The Complete Collection | Kinda Sassy

A Desk of One’s Own

April 13, 2009 By Courtney 8 Comments

I’ve been complaining (somewhat bitterly at times) that I have not have a space of my own in this ‘new again’ home in Ottawa. Not that I had my own space in Melbourne – far from it in fact, but here I feel I am allowed to crave somewhere for my own peace of mind. To have an area that is mine, a place that my creativity can rest in.

But there is precious little space in a two bedroom apartment for private space. Having a space to call ones own is a luxury that until now, I have not been allowed. Bronwen takes over the master bedroom because the only working TV is there and heaven help us if we miss an episode of Mr Maker; she will be an artist of some sort one day, of that I’m sure. Matthew is in the second bedroom with his computer, and I have, until now, been relegated to sitting at the kitchen table, spreading out my work and scraping back up everything I deem important in the goal of creativity for every family meal. It has been an issue of frustration and of loneliness for me. I think, I if I am honest with myself, I’ve been yearning for space of my own for years.

The other day Matthew lugged up from the basement and set up a small desk for me in the family room. The desk is made of redwood polished to a high gleam. The top opens up to reveal a green leather writing base that is embossed with beautiful gold filigree work. There are small compartments that can hide any number of notes or books. A single pen drawer has a solid brass button handle to hide away pens and tubes of glue. I find my hand gliding over the top of the desk, feeling the silky wood and the earthy grain of the leather. On the inside of the desk, there are criss-crosses of elastic that have been nailed in with brass tacks, to slide in postcards, or words of wisdom and encouragement. The hardware of the desk is brass, giving it an old world look that stands somewhat formally, but not unpleasantly against the dark stained wooden IKEA bookshelves that groan under the weight of my embroidery book collection.

The view from the other side of the kitchen table was much more pleasant, with the distant hills covered in trees. The only view afforded me here at my new desk is of the freeway in the distance, the other apartment building and the rooftops of homes. I confess that its not so pretty, the smooth geometrical brown roof tiles and the creamy brown bricks with flashes of white balcony edges and a swirling ribbon of black that carries scurrying multi-coloured beetles along the busy journey of their days. But even this view offers its own inspiration in that there is nothing to distract me as I sit and work on my story writing, or type up blog entries. I have more than enough daylight to work comfortably, but nothing to draw my eyes away from the work at hand.

OK. It’s not a room that I can close the door on and be alone. It’s not a place I can pile well read and loved or soon to be loved books around me, with baskets of embroidery materials, skeins of thread and several UFO’s (Un Finished Objects) projects scattered safely around. Buts it’s a desk, with a top that I can close. It’s a place I can put my notebooks on and write without staring at the crumbs left over from Bronwen’s morning breakfast toast. It’s a place that I can learn to love as my small space of serenity, or poetry or manic energy. It’s my small space in this small space of life.

And I think, when I become better acquainted with this space that hold my small desk, I may well just fall completely and utterly in love with it.

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: Bronwen, creativity, embroidery, Melbourne, Ottawa, writing

Story Telling the Story

April 2, 2009 By Courtney 5 Comments

I used to think a story was all about getting from point A to point Z with lots of interesting things in-between. That to write a story you sat down in front of a computer, wrote the first line of the story and wrote in a straight line from the start to the finish. So it comes as no surprise that I really didn’t get anywhere with writing stories and that I failed many times. Writing became something I couldn’t do. It was overwhelming, exhausting and the worst thing; demoralising. I expected the story to reveal itself in an easy to follow flow and when it didn’t, I punished it. To my great shame, I confess that I struck each little story’s fingers with rulers; I spoke to story’s with a cold voice, thinking that I could whip them into shape with strong discipline. It never worked, and I think I may have even scared several story’s away.

So this time when this new Story, still so small, came quietly creeping into the back of my mind, she was, no doubt scared from the repeated warnings to stay away that the other story’s I have lurking there. Story’s who wrongly assumed that they were unloved and unwanted because they were un-worked; who might have tried to tell this new Story to find another mind to be birthed into. But this precious Story is stubborn and strong, she has taken up residence for the last few months in a corner of my creativity, prodding me every now and then to remind me that she does indeed exist but far enough away that I can’t yet call her my own; its self preservation I’m sure.

