Not a Recipe Exchange blog...

Why the macaroons I hear you ask? Well it is just a reminder of how I put on the extra 70 kgs in the first place. I didn't often cook macaroons (indeed can't ever remember having cooked them) but when I was/am stressed and feeling out of control I crave sweet calorie laden cakes and desserts. Well that's today. It is a cold wintry day reminiscent of my childhood. My mother would always spend Saturday baking the weekly cakes, cookies, slices and desserts. The kitchen always had a sweet aroma and trays of goodies cooling. My Dad didn't think there ocould be a night-time meal without a dessert, and there was always weekend afternoon teas, mid-morning snacks and even suppers during card and board games. It was a fun way to live but not good for a person with a tendency to stack on the kilos if not doing rigorous excercise. Needless to say my whole family was sporty and I had my moments but when I stopped acting (and dancing classes) I began to pack on the weight.

I can say that I am pleased half of the excess is now gone but my emotions are playing havoc with my will-power, despite hypnotherapy! It is holding in as far as fast food and fried food, both really repulse me but it just cannot defeat sugar and chocolate. It is that whole need to reward oneself at times of stress... a reward for surviving it? No sense at all but hey we are talking the sub-conscious here.

Also my alcohol consumtion is vastly reduced (due to it also being calorific and EXPENSIVE... at least anything I like drinking).... so the cakes seem really obtainable instead. GRRR. will need even stronger mind-control and respect for my new body.

Can someone, probably a woman tell me how to respect my new body when attempting to deny a broken heart? It doesn't get easier with age, I can assure you no matter how many times you rationalise and tell yourself that you won't succumb. My dear old battered ego needed a good dose of flattery and I fell for it all.

Am trying to get out and about but when feeling emotionally isolated one's eyes are always drawn towards the apparently happy couples everywhere... well not everywhere just where the middle-classes come out to play. I have been seated amongst roughly 3 - 4,000 people in theatre audiences and galleries lately and what is disturbing is my shallowness. I am judging everybody on their appearance... clothes, what they drink, how they speak and treat one another... particularly the blokes. It is scary that only 3... yep, 3 blokes have passed my supercritical gaze... Is it any wonder I am alone and eating cakes on a Saturday evening?

Well as you can see my dear friends I have loads more work to do before I can claim any semblance of emotional wellness or mood stability... but I am working on it.

Sydney biennale and laying to rest the past.

Today has been a wonderful day, filled with sadness and extreme happiness. The day began with a sweet/sour goodbye to my dear friend N in Sydney as i boarded a plane to make it back to another dear friend's big day. My friend Kerry was to perform her one -woman show at a local theatre in front of selected guests and a camera crew from the ABC's Australian story. For Kerry, a great stand-up but no trained actor this was a major event, despite it being somefour months prior to her scheduled opening at a Melbourne Fringe venue. To have a film crew in the audience was something a seasoned pro would find daunting, especially given the script was still in workshop stage.

I am proud to say she nailed it. The material is so strong. Everyone is caught up in the moment; a friend doing the extraordinary. I am proud of her, just conquering the nerves and having the strength to face her demons publicly, especially considering her nearest and dearest were hearing events from her perspective for the very first time. Emotionally this was a momentous occasion for Kerry, her daughters and her ex-husband. There were tears shed in the auditorium as complete strangers were given a privileged insight into the Victorian justice system.

Even Kerry and her director, underestimate the potential power of this piece. As my friends know only too well, the acting teacher/director/performer and professional theatre reviewer still cannot sit inside a theatre auditorium and shut down the critics voice. Yet, today I became the dramaturg... another role I am comfortable in. However, this was not the role expected of me. I was to be the friend, caterer and general support crew.

I just find this impossible to do. I cannot switch off the producer/marketing head space. I know Kerry is sitting on a hit. Big time! It could do a national run easily.
But how do you speak to people so invested in a project? My dear friend asked my opinion as everyone (and that is literally everyone... oh yes except one regular theatre goer) gave Kerry such glowing feed back. We were all caught up in the emotion and success of the achievement.

Stupid me. I managed to avoid giving feedback at the venue when I discovered her director had very set opinions about the style the piece should take. In one sense she is correct, especially if Kerry is the 'talent'. However, I know this is bigger than that and needs a professional hand guiding the tiller. How can you discuss a project objectively when everybody ibvolved is too invested (and amateur).

Later when all the 'normal' people, the non-theatre people had returned home to their comfy suburban existence, Kerry and I sat together toasting a successful event.

I state again here that I am so proud of her accomplishement.


But then I made the mistake of being honest when she asked for my input. I was very cautious, trying to explain my point of view, but the moment I even hinted that the piece needed a dramaturg and professional actor.... well I lost my friend. The whole ownership issue and creative products is a fraught issue. Only the most successful palywrights (like Joanne Murray-Smith) know that for the piece to 'fly' the mother has to let go.

