I am from

I am from Australia. I am from blue ocean, yellow sand and hot sun. I am from “G-day mate, how yer goin’?” I am from animals that jump and fishes that kill. I am from clean air and big yards with rusted swings. I am from heat so fierce it can fry an egg on a paint tin left in the sun. I am from waves that pick you up and throw you around and around until your lungs burst and your head is ground into the sand. I am from deserts and rainforests and ranges and gorges. I am from red earth that flies up and settles on your skin like a tattoo. I am from ancient times. I am from fire and corroboree. I am from the rivers and the dried up riverbeds that cry out for salvation.

I am from my father’s house. I am from white rendering and Italian tile. I am from the smell of spaghetti that makes your mouth weep to be fed. I am from my grandmother’s rosary beads. I am from Ave Maria and French horns. I am from rose gardens and the smell of frangipani. I am from the sound of crickets in the night.

I am from a sister who held my hand. I am from a mother who weeps for the sorrow of the world. I am from a father who paints with his camera. I am from strong women. I am from a quince tree in the backyard. I am from bike rides and gumboots in the creek.

I am from nightmares of tidal waves. I am from a prisoner of war grandfather. I am from pig farmers and professors and musicians and carers. I am from the stage. I am from the pen. I am from my high-heeled red wedding shoes. I am from my aunt’s violin. I am from love.

(Inspired by Thomas and Charlotte. Thanks guys!)

Looming the Memory - Theatre Review

Thomas Papathanassiou

Growing up with fractured memories from a childhood spent in two places, a young man travels back to Greece from Australia to visit his family. His journey becomes a quest as he searches for a place to call home. During his stay at his family’s village he rediscovers his love of chickens, meets his estranged and bitter uncle, avoids being cursed by the Mati (the evil eye), uncovers some dark family secrets, and realises what it means to be a foreigner in your own home. “Alright then, I’ll go home…MY home…where I am also foreign.”

Sometimes, just sometimes, you are fortunate enough to see a theatre show that leaves you changed at the end of it. Thomas Papathanassiou’s one man show, Looming the Memory, did just that to me, twice. The sort of show that Papathanassiou has created is not an easy one to get right either. It’s a memoir piece; a dramatic narrative about a man whose heart is in two places; Australia, where his parents migrated to in the 70s, and Greece, where his heritage lies and where he lived for nearly two years with his Greek grandparents when he was two and a half. But get it right, Thomas does.

The thing about outstanding theatre is that it reaches deep inside you and takes you away. You can’t munch on popcorn and whisper to the friend next to you because theatre is too intimate for that, and outstanding theatre slides those red slippers on your feet and whisks you away to another place. In Looming the Memory you can smell the olive trees, the summer fires, the women’s cooking. You can hear the villagers, the goat bells, the crickets. And you can feel the tug of that universal desire for belonging right in the centre of your being.

Papathanassiou is alone on stage, an old rug loomed by his grandmother the only prop. He plays over 20 different characters, including a chicken, and he never misses a beat. His characters are instantly recognisable, his body suddenly taken over by them - sometimes in rapid fire as they converse between themselves - almost as if he is a man possessed. Without taking anything away from his impressive vocal abilities, Papathanassiou’s body is certainly the star of the show. One particular character, an old and bitter Uncle with less than five lines to deliver, completely transforms his face and it’s truly remarkable to watch. Papathanassiou’s background in physical theatre is partly what makes this show so extraordinary. He began developing this show seven years ago, has actually performed it with no lighting or sound and still managed to walk away with rave reviews, such is his ability to hold an audience with his performance skills, energy, and a great script.

The energy that is channelled into this 70 minute performance is impressive and one wonders how Papathanassiou manages to sustain it over a three week run. Again, his training seems to hold him in good stead here. The use of the rug as the only prop is extremely effective. As Papathanassiou unfolds it at the beginning of the play so he unleashes a flood of memories. At the end as he rolls it up, these exceedingly real characters flash through his body and across his face once more in what is one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve ever seen live on stage. There were no dry eyes in the audience by this point.

Just one of the good things about this script is that all of the typical antipodean wog-boy one liners aren’t there. This is personal story-telling without the stereotypes and with much candour. Because it is a memoir piece, the emotion that Papathanassiou brings to it is real so it’s extremely moving. In his powerful physical performance he brings his audience to Greece with him, and once there, he enables us to feel what he’s feeling.

The setting of Looming the Memory might be a small rural village in Greece, but the immigrant experience is a universal one, particularly in Australia, and so the appeal of the show is wide. At its core is the sharing of own our stories and working out where we fit in the world, even if that means finding out that maybe we don’t fit in one place, but have to split our hearts into several. As Pappou, Papathanassiou’s grandfather says at the end of the show, “It is a difficult thing to have your heart in two places”.

