Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Life.  It can be a joy, a disappointment, a pleasure, a pain, even at times, an anti-climax….  What it is not is black and white. It contains many shades of grey. Way more than 50.  Yet for some people they do see it as black and white. You’re right or you’re wrong. They’re a good person or a bad person.  You are good at your job or your not.  They’re either a good parent or not.  For a long time, I was one of those people. Someone that saw things in strictly black or white. But frankly that’s a very limiting and narrow minded way to approach life.

I have been lucky to have a few very dear people in my life who have preserved with me and pushed me to see and embrace the shades of grey.  They have encouraged me to venture into the grey abyss and I am all the more a better person for it.  But many people who have a tendency to see life as an either / or situation are afraid, reluctant, and even ignorant that the grey exists or the benefit that there is in embracing it.  This can often be to their detriment and also to the detriment to those around them or those who are affected by their views.

See, when you do start to embrace the shades of grey, you open up a whole new way of thinking and a whole new way of experiencing life.  You expose yourself to a new way of viewing the world and the people in it. You grow and you learn.  Whether you agree with other perspectives or ways of doing things doesn’t matter.  Whether you made the right call or not doesn’t matter.  What matters is putting yourself out there and learning that things are not black or white. In other words pushing your comfort zone and your pre-conceived ways of viewing the world.  This, to many “black and white” people, is like asking Tony Abbott to walk a mile in the shoes of those he considers beneath him.  It’s simply not something that occurs to them to do or something that they would be prepared to do.

If, however, people were prepared to see life a little less black and white, a little less me versus them, then this country, indeed this world, would be a far better place.  A place where we treat fellow human beings with respect, decency and dignity.  A place where we see that we are not all that dissimilar. A place where we realise that although I may be a darker shade of grey and you a lighter shade of grey, the reality is we are all some shade of grey.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

As a kid, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell people, “I want to be a starving artist and live in Paris.”  Dad used to say, “you don’t have to be starving Em, you can just be an artist who lives in Paris.”  He wasn’t really getting the whole picture but he built me an easel for my birthday anyway and Mum bought me brushes and art classes run by my aunt.  I exclusively painted acrylics of bush fires.  I think of what it would be like to live a life without regrets. I’ve never lived in Paris; so I should probably start by moving there.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

There was a period where I thought it would be good to come out as atheist at my wedding. I felt I could get a two-for-one deal on declarations, that while formally acknowledging my long term relationship in front of other people in a fancy dress, I could slip in that religion is not really for me.

I went on a tangent and thought about all the other things I could declare, as if this was going to be one big cathartic moment. I could report that I feel guilty that I can marry and friends can’t. Promote volunteering as a way of finding a spiritual connection with others. Rant that black and navy should never be worn together. I could advise that being kind should not be underrated.

To me, a wedding is a declaration of intent for, if not life, then for the foreseeable future. To me, my intention toward my partner becomes more real when said in front of my people, not quietly but into a microphone, and not kept to myself, but shown through actions and formality.

The ritual of marrying out loud, of declaring intentions out loud, is a longstanding and odd one. We live in a group and the group wants clarity on the status of others. Vague or hidden meanings are challenging. Hence the ritual with the legal phrases, the forms of dress, the food, the special dances, the flowers (to ward off evil spirits of course), the specially titled helpers and choosing venues that reflect ‘us’.

But more so, I felt that some people at our wedding may misunderstand or not know me and that declaring myself atheist would give them a better idea about who I am (more so than my choice in dress or hairstyle). The irony of trying to indicate individuality in a ritual does not escape me.

Where else though do you get to openly and honestly talk about things that are important to you? I guess I thought that at my wedding people might actually listen to me, because they’ve come to hear my public declaration, although for something else. I like people to be open and encourage the ‘over share’ so I’d be modelling that behaviour.

