It\u2019s an overcast day on St Kilda beach when I get the call. I don\u2019t answer it.<\/p>\n
Because I\u2019m at the beach. Also because \u2013 despite the fact that I work in a call centre \u2013 the sight of my phone flashing unexpectedly is like a snake wriggling across the sand.<\/p>\n
I listen to the voicemail, though. Several times before the words make sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I got that Asialink grant,\u201d I tell my friend Jess, in a tone better suited to I think I have herpes. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s amazing!\u201d<\/p>\n Jess was with me the weekend I wrote the grant proposal, in a hotel room in Newcastle.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so last minute\u2026I never thought I\u2019d get it.\u201d I bite my lip. \u201cOh shit. Now I actually have to do what I said I would do.\u201d<\/p>\n What I said I\u2019d do: fly to Jakarta in September. Call myself a writer-in-residence. Work on something new, something that isn\u2019t \u2013 <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy Jonestown novel. Shit. I really<\/em> have to finish it soon.\u201d<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t writer\u2019s block; it\u2019s just that the novel keeps getting bigger, its structure harder to maintain. Write now, edit later<\/em> has never been my philosophy. My first draft is a monolith under permanent construction: scaffolds in the sky, dumpsters full of rubble.<\/p>\n I already know I won\u2019t meet my contracted deadline: December 31, 2016. So does my editor. She extends it by six months, commiserates with me over the death of Leonard Cohen and the non-death of Trump. She comments on my busy 2017: festivals, residencies, finishing my magnum opus<\/em>. Also, presumably, holding down a day-job.<\/p>\n The call centre where I work always empties for a few weeks either side of Christmas. I\u2019ve been there long enough that I should be prepared for an indeterminate period of no pay. I should also be prepared to accept as much paid work as I can when it becomes available again in mid-January. I don\u2019t, though, because I\u2019m going to India.<\/p>\n The writer\u2019s festival doesn\u2019t pay, but the flights are free. Since New Delhi is a long way to fly for a two-day stint of panels, I deplete my savings further and book a week at a beach hut in Goa. Writing time, <\/em>I tell myself.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll be worth it, <\/em>I tell myself.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t, or not in any immediate way. In the mornings, the sun turns my walls as pink as the inside of a seashell. The days get hot, fast; I spend them toddling between my shack and various drink vendors, peeing a lot, and falling into internet wormholes. In the evenings, I reward my \u2018labors\u2019 with a beach walk, fish curry, and reading by restaurant candlelight. The book I\u2019m reading is big and bleak and emotionally exhausting, and I can\u2019t make up my mind about it, let alone how to write something better than it. At some point, I give up trying.<\/p>\n There\u2019s always the flight home, <\/em>I tell myself.<\/p>\n I only sell one book at the festival. The days are long. At the end of the second day is a cocktail party at the home of a local family, patrons of the arts. They have that rich-people skill of remembering names and biographies, performing seamless introductions \u2013 something I\u2019ve only ever seen in movies. There\u2019s a man in a white suit who can make any drink. There\u2019s a Hungarian ambassador, for some reason. It\u2019s just like being at a Peoples Temple party in Georgetown! <\/em>I think giddily, and wish I could find an elegant way of talking about the lucky members who got to be there, keeping tabs on spooks and diplomats, instead of working the fields in Jonestown. But it\u2019s not an elegant subject, so instead I act like a token Australian, talking about shark attacks and drinking too much.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember the ride back to the hotel.<\/p>\n I do<\/em> remember the bathroom sink. Vomiting a blend of Bombay gin and paneer, but somehow having the presence of mind to rinse my mouth with bottled water. Soon after, falling asleep with the lights on and my dying smartphone beside me, no alarm. It\u2019s pure, undeserved good luck that wakes me at 6AM: just in time to nauseously brave the tide of Immigration at Indira Gandhi Airport.<\/p>\n Needless to say, I don\u2019t write on my flight home.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n February, March, April, I find other places to write. The commute to work: in a window seat, if I\u2019m lucky; on the grubby tram steps, if not. Coffee breaks, at the mirrored table in my building\u2019s lobby. After work, in the overly conditioned air of the CAE study room, or the panopticon of the State Library, or barefoot on the library lawn. I walk the seven kilometres home each day; to save on tram fares, but also because it clears my head, though my left shoulder aches.<\/p>\n I write at night, or try to, instructing my boyfriend not to let me watch too much TV. He checks on me periodically and is always horrified by my unergonomic contortions, warns me I\u2019ll end up a hunchback. I put his warning in my novel, but otherwise don\u2019t abide it.