Dear reader. I will tell you a story. This is a story of my life now. Dear reader turn away from these pages…They will only bring grief to me… It will only wound me and hurt me. But I must do it now. lch muss… Inner necessity. I have to do it now. I must.I have to. I have to do it now and do do do a doo doo … lt is imperative. I have to. This is something I have to do to save me. Dear reader, I’m in bits and pieces. I am a broken house. I am a puzzle. I have to place this together. This will glue me and repair me. This will build me. Buildingsroman. A constructive novel. A book. This is the theatre of my head in a theatre. I act this out. I enact me. I act out. I act up. I work this out. I am actor enactor of the inner theatre of Anna 0. This is the theatre of my head. I am my performance now. I become somebody else. I want to become somebody else who is me. I am a she looking for me. Somebody help me. Help me. I help me. I talk to me when nobody else… I talk when I can’t talk. I speak here where there is no speech or speaker. This is a page and a tape. This will be done and done with. This is the theatre in a theatre. I act my body now. I feel my finger tips when I cannot feel my finger. This will stop a dam from burst asunder. This will•keep a dyke from flood. I’m little Dutch boy. I keep the world, together. By doing this, just by doing this, just by this, exactly. I intend to travel back and travel forward. I aim high. I plan to fly and fly. I am making this up and this makes me into into somebody. I become my story. I put on costumes in my, the theatre of my head. A performative text and a performance now. I am speaking in your head. I put on a fur cap and red boots now. I act up. This is a play in a play. I enter a narrative, a fragmented narrative. I cut me up. Rumplestitskin. I tear myself in half when somebody knows my name, but nobody knows me now and I don’t know me. But I will know me. I aim to. I want to.I plan to. I will start with a little child. I will start with Swidnica, a little town. I will go back to that and I will travel. This will take me where it will take me. I am ready.! enter a little theatre now with red curtains. I wear a red dress now. I have a horse. I wear a crown I wear. Who am I now. I will talk this out, work it now. I am making, I intend to make a person in a person. A subject in process, in progress…! am on my way. This is making me different. This does me an Ania. This my record and recording. I hear me now. Oral, aural text. I will act this out now. I ride a horse, horsey, hobby horse, dada. It rolls now. Unroll red carpets now. Lights and action starts. I feel lively, lovely, beloved, heavenly. God help me now. Light me, bright me. Speak through me.l am spoken now. Words tell me and say me and make me into me.l please me.Other writers speak through me now. I am a fictocritical construct, a machine for writing. I am made of this, only this.I make this. This grows me and grows and grows and makes itself in me.l am the beanstalk and jack and jack in a box now.I open my lid and laugh now.l will see where this will take me. It will take me where it will take me. It will make me famous and different to me. It will transform me. I will make a story and a theatre.! will travel far and further.I feel better and better.I can cry now.
Hinda Rosen, my student in the poetry class brings a book for me .”Konik Garbusek”, a fairytale “Konyok Garbunok”, written by Piotr Jerszow ,a Russian scholteacher. This is my first year prize from my primary school in Swidnica Slaska, school number 7. I remember the school number embossed in white on a navy blue shield, sewn onto my coat. And the blue beret that I now wear. With a bow.
What does this mean to me what does horse mean to me it hurts me it hurts me i remember me school now and blue navy blue uniform now overall with buttons on fartuszek with white collar on you have to iron this i have to find this out i have to know what i mean now I have to work this out rebus puzzle story of my life now what is it it’s all in my book now all here my diary dream diary my analysis now with franca simone shanti belinda Jacqueline and naomi now i learn how to cry I have to try and try to know me and i don’t know me no i don’t know me
I meet Hinda at the age of 11 at Elwood Central School by the seaside in Melbourne in 1963. I tell her I want to be a writer. Autor. Writer here. Exactly where I am. The Polish ambassador contacts me in 2011, Andrzej Jaroszewski. He wants to meet me and he meets me in 2012. He edits books of poetry about war. l am introduced to him by lzabela Rajtaczak who becomes my friend and sends me the current print of the “Konik Garbusek” book, Oficyna Wydawnicza, Poznan, smaller now and translated into prose but with the very same illustrations by Jan Szancer. I receive the book in 2013. The original imprint of my book is 1957, in the lost world now.
