I like to be busy, but productively busy. I particularly like to be busy writing, whether it's reviews or my own creative work. It's not happening, however, and that familiar feeling of frustration is creeping back.
Maybe I am not meant to be a writer. Maybe I like the idea of being a writer more than the actual writing work. Maybe I do not have the talent, or the motivation. The latter is a problem. I'm not ambitious enough to work steadily everyday and submit pieces on a regular basis. This worries me, because it's not what I want.
I want to write and to have what I write published. But I've had this desire for so long that I wonder if I am happy just to have the desire without the fulfillment. As if life consists of this single desire, without the need to fulfill it completely.
I could simply be lazy.
Of course, I have written vast numbers of reviews, and have a 50k manuscript sitting in my laptop (and on paper somewhere), as well as 30k of memoir fragments, and a 30k (terrible) novella that was written for my MA. So I cannot say that I have nothing to show for all this desire.
I need to turn the wistful desire into words, and send them away. What's stopping this?
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Friday, 19 June 2009
The psychologist's room
What stops me from writing?
In the psychologist's room, I learn there is a triangle, with me at one point, my Dad at another, and a male friend at the third. But there is no connecting line between my Dad and the friend, not the first time it comes into my head. Why were we three all there together? More to the point, what was the friend doing there?
Turns out there were similarities between my Dad and this friend, and I have problems (how benign a word!) with my relationship with both of them. But my Dad is dead, and the friend is very much alive. My Dad is a ghost, and present everywhere.
Many things happen in the psychologist's room. The triangle links up. I feel small, like a pinpoint, while the two men are enormous. My Dad controlled more with silence than loudness; my friend is loud and aggressive and opinionated. (Why do I let him intimidate me?) I have a knot of tension in my forehead. My friend punches me in this knot, and I punch him back. We have a fistfight, then I put my hands on his shoulders, and calm both of us down.
At some point, the image of a pair of scissors appears. I snip the string (for that is what it is) that connects the three of us. My Dad tumbles off into the distance. I tie the ends of one piece of string around my friend, and we have a calm conversation. I start talking about my writing, about the memoir, and am not embarrassed.
More people come into the room, and my friend starts to fade.
At some point, my mother appears, and collects my father. They wave at me, and I wave back. It is goodbye.
The string is hard to be rid of, however. I put it in a bowl, and throw it out of the window, set fire to it, douse it with water. Finally, it becomes an infinity symbol, and I accept its presence in that form.
Now, the next day, I feel irritable and out of sorts, out of place. I want to scream and throw things around. It is, I know, an inevitable consequence of all that psychological and emotional work. I must wait for these feelings to work through me. I must write.
If only my parents, particularly my war-ravaged father, had had the opportunity to work through the scars of their sorrow too.
In the psychologist's room, I learn there is a triangle, with me at one point, my Dad at another, and a male friend at the third. But there is no connecting line between my Dad and the friend, not the first time it comes into my head. Why were we three all there together? More to the point, what was the friend doing there?
Turns out there were similarities between my Dad and this friend, and I have problems (how benign a word!) with my relationship with both of them. But my Dad is dead, and the friend is very much alive. My Dad is a ghost, and present everywhere.
Many things happen in the psychologist's room. The triangle links up. I feel small, like a pinpoint, while the two men are enormous. My Dad controlled more with silence than loudness; my friend is loud and aggressive and opinionated. (Why do I let him intimidate me?) I have a knot of tension in my forehead. My friend punches me in this knot, and I punch him back. We have a fistfight, then I put my hands on his shoulders, and calm both of us down.
At some point, the image of a pair of scissors appears. I snip the string (for that is what it is) that connects the three of us. My Dad tumbles off into the distance. I tie the ends of one piece of string around my friend, and we have a calm conversation. I start talking about my writing, about the memoir, and am not embarrassed.
More people come into the room, and my friend starts to fade.
At some point, my mother appears, and collects my father. They wave at me, and I wave back. It is goodbye.
