Miriam Zolin

No, no, no, no

Miriam — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:31:45 +0000

Enough. I have to learn to say it, do it, believe it, live it. A life with space in it. A healthy respect for time spent not overtly ‘producing’. No more odd jobs taken on because it feels like I might have five minutes free in my day and I’m compulsively deciding to fill them up.

After all, if I say no, the world will continue to turn. As I transition into this [it will not happen overnight] very little will change for a few weeks. For example, tonight I’ll be in bed late then up at a 5:00 tomorrow and vulnerable during the day to all the normal workaday stuff that a girl should just take in her stride.

But the wheels have been set in motion. A day job that I like. Some daily writing. And the occasional special project. That should just about do it. And I can stop with the palpitations.

Rejection letter template

Miriam — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 04:11:12 +0000

In my capacity as editor of extempore, and having just put out a call for fiction, I find myself in the unenviable position this weekend of having to create a template in Word, to be used for rejection letters. Here it is…

Dear [First Name]

Thanks for sending the enclosed short story to us for consideration. We won’t be offering to publish it. In my opinion your story is well crafted. I have no doubt it would be accepted for publication if submitted to an appropriate journal.

extempore is not that appropriate journal. While I read your story, I had my eyes open for any hint that you had read our submission guidelines (readily available on our website at www.extempore.com.au and enclosed for your information) or that you were, in fact, familiar with extempore. It will come as no surprise to you that I found no such hints!

We are, like most literary journals in Australia, starved for funding and hungry for contributions of excellent writing. In our highly competitive world, these two factors are generally at the root of our successes and failures.

I wish you all the best in future submissions of your work and on behalf of all journal editors, exhort you to read the guidelines and purchase a copy of the journal before submitting your work.

Best wishes

Miriam Zolin
Managing Editor and Publisher

[sigh]

Chocolate crackles for grown-ups!

Miriam — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:07:14 +0000

This picture doesn't have the optional chilli sliver...

We have some chilli plants at work. It’s a long story but they ended up on my desk. I spend time nurturing them. I squish aphids on them (eek!) and water them. I fertilise them and talk to them. Anyhoo, we had a harvest recently. A beautiful single chilli… and then we had to figure out what to do with it. It sat on a few people’s desks… it was a prize in a weekly quiz [don't ask]. And eventually it came back to me. Not my chilli, really, but my responsibility.

The person whose plant the chilli came from loves chocolate. I’m a busy girl with not much time for cooking at the moment. So the obvious solution was to make chilli chocolate crackles. Well, it was obvious to me!

Here’s the recipe.

4 cups rice bubbles
1 cup desecrated coconut
1 cup icing sugar
250 g copha
7 tablespoons of cocoa (most recipes call for 3 or 4)
1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder
1 small chilli for garnish (optional)

Mix all the dried ingredients in a bowl.
Slowly melt the copha in a saucepan over low heat.
Allow to cool slightly.
Mix all ingredients together until well combined.
Spoon into paper patty cases.
Refrigerate until firm.

Makes about 24

Cut the top off the chilli and remove the seeds. Slice chilli into tiny slivers. Place a sliver of chilli on each chocolate crackle. TAKE CARE not to touch your eyes, nose or any tender areas while there is chilli on your skin. It hurts!!

Enjoy!

Predictive text gone crazy

Miriam — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:47:15 +0000

So I don’t really know A, except to say hello and have a fun conversation with on market mornings. His family grows and dries the fruit that makes my Sultana Cake so popular. So popular, indeed, that because he’s shared it with his customers and a few of them wanted the recipe, he’s asked me to email it to him. One customer in particular, he said, was asking and asking.

Of course, I did. It took me approximately 18 months, as the weeks slipped by on the smooth rails of good intentions. He patiently kept asking me regularly to send the recipe to him. He gave me his business card so I had his email address, and I intended (really!) to send him the recipe as soon as I got home from the markets that day. Then I lost the business card. He gave me another one about three weeks ago and I sent the recipe last week.

His charming response email said that the recipe would make a very persistent customer very happy.

I used my mobile phone to respond, typing a one-word answer Phew!

Predictive text turned it into Ogre!

I was this close THIS CLOSE!! [holds thumb and forefinger really close together] to pressing the Send button.

Crikey!

Anyway, here’s the famous recipe…

Sultana Cake
Originally from the PWMU cookbook from about 1980.
Ingredients:
250 gm butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup water 2 cups plain flour
½ cup self raising flour
500 gm sultanas. (Best with naturally dried sultanas)
pinch of salt

Method:

Soak the sultanas overnight in the water. (If using naturally dried sultanas, also works if you boil the water then pour it over the sultanas and let it sit covered for 2 hours.)
Cream the butter and sugar.
Add the eggs, beating well.
Sift the flowers and salt and add to the sugar and butter mix, alternating with the sultanas and water.
Mix well and place in a greased and lined 20 x 7 cm round or square cake tin.
Miriam’s note: This is quite a heavy cake so works best in a Bundt tin. This makes it easy to be sure the middle is cooked. I use one that is 22 cm across the top for this cake.
Bake in moderate oven for 1 ½ to 2 hours or until a skewer placed in the cake comes out clean.

