Category Archives: books

the identity question

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in books, culture, personal, sewing

≈ 7 Comments

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one thing i miss about working in an arts faculty, as opposed to a health faculty, is the theory. i dont mean people dont use theoretical frameworks to understand their teaching and research concepts, but health research just doesnt do theory like the social sciences do.

so it was kind of fun the other day to sink my teeth into some real subjectivity/identity theory, in order to help someone with an actual social sciences essay. my phd was all about subjectivity, what it is that makes you who are you, the forces that shape and ‘define’ you, how you define yourself. i used a lot of weird arse theories to basically write 80 000  words on the idea that we are ‘overdetermined’, that is, made at the intersection of a number of driving forces, some structural, some personal. Well der.

so reading up on some of that stuff the other day made me think about identity more personally, how i identify myself, what i identify with. i dont usually use a theory, funnily enough! i know my parents fucked me up, i know i was born pretty poor (but now am not), i know im a woman. i know i’m a scorpio, i know im a Gen Xer. i think sometimes its that last part, the culture part, that i hang onto hardest. i tend to listen to a lot of older music, from when i was young, taking drugs, out all night dancing, walking the streets in my doc marten boots (or no shoes at all), fire engine red hair, a ring through my nose. when i listen to music from that time, its like i’m right back there, like i havent grown up at all.

in less than two weeks i turn fortymumble. i do not feel in the least bit grown up. i cant believe some days that i’m that old. a week or so after that it will be 18 years since i started my life all over again (more about that later), and this time of year always makes me introspective (as if im not enough like that already). and with everything thats been happening lately, the question of identity seems to be right at the forefront. who am i, what am i doing with my life, am i happy?

in my twitter profile i describe myself as ‘knitter, researcher, dog lover, people hater (mostly)’. generally speaking thats pretty true. but is that all i am? i’m definitely not just a knitter anymore! i have, it seems, turned into something i am calling a ‘bicrafter’, with the recent introduction of the sewing thing. i spent the weekend just gone in sydney again, and it was funny to be packing the car this time with two lots of ‘craft’ supplies, including a sewing machine (knitting’s a lot more convenient in that regard). but you know, these arent really CRAFTS. i’m making clothes basically. i dont make anything knitted that im not going to wear. i dont see the point in knitting something just because its pretty. or ugly, in the case of yarn bombing. so ive take the same approach to sewing. im not interested in making weird bits of fabric things to lie around the house and just look pretty. i’ve gone straight to the making of skirts, because its warming up here and theres nothing i like more about summer than feeling the sun on my skin from wearing sandals, a t shirt and a short skirt over bare legs. but i wasnt happy with the way the skirts i made recently were sitting when i actually wore them around for a day. gathered elasticized waists are not a great idea for the fuller figured lady (and kate waterhouse you can call me that anyday if i ever look HALF as mouth watering as christina hendricks). so with the help of lots of other crafty friends, i learnt how to fix it by attaching a waist band and sewing some darts.

so much better. im fixing another one as we speak.

i have some fabric in ‘stash’ already (a gorgeous light japanese lawn for a wrap around)

i bought more fabric on the way home (denim for a short skirt)

my dining room looks like this

who am i?! what have i become? i feel a bit ‘domestic godessy’, which is the absolute polar opposite of who i was 18 years ago, and not even close to who i thought i would become, but im really enjoying it. i love the quiet hum of the sewing machine as it turns pieces of cut material into clothes that fit me properly. it gives me a feeling of quiet satisfaction, unlike anything i do at work does. there its all sound and fury, signifying nothing. who’s going to read my journal articles? who really cares what a bunch of 21 year old women told me about why they go out, get drunk and have sex with random boys (probably for the same reasons i did. and yes, i can hear you sniggering jane.) do i really need to drive myself insane worrying about how im going to get funding for all that? whether i’ll have a job past next year? whether my citation rates and h-index are high enough?

no i dont. thankfully, i didnt think about any of this on the weekend, because i was too busy having a great time with the lovely kris, hanging out at her house on saturday after knitters guild, watching battlestar galactica ‘jump the shark’, knitting a bit, and then putting our hipster on and heading out to newtown, to hartsyard even, for a bit of good old fashioned american dude food. (people here put shit on american food, and there is a lot to cause concern, but thats true of autralian food too and to be honest, i’ve always had fantastic food in america. and im a little america-nostalgic at the moment, so you know, step off!).

we started with drinks, kris had the manhattan made with bacon infused jack daniels, and i had them make me a mocktail (some kind of spicy ginger lime thing)

and then we had the duck rillette with blood plum jam and foie gras. oh yeah. also, not exactly screaming DUDE here.