The string is hard to be rid of, however. I put it in a bowl, and throw it out of the window, set fire to it, douse it with water. Finally, it becomes an infinity symbol, and I accept its presence in that form.
Now, the next day, I feel irritable and out of sorts, out of place. I want to scream and throw things around. It is, I know, an inevitable consequence of all that psychological and emotional work. I must wait for these feelings to work through me. I must write.
If only my parents, particularly my war-ravaged father, had had the opportunity to work through the scars of their sorrow too.
Monday, 1 June 2009
Travelling
She thought how strange it was to be sitting in an office with her eyes closed, thinking about something that happened twenty years ago. And then to not just think about it, but really dive into it, and imagine herself back into that moment, or succession of moments, that have never left her. To watch and listen as the self she was then, and the self her father was then, spoke to each other. They weren’t speaking, they were shouting, their mouths were making ugly shapes, their words hurt, their words flung sharp stones and ragged glass.
I need to leave this poisonous house.
You’ll end up in the gutter.
The psychologist takes her through these moments again, she is there with her, asking her to reimagine them. What would you have liked your father to say to you? What would you have said to him? How would you have liked him to respond? She didn’t think she’d be able to create this dialogue, and was surprised when she stumbled out a few words, then those words became stronger. Then she was there, her present self, with her younger self and her father; she was there, and she was talking to her younger self. What would she say to you now? What would your younger self ask you? What would you say to her?
She marvelled at the incongruous contrast of that inner reimagined dialogue, that time travel, created in that cocoon of healing and restitution, with the bustle of the shopping centre crowds, the random conversations, the smells of anonymous meat and fat, the scratched tiles. Babies in strollers. Pierced eyebrows. People who knew nothing of where she had just been.
I need to leave this poisonous house.
You’ll end up in the gutter.
The psychologist takes her through these moments again, she is there with her, asking her to reimagine them. What would you have liked your father to say to you? What would you have said to him? How would you have liked him to respond? She didn’t think she’d be able to create this dialogue, and was surprised when she stumbled out a few words, then those words became stronger. Then she was there, her present self, with her younger self and her father; she was there, and she was talking to her younger self. What would she say to you now? What would your younger self ask you? What would you say to her?
She marvelled at the incongruous contrast of that inner reimagined dialogue, that time travel, created in that cocoon of healing and restitution, with the bustle of the shopping centre crowds, the random conversations, the smells of anonymous meat and fat, the scratched tiles. Babies in strollers. Pierced eyebrows. People who knew nothing of where she had just been.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Eggs
I hated eggs when I was a child. But my parents thought they would help me grow into a big strong girl, and so they gave me one egg every morning.
They would poach or boil it, and put tomato sauce on the plate. I would take tiny spoonfuls, and try to ignore the taste as I chewed and swallowed. Then I would try big mouthfuls, to get through the meal more quickly, but that gave me an explosion of the foulness, the egginess, the white and yellow repellant smoothness. Sometimes I would be unable to keep it down, and flood the breakfast table with my undigested horror.
My parents would also try egg sandwiches, but the bread was never enough to mask the hateful flavour. It became a battle of sorts, with my parents eyeing me defiantly, daring me to come up with another complaint, another reason to not eat such a healthful foodstuff, or another vomit.
I took to hiding the egg sandwiches behind a large cupboard in the dining room. When my mother was in the kitchen, I would silently rise from the chair, and, keeping my eyes on the door, stuff the vile matter into the narrow gap between wood and wall. Sometimes it wouldn’t all fit, and bits of egg would scatter on the floor, or stick to the painted wall. I would frantically scrape it off and poke it back, pick up the squares of bread and force them behind the cupboard with the dust and cobwebs and dead spiders, as far as I could.
When we were sitting at that dining table one evening, a movement on the wall near the cupboard caught my eye. It was a big, black cockroach, the second most revolting thing in the world after eggs, and it was heading towards the space behind the cupboard. My mother saw it and put down her knife and fork.
