Gillian Polack's Blog, page 153
September 8, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-09-09T16:35:00
My paper has already been accepted for the ANZAMEMS program. That was very quick. It also means I get to talk science fiction and the Middle Ages both at once and to do the elephant thing. The most important part of this, of course, is that now I have a target for my post-submission work. I can use this conference paper as my spur for sorting everything out and moving on.
It might take forever for publishers to read my novels and almost-as-forever to get a job, but at least I'm doing what I want to do and need to do.
What I need to do today is work through my list of work, but I keep getting distracted. Conference papers are good things to get distracted by, though. I don't actually love them, but they're really good for me because they force me to think about the way other people will hear my ideas, which makes them outstanding for getting myself focussed on subjects where I might otherwise be self-indulgent.
It might take forever for publishers to read my novels and almost-as-forever to get a job, but at least I'm doing what I want to do and need to do.
What I need to do today is work through my list of work, but I keep getting distracted. Conference papers are good things to get distracted by, though. I don't actually love them, but they're really good for me because they force me to think about the way other people will hear my ideas, which makes them outstanding for getting myself focussed on subjects where I might otherwise be self-indulgent.
gillpolack @ 2012-09-09T15:38:00
I just had a Thought.
Ms Cellophane/Life through Cellophane is being relaunched at Conflux. (This is not the thought.)
Jack Dann is MCing the group launch. (This is not the thought - it's just very cool.)
It is Rosh Hashanah next week. (This is not the thought.)
I bought enough ingredients for extra honey cake this year, mainly because honey came in small tubs or in huge tubs and I wanted Beechworth honey this year and that meant a huge tub. (This is not the thought.)
Ms Cellophane is about invisibility. Being Jewish and outside the community in Australia is another type of invisibility. (This is half the thought.)
So, really, I should suggest that my share of the catering for the book launch on the Saturday night is honey cake.
Ms Cellophane/Life through Cellophane is being relaunched at Conflux. (This is not the thought.)
Jack Dann is MCing the group launch. (This is not the thought - it's just very cool.)
It is Rosh Hashanah next week. (This is not the thought.)
I bought enough ingredients for extra honey cake this year, mainly because honey came in small tubs or in huge tubs and I wanted Beechworth honey this year and that meant a huge tub. (This is not the thought.)
Ms Cellophane is about invisibility. Being Jewish and outside the community in Australia is another type of invisibility. (This is half the thought.)
So, really, I should suggest that my share of the catering for the book launch on the Saturday night is honey cake.
gillpolack @ 2012-09-09T11:59:00
Today is a day when my body starts catching up with itself and when it tells me it can't do anything but sleep. Since I have other things to do besides sleep, I am negotiating with it. It gave me time just now to sort and submit an abstract for a conference paper.
The one I was going to propose for March in Florida is equally appropriate for February in Melbourne, and February in Melbourne has many, many benefits* - I just don't know how much ANZAMEMS wants more Medievalism and if they're an organisation that prefers the phrase 'science fiction' be elsewhere - but the proposal is delivered and we shall see. I know that there will be a few people at Monash who want to see what I've done in translating the Middle Ages and how far it's all worked, so I hope the proposal is accepted and that I can report back to them. Also, I had a major realisation at 2 am about the reason why science fiction avoids the Middle Ages (except alt hist) and I need to explore this because it's blindingly obvious and yet it has major implications for how popular narratives interpret the Middle Ages and it so very much needs saying aloud in academic circles by someone willing to have some egg on their face because it's an elephant in a room - when it's said, everyone will say "Of course it's always been there" but no-one has yet pointed it out. This gives me a greater sense of what I shall be doing over summer, I suspect. The money I saved by not going to Florida will be my summer research money aka my daily living. And I can write my non-Beastly non-fiction alongside the Beast and alongside the novel that I suspect may be emerging.
