To business. I’m pleased to announced that today, on the 50th anniversary of the Meanjin/Overland sporting cup duel (now there’s a sentence) Meanjin WON the cup back.  I prepared chicken sandwiches. Jeff Sparrow provided Turkish dips and beer. The afternoon was slow to take off but by 4.30 pm we were off and running.  The match was a draw (one all) and we won on a penalty shootout.  Meanjin’s longest serving Board Member and eminent poet, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, kicked the winning goal. Following are a few pics of the event. Unfortunately they aren’t sport shots (I was too busy running around pretending I knew what to do with a soccer ball).  But as you will see several other Summer Reading folks were there.

Meanjin interns play Monopoly

Steven Carroll

Last night we went to a friend’s house to celebrate the only American tradition that speaks to me - Thanksgiving. What’s not to like about sharing a meal with friends? My friend lived in America for ten years so had made cornbread, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and other exciting things. It was an oasis in a sea of organisation. Late yesterday I had to have shots before I headed to Vietnam (Typhoid and Hep a) so my arm is sore. Today I’ve been running around buying food for a friend’s 30th birthday, and for the Meanjin/Overland picnic which I’m organising along with fellow Summer Reading shortlister, Jeff Sparrow. All welcome - particularly those who can play soccer, and can help me win back the Emu Egg cup which is many decades old (need to do a bit of homework on exactly how old). At the moment Overland have it, but Meanjin is keen to get it back.

Some of the foods that may, or may not, make their way into a salad for said picnic, are photographed below (along with a special bonus angry kitten I met at the pet shop).

Last night, at 10 pm EST I was part of a ‘global snapshot’ in which writers around the world wrote what they could see around them. This was for an online magazine called Another Magazine. I hadn’t heard of them before they look pretty good, and it’s a really nice idea.  Of course it was dark outside when my time to sit down came, so I ended up writing more about the feel of the darkness after that wonderful storm and talking about things I often see at that time of night, though didn’t happen to see last night.  Most particularly the small possum that shuffles over the clothes line most nights outside my study while the cats stare in the other direction with studied indifference. The kind of accommodations animals make with each other is very amusing , I think.

Writing this piece reminded me of  Buddhist meditation we were encouraged to do when I was on a retreat at Kopan monastery (the monastery that inspired the monastery in Bird).  The idea is that you feel love and compassion for your loved ones and that you actively try and visualize them, then you try and expand that to your enemies, and then to people on the planet you don’t know and never will.  I don’t believe this kind of thing stops craziness like we’re seeing in Mumbai at the moment, though some might think that. I think it’s good for the person doing the meditating though. It stops you carving up the world into a series of us and them scenarios. So, my point is, I really liked the feeling of sitting down at my computer for 15 minutes last night knowing that writers around the world were doing the same thing, for the same reason at all different times of the day, under a hundred different circumstance.

People who’ve read my novels Geography or Bird will know that I haven’t written much at all on my own city, Melbourne. But I’ve been thinking about it alot (by which I mean about the city; but also about why I might find it hard to write) and gearing up to write a book(s) set much closer to home. Alot of writers  use diaries as a prompt, but I often use my own photos. I have, in the last couple of years, began to try and learn a bit about photography.  There are several reasons for this. One is that when I take words so seriously, and am always whipping myself about how they should be used, photos are a liberation for me.  But in another way, taking photographs is very similar to writing in that you are in the moment when you take a photo: you are trying to be present to what is going around you; to observe  without judgement, or  static.  And you are, to some extent, positioning yourself as an outsider or onlooker.

Anyway, today I took possession of  a Nikon D80. It’s quite different from the D70 and I didn’t really feel on top of the differences when I took these photos - but they are all taken within 10 meters of my house, as the storm was coming in this afternoon and for that reason alone capture the intimacy of my street even if they aren’t all technically great.

The general chaos that is my life continued today as I sat down to write my first blog post and saw that in fact I should have begun yesterday.  Apologies all round.  The excuse is that I was in meetings for a total of ten hours yesterday - oh how I dream of sitting home and actually writing - and then went to the SPUNC (Small Press Underground Networking Community) Christmas drinks. To drink.  To make up for that I got a new camera today and later this afternoon plan to try it out and, if they’re any good, share the first results.

