Category: Life Experiences

Taking the Train

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Rock formation in New Mexico.

As my train rolled across New Mexico, I was reminded of how much I love this part of the world. Despite being someone who has spent most of my life close to the various huge bodies of water that set major boundaries of North America (the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico), I remain enamored of semi-arid and high desert places.

I have lived in cities since I left home (and the childhood home I left was already becoming a suburb). I love walkable cities with all the options they offer, not to mention the fact that those of us who hear different drummers can usually find a place in the city, while in small towns and the country, we are often out of step.

But all that open sky and space is glorious. It is easy to see why this was and is a special place to a lot of the indigenous people on this continent. It’s easy to want to be here.

I didn’t really mind the slowness of the train. I like the feeling of being in a neutral place, looking at beauty from my window. But it is absurd that we do not have the kind of train service we could and should have, with high speed trains going across the country and service to many more places.

To get to Kansas City from Oakland, I had to take a train to Bakersfield and then a bus from there to Los Angeles. Only in the city of angels could I get a cross country train to Kansas City. That’s the fastest route.

(For those who don’t live on the West Coast: San Francisco and Los Angeles are about 400 miles apart. California’s not as big as Texas, but it is damn big and has a bunch of mountains to boot.)

And the trains are so often late. They are not practical if your schedule is tight. Plus the sleepers are expensive and coach is not comfortable enough for long trips. (Also, the ventilation is OK and the filtration on my train seemed good, but I would not ride unmasked in coach.) Continue reading “Taking the Train”…

[reprint] Psychedelics, Transformation, and the Brain

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I admit to being a biology nerd. Nothing delights me more than understanding how our brains work. This reprint offers a fascinating glimpse into how psychedelics might turbo-charge change (insight? enlightenment? feelings of transcendent peace?).

Psychedelics plus psychotherapy can trigger rapid changes in the brain − new research at the level of neurons is untangling how

New research hints at how psychedelics can trigger rapid, lasting change.
wildpixel/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Edmund S. Higgins, Medical University of South Carolina

The human brain can change – but usually only slowly and with great effort, such as when learning a new sport or foreign language, or recovering from a stroke. Learning new skills correlates with changes in the brain, as evidenced by neuroscience research with animals and functional brain scans in people. Presumably, if you master Calculus 1, something is now different in your brain. Furthermore, motor neurons in the brain expand and contract depending on how often they are exercised – a neuronal reflection of “use it or lose it.”

People may wish their brains could change faster – not just when learning new skills, but also when overcoming problems like anxiety, depression and addictions.

Clinicians and scientists know there are times the brain can make rapid, enduring changes. Most often, these occur in the context of traumatic experiences, leaving an indelible imprint on the brain.

But positive experiences, which alter one’s life for the better, can occur equally as fast. Think of a spiritual awakening, a near-death experience or a feeling of awe in nature.

a road splits in the woods, sun shines through green leafy trees
A transformative experience can be like a fork in the road, changing the path you are on.
Westend61 via Getty Images

Social scientists call events like these psychologically transformative experiences or pivotal mental states. For the rest of us, they’re forks in the road. Presumably, these positive experiences quickly change some “wiring” in the brain.

How do these rapid, positive transformations happen? It seems the brain has a way to facilitate accelerated change. And here’s where it gets really interesting: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy appears to tap into this natural neural mechanism.

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy

Those who’ve had a psychedelic experience usually describe it as a mental journey that’s impossible to put into words. However, it can be conceptualized as an altered state of consciousness with distortions of perception, modified sense of self and rapidly changing emotions. Presumably there is a relaxation of the higher brain control, which allows deeper brain thoughts and feelings to emerge into conscious awareness.

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy combines the psychology of talk therapy with the power of a psychedelic experience. Researchers have described cases in which subjects report profound, personally transformative experiences after one six-hour session with the psychedelic substance psilocybin, taken in conjunction with psychotherapy. For example, patients distressed about advancing cancer have quickly experienced relief and an unexpected acceptance of the approaching end. How does this happen?

glowing green tendrils of a neuron against a black background
Neuronal spines are the little bumps along the spreading branches of a neuron.
Patrick Pla via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Research suggests that new skills, memories and attitudes are encoded in the brain by new connections between neurons – sort of like branches of trees growing toward each other. Neuroscientists even call the pattern of growth arborization.

Researchers using a technique called two-photon microscopy can observe this process in living cells by following the formation and regression of spines on the neurons. The spines are one half of the synapses that allow for communication between one neuron and another.

