The La La La Factor
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
I heard a while ago about a method of taking one’s mind off the ickiness of what one is having to witness or having to do. Whether it is dealing with excrement, or other gunk in unwanted places, or trying to mask the sound or the smell or the sight of something unpleasant, all you have to do is loudly say “La La La La La” repeatedly until the distressing phenomenon has disappeared or finished.
This is what I wanted to do a week ago when confronted with blatant rampant heterosexuality being flaunted in my face. I was in somebody else’s house and there was nowhere I could go really, to escape it. I tried to be polite and simply turn my attention and my gaze elsewhere – certainly there were more than three people in the room. The man seemed to take possessive and powerful pride in his chosen mate and she was all wrapped up in adoration of his person. Really it’s quite boring put into words, but all I could think was La La La La La let this stop and let them go be private someplace where I don’t have to see.
It’s not so much the sour grapes factor. I didn’t wish to conduct myself in a similarly amorous manner with my chosen mate. Conscious that we were already on enemy territory, taken in as a matter of duty more than because our hosts wanted us to be there, we were very careful not to draw too much attention to our deviant state of homosexuality. I did start to wonder why I was being treated to this lavish display. I suspect part of their enjoyment was in making me feel uncomfortable.
La La La La can you imagine what would have happened had I reached out and taken up her hand in mine for simple comfort? If she’d gathered me up into her arm or kissed me for heaven’s sake, on the cheek if not the lips? We’d have been accused of flaunting our degenerate state and we’d have been asking for trouble.
Of course I didn’t say anything audibly. I just kept thinking La La La this is so gross La La La take me away please La La La why are they so unspeakably selfish and so unspeakably rude and La La La what am I doing in this place? I don’t belong here.
I began to analyse their (hetero)sexual behaviour in the context that these two young people are not married and perhaps were putting on this elaborate and La La La La disgusting display in public because of their cultural context. Perhaps they were carefully going just as far as they could go in front of us to prove that they weren’t breaking the covenant or breaking the unspoken expectation that premarital sex is a no-no? Perhaps this was all they could do for want of privacy to enjoy themselves and their unmarried state?
I may have it all completely wrong. To some extent it also felt like everyone there was in La La Land. No one was real. No one was engaging with another person on a deep and thoughtful level – we were all skating along the surface like small water bugs who fear getting sucked under and losing our ability to escape into the blandness of two-dimensions.
Anyway it’s all beside the point really. Maybe everyone there around the dinner table was going La La La La La about the fact that I was sitting there with the woman I married in their presence several months ago? We were of course there because we’d invited ourselves over to try to break through the rejection and the silence enforced by an older generation unwilling to even grudge us room to breathe, space to exist, a chance to prove ourselves…
I tried to raise this over dinner – tried to turn the conversation to a topic that I thought was relevant to everyone present. At that point every person at the table except my Beloved turned to the person next to them and went loudly La La La La – or at least that’s what it sounded like to me. No one acknowledged what I had said, let alone engaged with it. I had broken a rule without even thinking. What was that rule?
You shall not challenge the older generation for fear that they will be driven out of their comfort zone. We must at all costs preserve their comfort for fear that otherwise they shall make things very uncomfortable for us.
You shall keep yourself small and meek because you are not deserving of attention or care or kindness.
You shall not speak of matters that concern you because if you do speak of these matters others will be forced to either take positions against you or to be complicit and culpable in your wrongdoing.
You shall above all be nice.
La La La La
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Knife's Edge
Knife's Edge
(c) Melina Magdalena 2009
I sit poised and frozen
Astride that cruel steel blade
Awaiting the split
Second when everything
Changes and nothing
Can be reversed – ever!
Dividing then from then
Transient as a chalk circle
Eternal as an inscription
On the book of life
Acceptable as is anything
When one lacks the choice
Even to imagine another outcome.
My hands already rubbed raw
From futile clutching
At saltwater currents
Which bear away
Irretrievably those golden
Grains of sand
That represent time – my time
Spilled wastefully
Like milk across a dirty floor.
Inside my chest
Behind my breast
My heart beats strong and slow
No nervous flutter
Betrays my inner disquiet
Mistrust, fear, despair, hopes concealed
Within the golden egg
Of my heart’s desires.
What will be
Gory mess, scattered scales,
Broken bones, sliced muscles
Severed vessel
Will be that’s all there is.
That’s all there ever was.
Longing for quick resolution
Transformation without pain
Is a cheat’s way out.
To gain legs
I must go through this
Have legs, will walk
Means accepting the price,
Heavy though that price may be.
What I wanted
What I want
What I worked towards
For so long
On the wisp of pure conjecture
For a promise now
Emptied of fulfilment
Like the rainbow filament strand
That connects my DNA
With past present future
Figures only slightly
In the equation
Of what I might attain.
Who do I think I am
– God – ?
(c) Melina Magdalena 2009
I sit poised and frozen
Astride that cruel steel blade
Awaiting the split
Second when everything
Changes and nothing
Can be reversed – ever!
Dividing then from then
Transient as a chalk circle
Eternal as an inscription
On the book of life
Acceptable as is anything
When one lacks the choice
Even to imagine another outcome.
My hands already rubbed raw
From futile clutching
At saltwater currents
Which bear away
Irretrievably those golden
Grains of sand
That represent time – my time
Spilled wastefully
Like milk across a dirty floor.
Inside my chest
Behind my breast
My heart beats strong and slow
No nervous flutter
Betrays my inner disquiet
Mistrust, fear, despair, hopes concealed
Within the golden egg
Of my heart’s desires.
What will be
Gory mess, scattered scales,
Broken bones, sliced muscles
Severed vessel
Will be that’s all there is.
That’s all there ever was.
Longing for quick resolution
Transformation without pain
Is a cheat’s way out.
To gain legs
I must go through this
Have legs, will walk
Means accepting the price,
Heavy though that price may be.
What I wanted
What I want
What I worked towards
For so long
On the wisp of pure conjecture
For a promise now
Emptied of fulfilment
Like the rainbow filament strand
That connects my DNA
With past present future
Figures only slightly
In the equation
Of what I might attain.
Who do I think I am
– God – ?
Friday, May 15, 2009
Of Dead Cats and Getting to Know the Natives
Of Dead Cats and Getting to Know the Natives
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
I am enjoying living in Kilburn. Outside our kitchen window is a large grevillea tree. When we first moved in we were a little dismayed by the tree. It is large, and was dominating the lemon tree which we considered to be of more use. We were not even sure what kind of tree it was, until my father took a cutting to a local nursery and returned with their verdict. A grevillea tree is a native and – what’s more, it is a flowering native. Clearly it does well in Kilburn. Soon after we moved in, small clusters of red blossoms began to appear as if at random, along its branches and at the tips. There is a small colony of honeyeaters (also native) which make their home in the grevillea tree. It is pleasant to stand at the sink and gaze at them as they flitter confidently about in the tree.
We did prune it back considerably during the last school holidays, mainly to give the lemon tree some chance at revival. It did the lemon tree no end of good and we even have lemon blossom at last, as well as a few ripening fruits. All is well, in our back yard.
Last Thursday we were sitting on our IKEA lounge under the window, yawning and chatting and generally winding down for the day. A knock came at the door, and it was our neighbour – two houses down. He brought us the unwelcome news that there was a dead cat on the corner. We looked out and saw the soft, dark heap. My heart gave a leap – after having already lost one of our cats since moving here, I hoped it wasn’t my Ripple. We walked over and saw a large, soft black and white cat, and I recognised it (I thought) as belonging to our across the street neighbour. We didn’t know what to do, and decided in the end to leave it until the morning for identification purposes. It seemed to have been struck by a car and to have crawled across to the safety of the street corner.
The neighbour who brought us the news is a native to Kilburn. He is one of those people who makes it his business to know what is going on in his street. He has a wealth of knowledge and a kind heard to go with it, so we don’t feel too impinged upon by his visits. His long experience in the area has given him a healthy perspective on what to expect from those of his community. This is useful for us, as we try to eke some credibility as new residents of Kilburn.
I spent some time next morning out by the back gate with the handy pruning saw, chopping up the grevillea and lemon tree branches that we’d removed from the trees several weeks earlier. They were too long and unwieldy for the bin, and we had nowhere to store them. So I reduced them to usable lengths – we have an 18th birthday bonfire coming up in October, stored them in the shed, and tidied up the area around our back gate. The cat was still there.
With no excuses left, I took my fork and went into the front yard to continue weeding our flower patch. Most of our front yard will be nativised (take a look at this website: http://www.backyards4wildlife.com.au/index.php?page=butterflies), but we’ve already planted a frangipani tree and some mint in the square outside the lounge room window. It’s a long job, clearing grass, and I want to try digging it out first, before simply poisoning the stuff. We’ve already got poppies and cornflowers sprouting in the area I cleared a couple of weeks ago.
Our across the street neighbour came out of her house, through her gate and across the street. My heart sank. “I just wanted to let you know,” she said, pointing to the cat, “that’s Nemo.” She had arranged for the council to pick him up and take him away, and turned down my offer of burying him in her back yard. I kept on digging until the council man came, and then I abandoned my silent vigil and put away the fork for another day.
We took this neighbour a home-decorated Easter egg several weeks ago. And she brought me some homegrown chrysanthemums out of her garden on Mother’s Day. Very sweet.
We were rather selective about whom to give our Easter eggs to. The Afghani family with whom we share a party wall, received some, of course. We’re hoping that over time we will get to know them and that they will become confident to share some of their culture with us. And our two houses down neighbour as well.
Since moving here, we’ve become aware of some of the issues that embroil this community. Groups of shiftless youths, some white, some black, some multicoloured, roam the streets from time to time. Clearly, they need something to occupy themselves. Our house was home to a drug-dealing prostitute before the public housing people put it on the market. There was a shooting here a while back, and there have been several murders in the suburb over the past couple of years. It’s generally been from native Kilburnites that we’ve received the response – you bought a house in Kilburn? Why?! Didn’t you know what it was like?
Our yard – front and back – is infested with couch grass. I think it is couch. My son scoffed at me recently when I mentioned it. Did he say it is kikuyu? I always imagined couch grass to be the sly, narrow-leafed grass that creeps its way in and takes hold before you even notice it. That’s not what we have. We’ve got the bold as brass bright green thick-leafed runner grass that pokes its nose out of freshly-weeded soil hours after you put away the fork. It is thriving here, and its long runners and juicy roots seem to be everywhere I stick my fork in and pull.
People do think we're a little crazy to think we can eradicate this grass by manual labour. My father has said patronisingly that we need to be left to make our own mistakes. He, like others is a keen promulgator of poison. We may yet need to resort to that.
There is a different ground-cover that we’ve noticed in the neighbourhood. It appears on the odd nature strip, as well as in our back yard. I was worried at first that it was three-corner jack, or some other kind of thorny creeper. It looks a little like creeping thyme, with small dark-green leaves a little grey on the underside, and tiny pink and mauve flowers. I think it’s very pretty actually. We took some to a nursery for identification, only to be told it is a weed and nursery folk are not interested in weeds. We tried again at another nursery and after asking friends, have decided it is a kind of saltbush, and does not produce thorns. So we’re keen to help it take over the areas where at the moment, the grass usurper reigns supreme.
However, the vegetable patch must naturally take some precedence, even over the native saltbush. It was while trying to dig up a patch of the stuff that I discovered its rooting nature to be quite different from the runner grass. Like everything else, our vege patch is a work in progress. At present it is comprised of two long and narrow beds (1.5m x 2.5m), with sleepers on either long side as the borders. The first one runs East – West, parallel to the side fence in the back corner. The second is splayed a little, running North-North-East – South-South-West, with the western end meeting at the corner of the first. Eventually, there will be six beds, each with a triangular path separating them, like a semi-circle.
Instead of sending out runners here there and everywhere, as the colonising grass does, the saltbush seems to grow from one very long, very thick, deep taproot. It spreads above the surface, but not below. I didn’t realise this until after cutting it back with the secateurs to make room for the vege patch, I realised I would need to dig one plant out completely. The fork, alas, was not much help. I got out the spade, but it would not cut that root. So I found myself on my knees with an old, blunt hatchet, chipping away at this root. The root was twisted and fibrous. It felt rather awful to be destroying it with such a blunt instrument. Perhaps next time I’ll sharpen the hatchet before I try this.
While digging and chipping and planning, I began to think about the process of developing our yard and creating our home. We have fairly clear ideas about why we chose Kilburn and how we hope to live here. We don’t mind at all, becoming part of its living history, as the colour of the community changes and transforms. We don’t mind coming into contact with its past history and the characters who inhabit its past. We are keen to be part of its future. We want our back yard to be productive, colourful and vibrant – to reflect in short, our inner lives, which is no small ambition.
I keep thinking about the native saltbush and the runner grass invader. It’s interesting that the native can survive and spread over the surface of a large area, through one large root. It’s almost as though this plant does not want to affect the soil beneath it, but just live cautiously, quietly, mindfully upon the surface. The grass on the other hand, behaves in a very different way. It pops up continuously, and sends its roots wastefully, capriciously in all directions, as though by doing so, it is guaranteed that part of it will succeed, somewhere, even if the rest is dug up or poisoned.
It reminds me of the different ways of different peoples. Some peoples recede into the background, doing their own thing, quietly getting on with life in an undemanding way. Others are much louder, more flamboyant – not only giving of themselves unasked and often unsolicited, but unaware of the impact they are having on their environment.
Where do we sit, along that continuum of extreme opposites? Are we not the enthusiastic invaders of this neighbourhood, determined to move in and make our mark? I’ve long considered myself to be essentially homeless as far as having sovereignty over a little piece of earth is concerned. I’m still getting to know myself as a homeowner. At the same time, I’m a homebody, and I enjoy pottering about, working on our garden, setting up and keeping house. I am drawn to my metaphor of living quietly and gently – not impacting or damaging this place that we have moved to. Perhaps it’s just one more thing to keep in mind as we continue our work in creating our home.
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
I am enjoying living in Kilburn. Outside our kitchen window is a large grevillea tree. When we first moved in we were a little dismayed by the tree. It is large, and was dominating the lemon tree which we considered to be of more use. We were not even sure what kind of tree it was, until my father took a cutting to a local nursery and returned with their verdict. A grevillea tree is a native and – what’s more, it is a flowering native. Clearly it does well in Kilburn. Soon after we moved in, small clusters of red blossoms began to appear as if at random, along its branches and at the tips. There is a small colony of honeyeaters (also native) which make their home in the grevillea tree. It is pleasant to stand at the sink and gaze at them as they flitter confidently about in the tree.
We did prune it back considerably during the last school holidays, mainly to give the lemon tree some chance at revival. It did the lemon tree no end of good and we even have lemon blossom at last, as well as a few ripening fruits. All is well, in our back yard.
Last Thursday we were sitting on our IKEA lounge under the window, yawning and chatting and generally winding down for the day. A knock came at the door, and it was our neighbour – two houses down. He brought us the unwelcome news that there was a dead cat on the corner. We looked out and saw the soft, dark heap. My heart gave a leap – after having already lost one of our cats since moving here, I hoped it wasn’t my Ripple. We walked over and saw a large, soft black and white cat, and I recognised it (I thought) as belonging to our across the street neighbour. We didn’t know what to do, and decided in the end to leave it until the morning for identification purposes. It seemed to have been struck by a car and to have crawled across to the safety of the street corner.
The neighbour who brought us the news is a native to Kilburn. He is one of those people who makes it his business to know what is going on in his street. He has a wealth of knowledge and a kind heard to go with it, so we don’t feel too impinged upon by his visits. His long experience in the area has given him a healthy perspective on what to expect from those of his community. This is useful for us, as we try to eke some credibility as new residents of Kilburn.
I spent some time next morning out by the back gate with the handy pruning saw, chopping up the grevillea and lemon tree branches that we’d removed from the trees several weeks earlier. They were too long and unwieldy for the bin, and we had nowhere to store them. So I reduced them to usable lengths – we have an 18th birthday bonfire coming up in October, stored them in the shed, and tidied up the area around our back gate. The cat was still there.
With no excuses left, I took my fork and went into the front yard to continue weeding our flower patch. Most of our front yard will be nativised (take a look at this website: http://www.backyards4wildlife.com.au/index.php?page=butterflies), but we’ve already planted a frangipani tree and some mint in the square outside the lounge room window. It’s a long job, clearing grass, and I want to try digging it out first, before simply poisoning the stuff. We’ve already got poppies and cornflowers sprouting in the area I cleared a couple of weeks ago.
