Diabolical Clay

This is a rather impressive title for a blog post and I am left wondering how on earth I can manage to write anything that lives up to the promise of such a title. Never one to back away from a challenge, I shall try to tap something out that is halfway readable and mostly true.

The train left Southern Cross station at eight am sharp and I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of the  trip from Melbourne to Geelong. I was  fascinated by the detritus that littered the ground alongside the tracks, the weeds were thriving and the industrial wasteland was especially interesting. At one point there was a great pile of mattresses lying in amongst the weeds and I wondered if a nearby squat had been cleaned out, or if a local bed barn had recently had a sale. I assumed that it was easier to dump the mattresses by the tracks rather than go to the tip and I pondered the mystery of the mattresses for a few miles. Cat graffiti seemed to be especially popular along a section of the rail lines and each power box thingy was decorated with a cat’s face similar to Hello Kitty but darker in intent.

I had decided not to take my Nikon with me as I didn’t want to lug the great heavy thing about the place. The only time I regretted this decision was on the train, as the battery on my phone was running out very quickly and I would have liked to have documented my journey with better photos. I did a lot of filming with my handicam though and I should have a three minute film done in a few weeks time.

Hindsight is a wonderful gift and my hindsight is always especially sharp.

There were a number of things about a train trip that I didn’t even take into consideration when I was planning my journey to Adelaide. The main thing I didn’t think about was the fact that I don’t like sitting down for long. I am hard pressed to sit down and watch a movie and here I was willingly paying to sit down for ten hours in a row. The Spouse had gleefully regaled me with horror tales of his own nightmare train journeys from Cairns to Brisbane in the eighties. I steadfastly refused to listen to his tales of  woe, as I was embarking upon an adventure, not a run of the mill trip on a train full to the brim with boxes of bananas and grumpy Queenslanders.

Being a gregarious and social person I assumed that once the novelty of staring out the window and daydreaming had worn off a bit, that I would have interesting conversations about stuff with my fellow travellers. Ha, not a chance, my fellow travellers were as animated as Norman Bate’s Mother and spent all their time on the train frowning at each other and avoiding eye contact with me.

I did sit across the aisle from a  lovely Indian couple but nodding and smiling enthusiastically at the canola can only sustain a person for so long, and we soon gave up trying to communicate much past the easy sign language of photo requests. Sadly most of  their photos of themselves on their train journey will consist of dark silhouettes against the yellow canola, as their little camera wasn’t up to the task of capturing both them and the view.

Once we had left  the  industrial landscape behind, the never ending flatness of the country began to feel a little bit creepy. As I was passing by giant paddocks full of wheat or canola it was easy to fall into a depressing state of mind and I wondered if the bees ever became bored with the taste of canola pollen. Do bees crave variety in their diet? I know that one of the theories about the decline of bees in the 21st century agricultural landscape is because the restricted diet in a monocultural landscape weakens the bees immune systems.

I was fascinated by the symmetry of the wheat fields and the optical illusions the rows of wheat produced. At the very edge of the paddocks I could see something jumping from row to row and I briefly wondered if it was a hare or maybe a kangaroo, until it dawned on me that the dark shape was keeping time with the trains passage and it had to be an optical illusion.I was especially pleased we weren’t travelling  through fields of corn as then my imagination would have seriously run amok.

Five hours into the train journey I had had enough, I was over the confinement completely and the thought of a further five hours trapped on a train was quite depressing. All the small towns had started to look the same, I was heartily sick of  endless blocks of yellow and I was beginning to suspect that I had broken my bum.To add insult to injury the train was running behind schedule so my ten hour trip ended up stretching out to eleven and a half hours.

Now I am home and my bum has recovered, I am pleased I caught the train. The country was interesting despite its spooky flatness and I amused myself by instagramming my journey.  This image above, of the station at Dimboola and the memory of the  vast yellow flatness are simmering below the surface of my consciousness and I can feel  the inspiration for a series of work titled “Goodbye Dimboola” swirling about inside my mind.

