Writing - Sounds like wish

27 February, 2016

Crux

A writing exercise: Describe something you see differently from others.

My vision allows me a clear view of everything within about a foot; beyond this, the world blurs. Yet when I lie in bed sleepless at two in the morning, without my glasses on, I can distinguish something through my sheer white curtains. Two stars, literally twinkling, catch my eye. They’re the pointers, signposts to the Southern Cross, the constellation Crux. And if I sit up and push the curtain aside, my poor eyesight can make out the five stars of the Cross, so brightly are they shining.

At 10 o’clock when I go to bed, Crux is on my horizon, just above the southern rooftops. I’m comforted by its presence, it helps me fall asleep. When I wake again at 2 o’clock, it’s at just the right angle to shine in my window. Often I’ll sit up and write or translate for a couple of hours until 4 o’clock, when the Cross is so high in the sky that I have to stretch my neck to see it almost above my house. If I’m still awake before dawn, I have to put on my glasses, go outside and look straight up.

For locations south of 34°S, that is, anywhere in the southern hemisphere south of Sydney, the circumpolar Crux is always visible in the inland night sky, even in this city of Canberra, for our population is small and produces only a little light pollution. In the dark sky the five stars of the cross – named in decreasing order of brightness from the bottom star, Alpha, then Beta on our left, Gamma at the head, Delta on our right, and the small one Epsilon – are easy to see.

These Greek names are scientific and logical, but the awesomeness of the Southern Cross has turned some star namers into poets. The blue-white star, Beta, is also known as Mimosa, from the Latin mimus, mime. Near it is a blue, red, orange and yellow star cluster called the Jewel Box, and just below it is a dark nebular, a cloud of interstellar dust called the Coalsack, a black fish shape in the whiteness of the Milky Way. And of course there’s the name of the Southern Cross which came from Christian European sailors exploring the southern oceans in the 15th and 16th centuries, discovering that this star pattern, which resembled the Christian cross, was a useful navigational guide.

Crux and Coalsack. Courtesy Naskies, Wikimedia Commons

But back to the pointers that accompany me as I write in the wee hours of the morning. Furthest from the cross is Alpha Centauri, the closest active galaxy to the earth. Yet, Beta Centauri, a hundred times further away, is brighter. To my dim eyes they seem the same distance from my window, both glowing with the same intensity.

Science is not my cup of tea, I’m not blinded by it, but I am dazzled by the two points of light shining through my curtains, the ones that, in all my former life in the northern part of Australia, I had never really noticed.

Crux_(Southern_Cross)_from_Hobart,_Tasmania, courtesy Edoddridge, Wikipedia

Postscript: My son is soon to be married, and the wedding breakfast will be at the Southern Cross Club.

Post Postscript: He’s marrying an astronomer.

*****

12 February, 20163 May, 2018

Agnes at the beach

A writing exercise. Describe nature imitating art.

I thought how pleasant it would be to pass through the quiet town and take a solitary ramble on the sands while half the world was in bed. […] Nothing else was stirring – no living creature was visible besides myself. My footsteps were the first to press the firm, unbroken sands; – nothing before had trampled them since last night’s flowing tide had obliterated the deepest marks of yesterday.

Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë

Late afternoon, south coast, New South Wales. The last waves of the ebb tide roll in, low impact waves thinning out as they feebly stretch their way up the shore. They wash back, and watery fingers gouge long grooves, dragging rutile particles from a pinpoint, down and out in fine sinuous curves, crisscrossing and lying darkly over each other. Peppery grains gather at the edges of the patterns, sharpening the lines. People and dogs tread obliviously over the etchings; not one is without a footprint. On this beach, unmined for mineral sands, the waves retreat and carry some of the lighter sand into the ocean, leaving rutile behind, a heavy mineral that resists movement and forms patterns like fine charcoal sketches. Mined beaches have the rutile sifted out and the whiter quartz grains put back where they were found, making a new beach that is strangely light, where there are no artworks at sunset.