Papathanassiou trained in Theatre at Curtin University and WAAPA (WA Academy of Performing Arts) and completed post graduate studies at VCA (Victorian College of the Arts) in physical theatre. Looming the Memory is written and devised by him and played to sell-out audiences in Perth in 2006, winning Best Production, Best Publicity and Best Actor for the 2006 Equity Awards. It also played successful seasons at the Antipodes Festival 2005 (Melbourne’s Greek Festival), New Voices Project 2005 (Melbourne) and the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2006.

If you couldn’t get tickets in 2006, you better hurry and book them now. This is a show definitely not to be missed.

Venue: The Rechabites’ Hall, 224 William Street, Northbridge, Perth WA
Season: 8 - 17 May 2008
Times: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 11am & 6.30 pm / Friday 8pm / Saturday 2pm & 8pm
Bookings: BOCS Ticketing 9484 1133 / www.bocsticketing.com.au / Groups 9321 6831

Into the Mons…

I’ve written about the Mons Pubis before. In fact if you google ‘mons pubis’ that post, written last year, comes up on the first page. There seems to be a lot of interest in that spoge of fleshy goodness that looms proud above a woman’s v-jj. (And yes, ’spoge’ is the technical term). So what’s all the hoo-ha about?

It seems that many women think their spoge of mons is too fat - and they want it reduced. Lips, tits and eyes can all be bigger, but God Almighty, please, please shrink my fat spoge-o-mons.

So, what are these women doing? They’re getting them LIPOSUCTIONED and raised up. This is also known as a ‘pubic lift’ to counteract ‘pubic sag’.

God forbid we have pubic sag.

Imagine telling your hubby that:

Righto darling, I’m just popping off to the hospital for my pubic lift. I’ll be back round seven to pop the chicken in the oven.

Of course in lifting the spoge-o-pube, the clitoris can be more exposed, which might be helpful in said hubby actually locating it after he’s endulged in his chicken wings and glass of beer. Nothing like a whopping great scar and your mound as flat as a poppadom to get him in the mood…

Jolley Times

I wrote a short story recently - over the last few days actually - but the idea for it has been brewing for a while. I haven’t written a short story in ages - it was fun. Fun not to be locked into the backstory of the characters like I am with the novel. Fun that it doesn’t really matter that the central character isn’t likeable. (One the protagonists in the novel is rather un-likeable and frankly, it’s a concern!)

Elizabeth Jolley was a lecturer of mine when I studied Creative Writing in my Arts Degree at University and her criticisms of my short stories were somewhat unflattering. (Truth be told, I’m fairly certain she hated them.) She was a sharp-tongued woman with a pointed nose personality that reminded me of a witch, especially when she handed me back another valiant effort with Not really good enough, Simonne emblazed across it in red pen.

God rest her soul and all, but… Sigh.

I wonder what she’d say about my latest effort, some 16 years later: Not really good enough, Simonne. Tim Winton studied here you know?

Finding Happiness

“When we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us.”

Eve Ensler

This is a brilliant talk given by Eve Ensler (of The Vagina Monologues fame) for the TED conference in 2004, called ‘Finding Happiness in Body and Soul’. Find 20 minutes to listen to it; it’s brilliant and Divinely inspiring. My gorgeous friend, Sandy alerted me to it. Thanks Sand.

New beginnings…

What an interesting hiatus I had. My life is vibrating with a satisfying hum. The last few months of introspection have been both challenging and highly rewarding on a number of levels, the least of which being my writing. Beat, the novel, is coming along at a pace and level that I’m very pleased with. The parts of my life that weren’t working for me have fallen away or been given the chop and I find myself at the writing desk, sitting in the quiet, more and more. This is where I’m supposed to be and so when I’m there, there I am.

The break from blogging has meant that I can now return. That makes sense, right?! New beginnings wrap themselves around me. Fresh breezes kiss my skin. And each time I step into the quiet, my authentic self squeals in delight.

Goodbye and Good Luck…

Just as one of my dear friends has decided to start up her own blog - check her out at Off the Beaten Track, it’s going to be great - I have decided to stop for a while. As I posted recently, I’ve been very introspective the last few months and the trend is set to continue for a few months longer, so I think a break from blogging is in order. In saying that, no doubt I’ll do the odd pop in and say hello, so will keep the site live and just see what happens.

