narrating kayoz

Group behaviour, boys and their cliques in school

Via the Twelfth Down Under Feminist Carnival, I've just been reading Andragy: CyberBullying, Feminism, Mean Girls, Queen Bees and Boys, and from there, the bit of Queen Bees and Wannabes that's online at Amazon.

Andra says of Wiseman's book:

I think that Queen Bees is a fine piece of feminist analysis, with racial and sexual prejudices opened up as well. Wiseman points out that she works equally with boys and girls, and that society's definition of masculinity influences boys away from strength, individuality and towards violence, bullying and groups in the same way that definitions of femininity trap girls.

I'd love to read a similar book about boys (though I note from the TOC of Queen Bees that there is a chapter on boys, and I have requested it from my local library). I do feel that ever since Liam began school the influence towards violence and group behaviour has certainly been growing.

He still does plenty of lovely creative play,* plays with girls as well as boys and so on. And I love his teacher and think she is working really well with them to teach them to be courteous, that making sure everyone gets a go is more important than winning a game etc. But the cliques seem to be forming, the popular children and less popular children are finding their places.

And I am starting to feel that I need more information. Liam is a boy, which I plainly am not. And also, he seems to be quite popular. Which, it might surprise you to know, I already was not by his age. I wasn't the lowest of the low at any time, but I was below the middle, right through until the end of year 10.**

So I'm not entirely sure how to teach him to - well, to be nice. To not fall in with group behaviour which is mean to others. To stick up for children who need support. Andra quotes Wiseman:

Boys and men who speak out against sexism or publicly support girls and women run the risk of being ridiculed by their peers as "fags", "sissies", "pussies" or in some circles "sensitive new age guys".

This is the sort of message I am afraid Liam might be picking up from his friend 'Craig'. That being kind, wearing a beany, playing co-operatively etc might may him some kind of 'sissy' (a word I would hope he's never heard, but I'm probably kidding myself), and that there's something wrong with that.

Any book recommendations for me?
__________
*Am I showing my biases here?
** Year 11 & 12 is at a different school in Canberra, and quite a different experience - for which I was extremely grateful.

The divided heart

(I wrote this offline, earlier in the week)

Reading Rachel Power's book, The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, I am overwhelmed by the resonances it continually strikes. It's not surprising, perhaps, that such a book should resonate for me. This blog, largely, is about art – writing – and motherhood (or at least it's about the children). But it seems that each page I read there is another quote I want to record, and share, and comment on. I have half written a dozen essays in my head in the past half hour. So many things I've been thinking, or not quite thinking but feeling, are being articulated in this book.

I often feel incredibly lucky: as a writer-mother I have it easy compared to many, if not most. I have a supportive partner who actively encouraged me to start the masters in writing, knowing that writing was really what I wanted more than anything else to be concentrating my energies on. My professional energies that is, because of course parenting requires and equal – if not greater – toll.

Right now I am sitting in a cafe, writing, on a Monday night. My children think I'm at pilates, which is where I usually go on Monday nights as soon as Chris arrives home. But my pilates instructor is away this month, so I am going to this cafe instead, to carve a little time to write, or read, or plot, or research markets. Yesterday morning I spent time writing while Chris took the children swimming, which is a recently resumed habit, since the pool they go to finally reopened just before Christmas, after six months of renovations.

Nonetheless, I struggle with the same guilt that seems common to so many writer-mothers. Somewhere recently I read a comment from a writer-mother about the problem of treating art as a privilege, not an obligation*. I know there are those who feel torn between their salaried jobs and their children. I honestly don't have that issue, perhaps because I know my kids are with their father when I'm at work, or because I only work 20 hours a week, or because I think the benefits to all of us of Chris and I sharing the domestic role as well as the paid-worker role far out way any disadvantages.**

But I do find it hard to treat my writing as an obligation, and I find it hard to expect my partner to do so also. It doesn't pay (usually) and while I hope that it will, it's never likely to replace my public service salary. And now that I am actually enjoying my paid work so much it makes writing seem even more like a luxury that I indulge in at the expense of my family. I long to have my Sundays back – Sundays in my study, that is, like I had before I went back to work, while I was working on my Masters Project. Time to write and think and read as I felt I needed to.

Power writes of "the burden of the artistic imperative, of that constant desire to record everything almost before it's happened" (p . 16).*** Oh yes, I thought. She also writes about sometimes longing to be free of it. "For the first time in my life, I envied the women without strong ambitions outside of the home. Art was like a monkey on my back and I resented it's skittish hold on me, the way it caused me to strain away from my babies, to live a split life. I was burdened by the knowledge of what it would cost my family (financially, but more so emotionally) for me to keep writing – just as I became aware of how much it was cost me not to." (p. 17) Yes yes yes!