Our across the street neighbour came out of her house, through her gate and across the street. My heart sank. “I just wanted to let you know,” she said, pointing to the cat, “that’s Nemo.” She had arranged for the council to pick him up and take him away, and turned down my offer of burying him in her back yard. I kept on digging until the council man came, and then I abandoned my silent vigil and put away the fork for another day.
We took this neighbour a home-decorated Easter egg several weeks ago. And she brought me some homegrown chrysanthemums out of her garden on Mother’s Day. Very sweet.
We were rather selective about whom to give our Easter eggs to. The Afghani family with whom we share a party wall, received some, of course. We’re hoping that over time we will get to know them and that they will become confident to share some of their culture with us. And our two houses down neighbour as well.
Since moving here, we’ve become aware of some of the issues that embroil this community. Groups of shiftless youths, some white, some black, some multicoloured, roam the streets from time to time. Clearly, they need something to occupy themselves. Our house was home to a drug-dealing prostitute before the public housing people put it on the market. There was a shooting here a while back, and there have been several murders in the suburb over the past couple of years. It’s generally been from native Kilburnites that we’ve received the response – you bought a house in Kilburn? Why?! Didn’t you know what it was like?
Our yard – front and back – is infested with couch grass. I think it is couch. My son scoffed at me recently when I mentioned it. Did he say it is kikuyu? I always imagined couch grass to be the sly, narrow-leafed grass that creeps its way in and takes hold before you even notice it. That’s not what we have. We’ve got the bold as brass bright green thick-leafed runner grass that pokes its nose out of freshly-weeded soil hours after you put away the fork. It is thriving here, and its long runners and juicy roots seem to be everywhere I stick my fork in and pull.
People do think we're a little crazy to think we can eradicate this grass by manual labour. My father has said patronisingly that we need to be left to make our own mistakes. He, like others is a keen promulgator of poison. We may yet need to resort to that.
There is a different ground-cover that we’ve noticed in the neighbourhood. It appears on the odd nature strip, as well as in our back yard. I was worried at first that it was three-corner jack, or some other kind of thorny creeper. It looks a little like creeping thyme, with small dark-green leaves a little grey on the underside, and tiny pink and mauve flowers. I think it’s very pretty actually. We took some to a nursery for identification, only to be told it is a weed and nursery folk are not interested in weeds. We tried again at another nursery and after asking friends, have decided it is a kind of saltbush, and does not produce thorns. So we’re keen to help it take over the areas where at the moment, the grass usurper reigns supreme. However, the vegetable patch must naturally take some precedence, even over the native saltbush. It was while trying to dig up a patch of the stuff that I discovered its rooting nature to be quite different from the runner grass. Like everything else, our vege patch is a work in progress. At present it is comprised of two long and narrow beds (1.5m x 2.5m), with sleepers on either long side as the borders. The first one runs East – West, parallel to the side fence in the back corner. The second is splayed a little, running North-North-East – South-South-West, with the western end meeting at the corner of the first. Eventually, there will be six beds, each with a triangular path separating them, like a semi-circle.
Instead of sending out runners here there and everywhere, as the colonising grass does, the saltbush seems to grow from one very long, very thick, deep taproot. It spreads above the surface, but not below. I didn’t realise this until after cutting it back with the secateurs to make room for the vege patch, I realised I would need to dig one plant out completely. The fork, alas, was not much help. I got out the spade, but it would not cut that root. So I found myself on my knees with an old, blunt hatchet, chipping away at this root. The root was twisted and fibrous. It felt rather awful to be destroying it with such a blunt instrument. Perhaps next time I’ll sharpen the hatchet before I try this.
While digging and chipping and planning, I began to think about the process of developing our yard and creating our home. We have fairly clear ideas about why we chose Kilburn and how we hope to live here. We don’t mind at all, becoming part of its living history, as the colour of the community changes and transforms. We don’t mind coming into contact with its past history and the characters who inhabit its past. We are keen to be part of its future. We want our back yard to be productive, colourful and vibrant – to reflect in short, our inner lives, which is no small ambition.
I keep thinking about the native saltbush and the runner grass invader. It’s interesting that the native can survive and spread over the surface of a large area, through one large root. It’s almost as though this plant does not want to affect the soil beneath it, but just live cautiously, quietly, mindfully upon the surface. The grass on the other hand, behaves in a very different way. It pops up continuously, and sends its roots wastefully, capriciously in all directions, as though by doing so, it is guaranteed that part of it will succeed, somewhere, even if the rest is dug up or poisoned.
It reminds me of the different ways of different peoples. Some peoples recede into the background, doing their own thing, quietly getting on with life in an undemanding way. Others are much louder, more flamboyant – not only giving of themselves unasked and often unsolicited, but unaware of the impact they are having on their environment.
Where do we sit, along that continuum of extreme opposites? Are we not the enthusiastic invaders of this neighbourhood, determined to move in and make our mark? I’ve long considered myself to be essentially homeless as far as having sovereignty over a little piece of earth is concerned. I’m still getting to know myself as a homeowner. At the same time, I’m a homebody, and I enjoy pottering about, working on our garden, setting up and keeping house. I am drawn to my metaphor of living quietly and gently – not impacting or damaging this place that we have moved to. Perhaps it’s just one more thing to keep in mind as we continue our work in creating our home.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
birthday (2009)
Birthday (2009)
© Melina Magdalena (2009)
1.
Gestation
becoming
rotating
nesting
listening
growing
moving
beating
beckoning
being
2.
Birth (one)
Shocking, bleeding, mess
Sucking, pulling, contracting
Bones shift, so that I become
Time stops – until
I arrive
Heart pumps
Lungs fill
Mouth opens
3.
Enslaved
Coming to was like
A growing awareness
Of a gnawing pain
So chronic it had passed unnoticed
As we had passed our years, our lives, our every days
In bondage.
Awareness changed to shame
Stripped to bare bone
Naked indiscretions exposed
To all and sundry
With nothing at all
To clothe ourselves
Or hide our shame.
No dignity
No shelter
No pride
No selfhood
No safety
We strove mightily
Under these conditions
Until
One magical day
Shame changed to rage
Anger stirred our hearts
We rose up as one
And departed from that place.
4.
Birth (two)
The Red Sea was no easy passage.
Wild waters rising up on either side,
Meeting far above our heads.
We ran for our lives
Through the narrow strait
Never questioning
Our final destination
Never stopping
To look back
At what we were running from
We lost our breath
And still the pressure
Of all that weight of water
Pushed us further in, further out.
Our blood drained of oxygen
We breathed water once more
Until, reaching the distant shore,
Every bone softened,
Every sinew stretched to breaking point,
Every muscle burning,
Drowned of thoughts and understanding,
Collapsed amongst the reeds
Allowed our lungs to fill
With the dry desert air
The taste of freedom
Reborn
Despite our never having planned this, either, of course
These things just happen.
But why do they happen to us?
5.
40 years of wandering
And now…
wandering
for forty years
through this desert
calling, calling
knowing this for certain
that all my plaintive melancholy
is all for this – for I am homeless
Wandering for forty years
fording creeks of fire
wallowing through quicksand
begging it to pull me
Down Down Down
into the bowels of the earth
where my skin might disappear
and where my bones might melt
into some form of someone else’s making
wandering for forty years
without guidance
without language
without purpose
without direction
without companion
without –
whilst within dull numb deadness
grappled in vain with turmoil and chaos
wandering wondering wandering
lack my defining characteristic
6.
This desert
This wondrous desert sand
red of the blood in my body
yellow of my skin
sticks to the hairs on my leg
creating friction between me
and the world that I live in
This miraculous desert sky
enfolds me in its depth
shelters me in peace
creates a veil that hangs between me
and the world I live in
This mysterious desert water
fragrant and life-giving
a well-kept secret
nourishes me
comes up and goes under
And around the world I live in
This treacherous desert path
wending and winding
un-mappable and mutable
a bridge that is teaching me
about the world I live in
These desert stars are music makers
moving of their own accord
offering hope amidst an inky sky
illuminating sternly,
the world in I live in
This unforgiving desert sun
casts shadows
makes wrinkles
causes thirst
a necessary solo star amidst a cast of millions
makes possible the world I live in
7.
Death by dessication.
Death by dessication.
Is this not what each of us faces?
Climate change our collective doom?
Souls shrivel, ideas wither, feelings die
Without lifegiving water to nourish them.
Death by dessication.
It’s a slow and painful attrition.
From the inside out,
Marrow crumbles to dust
Creative juices evaporate into thin air
Air cuts its way in and out of our lungs
With no attenuating moisture
to soften the blow
of every breath
Blood ceases to flow
Tongue loses its saliva
Eyes lose their tears
We have nothing left to give.
But before the death comes the living.
Nourished by means
We are unable to comprehend
Manna falling from the sky
Like snowflakes raindrops hailstones
Bringing us briefly to life again
Each time, each time, each time.
Life of dubious value
When it is borne of sameness
Repetition hones the senses
Until senselessness becomes our only escape.
But life nonetheless
Is what propels us
Footsore
Heartsore
Longingly
And clueless
From one end
To the other
And back again
We dared not leave the desert
For fear that what lay beyond
Might be even worse
Than the nothing that we had now
Or what we had left behind.
Fear marked us out
Drove us on.
8.
Letting Go
Fear and love
The driving forces
Loving nothing
Keeps us in limbo
Fearing
Keeps us in stasis
Fear and hope
Dichotomous poles
Hoping for something
Propels us to strive
Fearing
Renders us invisible
Fear and anger
Two sides of the same coin
Anger’s energy
Can bear poisonous fruit
Fear
Remains barren
Fear and Joy
Cannot co-exist
While joy
Banishes fear
Fear
Destroys all joyous potential
Sooner or later
We all have to choose
Fear
Or
Love
9.
Promised Land
I never dreamed of riches.
I never dreamed of love.
I never dreamed a wet, tropical night,
Lying fertile beneath a sky
Spread with sparkling jewels
Of promise, of hope, of a future
Crowded with possibility.
I never dreamed of those high places.
I never dreamed of climbing down.
I never dreamed of pointing out the crevices
Neither crushed, nor giving in
Each holding for dear life, what we consider precious
Reaching for a place of mutuality
In this process of transformation.
I never dreamed of strength.
I never dreamed of giving back.
I never dreamed that being intertwined
Mingled, nested, overcome by togetherness
Could feel like a new kind of freedom
Each of us in loving one another
Thereby loving ourselves.
I never dreamed of a companion.
I never dreamed her sweetness.
I never dreamed a partnership so vital,
With liveliness and laughter
Of unexpected pleasures and discoveries
Of family, of friends, of a lifetime
Of growing into one another.
10.
Decades
0-10 Birth growth movement food family friends language love wonder child
11-20 Teenage alienation depression aloneness school travel stain mark fail work
21-30 Growing learning cooking cleaning driving making moving sewing talking mothering
31-40 Resources choices support companion network prayer garden work loving life
© Melina Magdalena (2009)
1.
Gestation
becoming
rotating
nesting
listening
growing
moving
beating
beckoning
being
2.
Birth (one)
Shocking, bleeding, mess
Sucking, pulling, contracting
Bones shift, so that I become
Time stops – until
I arrive
Heart pumps
Lungs fill
Mouth opens
3.
Enslaved
Coming to was like
A growing awareness
Of a gnawing pain
So chronic it had passed unnoticed
As we had passed our years, our lives, our every days
In bondage.
Awareness changed to shame
Stripped to bare bone
Naked indiscretions exposed
To all and sundry
With nothing at all
To clothe ourselves
Or hide our shame.
No dignity
No shelter
No pride
No selfhood
No safety
We strove mightily
Under these conditions
Until
One magical day
Shame changed to rage
Anger stirred our hearts
We rose up as one
And departed from that place.
4.
Birth (two)
The Red Sea was no easy passage.
Wild waters rising up on either side,
Meeting far above our heads.
We ran for our lives
Through the narrow strait
Never questioning
Our final destination
Never stopping
To look back
At what we were running from
We lost our breath
And still the pressure
Of all that weight of water
Pushed us further in, further out.
Our blood drained of oxygen
We breathed water once more
Until, reaching the distant shore,
Every bone softened,
Every sinew stretched to breaking point,
Every muscle burning,
Drowned of thoughts and understanding,
Collapsed amongst the reeds
Allowed our lungs to fill
With the dry desert air
The taste of freedom
Reborn
Despite our never having planned this, either, of course
These things just happen.
But why do they happen to us?
5.
40 years of wandering
And now…
wandering
for forty years
through this desert
calling, calling
knowing this for certain
that all my plaintive melancholy
is all for this – for I am homeless
Wandering for forty years
fording creeks of fire
wallowing through quicksand
begging it to pull me
Down Down Down
into the bowels of the earth
where my skin might disappear
and where my bones might melt
into some form of someone else’s making
wandering for forty years
without guidance
without language
without purpose
without direction
without companion
without –
whilst within dull numb deadness
grappled in vain with turmoil and chaos
wandering wondering wandering
lack my defining characteristic
6.
This desert
This wondrous desert sand
red of the blood in my body
yellow of my skin
sticks to the hairs on my leg
creating friction between me
and the world that I live in
This miraculous desert sky
enfolds me in its depth
shelters me in peace
creates a veil that hangs between me
and the world I live in
This mysterious desert water
fragrant and life-giving
a well-kept secret
nourishes me
comes up and goes under
And around the world I live in
This treacherous desert path
wending and winding
un-mappable and mutable
a bridge that is teaching me
about the world I live in
These desert stars are music makers
moving of their own accord
offering hope amidst an inky sky
illuminating sternly,
the world in I live in
This unforgiving desert sun
casts shadows
makes wrinkles
causes thirst
a necessary solo star amidst a cast of millions
makes possible the world I live in
7.
Death by dessication.
Death by dessication.
Is this not what each of us faces?
Climate change our collective doom?
Souls shrivel, ideas wither, feelings die
Without lifegiving water to nourish them.
Death by dessication.
It’s a slow and painful attrition.
From the inside out,
Marrow crumbles to dust
Creative juices evaporate into thin air
Air cuts its way in and out of our lungs
With no attenuating moisture
to soften the blow
of every breath
Blood ceases to flow
Tongue loses its saliva
Eyes lose their tears
We have nothing left to give.
But before the death comes the living.
Nourished by means
We are unable to comprehend
Manna falling from the sky
Like snowflakes raindrops hailstones
Bringing us briefly to life again
Each time, each time, each time.
Life of dubious value
When it is borne of sameness
Repetition hones the senses
Until senselessness becomes our only escape.
But life nonetheless
Is what propels us
Footsore
Heartsore
Longingly
And clueless
From one end
To the other
And back again
We dared not leave the desert
For fear that what lay beyond
Might be even worse
Than the nothing that we had now
Or what we had left behind.
Fear marked us out
Drove us on.
8.
Letting Go
Fear and love
The driving forces
Loving nothing
Keeps us in limbo
Fearing
Keeps us in stasis
Fear and hope
Dichotomous poles
Hoping for something
Propels us to strive
Fearing
Renders us invisible
Fear and anger
Two sides of the same coin
Anger’s energy
Can bear poisonous fruit
Fear
Remains barren
Fear and Joy
Cannot co-exist
While joy
Banishes fear
Fear
Destroys all joyous potential
Sooner or later
We all have to choose
Fear
Or
Love
9.
Promised Land
I never dreamed of riches.
I never dreamed of love.
I never dreamed a wet, tropical night,
Lying fertile beneath a sky
Spread with sparkling jewels
Of promise, of hope, of a future
Crowded with possibility.
I never dreamed of those high places.
I never dreamed of climbing down.
I never dreamed of pointing out the crevices
Neither crushed, nor giving in
Each holding for dear life, what we consider precious
Reaching for a place of mutuality
In this process of transformation.
I never dreamed of strength.
I never dreamed of giving back.
I never dreamed that being intertwined
Mingled, nested, overcome by togetherness
Could feel like a new kind of freedom
Each of us in loving one another
Thereby loving ourselves.
I never dreamed of a companion.
I never dreamed her sweetness.
I never dreamed a partnership so vital,
With liveliness and laughter
Of unexpected pleasures and discoveries
Of family, of friends, of a lifetime
Of growing into one another.
10.
Decades
0-10 Birth growth movement food family friends language love wonder child
11-20 Teenage alienation depression aloneness school travel stain mark fail work
21-30 Growing learning cooking cleaning driving making moving sewing talking mothering
31-40 Resources choices support companion network prayer garden work loving life
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Or Forever Hold Your Peace
Or Forever Hold Your Peace
(c) Melina Magdalena 2009
I’m writing today from within the eye of the needle.