Writing this blog over the last 8 months has been such a fulfilling thing to do and I’ve made some truly wonderful cyber friends who I know I will stay in touch with. For the moment though, it’s taking me from my other writing, on top of the fact that while I’m in this introspective period, talking less and listening more is what I need to do right now. So, for now, it’s goodbye and good luck from me…

With love,

‘The True Heart’s Longing’ - a fable

She had no voice, this girl. She swallowed it in fear one day and like a flood, it was washed through her body and became lost in the quagmire of her fright. And so now she writes of her love. For this is her voice, her expression, her self. She wishes that she could give voice to her words and let them float like sweet music to fill the souls of whoever may hear them with the harmony of her love. Until that day, she writes; for you, for her, for the world. And she waits, her throat in chains, for the day that she may break free and sing to the stars of her desires and dreams and longings. So here she sits, this girl who swallowed a river, which became a torrent and drowned her voice deep in the earth. And so it floats back up, and here she writes, of love and longing and desire and all things precious and true and yearned for in this earth. And here it flows.

In her heart’s true longing is a love so deep, so true and so divine that all who hear of it fall under its spell and are instantly healed. When they hear of this love, their hearts, which have been afraid and tied down in the darkness of fear’s deep cave, erupt with passion and desire. These hearts grow in size so big, so big, that they burst forth from their caves and into the light. I saw this one day not so long ago. I saw this.

This girl who sits and writes because she has no voice sat out in the wind one day with her quill and ink and she wrote and wrote and wrote. She wrote of love and passion and desire and longing. And as she wrote her heart flowed with love for all of the people in the world and all of the animals and the plants and the angels and the planets and the moons and the sun and the stars. The words fairly flew from her heart and onto the paper. And as they flew, the wind picked them up one by one and lifted them off the rock on which she sat and carried them high into the air. They floated on the wind for a time, these words, enjoying the dance and the joy of it. And then, gentle as a kiss, the wind set them down in the opening of a dark and lonely cave. The wind did not want to stay near this cave and so flew on her way. And so sat these words of love and desire and longing in the opening of the darkest cave in the deepest corner of the forest.

Time passed and passed until a hand crept slowly forward and touched these pages as if they were made of the sharpest glass. It withdrew in fear of what they may contain. And so this continued for a time, this edging closer and then drawing away. Like a dance. The dance of fear. For really, in our minds, aren’t we all a little afraid of allowing ourselves to desire our true heart’s longing? I mean truly desire. That heart-filling, belly-twisting, life-affirming desire that sets your soul alight and leaves it burning for eternities of eternities. And so the dance continued for hours, for days, for years, for decades, until the hand grew weary and tired of repeating the same steps over and over and over, as if it had been doing the same dance with the same music for so long that it had worn a groove into the same piece of stone and now that stone was heavy in its heart.

Bruised and bleeding and forgotten, the hand one day could not see any other way but to give in to the fear of its own desire. It was either give in to it or die. And so soon the hand crept forward as it had always done and touched those yellowed pages as it had always done and slowly, slowly curled its fingers around the edges and dragged them back into the darkness.

Time passed and passed as the hand that clutched the paper told the arm, rigid in fear, to tell the shoulder, frozen in panic, to tell the neck, stuck in terror, to tell the head, held back stiff in the past, to tell the eyes, roaming in despair to read the words. And so, and so, word by word, sentence by pure sentence, this body reconnected with itself and came to read with joy these words of passion and love and desire.

Soon this body was so filled with love and longing that it burst from the darkness of the cave and into the light, like a wave unable to stop the force of itself crashing into the shore. And the light flooded in and so it was that a body and a mind and a spirit became renewed once more.

And what did she write, this girl who lost her voice and swallowed a river, which became a torrent and froze in her belly? What did she write that day?

Well what would you write if you really asked yourself, what is my true heart’s longing? What would you write?

Protected: The Year of Manifestation

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Arrival

The key to our homecoming is found in the shadows. I used to try avoiding the shadows. Then I went through a phase of almost reveling in the darkness and getting stuck there. But despise them I don’t. I look upon those dark times with humble gratitude, both for what I found there, when it was too dark to see and I had to feel my way, and for what I discovered when I emerged into the light.

No optimism can be truly authentic if it hasn’t included the depths of despair. I’ve found myself here again lately, but it’s a different despair, or maybe the way in which I embrace the shadows has changed, but it is different. In this despair I can truly see the point of it; I can see the beauty in the darkness, because now I know how much further it spits me out onto the path of my journey. It throws me forward in great, painful strides. The pain lets me know I’m alive and brings me the gift of compassion. And it propels me forward in my soul journey.

I can’t say “yes, that’s why I’m here!” first without a great search for what fills my heart. That search is full of shadows and so I am grateful for all of it, as here I am, on the brink, and here I sit, right now, in the shadow of my ego and I rejoice as well as despair. The pain of sluicing it from me like a great stain will soon be replaced by the joy of my arrival. So, for now, here I sit, in the shadows again, breathing in the darkness, giving thanks to the ache as I wait for the light to descend, as it always, always does.