Jan 28 2008

A Serious 7 Random Things…

Tag: Opinion — cerebralmum @ 10:46 pm

I was tagged by Child Person From the South for the 7 Random Things meme.

Last time I did it, it was fairly lighthearted but I think in order to respect the tags that have made their way to me this time, this one will need to cover some less fluffy details.

Number One

As a child abuse survivor, I don’t like to call myself a survivor. I think when I left home and began to deal with my childhood, the idea that I could be a survivor and not a victim was a powerful one, and one that helped me. But after a while it became something that felt restrictive as a label, that gave too much prominence to just one aspect of my history. It made me feel shrunken and defined, not just by myself but by the baggage of the assumptions people make when they know “what happened”.

I don’t want to be a “survivor”. I don’t want all my emotions and opinions and character traits to be seen through that filter. I want to be seen as a whole and not just a part. Whether I’m a survivor or not, it is just not all of me and it does not colour all that I am as a human being.

Number Two

I’m not sure that this counts as a random factoid, so let’s call it a random opinion: The result of child abuse is a powerful knowledge. It’s knowledge that is gained in the worst of ways, but it is gained nonetheless. I have the ability to recognise abuse, to recognise it in it’s early creeping, insidious forms: In the danger zone, where the dynamics of a relationship can, even without intent, become harmful. My instincts are finely honed. And I respect them.

I don’t think I can fully explain it in this amount of space, but if a child abuse survivor defines something as abusive which you can’t see for yourself, their opinion should be listened to as one of authority, not disregarded as an overreaction based of their personal history. Survivors are perfectly capable of distinguishing between their abreactions and their knowledge themselves. It is nobody else’s job to psychoanalyse them.

Number Three

And this leads us to something fairly obvious: I don’t like being psychoanalysed and I need to be respected. Those two things get in the way of me using the knowledge I have to help others and that seems selfish to me. I find it difficult to discriminate between my personal needs and a social obligation. I have not been able to find the defining line and I am pulled in opposite directions. I often feel guilty about it. About not doing enough.

Number Four

There is another dividing line I find difficult to define: I do not like the idea of Caspar ever having a step-father. This is purely theoretical of course, because at this stage I have no interest in having a relationship, but it is possible that this won’t be the case for the next 20 years. I’m not sure exactly how much this lack of openness is due to my statistical knowledge of the prevalence of abuse by non-biological parents, my own experience of abuse by a non-biological parent, my general lack of need for a relationship or my general parental protectiveness that allows no room for someone to take an important place in my son’s life without any guarantee that they will always be there for him.

The answer, of course, it that I can only make such choices if the situation arises, but I find it an interesting question nonetheless.

Number Five

I am not surprised by the prevalence of abuse but I am constantly surprised by people who read abuse statistics and disbelieve them. I won’t go into the statistical and data collection methods used because this is supposed to be about me, but leaving aside the big maths? All I have to do is add up how many people in my life - family and friends, young and old, male and female - who have been been victims of child abuse, child sexual abuse, who have been assaulted, beaten, or raped - to realise those numbers are not an overestimate.

Even taking into account that like attracts like, and that it isn’t surprising that my particular world would have an overpopulation of people who have had similar experiences and would talk about it with me, those numbers are not an overestimate. My personal numbers are far higher.

Number Six

Writing number five just then… I am angry. I’m angry at the level of ignorance there is about this issue. I’m angry at the head in the sand mentality. I’m angry at society’s inability to make the connections. I’m angry at the sensationalisation of the issues in the media which allows people to always see child abuse and sexual abuse as “Other”. I feel like ranting. I guess I am ranting. At who? I don’t know. But I still feel like smashing people over the head with some unpalatable facts.

Number Seven.

And writing number six just then… I feel powerless. No matter how I rant or what I do, I can not change things. Everything I know, everything I have learned both through experience and study, is useful only to help victims pick up the pieces. That’s something. But it isn’t enough.

It simply isn’t enough.

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Jan 17 2008

2007: My Favourite Five

Tag: Memories — cerebralmum @ 9:53 pm

I didn’t write a Christmas post, or a New Year post so this will be my Year-That-Was post.