I think I've written here before about the sense I have sometimes of how much easier life could be if I could just give up writing. The time I – we, as a family – would suddenly have. The freedom I would have from this constant desire to record, to interpret, to imagine. But I don't know how to be free of that desire. I've had it as long as I can remember, or at least ever since I read Our snowman has olive eyes when I was about eight, which ends with the protagonist deciding to write about her grandmother – sort of an eight-year-old's memoir (from memory, which could be wrong). And although I often think it would make life easier, I don't really want to be rid of the monkey either. I don't know who I would be without it.

This past six months, since I finished my master's project and started back at work, I have written little. I have spent weekends with my family, planted and expanded our vegie garden, planned fruit trees, half covered our pergola (our house faces west, so this is not before time), and of course gotten back into the swing of paid work, complete with occasional overtime. But I have been hankering after my writing time, trying to figure out how to fit it in.

The truth is that I am lazy by nature. I like to sit and read and chat with my husband, and yes sometimes watch television (I gave Chris the last season of Alias for Christmas and we've already watched 5 episodes). Also, since I had children I always seem to be tired. I don't like to do housework – and unfortunately neither does he, so our house is a constant mess, I don't like to get up early, I don't like to stay up late.

Also I do like to spend that precious hour or two after the kids are in bed with my husband. Usually a good bit of that is still spent in domestic labour, be it cleaning the kitchen (Chris usually does that), hanging out washing, watering the vegies or walking the dog. Then, if we're lucky, there's enough time left to watch an episode of Alias (or West Wing – we're on the second season) before I need to collapse into bed. Otherwise we usually retire to the living room for a cuppa and a chat. Sometimes I retire instead to the study to write a blog post or read my email or google something or other, but mostly I reserve that little bit of time to be alone with my partner. And I do that both because I want to and because I feel I should; that it's important for both of us separately and more to the point for both of us together.

Part of our commitment when we married was to nurture our relationship – to recognise that it would not always thrive without some effort on our part, and to put that effort in. Having brought children into the mix that becomes even more important, while ironically also becoming harder to manage. I am lucky to be able to say that our relationship is – I think – as solid today as it ever was. Nonetheless I feel to neglect it is both foolish and unfair.

Or is this simply all justification for my inability to prioritise writing?

I do feel incredibly lucky, as I began by saying, in my choice of life partner, in my well paid part-time work, in my wonderful children. But I still feel guilt when I take 'time out' to write. Especially when I use the time to write something like this, or to read, or to – well, do anything that is not either required for my masters (and I do have one subject to go, which will begin in March), or specifically aimed at getting published. If I'm writing an article or preparing a story for submission, that's not too bad. But if I use the time for writing like this, or what I think of as feeding my writing-self, by reading something like Power's book, I feel like I am somehow being deceitful, like my partner has given me this time (as Power says, time alone is never free, once you have children – it has to be "bought, borrowed or stolen" (p. 14)) and I am wasting it.

_____________

*Maybe at Literary Mama, maybe one of the revolving writer-quotes on Dawn's blog, maybe somewhere else (somewhere offline even!).

** That's not to say I don't feel frustrated by never having enough time either at work or home - I just don't feel guilty about it.

***page numbers refer to the paperback edition (amazon refers to a hardback?), published by Red Dog, Fitzroy, 2008. Rachel Power is an Australian, by the way, who also just happens to be a good friend of a good friend of mine, and who also had her first child within a week (or was it a day?) of mine, but who I've never met.

On mother-writing, mothering and/while writing, and writing as a mother.

If the woman artist has been trained to believe that the activities of motherhood are trivial, tangential to main issues of life, irrelevant to the great themes of literature, she should untrain herself.  Alice Ostriker

This is the epigraph to the introduction to The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, by Rachel Power. I blogged about this book before when I heard Power interviewed on the radio, and now I own it, thanks to my lovely husband who bought it for me for Christmas.

Of course, being a mother of children on school holidays, I've barely read any of it yet. But so far I think my favourite two quotes from the introduction (yes, I haven't even made it past the seven page introduction) are:

"Beyond giving birth, however, the stuff of mother's lives becomes worse than taboo - it becomes merely mundane. Mothering is such a prosaic term in our culture that it functions as a disguise for the true intensity of the experience, blocking any insight into the way this singular knowledge could be translated into good art."

You'd think we'd be over this by now, but we so are not! Just this morning I was discussing with one of my mother friends the sense one gets when talking to one's still single (or at least childless) friends - of being old and married with children and living in the suburbs (oh the horror!)*. I think being a mother is a bit like living in the suburbs. Actually, it can be very rewarding and intensely stimulating, but it still has such a dud reputation.  (Okay, I'm going a bit far as far as the suburbs go, but you get my point.)

"Every woman featured in this book defies the myth of the artist as tortured, self-obsessed genius with no option but to damage those who love them. Each is at a different stage along the path of reconciling the demands of domesticity with her desires as an artist...
"All the myths about art, as well as motherhood, are dismantled and reinvented by the voices collected here."

Soon, soon I will get to read more and I will enjoy those dismantlings and reinventions, I'm sure of it.