“Howard, there’s a huge cockroach on the wall.”
She wrinkled her nose and turned down the corners of her mouth.
“Good Lord, what a beast. I’ll get him.”
And in typical Dad fashion, he got a rolled up newspaper and proceeded to clobber the doomed creature with disproportionate violence.
“Lily, there seems to be something behind this cupboard,” he said.
I sat calmly eating my dinner of boiled vegetables and tinned ham, trying to ignore the inevitable.
Dad heaved the cupboard away from the wall enough to reveal a collection of little squares of sandwiches, the freshest at the top of course, with the layers becoming progressively greener, blacker and less distinguishable as sandwiches the further down the pile. The now thoroughly dead cockroach had obviously grown fat on my generous donations.
I tried, briefly, to lie my way out of the situation by saying I knew nothing about the decaying sandwiches, but my parents ignored me. They didn’t become as angry as I had feared, and in fact, they eased up with the eggs, whether poached, boiled, scrambled, fried or sandwiched, with or without tomato sauce, salt, or anything else.
I can tolerate eating eggs now, but occasionally the smell of hard boiled yolk and egg white takes me back to those breakfasts. My spoon pauses in the air, my stomach lurches, and I quietly put the sulphurous memory back on the plate.
They would poach or boil it, and put tomato sauce on the plate. I would take tiny spoonfuls, and try to ignore the taste as I chewed and swallowed. Then I would try big mouthfuls, to get through the meal more quickly, but that gave me an explosion of the foulness, the egginess, the white and yellow repellant smoothness. Sometimes I would be unable to keep it down, and flood the breakfast table with my undigested horror.
My parents would also try egg sandwiches, but the bread was never enough to mask the hateful flavour. It became a battle of sorts, with my parents eyeing me defiantly, daring me to come up with another complaint, another reason to not eat such a healthful foodstuff, or another vomit.
I took to hiding the egg sandwiches behind a large cupboard in the dining room. When my mother was in the kitchen, I would silently rise from the chair, and, keeping my eyes on the door, stuff the vile matter into the narrow gap between wood and wall. Sometimes it wouldn’t all fit, and bits of egg would scatter on the floor, or stick to the painted wall. I would frantically scrape it off and poke it back, pick up the squares of bread and force them behind the cupboard with the dust and cobwebs and dead spiders, as far as I could.
When we were sitting at that dining table one evening, a movement on the wall near the cupboard caught my eye. It was a big, black cockroach, the second most revolting thing in the world after eggs, and it was heading towards the space behind the cupboard. My mother saw it and put down her knife and fork.
“Howard, there’s a huge cockroach on the wall.”
She wrinkled her nose and turned down the corners of her mouth.
“Good Lord, what a beast. I’ll get him.”
And in typical Dad fashion, he got a rolled up newspaper and proceeded to clobber the doomed creature with disproportionate violence.
“Lily, there seems to be something behind this cupboard,” he said.
I sat calmly eating my dinner of boiled vegetables and tinned ham, trying to ignore the inevitable.
Dad heaved the cupboard away from the wall enough to reveal a collection of little squares of sandwiches, the freshest at the top of course, with the layers becoming progressively greener, blacker and less distinguishable as sandwiches the further down the pile. The now thoroughly dead cockroach had obviously grown fat on my generous donations.
I tried, briefly, to lie my way out of the situation by saying I knew nothing about the decaying sandwiches, but my parents ignored me. They didn’t become as angry as I had feared, and in fact, they eased up with the eggs, whether poached, boiled, scrambled, fried or sandwiched, with or without tomato sauce, salt, or anything else.
I can tolerate eating eggs now, but occasionally the smell of hard boiled yolk and egg white takes me back to those breakfasts. My spoon pauses in the air, my stomach lurches, and I quietly put the sulphurous memory back on the plate.
