Another year ends, but this time it feels like a beginning

This blog began in 2007, which coincided with the start of my PhD. It also marked the beginning of a difficult few years of understanding myself beyond the academic label which had stuck since primary school, as well as independent of parental-societal-cultural expectations.

I have now been through a research trip to Canada to meet Deepa Mehta, conferences around Australia, invigorating trips to India, multiple visits to the library, numerous undergraduate essays and films, many thesis drafts, long hours of film editing and countless intellectual stimulants around the clock. This has been accompanied by the development of a self that is more self-assured, more poetic and also more forgiving of its own and others' mortal shortcomings. In addition to scholarly journals and books in my field, I have also taken to style blogs, street photography, bright nail paint, sequined berets, peep toe shoes, pencil skirts, retro dresses, statement necklaces, paisley scarves, fresh scents, orange tulips, cooking laksa, shopping in Chinatown, enjoying driving and most importantly, being unapologetic about all of the above. I have been through a fair share of admiration and heartache in a relatively short period, and find my feet moving to a new beat (yes, love is more likely a musical journey rather than a happy ending, but then I don't claim to be an expert). 

Then there is the likelihood that I may not be in Adelaide for very long. The past seven years, almost my entire adult life has been spent here, and for that I feel fortunate - as much for the great people I have met and befriended as for the education and work experience I have acquired. If and when I move, I know I will miss the Cibo aromas in winter, the jacaranda carpets in spring, the festival fever in summer, and the long weekends in autumn. Here's to 2010, wherever it may be!

Thinking Design

It fascinated me that during the assessment of my ten selected images from the entire term, it is my sense of design that drew the most attention. I am glad that this evolving instinct, this attunement to forms and textures in the environment is a) not confined to my growing love of vintage fashion, and b) has been recognized by professional photographers. There is certainly still a long way to go in learning photographic concepts, as well as mastering the darkroom, but I feel encouraged. Nerdy days begone, this academic girl thinks design!

Darkroom Zen

Working is the darkroom was challenging at first, but taught me a great deal about image tones (and that method, discipline and patience go hand-in-hand with art). As one of my fellow students put it, it is a rather zen-like experience. Only difference is that instead of incense sticks, you smell developers and fixers. But it grows on you.

Image-Birthing

After years of itching to learn the 'craft', I finally undertook and completed the nine-week Introduction to Film Photography course at the Centre for Creative Photography.

Palimpsesting

I'm editing my thesis and trying to explain the notion of a 'palimpsestic reading'. This needs to be referenced, hence I resort to Wikipedia, Google Scholar and Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands. Still no definition. The reference is turning into a palimpsest in its own right. Then I turn to articles from a course on world literature undertaken in my undergrad years. More references to Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and Shakespeare's Othello. What a parchment! I'm turning it into a digital record.

Hallelujah

I am at Chocolate Bean and listening to Jeff Buckley's 'Hallelujah' - Hallelujah indeed!

Last time I was here, it was in the middle of a house move, a thesis draft, a documentary screening, a conference preparation and a personal decision hangover. Over two months ago. Only. 

Not that life is perfect now. Not that it ever will be. But it is a perfect moment now as Hallelujah comes on. Despite the pain of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

Hallelujah is now. The external is catching up with internal mechanics. It is not an affectation. It is wilful, ongoing and attuned. Now is hallelujah.

Colour-coordinated Home Cooking

Popular Wisdom

It has been an unusual weekend of gathering wisdom from the most unlikely of sources. One which began as my flight landed at Adelaide Airport on Friday evening. I had been conferencing in Brisbane the previous week and was undoubtedly weary. But the emotional turmoil resulting from seeing families travel together and unaccompanied travellers get embraced by kith and kin cannot be explained through fatigue. I was grateful for the professional opportunities I had thus far received, but at what cost? No one told me there was a sacrifice involved. Or that it entailed such a degree of self-reliance.

