Diary of Bodies 9: upcoming events to beat the winter blues (maybe)

As I write this it’s freezing and blustery, though, thankfully, there’s a deep blue sky – this neck of the woods really does know how to beguile and contrast. Perhaps we should just enjoy the feeling of winter, because it’s a feeling that will become increasingly rare as we cook our planet into smithereens?

In any case, enough of the grim stuff.

Over the coming weeks I have a handful of events in Canberra:

• I’m pleased to have been asked to help launch the new Harry Hartog store at the Australian National University, 6pm on Tuesday 16 July; the Harry Hartog group has been very supportive of BODIES OF MEN, so it’s lovely to, well, return the love
• I’m very much looking forward to being in conversation with prominent journalist and novelist Michael Brissenden, in the cosy and stylish Muse Restaurant & Bar (and bookshop), at 3pm on Sunday 11 August
• I have two events at the Canberra Writers Festival: a panel on the creative process with Karren Viggers, Kathryn Hind, and Patrick Mullins, with Emma Alberici at 3.30pm Sunday 25 August; and I’ll be chairing a discussion on ‘growing up queer’ with David Marr, Sally Rugg, and Professor Sally Wheeler at 5.30pm on the same day
• it will be interesting to visit a new arts facility in Canberra, Terroux, a private rural property that is now offering artist residencies and events – I’ll be in conversation with Dr Christina Spittel and Dr Glenda Cloughley, 2pm-5pm, Saturday 31 August

And before I head to the couch with a blanket and a book, I thoroughly enjoyed chatting about BODIES OF MEN with journalist Genevieve Jacobs for RIOTACT – our chat in the cafe of the Australian War Memorial resulted in a brief video interview as well as a terrifically engaged written piece.

Onwards.

Being there before it arrives

‘Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was – there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard – but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark – it must be dark – and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realised that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular…Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage with this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me.’ – Toni Morrison, The Paris Review Interviews Vol. II, 2007