SMELT LIKE BURNT TOAST TO ME

I had a meeting in the afternoon. When I sat down on the bus I could smell burnt toast. Which worried me a little. I heard if you are having a stroke sometimes you can smell burnt toast. When there isn't any there. I glanced around the bus for toast, but couldn't locate any. I looked out the window to see if my vision was blurry. It was. Turns out they hadn't cleaned the windows for about three weeks.

I had stroke on the brain, I'm a bit young for it, although you can have one at any time, even children! My friend who is more of an age, got her words all jumbled the other day, while we were at the beach eating chips. So I started my are you having a stroke quiz. How many fingers am I holding up? Follow my finger with your eyes. Say 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. Okay that one's cheating thats a typing exercise to get you to use as many as fingers and letters as possible. She got as far as 'the quick brain face'. Hmmm, are you feeling peculiar? The things that were coming out of her mouth were so nonsensical neither of us could look at each other without both laughing until we cried. Okay focus, she said quite distinctly, 'I am a lunatic going somewhere to cannibal-apple'. Close but no cigar. Coincidently in written form this particular symptom is called Paragraphia. She returned to 'normal' in a few minutes. Maybe a TIA - transient ischemic attack. Lasts 1 - 5 minutes, a 'mini stroke', causes no lasting damage, unless you have a lot of them or go on to have a stroke. I'm keeping an eye on her.

It's been windy lately, but not too cold. I've taken to wearing my favourite long woolly cardigan out of doors, instead of just in the privacy of my own home. A spinal injury last year has caused me to add a lumbar roll of late to my accessories. The one with the waist strap so I don't leave it behind on the bus. I caught sight of myself reflected in the window of the bank on the way home from the bus stop. In my woolly hat and all I looked like a scarecrow, with a piece of string tied around my waist. All I needed was my gumboots and a net, and I was good to go - whitebaiting that is! Toast and fritters anyone?

I had to smarten up if I was going to make it out to the arts organization AGM tonight. Miss b-f now fully recovered helped me work out a more suitable outfit with a better shirt, a long coat, and an attache case to invest my lumbar roll when not in use. Which was quite a lot of the time, because the chairs at the AGM were the folding kind which don't even have a back part where your lumbar spine is! That didn't stop me discussing dessert recipes with my fellow artist, and eating a lot of the homemade vegetarian pizza. I brought Miss b-f home two pieces of the leftover pizza, all the way on the bus, between two plates.

But to the person eating burnt toast on the bus. Cut it out! I nearly had a stroke!

DREAMS - perils of BLOG and sleep DepRIVE

No not our hopes and aspirations, the ones we have whilst sleeping! I like dreams, I like how wacky they can be, in alternate realities, how they jump parallel universes in a nanoseconed. How you can be in two (or more) places at once. One minute you are in country A talking with friend B, the next minute you are country C talking with acquaintance D. I like that you can fly and swim underwater, and do all kinds of things you can't in waking life. I sometimes teach people who fall a lot in their flying dreams how to fly better. I like it that there are people in my dreams, dream people that I don't know, that I have never met, and maybe won't. People who I will not admit I am attracted to in waking life will definitely turn up in erotic dreams! There are some imagined landscapes from childhood my dreams sometimes return to.

I like the way when I am editing my mind works on it whilst I am sleeping. Like a computer program running in the background it somehow searches everything and produces, errors and omissions, contradictions, similarities and differences which would play nicely off each other, and even technical solutions. Apparently we remember things better after we have slept.

I am aware my dreams often reinterpret the last things I saw on TV before I went to sleep, changing the location, and replacing the characters with me and people I know. I like the way people I should call or write, who are going through transitions, appear in my dreams to let me know.

It's much easier to remember your dreams if you are able to wake up naturally, without an alarm clock - the latter of which too suddenly springs you awake. Waking up slowly you can remember your dreams, and often be aware you are dreaming, and alter how the dream is going, in light of your wishes in the waking world - lucid dreaming. Everyone does dream, just observe the paw, whisker, and tail twitching of a cat or dog whilst dreaming. If you don't remember your dreams you can train yourself to by telling yourself you are going to, trying to wake up slowly, and writing them down straight away. Dreams do seem very gossimery and easily flit away. Sometimes I interpret friends dreams, no not in any encyclopedia of myths and symbols way, in the idiosycnraticness of peoples own lives way.