<\/p>\n I get some work as an extra in a TV remake of Picnic At Hanging Rock <\/em>and, dressed in my 1900s maid costume, type paragraphs on my phone. When the battery dies, I borrow a charger from Wardrobe.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n I grew up in Perth, Western Australia \u2013 the most isolated city in the world, by some measures. At eighteen, I moved to Melbourne. I go back west a couple of times a year, but never for much more than a long weekend. This fact changes in May.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the Perth I ever called home, though. It\u2019s a place called Greenmount, located in \u2018the hills\u2019. In my mind, \u2018the hills\u2019 are a mythical place when I once saw a giant blue-tongued lizard and, ten years after that, went on a Geography field trip. There are wineries, national forests, and probably some good places for hiding bodies.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been granted two weeks in a cabin here by the KSP Writer\u2019s Centre, their first \u2018scholarship writer-in-residence\u2019. There are three other cabins on the grounds, but none populated; a fact that pleases me by day, scares me at night.<\/p>\n On my first night, I take a walk to the nearest national park. The surrounding blocks of land are massive. Dogs are big and bark loudly. Everyone seems to drive a ute or an SUV. I feel like I\u2019m back in Ukiah, where I went a whole two years ago to research Peoples Temple, as it existed before Jonestown. But the trees aren\u2019t conifers and the birds are undeniably antipodean.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not in California, dickhead, <\/em>I tell myself. Look at the lorikeets. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t stop me from dressing like a California hippie. My second night, I walk in a different direction, taking random turns onto residential streets. The sky sets itself on fire; I photograph it. When an SUV starts following me, I studiously ignore the creep behind the wheel. As soon as he peels off, a police car rolls up.<\/p>\n \u201cWere you taking photos of houses?\u201d a cop with glasses questions me.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. I was taking photos of the sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a report of a woman matching your description acting suspiciously. You might\u2019ve noticed a car following you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that guy.\u201d I shrug, laugh.<\/p>\n I see the look he gives the other cop, a blonde about my age. They both have guns, but like I said, this isn\u2019t America and, even if it was, I\u2019m a white girl in a Free People skirt holding a phone with a cute faux-vintage cover.<\/p>\n \u201cI can show you, if you want,\u201d I offer. \u201cI think I got some good ones.\u201d<\/p>\n They explain that there\u2019ve been a lot of burglaries in the area, but I\u2019m probably not a person of interest. They take down my details, just the same. When I get back to the writer\u2019s centre, they\u2019re parked unsubtly across the road. I ignore them and walk the dark path down to my cabin, thinking of skin and power, dense trees, isolation.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n It makes a good story when I\u2019m compelled to socialise at an open day that weekend. It\u2019s an older crowd, and I prefer this story to the one I\u2019m asked about most, especially by men over forty. Why Jonestown. Why America. Why such a \u2018dark subject\u2019. <\/em>The implication: you\u2019re too young and female to be thinking about mass-murder.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m too afraid of the dark to make use of the centre\u2019s main kitchen at night. In my cabin, I microwave rice or oatmeal, or eat towers of crackers. I mysteriously lose my taste for chocolate and snack on apples and carrots like a child with health-freaks for parents. I drink constantly: instant coffee, cranberry juice, Pepsi, red wine. It feels right, but precarious.<\/p>\n In the middle of my first week, I get my period and develop a sinus infection. Better now than two weeks from now, <\/em>I think, quarantined in my cabin.<\/p>\n I meet my writing goal for the two weeks; return to Melbourne on May 13 \u2013 a date I recognize as Jim Jones\u2019 86th<\/sup> birthday. Eleven days later, I fly to Sydney for another festival.<\/p>\n The festival puts me up in a five-star hotel for one night. I invite Jess to share it and we attend the artist party, which is sponsored by a real estate company who show us slides of luxurious beach-front properties, as though artists are people who buy property. The next day, I move into Jess\u2019 sharehouse for the weekend. A considerate friend, she gives me space; takes me to a caf\u00e9 where I write for hours while she watches RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race, <\/em>wearing an earnest face that makes me think she\u2019s working too. I write at the airport and on my flight home. On June 11, 2017, at 7:30PM AEDT, I finish the first draft of Beautiful Revolutionary. <\/em><\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n I\u2019m a horror to live with in those last weeks, I know. I feel horrible when I recall certain incidents, like the time I bitch at my boyfriend in a parked car for accurately critiquing a section of my novel I gave to him for precisely that reason. I feel horrible when I think of everything wrong on the planet, and my skill at removing myself from it to make marks on paper that objectively mean nothing. Such privileged detachment doesn\u2019t seem in keeping with the spirit of Peoples Temple, with building a better world. This haunts me, as does my resemblance to those insomniac white women who were able to write memos discussing the pros and cons of mass-murder.