Thoughts and Feelings

The following headline, preceding the interview Eleanor Catton gave The Guardian caught my eye: ‘male writers get asked what they think and women what they feel’. It’s symptomatic, isn’t it?

To be accurate, Catton’s actual words were ‘I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel’. It certainly is an interesting and fairly sharp observation, but perhaps it may be worthwhile to go beyond the realm of literature.

I may of course be wrong, but according to my experience, males in general hardly ever get asked what they feel, let alone how they feel, particularly when the one asking is another male.

This might be a fundamentally Australian way of going about things, that is to say, a cultural trait. After all, Australia is such a weird place, where the question, ‘How are you?’, does not really mean ‘How are you?’ It is merely a greeting, not a question. Perhaps I’m clutching at straws there, but anyway, I’ve said it.

A few months ago, a TV campaign was launched by Beyond Blue to raise awareness about anxiety and depression among male Australians, particularly among the younger section of the population. It is of course an extremely laudable effort at making the community at large understand the issues of depression and anxiety, in an attempt to empower them to seek help when they feel or think (playing it safe here, I know) they need it.

What I found surprising (though nothing should surprise me anymore, really) about the campaign was the tongue-in-cheek approach adopted. The public face of the campaign is a doctor (an actor in real life, of course) who says rather funny things while encouraging viewers to go to the Man therapy website.

I found it rather sad that the (apparently) only way they could think of, in order to reach out to them, that is, so as to get males to take some interest in their own feelings, had to be through making fun of them.

I think it says a lot about the Australian male psyche. About how vulnerable it is, really; it also says a lot (and not too good) about the sadly frail façade many males hide behind in order to feign, to show themselves as joking, light-hearted blokes rather than genuinely disclose their own feelings to others.

But then again, authenticity is hardly something that defines our times. Or is it?

Lily and Huff

Perhaps I have imagined this: during the (occasionally unendurably) long hours I spend home alone I have recently walked into Clea’s bedroom; I have sat there and have grabbed some of her books from the bookshelf.

Maybe I have started reading out this story, Lily Ladybird, once more, the way I used to read it out to her when she was a toddler, she sitting on my knees after her bath, smelling clean and fresh and so, so very full of life. Maybe I have read it again translating the story into Spanish, the way I used to read it to her, even though the book is written in English.

It is just possible that I have been unable to finish it, but I remember it well. It tells the story of a good little ladybird who lived in an enchanted garden. One day she lands on an old branch that happens to be the nose of very horrible witch, who gets very cranky with Lily and casts a spell on her. “No longer will you be good and kind and helpful!” says the witch with an ominously wicked, croaky, throaty voice, and then lets out the most horrible laughter a daddy pretending to be a witch can put on.

Lily’s nose gets all twisted and crooked, and she starts behaving really badly. Her poor mum cries. Her friends stay away from her… Where was her father, by the way? He never gets a mention in the story… But Lily makes new friends: a hideous spider, Dolly, and a very slimy toad, Tony. And then one night they steal a magic wand from a fairy, and start mucking around… and suddenly, the spider turns into a carrot, and the toad turns into a bunny! That'll teach them a lesson! So the fairy sees that Lily is actually good-natured but she’s under the malignant spell of the witch, and so she turns her back into her good old self.

Perhaps I have had to put Lily Ladybird down. It is just possible that I could not go beyond the wicked bout of laughter Clea loved to hear. That childhood excitement of being suddenly given a little fright…

Maybe I have then taken in my hands this other very old book, called Huff the Hedgehog. It actually belongs to Clea’s mum. Her name is still handwritten on the cover. A very very old Christmas present.  Huff is a very hungry hedgehog, who goes around looking for food. He repeats his little rhymed self-introduction to every animal he comes across. I remember that when Clea first asked me to read this book, I had of course to come up with a rhymed version in Spanish. I did, and I suspect it was probably nearly as good as the original:

“Soy Huff el puercoespín,

todavía no he cenado,

si no como pronto,

voy a quedarme muy delgado."