Scientists have thought that enduring spine formation could be established only with focused, repetitive mental energy. However, a lab at Yale recently documented rapid spine formation in the frontal cortex of mice after one dose of psilocybin. Researchers found that mice given the mushroom-derived drug had about a 10% increase in spine formation. These changes had occurred when examined one day after treatment and endured for over a month.

diagram of little bumps along a neuron, enlarged at different scales
Tiny spines along a neuron’s branches are a crucial part of how one neuron receives a message from another.
Edmund S. Higgins
A mechanism for psychedelic-induced change

Continue reading “[reprint] Psychedelics, Transformation, and the Brain”…

Identifying bigotry, bias, and poor judgement

personby Gillian Polack
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Today’s post was going to be short and simple because today I feel very short and rather simple. Except it’s my least favourite topic and it’s the topic that governs so much of our everyday. So it’s long and complicated.

Because I often encounter prejudice, I have ways of measuring how far it extends so that I can avoid problems and problem people when there are no solutions. I don’t walk away from anything lightly, but I need ways to assess if an event of group has become unsafe for me or if I’ve become so much a second-class citizen that I cannot be certain my voice will be heard when a problem arises. I have walked away from something just this week, which is why this post is so very personal.

These are some of the things I use to look for incoming problems and for current problems. Every one of them relates to experiences from the last month or ongoing issues. They don’t work for extreme prejudice ie I had no way of predicting the Molotov cocktails that were thrown at a building I was in or hate mail I received. I cannot gently walk away before bad things happen. It’s not a complete list in any way. In fact, it’s simply the tools I’ve had to use this last week.

1. Red flags.

Indications that someone doesn’t see things the way I do, and (the ‘and’ is important) may act on their viewpoint in a way that’s, at best, uncomfortable, or at worse, dangerous. I avoid someone who lives locally to me, for instance, because they always want to talk about Israel or money: I’m Jewish, so I must always want to talk about Israel or about money – those are two red flags. There are other red flags for other aspects of my life. Some of them relate to being safe as a woman, some being safe as a person with chronic illness and disabilities. This last week I’ve encountered ten red flags from three people. Red flags often feel creepy to people in the same group. They’re indications of where a path can lead. When I mentioned one of them (the gender-related series) their response was “That’s so creepy.” While they’re not themselves dangerous, they can lead to bad places. One red flag won’t make me walk away from a person. We all make mistakes and we can all be stupid, after all. A consistent display of red flag behaviour, however, is a safety issue.

I first try to address the behaviour, because some of it is copying others. If telling a person “This hurts me” or “This makes me uncomfortable because…” doesn’t change anything, I have to get out.

2. Equality of access

One of the easiest-to-spot evidence of othering is when two people have equal background and put equal work in and one is rewarded while the other has to move on. This has applied to me more in Cnaberra than elsewhere in Australia. I can teach a subject for years and have amazing student ratings and full courses every time and then be dumped from the institution without notice (ask me about why I’m not at the ANU one day) or be told that, while other people are remembered by the organisation, I have to apply as if I’m a new person. I ask about my records with them and they say, “We’re not looking at history.” Except they do… with non-minority writers. Because of my disabilities, I have limited energy and not a lot of income, so it’s very easy to make something impossible for me by making it a two day job to apply for something that will give two hours income. If I weren’t in such a small community and if I didn’t hear that others are not made to jump through the same number of hoops and that their experience is counted and that most of the jobs I have to apply for as if I’ve never been seen locally are given to people whose names have come up in discussions… I’d assume it was a level playing field. There are, in other words, organisational ways of othering and of keeping undesirables out.

It took me a long time to realise this was happening. My moment of illumination came when someone carelessly said “We can’t consider you because you’re not experienced enough. The others have more qualifications, too.” This sounds innocuous. Except… I have two PhDs, a teaching qualification, 30 years teaching experience, ten novels, thirty years organising experience, non-fiction published on the subject. even the occasional award. What did my replacements have? About 1/10 of these things. What works in my favour outside a bigoted community is an actual impediment within one.

3. Fairness of treatment

This is so complicated in real life, but it comes down to “If you have two incidents at an event, are they being treated using the same set of values and the same approach/process and are all people involved in them being treated with equal fairness.” This includes communication about the incident. It’s so very personal at the moment that I’m not going to give an example, because it’s a bit triggery. Triggers are things to be avoided.

4. Being included

Who is at a social event and why? How are they treated? There are some once-close-friends who I will not dine with any longer because they only include me when they want to prove they’re not bigots and when I am at the same table as them they talk down at me. I’m only allowed to speak when spoken to. I have to respect the social order.

Or, from the other direction, is there someone who is continually left out even though they technically belong in a particular group? Are there events that don’t include this one person time after time? And, if asked, do the orgnaisers simply assume someone has asked them? Additionally, if the person is disabled, does anyone even both to ask “What do you need us to do so that we can include you?” or is the assumption made early on that it’s easier to invite everyone and expect that they won’t be able to come.

