Hello Ladies

Here are some lovely ladies which I completed as part of a fundraising project for our local Neighbourhood Centre. These drawings of staff will be printed onto tea towels along with handprints of children who attend the centre. Drawing the women started me thinking about how we see ourselves is often different to how others see us. When I handed the drawings over to the centre, the staff remarked that they all looked so young. ‘There’s no wrinkles’, they chuckled. I told them that’s what they’d look like if they were cartoons. Cartoon ladies.

Do you remember the first time someone called you a ‘lady’? It’s a weird term, polite on one hand and slightly patronising on the other. We go from girls to ladies in one swift moment and it can happen anywhere, anytime and there’s not a thing you can do to stop it. Because it is how others see you. You might still feel like a rebellious spirited girl who likes to climb trees in your spare time, but that’s not how you look to your neighbour when you’re in your 30’s and perched high up in your pittosporum tree. You’re a weird lady in a tree.

Now that I am well and truly a ‘lady’, it still freaks me out to hear a kid talk about me as ‘the lady in front of us in the queue’ or to be collectively welcomed by someone with a ‘hello ladies’. Maybe it’s time to embrace being a lady. Doesn’t mean I’m always going to be ladylike.

After Gatsby

I left the cinema. Out of the debauched hyper-reality of Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby film and into the debauched hyper-reality of the shopping centre.

The film moved me. It took me back to my teenage years when I studied The Great Gatsby at high school. It tossed me about as I watched it – into the excesses of Gatsby’s extravagant parties, letting the sound wash over me, enjoying the contrast between the early 20^th century scenery and this century’s hip hop heavy bass beats.

In the film, I witnessed the intimacy, the subtle looks of longing, of unspoken understanding between Daisy and Gatsby, and it drew me in. I felt the hopelessness of their relationship. And I felt the overwhelming sense of doom.

Baz himself makes a quick cameo in a modest moustache. The actors each give a solid and convincing performance. I wasn’t watching Leo, Carey and Tobey but rather I was indeed spellbound by Gatsby, Daisy and Nick. I was appalled by the manipulative skill with which those who belonged to the establishment, ‘old money’ defeats the self made man. Just as in a poker game, Gatsby is forced to show his hand. As I watched, my thoughts echoed, ‘Do not show your hand Gatsby, do not give them the satisfaction.’ As much as Gatsby has learned the ways of the rich, trained himself to seamlessly interact in their world, he eventually reveals that he is nothing more than a farm boy, lacking in the social graces which gives old money its power. Gatsby reveals his true feelings and from there, all is lost.

Entering the fluorescent lighting of the shopping centre after the film, my head was full of the messages I had understood from The Great Gatsby. I walked past a couple standing in the walkway with their two kids. ‘So what are we doing?’ the man asked of his partner. ‘I don’t know, having a look around?’ she replied as a question. They looked lost to me and as I opened my eyes to all of the people around me, I felt the futility of what we were all doing there. We were together, but alone, in a shopping centre, looking at things to buy, to entertain us, to fulfill us, give us a moment’s distraction, peace, comfort, joy, elation. The sense that we can have whatever we want, that we can buy our happiness, that by accumulating things, we are in control of our destinies. That we can provide an emotional fulfillment for ourselves and thus be self sufficient. Self made.

But what I really felt was Gatsby’s futility, his failure. And not that he had failed to accumulate enough wealth or status but rather that he had failed to understand that no amount of stuff can fulfill us. If we are nothing to ourselves, then we have nothing. And if we need to accumulate things such as wealth, status, credentials and property in order to please and impress people, then that should be the warning sign that those people will never be able to make you happy. Daisy still stands as the modern archetype for all that is unattainable, the unreachable goal that passes through our fingers like mist.

Like Gatsby’s craving for Daisy, what we crave is to love and be loved in return.  We crave a sense of connection as we want to exist in the minds of those that we love. We want our efforts to be witnessed, acknowledge and appreciated. We want our love to be reciprocated in the way we give it. But this is where Gatsby went wrong. He built his entire life around his love for Daisy, amassing a fortune to ensure that he would be worthy of her. In return, he expected her to love him as he wanted her to. But this too is a futile expectation. You don’t need to do anything but be yourself in order to be loved. No amount of superficial artifice will cause someone to love you. They will love you because you are, well, you. Love is given, it cannot be bought or sold, and though it wasn’t Gatsby’s intention, he put a price on Daisy’s love. He thought that if he worked hard enough that he would win love. But it wasn’t real.

Gatsby wasted his love on people who did not care. As Nick says to Gatsby, ‘They’re a rotten crowd, you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’

Sometimes we have to let go of the past and risk the pain of loss in order to find out what real love is. This is why I am moved by Gatsby’s fate. He didn’t let go, he wanted to recreate the past, but the past no longer existed, except in his own mind.

So as I walked through the shopping centre on my way back to my car, I turned my eyes from the merchandise shining at me under bright lights. Back in my car, I sat for a moment to shake off the tragedy that I witnessed in the film, knowing that I would be home soon welcomed by people whom I love and who love me for who I am in return.

