A lock-out, a Fetish, Alfie and the Cats of Conil

On the 30^th of September in 2009, Colleen in the U.S. of A., after having been locked out of her own house, turned on her computer, set up a blog and wrote her first post, I Want in My House.  There is no suggestion that the lock-out caused Colleen to set up a blog, but what is clear is that it was on her mind that first post.

Similarly, no one can really know but Bryan Hemming himself, why on the 3^rd of December 2010 – just over one year following Colleen’s lock-out in the ‘burbs of U.S.A. – started a blog and depicted in his first post his beautiful village, Conil, Andalucia.  The pictures are lovely.  The cats to me, stole the show.

I have a fetish:  it is visiting first posts. 

When I cruise the cyber-highways, usually weekends, and find a blog I like, I cannot “move on” until I’ve read their first post.  Why did they start blogging?  And what did they branch into, or discover of themselves from whence they started?  I really, really enjoy it.

“Twenty-one months of cloistered silence later, Nelle gets over her muteness,” wrote Nelle on the 20^th of March in 2011.    Not exactly 21 months after Colleen found herself locked out, but near enough to – and they don’t even know each other.  That’s just the beauty of it – over cyberspace we can say, Colleen:  meet Nelle; Nelle, this is Colleen. Then what follows, are very human exchanges:  lives, thoughts, feelings, experiences. 

What was that 21 months of cloistered silence endured by Nelle, and why did she start the blog?  That first post flows through to today, where to visit Nelle’s blog is to see she has established herself as a powerful voice for feminism, the core of women’s rights (aka human rights).

.

Someone commented to me recently that my life is an open book because I blog.  This isn’t so.  One facet – well, perhaps a few – are open for humanity to view, relate to, be comforted if not strengthened if not inspired by.  But not the whole of my life is open.  Yes, just when you thought it couldn’t get any “worse” – there IS more (to me)!!!!

To read my first post, you know I started this blog because I am a writer offering the first drafting of my novel real raw and true to view, because I was writing inroads for years and etching ache into myself in the recall. 

I wanted to write it away from me, put it out there, let it go.  And you, the sometimes flinching audience to my heart told, relieve me simply by taking the story into your own hearts like any book read, giving feedback and encouraging me to believe I may have something to give in this world. 

“…for whatever reason”, the person then continued.  I write my life for the reason anyone writes an autobiography of spirit, endurance, beauty and ache:  because I must. 

People see an autobiography in a book store and the author, published, is excused – even lauded.  But tell it first round in a blog, and you’re just an office worker with a weird inclination to speak from the soul to the world at large, from your computer in your bedroom, the cat purring at your feet.  Every novel starts somewhere, and this new cyber age enables readers to see authors on the very first steps of their journey (if the author is so inclined).

.

“There is an excitement there right now of really being on the cusp of something new,” wrote Jordan Clary on the 9^th of July in 2011.   It was the first post of a new blog launched into cyberspace – she was on the verge of a scholarship adventure, and continued that she will heed advice received while living in China, and “walk slowly”.   By contrast, Amy on 21 June 2011, set up her blog and wrote in her first post that she was packing, heading to Italy.  At that, personally, I’d be moving quickly – throwing all at-hand into my suitcase and singing out the door.

I reckon first posts are too overlooked.  They might have been read on the day they were established, by a handful of people, and then become forgotten as posts tumble one after the other and, in some blogs, snowball into a snowman of specific identity, style and humour… but where did they start at, I always wonder?  I truly cannot resist hitting that first post.

“These Klaxons are just fractions to me”

said Patrick Fennessey on 31 August back in 2011,

“The negativity

That’s entered my life; birth since three.”

I was interested in Patrick when I first ever read his words, but that first post totally nailed it for me.  I’m hooked.

.

First posts are part of my delight of blogging.  If you wish to leave a link to your first post in my comments, feel free.  It may take me time, but I will get there.  I’ll have to unjam the photocopier, pretend not to hear the lowered voices of secretaries in the hallways gossiping, and fight peak hour traffic first, but I will get there.

And just in case you ever wondered whether Johnny Bollox’ blog is about Alfie:

“Alfie?

Nothing to do with Alfie at all.”

he wrote on day one 26 March 2012.

 . 

What wrote from black ink darkness

rendered blue to purple sorrow

as lips red told true;

seeped words to bridge the morrow.

 

Shimmers golden life with promise

of healing and resolve

the words dark in trauma

by lighter hues dissolve.

 

The people they embraced

the telling as it told

the universal experience

of life what we behold.

 

A journey it is happening

as all we are so destined

and other souls they harkened

as openly I lesson’d.

 

Why does a writer write?

some of society ask

only us,  fellow bloggers,

know words reveal the task.

