Gratitude

Today I calculated statistics in my head, worked them like a mantra while I looked around a room filled with women in hospital gowns. We sat around the walls, a square coffee table in the centre, and surreptitiously eyed each other over the fake flowers and the pamphlets.

TIZIANO Vecellio: The Venus of Urbino

Just before Christmas I went for my first mammogram (because I’ve reached the age where mammograms are considered necessary, not because I had any concerns). I’d forgotten all about it until, five days ago, I received a phone call telling me that I needed to come in for further tests.

The woman on the phone was friendly and calm and told me not to be alarmed. The chances were it was all fine, there was just some density in the scan that needed to be checked. This morning at 7.30 I had to be across town at the large BreastScreen Qld centre in Chermside*. I took off my shirt and bra and put on the faded gown and went to wait with the other women who had also been called in because their scans showed abnormalities.

There were at least fifteen of us in the room and I pressed each face, exposed throat and V of chest into my memory like flowers. We’d been given a handout to read and, while it helped answer questions, it didn’t allay my fears. The handout said that about 7 per cent of people who go for mammograms get called back for these additional tests (I’d thought it would be more), of this 7 per cent, only 10 per cent of us will have something to worry about. The spectre of breast cancer is of course in the backs of all our minds.

I stared at these women – mothers, sisters, lovers, daughters, friends – and realised that, if the stats were right, then at least one of us would leave the room with bad news. I was the youngest one there and I felt a surge of relief that it probably wouldn’t be me. But then I looked at the lines on the faces and the worry in the eyes and regretted my selfish response. I wanted today to be a good news day for all of us. I wanted each woman to leave with a lightness in her step and the knowledge that she was healthy.

The doctors and nurses were warm, efficient and understanding. The volunteer at the front desk brought cups of tea and comfort. A couple of the women talked to each other. The rest of us read our books or magazines and tried to smile when we caught each others’ eyes. I spent two hours there and saw six different specialists. Each time I came back to the waiting room I tried to gauge the news the others had received but most eyes stayed down.

I am one of the lucky ones. I left with a sore breast, a big smile and a light heart. The shading of concern in my scan was just a cyst. A surgeon inserted a needle and drained it. (I asked to see what came out and rather wish I hadn’t!) I know my breasts are healthy after a physical examination, two ultrasounds, a further mammogram and the draining procedure. I don’t need to go back for another two years unless I have concerns or experience any changes.

But the chances are that at least one of the women who smiled at me in that waiting room won’t be so lucky. So, while I feel great relief and gratitude for myself, I am sending my thoughts to those other women. Mothers, grandmothers, lovers, colleagues, friends, I hope that if your news was bad today, that it was caught early. I hope that you’ll be treated and will regain your strength and spirit and that you’ll laugh and love for many years more.

Find out more about breast cancer.

* Something else to be grateful for: that I live in a country where there is superb, free care provided to people who need it. I saw six professionals today and underwent several expensive procedures and didn’t have to pay a cent. Thank you Australia.

Man and Other Natural Disasters

“it’s the myth, not the fact, that always proves strongest in the end”

I recently received a beautiful hardback novel in the mail. It came from a Canadian author, Nerys Parry, and she’d sent it to me because the idea for the novel had come from reading one of my uncle’s books.

Through reading Supernature, Parry came up with the character of Simon: a reclusive man hoarding an encyclopaedia of bizarre facts in his brain. In the acknowledgements for Man & Other Natural Disasters, Parry writes:

The inspirations for this book are many and multiple. From a tattered version of Lyall Watson’s ‘iconic’ 1974 Coronet edition of Supernature, salvaged from a garage sale many summers ago, the character of Simon was sprouted. Many of Simon’s theories emerged from Watson’s research into the paranormal, including the references to water’s memory, Ted Serios’ thoughtography, spontaneous human combustion, the climax state, and incidents of coincidence, or “synchronicity”. I am indebted to Watson, who passed away in 2004; he was a visionary, one of those few who are truly unafraid of the unknown and the unknowable. I hope his work continues to surprise and inspire us to see the world with new eyes.

On its own, this would be a lovely tribute but, in the context of reading the whole of Man & Other Natural Disasters, it is a truly glorious re-imagining of Lyall’s work. The novel is compulsive reading. I finished it in a 24-hour period on my Christmas holidays, while listening to the wind roaring through the trees, pounding up a swell on the normally placid lake we like to visit.

