A collection of writing and creative work by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon
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The Death of the Printed Novel
You’re standing in your local bookshop quietly browsing some favourite shelves, when a technicolour spine catches your attention enticing you to gently remove it from the shelf and survey it’s cover. You hold the weighty book in your hands and fan out the pages, wondering how long it might take to read.
Ten minutes pass and your prized book is carefully inserted into a crunchy paper bag as you rummage through your pockets for some warm coins.
Upon arriving home, you put the kettle on and start the hunt for a comfortable place. Perhaps it’s a worn nook on the couch, or it could be under the feathered duvet on your bed or maybe you’re waiting for the bath water to reach the perfect temperature. You remove the book from the paper bag and reassess the front cover, silently reaffirming your choice. That cup of tea is ready so you sit down with your legs crossed or perhaps one leg is tightly tucked under the other, as you gingerly open the book and make that first resolute crease.
And so it begins…
Perhaps this is demonstrative of your weekly ritual, or maybe it’s a nostalgic memory of days long gone when reading used to be a school-time chore. Regardless of the sort of reader you may be, it seems this once universal phenomenon is fast becoming a thing of the past. With several international bookstores filing for bankruptcy, major publishing houses downsizing and portable digital readers like the Kindle and the Nook reporting sales are reaching all time highs.
Gone are the days when we need to take time out of our schedules to head to the local bookshop, as are the times when budding young authors struggled to find forums in which to publish their works. The Internet age celebrates rapid progression and innovation – blockbuster movies, priceless works of art and entire literary oeuvres are now only a few clicks away. These new digital books are heralded as environmental champions, allowing individuals to carry their entire library in their pocket.
Concerned readers should take solace in the fact that media read the epitaph of the printed novel at the dawn of radio, film and then television, but perhaps this is different.
Perhaps the printed novel may follow in the footsteps of the record and analogue film in becoming a coveted item for reading enthusiasts. In a society obsessed with salvaging time through rendering everything super-convenient, it seems we’ve forgotten how to use this extra time to our advantage. (Unless you consider spending hours social networking productive).
So when you’re next sitting at your computer browsing the latest fiction on Amazon.com consider taking the time to visit the local bookshop to purchase something real. For then can you savour the texture of the printed pages, smell the dry earthy scent of the paper, open to a bookmarked page and gauge between your fingertips the amount you’ve read and how much is left to go. Enjoy the romantic sensory experience of reading, because who knows how much longer that bookshop will be open, or indeed how long it will take for the novel to become a novelty.
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THE PEOPLE YOU WILL MEET AT UNIVERSITY
On Wednesday the 5th of October I launched my first book The People You Will Meet At University at Name This Bar on Oxford Street in Sydney. The launch was pretty great, there were free dumplings and everyone ate delicious food drank little cups of champagne and had a cool time. I was so touched by the amount of people that made it out on a Wednesday night and bought a book! I am truly blessed to have such amazing friends.
Now, I just have to work on getting the book stocked in stores and then I’m home free. If anyone has any suggestions about book stores and distributors it would be much appreciated. Have a sneak peek at the book online at www.peopleyouwillmeet.comThank you to Tom Richards for illustrating the book, to Agnes at Name This Bar for letting me have the event at her bar, to the wonderful photographer Ash Corbett for taking such nice pictures all night, to my mum and dad for all the love and support and to all my amazing friends.
Thank you so much!
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The People You Will Meet
The People You Will Meet is a book series that I am in the midst of writing. The first book “The People You Will Meet at University” is finally finished and is due to launch on Wednesday the 5th of October at Name This Bar in Sydney! (which is super exciting)
The website is finished with more information and a few sneak previews of some of the finished pages in the book, so if you’re interested click right here.
The book will also be available for purchase very soon on Amazon!
Stay tuned for photos of the final proofs shortly!
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Rain
I sit up and look through the glass. I like the rain, how it makes monochrome of things. Even it’s own noise. People pass by, faces darkened under black umbrellas, feet mutely slapping shallow puddles. Some caught unprepared, rushing, arms crossed, heads bowed, as though shouldering their way out of an emergency room. Others slow down, and look up, faces spotted with raindrops, mouth agape, pretending they’re actually enjoying it.
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London Again
Arriving in London was exciting. We arrived at about 6 in the evening, and I already had a little piece of paper with the address to Carlotta’s studio apartment in Angel scrawled on it, and so all I really needed was a cab willing to take me and my bags there.