In the end, recognising that a wedding is a joint ritual and marriage is a shared state helped me to calm the compulsion to define all of myself publically. My wedding will be the only joint ritual occasion I will participate in my life. In the secular world, birthdays and funerals are the only other formal rituals I will be a part of where something defining is said. Though one I find increasingly depressing and the other I won’t even get to participate in as a conscious being.

So I’ve attached all importance to this one.

I have come to realise that it is not a good idea to try to wedge all these declarations between the main declaration of the day. But I will be sharing my opinions more boldly and broadly now. This I declare.

Anther brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Christmas 1980.  End of the school year.  Pocket money was tight. While there was a huge need to focus on what others wanted for Christmas, Ben really needed to get some things for himself.

Rexona deodorant and Libra pads.  All a 10 year old boy could possibly need.  Desperately.

Ben was a great student.  Ok, he was the smartest in the class.  Well, almost the smartest, but he was up there and he knew it.  At that age, you judge yourself by comparison and perhaps by what people say about you – your mum and dad, brothers and sisters, school mates and teachers. He knew he got stuff.  Maths, English, Social Studies, Geography.  He just GOT IT.  He was a genius.

One thing he didn’t get was sport. He didn’t get it in such a way that he could not throw or catch a tennis ball.  Picture this – tall for his age, scrawny, bowl-cut, home-cut hair – and the piece de resistance – glasses.  Yep, a classic nerd.  Smart and clumsy, tall and nerdy.  Aching to fit in.  Desperately lonely and unhappy.

He ached so much not to be the class goody goody.  He tried so hard at the stuff he was good at.  He focused on what he did well and he tried hard to have people and teachers like him.  Ben hung out with the other “nerds”, not that he was that friendly towards them and his belief that he was almost inevitably smarter than them, in his own mind at least.  Competition by comparison.  Like a fat person hanging out with fatter people to feel better about themselves.

His sense of balance in both the broader world and his sporting prowess was pretty warped.  They matched each other, in that they were as bad as each other.  Evidence of this was his kicking a goal for the other soccer team when he was six.  No-one told Ben that you changed ends at half time.  His opponents were not even competing for the ball – of course they weren’t – they were getting a free goal!  His teammates were calling his name to stop, but he was being selfish kicking his very first – and dare he think it, his last – soccer goal.  His teammates were not friends and any he did have prior to that goal were now gone.

Fastforward back to Christmas 1980. Somehow and strangely, this unhappiness was reflected in his end of year school report, which was not brilliant.  Ben could not believe it.  He was perfect – apart from his sporting prowess, of course – but in his teacher’s eyes, he was not.  He had done everything right – how could this have happened?

His teacher said that while Ben was very competent in a whole range of subjects and that he tried at sports, he lacked confidence in almost everything he did.  Ben didn’t even know what the word meant, his mum and dad trying to explain it in a convoluted way he just didn’t understand at the time.  He was in shock and withdrew within myself.  He was self-conscious that all his family were watching him and embarrassed by his lack of confidence.

Ben would watch television and become embarrassed when words like confidence were used on advertisements.  As always, he tried to think of ways to change this perception, to make himself more perfect. Which is exactly why he bought those Libra pads and Rexona deodorant for about $7.32 – to give himself some confidence.

God knows if his mum or dad ever found those things he’d bought that Christmas, but it was not a happy Christmas for his family when Ben announced he was not getting anything for the rest of the family.  He said he’d spent all his pocket money throughout the year and he was sorry.

But the Rexona smelt in a girly way and he just didn’t know where those pads were supposed to fit.  And he reinvented himself.  He tried to be less perfect, to give himself a break, to not achieve at the same level, to muck around in class a bit, to be friendly, to try to keep up with the latest episodes of The Young Doctors, understand the coolness of Countdown and its bands, to take up a sport that he might just be good at.  And just be himself without worrying about what others thought of him.  Even if he did wear ladies’ deodorant.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

It’s a fascinating and confronting thing when someone you love dies and the inevitable reflection on their life and your relationship reveals perhaps how little you may have known about them, of their life, their workings of their soul. Or when secrets or significant, but hidden aspects of their life and personality are revealed to you for the first time.

