Motherf*cking February
Photo: Marco Ceschi via https://unsplash.com/@spantax

Photo: Marco Ceschi via https://unsplash.com/@spantax

A little something for everyone this week. Here’s a short spoken-word piece

 

Every mother looks tired today

Or perhaps it’s the harsh light of Monday

As she sat with a baby in a sling

With the sun on her face

I could see the exhaustion

of the night before

And I also saw

Those dedicated mums meeting their friends

In cafes for lunch

Trying not to be in the way

Trying to get their two year olds to eat something

It’s not even much fun

But better than not having gone

What a mess they make

And I think maybe I’ll just get a job

And outsource all my childcare from now on

Every mother looks tired today

Motherfucking February

 

Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/motherfcking-february

Appenzell #26Cantons52Weeks

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Canton: Appenzell Innerrhoden / Appenzell Ausserrhoden

Destination: Hoher Kasten “The Top of Appenzell”

Crazy thing: The canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden was the last jurisdiction in Europe to grant women the vote – in 1991. Yes, that is only 26 years ago. What the… ?

 

We visited the Appenzell yesterday. I say “The Appenzell” because there’s actually two “half-cantons” that make up Appenzellerland in tourist terms – Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden (the split happened back in 1525 due to religion: Catholic / Protestant). Well, I’m going to claim both since we drove through Inner and Ausser before catching a cable car to the “Top of Appenzell”, where we had views over the two half-cantons and beyond — all the way to Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein and France (on a clear day).

We picked a rather windy Sunday for our trip, which meant a slightly hairy gondola ride up to Hoher Kasten for lunch at the revolving restaurant. The cable car had actually been closed due to high winds the previous day so we weren’t even sure if we’d get up there! Luckily it was running and there wasn’t too much rocking and rolling except right at the end as we ascended up the almost sheer rockface to the cable car station.

It was a rather grey winter’s day so we visibility wasn’t the best ever, but we could see all the way to Lake Constance and various other vistas. Added bonus was that, due to the inclement weather, it wasn’t at all crowded and we had a prime window-seat for our meal in the revolving restaurant – which was super-cool (the food wasn’t half bad either).

On the way home we stopped at a farm vending machine for some apfelsaft and raclette cheese. I am fascinated by these things.

Farm vending machine at St Gallenkapel

Farm vending machine at St Gallenkapel

Short entry this time – not much more to say, really!

Us and Them

horses

We’re the ones here now

it’s us. that’s it

on the spot

in the place

my face

and yours

just a set of real people

all with our own lives

loves

pains and joy

so why

do we feel so afraid

of Them

that They’ll come

and

take it all away

 

This blog has felt a bit neglected lately. The weather has been too snowy for canton visits and I’ve been trying to keep my poetry aside to submit to various journals and stuff. I’ve also been doing the first edits on my novel and writing some short stories and trying to get some other people’s stories together for an anthology (phew!). I think I’m procrastinating a bit, but I’m also enjoying myself… mostly!

This morning I saw a repellent poster from a local extreme-right political group that was scare-mongering about women in burquas. It didn’t even have an organisation name on it, but I know who put it up. What’s the German for Stop Punishing Women just because you’re a Fucking Coward? This country is so small, it sometimes feels like you know everyone. It seems barmy that people still feel so afraid of women looking different that they’d seek to ban it. I don’t know. I’m probably not making much sense. I got really angry. 

Ticino #26Cantons52Weeks

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Canton: Ticino

Destination: Bellinzona

Special guest: just the family this time

Cool thing: The Gotthard tunnel is currently the longest train tunnel in the world. At the “deepest” point you’re below 2.3km of mountain and temperatures can reach up to 45 degrees C.

 

I’m reaching a point in my life where it’s a tad embarrassing to admit my favourite food is pizza (yes, I’m 25!) but the fact remains. So we figured, in the week of my birthday, why not head to Italian Switzerland for one of the country’s finest oven-baked dough-and-cheese treats? So yesterday we headed south.

It was actually pretty good timing – Zurich, and indeed all the bits of Switzerland we passed through on “our” side of the Alps, were full of squally snowstorms and subzero temperatures, while in sunny Ticinio it was, well, sunny! (full disclosure: there was some snow on the ground and an icy wind, but it was 10 celsius and lovely in the sunshine). We got to travel through the recently opened Gotthard tunnel, which meant our travel time from Zurich HB to Bellinzona was a shade under 2 hours. This was excellent because 2 hours is about as long as Himself and I can manage to entertain two young children on a train journey while maintaining our own sanity (thank goodness we decided not to visit Australia this year!)

