Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Away away away

Tomorrow I am going away for a few days with this lady to look out a window at boats bobbing on a cold sea, write uninterrupted, and be nobody's mother, in a practical day-to-day sense anyway.

And possibly go out for a meal or two, watch a dvd or two, read a book or two, drink a coffee or two, a glass of bubbles or two and of course sleep. Glorious sleep...

Monday, June 23, 2008

Points of View

1
Scene: Dinner table, we're all sitting down, worked out who is having the blue fork, who doesn't want to eat the lamb, what the inside of a pea looks like...we're settling in to eat. Fred is musing aloud, half to herself.
Fred: It's not Tom's world. It's my world...
Me: Why's that?
Fred (looking around): It's from my eyes, from inside me, that everything is seen.

2
Scene: After Dinner. We're reading a picture book in which there is brief mention of a beauty contest.
Fred: What's she doing? Why has she got those things?
Me: She's in a beauty show.
Fred: What's that?
Me (uncomfortable): It's a show where people get up, like these three girls and judges decide who's the prettiest. I don't really like them.
Fred: Why not?
Una: She's the prettiest (pointing at the winner, who is holding a trophy and has a ribbon across her chest)
Mum: well don't you think these two girls look a bit sad that they weren't chosen? It doesn't really matter who is the prettiest. There's lots of other things that are important, like being smart, or funny, or nice, or happy...
I trail off. Then I venture tentatively: Would you like to go to a beauty contest?
Fred: No
Mum: (feeling kind of relieved) Why not?
Fred: (sadly) Because I wouldn't win.
Ensuing hugs and reassurance, I tell her what the judges can't see is that she has a beautiful heart, and a beautiful soul. Inside, I'm breaking. And the crazy thing is, Frederique is really truly beautiful. I know I'm biased. But she is. She really is.

3.
A few weeks ago, we're at the hospital visiting Martin's father. We walk past a multifaith room for 'quiet reflection'. Fred asks me what it's for. I stumble and say it's for people to go and pray or think quiet thoughts or meditate.
Fred: What's pray?
Me: It's something people do who believe in God. They might go into that room, and hold their hands like this. If they're sick, they might ask him to help them get better, or they might ask him to help make them feel happy (I know, like god's a commercial transaction - I was so not prepared for the question).
Fred: What's god?
I honestly can't remember what I answered. It's very hard to explain the concept of something that some people believe is true and some people don't to a little girl who has never yet questioned the existence of Santa or fairies in a way that is respectful to the people who do believe in God (I don't, but I went to church often when I was growing up, and some people in Martin's family are quite strongly Christian and my sister was born again once, the wedding Fred went to earlier this year was fairly religious, and probably the one we're going to in September will be too).
I believe I said something along the lines of: Some people think that God made the world and all the flowers and people, like a kind of Mother or Father.
Fred: Where is God?
Me: (with a nervous laugh) Well, those people believe god is everywhere, in everything (this concept FREAKED ME OUT as a child).
Fred lost interest then.
Later at home, she's dragging a cushion up the stairs and muttering to herself.
Me: Who are you talking to? (she has a number of regular invisible friends, that she now refers to as her Maginary Friends)
Fred: (offhand) God.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

School Daze 2


This is the child.

Friday, June 20, 2008

School Daze

See what i did there? With the title?

So we're still looking at schools*. We have three main contenders:

The local
Feral. 65 kids. This year, 4 preps, 1 of whom is a girl. After the tour I came out trying to be cheerful about it, because I really want her to be able to walk to school, and I did feel a bit cheerful, it seemed very Fred, like a fun school to go to. I have a vision of me and Una wandering down in the afternoon sunshine, or sloshing about through puddles, under the gum trees to pick her up. But after going to a 'prepare for prep' session, I'm less cheerful. Martin is definitely not keen, the computers are old and the teachers seem suspicious of them. The numbers are dwindling. Like I said, there's only 4 prep kids this year, though there will be a few more next year (interestingly they are all younger siblings of kids already going there, there was no one new at all in the class. Few of them, if any, are walking distance from our house (except the boy across the road). Martin really doesn't like this school and I don't love it enough to fight for it, in fact I'm not sure I like it either. It's hard to say why, except that it feels all a bit tired and lacklustre - even the buildings themselves feel dusty and a bit gloomy inside. It seems like there's a quite tight community of parents, but fairly intense. Intense scares me. We'll probably upset some locals we've become friendly with if we do opt for a different school. My gut feeling is that Fred would probably be fine there (though I think she would also find it socially very intense) but Una not so much. Una likes things to be tidy and structured. Una has come out of the other school tours keen and excited about the idea of being a schoolgirl. She came out of the local saying she did NOT want to go there (it surprises me because she talks about the three schools quite a lot and with no nudging from us she's remained very firm on her three preferences). Fred wants to go to the local because it has two monkeybars. It may also be because she's got a little girl crush on the big brother and the big sister of two of the kids from kinder. They do a lot of art, especially clay, but no language. Fred thinks clay looks a bit wet and dirty and no thanks. There's a library and a librarian, and the catalogue is not computerised. The parents and teachers Martin and I have talked to find the idea of computers in primary schools fairly suspect at best (yep, we live in a big hippie area), so even if we decided to send her there, pull up our sleeves and try and change it from the insid, there would probably be some resistance to the things we think are pretty important. Yes, yes, she'll have plenty of access to computers at home, but that's not really the same as having them integrated into the curriculum (to me it's a bit like thinking you can put your kid in Steiner and sneakily teach them to read at home, or an atheist sending their kids to the local Catholic school planning to deprogram them at home). A few years ago there was a bullying problem at the school and quite a few families pulled their kids out and sent them to the big school in the next suburb. We've never been able to get the full story on this. On the afternoon I took Fred in for the pre-prep activity I was early. I wandered in and hung around for a while inside the school. I was ignored by the school secretary, even though both Fred and I stood looking into the office and called out to get her attention a few times. So we wandered outside and went and watched the netball match. I was ignored there too. Eventually we went back in. The school secretary looked past me to another woman and led the other woman down to the prep room. She came back and glanced at me and went to go back into her office.
'Ah, excuse me,' I said.
'Oh, are you here for the "steps to (local school name) programme" too?'
'Ah, yes.' This is why I am wandering around your school with a couple of preschoolers.
What did she think I was there for? And why was she happy to let me randomly wander around the halls? For a little school it seemed fairly oblivious to someone unknown wandering about. Not that I'm that concerned that Fred is going to get abducted from her classroom. It's more just about the fact that they're not switched on, they're not very welcoming - for a school that's basically in danger or dwindling to nothing, they are pretty complacent - especially compared to the two other schools who don't HAVE to market themselves but do a bloody brilliant job anyway.

The big school
The big school is big. 530 students. I can hear most of you recoiling right now. But it's actually a great school. It's beautiful and right on and brand new (the original school burned down around 2000). The prep section is separate and they have their own very darling courtyard that is for preps only, though they are allowed to branch out into the big playground when they're ready. The preps also have a mess area so that they can do art or cooking (as well as using the special Art room once a week). The woman who took us around was lovely and very positive about the kid's experience. There's also a passive play courtyard for the whole school where kids can play a game of chess at lunchtime, which apparently has great accoustics and some lunchtimes they have music concerts in there. There are no fences, which I actually love - I know Fred, along with most kids are very good at understanding boundaries. There's a bus (I love the bus) Fred can catch from down the road and apparently there's a few prep kids that do (they have bus buddies and a teacher meets them at the other end), plus our next door neighbours go there so we'd be able to rideshare, or Fred and next door girl (who will be in grade 3) can catch the bus together. There's high school kids on the bus too, and we actually know one of them, so she can look out for Fred. There's all the facilities you could ever hope for, heaps of opportunities for extra learnin', like extra sessions for bright kids in maths, english etc, and a range of musical instruments taught (including clarinet, flute, guitar...not sure about violin, which is what Fred wants to learn). It's definitely more institutional than the other schools, but all the classrooms are nice and even the portables are brand new and integrated really well into the school. And I'm not sure institutional is a bad thing to be honest, if it's done the right way. The grounds are massive. Fred seemed a little overwhelmed by the size, but Una loved it, this is her first pick. Light and bright with lots of pretty corners and quiet places as well as four big play structures (and I'm sure they have at least two monkey bars, Fred says not) and a creek running down the end of the school (actually, 'running' is probably to grand a word considering the years of drought). A big range of staff, a good solid senior staff with longevity, a lot of graduate teachers too, which appeals to me. Students travel to get there, and there's quite a few from Fred's kinder going including 2 of her favourites and they endeavour to put kinder kids together in a class (there were 4 prep classes this year). But she might make besties with one of the kids who travels up from Greensborough and that would be most inconvenient.
When we started our tour we saw a group of kids lining up to have a lice check. When we got to the office at the end of our tour there were three kids, two boys and a miserable looking girl waiting at the seats in the foyer - they were being sent home. 'We got eggs!' one boy cried with delight. Woohoo.