I don’t think I will be in a hurry to catch a train for a long journey again as I think that three hours is about my limit. I am planning on travelling back to Geelong via train specifically to document the industrial landscape and the rubbish that we leave everywhere. I would like to photograph the weeds by the tracks and have another, closer look at Hello Kitty’s darker twins.

I arrived safe and soundly in Adelaide last night after a very, very long train journey. I was ready to be off the train after seven hours of enforced inactivity, but of course I had to stay on the train for a further four hours.

I have to register at the conference main desk at 8 am this morning so this is just a quick hello to share the photos I took on the train. After much dithering I left the Nikon at home as I didn’t want to lug the great heavy thing about the place, so these photos are courtesy of my camera phone.

There were paddocks full of wheat as far as the eye could see and the symmetrical rows created an optical illusion, where I could almost see something jumping from row to row in the back of the paddock. Drop bears probably.

The paddocks full of canola were very pretty. No illusions here.

As a Tasmanian woman, I am used to hills and mountains and I found the flat country a bit unsettling, especially when lines from B-grade horror movies started to pop into my head. Luckily there was only wheat and canola and not a cornfield in sight.

It was a glorious day and the blocks of colour, the blues and yellows and greens were absolutely lovely in their colourful flatness.

And so here I am quickly tapping this out, super quickly before I go and immerse myself in all things ceramic. If you use instagram I am on there as @frogpondsrock and I will be sharing photos throughout the weekend with the hashtag #subversiveclay

Early Wednesday morning I will be flying out of Tasmania to have an adventure.

As a child I devoured the Famous Five books and was eternally wistful at my own lack of adventures in suburban Springfield. Sure we built cubbies and forts and engaged in long running battles with those Glenorchy kids, but there were never any mysteries to solve or smugglers to catch. We had to content ourselves with billy cart races, stealing fruit from neighbourhood orchards and long lazy days at the pool.

But now as a grown up I am embarking on my very own girls own adventure.

I am catching a train from Melbourne to Adelaide on Thursday.

The last passenger trains stopped running in Tasmania when I was a child. I fondly recall the red leather seats and the dark wood panelled interior of the trains we used to catch and so with this romantic nostalgia in place, I booked my train journey.

I wonder how romantic an 800 kilometre modern day train journey will feel by the time I roll into Adelaide. Heh.

I am determined to enjoy my time at the Ceramics Conference, despite the constant thread of worry that is the backdrop to everything I do at the moment. I will be meeting up with old friends, as well as meeting new friends face to face for the first time. The advent of Social media has been wonderful for making new friends, and I am looking forward to meeting ceramists that I had only previously spoken with via facebook and twitter.

I am taking a fat visual diary with me and I expect to take copious notes while I am away, as one of the side effects of worry is that my already dodgy memory falls further to pieces. I lose my train of thought, I become uber-dithery and making a simple decision is extremely difficult. I just hope I don’t lose the diary.

Evelyn is still seizing and sleeping and it will be weeks before the test results are all back, and so we are in a holding pattern. Doctors and Patients stuck in limbo together. I don’t like being in limbo much, I remember the nuns terrifying me with their tales of all these disembodied souls stuck in Limbo forever. Poor souls floating through the grey, grey void because they hadn’t been splashed with holy water the instant they had been born.

At least I am not floating through greyness, my life is still full of colour and action. I am just more absentmineded than usual, more distractable, and more prone to wild flights of fancy as I dream up grand schemes to distract myself even further.

As  Evelyn’s medical journey inches along at a snails pace my mind has sped up exponentially and I am dreaming big dreams. Which I suppose I should write down so I don’t forget them. Now where is that diary?

I went to the hairdresser yesterday and had the first proper haircut I have had in over twenty years, I will publish a photo when I get near a camera. I had won the voucher in a charity auction and thought I had better smarten myself up a bit before I head off to Adelaide for the Ceramics Triennale.

