Writesites
Kirsten Krauth looks at writing on the net
West Ryde. Sydney. Australia. Noon.
Through rented white lace to a clumsy rusted clothes line. Dark colours in a harsh New Year’s light. Petunias fighting with weeds. A roaring herb garden, salad smells, lemon balm, Vietnamese mint, laksa dreams, pennyroyal. Green tomatoes staked yesterday and zucchinis big enough to kill. Milka’s beans snaking through from next door. Our garage roller door is shut. Hiding unused, secretive, bought-on-a-whim things. A brick barbie covered in Wandering Jew, native trees—bottlebrush and banksia—give no shade. Green lawn as long as a terrier’s fringe. Still. Waiting for cool change.
The Noon Quilt, trace online writing community, (http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/quilt/info.html – link expired) is a java patchwork of time impressions, a delirium of techno-hippiedom, the irresistible idea of words and moments linked around the globe. Singapore. Brisbane. Arizona. Paris. Brazil. Japan. Manchester. I am touched and transfixed at noon on this hot day.
A world view made of little windows: Trevor Lockwood sees a “fat publisher” who confronts writers at the end of his driveway, begging to be seen in print. Simon Mills writes from the basement. No windows. About his cat who fell off the window ledge. Fell a few storeys, “landed unscathed yet embarrassed.” Val Seddon sees the bench on the patio, where her father used to sit, “lit and warmed by memories that are my protection too.” The teenager forgets to do his English homework and creates a funny and dark view. Phil Pemberton feels like a detective, “Marlowe-like observing the crowds but never getting no closer to the girl.”
There are many women contributors; quilting was always women’s work and there is thought in these patches, a binding of stories, of light and dark shades. I am careful unravelling this hand-me-down, slowly savouring the stitches of time and memory
Helen Flint. Bournemouth. UK. Noon.
At exactly noon, Bournemouth this Seagarden Paradise is upright, shadowless; my front Boycemont Ericstatue and goldeneyed fishpond proscenium the porch I sit on, ten doors from the Channel between fuschia chapters I have just written. And parading past me go paleskin families or solitary on-the-prowl bods dragging huge inflatable plastic moulded floats; oh, 4 hours later they will much slower return floating back up my road, their angry red skin deflating and scorching them.
Some writers, like me, take the view literally, wanting to preserve my frame, where I am right now, my nondescript backyard. Others move cleverly to other frames, the television set, the photograph, a computer screen or a fictional window onto other lives. People use constricting wall views to leap off into imaginative air. Sue Thomas constructs her view in a LamdaMOO, floating “adrift in the endlessly shifting landscapes of a thousand virtual imaginations.”
Characters emerge and re-emerge. An old man drags his feet. Drags cartons of beer. Drags a trolley loaded with corrugated iron and timber. Where is he going? JD Keith finds “empty buildings, idle trucks, and peopleless homes indicat[ing] the Exodus.” Where have they gone? There are unresolved narratives…and notes of new beginnings.
Riel Miller. Paris. France. Noon.
At noon I see tomorrow forming, a tear drop shaking its way down, nourishing the earth, feeding the sky, rushing along twisted pipes, quenching desire, a trickle of satisfaction.
The Noon Quilt trace online writing community, http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/quilt/info.html [link expired]
RealTime issue #29 Feb-March 1999 pg. 16
