I Am Rudely Alive

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”

Dear Reader

I have been thinking about the antithesis of the social media¹ presence, which is best described by this quote - “I am obscure to myself. I let myself happen. I unfold only in the now. I am rudely alive.” A quote from the Brazilian short story writer, Clarice Lispector.

در درونش امیدی را حس می‌کرد که بی‌رحم‌تر از تمام ناامیدی‌هایی بود که تا به حال تجربه کرده بود.

I’m being increasingly cautious of my social media use because I don’t want to lose this feeling of letting myself happen. Not planning too much, not allowing myself to be described as ‘busy’, not deciding I know all that much about myself.

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This sense of honouring the fact of ‘being alive’ is appearing to me in all sorts of places.

This week I saw the black comedy film, Boom!² (1968) for the first time. It includes a version of the Tennessee Williams’ line quoted in the title of this newsletter, but which Richard Burton says as, “Boom, the shock of each moment of still being alive.”

Still.

Still being alive.

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Here’s a clip from the film with Mrs Goforth (what a great name!) writing her memoir. The whole thing is wonderfully bonkers! For instance, she terrifies her staff by dictating her memoir over the intercom at all hours of the day and, Gestalt-like, reliving whatever dramatic moment of her past she is trying to capture. (I personally can’t get enough of these kinds of middle-aged women characters - eccentric and awful).

The film is a version of the Tennessee Williams’ play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.

It’s an interesting film to reflect on in an age like now. It is the story of ways in which the very rich and powerful can get very bitter and very addicted to things as they try to deny their mortality. Elon and ketamine, anyone?

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“If you don't like this film, I hate you.” - John Waters.

The final reason to watch Boom!, if you haven’t already, is that it is John Waters’ favourite film. Here he is talking about it on the ABC’s Movietime.

Joseph Losey³’s film was a flop at the time but has a cult following now⁴. “Boom! is beyond bad, the other side of camp – a film so genuinely beautiful and awful that there is only one word to describe it: perfect.”

New Ritual

Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.

- Kafka

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Stay Eager

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you stay eager. Stay eager.

- Susan Sontag

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They Needed Me

Motherhood in a picture.

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Four Years

Here’s to the extended breastfeeding mothers. Like this writer, I went to just over four years, too.

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Kids

Children have no dignity

and I really admire that about them.

I love their ruthless response

to injustices, their desire to feed

birds in the park.

To grieve the sea.

Their right to be tired

in public.

- Megan Fernandes from her book of poems, I Do Everything I’m Told

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Deserted

Look at these thirteen pieces from Michael Cook’s series, Mother. So good!

Incidentally, Michael Cook also has a series on display in the Ipswich Art Gallery and it’s also wonderful. And, I hope you know there is a currently a Rothko in there, too?

When my husband and I went to see the Rothko the place was empty and I suggested a seat would be great to really take it in. And you know what - the lovely staff there went and got us two folding chairs. My husband and I probably got a whole ten minutes alone in front of the Rothko in complete silence.

Such a nice afternoon.

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The Trauma Began Before That Happened

Watch the transition from the memory to the source of the primary trauma⁵.

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Being Annoyed is the Price You Pay for Community

Being annoyed is the price you pay for community⁶. It means having guests when you’d rather be alone. It means letting someone live with you even when they get on your nerves. It means showing up for events that you’d rather not go to. It means turning the other cheek.

- Divya Venn

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An Example of the Above

Helen Hester and Alva Gotby on the controlling fantasies of homeownership.

(Feeling At Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing by Alva Gotby).

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When My Daughter Tells Me I Was Never Punk

- Jessica L. Walsh

I say, hon, my being alive is punk. I made my life
out of grudges when I saw the odds placed against me,

when my role was to marry a man who'd kill me
and give me my hot young death, a guy named Charles

who would have nearly did - the day I said fuck you
and throw his keys in the snow? That was punk.

When I called a nice guy who'd loved me steady
and thought what if I can try staying alive, that was punk;

when I had my last drink and surrendered the scene, that too was punk.
and yet I miss the me who would be dead

because I was a bottle rocket, a pipe bomb of a good time
but my being alive is the middle finger I never put down -

I did not let these days go by, I clawed each one from dirt.
When I get my nails done I am cleaning weapons.

when I buy food, when I fill the tank,
I am threatening to survive long enough to piss off

a million awful people to be alive in spite of,
I am promising to stay flagrantly alive:

This is my beautiful house. I am this beautiful wife.
How did I get here? I say, By my fucking teeth.

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Love Song to Brisbane

I’m walking free on Boundary Street.

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Manifesting Estrangement

I wonder if the broader themes of this family story are replaying in subtle ways: the sense of being cast out, pitted against others, or misrepresented. These dynamics may be familiar but not inevitable. What would it look like to reframe this narrative, to experiment with stepping outside the role of “pariah”, not by cutting off contact but by exploring whether your position within the family could evolve?

These are not easy questions, nor do they come with guarantees. Yet they may offer an alternative to the stark choice of enduring hurtful patterns or severing ties altogether. Healing from relational trauma often involves re-examining the ways we relate to others, including our interpretations of others’ behaviour and our reactions. It is a tender process, but it might allow for the possibility of connection without self-sacrifice.

