Life Writing Anthology

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2011-11-12T07:46:00.001+13:00

[M. C. Escher: Self-portrait]

Contents:

2010:

Joshua Lovatt, "Autobiography"
[Major Project]

Sharron Martin, "Nana's Story"
[Major Project]

Jo-zanne Owen, "Journal of an Addict"
[Major Project]

2009:

Sacha Jones, "Hunger"
[Major Project]

Carolyn Ranson, "Three Pieces"
[Short Writing Exercises]

Print Anthologies:

[your name here]: a Life Writing Anthology, ed. Jack Ross, with an introduction by Mary Paul (Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2003)

Where Will Massey Take You? Life Writing 2, ed. Jack Ross (Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2005)

Home & Away: Life Writing 3, ed. Kathryn Lee & Jack Ross(Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008)

[Sample]

Jo-zanne Owen (2010)

2010-08-13T09:56:00.006+12:00

[Fire on Table Mountain]

Journal of an Addict

I was born in the back room of 38 Duke Street, Walmer Estate, Cape Town in 1972. My name is Nathan Paul Matthews. My mother worked as a screen printer in a factory which built petrol pumps. My father was a carpenter but developed an addiction to a drug called Mandrax, a depressant, and found it hard to hold down a job as a result. I was exceptionally good at mathematics and science at school but dropped out at 16, and continue to blame the old apartheid government for my lack of education. In my teen years I displayed some promising dancing talent but any opportunity that may have come from that was replaced with getting drunk, or more accurately, inebriated. I now sleep in a car directly opposite the house I was born and raised in. I am considered a “fuck up” in life. I am approaching 40, with no job, no home, no achievements, and a very serious longstanding heroin addiction, which I spend my days unwillingly trying to sustain. I do not make light of this, as I know I have let my family down and lost my daughter as a result of this addiction. I do, however, admit that my failed attempts at living this life have resulted in my acceptance of this label.

25 May

This morning I woke up to the smell of cigarette smoke after my brother, Eugene, decided to smoke in the car because it was too cold outside. The smell of cigarette smoke does not conjure up any images or particular memories for me, but cigarettes were always an issue in our house. I grew up in a Christian home, sustained by my mother’s efforts at forcing us to go to Sunday school till I was about 16 years old. My mother believed that the body was the temple of God, and that one should not indulge in activities or actions that may harm God’s temple. My father did not share my mother’s belief and his heavy smoking was always a contentious issue at home. My mother worked as a screen printer in a factory that built petrol pumps. She cleverly used her skills one day to make the loveliest brass signs that said NO SMOKING. Needless to say this was neatly placed at strategic points around the house. My father’s reluctance to obey the signs was another issue altogether.

My mother’s disapproval of smoking was made further evident on an occasion when she discovered that my younger brother had followed in my father’s footsteps, and started sucking on those “cancer sticks” as she often called them. As parenting goes one has to do things to your children that hurts one more than it hurts them, and for my mother this was one of those occasions. She called my brother outside, to our little back yard, told him to sit down and made him ingest one cigarette at a time. After about an hour of vomiting and crying, she pulled out a second pack of cigarettes to further prove her point.

My mother had unconventional parenting techniques that quite often involved drastic actions. I was in my very late teens, possibly very early twenties and decided to grow dreadlocks, much to my mother’s disapproval. This, like smoking, became another issue in our house. My reluctance to cut off the dreadlocks versus my mother’s dislike of them was a debate heard by anyone who was willing or unwilling to listen. On one particular day I had consumed a fair amount of alcohol, managed to sneak into my bedroom, (which was the same room I was born in) and pass out. My mother, completely aware of my transgression of the day, decided that this was one of those moments in which a parent takes the opportunity to teach their child about the evils of alcohol. Again, my mother used a very unconventional parenting tool, called scissors and cut every single dreadlock off my head. A scene clearly matched to the biblical story of Delilah cutting off Samson’s hair. For without my dreadlocks I had lost my weapon of rebellion against my mother.

6 June - Zoe’s birthday

I am a slave to my own demons,
Imprisoned by the constraints of my spirit,

You were my angel,
I hoped, my redemption,
My release from this slavery,
But my spirit is my captor,

My only confession,
I confess to you,
I am broken,
I am fallen

7 June

Today my brother and I were chased by the police. Some of the neighbours have been complaining about us sleeping in the car and someone’s house got broken into, and of course it could only be the resident drug addicts. It is funny how being an addict makes you guilty of everything. Contrary to what some may think, we have more creative methods of supporting our drug habits. This method allows us to develop our skills of storytelling and hone some rather exceptional acting techniques. My brother has the gift of the gab and can spin a story that’ll make someone with even the shortest arms and longest pockets give him money.

One of our most profitable stories was when my brother and I would head down to a tourist area in Cape Town known as The Waterfront. We would identify the American tourists in their Khaki safari outfits and Eugene would approach them with a guitar bag on his back (which held a very broken guitar, which we had picked up). The story would be that we were a band scheduled to play a gig at a specific venue on the waterfront, ran out of petrol, and subsequently got mugged. One has to remember that this is South Africa and muggings are an everyday occurrence, making the story quite conceivable. Now there were two more factors that contributed to our success. Firstly, we were both fair skinned boys, good looking and well spoken, and it was unusual to see fair skinned beggars on the street, which sadly gave our story credibility. The second was Eugene’s ability to shed a tear on command as though Steven Spielberg was directing Eugene himself.

Now there were some occupational hazards attached to this type of work (if we can call it that). Our reputation preceded us and the Waterfront security was always on the lookout for us. Being chased by them often resulted in scrapes and bruises. Sometimes we would lose valuable props (such as our guitar prop) in an effort to get away.

21 June

Every Wednesday the night shelter in the city does a 50 cents lunch time plate of food for the homeless. We make a point of getting in early to avoid standing in the queue for ages. This attracts the homeless from all over the city. There are street kids, old homeless men, homeless couples, prostitutes, drug addicts, and more. One must be on guard in this type of environment, as every person is as desperate as the next one. Today was a busy day for the shelter. It was a cold night last night and we were all keen to get some warm sustenance into our systems. Now I was really tired since the wind kept me up half the night. While sitting in the queue I dozed off for a little while. Eugene was off talking to someone and I had to stay to hold our spot in the queue. I must have been quite tired because I had slept through someone stealing the shoes off my feet. Now anyone that knows me will know that I am a shoe person. I may not have the finest of clothes but I certainly appreciate a good pair of shoes. Not only do they provide comfort, but a good pair of shoes can upgrade one’s appearance from homeless. Needless to say this is a loss I will struggle to recover from.

[Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town]\

8 June

We were up at five this morning to catch a train to my sister’s house. To avoid paying for a train ticket we had to catch a very early train. The ramifications of arriving at my sister’s house at the crack of dawn meant witnessing her dislike of being woken up early. This was a consequence I was prepared to face as my need for a pair of shoes was far greater. Debbie, my sister was as hospitable as ever and went straight back to bed without saying a word to us. An hour later her husband arose and I took the opportunity to ask him for a pair of shoes. While at Debbie’s house we decided to stock up on some breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At some point during the day Eugene had managed to sneak fifty rand out of Debbie’s purse. Drugs unfortunately change people and can cause them to do things that betray the trust of those they love the most. When the theft of the money was discovered we were naturally both accused. The advantage of not being the only drug addict in such a situation is that denial by both addicts causes doubt in the mind of the person making the accusation, and presents a problem of blaming the innocent person. This was an advantage for my brother who was the guilty party in this particular situation. A disadvantage for me and a dilemma I was presented with. My sincere denial of stealing the money does not acquit me of this crime. For an addict’s lies are as sincere as his truths. This means that Eugene’s denial appears to be as genuine as mine. To prove my innocence my only option would be to point the finger to the actual perpetrator. By doing so I would betray the alliance of the addict between Eugene and I. Now the situation could have gone one of two ways depending on the decision I took. If I were too expose my brother as the perpetrator, he would be told to leave, in which case I would have to leave with him. Denying the act without exposing the perpetrator would cause my sister to have a suspicion of both us, however, this will be outweighed by the doubt and inability of my sister to possibly blame an innocent person. The ability of the addict to manipulate a situation is based on a premise of a warped understanding of psychology. Based on my understanding of my sister’s psychology I chose the option that of course did not betray my brother and still provided me with a degree of innocence, although tainted with suspicion. A consequence I was prepared to take.

29 November

Today was my mother’s birthday and since we have no money to buy her a present, we decided to use the only resource available to us, and that was time. With this time we decided to do the one thing we knew would please our mother. We surprised her by being in church on Sunday morning. Needless to say, the pleasure on her face was in fact “priceless”. To understand the meaning in this gift, one has to understand our experience of religion. We were forced to attend Sunday school every Sunday till we were in our late teens. In addition to this we had a father who was a very proud catholic, who never attended mass, but over a number of years would wake up the family at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to say the “Our Father”. We would all have to kneel around our parent’s bed and recite the Lord’s Prayer followed by the “Hail Mary”. A few hours after our Sunday morning prayer we would put on our Sunday best and attend the Baptist Church. On some of these days a few of the neighbours’ children would go to church with us to receive their religious education. One particular boy named Alistair often attended Sunday school with us. While our Sunday school attendance was involuntary, Alistair’s was voluntary. While the reason for our forced attendance was for religious benefits, Alistair’s was for financial benefits. When the collection bag came around, we would all sing along while putting our coins in the bag. The song, we sang went like this:

Droppings, droppings, droppings, droppings,
Here the pennies fall, everyone for Jesus,
He shall have them all.

Instead, Alistair would sing:

Droppings, droppings, droppings, droppings,
Here the pennies fall, everyone for Alistair,
He shall have them all.

He would sing this while slyly taking out coins instead of putting them in the bag. Nobody ever found out about Alistair stealing God’s money, but I am sure stealing from God was what the Catholics would consider a mortal sin. I was brought up a Christian and karma does not form part of my fundamental beliefs, but something has to be said of it. Many years later Alistair was pushed off a train in Cape Town, and lost an arm and a leg. Of course I am not saying that he was punished by the universe or God for his wrongful actions in his youth, but it still leaves one wondering.

