10 shillings for a pair of stockings, that’s all she ever wanted. Her trembling fingers fumble at the door to the past; the present drops her memory—and she is no longer haunted. Her 16-year-old hands could type and take notes in Pitman slightly slanted. With a final glance back at pale…
In-sistered writing
The solitude of a small red car
“The lighted changed; she turned onto the highway and was free of the city. No one, she thought, can catch me now; they don’t even know which way I am going.” — Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House [1]Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin Random House, 1959/2009, p. 16. Without a…
Freedom, fear and fury in a bell jar
Sub Heading 4 Generate custom solutions with the possibility to create synergy. Amplify outside the box thinking yet be on brand. Link 4 Sub Heading 5 Demonstrating sprints in order to innovate. Build innovation to innovate. Drive outside the box thinking and try to think outside the box. Link 5 Sub Heading 6 Leverage cloud…
Professor Von H.
“But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The…
A heavy secret lies
A heavy secret lies in waiting to be sentenced, 7 years, 3 months and 19 days blacked away out of sight— Inside the stone walls her writing watches[1]Hélène Cixous, (1998), Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, p. 3., eyes closed and attendant. She wraps a crocheted pink shawl[2]Emily Dickinson, (1970), “Shame…
Odd shoes
Today she chose to wear odd shoes. The left white with embossed flowers, the right spangled with stars, In the mismatch of this truth there was nothing to lose. A social experiment not yet abandoned at the feet of dreams in recluse. What a life awaited in the toes of boots painted red! …
Twirl.
“That moment when I whirl with words is a space of transgression [and] I write to live”.[1]bell hooks, (1995), Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. H. Holt., p. 45. bell hooks 1952-2021 African-American author, feminist, educator and social activist The daily with Uncle Malcolm “An unusual combination of letters that gave me quite a spin”,…
In souvenance
Forget me not Last Saturday, a horticulturist at Oxley nursery told me forget me nots refuse to grow in sub-tropical Brisbane—their clusters of soft powder blue prefer to sprawl under other spring skies, he said and raised his hands in surrender. I was hoping to grow some on my balcony to keep things I remembered…
Big love: Buddhism and bell hooks
A-way to write With bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress open on her lap, she gently closes her eyes and focuses on her breath. In and out. Until now, she had never seen the words of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh [1]Thich Nhat Hanh, (1992), Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday…
Boxes
“She had in her seventh year, she recalled wistfully, dreamed of a wishing-box land above the clouds where wishing boxes grew on trees, looking very much like coffee grinders; you picked a box, turned the handle around nine times while whispering your wish in this little hole in the side, and the wish came…