Sure I've had my share of nightmares, but not these days. In my 20's I was afraid to sleep because of the nightmares - the least of which was the dream about trying to leave the country. I would get to the tarmac, and there he was, everytime, to confiscate my passport. There is a symbiosis to changing your life and your dreams.

The thing about keeping a dream journal, is it makes you curious about the nature of dreams So according to this website on the subject of sleep, the above image represents your sleep and dream cycles, as related to entering deep sleep, or REM (rapid eye movement)-thats when you dream. They go on to say:

'At about 70 to 90 minutes into your sleep cycle, you enter REM sleep. You usually have three to five REM episodes per night. This stage is associated with processing emotions, retaining memories and relieving stress. Breathing is rapid, irregular and shallow, the heart rate increases, blood pressure rises....If REM sleep is disrupted one night, your body will go through more REM the next to catch up on this sleep stage'

Apparently kids have a lot more REM/DREAM sleep than adults as they are learning and consolidating more information. Older people may sleep more lightly, but are able to enter REM sleep much quicker, so also spend more time in REM/DREAM sleep.

According the this website 'The first period of REM typically lasts 10 minutes, with each recurring REM stage lengthening, and the final one lasting an hour. The five stages of sleep, including their repetition, occur cyclically. The first cycle, which ends after the completion of the first REM stage, usually lasts for 100 minutes. Each subsequent cycle lasts longer, as its respective REM stage extends. So a person may complete five cycles in a typical night's sleep.' Who knew!?

Which brings me to the subject of sleep. Or as someone said the other morning, what are you doing up, it's daylight. Considered wisdom has it that sleep is dependent in some internal time clock affected by light and darkness. I can tell you that, if'n I have had a good sleep, 8 or more hours, I feel almost human after 12, 17 hours is my record without peeing! I will feel like falling asleep 15 hours later. If I am not able to go to sleep then, due to work or appointments or whatever, it will be much harder to get to sleep later. Internal time clock yes, light and darkness, not so much. And yes I did once live 'off the grid' with no electricity at all, and once have a job that started at 6 a.m.! All the former got me was a lot of time staring up in to the darkness, and the latter, having the other half of my sleep when I got home at 2pm! In reality I negotiate with various disabilities and side effects which keep me from sleeping. I did see on TV once that after only 4 hours sleep, you brain is operating at only 60%. This includes your brains ability to process information, remember, react, your judgment and decision making ability. So don't BLOG and sleep DepRIVE! SAVE DRAFT was invented for a reason. Sometimes it's best to sleep on it.

Okay feeling sleepy go test your sleep deprivation by putting sheep to sleep courtesy of the BBC. Although for the record I am NOT in favour of tranquilizing sheep. This little test does require sight, and bear in mind your response time will also be affected by your motor skills, and how fast you have set the responsiveness of your computer mouse. But it's fun anyway to try.

GUERRILLA GIRLS – having a career after 80

I have just realized, the women writers/artists I have written about so far, Jane Rule, Janet Frame (and Jacquie Sturm), Renee, Marta Beckett were all born between 1924, and 1931, they all had pretty impressive careers, but in reference to being a woman artist and having your career pick up after you are 80 years old...A link to the Guerrilla Girls art activists. Women on a mission, with history, actions, and merch. I did get to see them perform in Canada in 2000 and have my picture taken with them and everything, they were fabulous! They were in Montreal recently for December 6 2009.

JANE RULE – bi-national identity

Jane Rule eh, (1931-2007) US born, transplanted to Canada in 1956 with her partner Helen Sonthoff (1916-2000)- teacher and scholar of Canadian literature. I read Jane Rule's posthumously published essay collection Loving the Difficult (2008) over the holidays. Columns and articles previously published in a variety of forums from 1990 - 2006. She had published 7 novels, 4 short story collections, and a commissioned literary review, Lesbian Images.

I was especially intrigued by her essay Labels (2005) about how she negotiated her bi-national identity, whether her work was considered American or Canadian, by whom in what circumstances and how much that depended on where the book was set. In Canadian Customs (undated) she explores not only censorship of her work, and seizure by Canada Customs at the border of her novels once published in Canada and given Canadian literary awards, but now only available from the US or UK; but also about how her work has been treated in different countries, as a female, and lesbian writer. She writes:

'Though mainstream publishers have since become more accustomed to handling both feminist and gay subjects. Their marketing skills for such books are limited since they depend on reviews and quick sales. Feminist and gay presses are willing to keep their books in print long enough to sell by word of mouth, as they must because books from such presses are rarely reviewed. Only in Canada do I still publish with a mainstream press. In the States I publish with Naiad, a lesbian press. In England, Pandora has reissued all my novels. In both countries there is critical silence about my work, and I am reviewed only in the gay and feminist media.

