I chose this quote specifically as I felt the notion and idea of writing what hurts to be connected strongly to me and my work. Especially over the past 3 years a lot of my writing and work I’ve completed has been related to either high school assignments or specific situations in which I wrote for the benefit of my school. Much of this comprised of essays, speeches, sometimes creative pieces and film. I found it very easy to articulate pain through these, being at a very religious school as a queer teenager it wasn’t necessarily easy to find freedom in the bravery to speak up against the strict conservative values present. For multiple assignments I chose issues concerning LGBTQ+ discrimination and repression, both by general society and religion, arguing against the values of my school and those assessing my work. The danger of such an act being that at any moment my teacher, assessor, or the vice principle I once directed a short film for, could mark down, punish or even threaten expulsion due to the stance my work decided to take. Despite this, I decided to do it again and again, even putting university prospects on the line to critique religious schools and their homophobia in my year 12 English oral. Even now, having graduated and no longer being confined to said institution I find it therapeutic to put struggles, trauma, emotion and simple pain onto paper, in a way that doesn’t always speak out and is more often for my personal benefit. 

The way a city bustles will be unfamiliar to those who lived their whole life in a country not. Not being able to see the stars lining the sky at night appear dystopian to they who know not of light pollution. Sky lines filled by skyscrapers are alien to those who’s sky has always been lined by trees. But a country girl can get used to the city, its grid and structure, whilst missing the chaos of the ocean.

 

Dragon fly wing:

As a child I would kill snails with no remorse, I would crush a spider without a thought and smack a moth for a screaming brother, but I have never killed a dragonfly. Was it the heroic name? was childhood me engrossed by the notion of a dragon bug? Something from a fairy-tale land I would never visit? Or was the dragonfly too beautiful. Did six-year-old me harbour some hidden materialistic views on beauty and worth? Or was I just never able to catch one?

 

Rock concert:

Concerts aren’t really my thing. The perspective of a larger fanbase for music I enjoy on a personal level makes it feel lees personal. It was never about me in the first place but in my room, with my headphones on, I can pretend it was. Maybe there’s a beauty in seeing so many connecting to music you like, as if you could look into the eyes of the person next to you and glimpse yourself in the reflection.

 

Editing as a whole is rather daunting to me as a writer, one of my big weaknesses is grammar and punctuation, so I was a bit nervous going into this assessment. However, I found that as the week went on, having an assessment that targeted my weakest point was actually a positive thing. I was even more conscious of grammar and punctuation whilst editing and it opened my eyes to some of my own common mistakes the more I zoomed into others.

 

I often ponder if perhaps the phenomenon of eldest daughters being adjacent to their fathers is not so much a fact of genetics, but rather the failing on the parents’ behalf to iron out the ruffles of her paternal genes. 

 

The second child is often better behaved, softer, more maternally inclined. Perhaps children instinctually know which parent they align with, much like they know their own name, and learn unbiasedly from said parent until their conscience is able to develop to a level that they understand the sins of their father, or mother. 

 

No eldest daughter truly understands the flaw in being “just like (her) Dad”, and likewise no father sees the insult being hurled. It’s not that eldest daughters wish to be our fathers, contrarily many of us would love to gain the warm softness that comes from being a “mummy’s girl”. I would rather look to my mother’s sin when I peer inside my mind than my father’s many. If I was able to repeat my childhood perhaps I would cry when I sprained my wrist, when I broke my fingers or each time I rolled an ankle. 

 

I feel as though allowing my mother’s emotional vulnerability to be wasted on a boy who feeds the above quote is tragic, perhaps a greater tragedy than my own.

Writers event pledge: Melbourne writers festival 4-7 May

The flamingo sits with us, in this room, it’s silence like a back alley in the dark of night, an old newspaper flutters by. But the flamingo’s head is not nearly as silent, they scream, a silent, yet ear splitting sound we cannot hear. Their cry’s would pull the blood from our veins into the cool of air if we listened. We do not listen, we cannot, for their dripping beak and deflated state are artificially observed.

 

Perhaps if we knew they were like us once, a writer, an artist, a tortured genius with too many thoughts for just one lifetime.

 

They wish to warm us, our fates are intertwined as one. To be a silent soul, so much to say and no voice to say it with,

 

In a way they’re glad to not be like us, they dreaded the ever churning loop of life, school, work and death. 

 

And yet if they could return, just for a moment, to write their soul onto a page, etch themselves into eternity as they see fit, they would. Just like us they long to be remembered. And like many before them they’re doomed to be forgotten.

 

So they sit. Watch. Year by year as students write around them, seeing but not listening.

