The Cerebral Mum

I’m trying to put my finger on it.

I was disappointed to find that both my subjects’ tutorials this semester are being led by female academics. What is that about? I’d love to be a female academic myself, so why do I think I’m somehow getting less out of them? To a certain extent, perhaps it has more to do with who I relate to rather than stereotypes. Then again, just saying “who I relate to” in such a way (ie; meaning males) is stereotyping. Isn’t it?

Can some of it be excused by personal experience? I prefer male doctors, for example. My experience with female doctors have been that they are either to emo or in-my-face or trying-to-connect when all I want is bald science, or too snarky or chip-on-their-shoulder or sour. Now those are some awfully destructive, endemic stereotypes. Perhaps they really were like that, but perhaps my perceptions were influenced by the culture I am surrounded by.

My current doctor, incidentally, is female and I really like her. She’s Chinese. Does her different background effect the way she relates, or do I relate to her differently? (That’s an even more concerning question!)

I have similar “experiences’ with females in wide range of roles. Even traditionally “female” roles. Like nurses. I loathe most nurses with a passion.

And even just generally, I prefer the company of men. With the exception of my blogging pals, I have few female friends. Occasionally, I love a “girly” get together - I’m a fairly girly girl and I have 7 pairs of pink shoes - but too much female company and I begin to dislike my own sex. I can only take so much.

In part, I think it is because I have a “masculine” mind and, statistically, more males than females think and interact the way I do. (Yes, I do think that there are statistically significant differences between the sexes, even though that tells us nothing about any single individual.) I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that I also like to be not so much one-of-the-boys, but the woman who runs with them. Because I “fit” very well, but I also have a point of difference and therefore get special treatment. That’s not a very admirable reason for what is essentially prejudice.

Or is it prejudice? Where is the line between prejudice and preference?

There is no self-loathing in play here. I share the “flaws” of my sex which irritate me in other women and I have no desire to be other than what I am. My “femaleness” informs everything I do and think. I experience the world through my female body. It generates meaning. I find it valuable.

Perhaps it is the complementary nature of “sex” differences which attracts me to the company of men. There are characteristics I admire which I find more frequently in males than I do in females and don’t think that is uncommon. (This applies in reverse as well: There are many men who prefer the company of women.) Still, I find it problematic.

Because I’m a feminist.

I’m not a “feminist, but…”: I’m 100% pure, unadulterated. So how does that compute with my “sexism”? How do I resolve those two leanings? My feminism is obviously not a female bias. It is a combination of broader principles and my female experience.

I think this post is opening a very large can of philosophical worms. I think I need to define my feminism again. It isn’t something I have intellectually considered for a long time. Is it a label that I have worn for so many years that it is no longer meaningful?

It’s time to make this area of my social conscience conscious once more.

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Dear Blog,

I know that I said I wouldn’t write until after New Year but the days seem to be getting longer. I don’t think I realised how much I would miss you, even though it was I who went away.

A lot has been happening, and I’ve been keeping myself busy. I’ve found other rewarding ways to occupy my time. There have been some awful days and some wonderful days and some dreary, nothing days in between. It’s not that I feel the need to tell you all about them: I have never been a good diarist and my thoughts have always taken priority over the events of my life. But I miss the anchor you provide, that space at the end of the day when my time is yours alone.

On the days when I feel like I have achieved nothing, when I have no motivation at all, I force myself to take care of you and it overrides the purposelessness of all those hours which came before. On the days when I am overflowing with ideas, or words, or pains, or joys, you give me a place to pour them out yet hold them safe.

Often my life lacks a sense of reality. I am not a grounded person. It seems odd that you, living such an abstract existence, are the thing which keeps me earthed. I thought you would be the place where I would take off on those flights of fancy I miss so much. I was wrong about that.

I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.

I’ve worried about the shape you take, I’ve worried about the face you present to the world. I’ve worried about your lack of coherence. Sometimes, I haven’t even liked you.

It turns out that you are not a mirror held up to show me who I am. Just like a person, you are a hall of mirrors. I cannot make you whole and make you Truth. I cannot choose which reflection I will look at: I may see from the corner of my eye something that holds meaning, or something unrecognisable.  I cannot choose what others will see reflected. Some aspect of light may catch them, or they may move on.