22 December

Today I saw Donovan who was in my dance crew when I was in my teens. We were quite good and competed in dancing competitions and did really well. I always loved dancing and should I have rejected the evils of this world I believe I may have had a future in it. To gain perfection at something one has to practise as much as one can, and that is why, from about 14 years old I would tell my mother that I was going to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon, but instead go to a nightclub which opened up for afternoon sessions to develop my dance techniques. She knew I was lying but just didn’t know where I was really going. Until one Saturday while I was breaking out my moves on the dance floor I heard the DJ say, “Nathan and Eugene your mother is here to pick you up, please come to the door”. Any teenager will tell you that there is nothing worse than one of your parents picking you up at the local disco or worse, making their presence known. Since I was not supposed to be at the club, my mother did more than make her presence know. She hobbled into the club with crutches because she had a broken foot at the time, and hit Eugene and I right out of the club with her crutches. We stayed away from the club for a long time after that. My mother certainly was unconventional.

1 January

I am not particularly fond of clichés as they assume everyone has the same experiences and in order for them to make sense one has to have a particular experience relevant to a particular cliché. For example, the cliché “shit happens”, although a more contemporary cliché it is one that to some extent reflects the events of my life. Or “same shit different day” pretty much exemplifies my life. Every day I get up and follow the same routine, which involves getting enough money to get me through the day without experiencing the sickness that comes from withdrawal. One could say it is just “another day another dollar” for me. On some occasions “the shit may hit the fan” but that is “all in a day’s work”. However, the cliché “time is money” has no real relevance to my life. Time has never been a commodity for me, it is a resource I have in abundance, and is not worth much at all. Time can be both a hindrance and a luxury. The problem with having too much time is that one is given the time to contemplate the past, regrets and mistakes too much.

- Jo-zanne Owen
(6/6/2010)

•

[Neil Young Live (2009)]

"Needle And The Damage Done"

By Neil Young

Sharron Martin (2010)

2010-07-17T08:32:00.005+12:00

[Searching for Survivors]

Nana's Story:
The story of Doreen Barbara Jane
Survivor of the Napier Earthquake
1931

It was a sunny morning in Napier on Monday the third of February 1931. Doreen Jane was ten years old and lived in a small brick house in central Napier, with her parents and eight other siblings. It had been a very hot dry summer and this day was no different, stifling even in the early morning. It was all action in the Jane household because it was the first day back to school after the summer holidays. Doreen and her brothers and sisters were busy hunting for shoes, pencil cases and all the other school paraphernalia that had been cheerfully ignored during the long hot days of swimming and playing. Today was also special because her brother Laurence turned five during the holidays and this was to be his first day at school.

Times were hard and families were big. New Zealand was still recovering from the depression and parents struggled to provide everything that a growing family needed. Finding clothes for everyone was the biggest problem; every family had a sewing machine and they learned to use whatever fabrics were available to them. People had to be resourceful; Doreen’s mother taught her daughters how to carefully stitch home-made underwear out of the used flour bags. Laurence had been fully kitted out in new clothes for his big day at school and he was very excited.

Finally everyone was dressed and ready. “Keep an eye on him, please, pet”, called their Mother from the front door. Doreen promised that she would as she waved from the street. She took little Laurence by the hand and along with Samuel and Lorna they began the short walk to school. The first day was always fun, the children were excited to catch up with all their friends and had a lot to talk about after such a long break. The morning passed quickly and before they knew it the bell went for morning tea.

This particular day they were really lucky because the teachers had a meeting and the children were allowed an extra fifteen minutes of playtime. Skipping was the favourite game of the day. One child on either end busy twirling while the others lined up and took their turn to skip. Doreen was on one end of the rope, as she swung, round and round, her sister Lorna jumped. Suddenly she noticed that the ground started rippling. Doreen though that maybe they were jumping too hard and wrecking the playground. She stopped turning the rope to tell Lorna, just as she did a huge old Kauri tree started to lean back and began ripping its roots right out of the ground. The children had all stopped playing by now and everybody stood fascinated, watching the giant tree groaning and heaving. Eventually the roots were free and the tree crashed down with an almighty bang right in the middle of the street, scattering dust, branches and a cloud of squawking birdlife.

Just then the headmaster came rushing out of the school, red faced and with a strange look on his face. Doreen thought “we’re in big trouble now”, it was strange though, they had skipped just as hard in previous years and never knocked anything down, certainly not a whole tree. “Get up the gate”, the headmaster shouted. “Come on right now, all children, get up the gate”. Then the ground started shaking, there was a low rumbling sound. Doreen suddenly recognised the look on the headmasters face, raw fear, she glanced around and all the teachers looked the same. She didn’t understand what was happening but she knew that it was serious.

All the children started to run to the gate. Suddenly Doreen stopped to look for her little brother. She turned to Lorna, “where’s Laurence?” she cried. Lorna said that he was in the toilets when the tree fell over, the noise frightened him and he ran out bare bottomed, without his new trousers. When he realised he ran back in to fetch them. Both sisters looked on horrified, as part of the school including the brick toilet block came crashing down in a heap of rubble, dust and smoke, on top of their little brother. Doreen felt sick; she had promised to look after him, what was she going to tell her Mother?

They ran to tell the headmaster what had happened. He raced to the caretakers shed and pulled out a shovel. As he dug Doreen and Lorna and the rest of the teachers worked to clear the bricks and rubble from the pile. The stench from the cracked sewage pipes was overwhelming but they struggled on. The headmaster dug frantically, his shirt black with sweat and forehead dripping. Suddenly he stopped and looked down into the hole in the rubble. He cleared a patch with his hand and then stuck the shovel in again. They heard it connect with a dull thud. “Ouch”, cried Laurence. “Watch my head”. Tears of relief flowed down the girls faces as they gently pulled little Laurence out from under the debris.

He was alive but both of his legs were broken. The head master ran out to the street and hailed a passing truck to take him to the hospital. Unfortunately when they arrived, the hospital was in worse shape than he was and Laurence was treated by the Red Cross who were busy setting up tents across the street. Many people had been killed and injured by the collapse of the hospital building. The unfortunate timing of the quake meant they there had just been a shift change and a lot of the night duty staff had just gone to bed. The nurse’s home had completely collapsed on top of them crushing eleven of the sleeping staff.

[Nurses' Home]

Doreen and Lorna were sent home with the rest of the children. They ran along the street anxious to be reunited with their Mother. As the girls hurried up the hill they passed what had been, a couple of hours previously the technical college, it was now reduced to a giant heap of debris. Some of the students, bloodied and bewildered were sitting outside crying. It felt like some kind of nightmare, everywhere they looked all they could see was thick dust, broken buildings and injured people. They hurried on, becoming more and more worried about what they were likely to find when they got home. Doreen realised that so far she had not seen a single brick building that had survived the quake. Fear squirmed inside her and she grabbed Lorna’s hand and hurried on.

They turned the corner and there it was. The home that they had all been so eager to leave that morning was now a dusty pile of bricks and rubble. It had been completely destroyed. The girls stood there in complete shock, trying to reconcile this mess with the house they had left just a few hours before. Too scared to say anything Doreen stood stock still, terrified that her mother was dead. Just then Lorna said “it’s ok, she’s over there”. They turned around and there she was, in the park across the street sitting on a bench with their little brothers and sisters. It was going to be ok, they were all alive. Their Mother was feeding little Desmond who was only four weeks old and when she saw them she stood up and waved them over. The girls rushed over and hugged her, almost sick with relief that she was still alive. Tearfully they told her everything that had happened that morning.

As they were talking the priest rode up on his bicycle and said that there was a tidal wave coming and that everyone had to get up to the top of the hill as fast as possible. They loaded the little ones into the pram and took off as quickly as possible. It felt like the longest walk in the world, the younger children didn’t know what a tidal wave was but Doreen did. She kept looking back over her shoulder, expecting to see a giant curl of water coming at them any second. Once they reached the top, their mother assured them that they would be all right.

Even the biggest wave couldn’t reach them now. Just then their Father arrived and started organising everything. They were all to stay on that hill for the night so they needed some sort of shelter. Doreen’s Father was the skipper on the Agnes Martin and he knew there were tarpaulins on the boat. Despite the risk of an imminent Tsunami he returned to his boat to get tarpaulins for everyone to sleep under. When he returned the men put together make shift tents and everyone was allocated a place to sleep. There were five or six families under each tarpaulin and it was a miserable night, they were constantly rocked by after-shakes and terrified of the threat of tidal waves. It never really got dark though, the amber glow from the fire penetrated the inky night. They coughed and choked on the hill as the city of Napier burned beneath them. Ash fell like filthy snowflakes and by morning the grass on the hill was black with soot.

[Napier in flames]

Doreen overheard her parents talking about how the fires started. The chemist shops kept gas jets burning to melt the wax used to seal prescriptions, when the earthquake struck they were knocked to the ground and started three major fires. The contents of the chemist shops made good fuel for the fires and they were well under way before anyone could do anything. He said that the central fire station in Napier was completely destroyed and the fire engines were trapped underneath it. The quake cracked the water pipes and once they broke underground the water quickly ran out so there was nothing to fight the fires with.

Doreen listened in horror as he went on to describe how the sailors from the HMS Veronica tried to rescue as many people as they could before the fires took hold. Apparently many people lay alive, trapped under the remains of broken buildings, waiting as the fire approached. Almost constant aftershocks and collapsing buildings all around them made it almost impossible to get anyone out alive. Some of the rescuers lost their own lives after becoming trapped by the fires or by falling debris. Soon they just couldn’t do anymore and the fires were left to burn themselves out, taking with them people, paperwork and in some cases the entire possessions of the city residents.

Doreen and her family were left with virtually nothing but the clothes they were wearing. However, there was no complaining, they were homeless, terrified and shocked to the core but they knew they were the lucky ones, both parents and nine children all alive, in a town where hundreds lay dead and dying. Looking down on the inferno below them from the safety of the hilltop, Doreen was just happy to be alive and to be with her family.

By the next morning the threat of a tidal wave had been dismissed. Men came up from the town and told them that the sea had gone out in Napier and apparently it was staying out. The families were instructed to go down to Nelson Park where the Red Cross had set up tents with food and emergency supplies. Doreen had never seen anything like it, there were hundreds of people, tents as far as the eye could see and official looking people in uniforms giving orders. The Jane family were shown to a tent where they spend the next two days. “See, it’s just like camping” her mother said. It was the fourth of February and that was the day that the city of Napier was officially evacuated. The water and sewage pipes were broken, it was mid-summer and the risk of disease was high. She didn’t want to leave but Doreen knew they had no choice.