It was quite bizarre sitting in a salon having my hair cut, trying to give an idea of myself to an unknown hairdresser, a professional small talker. I was trapped under the cape unable to wave my arms about, and so having lost any sense of  the theatrical, my words became small, as I felt small in that chair. Though the mirror told me that I was not small at all. Oh no that mirror shouted at me that I was old and fat and ugly. So I shunned the mirror and looked past the surface reflection of myself and studied the hairdresser instead. For all my scrutiny, I doubt that I would recognise him again.

The true test of a haircut is the next day and mine has passed with flying colours. I looked into my nicer mannered mirror this morning and all my hair needed was a quick rub with my fingers and I was ready to face the day. That is all I ask of my hair, that is does not bother me.

After my trip to the Salon I went to the supermarket and wandered the aisles aimlessly looking for something.

I remember when my non smoking Mother was first diagnosed with Lung cancer, I bumped into her unexpectedly at the supermarket one day, and arm in arm we wandered the aisles aimlessly together, both of us looking for something. We laughed at each others indecision, as I inherited my decisiveness from her and we both cried small tears in those aisles surrounded by all the things that neither of us needed.

I am so incredibly stressed and the fear is nibbling away at my soul. I worry about my baby as she worries about her baby and all the emotions that I felt as my Mother was dying come thundering back to bother me.

Your comments and support are keeping me sane.

Your prayers for Evelyn soothe me.

Small things are keeping me sane and as much as my distractability annoys the ones that love me, it is saving me.

You my dear internets are saving me also.

Evelyn was eight weeks old yesterday.

Today I feel much better. Thank you. Thank you for taking my fear and my despair and sharing it amongst yourselves.

Yesterday in the studio, as I glazed all the cups and all of the bowls, I listened to Nick Cave and REM, The Mess Hall and Jen Cloher and I cried.

I cried as I poured and I sieved, I cried as prepared my work for the final firing and as I cried, Harry the dog pressed himself against me and licked the salty tears from my face. I hugged my dog close until the hairs that he constantly sheds, went up my nose and into the glaze and I smiled at the mess we both made.

Over the past three years I have cried a lot of tears into Harry’s furry neck and all he asks in return is that I throw a ball for him and turn a blind eye when he steals the cats food. He is a good dog.

We are in a holding pattern. It will be weeks before some of  Evelyn’s test results are back and so begins the slow process of trying various medications that are known to suppress seizures.

As for Evelyn’s blindness, well, I am trying very hard not to think about the reasons for that at the moment.

Thank you for your support. I am so very very grateful that you are here with me.

On Saturday, the day of the pirate socks and blueberries, my daughter Veronica told me that she didn’t think her daughter Evelyn, could see anymore.

Only the day before, I had held baby Evelyn in my arms as she had a series of small seizures. It is not an experience I would recommend. I put the lack of response from Evelyn to visual clues, down to the fact that she was exhausted  from all her seizures. With the power of my awesome hindsight, I now know that my smallest grand child could not see me.

Here is my heart, watch as my heart shatters into a thousand tiny pieces, watch as the shards of my heart turn to ice and settle in the pit of my stomach.

Feel my fear internet.

I have not felt this stressed since Mum was dying. In fact I think I am quite possibly more stressed. Who knew that was possible? Certainly not me. What wins here? The pain of watching your mother die, or the pain of holding a desperately ill child in your arms?

I don’t think there are any winners here today.

Today I am going to surrender to my despair and wallow in its inky blackness. If I have learned anything from my grief, I have learned not to try and ignore the sadness on the days that are unbearably sad. And in this minute in time I despair, oh how I despair, and I give my despair to you dear internet, so that I don’t have to be alone.

