Prelude

Prelude

Life has a way of intervening in stories, pulling them this way and that, being generous with its impulses, teasing out new connections, intertexts, subtexts…. 

Memories, too, have their role to play, sometimes springing out of nowhere, leaving a bruise or a laugh, dangling clues that must lead somewhere. But where? And what are they?

…the bits you feel and the bits you’re told, and they all come together as snapshots in your mind. Some you lose, and some become parts of someone else’s memories. 

And some bits just disappear, and you end up looking for them for the rest of your life.

And can it be that even to breathe* is a political act? … a political act within a cycle whose ultimate aim is to care? 

I give you stories and how they may or may not have come about. Some are long, some are short. Some are mindbursts. Some evoke images and sounds. You may even make some olfactory connections. 

I give you my breathing* and ask if I might touch you.

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My Diaries

Fame has its ups and downs. I found fame with my novel „My Brilliant Career“and later wrote „My Career Goes Bung“ and other works. I thought I was onto something of the suffragette ilk since I was hanging out in Amerika with trade unionists in Chicago and then published newsletters for the Australia First Movement. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so vocal – a gal has to think of what can happen – so I set up a couple of literary prizes still in action today- the Miles Franklin and the Stella. But I never should have started my diaries; they were hidden away and have now been published, even made into a play. And they’ve blown my cover…lucky I never had kids the way mum wanted…

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In a glasshouse in the woods, I plait the strands of time with pinecone seeds and string a necklace for the birds. 

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