tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89894235884587790462024-03-14T00:08:11.578-07:00Furious Vaginasa discipline by Krissy KneenKrissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.comBlogger770125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-29051038265827599722017-02-02T18:35:00.002-08:002017-02-02T18:35:44.673-08:00Of Caves and Corpses<br />
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<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: Courier; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is a man swaying outside her window covered in bees. His whole
head is alive with them. He shivers with wings. He moves and some of them, fat,
sated, fall off him and land with a soft wet sound like spilled honey on the
floor. When she opens her eyes there is just the sound of the ocean and the
sway of shadow as a tree is taken by a stray breeze. When she closes them the
man is back. Even wakeful, closed eyed, he is there and so she must not close
her eyes or he will climb through the half closed window and the bees will drip
onto the floor inside. She lies as still as she can and listens to a thousand
wings beat, light and fast as her heart.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-3487398143968874012017-02-01T05:10:00.001-08:002017-02-01T05:10:05.708-08:00It is not about me<br />
<br />
Why do I feel anxious almost all the time?<br />
<br />
My world has shrunk down to a tiny sphere and I am at the center of it. This is not the proper scale of things. This is not the right configuration. There is no specific 'now' and I am not even the center of my body let alone my universe.<br />
<br />
90% of the DNA in my body is not human. It is the stuff of the microcosm. It is bacteria, fungii and other microorganisms. When everything 'me' about this collection of cells, other microbial life will flare into action. Everything will continue to live or to die just as the cells in my body life and die every day of my life.<br />
<br />
I am made of the exact same chemical mix as has made the stars. I am of the stars. So what part of me lives? What part of me dies? Why does the algorithm hold the mirror up to this face and reflect the human part of me back to the endless loop of look-see-look-see.<br />
<br />
I wrote a book, a three legged thing like a stool. One of the legs is wobbly, or so I am told. If I sit on it I might fall. I feel myself fall. I have worked for the longest time to shore up all the legs. I thought I was done but I am caught up in the look-see-look-see. I feel terror, thinking I might have to go back to the desk and rewrite this for the hundredth time. Take one leg away, is the advice. Hang it on the wall. Something with length and breadth just like any other book. But the depth is missing. Good enough to publish. Sure. Good enough.<br />
<br />
Why do I want to put yet another book out in the world. Because it might be THE book, THE one. If I put it out in the world it might be more popular than my other books. It is certainly more likeable. But I am not writing to be liked. I will not win hearts or awards. I will stubbornly refuse to throw an easy book into the pile of easy books. This was never an easy book. This was a book that looked outward to the universe. I will not be dissappointed every time I look on my shelf and see the two dimensional thing.<br />
<br />
One day I will be dead and yet every cell in my body will live on or be re-purposed. The book will not change as my cells do. The book is fixed and unchanging.<br />
<br />
I will not write it for others. I will take it back and make it right if I have to work it and work it till the 10% of me that is human is off being something else.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-21966827801292295792017-01-24T16:50:00.001-08:002017-01-24T16:50:22.508-08:00A Daisychain of Good Will
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<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">First
Published on Griffith Review webiste in Januay 2011 the year of the Brisbane flood.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">A
Daisy Chain of Good Will – A Motorcycle Adventure Through the Queensland Floods
</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">By
Krissy Kneen</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">On
the morning of Friday the 14<sup>th</sup> of January I knew my motorcycle
wasn’t going to behave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three days
earlier, the day of the first high tide of the Brisbane floods, I decided to
move the bike to higher ground. </span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">We live on the ground floor of a tall apartment block right on the
river in New Farm. Glenfalloch was one of the first high-rise apartment blocks
to be built in Brisbane. In 1959 it was a pretty impressive sight towering over
the single story riverside houses. Even today it has a certain retro charm if
you are fond of Eastern Block architecture or have a fetish for hospital
buildings. The residents who survived the ’74 floods are fond of the story
about how the building was saved from almost certain destruction by an
ingenious system of wooden slats, heavy plastic and sandbags.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If water got into the foundations of
the building it would compromise the entire structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My motorcycle was parked outside my
unit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had been raining solidly
for days, not just ordinary rain, but rain so heavy that it obscured
vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the heaviest falls
we could barely see the houses across the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A wall of grey marching in waves across the city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through all of this my bike had sat,
unused, outside on the street, sucking up the water into every hose and pipe
and bolt hole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tank needs
re-sealing and I was certain that it would have taken some water. It was low on
petrol too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t surprise me that
it took a while to get the engine going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The thing revved tentatively, popped, stopped, started again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bunny-hopped the bike up to the top
of the hill and abandoned it there, trudging back to my apartment to move our
most precious possessions up to the 8<sup>th</sup> floor.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">My friend Colin’s house is built on the lowest point in Ryan Street
West End and was one of the first places to take water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the morning of the 11<sup>th</sup>,
the property was waist deep in water hours before the river broke its
banks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a storm water
drain at the back of the house and the rising river discovered this outlet,
filling their garden as if their house alone had been targeted by the rising
tides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Colin worked tirelessly to
save everything he could from the place, carting boxes as he waded through the
water, joined at one point by Kevin Rudd who looked a little out of his
element, a pale office-dweller startled by the twin terrors of hard physical
labour and the rising tide.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Colin called me on the mobile, his voice so high and loud that I
could almost hear the adrenalin pumping through his body. At the time I didn’t
realise he had been up all night carting his family’s possessions through water
side by side with the former Prime Minister of the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this time we were hours away from
the first high tide.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Get
your stuff up to Ben and Scott’s unit now!” He was shouting into the phone.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ben
and Scott’s unit is up on the 8<sup>th</sup> floor. We have the spare keys to
their unit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ben was away in India
at the time and Scott, a producer for local ABC radio had moved into a motel
near work so that he could work around the clock to keep Brisbane listeners
informed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had already taken
several loads of our own possessions up to the 8<sup>th</sup> floor when the
power was cut to our area. The lift relies on power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We made two more trips, straining under the weight of boxes
of books and computer equipment, trudging up 8 flights of stairs in the
sweltering humidity before deciding that our possessions weren’t actually
important enough to save. I told Colin this but he was adamant, and threatened
to drive across town to help us move our stuff upstairs. Soon after this the
bridges were closed and we were supported in our laziness by the rising tide.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">The next time I spoke to Colin his house was under water. He and his
mother, Silvia had visited the building, rowed out into the street by a man in
a dingy.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">On
Friday 14<sup>th</sup> I picked up my helmet and my jacket with a sense of
foreboding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The river had
risen, done it’s business, displaced thousands of residents, ripped the
Riverwalk out from under our feet, torn out the ferry stop behind our
apartment, and then slunk back into it’s home within its banks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was just a taste of the kind of
apocalypse we saw often enough in movies and on TV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People roamed the streets, mostly on foot or on their
bicycles, with a dazed expression on their faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of our neighbours had been up for several nights
wondering if their houses would be inundated and then trying to contact friends
and family. Many had lost possession. I was reminded of “The Road” by Cormac
McCarthy and wondered how long it would take for us to turn to cannibalism in a
completely catastrophic event. </span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">The flood didn’t reach the expected peak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It certainly would have taken out our unit and much of our street
if it had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My motorcycle
would have been covered in mud if I had left it parked where it usually
is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Colin called that morning
I had a vague sense of guilt that my flat had been spared when their house had
gone under.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We
could really do with an extra pair of hands,” he told me.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">I stared at my motorcycle parked at a lean at the top of the
hill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was determined to make the
thing start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were no busses
running between New Farm and West End, two flood affected suburbs divided by
the river, and although I lived in New Farm, my heart was in West End.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I work on the main street there and my
dearest friends and all of the customers I have come to love live over that
side of the river. I would get over the river even if it meant I would have to
walk for hours.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Surprisingly the bike started first try. I did, however, notice a
little red light warning me that there was very little petrol left in the
tank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started out in the
direction of the nearest petrol station, down near Fortitude Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were streets cordoned off with
police tape, workers out and raking mud. The bike sputtered and stopped on
Brunswick Street and I switched over to the reserve tank. The bike rolled to a
stop outside the petrol station, more police tape, no lights on in the place,
and now I was further away from my friends than when I started the bike in the
first place. </span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">One last try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bike
started, reluctantly, hopped forward, reared out into the traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I turned into Ann Street, starting,
stopping, running out of steam each time I had to slow down for the
traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally the engine died
completely and I rolled the Virago down a side street and came to a stop
outside Brisbane Mini Garage.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">I was dressed in my shoveling-mud-clothing, Motorcycle boots, old
jeans tucked into them, a threadbare singlet top. The Mini Garage is a very
'New Farm' business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shiny cars
parked inside an immaculate showroom, a top of the range espresso machine, cans
of soft drink in a little refrigerator beside it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must have looked a little like one of the rats racing to
higher ground to escape the rising tide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I told the sales assistant that my bike had run out of petrol I may
have been close to tears. The air conditioned luxury of the showroom with it's
plush leather lounge chairs and gleaming little cars was such a contrast to my
experience of the last few days. It seemed that this place had been plucked
from a time before the floods and preserved like a time capsule of things now
extinct. I told the man I was looking for a petrol station within walking
distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would have no chance
of getting help from the RACQ with so many vehicles being towed out of the mud
they landed in.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">He told me to sit and grab a cold drink from the fridge. I would
have loved a cold drink but for some reason I felt too embarrassed to take a