From the phone

Miriam — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:54:48 +0000

Slow afternoon…

Well, I managed the first three words and an ellipsis from the phone but then it all got too complicated. It would probably be a great way to while away a few hours at an airport. Or something. I think I’ll stick to proper sized keyboards for now…

Sunday encounters with humanity

Miriam — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:20:24 +0000

Old codger crossing Johnson Street at Smith Street, on green light, at a slow shuffle
Car turning right from Smith Street into Johnson Street
Driver of car doesn’t see codger
Codger sees that driver of car hasn’t seen codger
Codger attempts to speed up but instead falls on his bottom, in the middle of the road
Car stops - driver sits in car - codger struggles to get up on slippery road.
Miriam sprints 50 metres up hill to help codger get up.
Finally, driver of car gets out of car and walks over, saying “I didn’t see him, I didn’t see him”
Miriam says to codger “Are you okay, were you hit?”
Codger says no, he’s okay but he’s got a dicky ticker. He seems fine and sprightly, though shocked at what just happened.
Driver looks around at other cars who are now stopped, unable to go anywhere because of all this, and says (as though looking for backup) “But I didn’t see him”
Codger [who is not tiny] says “I’m big enough, you didn’t have to look very hard!”
Miriam says “Let’s get him up”
Driver, half bent down with her hands sort of extended to help, but not actually doing anything, continues with her refrain… “but I didn’t see him, I didn’t see him”
Codger again comments that he has a bad heart and says - “Well you weren’t looking very hard”
Miriam says “For god’s sake woman get your hands under his shoulder and lift him”
Driver says nothing. Expressions cross her face and none of them settle. Miriam thinks that none of them are about concern for the codger.
Miriam loses her cool “Wake up! It’s not about you! Help me lift him you stupid fucking cow!” [can't believe I actually said that but by now I was shaking with the injustice of it all]
With driver’s help, codger is lifted and is not quite steady on his feet but otherwise okay.
Miriam walks codger to footpath, driver returns to car, turns corner and drives off.
Both codger and Miriam are vaguely surprised she didn’t pull over and see if she could do anything else to help. As time passes we become more and more disgusted.
Miriam walks with codger to chair and they chat just to be sure he really is okay.
Codger shows photo from his inside coat pocket, of a pure white Tasmanian devil crossing a road, near some road kill. He actually saw this. There’s another photo too, he says, of the same white devil on the other side of the road. The codger says he’s going to get it blown up. It’s very faded. It looks like he’s been going to get it blown up for a while now.
The codger reveals he’s on his way to play pokies at the pub up Smith Street then on to the Mission for a feed.
He says he makes Huon pine clocks at Austin Hospital. He has a friend, Warren, who makes violins. He gives Miriam Warren’s card.
Miriam notices that the codger has food down his front, long dirty fingernails and a really long eyebrow hair that curls back on itself threatens to lodge in the codger’s watery right eye.
She tells the codger her name is Miriam and he says his name is Max. He writes it down for her on the back of Warren’s card, so she can use it in her report, when she rings the police. He writes it in beautiful copperplate, in an old-fashioned way, as Mr M Ramsdale
Miriam calls police and relates story, but of course there’s nothing they can do, because the codger was not actually hit by the stupid fucking cow.
The police person is stoically silent when Miriam says “Where does one go to report bad human behaviour?” Or perhaps he didn’t understand the question.
Miriam sits with Max for five more minutes, but he’s restless and wants to get on.
A hug, a goodbye, and that’s it.
Another Sunday adventure.

Oby is gone… Long may we remember him

Miriam — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:11:23 +0000

: Farewell Oby…

Oby has gone. I bought him from Rohan in 2001 and I seem to remember it was April. In April 2010, the day before his rego ran out, I took him to a scrap merchant. They call themselves end-of-life car recyclers. But the truth is, it was a paddock with an office in it and a few tonnes of scrap metal in various stages of machined-ness and oxidisation. Squashed cars in piles. It was a wrench to leave him there. He has done me proud, but he was about to need a lot of work and had started trailing stinky smoke. I felt like we had been through alot together, that little 1987 Barina and me. I miss him… it’s only been ten days, but I miss knowing he’s out there in his parking spot, ready to take me wherever I need to go. I rarely locked him, and nobody tried to steal him. He leaked water in the rain and air in any weather. He smelled of old car and the CD player didn’t work. The vents were full of leaves, so when you turned the fan on, you’d be covered in dust and scraps of organic matter. But I was attached of course. As I said to someone the other day, if I stare too long at a blade of grass, I get attached to it… and Oby [though green] was much more than a blade of grass. Goodbye old mate.

