There's no aphrodesiac like a one-way ticket out of the country.

Suddenly I am like a tantrum-throwing infant, squalling & stomping my feet: I DON'T WANT TO GO TO EUROPE! Europe stinks! Who needs Europe? Whose stupid idea was this whole adventure anyway? Suddenly "I'll be gone indefinitely" has become "Well- I don't know- maybe- um. Maybe I'll come back for the summer".

I would like to sincerely apologize to the non-trivial number of people I have mocked, or been cynical to, when they have embarked on logically foolish but emotionally compelling endeavours where one or other of the participants is about to get on a plane and leave the country. I was right in what I said, yes, but knowing that has apparently not prevented me from doing exactly the same thing.

That noise is the karma stick cracking me across the back of the head. Ouch.

I am so deeply in denial about my imminent departure that I am actually afraid, in my rare moments of clarity, that I will forget to do something rather necessary like apply for my visa, or pack my suitcase, or arrange my places to stay. I have made delaying those things, putting them off, refusing to think about it, into an art-form. Procrastination: Ask Me How.

Meanwhile I am having a very good time, in denial. This past weekend was Bad Dog's Playgroup party and Extra Dirty, and both of those parties blew my mind. I am having fun in ways that I forgot it was possible to have fun. Cynical hard-edged mutinously independent Ali seems to have stepped off the stage for a moment, and wide-eyed grinning hand-clapping delighted "oh my goodness this is so much FUN!" Ali is in the house.

Given that it was hard-edged cynical Ali who decided she might as well hurl herself out into the world, over the seas, because nothing that interesting was happening in her life here (the problem with purchasing international flights: you have MONTHS before departure for something happen to make you regret the decision), I'm not really sure which one is going to be getting on that plane in July. July. That's ages away, right?

Making Something

Every Monday night we gather in a sweet little community run space in Enmore, and we craft together. We are not the first stitch'n'bitch group in the world, not even the first in this space, but who needs to be the only people doing something fabulous in order for it to be fabulous? We are building something, making something, a little community of skill and warmth and love. One week we crochet hats, the next we spend making stuffed animals out of socks and gloves, the one after we cross-stitch. And some weeks, like this week, we all work on our own projects, with a million conversations threading through across and around the room, over pots of tea and bags of yarn.

Some of us are expert crafters, some of us have never picked up a needle or hook before, some are expert in one thing and brand new to another. Many of us are brand-newly experiencing the magic, the revelation of craft, the way the world tilts and shifts when you learn that I can make that, and you witness yourself doing it.

This group is a project I thought and spoke about for a long time before I began it. I am so proud of having done so. Seeing people blossom into the confidence of new crafts, seeing the connections and friendships forming, the crafters coming out of the woodwork to be social and share with each other: it's a lovely thing we have made together, and I am proud to have begun it.

(photo by Miss Yasmin, taken at last week's cross-stitch extravaganza)

Waves

We are 4 women and this fierce & surging ocean, the waves so intense that the distortion, looking all the way out to the horizon, is enough to induce sea-sickness. It looks like the end of the world, Armageddon as it always turns up in my nightmares (a fierce, uncontrollable ocean, implacably advancing, unrelenting). The air is thick with salt-spray and the breakers are violent, crazed things. This pool is usually calm, clear blue: but today it is white-water surging & hissing, driftwood and debris crashing against the rocks.

And so, of course, we get in. Strip naked on this freezing-cold, biting-wind day, dash down the stairs, and leap into the fierce water. It's warm- warmer than the air- and we shriek with being shoved & pushed & pulled by the waves breaking over the pool wall. It's brilliant, thrilling, enlivening, washing the hang-over cobwebs out of our brains, and it's a little bit terrifying as well: because those waves are really fucking rough, actually, and actually, those rocks behind us are really hard, and there is a moment where you are trying to stay where you are but the wave is shoving you hard at the rocks and you realise this may not be the best idea you've ever had.

But we all survive (with only minor injuries- my foot got smacked & scraped along a rock, and someone else wound up with sea-urchin spines embedded in her foot). We scramble out and, teeth-chattering, dress again, bubbling and thrilled with our adventure. There is impromptu pocket-knife and safety-pin surgery to remove sea-urchin spikes, there is a swig from a hip-flask of something sweet & strong, and we disperse. Salty and happy and alive, very alive.