Next morning, I go early to the beach to look for lines in the sand. They’re all gone, the art has been washed away and the rutile is no longer gathering in dark rivulets. The night tide has stirred and blended it with the regular quartz grains. As I, like Agnes, make the first footprints in the sand, I see the dark specks that soften the glare. In the late afternoon the sketches will reappear, no two lines ever twisting the same way twice, not drawn with a pencil or brush or sculptor’s tool, but with the ebb tide.

*****

PS I posted this piece yesterday about nature imitating art, and today the WordPress Photo Challenge is… Life imitates art. That’s a coincidence.

5 February, 2016

Beetles

A writing exercise. Describe something never before described. Something that makes you look twice.

I’m sitting on a park bench, my feet tucked up on the seat to keep away from large two-centimetre ants wandering about looking for their nest. I can see it, in the soil to my right. Nearby, a crowd of regular-size ants crawls over and under a small Christmas beetle, devouring its innards. The beetle’s iridescent elytra – its hardened forewings – were intact when I arrived, but now one elytron is hanging loose, barely attached. It’s a small and pretty beetle, yellow with blue and purple tints like a tiny metallic-painted VDub. I look back to the large ants that have found their nest, a broad depression in the dry soil. In it is a bed of eucalyptus leaf litter, and at its centre, a jewel, a deep emerald green beetle. Can’t tell if he’s dead or just playing dead. I want to save him from the marauding ants, take him to my safe home.

I have nothing with me except a paperback novel; I pick him up on two gum leaves and sit them on the book, and his little black legs stretch out. Not dead, sleeping. He tries to walk away but the plastic film of the book cover is slippery and he can’t get a grip. I walk towards home, holding the book horizontally, tipping it repeatedly, watching him slide back towards my fingers. He never tries to fly away. Christmas beetles are clumsy fliers anyway; he probably wouldn’t get far before slamming his tiny body into an obstacle. At night we hear them hitting the windows, flying blind. It sounds like someone tap tap tapping. In the mornings there are always a few upside down on the ground beneath the glass. If they’ve survived, they just need flipping over and off they go. Otherwise they’re trapped on their backs and die. Reminds me of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Resigning himself to fate, he crawls underneath the larger leaf where he thinks I can’t see him, and hangs on for the remainder of the walk.

Back home, I put the book on the table and the leaves and beetle fall off.

I encourage him to walk on top of a leaf but he doesn’t trust me, crawls beneath the longest one and hangs upside down.

I take his photo and release him into the native garden in my back yard.

*****

30 January, 2016

Insomnia

A writing exercise. Describe something never before described.

Someone at work or play. Or trying to sleep.

Insomnia. A Chekhovian professor in A Boring Story, which incidentally isn’t boring, suffered from it. He says:

“If I were asked: ‘What is now the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?’, I would reply: ‘Insomnia.’ ”

And for the next 28 lines the professor describes his nights when he doesn’t have the right to be awake.

Yes, insomnia has been described before. However, there’s no insomnia like one’s own.

***

Why does it take me so long to fall asleep now I’m in the second half of my life? Chekhov’s fictional professor goes to bed every night at midnight and wakes at one o’clock. And that’s it. That’s all the sleep he gets. The rest of the night he paces and reads and waits for the cock’s crow. Here in my bedroom it’s presently 12.30am and I’m thinking of the professor. Two hours I’ve been in this bed. My mind is busy, buzzing even, anything but tired, yet my body is weak and exhausted. Yesterday was hot, and the heat lingers. My feet are too warm, puffed up; I’ve kicked off the quilt and even the sheet.