There were many beautiful lines that I stopped to re-read for the joy of savouring them, rolling them in my mouth like a taste I didn’t want to finish. “It is not so easy, here, to shake off the long months of cold. They cling to you like guilt, and for so long, you almost can’t believe there is such a thing as the forgiveness of spring.”

Thank you Nerys Parry for writing such a beautiful book and acknowledging my uncle’s influence on its inception. And thank you for gifting me with a copy.

Rejection: a user’s guide

Today just hammered me with a punch in the solar plexus. I had tried to prepare myself but, when you’re hoping against hope for something and it feels like all your future rides on it, it’s hard to stay positive when it all comes crashing down.

My daughter - who would never let rejection get her down.

I got the phone call I’d been waiting for this morning but the news was not what I wanted to hear. Because I was in a shared office I did what any self respecting adult does: I hid in a toilet cubicle and cried. The tears were part sadness and part anger at myself: for thinking I’d stood a chance, for letting this thing be so important and for crying in a frigging toilet.

Now I’m trying to get myself together the only way I know how – by writing.

While I sobbed in the toilets I went through all the usual stages I go through when I get rejected. If I make it sound like this is a commonplace thing, it’s because it is. I was an actor for years and being an actor means facing rejection on an almost daily basis and receiving it nine times out of ten. Playwriting takes a lot longer so the rejections tend to be spaced a bit further apart. (Hmm, maybe that’s part of the problem: I’m out of practice.)

Now that I’m stepping out of my bruised chest and into my head, I’m starting to get some perspective on the whole thing.  (This is why I love writing.) I thought I’d share the processes I go through when dealing with rejection. There might be someone out there who’ll recognise themself in some of it and won’t feel quite as alone.

Four stages of rejection

1. Denial: It must be a mistake. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this a parallel universe where everything goes wrong …
Physical symptoms: stomach churning, winded, light headed.

2. Acceptance: Oh God – it did happen.
Physical symptoms: Intense pain and tears.

3. Despair: I’m no good. I’ve never been any good. Everything good that’s happened has been a fluke or a mistake. I’m useless and I should do everyone a favour and give up now.
Physical symptoms: more tears, panic, nausea and a longing for escape.

4. Determination: I’ll show those bastards.
I don’t have physical symptoms for this one as I don’t tend to reach it. But I hear other people express things like this and always feel really impressed that their anger fuels them to keep going and to strive harder.

I think perhaps the reason I keep going is to get myself out of number three and so that I can stop hating myself. You see, when I was younger, I used to stay at number three for a long time. Sometimes a really long time. I would go into a dark place and it would be very hard to find my way back out again. Like a bear withdrawing to a cave to survive winter’s harshness, I would retreat, only to face the far harsher attacks of my own mind. The real world rejection was nothing compared to the hammering I’d inflict on my already bruised self.

Today I went into, and got out of, number three in the space of a few hours. That’s unheard of for me and I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself until I remembered the little pill that I take every morning…

Just over a year ago I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication and I’ve been taking it every day since. It’s calmed my panic attacks and, while I think of it as an anti-anxiety medication, it’s actually an anti-depressant. So, perhaps my cave days were actually depression. And maybe the reason I’m coping better now is chemical.

I don’t know how to feel about that. Whether it makes my victory over the crying girl in the toilet a real victory or just a drug induced one. Have I learnt and grown or am I still as trapped in old habits as I ever was?

I don’t have any answers. But I know that today was awful and I’ve survived it better than I would have in the past. If that’s thanks to a pill, then I’m grateful help is so readily available.

When systems go mad

DOCTOR:   It’s time. We’re going to turn off the life-support.

MOTHER:   But there’s nothing wrong with her –

DOCTOR:   Of course there is. Can’t you see? She’s gangrenous from head to toe. She has no brain function left at all.

MOTHER:   But she’s sitting up –

DOCTOR:    An involuntary muscle spasm. Ignore it.

MOTHER:   And, look, she’s smiling at me.

DOCTOR:   It doesn’t mean anything. I promise you, she’s a vegetable.

MOTHER:   My baby.

DOCTOR:   We’ll switch her off and give you a new one.

MOTHER:   A new baby?

DOCTOR:   Oh yes – we have a cupboard filled with spares. All much more modern, user-friendly and cost effective than your old model.

MOTHER:   I don’t believe it.

DOCTOR:   Here. I’ll show you.

                      DOCTOR opens cupboard and pulls out a toy robot.

MOTHER:   That’s not a baby.

