by tashmcgill | Jun 20, 2012 | Monologue, Short Stories
She looks frazzled and tired, he looks frustrated but calm; trying to maintain patience. They’ve walked off a 21 hour flight to Australia to begin the adventure honeymoon of a lifetime. Their rings are glistening under fluorescent light and both are still fidgeting, getting used to the weight of warm metal against skin; twisting and admiring the statement it makes on each of their hands. Then the too-warm air of the airport arrivals terminal clouds in, the groaning luggage carousel clanks along and other passengers swarm in.
She pushes then pulls their luggage cart to a stop beside a queue of people pushing themselves towards the customs line. He tries to steal a kiss but she pushes him to one side and gestures to the carousel. He struggles his way through the crowd and back, one suitcase at a time. Now he’s made three trips and is torn between anxiously looking for the next bag and glancing back at his wife, tapping her foot and waiting for her iPhone to find signal. By the time he returns with the fourth bag, those over-packed full size suitcases perilously stacked on the cart, she’s done with the phone and marching through the lines towards fresh air.
Now it’s his turn to sigh and hustle, creeping closer to people slightly ahead of them in the queue.
Maybe he’s anxious to shower and change or just to get his wife into more comfortable surrounds but now it’s his frustration that claws at the atmosphere. Here’s where I learn their story – he’s from Oklahoma, she’s from Los Angeles. They’ll be here for two weeks. I look at the luggage, I look back to them. She explains one bag is shoes, and I laugh – embarrassed but amused at the easy cliche. Their itinerary is jam-packed, they’ll cover New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, not to mention a flying visit to Uluru and she has a pair of shoes for every occasion. She pulls him close, looks up into his face with a moment of calm. I feel relieved; they were making me anxious but I run out of time to tell them why. I hit the security fast-track lane and leave with my hopes for them heavy in my head.
“Dear American Honeymooners,
Please slow down. You’re running the risk of missing each other in your rush not to miss a thing. Don’t fall into the trap of writing a to-do list that doesn’t leave you anytime to make memories of what it was like to be together in that place. Don’t set a pace for your life you can’t maintain. You’ll leave one another behind.
Please pack less. I’m not sure what you were planning on doing, but life just doesn’t need that much baggage. Love is only helped with great hair and nails, it isn’t made. Buy more lingerie and fewer pairs of jeans. Be light on your feet. We carry each other – learn not to be too heavy when you are expecting someone else to carry your bags.
I hope you have a wonderful time, see all sorts of things you’ve never imagined before and have your childlike wonder engaged with creativity, nature and breathing the air of the one you love. Love each other well – you deserve it. You came a long way to get here.
Oh – one last thought. I’m a big believer in shoes. They’re glamorous, enigmatic, practical, empowering and often necessary. But they’re also the difference between staying home and going out. A great shoe isn’t a personality that you put on, but it expresses something of your persona. Learn to wear your lover like one great pair of shoes. The ones that become an extension of who you are. The ones you can’t live without. The ones that make you feel strong enough to climb mountains and fast enough to run for cover. Warm like slippers and a fireplace, easy like Chucks you wear everywhere. And keep walking in them. Live in your love the way you live in your shoes. You’ll need less of them, you’ll take better care of them, you’ll nurture and protect them, you’ll take a lot of pride in them when they’re the only pair you’ve got.
Wishing you all the best,
T.”
by tashmcgill | May 1, 2012 | Culture & Ideas, Prose & Poetry
I wrote a poem once that included a line about love letters written on paper somehow being more convincing than their digital counterparts. At the time I was writing emails to a friend far away and every time I hit send, I felt like there was just a little something missing.
For a girl who always wanted to be a writer, it’s no surprise I spend a lot of my time playing with words. But they’re always words on a screen. So rarely do I get to see and experience those words in print. I used to wonder with amazement how writers could spend hours with their handwritten manuscripts – concurrently admiring and despising the words crossed out and rearranged in blue, black, red ink. Red ink looks so angry on the page, but it’s so compelling.
Dissecting the anatomy of every sentence – why change that word? Why choose another? What made that word better, stronger, softer?
Now in my work, I thrash out words, flinging them into the digital world as if I have an endless supply. It’s so hard to choose your words so selectively – there is no margin to the paper, no running off the end of the page or abruptly changing the size of my scrawl to eek out another syllable or two onto the page.
I don’t want to make digital things always. I want to smell paper and ink, newsprint and binding glue. I want to write the kinds of phrases that people are compelled to write out onto Post-It notes, stuck to monitors. *A permanent indelible mark.