Canada is not as homophobic as either England or the States. My books are generally reviewed here, and I am invited to participate in the literary life of this country, which includes serving on juries for the Canada Council, our arts granting organization, and being sent abroad to represent Canada.'

Jane Rule's groundbreaking lesbian relationship themed novel Desert of the Heart which she published in 1964, after 22 rejections from publishers, was made into the film Deserts Hearts (1985). The ONLY lesbian movie we had when I came out in small town New Zealand, we watched it just about every weekend at different community members houses.

Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975) eventually found it's way downunder, and I was entranced by it's series of stories with the twins (was it Ariadne and her twin brother ?)the realism of their close yet competitive relationship. She wrote so convincingly of the twin siblings I assumed she was one herself. It was only when I read Loving the Difficult, I discovered she wasn't, having an older bother who barely tolerated her, and a boy cousin she shared a twin-like existence with. Apparently her father was a twin and there were both fraternal and identical twins in her extended family. By 1993 Memory Board (1987) was one of my favourite books, as at the time like the characters in the book, I was estranged from my fundamentalist twin brother as an adult; we're all good now. I could not have forseen how in other memory board ways this novel would come to reflect my life in the future.

It has taken me these past 10 years to understand the nuances of New Zealand and Canadian English, humour, accents, slang, spelling. When I came to Canada fantastical worlds opened up to me in digital media. Writing and performing was harder to mediate. People were confounded by the way I used words, my accent, poetry readings were a nightmare, people were always 3 lines behind trying to decipher what I said, by the time they got the point, the joke, I was 5 lines ahead talking about something else.

In my country of origin my delivery was all about the speed, the onomatopoeia, the hard sounds at the beginning and ends of words bouncing off each other. In my adopted home country my delivery had to be about savouring the fat succulent juiciness of words, the nuanced pauses. I am probably fluent enough now to write exclusively in either New Ziln, or Canagen English, instead of this strange hybrid I favour. I am ready to write. A sojourn to work back in the country of origin, and a return, to perform in Canada, has taught me how to negotiate the universality of story, and the nuance of location.

When I first came here, the Canadians I met spoke English so slowly it seemed to me, that I was always accidently interrupting them, by mistaking the pauses between words for being them finished what they had to say. When I went on TV they asked if I would be offended if they gave me subtitles. I replied: 'I w-i-l-l s-p-e-a-k s-l-o-w-l-y f-o-r t-h-e C-a-n-a-d-i-a-n-s. Still people comprehended about 1/3 of what I said. My much longer transplanted compatriot tried to teach me how to speak in sentences, rather than my usual paragraphs. A self-conscious silence came over me. Day to day people teased, mocked, parroted my accent, every time I opened my mouth. I started to sift out incomprehensible sayings, 'better than a slap in the face with a wet fish', I tried never to speak in public for a whole year. (I know, I know, quit whining for crying out loud, I have the luxury of passing if I keep my mouth shut).

Ironically I came from a nation of teasers, where wry sarcasm, and exaggerated over-statements of the obvious are a sign of affection, where making yourself the butt of the joke is an art form. If Canadians are self-effacing, New Zealanders are self-deprecating, I spent so much time making out how stupid I was, people actually started to believe I was! I found myself hanging out with First Nations people, refugees, and folks from the prairies, or all of the above, we seemed to share a lexicon of humour. Thanx mates!

RENEE – you can’t really explain humour

You can't really explain humour. It is different in different locations, even if you are all (allegedly) speaking the same language. I have just finished re-reading Renee's (1929- ) book of comic writing Yin and Tonic (1998). Makes me laugh so hard! She has urban and small town NZ down to a T. Whether it be her frustration and successes in having some female garden gnomes made because previously all garden gnomes were male which she found ridiculous! Her priceless satirical gardening, cooking, ironing or pet care tips; taking the piss out of the media, dealing to heterosexism, ageism and sexism; or reminiscing about the good old days of political protest, womens groups, and writers parties. She has it going on!

