Public or private?

I saw the picture of a still born baby of twenty weeks on someone’s blog yesterday.  The folks at Mamamia put it up in the interests of helping people who have suffered a miscarriage.  

It shocked me and clearly, not only me. The editors at Mamamia equivocated about putting up the pictures as well. 

There’s something devastating and surreal about the sight of such a tiny underdeveloped baby, one who should still be inside his mother’s womb and alive, not outside in the world before-term and dead.

 

I do not oppose the publication of such images on line because something tells me the motive behind their publication is not one of inducing gratuitous shock.  It's more an effort to help people share the load of their grief.

So many horrible things are otherwise veiled in secrecy and hidden from the public view.  People must bear the worst of it alone. 

My own miscarriage happened when my baby was only ten weeks into life.  There was no foetus to be seen.  It was no less traumatic for me for that, but to get to twenty weeks and lose a baby would have to be worse.  The further into a pregnancy, the more alive that baby becomes in one’s imagination, and to lose a baby full term must be worst of all. 

But why compare these events?   They are all ghastly in their own right.  The thing about this woman publishing the photos from her still born baby’s brief stay in the world is meaningful in a world where many would prefer not to know the details.  While others search for them.  

 

I had an email recently from a woman who read some of my writing and cannot understand my motives for writing about the traumatic events from my childhood and my attempts now as an adult to understand them through my writing.  She believes my musings belong in a diary or journal.  They are not for publication.

 

Clearly, there’s a whole range of views about what is fit for the public view and what should stay private.  

As one who comes from an incestuous family, I lean towards more exposure of these things in the public view because too much secrecy can be dangerous.  Witness Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers of renown.

 

I also recognise the wish I felt when I saw that unborn baby not yet ready for the world, my wish to turn away, and not to see something so disturbing, so raw, so unprocessed. 

And then there’s all this derision for those who take selfies and put them online, particularly, the pretty young women.  Narcissism, the critics say.  On the other hand, it seems it’s okay for any other person to take a self portrait, including centuries of artists who have recreated their self images as one of least difficult ways to get a model and so practice their craft.

 

Narcissism or artistry?  Catharsis or gratuitous shocking of unwitting and unwilling others?  

Who knows?  As far as I can tell, the jury is still undecided.

Sins of impure thought

My grandsons stayed overnight during the past couple of days.  At bath time – a bath time of sorts, a puddle of water in the base of the bath on which the two paddled mechanized ducks – I noticed how reluctant the older boy was to take off his clothes.  This compared to his younger brother of two years, who has no shame or modesty.

 

I put those words together effortlessly, shame and modesty.

 

Why be ashamed of your body?  What drives my grandson as a six-year-old, and not even into the hormonal stirrings of pre-adolescence, to want to hide his penis from others?

I remember the sensation as a thirteen-year-old; my mortification when my older sister insisted I should not try to change my clothes in private.  My desperation when all the cubicles at the swimming pool change rooms were occupied and I was forced to change out of my bathers in public.

Others did not mind.  Others were okay with standing there naked to towel themselves dry.  Others bent over to pick up clothes, unabashed by their nakedness, but I had decided early on that it was shameful, my body was shameful and needed to be kept hidden.

There are those who might suggest my shame comes out of some sort of desire frustrated, to use a technical term, out of ‘repressed libido’.  The excitement of looking at naked bodies,  as I did so often in those days when I was a child .

 

I scanned the pages of my father’s art books under cover, hidden beneath layers of blankets so that no one else, none of my siblings, might see what I was up to.

 

What was I up to?  Looking at naked men and women in old fashioned settings with bits of material draped over strategic bits, the occasional fig leaf, but enough nakedness revealed to send shivers of excitement through me. 

I did not understand my excited pleasure but I recognised it as wrong. 

By the time I was my older grandson’s age I had begun preparations for my first confession and first communion.  The nuns took us to the priest who taught us about the nature of sin.  Sins like stealing and telling lies.

 

Such tame and obvious sins did not trouble me, but the priest gave a name to my excitement under the blankets with my father’s borrowed art books.  

He called mine the sin of impure thoughts.  And impure thoughts were worse even than stealing ten pounds.  They were worse even than even the biggest of lies.

 

Whether it is true or not, in terms of Catholic doctrine, in my mind it became true: impure thoughts constituted mortal sins, and mortal sins were dangerous indeed.  

Die with a mortal sin on your soul and you will be banished to hell forever.  Die with a mortal sin and you can never enter the kingdom of heaven. 

By the time I was eight years old I agonized over these incessant sins to the point where I imagined God’s pointed finger burning red at the tip in my direction, but I could not bring myself to tell the priest about my impure thoughts in the confessional. 

I could not bear to tell the priest things that I feared might not only cause him to despise me, but might also stir him up. 

Somehow, I knew about that strange contagion of desire; the way looking and being seen, listening and telling could evoke powerful responses in the others. 

