Friday, September 01, 2006

IT'S SPRING! IT'S SPRING! IT'S SPRING!!!



Oh hooray. Winter is over. Yesterday on the tram I was talking to Frederique about spring and she pointed to the distant sky and said, 'Is that spring?' and it was, and here it is. Even Fred can feel the change in the air. She was running up the street singing 'I'm jumping over the clouds, I'm jumping over the rainbow, I love you...Jump over the rainbow, Mummy!' So I did and it felt great. We chased each other's shadows all the way to Kate Constable's house where we sat in the sun in their backyard and played and Una ate dirt and Kate and I looked at old HQ magazines and laughed at 1996. Multi-talented Kate even made us souffle for lunch which was a very special treat.

I wrote a short story this week for the first time this millenia and it was a very interesting exercise. It is being workshopped at uni next week, so I had to rush the ending and it will need some fiddling with. It was a good exercise though, writing something short, being able to see it as a whole and as a series of parts. I had a brief moment of insanity where I was considering turning it into a series of sonnets... Martin is studying poetry this semester and so far together we've pulled apart two sonnets - Shakespeare and Keats - and That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
by Gerald Manley Hopkins, which has been really interesting - it's been a long time since I've really wrestled with poetry and the G.M.H. one was especially difficult. It's made me realise how much I would enjoy teaching it. Anyway the story has stayed a story but I think writing poetry might be a summer project when uni is finished for the semester.

And now I am reading a really good unsolicited manuscript for Allen & Unwin, listening to Michelle Shocked singing Bluesgrass versions of Disney Songs (Got No Strings).

And outside it's spring. I can hear it. Our doors are flung open to let spring in. The air is sweet. Hooray for spring.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, I walked to work in shorts and a tank top and was HOT, and I don't mean good-lookin', though of course I am most assuredly that! The cat knew it was spring too... apparently spring began at 4.30am, and he felt the need to roam the house singing about it until I got up and screamed at him and chased him with the water-sprayer until he was deeply traumatised for all of 2 minutes. I will make a lovely mother.

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  2. It might as well be winter here, as it's really not very summery... but enough of the grinchiness. I'm popping in to say that I've a little something to send you for participating in the 'Guess the baby's age' competition! I can't get your'mail me' button to work because of a problem with my mac though... can you try emailing me from my blog??

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  3. To me jasmine is a very Melbourne thing (though it grows everywhere of course). In Tassie it's jonquils that makes me KNOW it's spring.
    Glad to hear Auckland is putting on a good show for you weatherwise Dustykisses.

    I wish I had an angora cardigan.

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  4. Anonymous10:34 PM

    Yes, indeed, our Melbournes do sound similar. You also seem to have the pittosporum/jasmine combination going on? I live in Brunswick. As for the seasonal shift, yes I am inclined to be unsettled, pleased, but with a touch of melancholy.

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