The book becomes my symbolic field of reading the self, of reading myself, of projection, introjection, play of symbolic meanings and the sense ofthe puzzle appears. Something needs to be deciphered or made clear. I have a stone in my shoe I need to take out now. This has to be done. I have to do this. I want to do this now. This is the doing. I am doing this is doing me and writing me now. Writing as a memory and imprint ofthe self. This is my diary. This my dream diary. I analyse me.
“Konik Garbusek” translates into “Humpback Pony”, the pony is the helper, the assistant, the magical force in the story. I am the humpback pony. At the age of six my back is bent, one shoulder higher than the other. The self is split and exists within the fissure of the underdog Ivan, the protagonist, the Konik who helps him and the elements of the story, a journey. I write a fairytale at the age of six, called “Sopel Zlosci” – “Icicle of Anger” about a king who is ill and a magician travels and performas magical acts so that the king can recover. I never finish the story. I abandon it and I take it up here. l abandon me and take it up here. The anger is frozen but I unfreeze me. I come alive now. I feel good. I feel my life now.
pony humback pony hunchback me I am humback pony help me god help me help me somebody help me oh help me help help me help me Rhonda help me guardian angel with wings help me over a dark water now ober over over little bridge guardian angel with wings aniele bozy strozu moj angel help me now over water river I can’t swim now in deep dark forest now in deep dark night in deep dark now I am pony girl now i enter my picture get into me now associate and disassociate now i attach me here i sew me in i sew me in by magic now I was torn in pieces and sew me together to put it how to put
Fictocriticism; a practice that sews me that I sew here. Bricolage, montage, assemblage, collage, caller, to stick together. I make a story out of bits and pieces. The process of associative thought and reflection. Improvisation and analysis. The flight of thought, a trajectory and reflection, retrieval, recoil. The use of multilevel text comprising poetics, theory and appropriated text. The entry into my fairytale here.
Define fictocriticism, define a horse. Fictocriticism tells a story through a story, tells a story indirectly, alludes to a story, tells my story differently, represents me, presents me with a symbol, a remnant, a rebus, a puzzle, a shadow a dream that has to be decoded.Amanda Nettlebeck writes in “The Space
Between- Australian Women Writing Fictocriticism”:”the voice and the book dissolve into a plethora of half complete” texts”, voices, incommensurable “positions”. Between the two moments-a world of difference”.
I dream that Margaret Trail, my reader is my mother and that Leonardo di Caprio who plays Arthur Rimbaud in “Total Eclipse” is both my brother and my father. He is drunk and writes “The Drunken Boat” here. We live in the flat in St. Kilda. l write my dreams down now. Margaret Trail becomes the “good enough mother” of Winnecott who “meets the omnipotence of the infant ( me} and makes sense of it”. lanalyse my dream now. l analyse me. I am the director of my theatre! am Arthur Rimbaud who is drunk now.
I go back now I go back now oh I go back now … i cry and cry and cry and cry now or i pretend to cry here boohoo boohoo I tell jess that I worry and worry but now I don’t worry but I worry I scare me
Sigmund Freud writes an essay on the uncanny, unheimlich, the unhomely, the weird, that which makes my hair stand up. The pony book reminds me and reminds me … One thing echoes and duplicates another and doubles and trebles and multiplies me. This scares me. Freud becomes terrified by his reflection in the mirror of the train, a sleeper, wagon lit, when the mirrored door swings open, all of a sudden he sees a stranger, a gentleman in a dressingown and a sleeping hat of a sleeper who invades his cabin. The self and its reflection. The self and its double. That other in the mirror. I am scared of the book that is brought to me in the poetry class now. I read it and re-read it.