I got in a taxi with some old cabbie from the East end, and we spoke about everything. I knew I was looking forward to being able to express myself in English, but I really didn’t previously know the extent to which I had been starved of my language. All up, it had been really about seven months since I had spoken English in such a carefree manner. I spoke for 15 minutes straight about everything, growing up in Stratford, our old house, the London 2012 Olympics, housing prices in the UK, politics, and immigration. I missed so much being able to talk without having to mentally conjugate and structure every one of my sentences. That’s something that’s really hard about other languages – it takes a long time to be able to gain the capacity for small talk you have in your mother tongue. When I speak English, I am quite easily able to convey my personality within a few minutes, whereas in other languages I must just appear deadpan and slightly retarded. Obviously I need to learn other languages, its just going to be difficult for a while, and having this wonderful first chat with the cab driver made me realise just how difficult it would be.
I love speaking English. I love using language to effortlessly express everything I need to, without any trouble. Being back in London meant also, that I no longer needed to speak quietly on the streets like I did in Paris. And it was refreshing; it felt like I was home.
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Leaving Paris
Leaving Paris was strange, the day came and went really quickly, and then it was over and we were on the train. We were ok to leave; we had been there for a long time and felt that for now we had seen all there was to see. We both bought newspapers, baguettes with cheese, chocolates croissants and little orange tarts for snacks on the train, and left. The journey there was relatively painless, an easy cab ride door to door and a short wait at the station. Both of us knew we would definitely be back here sometime soon, so it wasn’t really that sad to say goodbye, plus we were secretly looking forward to both being able to make small talk with perfect strangers and speak English for a while. The Eurostar ride lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes and was nice, a smooth journey built for reflection, the funniest thing is, it only took 2 hours and 15 minutes to cross an ocean and be in a completely different country with a completely different language, and that much closer to the end of our trip.
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Revisiting Everything
After all this time away, we only had two weeks left in Paris, it was really quite surreal, as at the beginning, going home seemed like a point on a calendar that was so far away, but now it was measurable, it was written in my diary, and we had to start planning our days accordingly. We each made lists of all the things we wanted to do again, and all the places we wanted to visit and planned the weeks that we had left.
We went to the Pompidou again, which was underwhelming as the line was strangely long and the exhibitions hadn’t changed since the first time we had been there in early August.
We visited the Musée D’Orsay, which was much the same story as the Pompidou, except all the Monet works were missing, which was really disappointing for me.
We walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg and saw what it was like when there were no flowers and the leaves had all left the trees.
We walked alone the Seine, and reexplored St Germain de Pres, the Marais and the markets around Republique.
We ate at the café in the 1st near Quatre Septembre that serves the best Croque Monsieur with exceptionally crunchy chips for only 8.50 euro, and the little understated diner on the corner Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau that still makes the best confit du Canard in all of Paris. We had popcorn and kirs at Le Comptoir des Saint Peres, and another scrumptious cake at Laduree.
We sat on wicker chairs and I drank thick hot chocolates while Rupert had tiny strong espressos with little dark chocolate covered roasted almonds in gold paper.
I will think of more things eventually, but it really was a wonderful last few weeks, it felt like we were on holiday again, and trying to enjoy every hour in each day.
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Versailles
Today we went to Versailles, it’s one of those places that’s always half on people’s list of places to go, but no one ever really gets around to it, so we decided to get around to it, as we only had a few more weeks in Paris and we figured we may as well play the tourists. So, Rupert Bianca and I caught the Metro and then the RER to Versailles (alleged homes of bands, AIR, Daft Punk and Phoenix – although we didn’t see anyone famous). It took about 40 minutes to get there, and it was quite nice, just a nice little town, although we didn’t look around very much, we just walked straight to the palace and found that once again, being citizens of the EU granted Rupert and I free entry into everything while Bianca had to pay 18 euro for the same privilege.
The palace was quite immense, rich velveteen wallpapers covered every possible surface, lashings of bright gold and silver decorated cornices, and the floors were tiled with a black and white marble check. I was honestly expecting it to be a little lighter, a little more like it is portrayed in cinema, but it was still lovely, just a little decadent for me.