When my non-smoking Mother was first diagnosed with Lung Cancer I had an overwhelming urge to paint. I wanted to paint a giant blue painting, with sweeps of light and shade, all blue and white. I did not have the means to paint anything in 2008 and we three, Mum, Veronica and I became consumed by our journey.

The need to paint has returned and this time as I watch my family be consumed by the processes of the hospital, I have the means to paint.I have two blank canvases, I have acrylic paint and I have the space to paint my paintings in the studio that I built from the ashes of my Mother’s life.

Here is my despair, here is my fear, I give this blackness of spirit to you because I do not want it.

I do not want it at all.

I worked in the Off Centre yesterday, Saturday is Salamanca Market day, the cars are banished and replaced with a bustling market. The day was busy and there was a constant stream of people to talk to,who unknowingly kept me sane all day. Thank you people.

Veronica had rung me in the morning to share her latest fears about Evelyn’s health and such is my ability to detach myself that I was able to happily chat away with strangers about Tasmania. We talked about Art and Mona, the weather and the best places to eat, the steady stream of mostly tourists browsing in the shop helped me to ignore the cold block of ice that had somehow lodged itself in my tummy.

During a quiet spell I closed the shop and headed off to find some lunch, I had fifty dollars to see me through until payday and I spent thirty of those dollars on pirate socks and frozen blueberries. Classic case of retail therapy. Blueberries for my breakfast and pirate socks for my soul.

Driving home from work last night  I whispered, “Give me strength, Mum” and I heard mum whisper back, “You don’t need strength Kimmy, you are strong enough.”

And I know that I will have to be.

But in the meantime I will distract myself with my pirate socks, I am wearing them now and I imagine tiny little pirates going aaarrr each time I take a step and I smile at my own silliness.

Veronica and Evelyn have been granted gate leave which means they are both home for the weekend. Evelyn’s seizures are not registering on the EEG machines which is a worry and as far as I know her MRI results were clear. The Doctors have eliminated all the easy reasons why my tiny little grand daughter is having these seizures. Ev is not having multiple strokes, there is not a brain tumour, her liver isn’t failing, her bile ducts are not blocked and it isn’t Epilepsy.

One of the advantages of living in the 21st century and having a broad social media network, is that Veronica accidentally found another Mother whose little baby is doing almost exactly the same things as Evelyn. It is terribly isolating when your child is unwell with some rare condition as I know only too well and so I am pleased that these two women have connected. The potential for their respective medical teams to connect up as well is also a possibility that keeps me level.

Such is my ability to detach myself from reality that I will now spend the weekend very determinedly not worrying about Evelyn and I will drown my brain in the specifics of my ceramics instead.

The upside of using up my weeks allotment of petrol driving to and fro from the hospital, is that I am stuck here at home and I have no way to avoid doing any work.

So I will be glazing pots all weekend ready to take a suitcase full of my work to Adelaide to sell at the Triennale’s Sunday Suitcase Sale.

These pots are the ones I will be working on, they will have an iron oxide wash on the outside of them to bring out the texture. Texture that was made with a rock my friend Meegan brought me back from Corfu. The inside will be a deep glossy blue or green.

They should have a final glaze that looks the same as these cups.

Now for the Chicken update. Natasha who owns the delightfully quirky Three Windows Gallery at Oatlands gave me two hens to keep my Rooster happy. As it stands at the moment I have two roosters left out of the original three I rescued and some time this weekend I will only have one rooster.

I told a friend that I was going to eat two of the abandoned roosters and she was appalled, her Mother even went as far as to tell me that it was disgusting that I should be killing the roosters to eat. I was in a hurry to get down to the hospital to See Veronica and Evelyn so I didn’t hang around to ask if they were meat eaters or not and if they were, where it was exactly they sourced their meat. That will be a conversation for another day and of course if mother and daughter turn out to be committed Vegans, well then I will happily wear the label of disgusting rooster murderer and go quietly about my carnivorous ways.