I think my favourite story is: New Zealand's greatest pastime

'No it's not rugby, racing or beer. It's not sex, going out to restaurants, or reading books. It's not going to the theatre, opera, or ballet, It's not even bowls.
This pastime is indulged in by people of either sex, with people of their own or the other sex,and takes place both in the privacy of their own home and/or on the streets. It is enjoyed by people of any age. It is not a special feature of any culture, a plank of any political party or religious group. It is not confined to a certain class or income bracket, or whether you have or have not had children, a mammogram or cervical smear, or been tested for AIDS.It doesn't matter if you do it in the latest Porsche or in a rusty old Ford Falcon stationwagon. Policemen do it, drug dealers do it. Politicians do it, so do poets. Women do it, men do it, kids do it. Even animals have been known to do it. Hands up anyone who has moved house in the last five years.'

I believe I worked out once I have moved 60 times in my 4 decades and then some!

Or maybe it's her hilarious take on the invisibility of women over sixty in: To tell or not to tell, that is the answer

'You are party, from the next booth, to the discussion between two cheerful-looking men. One of them becomes aware that you would possibly overhear. You smile as though you have recently been discharged in to the community.'The old girl okay' the friend asks? 'Can you count to 100 backwards?' asks the first one. You nod and let a dribble of flat white run down your chin. They shrug and go back to discussing whether it should be a car accident or a drive by. You wait until they've gone, and then you attempt to solve the moral dilemma: should you tell someone? And if so what will you say?'

But then again theres What to do when I tell you I have breast cancer...

'Do not tell me about your auntie who died recently of breast cancer. Or I might tell of the sudden death by strangulation of someone who told someone who had a breast cancer that their auntie had recently died of a breast cancer.
Remember a lump is a lump is a lump, so do not ask me how big the lump is.'

Or the classic Touring:

'Then they turn to you and say, 'How would you like to be introduced?'
As the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, Queen Salote. Winner of Dominatrix of the Year Award. How about something about the books and plays I've written? Ugh, Ugh.
For some reason they expect you to be a good sport. Haven't they heard, that writers are never good sports? If they were good sports they wouldn't be writers, they'd be flight attendants.
And you'll eat all the asparagus rolls, won't you, because asparagus rolls give the writer indigestion.
Book signings. If you're very lucky one person might turn up for the book signing, and if you talk in a lively animated fashion they might stay round for two hours so it doesn't look as if no one loves you. Or maybe they'll just think you've gone off your medication, and run like hell.'

Part of her bio from the NZ Book Council/Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa reads: 'Renée, feminist dramatist and fiction writer, was born in Napier, of Ngati Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry.She left school and started work at the age of 12; has worked in woollen mills, a printing factory, a grocery-dairy, and as a feature writer and reviewer; and completed a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979.

Renée has described herself as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals’ and most of her writing is a direct expression of that conviction. She has been involved with community theatre, the Broadsheet Collective, PEN, radio shows, programme organisation for the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, and with script writing for TV. She started writing for the stage at the age of 50.'

See it's never too late to write! Renee has written 14 plays, 8 novels, short stories and poetry; a textbook Lets Write Plays (1998) and taught creative writing. For sure I saw her drama performed at the Dunedin Women's Festival (1989?) at Otago University. I think probably it was Born to Clean, and also maybe Secrets, and/or Setting the table. It was unforgettable, I can still picture the character in her floral pinny franticly cleaning, setting the table, and washing her hands over and over again. It was about sexual abuse, real, and unnerving, I felt quite sick after, yep it was that good! I am pretty sure I saw her perform with the legendary Hens Teeth womens theatre/comedy troupe in Wellington in the 1980's sometime, and man were they funny! Mostly I have been aware of her wry and status quo busting novels like Willy Nilly (1990), Daisy and Lilly (1993), and Does This Make Sense to You? (1995). Her work was some of the first local writing published by a lesbian with lesbian characters, along with Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Tahuri : Short Stories. (1989)

CREATIVE WRITING 101 – writers born or formed?

In 1997 I wrote I wanted to perfect the art of writing humorous absurd tragedies about important things where nothing really happened! I think that is still a good aim, and I may be well on my way towards it.

