sincerely misguided
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
for grandparents
Yesterday was another important day in the life of our family. We held a thanksgiving service at home in the afternoon, and our son had a dedication in the morning, at my partner’s church. We get some pleasant compliments when we throw parties – and in doing so, we are building a community of friends and family here in Adelaide that feels strong and positive. It is great to offer hospitality and share our events with people we love and respect.
It occurs to me that we ask a lot, of the people around us, by being who we are and by living the way that we live. In making our expectations explicit through our actions and commitments, we merely reflect back the similarly unspoken majority mainstream, which is rarely brought into focus or questioned as to the correctness, validity or tastefulness of its presence. By choosing to live quietly and openly as a same-sex, mixed-faith couple with a child, there are an awful lot of aspects to our identities which cause anxiety and disquiet in people who position themselves squarely in the mainstream, and for whom coming into contact with us is far removed from what they perceive as normality.
However, we are not only interested in engaging the so-called mainstream. Naturally, most of our friends and family members do not identify as mainstream. But in preparing for our thanksgiving afternoon tea, we were acutely aware that in choosing to invite our neighbours to the celebration we hoped to build on the tenuous threads of connection that we have tentatively been establishing whilst living here, as well as sharing with them, our joy in the new life in our family. We live in an area that is rich in cultural and socioeconomic diversity. Building on the threads of common connection and shared humanity is the only way to find any hope of cohesion.
In the ceremony which we conducted to bless our baby and welcome him into the family, we omitted, for example, a Kiddush or blessing over wine which is a traditional and indeed central part of nearly every Jewish ritual. We could have used grape juice, but chose instead to incorporate a blessing over water, something with which our Muslim neighbours could also identify. We’ve all been experiencing a similar relief at the breaking of a long drought in our state.
Food is always an issue with us, as my partner is vegetarian and I am coeliac. This time we chose to have a vegetarian afternoon tea, not only because it is easy for us, and out of deference to the many vegetarians in our circle. We also chose not to have meat out of deference to our Muslim neighbours, for whom food that may not be halal, is problematic.
It irks me that they did not come and that indeed they did not even respond to our invitation. It’s ok – we’re a long way from giving up on this! But I’ve been thinking about it today, and realised that my own Jewish tradition, like Islam, has long demanded that its adherents separate and keep themselves apart from the general community, instead gathering in tightly insular, self-sustaining groups. In the light of certain interesting questions that were asked of us yesterday, and issues that have been raised because of yesterday, I have been tracing back what happened to make me the way I am, and to break me out of the mould of needing to keep myself apart.
I could not do the work that I do, which is teaching English to newcomers to Australia, without being open to the complexities of cultural and religious diversity. I am continually confronted in the classroom, by manifestations of diversity and incipient conflicts that arise from this. Ethics and conflict resolution are not directly part of our curricula, but maybe they need to be.
I was surprised week or two ago, whilst planning an end-of-term event with one of my classes, when a student challenged the easy statement I made, that if we were to have a BBQ of course the meat would need to be halal. “I’m not Muslim,” she said, “I’m Christian. So why do I have to have halal meat?” Good point, particularly since she comes from a war-torn region where religious conflict tore apart her family and community with the direct result that she is orphaned in Australia as guardian of two younger siblings, and worries incessantly for the safety of the other four who remain, inexplicably, marooned in their home country.
I didn’t have an adequate answer for her, but it’s something I would dearly love to take up in the classroom, after our holidays.
A Jewish friend commented last night that it must have hurt, to have my son dedicated in a church. She also asked, as though it were given, whether he had had a bris (ritual circumcision). My sister referred in passing, the other day, to the fact that our son won’t be raised as a Jew. I was struck by my strong internal reaction to all of these comments. I found these questions harder to deal with, than the question of a young boy in church yesterday, who asked me whether I was my son’s Dad.
Clearly, I am not completely reconciled to our situation, but I take comfort from the fact that our family is in a process of continuous transformation and conscious evolution. We are not set rigidly within a mould that would impose upon us certain conditions that we might not be able to live up to. With such freedom comes a great deal of responsibility. I feel that it I am responsible not only to my family and myself, but to exploring and explaining our situation to others, in the hope that they might also find understanding and acceptance of us. It’s not something I can take for granted, and it’s not something I feel comfortable in imposing upon those who would impose their ways upon us.
There have certainly been times in my life when I have felt threatened by Christianity, and when I could not have felt comfortable with having any kind of formal or semi-formal associations with a church, or church-members. Happily, I now dwell in a certainty that we share far more than I was once able to acknowledge. This does not feel threatening, most of the time. I still insist on certain latitudes of choice and distance, and as I said in the previous paragraph, my situation is in process of continual transformation. I am getting comfortable with who I am, and how I came to be.
I can state with flippancy that it would take far more than my son’s severed foreskin to convince others that he is Jewish, or to usher in the messianic age. But the issue of ritual circumcision is difficult and mystical, not very different from issues that confound me when I think about some of the difficult and mystical things that Christians do and believe. Indeed, the peculiar things central to all religions that seem strange to outsiders.
I cannot be flippant about my son’s religious identity. I did not birth him. Therefore the Jewish tradition that a child follows its mother’s Jewish identity cannot apply in our situation. Does this mean therefore that he is Christian, like his birth-mother? Christians do not have the same tradition – whether they are of the view that a baby can be baptised, or whether a person must choose to be baptised into a Christian church. Nevertheless, this is truly a dilemma for both of his mothers. We create ourselves as a family that is both Jewish and Christian.
We intend not to impose a singular identity on our children. Some might say such ambiguity in itself is cruel, but it is our conscious intention to not demand that our children choose one over the other. If we as parents can live (un)comfortably with our multiple identities, than so can they, we hope.
My understanding of life is directly related to the fact that I am a third generation person consciously committed to interfaith and intercultural understanding. My mother’s mother appears to have made a deliberate choice to intermarry and to raise her children in a new country and a liberal faith tradition that embraces diversity. Her husband of choice came from a family that brazenly defied the national xenophobic law and culture which destroyed most of her family. Her 6 children, as I am fond of reporting, adhere with their respective spouses to 6 different religious traditions!
My father’s father married a woman who had been raised within a small, insular German-speaking community. He and his wife (my paternal grandmother) raised their four children to recognise and respect diversity, something which each of them has passed onto their children, in a myriad of manifestations.
My mother and father have, in their lives, directly engaged in interfaith and intercultural activities that have spun a vast web of connections that sparks off every continent of this planet. This has been part of their personal and professional lives, and is a source of great pride and inspiration to me. They are quiet achievers, but their achievements have a depth of integrity which I draw on, in my own personal and professional life. It’s not for nothing, that we migrated to Australia; that they adopted children into our family as well as birthing them; or that we earnestly and sincerely bounced from one religion to another.
To turn back to my partner and me – at least we cannot be accused of lazily adhering to empty tradition for its own sake. Our situation demands that we grapple on a daily basis with what is at the hearts of our belief systems and values. Some might well accuse us of being misguided, but no one can accuse us of insincerity.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
a protest vote?
a protest vote?
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
It was because of Facebook that I became aware of Wendy Francis and her obnoctious, hurtful, defamatory and vilifying comments. If I do a quick scan of my Facebook Friends, a good percentage of them are lesbian friends whom I’ve never met in person. I don’t have many face-to-face connections in Adelaide where I live, and my online lesbian parenting community has become a big part of my life.
However, during this election campaign I have been aware of Bob Day, and his obnoctious, excluding electioneering propaganda, because it came right into my letterbox, despite the “No Junk mail, thanks”, painted thoughtfully on said letterbox a week after we moved into Kilburn. The Family First Party proudly captions its candidates’ photographs with statistics on how many years each one has been happily married and, if possible, how many lovely children they have.
First of all, I watched the link posted to Facebook, of Wendy Francis and Fiona Patten, of the Australian Sex Party, when they appeared on
Sunrise, August 2 2010. I was first of all appalled by Wendy Francis’ complete lack of respect for the courtesies and formalities of a debate, and her gleeful verbal attack of everything that Fiona Patten said. I felt Wendy Francis came across as a defensive bully, who couldn’t allow Fiona Patten a chance to speak.
A few days later a different Facebook Friend posted a link to the comments that Wendy Francis published on Twitter, against gays having children. I was incensed and offended. For the next week, my updates on Facebook were mostly about this issue. The whole thing about Gay Marriage does not really move me one way or the other, but to accuse me of being a Child Abuser because I am a parent in a same-sex relationship really hurts and frightens me – especially because I’m quite open about my identity.
What is interesting is to see the reaction of my Facebook Friends to my furious status updates. Usually, there is a range of responses to my pithy and often ridiculously banal status updates. However, an uneasy silence seemed to reign this week, from many corners. So – is this the silent majority to which conspiracists enjoy attributing election results? Everyone was busy? Refugee issues are more important? We’re fed up with “liking” bits and pieces of election coverage? I don’t know.
Piqued, I chose to post a link to Clemetine Ford’s article published on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed, Family First Worth Fighting For. I picked out Ford’s argument about the demographic which happens to really be responsible for perpetrating most abuse against children in Australia, and commented: yup the stats on child abuse - whether physical or emotional or otherwise - speak loud and clear against straight white men parenting children. Of course, neither Ford nor I meant that therefore no one in that particular demographic ought to be allowed to parent children. Naturally, neither Ford nor I was implying that the majority of straight white men in Australia are Child Abusers.
In hindsight I don’t think I need to apologise to my Straight White Male friends or their spouses. Certainly, Wendy Francis can only tick two of those three boxes, so it would possibly have made more sense for me to be attacking Straight White Married Female Religious Fanatics. But even in our family-unfriendly society no one is claiming that Straight White Women should not be having babies!
On a side note, I really do need to take stock and mind my attitude, because as the mother of two sons I don’t want them believing they need to fit the stereotype’s mould and thereby earn my wrath and scorn. I don’t want them to be exposed to the kind of anti-male sentiments that women – both straight and bent – tend to indulge in, which of course, is the corollary of the kind of misogynist male talk that pervades our society (posted, incidentally, by another Facebook Friend). And no, while I am big enough to admit to this tendency of mine, I am not accusing all of my male friends of indulging in this. And seriously, I don’t want my boys thinking there is no way we can relate with mutual respect and affection.
What interests me is that a few of my Facebook Friends took great umbrage at my comment. I realise it is politically correct to swaddle Straight White Men in the heady embrace of adoration and abject gratitude for taking seriously, their roles as fathers and partners, and while my gag reflex is thereby triggered, it is mostly sour grapes for the lack of similar encouragement that women tend to receive for stepping outside their perceived roles and treading unfamiliar paths, with similarly varying degrees of success. Will these fathers and partners stop performing their roles if they aren’t given sufficient reason to keep them up? I don’t think so!
But this was not supposed to be another heterophobic verbal onslaught. I am fascinated by how people rose up in indignant affront when I was seen to be attacking the group who least require our support. These are the people who through no fault or effort of their own, have power and status granted to them simply because of their skin colour, gender, and sexual orientation.
Wendy Francis made very personal attacks on me, my partner and our child. She accused my partner and me of being Child Abusers. And this was supposed to be an intelligent and considered piece about why some of my Facebook Friends thought it was more important to stand up for the rights of straight white men, than to show empathy to families who have been attacked and publicly vilified across Australian media.
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
It was because of Facebook that I became aware of Wendy Francis and her obnoctious, hurtful, defamatory and vilifying comments. If I do a quick scan of my Facebook Friends, a good percentage of them are lesbian friends whom I’ve never met in person. I don’t have many face-to-face connections in Adelaide where I live, and my online lesbian parenting community has become a big part of my life.
