about them, but she couldnt say what…..

Without thinking about it, she knelt down in the rain and hugged the wet and crying child. And then, she herself began to cry. But this time, her tears were not for herself. “it’s ok little girl. What’s wrong? Why are you so sad?”

The blue eyes fixed on her. But the child didn’t speak.  Her bottom lip still shaking and sniffling.

“come,” said the woman. “I live very close, just down the lane. Come and get warm in front of the fire, and I’ll make you a nice rich hot chocolate.”

The child’s face became a little brighter, a flicker of a smile on her lips.  She followed the woman down the lane and into the creaky old house. The moment she opened the door, all 15 cats burst out in a ball of fur and meows and purring and rubbing themselves against legs and door frames and tables.  The child broke out into a toothy smile and patted and tickled them, giggling with delight. The woman watched her as she stoked the fire and then poured the thick creamy chocolate into 2 mugs. They sat together on the old sofa, together with all the 15 cats, and felt the warm sweetness in their mouths and trickling down into their tummys. The woman put her arm around the child, and together they fell asleep covered in purring cats and full of contentment.

Then the woman had a dream.

She was running to the top of a big grassy hill sprinkled with daisies. The sun was high in the indigo sky, fluffy white clouds keeping pace with her.  Huff and puff, her legs were strong and fast, her tweed skirt flying about her legs. Up and up,,without slowing, she ran all the way. And at last she came to the summit, and from there she could see the whole world. The little farms below, and forests and the blue river winding to the great sea beyond. And she heard the seagulls swooping over the great cliffs,  and saw the great crashing waves and smelt their salty breath. And she could see further, into villages and houses and shops and schools where all the people of the world lived out their lives. And she could see still further, into the hearts and minds and dreams of every person. She saw a mother with her newborn, sleeping softly in her arms. She saw folk at the market bartering and bantering and feeling belonging and joy with their friends. She saw the squealing delight of the school playground.

 But she also saw the child left out and teased. And the grieving mother who’s child had passed away. And the lover left behind.

And because of that she started to see the sadness that lives in all people sometimes. And that this kind of sadness was as real and noble as happiness.

Suddenly, she felt a shift in the breezes, and she began to feel less alone in the world.

In that moment, her heart fluttered and trembled in her chest, and with a deep pain, began to shake off the scabs of self pity and suffering, and the dirt and grass that had grown over it and the iron fence that and imprisoned it for so long.

She began to let in the air and the sunshine and the rain and all of the beauty of the world. And there, behind the iron fence and under the dirt, was her long buried heart, it’s tender pink skin glowing softly. Then a strange and wondrous thing began to happen:  the pieces of glass buried deep inside began to dissolve in the moonlight.

Suddenly, a drop of water fell on her hand. She looked up from the grassy summit and saw the turning of the sky, now heavy with black rain. “time to go” she thought, still floating in the glowing rapture of her newborn heart. More drops. She looked down at her arm. She was wearing a yellow raincoat.

On Wednesday my therapist told me to work on my self-worth. Self-love, even. Things will apparently start happening when I start to value myself instead of worrying about the world.

Today, Friday, in Catherine Deveny’s The Gunnas writing class, I was listening to Lucy the lawyer, and I can’t remember her precise words, but her expression and tone of voice was like a mirror of my own. The issue was what to write? Because when she was writing about clients or for clients the words flowed, but when she was trying to write for herself nothing came out.

It’s that service ethic thing. What you do for others is worthwhile. What you do for yourself is bottom of the priority list, just under unpacking the dishwasher. A waste of time that could be used for better things, to better purpose. This is a lifetime thing, a consequence of being brought up female, Christian, or just plain ‘good’. Think of others before yourself, don’t be selfish.

The next exercise was 5 minutes free writing. Don’t let your hand be still. So of course I started thrashing these ideas out with the stiff, painful muscles of my right hand in my doctor’s hand-writing. (I’m not a doctor, by the way.) When I do actually write, and stop doing online Sudoku, I trail off into political rants and social justice things of the kind you see hundreds of on the net. I suddenly realised that this is because saving the world – which of course, I can do by ranting online – is for others, not for me. It qualifies as unselfish. It’s not about me. First save the world, then start your novel. So the whole self-worth thing is exactly where it’s at for me, right now.

If I want to pacify the service ethic in me, I claim I am giving voice to the silenced. That is probably why it let me get away with my play. it had a strong, overtly feminist agenda. But perhaps giving voice is not a social justice thing, but curiosity? Perhaps I am looking to have experience through the eyes of the characters I am creating. Perhaps the silence/voice thing is just an excuse to cheat and have other people’s adventures with them … that is what acting is, after all, and I like that.

The next 5 minute exercise was stuff about what to write, whose writing I liked and random ideas. Nothing revelatory. What was important was that my handwriting changed. It flowed, got less jagged and cramped, got big and messy and assertive and easier to read. And my hand stopped hurting. My hand has been hurting while writing for about 40 years, which is why I love computers. It made my uni exams hell, and I had to take double the space to make sure that I could be read.

I can write.

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