I took a creative writing class that year, in response to my short story submitted for grading, the tutor exhorted me to publish, and wrote amongst other things that my writing had clarity and vividness, was powerful and moving, containing a dark intelligence. I am not immune to such flattery, but me and my creative collaborators of the time, T and, A, did have a lot of fun with it, spending some time debating if we should have an art competition amongst ourselves to see who could create the best image of what my dark intelligence might look like! In the end we didn't, but included above are two images of me drawn around that time by minimalist extraordinaire T, during a session in which we each drew portraits of each other in a set number of lines, in this case 5, and 7. Which illustrates what I might have looked like at the time my dark intelligence may have been in evidence! Yes I still have these things, in journals full of: writing, cards for exhibitions, tickets to movies and plays, photos, leaves, feathers, drawings - mine and others.

Before email, when living at a distance we perfected a way of sharing our writing via the telephone answering service for free. Each of us had voice mail with the same telephone company, which had only one access number for the whole country. We recorded our stories in a series of 3 minute messages on our own voice mail. Then T and A, would call up the system, enter my voice mail number and passcode and listen to the story of the day or week. I could do the same with them, erasing the messages as we went, and leaving messages in response to the stories for instant feedback.

A good 12 years earlier, I was 18, in my first year at university living on campus in the halls of residence, in small wooden room on the second floor, cluttered with posters on the wall, a purple plastic cup and saucer upside down on the ceiling impersonating a light fixture, it was the 1980's so there was some lime green and pink chiffon which were in vogue thanks to Cyndi Lauper. During a one week break from classes, I took all this down from the walls, and put up 7 of my photos of nature, one for each day of the week, along with literary quotes relating to the images under each photo. I had not quite exited christianity at this point so I believe the quotes were from the bible, the poetic parts, song of solomon, pslams, proverbs perhaps, lay me down in cool water etc.

I dragged the single bed in to the middle of the room on a diagonal, and put the desk and chair beside it, I put everything else away in the capacious built-in wooden wardrobe. I bought a hard covered journal with blank unlined crisp pages. Out the window I could hear performances of Shakespeare's A midsummers nights dream, being staged in the open-air by the university drama club. I am not a fan of Shakespeare, but it did make for a nice backdrop. For one week I wrote in to the book, the poems I had written since I was 15, from the loose leaf pages they were recorded on. Now that I would not return to my family's home, and it was safe to do so, where previously such poems had been hidden in a plastic bag in a box, on shelf, deep in the wardrobe. My mother concerned perhaps by my unexplained absence, upon driving up to visit one day looked nervously around my room, and asked if i had become a nun. No not disciple, disciplined. Which brings me to the present day, 27 years and 15 or so journals of writing later. Five of these journals are already deposited with an Archive, and the rest will be one day too, but like Janet Frame, no one gets to read them until I am long gone!

I have a high school English teacher to thank for my earliest literary encouragement. Mrs D, where are you? I had the pleasure of being in her class for two years, she really did love writing. I was one of few who actually enjoyed being left with creative writing assignments, on rainy days, when she had to leave the classroom. While my classmates gossiped, ate, threw things, I moved my desk to face the wall at the back of the class, far as I could get from the hub bub, and wrote. Whatever came into my mind, it was such a relief, creative expression, the release from strictly structured lessons. My work was always met by Mrs D with useful pointers, encouraging comments and humorous retorts to my sometimes satirical writing about the class.

She was amused by my audacity and gave me credit for originality at least on a set assignment in small groups to read part of a Shakespeare play, it may have been Macbeth. I rewrote the lines in the language, accent, slang of the present day I heard on television sitcoms. Each character in a different voice, Cockney, African American, Jewish, New York Italian, stereotyped renderings I know, and talked my group in to performing it thus, Shakespeare updated. We also had to study Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which was a bit to close to home and caused me to have a small nervous breakdown.

I wrote studious book reviews about the life of Ghandi and such like. It may have been Mrs D who was instrumental in having eight of my poems published (anonymously) in the school magazine in my final year. I will always be grateful for her literary nurturing, and recognition of possibilities, that writing had it's own value.

JANET FRAME - crazy? autistic? brilliant!

I have started keeping a dream journal. In the middle of an intriguing dream I was having about experimenting with making small sculpted letters of the alphabet out of leaves, plants, paint, yellow, red, green etc. Which spelled LGBTQI, and were to be held up by people scattered throughout the seats of an outdoor stadium. My mate from Brians an unusual name for a girl blog appears in my dream rather randomly and says "Don't you think if there is a Janet Frame award it should go to a crazy person".

