Erica Wheadon
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Author: Erica Wheadon

Going home

I always knew that I’d intuit the right time to leave. I suppose that’s an inherent knack I have. A crawling wiggles in the back of my mind. It directs my eyes to the horizon, and I feel my skin, tight to bursting around my chest. Still, the reconciling between past and future decisions takes time. My imagination fires up. Where to next? Where do I need to be? What do I need to slough off in order to move forward without weight? Lists are drawn. Pros, cons, wildest dreams, realities (don’t realities always begin as wildest dreams?). There is the A list and the B list. A is what we want. B is something we could make work. Manifesting requires absolute faith. There is no plan B. And yet…plan B got us into the house we have called home since the end of 2018. We jumped, the A-list shifted and we free-fell (gratefully) into this place. In many ways I am grateful because if I hadn’t landed here, I might never have left. Then I would have been living on the west side of Brisbane, without a full breath to call my own.

‘What do you want?’ whispered the universe.
‘I want to go home’ I said.

This time I said it with conviction and a clear mind.

This will be the third time I return to the Sunshine Coast, since I fell in love with it back in 2006. Each time, the same house spat me out. I kept landing back in Brisbane (do not pass go, do not collect $200) but it took my damned heart, and for every time that I have packed to leave, I have made a vow to return.

So, we wrote a list. If I was to have a place we would never leave, what would it look like? I meditated on it. I obsessed over it. I called it in. I felt it slip. I faltered and applied for other places, and was systematically rejected. I visited our beaches and appealed to the ocean. I communed with the forest.

Two weeks ago, we got the call. The house contains every single thing on our list. Plus a pool.

What’s next? I am asked. I am asked this a lot. I have no idea. The future, I have been told, will attend to itself.

I can’t leave this house without deep gratitude, however. I knew an estate would materialise around us with its tight gaps and high fences. I knew that it I would never be able to survive in its hem. But provided a shelter when we needed it most. And as I packed this place into boxes, the ghosts shook free and reminded me of its story, which I tapped out in a list:

street light windows / 4am willie wagtails / grief like a fire / book launch / hands shaking / rapid cycling / diagnosis / lithium / drowning / burning my red skirt / wandering suburban cows / climbing the hills in the estate just to see the moon / national park trails / squinting to see the Grand Conjunction at sunset from the park / leaving for Italy / turning 40 in the backyard / festoons strung up like a carnival / Moët from my brother / the smell of dough and wood smoke / Chianti / booking Japan trip / pre-grieving / what is a daughter / paring back / going to ground / running / walking because running sucks / watching COVID descend upon us like a dark cloud / lock down / empty skies / empty roads / meeting the neighbourhood dogs. all of them. / queues outside the supermarket / adult-motherhood / cancelling Japan trip / staring at fences / post-it note wisdom / writing my thesis / nervous Zoom calls with supervisors / birth of my first blackberry, tomato, capsicum / lavender tea / finishing my thesis / one.more.subject / escaping to Cairns / finishing M.A / finally drinking that Moët from my brother / publishing more work / perfecting a mirror glaze/ colour-stained fingers / neon, wigs, dancing, watching my daughter turn 21 in the back yard / addiction therapy / birth of my first magnolia / death of my first magnolia / plants as life-givers and takers / lifeless dragonflies / everything dies / figure skating as self-soothing / i. hate. christmas. / somatisation / starting manuscript / writing as discipline / new research / graduating in absentia / new psych / calcified anxiety / stretching is life / black and white Denmark still in frames, leaving marks on walls / finding the same pink teddy bear every move (we can’t remember why) / re-packing said bear in case we figure it out / house mantras & coast drives / inspection & rejection cycle / relief / last boxes / going home.

I wandered through the rooms and talked to ghosts, leaned against the wall in the kitchen, watching two and a half years of realities blur simultaneously, breath caught, searching for something to hold onto.

I pressed pause.

‘We made a cake in this house!’ I smiled, tearfully.
‘We made a LOT of cakes in this house.’ Stephen replied, hugging me.

I know more than anyone, that moving doesn’t erase the past. It just compartmentalises it, neatly.

Grief is love that won’t let go, she said.

I am learning to choose my ghosts wisely.