However, during this election campaign I have been aware of Bob Day, and his obnoctious, excluding electioneering propaganda, because it came right into my letterbox, despite the “No Junk mail, thanks”, painted thoughtfully on said letterbox a week after we moved into Kilburn. The Family First Party proudly captions its candidates’ photographs with statistics on how many years each one has been happily married and, if possible, how many lovely children they have.
First of all, I watched the link posted to Facebook, of Wendy Francis and Fiona Patten, of the Australian Sex Party, when they appeared on
Sunrise, August 2 2010. I was first of all appalled by Wendy Francis’ complete lack of respect for the courtesies and formalities of a debate, and her gleeful verbal attack of everything that Fiona Patten said. I felt Wendy Francis came across as a defensive bully, who couldn’t allow Fiona Patten a chance to speak.
A few days later a different Facebook Friend posted a link to the comments that Wendy Francis published on Twitter, against gays having children. I was incensed and offended. For the next week, my updates on Facebook were mostly about this issue. The whole thing about Gay Marriage does not really move me one way or the other, but to accuse me of being a Child Abuser because I am a parent in a same-sex relationship really hurts and frightens me – especially because I’m quite open about my identity.
What is interesting is to see the reaction of my Facebook Friends to my furious status updates. Usually, there is a range of responses to my pithy and often ridiculously banal status updates. However, an uneasy silence seemed to reign this week, from many corners. So – is this the silent majority to which conspiracists enjoy attributing election results? Everyone was busy? Refugee issues are more important? We’re fed up with “liking” bits and pieces of election coverage? I don’t know.
Piqued, I chose to post a link to Clemetine Ford’s article published on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed, Family First Worth Fighting For. I picked out Ford’s argument about the demographic which happens to really be responsible for perpetrating most abuse against children in Australia, and commented: yup the stats on child abuse - whether physical or emotional or otherwise - speak loud and clear against straight white men parenting children. Of course, neither Ford nor I meant that therefore no one in that particular demographic ought to be allowed to parent children. Naturally, neither Ford nor I was implying that the majority of straight white men in Australia are Child Abusers.
In hindsight I don’t think I need to apologise to my Straight White Male friends or their spouses. Certainly, Wendy Francis can only tick two of those three boxes, so it would possibly have made more sense for me to be attacking Straight White Married Female Religious Fanatics. But even in our family-unfriendly society no one is claiming that Straight White Women should not be having babies!
On a side note, I really do need to take stock and mind my attitude, because as the mother of two sons I don’t want them believing they need to fit the stereotype’s mould and thereby earn my wrath and scorn. I don’t want them to be exposed to the kind of anti-male sentiments that women – both straight and bent – tend to indulge in, which of course, is the corollary of the kind of misogynist male talk that pervades our society (posted, incidentally, by another Facebook Friend). And no, while I am big enough to admit to this tendency of mine, I am not accusing all of my male friends of indulging in this. And seriously, I don’t want my boys thinking there is no way we can relate with mutual respect and affection.
What interests me is that a few of my Facebook Friends took great umbrage at my comment. I realise it is politically correct to swaddle Straight White Men in the heady embrace of adoration and abject gratitude for taking seriously, their roles as fathers and partners, and while my gag reflex is thereby triggered, it is mostly sour grapes for the lack of similar encouragement that women tend to receive for stepping outside their perceived roles and treading unfamiliar paths, with similarly varying degrees of success. Will these fathers and partners stop performing their roles if they aren’t given sufficient reason to keep them up? I don’t think so!
But this was not supposed to be another heterophobic verbal onslaught. I am fascinated by how people rose up in indignant affront when I was seen to be attacking the group who least require our support. These are the people who through no fault or effort of their own, have power and status granted to them simply because of their skin colour, gender, and sexual orientation.
Wendy Francis made very personal attacks on me, my partner and our child. She accused my partner and me of being Child Abusers. And this was supposed to be an intelligent and considered piece about why some of my Facebook Friends thought it was more important to stand up for the rights of straight white men, than to show empathy to families who have been attacked and publicly vilified across Australian media.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Gardening Outside the Fence
Gardening Outside the Fence
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
I call it gardening outside the fence. It’s so easy and productive, that I think this style of growing vegetables and herbs could become as popular as Lolo Houbein’s “One Magic Square”. At present there are radishes, Japanese turnips, silverbeet, red chard, beetroots, snow peas and coriander in this garden strip. There are also two volunteer sunflowers, reminders of our first crop outside the fence, last spring and summer.
This morning I harvested some radishes and beets, sowed some carrot seed and planted out a few tiny parsley seedlings. While working I chatted with a few passers-by. One man just smiled and grunted a greeting. He’s the one who warned me not to bother planting the sunflowers, as the “kids around here” would just destroy them. A couple of months later though, he was also very happy to take home a seed-filled sunflower head for his cocky. Another man stopped and admired the crops. This was the first time I had spoken to him. He told me he has cabbages and carrots in his garden at home. Some kids ran past, busy with a project they have going on the back fence of the vacant lot over the road. They waved.
Last week I was hanging out the washing, and heard my bamboo poles being removed yet again, from the snow peas that have been straggling across the footpath instead of climbing them as they should. “Who is that outside my fence, stealing my sticks?” I roared in an imitation of the troll in Billy Goat’s Gruff. The chattering paused, and moved a little bit up the path. When I finished what I was doing, I took the baby out to see whether there were any sticks left. I chatted with the two little boys, aged 9 and 10, who live around the corner and were engaged in a vigorous sword fight with my bamboo poles. I explained to them what they were for, and told them to come back every week to check for peas. I said they can eat the peas if they find them on the plants.
Most of the houses in our suburb of Kilburn were built by public housing. They all seem to have their fence lines 30-50 cm away from the footpath. We are lucky enough to live on a corner, with the long side fence facing north. I noticed last winter that this strip of dirt was full of healthy weeds and I thought – why not dig up the weeds and replace them with something I want to grow? I set to work with my fork and spade and had soon filled the compost bin with weeds, and had a garden bed full of rich soil, which I have since manured and mulched at least twice, to keep it in good shape.
The sunflowers as I mentioned, were our first crop. They grew with strength and beauty in that sun, against the colourbond fence, and attracted a lot of positive attention. We are new to this area, and I’m keen to try and strike connections with other members of our community, which is diverse and changing. As well as the very poor, multi-generational unemployed white public housing residents, there are Aboriginal families and also families of new immigrants and refugees. I sometimes wonder whether they would take up gardening in their new homes, if they could access the tools and the seeds.
We already have a vege garden in the backyard. We have a couple of fruit trees as well. We are slowly working to establish a native garden in the front yard. I love gardening, and try to do a couple of hours in the garden every week, rain or as it mostly is in Adelaide, shine. So why garden outside the fence?
I grew up around Maylands and Payneham. Most of our neighbours were post-war southern European immigrants. Everyone had olive trees, fig trees, grape vines and vegetable gardens. This was part of my culture, way back before the subdivisions started. Every year, my brothers and sister and I were sent out to gather flowers and leaves to decorate our Easter nests. We built the nests out of grass clippings – my Dad always mowed the lawn on Easter Saturday. It was our time-honoured rule that anything hanging over or outside of the fence was fair game, and we could pick it with impunity. We could not, however, pick anything that was inside someone’s fence.
It occurred to me that I can adopt a different philosophy with the produce that I grow. I can share it, instead of keeping it just for us and ours. I’ve had my eye on a couple of traffic islands around the corner, wondering whether we could establish a community orchard on them, harvesting rainwater from the stormwater drains next-door to keep the fruit trees healthy.
Food growing on plants is not something that kids around here see every day. I’d like to show the kids around here how easy it is to grow good food. I rely on my fork for nearly all of the digging work that I do, and I would happily lend that fork to someone else, if she wanted to start a garden outside her fence. Or, I could help that person purchase a fork and spread the work around.
And so I’ve made a start. Last week a pair of Housing Trust maisonettes just like ours was knocked down opposite us. Apparently it could take a couple of years before building work commences on them. In the meantime, I think I’ll plant sunflowers over there, too. One of our neighbours pointed out that because this vacant lot is on a corner, people are sure to use it as a shortcut. That was useful information. I’ve decided to plant a double row of sunflowers marching diagonally from open corner to open corner. I imagine us Kilburnites might enjoy walking through an avenue of sunflowers when spring comes…
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
I call it gardening outside the fence. It’s so easy and productive, that I think this style of growing vegetables and herbs could become as popular as Lolo Houbein’s “One Magic Square”. At present there are radishes, Japanese turnips, silverbeet, red chard, beetroots, snow peas and coriander in this garden strip. There are also two volunteer sunflowers, reminders of our first crop outside the fence, last spring and summer.
This morning I harvested some radishes and beets, sowed some carrot seed and planted out a few tiny parsley seedlings. While working I chatted with a few passers-by. One man just smiled and grunted a greeting. He’s the one who warned me not to bother planting the sunflowers, as the “kids around here” would just destroy them. A couple of months later though, he was also very happy to take home a seed-filled sunflower head for his cocky. Another man stopped and admired the crops. This was the first time I had spoken to him. He told me he has cabbages and carrots in his garden at home. Some kids ran past, busy with a project they have going on the back fence of the vacant lot over the road. They waved.
Last week I was hanging out the washing, and heard my bamboo poles being removed yet again, from the snow peas that have been straggling across the footpath instead of climbing them as they should. “Who is that outside my fence, stealing my sticks?” I roared in an imitation of the troll in Billy Goat’s Gruff. The chattering paused, and moved a little bit up the path. When I finished what I was doing, I took the baby out to see whether there were any sticks left. I chatted with the two little boys, aged 9 and 10, who live around the corner and were engaged in a vigorous sword fight with my bamboo poles. I explained to them what they were for, and told them to come back every week to check for peas. I said they can eat the peas if they find them on the plants.
Most of the houses in our suburb of Kilburn were built by public housing. They all seem to have their fence lines 30-50 cm away from the footpath. We are lucky enough to live on a corner, with the long side fence facing north. I noticed last winter that this strip of dirt was full of healthy weeds and I thought – why not dig up the weeds and replace them with something I want to grow? I set to work with my fork and spade and had soon filled the compost bin with weeds, and had a garden bed full of rich soil, which I have since manured and mulched at least twice, to keep it in good shape.
The sunflowers as I mentioned, were our first crop. They grew with strength and beauty in that sun, against the colourbond fence, and attracted a lot of positive attention. We are new to this area, and I’m keen to try and strike connections with other members of our community, which is diverse and changing. As well as the very poor, multi-generational unemployed white public housing residents, there are Aboriginal families and also families of new immigrants and refugees. I sometimes wonder whether they would take up gardening in their new homes, if they could access the tools and the seeds.
We already have a vege garden in the backyard. We have a couple of fruit trees as well. We are slowly working to establish a native garden in the front yard. I love gardening, and try to do a couple of hours in the garden every week, rain or as it mostly is in Adelaide, shine. So why garden outside the fence?
I grew up around Maylands and Payneham. Most of our neighbours were post-war southern European immigrants. Everyone had olive trees, fig trees, grape vines and vegetable gardens. This was part of my culture, way back before the subdivisions started. Every year, my brothers and sister and I were sent out to gather flowers and leaves to decorate our Easter nests. We built the nests out of grass clippings – my Dad always mowed the lawn on Easter Saturday. It was our time-honoured rule that anything hanging over or outside of the fence was fair game, and we could pick it with impunity. We could not, however, pick anything that was inside someone’s fence.
It occurred to me that I can adopt a different philosophy with the produce that I grow. I can share it, instead of keeping it just for us and ours. I’ve had my eye on a couple of traffic islands around the corner, wondering whether we could establish a community orchard on them, harvesting rainwater from the stormwater drains next-door to keep the fruit trees healthy.
