Winter thoughts

I've spent the last little while re-reading The Darma Bums by Jack Kerouac, and then realised, much to my fascination, that Japhy Ryder, the inspiration for going, not on the road, but into the mountain, was based on Gary Snyder, whose work I love to read, and who has shared an understanding of oral culture, the importance of the commons, and what it means to be a person living in a more than human world.  I loved Gary Snyder's exploration of deep ecology as more than the wonders or beauties of the natural world, but also the horrors, the maggots, the underground life of forests, and what it means to hold a saw as a ten year old.  He also speaks of getting to know all of our neighbours in this world, including the plants and animals we share our lives with.

Linking back current ideas and inspirations to teenage inspirations and dreams feels quite wonderful, as though it is possible to thread new ideas into old, and see where some of the seeds were perhaps planted.  It's also been a good time for reflections.  Winter in Cape Town is cold and wet, and often the time I like to think through old work or ideas rather than try to work towards new ones.  I tend to find I like to think or dream during winter, and as we head towards spring, I start to wake up, and find the idea of new thoughts (and new writing) more appealing.

We live close to table mountain in Cape Town, and the beautiful mists are a part of life.  We also get to see what is called the 'table cloth' or the clouds coming in over the mountain.  In winter, the shadow from the mountain means that the sun goes down early and the feeling of being in shadow can be quite solid.  Being away from the mountain can sometimes feel quite liberating towards the end of winter.  The shadow can feel quite heavy.  At the same time, I tend to find that working within this space of deep shadow can be interesting, a space of deep thought rather than a quick jump from one idea to another.  Winter's also the time for fires, a time when I catch the scent of woodsmoke when I walk to pick up my daughter from school, and a time when long walks are a welcome relief from being shut inside.

I'm starting to look forward to spring, even just for the opportunity to start wearing short sleeves again, and to get to feel the air on my skin.  The winter fires have been wonderful, but the chance to sit outside in the morning sunlight, to properly awaken from winter shadows, and to start to explore new aspects of my work feels exciting.  I think I am starting to wake up again.

Writing with care

I woke up this morning to a song by Sade, with the lyrics "It hurts like brand new shoes..."

The song is called pearls:

There is a woman in Somalia
Scraping for pearls on the roadside
There's a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
That's how she's dying
She's dying to survive
Don't know what she's made of
I would like to be that brave
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn't choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes

Hurts like brand-new shoes

The song stayed with me until I started reading.  I started with  some of Susan Griffin's work.  Our Secret looks at the ways in which our lives interconnect with the world around us, a world we both inherit and create via our own contributions.  Susan Griffin is an Eco-feminist, but one of her passages focused on art, poverty, and the terrible fear of having a baby whose health is fading.  Griffin explained how poverty seems to expose the rawness and vulnerability of what it means to be a person in this world.  She also explained that art may sometimes be used to challenge the social norms of the time.  Explaining that poor people were (are) sometimes seen to be both less valuable, and less threatened by the loss of a child, Griffin explained that this artwork shows something different:  the fear of a mother for her baby, and the anxiety of the baby's father and sibling, who linger in the background.

Some of Griffin's work focuses on war, and while I was reading, I thought about Rollo May's work on care, and the story he shared of images returning from the Vietnam war.  These images no longer showed the heroics of soldiers.  Instead, May explained that they were images of care.  In a very beautiful paragraph, May explains a scene he had observed on the television of a camera man at a scene where a child comes out of a tunnel which has been gassed by marines.

May explains that the child emerges in a state which is beyond crying.  Instead, he is bewildered by a world which could contain such horrors.  And the 'black' marine, aware of the mistreatment and oppression which exists in his own homeland, possibly sees his own oppression and pain in the face of the child:

"While the announcer of the program rattled on about how the gas is harmful for only ten minutes and then leaves no deleterious effects, the cameraman kept his camera focused on the face of the marine...I think he sees there another human being with a common base of humanity on which they pause for a moment in the swamps of Vietnam.  His look is care.  And the cameraman happens to see him - happens almost always now to see them so - and keeps his camera trained on his face; a subconscious reaching-out only for human interest, rendering to us an unconscious expression of the guilt of us all.  And...keeps his camera pointed at the face of the large 'black' man starting down at the crying child, nameless in the whole sad quicksand of modern war..."  (May, 1969, p 289).