Five thousand people left Napier over the next forty eight hours. Some went to stay with relatives but those with nowhere to go were billeted out to families in the surrounding region. The Jane family were too big and they were told and they were going to have to be split up. Doreen was terrified; a kind lady from the Salvation Army promised her she would try to find a place that she and Lorna could go together. She held true to her word and Doreen and Lorna were told that they would be going to stay with the Headmaster of Sampson School and his wife. First of all everyone was going together to Palmerston North and then on to different places after that.

About twenty families clambered aboard a huge bus. There were doors down both sides and the long seats ran across the entire width of the bus. They all got settled and soon they were off. As they drove through the devastated remains of Napier Doreen and her family got a bird’s eye view of the destruction. They drove past the Tavistock Hotel; she’d always wondered what the rooms were like in there, now she could see straight in. The entire wall on one side of the building was gone, leaving the rooms on show to the world. It looked like a magnified dolls house in one of the smart shops in town. The streets were still littered with rubble and the bus had to steer around various obstacles to get out of town.

They passed the entrance to the Westshore Embankment Road which had a huge crack down the middle, there were semi submerged motor cars jutting right out of it. The bus continued its slow weave through the wrecked city and soon they were out on the open road. They continued to pick up speed and everything was going fine until suddenly they turned a corner on the highway and saw that half of the road had dropped over the cliff. The driver swerved in as close as he could to the cliff face and Doreen heard the screech of metal scraping against rock as the handles on one side of the bus were ripped away. She gripped her mother’s hand as tight as she could, the driver desperately tried to steer the bus between the cliff face on one side and the sheer drop on the other. Doreen couldn’t look and she heard her father muttering some choice words under his breath. It was a white knuckle ride but somehow they made it, thankfully the rest of the road was intact and the remainder of journey was uneventful.

The Bus arrived at Palmerston North Racecourse early that evening. They all had to squeeze out one door as the doors down the entire right side of the bus were fused together and the handles were gone. The families stayed there for two more days before being billeted out to various volunteers in the area. Doreen had never been to a racecourse before and she was excited to explore it. There was a huge sleeping area and each family choose mattresses and picked a spot to sleep in. The best part was that there was one room entirely filled with clothes. Doreen had never seen so many in one place, and couldn’t believe that you could take whatever you wanted. After many hours of trying on, Doreen chose a coat with a fur collar. She was so thrilled with it that even though it was midsummer and the sweat was tricking down her back she flat refused to take it off, much to the amusement of her family.

To Doreen, staying at the racecourse was like a holiday. All her family were together, there was lots of space to play and huge pots of food were cooked up for them all every day. Doreen’s mother warned them that it wasn’t going to last. Sure enough the Red Cross people told them that they would be leaving the next day. Her mother, along with her four youngest siblings was sent to a farm near Palmerston North. Doreen and Lorna were sent to stay with the headmaster of Samson school and his wife. Her older brother Samuel went to a deaf lady who lived close by, Mrs Scottie. Once they were all settled at their various destinations, their father went back to Napier to help with the rescue effort and to try and salvage what he could from their ruined house. By the time he got there the remains had been picked clean, anything worth taking was long gone.

Doreen and Lorna arrived at the Headmasters house in Samson. They were to stay with Mr and Mrs Francis until their father found somewhere big enough for them all to live in. They were lovely people and very glad to have the two girls to stay. Their own children had grown up and gone and they missed the noise and chatter of young children about the house. Mrs Francis had a friendly face with blond hair scraped up into a bun at the back of her head. The girls were well fed and cared for, it was an ideal life for Doreen; with no younger siblings to look after and no housework to do she was free to be a child herself. The only thing required of her was that she went to school on weekdays and church on Sunday, apart from that her time was her own. Things weren’t quite so idyllic for her mother. She had been sent to a dairy farm and she was expected to work, milking cows and other tasks on top of taking care of four small children. Milking was all done by hand and it was arduous work. The highlight of the week was Sunday, when a lad from the farm arrived at the Francis house to collect Doreen and Lorna in his horse and cart so that they could visit their Mother and have dinner together, afterwards the girls walked back to Samson.

In the meantime it was left to Doreen’s father Samuel to sort the practicalities in the aftermath of the earthquake. There was no insurance policy to cover the house and contents so most people literally had to start again from scratch. With his family safe for the moment Samuel set about the task of finding somewhere to live. New Zealand was still recovering from the depression and money was very tight. There were some loans made available to business and individuals but they came with harsh repayment terms and were beyond the means of most ordinary people. It took three months to find a rental property big enough for a family of eleven but finally he managed it. The house was furnished with donated beds and blankets from the Red Cross. Finally three months after what became known as the biggest natural disaster in New Zealand history, the Jane family were reunited under one roof.

When they did eventually get back, it was to a very different Napier than the one they had left behind. The cause of the earthquake was the movement of a fault line that lay deeply buried under the region. As the fault moved, an area directly above it, roughly ninety kilometres long and fifteen kilometres wide, rose upward. The land and the sea floor of Ahuriri lagoon was raised by almost three metres. The same lagoon where Doreen and her family had spent the summer swimming and playing had completely disappeared. The sea water drained away and left Napier a present of almost two thousand hectares of brand new land. Napier town centre had been virtually destroyed so the city took the opportunity to completely redesign and rebuild from scratch. It took several years but Napier was redeveloped with many improvements. After almost being killed twice within as many days, Doreen Barbara Jane was back with her family in her own home town and she knew they were all very lucky to be alive.

Joshua Lovatt (2010)

2010-07-16T09:42:00.008+12:00

[Flammarion: Flat Earth (1888)]

Autobiography

I was born as a baby at a very young age. As certainly many children are - hopefully all. However, the redundancy of this sentence serves the purpose of introducing the fact that I was younger than most when I was born, for I was born prematurely. This singular fact combined with the circumstances around my premature birth caused me to spend a majority of my early months within the confines of an incubator, suffering from severe breathing dysfunction and asthma.

Upon regaining my health – or perhaps gaining it would be more accurate – as being born needing an incubator one could argue that I was hardly healthy until this point – I was taken by social services to an orphanage where I remained for several more months until 2 months before my first birthday. Which is to say, until I was 10 months old I lived in an orphanage. I was then promptly adopted by a young missionary couple and whisked off to a very tumultuous existence; travelling to Papua New Guinea for a while before moving to Vanuatu and then finally to Australia.

It was in Australia that I settled for the first time in my life. Though we moved from Melbourne to Brisbane, we did stay in the country itself and retained contact with friends; it was a consistency I hadn’t had before. My parents had children, 2 of them, and before long I was old enough to attend school. I had begun attending school once in New Zealand, but to be honest I recall nothing about it, or how I was even old enough to attend school, so for the sake of continuity it shall be ignored.

I started attending school in Brisbane at a small public school. It was a cheap wooden place; no grass on the field, just dust and rocks, a small metal playground and teachers who didn’t bother stopping fights in the schoolyard. I was only there for a short while before my parents decided to buy a house. We moved again and this time I began attending a private Christian school by the name of Christian Outreach College.

It was in this school that I was first encouraged to grow, to expand, and to develop my imagination. While certainly I recall some teachers who hounded my second-grade self day after day that the number “8” was to be drawn in 1 pencil sweep, not as two joined circles, I also recall other teachers, who didn’t bother with inane teaching practices. I was paid in candy and sweets to draw illustrations and write stories for my old first grade teacher, and while they weren’t very good, since I was only in second grade I enjoyed it immensely.

It gave me a chance to develop skills that within the confines of the education system were merely acting as redundant sponges; learning to draw what the teachers wanted us to draw, writing only academically, not creatively. Such a method I now feel is detrimental to much of the learning process. However, Miss Gravestein, in her casual efforts to entertain her class with stories and pictures of a previous student allowed me to develop skills that would soon become my greatest talents.

It was also whilst attending this school that I received my first distaste for the useless authoritarian dictatorship of academic administration. A group of friends, including myself, had been enlisted by Miss Gravestein to write a comic strip for her class; we would each be given a giant lollipop upon its completion and it was to be left uncoloured so that she could photocopy it and her students could then colour it as they read it. We had fallen in love with our characters in this strip and thus formed a lunch time meeting in which we would discuss stories and adventures involving our respective characters.

Calling ourselves the “Tree Gang” for a tree was where we met at lunch we began our amateur role-plays. However, the school did not take kindly to our meetings and perhaps in fear of our role-players guild unleashing some evil upon the school with our imaginations they banned the existence of gangs. We cared not, even as second grade children we understood that if all we did was change our name then the educators could not punish us for our existence, we became the “Tree Club”.

Alas, it was a failed endeavour, for soon clubs too found themselves to be outlawed at our school, on a mildly unrelated note I also recall Pokémon being banned from the premises in that same week – those who played the card game resorted to trading cards in the bathrooms or via mail, children can be quite ingenious about such things. (It's also quite amazing that my spell check told me I needed to add an acute accent on Pokémon. I did not realize it was so popular that Microsoft had included it in the spell check: that's hilarious).

But like all legislation before it , this new Act did not stop us! Nay it merely strengthened our childish resolve. That is, until we all got detention and role-playing was banned. And so for a time everything stopped, until, by foolish mistake we were all of us placed into the same class, a class with a creative writing assignment. And the characters came back.

It was third grade by this time and we had to create a character. After which we were to write a story and design a poster or a comic book in relation to this character. The tree club/gang already had our characters. My friends stuck with their characters and I stuck with mine; he was a magician by the name of Era. I had decided he could control time and in a traditionally childish manner made his name a pun to convey his abilities.

At any rate, the story-based assignment served to reinvigorate our lost role-playing spirit, and while it may be uncommon for second graders to forsake the class’s congregation around the slide for the shelter of a tree, it was a common habit in the society of the third grade, as cliques were beginning to develop. Perhaps I could turn this autobiography into a thesis on the development of social structures in the younglings of the human race, but I doubt it.

And so the assignment was made, the stories turned in and then once again the characters and their adventures faded out of mind and memory. We were distracted by an ant colony which had taken up residence near our tree, and we resolved to dig them up and make them fight in ice-cream containers with termites from another tree. The termites always won.

