Naomi Bulger: messages in bottles

Despite sharing this need to take little breaks from blogging, I am still guest posting my weekly antipodean dispatches over on English Muse.

This week, I'm thinking about The Harp in the South by Ruth Park, and how places, as well as people, can grow up and change, with or without us:

"Surry Hills is one of those places that has faced a fundamental shift in personality, more than once. A hundred years ago, it was the most dangerous part of Sydney, full of razor gangs and brothels and sly-grog joints. In Ruth Park’s famous novel The Harp in the South, she conjured up the Surry Hills of the 1940s, then a slum, and the downtrodden yet vibrant families that populated its old streets."

I also found some lovely and sometimes poignant photographs of Sydney life in the 1930s and 40s from the NSW Library archives (like this one, of a Salvation Army service in Surry Hills).

The post is here if you'd like to take a look. I welcome your comments!

I have carpal tunnel syndrome. It's a kind of repetitive strain injury in the hand and wrist, so people in jobs like mine that require a lot of typing are likely candidates. Add to that, pregnancy has been known to bring it on and, yep, I've had it since the start of my pregnancy.

Carpal tunnel syndrome causes tingling and numbness in the wrist, hand and fingers. For me, it has gotten progressively worse and is now so bad that I wake up at night with excruciating pain that radiates from the tips of my fingers up to my elbow. Often I get this through the day, too.

It's so bad now that it is impairing my capacity to use my hands, especially my right hand. Simple things like holding a fork or toothbrush, opening a door, signing my name, using a phone, carrying a bag, navigating the Internet on my laptop, have all become difficult and sometimes impossible. Typing this post is also causing extreme pain, and I'm having to fix a lot more typos than usual as my fingers spasm on the keyboard.

So I'm going to take a little break from blogging. I'll still pop in and share things on this blog whenever I have a good day, and I'll keep reading your blog posts whenever my hands will let me use the mouse.

Baby B is due in four weeks and hopefully the condition will go away after that. If not, I'll have to undergo an operation as my job is to write and that's going to require the use of my hands. So either way, I'll be back. See you soon!

Yours truly,
Naomi xo

Often I get asked by people visiting New York where I recommend they eat, and what I recommend they do. I've written so many emails about this that I thought I'd share my top tips with you here.

I lived downtown on Manhattan (in SoHo), so most of my tips are around that area: SoHo, NoHo, Nolita, Greenwich Village and East Village. These are all places I used to go with my friends. Some are a bit fancy but most of them are cheep and cheerful local haunts, as opposed to tourist traps.

A disclaimer:
One thing about New York is that there are SO MANY wonderful places to eat, and the city is constantly changing. So bear in mind that I lived there two years ago, so what I'm giving you now may not be the same... and I'm positive there will be hundreds of other great places that have sprung up since. That said, these were my favourite eateries in my neighbourhood.

If you just want to wander to find somewhere to eat, Elizabeth Street (Nolita) has some great restaurants; Mulberry Street (heading south from Prince) is ‘Little Italy” (until it becomes Chinatown); and Bleeker Street heading West has some wonderful little places as well as nearby laneways and nooks and crannies with cafes and restaurants to explore.

Also, get over to Brooklyn if you can find someone to give you tips on the good places to eat and drink. There are some fantastic villages in Brooklyn, and super cool bars and restaurants, but I just can’t remember the names of any so you'll need to find a local to advise you.

How about you? Have you lived in New York or visited the city? What are your favourite eateries? Add them in the comments so everyone can benefit.

Lately I've been drawing pictures on the mail I'm sending. The ladies at my local post office seem to like it. Hopefully my friends will, too.

I was inspired to draw pictures on parcels by this wonderful book, posted to ME recently by my dear friend Ruby Blessing. I love Edward Gorey's little graphic stories, and already have two of them at home. How did she know? I can't wait to delve into the wonderful letters inside this book!

And look what else arrived in my mailbox last week, all the way from my lovely postal pal Hermine, in Belgium. She sends the sweetest, most creative little parcels, I just love getting them.

Then yesterday afternoon I answered the door to the postman and JUST LOOK what arrived, sent from my dear friends Michelle and Kevin in Sydney, who stayed with us just last weekend. I am incredibly spoiled.

How about you? What have you found in your mailbox lately? What are you sending to friends?

(ps. As always, if you buy a copy of my novella Airmail, I promise to send you a personal letter in the mail. Just email me your address, or my other contact details are here.)

Autumn showers, cool mornings, my breath visible in the air when I walk the dog. Welcoming visitors from far away, exploring the shops and markets together, downing tacos and treats. Reading books under a warm blanket, cuddling cat, dog and man; taking kicks left, right and centre from Baby B.

I'm sorry I've been so absent from your blog and mine lately. As you can see, I've been spending my time in all kinds of lovely ways. What's been happening in your life? How are you enjoying the change of seasons?

Roll up, roll up. Great wonders will appear before your very eyes. What phantasm is this? Behold, the conjurings of the magic lantern, seen here in my post on The English Muse this week (hint: they do it with mirrors).

And in other news, have you seen these dance blooms yet? Stunning, oui?
 