Guera, one of my new favourite people, who writes one of my new favourite blogs, A Roaming Aussie Mum, has challenged me to the Favourite Five Meme.

I say challenged because I’m pretty sure that I will find this hard. You see, the meme is this…

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts, one relating to each of these key words:

  1. Family
  2. Friend
  3. Yourself
  4. Your love
  5. Anything you like

The only thing I ever write about is No. 3. Yes, I am that self absorbed. But I shall give it a shot. You just hold the line while I go hunting.

I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath.

(Some time later…)

1. Family

Not just sibling rivalry… is probably the post in which I’ve talked the most about my relationship with my sister, whose house I currently live in. Although I mention her often, I don’t really discuss the details of our relationship, or its ups and down. I don’t discuss those kinds of details for any of my real life relationships, because words are permanent and I hope that I am wise enough to use only the ones I can stand by, and that I have enough integrity to not lash out in an arena where there other has no means to defend themselves. Our relationship isn’t easy, and I talk about that a little in this post, but the overwhelming emphasis is on what is strong and good. As depressed as I may be, as difficult as life sometimes is, I do try to always focus on that.

2. Friend

There wasn’t an obvious choice for this one. There is a post that written for a specific friend in a specific circumstance, Because you remember what I remember…, but my care for her was written obliquely within my thoughts on the nature of friendship. I know it reached her, however and that she understood all that I was trying to say so it is an important post to me. And then there is the The first birthday party…, with a long list of appreciation for many friends who too often get lost in the darkness of my mind. As awful as it is to feel alone and abandoned, it seems somehow worse to fail to recognise those people who do not abandon you and who light your way. This is the post I wrote for them.

3. Myself

Oh, a wealth of choices! I think that makes this an even harder choice. I have a favourite but I have linked to it in several other posts so I’m going to choose the most special one, one I didn’t write myself: The Cerebral Mum, from another perspective. I was so grateful to HG for doing this for me, to help me see myself from someone else’s point of view. It is such a wonderful post in it’s own right, but it also made me feel fortunate to have people like HG in my life, and that perhaps I wasn’t so lost as I imagined.

4. My Love

Love takes many forms, I know, but many of them have been covered by the other key words. The obvious choice is Caspar, but I do not think that I have ever captured in a single post the breadth of my love for him. And I cannot help but read this as meaning an adult love, they kind you have for your partner. I don’t have one, I have written nothing about one., so I’m sitting this one out. At some stage, I will probably write about this kind of love, theoretically, and the way it befuddles me. But that post doesn’t exist yet. The bonus post under “Friend” will have to suffice.

5. Anything I Like

My failed attempt to complete 30 Poems in 30 Days yielded one poem that I love, Sapphics of the deep, so that is my choice. It is imperfect. It was written in a difficult metre that I was unfamiliar with, but to me the words are rich; dense with symbolism and mouth-filling. Those not familiar with the Sapphic may not recognise the rigid form in which it was constructed but for an undisciplined person like myself, restricting my writing in this way and still being able to create something large remains a source of pride.

And now the tagging. I generally don’t tag people for memes. Instead I ask anyone who would like to participate to let me know so that I can add their link. But often no one ever does so today I’ll break that habit and and invite…

  1. Karen from Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum
  2. Mountainmama from Careful What You Wish For…
  3. Anonymum from The Nook of Oz
  4. Missy from Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
  5. Stewart from The New USSR, Illustrated
  6. Marj aka Thriver from Survivors Can Thrive

There are of course other people I’d like to tag but I’m only supposed to do 5 and January is half gone so many people have already written their retrospectives. If you want to be added, however, let me know because I was never that good at following senseless rules.

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Jan 04 2008

Broken resolutions…

Tag: Uncategorized — cerebralmum @ 4:46 pm

This post was written as part of the [Fiction] Friday meme. The basic principle is to write a piece of fiction based on the week’s theme, to write for at least 5 minutes and do no editing.

This Week’s Theme: What is the first New Year’s Resolution your character breaks? How soon? Why?