_____

*I hasten to add this is not a sense necessarily projected by the childless friends, just a message we have internalised from the broader culture.

The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood

I've just been listening to a radio interview with Rachel Power, author of The Divided Heart, along with two of her interviewees, and just listening to them talk inspired me to get back to writing something - even blogging.

I have written virtually nothing since I started work two months ago. A few blog posts, a few more half blog posts*, nothing else.

I blame it partly on settling into my new routine that includes three days a week in the paid workforce,** partly on a sort of post-intensive study/writing lull, and partly on the fact that I've been sick four (4!) times since I began work. That's roughly every two weeks. Currently I m just getting my voice back after two days without it, but to compensate one of my ears is completely blocked (and weeping!) and every sounds reverberates inside there, mixing in with the constant ringing. And that's not even to mention the sore throat, headache, wet cough etc. And this began two Sundays ago.

Of course another factor is Spring - I always have a hard time settling down to writing in the Spring, when what I really want to do is get out into the garden. Today it is a beautiful, sunny, 16 degree day, and what I really long to be doing is getting out into the vegie garden which has a lot of preparation needed before the Spring planting begins,*** but I know that what i should really be doing is resting, and even standing here at the bench typing on my laptop (which is the only way Kaely will let me get any writing done) is more restful than digging paths and lugging manure and mulch and sawdust. So when my brain is still available at night I've been re-reading books on permaculture and vegetables and herbs, and drawing out plans, trying to figure out how to make the best of my south-west facing block.

But back to the point of this post, which was writing and motherhood and Rachel's book. Rachel Power, I realised half way through the interview, is a very good friend of a friend of mine. A few years back when Liam was a baby, and her first child was a baby, and I was in Melbourne for a month while Chris completed his Rolfing triaining, our mutual friend was trying to get us together, and I remember she told me that Rachel was writing (or perhaps just thinking about at that stage) this book. We both had babies and lived on opposite sides of Melbourne and had transport issues, so we never did manage to connect. But it was partly talking to that same friend, a year or so later, that inspired me to start the Masters degree. I suppose I felt that studying and working part-time would simply not be possible at the same time as being the mother I wanted to be for my son.

Of course me studying did impact Liam. And (equally of course) that is one of the refrains of the book - the balancing act between doing the work you want/need to do and being the mother you want/your children need you to be. One of the women interviewed said that of course her children were impacted, but that for her it was about finding the compromise she could live with. Of course, that's something I suppose all working mothers (and to some extent fathers) live with, but there's a definitely difference between working for a certain pay check and working for a *maybe* pay check, somewhere in the future. For me, I suppose that I could make a living writing if I really really worked at it, but it would be a lot more work for a lot less money. So my writing becomes something that I fit into my 'spare' time, and hope to get bits of peices of published here and there.

Another difference between the at work mother and the artist mother is that the latter, whether she's paid or not, is very often a work-at-home mother, so her work is constantly interrupted and fit in around. Rachel Power spoke about the self-discipline required - that now she has finished The Divided Heart, it's so much easier to make the beds than to sit down and start a new project. Especially, I add, when you know that you will be interrupted over and over again. So far in the time I've been writing this post I have also

• changed a stinky nappy
• set Mikaela up with the trainset
• set Mikaela up with the barn and animals
• set Mikaela up with a pencil case and paper (and moved myself from the kitche bench to the dining room table so as to keep an eye on her and make sure she neither sucks any of Liam's textas (markers) dry, nor draws on my pile of gardening books also sitting on the dining room table)
• put on a load of washing (nappies)
• helped Mikaela with numerous pen lids, and rescued the same from her mouth.

One of the mothers on the radio mentioned the guilt over knowing that your children want to be with you, and yet you are argonising over the exactly word or phrase you need while they watch a video. Mikaela's not yet of an age or temperament where I can count on the tele to keep her occupied for more than about five minutes (although sometimes it will), but I have certainly experienced that guilt with Liam. For me though, when I was studying on a Sunday, it was more the sense that I was depriving not only the kids, but the whole family of 'family time' (since Chris was also working on Saturdays). So now that I am not studying, and Chris is not working on Saturdays for a while, I am relishing our long, two day weekends, but also half wishing I could justify shutting myself away in my study again. I said I was write in the evenings, but so far I haven't done it. Some women get up at the crack of dawn to write or paint or whatever before their kids are up, but my kids are up at about 6am lately, and I frankly am not going to get up significantly earlier than that - I don't get enough sleep as it is.

I am still planning to make the evenings thing work for me, but for the moment I really just need to try to get my health under control, and try to write a little more during the day I think, the washing be damned.

On the up side, I was interested to hear my experience reflected (and I gather this was also a common theme), in that having children actually makes the art easier, the work more efficient in some ways. There's something about knowing you only have ten minutes, or two hours or whatever that can focus the mind, reduce the procrastination, and enhance one's ability to make fast judgements. One of the women also commented that having children makes your emotional nerve endings that much more sensitive, which can actually be quite useful to an artist.

