Iris Lavell's Blog, page 17

April 9, 2013

Episode Five


Flight
One day there was the distinct sound of children playing across the trees. The sound was caught and dropped by the wind, and picked up again. Dalyon heard it many times and calculated the direction of the sound in relation to the position of the sun at various times of the day. The children moved around but they moved around in a particular area that ended some distance from the yard. Night came and went and now that Dalyon knew how to listen, he heard the children many times.
Then came the day when he sensed that he was being watched. He saw nothing but a movement in the top of the closest tree that had peered at him over the fence every day for as long as he could remember. Before the big fence was built there used to be more of it. Now, just its top appeared over the line. It was a good place for a person to sit. This person in the tree might have been a crow, but it felt bigger, softer and more curious.
‘Why do you sit in that tree looking at me’, he asked? ‘Why do you sit, why do you go, why do you sit and go?’
 No-one and nothing responded and his question became a song that he sung on the swing for days afterward. ‘Why sit and go, why sit and go, why are you looking at me in that tree?’
Today the air was as clear and sharp as a pin. It was morning, and the crows had started up again. There was something else warbling away, creating a kind of music that Dalyon memorised for future songs. And then he heard it, the child’s voice. She was singing in his language, but with a sound that rang out across the sky like a calling bird.
‘Why sit and go, why sit and go, why are you looking at me in that tree?’
 There was no mistaking the sounds of the words, the rising and falling of notes, the hesitation, the start again, the repetition. She sounded quite close. She was singing to him. A mixture of fright and excitement rose in him. Frightcitement. He bolted to the house. The sound followed for a moment then stopped, then started, then stopped again.
Dalyon went to the side door and peered into the darkness. The shape of his mother was lying stretched out on the bed. With his help, she had dragged the mattress down the stairs to lie along the wall opposite the table, straight after Bob and Terry had left the last time they came. After they got it down there, she went straight to bed and fell into a long sleep. In the days that followed she had spent more time lying on the mattress than walking around. Now she lay there breathing heavily, as she did when she was in a long sleep, although today the music was different. She was stopping and starting, stopping and starting. Sometimes she stopped for a long time, before starting up again, and at other times, like now, the breathing was noisy, noisy, noisy, stop, noisy, noisy, noisy, stop.
Dalyon strained to hear through Ma’s breathing whether the outside singing had followed him right to the door, but it seemed to have stopped and not started up again this time. He listened hard. Had the child gone?
He ran to the fence and looked up and up, climbing in his head, marking every toehold. This fence was far bigger than the time he scaled it before, where he stood in the insect world. On the Wednesday afterwards Ma told Terry and Bob that he had left the yard.
*
Ma had to tell Terry and Bob everything that was new. She would write it down in a little book that they gave her, with a pen that they gave her.  That was when they sent the others to build the fence higher, to keep them both in. There was no need to keep Ma locked in. As long as Dalyon was there, she said she would stay.
Ma told him that they knew this. Ma seemed to be able to see right into people’s minds. She said that this was why they spoke to him and not to her.
‘Stay’, Bob said. ‘You stay. Understand. You stay, or she will die. See this.’
Bob had spotted a beetle scuttling across the floor by his chair. He put his foot down on it hard and when he lifted his foot up the beetle was partly flattened with one leg still waving.
‘That is what it is to die.’
Dalyon watched the beetle with its one leg waving goodbye, and that was when Dalyon knew Bob was the tracking animal that had found its way right inside the yard.
Terry smiled at Dalyon and said, ‘What Bob is saying, is that your Ma needs you here with her or she will feel very sad. Also, we want to keep you safe. The forest is a dangerous place for small boys. You must promise to never, ever, ever go there.’
Dalyon didn’t understand why Ma and he must stay in the yard with the tracking animal sitting right there, but he did understand that Terry and Bob wanted them to stay, because of what they said and because of how Ma told him what they were thinking, and of how she knew.
She said that a person’s body and face moved in a kind of language that told you what they were thinking and feeling. Bob and Terry’s bodies and faces did not move into softness. Their song was ugly and tuneless, the creaking door of the old shed. That door won’t be still in an ugly hot wind. Bob and Terry could made that hot wind blow on and on and on. Creak, creak, creak went the door. Ma sat with her eyes looking at their shoes, which were dusty and scratched, from the way that they had ridden a long way through the dirt. Ma later told him she looked at their shoes because she didn’t want them to know from her eyes what she was thinking.
 After they left, Ma held him for a long time. She laid her soft cheek on his head. He felt caught like an animal waiting to be set free, but he did not struggle. Even so, she held him tight to make him hear what she wanted to say.
‘Please Dalyon’, she said. ‘Please. I know it’s hard. We must do as they say. It is the only way. Be a good boy for Ma. One day you will see something new’.
It was a sad and tired song that Ma sang to him that day.
*
 Now Dalyon ran back and peered into the dark house where Ma’s shape was stretched out on the bed. He could no longer hear her heavy breathing. She lay quiet.  He forgot when she last stopped. He crept up to the bed and stood by her head.
‘Ma?’ he said,’ but she did not move. He patted her head. ‘Ma?’
He pushed her arm then, and it fell and hung with the back of its hand resting on the floor. He patted Ma’s shoulder, as she had often done to him. ‘Be a good boy,’ he said.
There again, beyond the perimeter, was the drifting sound of a child singing. Dalyon realized with a feeling that the child had moved further away. It was as if he had dropped something that would roll away and be lost forever if he didn’t move quickly. He went to the door and looked out and up into the tree, and saw nothing but the leaves moving softly.
‘Don’t go,’ he whispered to the child.
She must have felt his will. She stopped moving and sang a little song in one place, and now Dalyon felt shock and surprise as another voice joined hers, taking the low part. The two singers were like the crows and the warblers, creating a sound that prickled and drew him even more.  Their song was long and beautiful, looping around and around and around.
When at length it ended, Dalyon turned back to look at Ma. She was paler than he had ever seen her, and very still except for her hair which moved slightly in the breeze that came from the open door. She may have been lying that way for a long time as he had listened to the sounds outside with his head tipped towards his shoulder so that his main listening ear could catch each nuance.  Her arm hung down from the bed with its hand resting on the floor. He went to her side, picked it up and put it gently beside her under the covers. Her skin was cool. Her eyes were a little open and she seemed to smile at him. He closed his eyes and felt felt her standing beside him. ‘Take the package from the flour drum and go,’ she told him. ‘I will come a little way with you.’
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 09, 2013 19:25