After a few more negligible years of existence my parents decided to leave Australia. They felt called to the Philippines so we packed up our belongings, rented out our house and much to my chagrin departed from Australia for Manila. The first year was spent much in isolation and misery. I was enrolled into an international school for missionary’s children, run and taught by volunteers in the American system of education.

Unable to adapt, I spent the first year alone, quite upset with meagre grades. As a result my parents considered returning to Australia but instead resolved to get me a puppy. A wiser decision could not have been made. I had never had a pet before and this dog was quite the invaluable companion. In my spare time I took to writing stories in cheap lined books I got from school, watching anime on television – which I had never before been exposed to – and reading the occasional book. In Australia I had been considered a voracious reader, but to be honest most often it was the same few books by Michael Crichton over and over again.

I began “Middle School” (or “Junior High” as it is more commonly known) at the age of 11. I started in what was 6th grade (I had actually already served year 5 and 6 in Australia). However, I had also been a year and a half younger than my class mates and so upon transferring to the American system it was decided that I should be put back with my age group to alleviate some of the stress of the transition.

At the time I felt this to be rather condescending, but in retrospect, given how poorly I took to the adjustments, as it were, I’m quite certain it was a good choice. Middle School brought a slight reprieve to my isolated status; I made friends and soon had purchased a Gameboy from one of them.

This was my first exposure to videogames, a rather momentous event but it passed rather quickly. I was spontaneously offered it in band class by a fellow Saxophone player and we swiftly exchanged my 1,000 pesos (roughly $30) for his Gameboy and “Pokémon Yellow” video game. Video games back then were rather basic, they had only begun to develop and evolve, however, through my Gameboy I had been exposed to an entirely new medium of art, through which I would be able to eventually come to appreciate the nuances of other mediums as well as the benefits of its own.

I realize that idea of considering video games as a medium is often met with disdain, however my stance remains that whilst ignorance may be bliss it is rather pathetic and it is logically fallacious for anyone to judge a medium which they have not themselves fully experienced. However, I had yet to be exposed to the appeal of video games as a medium and as an eleven year old the appeal was purely derived from the enjoyment of the game.

In response to my acquisition of this Gameboy my parents imposed reading limits to match my game time. Naturally seeking as much game time as possible I began reading ravenously. During such readings I encountered The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was around this time that several things occurred; the release of the first Lord of the Rings movie and a friendship I fostered with a tall ginger American. Not recognising The Lord of the Rings as a Tolkien work I was originally hesitant to see the movie, the advertisements on television had somehow left me under the impression it was a horror movie and I had had enough of those. Eventually upon the revelation that it was in fact a fantasy movie and based on a work by Tolkien I felt obliged to watch it.

[Peter Jackson, dir. The Lord of the Rings (2001-3)]

Before Lord of the Rings there had been no movie, bar perhaps Jurassic Park, that my decade-old child had found as stimulating and exciting. Like millions my age around the globe I instantly declared it my favourite movie and raced home to revel in its awesomeness. (I may have misused the word "awesome" in that sentence).

My parents, on hearing of my affection for said movie, logically offered to buy the books for me to read. A child as I was, whilst I liked the movie I was not immediately sold on the prospect of reading the books, however, eventually I relented. Much to my young horror I discovered the books and movies had hardly anything in common aside from a few base themes and names. Luckily, however, I was able to appreciate the literary quality of the work, and soon came to favour it over its cinematic adaptation.

Seventh grade began and I befriended others, making yet another close friend. It was somewhere in 6th-7th grade that we moved again, this time closer to the school, the move changed nothing except the quantity of pets we had, for in moving to our new house we acquired four new dogs, and some turtles. In a joint effort with my new friends I began to grow bored in classes, instead of passing notes to liven the experience we drew maps and designed a way we could play “video games” in class – on paper.

We had stats and ranks and could go on adventures; it was a lot of fun, especially since at the end of class we threw out the paper and got a new one for the later. It was also during this year that perhaps the most momentous event in my life occurred, this is of course an exaggeration, but in hindsight for my book it was this event that sparked its creation; the release of the video game “Golden Sun” for the Gameboy Advanced.

Golden Sun was a Role-playing game, but unlike the typical Pokémon adventures and hack and slash level based games I had played in the past this one had a plot. A plot, a unique one, with characters and friends, the game was linear; however, one could develop friendships in game, which would affect future nuances in the story making the experience far more enjoyable. The plot was what grabbed me though, and to be entirely honest; it was riveting, true fact.

Unable to afford a working real game I had been forced to purchase a fake copy, with this copy I soon discovered I had an inability to save my game. As such I never turned it off. I played it virtually non-stop, dedicating an entire weekend to it, and whenever I wasn’t playing it, it was plugged in and charging so it would not lose my place. The game was addicting, it was the same rush I felt when reading a good book - the same intoxicating elation that races through you as your eyes leap from page to page, consuming the story in a hungry fervour.

This one video game exposed me to the fact that games – like books and movies – had their own merits as a medium. For unlike books and movies, they had the supreme advantage of being interactive, thus it has a powerful twist over immersion, atmosphere and character interaction which movies and books could not match.

[Nintendo Gameboy Advanced: Golden Sun]

In saying this I do not mean to imply that as media they are incapable of conveying such things, only that as they lack the interactive aspect they cannot convey them in the same manner; this gives strength to the video game genre when taken advantage of by well designed video games. The interactive aspect also allows for powerful psychological play and exploitation, but that discussion is not relevant to my autobiography.

Another strength of the genre which I was drawn into by my exposure to Golden Sun was the concept of a non-linear game. Although very basic and only really affecting conversations Golden Sun carried a feature to affect and change aspects of the game based on what the player did. So enthralled was I in this prospect that I decided to take advantage of the freedom in our role-plays and make a game just as plot driven as Golden Sun – but without the limitations of linearity.

What if the ending was not always the same? What if good did not always conquer evil? What if you could choose a side? What if in offending an ally along the way you could trigger an event down the path where they might betray you, thus in turn changing the outcome of the story? The possibilities were endless, however, I could not design video games for the life of me, I had barely touched a computer, my entire exposure to video games at that point was limited to my hand held Gameboy. As such I was forced to develop the only medium I had – my role-plays with my friends.

In order to construct a believable story I was forced to create a believable world. I designed a map, created races, cities, countries, currency, unique products, an amateur alphabet and made up clumsy sentences and words that lacked coherent syntax or sound inventory. From this we created characters and people to live within this world. And from there we went; we role-played, we wrote stories, we crafted adventures for our characters and out of sentimentality I gave new life to my old character “Era”.

Each year the Middle School at which I attended went on a trip known as “Outdoor Ed”. Middle School lasted for years 6-8 and so each year the location of Outdoor Ed rotated to a different site; in 6th Grade we camped on the inactive volcano Taal, in 7th we visited the jungles of Subic and in 8th Grade we were set to go explore the Island of Corregidor where the US and Japanese had fought for the Philippines during the Second World War.

Children are rather spontaneous and irrational creatures, as such early on in 8th Grade my friendship with two of my former friends abruptly ceased to exist. I believe I was 13. The reasons for which were one friend didn’t like what I was doing with our role-plays and rather than reason it out and come to an accord we simply opted to cease being friends; the other friend simply decided on a whim they could get more attention should they pretend to be leaving the friendship of both parties. This attempt failed and they ended up a loner for the remainder of the year. Poor choice. Regardless, this left me without any friends to sign up with in my group for Outdoor Ed during my 8th year. Lacking members in another group the teachers took my two old friends and myself and threw us in with them.

It was in this group I befriended new people, friends who would remain my closest ones until we graduated, and even thereafter. Ian Darwin was the closest of these, a Filipino-American who looked-and still looks, like a panda. Ian liked my world and created a character to explore it. Over the course of Outdoor Ed we reworked a lot of the flawed or blatantly stolen ideas my world had been constructed upon and began refining it as best as we could. It wouldn't be until high school that I truly realized what I wanted to do with this world.

High School began with the return of an old acquaintance, David Pham; a Vietnamese boy who soon became an invaluable friend to me. Though he didn’t role-play he was an avid reader, gamer and he shared my interested in Japanese Anime and Manga. David and Ian encouraged me to become an author, to develop my stories and eventually write a book about them. At the time it was but a casual idea, but I endeavoured to realise it.

I began attempting to craft a story with which I could write a decent fantasy novel. Tragically in my attempts I slipped into the same pit that ensnares so many a fantasy author and has damned the entire genre to being classed as low grade fiction – I overlooked the importance of plot, themes, and characterisation. For all the fantasy I could weave, the best readers I could captivate were my friends. The minds of adults and unbiased readers were not to be ensnared by such feeble attempts at literature. Disheartened, I scrapped my stories and focused myself entirely to making my game.

High School opened up the ability to choose what classes I wished to take. Filling my quota of IGCSE Cambridge classes to give me a better chance of acceptance in a New Zealand University I turned my attention to the slots that my other classes would fill, utilizing them to improve myself, so that I could in turn better the world I had created; Once again I designed nations and to make them believable I studied economics, history, mythology and religions. I drew maps and studied geography and cartography. I took biology and created diseases. Soon I held within my grasp a living, teeming world flowing with depth and lore, religions and cultures. I took web-based design classes so that I could create a webpage for my game and soon enough I began designing it on computer. I was going to make a video game.

Unfortunately, the computer variant of my game was a grand disappointment. It lacked the freedom of scope that face to face role-play had carried and I discovered a tremendous weakness of mine with writing believable dialogue. I scrapped the video game idea and returned to my role-plays.

By 11th grade, I had been lured back to my original intent; to write a book. In order to improve my writing I took English classes, lots of them, where once more I began to read. I read the classics: fell in love with Oscar Wilde, laughed at Jane Austen’s wit, despised Charles Dickens for being abhorrently boring, and delved the depths of Shakespeare and his work. My love for mythology and the classics’ habits of paralleling and referencing myths and lore secured their hold over me. I fashioned myself after my favourite authors as best I could, adhering to the lessons of writing which they conveyed through their work.

It was within the classics and my study of poetry that I began to see techniques and tactics authors used to convey hidden meanings and themes. I saw them tie in personal feelings; expose their souls through writing, and I finally realized how to make a character grow, and do so believably. I began incorporating what I had learned into my writing, crafting stories within the histories of my world and hiding meanings within my world’s “literature” to reference their legends and religions. And finally after six years I created a much needed back-story for my main character. It was then that Ian discovered that my website had accumulated over 150 pages of information and stories about my world. He persuaded me to publish it.