I am, I confess, in a state of yearning - mainly for the Christmas break and that sometimes bleak sometimes sweet feeling of a city that’s shut down for a couple of weeks.  People disappear. Favorite cafes close down. People with children head off to beach houses, people without wait until the school holiday season is done before they take their break.  The streets are quiet.

Yearning too , as I said above to have the time to read and to write without the pressure of work.  This Christmas break I am off to Vietnam and already have my books organised (yes, The Quiet American).  The writing will probably just be jotted notes, emails maybe blog posts. And hopefully those disorganised observations will bloom into something more substantial later on. That said, I’m not going to vietnam with a book project in mind and there is  a freedom in that.  Often my travel is more directed to an outcome and that can be both good and bad. 

I travelled to India a few times when I was writing Bird - and obviously that country is on my mind this morning.  There have been bombings throughout Mumbai and the Taj Mahal Hotel is burning. That is the place I had my first Indian meal in what was then known as Bombay.  It was January 1983, and my friend and I went straight to our divey hotel from the airport, and  then dutifully went to the Taj to try their Indian buffet - as recommended by our travel guide.  It was great food - and very expensive by backpackers standards ($20 -25 years ago) but it was such a treat. One of those nights, as a teenager, that I felt very grand and grown up - though India can often have the opposite effect.  The point of these bombings seems to have been to target tourist areas, but as is always the case, it is mainly the local people who’s lives are lost, or turned upside down.

Sophie Cunningham is the next Summer Read author blogging from 26 – 30 November.

Sophie has worked as an editor, publisher and journalist since 1989. Her first novel, Geography, was published in 2004. She is currently the editor of Meanjin and working on a novel This Devastating Fever, about Leonard Woolf’s time as a colonial administrator in Ceylon.

Her book Bird is one of the books on the Summer Read shortlist.

Bird tells the story of Ana-Sofia’s mother Anna Davidoff – ‘Bird’ – a famous wartime refugee, fifties movie starlet, sixties party girl and drug-charged acolyte of the jazz greats. Anna Davidoff went on to become a Buddhist nun and finally died alone in a Himalyan cave. Ana-Sofia now feels the need to confront the ghosts of the past; to find out who Anna was.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Sophie will be appearing at:

- Yea Library on Tuesday 3 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone 5797 2209

- Mildura Library on Wednesday 11 February 2009, 7.30 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone 5018 8350

What Sophie says about summer reading
“Summer is a time I try to read for fun, rather than work. This often means a thriller of science fiction novel – two genres that I enjoy a lot, and that have the advantage of not triggering the ‘at work’ part of my brain. I also like to read books about the place I’m holidaying in. This year I’m lucky enough to be going to Vietnam so I plan to read a book that I’ve never read but always wanted to: The Quiet American by Graham Greene.”

Thanks so much Alice for your insightful posts.

Vote for Growing up Asian in Australia

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Alice will be appearing at:

- Footscray Library on Wednesday 11 February 2009 at 7pm
For more information and bookings phone 9688 0289

- Mill Park Library on Monday 23 February 2009 at 6.30pm
At this event Alice will launch the Mill Park Writers Group. For more information and bookings phone 9437 8189

I don’t have much of a personality here.

This doesn’t bother me, but it has made me realise how important words are to the development of individual personality. Without being able to speak much of the language, no one knows much about me. The little nuances which constitute ‘individualism’ - whether a person is reflective, funny, idealistic, sarcastic, or ironic - become invisible. Only the most universal emotions show through – tiredness, elation, sadness, frustration. These are easily read through body language. Without the language, all I am is literal and polite. This character fits in well with the world around me (there is nothing post-modern about a country in Development), and I am content to just listen.