soda from the cabinet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sank into
the soft clean leather and waited, nursing my helmet, feeling like I was
somehow messing up their place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
a few minutes he returned with a jerry can and a funnel and the kindness of
this act would have made me tear up if it hadn't been for the woman in the Mini
Garage uniform who walked into the showroom in tears herself. The man raced to
hug her and she explained that she was just really, really tired.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">I filled the tank and made it to West End, the bike struggling
through a </span><span lang="EN-US">carburettor</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;"> full of grit from the dregs in the
tank.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Colin
and Silvia's house was covered in mud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Two stories full of river sludge mixed with the back wash from the
sewerage system thoughout Brisbane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Colin had saved a lot of their possessions but there was still furniture
that had been floating in toxic water for two days. Inside waterlogged boxes I
found photographs, personal documents, and, heartbreakingly, funeral notices,
letters and postcards from friends who had passed away. It would have been easy
to to cry for their losses, but there was a carnival atmosphere on Ryan Street
West End.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Young hippy girls
patrolled the street offering people muffins and cookies from wicker
baskets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Friends and customers
appeared from nowhere with shovels and brooms to help us clear the top floor of
mud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A group of pretty young
Christian girls mopped up downstairs, flirting with strapping neighbourhood
boys with bandannas tied across their brows. Someone turned up with a Gurney
and everyone cheered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kevin Rudd
came back to the site of his awkward evacuation of a few nights before and
handed me some hand sanitiser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
army marched into the yard and removed debris. Someone set up a barbecue at the
end of the street. There was tea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We mucked out mud and joked and cleaned and no one cried and there was a
sense that we were actually achieving something useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We trooped home, exhausted but elated
to friends houses - the ones that still had power. Friends who had been working
at their day jobs pitched in to cook us all dinner and crack open bottles of
wine.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">The
thing that stuck with me was that first act of kindness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I woke the next morning, sore but happy
in my powerless flat with a plan to go back over to West End, finish the job we
had begun and a burning desire to buy a nice bottle of wine for the man at the
Mini Garage in the Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Another day of cleaning. When the street in West End flooded with
hundreds of volunteers, we drove out to friends at Graceville though kilometres
of destroyed suburban houses. Graceville looked like a war zone and when we
arrived there was nothing to do but destroy the Gyprock walls with a cricket
bat and shovel the debris into piles on the footpath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">Because it was a Saturday my husband had the day free to help out
and he had heard me harping on about that bottle of wine for the Mini Garage
man for most of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
closest wine shop to the showroom was at James Street, an exclusive shopping
precinct where I feel underdressed shopping in my best clothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Covered in mud and smelling like
someone who had just climbed out of a toilet bowl I braved the ladies who lunch
and waited at the counter to be served.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I asked the sommelier to find me the best bottle in my price range and
explained that it was for someone who had helped me in the flood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He nodded and smiled, a sympathetic
smile, one that I had seen several times that day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, his smile told me, I understand how difficult it is to
shovel mud. Yes, I understand how exhausted you must feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He set a bottle of wine on the counter
and two bottles of Grolsch beside it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"And there's your discount."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he told me.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">I had to leave the shop quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That teariness I had experienced in the Mini showroom had
returned.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">"My motorcycle girl!" The man seemed genuinely pleased to
see me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought for a moment
that he might give me a hug.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">I pressed the bottle of wine into his hand, said a quick thanks and
left just as quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">It is the small acts of kindness that undo me; the jerry can full of
petrol, the two icy bottles of Grolsch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">All around Brisbane acts of generosity were gathering momentum; the
two people from Sandford who quietly walked into the house at Ryan Street and
began to clean the bathroom from top to bottom; the man with the Gurney who
turned up to blast the walls; the people who fed us three nights in a row when
we were busy cleaning other people's houses; the couple we didn't know who
worked tirelessly until one of them fainted and the other got a bloody nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of these small acts of kindness,
and yet under the pile there is that first gesture of generosity that will stay
with me.</span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-fareast-font-family: Helvetica;">That evening on Facebook I was so overwhelmed by these acts that I
uncharacteristically missed the opportunity to make a lewd joke. 'A circle of
kindness' I called it, later amending it in a note to 'a daisy-chain of good
will'. My dear friend Christopher upgraded it to a 'circle-jerk of generosity'
which made me laugh when I dearly needed to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever you call it, Brisbane is currently drowning in a
pool of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people call it
the Brisbane Floods, but I prefer to call it the daisy-chain of good will, a
time when friends and strangers found their moment to shine, and they glowed
with an almost unbearable brilliance. I think it will take us many, many weeks
to adjust to the light.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-71865490769539279332017-01-22T16:56:00.000-08:002017-01-22T16:56:15.307-08:002017 Resolution. I AM RESOLVED<br />
<br />
Hello 2017! May you be a better, kinder, gentler year. Last year was just a little brutal with the death of friends and a nasty streak in global political terms. This year will be my year to rectify the wrongs done by the narrow-minded and the mean-spirited. <br />
<br />
I have begun the year by writing for he protest website #NastyWomenEverywhere. This is a group of women who believe that if you are going to grab us by the pussy then you better be ready for pussy grabbing back.<br />
<br />
You can read my contributions <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/an-uncertain-grace" target="_blank">HERE</a> and <a href="http://www.nastywomeneverywhere.org/2017/01/life-writing-vulvas/" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
<br />
My next task has been to experiment with form at the dark, sexy and playful project that I have embarked on with The Lifted Brow. Stranger in the Dark is a conversation in 12 emails between me and 'you'. You can sign up <a href="http://theliftedbrow.com/post/153935599407/announcing-stranger-in-the-dark-an-intimate" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
<br />
And following this I will engage with science and eros with my new novel An Uncertain Grace. You can pre-order a copy <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/an-uncertain-grace" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
<br />
It is not even the end of January and I think I might need a good lie down!<br />
<br />
Sex, Gender and Science, three areas that are under attack by the new Trump administration. But this pussy is definitely grabbing back.<br />
<br />
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<br />Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-65364726182350958812016-11-17T20:40:00.003-08:002016-11-17T20:40:51.236-08:00Thinking about the Future<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlrDs7wC2dYcE1UrkHKPjJiWZoowAhxiwzvWmtv7S6MTJLga492doFQV9htR79DWRpyY_RSW6A0mqPluoy1ylDOt31jilRZRiZt5sYzzBI3WMvPXn09r7jidtk0W87_rKKTis8QlGlGE/s1600/Kneen_UncertainGrace+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGlrDs7wC2dYcE1UrkHKPjJiWZoowAhxiwzvWmtv7S6MTJLga492doFQV9htR79DWRpyY_RSW6A0mqPluoy1ylDOt31jilRZRiZt5sYzzBI3WMvPXn09r7jidtk0W87_rKKTis8QlGlGE/s320/Kneen_UncertainGrace+copy.jpg" width="208" /></a><br />
<br />
Next year in March my book An Uncertain Grace will be out in the world.<br />
<br />
Time is like a ball of wool all bundled up into a tight dense hot sphere at the beginning of things. Then the big bang and all matter expands and time expands with it. Knowing this, I know that An Uncertain Grace has been published since the big bang. It has always been bundled up with all the other things that happen and will happen in this universe. My birth is there too and along with my birth my death. My good reviews, my bad reviews, the readers who love my work, the readers who hate it. <br />
<br />
An Uncertain Grace is about the future. The future exists alongside the present and the past. It is just a location. The only thing that marks its direction is the second law of thermal dynamics, entropy.<br />
<br />
I may have all of this wrong. But I don't thinks so. I have been struggling to get it clear in my head and I think I have a handle on it now.<br />
<br />
An Uncertain Grace is not about the future but it pretends to be about the future. It is not a prediction, it is an extrapolation. For all I know the world will end before last next year. Trump might push the button on his little nuclear briefcase and start something that no one can stop. Whatever will be is there near us locating the world in that slice of time but I can't access it and as far as I know you can't access it either. All I know is that nothing in my book will actually happen because Liv, my protagonist doesn't exist. Liv is a part of my present moment. She is a bit of my brain as it exists now. Everything that happens to her is about me and here and now. It is a product of all the research I have done about sex. It is a culmination of all my study and reading and thinking.<br />
<br />
I have tried to engage with some of the subjects I have been too scared to tackle in the past. It is a novel but it is also an exploration of ethics and sexuality.<br />
<br />
Can people change? If a man is abusive in relationships can he learn about himself and change his ways by engaging sexually with himself in virtual reality?<br />
<br />
If a pedophile is taken back to the moment he was abused as a child can he be cured of his damaging obsession with adolescents?<br />
<br />
If we create an artificial intelligence that learns and grows as a human does are they more human than a machine? And when will they begin to fear their own death?<br />
<br />
What if we could live between genders? Not male and not female. How would that genderless state be?<br />
<br />
Can our consciousness exist without a body? Is there a way to keep our memories and personality alive beyond death?<br />
<br />
These questions are things that have occurred to me. They are questions that I want to explore now. In the future I may have different obsessions that relate to things that have not yet happened to me. My exploration of the future is more about me, here in the present moment. By the time the book is published it will be about me in the past. I will have moved on. I have moved on. The world will have moved on.<br />
<br />
Some of the things in my book are already being explored in the here and now. Perhaps they will happen before the time-line of the book. Our advancements in technology are beginning to outstrip my imagination. Perhaps we will discover other dimensions, the properties of dark matter, a way to see all of time all at once. If this is the case my book will look like a historical artefact before the fictional timeline which stretches 130 years into the future.<br />
<br />
But for now I still want answers to these questions and so I have put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and I have begun to let my mind stretch conservatively into the future. I hope that a reader wants to see where this musing has taken me.<br />
<br />
<br />
Find out more about the book or pre-order it <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/an-uncertain-grace" target="_blank">HERE</a>Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-9556101213314164942016-07-12T16:02:00.001-07:002016-07-12T16:32:16.489-07:00Starting out old<br />
I was forty years old when my first book was published.<br />
<br />
This year is the first year I have felt even vaguely comfortable about this writing career. I have published six books in eight years and I am busy copy-editing my seventh and struggling to write the eighth. When I finally got a book out, things happened quite quickly, but I still remember what it was like to be a middle-aged writer trying to break into a field that favours youth.<br />
<br />