followed by almost-traditional (canadian) poutine (no cheese curds cos you cant get them in australia, for crying out loud)

then of course, that most traditional of hipster food, buttermilk fried chicken with biscuit and sausage gravy. the gravy was a bit too salty but the chicken was AMAZING. i’ve had this dish before in san francisco and DC, and both their sausage gravy was better.

of course, we had to find space for dessert, a banana, peanut butter cookie and pretzel ice cream sundae. you could have put bacon on it and called me elvis.

i contemplated a salad and the waiter looked at me like i was mental. it was such a great place, so much atmosphere, really great service, not cheap but thoroughly worth it. having said that, my liver would rather i not go there again in a while. kris and i pretty well just ‘groaned’ our way back up king street. i think we’re both on the no sugar bandwagon from today. i do crazy things when im sugar high. like not sleep and lie in bed giggling at nothing, and write rambling emails, with the battlestar galactica theme song going over and over in my head.

so, apart from a walking coronary and a reject from freaking portlandia, what else am i? im pleased to call myself a reader. i was a bit lost for a couple of days last week when i reached the bottom of that pile i showed you a few posts ago. i madly scurried around this weekend restocking the bedside table.

ive started with ‘the casual vacancy’ the first post-potter book from jk rowling. its got swear words in it, naughty grown up joanne! so far, its better written than i would have given her credit for. im looking forward to seeing where it takes me.

so i dont know if all those things I’ve been doing ARE me, or just parts of me, or just things i do that dont define me at all (lots of other people sew and knit and read and try too hard to be hipsters!). i think its what we do with all that stuff that makes it US. ultimately what really makes me ME is something altogether different, not really the external at all. the externals are reflections and refractions, not the whole thing, not even really the important things.

but today, they are the sweet, quiet, harmless things. they stop me thinking too much. they keep my hands and brain occupied. they make me smile. this is a good thing!

k xx

reality bites

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in books, dogs, personal

≈ 8 Comments

tomorrow its officially over. im back at work. ok, so monday is my ‘write from home’ day so i probably won’t go into the office. in fact, i have plans to take my laptop and meet up with catherine for a ‘shut up and write’ session together down at diggies. we met down there on thursday for coffee. it was hot. it looked like this:

so i’m not going to moan too much. but it does give me that kind of queasy sinking feeling. not because i dont like my job. for the most part i enjoy the actual work. im a good researcher, and most of the time i like writing. but thats not all i have to do. im doing two different jobs at the same time, and its hard to time and project manage them both. and because i work directly for the dean, and sometimes for the vice-chancellorship, theres a lot of stress that goes with it. i know some people who actually have really stressful jobs, sometimes doing things that involve dealing with actual crazy people in crazy situations (as opposed to me, dealing with academics in a university) will think i dont know what stress is. they’re probably right. but academics in an australian university are their own kind of crazy, let me tell you. australian universities are not nice places to be at the moment. i could, and probably will, write a whole blog post about the mindless lemming like behaviour currently being encouraged by administrators and government, where we all march to the drum of international rankings and MORE OF EVERYTHING, and no one stops to think about how thats going to play out in the real world where sometimes more is just not possible. some days my boss will come out of his office with three or four different schemes (for me to enact) aimed at the MORE and i could almost cry, its so frustrating, the constant knee jerk reactions. so its that im not looking forward to.

but i shouldnt talk about it before it even happens. i should concentrate on all the good things about my week off. so i’ve been down the beach (see above), i went to sydney (see the last post), and the last few days i have been quietly hibernating in my little house. talk about domestic goddess – seriously, i’ve turned into martha freaking stewart. for a start, i baked, turning this

(yes that is a lot of butter), into these:

drunk blondies. so good. i went to the craplight of doom and fought my way through the ridiculous non-displays

to buy some fabric

and make another skirt

(slightly longer, a true ALine. it fits great). i finally restarted my sisters christmas present,

the roller derby leg warmers. ive been hanging out in bed and reading a bit

not all of these this week, but this is the last month or so.

no one could accuse me of literary snobbery at least. im a bit tired of the swedish crime fiction and trashy vampire porn, so i’ve gone back to the classics.

and i couldnt bring myself to read that actual piece of soft porn, 50 shades, not because i dont like that kind of thing, but because its soooooo badly written. i opened it randomly and read this sentence where she was describing the best orgasm she’d ever had with the words “it felt out of this world” and im like really?? thats the best you can do? i could do better than that. i SHOULD do better than that. so now im waiting for the sequel to the passage, and should have my hands on the new j k rowling next week (that will be interesting). i feel the need to read more, but where oh where does one fit it in? i usually manage an hour before sleep and that’s it these days.