 

Why does a writer right?

the unknowing they do query

only us, fellow bloggers,

we find life;  know the theory.

 Copyright, Noeleen

A perpetual anti-climax, actually

WHAT DO Sam, AngryGaijin, Anje, Johnny  and Janine  have in common?

 - APART from that they each blog…

 – and apart from that they do not all sit down to dinner together at night (not that they wouldn’t want to, I’m sure – but they live in different countries)

 – and apart from that Willow left a Thank You award on my cyber-doorstep the other day and not theirs (tee hee!)…

PS… thank you Michael S. Fedison, author and aka The Eye-Dancers for the ‘Shine On’ Award the other day, Judy Unger for that Liebster,  Prinze Charming for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.… and then IAmNotShe who threw another Liebster on the barbie.

BUT THIS IS NOT AN AWARDS ACCEPTANCE POST.  No-no! 

Sure, THANKS to all those guys, but I can’t get into the awards thing because – you know what it’s like if you take them on:  before you know it, you’ve used all your time researching 15 blogs to pass the award on to, or following rules like “write 5 things you’d like to do with your life” and neglecting Ze Grande Novel you mean to VENT.

That was a pretty good one by Willow:  she made her own rules, herself initiating the Thank You Award (for blogs that have helped her in some way.).  That’s gorgeous, Willow .  If, just say IF I were to list five things I’d like to do in my life, they’d be:

 Get up – UP, UP, UP!

Get lost

Get found

Get real

Give.

WHICH BRINGS ME (not really) TO recall the worst award I ever received.  I received it one weekend after gruelling – I tell you, GRUELLING –  tennis matches.  Of course, as usual there was no-one to cheer me on – it was just Me -v- The World (opponents-who-dared). 

I remember applying all my teen angst that day, my inner rage and never-admitted-wish that I had a dad like dads are meant to be (personal prayer:  may fathers please know how important a role they have on Earth, bring they a boy or a girl to this Life).  At the end of it all, I won an award.  I was proud.  

I ventured considerable pride about myself, though not a pair of eyes was in the audience to meet my happy little self.  I’d beaten all the girls who had mums, dads and siblings at side.  Pride is a sin, my Catholic raising scolded me within, but yep:  I was proud. 

THEN, guess what?  They asked for it back!!!!!!!!!!  I had literally just received it, and they wanted it back.  However, before they could extract it from my proud little grip, they had to get me to understand it was a ‘Perpetual Trophy’.  That is, my name would be inscribed on it, I could hold on to it for a year, and then I had to give it back. 

That was the anticlimax of my life – of my LIFE, I tell you.

I trusted the trophy back to them (like I had a real choice) and never saw it again.  I don’t know if my name was inscribed on it (and likely spelt wrong). I wasn’t part of that club, had walked miles just to be in the tournament, and walked myself back to where I lived after it all.  Yet, like all the medals I kept in a jar, I would likely have lost the thing and not been able to give it back.  So it was all just as well, I guess.

THEREFORE , WHAT do Janine, Johnny, Anje, AngryGaijin and Sam have in common?  Before I even got around to doing a post announcing I wish to be a contender for the BIG BLOG EXCHANGE and humbly beseeching your vote, they up and voted for me already!!  They saw the ‘Vote for Me’ badge on the right and placed an unsolicited vote.  THANK YOU!  

Subbers, literary nomads and all who made it to the very word, I here announce my going for this gig.  There is the opportunity for world travel in it, meeting other bloggers in real life who have a story to tell, and reporting to you the experience in any form I like (oh video camera!! ).

Votes close 15 April

The Big Blog Exchange wants to know what I would recommend for visitors to Australia.  They queried icons? customs?  Well, short of lobbing in at AussieEmu’s  joint to crack a tinnie and throw a shrimp on the barbie, I would recommend a visit to our brilliant Comedy Festival.  There, you are sure to get a taste of Australia which surpasses the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Ayers Rock and all those other icons.  My fave is Dave Hughes.

Thank you, if you don’t mind voting,

& totally fine if you do mind.  I know how “these things can get“.

The telling will continue.  

Cheers ALL

N’n.

Uncle Molest

After having got over me discarding the snail without consideration of his wants, watching it sail across the garden and land somewhere amongst bushes, Daniel brought two bills and one letter from the letter box.  I told him “Thank you!” with a big smile, and animatedly received the mail from him.  He looked proud, and that gave me joy.

.

