Bones in the Family Closet and Why I Won't Be Going There Again
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
Well this is unbelievable, except that he's done it so many times before. I suspect my uncle expects us all to just forgive and forget, like the good Christians we aren't. I think I've had it this time around.
My inbox just went BEEP, as I was sitting here, minding my own business, preparing a worksheet for my students. My first thought was - oh goodie, another person responding to my birthday party invitation - and then I saw the sender's name, and the subject header RE: Children's 'Education' Accounts. My heart skipped a beat or two as I contemplated whether to open the email, fearing I would be subjecting myself to another torrent of abuse and racial vilification, but I went ahead and opened it, ready to delete at a moment's notice, if necessary.
Some background -
In 1980, after my parents brought us to Australia for the second time, it was clear we would be making this our permanent home. To their dismay, we were followed within 2 years by my mother's mother, her second husband, and their youngest two children my Uncle F, who is three years my senior, and my Aunt X, a year my junior. Much more is tucked away in our Family Closet, unspoken and unseen, than is talked about, but these things nevertheless enact their toll upon us all from time to time, as we are held accountable for the actions of our forebears, and find ourselves struggling for breath in the stranglehold of past wrongs that were never revealed, let alone amended.
Forgive the obtuse nature of these revelations - obviously I can't just lay it all out on the table here publically, lest I risk finding myself up to the neckio in legal proceedings by irate family members intent upon preserving the afterlife dignity of the aforementioned. Besides, since no one is willing to go beyond the Pale of Denial and talk about it, nothing has been proved. Without the evidence, all I have ever had to go on, is its very real and somewhat painful consequences.
So, as far as extended family goeth, I have only my aunt and uncle, their spouses and children (4 boys between them) here in Australia. I don't know my American family.
Although my beloved grandmother (their mother) seemed to take a long time between declining and then dying, it all happened in the space of a few intense months, during which I spent a lot of time visiting her in hospital, at home, at hospital again, and finally in the nursing home. I would not change anything about this experience even if I could. I have no regrets and no guilt in my heart, where she is concerned. We had a deeply honest, compassionate and loving relationship; I feel loved and cherished by my grandmother, and I believe she knows how much I loved and cherished her in turn. The only topic we didn't discuss was her late husband. So you can see I held up my end of the bargain, and kept the closet doors firmly childproofed and locked.
In the absence of any other likely villains, Uncle F leapt, quite early on in his career, upon my parents as the source of his anger, alienation and general frustration. Time and time again would go round and round the cycle of betrayal, abuse, apology and contrition. It started when he was quite young. He would steal something from them; sometimes something very precious, such as my great-grandfather's collection of stamps. Spectacularly outraged by the accusation, Uncle F would do a disappearing act. Unlike the stamps, he came back eventually. In returning, he'd try one of two tactics
(a) do a prodigal son manoeuvre and expect to be feasted and feted as the returned lost prince
or
(b) crawl back in on his belly, lower than the proverbially malilgned snake, expecting forgiveness in greater measure than his self-loathing.
As time went on and history repeated itself in expanding histrionics, Uncle F was more often met by suspicion and hurt, than welcome. We're only human, after all.
I would have to say he had it fairly tough, but certainly no tougher than any of us. I first became villainised after he moved out of my house. I was a young wife and mother, going through the great life changes that wifedom and motherhood tend to engender, along with all that other stuff I went through at the same time. Uncle F moved in, took advantage, embellished and embroidered his victim state that had led him to be homeless, ate, drank and made merry and never contributed to household expenses until he moved out again, trailing a wake of anger and hurt behind him that we would feel he ought to have behaved any differently towards us, the only members of his family at that time, who would give him the time of day.
Tja!
whatever!
Ah, the ebbs and the flows... I am reminded of "Watershed", that Indigo Girls' song in which they sing
Every five years or so I look back on my life
And I have a good laugh.
You start at the top, go full circle round
Catch a breeze, take a spill
But ending up where I started again makes me wanna stand still.
Then one day Uncle F found his God and His God found him. He was saved and forgiven for all past wrongdoings - and forgive my faulty understanding of the subject at hand, but it seems he considers himself forgiven of any future misdemeanours as well. The idea of being saved and forgiven extends itself widely from past, through present, to distant future. There is nothing he need do in the meantime, to preserve his State Of Grace. He is free from blame, free from responsibility, free from relationship or consequence.
Considering that Unvle F's transformation more or less coincided with my branch of the family's finding our Jewish feet, some conflict was sure to ensue. I can believe we found the same God, even though I've actually been a believer of some description, all my life. The expressions of our faithful selves naturally took quite divergent paths. We were no more open to expressing ourselves as Christians, than Uncle F was to express himself as a Jew, despite the fact that it was the same family member - my grandmother, his mother, my mother's mother, whose heritage had led us finally to our home of faith.
And so we painted another layer of mutual distrust onto the surface of our Family Closet.
When my grandmother died, she left me a small inheritance - something I had neither anticipated, nor expected. I was dismayed to learn she had left considerably less to her youngest children, my Uncle F and my Aunt X, and I was worried about this on two levels. On the one hand I felt it was unfair, and that as her mere granddaughter, I had no right to my inheritance. On the other hand I was afraid that there would be consequences to my grandmother's choices. I was reassured by various family members, including my Uncle F and my Aunt X, that my grandmother (their mother) had good reasons for choosing to distribute what she could not take with her in the way that she did; and that I should discard any feelings of discomfort about it. So I did.
My mother, (their sister) took steps to pre-empt disturbing consequences, and make amends for her late mother's (in)discretions. She decided she would like to take part of what her mother had left her, and give it to her nephews - the children of Uncle F and his wife, and Aunt X and her husband. In doing so, she enlisted my support. She knew I was on fairly good terms with the pair of them, and she knew that as her only adult child who was in the same city, it would be practical for us to share the signatory role to the accounts she set up in her nephews' names. I agreed to this.
It means that every time I get a bank statement, indeed every time I take a look at my bank accounts online, I get to see the accounts of my four young cousins (aged 1 - 8 years). It has been wryly frustrating over a summer of earning no income, to see my accounts gradually dwindle to nothing, whilst theirs maintain their steady, slow upward pace.
When all this took place, my mother contacted her brother, Uncle F, and her sister, Aunt X, and explained her intentions. These were immediately dismissed and rewritten by her outraged brother, who accused her amongst other things, of believing him to be incapable of providing for his own children. Nevertheless, the accounts exist, and my mother adds to them from month to month, because otherwise they would no accrue any interest at all. My Aunt X has taken quite a different view of the opportunity, and contributes to her son's account quite regularly. The boys will gain access to this money, such that it is, when they turn 18 years old.
As signatory to the accounts, I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of a vitriolic email addressed to my mother from her brother (Uncle F) in January this year. In this email, he accuses my parents of stealing Aunt X's money that she has been contributing to A's (her son) account, in order to fund their own bathroom renovations. Here are some excerpts from this first email, provided as examples of the nature of his communication to us.
"I think it's pretty obvious that I was wrong, and that you are in fact nothing more then [sic!] hypocritical thieves, liars and con-artists ..." (21/1/08)
"I have writen today to ask you (assuming you haven't already spent their
money on your bathroom rennovations [sic!] and/or all the other things I hear
you've been spending on) to transfer B, K and W's deposits directly to X ... to partially remunerate them for the money you so shamelessly have stolen from them."
Now when tempers flare, this kind of strong language is to be expected. What really offends and hurts me is Uncle F's misuse of certain Jewish texts, in this case what he calls "The Gemara (A key part of The Talmud - every Jew's most 'sacred' oral
tradition)" to back up his reasoning for why my mother and father would have behaved in the way he accuses them of behaving.
I am no Jewish scholar. I have not studied anyone's Bible or other religious texts, and I have never claimed to cling to Torah, Talmud or Bible as a person who takes them literally. I think to take such a complex set of texts literally would be crazymaking, because they are narratives that interweave, explore, cry out in anguish and despair, explain, rejoice, contradict and question, as much as they instruct. This I know from my limited experience as a Shul-attending Jew, which I was, for a few years.
Part of Uncle F's transformation into what he calls a Christian has involved a lot of study. He uses this study to explain and justify his behaviours, whether they have been to label his mother and sister as "evil incarnate", or to deny his children any contact with "magic" via evil Disney cartoons.
Setting aside my previous assertion that it could be taking his Bible literally that has produced such crazymaking, I am deeply wounded by my Uncle F's using his so-called knowledge of Judaism to accuse his sister and brother-in-law of theft.
I realised I could not let this lie unchallenged. I could no longer maintain any level of relationship with my Uncle F, if he were so cruel, disrespectful and abusive. The terms he lays out in this email are terms I can no longer condone or ignore. So I replied to him. Here is some of what I write:
"Dear F,
"I am not sure how to respond to this email. It makes me shrivel up inside and want nothing to do with you ever again. And this is such a shame, because I enjoyed visiting you and your family on Christmas Day, and had thought you accepted me as part of your family.... I would like you to refrain from using the Bible and Talmud to back up your defamatory, hurtful, disrespectful and abusive accusations. It seems such hypocrisy that you adhere to a religion that preaches such hatred against others whilst speaking from the other side of its metaphorical mouth of love. I can't see any love in what you've written here, to my mother and your sister....
"As an out lesbian, I know I need to tread carefully around you and your belief system. I have tried hard not to offend you. It is ironic that despite my efforts, you appear to make no consideration on my behalf. Consider for a moment how it feels as a lesbian and a Jew, to receive these accusations? They affect me no less than they affect my parents. There is absolutely no sense of relief in my mind to realise at this moment that you do not accept me; and that on the contrary you deride and revile my existence as a lesbian and a Jew; your niece; the cousin of your children. I had hoped to maintain a friendly and civil relationship with you on terms that I could accept. However, I cannot accept the terms you present in this hateful email to my mother....
"There is no truth in your accusations. I shall not dignify them with a detailed response." (23/1/08)
Clearly, I opened myself up to his further abuse. It did not take long.
".... Melina, I could understand your being upset if I were offering my
interpretations. After all, I am not Jewish, and I have only studied Judaism (off and on) since 2000 to try to understand your parents better. (About 1 year of full time study over those 8 years.) However, because I did't [sic!] offer interpretations cannot understand your being upset at quoting your own oral tradition to you....
"Perhaps your [sic!] upset at having the truth thrust into your face? If so, don't
blame me for the fact that you're following Rabbi's [sic!] so corrupt that G-d sent
His people into captivity through The Babylonianians in the 6th Century BCE
to force them to turn back to Him!
"If you don't like/agree with what's in the Babylonian and Jurusalem [sic!] Talmuds,
I suggest you find another set of beliefs. ....
"I think it's really sad that:
(1) You take personal offense to an email not specifically addressed to you
(2) That you can somehow conclude that I'm attacking your sexuality!!!???
(3) That you can discount my actions to bipolar or some other mental deficiency
(4) That you can attack me for no other reason then I'm trying to help my sister
(5) That you twist my words so... incompetently!!! ....
"This email is one of the worst examples of deflection I've seen in a long time. With your high IQ, combined with your formal education I really expected a lot more... Frankly, I've seen people with half your IQ and no matriculation do far better at changing subjects and avoid accountability." (23/1/08)
I did not reply to this email, but the torrent did not end, there. The next day, I got more in my inbox from him. I could not bear to read it, and stashed it in my 'family' file until today. OK, I've gathered my strength. This time, he makes no pretense of writing to me. After a series of 20 progressively vile, disgusting and violent quotes:
"Oh, I could quote many many A4 size pages containing the vile filth Rabbi's [sic!] have claimed to have been passed on by Moses in your written traditions...
Things these vile individuals claim to be as equally divinely inspired by the All Mighty as the ten commandments, the prophets and the pentatuch [sic!] - but so obviously are so obviously not that Jesus called them painted tombs full of dead mens [sic!] bones. (Beautiful on the outside but dead on the inside.)
"Now... I have shown you MANY examples of religious hatred in your most current and so-called 'holy' writtings... I hereby challenge you to list one (single) solitary example of the teaching of religious hatred by Christianity to justify your false accusation." (24/1/08)
MOST CURRENT?????
What century is this idiot living in, I ask you!
On the subject of my sexuality, he tells me of his sister-in-law, a woman I've never heard him speak of before. Apparently she and her female lover visit Uncle F reguarly:
"We do not treat them any differently then the way we have ever treated you at any time. We do not 'hate' either of them (or you) we love them - just as we love you. We love them as purely as we can - doing our utmost to treat them as Jesus did when he ministered to the prostitutes, murderers, liars, thieves, tax-collectors and/or any other kind of sinner the Pharrisees [sic!] and Saducees condemned as worthy of death by stoning.
"They (the religious leaders of Israel) didn't understand that Christ came not to condemn, but to to turn all sinners back to the Father anymore then you do." (24/1/08)
WHOAH - I can tell you it made me feel a WHOLE lot better to know that my Uncle F regards me and my so-called "lifestyle" in the same category he regards prostitutes, murderers, liars, thieves, tax-collectors and so on. I can also safely assert he does not show the same degree of lovingkindness to my parents, whom he at this point in time also considered to be thieves. He concludes by calling me crazy.
"I think you need serious help when you write things like the above to me.
"Perhaps I will address the more crazy stuff you wrote another time... I'll think about it after I've calmed down." (24/1/08)
My replies to this email are terse "don't bother, F" (24/1/08) and "F, Do not email me again." (24/1/08)
to which he confidently and in sane? mind replies:
"If you cannot accept what I have written, that's fine, and I'll be happy to accept that and not initiate further unwelcome contact...
When you email me, I have the right to reply. Stop emailing me, and I'll stop replying... It's really that simple!"
Unfortunately, is isn't that simple. I did not reply, but alas, received another email from Uncle F today. I paste it here in its entirety, without [sic!]s. He addresses my mother, who is Y. My father is L:
"Y,
"X just rang me to confirm that it was in fact the Bank that had made an accounting mistake which proved your and Ls innocence from all/any wrong-doing regarding the gift account you setup for A.
"I should have known that my initial belief was correct (that you and L are not thieves) and apologise for coming to the wrong conclusion.
"Aditionally, it occurs to me that it is not impossible that you did not know some of the deeper writings - afterall, not everyone studies their history as deeply as I have studied Judaism, and not everyone follows the teachings of Judaism totally.
"Regardless, I am gratified to have been proven wrong, and unconditionally apologise for accusing you of theft, as well as unconditionally apologise for making assumptions that you followed Judaisms total teachings word for word; and hope that 2008 is a fantastic year not only for you - but for all those you care about as well.
"F"
I shan't reply to this further confirmation of his loopiness. I take no responsibility for his loopiness. I won't be going there again.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Adventures in Stasiland (1985)
Adventures in Stasiland (1985)
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
As I write this post, on Australia Day 2008, I call to mind my younger self on Australia Day 1985, as she prepared to journey to West Germany for a 12 month student exchange. I was 15 years old, and had led a politically sheltered existence. I knew very little of what was going on in the world, and was not prepared for making decisions and choices based on oppression, social justice or politics. I was travelling on a US passport. I only became naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1988, when I was 18 years old.