Now in my 12th and final year of school I began looking around for methods of publication. My dream being simply to share my world with my friends I did not need to endure the endearing stress of selling myself to a publisher and facing rejection. No, I saved such treats for later in life. I wanted only a few copies; for those who had journeyed with me as I had forged this world, who had been there when I began trying to write and would be there long after I had published this first book. I wanted three copies, one for Ian, David and myself. Thus, I decided to self-publish it.

I took what I had written on my website, revised it, edited it and passed it off to friends, to teachers and mentors. I received my copies back, revised once more, and finally compiled it. Ian and I found a nice font for the title and an awesome rusted piece of paper to scan in for the cover. We formatted it, converted it to the correct file type and took it down to the printing company that had agreed to make me three copies.

We paid the agreed fee and turned in my files. In one day we returned and beheld the work of six years of learning. All of my education, my work to evolve my world, to better my game, and to create as perfect a book as I could, all funnelled into this very moment. It was amazing.

Of course it wasn’t finished, though it encouraged me in my aspirations to become a real novelist. It was through this amateur book that I was able to take all of my creations, my characters, and my world and draw them together in an amalgamation of all that I was. Through it I could accurately portray the years of friendship that had spawned this world. Through the processes devoted to creating this one work I had learned what it was to devote oneself to a goal and achieve it. I also began to see what it was that I wanted to do with my life.

We picked up the final copies the day before Graduation and shortly after I found myself once more packing up and leaving. I spent 6 months in Australia until I decided I did not want to attend school there before returning to New Zealand. I examined the universities and settled on Massey, I like the atmosphere, Auckland University seemed far too corporate.

My intention in attending university is to improve my writing, to better myself that I may become a good author, and should that fail, to provide me a Degree to fall back on. The advantages shown thus far have been a visible improvement in my writing as well as the discovery that I enjoy writing other forms of fiction as well as fantasy. I’m not entirely sure how to end my autobiography; however I fully intend to finish my book. I have a sequence of them now, chronicles within my world. And one day I shall publish them. We’ll see how it goes.

Sacha Jones (2009)

2009-07-28T16:40:00.007+12:00

[Sydney City Ballet: Coppelia (1983)]

Hunger

To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible ...

- Franz Kafka, “A hunger artist” (1924)

Prologue

When you regurgitate an entire packet of Hundreds and Thousands into the toilet, a multiplicity of brightly coloured sugar specks merge to create a lumpy pink-brown slush, just a few of the most valiant specks flashing and darting to the surface, fighting against the swollen river like doomed swimmers, eventually being swallowed up and washed away in the tidal flush ...

The word ‘bulimia’ is Greek for ‘ravenous hunger’. Although we all come into the world ravenous, some turn out to be much more ravenous than others ...

For eight years I was a committed bulimic driven by a rapacious hunger to eat and eradicate, eat and eradicate, over and over in a cycle that exposed me to a distinctly unglamorous side of life in some of the most glamorous cities of the world. Every day began with a firm resolution to deny my hunger, to starve my way to recovery and redemption. But the longer I held to my resolve, the more urgent the hunger grew so that when the resolve not to eat inevitably collapsed, the hunger was so fierce in its outrage, that it drove me to even greater extremes of binge-eating and aggressive purging that eventually drew blood from the lining of my stomach, throat, and heart ...

No matter how greedily I ate I remained hungry. On the surface this hunger was for the ballet figure and career that had driven me to extremes of food-denial in the past, which had delayed the onset of puberty for several years, and which eventually, had unravelled in London on the other side of the world from my home in Sydney partly due to my increasing food consumption. It is easy enough to blame the rigorous demands for physical perfection that ballet entails for this cycle of self-destruction that ensnares so many dancers. But living in this world, one learns a deeper truth about ballet and art in general, a truth which suggests that sacrifices of the body – of mere physical pleasure – are an inherent part of the artist’s pursuit of a higher purpose and understanding.

Today, some twenty years on, I neither diet or binge or purge. Nor do I dance. However I do continue to hunger for the understanding that Kafka’s ‘artist’ died for lack of. I have children to look after, to nourish, to grow, and to believe in...I cannot afford to give up even for art’s sake. But neither can I properly nourish others until I have been nourished myself...

•

Sydney, August 16th, 1982:

Somehow the senna powder solution I’d forced down my throat in the bathroom last night hadn’t worked. At 6am I woke with the alarm and lying there in the top bunk, with my heart beating as if I’d been running, I realised the food I’d eaten before going to bed was still inside me.

Tears of panic and anger began to well up as I grappled around in my head for a way out. I could hear my sister breathing from the lower bunk and knew she and the rest of my family would be awake soon. Normally the senna, which was the strongest laxative in my arsenal, would wake me well before dawn and I’d have to be careful not to clamber too hastily down the bunk ladder to get to the toilet in time without waking my sister. Often it got me up more than once in the night and by morning I felt positively virtuous having thoroughly cleansed my body of the devil calories; my family none the wiser. No harm done. It seemed a good system, when it worked.
So what had gone wrong this time? Lying there in the dark, my child’s body painfully bloated, but not the usual reassuring pressure in my bowel, I dismissed the possibility I’d become immune to the laxatives, as I’d read eventually happens. Surely I hadn’t been taking them long enough? Perhaps the few stolen morsels of mince pie scraped from the sides of the dish discarded by the family last night hadn’t been enough for the laxative to work with. I dismissed this too, preferring an explanation I could do something to fix. I decided I can’t have taken enough of the powder. I hated it so much. The dark green glug it became when mixed with water caused me to gag just to look at it ...

It was ironic, I guess, that in these early days I clung to a distinction between what I did, occasionally taking laxatives and only as a last resort ... and what the die-hard bulimics did on a regular basis, which I saw as cheating, pure and simple.
Still in the dark, I got up and silently retrieved the box of powder from its hiding place at the back of the drawer on my side of the wardrobe. I headed quickly to our bathroom cursing, yet again, its close proximity to the rest of the family’s bedrooms. I locked the door, reassured by its solid, familiar sound. Without giving myself time to chicken out, and assiduously avoiding the large mirror over the vanity, I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and scooped a generous spoonful of black powder into a glass, adding the smallest amount of water to keep to a minimum the quantity to be swallowed. Taking a deep breath of courage, I downed the dark lumpy potion in two gulps and several gags. It was not unlike swallowing shit...in one end and out the other ...

With the dastardly deed done, I rested briefly, ignoring the scales that eyed me from the shadows beneath the vanity where they lay in wait for me every morning like a troll. The daily weigh-in was mandatory self-discipline, but I couldn’t face it this morning, knowing I’d be at least a pound over Tuesday’s target weight of 40.5kgs (39kgs by Friday). My diet since leaving school at 14 to join the Sydney City Ballet Company as one of the company’s two principal dancers was a strict weekly programme of one meal a day – breakfast – Monday to Friday, and ‘normal’ eating/binging on the weekends.

As punishment for last night’s lapse, I decided to forgo this only meal for the day. I went to the fridge anyway, and took several swigs of TAB (diet coke) from the bottle to try to wash away the foul taste of senna. The remaining shepherd’s pie looked so tantalising beneath a skimpy piece of plastic wrap I swallowed down hard on tears of frustration beginning to threaten my resolve. The pressure in my bowel was already a deep twisted pain that I knew would get worse before there was any relief. I thought of the eisteddfod coming up in a month. This year I had to win. I deserved to win after last year’s second place. People were counting on me. I needed the prize money to get to London. I’d wanted to go to London ever since I was a small child; since before my mother put me into ballet, aged six. Pictures and films suggested something splendid and magical about the place; a magic I felt was so patently lacking in the bland ruggedness of the bush and sand-clad suburbs of Sydney’s North Shore where I grew up. The vision was fortifying.

I slammed the fridge door shut, relieved to have won that round. Returning to the bedroom where my younger sister slept on, I quietly dressed before arranging my long hair in a painfully meticulous bun in the half-light of the darkly curtained room. Finally, heaving my bag weighed down with several pairs of pointe shoes and Correspondence School books over my shoulder, I headed out to catch the 7.10 bus to Chatswood. From there, as usual, I would take the 7.40 train to Central Station and walk the half-hour distance through the seedy Ultimo tunnel to arrive at the studio in enough time to warm-up before class at 9am ...

Walking down the hill to the bus stop my bowel was gripped by a violent spasm. I knew I didn’t have long before I’d have to get to the bathroom. I almost turned around rather than board the bus that would trap me for at least half an hour. If the bus was running late, or the morning traffic to the city was heavier than usual, I probably wouldn’t make it ...

•

My mother’s diary records that some time later that day I collapsed in the bathrooms of the company’s Ultimo studios and ended up in intensive care at Sydney Hospital. I remember feeling dizzy and nauseous as I sat on the toilet while the rest of the Company rehearsed Coppelia, praying nobody would disturb me before I’d finished; before the putrid smell of my guts emptied out could shock the other dancers who looked up to me – the principal dancer – or so I thought ...

Later that year, on the magnificent Concert Hall stage of the Sydney Opera House, I stood weeping uncontrollably, mascara staining my not-quite-thin-enough cheeks, the second-place trophy slumped heavily in my trembling hands, as the gazelle-like winner of the Peter Stuyvesant Cultural Foundation Scholarship was announced...
My determination returned with a vengeance. For the next six months I worked even more relentlessly on my body and technique and in May I won the Society of Dance Arts Scholarship; a lesser prize, but enough to get me to London ...

•

London, February, 1984:

I wake with the realisation of last night’s binge strangling my heart with giant fat fingers. It’s still night, but I can tell it’s too late to get rid of the food I fell asleep on and can now imagine spreading to every inch of my expanding body, making a messy meal of the sculptured form I’ve put so many exhausting hours into fine-tuning and disciplining.

I realise also there is no possibility of taking a ballet class today, of showing my bloated body to the wall of mirrors or the world of watchers reflected in it. Falling asleep on a binge is the worst of this miserable life, I hate myself in multiple, pointless ways. Rolling over to hide from the glare of the room, I begin the daily wrestle with my consciousness to decide what I’m supposed to do now.
Karen, my room-mate, a skinny girl from Camden, not much older than me and working in the city as an apprentice stock-broker – a million miles from any reality I’ve ever known – lies peacefully sleeping across the other side of the room. I know she isn’t the slightest bit bothered by me and never will be...I long for the freedom I imagine that skinny indifference gives her, and yet, I don’t long to be her at all ... I long to be me ...

