As Seasons Fleet

Though the autumn colours are still bright in our gardens and along the hillside across the valley, already nature is preparing for spring.

The wattle may still be three or four months from flowering, but the delicate buds are already reaching out to brighten the coming dullness of winter. Not far away, the pine is readying itself for the return of warmth and light, as the tightly coiled embryos of the next summer's growth prepare to explode.

Our landlords, the resident Magpies, are still minding the last of the youngsters they hatched out in previous seasons, even though it can fend for itself quite well if they are not present to meet its demands.  Yet they are also vigorously guarding their nesting tree against future need.  In the lake, and the stream that runs down from it, the Perch are fat with roe - and, though we are yet to feel winter's blast, already all the signs of the coming spring and summer are visible to anyone who walks slowly through our valley and over our mountain.

Yet things are not quite as they should be - one sign of spring in my part of the mountains is the golden dusting of pollen, from the Radiata Pines, that drifts down into the cracks in the footpaths, and filters the light coming through any windscreen left in the open.  It is autumn, but our Pinus gold dust is present again, if in smaller quantities than the spring flowering produces. The Elderberry has flowered again, too, and the Jonquills are appearing around the garden.

The seasons in Australia are never quite as predictable as they are in many parts of the world, but I am not sure what to make of this.  I can watch this ebb and flow of seasonal life, and work it into the stories I tell - to myself and to the world.  Time will tell how pertinent those stories are.

Reality? Really?

Nobody could be that stupid, could they?

How often have you encountered a moment in a book or film that has provoked that response?  You look at the thing the character has just said or done and immediately condemn the author or screenwriter, and your willing suspension of disbelief takes a serious hit.

But why?  I don't know about you, but it is a rare day in my life that contains no such acts of stupidity - some of them are even perpetrated by my own well-intentioned self, and don't ask what my evil self gets up to - for that you will just have to buy the book (if it gets published).

But think about the seemingly unbelievable behaviour you have seen authors inflict on their characters and then think about the last time you walked through a busy town centre or mall, or along a highway, or even along the sort of relatively quiet streets that surround my home.  What about weddings, family get togethers, end of year parties in the workplace, or any gathering of humans large and noisy enough to allow an individual to feel anonymous?

Pay attention to your fellow human beings for even a few minutes - you will quickly fill a page or two in your notebook with misdeeds - foolish, stupid, and sometimes, downright malicious - that were committed out there in full view of the public.  Imagine what those people do when they think nobody is watching?  Perhaps they did think there were no witnesses?

Not enough?  Turn on the news and watch as people get themselves and others killed or maimed, as politicians say or do remarkably idiotic things, as police or security guards forget that they are operating under the unblinking gaze of public security cameras, and in the presence of a population that is armed with more data gathering and storage capacity than was dreamed of even a decade ago.

How often have you seen some wealthy and powerful individual facing the Press scrum on the courthouse steps and wondered "Why - he had everything anyone could want, why would he steal more/do that?"  More than one police officer has said to me "thank heavens so many criminals are stupid - it makes our job so much easier"

So don't condemn the author too quickly - chances are that the unbelievable bit of stupidity that one of their characters has just committed is identical with something the author has seen (or even done) in real life.  You only have to look at the annual Darwin Awards to get a sense of just how far human beings can go with something that "seemed like a good idea at the time"  If that isn't enough, there is the vast, on-line collection of videos by people, of themselves, or their nearest and dearest, pushing that "good idea" just that bit too far.

More often than not, my short stories include snippets of behaviour gleaned from that great jumbled warehouse I call Memory - much of it from an age in which, thankfully, smartphones and their miraculous recording abilities did not exist.  I have at times left out or toned down incidents that I felt might present as beyond credibility, and not just because I feared a libel action. Perhaps it was wisdom on my part, perhaps a lack of courage - but thinking about it makes me respect those writers who have been braver.

I am trying to write further into those crazier, darker aspects of human life, even if I have not yet felt able to reveal any of those pieces to critical eyes.  For what it's worth, though, I can recommend doing it, even if you tear the paper up, shred it, and feed it into a hot incinerator after writing - if it is there in your consciousness, it is asking to be written.  How can you say no?

Some Days Are Born Ugly

Some days are born ugly - anyone who knows that line has read Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday and knows that it begins the chapter about the Lousy Wednesday that comes before that sublime but crazy Thursday.  Anyone who has had to get up and face that sort of day knows its truth.  It is such a short but perfect opening line.