And that's the worthy bit of the blogpost. No, it isn't. Everything about me is worthy today, except my waistline which is super-worthy. I had many flighty thoughts yesterday, but they were all subsumed by usefulness. I was useful twice in the library, for instance, and once at the supermarket. I love being useful, but it does bring out the worthy in me.
Also, the PhD is edging closer to being finished. The novel is with proofreaders. The rest of it is not quite there yet (still has one iteration to go through - if things go wrong, it might have two) but we're getting closer. I'm gradually metamorphosing into a timelord...
*It will cost me about 1/7 and only requires one hour travel. The conference is one train stop away from my mother's. I am *from* Melbourne. I can achieve my grand goal of redeeeming outstanding promises for science fictional drinks. And many etceteras.
The one I was going to propose for March in Florida is equally appropriate for February in Melbourne, and February in Melbourne has many, many benefits* - I just don't know how much ANZAMEMS wants more Medievalism and if they're an organisation that prefers the phrase 'science fiction' be elsewhere - but the proposal is delivered and we shall see. I know that there will be a few people at Monash who want to see what I've done in translating the Middle Ages and how far it's all worked, so I hope the proposal is accepted and that I can report back to them. Also, I had a major realisation at 2 am about the reason why science fiction avoids the Middle Ages (except alt hist) and I need to explore this because it's blindingly obvious and yet it has major implications for how popular narratives interpret the Middle Ages and it so very much needs saying aloud in academic circles by someone willing to have some egg on their face because it's an elephant in a room - when it's said, everyone will say "Of course it's always been there" but no-one has yet pointed it out. This gives me a greater sense of what I shall be doing over summer, I suspect. The money I saved by not going to Florida will be my summer research money aka my daily living. And I can write my non-Beastly non-fiction alongside the Beast and alongside the novel that I suspect may be emerging.
And that's the worthy bit of the blogpost. No, it isn't. Everything about me is worthy today, except my waistline which is super-worthy. I had many flighty thoughts yesterday, but they were all subsumed by usefulness. I was useful twice in the library, for instance, and once at the supermarket. I love being useful, but it does bring out the worthy in me.
Also, the PhD is edging closer to being finished. The novel is with proofreaders. The rest of it is not quite there yet (still has one iteration to go through - if things go wrong, it might have two) but we're getting closer. I'm gradually metamorphosing into a timelord...
*It will cost me about 1/7 and only requires one hour travel. The conference is one train stop away from my mother's. I am *from* Melbourne. I can achieve my grand goal of redeeeming outstanding promises for science fictional drinks. And many etceteras.
September 7, 2012
On improving the fiction of others
I've just done a giant sort of papers resulting from novel critiquing (both to me and of me) and editing over the past few years. The papers are now gone, but a worry remains. I noticed patterns in the comments. Most of the commenters were guilty of one of two things, some (thankfully) to a lesser degree than others.
The first was of trying to push the other writer into a genre into which the work didn't fit. This really showed when the reader/commenter didn't know the genre in question. That was when they tried to push the work to becoming their own writing or the writing of their favourite writer at that time. I've had this happen with editors (once with fiction, once with non-fiction), and it's not a good thing. The story the writer is telling is their story, and the flaws in the telling need to be resolved without destroying the quality of their writing.
If I were teaching these writers, I would be telling them (very strongly) that they need to read far more widely. They need to read carefully, with an eye to understanding the craft that supports each and every work. Storytelling can be done in so many ways.
The second was of recycling advice learned from others without having determined first that it was relevant. "Telling not showing," for instance, is not a useful piece of criticism when the section that is being told is a minor plot point by a minor character, for instance, and showing would take the story away from its main paths and lose the reader down by-ways. Nor is it showing through action useful when the story is one that requires description or neat character summaries as an aid to interpretation.
There are times for telling and times for showing and blanket rules are a nuisance (but necessary at a certain stage of learning - this is why writers are in trouble if they learn a little and then say "I am beyond this now" and never move beyond the learning they think themselves beyond).