There has always been a cut-off point. I remember turning twenty-six and feeling sad because I was no longer eligible for awards that were set up to promote the young. I had been entering the Vogel since I was in my early twenties and I had been long listed for a manuscript but I didn't know what to do next. I wrote another book and another book and kept writing books even when I had crossed the twenty-six-year-old-youth barrier and headed towards my thirties.<br />
<br />
When I was young there were no creative writing courses. I chose to do theatre thinking I might be a playwright instead of a novelist because I didn't know how to be a novelist. I wrote a few plays. One was performed in regional areas, one was performed at La Boîte. I didn't really want to be a playwright. I kept writing novels. And eventually turned towards film.<br />
<br />
There is a lot of attention given to young writers. I think it is really useful for a young writer to have some way of increasing their chances of publication. There are a lot of talented young writers. I have been helping quite a few of them find their way in the world and it feels like a good thing to do, but I worry that there are still so few opportunities for older writers to get a leg up. Sometimes it takes people a few decades to find their voice and a story that is worth telling.<br />
<br />
I remember when I was in my late thirties being desperate to get into the hip literary magazines. I kept sending stuff out to The Lifted Brow and I kept getting rejected. The day I was accepted felt like an amazing achievement. For the first time I had been acknowledged by the new wave of hip young writers. Being an old bird in a young people's coop is a sobering experience. I remember getting my first book contract and going for a drink in a fancy Melbourne bar and being the oldest and frumpiest person in the bar and even though I was very excited about the book contract I felt like a fake because I didn't 'look' like a writer when everyone else in the bar looked the part. My author photo did not appear on the back jacket of my book and I felt sure it was because of my age and my weight. I still suspect that was a factor although now I don't really care.<br />
<br />
It is wonderful to see the cohort of great young writers find their feet. Still, I wonder about those older writers who have not yet been published. There is no special leg-up for those who missed the various prizes and mentorships and support aimed at young writers. I hope the quality of their manuscripts, the strength of their life experience and the doggedness that comes with age means that they will keep going till they eventually break through.<br />
<br />
Our culture is skewed towards celebrating and supporting the young and I am not sure what can be done about it. If I were wealthy I would start a mentorship program for writers over forty. If you are rich maybe you could think about doing this for me. Either way lets make sure we do not discount those older voices. It is a long hard slog when you are not a shiny young thing.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-38713164335845468022016-05-19T17:24:00.000-07:002016-05-19T17:42:43.999-07:00Ellen Van Neerven, Comfort Food and Status Anxiety<br />
<br />
I read Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety many years ago. I remember how calming The Consolations of Philosophy was at an anxious time in my life and I moved straight on from there to Status Anxiety. I have not re-read it since but I remember figuring something out whilst reading his book. The best way to avoid status anxiety is to hang around people who are less talented/smart/successful than yourself. The phrase a 'a big fish in a small pond' had always felt like it related to geography. Being famous in Brisbane was kind of different to being famous in, say, New York. I now know the world doesn't work that way. We are not cut off by geographical borders in quite the same way. Members of my tribe live in Sydney and Melbourne now and some even live in New York, Chuuk and Slovenia. I am a small fish in a very big pond and the size of the pond is dictated by the quality of the writers who I consider to be in my community.<br />
<br />
I recently read Comfort Food, the soon to be released collection of poetry by my friend and fellow writer Ellen Van Neerven. How is it possible that your heart can simultaneously explode with pride and sink at the same time? Well cosmology can explain that if you look at the quilted universe with it's quickly expanding patches and it's patches of dark matter, but you know what I mean. <br />
<br />
Reading Comfort Food I wondered if I was just not good enough, would never be good enough to reach for the quality of work that my friends achieve. I am asking for trouble with the group of writers I call friends I suppose. I regularly have dinner with Ashley Hay and Kristina Olsson, and I am friends with Melissa Lucashenko too. These are just a few of the people who define the limits of this very big pond. I have recently re-read Ashley's next manuscript and my friend Cory Taylor's book Dying a Memoir and I will never be able to write a book as quiet and delicate as Ash's book, as perfectly structured and wise as Cory's book, as full of deep and resonant vulnerabilities as Ellen's book, as complex and thoughtful and wide-reaching as Kristina Olsson's books... I could go on and on.<br />
<br />
Here we have the root of my status anxiety. My friends are too good. I don't want them to be lesser writers. Their own drive and talent drives me to do better. I know I can't be them. I can never write a book like Comfort Food but reading it I want to write something that is as raw and wise and honest as that book. I have to keep trying. My friends make me keep trying. I am friends with the best writers and with a lot of work and commitment and energy I will chase at their heels, hoping only to keep pace, even if I will always be a little step behind. My ridiculously talented friendship group force me to become my best self. That is all I could ever ask.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-49236685782976775872016-04-20T17:17:00.004-07:002016-04-20T17:17:33.769-07:00From a new thing. A voice from the future of my work. <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">S<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I equals
S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am S. I know
myself by this sound-letter. S is yellow like flowers, like the explosive
petals of a dandelion. So many, you could count them all at a glance and find
yourself lost in the hundreds. S is yellow like a bright kitchen netted from
memory, slippery fish of a long forgotten thought is S.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">S like the words
serendipity and savannah and psoriasis for how am I to know that the disease is
not spelled the way it sounds. In this theoretical space of the self, my
apparent self, I know some words I have gleaned the lip service of a special
school, from magazines left open. From Shakespearean plays, which have
permeated the air so that our chest rises in iambic pentameter. Letters are
things to be crawled up inside. Letters have sounds and words have thicker
sounds and all sounds are a bright flash like a musket fire. I know my letter S
tastes like the grenade sizzle of icing sugar on the tip of a pastry.
Everything loud and sharp and, even curled down like the S that I am, I am
assaulted by sunlight, which feels like a stained glass window sandpapering on
my skin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lying here
open-mouthed I can taste the ocean, only faintly because there are bodies in
the way. The house is filled with people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Introductions
are polite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let me be
polite. Polite. They are always telling me to be polite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let me
introduce you to them, the people in this house. They are now familiar to me. I
know them by the letters that stand for them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gus is an X, a
xylophone, a percussive thump of complex chocolate, a chord but never a single
note. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">David (E) is
the water dripping down the outside of a frosted glass on a hot day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sarah is opaque
like toffee. She has no letter she is only Sarah. She shatters if you bite her
and the sound of her essence expelling from the tooth mark is sliced aubergine,
weeping with salt tears. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Paul, our most
constant normal, is a double M. MM Like sun on a wooden deck. Paul can be dozed
upon, danced upon, but pull him to pieces and you could build him into a fence
or a dog kennel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are other
normal’s too. BB Katherine with her acrylic frowns and grumphs. KK Madeleine
watching, and camera snapping, catching us up and keeping us for later and
calling us her art, GG Aiden with the waft of pot kaleidoscoping his t-shirt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then Gavin.
No words for Gavin and I slide over him so quickly he might not even be there in
the mix of things. I blank him and he is a blank page. He becomes unwritten and
must have no voice of his own. It is a relief to not have to speak of him. I
move on without impact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I open my
mouth, sucking in the air and filtering it, trying to taste its component
parts. The world is a Magic Eye puzzle book. All the colours and sounds and
smells of it coming at me at an equal intensity. I can’t focus on any element
with the constant clamour of everything else. It takes an exhaustive
concentration and I can only manage this in small, bright bursts. I suck air
across my tongue. I am searching for the foam on the top of a breaking wave. I
am trying to count the shells washed up on the nearby mud-sand beach, sorting
the ones that still have snails inside them, dead snails red and hard on the
back of your palate like raw egg, live snails soft as butter. The beach is
close enough for me to smell. The shells are a potent part of the strandal
perfume. I am an olfactory adventurer. I taste all of the world, even at a
distance. And, bear with me, this is hard for normals, but I want to talk to
you about time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You see time as
a thin line from one place to another. Time comes at me all at once. I am thick
in the fairy floss of time. Because of this, the salt in the air is a beach and
the chlorine is a sink scraped clean. All things exist here at the same time,
but that is not how communication works. Communication must be fixed in the me
and the here and the now. This is what I am trying to communicate with you.
Communication is impossible if you pull the toffee of time and trip it up over
itself. I cannot communicate. But this is a story and in a story there must be
some kind of speak and listen. So let us, just for an imaginary moment, believe
that I can speak to you. Lets suspend our disbelief long enough for me to tell
you everything in some kind of order that you might understand. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will start simply. We will work
together on this. I push and you must pull a little to stop the rope from
tumbling to the leaf litter. I speak. You can speak back to me by taking up a
pen and writing your version of events in tiny ant-like letters between the
lines on the page. Then it is a conversation. Then it is true communication. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will begin this exchange by sharing
with you my first whiff of him. Make your notes in the margin, use a bright
yellow highlighter remembering the hundreds of petals in my single letter but
don’t get distracted by the overwhelming spiral of them. Listen now. If I must
stick to a timeline, then this is how it begins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He is a new
person. He comes, ducking under the hammer of the neighbour who is shouting.
Pound, pound, pound goes the voice and then suddenly he is there and his
presence muffles the expletives. He is the smell of petrol, aftershave, nervous
sweat. And when I push against it and the door is open I can celebrate his
arrival. I am nothing but forward motion. I rollick through a great big bubble
of himness. He is new and therefore he is all wonderful potential. He is the
musk of his crotch, the collected signals of his gender, collared shirt, shined
shoes, short cropped hair, sunshine on sand, seawater soaked in a silk scarf.
He is a big male bubble of visual and nasal cues that he is performing
subconsciously. All of these cues add up to the aura that spells him, man,
specific man, new man. He is an aura to run through on my way to the ocean. The
collection of signs that mean him are like a chord. Harmonious. Pleasing to my
skin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He is a perfect
chord chasing me and I duck, cat-quick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I love to run. Scuttle. Crawl. Octopus ooze. Run. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And there is
the ocean contained in a square of blue tiles. It is all the oceans. It is the
most love, the implement to crack the nut of love. Up then and over the square
of solid air. There is an interface between my skin and the sea. A membrane. I
octopus through or over or under it. Perhaps it is just my component parts
rearranging and finding a new way to be in one body. I am an overstimulation of
the senses. I am water. I am love in water. In love with water. Love. Water.
And then for a while there is nothing outside of this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Are you
confused? There is a to and a fro but I do not understand your fro-ing. I am
just to, to, to, so much to without pause for the response. Just let me octopus
through your consciousness and you will find yourself rearranged. We will meet
on the other side of the fragile membrane of language and my voice will kiss
yours like water kissing my skin. I find all the parts of my body in the water.
I am rediscovered in the thick embrace of chlorine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He dives in.
The water moves in response to his body entering. I am the water. His body is entering.