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  • March 28, 2021

All we have

We’ve stopped saying goodbye. On some days he is so close to the veil that he can make out the shapes behind it. Other times lucidity flashes across his face like lightning – bright-eyed between micro sleeps – and he can remember the names of castles and his childhood best friend. I’ve lost count of the “you need to come in and see him now” phone calls. I’ve already walked through that door more times than I believed myself capable of. 

I don’t remember my parents ever holding each other’s hands out of love. They are long estranged and there will never be forgiveness or closure. But today there was a kind of love. Not out of pity, but compassion. Their collective trauma is encoded in my cells and it is now mine to transform, and transformation, as it turns out, begins with courage. I’ve been angry for so long. And dismissive. It burns energy that I can no longer spare. 

When he wakes up tomorrow, he won’t remember that we were even there. And we don’t owe him the fleeting moments of happiness we choose to give. But I’m beyond who owes who what now. Grief is a slow leak. Moments are all we have.

  • March 24, 2021

Careful truths

This morning I woke up to an interview with Glennon Doyle about the genesis of her blog. She began writing, she said, because she was “dying for a place to tell the truth.”

Well, shit.

She talked about the long missives she would send her friends, the way her story was spilling out of her. I kept nodding, yes, yes. My friends are still on the receiving end of of similar rants, although perhaps not as long anymore. I’d like to say that this is because I am writing a book, but that’s not necessarily true either. Writing, as I have learned, isn’t about pouring your story onto the page. It’s as much about curation and craft as it is anything else. Finding connections. Truth, I have discovered, often lies between the lines.

I met someone recently for coffee (okay, bad juice in an empty cafe) who encouraged to me pour out my unabridged version; realities and feelings tumbling out in ways that I will never be able to put my name to. She then talked about her life and as I listened, a shared reality began to emerge. This isn’t just my story. This is hers too. And I know there are more out there like us – too-much women grappling with the stigma attached to our choices. She implored me to continue writing in the same way that I myself have crawled through essayistic writing and memoir, in order to find traces of myself. And yet, sometimes it’s that very work that halts my efforts. It is both a blessing and a curse to have a story and a desire to share it.

Glennon Doyle had legions of blog followers when her books came out. She had amassed an army of believers who moved swiftly to defend her against the tide of scorn, and sometimes I wonder what hope an introvert who is disenchanted with social media has against that.

My new friend called me brave. It’s not the first time. It reminds me of a note that I jotted down many years ago:

Until he called me brave, I had no idea that I was required to be. Suddenly I felt dizzy – as if I had woken up on a parapet, high above the city, not knowing how I got there, or how to get down. Maybe he’s framing it against his own circumstances. Maybe he couldn’t personally do it because he had too many people in his life to lose and he couldn’t bear the judgement. Still, he looked at me in awe and shook his head and suddenly I became quite afraid. As if I was Eve, suddenly required to be ashamed of her nakedness.

Am I underestimating the courage that I will need to summon? What if I only summon a little and then come up short? What if there are consequences that I can’t see? What kind of world do we live in when it requires this much courage just to be yourself?

Glennon has a post-it note stuck to her mirror that says ‘Feel it all’. I wonder if Glennon retained her friendships, after inundating them with all of these feelings. Maybe she could introduce us.

I told my new friend that I am more careful with my truths now, and that even these posts will sit in drafts, often weeks at a time. Do I feel it all? Damn right I do. And even though each draft of this book is a careful ballet of speed-typing and backspacing, punctuated by moments of stillness and reflection, you can bet your ass that I still show up to write it.

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. – Janis Joplin.

  • February 17, 2021

40 lessons from 2020

Yeah I know. A calendar is a construct and 31 is a number etc. etc. but since I like a bit of ritual and reflection, here’s a quick and dirty list of forty lessons I’ve taken away from this clusterfuck of a year.