Food growing on plants is not something that kids around here see every day. I’d like to show the kids around here how easy it is to grow good food. I rely on my fork for nearly all of the digging work that I do, and I would happily lend that fork to someone else, if she wanted to start a garden outside her fence. Or, I could help that person purchase a fork and spread the work around.
And so I’ve made a start. Last week a pair of Housing Trust maisonettes just like ours was knocked down opposite us. Apparently it could take a couple of years before building work commences on them. In the meantime, I think I’ll plant sunflowers over there, too. One of our neighbours pointed out that because this vacant lot is on a corner, people are sure to use it as a shortcut. That was useful information. I’ve decided to plant a double row of sunflowers marching diagonally from open corner to open corner. I imagine us Kilburnites might enjoy walking through an avenue of sunflowers when spring comes…
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Chicken Livers
Chicken Livers
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
“ I’m off to cook chicken livers for my children now,” I announced to my colleagues as I left the office.
“What?” asked one of them.
“Chicken livers – we all love them. When we were really poor we found out they’re one of the cheapest sources of iron-rich foods.”
As soon as I was ready to cook, I measured out 2 cups of basmati rice, washed it once and left it to soak in some cold water for 15 minutes.
My son accepted my dinner invitation with one proviso. He was going for a run later, with an old school friend, so he couldn’t stay all evening. (He must be doing OK again, if he was willing to see me.) I had told him I would cook fish, so it wasn’t just the lure of the chicken livers.
I bought 500g free range chicken livers last time I was at the Central Market. Well, haha – when they were attached to the chickens they were not free range. I froze them and then thawed them in the fridge overnight, but they were still half-frozen this afternoon when I was ready to cook. That made it easy to slice and dice them into small pieces.
My daughter had her first prac in a piggery today, and she was not going to go to karate if she smelled too bad. But she really wanted to go to karate, so I agreed to drop her off after she had a shower. (She usually catches the bus.) She made sure I would leave her some pilaf for when she got home.
I heated a little olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan and saut̩ed the livers whilst I chopped up a lot of garlic very fine, and added it to the livers. Our parsley dried up in the late summer sun, so I had to make do with some celery chopped fine. Parsley is better Рit looks good to have the dark green flecks, and it adds flavour. The celery went in next.
After I learned to make this dish, I used to cook it a few times each year – always in sufficient quantities that we could eat the leftovers for breakfast, and lunch next day. It’s a simple recipe, and so nutritious and delicious. I do recall once, during the most strenuous growing times, there were no leftovers – everything was eaten and the bowls were licked clean.
I strained the rice and added it to the garlic, celery and livers, and stirred frequently with a wooden spoon. We were out of currants, so I throw in a couple of handsful of sultanas, and about 2 teaspoons of cracked black pepper. Then 6 cups of water (no need for stock because the livers make it flavourful), stir it through one last time, turn up the heat, put the lid on, and let it cook.
Despite the extra drive to Kilkenny and back to get my daughter to karate, I managed to prepare the cucumber and yoghurt by the time my son arrived, and I was chopping some vegetables for a side dish. His face lit up.
“What are we having? That smells good! Ah, vegetables!” (It was just carrot, cauliflower and broccoli in a pot with some water – nothing special. (He’s not eating terribly well at his Dad’s, I note.)
He sat down to read bits of the newspapers that were lying around on the table. There was an article about the primary school he and his sister used to go to. There was a lot of sport in the Messenger this week. There was an image of virile masculinity on the front cover – representatives of all the SANFL football clubs with their faces and shoulders painted. My son called them a rude name. He didn’t sign up for football this season, on the grounds of unfitness. I’m thankful once again, that he has friends to go running with.
Here’s how I prepared the cucumber and yoghurt salad: grate a large cucumber, drain off the juice and drink it – it’s delicious. Sprinkle on a pinch of salt, a scant teaspoon of dried mint and twice that amount of dill tips. Scoop in a lot of plain yoghurt, and dribble a dash of lemon juice or white vinegar over the top. Mix well, and stash in the fridge to serve with the pilaf.
My son and I dished up enormous quantities and sat down together at the table to eat and chat about life, university and whatever he felt like telling me about. I managed not to annoy him too much with details from my working life.
“What’s the kid going to be?” he asked at one point, “a girl or a boy?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. Then – “Everyone says it’s a boy.”
He looked at me sharply – “Who’s everyone?”
“Oh you know,” I mumbled, regretting bringing up hocus pocus, because now he’s living with his Dad such matters are clearly off limits, “People who think they have a feeling about such things. They all think it’s a boy.”
“But the doctor?”
“No, we didn’t get it looked into. It’s going to be a surprise.”
At that point I realised I’d forgotten to toast the pine nuts – whoops! So I got up and did that, then added some to the pilaf on our plates and the rest to the pilaf still in the pot.
After tea, he used the computer in the dining room to do some study. I used my laptop in the lounge room to check my emails. It was very companionable. He left for his run before his sister came home. By that time, I was reading a novel. I only regret not getting up to hug him as he went out the door, but on the other hand, maybe it’s better I didn’t push that boundary too far…
His sister eventually returned from karate, sniffed the air and said “Did you leave some for me?” She devoured two plates full of the stuff, plus veges on the side, and then drank all the water that the vegetables had cooked in. After all, she’d spent 8 hours at university today, plus an hour and a half of karate. She had earned her appetite.
“Yum,” she said, “Do you like this stuff too, Mum?”
“It’s bitter, isn’t it?” I said.
“No – here, you taste it.”
I did. It tasted like a mild vegetable soup.
My partner, who is vegetarian, goes to her Christian lesbian group on a Thursday, so I didn’t need to worry about having meat for tea. This pilaf is good made with mushrooms instead, but if you use mushrooms, sauté them with a lot of chopped onions first, and use a bit of stock in the water.
I fantasise a little that when I’m at work today and my daughter is at uni, my partner might lift the lid off the leftover chicken liver pilaf that’s in the fridge, and just take a tiny taste. I know she’s vegetarian for political and ethical reasons, but if she just tasted my pilaf, it might be good for her, and for the baby.
In recalling my vegetarian years, the transition phase came after I bought dill pickles and mettwurst at the Central Market. My kids were still preschoolers at that time. We ate these foods ravenously and I realised again how much I was missing the food I had grown up with. But I didn’t know how to prepare meat dishes.
Then I went to my very first Passover Seder. It was the Communal Seder at the Reform Synagogue here in Adelaide. On every table was a little dish of chopped livers, made – I found out later, by the husband of the head of the Catering Committee. Well – I took one taste and could not stop. It was so delicious!
This is a fitting memory as we approach the Passover Season once again this year. My daughter asked me last night when we were going to have our family Seder. “Then we get to have chicken livers again!” she said gleefully, “and I’m going to eat a lot of Charoset, as well. I still don’t understand why people don’t make that at other times of the year!”
“Well, if you learn to make it, you can have it whenever you like,” I told her.
All is well at our house, when chicken livers are on the menu.
Chicken Liver Pilaf
500g free range chicken livers – chopped fine
1 tablespoon olive oil
4-6 cloves garlic – chopped fine
½ cup chopped parsley (celery plus leaves is a good substitute)
2 cups basmati rice – washed once, soaked in cold water, then drained
1 cup dried blackcurrants, or sultanas
2 teaspoons cracked black pepper
6 cups water
½ cup toasted pine nuts
salt to taste (when serving)
1.Use a heavy-based pot if possible. Sautee livers gently in oil.
2.Add garlic and parsley, stir intermittently for about 5 minutes.
3.Add pepper, rice and currants, stir well. The idea is to mix everything together so that the oil will stop the rice from sticking.
4.Pour on the water, bring to the boil, put the lid on, turn the heat down, and allow to cook undisturbed until the rice has absorbed the liquid (15 minutes approximately). It’s ok to lift the lid to check on the rice, but try not to open the pot too often because it lets too much steam escape.
5. Stir in the toasted pine nuts just before serving.
Serve with cucumber and yoghurt, and a side dish of vegetables of your choice.
Cucumber and Yoghurt Salad
This is a close relation to the Turkish cacik and the Greek tzatziki, but milder. I think there is a European cucumber salad too, that’s very like this one.
1 large cucumber, grated and drained.
pinch of salt
scant teaspoon dried mint, or 1 teaspoon fresh mint, chopped finely
2 teaspoons dried dill tips, or 4 teaspoons fresh dill tips, chopped finely
dash of lemon juice or white vinegar
2 cups plain yoghurt (greek style is good)
Mix well and refrigerate until serving time.
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
“ I’m off to cook chicken livers for my children now,” I announced to my colleagues as I left the office.
“What?” asked one of them.
“Chicken livers – we all love them. When we were really poor we found out they’re one of the cheapest sources of iron-rich foods.”
As soon as I was ready to cook, I measured out 2 cups of basmati rice, washed it once and left it to soak in some cold water for 15 minutes.
My son accepted my dinner invitation with one proviso. He was going for a run later, with an old school friend, so he couldn’t stay all evening. (He must be doing OK again, if he was willing to see me.) I had told him I would cook fish, so it wasn’t just the lure of the chicken livers.
I bought 500g free range chicken livers last time I was at the Central Market. Well, haha – when they were attached to the chickens they were not free range. I froze them and then thawed them in the fridge overnight, but they were still half-frozen this afternoon when I was ready to cook. That made it easy to slice and dice them into small pieces.
My daughter had her first prac in a piggery today, and she was not going to go to karate if she smelled too bad. But she really wanted to go to karate, so I agreed to drop her off after she had a shower. (She usually catches the bus.) She made sure I would leave her some pilaf for when she got home.
I heated a little olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan and saut̩ed the livers whilst I chopped up a lot of garlic very fine, and added it to the livers. Our parsley dried up in the late summer sun, so I had to make do with some celery chopped fine. Parsley is better Рit looks good to have the dark green flecks, and it adds flavour. The celery went in next.
After I learned to make this dish, I used to cook it a few times each year – always in sufficient quantities that we could eat the leftovers for breakfast, and lunch next day. It’s a simple recipe, and so nutritious and delicious. I do recall once, during the most strenuous growing times, there were no leftovers – everything was eaten and the bowls were licked clean.
I strained the rice and added it to the garlic, celery and livers, and stirred frequently with a wooden spoon. We were out of currants, so I throw in a couple of handsful of sultanas, and about 2 teaspoons of cracked black pepper. Then 6 cups of water (no need for stock because the livers make it flavourful), stir it through one last time, turn up the heat, put the lid on, and let it cook.
Despite the extra drive to Kilkenny and back to get my daughter to karate, I managed to prepare the cucumber and yoghurt by the time my son arrived, and I was chopping some vegetables for a side dish. His face lit up.
“What are we having? That smells good! Ah, vegetables!” (It was just carrot, cauliflower and broccoli in a pot with some water – nothing special. (He’s not eating terribly well at his Dad’s, I note.)
He sat down to read bits of the newspapers that were lying around on the table. There was an article about the primary school he and his sister used to go to. There was a lot of sport in the Messenger this week. There was an image of virile masculinity on the front cover – representatives of all the SANFL football clubs with their faces and shoulders painted. My son called them a rude name. He didn’t sign up for football this season, on the grounds of unfitness. I’m thankful once again, that he has friends to go running with.
Here’s how I prepared the cucumber and yoghurt salad: grate a large cucumber, drain off the juice and drink it – it’s delicious. Sprinkle on a pinch of salt, a scant teaspoon of dried mint and twice that amount of dill tips. Scoop in a lot of plain yoghurt, and dribble a dash of lemon juice or white vinegar over the top. Mix well, and stash in the fridge to serve with the pilaf.
