Spring

The closest thing I have to a goddaughter is M, the soccer-playing soprano and third-year Aerospace Engineering student who has made occasional appearances on this blog before, and of whom I stood in awe even before she reported earlier this year that she'd scored a 95 for a subject called Space Vehicle Design.

Her birthday is on the last day of winter -- I remember the first one well; I have a vivid memory of sitting on some hard institutional seat in the maternity hospital with her late father, handing him the hip-flask of brandy that my own father had thoughtfully provided for his use -- and yesterday she turned 21, an occasion celebrated with an afternoon tea party.

As she floated down the hall of her auntie's house to greet me I was dumbstruck by what she was wearing --




-- not only because of its perfectly-preserved beauty as a piece of vintage clothing but also because the last time I'd seen it, her mother (above right, and below) was wearing it at my own 25th birthday party, 30 years ago:




I don't get a lot of opportunities to observe the young en masse, but there would have been about 60 people there yesterday, of whom only ten or fifteen were my generation or older. Most of the more-or-less-21-year-olds would have been from either the soccer team or the Adelaide U Choral Society, though in their tea-party clobber -- there were some very pretty floral frocks, waistcoats, bow ties and so on -- it was impossible to tell these two groups apart right up to the moment, not long after that photo was taken, when it came to sing Happy Birthday, which was the most brilliantly tuneful and certainly the only eight-part rendering of Happy Birthday that I've ever heard in my life. Having warmed up with that, the AUCS members present -- at least 25 of them -- sang several other things, most of them through mouthfuls of cake or champagne, and were magnificent.

To a person, the younguns were friendly, sociable and courteous, some of them showing a degree of social adroitness that I don't even have now, much less when I was their age. I saw a great deal of thoughtful behaviour, particularly towards M. Nobody was rude, nobody got drunk, nobody whined and nobody behaved like a prat. Perhaps young persons who join choirs and soccer teams are not necessarily representative of their generation, but I'd like to think they are. Watching and listening to them made me very happy.

But those with biscuits should go straight ahead

Stephanie turned 50 today (well, yesterday, technically) so I don't want to say too much about what being one's 50s is like. It would be tactless. I have been in this challenging decade for *cough*several*cough* years now and the dispatches from the front are not exactly full of sweetness and light.

However, one of the more manageable aspects of being this age is that even if you started life with excellent vision, by now almost everyone has started to see the world less clearly. This, of course, has its up side. There are many things you're glad you can't see properly.

But I wear my driving glasses diligently, so I did get rather a shock today when, chugging slowly out along Port Road in the early afternoon and idly watching the footy traffic inching along in the left-hand lane as they all prepared to turn off onto the road that would take them to the stadium, I saw out of the corner of my fifty-something eye a blinking traffic sign that said

TURN LEFT
WITH CAKE

I can has MRI? Or not.

Those of you who have been following the fortunes of Liz, aka Lymphopo of As the Tumor Turns, will know that the aggressive Stage IV lymphoma actually went away and that she is now back in the gym rebuilding the cut physique of yore.

But her most recent post -- she's come back to the blog after what was for her a long hiatus -- was about going back to the New Orleans charity hospital she calls Our Lady of the Damned (which I assume is the same place Clayton Cubitt at Operation Eden has a photo of here; surely there can't be more than one) to ask about her residual chemo-brain and see whether there might not be some more sinister cause for her lapses of concentration and memory. She was seen by an oncologist. NOW READ ON:

'After reviewing my chart and asking me some basic questions, she said, "You know, it's not really unusual for our memories to give us a little trouble, what with aging and menopause and all. What sorts of problems have you been having?"

"Well," I said. "Last week I locked my keys in my car."

"Ha!" she said. "That's nothing. Last week I locked my keys, my phone, and my emergency beeper in my trunk. And the whole 45 minutes while I was waiting for the Pop-A-Lock truck, I had to listen to the phone ringing and the emergency beeper frantically beeping, like all my patients were dying."

"Well," I said. "I missed my turnoff on the interstate. I was halfway to Shreveport before I even realized it."

"Ha!" she said. "That's nothing. One Tuesday I went to my Wednesday hospital by mistake, and I was on my third patient before I realized it."

"Ok," I said. "I accidentally sent a fuck-you email intended for my ex to my landlord in California instead."