What!? Which has got me thinking about the wonderful Janet Frame (28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004). One of Aotearoa/New Zealand's most famous authors. In her lifetime she published a book of poetry, a children's book, eleven novels, four short story collections, and three volumes of autobiography, which have been translated into many languages. Since her death, a novel, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories have been published.

Janet Frame, as a child suffered the loss of two of her sisters by drowning ten years apart, grew up in poverty, infused in storytelling, spent 12 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, narrowly avoided a frontal lobotomy in 1951, when the doctor had a change of mind after her first book of short stories, The lagoon and other stories won a literary award.

I think to myself well there probably is a Janet Frame Award, Google will provide the answer! Yep, since 2005 The Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, has been granted to 4 authors to write fiction or poetry, and to 2 Authors Advocacy Organizations. The 2008 recipient, poet Rhian Gallagher (1961- ) who moved to London in 1987, returned to Aotearoa in 2003, and as it turns out happens to be a lesbian.

After completing her first novel in 1956, Owls do cry, Janet Frame moved to London, not returning to Aotearoa for 7 years. When she was in the looney bin in Aotearoa in the 1940's her writing plans and aspirations were noted as symptoms of her mental illness, perhaps 'delusions of grandeur'. In her novel Towards another summer, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 2007, the main character Grace Cleave, expatriate novelist living in London, is holidaying in the north of England. Her host asks why she has abandoned her homeland: 'Don't you ever want to go back?''I was a certified lunatic in New Zealand. Go back? I was advised to sell hats for my salvation.'

Two previously unpublished stories she wrote were published in the New Yorker in 2008. Janet Frame did submit them for publication in 1954 to Charles Brasch of Landfall magazine, but he returned them to her with a note saying the stories were 'too painful to publish', which begs the question, too painful for who? A night at the Opera, portrays the screening of a movie in the looney bin and 'Gorse is not people reflects Frame’s determination to view reality from alternative perspectives, in this case that of a dwarf celebrating her 21st birthday. The story also makes disturbing use of Frame’s still fresh memories of life as a resident at Seacliff mental hospital.' (The Arts Fuse 2008)

Janet Frame published 3 volumes of autobiography, To The Is-Land (1982) about her childhood, An Angel at My Table (1984) about her years as a student and in a psychiatric hospital, The Envoy from Mirror City (1985)about her travels and life as a writer. All three came out as a collected Autobiography in 1989, and were made in to a dramatic film An Angel at My Table in 1990 by Jane Campion.

Like many people I read her autobiographical books in 1985. They were gripping, written in a way like no other, and to me chilling. Her writing was so important to so many of us, including close friends who had been incarcerated in psychiatric institutions, often as a result of being lesbian, or the effects of family abuse. Through her writing we knew you could survive: grinding poverty, unbearable loss and grief, torturous mistreatment, soul destroying ignorance, and misunderstanding. That somehow the will, the creative impulse does prevail. That not compromising your own creative vision was possible. That making your own way, on your own terms, was a viable option. Her books left a lasting impression on me, of what my country did to those considered a little different, it's writers and artists. For many years I kept my writing to myself, difference is defined by others and so that I could not keep to myself. I followed the example of those who had gone before me in finding an antidote to the strictures of the society they find themselves in, and left the country (some 15 years later). Like painters Margaret Stoddart, Frances Hodgkins, writers Katherine Mansfield, Witi Ihimaera, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, musicians Kiri Te Kanawa, Gareth Farr. Some for a few years, some for good, to survive, to follow creative, employment or academic opportunities.

When Janet Frame died in 2004 I happened to be in Aotearoa on Waiheke Island. I bought the Listener with the 4 page tribute by C. K Stead. Janet Frame wrote in a truly unique way, eschewing literary conventions to be true to her own inner monologue, and that of her characters. Said to possess a 'dangerous intelligence', her books won many literary awards, making her the subject of some professional jealousy. Despite her at time autobiographical writing, she guarded her privacy, wanting to lead an already life, far more interested in writing than succumbing to the cult of personality which surrounded her. I also bought at this time the more conventional weighty tome (nearly 600 pages) of a biography she had collaborated on with Michael King, Wrestling with the angel, (2000) with it's photos and dates and letters and references. We mourned the passing of a great soul. I returned home to my small collection of her books, the only collection I have of anyones work. I was fond of picking up old hardback copies of her work I came across in secondhand bookstores. Scented gardens for the blind, Faces in the water, The Edge of the alphabet....

