Reflection Statement

‘Among the Paw-paws’ is a collection of short stories based on the life of my great-

grandmother, Hazel. I have taken events from her life and incorporated them into an

embellished story combined with my memories of her. I decided upon my intention

quite early on in the development of my work ...I wanted my stories to provide

responders with a form of escapism yet historical veracity. Various works, such as

the novel Perfume by Patrick Süskind and the film Amélie, directed by Jean-Pierre

Jeunet, significantly influenced my writing. I love artistic and intellectual writing and

wanted to bring these same tones to my stories. These texts, like mine, explore the

concepts of journeys, relationships and self-realization.

Focusing on an individual caught between illusion and reality, I crafted my story to be

intellectually stimulating, although not conventional in terms of plot and structure. My

aim was to produce a thought-provoking, memory story. When the reader has

forgotten the words, the impressions and memories live on. I utilised the short story

medium to make the audience feel and resonate with the characters’ own

experiences. The stories underline how, as socially embedded creatures; people

strive for a place in life and need a sense of belonging. My short stories are

analogous to the key incidents of life – apparently fragmented and yet cumulatively

whole. I utilised the concept of selective memory and distortion to develop the idea of

‘pretend truth’, and the concept of re-creating and affirming one’s memories.

Perhaps it can be easier just to keep on pretending.

Philosophers such as René Descartes developed further for me the idea that what

we take to be the real world could all be just a dream. Most of us, at one time or

other, have been struck with the thought that we might mistake a dream for reality, or

reality for a dream:

 ‘How often, asleep at night, am I convinced...that I am here in my dressing gown,

sitting by the fire —when in fact I am lying undressed in bed...As I think about this

more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which

being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.’1

This is reflected in my work through the incorporation of dreams and the fog-like

stream of consciousness results. My work is predominantly a ‘memory’ work.

The short story allowed me to present themes with coherent expression,

conceptualising of ideas and comprehensive research of elements such as mental

depression and shock treatment. The short stories vary in length and the concept of

snapshots allowed them to be from three hundred to over a thousand words in

differing pieces.

It was important that my language was corporeal, to reflect my main character,

Hazel. I wanted to evoke strong images through descriptions of smells, taste, sight,

touch and hearing. The use of sensory language came to be particularly appealing to

me after reading the 1985 novel Perfume (Das Parfum) by Patrick Süskind. The

novel explores sensuous imagery, taking responders on an imaginative journey to a

new and exciting world. Süskind uses innovative and unexpected analogies to

capture sensuous synaesthetic experiences.

‘Their bodies smell like...like a pancake that’s been soaked in milk. And their heads,

up on top...is where they smell best of all. It smells like caramel...’2

I wanted to take this technique further and expand it as metaphor to focus on senses

such as sight and touch;

 ‘The sun was just beginning to rise, plump, golden, universal watch face casting its

first tantalising rays, filtering through my blinds and burning invasive strips onto my

bedroom wall.’3

I used mainly Australian poetry extracts and stories to reflect my themes. The

sentence structure has not always been conventional and this reflected the woman…

eccentric and unconventional. I reinforced this concept by quoting Virginia Woolf who

overtly advocates feminist rights in her novel A Room of One's Own. This is

particularly ironic, as in her book she focuses on the lack of feminist literature

throughout history, while I am a female writing short stories about a strong,

independent female protagonist. Poets such as John A Scott, appropriated as one

of a series of epigraphs, directly captured the almost absurd and non-direct language

that is so similar to my style of writing,

‘The office girl whose stockings violin

across this empty road’
Scott has utilised the word ‘violin’ as a verb. This made the poem even more

significant and remarkable. I love abstract language and structures that don’t

immediately make technical sense.

The investigation into past events and contexts allowed my work to be factually

accurate to re-create Hazel’s world. My investigations have been varied and wide,

including interviewing family members, finding old newspaper articles for certain

dates and reading Australian history books, such as Understanding Australian

History by Robert Darlington and John Hospodaryk. From these diverse sources I

came to understand the nuanced differences between the oral and spoken word,

enriching my passages of dialogue.

Initially I aimed at a predominantly family based audience, believing they would best

be able to comprehend the memories and ideas. However, through the

development of my work and further investigation into the history of short stories

and Australian history, I extended my target audience to include short story

enthusiasts and those interested in the historical aspects of the writing; allowing

my work to transcend different contexts. I focused on reaching an intellectually

creative audience who appreciate the writing, purpose and personal memory

involved.

Through looking at the origin of short stories and poetry, I dramatically changed

aspects of my original concepts and presentations. I veered away from the

traditional aspect of a short story in not keeping the one main character, one

setting and one plot. This has been a direct consequence of Tim Winton’s

novels, and in particular his novel The Turning; short stories which are linked.

This idea appealed as I was having difficulties creating contrast and interest in

my work and these writings influenced me to subtly connect all of my short

stories whilst introducing descriptions of less important characters throughout my

stories, for example the ferry driver:

‘Mr Fellic flicked the lights of the boat, and all his passengers waved to the girls,

breathless and flushed with delight. By the door to the veranda, a lady stood’.

The use of quotes from composers as epigraphs to begin each story helped develop

the structure and concepts of my work. I used poets such as Kenneth Slessor

and Judith Wright whose work incorporates a lot of water based imagery. These

poets represent different times and like them, I attempted to link past contexts to

contemporary audiences. Kenneth Slessor used the motif of water quite a lot in
 his work in such poems as Sleep, Out Of Time and Five Bells. I particularly like

in Five Bells where Joe has somehow managed to escape time…Hazel, my

character, never worried about time…‘little fidget wheels’4 were not her time. I

also investigated the work of Judith Wright, Robert Gray, Les Murray and

Christopher Brennan and included some works by Plath, Martel and Eliot. All

these composers, I believe, epitomised the concepts deeply embedded within

my work. The parallels allow the reader an epigraph of explanation.