"Whoa," she said. "Wow. Ok. I'm ordering you an MRI of the brain, stat."'


Pffft. I'm still recovering from a mistake I made some years ago, when I wrote a long, anguished email to the co-ordinator of a graduate program explaining in detail exactly why the student whose thesis I was supposed to be supervising would never, ever be able to even start a thesis, much less finish one, and then (you know what's coming, don't you) confidently sent it straight off to the student in question.

Not only do I not need an MRI (I had a CT scan of my brain a few years ago when tracking down monster headaches and I'm happy to report that my brain is beautiful),

I don't even need anyone to remind me that Freud would say there's no such thing as an accident. And given her many Flickr photos of and comic wailings about the lack of space and leaky roof at the rented home she calls 'Le Shaque', I'm guessing that Liz doesn't need an MRI either, so much as a gentle reminder of what Papa Sigmund might have said.

Births, deaths and marriages

Actually there are no births, I made that up. Unless you count the birth of the baby Jesus which us literary types tend not to have a lot of trouble with. I don't believe there was once an old man called King Lear who had three daughters, either, but that doesn't mean it's not an incredibly powerful story about the human condition or that it has nothing to teach me. Quite the reverse.

I am being forced at the moment for various reasons, some personal and some less so, to think about death quite a lot. I am not happy about this, as you might imagine. There's only one bloggable aspect to this preoccupation (the rest is matter not mine to divulge), and that's the death of Benazir Bhutto, which is obviously going to destabilise further a region already terrifyingly chaotic and make the world an even less safe place to live in than it already is.

But for me there's also the fact that Bhutto was five weeks younger than me, and the death of any direct -- in this case almost exact -- contemporary is profoundly unsettling in a subterranean personal way no matter who it is. There's a deep, gut-level empathy one has with people who, no matter how wildly different their histories and cultures, know what it was like to be in the world at a particular age at a particular time.

Bhutto's Western education would have brought her closer to me culturally than she might otherwise have been, but there's still that unfathomable east-west difference in women's lives. And yet I was looking at photos of her last night and found a shot from 1972,


when she and I were both nineteen, and another from 1985,


when we were both 32 and at the top, I now think, of our respective games. (And certainly, for what it's worth, of our looks).

And in both cases -- again despite the wild differences in our lives -- I thought: I know that hair, I know those clothes, I know the quality of the photograph and the requirements in that particular year of performing femininity in public (it changed between 1972 and 1985, but not enough, and I always dug my heels in about it, which Bhutto manifestly did not). I know the feel of being a woman exactly that old in the world, exactly then.

And now she's dead. Thinking about what we have achieved in life, much? And as if the New Year, which I have always disliked, were not quite bad enough in that regard already.

So it was with a rush of instinctive pleasure that I opened the not-immediately-identifiable envelope in the mailbox yesterday -- late Christmas card, I thought, but from whom? -- and found an invitation to the wedding of P and L, both also in their fifties, as though to defy whatever the world has in store.

Onya, both of you. I shall buy a new frock.

A Meme for the Middle-Aged

Deliver me, Lord, from the threat
of heaven ...

-- Peter Goldsworthy, 'Mass for the Middle-Aged'


As previously threatened promised, I have composed a meme for the middle-aged in order to offset the peculiar psychological effects of doing memes that were written for backward American teenagers. It even has some serious questions in it. If you are under 37, you will not understand some of these questions. If you a blogging beginner, this post will bewilder you -- better scroll down and read the the Christmas carols one instead.

UPDATE: I've just realised I haven't done this meme myself, so will use it as an excuse for some avoidance behaviour instead of tackling the next task on the list.


1) Which part(s) of your body is/are hurting as you read this? List all that apply.

Feet, head. I am bracketed by middle-aged aches.

2) Which of the following is/are no longer working properly? List all that apply.

a) feet
b) ankles
c) knees
d) hips
e) back
f) neck
g) brain
h) digestive system
i) blood pressure
j) memory
k) idealism
l) compassion
m) optimism
n) other (please specify) (NB -- if the answer is 'bits', and it may well be, that's on a strictly a need-to-know basis)

(a), (c), (d), (f), (h) and (k).

3) Has your hairline receded? (For both sexes.)

No, it's always been this high.

4) Is your hair the same colour it was ten years ago?

Not quite.