The kind of work you can write as an inscription on the inside cover of a book or one day worthy of printing inside hardbound covers. To write the kind of work you give to someone you love like you are exchanging a great secret, entrusting some great treasure into the hands of another.
And therefore, just like that – I am a writer after all. Tucked inside a leather journal, fit to bust – all the good words, I’ve been saving them up to pass on as delicious mysteries, as if to say ‘Here it is, my whole heart and every crevice of imagination tucked into a binding I’ve made just for you.’
by tashmcgill | Jul 22, 2011 | Prose & Poetry
We forget that the seasons of life do not move as quickly as the seasons of spring, winter and fall. For some of us, we have never been known in summer; in full bloom. Some of us are re-emerging, seen for the first time.
I wrote this poem when as I was stepping back into myself after some time away. I realised that while the reflection of myself I saw in the eyes of others was familiar to me; they were seeing me for the first time.
Oh, the possibility that we could see ourselves new again, recognising our strength, our beauty, our wonder as if for the first time and without fear.
Fierce.
This woman is like an army in front of me
Like a great tiger out of hibernation
Everything about her uniform is strong,
she is oiled like snakeskin
I forget, you have forgotten her – before the Hiberation,
that great dark winter when she watched
hovering from the north west east south borders of you
And you, hidden in the corner, did not know me
before the winter; cracking brittle icicle heart.
That underneath, she is entirely fierce
You over there could not know, you there, have pushed it from your mind –
That I am always summer.
Always, like an unshakeable,
immovable living oak tree, a cedar, fragrant – I am drenched
in some internal sunshine, I am always summer merely beneath snow
My blazing flesh becoming sacred, holiness of ash and ice
I have a secret, layers of secrets over hidden things and the most
furthest hidden thing in my heart, beating like a drum…
I do not need to feel happy to be happy
Happiness is in me like spring, summer and snow
now that I have remembered
How to roar from within to always be warm,
the dancing hunt of the tiger, the flight of the dove –
do not forget me again (I will not forget myself)
I do not need to be happy as some people need happiness
or melancholy as fuel, not to be happy or sad
the deepest melancholy is joy to me in summer, spring or snow
I fear nothing, I am not burdened by desire – I am freer
than one who tries to satisfy the burn
the burn instead delights me
i do not need to feel happy to be happy
I am fierce, like summer.
Fearless like this army within me.
by tashmcgill | Mar 13, 2011 | Culture & Ideas, Prose & Poetry
We were just kids walking to school, skipping classes, drinking too much Coke in the weekends and talking about small things as if the world depended on them. We believed the world would depend on us. We were well-intentioned, no matter how we played on the edges of darkness and clung to one another in the chaos of adolescence. We held on to one another with a fervour. Somewhere within we knew that innocence was rushing from us like the tide escaping the shoreline. We longed for our freedom but had no idea what ‘real-life’ would bring.
We were unprepared – no fault of our parents, our school system, our religious institutions or lack of. It wasn’t television, the dawning of the internet age or the influence of sex, drugs’n’rock’n’roll. We were unprepared because that’s how you must be, to enter the fray of life. Stepping up onto the diving board, if you knew what was ahead you would never do it. So we closed our eyes and jumped, hoping everyone was just as scared as we were and trying not to show it.
But that was only yesterday, and what the hell just happened?
We gave birth to babies, kept some and gave some away; lost husbands, boyfriends, broke a limb, broke a back.
Suffered cancer, fought cancer and won, fought cancer and lost.
Stayed in one place for 2 years not leaving the house, didn’t stay anywhere more than 2 weeks, didn’t call anywhere home.
Tried to have babies and lost them, tried to have babies and couldn’t make them, tried to have babies then hated them, tried to have babies but couldn’t find a lover.
Found love in the arms of men, of a woman, of a few men and women.
Called ourselves feminist, traditionalist, reformist, non-conformist, modern, post-modern, wouldn’t be called anything or put in a box.
We tried over and over to find hope, until it was hopeless and then we succumbed to depression, succumbed to life and to death.
We died in our waking and living the same old thing, day in and day out wishing we were dead and some of us just died. Drove a car into a cliff face, never woke up. Drank too much vodka and drove, never woke up. Drank just enough wine to wash down the pills, never woke up. Tried to slice ourselves open but that never took, while some of us starved and others threw up. Some of us heartbroken and fear never recovering, others so strong now we hate ourselves and everyone. Some of us just lived but never woke up.