I'm also revelling in the return of my daughter, after a 2 month student exchange to Vannes, France. She stayed with a family and went to school there, but apparently spent most of her time wandering around the medieval city with the other exchange students. School was irrelevant and boring, and the French students weren't much interested in mixing with the exchange students. It's good to have her home, and to hear the stories she has to tell, about being a foreigner in France.
This afternoon I finished reading Where the Road Leads (2007), the memoires of Jean Calder, an Australian woman who has spent her adult life working with people with disabilities in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. As I reflect on what the Berlin Wall was for me, as a callow 15 year old in 1985, I am conscious of the Wall between Israel and Palestine, and the gross human rights abuses that are being perpetrated in that region of the world, a region I have never visited, but which is often in my thoughts.
Earlier this Summer I read Anna Funder's astonishing book, Stasiland (2002), which opened my eyes wide to some of what was going on in East Germany before that Wall fell. The Stasi were the State's Secret Police, made up of a multitude of bureaucrats, paid informers and unpaid informers. I am horrified by the stories Funder tells in her book, but I am not disbelieving. They set a few puzzle pieces into place for me - things that had affected me, and my family members who lived in East Germany, and things I had not been able to understand until I read the book.
It is interesting to reflect on the passage of time, how that affects the revelation of secrets, and how in turn, the revelation of secrets affects the world as it has changed through the passage of time. The things that can be told, and the things that people are prepared to hear, depend a great deal on what is considered to be acceptable at any given time. Over the past 23 years, I have often thought about what happened to me in East Germany. It is only now, after reading Funder's book, that I am prepared to accept that like so many of the citizens of East Germany, I as a foreigner also fell prey to their evildoings.
I visited my great-uncle, Immo Lucchesi, and his family, three times during 1985, but only two of these visits resulted in our spending any time together. I was rigorously drilled on the border crossing procedures; had my passport in order, and knew what I was allowed, and not allowed to do. I laugh at my younger self now - if only I'd been a more independent, adventurous teenager, I might have taken more notice of my environment. Instead, I relied solely on what I was told, and my own resources. I have no memory of what the Berlin Wall looked like, or what it was like to travel through West Berlin on my way to the East. My memories of East Germany are uniformly grey - no sepia nostalgia - neglected, cheerless and ugly, with a no frills atmosphere.
I was told at the time, that the reason for what happened on my failed visit, was the Sondermarke (special issue postage stamp) that I had chosen to put on the postcard I sent to Onkel Immo, in which I confirmed my arrival date and time to East Berlin. Even as a 15 year old I found this hard to fathom. Who would take the time to go through each and every postal item from West to East Germany; select out those items with the offending stamp; and set them aside or simply throw them away, so that the recipients never knew what they had not received?
Yet after reading Stasiland, I no longer doubt that this was precisely the kind of project to which the East German regime would have devoted a sector of its workforce. It's a shame I don't recall what was on that stamp, but apparently, it was unacceptable to the East German Government. My postcard did not reach my uncle, who was not there at the station to meet me.
A part of me wonders egocentrically whether this was a small, unplanned occurrence as part of a larger-scale effort, or whether it was a more targeted omission. Onkel Immo was well-known as a musician in East Germany. Members of his family were persecuted on many petty levels, that all added up to one big heartache. Unlike the rest of his family, he was able to travel with his orchestra. He was a flautist. He drove back from a tour of China one year, having requested payment in gold. A golden tube lay in the boot of his cardboard Trabi, wrapped in an oily rag. It wasn't detected as he crossed the border back into East Germany. He had it made into a flute, and flaunted his ability to resist the State every time he performed thereafter.
This tale was family legend. It had a huge bearing on my choice to learn the flute when I started highschool. A nice piece of synchronicity is that my second cousin Albrecht Lachmann, (the one who proposed a marriage of convenience to me during the first of my visits to East Germany that year) took me to a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Our uncle was not playing that night.
Christa, my exchange mother, put me on the train to Berlin, and waved goodbye from the Hamburg platform. I felt confident. I knew from previous experience that my Tante Ursul would not permit me to leave them any Western money or chocolate, and I had in my bag an appropriate (and legal) set of gifts for my family members.
It was around six in the evening by the time we reached Berlin. I got off the train and went to the area where I would meet my uncle and go home with him. But there was no one there to meet me. I tried to be patient, and work out what to do. I simply stood against a wall, expecting to see someone I knew at any moment. But no one came.
A brainwave! I could call them on the public telephone. But I had no Eastern money. I went to the money exchange desk to ask for help, and to exchange some of my West German marks for East German legal tender. There were people there behind the thick glass. I knew they could see me. One woman sat with her feet on the table, glaring belligerently at me. I gestured politely, knocked on the window, and tried to gain her attention; I had it, but there was no way she was prepared to offer me any assistance - not after hours! She kept on staring at me through the glass, unwilling even to acknowledge our shared humanness.
Later, people asked why I didn't just hop on a taxi with the understanding that my uncle would pay the fare when we reached his home. This idea never occurred to me. I'd never caught a taxi alone before, would never have presumed that my uncle had the money to pay anyway, and was not prepared to get into a taxi with a strange man, when I did not have legal money to pay him with.
So I stood around some more, whilst commuters flowed around me. I felt resentful. They had someplace to go. What was I going to do? Eventually, my gaze fell upon a sign that showed the train timetable. Ah - there was a train back to Hamburg that evening. I could catch it, and at least when I got back to West Germany I knew how to get home from the station. And yes, there was time for me to figure out where to catch it.
I gathered all my courage and approached a middle aged woman. I asked her how to get back to the western side of the station so that I could catch another train. She explained the pathway. From memory, I had to go down some steps, through a short tunnel, around the corner, and up another set of steps. Something like that. I presented my passport and my return train ticket at the counter, as requested. The officers, in their green uniforms, took it away and left me standing there.
After a while, a uniformed someone came onto my side of the counter, and led me into a small room. It had no window, and was furnished with a desk and two chairs. A naked light bulb swung from the ceiling. Unschooled and naive as I was, I still recognised the cultural conventions of an interrogation chamber. He fired questions were at me in rapid German. I struggled to cope.
First, to confirm my personal details, as set down in my passport.
Secondly, to establish my reasons for coming to the GDR (East Germany). Who was I planning to stay with, what was I going to do there, and why hadn't I gone where I was supposed to go?
Thirdly, the bureaucratic necessities, and my failure to observe them correctly. Why hadn't I registered with the police as a foreigner was supposed to? Why had I not exchanged my West German money for East German marks?
While all this was happening, and for years thereafter, all I could see was how these soldiers or police - these human beings, for crying out loud - WHATEVER their role, had all the pieces of my story in front of them. Why couldn't they have taken the small leap of intelligence to assist me in my distress? What would it have taken, to call my uncle for me, and have him not only confirm my story, but also give him the opportunity to pick me up and take me home as planned?
Now I understand - they no doubt saw me as a bona fide East German citizen, posing as a US citizen, trying to make my escape to the illustrious West. I thought my story was straightforward, and my German bad. Perhaps it was not bad enough? I don't remember their searching my luggage. Funder mentions that some would-be escapees placed western goods in their bags in an effort to look like Western tourists. People were also told to cut the tags off their garments "so that they did not read 'People's Own Manufacture" (page 210).
Eventually, my interrogator left the room and returned 10 minutes later with my passport. I ran up the stairs to the platform to see the train to Hamburg just chugging out of the station without me.
The petty meanness of this deliberate act cut me to the quick, but I was determined to be strong, and not let it get to me.
The next train was in 12 hours time. I had a whole night to wait, and nowhere to go. I was hardly your streetwise 15 year old. What could I do? The platform was deserted, so I sat down on a bench and took out my novel to re-read. At least that would help to pass some time. I tried to read slowly.
After a couple of hours, when it was nearing midnight, I was still reading slowly. A trio of soldiers paraded intermittently along the high catwalk that spanned the East German platform. I suppose their role was to look for potential defectors, and that from so high up, they could see just about everything. I heard them shouting and talking amongst themselves, but I tried to ignore them. Eventually, I realised they were trying to get my attention.
"You can't stay here all night!" they shouted sown at me.
"Why not?"
"You just can't."
"Well, where am I supposed to go then?"
"To the West. That's where you belong!"
They laughed at me, and I felt the impact of their derision. At the time I felt sorry for them. I thought perhaps they resented my freedom in comparison with their repression. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe they were just poking fun at me.
I took them seriously, and put away my book. They were armed and dangerous, after all. I asked them how to get to the West, and they told me the route. It involved more steps and more tunnels to get to another train platform in the same station. Uncertain of what I was going to do once I got to the West - would I, for example, be able to get the morning train to Hamburg from the same platform - I left East Germany, and boarded a busy West German subway. I didn't have a ticket, and almost hoped I would be caught. At least then someone would listen to my story, and perhaps assist me.
BErlin Zoo Station - lots of people were getting off, including an elderly woman with her shopping trolley. I followed her out of the train. I must have looked rather lost, because she spoke to me, and asked whether I had anywhere to go. She directed me to the Red Cross office, which was in the station. I later found out that Berlin Zoo was notorious for its drugs, prostitution and other manifestations of homelessness and dysfunction.
I knocked on the window, though it was obvious to me the office was closed. But somebody answered! The shelter was full, but the worker took pity on me, and found a chair for me to sit on, around a table that was crowded with people who were all valiantly trying to sleep, sitting up. Were they all victims of the Sondermarke?
In the morning, we were all given tea and a roll. A worker accompanied me to the correct platform so I could board my train to Hamburg. I thanked her profusely. I can't remember the journey, but I remember wishing I was there already.
I got off the train and ran into Christa's waiting arms. She knew I hadn't reached my destination, and had had no way of knowing where I was in the meantime. She had waited to contact my parents on the off-chance that I might have found my way back to Hamburg on the morning train.
That intuitive optimism saved her a long-distance phone call to Australia! And I had an interesting story to write in my next weekly letter home.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jean E Calder (2007) Where the Road Leads, Hachette Australia
Anna Funder (2002) Stasiland, The Text Publishing Company, Victoria, Australia.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
As I write this post, on Australia Day 2008, I call to mind my younger self on Australia Day 1985, as she prepared to journey to West Germany for a 12 month student exchange. I was 15 years old, and had led a politically sheltered existence. I knew very little of what was going on in the world, and was not prepared for making decisions and choices based on oppression, social justice or politics. I was travelling on a US passport. I only became naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1988, when I was 18 years old.
I'm also revelling in the return of my daughter, after a 2 month student exchange to Vannes, France. She stayed with a family and went to school there, but apparently spent most of her time wandering around the medieval city with the other exchange students. School was irrelevant and boring, and the French students weren't much interested in mixing with the exchange students. It's good to have her home, and to hear the stories she has to tell, about being a foreigner in France.
This afternoon I finished reading Where the Road Leads (2007), the memoires of Jean Calder, an Australian woman who has spent her adult life working with people with disabilities in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. As I reflect on what the Berlin Wall was for me, as a callow 15 year old in 1985, I am conscious of the Wall between Israel and Palestine, and the gross human rights abuses that are being perpetrated in that region of the world, a region I have never visited, but which is often in my thoughts.
Earlier this Summer I read Anna Funder's astonishing book, Stasiland (2002), which opened my eyes wide to some of what was going on in East Germany before that Wall fell. The Stasi were the State's Secret Police, made up of a multitude of bureaucrats, paid informers and unpaid informers. I am horrified by the stories Funder tells in her book, but I am not disbelieving. They set a few puzzle pieces into place for me - things that had affected me, and my family members who lived in East Germany, and things I had not been able to understand until I read the book.
It is interesting to reflect on the passage of time, how that affects the revelation of secrets, and how in turn, the revelation of secrets affects the world as it has changed through the passage of time. The things that can be told, and the things that people are prepared to hear, depend a great deal on what is considered to be acceptable at any given time. Over the past 23 years, I have often thought about what happened to me in East Germany. It is only now, after reading Funder's book, that I am prepared to accept that like so many of the citizens of East Germany, I as a foreigner also fell prey to their evildoings.
I visited my great-uncle, Immo Lucchesi, and his family, three times during 1985, but only two of these visits resulted in our spending any time together. I was rigorously drilled on the border crossing procedures; had my passport in order, and knew what I was allowed, and not allowed to do. I laugh at my younger self now - if only I'd been a more independent, adventurous teenager, I might have taken more notice of my environment. Instead, I relied solely on what I was told, and my own resources. I have no memory of what the Berlin Wall looked like, or what it was like to travel through West Berlin on my way to the East. My memories of East Germany are uniformly grey - no sepia nostalgia - neglected, cheerless and ugly, with a no frills atmosphere.
I was told at the time, that the reason for what happened on my failed visit, was the Sondermarke (special issue postage stamp) that I had chosen to put on the postcard I sent to Onkel Immo, in which I confirmed my arrival date and time to East Berlin. Even as a 15 year old I found this hard to fathom. Who would take the time to go through each and every postal item from West to East Germany; select out those items with the offending stamp; and set them aside or simply throw them away, so that the recipients never knew what they had not received?
Yet after reading Stasiland, I no longer doubt that this was precisely the kind of project to which the East German regime would have devoted a sector of its workforce. It's a shame I don't recall what was on that stamp, but apparently, it was unacceptable to the East German Government. My postcard did not reach my uncle, who was not there at the station to meet me.
A part of me wonders egocentrically whether this was a small, unplanned occurrence as part of a larger-scale effort, or whether it was a more targeted omission. Onkel Immo was well-known as a musician in East Germany. Members of his family were persecuted on many petty levels, that all added up to one big heartache. Unlike the rest of his family, he was able to travel with his orchestra. He was a flautist. He drove back from a tour of China one year, having requested payment in gold. A golden tube lay in the boot of his cardboard Trabi, wrapped in an oily rag. It wasn't detected as he crossed the border back into East Germany. He had it made into a flute, and flaunted his ability to resist the State every time he performed thereafter.
This tale was family legend. It had a huge bearing on my choice to learn the flute when I started highschool. A nice piece of synchronicity is that my second cousin Albrecht Lachmann, (the one who proposed a marriage of convenience to me during the first of my visits to East Germany that year) took me to a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Our uncle was not playing that night.
Christa, my exchange mother, put me on the train to Berlin, and waved goodbye from the Hamburg platform. I felt confident. I knew from previous experience that my Tante Ursul would not permit me to leave them any Western money or chocolate, and I had in my bag an appropriate (and legal) set of gifts for my family members.
It was around six in the evening by the time we reached Berlin. I got off the train and went to the area where I would meet my uncle and go home with him. But there was no one there to meet me. I tried to be patient, and work out what to do. I simply stood against a wall, expecting to see someone I knew at any moment. But no one came.
A brainwave! I could call them on the public telephone. But I had no Eastern money. I went to the money exchange desk to ask for help, and to exchange some of my West German marks for East German legal tender. There were people there behind the thick glass. I knew they could see me. One woman sat with her feet on the table, glaring belligerently at me. I gestured politely, knocked on the window, and tried to gain her attention; I had it, but there was no way she was prepared to offer me any assistance - not after hours! She kept on staring at me through the glass, unwilling even to acknowledge our shared humanness.