The unifying motifs of water, the colour red and the line ‘raindrops on roses and

whiskers on kittens’ were integrated throughout each of my stories. In expressing

each story as just a snapshot of time, I was aiming to create for the reader, a simple

sequence of moments, allowing at the same time to empower the reader to fill in the

gaps in their own way, adding to the textual integrity. The use of descriptive

language developed for the reader, a deeper understanding of my character and

ideas. The motif of water, for example, is a recurring symbol throughout Hazel’s life

representing sadness and emotional upheaval.

I always knew what I wanted to show, say and how. The difficulty has been in the

areas of inquiry and composition. I have so many memories and I had to be selective

about which had a story to tell that was universal and could survive the perils of time.

My recollections are hindered by age and love. I had to visually process my stories

and decide…is it a memory worth telling and what is the best way to tell it?

Jean Pierre Jeunet’s film Amélie particularly influenced my writing, in that he

explores the dichotomous worlds of imagination and reality, and discovers the

necessities of self realization and human intimacy…and this was, essentially, what I

was attempting to do in my work. It poses a multitude of ontological and existential

philosophies that are exhibited through the Romantic, Neo-Surrealist, Impressionist

and Pataphysic5 contexts. The director, Jean Pierre Jeunet has permeated his

composition with a multitude of symbiotic allusions, abstract dialogue and developed

descriptions similar to my work.

I chose to write snapshots of time...moments... and I chose to base them around the

life of my grandmother: the life of a remarkable woman whom others did not see as

remarkable. I embroidered the story of my grandmother into a memory tapestry. I did

not attempt to write my grandmother’s life as it happened. I wrote her as I remember

her in my childish haze. I imagined her perception and self, based on my belief that

we are very much alike. These snapshots are part of a journey with no destination-

the snapshots have the possibilities to continue indefinitely as moments and

memories appear from the hidden recesses of mind and time… rich tapestry to

continue weaving.
 ‘Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time...’
Five Bells Kenneth Slessor

She was a not so remarkable a lady to pass in the street. She was Mammy to her
family, Hazel to her husband and Mrs Silver to everyone else. She was a catalogue
of generic pensioners established through time. Mammy was a young-old but
passers-by did not see this. They saw... a woman who was old. They saw the silver
hair with fairy touches of auburn filtering through in escaping drifts of time. They saw
the wobble of skin below the weakening chin. They did not see the touch of velvet
that rested lightly on the heads of great grand-daughters as they were rocked to
sleep in her arms. They saw the handbag that lurched close to her falling chest.
They did not feel the warm heart emanating from beneath the terry towelling and
velour cloth. They saw a cigarette ash container to collect the wastage of habit. They
saw dimly glassed blue eyes. They did not see the sparkling hiccups that were
bestowed on antics or traipsing alive with fairy stories and dances on yellow brick
roads and songs of favourite things. They saw a soft shoe shuffle of uncertainty and
dreaminess captured often in the aged body. Hush Puppies and hankies alert and at
the ready.

She was not shuffling. She was simply never in a hurry. Time had moved fast so why
did she have to allow it to continue.

They did see...that she had the most beautiful hands. Hands that had lived for a long
time and had loved and laughed, had held tears and heartache. They were not big
hands but hands that carried weights and waits in her life. They were soft and thin,
strong and quiet, brown and thronged with her blood’s journeys.

When the night crept in from the water scattered with dying sun, her hands would
begin to dance. They were…long, thinned and directional. They danced and
stretched to heights in her imagination. They directed and told such stories with
faintest movements …movements that inspired memories.

Amid the tinkling tinsel and synchronised flickering of lights, Mammy would drift away
to the waltzes and taps across the floor. The fingers would lift like wisps of webs into
the air and autonomously meld with the notes. Placing dirty dishes in the sink,
stirring milky tea and lighting a Winfield Blue, fingers would jig and spin upwards,
down and with a flick of a turned wrist, out.
 ‘Let your song be delicate.
Sing no loud hymn:
Death is abroad… Oh, the black season
The deep – the dim!’

Song be Delicate John Shaw Neilson

Once upon a time, I believed that all things in life happened for a reason.
I am young. No older than 8. My name is Hazel. I enjoy storing mandarin seeds in
my upper lip, the smell of popcorn and the safety of hearing my dad snore late at
night. I dislike the next door neighbour’s cat, the pain I feel when I am caned at
school and listening to my mother cry when she thought everyone was asleep.

Hush, I don’t say a word, hidden under the stained mattress of my bed. Squeezing
my eyes shut into slits, I sing ‘Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright
copper kettles and warm woollen mittens’, but nothing could cover the strong, bitter
stench of alcohol. I hold tightly to Daphne’s hand, and night dumbly, splendidly
passes me by, and as the screams begin to fade I fall asleep.

...

At 4.23am July 10th, 1989, a fruit bat travelling 62km/h landed on Mrs Roberts’ prized
mulberry tree. At that same moment, somewhere nearby, a gust of wind caused a
white handkerchief to escape from the clothesline and dance, unseen, into the
neighbour’s yard. Meanwhile, at 17 Oxley Street Campbelltown, in the little white
cottage, Mr Stephen lies alone. Pink hands, palms up over the edge of his patchwork
quilt, he dreams of cold bread pudding and dripping taps.

It was at that same moment that realisation hit, hard, cracking me on the head, like a
spoon hitting the surface of crème brûlée. The sun was just beginning to rise, plump,
golden, universal watch face casting its first tantalising rays, filtering through my
blinds and burning invasive strips onto my bedroom wall.

Connections zip, zapped, sprung in my mysterious grey matter, memories replaying

themselves like a show that refused to go off the air.