What I find appalling  is that we have become so far removed from the food that we eat that it is perfectly acceptable to buy  meat from a shiny clean supermarket but it is dreadfully cruel to kill your own food.

The roosters that were abandoned down in the gully would have starved to death, been run over or killed by a quoll, a dog or a feral cat. Their options were limited and their outlook was pretty grim. I walked down a giant hill shaking a bucket of wheat calling “chook chook chook” and the roosters followed me home. In the time they lived with me they were well fed,totally free range and repeatedly told how handsome they were (Roosters like flattery)

The oldest and naughtiest rooster was killed quickly as he was eating his breakfast and he will be delicious. The second naughtiest rooster is still out in the paddock crowing his head off and shagging his new sheilas. He will be killed equally as quickly and he will also be delicious.

The third and luckiest rooster will then have sole shagging rights to the two hens Natasha gave me. Providing he doesn’t irritate The Spouse too much by crowing underneath the bedroom window at the crack of dawn, he will live a happy life  until his daughters grow up and then I will eat him as well. If he produces only roosters, he will live long and prosper and I will eat his sons instead of him.

As a carnivore I like to know where my meat comes from. I refuse to buy any meat from factory farmed animals. David nagged and nagged me for bacon every time I went to the supermarket and I steadfastly refused to buy him bacon because I could not find any that was from free range pigs. Guy and Eliza from Mt Gnomon Farm have since come to David’s rescue and he now treats bacon like the luxury item it is.

What I don’t mention about the throw away roosters is how much I had to beg The Spouse to be allowed to keep them. How I had to faithfully promise to keep the destructo creatures out of the garden and how at first light when I hear the roosters crowing I dive out of bed  to shut them up with food so that Jeff’s insomniac head doesn’t explode.

Life is full of compromises and difficulties and it seems to The Spouse that every compromise I propose poses difficulties for him, but he loves me and now I have chickens again.

I would like to say thank you.

Thank you for your kindness and concern.

Thank you for your supportive comments on this and on Veronica’s blog, thank you for the facebook messages, twitter conversations and thank you for the emails and offers of help.

Your support means a lot to Veronica and I, with each comment left or prayer offered we feel less alone and I know that I feel less terrified.

I have lifted this from Veronica’s blog, Veronica wrote this yesterday.

Oh internet, I am shattered after this afternoon. They recannulated Evelyn in order to take lots of blood, only to have the line kink and require lots of fiddling with.

Eventually they got the line working again (I’ll point out here that it was nothing anyone did wrong, just a thing that happens), while Evelyn cried, loudly. Sucrose, normally the liquid saviour of the gods – or more accurately the saviour of tiny babies undergoing painful procedures, helped, but it wasn’t as good as previous times.

Eventually it was done though and thus began the lumbar puncture ordeal.

The first needle got us nothing. The second needle got us blood. The third try got us mixed spinal fluid and blood, but not enough to be useful for testing.

The doctor was so apologetic, but she will have to have another lumbar puncture tomorrow.

It wasn’t easy to watch. She screamed so hard that she turned blue. Then once it was over, she was pale and miserable, until I managed to feed her. She sweated everywhere and gave herself a heat rash.

I was fine during it, but I’m not sure whether I want to cry or throw up more now.

I am pleased that Veronica has a place where she can share her fear.

I babysat Amy and Isaac yesterday so that Nathan could be there with Veronica for the Lumbar Puncture.

Today as my girls have to go through the whole awful procedure again, I will be at work at the Off Centre in Salamanca. So close to the hospital but so far away.

I hope Nathan makes it to the hospital in time to hold Veronica’s hand.

I hope the Doctor gets some spinal fluid with her first attempt today.

I am hoping like mad for a lot of things internet and I am ever so grateful that you are here hoping with us.

EDITED 11 am 

Because the spinal fluid has to be sent to Melbourne as well as Adelaide, the Paeds are not going to do another Lumbar Puncture until Monday. I am now feeling slightly better.