Later, people asked why I didn't just hop on a taxi with the understanding that my uncle would pay the fare when we reached his home. This idea never occurred to me. I'd never caught a taxi alone before, would never have presumed that my uncle had the money to pay anyway, and was not prepared to get into a taxi with a strange man, when I did not have legal money to pay him with.
So I stood around some more, whilst commuters flowed around me. I felt resentful. They had someplace to go. What was I going to do? Eventually, my gaze fell upon a sign that showed the train timetable. Ah - there was a train back to Hamburg that evening. I could catch it, and at least when I got back to West Germany I knew how to get home from the station. And yes, there was time for me to figure out where to catch it.
I gathered all my courage and approached a middle aged woman. I asked her how to get back to the western side of the station so that I could catch another train. She explained the pathway. From memory, I had to go down some steps, through a short tunnel, around the corner, and up another set of steps. Something like that. I presented my passport and my return train ticket at the counter, as requested. The officers, in their green uniforms, took it away and left me standing there.
After a while, a uniformed someone came onto my side of the counter, and led me into a small room. It had no window, and was furnished with a desk and two chairs. A naked light bulb swung from the ceiling. Unschooled and naive as I was, I still recognised the cultural conventions of an interrogation chamber. He fired questions were at me in rapid German. I struggled to cope.
First, to confirm my personal details, as set down in my passport.
Secondly, to establish my reasons for coming to the GDR (East Germany). Who was I planning to stay with, what was I going to do there, and why hadn't I gone where I was supposed to go?
Thirdly, the bureaucratic necessities, and my failure to observe them correctly. Why hadn't I registered with the police as a foreigner was supposed to? Why had I not exchanged my West German money for East German marks?
While all this was happening, and for years thereafter, all I could see was how these soldiers or police - these human beings, for crying out loud - WHATEVER their role, had all the pieces of my story in front of them. Why couldn't they have taken the small leap of intelligence to assist me in my distress? What would it have taken, to call my uncle for me, and have him not only confirm my story, but also give him the opportunity to pick me up and take me home as planned?
Now I understand - they no doubt saw me as a bona fide East German citizen, posing as a US citizen, trying to make my escape to the illustrious West. I thought my story was straightforward, and my German bad. Perhaps it was not bad enough? I don't remember their searching my luggage. Funder mentions that some would-be escapees placed western goods in their bags in an effort to look like Western tourists. People were also told to cut the tags off their garments "so that they did not read 'People's Own Manufacture" (page 210).
Eventually, my interrogator left the room and returned 10 minutes later with my passport. I ran up the stairs to the platform to see the train to Hamburg just chugging out of the station without me.
The petty meanness of this deliberate act cut me to the quick, but I was determined to be strong, and not let it get to me.
The next train was in 12 hours time. I had a whole night to wait, and nowhere to go. I was hardly your streetwise 15 year old. What could I do? The platform was deserted, so I sat down on a bench and took out my novel to re-read. At least that would help to pass some time. I tried to read slowly.
After a couple of hours, when it was nearing midnight, I was still reading slowly. A trio of soldiers paraded intermittently along the high catwalk that spanned the East German platform. I suppose their role was to look for potential defectors, and that from so high up, they could see just about everything. I heard them shouting and talking amongst themselves, but I tried to ignore them. Eventually, I realised they were trying to get my attention.
"You can't stay here all night!" they shouted sown at me.
"Why not?"
"You just can't."
"Well, where am I supposed to go then?"
"To the West. That's where you belong!"
They laughed at me, and I felt the impact of their derision. At the time I felt sorry for them. I thought perhaps they resented my freedom in comparison with their repression. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe they were just poking fun at me.
I took them seriously, and put away my book. They were armed and dangerous, after all. I asked them how to get to the West, and they told me the route. It involved more steps and more tunnels to get to another train platform in the same station. Uncertain of what I was going to do once I got to the West - would I, for example, be able to get the morning train to Hamburg from the same platform - I left East Germany, and boarded a busy West German subway. I didn't have a ticket, and almost hoped I would be caught. At least then someone would listen to my story, and perhaps assist me.
BErlin Zoo Station - lots of people were getting off, including an elderly woman with her shopping trolley. I followed her out of the train. I must have looked rather lost, because she spoke to me, and asked whether I had anywhere to go. She directed me to the Red Cross office, which was in the station. I later found out that Berlin Zoo was notorious for its drugs, prostitution and other manifestations of homelessness and dysfunction.
I knocked on the window, though it was obvious to me the office was closed. But somebody answered! The shelter was full, but the worker took pity on me, and found a chair for me to sit on, around a table that was crowded with people who were all valiantly trying to sleep, sitting up. Were they all victims of the Sondermarke?
In the morning, we were all given tea and a roll. A worker accompanied me to the correct platform so I could board my train to Hamburg. I thanked her profusely. I can't remember the journey, but I remember wishing I was there already.
I got off the train and ran into Christa's waiting arms. She knew I hadn't reached my destination, and had had no way of knowing where I was in the meantime. She had waited to contact my parents on the off-chance that I might have found my way back to Hamburg on the morning train.
That intuitive optimism saved her a long-distance phone call to Australia! And I had an interesting story to write in my next weekly letter home.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jean E Calder (2007) Where the Road Leads, Hachette Australia
Anna Funder (2002) Stasiland, The Text Publishing Company, Victoria, Australia.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Our Excellent Roadtrip
Our Excellent Roadtrip
Melina Magdalena
(c) 2008
Yup! One month into 2008 already, and one month since last I posted... I got home yesterday after three most wonderful weeks with my Honey - one week here in Adelaide, one week on the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, one week in Melbourne. T'was excellent.
So this is one of those holiday posts that bloggers seem to indulge in from time to time. I didn't do a round up of 2007, as I spent New Year's Eve on the beach at Semaphore. And I've been too busy since. There's a lot happening. It's going to continue to be a most excellent year.
Perhaps this will be the year to learn some more about blogging - images, artwork, links to other blogs, etc. - perhaps?
Here we go with the post proper.
GOOLWA and THE COORONG
We left Adelaide for Goolwa and the Coorong, after a quick trip to the Gepps Cross Sunday Market to stock up on fresh fruit and veg. In hindsight we didn't see much of the Coorong - it certainly wasn't the Coorong of my childhood, with massive flocks of birds on the water. I was reminded again and again of the warnings issued on behalf of the women of Kumarangk, that the Murray will dry up if a bridge is built . We didn't cross the bridge. I haven't been to Hindmarsh Island since it was bridged.
On our way to the Coorong, we walked across a large salt pan!
Honey directed me to a "bush site" where we could pitch our tent and camp for about $5. I hadn't been camping for quite a few years, and was a little nervous, but we got the tent up with no hassles whatsoever, went for a walk through the dunes, and got back in time to cook our dinner on her little butane-fueled camping stove.
Our walk was uphill and downhill and we met a red-bellied black snake which was soaking up the late afternoon sun beside the path. When I say "met" I mean the poor creature was inadvertently kicked by Honey, and screamed at by a terrified me. We looked it up later and indeed, these snakes generally slither away at provocation - thanks be to the Goddess.
I worried all night she'd been bitten and didn't know it and I'd wake up to find her dead beside me. But she was fine, and got me up in the early morning hours to go outside and see the awesome Milky Way as it careened its way above us. I didn't sleep again after seeing that sky. My mind was full of gratitude and wonder.
NELSON and GLENELG RIVER
Next day, we drove through Mt Gambier and stopped at Nelson, on the border. The caravan park was chokkers, but the lovely woman who ran the place, gave us the option of the last tiny tent site, or a spot in the "overflow". Seeing that it was lush with green grass, and hedged in for privacy on three sides, we chose the overflow. We felt very blessed.
We went paddling up the Glenelg River for an hour or so the next morning. On our way back, we heard the rich male voice, guitar and penny whistle we'd thought we had imagined the previous evening, as we walked down to the seashore. We looked to the opposite bank where a man was singing outside his combi van. The woman who hired out the canoe to us said she wished he would stay there forever for her to listen to.
SAWPIT PICNIC GROUND
We stopped at the Nelson Tourist Information Bureau to ask about a good campsite to go to next. It was very hot, though we were very lucky with the weather. It cooled off every night.
Sawpit Picnic Ground looked to be a better option than the other two sites near Portland, because although it wasn't on the beach, it had water and loos.
We stayed two nights at Sawpit, because it was so lovely.
CAPE BRIDGEWATER
We swam nearly every day in the ocean. I haven't done that since I was a child. It was amazing to reconnect with that part of me. My favourite swim was when we drove down to Cape Bridgewater. This is a small town nestled in some steep hills. We bought scones at the kiosk, and went swimming after lunch. The water was cool and about shoulder high, with continual waves that we could jump and dive under to our heart's content.
PORT FAIRY
It was in Port Fairy that we spent one half-hour on a public library computer, checking our emails. Honestly, I hardly missed my computer the whole time we were away.
Our evening meal at Port Fairy was, of necessity, hot chips and salad by the beach. It was a total fire ban situation. We were entertained during breakfast at Sawpit that morning by the Firies who rocked up in their engine to put out the illegal fires at several campsites. A van full of young, male German backpackers had made a fire the night before in the concrete fireplace, and not doused it sufficiently. They were still asleep when the Firies turned on the hoses. But there were some Aussie campers at Sawpit too, who really ought to have known better.
We walked along the foreshore to the lighthouse at Port Fairy that evening. On the rocks around the lighthouse, we saw a soft, brown wallaby. It was trying to evade us, but we hadn't seen it until it was almost to the water.
WARNAMBOOL
After two nights at Sawpit, we drove past the Codrington Wind Farm and on to Warnambool, where Honey has some friends, and we stayed with them overnight. It felt odd to be in a bed in a house, but it was nice. The winds of Warnambool played havoc with the windmill outside our window that night, and at one point a weird whistle was created when the wind blew into the empty fireplace in our room, and woke us up.
Warnambool is where the Great Ocean Road proper begins, but I didn't know that at the time. There was much more in store. I can't remember where the Petrified Forest was, but we stopped and looked at it, as well as the Blowhole nearby. This place will be most remembered for its flies, its impressive scenery running a close second.
PRINCETOWN and PORT CAMPBELL
On our way to Princetown, we stopped at Port Campbell, where Honey spent several summers in a row as a teenager and young adult. We looked at the Bay of Martyrs, what's left of London Bridge and the Grotto that afternoon, but saved the Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge for the evening, after the tourist buses had gone home.
LOCH ARD GORGE
We were there at sunset. We had the beach all to ourselves for twenty blissful minutes.
JOHANNA
Our next campsite was at Johanna. We were flummoxed by the two Johanna's - Red and Blue. It turned out these were roads that joined up at the bottom. The campsite was enormous and well populated, though not crowded. It had no water for campers, but there were toilets. Unfortunately, not too far away was a large crowd of yobbos who kept us all up with their raucous behaviour, far into the night. We didn't rev our engine as we drove out the next morning, though we thought about it.
We wanted to drive up to Lavers Hill that night to see the glow worms, but the dirt and gravel Blue Johanna Road was something of a deterrent. However, Red Johanna Road was paved, and drove us smartly back up to where we needed to be - this is something for future campers to bear in mind.
We splurged that day and visited the Otway Fly Treetop Walk, for $19.50 each. We arrived at 6:00pm, and I wish we'd had a couple of hours to spend, but unfortunately, the park closed at 7:00pm. We climbed on the steel walkway, and up the tower, which was scary for me, but scarier for Honey, who doesn't like heights. The ranger picked us up as we were strolling through the trees, and transported us on his small car to the exit. But this place was also awesome, with great signage and amazing wilderness.
It was another total fireban night, so we ate at a Roadhouse and sat around reading, waiting for the sun to go down.
It still wasn't dark enough for glow worms when we reached Melba and Lavers Hill, so we had a game of Scrabble in the car. Eventually it got dark enough and off we traipsed, down a path. We spoke to a vet who works at the Warnambool Abattoir. He told us they're always on the lookout for workers, and that we should advise our students (newly arrived refugees and migrants) that if they want work, Warnambool's the place to be.
I loved the glow worms. I wonder what they look like in the light?
APOLLO BAY
Did we spend a night at Apollo Bay? I can't quite remember how it went, after that. We went swimming there, and I had the most excellent pot of Earl Grey Tea, and I know we went to Lorne the next day, so we must have stayed somewhere that night. All in all, we put up the tent and the air mattress about 7 times in 8 days. We got very efficient at it, and it never stopped being fun.
AIREYS INLET
Our last night was at a caravan park at Airey's Inlet. I know this was on Sunday night, because Honey and I had a discussion about traffic, and decided it would be better to drive up to Melbourne on Monday, rather than through the end of weekend madness. It was a good decision. We stopped and asked at the caravan park, whether there was a tent site available, despite the notice outside that told us there was no room at the inn. Lucky for us, there was one spot left, and it was very nice. Some teenagers were in the tent next to us, and gave us a long rendition of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" into the early morning hours. Listening to them - a boy/girl couple plus a male friend - Honey and I made a decision never to bicker and whinge to one another the way that girl whinged to her boyfriend.
Airey's Inlet is the place where "Round the Twist" was filmed. In the evening we walked along the top of the cliffs, because the tide was in. In the morning, we walked down along the beach and the rocks. At some points we had to wade through the water, to get to the next section. It was a lovely adventure to have at the end of our journey.
BELLS BEACH
On our way to Melbourne via Geelong, we stopped at Bells Beach to watch the surfers. This photo is not at Bells Beach, but it is a good photo to represent the multiple layers and diverse views of the ocean that we were treated to on our journey up the Great Ocean Road.
Highly recommended!
Melina Magdalena
(c) 2008
Yup! One month into 2008 already, and one month since last I posted... I got home yesterday after three most wonderful weeks with my Honey - one week here in Adelaide, one week on the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, one week in Melbourne. T'was excellent.
So this is one of those holiday posts that bloggers seem to indulge in from time to time. I didn't do a round up of 2007, as I spent New Year's Eve on the beach at Semaphore. And I've been too busy since. There's a lot happening. It's going to continue to be a most excellent year.
Perhaps this will be the year to learn some more about blogging - images, artwork, links to other blogs, etc. - perhaps?
Here we go with the post proper.
GOOLWA and THE COORONG
We left Adelaide for Goolwa and the Coorong, after a quick trip to the Gepps Cross Sunday Market to stock up on fresh fruit and veg. In hindsight we didn't see much of the Coorong - it certainly wasn't the Coorong of my childhood, with massive flocks of birds on the water. I was reminded again and again of the warnings issued on behalf of the women of Kumarangk, that the Murray will dry up if a bridge is built . We didn't cross the bridge. I haven't been to Hindmarsh Island since it was bridged.
On our way to the Coorong, we walked across a large salt pan! Honey directed me to a "bush site" where we could pitch our tent and camp for about $5. I hadn't been camping for quite a few years, and was a little nervous, but we got the tent up with no hassles whatsoever, went for a walk through the dunes, and got back in time to cook our dinner on her little butane-fueled camping stove.
Our walk was uphill and downhill and we met a red-bellied black snake which was soaking up the late afternoon sun beside the path. When I say "met" I mean the poor creature was inadvertently kicked by Honey, and screamed at by a terrified me. We looked it up later and indeed, these snakes generally slither away at provocation - thanks be to the Goddess.