So I have taken a different tack to try and lure her out of her hiding place. Coxing her with gentleness and proving my worth by having a hand holding a pen, asking Story to reveal her brilliance when ever I can find the time to dedicate to her. She hasn’t started the story at the start, my new friend Story; and instead of reprimanding her, telling her to be sensible and do things in order, I have simply sat and listened, written and smiled. I am to write, even if it is without any kind of order. Higgledy piggledy is good enough for me right now.

Truth is, I’m not sure how Story really begins at all. There is a general idea of the story arcs for the three main characters that she has shared with me, and there is a loosely based plan of getting them from one situation to the other…. but the details are sketchy. Each day I write, I say to the voice in my head that I now recognise as Story, “OK Story, what are you going to reveal to me today?” And Story seems to like it this way. Who am I’m to argue with her? She holds the glory within her; currently it would be generous to call me her typist.

There are times when Story tells me about the same situation twice, with different twists each time. I like to think that it’s a sign that Story is starting to trust me and that she expects me to sort out the little hiccups and make the flow orderly. I like that she trusts me to use the cut and paste tools on my computer when I transpose the handwritten to the computer screen to smooth out the wrinkles.

Because I’ve discovered that sitting at the computer does not work for Story and me. Maybe it’s the clacking of the computer keys that scares her away. There is the very real possibility that I have to still allow a small chunk of mind to work on the mindlessness of getting the right fingers to the right keys, and Story is jealous and wants all my mind for herself when she is telling me the story, I’m not sure. But when Story is in full flight, she is demanding and wants my full attention. So we have come up with the solution of using the piles of notepads I’ve had stored in my writing bureau for the longest time.

There is something relaxing about holding a pen in my hand, feeling the sweep of the outside of my hand brush along the paper as I weave Story’s words in the ink. I’m particular about the pen I use in our writing sessions. It has to be the ‘right one’ – whatever right means at that particular moment. Story understands this about me; she isn’t the only one who has issues. I enjoy the sound of Story’s voice and the nib scratching over the top of the paper, ink leaving indelible proof that I tried, just one time more with Story to fulfil the gift I think, hope, sometimes believe has been placed in me. I enjoy looking over the number of pages filled with ink at the end of a session of writing, feeling the thrill inside that together we have come so far.

I’ve learnt, even in this short time with Story, that it’s OK to write in messy patches. That sometimes things don’t have to go from start to finish, and most of the time life isn’t like that anyway and who was I trying to kid? All those books I’ve flipped through teaching me how to write, and never once did I stumble across the idea that it’s OK to write in a mess and piece it together like a puzzle later. But now that I’ve been shown how and have cut myself some slack, I read more and more published authors write in the same manner. I find it comforting, and I don’t mind that Story is gloating at me; so she was right, good for her; good for me!

I’m not ready to share anything that I’ve written with Story. It still feels too new, too raw. In my youth I was eager to show pieces written much too early to people who didn’t truly understand what writing as a medium was like. It was schooled into me that there should be a beginning, middle and end to the writing of a story, which really screwed up my writing for years, and Story has shown me that that’s just not true. But rest assured. Story seems to be gaining in strength. I can’t wait to see her in full flight.

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: creativity, hope, writing

I Have a Wee Problem here in Canada

March 17, 2009 By Courtney 7 Comments

Last night I was contemplating things that are challenging for me here. Things that make living in my adopted country of Canada a learning curve experience. Things that are mildly irritating or otherwise just not right because it’s not like back home – because back home in Australia we do it right you understand.

Its not that I don’t I find it maddening that here in Canada people drive on the wrong side of the road, which leads to me being confused as to what to teach my daughter in regards to learning to cross the road safely. When I was a child Hector the Safety Cat used to sing a handy dandy song that gave every child instructions on to how to cross a road safely.

This song made perfect sense – in Australia. But here in Canada, when I sing that little ditty to myself, it only leads me to trouble. Because here in Canada I’m not sure if I look left or right first… I can never recall which side of the road traffic is going to be approaching from. Picture if you will, a spectator at a tennis match being played on the television in high speed, head whipping left and right at full speed, desperately trying to gauge when the right time is to walk across the road. Way to teach the child huh?