Full moon in Sydney I

Miriam — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:12:03 +0000

Don’t try and tell me that our species beyond all that, evolved to the point where the full moon has no effect on our sanity. I was in Sydney on the weekend of 30 and 31 January, and yes it was a full moon. I wasn’t staying in one of my usual favourite hotels - I’m on a tight budget at the moment and I think some prices may have gone up at the beginning of 2010, so I was in Pitt Street between Bathurst and Liverpool. It’s not exactly seedy there, but it is one block back from George Street, in the strip that includes cinemas, McDonald’s, KFC and a couple of night clubs, with two lanes leading to more clubs and of course the extensive range of dining outlets - fine and otherwise - to be found in Liverpool Street and its cross-streets. And pubs on many corners. Plus a stone’s throw from Darling Harbour. Which of course all adds up to vomit in the gutters and the aroma of stinking rubbish bins floating on every breeze.

Like I said, not exactly seedy but…

Anyway, my hotel was fine. Clean. With a bed and a shower and all that stuff. Plus also aligned with current trends in in-room entertainment the area of the tv screen was almost the same as the size of the bed. That’s what we’re here for, right?

Saving that for later, I decided to go to a jazz gig. In the lift area, I saw a lady inspecting the back of a hall table, very carefully. This mildly incongruous behaviour was made more incongruous by two factors. 1. A slightly older lady was standing by, watching, fussing, and a little anxious as she watched her younger friend / relative and 2. I had peripherally seen the younger lady attempt to climb said hall table as I approached and she was clearly pretending that she was inspecting, to throw me off the scent.

It was one of those moments when you make a snap decision… I had to allow myself to be thrown off the scent, or confront the incongruous behaviour. I find these things are touch and go. On this occasion, I chose to confront.

me: “May I help you; at least may I hold this to keep it steady while you’re climbing it?”

climbing /not climbing lady: “No, no, thank you, we are fine.”

me: “So, what is it you’re actually doing?”

She points up at the motion detector. I should explain that this hotel is saving money (and the planet) by having installed motion detectors connected to light switches. If nobody’s moving, the lights go off. As soon as the lift appears, and the doors open, the motion detectors sense this and turn the lights on. You never have any idea that the place was dark like a tomb before you arrived.

Like I say, she pointed at the motion detector, which was in turn pointing at the lift and said, “They have cameras. They are filming us and they are not allowed to do that. ”

I tried pointing out what they really were, and even mentioned that the opaque covering on the sensors would make it impossible to take photographs through them… but she was not completely convinced, though I admit by now she had stopped trying to climb the hall table. Her friend /relative and I eventually convinced her that management should be doing this, and not her. She went into her room and the older lady came downstairs with me.

“Is your friend alright?” I asked in the lift.

She shook her head.

I pushed on. “She seems a bit anxious.”

Illegal picture of a non-camera turned so that it cannot take non-pictures illegally.

“Yes,” said the lady, with a certain tilt to her head and a roll of her eyes that suggested she’d seen more anxiety-fuelled antics than just this recent instance. “Yes, many people are.”

And off I went to hear some jazz.

And while I was gone, somebody turned the motion detector near the lift down so it was not photographing anybody who emerged from the lift.

I took a photograph, which is probably illegal. But there you go. And here it is.

Book and broad beans

Miriam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:07:44 +0000

A feeling I haven’t had for a while… on the tram yesterday I knew there was a book brewing. Luckily, I had pen and paper with me and I managed to jot a few things down. Without warning, I know the shape of this book and a little bit about what it will feel like to write it. I know where it starts but I don’t know where it ends. It’s real. It already exists and now I have a job to do, to bring it into the world.

That feeling, when it happens (and I guess I can remember about five times and only three of them turned into books and only one of them has been published) imbues all of life with a new energy. I become more sensitised, at every level. Today, I’ve been walking lighter, smiling more, thinking, planning, shaping. Wondering where I’ll find the time to make this happen!

Tonight, as I made one of my favourite dishes–broad beans–I found myself enjoying the process more than usual. The act of preparing and cooking the beans made them more than just beans. They became links to the imagination and to childhood. Memories of my Nonna who taught me how to cook them and peel them. And the tactile memory of the furry insides of broad bean pods. Remembering a younger me who imagined what it might be like to sleep in a broad bean pod. Well, imagine it…

So there’s a book brewing. And the beans became infected somehow. BTW, they were delicious, with olive oil, chives, black pepper and salt. Normally I add lemon juice, but the lemons are all gone…

Wangaratta tomorrow

Miriam — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:10:07 +0000

Getting ready for Wangaratta has brought me to four minutes past midnight, the night before. I now have boxes packed, things organised and absolutely no effing idea of what I’m wearing tomorrow for the launch of extempore Issue 3. I do know that my hair will be in ringlets and the whole day will be a constant struggle to stop my ankles swelling. They are the bane of my existence at the moment. They used to be so nice! But when I am tired, I retain fluid… Oh, ugggh. Nobody wants to read about that.

And now for something completely different. Peter Jordan, the lovely editor at the lovely Jazz Australia website kindly gave me permission to do another Q&A feature with the National Jazz Awards finalists this year. The instrument for 2009 is saxophone and all of the finalists took part in our Q&A .

Read the results here! http://www.jazz.org.au/features/366