I worried all night she'd been bitten and didn't know it and I'd wake up to find her dead beside me. But she was fine, and got me up in the early morning hours to go outside and see the awesome Milky Way as it careened its way above us. I didn't sleep again after seeing that sky. My mind was full of gratitude and wonder.
NELSON and GLENELG RIVER
Next day, we drove through Mt Gambier and stopped at Nelson, on the border. The caravan park was chokkers, but the lovely woman who ran the place, gave us the option of the last tiny tent site, or a spot in the "overflow". Seeing that it was lush with green grass, and hedged in for privacy on three sides, we chose the overflow. We felt very blessed.
We went paddling up the Glenelg River for an hour or so the next morning. On our way back, we heard the rich male voice, guitar and penny whistle we'd thought we had imagined the previous evening, as we walked down to the seashore. We looked to the opposite bank where a man was singing outside his combi van. The woman who hired out the canoe to us said she wished he would stay there forever for her to listen to.
SAWPIT PICNIC GROUND
We stopped at the Nelson Tourist Information Bureau to ask about a good campsite to go to next. It was very hot, though we were very lucky with the weather. It cooled off every night. Sawpit Picnic Ground looked to be a better option than the other two sites near Portland, because although it wasn't on the beach, it had water and loos.
We stayed two nights at Sawpit, because it was so lovely.
CAPE BRIDGEWATER
We swam nearly every day in the ocean. I haven't done that since I was a child. It was amazing to reconnect with that part of me. My favourite swim was when we drove down to Cape Bridgewater. This is a small town nestled in some steep hills. We bought scones at the kiosk, and went swimming after lunch. The water was cool and about shoulder high, with continual waves that we could jump and dive under to our heart's content.
PORT FAIRY
It was in Port Fairy that we spent one half-hour on a public library computer, checking our emails. Honestly, I hardly missed my computer the whole time we were away.
Our evening meal at Port Fairy was, of necessity, hot chips and salad by the beach. It was a total fire ban situation. We were entertained during breakfast at Sawpit that morning by the Firies who rocked up in their engine to put out the illegal fires at several campsites. A van full of young, male German backpackers had made a fire the night before in the concrete fireplace, and not doused it sufficiently. They were still asleep when the Firies turned on the hoses. But there were some Aussie campers at Sawpit too, who really ought to have known better.
We walked along the foreshore to the lighthouse at Port Fairy that evening. On the rocks around the lighthouse, we saw a soft, brown wallaby. It was trying to evade us, but we hadn't seen it until it was almost to the water.
WARNAMBOOL
After two nights at Sawpit, we drove past the Codrington Wind Farm and on to Warnambool, where Honey has some friends, and we stayed with them overnight. It felt odd to be in a bed in a house, but it was nice. The winds of Warnambool played havoc with the windmill outside our window that night, and at one point a weird whistle was created when the wind blew into the empty fireplace in our room, and woke us up. Warnambool is where the Great Ocean Road proper begins, but I didn't know that at the time. There was much more in store. I can't remember where the Petrified Forest was, but we stopped and looked at it, as well as the Blowhole nearby. This place will be most remembered for its flies, its impressive scenery running a close second.
PRINCETOWN and PORT CAMPBELL
On our way to Princetown, we stopped at Port Campbell, where Honey spent several summers in a row as a teenager and young adult. We looked at the Bay of Martyrs, what's left of London Bridge and the Grotto that afternoon, but saved the Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge for the evening, after the tourist buses had gone home. LOCH ARD GORGE
We were there at sunset. We had the beach all to ourselves for twenty blissful minutes.
JOHANNA
Our next campsite was at Johanna. We were flummoxed by the two Johanna's - Red and Blue. It turned out these were roads that joined up at the bottom. The campsite was enormous and well populated, though not crowded. It had no water for campers, but there were toilets. Unfortunately, not too far away was a large crowd of yobbos who kept us all up with their raucous behaviour, far into the night. We didn't rev our engine as we drove out the next morning, though we thought about it. We wanted to drive up to Lavers Hill that night to see the glow worms, but the dirt and gravel Blue Johanna Road was something of a deterrent. However, Red Johanna Road was paved, and drove us smartly back up to where we needed to be - this is something for future campers to bear in mind.
We splurged that day and visited the Otway Fly Treetop Walk, for $19.50 each. We arrived at 6:00pm, and I wish we'd had a couple of hours to spend, but unfortunately, the park closed at 7:00pm. We climbed on the steel walkway, and up the tower, which was scary for me, but scarier for Honey, who doesn't like heights. The ranger picked us up as we were strolling through the trees, and transported us on his small car to the exit. But this place was also awesome, with great signage and amazing wilderness. 
It was another total fireban night, so we ate at a Roadhouse and sat around reading, waiting for the sun to go down. It still wasn't dark enough for glow worms when we reached Melba and Lavers Hill, so we had a game of Scrabble in the car. Eventually it got dark enough and off we traipsed, down a path. We spoke to a vet who works at the Warnambool Abattoir. He told us they're always on the lookout for workers, and that we should advise our students (newly arrived refugees and migrants) that if they want work, Warnambool's the place to be.
I loved the glow worms. I wonder what they look like in the light?
APOLLO BAY
Did we spend a night at Apollo Bay? I can't quite remember how it went, after that. We went swimming there, and I had the most excellent pot of Earl Grey Tea, and I know we went to Lorne the next day, so we must have stayed somewhere that night. All in all, we put up the tent and the air mattress about 7 times in 8 days. We got very efficient at it, and it never stopped being fun.
AIREYS INLET
Our last night was at a caravan park at Airey's Inlet. I know this was on Sunday night, because Honey and I had a discussion about traffic, and decided it would be better to drive up to Melbourne on Monday, rather than through the end of weekend madness. It was a good decision. We stopped and asked at the caravan park, whether there was a tent site available, despite the notice outside that told us there was no room at the inn. Lucky for us, there was one spot left, and it was very nice. Some teenagers were in the tent next to us, and gave us a long rendition of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" into the early morning hours. Listening to them - a boy/girl couple plus a male friend - Honey and I made a decision never to bicker and whinge to one another the way that girl whinged to her boyfriend.
Airey's Inlet is the place where "Round the Twist" was filmed. In the evening we walked along the top of the cliffs, because the tide was in. In the morning, we walked down along the beach and the rocks. At some points we had to wade through the water, to get to the next section. It was a lovely adventure to have at the end of our journey. BELLS BEACH
On our way to Melbourne via Geelong, we stopped at Bells Beach to watch the surfers. This photo is not at Bells Beach, but it is a good photo to represent the multiple layers and diverse views of the ocean that we were treated to on our journey up the Great Ocean Road. Highly recommended!
Friday, December 21, 2007
An Illustrated Christmas (card) Story
An Ilustrated Christmas (card) Story
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
**please note, some names and identifying details have been altered, to protect the identities of people involved in these incidents**
In early December, I received a Christmas card from an old friend. I call her that, because for a couple of years we socialised regularly, and exchanged quite a lot of information about one another. We had a mutual friend in common, and she remains one of the brightest stars in the constellation of my social network.
Here's the card:
(I have no idea to whom this image belongs, but this is the copyright information on the back. © distributed by Austwide Wholesalers Pty Ltd)
Inside, it read
To Dear Melina, K, I & family …
With Season’s Greetings
and All Good Wishes
for the New Year
from (those pesky Christians!)
Nancy & Michael Smith
X
It was quite a relief when Nancy and Michael moved interstate two or three years ago. Since that time, we have exchanged pleasantries on the phone from time to time, and a couple of perfunctory emails. All contact has been initiated by Nancy. She always uses the opportunity to enquire about our mutual friend, who had already curtailed even this level of contact with Nancy, finding the hypocrisy of maintaining friendly relations more than she could bear. There’s more to their story, but I’ll just stick with mine here.
I wrote her a card in response. It wasn’t a Christmas card. It wasn’t a Channukah card. It was a blank card with a picture of butterflies, one of a set of cards I’d purchased from the Foot and Mouth Artists. I chose the card carefully, knowing that Nancy and I had strong reactions to butterflies, as a symbol of beauty in survival.
11 December 2007
Dear Nancy,
Thank you for your Christmas card and funny message. It’s good to know that you and Michael are doing well.
I do have to wonder though, about your choice of card for me, showing the Nativity scene. A culturally sensitive friend might have chosen a more neutral image for her Jewish friend. I’m not offended. I happen to love the Christmas story, and stories of Jesus the Jew, the teacher, the poet, the activist, the man, the friend…
I have nothing against Christians. In fact, I’m deeply in love with a Christian. I would, however, urge you towards a little self-reflection. Do you understand that it’s precisely because you are a white, Anglo, Christian woman, that you feel you are entitled to deliberately send me a culturally-inappropriate card at this season?
Do you remember several years ago, when you asked to participate in a Jewish Sabbath meal? I arranged this for you, in good faith, as a friend. My parents welcomed you into their home, shared their food with you, and gave generously of their time. I was alarmed, ashamed, offended and upset when you then began to express your racist attitudes. Consider for a moment, the impact this had on people whose family were refugees and migrants, and who choose to work with refugees, migrants and Aboriginal people. Just as with this Christmas card, you failed to show any sensitivity to our cultural differences. Perhaps because you feel part of the powerful, oppressive majority, you felt at home to speak your support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation policies, for locking up asylum seekers indefinitely in concentration camps, and to express your view that Aboriginal people have it far to easy in Australia, compared with whites. Your behaviour was outright offensive and fear-provoking. It’s taken me a very long time to find a way to tell you about this.
Nancy, I do thank you for your kind wishes, but I don’t wish to cultivate a friendship with a racist.
Best wishes for a bright future.
Merry Christmas & Happy 2008.
love, peace and blessings,
Melina Magdalena
I was away for a few days, visiting my sweetheart, and upon my return, this message was on my answering machine:
Message received 17/12 @ 7:03 pm
Oh hi Melina, it’s Nancy Smith calling. I received your Christmas card today. And first of all I’d like to say I’m really sorry if I’ve offended you, but I also found what you wrote in there very very offensive. I’m not going to grace the insults that you dished out in defense; they’re completely wrong, and I’d be very careful who I call those kinds of names. And you have deeply offended me, because I am not those things, and you’ve taken my comments out of context. And I suggest you look in the mirror yourself at the resentments that you’ve been harbouring. I also invited you into my home, and I never had any idea that you harboured those pathetic resentments about me. I’m very sorry that you’ve written such untruths about me. I’m very happy that you’ve been emotionally honest, and that you haven’t been two-faced anymore, which you have been all these years, and I’m very glad to disassociate from you and your insults. OK? And I do wish you well, but yeah, we’ll leave it at that, hey? Goodbye.
It’s worth pointing out that I had only ever spoken of that Shabbat meal to our mutual friend. I’d never spoken about it to Nancy, or even to my parents. We felt too ashamed and bewildered to mention it.
My first reaction to Nancy’s phone message was one of abject fear. To hear her accusations and the hurt in her strident voice felt threatening, ominous. I know she has criminal connections and a long history of illegal goings on. I wouldn’t put it past her to organize something nasty to happen to me or to someone I love, in retaliation for the “insults” I dished out to her, even though we are physically thousands of kilometers apart.
I acknowledge two things in her defense
a) it wasn’t particularly nice for me to choose Christmas as the time to finally raise this matter with her
b) yes, I have been two-faced in not speaking of this sooner.
However, I take no responsibility for her selective memory. The impact of her behaviour has stung ever since, like a resounding slap in the face, or a brick thrown through a bedroom window.
My mother invited me over for tea, and while my father was outside struggling with an overenthusiastic BBQ, I told her about the phone message. I’d told her about my earlier reply to Nancy’s Christmas card, so she knew the story. She had laughed, when I told her that I’d finally made some response to what had happened at Shabbat that night.
“You’re so much like your father,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You worry at things, and carry them around until finally, you can’t keep hold of them anymore and out bursts your response.”
“I’ve been wanting to say SOMETHING to Nancy for a long time, I just didn’t know how,” I replied.
My father came in then, and I spoke to him of what had happened. He has a history of misplacing my friends and acquaintances. When I tell him stories, he usually spends quite a long time organizing in his mind who I’m talking about and how that person fits in relation to my messy life.
“Is she the one?” he said, as soon as I’d barely begun.
“Yes,” I replied, knowing instantly, that he had placed her.
He continued speaking doggedly, as though if he didn’t say it then, he never would, “We thought she was on our side, and then after dinner, she started talking about how good the detention centres were, and so on….”
“Yes, that’s Nancy,” I confirmed.
My father turned and carried the dish of burnt chops out to the table. “Well, since that night, we’ve stopped inviting total strangers to sharing Shabbat with us.”
Shabbat = Jewish day of rest, day when one ceases work; also called “Shabbos”, and in English, Sabbath.
Shabbat Shalom = peace of the Sabbath; the traditional greeting exchanged around the Shabbat table.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
**please note, some names and identifying details have been altered, to protect the identities of people involved in these incidents**
In early December, I received a Christmas card from an old friend. I call her that, because for a couple of years we socialised regularly, and exchanged quite a lot of information about one another. We had a mutual friend in common, and she remains one of the brightest stars in the constellation of my social network.
Here's the card:
(I have no idea to whom this image belongs, but this is the copyright information on the back. © distributed by Austwide Wholesalers Pty Ltd)
Inside, it read
To Dear Melina, K, I & family …
With Season’s Greetings
and All Good Wishes
for the New Year
from (those pesky Christians!)
Nancy & Michael Smith
X
It was quite a relief when Nancy and Michael moved interstate two or three years ago. Since that time, we have exchanged pleasantries on the phone from time to time, and a couple of perfunctory emails. All contact has been initiated by Nancy. She always uses the opportunity to enquire about our mutual friend, who had already curtailed even this level of contact with Nancy, finding the hypocrisy of maintaining friendly relations more than she could bear. There’s more to their story, but I’ll just stick with mine here.
I wrote her a card in response. It wasn’t a Christmas card. It wasn’t a Channukah card. It was a blank card with a picture of butterflies, one of a set of cards I’d purchased from the Foot and Mouth Artists. I chose the card carefully, knowing that Nancy and I had strong reactions to butterflies, as a symbol of beauty in survival.
11 December 2007
Dear Nancy,
Thank you for your Christmas card and funny message. It’s good to know that you and Michael are doing well.
I do have to wonder though, about your choice of card for me, showing the Nativity scene. A culturally sensitive friend might have chosen a more neutral image for her Jewish friend. I’m not offended. I happen to love the Christmas story, and stories of Jesus the Jew, the teacher, the poet, the activist, the man, the friend…
I have nothing against Christians. In fact, I’m deeply in love with a Christian. I would, however, urge you towards a little self-reflection. Do you understand that it’s precisely because you are a white, Anglo, Christian woman, that you feel you are entitled to deliberately send me a culturally-inappropriate card at this season?