The little school with big ideas
Equidistant from home as the big school (dammit, or that would be our determining factor) though a slightly nicer drive. Bus also goes there (I think it's the same bus), but no prep kids from Panton Hill catch this bus (I think some older ones do) and it's less convenient timing (and the principal was slightly horrified at the idea of Fred catching the bus - we are bad neglectful parents who want to send their children out into the big wide world unsupervised - so sue me, I want Fred to navigate the world on her own and I happen to think the world is generally safer and nicer than we're led to believe. Plus to me the bus equals independence for both of us, and for Una too when she goes.) The little school is less little than the local school, about 130 students this year and a full class worth for every grade. The preps and ones are in a unit with a removable wall. In the morning they're separate, in the afternoon prep, one and two combine down there. I don't know that this is ideal, but in some ways I think the double unit principle can work quite well. The principal is an action man extraordinaire - he came five years ago with a list and I suspect he has made the school the place it is today. There's an electronic whiteboard (like a big computer screen, but touch sensitive so kids can shift stuff around) in every classroom. Big whoop you might say (I did) but Martin has convinced me that studies have shown that kids are more engaged in a classroom with the electronic whiteboards, which means things like the naughty kids are less naughty. I'm for that. Fred was very resistant about this school until she did a tour, but by the end she really liked the school. Una likes it too. I am super impressed by the principal but I'm scared if he leaves the school might crumble into chaos and despair (okay, not likely, but valid to worry that the principal seems to be the lynchpin of the school, not necessarily so at the big school which has a larger group of senior staff). Panton Hill is familiar ground - the school is adjacent to Fred's kinder. Lots of kinder kids are going there, including one who Fred plays with quite a lot. We know and like some of the parents. It would be a closer knit school community. It's a really pretty school, with a gorgeous old bit, and quite well designed new bits and only one portable classroom which is the music/PE room. The grade 2s are in the library in the mornings and though the library gets a fair bit of parent support I'm disappointed that there's no librarian. The principal argues (justifiably) that the council's mobile library parks once a week across the road and all the kids go there, which has a wealth of books, much more than they could afford to buy. Fair enough, but it still means the kids don't get to have the same intimate relationship with a library space. I guess that reflects the digital information age where library's roles are changing (I did my whole Masters without ever speaking to a librarian), but I'd like to think there's always space in the world for a cosy school librarian. Perhaps I'm just having longings for Mrs Jessup, my most amazing and gorgeous primary school librarian. The 'extras' aren't as extensive as at the big school, but they do a bang up job with what they've got.

Basically the decision seems to boil down to convenient big school or less convenient little school, city-ish school or country-ish school, drive her every day, or let her catch the bus. Or do we do what seems like the 'right' thing, the socially responsible thing, and send her to the local, despite its shortcomings.

Which brings me to this aside: When I last posted about this, a sensible commentor called John made the point that we make a lot of parenting decisions based on nostalgia, and I surprised myself with how defensive this comment made me. Because he was right. Every decision I make taps into my own nostalgia. I have this tendency to look at schools in terms of what my kids will remember and treasure, rather than in terms of their actual lived experience. And it's funny because along with the warm nostalgic feelings i have about my small primary school, I also remember this vague sense of anxiety, there were so many forms, and rules, and the scary girl, and mean boys, and grouchy teachers, and being put in a different class from my friends (it was all composite classes and for some reason for a year or two I was shifted from being in the lower year to being in the upper year, which felt like a downgrade and probably wasn't). And I have to add, as a latchkey kid from a fairly young age, I am finding the idea of committing myself to picks ups and drop offs and being home for the kids for the next several years a bit overwhelming wherever they go. But I don't love the before and after school care option either. Why can't they come home, conduct delicious experiments with milk, milo and sultanas in the microwave, make prank calls and watch tv after school like the good old days? Okay. Don't answer that. I won't even mention my very distinct memory of my sister threatening me with a knife - I mean she didn't actually stab me or anything.