Perhaps my friend appearing in my dream was to tell me, Janet's contemporary, close friend, and fellow poet, J.C. Sturm had just died (1927 - 2009). Jacquie Sturm whose poetry I also have thanks to my friend N (she of the write a poem a day discipline), who often sent me a book by a NZ woman poet for my birthday these past years in exile. J.C. Sturm was the wife of 'preeminent NZ poet' James K. Baxter, who I am not much of a fan of. This opinion did not improve when I discovered although she submitted poetry to a literary magazine he edited for several years he never published a single one! He went off to 'find himself' leaving her a solo parent. Had her collection of short stories The House of the Talking Cat : Stories been published when they were ready in 1966, instead of in 1983, they would have been the first collection by a Maori person, man or woman, instead this honor went to Witi Ihimaera with his novel Whanau in 1977. She was one of the first Maori women to get a university degree, in 1949.

Through the reach of the web I stumbled upon a debate raging since 2007 about whether Janet Frame was autistic. New Zealand doctor and rehabilitation researcher working in Australia, Sarah Abrahamson proposed that Janet Frame had high-functioning autism (HFA), in an article in the NZ Medical Journal October 12 2007. She based this on her reading of Janet Frame's writing, particularly the posthumously published novel, Towards another summer. Which portrays a weekend in which Grace Cleave, stays with a family she does not know well, and the painfulness of this and other social interactions for her, the divide between her inner life and outer world. There is the point of view that her artistic gift does not need to be pathologized with a diagnosis, or alternately that she can posthumously act as a positive role model for autism.

It has been suggested that her biographer Michael King and she herself did not find the autism label such a foreign idea. But as someone who fought for years to escape the the label of crazy and schizophrenia - she was later determined by doctors to not have schizophrenia, to have never had schizophrenia, but she was likely affected by post traumatic stress; she may have been reluctant to take on any label. She was leery of the 'mad-genius' mythology which surrounded her and her work. If the label of autism would have fit with her during her lifetime; or now that she has passed, we will never know.

David Cohen, journalist, father of an autistic son and author of a book about autism, A Perfect World, in an article in the NZ Listener, Autistic Licence seemed to be hedging his bets. Yet on his website about autism, humans.org.nz in a a discussion from 2007 he seems pretty convinced she was.

Pamela Gordon, niece of Janet Frame, appointed by Janet as her Literary Executor, and representative of The Trustees of the Janet Frame Literary Trust; and who has a daughter who is autistic, is adamant that Janet Frame was not autistic. This has resulted in much debate, some of it ill-willed, as evident by a January 5 2010 entry on Pamela's blog about Janet's work entitled Janet on the planet: Poison Pen letters. The entry has since been removed from the blog, but the title is visible if you Google search it.

What I was able to glean by a quick scan of the entry before it was removed, was that there are those affected by autism who are angry at the denial of Janet's possible autism. But also that Literary Executor, Pamela Gordon receives an inordinate amount of correspondence on this and other matters, personally attacking her for how she deals with her aunt's legacy. This is both to be expected given the attachment of so many to the mythology surrounding Janet Frame; as well as being completely unreasonable.

It reminds me that art historians and the media have brought us such startling revelations (not) in the past few years just by looking at the painting of Mona Lisa, that she is a) pregnant b)flushed from recent sexual activity, and most recently c) her lips reveal she was suffering from high cholesterol. A then partner of mine, upon viewing the painting of the Mona Lisa in person excitedly informed me some years ago, that I have the exact same hands as Mona Lisa. So I do know, what we see, can be, in the mind or eye of the beholder

Towards another summer, Janet Frame's novel published in 2007, based on a weekend spent with a journalist in England, and his wife, a fellow New Zealander. Widely considered to be about homesickness, Grace Cleave becomes a migratory bird. It is, but for a romanticized version of the country of origin she had left behind, as she left it and remembered it. She knew this, it is there in the damp woolly portrayal of her compatriots relative's room.

In 2008 I read from cover to cover her book of poetry published posthumously. The Goose Bath also titled Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems (2006) and then passed it on to my art collaborator of 20 years T, at a bus station, as is our wont.

