In the Southern Hemisphere, June is For Scattering Flower Seeds

Destructive and creative

Dear Reader

Recently I did a memoir cartooning workshop with Celeste Mountjoy (aka @filthyratbag on Instagram¹). The picture above was my work on motherhood memoir - and how I constantly wonder if the practice is self-indulgence or self-compassion. Celeste liked it so much that I left it for her.

And this is Celeste and me.

June is for scattering your children. My fifteen-year-old son is on winter holidays and arranging a million sleep-overs for himself. My nineteen-year-old daughter has gone to Hanoi to rendezvous with an American boy she loves who she hasn’t seen in person for quite a while. She is also going to see my father. All sorts of chaos will happen.

This is her first time travelling overseas alone. It feels like I threw her to the world, and I am holding my breath waiting for my father to catch her. My father has not particularly been there for me since he left when I was a young girl, so it is some kind of trust exercise to be doing this. But, this is this time. It is a time of faith, it is a time of love.

Along the way, she neglected to get a visa for her trip and so my father had to hurriedly sort it for her the afternoon before her flight. “She will only make this mistake once in her life,” he said between gritted teeth. I hate to tell him that all signs point to that not being the case with her.

June is for scatter flowers. Read about Piet Oudolf’s naturalistic planting styles and lazy flowering in Casey Lister’s gardening newsletter here. I have celebrated by throwing poppy seeds all through my front garden. Fingers crossed for lucky dip beauty.

Sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday but twenty-six years may be passed in a moment. Time is not a straight line, it’s more a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you can hear the hurrying steps and the voices, you can hear yourself walking past there on the other side.

- Tomas Tranströmer

.

call me

even if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time

with a full moon and a lone wolf

whimpering bloody-pawed from your insides

if you are knee-deep, puddle-spilled

puking up every warning that I gave you,

just call me - I will pick you up quick as prayers leave lips

I have blankets and hot chocolate, arms locked open,

I do not care what you have done,

never let shame stop you reaching for your phone

and dialling my number; I am no god I am no judge

I am your mother - call me and I will come

- Hollie McNish

.

Have Two

Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the stake rare. Eat an oyster. have a Negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Enjoy the ride. - Anthony Bourdain

.

Where You Going to Run To?

.

On Motherhood

last night,

I woke from a dead sleep

to write

ice cream scoop

on the list of things we need

for your party today,

so when you one day wonder

if I love you,

if I think about you,

the answer is

all the time,

even when I’m not

- Elizabeth A Berget

.

Life

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. - Emily Dickinson

.

Death

From this interview by Ariel Gore with Tomas Moniz in Psychology Today about his latest novel. I really enjoyed his last novel about a queer father and his teenager daughter, so I will definitely be reading this one. And, goes without saying that I have always loved Gore’s books.

Ariel Gore: You and I have both experienced deep grief in the last few years. In my own life, I’ve really appreciated the friends who've reminded me since my wife died that even though there’s a pull toward isolation—and a social expectation of isolation—we also heal in relationship. All Friends Are Necessary feels like a celebration of that truth.

Tomas Moniz: That’s so true. The expectation is that we grieve alone: Don’t leave, don’t go to work, don’t engage with others. I do think some of that is necessary, but for me and my family the most powerful moments of grieving as well as healing happened when we were in the vicinity of each other: cleaning up or holding the baby or doing the dishes while someone else swept the floor or took out the trash or made a meal: The work of living and healing. In many ways that kind of work never really ends; it evolves and changes as does grief, as do our stories.

AG: I love that your character, Efren "Chino" Flores, is so sexual. I think there’s a taboo around grief and sex, but Efren—who has just suffered an incredible loss of both his unborn child and his marriage—just seems to go with what he needs. Did you or he struggle with that at all? Or is it just that you and Chino are male and I’m female, LOL?

TM: I’m glad you’re pointing out those taboos around how we grieve because the first half of the book was written as an attempt to grieve the election of Trump. I needed to lose myself in silliness and sexiness to find joy in artistic creation and activism because what’s the point of this work we’re doing when someone like that can be elected president? When I began expanding that section to the more personal story of grief Efren faces, silliness and sexiness still worked because how often do we lose ourselves in slightly problematic behaviors as a way to deal with the pain whether it’s drinking or anger or hooking up?

.

What the Hell Am I Doing?

I had this habit for a long time: I used to get in my car, and I would drive back to my old neighbourhood, the old town I grew up in. And I’d always drive past, like, the old houses that I used to live in. And I’d do it, sometimes late at night, if I was - when I used to be up at nights. And I got so I would do it really regularly, for - two, three, four time a week - for years. And I eventually got to wonderin’, what the hell am I doing?

And so I went to see this psychiatrist - this is true! - and I sat down, and I said, you know, “Doc, for year, I’ve been gettin’ in my car, and I drive back to my town, and I pass my houses late at night, and, you know… what am I doing?”

And he said, “I want you to tell me what you think you’re doing?”

So I go, “That’s what I’m paying you for!”

So he says, “Well, what you’re doing is, there’s something bad happened. And you’re going back thinking that you can make it right. Something went wrong, and you keep going back to see if you can fix it, or somehow make it right”.

And I sat there, and I said, “That is what I’m doing”.

And he said, “Well, you can’t”.

- Bruce Springsteen, 1990.

.

Notes From My Journal

Senza di voi, forse non sarei qua!