In my incredibly accommodating, welcoming home state of Victoria, as a driver with a licence from overseas, I can walk into my local VicRoads office, produce a licence from valid country, and walk out with a full Victoria licence without having to even prove I can drive. Gallingly, here in Ontario, I have to jump through hoops that would send a highly trained circus poodle into a psychotic frenzy, and if I screw up my one chance to prove I can drive (I am a nervous test taker – years of secondary and university transcripts would attest to that) I have to go back to the very beginning of the driving scale (equal to a 16 year old) despite my having driven cars for almost 20 years with no major accidents and only one (highly contentious) speeding ticket.

After talking to the chemist, oh, sorry, the pharmacist it is just a little niggle on the frustrating side of things that I blindly assumed I would have easy access to medications you can buy over the counter back home are only available with a prescription here.

And I do find it demoralising that I can earn $21 an hour as a casual worker in a supermarket stocking shelves or putting customer’s orders through the check out, and here, if you earn $9.15 an hour, people say that you are on a good wage for a customer service job.

Oh and whilst I’m at it, please don’t ask me to pass you a Klennex… it’s called a tissue and the brand you are asking for isn’t the one we currently offer in our home… will a Shoppers Drug Mart do?

But for all the frustrations I feel with these little annoyances, I say to myself, “Suck it up buttercup! You came here; you deal with here.”

But none of the above issues have the ability to truly drive me mad.

No. What really drives me over the edge is this.

It’s when I’m resting in a far too infrequent warm bubble bath, and someone in my family simply insists that they have to use the toilet..

Pass water. Piddle. Whizz. Tinkles. Twinkies. Wee-wees. Pee-pee.

When I’m in the bath.

Now its bad enough that there is no natural light in this room which is squeezed into the centre of the building as if its an after thought, but to subject me to the indignity of hearing – smelling – you twinkle right at my heads height as I recline in the bath – oh it is not to be endured!

And every time this occurs, I ask the offending member – did you not know that you had to pee before I got in the bath? I told you I was going to have a bath. I walked up and down the length of the apartment calling out that I intended to have a warm bath… could you not have chose to empty your bladder then? Why when I’m here, enjoying the sensations of warm water do you feel the need to relieve yourself?

Of course, the offending member (my husband) will offer to pee in the kitchen sink, which sets of new waves of nausea in me, earning him the verbal reward of being called a jerk! Sadly that only makes him laugh all the more, thus threatening to spray his pee everywhere, because the sight of me, holding my nose, tightly screwing my eyes shut and singing “Tra La La Laaaaa!” in an attempt to not experience the streaming water hitting the water in the base of the toilet is just too funny for him. Some are more easily amused than others.

And the thing that is truly beyond my comprehension is having a toilet in the bathroom in the first place. The room is called a bath room for a reason people; you are supposed to bathe in it, not pee in it. Even the Penguin Concise English Dictionary agrees with me:

Toilet n 1A A fixture for receiving and disposing of faeces and urine. 1B a room or compartment containing a toilet and sometimes a washbasin. 2 archaic or literary the act or process of dressing and grooming oneself.

Does anyone see the word bath or bathe in there? No? Do you note that the toilet is described as a room or compartment containing a toilet and sometimes a washbasin? That would be because it’s a very simple thing. Bath room – bathe. Toilet – pee. The toilet does not, I repeat, does not belong in the same room as the bath tub.

And I have learnt that it’s not just because I live in a small two bedroom box apartment that I must deal with a toilet in the bathroom; no, no, no! Even the big fancy – schmancy houses here in Canada have the chamber pot in the same room as the bathtub. The only advantage in a big house is there is more likely to be a smaller toilet tucked away some place incredibly useful – like under the stair well, only big enough to be comfortable for oh, say, a two year old troll or something.

I think it is the one thing I truly hate about living in Canada. It is the one thing I cannot be a buttercup about and suck it up. I will, til my dying day, think it is wrongWrongWRONG to have a toilet in the bathroom. And even worse to use the toilet when someone is in the bath.

Now please excuse me, I have to post this love letter to my husband now so it gets to him by next Friday.

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: Australia, Canada, humour, sassy

Singing in the Choir of Blogs

March 7, 2009 By Courtney 8 Comments

Anne, author of the blog Small Town Mommy left a note on the Rams, RAM and Romance post that commented on my use of language.

I love the words you use, it sounds so foreign. I don’t know if it is the Australian or the Canadian, but it sounds so musical.

Of course, the first thing I focused upon was the ‘sounds so foreign’.