Anyway, just sharing my dilemmas, and I realise I probably sound barmy (do we send her to this good school or that good school?). Feel free to weigh in with suggest, comments, advice, or your own experiences. I'm always curious about the decisions other people make and why they made them.

------
*I always thought I'd be really relaxed and cool about schools, fling her in the local and be done with it. But actually, surprise surprise, I'm not cool at all. But I don't have a clipboard. And unlike Catherine D's assumptions, I'm not looking for the school that will turn my kids into geniuses. I just want them to have more good days than bad, to have a mix of kids to pick from in terms of friendship (including alternatives if a friendship goes sour), a quiet place to go on the days the world disappoints them, teachers who quite like kids and like learning themselves, some interesting breaks from routine, and a reasonable foundation so they don't get to high school and freak out.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Fred's turn

By her request.


It's a cool little program and easy to play with, though it would be nice to be able to have a bit more control. Martin finds these things because he's busy building a website called Digital Narrative (and because he's recently become addicted to StumbleUpon.

Here's another lovely toy he showed me the other day.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Animoto



I've been playing over at Animoto (yes yes, I'm stuck with my noggle all right?)

Monday, June 09, 2008

Audio - A reading

Afterthought

This is the audio of a spoken word piece that I recorded, yes, ten years ago (well, perhaps 9 and a half). I made this with my dear and clever friend Andrew.

If you do try and download it and listen to it, can you let me know if it works? This is my first attempt at audio, and I found it tricky to find free hosting online. (If anyone has better suggestions for putting audio on a blog, please, I am your empty vessel, pour wisdom into me).

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Ten Years Ago: In Poems

Here are three poems I wrote ten years ago. Anyone who has read the Undine trilogy will recognise that these poems were precursors to the novel (read - I totally plagarised myself). The three fishes from the first poem appear in Undine. The second poem is thematically very similar (especially in tying The Tempest and Little Mermaid together), plus I write quite a bit about The Little Mermaid in Drift (it's one of my favourite parts of the trilogy). And I describe the magic as a sea of lost things in Breathe - I think I use that whole phrase - civilisations submerged, moth wings. I haven't looked at these for years, and it's only now that I'm realising how much I plundered them as I was writing.

Belladonna Night
It was a night like any other night, stuck between days like an
afterthought, something to do between suns. It arrived sometime
after dusk and left before morning. There was a particularly brilliant
moon and an aeroplane falling out of the sky. Ships navigated their
way by the stars, invisible rocks tore open their huge jagged hulls.
Weather kept itself mysterious, unobservable. It was a night that
smelt coastal, a gypsy night, she came wearing an old shawl,
oceans and skies gathered about her.
Deadly she wound herself in black berries and white flowers. She found
me sleeping, and thumped me hard on the chest. She left three silvery
fishes on my doorstep. I woke up gasping for air.
At dawn she blushed and left.

The Little Mermaid

I lived with fish and drowning girls in blue,
Submerged and bound in seaweed coloured lace,
And salt and brine formed crystals on my face.
I surfaced on a winter afternoon

And found I had to learn to look at you.
Like Miranda I left this island place,
O brave new world, and somersaulted space;
I arched my back and split my tail in two.

I forced myself to walk on tortured legs
And sexed my sexless body with a knife,
Untangled algae then unwound, unthread

My self from sea and sisters into life.
I lost my voice to make myself your wife,
It was that vision: You thrown back, half dead.

Sea of Lost Things

So I write, I have lost you.
Again and again,
I have lost you.

In that sea of lost things
Where you turned yourself
Upside down and drowned,
Like a photograph
Or a small moon.