Do you remember several years ago, when you asked to participate in a Jewish Sabbath meal? I arranged this for you, in good faith, as a friend. My parents welcomed you into their home, shared their food with you, and gave generously of their time. I was alarmed, ashamed, offended and upset when you then began to express your racist attitudes. Consider for a moment, the impact this had on people whose family were refugees and migrants, and who choose to work with refugees, migrants and Aboriginal people. Just as with this Christmas card, you failed to show any sensitivity to our cultural differences. Perhaps because you feel part of the powerful, oppressive majority, you felt at home to speak your support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation policies, for locking up asylum seekers indefinitely in concentration camps, and to express your view that Aboriginal people have it far to easy in Australia, compared with whites. Your behaviour was outright offensive and fear-provoking. It’s taken me a very long time to find a way to tell you about this.
Nancy, I do thank you for your kind wishes, but I don’t wish to cultivate a friendship with a racist.
Best wishes for a bright future.
Merry Christmas & Happy 2008.
love, peace and blessings,
Melina Magdalena
I was away for a few days, visiting my sweetheart, and upon my return, this message was on my answering machine:
Message received 17/12 @ 7:03 pm
Oh hi Melina, it’s Nancy Smith calling. I received your Christmas card today. And first of all I’d like to say I’m really sorry if I’ve offended you, but I also found what you wrote in there very very offensive. I’m not going to grace the insults that you dished out in defense; they’re completely wrong, and I’d be very careful who I call those kinds of names. And you have deeply offended me, because I am not those things, and you’ve taken my comments out of context. And I suggest you look in the mirror yourself at the resentments that you’ve been harbouring. I also invited you into my home, and I never had any idea that you harboured those pathetic resentments about me. I’m very sorry that you’ve written such untruths about me. I’m very happy that you’ve been emotionally honest, and that you haven’t been two-faced anymore, which you have been all these years, and I’m very glad to disassociate from you and your insults. OK? And I do wish you well, but yeah, we’ll leave it at that, hey? Goodbye.
It’s worth pointing out that I had only ever spoken of that Shabbat meal to our mutual friend. I’d never spoken about it to Nancy, or even to my parents. We felt too ashamed and bewildered to mention it.
My first reaction to Nancy’s phone message was one of abject fear. To hear her accusations and the hurt in her strident voice felt threatening, ominous. I know she has criminal connections and a long history of illegal goings on. I wouldn’t put it past her to organize something nasty to happen to me or to someone I love, in retaliation for the “insults” I dished out to her, even though we are physically thousands of kilometers apart.
I acknowledge two things in her defense
a) it wasn’t particularly nice for me to choose Christmas as the time to finally raise this matter with her
b) yes, I have been two-faced in not speaking of this sooner.
However, I take no responsibility for her selective memory. The impact of her behaviour has stung ever since, like a resounding slap in the face, or a brick thrown through a bedroom window.
My mother invited me over for tea, and while my father was outside struggling with an overenthusiastic BBQ, I told her about the phone message. I’d told her about my earlier reply to Nancy’s Christmas card, so she knew the story. She had laughed, when I told her that I’d finally made some response to what had happened at Shabbat that night.
“You’re so much like your father,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You worry at things, and carry them around until finally, you can’t keep hold of them anymore and out bursts your response.”
“I’ve been wanting to say SOMETHING to Nancy for a long time, I just didn’t know how,” I replied.
My father came in then, and I spoke to him of what had happened. He has a history of misplacing my friends and acquaintances. When I tell him stories, he usually spends quite a long time organizing in his mind who I’m talking about and how that person fits in relation to my messy life.
“Is she the one?” he said, as soon as I’d barely begun.
“Yes,” I replied, knowing instantly, that he had placed her.
He continued speaking doggedly, as though if he didn’t say it then, he never would, “We thought she was on our side, and then after dinner, she started talking about how good the detention centres were, and so on….”
“Yes, that’s Nancy,” I confirmed.
My father turned and carried the dish of burnt chops out to the table. “Well, since that night, we’ve stopped inviting total strangers to sharing Shabbat with us.”
Shabbat = Jewish day of rest, day when one ceases work; also called “Shabbos”, and in English, Sabbath.
Shabbat Shalom = peace of the Sabbath; the traditional greeting exchanged around the Shabbat table.
Friday, December 07, 2007
The Double Bind - book review
The Double Bind - book review
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
I’ve read several novels by Chris Bohjalian. Each time I close the books feeling a little depleted and possibly misused. It’s a curious sensation, because I enjoy every minute of every novel while I’m reading them – it’s just that the endings leave me with a sense of betrayal.
Perhaps it is my trite and feisty longing always to be on the side of the woman who was wronged. If I am so shallow then I disappoint myself. Maybe life isn’t really so black and white! Bohjalian’s plots turn the tables on his women protagonists, leaving them in either an overtly bad light, or floundering with serious ambiguity as to their ability to avoid consequences of poor decision-making or their actual feminine nature, which in his eyes appears to invite said dire consequences for these women protagonists and those unfortunate enough to become involved with them.
The Double Bind is not a novel about blaming victims. Much of what it has to say about PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is valid. Bohjalian’s compassionate view of his character’s world is not offensive in itself. At least in this plot, the hurt that protagonist Laurel Estabrook inflicts upon the people in her life is clearly unintended and unavoidable. What Laurel suffers is the fault only of the men who attacked her. The consequences of their attack can never be blamed on their victim. The people who love Laurel understand clearly that she does not intend to cause them harm; indeed that her every action is directed from the vantage point to which she has withdrawn. To protect themselves, they keep Laurel at arm’s length every bit as much as she keeps them at bay.
The book for me was a head-spin in that it left me questioning my own sense of reality. I wondered to what extent I have created an illusion of health, a glamour of safety, a delusion that the world still belongs to me even as I still belong to the world, when in fact, perhaps I would be better off dead. Do I need my fantasies in order to continue to function? Are my delusions necessary for my survival? Must I trick myself into believing I am more than that to which I was reduced, through the actions of the men who damaged me, so that I can convince myself that life is still worth living?
I did not drift for too long, in the howling winds of such existential agonies. I am not a fictional character – I know there is a lot more to me and to my life, than a few isolated events that had far-reaching effects on the way I choose to live my life.
Instead, I pursued this thread by questioning to whose benefit it is, that Laurel confront, define, acknowledge and own every nasty little detail of her experience. In order to be a “true survivor” is she to be left undefended and indefensible, with no dignity of choice and no delicacy of privacy? Is it necessary, in order for her to wear the mantle of “survivor” as opposed to “victim”, to somehow step out from under the burden of her experience and say – hey look at me, I’m still a valuable, contributing human being, even though those men did this and this and this and this to me?
In this sense, the demand that Laurel be open about her experience runs parallel to the demands that every person whose identity falls outside the mainstream, whether through race, gender, ability, or affiliation come out repeatedly, consistently and continuously, in order to be validated as a healthy human being. These demands call for superhuman effort. Most of us are too busy living our lives to waste our time constantly bringing our differences to the attention of those who would just as soon ignore them.
Is not Laurel, by the nature of the life that she is leading, proving her worth and her survival with each and every waking moment? She remains defiant, intelligent, unbeaten and spirited to the end.
I wondered anew about the nature of true healing. The sour taste that was left in my mouth when I finished Double Bind was more to do with the big question of – is it possible or even desirable to heal from such a major traumatic event? Clearly, if PTSD leads directly to madness, and if madness by its definition is mental disease, than the most that can be hoped for is a set of coping mechanisms and a network of support people to prop up the unfortunate victim.
It is unquestionable that no one should go through what Laurel goes through. It is undeniable that many people do experience abuse and torture, and that most of us do not die as a direct consequence of such maltreatment. So what should be done to us, or what should we do, in order to choose a different path, than the path that Laurel takes on her quest for survival? How different are our journeys, from Laurel’s experience of survival?
If healing means denying oneself the liberty or luxury of rewriting the past to something that is more acceptable and tolerable to us, than what other people know really happened, than do we all not live in a state of denial? Do we all not tend to rewrite our pasts, dampen down the emotional states to bearable levels, in order that we continue to function?
We do not all descend into madness. Nor is madness necessarily a permanent state. Madness can provide the respite we need sometimes, in order to regroup and find our feet again. PTSD perhaps, is a life sentence – a direct result of specific traumatic experiences. Not everyone with PTSD experiences madness all, or even some of the time. Nearly everyone with PTSD is accused at some stage, of at least being emotionally extravagant and at worst, of being mad.
The human mind and spirit is incredible in many ways. Those of us who live successfully with PTSD develop our meaning-making skills of intuition and connectivity to a level that others can barely glimpse as possible. It is difficult to verbalise this amongst ourselves, let alone to medicos whose understandings are relegated to regulated mechanical understandings.
Bohjalian does not seem to realize in his PTSD character, the depth and levels of self-talk that must necessarily interweave in a complex and strangely harmonious manner to enable Laurel’s survival in this hostile world. Her world is indisputably hostile, despite the mostly benign characters with whom Bohjalian has peopled it. Were it not hostile, at least in the way Laurel perceives it, why would she have needed to develop such strong defences against it? Laurel’s defenses range way beyond the defense of her own mutilated body. Her purpose is to defend anyone she cares about, from being affected and destroyed by the forces that came so close to destroying her.
So for Laurel herself, since the novel deals mostly with her internalized world as she comes to externalize it, I was gripped by the buzzing current that keeps her sleepless, that runs through her body and circulates in her blood. How could she appear to be anything but calm, in the face of constant panic? How can she possibly escape her past? She is guarded, day and night; vigilant against any attack upon the semblance of sanity and good health that she has created around herself.
Would it be better for Laurel to meditate every morning about the horrors that were enacted upon her body, count them off in a litany of gruesome acknowledgement, and then rise from her bed and go about her day along with the constant physical reminders of these acts? Perhaps it’s her ability to repress part of the knowledge from her everyday consciousness that enables her to function at all? Perhaps it’s amazing that she functions as she does, despite the unvarying murmuring of self-talk, panic and mind-messages that are playing in the background? Perhaps this ability to hear around and despite all this, is healing and health.
What is not spoken of in this book is the question which drives Laurel. Her story, and the story in this book, is infused with the question “WHY?”
Why did this happen to me?
What is it in me that caused this to happen?
Why did they do this to me?
What kind of people imagine and consciously carry out such horrifying acts?
Why did I survive?
What does it mean for the rest of my life, that I must carry the scars from these unspeakable acts?
When there are no answers to these questions and yet these questions cannot be avoided, the only way open is for Laurel to deal with them herself. She seeks meaning, and she finds it on a level that others define as madness. The other people in her life cannot follow her, because they do not understand the path she took to reach that place. Their experience of Laurel is not her experience of herself. That doesn’t make her completely wrong, misguided and crazy. When there is no one left to blame, the blame must be self-inflicted. And that is precisely the shame.
There is no Goddess in Laurel’s world. She must birth herself. Life is hard. To find new meaning in her life, Laurel looks beyond the confines of her own rich inner world, and extends her compassion to those whose realities are even harsher and stranger than her own. Such is the depth of her character.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
I’ve read several novels by Chris Bohjalian. Each time I close the books feeling a little depleted and possibly misused. It’s a curious sensation, because I enjoy every minute of every novel while I’m reading them – it’s just that the endings leave me with a sense of betrayal.
Perhaps it is my trite and feisty longing always to be on the side of the woman who was wronged. If I am so shallow then I disappoint myself. Maybe life isn’t really so black and white! Bohjalian’s plots turn the tables on his women protagonists, leaving them in either an overtly bad light, or floundering with serious ambiguity as to their ability to avoid consequences of poor decision-making or their actual feminine nature, which in his eyes appears to invite said dire consequences for these women protagonists and those unfortunate enough to become involved with them.
The Double Bind is not a novel about blaming victims. Much of what it has to say about PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is valid. Bohjalian’s compassionate view of his character’s world is not offensive in itself. At least in this plot, the hurt that protagonist Laurel Estabrook inflicts upon the people in her life is clearly unintended and unavoidable. What Laurel suffers is the fault only of the men who attacked her. The consequences of their attack can never be blamed on their victim. The people who love Laurel understand clearly that she does not intend to cause them harm; indeed that her every action is directed from the vantage point to which she has withdrawn. To protect themselves, they keep Laurel at arm’s length every bit as much as she keeps them at bay.
The book for me was a head-spin in that it left me questioning my own sense of reality. I wondered to what extent I have created an illusion of health, a glamour of safety, a delusion that the world still belongs to me even as I still belong to the world, when in fact, perhaps I would be better off dead. Do I need my fantasies in order to continue to function? Are my delusions necessary for my survival? Must I trick myself into believing I am more than that to which I was reduced, through the actions of the men who damaged me, so that I can convince myself that life is still worth living?
I did not drift for too long, in the howling winds of such existential agonies. I am not a fictional character – I know there is a lot more to me and to my life, than a few isolated events that had far-reaching effects on the way I choose to live my life.
Instead, I pursued this thread by questioning to whose benefit it is, that Laurel confront, define, acknowledge and own every nasty little detail of her experience. In order to be a “true survivor” is she to be left undefended and indefensible, with no dignity of choice and no delicacy of privacy? Is it necessary, in order for her to wear the mantle of “survivor” as opposed to “victim”, to somehow step out from under the burden of her experience and say – hey look at me, I’m still a valuable, contributing human being, even though those men did this and this and this and this to me?
In this sense, the demand that Laurel be open about her experience runs parallel to the demands that every person whose identity falls outside the mainstream, whether through race, gender, ability, or affiliation come out repeatedly, consistently and continuously, in order to be validated as a healthy human being. These demands call for superhuman effort. Most of us are too busy living our lives to waste our time constantly bringing our differences to the attention of those who would just as soon ignore them.
Is not Laurel, by the nature of the life that she is leading, proving her worth and her survival with each and every waking moment? She remains defiant, intelligent, unbeaten and spirited to the end.
I wondered anew about the nature of true healing. The sour taste that was left in my mouth when I finished Double Bind was more to do with the big question of – is it possible or even desirable to heal from such a major traumatic event? Clearly, if PTSD leads directly to madness, and if madness by its definition is mental disease, than the most that can be hoped for is a set of coping mechanisms and a network of support people to prop up the unfortunate victim.
It is unquestionable that no one should go through what Laurel goes through. It is undeniable that many people do experience abuse and torture, and that most of us do not die as a direct consequence of such maltreatment. So what should be done to us, or what should we do, in order to choose a different path, than the path that Laurel takes on her quest for survival? How different are our journeys, from Laurel’s experience of survival?
If healing means denying oneself the liberty or luxury of rewriting the past to something that is more acceptable and tolerable to us, than what other people know really happened, than do we all not live in a state of denial? Do we all not tend to rewrite our pasts, dampen down the emotional states to bearable levels, in order that we continue to function?
We do not all descend into madness. Nor is madness necessarily a permanent state. Madness can provide the respite we need sometimes, in order to regroup and find our feet again. PTSD perhaps, is a life sentence – a direct result of specific traumatic experiences. Not everyone with PTSD experiences madness all, or even some of the time. Nearly everyone with PTSD is accused at some stage, of at least being emotionally extravagant and at worst, of being mad.
The human mind and spirit is incredible in many ways. Those of us who live successfully with PTSD develop our meaning-making skills of intuition and connectivity to a level that others can barely glimpse as possible. It is difficult to verbalise this amongst ourselves, let alone to medicos whose understandings are relegated to regulated mechanical understandings.