I have to admit that my reading has always been eclectic, impulsive, and erratic, as far as subjects, styles, and genre choice goes, and I rely heavily on serendipity to provide me with new and interesting material - one of the great advantages of working at the returns desk for a few hours is exposure to the tastes and interests of so many other people, as the tide of returned books flows in from the front counter and the bookdrop.

A stint on the returns desk is like a trip to the tip (as it was in older days) when I invariably came out the gate with more stuff than I took in.  Likewise, a day working at the library nearly always sees me return home with far more material than I can possibly read or watch or listen to during the borrowing period allotted.  It's a common problem for library staff.

I have digressed (mea culpa, but it happens when I am talking to people and it will no doubt happen quite often on this blog) and should return to Steinbeck.  I read Grapes of Wrath many years ago, and gained a new appreciation of why my grandparents and ancient great aunts approached life with such frugal caution.

My pleasure in its qualities, as well as my gratitude to the author for the way he presented the tribulations and struggles of the Okies, should have sent me off in pursuit of all his other works, but I was distracted by other passions - in my teens I found the Hugo award anthologies, Tolkien, and Dune.

The flood of great Science Fiction - Herbert, Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, et al - and new Fantasy writing, swept me along for quite a few years.  Oh, and I mustn't forget the influences of P.G.Wodehouse and Dennis Wheatley.  What was I doing in the Adult section of the Library?  I had exhausted the Children's collection, there was no YA section in those days, and a sympathetic librarian bent the rules for me.

But gradually, I caught up with other Steinbeck works, and each has been a real pleasure and a revelation. Scattered through the pages of Sweet Thursday are characters and actions that seem fantastical, yet those seemingly impossible moments blend smoothly and realistically with the more mundane behaviour of the denizens of Cannery Row to create an utterly enjoyable, plausible world.

If Wednesday was "born ugly" well, as for Thursday, Steinbeck says "There aren't many days like that anyplace.  People treasure them."  Again, in very few words, he has taken you to a place you recognise - a place you remember, and wish you could visit again and again.  A few chapters earlier, Doc walked along the beach towards the lighthouse and the waves "... basted his ankles."

"The Golden afternoon moved on towards China....." as he walked and listened to the argument going on between the voices in his mind - the upper, middle, and lower voices.  A few short sentences and you know the torment Doc is going through, even as you feel the warmth and beauty of the place in which he is suffering.

One of the skills my friends at writing group are helping me develop - against my naturally wordy inclinations - is the skill Steinbeck displays so well.  His writing is both poetic and succinct, even when dealing with highly complex characteres and situations.  If you haven't read him yet, please do.

Something new in the garden.

For a couple of days over the Easter weekend my back gardens were noisy and busy with grandchildren, climbing trees, hunting yabbies, chasing butterflies, and generally having all the fun that children have when given time and space, and freedom to use both as they wish.  At some point the noise changed - a rhythmic tapping joined the more chaotic background noise of children enjoying a large lawn on a sunny day.

Somehow the ten year old - the oldest child present on that weekend - had dragged a small pallet up into the willow tree by the poultry run, and had begun securing it in a space between four large branches. She had made a ramp out of spare planks to help her get the pallet into the fork, her grandmother had raided my workbench for a hammer and nails, and construction of a tree house had begun.

A few months earlier, it had been a tipi by the creek, using fallen branches and prunings gathered from various corners of the gardens.  I am always intrigued by the things the children will do, make, and build, when they are left to their own devices - even the most screen-fascinated cousin could not resist the siren call of other children enjoying the outdoors.  One child with a good idea will quickly attract a crowd of helpers and collaborators.

Before the tree house, there had been chalk art on the deck, and a group effort gathering firewood for Grandma's campfire - though there was an ulterior motive in that, as they know Grandma usually has a packet of marshmallows tucked away somewhere in the pantry.

When the children have gone back to their respective homes, the garden can seem quiet - but never for long.  Stand still and listen - myriad small, piping voices and fluttering wings tell of the arrival of an uncountable flock of Silvereyes (Zosterops Lateralis), pausing for refreshments in my garden as they migrate north for the winter.

They are uncountable simply because they are never still for more than a second or two as they flit and whirl from fisssured bark, to twig, to branch, searching under every leaf for the tiny morsels - aphids, scale insects, ants, tiny grubs, moths - that they need to fuel their journey.  How something so tiny can travel so far is truly a wonder - and in spring they will pass through on their way back to their nesting places.  For a while, the flock descended on my cabbages, and it was wonderful to behold the way each bird searched the top and bottom of every cabbage leaf, delicately cleaning it of all pests.  Then, with a sudden outcry, they fled into the trees along the creek, as a pair of screeching cockatoos raced overhead.

