non-verbal communication

The year I turned 30, I spent three months in France and Spain, mostly staying with the family of my then lover, a man who called himself a SuperWog. Born in French colonial Algeria, he was a real mixture of Mediterranean bloods. He'd taught himself English watching Kojak as a squatter in London, but despite being naturally gifted with languages, he didn't care for talking much. Unlike me, an obsessively verbal type. I thought I'd go mad. I had no one to talk to, not even books to read. I'd studied German at school and he'd only given me a handful of lessons in French before we left. His family tried hard to make me feel welcome but I was desperately lost and lonely. With the vocabulary of a two year old, I began to feel and behave like one too.

Eventually, with the help of red wine and high motivation, I managed to crack the code. The more abstract the topic the easier it was to converse because the English words tended to come from French. Interestingly, though, I got by much better in Spain even though I had almost no vocab. It wasn't just because Spanish isn't slurred together like French. It was because Spaniards are so expressive. Someone would say 'equestro' and then mimic riding a horse. Hey presto. Non-verbal communication.

Last week in Turkey, the same magic was at play. My partner and I and another couple were staying in Uskudar, on the Asian side. No one spoke English and none of us had any Turkish. But we managed to have traditional Turkish baths, buy groceries, order meals, and explain and solve problems. All because of good will and high motivation. At times I felt like a one year old, especially when pretending to be a dog tearing our rubbish bags apart, but I needed to explain why I couldn't leave the bags where instructed. 'OK, OK,' said the guards. They got me. How wonderful.

Romantic ideals

Well, CJS, your comments about connections between my fascination for Heathcliff and feelings for my brother left me reeling. This is a big topic, but I'll make a small start.

I was in my late 20s when I read "Wuthering Heights" for the first time. It made a huge impression on me. Until that time, I had never encountered a character with whom I'd identified so strongly (Catherine Earnshaw) or a perspective on romantic love that so matched my sensibilities (mirror image connection).

In my own experience, love is involuntary. It bypasses conscious processes and operates on very deep and basic levels. Of course, managing relationships requires a lot of conscious effort and skill, but the motivation to do so is either there or not. You can neither create it nor kill it.

It's a bit like McLelland's theory of work motivation: what gives you a buzz and drives you in life is innate. Your values, on the other hand, are shaped culturally and can change through life experience. When I encountered these ideas in the corporate world, a lot of things fell into place for me. I was putting myself under immense stress because what I wanted to do frequently conflicted with what I thought I should do.

Sooo, back to "Wuthering Heights". No credible character is all light. What gives me a buzz about Cathy AND Heathcliff are their self-reliance, resilience and passion. Their dark sides are vile -- selfishness, callousness, and arrogance -- but these are the very flip sides of their positives.

Like Cathy and Heathcliff, my brother and I effectively raised ourselves. Which means we have just as little patience as they did with sweet, pampered Linton types. Arguably, we haven't take our dark sides to quite their extremes. Then again, maybe we have.

We all have darkness in us. But we bond with others who share our shadows. It's only natural. I've learned to let myself enjoy my buzzes and duck a few truly loathed shoulds.

PND pioneer

In the mid 70s, post-natal depression was not on the public radar. I'd never heard of it until I'd had it, and even then not straight away.

When my new baby was about three weeks old, I cracked up. I'd spent 72 hours awake, many of them hallucinating. It was like the "Easy Rider" cemetery scene without the acid, music and cool clothes. I went to my local GP and asked to be hospitalised. I wanted a huge horse dose of tranquilliser. I wanted to sleep. I was sure I could manage if I could just stop my head going for a while. But when I got to the local hospital, they decided I was a psycho case and they didn't have the facilities to cope. So they sent me to Royal Brisbane Hospital, aka "the biggest hospital in the southern hemisphere". Pretty soon I was signing a voluntary admission form to the Big Loony Bin (one of Queensland's ugliest over-sized icons). In retrospect, it was strangely hilarious, but I was in no mood for joking at the time. I was wheeled into a dark ward and woke up to find myself in a very unfunny farm.

I knew my head wasn't right but it certainly wasn't as bad as all of these women around me -- some ancient and demented, others young and nymphoid, others again just broken down by disadvantage. What a place. There was no peace, privacy or dignity. Shower cubicles had no doors. Dining tables and chairs were miniaturised. Patients screamed and sobbed all night. But I couldn't get out. I'd signed myself in and I had to wait until the next scheduled medical review to be cleared for release. Eventually I had my turn before the panel and some bearded bloke who looked like a caricature of Sigmund Freud asked me if I thought I was sane (or something to that effect -- I can't vouch for my objectivity at the time). He was flanked by women in tweed skirts and twin sets, and as I solemnly swore I was perfectly fine and fully cured, their faces kept morphing into baby pouts. Whether they could tell this or not, I don't know, but I was forced to stay another day in the locked ward, where I had more surreal conversations with doctors. They clearly thought I was suffering from long-term issues, not messed-up hormones.