It’s perhaps an inevitability of death and life that we only ever know a portion of another’s life story while they are alive no matter how intimately familiar we are with them. Often we learn of facets of their lives only after the fact.

When we are young and those older than us die that is not surprising, in fact it’s expected that we learn much about the person at their funeral or wake. It can be one of the ‘joys’ of the rituals that surround death, that the life events and achievements are shared amongst the group, significant moments and anecdotes recounted, and the best and most human aspects of the person’s life are expressed and shared.

But what if you are denied these opportunities? What if the death of your loved one is complicated? What if you learn something about the person or their passing that doesn’t reflect ‘well’ on them, their life, your relationship or family following their passing? Or uncover something that you find hard to reconcile with your pre-existing conception of them? What if you discover a secret that you believe they would prefer remained so, had they the choice?    What would you do???

What do you do with such revelations? With your complicated, disenfranchised grief? These are the questions that I still seek the answers too. This is a part of my, and therefore his unfinished story.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

I remember the day that I first understood the difference between “forever” decisions and ones that could be undone.  You grow up with a bunch of adults telling you that you can do anything, and then that you can do anything but you have to decide what now, and then that you should probably stop fucking up your life, and none of it means anything, because you’re young and invincible and full of potential and you’re never going to die.

I was 23, and had just fallen in love with a married man.  I spent a Sunday afternoon crying to my mother because I realised that I couldn’t be with a married guy, and that that fact meant we would never be together.  I had never faced never before.

Of course, I was 23 and in love and so when I broke up with him, it didn’t stick.  8 years, a divorce, step-parenting, a baby of our own, an unsaleable house, and a two year affair later, I tried again and it did.

After that, I had to find a new way to build a life: a new one that would never bear any resemblance to the one I thought I was building.  I made lists of people who would look after me and see me as worthwhile when I couldn’t.  One in particular.

Molly told me that I could move in with her for as long as I needed.  And I did.  And she was my family, and her people were my people, and I survived.  Just.  Until I could figure out how a grieving woman and a 4 year old could try to be a family.

But this isn’t the story of how I put myself back together.  It’s the story of Molly and me and babies and circus and the death-defying preciousness of real friendship.

We met when I was 27 and she was 26 and we were brand new at the parenting thing.  We bonded over wine and a mutual contempt-slash-envy of the “real” mums.  We forged the kind of friendship which requires open-doored toilet visits in the middle of wine-soaked evenings so that the conversation doesn’t pause.  And we bitched about our men, and our families, and what the hell we were going to do with our lives, and we stressed about completely different things to do with babies which all turned out not to matter.

Gradually things moved on.  The geography changed, which meant that visits became sleepovers.  Work changed.  One of us went back to university.  One of us started a career, and then took another leap within it.  One of us had another baby.  Our relationships grew and shifted and shriveled and faltered and hers got stronger and mine ended.  There were other pregnancies too, ended and mourned in different ways.  And at every stage, we had to find new ways to relate, new ways to support each other, develop – or if desperate, fake – an interest in each others’ lives and obsessions and dilemmas.

The thing is that we did.  And we still do.  Her newest little boy was born a couple of weeks ago.  I was there (well, except for the bits to do with her bits).  And it completely tore me apart.  It’s unlikely that I will have any more children, which I desperately want. But I don’t think that there are many times I have been torn apart which I’m so very grateful for. I think, or at least she says, that it was something that she wanted and that was helpful to her.  While I would have done it, anytime, gladly, for that reason, on reflection it was so precious to me to have an acknowledgement that we are family, that trivia like broken hearts, or inventing whole new people, or being pointed in completely different directions pale in the face of deciding to love my friend.