Soon, it will be red-browed finches flocking through the gardens, and when they are gone, the fairy wrens will have the place almost to themselves again, as the first frost and snow descends to change the season. Not long after that, the magpies and currawongs will be gathering grass and twigs for spring nesting.  Even now, before winter has arrived, the satin bower bird can be heard rehearsing his repertoire as he begins to stake out a territory against the return of warmer weather.

Habits

"In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established." - an excerpt from Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath in which John Steinbeck recorded his daily struggles as he wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Though Steinbeck intended to acheive the production of his Magnum Opus within a certain time-frame, and had declared his desire to write a certain number of words each day, he knew how difficult a task that would be.  He recorded honestly in his journal the successes and the failures - as well as the swings of mood, motivation, and confidence - that anybody, no matter what their creative field, goes through as they push towards their goal.  Maria Popova wrote a detailed and interesting article on Steinbeck's efforts here - https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/02/john-steinbeck-working-days/

How many of us have, at some time or another, tried to keep a journal?  Did you keep it for a specific purpose, like Steinbeck's?  Or perhaps like the journals maintained by so many modern politicians as they prepare to write their own version of history in the  desperate hope of countering the other political memoirs and commentaries that they know will be churned out by their political enemies?

Or, do you try to keep a true and faithful record of your life in all its ups and downs?  It is a risky business, of course - how honest can a person be when recording details of thoughts, actions, feelings, and longings that are otherwise unrevealed to the broader world?  What if your mother reads the journal, or your spouse?  What if your cousins or schoolmates find it, and publish it far and wide for the titillation of all and sundry?  Such abuse of privacy can have a shattering effect upon the creative impulse, whether it happens to a child or an adult.

There have been some remarkable journal-writers - Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, and Henry David Thoreau come to mind - and some less so - which brings to mind the published efforts of some of our more recent Prime Ministers.

For a writer, the purpose can be to keep track of our thoughts, to shape them, and to seek some clarity in the muddle of ideas and impulses that can overwhelm us all to easily - fame and publication are a distant dream (or nightmare).  And, importantly, keeping a journal can be the first small habit of daily writing that will help us build and cement the habit of perservering at the larger creative tasks that we hope to perform.

There are days when the only writing I achieve is an entry in my journal.  Sometimes that can be quite a brief summary of events, or it can stretch out to a prolonged meditation, but it happens daily, and that is important. The keeping of a daily journal is something I have attempted during several periods of my life, beginning in my teens - but, for various reasons, I have only been consistent for the last decade and a half.

Yet, without that habit, that commitment, there could easily be days or even weeks when no writing would be done at all - the task of writing can become like the task of putting in order that pile of receipts and business papers that have been building from a week's postponement to a month, and then a year.  When mood or circumstance make the task of creatively writing seem too large to contemplate, let alone attempt, the smaller habit of the journal can save me from complete failure.

Once the pen is between my fingers, and the ink has begun to flow, the mind is given over to writing - and, even if that writing is mainly about failure, fear, distractions, and annoyances, there is only a tiny gap between the neurons telling that sad tale, and the ones that, yesterday, wrote a chapter that sparkled.

Those fears, or failures, may yet become the stuff of some future masterpiece - those distractions and annoyances could move beyond the pages of the journal to the broader stage of a poem, essay, or novel - or, at least, a Facebook post or blog entry.  Now that some of my own distractions have gathered up their surviving Easter eggs, toys, ipads, shoes, and sleeping bags, and have departed for warmer climes, I can consider whether there may yet be a place for them in some current or future literary endeavour - and what sort of place that might be.  Meanwhile, as Frodo said, the road goes ever on.......

Distractions

Distractions are all about me as I write.  The leaves are fading and falling from the fruit trees beyond my study window, allowing me to glimpse the smear of autumn colour on the Japanese Maples on the other side of my little valley.  A few minutes ago the biggest of them was glowing red and orange against the white boards of the house behind it, and the dark green of pines and eucalypts beyond.

Excited, shrill piping drew me to the other window to find a flock of silver-eyes celebrating the food they were finding in the vegetable gardens.  Watching them carefully inspect the underside of each cabbage leaf in search of caterpillars and aphids made me wish they would live there full time - but, like all the life in the Mountains, including mine, they are seasonal.  Tiny nomads on an endless round, the silver-eyes, robins, and finches, with their larger cousins, the doves and quail, all pass through my gardens twice a year.

A magpie's fleeting shadow sent them scurrying to hide among the thorns of the rose bush by the front steps.  Magpie is harmless to them, I think - perhaps they mistook the flash of black and white for her cousin, the butcher bird.  After a few minutes pillaging the aphids on the rose shoots, they were off with the rising breeze.