What is a needle? A needle is a tool. I use needles for sewing, for knitting, for mending, for weaving. I have used a needle to apply paint to a tiny surface. I have used a needle to prise a splinter out of my daughter’s foot, to scrape grime from beneath my fingernails. When I was ten or eleven a doctor used a needle to stich my lip in three places where I had bitten through it during a somersault on Kathryn Turner’s trampoline. After giving birth to my son, two surgeons stitched me up down below because I had torn myself badly in my haste and inexperience.
When I contemplate needles, the point of the needle comes immediately to mind. However, the last few weeks has also brought the eye of the needle to my attention, when I was able to assist three dear friends with threading their needles for sewing projects, including the chuppah we created for our Promise Making Ceremony and Celebration.
That’s another nice metaphor; gentler than pushing someone’s barrow for them. Used without literality, I am sure I have helped many other people to thread their needles so that they could get on with whatever projects their life journeys had laid out before them. I know many people help me to thread my needles, too. The magic of this metaphor lies in the possibilities not only of what might be done with that thread once it’s in the needle, but what kind of thread it is in the first place. I could for example, use a golden thread to sew a silver lining to the clouds that beckon on the horizon, for example.
I’m wondering what a needle has to do with gaining access to heaven.
To a micro-being, the eye of a needle must seem vast. Poking the point of a needle around in a Petri dish teeming with micro-organisms must be the equivalent of dropping bombs on fragile human communities. It wreaks death and destruction. This hardly evokes an image of heaven to my mind.
To a human being, whether she is rich or poor or somewhere in between, the eye of a needle is tiny.
In any case, we none of us gain access to heaven through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:22-25). A needle binds two pieces of fabric together, allows us to make things of function and beauty. It’s not a means for gaining access to heaven, and I will always prefer the concept of using the tools we humans have at our disposal, to create heaven on earth. It’s that old Tikkun Olam again.
I’m wondering about the meaning of life.
It’s a frequent preoccupation of mine, but I have reached my own conclusions and beliefs. They are not incompatible with those of some mainstream religious – at least where they are concerned with the implications for how I choose to live my everyday life.
I believe that life goes on before, during and after. I believe there is much more to Life than what we conventionally acknowledge – perhaps there are many more kinds of life which are distant from the narrow focus that human beings on this planet choose to include within the concept.
As to the belief that my actions today will determine my future – I have seen this enacted time after time within my present, so I do not discount the idea. However, I don’t have a strong or rigid idea of where “I” will “go” after “death”. I do not believe that my life journey is leading me either to the door of heaven or to the gates of hell.
Many people do believe this of course. They purport to know with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, just what rituals and choices they must make in order to determine their eventual destination. And this leads me to a whole set of other questions.
For people with such beliefs, just how does a person gain entrance to heaven? Apart from the gauzy gaudy idea of a reward for hard work and difficult choices, what purpose does heaven serve, in the life of a person here on earth?
Does one gain entrance to that heaven by hurting … judging … rejecting … through bigotry … building walls to separate … burning bridges to enlarge an already existing divide … directly condemning … explicitly refusing to affirm other people’s endeavours?
Is the quality of being saved more about belonging to a special chosen group of people, or is it more about the moment of salvation, which propels one’s feet upon a journey to seek commonality and to foster inclusion amongst those whose eyes remain closed to the possibility that they themselves are valued and loved, as members of the human family?
What people can be so arrogant as to assume that their feet alone keep to that true path, whilst simultaneously claiming that it is their mission to serve? How can they live lives of questioning, judgment and rejection; blinded to the fact that in doing so, they project their arrogant, parsimonious and uncaring attitudes onto everyone who is different, and on those who had believed that they were loved?
What kind of life is it, to be ever blinkered by the shadow of heaven hovering above, beckoning one away from temptation, removing from one’s gaze, every possibility that might lead one from the path?
I’m wondering about the rigidity of people’s beliefs when they encounter the truth about the nature of homosexuality and same-sex unions.
In the lead up to our ceremony, more and more people began to refer to it as our “wedding”. At the beginning, I was uncomfortable with the idea that we were going to “get married” – I preferred to mask reality behind the euphemism of making promises to one another. It felt good to be defiant in the face of the legal and religious opposition to our union. This awkward position between a so-called lifestyle choice that is too often linked with promiscuity, and a social convention of mandated coupledom was certainly a queer position for us to take.
I grew to accept that what we were doing was the same as what other couples choose to do – to seal our bond by openly and publicly stating our intentions to nurture one another within a life long partnership. I also grew much more comfortable with the idea that we were getting married, and I felt excited that we were having a wedding to ceremoniously celebrate this deed.
Although I had felt a little unhappy that “my” guest list was so much shorter than my beloved’s and that the distance most would need to travel precluded their attendance, the irresistible urge to be part of our wedding drew people from my circle into our lives with an ever strengthening undertow, the closer we came to January 17, 2009. It was so affirming for me that so many of my invited friends and family members made the effort to attend. I felt surrounded by their well wishes, love and support.
I’m wondering why someone who refused to make a square for our chuppah, and refused to give an rsvp to our promise making ceremony, on the basis that she believed that what we are doing is against god, might still choose to attend.
My beloved and I are the kind of serious people who practise liturgy often in our daily lives. We took a long time and expended a lot of energy in writing our promises, and in working out the logistics and specifics of our ceremony. This was important to us.
We wanted, for example, to welcome everyone who came to be part of our day. We specifically wanted to rejoice in what we were choosing whilst affirming the choices that others have made and the places they find themselves in that are different from ours. We have both spent large portions of our adult lives as single people. We know that this can often feel like a contested and defensive position. We know that people move in and out of partnerships and likewise feel ousted from the norm because of these circumstances. We know both first and second-hand how it feels to live under siege because we are in a minority. In a world where we as a lesbian couple are not always welcome and free, we wished to extend an open-handed welcome to others.
We had worked from the assumption that those who had chosen to be present had their reasons for their presence. Equally, we reasoned that people who chose not to attend had reasons for their non-participation.
It never occurred to me that people might choose to attend and stand in open judgment as witness to what they label as being “against God”. I can only ask what they hoped to achieve in so doing. Was their God paying attention at the time? Did they receive extra Brownie points in their favour? Or was it their intent to cause harm to the people who had invited them to be part of our special day?
I wonder whether they can understand that the fact they were invited points to the value we place on our relationship with them; the esteem in which we hold them; and our hope that this may be reciprocated. Certainly from my side, I chose not to invite people who have attacked me in the past, just because they happen to be family members.
I’m wondering about the motivations of someone who would place responsibility for attending our ceremony on those who invited her, rather than being accountable for her own uncomfortable feelings. If we hadn’t wanted her to attend, than surely we would not have issued an invitation?
I get, that it’s not pleasant to be the bearer of unwelcome news. I get the moral courage that it takes to stand against something that seems to be receiving overwhelming support from all other quarters. This ought to be obvious to anyone who changes his or her vantage point from that of rigidly religious righteousness to that of renegade.
It is my contention that people who fail to act upon that moral courage, as we did, for example, in celebrating our union and inviting our friends and family to be part of the occasion, can’t really claim to possess that moral courage.
It pisses me off that the rigid religious fail to acknowledge the effects of their actions and beliefs upon those they judge. They either fail to recognise that their choices are hurtful, or act in full knowledge that their actions will cause pain and distress. They fail utterly to stand in the shoes of someone else, and are incapable of contemplating how hard it is for others to stand up and be counted in the face of their implacable hatred and homophobia. This seems blatantly hypocritical and prideful, when the message they speak from the other side of their mouths is a message of love and acceptance.
The commonalities between our two positions are clear to me. Both of us feel we must defend our positions in the face of hostile or indifferent opposition. Both of us feel that it is only by digging in our heels and refusing to bend that we are being true to what we believe about ourselves. The difference lies in whether we choose to interact with and embrace our antagonist, or whether we hold ourselves separate and aloof in disapproving judgment.
I never imagined someone might offer to turn her back at any portion of the ceremony that she could not bring herself to affirm. Such rigid judgmentalism had no place in my thinking about our day.
I’m wondering why someone would explicitly choose his view of morality over his relationship with a person he had known all of his life.
On the one hand the stance this person chose shows integrity of the upright, courageous kind.
Never mind the fact that as the unknown member of this couple, I was automatically placed under suspicion and judged to be of dubious character and reputation before I had even met any of these people – I am used to being cast in that role. Yes, it hurts. And no – I felt no compunction to overdo my niceness and prove them wrong. I was quite willing to crawl into my shell and give nothing away.
I wonder how much it cost him, to make this stand, and to hammer in this point of contention, dismantling with hard intent, every point of connection that had previously existed between him and my dearly beloved?
I think this was perhaps the easier moral position to take. Facing the situation openly and honestly would have taken a different kind of courage, and would have been less destructive. He was not even willing to test the waters and seeing whether indeed any connection of value remained between them.
There was no specific place in our ceremony, where we demanded that those present affirm our relationship. We never asked for anyone who disapproved to make his or her disapproval known. Ours was a rewriting, a reframing and a refashioning of a traditional wedding ceremony. As women standing openly and proudly outside the laws of our religions and our country, we felt no compunction and little desire to adhere to traditions and forms that hold no meaning for us. We chose to develop a ceremony whose every facet would hold meaning for us.
I’m wondering whether any of them got it at all on the day, at the park, amongst the crowds of rejoicers.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2009
I’m writing today from within the eye of the needle.
What is a needle? A needle is a tool. I use needles for sewing, for knitting, for mending, for weaving. I have used a needle to apply paint to a tiny surface. I have used a needle to prise a splinter out of my daughter’s foot, to scrape grime from beneath my fingernails. When I was ten or eleven a doctor used a needle to stich my lip in three places where I had bitten through it during a somersault on Kathryn Turner’s trampoline. After giving birth to my son, two surgeons stitched me up down below because I had torn myself badly in my haste and inexperience.
When I contemplate needles, the point of the needle comes immediately to mind. However, the last few weeks has also brought the eye of the needle to my attention, when I was able to assist three dear friends with threading their needles for sewing projects, including the chuppah we created for our Promise Making Ceremony and Celebration.
That’s another nice metaphor; gentler than pushing someone’s barrow for them. Used without literality, I am sure I have helped many other people to thread their needles so that they could get on with whatever projects their life journeys had laid out before them. I know many people help me to thread my needles, too. The magic of this metaphor lies in the possibilities not only of what might be done with that thread once it’s in the needle, but what kind of thread it is in the first place. I could for example, use a golden thread to sew a silver lining to the clouds that beckon on the horizon, for example.
I’m wondering what a needle has to do with gaining access to heaven.
To a micro-being, the eye of a needle must seem vast. Poking the point of a needle around in a Petri dish teeming with micro-organisms must be the equivalent of dropping bombs on fragile human communities. It wreaks death and destruction. This hardly evokes an image of heaven to my mind.
To a human being, whether she is rich or poor or somewhere in between, the eye of a needle is tiny.
In any case, we none of us gain access to heaven through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:22-25). A needle binds two pieces of fabric together, allows us to make things of function and beauty. It’s not a means for gaining access to heaven, and I will always prefer the concept of using the tools we humans have at our disposal, to create heaven on earth. It’s that old Tikkun Olam again.
I’m wondering about the meaning of life.
It’s a frequent preoccupation of mine, but I have reached my own conclusions and beliefs. They are not incompatible with those of some mainstream religious – at least where they are concerned with the implications for how I choose to live my everyday life.
I believe that life goes on before, during and after. I believe there is much more to Life than what we conventionally acknowledge – perhaps there are many more kinds of life which are distant from the narrow focus that human beings on this planet choose to include within the concept.
As to the belief that my actions today will determine my future – I have seen this enacted time after time within my present, so I do not discount the idea. However, I don’t have a strong or rigid idea of where “I” will “go” after “death”. I do not believe that my life journey is leading me either to the door of heaven or to the gates of hell.
Many people do believe this of course. They purport to know with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, just what rituals and choices they must make in order to determine their eventual destination. And this leads me to a whole set of other questions.
For people with such beliefs, just how does a person gain entrance to heaven? Apart from the gauzy gaudy idea of a reward for hard work and difficult choices, what purpose does heaven serve, in the life of a person here on earth?
Does one gain entrance to that heaven by hurting … judging … rejecting … through bigotry … building walls to separate … burning bridges to enlarge an already existing divide … directly condemning … explicitly refusing to affirm other people’s endeavours?
Is the quality of being saved more about belonging to a special chosen group of people, or is it more about the moment of salvation, which propels one’s feet upon a journey to seek commonality and to foster inclusion amongst those whose eyes remain closed to the possibility that they themselves are valued and loved, as members of the human family?
What people can be so arrogant as to assume that their feet alone keep to that true path, whilst simultaneously claiming that it is their mission to serve? How can they live lives of questioning, judgment and rejection; blinded to the fact that in doing so, they project their arrogant, parsimonious and uncaring attitudes onto everyone who is different, and on those who had believed that they were loved?
What kind of life is it, to be ever blinkered by the shadow of heaven hovering above, beckoning one away from temptation, removing from one’s gaze, every possibility that might lead one from the path?
I’m wondering about the rigidity of people’s beliefs when they encounter the truth about the nature of homosexuality and same-sex unions.
In the lead up to our ceremony, more and more people began to refer to it as our “wedding”. At the beginning, I was uncomfortable with the idea that we were going to “get married” – I preferred to mask reality behind the euphemism of making promises to one another. It felt good to be defiant in the face of the legal and religious opposition to our union. This awkward position between a so-called lifestyle choice that is too often linked with promiscuity, and a social convention of mandated coupledom was certainly a queer position for us to take.
I grew to accept that what we were doing was the same as what other couples choose to do – to seal our bond by openly and publicly stating our intentions to nurture one another within a life long partnership. I also grew much more comfortable with the idea that we were getting married, and I felt excited that we were having a wedding to ceremoniously celebrate this deed.
Although I had felt a little unhappy that “my” guest list was so much shorter than my beloved’s and that the distance most would need to travel precluded their attendance, the irresistible urge to be part of our wedding drew people from my circle into our lives with an ever strengthening undertow, the closer we came to January 17, 2009. It was so affirming for me that so many of my invited friends and family members made the effort to attend. I felt surrounded by their well wishes, love and support.
I’m wondering why someone who refused to make a square for our chuppah, and refused to give an rsvp to our promise making ceremony, on the basis that she believed that what we are doing is against god, might still choose to attend.
My beloved and I are the kind of serious people who practise liturgy often in our daily lives. We took a long time and expended a lot of energy in writing our promises, and in working out the logistics and specifics of our ceremony. This was important to us.
We wanted, for example, to welcome everyone who came to be part of our day. We specifically wanted to rejoice in what we were choosing whilst affirming the choices that others have made and the places they find themselves in that are different from ours. We have both spent large portions of our adult lives as single people. We know that this can often feel like a contested and defensive position. We know that people move in and out of partnerships and likewise feel ousted from the norm because of these circumstances. We know both first and second-hand how it feels to live under siege because we are in a minority. In a world where we as a lesbian couple are not always welcome and free, we wished to extend an open-handed welcome to others.
We had worked from the assumption that those who had chosen to be present had their reasons for their presence. Equally, we reasoned that people who chose not to attend had reasons for their non-participation.
It never occurred to me that people might choose to attend and stand in open judgment as witness to what they label as being “against God”. I can only ask what they hoped to achieve in so doing. Was their God paying attention at the time? Did they receive extra Brownie points in their favour? Or was it their intent to cause harm to the people who had invited them to be part of our special day?
I wonder whether they can understand that the fact they were invited points to the value we place on our relationship with them; the esteem in which we hold them; and our hope that this may be reciprocated. Certainly from my side, I chose not to invite people who have attacked me in the past, just because they happen to be family members.
I’m wondering about the motivations of someone who would place responsibility for attending our ceremony on those who invited her, rather than being accountable for her own uncomfortable feelings. If we hadn’t wanted her to attend, than surely we would not have issued an invitation?
I get, that it’s not pleasant to be the bearer of unwelcome news. I get the moral courage that it takes to stand against something that seems to be receiving overwhelming support from all other quarters. This ought to be obvious to anyone who changes his or her vantage point from that of rigidly religious righteousness to that of renegade.
It is my contention that people who fail to act upon that moral courage, as we did, for example, in celebrating our union and inviting our friends and family to be part of the occasion, can’t really claim to possess that moral courage.
