The suitability of love

 I just finished the novel 'Intermezzo' by Sally Rooney. I am missing the characters already so I listened online to a few book club groups sharing their opinions, which were divided, as one would expect. 

What did appear to be consistent was a liking of Margaret, the 36-year-old woman, recently divorced from her alcoholic husband who goes to bed with Ivan, the 23-year-old "on the spectrum" chess player who she has been assigned to drive home to his Airbnb from a tournament.

The two protagonists of the novel are Ivan and his brother Peter, but we get to know Margaret from the inside, and thus, it seems to me, readers relate to Margaret, and not to Naomi and Sylvia so much, because we come to understand Margaret better. There's so much about the other women that remains a mystery. It's missing the point by the way to expect to know them better because they are Peter's girls, and if Peter can't know them better, then neither can we. It's his confusion about the two women in his life, and how they fit, or don't, that is central to the story.

One book club member was lost as to a motive for Margaret having a relationship with the much younger Ivan. Ivan has braces, isn't that sure of himself, but there's something there; a wanting, a desire, and they are both kind, humble people. The sex scenes between them are so beautifully constructed that I would have thought there was no doubt in readers minds that this is irresistibility on both sides. And kindness, which they are both needing.

I think this is either a conscious or unconscious thought on Rooney's mind all the time - that what seems 'suitable' for some people isn't suitable for other people, and maybe these choices aren't even ours, but the conditioning of forces greater than ourselves. The reader leaves the book, I would have thought, wondering about the limitations we set on ourselves about what is suitable; even what 'love' looks like.

I think for many readers it will be a stretch to think that the two women could share Peter in an ongoing way, and that's probably right. Should Peter and Naomi settle down and have a child, the opportunities to see Sylvia may begin to run down, or not. She may be incorporated into the new family in ways, a loving aunt for the child perhaps. The two women genuinely care for one another, and for Peter, and that's the glue.

Monogamy has its place, of course, but what I don't think makes sense, is that it demands that we have no care for other people of the opposite sex. Jealousy has a purpose, to be sure, but it also has this nasty demand that all loving feelings should go to one person, forever.

Honestly, I think this unwritten expectation places demands on a union that are almost unachievable; that one person has to fulfil one's needs for passion, affection, understanding, companionship and so forth, forever and ever. It's sort of bottling oneself up, kind of living in fear of spreading good will around, lest one be judged.

I don't mean that Peter's decisions, and the girls, can be a regular sort of thing, suitable for the masses. It's a particular situation, but maybe not so particular. The times they are a changing.

Acceptance

 I had a brief but poignant exchange with someone who was recommended to me. He made the comment that if we were to work together for a limited time, the work would center around Acceptance.

I mulled this over several days; one of those statements that confirms my own feelings but brought those feelings more into present moment awareness.

Today, I searched for times in this online journal when I might have written about acceptance, and I see that over the years I have had the thought on my mind a number of times to the extent that I wanted to journal those feelings.

Acceptance, to my mind, isn't about giving up, about giving up hope for something better, but it is about facing the reality of the situation you find yourself confronted with. As much as one might find the phrase 'it is what it is' a bit glib, there's so much truth to it.

I know someone who likes to think he can adjust the natural order of things if he only puts his mind to it. Why suffer with all those levels - anger, sadness, denial and so forth - before you get to acceptance? Why not just jump them all and go straight to Acceptance? Perhaps that's possible, but I don't think it is.

When I was younger, much younger, I had an abundance of positivity. I was convinced I lived in 'the lucky country' (still do) and more personally, I was convinced that I was protected by a 'guardian angel'. In terms of the guardian angel, I think this protected me, at the same time as it did not allow me to see what was right in front of me, which, for a small and vulnerable child, was probably a blessing, and a rather smart thing to believe.

When my husband told me he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I definitely didn't go straight to acceptance. I do wonder if the more invincible someone seems, the least likely one is to accept such a thing. In the months that followed I was sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes disbelieving. Like, are you sure they know what they are talking about?  I didn't so much disbelieve what I was told as I figured we'd solve it, like we solve everything. 

The mind can be mad, and I remember saying to him one day, 'I can't believe you are even considering leaving me with all this mess to clean up. Where will I even start?' It was a poor me thing, a cry for help, disbelief, overwhelm, and a call to action.

It's several months later since that day, and I find respite in similar ways to those I began to use many years ago now. I meditate in a way, in a space and place where 'the problem never existed in the first place'; complete lack of ego; complete nothingness; no mind.