•

Thin Ice

Eat
Till the skin on your fine dancer’s legs
Stretches –
Tight and red
And your eighteen-year-old heart
Strains –
To lift you off
The far-from-home bed
To get you up...to bring back
The ice-cream cake swallowed whole
With pus-like custard – and
Snow White cream

Whipped, as art must be
To make a meal of it
To satiate ... to suffocate ...
The artless cravings ...

“Havin a party are ya luv?”
The bouncy lady at Sainsbury’s probed
Perhaps thinking it was your sweet sixteenth ...

The simplest answer is always “Yes”

“Ah, that’s nice in’it?”
She kept on merrily, as you watched your cake
Melt a hole in its thin-skinned box

Smuggling salty tears
Behind dry eyes of green glass –

A dancer on thin ice now ...

•

London, September, 1985:

I am working at an all-night restaurant in Finchley Road, Hampstead. Celebrities visit regularly. In the six weeks I’ve been working there I have served George Michael, Boy George and Samantha Fox (famous for having big boobs). I have a new room-mate called Jen who got me the job at the restaurant and who also works there. We share one of twelve rooms in a well-appointed girl’s dormitory not far from Hampstead Heath. We are friends; fellow Aussies. On the surface, my life has changed dramatically. I am no longer taking dance classes and I have resolved to go home. I am booked on a flight to Sydney on October 20th and feel confident of making it. My mother has called me home for my brother’s 21st on November 2nd. I have cancelled several flights home before. I am determined to make it this time ... provided I lose the weight. I’ve already failed in my ambition to make it in London as a dancer, I can’t face the cliché of returning home a failure and fat ...

Working through the night with Jen, who is sleeping with one of the cooks called Ali, suits me perfectly. After work, when she goes back to Ali’s for sex (strictly no boys allowed in our dorm), I can binge in private. Jen knows about my own grubby little habit and doesn’t disapprove as much as some would, but she doesn’t know the extent of it, the lengths I go to, the quantities I consume. And she doesn’t understand. Occasionally she embarrasses me into not skulking off to the bathroom to puke after we’ve eaten a feast of junk food. I secretly and deeply resent her for this. She is much more voluptuous than I am and makes me feel petty and vain for obsessing about my weight. I don’t like to look at myself from her point of view and resent her for making me look.

I focus doggedly on my goal. With five weeks to go I am about 7 pounds off target. Working from 7pm to 7am, Wednesday through Sunday, I’m able to reduce considerably the number of possible binging hours. For the twelve hours I wait on tables, I eat a single pita-pocket with tabouli and lettuce. But on the way back to the dormitory along Finchley Road, most mornings I am so ravenous my resolve to go straight home and to bed caves at the first shop and I begin my serial purchasing of chocolate bars, visiting maybe five different shops, lined up all too conveniently along the route back to the dorm, careful never to buy more than two at any one shop to avoid raising suspicion.

Sometimes I venture further afield to the supermarket for a more serious binge. There, I buy a loaf of fresh white bread, several pieces of roast chicken, a packet or two of cream cakes, and head back to the dorm to devour the unlikely breakfast all before nine o’clock in the morning. The supermarket provides more choice and anonymity than the High Street, but it takes longer to get there and back to the dorm, which risks delays I can’t afford. After working all night I need some sleep before the next shift, plus time to do my exercises. Somewhere in the back of my mind I still cling to the hope of resurrecting my dance career back in Sydney, which has started to look a better option now from the vantage point of the de-glamorised London I’ve come to know. As well, bread is so slow to break down; I have to give it time before I’m able to regurgitate it back.

My body, still trying to develop and grow (even at the age of nineteen), craves substance and bulk; protein and savoury food in general. But the ex-dieter continues to want sugar – especially chocolate, the most ‘forbidden’ food of all. Chocolate is easier to regurgitate, but much faster to convert from sugar to fat. I know this from experience, from the extreme body-heat generated whenever I consume large quantities of chocolate in a short space of time, and from the weight that piles on if I don’t get to the bathroom in time. But if I get back to the dorm before the other girls have left for their day jobs, it’s unlikely there will be a bathroom free (in which to purge in peace). Even a chocolate binge takes me a while to regurgitate and I’m not quiet about it. I’m still an apprentice bulimic. The girl who taught me how, an African-English girl called Yanyi, who had learnt the trick from her own mother when she was eleven, seemed to manage it without tools or fuss. But I needed both. Using a pen I’d bought especially for the purpose, I’d spend up to an hour each time shoving this thing down my throat making loud, involuntary choking sounds with every jab.

Some mornings a further dilemma presented itself. His name was Saed. He was an Iraqi kitchen-hand working at the restaurant; he’d make me my pita bread every night. He was a friend of Ali’s, but younger, or so it seemed to me, it was hard to tell behind the moustaches they both wore like masks or badges. On nights when I was feeling good about myself – about my weight – I’d wonder about Saed, and consider reaching out beyond my comfort zone to get to know him better. Jen had said he was interested. I thought it might have been fun to get together with him so the four of us could see the sights of London, other than the restaurants I frequented on my days off – always alone. I had to admit to myself I had a desire to see behind the moustache ...

One morning our boss, Muhammad, who drove a large gold Mercedes which he parked pretentiously outside the restaurant all night, suggested we head out for breakfast. I glanced across at Saed to find him gazing intently at me and my heart gave a surprised leap. I was starving and had already begun to anticipate my assault on the High Street’s sweet shops. The thought of taking the first bite of a chilled bar of chocolate was so vivid in my mind I could practically hear the snap as it broke into my mouth. Of course, eating more than a morsel of any kind of food in front of others was out of the question. I couldn’t stand people watching me eat; they might as well have been watching me shit for all the anxiety and paralysing self-consciousness it gave me.

But Muhammad was persuasive ... Saed and I sat next to each other in the back seat, our thighs almost meeting. I’d been partnered by various male dancers, but I’d never been, or felt, this close to a man before; a man who wasn’t a dancer and who didn’t see me as a dancer ...

I sat by the window looking out upon a clear autumn morning feeling something new, something unrecognisable and good, as this magnificent beast of a car swept me along the tree-lined streets of Hampstead. And for a blissful moment or two I forgot my hunger ...

Jen and Ali were seated on the other side of Saed. Another waitress called Sonya – Muhammad’s mistress, or so Jen had been told – sat up front with Muhammad – three girls and three boys ...

In another moment, I looked over to see Jen kiss Ali. I turned back to the window, embarrassed. Saed chuckled.

As if stepping out of a cinema into the harsh glare of the (real) world, my crippling self-consciousness returned and in that moment the thought of intimacy with this, or any, man seemed suddenly entirely absurd ...

I endured breakfast, sipping half a glass of orange juice, watching the others enjoy themselves, pretending not to care. All the while I was willing for the moment to arrive when I could politely excuse myself, go home, binge, vomit, and – finally – sleep ...

•

Binge

Body

Bone

Beauty

Bullshit

•

Auckland 1989-1993:

In the early years after I let go of the dream to dance – or it let go of me – I made a classified secret of my ballet past and came to think of my passion for dance in much the same way as my father had always done – as a somewhat childish and frivolous pursuit to be grown out of and forgotten. My body in a way seemed to agree with this view, as it finally emerged in its full womanly form with lumps and bumps that could not and would not ever express themselves in a balletic manner ...

However, I was far from happy. I was frustrated and confused by this ordinary-looking person I found myself to be without art or grace. I struggled to accept and understand my changed reality throughout most of my twenties. Twice I was directed by well-meaning people to get ‘treatment’ for the bulimia that if anything intensified during these post-dancing years. The first time, I was sent to a psychiatrist who prescribed anti-depressants. These failed profoundly. I remember the somewhat overweight man’s blank stare as I sat in his plush office feeling more out of place than ever, mortified at having to disclose what I thought at the time to be both trivial and deeply private habits to this complete stranger, to a person who I could see, from that blank disinterest, hadn’t a hope of understanding, much less of helping me.

The second time, now married and living in Auckland, was a little more successful. I’d just started university, aged 23, and was struggling to make it to lectures on account of the ongoing urge to binge. Eating options were not only abundantly provided for on campus but the multitude of young people focused on things of the mind more than the body – or so I imagined then – provided a perfect environment for a now seasoned bulimic to operate unnoticed.

As ever, I’d head out for the day with the best of intentions, my modest lunch packed and no money in my pocket. But most days I’d have eaten my ‘lunch’ within the first hour and within the second, extracted funds from the on-campus bank. Typically this meant having to use cunning and complicated methods (short of robbery), as I’d have deliberately left all means of identification at home, knowing better than to trust myself by now ...

The woman psychologist I saw during these undergraduate years talked and listened to me, giving emphasis to what she saw as the positive aspects of my life, such as my early achievements at university, and expressing her opinion that my weight (of approximately 60 kilograms by then) was ‘normal’ and healthy for a woman of my height. I enjoyed these sessions with this woman who was willing to discuss with me her own ‘problem with anger’, as she put it. However, I couldn’t take seriously her view that I wasn’t overweight and after she left to go into private practice, I abandoned counselling and returned, once again, to face my ‘problem with food’ alone.
The binging and vomiting continued. I enjoyed and did well at university in spite of this but kept pretty much to myself and never disclosed my dancing history – much less my disorder – to anybody. I hid my body beneath oversized clothes and sat at the back of the lecture theatre sneaking morsels of cake from a bag within a bag sat beside me – where a friend might have been.

•

I began to want a baby. In one of life’s little ironies, when so many people had gravely forecast my own infertility due to all the childhood dieting (and they didn’t know the half of it!), it was my husband who was diagnosed ‘sub-fertile’. After the top fertility expert in Auckland put in writing his view that we would never conceive a child ‘naturally’, I became obsessed with proving him wrong. I read many books about alternative treatments for male infertility. We visited a naturopath. Time passed. All the while I continued binging on mostly sweet foods. If anything, my addiction intensified over time as I became increasingly frustrated with my inability to lose weight, to stop binging, and, now, to conceive a child.
In my final year of undergraduate study I took a paper in medical sociology. Researching for an essay on eating disorders I came across an article that linked high sugar consumption and infertility (male and female). I stopped binging from that moment on and within three months had conceived my first child. What do doctors know ...?