Bohjalian does not seem to realize in his PTSD character, the depth and levels of self-talk that must necessarily interweave in a complex and strangely harmonious manner to enable Laurel’s survival in this hostile world. Her world is indisputably hostile, despite the mostly benign characters with whom Bohjalian has peopled it. Were it not hostile, at least in the way Laurel perceives it, why would she have needed to develop such strong defences against it? Laurel’s defenses range way beyond the defense of her own mutilated body. Her purpose is to defend anyone she cares about, from being affected and destroyed by the forces that came so close to destroying her.
So for Laurel herself, since the novel deals mostly with her internalized world as she comes to externalize it, I was gripped by the buzzing current that keeps her sleepless, that runs through her body and circulates in her blood. How could she appear to be anything but calm, in the face of constant panic? How can she possibly escape her past? She is guarded, day and night; vigilant against any attack upon the semblance of sanity and good health that she has created around herself.
Would it be better for Laurel to meditate every morning about the horrors that were enacted upon her body, count them off in a litany of gruesome acknowledgement, and then rise from her bed and go about her day along with the constant physical reminders of these acts? Perhaps it’s her ability to repress part of the knowledge from her everyday consciousness that enables her to function at all? Perhaps it’s amazing that she functions as she does, despite the unvarying murmuring of self-talk, panic and mind-messages that are playing in the background? Perhaps this ability to hear around and despite all this, is healing and health.
What is not spoken of in this book is the question which drives Laurel. Her story, and the story in this book, is infused with the question “WHY?”
Why did this happen to me?
What is it in me that caused this to happen?
Why did they do this to me?
What kind of people imagine and consciously carry out such horrifying acts?
Why did I survive?
What does it mean for the rest of my life, that I must carry the scars from these unspeakable acts?
When there are no answers to these questions and yet these questions cannot be avoided, the only way open is for Laurel to deal with them herself. She seeks meaning, and she finds it on a level that others define as madness. The other people in her life cannot follow her, because they do not understand the path she took to reach that place. Their experience of Laurel is not her experience of herself. That doesn’t make her completely wrong, misguided and crazy. When there is no one left to blame, the blame must be self-inflicted. And that is precisely the shame.
There is no Goddess in Laurel’s world. She must birth herself. Life is hard. To find new meaning in her life, Laurel looks beyond the confines of her own rich inner world, and extends her compassion to those whose realities are even harsher and stranger than her own. Such is the depth of her character.
Monday, November 26, 2007
boundary runner
boundary runner
© Melina Magdalena 2007
you know the kind of dog I’m talking about
overgrown, full-blown, slightly out-of-control
everyone would like to love her because she is so loveable
but that slightly wild aspect that permeates your every interaction
causes people instinctively to throw up their hands
back away, retreat to higher ground – she’s all too much, so
they keep her on that short leash that defies any possibility of intimacy
she doesn’t need obedience training – good lord no!
she doesn’t need her spirit crushed with harsh words and demands of martial precision
a large portion of her charm lies in her ability
to transcend those social norms, to insinuate herself beyond those walls
and end up with her wet nose pushed into your face,
those liquid eyes that beseech you to become your own best friend
it’s uncanny. she doesn’t push or barge her way in
no one sees quite how she does it
she’s just there! suddenly! where she wasn’t, a moment before
and after no one beckoned her to enter
rare are the moments when she yaps like a terrier
alerting you to the fact that she is well aware of the silly games you’re playing
the patrols you set around your barbed-wire fences who only
begrudgingly permit the passage in either direction of anything at all
no one ever told her this was not the way to do things
and she’s knows it’s not the way to do things
she really doesn’t mean to find herself lurking where she’s not welcomed
chastized, she hangs her head, droops her ears, lets her tail sag into the dirt
banished, she starts that slow creep once again around the edges
sniffing the perimeter, leaving her mark at every sapling like a promise that
she’s still out there waiting for the good times when you will finally let her in
energised, that slow lope picks up momentum – yes, she’s passed this way before
gaining confidence, she’s completely forgotten
how she came to be here in this barren, unfriendly place,
on the outside in the first place … second place …
time immemorial has faded into insignificance
memory is meaningless when possibility hovers enticingly at the horizon line
around and around and around she circles, alert now
to the murmurs, the panic-stricken yelps of alarm, the dull drone of despair
it’s so much more than she can bear
she leaps frantically against the windows and barred doors, she’s scary now
that persistent, rhythmic scratching – let me in, let me in!
because she knows full well that it’s her purpose to be there,
to witness and to soothe
it makes no sense at all when you lock her out
she wants only to love and be loved
it’s not harsh words, obedience training, choker collars, short leashes and rewards
that keep her going – she’s tough, well schooled in hard knocks
she survives this periodic maltreatment, yes
but how she would blossom and thrive on
gentle training, a loving hand and consistent guidance
to teach her how to navigate those places without again
coming to grief or causing that endless offence
© Melina Magdalena 2007
you know the kind of dog I’m talking about
overgrown, full-blown, slightly out-of-control
everyone would like to love her because she is so loveable
but that slightly wild aspect that permeates your every interaction
causes people instinctively to throw up their hands
back away, retreat to higher ground – she’s all too much, so
they keep her on that short leash that defies any possibility of intimacy
she doesn’t need obedience training – good lord no!
she doesn’t need her spirit crushed with harsh words and demands of martial precision
a large portion of her charm lies in her ability
to transcend those social norms, to insinuate herself beyond those walls
and end up with her wet nose pushed into your face,
those liquid eyes that beseech you to become your own best friend
it’s uncanny. she doesn’t push or barge her way in
no one sees quite how she does it
she’s just there! suddenly! where she wasn’t, a moment before
and after no one beckoned her to enter
rare are the moments when she yaps like a terrier
alerting you to the fact that she is well aware of the silly games you’re playing
the patrols you set around your barbed-wire fences who only
begrudgingly permit the passage in either direction of anything at all
no one ever told her this was not the way to do things
and she’s knows it’s not the way to do things
she really doesn’t mean to find herself lurking where she’s not welcomed
chastized, she hangs her head, droops her ears, lets her tail sag into the dirt
banished, she starts that slow creep once again around the edges
sniffing the perimeter, leaving her mark at every sapling like a promise that
she’s still out there waiting for the good times when you will finally let her in
energised, that slow lope picks up momentum – yes, she’s passed this way before
gaining confidence, she’s completely forgotten
how she came to be here in this barren, unfriendly place,
on the outside in the first place … second place …
time immemorial has faded into insignificance
memory is meaningless when possibility hovers enticingly at the horizon line
around and around and around she circles, alert now
to the murmurs, the panic-stricken yelps of alarm, the dull drone of despair
it’s so much more than she can bear
she leaps frantically against the windows and barred doors, she’s scary now
that persistent, rhythmic scratching – let me in, let me in!
because she knows full well that it’s her purpose to be there,
to witness and to soothe
it makes no sense at all when you lock her out
she wants only to love and be loved
it’s not harsh words, obedience training, choker collars, short leashes and rewards
that keep her going – she’s tough, well schooled in hard knocks
she survives this periodic maltreatment, yes
but how she would blossom and thrive on
gentle training, a loving hand and consistent guidance
to teach her how to navigate those places without again
coming to grief or causing that endless offence
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Marriage and Other Great Acts of Political Resistance
Marriage and Other Great Acts of Political Resistance
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
Reflecting upon the so-called "gay marriage debate" (the opposing sides are not speaking to one another), my first marriage proposal came to mind. I was 15, visiting relatives in East Berlin. I was up in the bedroom of ny second cousin, Albrecht Lachmann (1967-2002). He had just finished playing for me, his blackmarket recording of Pink Floyd's The Wall . Albrecht burned with a passionate desire for freedom. In my callow state of ignorant, apolitical, inhibited youth I rejected his proposal.
I first met Albrecht when he was 8 and I was 6. He used to take violin lessons. I was visiting Germany with my parents and siblings. My mother had reconnected with her father for the first time since he left the USA in the wake of his divorce from my grandmother Ruth. My mother's father Christof Lucchesi was the brother of Albrecht's mother's father, Immo Lucchesi.
Seven years later, I still had only a dim understanding of what it meant to live in a police state like the German Democratic Republic. I knew fresh food was chronically short, travel was restricted, the currency was practically worthless outside the USSR, and that families remained divided across the internal German borders.
I heard murmurings from Onkel Immo and his wife, Tante Ursul.... Albrecht was only making things more difficult for himself, with his attitude. All students were forced to study the Russian language. Only by excelling in this subject, could a young person be guaranteed a chance at further study and a career.
I had also met another young second cousin, whose name I have regrettably forgotten. She lived in Dresden with her mother. Her chances of further study were nil, due to the fact that her father had defected from East Germany after divorcing her mother. The justification for this? Bear in mind - there were no secrets about her plight. There was no chance for her to resist the decisions imposed on her by the police state in which she lived. The already slim chance this young woman might find a way to join her father in West Germany had been increased by a mere smidgeon. Therefore the East German government deemed it a fruitless exercise on their part to educate this young woman.
Here in South Australia, we do not labour under a police state. But the rules and restrictions that the state and federal governments impose upon our people, young and old still have those affected chafing at the bits of their confinement.
In the case of my teenagers, both have chosen to focus upon the mandatory learning of "Australian Studies" as the site of their resistance. Australian Studies is a Year 10 subject. My son weasled his way out of taking it last year, by becoming overinvolved with cricket - a legitimate passion. However, he was forced to take the subject this year as a Year 11 student. My daughter took the subject during the first semester of this year. She is currently a Year 10 student.
Their tactics of resistance are lamentably crude. I would have to say they are ineffective in so far as their rage is enacted against their teacher, poor thing, who has to mark their work and cajole them to do any work before she has anything to mark. From what I've heard, neither of their Australian Studies teachers has been too impressed, impassioned or informed about what wisdom, history and values she is supposed to be imparting to these youngsters. One of them focused her curriculum almost entirely on US Indigenous issues; the other asked her students to produce a piece of work about imported species. Perhaps the teachers are sneakily resisting in their own way.
I cannot resist posting this example of resistance by a South Australian teenager. The task was supposed to be 1000 words long.
For this illustrious example of academic excellence my very smart teenager received a grand total of 7 (out of 20). I suppose this is Recorded Achievement, at its best.
I believe the best acts of political resistance are personal. I believe these may be acts of outstanding courage and fortitude, but they do not need to be showy spectacles that draw the awed attention of passersby. Most importantly, effective acts of political and personal resistance must not hurt the actor more than he or she would be hurt by not resisting. Yes, there are times and there are situations where people risk their lives in order to stand for what they believe in; this usually takes the form of standing against what they disbelieve. But there are many ways in which ordinary, humble, brave, optimistic human beings may resist the seductive pull of conformity, the thrall of convention, and the deadly boredom of only ever doing what others expect of you.
Hence, Loved Up!.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
Reflecting upon the so-called "gay marriage debate" (the opposing sides are not speaking to one another), my first marriage proposal came to mind. I was 15, visiting relatives in East Berlin. I was up in the bedroom of ny second cousin, Albrecht Lachmann (1967-2002). He had just finished playing for me, his blackmarket recording of Pink Floyd's The Wall . Albrecht burned with a passionate desire for freedom. In my callow state of ignorant, apolitical, inhibited youth I rejected his proposal.
I first met Albrecht when he was 8 and I was 6. He used to take violin lessons. I was visiting Germany with my parents and siblings. My mother had reconnected with her father for the first time since he left the USA in the wake of his divorce from my grandmother Ruth. My mother's father Christof Lucchesi was the brother of Albrecht's mother's father, Immo Lucchesi.
Seven years later, I still had only a dim understanding of what it meant to live in a police state like the German Democratic Republic. I knew fresh food was chronically short, travel was restricted, the currency was practically worthless outside the USSR, and that families remained divided across the internal German borders.
I heard murmurings from Onkel Immo and his wife, Tante Ursul.... Albrecht was only making things more difficult for himself, with his attitude. All students were forced to study the Russian language. Only by excelling in this subject, could a young person be guaranteed a chance at further study and a career.
I had also met another young second cousin, whose name I have regrettably forgotten. She lived in Dresden with her mother. Her chances of further study were nil, due to the fact that her father had defected from East Germany after divorcing her mother. The justification for this? Bear in mind - there were no secrets about her plight. There was no chance for her to resist the decisions imposed on her by the police state in which she lived. The already slim chance this young woman might find a way to join her father in West Germany had been increased by a mere smidgeon. Therefore the East German government deemed it a fruitless exercise on their part to educate this young woman.
Here in South Australia, we do not labour under a police state. But the rules and restrictions that the state and federal governments impose upon our people, young and old still have those affected chafing at the bits of their confinement.
In the case of my teenagers, both have chosen to focus upon the mandatory learning of "Australian Studies" as the site of their resistance. Australian Studies is a Year 10 subject. My son weasled his way out of taking it last year, by becoming overinvolved with cricket - a legitimate passion. However, he was forced to take the subject this year as a Year 11 student. My daughter took the subject during the first semester of this year. She is currently a Year 10 student.
Their tactics of resistance are lamentably crude. I would have to say they are ineffective in so far as their rage is enacted against their teacher, poor thing, who has to mark their work and cajole them to do any work before she has anything to mark. From what I've heard, neither of their Australian Studies teachers has been too impressed, impassioned or informed about what wisdom, history and values she is supposed to be imparting to these youngsters. One of them focused her curriculum almost entirely on US Indigenous issues; the other asked her students to produce a piece of work about imported species. Perhaps the teachers are sneakily resisting in their own way.
I cannot resist posting this example of resistance by a South Australian teenager. The task was supposed to be 1000 words long.
For this illustrious example of academic excellence my very smart teenager received a grand total of 7 (out of 20). I suppose this is Recorded Achievement, at its best.
I believe the best acts of political resistance are personal. I believe these may be acts of outstanding courage and fortitude, but they do not need to be showy spectacles that draw the awed attention of passersby. Most importantly, effective acts of political and personal resistance must not hurt the actor more than he or she would be hurt by not resisting. Yes, there are times and there are situations where people risk their lives in order to stand for what they believe in; this usually takes the form of standing against what they disbelieve. But there are many ways in which ordinary, humble, brave, optimistic human beings may resist the seductive pull of conformity, the thrall of convention, and the deadly boredom of only ever doing what others expect of you.
Hence, Loved Up!.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Crushed
Crushed
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
To K.L. with best wishes on her 38th birthday next month.
I didn’t want to be with her. I wanted to be her. She fascinated me; from the moment I laid eyes on her. At almost twelve years of age, I had no one to talk to about this. Newly arrived in the small Queensland sugar town, I had no friends, no cousins, no aunts, and no older siblings. I remember the day so clearly.
It was the last weekend before school started for the year. The Girl Guides in that part of the world were active throughout the year, so I went to my first meeting in this new place. The Guide Hall was a long weatherboard building. I think it was painted blue. I walked up the three steps and in through the door to be greeted with the sight of many busy girls, all in uniform, sectioned off into their patrols along each side of the room. Our Guide Leader walked me across the wooden floor to meet my new Patrol Leader. I met her second first, a merry, round-cheeked, frizzy haired girl who became my best friend for the two years we lived there. She tapped S on the shoulder to get her attention.
