takes all types

Monday

I am chipping away at the piece about Central Australia, that I’m going to enter into the nature writing competition. Trying not to think about winning and losing. I know I won’t win. I know I’m not a fabulous writer. Possibly not even a very good writer. Not hopelessly incompetent either. Just hovering somewhere around average. Good enough to know I’m not that good, goddammit.

Trying not to think about all that. Trying not to buy into an unkind  picture of myself as a deluded wannabe with fading middle-aged stars in her eyes. Poor old me. Dear old me. I just write because I have to. Because there are times when nothing else will hold the demons at bay. 

So I’ve spent half the day here at the computer, twiddling with syntax, twaddling with metaphor, lost in my own little world. Indulging in my reclusive tendencies. Allowing myself to be the hermit crab that I  am on days like this,  when even going in to town to pick up milk and eggs feels like over-exposure.  I guess for some people it’s like this every day.

I got so lost out under the desert sky on the Larapinta Trail today  that I completely forgot to go to the new Feldenkreis class. Even though I was looking forward to it. Didn’t realise till hours later, when it was time to go and pick up F from school bus.

I downloaded a piece by acclaimed  nature writer, Barry Lopez, called ‘An Intimate Geography’ . It flows - so smoothly - from vast Alaskan valley to Yangtze River to Australian desert and beyond. Speaks of deep connection with land, without ever sounding mawkish. I reckon it’s bloody hard to write well about what is most sacred to you. I’m going to read it again, try to figure out how he does it. 

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I still haven’t emailed anyone to say I have a blog. I’ve had a terrible, all-too-familiar attack of self consciousness. As usual, I am just hoping to be found.

What a wonderful thing is the internet: a sense of connection without having to actually  talk to anyone. 

Late at night while my family is asleep I continue, with only slightly diminuished enthusiasm, to comb the back alleys of the blogosphere in search of obscure treasures. 

In the rarely visited outer reaches of Cyberbia, just before it turns into old cyber-paddocks and infinite black space,  I find abandoned sites where no-one has been  for years. There are other sites which  look as shiny and new as a Gold Coast Dream Home but have clearly never been lived in or visited at all, even by their owners. Not a single post. Some of them have fine, promising sounding names (which I wish I had written down)

Some got off to an energetic start  with childhood tales and granny’s recipes and good resolutions;  others were half-hearted from the word go  ( “I don’t know why I’m doing this” etc.) Did the bloggers die, or just lose interest? Maybe they got distracted by Real Life?  Will there one day be entire cyber- ghost towns?  

I searched people who listed The Beatles among 'favourite music' and discovered there are 249,000 of us. Zillions for leonard Cohen too.

Then I searched Toumani Djabate fans and discovered that  it’s just me and Tristan’s Pet.  Her picture  is of a pale bare breasted torso in a black corset. Tristans's Pet  lists her  interests as My master, his pleasure, passion, bdsm, love.  

I guess bdsm does not stand for ‘Buddhism’ 

As well as Toumani Djabate ( how come no-one else likes him? Or did we both miss-spell his name?), she (his slave, his pain slut) also likes films and writers that I like ( Amelie, La Belle et La Bete, Jane Austen, the Brontes,  Phillip Pullman, ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind)

Tristan loves her as no other ever has before, she says. 

Am I going to make some jolly comment like ‘Takes all types’? 

Yep.