I said that this was also the story of circus, and there was of course the blip that was the Irish street performers, and circus school, and our plans for world domination through acrobalance and absurd humour, and the fact that for me that formed the basis of my new community and identity and for her it was an experiment that didn’t go where it was supposed to.  I don’t know that that had a profound effect on her, but nor do I know that it didn’t: I know that it was another thing that we absorbed and rebuilt around and that didn’t make any of it feel too hard or not worth doing.

This started about “forever” decisions.  Perhaps I’ve strayed too far from that, but I don’t think so.  The lesson for me has been that other people can also make forever decisions for me, and while the letting go is real and hard, the re-assessing and re-affirming the connection that underlies that grief is liberating and strengthening and exhilarating.  This is my real life, the one that I never thought would begin, the one that I waited for.  It is happening, and it is beautiful and searing and filled with hope and despair and the knowledge that death is around the corner, tomorrow or the next day or in fifty years and the only things that matter are love and authenticity.  So I will continue to honour this connection to another human being who makes room in her own busy life for my mundane and profound anxieties and keeps trusting me with hers.  One day we will sit, white-haired and saggy, on a porch somewhere, drowning in obscene quantities of wine, smoking the cigarettes we both will have given up, again, watching another generation of kids squabble and hug and play, and I will drunkenly tell her again that I love her, and it will be unnecessary, because she knows.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer. 

Once upon a time there was a man named Carol. Carol was a man’s man. He grew up on a farm, he toiled hard from dawn to dusk and he always had dirty fingernails.

He provided for his family. He killed his sheep, milked his cows and ploughed his fields.

And he loved to finish his working day with an icy cold beer.

He felt manly. He felt valid. He felt strong.

But he fucking hated his name.

He hated his parents for giving it to him. He didn’t understand why a regular, humble farming couple would give their first born son a woman’s name.

One day when Carol was driving his tractor, (it wasn’t an ordinary tractor, it had 5 sets of wheels on it-a contraption that Carol himself had made because he was asked to) he felt a pain. He stopped driving.

It wasn’t the average tractor driving leg ache, or shooting pain from standing awkwardly too long between the cows; that he often experienced during his long days. This pain was different.

It was a prickly, urgent pain deep inside of himself ..but also outside of himself. It was a pain that if someone was to ask him to describe it’s exact location he would have difficulty even speaking. Because it was somewhere he didn’t understand. And it was solid. And it was heavy.

He couldn’t say where it was but he knew it was there and that it was powerful enough for him to stop in his (tractor) tracks and have a big hard think.

This was not something he did often. In fact, he couldn’t recall having ever done it before. He usually just.. did things. Without stopping. Without question.

And now he was stopped under the sky, with nothing but open fields around him and a peculiar pain, and his thoughts came at him like a bull. They charged hard and fast.

He thought about how much he yearned for the ocean. He thought about growing a beard. He thought about how his grandfather taught him to waltz and hit him with a broomstick when he’d lose focus. He thought about how strikingly blue the sky was and how he’d never tasted sorbet. He thought about the size of his penis, he thought about stewing fruit. He thought a about life outside the farm. He wondered if he was happy.

And he thought about a hula hoop he’d seen the day before. It was propped up against a tree by the grain shed. He didn’t know whose it was or how it got there. He couldn’t even be sure if it had just shown up or if it had always been there. He actually had no idea what it even was. But he wanted to get it. He knew that.

Because of that, he smiled. This smile was a smile that Carol had not experienced before. It was a smile that he felt in his body. It was a smile that seemed to make the sun brighter and the air slippery and eager to get inside him to fill him up.

And then the pain stopped.

Carol looked around to see if anyone had seen this peculiar occurrence. Assured that no one had, he started his tractor once more and drove on to the machine room.

But things were different now. He drove differently. He began to notice the details in how he changed gears. He noticed a splash of what looked like green paint next to his seat. He saw a bulbous spider hanging from a small web just under the rear view mirror.