But now I have literally used up all my time for writing this morning. Kaely is moving towards melt down and needs to be fed and put to bed in time to get her up again to go pick Liam up for school. It's possible her nap will give me more time, but just as likely that she'll spend half of it in my arms and then wake up twenty minutes after I put her down. I don't mind too much - I love having her sleep in my arms, and it gives me an enforced rest too, which I could use. Then again I could also use the time to hang out those nappies before while the sun is still high in the sky, or to think about dinner, or perhaps I could plant some of those tomato seeds that arrived in the mail the other day, so they'll be ready to plant out in the garden by the beginning of November... right now though I'd better go organise lunch.

________________

*Because most of the time when I start writing Kaely interrupts after about two paragraphs if I'm lucky, and then again another para on, and so on until I completely lose the thread and the interest. Which is why the posts I do write are so jumpy from one thought to another - no time to stop and think or save a thought till later or re-structure afterwards, if i do that, it never gets posted at all.

**Which i am still quite enjoying by the way, and at least there I am getting to do a teeny bit of writing - currently I'm working on a story on WWII shipwrecks in Australian waters, as random as that sounds - though mostly I'm doing more mundane work of updating websites with other people's content.

***Our vegie garden has lain fallow since we moved the chooks back into their run a couple of months back, but we are about to get serious about it again - and see how that goes with Lochie and what we might have to do. In the meantime, on the weekend we finally got a couple more Silkies (another white and a blue) to be friends for Fluffy, which was very exciting and is another reason to be spending time outside.

Managing the toddler's 'negative' behaviour

I've been re-reading bits of You are your child's first teacher, by Rahima Baldwin Dancy. I have to return it to the library today, but I'll be getting it back because it's full of good reminders and information. It's written by a Steiner teacher, but what I like about it is that it doesn't just rely on Steiner's ideas, it backs them up (and occasionally updates them altogether) with more contemporary research.

This is the sort of book you can just dive into anywhere and find something good. I opened it first (randomly) at a section called 'Dealing with Negative Behaviour' in the chapter on 'Helping Your Toddler's Development'. It starts out "One of the challenges of living with the child from eighteen to thirty-six months is dealing with the 'negativisim' that he manifests. If you can recongnize your child's emerging sense of self and power as something positive, you won't fall into the trap of thinking that you have done something wrong..." (or, I would add, that the child is somehow 'wrong').

She talks about the importance of being loving but firm, providing limits and corrections in calmness (not anger) but with 'absolute certainty' that there is no other choice. She goes on to suggest that you

...set up your house so that the child has the maximum freedom and requires the minimum of no's, and then you are firm about what is not allowed. It is wonderful for your child to be curious, but he doesn't have to play with your makeup, which can be met with a stern no, removing the child from the scene, and then putting the makeup in a less accessible place. There is no need to punish the child, because a toddler is unable to understand what he has done or to remember the next time.

This idea of then making it inaccessible is the key. Why set yourself up for conflict? She goes on (a bit later)

Many two-year-olds hate change and fall apart during transitions between activities. Everything has to be a certain way or pandemonium breaks loose. This doesn't mean you need to give in each time or put up with whiny behaviour, but understanding this aged child's attachment to order can help you avoid problems.

Of course, knowing something is age appropriate and acting that way are two different things. I find it a whole lot easier to accept Kaely's two-year-old age appropriate tantrums than Liam's six-year-old ones - even though I know in my head that his behaviour is just as understandable as hers. Head knowledge doesn't stop me feeling cross about it. But - and this, I think, is the important part of Dancy's comments - knowing what's normal can help you avoid problems, for instance by putting the makeup out of reach, or in the case of transitions by creating set routines and rituals that the children know and even enjoy. She gives an example of a bedtime routine:

One mother I know lights a candle while she sings a song, and then lets the child blow out the match, which is an exciting incentive to get the child to go into the bedroom. Then they go into the bathroom to put on pajamas and brush teeth. The mother has turned off the bedroom light, so when they return, they have to tip toe and be very quiet as they enter the softly lighted room and lie down together for songs and playing the children's harp.

Of course, sometimes it's not that easy:

...sometimes your child will just be negative, and she may astonish you with the force of her refusal...

One of the most effective ways of handling negative behaviour is removing the child from the area of activity. With a young child, this requires going with her and staying with her until she is ready to return. For example, fussiness and throwing food at dinner can be quickly handled by taking her down the hall, telling her what when she is a happy clown the two of you can go back, and then standing there like a stone until she comes around. It usually takes about one to three minutes, because it's very boring being out of the action with a deadpan mother or father who won't interact with your until you're ready to do what is expected.