Only then in workshop can the writer see just what a gem she has created. How many great works falter at this first hurdle because writers/performers think that they alone can make the work 'fly'. I would say this is true at every level of the Industry, from Melbourne fringe to Hollywood blockbusters.

I guess this is why I no longer work as a theatre critic. I have made too many enemies by trying to be faithful to the potential of the work rather than the individuals involved.

I learned many years ago that no matter how good I thought I was, there was always someone better than me.... even with my own stories. I have learned the skill of letting go. It is painful but a necessary severing for the art to happen.

I want this piece to make its presence felt nationally, but I do not want my friend hurt or feeling inadequate. I am so conflicted. It really is none of my business... but basically I am still the woman prepared to mortgage her house to option a script, as I did in the eighties. I was defeated then... (Neil Armfield did the film, and unsuccessfully in box-office terms) but am too timid to take on the heartache again.

I guess I value my friendship with Kerry more... does that mean I am finally growing up?

Mondayitis...or mania?

Am I the only person who looks on the beginning of a new week with dread? Yet, again after a seemingly stable week and quiet weekend attending to domestic duties and my own headspace (reading papers, watching my beloved Magpies play AFL football, one chick flick movie in the evening when alone in the house), I do not want to rise from bed and greet the new day.

Today I have begun with a leisurely lie-in which I justified by reading a hard back on Wikinomics. Yep, it is interesting in a dry academic way but it was not really a priority task. Next procrastination was my own and my son's washing (yep, he could do it himself after TAFE) but why waste all these sunny daylight hours? Then on to that wonderfully riveting household duty bathroom cleaning. Yep, even that appears better than sitting at the keyboard embarking on my final write up of my PhD.

Oh, look lunchtime. Now I MUST prepare yoghurt, hummus and vegetarian lasagne for dinner.

Next the email sort through and on to this blog.

Funny how the hours are rapidly dwindling and I have achieved NOTHING of substance.

If I stop and reflect, and am honest with myself I really do know why I feel this way each Monday.

By the end of June the Exegesis must be completed so that means only three more weeks to go. I have the material I need. I have all the reading completed, to read more is just going to make it all less 'controllale". I have written the Preface structural summary and main points. I have drafted the Chapter structural layout with thesis argument and hypothesis development through to outcomes.

So why won't I write it?

I have been trying very hard to distance myself from my candidature and look towards life after the PhD, knwoing it is common for people to face a void. For me I fear that void. My self-perception for so many years now has been that I am a PhD candidate and trainee academic.

When the Exegesis is done and dusted the Artefact remains, and I have never been comfortable identifying as a writer. I am not. I am simply a writing craftsperson on a journey of discovery, playing with the 'real writing', a novel.

And I am scared.

I am scared I cannot do it, no matterhow much research and analysis I have done into the process and practice of professional authors.

The big question remains do I have that ability to commune with the Muse? To reach out and grasp that very essence of creation?

Also to do this, mobilise my creative desires and abilities, how safe am I going to be?

Now I have worked my way down to the crux of the matter.

Do I really want to embark on that marvellous, addictive manic phase I need to be generative and productive?

Having spent so many weeks trying to consolidate my wellness routines, and stabilise my moods, am I ready to (or willing to) put it all 'on the line' just to achieve at my highest level of creativity?

It's what I have grieved for that beautific state for over twenty-one years.
I have been atempting to control it via medication ever since I accepted the need to be medicated for life. It had to be fought for my role as mother, but what about now?

Surely, as an author, I must go there.
I cannot see how to do it without mania. Is it any wonder, I put it off.

I just wish my supervisor could realise how much I am thinking of sacrificing for this last foray into my artistic self.

I am scared.

Come, hold my hand Calliope.

Wonder women....

I guess today has been one of those days when life seems to be art. I can now see how all my experiences from meeting a diverse group of women throughout my periods of hospitalisation, has shaped my understanding of women characters. The very essence of these women are beginning to find their place inside the lives of my fictional characters. When these real life women speak, their stories are those of my characters. It is what makes my artefact work (my PhD novel) so difficult to pull together.

On the one hand I have this need to be true to the people whose lives have driven me to commit them to paper. Yet, I also need to strive for verisimilitude and realism. This means that I am cannibalising all my lived experiences and interpersonal interactions. I feel guilty that I am 'using' people and exploiting their moments of vulnerability... yet somehow this vulnerability strikes me as being the essence of Everywoman's experience. I have capitalised the E to draw comparisons to the medieval mystery plays' Everyman.

I am attempting to get onto paper the very essence of male/female relationships and the inherent miscommunication and misunderstandings that come to the fore during periods of crisis and stress.