May explains that this image is a simple illustration of care, a state in which something does matter.
He lets us know that care is 'the dogged insistence on human dignity, though it be violated on every side..."

Last week, English journalist, Giles Coren, wrote with a great deal of tenderness and sensitivity about the need to break the cycle of violence or harsh treatment of children in a very moving article which related to a seven year old who was lost in a forest.  The article comes from the London Times, which is usually protected by a pay wall, but can be found here.

He explains how "Mr Tanooka told a Japanese television channel, "I said to Yamato, "Dad made you go through such a hard time.  I am sorry." And then my son said, "You are a good dad.  I forgive you"."

He then shares that "That is how it goes when fathers punish their children.  The violence happens in the heat of the moment and then the burden of forgiveness is placed, almost immediately, upon the child.  The power to make everything okay in the family again is placed in his tiny hands."

And that "The chain has to be broken.  it cannot go on.  The violence and punishment that begin in the home go on to ...cause all of the misery in the world.  And if this chain is to be broken it has to be broken by us.  Me.  You..."

These writers are teaching me about aesthetics or soul, about putting care into action so that it can resonate with others, breaking down the hierarchies which harm other people, and giving us images which embed themselves into the minds of others, offering an awakening or a deeper sense of consciousness.  This, I think, is what it means to work with warmth or soul.  It's what I would like to do too.

Reading and writing

Sometimes this cartoon shows my writing process, and it has certainly been true these last few weeks, but this is probably because some of my work has gone to an outside reader, and I'm quite anxious about whether it will be okay or not.  I've been quite good at imagining readers (usually ones who agree with me) and writing with this reader in mind.  At times, my imagined reader can be a benevolent being, encouraging and supportive.  At other times, the reader in my head is an absolute harpy.  This usually means that any real readers I do have are very much kinder than the imaginary being I frequently contend with.  What a relief.

Last year though, I read a book called 'Hallucinating Foucault' which focused on the relationships between writers and their readers.  The book told of Paul Michel, a fiction(al) writer, and his relationship with Foucault, the French philosopher.  Michel was in an asylum and said to be suffering from schizophrenia.  The book told the story of the relationship between Michel and Foucault, and how Foucault would read Michel's work, never publicly acknowledge having done so, but then give a(n academic) response to the work.  

Foucault was Michel's beloved interlocutor and reader to the point that Foucault's death completely destabilised him.  He never really recovered, despite his later fans stating that "I was your reader too."  And it got me thinking about the value of having support and even dialogue, when it comes to writing.  I've been lucky in that regard, because I have a lot of support (except, sometimes, from my own inner critic).  But the PhD journey could be a lonely one without it.  

I shaped my PhD based on a blog I started at the end of 2013.  As I started writing, I started to realise what mattered most to me within the work I was doing, and the ideas eventually turned into a proposal.  I left the blog behind because it formed the basis of my literature review, and I thought it best to work on that on a more official level.  But the support I got from readers was very welcome.  I also picked up a troll, and though annoying (and very rude) I found the questions helped to clarify (for me) what I believed in.  

This time, it isn't the literature I'm as interested in blogging about, as much as the process of starting a PhD, dealing with those moments where I wonder what on earth I am doing, and the big question, will anybody actually read it anyway, in the end?  There are times when I wonder about my own sanity.  I wonder what I am thinking, giving so much time to work which may just end up on a dusty shelf, read by nobody.  It feels a bit like banishing an imagined friend to the depths of the library and telling him/her to stay there forever. 

And yet, and yet, I learn so much as I go along that I love what I am doing.  I'm more of a researcher than a writer.  I know this because I am more interested in answering questions than already having the answers.  I want to seek out new ways of looking at a situation rather than share what I know.  I love the way research changes my perspectives, and shakes up everything I thought I knew.  And for this reason, it is worth it.  But there are certainly times when I wonder whether I am simply caught up in a moment of madness which takes up a lot of time and contributes little.  

It is at times like this that I can understand Paul Michel's grief at the loss of his reader.   I can understand why a reader could be such a beloved character ("It is you that I love").  Because Paul Michel was diagnosed with schizophrenia, there were moments when I wondered whether Foucault had actually responded to his work, or whether the relationship was an imagined one.  And there were moments when I could understand the need to hallucinate a reader, somebody as interested in your work as you are that they are willing to move it forward or engage with it.  What greater compliment could any writer be given, after all?