Another Small Patch of Blue Sky

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Dear Readers,

WELCOME new subscribers, it’s lovely to see you here. At the moment I’m mostly posting excerpts from my new travel memoir and we are on the home run, about six more chaps to go. If you want to start from the beginning you will find them all lined up and numbered here.

THANKS to Sarah Fay of Writers at Work for a great mentoring session last week on how to get things crackling on Substack. Can definitely recommend! She has fabulous tips and tricks for writers of all persuasions over in her busy Writers at Work studio. As a result I’ve been rearranging headings and other things on my SS home page to make it all a bit more interesting and accessible. Sarah has great webinars and is very generous with her extensive knowledge of writing for this platform.

TRAVELLING AGAIN! In November I’m heading to India with a group of creatives on a new Writers Journey adventure. We have a fabulous itinerary and will be spending time in Delhi, Jaiselmer and Varanasi. If you want to take a look at what we’ll be getting up to check out Story Hunters India 2023. On all my trips creativity workshops and readings/sharings are part of the daily itinerary. If you love to travel and write/make art as I do, check out some of my other group tours for writers and artists in 2024:

Haiku Walking in Japan, April 27-March 1, 5 days, 6 nights, Kunisaki Peninsular: easy walking along ancient pathways once followed by Buddhist monks, staying at traditional inns, soaking in onsen (hot springs) writing haiku as we go. Two places still available. Previous pics here.

Sensing Italy, June 4-15, 10 days, three days in Florence before we head out to the village of Mercatello Sul Metauro for a total sensual immersion in Italian village life. In Florence we stay in a convent and in the village, a restored palazzo right on the village square. Booking now. Pics from our 2023 trip here.

Gascony Residency, June 19-30. A small group mentored writer’s residency at Relais de Camont near Agen in the South of France. In collaboration with author and chef Kate Hill who I met here on SS. For writers/artists working on a specific project or manuscript. Just 3 places available.

HAPPY READING. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you have time. It really is a treat to hear from you. On Sat I had a wonderful Facetime call from dear friend and fellow writer A.D. Scott who lives in Hoi An, Vietnam. (Another of my silent readers!) She is the author of six wonderful murder mysteries (Simon & Schuster) set in the 50s and 60s in the Scottish Highlands where she grew up. She had some very useful feedback for me which I hope to include. She also reminded me of that great editing tip — reading aloud. A technique that I have employed often in the past but have somehow forgotten lately. Try it next time and watch all the ‘and, ifs and buts’ shrivel up and disappear!

ADOPT A WRITER — ME! If you would like to support my writing process in a more substantial way, consider becoming a paid subscriber or founding member. It’s just like buying the book with a few added extras tucked in the back jacket. Love to have you in the club!

Looking for Duras weaves three strands of memoir into one: my lifelong infatuation with the French writer Marguerite Duras, a journey through Vietnam and Cambodia tracing her footsteps, and a musing on mothers and melancholy. (Read prev chap or browse all chapters here.

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A tall decorative archway set in pristine yellow walls marks the entrance to the Royal Palace. Vang drops me out front and says he will be waiting at the exit in an hour. There aren’t too many tourists around so I pass through the ticket office quickly. Map in hand, I enter the vast grounds. It feels like a portal to another reality.

Spread out over acres of pathways, a number of tall, elegant temples with golden rooves reach their spires and finials up into the sky. Between them, neatly clipped lawns and sculpted palms are arranged in perfect symmetry. Like the image of Shangri-la I glimpsed on the river bend, only several times multiplied, this vision is so splendid, I have to make a slow 360 degree turn to take it all in. When I get over my ooh-aaah moment, I check the map and make a plan. I do the rounds of the Moonlight Pavilion, the Throne Hall, the ‘sleep peacefully’ pavilion where the King would alight his royal elephant, and an oddly decorative two-story iron building — a gift from Napoleon the Third.  In the Bronze Palace, I stroll past glass cases filled with jeweled costumes, royal regalia and elephant riding paraphernalia. On the southern side of the complex, the tall impressive Silver Pagoda sits among stupas that house the remains of past royals —its name given for the thousands of silver tiles used to pave the temple floors. It’s closed to the public today, which I don’t mind, as already I’m a bit pagoda-ed out.

        The more I explore the less convinced I am that MD and her family lived here. I can’t imagine Marguerite and her brothers running wild in this ultra manicured and ordered place where every shrub is clipped into a fantastical topiary — the influence of the French no doubt. I turn to Page 35 of The Lover and check again. ‘Once the palace of the King of Cambodia, ‘ it says. I recall reading somewhere that while this grand complex was being built in 1866 King Norodom had resided in a temporary palace built nearby.  That would make more sense. The grand, wooden built residence with vast grounds on Sisowath Quay would surely be long gone, like the buildings in front of me that have been demolished and rebuilt more than once. 