April 7, 2013

Prose poetry

I was checking out the new writing prompt for Poetsonline a couple of days ago, and the task was to write a prose poem. It's a nice idea, this intensified, poetic language that can be employed in prose format. I suppose with all the news of troubles in the world at the moment, and along the lines of the post-apocalyptic theme which preempts the first draft manuscript I have been posting on a weekly basis on this blog, I came up with the following attempt at a prose poem. I'll try another for submission to Poetsonline - maybe - but check out their site if you're interested in having a go at a prose poem yourself. They have a blog and instructions on how to submit a poem.
  
ReflectionsSome things don’t bear thinking on, like are we on the brink and do you ever imagine yourself on the losing side, confused and defenceless, human, a biological speck on a ball of dirt spinning through an endless universe? Thinking post-apocalyptic is more satisfying when you live in hope, picturing an afterwards with you at the centre, hyper-inflated, selectively-connected, this-not-that, taken up, saved, loftily pitying or condemning all others who didn’t hedge their bets, who didn’t see things in quite the particular way that mapped the precise contours of your mind, who didn't form those filial affiliations, expectations, invocations, dedications, or follow the orders of the man poised over that button, those buttons, your buttons, who sees himself privileged, supreme, flying, untouchable, unharmed and unharm-able, on the side against Evil (though he looks into the other rooms, this room repeated, and repeated, and repeated, until he sees it is just a mirror after all, in which is reflected him, self, in all those reflected mirrors, his own eyes, again and again, his own windows to the soul, his own darkness, where he, himself is so lost that he recoils and retreats to the comfort of his own illusion where he's the one that calls the shots, and) looking down on the destruction he has wrought, wants still to wring, pretending he is God, or the Devil, then says that he is ready to be taken up or down into the arms of, because he has been caught fast in the idea that he is the extra-special one.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 07, 2013 19:17

April 5, 2013

Satire, humour, tongue in cheek... some thoughts

Is that a bunch of lemons I see through a tangled text? Or are you having a laugh?The thing most of the books and plays that I seek out and have enjoyed over the years have in common, is that they almost all fall under the category of satire, the absurd, or humour, more generally. Not all, but there is a strong element of satire in most of the books I have read, and the entertainment I have enjoyed. Why? It's fun. It feels good to have a laugh. I think it provides alternative ways of seeing the familiar.

Hard to pull off though, and I don't know, but maybe when I look back, things aren't as funny as they used to be. The assumptions upon which the humour depended have changed - a shared understanding of the conventional, and the absurd. Or my assumptions have changed. Humour, as an element of the writing (as opposed to its central premise) is something that seems to get lost these days, unless the reader's attention is specifically directed towards it.