5) Is your hair the same colour it was ten days ago?

Yes.

6) Do you know what colour your hair would be if you grew the colour out?

Yes -- a less tabby-cat-like version of what it looks like now.

7) Are you still content to have your photo taken?

What do you mean, 'still'?

8) Do you think that Brazilians and/or back, sack & crack waxes are ridiculous?

Not quite; some of my own 'beauty' practices are a bit odd, too. I mean, I own an eyelash curler. (Which I can no longer use without thinking of that scene in The Boys.)

9) Or have you had one (or more than one)?

Hell no.

10) Did it hurt more than childbirth / falling off a ladder / root canal work / being attacked by a shark? (If not applicable, write ‘Not Applicable’.)

Not Applicable.

11) Have you had root canal work?

Not Yet.

12) Have you had surgery on any of your intimate parts?

Yes.

13) Were you evasive about it with your friends and relatives?

No. Only with readers of my blog.

14) How long have you known your oldest friend?

Since we became friends in Year 9 after having been enemies in Year 8 -- 40 years.

15) How often do you have to grope around for a particular word before you remember it?

Too bloody often.

16) When you travel, do you take a special separate toiletries bag exclusively for your medications and other first aid supplies?

Absolutely.

17) Does the thought of starting a new relationship

(a) fill you with horror
(b) make you giggle
(c) make you want to run away into the desert
(d) other (please specify)

All of the above.

18) What have you found to be the most reliable mantras, slogans and shibboleths to get you through life’s bad moments?

'This too shall pass.'
'Think of it scientifically.'
'You're not being napalmed.'
'My heart is pure, I have the strength of ten.'
'Let it go, Indy.' *

* Much of the appeal there is in the visualisation and imagined hearing of Sean Connery.

19) What makes you cry?

Music, injured animals, news items about lost children who have been found safe, music, funerals, and music.

20) What makes you laugh?

My friends, bless them.

21) Who were your musical gods and heroes when you were in your late teens/early 20s?

The Joni Mitchell of Blue and the Elton John of Tumbleweed Connection, which to this day I'm proud to claim.

22) Is/are he/she/they still alive?

Elton (age 60) is still touring his butt off and Joni (age 64) has a new album, an exhibition of paintings and a new ballet based on her music all showing/touring/on sale as we speak. I've seen them both live and they are both great musicians.

23 Which of these is no longer what it once was? List all that apply.

a) your ability to metabolise alcohol or other drugs of choice
b) your desire to metabolise alcohol or other drugs of choice
c) your desire to dance
d) your ability to dance

All but (c).

24) Have you now been to enough funerals to have definite and detailed ideas about how they should be organised and run? If yes, please elaborate.

Yes. Good music, good flowers, carefully chosen speakers and readers, and minimal crying if possible.

25) Have people started trying to help you across the street?

No, but give me time.

26) Could you get up on karaoke night and sing 'Non, je regrette rien' without bursting into howls of hysterical laughter?

No.

27) If not, please explain.

I can sing in tune, and my French accent is passable, but I regret almost everything.

28) What about 'My Way'?

Hmm. Wouldn't opening with the lines 'And now the end is near' provoke sarcasm in the ranks, at karaoke?

29) When did you last have a drink?

Last night.

30) What was it?

Fox Creek Verdelho, my fave.

31) Can I have some?

Soit'nly.


No tagging, just do it, if you feel it speaks to you. And please let me know here so I can go and have a look.

All kinds of things can make a person cry

Lymphopo of As the Tumor Turns, formerly Liz of Grannyvibe, has got her scans back. The longer you have been following this saga the more you will appreciate the quality of the smile.

Actually, if you've never heard of her until now this post will probably do it for you anyway.

Olive and her Blob

Some time in the last half-hour since the daily crikey.com.au email arrived, many fellow-subscribers who hadn't heard about it already will, like me, have made their way to the blog run by 107-year-old Olive from 'near Sydney', with help from her helper and scribe, Mike "It's a blog, Ollie, not a blob" Rubbo.

I am so blobrolling this. Go and have a read.

Serves me right for blogging about it already

Most bloggers are too young to remember, or probably to care, what Billy Thorpe looked like in the 1960s, but I do.

Killer smile.