I'm not sure how I feel about the 'happy clown' idea - do I want to teach my kid that 'happy' is the only acceptable emotion? But the idea that you removed the toddler from the situation, stay with her, and remain impassive - that all makes sense to me. There's no point in getting upset or angry. She's only two after all - but there is a point to firmly enforcing acceptable limits. She needs them enforced in order to learn them.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to take this book back to the library now, and I had so many other bits bookmarked.

Meditations for kids

Following a post from Trish a while ago at Imperfect Parent, I borrowed a book from the library called Meditations for Kids, by Kids. It's not the book Trish was talking about (which was The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children) - they didn't have that one in the library. But I liked the idea of reading a meditation with Liam each night before he went to sleep, so I thought I'd try the one they did have.

It's been a good experience. We've been right through the book once, and are half way through again. Sometimes Chris reads him a meditation after Liam and I have finished our 'book & chat' time and I have gone off to nurse Kaely and put her to bed in our room. Or sometimes if Liam is still awake when I've got Kaely down, I read him one then.

Each of the meditations is written by one of four kids in a family. The youngest was, I think, four at the time of writing (he's only got one or two in there) and the oldest was about ten (she has a lot). They all have the same basic structure - you go into your peaceful garden, hang your worries on the worry tree, take a few deep breaths, let go etc. - and they tend to have lots of comments about being safe and loved.   In the middle of that, some are rather quirky. But all are engaging, as far as Liam is concerned. One includes a dolphin ride into the quiet depths of the water. Another involves Pixies. Many involve friendly talking animals.

At first Liam said he wasn't going to 'do' the meditation, he just wanted to listen. Now he tends to close his eyes as he listens and take the deep breaths when instructed, but he still often bounces up at the end to ask for another one. Recently when he did that I told him the idea was to stay relaxed afterwards and let himself drift off to sleep. I don't know if he took that to heart, because I haven't read him one since then, but last night after our goodnight kiss and cuddle he said "I think I could just lie here and drift off to sleep now," so maybe he did take it in. Either way, I think we'll keep up the habit of bedtime meditations. It's a soothing way to end the day (and lets face it, the pre-bedtime part of the end of the day is usually anything by soothing), and I like the idea of Liam gradually developing the skills of mediation, or at least of relaxation.  It's something we could all do with more of.

Taboos and the trouble with abortion politics

In her book, A feminist account of pregnancy loss in America, Linda Layne talks about the way (wanted) ambryo's have personhood bestowed on them far earlier now than they would have a generation of two ago, when a woman often didn't even go to the doctor until the second missed period. But then, "the very people participating with us in the construction of this new social person - your mother-in-law or your friend or whoever was saying 'Everything you do is important to the health of the baby, every cup of coffee matters' - they suddenly revoke that personhood [when you have a miscarriage]. It's like nothing ever happened."

Peggy Orenstein quotes Layne in her article 'Mourning My Miscarriage' (New York Times Magazine, Apr 21, 2002, p.38-41). She talks about why people often don't talk about their miscarriages, why there is still a taboo. And then she goes on:

But for me, there is another uncomfortable truth: my own pro-abortion-rights politics defy me. Social personhood may be distinct from biological and legal personhood, yet the zing of connection between me and my embryo felt startingly real, and at direct odds with everything I believe about when life begins. Nor have those beliefs - a complicated calculus of science, politics and ethics - changed. I tell myself that this wasn't a person. It wasn't a child. At the same time, I can't deny that it was something. How can I mourn what I don't believe existed? The debate over abortion has become so polarized that exploring such a contradiction feels too risky. In the political discussion, there has been no vocabulary of nuance.

I have more to say about this, but no time to say it. Today is the day my master's project is supposed to be finished. It is basically done, though the essay still needs a significant amount of polish I think. I have the next several nights to get to that, plus to write an abstract and figure out what details need to go on the title page, then the plan is to print, bind and post the whole thing on Friday. That's the plan.

A meme about books

I got this meme from Pavlov's Cat, though I've seen it in at least two places since then..

These are the 106 books most often listed as 'unfinished' on LibraryThing. The rules seem to vary, but I'm going with bolding the ones I've read and underlining the ones I started but didn't finish. I must say it's interesting to me to see how many of the latter are books I was supposed to read for uni.  Hmm... All in my undergrad degree though.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities [I never finished this, but I know it's actually called A Tale of Two Cities]
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin (but i still have this out from the library, so there's still hope)
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Writing in the dark

In one of the novels I have just read for uni, Diane Blacklock's Almost Perfect, (yes, another infertility narrative, although the back cover description - romantic comedy - is really more on the mark), one of the minor characters claims that it's good for him to write in the back room of his house, because if his study had a view he would never get any work done.

The character to whom he's speaking (a newly wannabe writer who appears to be a 'natural') feels differently and spends some time making her writing space just right. Until she realises she's procrastinating and just starts writing.

I get both points of view, but I have to say: on gorgeous days like today, I think I would find it easier to settle in to work if I at least had some sunlight in my 'office'.  Because quite frankly, without it, I'd rather be outside.