It pisses me off that the rigid religious fail to acknowledge the effects of their actions and beliefs upon those they judge. They either fail to recognise that their choices are hurtful, or act in full knowledge that their actions will cause pain and distress. They fail utterly to stand in the shoes of someone else, and are incapable of contemplating how hard it is for others to stand up and be counted in the face of their implacable hatred and homophobia. This seems blatantly hypocritical and prideful, when the message they speak from the other side of their mouths is a message of love and acceptance.
The commonalities between our two positions are clear to me. Both of us feel we must defend our positions in the face of hostile or indifferent opposition. Both of us feel that it is only by digging in our heels and refusing to bend that we are being true to what we believe about ourselves. The difference lies in whether we choose to interact with and embrace our antagonist, or whether we hold ourselves separate and aloof in disapproving judgment.
I never imagined someone might offer to turn her back at any portion of the ceremony that she could not bring herself to affirm. Such rigid judgmentalism had no place in my thinking about our day.
I’m wondering why someone would explicitly choose his view of morality over his relationship with a person he had known all of his life.
On the one hand the stance this person chose shows integrity of the upright, courageous kind.
Never mind the fact that as the unknown member of this couple, I was automatically placed under suspicion and judged to be of dubious character and reputation before I had even met any of these people – I am used to being cast in that role. Yes, it hurts. And no – I felt no compunction to overdo my niceness and prove them wrong. I was quite willing to crawl into my shell and give nothing away.
I wonder how much it cost him, to make this stand, and to hammer in this point of contention, dismantling with hard intent, every point of connection that had previously existed between him and my dearly beloved?
I think this was perhaps the easier moral position to take. Facing the situation openly and honestly would have taken a different kind of courage, and would have been less destructive. He was not even willing to test the waters and seeing whether indeed any connection of value remained between them.
There was no specific place in our ceremony, where we demanded that those present affirm our relationship. We never asked for anyone who disapproved to make his or her disapproval known. Ours was a rewriting, a reframing and a refashioning of a traditional wedding ceremony. As women standing openly and proudly outside the laws of our religions and our country, we felt no compunction and little desire to adhere to traditions and forms that hold no meaning for us. We chose to develop a ceremony whose every facet would hold meaning for us.
I’m wondering whether any of them got it at all on the day, at the park, amongst the crowds of rejoicers.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Countering - OR It Must Be That Time Of Year Again
Countering - OR It Must Be That Time Of Year Again
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
just briefly
let me say please
i have no interest in:
attack
or
counter-attack;
accusation
or
counter-accusation;
rewritten history
or
rewriting history;
threats
or
threatening
there
is
already
enough
sorrow
pain
heartache
trouble
misunderstanding
in this world
there
are
so many
sleights of hand
and
flights of fancy
let it be
dayenu
let it rest
dayenu
finally
dayenu
it is enough
already
dayenu
no more
returning
to those sore spots
no more
wringing of hands
licking of wounds
opening of scars
i have reached my
limitations
i have resurrected my
boundaries
i have gone as far
as I would go
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
just briefly
let me say please
i have no interest in:
attack
or
counter-attack;
accusation
or
counter-accusation;
rewritten history
or
rewriting history;
threats
or
threatening
there
is
already
enough
sorrow
pain
heartache
trouble
misunderstanding
in this world
there
are
so many
sleights of hand
and
flights of fancy
let it be
dayenu
let it rest
dayenu
finally
dayenu
it is enough
already
dayenu
no more
returning
to those sore spots
no more
wringing of hands
licking of wounds
opening of scars
i have reached my
limitations
i have resurrected my
boundaries
i have gone as far
as I would go
Friday, November 21, 2008
South Australian Teachers' Struggles
South Australian Teachers' Struggles
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
Comment posted to AdelaideNow (22/11/08)
After putting in a full day's work at my school (and despite the lack of students, there is ALWAYS plenty to be done at school), I was at the 4pm rally on the steps of Parliament House last night, together with hundreds of other angry teachers and school staff.
We were there to express our utter indignation and outrage at the State Government's bullying, strong arm tactics.
Rann, Caica, Foley, Lomax-Smith - these are the "culprits" responsible for yesterday's chaos and empty classrooms. Their behaviour is unconscionable. While the
Australian Education Union attempts to use the legitimate processes of lobbying and negotiation, the State Government of South Australia refuses to engage. The government's stubborn, arrogant refusal to meet the AEU and show some respect for South Australia's Public School Sector produced yesterday's chaos.
As well as refusing to negotiate, the State Government has lied, reneged on agreements and proposals and now removed our right to protest at their high-handed behaviour.
I love my job, and I love what I do. I won't compromise my professionalism by allowing this process to impede my work. But I will go to the steps of Parliament House in my own time for as long as it takes for Rann, Caica, Foley, Lomax-Smith to be stood down from office and face the discordant music of the havoc they have chosen to wreak upon South Australian families. I am ashamed to have voted Labor with the thought that Labor would be good for public education.
South Australia's politicians are the highest paid state government politicians in the nation.
South Australia's teachers are the lowest paid teachers in the nation.
Melina Magdalena
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
Comment posted to AdelaideNow (22/11/08)
After putting in a full day's work at my school (and despite the lack of students, there is ALWAYS plenty to be done at school), I was at the 4pm rally on the steps of Parliament House last night, together with hundreds of other angry teachers and school staff.
We were there to express our utter indignation and outrage at the State Government's bullying, strong arm tactics.
Rann, Caica, Foley, Lomax-Smith - these are the "culprits" responsible for yesterday's chaos and empty classrooms. Their behaviour is unconscionable. While the
Australian Education Union attempts to use the legitimate processes of lobbying and negotiation, the State Government of South Australia refuses to engage. The government's stubborn, arrogant refusal to meet the AEU and show some respect for South Australia's Public School Sector produced yesterday's chaos.
As well as refusing to negotiate, the State Government has lied, reneged on agreements and proposals and now removed our right to protest at their high-handed behaviour.
I love my job, and I love what I do. I won't compromise my professionalism by allowing this process to impede my work. But I will go to the steps of Parliament House in my own time for as long as it takes for Rann, Caica, Foley, Lomax-Smith to be stood down from office and face the discordant music of the havoc they have chosen to wreak upon South Australian families. I am ashamed to have voted Labor with the thought that Labor would be good for public education.
South Australia's politicians are the highest paid state government politicians in the nation.
South Australia's teachers are the lowest paid teachers in the nation.
Melina Magdalena
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Party Popper Incident
The Party Popper Incident
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
my lips are sealed
I promised.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
my lips are sealed
I promised.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Smelly Compost
Smelly Compost
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
It was 5pm before I was able to force myself to go outside. I had plenty of excuses – it was thirty three degrees, after all, I had lots of planning to do, I’d got up this morning and washed 3 days worth of dishes and a week’s worth of clothes already; it wasn’t like I had been spending all day playing solitaire and checking other people’s Facebook Status Updates.
I put on some socks and shoes and trundled the wheelbarrow around from the front to the back yard. I was very conscious of the full bucket of composting materials still sitting on my kitchen bench, waiting to be taken to its final destination. Tja – it was time to deal with the big daddy compost.
There are two compost bins in my back yard – one quite a lot bigger than the other. I stopped using that one about a year ago, and started on the smaller one, in the vain hope that the stuff in the big one would miraculously transform into soil for my garden, as compost is supposed to. Alas.
I tried pushing the big bin over, and soon realized that the stuff inside was not friable, as composted materials ought to be. Or else it was just that the compost bin had been dug into the ground and was holding on. I grabbed the fork and began to work my way around the base, prising it up a little from several directions. It began to come loose. Good news. OK, so what next? Maybe I could try lifting it off like a mould.
I removed the lid and gagged. The surface was alive with bugs. It was black and it was slimy. I went inside and found some gardening gloves, which I put on. This made the dog very excited. I’m not sure why.
I approached the compost bin again, embraced it gingerly and slid it upwards. I twisted to one side and set it down on the ground, now empty, and turned back to view my glorious creation – 3 years worth of rotting vegetable matter. It looked like a bizarre sandcastle. It was the colour of babyshit and smelled much, much worse. I could identify bits and pieces, but other things were not readily identifiable and I quickly stopped trying to analyse them, because I was beginning to feel rather ill. When I prodded the mound with the fork, hoping I might be able to lift it bit by bit into the trench I’d dug to bury it in, the fork got stuck. By exerting some force I managed to yank it out again. There were slimy, gooey somethings hanging off the tines. I began to dry-retch, but thought better of it, and managed to curb the reflex. This nightmare was just beginning.
Gilles Plains is a swamp and even in a drought it is a haven for mosquitos and flies, but this beggared belief. Six-legged flying torturers cruised gaily in and out of my hair, my ears, my eyes, my nose, and calmly settled on my bare arms as I frantically tried to deal with the [not]compost. Goodness knows how many made their way into my digestive system. It does not bear thinking about. Of course, the flies were far more interested in the stuff that was supposed to be compost. I decided to bury it as fast as I could.
In the mistaken notion of being an independent woman and an ecologically minded world citizen, I made certain lifestyle choices after moving to this house. It had been supposed to be my final move, and now with six weeks until my sweetheart and I move into the home we’ve just purchased together, I chose to spend part of this weekend preparing for our impending move. She’s moving from a sharehouse in Melbourne, and I’m just moving suburbs, so we’re preparing separately for our lifetime of living together.
As well as purchasing the compost bins, a couple of years ago I purchased 10 untreated jarrah sleepers and constructed a large vegetable patch in the centre of our backyard. I’d considered leaving it here, but it’s several hundred dollars worth of sleepers, and since we do want to grow veges, it makes sense to take them with me when we go. My most recent purchase was the wheelie bin equipped with a handy hole in the top for the washing machine hose, and a tap at the bottom for emptying water out of it. I stopped collecting the water over the winter months, but it’s time to start looking after the fruit trees. It will be a bit sad to leave them all behind, but I don’t think I’ll have the energy to try and take them to our new home. We can start afresh.
How wrong I was, to think I could make compost… I wish I had had some guidance from a real person with experience in these matters (as opposed to printed materials). I’m hoping that life lived as half of a partnership will be more fruitful and less disgusting than this experience has been. I’m not a little worried that someone is going to come and angrily break down my front door demanding to know whom I killed and why I thought I could get away with burying the corpse in my back yard. Or irate neighbours whose backyard BBQs have all been spoiled by the stench still drifting in from my backyard. I’m very sorry about this. I hope the smell reduces quickly.
I’m not sure what went wrong. Note to sweetheart – I think maybe we should try chickens next time, if we can make a chook run that is Jack Russell-proof...
I worked solidly for two hours transferring the soil out of one-half of my vege patch onto the pile of [not]compost. Unaccustomed to such labour, I am now as tired as I could be. I finally stopped, coughing uncontrollably, still trying valiantly not to retch, and completely devoid of energy; went inside, stripped and got under the shower. I cleaned myself as well as I could, but the aroma of rot lingers on my fingers in the same way that poo will do. I’ve read about that. Our noses are more sensitive than we’d like them to be. Tiny particles of scent lodge themselves in the membrane and we are convinced that we haven’t washed ourselves under the fingernails as well as we should have.
Now I’m sitting by an open window that faces the backyard. I’m really not sure how stinky it still is. I’m pretty concerned that the dog is going to have a field day overnight. Oh well – maybe after some sleep I’ll be able to muster up more energy. If I empty the other half of the vege patch tomorrow, the compost will be a few feet under. Maybe we won’t be able to smell it anymore, and I can pretend this debacle never happened … just move on to our glorious and fragrant future.
Yep – and all those wonderful worms I found whilst digging the good soil might sprout wings and fly, too.
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008)
It was 5pm before I was able to force myself to go outside. I had plenty of excuses – it was thirty three degrees, after all, I had lots of planning to do, I’d got up this morning and washed 3 days worth of dishes and a week’s worth of clothes already; it wasn’t like I had been spending all day playing solitaire and checking other people’s Facebook Status Updates.
I put on some socks and shoes and trundled the wheelbarrow around from the front to the back yard. I was very conscious of the full bucket of composting materials still sitting on my kitchen bench, waiting to be taken to its final destination. Tja – it was time to deal with the big daddy compost.
There are two compost bins in my back yard – one quite a lot bigger than the other. I stopped using that one about a year ago, and started on the smaller one, in the vain hope that the stuff in the big one would miraculously transform into soil for my garden, as compost is supposed to. Alas.
I tried pushing the big bin over, and soon realized that the stuff inside was not friable, as composted materials ought to be. Or else it was just that the compost bin had been dug into the ground and was holding on. I grabbed the fork and began to work my way around the base, prising it up a little from several directions. It began to come loose. Good news. OK, so what next? Maybe I could try lifting it off like a mould.
I removed the lid and gagged. The surface was alive with bugs. It was black and it was slimy. I went inside and found some gardening gloves, which I put on. This made the dog very excited. I’m not sure why.
I approached the compost bin again, embraced it gingerly and slid it upwards. I twisted to one side and set it down on the ground, now empty, and turned back to view my glorious creation – 3 years worth of rotting vegetable matter. It looked like a bizarre sandcastle. It was the colour of babyshit and smelled much, much worse. I could identify bits and pieces, but other things were not readily identifiable and I quickly stopped trying to analyse them, because I was beginning to feel rather ill. When I prodded the mound with the fork, hoping I might be able to lift it bit by bit into the trench I’d dug to bury it in, the fork got stuck. By exerting some force I managed to yank it out again. There were slimy, gooey somethings hanging off the tines. I began to dry-retch, but thought better of it, and managed to curb the reflex. This nightmare was just beginning.
Gilles Plains is a swamp and even in a drought it is a haven for mosquitos and flies, but this beggared belief. Six-legged flying torturers cruised gaily in and out of my hair, my ears, my eyes, my nose, and calmly settled on my bare arms as I frantically tried to deal with the [not]compost. Goodness knows how many made their way into my digestive system. It does not bear thinking about. Of course, the flies were far more interested in the stuff that was supposed to be compost. I decided to bury it as fast as I could.
In the mistaken notion of being an independent woman and an ecologically minded world citizen, I made certain lifestyle choices after moving to this house. It had been supposed to be my final move, and now with six weeks until my sweetheart and I move into the home we’ve just purchased together, I chose to spend part of this weekend preparing for our impending move. She’s moving from a sharehouse in Melbourne, and I’m just moving suburbs, so we’re preparing separately for our lifetime of living together.
As well as purchasing the compost bins, a couple of years ago I purchased 10 untreated jarrah sleepers and constructed a large vegetable patch in the centre of our backyard. I’d considered leaving it here, but it’s several hundred dollars worth of sleepers, and since we do want to grow veges, it makes sense to take them with me when we go. My most recent purchase was the wheelie bin equipped with a handy hole in the top for the washing machine hose, and a tap at the bottom for emptying water out of it. I stopped collecting the water over the winter months, but it’s time to start looking after the fruit trees. It will be a bit sad to leave them all behind, but I don’t think I’ll have the energy to try and take them to our new home. We can start afresh.
How wrong I was, to think I could make compost… I wish I had had some guidance from a real person with experience in these matters (as opposed to printed materials). I’m hoping that life lived as half of a partnership will be more fruitful and less disgusting than this experience has been. I’m not a little worried that someone is going to come and angrily break down my front door demanding to know whom I killed and why I thought I could get away with burying the corpse in my back yard. Or irate neighbours whose backyard BBQs have all been spoiled by the stench still drifting in from my backyard. I’m very sorry about this. I hope the smell reduces quickly.
I’m not sure what went wrong. Note to sweetheart – I think maybe we should try chickens next time, if we can make a chook run that is Jack Russell-proof...
I worked solidly for two hours transferring the soil out of one-half of my vege patch onto the pile of [not]compost. Unaccustomed to such labour, I am now as tired as I could be. I finally stopped, coughing uncontrollably, still trying valiantly not to retch, and completely devoid of energy; went inside, stripped and got under the shower. I cleaned myself as well as I could, but the aroma of rot lingers on my fingers in the same way that poo will do. I’ve read about that. Our noses are more sensitive than we’d like them to be. Tiny particles of scent lodge themselves in the membrane and we are convinced that we haven’t washed ourselves under the fingernails as well as we should have.
Now I’m sitting by an open window that faces the backyard. I’m really not sure how stinky it still is. I’m pretty concerned that the dog is going to have a field day overnight. Oh well – maybe after some sleep I’ll be able to muster up more energy. If I empty the other half of the vege patch tomorrow, the compost will be a few feet under. Maybe we won’t be able to smell it anymore, and I can pretend this debacle never happened … just move on to our glorious and fragrant future.