Thinking back, I can’t figure out how S was already Patrol Leader, because from what I know of the story, she was also new in town. Maybe she had moved up with her family the previous year, and had had some time to establish herself. She looked at me through her glittering brown eyes, down the curve of her arrogant nose, smiled cursorily and set me to work. In that moment, I became hers for the taking.
What must she have seen, when she glanced at me, that tall, willowy girl, a study of brown on brown, with her long, tanned arms and long, tanned legs? What was I? A short, stocky little girl in a Girl Guide uniform, her light brown hair in two preposterous pigtails that stuck out at odd angles over each ear, the aftershock of a haircut several months earlier. I was too shy and nervous to smile. I didn’t make small talk. What eleven year old does?
The rest of my family spent the afternoon house hunting. When my mother came to pick me up, I bubbled and burbled my way to the car, excited about the new best friend I’d made. Her name was S. She was so great. I was going to be so happy there. I got some kind of “That’s nice, dear” response. That’s OK. I understood; there were other things on my mother’s mind.
What does one do, in the grip of sudden infatuation? Within a matter of weeks, I transited from being a happy little girl, to a confused and awkward adolescent. A month or two earlier I had kicked a boy in the balls when he looked up my dress as I played on the monkey bars. I was severely spoken to for that incident, but I didn’t appreciate his interference in my games. It seems while I was preternaturally disposed to intercept and deflect the male gaze, I was sorely unequipped with words to explain my new superpowers.
I had grown breasts and hips over the past eighteen months, and I didn’t like them. I used to wear a tight zipped cardigan to squash my chest, but just before we moved, my mother took me downtown and got me fitted for some proper bras. We referred to them as my unmentionables. I was sure that if I tried hard enough to pretend I was still a little girl, I could make them – and my messy, painful, frightening periods go away.
And now this – what did it mean? I just wanted to be her friend, that’s all.
Maybe I looked at her with too much intensity? Maybe I tried too hard? Maybe I infringed on the boundaries of the friendships she’d already established within the group. She was after all, the undisputed queen bee of the hive. That is not why I was so attracted to her. I liked her elegant brownness, her suave, smooth way of moving through the world. I admired her adeptness at dealing with authority figures, and the ease with which she interacted with her peers. I wanted to be just like her.
Maybe she just didn’t like me. That’s always possible. If she were so remarkable that I would want to be like her, if follows doesn’t it, that there is no way she would aspire to be anything like me!
School started. I drifted through the classes, separated thanks to our untimely arrival in the town, from any of my guiding buddies. High school was hard for that fact alone. At least I had someone I could hang out with during lunch and recess.
The next clear incident that I recall was in November, at my best friend’s birthday party. She lived next to the swamp, which was one of the mangrove areas around the town. The party was not at the swamp, but we giggling girls went for a secret walk to the swamp so that S could meet her boyfriend.
I didn’t really mind that she had a boyfriend, although I didn’t want one. I thought it was stupid really – I stubbornly resisted all those teenage flirtations, knowing instinctively they were somehow not for me. I seem to remember his name as Kermit, though I’m sure it wasn’t. It must have been some Germanic name like Klaus or Kurt or something. S had ostentatiously used a black marker to write his and hers initials on her arm. I know his first name started with ‘k’, because in an insane moment of identification with S, I secretly took up that same black marker and copied the four letters onto my own arm, along with the heart that linked them.
How S mocked me for that unforgivable act. It was her best buddy who revealed my indiscretion to all and sundry. I was shamed, without even being able to adequately explain my actions. It didn’t make sense to anyone, let alone me. I was sullied in their eyes, no longer a known entity, but something dangerous and strange.
I’ve blocked out most of the memories of what happened after that. I managed to avoid Susan during most of that summer, but the next year, school became a nightmare. She contracted glandular fever towards the end of the school year, which was a blessing for me. I remember hearing that she was so weak that her mother had to bath her.
I was not a sophisticated type. Even before the birthday party, I didn’t pursue S, or seek her out, as is common when people are in the grip of infatuation. In this small town, we all knew where each other lived, but I had never been to S’s house. The infatuation had long disappeared, submerged beneath the combined weight of my bewilderment and misery. Now I imagined going to her house, pushing her head under the water and holding it there until the bubbles stopped.
It’s literally at this moment, twenty-five years later that I begin to realize S may have been smarter, or savvier, than I ever gave her credit for. Certainly, she found her target every time with me, and I was so innocent, I had no knowledge or prior warning of what she would aim for next. S seems to have known quite well, what she thought of me – dirty, hairy and perverted.
I once wandered into the change rooms before PE, to discover to my shock, that S and her crowd was already in there. I took another bite of my apple, and nearly choked, as her harpy’s voice berated me for being so dirty that I would eat my lunch in the toilets.
When she started taunting me with the gorilla tag I begged my mother to let me start shaving my legs. I hated the whole process. I didn’t want anything to do with my misbegotten body. One Saturday afternoon I sat in the bath and doggedly dragged the razor with such ragged pressure up my shin that the bathwater turned shockingly red with my blood and I had to shower whilst attempting to staunch the bleeding so that no one would find out. I bore those scars for about fifteen years before they faded – and that was long after I had stopped shaving my legs for good.
A new girl started at the school, and was immediately taken under the shelter of S’s malevolent wings. She still wore her uniform from her previous school. Her dress was far too short, and she would sit on the benches at lunchtimes, rubbing and rubbing the section of her legs between the hem of her dress and her knees. When S gleefully claimed that I had been looking at this girl’s legs, I wasn’t sure why I felt so shamed, but I felt it anyway.
S was merciless in avenging her honour. I had crossed a boundary into a new country where I was to be persecuted for the rest of time. During my childhood, I always had close friendships, and being a naturally studious and motivated learner, I had been popular with nearly all of my teachers. I hadn’t experienced such severe ostracism. I wasn’t brought up to be a pariah. The shock was too much to bear.
I took myself off and tried to find some other friends. Even the gentle, longhaired girls who belonged to some variety of Brethren background could not suffer my presence in their midst. S made sure my reputation caught up with me. So I tried to stay alone at school. This was difficult. I found it was necessary not only to be alone, but also to become invisible. I acquired this skill by virtue of necessity.
I began to have nightmares. There was something dangerous and corrupt in me. My nightmares were all about my need to protect those around me, from my influence. My sister was in particular danger, and I pushed her as far away from me as I dared.
My hitherto best friend was a dear and loyal soul. She weathered my bizarre behaviour and maintained her earnest desire to be my friend, though I did my best not to corrupt her with my presence. From her point of view, I was still welcome to join her and her friends at school, at band, and at Guides, but I could not feel welcome or safe in any place where S was.
So after two years, when we left that town, I tried to leave all of that behind me. My spirit was crushed beneath the weight of my despair. There was something very wrong with me, and there was not a damned thing I could do about it. I could not even name what it was, though the corruption was like a vivid, ugly stain across my face that everyone else could see. I could only stare out of my sullen green eyes in utter incomprehension, and strive to be invisible.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
To K.L. with best wishes on her 38th birthday next month.
I didn’t want to be with her. I wanted to be her. She fascinated me; from the moment I laid eyes on her. At almost twelve years of age, I had no one to talk to about this. Newly arrived in the small Queensland sugar town, I had no friends, no cousins, no aunts, and no older siblings. I remember the day so clearly.
It was the last weekend before school started for the year. The Girl Guides in that part of the world were active throughout the year, so I went to my first meeting in this new place. The Guide Hall was a long weatherboard building. I think it was painted blue. I walked up the three steps and in through the door to be greeted with the sight of many busy girls, all in uniform, sectioned off into their patrols along each side of the room. Our Guide Leader walked me across the wooden floor to meet my new Patrol Leader. I met her second first, a merry, round-cheeked, frizzy haired girl who became my best friend for the two years we lived there. She tapped S on the shoulder to get her attention.
Thinking back, I can’t figure out how S was already Patrol Leader, because from what I know of the story, she was also new in town. Maybe she had moved up with her family the previous year, and had had some time to establish herself. She looked at me through her glittering brown eyes, down the curve of her arrogant nose, smiled cursorily and set me to work. In that moment, I became hers for the taking.
What must she have seen, when she glanced at me, that tall, willowy girl, a study of brown on brown, with her long, tanned arms and long, tanned legs? What was I? A short, stocky little girl in a Girl Guide uniform, her light brown hair in two preposterous pigtails that stuck out at odd angles over each ear, the aftershock of a haircut several months earlier. I was too shy and nervous to smile. I didn’t make small talk. What eleven year old does?
The rest of my family spent the afternoon house hunting. When my mother came to pick me up, I bubbled and burbled my way to the car, excited about the new best friend I’d made. Her name was S. She was so great. I was going to be so happy there. I got some kind of “That’s nice, dear” response. That’s OK. I understood; there were other things on my mother’s mind.
What does one do, in the grip of sudden infatuation? Within a matter of weeks, I transited from being a happy little girl, to a confused and awkward adolescent. A month or two earlier I had kicked a boy in the balls when he looked up my dress as I played on the monkey bars. I was severely spoken to for that incident, but I didn’t appreciate his interference in my games. It seems while I was preternaturally disposed to intercept and deflect the male gaze, I was sorely unequipped with words to explain my new superpowers.
I had grown breasts and hips over the past eighteen months, and I didn’t like them. I used to wear a tight zipped cardigan to squash my chest, but just before we moved, my mother took me downtown and got me fitted for some proper bras. We referred to them as my unmentionables. I was sure that if I tried hard enough to pretend I was still a little girl, I could make them – and my messy, painful, frightening periods go away.
And now this – what did it mean? I just wanted to be her friend, that’s all.
Maybe I looked at her with too much intensity? Maybe I tried too hard? Maybe I infringed on the boundaries of the friendships she’d already established within the group. She was after all, the undisputed queen bee of the hive. That is not why I was so attracted to her. I liked her elegant brownness, her suave, smooth way of moving through the world. I admired her adeptness at dealing with authority figures, and the ease with which she interacted with her peers. I wanted to be just like her.
Maybe she just didn’t like me. That’s always possible. If she were so remarkable that I would want to be like her, if follows doesn’t it, that there is no way she would aspire to be anything like me!
School started. I drifted through the classes, separated thanks to our untimely arrival in the town, from any of my guiding buddies. High school was hard for that fact alone. At least I had someone I could hang out with during lunch and recess.
The next clear incident that I recall was in November, at my best friend’s birthday party. She lived next to the swamp, which was one of the mangrove areas around the town. The party was not at the swamp, but we giggling girls went for a secret walk to the swamp so that S could meet her boyfriend.
I didn’t really mind that she had a boyfriend, although I didn’t want one. I thought it was stupid really – I stubbornly resisted all those teenage flirtations, knowing instinctively they were somehow not for me. I seem to remember his name as Kermit, though I’m sure it wasn’t. It must have been some Germanic name like Klaus or Kurt or something. S had ostentatiously used a black marker to write his and hers initials on her arm. I know his first name started with ‘k’, because in an insane moment of identification with S, I secretly took up that same black marker and copied the four letters onto my own arm, along with the heart that linked them.
How S mocked me for that unforgivable act. It was her best buddy who revealed my indiscretion to all and sundry. I was shamed, without even being able to adequately explain my actions. It didn’t make sense to anyone, let alone me. I was sullied in their eyes, no longer a known entity, but something dangerous and strange.
I’ve blocked out most of the memories of what happened after that. I managed to avoid Susan during most of that summer, but the next year, school became a nightmare. She contracted glandular fever towards the end of the school year, which was a blessing for me. I remember hearing that she was so weak that her mother had to bath her.
I was not a sophisticated type. Even before the birthday party, I didn’t pursue S, or seek her out, as is common when people are in the grip of infatuation. In this small town, we all knew where each other lived, but I had never been to S’s house. The infatuation had long disappeared, submerged beneath the combined weight of my bewilderment and misery. Now I imagined going to her house, pushing her head under the water and holding it there until the bubbles stopped.
It’s literally at this moment, twenty-five years later that I begin to realize S may have been smarter, or savvier, than I ever gave her credit for. Certainly, she found her target every time with me, and I was so innocent, I had no knowledge or prior warning of what she would aim for next. S seems to have known quite well, what she thought of me – dirty, hairy and perverted.
I once wandered into the change rooms before PE, to discover to my shock, that S and her crowd was already in there. I took another bite of my apple, and nearly choked, as her harpy’s voice berated me for being so dirty that I would eat my lunch in the toilets.
When she started taunting me with the gorilla tag I begged my mother to let me start shaving my legs. I hated the whole process. I didn’t want anything to do with my misbegotten body. One Saturday afternoon I sat in the bath and doggedly dragged the razor with such ragged pressure up my shin that the bathwater turned shockingly red with my blood and I had to shower whilst attempting to staunch the bleeding so that no one would find out. I bore those scars for about fifteen years before they faded – and that was long after I had stopped shaving my legs for good.
A new girl started at the school, and was immediately taken under the shelter of S’s malevolent wings. She still wore her uniform from her previous school. Her dress was far too short, and she would sit on the benches at lunchtimes, rubbing and rubbing the section of her legs between the hem of her dress and her knees. When S gleefully claimed that I had been looking at this girl’s legs, I wasn’t sure why I felt so shamed, but I felt it anyway.
S was merciless in avenging her honour. I had crossed a boundary into a new country where I was to be persecuted for the rest of time. During my childhood, I always had close friendships, and being a naturally studious and motivated learner, I had been popular with nearly all of my teachers. I hadn’t experienced such severe ostracism. I wasn’t brought up to be a pariah. The shock was too much to bear.
I took myself off and tried to find some other friends. Even the gentle, longhaired girls who belonged to some variety of Brethren background could not suffer my presence in their midst. S made sure my reputation caught up with me. So I tried to stay alone at school. This was difficult. I found it was necessary not only to be alone, but also to become invisible. I acquired this skill by virtue of necessity.
I began to have nightmares. There was something dangerous and corrupt in me. My nightmares were all about my need to protect those around me, from my influence. My sister was in particular danger, and I pushed her as far away from me as I dared.
My hitherto best friend was a dear and loyal soul. She weathered my bizarre behaviour and maintained her earnest desire to be my friend, though I did my best not to corrupt her with my presence. From her point of view, I was still welcome to join her and her friends at school, at band, and at Guides, but I could not feel welcome or safe in any place where S was.
So after two years, when we left that town, I tried to leave all of that behind me. My spirit was crushed beneath the weight of my despair. There was something very wrong with me, and there was not a damned thing I could do about it. I could not even name what it was, though the corruption was like a vivid, ugly stain across my face that everyone else could see. I could only stare out of my sullen green eyes in utter incomprehension, and strive to be invisible.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
My Own Private Xenophobia
My Own Private Xenophobia
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
Xenophobia - a fear of foreigners or strangers
A question for this week - to what extent are my attitudes and prejudices governed by my fear of the strange?
This question can only arise if I subject myself to the same level of scrutiny to which I subject and judge others. It emerges as I wallow in a cloud of grief that envelopes me from time to time, like a cloak lent to me by some friendly stranger to shelter me from the the indifference of those who allow my tears to fall unremarked.
