Pretty in pink
Don’t get me wrong – I really like seeing Violet in tomboy clothes because I can’t stand all the pink and purple that dominates girls’ fashion these days. I longed for pink as a child, when we weren’t allowed to wear it, and perhaps that’s why our daughters wear it so much – the daughters of the 1970s feminists are rebelling. But I also have a weakness for little dresses, and when I thought I was only going to be the mother of boys, I would gaze longingly at little girls in florals and checks. If only I could dress up my sons like that! Now I’m focusing my attention on my own wardrobe which, naturally, has a lot of dresses in it. None of them pink.
I also have this disconcerting sensation when I pick Violet up from creche. Often she will smell different, of their air freshener or the lunch they fed her. And she will be dressed in their spare clothes, invariably pink and threaded with gold or silver. It’s a material proof that she is moving away from me, changed by the outside world.
Milk
This is another one of my comics for the paper promotion. This one was for a paper stock called ‘Milk Touch.’ As you can see, I came over all nostalgic. I miss the glass bottles and that clinking sound the milk boy made as he ran along the street. In my memory, he always comes when the light is golden, a perfect autumnal gloaming.
Breakfast burritos
I drew this and yesterday’s comic as a paid job to promote a paper company. It’s quite fun to experiment with different characters and also to have to make things short – I naturally draw a longer style of comic. This one was on a metallic paper, which is why I drew robots – I figured they would like to be shiny. Also, as you might be able to guess, I’m quite taken with the breakfast burrito caravans that are springing up around town, not that I’ve bought one yet. I make burritos at home – black beans, cheese, guacamole, tomato and red onion salsa -¡muy rico!
Autumn
Sarah’s room
I was sorry to hear that Maurice Sendak died. I loved his books as a child, and I love reading them to my children. One of my favourites is ‘In the night kitchen’ and I am always thrilled by how tins and egg beaters become a Manhattan-style cityscape. I read this book with gusto, and I have my own tune for ‘Milk in the batter, milk in the batter, we bake cake and nothing’s the matter.’ There is no disengagement while reading – no replaying conversations I had earlier in the day, no drafting shopping lists. I perform this book, and we marvel at Mickey’s naked body, his brazen chipolata penis. We dive down to the bottom of the milk bottle with him, singing ‘I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me.’ Together we wish that we, like Mickey, had cake every morning, but instead we have porridge.
The book in the picture is not written by Maurice Sendak, but they are his illustrations. I loved it too – how could I not? Of all the rooms in all the world, the best is Sarah’s room. Of course it was Jenny that I felt more empathy for – I was the kind of child who drew on walls and who didn’t keep her room tidy.
And I too had dreams in which I flew, and I shrunk down to visit dolls’ houses, eating tiny cakes and sucking on lollypops.
I’ve been skim-reading obituaries and listening to various tributes to Maurice Sendak, and what I loved was that he fully acknowledged the horror of childhood. I was scared out of my wits for large parts of my early life. I had terrifying nightmares (one in particular when a Sendak-styled wild thing leaped out from behind the lemon tree and scooped out my back) and my mother had formidable visitors, including an artist/punk with a 30 cm blue mohawk, that prompted me to take refuge in a kitchen cupboard. I didn’t sleep without a hall light on until I was twenty. In a PBS interview, Sendak said that the wild things were inspired by his Jewish relatives, recently arrived from Poland, who smelled funny and had hairs sprouting out of their noses. He also said that ‘Where the wild things are’ started off as a book about wild horses, but he found that he couldn’t draw horses, so he made them monsters instead.
Looking at this book now, I can see that I am influenced by it – my novel has a dream sequence, and there are houses that my hero can enter only whilst asleep. Sendak has shaped the way I see the world, leaving rooms inside my head in which forests can grow.
Snails
Two snails have died – I had to throw their frothy carcasses into the hedge. Tonight Violet took her surviving snail off to have a bath with her. She left it to slide, then thought better of it, and plucking it off the tiles, dropped it into the bath. It bobbed, sucked up inside its shell, until I came to rescue it. She wanted to take it to dinner, but Otto’s snail phobia had been incubating throughout the day, and he started yelling at the top of his voice. I put the snail in her room, waiting for her to come to bed.