Towards another summer rests on my bookshelf along with her other novels. For now Janet's biography Wrestling with the angel sleeps peacefully under my pillow.

AMARGOSA: MARTA BECKETT – a state of mind

Sigh, feeling all dreamy and peaceful and quietly inspired, watched one of my favourite movies again the other day, AMARGOSA. Came out in 2000, about the then 76 year old, painter, dancer, actor, musician and theatre restorer Marta Becket (1925- ). At the age of 42, in 1967 she left the bright lights of dancing in a chorus line on Broadway in New York behind and moved to the desert in Death Vally Junction, California. Where she restored and painted murals on the walls and ceilings of an old run down theatre for six years, which became the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel. The murals of people's who had previously lived in Amargosa, provided her with an audience while she composed her, often humorous, dance, ballet and theatre performances, working much of the time alone. The walls, and Marta couldn't be more alive!

She seems so true to herself and her artistic vision, has such a clear way of both understanding and describing these. Singular in her dedication, disciplined, quirky flamboyant, and funny. Marta tells a story of seeing a play set in a senior citizens home, which had a special chair and when when each person sat in the chair they would tell their dreams, and the others would listen intently. She says 'Somehow people laugh at old persons dreams, they even laugh at dreams, until they come true, then they don’t laugh anymore.'

Amargosa is beautifully shot and musically scored, it opens with the spine tingling scene of the sun slowly rising over the mountains in the desert,the wild horses who live there, Marta walking, and these words:

'It begins with a distant notion, a plaintive whisper of the heart, it comes in the flash of an epiphany, or through a deeper unexplainable longing. It is the recognition of conception, the understanding that a new idea has been formed. It is embracing the dreamscape which is imagination, and having the courage to go there. For those who accept a life of self exploration through willfull acts of creation, the journey offers the ecstasy of all that is possible along with the agony of unattainable perfection. It is a solitary road in to the unknown self, and offers no destination but the journey. But for those who follow it does lead somewhere, and such a life will never be uninteresting. One such road led a woman from the urban confusion of a broken childhood, across the flatirons of midlife, to a deserted crossroads in the badlands of an uncertain future. But it is here, amongst the rubble of another time, in a place abandoned by hard men and harder gods. She makes the path by walking, in a state of mind, called Amargosa'.

Sigh.......

CHEQUES IN THE MAIL – let it rain, rain, rain

Aha a visit to the mailbox reveals cheques in the mail from various artistic endeavors. This will enable me to write guilt free for several more weeks. I have started work editing what will one day be a book with 25 of my short stories; as well as a book of poetry. Content to be writing, I say, let it rain let it rain let it rain!

PARAGRAPHIA – speaking in paragraphs

Luxuriating in my newly minted blog for now, PARAGRAPHIA. Mmmmm immersed in paragraphs and meanings, I like the graphite sense of writing with a pencil, my compulsive desire to write, paragraphia. My tendency to speak in paragraphs instead of sentences, words going forwards, sides ways and backwards as I consider things from many points of view, parallel, intersecting or even contradictory truths. The disability meaning, para the parallel lives we all lead. Or Parapodium, don't you think that sounds like a soap box platform for disabled people!? Oddly instead it is an an appendage on the body of some marine worms, occurring in pairs on each segment of the worm’s body, used for swimming, crawling, or holding onto things. I rest my case. The word PARAGRAPHIA actually means the writing of words or letters different from the ones intended, as a result of a stroke or disease. Which is just fine too.


I did toy with the equally lovely paralipsis: a rhetorical technique of emphasizing a topic by saying in some way that you will not talk about it, for example, by using the phrase “not to mention”. Parasynthesis the formation of words by a combination of smaller words and additional elements. Which I am very fond of, some of my favourite inventions are artivist (activist artist) and tangulate this is what happens to your feet when the sheets get wound all around them during restless sleep, (tangled and strangulate). New words are called Neologism.Or paralipomena: material added to a literary work as a supplement. Or parhelia: plural of parhelion a bright colored spot on a parhelic circle, often seen in pairs and caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere diffracting light. Also called mock sun, or sundog. The paranormal: the spooky, unexplained, abnormal or supranormal. Supra: transcending, or used in formal writing to refer the reader back to something at an earlier point in the same text.

So welcome to PARAGRAPHIA a mythical place combining all of the above, where more may be possible in a realm devoted to words and writing.