On the other hand with the runny, irritated nose and eyes I have at the moment, the glare outside would probably blind me. Maybe I should stop making excuses and just get to work. But honestly, after three cups of caffeinated coffee (for someone who usually sticks to decaf tea), that's easier written than achieved.

Nonsexist books - where they succeed and where they don't.

In "Learning to Be Little Women and Little Men: The Inequitable Gender Equality of Nonsexist Children's Literature," Amanda B. Dickman and Sara K. Murnen found that "Nonsexist books succeeded in portraying female characters as adopting the characteristics and roles identified with the masculine gender role, but they did not portray male characters as adopting aspects of the feminine gender role or female characters as shedding the feminine gender role" (381).

(Lisa Rowe Fraustino, 'The Berenstain Bears and the Reproduction of Mothering' The Lion and the Unicorn, 31.3 (2007), 250-263, p. 257)

I'm sure I've said this before, but there's no harm in repeating myself - any recommendations of children's books that succeed in doing any of the above (better yet all, but as the authors note, that is rare), I am all ears.

 

Inconceivable

I'm now reading Inconceivable (Ben Elton), and while it too has it's annoyances (seriously, are there still women who think if their partner is attracted to someone else that he (or she) is effectively being unfaithful to her? Or that enjoying a spot of "choke the monkey" (his term) on his own is somehow evidence of him not being attracted to her any more? This is the Noughties for heaven's sake!), it's only taken to page 69 to have me laughing till I cried, a very good sign for a comedy.

More on the Panayotov book

I finally finished In Vitro Fertility Goddess. By the end, it finally got me in.

I assume it’s doing fairly well (here in Oz anyway), judging by the amount of publicity it seems to have had, so I wish they’d put out a revised edition – one that’s been professionally edited. Because as Leslie Cannold said, it could be a lot more readable with some editing out of repetition, and (I say) the addition of a few more pronouns and articles.

One of Sol Stein’s “little things that damage the writer’s authority” is glitches that yank the reader out of their experience. That’s what all those missing pronouns etc were for me. Leaving out a few gives an impression. Doing it all the time got annoying (quickly), as I had to keep re-reading sentences to get the meaning.

As regards the content of the book, the only part I found really got me in was the last bit when she was finally pregnant. Despite the subchorionic hematoma that had her bleeding on and off, and therefore worrying constantly, for most of the first trimester, and the placenta previa and its accompanying complications later, it made me want to be pregnant again, or more particularly, it made me want to give birth to a tiny new baby again. Also this was the part of the book where I finally laughed. Twice, even.

I can see how this part of the book might be the most annoying part to people currently experiencing infertility though. Although she suffers miscarriages and took a long time to finally achieve a sustained pregnancy, Panayotov was quickly successful once she turned to IVF. That makes her unusual, despite the cultural image we have of IVF being the quick solution to infertility. Most of the time its not. And that’s another annoyance – that the book perpetuates that stereotype – though one can hardly fault Panayotov for not faking a few unsuccessful cycles for the sake of a counter-narrative.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that I have been pregnant, while I haven’t suffered from sustained infertility,* that makes the last part of the book more palatable to me. I suspect it might be as much to do with the fact that it lacks the over-the-top contempt towards pregnant women and mothers, and indeed women in general, that in the rest of the book becomes boringly repetitious at best and quite offensive at worst. It is the sort of comedy that depends on belittling and stereotyping – not uncommon, but not to my taste.

It also probably has to do with the fact that the reader knows from the start that Panayotov ends up with a baby. At least you do if you’ve ever heard her interviewed or just read the back of the book. And it’s pretty clear from the title just how she achieves that pregnancy. So there’s no page turning motivation early on in the book. It’s only once she safely pregnant, following an embryo transfer, that I started to be really interested in the outcome – how will the pregnancy go, what sort of birth will she end up with? Perhaps it’s also that at this point she starts treating other characters with some empathy instead of as cardboard cutouts put there to annoy her.

In any case, I did eventually come to care about Panayotov’s story, but it took a good while. The obsessive insanity aspect of the infertility narrative is probably something a lot of women can relate too, although I think they might relate more if it were toned down some. And of course the outcome – a healthy baby at the end – could be hopeful and inspiring to those setting out on a similar journey. But for those four years into IVF with no baby in sight (or even with a baby, but only after several years and as many egg collections), it could be downright galling.

___________
*We had only just begun serious investigation – ie going beyond what my GP could do – when I fell pregnant with Mikaela.

Lochie and Jodi Panayotov (not related to one another I hope)

It's official. We're getting a dog. Today. In about two and a half hours from now, Chris will be bringing home Lochie, who is about to become a part of our family. I wonder what Thea (our cat) will think? I don't imagine she'll be impressed, but hopefully she'll adjust. She's a mostly indoor cat, and he'll be a mostly outdoor dog. I wonder what he'll think of the chooks? Hopefully he'll scare off any foxes that might have been eyeing them off.

