Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard. Haruki Murakami Hey, Lovelies! I saw my bossy but kind cardiologist on Tuesday, and […]
What I hate about writing memoir
Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody. Neil Gaiman Hey, Lovelies. I’m deep in what I hope will be the final edit of my memoir – the first one, anyway. The one where I find myself in […]
Midnight Visitor
Have you ever Stared into the owl’s eyes? They blink slow, then burn: Burn gold in the dark inner core of the snow-shrouded cedar.” Robert Penn Warren Hey, Lovelies. I had kind of a crap day yesterday. Unexpectedly, late in the day, I received bad news. The kind you can’t shrug off or ignore. The […]
When The Universe Gives You Messages…
A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it’s not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. Thich Nhat Hanh Hey, Lovelies! I’ve been so tired with all of this moving that I have been having lots of […]
The Rash That Broke The Camel’s Back
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt It wasn’t even my rash. It was the rashes in my inbox and an offhand comment my husband said to me. One of the weirder occupational hazards of […]
What if it didn’t matter?
“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.” ~ Maya Angelou I need to give you an update about my memoir. For those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know that you encouraged me to turn some of my posts about my time in the Kimberley […]
Sometimes You Need Right Timing
“Sometimes my successes come quickly and at other times they are terribly slow to arrive. It is not my place to determine the speed at which they arrive or if they arrive at all. My place is to keep forging ahead no matter what.” ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough If you follow my blog you’ll know that […]
A Life Examined – On Memoir Writing
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” ~ Charles Dickens, David Copperfield “From the ages of 8-18, me and my family moved around a lot. Mostly we would just stretch, but occasionally one of us […]
What’s Really Going On, Nicole?
“Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.” ~ Mignon McLaughlin I’ve had a cranky few days. I could explain it away as lack of sleep – too much noisy koala sex outside my bedroom window keeping me awake all […]
What Else Can You See?
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” ~ Marilyn Vos Savant A wise and talented memoirist and creative writing teacher, Beth Kephart, has her students do an exercise where they go out into the world and take ten photographs. The students know they are going to come back […]
Looking Back at Me
“We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections It’s odd, this process of writing about yourself. Seldom do we […]
Poking Bruises
“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche I’m still editing this memoir. Because of that, I did something really dumb. I couldn’t remember a detail about someone’s appearance. An old friend from the past. Turtle. What colour were his eyes? I couldn’t tell in any of […]