facebook 2 - worlds fall in

Sometimes I think time behaves like an alternate universe, that the me-who-I-was-then is still there, perpetually existing and I could sidestep into that time. Sometimes memories are so sharp, so clear it's almost like you're looking through a gap straight into that concurrent past. Sometimes I long to walk through a memory (Fred's first days, the afternoons in various shared houses, sitting outside with friends in the sunshine, drinking beer, laughing hysterically and feeling young and free).
Of course I am not alone in this - it marks us as temporal creatures - the pastness of the past is part of our shared melancholy (part pleasure, part pain). This is why movies like Peggy Sue Got Married succeed, a movie I once bought an ex-rental copy for $3 at a closing down sale at a video store, and therefore have watched more times than substance or quality would demand of the viewer - yet it is perfect comfort food fare. And why is it comforting? Because it suggests a chance to do-over. It says we can go back to an earlier event knowing what we know now, and see things for what they really are. Perhaps this is where something like Facebook is so seductive. It's - potentially - like a party where there's all these people you knew at different times in your life in the one room.
But tell me now, does anyone REALLY want to go to a party like that?
Don't get me wrong. I adored Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, simultaneously laughing and cringing, wholly identifying (does everyone think they didn't quite fit in high school?). Zoe and I occasionally talked about going to our 10 year high school reunion, worrying that the most interesting thing we'd done, like Romy and Michelle, was move to Melbourne (except that they moved to San Francisco or something). But my 10 year reunion (I believe attempts were made to organise one but there wasn't enough interest, perhaps because so many of us were living away from Tasmania or perhaps because ten years wasn't long enough to feel we'd truly left those selves behind) fell when I was 25, and I was in the throes of an existential crisis. I felt no inclination to go back when I was so unsure of how to go forward.
These days I'm extremely happy with my place in the world, happier than I ever would have expected to be as a teenager. Which is not to say that high school was utterly traumatic. But without a doubt the four years I spent at Taroona High weren't the best years of my life. Thank god. I'm glad that I'm qualified to say with utter conviction to my own daughters when they're in high school 'It gets better. It gets so much better.' The people I shared that time with are now, for the most part, strangers to me. To reacquaint myself with them seems a peculiar exercise and I am not quite sure why I would do it. And yet I seem to have joined a (small) group on Facebook created for that purpose. What drives me? What drives any of us? (the overwhelming tone is 'good lord, why am I here?') Of course the uncomplicated answer is that there are people in that group who I genuinely liked back then, who I thought were clever and funny and interesting, who I wish well, and would love to hear what clever things they've done since. It's mostly curiosity I guess, it's the epilogue, the 'where are they now?' But there's other psychological impulses at work, clearly, because part of me is uncomfortable with it. It's partly I guess to measure change, surely if they have changed, I have changed, if they have not changed, I have not changed. How much of who we were then is in us now, how much can you tell about a person by the teenage school persona? The part of me that wries YA is especially interested in this.
Who are we to each other? It's a strange and distorted mirror, looking at the people who shared your childhood or adolescence, not because they loved you, or because they chose you, but because they were simply there. High school is intense, not just because you're a teenager, but because of the degree of daily contact you have with a group of people of odd number, too many to care about them all, but few enough that you are connected, and that connection oddly lasts throughout life. I would not choose (and have not chosen in adult life) that degree of society. There's a reason why I'm a writer, why I worked from home even before I had children. It's a strange mirror, a mirror that tells us what we are not as much as what we are, a mirror that gives us glimpses into the sideways universe where we are always 15. (Why does that thought give me a cold shiver of dread? Always 15? Perhaps it's time to go break that poor girl out.)

thinking blogger award

I almost forgot about this!
Lili Wilkinson, author of Scatterheart, has given me a thinking blogger award. I'm fully chuffed, especially since I enjoy Lili's blog immensely.
Part of the award is nominating other people (yes, really this is a meme), still it's nice to tell people you notice them and care, so here are my awards in no particular order. It's skipping over lots of other people who I adore so this is kind of my top five of the moment. I must admit I don't read anywhere near as many blogs as I would like as frequently as I wish I could. And I tend to be a lurker.