Genre matters. The story matters above everything. If there's no fault, then trying to fix it because the story doesn't fit the rules one has been told is really, really daft. If there is a fault but you can't work out what it is, then falling back on a rule told to you by someone else only works if the fault would actually be fixed or the narration improved or the characterisation made more intense by the application of that rule. Maybe one case in ten of the comments I skimmed through this morning would have been improved by the application of the rule cited in the comments. In all other cases, it would not. In some instances, it would have made things worse.
My set of rules for critiquing goes something like this:
1. What genre (and, if possible, sub-genre) is the best fit for this work and why?
2. Are any of the problems in my reading due to going off-genre? If they aren't then genre matters are fine at the editing level.
3. What is getting in the way of the plot?
4. What about the characters?
5. What about stylistic issues?
6. If scant worldbuilding*, or dangling participles or a cliché** or sentence fragments or telling-not-showing are causing problems with 3-5***, then they should be noted in this context. If they don't cause any problems at all (if they are intrinsic to the style, or magically clever in how they achieve strange and wonderful depths to the tale), then I'm wasting my red ink, even if I personally hate the cliché used or the level of worldbuilding and am tired of dangling participles.
Now the papers are gone and the mess is less, both in my mind and on my couch, I shall return to work.
*Which can be insufficient, or it can be amazingly poetic, or it can be a number of other things. It's not the amount of world building that appears in a novel that's the problem, it's how the novel handles it.
**The example I have in mind for this is where a writer had one single cliché in 50 pages of prose. If the cliché had been egregious and took the reader out of the novel, that would have been a problem, but it being a cliché is not actually necessarily a problem in itself. Clichés depend on context, and the comment addressed the cliché and not its context.
***Or any other crucial aspect I haven't listed - I'm not trying to be exhaustive here. In fact, I'm trying very hard to make these notes and then get back to editing.
The first was of trying to push the other writer into a genre into which the work didn't fit. This really showed when the reader/commenter didn't know the genre in question. That was when they tried to push the work to becoming their own writing or the writing of their favourite writer at that time. I've had this happen with editors (once with fiction, once with non-fiction), and it's not a good thing. The story the writer is telling is their story, and the flaws in the telling need to be resolved without destroying the quality of their writing.
If I were teaching these writers, I would be telling them (very strongly) that they need to read far more widely. They need to read carefully, with an eye to understanding the craft that supports each and every work. Storytelling can be done in so many ways.
The second was of recycling advice learned from others without having determined first that it was relevant. "Telling not showing," for instance, is not a useful piece of criticism when the section that is being told is a minor plot point by a minor character, for instance, and showing would take the story away from its main paths and lose the reader down by-ways. Nor is it showing through action useful when the story is one that requires description or neat character summaries as an aid to interpretation.
There are times for telling and times for showing and blanket rules are a nuisance (but necessary at a certain stage of learning - this is why writers are in trouble if they learn a little and then say "I am beyond this now" and never move beyond the learning they think themselves beyond).
Genre matters. The story matters above everything. If there's no fault, then trying to fix it because the story doesn't fit the rules one has been told is really, really daft. If there is a fault but you can't work out what it is, then falling back on a rule told to you by someone else only works if the fault would actually be fixed or the narration improved or the characterisation made more intense by the application of that rule. Maybe one case in ten of the comments I skimmed through this morning would have been improved by the application of the rule cited in the comments. In all other cases, it would not. In some instances, it would have made things worse.
My set of rules for critiquing goes something like this:
1. What genre (and, if possible, sub-genre) is the best fit for this work and why?
2. Are any of the problems in my reading due to going off-genre? If they aren't then genre matters are fine at the editing level.
3. What is getting in the way of the plot?
4. What about the characters?
5. What about stylistic issues?
6. If scant worldbuilding*, or dangling participles or a cliché** or sentence fragments or telling-not-showing are causing problems with 3-5***, then they should be noted in this context. If they don't cause any problems at all (if they are intrinsic to the style, or magically clever in how they achieve strange and wonderful depths to the tale), then I'm wasting my red ink, even if I personally hate the cliché used or the level of worldbuilding and am tired of dangling participles.