<\/p>\n Where Jonestown was, there are now empty spaces. I keep listening to Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u2018Woodstock\u2019 to feel the sting of exile. <\/em>I offer to do more of the cooking, and spend an evening hurling because the cream-based pasta is too rich. I watch all the TV shows, but have trouble staying awake past 11, though my Jonestown-self could fall into bed at 4AM and wake bright-eyed at 7. I\u2019m desperate for feedback, to be told that my work is a revelation. I\u2019m desperate, also, to be told that it\u2019s not that <\/em>good, get over yourself, just because you\u2019re twenty-seven with a bit of talent, doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re Jim Morrison. But the feedback doesn\u2019t come fast enough; I\u2019m forced to live among those empty spaces.<\/p>\n Because the spaces aren\u2019t only creative. They\u2019re personal, too, and harder to ignore now. While I\u2019ve been flitting around, nursing artistic mood-swings, the man I love has been stoic. While I\u2019ve been single-mindedly pursuing my ambitions, he\u2019s been increasingly unsure of what his are. While I\u2019ve been turning down paid work, he\u2019s been working overtime for a struggling tech startup, which rewards his diligence with company-wide paycuts that have him earning less per hour than a teenager at McDonald\u2019s. It\u2019s been an uneven year, to say the least.<\/p>\n It\u2019s magic mushroom season. We take some one rainy Saturday, and our differences are exacerbated: where I crave \u2018authentic experience\u2019, he wants to be alone with his headphones. I accuse him of being a robot, deliberately kill the mood, then leave the room to play with watercolors.<\/p>\n The bad vibes linger into the next week. We have a very adult conversation about what it means to be adults in this time, this drowning world. By the end of it, we\u2019re bashfully engaged.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t start telling people until we set a date, the soonest we can get, a month after our conversation. The same week, conveniently, we\u2019re set to leave for a week in Bali before I start my two months in Jakarta.<\/p>\n We marry at 2pm on a Monday, blushing through our ironic laughter.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n The first call to prayer comes around 4AM. I know because I\u2019m having trouble sleeping. I know other things: that walking is for orang kampung, <\/em>and that it will always look strange for a white woman to do so, no matter how many kilometres she\u2019s accustomed to walking in a day. That the sides of drains, nevertheless, may be traversed, if you\u2019re able-bodied and watch out for potholes.<\/p>\n I know that sleeveless tops and shorts \u2013 even short-shorts \u2013 are generally acceptable, but a woman is liable to be mocked or ignored if she bares her midriff. I know that look of polite pity that greets the linguistically-challenged, no matter how articulate they may be in their native tongue. I know that mice squeak, but so do geckos, bats, and large cockroaches, so it\u2019s best not to think about it too much.<\/p>\n I know, even as my brain shapes itself around a new language, certain words remain familiar: rasisme, sekte, harmoni. <\/em>Others seem too quaint for what they\u2019re describing, like pemimpin<\/em>, leader. I know Jonestown is still called Jonestown. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I know the novel isn\u2019t perfect; though the structure is strong, there are reasons I need an editor. I know I must look at it again soon, with fresh eyes. I know I\u2019m afraid to.<\/p>\n I know every novel is a palimpsest, under which the personal is written. I know I can read sections of my own work and know precisely where I was sitting, what I was wearing, drinking, listening to. I know it is difficult to place these things in strangers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n As for that other difficult thing, leaving \u2013 I haven\u2019t done it yet. Don\u2019t expect to, though life demands to go on.<\/p>\n (Laura Elizabeth Woollett is an Australian writer. Her <\/em>Peoples Temple novel\u00a0<\/em>Beautiful Revolutionary\u00a0is due to be published in Australia in early 2018. Her guest blog for the Melbourne Writers Festival about her research trip to the United States is\u00a0here<\/a>. Her other piece in this edition of <\/em>the jonestown report is Danger Cycle<\/a>. Visit her website at\u00a0http:\/\/lauraelizabethwoollett.com<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s an overcast day on St Kilda beach when I get the call. I don\u2019t answer it. Because I\u2019m at the beach. Also because \u2013 despite the fact that I work in a call centre \u2013 the sight of my phone flashing unexpectedly is like a snake wriggling across the sand. 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