My son and I dished up enormous quantities and sat down together at the table to eat and chat about life, university and whatever he felt like telling me about. I managed not to annoy him too much with details from my working life.
“What’s the kid going to be?” he asked at one point, “a girl or a boy?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. Then – “Everyone says it’s a boy.”
He looked at me sharply – “Who’s everyone?”
“Oh you know,” I mumbled, regretting bringing up hocus pocus, because now he’s living with his Dad such matters are clearly off limits, “People who think they have a feeling about such things. They all think it’s a boy.”
“But the doctor?”
“No, we didn’t get it looked into. It’s going to be a surprise.”
At that point I realised I’d forgotten to toast the pine nuts – whoops! So I got up and did that, then added some to the pilaf on our plates and the rest to the pilaf still in the pot.
After tea, he used the computer in the dining room to do some study. I used my laptop in the lounge room to check my emails. It was very companionable. He left for his run before his sister came home. By that time, I was reading a novel. I only regret not getting up to hug him as he went out the door, but on the other hand, maybe it’s better I didn’t push that boundary too far…
His sister eventually returned from karate, sniffed the air and said “Did you leave some for me?” She devoured two plates full of the stuff, plus veges on the side, and then drank all the water that the vegetables had cooked in. After all, she’d spent 8 hours at university today, plus an hour and a half of karate. She had earned her appetite.
“Yum,” she said, “Do you like this stuff too, Mum?”
“It’s bitter, isn’t it?” I said.
“No – here, you taste it.”
I did. It tasted like a mild vegetable soup.
My partner, who is vegetarian, goes to her Christian lesbian group on a Thursday, so I didn’t need to worry about having meat for tea. This pilaf is good made with mushrooms instead, but if you use mushrooms, sauté them with a lot of chopped onions first, and use a bit of stock in the water.
I fantasise a little that when I’m at work today and my daughter is at uni, my partner might lift the lid off the leftover chicken liver pilaf that’s in the fridge, and just take a tiny taste. I know she’s vegetarian for political and ethical reasons, but if she just tasted my pilaf, it might be good for her, and for the baby.
In recalling my vegetarian years, the transition phase came after I bought dill pickles and mettwurst at the Central Market. My kids were still preschoolers at that time. We ate these foods ravenously and I realised again how much I was missing the food I had grown up with. But I didn’t know how to prepare meat dishes.
Then I went to my very first Passover Seder. It was the Communal Seder at the Reform Synagogue here in Adelaide. On every table was a little dish of chopped livers, made – I found out later, by the husband of the head of the Catering Committee. Well – I took one taste and could not stop. It was so delicious!
This is a fitting memory as we approach the Passover Season once again this year. My daughter asked me last night when we were going to have our family Seder. “Then we get to have chicken livers again!” she said gleefully, “and I’m going to eat a lot of Charoset, as well. I still don’t understand why people don’t make that at other times of the year!”
“Well, if you learn to make it, you can have it whenever you like,” I told her.
All is well at our house, when chicken livers are on the menu.
Chicken Liver Pilaf
500g free range chicken livers – chopped fine
1 tablespoon olive oil
4-6 cloves garlic – chopped fine
½ cup chopped parsley (celery plus leaves is a good substitute)
2 cups basmati rice – washed once, soaked in cold water, then drained
1 cup dried blackcurrants, or sultanas
2 teaspoons cracked black pepper
6 cups water
½ cup toasted pine nuts
salt to taste (when serving)
1.Use a heavy-based pot if possible. Sautee livers gently in oil.
2.Add garlic and parsley, stir intermittently for about 5 minutes.
3.Add pepper, rice and currants, stir well. The idea is to mix everything together so that the oil will stop the rice from sticking.
4.Pour on the water, bring to the boil, put the lid on, turn the heat down, and allow to cook undisturbed until the rice has absorbed the liquid (15 minutes approximately). It’s ok to lift the lid to check on the rice, but try not to open the pot too often because it lets too much steam escape.
5. Stir in the toasted pine nuts just before serving.
Serve with cucumber and yoghurt, and a side dish of vegetables of your choice.
Cucumber and Yoghurt Salad
This is a close relation to the Turkish cacik and the Greek tzatziki, but milder. I think there is a European cucumber salad too, that’s very like this one.
1 large cucumber, grated and drained.
pinch of salt
scant teaspoon dried mint, or 1 teaspoon fresh mint, chopped finely
2 teaspoons dried dill tips, or 4 teaspoons fresh dill tips, chopped finely
dash of lemon juice or white vinegar
2 cups plain yoghurt (greek style is good)
Mix well and refrigerate until serving time.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
And Ain't I A Human?
Ain’t I A Human?*
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
*paraphrased from Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech “Ain’t I A Woman?
While we prepared for our union, deliberately not called a wedding, we laughed a little bitterly about the role of institutionalized worship in our relationship. A Reform Jewish Rabbi would have been happy to formalize my partnership with another woman; if only she had also been a Jew; a Christian cleric might have been persuaded to officiate at a mixed-faith ceremony; if only it had not been a same-sex union. And on and on and on the merry-go-round turns, scarcely deviating in its course of division, subjugation and demoralisation.
As for the state of our union? A year and a bit down the track, all of our friends and family members refer to our carefully and cumbersomely titled “Promise Making Ceremony and Celebration” as our wedding. We bow to the inevitable, and do the same. There is no essential difference between our marriage and how any couple learns to make a life together. Life is good. We are expecting our first child in a couple of months, and so our world expands, unfolds and blossoms.
By the way we did mention God – and even Jesus – in our ceremony. The multitude sanctioning our union by their presence included a Catholic nun and representatives of Protestant Christian ministry in their double digits, but sadly no representatives of Jewish ministry, mostly because I have chosen in my last ten years or so, not to engage with my Jewish world on an institutional level. No lightning struck.
The reflections by Gordon Preece, commissioning editor of Zadok Perspectives , on an article written by my beloved’s mother, and printed in No. 106 of this publication, (Autumn 2010) deny our humanity in a vicious and sustained attack upon us as lesbians. I found it shocking, but my beloved assures me that she could have a “conversation” of this nature every day of every week of her life, with someone in “the church”, if she chose to embark on such a self-abnegating venture, which she doesn’t.
The banality of Preece’s so-called scholarship is exposed by the various and oft-cited authoritative texts and ideas to which he refers in his editorial, compared with the single source chosen by him to represent queer thinking – the lyrics to the satirical and deliberately outrageous song by Lily Allen and Gregory Kurstin. In a paragraph where Preece denies church leadership roles for “practising gays”, he demands that “Both sides should move from hostility to hospitality”. Preece is sadly mistaken to assume that his carefully scripted attack on queer humanity is any less damaging than Allen and Kurstin’s song lyrics, just because of the format he has chosen. His attack cuts far more deeply, because it is couched in hypocritically nice language of “clarity and charity”, which very clearly expresses his hatred for me as a lesbian.
=Fuck You Very Much is a refreshingly honest response to those who like to practice their bigoted faith with low acts of hypocrisy and violence against people like me. I’m not just referring to Gay Bashing, as practiced against men in Australia; Corrective Rape, practiced against lesbians in South Africa, and Other Forms of Murder, practiced against homosexuals, transsexuals and queer people the world over, from Uganda to the = United States of America .
Homophobia is mainstream hatred which queer people face every day of our lives, from the ordinary bigoted people who inhabit the worlds in which we as queer people also dwell. The idea that homosexual people are not human enough to lead other human beings in a church context is as homophobic and potentially murderous as physical violence. With his denial of church leadership roles for “practising gays”, Preece advocates spiritual murder.
The issue is always the same. Whether it is the colour of one’s skin; one’s status as a slave or free born; the religious heritage of one’s grandparents and other forebears; the language one learned as a child; the borders of the nation where one was born; physical deformity, infirmity or simply difference, human beings are expert formulators of reasons as to why some people are awarded the title of being human, whilst others are resolutely denied that privilege. Such narrow-mindedness is almost amusing, in an issue of this publication which is sub-titled “Difference & Difficulty”. I cannot laugh at it however. It makes me angry. I must express that anger, lest I internalise it and fall into a depression. Unlike my beloved, I do not have decades of resistance behind me, to bolster my reactions.
Preece has a plethora of groups to choose from in this issue of Zadok. Should he marginalise and condemn people with mental illness? No, that is no longer politically correct, because sufferers who are appropriately medicated can live fulfilling (heterosexual) lives. People with schizophrenia may be dangerous and street-people are tragic, but Preece correctly defines mentally ill people as victims who are deserving of Christian charity. Perhaps then, the spotlight should be turned on the women and men of the church who remain single? Does their failure to marry not mask the fact that they are running around and engaging in illicit sexual relationships outside the institution of marriage? We cannot, surely, in good conscience, accuse virgin missionaries of such shenanigans. Let us let the single people be. Ok, so if not the mentally ill, nor the single people, what about people whose physical bodies fail to match up with what we refer to as normal? These are people whose bodies work in different ways from ours; those who compensate for a lack of hearing, by developing a rich and creative culture from which normal people are barred from participating, simply because we do hear. They are shutting us out. Should we not shun them, and stop them from cultural expression? Surely not! Jesus is cited as specifically including people with disabilities in his house as “an indispensable part of God’s family”. We must instead demand that these groups return the favour.
It is notable that Preece avoids the debate over whether homosexuality is a choice, or biological. The choice that he mentions involves homosexual practice versus (presumably) celibacy. I fail to understand how my homosexual practice hurts anyone at all. The artificiality of separating sexuality from sex is highlighted when religion tries to defend its homophobic stance. The only people who are supposed to be having sex are those who are having sex with their heterosexual marriage partner. So he can have sex with his wife. Fine. But two women or two men who are in a committed marriage-like relationship are not supposed to express themselves sexually, because…?
For religious adherents, whether they be Christian or Jewish, (since those are the two religious systems that come directly into play in my life), around the heart of the fear of same-sex attraction lies a framework of control devices – belief systems, dogma and rules – that are designed to ensure compliance and conformity. This structure need not be thorn-covered, to divide the acceptable, from the unacceptable. Anyone who is born unable to conform and comply because of the nature of their being is constricted and tortured if he or she is brought up within that structure. My partner describes how wonderfully safe it felt during her childhood, to know her boundaries and where she fit in. She also tells how impossible it was to fit in, when she discovered that she was the wrong sexuality. This was not something she could alter, but in order for her to survive, her worldview had to shift radically in order to accommodate her difference.
Preece expresses concern that in our postmodern world we are kneeling down to difference. He suggests that the concept of difference has taken centre stage on the altar of our western culture and threatens to become the idol of our religious focus, as well. It is a strange fear. Fashioned by God as we were – perhaps even created in the image of God – diversity exists at the deepest level of creation. What use is there in denying the differences that exist between us? With such a fear focus, Preece forgets that there is much more that unites us, than what divides us from one another.
The fear of what is similar lies at the heart of homophobia. Heterosexual people fear homosexuality not because it hurts them or even affects them directly in any way at all, but because they have been taught that it is something to be feared and avoided. To be called homosexual is to be called sub-human and abnormal – Preece has clearly never conquered an upbringing where he was told that homosexuals are mutant deviant dangerous monsters. I can presume he would pass this message onto his own offspring as well, which is monstrous.
The issue is always the same, and it is sad that a publication which purports to “promote informed theological reflection and engagement by people from all walks of life, in relation to Australian public, working, and personal life” continues to support homophobia and to deny the status of homosexual people as human beings. Naturally, issues around bisexuality, transgender and intersex people are ignored in his editorial. It is as though Preece, as representative of Christian thought on the matter, remains firmly blinkered to the realities of human diversity. As my beloved’s mother points out – Jesus was not so blinkered.