So you will be what you are. Just pieces. I cannot write myself like a book. I cannot read myself like a book. I think I asked too much of you and I wore us down. I am an exhausting person. But that’s okay too.  I do not need to worry about how our story ends.

You are a very special medium, and new to me, but you have taught me something. You cannot analyse an unfinished text, like a blog.

Or like a life.

And I miss you, so I’m coming home.

Yours (truly!),

cerebralmum

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[As you know, I’m am struggling to figure out who I am right now so a little while ago I asked an old friend to tell me who he saw, both in the past and now, hoping that I would recognise something by looking through someone else’s eyes. This is the guest post he wrote for me. It made me smile. And left me with many things to think about. ~cerebralmum]

This is going to be a roughly chronological remembrance. A collection of moments that I hope will also serve to reflect your character as I see it.

I met you in 1994. I went to high school with L, your then-boyfriend. Before I met you, the main thing I knew about you was that you’d gotten my friend into Tori Amos. He was giving me a lift somewhere, and the CD was playing in his car. I was struck by the melancholy whimsy of Happy Phantom. I ended up a much bigger fan of her than he did.

The first time I actually met you is still vivid. We were on our way to the beach, L giving a carload of us a lift as usual. We stopped to pick you up on our way. As I stepped through the front door, you came thundering down the hall, wearing a pair of jeans that would comfortably have fit me, tightly belted, a clinging black singlet top, pigtails, and a scowl, bellowing, “We can’t go yet! I can’t find my TAMPONS!” L trailed down the hall after you smiling sheepishly and shrugging limply as if in apology. I failed to see what he had to apologise for – I was still laughing. So there you were: brash, unconventional, confronting, funny, honest to a fault, and, evidently, bleeding.

Early impressions: You were fun. You were loud. You were sharp. Incredibly observant. You were enthusiastic - it seemed like your energy was boundless. Sometimes you seemed to try on new personalities for a day or two, just to see what would happen. I remember thinking it must be tiring to go out with you. Your curiosity was huge, and it seemed like you’d talk to anyone about anything. You were idiosyncratic in your tastes - in music, clothes, literature, art, décor. You thought deeply about things, and considered your opinions. I relished your point of view on issues, and always enjoyed talking with you. You were always elbow-deep in some fascinating book.

I ended up getting to know you better, while you were sharing a house in Glance Street with another of my high school friends and C, one of your oldest friends. I spent a lot of time there – it became a home away from home for my close-knit geeky crowd. Many late night videos, talk fests, and parties. I went out for a short while with C. My first real heartbreak, that one.

I watched you working through a lot at that time. You read voraciously, taking what you needed and moving on. Lots of stuff on journeys and archetypes. I could almost see you piecing these things together, and making them your own, feeding back into your own narrative. You were bold and systematic in this self-exploration. More than anyone I’d met, you were committed to really looking at yourself.

You made things: decoupage, furniture, decorative pieces. It seemed to be therapeutic to you to make things with your hands. There was also a restlessness to your activity sometimes – an inability to stay still. You couldn’t stop moving. It seemed like the flipside of the therapeutic aspect. You didn’t necessarily feel better, but the movement gave you something to do. I heard about the cleaning at four in the morning. I saw for myself the overnighters on The Table.

You showed me your writing. You handed me sheets one at a time, watching my face as I read. I thanked you, and I still do, for sharing your voice with me. Reading your writing is like speaking to you.

I remember you curled on my lap once, sobbing and shaking while I held you and stroked your hair. You stopped and looked up at me, clear-eyed, and asked, “Are all your female friends fucked up?” I had to stop and think about that one. I believe I eventually came back with a lame “…not */all/* of them…”

I arrived late for the Epic Party. The wrestling was over, sadly. You pounced on me in the hallway, shrieking, and bit me hard on the neck. I was happy to see you too.

I remember the first time I saw your tattoo. It was a Vietnamese restaurant on Smith Street. One by one, you led the dinner guests to the foyer of the toilets to flash them your new ink, grinning. I loved it, and told you so. It fit you well: she is the youngest of the Endless, who sees more than people know, who knows delight and pain, and who isn’t as mad as people might think.