Tiny little apples

It rained all day today. It's cold. It's miserable and so, I am thinking of things that warm my heart. Like tiny little apples. Small enough to fit two in your hand. Crunchy and sweet to eat whilst sitting near a crackling fire. A quiet moment of cozy comfort.

This image with my hands in front of the fire reminds me of a scene from The Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky. The image of a girl warming her hands by the fire has echoed in my thoughts from time to time ever since I saw the film years ago. To me, it looked like her hands were on fire, even though they clearly weren't. A strange and intimately domestic moment captured in film to give it weight.

The Mirror is such a powerful, poetic and weighty film with such a dreamlike quality that watching it feels like you enter someone else's inner reality. Thoughts, memories, reflections and poignant moments pass by on the screen and if you don't look for narrative, if you don't question it, you are carried along by the film's rhythm. It is a film that has the most effective use of silence, spread out over long sequences that I have ever seen.

As I think of The Mirror, I feel a bit warmer. My heart and belly are full and I'm not minding the rain so much now, sitting by the fire with my tiny little apples.

Cloud break

Sometimes my brain needs a break and so I go and look at clouds. Here are some for you to look at too. If your brain is thirsty for more cloud images, have a look at the Cloud Appreciation Society. Yes, I know, I can’t believe there is actually a society that appreciates clouds. Amazing stuff.

Virginia Woolf was right

There is something to be said for having a room of one’s own. Virginia Woolf famously wrote that a woman must have a space of her own in order to write. But this could also apply to any creative endeavor. I could check my copy of her essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ for the exact quote but I can’t find it anywhere in my house amongst parenting books, interior design magazines or recipe books. If I had a room all to myself then maybe I’d be able to find it.

Imagine, if I had a room all to myself – oooh, the luxurious potential I could unleash in there. I could hang a hammock, to lie in while I sip my ice cold pina coladas and read a sumptuous novel or two. I’d play music that I don’t play around my toddler – loud hip hop with copious amounts of swear words, and I’d dance, throwing myself around the room like a teenager. If anyone came in I’d shout, ‘Get out of my room!’ with my face all screwed up. The walls would be covered with inspiring stuff that I’d pick up at art galleries, ripped out of newspapers, old movie tickets found in last year’s winter coat pockets, lists of dreams that I’d want to achieve and more lists of places I want to visit all over the world.

Then there would be my desk. My desk. Not a desk littered with bills to pay, half eaten bananas, clothes to repair, odds and ends like used batteries, broken toys and stacks of paper for filing. My desk would have all of my art materials, laid out like an invitation to create. It would be clean, neat, ordered and sacred. Mine. Mine. Mine.

The pull between motherhood and creativity is not a new discussion, but it is an eternally interesting conversation. How do we make time and space for ourselves to pursue our creative work when we have children without feeling guilty (‘I really should be spending time with my child’), or feeling impatient (‘I wish you’d just go to sleep so I can work on my painting’). Push, pull, push, pull.

So the idea of having a room of one’s own may be unrealistic for many of us at one time or another but let’s not let what the room represents to us be unrealistic also. It represents the permission to have time to create, unabashedly, with joy and with high hopes.

Creativity is important work, and even if your creative space is only the dining room table and a cupboard from which you pull out your art materials (like me), or your laptop or a small sketchpad, know that being creative is essential to who you are and that you must not ignore it. After all, we have a big example to set for our kids by letting them know how important it is to follow your dreams.

(P.S. I was inspired to write this post by Mique Moruichi’s post on her creative space. So, thank you Mique for the inspiration. I am eternally interested in the spaces in which all creative women make their artwork. I was also very interested to see Jenni Desmond's work space as well as the work spaces of Anna Emelia, Anna Walker, Jen Collins and Carson Ellis. If you have images of a creative space that you work in, I’d be very happy to hear from you!)

Car park sushi

There it was. Quietly sitting on the ground in the car park next to the trolley bay. Perfectly packaged takeaway sushi. It didn’t look as though it had been dropped. It looked neatly placed. All of the tempting pieces were lined up in well spaced rows.

What was it doing there? Had some starving and harried person placed it there as they were searching for their keys whilst talking on the phone and buckling kids into their seats, eventually driving off without it? Was it a hidden camera trick to see if anyone would pick it up and eat it? Or could it have been a modern art piece, placed by an enthusiastic art student to make comment on the poetic relationship between fish, shopping trolleys and car parks?

I stared as I walked past, I couldn’t take my eyes off it as though I had just witnessed the evidence of a mini suburban tragedy. Why were you in the car park that day, sushi, why?

‘I’m doing my best’ badge

This is what I know. Since becoming a mother, some days are just crappy. Yes, yes, cute stuff happens too, but oh my goodness, if I had a badge like this in those early days, it may have eased some of my sleep deprived crankiness.

But you know, some days are crappy when you don’t have kids, or when you’re a kid, or single, or working in a beige cubical, or living in a small dank flat with rising damp…Some days just being a person is hard.

Someone I know was made a special badge like this by her husband when she needed it most. This is my version for you.

With Mothers’ Day coming up soon, let a new mother know that she is doing a good job and that her best is enough.