Now the papers are gone and the mess is less, both in my mind and on my couch, I shall return to work.
*Which can be insufficient, or it can be amazingly poetic, or it can be a number of other things. It's not the amount of world building that appears in a novel that's the problem, it's how the novel handles it.
**The example I have in mind for this is where a writer had one single cliché in 50 pages of prose. If the cliché had been egregious and took the reader out of the novel, that would have been a problem, but it being a cliché is not actually necessarily a problem in itself. Clichés depend on context, and the comment addressed the cliché and not its context.
***Or any other crucial aspect I haven't listed - I'm not trying to be exhaustive here. In fact, I'm trying very hard to make these notes and then get back to editing.
gillpolack @ 2012-09-08T09:36:00
It's just a week until the New Year.
How does one prepare for New Year when it's a time of fair pain*?
Normally, I pack a case and spend it with family, but that depends on school holidays being at the right time: I don't get time off teaching for my holy days, since Australia follows the Christian calendar in its mildly secular way. This isn't possible this year. I would be in Melbourne for first day and then have to return forthwith, while preparing my doctorate for submission and with teaching sandwiching the trip. I would end up with a backlog of work and overtired to boot.
So, no. No family for me this yontef. I have my 'Canberra family' though and some of them are coming to dinner for my celebrations. I shall have honey cake. I'm buying the ingredients today, when I do my message run.
So how do I prepare? Slowly.
If my place isn't perfect, I won't let it get to me. I will have honey cake and candles and if my friends help with bringing sections of dinner I won't feel guilty (or panic about kashruth). I just put three books away and tidied two messy segments of floor and swept where I tidied and if I can do that much three times a day, I'll be fine for bigger cleaning next Sunday and if I'm not fine, at least my place won't be a complete pigsty. If I hurt more, I do less, and the housework does not take precedence over either the doctorate or teaching.
Having cancelled all the other festivals this year (very reluctantly) I'm determined to get at least a whiff of Rosh Hashanah. It's going to be a good and sweet year, for I shall make it so.
*or unfair pain - it depends on whether one considers aches my just desserts or not - and by this mild joke it can be seen that today I still hurt, but not as much as earlier in the week
**and there's space for a couple more of you, if you want to drop gentle hints that go something like "Dinner, Sunday night, count me in."
How does one prepare for New Year when it's a time of fair pain*?
Normally, I pack a case and spend it with family, but that depends on school holidays being at the right time: I don't get time off teaching for my holy days, since Australia follows the Christian calendar in its mildly secular way. This isn't possible this year. I would be in Melbourne for first day and then have to return forthwith, while preparing my doctorate for submission and with teaching sandwiching the trip. I would end up with a backlog of work and overtired to boot.
So, no. No family for me this yontef. I have my 'Canberra family' though and some of them are coming to dinner for my celebrations. I shall have honey cake. I'm buying the ingredients today, when I do my message run.
So how do I prepare? Slowly.
If my place isn't perfect, I won't let it get to me. I will have honey cake and candles and if my friends help with bringing sections of dinner I won't feel guilty (or panic about kashruth). I just put three books away and tidied two messy segments of floor and swept where I tidied and if I can do that much three times a day, I'll be fine for bigger cleaning next Sunday and if I'm not fine, at least my place won't be a complete pigsty. If I hurt more, I do less, and the housework does not take precedence over either the doctorate or teaching.
Having cancelled all the other festivals this year (very reluctantly) I'm determined to get at least a whiff of Rosh Hashanah. It's going to be a good and sweet year, for I shall make it so.
*or unfair pain - it depends on whether one considers aches my just desserts or not - and by this mild joke it can be seen that today I still hurt, but not as much as earlier in the week
**and there's space for a couple more of you, if you want to drop gentle hints that go something like "Dinner, Sunday night, count me in."