The whole drive saw him like this, really noticing details in things he’d had in front of him every day for most of his life.

He saw that his hands were aging. There were crumples he’d never noticed in his hat on the floor. He picked it up and put it on his head to look at it in the mirror. And he saw his reflection. He looked away and tried to keep noticing the other things. The gears again, the spider had moved up a bit, the paint splash looked kinda like a tree, the whole hat brim was crumpled.

He faced the mirror once more and this time he didn’t turn away. And then finally, as the sun went down, Carol noticed himself.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer. 

Nine year old William took a kite out from under his bed and quietly snuck out the back door, wedging the squeaky flyscreen open with a broom and scampered across the back fence to the park while his family were glued to mindless game shows on the TV.

There was plenty of daylight but no one was around tonight, not even people walking their dogs. He looked towards one end of the park where there was an empty playground, at the other end, a picnic area. In between, a large stretch of grass where people would play football and cricket during the summer holidays

William placed the kite onto the ground and gently unravelled the each section so he could see all the parts, checking nothing was tangled. He carefully arranged the tail out under the diamond shaped kite, checked the knots along the spine and cross spars, then unravelled three long arm lengths of line from the green reel.

Once William was satisfied, he stood up and looked out towards the sea, put his finger in his mouth to moisten it and then held it into the breeze.

‘Perfect,’ he whispered.

Today the wind was blowing out to sea which he intuitively meant he had to start close to the shoreline and run back to where he arrived at the park. He picked up the kite by the middle of the frame, grabbed the green reel of line and headed towards the start of the sand dunes. The tail of the kite dragged along the ground behind him.

William reached the edge of the dunes, turned to face the sea, held the kite in his left hand high above his head, shook the tail so it fell into place and reeled off about three more arm lengths of string which curled at his feet.

His body tensed as he said out loud to no one ‘Ready….Set…Go’ William tossed the kite in the air with all his might at the same time he started to run away from the beach. The string snapped tight as the kite whipped up and down, sideways and around until it found a gust of wind that took it upwards.

‘Woo hoo’ squealed William as he let more string slip through his fingers, taking the kite higher and higher, the tail whipping behind its colourful companion.

With no warning, the wind dropped. The kite dipped rapidly and William pulled tightly on the string to give it some upward momentum. It rose quickly again, William feeling pleased with his skills. But again, the wind dropped, the breeze changed direction and the kite started to move dangerously close to the ground, jerking to the left and then the right. William ran faster, pulling harder to stop it crashing. Within centimetres of the ground a gust blew the kite up, tail racing around behind it, the sound of the wind flapping on the tail and once again it was up in the air, this time going higher than before.

William knew from experience that his kite had found ‘the sweet spot’, the place where the wind wasn’t so gusty and it could now fly there for a long time. He lay down on the grass, his arm tugging on the string every so often, watching his kite being buffered by the wind, hearing the sounds of the nylon material flapping, the gentle waves nearby, the smell of the salt, the seaweed and the soothing sound of the breeze through the coastal banksias. As William lay down on the newly dewed grass his thoughts turned to the day’s events and wondered how he was going to tell his parents that he lost his new soccer ball.

They weren’t going to be happy that he’d snuck it to school.

They weren’t going to be happy that once of his classmates took it off him, teased him by kicking it to another boy and wouldn’t let him have it.

They weren’t going to be happy that after ten minutes of playing ‘keepings off’ William, the boys got bored and booted his ball over the school fence onto the busy road.

He watched it roll down the hill; he watched two cars drive right over the top of it but not hit it; He saw it come to rest in the gutter at the bottom of the street. He wasn’t allowed to leave the school grounds or he’d get a detention. But at that moment the bell rang for the end of the break. William looked back down at his ball and was torn between his new soccer ball and getting a detention. Students were walking into classes however, William couldn’t move, just looking at his ball.