Yep – and all those wonderful worms I found whilst digging the good soil might sprout wings and fly, too.
Monday, October 06, 2008
A nice day
It is a nice day when your former student pays you a visit on the last day of term, whilst he is fasting and recovering from surgery, to wish you a Happy Jewish New Year. I was incredibly touched by his intercultural reaching out. It came about this way.
Last year, around this time, there was trouble simmering in my classroom. The trouble centred around two students - one, a volatile, passionate Sudanese woman, and the other, a mischievous, curious, awkward Afghan man. I decided to take some lateral action, and planned to make Tashlikh with my class.
I brought along my best apple table cloth, some apples, honey, and breadcrumbs. I believe this was still during the time of Ramadan, but in that class only a few students were fasting. I prepared a worksheet with some information about Rosh Hashanah, which we read in class. I taught my students to say the traditional greeting "L'Shanah Tova". We then walked to the nearby River Torrens, where we threw breadcrumbs into the water and let go of our grievances.
The two students I mentioned above didn't come to this class. I was a little downcast by that, but went ahead with what I had planned nonetheless.
The student who visited me last week was there. The activity was obviously meaningful for him.
I wished him Eid Mubarak in return - the greeting he had taught me in return for my new year's greeting.
Last year, around this time, there was trouble simmering in my classroom. The trouble centred around two students - one, a volatile, passionate Sudanese woman, and the other, a mischievous, curious, awkward Afghan man. I decided to take some lateral action, and planned to make Tashlikh with my class.
I brought along my best apple table cloth, some apples, honey, and breadcrumbs. I believe this was still during the time of Ramadan, but in that class only a few students were fasting. I prepared a worksheet with some information about Rosh Hashanah, which we read in class. I taught my students to say the traditional greeting "L'Shanah Tova". We then walked to the nearby River Torrens, where we threw breadcrumbs into the water and let go of our grievances.
The two students I mentioned above didn't come to this class. I was a little downcast by that, but went ahead with what I had planned nonetheless.
The student who visited me last week was there. The activity was obviously meaningful for him.
I wished him Eid Mubarak in return - the greeting he had taught me in return for my new year's greeting.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
fear cancels love
So, we protesters are responsible for causing the Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition planned to open on Rememberance Day 2008 in Adelaide to be cancelled.
NOT because we made our point.
NOT because ideals of peace won the day.
NOT because Rann's government saw the light.
NOT because of an overwhelming longing for cooperation rather than competition.
According to media reports, what I see as a victory for those opposing the Arms Fair is actually us bullying the poor little government into backing down from their monstrous venture.
I haven't seen any commentary from the government about why APDSE was such an abhorrent concept and why it should never have been planned for our city or indeed any city.
I think we need to continue to speak very loudly about our reasons for organising protest actions, and drown out the petulant voices of Foley and the rest.
To Foley I say - grow up and develop a backbone.
To Rann I say - develop some morals and get the courage to stand by them.
To all the protesters, I still say non-violence has won the day.
NOT because we made our point.
NOT because ideals of peace won the day.
NOT because Rann's government saw the light.
NOT because of an overwhelming longing for cooperation rather than competition.
According to media reports, what I see as a victory for those opposing the Arms Fair is actually us bullying the poor little government into backing down from their monstrous venture.
I haven't seen any commentary from the government about why APDSE was such an abhorrent concept and why it should never have been planned for our city or indeed any city.
I think we need to continue to speak very loudly about our reasons for organising protest actions, and drown out the petulant voices of Foley and the rest.
To Foley I say - grow up and develop a backbone.
To Rann I say - develop some morals and get the courage to stand by them.
To all the protesters, I still say non-violence has won the day.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Breaching the Peace - AIDEX 1989 and 1991
Breaching the Peace - AIDEX* 1989 and 1991
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
BACKGROUND TO AIDEX 1989
There seems to be little recorded memory of AIDEX 1989, which was the precursor to the BIG protest in Canberra at AIDEX 1991. I was one of a small group of Adelaide activists who travelled from the Anti-Bases Campaign action at Nurrungar in 1989 to Canberra, to protest against the Australian promotion of an international trade fair of weapons and “defence” equipment.
The training we peace activists had previously received in Non-Violent Direct Action had prepared us to be clear-headed and thoughtful about how we would engage authorities (police, security guards, army) and what our purpose was, in standing up for what we believed in. This was mainly through our involvement in the Anti-Bases Campaign protest actions at Nurrungar. Yet even the History of the Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition fails to count AIDEX 1989 as one protest in which Anti-Bases Coalition activists were present and active.
We were fairly clear about what we believed in. Animal Liberation provides some good information about what NVDA was for us. We were ratbags, but we were non-violent ratbags. We wanted to be seen and heard and taken seriously, but we also wanted to be safe and have fun. We were creative and we took calculated risks. The idea of non-cooperation was as appealing as street theatre, and during our participation in the action at Nurrungar, our contact with police officers had been friendly and non-threatening.
I Was Only Nineteen, knew nobody who was directly involved in making war, and had every intention of keeping my nose clean. I would no sooner have considered applying for a defence force scholarship than applying to NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. A few years later when Richard, who had entertained all the protesters and the security guards alike with his hilarity and sharp wit, was knocked back from the Army Reserves, I imagined he had some kind of death wish. Come to think of it, one of my old school friends, Sheila who came along to AIDEX with us in 1989 for a holiday more than out of any conviction, ended up joining one of the branches of the ADF.
Now that I am older and have had contact with a more interesting and broader range of people, I know people whose lives have become entangled with warmongering, whether because there are too few peaceful outlets for their specialities, or because they needed a trade and the defence forces were the only creditable establishments who would take them on. But at that time we were purists. Life was black and white. It was quite simple. Us and them.
As Chris Hannaford writes: “it is our job to be the peace movement and set examples to the police and the community. In this way we can influence public opinion.”
(Accessed online 23/8/08)
We were mighty proud of ourselves for making it to Canberra on such short notice. When we arrived back in Adelaide after Nurrungar, dusty red and triumphant, Roman Orzsanski of Friends Of the Earth interviewed a few of us youngsters about our experience on Triple M Radio (Adelaide’s community radio station that has since morphed into Three D Radio). It was Roman who told us about AIDEX 1989, and it was Roman who inspired us to hire a bus and try to fill it with protesters to stop this trade in war.
I worked my tail off trying to convince people to come, but in the end the $2000 deposit I had put down on a coach was squandered, and my trip back to Europe was to become a never-realised dream. The bus was less than half full, and most of those who went were students or concession holders. Oh well, I was pregnant anyway. Life was taking a serious turn for the worse, what with the Hawke government promoting Australia as a venue of choice for war games and weapon exhibitions.
I was ashamed to live in Adelaide then, as I am now – Don Dunstan would surely turn in his grave to think that we have transformed from The Festival State to the Defence State.
Jones, Pestorius and Law of The Australian Nonviolence Network(accessed 22/8/08), write in relation to NVDA protest in Australia from the mid 1980s that: “There was bitter criticism at having to buy the whole non-violent package as well as the concept, particularly by those who were driven by a deep anger directed against the state and all its institutions”.
AIDEX 1989 - THE ACTION!
When I think back on our action at the Canberra Show Grounds in 1989 it is obvious that we were acting from our heartfelt belief in NVDA.
Our small group of activists was not involved in the Australian Nonviolence Network or the Nomadic Action Group. Though some of us had been involved for a while in activism, mostly through C.A.N.E., SANITY and the Anti-Bases Campaign, we were really just driven by our idealism which told us that we could make a difference just by being present and making a peaceful stand against the military industrial complex as we understood it.
We were not interested in attacking anyone. We were not interested in being attacked. The fact that we chose an arrestable action was influenced by our recent contact with the Catholic Worker movement and the Jesus Christians, though we were not representatives of either of these groups. We neither destroyed property, nor abused anyone verbally.
It didn’t take much for us to work out what kind of stunt we would pull at AIDEX. And it was a stunt. Our purpose was not to confront those whose jobs it was, to keep ratbags like us, out of the arms fair. Our job was to (a) draw attention to AIDEX in order to show the world that not every Australian supported this venture and (b) express our opposition and outrage about AIDEX.
The entrance to AIDEX was through the Canberra Show Grounds front gates. We got a ladder, climbed on top of the ticket booth, and pulled the ladder up behind us to prevent anyone using it to remove us from our chosen place of protest. We took with us, snacks, water to drink, fake blood, a megaphone and a banner. Once in place, my husband-to-be proceeded to blare out his Dylan-influenced poem through the megaphone. The rest of us unfurled the banner down from the roof and hurled our blood across it.
I can’t find a record of this protest online, but I know we made the Canberra Times the next morning. We ignored police demands to come down. We ignored police indignation that we would not comply, and give them the ladder. The police eventually found another ladder they could use to carry us off the roof. Fearing that we might fall, we did cooperate in our inevitable arrest. We spent the night in the lockup, and appeared in the Magistrate’s Court the next morning.
The men spent the night in the company of Bernie Maloney, who subsequently became a good friend. We women spent the night in the company of a young mother who had been arrested for outstanding fines and was frantic about the welfare of her little girl.
We were charged next morning with Breach of the Peace, which we all found hysterically ironic, and we were released on the condition that we not protest at AIDEX again. Since our bus was due to depart, this was an easy condition to fulfil, at least until 1991.
AIDEX 1991 - DEBACLE AND ANARCHY
My second child was born in mid-October 1991, and so both of my children are veterans of that protest. In hindsight I was utterly mad to have believed I could effectively protest outside the gates of AIDEX 1991 with a toddler of 18 months and a 6 week old baby, but I desperately wanted to be part of the groundswell of indignation and outrage that the Australian Government could be so short-sighted and stupid, in encouraging this trade in war machinery. I reasoned if I had been part of the first protest, I had every right to be part of the second. And I didn’t want my children to grow up in a world where war was waged in the name of keeping the economy productive!
The same group in Canberra organised the protest this time, but it was a very different picture. Activists from all over Australia swarmed to the site. There seemed to be no central organisation. It was loud, uncomfortable and chaotic. This was not really what we’d signed up for, and was in direct contrast to the protest of 1989.
Most of the protesters were in discomfort and distress of one kind or another, whether from lack of space to rest and recuperate before another shift of blockading the exhibition, or from lack of access to necessary amenities. The heady sense of anarchic excitement warped into fear as meetings were called that people either ignored or disrupted. Decision-making was not a successful part of the process, which proceeded ad hoc. There were quite a few casualties, including Non Violent Direct Action.
We were at least part of an organised group that fed us, and we had a tent. I distinctly remember throwing one of very few wifely tantrums when my husband absconded, leaving me to erect the tent single-handedly and without anywhere safe or comfortable to set the babies down. The whole protest contingent had by that time become so jaded that not one person from our group bothered to assist me in my small distress. My voice was very small amongst the clamour. I think some other women nearby held the babies for me for a few minutes.
FEMINISM AT AIDEX 1991
My experience at AIDEX 1991 gave me the needed impetus to become a feminist. I would probably have said I was a feminist prior to that protest; it would have seemed liked the right thing to do, but I wouldn’t have been able to articulate why. I was deeply resentful at the lack of support my large group of peace protesters gave me, as a young mother. I felt entitled to be there and had travelled there with some crazy notion that others would enable me to participate. This did not eventuate. It wasn’t until years later that I realised some of what the others had been going through at the protest.
I was unprepared for camping with two babies. We weren’t prepared for the prickles that assaulted my son’s tender feet all about the campground. At 18 months, he had wandered barefoot through the world to this point. One golden moment of altruism at AIDEX 1991 was when Kirsty and Matilda in an extraordinary act of compassion on their meagre AUSTUDY funds, found their way into town and bought him a pair of multicoloured sandals, size 5. This made the experience a little more bearable for both of us.
Hellen Cooke of W.I.L.P.F. writes that she persuaded WILPF women to protest in Canberra’s Civic Centre instead of outside the gates of AIDEX, “because there were enough people there” (accessed 23/8/08). She goes on to describe what led her to be involved in a project to collect the stories of people who had been involved in AIDEX 1991.
“After AIDEX 1991, as after AIDEX 1989, people in Canberra seemed to be in a state of shock. Even people who had not been involved in the protest at all. Almost everybody who lived in Canberra knew somebody, or was related to somebody who had been in the protest, it was so widespread and well attended.“
My perspective during the protest itself was that it just seemed like more of the same. Our meetings leading up to going to Canberra had devolved into ugly obstructionist times where certain pig-headed men refused to allow the women any respect and blocked every attempt to seriously plan, learn, listen or seek consensus amongst ourselves. So when we became of the huge amorphous mob in Canberra any vestige of the voice of commitment, justice and integrity escaped from our lungs with a dying gasp. There was no energy and no goodwill left to try for NVDA, particularly when we were surrounded by the howls of unorganised protesters who seemed to be operating under very different agendas.
The truth was, our little peace group was already in shambles. We had been struggling to get it together for quite a while before going to AIDEX. The division between those activists (mostly women) who were strongly committed to NVDA and group processes were continually shouted down by the angry men who seemed to feel they were entitled to run the show because God had bestowed them with penises and deep voices. They effectively destroyed the bonds that had already grown between some of the women of the group, and the shy tendrils of sisterhood that occasionally crept out between the women who remained in the group withdrew in surprised hurt as soon as one of the men noticed them and reached out indiscriminately with his crude secateurs.
AFTERSHOCKS AND REFLECTIONS
Adelaide is a small city. I am kind of disinclined to get involved in so-called peace groups again. Try as I might to avoid the ghosts of my past, I’ve already heard disparaging remarks about people who want to sing at the protest
against APDSE. I’ve heard a member of the Anti-Bases Campaign express his strong view that it was lack of cohesive leadership that was responsible for the violence and injuries at AIDEX 1991. He believes that if there had been a stronger commitment to NVDA, and if protesters had been encouraged to adopt those principles at the protest, there would have been much less violence.
I’m not sure what to think about all that. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, getting back in touch with the experiences of AIDEX 1989 and 1991. A great deal of shame has resurfaced and needed to be dealt with. My capacity to dredge up memories from those times that I thought I had firmly discarded has surprised me, and I’ve reached some new conclusions.
The only writing I did about my experiences at AIDEX 1989 and 1991 was in relation to how my attitude towards police changed from believing police were the enemy, as they were at these protests, to believing they might be able to assist women as we emerged from situations of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
It’s hard to believe that my children are now aged almost 17 and 18. They are now walking the footsteps of life’s journey that are parallel to those that I was on during my life as a ratbag activist from 1986-1993. As my daughter anticipates participating in the November 2008 protest action against **APDSE, I feel a mix of emotions – pride in her intelligence, liveliness, curiosity and idealism, bitterness about how short were my days in the sun, fear that she may find herself hurt or betrayed through her involvement in this protest, and jealousy that because I am now a staid fulltime worker I will probably be unable to participate in the protests myself, this time around.
I’ve been wondering whether to compare the protest at AIDEX 1991 with a war situation. Working as I do, with survivors of real war, I find the leap between my experience at AIDEX and the experiences they do not talk about, hard to make. But without being insensitive, my thoughts are wandering in that direction. Perhaps AIDEX 1991 is as close to being in a war as I have come during this lifetime?
The chaos and disorganisation that emerged as we protesters lost the veneer of living under the laws of our nation could be viewed as having taught us firsthand the absurdity of believing in human goodness and mutuality. This indeed comes very close to the accounts of wartime panic and institutionalisation that I have watched in films, read about, and heard survivors talk about. Niceness and compassion go out the window and it takes more time than we had to AIDEX to build up a sense of community welfare.
There was almost no altruism, no heroism and no self-sacrifice at AIDEX 1991. There was very little cooperation, and only isolated incidents of working together. I remember those who tried to change the world by meditating on the road outside the blockade, and I remember how they were taunted by their fellow protesters.
My personal experience as a young mother taught me that in this kind of situation it is each man for himself and damn anyone else. It was a sobering experience of lawlessness. A woman with children who had no attentive and benevolent patriarch looking out for her welfare could, but live in hope that her children would survive and she wouldn’t be trampled too badly. I felt vulnerable and unsheltered.
Police brutality at AIDEX 1991 came as a rude shock to peace activists, but there are clear lines of causality between the attitudes of protesters and the actions of the police. It was very scary to come into contact with that.
