Keys: Workshop response 2
The keys were lost again. Georgie knew they were not and had never been inanimate objects. She could swear they were inhabited by a malign life force that directed them away from her sight as soon as she had laid them down, scurrying under the bed, or lurking beneath a pile of newspapers. Or burrowing into the deepest, darkest corner of her bag confident they would never be found until, exasperated, late, driven to distraction, she would up-end the organiser and scatter everything far and wide - and there they’d be.
“You should hang them up as soon as you come in”, said Henry, and he went out and bought a key tidy – sunflowers, definitely not her style. He got out his drill, his slide rule, and the dustpan and brush. Lo and behold! Within twenty minutes his pedantic efficiency had secured the key tidy to the wall exactly where she could ignore it as she rushed in with a week’s shopping in bursting bags or late to pick up the kids or with the telephone ringing urgently on the kitchen bench.
Later on she would remember that Henry was due home and would expect to see the keys hanging there, smugly obedient, ready to hand. The search would begin and get more and more frantic. She’d bribe the children to abandon toys and join her in the hunt. The places they chose to check out got wilder and more desperate. Surely no one sane would put keys in their children’s gummies, in a butter dish in the fridge, or in the baby’s potty? By the time she found them she would be so mad she wanted only to hurl them out the window. Lost forever in the deep dark gully that bordered their section.
Then she would recall what the keys were for. To get in, get going. Oh, there must be some better way to drive a car or open a door. Perhaps they could put a coded entry pad on their front door. Perhaps someone would invent a voice-activated vehicle …
Huh! That was as likely as her turning overnight into a female version of Henry. Well, they did say opposites attract, thought Georgie, though she sometimes wondered for how long. And suddenly she sat down in the chair, the keys forgotten as she began to count her blessings and found them coming in below target.
Keys: Workshop response 1
If knowledge is the power, then information is the key. Finding out will bring you the keys to the kingdom. Lock a door on me, and you will experience a scorch of anger directed at you. This has something to do with claustrophobia, and something to do with exclusion. Especially lock me out of my own home or my own workspace, and I will explode with range. The jingle of keys in my hand is a powerful comforter. Piano keys – the expert spread of fingers upon ivory and black. What is the key and where is the door? Open, sesame. I would prefer a thumbprint to get into my house. I have spent hours searching for keys or waiting on a cold doorstep while I fumble in bags or pockets. I would like a silver key to the gates of St Peter which I imagine as made of lapis lazuli and mother of pearl. I would like to know how to unlock my mind, my creativity. I like boxes that lock without a key, puzzle boxes that no-one else can get into. I like a locked trunk with treasures from my past. I like a key to turn when I am inside the bathroom so no-one can get in and I am inviolate. I like a quay also – to stand and watch the water, watch the boats. A French detective could be Monsieur le Clef. What is the key motif of my life? Lack of focus, lack of drive. Dreams of locked doors and lost keys.
To an Older Sister
~ for Sheila ~
and made rebellion easy for this disregarded child.
You'd bring me up to London, feed me eggs on toast.
You introduced me to the gods, to players, parks and poets.
Off stage you sang so sweetly, sang so small. Too easily hurt,
I couldn't bear it for you, wanted you only to laugh and dance.
You had the bluest eyes, a supple waist, small crooked teeth
that gave me hope I would one day be prettier than you.
Weekends, I'd raid your wardrobe, smear your shadow on my lids,
sit patiently beneath the comb as you braided my hair.
You had choices you were ready to make, being four years older.
Why did you marry across an ocean? My resentment made it an abyss.
Then I found purpose strong enough to defeat the miles, and being poor
I flew to my sister, my friend. Since then our paths have twined together.
Jenny Argante
Insane Rant about Money and the IRD
Watch out - the volcano erupts. That's what I feel like - a volcano that has blown its top. I am incandescent with rage at present and I don't think I can afford to stay in New Zealand. First off, I am 25,000 miles away from my money. My teacher's pension was not paid on 29th August, or, rather, according to them (in the UK) it was paid but has not yet arrived here. Though Western Union can transfer money immediately by quoting a country code, a sort code, and an account number, this is obviously beyond some of the banks here, so my money comes from TP (Teachers' Pensions) in Darlington to the ANZ Bank here and then to my Kiwibank account. Legally, it is due on 29th, but my argument that they should therefore transfer it earlier so it is in my account by 29th has fallen on deaf ears. Though it has (eventually) turned up every other month that I have been out here, now it seems to have got lost somewhere in the ANZ Bank system. So the answer arrived at by TP is to 'suspend all future payments until this is sorted out'. So having waited for two weeks to get no money, I am supposed to hope they can sort it out in the next two weeks - which they won't, so as well as being without August money I will also be without September money.