This one sentence sent me into what I’m sure is the classic ‘outsider living in another country’ blogger panic. If my words sounded so foreign, did this mean that I wasn’t being vigilant enough and allowing much too much Aussie slang into my blog posts? Would my choice of words mean that a wider audience would not make the effort to read more than the one post they had read, because the words were so foreign: which in my mind obviously means too hard to understand? Was I limiting my audience – and did I even have an audience beyond the few people who had stumbled upon my blog or who had come to visit out of sheer politeness?

Come. Let me show you the inner thoughts that flitter across my mind like an ice skater glides across a smooth expanse of glassy water as I pondered Anne’s comment:

Good grief. Do people in North America really not say things like getting my goat? Stupid question; think about all the weird sayings Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini
has been telling us the French say! Of course no one here says get my goat! Hmmmm, now that I think about it, people tend to call rubbish bins trash cans here… yes, that’s a serious oversight, I need to be much more thoughtful on behalf of my North American audience. Voila! Definitely an attempt to suck up to the French Canadian readers who might one day find my blog… I adore the French language and culture. Wish I could speak it fluently. I really need to go to French classes seeing I’m a Landed Immigrant. Lord, I’ve enrolled Bronwen into a French immersion school and I don’t speak the language! Heeeeeeelp!. Bronwen starts school… in…. wait on….six months… SIX MONTHS? How is that possible she was only born a little while ago…. arrrrrrrrrrgh! Maybe this example proves I could be a good entrant into the Ramdon Tuesday Event hosted by Keely at The Un-Mom Blog. I can be really rather random. How did Random Tuesday Event get into… oh yeah. Small Town Mommy.

You get the idea.

But of course, what I should have focused on in the comment left by Anne – what I have seen more fully with my inner sassy self, is that it sounds so musical.

The blogosphere is full of voices, all telling tales, all sharing wisdom and insights; each writer wanting to teach other people something. It can be a cacophony of noise (a little like Twitter!), or it can become a choir of compassion, understanding and sharing. And because Anne and I come from different parts of the world with different experiences, we don’t see things the same way; nor would we want to. In the sea of voices on the blogosphere, an Australian living in Canada is indeed musical, because I don’t say things in quite the same way as anyone else. But each blog writer has a voice that adds a unique colour in the choir…. and phrases are the gift of language to reveal and rejoice in our differences. Because in a few words Small Town Mommy gave me the gift of seeing that my voice is a wonderful part of the choir, and I’m going to sing my heart out!

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: attitude, Australian, Canadian, language, sassy, social networking

The Slippery Slope of Tweeting

February 18, 2009 By Courtney 2 Comments

Tweetaholism… I hear that its a very real affliction.

And it starts off oh so innocently.

First you create a Twitter account and send out a couple of tweets telling no one in particular what you are up to and that life is all fine and dandy. As a newbie to Twitter you might even miss a day or two and not send out any tweets because you simply forget about it. You do wonder how some people become so fabulously followed. I mean, seriously, is it even possible to have 77, 967 people interested it what you say?

Then it starts to happen. You send a reply to someone’s tweet and they actually reply back to you. A real conversation begins. You are so buoyed at the conversation with one person that you actively start to look for a second conversation. And there is a certain reluctance to sign off from the medium in case you miss a follow up comment.

Refusal to do real work in favour of watching the latest tweets come in seems logical rather than ridiculous. You don’t want to miss any of the tweets from your favourite tweeters…. there could be the one gem of an idea in there that you might very well miss out on if you’re not there on your tweetdeck or at the very least on the homepage of your twitter account updating every few minutes.

Suddenly writing anything that goes beyond 140 characters seems like such a lot of unnecessary work. Surely people will understand if you start writing in shorthand…..

#CountDown: 3 hours =>Next Twitter Tips /TwitTalk.tv 2 air 3:30 cst =>1509 watched Tue => Do Join Us==>RT This Pls>.

Makes perfect sense… doesn’t it?

And so ends the journey from a newbie on Twitter to a burgeoning tweetaholic. And it would appear that it’s not much more than a week’s journey for me.

My sincere thanks to Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak…. for their educationally sound video teaching me how to become additcted make the most of Twitter.

Does anyone know where to sign up for the twelve step program to kick the habit? Hang on… maybe someone on Twitter will know!

