Judith White

There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
…
No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.

From: All Along the Watch Tower (Bob Dylan)

It’s a sunny spring day, and time to update news of the book, the life, in which Elusive Language dances tantalizingly before me, behind me, within me. And thinking of all the selves that nestle within us, and in particular, my own ‘writing self’ versus my ‘public speaking self’. And how, in comparison, the writing self is the one that comfortably wears the old slippers and favourite jersey. And the public speaking self is an uncertain venture onto a tight-rope, wearing the straight jacket, requiring practice and applied self control. Not daring to look down. [Read more…] about All The World’s A Stage

Hamlet: Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Guildenstern: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet:  A dream itself is but a shadow

(Shakespeare – Hamlet)

Here I am shoveling the past into a nutshell, a whole year gone by … [Read more…] about The Year in a Nutshell

How to hold on to it
Hold on to it like you hold a day old chicken
Hold on to it like you hold a live fish
Hold on to it like you hold a horse
Hold on to it like you hold a bowl of soup
Hold on to it like you hold a door open for the Queen Mother
Letting go of it is just as difficult and shall be dealt with at some later stage.

(Michael Leunig)

The enticingly and profoundly quirky Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig was a guest speaker at the recent Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. He was talking about the duck that he often draws in his cartoons. He said that a duck is ‘a lovely symbol’ to put in; it changes the whole mood of a drawing.  He said that unbeknownst to him originally, a duck in German folklore is a symbol of transcendence; when your life is blocked, a duck turning up can carry you forward. [Read more…] about Holding a Live Book

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes, without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee, take all myself.

From: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

So, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? A rose is a rose is a rose. But is it? A rose is a variety of nouns,  a verb, an adjective; a flower, a shower spout, the act of having lifted, a colour … a girl’s name.

And I’m discovering that my name, Judith White, is a variable.  A Judith is a Judy is a Jude. But just as there are many different sides to our nature, many different selves to the whole that makes us a person, there are many different Judith Whites in the world, and what’s more, quite a selection of Judith Whites who are writers – and each is a part that does not make up the sum of the whole. [Read more…] about Coming Up Roses

He thought he saw a rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
‘The one thing I regret,’ he said,
Is that it cannot speak!’

From Sylvie and Bruno   (Lewis Carroll)

A  month now since the launch of The Elusive Language of Ducks, held in Studio 29 – my daughter, Xanthe’s, office in St Kevin’s Arcade in K Road. The launch was a great success. Every dog has his day. Every duck. Perhaps this was mine. But actually no … it wasn’t just about me … it was also about the publisher, Harriet Allan, from Random House as well, and my publicist, Jennifer Balle, and all those people and friends and family who poured so much enthusiasm into the publication. And we were all buoyed by the email that arrived just two hours before the launch with the offer of World English Rights from Oneworld Publications in London! [Read more…] about The Elusive Language of the Interviewee

Groucho:         Now here is a little peninsula … and over here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico:              Why a duck?
Groucho:         I’m fine, how are you? I said, this is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.
Chico:              All right, why a duck? Why a duck? Why not a chicken?
Groucho:         Well, I don’t know why a chicken. I’m a stranger here myself. I know that’s a viaduct. You try and cross over there on a chicken and you’ll find out why a duck.
Chico:              It’s deep water, that’s why a duck.

Marx Brothers (from movie Cocoanuts)

Sitting looking out the large window through the soft rain across the valley thinking of the launch of The Elusive Language of Ducks coming up in a couple of weeks. Thinking of how it all started…

Chooks.

I wanted chooks not a duck. But a duckling arrived unannounced in my house, an orphan, its mother killed by a predator.

‘But you’ve always wanted chooks,’ said my daughter as she handed over the container with this two day old skittery fluffy thing scrabbling around its smelly straw. ‘Anyway, we can’t have it as Pedro would get it. And duck eggs are great for cooking. And … it’s perfect timing for Christmas dinner.’

Pedro is their enormous pantheresque cat that spends his life with his nose skimming the floor in the hunt for random food, or outside on the lookout for birds, mice, rats, or any juicy animal that will fit between his jaws of broken-glass teeth. I agreed to look after the duckling until it was ready for the world. I reluctantly became fascinated by the design of its feathering up, its sense of knowing about duck life even though it had no role models.

It had adopted me as its mother. Each night I’d write a few notes about its development. My own mother had recently died so I was feeling out of kilter with the world. This funny little dependent creature was able to make me laugh. It followed me everywhere and became anxious when I left it. As it grew, I in turn became attached to the duck, struggling always to understand what it meant by its wide variety of expressive sounds. Its language. I started thinking about the nature of attachment and love, and obsession. And addiction. Characters, like the duckling, arrived unannounced into my thoughts. Into my notes. What if, what if, what if …

So this is why a duck. How the novel, The Elusive Language of Ducks, evolved. The fraying strands of reality weaving into a fictional world that seemed to exist even before I tapped into it.