Generosity = love

Last Saturday, I posted this photo on my Facebook page…

Image

 

Underneath it I wrote –

Down a deep tunnel, working away. But here’s some Saturday love in lieu of news. X

I’m not much chop on social media. I’ve let go of my claim to being the “world’s most connected Luddite”, but I’m still not across it all as I’d like to be, and I’d been absent from my Facebook village for quite a time. Working, working. Writing and immersing. Wrangling – confidently on some days and blindly on others. Normal.

Anyway, I wanted to wave hello to my village of support, so a little love was despatched into the Facebook ether, and I went about my day.

Some time later I got a message to say there was a comment waiting for me. It was from a writer colleague called Jesse Blackadder. She left these words –

In lieu of news can I report that my partner Andi just finished Sinning Across Spain this morning – adored it, and cried at the end xx

When I saw them, I lifted – and not just for the words about my book, although they meant a great deal, particularly as they came from a writer I admire. What struck me even more than Jesse’s kindness in leaving the message was the history I have with her. It’s a history of generosity.

We “met” in the lead-up to last year’s Byron Bay Festival, when Jesse was doing some social media work and writing for them. She was always available and encouraging to me as I began my journey into the world of Festivals and writing appearances. By the time the Festival came around, I had that weird sense, via online connection, that I knew her.

In the throng of the opening party, Jesse made a point of seeking me out to say hello. In person she was smiling and curious, attentive and funny. I watched her later, spinning around the dance floor with Andi, and thought what a vibrant spirit she had. That feeling only grew as I followed her adventures on Facebook and via email in the following months. Jesse has been all over – from Antarctica to NYC, and several places in between. She was writing, researching and getting awarded. In Paris she bought an excellent coat!

When I went to the Perth Writers Festival at the beginning of this year, I was chuffed to learn Jesse would be there. Unreasonably happy, really, given that we don’t actually know each other. But then, what is knowing? We are both engaged in the precarious and occasionally disheartening business of wrestling with words – and we both feel incredibly grateful for the privilege of doing it. That is certainly a point of connection. But we’ve not spent great chunks of time, or had lengthy correspondence.

Anyway, there she was in a mini-bus in Perth, greeting me with her sunny smile, asking after all my news, and wishing me well. When I mentioned my nerves at performing the Sinning monologue in a theatre where I had acted almost thirty years earlier, she said “Oh, I’ll come along and watch you.”

She was in the middle of a hectic programme of events of her own, but she was as good as her word, and sat in the centre of the auditorium beaming at me all the way through. I could feel her willing me on and wishing me well.

In May, I was at the Sydney Writers Festival, and was a bit off-colour health-wise. In the foyer of the hotel, all the writers and publishers and agents were mingling – waving to one another, buying drinks, shouting jokes. Normally such a scene would have been enticing, at the very least as an exercise in learning who is who. That afternoon it looked a bit daunting. Then, over at the bar, I saw Jesse. We waved. I wandered over to say hello. She asked after me, told me she was off to New York for an awards ceremony and enquired about how my next book was progressing. Little things. But as always, I felt that Jesse’s welcome and interest were genuine. She is completely present in conversation, and has that particular gift of being able to make people feel they are the only one in the room.

We wished each other well and went about our days, but again, she had left me feeling better for that chance meeting.

Generosity is many things. Often it’s made into something rather grand – bequests and donations, pledges and promises. Those things are vital, but fiscal generosity is only one aspect. In some ways, generosity of spirit is harder. It can cost more than signing a cheque. It requires more intimate things of us. Personal debits on the ledger…

Time. Stopping and giving of oneself when the clock is ticking or the day getting away, or there is someone more “interesting” over the shoulder.

Seeing. Paying attention instead of cash. Observing, not just noticing. Looking for signs that another person is vulnerable or uncertain.

Extending. Going out of the way to be present, whether the other person can yield up a reward to us or not.