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: social networking

Beep! Beep! To You Too

February 12, 2009 By Courtney 6 Comments

I have always had an inner kernel of sassy in me, just waiting to be set free from the confines of societal expectations, but it wasn’t until recently that I really started to allow my sassy to start expressing itself.

Not so with my daughter. My daughter is fabulously sassy already.

Stating the obvious, but here is proof.

Today Matthew took her downtown to get his health care card renewed at City Hall, and as you can imagine on a busy grey work day in Ottawa, people are grouchy, going about their business as if they are the only people on the planet who matter, who have their own agendas and want their own way – NOW.

As Matthew and Bronwen were crossing a street, a taxi driver got sick of waiting for a (4 years old in 15 days!) child to walk across the street… so he blasted the horn at them to either try and scare Bronwen into walking faster or to make her Daddah pick her up and run the rest of the way.

But my little girl was having none of that! No, no, no.

She swung her head sharply around, gave the taxi driver a withering look that can only be described as saying “How Dare You!” in the haughtiest aristocratic way and replied… “Beep! Beep! To you too!” and then, without turning back even once, she kept on walking to the beat of her own drum.

I couldn’t stop laughing with delight as Matthew relayed the story to me over the phone. Bronwen is the living example of Kinda Sassy; she really is sass on legs!

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: attitude, Bronwen, daughter, sassy

Was Jane Austen the Original Chick Lit Writer?

February 8, 2009 By Courtney 1 Comment

Portrait of Jane Austen (1810) - by Cassandra Austen watercolour and pencil

Portrait of Jane Austen - by Cassandra Austen (1810) watercolour and pencil

I’ve sniggered at the insanity of Becky Bloomwood’s behaviour in Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series. I’ve owned the whole series of “Princess Diaries” by Meg Cabot long before I had a daughter to justify them by saying one day I would share the books with her. I’m a big fan of Jennifer Weiner because she made the heroine in “Good in Bed” a plus size woman who didn’t fall into the predictable line of society’s demands for womanhood. If my bookshelves are anything to judge by, I am, in short, a “chick lit” kind of reader.

But for the longest time I have kept my reading preferences hidden, as if women’s contemporary fiction was my dirty little secret. Why you ask? Well, that genre of writing isn’t considered, shall we say, profound, now is it? Admitting to reading such novels does not make you look at all discerning. Not according to the intelligentsia anyway.

For it seems sometimes to me that for people sitting on discussion panels on book shows (like First Tuesday Book Club ), or people who write reviews over at the New York Times Book section can, intentionally or not, appear somewhat boorish in their need prove their superiority to the average person who reads, shall we say, contemporary women’s literature. Apparently writing doesn’t become good literature until its gut wrenching or emotionally tiring so that, yes, you are in awe of the authors’ ability and skill, but still in the end, feeling oppressed. And the good literature that the intelligentsia laud takes work to digest; it isn’t something that you enjoy for a time and then move on.

But I happen to agree with Jennifer Weiner, who in her own blog said;

(Give us) Contemporary women’s fiction (duh!) reviewed by people who do not think that contemporary women’s fiction and/or contemporary women themselves represent a pox upon the land. Reviews of books people are actually reading, instead of the ones the critics think we should be reading.
- Tuesday Feb 3rd 2009

Now don’t get me wrong. I spent a whole day in the bathtub one summer long ago, reading “Fall on Your Knees” by Ann-Marie Mac Donald with baited breath. I knew what was coming in the deepest part of my heart… I just didn’t want to see it confirmed in black type on the page. I’ve been whisked away to a time long ago and felt the softness of the silk kimonos against my skin in Japan with “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden. The gritty desperation and sadness in the story of “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt made me think of my own mother’s life. And I’m confident enough in my opinion of good and bad to say that I really wasn’t impressed with Wally Lambs’ “She’s Come Undone”. I think it was a success primarily because of the hype he gained from being chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.

So why is it that I’ve felt the need to hide my enjoyment of pure literacy ‘girliness’? And why have I felt the need to deny that if I were to ever write the stories that I know are floating around in my head, they would more than likely end up being considered contemporary women’s literature? I dream of writing neither the great Australian novel, nor Canadian for that matter. I do think it would be an amazing gift to write something that would change the world forever, but in all seriousness I do not dream that my writing skills will one day earn me a Pulitzer Prize. A Nobel laureate I am not! What I do dream, is of going into a book store and seeing books, printed and bound, with my name on the spine. Of being able to in some way support my family financially using the talents God has placed in me.

