Other people's words

At the moment I am sitting in Eleanor Dark’s studio with a rug over my knees and a heater close by, two heaters in fact.  It’s cold in the Blue Mountains, colder than I had imagined, but at least today the sun is shining and the world outside - despite the dew on the grass and the bare tress in the garden dripping with left over rain - looks almost spring like and therefore warmer, warmer at least than yesterday when the day was over cast from morning right through to night and there was a steady misting rain. 

I went out for only one walk into town yesterday and did not enjoy it, not as I have enjoyed my walks through Katoomba in the past.  But it goes in cycles.  Exhilaration to misery in as little as five minutes.  The pressure to do nothing but write and read and think about writing is a luxury but it’s also a burden and for some reason I feel it more acutely this time.

I’m stuck in a well of the familiar and I cannot get out of it.

 

In this studio, once the writing place of Eleanor Dark, there is a series of drawers in which other writers who have used this room have left snippets of their writing drafts, a page or two, no more. And perched on top are two tall chests with flower embossed fronts in which someone has placed a slip of paper with the words:

 ‘Courage is the first essential.’ 

In the next cupboard alongside but separated by mouldy dictionaries and grammar books, this same person, I presume, has penned the words:

‘And coffee second.’

In another of the drawers below where there are countless screeds from countless writers I found one piece that has taken my fancy.  It’s from an Australian poet named Jude Aquilina and it reads like this:

First Penis Transplant

A cutting from The Herald, 2107

Today, the first penis

transplant was successfully

performed on a woman in her

twenties.  I’ve always wanted

one, stated the Sydney

housewife, to prove that

women can wear penises too. I

don’t intend to flash it nor

thrash it, just use it for its

natural purposes and I hope it

comes in handy around the

house.  I want to invent

practical attachments such as

dusters and dish mops.  How

many mothers have wished

for an extra hand? – crossing

the street with a child each

side, I’ll hang my handbag on

nature’s hook.  And when I

 go dancing on summer nights,

I’ll wear bangles that jangle

 from side to side. I really

think they’re going to catch

on, Women have been without

them far too long.  Surgeons

say their lists are full of

women waiting to fulfil their

masculinity; the problem at

the moment, unfortunately,

lies in the lack of donors.