Bellinzona is famous for its three castles, which are UNESCO listed. I’m pleased to report we visited all three although, being winter, they weren’t looking too lively – you could walk around the grounds and the ramparts but not go inside (however this also saved us paying any entry fees, ha!). There’s usually the dinky little Artù Castle Train running a few times per day to take you up the very steep hill to Castello Montebello and Castello Sasso Corbaro but this was also on “winterpause”. No matter, we lucked in by getting to the postbus stop at just the right time (buses were only once every 2 hours!) so we caught the bus to the top (Castello Sasso Corbaro), took a look around, then walked down to Montebello, which was the biggest castle with the most to see, as well as a small playground for the kids, and then it was time to catch the postbus back to the station and get the train home.

Did I mention the pizza? In between the Castlegrande and heading up the hill to the other two, we had a nice wander through the town of Bellinzona, checking out the Saturday produce market (we bought some cheese for our newly-acquired raclette grill) then stopped at a local pizzeria for some very tasty birthday lunch.

A brilliant day out in beautiful Bellinzona and that’s Ticino ticked off the list. However, I feel like we may have to revisit this canton before the year is out, as there’s so much to do here – eg: I’m slightly bummed we didn’t go to Swissminatur yet!

Glarus #26Cantons52Weeks

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Canton: Glarus

Destination: Braunwald / Glarnerland

Special guest: Cath

Cool thing: Glarus has one of the funkiest coat of arms of any canton –featuring this cool dude, Saint Fridolin of Säckingen – an Irish missionary who spread the good word (ahem) in the Rhineland during the 6th or 7th century

 

Happy New Year! 

This post kicks off my “26 Cantons in 52 Weeks Challenge” where I’m attempting to visit each canton of Switzerland throughout 2017. I was hoping to go alphabetically or in some sort of logical order (by geographical size, population, altitude or when each canton joined the federation etc) but in none of those lists does Glarus come top. It’s just a nearby canton with a mountain that seemed like a good one to visit right after New Year’s while our friend Cath was in town.

So – Glarus!  Conveniently located a 45 minute drive from where we live in Zurich, the Braunwald in Glarnerland is a pretty mountain area just up from Glarus’ capital city, also called Glarus. The city of Glarus looked very attractive as we drove through it, but sadly we didn’t have time to stop.

The Braunwald was a new mountain for us (hence the appeal). It contained the usual assortment of cable cars, Bergrestaurants and stunning vistas. Unfortunately there was almost no snow! Up until this point, it has been a rather disappointing winter for skiiers and snow bunnies. We saw quite a number of people making the best of it, gritting their teeth and playing games of cards on the terrasses of their chalets while there. We did feel a bit sorry for them – you would have expected guaranteed snow in the first week of January in Switzerland at over 1,000 meters above sea level! I bet they were relieved when it started snowing the next day and there’s been plenty more snowfall pretty much ever since.

Anyway, it was good for us, as we had snow-free roads to get there, non-slippery paths to walk and even some nice green grass. We arrived at Glarus Nord and parked near the station (from here up it’s all car-free) so we caught a cable car up to the Braunwald (1256m above sea level). Then another cable car to Grotzenbüel (1559m) where we ate our lunch. We were kicking ourselves though, because if we’d spotted the path to walk five minutes further along, we could have gone all the way up to Gumen at 1901m! You start to become an altitude snob on these trips.

Anyway, it was lovely. Taking people up mountains is probably one of our favourite things to do with visitors, so I imagine we’ll have a fair few of these sort of trips in the year’s challenge. I also like the idea of having a special guest on some/all occasions! In this case, Cath got a respectable dose of the Swiss alpine experience, we had some lovely sunshine and all got a very decent “mountain high”.

One canton down, 25 to go!

Clairevetica: Year in Review 2016

Lake Zurich

Although it’s against popular opinion, 2016 has been a good year for me. Maybe one of my best! It’s been a great year for this blog too. In fact, a lot of my joy in 2016 has been directly tied to Clairevetica so it seems appropriate to write this post.