I have to admit it's still feeling all a bit bizarre to me. I've never had a dog, so to suddenly have a fully grown, large, enthusiastic Labrador does feel a little overwhelming. Still, he seems like a lovely fellow, and Mikaela (who came with us to meet him this morning) seemed quite impressed, although not so keen on the licking he tried to give her face. Still, she coped okay with that.

Liam was not keen on the idea when we first mentioned it on Saturday, but after we looked at some pics of a black Labrador on the web, and he saw a real one ("and it was alive") at the park yesterday, he changed his mind. He does like dogs, but he'd probably prefer a smaller one. He'd probably prefer a puppy, but frankly, I would not. No way.

Lochie is unfortunately not so good with the training, but he's okay with sit and drop, though not perfect. Chris (who's going to be the one primarily responsible for him, just like I am with the chickidees, but with a bit more effort for him) will have to work on that. His current owner said she never lets him off the lead when they are out for a walk because he just runs off, which is a shame because there are 'off the lead' areas just near us (five minutes walk) where he would no doubt have fun chasing a ball. So Chris will be working on that too. Any book recommendations on dog training much appreciated. Chris has had dogs before, but not as an adult.

In other news, what I should be doing right now is studying, but am trying to read Jodi Panayotov's book*, and am finding it rather irritating. First thought this was due to own fertile mertil selfishness (after all, only took 17 cycles and one miscarriage to conceive Mikaela so am obviously smug mother, completely oblivious to pain of others' infertility), but then realised was due to absence of pronouns, possessive adjectives and articles (definite or otherwise). Could be content also annoying me, plus putting to sleep. Though that could be fault of own sleep deprivation.

The review I linked to (which I have only just now read) suggests that the book's faults are largely not Panayotov's fault, as they are issues which a professional editor would/should have helped her deal with. Fair enough, and yes it sux that publishers don't provide that nurturing to new authors any more, but still, the fact remains that I'm finding the book a trifle hard to get through, and not "at times laugh out loud funny" at all. On the other hand if it helps to raise the issues associated with infertility and reduce the 'taboo-ness' of such openness (especially about pregnancy-loss), then it's doing something valuable. I'm just not sure many people who hadn't already lived in that world would be interested in slogging through it.

[edited to add:] On yet another hand, I've just read an article by Ms Panayotov in The Australian, which comes off rather better than the book does. I like her last line: You see, when people speak of infertility, nobody mentions that it has an insanity clause.

__________

*BTW, the book is called  In Vitro Fertility Goddess

feminist thoughts on motherhood: a drama in three parts

Often, though not always, the story of feminists thinking about motherhood since the early 1960s is told as a drama in three acts: repudiation, recuperation, and, in the latest and most difficult stage to conceptualize, an emerging critique of recuperation that co-exists with ongoing efforts to deploy recuperative strategies.
(Hansen, ibid, p. 5)

This comes, of course, from a book published in 1997, a decade ago now. Any suggestions for movement beyond this point, or are we still there?

Also she observes in a note that

Simons, among others, argues that the gap between between feminist repudiation and recuperation of motherhood is less "absolute" than it is sometimes said to be, and she discusses the possibility of a more "integrative feminist resolution" of this opposition.
(p. 240, referring to Margaret A. Simons, "Motherhood, Feminism, and Identity" in Hypatia Reborn: Essays in Feminism Philosophy, ed Azizah Y. Al-Hibri and Simons, 1990.)

'This isn't the way I'm meant to be'

Look in the mirror. (As women do: self as object.) Good bones, don't smoke cigarettes, don't drink much, get lots of rest, eat well, do yoga, go for walks, it all helps, it doesn't help. I thought something would stop this from happening, it wouldn't happen to me. I'm not even meant to this this til I'm 39. You get to an age and you think it was meant to be better than this. This isn't the way I'm meant to be. I'm meant to be younger, and richer.
(from Inex Baranay, 1988, 'Living alone: The New Spinster (Some Notes)', quoted in Hazel Smith, The Writing Experiment (etc) p. 198.)

At some point I swear I will get back to writing actual posts, instead of just typing out quotes. But not today.

Feminisim's 'dilemma of difference'

['The dilemma of difference'] refers to the way in which feminism and feminist theory must deny of disavow women's difference, and differences among women, in order to argue for women's equality and to mobilize women women as a group, but must also rely on the concept of difference to analyze the specificity of women's situations and experiences and to theorize differences among women. ...

By insisting on women's difference, for instance in analyzing women's situations and experience of mothering and their effects on consciousness and social relations, difference feminism jeopardizes feminism's claim to women's equal human subjectivity. On the other hand, the possible benefits for feminism and feminist theory of taking these risks of difference are also considerable. These benefits include the rearticulation of understandings of mothering that more adequately conceptualize mothering, more strenuously challenge individualism, and thus more strongly support the changes in the social organisation of mothering that feminism advocates. The difficulty for feminist theory is that, in an individualist ideological context, the subversive and liberatory possibilities of accounts of mothering that challenge individualism in terms of difference are never far removed from the risks of reconsolidating elements of essential motherhood that occur in the project of theorising motherhood.   
(Patrice DiQuinzio, The Impossibility of Motherhood, as previously cited, pp. xv-xvi.)