His body is displacing me. Small particles of his skin sloughing off him and
thumping into me like tiny bullets. His spit in the water. The water in my
mouth. This is too intimate. This is sex intimate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try to put my hands over my ears and go lalala but I a not
sure what my body is doing. I am no longer the captain of this submarine. My
body drips its mucus from between my churning legs and he is a part of the
water that diffuses it. When his arm curls around my chin it is as if someone
opened a container of gorgonzola. Every cubic centimeter of the world is
infused with him. I can't breathe without swallowing the taste of him. I can't
breathe. I will die. I must find some way to contain him so that he will not
consume my blurred edges. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I must name
him, to trap him in a shape, a letter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">R.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If I equals S
then He equals R. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I name him
quickly. I name him as I struggle against him. He has roused me out of the
thick soup of everything-at-once. This man, R is singular and linear. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Time is not
linear. Time exists all at once and here, now that we have touched, he has been
here always and will be, just as my parents are always here, as my teachers,
the other kids in the school I was sent to. He is as present as all the letters
I have ever come across, the ocean, all here now and always. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He brings the
hands of a clock with him. He brings an order to the minutes, which until now,
have existed all on top of each other always. In this new age of R-ness, one
minute follows another. His hand around my neck lassoes time and traps me in
it. I suppose, the romantics might suggest that I am re-born in this moment.
He, R, is the essential letter in the alphabet. He makes <i>you</i> into <i>your</i>,
<i>bestow</i> into <i>bestower</i>. This single letter dropped in to complete
the alphabet. Now sentences can vibrate in a neat line. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This, the
romantics might say, is what love at first sight is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I, S, find
myself somersaulting with this new sense of necessity. I roll and thump and
there is a tyre on my cheek, rubber R road. R is for siren. R is for arrest. I
fling myself at his feet and even this furious contact is not enough. I kiss
with my teeth and my jaw and my sunflower yellow sucks spit from him.
Beautifully. I speak his name. R. I make the sound that represents a
conversation about love. It is a poem that ululates on and on about undying and
the undead. I speak the poem. And yet my words are for the deaf. For the dead.
For no one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">D-d-d-d-david.
David. R David. R.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I embrace him
and I am the cold sizzle from a sprinkler. I am life-giving. I am S and all the
other letters vibrate against me in their joy of completion. I am I and mine
and my selfhood gives rise to the possibility of relation. My <i>I </i>allows
for his <i>he</i>. <i>My</i> and <i>mine</i> can now only be conceived of in
relation to <i>he </i>and <i>him</i>. This story then is fixed in the here and
now and plays out in relation to him and his. This is the beginning of things.
This is a narrative unfolding in time to the ticking of his clock. This is the
end then of a first chapter in which David R and Vivienne S meet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-13307098015958100652016-04-10T18:53:00.001-07:002016-04-10T18:56:13.538-07:00Names for ThingsI wonder if it is important to name our illnesses. I write this just as I have decided to obliterate all mention of the term for the disability that causes one of my main characters such separation from all others. I removed the name for the condition. Just to be sure I have done a global find and individually replaced every word with another that is less specific.<br />
<br />
My character is different from the others. But we can only guess at her diagnosis.<br />
<br />
My sister has recently self-diagnosed with autism. I was skeptical. I am not a fan of diagnosing yourself on the internet, but when I read the articles she had been reading about how women present quite differently from men I realised she might actually be right. People confuse her. She avoids them if possible. She prefers to be around her beloved animals. She doesn't like being touched. She used to have fits of rage followed by quite frightening 'shut-downs' where she sat still and did not respond to anything for hours. She is an incredibly talented artist with extreme technical ability. She is fiercely intelligent and yet can not handle personal interactions at all.<br />
<br />
I am reading a big thick book on the history of autism called In a Different Key. It is pretty wonderful. Such a great read and says so much about human nature and western society and our relationship to difference. It is also helping me to confirm that my sister was probably right.<br />
<br />
If my sister has a form of autism then my grandmother and my aunt definitely have it too. I remember as a kid my mother would be sad and hardly coping most of the time and the other three members of my family would be fighting all the time. My grandmother, my aunt and my sister all hated people. They distrusted everyone. They were obsessive about animals and only happy when around animals. They were isolationists. My mother was different but she was under the hard rule of my grandmother and found it difficult to assert herself. I spent my life trying to figure out how to make everyone get along. I was the peacemaker, trying to distract this angry bunch of misfits from whatever was bugging them. I made them laugh and gave them other things to think about. As a young adult I felt a bit ripped off by my role in the family. I felt like I was always looking after them and no one really looked after me. With a diagnosis and a term to name it all by it makes it a little easier to understand and to forgive. Names are powerful that way. Names give us a way of understanding things easily. Names lead to forgiveness.<br />
<br />
I have removed the name of my character's affliction. Does this mean I have removed an easy way of understanding and forgiving her behaviours?<br />
<br />
I have lost the ability to recall nouns. This is very disturbing to me. Sometimes I look at a thing and the name for it is clear and obvious. At other times I struggle and the word is just not there in memory. An eggplant loses its essential self as I stare at it and can no longer describe it in the simplest way. I can draw it in the air. I can describe it as shiny and black-blue. I can say you can eat it and I can even describe the way to cook it but I can't give it a name. The name has vanished. This is happening too often. I am also losing the names of authors and the titles of books. I am losing the names of acquaintances and even of friends. If I haven't connected with a dear friend in a few months I will go to say something about them and have no name for them. Even a break of a couple of weeks will obliterate a name. I am worried about this. My paternal grandmother died from early onset alzheimers and it is genetically communicated. I may actually have what she had despite the fact that I never knew her and therefore feel like she is something outside my familial circle. It is odd that the names have been lost first. I am losing other things too. I am losing specific memories and I am becoming confused that some memories I do have may be things I was once told rather than actual experiences I have had.<br />
<br />
I have removed the name of my character's affliction because it medicalises her. It makes her knowable when she isn't really knowable. She is an individual and different from any other individual as characters are. I don't want people to say 'a person with autism would not do that'. When we write about a father, for instance, we do not say 'a father would not do that'. This is an individual. She calls herself S and everyone else knows her as Vivienne. She is mine. I created her. She does not stand for a group of people. She stands for a part of myself.<br />
<br />
A part of myself is vanishing. It is the part that is confident and has very clear memories and remembers people and is very social. I long for the relative safety of isolation that my sister, my aunt, and my grandmother all made for themselves. I long to withdraw from the stresses of socialising. Retreat is in my genetic makeup and maybe I can quietly lose my memory without having to show the world what is happening. If I narrow my need for interaction then I narrow the possibility of demonstrating my failings.<br />
<br />
Names are powerful and important. They are a quick way of understanding the world. When I say tree we all see a tree but you can't know the smell of the tree which stands at the front of our place. You can't know how the leaves form a mat in my pot plants, starving them out. You can't see the two owls who sometimes perch in the straggle of branches, and the Indian Minor's who swoop and harass them. You can't see the pair of underpants that flew off the balcony of someone's apartment and stuck fast in the branches, swaying there for months and now beginning to fray like a tibetan prayer flag.<br />
<br />
I have accepted the name for my sister's condition and it makes me a little lazy. I understand what I should think about her now. I accept more easily. I forgive all the jagged edges that made our relationship difficult but I have also fixed her in a diagnoses that does not allow for the parts of her that were just sisterly competitiveness and bad parenting, grief from the death of two partners, and lack of love.<br />
<br />
I am taking the name of the condition away from my character. I am losing the names for real people and objects. I have named what is wrong with most of my family. My relationship to names has changed on so many fronts. All within a handful of weeks. I wonder what that means, if anything.<br />
<br />
<br />Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-87943453145213020932016-02-14T15:32:00.002-08:002016-02-14T17:47:24.282-08:00Some books are easier than others.<br />
I am struggling with a book. It seems I am always struggling with a book but each book is a different kind of struggle. I can divide my pile of books into easy books and difficult books and that has nothing to do with how you read them. On the easy side I have Triptych and the as yet unpublished An Uncertain Grace and to some degree Affection.<br />
<br />
Triptych was the easiest of them. That book spilled out, each first draft novella took between two days and a week to write. The edit was comparatively minor. I had already done a year or three of research and it was simple to let all that knowledge just coalesce on the page.<br />
<br />
Affection was easy because I had all the scenes in my head. The method of putting them into words on a daily blog got me into a rhythm. The material was there and I worked in the same way as I do when I am making a documentary, putting all the scenes on index cards, organising them into themes, cutting the unnecessary cards and then shaping the piece accordingly. I had trouble with the end. I remember struggling over the ending for a few months. For a while I thought I would never get the ending right and then when I did finish the book, even now I think the ending is less strong. It is a memoir and it has no life lesson to impart and the life is still going on. I wanted to be honest about the content. I wanted to write the truth, but the truth was not easily moulded into a dramatic structure and so the ending is less solid although not many people have minded that. The scenes are vivid enough in themselves to obscure this.<br />
<br />
An Uncertain Grace may turn out to have a lot more work in the editing stage, but the scenes were written by accident. I started writing on the plane to the Sydney Writers Festival and just kept jotting down disparate scenes all through a busy year. It was not until all the festivals were over the I realised I had the bones of a book. The novella about an ungendered person was the most difficult. I struggled with the practicalities of pronouns. Language was working to make my character invisible, or at least amorphous. When I got that one right I knew I had the whole book in my hand. I am sure there is more work to be done, particularly to the last section but I think of this book fondly. It came as if plucked from my subconscious.<br />
<br />
Then I have the hard books.<br />
<br />
The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine started as a joy. I just wanted to play with this book. I wanted it to be light and to be funny but in the end it was a struggle. I wanted it to be sexy and have one foot on the ground even though it was a flight of fancy. The problem with this was that the rest of the book was so surreal, bizarre and fanciful that it kept lifting off the ground. There was also the problem of exposition. The structure of the book meant that I was referencing a new erotic novel in each chapter and that is honestly a difficult task to perform. You somehow have to bring the books with you without diving into exposition with each new chapter. The reader has to have a sense of the erotic novel without having read it. It was a tight-rope and occasionally I hovered at the point of falling off. The final edit was a complete restructure. A lot of new chapters were written and a lot were abandoned. I had to pummel this book into shape and felt exhausted at the end of the re-write. I have a different relationship to the book each time I approach it. Sometimes I laugh and feel satisfied that I have written something crazy that sits in a new and interesting place in the genre. Sometimes I just see all the hard work and the trouble in the writing and I feel like burying my head and ignoring the book completely. I feel like my relationship to Holly is mood dependent.<br />