This is the year that I randomly decided on 30 March to participate in a month-long poetry writing challenge: NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. I feel like that spur-of-the-moment decision has changed my life! A month later, I’d written 30 poems in 30 days, I had a bunch of new followers and was following heaps more blogs myself. It helps that it coincided with a friend/local blogger starting a Switzerland blogger group so I simultaneously followed a bunch of local blogs as well as all the poetry stuff. Clairevetica has gone from having around 50 followers to having 200. Impressive. And I really thank you all for following, liking, commenting and supporting (both on the blog and elsewhere) – hell, even just bothering to read all the words I write! Fittingly, as I was writing this post, I just got a notification from WordPress that I’d achieved 1,000 likes on this blog altogether, w00t!

However, stats aside, perhaps the most important thing about the poetry month was it meant poetry went from being a thing I occasionally dabbled in to a Thing I Am. Alongside my various other jobs and titles, I’m now “Zurich-based poet, Claire Doble” and fuck that makes me happy.

My most popular poem was The Earth / His Purpleness about Prince and Earth Day. Which seems even more appropriate since this year is ending on a media storm of all the famous people who’ve died, as well as there being ongoing worries globally when it comes to ecology and politics.

Other current affairs poems I did included The Unicorn and the Lion about Brexit, Stars and Stripes about America, Over Heard and Cincinatti about Johnny Depp’s breakup and that Gorilla grabbing a child (remember?!) and Landfill – deploring all the waste.  Other poems I wanted to mention again included Alison, which I’m humbled was read aloud at the funeral, Morning Song, which really evoked something about my life here and Rollins Rules, trying to capture the give-no-fucks spirit of the man. While I’m thanking people and noting poems, I should give a shout-out to my ever supportive husband, Himself: Respect! (and love)! 

I also wrote a few book reviews In Deep that’s stayed with me and I am a Feminist as well as a couple of film reviews from Zurich Film Festival.

I had my spoken-word debut, and went on to do a few more spoken word recordings. Possibly my favourite so far is Vanish.

And, of course, I had a good dose of soul searching and attempts to find my way – Time Out of Mind and Writing for My Life/ Fighting for my Life (which is my second-most viewed post of the year) . It’s nice for me to take a look back at these and see how things have worked out (mostly well).

I also started and finished writing my first novel – which I should mention as it’s pretty huge. Although it doesn’t have a lot to do with the blog…

In the midst of all this, we had an amazing summer of international visitors to Zurich. It was so great to introduce our adopted home-city to friends and family from near and far and to spend time exploring more of this gorgeous country with them.

As I said in my previous post of New Year’s Resolutions. I’d like to do some more travel stuff in 2017 with our 26 Swiss Cantons in 52 Weeks challenge. I’ll do more poetry of course but hope to get stuff published above and beyond Clairevetica. And you can follow my spoken word stuff on Soundcloud.

Happy New Year everyone – I’m so delighted to be writing so much and to have all these Clairevetica followers old and new. I appreciate each and every one of you. Here’s to a rockin’ writing 2017!

Flat, fat, Christmas and New Year crap

My latest “Roxette” haircut. Maybe another NYR should be find a decent hairdresser!

 

A few short weeks ago I was riding high. I’d had a couple of poems published and a story up in a local newspaper (43 Habits You’ll Pick Up Living in Switzerland). I’d just completed a rough draft of my first novel and poems and even a few short stories were falling out of me all over the shop.

And now… I’m the kid after Christmas. It all just feels a bit jaded and useless. Where’s the confidence-bordering-on-arrogance? The joie de vivre for this writer’s life?

A few things I was looking forward to got derailed. After a few months of little to no drinking, I got a bit festive and the wine intake has crept up again. I kicked Facebook off my phone and I feel better, but it’s created space for loneliness — amazing how social media sort of causes but cures that. Which basically proves it’s yet another addiction. David Foster Wallace (yes, I am that wanker today!) gave what I think is the best description of addiction.  Or, if you prefer, Homer Simpson – “Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

I think I’m tired, it’s been cold and dry and dark but without the joyous surprise of snow. I think a few months of sitting still at my computer tapping out the words finally caught up with me physically and I’m feeling heavy, unfit and yuk. I miss my friends and my family. Even those who are nearby. I think finishing things and achieving things, while wonderful, does result in a bit of comedown afterwards. It can be hard to keep the momentum going, especially at this time of year when things are winding up.

But anyway, it’s inching towards 2017 now and I’m trying to look forward. Play it forward.

Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to make some small, incremental changes that would hopefully make a big difference to my / our lives and I think I’ve achieved that. (Interesting to look back actually – in 2015 it was about surrendering to my fate and a year or so before that it was Don’t Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread… something I may have to re-examine given my furious forward-pace of work recently. Ha!)