I decided, on a whim the other day to pick up a ‘classic’ in the form of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.” I had been putting it off reading it for the longest time because I assumed it would be hard work, a piece of literature I would have to really work at to enjoy. How wrong I was; it was pure reading pleasure. I confess that I had Emma Thompson’s screen adaption and the latest BBC version by Andrew Davies playing in my minds eye as I read the story, but that only added to the pleasure. The gloriousness of the vocabulary, the extensive speeches, and the very richness of words that Austen used struck me strongly. Such a book, if it written today, would, I doubt, ever be published. Or if it were accepted by a publishing house, an editor would probably rip it to shreds in the name of readability; condensing it into a concise book with 10,000 words less to its girth, slap a pink cover on the front and apologise for its existence by placing it in the contemporary women’s literature category.

But a few days after finishing the book I had a thought strike me so strongly that I have been able to think of little else whenever I think on the subject of books. Jane Austen was the writing heroine of her age. She wrote novels that had the whole of society talking, despite her stories placing women as central characters and the heroines in an age where they counted for very little in a culture ruled by men. Austen wrote domestic fiction, putting the dynamics of human relationships into a sharp and often critical focus.

True. She didn’t sit down and plan on writing novels that would be lauded decades into the future. She wrote the story that played itself out in her mind over the course of several years and when it was published, hoped that people would read and enjoy it. She hoped that people who read Sense and Sensibility would come to love Elinor and Marianne as much as she herself must have loved them as she wrote their stories. And in the end, she herself would admit that she wrote stories to make money. And here it is, two hundred years later; Jane Austen’s books are still being published, still be discovered by new eyes and still delighting afresh.

So now I’m thinking that its high time I got over my fear of the title contemporary women’s writer and just started writing, in honour of Jane Austen. And by the by, indulge my current craze and tell me, which is your favourite Jane Austen novel?

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: books, sassy, writing

Small Tasks, Serenedipity and Mermaids

February 5, 2009 By Courtney Leave a Comment

Are you anything like me? You look at a small task and think…

“Ooh, I reckon* could knock that off in fifteen minutes. Yeah… I’ve got plenty of time before I have to start…. insert any urgent, time sensitive task that must be done – like , say, cooking dinner —-> HERE.”

Except that the small task you thought you could ‘knock off’ was not so innocently small. Nohoho… it was bigger than you imagined. It was even bigger than you thought you couldn’t imagine it to be. It was actually a Big Job disguised as a small task that was always going to balloon out to take up two and a half hours of your time and still leave little pieces of undoneness hanging out everywhere to annoy you.

Like cleaning up a small section of book shelf.

Alright … keep the sniggering to yourself please. I know, since when was cleaning a book shelf ever a small task? But I thought, in all honesty, that it was going to be a small task. Simply clean out the folders I had there, sort the items (keep or toss), wipe down the shelf, and bobs your uncle, fresh, workable space for my growing assortment of current paper work.

Except that cleaning out the standing files meant I had to move some books (I want, no, I need my synonym book and my dictionary within easy reach!) from one shelf to another… which meant that those other books had to be moved …. and that meant moving the sewing machine …. and wouldn’t Bronwen’s books be better on that shelf rather than the shelf right behind me?…. and maybe I should move my fashion books up to this shelf instead of down on the bottom shelf especially if I want to think seriously about starting a fashion blog …. and ooooh, look at this coffee table book on Cartier jewellery…..

You get the idea.

And it’s not often that when you undertake such a large amount of work are you tangibly rewarded for your effort. Just a few weeks ago I finished “The Secret Life of Bees” and enjoyed it so much that I felt the urge to go to the book store, plonk some cash down and buy the next book by Sue Monk Kid, “The Mermaid Chair”. Except that with the bus strike that held Ottawa captive for seven weeks, I have been put on temporary hold of sorts on my little job and have no money coming in, which meant that fulfilling the urge to buy a new book could not be satisfied.

And here is where the serendipity part of the title falls in place. Wouldn’t you know it? As I cleaned out the shelf on the music book case (called because it has the music system on it and not because we are musically gifted) to put Bronwen’s books there I came across a copy of “The Mermaid Chair” that I had obviously bought before I went back home to Australia all those years ago; I had totally forgotten about it. But here it sits, shiny and new, just waiting for me to read it (when I find the time to make a pile of peanut butter sandwiches for Bronwen to eat and organise a few bottles of water), and all because I decided to do one small task before I cooked dinner one night.