I hate banks and money and bureaucracies. All my life worry about money has been a huge grey stone weighing me down and preventing me from being happy and stable. We can talk about bipolar/ manic depressiove/ borderline personality disorder: the truth remains that the men in my life didn't care enough about me to take care of me in spite of myself. Glen never paid more than twelve pounds a week towards Gina and Andria's maintenance even when he was earning 70,000 pounds a year. He also kept me waiting six years for a divorce where he could be the innocent party. I helped Allen fulfil his lifelong dream of being an artist and his reward was to let me be the breadwinner, to take half of the Stafford house bought with my superannuation (cutting my eventual pension in half). He took half again of the Telford house contents (after a failed reconciliation which ended when Jeremy took a knife to Andria) and a big payout so he would not get lifelong maintenace from me. Malcolm wanted to 'support me being a writer' and so I gave in my notice from the best job I ever had (Lecturer II, Aylesbury College) and before I'd served my 3-months notice was in such a panic about what we'd live on that I ended up going back to work at the shit end of the market as a supply teacher and fill in. I allowed myself to be blackmailed when my back went and eight other teachers at Burlington Danes took early retirement and a redundancy pay-off - which I was entitled to - because the bitch in charge, Cynthia Amos, now dead of cancer, and aren't I glad about that - I hope she died in agony - told me if I did, she'd sack Birgitta and shut the Learning Resources Centre. Yes, I was wrong to trust these men, and yes, I was wrong to listen to her - Birgitta was not my problem, nor was it my fault if the students were without an LRC.
I known I did it to myself, and in the long run, I can blame no one else for my folly, and yet there is a deep, deep anger there that no one cared enough or put me first. Am I so eminently unlovable? I am no better and no worse than hundreds of other women whose husbands fall over backwards to work with them and not against them.
The term 'reciprocal' is used to describe what happens when a UK citizen becomes a permanent resident in NZ. Reciprocal in my dictionary talks of an equal exchange. Excuse me? Over there, I am a pensioner at 60 and qualify for pensioner benefits, including free medical and dental treatment, free chiropody and physiotherapy, which I need for my damaged feet, housing benefit and invalidity benefit. Over here I pay out and pay out and pay out - $175 today when another filling fell out of my tooth, $65 every time I see the doctor, $350 for an X-ray on my ankle to determine why it is not healing as it should, $600 for a CAT scan ditto ... All this I have taken in my stride, accepting I will be poor until the day I die and not letting it interfere too much with my daily pleasures. My pension which I paid for over 35 years of full stamps was frozen the day I became a permanent resident at the rate it was then: in the UK I would get annual index-related increases (this freeze happens because NZ has not signed the international social security agreement - which saves them $3.8m. a year.) I have already in the 2 years I've been in receipt of it seen my pension drop from $1750 a month to the latest figure of $1260 a month. That is a substantial loss to bear and my expenses do not drop - they increase with inflation.
Then half an hour ago I was with the IRD expecting to get a tax rebate I'd been told would be between $800 and $1200. Instead, I have come out with a tax bill of nearly $3000. Why? My UK pensions are 'taxed at source'. However, because in fact if you add both of them together they still do not reach the maximum at which you begin to pay tax in the UK, no tax is deducted. Aha! If I haven't paid tax on then in the UK, then the NZ can insist that I pay tax on them here. If only $5 a month was paid in tax in the UK, that income would be tax free here - it is taxed as 'world income' and therefore can only be taxed in one place. It is taxed in the UK - but doesn't rate tax.
So here I am, stuck with a huge tax bill for what? For bugger all. I get no medical or dental cover - again, I've paid NHS contributions in the UK for over 30 years and get nil benefit from that. I get no post-operative ACC cover for my damaged ankle (the major health cost I have to bear) because the accident did not occur in NZ, and I get no personal allowance - that minimum amount you are allowed to earn before you pay tax - because in NZ you pay tax on the very first dollar you earn each year and the government gives you ACC cover in return - which I don't/can't benefit from.
MOT is WOF over here (warrant of fitness) and has to be done every 3 months on old cars - the only sort I can afford - @ $55 + any repair costs. Registration of your car is done every six months @ $172. My rent is $520 a month, electricity about $200, telephone about $100, and GST of 17 per cent on everything you buy.
Well, today I have had it. All I wanted to do was crash the car on the way home and I have decided when my next big payment comes in on or about the beginning of October to buy a one way ticket and go home. I am happy here and I will miss the Littlies like mad and I can't even begin to think of anyone who will love Blossom and Minnalouche like I do, but basically I want to be able to pay my bills and keep myself without this constant stress. Again, I will have to 'start over' - a hologram phoenix feebly flapping my wings as I try once more to rise from the ashes.