After walking through countless rooms of large paintings of nameless royalty, and little silk covered ottomans covered in plastic we were all fairly hungry so we decided to find a little restaurant. As is usually the case with the restaurants attached to Museums, it was fairly expensive, I wasn’t too hungry so I decided to order a soup and fill up on the free bread, Bianca chose a club sandwich while Rupert decided to pay 20 euro for roast chicken and mashed potatoes and stated that he would just not eat for the remainder of the week. The food arrived and it was delicious, unexpectedly delicious. The soup was creamy and rich and the bread was crisp and not stale like it sometimes is. We were a quarter way through our meals when suddenly an alarm sounded, we all looked at each other, everyone in the restaurant looked at each other, we looked at the waiters, they looked at each other, and whispered amongst themselves. One of them sheepishly came forward and told us that we would all have to leave the restaurant and gather outside until the alarm had subsided, if we wanted we could take our plates with us. So, all of us pushed out from the table, unwillingly left our plates of delicious food to be devoured by the inferno and made our way into the courtyard. We thought it was quite funny, and laughing about the possible scenarios or the person who bought their entire plate of roast chicken to then eat standing up with a knife and fork, or walking back into the restaurant and stealing an appealing drumstick off an unsuspecting person’s plate.
The head of the wait staff told us we could return to our meals, and said he was really sorry for the test alarm. We all walked back in to the restaurant after our somewhat eventful intermission and resumed eating our slightly less hot meals; they were still delicious, in fact probably even more so after the time we spent apart.
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Arriving in Paris
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The Night Train
I got off the boat, and hauled all my things that one final part, from the dock where the ferry stopped to my seat on the train. I was a little early, but I was calm and ready. There was already an elderly African woman sitting in my carriage, she spoke only French, and so I tried to make some small talk with her, while I managed to hoist my bags onto the top rung of the storage area. I told her that I hoped it would be just her and me, and she agreed, she had been in Venice for a wedding and was now returning to France where she lived. She told me that the snow had spoilt the wedding a little, but the ceremony was inside so it wasn’t that bad.
The train started rolling and it was just me and her, so far so good. No delays, no cancellations, the train was en route and should arrive on time. We stopped in Mestre and another woman got on, one who seemed to speak Italian, but then she answered her phone and spoke in German and she was reading a German book. She was definitely some sort of trained assassin. She spoke to me in Italian for a while, and I told her that I actually spoke English and was from Australia and only spoke Italian as I had been on exchange, and she said, oh cool, I speak English too. Definitely an assassin. She told me she was German, but her mother spoke French and her dad spoke Italian and she was living in Belgium where everyone spoke French or English, and I told her I thought that was insane and she was my hero. We stopped later in Padova where a young Italian man got on, and started reading a magazine in French. Then later, in Brescia a weird Indian looking man got on, who spoke no evident language, and actually looked like one of those Indian people who sells roses in every capital city. At our final stop in Verona another Italian woman got on, who was exceptionally loud and confident, and then we were six. We were all sitting there silently, reading our respective newspapers and novels, and then a man came in who worked for Trenitalia, and wanted to conduct a survey. We all obliged, except for the Indian because he didn’t speak any languages, and the French woman because she was old and French. He asked us all questions like, where we boarded, where we were getting off, what we were doing in Venice, how long we spent there, why we were on the train, whether we were returning, and whether we were going for business or leisure. Not really so difficult, but I felt smart doing an interview in Italian, and as far as everyone else was concerned I spoke Italian. I learnt from the man, that all the planes were cancelled as the airports in Venice, Paris, London, Frankfurt and Brussels were closed. My decision to choose the train over the plane was affirmed and I felt good.
Half an hour later, another train conductor came in, this one spoke French and was conducting a similar survey but for a different company. This interview was a little more difficult as my French wasn’t so good, but it turned out that everyone in the entire carriage also spoke French (except the weird Indian dude) I was overwhelmed with this feeling that, in Europe speaking only one language renders you relatively useless, whereas in most other countries – Australia, America, England – speaking just English is good enough, and if you speak another language you are considered exceptional.
At 11pm I started falling asleep and so everyone decided we should set up the beds. Everyone unpacked their sheets and blankets, and we all climbed into our respective beds. Train beds are not really comfortable, they’re considerably more comfortable than a plastic chair, or even an upright padded chair, but its no bed, its more of a plank with a piece of felt placed on top, and if you roll over twice, you fall two metres.
I floated in and out of sleep the entire night, I didn’t really sleep well at all, but at least I was asleep for part of the time. When I woke up it was 9am and we were told the train was running 45 minutes late, it didn’t bother me, and I’d already been on the train for 13 hours anyway.