In other words, if we talk about how women, and their experience as mothers, are different to (say, for instance) men, then we set ourselves up for all the old sexist arguments about women's place (barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen etc). But if we don't, then we can't adequately theorise mothering at all, and also, for instance, can't challenge (western, capitalist) individualism in terms of its emphasis on subjectivity in traditionally 'masculine' terms. It's tricky.

Variety in mothering

"Many mothers report that mothering is a deeply ambivalent experience in which, at one time or another, they feel exaltation, despair, and many other emotions in between." (Patrice DiQuinzio, The Impossibility of Motherhood: feminism, individualism, and the problem of mothering, Routledge, New York, 1999, p. viii.)

Realism is reassuring

The experience of reading a realistic text is ultimately reassuring, however harrowing the events of the story, because the world evoked in the fiction, in patterns of cause and effect, of social relationships and moral values, largely confirm the patterns of the world we seems to know.
(Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, 2nd edn, Routlegde, London, 2002, quoted in Hazel Smith, The Writing Experiment, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005, pp. 28-29.)

The practice of writing

Another quote from Woolf, but from yesterday's reading.

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do I must make the most direct and instant shots as my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink. I believe that during the past year I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea. (Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1954, p. 13.)

This reminds me of a debate that occurred in the blogosphere (only I think it was before the term blogosphere was coined) a few years back, about whether slapdash blog/online journal writing was of any benefit to 'wannabe' writers. I remember there was some high feeling and in fact no little acrimony around the issue.

Each (writing) morning before I start the real work, but after I read VW, I spend some time 'free writing', which sometimes (like today) I turn into a blog post. Sometimes it just serves to warm up my fingers. Other times something really useful comes out. Either way I like it.

The (would-be) writing life...

I am sitting in my dark part-time study, having just come in out of the sun where I was reading Virginia Woolf’s diary. I am reading a few pages of A Writer’s Diary (extracts from her diary published by Leonard Woolf a decade or so after her death) each day before I begin work (each Sunday/Monday that is!). It was tempting to stay out there and keep reading, but my point for the day is really writing, which I can do most effectively sitting in front of the computer. Besides, I wanted to record something she wrote in May 1920:

It is worth mentioning, for future reference that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning  a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I’m a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don’t enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult. (Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1954, p. 25.)

Leonard Woolf comments in the preface that one must keep in mind at all times that this is only “a very small portion” of her diary, and does not constitute the entirety of her thoughts. Otherwise “the book will give a very distorted view of her life and her character” (p.ix). I mention this, because as I am reading there is a part of me wishing to have what she seems to have – so much time to focus on writing. I know she didn't have children, but indeed the entries in this diary are often weeks apart – indicating, presumably, weeks when her diary consisted only of non-writing related observations. And even within this extract she remarks that her time for writing has not been hers at all (evidence by the fact that she has hardly done reading outside her review books). Of course, my reading is also inevitably coloured by knowledge of her suicide two decades later. It’s hard to be jealous of that!

Last week I had an email from a (single, childless) old school friend who is currently in Berlin, having (by the sounds of things) the time of her life. She is there for (I think) about six weeks, following which she is heading to France to visit some friends there, and “then on”. I could hardly read her lovely email without feeling jealous as hell. I think she is living the life I want!

But actually, she’s not. I love my husband and my children and even my house, despite the mortgage. When I first bought a house I was 22*, and more than one person commented that I was the last person they expected to ‘settle down’. I wasn’t settling down, I replied, I was merely committing to live in the one place for a year or so, after which I could rent it out and head back overseas if I felt like it. Up to that point I had cultivated a footloose image - which I believed in myself and which fit beautifully with my star sign. I was carefree and adaptable, ready to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice. (According to this site, for instance, Sagittarian likes include travelling and freedom, while dislikes include being tied down, being constrained, being bothered with details). Then I met Chris, whose star sign makes him out to be a homebody (“It is a fundamentally conservative and home-loving nature, appreciating the nest like quality of a secure base” ). You’d think we’d be at odds (if you believe in that sort of thing). But actually, as much as the idea of being able to take off to Berlin appeals, I’m honestly just as much of a homebody as Chris is. Maybe more.

Sure, I have a constant conflict between my role as a mother and my role as a writer, but is there any other option? The fact is, I’m living the life I want. Except for the lack of a rich sponsor of course.

____

*The housing market had just crashed and it was basically cheaper to buy than to rent, once you get past the start-up expenses which I borrowed from my mother, and paid back in dribs and drabs over the next several years. The house I bought then would now be worth over three times what I paid for it.