So here is a new challenge for this blog. Not that this is the only style of challenges will be in the future, (I’m not quite ready to reveal that side of things yet,) but I did want to create a fun challenge! Tell me, what small task have you been putting off because you have a gut feeling it might turn into a Big Job? Can you to do it in the next two weeks? Are you ready to accept the challenge and then come back and tell me about your serendipitous findings?

*Australian slang term meaning You bet! Absolutely!

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: Australia, books, Bronwen

Song Nine

January 27, 2009 By Courtney 3 Comments

starrynight Funny how a song playing in the background of a busy day can bring back memories and make you realise that even as a child you knew who you truly were… and that other people can have such a profound impact on your true self and that it can take years to get back to the truth you knew deep in your heart as a child.

I can recall very clearly a day as a young child thinking the song” Vincent (Starry Starry Night)” about Vincent Van Gogh was so incredibly beautiful yet heartbreakingly sad – although I was yet to fully understand heartbreak – and that the haunting tune brought tears to my eyes. But Mum said that Vincent was nothing but a layabout who tried to get attention by cutting his ear off and that he didn’t deserve a song to be written about him, even if the song was boring! She made it all too clear to me with her facial expressions that I wasn’t to find any loveliness in the story, or the song: that I was being silly to cry over it. Her behaviour and attitude made me feel that my inner being was useless. So I hardened my heart and turned away from what my true spirit was drawn too…. I mentally walked away from the beauty I was pulled towards and firmly set my resolve to making my mother approve of me… and that meant seeing things in the world her way.

Now I’m 30-something, and desperately searching and striving for my own true spirit once more. I struggle for creativity. I yearn to be more productive in my creative skills; I want to produce magnificence in the world around me. And I sit here listening to Josh Groban singing about Vincent, the memories come flooding back of that conversation and the realisations; the ramifications hits home.

The song was a big hit in the 1970’s for Don McLean, which suggests to me that I have pushed my true feelings about this story down rather than allow it to fill my soul with the beauty I felt even as a very young child. It’s almost as if I can pinpoint an exact moment in my childhood when I learnt that creativity, beauty as I saw it, was not acceptable in this world. And the message I understood loud and clear on that day was that I had to change my inner being, that which I really was, to be acceptable to the one person who matter to me the most.

Your parents may never have felt that they had the right, much less the opportunity, to get what they wanted out of life. Let’s face it. How many of our mothers really had a chance to do anything but keep house, raise babies, and maybe work to supplement the family income? How many of our fathers really got the chance to explore their own talents and interests? Most of them had to start earning a living and supporting a family when their own lives had hardly begun. My parents were like that. If yours were, how do you imagine they felt when you came along? Proud. Delighted. Hopeful. But then you began to grow… and demand …. and suddenly they saw blooming in you all the qualities they’d had to squelch in themselves: open, shameless wanting; free fantasy; originality; ambition; pride. They saw you grabbing the limelight when they had never gotten enough of it. They had learned at great inner cost to be modest and self-sacrificing and resigned – often for your sake – and they said,” I learned that lesson. You’ll learn it too.”

As very small children, we sense that message. We’d rather forget our destiny than risk hurting or angering the person whose love is life itself to us.

Wishcraft – How to Get What You Really Want.
Sher, B., with Gottlieb, A., 1979, 1983, Page 20

Without a doubt, my mother would be devastated if she knew I carried a memory like this around with me today. As a young woman trying to be my mother, she had no strong, stable, good examples of parenthood to emulate. She was too busy crawling out of a situation of neglect that defies description to be purposely mean spirited. She would never knowingly have squelched my inner being; she loved me more than life itself. She was simply a product of her life experiences, trying to figure out how to help another life bloom when she had never fully bloomed herself. And I know how blessed I am that as an adult woman, I now have a mother who cares very much for my dreams, encourages my flights of fancy and rejoices in every attempt at creativity. I’m well aware that for some people, such love and acceptance from a parent will never be forthcoming.

