Blog Posts - Liana Joy Christensen, Writer

Daylighting

26/12/2021

In December 2021 I was part of an ensemble of dancers from The Dance Collective on stage at the Crown Theatre, Perth. We had the privilege of bringing to life the choreographic vision of Company Director Charisse Parnell and Assistant Director, Andrea Chan.

"What about us?" began as an impassioned response to the impact of fast fashion on humans and the more-than-human world. It grew to encompass a bigger picture of destructions and the possibility of healing and repair.

I write and I dance . . . they seem very different activities.

Until a rare confluence shows the depth of the connection.

In the image above we are dancing a once-poisoned river restored to life. It was profoundly felt. Many of the dancers and members of the audience shed a quiet tear.

Soon after this event I spent a week in silence and solitude camping by a river. I do this most years as a necessary complement to the intensity of being part of a major performance. We are (mostly) amateurs, in the true and original sense: "lovers of".

During my time alone the surface waters of intense activity cleared and I came to understand that we had danced "daylighting". This realisation brought me a tenderly painful species of joy.

My essay Landscape Manifest, was recently re-published in an Australian journal. Re-reading it reminded me of just how much daylighting matters.

"In grief it is common to dream that the dead have returned to you. The exquisite relief is a fair measure of the depths of the pain you do not dare to plumb. I had this experience in waking life when a friend, a poet, told me of ‘daylighting’.

Daylighting is the name given to the practice of liberating rivers or streams long ago buried and built over [. . .] I was heart struck hearing this. Having the impossible suddenly presented as possible showed me the depth of a grief about the world I had long buried and concreted over. It opened up hope. "

from Landscape Manifest

Two rivers, one world

On Being Seen

18/9/2021

Many years ago, I created a gig as a Café Poet, offering to write short poems upon request. The very first request was from a dear friend’s 90 plus year old mother, who wanted a poem on the theme of Old Age. Being recently admitted to the very junior ranks of eldership, I dashed off a tongue-in-cheek little ditty called “Invisibility has its Consolations”.

It is now several years later, and I am learning the delights of being seen. It has by no means been a straightforward path to this place. My relationship with mirrors, for example, is fraught with primal trauma. Being seen originally was a terrifying exposure. I resist quantum entanglements with this particular memory by chanting to myself lyrics from a Joe Camilleri song: Hold it up to the mirror/ Won't you tell me what you see/Something might look familiar/
But it's a bad likeness of me.

As a dancer, mirrors are a constant in my life. I’ve learned to make my peace with them. They are a tool of the trade, a guide to learning and nothing more. But the desire to be invisible is still strong . . .

Writing this post was kicked off by a most extraordinary artwork I received this week. This gift needs a context. Let me begin with Merlin (appropriately enough, as I seem to be living backwards towards a state of innocent and fearless delight). This was a treasured gift from another dear friend, a writer with multiple talents in other artistic forms. Having learned a love of Arthurian myths from my mother, this ceramic has been a longstanding joy in my life. Recently, my grand nephew has become the Wizard-Elect of the family (deep into Tolkein, Star Wars, drama and dance) and the time was right to pass on what has now become a family heirloom.

I wasn't always a writer (I was always a writer)

There was a time I sought help for the damage, the central symptom of which was a complete lack of faith in my own creativity. I timidly shared my desire to write. It took years but eventually (resisting the compelling temptation to bolt back to the safe invisibility of my log) my numbat persona found its way into the open. I published an article called "Stars with Stripes" in Australasian GEO. This was a significant milestone, of course. And one that was made infinitely more precious by a gift from two sister seekers who had witnessed the courage it took me to emerge into the open. I remember their excitement the night they gave it to me. And my infinite astonishment. They had commissioned a potter to make this numbat for me. It was my first inkling that being visible did not have to be excruciating, that it could, in fact, be exquisite.

Deadly Beautiful

"Stars with Stripes" was just the beginning, and I have gone on to publish poetry and prose, including a non-fiction book on dangerous animals of the world, Deadly Beautiful. And that brings me to the gift I received this week. Another commissioned artwork, from one of the amazing women who originally gave me the numbat. I shake my head at my good fortune at receiving works made by artists, especially for me. Meet "Deadly Beautiful", my ceramic avatar, sculpted by Albany artist Nicci Romanovsky Daniele https://www.facebook.com/niccidaniele/

Each lovingly crafted detail is a response to the brief from my friend, which included a picture of me in a blue wig (see Ghosts of the Unfinished Monastery) and a copy of my book.