I sat up quickly in bed, swung my legs over the edge and slipped my feet into my
fluffy red slippers with the little red hearts all over them. I slowly, softly, ever so
delicately stepped across my bedroom floor, careful not to disturb but a particle of
dust. Gasp; a creaky floorboard.
Stop and wait. I stood and listened, straining to hear any movement within the
house. All was quiet. I continued my walk across the room. Light footsteps, don’t let
them hear you.

Years later, I wake not to the sound of sirens, but the sounds of life: grasshoppers
whining and the gab of birds. I was young, unable to control my destiny or that of my
mother’s. With the sky lightening, and a new day brewing, the cloud around my head
clears.
 ‘...The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime....’

Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird Wallace Stevens

Daphne lay on her back under a wide-branched paper mulberry tree. She opened
her eyes and looked up. The paper mulberry had broad leaves that made a pool of
shade in which she lay. Thick roots spread around her, making a kind of chair for her
to lean on. She wore only shorts in the hot midday air. Her arms and chest were
spattered and streaked with red paint, and the fence was finally completely painted,
top to bottom, all four sides, patched and painted and looking good. The paint and
sweat were drying on Daphne’s body. She could hear the buzzing of insects and
nothing else. Her sister lay close, singing softly with her eyes closed. Her feet, as
Daphne watched, moved gently and precisely with the song.

‘Daphy? Do you ever want to just...stop? Just stop being, so that everything perfect
stays perfect?’

‘No...’ Daphne replied softly, fearing that whatever she said would bring back her
silence. ‘If I stopped being, I wouldn’t have you. I couldn’t bear that.’

Daphne watched as Hazel pressed her hand into her own, holding tight. As Daphne
looked over, salty tears were making liquid tracks of hurt along the sides of her face.

‘I wish I could make it all ok for you,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I could take away all the
pain and grant you raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.’

We held hands tightly, and Daphne noticed the veins on the back of their hands
more vividly than she had noticed anything in life before and silently promised to
keep her safe.
 ‘He’s dropped his heart!
His heart has fallen to the footpath.
But no one seems surprised and least of all
the office girl whose stockings violin
across this empty road. He’s dropped his heart!’

Man in Petersham John A Scott

She looked up as a droplet of water fell lazily onto her cheek. The sky was closing in
on itself, dark shadows of grey becoming darker clouds. There were only seconds of
silence between the droplet and the roar of thunder. Beginning to hurry, she ran as
fast as she could in her shoes. The shoes were not practical, but then practicality
was not the reason she had bought them. Shoes were bought to accentuate the feet
and to flatter a lady’s ankles.

The air was muggy, the already stuffy and humid day becoming unbearable.
Stopping under the shelter of a café, she paused only momentarily to remove the
shoes and shake her head dog-like forcefully in an attempt to remove some of the
water in her hair. She ignored the disgusted looks on the faces of the two elderly
women at a nearby table and instead threw them a dazzling smile before continuing
on her way. Ten or so yards up the road she turned her head to see them muttering
under their breath and shaking their heads at her. She stuck her tongue out at them
politely.

Her feet hurt from the harsh road but she didn’t stop and rest them. She was late,
and being late was inexcusable. Her long skirt was getting tangled around her legs,
and she allowed a moment’s distress at the ruin of her latest work, for surely there
was nothing one could do to mend the hem of a silk skirt so rudely dragged through
water and dirt and goodness knows what else.

A sudden blinding pain took her to the ground. She lay upon her back and gasped
for air.
‘So sorry Miss, are you alright?’ A young man leaned over her and extended a hand
to help her to her feet.
‘I…yes, I am. It was entirely my fault. A stupid person who watches her skirts when
running deserves to be knocked down.’ She brushed herself down as best she could.
She noticed it was no longer raining but then saw the umbrella the man was holding
over her.
‘I am sorry, I promise to look where I’m going from now on,’ she laughed.
As she looked up to say thank you again, she started. She was abruptly confronted
with the most sparkling blue eyes.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’ she asked, blushing slightly as she became aware of him
speaking. She silently reprimanded herself.
He smiled - a smile which filled her with delight, breathlessness and exhilaration all
at once. ‘I asked your name…?’
‘Hazel. And yours?’
‘Harry.’
Once in a while...things take your breath away. Hazel looked around. She was early
and being the first one there, she took the time to take in the hall. It was larger than
Hazel had imagined but beautiful. The roof was supported by beams that had
intricate designs carved into each one. Twenty minutes she spent, looking at the roof
beams. It was absurd but so transfixing. The wood of the roof, floor and walls was a
dark and rich wood. It was warm, retaliation on the part of the hall at the weather, a
rebuke to the winds and rain that had been harshly attacking and stripping its
exterior.

She walked into the centre of the space and kneeled. Tracing her hands over the
paint, she marvelled at the complex designs that had been carefully and lovingly
created. The wood felt soft and light beneath her feet. She sat down on one of the
long and delicately carved benches that ran along the wall at the back of the hall.
Mirrors covered both walls lengthwise, and towards the front of the hall was a large
and ornate piano, with smaller benches on either side. She quickly replaced her
jacket with a light cardigan as more students began filing into the room. Barefoot,
she stood and stretched her arms and back before smiling politely at them. She
began a series of warm-ups before going to the bathroom to put on her stockings
and dancing skirt. The skirt...it was above all other skirts in both practical and entirely
materialistic senses. Red. It was an undisguised, confident red.
A red to steal the eyes of girls and men alike. This particular skirt... was subtle in its
fierce delight.

Outside, again sitting on the bench among the others, she began the formal and
dedicated ceremony of putting her shoes on. Beside her, most others were
beginning the same ritual. The air was still, the silence a mutual respective silence.
The bending of feet and stretching, before carefully sitting one’s feet in one’s shoes
was not a procedure to be impatiently rushed, hurried or quickened. The applying of
one’s shoes to one’s feet is what binds a dancer’s shoes to the obedience and will of
the dancer.