I'd like to form a Grey Panther movement and blow up the Beehive in Wellington. I am so upset I want to slash myself with a knife or tear my hair out or do a bungee jump without the rope. I do not deserve this. I do not.
The Buddy System for Women Writers
Writing is a solitary activity, by definition. You need a different impetus to carry you forward from that which got you started. Writing courses and groups such as Women and Words can help you to begin. To help you to go forward, and get on, you might like to consider setting up a buddy system.
This is a concept borrowed from America, home of self-help and co-counselling, of coaching, mentors and role models. It shares something with all of these and is equally useful to women who in spite of talent and energy consistently under-achieve. This isn’t the place to analyse why. Some of us, we’re told, are frightened in case we fail, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of us are scared we might succeed. Crashing through a glass ceiling, feted and famous, will we know ourselves? Will we be loved and appreciated for who we are, and not for what we’ve done?
Are women such complex creatures? Yes, too often. Socially programmed to put others first. Self-programmed to self-destruct. Listening to the inner voice that whispers: “Not quite good enough.” For whom? For what? Kill it, as Woolf advised us to kill the angel in the house.
The buddy system is designed for women to overcome, together, such problems of self-esteem that interfere with progress. In Women and Words, some of us are using it to grow. We’ve chosen writing buddies who have replaced harsh self-assessment with benign evaluation by a trusted and significant other.
Women notoriously experience difficulty in putting themselves first. Yet to do so is a necessary precondition for changing self-perception. With a buddy, we learn that we can do it - hand in hand, and step by step. We can find our self - discover, uncover, recover. We can learn what we want and how to get it. Learn to be writers.
This seems easier for men. They appear to have access to something from which women are, seemingly, debarred. Why? The easy answer is the support and encouragement historically available to male high-flyers through the old boys’ network. The elaborate back-up of mothers, sisters, wives and girl friends; of secretaries and PAs. Men take such help for granted; add to it deliberately by seeking out role models and mentors.
Women can do the same. Getting your hands on such support will optimise strengths and counteract weaknesses. Some help is available - from books and other traditional sources; or from Internet chat rooms for writers and dedicated websites Nothing replaces personal contact. Women want it all: face-to-face exchanges; telephone calls; group commentary; brainstorming, workshops, and seminars. One-to-one fits most snugly with female learning patterns.
A creative writing group like Women and Words (York City) delivers its message of self-improvement through open workshops, and through work in progress where writing is shared for constructive criticism. However well intentioned, this can be intimidating.
Yes, we’ve got guidelines to ensure a secure environment to offer up work for comment and analysis. Yet even the best-run group occasionally fails an individual member. Too many faces overwhelm; the still, small voice is silenced. Personalities intrude, or a meeting doesn’t gel.
Sometimes a folder or folio system is added so that work can be circulated among sub-groups specialising in playwriting, the short story, etc. A particular genre such as sci-fi or erotica may demand more time than a general meeting can allow. A writer working seriously for publication wants ongoing advice and individual support. This isn’t available often enough or in sufficient depth, however frequently the group convenes. There may be a lack of consensus as to what constitutes work ‘of a publishable standard’; a shortage of expertise on content or format.
Sometimes work is too personal for group sharing: a diary, or letters; autobiographical writing on events too raw, too recent, for mass exposure. Our self-esteem is closely linked to self-expression. One negative response, and we retreat, lying fallow far too long.
In such cases, the best support - objective, reliable and well informed - still comes from other writing women, but by other means. The buddy system was devised for two people working to achieve predetermined goals, like writing a book of prime importance to each. Together they make agreements on how to overcome personal difficulties in sustaining ongoing and steady commitment to the chosen work. They learn to put themselves first, and their work. Such development of ego is necessary; men know that. It doesn’t make them better writers than women; it does make them writers more often.
The predisposition to create exists in us all. Why, then, choose a woman as buddy? You don’t have to; but it makes good sense. Women often have more insight into a friend’s best interests than their own; they are natural enablers. The buddy system turns this ‘weakness’ to strength.
Where does writing come from? You could answer, everywhere and nowhere. I prefer to believe that it arises from our own experience, from something interior or external that is shaped by our imagination, by how we think, who we are and what we do. In other words, from identity and from acculturation. A woman’s sense of self, her place in society, will always be different from a man’s. While a male perspective can assist writer-reader communication in unexpected ways, another woman is partisan as a man cannot be.