September 6, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-09-07T13:49:00
Last night, during teabreak, somehow we ended up talking about stuff I won't publish. One student was utterly horrified (and I'm not sure that the others were best pleased) when they discovered that I have fiction sitting on my computer that is good enough to get published (and in which publishers have been interested) and yet I refuse.
Just because a publisher wants it, doesn't mean I want my name on it. "Use a different name," was the suggestion. No. I still won't be happy with it. In the end, everyone agreed that it was my decision, but it entirely horrified them.
Just because a publisher wants it, doesn't mean I want my name on it. "Use a different name," was the suggestion. No. I still won't be happy with it. In the end, everyone agreed that it was my decision, but it entirely horrified them.
gillpolack @ 2012-09-07T11:33:00
Today still hurts, but not quite as much, and besides, I'm tired of it all and moving on. If my body decides not to move on with me, then that's its problem. Also, I ate a small custard apple. Decent custard apples are hard to find in Canberra, so this is a matter for quiet rejoicing.
Today is hours and hours of bibliographical work (again) and then an evening of Beastliness. Possibly also an hour of Beastliness in between the bibliographies. Also, when I need a break, review books. I've run out of excuses not to read review books, for Aurealis books have finally started appearing and I have to make a start on them next week.
What else is interesting in my life? Too much...
One thing that I have found out through the intarwebz is that all my Australian East Coast friends with chronic ailments are in great pain right now. This is why I'm resigned. It will improve when the weather stabilises for me, and I shall do all the right things and minimise the problems. I shall also say "So there!" a lot, to people who believe that there are cures for these things.
One more piece of news (a reminder, not something new) for anyone who can get ABC (Australian ABC) my brother's 2 part whatever starts next Tuesday at 10 pm. I'll finally get to know what he's been working on!! (My family is not good at communications, on the whole.)
Today is hours and hours of bibliographical work (again) and then an evening of Beastliness. Possibly also an hour of Beastliness in between the bibliographies. Also, when I need a break, review books. I've run out of excuses not to read review books, for Aurealis books have finally started appearing and I have to make a start on them next week.
What else is interesting in my life? Too much...
One thing that I have found out through the intarwebz is that all my Australian East Coast friends with chronic ailments are in great pain right now. This is why I'm resigned. It will improve when the weather stabilises for me, and I shall do all the right things and minimise the problems. I shall also say "So there!" a lot, to people who believe that there are cures for these things.
One more piece of news (a reminder, not something new) for anyone who can get ABC (Australian ABC) my brother's 2 part whatever starts next Tuesday at 10 pm. I'll finally get to know what he's been working on!! (My family is not good at communications, on the whole.)
September 5, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-09-06T14:28:00
I am now celebratory, for I managed to put the rubbish out before taking pain relief. I ought to explain that the rubbish hopper is 75 steps from my door and uphill and has a lid that's sometimes too heavy for me to shift. This is why things become a problem on pain weeks. My place is still impossible, but not as implacably so. Also, I have totally earned my medicine. I'm leaving it for as long as I can, though, for the two parts of the day when it's best to be pain free (or in lower pain) are when I'm teaching and when I go to bed. Since I refuse to become addicted to codeine just because my body is a bit stupid at times, this means leaving things until 4 pm right now on Thursdays.
When I get a regular job (however long it takes) I'm going to have someone in to do the cleaning and my quality of life will suddenly be awesome. That's all it takes, sometimes - just a couple of hours a fortnight to make things neat and wipe things down.
Right now I have a choice: the Middle Ages (with hot drink) or review books (without) or Aurealis reading (again without). Hot drink wins. This afternoon is devoted to the Middle Ages right until when I leave to teach (for my teaching prep is already done, including finding precisely the right shoes to emphasise the world building lesson - pity my students).
When I get a regular job (however long it takes) I'm going to have someone in to do the cleaning and my quality of life will suddenly be awesome. That's all it takes, sometimes - just a couple of hours a fortnight to make things neat and wipe things down.
