My creative muse turns 100 today.
How far back does your creative lineage go?
Our mother Marjorie died peacefully in her sleep thirteen years ago. If she was still with us we would be celebrating her centenary this year.
She was my original creative muse. She still is.She was the first one to encourage my creativity, to show me the haiku delight of capturing a moment in words or pictures.
Like most creative people she didn’t have an easy life. She suffered from bipolar illness which for half her adult life went undiagnosed. While she may spend months each year in the grip of the black dog, somehow she would bounce back and be at the kitchen window sketching the sunset or out in the garden collecting bunches of violets and forget-me-nots, lemon balm and mint. Her Encyclopedia Britannica was full of wild flowers and dried grasses which she would pop into envelopes filled with magazine cuttings, drawings and poems, ready to send to friends, kids and grand kids. Over the years she must have written 1000s of poems, dashed off 100s of sketches, painted dozens of paintings. Never published or exhibited, when we were packing up her house I collected them all. A few of her paintings line my walls and her poems and sketches sit in Hong Kong bags in my garage and under my desk. Whenever I bring them out, her quirky creative spirit oozes off the pages, encouraging me to be as wild and playful as she was an artist, reminding me to enjoy the creative potential each day brings.
Marj spent her working life as a school teacher and high school librarian in country town Victoria. Husband Chas was the school principal. They moved around from town to town following the promotion ladder, finally settling in Alexandra, a picturesque place of rivers, lakes and mountains, where on weekends we would follow dirt tracks up into tall timber forests in search of the green hooded orchid. If we got bogged and we often did, Chas would get out his homemade barbeque and start cooking chops until help arrived.
Marj loved poetry. She’d studied all the greats in her early years and had the works of Yevtushenko, Matsuo Basho, Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood on her shelves. She loved nature too. When a nurse once asked her to give her religion for a form she was filling out, Marj answered without missing a beat — nature.
Her notebooks are filled with nature poems, haiku and children’s limericks written for the grandkids. There’s another category too — black humour writings about depression, small town life and marriage. Even her shopping lists read like poems!
On her darkest days Marj felt she had wasted her life. We reminded her that her legacy lives on in her kids and grandkids (who are now having their own kids). Nature lovers all, among us there are adventurers, sailors, skiers, writers, poets, singers, a fashion designer/jeweller, an Olympian snowboarder/musician, a comic artist/illustrator, and a drum playing, screenprint artist.
While Marj may not have seen her work in print it is powerful to realise the influence one creative person can have. Who knows how long that influence will be carried down through generations to come.
It’s always a worthwhile exercise to recognise your creative lineage. Maybe it wasn’t a family member but a teacher or family friend. Who was the grandparent, parent, aunt, uncle, school teacher, artist, who ignited your creative spark, who showed you by example it was possible to live a creative life?
And when you have identified them don’t forget to thank them.
Thanks my Marjorie Mum, who the hell would I be without you?!
Happy centenary!!
From the Marj Archives
Rain
Day upon day upon night
the lashing rains
the spouts pour over
the lawn is a sea
the ferny asparagus
golden yellow and lacey
waving this way and that
like tangled seaweed
sucked by the currents
Fog
The old sun deigned to shine
for one hour today
A lacework of gnarled, twisted, twiggy branches
stretched towards the blue dome of sky
People sang and went trippingly to the park
a lilt in their voices
But too soon an ominous mist on the range
predicted the pattern
of evening
Dog and I
We were up there one dew filled morning
dog and I
racing through masses of wildflowers
When we got home
my white jeans
bore a printed pattern of mauve and pink
painted by petals
Happiness
A lady I know runs on happiness
One day, last autumn
I ran out of it
So I phoned her up
Left a message
“Please send me half a kilogram of happiness to last til thurs week
Pay you later”
Marj
©Jan Cornall 2018
Jan Cornall is a writer/performer/teacher who mentors writers and leads international writing workshops and retreats. She has written plays, screenplays and her books, Take Me To Paradise and Archipelagogo are available here. She is currently completing a short story project with Indonesian writer Triyanto Triwikromo and working on a literary travel memoir about mothers and melancholy while following the traces of the French writer Marguerite Duras in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Heading out next
November 1–7, 2018. Bali Residency. Seven days just to write! At a beachside hacienda with inhouse mentors and feedback from fellow authors.
Jan 29-Feb 4, 2019. Haiku Snow Walk, Japan A snow shoe trek through Kawabata’s Snow Country near Nagano, Japan.
March 1–15, 2019 Moroccan Caravan A creative adventure into the heart of Moroccan culture. Tangier, Chefchaouen, Fes, Tissardmine.