Monday, 16 March 2009
The Orange
I looked down at the vast expanse of water, so deep and limitless it seemed like a gigantic shape-shifting beast, surging, cresting, foaming, throwing out spray and flying fish at whim. It merely tolerated our flimsy boat to glide through its surface layers.
Out of a porthole a pair of hands appeared with an orange. They began to peel it. Curly strips of skin fell away into the water, then, when it was fully naked, the mysterious hands withdrew, taking the tempting bright fruit with them.
My mother managed to get one for me, and I sat on the deck with my parents and peeled away curls of dimpled skin like the anonymous hands from the porthold had done. The juice dribbled down my chin, smeared over my cheeks, down my forearms. My tortured stomach gurgled and protested.
Some time later I was back in our cabin, in my bunk bed, turned to the wall. The orange had stayed down for about half an hour. This was the story with all food since the first three days on the ship after leaving Singapore; we were heading for Melbourne. The orange had been a delicious interlude, a folly, a desperate attempt to be well in a flurry of seasickness.
It was sometime after this, when my parents were in the cabin with me, I heard my father say to my mother that I was ‘putting it on’, that I wasn’t really sick, and could stop it if I wanted to. He must have thought I was asleep. Or maybe he didn’t care. I thought about this, and wondered how I could stop vomiting, and how good it would be to be able to do that. However much I tried, the nausea brought me down, again and again. If only the ship would stop moving, I would be able to stop feeling sick.
I spent most of the two week journey in that cabin. We stopped briefly in Perth, and on the way out, the ship encountered gale force winds.
“A creaking ship is a safe ship,” my father said.
And the Patris creaked and groaned and moaned, a wounded animal battered by an ocean in fury. Water beat against the porthole and leaked into the cabin, bringing strong smells of salt and things unknown.
My parents went to a ball one night, my mother resplendent in a halter-neck dress of black and silver that caught the light in hundreds of reflective threads. My father wore a white dinner jacket which accentuated his smooth olive skin. The photo of them taken as they were greeted at the entrance to the ballroom showed my mother beaming, her lips coloured red, a handkerchief tucked neatly into her watchband, and incongruous navy and white plastic sandals peeping out from under her floor-length glamorous gown. The man with whom she was shaking hands was already focused on the next guest.
Once one of the Greek stewards came into our cabin to say hello, and he pinched my cheek as I lay in bed, trying to smile, the covers pulled up to my chin.
There must have been brief interludes when I was not nauseous, as I remember beginning to write a story about Mickey Mouse in an exercise book. My father thought I was writing about our trip, and his face fell when I showed it to him.
I was afraid of the toilets, because there was a time limit to the door. It allowed you fifteen minutes, then it would open automatically. I was terrified that I would lose track of the time and be revealed, stuck to the seat, unable to move, and unable to close the door again.
When we arrived in Melbourne, we travelled straight up to Sydney, and stayed in a caravan park until my parents decided what to do. I soon adjusted to no longer vomiting at the sight of food, and no longer feeling as if the waves were inside my stomach.
My hair, which was past shoulder length, was a bird’s nest of knots, or rather, one enormous knot, at the back of my head. My mother helped me tease it out, but I don’t remember how long that took.
Out of a porthole a pair of hands appeared with an orange. They began to peel it. Curly strips of skin fell away into the water, then, when it was fully naked, the mysterious hands withdrew, taking the tempting bright fruit with them.
My mother managed to get one for me, and I sat on the deck with my parents and peeled away curls of dimpled skin like the anonymous hands from the porthold had done. The juice dribbled down my chin, smeared over my cheeks, down my forearms. My tortured stomach gurgled and protested.
Some time later I was back in our cabin, in my bunk bed, turned to the wall. The orange had stayed down for about half an hour. This was the story with all food since the first three days on the ship after leaving Singapore; we were heading for Melbourne. The orange had been a delicious interlude, a folly, a desperate attempt to be well in a flurry of seasickness.