A woman can share our perplexities, and their communication; understand our passion, yet help us to be dispassionate. For in writing you must find a means to convey and control emotion before it distorts or destroys intention.
The writer, after all, is God: no longer a participant. Such a thought is both empowering and disabling for women. We do not readily identify with a God that most religions obstinately portray as patriarchal. To write is to be God, the creator, and not the creation.
Women have another, shared, dilemma: the dual nature of our creativity. Motherhood is commonly held to be our main function, something for which we are genetically programmed even when opting out. If we are not mothers, we may find others judging our creativity to be of a lesser kind. If we are, that role will clash with the demands of being a writer. Such conflict may arise on a mundane level such as simply finding time. Or it may fester in our subconscious because the dominant male element in society continues to challenge our right to be both.
Sisterhood was a means whereby women helping women recognised what was mutual between them, and celebrated what was different. Sisterhood offered that which we seldom got unconditionally from our menfolk - safety, trust, and equality. All these are virtues we insist on from our friends.
In choosing a woman to be your writing buddy, you stay with what is known and friendly. You can expect intimacy of mind and emotion - the intuitive comprehension lacking from professional and academic worlds. Sometimes female judgement is subjective; sometimes objective. Women value both. Women also understand that the work in progress is as important as the finished product. Their logic and intuition lead to such uncommon insights as this from Patricia: “Panic makes me calm.”
Women still score higher than men on caring and sharing. Caring is a means whereby you demonstrate the value another person has for you. A buddy will extend that caring to the work you do. Sharing implies generosity and women are the majority among the volunteer workforce.
We give our time and our commitment readily; like to impart information garnered; to proffer different views of women’s writing gleaned from Virago, Raw Nerve and the Women’s Press; from Mslexia and Diva.
We eagerly share techniques that work for us, like CIPP and CIS, patterning, word games, Dorothea Brande, creative visualisation, focus and affirmations.
All this explains the whys and wherefores of the buddy system. You’ll either want to do it, or leave it alone. You may already have a ‘buddy’ in mind - some friend, tried and trusted, whose full worth and true potential have been under-utilised too long. A buddy-in-waiting, as it were. You might even have two; it’s permitted.
Once you’ve opted for a buddy, choose her with care. She can be your best mate, or someone you barely know. She must be a person whom you can trust to stick to this commitment for as long as it’s required. She must be close to hand. My sister is my best friend and the cleverest editor I know; but she lives in America. We e-mail each other often about writing, and want to collaborate on a book, but we can’t be buddies.
Selection isn’t always straightforward. For some, it works better if you’re in the same field. You have a shared language; you agree on what constitutes proper poetry, a marketable script, etc. For others, divergent interests or attitudes aren’t necessarily a hindrance, but offer new perspectives.
Use preliminary meetings to define goals. Express these concretely, e.g. 250 words three times a week; one chapter a month; specific research in the British Library; close editing of a finished manuscript From now on, when you meet, stick to the business at hand until you’ve done what’s needed.
Learn to state exactly what you want to achieve, however scared you are of saying it aloud. Then commit to it. Within this long-term objective, define short-term goals in your reach that contribute to your ultimate success. For example, my poetry buddy Joanna and I are working together on individual, themed collections. My subject is flight, and hers is portrait poetry. I prefer free verse; and she is working to strict rules of form and metre. When we meet, we discuss one poem only. We are both only pages away from a finished book.
Set target dates to avoid procrastination. Each is timetabled for one stage of the process. You can always reschedule if major delay is forced upon you. Like a burst appendix or an unplanned pregnancy. However, the intention is that the later of your two, individual target dates ultimately becomes the joint target date. Meetings continue until all individual goals have been met. Now start over with a new goal and deadline.
This works better if you plan backwards from final objective to first step. Write down your objective and, in reverse, define each goal, each stage, until you reach Step 1. Make it small and manageable. When it’s accomplished, move on to Step 2, Step 3 ... and beyond.
Say you’ve decided that this year you’ll enter your novel for the Lichfield Prize. Plan backward from the closing date and from the specified length and subject. Step 1 could be: “Write a synopsis”; Step 2: “Present your characters”: Step 3: “Explore location”, and Step 4: “Write Chapter 1.”
What’s important is to schedule Step 1 for a specific date and time. Your first exchange sets the tone, and determines what you get from it. The buddy system only works when you’re ready to make changes in your writing life; to realise your potential and increase your skills.
You are entering into a contract to give and to get positive support. You must be willing to open up and take risks in order to do so. You have to explain what each wants from a buddy, and women don’t find it easy to ask for what they need. You have to explain what your work is about, and this is difficult for writers, who live largely in their minds and rely on intuition.