And I'm not sure that yesterday's humour has travelled all that well through time, culture, or geography - even very obvious comedy. Humour is largely dependent on the society from which it springs, and its foibles. Nowadays the society from which it springs tends to be less local, more global. To be successful at getting a laugh, the modern comedian needs to become an observant citizen of the world, and to get a handle on mainstream assumptions in order to challenge them.  But as societies become less homogeneous, yet more interconnected, the mainstream (if such a thing continues to exist) becomes increasingly difficult to identify. For the comedian who wants to reach global audiences s/he needs to understand the nuances not only of language but also of socio-political- religious acculturation right down to the level of the multifaceted family in a cosmopolitan society - ok? Now I've probably lost you, as well as myself. Seems that being a comedian is a serious business.

Then again, are we all becoming a little too serious? These days when we read books that contain both comedy and tragedy, I wonder whether drama trumps humour. It seems to me that there is often a privileging of seriousness, even when it seems obvious that amongst all the bleakness and the underlying serious intent, a writing style is satirical. The link between humour, and what is otherwise too much for human beings to bear, is well-established. It is the reason that people in the medical professions, in the police forces, in the defence forces, in politics - and in books that deal with these subjects - have to lighten the mood with some laughter, no matter how black the humour. It might be the only thing that keeps them on this side of sanity.

Another difficulty for some writers, such as (but not exclusively) women, is that satirical humour has not historically been assumed to be their domain. Typically satire has been harshly applied at the expense of those in power, but I think it is often applied by those with an expectation of usurping and replacing the status quo (and thereby becoming the status quo). If a traditionally powerless group applies that particularly biting form of satirical humour, there seems to be some difficulty with the laugh. Is this because this type of humour has usually been applied to particular types of political concerns? War. Power struggles in the public domain. Large 'P' politics. Or is it because satire in those different hands implicitly sidelines the assumed up-and-coming?

Of course things have changed over the years for female comedians and others who had previously been the butt of jokes, rather than their conveyors. Female comedians are staking a claim in the situational comedy and in stand-up. A random (far from comprehensive) review - maybe it started with Lucille Ball. More recently, Roseanne Barr.  Miranda. Kath and Kim. Dawn French. The Ab Fab duo Saunders and Lumley. The 53 women comedians featured in the Huffington Post a couple of years back.  Even so, much of female humour tends to be self deprecating, inward, rather than outward looking. Roseanne Barr might be an exception here.

Satirical female writers seem thinner on the ground, or is it just that they are not typically recognised as such? Margaret Atwood is surely a satirist. If you're not sure, you just have to listen to her speak. Kathy Lette. Susan Maushart certainly. Playwright Caryl Churchill is, in the main, or at least straddling that and the absurdest school. I'm sure there are many more, but not so they stand out. Maybe they are not all that readily picked up for publication.

Or the humour might be hidden in books masquerading as something else. It is subversive, after all. The problem with that is that we see what we expect to see. Humour sometimes gets missed because if we don't expect it to be there, and our focus is on something else.  This can be disastrous to the intention of the text, because it can look like the sentiments expressed are either mean-spirited, or just plain weird. The difficulty is that while some vehicles of humour, such as cartoons - especially Family Guy, American Dad, The Simpsons and South Park, have a big arrow pointing to them (music, sound effects, the traditional funny role of cartoons itself) to prime us not to take them seriously, often literature is assumed to be intimate, private, hard work, and therefore, serious, unless it has a sticker on it saying 'hilarious'.



Compliments DW
If something seems a little bit over the top, I always entertain the possibility that it might have been intended. Whether it comes off or not is another thing. Humour, after all, tends to be enjoyed in social situations (even text - bits of funny articles or books are often read out and shared with friends) and social situations are diverse, and always changing. A few drinks and some laughing gas can change everything. Cold, stone sober, how much is too little? Too much? Exaggeration, excess, self-deprecation, understatement, playing opposite to the conventional wisdom are just some of the tools employed.

Getting a laugh is the province of ordinary people too.  How easy it is for the regular-person-would-be-comedian to be misunderstood. As in social media, it seems we must increasingly employ :) lol ;-) !!! to ensure that our good intentions are made clear. Their absence when irony or satire is applied always risks misinterpretation and a break down of the social relationships we work so hard to maintain.

Bottom line - as so beautifully portrayed in one of Caryl Churchill's television plays The Judge's Wife we don't always get the joke that was intended. In this teleplay, the judge deliberately becomes more and more extreme and reactionary in the hope that people will see how absurd that position is, but he simply attracts more and more people to the cause he is attempting to ridicule. They think he is what he is lampooning. And maybe, in a twist of Orwellian double-think, he was, and his wife is posthumously reinterpreting his life! It's worth reading the text if you can't track down the performance itself.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 05, 2013 17:33

April 3, 2013

BLPG Member Profile Louise Allan



When I read about the Book Length Project Group, I thought it was exactly what I was looking for, and joined up. I’m so glad I did. I can’t believe the expertise and experience within the group. Not to mention the talent! The discussions, encouragement and support really help when tackling a lengthy and complex project.