There are other things down there,
Small bright coins
And gods and children.
All lost things. Whole buildings
Submerged, civilisations,
Moth wings, the groaning
Wooden spaces of torn ships.

She stands in a lonely kitchen
Her heart opens and closes.
She contemplates three silver fish.
On the windowsill is a photograph,
Behind it, a small moon.
It is not enough, she writes.
I have lost you.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Tagged

Some facts about me! meme

Courtesy of Ariel (who I have the biggest blog crush on).

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

(Best question in this meme.)
Ten years ago I was 23. I was doing my first year of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. I bought my first car, and my best friend Zoe took me out for driving lessons, and I have very very warm lovely memories of this time. Despite the fact that I also had my first (and only) serious car accident, in which my little car was written off. I was living in a fractured though well-meaning sharehouse in Northcote, the most gorgeous house, right opposite Northcote station. (I loved the sound of the train but you could hear the boomgates from my bedroom which was occasionally maddening.) I was scared of my housemate, and was so finished with sharehousing after having a hell year of it the year before. I fell madly in love with a boy from my editing class and I broke up with my boyfriend, Tom. Me and Editing Boy* had been together only a matter of weeks, maybe a month, when we moved into a Victorian flat over an architects' office in Carpenter Street Brighton, with soaring ceilings and a beautiful room with lattice all around the windows, a train line across the road and no boomgates. Ten years ago I had never heard of Harry Potter. I dropped out of my novel class because I knew I would never be able to write a novel. It's a shame I did because my teacher was Susan Johnson, who is an incredible writer and now I feel like it was a bit of a missed opportunity. I relearned how to ride a bike that year and bought my first ever brand new bicycle. I was a smoker (a fact that bewilders me now). I was a cat owner. I had laser surgery after a bad pap smear. I'd never been overseas and was afraid I would never go. I was living on Austudy and the supplement loan - man, I regret that supplement loan now.

Five snacks I enjoy in a perfect, non weight-gaining world:

1. Hot fudge sundae

2. Bacon sandwiches

3. Chocolate Eugenies

4. Pannacotta

5. Loukamades (if you don't know, little deepfried semolina donuts soaked in honey syrup)

Five snacks I enjoy in the real world more nutritious snacks (since I am not opposed to eating the above in this plane of reality):


6. Yogurt with honey and walnuts

7. Dip (say feta and carrot with cumin) with rice crackers

8. Vegemite, ricotta, avocado or tomato on sourdough toast (walnut and rye is my new favourite)

9. Cheese and sultanas all smooshed up together with crackers

10. Some kind of homemade oaty honey slice (oh my god, made this while I was doing this meme and the finished product is delicious)


Five things I would do if I were a billionaire:


1. Travel

2. Buy a big double storey terrace house in North Fitzroy and a flat in North Queensland (and keep this house too, but renovate it).

3. Write whatever I want. Study forever.

4. Have a personal chef, a cleaner and a regular babysitter. And a personal shopper for Christmas presents.

5. Get laser surgery on my eyes.

Five jobs that I have had:

1. Child carer

2. Freelance editor

3. Sunglass seller

4. Teacher

5. Um...oh yeah. Writer. (Was genuinely stumped for a moment.)

Three of my habits:


1. Gossiping.

2. Singing in the car.

3. Vaguing out.

Five places I have lived:

1. Battery Point

2. Adelaide (city)

3. Northcote, Melbourne

4. North Fitzroy, Melbourne

5. Mitcham, Melbourne

Five people I want to get to know better: (A nice way of saying TAG!)

Dani @ Kitchen Playground
Maria
Zoe @ When Fads Attack
Zoe @ Rivet Kitty
Em @ Dance of Small Things
(actually i feel like I know you all quite well, but I am interested anyway).

*Ten years later Editing Boy is pulling a dead mouse out of our lounge room wall, while our oldest daughter makes a person out of saucepans in the kitchen and our youngest daughter runs around in a grass skirt and fairy wings singing 'Bee Buzzy Bee'.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Masters



I have just finished my last assignment for the last subject in my Masters in Creative Writing (by Coursework and Minor Thesis). Hallelujah.

Now, decisions decisions - what shall I do with my new powers? A PhD? Save the universe? Or become a supervillain?

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Sunday, June 01, 2008