The intertwined snakes, the tiny butterfly, the warrior woman breastplate marked with a peace sign, the native flowers, the shark fin . . .

Now she lives atop the Cabinet of Devotion with other talismans of my writing life.

It feels like my soul made manifest.
It is an experience like no other
to be so seen . . .
and so loved.

Fathers' Day

4/9/2021

Like everyone in Australia born in the first week of September, once every seven years my birthday coincides with Fathers' Day. I always loved it when I shared my "special day" with Dad. Now it is 2021, twenty-eight years since he died, and the two celebrations once again coincide. I've been thinking what an extraordinary birthday gift I received simply by being born to such a man.

Fathers' Day 1993: I was moving house. It was my birthday. My Dad only had a couple of months left. Yet, there he was, at my new cottage, pruning the grape vines. And my Uncle Les was there, too. Driving trailer load after trailer load between Beckenham and Hilton, moving some furniture and an implausible number of plants.

He worked all day. It wasn't till he went home in the late afternoon to be with his own family that I found out that not only had he spent Fathers' day with me,

it was also his own birthday. He was ill, too, with the asbestosis that killed my father. He died only six weeks after him.

Many years ago I was in a psychotherapeutic group and we were asked to pair up at random and sit back to back with another group member. My partner happened to be a tall, solid man. Sitting back to back with him I became aware at a visceral level that the senior males in my life have always "had my back". In our toxic, patriarchal culture, this is a rare and fortunate thing. You can see in both these photos, the beauty of nurture, the gentleness with animals that was the measure of both my father and my uncle.

Happy Fathers' Day, Dad. Happy Fathers' Day, Beloved Uncles. Happy Fathers' Day, to all the good fathers out there. Know that your work is immeasurably important.

My priceless birthday gift will last me through my entire life. I am profoundly grateful.

Here is a prose poem about that cottage, that time, those men . . .

Idiom

My husband gutted our bathroom this week. I removed myself to the back garden while he removed the debris of decades. Later he showed me the shell. The dark wood of the weatherboards, the patched hole where the chip heater used to be, the inevitable white ant damage. I registered the stamped logo on one wall: Hardi Flex. That’s the new stuff isn’t it? I knew the other wall between house and lean-to was blue. ‘Stabilised,’ my husband cracked hardy. He was thirteen when he first handled sheets of asbestos. My brothers’ sleepout was lined with it, a weekend’s project by dad and my uncle. I live a couple of streets away from that uncle’s old house, a carbon copy of my own in this garden suburb where every wind bears filaments. He was an old school Aussie, the sort who’d say ‘Bewdy’ without irony and ‘Your blood’s worth bottling’ and his was. He was the first person I’d heard use the expression ‘cracking hardy’. He was advising me not to when I’d come home after a fall. I had no idea what he meant. But I learned. I watched for months while he held back rage and terror at my father’s deathbed. He never lost his bottle. Dad was Olympic class at the job himself. Their lungs were full of fibre, too. My dad died. My uncle died six weeks later. And I’d give a lot to crack hardy, myself.

Diamond Anniversary of Dance

12/12/2018

Last Saturday evening I had the privilege of dancing a duo centre stage on the Crown Theatre, together with participating in three ensemble pieces. I was so excited by this rare honour that I rounded up my family and friends saying: "Please buy tickets, this is something special for me, like graduating or getting married or some such". So my loyal and beautiful cheer squad, whom I rely on to come each year, expanded to double the numbers. In the end I had around 25 people attend. First-timers were amazed at the professional level of the show. My older brother's comment: "I was expecting about 14 dancers doing a tame end-of-year recital. I was not expecting Los Vegas!"

Keeping time

It was a magic night, made even more magical by the love and support of my family and friends, as well as my fellow dancers. It was only a couple of days later that something dawned on me. My sense of it being a big milestone was even truer than I thought. I've long observed that some part of one's soul or psyche keeps a perfect record of time. Let me explain. The year is 1958. The dancers of the Joy Ashton school are about to take the stage at Fremantle Town Hall. Among them are the three-year-old infants of "Tiny Tots A", and among them is me! I was a gypsy girl with a ribboned tambourine. My mother had spangled my black bolero. I also had a little sailor suit costume. I don't have a photo of myself at three, but this one was taken only a couple of years later, costumed for the Highland Fling and the Wild Irish Washerwoman's jig, respectively.