She carefully took her shoes out of their box, removing the inserts used to keep their
shape, and in turn placing those carefully back in the box. She checked the condition
of the shoes before putting them on and adjusting the straps.

The first step she took in that hall... made her world spin out of control, upside down
and practically everywhere in between. That first step brought her before the man
she had so ferociously thought of; kept in her mind with an anxiety. Once in a
while...people take your breath away. She remembered, all at once it was
exhilaration, breathlessness, fear and above all love. So certain; drowning surely in
her suffocation. Thinking... pick me... choose me... love me.

‘We danced our dance undressed

And looked out at the night
For fear some passer-by
Dare share in our delight’

Dance Undressed David Campbell

She kneels in the hollowed belly of the bath, her knees pressing uncomfortably
against the mottled skin of the sandstone. She lays her hands upon the swollen lump
of growing tummy and feels nothing. A glint of silver in the corner of her eye startles
her and she raises a hand to bat away an imagined threat. Her eyes focus on the
silver, taking in the line of taps, each one glinting a million secrets knowingly,
mocking her with their understanding.

Hazel reaches a hand up to turn on a tap…and falters. Out of the tap bursts music…
soft and beautiful, it enters through her every orifice. Each chord played sends
momentary joy vibrating down through the tips of her fingers, her toes, her ears...
The piano music is a passionate red-it is angry but seductive, creating in her a
feeling of elation and of power… she could do anything with this music. Before she
can explore these sensations more deeply, the tap turns off. Her hand, again
reckless and uncooperative, acts of its own accord.

Without time to understand, the second tap begins. Out of it spills yellow sunflowers,
brilliant harshness with a touch of sweet, and they dance. The dancing consumes
her vision, for if she were to look away, the sunflowers would die. If the sunflowers
died… so would she. All of her dances with them. Their bodies and hers envelop
each other in brilliant sinuous shapes, folding and caressing each other with
movements. As quickly and gloriously as the movements have come, they are gone.
The tap turns off, as another one comes to life.

Without needing to think, she slowly twists the next tap in line, the tarnished solid
silver giving off a harsh and metallic scent. She knew what was imminent, what to
expect, but that didn’t relieve the instantaneous fear and complete panic that took
hold of her… and yet she turned. With an almost sickening feeling… she allowed the
blue eyes to escape their metallic canister. They swallowed her. All encompassing.
Depressing and yet so splendid and perfect, each centre black with sorrow and
knowledge. So solid it almost gulped her mind away, almost, and yet not quite. The
blue of the outer circle was so perfect, so unnaturally clear that she was startled.

Startled as she was, she was also expecting the three steps that followed these
eyes. The momentary loss of breath, the sharp breath she couldn’t release and the
utter force with which it was held. Her neck tensed with the strain, each vein pressing
against the delicate skin, the lack of air making her own eyes blur and her stomach
turn. As abruptly and dangerously as it had come, it was gone. The ache in her, the
dull thumping ache that made her retch, made her feel sick and elated all at once, it
was so sharp and unbelievably real that she gasped. The sob would not be stifled,
would not be hushed nor swept beneath the mantle next to the bath with its pictures
of old ladies in cotton dresses sitting with fans, the cobwebs across the roof casting
shadows over their delicate faces.

The eyes themselves have left, taking mercy perhaps on her face, stained with tear
tracks and blood from where her fingernails had pressed out the anxiety trapped
within. She rubbed the crescent-moon shaped marks hard, an impulse. The strange
inclination you get from a cut in the mouth…where you have to keep touching it with
the tip of your tongue, or eating oranges just to remind yourself it’s there.
It was over. The water was cold, her toes and fingers wrinkled with despair. As she
rested her head back against the rim of the bath, her eyes, her poor and un-rested
eyes were again taken to her belly. The enlarged and pathetic belly… was not
hers… could not be. The eyes had played their part. Her senses… were enhanced
during the nine month wait.

How long delays the miracle blossoming,

vermeil and gold, soft fire, flush of the dark,
aurora, and ravish of night’s mother ark
still hallow’d ‘neath her present cherishing!
The Womb of Night Christopher Brennan
It still makes me ache. Remembering.
It makes me ache all around, through every vein and muscle, deep throbs play like a
metronome through my body. I keep remembering how my body turned, and how
slowly my mind filled. The angry red diffused like watercolour. Spreading and
capturing, throwing itself and damage over him. There was so much sound, it
couldn’t and wouldn’t stop.
I moved so slowly...
too slowly,
my body numbed and ignorant. I couldn’t do anything. I still remember everything I
saw, every part of my little boy as he was covered in the boiling water, his tiny hand
still holding the handle of the pot. I wondered, even as my body turned, how he could
have pulled it over. Of all the moments in those seconds, what I saw did not bring the
ache. The sound was worse than anything I had ever heard. The scream was
indescribable...but then...the silence was worse. Silence pressed upon me before I
had even got to him. Tiny and red he lay, still and silent. Deafeningly quiet, pushing
on my chest, my eyes and the top of my head. The silence made me sick. Silence
remained till my own screams came.
February choked the city. The morning sun was burning its red path through low-
hanging hazes and clouds of industrial smoke. The streets steamed, as concrete
reflected heavy sunlight. The temperature climbed until one in the afternoon and
then continued climbing. When it rained, fat grey drops plopped down upon the
roads, and then bounced up, as if in a half-hearted attempt to escape. At evening,
darkness gradually smothered the sun, until night fell upon the city.
Twisting my hand slowly around, bending the wrist sideways and backwards, the silk
folded into waves and fell softly and languidly onto the counter. I tilted my head to
the side slightly, and closed my eyes so to blur everything that was in sight. I lifted
the material, twisted, turned and dropped it again. With my eyes blurring the motion,
the falling fabric made me think of coloured wind. ‘You are my sweetest downfall’
played softly on the radio as I stood slowly and turned. I let the material drop lightly
from my hands as I did so, causing it to make gentle shapes around me.
‘One’.
‘Two’.
‘...eight’.
‘Once you were...my one and only...da de da...I loved you first...’ My voice sounded
harsher than I remembered. Still turning I took one step quickly to the right, then
another to the left but slightly forward. I continued spinning the material. ‘You are my
sweetest downfall...’
I stopped. Holding the material against my waist, I pinched a measurement out
quickly. I lay the silk out on the counter, and looked at the assembled colours.
Venetian red with ivory lace edging and beads. It would have to be a full skirt, but not
too long.