What is it, to be human? Like my beloved, I also work with new-comers to Australia. It is work that never fails to move me, in many directions. One of my students posed this question last week, in an English class. We were on the topic of Open Questions; based around the wh- words: who, what, where, why, which, when and how. He wrote on his form “Why are you a human?” and proceeded to parade that question past his bemused classmates, who were unprepared for such a deeply philosophical task. (Their questions were at a different level: “When did you come to Australia?” “Where do you live?” “Which bus do you catch?”) No one could offer a satisfactory response to my deep-thinker and when I turned the question upon him, he could only laugh, and say “I asked you first!”
The concept of a tribe of homosexuals is no less frightening than any tribe of outsiders. For those within the tribe there is at least a feeling of safety in numbers. The reality is that in most Christian congregations there is likely to be a smaller ratio of queer Christians than the 8-10% cited by my mother-ex-law in her article. The reasons for this are clear. Queer people are hated and feared by most Christians and would see little benefit in participating in church unless they had a personal faith that sustained them to find worth in their existence and their participation that was able to raise them above that hatred. A relationship with God (Jesus) might do the trick. I hesitate to posit that this relationship with God could be labelled “Christian” because of the obvious contradictions this poses in a world of mainstream homophobes who also use that label.
As a Jew, I was taught always to heed the fact that as an eternally homeless stranger myself, I can expect no less a welcome than that, which I am willing to offer to other strangers. The apartheid to which my mother-ex-law refers in her article, which “We have practised with our homophobic shudders and avoidance of encounter”, is something which my beloved has experienced all her life, as a member of Christian congregations, and it is wrong. It also exists in Jewish congregations.
As teachers, my partner and I are lucky enough, partly through working directly with marginalised new-comers to Australia, to reach a level of self-understanding that enables us to love our oppressors. We acknowledge that the hatred continually thrust in our direction, does not need to destroy our sense of well-being and purpose. In order to triumph, to flourish and to express our love for the world, we do not need to descend to the level of expressing hatred towards those who hate us.
The merry-go-round grapples with shallow concepts such as acceptance and tolerance at the same time as using a cattle prod to push us further away from the spotlight, and slam the doors of churches (and synagogues) behind us. Walls of words are built to keep us apart from the deserving minions, so that we might not taint the purity of so-called Christ-centred practice.
There is little depth to Preece’s preaching against homosexual humanity. He fails even to take a baby step in the direction of informed research collected about homosexuals. If he had bothered to do so, he would have discovered that many queer people also develop mental illness as a result of their mistreatment by mainstream society and marginalisation by Christians. Many homosexual adults remain single because they have been taught that same-sex relationships are not sanctioned by God and are therefore evil. Though they are attracted to people of the same sex, they choose celibacy in order to not be ostracised from their communities. Thirdly, some people with disabilities are also homosexual. How will “the church” deal with those?
Preece does not mention the unforgivable fact that a same-sex-attracted young person who has grown up in a church community is far more likely to kill himself or herself at discovering that he or she is not heterosexual, than a queer person who grew up outside Christian practice. Perhaps he recommends suicide as the better answer, for queer Christians?
© Melina Magdalena (2010)
*paraphrased from Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech “Ain’t I A Woman?
While we prepared for our union, deliberately not called a wedding, we laughed a little bitterly about the role of institutionalized worship in our relationship. A Reform Jewish Rabbi would have been happy to formalize my partnership with another woman; if only she had also been a Jew; a Christian cleric might have been persuaded to officiate at a mixed-faith ceremony; if only it had not been a same-sex union. And on and on and on the merry-go-round turns, scarcely deviating in its course of division, subjugation and demoralisation.
As for the state of our union? A year and a bit down the track, all of our friends and family members refer to our carefully and cumbersomely titled “Promise Making Ceremony and Celebration” as our wedding. We bow to the inevitable, and do the same. There is no essential difference between our marriage and how any couple learns to make a life together. Life is good. We are expecting our first child in a couple of months, and so our world expands, unfolds and blossoms.
By the way we did mention God – and even Jesus – in our ceremony. The multitude sanctioning our union by their presence included a Catholic nun and representatives of Protestant Christian ministry in their double digits, but sadly no representatives of Jewish ministry, mostly because I have chosen in my last ten years or so, not to engage with my Jewish world on an institutional level. No lightning struck.
The reflections by Gordon Preece, commissioning editor of Zadok Perspectives , on an article written by my beloved’s mother, and printed in No. 106 of this publication, (Autumn 2010) deny our humanity in a vicious and sustained attack upon us as lesbians. I found it shocking, but my beloved assures me that she could have a “conversation” of this nature every day of every week of her life, with someone in “the church”, if she chose to embark on such a self-abnegating venture, which she doesn’t.
The banality of Preece’s so-called scholarship is exposed by the various and oft-cited authoritative texts and ideas to which he refers in his editorial, compared with the single source chosen by him to represent queer thinking – the lyrics to the satirical and deliberately outrageous song by Lily Allen and Gregory Kurstin. In a paragraph where Preece denies church leadership roles for “practising gays”, he demands that “Both sides should move from hostility to hospitality”. Preece is sadly mistaken to assume that his carefully scripted attack on queer humanity is any less damaging than Allen and Kurstin’s song lyrics, just because of the format he has chosen. His attack cuts far more deeply, because it is couched in hypocritically nice language of “clarity and charity”, which very clearly expresses his hatred for me as a lesbian.
=Fuck You Very Much is a refreshingly honest response to those who like to practice their bigoted faith with low acts of hypocrisy and violence against people like me. I’m not just referring to Gay Bashing, as practiced against men in Australia; Corrective Rape, practiced against lesbians in South Africa, and Other Forms of Murder, practiced against homosexuals, transsexuals and queer people the world over, from Uganda to the = United States of America .
Homophobia is mainstream hatred which queer people face every day of our lives, from the ordinary bigoted people who inhabit the worlds in which we as queer people also dwell. The idea that homosexual people are not human enough to lead other human beings in a church context is as homophobic and potentially murderous as physical violence. With his denial of church leadership roles for “practising gays”, Preece advocates spiritual murder.
The issue is always the same. Whether it is the colour of one’s skin; one’s status as a slave or free born; the religious heritage of one’s grandparents and other forebears; the language one learned as a child; the borders of the nation where one was born; physical deformity, infirmity or simply difference, human beings are expert formulators of reasons as to why some people are awarded the title of being human, whilst others are resolutely denied that privilege. Such narrow-mindedness is almost amusing, in an issue of this publication which is sub-titled “Difference & Difficulty”. I cannot laugh at it however. It makes me angry. I must express that anger, lest I internalise it and fall into a depression. Unlike my beloved, I do not have decades of resistance behind me, to bolster my reactions.
Preece has a plethora of groups to choose from in this issue of Zadok. Should he marginalise and condemn people with mental illness? No, that is no longer politically correct, because sufferers who are appropriately medicated can live fulfilling (heterosexual) lives. People with schizophrenia may be dangerous and street-people are tragic, but Preece correctly defines mentally ill people as victims who are deserving of Christian charity. Perhaps then, the spotlight should be turned on the women and men of the church who remain single? Does their failure to marry not mask the fact that they are running around and engaging in illicit sexual relationships outside the institution of marriage? We cannot, surely, in good conscience, accuse virgin missionaries of such shenanigans. Let us let the single people be. Ok, so if not the mentally ill, nor the single people, what about people whose physical bodies fail to match up with what we refer to as normal? These are people whose bodies work in different ways from ours; those who compensate for a lack of hearing, by developing a rich and creative culture from which normal people are barred from participating, simply because we do hear. They are shutting us out. Should we not shun them, and stop them from cultural expression? Surely not! Jesus is cited as specifically including people with disabilities in his house as “an indispensable part of God’s family”. We must instead demand that these groups return the favour.
It is notable that Preece avoids the debate over whether homosexuality is a choice, or biological. The choice that he mentions involves homosexual practice versus (presumably) celibacy. I fail to understand how my homosexual practice hurts anyone at all. The artificiality of separating sexuality from sex is highlighted when religion tries to defend its homophobic stance. The only people who are supposed to be having sex are those who are having sex with their heterosexual marriage partner. So he can have sex with his wife. Fine. But two women or two men who are in a committed marriage-like relationship are not supposed to express themselves sexually, because…?
For religious adherents, whether they be Christian or Jewish, (since those are the two religious systems that come directly into play in my life), around the heart of the fear of same-sex attraction lies a framework of control devices – belief systems, dogma and rules – that are designed to ensure compliance and conformity. This structure need not be thorn-covered, to divide the acceptable, from the unacceptable. Anyone who is born unable to conform and comply because of the nature of their being is constricted and tortured if he or she is brought up within that structure. My partner describes how wonderfully safe it felt during her childhood, to know her boundaries and where she fit in. She also tells how impossible it was to fit in, when she discovered that she was the wrong sexuality. This was not something she could alter, but in order for her to survive, her worldview had to shift radically in order to accommodate her difference.
Preece expresses concern that in our postmodern world we are kneeling down to difference. He suggests that the concept of difference has taken centre stage on the altar of our western culture and threatens to become the idol of our religious focus, as well. It is a strange fear. Fashioned by God as we were – perhaps even created in the image of God – diversity exists at the deepest level of creation. What use is there in denying the differences that exist between us? With such a fear focus, Preece forgets that there is much more that unites us, than what divides us from one another.
The fear of what is similar lies at the heart of homophobia. Heterosexual people fear homosexuality not because it hurts them or even affects them directly in any way at all, but because they have been taught that it is something to be feared and avoided. To be called homosexual is to be called sub-human and abnormal – Preece has clearly never conquered an upbringing where he was told that homosexuals are mutant deviant dangerous monsters. I can presume he would pass this message onto his own offspring as well, which is monstrous.
The issue is always the same, and it is sad that a publication which purports to “promote informed theological reflection and engagement by people from all walks of life, in relation to Australian public, working, and personal life” continues to support homophobia and to deny the status of homosexual people as human beings. Naturally, issues around bisexuality, transgender and intersex people are ignored in his editorial. It is as though Preece, as representative of Christian thought on the matter, remains firmly blinkered to the realities of human diversity. As my beloved’s mother points out – Jesus was not so blinkered.
What is it, to be human? Like my beloved, I also work with new-comers to Australia. It is work that never fails to move me, in many directions. One of my students posed this question last week, in an English class. We were on the topic of Open Questions; based around the wh- words: who, what, where, why, which, when and how. He wrote on his form “Why are you a human?” and proceeded to parade that question past his bemused classmates, who were unprepared for such a deeply philosophical task. (Their questions were at a different level: “When did you come to Australia?” “Where do you live?” “Which bus do you catch?”) No one could offer a satisfactory response to my deep-thinker and when I turned the question upon him, he could only laugh, and say “I asked you first!”
The concept of a tribe of homosexuals is no less frightening than any tribe of outsiders. For those within the tribe there is at least a feeling of safety in numbers. The reality is that in most Christian congregations there is likely to be a smaller ratio of queer Christians than the 8-10% cited by my mother-ex-law in her article. The reasons for this are clear. Queer people are hated and feared by most Christians and would see little benefit in participating in church unless they had a personal faith that sustained them to find worth in their existence and their participation that was able to raise them above that hatred. A relationship with God (Jesus) might do the trick. I hesitate to posit that this relationship with God could be labelled “Christian” because of the obvious contradictions this poses in a world of mainstream homophobes who also use that label.