She knows her life is spinning out of control but she has no idea what she wants. Her hours are long and she is surrounded by men. Attractive men, charismatic men, who pander to her ego and her predilections. Who mirror her image of herself. That is why she does this, why she works where she works, why she is caught in the chaos of sleepless nights and lost days. Lost weeks.

She is not lonely but she has lost her taste for solitude in the same way a drug addict forgets to eat. The pace is addictive. Her energy levels are euphoric and synthetic. She knows a crash will come but still the desire for sensation draws her onward. It tastes like life, like a rebellion against the heavy crush of normality and the necessity of living daily, doing daily things. It effects her choices.

She has no longing for companionship but idealises the notion of connection. Of ships passing in the night. Of twinned souls and loves not bound by time or pedestrian, formalised relationships. Living and loving are star-crossed things.

These men run in her same rush-rush pace; frenetic, hungry. Some are artists, some are actors, some are musicians. Some are trying to be. Some have been yet have fallen. All are bartenders.

With them she spins, unique and singled out, sometimes drawn in to more visceral interactions than she intended. Mostly it leaves her empty; drained and disappointed by the reality of what always follows.

Like her, these men can not be trusted. Nothing sates them, as she is never sated, and she and they move on, still searching for something more real than dull reality.

She says, Enough!

She knows she needs to be alone, that this overpopulated world is slowly eating her. A New Year’s resolution, a token gesture towards something she does not want to face head on; she swears off bartenders and musicians. No more disappointing mornings. She will remain her ice queen self, always hovering on the brink of consummation. It is the tension which she craves, not the falling. A life solely composed of possibilities.

But there he is, his slow chasing growing more intense and she is trapped by the picture that he paints of her. She wants always to be an object of fascination and she is his.

The staircase walls of his parents house are lined with gold and platinum albums, awards and autographs she recognises. She is accustomed to living on the outskirts of fame and feels at home there, listening to her friends talk about their friends whose names are splashed around the world, seeing supermodels and rock stars as what they are; simply people. She is used to having invitations to exclusive functions and walking past queues knowing that the ropes will be moved aside for her..

She is close enough to see the truth of fame, and to read between the lines when those outside of the circle she lives in the fringes of talk about the people they presume they know from gossip columns and movie screens. Only rarely though, privately, does she admit to herself that she too is sometimes caught by the unnatural glow.

So she stands too close to him, but it is not the fame that captures her. It is not even his rejection of it and those lost years in Africa. It is the picture of herself he gives to her, that notion that she is special, that she is inspiring and captivating. He believes it, for now at least, and that image is quicksand.

So it is January. And she lies awake beside a child-man who is both a musician and a bartender. So much for resolutions.

Sometime later in the year, she will remember why she decided she didn’t want to do that anymore: You do not need to be Rita Hayworth to know that men will go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with you.

NB: Although I have mentioned my predilection for bartenders and musicians, remember this is Fiction Friday. There is a small possibility that some of what I have written above might be semi-autobigraphical. But you’ll never know which parts or why. ;)

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Dec 07 2007

Why she wants to rule the world…

Tag: My writing — cerebralmum @ 11:45 pm

I have had the very worst of days but this is a piece I wrote a few days ago for a meme I think I’ll be participating in every now and then.

[Fiction] Friday

You can click on the link above to find out more about it but the basic principle is to write for at least 5 minutes and do no editing. (So I have not edited it.)

It is a good way, I think, to open up my writing, similar to what I did with my 30 Poems Clearing House post. But it’s prose instead, which is my greatest love. And when I say that, I’m not just talking about types of writing. It’s my greatest love in life, animal, mineral or vegetable. With the one exception of Caspar. When it comes to choosing between fiction and people, fiction comes first, not because I don’t love reality. It’s just that reality only makes sense through fiction.

It’s also a way for me to add a little prose fiction here: With the exception of that small extract from An Eloquent Sleep, I haven’t yet done so because the pieces I would like to show are too large for a blog.

The last reason why I think this is a good semi-regular meme for me, is that it is very easy to get entirely sick of yourself when you’re writing a personal blog. I get exhausted squaring off with this depression. So this is my chance to switch persona, to write from the 3rd person. And that can tell me as much about what is going on in my head as my dreams, or my reason can.