Formative: created by

So I wrote this, and left it up overnight, and woke up in the morning and deleted it. But deleting it didn't feel right. I wasn't comfortable with the reasons why I deleted it: it felt like shame, and silence, and not talking about "these things" in polite company. And you know what? FUCK SHAME & FUCK SILENCE.

It's my right to talk about this, and I choose to. For myself, and for all the many (many, many people- this is a fucking big club I belong to) who can't or don't want to talk about it publicly. I will, because I can, and it's my right to do so.

And so, on with the post, with an additional Trigger Warning: Don't read this if you're not feeling safe and comfortable with reading about experiences of physical & sexual violence.

Sometimes you can have known somebody for a long time- or a short time, but intensely. And they begin to speak, maybe in a monotone or maybe in exactly the same voice as they were just using to tell you about their weekend just gone. But what they are telling you is about the things, the deep, cutting, rupturing things that have made them who they are, without which you could never really know them. And it is difficult to know what to do with that knowledge, suddenly thrust, of their deepest, of their darkest, of their fault lines and their hair-triggers.

So I have a need, right now, to tell you these things, that I do not often or willingly share in public forums.

The first, and by now easiest, is about going to the desert, to Woomera in 2002, as a 19 year old university student, about being part of a liberation-by-force action, about coming face to face with the iron fist of the state and the people whose bodies suffered it directly.

This is what I wrote about it, back then, aged 19, just returned:

I've been in the desert. 1000 kilometers away from home, rescuing refugees from concentration camps. I don't know how far away news of my actions travelled because I've been cut off from phone, email, news and papers for almost a week (it feels like much longer). If you have heard of us in the news, please know that probably most of what you've heard has been lies. Just. You know. So you know.

I was there. In a great, flat desert where they lock people away for having the audacity to try to enter my country. I smashed down fences and fought back when the cops hit me and I pulled people out of captivity. I screamed and cried and ran with them and shielded them with my body and presence when they would have been recaptured. Some of the ones I was looking after were recaptured and I used my voice to call for cameras- not to record the police brutality, but to stop it. They stop kicking children when it's being recorded.

I have images burned into my memory that will never go away. Things have changed that will never change back. I'm not the same person I was before easter and the desert. The fine, clean red dust will never entirely wash out of my boots and jeans and balaclava. The children being bashed by police officers will never leave my mind. The fear and pride and shocking responsibility of liberating human beings will never fade.

I don't know how to move in the world I've come back to. I don't know how to talk to friends who weren't there. I don't know how to see the benign concrete jungle again and not a sinister parasite cloaking everyone I know and love in blind, complacent deceptions. I don't know how to cry about it and let it out. I don't know how to forget.

I never learned how to forget, and there are things that I have never been able to do since I came home from there. It's 7 years later now, and still: I have never been able to watch television, for example, or most movies. I can't- not won't, but CAN'T- deal with entertaining narratives of traumas being done to people. I can't go into supermarkets without breaking into cold sweats. I can't and refuse to engage in political arguments with emotionally removed people who create abstractions of human lives. I cry, often, and (in this cultural context) inappropriately. I care too much, and uselessly, and turn my energies to community activism (where I hope and believe I can make a difference) rather than that brutal real activism where I saw the truth, saw my powerlessness in the face of it, and was completely broken by it.

So. And. The other thing that I might tell you, in a light-hearted voice maybe to distract you from what I am saying, is that I care a lot about community actions around consent, and boundaries, and trust, and power, and abuse, and assault. And I care about these things because (and I will mumble this bit) my girlfriend used to rape me and ha ha ha well I mean I don't usually put that word to it because hey she's a woman and I'm a strong person and these things don't really happen and- I will go on, and on, and meander and monologue, but what I mean is: I said no, and my saying no meant nothing, and I learned to hate myself, and my body, and sex, and sexual response, because what I wanted, what I said, all of my proud feminist training and all of my sex-positive experiences meant nothing because when I said no, she kept going, and there was nothing I could do about it.