 

Hoping that one day their cry would reach into the mind of another and they would once again exist.

 

She takes a deep breath and grimaces at the man sitting across from her, nodding at him to continue.

 

“They said she wouldn’t figure it out” 

 

Delusional thinking, her poker face was so poor you could see the cards reflected in just the expanding of her iris’.

 

“I found out that same night, thanks for that by the way.”

 

The girl throws her hands up, exasperated. “She found out after you told her you idiot.”

 

“Don’t involve me”

 

Right, like he wasn’t already involved enough in her life.

 

“He thinks youre trying to break them up you know.” Eyes glinting with amusement as he takes another mouthful of cheap whiskey into his bushy mouth. “I would too if I didn’t know about his sister.”

 

She chokes on the liquid, eyes widening with the implication. “We made out one time, I cut all connections after that.”

 

“You’re such a liar, I literally saw the messages you sent her, you need to get better at this whole ‘avoiding peoples sisters’ thing.”

 

It was one sister, one time, really drunk at an expensive nightclub. Okay? There were no more sisters after that. At least for a year. She might’ve, maybe, made out with her best friend’s sister one time at a house party, but it hardly counts if it’s a dare! Even if the dare was only a peck. She didn’t have a habit of getting with people’s sisters. Hardly. More of a consistent streak.

 

You couldn’t blame her for this sister though, she had the kind of strawberry blonde hair you just wanted to play with softly in the morning sun, oh and the kind of eyes you wished where always looking into yours. It truly wasn’t her fault they had such similar interests and ended up in the same place at the same time. Not her fault at all.

 

Suddenly she’s sighing into her hands, the whiskey has warmed her up and her bad poker face is about to get her in trouble again but for a moment it doesn’t matter.

 

“Stop making that face” and moment over.

 

She slaps his arm lightly, scoffing as he smiles into his glass.

 

“You need to shut up. I do not like my best friend’s sister, and if I did, I wouldn’t, because I don’t.”

 

 

The hand on my mouth is tight, holding my very self-closed. I cannot understand. I cannot listen.

 

The quiet night is still, so still around me. 

 

The darkness is tight, the world is quiet. 

 

I am silent. The world is silent. 

 

Quiet and still, the world cannot speak, cannot listen. 

 

I cannot listen. 

 

I do not listen.

 

I will not.

 

If I will it, the world will stay closed to me. Silent to my loud mouth.

 

The timeless womanhood experience hat stretches far beyond its generations.

How can we possibly connect with those who lived so long ago our existences never touches. How can pain, anguish, mourning transcend time. How can everything change and yet nothing change. How can I look at you, grey scaled on a modern screen and filmed by a retro camera, see myself, holding a cell phone, looking at an image projected on a wall.

 

One might wish the sorrows of woman hood died with the first to experience them, that man saw pain and sought to extinguish. One would say that’s a fanciful thought. How could man, men, ever put out the flames of a fire they lit underneath women. 

 

I question often the purpose of such a flame, was it lit to scorch our existence in hopes it would turn to ash, or was the fire in our eyes an intended spot fire, lit by embers.

 

If they wish to reduce us, why allow us. The very existence of woman and free thought plays a melody that the patriarchal drums cannot bear, and thus the drummers leave their instruments to take up arms. It is not then a surprise when they return to the women in their seats, and yet they pretend it is, they yell, and cry, and put on a pedestal leader’s who would rather blow up the entire band than let the women play.

 

I suppose it’s rather cynical, to reflect on such times as if I lived them. One cannot imagine, and yet we can. Life’s many functions and opportunities may have opened like a black hole, but people’s minds have not.

 

The tree is stoic where I am traped. Its laves shelter me from the soft splatterings of rain. 

 

The tree guides me, gently holding my small hand it its branches, towardsthe knowledge of a thousand lifetimes.

 

The tree retains my knowledge, mormies, lifetime, thoughts. Everything I was, am and will become are eternal, within the tree.

 

The tree is my saviour, salvation, like a god descended from the heavens to shin light upon my skin. Poseidons crashing waves, zeus’ stormy skies, Athenas final battle. All for me, and the tree.

 

I ponder if my soul’s existence is worth this anus torture. My friends long dead and buried don’t remember me. their children forget my tale.

 

The humans yet to breach my seal, hidden beneath my rough cushioning. They cannot fathom the entity upon which they perch, as the entity fails to fathom itself.

 

I forget time again who and what I am. 

 

I have forgotten now. The words run like water between my fingers as I attempt to grasp them.

 

I recall fire, rocky landscapes, something below this world. why am I here. Who am I here. But a lonely chair.