I have been listening to Of Monsters and Men's My Head is an Animal album all week. It makes me so happy. And I just love this track, "Little Talks." When I hear it, I feel like somebody has handed me a shining gift and, when I open it, the gift is freedom. Maybe that's what I'm craving.

It seems like the closer my beautiful Baby B is to arriving, and the more exhausted my body feels from carrying and nurturing her, the busier I get.

I am swamped with work. Literally swamped, with towers of notes and briefings spilling over my desk and into the lounge room and onto the sweet little rocking chair that Mr B bought for me to nurse baby, not laptop.

We've had weeks upon weeks of house guests and dinner guests and travel plans and outings and shopping trips to try to prepare for baby's birth. So much housework! How does our home get so messy and so dirty so quickly?

I'm trying to write my next book, get started on an exciting new creative, collaborative project that will launch next year, and keep up with my blog.

This is all fun and I feel deeply loved by my friends and family, but I am also in somewhat of a spin. I'm prone to sudden bouts of dizziness and moments of "I must lie down, NOW," which do not work well with deadlines.

And I am not sleeping. What with the kicks (not that I'm complaining about those, oh how I love those kicks), the cramps (I WILL complain about the cramps), the carpal tunnel syndrome I've had in my hands and wrists since the start of my pregnancy, the back spasms when I roll the wrong way, and the stuffy nose, very little sleep goes on during those long night hours.

I wish I knew how other people did it. I don't see other pregnant women looking as done-in as I feel. They have that glow everyone talks about.

And of course I'm nervous. I know that this is just the beginning of sleepless nights and incessant demands on my time. That I am about to enter a whole new realm of indentured service to a tiny, beloved dictator. We don't have the financial luxury of me being able to be the stay-at-home mum I long to be, so I will need to juggle the dictator with deadlines, too.

But when all is said and done, I'm doing ok. I will figure it all out, somehow. From what I hear I've had a very easy road in this pregnancy, and I truly am grateful. Just tired.

Oh, and another thing that is cheering me this week, alongside "Little Talks," is my memory of France last year: of being there with my friends, of exploring Paris and basking in the heat of the south, and of little Baby B beginning to grow inside me, although I didn't know about that yet.

So in my guest post on English Muse today, I'm bringing you a visual treat from two great cities: Paris and New York. Come travel with me, won't you?

The weekend is almost here! Time to pull out the camera and get creative...

Loving this DIY tutorial from Photojojo to print your memories onto fabric.

Those cheeky Instagrammers! I've been wondering how on earth they manage such amazing photographs, even with the help of the Instagram filters. Then I read this how-to and discovered what goes on behind the scenes.

Still Life stylist Sonia Rentsch is guest blogging for the Design Files. I love her simple, quirky aesthetic. She says, "A fruit tree, so simple and evocative, is beautiful in and of itself – but how do I make it more? In a world saturated with imagery, how do I ask people to look again?"

Take a look at this post and collection of archive photos from WWII on Hila Shachar's blog, le project d'amour. So moving, and thought-provoking.

Temporary, damage-free, wash-out-able pink hair? I am so going to do this, thanks to this tutorial from The Beauty Department.

_These are the words of Australian author John Marsden, and today on the English Muse, I'm exploring the mental and emotional gymnastics that Marsden put me through when I read my way through his Tomorrow, When the War Began series these past weeks. My post is here if you're interested.

When I first read this quote, I thought "Oh yeah, me too." But that's not strictly true. Those alternative worlds? Escaping into them is why I read, not necessarily why I write. And that got me thinking: why do I write?

It surprised me that I had to think so hard to find my answer. After all, I've been writing since I was six or seven years old. Why did I write then? Why do I still write now?

Being a writer is like being an explorer. Charting new territories. Forging new frontiers. Rewriting the maps. Here be dragons! I undertake this adventure in the company of people I love, the characters who populate my stories. They are my co-explorers, often drawing me into places I'd never have thought to go. It is exciting, invigorating, and utterly addictive.

So tell me: why do you write?

It's all becoming very real. Now I can say "next month" when anyone asks me when the baby is due, and that is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.

On the weekend we managed to set up a little 'nursery nook' for the baby. In a two-bedroom house with two adults, a part-time teenager (that is, she lives here part time, the teenager bit is full time), a home office and soon a baby, there will be no official 'baby's room' or nursery.

But we did manage to repurpose a little alcove by the back door and facing onto the lounge room, next to my office, into Baby B's little day area.

Thus with a quick trip to Ikea and an evening of fussing, heaving and swearing over bizarre instructions, we are almost ready for baby to arrive.

_ It occurs to me that I never did make an official gender announcement about our little bundle-to-be on this blog. Can you guess now?

_Part of the reason we managed to get this done so quickly was that I have been on what you might call an unintentional Internet hiatus.

Last Thursday I realised just how far behind I was on my deadlines. I shut down Firefox and my email software for a few hours so I could get to it without any distractions. That worked a treat. But it wasn’t until mid-way through today that it dawned on me that no emails for almost five days was pretty unpopular, even for me. I had forgotten to turn everything back on. 

If I haven’t answered your emails or tweets, or commented on your blog lately, I’m not ignoring you and I'm sorry. I promise to be in touch soon.