1958-2018

Saturday night was my diamond anniversary of dancing. Sixty years! It was a long time to wait to wear a tutu! Talk about delayed gratification . . . and all the sweeter for it. And in the meantime, a whole lifetime of joy. And hilarity. Every time I watch 'retro pieces' going back several decades I smile because I lived and danced through it all. I am so grateful to The Dance Collective for creating a culture where the miracle of continuing my love of dance is made possible.

Ghosts of the Unfinished Monastery

29/5/2018

Nelken Line South from Pina Bausch Foundation on Vimeo.

Click to set custom HTML

FantaSEA
~ a calling card for the ghosts of the Unfinished Monastery ~

In December last year I moved to South Fremantle, my forever home. This place was thick with ghosts. Not apparitions, as such, but the dense psychic territory of three generations of my husband's family's intertwined lives. I felt thin, wondering how to add my own presence to those I sensed were here. The aptly named Walter de La Mare captured this feeling in his poem "The Listeners", a childhood favourite:

But only a host of phantom listeners
  That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight  15
  To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

Among these ancestors are a Spanish grandmother who held dances on the back verandah; her daughter Dolores who taught music and played piano for parties; a host of vaudevillians hailing from the U.S.; and an unmet brother who left this world too soon.

And most of all there was the oceanic child who grew to be the man who created a magnum opus in The Unfinished Monastery. I have the extraordinary privilege of living in his three-dimensional work of art.

I am profoundly grateful. And in response I decided that these ghosts were now my ghosts, and I liked the cut of their jib. What better way to introduce myself than a theatrical dance up the Colonnade?

Hello. I am here. And I'm ready to play . . .

Starving

31/10/2017

Remember this, Australia? In case you have forgotten, these are Australian prisoners, contemporaries of my father. Pictured outside a hospital hut on the Thai-Burma railway. This is what starvation is. Take a good look. And ask yourself what these men would think of Australia's unspeakable decision to starve 600 men. Men who have committed no crime; men with whom we are not at war. Ask yourself what you think.

As for me, I'm starving, too. Starving for leadership, vision, ethics, compassion, decency. Starving for a just world. We cannot abandon those we imprisoned on Manus. Bring them here.

EOFY (it's not what you think!)

30/6/2017

June 30th. The date is significant. And I'm not talking about the end of the financial year. I have been in some tight spots over the years, and more than once, tied to the machine.

After this close encounter, for instance, locking on was small beer!

Reading poetry and 1984.
So threatening it needed five policemen to deal with it!

June 30th

Today I was scheduled to appear in the Perth Magistrates Court to face trial for my lock on.
Between now and then, however, the charges simply disappeared.
And now I am humming an old Waterboys' song:

"Once I was tethered and now I am free"

I'm so grateful for the campaign friends and legal support team that carried me through this experience. Now I get to hang around with friends just for fun.

So: the big reveal.

EOFY stands for

Experience of Flying Yoga

And tomorrow I fly off to our Persephone Writing and Yoga Retreat, bringing with me all I have learned of the darkness and the light.

Thanks to Jenny Rowles, Paul McGovern (Cottesloe Post) and Kathleen O'Donoghue for the pics.
And thanks also to Jac at Enerchi Yoga for the silk swings.

Happy Shoes

21/2/2015

Remember the old hippy "Happy Shoes"? Well, these are my "Happy Shoes". For the fifth time in my life, I am back dancing. Something I thought might have permanently dropped off the list of possibilities is once again available to me and I'm thrilled.

I was two and a half when I started dance classes. How was I to know it was going to be a lifelong addiction? Over and over again I have been drawn back, spending years as a child - and even more years as an adult, in class and occasionally on stage. It's one of the activities where I feel most myself.

Finding Flow

What does it mean to take my ageing and rather battered body back to dance class? Well one of the studios where I do classes has as its slogan "Great dancers can come from all walks of life. This is where they come together". The young man who teaches ballet recognised me from three years ago. The class is full of passionate young people of various ethnicities - a tall, bespectacled youth and a fairly even gender balance. I am the only older dancer. I know for a fact that I'm five years older than my nearest contemporary at this studio. Nobody minds. We are all different in our own way. We are all united by the passion and pleasure of doing the physical meditation that is ballet. Will any of us be performers with a capital "P"? Unlikely. Certainly, I won't be. It's sheerly the joy of doing it that matters. It's a perfect example of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi dubbed "flow".

At the other studio, where I had previously danced for around seven years, I was welcomed back like a family member. A long-standing Dance School of solid repute, this place has whole dynasties of dancers, covering the entire lifespan. My teacher is in her mid-sixties. The school is run by a woman in her seventies. I look at them, and think "I want what you're having". With this school, I've participated in many concerts where grandmothers, mothers and daughters or sons are all dancing. Each at their own level, in their own style. It's a not-so-secret society. And it beats the hell out of aerobics.