L ended your relationship in bad circumstances. In retrospect, it was one of the key incidents that made me look at him more closely and see that we were drifting apart. His new girl reminded several of us of you, in looks at least. One of us accidentally called her by your name in front of him while we were in Brisbane for his wedding. Oops!

(I’m not sure if I ever told you about his wedding. I got tremendously drunk at the reception, and came oh so very very close to standing up and adding an impromptu speech, because the “official” one mentioned that he’d met her on a cricket trip to Brisbane, but left out the fact that he was still with you at the time. I felt this was a terrible oversight, and barely kept myself seated. I later shook his hand on the dance floor and complimented him on his continuing excellent taste in women, and only avoided telling him how I would happily shag his wife because a good friend thankfully grabbed my elbow and steered me away.)

After everyone moved out of Glance Street, we largely lost touch. It was a totally benign neglect, at least on my part. I always asked after you when I saw C, and asked her say hi for me. I think you two didn’t see as much of each other in those days, as she moved to the bush. I got the odd update, but I didn’t see you for about ten years.

I met you again at C’s wedding. It was also my first meeting with Caspar. My immediate reaction was “Wow, what a cute kid!” closely followed by “Why did I lose almost complete touch with this person? I really like her!” My strong suspicion that you and my wife would get on well was confirmed.

Caspar doesn’t seem to have changed you so much as become a focal point for several of the attributes I’d seen in you before: your attentiveness, your creativity, your sense of humour, your gift for observation.

Seeing you again has been a great thing. From spending time with you in the flesh and following your blog, it seems almost impossible that there was so huge a hiatus in our friendship. I’m glad we’re back in touch.

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The last 48 hours have been relatively busy and I was going to talk about all the things I’d done, all the things I’ve yet to do and all the benefits of the new site for me and for my readers but I’m too tired to make administrivia sound interesting right now. Even though it is interesting (to me at least). So I’m leaving that for another day and what I’m thinking about is this:

How on earth do we know when things are real?

I’ve spent the last couple of days moving this blog, which required a certain amount of commitment and energy which I purport not to have, and chatting and joking on Skype with people I don’t even know while we worked together to get things set up. I felt normal. I think I even seemed normal. I almost felt likeable. I almost felt human.

And then I got a message from a long-lost friend, the closest friend of my teenage years, and I sent a happy, chatty message back. That felt kind of normal, then very fake.

I was genuinely excited to hear from her and I would genuinely like to see her again but I was also scared of the mess in my head and hyper-aware that if we were to find a time to catch up, I would be stricken with anxiety and feel overwhelmed by the process. I have to ask myself, is a computer a place to hide or is it a safety net while I find my feet again? And I don’t know the answer. I really don’t. Maybe it’s both.

A few people have left comments, and sent messages, appreciative of my candour. Am I candid? I think I am. I try to be. But my mask is still on when the conversations are closer to home, and away from my homepage. Part of me thinks this is good: It is nice to be reminded that there are actually human beings in the world that I can interact with, it’s nice to feel like myself, but then I’m challenged as to why I don’t feel that way when it becomes face-to-face. Worse, I’m challenged as to whether this depression is just a figment of my imagination, something I’ve made up. Maybe there is actually nothing wrong with me. Maybe I am one big faker. Maybe I am not being candid at all.

In the cerebral part of my brain, I can untangle it all, see that none of this is black and white. I can reject the false dichotomy: That’s logical fallacy 101. In spite of that, I just cannot seem to find solid ground to stand on.

Why do I feel that ominous sense of guilt for momentary pleasure? Why do I feel that ominous sense of guilt for being depressed? Why does everything I do or feel make everything else seem like a lie?

The truth is - I know this is the truth! - that we all have many faces. We all play many roles. How honestly we play them is dependent on us, but we play them nonetheless. Why do I not feel at home in any of them? Being sad feels wrong, being happy feels wrong, being alone, being with people, being quiet, being intense… It all feels wrong. I want to feel comfortable in all my faces again. I want them to feel real.

I need to shake everything up. I need to rattle me in a dice box and just see where I fall. I need to somehow create something to work with again, something to hold on to.

In the past, often I would do something sudden: Move house, change jobs, shave off all my hair, anything just to see who I was. At the moment, I can’t even move the furniture. It’s not my furniture. I am living in borrowed space in borrowed time. Time borrowed from living that can never be paid back. But I can do nothing suddenly. I have created too much of a mess. I need to strip away everything, all my labels, all my things, all my burdens, and try on new faces.