I then picked Daniel up and carried him halfway down the driveway where I decided we would sit under the warm sun, and I would read the letter – it was from my sister Wendy, in Melbourne.  We wrote each other occasionally, and she rang fairly often.  She seemed to care for Daniel and me and it was sort of nice, but curious to me.  Again I labored mentally, trying to understand how she could possibly care about me when she did not know me.  From the orphanage to living with my aunty, to living with dad, we were never what I believed “sisters” to be.  Sisters giggle, play and go shopping together.  They swap clothes, talk about periods or not having any (I didn’t get mine until I was 19).  They talk deeply and on a level.  They feel they can reveal to each other, and I have never felt that way with Wendy.  I never told her I wanted to die, that I had just spent the last two hours crouched between parked cars, trying and trying for the guts to jump out and die, just die, I couldn’t take any more, I just wanted to die (at 15).  Between Wendy’s baggy clothes and my short tennis gear, let alone my concept of what it was to be female…

.

I was once was getting ready to go out and as I tightened a belt around my grey-blue work skirt and work shirt, Wendy sneered, “You look like bloody Dolly Parton”.  I had developed breasts early, I was guilty of that, but to let them be seen in form female, this just added to the offence, in Wendy’s eyes (I felt).  It was hard enough walking past dad without him looking at me in that way men do, that make you uncomfortable, but when my sister said that, I just wanted to cut my breasts off and say, “I wasn’t trying to pronounce my breasts, actually, I was putting a belt on because it ‘makes’ the outfit – it divides the upper and lower nicely.  I hate them sticking out.  I’m sorry they’re big.  I’m sorry everyone – I’m sorry!”  To this very day I have not ever felt attractive, being female.  I have felt guilty.

.

When I ‘d fled dad’s domain at 17, and Wendy had escaped so much sooner – as within dad’s walls we were “different people” coping our own way; so we continued beyond.  She wasn’t aware dad wrote me hate mail, telling me I would end up in a gutter with a needle up my arm, that I was headed for self-destruction and nothingness – continuing his dialect the only way he could now I was physically no longer there, intent on destroying my already bludgeoned ego for reasons I sobbed to understand.  I knew he did not write Wendy same when she left his house.  But for some reason after a day’s work dad gathered paper, a pen, undoubtedly a few beers, and focused on hating me, inking into the page his vitriol.  And after several (once 11) pages, so often repetitive (did he not realize?) he would lick the envelope to seal his continuation of abuse of me, purchase a stamp and drop the letter into a letterbox, knowing that the next day, or following, I would come home from work and be confronted, again, by his hate of me.  I wondered if it gave him a hard-on – to still affect me from afar.

.

As I grew up, dad constantly said I was “the most like yer Mother” – in fact, all of our relatives did.  I felt special by this.  I had only had Mum in my life for six years before her suicide, while my eldest sister had her for 12, yet I was the greatest resemblance of her in manner, looks and idiosyncrasy. “Gee she’s like Krystyna, isn’t she?” I remember Uncle Kevin (RIP) once (again) saying to dad, and for a few moments I had my father’s attention and – love? – or something – while he looked at me, and I at him, before I could hold the older man’s gaze no longer, and looked away.  And dad agreed that, yeah, I was.

.

Uncle Kevin, a bachelor, was always good to us four girls.  Such a good, kind uncle.  At Christmases, at a loss of what to get a 7yo (youngest), let alone a 13yo (oldest); or a 9yo let alone a 15yo, and so on, he always gave us four girls the same thing each.  We learned quickly, and would tear into our package to be the first to discover what it was – rather than be the one opening the gift, already knowing what it would be.  Uncle Kevin gave me my Barbie doll, which I treasure to this day.

.

I got a good feeling from Uncle Kevin, always, when he visited – unlike Uncle Porter.  When I was married and caravanning across Australia with my husband, we detoured to visit my Uncle Porter at his rural property.  When I stepped out of the car as he strode up his dirt driveway, he took one look at me before saying to my husband, “Geez she’s hot, just like her mother”.  I felt an avalanche of confusion implode within.   There was no, ‘Hello niece; it’s been years…’  Uncle Porter had completely overlooked me, and having passed over my physical being, he addressed my husband, David.  David of course had never met Mum and so couldn’t agree or not, so he brushed off the remark and shook Uncle Porter’s hand.  Uncle Porter then turned to me and demanded a nice big hug.  Uncle Porter had done damage to females in the family reach, I later discovered.  But I couldn’t take back that hug.

.

In Cottesloe, Western Australia, on the warm concrete driveway of the block of flats, I settled into the embrace of the sunshine, Daniel settled into my embrace, and I opened the letter.  I kissed Daniel on the top of his head.  I could swear his shiny brown locks were threads of silk itself, woven by fairies overnight, tending their illustrious garden of natural beauty.  As the ocean rumbled afar, beyond our ears but still tangible in the salt of the air, I began reading Wendy’s letter.

.

Dear Noeleen

I can’t sleep (or do my essay!) for thinking about your situation.  I’ll come straight to the point and tell you my idea.  Come to Melbourne.

~
~
Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50