Reading matter

On my bedside table. Isn’t this a beautiful study in similarities and contrasts?

(please ignore the dirty kitchen floor - but extra points if you can spot the red mini pom pom).

Library day (and lots of parentheses)

Still working my way through that big list of things to do.

Today I made a mad dash to the library to return a stack of books - but I took a moment to browse the shelves and borrow an even bigger stack of books for holiday reading (and listening - nothing like Library audio books for a long car drive). We’re off to the country for ten days and there’ll be plenty of sitting by the fire in the evenings reading books (usually through closed, exhausted eyelids) and talking about how good it would be if we had enough energy to get up and get out the scrabble board.

I love it when you find a title in the library which you have eyed off on the shelf at the book shop and decided that to purchase it would be way too indulgent but it’s very nice anyway (see above right).

I also love it when you find a title which you have seen on other lovely people’s blogs and thought “ohh I need to find a copy of that!” and to have it turn up like a little gem in amongst a couple of dozen other far less appealing dvds. (see above left).

I loved My Family and Other Animals when I was younger - I was determined that I would end my days living on a Greek island with a house full of animals (anyone who knows me and my fears and allergies will find this mildly amusing). I recently stepped out (which makes going out sound far more special, which it really is these days) to see that Abba movie … what was it called? Mama Mia! That’s right… with a bunch of girl friends and decided that my younger self had been entirely on the money when it came to nice places to end your days. Ok — enough of my free form ramblings. I am off to keep at that list!

The Divided Heart - Rachel Power

Firstly, a big thank you to those who recommended I track down The Divided Heart by Rachel Power when I wrote about life/work/art balance a while ago. I did indeed track it down and then devoured almost the entire thing in a weekend - a pretty mean feat, you would have to agree, when there are small children to be entertained but I am pretty adept at reading while I cook, collect laundry off the floor and make creatures out of playdough. Despite life buzzing around me, I couldn’t help. I just had to keep reading.

As you know, I am no book critic, but someone who will rave endlessly and evangelically about a book I enjoyed - and The Divided Heart falls into that category. Reading it, especially so intensely, had such a profound affect on me. I took a little mini roller-coaster ride of emotions that weekend. To show you how extreme, my thoughts went from finding more childcare for Lily, to giving up my work entirely and then to, for the first time, contemplating a third child. THAT is how much of a roller-coaster ride and that is no exaggeration.

Rachel is such a sensitive and hugely intelligent author. Her introduction and her own reflections on being a writer and a mother are some of the most interesting parts of the book. She looks at the sad truth that, on the whole, historically women were not given any chance to attempt to be both a mother and an artist and so many women artists turned away from motherhood as a result. She looks at the mythology that surrounds art and (usually male) artists, and she talks about motherhood and domestic life still being feminism’s final frontier; the fact that our generation has grown up believing that it is possible to do everything (and let me tell you - reading my 80s journal is a blinding testament to that! I was going to be a film making / writer / mother of FIVE according to my 17 year old self) only to discover somewhere along the track - around the time of breastfeeding is the general impression - that despite the best of intentions of all parties, this is not always so easy. Each of the women she talks to have pretty similar struggles - and her point is made so very clearly that it’s a hard thing to be both a passionate mother and a passionate artist.

All the women she spoke to and interviewed for the book (including such gorgeous women as Claire Bowditch, Rachel Griffiths, Joanna Murray-Smith and Davida Allen) are refreshingly candid and touchingly open in their desire to share their experience. You get a real sense of sharing a heart to heart over a cup of tea with each of the women, a sense of their life and also a clear sense of the transience of all these feelings - which, we all know, change from day to day, stage to stage, child’s age to child’s age, yet a sense of the universal truths they live by.

I loved this book but at times I found it a little bleak as unsurprisingly there is no easy path to follow and the resounding message is “yes it’s bloody hard but you do the best you can do.”

But in the end I did come out feeling a little better about all in the world. There are so many pearls of wisdom to be found within the interviews, unsurprisingly the most inspiring come from the older women Rachel chose to interview, the ones whose children have grown up a little and who can look back on the early years with a sense of perspective. One of the interviews is with printmaker, Franki Sparke. It was a paragraph from this which resonated with me last week:

“There is always a gap between what we imagine ourselves to have the potential to become and what we really are,” Franki warned. “Motherhood is just one of the things that can be used as an excuse for not realising our dreams. You can always find a way to adapt your practice and work around your children. Perhaps it’s your career that’s compromised, as opposed to your art, or yourself as an artist.”