I explain it to my husband in the hope he will join me in this space, but he repeatedly says that he is too stressed with too much to do to take the time. I say, but it in those times that you must visit that space. Your mind and body need a break.

There's a huge benefit to getting to acceptance of a situation as fast as humanly possible. It avoids a great deal of personal pain, for starters. It's an acknowledgement that you are part of the human experience, and that suffering comes to us all. You're not special after all, there is no guardian angel and bad stuff happens to good people.

Once you hit acceptance - this really is happening - then you can see ahead of you all sort of things to assist the situation; ways to make things better. You can dig deep to polish up your empathy skills, and you find ways to nurture yourself, to accept that this is hard and you need to take care of yourself too, so you are there for your loved ones. Always put on your own oxygen mask first.

I follow a few very special people around the world who fuel me with their wisdom and kindness. High on the list is Henry Shukman and I offer you here, to those who might benefit from his beautiful heart, the  final words of his poem, Resistance:

'...do nothing, be still,

stay just where we are,

sit right here,

on the very fence,

exactly on the blade

of reluctance itself,

just here, where we least

want to be, where it seems

it must hurt the most.

But it's here that the blade

already knows

what it needs to do.

And if we could just let it, then finally it could do

what it was always meant to.

And we would fall open,

until there's nothing left

in the middle

except a silent space

which everything is free to fill,

and the whole world can pour

into that one blessed gap.'

Macro and micro decisions

The big, wide world doesn't factor into my writing in this web journal hardly at all. However, it is nearly impossible to ignore the world stage at this time which seems to be in more flux than ever (which isn't true, of course, but it can seem that way when big changes happen overnight). England has left the EU and that has caused great disruption on the world stage. As well, there's an unabating movement of people around the world now, something that was necessary for the safety of hundreds of thousands of people. Sovereignty is a thought in people's minds. Even here in Australia, well removed from centre stage, it might well be the case that England's removal from the EU may mean that we will become a Republic sooner than later. The American elections are also a worry. Did we ever think that a candidate for President would ever make such hateful comments?

At school, I loved my history. In my final year of school I studied the French Revolution. It seemed obvious to me that if you ignored the needs of enough of the people for enough time, they'd revolt. In my US days I remember hearing a dinner guest expound a similar, rather commonsense theory really, that you should always take care of the people lest they get angry and turn their anger on you. If no other reason stirs you, then there's the case of self-interest.

We're all people, made of the same flesh and blood, but in a democratic system, some people are going to accrue a lot more than others, and achieve a lot more than others. It is the way it is, the way it has always been and will always be.  But, we all deserve to be free, safe and to pursue happiness. The Founding Fathers of America did a great service in expressing these ideals.

It is why we hold a former Prime Minister of my country in great esteem, Gough Whitlam, because he made higher education free. I'm a 'baby boomer', a product of that free education, and so are thousands of people like me. We're also very attached to the notion of 'Medicare' here; that all Australians have medical coverage via a small levy on our income. This provides Australians with a level of respect; that they all count.

Recently, in the midst of all this changing of the deck chairs on the world stage, I was in Tasmania. You can't get much further away than that, unless you want to go to Antarctica. It's such a beautiful place, a time warp too, and it did go through my mind, as it always does when I am there, that it would be a lovely place to have a cottage.

As I walked along I found myself wondering why I wanted that. Well, it would be a simple, little life in a cottage in Hobart; space, lots of walking, close to the country; fresh air, cooler summers; access to plentiful fresh food and being surrounded by fairly chilled out people. It would be safe and there would be enough culture and people engaged in creative pursuits that I wouldn't feel alone, and in fact would have plenty of people around me that I'd enjoy.

Employment wouldn't be so easy, but my cost of living would be low, and maybe I could get busy and write something that might make me a little money. Anyway, the selling of assets here would give me enough to live on. I've devoted my life to family, not a career, and that was a choice. Money initially was, but is no longer, my thing. I'm more than aware that to bring up and educate a large family you need to focus on money for a lengthy period of time.

Right now, I'm influenced by having read 'Tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom. I finished it on the plane coming home and was in tears. It's such a sad but heartwarming story. Morrie, a professor at an American college for over 30 years is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease and his old student Mitch comes to learn about life from his professor once again. He visits him regularly, on Tuesdays.