Generosity is the welcome to the stranger out on the road. I’ve known that. But it’s also profound in moments that are easily overlooked – the ordinary ones that occur in workplaces, in families, among friends and colleagues, at parties, on minibuses and in bars. There are strangers to welcome there too.

Jesse has been like sunshine for me on all those occasions, and I’m pretty sure that she might not have had any idea of it, or of what her smiling welcome has meant. She simply acted out of generosity. When I looked up the derivation of that word, it told me it came from Middle English and suggests “nobility of birth”. I reckon that sums it up. Jesse has nobility. She might be amused or appalled at that word, but she does. I’ve experienced it first hand, and am profoundly grateful.

So this is a kind of love letter to Jesse. And a thank you note. And a song of praise. She reminds me to pay closer attention (not a bad thing for a writer), to take a breath, to listen intently, and to stay present with whoever appears. To extend myself. To take one more step along the road with those I meet, even when I think we are done.

Amor is Spanish for love.

Gracias is Spanish for thanks.

I send both to Jesse.

If you’d like to know more about Jesse and her wonderful books, duck over and spend some time at www.jesseblackadder.com. Think of it as meeting a new chum.

Byron sunshine = Jesse's welcome
Byron sunshine = Jesse’s welcome

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Looking back

Looking back to the meseta on the Camino Frances in 2009

Pride. My sin.

It surfaces in myriad ways. One is that I’ve always prided myself on not looking over my shoulder. I live in the present, I tell myself and others. I move forward, I say, I move on.

Well, today, I have a confession. I’m looking back.

Unfortunately, not entirely without pride!

I’ve been trying to imagine how to honour this amazing year, and those who have travelled it with me – for a day, a week, a conversation, a glimpse, or for the time it takes to read a book. Images swirled: my friends holding up copies of the book; faces shining at beachside festivals; blinking into stage lights at the end of the Sinning monologue; the profile of a hero-writer in conversation beside me; singing Gracias a la Vida when I didn’t know I dared sing; holding hands as a confession was made; laughing as a secret was told; crying as pain was shared; asking other writers to sign their books for me; thrilling at coincidences and serendipity…

 

 

 

 

 It was a glorious mental collage, but I thought I’d best be methodical, so I came here to the blog and made a pilgrimage through the posts to my first entry, written with trepidation, about entering the cyber-world. I was a Luddite and afraid. I don’t know why exactly, but I felt I would be exposed in some uncomfortable way.

Stepping forward through the posts, I marvelled at things forgotten in the melee of the months, and I began to see with clarity how very much the sin-walk has given me, and continues to give. That first inexplicable impulse to carry for others still takes me into wild places, and still introduces me to members of my village – a village that has grown and grown, and asked me to expand with it. “Get bigger,” the book has kept shouting to me as it has pulled me after it down new roads and by-ways.

I’ve tried!

This blog, begun in doubt and nervousness, is now a village all its own. Its history is right here, in the posts, but even more so in the comments, which I think of as the village square where we meet at day’s end to sniff the  breeze and check in on each other. No relationship is one-way. They all require exchange of one sort or another, and it is the richness of that exchange that I see when I look at the comments. Such wealth. Such generosity. Such humour. Such tenderness.

I thought I would compile a list of thanks, but it would go for days. I’ve shared stories in Aireys Inlet and Carlton, the Wheeler Centre and the Grumpy Swimmer, Byron Bay and Eltham, Strath Creek and Hampton, Thornbury and Leichhardt, Paddington and under the spire of the Melbourne Arts Centre. I’ve sung the praise of Spain at the Cervantes Institute and with the Spanish Consulate. I’ve been welcomed and championed and – most amazing of all – given away as a gift. I have been applauded and belittled – and learned that neither matter as much as the moments when someone tells me the book has helped, offered an insight, or illuminated a moment. Nothing thrills me more than that the book has given pleasure to some and been useful to others. It has even been re-read. Imagine!