I realised that this for me is SO true! I have been banging on about not having enough time to do my “Work” for so long that I haven’t even any idea what my “Work” really is. I should just bloody well do something!

I highly recommend The Divided Heart, especially if you, like me, are feeling that inevitable pull between your work and your children… but I suggest reading it slowly (though the temptation is to keep reading it in a kind of frenzied desire to find answers to all the big questions) because it can be overwhelming and then let it sit before you rush off to have extra babies, book nannies, chuck in your art or your family.

A Divided Heart can be found in bookshops here in Australia, and can be bought from the publisher’s web site for those who are interested from Overseas.

St-st-studio

Project Atelier De Filles continues! I have much inspiration to keep cleaning my studio from some of my favourite Paumes titles pictured above (of the look but can’t read kind).

We are employing Mati’s MOOP theory (”Matter Out Of Place”) which I am going to paint on a plaque Mati-style and hang on the wall. It’s a very useful little word to have clanging around in your mind at a time like this. The most challenging thing is to actually find a Place for all the Matter. For the last couple of years a lot of the Matter’s Place has been the floor.

I have a new desk arriving today - not a very flash one, but one which will replace my enormous grey elephant of a computer desk which I have been putting up with for the last 9 years. I bought the old one when I was feeling all efficient and corporate and it was a big, expensive mistake. While tidying out one of the bookcases yesterday I opened up an old journal (my old “morning pages” actually) and immediately came across the line “perhaps one day I will be doing less desk-work so I can get rid of this horrible ergonomic grey computer desk and get something more ‘me’ ” - hah! Having read that just after feeling a bit guilty for ordering a new desk was very reassuring.

While cleaning out the same bookcase I also came across this old battered copy of “The Little House“. It is one of my all-time favourites.

It’s a copy from my old primary school library which my Grandma, who taught at the school, rescued at some point. It’s water damaged but also has so many important marks - my grandma’s name written in the front, my old school library’s rubber stamp, a little sticker from the store it originally came from in Adelaide which was owned by my Grandma’s friend… those sorts of things make the dirt and the shab completely unimportant.

Ok… back to pulling large amounts of junk out of cupboards and drawers.

Don’t forget that Yvonne has a shop for those who might be interested in chasing up some of those Paumes titles. She has Atelier de Filles 2 (pictured above, which I think is better than Atelier de Filles 1 because the image reproduction is much better). I got mine from Amazon Japan — but the Yvestown shipping is cheaper! My favourites are definitely all of the “Children’s Rooms” titles.

Surprise Plant

When we need a little comfort-reading we always turn to Milly Molly Mandy. We chat about what it would be like to live in a little white cottage with a thatched roof with a brook at the bottom of the nearest meadow. It’s a very nice fantasy, and quite different from our current “eat your breakfast!”…”Hurry up! We’re late! We’re leaving in five minutes!”…”Can someone wipe Lily’s nose/hands?!” reality. At the beginning of last Spring we read the story “Milly Molly Mandy and the Surprise Plant”. MMM is given a little mystery seedling as a gift and plants it in her garden. As the Summer goes by the plant grows and grows; “It spread out branches along the earth, with tendrils which curled round any stalk or twig they met and held fast.” After much theorising It turns out to be a prolific pumpkin. After giving away the largest pumpkin for Harvest Festival they cook up the rest and everyone gets a little bread and butter with pumpkin and ginger jam spread on it.

So of course we decided we should plant a pumpkin to fill the new garden bed which we had put in when the deck was taken away (hooray!). True to the story the crawling creeper has grown and grown and is slowly but surely spreading it’s long tentacle, triffid-like arms around the garden. Amelia keeps talking about growing a prize winning pumpkin. “Ooh, this sunshine will be good for our Prize Winning Pumpkin!” etc. Despite the enthusiasm we have only just seen a few male flowers popping up their heads in the last couple of weeks and nothing in the way of female flowers let alone any signs of a pumpkin. Perhaps it’s been the lack of rain or maybe our new topsoil is lacking in goodies, but I may have to wait until next year and another attempt to try my hand and pumpkin and ginger jam. Perhaps Jane will have a recipe in her book!