As a Jew, I was taught always to heed the fact that as an eternally homeless stranger myself, I can expect no less a welcome than that, which I am willing to offer to other strangers. The apartheid to which my mother-ex-law refers in her article, which “We have practised with our homophobic shudders and avoidance of encounter”, is something which my beloved has experienced all her life, as a member of Christian congregations, and it is wrong. It also exists in Jewish congregations.
As teachers, my partner and I are lucky enough, partly through working directly with marginalised new-comers to Australia, to reach a level of self-understanding that enables us to love our oppressors. We acknowledge that the hatred continually thrust in our direction, does not need to destroy our sense of well-being and purpose. In order to triumph, to flourish and to express our love for the world, we do not need to descend to the level of expressing hatred towards those who hate us.
The merry-go-round grapples with shallow concepts such as acceptance and tolerance at the same time as using a cattle prod to push us further away from the spotlight, and slam the doors of churches (and synagogues) behind us. Walls of words are built to keep us apart from the deserving minions, so that we might not taint the purity of so-called Christ-centred practice.
There is little depth to Preece’s preaching against homosexual humanity. He fails even to take a baby step in the direction of informed research collected about homosexuals. If he had bothered to do so, he would have discovered that many queer people also develop mental illness as a result of their mistreatment by mainstream society and marginalisation by Christians. Many homosexual adults remain single because they have been taught that same-sex relationships are not sanctioned by God and are therefore evil. Though they are attracted to people of the same sex, they choose celibacy in order to not be ostracised from their communities. Thirdly, some people with disabilities are also homosexual. How will “the church” deal with those?
Preece does not mention the unforgivable fact that a same-sex-attracted young person who has grown up in a church community is far more likely to kill himself or herself at discovering that he or she is not heterosexual, than a queer person who grew up outside Christian practice. Perhaps he recommends suicide as the better answer, for queer Christians?
Saturday, January 09, 2010
On Exposure: a journey
On Exposure: a journey (Joel Magarey, Wakefield Press, 2009)
I the Reader
I approached Joel Magarey’s book Exposure: A Journey with twin measures of hope and scepticism. I hoped that he might enlighten me about certain aspects of my own life during my late teens and twenties, but I was sceptical that there was very much to discover through the perspective of someone who was actually writing about something else.
I took the book personally – after all, Penny was Best Woman to the man I married, Joel juggled at our wedding, and Basil’s band provided the music at the reception afterwards. The shattered constellation of my first marriage remains as a facet of my identity that looms large when an old ghost like Joel pops into view from time to time.
Had my first marriage lasted, we would be coming up to our twentieth anniversary this month. It’s a staggering idea. It is significant that Joel’s book appeared in 2009 – a year during which I have been learning how to be a partner within a new marriage; how to mother children in their late teens, when I myself became a mother; and some different ways and contexts there are to be Christian. My response to the book is necessarily framed within this context, and would have been a very different response had my circumstances not changed so greatly.
I was never taught that suffering is the human condition; or that good can emerge from suffering. These kinds of Christian ideas were foreign to me and in bumping up against them again as a mature woman in my 30s I find myself better able to deal with them than I was, in my late teens.
Joel and I grew up in two very different worlds. Our respective backgrounds set us up to impact upon one another in different ways. The fact that I as a non-Catholic ended up pregnant and married at 19 is ironic. I recall the sex education that I received at school – we were told about condoms yes, but only for prevention of AIDS and other STDs. I knew about the birth control pill yes, but only for sexually active young women (not me) and those whose menstrual agonies were such, that the Pill could alleviate their severity. I got pregnant very easily and thoughtlessly. I did not entertain the notion of terminating the pregnancy, even though I wasn’t sure how it had happened or how having a baby was going to affect my life. The idea of abortion was repugnant to me.
It might sound quite odd, but the fact is that I was brought up in silence more than spokenness, when it comes to sex and marriage. I had never been inculcated into the idea that the best way for humans to live is as part of a heterosexual couple who have children together. I had not been taught that I needed a partner at all. I did not feel loneliness or isolation – I was filled instead with the ebullience of knowing I had my life to live and that I could be the person I wanted to be.
Some might have assumed that I grew up in a permissive household – that is far from my experience! The unwritten rules that I unwittingly broke were not defined and never made explicit to me until it was too late. So I was fascinated to learn that Joel was explicitly taught about those things I didn’t know about – what it means to have sex with someone, and how the consequences of these acts may impact on his future life choices.
Book Review
Exposure moves frequently between times – distant past, recent past, present – but never into the future. This structure effectively builds and maintains momentum and injects suspense into the narrative. As an insider I was aware of certain elements of the story, but still found myself guessing and occasionally gasping with surprise whilst reading it. I finished the story wondering – what next?
I enjoyed immensely the well-crafted descriptive elements of the travel narrative. I was conscious of reading Joel’s descriptions, closing my eyes and imagining the skies, lakes, mountains and weather conditions of those faraway places.
Although Joel’s diagnosis and experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is prominent in Exposure, I see the main themes as being sex and responsibility, inlaid with a heavy dose of questions about morality.
Extramarital sex and the unwanted child are prominent triggers for the OCD, and occur as motifs throughout the narrative. These issues are linked with the relationships that Joel writes about, most obviously his relationship with Penny, but they are never framed within the expected context of marriage. This forms the underlying crux of the matter. The idea of marriage pops up at the tail end of Joel’s narrative, after long journeys of separation and rapturous rejoining. Penny and Joel’s relationship could be seen as a kind of marriage, with the implicit understanding that these years of learning how to travel and live together were all part of a togetherness that would continue to be built upon in years to come.
One of the largest limitations of the novel is in itself significant, because it functions as a signpost as to why things turned out the way that they did. The lack of insight into Penny as a person with her own needs, her own motivations, her own desires and her own responses has left me wanting to know so much more about her.
When it comes to the crunch, Ahmad and Joel set themselves up as rivals, with Penny choosing one and rejecting the other. However, this still seems to occur without Joel’s realising that Penny has some agency in the matter – she has needs and desires that he has not yet considered fully in light of their relationship and its future.
I am intensely curious about Penny’s life now. When I heard what she had done, I was appalled. It looked to me as though she had deliberately placed herself in a position of being oppressed and repressed. It felt to me at the time as though she were punishing herself. I could not imagine her choice as being real. Knowing more now than I did then, about other cultures, I have a less closed-minded attitude as to who she might have become within the structure of her chosen culture. I would love to hear what her experiences have been; how she has grown within the parameters placed around her, what she has been able to achieve and discover about herself, her husband, her new family and the culture in which she now lives, loves and works.
My Narrative
As a 16, 17 and 18 year old, the years between meeting the man I married and our wedding itself, I was still firmly fixed on my future as being one of
- travelling and seeing the world
- learning languages and getting to know the people of the world
- never getting married
- never having children
- living independently with my cats
- writing, making, creating, studying.
Ever afraid of being forced to do things against my will, I was well aware that I was not on the ball when it came to producing appropriate reactions and responses to what confronted me. I have always required more time to process things than is generally allowed me, particularly by intelligent, selfish, manipulative and aggressive young men who see themselves as invincible and entitled to whatever catches their fancy at any given moment. Isn’t that how I ended up pregnant in the first place?
Of those who condemned my actions in leaving that marriage after three years, one of the strongest came from Joel’s father, whom I had known from my first days at university, when I was part of the Sudan Relief Committee that held its meetings in his staff room in the Napier Building at Adelaide University.
Kevin took me aside at a New Year’s Eve party some time after I had left. I described the circumstances that had led me to my leaving and he told me I was wrong. He painted a picture for me of some of the lowest, most difficult points of his marriage and explained that such things occur in every marriage; that they don’t mean the marriage should break or be destroyed; rather that the people in that marriage need to work harder to strengthen the marriage.
I had no idea what he was talking about. It made me very angry to hear him blame me for breaking up my marriage. It felt as though he conceptualised marriage as a separate entity from the two people who had entered into the institution; an entity precious and valuable as to subjugate both parties into its service, to their ultimate self-denial and self-destruction. And I wanted no part of such a condition. I was unwilling to bend and to break myself down in order to fit into the mould of marriage, if in fact that was, what marriage meant.
The thought that parents can lecture children about sex and marriage fills me with a certain amount of dread, particularly as I have also failed to make this a part of my children’s education. I wonder to what extent my ideas about being the poor girl who set such a bad example to her peers had any impact on the moral struggles that Joel experienced as a sexually active young man who had been exceptionally well educated on the evil consequences of sex outside marriage?
When I was pregnant with my first child, Joel waylaid me at one end of our share house and mischievously teased me, trying to convince me that if I were to have sex with him it wouldn’t matter at all, because I was already pregnant – whom could it possibly harm? (Secondhand Notoriety, 2007) I have pondered Joel’s behaviour many times since that afternoon, and assigned several possible reasons to it. Was he jealous; was this some kind of resistance action against the institution of marriage; was he just testosterone-driven? He scared me.
His sister took me aside and encouraged me at one point after I had already fallen pregnant. She said it is idiotic to “wait to have sex until you’re married”, because you can never know whether you’ll be sexually compatible with your chosen partner until you try. I was just embarrassed. None of this had been my idea.
I attended Joel’s birthday party at his family home just off King William Road. I wonder whether this was the party he describes, where he and Penny first got together? I remember walking home from that party to my parents’ house in Payneham. I was unaccustomed to being out so late at night, but the young man whom I regarded at that time as my “best friend”, entertained me and encouraged me as we walked. I recall our late night walks with some fondness.
Just before I agreed to have sex for the first time in my late teens I was confronted with a similar situation to the Penny / Ahmad / Joel triangle. I wanted neither suitor. Attracted to neither man, I was not looking for marriage, and the situation was both ludicrous and unwelcome. When I first heard about Penny, I wondered whether something similar had happened to her. I assumed it had, and I pitied her.
Penny is clearly an unconventional woman, with her own ideas about right and wrong. We see this in Exposure mapped out through Joel’s eyes as they form their bonds and celebrate their relationship outside the bounds of his parents’ explicit expectations. I also remember Penny as an important member of the Legal team assisting protesters at the Narrungar Protests (late 1980s to early 1990s). She is capable and smart. Her plain-spoken sensible attitude was refreshing, matched against the snobbish and intellectual cynicism that prevailed during our university days. It should not be mistaken for stupidity or a simplistic Pollyannaish response to the world.
I felt squeamish, reading the idealised version of Penny’s character – just as squeamish as when twenty years ago she was held up to me as an example of the kind of woman I ought to be aspiring to become. And I wonder, who was she, who has she become?
What I remember about Penny is worth remembering. She was independent and resourceful, and lived alone, without any family around her, in a little converted garage off Grange Road. I never thought very much about how she afforded this, although at that time our peers were dependent on their parents for support. She was interesting and knowledgeable, and passionate about seeing the world. She was left-wing and alternative. During my fuzzy-headed days of reproduction and new motherhood, I failed to take very much in, but I do remember seeing books and posters at her place that roused my interest and caused me to howl in the depths of my soul for the chances to see the world that I had given up, having married and borne children so very young.
I recall a conversation Penny and I had, that terrible spring when I had lost all control of my own life and future. The man I married set this conversation up, just as he had carefully impregnated me and then injected me with the poison of his own anti-abortion beliefs. Penny may well have been aware of this, but she would have trusted me as an intelligent young woman to be capable of seeing the other side and making my own choices and decisions.
We were outside the Art Gallery on North Terrace. I was a little awestruck, as Penny had never really paid me much attention. My husband-to-be and I had already performed our “Three Foetuses” manoeuvre on the floor of the university refectory so that the whole group had been clued into the fact that we had (unprotected) sex and conceived a child, as he had planned. That I remained clueless was an option no one seemed to have considered, and it probably didn’t matter to anyone but me.