Finding this precious information buried in an obscure medical journal, that would turn out not only to provide a cure for our infertility but a cure for my eating disorder, made me feel lucky. The desire for a child – for life itself – was my escape from my life of guilt and deception. It gave me hope and a sense of control. When you can’t find the understanding or the strength within yourself, hope and luck help.

In another of life’s ironies, after the birth of my son I lost quite a bit of weight, and in the best way – by not trying to. The pressure to be thin is lessened for a woman around pregnancy and motherhood, and without this pressure, I relaxed around food and the weight fell away. Today, with my youngest child now ten years old, my weight has stabilised at a healthy size ‘average’, and unlike the majority of women I know, I never diet or really worry about my weight and haven’t weighed myself in years ...

•

[SwanHilda in Coppelia]

Epilogue

June 5, 2009:

It’s telling, I think, that tears of joy flow just as wet and salty; just as plentiful as tears of sorrow and despair...I think this means these emotions are much more alike than we imagine, just as our passions for things apparently ‘bad’ for us – like sugary treats – often stem from a lust for more of the good in life. A lust or hunger for more sincerity, more meaning, more purpose, and more understanding ... More of things that are essentially denied us in the quantities at least some us seem to need to survive ... and to thrive ...

Thinking back on all that self-destruction, I wonder if in fact there was a purpose to it. I wonder if for some people the so called ‘normal’ channels of development and growth are never going to deliver the self-understanding necessary to achieve any lasting kind of success and happiness. In particular, I think back on my dancing years and the intensity of feelings caught up with the desire to succeed and the frustration I felt when I failed to achieve the heights of success I aspired to.

The red ribbon in 1982 has always symbolised the frustrations and limitations of my endeavours as a ballet dancer. Until now, I have been stubbornly reluctant to reflect on that event with anything other than bitterness, regret, and shame. I remain convinced that this loss, which felt like betrayal; like injustice; like misunderstanding, was what it felt like and did contribute substantially to subsequent unhappiness, frustration, and wilful self-destruction. But I have also begun to realise that an understanding of self, at least for me, has to be forged through frustrations faced, the letting go of bitterness, and the banishing of blame ...

•

Today, as I sit here warmed by the winter sun, watched by the gentle green leaves, I can recall the intense pleasure of the dance...the control in every precision movement, the joy taken – and given – in the music that melted and soared so poignantly, only an artist could bring to life ...

If I dig a little deeper I can recover a resilient pride felt in the applause of an auditorium full of ballet enthusiasts – including (once) my less than enthusiastic father – as it thunders out from the cavernous dark, a sound reminiscent of understanding ...

Carolyn Ranson (2009)

2009-07-28T16:38:00.003+12:00

Three Pieces

[Hever Castle, Kent]

Time

Lost in a maze. Dead ends in all directions. No way out. “I wish time would stand still,” you said.

We were at Hever Castle. Laughing, caught in the rain, running down the green hedge trimmed paths to nowhere. Your hand holding mine. We wanted the day to last forever and courtship followed. There were weekend drives and slow, dreamy walks. Then the holiday in Greece, skinny dipping off the rocks and drinking ice-cold retsina served in earthenware jugs.

You accepted a contract in South Africa. It was good for your career. “Great, I’ll join you for a holiday,” I said. “It’s a dangerous place,” you said quietly. I laughed. We called it the holiday of a lifetime. Big game, up close. Pure parchment beaches and endless winery lunches. But you always left the engine running when we stopped en route. “Carjackers,” you said “you can’t be too careful.”

You got down on one knee on the top of Table Mountain, diamond picked and ready. Diamonds are forever and time stretched out in front of us like an endless road paved in fool’s gold. I brought you home to New Zealand. My parents approved. It was a poignant airport farewell, “See you in three weeks,” you promised.

You had the next Sunday off and wanted some fun. You let the American drive. Too fast. It was the wrong side of the road, for him. Gravel splinters chopped through the air. The car went spinning across the lanes of traffic again and again and again. One last slow cruel dance.

The ringing phone invaded my dreams. It was too early. A premonition. Dread lay in my stomach like cold stone. Then, my Mother’s voice… “Colin has been killed!” Time stood still, for a moment. Then moved on.

Someone opened a curtain to view your remains. The well meaning words were meant to comfort “It will be alright.” Someone’s hysterical laughter (was it mine?). How can anything ever be right again? The heavy black hearse moved slowly through the streets towards an overflowing village church. There were too many spring flowers. The day, too bright and shiny for the heavy blackness in my heart. “You are young,” they said … “time heals all wounds.” But time is not my ally. Time takes me away from you!

Lost in a maze. Dead ends in all directions. No way out. I wish time would stand still. You said.

•

My Mother always said

Just 18, I was naïve for my age, even by 1980’s standards. I was flatting alone, fresh faced and newly arrived in the big smoke. I became friendly with my next door neighbour, Reg. A harmless old bloke. Ok, the sherry bottle in the brown paper bag was a giveaway, so I knew he had a bit of a drinking problem, but hey, there but by the grace of God go I, my Mother always said.

To begin with, Reg would stop me as I was coming or going to chatter about the weather. Then he began to wait for me to come home after work each evening. “I’ve made too much again”, he would say “help me out and come for dinner, would you?” I felt sorry for him. He led a lonely sort of life and maybe he missed his grandchildren. He would set the table with care - napkins, wine glasses, even a table cloth. Speak as you find, my Mother always said.

Reg worked at the ferry terminal, clipping the tickets of the commuter hoards flooding through the gates each morning. He used to hand mine back, un-clipped. Handy that when you earn $80 a week and your rent is $55. I couldn’t even afford the phone on. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, my Mother always said.

“Does that petticoat go all the way up?” he asked me one night as I sat in his flat drinking coffee. I told myself I had misunderstood him and made my excuses and escaped next door. Still, it shook me up a bit and the morning commute began to feel uncomfortable. I wished he would clip my ticket now. But surely he didn’t mean any harm. Just an old chap with a few problems. Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, my Mother always said.

One morning, I was one of the last to disembark and as I walked toward the gate I saw him watching me with a strange half smile on his lips. “Is it cold enough for you this morning, Reg?” I said as I gave him the ticket, hoping to keep my voice light. “This will keep me warm,” he said grabbing my hand and pulling it down towards the crotch of his greasy brown tweed trousers. I could smell his unwashed body and the stale sherry clinging to his breath. Sickened, I yanked my hand back and scurried away. I was shuddering with the shock of the exchange and I felt violated. I also felt a little stupid. How did that happen? And why had I said nothing to him? Respect your elders, my Mother always said.

I only saw Reg a few times after that. He put his head down and scuttled away when he spotted me. He moved out of his flat not long afterwards and I never saw him again. Still, I couldn’t move past the memory of that morning and the questions it left behind. Had I done something to encourage him? Was it my fault? Serves you right, my Mother always said.

•

Seven

Slap, slap, slap - the sloppy wet sound danced up through the apartment window from the rocks below and woke me up. My brother’s excited voice came next “Come on Sis, let’s go down and see what’s happening!” Where my big brother went, I followed. It was coastal Spain, in the winter of 1972. We had just arrived and were eager to explore.

I followed my brother down the cool marbled stairs to the street below. We crossed the road and took off our shoes to walk over the grainy wet sand to the rocks at the far end of the beach. Our feet protested at the morning cold but our hearts drummed with excitement as we clambered towards the sky, sometimes pausing to jump from rock to rock. The Mediterranean Sea was a breathtaking sight to a seven year old girl from the English countryside.

As we crossed over the deep crevasses in the rocks I became conscious of my little, skinny legs compared to my brother’s longer, stronger ones. It was much harder for me to make the jumps but I knew he would never let me fall. We were inseparable and I would follow him anywhere.

As we went higher we seemed to grow closer to the source of that wet slapping sound and the fresh scent of salty sea spray mingled with the early morning breeze. We reached the highest rock and I focused on the beauty of the crimson sunrise as we looked out from our vantage point.

Then, my gaze fell onto the two fishermen on the rocks slightly below us. One was sitting a short distance away from the other, his morning cigarette pressed between his lips. He was watching the other, who was diligently and violently bashing a squid on a rock, which was already completely blackened by the ink of the hundred dead squid which had gone before it. Slap, slap, slap.

“Is that the squid’s blood?” I asked. “No, Sis, its just ink” my brother said, his eyes rooted to the spot below. I turned again to look at the sight below me. “But doesn’t it hurt the squid?” “No, it’s already dead” he replied, his eyes turned from mine. I sensed his uneasiness and knew that he didn’t speak the truth. “Why do they do that, it’s so cruel” “It’s how they make their living here” He said. “This is how they have always done it.” I looked down, confused. Did that make it right?

I watched as my brother left me to clamber down the other side of the rock, eager now to join the fishermen and be part of this ancient ritual of men. They needed no other shared language. I turned away. Alone, I climbed back the way we had come.

He returned home later that afternoon, proudly holding up his cache, his blue-grey eyes shining like that wintry sea. The slimy, dead carcass was leached of its blue black ink, its arms holding on to nothing.

My Mother gently covered the rings of its flesh in seasoned flour and fried it in the pan. I ate it with a squeeze of lemon juice. It was the best thing I had ever tasted.

Life Writing Anthology 3 (2008)

2008-09-21T12:03:00.002+12:00

Cover photograph & design: Kathryn Lee

Home & Away: Life & Travel Writing 3. Edited by Kathryn Lee & Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-13539-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. ii + 156 pp.

Contents:

Kathryn Lee
Preface: Writer's Block

Jack Ross
Xmas

Hayley Baines
Changes
Rules and Taboos
Seven

Bianca Burger
Home

Rebekah Chambers
Nobody Knows
Nothing but Silence
Never Again
Like You
You Were There
Melting
Tiny Black Curls
Your Face
Remember?

