Outside In

Bird On The Wire
an online column by Carmel Bird

No. 3
15 April 1998

Previous columns
The future of the book
Time slices

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw.

It's the light at the end of the tunnel thing; it's the search for the lost garden of paradise thing; it's birth and death; inside and out.
I acknowledge my own preoccupation with bright gardens glimpsed through doorways. In my case the preoccupation is linked to my fascination with the idea of the threshold, the line between inside and out. I love the fact of windows and doors, the idea of a pane of clear glass separating one region from another, the notion of an invisible membrane filling the doorspace, the certainty of difference and change between one realm and the other.
The painting by Anita Mertzlin on the jacket of the 1987 Australian edition of The Woodpecker Toy Fact shows an open doorway. The viewer is inside a darkish house. Light spills through the doorway onto the floorboards. Because much of my fiction is speculative, there are some surreal elements to the picture, but right now I am looking only at the fact that the door opens into the garden.
Above the plants flit white butterflies.
Last week I went to Tasmania to collect from my childhood home some of my late father's things. While I was there with some friends we took a few photographs. We did this in a quick, unstudied, almost accidental way. Somebody took one from the inside of my old playhouse, through the open doorway, looking out onto the ruins of the garden. When the picture was printed I was struck by its similarity to the scene on the cover of the book. Although there were no white butterflies in the garden, something, perhaps some leaves, mimics those butterflies.
Because the visit to the house was a final one, and because I was unearthing ordinary objects and treasures from my past, I was (and am) vulnerable to the slightest gesture towards some sweet significance. I see the photograph from the playhouse as a twin to the picture on the book, the 1998 photograph a mirror of the painted image from 1987. I may be exaggerating the similarities which may, to a dispassionate viewer, be slight, but my eyes refuse to separate the two pictures.
As if the photograph had been in my head from childhood days spent in the playhouse, and as if the artist had extracted the image from my brain and translated it into paint. I was always very personally attracted to the picture on the cover, but it was not until I saw the recent photograph that I realised how deeply connected I had been. The picture had taken me back in time without my realising it.
At this point I rejoice in the medium of a Website, for I don't need to reproduce the two pictures side by side on a colour plate in a journal or a book; I can put them here with ease, and people can make up their own minds about the similarities.

Color Whatever the verdict, I treasure the coincidence, and I realise that my imagination is frequently triggered by what I consider to be coincidences.
They are not always easy to write about because they are often very personal -- like this one -- but like the glass in the window, or the invisible membrane in the doorway, they preoccupy me and I must think about them and around them and occasionally write them up. Cataloguing the coincidences in your life can be as boring as talking about your pets and babies, so mostly I keep pretty dark about them. But because this one relied on images, and because it came to light at a key instant in my life, I have to examine it. There is emotion surrounding these pictures, the emotions of an adult visiting childhood, the emotions of a writer looking long and hard at the cover of her book.
I am often asked where writers get their ideas from. I have no satisfactory answer, but I can tell you that in my own case details such as the coincidence of the two images hover and move about in my imagination; I am conscious of them and sometimes they slip beneath the level of consciousness. That's another threshold, the line between what goes on in one region of the mind and another. And what goes on between the regions.
I am convinced that something is going on between the photograph and the painting. I will continue to shift my gaze between the two; you could say I am getting ideas, but as for where I got them from, or how it is that I classify them as ideas, I can't say. But I do think that the element of emotion is important here: the unconscious mind, the trigger of the images, the threshold between inside and out -- these things are bound up with my emotions. And what is a writer of fiction doing if not turning onto the outside the feelings that are contained within.
So kneel down, Alice, and take a look into the loveliest garden you ever saw. It's in your heart; it's in your head.

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Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.


	Bird On The Wire an online column by Carmel Bird No. 3 15 April 1998
Previous columns The future of the book Time slices	Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. It's the light at the end of the tunnel thing; it's the search for the lost garden of paradise thing; it's birth and death; inside and out. I acknowledge my own preoccupation with bright gardens glimpsed through doorways. In my case the preoccupation is linked to my fascination with the idea of the threshold, the line between inside and out. I love the fact of windows and doors, the idea of a pane of clear glass separating one region from another, the notion of an invisible membrane filling the doorspace, the certainty of difference and change between one realm and the other. The painting by Anita Mertzlin on the jacket of the 1987 Australian edition of The Woodpecker Toy Fact shows an open doorway. The viewer is inside a darkish house. Light spills through the doorway onto the floorboards. Because much of my fiction is speculative, there are some surreal elements to the picture, but right now I am looking only at the fact that the door opens into the garden. Above the plants flit white butterflies. Last week I went to Tasmania to collect from my childhood home some of my late father's things. While I was there with some friends we took a few photographs. We did this in a quick, unstudied, almost accidental way. Somebody took one from the inside of my old playhouse, through the open doorway, looking out onto the ruins of the garden. When the picture was printed I was struck by its similarity to the scene on the cover of the book. Although there were no white butterflies in the garden, something, perhaps some leaves, mimics those butterflies. Because the visit to the house was a final one, and because I was unearthing ordinary objects and treasures from my past, I was (and am) vulnerable to the slightest gesture towards some sweet significance. I see the photograph from the playhouse as a twin to the picture on the book, the 1998 photograph a mirror of the painted image from 1987. I may be exaggerating the similarities which may, to a dispassionate viewer, be slight, but my eyes refuse to separate the two pictures. As if the photograph had been in my head from childhood days spent in the playhouse, and as if the artist had extracted the image from my brain and translated it into paint. I was always very personally attracted to the picture on the cover, but it was not until I saw the recent photograph that I realised how deeply connected I had been. The picture had taken me back in time without my realising it. At this point I rejoice in the medium of a Website, for I don't need to reproduce the two pictures side by side on a colour plate in a journal or a book; I can put them here with ease, and people can make up their own minds about the similarities.

Color	Whatever the verdict, I treasure the coincidence, and I realise that my imagination is frequently triggered by what I consider to be coincidences. They are not always easy to write about because they are often very personal -- like this one -- but like the glass in the window, or the invisible membrane in the doorway, they preoccupy me and I must think about them and around them and occasionally write them up. Cataloguing the coincidences in your life can be as boring as talking about your pets and babies, so mostly I keep pretty dark about them. But because this one relied on images, and because it came to light at a key instant in my life, I have to examine it. There is emotion surrounding these pictures, the emotions of an adult visiting childhood, the emotions of a writer looking long and hard at the cover of her book. I am often asked where writers get their ideas from. I have no satisfactory answer, but I can tell you that in my own case details such as the coincidence of the two images hover and move about in my imagination; I am conscious of them and sometimes they slip beneath the level of consciousness. That's another threshold, the line between what goes on in one region of the mind and another. And what goes on between the regions. I am convinced that something is going on between the photograph and the painting. I will continue to shift my gaze between the two; you could say I am getting ideas, but as for where I got them from, or how it is that I classify them as ideas, I can't say. But I do think that the element of emotion is important here: the unconscious mind, the trigger of the images, the threshold between inside and out -- these things are bound up with my emotions. And what is a writer of fiction doing if not turning onto the outside the feelings that are contained within. So kneel down, Alice, and take a look into the loveliest garden you ever saw. It's in your heart; it's in your head.
HOME	Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.