I suppose it is just as well that I did not find a way to take my babies and be part of the blockades. Instead, I wandered the median strips, admired the tripods and the daring of those who ascended into them, did a little fence weaving, and tried a few times to make eye contact with the feral mums who looked askance at me with my babies in nappies. Their babies went about with bare bottoms, and in the hierarchy of crunch, they won, hands down. They were so cool, with their hippy clothes, dreadlocks and bare feet. I was glad they had come out of the forests into the suburbs again, but we seemed like a separate species. Their experiences of protesting in the forests undoubtedly coloured their approach to protesting against AIDEX. Perhaps their experiences with the foresters and the police who allowed them to get on with their destructive work made them less surprised than some of us others, at the actions of the police.
I think it’s the bus trip home that I recall most vividly. Out coach broke down three times. My fellow protesters were mostly silent in shock; immersed in a state of dispirited disbelief at the inescapable fact that our world was nasty. Being at AIDEX 1991 propelled us out of our white middle class complacency and gave us just a tiny taste of the kinds of things that happen to bystanders and protesters in other parts of the world.
It was cherry season. We stopped to buy cherries from a roadside stall. I sat, longing for home and a soft mattress, while I breastfed my daughter and pipped cherries for my little son, to plug his mouth and keep his innocent chatter from interrupting the thoughts of those around him. They had enough on their minds.
*AIDEX = Australian International Defence Equipment eXhibition, Canberra Show Grounds, 1989 and 1991.
**APDSE = Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition, Adelaide Convention Centre, November 2008.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
BACKGROUND TO AIDEX 1989
There seems to be little recorded memory of AIDEX 1989, which was the precursor to the BIG protest in Canberra at AIDEX 1991. I was one of a small group of Adelaide activists who travelled from the Anti-Bases Campaign action at Nurrungar in 1989 to Canberra, to protest against the Australian promotion of an international trade fair of weapons and “defence” equipment.
The training we peace activists had previously received in Non-Violent Direct Action had prepared us to be clear-headed and thoughtful about how we would engage authorities (police, security guards, army) and what our purpose was, in standing up for what we believed in. This was mainly through our involvement in the Anti-Bases Campaign protest actions at Nurrungar. Yet even the History of the Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition fails to count AIDEX 1989 as one protest in which Anti-Bases Coalition activists were present and active.
We were fairly clear about what we believed in. Animal Liberation provides some good information about what NVDA was for us. We were ratbags, but we were non-violent ratbags. We wanted to be seen and heard and taken seriously, but we also wanted to be safe and have fun. We were creative and we took calculated risks. The idea of non-cooperation was as appealing as street theatre, and during our participation in the action at Nurrungar, our contact with police officers had been friendly and non-threatening.
I Was Only Nineteen, knew nobody who was directly involved in making war, and had every intention of keeping my nose clean. I would no sooner have considered applying for a defence force scholarship than applying to NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. A few years later when Richard, who had entertained all the protesters and the security guards alike with his hilarity and sharp wit, was knocked back from the Army Reserves, I imagined he had some kind of death wish. Come to think of it, one of my old school friends, Sheila who came along to AIDEX with us in 1989 for a holiday more than out of any conviction, ended up joining one of the branches of the ADF.
Now that I am older and have had contact with a more interesting and broader range of people, I know people whose lives have become entangled with warmongering, whether because there are too few peaceful outlets for their specialities, or because they needed a trade and the defence forces were the only creditable establishments who would take them on. But at that time we were purists. Life was black and white. It was quite simple. Us and them.
As Chris Hannaford writes: “it is our job to be the peace movement and set examples to the police and the community. In this way we can influence public opinion.”
(Accessed online 23/8/08)
We were mighty proud of ourselves for making it to Canberra on such short notice. When we arrived back in Adelaide after Nurrungar, dusty red and triumphant, Roman Orzsanski of Friends Of the Earth interviewed a few of us youngsters about our experience on Triple M Radio (Adelaide’s community radio station that has since morphed into Three D Radio). It was Roman who told us about AIDEX 1989, and it was Roman who inspired us to hire a bus and try to fill it with protesters to stop this trade in war.
I worked my tail off trying to convince people to come, but in the end the $2000 deposit I had put down on a coach was squandered, and my trip back to Europe was to become a never-realised dream. The bus was less than half full, and most of those who went were students or concession holders. Oh well, I was pregnant anyway. Life was taking a serious turn for the worse, what with the Hawke government promoting Australia as a venue of choice for war games and weapon exhibitions.
I was ashamed to live in Adelaide then, as I am now – Don Dunstan would surely turn in his grave to think that we have transformed from The Festival State to the Defence State.
Jones, Pestorius and Law of The Australian Nonviolence Network(accessed 22/8/08), write in relation to NVDA protest in Australia from the mid 1980s that: “There was bitter criticism at having to buy the whole non-violent package as well as the concept, particularly by those who were driven by a deep anger directed against the state and all its institutions”.
AIDEX 1989 - THE ACTION!
When I think back on our action at the Canberra Show Grounds in 1989 it is obvious that we were acting from our heartfelt belief in NVDA.
Our small group of activists was not involved in the Australian Nonviolence Network or the Nomadic Action Group. Though some of us had been involved for a while in activism, mostly through C.A.N.E., SANITY and the Anti-Bases Campaign, we were really just driven by our idealism which told us that we could make a difference just by being present and making a peaceful stand against the military industrial complex as we understood it.
We were not interested in attacking anyone. We were not interested in being attacked. The fact that we chose an arrestable action was influenced by our recent contact with the Catholic Worker movement and the Jesus Christians, though we were not representatives of either of these groups. We neither destroyed property, nor abused anyone verbally.
It didn’t take much for us to work out what kind of stunt we would pull at AIDEX. And it was a stunt. Our purpose was not to confront those whose jobs it was, to keep ratbags like us, out of the arms fair. Our job was to (a) draw attention to AIDEX in order to show the world that not every Australian supported this venture and (b) express our opposition and outrage about AIDEX.
The entrance to AIDEX was through the Canberra Show Grounds front gates. We got a ladder, climbed on top of the ticket booth, and pulled the ladder up behind us to prevent anyone using it to remove us from our chosen place of protest. We took with us, snacks, water to drink, fake blood, a megaphone and a banner. Once in place, my husband-to-be proceeded to blare out his Dylan-influenced poem through the megaphone. The rest of us unfurled the banner down from the roof and hurled our blood across it.
I can’t find a record of this protest online, but I know we made the Canberra Times the next morning. We ignored police demands to come down. We ignored police indignation that we would not comply, and give them the ladder. The police eventually found another ladder they could use to carry us off the roof. Fearing that we might fall, we did cooperate in our inevitable arrest. We spent the night in the lockup, and appeared in the Magistrate’s Court the next morning.
The men spent the night in the company of Bernie Maloney, who subsequently became a good friend. We women spent the night in the company of a young mother who had been arrested for outstanding fines and was frantic about the welfare of her little girl.
We were charged next morning with Breach of the Peace, which we all found hysterically ironic, and we were released on the condition that we not protest at AIDEX again. Since our bus was due to depart, this was an easy condition to fulfil, at least until 1991.
AIDEX 1991 - DEBACLE AND ANARCHY
My second child was born in mid-October 1991, and so both of my children are veterans of that protest. In hindsight I was utterly mad to have believed I could effectively protest outside the gates of AIDEX 1991 with a toddler of 18 months and a 6 week old baby, but I desperately wanted to be part of the groundswell of indignation and outrage that the Australian Government could be so short-sighted and stupid, in encouraging this trade in war machinery. I reasoned if I had been part of the first protest, I had every right to be part of the second. And I didn’t want my children to grow up in a world where war was waged in the name of keeping the economy productive!
The same group in Canberra organised the protest this time, but it was a very different picture. Activists from all over Australia swarmed to the site. There seemed to be no central organisation. It was loud, uncomfortable and chaotic. This was not really what we’d signed up for, and was in direct contrast to the protest of 1989.
Most of the protesters were in discomfort and distress of one kind or another, whether from lack of space to rest and recuperate before another shift of blockading the exhibition, or from lack of access to necessary amenities. The heady sense of anarchic excitement warped into fear as meetings were called that people either ignored or disrupted. Decision-making was not a successful part of the process, which proceeded ad hoc. There were quite a few casualties, including Non Violent Direct Action.
We were at least part of an organised group that fed us, and we had a tent. I distinctly remember throwing one of very few wifely tantrums when my husband absconded, leaving me to erect the tent single-handedly and without anywhere safe or comfortable to set the babies down. The whole protest contingent had by that time become so jaded that not one person from our group bothered to assist me in my small distress. My voice was very small amongst the clamour. I think some other women nearby held the babies for me for a few minutes.
FEMINISM AT AIDEX 1991
My experience at AIDEX 1991 gave me the needed impetus to become a feminist. I would probably have said I was a feminist prior to that protest; it would have seemed liked the right thing to do, but I wouldn’t have been able to articulate why. I was deeply resentful at the lack of support my large group of peace protesters gave me, as a young mother. I felt entitled to be there and had travelled there with some crazy notion that others would enable me to participate. This did not eventuate. It wasn’t until years later that I realised some of what the others had been going through at the protest.
I was unprepared for camping with two babies. We weren’t prepared for the prickles that assaulted my son’s tender feet all about the campground. At 18 months, he had wandered barefoot through the world to this point. One golden moment of altruism at AIDEX 1991 was when Kirsty and Matilda in an extraordinary act of compassion on their meagre AUSTUDY funds, found their way into town and bought him a pair of multicoloured sandals, size 5. This made the experience a little more bearable for both of us.
Hellen Cooke of W.I.L.P.F. writes that she persuaded WILPF women to protest in Canberra’s Civic Centre instead of outside the gates of AIDEX, “because there were enough people there” (accessed 23/8/08). She goes on to describe what led her to be involved in a project to collect the stories of people who had been involved in AIDEX 1991.
“After AIDEX 1991, as after AIDEX 1989, people in Canberra seemed to be in a state of shock. Even people who had not been involved in the protest at all. Almost everybody who lived in Canberra knew somebody, or was related to somebody who had been in the protest, it was so widespread and well attended.“
My perspective during the protest itself was that it just seemed like more of the same. Our meetings leading up to going to Canberra had devolved into ugly obstructionist times where certain pig-headed men refused to allow the women any respect and blocked every attempt to seriously plan, learn, listen or seek consensus amongst ourselves. So when we became of the huge amorphous mob in Canberra any vestige of the voice of commitment, justice and integrity escaped from our lungs with a dying gasp. There was no energy and no goodwill left to try for NVDA, particularly when we were surrounded by the howls of unorganised protesters who seemed to be operating under very different agendas.
The truth was, our little peace group was already in shambles. We had been struggling to get it together for quite a while before going to AIDEX. The division between those activists (mostly women) who were strongly committed to NVDA and group processes were continually shouted down by the angry men who seemed to feel they were entitled to run the show because God had bestowed them with penises and deep voices. They effectively destroyed the bonds that had already grown between some of the women of the group, and the shy tendrils of sisterhood that occasionally crept out between the women who remained in the group withdrew in surprised hurt as soon as one of the men noticed them and reached out indiscriminately with his crude secateurs.
AFTERSHOCKS AND REFLECTIONS
Adelaide is a small city. I am kind of disinclined to get involved in so-called peace groups again. Try as I might to avoid the ghosts of my past, I’ve already heard disparaging remarks about people who want to sing at the protest
against APDSE. I’ve heard a member of the Anti-Bases Campaign express his strong view that it was lack of cohesive leadership that was responsible for the violence and injuries at AIDEX 1991. He believes that if there had been a stronger commitment to NVDA, and if protesters had been encouraged to adopt those principles at the protest, there would have been much less violence.
I’m not sure what to think about all that. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, getting back in touch with the experiences of AIDEX 1989 and 1991. A great deal of shame has resurfaced and needed to be dealt with. My capacity to dredge up memories from those times that I thought I had firmly discarded has surprised me, and I’ve reached some new conclusions.
The only writing I did about my experiences at AIDEX 1989 and 1991 was in relation to how my attitude towards police changed from believing police were the enemy, as they were at these protests, to believing they might be able to assist women as we emerged from situations of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
It’s hard to believe that my children are now aged almost 17 and 18. They are now walking the footsteps of life’s journey that are parallel to those that I was on during my life as a ratbag activist from 1986-1993. As my daughter anticipates participating in the November 2008 protest action against **APDSE, I feel a mix of emotions – pride in her intelligence, liveliness, curiosity and idealism, bitterness about how short were my days in the sun, fear that she may find herself hurt or betrayed through her involvement in this protest, and jealousy that because I am now a staid fulltime worker I will probably be unable to participate in the protests myself, this time around.
I’ve been wondering whether to compare the protest at AIDEX 1991 with a war situation. Working as I do, with survivors of real war, I find the leap between my experience at AIDEX and the experiences they do not talk about, hard to make. But without being insensitive, my thoughts are wandering in that direction. Perhaps AIDEX 1991 is as close to being in a war as I have come during this lifetime?
The chaos and disorganisation that emerged as we protesters lost the veneer of living under the laws of our nation could be viewed as having taught us firsthand the absurdity of believing in human goodness and mutuality. This indeed comes very close to the accounts of wartime panic and institutionalisation that I have watched in films, read about, and heard survivors talk about. Niceness and compassion go out the window and it takes more time than we had to AIDEX to build up a sense of community welfare.
There was almost no altruism, no heroism and no self-sacrifice at AIDEX 1991. There was very little cooperation, and only isolated incidents of working together. I remember those who tried to change the world by meditating on the road outside the blockade, and I remember how they were taunted by their fellow protesters.
My personal experience as a young mother taught me that in this kind of situation it is each man for himself and damn anyone else. It was a sobering experience of lawlessness. A woman with children who had no attentive and benevolent patriarch looking out for her welfare could, but live in hope that her children would survive and she wouldn’t be trampled too badly. I felt vulnerable and unsheltered.
Police brutality at AIDEX 1991 came as a rude shock to peace activists, but there are clear lines of causality between the attitudes of protesters and the actions of the police. It was very scary to come into contact with that.
I suppose it is just as well that I did not find a way to take my babies and be part of the blockades. Instead, I wandered the median strips, admired the tripods and the daring of those who ascended into them, did a little fence weaving, and tried a few times to make eye contact with the feral mums who looked askance at me with my babies in nappies. Their babies went about with bare bottoms, and in the hierarchy of crunch, they won, hands down. They were so cool, with their hippy clothes, dreadlocks and bare feet. I was glad they had come out of the forests into the suburbs again, but we seemed like a separate species. Their experiences of protesting in the forests undoubtedly coloured their approach to protesting against AIDEX. Perhaps their experiences with the foresters and the police who allowed them to get on with their destructive work made them less surprised than some of us others, at the actions of the police.
I think it’s the bus trip home that I recall most vividly. Out coach broke down three times. My fellow protesters were mostly silent in shock; immersed in a state of dispirited disbelief at the inescapable fact that our world was nasty. Being at AIDEX 1991 propelled us out of our white middle class complacency and gave us just a tiny taste of the kinds of things that happen to bystanders and protesters in other parts of the world.
It was cherry season. We stopped to buy cherries from a roadside stall. I sat, longing for home and a soft mattress, while I breastfed my daughter and pipped cherries for my little son, to plug his mouth and keep his innocent chatter from interrupting the thoughts of those around him. They had enough on their minds.
*AIDEX = Australian International Defence Equipment eXhibition, Canberra Show Grounds, 1989 and 1991.
**APDSE = Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition, Adelaide Convention Centre, November 2008.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Screaming is Required
Screaming is Required
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
Re-reading Alice Walker this week - The Complete Stories - and in particular Advancing Luna - and Ida B. Wells (You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down, 1982), I vacillated between blazing anger and utter despondency. As usual, it took a day or two to recognise my anger. Despondency is still the far easier reaction for a socially conditioned middle class white woman in 2008.
Luna, the central character of this short story, is a white woman who didn't scream when a black man raped her as she worked for the Civil Rights Movement in southern USA of 1965.
What makes me want to scream, and LOUDLY, is not the idea that pale, patient, passive, unattractive, flat-chested Luna martyrs herself in the apparently misplaced notion that in so doing, she might spare the idealistic Civil Rights Workers the possibility that yet another young black man lose his dignity and his life by getting lynched as a rapist (even though in the scenario painted by Walker he might well have deserved such a fate). Yes, Luna's reply to the question
"Why didn't you scream?" is "You know why." And yes, we are told that subsequently, Luna goes on to date and sleep with exclusively black men including the rapist himself, though Walker leaves the circumstances of this night purposefully ambiguous. Luna appears to suffer from the idea that her duty is to count herself out as a human being with rights or feelings or opinions, because she is white. Like many a rape survivor, she suffers from a grandiose idea of her own personal responsibility, and she continues to punish herself for falling prey to the violence of someone she was trying to help. Walker's questions Luna's belief that she did the right thing by not screaming. This issue looms as the divisive catalyst for the destruction of a close friendship between two women - one white, and one black.