But if your buddy doesn’t understand what you want to do, how can she help you do it? How will she recognise when it’s been done? Do your best to prepare her, so she can do best for you. Run through or rehearse what’s unfamiliar. If you want to write for Coronation Street, should you watch an episode together? If she’s wants to write experimental drama should she drag you off to fringe theatre? Agree on this beforehand. Set boundaries. Lay down rules.
For all subsequent meetings, the following rules apply. As my old teacher used to say: “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”
RULE 1.
Hold weekly meetings, timetabled for at least one hour at a regular time.
RULE 2.
No socialising, no idle chitchat. Each person gets exactly half an hour. Make it worthwhile.
RULE 3.
Take it in turns to go first. Don’t rely on memory. Write it down.
RULE 4.
For the first five minutes of your time, report on what you did, or didn’t do; what resulted; problems or break-throughs; a change of direction, etc. Or try creative complaining: mean, low-down and dirty.
RULE 5.
Your buddy is there to listen, and to cheer you on, not to cheer you up.
RULE 6.
For the next twenty minutes, brainstorm. Where are you? Where do you want to be? Come up with inventive solutions, outrageous suggestions; write them down. Do this on a big sheet of paper you can pin over your desk.
RULE 7.
For the last five minutes plan your next meeting. Put the date in your diary and on the calendar. Don’t rely on memory. Make notes on what you’ve agreed together for the week to come. This is your writing directive. Follow it.
One final suggestion from Women and Words in Dover, New Hampshire. Try a resource party annually. Set aside a day for it. Everyone brings something to eat, and a writing problem for solution. You’ll work in twos or threes. You might even take along your own particular buddy.
© Jenny Argante, with rules added by Sheila Bolsover
Yesterday Tonight Tomorrow
Yesterday a cold wind was blowing across the waters of the Welsh Harp reservoir, ruffling starved grasses and keening through the trees. I pretended it was gusting down from the high Rimutakas, shaking the easy waters of Wellington’s blue harbour bowl.
Tonight I’m floating in a homely sea, thickly-scented, easing my bones. I’m drinking rough red wine, and eating kiwi fruit. My knees incline together like twin peaks in Takimutu mountains, and my belly is as round as the boulders in Moeraki Bay.
The wine is good; but it doesn’t bring you nearer. Will you toast me tonight in sparkling Auckland wine?
The kiwi fruits are small and green, needing the sun to plump them up to gold. The kiwi fruits grew once in your far country; but they do not bring you nearer.
You send me postcards from Waitangi and Rotorua. There are snapshot images filed inside my brain. I liked you round and kindly in your faded red-silk dressing-gown. I liked you around, and kindly in my bed. I liked you. You rounded me with kindness.
When I move, rearing up, I shake the stale cold water, and it rolls down the edges of the bath like Morokopa falls. Tomorrow you‘ll worry, as you pace out Paekakariki, that I’m in love with you. I’m not. I’m in love with the idea of being in love with you.
Yesterday, walking back through a bitter and dusty wind, I wanted greenstone tiki to hang upon my ears. My face is being carved roughly out as if by a scorned tohunga. There are lines on my forehead and under my eyes as detailed as moko. I didn’t choose this pattern to put upon my face. I want greenstone tiki to hang upon my ears. I want the wind to growl ‘darling’ and shake me, sudden and fierce.
Tonight I am suspended in a hot salt-thickened bath. I count the childbirth scars upon my belly, check again the stretch-marks that meander across my white, withdrawn body. The door is shut. I am my own mother now, badly scared, wanting to climb back inside where water first lulled me. I am my own baby and I cannot hush the crying. I want to put myself inside the strong guard of your pa. I am my own baby and I cannot hush the crying. The wind must growl. ‘Darling’. Sudden and fierce.
I turn on the tap. Hot water erupts from ancient plumbing: gushes, swirls. Heat surrounds me. The door is shut. Heat surrounds me, and images are lost under white clouds. Lost and clinging. Hot water gushes, erupts. When I was young, I panted for the dark stranger. I didn’t see you, hiding in books, playing out your simple dramas on a bare and empty stage.
I didn’t see you but I can remember dark curling hair and the sweetness of your red and curving mouth. I didn’t see you, but I can remember. Smiling eyes and that you listened.
Tomorrow you’ll worry that I’m in love with you. I’m not. I’m in love with the idea that I’ve fallen in like with you. When I was young I desired only the dark stranger. You hid in books, played out new dramas on a crowded stage. I didn’t see you until you returned as the dark and smiling stranger.
By then I’d grown into a different age.
