The Journey of a Thousand Miles

Today, I received my first rejection notice.

As a writer who hopes to be published many times over, I expect this will be the first of many.  But I had hoped my first foray into the no man's land of publishing houses would have proved a tad more fruitful.  Some  indication that I am not choosing to wither away my life at the keyboard; like a neuro-surgeon whose marathon operation is vindicated by a patient's toe wiggle.

Over the years, I have been told I am my own worst critic.  If the letter I received is anything to go by, it would appear there are others far more eager to dismiss my work than I.  Especially as I considered it the best piece of writing I have produced, if not in years, then ever.  I loved the structure, the pace, the character development.  It just felt right.  If the editors had come back and asked me to adjust this sentence or that phrase, I honestly do not know if I could have.

As it was, my rejection letter took the tone of TBSS, as my work colleagues would say.  (To us mere mortals, this translates as Too Bad, So Sad.)

In days of yore, I would have dissected such a letter until I found inference and innuendo in every word,  punctuation mark, and space.  I would have devoured it only to have it consume me from within.

These days, I am in a more comfortable place with my writing.

And so, I have decided to frame it.

It shall bear witness to my success.  I will hang it in pride of place in my office to remind me: never proffer second rate work and never acquiesce to second rate opinion!

If my muse wills it and the fates keep smiling on my persistence, I hope to have my J K Rowling moment of denigrating those who dared snub my work.

Farming Weeds

I am driven to distraction by the ease with which weeds flourish to the detriment of all else in my vege garden.

I have lost beans, beetroot, broccoli, carrots, corn, cucumbers, leeks, lettuces, mange tout, onions, pak choy, parsnips, peas, potatoes, pumpkins, raspberries, silver beet, spinach, strawberries, tomatoes, zucchinis, and a host of herbs all to the strangling clutches of the vagrant weed.  I have even lost radishes, which is a major failure for a gardener.  Radishes tend to thrive on neglect; as long as the seeds have been sown, you can pretty much count on a crop.  Not for me.

It's not like the climate isn't suited to these plant species.  Our neighbours grow tomato plants like Californian redwoods, which are impossibly fecund with fruit.  We have friends whose backyard corn patches resemble sizable portions of Iowa.  And I continually fail to gain acceptance as a local, having never grown my own body weight in spuds.

The only edible plant that does flourish in my garden is the blackberry.  And for fifty weeks of the year they are naught but thorns, and an assortment of tennis balls, sparrows and neighbourhood kittens that strayed too near to ever fetch again.  They are the horticultural equivalent of razor wire.  And while the fruit is indescribably delicious, I always come away from a harvest looking like I've crawled across no man's land on the western front.  Consequently, I spend most of the year trying to eradicate them.

So how did our ancestors succeed in the basics of farming without being overrun with weeds?

Some theorise that the ancients tended to settle in areas that were fertile in a particular plant, where they just learned to live with its growing cycle.  Others suggest that a tribal narrative allowed them to draw conclusions about the recurrence of certain plants at favourite sojourns on their nomadic trails.  And yet others reckon a giant, black, omniscient obelisk taught them everything.

Personally, I think they must have farmed weeds.  They started off growing snozberries or something, but found their efforts continually thwarted by infestations of wheat, corn, or rice.  And so it was, lacking the sensibilities of any 19th century, middle class, fictional heroine, that they decided to lay down the foundations of civilisation on the more practical choice of fare.  The insuperable, ubiquitous weed.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to harvest my first crop of dandelion leaves, oxalis tubers and onion weed.

Meditations on DIY

Old jokes aside about living nearby, I am not a handyman.  So when my wife started expanding on plans for a home made verandah, some three metres off the ground and fronting the house, I was a tad trepidatious.

You see, my wife grew up with a builder in the house - her father.  Want a new garage?  No problem.  Re-plumb the laundry?  Sure, ready by lunchtime.  Build an unscalable benchmark against which to measure future spouses?  Managed that one overnight.

So, understandably, she despairs at my abject lack of DIY skills.  I have no manual coordination with hammers; secateurs just confuse me; and I have no idea of the difference, if any, between a cross-cut saw and a rip-cut saw.  (I'm not even sure if that is funny; I just googled for saw names.)

I had my mind blown recently by the fact that more than half the world's population build their own home.  (I hasten to add, I plucked that figure from the ether to illustrate a large number of folk - the true number having slipped my mind - but believe me, the number was quite substantial.).  They trust the alpha male of the household to construct an actual household.  One that, presumably, can withstand vagaries of nature, time and children.