I’m grateful that today I can rejoice in the pleasure of the song; that it’s no longer meaningless to me. I can celebrate the fact that my true self understands, that it is the identical desperation of yearning for the same self actualisation that Vincent strove for all those years ago. I can take heart in the fact that even if I don’t achieve success in the worlds view during my lifetime, maybe in the future the things I created will be seen with the same love and passion that I created them with now. I can rejoice, slump in comfort and understand that my yearning are not mine alone, that it is the same journey that every artist person has striven towards for all of time. One day I too will have my starry, starry night. One day my life will be a beautiful story of inspiration for others. Do you have your starry, starry night already? If not, what will it be like?

Filed Under: The Complete Collection Tagged With: art, books, creativity

Sequins from the Sky

January 24, 2009 By Courtney 2 Comments

loupe

Today has been a genuinely wonderful day – and yes, it’s January and yes, it was snowing all day! Bronwen and I spent at least an hour out in the great outdoors, slipping on the ice, covered in flakes of snow, playing on the play equipment and having a blast. It was a day that was cold enough to have softly falling flakes of snow, but not so cold as to become painful after 10 minutes of exposure. There was a hint of blue in the sky hidden behind the clouds that makes a soul smile; a blessed relief after weeks of melancholy skies.

It never ceases to amaze me the sheer number of different kinds of snow that fall from the winter skies here in Canada. There are the softly falling flakes that are the archetypal snowflake designs that we are so used to seeing in the brochures of department store catalogues. There are the soft drifts of snow that cling to a child’s eyelashes and make her look as if she is wearing white mascara – usually reserved for the exclusive use of drag queens at Mardi Gras. There is the hard stinging kind of snow that feels as if the very heavens have turned into cannons, firing hard pellets of ice, leaving small red marks on any exposed skin. There is the snow that falls and turns into small diamond shapes of crystal that glitter in the sunlight. Snow showers, drifts, blizzard, whiteouts and storms snow puffs. You name it; there are some wonderful words for the white stuff that falls from the heavens.

I confess that when first I came to Canada I did nothing but complain about the cold and when I saw the snowflake decorations flanking the escalators in the local department store, I voiced my negative opinion. I thought it showed a lack of creativity to use such a hackneyed expression of winter, my knowledge in snowflakes being as such that I thought it was an urban myth that snowflakes looked that way. Until Matthew leaned over my shoulder and quietly said… “Ahhhh… that’s what they really do look like.” From that moment I couldn’t wait for the next snow to fall, because as the saying goes, seeing is believing.

I’ve cultivated a new hobby to partake in these recent days. I guess you could call me a ‘flaker’ for short, not that that’s anything to do with the flake we enjoy with our fish and chips in Australia, although truthfully, I could really gobble up a piece of gummy shark right about now in this land of salmon and halibut…..

images And follow it up with a chocolate flake… yuuuuuummm

Flaking has nothing to do with being stupid and ditzy, nor can it be understood as to being a blonde moment. No, this type of flaking is when I go out in the middle of a storm, catch snowflakes on dark pieces of clothe as they fall and look at them through a magnifying glass. OK… so maybe it is a little ditzy! Snow flake watching is when you take the time to really look at the beauty of individual snow flakes before they hit the ground and are destroyed. Go and look at the amazing photography of Kenneth Libbrecht to see why I’m totally hooked on watching sequins falling from the sky.

Having been challenged by my life coach to find a way to enjoy the cold weather, I struggled because I am not a naturally outdoorsy kind of person and the winters here can be very long. For me, the perfect way to spend a winter day is to curl up with a good book, or have a favourite movie playing in the background as I loose myself in embroidery for hours on end. It is not my thing to grab some vital piece of equipment and go cross country skiing or ice skating. I freely admit that neither I nor my husband enjoys watching hockey, I don’t ever expect to desire to go snowboarding or dog sledding and the Canadian love of curling is simply beyond my comprehension. But with my delight over watching flakes of snow, I have found a way to take pleasure in a previously unenjoyable aspect to life here in a new county. It has taken a deliberate course of action on my behalf to find this new found enjoyment and appreciation of winter in my adopted country.

Obviously a challenge can be found in all this. What is there in your life that you need to change your attitude towards to make things better? How would improve if you changed the way to reacted to them? Would it bring to you pleasure to a previously uncomfortable, unwelcome part of life? If I were to ask you face to face, what is the one thing that you can think of right now to change your attitude towards, what would you tell me?

Filed Under: The Complete Collection

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Song Nine

Sequins from the Sky

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