Jenny Argante
Found Poem
a flawed precept
dry flatlands of Uttar Pradesh
the Jhansi to Delhi train
makes an unscheduled stop
dust and stone and hot-rail steel
a ghost appears, a ghost
in stained cotton
on a makeshift stretcher
of sheets and ropes
a wailing procession
and solemn whispers …
‘burnt by her father’
a drop in crime of all kinds bar one:
rape and the murder of women
girl babies and grandmothers starve
honour killings
the burning of brides
acid attacks
and dowry deaths
different forms of the same demon
that a Sri Lankan girl
would flee down under
raises eyebrows all right:
because she escaped …
a grim snapshot of women in Asia
with its skewed sex ratio
50 million missing from India alone
maternal mortality the worst in the world
the destruction of schools where women can learn
daughters, sisters, wives and mothers dissolved
in the pious dust of an Islam republic
go to Lahore, a bustling city
of six million souls
count on one hand the women you see
but no wife travels so far
without her husband’s permission
divorce can be deadly and children
belong to the man
commonplace on the streets:
for adultery, stoning to death
but not for the men
beatings for improper dress
gun-toting gangsters ruling by fear
a Hindu widow is committing suttee:
self-immolation in a husband’s flames
thousands gather in praise
of an ancient ritual
based on belief that women
only have worth
in relation to men
Jenny Argante
All lines taken from 'Burnt by her father', by Paul Yandall IN The Listener, March 13th 2004
Hen Enterprises
Focus on Fiction by Sue Emms [$7.50 incl. P.& P.]
If you want to write short stories and novels, this is a useful introduction to the main principles of fiction to help you get into print. Sue Emms has been widely published in New Zealand and abroad, and has won or been placed in many competitions, including the Sunday Star Times and Takahe. She has herself judged story competitions like Auswrite and the Western Districts, and was three times a finalist in the Richard Webster Popular Fiction Award. Hazard Press published Parrot Parfait in 2004 and Come Yesterday, a romantic thriller, late last year to excellent reviews. Sue tutors on the Waiariki Institute of Technology's online Certificate in Creative Writing.
Constructive Editing by Jenny Argante [$10 incl. P. & P.]
‘The only true writer is a re-writer’ say the experts. This is a guide to ‘close editing’, that process of revising a first draft to publishable standard. The writer as reader gets a lucid explanation of different kinds of editing for content and readability. Jenny Argante is a Bravado editor, and writes regularly for Freelance, New Zealand's longest-running journal for creative writers of all kinds, and for the Bay of Plenty Times. Jenny also tutors on the Waiariki Institute of Technology's online Certificate in Creative Writing.
Poetry by Owen Bullock
summer, Hauraki Plains
with sumi-e illustrations by Janice M. Bostok
A verbal portrait of a particular time and place essentially New Zealand. [$12 incl. P. & P.]
after the buddhist comes to call
with illustrations by eRiQ
A series of poems written as half-humorous, half-serious responses to a Zen philosophy of accepting life as a random mix of pleasure and pain. [$12 incl. P. & P.]
Poems by Bay of Plenty writer Owen Bullock launch a series of chapbooks intended to showcase the work of local writers and illustrators in an affordable and compact format. Owen Bullock is poetry editor of Bravado, an accomplished songwriter and musician, and a rising star on the New Zealand poetry scene. He has tutored in poetry writing at the University of Waikato in Tauranga.
Enquiries to:
Hen Enterprises PO Box 13-533 Grey Street Tauranga
(Don't forget to include your name & postal address.)
Bill Gates owes Alan Sugar
A writer describes her love affair with a computer
When I was 39 I decided to take my writing seriously. I bought a state-of-the art electronic typewriter. The price made my husband's jaws drop.
Before I'd mastered the manual, I saw an ad. on British TV for the Amstrad. This centred round workers chucking their old machines out the window to embrace the new computer revolution promised by Alan Sugar's affordable PC.
Under the spell of this modern-day Svengali I raced down to the High Street and bought my very first computer. My husband couldn't get over it. "You just bought that typewriter," he said. Such fine phrases as 'cost-effective', 'user-friendly' and 'increased productivity' went over his head. He was sobbing quietly into his hankie.
Computer whizz-kids sneered at the Amstrad and pointed out its limitations. "Locoscript isn't really a word-processing program," they said. I acknowledged its deficiencies and loved it anyway. Computer manuals can seriously damage your health so I threw mine away and made friends with the help key.
I learned the hard way that back-ups are essential when I lost three chapters from the hard disk through digital incompetence. I learned the fallacy of wizzy-wig and the truth of the old adage, 'Garbage in and garbage out'. As for those nerds and geeks, what did they know? The Amstrad was made for people like me. Short on money and short on time. Computer virgins.
