Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

You have to wonder, don’t you? Who the fuck finds Tony Abbott desirable? Who? Not my nan, not my friends, no-one I know or am even related to. But then there are very few politicians whom I could honestly say I find desirable. I get the pull / inspiration that some leaders have but Tone is so thick light bends around him.

Ah-ha! My desire is led by an admiration of intelligence, and I guess that’s why I still find Barry Jones so appealing. Stephen Fry is up there too, Van Badham and Leonardo Da Vinci, Nelson Mandela. God, even Russell Brand (though the Booky Wooky title was a definite low point). I don’t necessarily want to bonk all these people (Da Vinci is definitely out! I have standards.) but I desire their company.

I guess it explains my romance with Spider, the Anarchist from my second shared house. Now Spider was a Maths geek (Maths PhD student) and general control freak (weird for an Anarchist but there you go). Sex became a wrestle with a textbook he had in his head…”No, you go there and I do this…” FFS it got really dull really quickly. The final nail in the coffin (or spray of Mortein) was Spider’s need to have conversations while he was on the loo. No, just NO.

But I like the smarts. You know that hypothetical  who-would-you-have-at-a-dinner-party, I’d have Desire. Who wouldn’t love Desire, right? People do funny things and sometimes go to extraordinary lengths in the name of Desire – heroic gestures like midnight (and out-of-tune) serenades, through to contorting themselves to fit in to get that approval and sate Desire, to paying for IVF cycles in the hope of having a child, to finding a home, a tribe, to self –harm in a desire for the pain to stop.

The desire for a partner and kids brought me a bucketload of sadness and confusion and some points, including crippling anxiety about choosing the right partner, loads of fun exploring and being in relationships, and some difficult decisions to terminate relationships and pregnancies. I haven’t forgotten to have kids. I have chosen not to have them in circumstances where I’m not happy. My choice, my decisions, my desire and ultimately I live with the consequences (and at times, the what-ifs). Then again I think of Spider, and thank my lucky stars!

Desire’s a weird fucking beastie. For 10 years I chased and saved and scrimped and worked to get a deposit for a house. It was like all my problems and those of the world too (yep even world poverty) would be solved if I could just buy a house. Then I’d find a partner immediately (or maybe he came with the house), and would start producing a tribe of kidlets and then I’d be living the dream happy and all that. Full stop. Forever and ever.

And then, ten years later and I buy a house, right? And it’s this gorgeous old 1930’s weatherboard house that’s been moved and renovated…polished floorboards, gorgeous plasterwork, wood-panelled walls in the foyer…just gorgeous and awesome and perfect and no more for me to do but establish a garden, right? It was relocated to the old Drive-In site in the small country town I lived in then. So half the town had been conceived there (so the tribe of kids was looking good), though the soil was compacted (garden-speak for hard as rock) with flecks of asphalt. And so I spent all my spare time planting trees, trying to compost, building raised veggie gardens, and automatic watering systems, putting in a water tank, and getting it going. After a couple of years of this I realised bloody dreams are very different up close. And they morph.

So now I had the house, I needed half of Bunnings too, and the furniture, and the tools, and, and, and…. and 3 years later I felt like I woke up in the Talking Heads song…”and I say to myself, where is my (fill in the gap)”. I’d chosen this bloody dream and it wasn’t panning out as I had expected it to. Bugger! I had a fat mortgage and was no happier than before. So perhaps I needed a different dream….

So charge your glasses and let me propose a toast. To Desire – that fire in the belly, that impetus to do something, be someone, live something wonderful, who is also a tricky bugger, and a wily dodger. You minx, Desire, you siren, you harbinger of passion and purpose, you’re the one I’ll get off the couch to pursue, the one I’ll get out of bed for, the one I’ll stalk Barry Jones on Facebook for.

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Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

What is a house, what’s built of bricks and mortar?

What is a home, where the heart really is?

Now going home is making way toward her:

Have we “domestics”? Or domestic bliss?

 

I may have thought that there’d be more bad habits,

I may have thought I’d get more chance to roam,

For now, the main idea when we cohabit

Is that I always feel like I’m at home.

 

They say that home’s where charity commences

And that, like home, there’s just no other place.