Some of us divorced, divorcing or cheating in public, in private – all of us still lonely somehow, even as we find ourselves in the places we never expected to be. Good or bad, who knows, who cares – we’re still fifteen and holding on to ourselves. Trying to let go and leap, trying to hold on to someone else just enough to let them be loved and be loved ourselves but not enough to kill it, the love in our hearts, the love in our life.
And we have become well-practiced at living, even when it doesn’t feel real but there is so much that feels so good, that we live like the breath is being stolen from us. Live, live, live screams our blood.
Some of us burying children, marriages, husbands, parents. Some of us nursing each other. Some of us dreaming still, looking forward to next beginnings, some of us waiting for the first beginnings and what the hell just happened? Live, live live screams our blood.
It was yesterday and we were jumping with our eyes closed into Life, that we had been hurtled towards by Time and everyone, hurtled ourselves into it and now we are dying. Some of us have died.
So all the time, we are hurtling towards death and it flies at us in the minutes and hours. Our lovers, our children, our parents, our siblings. By car, by disease, by water, by choice and I do not know if we are ever at peace.
by tashmcgill | Nov 18, 2005 | Short Stories
A Life Lived In Installments
Last night I told my story – at least all the important bits, to a complete stranger. When strung together, the instalments I have lived within, the pieces and palette that have shaped and fashioned me… sound like a cliche.
A Small Disgrace.
1. A Simple Untruth.
A lie starts with a whisper.
If you listen carefully to the words, the untruths slip with a heavy breath from the mouth. You have to be attuned to it of course, the slight catch in the throat, followed by the husky expulsion of warm air before the sound forms fully over the vocal chord. Ears twitch and listen for it in the hum of a café as your girlfriend recounts her Saturday night. You listen for small exaggerations, out of place adjectives and tinges of hesitation in her sentences.
The beginning of a simple untruth, like a loose thread that pulled too tightly threatens to unravel the fabric of a life. These sorts of untruths are shades of the truth in amongst lies, half-lies, half-truths and the Truth itself.
In this particular life, the simple untruths are rapidly growing out of control, and things are quickly unraveling. Although day by day, it goes unnoticed, without any measure of control the whispers are overwhelming truth and soon she will be lost in deception, hidden in the shadow of a small disgrace.
A small disgrace once kept out of view, but now being revealed as gently as a blanket is unraveled thread by thread.
2. Nothing happened today.
That was the first half-truth that was spoken from her lips.
At least, it was the first half-truth of any importance. Previously, white grey lies had only been in regards to trivial things like boys, using her sisters’ perfume, her mother’s make-up, how much homework there was left to do and the reasons why she was late to class. Simple lies that never connected or added to anything. But today her throat did catch, and her voice was husky as she formed the words so uncertainly.
“Nothing happened today.”
It was a foolish lie to begin with, because much happens every day between the sun rising and setting; the delivery of milk and the collection of rubbish on Monday mornings. All of these things had happened today. What she was trying to say, was that nothing important happened today.
But even that was a half-truth because it was the sum of insignificant things happening that Monday that led to the first situation she had ever willingly and knowingly covered with deceit. At first, she kept the dangerous truth from her mother, and then from her sisters and father, until it became the truth that she was keeping from everyone. That is when the unravelling began.
3. A Monday of Insignificant Events.
Mondays are not always pleasant and this particular Monday was no exception, besides being her 17th birthday. After a breakfast, she walked to school. Schoolyards and classrooms are the birthplace of many half-lies and untruths. For her, school is both triumph and tragedy, a place she escapes to with questions and ideas. Neither a genius or a fool, she engages with the marvellous possibilities of “what if?” in the schoolyard, because the rest of her life is dictated by pragmatism and realism. Although she doesn’t know it yet, she will spend the next 5 years determining exactly what extent one has to engage with reality. Her struggle both frustrates her and defines her; one of many things she will call character-shaping.
For now, she indulges in the books of great writers and history, calculus and chemistry equations inside a mind that is cluttered in the malleable form of a developing psyche. She is there, just under the surface and yet still becoming herself.
At 8.45am she is walking through the school gates, passing by younger students walking less confidently and classmates who look bored. She is however, wandering along a clifftop, face out into the wind looking at grey clouds breaking on the horizon. On the clifftop she feels powerful and small, and believes in God. She spends hours each day reminding herself why she believes in God.
Not because she is scared of not believing, but because she is scared of forgetting.