Right now I have a choice: the Middle Ages (with hot drink) or review books (without) or Aurealis reading (again without). Hot drink wins. This afternoon is devoted to the Middle Ages right until when I leave to teach (for my teaching prep is already done, including finding precisely the right shoes to emphasise the world building lesson - pity my students).
A profile of pain
It's a high pain day today, which is not unexpected. Most of you may well want to stop reading at this point, for I'm going to take things in odd directions and not all of them are savoury.
It was dreaming of sheep with scales and evil smiles that should have warned me. Today's crop of dreams is less exotic, but all to do with childhood fears. It reminds me when, in The Voyage of the Dawntreader, all the sailors are scared of their worst dreams. I was more curious than scared when I first read it, though I tried very hard to make myself scared. I knew it had to scare me for all my friends found it terrifying, and I tried very hard. Trying almost worked.
I was a primary school kid, and I already knew that nightmares were not nearly as scary as real life. I was missing several layers of skin over swathes of my body at the time* and I had recently understood** my first pictures of the piles of bodies outside the liberated concentration camps. By 'understood' I had made that emotional leap: these were people like me, of my religion, could be my relatives, some probably were my relatives and I would never known them. If my family had been in a different place, I would not have been born, I realised then, and neither of my parents would have lived to marry. I was eight. It was also the first year a close friend had died.
Knowing how close to me dead people were meant that hurting when the air breathed over me was not a significant problem and that people looking away when they saw me was not really important at all. Nightmares were easy, because one could wake up and read a book.
I've been told so often that these are issues too big for children, but the big issues made me able to deal with the small bits of anti-Semitism and the frequent deaths of friends and relatives that the world casually threw my way. People were accusing me of things I hadn't done and they were using bad language at me, but they were not killing me. I still don't fully understand when a culture of prejudice becomes a culture of hate and murder, but I am very grateful to have only lived in the former, despite my dreams***. I will never be happy about losing friends my age, when I was so young, but at least I had some tools to cope, strange though those tools were.
I guess this is me admitting, with a certain macabre glee, that I may complain about being in pain these days and the pain is genuine and while it certainly impairs my quality of life, it's nothing compared to the pain of my childhood. Not even nearly dying can match with eczema so acute that your skin feels twenty-five different types of hurt. And the pain of my childhood was nothing compared to the pain of many adults I grew up with. So I feel miserable today and unusually loquacious about the misery, but I'm also relieved that the physical side of it isn't all day every day any more. I get very few days pain free (the life of anyone with significantly annoying chronic illness) but I get very few days like this these days. Mostly, I lead a full life.
Although if anyone tells me to put out the rubbish or wash my floor, I shall have their guts for garters. I want to do both and have wanted to do it for days and the mess that is my flat is distressing, but this situation has been building for days and little things set it off. If you want my flat to be in a state either of us can tolerate, then please invite yourself round at a time when I'm not so grumbly and spend fifteen minutes fixing things. Or wait a couple of days, for as things improve the sheer relief of it will make me do the housework despite myself and I'll pay for it physically****, but I'll be much happier that my place isn't intolerable.
This is always assuming I don't do something exceptionally stupid and take extra pain relievers, purely so that I can stop worrying about the rubbish by putting it out... How likely is this to happen? It has happened before. It will happen again. I never said I was exceptionally clever at pain management, just that I'm exceptionally used to it.
It would be nice to feel almost as if I'm an adult able to manage a household. If I complain more tomorrow, blame that rubbish going out. I will have earned the pain then, though. Today I have done nothing to earn it, hence my discomfiture.
I'm amused that I looked at my nightmare while I was in the middle of it and said to it "Your focus is wrong, you know. You can do better than that." I think my nightmare is sulking, for it then pulled out my dream coat from when I was about ten (which explains the childhood memories) and tried to make me feel bad about it. "Not right for my big shoulders," I told it, "But very good in a difficult climate and brown is a much more practical colour than the pretty red coat you've given my beautiful sister." It pulled out all stops to tell me I was in a difficult climate, so I said, "I know that already" and woke myself up.