‘This is not I. I had no body once-

only what served my need to laugh and run
and stare at stars and tentatively dance
on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun’.
Naked Girl and Mirror Judith Wright
I stood, and walked out of the anonymous room. I followed the nurses down the hall
and into the symmetry of the elevator. We went down two floors and into another
hallway, similar to the first but in a more severe white than I had ever dreamed
possible. I lay down where they told me and allowed the stringent straps to be
fastened. My head was the part most firmly constrained. The cool metal band across
my forehead panicked me only momentarily. I could do nothing to stop what was
happening. The first wires were put in place and a sympathetic nurse stroked my
cheek softly and whispered hushed words of comfort. Then without warning I felt the
first shock. And then another...and another...and another...I smelt my own flesh
burning and felt the warmth of saliva run down my cheek as my mind fell down into
darkness...
My eyes were blurring; I frantically started to rub them as I walked. Rhythmic
footsteps preceded mine. I tried to step on the off-beat but my mind was so
disconcerted that I was almost immediately drawn back to the beat. I tried to take in
the surroundings as I walked. Impossible as it was, it was something to keep my
mind off the destination of our walk.

Everything around me was so demandingly vibrant. I took note of the colours: white,
white and white. I had to be sure to tell Susie everything. It wasn’t even a nice shade
of white. It wasn’t that fresh, clean, new bed sheet white. It was almost a defeated
white. On top of the white danced intermittent grey octagons, another defeated and
tormented colour. It was depressing yet appropriate. Pausing in my steps, I put my
hand palm down on the floor, feeling the sharp cold relax itself into my flesh. I stood
straight again and marvelled at the impression the edge of the tile had made on my
hand. I hadn’t realised I had pushed my hand down so firmly nor for so long.

A scent came quickly as I stepped lightly around in a circle, all-encompassing. It was

sharp and bitter, sweet and crisp all at once. The citrus taint of disinfectant was
unsympathetically scratching at my private nose. It was too clean a smell to be
uncomfortable. It was a tentative smell at first, almost as afraid of me as I was of it. I
got to know it, politely making conversation in a hope that they could work something
out about its placing, for I rather favoured my nose above all other extremities and
preferred it to be mine alone. I explained and with an apology and a whoooosh… it
expelled itself. Left, however, was the remarkable feeling of loneliness; ‘again, again,
again,’ I thought out loud.

‘Mrs Silver? We don’t have time. Hurry up.’ Her voice was insistent and rude.

‘You just be quiet and wait, I will come when I’m ready. There is no need to take that
tone with me; I am not an impertinent and naughty child.’ A cold and firm hand,
unfriendly and harsh tugged at mine. My hand, so newly imprinted with tile
impressions. ‘Oh bugger off.’ I thrust the hand away from mine in disgust.
I began stepping again; counting to make sure that everything was in order. As I
walked, I touched my fingers to the crescent shaped cuts on my cheeks. That
wouldn’t be happening today, they had assured me.

I got to door number 143. It was open and so I went in. I walked towards the bed, my
eyes locked with his. We both ignored the nurses’ complaints. They could wait, I
could wait; he could not.
He told me one last story. He used his aged, ruined voice like an old man’s hands to
pick the lock on his past. Lying down inside immaculate strong sheets, in the stark
white hospital room, his voice acted as the vehicle, taking me down the foetid
galleries of time and space…
‘I went to work in the morning wind, in jeans and boots, a beanie over my head and
the horizon around my ears. The dread hung heavily in the sky, as I made my way to
my daily existence- the meatworks.

The hot, fertiliser- thick, sticky stench of blood fills the air, sending flies mad. The job
consists mostly of hosing blood off floors and lugging gutted pigs to the ice- rooms,
their dripping blood solidifying like candle wax on the walls and floor.
Today, the chore involves fighting slippery chunks of cow hide into boxes. Very
quickly my arms become sticky with gore and matted with orange and black beef
hairs. The smell isn’t good, but it’s nothing compared to the feel of severed nostrils
and lips and ears between your fingers.
No-one talks much as they go about their work. The sounds of pigs squealing and
jockeying in their metal pens and the noisy concrete gutters is enough to make a
man go mad. I avoid the pig pens when I can, suppressing the images of them
mounting each other as the fear gets too much, and the acidic aroma of urine
alerting the pigs to their perilous destiny.
Finally, finally it’s finished. Driving home in the floating rain, the heated cocoon of the
car and the surrounding storm; cloud mountains creating a claustrophobic
atmosphere that forced me to pull over. I sat. Listening to the frying pan splutter
underneath and the flap of wipers...’