Every day of this miraculous almost-nine-months, I’ve had cause to consider the road, the sins, and the sin-donors. Every day I’ve been grateful. It seems more incredible to me now, after the book has its own life, that people trusted me with their intimacies back in the beginning when it seemed like lunacy. When people tell me secrets now, they know that I can be a vault. It doesn’t make it any less of a privilege for me, but I’m aware that my first sinners took a leap, and I salute them again for their bravery and trust. The book could not have been a book without them.

To share one’s self to that degree is rare. They didn’t give me their air-brushed, curriculum-vitaed, rubber-stamped glossy selves. They gave me their scuffed, tarnished, worn and wept-over bits. Those stories are the most precious cargo I will ever carry. They taught me so much.

I’ve been asked often whether the road changed me. I think it’s an impossible question to answer, really. I hope it did. It certainly asked me to expand, every single day. It still does. And I hope I’ve been able to meet its requests when they have come to me. I try. I try really hard.

And I fail.

I fall too, as witnessed by a post on this blog!

But I like to think that the sinners, my road companions, my angels from Barcelona, the readers of the book, and my subscribers here, are behind me, propelling me up the hills when they’re steep and watching I don’t fall on the shale of the slippery downhills. When I remember all of them, I know there’s no failure, only expansion. Only growth.

So at this curious time of endings and beginnings, reflection and revelry, I come with no pride at all, only humility and wonder, to offer thanks. Gratitude. Which has the same beginnings as gracias and grazie. And grace. I have known such grace on this journey.

I trust that it will continue next year, when I will be sinning across Sydney, Perth, Albany and Brisbane at festivals and events. I know it will continue to take me in, deeper and deeper, and out, further and further, to my limits. And that is good. I am still a pilgrim.

Grazie. Gracias. Merci.

Terimah kasih.

That is Bahasa for “thank you”. It translates as “receive love.”

So here is the last poem for 2012. It’s an original this time.

 

Terimah kasih. Terimah kasih.

Terimah kasih, terimah kasih, terimah kasih, terimah kasih.

Terimah kasih.

 

Terimah kasih. Terimah kasih. Terimah kasih.

Terimah kasih.

 

 

May your final days of 2012 be peace-filled and joy-full.

May 2013 bring you dazzling roads and shimmering horizons.

May you be loved.

Always and all ways.

Walking near Glenlyon in Central Victoria. Photo courtesy of beloved walker Carl NP.
Muchas gracias!

 

I will write again in about four weeks, and I hope that you will continue to walk with me into the brave new year ahead.

Gracias, amigos. Gracias.

Buen camino…

 

The ones that keep on giving…

One of the most thrilling sentences I’ve heard this year is – “I’ve just given your book as a present because I know that my Dad/friend/cousin will really enjoy it.”

To be “gifted on” has been the unanticipated joy of writing a book. I have one friend who has popped in several times to ask me to inscribe copies, and each time I feel honoured and excited to be the gift given. Maybe it’s because one of my biggest pleasures has always been to go into a bookstore to select a book for someone. Arranging that marriage of writer and recipient is endlessly fascinating as I weigh up whether the relationship should be challenging, consoling, sensual, amusing or intellectual. It’s made even more of a joy when a knowledgeable bookseller makes recommendations and I have to consider stranger, but equally attractive, possibilities than those I had begun with. Such fun!

Then there is the treat of being given a book voucher and browsing the shelves for myself. That almost equals the moment of receiving a book wrapped in crisp paper!

The other deep pleasure is when I’m recommended a book. “You haven’t read it, Ailsa? I can’t believe that. You must! You will love it!” That certainty. That wish to share the story or poem that has shaken someone’s foundations, or made them step into the world and see it with new eyes. I’ve been recommended some wonders in the past few months, and I thought I would pass on a few of my favourites here. These are the books I have given – and they are also books that keep on giving. In no particular order…

I’ve actually read this twice now. I bought it the minute it came out, and gulped it down greedily, loving Sophie Cunningham’s very particular portrait of her Melbourne, which overlaps and intersects with my Melbourne, but which also uncovered aspects that surprised me, both historically and topographically.