Currently, I’m nearing completion of a first draft of my first novel. It has the working title 'Ida's Children', and grew out of a short story I wrote in 2010. In 2011, I homeschooled my boys and looked after sick parents, but I returned to writing the novel in 2012.

The story centres around two sisters: one who is childless, while the other conceives easily, bearing child after child. The novel touches on issues of child abuse, what is a good mother, the expected roles of women, and the impact of giving up one's dreams. It is set in rural Tasmania from the 1920s up to the present day.

At school, I found English and creative writing difficult, so I stuck with Maths and Science. I found them more straightforward: you were either right or wrong. No articulating of opinions and backing them up with quotes from the text. I pursued the scientific pathway and became a doctor. I loved that world: where decisions can mean life or death, literally; where you witness life beginning, and where you see it end; where people tell you things they’ve told no other person. I will never regret choosing Medicine as my career.

I married and had four children and eventually found myself torn between work and family. Our hectic life was unsustainable and I quit work. It wasn’t an easy decision, but family life is much smoother and happier now.

As soon as I knew I was stopping work, I enrolled in an online writing course (less intimidating than face-to-face). A couple of my children had won writing awards and I wondered if perhaps I could write, too. It was so pleasurable to unleash my creative side. It had waited for over four decades to emerge, and towards the end, it was banging against my skull, begging for release. Now it’s out, its relishing its freedom like an unbridled horse.

Apart from my family and writing, I also love classical music, the ocean and the Australian bush. I walk every day through the bushland around Allen Park, making sure I at least glimpse the sea. For me, it is ‘nature’s antidepressant’.

I have recently started a blog, which you can find at: louise-allan.com. Feel free to slip over and take a look.




 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 03, 2013 04:04

April 2, 2013

Episode Four

Fences 
 There is a time to hang on and a time to let go. This is a rule that the boy Dalyon learnt with regard to his fences. He climbed to the top and balanced there, swaying a little. The small hand that grew from the end of the arm, attached to the shoulder that was Dalyon’s body, loosened, and he toppled to the grass. Pressure. A small cut. He climbed again and again. Swayed. Toppled. Don’t do that, do that, don’t do that do that, don’t do that, do that. This and that. At the end, at the shift part, he stood up and leant against the fence. The fence was hot from the sun shining on it. He walked along the fence that formed the boundary to his world, dragging a stick over its undulating surface.  At the end was a high gate that could not be opened. He touched the gate, swiveled around and walked back around the fence. At the other end was another gate that could be opened. He climbed up and undid the latch that had been made to keep him in.
Beyond the fence a struggling forest stretched out in every direction, dry trees above dry ground made worse by the long summer. In the strings of shade cast from sickly branches overhead, red winged insects moved about, piling sand around the edges of deep dark holes in hard ground. Dalyon watched two fighting, pulling, or helping, each other down below the ground.  He stood amidst the swirling lines of insects as he stared into the narrow channel of darkness that led to their world. At some stage he became aware of a stinging sensation. He looked down to see the creatures crawling all over his feet. He began to brush at his feet frantically.
‘Get away, you! Get away!’ He let out a scream to bring Ma. ‘Get away! Mama!’
She came running from the house with a jug of water.   ‘What are you doing boy? Get back. Get back inside. Quickly. Wait!’ She washed his legs and all the insects on the ground. ‘Now go. Go! They’ll have you soon enough if you stray.’
‘Ma?’
Ma didn’t answer for a moment.
‘What Ma?’
 She said, ‘there are monsters in the forest that still haven’t been caught. Big, hungry, hairy monsters. Grrr!’ She made her hands into scary claws. ‘They will kill you, and eat you all up. Gobble, gobble, gobble. And me too. Do you want that? No, no you don’t, you don’t at all. Come. You can’t have your water now. You can have some of mine. I’ve made ice. You’ve been outside enough today. Inside time now. Time to rest.  We’ll come outside again at dusk.’ She took his arm to bring him back.
‘Hungry monsters eat Bob-and-Terry?’ Dalyon asked as she dragged his resisting body after her.
‘No, they’ve got big guns. Like magic sticks – very loud. Bang!’ she said. ‘Bang, bang! No more monsters.’
‘Bang,’ he whispered.