  1. The human race is fragile and resilient in equal measure.
  2. We are a speck in our species’ evolution.
  3. It’s easy to lose sight of this when you are mired in and overwrought with sadness.
  4. Staying on the fence isn’t always impartiality. Sometimes it’s preservation.
  5. Talent emerges from hard work but also privilege.
  6. Literary magazines don’t give a shit about your high distinctions.
  7. The human body can reduce itself to a shadow and still refuse to die.
  8. Pre-grief is a slow leak.
  9. Loneliness is a vast emptiness that few understand.
  10. Stasis is another word for survival.
  11. If you can’t write, read. Then try again.
  12. Most of my fears are in my mind. That doesn’t make them less real.
  13. Family isn’t a fairytale. Sometimes, no one is coming to save you.
  14. You can scare a dragonfly to death.
  15. The makers of Fitbit are responsible for a sizeable percentage of the world’s landfill. And they know it.
  16. Compression is the bane of my existence.
  17. I pared that sentence back.
  18. I watched a lot of television this year and I’m not mad about it. Spinning Out, Homeland, Yellowstone, Star Trek: Discovery, His Dark Materials, The Expanse, You’re the Worst, Fleabag, The Queen’s Gambit and Raised by Wolves were standouts. I also re-watched Yuri on Ice and Smash at least twice.
  19. Reading makes you a better writer. This year my favourite books were: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong), Abandon Me (Melissa Febos) Book of Mutter (Kate Zambreno), An Unquiet Mind (Kay Redfield Jamieson), Manic (Terri Cheney), The Balloonists (Eula Biss), Darkfall (Indigo Perry), and Lying (Lauren Slater).
  20. If you don’t make room for what’s possible, you can’t possibly expect it to arrive.
  21. Everything is a construct. The calendar year, time, our age, the names given to us. Status, wealth, social expectations, behavioural responses, psychiatric designations. Some of it is useful. Much of it is not.
  22. We’re all going to die at some point. Some of us, much sooner.
  23. A magnolia in full bloom has less life expectancy than a butterfly and it is, in fact possible to think about this too much.
  24. The internet can convince you that you’re a terrible person.
  25. If you read my search history, you will learn how to identify the colour persimmon, how to save a tomato plant (tip, you can’t), where Mina Loy was buried and what constitutes an overdose.
  26. Social media is a misnomer.
  27. Get in there and help, or shut the fuck up.
  28. Educate. But also
  29. Online vitriol does not add, it subtracts.
  30. The opposite of what you know is also true.
  31. I wrote over 100,000 words this year. Approximately 85.4% of them will never see the light of day.
  32. Most of the human race doesn’t breathe properly.
  33. Scotch is surprisingly, pretty great.
  34. Motherhood doesn’t end when your children become adults. It begins.
  35. Watching figure skating is valium for the soul.
  36. It takes approximately 90 days to break an addiction. Today is day 76.
  37. The only reason one should become an artist is when they can’t bear the thought of being anything else.
  38. Silence is the first creative act.
  39. Astrology is subjective. But so is everything.
  40. The body always knows.

It’s not always easy for me to exist in this space, so regardless if you’re a reader or a passer-by, thanks for being here.

See you on the flip side. x

  • December 30, 2020

2020 – Songs that Shaped a Year

This year’s soundtrack didn’t take me long at all. Out of the thousands of songs I listened to in 2020, these were the ones that I obsessed over, etched into my psyche and wrote alongside the most.

In a bid to combat what could have been a treacherous year, depression-wise, I did my best to avoid anything that would potentially kill me (Woodkid, Nick Cave, Anaïs Mitchell etc) (progress), so these songs are stories of my highs, lows, ruminations, triumphs, vindications, decisions. Stories about family, forgiveness, addiction; the songs that would play on repeat in my head at 3am.

My biggest (and potentially most precious) find of the year was Anita Lester. She slays me. What a voice. (Also she is fucking gorgeous. Dear god.) The first song slid into my head, in my thoughts, in my Insta bio. Also, watch the film clip. Fuck.

Forest Blakk fucking destroys me. Find Me was my gateway, but Easy to Lie was an anthem.

A few surprises – a bit of country/folk crept in (thanks Kevin Costner WHAT), a bit of Sofi Tukker (if you don’t have that on your lists after The New Pope, then shame on you). Trevor Hall’s Fire on your House was a 2020 mood.

Led Zeppelin was more of an analogue entry, but since I can’t produce vinyl analytics, I slipped it in.

Hearing Jeff Martin perform Going to California at The Triffid was one of the highlights of what was a very. shitty. July.