DOCTOR:   Of course it is.

MOTHER:   It’s not even alive.

DOCTOR:   That’s why it’s so much better. It’ll never get sick, never cry. It’ll just sit here, nice and quietly and do what it’s told.

MOTHER:   What about smiling?

DOCTOR:   Over-rated.

MOTHER:   Talking?

DOCTOR:   Silence is a virtue.

MOTHER:   No thanks.

DOCTOR:   What?

MOTHER:   I’m happy with the child I’ve got. I want to take her home now.

DOCTOR:   You can’t.

MOTHER:   Why not?

DOCTOR:   Official policy. We don’t let patients go home unless they’ve passed our tests for optimal health.

MOTHER:   But she’ll be my responsibility. I’ll look after her. I’ll give her everything she needs, and you’ll never have to see me again.

DOCTOR:   Impossible. She’s been in this hospital. If she leaves she could damage our reputation.

MOTHER:   So what are you going to do?

DOCTOR:   Switch off the life support.

MOTHER:   You do realise she isn’t on life support.

DOCTOR:   Why on earth not?

MOTHER:   Because she’s functioning perfectly.

DOCTOR:   We’ll see about that.

                    DOCTOR picks up a mallet and hits baby repeatedly. MOTHER screams.

DOCTOR:   There. Now she needs life support.

                   MOTHER scoops up baby and cradles her.

MOTHER:   Get away from her, you monster.

DOCTOR:   Just doing my job. (Holding out robot) Leave her and take one of these instead.

MOTHER:   You’re supposed to care. To help people.

DOCTOR:   I have a whole team of mechatronic technicians working behind the cupboard there. They rely on me.

MOTHER:   You kill perfectly healthy children just to keep your robot makers in business?

DOCTOR:   We’re just doing what’s necessary to meet our KPIs. Now give me the baby.

MOTHER:   Never!

                   DOCTOR approaches MOTHER. She grabs a scalpel and stabs him. He deflates. She peels back his suit and there’s a robot beneath his clothes. The robot slowly grinds and whirrs into action.

ROBOT:    Give me the baby.

                MOTHER goes into a frenzy, stomping on the ROBOT until she’s broken it into tiny pieces. She gives it a last kick for good measure and runs out with her child.

Lyall Watson radio interview

My heartfelt thanks to Robert Shannon who sent me this interview recorded February 26, 1996, while Lyall Watson was on a book tour for Dark Nature. The interview was recorded at Boulder, Colorado, at KGNU studios. The interviewer is Ellen Klaver.

In the interview, Lyall discusses his thoughts on the nature of evil.

Lyall Watson radio interview 26 Feb 1996

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did.

365 plays

So, just because I don’t have enough on my plate already, I’ve decided to set myself a new challenge.

I want to read a play a day for a year. It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for a few years and have kept putting off because of being too busy. But now I’ve decided it’s time.

I’ve set up a new blog, 365 plays, and I’m going to do a post every day with a brief overview of the play I’ve just read. I’m up to play 5 now – so only 360 more to go!

Before you think I’ve gone crazy, there is some method to my madness. I read a quote recently from Van Badham saying that people who wanted to write plays should read them. She suggested reading a play a day. There are many days when I do just this, for uni or for pleasure. So now I’ve decided to get serious about it.

My hope is that the more I read, the better a playwright I will be. Some of the magic will be absorbed, but I will also become more discerning. I’ll learn from the dodgy lines as well as from the beautiful ones. Each new playwright I read, shows me another way of doing things. Another way of looking at the world and creating something new on stage.

I can already see the next stage for the project – reading a play a day and writing a page in the style of each play or inspired by each play to go alongside it. I’m not doing that yet. Right now I’m reading and reflecting. But maybe it will become a playwriting exercise as well.

I might not be posting here that much as this new project takes off. If you’re interested you can subscribe to the new blog and get an email each day with details of the latest play read. I could do with a cheer squad to keep me going so hope to see you over at 365 plays.

Downtime

I wonder if mountain climbers get the blues after they’ve conquered Everest? If singers have an emotional crash after a big concert? If writers cry when they finish the last edit of their manuscripts? I’d have thought there’d be champagne and celebrations, but what happens when the bottle is empty and the well wishers have gone?

And what about the climbers who aren’t going for Everest, just the challenge at the top of the next rise? Or the novelist who’s pausing at the end of the first draft, knowing she has to go back and start again? Do they give themselves that metaphorical pat on the back and keep going, or do they pause and wonder what they’re doing?