Every time Huff finds something edible, a farm animal comes up and tells him that it’s their food Huff is taking. He walks away every time, hungry and disconsolate, knowing that if he does not get his dinner, he'll “get thinner and thinner”. And eventually he meets a lovely blonde girl who gives him a bowl of bread and milk. Huff loves it.

Maybe someone was listening, maybe not. Perhaps tears welled up and then they were falling down my cheeks, and desperation again filled my mind. It is just possible that I had to close the books and put them away.

I think maybe Huff and Lily felt lonely, perhaps even a little sad, when I tried to read their stories.

A scream that gets drowned in a void

A rare insight into parental grief from a fiction writer.

“No one ever thinks of what a violation of the natural order one's child's death means until they have a child themselves. For a parent, there is no greater experience of disorder than their child's death. Suddenly the hours break down, night suppresses day, blood crystallises into wounding needles. Theirs is a scream that gets drowned in a void, a grief whose venom is like no other. Their world shatters, like a mirror on which their image had been reflecting. […]

I ventured into the notion of my daughters' death as if into a nightmare which ultimately was but an exorcism. “If I imagine it, it won't happen, because fiction never ever mixes up with life”, I would tell myself by way of relief. But the nightmare lasted a few years, the years I needed so as to assimilate the fact that, if death happened, it would be an unavoidable reality. I cannot say that I prayed, although I was very close to doing so. The gesture with which I rejected such a recourse was, I think, what brought me back to serenity. No one is the keeper of their future, or at least, no one can say they are until they overtake it and are able to hide that future within their own life, like a part of their own selves. That is why I thought that, if at some point in time I suffered the misfortune of losing one of my daughters, my problem would not be to lose her, but rather worse, to accept my life without her. However, I didn't feel that way about Clara, my wife. Clara's death, just like my own would have to be for her, was a natural event, within the natural order of things, like leaves falling from deciduous trees every autumn. Loneliness, loss, grief…, these would then be the consequences of compliance with one of the laws of life. But a child's death leaves the parent suspended between two voids, a before and an after, and loneliness, grief and loss become an unnatural horror where all hope and all incentive are consumed in themselves, without any support at all, without any consolation.”

Jose Maria Guelbenzu, El amor verdadero [True Love], p.549-50. My own translation.

Forever travel: A sonnet

Popiltah Lake, Western NSW

Forever travel

They could forever travel far away,

See cities, towns and countries, go places,

Hide themselves behind pretexts, never stay

Put, or throw themselves into rat races.

They could forever more pretend delight,

Give parties and still chitchat, smile at friends

And greet people, declare that they’re alright,

Say the right words, nod and wave, make amends,

Never wake up, forever stay asleep,

Deny the dreadful nightmare, this new life;

Decide that never again should they weep.

Yet they feel this great pain, it’s sharp like a knife;

They can’t strip off this sadness or their grief.

Their daughter’s dead: they someway didn't survive.

The first draft of this sonnet I wrote while we were on a two-month round-the-world journey we did in late 2010 and early 2011. It was a journey we had been planning since well before 2009, and I was adamant that we still had to go ahead with the idea, we had to travel around the world for Clea.

The poem has changed a fair bit since the first draft. Originally I used the first person, and some rhymes in the last two tercets were not that great (or so I thought). I like it as it is now, and I hope the reader can also appreciate the poetry.

We have recently completed another journey; this time it was a road trip, which covered almost 3,000 km and took us to the eastern edge of the uninhabited part of Australia, where the desert begins, the point where one could start walking into the wilderness and would not see anyone for weeks (if you could survive, of course).

As I gazed into the vast Mundi Mundi Plains, one small stretch of the immense dry core of the Australian continent, a thought occurred to me: I could have gone in there on my own, and I would not have felt alone or lonely; not one bit. Sometimes one may feel more lonely when in company.

There is something about travelling that makes this new life more digestible, something of a relief valve one can resort to whenever it is needed. Some friends, who lost their daughter to a moronic car thief being chased by police, own a car that they call the Escape Pod, the E-Pod. I like the idea of an E-Pod. I understand it.