The way I operated mostly back then, was on pure intuition, and my intuition has always been excellent. I would tune in to the person who was speaking to me at the time, intuit what she or he wanted me to say, and say it. It was simple. That it bypassed any interpretation, decision and choice-making on my part was beside the point. I did not allow myself the slightest bit of agency.
“You know the choice is up to you,” Penny said. Or something very like that. Startled, I said “What do you mean?” “You don’t have to have a baby.” “Oh,” I replied brightly, defensively, feeling as though Penny were a traitor, steering me up the steep path towards abortion. “It’s OK. I understand. But I want to have this baby.” “Well that’s all right then,” Penny said gently, “just as long as you don’t forget it’s your choice.”
Months later, my husband and I went to her place to meet some friends for a meal. Our baby, a winter child, was just a few weeks old. We travelled across town on at least two buses. The weather was cold and wet. The food wasn’t ready on time, because keeping to time was unimportant. No one but me was responsible for anything but themselves. I was hungry, tired, nipple-sore and miserable, being both on show as “the new mother” and overlooked as a human being with needs of my own. I sat in a corner with my baby and cried. Penny was kind and sensible. She took my husband aside and suggested he take me home to rest. I was very grateful to her.
I the Reader
I approached Joel Magarey’s book Exposure: A Journey with twin measures of hope and scepticism. I hoped that he might enlighten me about certain aspects of my own life during my late teens and twenties, but I was sceptical that there was very much to discover through the perspective of someone who was actually writing about something else.
I took the book personally – after all, Penny was Best Woman to the man I married, Joel juggled at our wedding, and Basil’s band provided the music at the reception afterwards. The shattered constellation of my first marriage remains as a facet of my identity that looms large when an old ghost like Joel pops into view from time to time.
Had my first marriage lasted, we would be coming up to our twentieth anniversary this month. It’s a staggering idea. It is significant that Joel’s book appeared in 2009 – a year during which I have been learning how to be a partner within a new marriage; how to mother children in their late teens, when I myself became a mother; and some different ways and contexts there are to be Christian. My response to the book is necessarily framed within this context, and would have been a very different response had my circumstances not changed so greatly.
I was never taught that suffering is the human condition; or that good can emerge from suffering. These kinds of Christian ideas were foreign to me and in bumping up against them again as a mature woman in my 30s I find myself better able to deal with them than I was, in my late teens.
Joel and I grew up in two very different worlds. Our respective backgrounds set us up to impact upon one another in different ways. The fact that I as a non-Catholic ended up pregnant and married at 19 is ironic. I recall the sex education that I received at school – we were told about condoms yes, but only for prevention of AIDS and other STDs. I knew about the birth control pill yes, but only for sexually active young women (not me) and those whose menstrual agonies were such, that the Pill could alleviate their severity. I got pregnant very easily and thoughtlessly. I did not entertain the notion of terminating the pregnancy, even though I wasn’t sure how it had happened or how having a baby was going to affect my life. The idea of abortion was repugnant to me.
It might sound quite odd, but the fact is that I was brought up in silence more than spokenness, when it comes to sex and marriage. I had never been inculcated into the idea that the best way for humans to live is as part of a heterosexual couple who have children together. I had not been taught that I needed a partner at all. I did not feel loneliness or isolation – I was filled instead with the ebullience of knowing I had my life to live and that I could be the person I wanted to be.
Some might have assumed that I grew up in a permissive household – that is far from my experience! The unwritten rules that I unwittingly broke were not defined and never made explicit to me until it was too late. So I was fascinated to learn that Joel was explicitly taught about those things I didn’t know about – what it means to have sex with someone, and how the consequences of these acts may impact on his future life choices.
Book Review
Exposure moves frequently between times – distant past, recent past, present – but never into the future. This structure effectively builds and maintains momentum and injects suspense into the narrative. As an insider I was aware of certain elements of the story, but still found myself guessing and occasionally gasping with surprise whilst reading it. I finished the story wondering – what next?
I enjoyed immensely the well-crafted descriptive elements of the travel narrative. I was conscious of reading Joel’s descriptions, closing my eyes and imagining the skies, lakes, mountains and weather conditions of those faraway places.
Although Joel’s diagnosis and experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is prominent in Exposure, I see the main themes as being sex and responsibility, inlaid with a heavy dose of questions about morality.
Extramarital sex and the unwanted child are prominent triggers for the OCD, and occur as motifs throughout the narrative. These issues are linked with the relationships that Joel writes about, most obviously his relationship with Penny, but they are never framed within the expected context of marriage. This forms the underlying crux of the matter. The idea of marriage pops up at the tail end of Joel’s narrative, after long journeys of separation and rapturous rejoining. Penny and Joel’s relationship could be seen as a kind of marriage, with the implicit understanding that these years of learning how to travel and live together were all part of a togetherness that would continue to be built upon in years to come.
One of the largest limitations of the novel is in itself significant, because it functions as a signpost as to why things turned out the way that they did. The lack of insight into Penny as a person with her own needs, her own motivations, her own desires and her own responses has left me wanting to know so much more about her.
When it comes to the crunch, Ahmad and Joel set themselves up as rivals, with Penny choosing one and rejecting the other. However, this still seems to occur without Joel’s realising that Penny has some agency in the matter – she has needs and desires that he has not yet considered fully in light of their relationship and its future.
I am intensely curious about Penny’s life now. When I heard what she had done, I was appalled. It looked to me as though she had deliberately placed herself in a position of being oppressed and repressed. It felt to me at the time as though she were punishing herself. I could not imagine her choice as being real. Knowing more now than I did then, about other cultures, I have a less closed-minded attitude as to who she might have become within the structure of her chosen culture. I would love to hear what her experiences have been; how she has grown within the parameters placed around her, what she has been able to achieve and discover about herself, her husband, her new family and the culture in which she now lives, loves and works.
My Narrative
As a 16, 17 and 18 year old, the years between meeting the man I married and our wedding itself, I was still firmly fixed on my future as being one of
- travelling and seeing the world
- learning languages and getting to know the people of the world
- never getting married
- never having children
- living independently with my cats
- writing, making, creating, studying.
Ever afraid of being forced to do things against my will, I was well aware that I was not on the ball when it came to producing appropriate reactions and responses to what confronted me. I have always required more time to process things than is generally allowed me, particularly by intelligent, selfish, manipulative and aggressive young men who see themselves as invincible and entitled to whatever catches their fancy at any given moment. Isn’t that how I ended up pregnant in the first place?
Of those who condemned my actions in leaving that marriage after three years, one of the strongest came from Joel’s father, whom I had known from my first days at university, when I was part of the Sudan Relief Committee that held its meetings in his staff room in the Napier Building at Adelaide University.
Kevin took me aside at a New Year’s Eve party some time after I had left. I described the circumstances that had led me to my leaving and he told me I was wrong. He painted a picture for me of some of the lowest, most difficult points of his marriage and explained that such things occur in every marriage; that they don’t mean the marriage should break or be destroyed; rather that the people in that marriage need to work harder to strengthen the marriage.
I had no idea what he was talking about. It made me very angry to hear him blame me for breaking up my marriage. It felt as though he conceptualised marriage as a separate entity from the two people who had entered into the institution; an entity precious and valuable as to subjugate both parties into its service, to their ultimate self-denial and self-destruction. And I wanted no part of such a condition. I was unwilling to bend and to break myself down in order to fit into the mould of marriage, if in fact that was, what marriage meant.
The thought that parents can lecture children about sex and marriage fills me with a certain amount of dread, particularly as I have also failed to make this a part of my children’s education. I wonder to what extent my ideas about being the poor girl who set such a bad example to her peers had any impact on the moral struggles that Joel experienced as a sexually active young man who had been exceptionally well educated on the evil consequences of sex outside marriage?
When I was pregnant with my first child, Joel waylaid me at one end of our share house and mischievously teased me, trying to convince me that if I were to have sex with him it wouldn’t matter at all, because I was already pregnant – whom could it possibly harm? (Secondhand Notoriety, 2007) I have pondered Joel’s behaviour many times since that afternoon, and assigned several possible reasons to it. Was he jealous; was this some kind of resistance action against the institution of marriage; was he just testosterone-driven? He scared me.
His sister took me aside and encouraged me at one point after I had already fallen pregnant. She said it is idiotic to “wait to have sex until you’re married”, because you can never know whether you’ll be sexually compatible with your chosen partner until you try. I was just embarrassed. None of this had been my idea.
I attended Joel’s birthday party at his family home just off King William Road. I wonder whether this was the party he describes, where he and Penny first got together? I remember walking home from that party to my parents’ house in Payneham. I was unaccustomed to being out so late at night, but the young man whom I regarded at that time as my “best friend”, entertained me and encouraged me as we walked. I recall our late night walks with some fondness.
Just before I agreed to have sex for the first time in my late teens I was confronted with a similar situation to the Penny / Ahmad / Joel triangle. I wanted neither suitor. Attracted to neither man, I was not looking for marriage, and the situation was both ludicrous and unwelcome. When I first heard about Penny, I wondered whether something similar had happened to her. I assumed it had, and I pitied her.
Penny is clearly an unconventional woman, with her own ideas about right and wrong. We see this in Exposure mapped out through Joel’s eyes as they form their bonds and celebrate their relationship outside the bounds of his parents’ explicit expectations. I also remember Penny as an important member of the Legal team assisting protesters at the Narrungar Protests (late 1980s to early 1990s). She is capable and smart. Her plain-spoken sensible attitude was refreshing, matched against the snobbish and intellectual cynicism that prevailed during our university days. It should not be mistaken for stupidity or a simplistic Pollyannaish response to the world.
I felt squeamish, reading the idealised version of Penny’s character – just as squeamish as when twenty years ago she was held up to me as an example of the kind of woman I ought to be aspiring to become. And I wonder, who was she, who has she become?
What I remember about Penny is worth remembering. She was independent and resourceful, and lived alone, without any family around her, in a little converted garage off Grange Road. I never thought very much about how she afforded this, although at that time our peers were dependent on their parents for support. She was interesting and knowledgeable, and passionate about seeing the world. She was left-wing and alternative. During my fuzzy-headed days of reproduction and new motherhood, I failed to take very much in, but I do remember seeing books and posters at her place that roused my interest and caused me to howl in the depths of my soul for the chances to see the world that I had given up, having married and borne children so very young.
I recall a conversation Penny and I had, that terrible spring when I had lost all control of my own life and future. The man I married set this conversation up, just as he had carefully impregnated me and then injected me with the poison of his own anti-abortion beliefs. Penny may well have been aware of this, but she would have trusted me as an intelligent young woman to be capable of seeing the other side and making my own choices and decisions.
We were outside the Art Gallery on North Terrace. I was a little awestruck, as Penny had never really paid me much attention. My husband-to-be and I had already performed our “Three Foetuses” manoeuvre on the floor of the university refectory so that the whole group had been clued into the fact that we had (unprotected) sex and conceived a child, as he had planned. That I remained clueless was an option no one seemed to have considered, and it probably didn’t matter to anyone but me.
The way I operated mostly back then, was on pure intuition, and my intuition has always been excellent. I would tune in to the person who was speaking to me at the time, intuit what she or he wanted me to say, and say it. It was simple. That it bypassed any interpretation, decision and choice-making on my part was beside the point. I did not allow myself the slightest bit of agency.
“You know the choice is up to you,” Penny said. Or something very like that. Startled, I said “What do you mean?” “You don’t have to have a baby.” “Oh,” I replied brightly, defensively, feeling as though Penny were a traitor, steering me up the steep path towards abortion. “It’s OK. I understand. But I want to have this baby.” “Well that’s all right then,” Penny said gently, “just as long as you don’t forget it’s your choice.”