1. Perry Middlemiss's awesome blog Matilda, which is an incredibly informative resource, giving a great overview of what's being reviewed and talked about in Australian books, and occasionally dipping into the treasure trove that is Australia's literary past. The nostalgia is perfectly balanced with thoughtful commentary.
2. Ever thoughtful Janet of Muppinstuff, who I think is actually a master (mistress?) of the blog form. She writes about personal things in an intimately personal but never sentimental or saccharine way. The snapshot of her days and thoughts are honest, rumpled, sometimes a bit knobbly - you never get the feeling she's edging her photos or her life with a vaseline gloss. She also ties visual imagery and text together in an interesting way.
3. Blue Milk is a blog I don't read regularly, but when I do I am blown away by how articulately she expresses values and thoughts that swirl around in the undercurrent of who I am, a side to myself I don't often express. She writes in a way that is never self conscious or contrived about feminism and motherhood and I find her breathtakingly smart and searingly honest and sometimes uncomfortable, because it tests me.
4. Even before I knew that I know her (we went to matric/college/senior secondary whatever together but she blogs under a different name), I loved Jamila's blog. It's a blog about so many things - art, ideas, motherhood, Islam, faith, beauty, selfhood...I'm not sure if she's still blogging, but it's worth reading through the archives regardless. I adored her back then, and we were friends, but I still felt I admired her from a distance because in some ways she is a difficult person to get to know (and perhaps so am I - I think I have always been a little private), not in a cold way, merely inscrutable. Anyway, she is still inscrutable, but this makes reading her blog all the more rewarding.
5. The delightful Meli started commenting on my blog a while ago, so I trotted off to read her blog, as is the natural order of things. Anyway, I'm glad I did. If you click on no other link today, click on this one, her post on paragliding. It's truly awesome and it will make you believe you can fly.

More Coraline

A trailer for the book (not the stop-motion animated movie, which is out in 2008).

And another quote:
“I swear it,” said the other mother. “I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
“Does she have a grave?” asked Coraline.
“Oh yes,” said the other mother. “I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.”
Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Quote of the moment

“Nobody sensible believes in ghosts anyway––that’s because they’re all such liars.”
Neil Gaiman, Coraline

facebook

I joined facebook just to see what it's all about. I suspect it may actually be lowering my IQ.
It's an oddly fragmented/fragmenting experience, and yet strangely compelling.
Anyway, on a completely couldn't-be-more-unrelated note, Martin talked to the tenant who is currently living in our new house and she says that kangaroos come and visit the front garden some mornings (right up to the veranda), kookaburras and rosellas feed out of her hands, an echidna was recently rampaging through her flower beds... Doesn't it sound idyllic? Who will I be when I live there? I can't wait to see the house again, we haven't been back to St Andrews since we bought the house. Martin and I both tried to draw a floorplan and completely disagreed on where the bathroom is and where the dining table goes. But we both agree there is one of each. So that's comforting. It feels very surreal and distant, we asked for a 90 day settlement, which is 3 months and a quarter of a year, so I guess that's why it feels like a long time away. I think settlement is October 10.
Okay back to reading Chekhov for the class I'm tutoring... (must not check facebook must not check facebook)

because it's cute

Una calls stewed apple 'stupid apple'.
And she calls outside/the backyard 'backside'

Ha.

Hot Fuzz

We watched Hot Fuzz a couple of nights ago. It's a movie made by the same guys who did Shaun of the Dead. I loved Shaun of the Dead. It was clever, funny, silly but it was still a bloody good, bloody scary, bloody bloody zombie movie. Hot Fuzz is the same, only this time it's a cop movie, but like Shaun of the Dead it works in its genre while simultaneously spoofing the genre, while also paying homage to the genre. I think the pacing is slightly off and there were a few times when my attention wandered (for example, I'm not one for protracted gunfights). However, sometimes the slowness in the build-up is perfect: like the beginning of Shaun of the Dead (which is the best example of foreshadowing I have ever seen), Hot Fuzz has all this deliciously eerie tension and atmosphere, which focuses on seeing the bizarre in the everyday. The editing is virtuosic, for example the journey at the beginning from London to the country town is a truly astonishing and surprising bit of film-making.

I also loved that they spent so much time showing the blossoming and then deepening friendship between the two main characters. What's so beautiful about these movies (yes, I meant to use the word beautiful) is that they both have real heart. The relationships are achingly real, within all the jokes and schlock and viscera and physical humour, and the actors spin from playful to serious on a dime, flawlessly.

Watching Hot Fuzz made me happy. It made me really, really happy.