No Nathan Chen free-skate song this year (as much as I love Phillip Glass), but Ben Platt doesn’t disappoint, as always.

Honourable mentions to: Placebo – Protect Me From What I Want, Taylor Swift – Mad Woman and Didirri – Formaldehyde (live at the Corner Hotel thank you, Amen).

TRACK LIST.

1. Anita Lester – Man
Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

2. Anita Lester – Again
Please martyr this for us / For I am weak, for I am running from the end. 

3. FINNEAS – I Lost a Friend
How the hell do you lose a friend you never had.

4. Jenny Lewis – Red Bull and Hennessy
Out of my own mind again.

5. Forest Blakk – Easy to Lie
0:43

6. Michel van der Aa feat. Kate Miller-Heidke – What a Dream
Waiting for my father to die.
Again. Again. Again.
And again.

7. Alanis Morissette & Elizabeth Stanley – Smiling
Three Alanis songs fought for supremacy this year, but I stan Jagged Little Pill on Broadway. Special mention goes to Reasons I Drink and Flinch.

8. FM-84 feat. Clive Farrington – Goodbye
Too late for goodbyes.

9. DMA’s – Never Before
New drugs and a modicum of stability.

10. Sofi Tukker – Good Time Girl
Mmmf.

11. Manchester Orchestra – The Silence (live at the Regency Ballroom)
Little girl you are cursed by my ancestry
There is nothing but darkness and agony
I can not only see, but you stopped me from blinking

12. Kevin Costner & Modern West – You Won’t See it Coming
You know what I didn’t see coming? Kevin Costner being this fucking good.

13. Kevin Costner & Modern West ft. Jaida Dreya – Killer
Dark places. Yellowstone.

14. Trevor Hall – Fire on Your House
I did not expect this from Trevor Hall and I DIG it. Also, yes.

15. Jonatha Brooke – Prodigal Daughter
Absolution.

16. Phil Collins – Long Long Way to Go
2020’s scab-picking-song-on-repeat

17. Katie Noonan – Dance Monkey
This cover though.

18. Washington – Catherine Wheel
That hesitation at 0:53. Slit my wrists already.

19. Led Zeppelin – Going to California.
Wandering. Winter.

20. Sam Brookes – Ekarma
Punching clay.

21. Phoebe Bridgers – Savior Complex
Every word every word every word every word.

22. Ben Platt – So Will I
Salvation. Survival.

—–

YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL24yL0Ku5RchxXF6vIitOE5iDELyx8PHn

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1JHqdK1OhamHTf1GIMMR46?si=GBQfxFaYQe-QSzf6-d1x9w

  • December 19, 2020

Twenty-Two Exposures

I’ve started to dig out some of my older work – most of the time I don’t really know what to do with it, so it stays buried on my hard drive. Photography and I haven’t really been talking this year – we’ve been eyeing each other from opposite sides of the room, looking for an excuse to start a brawl.

I took these images in 2019, pre-pandemic. It felt disingenuous to glorify normalcy of any kind in 2020 so I didn’t look at them again, but now I feel a small ache creeping in my chest. Looks like we don’t have to come to blows after all.

This morning I woke up to an email saying that a video poem that I put together last year for a unit on Sex, The Body and American Poetry (I did the coolest M.A) has been selected for the 9th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens. I’m still not sure how I feel about it (aside from shocked and grateful and humbled, which is a given). This thing (like so much of my work) would still be on a hard drive if it hadn’t been for a friend convincing me to throw it out there and see what comes back. So I did, literally an hour before deadline.

It’s not an easy watch. I was bottoming out mentally at the time, just before Zoloft kicked me into high gear and I ended up dodging involuntary hospitalisation a few weeks later. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to film trains or just walk in front of them. I was obsessing over Maggie Nelson. I’ve never wanted to be a poet per-se, but I am a whore for fragmented memoir – so much so, that I ended up by writing my thesis on it. At that time, fragments were all I had. The idea that any of this can resonate with a selection committee is humbling.

Yesterday I wrote a whole holier-than-thou post about how I escaped 2020 relatively unscathed, mental-health-wise. It’s bullshit of course. Spotify/Last.Fm reminded me of this when I began to put together my annual playlist. (If you ever want to get to the core of what you were feeling during a particular time in your life, keep a time-stamped running list of the music you listen to. Fuck.)