For the next 12 months, I was treated by psychiatrists using only talk-talk tactics. One told me I was manic depressive. Another said I was a spoiled brat pretending to be sick to get attention. Not a day went past without my wanting to die. I was a serious danger to myself and my little boy, but somehow I managed to survive. And one day I told my shrink that I'd decided I needed to get out of the house and get a job. "Who'll look after the baby?" he asked. "My husband will," I told him. The doctor accused me of being selfish and unnatural. I was so furious with him, that I stormed out determined to sort myself out on my own.

I've read somewhere that depression is anger at oneself, so redirecting the anger externally is actually therapeutic. That bastard shrink did me a favour, ultimately. To this day, though, I remain appalled at his stupid, sexist, high-risk approach. I got better and raised two children with whom I have great relationships. No thanks to the system.

I hate the seventies

What a disastrous decade that was. There's a tendency among Gen Xers to romanticise this time, just as every generation does of its childhood era. But let me tell you: very few people in my neck of the woods were interested or able to taste the few cultural highlights (like Danish teak furniture, Marimekko fabrics, new wave music and The Female Eunuch). Most people opted for ugly mission brown and burnt orange over-stuffed lounges, macrame wall hangings, ABBA and Charlie's Angels. Men twisted feminist ideas into self-serving crap: having sex is like having a coffee, no big deal, why should you be jealous, don't be so uptight. Women were herded into frizzing their hair and dressing like earth mothers or Swedish vamps.

All that stuff on TV about Woodstock and free love made suburban dads restless. Mine started wearing body shirts and growing sideburns. Then he left mum for the neighbour's wife, so I had to do my Senior exams with an abscess pounding in one ear and mum pummelling the other: if you ever have an affair with a married man, I'll never talk to you again. (Like that was supposed to deter me?)

Somehow I managed to do so well in my exams that I could have easily got into Law or some other lucrative career path. Instead I chose art college and found myself drawing plaster casts of nude figures (life modelling was illegal back then in Queensland!) and arranging bits of dowel on planks (they called it 3D studies). Disillusioned, I dropped out and applied to a college in Toowoomba which offered the first film and TV course in Australia and the chance to study visual and performing arts at the same time. It was the Whitlam era. All the lecturers were American expats, failed actors and painters who boasted about their "busts" for civil rights protests and recreational drug use. They didn't believe in structured classes or passing value judgements on students' work. No one could fail: the only assessments were "complete" or "incomplete". Toowoomba was a very odd location for such an experiment. In those days it was full of rich pastoralists cruising the streets in Rolls Royces and Bentleys with windscreen stickers complaining about Whitlam's abolition of the super-phosphate bounty. People would stop, wind down their windows, remove their sunglasses and stare at the weird college students. Forced by economics and logistics to hitchhike to college each day, I heard the line every second day: "Can I ask you a personal question? Are you an advocate of free love?" Puke.

I fought with the college director, an evil egotist who'd once appeared in "The Cruel Sea" with Robert Mitchum and had been married at one stage to Agnes Morehead (of TV's "Bewitched" Fame). I'd been his pet to begin with, but later I began to object to his power games. He cast us all in his personal dramatisation of Walt Whitman's poetry. Men could wear jeans and T shirts, but women were forced to wear body stockings. I thought it was exploitative. He thought I was an uptight bitch. Even more disillusioned, I dropped out again and got pregnant (accidentally on purpose) to a man I'd married so I could get tertiary allowance.

Naively I thought that looking after a baby would be like caring for a cat. A nature child at heart, I didn't bother going to classes or reading books. I fervently believed everything would just click into place. It didn't.

To be continued...

Literature or what?

Blurt, blurt, blurt--that's what blogging's about. Forget the composition. Never mind the quality of expression or idea. Just spew. I'm not good at it, I know. My son, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic and accomplished proponent. He's prolific, natural, entertaining. Must be a generational thing. Anyway, stung by anonymous criticisms, let me have another stab at the business. I've had a few drinks (OK, many drinks) and I can't sleep. Too many things are on my mind.

Number one: what makes one book literary, prize-worthy, collectable, memorable, treasured, while another is at most amusing, diverting? I've recently finished reading two books by Orhan Pamuk--The Museum of Innocence and Istanbul: Memories and the City. I was drawn to them because I'll be visiting Istanbul soon and I read an intriguing review in The Age (Melbourne's metro broadsheet). I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I half suspected that Pamuk's recent Nobel Prize for Literature was more about ideological barrows (pushing niche nobility) than absolute merit. But I was truly humbled by what I discovered.