The sound of the crows carried across the sky. Dalyon copied their cries. He was speaking to them in their language, echoing the cadence of their sound perfectly. The sounds fell away at the end. All crows were old and cross. They stopped to listen to his taunts, then started up again. Watch it, they said! Watch it or you’ll be sorry. Watch it meant, ‘be careful’. It was how people used to speak in this country when there were many people on the earth.
‘Crows, you watch it or you’ll be sorry,’ he said. ‘You watch it! Caw gaw gra-aaaw. You, you watch it crows.’ They flew off at that.
Dalyon had worked out a way to scale the fence. Tucked into his pocket he now kept a magic stick that he could make go ‘bang’. His stick would frighten the monsters away so that he and Ma could go into the forest whenever they wanted. Ma would say,‘no Dalyon,’ when he told her this, so he said no more about it.
He would need to scout ahead. He had a plan that took Ma into account. She had a certain routine that gave him time to do what he could do. She felt now that she didn’t need to watch him all the time because of the outside fence that Bob and Terry had caused. Others had come to build it – big, wordless men and women who sang nothing and went away. Dalyon swung and bounced all day, watching them as they worked, assessing the weaknesses and exit points that they were building into the barrier. When the workers had gone, Dalyon and Ma stood together for a long time looking up at it. Ma did not sing that night.
After that day she spent much of her time sitting inside. One day when Dalyon looked inside to see what she was doing, he noticed how she sat staring into the bowl from which she had hardly eaten since he left her at the table. Soon she made odd, gulping sounds, half way between laughing and speaking. Water streamed from her eyes, trickled over parts of her face and joined in a drop at the bottom of her chin. Dalyon saw that she was crying.
Dalyon had never cried. It was one of the things that Ma said he didn’t seem to do. It wasn’t either good or bad. It just was. In the story about Hansel, Gretel and the witch, Gretel cried when she was lost in the woods, and Hansel told her not to worry. Perhaps Dalyon should say this to Ma. From his quiet place just near the side door, Dalyon looked to her face for more clues. Ma said that a person’s face could show if they were happy or sad, and of other things they were thinking and feeling too. Everyone had their own thoughts, different from Dalyon.
Dalyon tried to see Ma’s thoughts in her face. Her face was a changing thing. It changed shape and it changed colour. It became dark, and then as pale as flour so that she almost disappeared into the walls. Dalyon danced from one foot to the other as he hovered by the door, watching her, unsure of what he should do. It was too difficult. He closed his eyes, and listened until she stopped her strange noises. Perhaps she knew he was there. Perhaps this is what she was thinking. Perhaps she didn’t like him looking at her crying.
He moved away, back to his business, ashamed of being there. He shook his head, shaking away his discomfort, and flapped his hands like small rags in a strong wind. He went like that until something entered his field of vision and called him away to play.
These objects in this yard spoke to him. Perhaps they, too, had their own thoughts. This chair was heavy and claimed it didn’t want to be moved. The swing was playful and always teasing him with its little movements. Come and play with me, it said. The trampoline liked being jumped on. It laughed and giggled with every spring and hop. When he ran fast, it laughed fast and high. When he jumped slowly, it laughed slowly like a goofy storybook horse.
Dalyon was flying on the swing. He was bouncing on the trampoline. He was checking his chair fence for gaps. The cat was lying there, old and tired. It got up, stretched its opposite side front and back legs way out, brought them back to stand beneath its body, and slunk away. It looked over its shoulder, not knowing what to do, or whether Dalyon would run to catch it this time, or not.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 02, 2013 19:21

April 1, 2013

April 2 World Autism Awareness Day

April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day and has a blue theme. Wear blue, bake a blue cake, have blue themed activities for school - these are just some of the awareness raising suggestions by Autism Spectrum Australia .

In this spirit, I would like to put in a plug for employment opportunities for people on the spectrum. So much in being a competitive job seeker has to do with having good social and communication skills and this often means that perfectly good potential employees miss out on an opportunity to contribute to the workforce and to become independent citizens. Work is one thing that helps define how we see ourselves, and provides a sense of pride and control over our own lives. If you are an employer (or anyone in a position to make this great contribution to a healthy and happy society), on World Autism Awareness Day I would ask that you consider this next time a suitable vacancy comes up.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on April 01, 2013 17:51

March 30, 2013

Best wishes for a happy Easter

Peace and love to all
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 30, 2013 19:22

March 29, 2013

BLPG Member Profile - Lynn Allen

LynnAllen.

Lynn Allen was born in the northeast of Scotland into a family that has lived in the region of Brechin for centuries. In the 1960s she migrated to Perth, Australia, where she now lives and works as an independent coach in systems thinking, a writer and executive educator.
During her more than 20 years as an executive in the information services sector, including the computer industry and 12 years as a state government CEO and State Librarian, Lynn has written many papers on leadership, strategy and the use of technology.
She has studied and loved the novel all her life, believing in the power of story to illuminate and explore the human condition. Her particular interests are how women tell their stories and how they are represented in literature. She considers herself a feminist and has an abiding interest in writing on the topic.
Lynn's novel, Illusion, is a contemplation of what can happen when a woman's integrity is challenged while working as a public servant in highly charged political environments.
Lynn is currently writing a novel that explores what highly educated, professional baby-boomer women might do after they leave paid employment. Is the world ready for this group of women and their wisdom? Are the women themselves prepared to generate another feminist agenda while facing questions of identity and ageing in unknown territories? What happens when they are forced to face secrets and decisions of the previous generation that haunt them and influence their lives?