I need people.

I think I require a stage. I think the only set-decoration should be me. I don’t think I can do it in this vacuum. I don’t know how to get out of this vacuum. Am I too scared to get out of this vacuum?

The other day, chatting with my Mum on Skype, I called her Mrs. Plod, an affectionate insult that she is not insulted by in the least. I would be highly insulted by it. Is it slow-and-steady that will win this race for me? I am not slow and steady. I am fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread. With nowhere to go and no way to get there.

Tomorrow, I will rearrange my room.

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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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I have no idea who I am. I am in stasis. I interact with few people. I am not working. I do not see my friends. They are ghosts. They live in the world I used to belong to. The only human contact I have apart from my son is Big Sis whom I am both too close to and a world apart from.

Of course, I see other people. I pay the check-out clerk for my groceries. I say, Have a nice day. I speak to the Maternal & Child Health nurse as she weighs Caspar and checks his head circumference. I watch the audiologist as she moves the dials and records Caspar’s reactions on a photocopied form. I ask for a locker key at the front desk when I go to the gym. I say, Thank you.

But these people are nobody.

Because I am nobody.

I blame the suburbs, but it is I who is to blame. I am a snob.

I was always a snob. I liked large things. I liked words which could be capitalised. Truth, Beauty, Art. The people I loathed were those who went to the opera so they could say, “Last night I went to the opera”, those whose tastes were formed by magazine and newspaper reviews: What’s hot? What’s not?

I liked the way the world flooded my mind, rushing through it like a braided river, sometimes of water, sometimes of blood. Everything moved me. Everything was made of words.

When I read Henry Miller I would salivate. Even the bed lice and the pissoirs would make me salivate. Miller said:

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. _{Tropic of Capricorn}

And I was.

I am no longer. I do not want to be aware of the minutiae of life. I reject it. I am self-destructive. I can no longer even feel the Nausea.

I want to feel ill again at the sight of my hand. I want life to be large again. I want to be that girl again, who, when she walked down the street, felt so huge that shop windows would explode and cars would burst into flames. Years ago, in my novel, I wrote:

...I have been trapped here in this silent inertia by my desire to drive earth’s gears into reverse and nothing – nothing! – can be unmade in this world of time. It will not devolve for me.

Writing is prescient.

There is nothing I can do except write until I am true again.

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It’s too long since I’ve written. It was never this hard. It was never this hard knot in my chest that feels like tears. I’ve have too much to say. I have forgotten how to say it.

It was never this hard when I made myself jugs of coffee and brandy and typed through the night with the city lights creeping through my apartment, knowing all the while there were people still awake, still out in the streets, still living. It was never this hard when I was sitting in a corner of the Supper Club at 3am with my notebooks and a Pedro Ximénez, surrounded by people, alone but never lonely.

I hate living in the suburbs. When did I decide to stop being? I didn’t. It just came creeping and that’s far, far worse. It’s easy to live with the consequences of decision. You have answers to all your whys; you can respect your choices even when they’re wrong. But this creeping passivity, this loss of passion, this degrading slide into conformity…

I hate living in the suburbs. I hate this lack of will in me. I hate this non-entity I’m trapped inside. I hate being surrounded by clean concrete and new bricks and people who speak in nothings. I hate my hollow voice.

I guess there are things that have happened in my life, there are people, I could blame for where I am and I see the temptation but I refuse attribute my life to others. I refuse to abdicate. So instead, I don’t like myself. I am ashamed.

And after stating so categorically that I am a writer I cannot find words. There are times when reading breaks me down, breaks through that barrier freezing my fingers at the keyboard, but today was not one of them. Today, reading Girl’s Gone Child’s past and present futures, reading that she’s on the road again with a Kerouac quote in her pocket, I saw the sad echo of myself and had to face my stasis. Even her predilection for guitarists and Henry Miller was a mirror, an accusing reflection of who I am, or who I was, or that person I’ve failed by no longer being.

But the future is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and life doesn’t have to creep in this petty pace from day to day. Somewhere in me there is a breath. It is a hard knot in my chest that feels like tears and I will write it until I am no longer a walking shadow.

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