And the doubt, and the fear, and the re-writing of memories, and the deciding not to speak out about it (for what I felt were my very valid reasons at the time). And the having physical and intimate boundaries that are 40 foot high, topped with razor-wire, and patrolled not only by dogs that shoot bees out of their mouths when they bark but also sharks that have lazer-beams strapped to their foreheads. And being all of these things while also being a 26 year old polyamorous kinky queer dyke who likes to dress skimpy and do (in this cultural context) incredibly adventurous things in public. And dealing with the disconnect between that public persona, and the expectations that people produce from reading me out there, who then encounter me sitting on top of those 40 foot high personal walls, among the razor-wire. Thinking, you could not possibly ever want me enough to bother scaling these.

These aren't the only experiences that have formed me but they are the invisible ones, the ones that don't tend to be part of the grander or more casual narratives, the ones that, when they pop out, make people look at me differently and re-consider what they thought they knew. I'm an extrovert, and I thrive on being known and seen for what I am. Recently I have found myself declaring, more and more often, who and what I am. I am not so interested in simply claiming my "survivor" badge (although I do, and with pride). I care more about connecting with other people with similar experiences, with pooling our knowledge and beginning to understand what this shit means, all of it or little pieces of it.

I am coming to believe, a little bit, in the power of what communities are capable of doing when they're mobilised for the collective or individual good. I am becoming brave enough to pick up publications like the "World Without Sexual Assault" newspaper and wait til I get home before I start crying over it. I am learning that my personal response to trauma, which is (as it is for everyone) multifaceted but often winds up presenting as this proud and clear statement of my experiences: that this is useful for other people, and that it is, perhaps, worth my while to speak up.

Capsicum Anuum & Other Solenaceous Delights

The hardest thing about moving out has been leaving my garden behind (again). At least this time the garden is still here, the plants all still merrily carrying on with life (last time I moved I had to dismantle my raised beds & destroy my plants in the productive rush of late summer- heartbreaking!). I visit often, and return to my new home with a bag full of fresh things to keep me going: kale, chard, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, eggplants, capsicums, chillies. It turns out I have completely forgotten how to cook without ready access to fresh herbs & veggies (dried herbs? What are they?).

Today I went out and harvested this incredible load of capsicums and chillies: sweet and spicy both. The thing about growing these (and eggplants and tomatoes) in this garden has been observing the effects of what I knew was limited sunlight. This house is oriented so that by mid-Autumn the garden is almost completely shaded by the shadow of the house, and no sunlight is seen again til mid-Spring. It's one of the reasons I never grew too attached to the idea of being here long-term- gardening has taught me many things, including the profound and priceless value of winter sunlight. And even in Summer the sun situation never reaches what a European garden would require to be called full-sun, the 8+ hours they tell you you MUST HAVE in order to grow veggies. At the peak of Summer I think the best-exposed beds got, maybe, 6-7 hours of sunlight.

So, well, look: I grew veggies in those conditions. I grew even the heat-loving, sun-hungry veggies, with reasonable success. I've harvested scores, possibly hundreds of chillies off my assortment of chilli plants (made up of a '6-pack spicy' punnet mix from Bunnings which between them grow a dazzling array of colours and shapes, and a "Burke's Backyard Thai" that produces the darlingest little fire-orange chillies). Probably 20-30 eggplants over the season, between my "Casper" white eggplant (which has without question produced the best- started early and kept going all season, and STILL has 6 little baby eggplants growing on it now, on the edge of Winter!), the "Long Purple" Asian eggplants, and the sickly, surly but eventually productive Rosa Bianca. As for capsicums, the sweet bell-pepper varieties: well. I've harvested heaps, dozens, but they've all been green. And not one that I've left on the plant has ripened properly to red- they've only ever rotted before quite getting to full ripeness. And the same is true of the larger sizes of the chillies, these nice long horn-shaped ones (no idea what the variety is): dozens and dozens of green fruit, but nothing ripening.

So at a guess, I'd say that the larger fruit need more sunlight and longer seasons to ripen properly- and now, at this end of the season when they want to ripen, there's not nearly enough sunlight left in this garden to do it.