I was madly in love with my keen, mean, green machine. Together we burnt the midnight oil and created new poetry and prose. The daisy-wheel went rat-a-tat-tat and printed out pristine and professional submissions that won me friends and influenced people. As musical to my ears was the ching-ching-ching of the money rolling in.
Now I'm a dedicated word-processor who's totally in control. I am the master and the machine is my slave. It endows me with powers to edit - that skill that separates professional writer from amateur. As Dhondy says, "The only true writer is a rewriter." Before if I changed a single word or comma I had to retype the whole page. Cut and paste was literally that. Slips of paper went AWOL. The glue was everywhere except where it should be.
Computers liberated me from that drudgery and set me free to write. As I grew in confidence and competence, I got cocky. I organised myself as if I were a company: Jenny Argante Ltd. - writer, researcher, information specialist and Freecell junkie. The computer helped with all these roles - and in the household. I had 28 days of menus with shopping lists incorporated. I had my files indexed and annotated. I had two correspondence databases, personal and professional, and utilised mail-merge fully.
Wherever I was - in writers' groups, at college or in the library - I enthused about the Amstrad. My friends and colleagues bought Amstrads, too. If I'd been on commission I'd have made a bomb. I was the 'Nelly' that new owners sat next to and learned what to do. Our Amstrad self-help users' group spread the word. Hallelujah!
Almost casually the college where I taught decided to buy six Amstrads and put me in charge of them. I started to run Access and NOW* courses. Exuberantly I taught the joy of computers to men and women out of work and low on expectations. As they got to grips with the Amstrad, that friendly little beast, hope bloomed, and self-esteem. Home they went beaming broadly and clutching to their bosoms documents and databases of all kinds, especially CVs and business plans.
Soon they outgrew the Amstrad, and so did I. I became a freelance preparing online information bulletins for clients. I wrote books on my IBM with its huge megabytes and generous RAM and ROM. I did data input for international scientific and medical databases and casually undertook Internet research for consultants and engineers. I swapped snail mail for e-mail and learned to evaluate websites for content and style. I set up new learning resource centres in colleges and universities. I worked in a school and learned how much the younger generation knew.
Today my home office boasts iMac state-of-the art technology that is highly user-friendly and extremely profitable. But you don't ever forget your first love, do you? And so I won't go to Heaven if my Amstrad's not there.
© Jenny Argante
* NOW = New Opportunities for Women
Note: I estimate this is 95% fact, and 5% wishful thinking.
Incidents in London
Every Friday myself and two colleagues go to lunch at the neighbourhood pub. Not exactly riotous living - a sarnie and a spritzer. But even a mild splurge means cash, so last week I went to raid the piggy-bank and they went on ahead. The queue at Lloyds was over-long, and once I’d collected the money, I walked fast back to the pub. I’m in my middle fifties, and, yes, I’m overweight.
As I strode along in my jumper and jeans I was hailed by one of two lads standing outside another pub before the Pig and Whistle. Young men not above eighteen, one clutching a pint mug, the other smoking a fag, both rosy with beer and adolescence.
“Hey, missus! You’re doing a grand job of juggling them.”
Now in a college with a few hundred students, most of whom use the library, more of them know you than you can ever know yourself. I assumed they were greeting me as someone they recognised, and I didn’t quite catch, or fully understand what was said. So I stopped.
“Pardon?”
The one with the fag grinned. He cupped his hands, and moved them up and down suggestively. “You’re doing a grand job of juggling them, missus.”
I was flooded with rage. I had thought I was past the age of catcalls and wolf-whistles, and these boys were thirty years my junior. I said sharply, “I’d juggle your balls if I thought I could find them.”
That wiped the grin of his face, and set his partner laughing. I marched into the pub, sat down fuming, and told my girlfriends why.Brenda leaned forward. She’s a quiet girl, in her late twenties, attractive with her long black hair, but not a raver - her figure slight and boyish.
“I get it, too,” she said, “when I’m jogging, from boys as young as seven or eight. Making rude remarks about my breasts, telling me not to get jogger’s nipple.”
We were marvelling over this as evidence of early socialisation into the cult of the ‘macho male’ when an old gentleman, easily in his 70s, toddled over. He dropped a hand-written card in front of Maggie, winked broadly and retreated. She picked it up. In his spiky, old man’s hand, he’d written, “If you smile, I’ll know you want to sleep with me.”
This called for more talk, and a second spritzer. Ten minutes later, he returned for his answer. Maggie pursed her lips. “I’m not smiling”, she informed him. (Not seventy either.)
“Oh, well, worth a try!” he picked up the card - to use again? - and stood there, chatting. “It used to work better when I was younger”, he told us regretfully, “but I had them printed then. I think the printed cards worked better.”