Months later, my husband and I went to her place to meet some friends for a meal. Our baby, a winter child, was just a few weeks old. We travelled across town on at least two buses. The weather was cold and wet. The food wasn’t ready on time, because keeping to time was unimportant. No one but me was responsible for anything but themselves. I was hungry, tired, nipple-sore and miserable, being both on show as “the new mother” and overlooked as a human being with needs of my own. I sat in a corner with my baby and cried. Penny was kind and sensible. She took my husband aside and suggested he take me home to rest. I was very grateful to her.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Of where he used to be
of where he used to be
© Melina Magdalena 2009
He
is breaking himself out
of the habit of having a mother
wants
no part of Kilburn
with its seething streets of neglect
its hungry, disaffected youth
and paths that glisten with broken glass
(although we
are better off than we have ever been before
in the short history of his life)
doesn’t come home
to our little house of colours
where his mother’s lover shouted at him once
in exasperation
at his abject refusal to be part of
what we’re trying to create here
precious boy
as if no one had ever shouted at him before
as if his own mother didn’t sometimes get angry with him, too
as if he had never shouted or even sworn at anyone
his whole life long
allows himself
no luxury of comfort
no occasional home-cooked meal
no night in the room he decorated, just to his taste
curt
on the phone as though split in halves by the wires that connect us
always rude all right now goodbye he says
and don’t fuckin’ text me ever again
loathes
me actively
with every fibre of his being
straining to get further away from me
at chance meetings when he’s visiting his grandparents
or ferrying his sister from place to place
What kind of withdrawal symptoms must he suffer?
All I sense is the negative space
of where he used to be.
© Melina Magdalena 2009
He
is breaking himself out
of the habit of having a mother
wants
no part of Kilburn
with its seething streets of neglect
its hungry, disaffected youth
and paths that glisten with broken glass
(although we
are better off than we have ever been before
in the short history of his life)
doesn’t come home
to our little house of colours
where his mother’s lover shouted at him once
in exasperation
at his abject refusal to be part of
what we’re trying to create here
precious boy
as if no one had ever shouted at him before
as if his own mother didn’t sometimes get angry with him, too
as if he had never shouted or even sworn at anyone
his whole life long
allows himself
no luxury of comfort
no occasional home-cooked meal
no night in the room he decorated, just to his taste
curt
on the phone as though split in halves by the wires that connect us
always rude all right now goodbye he says
and don’t fuckin’ text me ever again
loathes
me actively
with every fibre of his being
straining to get further away from me
at chance meetings when he’s visiting his grandparents
or ferrying his sister from place to place
What kind of withdrawal symptoms must he suffer?
All I sense is the negative space
of where he used to be.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Self Harm
Self Harm
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
Years ago when counsellors advised me to be “my own best friend” I learned to be kinder to myself. One counsellor suggested I seek out a teddy bear or stuffed toy to cuddle when I needed to, but this never appealed. My cats served this need nicely.
I go through patches of abject misery where I cannot bear the thought of remaining in this world, and I have learned to wait these out in the knowledge that they will pass over and through me and I will emerge out the otherside still breathing, still alive, still capable of creativity and joy, ever-tempered by my experience of their shadow opposite states.
I never talked to my counsellors about self-harming, though I know in some tense sessions they probably saw me rip and tear at my cuticles. And I never realised the impact that my self-harming habits have on me until I got to see them through the eyes of someone who loves me. She is horrified, terrified, repulsed and shocked that I could put myself through what I do.
It’s not necessarily good to decide to stop self-harming because of the impact it has on another person, but it has certainly been a wake-up call for me to think about the choices that I’m making. I know compared with others my level of self-harm is paltry. But I’m realising that any level of self-harm is potentially dangerous, because of the mind-set that it perpetuates.
When I was going through my worst weeks of sleeplessness these last months I wanted nothing more than to obliterate myself; failing that, to punish my body for its refusal to allow me the relief I required. I was sleep-deprived and dream-deprived. My spirit was parched, pursed, dried up like an old prune. I faced the prospect of and endless slide into physical deterioration – ageing, menopause, wrinkling, pain and more pain, losing teeth, infirmities, loss of functions left, right and centre. Nothing cheered me.
One night after things had already started to improve I fell off the wagon. We had had a late meal, or been up and out late at a party and my “sleep hygiene routine” had been disrupted. Frustrated because at that moment there seemed to be no cause and no effect to the senselessness of the of my sleep pattern, I got up and sat on the loo and slapped myself in the face, very hard, quite a few times. I hoped the pain would send me reeling into the sleep that I craved. I hoped that changing state from dull numbness into sharp pain might help change my wakefulness into sleep. I had thought about banging my head against the wall, but I thought it might hurt too much and damage my brain besides. I wasn’t after permanent obliteration – just a temporary whack from being awake, into being asleep.
That night, like so many others, I did manage to fall asleep eventually, after cocooning myself in a blanket on a pallet on the floor. My Beloved had rubbed my back and curled up into me, trying to soothe me into sleep, but I had crawled back out of bed and onto the floor where eventually the sweet joy of sheer relief took over as I rolled over and realised – I had been dreaming – therefore I had been sleeping. (Once that moment hits, I convince myself that I can fall asleep again. Doesn’t matter that there are only 50 minutes until it’s time to get up and start the day – 50 minutes is better than no sleep at all (and I speak from grim experience).
It wasn’t until several days later that I admitted what I had done that night. It hadn’t worked, and I’d felt foolish and betrayed by this fact. My Beloved said “I heard those noises and I didn’t dare ask what you had done.”
Other times when I self-harm are just at the level of consciousness. I would say they are long-entrenched coping mechanisms that comfort and distract even as they hurt physically.
For example:
Preparing and waiting for social occasions to begin I invariably end up with reddened, torn, searingly painful fingers, from gnawing, chewing and pulling at my cuticles. I can stop myself just before the skin tears, when I’m conscious of what I am doing, but this is rarely the case when the nerves take over. And the shame that wells up when I realise what I’ve done more than compensates for the self-belief that people don’t want to see me, won’t have enough to eat, may not like to be in my home. I’ve gone to job interviews in the same state and practically sat on my fingers to keep from showing them. Not a good look.
I’ve wondered why other people don’t seem to have the same problems with their cuticles that I do, and also why other people seem to have a greater tolerance for skin irritations such as insect bites, and manage to restrain themselves from picking them open until they bleed.
To some extent I know that I am formed and set in my ways of being as much as in my ways of doing. Whilst I believe in the capacity of humans to change and transform, there are some aspects of my identity that I doubt I am willing to give up. Negative and self-destructive though they be, they remain a part of me.
I hear the owl in the night
and I realise some things never are made right*
So I am thankful to have my Beloved, though I feel bad that she stands helpless to shift me when I’m relentlessly pursuing a course of self-destruction. And I never want to push the limits of her tolerance past the point of no return. Not only for my own selfish reasons, but it must be horrible for her to be able to do nothing but be
stacking sandbags against the river of [my] troubles* .
That is not a nice thing to do to another person.
*Saliers, E. (2004) Come On Home, All That We Let In.
http://www.indigogirls.com/home.html
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
Years ago when counsellors advised me to be “my own best friend” I learned to be kinder to myself. One counsellor suggested I seek out a teddy bear or stuffed toy to cuddle when I needed to, but this never appealed. My cats served this need nicely.
I go through patches of abject misery where I cannot bear the thought of remaining in this world, and I have learned to wait these out in the knowledge that they will pass over and through me and I will emerge out the otherside still breathing, still alive, still capable of creativity and joy, ever-tempered by my experience of their shadow opposite states.
I never talked to my counsellors about self-harming, though I know in some tense sessions they probably saw me rip and tear at my cuticles. And I never realised the impact that my self-harming habits have on me until I got to see them through the eyes of someone who loves me. She is horrified, terrified, repulsed and shocked that I could put myself through what I do.
It’s not necessarily good to decide to stop self-harming because of the impact it has on another person, but it has certainly been a wake-up call for me to think about the choices that I’m making. I know compared with others my level of self-harm is paltry. But I’m realising that any level of self-harm is potentially dangerous, because of the mind-set that it perpetuates.
When I was going through my worst weeks of sleeplessness these last months I wanted nothing more than to obliterate myself; failing that, to punish my body for its refusal to allow me the relief I required. I was sleep-deprived and dream-deprived. My spirit was parched, pursed, dried up like an old prune. I faced the prospect of and endless slide into physical deterioration – ageing, menopause, wrinkling, pain and more pain, losing teeth, infirmities, loss of functions left, right and centre. Nothing cheered me.
One night after things had already started to improve I fell off the wagon. We had had a late meal, or been up and out late at a party and my “sleep hygiene routine” had been disrupted. Frustrated because at that moment there seemed to be no cause and no effect to the senselessness of the of my sleep pattern, I got up and sat on the loo and slapped myself in the face, very hard, quite a few times. I hoped the pain would send me reeling into the sleep that I craved. I hoped that changing state from dull numbness into sharp pain might help change my wakefulness into sleep. I had thought about banging my head against the wall, but I thought it might hurt too much and damage my brain besides. I wasn’t after permanent obliteration – just a temporary whack from being awake, into being asleep.
That night, like so many others, I did manage to fall asleep eventually, after cocooning myself in a blanket on a pallet on the floor. My Beloved had rubbed my back and curled up into me, trying to soothe me into sleep, but I had crawled back out of bed and onto the floor where eventually the sweet joy of sheer relief took over as I rolled over and realised – I had been dreaming – therefore I had been sleeping. (Once that moment hits, I convince myself that I can fall asleep again. Doesn’t matter that there are only 50 minutes until it’s time to get up and start the day – 50 minutes is better than no sleep at all (and I speak from grim experience).
It wasn’t until several days later that I admitted what I had done that night. It hadn’t worked, and I’d felt foolish and betrayed by this fact. My Beloved said “I heard those noises and I didn’t dare ask what you had done.”
Other times when I self-harm are just at the level of consciousness. I would say they are long-entrenched coping mechanisms that comfort and distract even as they hurt physically.
For example:
Preparing and waiting for social occasions to begin I invariably end up with reddened, torn, searingly painful fingers, from gnawing, chewing and pulling at my cuticles. I can stop myself just before the skin tears, when I’m conscious of what I am doing, but this is rarely the case when the nerves take over. And the shame that wells up when I realise what I’ve done more than compensates for the self-belief that people don’t want to see me, won’t have enough to eat, may not like to be in my home. I’ve gone to job interviews in the same state and practically sat on my fingers to keep from showing them. Not a good look.
I’ve wondered why other people don’t seem to have the same problems with their cuticles that I do, and also why other people seem to have a greater tolerance for skin irritations such as insect bites, and manage to restrain themselves from picking them open until they bleed.
To some extent I know that I am formed and set in my ways of being as much as in my ways of doing. Whilst I believe in the capacity of humans to change and transform, there are some aspects of my identity that I doubt I am willing to give up. Negative and self-destructive though they be, they remain a part of me.
I hear the owl in the night
and I realise some things never are made right*
So I am thankful to have my Beloved, though I feel bad that she stands helpless to shift me when I’m relentlessly pursuing a course of self-destruction. And I never want to push the limits of her tolerance past the point of no return. Not only for my own selfish reasons, but it must be horrible for her to be able to do nothing but be
stacking sandbags against the river of [my] troubles* .
That is not a nice thing to do to another person.
*Saliers, E. (2004) Come On Home, All That We Let In.
http://www.indigogirls.com/home.html
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The La La La Factor
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
(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
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.
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