Which is not the world's greatest tragedy, really. Green capsicums are fine & delicious things, and it's been an excellent lesson in what you can do with less sunlight than is generally recommended. I've left green fruit on the smaller chilli varieties, because I think they might still get a chance to ripen, but I've cut all the green fruit off the bigger ones now. And the eggplants I'll give a few more weeks- they're still madly flowering and unfurling new leaves despite the severely restricted sunlight, so we'll see how they go growing fruit.

Other lessons imparted by the eggplants, capsicums & chillies this year:

• these are LONG-SEASON plants. They go in in early Spring & stay up until, at least in Sydney, Winter. DON'T plan to put them in a bed that will be occupied til mid-or-late Spring, and DON'T plan to get in any Autumn crops in those same beds unless you're keen to rip out plants at their peak of productivity (Autumn is the real season for these- they grow & produce some through Summer, then go crazy-productive as the days shorten- did you know that? I didn't).
• Feed them lots of potash, they like that.
• Give them a good staking/caged support system- I didn't, and regretted it. I've been de-tangling heavy, fruit-laden branches all season, and finding sprawled branches lost in tangles of grass. Next time, I think, there will be cages.
• Always harvest the chillies when they turn red, because removing one flush of fruit from the plant will encourage it to flower & set another flush of fruit.
• And come up with a plan for your harvest, especially your chilli harvest- give it away to friends or find some chutney/relish/chilli jam recipes, because you will never go through the quantity of chillies produced (well, not if you have 7 plants) and it is ridiculously heartbreaking to throw them out when they've been sitting on the counter too long & gone bad.

A Thing Of Unsurpassed Beauty

I finally finished my first tea cosy. I've been on a bit of a tea cosy fantasy rampage recently, not so much with the actual constructing of them but lots of thinking, reading, researching and daydreaming about them. Tea cosies- who DOESN'T need more in their life?

I made this one across two Monday meetings of the Tu-Tu Stitch'n'Bitch group (which is awesome, and if you're in the vicinity of Enmore on Mondays you should stop by). Finding a sad (tragic!) dearth of crocheted tea cosy patterns in my research, I decided to make this one by modifying a hat pattern on-the-fly. The hat pattern is this fantastic hat by Rheatheylia (which I highly recommend for the crocheted-hat beginner, it's incredibly easy to follow and makes a very fine hat indeed- nicely shaped & textured).

I modified it to create slits by, after the 5th row, only crocheting down one side for the next 6 rows (literally ending the row, chaining up, turning the cosy, and going back- reversing the pattern by doing backpost-double stitches instead of frontpost-double on every 2nd row). Tied off after the end of 6 rows, joined the yarn back in at the top of one of the slits, and worked across the other side for 6 rows to create 2 equal-length 'flaps', then worked another two rows all the way around to join the two slits and finish the cosy. Then I single-stitched rows of that feathery/lashes pink stuff along the ribbing/ridged effect in the original pattern. I think it looks a little bit like a sea urchin, what d'you reckon?

I've donated the tea cosy to the Tu-Tu space so we can use it to keep our tea warm on Monday nights, but I think now that I've made one there are many more tea cosies that need to be made for my home, friends, and the office.

The Only Constant

It's only been a little over a year since I moved in- last February, in fact- and now off I go again. This has been, for real, an era, for me and for this household, and it's not easy thing to leave behind. I ache already in anticipation of missing the cats, my garden, the constant happy hum of chaos, the friends that have become cups-of-tea-together-every-morning family.

The last time I lived in a house like this- a sharehouse that became a family, an institution, practically a brand name- was before I left for America four years ago. It seems not coincidental that the vibrancy and possibilities of these big shared spaces are a powerful part of my movement onwards and away. It is possible for me to go to Europe now for having lived in this house, learnt these lessons, met and loved these people. And four years ago it was possible to go to San Francisco, to seek my leather queer homeland, because of what and who I became as part of that household.

My enormous, cluttered bedroom has been packed down into a few small boxes, all my furniture, all my crafting gear, most of my clothes distributed out into the world (mine no longer). A few boxes of photos and precious documents to be stored at my parent's house, but overall, well: I own vastly less stuff today than I did a week ago, and it feels fucking amazing.

Breaking these attachments is hard. Comfortable and safe are difficult things to give up.