Later, when she was tucked up with it, she called to me. ‘Mummy, the snail isn’t sleeping.’ I went in to look, and the snail was writhing, shell between her fingers, looking like it was trying to eat its tail. I convinced her that snails preferred to sleep outside and put it on the doorstep next to the cat food bowl. Perhaps the snail will figure out how to come back inside again – Violet has renamed the cat door ‘the snail flap’ .
Auckland Writers and Readers Festival
I went to the Gala Opening of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival last night. I had lots of short manic chats to people, including to Jolisa Gracewood and her husband, and returned home too wired to sleep deeply. In between dreams, the children climbed into bed with me. They always get worried when I go out at night, and have to make sure that I have returned home. I think they share the anxiety that James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree had about his mother. Of course his mother drove to the end of the town and never returned, so his fears were justified. I have never chaired a session, but I have recurring dreams about being late to performances, and having to play instruments to audiences when in fact I don’t know how to play them. I know that lots of people think that dreams are boring, but I am always fascinated by how familiar places distort, and home towns become foreign cities. I am exploring that a bit in my novel. Which I better get back to.
By the way, here is real Jeffrey Eugenides session, to be chaired by Kate di Goldi. And here is the Emily Perkins and Jeffrey Eugenides session, to be chaired by Jolisa Gracewood. I am hoping to attend them both, even if it means that I can’t go to the Oliver Jeffers session.
Outtakes
I haven’t had a chance to do part 4 of my clueless story as I have been busy working on paying comics. One of the jobs I am doing is for a paper company, and my comics are going to be printed on fancy paper. Here is a sneak preview of a couple of characters involved:
I’ve made 4 separate comic strips, and I drew about 12 in order to settle on those 4. Here are a few of the rejects:
This was to be printed on paper that felt a lot like skin, and it was inspired by Fiona Samuel’s ‘Bliss’ film, based on Katherine Mansfield’s life.
‘The Alchemist’ was intended for a shiny gold paper, and Jonathan helped me write it, but then he complained that I hadn’t drawn enough decent pictures to go with his words.
This comic was to be printed on pearlescent paper. Recently I met a woman who was descended from Lebanese pearl fishers, who came to Dunedin in the gold rush. She said the Lebanese community remains strong down south. I never knew that!
This comic was inspired by the brilliant pea green colour of the paper, which you may or may not appreciate on screen. Actually my sister tells me that all my comics look fuzzy on her screen, although they look fine on mine. This is the risk of digital publishing. I can’t control what you see.
This comic is actually inspired by a far more brilliant and concise one by Ace Hammersmith, which someone handed me in 2002. They gave me a photocopy of it, which shows you how much has changed. I found it on the internet here – you can see how much better it is than mine!
One thing I found interesting as I redrew all my roughs to make them look slick and designerish is that I felt like something was lost – an energy. Also I think I’m a better drawer when I’m not trying to draw well – when I start to think about it, that’s when all my proportions go wrong.
Pretty on the inside
Today I am working on my comic for the June issue of Metro, but here is my comic for February. Actually, it might have worked for this month’s Metro, since they have the list of the best Auckland restaurants in the latest issue.Click on it to make it bigger because it’s a little small to read at this size.
And last night I was very happy to escape the family and go to the launch of Emily Perkins’ novel ‘The Forrests’, which has gotten rave reviews so far. One in Metro, along with a fabulous author interview by Jolissa Gracewood. The cover photo is beautiful, like a still salvaged from a 16mm home movie reel. Her name is embossed in shiny green foil. The launch was fun, at Sunday Painters in Ponsonby, which has beautiful green walls embellished with vines, reminding me of Sarah’s Room by Doris Orgel. It was jam-packed with excited bookish people, fancying we might be on the brink of something big. Here is a snippet from this month’s comic, in which I tried to draw Emily:
Thank you so much to everybody who commented and ‘liked’ my post on Sunday. I got the confidence boost I needed to carry on! Your encouragement is very much appreciated, because I quite easily imagine that I’m crap. I am planning on posting another installment by the end of this week.
Clueless, part 3
This story has got out of control and I’m going to have to write a part 4 to finish it! So what do you think? Is it just boring when I write these mini-memoirs? Perhaps my motherhood-implosion or writing-angst posts strike more of a cord? Of course I am drawing these comics because I feel like it, and it’s nice when other people enjoy them. But since this is a blog, I get more of an idea about whether my writing strikes a cord by the number of comments and visits. When you publish a novel it is an entirely different experience – you have no idea what your audience likes until they have finished the whole book.
LET ME BE FRANK 