What angers me most is not the idea that a black man might use rape as a weapon to vicariously take revenge on white man for the wrongs he has suffered. Walker does not trivialise this idea; nor does she discount it altogether. In fact, she raises the idea that white men may have hired black men to rape white women in order to prevent the peaceful modelling of interracial projects to further the Civil Rights Movement of the times. I am neither shocked, nor offended by the idea that rape might be used by a man of any colour as a weapon of power. This is commonplace.
I am aware that anger as a destructive force invites people to make scapegoats out of others who are perceived to have less right to power than those who are acting out of their anger, no matter what its source. A person who is complacent and smug; comfortable with himself or herself, and who goes about the world with confidence about his or her place in the world, appears to be powerful. Such a person is less often prone to being attacked by someone looking to do something with his or her anger. The projected idea of "less right to power" is instead quite often manifested in a person who seems frail, harmless, vulnerable and weak. A person whose anger is a blazing fury, will target the vulnerable, failing to recognise that this in itself most often constitutes revictimisation. Luna fits the description of victim nicely, thank you very much.
But this also, is beside the point. I do not seek to excuse or understand a rapist.
What angers me most is this idea that for an act of cruelty, violation and annihilation to constitute rape seems to require the person who is a victim of this crime, to scream. Once again the onus is upon her to manifest the crime. If she fails to scream, the idea that she was raped at all is called into question, no matter what the circumstances, and no matter what her reasoning for not screaming.
I acknowledge that making a noise to alert passersby, neighbours and people who may be able to stop an attack is extremely important in some circumstances. Furthermore, a woman who can scream and shout and who defends herself against her attacker is sometimes successful in scaring him away.
While we continue to be silent about rape, on the pretext that we are protecting the victim from being further humiliated or injured, rape continues to be a hidden, private crime. We need to scream! We do! But to question the validity of a rape survivor's experience on the basis that it may not have been rape at all, if she failed to scream and struggle in the moment that she was being violated, is a surefire way to revictimise her. Survival constitutes responding appropriately to the situation. It is not always appropriate to scream, and she should not be held responsible for the rape, if in that moment of surviving, she chooses not to scream.
So I thought I'd make a quick list, off the top of my head, of reasons it might be entirely appropriate that a woman notscream. Perhaps my readers will add to this list.
- When a knife is held to her throat, a woman need not scream.
- When her tongue has been cut out, as was done to the young El Salvadorean woman in Romero, she need not scream.
- When she is only a few months old and a man bought the right to take her virginity on the basis that raping her will take away his HIV, we cannot accuse her of failing to defend herself if she does not scream.
- When the rapist is one of a group of sadistic men, screaming is likely to not only incite worse physical damage, but excite these sadists. In such a situation, a woman need not scream.
- When her sleeping children are being threatened with violence and murder should she make any noise to wake them, a woman who is being raped, need not scream.
- When past experience has taught her that screaming will cause her rapist-husband-uncle-father-grandfather to choke her as well as raping her, she need not scream.
- When she has been drugged senseless and is unaware of what is being done to her, a woman need not scream.
- When the rapists are holding her younger sister, or her husband, or another family member hostage, in order to force her to submit quietly, and they are threatening to kill this person if she should struggle against them, a woman need not scream.
- When a rapist has done his worst, and believing she is already dead, is about to dump her body and flee, and if screaming were to alert him to the fact that she is still alive, a woman need not scream.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
Re-reading Alice Walker this week - The Complete Stories - and in particular Advancing Luna - and Ida B. Wells (You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down, 1982), I vacillated between blazing anger and utter despondency. As usual, it took a day or two to recognise my anger. Despondency is still the far easier reaction for a socially conditioned middle class white woman in 2008.
Luna, the central character of this short story, is a white woman who didn't scream when a black man raped her as she worked for the Civil Rights Movement in southern USA of 1965.
What makes me want to scream, and LOUDLY, is not the idea that pale, patient, passive, unattractive, flat-chested Luna martyrs herself in the apparently misplaced notion that in so doing, she might spare the idealistic Civil Rights Workers the possibility that yet another young black man lose his dignity and his life by getting lynched as a rapist (even though in the scenario painted by Walker he might well have deserved such a fate). Yes, Luna's reply to the question
"Why didn't you scream?" is "You know why." And yes, we are told that subsequently, Luna goes on to date and sleep with exclusively black men including the rapist himself, though Walker leaves the circumstances of this night purposefully ambiguous. Luna appears to suffer from the idea that her duty is to count herself out as a human being with rights or feelings or opinions, because she is white. Like many a rape survivor, she suffers from a grandiose idea of her own personal responsibility, and she continues to punish herself for falling prey to the violence of someone she was trying to help. Walker's questions Luna's belief that she did the right thing by not screaming. This issue looms as the divisive catalyst for the destruction of a close friendship between two women - one white, and one black.
What angers me most is not the idea that a black man might use rape as a weapon to vicariously take revenge on white man for the wrongs he has suffered. Walker does not trivialise this idea; nor does she discount it altogether. In fact, she raises the idea that white men may have hired black men to rape white women in order to prevent the peaceful modelling of interracial projects to further the Civil Rights Movement of the times. I am neither shocked, nor offended by the idea that rape might be used by a man of any colour as a weapon of power. This is commonplace.
I am aware that anger as a destructive force invites people to make scapegoats out of others who are perceived to have less right to power than those who are acting out of their anger, no matter what its source. A person who is complacent and smug; comfortable with himself or herself, and who goes about the world with confidence about his or her place in the world, appears to be powerful. Such a person is less often prone to being attacked by someone looking to do something with his or her anger. The projected idea of "less right to power" is instead quite often manifested in a person who seems frail, harmless, vulnerable and weak. A person whose anger is a blazing fury, will target the vulnerable, failing to recognise that this in itself most often constitutes revictimisation. Luna fits the description of victim nicely, thank you very much.
But this also, is beside the point. I do not seek to excuse or understand a rapist.
What angers me most is this idea that for an act of cruelty, violation and annihilation to constitute rape seems to require the person who is a victim of this crime, to scream. Once again the onus is upon her to manifest the crime. If she fails to scream, the idea that she was raped at all is called into question, no matter what the circumstances, and no matter what her reasoning for not screaming.
I acknowledge that making a noise to alert passersby, neighbours and people who may be able to stop an attack is extremely important in some circumstances. Furthermore, a woman who can scream and shout and who defends herself against her attacker is sometimes successful in scaring him away.
While we continue to be silent about rape, on the pretext that we are protecting the victim from being further humiliated or injured, rape continues to be a hidden, private crime. We need to scream! We do! But to question the validity of a rape survivor's experience on the basis that it may not have been rape at all, if she failed to scream and struggle in the moment that she was being violated, is a surefire way to revictimise her. Survival constitutes responding appropriately to the situation. It is not always appropriate to scream, and she should not be held responsible for the rape, if in that moment of surviving, she chooses not to scream.
So I thought I'd make a quick list, off the top of my head, of reasons it might be entirely appropriate that a woman notscream. Perhaps my readers will add to this list.
- When a knife is held to her throat, a woman need not scream.
- When her tongue has been cut out, as was done to the young El Salvadorean woman in Romero, she need not scream.
- When she is only a few months old and a man bought the right to take her virginity on the basis that raping her will take away his HIV, we cannot accuse her of failing to defend herself if she does not scream.
- When the rapist is one of a group of sadistic men, screaming is likely to not only incite worse physical damage, but excite these sadists. In such a situation, a woman need not scream.
- When her sleeping children are being threatened with violence and murder should she make any noise to wake them, a woman who is being raped, need not scream.
- When past experience has taught her that screaming will cause her rapist-husband-uncle-father-grandfather to choke her as well as raping her, she need not scream.
- When she has been drugged senseless and is unaware of what is being done to her, a woman need not scream.
- When the rapists are holding her younger sister, or her husband, or another family member hostage, in order to force her to submit quietly, and they are threatening to kill this person if she should struggle against them, a woman need not scream.
- When a rapist has done his worst, and believing she is already dead, is about to dump her body and flee, and if screaming were to alert him to the fact that she is still alive, a woman need not scream.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
A Crunchie Chuppah
A Crunchie Chuppah
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
"God, our merciful Father, I'm wrapped in a robe of light, clothed in your glory that spreads its wings over my soul. May I be worthy. Amen."
Yentl (1983)
Take a square of washed calico.
Press the four edges neatly.
Send the square to a friend with a request, and a deadline for action.
Wait to see what comes back.
Receive it with delight. Add it to the growing pile of calico squares, no longer plain, but decorated extravagantly, simply, naively, elegantly, with flair - each and every one.
Take a pile of decorated calico squares.
Open up the pressed hems.
Join them to make a large square.
On the ascribed day toss the large square over the framework of a pagoda, with four open sides. Create sacred space for a solemn and joyful ceremony and celebration.
The sky expands over the park. The river extends nearby. The chuppah, made by contributions from many loving hearts and hands, lies between earth and sky, waiting for the moment to begin.
Enter the clearing with your family members to guide and escort you to the sacred space.
Acknowledge the gathering.
Honour the day. Remove your shoes. Enter the chuppah. Marvel at its beauty. Take the hand of your beloved, and begin the ritual.
In the old story (Genesis 18), Sarah and Abraham offer hospitality to strangers who turn out to be God's representatives. Sarah is rewarded when her deepest desire is granted - she later gives birth at an advanced age to baby Isaac, but not until after Hagar, about to give birth to Ishmael, has been cast out of their tent in a fit of jealousy.
In the story of the Angels, the one who grants Sarah's wish also refers to her habit of laughing. As evidenced by her jealous treatment of Hagar, Sarah doesn't think much of her barren self, but has the dignity and presence of mind to conform nonetheless to the traditions of hospitality and welcoming the stranger.
The tent in which Sarah, Abraham and Hagar reside is both ephemeral and sturdy. Though constructed of fragile materials, it amply shelters Sarah and her family wherever they should wander. Any comforts that Sarah and her family find within their tent, are the products of the work that Sarah, Hagar and Abraham do, in providing for themselves.
The presence of God in their lives might feel no less ephemeral and transient. Jews often pray that God's wings might shelter them and keep them safe, in just the same way that a tent can shelter those inside its walls.
After her father's death, Yentl adopts and adapts time-honoured rituals to find comfort and to feel close to God. The heresy therein is of course, that Yentl is female and the rituals she adapts are traditionally barred from her practice.
Yentl takes her father's tallit (prayer shawl). She wraps herself in the tallit and she feels herself to be in the presence of God.
After wrapping the tallit around the body
Psalms 36:8–11 is traditionally recited:
מה יקר חסדך א להים, ובני אדם בצל כנפיך יחסיון. ירוין מדשן ביתך, ונחל עדניך תשקם. כי עמך מקור חיים, באורך נראה אור. משך חסדך לידעיך, וצדקתך לישרי לב.
Transliteration: Ma yakar hasd'kha Elohim, uvnei adam b'tzel k'nafekha yehesayun. Yirv'yun mi deshen beitekha, v'nahal adanekha tashkem. Ki im'kha m'kor hayim, b'or'kha nir'e or. M'shokh hasd'kha l'yod'ekha, v'tzidkat'kha l'yish'rei lev.
Translation: "How precious is your kindness, [O] God! People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They are sated from the abundance of Your house, and from the stream of Your delights You give them to drink. For with You is the source of life; by Your light shall we see light. Extend Your kindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright of heart."
What kind of heresy then, is this crunchie proposition? Not only is the couple not heterosexual, but only one of them is Jewish. What right have they to alter the ritual of the chuppah, and twist it to suit their own purpose?
Some might find the idea offensive. Some might label it perverse. Others might be indignant because the chuppah is reserved for Jewish-Jewish couples, and not for mixed marriages. Another group of people protest - what value remains, when you persist in picking apart rituals and blending them together in such a confused and watered-down form?
Then there are our detractors who say things like - why on earth would you want to ape heteronormative practice? No one is exacting this toll upon your relationship. You do not know your future. Why complicate matters by setting yourselves up to fail? Who benefits, from your attempts to commit publically to your partnership? This is a private matter. This is folly. It serves no purpose. Pure self-indulgence.
To such detractors I have a few things to say.
- What significance has a ritual if it has no personal value? Whom does it benefit? Are we so superstitious as to believe that making the right moves and paying lip-service will automatically confer some kind of benefit upon us and our lives?
- Mine is a faith that grows and transforms in the same way that I respond and change according to the experiences that shape me. It makes sense to me then, that my rituals and prayers are not static and rigid. My ritual and prayer response is in keeping with my experiences.
- Yes, we are a same-sex couple, and we come from different faith backgrounds. We seek to bring our lives together by enacting a solemn and joyous ceremony of our own creation. Neither of our faith backgrounds offers us their sacred space in which to do this. It is left to us to create our own sacred space for that purpose.
It is outrageous to consider that as a same-sex, mixed-faith couple we can answer to no authority. Yet we are far from dismayed by this. Our is a covenant we enter into voluntarily and with love and hope in our hearts. It's not that those heterosexual couples who choose to marry do so under duress - but rather our choice in this matter says a lot about who we are as human beings who choose a life of committed partnership.
Like many people who are unable to conform to societal norms, we have both spent years examining and questioning ourselves and decrying our places in the world. We wandered long and wondered bitterly like Sarah why our fates did not bring us the happiness we craved.
Indeed - there is no authority to whom we can look to bless our union. Our actions make very little sense in the usual scheme of things. We know very well that there are those who oppose what we are trying to do. We have searched our hearts and we have not found them wanting. We will do, what we will do, with or without their blessing, because we are people of integrity. We feel sorrow for the small-minded but ultimately it would serve no purpose for us to crush our own spirits in order to preserve their stubborn and privileged understanding of the world.
Our chuppah is a physical symbol of the people who have helped to sustain and nurture us on our separate journeys to this place, where our lives meet and converge. Our chuppah is a place for ceremony and celebration. We honour those who have helped to bring us to this place, because we know that without them, we would be far lesser people and our worlds would be much smaller.
Sarah did well to laugh inside her tent. As we shall laugh inside our chuppah, I belive the angels will laugh with us. Laughter is a life force that unites people and ignites us into positive action. We shall be enfolded by the good wishes of the people of our world, as we shall feel ourselves nestled in a safe place that is close to our understanding of God.
(c) Melina Magdalena 2008
"God, our merciful Father, I'm wrapped in a robe of light, clothed in your glory that spreads its wings over my soul. May I be worthy. Amen."
Yentl (1983)
Take a square of washed calico. Press the four edges neatly.
Send the square to a friend with a request, and a deadline for action.
Wait to see what comes back.
Receive it with delight. Add it to the growing pile of calico squares, no longer plain, but decorated extravagantly, simply, naively, elegantly, with flair - each and every one.
Take a pile of decorated calico squares. Open up the pressed hems.
Join them to make a large square.
On the ascribed day toss the large square over the framework of a pagoda, with four open sides. Create sacred space for a solemn and joyful ceremony and celebration.
The sky expands over the park. The river extends nearby. The chuppah, made by contributions from many loving hearts and hands, lies between earth and sky, waiting for the moment to begin.
Enter the clearing with your family members to guide and escort you to the sacred space. Acknowledge the gathering.
Honour the day. Remove your shoes. Enter the chuppah. Marvel at its beauty. Take the hand of your beloved, and begin the ritual.
In the old story (Genesis 18), Sarah and Abraham offer hospitality to strangers who turn out to be God's representatives. Sarah is rewarded when her deepest desire is granted - she later gives birth at an advanced age to baby Isaac, but not until after Hagar, about to give birth to Ishmael, has been cast out of their tent in a fit of jealousy. In the story of the Angels, the one who grants Sarah's wish also refers to her habit of laughing. As evidenced by her jealous treatment of Hagar, Sarah doesn't think much of her barren self, but has the dignity and presence of mind to conform nonetheless to the traditions of hospitality and welcoming the stranger.
The tent in which Sarah, Abraham and Hagar reside is both ephemeral and sturdy. Though constructed of fragile materials, it amply shelters Sarah and her family wherever they should wander. Any comforts that Sarah and her family find within their tent, are the products of the work that Sarah, Hagar and Abraham do, in providing for themselves. The presence of God in their lives might feel no less ephemeral and transient. Jews often pray that God's wings might shelter them and keep them safe, in just the same way that a tent can shelter those inside its walls.