So I think 2017 is going to be all about consolidation and possibly realignment – shaving off the excess to concentrate on the main game. I’ve put in some amazing groundwork in 2016 and I want to build on that. This means not getting distracted by stuff, no matter how important it may seem. And this is going to include saying no to paid work if need be, which is slightly terrifying when I think about my bank balance! Hopefully it’s all to the greater good though and the fact I’ve made this commitment to this Writing for My Life thing will eventually start to pay off, literally.

So I’ve come up with some more ideas – why not. And because this has worked for me in the past, I’m going to make it into a statement of intent. With SMART goals even (yes, I’m that wanker too today)…

In 2017 I would like to

  • have a reasonable first draft of the novel by mid-year to give to early readers to feed back on
  • (self-?) publish my novel by the end of the year. [I’m not sure how realistic this is – may need to be revised, depending on how well point 1 goes!]
  • (self-?) publish a chapbook of poetry and/or publish or contribute to a book of short stories
  • record more poems – let’s say 6. At least one every two months
  • perform some poetry live to an audience at least once (eek!)
  • make a bit of money off my creative writing (ie: non-journalism)
  • get at least five pieces published in places that are not Claire-controlled: journals etc.
  • complete A2.2 German (I admit, this was rather an afterthought!)

PLUS – I’ve also had an idea for this blog that I’d like to reclaim some of the travelogue stuff and so Himself, the kids and I are going to do a 26 Swiss Cantons in 52 Weeks challenge where we’ll visit all 26 cantons of Switzerland throughout 2017. I’ll aim to take at least one photo (if not a whole gallery) of each and do a writeup of something we saw or somewhere we went. We’re planning to go alphabetically but we’ll see how it pans out.

Phew – that should probably be enough for now. I’d better go get some rest before NYE !  Oh, and I’m hoping to do a year-in-review of this blog at some point in the next week or so as well… stay tuned. 🙂

Wynyard

Wynyard Station Entrance. Photo: J Bar

Wynyard, Wynyard

your windy yard

the vent we sat at

after dark

what a lark

all dressed in black

our faces painted

our hair teased up

 

Wynyard, Wynyard

your 70s brownness

serried escalators arc

unconsciously modernist

a real-life Jeffrey Smart

Wynyard, Wynyard

Sanctuary in your depths

the handicapped toilet

full of thick brown tiles

count them and you might

have the number of miles

we danced

or pranced

with trails of gossamer and tulle

following us through

your pitched inclines

our tresses

our rounded arms

brushing carelessly past

your unspecial address

with Town Hall before

and Circular Quay after

(the queen of the harbour

with her Cahill crown)

 

Wynyard, Wynyard

our gateway to town

the Hunter Connect

(always made me think

of that Computer Cat pet)

we kids

let loose

and yet

in your wide brown history

merely

another set

of passers by

as your steep shoulders shrug

and shudder with the trains below

an ancient spot

dressed up, ignored

tired of our bored

congress

 

Wynyard, Wynyard

tho

it seems odd

to cherish a dusty park

a station! a bus stop!

just off the bridge

Wynyard Wynyard

I hope you know

I think of you

(it surprised me too)

if not as the place

where dreams come true

at least a spot

where dreams embark

even scruffy ones

after dark

or: gave up, headed home

waiting

for a taxi to the North Shore

it’s changover time again…

enough – I’ll say no more

about

Wynyard, Wynyard

 

Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/wynyard

I don’t know why I suddenly had a nostalgic pang for this central-Sydney station but there you go. I did spend a lot of time there I guess. One for the old Sydney goths out there – particularly the North Shore ones (a select group to be sure!) And, obviously, I had to record it because anyone unfamiliar with Sydney will not know how to pronounce “Wynyard”.   PS: Does Sydney do ‘Poems on the Underground’? 🙂

 

 

Published work

 

I had two poems published in two online literary journals at the beginning of December and thought I should take a moment to boast a little! So, um, here’s a picture of a Christmas-themed lemon cake I baked for our local Xmas market to celebrate!

 

Write to Me was published in the UK’s Allegro Poetry December “Travel” themed issue. This was one of my letter-writing poems http://www.allegropoetry.org/p/issue-11.html

 

And my first ‘official’ spoken-word piece, Beginnings, was published in The Woolf – a Zurich-based literary magazine. http://thewoolf.org/2016/11/28/spoken-word-beginnings-by-claire-doble/