Life carries on like it always does. Work continues with all its usual grumbles and challenges, laundry waits to be folded, pantries need filling and all I want is to sink into a pool of water and float just beneath the surface.

I’d like to look up at the sky through this film of water, feeling myself buoyant and weightless, hearing just the muffled beating of my heart. And then I’d like to freeze that moment in time. I’d like to be able to climb into it any time I want, stretch into the quiet and the weightlessness and float, abandoned.

Downtime.

I’ve never held the word before and looked at it like this.

Time to be down.  Time to be blue.

Downtime.

Putting time down.

Stopping the clock for a while.

I want to put the deadlines on hold, walk away from the everyday pressures and float for a bit. Just to get my strength up for the next hill.

Academic language

Academia has its own language. It is filled with code words and meandering sentences. Why say something in one sentence if you can say it in a page? Why use a short word if a long one can be used instead?

I write this half in jest, but only half. I have been reading theory and it has been doing my head in. I resisted for a long time. Years ago when I was at drama school and dreamt of being an actor, there was a course we had to do called ‘Signs and Meanings’. It was about semiotics and I refused point blank to have a bar of it. What did semiotics have to do with acting? How could it possibly make me a better actor?

I was (and maybe still am) ridiculously stubborn. I refused to sit the exam and read none of the textbooks. I could be accused of tilting at windmills, or perhaps of laziness. While I definitely have a bit of Don Quixote in me, the reason I refused to learn anything about semiotics was that I was absolutely certain of my future path: I knew that I was going to be an actor. There was no point in bothering with subjects that didn’t propel me to my brilliant career.

I got a one for ‘Signs and Meanings’ – the lowest mark possible – and I never became the successful actor I was so sure was my destiny. I wore my failure at semiotics as a badge of honour but my failure as an actor burned for many years.

Now, two decades later, I am back at university and struggling to open my brain to academic thinking. (I do think of it as opening my brain rather than my mind. I can see the wrenches and clamps, forcing open the spongy grey matter to let this new learning in.)

At first reading theory was dense and impenetrable. I’d read the same paragraph over and over again, trying to make sense of it. I had to read with a dictionary open, looking up terms in every sentence. I felt smaller and more stupid with each word I didn’t know. It takes a certain courage to admit to one’s own ignorance (at least it did for me, even if I was only admitting it to myself).

Part of the problem was that admitting my ignorance and looking up the terms I didn’t know didn’t offer any immediate answers. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias don’t explain theories; they just point you to the theorists. I’d get out a new article or book to try to understand the paragraph in the original that was giving me trouble, and on page one of that new book there’d be another incomprehensible paragraph with yet another theorist and theory for me to get my head around. I felt caught in a never-ending spiral, delving deeper and deeper into the murky depths of philosophy and academia.

But, persevere and there comes a moment where it all starts to click into place. The same theorists and philosophers are mentioned in different texts, you start to recognise them and their names bring a sense of familiarity instead of the old dread. I’ve yet to reach a point where I can say, “Ah, Derrida. I know him well.” But there are at least a few synapses firing now when I read his name and hopefully there will soon be new pathways carved into my brain, allowing the clamps to be put away as understanding blossoms.

Becoming Katherine (part 2)

I took a gap year after I left school and travelled overseas. When I arrived in new places and met new people, there was always that awkward moment when introductions were made. I decided to use it as an opportunity. When asked for my name, I’d ask the stranger what they thought it should be. Some people thought I was mad, but it didn’t worry me. I was drawing up a longlist of possible names for myself.

Possible names

The most frequent suggestion was Sarah. A name I could never use as it belonged to my sister. Others included Rebecca and Emily. I liked these names. They were good names, but they felt no closer to me than Lee did. No one suggested Katherine and, at that time in my life, I knew no Katherines (Kathys, Kates and Kaths, yes, but no Katherines).

I returned from overseas no closer to a new name, but adamant that I couldn’t continue being Lee. It was dusk one evening and I sat in the lounge room with my mother, confiding in her that I couldn’t stand being Lee anymore: that I wanted to change my name but had no idea what to change it to. She went through the list of names she’d had for me before I was born. Nice names, so much better than Lee, but not my name. It seemed hopeless. I could pick one of these random names and be Rebecca or Emily but would it be any different from how I was as Lee? Would I recognise my name when called if I chose one of these new ones?