I would be lucky to dig a straight hole for the first ... post, thingy.  It would be like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: I'd get to one side of the house only to find the house collapsing back where I started.  This would be my Sisyphean boulder; my eternal penance for some ancient transgression - perhaps marrying into such a testosterone led family.

We will very likely rely on hired labour in the end - for the verandah.  But the whole episode will leave yet another scratch in the facade of my wife's ideal husband.  That long, cold sobering-up called marriage.

My Favourite Childhood Game

Some of my fondest memories of late childhood are of playing cards with my family.

That makes it sound like my upbringing was largely an unpleasant or unforgiving experience.  Far from it.  In fact so far from either extreme as to be mundane.  We fought over absurdities, then made up; we broke precious mementos, and were punished; we rebelled in due course, and were welcomed back into the fold.  Median and suburban.

But I digress.  Cards.  Most notably, a game called euchre.  A simple four-player, 24-card deck, trick taking game.  Score was kept using the 5 and 6 cards as counters (first pair to win eleven hands takes the game).  My father, mother, brother and I would play for hours.  Foregoing even the seduction of the tele for the evening.  The light-headedness, that squeal of delight when you flushed out the only card from an opponent that could possibly have offered a threat, thus paving the way to taking all five tricks in a hand was intoxicating.  Rare, but intoxicating.  I thrilled with vindication when proven correct about my suspicions of with whom the power lie.

Some years later, I taught several friends to play, in an attempt to wile away many more hours.  Most struggled to get their heads around the strategy of it all, and quickly grew disenchanted.

I was interested to see, however, that one partner had obviously experienced a similar upbringing.  She knew the golden rule about the scoring cards: never place the 6 card on top of the 5 card; its too heavy.

My Relationship with My Washing Machine

On the face of it, my relationship with my washing machine is rather a simple one: it washes my clothes when it feels like it, and I pay it lip service.

Bill Bryson wrote that he would just as soon get excited about his washing machine than his car.  I am inclined to agree.  A car is merely a tool for moving one from point A to point Z.  If it does not break down at points B through Y, so much the better.

A washing machine, however - my washing machine ....  My Ariston AV-149 front loading washing machine with 7.5 kg capacity, a top speed of 1000 rpm, and twelve different wash cycles (from a three hour, all-cleansing epic to an über-gentle cycle just for sheep), is a thing of beauty.  Or rather, was a thing or beauty.

When it first came home, it was sleek, quiet, efficient.  It sparkled like morning TV presenters' teeth.  And it disposed of dirt with the moral ambiguity of an old, spaghetti western bounty hunter.  Now its just a squat, jaded, hospital-white clunker.

In its heyday, it could knock off 40 nappies, 6 towels, and clothes for two working adults and one hyper-active toddler in a week without so much as a gurgle of complaint.  Nowadays, I am lucky if it can make it through a  cycle without gouging a hole in the wall, or regurgitating a long lost sock in a puddle of grey water on the laundry floor.

In truth, it is long past time I put her out to pasture.  One fine day, I will carry her down to the kerb, give her one final wipe down, and leave her to crumble into rust flakes.

Until then, the battle of wills rages on.

(P.S. This is not a metaphor.  I really am talking about my washing machine.)

A Beginning...

My very first blog - certainly a new experience.  If I'm not careful, I'll be tweeting next.

Started taking a creative writing class.  Great fun.  I am still very excited about the prospect - giddy even - like a teenager anticipating spending time alone with his girlfriend.  I love being around other people with a similar interest in writing.  It stirs the creative juices.  I think I crave the attention/adulation received from a well written or clever piece of prose (rare though that is); as well as the support from a group of self-conscious novices (like myself I hasten to add) that are loath to step on other people's toes for fear of retribution.  Nothing I write could ever be shit in the eyes of someone who awaits judgment on their own bared soul.

I took some creative writing classes/subjects many years ago, and in all modesty, I was good.  I can see that now.  At the time I was still striving to relegate Shakespeare and Wilde to the pulp fiction shelves.  I would spend hours working and re-working a single sentence, wringing every last rhythm and connotation from the words.  (Almost like Douglas Adams, passing his hard worked manuscripts to his publisher one line at a time.)  Thankfully, the English language is robust and forgiving.

I read a Stephen King short story some years back.  It's okay, I got over it.  Anyway, the character was an aspiring writer who suffered a similar inferiority complex with his own literary heroes.  At some point in his career (and I am assuming this character was at least a partial self-portrait), he just let go and decided his job was to write.  Simple.  He didn't have to compete with the greats; just learn from them.


At nearly forty, I hope I have learned enough to shine.