Illusion: a novel of women, power and leadership in government
When the Scottish-born Elizabeth Wallace returns to Australia to take up her position as managing director of a major new government organization she could not have imagined the difficulties she would face.
What she discovers are power games in a highly politicised environment. The system is unwelcoming of women and she becomes mired in constant battles as she tries to achieve her goals. Her lack of understanding of the way government works as well as the complexities of the social network she is drawn into hampers her ability to read people's intentions. Hence she is constantly blind-sided by others' actions.
She has left a long-term lover behind in Scotland as well as a successful career in the corporate sector. With unfinished personal troubles haunting her and increased media scrutiny she begins to wonder whether she has made the right decision.
This is a novel that does not easily fit into genre. It tells one woman's story against the odds, navigating her career journey through the corridors of political power. There are lessons to be learned but, most of all, this is one woman's journey to finding her power.Novel is available as a free ebook at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57950 
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 29, 2013 16:44

March 27, 2013

Book Recommendation - Reaching One Thousand

After I had been encouraged to read Reaching One Thousand , Rachel Robertson's memoir (subtitled A Story of Love, Motherhood & Autism) - encouraged for about the third or fourth time by different people - it jumped out at me while I was browsing in a Fremantle bookshop the other day, so I added it to my pretend basket, started reading that afternoon, and finished it the next day. Now that I have read this memoir not all that long after reading another that I reviewed on this blog, Maureen Helen's Other People's Country, I have discovered that I really do like well-written memoirs.
Rachel Robertson is a wordsmith, and teaches professional writing and publishing at Curtin University, so I guess I was always in good hands. I have a special interest in autism as a psychologist (not so much because of this) and because one of my loved ones has a similar identity - diagnosis?  (yes, mostly because of this). Something that Rachel Robertson has managed, that the professional paradigm does not do very well (although it strives for this), is to explore the relationship with her son, and autism itself, from a perspective of strength rather than deficit, and from a perspective of love, rather than clinical categorisation based on a rather vague notion of normality. In fact normality is more often understood by what it isn't, than what it is, and as such is difficult for anyone to attain. Even too much normality is sometimes construed as abnormal. Plus it's a moving target. Normality seems to shift around depending upon the ever-expanding list of abnormalities that it depends upon to gain its meaning. (Just to be clear - I'm speaking as a regular person, not as a psychologist).

The writer touches, but does not dwell, on socially constructed notions of normality as they impact upon ideas of autism and identity. More importantly this is a story of a mother and a son, as unique and as commonplace as any relationship between parent and child. Her son sounds like a great kid, by the way - smart, considerate and creative. As does her ex-husband, an involved parent, and this portrayal is just one of many examples of the ethical way in which Robertson manages the text.

Robertson also explores how the relationship with her son provides her with the great gift of enabling her to explore aspects of her own identity, and that of her parents - both gifted mathematicians - and to reach new insights. She shares these with the reader, and in the process this reader discovered more that was of help in appreciating and enjoying the uniqueness of those I love, than any scholarly paper might provide. I wondered about that too, the tendency for studies to focus on what was seen to be wrong rather than everything that is right. I suppose that is their purpose, to help out, but sometimes the too tightly controlled reductionist approach misses something vital. In statistics they call this - this chopping off something vital to fit the bed, or stretching it - Procrustean. In Greek mythology, Procrustes was the nasty innkeeper who made his customers fit the bed, and not the other way around. In this book, while due and genuine appreciation is given to the dedicated professionals working in the area who lend a helping hand, Robertson shows us that context has the most dramatic effect, and the way that we respond to our children, with love, courage, not too many preconceptions, and yes, enjoyment and a sense of fun, is ultimately what matters most. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the exploration of identity and relationship.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 27, 2013 01:43

