Tag: Varuna

At the moment I am sitting in
Eleanor Dark’s studio with a rug over my knees and a heater close by, two
heaters in fact.  It’s cold in the
Blue Mountains, colder than I had imagined, but at least today the sun is
shining and the world outside – despite the dew on the grass and the bare tress
in the garden dripping with left over rain – looks almost spring like and
therefore warmer, warmer at least than yesterday when the day was over cast
from morning right through to night and there was a steady misting rain. 

I went out for only one walk into
town yesterday and did not enjoy it, not as I have enjoyed my walks through Katoomba in
the past.  But it goes in cycles.  Exhilaration to misery in as little as
five minutes.  The pressure to do
nothing but write and read and think about writing is a luxury but it’s also a
burden and for some reason I feel it more acutely this time.

I’m stuck in a well of the
familiar and I cannot get out of it.

 

In this studio, once the writing
place of Eleanor Dark, there is a series of drawers in which other writers who
have used this room have left snippets of their writing drafts, a page or two,
no more. And perched on top are two tall chests with flower embossed fronts in
which someone has placed a slip of paper with the words:

 ‘Courage is the first essential.’ 

In the next cupboard alongside but separated by mouldy dictionaries and grammar
books, this same person, I presume, has penned the words:

‘And coffee second.’

In another of the drawers below
where there are countless screeds from countless writers I found one piece that
has taken my fancy.  It’s from
an Australian poet named Jude Aquilina and it reads like this:

First
Penis Transplant

A cutting from The Herald, 2107

Today,
the first penis

transplant
was successfully

performed
on a woman in her

twenties.  I’ve always wanted

one, stated the Sydney

housewife,
to prove that

women
can wear penises too. I

don’t
intend to flash it nor

thrash
it, just use it for its

natural
purposes and I hope it

comes
in handy around the

house.  I want to invent

practical
attachments such as

dusters
and dish mops.  How

many
mothers have wished

for
an extra hand? – crossing

the
street with a child each

side,
I’ll hang my handbag on

nature’s
hook.  And when I

 go dancing on summer nights,

I’ll
wear bangles that jangle

 from side to side. I really

think
they’re going to catch

on,
Women have been without

them
far too long.  Surgeons

say
their lists are full of

women
waiting to fulfil their

masculinity;
the problem at

the
moment, unfortunately,

lies
in the lack of donors.