They wouldn't sit still for my camera, and I could only capture what may be the last rose of autumn, fading as wintry clouds stole the blue from the sky.

Within minutes of the sun's disappearance, the picknickers come down the road from the lake, striding towards warmth and shelter.  The visitors and tourists are dressed for the warm autumn day that was, while the locals are equipped with scarves, mittens, beanies and coats - they know how swiftly capricious the Mountains weather can be.  Weaving through the walkers are the first of the evening joggers and cyclists, hurrying to complete their appointed miles before the threat of rain is fullfilled. The chilly gusts and prematurely fading light adds weight to that threat.

When the sunlight left, so did the small birds.  If I leave my keyboard and walk through the garden to the forest, or perhaps down to the creek, will I find them there?  Or are they deeper in the shadows, hiding from the hawks and butcher birds who like to cruise the valley as the light fades?  It is tempting - but I have been there twice already today, when the sun was shining, and I owe my novel-to-be at least another half a chapter before I can leave the keyboard again.  There are shadows enough to be explored there, as I hunt for the truth about my characters.

Group Marathons

Daily life provides me with so much to write about, while giving me lots of reasons to procrastinate about writing.  Writing group, for a couple of hours, puts me in the company of people with a common purpose – to get something onto paper.  It is only once a month, and yet, if the other demands of life have distracted me too much, going to that quiet space at the library with other like-minded people helps me reset my priorites and get back on the writing track.

Katoomba Library kindly allows us the use of a study space – our group is one of the results of a public meeting organised a couple of years ago by the librarians.  One of those librarians collates and publishes some of our efforts in the Writers in theMist blog, on Blue Mountains Library's website and this has led to some of us launching our own blogs and seeking out other places to publish.

People drift in and out of the group, though a core has continued on – there is no constitution or committee, nor any fees, or rules, other than an acceptance of the principle that we are there to create, and to foster creativity in each other.  Sounds serious?  Sometimes it is – some works bring tears, and many bring laughter.  We pick on grammar and spelling, suggest alternative plot lines, and generally get lost in the joy of creative writing.  It is serious, and it is fun – and I wish I had taken my solitary habit out into company much sooner than I did.

We recently had a writing "marathon" day – bringing a plate of food to contribute to lunch, we gathered at the house of one of the group.  The house had the light and airy feel of a place by a beach in much warmer climes - it was the only sunny day in an otherwise rain-drenched month - and we sat down to the long table to write while looking down a wooded gully towards the vast expanse of rugged country that enfolds Sydney's main water supply.

The writing alternated between sessions of working in a group to various prompts, and working on a piece of our own, each in our own corner of a veranda or a sunny part of the gardens.  It is amazing how productive you can be when all the demands of daily life and all the opportunities to procrastinate have been swept away by the commitment to a writing day.

Our first prompt based session took a different approach to anything I had experienced – we wrote while music was playing.  Three pieces – Norwegian, Scottish, and Irish – stimulated some interesting and varied written responses.  I love music, and often have it on in the background while writing, but this was a particularly vivid and poignant selection designed to evoke deep feelings.

It is one thing to contemplate a phrase, or some word, object, or picture, that has been placed in the middle of the table by the moderator for a particular group session – you have time to rack your memory, mentally pick up, examine, or discard, any associations such words or objects produce – and another thing entirely to respond in writing to music while it is playing.  The response is visceral and immediate, swept along by the changing tone and tempo of the piece.   Music, like scent, can reach deep inside mind and memory to conjure images we didn't know were present, or had long forgotten.

What an amazing cascade of memory and association is often produced by the initial evocation – as the first image is drawn out of our mind, through pen onto the paper, it in turn wakes more memories and calls forth more stories – stories we have not thought of for years, or even decades. 

Working on an essay about the history of the Bush Fire Brigade I had spent twenty years with, I decided to jot down the names of a few people I might have to interview or otherwise include in the story. Each would have a few lines summing up who they were and what their part in that history was.

What should have been a page or two became half a notepad, as one name and its story called up other forgotten names, and their stories.  These were names I had not been able to remember previously, but the act of writing part of the story of that group opened the memory files of so many more people and stories, just as unexpected sights, sounds, smells, familiar faces or old movies, can also be windows into the vast storehouse that lurks within our little halls of bone and brain.

One day, perhaps, we will truly understand the human mind – how it collects and stores memories, and how we recall those memories – but, until we do, any talk of uploading ourselves into machine storage and living "immortally" in such a state is quite fanciful.  Which doesn't mean a good SciFi writer can't imagine what such a state might be like.  Anything is possible to a writer - even the impossible.