meanwhile, i’ve managed to get some time with the dogs this week.

even this, sadly, is bittersweet. they are spending most of the time with trent, my ex, and his new family now. it happened kind of suddenly – not how i intended. i had mentioned to him that i wanted to move back to sydney sometime in the next 6 months and i might not be able to afford a house, meaning we might have to talk about the dog arrangements. while i was in sydney last weekend, he had all three, and when i came back, it seems they had moved in with him permanently. i dont know whether doing it suddenly (and without really talking to me) was the best way to do it. you know what they say about ripping a bandaid off. maybe. maybe not. anyway, i had the three of them here yesterday and then the two boys overnight, and its made me realise what it is im giving up.

seriously, does it get any cuter than that? they even slept on the bed with me last night, ricco giving me little nose kisses. sounds weird i know, but i needed it. i’ve been anxious at night time, not helped by getting a random evil text message from that horrid person I met in melbourne.
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words on a page

04 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in books

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i’ve been reading and writing my whole life. i could read whole books before i went to school, i drove my teachers and librarian crazy asking for more books all the time. i wrote my first novel (about 60 pages) when i was still in primary school. i sent the hand written pages to my favourite author at the time, ivan southall, asking him to read them and he sent them back with a lovely hand written note explaining that he just didnt have time, that if he read everything he was asked to he would have no time to write anything himself. i wasnt upset, i was just so thrilled to have a note from him, and the librarian made me a special clear plastic envelope for it (im sure she was just as excited as i was). his advice to me was to keep writing, that the only way to be a writer was to write, and i did, for a long time. but then later, my mother decided that wasnt good enough for me, i needed to be a doctor (despite me showing no scientific or mathematical aptitude at all) and where i went from there was kind of inevitable.

its taken me a long time to crawl out of the hole she made for me (in more ways than one) and i came back to writing, using all my spare time at a number of menial clerical jobs typing away furiously, short stories mostly, bleak and dark and violent ones. then someone encouraged me to apply for film school, and i did, and i got in. i dont think anyone was more surprised than myself really. but writing scripts, especially for other people, can be kind of soul destroying (although i am quite proud of this one, which ironically missfee worked on before i knew her!)

anyway, my point is this. i havent written anything creative for a long time. 10 years of academic writing, including 5 on a phd, can pretty much ruin your love of putting words on a page. and now that i write academically for a living, i dont want to sit in front of a screen and worry about the order of the words when i get home! but something was bugging me last week, and the scenes and dialogue for a particular story jumped into my head one night as i went to sleep, and i got up and wrote it. it took me two days, and i really enjoyed doing it. i was kind of thinking it was ok too. then i read this.

is there anything more capable of killing your own authorly aspirations than reading a masterpiece? seriously, this is without doubt the best book i’ve read in a very long time, and it comes second only to wolf hall, the first book in this trilogy. actually, i think ‘bring up the bodies’ is better. it’s tighter, and a bit more plot driven, the inexorable descent of anne to the chopping block driving the narrative more than in the first one. its shorter too, which was a bit sad, because the writing! oh my goodness. the way she puts words on the page, every single one carefully chosen, you can feel the weight of deliberation behind it. but its effortless at the same time, just so perfect i got completely lost, its like being mesmorised and having a web woven around you. i was sad to finish it and must now wait impatiently for the final volume.

lucky for me, im not a literary snob. i was just as happy last night to crawl into bed with harry hole again, and im even thinking about reading ‘fifty shades of grey‘. i have a whole bookshelf of black spined penguin classics from augustine to zola, but i also have the complete collection of hanning mankells, the sookie stackhouse books, the twilight books and songs of fire and ice. and now the nesbos. i dont understand people who read jane austen and then put shit on the twilight books. yes the austens are better written but they’re not much more than romance novels, really. i can put up with a lot of bad writing if the story keeps me turning the page.

and i do mean a page, in the physical sense. i have no interest in the whole e-reader thing. i was disturbed lately to see my reading role model has gone over to the dark side. i know this makes me sound like a terrible luddite, dont get me wrong, im all for technology and i get frustrated when im doing my research and the things i want to read arent available in digital format, but theres just something about reading off a screen i dont get. even at work, i print off all my pdfs to read. someone told me once that i collect books as if they’re trophies, but its not that. its the feel of them, the smell of the paper, the pretty covers, they’re like works of art

it contributes to the whole experience for me, getting lost on the yellowing dusty pages. i just cant imagine curling up in bed at night with a cold steel kindle. and audiobooks? what is that? yes i get the convenience factor, but its not even reading! reading is seeing the words, having them turn into something in your brain, imagining the tone and intonation of the characters in your head. i never did like having someone read to me as a kid either. i would rather stay up all night driving my sister crazy with a torch under the sheets.