Life goes on, behind so-called picket fences:

We rewrite our idea of sharing space.

 

This house and home, where my heart lives, is here:

In this freestanding house of brick veneer.

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Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

Seriously. I ruminate on my ruminations, about the shit that has gone wrong in my life. Why do I do that? It’s such a miserable existence. OK, so my Dad was emotionally and physically abusive for the 21 years before I fled home, to the intense, poor but wonderful life of an inner city share house. But now 40 years later I’m still delving down into the depths of that misery, seeking to heal and understand.

Trying to work myself out!

For goodness sake wake up

Get on with your wonderful life!

Make a meal of it and eat it up

Savour your morsels with delight

Bathe in the humour, laugh like an idiot

Pratfall, you raving lunatic

 

Make a study of being funny

and remember that you’re joking

Hang around with funny bastards

Steal all humour that’s going

Mimic Michael Leunig, pillage all his ‘toons

Paper up a funny wall, revealing all the runes

Sculpt words of fun you’ve found, kidnap Catherine Dev

Give her tickle, tease & torture  

for the laughs that give her cred

 

Study up the belly laugh

Leap deep into stand-up comic

Create a workshop of hilarity

Plunge boldly, be bad, catatonic

Examine your funniest wishbone

Find your humorous fancy

Guffaw loudly on a tram

crazy Mad Hatters’ tea-party

 

Laugh until you it makes you cry

Howl until you almost die

Snicker, snort, and snuffle, give a rude retort

Giggle and smirk, try out a new lurk

Take a cue, a maddened view, employ it

Dare a farf, create a laugh! Chew off every bit

A laughing life can be fun

Seriously, I think I’ve thrown it!

 

by Peter Forrester [Twitter @fortaypete]

Dedicated to all those beautiful, creative souls at today’s inaugural Advanced Gunnas.

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Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

A Prayer to the Almighty NRA

Dear National Rifle Association,

            I, a bleeding heart, humbly beseech thee to stop this madness. How many guns do we really need? Enrich my heart so that I can understand why guns are the key to a free and fair democracy.

            I know, oh great and powerful NRA, that I a poor miserable do-gooder, can never understand your infinite wisdom. Please enlighten my ignorance and help me to see your divine plan, a gun for every citizen.

            Explain to me, oh NRA, how background checks before people buy guns would limit your omnipresent reach. Help my wayward heart to comprehend why anyone needs a semi-automatic weapon that fires 100 rounds per minute. When last I checked, holy NRA, deer were not that fast.

            I confess, oh NRA, that I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed. In my heart, I have blamed you and your teachings for the death of multitudes. I have spoken in frustration of the easy availability of guns, your weapons of salvation. I have written letters to politicians asking for regulation of your chosen instruments. I have voted against those who support you. Cleanse my soul of these impure thoughts. Clearly my own lack of understanding, my inability to embrace the wisdom of unbridled gun ownership leads again and again to death.

            Purify my heart, soiled by grief. Forgive my belief that there could be a path other than that down which you lead us. Show me once again how open-carry patriots protect the rights of us all.

            Give me a gun, almighty NRA, and teach me to use it so that I, a good guy with a gun, may resist that ultimate threat to liberty, a bad guy with a gun. Help me convert those unbelievers who would fetter your power and threaten the great American way of life.

            Free us from those who would restrain our destructive impulses. Deliver us from the example of nations who have limited carnage through gun control.

For thine, almighty NRA, is the power and the glory, now and forever.

AMEN.

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Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

I’m so fucking serious 

I’m soooooooooo fucking serious.

I AM SO FUCKING SERIOUS.

Really? Why? I’m so over myself. What’s with the fucking seriousness thing? 

Why the fuck can I not get all Teflon, all greased up and just let shit go, let it slip off? Why am I crazy Velcro woman who just attracts stuff that gets caught between the tiny Velcro spikes? Why is it like I get covered in little bits of tissue that accidently get left in a pocket and chucked in the wash and then there’s all those little fluffy bits of tissue sticking to everything, all over the black clothes? Because it never happens on a white wash does it – just the idea of it happening on a white wash is hilarious. What rule in the universe says that it always has to be a black wash that the shitty bits of tissue end up all through and all over? Oh my fuck – do you see what I mean???? I’m so fucking serious…it’s a tissue. In the wash. Let. It. Go… 

I’m sooooo fucking serious. And the irony is, I don’t actually like serious. Not all the time, not over everything. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind serious, there’s some serious shit going on in the world – in your world, in my world, in the world around the corner or up the other end of the globe.

