Juniper’s World Journal – Page 7

How I am Writing my Memoir

june — From Family Albums – June Perkins

I am so thankful for my blog because it has made me regularly record my life as it happens and as remembered. As I write my memoir my various blog posts have been a rich resource to mine.

But now I must go beyond the blog. And in this journey beyond I turn to: friends and family who were there at the time, sensory triggers of a vivid nature like thunderstorms and tastes of food at the time, photographs, and offline resource of journals and letters mostly kept before 1993. I often send the stories to people to gain their insight. I like to call on the muse of ancestors and the power of prayer and meditation as I write.

Reflecting on life past sometimes I find gaps that need filling in. I am truly hoping those boxes of memory papers will help me out !

The three photographs above represent, early motherhood, graduation from University of Melbourne, and the days when my hubby and I were first going out. He had a one bedroom flat and a pet cat called Claws Depussy. He had put all of his worldly belongings into a car and traveled on the boat across the bass strait from Melbourne to Tasmania. A year after we met we were married.

I used to write diaries for my children, and keep notes of many meetings that I went to. I still try to write them a letter a year of what their lives were like. I hope to pass these onto them one day when they will mean more.

The other two major challenges are to consider what would people like friends, family and general public find interesting or inspiring about my life and what am I able to publicly share.

As I weave the threads this is what is emerging: the role of cultures from both my Mekeo Mum and Aussie English Dad; the role of the Baha’i community, the power of writing and art in my life, the significant positive impact of some amazing people on my life (some well known and some who should be), portraits of people who have inspired me directly and indirectly significant life events – motherhood, surviving and recovering from a cyclone, completing phd studies, and moving country to city.

As I come to the end of my first rough draft of the memoir I am wondering how best to present my memoir, and if I have it right for what I want to achieve.

This is my mantra for the memoir to help me as I head closer and closer the editing process.

This memoir is an exploration of landscapes, dreamscapes, writing scapes, culture scapes, and the getting of wisdom from Tasmania to Queensland. A Mekeo/Australian girl’s daily and remembered life.

(c) June Perkins

A Mekeo/Australian girl’s daily and remembered life

motherhood3b — An offering – June Perkins

I’ve been collecting my life story blogs into a memoir. Today I was so excited because that collection hit 75,000 words.

This is how I presently describe the book: exploring landscapes, dreamscapes, writing scapes, and the getting of wisdom from Tasmania to Queensland: a Mekeo/Australian girl’s daily and remembered life.

The book has shown me how much my blog has focused me into the daily task of writing and contributed to the creation of many works that I can now polish.

My major preoccupations have been growing up in Tasmania as a second generation migrant, the process of writing, gaining wisdom from life experiences, the making of identity, experiencing Queensland and moments of epiphany that sometimes appear like side tracks in life, but where understanding of the world become clearer.

Some of the stories in my collection include: how my Mum and Dad met, meeting an anthropologist studying my Mum’s village in Papua New Guinea, experiencing the night of Cyclone Yasi, being a community journalist charting the recovery process after a natural disaster, the experience of racism, belonging and acceptance, school, writing groups, how my family coped with my brother becoming brain damaged after being knocked off his bike, the loss of another brother who had many problems and died in his thirties, the joys and challenges of motherhood and the exploration of what makes identity in terms of – place, spirit, culture, religion, upbringing.

Music, art, photography, writing, creativity all weave their way through the many stories. It pays tribute to many inspiring friends and people met in my family’s life journey.

My present challenge is do I leave it as a collection of stories and poems that I connect with newly written stories or newly written passages in the stories already there, or do I now use it to inspire a memoir written in a more traditional way.

Now it’s time for me to read a lot of memoirs and think about what makes someone want to read a life story.

If you have any suggestions of great ones to read let me know.

I am really interested in – What makes you read a memoir or a collection of related short stories?

More paper please

It was so Dickension – the moment I headed off to the paper supply office at my school.

I had gone back into the public system after being in a small alternative school and this was my journey back into the mainstream system.

I was on what was called the ‘free list’ which meant our family was now so poor I was eligible for free paper.

The office shop lady gave me her usual once over disdainful look and said ‘And why do you need more paper so soon? Weren’t you here a short while ago’

After causing her usual amount of discomfort through a quick draw ‘you sure you need this paper’ stare. She handed it to me anyway, but I went away wondering how to write smaller and squeeze more into less space.

It wasn’t my fault I had so much to write for my assignments.

I was doing well with my book reports, social science and English projects and poetry. ‘More paper please,’ was all I could say.

I just kept going back for paper and writing more stories.

Our year 6 teacher was a former football coach and he believed in applying all his footy coaching tricks to his students. He liked to coach us in life. We ran laps of the school every day to stimulate our intellect by having our bodies fit. I remember doing ten laps I was that keen to have my brain work well.