It was sometime after this, when my parents were in the cabin with me, I heard my father say to my mother that I was ‘putting it on’, that I wasn’t really sick, and could stop it if I wanted to. He must have thought I was asleep. Or maybe he didn’t care. I thought about this, and wondered how I could stop vomiting, and how good it would be to be able to do that. However much I tried, the nausea brought me down, again and again. If only the ship would stop moving, I would be able to stop feeling sick.
I spent most of the two week journey in that cabin. We stopped briefly in Perth, and on the way out, the ship encountered gale force winds.
“A creaking ship is a safe ship,” my father said.
And the Patris creaked and groaned and moaned, a wounded animal battered by an ocean in fury. Water beat against the porthole and leaked into the cabin, bringing strong smells of salt and things unknown.
My parents went to a ball one night, my mother resplendent in a halter-neck dress of black and silver that caught the light in hundreds of reflective threads. My father wore a white dinner jacket which accentuated his smooth olive skin. The photo of them taken as they were greeted at the entrance to the ballroom showed my mother beaming, her lips coloured red, a handkerchief tucked neatly into her watchband, and incongruous navy and white plastic sandals peeping out from under her floor-length glamorous gown. The man with whom she was shaking hands was already focused on the next guest.
Once one of the Greek stewards came into our cabin to say hello, and he pinched my cheek as I lay in bed, trying to smile, the covers pulled up to my chin.
There must have been brief interludes when I was not nauseous, as I remember beginning to write a story about Mickey Mouse in an exercise book. My father thought I was writing about our trip, and his face fell when I showed it to him.
I was afraid of the toilets, because there was a time limit to the door. It allowed you fifteen minutes, then it would open automatically. I was terrified that I would lose track of the time and be revealed, stuck to the seat, unable to move, and unable to close the door again.
When we arrived in Melbourne, we travelled straight up to Sydney, and stayed in a caravan park until my parents decided what to do. I soon adjusted to no longer vomiting at the sight of food, and no longer feeling as if the waves were inside my stomach.
My hair, which was past shoulder length, was a bird’s nest of knots, or rather, one enormous knot, at the back of my head. My mother helped me tease it out, but I don’t remember how long that took.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Twins
They can take out a diseased womb, but what about the heart? My heart is sore and aching, but there’s nothing the doctors can do about it, is there?
Can the psychologist cure me? Or the psychiatrist? What can they tell me, what stories can they weave, what thoughts and feelings can they help me separate and understand?
I sigh.
The specialist said to me yesterday that the tumour on my ovary was so large, the removal of it was like delivering twins. I have never delivered twins, not even a single child. That one you see, that girl standing there by the mirror, looking at the flowers in the vase, is the child that came to me from someone else. Another woman gave her to me. I have not seen that woman, and never will.
I do not know what thoughts and feelings she had in her heart when she gave birth to this child, then gave her away. My husband says that she was a nice young woman, but unmarried. He had that look on his face. He can be a prudish man.
That was seven years ago. I wonder where she is now, and what she is doing. I wonder where I would be now, if she had not been pregnant, and needing to make arrangements. There were other babies. We would have chosen one of them, already born, waiting for someone to pick them. Like pets in a pet shop. How much is that baby in the window, the one with the curly top hair?
My mother blamed my husband for our childlessness. She blamed him for everything, through gritted teeth. I do not blame him for everything, and he was not the cause of our inability to conceive.
Not the sole cause.
My twinning ovarian cyst and my womb had to go. The doctor said that because the cyst was so large, he removed the womb and the other ovary as well. I was past childbearing, and there was risk of other disease if he left them there. My heart beats, my heart pauses. The womb contracts and waits. It’s done with waiting. The ovaries, too, are done. No more eggs to farm, only to go to waste. Where do they go, all those unused ova? Is there some mysterious pocket in the pelvis that holds them all? Where do the sperm go, all those millions, destined never to meet their partners in life?