At 10.30 when I lay down, my window was open wide, but so was the neighbours’. They had guests, and their games and laughter and loud voices carried across the night air into my room. An hour and a half had passed before the guests departed and all went quiet next door. Now, despite another half an hour of a fair silence, I’m still awake. The night breeze picks up. In the next bedroom, the bed empty for now, the blind on the open window blows in and falls back with the gusts, bang bang bang, as its plastic base rod hits the window frame. It’s too hot, no point shutting it, the man who will sleep in that empty bed will only open it when he finally comes home. Minutes later, he does. I hear his feet gingerly treading on creaky floorboards as he comes down the hall, puts his keys in his room, then makes his way to the bathroom and back again. Far off in the distance, leftover fireworks from New Year’s Eve illegally explode every ten to fifteen minutes. In the emptiness of the town they sound much closer, like gunshots. Across the street someone walks a dog past the fence of the government flats where another dog picks up the scent and barks out a repetitive warning. The walking dog responds for as long as its adversary is in sight, the barking echoing in the tunnel of the street. Outside my room all at last is silent, but the bathroom light has been left on and is shining under my door. I can’t ignore it. I get up and turn it off. It’s now 1.30.

‘Not to sleep at night means to be conscious every minute that you are abnormal, and that is why I wait impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right not to sleep.’
A Boring Story, Anton Chekhov

At 6.30am I wake to the sound of creaking floorboards, the shower running, doors opening and shutting as the man from the next bedroom gets ready for work. I rise and prepare for a two-hour journey to another town to visit an aunt. I can’t cancel her; she’s 88. I’m a zombie, but fortunately I won’t be the driver. Sitting up in the front seat of the car, I can sleep.

*****

24 October, 20154 October, 2017

Pinboard

Authors today are encouraged to promote promote promote their work on a blog (and on other popular elements of social media that I don’t use). One promotional activity which hasn’t been too time-hungry and is even enjoyable is the creation of a Pinterest board with images associated with my translated works. I’ve recently read articles by two much-published authors pushing Pinterest as an author’s friend. So I tried it. When you check out my board you’ll see intricately decorated pages from the original French versions of my translated stories, like this one from La Revue illustrée, 1st June 1899, illustrated by Alfred Daguet for ‘Princesse Mandosiane’, one of the stories you can now read in English in the Eleven Eleven journal (which you’ll have to buy):

First page of Princesse Mandosiane, in Revue illustrée, 1 June 1899 — First page of Princesse Mandosiane, in ‘La Revue illustrée’, 1 June 1899

Look at the creature in the bottom left of the page doing a handstand while balancing an ‘L’ signpost in his mouth! Reminds me of the sculpted column swallowers in Romanesque churches. Such fun! Why don’t we decorate our pages any more?

Of course, for every one of my translations that’s published there are several others not accepted. Just this week I’ve received two rejections and a notice that someone is already translating some stories I’m working on. Or, rather, was working on until that moment. Submitting stories to magazines and journals has become a part-time job, taking so much time and effort that I hardly have time to translate new stories. But why write it if no one will read it? Between the writing and the reading, there must come submission, publishing and promotion. Fortunately there’s pleasure in it all!

*****

24 October, 2015

Not quite the back of beyond

For a couple of months I’ve been waiting for a journal posted in August, and yesterday it arrived in my letterbox: Eleven Eleven, Issue 19, a Journal of Literature and Art produced by the California College of the Arts. I was surprised at the size of it, about half an inch thick, 256 pages of stories and poetry and art, some in colour.

The editors had published two stories I translated from a collection by Jean Lorrain: ‘Princess Mandosiane’ and ‘Queen Maritorne’, and sent me a copy by way of payment. Seeing the stories in the journal was pretty special, and knowing that readers will have to go out and buy it gives the experience an edge.

But even being published in a free online magazine earlier this year was, I have to admit, a thrill! Another one of Jean Lorrain’s stories, ‘Madame Gorgibus’, was published in Intranslation, part of The Brooklyn Rail, ‘an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and beyond’. I was so glad to read that last word, my home being far far away from New York. Indeed, I’m very grateful to American magazines that welcome submissions from Australia, from the back of beyond (well not quite), since there are virtually no journals here that would take my translations.