‘Was it worth it?’ I ask ‘Going home to the woman and child that you loved, within the
confines of a life that you hated?’
‘Yes,’ he replies immediately...
‘Pulling into the driveway and seeing them sitting softly on the veranda instantly
pushed a breath of air back into my lungs. Memories of the day’s work became
reduced to the blood still around my fingernails. Invigorated, I bounded up the stairs
and wrapped my arms around my wife and child, burying my face in their clothing,
recognising the steamy smell of wet wool and cedar…
I remember those times when I was happy and didn’t think I was,’’ he says, piercing
my unwavering attention with his stare. ‘Strange, the way only now I recognise it as
happiness. That that should be what happiness is like.’

‘There was a flaw to the analogy

you felt, but one
I didn’t look at, then –
the way those pigs stuck there, clinging onto each other.’

The Meat Works Robert Gray

A nurse flickers by out in the corridor, causing the vinyl to squeak with her sensible
shoes. From one of the other dimly lighted beds comes the faint sound of a radio;
‘Come on Hazel, it’s really time to go now. We don’t have any more time,’ the
insistent rattling voice of the nurse wearied me.
I look at the heavily lined, roadmap face of my husband and spoke: ‘Can you look
back on the world’s tears and despair- a world of dismal, failed dreams and inertia-
and still love it?’
‘Endlessly and effortlessly,’ he said, tears rolling down his face. Our goodbye was
unspoken.
I awoke with a start and looked around to find myself back in my own sterile and
enclosing room. I lifted my hand and traced the stinging burn marks on my forehead,
reminders of my ‘treatment’. My heart beat was still irregular. I lay there; tears rolling
down my cheeks and felt my heart tear into a million pieces.
 ... It was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its
impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge...
A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf

The sun was in the lake. It was the hour when fish jump recklessly in the shallows,
when bats fly low and small animals play underfoot. A few solitaries lingered about
their gardens gazing dreamily into the sky which was being gradually emptied of its
colour.

Look, as the lake reflects whatever it chooses of the sun, the trees, and the sky.
Boats set anchors or come in for the night, their diesels throbbing like blood in
fattened hearts. It was the hour when James from 32 Arcadia Vale came home from
work, his tie askew and collared shirt hanging damply from his lithe frame. He plays
for a moment in the yard with Sandy, the faithful family collie who loves James with
the fervent adoration of a loyal servant to his master, holding his muzzle closed or
throwing him upon his back.

Listen, to the mob of rascal kids next door chucking bombies off the end of a jetty in
the bronze evening night. The rangy sun-dark kids shrill like gills, setting the loose
boards rattling as they run and, holding one or two knees, hit the water with a ker-
thump.

Young girls look about for the first star to fix a wish upon and boys grow restless for
their supper. Even the busiest mother stands for a moment idle handed, smiling at
her dear and exasperating family. Alone in her pumpkin patch, Mammy wanders
through the tangle of vines that crowd the ground and fence. Carefully selecting the
biggest, ripest pumpkin, she expertly cuts it from the vine and admires the smooth,
hard surface of its skin. Her own skin wrinkled like a pawpaw is turning soft in her old
age; her once firm hands become wrinkled with prune fingers that look like she has
stayed in the bath for too long. Adding up her age in her head, she is surprised to
find how old she is. She thinks of her husband standing among the pawpaws over
two decades ago. His knobby knees poke out as he bends down in his small
ruggers, wife beater singlet and cloth hat. He is pigeon-toed and slow in his
movements, but not ungraceful.

I'm not young, she thinks. My whole life isn’t ahead of me.

Mammy has always believed in the nation and the monarchy. She was patriotic like
no other. She wasn't political, but she was proud, and thought everyone should offer
herself to the good of the nation. Some years before, this had caused quite a blue
between her and her grandson. 'I'll be voting for a president in next week’s
referendum that’s for sure.'
'Go and wash your mouth out with soap, Steve Silver. You'll do no such thing.
Respect. That’s what our monarchy needs and deserves.'
'It’s time for a change.'
'There's a bar of velvet beside you.'

But despite the extensive memories, the hardships and the conquests, the losses
and the gains, with the sun setting low over the roofs of the neighbourhood and the
smell of oncoming night and setting pollen, Mam refuses to lament as her thoughts
turn to the chops spitting in the oven and how she will put a teaspoon of sugar into
the mashed pumpkin to keep the young-uns happy.

The kids were all inside now, called for dinner. The sea was turning black and trees
transforming into silhouettes.

The night ferry starts its tour around the lake, carrying couples dancing to music
under the flashing stars. Inside she hears her two great granddaughters abruptly end
their squabbling in the bathroom as they spot the flashing fairy lights of the boat and
hurry out to the veranda. Breathless with excitement, they frantically flash the outside
lights. Their efforts are soon rewarded by the lights of the ferry replying in turn and
the driver honking its horn, as both the little girls cheer in triumph.
‘Whacko!’ says Cassie.
‘Whacko!’ says Gabby.
With their broad smiles shining on her and generous hugs and kisses, Mammy feels
hard-pressed not to think that she has her whole life still ahead of her...
‘There's no vocabulary for love within a family. Love that's lived in but not looked at.
Love within the light of which all else is seen. The love within which all other love
finds speech. This love is silent.’
TS Eliot

At 7.31pm on March 21st, 1985, a Ford panel van drove into 11 Alexander Parade,
Arcadia Vale. The license plate read LKI356. He remembered. She did not. He
walked, a shadow beside her up the path, with a right sided sway to bowed legs that
you could run a train through. Softly, he comforted, you are not alone. She was
steadier and held a cigarette limply by her side, alight and hesitant. The stroll
upwards was not for the feeble or aged. It was a strong and silent driveway that had
been both welcoming and ambivalent in its life. It bubbled with pebbles and
massaged cruelly underfoot. The Ford did not notice. Heavy doors were opened
gingerly and to squeals of despondent oil. Young girls cried happy welcomes. She
smiled and shook her soul, swallowed to a line down the oesophagus that was fast
closing and made her way to the front of the car.