Bruce Craig
“Beautiful Little Dolls,” the Policeman said …

Jane Gardiner
Gardening with Granny
24 June 1977

Rhiannon Horrell
Travelling in the Footsteps of Janet White …

Emma Jeffrey
A Bus Full of Pirates

Rachel Koch
Getting Lost in Costa Rica

Kathryn Lee
Culture Shock 101: Day One in Hsin Chu

Dana Maton
Goodbye
The McGintys
Relations

Tania Menzies
Trouble in Tirau

Lisa Simpson
My German Grandfather
Goodbye

Sophie Smith
Rules and Taboos

Gregory Wood
Into the Mist: Searching for the Lost Huia

Available:

Leanne Menzies
School Adminstrator
School of Social and Cultural Studies
Massey University
Private Bay 102 904
North Shore Mail Centre
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 10 (+ $2 postage & packing)

Reviews & Comments:

Jennifer Little. "New books reveal bold approach to writing life.” Massey News. [6/6/08]

Jack Ross & Kathryn Lee at the booklaunch (4/6/08)

A former police officer’s sorrows about dealing with the deaths of children on the job is one of the most striking contributions in the latest anthology of student creative writing from Massey’s School of Social and Cultural Studies in Auckland.

Titled Home and Away, to reflect the inclusion of work from students of travel writing and life writing papers, the book was one of two launched this week by special guest and two-time Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize-winning author Tracey Slaughter.

Poems, essays and memoir showcase the diverse voices and subject matter from students’ writing assignments, with travel diary impressions of Costa Rica and Taiwan alongside reflections on childhood, the perils of family life, fraught love and a tale of a search for the extinct native bird, the huia.

In a story titled “Beautiful Little Dolls,” the Policeman said..,, former police officer Bruce Craig writes of attending the death of a baby, and discusses his own misgivings about the workings of police culture from an insider’s viewpoint.

Contributor and co-editor Kathryn Lee says the publication is a testament to the courage of students who overcame fear and the inclination to procrastinate when faced with the blank page.

“The lesson that I learned from this class [life writing] was a very simple one but one that needed to be learned. Stop worrying and start writing,” Ms Lee says in her preface.

Home and Away co-editor, writer and English lecturer Dr Jack Ross says the diverse backgrounds of the contributors produced a huge variety of “amazing” stories.

“Showcasing and polishing these pieces for others to read and learn from has been a great pleasure for me.”

Life Writing Anthology 2 (2005)

2008-09-21T12:01:00.001+12:00

Cover photograph: Simon Creasey / Cover design: Sarah Grimes

Where Will Massey Take You? Life Writing 2. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2005. viii + 155 pp.

Contents:

Jack Ross
Where Will Massey Take You?

Catherine Alexander
Diagonal Parking in a Parallel Universe:
A view from within the world of Asperger’s Syndrome

Kali Bell
Going Back
The Trigger
Despair

Rachel Bresnahan
The Sheepskin
When she was good …
Someone Else’s Story

Nathan Calvert
Interview with Farid Shafizadeh Dizaji

Jenna Crowley
The Lawnmower Man
Us
Friends
Six-Legged Fear

Erin Gallagher
Schools

Justine Giles
Mirror people
Old man, little boy

Anaise Irvine
Families

Anna Leclercq
Patagonia
Bomb Blast

Erica Marsden
What to do?

Katie Ranby
Great-Grandmother’s Poetry

Phillipa Reeve
Roadside Reflections

Kelly Schischka
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About
Dr Leslie Whetter, Mr. Weta, The Man Who
Went to Antarctica & the German Spy on The Hill

Claire Talbot
Unpardonable Sins
Trauma: Journal

Emma Zhang
Love, Time and Memories:
Liu Jing Hua, My Grandmother

Available:

Leanne Menzies
School Adminstrator
School of Social and Cultural Studies
Massey University
Private Bay 102 904
North Shore Mail Centre
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 10 (+ $2 postage & packing)

Reviews & Comments:

Jenny Lawn. "Life Writing 2." School News. SSCS - Massey University, Albany [6/10/05]:

Lecturer Jack Ross has edited the second anthology of work by students in 139.226, Life Writing. The poems, short stories, and interviews gathered in the collection are varied and hard-hitting, so come to our book launch ... to meet the contributors and be inspired! The English programme is grateful to Sarah Grimes for the evocative cover design (from an image by Simon Creasey).

Jennifer Little. "Immigrant Voices heard in Life Writing.” ‘Scoop’ - Independent News (11/8/06]:

New immigrants are bringing a distinctive flavour to the body of work emerging from Massey University’s popular Life Writing course.

In most academic courses, students never hear about the startling events, painful moments, exotic episodes and revealing recollections of their fellow students.

But in this course, at Massey’s Auckland campus, such material takes centre stage. Indeed, students learn a lot about each other’s lives whilst critiquing their attempts at turning them into fascinating stories, if not art ...

Jennifer Little, “Life Writing Course Lays it Bare.” Massey News 14 [12/8/06]:

In most academic courses, students never hear about the poignant moments, painful memories, startling events, exotic episodes and revealing recollections of their fellow students.

But in the University’s popular Life Writing course on the Auckland campus such material takes centre stage. Indeed, students learn about each other’s lives as well as critiquing their attempts at turning them into fascinating stories, if not art.

The life stories emerging are not only by and about New Zealanders, but have included personal tales from Baghdad, Beirut and Beijing, as well as parts of Africa and Europe.

A young man from Baghdad writes tenderly of his Egyptian-born great-grandfather, and of the war-ravaged history of his Middle East homeland.

A middle-aged Chinese woman, a former high-flying television documentary maker who spent her teenage years on a farm labour camp during the Cultural Revolution, tries to recapture lost memories of her own teenage daughter’s early years when she was a busy working mother.

A former New Zealand policeman puts aside real-life crime stories and is concentrating on children’s fiction.

As the title suggests, the paper deals with biography and autobiography. Far from encouraging outpourings of pure narcissism or unadulterated self-confession, the course enables students to combine academic study and analysis of literary masters with workshops where they experiment in different writing styles and genres.

It was launched seven years ago by the Head of English at Massey’s School of Social and Cultural Studies in Auckland, Dr Mary Paul, and is currently taught by senior lecturer Dr Jack Ross – also an author and book editor – with regular guest appearances from other lecturers and writers

Along the way students examine Graham Greene’s advice on writing autobiographically by changing one thing to make the transition to fiction, Marcel Proust and his ability to use sensory impressions to capture memory, and other well-known writers and poets.

The mix of academic study of writing techniques with creative writing exercises has proved to be a winning formula, says Dr Ross. The students reap great satisfaction from the chance to explore their own life stories imaginatively whilst improving their writing skills.

“Writing has to be approached as a pragmatic craft as much as an art,” he says. “There is a lot of false awe surrounding it.”

Several anthologies of past students’ work have been published by the University.

The course has also helped strengthen New Zealand’s evolving cultural identity, embracing more Asian and Pacific voices, he adds.

“One of the desired outcomes of the course was that it should improve the student’s understanding of how personal and non-fictional narratives contributes to New Zealand’s cultural history,” says Dr Paul in the introduction to one of the anthologies.

For students such as Chinese immigrant Xiaoping Wang, a new language and location have given her a freedom to write about personal matters in a way that she could not have in China.

Mrs Wang spent 14 years as documentary maker for a major Shanghai television station. Her last assignment was about New Zealand and she literally “fell in love” with the country while filming and decided to emigrate.

Although her memories of the six years she spent from the age of 16 enduring the harsh conditions of a farm labour camp during the Cultural Revolution might seem obvious and dramatic material for autobiographical writing, the 50-year-old was primarily interested in writing about her 16-year-old daughter.

Mrs Wang says her chosen writing theme, in which she wistfully rebuilds memories of her daughter’s early years spent at kindergarten and boarding school while her parents were busy working, has been a healing exercise for both mother and child.

She hopes to complete her Bachelor of Arts in English next year, and to become a tertiary teacher.

Media Studies student Muhanad Alnahas, who came to New Zealand from Iraq via Malaysia three years ago, has written about his much-admired great-grandfather – an Egyptian who pioneered a modern printing press in Baghdad.

“I wanted to show how a person could make something out of their life,” Mr Alnahas says.

Even the apparently dullest life can be turned into compelling art if the writing is well executed and the story given shape, according to Dr Ross.

But while the lives of many students who embark on Life Writing are far from dull, the challenge for all is to learn “the best way of saying what they want to say,” says Dr Ross.

Life Writing Anthology 1 (2003)

2008-09-21T11:57:00.002+12:00

Cover photograph & design: Lisa Allen

[your name here]: Life Writing. Edited by Jack Ross. Introduction by Mary Paul. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2003. x + 140 pp.

Contents:

Introduction (Mary Paul)

[your name here] (Jack Ross)

People

Poem for Dad (Kirstin Douglass)
Father (Jennie Allan)
Father (Harley Hern)
A Lamp in My Life (Julie Rah)
Bedtime (Kath Harris)
Bedtime (Jennifer Marsters)
Chips (Lisa Allen)

Places

Nostalgia (Janine Howe)
Death of a Tree Stump (Fiona Lambert)
Changes (Evan Lazarus)
Morning (Jacqué Mandeno)
The Range (Kay Paltridge)
Silence (Antonia Smith)
The Drums (Alice Whale)

Rules

Before the Law (Vicky Adin)
My Mice (Harley Hern)
School (Jacqué Mandeno)
Scent of the Sun (Victor Poliakov)
The End Justifies the Means (Noeline Sadler)
The Cure (Barb Smith)
Ham and Mustard (Sarah Thrasyvoulou)

Rituals

Race Day (Barb Smith)
The Basketball Game (Donna Banicevich Gera)
The Barbecue (Carol Buchanan)
The Anniversary (Barbara Grigor)
Seven (Melanie Shaw)
The Swimming Lesson (Rowan McCormick)
Lea & Perrins (Deanne Taylor)

Stories

Footsoldier (Lisa Allen)
Circumstances of Love & Lust (Phoebe Bellows)
from Black Sand (Barbara Grigor)
Just Deserts (Noeline Sadler)
The Barbecue (Nina Soma)
Fragments of My Life (Alice Whale)

Interview

Roger Thomas Ward Smith (Peter Linnell)

Letter

Three Good Things (Rowan McCormick)

Notes on Contributors

Available:

Leanne Menzies
School Adminstrator
School of Social and Cultural Studies
Massey University
Private Bay 102 904
North Shore Mail Centre
Auckland

RRP: $NZ10 (+ $2 postage & packing)