And now that he's dead of a heart attack at 60, and I reflect that that's only seven years older than I am, please just excuse me while I go and write a novel, learn Indonesian, master more than just the first few bars of Debussy's Claire de Lune, swim with dolphins, go to Uluru, Montreal, Bali, Prague, Louisiana, Marseilles and the Scottish Highlands, update my will, apologise to three or four people, throw out three-quarters of the contents of my house, and get back into my size 10 (hahahaha, sob) Japanese-influenced black-and-white pure silk George Gross and Harry Who dress from 1986 that I've never been able to bear to throw out.

Tonight.

For whom the bell tolls

Sobered by the recent death of Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley, I'm probably not in as good a frame of mind as I could be to be reading an anthology of short crime fiction.

Stories about murders, every one.

I love crime fiction, and I have a strong stomach, and I know it's 'just a story', and I need to keep reading this book because it's for work, but all this endless clever variation on the theme of violent death is starting to make me feel a bit sick. In a complicated way this does have to do with Elizabeth Jolley, whom I knew a little, some years ago now; about whom I've posted, as has Meredith of Marrickvillia, a few memories at Sarsaparilla; and who died, as we nearly all say we hope we will, peacefully in her bed at a ripe old age.

Earlier today, all deathed out for the moment, I put down the book and headed into the study for some light relief in the blogosphere -- where almost the first thing I looked at was the thread over at Sills Bend being haunted by the ghost of former Melbourne literary and academic character Dinny O'Hearn, also now dead, and whom I also knew.

In April 1999 I went to Barcelona. It was work; I was giving a seminar at the University of Barcelona and being a bit of a visiting Aust Lit person before moving east to Klagenfurt in Austria, where I taught a four-week summer school in Australian writing at the university there. My mother had died in the February and I was still feeling extremely fragile and a bit deranged; the colleagues in both Barcelona and Klagenfurt who had organised the two gigs both insisted that I should cancel at once unless I really felt up to it, but if I had done so, my mother would have risen up phoenix-like from her ashes and beaten me about the head and shoulders with a large placard saying GET BACK ON THAT HORSE AT ONCE.

While in Barcelona I visited the Cathedral in the Placa de la Seu and could not go past the rows and rows of votive candles to light for the dead. I could only think of two people who needed candles: my mum, and a friend who had committed suicide five years earlier at the ridiculous age of 26. I had some long-dead grandparents, but really, that was all.

I got home from Europe in early May to the news that the old school friend who had survived cancer the previous year had now developed secondary tumours in her lungs, and she did not survive the winter. She was 46, the same age as me. Her death and my mother's seemed to open some sort of gate; with the turning of the century, people I knew started dying off right and left.

This is partly to do with my age, of course; almost everyone I know in my immediate age range has at least one elderly parent who needs to be worried about on a daily basis. Last January, two close friends' mothers died within days of each other. The point of the story about the Barcelona candles is that now, a mere eight years later, I can think of least twenty people I would light candles for, if I were to go back there tomorrow.

As a farmer's daughter I have always been reasonably realistic and resigned about the life cycle of the human being. We shall die, and there seems no point in kicking and screaming. I have always found it ironic that Dylan Thomas's famous and beautiful roar of rage at the dying of the light should have been written by a man who then purposefully drank himself to death at the age of 39.

But there is a kind of thinning out of the texture of your life as people disappear from it forever one by one, as if somebody had watered the wine. I think of Elizabeth and of Dinny, and of the way that, although I didn't know either of them well, I have in each case a handful of complex, detailed, colourful memories of particular moments, remarks, afternoons, tones of voice and turns of the head.

Crime stories, in which fiction-writing is a game and violent death merely one of its rules, can be very entertaining and the best of them are haunting. But they have less than nothing to do with the endlessly mysterious truth of actual death in your actual life, even just that of a colourful acquaintance, much less someone close and dear. As one of A.S. Byatt's characters says somewhere: 'You don't know what a death is going to do to you.'

Eight years is a long time when you're under 18

Just ask Daniel Radcliffe.


David Copperfield, 1999


Equus, 2007


Apparently lots and lots of mummies and daddies are up in arms about Harry Potter getting his gear off. Wait till they find out about him blinding six horses with a hoof pick.

I bet he does, too

'Right,' said my father last night after he'd blown out the candles on his 80th birthday cake, 'now I'm striking out for 85.'