March 25, 2013

Post apocalyptic story - Episode Three


Three - Sky The time came when Dalyon would divide his time between the swing and the trampoline.  The swing didn’t mind. It was bored by now and amused to see Dalyon bouncing up and down.
Ma joined him in the yard every day. At the swing she exercised her arms, pushing him and growing as strong as she could.
‘Push me high as the sky,’ he sang.
‘Push me high as the sky please Ma,’ she responded automatically.
‘Push me high as the sky please Ma,’ he sang, over and over again, and when he was flying he hung his head back and let the sky take him.  
Finally she brought him back with her mystery words.
‘The train’s at the station now Daly,’ she said. ‘Slowing down, slowing down.’
‘What train the station?’ he said, sending her to a place where she could not speak. He fell back into his own silence.
She lifted him down, and there he stayed for a time dancing from one foot to another, until he noticed that she’d left a break in his construction of chairs and sticks and tin and rocks. His body let out the sound of his frustration, and he was off to fix it.
 Ma shrugged her shoulders, stepped over the low wall that he’d built to keep everything that was in, in, and everything that was out, out, and disappeared into the darkness of the house. He went back to his work.
Always, there was work to do, a never-ending going round and round and round.  The cat watched from under one of the fence chairs, ready to stay, ready to go, ready to stay, ready to go.  Dalyon’s song of words repeated and stretched out until they echoed back on one another and joined up with no breaks, no breaches. Stay-ready-go-ready-stay, ready-go-stay-ready-say-go, ready-say-ready-stay-ready, ready, go-stay, stay, stay, stay, stay-a-a-a-go-ready, stay, steady – until something, a movement or a thought, stopped the looping words and sent him spinning off onto another track, bouncing on the trampoline.  
She came back to watch his dance of twists and turns. ‘Listen to me Dalyon,’ she said. ‘Things change. That’s a good thing. You are growing bigger and stronger. The world will need you one day. One day you will need the world.’
He put his head over towards one of his shoulders, and smiled at the way that this song felt as it circled around inside his head.
*
On the morning of the day that the two men first came to see him, Ma was busy doing different things. He followed her around to watch. She washed the dishes twice. She went to the pantry-room and brought out some of the flour that was stored in the big drum. She gathered the eggs earlier than usual. The chickens squawked for a long time. She went back and fed them and poured some water for them. It was the wrong order of things, at the wrong time. Dalyon stood in the corner of the yard, covered his ears, closed his eyes and sang a long song to set it right. When he came back to watch she was foraging in the vege patch.   She found two ripe strawberries on the bush, brought them in, and placed them on a saucer. She lined up the cups without the chips, the teapot with, and placed them all on top of the small lace cloth made of blue hexagons bordered in white. Finally she stopped, stood back and looked at what she’d done. She spoke to him while she looked at the table.
‘Listen to me Dalyon. Two people are coming here today,’ she said. ‘Two men. Terry and Bob. I want you to be good. They will talk to me and drink some tea, and I am making cakes for them to eat. You can have a cake if there is one left. Don’t ask for it. You must sit quietly and listen to them when they speak to you, and do what they ask. Then you can have a cake. Will you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Dalyon.
They came on bicycles. The tall thin man said, ‘Hello Dalyon. My name is Terry.’
The shorter man said nothing. He made a smile, lifted up his eyebrows and let them slip back to their starting point. His face was quite red and there was water coming out of him, his face and his neck. His light-coloured hair was damp, although there had been no rain. The other man called Terry had shiny black hair, black eyes, and small, neat fingernails. Both men had dark patches on their shirts under the top of their arms.
Ma made a smile with her mouth, rested one hand on the side of her neck, and lightly shook their hands with the other.  She had a feeling about her that made Dalyon feel scratchy. He wanted to run away and sit underneath the trampoline until they left, but he remembered his promise to Ma, and her promise to him about the cake. He watched her for signs of how he should learn the visit. She looked at the man with the neat fingernails, at his hands and at his head when he was turned to look at Dalyon, so Dalyon did that too. They all sat on chairs pulled up to the table. Dalyon had a cushion on his chair. The two men drank the tea that Ma poured, and ate the cakes. They sang a long boring song using flat, ugly words that had no music to them and provided no information at all. Dalyon sat quietly balancing on his cushion with his hands on his knees, watching as the shorter man took the last cake and lifted it to his mouth. When he brought his hand down to the plate again, half the cake was gone. He lifted the cake again, brought it part of the way to his mouth, and turned to look back at Dalyon who was watching the cake. He put the cake piece on the plate and put the plate in front of Dalyon.
‘Go on, eat,’ he said.
‘No,’ Ma said.
‘Yes go on,’ said the man.
She said, ‘Yes, go on then. Eat, boy.’ She looked at Dalyon and nodded.
Dalyon ate. The cake was good.
‘We will come once a week,’ Terry said. ‘Every Wednesday morning.’
‘What day is it today?’ she asked.
‘Wednesday.’
‘All right.’
That was how it started, these men who came to watch and instruct and change the way they did things. They gave her a calendar with a picture of a small yellow bird that Dalyon did not know, and she would cross off the days as Dalyon watched. At the circled day, Bob and Terry would come after Ma had collected the eggs and made the cakes. On the day of the last calendar cross, Ma would always say the same thing.