What could I do?  My sins of impure thought weighed me down as if I were carrying lead, like the silver grey lump that rested on a bench in my father’s workshop; a lump of lead, poisonous my brothers told me, and too heavy for us to carry.

 

How could I be rid of this sin? 

Then I heard about novenas, and relief from sin, of all kinds and degrees of severity, when a person goes to mass on the first Friday of every month for nine months. 

How I managed to get to the first Friday of every month Mass as a ten year old, I cannot fathom, but in my memory I managed it.  I most likely went along with my sister. She was busy getting up early most mornings by then to avoid our father’s visits in the night. 

She and I went to early Mass together. In those days daily seven o’clock Mass was commonplace.  She and I walked together to mass to cleanse our souls; she for what was done to her, and me, for what I might do to others.  

Glory be to God for dappled things.

Years ago, in the days when most communications, other than over the telephone, came in the form of mail through the post, I received an unprepossessing post card, dolphins leaping through waves? Some friend on holidays had sent it, I imagined, until I read the words scrawled on the card.

 

Les Murray, who at that time was literary editor for Quadrant had decided to accept my story, ‘Hold on’ for publication in his magazine.  No matter that Quadrant was renowned as a right wing magazine, I had finally had a story accepted for publication.  I was a writer at last.  A published writer. 

It was official. 

The pleasure of being published that day was more profound than for any publication since, but every time someone agrees to publish something I have written, I am filled with some of the same pleasure; short lived as it may be.

 

Anne Lamott in her book, Bird by Bird, writes about the way in which, until your writing is published, you imagine your whole life will be completely different, and better, for evermore after publication.  And then it happens.  Something gets published, but your whole world does not change. 

At least, not simply because of the writing. 

Our lives change, as inevitably as day follows night, but the changes come about through things other than writing, at least they have for me, and yet here I am stuck in this fantasy of wondering what it will be like once my book gets accepted for publication.  

 

I pinch myself.  My book is still not quite ready to send out.  Nearly ready, but who will want it, if anyone?

That same dreaded fear of rejection; that same secret longing; that same hideous sense that someone will read my writing and say, ‘Sorry, no market here.  Nothing of interest to the general public.  Interesting perhaps, but not of interest to us.’

This morning as I hung out the sheets, I considered my wish that I be like Gerard Manly Hopkins.  An English poet and Jesuit priest, he wrote for the love of God - as in his 1918 poem, 'Pied Beauty' with its fine first line: Glory be to God for dappled things - or so he believed, or would have us believe.  

Publication was not within his desire.  He wrote for the glory of God and given that God knew and read everything, Hopkins always had a ready and willing audience.  

I can’t say the same for me.  For my own writing.  I have no God-like audience, only a few people who visit my blog and others unknown to me who might read my writing in hard copy or elsewhere online. 

But if I can get this book of mine out into the published world, then life will be different – or will it?

 

I’m not quite at the age where I imagine that every new year that dawns might be my last, though of course it could be.  

Last night at midnight we went outdoors onto our street, which sits atop a hill across from the city, to admire the fireworks.  

We do this every New Years Eve, the highlight of our efforts at acknowledging the birth of a new year.

 

Our daughters laugh at us.  It’s hardly inspirational to go out onto the street and dodge the trams of Riversdale Road and the few cars that flash by and honk their horns in greeting.  But for us it’s enough.

 

The lights over the city were glorious, better this year for the weather I expect.  A calm cool evening without even a gentle breeze.  

I had also avoided too many drinks as I might sometimes do by way of New Years Eve celebrations as I needed to collect our youngest from a New Years Eve party in the wee hours of the morning. 

As it was, she called me at three.  Normally, she might catch a taxi but they’re hard to come by on New Years Eve, besides, she, like her sisters, hates to catch taxis when she’s the only one travelling.  

Young women in taxis late at night are vulnerable and easy prey, especially if they have been drinking.

 

I decided I would rest easier if I could instead collect her from her party, even if it interfered with a reasonable bedtime post midnight on New Years Eve.

 

So I’m up late this morning, filled with a fresh desire to perfect my book.

 

Happy New Year to all my blogging friends.  

So many baubles smashed.

There was one Christmas when my father in a fit of rage pulled our Christmas tree up by its branches and ripped it from its soil filled pot in one corner of the lounge room.

The tree fell heavily and there was a clattering of baubles, a sea of cut glass that my mother later tiptoed through with her dustpan and brush.

My father sulked off to his room.

Some of the Christmas baubles had come from Holland, where they had once adorned the Christmas trees of my mother’s childhood.  Through them she had held onto hope for a better life on the other side of the world.

 

Did she lose hope then, at the sight of the smashed tear drop bauble, the one that hung from the topmost branch and glittered from its many edges?  This was a bauble renowned for its shape and the way its maker had caved in one side and filled it with a different colour and texture from the smooth round outside.

