Tim Winton's EYRIE

So what do we think of Winton generally and has anyone read Eyrie? There seems to be a bit of Winton-bagging that goes on in this country, I'm not wrong am I?

I'm trying to work out what it might be about him. Is it the ponytail? Is it the success? The blokeiness and the fact that he doesn't seem to give a rat's arse about celebrity and fame.

I'm wondering whether we need our heroes to be failures? A la Kelly, Burke & Wills, Eureka. Sports people who always come unstuck (off the ground is okay, on the ground is not.)

What is it about us as Australians that makes us want to tear successful people down? Are other nationalities like this?

What's the deal?

And in other news, went to the beach yesterday god it was lovely and quite surreal to be there in the warm sun, in bathers, while today back in Melbs it's cold, wet and 16 degrees.

Windy old Melbourne Town

September always seems windy. My daughter was born in September, and I remember the trees thrashing outside the window as I walked the flat, my mother sitting on the couch timing contractions.

Since we got back from Hong Kong, we've been pretty busy. Princess had her wisdom teeth out last Thursday so I've been nurse: dispensing medications from the infirmary (a kind of table thing in the hallway), making soft food, taking her ice packs, making her swish salt rinses, mashing food, heating up tinned Campbell's soup. That sort of thing. The swelling is going down but she's still got a bit of bruising. I was a bit anxious because she'd never had anything other than a local anaesthetic before and she gets heart palpitations (which I again need to get checked out by a cardiologist) BUT it was all okay, and I could put away the catastrophising scenes of doom that filled my head as I sat in the waiting room. The dentist had also said one of the teeth had a hooked root and was perilously close to a large nerve in her jaw. There a no signs that it's not gone perfectly well.

It's the second week of the school holidays (third for P) which means no teaching for me and lots of writing time (ordinarily, and the last couple of days I've managed a lot of writing.) I've been walking the dog, continuing my healthy with my food. Day before yesterday I chopped off my hair. It had grown very long, down my back, and while I kind of liked the wild woman effect a side ponytail gave me, when I got up Saturday morning with what other people call bed hair and I call playdough hair, I realised the ends were just so ratty and all uneven (because I have this thing, you see, where I cut my own hair) and so I went into the bathroom and pulled it forwards and chopped it off on either side. So it's just past my shoulders, or on them, a long bob and a bit hacked at the back. Good for summer.

We finished Season One of Orange is the New Black. It is fucking amazing. Alex, have you managed to see any of it? I recommend moving it to the top of your list right now. We are pottering through West Wing, up to about early Season 5. And we re-borrowed Sopranos from Clokey's sister on the weekend and so I'm watching that (again, for me) with Princess.

Seriously, too much goodness.

Clokes and I are watching Big Brother but that's all I'm watching on tv. Did not re-invest in either X-Factor or any other reality tv. The other day caught five minutes of Winners and Losers. Oh my god. How can people watch it? It's so saccharine. Reminds me of what little I've seen of that Asher Keddie show, but much worse. The state of television is terrible and people moan about reality tv?

Reading: am reading various books. I am struggling to settle and go deep. Am flicking between different ones, including reading printed-out articles, interviews all to do with writing (The Paris Review series of interviews are amazing, if you like long-form and even writers you don't read, they are always insightful and interesting.) They go back to the '50s man, and you can search by decade or by person's name. Sometimes I think it's the best thing on the Internet.

I have started Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, which is on the shortlist for The Booker Prize. She's twenty-seven, it's her second book and I hate her. She uses an interesting form in the book which is partly why I'm reading it; partly too I'm reading it because it's so frigging long, more than 800 pages and I'm curious to know how she sustains it well enough to be shortlisted in such a prestigious prize; alsoam curious to see how's she's done it at all. I also bought the shortest on the shortlist, Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary.

Writing: over the weekend I wrote a long piece to submit to a journal that has a theme of SEX. I don't write sexy stuff but I'm a sex ed teacher so thought to angle it from there. We shall see. Then this morning I rejigged a piece I'd done on gadgetry and my hate for Apple products, and incorporated some commentary on the hate people have for Jonathan Franzen (and to a lesser extent, Tim Winton.) Not sure what I'll do with that, it's pretty ranty. And THEN I got an email last Tuesday from one journal to say they wanted to print something I'd submitted (it's a creative non fiction piece, kind of) and then last night, an email from a small publishing house who want to include a poem I sent them in their annual collection of stories. So. A few little things happening.

My big writing thing: I have to get my second manuscript to my agent early November. She wants to get it to publishers I think in February. They are keen to see it which is good but so much pressure because what if it's terrible?

Let's just look at this for a moment to calm down:  Putting time in perspective

I do love a Saturday morning

And then I do love the rest of the day as well.

Things that were good about this week:

Seeing this in the media

Here's another one:

Full story here. Although you know it won't really be the Full Story, because that can't really be written down anywhere.

Then there was this, a visual tree guide:

I hope you can make it bigger, it was bigger on the website.

There was some good writerly news that I mentioned might be imminent a little while ago. One of my short stories is being published in the Big Issue Fiction Edition, out on 16 August. Without knowing who else is in it, I'm sure it won't be hard for people to work out who I am. It's a bit exciting though which means there's been three bottles of champagne consumed this week. Not all on one night and not all by me.

That news came through on Wednesday, and that was the same afternoon my mum and Princess and I went to see Monet at the NGV. There is a pool with white bowls, much like the ones from my kitchen. The water moves around and the floating bowls chime against each other. It's gorgeous:



The Monet exhibition was beautiful. We went in at about 4pm and had an hour. It's a good time to go and often we make this type of stealth-approach on a Wednesday afternoon to see the exhibitions. They aren't crowded and it's a lovely mid-week treat. Loved seeing three of his paintings of London in smog/fog. Very Turneresque and just divine. Particularly this one:
 

There was only one painting of the waterlilies and the iconic green bridge but that was well-advised I think, if it was deliberate. Everyone knows about the waterlilies and the little green bridge, so the "Nymphaea" room was filled with paintings of the waterlilies (and even a few irises thrown in) and there was one in particular, round-framed and delicate. So pretty.

In one of the text boxes, a quotation from Monet:

It took me a while to understand my waterlilies.

This resonated with me so much, especially as this week I've been trying to work out what my second book-thing is 'about'. Who the fuck knows? I read today that EB White, when asked by his publisher why he chose to write Charlotte's Web gave a lovely response, describing his inspiration and why he chose to write about a pig and about a spider, then at the end he wrote: 

I haven't told you why I wrote the book but I haven't told why I sneeze either. A book is a sneeze.

I don't know if either of these sentiments make much sense to you but they do to me.

This was good. A panorama pic of Tokyo and you can zoom right in. When I zoomed right in it made me think of some of the scenes in 1Q84 like when they go down a ladder off the side of the freeway. I think I want to read that book again. This week too I bought Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle. I have a lot of books on standby. They are patient.

Tokyo zoom

Then this piece of excrement:

Misogyny lurks in Winton's world of fiction

Such bullshit but it niggled at me and I spent far too much time thinking about the reasons why she is wrong. Luckily, other far more articulate people than me got into the letters pages to rebuff this stupidity.

And finally, this was waiting for me at the back door when I got home yesterday. I know it's not right to call one of your children stupid but really, when there's a shed open and available for shelter. Also a fucking garage...