That's another thing I learned when I went through that interesting period of my childhood: dream control. I guess this post is another form of that. Gillian as an adult inflicts her nightmares on others. I should write a real horror novel one day, just to explain why the horror people see in my fiction is only the dream kind.
*I tell people I have acute allergies and they assume that this means spots or a stomach ache. I do not disabuse them of this for the most part, although I do explain about anaphylactic shock and how we can avoid me getting it. I don't know why I'm talking about it today. Those dreams, I guess. My skin wasn't an issue in my dreams, though, for I learned to deal with it many, many years ago. As one does.
**Not seen, for I'd seen them earlier. My parents didn't believe in cosseting children, which is just as well. The 1960s was an intersting decade to be brought up an Orthodox Jew.
***And the once-off stone thrown in my teens, and the molotov cocktails much later - these were still small in the overall picture. One a related note, why on *earth* has Australia got a problem with refugees? We've always had a problem - we had a problem with refugees from the Nazis - but how did we develop it?
****As I am now, for those dishes and for all that laundry.
It was dreaming of sheep with scales and evil smiles that should have warned me. Today's crop of dreams is less exotic, but all to do with childhood fears. It reminds me when, in The Voyage of the Dawntreader, all the sailors are scared of their worst dreams. I was more curious than scared when I first read it, though I tried very hard to make myself scared. I knew it had to scare me for all my friends found it terrifying, and I tried very hard. Trying almost worked.
I was a primary school kid, and I already knew that nightmares were not nearly as scary as real life. I was missing several layers of skin over swathes of my body at the time* and I had recently understood** my first pictures of the piles of bodies outside the liberated concentration camps. By 'understood' I had made that emotional leap: these were people like me, of my religion, could be my relatives, some probably were my relatives and I would never known them. If my family had been in a different place, I would not have been born, I realised then, and neither of my parents would have lived to marry. I was eight. It was also the first year a close friend had died.
Knowing how close to me dead people were meant that hurting when the air breathed over me was not a significant problem and that people looking away when they saw me was not really important at all. Nightmares were easy, because one could wake up and read a book.
I've been told so often that these are issues too big for children, but the big issues made me able to deal with the small bits of anti-Semitism and the frequent deaths of friends and relatives that the world casually threw my way. People were accusing me of things I hadn't done and they were using bad language at me, but they were not killing me. I still don't fully understand when a culture of prejudice becomes a culture of hate and murder, but I am very grateful to have only lived in the former, despite my dreams***. I will never be happy about losing friends my age, when I was so young, but at least I had some tools to cope, strange though those tools were.
I guess this is me admitting, with a certain macabre glee, that I may complain about being in pain these days and the pain is genuine and while it certainly impairs my quality of life, it's nothing compared to the pain of my childhood. Not even nearly dying can match with eczema so acute that your skin feels twenty-five different types of hurt. And the pain of my childhood was nothing compared to the pain of many adults I grew up with. So I feel miserable today and unusually loquacious about the misery, but I'm also relieved that the physical side of it isn't all day every day any more. I get very few days pain free (the life of anyone with significantly annoying chronic illness) but I get very few days like this these days. Mostly, I lead a full life.
Although if anyone tells me to put out the rubbish or wash my floor, I shall have their guts for garters. I want to do both and have wanted to do it for days and the mess that is my flat is distressing, but this situation has been building for days and little things set it off. If you want my flat to be in a state either of us can tolerate, then please invite yourself round at a time when I'm not so grumbly and spend fifteen minutes fixing things. Or wait a couple of days, for as things improve the sheer relief of it will make me do the housework despite myself and I'll pay for it physically****, but I'll be much happier that my place isn't intolerable.
This is always assuming I don't do something exceptionally stupid and take extra pain relievers, purely so that I can stop worrying about the rubbish by putting it out... How likely is this to happen? It has happened before. It will happen again. I never said I was exceptionally clever at pain management, just that I'm exceptionally used to it.