‘Tomorrow they come. Terry and Bob.’
He would dismantle his fence and tidy his room. The day after they had been he would put everything back in its place.  
One day they came on a day unexpected and he still had his fence up. She had no cake or tea ready. They said loud jagged words to her. Dalyon didn’t like that at all. It felt like the shirt he had put on once, with prickles stuck to its inside. He whispered a curse at Terry and Bob, turning away from them so that they couldn’t see him. Then he climbed up onto the trampoline and began to run around it in giant steps. He found an angry song coming through his mouth. He caught them in his lasso of sound, and tied them up.
‘I wish you didn’t come, I wish you didn’t come, I wish you didn’t come, I wish you didn’t come,’ he sang as he ran circles on the trampoline, round and round and round, and they stood there staring at him, dancing from one foot to the other. 
‘Don’t say that Dalyon,’ Terry said. ‘That’s not good.’
But it was the best he could do. He closed his eyes and wished very hard as he ran the familiar track.
‘I wish you didn’t come,’ he sang, circling round and round and round.
*
Beyond the perimeter of house and the fence that stayed with the house, in the vast and disturbing forest it seemed that other houses and other fences might hide amongst the trees. Sometimes Dalyon thought he could hear the faint sound of children’s voices in play, carried far across the still air. When he closed his eyes he would see a thin rise of smoke from a fireplace, moving like a vertical strand of cloud, tracking its way from the surface of the tree-tops to the edge of the blue, touching the boundary and spreading across until it became the slightest whisper, and faded away to nothing.
He thought Ma might be able to say something about the things he was seeing.
‘Where are those boys? Girls-and-boys,’ he said, remembering a sound chain in story she had read him. She pretended not to hear as she stirred the cake mixture.
She heard. She asked Terry and Bob about other houses and children when they came. She asked them at the part just before they were leaving, when they were eating cake and drinking tea, and feeling round and harmless. Bob stared into his tea and gave no news of others. Terry ate another cake. They pretended not to hear.
Dalyon could speak louder than she could with her frightened little song. He would ask them again, in his own way, looking at them right at the face. It hurt him to do that, but they liked him to try. They would give him a small glass ball to hold for awhile, each time he did. The glass ball had a black double triangle, and another ball inside.
’Where are boys-and-girls Terry-and-Bob, Bob-and-Terry where, where, where? Boys-and-girls and birds in trees, tree-birds singing gaw-aw, la, la, ah-oh.’
He said it looking at them right in the face, hard and loud. He waited for them to give him the ball to hold, but they didn’t. They looked at each other, picked up their hats and their backpacks, and left.
Perhaps they failed to understand what he was trying to say. He had his own language, using words that came into his head and felt right in his mouth, rather than those that others suggested, those harsh sounds devoid of music. Maybe it was that he was small and they were large. It seemed that all but him were large. He was the odd one out, except for the cat which made itself even smaller by creeping around all day on its hands and feet.
Bob and Terry would make themselves small by sitting down as soon as they could after they arrived. After spending some time watching him do his tricks on the swing and the trampoline, they would sit and eat and drink with her at the table. They would speak to her in low sleepy tones.  She sat with her mouth in a smile, wanting them to leave, as much as she waited for them to come with their presents of food and papers. They would go on and on, filling the room with a low buzz.
After a while other movements would join Ma’s smile. Her face would tighten and her eyebrows would stand closer together. This happened so much now that she had two lines that stayed between her eyebrows even when she slept. Dalyon knew this from watching her face by moonlight, once when the moon was big.
When Terry and Bob went away the time that Dalyon asked about the children, Ma sat with him. He felt her needing something from him, crowding in on his work.  It spoiled his concentration.
‘Don’t look. Go away. Go away,’ he said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her face make a strange shape.  
‘I don’t want to’, she said. 
It became a game then. ‘Go away, go away, go away Miss moo-moo.’
She tickled him and made a funny laughing song.
‘What did you say? What did you say? What did you say?’
This made him laugh.
Sometimes she would close him up in her arms and rock him gently until he fell asleep. She would sing to him in her small dancing stream voice, so delicate and fragile that he would be afraid to move in case it broke.  When the singing came to its end she stroked his hair and said words that he felt as soft feathers against his cheek.
‘Where do you think you got such black shiny hair my baby? Such black eyes? Such pale skin. Where did you come from my little one, my child? Not that one, I hope. Oh, I hope you have learned enough. Have you learned enough? I love you Daly, so much. So much. What will become of us my son, my poor little one? Will you remember me? ‘
She sang to him again, a song filled with soft reds, purples and blues, as his eyes and body grew heavy.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 25, 2013 19:14

Iris Lavell's Blog

Iris Lavell
Iris Lavell isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow Iris Lavell's blog with rss.