So without any further ado…

This Week’s Theme: Your evil villain wants to rule the world. Write about her (or his) reasons.

She wants to see the intricacies of people moving like ants in and out of each other’s lives. She wants to twitch delicately at their puppet strings, avoiding collisions and bruises. She wants to say no. She wants to say stop.

Sometimes she wants to crash people together, odd people, just to make them wake up, to startle them into change and growth. She wants to confuse everyone with shoes, to make them see differently. She wants to overhear conversations, especially the silent ones people have in the heads. She wants to make everything alright. She wants to tear everything down.

She wants to rapidly cycle through seasons of contentment and destruction according to her mood. She wants her anger to achieve something. She wants to send waves of electricity through her puppet strings and shock people. She wants to be lightning.

And spring rain.

She wants everyone to feel electric when the heavens open up and the floods come, and the plagues. She wants everyone to move in spirals.

She wants them to recognise their idiocy, the way their lives move in that petty pace from day to day. She wants to shake the globe, thunderously, violently, and let them all fall where they may. She wants to tear everyone to shreds, get at the truth of them. She wants to make the world explode.

She has little hope of her puppets. She will push them with a cattle prod until they burn or die.

She wants them to burn while she dances to the rhythm of the music of the Tower of Babel. She wants to turn the volume up and make them sing while she drinks tea with Ereshkigal.

NB: The out-of-my-niche guest post I wrote is now up. Drop by Life in the Country and have a read, especially you old Myrtleford friends. It’s a happy one.

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Nov 14 2007

Meme’d - 7 random things…

Tag: Saffron noodles — cerebralmum @ 4:13 pm

Eve tagged me for a meme. It the usual deal - answer the questions, pass it on. So I’m going to do it all Jung-like, as Eve did, and just say the first things that pop into my head. I have no choice about it because I only have a few minutes before Cas gets sick of the Jolly Jumper.

7 Random Things About Me

(Hey, they’re not called MeMe’s for nothing…)

  1. I need to get a new prescription for my glasses. I’d rather have laser surgery.
  2. I wore lipstick yesterday. That shouldn’t have been an event. I shall now add wearing lipstick to my daily to-do list.
  3. I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.
  4. I used to like clomping around in my male friends’ oversized work boots. I think I’d still like doing that, given the opportunity. I have conquered my habit of stealing their fat socks, though. I think. (Perhaps this is more Freudian, rather than Jungian. You figure it out.)
  5. I have a tendency to walk into lamp posts. (Is that Sartrean?) One New Year’s Eve I even managed to break a rib at work simply by carrying a food platter into a wall. I proceeded to drink my way through the rest of my shift, which ended with a brawl and a fired manager and a promotion for me.
  6. When I was little, I got caught in the seatbelt when I got out of the car and my father drove off and ran over my foot. I was very brave when I was taken to the hospital and while I had my foot x-rayed. I was very brave until the doctor told me that I didn’t need crutches. Then I cried my poor little heart out.
  7. And speaking of Sartre; my great-grandmother’s uncle was Albert Schweitzer, whose cousin was Sartre’s mother. I’ve never figured out what that means, genealogically speaking. My nth cousin in the nth degree?

I’m supposed to tag 7 people of course, but that presupposes I have 7 friends, with blogs, who haven’t already been tagged. Joh? Rosemary? If anyone wants a little free link-love, let me know.

I’ll be back tonight. Today is a good day.

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Oct 05 2007

Ten random things…

Tag: Saffron noodles — cerebralmum @ 11:27 am

I’ve been meme‘d again. This time by Joh. I’m one of the chosen ones she would love to learn more about. How flattering is that?