He was imaginative, and had us deck our whole classroom out as an Egyptian scene, complete with pyramid to read in. I wrote poetry about Egypt as we were studying Ancient history and performed it at the school assembly. This was one of my highlights of year 6.

He encouraged us to make our assignments well presented in terms of how they looked, as well as the content. This was the year I learnt how to use pencil shavings to colour my paper. It was the year I mastered my cod cursive handwriting and went up 4 years in spelling age. As a treat if we did well in class or finished work early we could go and collect a mind puzzle from the school office and then solve it for the rest of class.

I collected many fun puzzle times.

One of my proudest moments was winning a big maths puzzle, that was set for the upper grades. It was a number find I think. I won a Rubics cube, back when they first came out.

Year 6 was an amazing school year, and although that office lady and I never saw eye to eye, I began to realise that there was a power in being able to write, speak and present words.

I had many opportunities, but was unable to afford school camp. Instead my memory is of two other girls from that year staying back from camp also, and we had to plan an interstate trip we would make with travel brochures. We had to do all the costings and list the places we would visit. I miscalculated some of my travel time, and was told I would be booked for speeding, but apart from that my assignment was sound.

At the time I had never been across the Tasman, to what Tasmanians call the mainland. Yet my Mum came from a far away land, Papua New Guinea and I had come out from PNG when I was under two. I didn’t know about travelling anywhere but Tasmania.

There were many other adventures and wisdoms learnt in year 6, but most important of all it was definitely a time I came to see the power of the written and spoken word.

I didn’t know that the future would hold many travels and I would make some the journeys in that assignment. Yet, even though I adore the power of the written word I often wonder –

How much of the eternal spirit can we capture on mortal paper?

(c) June Perkins

Saying Goodbye: Leaving the North

33001_orig_636_0 (2) — At the Golden Gumboot 2006

To say goodbye to the Cassowary Coast we have revisited early photographs and taken new ones in the same pictured spot.

One iconic spot in our local area is the Golden Gumboot pictured above. It’s such a touristy thing to do, having a photo at all the big objects around Australia.
No wonder we didn’t bother to take one of these every year.

I took some more of the family in the cane, based on some early family portraits here, but will post those later as we still have so much to do.

It’s interesting what people say as we are moving things like:

‘You won’t like the city after living here’
‘Will you be driving around [to me]?’
‘You will be missed’
‘You will be remembered’
‘Goodluck’
‘Thanks for how you have been in this community’ [lots of messages to David as a teacher]
‘We will come see you’
‘We probably won’t come see you but you are welcome to see us if you come back’
‘Thanks for your friendship’
‘You won’t be able to stay there, you will come back here’
‘We know this move will be good for you in the long run, and we hope in the short term too’
‘Looking forward to meeting you [from the new area]’
‘It will be a big change but you will adapt [from the new area.]’
‘We’ll see you in the cricket competitions for teams travelling north [Sandon’s coach!]

I think back to the things people said before we moved North, and have a feeling a place
city or country, is what you make of it, and the people in it and the special memory places and spaces that come into being.

The people who are going to remain friends, stay friends wherever you move, and you connect again, whilst others
are there for a part of the journey and that is okay too.

It is comforting visiting friends who will have some of their children living a few suburbs away from where we are moving.
Seems there is a Tully contingent in Brisbane. However, I also think warmly of my Tasmanian childhood and friends.

Time to explore, time to dream, time to search for new opportunities and new stories. Perhaps though also a time to dream of the good things of the past.

groupkidsgumboot201resize3 — At the Golden Gumboot 2013

Travelling Light – The day of the great book cull…

We are selecting what to take to Brisbane. We want to learn to travel lighter. So although we love books, we are taking only our favourite and most useful books, and our most beautiful ones.

It is the day of the great book cull.

When I was growing up I owned about ten books, and the rest were borrowed from the library. I borrowed about ten a week. I wonder what made me start collecting so many to keep physically.

There are books from university courses, favourite subjects, library throw out sales, kids books galore, and then the series books the children worked their way through and bought when on special. So much accumulation.

Books mark anniversaries, birthdays, special occassions, prize givings and more.

Some are ancient, out of date text books, like my Abnormal Psychology book from University days.

Other books going out are the learn to read books of the children and some of their early picture books, we want only small selections of to keeps of most precious ones they still read and reread.

It is not always difficult to select the throw aways as mould, the damp and wasps have attacked some of the books, and they are no longer pleasant to read. Other books we know we can easily access on line, and there’s just no need to have them.

As my son says. ‘you don’t need to own a book to have it in your head or easily find it to read’ and this is very true. I carry the memory of so many books in my head and heart – and now it’s just time to let go, give away and surrender.