I have always craved the independence I now (almost) have, so why the hollowness? Well, while contemplating all of the above the following Saturday, I accidentally began watching The Princess Diaries, something I would not announce on an academic profile. Then there was the penultimate scene where the much-flawed and drenched character played by Anne Hathaway declares to a regal audience the reason she chose to take up the 'princess's job'. She said it was because this time it wasn't about her, but the others who could potentially benefit from the smooth carrying out of her duties. My scepticism about aristocracy and chick flicks aside, this is just the piece of advice I needed at that point. Settled or otherwise, I was not going to make my parents or friends or students any happier by drowning in melancholy.

Then there came the astrological column in the local daily suggesting Aquarians had a once in a lifetime opportunity to let go of the past. Again, potentially cliched, but it meant a lot to me in context. This happens to be a time when a lot of old tangible and intangible 'things' are biting the dust. I am going to choose to feel happy about the new opportnities this presents, as well as the space this creates in my life for hitherto unexperienced experiences. I also need to forgive myself just as I have forgotten and forgiven others. As I was worrying about the ghosts of persons past, I got the following message from a friend - "There's no bad karma of yours that hasn't been offset by their's. Mediaeval etiquette: It is bad manners to serve a lady while you are wearing a helmet". On that note, I decided to try and shed my emotional pessimism, work-related overdrive and general lack of exuberance. No point in attempting to be a supergirl when it hard enough being a 'normal' one. Breathe...

Displacement for the Always Already Displaced

Eight more days of transit, and I can't wait to arrive. The importance of journeying notwithstanding, a combination of stability and uncertainty might be better than having your goods in two or more places. So many split selves.

This is the longest relationship I've had with a house outside of my parental home. Just over four years is not a long time, but encompassing my transition from a shaken twenty-one year old girl to a more realistic and self-assured person has been a significant shift. It may not be the rosiest period of my life, or the most memorable s/pace, but it has been meaningful in its own right. Its space has allowed me to experiment, to fail, to stand up again and to celebrate with good friends. It has given me room to manouevre around my own developing self, which I'm sure will continue to grow and learn.

The comfort zone established by this house and its radius has also generated a spatial inertia over the past couple of years that I have been craving to move beyond. I only have to shop in a new supermarket or buy coffee from a different cafe or drive down an unknown street to feel alive and adventurous. The hassle of un-cluttering and financial-physical-psychological stress aside, I am looking forward to this change. It is a small step towards tangibly letting go of a past that once felt like a giant leap. Lest I forget, changing countries/continents is a bigger ask. How could I have come to fear displacement? It is not the absence of roots, but an excess. A potentially constructive, creative excess at that. The Always Already Displaced need not be detached entities floating amoebically in deterritorialised discourse, we should feel at home everywhere.

It annoyed initially that this change beckons just as I am approaching a full draft of my doctoral thesis, and a not too distant submission date. However, my time management skills were probably in need of a force beyond control of this magnitude. And my intellectual-emotional energies, narrativising the project in the final chapter, were also possibly clamouring for a more recent, more embodied experience of displacement. This is not to say that the previous displacements have been forgotten, only that they have become souvenirs. A notebook here, a t-shirt there, and some furniture to deal with. Also, there are the episodes that have been consciously erased. Tears and troubled waters are now being mingled with hopes and dreams. A changed external configuration, an altered path of everyday existence may or may not make a difference to old habits that have turned into hindrances. But this time I'm looking out for light, not for ample space. If I can open my bedroom blinds in the new house, I will have let the outside in, the inside out.

Displaced Thought c

There are other 'things' that need to go. Perhaps an online garage sale is the answer. Dangling earrings that I will not wear any more. Big statement necklaces that are lying unnoticed. Shoes that are a size too big or small, but good as new. Bags that could fetch moolah from vintage buyers. I'm feeling the change, and not just in terms of my current wardrobe. File, fold, give, take, the cycle continues.