Euthymia is seductive.

I’ll write more when it’s sunk in.

Update: Poetic City Canberra have very kindly shown an excerpt of this piece as part of their Poetry Cinema program. We had to cut it down for time, but if you’ve found your way here, and are interested in viewing the full piece, and learning about its conception, I’ve created a page for it here.

  • November 30, 2020

forty-one

As a child, I would visit my grandmother and together we would pick blackberries off bushes in a nearby common, our hands and mouths stained with purple. I’m sure that the common was just a thicket of trees, but to me it was a forest, and it was magic. She was the first to teach me how to ground myself, to reconnect with the earth, and that walking, and trees, and dogs and birdsong was its own kind of healing. 

When she died, I was fourteen – having only seen her four times in my life. I had such little time with her on this earth, so blackberries are more than nostalgia to me, they’re a symbol of simplicity, and healing.

At the start of the year, I bought a blackberry plant of my very own. I had no illusion that it would bear an abundance of fruit, but it has been sitting on my back deck since January and I have been tending to it protectively, nonetheless. About a month ago, a tiny little red fruit sprouted and I felt a little pinprick of pride. Life goes on. I had proof.

41, and I’m still not sure how to measure a year.  In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee…(thanks Jonathan Larson) (#nerd). Probably more along the lines of… in whisky, in first drafts, in new books and medication. Doesn’t really have the same ring to it. 

I’m not sure how it’s been a year since 40. What the fuck, world. I’d demand a do-over, but it’s been a pretty good year, world-going-to-hell notwithstanding.  I won’t lie, my interpretation of ‘pretty good’ is a little different now to what it used to be. It’s been the first (relatively) drama-free year in a long time. I mean, unless you can count thesis writing and the slow-release-grief that comes with losing a parent inch by fading inch. 

So what’s changed. Perspective, I guess. Social, political, intellectual. I stopped for a moment and the world kept turning. And so I began to do it more often. Finetuning. Finding my feet.  It was also a Neptune Square year for me, one I had been dreading initially but it brought a welcome introspection. What did I want to take into my new world? What weight needed to be removed, adjusted?

‘Grateful’ is no longer a platitude.  My year has been uneventful compared to so many. I owe so much to my incredible husband and daughter. My family. Those who were wading through shit 10 inches deep, but still reached out to steady me.  To those who listened. You are a gift. My teachers and supervisors, who bore much of my mental weight in a year where they were facing funding cuts and potential job losses.

In the maelstrom that has been 2020, silence has been a protective measure. Normally when I go to ground, I am mired in self-destruction, but this year it was a sanctuary. And in it, I found a little discipline. Fasts, yoga, water, sunshine.  I found a great doctor, and a few chemicals that finally agreed with my brain. I learned to turn off the songs that would trigger me into regression (I can’t promise that this one is permanent, but it’s a small victory). I finally had my eyes re-tested. (hallelujah). When things seemed impossible, I returned to the forest. Feet on the earth. Wind on my face. Birdsong.

I found some astrological teachings that changed everything I thought I knew and weight turned to lightness. Karmic relationships took on new meaning. Up was now down. North became south. I was once asked whether I wanted to be right or whether I wanted to be free. Never has that been clearer than right now. I have learned to observe the tragedies and losses of this year privately. I no longer feel as if I need to justify my involvement, prove my allegiance, tear flesh from limbs.  

I should have been packing to go to Japan this weekend, and I’m trying not to be sad about that, because all things considered, if that is the worst thing to happen this year, then I am fortunate. Instead, I get to celebrate my daughter’s 21st next week with family and friends. How lucky I am. 

Finally, as of last night and after two and a half (long) years, I have finally satisfied all of the requirements for my Masters degree, finishing with an 85 (WAM) (approx. 6.8 GPA). I had been saving the bottle of Moët that my brother gave me on my 40th for the occasion, so it was remarkable that this came through exactly a year later. I’m not sure I’ll be able to cross the stage in 2021, but for now, this is enough.  

After a few weeks of slowly ripening, this morning my little blackberry finally came into its own. It hangs from its branch, proud and plump, the first of its kind.  

  • November 7, 2020
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