Why a friendly stranger? The tears are mine. My griefs run both deep and wide. Under this cloak I can let them flow in private. I can honour my grief, express my sorrow with no expectation that others will allow me this unimpeded. A friendly stranger indeed. I know no one who suffers other people's tears easily.
Another question - to what extent must 'safe space' be constituted within exclusivity?
This question arises from my intense personal need for safe space, a need which I believe I share with every other human being. But what may be safe for me is not the same as what is safe for others. So to what extent can I reasonably expect that my need be answered?
I first encountered the concept of 'safe space' when as a university student, I was introduced to the Women's Room on my campus. I readily took advantage of this room for study and time out. This was well before I was a wife, a mother, a divorcee or a lesbian. I was intrigued by the idea, and I welcomed this haven. Even though I had no words for verbalising why I felt so refreshed by spending time in the Women's Room, I felt acutely the difference between being in a male dominated sphere and being in a female exclusive sphere. It took me many more years to appreciate the insight, strength and intelligence that must have been required for the women who first set out to carve their own space on campus.
The idea of a Women's Officer was similar. For quite a while I didn't know why I thought it was a good idea for there to be a women's officer in the Student Union, but I was glad that she existed.
Later, I noticed there were new positions, new categories, some of which I could enter, others that excluded me. Suddenly there was an Environment Officer, a Sexuality Officer...
As well, my personal journey of discovery coincided with the merging and transformation on university campuses around Australia of women's rooms, women's departments, women's studies into shared spaces. At the university I attended for example, Women's Studies disappeared into Gender Studies, into Gender and Labour Studies. In other places, Women's Studies was similarly subsumed by something called Queer Studies. These merges have not been popular in all quarters. There are as strong arguments to support the separation of Women's Studies from Queer Studies or Labour Studies, as to support their subsumption.
When I was abused and then separated and then raped I discovered to my chagrin and outrage that there was no safe space on this planet. Not for me. I learned to live with the feeling that danger was ever present.
I imagine this experience is similar to the experience of desensitisation that people go through when they live in a place where there is constant warfare, under the threat that at any moment, they might be blown to pieces, or see someone next to them annihilated in an instant.
I hope it is not perceived as insensitive for me to compare these two human experiences. But if safe space is something which every human being requires; if safe spaces are a human right, than it is important to explore what happens to people when safe spaces are not available.
Because I am a mother of a son and a daughter, lesbian separatism was never something to which I felt I had access. Although on the one hand I felt far freer and safer in the company of only women, there was no way I would abandon my son in the expectation that he would grow up to abuse his position as a white male. With hindsight, I have come to appreciate how lucky I have been to avoid the excesses of separatist attitude.
And again, this insight was not gained without due pain. When I left the mixed company of idealistic patronising misogynist racist peace activists and entered a female-exclusive peace group, it was with an expectation that we would all treat one another as we expected to be treated; that justice, sweetness and light would prevail; that the burden of hard work that was required to mend the world would be a burden shared amongst friends, not a matter for endless contention and the obsessive controlling power of consensus blocking that was the favourite ploy of male peace activists who were afraid of taking action.
How my mighty expectations were brought low is already a matter of public record. It's my naivete that makes me cringe to remember it these days. And yet - the promise was there, the possibility still hovers endlessly on the horizon - it is power that corrupts and shatters love and goodwill and courage and perverts them into the same old same old patterns of exclusion and victimisation time and time again, whatever the gender of those who seek to use their positions of power and control others.
My next foray was when I took on the mantle of Reform Judaism. Here is my home, I thought! Here I can be myself, I can explore my heritage, I can mend the torn shreds of my secret longings to reconnect with my past and paint a colourful, positive picture for my children of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.
The synagogue didn't approve of me or my children. I lacked both the funds and the chutzpah to convince them of our worth. I tried to give in kind, but got rejection after rejection in return. This was no safe space for me, or my children.
I went to a LesFest soon after I came out as a lesbian. At last! Safe space! Women's only space! But what on earth is a woman born woman? It took a few years for me to understand what this meant.
Perhaps I'm a slow learner? Perhaps it's my natural optimism that prevents the cynicism that would pop up like those annoying balloons on my monitor to ensure I didn't stray from the stoic path of realism. I don't suppose I've ever lived in anyone else's "real world". Mine must be very different from the norm.
On the other hand, lesbian space has come to be very special to me. The world I inhabit in my everyday allows me to be myself so long as I stick to the paths and keep off the grass. Within reason, I can be surprising. I can speak out. I can come out sometimes, and expose myself as a lesbian. I prefer to pretend that I am out, when in fact most of the time no one questions my sexual identity. And that can be quite convenient. It feels almost safe, in a funny kind of way.
My days are spent in this heteronormative world, where I live a kind of half-life. Although I do not feel constricted or confined to the closet, nor am I free to relate to most of the other women in my world, and certainly NOT to any of the men, in any way except as an apparent heterosexual.
This is familiar to me. I have adapted to living in this way. It begins to burden me only when I have no respite. No lesbian safe space. No lesbian company.
And this is where the question of my own private xenophobia begins to play out.
As a woman, what must I do to find women's only space some of the time?
As a lesbian, what must I do to find lesbian only space - just occasionally?
Is there something wrong with me that I define lesbian safe space as a space where lesbians are free to gather and socialise where we do not have to suffer the endless gaze of heterosexual men?
This week I sought lesbian only space at a public restaurant. It was Adelaide's monthly lesbian dinner, at a gay-friendly restaurant, on the first Friday of the month. This has been a long-running event in a city which boasts very few regular public lesbian get-togethers.
Yes! This dinner was at a public restuarant.
No! We have no rights over who dines at this restaurant on any particular night.
Yes! Restaurant management reserves the right to open its doors to whomever it pleases, in order to turn a profit.
For me, it has become an unfriendly, unwelcoming place to be. On this occasion, as well as the lesbians, there were two other groups there. One was a group of men who were attending a men's health conference. Interestingly, they did not impinge on lesbian space. The second group was a mixed bunch of people who are into BDSM.
Perhaps this is where my xenophobia and prejudices kick in? I freely admit - BDSM does not attract or interest me in the slightest. In fact, I find the idea repugnant. I'm not interested in being converted.
It was my observation that this group of people used the restaurant space to their full advantage with no consideration for the needs of anyone else in the restaurant that evening. We lesbians were relegated to a few tables into which we were packed like sardines, trying earnestly to communicate and socialise as though the BDSM men and women were not loudly and rudely flaunting their presence and impinging on our space.
Their arrogance was all the more profound because it felt as though there were a quality that they were enjoying it all the more because they were opressing a weaker group and getting off on this fact, rather than it simply being a quality of relief and refreshment to be gathering for once, in a BDSM safe space.
Which brings me back to the question of exclusivity. It seems that for me, safe space is constituted equally by what is not there, as what is present. In order for me to feel safe, something must be lacking.
My impulse is to reject the possibility of finding safe space at Out4Tea anymore, since the first Friday of every month is now marked not only by the lesbian dinner at Caos Cafe, but the BDSM dinner in the same small space.
There are probably places where we would like to all be weirdos together, safe and free and happy in the fact that we are different from the mainstream, but just because we are two facets of queer does not mean we all get along like one big happy family, even if we ought to. Just because neither group is heteronormative is not enough of a bond to make all of us feel safe in the presence of one another.
Perhaps it is my xenophobia that prevents my embracing the presence of queerness in all its forms as constituting safe space for me? How can I own this fact, without being blamed for it? Am I automatically at fault because of my attitude?
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
Xenophobia - a fear of foreigners or strangers
A question for this week - to what extent are my attitudes and prejudices governed by my fear of the strange?
This question can only arise if I subject myself to the same level of scrutiny to which I subject and judge others. It emerges as I wallow in a cloud of grief that envelopes me from time to time, like a cloak lent to me by some friendly stranger to shelter me from the the indifference of those who allow my tears to fall unremarked.
Why a friendly stranger? The tears are mine. My griefs run both deep and wide. Under this cloak I can let them flow in private. I can honour my grief, express my sorrow with no expectation that others will allow me this unimpeded. A friendly stranger indeed. I know no one who suffers other people's tears easily.
Another question - to what extent must 'safe space' be constituted within exclusivity?
This question arises from my intense personal need for safe space, a need which I believe I share with every other human being. But what may be safe for me is not the same as what is safe for others. So to what extent can I reasonably expect that my need be answered?
I first encountered the concept of 'safe space' when as a university student, I was introduced to the Women's Room on my campus. I readily took advantage of this room for study and time out. This was well before I was a wife, a mother, a divorcee or a lesbian. I was intrigued by the idea, and I welcomed this haven. Even though I had no words for verbalising why I felt so refreshed by spending time in the Women's Room, I felt acutely the difference between being in a male dominated sphere and being in a female exclusive sphere. It took me many more years to appreciate the insight, strength and intelligence that must have been required for the women who first set out to carve their own space on campus.
The idea of a Women's Officer was similar. For quite a while I didn't know why I thought it was a good idea for there to be a women's officer in the Student Union, but I was glad that she existed.
Later, I noticed there were new positions, new categories, some of which I could enter, others that excluded me. Suddenly there was an Environment Officer, a Sexuality Officer...
As well, my personal journey of discovery coincided with the merging and transformation on university campuses around Australia of women's rooms, women's departments, women's studies into shared spaces. At the university I attended for example, Women's Studies disappeared into Gender Studies, into Gender and Labour Studies. In other places, Women's Studies was similarly subsumed by something called Queer Studies. These merges have not been popular in all quarters. There are as strong arguments to support the separation of Women's Studies from Queer Studies or Labour Studies, as to support their subsumption.
When I was abused and then separated and then raped I discovered to my chagrin and outrage that there was no safe space on this planet. Not for me. I learned to live with the feeling that danger was ever present.
I imagine this experience is similar to the experience of desensitisation that people go through when they live in a place where there is constant warfare, under the threat that at any moment, they might be blown to pieces, or see someone next to them annihilated in an instant.
I hope it is not perceived as insensitive for me to compare these two human experiences. But if safe space is something which every human being requires; if safe spaces are a human right, than it is important to explore what happens to people when safe spaces are not available.
Because I am a mother of a son and a daughter, lesbian separatism was never something to which I felt I had access. Although on the one hand I felt far freer and safer in the company of only women, there was no way I would abandon my son in the expectation that he would grow up to abuse his position as a white male. With hindsight, I have come to appreciate how lucky I have been to avoid the excesses of separatist attitude.
And again, this insight was not gained without due pain. When I left the mixed company of idealistic patronising misogynist racist peace activists and entered a female-exclusive peace group, it was with an expectation that we would all treat one another as we expected to be treated; that justice, sweetness and light would prevail; that the burden of hard work that was required to mend the world would be a burden shared amongst friends, not a matter for endless contention and the obsessive controlling power of consensus blocking that was the favourite ploy of male peace activists who were afraid of taking action.
How my mighty expectations were brought low is already a matter of public record. It's my naivete that makes me cringe to remember it these days. And yet - the promise was there, the possibility still hovers endlessly on the horizon - it is power that corrupts and shatters love and goodwill and courage and perverts them into the same old same old patterns of exclusion and victimisation time and time again, whatever the gender of those who seek to use their positions of power and control others.
My next foray was when I took on the mantle of Reform Judaism. Here is my home, I thought! Here I can be myself, I can explore my heritage, I can mend the torn shreds of my secret longings to reconnect with my past and paint a colourful, positive picture for my children of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.
The synagogue didn't approve of me or my children. I lacked both the funds and the chutzpah to convince them of our worth. I tried to give in kind, but got rejection after rejection in return. This was no safe space for me, or my children.
I went to a LesFest soon after I came out as a lesbian. At last! Safe space! Women's only space! But what on earth is a woman born woman? It took a few years for me to understand what this meant.
Perhaps I'm a slow learner? Perhaps it's my natural optimism that prevents the cynicism that would pop up like those annoying balloons on my monitor to ensure I didn't stray from the stoic path of realism. I don't suppose I've ever lived in anyone else's "real world". Mine must be very different from the norm.
On the other hand, lesbian space has come to be very special to me. The world I inhabit in my everyday allows me to be myself so long as I stick to the paths and keep off the grass. Within reason, I can be surprising. I can speak out. I can come out sometimes, and expose myself as a lesbian. I prefer to pretend that I am out, when in fact most of the time no one questions my sexual identity. And that can be quite convenient. It feels almost safe, in a funny kind of way.
My days are spent in this heteronormative world, where I live a kind of half-life. Although I do not feel constricted or confined to the closet, nor am I free to relate to most of the other women in my world, and certainly NOT to any of the men, in any way except as an apparent heterosexual.
This is familiar to me. I have adapted to living in this way. It begins to burden me only when I have no respite. No lesbian safe space. No lesbian company.
And this is where the question of my own private xenophobia begins to play out.
As a woman, what must I do to find women's only space some of the time?
As a lesbian, what must I do to find lesbian only space - just occasionally?
Is there something wrong with me that I define lesbian safe space as a space where lesbians are free to gather and socialise where we do not have to suffer the endless gaze of heterosexual men?
This week I sought lesbian only space at a public restaurant. It was Adelaide's monthly lesbian dinner, at a gay-friendly restaurant, on the first Friday of the month. This has been a long-running event in a city which boasts very few regular public lesbian get-togethers.
Yes! This dinner was at a public restuarant.
No! We have no rights over who dines at this restaurant on any particular night.
Yes! Restaurant management reserves the right to open its doors to whomever it pleases, in order to turn a profit.
For me, it has become an unfriendly, unwelcoming place to be. On this occasion, as well as the lesbians, there were two other groups there. One was a group of men who were attending a men's health conference. Interestingly, they did not impinge on lesbian space. The second group was a mixed bunch of people who are into BDSM.
Perhaps this is where my xenophobia and prejudices kick in? I freely admit - BDSM does not attract or interest me in the slightest. In fact, I find the idea repugnant. I'm not interested in being converted.
It was my observation that this group of people used the restaurant space to their full advantage with no consideration for the needs of anyone else in the restaurant that evening. We lesbians were relegated to a few tables into which we were packed like sardines, trying earnestly to communicate and socialise as though the BDSM men and women were not loudly and rudely flaunting their presence and impinging on our space.
Their arrogance was all the more profound because it felt as though there were a quality that they were enjoying it all the more because they were opressing a weaker group and getting off on this fact, rather than it simply being a quality of relief and refreshment to be gathering for once, in a BDSM safe space.
Which brings me back to the question of exclusivity. It seems that for me, safe space is constituted equally by what is not there, as what is present. In order for me to feel safe, something must be lacking.
My impulse is to reject the possibility of finding safe space at Out4Tea anymore, since the first Friday of every month is now marked not only by the lesbian dinner at Caos Cafe, but the BDSM dinner in the same small space.
There are probably places where we would like to all be weirdos together, safe and free and happy in the fact that we are different from the mainstream, but just because we are two facets of queer does not mean we all get along like one big happy family, even if we ought to. Just because neither group is heteronormative is not enough of a bond to make all of us feel safe in the presence of one another.
Perhaps it is my xenophobia that prevents my embracing the presence of queerness in all its forms as constituting safe space for me? How can I own this fact, without being blamed for it? Am I automatically at fault because of my attitude?
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