A writer friend of mine thinks that it's writing style that distinguishes literature from pulp (gross exaggeration but this is a blog after all). But if that's so, translations will always fall short of the mark. And even allowing for the translation gap, I can't say I've been enchanted by Pamuk's sentence and chapter construction. On the other hand, I've been deeply and mysteriously affected by his canvas craft. Interesting. He has something to say, and he does it slowly, deliberately, unbloggingly. Long live the blurt-free form.

Secondly, I had lunch today with one of my longest-standing and most controversial friends. We've had our ups and downs to say the least, including five years or so when I classed her as enemy. Long story. But life is short. If you expect people to be perfect, you'll soon be alone. I have many gripes with this woman, but also many commonalities. She's another bad girl, larger than life, flawed but fabulous.

The connecting thought? On YouTube, I heard Pamuk talking about how novels taught him about the value of individual choice versus cultural conformity. Relationships are a case in point. Accept the whole package or move on. Neat details don't necessarily add up to worthwhile bundles.

Are you out there, Rod?

My brother, Rod Schneider, has been missing for more than ten years. Tomorrow is his birthday. In the hope that he might happen upon this blog in a googling moment, I am posting something I wrote for him:

Why did you disappear, Rod? When did the rot set in to break the bonds between us? Back in 1980 when you left your first wife and destroyed the business you built with my first husband? Or five years later when you came to France, outraged my second man’s family and ruined my thirtieth birthday party? Who felt worse each time? You, with guilt? Or me, with a sense of betrayal?

I thought we were back on track in 1995 when I visited you in Germany. You were my astonishing baby brother again – intense, moody and occasionally explosive, but as interesting and insightful as you had ever been. I thought we had forgiven each other’s mad moments. Wounded children become wounded adults, don’t they? We had some excuses.

And there we were – me forty, you thirty-eight – both successful and resolved in our own ways. I was a senior public affairs manager in a big corporation. I had two kids and a cute place in an inner Sydney suburb that was gentrifying by the day. Sadly, I didn’t have the relationship side sorted, but you did. You seemed happy with your second wife, Friedericke, and she seemed far warmer than when you’d brought her to my thirtieth birthday debacle. You had made your apartment in an obscure German village gorgeous and gadgety. And you didn’t give a damn that she made the money while you dabbled in astrology, soap-making and software development. We had forged ahead in opposite directions and in some ways we had both reached our peak.

You had always been handsome, in the sort of boy-poet way that made women want to mother and brother you. But now you had matured into a striking wizard of a man – so much so that I didn’t recognise you when you met me at Frankfurt airport. After ten years, I still had a vivid picture of you in my mind, but I hadn’t added long hair and subtracted five kilos. I was standing there waiting for you when a complete stranger took my breath away. He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans – tall, bony and beautiful with streaming hair of coal, copper and silver. Only as he came close did I see those blue eyes burning into mine and realise that it was you. No one looking on would have imagined I was your sister – I was so different in colouring and tone. My hair was as long but completely copper, my face was girly rather than gaunt, and my manner was as light and airy as yours was intensely focused. Indeed, you looked more like Friedericke’s sister. The snowy-haired Christmas tree angel I remembered from ten years before now mirrored your new starved, scrubbed and androgynous style.

Purposefully, you led us to the train station below the airport and we bought tickets for Saarbrucken. Once we were on our way, you relaxed and we started bouncing ideas off each other the way we used to as teenagers. It was my first time in Germany and I was struck by the brutal edge to the architecture, signage and systems I saw around us. Pointing to a chocolate billboard advertisement, you said that the slogan “quadratisch, praktisch, gut” meant "square, practical, good”. “Where else in the world would people sell chocolate that way?” you asked with a mixture of contempt and admiration. At Saarbrucken, we caught a bus to Lummershied and then walked to your apartment in the basement of a large house. It was decorated beautifully and imaginatively, just as I had expected, but I sensed something dark and forbidding about the place. Your in-laws owned it and lived above you, but there was little contact and even less warmth between the two households. You didn’t introduce me to them for days and only spoke of them in the harshest of terms. But I wasn’t particularly concerned at the time. I shiver now when I think back to the call you made to our sister before you vanished, claiming one of Friedericke’s relatives was threatening your lives.

I presumed you were just being melodramatic. We’re both inclined that way, you have to admit. And it’s perfectly understandable, given our manic genes and depressive upbringing. But you’ve been missing so long, I sometimes imagine that you really were in danger and perhaps the worst happened and you’re dead and no one found your body, or identified it, or knew we existed to inform us.