It would be nice to feel almost as if I'm an adult able to manage a household. If I complain more tomorrow, blame that rubbish going out. I will have earned the pain then, though. Today I have done nothing to earn it, hence my discomfiture.
I'm amused that I looked at my nightmare while I was in the middle of it and said to it "Your focus is wrong, you know. You can do better than that." I think my nightmare is sulking, for it then pulled out my dream coat from when I was about ten (which explains the childhood memories) and tried to make me feel bad about it. "Not right for my big shoulders," I told it, "But very good in a difficult climate and brown is a much more practical colour than the pretty red coat you've given my beautiful sister." It pulled out all stops to tell me I was in a difficult climate, so I said, "I know that already" and woke myself up.
That's another thing I learned when I went through that interesting period of my childhood: dream control. I guess this post is another form of that. Gillian as an adult inflicts her nightmares on others. I should write a real horror novel one day, just to explain why the horror people see in my fiction is only the dream kind.
*I tell people I have acute allergies and they assume that this means spots or a stomach ache. I do not disabuse them of this for the most part, although I do explain about anaphylactic shock and how we can avoid me getting it. I don't know why I'm talking about it today. Those dreams, I guess. My skin wasn't an issue in my dreams, though, for I learned to deal with it many, many years ago. As one does.
**Not seen, for I'd seen them earlier. My parents didn't believe in cosseting children, which is just as well. The 1960s was an intersting decade to be brought up an Orthodox Jew.
***And the once-off stone thrown in my teens, and the molotov cocktails much later - these were still small in the overall picture. One a related note, why on *earth* has Australia got a problem with refugees? We've always had a problem - we had a problem with refugees from the Nazis - but how did we develop it?
****As I am now, for those dishes and for all that laundry.
gillpolack @ 2012-09-05T22:46:00
Tonight is very odd. The weather is change-of-season and very blowy and horrid. I was going to do housework and watch TV and work on review stuff, but I didn't. I don't know what I did when I didn't, but I didn't. I've been saved by an email from a friend with impeccable timing. I now have Medieval stuff to do, and it's mostly thinking (not researching, not writing) and editing. It's an aspect of the subject I know well, and so I can accomplish quite different things and not waste the evening.
It's not just me feeling spaced out and strange. My class last night and my class this morning were a bit like that. The season change is happening very quickly. Snow on Friday and showers of blossom today. Our bodies are adjusting and our brains have yet to catch up.
What I really needed was a dinner party with friends, but the Wednesday friends are all at the CSFG crit group (I have banned myself from it until the idiot doctorate is closer to finished - hopefully next month I'll be able to shock everyone by turning up) and so it's me and my computer. About the only housework I've managed is some washing of dishes and many, many clean clothes and sheets and towels.
Twelve pages of text, and then I'm allowed to sleep. Twelve slow and painstaking pages. It will be good for my soul and ratify my existence. It will also mean that, though I won't have done half the things I meant to finish today, I shall have done the equivalent work and all will be well.
The wind has swapped for rain for a bit. Just in case you were wondering.
It's not just me feeling spaced out and strange. My class last night and my class this morning were a bit like that. The season change is happening very quickly. Snow on Friday and showers of blossom today. Our bodies are adjusting and our brains have yet to catch up.
What I really needed was a dinner party with friends, but the Wednesday friends are all at the CSFG crit group (I have banned myself from it until the idiot doctorate is closer to finished - hopefully next month I'll be able to shock everyone by turning up) and so it's me and my computer. About the only housework I've managed is some washing of dishes and many, many clean clothes and sheets and towels.
Twelve pages of text, and then I'm allowed to sleep. Twelve slow and painstaking pages. It will be good for my soul and ratify my existence. It will also mean that, though I won't have done half the things I meant to finish today, I shall have done the equivalent work and all will be well.
The wind has swapped for rain for a bit. Just in case you were wondering.
