Intuition

The vast majority of the readers of this web journal reside in the United States and Europe and hence I doubt many of you know of the death of Ruth Park a few weeks ago. Ruth is the author of 'The Harp in the South', well known to many Australians who read that book in their final year at school. She was a prolific writer and perhaps some readers are familiar with 'The Muddleheaded Wombat' series heard on ABC Radio. My husband certainly remembers listening to them.

In the late 1990s my mother sent over to the United States Ruth Park's two autobiographical books. I loved reading them then and on hearing of her death I had a desire to revisit them. One of the first things I did when I reached the holiday house was to cast an eye along the bookshelf and there I found them, to my delight.

I am currently immersed in her second book which largely takes up her adult years - those years after she marries the enigmatic D'Arcy Niland. I hope you will excuse me if I return to this autobiography many times over the next few weeks, picking up on a thread of thought here and there. Ruth's words has my mind aglow with ideas - ideas about writing and ideas about living - and I know I will feel a desire to share some of those ideas with you. You see, she captures that time of Australian life which is entirely enthralling to me. It is an era long gone but through her words, I am reliving it and somehow reaching into a part of myself which I thought had also gone, but I now realize is alive and well.

Ruth was not inclined to philosophize about life; at least not until she realized later in her life that she had to find her way out of "the pit" after D'Arcy died long before his time . She is a storyteller at heart and 'Fishing in the Styx' (part 2 of the biography) is busy telling the tale of her life. But, in spite of this she does, at moments, reveal the workings of her mind. She remembers well looking back on how she felt at certain key moments of the tale. She writes:

"After so many years of hard running, I acknowledged I did not get from my life much that was satisfying....This disquietening and deeply melancholy feeling may have been what is today termed burn-out, when the validity of what one is doing is in question...On the other hand, it could denote entrapment of my mind in the vast religious and ethical error of construction - that all life is nothing more or less than a storyline - a linear plot moving onwards, onwards, towards The End, which will prove either satisfactory or otherwise. Satisfactory, if they want it to sell. This variety of time-travelling is not programmed by culture into all races, but it is a part of our own, thereby robbing us of awareness of the moment."

Ruth lived most of her life at an extremely fast pace. Often poverty stricken, she and D'Arcy lived according to dead lines for stories and series and articles that procured enough money to feed, house and clothe themselves and their growing family. She really had no choice but to keep moving forward and in any case, I think it was her predisposition to do so.

Nevertheless, I feel sure that the above words were said with sincerity and the writer in me also feels that it is hard to move away from the notion that a person's life is a story. We can't really see the story line until much later and so the story unfolds rather unwittingly, almost as if we had no say over the story.

But, here's the thing. I think we do have a say over the story of our lives. I think we make choices all the time that dictate in large measure how the story will go. What interests me particularly about what she said in that paragraph is that in order to make the best choices, we must be aware of 'the moment'. We must take the time to really listen to what is in our hearts and minds and follow that intuition inside ourselves; the conscience too that speaks to us and guides us in our decisions.

On a personal level, I always put my husband and children first. That is what my intuition and my conscience told me to do. But, the time in my life is now here when I have some time, energy and courage to let the characters and events of my life out of my head and put them onto paper. This is a chapter in my life that I can look forward to immensely. It was Ruth who made me see that I can do that. What does your intuition tell you to do?