After a long while, the train finally pulled in at Bercy station in Paris, everyone helped me get my bags down and then we all said goodbye to each other and went our separate ways. Rupert was waiting for me, and as per usual didn’t see me until I was tapping on his shoulder. I was back in Paris, this time for good. And it was snowing, and it felt right.
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Leaving Venice
When I boarded that final boat, I still didn’t know what to think. I had been thinking for sometime about how I would eventually feel when it came time to leave Venice, and even as I was making my last trip down the Grand Canal, I still didn’t really know what to feel. This city had given me so much. So much growth, anger, happiness, disappointment, surprises and challenges, and when it came time to say goodbye for the last time, I didn’t really know how I felt. It was quite surreal actually, drifting silently through the dark down this huge canal, and seeing everything with a fresh light, seeing so many little places I hadn’t ever seen before, and seeing all the little places that I knew so well. No one really spends over three days in Venice, but I had, I had and I had survived, and I was proud of myself for that reason. I wasn’t sure when I would come back, or whether I would ever come back. I had my time, I came with absolutely nothing, and was able to make friends and build a little life all by myself – something I really didn’t believe I could do. And so, for me leaving that part behind was sad, but there were a lot of other things I was happy about. I was happy to be going to Paris, to be seeing Rupert, to be having Christmas, there was almost too much in the future to think about to justify dwelling on these endless emotions and questions. When I left, I decided that I felt complete, I had done something, I had finished it. There were plenty of times where I was going to give up, where I was writing about leaving and ending the whole thing, but I didn’t, I kept going and I made it work for myself, and to me that’s a big deal.
To this day, I am yet to quit anything, and I feel that this is a tribute to myself. It’s going to be hard to explain this experience to people, because I really feel it requires an immense amount of back-story. Perhaps the worst thing now is, that the whole experience – that whole part of my life, will just get reduced down to a few sentences at a party.
“Oh, hey Kara, where have you been? I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve been on exchange for the last 8 months”
“Cool! Where did you go?”
“Well, I did my exchange in Venice.”
“Venice! That’s amazing, I can’t imagine living in Venice for that long, it must have been such an amazing experience.”
“Yeah, it was… I suppose it was.”
That’s it really. That’s what exchange boils down to, little conversations with people at parties. And maybe, had I not written something like this diary, after a few years of telling people that I did exchange in Venice I might begin to believe that it really was this incredible experience of adventure, and to some degree it was just that, but it was also so much more to me. And I’m really glad that I documented the whole thing so I can look back and see what sort of experience I really had. So, in a nutshell, as I was standing on that night boat, beside all the things I owned packed into my suitcase, I didn’t want to think anything really, I didn’t want my mind to concentrate all that I was feeling into a few coherent sentences just so that I could write it down somewhere, it was really too much for that. I’ll obviously have to do it at some point, when I’m at those parties, but for now, I’d rather leave it be.
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the loneliest pooch in Venice
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Snowing in Venice
The weather forecast had been promising snow for weeks, but still no dice. It was Bianca’s last day in Venice before she left for London to meet Glen for Christmas; I walked over to her house for lunch with my computer and warm jacket as it was raining. The rain was colder than usual, it was burning my cheeks and so I walked faster. A few minutes later, I noticed that the little rains were sticking to me for a few fleeting moments before disappearing. The tiny droplets turned from clear to white, and tiny little white flecks were falling, sitting on my jumper for a split second then fading away. I was quite sure it was beginning to snow. But there was no snow on the ground and I couldn’t see the flakes, all I could feel was the ends of my fingers throbbing with pain, so I picked up my pace and hurried towards Bianca’s. She was just finishing her packing when I arrived, so I helped her get her things together, and then we began cooking some pasta, I told her it was snowing outside, and she ran excitedly towards the window, and surely, there on her sill was a delicate little blanket of white, as the snow was just beginning to stick.
We ate our cheesy pasta, she had one last check around the house for things she may have left, and then we began our hurried walked towards Piazzale Roma, the snow was getting heavier, and settling in more places, so little hidden piazzas were already blanketed with white. It was really very beautiful, the city was emptied of tourists, and it was snowing quietly. We walked for 40 minutes, and eventually arrived just in time, I said goodbye, and began my long walk home through the fresh snow. Supposedly snow in Venice is exceptionally rare, and so I’m really glad I got to see it.
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