I read it again after asking her to sign a copy for me at Byron, and I’m so glad I did. It merits a second, slower read. Rather like Melbourne itself, it is full of by-ways and diversions. It details our clans and allegiances (yes, like the football…our Cats did not make it to the final this year), and focusses on 2009, the year of fires. It is beautifully crafted, seamlessly blending the personal and the public life of the city and the author. Read it wherever you live.

Rodney Hall’s book of short stories – Silence – was an epiphany for me at the beginning of the year. I waxed about it to everyone I met. We created a night of words and music around it at the Airey’s Inlet Festival. I gave it for birthdays and beloveds.

I have read much of Rodney’s work, and always admired it, but these stories woke me to what a master of the short story he is. They are the work of decades, and they reward reading and re-reading. Infinitely varied in tone and setting, they are by turns fierce, tender and always true.

I can’t go another minute without mentioning Charlotte Wood. I know she has had air-time here before, and maybe my admiration for her is already obvious, but she has produced two books in twelve months and both of them are magnificent. Animal People is a novel of dark humour, wisdom and compassion, with a central character who must be put onto a cinema screen. It is one of the most vivid portraits of person and place I’ve ever read, and Sydney streets will always look different after reading this. Love and Hunger is just my favourite book of the year for its generosity, its tender heart, its moral wrangling with contemporary issues and its complexity. Enough said? Not really, but you get the picture!

OK, so there had to be something Spanish!

Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves. She grew up in Spain, and writes about it with the particular intimacy of an insider/outsider. It is exquisite as biography, as cultural document and as a history of a particular time. It’s not easy to track down but I can’t recommend it enough. And for those of you who enjoy Carlos Ruiz Zafon, it is Lucia Graves who translates his works so brilliantly into English.

Seek her out. Do!

You don’t need me to tell you the wonders inside this cover, but it has been great to go back and re-read, re-savour, replenish.

Even in translation, Lorca’s words pierce psyche, heart, conscience, intellect. All.

They are lush and lovely.

An essential indulgence.

And speaking of lush and lovely…

I couldn’t wait to read Susan Johnson’s new book My Hundred Lovers. I am a paid-up fan over many years. It is one hundred shades of sensuality, and is crafted masterfully. Lap it up. And while you are seeking it out, see if you can find my favourite of hers – A Better Woman. It remains one of those lifelong “besties” for me. I have given it and given it. I re-read it in the light of her new book and it is just as potent and wrenching. Hard to find but you can get it with the help of a good bookseller or online. Maybe we can force a reprint if enough of us ask.

Also potentially hard to get, but worth tracking, is Hilary McPhee’s timeless book Other People’s Words. Hunt it down.

I have loved this since it was first released. It is wise, funny, meticulously observed, full of delicious details, and delivers way more than its humble title suggests.

These are Hilary’s words, and so of course they are gold. If you love Australian writing, this book is almost a primer for you. On every page there is something to savour and remember.

The poet (and friend!) E.A. Horne recommended Bereft at the beginning of the year. I read it in the heat of summer, and couldn’t put it down.

Dark, gothic and poetic, with hints of another favourite, Sonya Hartnett, but entirely individual, it is bound to be a film because every page is so vividly evoked. I could see, smell, taste the place, and held my breath on every page. Brilliant characters and an Australia that is both familiar and strange. Magnificent.

I’m not sure I can add anything to what you already have read about All That I Am. It has won all the big prizes this year, and is a masterly novel that squeezes the heart and challenges the mind. It is also an exercise in writing place – each location is brilliantly evoked. But I did want to remind you about Stasiland, Anna Funder’s previous book, which remains on my all-time top ten. I could just list superlatives endlessly, or you could just get your hands on it!

 

I’m currently finishing off this collection of writings by Robert Dessaix. I would never miss anything he writes, even though I have moments of being shocked by his curmudgeonly take on things.