Morrie always encouraged his students to create their own culture, to reject what it was about culture that doesn't work, or doesn't work for them. He lived humbly, but he was surrounded by the books that he loved, by the family he loved and who loved him. He'd developed a faith that took account of the philosophers. He encouraged Mitch to go to the heart of all his emotions, good and bad, but then to let the emotions go. He accepted his fate, but he refused to stop living until he took his last breath.

Born into poverty in the Bronx, but blessed with a step-mother who told him that education was the way out of poverty (yes!), he worked hard and made a good life for himself and his family. He encouraged Mitch to put love first, ("love or perish") and to be involved in his community. He imparted a common sense approach to a good life. It's a quick read, but it is one of the most important reads of my life.

I was living in the US in the early 80s when Donald Trump came to my attention. I remember Ivana Trump telling a reporter that first you make the money, and then you work on attaining power. I tucked her comment behind my ear and wasn't surprised when Donald chose to run for President of the United States decades later. I can only imagine that many people in the US feel disenfranchised; disenfranchised enough in a changing world that they think he, rather than your mainstream politician, has the answers for them.

Realistically, I doubt you can turn back the clock on an era where the world is more fluid in every way. I doubt that there is any one person capable of doing this. The strictures that were in society - sexual, gender, class, race - are all being broken down over many years. Change is afoot and this can evoke fear. Trump works with 'fear'. This fact alone concerns me.

I think that for many of us change is a very scary thing, but if you take the long term view, the world has always been changing, often very slowly and imperceptibly moving towards big changes. I think we'd do well to be less anxious; to see what is common amongst us rather than focus on what is different. I think we'd do well to take a breath and settle down.

A few afternoons ago, I was driving in traffic and stopped behind a tram who was letting passengers off. A parked car beside me started tooting his horn, which seemed odd, but I assumed he wanted to join the traffic (it was dark and I couldn't make out the driver) and so as soon as I had a chance I moved forward and to the side of the tram. That is, I made way for him to enter the traffic. Unfortunately, the car behind me decided he wasn't going to co-operate and I heard a loud bang and saw in my rear vision mirror that they had collided and were now holding up all the traffic behind them.

For what good purpose did that accident happen? Was it so much of an issue to allow the man out into the traffic? Would it have taken up a split second of the time of the driver behind me? Not at all. Morrie encouraged Mitch to let drivers in; that when they honked their horn angrily to simply raise his hand and wave. I do that. I wave my thanks when given a break in traffic and hope I spread the joy. As philosophies go, even political philosophies, you could do worse than aim to spread joy; to show some heart. There's an idea.

(P.S. Having published the above, I just so happened to read this. You won't spend five minutes better.)

How can I help?

I've been reading various reviews from The New York Times this morning. I've been listening to interviews on the radio. I've been trying to finish a novel All the Light We Cannot See. I've also spent a day at a Writer's Festival. It's quite fascinating to see the ideas contained in this stimuli merge, not necessarily forming one clear and complete idea, but rather reminding me what delicate creatures we are at the same time as how resilient we are; how capable we are of healing from past blows.

Richard Glover, a radio presenter here in Australia has written a memoir and as I listened to him being interviewed about the book he has written I am reminded that  without proper parenting we truly are at risk. Richard's mother clearly lived in a fantasy of her own making and his father became a hopeless alcoholic. They probably tried in their own way to be good parents but at age 15 his mother had run off with his English teacher and his father left for a time too leaving him in the house alone. As one of his friends remarked, 'Richard didn't run away from home but rather home ran away from him'. This instability in his life led to all sorts of issues, but I think writing it all down has helped him to be philosophical: If you can't get the love you need from those you'd assume would provide love, stop beating your head against a brick wall and find it elsewhere. He did.

An earlier radio interview related to Merryl Streep's most recent movie Ricki and the The Flash with a couple of local aging rock chicks remarking that they didn't feel the movie had much of a believable plot - why go work across the country leaving your family behind if it isn't creating a decent income?  Both women had managed to have their singing career and a family, though with the help of husbands and their own mothers to lighten the motherly burden.

I read a comment about motherly guilt made by Streep in an interview about the film and I have to admit I did wonder to myself, 'What if there was no motherly guilt about leaving your children? Is that an outcome we want? Does a lack of a sense of responsibility to the children we bear lead to good things?