“Do you remember when you were five?” Mum asked. “At the beach house after we left the farm? You told us your name wasn’t Lee anymore. You wanted us to call you Katherine.”

The name was an electric shock running through me. I started leaping around the lounge room, literally jumping with joy. I’ve never felt such certainty and rightness about anything else as I felt at that moment about being Katherine.

I changed my first name by deed poll soon after. I kept my last name: even if it was a whim of my grandfather’s, it was my connection with my past, my family and my roots. It seemed an important part of my identity and I held on to it.

Finding my name was a homecoming for me.  I realise this will sound strange to many people. I can’t explain why I had such an aversion to the name I was given or why I knew from such a young age that it wasn’t my real name.

It makes me wonder whether Lyall felt the same way about being Malcolm.

Patterns or coincidence

My grandfather Doug changed his name. He had three sons, the eldest of whom (Lyall) changed his name. The other two sons each had three daughters, the eldest on both sides changed their names.

I wonder if there’s a genetic link and whether my children will one day change their names too.  Or if, perhaps, coming from a family where names were changed, gave us the freedom to consider alternatives for ourselves. Maybe there are thousands of people walking around with names they can’t bear, names they hardly recognize but that they feel obliged to keep…

I struggled when it came to naming my own children, wanting to find the perfect names for them. I could have obsessed endlessly, instead I found the names that seemed the best fit for the new humans in my arms and recognised that they might choose to discard them later. Perhaps the perfect name comes from the inside and can’t be imposed from the outside…

PS: In a repeat of history, when she was about five my daughter told me she wanted to change her name. The new name she picked? Yugioh. I’m pretty sure it won’t stick, but she seems set on naming any future child Lee!

Becoming Katherine (part 1)

My family has a history of playing loose with identity. Names are things that can be picked up, added to, shortened or changed as required.

I didn’t know this when I was little. All that I knew was that I hated my name. My parents called me Lee. No middle name. No softening ‘ah’ at the end of the name. For the Zulu workers on the farm, my name was almost impossible. One-syllable words weren’t part of their language. So my beloved nanny and everyone else called me Lee-lor. But Lee-lor was just as bad as Lee in my ears, maybe even worse. I shuddered every time anyone said my name.

Lee-lor

 

I was about six when I first met my uncle Lyall and discovered that someone in the family had changed their name. We were at Hwange National Park (then called Wankie game reserve) in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) – how fitting that all the places I mention have also changed their names. It was a family reunion and Lyall was there with his beautiful blonde girlfriend, Annie Wilson. I saw how Lyall’s lips tightened when his brothers called him Mo (their pet name for him, abbreviated from his first name Malcolm). Annie called him Lyall and I realised there was a new and old version of the man. The old, familial ties were with Malcolm. The new, chosen relationships were with Lyall. As I grew older, I resolved to call him Lyall. It was what he preferred and it gave me a chance to be part of his new life and not someone he had to tolerate because of blood relations.

We left South Africa when I was ten and moved to England. When my parents enrolled me in my new school they put my name down on the forms as Lee Watson, dropping the hyphenated surname that was on my passport. Mum and Dad said it would be easier at school: that I wouldn’t have to constantly spell my name.

My father also called himself Watson at this time. When I asked about it, he said that Lyall-Watson was an affectation of his father’s. That it wasn’t our proper name. Apparently my grandfather was christened Douglas Lyall Watson but he changed his name, hyphenating his middle name with his surname because Watsons were too common. (I still haven’t resolved the shame I felt on hearing this.)

All through my schooling then, in England and Australia, I was Lee Watson. The hated first name and a last name that differed from the one on my passport and birth certificate. I was an awkward and dreamy child and having a name that seemed to bear no relation to me made life even more difficult. One of the most notable problems it caused was that I didn’t respond when people called me. They could shout my name until they turned blue and I wouldn’t turn around. I’d be aware that someone was calling someone else and would sometimes wonder at the urgency of the call but never related it to me. So I was accused of being stuck up and snobby.

Most people’s ears prick up when they hear their name. This never happened to me when I was Lee. The name floated past, meaning nothing, having no relationship with me.

It got worse as I got older. Reaching a pinnacle when my first boyfriend whispered my name and I froze. I thought he was talking about another girl, that he’d been caught out saying the wrong name at the worst possible moment. I started to cry and he asked me what was wrong.

“You called me Lee!”

“But that’s your name.”

I was 18 and adrift. I knew who I was inside, but I didn’t know what my name was. All that I knew was that it wasn’t Lee.

To be continued…