Often the cutting of ties does not release us from the dynamics but simply reshapes how they manifest.

From Philippa Perry’s advice column in The Guardian.

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Disassociation

This, in The New Yorker by Rachel Aviv is by far the best thing I have read on Alice Munro since that awful revelation about her appalling treatment of her daughter, Andrea.

There’s a lot to appreciate here. The best bit is Aviv’s theory, which I find very plausible - that Munro’s insightful writing about men’s mistreatment of women, which she was fascinated by and returned to again and again in her stories, conveyed a level of insight about cruelty, its blame, and its impact on women and girls that appears absent from her horrifically neglectful mothering and that this was the result of.. disassociation.

This, then explains her need to write stories about details very close to home, which she manages to depict readily by describing encounters she did not or could not experience at the time.

And, can disassociation almost become a family ritual? Here’s a tell.

In the Munro family, the word “earnest” had been used as an insult.

Andrea has spent most of her life as an outcast in this family. And, of course, because she carries the shadow for the family. And is punished for truth-telling and ultimately, breaking the spell.

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Three Recipes Against Despair

On not embracing despair by Yasiin Bey (Mos Def).

Recipe for defence against despair from Zadie Smith.

The small things that give adults joy from Kate Forster

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Archival Research

Jenny Hocking (history emeritus professor at Monash University) on the strange disappearance of Gough Whitlam’s ASIO file, and Celeste Liddle’s (writer and social commentator) Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist tracing her ancestry.

Being a middle-aged woman with a love of casual snooping, I have also been researching my ancestry, which I have spoken about before.

And, how lovely is this photo essay of older women and their very young selves in The Guardian?

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The Beautiful Ordinary

I love this initiative. (And that’s my dear friend, Naomi).

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Trick Shot

The best of Gamze May’s very calm but very brilliant reflexes.

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What Your Reader Doesn’t Know That They Know

Rachel Cusk on the highest experience of reading. Unconscious recognition.

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Original Brick House

This is a very boring article, but how pretty the 1950s Brisbane house is from the outside.

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The Art of Having No Overall Plan

Chaos gardening. Yes, I like that term for my gardening.

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Meals

We need to reclaim our meals from the field of nutrition and take them back to the realm of human interaction, of conviviality, culture and the daily activities that define us as humans. As I said, we don’t need food solutions, we have them! They are called meals and recipes; they are called a birthday cake.

The breakfast that I was so willing to give up in favour of intermittent fasting has proved itself for millennia as an effective way to sustain us and to mark the beginning of the day with a social gathering.

From Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian.

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Fate

What remains unconscious appears in our lives as fate. - Jung

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Life Transitions

Here’s a good podcast interview with Torrey Peters on the role of emotional truth in stories. And also, this strange time when identity is such a cultural obsession, and on whether the struggle with physical transition is an experience more people might relate to than we acknowledge.

I didn’t love Detransition, Baby but I still think it was an interesting novel. Did you read it?

The Second Self

Midlife, according to Jung, marks the emergence of a second self, or what he called the “non-ego.” Up until this point, our lives have been dominated by the ego, the part of us that’s focused on external goals—careers, relationships, and societal roles.

The ego thrives on control and stability, but midlife brings a wake-up call: there’s more to us than the ego. This second self, often buried beneath the surface, begins to make itself known.

Think of it as a kind of self-division. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, captured this beautifully when he said, “One becomes two.” It’s a poetic way of describing a moment when the person we thought we were begins to shift, and we’re confronted with a deeper, often unfamiliar part of ourselves.

This isn’t just a psychological process; it’s a spiritual one. The non-ego demands our attention, challenging the ego’s dominance and inviting us to explore questions about meaning, purpose, and connection.

From David Tacey’s Gods and Diseases.

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Haunted Suburbia

By far the best Australian birds to have managed to live in suburbia are curlews. A little account is here for the Bush Stone Curlews of Brisbane - listen to their ghost-like cry. Absolutely haunting.

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Finally

This month I am randomly in charge of designing a table setting for a dinner event, and I’ve decided to go surrealist. If ever there was a fun thought to be daydreaming about at a time like this, it is imagining surrealist dinner parties.

Speaking of surrealism, a word from our sponsor… on noticing and loving the moment, surrealist film maker, David Lynch. We miss you.

“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life."

See you next month, dear reader.

1. Since coming into this new year, I have been operating with more intention behind my consumption of social media.

2. It is available on YouTube for free at the moment.

3. Losey on being blacklisted for Communist leanings: “Without it I would have three Cadillacs, two swimming pools and millions of dollars, and I'd be dead. It was terrifying, it was disgusting, but you can get trapped by money and complacency. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm”.

4. What can I say about the costumes and set, except that I wish more billionaires took a leaf out of Taylor’s book and dressed like this, too.

5. “Abusers can tell with almost laser-like accuracy who’s defended and protected and who’s not”.

6. Two months ago I was talking and thinking about ‘hanging out’, so you can see more good quotes on community-building in this post.