Whilst I sit here at the keyboard I can pontificate and even generalise as suits my purpose as 'narrator' yet I know that as people read these words and those of my novel I need them to identify and even feel that I have 'stolen' from their stories. the essence has to be THAT REAL for my linear plot development to hang together.

I guess this is why my PhD supervisor is asking me to think about utilising fictocritism as my guiding frame.

"Creative nonfiction differs from fiction because it is necessarily and scrupulously accurate and the presentation of information, a teaching element to readers, is paramount. Creative nonfiction differs from traditional reportage, however, because balance is unnecessary and subjectivity is not only permitted but encouraged." Guttkind 1997.

So for the sake of 'scrupulous accuracy' I must use my experience from the talking therapy sessions with my co-patients but must also divorce the key issues and themes from the personal spaces. I need to take a type of Brechtian approach, in that my very selectivity is the space where the author speaks, and where I would contend the TRUTH is revealed in all its' subjective glory. It is my notion of TRUTH and my reading of women's experience based on years of research fieldwork, if you will. My mind is trawling through virtual diary notes and interview transcripts to create the WOMAN'S lived experience in text.

So when I discuss the fact that from my perspective I can easily see how the psychological term hysteria came to be gendered according to female anatomy and biochemistry. What I can also see is how the patriarchy used it to denigrate women's emotions and reactions to stressful situations.

I have seen today, just how many women are totally distressed by their familial relationships and domestic expectations and the price they pay for this societal pressure is personally immense and damaging. One could almost state that Depression seemes intrinsically linked to the middle-class female role in C21st Australia, but that would be to ignore that men do suffer from role pressures and mental illness.

Are women more vulnerable to the disconnect between expectations (familial, social and self) and actual roles in life than men?

If so, why?

To me from my observor/particpant-viewpoint, perhaps the very brain chemistry (or neurological wiring) which enables women to multi-task, and to have more prominantly developed communication areas of the cerebral cortex complete with 'more traffic' crossing the corpus callosum is responsible for some type of neurological 'blackout' or 'short'? Is that the medical the basis for the stress overload so often articulated by women in hospital? Is there actual research on this? If so I need to find it.

These ideas and questions need to be carefully thought through as I write my way through this gender minefield. Watch this space.... I need another 'ablution breakthrough illumination'.

"Bring Out Ya Dead!"

"I'm not dead yet.... I'm gettin betta".
Ah Python. A great way to begin the day. I need a laugh today.

I am again thinking outside of my own head space which is good. I am very sorry for a friend who has lost a close friend from her golden days, Malcolm McLaren. Cancer is such an insidious disease and takes people far too early (or makes them suffer far too long). Having just encountered my own 'would be glory days' last Wednesday I can only empathise with you dearest Clare. How those days in London would have wreaked havoc on many of your soulmates lives.

Yesterday on my Writingnetwork.edu.au response to the student editor of the month's first post, I spent time reflecting on the whole cliched madness creativity nexus as it applies to my own mental health. To then later in the day hear of the death of Malcolm from a physical illness, it seems that any of us who aspire to great heights (whether achieved or not) are somehow blighted to be victims of Fate in some way.

In Australia Fate comes in the hands of the Mr & Mrs Averages that just want areveryone to be perfect, especially if they are annointed with the mantle of 'superstar' or 'hero/ine'. It is the tall poppy syndrome that makes it even harder to live in Australia as a creative soul. Don't dare stick your head up above the crowd, it will be lopped off. Don't dare to be different or you will be viewed with suspicion as deviant. Don't dare to challenge the status quo or you will be deemed 'too radical' or even 'mad'. On the local ABC radio Friday wrap, Liberty Sanger summed it up well, in the week when Malcolm Turnbull announced his retirement from the Liberal Party, and Joe Hockey flagged a possible re-organising of his priorities putting family first. She said: "There appears to be no place in Liberal party politics for people of principle.. no room for the small 'l' liberals anymore."

How sad that I could say that this appears to be the case in both major political parties. The same Mr & Mrs Averages who chop down our tall poppies are the same people who determine our political leaders, and we wonder why we no longer get colourful leaders, flawed but visionary policies and attempts to make Australia a better Country.

Being a Libran, I know that things swing in both directions before finding equilibrium... please when is society going o tilt towards social justice, equality of opportunity and empathy again? Did I miss it recently, and this is 'equilibrium'. God I hope not. Race card being played on poor old asylum seeker issues again on front pages of both broadsheets and tabloids... seems nothing changes.

Is it any wonder I prefer the sanctuary of a hospital ward and my own wellness focus. At least I feel less powerless on these issues. I have choices. My choice now is to re-enter the 'grey zone completely' and not let this crap through, or to roll with it and allow my inner demon free, to react with anger, vengeance and calls for revolution, thus repositioning myself as 'mad, bad' and as my previous boss added, 'rad'. At least anger at injustice gets me to a keyboard... maybe how I can complete this bloody PhD.