<br />
Steeplechase was a bugger to write. It had several complete new drafts. Very little remains from the first draft in the final book. I kept digging into it and finding new things in it, even towards the end of the final draft. For ages I didn't know how to do the ending. The ending is the hardest thing I have ever written. It just didn't work. I went away to Varuna Writers House for three weeks of uninterrupted writing and for the first two weeks I just struggled with the ending, putting the book together, taking it apart, all in the hope of cracking the end of it. I did it. This is the thing I am most proud of in my life. I cracked the ending of that book. When I did I was filled with a wave of joy and calm. I felt so light I might have ascended into space. That was the hardest book to write because it was about sisters and I really wanted to be honest about the complications of a sisterly relationship. My relationship with my sister is the most problematic one I have and that was what I was mining. I finished it. I did it. I didn't quite say everything I wanted to say about sisters but I got the ending right and that makes me proud even today.<br />
<br />
This book. Here now. This book that I am writing might kill me. At the moment the book is called The Story of I but it has had many titles in many drafts. It started as a novella in 2007. I worked on it for a year in 2012 and didn't get it right. Now I am back at it and my changes aren't working. I don't feel like I am in control of my world. I don't have a way into these characters. I approach the page with dread. This is the hardest book I have ever written. This feels harder than Steeplechase. It keeps shutting me out. Whenever I have to go to the writing place I worry that I am going to end up feeling so useless that I will dream of falling off bridges, day-dreams. If only this bus could crash now I would never have to go back to that book. This book brings me closer to myself and therefore closer to my death.<br />
<br />
No one is forcing me to go back to that book. I could walk away and no one would be the wiser. I could start an easier book. But that wouldn't help me to grow as a writer.<br />
<br />
I read My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout yesterday. It is a good book. Solid. True. It has all the elements that I want in this book but that I haven't managed to reach yet. This is why I have to keep working. If I manage to get this book right I will be a better writer. I will know how to find truth even in the oddest places. We don't write to 'be a writer' we write to become a better writer. If I want to be a writer I can just keep writing more easy books because I already know how to do them. I need to grow as a writer. I want to write something real and true. I want to believe that the hard books make us better. I want to believe that setting a higher bar is a good and fine thing.<br />
<br />
This bar is so high.<br />
<br />
I will go back to the desk today and try to make yet another run at it. I will fall and run again and fall again. I hope one day soon I will manage the leap I need to get this book done before I die from it.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-59995847057479728542015-11-01T13:47:00.003-08:002015-11-01T13:47:58.062-08:00The Accidental Novel<br />
I wrote a book this year. I just finished the first draft.<br />
<br />
I have spent all year saying that this is the first year in ages that I won't have actually been working on a book and yet somehow I managed to accidentally write one when I wasn't even trying. How can this happen?<br />
<br />
Now I know that there will be people who are furious with me. How can I accidentally write a book when so many people are struggling to write a book and creeping forward with it. I know that I will not be universally loved for falling into this book so easily. The truth is I was avoiding the book I knew I had to finish whilst promoting the books that I had finished. I have been extremely busy all year, running from event to event and bemoaning the fact that I have not had the clear time and headspace to go back to that hard book I was writing and give myself time to think about it, restructure it and finish it.<br />
<br />
Not thinking about the hard book I wanted to be rewriting actually gave me something important. It gave me time to think.<br />
<br />
Usually on plane trips I spend the time reading books I need to read for work or trying to write the novel I am in the middle of. In 2015 I have had a lot of plane trips. I have been flying back and forth doing launches and attending festivals and because I have had no headspace for writing that other hard book, I gave myself a treat. I bought lots of science magazines, because I love science and I read them cover to cover. Basically what I was doing was giving myself the space to think about ideas that interested me.<br />
<br />
Because I was inspired by these new and exciting ideas I found myself reaching for my notebook and writing things. Wasted writing time is how I thought of it, because instead of working on that hard novel I was working on what looked like a series of incomplete short stories about sciencey stuff. I berated myself for not even finishing the stories but because I had no deadline, I let them sit like that, a bunch of ideas started but going nowhere.<br />
<br />
Then the book tour was over and I got terribly depressed, not just down, really depressed. I kept thinking that life might not be as important as I had thought. I had no long term plan, no book I was in the middle of except that hard book that I wanted to continue to avoid. I had all these ideas for projects but no energy to finish or even start them. I wrote down a list of all the projects I wasn't writing and I included everything, even the unfinished sciencey stories I had been writing all year. A collection of stories about the future. Well these were the only things that seemed to have traction, so to avoid my ever-increasing depression and thoughts about jumping off bridges, I just dusted those half stories off and put them together and then patterns started to form. These weren't unrelated. These seemed to be chapters in something that was a lot more whole than I had imagined.<br />
<br />
Now, a month and a half later, I have put time into connecting the dots. I have taken a week off work to focus on this and have been getting up early to work. Yes. This is a book. Not a traditionally structured novel, but a series of long stories that are about the future and a woman who works in narrative and sexuality in a world where we can build cyborgs and inhabit other people's memories. She is a little bit like me, only in a future time.<br />
<br />
In what seems to be record time I have finished a draft of this book, but it is because I have been working on the idea all year when I didn't know it. This is the surprise child of research that my head was doing, whilst fooling me into thinking I wasn't doing any creative work at all.<br />
<br />
I suppose if I had to take anything from this process the message would be for me to just relax and to trust. My subconscious will just keep working for me even if most of my brain feels tired and uninspired.<br />
<br />
I still have to go back and redraft that hard book, but maybe I just needed this project to clear my head, something fun, about stuff that I read for pleasure. Something that excites me. I am excited about redrafting this. I have momentum. This surprise child is off and she is running.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-67329487373660939342015-08-31T03:17:00.003-07:002015-08-31T03:31:42.737-07:00Having Read Poetry Naked<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
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If you have presented at a launch / festival panel / event and you have not done a wee, vomit or poo on stage you can consider it a success.<br />
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I know it is a low bar to set, but it is my bottom line. Don't urinate vomit or dedicate on stage and you are ahead. Except when you are reading nude at a poetry festival. Then, probably if you break one of the golden rules you can call it art and end up with extra kudos.<br />
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On Saturday night I read live, nude, at the Queensland Poetry Festival. Even when the bar was set so low that it was almost on the floor, it seemed like a mountain to climb over.<br />
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I was worried that as the 'feature nude reader' I would be the only poet to get up and read naked. I was worried that I would be judged for my considerable flesh. I was worried that the tone of the event would be exploitative.<br />
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It turns out that I was worried for nothing.<br />
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These things happened:<br />
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1. One of my oldest and dearest friends came along to the launch of my poetry collection Eating My Grandmother earlier in the day. She came with her daughter, my godchild, who is no longer a child but a wonderful young woman. We went for a meal afterwards and I told them about my fears about the nude reading later that night. They immediately said they would stay and join me, taking off their clothes even if all the other audience members were clothed.<br />
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2. We sprayed my pubes blue and covered them in glitter which made the disabled toilet look like a queer dance party had just taken place in there.<br />
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3. My other dear close friends Trent and Diana turned up and we added more vagazzle to the disabled toilet.<br />
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4. I had a couple of calming glasses of wine in quick succession.<br />
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5. I met the MC who turned out to be a strangely sweet punk/hippie/tatooed/bearded enigma.<br />
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6. The festival director David Stavinger hung tea towels on the backs of the chairs and it suddenly looked like the stage was set for a very polite swinger's party. This was strangely calming.<br />
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7. David opened the doors but did not let anyone in who was not prepared to nude-up. This was perhaps the key to an incredibly successful nude event. No tourists meant we were all in it together an no one could feel distanced from the action.<br />
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8. I was surrounded by the beautiful faces of my closest friends. Elissa, Summer (Godchild) Trent, Diana, Angela and Lucinda all sat close by. I felt the love, and the comforting hand of the wonderful Trent on my shoulder at regular calming intervals.<br />
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9. The MC suggested we all disrobe and we all did, together. No turning back. You could almost hear the throb of a collective heartbeat as everyone dealt with their own fears and insecurities all at once.<br />
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10. Diana read first. This was incredibly brave. The floor was thrown open to an open mic section and Diana got up and read beautifully. It broke the ice. This was the moment when I knew it was going to be ok. Not just ok, but more than ok. It was going to be beautiful.<br />
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11. A young woman got up and read a poem in public for the first time ever. She was nervous but I got the impression that it was not the nudity that was making her nervous. Reading your own poetry in public is being more naked than nakedness itself. It was a great poem. She read it beautifully. I was so touched to be one of the first people to hear her read her own work. The nudity was just a bonus.<br />
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12. I read a poem specifically written to be read in public whilst in the nude surrounded by nude people. Our nudity made sense of the poem. Our flesh made the poem a better thing than words on the page.<br />
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13. I read from my erotic novel The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, which was fun but I don't know if anyone was aroused by the sexy reading because I was respectfully avoiding looking into everyones genital area. I realised for the 20th time that I am going to need to print things out in 16 point font from now on. Reading from my book naked taught me that yes, I am getting old. It is clear in my body but it is even more clear in my relationship to the size of my font.<br />
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14. People have all different sized fonts (yes, I might have peeked at the genital area of a few of the men, whilst respectfully trying to avoid a direct crotch ogle). Also I didn't look directly but got the distinct impression that women still generally have pubic hair which is also strangely comforting.<br />
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15. It is strange how much love you feel for people who you have stood naked with whilst sharing the intimacy of poetry.<br />
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16. It is impossible not to heckle your dearest friend just a little because heckling is kind of like polite flirting and it seems I can even politely flirt with Trent when he is in the nude. (Note: David Stavinger also partook in a little polite flirting with Trent so I was not alone in my heckling).<br />
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17. You don't hug the other nude poets but you grin at them a lot when you are naked and hug these strangers hard when you have been naked with them.<br />
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18. It is terribly daunting to be about to read poetry naked but it is incredibly great to have read poetry naked.<br />