Once a dancer, always a dancer.

The Long Way

15/12/2014

It's been two long years now
Since the top of the world came crashing down
And I'm getting it back on the road now
But I'm taking the long way . . .

Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way

In 2012 I was working at UWA, where I had been teaching for four years. The screensaver on my desktop was a slideshow of me and Larry camping — him painting and me writing. This daily reminder of my alternative life was essential for maintaining sanity. We were saving hard and hoping to find a successor to Sunshine.

Then came the big detour. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I lost my job. My mum died.

For the next two years I was surrounded by so much support, I consider myself the most fortunate of women. The lifts, the meals, the visits, the love. The many cards and gifts of all sorts. Especially the ones with little camper vans — thanks Christos and Michelle. It all helped keep my heart light.

On two indelibly blissful occasions Adventurous Jen (who is also a nurse) smuggled me out through my treatment haze and brought me to the ocean, the river, the bush. She knows her medicine. My starving soul was fed. Just enough to get by.

I bided my time. I dreamed. I read the entire set of Enid Blyton's Adventures of the Famous Five - last year's Christmas gift from my cousin Maureen. Perfect! It was all I could manage to concentrate on - and it was full of camping.

And now Christmas has come around again and Larry and I have given ourselves the longed-for gift . . .

Good morning, Starshine!

Larry and I have a tradition of singing themed songs (in my case loudly and tunelessly) when we travel. If you're old enough to remember Hair, you can sing along. It's a terribly silly song, but who cares?

Starshine already has a full soundtrack including Don Maclean's Vincent ("Starry, starry night"), Joni Mitchel's Woodstock ("We are stardust, we are golden/we are billion year old carbon/and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"), the aforementioned Dixie Chick's Long Way Round ("I hit the highway/ in a pink Kombi/ with stars on the ceiling") Mama Cass' Dream a Little Dream of Me ("Stars shinning bright above you"). If you have any suggestions for additions, please feel free to add them in the comments below!

The Freeway Song is one of my very favourite songs by my brother, Erik Christensen ("Cold wheel in the cabin light/head off down the hippie trail/feel naked as a footprint in the early dawn/you drink from the holy well"). If it ever goes up on You Tube (Erik?) I'll link so you can listen.

Heading off down the hippie trail . . .

A True History of Sunshine

6/12/2014

I remember the exact moment I fell in love. It was many years ago on a road trip with my good friend, Adventurous Jen (that's her to the left, when we were in Amsterdam, but that's another story). Now, I've loved Jenny since she was fifteen - but it wasn't her I fell in love with.
Jenny's chosen chariot was a 1978 Toyota Hiace campervan rejoicing in the name of "Sunshine". One of our many joint adventures was a trip to Tone River. After a couple of hours' driving, Jenny pulled up under a big tree in Balingup, cut the engine, popped the kettle on and made a cup of tea accompanied by shortbread biscuits. I was a goner. I fell deeply in love. This was the life for me.
A couple of years later Jenny went on a solo trip around Australia. Sunshine survived the Nullarbor; she survived going across the top. She was just cresting the Darling Scarp on the last leg of her long run when a vigilant policeman pulled the van over, because her number plates were not reflective.
Never mind that they weren't reflective because the painting of number plates had been outsourced to the prison, and the prisoners had not been supplied with the correct reflective paint. Sigh.
Well, you all know the story. An unhappy yellow sticker was slapped on that vehicle of happiness incarnate.
Jenny arrived at my place, in tears. She was about to head off again — sailing on the Leeuwin? whitewater raft guiding in Alaska? I can't remember the exact adventure that time. As Jenny lives on a budget of cents and luck, she couldn't afford to resuscitate her beloved campervan. But all was not lost.
Sunshine was gifted to me and Larry. We had our own piece of heaven for the price of getting her cleared over the pits. Thus began three or four years of hippie bliss. So many road trips. So many happy memories.

Sunshine was a grand old lady. She remained continent across the continent. But all things must pass. One day on the road back from New Norcia, her engine packed up. No new engine could be sourced. So her body was put out to pasture on a friend's property in Toodyay, where she does double duty as a cubby house and overflow guest accommodation. Still bringing Sunshine into people's lives.
And Adventurous Jen? Well she currently lives with her Honey on a catamaran in Thailand.