         The full sun of the day is beating down as I head off to explore another area — the cool tiled cloisters and frescoes illustrating The Reakmer, the epic Khmer poem based on the Hindu Ramayana tales. Adapted to Buddhist themes, Reakmer stories show life as a balance of good and evil. Originally completed in 1904 by a team of students under the direction of a master artist, many of the frescoes are in poor condition due to water damage and rising damp. Those that remain are exquisitely alive with depictions of monkeys and mermaids, royalty and giants — playing out stories of love, loyalty, trust and revenge. Unlike the Ramayana, the Hindu classic it is based on, in the Reakmer the main characters are not gods but mere mortals. Asher’s favourite, the monkey warrior, Hanuman, plays an important part. I wander the cloisters relishing the coolness of the red and white checkerboard tiles underfoot, admiring the smaller details on the walls — of birds, animals and daily life depicted in the ancient Khmer Kingdom.  I indulge the daydream as I have before, that maybe the young Marguerite roamed these cloisters with her family after attending an official ceremony — a garden party or a performance of the Royal Ballet. Whatever pleasures they enjoyed in this town were cut short as MD’s mother sought leave for the family to return to France to mourn the death of her husband.

        Towards the end of my walk around, in a forgotten corner, I come across a scene that inspires more meditative calm than all the pagodas and pavilions combined. Sitting on a chair perched on top of a table, a grey-haired, bespectacled artist leans forward in a pose of relaxed concentration — chin slightly raised, eyes completely focused, thin brush to the wall —bringing back a detail of a faded mural. Slowly, slowly, stroke by stroke — another small patch of blue sky or a lily in a pond.

        Even before Marj moved into the nursing home, I’d been collecting her small  paintings and drawings. Some are dashed off on the bottom of lists, the backs of envelopes or manila folders. Painted or drawn in textas or coloured pencils, quickly captured or unfinished, with notes scrawled on the edges: ‘deep yellow, pale yellow, shadow here.’  Landscapes and flowers are a common theme, with funny character sketches in biro to accompany limericks written for the grandkids.

        Alone in the house after my father died, Marj, who was in her seventies, finally had free reign to do as she pleased — stay up late, sleep in, eat when she felt like it. The big garden filled with lemon, grapefruit and orange trees, passionfruit vines and wild asparagus, had a vacant grassy paddock next door and a sports oval opposite. Except for summer when the hills surrounding the town turned dry and yellow, there was green all around. In winter the fog rolled in and sometimes didn’t lift until 2pm. 

The old sun deigned to shine

for one hour today

A lacework of gnarled, twisted, twiggy branches

stretched towards the blue dome of sky

People sang and went trippingly to the park

a lilt in their voices

But too soon an ominous mist on the range

predicted the pattern

of evening

MC 1988  

       MD lived alone in her house at Neauphle-Chateau just outside Paris and in her book Writing, * says: ‘I shut myself in — of course I was afraid. And then I began to love it. This house became the house of writing.’ As with Marj, MD’s writing place within the house was never fixed. It could be a particular window, table or chair, whether in her home at Neauphle or her apartments in Paris or Trouville. In each place she would confront the great emptiness a writer must face when she finds herself without an idea — in the terrible nothingness that comes before a book begins to appear — this, MD said, is the adventure of writing.

        I wonder if the terrible nothingness of my mother’s depressions was the necessary lull before her creative storm. In the years she lived alone I don’t remember her complaining about being lonely. She missed us kids and the grand kids in particular, filling books of hand written verse and limericks for them, living on whim, following her creativity around the house, taking her words and colours with her wherever she went. And though the black dog still visited her it was never as bad as her darkest days when at the age of fifty-eight she tried to take her own life. 

           At the time I was living overseas in a women’s share house in Portland, Oregon.  I’d moved there from its nearby sister city, Eugene, where I’d ended up after my year of travel around the US and Central America.  I’d started writing songs on the road and was caught up in a vibrant music scene. I was even taking conga playing lessons. When an all girl Latin jazz band called Baba Yaga came to town, I convinced them to take me on as their percussionist and occasional songster. We rode the feminist wave, playing at local community cafés and women’s festivals and were about to make an album.  Everything was going brilliantly until early one morning I got a long distance phone call from home.  It was my dad, telling me that Marj had tried to take her life with an overdose of pills she’d been stockpiling for years.

        ‘She is ok’, he said, trying to downplay the scary reality of what she’d done.  ‘We managed to get her to the hospital quickly so she is out of danger.’ 

