Figs on my tree. I think this time next week they will all be ready to eat.
Grateful for
Health. Safety. Love. Enough to eat, clean water.
More granularly, I was grateful for the kind words and encouragement from my friend and fellow creative writing PhD candidate who just gets it, as it’s been a bit of hard slog this week. Also deeply grateful for this Charlotte Wood interview where there were two very comforting things said that I really needed to hear:
“It’s taken me a very long time to trust that the book will show me how to write it if I just pay attention. If I don’t freak out too much, if I don’t resist what’s happening as I write…but it’s hard to trust that, because a lot of the time you’re throwing stuff away because it’s wrong! With the first draft, the only thing I can do is go with it.”
“I’m always telling younger writers to normalise rejection. It’s not something that you can avoid and it’s not something you should attach too much meaning to. Your work will find its way if you pay attention to the work. The best way for me to deal with rejection is to go back to my work. When I’m really dug in to a work, all of that anxiety about the outside world and what people think of you just drops away. Which is kind of why I write, I think.”
In awe of
Those in the medical profession. How they stay so calm, professional and caring through it all.
Reading
Frankie Magazine: Where to recycle your clothes and shoes in Australia
The Saturday Paper: Bruce Pascoe on why we should bring back Aboriginal food industries
The Audacity: The Ladies Room by Nancy Powaga - “Listen, you can’t tell a person’s gender based on how they look, and you shouldn’t assume or tell someone they’re in the wrong bathroom.” A very moving and powerful piece. I particularly appreciated Nancy’s point about how all forms of oppression are connected.
The Planthunter: A Message From The Flood Zone - “I have read many peer reviewed scientific papers about the link between a warming climate and extreme weather events like flooding and bushfires. I knew, intellectually, that events of this nature would happen in my lifetime. But knowing something intellectually is very different to living it.“
The Conversation: The new IPCC report’s grim predictions, and why adaptation efforts are falling behind. This is rather terrifying reading.
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski. The perfect read to follow bingeing the Pam and Tommy series.
Listening to
Black Magic Woman: Interview with Reconciliation Australia’s CEO, Karen Mundine
ABC Conversations: Dr Anne Aly’s passion for justice
Life Examined: Alain de Botton and the complexity of modern day love
Eating
One-pan orecchiette puttanesca from Ottolenghi’s Flavour (pictured)
Crowd-pleasing Tex Mex casserole (perfect vehicle for leftover cooked rice, FYI)
Tinned tomato risotto - but this time with fresh tomatoes from the garden, and I veganised it.
I also turned some of the huge pile of cucumbers my neighbour gave me into a pickle, which we’ve eaten with tofu and rice so far. Homegrown cucumbers are indeed a revelation.
Drinking
This jalapeño and lime soda is nose-pricklingly tangy and really good! Perfect with Friday night nachos, which seem to have become a thing.
Picking
Silverbeet, chard, spinach, strawberries, tomatoes and… celery! A friend gave me a celery plant during the national lockdown of 2020, which I kept in a pot until a few months ago, when it became increasingly clear it was confined and starting to suffer. I planted it in the ground and it has thrived. Instead of being more like a herb that I’d use as a parsley substitute, it has become quite substantial. Hence I am now harvesting pencil-thick stalks of celery.
Watching
TV-wise, not much! The last episode of Pam and Tommy (Disney+) which I am still reeling from and a bit of chain-watching The Simpsons (also Disney+) because we haven’t watched it for 10 years and suddenly have hundreds of episodes we’ve never seen, which is a huge novelty. I’ve also caught up with my YouTube favourites in my lunch breaks…but that’s about it.
Wearing/applying
Despite Tasmania lifting the mask mandate for indoor retail spaces, I am still wearing one everywhere.
My Bell Jar t-shirt and favourite old Jack Wills hoodie.
Yoga leggings and smart jumpers for WFH (I know - JUMPERS, when it was 27 degrees last week) and posh jeans and dresses for the office. Which nobody sees unless I’m walking to the kitchen or the library, as I’m all alone in my office. Which is not a bad thing when you’re trying to write a book, but I do miss seeing people. As masks are mandated in any shared indoor spaces at uni, which I fully support, either everyone is WFH or coordinating it so we’re not in the office at the same time. It’s just what we have to do right now but it is a bit lonely.
My Vitamin C serum has run out but to be honest I wasn’t wild about it so I’m on the hunt for another…
Thinking about
Things I’m looking forward to. It’s the only way to stave off the despair and overwhelm - but, as Sarah Wilson put it in her excellent newsletter, maybe we should be overwhelmed. We should surrender to it, because then we will stop being so tolerant of the intolerable. Maybe then things will change.
Favourite experience/s of the week
Coffee with my PhD friend. Starting a new embroidery. Listening to compositions for the violin from 1815 by an early Tasmanian composer in an empty room in the library, marvelling at the two centuries that have passed, at how humanity has been here before and it will be again.