Deep down, though, I am certain you’re alive and you’ve just cut us off. Maybe you regret that rash decision but can’t bring yourself to reverse it. And that’s the problem – not knowing. For you, that’s probably the point. You want us to suffer. Back in 1995, you kept describing yourself as “cruel but fair”. Sure, it was a line straight out of Monty Python and there was a glint of the old Rod’s cutting wit in the way you used it, but you meant what you said. Nothing is more serious than a joke, is it?

That was one of the life observations we mulled over that cold, wet month of May 1995. For three days we were cooped up inside your apartment, unable to make the excursions you had planned for my visit. Instead you cooked delicious vegan meals, which was an extraordinary feat considering your long list of banned ingredients (meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy products) and your special quirks (like measuring everything to the nanogram and cutting back anything even remotely indulgent). When we ate, I was obliged to drink my wine alone because you never touched the stuff. I even had to buy a corkscrew because you saw no use for such a utensil. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves. We played the occasional game of Scrabble or Five Hundred, but mostly we talked … and talked … and talked.

We discussed every aspect of art from graphic design to grand literature and we plunged into astrology, numerology and tarot to analyse personalities and relationships. I read your cards and you meditated on the natal charts of everyone in my worry basket. I was at a turning point – the classic mid-life crisis – and you were head-butt blunt in your advice. Cruel but fair, you kept on saying.

One comment in particular still haunts me. We talked about regrets. Do you remember? You asked me if I had any regrets and I said I didn’t. I felt I’d done the best I could at every point of my life and the mistakes I’d made were all part of the rich pattern of life. Without pain, how could anyone appreciate pleasure? You shook your head. For you, my answer meant I’d learned nothing and I was doomed to keep stumbling in the dark. My riposte was worthy of Sophocles, I thought back then. “That’s exactly the point!” I said. “I have learned valuable lessons from all of my mistakes. So why regret them? They’ve spurred positive change.”

After all this time, I understand the scornful look on your face when you heard this. I wasn’t facing up to my regrets back then, but I’ve more than made up for that since. I need to tell you about that. I need to talk to you adult to adult. I’ve finally grown up. Menopause has worked magic for me. I see things so much more clearly without the hormonal rages that screwed up my emotions and skewed my judgement.

More importantly, though, there is so much family news you should know. Mum is now living here in Melbourne. Our sister, Marilyn, had a stroke that fried the front part of her brain, but she seems happy and has remarried. There are new babies – Stephen’s and Carmina's daughter and son in Barcelona, Kate’s and Anna's son here in Melbourne. I’ve finally found a solid relationship. John and I have been together for more than eleven years now.

Who would have thought I could do it? Not you. You told me in 1995 that I seduced men with my femininity and then dismayed them with the full story – that I was a harpy, I suppose. You clearly disapproved of my taste in men and most likely how I played the game. They deserved everything I dished out, you said. Cruel as you were, I must admit you were pretty fair in your assessment. And strange as it may sound, I appreciated that.

I miss you, Rod. So do Mum and Marilyn. I can’t hunt you down again. When I tried that, I alienated you even more. So I am writing this. Perhaps you will think of us on your birthday.

This is what i want to tell you – you are more than blood. I would like you whether you were related or not. You have infuriating bad qualities. So do we all. You are intelligent, funny and soulful – the three qualities I demand of friends. I admire your inventiveness, your fine taste and your philosophical depth. I feel protective about you. I cannot like any man without comparing him to you. You were my first real friend. Where are you?

When to let go

At the 2008 Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne, one speaker offered some advice which stuck with me. "The world is not hanging out for your book," she said. "Take your time. Get it right. Wait until you're truly happy with it." A few months later, the speaker at another workshop I'd signed up for advised the opposite. "Don't hang onto your manuscript too long. Let it go. Take the chance at getting helpful feedback."

I puzzled about the apparent contradiction. Then I realised both bits of advice were spot on, depending upon the writer's personality and the manuscript's stage of development.

When I finished my first draft, I was impatient and over-confident. After years in the corporate world, I'd been indoctrinated in the 80/20 rule. It was more important for me to meet deadlines than drag the chain on minor details. What I didn't understand at the time was the benefit of perspective. You can't judge your own work without getting some distance from it.

So, after several strong doses of feedback about the shortcomings in my work, I started diving deeper into my ideas and their expression. Seven minor redrafts and one major redraft later, I'm experiencing the other side of the timing dilemma. I'm scared of letting go. Having put so much of myself into this book now, I'm much more afraid of failure than earlier in the piece when it was more of a mental vs emotional exercise.

A long time ago my brother told me that I should follow my intuition rather than my impulse. Differentiating one from the other has never been easy for me, because I'm hot-headed. But if I relax and let my cannier side come through, my timing is usually impeccable. I'm almost ready. And I know I'll know when I should try again.