What opportunities there are for writers in this electronic world!

*****

12 September, 2015

Thank you

Yesterday I read two writing prompts that gave me ideas. The first one was the Daily Post’s prompt, Handwritten, and the second was in the ebook, 365 writing prompts, where the prompt for 11th September is Thank you. The task is defined:

“The internet is full of rants. Help tip the balance: today, simply be thankful for something (or someone).”

It was funny they should say that about the internet and rants, because I was grazed by this combination today. I was feeling thankful for something that happened because of the internet: a nomination for a literary prize by the editor of Eleven Eleven literary journal. Last month the journal published my translation of Jean Lorrain’s Princess Mandosiane. Knowing little about prizes, I made what was perhaps a mistake and searched for online information. Within seconds I was reading a rant about the meaninglessness of nominations, the unlikelihood of winning a prize, the embarrassment of being one of tens of thousands of nominees. Don’t put it in your bio, pleads the ranter, don’t put it in your résumé.

One moment I was thankful, the next I was fizzing. It took literally seconds for an internet rant to douse my small flame of pleasure.

Digging deeper and reading wider, I found a number of positive articles, a number of writers reminding readers, and me, that it’s incredibly hard work to get something published, let alone to be nominated for a prize, and that that’s something to put in your bio, something to write home about. In fact, since I’m away from home, that’s something I’m going to do.

Today I’m simply thankful for Eleven Eleven journal and for the editor’s opinion of my work.

To illustrate my little achievement, here’s a photo I took at the beach this morning when I saw this rocky man laughing up at the sky. Ha ha ha, you ranters! A nomination is a reason to be cheerful.

*****

12 September, 20155 February, 2018

Handwritten

The Daily Post writing prompt for 11th September was Handwritten: When was the last time you wrote something by hand?

I write by hand many times a day, and indeed was handwriting something for another blog post only moments before I began typing these words. But writing for this blog is something I do infrequently, unfortunately. Translating literature is what I do every day, writing the translation by hand before keying it into my computer. Usually I write with a cheap ballpoint pen or pencil on cheap note paper. However, a German friend recently sent me a calligraphy pen and coloured inks, and a French friend sent me a Clairefontaine notebook with its silky smooth papier velouté. To test them both out, I wrote the fourth verse from St. Patrick’s Breastplate:

The last lines are particularly meaningful to me, for I love the sea and its rocks, not to mention stability… Just this morning, in the small bay of Lilli Pilli Beach, I was snapping waves as they crashed against rock projections:

LilliPilli Beach NSW — Lilli Pilli Beach NSW

I once heard that when you’re focused on a subject or scene to photograph it, you can’t feel depressed. Your brain is too busy getting the shot right. Similarly, when you’re writing out your thoughts by hand, your disappointments and confusions flow out of your head, through the pen and onto the paper. But no one needed to tell me that.

*****

6 September, 201511 September, 2017

Weekly photo challenge: Connected

Here’s a direction sign from World War II Libya. The photo taken in about 1941 is in my father’s war album, and is marked as “Signpost Libyan Desert”. The camps are named after Australia’s state capitals, and might have helped the Australian forces to feel (slightly) connected with home, several months’ sail away.

All the capital cities are there except for Hobart. But this board is a palimpsest, a surface where earlier writing has been removed, scraped off, to make way for later writing. Here, the former text has been rubbed or washed away but if you look closely you’ll see the ghosts of smaller words, including the name of Hobart. Whatever happened to Camp Hobart?

There’s also a bit of graffiti on the bottom where a few blokes have scratched their names.

Searching for the locations of the other place names, I learnt that Ikingi Maryût was in the Western Desert outside Alexandria, Egypt, to Libya’s east. But I’m not sure about Abd-el-Kader, though it had been the name of a popular nineteenth-century leader of Algeria, to Libya’s west.