Or is that why I love him? He’s unflinching and pithy, and his view of the world is particular and incisive. I saw him speak at the Wheeler Centre earlier this year, and just wanted him to go on and on. That mix of generosity and sharpness is entirely seductive. I don’t want the book to end. I know he is not everyone’s taste – I’ve had arguments about this – but I’m in awe of him. And in delight. And anyway, why be to everyone’s taste?

And next?

Well, I’ve already started to delve into Fishing the River of Time, and I know it is going to be a perfect follow-up to Dessaix. Completely different in tone, but equal in craft and detail, from the truly lovely first sentence I was hooked.

Sorry.

Dreadful pun.

Just google it and you will be seduced by the story. The writing lives up to all promises.

I have to stop. I could go on and on, but I have a tale to write for Wednesday’s story-telling night at Grumpy Swimmer bookshop in Elwood, and a letter to pen for Sunday’s Women of Letters event.

And I have books to read. What a privilege that is, and what companions they are.

The list is far from complete. The year has delivered so many other treats – essays and ruminations, picture books and poetry, genre novels and plays. But I offer these up as possibilities. Walk into a bookstore or a library in search of one of them, and I guarantee you will emerge with a friend.

Or a gift – for yourself or someone else. No matter. You will have had pleasure before you even open the pages!

*******************

OOPS! A postscript added later.

The other thrilling sentence of this week was “Did you see that great review in Sunday’s Sun-Herald in Sydney?”

I hadn’t, but friends sent me a photo. And here it is for you. My gratitude for the pic, and also to the reviewer – Rosemarie Milson – for her kind words.

Beyond Byron

I wonder what a Festival like Byron’s does to the collective consciousness.

We gathered for those three days – hundreds of us – bringing the best of ourselves to conversations, meetings and panels, down the road from the lighthouse at Australia’s eastern-most point. Another Finisterre – land’s end. Under open skies, our bodies unwinding in the warmth, we argued and posited and reflected. We listened to other ways of seeing and possible ways of being. We heard stories and songs. We looked at sculptures. We turned pages. We honoured the word.

And then we left. Many of us, anyway.

Where does all that go, that goodwill and possibility? I keep imagining the site, vibrating, highly charged, humming. I wonder, if I walked there now, would my feet feel the changes? Would I know that this was a place where people had tried to be at their best?

And back home, how are we changed? How do we bring that spirit of openness and curiosity into our everyday worlds?

I’ve struggled a bit.

Like this morning when someone sent me a link to a site because there was a complimentary review of my book. I scrolled down and of course I found another from someone who had hated it, who had not understood my intentions, who clearly loathed my writing.

And what do I recall now? The negative response, of course!

So all those voices of experience at Byron Bay, and all that generosity of spirit, didn’t prepare me for facing down my own ego and hubris, or my desire for the book to be liked. For me to be liked!

It’s possible that it is partly because the book is written in the dreaded “I” voice, so it does seem that someone liking or disliking the book is commenting on me, the person; but in truth, I think it is something else.

Post-Byron, after three days in a bubble of considered discussion and respectfully expressed differences of opinion, it has been a big transition back to the world of blunt opinions in which we mostly exist.

Watching Q and A on the ABC last night, I was struck by the polarising, shouted, argumentative discourse. No-one was heard and nothing of value was said. Reading the daily papers, it’s rare to find an article critiquing a situation where the writer has first endeavoured to see clearly the position of the person being rebutted.

I don’t know how commentators and public figures continue in this environment, but it must be bruising on some level. I was struck, at Byron, by how accessible and warm Bob Brown is. I was bowled over by the grace and generosity of Anna Rose. Both of them have suffered vicious personal attacks and received bags of hate-mail, yet both stay open and engaged; both step toward you with a smile and no caution. This seems to me a miracle, when their first response could be to withdraw and assume that the world is made up of people who will dismiss them or attack them on personal grounds.