(And you too, mister.) Aloud I suggested he staple his bank statement to it to make the bargain irresistible.
Just two nights later I was walking home from the tube when I was propositioned by two boys, about twelve. They told me they'd give me a fiver if I let them 'do it' to me. They seemed to think this was an irresistible offer. I was a woman, wasn't I? Over the hill, too, and therefore likely to be grateful. Perhaps I'd even do it for free. I was flabbergasted. I don't consider myself flashy, and I was dressed warmly and informally. No high heels. No make-up. It was eleven o'clock. What were they doing up? Who had taught them it was O.K. to accost any woman who came along and ask her for sex? Who had taught them that sex is something you pay for? I was angry then and I am angry now.
When ARE women safe from the unwanted attentions of any casual male passer-by? (“Cheer up, ducks. It may never happen.”) They begin to intrude on us - make passes or personal comments, force a response - in such a minor fashion, though never with our permission. We think we’re being silly if we resent it or resist it. Men often tell us we are being silly. “It’s only fun.” But where does encroachment end, and total invasion begin?
Last year in America I read a report that said appeal judges had reduced a man’s sentence for rape because his victim was ‘provocative’. She was four years old. Last night I heard on the news about an 88-year old woman raped in her own home. Today I read about a 12-week baby gang-raped by four perverts.
I suspect all this has to do with an assumption that men still have rights over women, and the power to enforce them. I suspect that it always begins with what's insidious and denied. “Only joking.” Hardly discernible at all, unless you’re on the look-out for it.Yes, it begins in small tyrannies, but all too often it ends in female terror and resentment. At how so many men feel free to exercise their ‘right’ to comment on or possess any woman. And yes – it does make me angry. It always will.
(First published in Everywoman [UK]. Oh, how I loved that magazine - and Spare Rib. Thank God we've still got Mslexia.)
Questions
Still on the subject of ego, this poem (or whatever) was pure stream of consciousness and also All About Me. In free writing you allow yourself to run wild without censure or censoring, simply discovering what lies beneath when you read back. Cheaper than analysis!
* * * * * * *
Am I
an introverted extrovert
or
an extroverted introvert?
I don't know:
but sometimes I'm brash and brassy
when I want to be cool and classy,
laid-back or insignificant
when I needed to be magnificent.
I have weeks when my thoughts are shallow
and my brain is lying fallow,
then something triggers off the profound,
and when I share my thoughts around,
others gasp and go, "Gosh! Oh, golly!
She's philosophical AND jolly!"
and they don't know which to believe.
My intention is not to deceive.
Though I'm pondering death or dying,
I don't go around sighing;
it's all locked away in my brain.
Perhaps it's too much of a strain
to consider how deep I am trawling:
I don't want to start everyone bawling.
Then suddenly out of the blue
comes a truth that I've minted anew
and thoughts reach out and take hold,
and my tongue is both clever and bold;
and I feel like Aristotle,
or Wittgenstein, off the bottle.
We all have this potential:
it isn't accidental,
but part of the human psyche,
mostly dismissed with, "Oh, crikey!
I didn't learn that at school.
Shut up, or they'll think you a fool."
What a pity we have to mistrust
what lifts us up from the dust.
So just once I am flaunting it proudly,
proclaiming my intellect loudly
and telling you all what I ought:
"You are never alone with a thought."
And when several come clamouring hearty
it's a kind of mind-power party
for one, or for ten:
a festival Zen
or mystical reflection
and empowering detection
of the human soul and spirit
and its individual merit.
Before I end, one final thought that I keep on getting:
you're only a flawed diamond until you're in the right setting.
Jenny Argante
Jenny's Ad
This was a workshop exercise, to create an advert promoting yourself and your Unique Selling Points. Writers need healthy egos to survive and prosper, and writing something like this is not only fun but fosters self-esteem. Why not write your own ad now?
* * * * * * *
JENNY - original, innovative - an agent for change.
Feeling bored? In a rut? Try JENNY, the mobile think-tank, and get your ideas shaken up. Break out of your deadly routine with ... JENNY!
Need some wit and a happy smile to liven up your party? Take JENNY home with you and relax.
JENNY works best on those of a sluggish disposition, but put her together with another ideas person and she’ll still fizzle!
JENNY is second to none, so let her come first with you. JENNY mixes well with others, but can also go it alone - working, creating, brewing up more ideas for the next big occasion.
Privately or publicly, JENNY is ace! She can organise, revitalise and tantalise, because JENNY is always one step ahead of the crowd.
Once you’ve tried JENNY, you’ll never want to be without her again.