At 8.13 pm all parties moved inside as a motorboat engine spluttered to life and
made its way across the blue liquid silk. It followed its usual path across the lake,
leaving rolling unsettled waves in its wake. Mr Fellic looked around at the large
houses that decorated the water’s edge, like the lace on a doily.

Turning the wheel of the boat, he looked at the red and white brick house, with the
Spanish arches framing a woman, singing hush and rock-a-byes to unseen children.
He looked again at the little shed at the front of a rambling worn house, its door open
for the man inside. He sat as he did each evening, crumpled and sad, his tired and
knobby knees protruding from his plaid shorts.

To the house near the rock wall, Mr Fellic was pulled. He waited...hand resting on
the controls...waiting quietly. With a flash of light and a squeal of excitement, two
little girls ran out onto the veranda facing the lake. Mr Fellic flicked the lights of the
boat, and all his passengers waved to the girls, breathless and flushed with delight.
By the door to the veranda, a lady stood. Old and stooped, damaged but determined,
she flashed the lights again.
They snuck in quietly in the night. There was no discussion. There was no anger,
malice or delight in their actions. They just were.

They came tiptoeing in the early hours of a cold morning when she lay asleep, soft
fluttering of an emptying breath dusting her pillow slip. They had watched and
waited. They saw the cloisters of decaying vegetation that had once been a
gardener’s soul-mate. They noted the blinking light above the garage that signalled
friends were watching. Friends could not watch all the time and so they sat and
waited.

Their time had come on this July night. It was violent. It was rapid and without
hesitation. No backward glances. Awash with the scent of Boronia, they angrily took
the red blood cells. They harvested and gave strength to the white blood cells who
took no enemies. They broke Mammy’s body; sucking out her once bottomless
energy and all she got in return, left by the night thieves, was bumping sores and
searching aches looking for a place to rest in her body.

She tried to fight. It was hard to fight what you could not see or touch. The ethereal
nature of capture was limited to those who knew her not and had no stake in her
survival. Her body was a battlement, capturing aggressive arrows of discontent and
impatience. Time which had once no measurement became a malignant enemy
intent on her defeat. The war of attrition had begun. A death betrothal was signed
without her signature but with her blood.

Blood was cleaned and pumped, pressured and pulverised. Body was bruised and
befuddled, blasted and badgered and still …knives and weapons were drawn and
lifted above the finger’s fluttering. Dances of life became softer and quieter and
touches were like a disappearing web of ticks. While the erythrocytes died, her
toenails grew. While her leukocytes died, geraniums waved in the lake’s breeze and
pawpaws fell splattering onto concrete, sending rivulets of black seeds bursting on
and over the crackled cement.
While the thrombocytes died, she became smaller and softer… eyelids taunted by
weight and foetal shaping of bones. She became colder.

While her plasma silently suffocated, we remembered...

Beef soup made with shin bones and nature coloured split peas. Side plates and
melting cheesecakes, castor oil and sunburns rubbed with Rawleys. Ice skating and
spins on fence lines and days of yellow brick roads. Pollyanna dresses and onion
gravy dipped with bread and butter, Monte Carlo biscuits and surprises in our beds,
mothball smells and Glen 40 dousing…while her blood died, we loved and were
loved.

At 2.54pm on April 24th, 2005, Debbie and Steve were shopping at Wangi
supermarket. In their basket they had carrots, bean sprouts, frozen chicken Kiev and
a can of Pal dog food. Their daughters had asked them to buy them a Magnum.
They forgot. At the checkout, they decided to buy Mammy’s favourite wine, Glass
Mountain Champagne and talked of celebration. A well used fifty dollar note was sat
in the young girl’s warm palm at the register. Steve’s mobile phone rang and
reverberated in the hearts of those purchasing. At 2.55pm on April 24th, 2005, the
bandit marauders of blood had won.
 Let your song be delicate.
The skies declare
No war- the eyes of lovers
Wake everywhere

Song be Delicate John Shaw Neilson

Have you ever watched sunlight skate on water? It dances and drifts in and out of
my vision, creating mini snapshots of moments. Dancing is like that. Spinning around
as the caller asks us to move politely to the next gentleman, my skirt whirls and drifts
around my stockinged legs, clinging and chastising my knees. I wish to laugh as I
spin in accordance with the sounds tapping across the floor. Tabloids of trestle
tables flicker in and out of my eyes, dappled with scones and tarts, tea and cordial,
bottles of burping ginger beer and smells of egg and lettuce. Mock chicken mingles
with curry cloisters of sandwiches.

Shutting my eyes, head tilted back, I quietly sort Henry’s silhouette beneath my
eyelashes. Bodies turn, skipping, bumping, giggling, sweating and forward looking
criss-cross the hall, seeking order and precision in a mayhem of deliberate
encounters.

My hands clutch my skirt to allow me to fly in circles of delight. My feet tip-toe light
movements across the floor, cradling themselves softly in the patent leather of the
shoes. I wander into the oblivion of sound, surrendering to the music. Capture to
reality as Harry’s hands clasp mine, and I open my eyes into the blue of his. He is tall
and lovely, loud and with hands the size of dinner plates. He twirls me off my feet
and places me back down...as if I were a piece of crystal. I feel like I matter to
him...like I am enough.

Dancing was like that...sunlight skating on water...stored images, there one minute
and gone the next.
 ‘All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange,
sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving...’

Life of Pi Yann Martel

To begin at the beginning...6

It is night. Black, dull and lifeless in the sleeping, slumbering town. Fruit bats fly
silently overhead like protectors of the night sky, a subtle reminder in the otherwise
motionless state of things that breathing, living organisms actually exist

Hush. The tiny grandmothers, eccentric artists, salesmen, teachers, blushing girls,
angry adolescents; the lonely, the rich, the content, the odd, the bored are all
sleeping. Water drips unheard from leaking taps, flowers wither imperceptibly in
vases and eyelashes fall on to the pillows of sleeping children with wishes unmade.