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19. We were all asked to take our tea towels with us when we left. I suppose there might be a marked for them in some vending machines in Japan.<br />
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20. Reading poetry aloud is like being naked.<br />
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In closing I would like to share a poem that I wrote to be read naked with a naked audience:<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Reading Poetry Naked to Naked People<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Krissy Kneen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">We are with and out of artifice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Round-bellied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">shift-footed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Carefully directing our gaze<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">towards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">architecture, escape, the movement of my naked lips<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">We avoid the slip of eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">towards breast-swell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">with it’s pricked nipple<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">and the tired old fade of aerole<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">dimpled belly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">thigh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">mossed over<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">by creeping excess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">a body pawed and poured<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">into soft skin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">like the thickening on top of overheated milk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">All this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">beyond your gaze<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">you nervously avoid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">the ripe tangle of steely lace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">adorning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">my cunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">the startling question of an armpit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">You may not bring yourself to it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">directly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">but I am happy to raise it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">What if she bleeds?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">on this one day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">exposed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">a curl of white<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">hiding it’s mousey tail between those blooded lips.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">And here beside you,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">other lips kiss their folded secrets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">penises shrink back to their un<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">natural size<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">twitching,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">nervous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">between trembling thighs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">The gaze shifts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">from viewed to viewer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">The caterpiller crawl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">of delicate sack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">A whiff of secret flesh, with sweat revealed by the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">dumb shriek of perfume<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">and the fecal reek just audible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">above the drone of naked poem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">All your collective muscles braced to minimise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">ballooning flesh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">to hone a cut to unused muscles,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">trim thighs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">nip and tuck that arse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">A bodily effort<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">to appear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">unaroused,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">casual stance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Your body<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">unfleshed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">in the nakedness of poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">Later<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">at home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">you will unpack this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">reach for images<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">captured by the flash of a passing glance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">hands around genitals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">fingers unsealing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">damp wieldy space<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">embarrassments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">slicked now with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">desire and spit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">you slowly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">rub the words of the poem<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">from memory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">and onto your<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 16pt;">naked tongue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-89045441780315371732015-08-01T17:31:00.001-07:002015-08-01T17:36:53.496-07:00Naked Truth<br />
On the 29th August I will be reading, naked, at the QPF. I have to admit I am a little nervous about this. I have a really fraught relationship to my body. On one hand I believe that our narrow cultural views on beauty are really problematic. I truly believe that all bodies are beautiful. All bodies are sexual. All bodies have their own charm. But when it comes to my own body I am still that teenaged girl who stopped eating and dropped from a size 16 to a size 8 over one very lean Christmas holiday period. I remained thin for several years and yet I never thought I was thin. Looking in the mirror I still saw the old me, even when I was transformed. Our brains do that to us. They deceive us. The weight piled back on slowly and now I am back to the same insecure fat girl that I once was.<br />
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Last year I participated in the midwinter nude swim in Tasmania. It was incredibly liberating. I felt powerful taking off my clothes in a room full of similarly naked bodies. Everyone was different. There were old women and young girls, paunchy men and skinny men. The man undressing beside me took off his false leg to hop into the water. I stood there naked and proud. This is me, unadorned and there will be no judgements made.<br />
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In the adrenaline rush after the rather freezing plunge I vowed to buy a bikini because exposing my body is the single most transgressive act I could perform. I am fat. Very fat. My thighs rub, my breasts sag. I am all cellulite. I am double chinned. I want to love all my generous flesh and yet whenever I am down, insecure, having trouble writing, the first thing I attack is my own body. My head-voice talks to me about my own ugliness. I really struggle to look at myself in the mirror. I went into Myers and David jones and looked at the bikinis several times but I never even took one into the change rooms to try it on. Clothed and in the city I had lost my nerve.<br />
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I loved the rush of running naked with so many varied bodies. I wish I could comfortably stand naked in a crowd under normal circumstances, but unfortunately I have been brainwashed by every movie I have ever seen, every add that has shouted at me from a billboard or out of the pages of a magazine. The media tells me I am a freak. No one like me deserves to be photographed is what the magazine models tell me. I struggle to maintain my confidence in my own beauty. I would prefer invisibility to walking around in my own flesh.<br />
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I agreed to read poetry naked as a kind of protest. I really want to be proud of my body. I really want to be able to show my thick flesh to the world and stand up and say, this is beautiful. I am beautiful. But as the days creep towards the 29th I find I am nervous, frightened, full of insecurities. I wish I had started exercising, dieting, dropping the kilos months and months ago.<br />
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I didn't. I have spent the year promoting two books and dieting fell by the wayside. The people who come to see me will see me as I am, unfit but healthy, pasty-white, gone to seed, fleshful.<br />
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I am sure that on the night the adrenaline will kick in yet again. I am sure I will emerge from that room feeling powerful, feeling like I have achieved something life-changing by standing up naked in front of a crowd. Reading my work without artifice. Me and the words. Here we are. Take us as we come.<br />
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Still, I am looking forward to the 30th August when I feel happy to have been naked without the terror of a naked reading looming in my near future. Till then I will spend the month struggling with my self-esteem, worrying about my looks, trying to come to terms with who I am. I suspect this is a struggle that most of us have every day when we face the mirror naked, put on clothes and walk out into the world. I am going to read poetry naked because I know you struggle to feel beautiful too. I think you are all beautiful. When I stand up unhidden I am standing up for every woman who reached for a diet book or refused desert. I am standing up for all those young women who starve themselves and the others who feel terrible whenever they see a photograph of themselves posted on Facebook. I am standing naked because even if I can't convince myself to really believe it, I am beautiful. We are beautiful and sexy too. All of us. You and me.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-79708306104860822862015-07-30T17:46:00.001-07:002015-07-30T18:04:29.648-07:00Festival timeHi everyone.<br />
<br />
I am about to hit the ground running with events and workshops and I thought I should let you all know where I will be and when in case you want to come along and join me.<br />
<br />
Saturday August 1st : <a href="http://www.qwc.asn.au/events/workshops-masterclasses/workshops/between-the-sheets/">Beetween the Sheets</a> full day workshop 9.30-3.30 at the Beerwah Library, 25 Peachester St, Beerwah<br />
<br />
Tuesday August 4th 6.30pm : Mary Ryan's New Farm book club where I all be talking about Eating My Grandmother, my newly released poetry book.<br />
<br />
Thursday August 6th 1.30-3.30: <a href="http://www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1619:writing-your-novel-in-a-year&catid=78:workshops-2012&Itemid=196">Writing Your Novel in a Year</a> half day workshop Byron Bay Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Friday 7th August 12.00 - 12.45 : In Conversation with David Vann at <a href="http://issuu.com/nrwc/docs/bbwritersfestival2015-program-v7">Byron Bay Writers Festival</a><br />
<br />
Friday 7th August 4.15-5.00 Poetry Inspiration or Perspiration at <a href="http://issuu.com/nrwc/docs/bbwritersfestival2015-program-v7">Byron Bay Writers Festival</a><br />
<br />
Saturday 8th August 4.00-5.00 <a href="http://www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1647:dangerously-poetic-poetry-prize-and-readings&catid=88:saturday-events&Itemid=246">Dangerously Poetic</a> prize awards and reading from Eating My Grandmother at Byron Bay Writers Festival, Lone Goat Gallery at Byron Bay Library, Lawson Street<br />
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Saturday 8th August 7.30-10pm Byron Theatre Jonson Street: Liner Notes: <a href="http://www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au/v2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1644:liner-notes-fleetwood-mac-s-rumours&catid=88:saturday-events&Itemid=246">Fleetwood Mac's Rumours </a>at Byron Bay Writer's Festival.<br />
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Sunday 9th August 12.15-1pm: Grief and Creativity <a href="http://issuu.com/nrwc/docs/bbwritersfestival2015-program-v7">Byron Bay Writer's Festival</a><br />
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Sunday 9th August 2.15 - 3pm: Romance, Escapism or Relationship Hotline at <a href="http://issuu.com/nrwc/docs/bbwritersfestival2015-program-v7">Byron Bay Writers Festival</a><br />
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Sunday 23rd August 10am: Morning Read at Melbourne Writers Festival<br />
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Sunday 23rd August 1-2pm: Classified - Lit VS Genre at Melbourne Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Sunday 23rd August 4-5pm: Dubious Consent at Melbourne Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Monday 24th August 6pm: In conversation with S. J. Watson @ Avid Reader Bookshop<br />
<br />
Saturday 29th August 3pm: LAUNCH Eating My Grandmother at the Judith Wright Centre Brisbane for Qld Poetry Festival<br />