 

How could my father have done this?  How could one person so destroy the beauty of Christmas?

 

It was never the same again.  So many baubles smashed. 

Over the next few years we went to Southland and bought new trinkets to put on the tree but none so glorious as those that came from Holland.

Today my mother is too old and tired for a tree.  She prefers her ancient nativity set, careful as ever to leave the baby Jesus hidden behind the crib until Christmas eve.  

Once more this Christmas one of my daughters has decorated a potted olive tree from our back garden with origami birds and butterflies in subtle colours, alongside the glow of white lights from Target.

 

In our house where no nativity scene appears, there is only the spirit of Christmas, a time when tensions are high but love cuts deepest; where we help one another; think of one another; grow frustrated with one another and sigh at the advancing of another year’s ending. 

May your Christmas be as good as mine, with all its hard edges and joy.  

Three bears, cults and extraversion

I made up a bowl of porridge for my daughter this morning, the easy stuff out of a sachet, with two minutes in the microwave instead of one and a half, given I had put in too much milk.  My daughter was in a rush for work and I was trying to help her get out the door in time. 

The porridge at first was too sloppy and therefore needed more time in the microwave and then when she did not eat it immediately it became too lumpy.

 

I think of those three bears, and Goldilocks’s desire that things – chair, porridge, bed – be just right.

I did another Myers Briggs test this week and came out with a slightly different score from the first time I’d tried it. 

I’m sure this is not the official test but it’s one that’s free to try on line. 

My daughter reckons I should take the results of the first test seriously, at least more seriously than later results because by the second and third times I was likely to answer less honestly given I could anticipate the questions.  

Funny questions like: after you have been socializing heavily do you prefer to spend time alone.

 

Well, yes and no.  I can manage more company after a I’ve been with a crowd but equally there are times when I’d like some quiet time. 

This is why I dislike these tests so much.  They tend to demand 'yes' or 'no' answers and therefore become reductive. 

I know the test managers ask the same questions in reverse order to try to trick the truth out of you but I suspect people can become test-savvy and answer in whatever way they feel might best suit their purposes. 

These tests to me are like horoscopes.  You go along with whatever suits you – namely the positive interpretations, and ignore the rest.

I came out as Extravert 78%, Intuitive 38%, Feeling 62 % and Judging 22%.

At a glance, I’m not much of a judge.  The other results don’t surprise me so much.

I have my third Christmas party this afternoon, and my last bar Christmas day on Monday evening.  I haven’t done too badly.  I do not yet feel overwhelmed by the sense of excess this time of year brings. 

Shades of the question I quoted above from the Myers Briggs test.  That one is to root out the introverts,  I'm sure.  

 

My husband and at least one of our daughters are so-called introverts.  My older sister reckons a person on the introversion scale a la Myers Briggs, is simply one who derives energy from their own company, from quiet times.  While an extravert is a person who derives energy from time spent with others. 

I’d like to think I derive energy from both sources and to an extent I suspect we all do.  But it’s true, I prefer the company of others to total and prolonged solitude.

When I was a school girl we went on retreats once a year.  A week or maybe three to five days during the school day dedicated to prayer.  I pretended to enjoy those days.  The imposed silence. 

During retreats there were times when we sat in chapel together and a nun read to us or the priest held  Mass or benediction, something that involved noise, voices, or better still singing, but then later we were meant to make our own entertainment, namely in the form of more prayers and contemplation.

 

I can see us now, thirty or so fifteen-year-old girls, our missals in hand wandering around the gardens of Vaucluse Convent ostensibly in deep contemplation.

 

The more outgoing girls caught one another’s gaze and burst into fits of giggling.  The nun in charge who stalked around behind the rose bushes offered an unspoken reproach and silence prevailed again.

I longed for the hours to pass.  It felt as though I had been tied in a strait jacket and could not move my arms.  I should have known from this experience that I would never make a nun. 

Nuns take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  All three would have been impossible for me, and yet there was a time in my life when I contemplated taking on such a life, out of love for my favourite teacher, whom I once decided I had wanted to emulate.  Even if it meant hours of imposed silence and a pretense – for me at least – of prayer.  

This nun has since left the convent but not before I gave up on that particular vocation. 

The other day I listened to Phillip Adams during his radio program Late Night Live on the topic of cults.  Apparently there is a group of people in London who were arrested.  Three women had been held in enforced captivity for thirty years, one of whom must have been born into slavery.  Apparently they are part of a cult. 

Their story fascinates me but the discussion of cults fascinates me even more.  One speaker made the point that if you get a group of people together and keep them separate from outside influences for long enough they can begin to develop kooky ideas. 

Madness breeds out of too much introversion, though equally there is the opposite madness, that of the mob. 

It all comes down to balance I suppose, a bit like my daughter’s porridge this morning: not too runny, not too firm.