He paused for a moment to weigh up the pros and cons but was unaware that he was already walking towards the fence of the school to retrieve his ball. He put his hands on the fence and was halfway over when he heard:

‘William Charles Stockton, where are you going?’ It was the Principal, Mr. Edgerton.

‘I….I…’ he fumbled for words.

‘Over here Mr. Stockton – NOW!’ said the Principal.

As William climbed down from the fence, he took one last look back down the street to see a Jims Mowing van pull over next to his soccer ball. A man leapt out of the passenger side, picked up the ball, jumped back in and the van drove off.

William’s heart sank. Not only had he lost his soccer ball, but now he was probably going to get a detention. And his parents will ground him from going out anywhere after school for a month.

William sighed as he looked up at his kite when he saw a familiar van pulled up at the other end of the park. Two men emerged eating a hamburger and a ball which they started to kick to each other. William recognised them as the same dudes who picked his ball up earlier that day. With all the gumption he could muster and still holding his kite, he walked over to two men and nervously asked ‘nice ball, where did you get it?’

‘Why do you wanta know peanut’ said one of them.

‘Because I lost my ball today at school, it rolled down the hill into the gutter and I saw you pick it up.’

‘Well it’s not yours,’ said one.

‘If it’s not yours, then it won’t have my name on it,’ said William.

‘No name on this ball, except Adidas,’ said the larger of the two men as he rolled the ball over in his hands showing him the name Adidas.

‘My name is on the other side, it should say WS on the other side’ William said as boldly as he could.

The second man snatched the ball from his friend and spun the ball around in his hand and stopped when suddenly, staring.

William knew his name was on it, he knew it was his ball.

The two men tossed the ball at him and said ‘whatever’ and walked back to their van.

The kite kept flapping above William’s head, dipping and cutting through the air.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer. 

So, today I bit the bullet and attended Catherine Deveny’s Gunnas writing class and it was fabulous.

A day all about a kick up my procrastinitis-bigtimus-1A, arse, inspiration and devouring plenty of fantastic food. (provided by the lovely, food ninjas at La Luna Bistro in Carlton)

On my way home I had a gazillion and twenty-nine thoughts going through my head, negative and positive, about writing and myself – Can I? Can’t I? And then, on the radio, I heard these lyrics being sung by the magnificent Kate Miller-Heidke – “I’m sick of turning it down” and a bolt of lightning hit my lead-ridden brain.

I couldn’t even hear the rest of the song because those lyrics rang so incredibly true to me, and an idea for something to write, was formed, then and there, in my car, driving along good old Punt Rd.

My entire life has seen me being told to “keep it down” or “ssshhhh” or “calm down” or asked “why do you have to be so loud?” and until quite recently these statements would slap me in the face, knock the wind right out of me and I would stop. A wee bit of background – I’m of mixed race – half Italian, half Anglo-Irish and a lot of these comments would come from the more-reserved of my clan and therefor cut me quite deeply. I would feel hurt and angry and upset, but I would stop talking and expressing myself.

I knew I needed to analyse exactly what was happening and so I sat and thought about what was really going on and a giant light-bulb moment, so bright I felt like a dumb-arse for never having seen it before occurred.

Even though other people’s reactions to my big-voiced, gregarious, outspoken, opinionated ways are their responsibility and issue, every time anyone said these things to me, what I heard was “could you please stop being you?”

A few years ago, I had the soul-stirring experience of visiting Italy, the land of my Father and his family for generations. As my partner and I drove across the border from France into Italy I could not only SEE a difference I could feel it.

We stopped at a vibrant and hectic small-town, market place and as I stood amongst all the people there, I cried.

Loud-talkers! Everywhere I looked – all I could see and hear were loud-talkers. And no matter where we went, where we sat and watched, where we sat and ate, where we sat and drank – there were passionate, demonstrative, hilarious, angry, happy, LOUD-talkers.

I found my people. I found my spiritual home. I found ME.

So, YES, actually, I AM sick of turning it down and I won’t be any more, ever again,