When I was growing up, people used to just assume that because I was yellow I could speak universal Chinese. It was as ridiculous as assuming that a white person in Australia could speak German. My ancestors come from a little village in the Chaozhou district – our language could not be any more different to Mandarin (the official language) than German is to Russian. When I step out of my flat, though, I speak Mandarin (or what small amount of it I have). I am surprised how quickly I am picking it up. My friend Sally Rippin says that this is because I am learning as a child learns – seeing things in the world around me and naming them, instead of seeing black words in a textbook.

Speaking of words, I have been reading a book that my dear friends Ron and Inese gave me, called One Writer’s Beginnings, by Eudora Welty. Professor Ronald Sharp is a professor of John Keats and friendship. Eudora writes that “I don’t believe that my anger showed me anything about human character that my sympathy and rapport never had.”

Romance is not openly slathered about in salacious glory on the streets in China. I have not yet seen any public kissing, or embracing. (Just a lot of expectorating). But I have seen old men and women linked arm in arm hobbling down the streets, their austere army green and brown padded coats blending in with the ancient trees. I have seen them dance in the Hou Hai district, in a public square to the sound of loudspeakers. While the young people ram themselves inside the expensive wine bars and claustrophobic nightclubs, these old people do it all outside for free – they have the freedom of movement, of un-self-consciousness. They can wear their shabby clothes and bask in the glow of lantern-lit, familiar affection. The first time I saw it I was so moved I almost became tearful, for some reason I didn’t understand.

Then as I closely watched the old people dancing, I soon realised: these are people who have toiled together through the decades: through communism, through the cultural revolution, through austere times. They dance like awkward school-children, because their bones cannot bend all that far, But like steady brown branches they can sway, so they do. This bright shining Beijing is beyond some of their wildest imaginings, they who have stayed together through the severe and unglamorous years.

I see the young people just down the road buy expensive things for each other. Because there is no toil in my generation, the importance of romance and play is accentuated. Hao wanr seems to be the catchphrase of the modern youth – how fun! It is advertised on television everywhere here (that, and white skin). At every pause, there must be a photograph taken on a digital camera to capture the moment.

But these old people don’t bring cameras. They remember each others’ faces, the faces of people they love. I wonder why people are so obsessed with their own faces when we don’t see our faces most of the time anyway – we see the faces of others. Except in expensive boutiques and hotels anywhere in the world – then mirrors reflect ourselves a million times, perhaps to highlight our own importance.

The other day I walked through a department store with a Beijing friend who seemed to fall in love with handbags in the same way I would fall in love with a man. After a while, I noticed something disconcerting arise in me – being surrounded by all these beautiful and expensive objects, mirrors all around and immaculately coiffered people – I felt a bit shabby, a bit unfinished. People everywhere were so glamorous. Perhaps I needed a vial of 120 yuan face cream, a 2349 yuan bag and a pair of heels. But when I walked out of the doors into the cold, I realised how deceptive those places are with their resplendent white walls – back into the streets were rickshaw drivers, old beggars, breathtakingly wonderful ordinary Chinese with plein air faces and padded winter coats. My old brown Brotherhood coat and bush tracker boots blended in quite well and kept me warm and comfortable.

I am writing from Beijing, city of lights at night – rubies of car taillights down one direction and diamonds of headlights up the other. There are so many roads here. They say the National Bird of China is the Construction Crane, because two thirds of the world’s cranes are here. This country is developing like a bewildered adolescent going through a rapid growth spurt, with no time to stop and consider their physiological marvels. Here, there are massive architectural marvels standing side by side, all vying for attention; like a teenager displaying their designer clothes.

Here, there are also busloads of country-side construction workers in their yellow hardhats being driven back to their barracks in the evening. Beggars that only come out at night because the streets should be clean during the day. And expectorators. People still spit in the streets like they have tubercular lungs.

I am rapidly falling in love with this country and its people. It is approaching summer in Melbourne, but winter here. So this is my Winter Reads Blog. Strangely, I don’t seem to feel an innate sense of connection to my ancestral homeland. But perhaps that is not so strange after all. Many of the writers in Growing Up Asian in Australia expressed similar sentiments. I feel at home here, because everyone looks like me and when I don’t open my mouth I can almost blend into the background.