Thanks to WordPress for the photo challenge. See what the word ‘connected’ triggered in others.

*****

14 April, 2015

Chopin's Raindrop

Today in Valldemossa, Mallorca, I heard two Chopin piano concerts, each lasting ten minutes. They were included with the ticket to the Real Cartuja Municipal Museum which exhibits Frédéric Chopin and George Sand memorabilia in a few cells of the old monastery. Though one of Chopin’s pianos is present in another cell, the Celda de Chopin (a different, privately owned museum), it was not played today; the pianist played on a grand piano in the adjoining Palace of King Sancho, who owned the monastery before it was a monastery.

The Chopin pieces give visitors an impression of the sounds that drifted from the monks’ cells where he was staying in the winter of 1838/39. Though he began his sojourn by composing on a borrowed instrument, in the last few weeks of his stay his new Pleyel piano arrived from Paris. In the cold bare cells he composed a few Preludes, a Polonaise, a Ballade, a Scherzo – pieces now famous. Today’s tourists come to see this very piano in the private museum, they photograph it and even hear it played by concert pianists, but only in summer. I missed out, being here in spring.

Chopin's piano in the Real Cartjua, Valldemossa — Chopin’s piano in the Celda de Chopin, Valldemossa

They photograph his handwritten musical scores, his death mask, his hand mask. There’s little information attached to the exhibits, and if visitors can’t speak to the guide in Spanish, they can only look but not learn. Yet if Chopin’s name is famous here, it is a modern phenomenon; when he and his lover, George Sand, were staying in Valldemossa, they were anything but popular, he having a disease which in the Mallorcan mind was contagious and deadly, and she wearing men’s clothes and not attending mass on Sunday. Even two years later when she wrote her account of their stay, Un Hiver à Majorque, Sand did not reveal the name of her companion but discreetly referred to him as the sick one, the invalid, our friend, someone in my family.

Time passed, and the world learnt that Chopin had been here, had composed here. They wanted to come and feel his presence, hear the echoes of his music in the cloisters, see his music scores with all their corrections exhibited on the walls.

George’s photos and images also adorn both of the museums, samples of writings by her and about her are exhibited under glass, with no indication of who wrote what. Copies of paintings of Sand, Chopin and their contemporaries hang on the walls.

Display for George Sand in Chopin Museum, Valldemossa — Display for George Sand in the Celda de Chopin Museum, Valldemossa

The view from each cell is stunning, a distant perspective with a foreground of Mediterranean plantings in a monk’s garden. While Chopin composed, Sand finished Spiridion, the novel she’d begun a year earlier, coincidentally about monks in a monastery. What providence for a writer to land in her imaginary setting, to live for a short time the life of her protagonists!

View from monk's garden, Valldemossa — View from monk’s garden, Valldemossa

Copies of Sand’s travel account, Un Hiver à Majorque, are on sale in both museums in many languages. An English translation by Shirley Kerby James, A Winter in Mallorca, sells well. Clearly tourists like to buy it and relive Sand’s experience here with Chopin, its ups and downs, mostly downs. His health deteriorated with the winter rains, the cells were miserably furnished and bitterly cold and the local food was unpalatable to them. If you listen to Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat major, Op. 28 no. 15, sometimes called the Raindrop prelude because of the repeating A flat which seems to imitate insistent raindrops – it’s believed he wrote it during a rainstorm – remember him at this low point in his physical health, remember that this music came from his suffering.

As for Valldemossa, I can recommend it if you like well cared-for stone houses and cobbled streets, green-shuttered windows, and if you like to be surrounded by your fellow human beings, for masses of them flock to this village to see the place that unceremoniously inspired Chopin to write beautiful music, the place where Sand observed so astutely the Mallorcans and a few monks left over from the days when the Real Cartuja was a functioning Spanish monastery.

*****