The surgeon is a nice man, smiling, putting his hand on mine, telling me not to worry, everything would be fine. When it was all over, he came in and asked me about the pain, the wound, the urination. He talked to my husband, he smiled at my daughter.
My daughter. She went to stay with people I hardly know. H said he couldn’t look after her on his own while I was in hospital. She seems all right, but I don’t think she really knows what this is all about. She’s too young. She seems to like the people she’s with, but there’s that look in her eyes I see too often. She wanders about this room, and touches the flowers, and sits on my bed, and gives me a cuddle, but I don’t know what she’s feeling.
H is oblivious to what she’s feeling. He loves her and cares for her, but she’s not quite there for him. Not as a real person. I think he looks upon her as something he ordered from the shop, and now she’s here, he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to do. He’s a kind man, but there’s a lot that was taken away.
I wonder if his mother realised. They were so alike. Both as difficult as drudgery.
My husband has come back in.
“How are you dear?”
“I’m feeling more myself.”
“When are you coming home, Mummy?”
“In a few more days, darling. I’ve got to get better. Got to be able to walk.” I smile at her, this dark-haired girl.
She doesn’t ask many questions. I see her looking at me, or her father, but she doesn’t say anything.
Can the psychologist cure me? Or the psychiatrist? What can they tell me, what stories can they weave, what thoughts and feelings can they help me separate and understand?
I sigh.
The specialist said to me yesterday that the tumour on my ovary was so large, the removal of it was like delivering twins. I have never delivered twins, not even a single child. That one you see, that girl standing there by the mirror, looking at the flowers in the vase, is the child that came to me from someone else. Another woman gave her to me. I have not seen that woman, and never will.
I do not know what thoughts and feelings she had in her heart when she gave birth to this child, then gave her away. My husband says that she was a nice young woman, but unmarried. He had that look on his face. He can be a prudish man.
That was seven years ago. I wonder where she is now, and what she is doing. I wonder where I would be now, if she had not been pregnant, and needing to make arrangements. There were other babies. We would have chosen one of them, already born, waiting for someone to pick them. Like pets in a pet shop. How much is that baby in the window, the one with the curly top hair?
My mother blamed my husband for our childlessness. She blamed him for everything, through gritted teeth. I do not blame him for everything, and he was not the cause of our inability to conceive.
Not the sole cause.
My twinning ovarian cyst and my womb had to go. The doctor said that because the cyst was so large, he removed the womb and the other ovary as well. I was past childbearing, and there was risk of other disease if he left them there. My heart beats, my heart pauses. The womb contracts and waits. It’s done with waiting. The ovaries, too, are done. No more eggs to farm, only to go to waste. Where do they go, all those unused ova? Is there some mysterious pocket in the pelvis that holds them all? Where do the sperm go, all those millions, destined never to meet their partners in life?
The surgeon is a nice man, smiling, putting his hand on mine, telling me not to worry, everything would be fine. When it was all over, he came in and asked me about the pain, the wound, the urination. He talked to my husband, he smiled at my daughter.
My daughter. She went to stay with people I hardly know. H said he couldn’t look after her on his own while I was in hospital. She seems all right, but I don’t think she really knows what this is all about. She’s too young. She seems to like the people she’s with, but there’s that look in her eyes I see too often. She wanders about this room, and touches the flowers, and sits on my bed, and gives me a cuddle, but I don’t know what she’s feeling.
H is oblivious to what she’s feeling. He loves her and cares for her, but she’s not quite there for him. Not as a real person. I think he looks upon her as something he ordered from the shop, and now she’s here, he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to do. He’s a kind man, but there’s a lot that was taken away.
I wonder if his mother realised. They were so alike. Both as difficult as drudgery.
My husband has come back in.
“How are you dear?”
“I’m feeling more myself.”
“When are you coming home, Mummy?”
“In a few more days, darling. I’ve got to get better. Got to be able to walk.” I smile at her, this dark-haired girl.
She doesn’t ask many questions. I see her looking at me, or her father, but she doesn’t say anything.
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