Anne Enright writes:

When desire is in the air, motherhood becomes problematic. This despite the fact that sex causes motherhood. It is a fact worth stating sometimes that sex, in itself, cannot turn you into a whore, no matter what the nuns told you then or pornography tells you now, but it really can turn you into a mother. After which, of course, you are never allowed to have sex again.

And then a little later she writes:

And when the child grows up, and when the child becomes a writer — a male writer, ­usually — such sins will be endlessly rehearsed. Because, in the fantasized perfection (or the experienced perfection) of the ­mother-baby bond, each is entirely fulfilled by the other. There can be no one else.

It does give pause to wonder if Anne Summers was onto something when she wrote all those years ago that women could either be Damned Whores or God's Police. (I heard Summers in interview a few days ago since it is 40 years since she wrote that book, her doctorate in fact.)

Recently I was talking to a Russian psychiatrist, now retired, who shared his opinion with me after a lifetime of caring for troubled children that 'not all people are meant to be parents'. (He is a prone to making heartfelt understatements.)

To be a parent is to be prepared to sacrifice bits of yourself, at least for  a time. If you can't make some room in your life for the care and responsibility of another human being, then it's not the right time to be a parent. It may never be the right time in your life.

It's more profound than even that: You can aim to be the perfect parent but you won't ever be the perfect parent. Personally, I encourage the children to air their grievances. I heard a biographer talk yesterday who said that it was his job to reveal and that a secret was more toxic than a revelation. I found myself agreeing with him.

Rod Jones wrote The Mothers, a story in part about a young girl who was forced to give up her baby for adoption when she fell pregnant at a young age, and all the repercussion around that one decision. In his book, the adopted child never blended with his adopted parents despite their best efforts to love him and care for him. Of course, many people have very different experiences with their adopted parents.

I read recently of a woman writer who cared for her dying parents and nearly stopped reading altogether. She read a little of  many stories but could finish nothing, as if endings were too difficult for her. Nine months after their deaths when she did start reading again she read 'coming of age' stories, as if she had to somehow come to terms with beginnings again before she could go on with her life.

In an interview Lorri Moore talked about "creating ruptures" as a writer; interrogating ways people observe and talk to each other, "where unbearable and lovely humanity dribbles through".

Hugh Mackay says that a happy life is made up of selflessness; forgiveness.

All these people saying something similar in their own way, something that Clarie Underwood of all people used to say to Francis often:

How can I help?

Remembering

A few days ago I had the sad task of telling my brother, currently living on the other side of the world, that our Uncle, my mother's brother had passed away. I knew he'd be sad. Thirty-six hours passed and  I received a beautiful email, telling me stories of their exploits together when he was just a boy, stories that I hadn't heard before. The tendency was for my brother to spend time with his Uncle whilst I spent time with my mother's sister and mother. I hadn't thought about this much until now, but that's the way it happened.  I'm currently seeing if I can read his message at the Service because it tells the beautiful story of a deeply caring and fun loving man and the impact he had on his young nephew.

As fate would have it my brother was able to see the very good, fantastical and even magical aspect of his Uncle, whilst a few of his many children only saw the bad and stayed away from him in the last years of his life. I didn't see him often myself but my mother remained a wonderful Sister until his dying moments and I often tagged along with her for a visit or he tagged along with my mother for a visit when she came to see me. He was a good man, his heart was in the right place and there's no doubt that he was a natural oral storyteller. His son is a very famous playwright. We all have, on my mother's side, what my father referred to as "the gift of the gab" in some measure or another.

There is so much I could say at this time but blog posts are meant to be pithy, aren't they, so let me get to the point. After death, there's nothing but a void. There are no last chances, no more opportunities to make the peace, to say what you should have said years before, to be kind, to care, to say goodbye. We are here and then we are gone.Take your opportunities whilst you have them and use them well.

I am very pleased to say that my Uncle's youngest daughter has been very kind in the past year or so and she held an 85th birthday party for him and many of his children and siblings came to that; not all. There were a few notable absences, but this is life. We make our decisions and we must live with them.

He wasn't a particularly notable person - a businessman, a father and a husband who always did his best - but he made the most of every situation, thought the best of everyone and stayed positive in spite of enormous setbacks and difficulties.  My uncle once sent some stories of his younger days to his son, the famous one. He returned them, explaining as tactfully as he could I am sure, that they weren't stories but reminiscences. Of course, there is nothing to stop a good story teller like him making use of those memories and turning them into stories. Now that he has passed over, I have my fingers crossed that this is exactly what will happen to them.