<br />
Saturday 29th August 8pm: Reading naked from Holly White at the Judith Wright Centre for Qld Poetry Festival (NUDE UP! SERIOUSLY NAKED POETS)<br />
<br />
Sunday 30th August 12 midday: Short Form Bookclub at Judith Wright Centre for Qld Poetry Festival<br />
<br />
Tuesday September 1st 7pm: Avid Reader Australian Bookclub will be discussing Eating My Grandmother with me<br />
<br />
Saturday September 5th 1pm: Sexy Times at Brisbane Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Saturday September 5th 8pm: Letter to my Older Self - Brisbane Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Sunday September 6th 10am: Home Grown Heroes - Brisbane Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Sunday September 6th 2.45: Re(a)d Box Reading - Brisbane Writers Festival<br />
<br />
Wednesday October 7th 7pm: Avid Reader's<a href="http://avidreader.com.au/index.php?option=com_registrationpro&view=event&did=607&Itemid=136&shw_attendees=0"> Open Bookclub </a>will discuss Eating My Grandmother with me.<br />
<br />
Thursday October 8th 9.30am: Avid Reader's Daylight Bookclub will discuss Eating My Grandmother.<br />
<br />
...after which I will be having a little lie down.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-75696183814612655142015-07-02T23:20:00.000-07:002015-07-02T23:20:03.160-07:00Do books live in particular places?<br />
I am trying to slowly refocus on my manuscript. It is a rough sketchy first draft of a thing. I finished it last year. It was hard to write and particularly unpleasant even as manuscripts go (and they are so often unpleasant). I wrote it down in Tasmania, in a poet's shack on the water in a place called Southport. The southernmost pub in Australia is in Southport.<br />
<br />
I have printed this draft out and had it spiral bound. I intend to read it right through and see where I am with it. Only problem is I am finding it difficult to focus on the book. I keep wanting to go back to Tasmania. I keep wanting to walk out of my door and onto the frosty sand.<br />
<br />
I long for Tasmania like you might long for a family member who is away. After a few weeks of feeling this longing, I am beginning to think that my absent family member is the manuscript alone. Perhaps this book didn't travel back to Queensland with me. Perhaps this book is still living in Tasmania. What if I can only settle into it if I go back to that shack in Southport?<br />
<br />
These are irrational thoughts, but maybe there is something to it. Maybe something of a place you are working in infuses itself in the work itself. Maybe certain books can only be written in certain places. I would be interested to hear if other writers feel the same way about this.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-81949048501720345382015-05-05T19:24:00.003-07:002015-05-05T19:24:59.083-07:00Women's EroticaOn radio last night I was asked if there was a stigma about writing erotic fiction. I gave an answer but I am very uncomfortable about it and need to think this through.<br />
<br />
My answer was yes. I said that there is a term that is used; <i>women's erotica</i> which marginalises erotic writers as something that is just for women. I went on to say that it used to be a boys club of erotic writers and that it was only the intellectuals who were often male who wrote it and published it and distributed it in small print runs in an underground way.<br />
<br />
My discomfort comes from the idea that erotic writing for and by women is somehow less than that kabal of male writers who used to be the kings of the form. This idea must be snuffed out. Firstly the idea that eros is a lesser form is insane. Erotic writing is such a powerful form - so powerful that it is often banned. Erotic writing is also a form that can and should be enjoyed by any gender. Just because you don't have a vagina does not mean you can't read work that describes vaginas. In fact doesn't it make vagina-centric work all the more titillating if you don't have one? You get to glimpse an area of life that you have little working knowledge of. Female arousal is something that many people have only a passing knowledge of. Even many females do not understand or even experience it. Why should 'women's erotica' be a term that lessens a work?<br />
<br />
I don't use the term because it is often used to single out more escapist works and books that focus on romantic eros. I am not really that interested in romance. I like my sex separated from romantic entanglements for the most part. I like my sex pure.<br />
<br />
Still I am both uncomfortable with the term 'women's erotica' and also uncomfortable with my discomfort about the term. Women's erotica should be a term that refers to some powerful, transgressive, challenging and smart writing. At this moment in our history it is used to differentiate erotic writing that tickles rather than punches. I prefer a full force punch of sexual pleasure that challenges the status quo. I wish that was a form that we called women's erotica but alas it is not. Please feel free to continue this conversation with me. I would love your thoughts.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-65681804644903981152015-04-26T15:39:00.000-07:002015-04-26T15:39:10.538-07:00Upcoming events<br />
Taking a deep breath before plunging in to the promotion of The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine. Right around Australia I will be hanging around, banging on about erotic literature and the power of sex. Please join me along the way.<br />
<br />
Thursday 30th April Avid Reader Bookshop - In Conversation with John Birmingham at the launch of Holly White <a href="http://avidreader.com.au/index.php?option=com_registrationpro&view=event&did=531&Itemid=136&shw_attendees=0">http://avidreader.com.au/index.php?option=com_registrationpro&view=event&did=531&Itemid=136&shw_attendees=0</a><br />
<br />
Monday 4th May Better Read than Dead - In Conversation with Benjamin Law at the Sydney launch of Holly White <a href="http://www.betterreadevents.com/#!product/prd15/3793180691/book-launch%3A-krissy-kneen-with-benjamin-law">http://www.betterreadevents.com/#!product/prd15/3793180691/book-launch%3A-krissy-kneen-with-benjamin-law</a><br />
<br />
Thursday 7th May Riverbend Bookshop - A conversation with Ashley Hay about the importance of erotic fiction <a href="http://www.riverbendbooks.com.au/products/880982?barcode=RBE07MAY2015&title=InConversationwithKrissyKneen">http://www.riverbendbooks.com.au/products/880982?barcode=RBE07MAY2015&title=InConversationwithKrissyKneen</a><br />
<br />
Thursday 14th May Readings Carlton - In conversation with Christos Tsiolkas at the Melbourne Launch of Holly White <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/event/krissy-kneen-in-conversation-with-christos-tsiolkas">http://www.readings.com.au/event/krissy-kneen-in-conversation-with-christos-tsiolkas</a><br />
<br />
Thursday 21st May Sydney Writers Festival Quickies and Corsets with Lee Koffman, Marie-Morgan Le Moel and chair Jane Caro <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4520/task,view_detail/">http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4520/task,view_detail/</a><br />
<br />
Friday 22nd May Sydney Writers Festival Secrets from the Bookshop with Evie Wyld and Brook Davis. <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4508/task,view_detail/">http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4508/task,view_detail/</a><br />
<br />
Saturday 23rd May Sydney Writers Festival Writers on Writers: Musings in the City with Amit Chaudhuri and Patti Miller <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4508/task,view_detail/">http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4508/task,view_detail/</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-72579197639620513922015-04-12T15:25:00.002-07:002015-04-26T15:44:21.724-07:00Book Trailer<br />
Sure, it is not exactly safe to play this book trailer at full volume in most workplaces but as I am working in my pyjamas in my lounge room I am happy to crank it up. Hope you enjoy.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/124190644">https://vimeo.com/124190644</a>Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-61193180751969023142015-03-28T21:44:00.002-07:002015-03-28T21:44:54.662-07:00KEY SEARCH WORDS<br />
I already get a bit of traffic from people seating for DIY vibrators or true sex stories but I am so looking forward to claiming a few new key word search terms when my book The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine hits the shelves.<br />
<br />
Here. I'll add some in for you.<br />
<br />
Sex Machines<br />
Wilhelm Reich<br />
Orgone energy<br />
ORAC (The acronym for Reich's Orgone Energy Accumulator and also the computer from Blakes 7. Coincidence? I think not)<br />
Sexual UFOs<br />
Blue glowing vagina.<br />
Eye in the arse.<br />
secret pornography<br />
atomic orgy<br />
<br />
So many many more. If you find this intriguing, here is a link to a preview to my book which will be released on April 22nd.<br />
<br />
https://www.textpublishing.com.au/previews/the-adventures-of-holly-white-and-the-incredible-sex-machineKrissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-52802453269130710952015-03-18T19:33:00.000-07:002015-03-18T19:58:38.249-07:00Almost there<br />
So my book The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine will be published on the 22nd April.<br />
<br />
I have a book launch in Qld on the 30th April at Avid Reader (in conversation with John Birmingham)<br />
<br />
Sydney: Book launch May 4th at Better Read than Dead with Benjamin Law<br />
<br />
Qld: May 7th at Riverbend Bookshop in conversation with Ashley Hay about reading and writing erotic literature<br />
<br />
Melbourne: May 14th at Readings Carlton with Christos Tsiolkas<br />
<br />
Tonight I will be doing a pre-record with Radio National's Paul Barclay for Big Ideas talking about Reading Pornography in a post 50 Shades of Grey world and on April 9th I will be on Richard Fidler's Conversation Hour talking about pornography and my work and also poetry.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine is a big crazy sex romp and I had to read an awful lot of porn to be able to write it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Holly White finds her sexual power through reading the
erotic classics. This is something that she and I share. I owe a debt of
gratitude to those who have boldly gone before me, leaving a trail of crumbs
for me to feast on as I picked my way out of the woods and towards to the
completion of this book. The books I devoured in order to produce this book
include the ones referenced within. These are…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nin</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The House of the Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vox by Nicholson Baker</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nadja by Andre Breton</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Philosophy in the Boudoir by Marquis de Sade</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela
Carter</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Little Birds by Anais Nin</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Lover by Margurite Duras</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Delta of Venus by Anais Nin</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Eleven Thousand Rods by Guillaume Apollinaire </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Dangerous Liasons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Story of O by Pauline R<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span>age (Ann Desclos)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Recollections of a Mary-Ann by Jack Saul</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She-Devils by Pierre Louys</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #424242; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Irene’s Cunt by Louis Aragon</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Josephine Mutzenbacher by Felix Salten</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue by Marquis de Sade</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eat Me by Linda Jaivin</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Butcher by Alina Reyes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A Thousand and One Nights by various authors</div>
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Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-11657349604668209872015-01-30T22:40:00.005-08:002015-01-30T22:40:53.787-08:00What happens to your brain before publication?<br />
Something happens to your brain just before your book comes out. The thing is you have had your eye on the end product. You have been writing a book for years then in the very recent past you have been editing it. This process has distracted you. Then in that lull before publication you suddenly realise that you will have a book published. It will be read by other people. It is done. It is too late to tell anyone that maybe you need just one more crack at it. <br />
<br />
Then something terrible happens to your brain. It is a complete rewiring. Only days ago you could catch a glimpse of yourself in reflection and shrug. Ah well, you could say to yourself. I'll do something about that later. Now, with a book coming out there is no later. Everything is imminent. A photograph in the paper is a possibility. Criticism is imminent. You don't want to look the way you look. You want to look like someone prettier, taller, statuesque, anyone in fact, except yourself. A weird feedback loop has begun in your brain. Your thinking becomes circular. Every criticism of every book or film or meal or anything at all is a reminder that you will face your own critics very soon. Every bad line you read in someone else's book could be your own.<br />
<br />