Freud writes …”the uncanny is that class of terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar…We are reminded that the word Heimlich is not unambiguous but belongs to two sets of ideas, which without being contradictory are yet very different: on one hand, it means that which is familiar and congenial, and on the other, that which is concealed and kept out of sight”. *(“Imago”, BD.V.,1919; reprinted in Sammlung, Funfe Folge.( translated by Alix Strachey}
return to child me return a come back to me where at six it comes back a me a feel how i this feel to m,e what ida did what happen to me what did what where where where am inow back a me where
aniusia tak ja jestem biedna i chora, nie, jestem bogata i zdrowa jestem zywa jeszcze zywa tutaj tu ja wiem jak czytac teraz wiem jak pisac wiem jak teraz wiem jak
Anna Gibbs writes” … a selection of psychoanalytic writings to explore what theoretical writing on intertextuality so often occludes: that is the passionate dimension of intertextual practices … literary borrowings, influences, apprenticeships, and hauntings- by other writers, by the music of words, by memories …”fiction theoretique”… called “fictocriticism”… hybrid forms of writing which mix genres,eschew omniscient modes of narration and “grand narratives” in favour of first-person or multiple partial perspectives … singular stories and fragmented forms”.*( Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 42, 2003}
Ania Walwicz writes-” I always have to quote somebody. This is a form of gossip now. So-and -so said. That’s the way to write about. The discourse, the formation of a discourse. That is what I am learning
now. What somebody said and the interaction with that. That somebody says me now. Or I say that, I say that. I say what I think now. What I think about.” *(Meanjin Voi.S6,1996)
When one reads one’s writing one becomes another person and another person. I am Luce lrigaray, Monique Wittig, Helene Cixous, Piotr Jerszow and me when I was six years old. Reading and re reading the self or what one thinks and feels the self is or was. Janet Frame writes- I don’t know if it had happened to me or is happening or will happen to me in the future.
Freud writes about screen memory. We recollect an outline, a shadowy construct, a fragment and then fill that in, colour it in. The pony book is the instigator, the trigger, the commencement and then beginner. I free- associate now. Teresa D’Avila writes about the smell of flowers, the olfactory event when I smell the smell of roses, dusty pink smell of roses while I read my words. I begin a voyage, an adventure here. I improvise and construct this as I go along. I don’t know where this will take me. Yet I feel my way and know that the story, the true story of my life, the real autobiography …
i am little horse pony konik garbusek little hump back pony now am mister ed dead dad mister deedee said i get in me iget out of me and I get in me I enter little door now in palace of ants i am king here I am king of my heart
Marguerite Duras says that the story of life does not exist. I am made from bits and pieces. Glimpses.The Kaballah states that awareness, awareness of the divine, the Shekinah, appears in glimpses, little glimpses, shards. Zohar, the book of splendour, writes that all will be reversed, all that stands up will lie down, all that upside will stand on its head, all will be transformed, transferred, altered. Words will alter me, words will, by writing this by saying this
god help me assist me gold help me now angels of angels hold me up arms gold help me assist me
The horse book tells me a story. Three brothers live with their father and grow wheat. The eldest are strong and cunning but the youngest Ivan, Vanya ( Ania) is stupid now. He sleeps above a stove, on top of the stove in winter. Somebody steals wheat now. They set up a watch. Big brothers fall asleep. But Ivan, Vanya (Ania) stays up and sees a white mare, a big horse now, golden mane who frolicks and gallops. He leaps and won’t let her go now. No, never ever. She speaks to him and makes a bargain. She will give him two beautiful, fine horses, and a magic pony, in return for her freedom. He can sell the horses but the little hump back pony must stay with him, always. He agrees to this. He lets her go. The horses arrive next morning, with the pony. Evil brothers steal the horses and sell them. Evil sister steals my horses away. I am Ivan now (the focus of identification). I am the hurt party, the underdog. They steal me and steal from me. But I keep the pony, the magic pony- konik garbusek, with two humps on me. Ivan finds this out. I find this out now. I find me out. Brothers sell horses, lovely black horses with silver manes and plaits and shiny hoofs from pearls. The Russian tsar buys them for his stable. The best horses. He hires me to look after him. I am the stableboy, groom, at the centre of the story. I act it out on me, in me.
Psychodrama, the theatre proposed as a psychological carthasis, a release of conflict, an externalisation of repressed areas in the psyche, the theatre where all elements of the narrative become movable