So if I don’t want to live a life with the ‘I’m so fucking serious’ setting, what is the alternative? What’s it like on the other side of I’m so fucking serious? What’s it like with a Pollyanna-esque  alter ego where it’s all sunshine and rainbows and little fluffy kittens? And about as far away from ‘I’m so fucking serious’ as it’s possible to get. Actually, I don’t think I could live like that – a little bit of vomit came up at the thought of that much blinding sunlight and sugar rush from all that sweetness and light and sugar and spice and all things nice and binging on the naivety that there’s not some serious stuff going on.

I want a switch, which can control the I’m sooooo fucking serious. You know what I want ? A dimmer switch….that’s what I want. I’m so fucking serious.  It’s like scary pub toilet fluro lighting. You know what it’s like, where all of a sudden you leave the gorgeous ambient lighting in the pub that comes from the tea light candles on the tables or the fairy lights around the door ways or the 1980s lamps that are all over every surface, to wham – lighting that just smacks you in the face and shows everything. Every random grey hair you thought you’d pulled out when you went on a grey hair pulling binge the other night in the bathroom at home; every smudgy bit of eyeliner that’s making it’s way into weird places around the crevices of your eyes, every hour of sleep you haven’t had lately and the bags under your eyes are now passively aggressively reminding you of that fact by the sheer nature and presence of their bagginess. 

Where the fuck is that dimmer switch. Something, anything that has some sort of spectrum from feigned mild interest to moderate concern to blood boiling rage. Something with a bit of variety, to make things a bit more interesting rather than a constant, continual setting of I’m so fucking serious. It’s like the fluro lighting – just too, too, too, too much. And quite frankly, not all necessary, not all the time.

It’s exhausting.

It sucks away the capacity to recognise and accept silly little moments of joy.

It’s boring. It’s over.

I was so fucking serious, but I’ve moved on now. So much so, I occasionally like to mix things up a bit and chuck a tissue in the wash…just for old time’s sake.

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Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer

I never thought of you all being together; three coloured threads in the Creaghend tartan. The line of yellow thin and bright traversing large green and red squares –  a Mondrian mean making some more red, others darker green, the combinations changing colour –  winter heather summer gorse. Entwined, woven, bright changing aspects, texture and colour of heavy cloth.

That’s how it was with you; never just one thread nor just one colour. I used to think you were only in my head, as there the sparks would fly. In my mind’s eye certain features- broad shoulders, blue eyes, hairy forearms, strapping gait – would strike in me that deep longing: the rush of wanting, to touch, to possess and to be responded to.

To me, the physical part seemed to follow, like a startled lizard sunning on a lichen splattered rock. Instantly alert, tense and rigid at the first crack of a branch broken underfoot. So was I when a man returned my stare, flashed a smile, moved closer. Electrified and hard, my body ready for battle – the wrestling duel that is two men close, heaving, sweating, making love.

But you were more than an engorged muscle, that straining rod, leaking, cocked, prone to pump.

My whole body, hairy, taut, muscled, alive.

Here your place, surging through me, marking me out to others as someone corporeal, pheromone scented, powerful, a lover.

Oh three threads that I took for granted, used interchangeably for so much fun, now all of you have met your death for coursing through my veins now is an antidote.  I am Lucrin blocked – your synesthetic power by which a snatched glimpse from a moving bus created the firm, hot feeling of the touch of a strong nape under my caressing hand – neutralised/dead. A hormone blocker, a spirit killer, a hard-on deflator – I am emasculated now, a eunuch.

Where there was function, now only memory of what seeing a man made stir in me, now retreating, Doppler-distant and blurred like smells of a favourite summer holiday in years past.

Farewell Dolby surround sound and 3D now I silently sift a box of faded Victorian postcards – racy girls, seaside follies, Parisienne damsels, their attractive power now beyond my reach, lost in an undecipherable psycho-cultural sexual code.

Cold sepia, forgotten, torn, worthless.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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