so my point,again? go get ‘wolf hall’, and ‘bring up the bodies’, if you havent already, and read them on the page, letting the words slowly unroll under your fingertips, so you can almost smell the blood. and be safe in the knowledge that i am now the anti-elle mcpherson, and wont, apart from work things, read anything ive written myself, ever again.

k xx

super moon

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in books, friends, knitting, personal

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i have been under the influence of strong forces this past couple of weeks. as a scorpio sun sign with a gemini rising and a moon in scorpio (if you believe that kind of thing), last weeks supermoon (passing through scorpio) seemed to have an almost tangible effect on me and my life! of course, it might not have been the moon at all, just a weird convergence of things happening at the same time, but boy did it happen.

firstly, quicker than expected, my ‘housemate’ moved out. it hasnt been too bad, expected sadness and weirdness at the end of an era. today has been hard, working out some finances. its a bit like getting ‘redivorced’. just weird. i made it a bit less weird by rearranging some things and tiyding up the sunroom to make some craft space

but its still weird. i still have the three dogs for the time being, i think one of the boys will be also moving out this week but they are just around the corner and there will be lots of play dates etc as we thought it might be good if the boys came back to spend days with possum while trent and i were at work/uni. still. its just weird. i know a lot of people dont understand why my ex and i would want to try and stay so close, and it hasnt always been easy, but if you go through life with no real family, and be through some things that we’ve been through, you dont let that just drift away. and also, im a very loyal friend. if i decide you’re worth it, i’ll pretty much do anything for you.

of course, some people arent worth it. this week has seen me think and feel pretty strongly about this issue in general, who i do and dont want in my life, what kind of person i want to be, to have around me. its made me think long and hard about the nature of friendship and how my idea of it means relationships based on sincere care and compassion. i still need to be better at accepting people’s limitations. and i need to care less about what other people think. i’ve always been fairly outspoken, but at 43, my time for suffering fools is over. i really just dont care if people dont like me anymore. there are plenty of people who do. i think this is a very powerful realisation, thank you scorpio moon.

speaking of, i had a great day on saturday with some great friends. i spent the whole day in sydney, first at knitters guild (i only took socks as i went up on the train and celes, still not quite finished, is too heavy for travel)

then after guild my two best enablers took me shopping. i really wanted to buy some new earrings, i tend to wear the same ones all the time and then i lost one of those same ones, and was wearing a not quite matching pair. there’s only so much of that a girl can endure. so i picked up these cute little things at dinosaur designs.

they werent exactly cheap but i love them. they look great on. oh, whats that underneath the earrings i hear you say? why yes it is a ticket to prince, who just happens to be in australia at the moment. these tickets went like hotcakes but a few of us crazy knitters also turned out to be closet prince fans (seriously, can you be a teenager in the 80s and not love prince?) and so we set off out to olympic park on saturday night

to see his royal purpleness sing and dance and yell and squeal and shriek and play wild guitar and crazy medleys that included about one bar of ‘darling nikki’ (tease) and 20 minute versions of purple rain with purple glitter in the air and three encores over three whole hours. it was great. best concert ive been to in ages. did you know he’s 53? he was wearing silk pyjamas and stilettos. hes like a god. too many hits.

anyway, saturday also included a touch of Literature when i managed to grab the just released sequel to ‘wolf hall’ (one of my favourite books ever).

i cant wait to read this, its gone to the top of the bedside pile

the adventures of harry hole are going to have to go on hold for a bit i think (ive read all the ones on the bottom shelf. given im reading stuff like ‘developing emotionally intelligent leadership in higher education’ for work, you will have to excuse me the bubble gum bed time reading).

and speaking of work, a huge week there too. a while ago i hinted about some possible career shifts that would decide whether i stayed here or looked further afield. well, some concrete steps have been made in that direction, with me being offered a .4 research intensive academic appointment in a school which will eventually take me away from policy work and more fully into a research pathway. the job i do now is research based and has research outcomes, but its a project not of my own devising. the paperwork is still to be finished, but i have a start date of june 1. i cant wait.  in the new job, (among other things) i will be going back to historical work, and looking at ways to integrate historical research into health courses (while also staying on my other project for the rest of the time). its also a promotion, so there will be more money as well (not a lot at first, given the fractional appointment to start with). but its the foot in the door i’ve been waiting for, and the fact that it was alluded to a year ago and is starting to happen gives me some faith that my loyalty to my current boss wont go unrewarded.

so i dont know whether you can put all those things happening in the same week down to a big silver disc in the sky but something’s going on. i’ll just take it while i can i think!

k xx

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