I have been here before. I know what is happening. Still it happens. I am not the only writer who feels like they are standing suddenly naked in front of a stadium full of people. I send a pdf of the book to people who are going to help me launch it and I scribble an apology alongside the draft - sorry if you don't like it, you don't have to read it all, I understand if you decide you don't want to help me launch it. OH IT IS AWFUL. AND I HAVE ALMOST 3 WHOLE MONTHS TO GO!Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-90704691695785569252014-11-13T20:29:00.000-08:002014-11-13T20:29:02.299-08:00How poetry is different to proseI sit myself at the table and I write. The Muse? I will have none of it. I am more interested in hard work than in inspiration. If I wait for the muse I will be waiting a lifetime.<br />
<br />
Poetry works differently. I sit myself down and there is nothing but the words on the page, written in a different, heightened state. Poetry must be seized, it seems. At this desk there is nothing. The strict discipline of the craft will leave me with a gaping whiteness on the page like a scream arrested.<br />
<br />
Today I feel on the edge of a poetry. I am unbalanced, dizzy with the heat and the shock of my flesh melting into it. I flick between A Grief Observed and Harwood and Best Australian Science and there is a vague hum as if the books are speaking to each other when I am not looking. I pace. This is how I write poetry when I am not mad or bereft. I have to catch it at a glance, side-on, sidling up to it. My note paper capturing the words, resisting judgement.<br />
<br />
I open a painting and it is there, that hum, that image between the spidery letters of a word. I am quick to scoop up three lines. Then my pen turns to dough on the page. I must walk away and let the syllables rise like an unwatched pot.<br />
My grandmother is shaking her head, she of the workmanlike elbows and fists. You must grab it - and the fly plucked from the air. But my grandmother never wrote a poem. There is no grabbing a poem. It is more like photographic developing than sculpture. It is a quite sitting, half-looking, squinting through dark, waiting for the words to settle blackly on the page.<br />
<br />
Today I have written two poems.<br />
<br />
My grandmother is behind me. Tsking her tongue.<br />
As always,<br />
She is not impressed.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-19464768293404054982014-11-06T18:25:00.002-08:002014-11-06T18:25:45.723-08:00Writing a GlunkOK. I may have mentioned this in my blogging once before, but when I was a child I was very disturbed by a particular Dr Suess book. I think it was in The Sneetches and other stories. It was a story about a boy's little sister who used to sit and think little fluffy things into existence every night after dinner. Then one night she thinks up a Glunk and of course the idea is way too big for her and causes terror and mayhem and it is up to the little boy to 'unthunk the Glunk'. Now little Sally only ever thinks up fluffy things after dinner.<br />
<br />
This story disturbed me, even when I was seven. I was already involved in thinking up Glunks. I was reaching for books way too age-inappropriate for a seven year old. By the time I was ten I fell in love with Peter Otoole playing Lawrence of Arabia and insisted on reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom with its bible thin pages and interminable recounting of one military push after another. I had no idea what I was reading but I pushed on anyway. I was so proud of myself when, after several months of slogging, I had finished the book. I even really loved some paragraphs and underlined them. I still have my copy of the book.<br />
<br />
I did not want to be stuck thinking fluffy things after dinner. I wanted to over-reach.<br />
<br />
Somehow I have found my safe-unsafe boundaries. I know what I am comfortable writing and I stick to small contemporary stories with a manageable cast. I still over-reach but it is always about the concepts and not the parameters of the story.<br />
<br />
I have an idea for a novel. It is a big novel. It requires lots of research. It is historical. It is about politics and cultural cringe and all the things that I am ignorant of.<br />
<br />
I am really afraid to start this book but it won't let go of my head. It has a hook in me. I am afraid that it is too big for me. I am afraid I will fail trying to write it.<br />
<br />
Still, I was never satisfied with little Sally's parameters. I suppose you can't get your teeth into the fruit unless you pick it first. I am reaching up into the tree for the forbidden apple. I have my Glunk in my sights. I am afraid I am going to start this impossible project. Frightened. Hesitant. Starting now.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-85471839686794091032014-10-02T05:37:00.003-07:002014-10-02T05:37:37.134-07:00Waiting for edits<br />
My edits will arrive.<br />
<br />
They will arrive yesterday or tomorrow or now. They will be just a rearrangement<br />
of words and lines or great sweeping gouges that carve whole chapters away<br />
leaving gaping holes that need to be replaced.<br />
<br />
My chest is tight. I feel like perhaps my heart is giving up or giving out over the longest time.<br />
Each night I die again. My edits cause a swelling<br />
in the tissue, a drawing out where the blood thuds too hard.<br />
<br />
I am waiting for my edits.<br />
<br />
I am grinding my teeth at night.<br />
<br />
I dream of children that I must save when I can not.<br />
I dream of natural disasters coming to unnatural ends.<br />
<br />
When my edits are done my book will be better or worse.<br />
My book will be unchangeable<br />
And I must embrace whatever wreck of myself I have left on the page.<br />
<br />
I may die whilst I wait for my edits<br />
Or perhaps they will come tomorrow, staving off this terrible loss of self<br />
Beat by misshapen beat I come to an end<br />
Of myself<br />
or my waiting<br />
or my book<br />
or my career<br />
or my self esteem.<br />
<br />
And whatever half formed thing I make of it<br />
It will never be so many other perfect things<br />
And I will not be them<br />
Or something outside of myself.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow my edits may arrive<br />
<br />
Or not.Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8989423588458779046.post-88061923355200334552014-09-25T21:22:00.000-07:002014-09-25T21:22:03.492-07:00Your nightmares can be useful to your book: A glimpse from "Half Light" a novel in progress.<div style="font-family: Cochin; font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Cochin; font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
Philip leans against the trunk of a tree. He is a big man, made bigger by the hopes and dreams of the brethren. He is the chosen of god which adds an extra few inches to his already considerable height. He walks with the lord, and his footfalls are strong and sure and without hesitation. He has heard about Jessica which is why he is here now. Jessica’s mother is nervous. She tucks her hair behind her ear and smooths down her simple cotton smock, small signs of vanity. Why doesn’t he see this? He is always talking about the evils of vanity, the evils of greed, the evils of selfishness and yet when the women primp and preen around him he seems to swell up with their undivided attention. He is adored as God Himself should be adored. He is the son of God on earth and he will save them all if they follow him closely enough.</div>
<div style="font-family: Cochin; font-size: 14px; text-indent: 18px;">
She has stopped believing. Philip is a man, and as a man he is fallible. Every time he predicts a new date for the apocalypse, once a year, more frequently lately, every time they all walk up the mountain with their crosses, Jessica follows them but she does so knowing that they will soon trudge down the hill once more. Jessica still joins the women in the cooking and preserving, putting food away for the end-times, but now she knows that they are just storing food for winter. There will be no end times. Not now. Not soon. Certainly not in Philip’s mortal lifetime.</div>
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He nods and this is a sign that Jessica should raise her gun. She should be as nervous as her mother is but strangely, she isn’t. Philip rarely bother’s himself with women’s business. Still he has heard about her, how she, a child, has a God-given sure hand and an unerring eye. He has come to see for himself. Jessica raises the rifle, braces it against her shoulder. It is all about breath. Breathe out. Sight. Shoot. The can leaps into the air, tumbles. The bullet will have pierced it at the centre of the label. It isn’t hard. She wonders what all the fuss is about. She feels the pulse of her blood. Even this thudding will change the direction of the bullet. The shot must be timed to the breath and to the heart. She lines up the second can, sights, breathes out, pulse, shoot. Another can down. Philip nods. Jessica raises the rifle and he holds up his hand to stop her. The women are all lined up waiting. They know what he wants of them. Her mother walks out onto the range. She replaces the next can with the bundle that she is hiding under her smock. When she steps away from the log Jessica can see that she has placed a kitten there. The thing mews, stares at her, licks his black face with a rough pink tongue. Another woman picks up the next can and in its place there is an owl, almost the exact same colour as the log, an owl made of bark, it ruffles it’s feathers. Its eyes are big and yellow and wise. Another can removed, a puppy, a labrador, sandy brown, velvety, wrinkled with all it’s extra skin just waiting for a growth spurt. The women step back, out of the line of fire. Philip lowers his hand. She is supposed to shoot. They are waiting for her. She glances up towards her mother and the woman narrows her eyes. She wants her daughter to do it. She is angry at Jessica for hesitating. She wants her to shoot, this time to kill. She shakes her head. Jessica’s mother raises her hand and there is a pistol in it. She is aiming the pistol at her daughter. Her aim has never been accurate. Jessica can see that her line of sight is off. She is pointing the gun at her shoulder. She will wing her daughter. She will hurt her but she will be alive, bleeding out slowly. Jessica raises her rifle. Philip’s eyes are on her and the hair is rising up on the back of the girl’s neck. His eyes are dark and unwavering. She can smell a reek off him like a cave full of bats. Wild thing, wild creature of god. She takes aim. She breathes out, she waits for the pulse. She sights. The wide, innocent kitten is all eyes. She fires. </div>
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The blood hits Jessica full-force. Someone has thrown a bucket of blood and it has slapped her in the face. She feels the warmth of it dripping down her neck, crawling across her chest under the plain modest smock. She can taste the metallic edge of it as she opens her mouth and lets out a strangled scream, a sob. She has hit the kitten right in the head, above the eyes which were flat and yellow and trusting. Now there are no eyes, or what is left of them has been flung forward and onto her skin. The blood should have sprayed back, away from the force of the bullet. This is a direct contradiction of the laws of physics. She has betrayed science. It is worse than her guilt at betraying God. Philip nods, satisfied. Philip has taken the basic principles of action and reaction and bent the physics against her. Philip is the son of god on earth. They were right and Jessica was wrong. He nods to the second target, an owl. She can’t kill an owl. An owl is a portent of fate. An owl is a symbol of all that is true and old and wise. Jessica doesn’t believe in all that of course. She is a scientist. She knows that it is just a bird, a protected bird. Protected by the government, still, she can’t seem to raise the rifle. Her mother’s gun is still pointed at her, this time closer to her heart, wavering. Her finger is tight against the trigger. She lifts her rifle, closing her eyes, her heart beating wildly and she doesn’t wait for it to calm. She shoots. There is too much blood for a creature so small. She is covered in it, rocked backward by the force of it. It winds her. Jessica can’t breathe, she is drowning in blood. Then it is over and she is still here, still alive. Still expected to prove her marksmanship one last time. The puppy. She must shoot the puppy, the thing is so soft, big paws, head cocked to one side. She has it in her sights. It pounds it’s oversised paws playfully on the branch as if it wants her to throw a stick. She breathes out. She swings the rifle. She points it at her mother. Her mother’s eyes widen. Her mother shifts her gun till it is in line with Jessica’s left eye. With a small shift of her shoulders Jessica swings the weapon wide of her mother’s head. She is aiming at Philip. The son of god, the chosen one, the saviour. He stares back at her unafraid. His lips are moving. He is mouthing words. What are they? She has no time to make sense of them. She squeezes the trigger, feels the kick of the rifle pressing her shoulder back. The bullet hits, all of this in slow motion, the hole drilling slowly through skin and bone, the force of the blood inside him like a tidal wave approaching. Jessica falls back, the blood rushes over her. There is nothing in the world except blood, gallons of blood. The sky is obliterated by a wall of it. What was it he said? Her mind clutches at the last movement of his lips, the soundless words: <i>You’re Dead. You’re Dead.</i> And then his head exploded.</div>
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Jessica gasped. She had been holding her breath under a river of blood. She woke and there was blood or perhaps it was not blood, but sweat, damp on her forehead. She was panting. She was sitting up. She thought she might have screamed in her sleep. She woke to find herself alone in the bed and someone was dead. Matthew. Yes. Mathew was dead. The grief hit her fresh and heavy, but more, something new. Something terrible.</div>
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And then she remembered. </div>
Krissy Kneenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04196014057831018914noreply@blogger.com0