Forgive me if I seem to be drawing a long bow. I’m not for a moment comparing one person’s response to a book to the tsunami of hate Brown has weathered, or the battering taken by the elegant Anna. What I’m trying to do is to extend myself out from a personal response to something larger – something bigger than ego and pinpricks of pain. Because that is what Byron asked of all of us. That is what any gathering asks, when the parameters are respect, attention and dignity.

We were invited to be the biggest versions of ourselves that we could be. From what I saw, that meant that all opinions, whether in rabid agreement or disagreement, were then able to be heard. Perhaps readers are more able to do that, but I don’t think so. We are all capable of it, all the time. And it doesn’t have to look like political correctness, or shutting down of discourse. It might just look like respect.

So today I’m going to channel my Byron self, and try to listen harder, to take a breath before responding, and to let some things slide away if they are simply not helpful or comprehensible to me in the limitations of my mind.

Luckily, there’s sunshine outside to remind me of Byron and its warmth.

The sky is helping.

And there are the days to come. Hopefully.

Because that is the other reminder that lodged firmly at Byron – the preciousness of these days, and how we can’t take a breath for granted. Gore Vidal died as I was travelling up there. Today I heard of the passing of Robert Hughes. Funeral parlours and crematoriums are always busy. Flesh dissolves into the earth or is burned to dust. Each breath I take is a victory and should be celebrated. I knew that when I saw a distant spume blurt from the ocean last Friday, just after hearing that a whale had died in Sydney Harbour. I think about that burst of water and air on the horizon now, and try to remind myself that each time I exhale, that is what I’m doing – pushing a celebratory plume into the air.

And speaking of celebrating. Thank you to Jonathon Parsons for the festival and for programming us all so thoughtfully; to those with whom I was lucky to share panels – Jill Eddington, Anna Rose, Jessica Watson, John Bailey, Mike Ladd, Tony Taylor, Caroline Baum, Hannie Rayson and Charlotte Wood; to those who came to the workshop I taught; to those who spoke on the panels I watched (many of them my heroes), and to all of us who listened. Here’s to all of us, readers on the grass.

Gratitude too, to the Duchess of Malfi company, whose run in Sydney ended on Sunday.

And to you for reading and subscribing here, beyond Byron.

Thank you. Gracias.

And looking ahead…

Please check the EVENTS AND MEDIA tab up above, or visit my Facebook page if you are inclined. This Thursday I will be in the centre of Melbourne at a wonderful event where seven writers reflect on their love affair with writing. On Saturday I will be performing a sin/poetry/walking monologue in Daylesford, and on Sunday I’ll be sharing a Spanish celebratory lunch and stories at the mighty Pavilion Cafe in the Valley of A Thousand Hills. Maybe come out and join us for some paella, some hills and some air.

And sky.

I have need of the sky

I’m packing for the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, trying to imagine what warmth might be like, and covering all bases. In between searching for swimmers and scarves, I’m also finalising the script for my monologue performance first thing on Sunday morning.

This fragment of Richard Hovey’s poem was sent to me by Jenni Gates via the Festival website, for inclusion in my performance. I thought I’d share it here, so you can be part of the fun.

 

…I have need of the sky,
I have business with the grass;
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass.
I will get me away to the woods…

 

Thanks Jenni, for an introduction to another poet, and for the reminder of the wide blue.

Thanks too, to all who came along to hear Hilary Mc Phee talk last night. It was a glowing evening. Thanks to those of you who have visited the Pilgrimage of Bookstores post over at the Meanjin blog, and to the “likers” on Facebook and even the twitterers who spread the words. Thanks to my pueblo of subscribers here – you keep me honest.

I was such a skeptical Luddite when all this began, but I am coming around, and some days I’m lit up by the sound of a Tweet whistling in or out.

Who could have guessed?

For now though, I’m imagining the sound of waves and picturing a light reaching out across the ocean to greet the dawn – and maybe even whales.

It’s my first visit to Byron. Another Finisterre, at the other end of the world.

I’ll report in on my return, but for now, buen camino, my village.

Paso a paso.

I will get me away to some sky…