Listen, to night unfurling itself quietly in Arcadia Park, with lampposts camouflage
across the playground equipment like camouflage. You alone are privy to the nooks
and crannies of the meandering minds of dreamers. Only you can soar in and out of
the dark crevasses of unlit streets, past the salt and vinegar smell of Al's Fishing
Tackle shop to the dark wastes of Lake Macquarie.

Come closer now, to see the lulled lake reflecting what it likes of the flashing stars
and moon. The pearl white moon, the crescent moon which hangs in the expansive
black sky as if held by a piece of string.

Slide in effortlessly through the bedroom porthole window of Old Stuart's houseboat.
Watch, as sprawled across his bed, entangled in a yellowing sheet, he wheezes and
splutters like the run down engine on an old dinghy. Look, at the four days growth of
stubble on his chin, at the salt encrusted on his body like Pavlova shell and the nails
filled with the grime of fish guts, blood and worms. From where you are, you can see
behind his closed sleep ridden eyes as he dreams of...
Fish.
Raining down into his boat. Fish with their big glassy mooned eyes staring in shared
disbelief. Fish arching, beating sliding, squelching as they leap into his boat of their
own accord. Fish being gaffed as Stuart laughs like a kid; his rod continuously
arching in the water as more and more fish vault vicariously. He guffaws, giggles,
shrieks with excitement and feels like getting sick drunk and dancing all night. Until
the boat begins to sink, down...
Down...Down...
Into the stinking, scaly mass of...fish.
You leave as Stuart wakes suddenly with a gasp, his mouth opening and closing like
a dying fish rejecting the air...

Flying low over the glittering lake, it’s easy to see the white sails of yachts remain un-
flapping in the breezeless night. Dodging orange buoys and sleeping pelicans with
their great sagging bags of necks, you skim lightly across the water's luminescent
surface. Over the longest jetty extending from the lake’s shores, with bird shit, dried
seaweed and clinging crustaceans. Past the closed metal gate and through the
sliding glass doors to the carpeted bedroom of an angel. Pink curtains hang down
effortlessly from the window, brushing the top of the crayon and paint stained
wooden desk. In one corner of the room sits a rocking chair, barely visible
underneath the mountain of stuffed animals and dolls that clutter it. Glow in the dark
stars break up the dark, projecting light on the heavenly girl sleeping soundly. A halo
of white blond hair spreads out across her lacy pillow. Chubby cherub cheeks rise
and fall as her exhaled breath is released lightly to the night sky like soft notes from
a flute. She sings silently of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

No sooner have you begun to feel the rhythm of this musical breathing, when
something starts to pull, tug gently at your right earlobe. It draws you incessantly
outside and over the white-turning-grey panelled fence to the great lumbering house
next door.

You find yourself reverently entering the un-explicable somewhat sacred sanctuary
that is an elderly woman's bedroom, evident by the unmistakable musky smell.
Tiptoeing stealthily past the large wooden dressing table with its crystal vials of
perfume and a smooth oriental jewellery box. Look now to the bed where a frail hand
lies delicately next to tufts of fine white hair that peek shyly from beneath the high
pulled quilt like wisps of smoke that could disappear any moment. The room is
peaceful, as quiet as a church. The sleeper's breathing is even. No one but you
could realise that a tumultuous battle of rising uncensored memories is raging within
her seemingly at ease mind, threatening, always threatening, to boil over...

Black high heels click harshly against the lino floor as the mourning mother holds
firmly onto the suit cladded pillar beside her. The door is there, she can see it behind
the veil partially obscuring her eyes. The door waits. The room waits. She knows
what is behind it, what she is going to see. The thought makes the molten ball of
grief stuck firmly in her throat expand until hot tears sting the corners of her eyes.
With streaming cheeks she stops thinking and concentrates on putting one foot in
front of each other. Until eventually, the door is there before her. Without a moment’s
breath the emotionless, distant leviathan next to her pushes open the door.

And there is the casket. There is her son. With his eyes closed and little smile, you
could almost think he was just sleeping. But when she touches him, stroking the
cheeks that she had wiped food from, the nose she had wiped snot from, the hands
that had once firmly clasped hers, he doesn’t wake. Desperation cascades down
upon her head until she falls to the ground. The floor in front of her opens up and
under a wave of water the casket disappears. She feels herself drifting there,
following her son wherever needs be...
From the bedroom the name 'Clive' escapes from her sleeping lips.
 ‘Most did not see her as an extraordinary woman. She was...Harry’s Hazel...James’
Mum... my Mammy. She taught me the joys of playing bad mitten badly using the
lounge dragged into the centre of the room as a net. Together we sang songs of
‘Little Miss Muppet’, melted large pieces of strawberry cheesecake in the microwave
and drank milk mixed with orange juice to gain our daily dose of vitamin C with
calcium. We twisted ribbons into our hair, painted toenails different colours and lay
on our backs on hot cement until it started to burn. I gave her a gold star, like the
fillings in her teeth, Chinese hand-held fans and the snake bracelets around her
arms. To me she was...a remarkable woman’.

Memories of Mammy
18713640
1 R, Descartes Meditations, 13

2 P, Süskind Perfume, Penguin Books, 1987, page 13

3 Among the Paw paws page 2

4 K, Slessor Five Bells

5 Pataphysics is a term coined by the French writer Alfred Jarry, a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. It is a parody of
the theory and methods of modern science and is often expressed in nonsensical language. A practitioner of pataphysics is a pataphysician or a pataphysicist.
Pataphysic (contraction of the greek "epì tà metà tà phusiká") means "what is close of what is after physics".

6 D, Thomas Under Milkwood