After her father's death, Yentl adopts and adapts time-honoured rituals to find comfort and to feel close to God. The heresy therein is of course, that Yentl is female and the rituals she adapts are traditionally barred from her practice. Yentl takes her father's tallit (prayer shawl). She wraps herself in the tallit and she feels herself to be in the presence of God.
After wrapping the tallit around the bodyPsalms 36:8–11 is traditionally recited:
מה יקר חסדך א להים, ובני אדם בצל כנפיך יחסיון. ירוין מדשן ביתך, ונחל עדניך תשקם. כי עמך מקור חיים, באורך נראה אור. משך חסדך לידעיך, וצדקתך לישרי לב.
Transliteration: Ma yakar hasd'kha Elohim, uvnei adam b'tzel k'nafekha yehesayun. Yirv'yun mi deshen beitekha, v'nahal adanekha tashkem. Ki im'kha m'kor hayim, b'or'kha nir'e or. M'shokh hasd'kha l'yod'ekha, v'tzidkat'kha l'yish'rei lev.
Translation: "How precious is your kindness, [O] God! People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They are sated from the abundance of Your house, and from the stream of Your delights You give them to drink. For with You is the source of life; by Your light shall we see light. Extend Your kindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright of heart."
What kind of heresy then, is this crunchie proposition? Not only is the couple not heterosexual, but only one of them is Jewish. What right have they to alter the ritual of the chuppah, and twist it to suit their own purpose?Some might find the idea offensive. Some might label it perverse. Others might be indignant because the chuppah is reserved for Jewish-Jewish couples, and not for mixed marriages. Another group of people protest - what value remains, when you persist in picking apart rituals and blending them together in such a confused and watered-down form?
Then there are our detractors who say things like - why on earth would you want to ape heteronormative practice? No one is exacting this toll upon your relationship. You do not know your future. Why complicate matters by setting yourselves up to fail? Who benefits, from your attempts to commit publically to your partnership? This is a private matter. This is folly. It serves no purpose. Pure self-indulgence.
To such detractors I have a few things to say. - What significance has a ritual if it has no personal value? Whom does it benefit? Are we so superstitious as to believe that making the right moves and paying lip-service will automatically confer some kind of benefit upon us and our lives?
- Mine is a faith that grows and transforms in the same way that I respond and change according to the experiences that shape me. It makes sense to me then, that my rituals and prayers are not static and rigid. My ritual and prayer response is in keeping with my experiences.
- Yes, we are a same-sex couple, and we come from different faith backgrounds. We seek to bring our lives together by enacting a solemn and joyous ceremony of our own creation. Neither of our faith backgrounds offers us their sacred space in which to do this. It is left to us to create our own sacred space for that purpose.
It is outrageous to consider that as a same-sex, mixed-faith couple we can answer to no authority. Yet we are far from dismayed by this. Our is a covenant we enter into voluntarily and with love and hope in our hearts. It's not that those heterosexual couples who choose to marry do so under duress - but rather our choice in this matter says a lot about who we are as human beings who choose a life of committed partnership. Like many people who are unable to conform to societal norms, we have both spent years examining and questioning ourselves and decrying our places in the world. We wandered long and wondered bitterly like Sarah why our fates did not bring us the happiness we craved.
Indeed - there is no authority to whom we can look to bless our union. Our actions make very little sense in the usual scheme of things. We know very well that there are those who oppose what we are trying to do. We have searched our hearts and we have not found them wanting. We will do, what we will do, with or without their blessing, because we are people of integrity. We feel sorrow for the small-minded but ultimately it would serve no purpose for us to crush our own spirits in order to preserve their stubborn and privileged understanding of the world. Our chuppah is a physical symbol of the people who have helped to sustain and nurture us on our separate journeys to this place, where our lives meet and converge. Our chuppah is a place for ceremony and celebration. We honour those who have helped to bring us to this place, because we know that without them, we would be far lesser people and our worlds would be much smaller. 
Sarah did well to laugh inside her tent. As we shall laugh inside our chuppah, I belive the angels will laugh with us. Laughter is a life force that unites people and ignites us into positive action. We shall be enfolded by the good wishes of the people of our world, as we shall feel ourselves nestled in a safe place that is close to our understanding of God.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
A Second Crunchie Proposition
A Second Crunchie Proposition
© Melina Magdalena (2008)
It’s becoming crunchier to own up to having and valuing some kind of spiritual belief system. When I say crunchier, I don’t just mean fashionable, trendier or more hip. Of course what I’m observing could be a flash in the pan, but I have a feeling that it reflects a deeper shift in understanding and appreciation of what it is to be human, and live in this world.
It’s hard to think in terms of generations, but if I consider the folk I grew up with, there were two main camps – those youth groupers who were openly and joyously religious, and the rest of us, who were not. That’s not a fair dichotomy, because many of us were in fact raised to be believers of one sort or another, but those who belonged to the youth groups were a special breed of youngster. I remember being irritated whenever I came into contact with them – and I received a number of invitations to join various social groups, notably the Mormons and Assemblies of God. Why on earth were they were so happy all the time? What was there to be happy about in this severely depressing scary big world we all inhabited? How could they be so insular and blind to all of the faults and dangers?
I remember being furious at the idea that everything bad in the world had somehow been cancelled out because of the death of a certain somebody 2000 years earlier. Not only did it seem grossly unjust for people to claim that his death set them free forever, but I didn’t understand why his death should seem so much more glorified than his life. I was not about to claim sinless status by letting him bear the brunt of my imperfections.
So I was not a youth grouper, but I was a believer and as I grew up into a ratbag activist my belief systems were knocked around pretty badly. It was not then and is still less fashionable now, to be Jewish of course, because the facile mentality of many left-wing political activists of my Australia says that Jewish means supporting Israel. Even naming our firstborn after one of Israel’s most famous traitors was insufficient to rid me of the taint of being both Jewish and American by heritage.
I denied my beliefs completely for a few years, tucking them away into the recesses of my snail shell along with all that other baggage, until I abandoned all hope of belonging to the activist community and felt safe in my isolation, to bring them out into the open once again.
Those activists I hung out with were for the most part not actively religious. There may have been one or two who expressed fond memories of their childhood church-going, and who persisted in identifying with some brand or denomination or other, and there were certainly those who were into alternative beliefs, but it was hard to see how these manifested in the way they lived their lives. Their values and beliefs were as underground as mine. What we emanated was anger and fear, for the most part. We were simply outraged at the state of the world and dismayed that THEY weren’t letting US fix things. The pressure we put ourselves under, to change the world left no room for considering, developing or practising living in the kind of world we wanted it to be.
We felt we had to take action against social conventions and institutions, and we were unsupported and aimless, rootless railers against injustice, without any place to call our own. We didn’t celebrate or worship. We didn’t talk about God. We barely talked about community, unless we were the co-counselling feminists who insisted on discussing process ad infinitum and trying for consensus decision-making in our meetings. At that point I really didn’t relate to feminists at all.
As we began to start families, some of us actively chose to raise our children differently from the way we had been raised. I was charged more than once, with the sin of giving my children too clear a picture of the ills of the world. Give them time to just be kids, my mother urged. They don’t need to know about all that horrible stuff. Don’t deny them the magic you were given, growing up – that feeling that everything is all right, and that even the mysterious can be acceptable. You don’t have to give them answers to everything. Don’t weigh them down with the cares and burdens of the world.
There was a lot of magic in my childhood. I had Santa Claus, I had the Tooth Fairy, I had angels and spirits and fairies and witches and goblins and mermaids and unicorns. I disbelieved those people who told me I was a fool to think any of this was real. I was the credulous kind of little girls whose mother had to tactfully take aside aged 11 and make sure I knew there wasn’t really a Santa. And of course, I also had God.
My God is not and has never been a personal God. Putting into words my ideas about God, I reveal myself to be almost completely a child of my time. Nature words come most easily to mind – wind, air, sky, leaves, rainbows, water, earth, seeds, and life itself. I have a particular affinity to sky. My sophisticated emotionally intelligent self might say that my God is not a vengeful God but rather my God is Joy.
There are two kinds of situations when I feel close to God. I usually have those moments of joy when I am at one with, or having a (usually solitary) encounter with nature. I stop in my tracks and marvel at the utter beauty, fascination and intricate magic of one small aspect of this world we live in. It’s like opening a window to God’s presence. Secondly, I feel joy when I am experiencing the warmth, closeness and connection of my life interwoven with the lives of those around me. This happens frequently in my classroom, with family members and with those rare kindred spirits I encounter from time to time, as well as with my love. In those moments of joy, I feel God is active within and around me.
I need to point out that in the absence of Joy I feel great Fear much of the time. That Fear points to the absence of my awareness of God in those times. I was heavily influenced by my mother’s and my mother’s mother’s beliefs about love, fear and all other such jampolskyesque miracles; (not that simply believing or thinking about these can ever equate to the conscious choice to practice such beliefs).
To my way of thinking, the generation that lives between my parents and me is less god-focused than the generations that embrace it at either end. Many people of that vintage have made concerted efforts to divest themselves of the useless superstitions of their own parents, and to free their offspring from the burdens of belief. I don’t think this was good for the children or their parents. The current pendulum swing back towards beliefs evidences a shift in thinking about the ramifications of spiritual health and emotional well being.
It will be interesting to see how my children become adults. Their parents both come from backgrounds of belief, but while I have explicitly exposed them to my belief system, and worked towards fostering their own spiritual growth, their father chose not to do this. In the last eighteen months one child has moved from the label atheist to agnostic. The other refuses to enter into discussion about beliefs or religion.
Within this new chapter of my life in partnership, I am simply revelling in being encouraged to open up and explore my spiritual side again. It’s amazing and affirming to be encouraged to let those aspects of my identity come out and play. I feel very excited at the prospect of putting concerted effort into revealing and establishing life-giving connections and enacting these meaningfully, whether through liturgy, prayer and ritual, or through conscious choices in our everyday lives.
The second proposition is of course, the ritual that we are creating as a signpost that we are joining one another as we journey through life. It’s fun, and it’s joyful work. Although we come from different traditions and perspectives, there are plenty of ding ding ding moments where we look at one another in frankly quizzical disbelief as if to say ‘you mean this is important to you, too?’ And then there are the head into brick wall moments of ‘Huh?’ All of these are strands in the rich tapestry of life.
Never boring, is it…
© Melina Magdalena (2008)
It’s becoming crunchier to own up to having and valuing some kind of spiritual belief system. When I say crunchier, I don’t just mean fashionable, trendier or more hip. Of course what I’m observing could be a flash in the pan, but I have a feeling that it reflects a deeper shift in understanding and appreciation of what it is to be human, and live in this world.
It’s hard to think in terms of generations, but if I consider the folk I grew up with, there were two main camps – those youth groupers who were openly and joyously religious, and the rest of us, who were not. That’s not a fair dichotomy, because many of us were in fact raised to be believers of one sort or another, but those who belonged to the youth groups were a special breed of youngster. I remember being irritated whenever I came into contact with them – and I received a number of invitations to join various social groups, notably the Mormons and Assemblies of God. Why on earth were they were so happy all the time? What was there to be happy about in this severely depressing scary big world we all inhabited? How could they be so insular and blind to all of the faults and dangers?
I remember being furious at the idea that everything bad in the world had somehow been cancelled out because of the death of a certain somebody 2000 years earlier. Not only did it seem grossly unjust for people to claim that his death set them free forever, but I didn’t understand why his death should seem so much more glorified than his life. I was not about to claim sinless status by letting him bear the brunt of my imperfections.
So I was not a youth grouper, but I was a believer and as I grew up into a ratbag activist my belief systems were knocked around pretty badly. It was not then and is still less fashionable now, to be Jewish of course, because the facile mentality of many left-wing political activists of my Australia says that Jewish means supporting Israel. Even naming our firstborn after one of Israel’s most famous traitors was insufficient to rid me of the taint of being both Jewish and American by heritage.
I denied my beliefs completely for a few years, tucking them away into the recesses of my snail shell along with all that other baggage, until I abandoned all hope of belonging to the activist community and felt safe in my isolation, to bring them out into the open once again.
Those activists I hung out with were for the most part not actively religious. There may have been one or two who expressed fond memories of their childhood church-going, and who persisted in identifying with some brand or denomination or other, and there were certainly those who were into alternative beliefs, but it was hard to see how these manifested in the way they lived their lives. Their values and beliefs were as underground as mine. What we emanated was anger and fear, for the most part. We were simply outraged at the state of the world and dismayed that THEY weren’t letting US fix things. The pressure we put ourselves under, to change the world left no room for considering, developing or practising living in the kind of world we wanted it to be.
We felt we had to take action against social conventions and institutions, and we were unsupported and aimless, rootless railers against injustice, without any place to call our own. We didn’t celebrate or worship. We didn’t talk about God. We barely talked about community, unless we were the co-counselling feminists who insisted on discussing process ad infinitum and trying for consensus decision-making in our meetings. At that point I really didn’t relate to feminists at all.
As we began to start families, some of us actively chose to raise our children differently from the way we had been raised. I was charged more than once, with the sin of giving my children too clear a picture of the ills of the world. Give them time to just be kids, my mother urged. They don’t need to know about all that horrible stuff. Don’t deny them the magic you were given, growing up – that feeling that everything is all right, and that even the mysterious can be acceptable. You don’t have to give them answers to everything. Don’t weigh them down with the cares and burdens of the world.
There was a lot of magic in my childhood. I had Santa Claus, I had the Tooth Fairy, I had angels and spirits and fairies and witches and goblins and mermaids and unicorns. I disbelieved those people who told me I was a fool to think any of this was real. I was the credulous kind of little girls whose mother had to tactfully take aside aged 11 and make sure I knew there wasn’t really a Santa. And of course, I also had God.
My God is not and has never been a personal God. Putting into words my ideas about God, I reveal myself to be almost completely a child of my time. Nature words come most easily to mind – wind, air, sky, leaves, rainbows, water, earth, seeds, and life itself. I have a particular affinity to sky. My sophisticated emotionally intelligent self might say that my God is not a vengeful God but rather my God is Joy.
There are two kinds of situations when I feel close to God. I usually have those moments of joy when I am at one with, or having a (usually solitary) encounter with nature. I stop in my tracks and marvel at the utter beauty, fascination and intricate magic of one small aspect of this world we live in. It’s like opening a window to God’s presence. Secondly, I feel joy when I am experiencing the warmth, closeness and connection of my life interwoven with the lives of those around me. This happens frequently in my classroom, with family members and with those rare kindred spirits I encounter from time to time, as well as with my love. In those moments of joy, I feel God is active within and around me.
I need to point out that in the absence of Joy I feel great Fear much of the time. That Fear points to the absence of my awareness of God in those times. I was heavily influenced by my mother’s and my mother’s mother’s beliefs about love, fear and all other such jampolskyesque miracles; (not that simply believing or thinking about these can ever equate to the conscious choice to practice such beliefs).
To my way of thinking, the generation that lives between my parents and me is less god-focused than the generations that embrace it at either end. Many people of that vintage have made concerted efforts to divest themselves of the useless superstitions of their own parents, and to free their offspring from the burdens of belief. I don’t think this was good for the children or their parents. The current pendulum swing back towards beliefs evidences a shift in thinking about the ramifications of spiritual health and emotional well being.
It will be interesting to see how my children become adults. Their parents both come from backgrounds of belief, but while I have explicitly exposed them to my belief system, and worked towards fostering their own spiritual growth, their father chose not to do this. In the last eighteen months one child has moved from the label atheist to agnostic. The other refuses to enter into discussion about beliefs or religion.
Within this new chapter of my life in partnership, I am simply revelling in being encouraged to open up and explore my spiritual side again. It’s amazing and affirming to be encouraged to let those aspects of my identity come out and play. I feel very excited at the prospect of putting concerted effort into revealing and establishing life-giving connections and enacting these meaningfully, whether through liturgy, prayer and ritual, or through conscious choices in our everyday lives.
The second proposition is of course, the ritual that we are creating as a signpost that we are joining one another as we journey through life. It’s fun, and it’s joyful work. Although we come from different traditions and perspectives, there are plenty of ding ding ding moments where we look at one another in frankly quizzical disbelief as if to say ‘you mean this is important to you, too?’ And then there are the head into brick wall moments of ‘Huh?’ All of these are strands in the rich tapestry of life.
Never boring, is it…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)