(A text message from my Nigerian/Italian/German male friend, who is capable of sending messages in any of those three languages, and more, to me)

-

I wake up to a text from our nineteen-year-old daughter:

Off to Hobart, love you all.

-

By midnight half of our two families are talking animatedly together in various rooms, and half of them are asleep on couches together.

-
I agree to edit my daughter’s university assignment on radical feminism to get it in under the word limit. I send it back to her in an email titled, Submit Me. She hasn’t packed for her overseas flight, and we have to leave for the airport in a matter of hours.

-

She is complaining about her law readings and having to research all sorts of papers from the 1800s about the construction of the Criminal Code. The parliamentary debate told me nothing, she says. They took hours arguing over even starting the discussion.

I correct her, the fact that happened in the Second Reading Speech tells you a lot.

-

This year for mothers’ day my son bought me a collector’s version of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on vinyl with the money he earned from a part-time job. I felt so cherished.

-

Are you ever going to let your kids read your newsletter, my fifteen-year-old son asks me. Too much bitching? he hypothesizes, laughing.

-

One of our male friends is telling us how charmingly other-worldly he finds our son, Cormac.

“He shows up in space and time. Like, you will see him in the most unexpected places, and he will be there for a moment waving to you, and then a bus passes, and he is gone. Last Christmas I got a present from my family that I really loved and then they told me, yeah, Cormac picked it out for you. I thought what the hell. Turns out they ran into him in a book shop in West End”.

-

My husband was complaining to our nineteen-year-old daughter about her lack of supervision with her little dog, and saying, “that’s lazy parenting”.

She replied, “you said you’d look after my children when I’m practicing law”.

He said, “I will, but right now I am here”.

-

Friends are telling us about the high school their teenager is moving to and my husband² says, oh yes I know that creative arts school. I’ve spoken to the principal a few times.

No offence, but the fact that school is on your radar in not a good sign, they say laughing.

-

Friend: I'm going sailing with him, though I'm scared of boats. 

Me: Why are you doing that?

Friend: I'm trying to..

Me: Oh, you're being a sexy girlfriend for your husband. Like I am being for mine. 

.

I Am Reading

Caroline Overington on why you should read this novel, too.

.

Recommend

I like Sarah Miller’s storytelling and rate her newsletter. Here she is in one of her posts: The Enemy of All That is Right: The Guy Who Ate Fruit Salad.

I relate to the feeling of being intolerant of other’s people’s eating.

I used to go to a 12-step meeting in Los Angeles on Saturday mornings. I went to three different 12-step meetings in Los Angeles, I’m not sure which problem this one was for. My BFF from this meeting was a writer about thirty years older than me who was brilliant and had had some success but was struggling. His name was Bob. I used to take him to lunch a lot and pay, because I was working. At lunch we talked about writing and 12-step stuff and affairs he’d witnessed while working on movies. He’d tell me about macho actors crying over actresses. “I’d say to him, hey, you can’t let this chick get to you. Do you know how bananas this chick is? Do you know how many sad sacks she’s done this to? You’re one guy in a long line of dipshits. Get it together and get back to work.”

Bob was tall and thin with a mustache and a fast walk. He was sober. That wasn’t the program he was in with me because even though I drink too much because drinking is just bad for you period I don’t qualify to be in with those guys. I know because I went for a while and I was like wow … these people can really drink a lot. They are something else. Also I’m just not as asshole the same way these people are assholes. I’m an asshole but not this genre of asshole. Bob was this genre of asshole and a few more but also not an asshole at all.

I bet Bob was fun to drink and do coke with in the 70s and he also got a lot of groovy women to go out with him and even marry him.  We had become friends because another regular at our meeting always brought a giant white Tupperware bowl with a green lid and ten minutes into the meeting he would open it up and eat. The first two or so times I went to this meeting I endured this spectacle on my own. But the third or fourth meeting as that Tupperware came out my eyes met Bob’s and we shook our heads with shared disgust. The next week we did the same and then both mouthed something like “Jesus Christ.”

.

The Storm

I called my father long-distance last night

to let him know how we’re doing -

Andrew feeling much better, the baby kicking,

me taking a turn with the flu, feeling like

I’m inside a glass bubble. My father patiently

waited for me to finish what I was saying,

then eagerly told me about the terrible

thunderstorm, asking if I could hear

the rain beating down. Suddenly

neither of us was talking

I stood with the phone to my ear,

listening to drumming on the skylight

in my father’s kitchen, picturing an old man

holding the receiver up to the thunder and darkness.

- Richard Jones

.

You’ve Got to Invest

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. you’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

- Vivienne Westwood.

.

Adorable

If you haven’t heard of Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol before then you’re in for a treat. It is a gibberish song that is supposed to sound like English to Italian pop audiences. I love the outside perspective.

.

Finally

It is June. I am tired of being brave. - Anne Sexton³.

Oh, me too, Anne, me too. The other evening, I was lamenting to some friends about this difficult time I am going through, and how it is requiring unbearable levels of patience from me because resolving it is not something I have the power to force. And, it has been going on for years, and it keeps me awake at night. One of my friends laughed. He said, “you just live as things are now, and you just keep going”. That’s actually surprisingly helpful advice, I told him.

1. Author of “What the Fuck is This?” that I have been recommending to you for ages.

2. My husband is a counsellor for teenagers in rehab.

3. Oh and hey, sorry about missing May’s newsletter. It has been hectic here.