So here they are, Ten Random Facts About ME…

  1. When I was little my Mum had really great jobs. She worked as a live-in cook in a monastery so I used to skite that I had 12 brothers. She owned a general store so I used to steal all the lollies. And she was a Play School presenter (but in New Zealand) so I got to play with Big Ted and Little Ted on set. Could your Mum have a better job than that?
  2. I hate ants. I’m not freaked out by snakes or spiders or any other creepy crawlies. Just ants. I once had a dream where I saw a little girl and as I got closer I could see her slowly turn into a doll and there were ants all over her, coming out of her mouth. Yup. I hate ants.
  3. I have had platinum blonde hair and pink hair and purple hair and black hair and no hair but never red hair. That would just highlight the freckles which I loathe.
  4. I “failed” Year 10 but never repeated it. We moved to Melbourne and my new school let me go on to Year 11. I still think the numbers didn’t add up to failure. They just didn’t like my attitude. Trying to make me repeat the year that was too easy to bother with? Way to challenge a smart kid, people!
  5. Okay, now this one is going to sound really, really bad. I’m just warning you. Once, I slept with 3 different guys all on the same day. Now, I’m pretty stingey with my sexual “favours” but I just happened to get 3 random visits from 3 different ex’s, all of whom I still love and adore. The first 2 I can discount as a consequence of residual feeling. The 3rd one was just because I thought it was funny.
  6. I like to have painted toenails at all times but hate painted fingernails. They just look tacky.
  7. I haven’t travelled much, even though I’ve always wanted to. I’ve only been to New Zealand, Cyprus and Italy. I feel envious when people talk about their travels. This really sucks when my Mum has spent the last 10 years living and working all over the world. She blogged here. Go give her a kick in the pants and tell her to start writing again.
  8. I am privately vain.
  9. I’ve just applied to get back into university to finish my history degree. This freaks me out. I am horrified by the idea that I might not get in and feel like a teenager whose life will be ruined if she can’t do want she wants. I am so freaked out I think I may have missed some forms I had to fill out. I really need to chase that up. Today.
  10. I have never had a job that utilised the best of me.

I won’t tag anyone because I don’t know that many bloggers yet but if anyone would like to be tagged, let me know and I will add your name here.

Thanks for the meme, Joh.

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Sep 20 2007

5 strengths…

Tag: On writing... — cerebralmum @ 11:42 pm

I’ve been meme’d.

I’ve sat on this for 4 days, partly because of my computerlessness but mostly because the task is not an easy one:

Name 5 of your strengths as a writer / artist.

Like Musing who tagged me, I could easily name 5 weaknesses, or 50, but even though I will state I am a good writer, my reasons for doing so are based on why I write and my experience when I write rather than being an analysis of the writing itself.

Although it seems counterintuitive, writing is what leads to understanding, not the other way around, and I am hesitant to take away a little of the mystery of the process. But craft as much as art creates good writing so this is a meme worth answering.

(I should probably clarify that when I think of my writing, it is my novel which dominates my thoughts. None of my fiction is published here (yet) so you will have nothing to weigh my opinion against. You’ll just have to take my word for it.)

Strength #1 - Truth

Truth is unwieldy. It is large and paradoxical and difficult. I write the truth; the brutal, raw, ugly, uncompromising, but never absolute, truth. It is my standard of beauty.

Strength #2 - Reading

You can only learn about language - both what it can do and what it can say - by reading. Years of studying grammar and style cannot substitute for it. They can only make conscious what you already know. Being a good writer is dependent on reading. And the best reading inspires you and challenges you. It makes you pause and write whole passages in your head, it makes you reach for your notebook. It makes you think and it makes you flow. I have the appetite for it and I feed it.

Strength #3 - Poetry

There is poetry in my prose. It is driven by rhythm and imagery. It is rich and dense. It can be read aloud. It can be read again.

Strength #4 - Voice

My voice is my own. I’m sure I could name “influences” (Henry Miller and Violette Leduc spring to mind) but they are writers I recognise something in, writers I feel an affinity to. I could never hope to emulate them and I have never tried. The content and style of my writing is mine alone.

Strength #5 - Love

You cannot write the truth and hate the truth. If you try, you will go mad. I love people. As they are. I know their infinite potential cannot be seen without accepting the depths to which they can sink. The best of us and the worst of us are the same. The subject matter I write about is often sordid, often unhappy, but it is never negative.

For this meme I tag:

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