        He went on to say it would be good if I could come home for a few weeks. They would cover my return airfare. I was in shock, but perhaps not surprised. I knew my mother was unhappy, but sometimes she also seemed fine.  Of course I would go, no question about it, but the timing couldn’t be worse. This would definitely put a spanner in the works. An emergency band meeting was called and they decided to postpone recording until I got back.

        I don’t remember anything about the flight, landing in Australia, who picked me up (it would have been my dad), or what we talked about (probably not a lot). I do remember walking into the hospital room and the first thing my mother said was not, ‘hello, how are you, how was your flight,’ but  ‘can’t you find me something that works? I don’t want to be alive.’

         It’s hard to know how to respond to such a plea. I think I joked my way around it. The perverse side of me wanted to present her with a list — have you thought of poison? What about hanging? I’ve heard gas is pain- free and not at all messy. I wanted to push the topic out into the open, expose the cry for help, get her to admit that wanting to take her life was a mistake.

     But I didn’t. She was standing firm, telling me she wished they hadn’t saved her, that she would rather be dead, and the most useful act I could perform right now as a daughter was to help her achieve it.

        By the end of my stay she had changed her mind. She told me she would never attempt it again, for to fail at suicide twice would be just too embarrassing.

        I was relieved to hear it and while I knew her actions had affected me in ways I couldn’t yet understand, I had a band and recording studio to get back to. Marj was referred to a new therapist and I returned to the US. We recorded the album (now a collectors item) which included one of my songs, Monogamy Shbedogamy. Life went on.

It wasn’t until many years later I was able to articulate these thoughts…

         ‘How can a daughter be happy when her mother is sad? How can she pretend that everything is ok when the one who gave her life gives up on her own? She lies down beside her mother in her sadness bed, holds her arms tight around her neck as she did when she was young and says, don’t worry mummy. I will stay with you in your sadness bed. I won’t be happy until you are.’ *

As I’m wondering if MD ever contemplated suicide, I remember a piece from her book Practicalities * where she spoke of her relationship with alcohol. ‘ You can’t drink without thinking you are killing yourself, ‘ she writes. ‘What stops you killing yourself …is the thought that once you are dead you won’t be able to drink anymore.’ I laugh out loud at the irony of this statement — her life was saved by her most destructive habit!

        I wonder what my most destructive habit is. It’s certainly not alcohol or drugs. When I was younger I enjoyed a drink or two and an occasional puff on a joint. I tried other things too — magic mushrooms, cocaine, peyote, acid, even morphine, but in my late thirties I drew a line and gave it all up. During my pregnancies I gave up caffeine too, I went totally ‘straight edge’ and I still am. People ask — is it for religious reasons, do I have a bad liver, is it an idealistic position?  No, I always answer— I just feel much better without them. 

        The closest I have come to pinning it down was on an online Jungian course I took during lockdown. We were asked to identify: the Persona — the mask you present to the world and the Shadow — the self you hide from the world. Like most people I know, I like to present a bright, strong, happy, ‘everything is fine’ persona ( the one we present on social media everyday!) But the shadow self is never far away, and I clocked one I call the Languishing Self (close friend of the Thwarted Self), who unsurprisngly also has a predisposition towards melancholy.  While my Languishing Self loves to loll about in the arms of self-criticism and self doubt, she also takes great pleasure in all the melancholic clichés — sad songs set in minor keys, moody French movies, autumn fires, misty mountains. Rainy days give her the opportunity to retreat and reflect, to nurse her wounds — to dwell in the nostalgic feeling that is so beautifully expressed in different languages around the world:  Hireath (Welsh), Saudade (Portugal/Brazil) Rindu (Indonesia), Longing (English).

        The destructive habits of my Languishing Self come out when the negative tendencies take over and tip the balance into hopelessness and inactivity. The languisher languishes so long she can’t get up off the chaise longue!

A fellow student on the Jungian course told me that she has to be as vigilant with her negative tendencies as a recovering alcoholic. She cannot not allow them a foot in the door (not even a toenail) or she’ll be back in the negative soup again. I found this extremely helpful — all I had to do was remind myself each day not to indulge the negative self-talk and when it did surface, to nip it in the bud. Easier said than done, did that mean I’d have to give up all my delicious melancholy moments as well? Perhaps not, as long as I didn’t ingest — like sniffing the heady scent of alcohol or coffee but not putting it to your lips. Maybe I’ll give it a try.

_____________________________________________________________________

* Spoken by my character Marilyn, a thinly veiled version of me, in Take Me To Paradise, Jan Cornall, Saritaksu Editions, 2006.

* In The Lover p 106, MD writes ‘ And the loathing of life that sometimes seizes her, when she thinks of her mother and suddenly cries out and weeps with rage at the thought of not being able to change things, not being able to make her mother happy before she dies…’ 

* Practicalities p15.

* M Duras, Writing p 5.