A portrait of a writer, a master of none.
I am inside my seventeen-year-old
body. From here anything is
possible. Because -this vessel is the only one I will own and I re discover it everyday.
I sit in a crowded room that reeks of disenchantment. This is my English class.
I am sitting at a desk littered in cave like scribbles. One reads School is a tempestuous lover. Running
my finger over the engravings I am reminded of a distant aspiration to be an
artist. To belong to the canvas and not the page felt right, for a time, until
one day - epiphany. Fuck Art. Write. I pick up my pen and draw a flower on the desk. It
has seven petals and a long stalk. A well drawn flower... Maybe I can be both the artist and the writer? The roll is getting called
out and each voice echo’s back here. My
mouth is wet. I hear my name and then, as if to make sense of it, I hear it
again. I feel my lips open. here. I am
here.
-
Skin is the
organ that registers touch but I sense myself from the inside. You are not a love junkie; you are just a
descriptive writer of consciousness. But I do have a lover. When I am in
love, I do not want to write, because, love.
I find it emotionally …thin. Sometimes
when he and I are talking, he looks at me as if in search of something. He appears
in that moment, like someone who has tumbled off a star. Bewildered and luminous.
I don’t think he is the one who feels alien—ever. He lives in a slight state of
hope, which is his heart. This is why he is good and why I
am both the alien and the writer. He doesn’t write but he does read. But not my
writing, ever. He doesn’t transcend into my private practice. He is a tradie
and he wires me effortlessly. That I will put in writing.
-
I write best in a
clean space, as it invites clean writing. Like my body waits for clothes. Everything naked
until - covered. Then we become - an identity? Ourselves? Or a character always
subject to change. The city does not
give my senses enough room. I’m glad then, that I live on the outskirts. I am
the most creative any where inconvenient.
Like when I’m in nature…where I can see the edge of the planet and feel - no
history, no sophistication, no race, no church. Just that we are made alive and
kept alive by it. I am a jack of all trades but master of none. If I could go
back I would tell my younger self yes, you are going to do a lot, try a lot and
feel a lot. You will be a woman who can stand up and who can want. But when you
write you will be un-gendered and unlimited. Like nature: Boundless and
blooming.
-
It takes me a
while to get anywhere from out here. The train leaves at the same time
everyday, like clockwork so I too am punctual. I keep a notebook open on my lap
for this journey. Outside a flock of bird’s land and become a landscape over a
landscape: A white contour line. A living typography. Buildings I pass look
like technicolour postcard destinations of Australian suburbia. Signs. Roadsides.
Pavement. From the grey
sky, waterbeds fall like ash on the window. They intersect each other over my
reflection. The weather woman on my phone says it will rain all tonight and it
will rain all tomorrow. My notebook is still empty and open. It waits patiently
for string thoughts to form solid words. I am alone and for a little while longer,
I am free to dwell in thought.
-
I am inside my twenty-year-old body today and I do not create words. I carry
them.
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