This kind of thing is very badly recognised and handled in Australia because we don’t like to admit we do it.

5. When specific racist/problematic things occur, how those in charge react?

When there is hate mail or stones or Molotov cocktails or something else, how do the people in charge handle it? For years I was the go-to person for advice on these things. Now I’m told socially, “Look, antisemitic event in Canberra. You should know.” It’s done with apparent sympathy, but no support, and no sense of how I may feel to be told of a Hitler salute and that it was handled with less effort than the amount taken to deal with issues where I was seen as the guilty party. And that’s the caring people. It’s a red flag that the allies only see themselves as allies. This relates to people from majority background, or some other minorities. It also includes people who come from minority backgrounds but do not have the life experience to handle problems for others from that background, but who think that they do – this is a very sticky and thorny area. All of these people can unintentionally compound a problem. It’s also a red flag that the wider community accepts something.

There is one very difficult area here. I said that it was a very sticky and thorny area in the previous paragraph. What is this sticky and thorny area? Passing: ie it includes people from the same minority background who can ‘pass.’ Some of us have knowledge about handling difficult issues, and some do not. Just because someone from a minority passes, doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to make wise decisions… and it doesn’t mean they don’t have this knowledge. It depends so much on the individual.

If I weren’t public, for example, about being Jewish, I could publicly skip all the cultural and religious aspects of Judaism and pass as white in Australia. It wouldn’t negate my knowledge, and I was brought up traditionally and so have a fair amount of that knowledge, and my historical knowledge is mostly relating to Europe, which deepens my understanding. I know stuff, in other words, and can give good advice if asked. (The red flag for me is who rushes into things without asking, but that is an offshoot of 2 – experts who are not seen as experts because they are being othered so their expertise is not acknowledged.)

A very well-known group that has ‘passed’ is those Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews who went into hiding for their own safety. Many Sephardi Jews were killed after Inquisitional interrogation brought out that they ate Jewish-style eggs, or salad on Saturday afternoon ie that they hadn’t relinquished all Jewish culture. Some remained Jewish in secret and a few of them are emerging into the Jewish world now. Most converted to Christianity or Islam and remained safe but lost hundreds of years of heritage.

For anyone who can pass, it can be simply not telling people about your private life and that can save you from so many mean places. I choose not to hide, and these last two years I’ve questioned my own wisdom in making that choice. Anyone who cannot hide, of course, has to deal with a lot more garbage than those of us who can and those of us who do. How those in charge of a place or an event react to problems hurts those who cannot and those who will not hide their minority identity consistently and often.

This is not even close to a complete analysis. It’s based on my experiences, mostly over the past year. There are bigger and much better analyses. The first place I send people who want to get a handle on this is https://nyupress.org/9781479840236/white-christian-privilege/ While Joshi’s book is about the US, the first three chapters in particular apply to Australia. Why is this so important? Many of the people who cause such problems have good intent and are otherwise nice people. They don’t, however, have a solid way of measuring their world view, understanding how it affects their thoughts and actions, and using understanding to handle bigotry. The work is often given to those who are bigoted against, which means that the experts are also the ones who need support. It means, also that those who have to deal with all these things in their everyday have to be willing to take on, as voluntary work, helping privileged people. Step one is understanding, and Joshi’s work is the first step in the path to that. Just the first step. Right now, I really wish more people in my home town would take that first step.

Ironically, I sued to teach these subjects to public servants. I was thrown out of that job without notice and without even a letter saying “Sorry we’re losing you after 20 years.” I found out I’d lost the job because of a notice saying “Your email account is being cancelled.” Manifestations of prejudice are varied and some can only be handled by walking away.

Talks and ducks and coots and swans

personby Gillian Polack
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I writing several talks this week. I didn’t used to write talks: I used to simply deliver them. Because of the health issues I have, though, I can’t guarantee that, on the day I give a talk or when the talk is recorded for later delivery (this latter is what happens this evening) I will be able to think effectively and to speak cogently. Most of the time, now, then, I write things down. So many people want to read it as a written word, too, that I often have a small audience (this month through Patreon) that wants to see what I say.

I have two pieces for finish today. One is an academic paper. My academic self is quite different to my fictional self when it comes to talks. The academic self is more intense and only sometimes includes bad jokes. The paper is about where the history comes from in Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver and is for a conference in Melbourne on Monday. I need to complete the overheads today and to do that, I need to know what I’m going to say, so it’s wise to finish the whole paper.

I have written almost all of the paper (and it’s already in the hands of someone who won’t be at the conference on Monday, but who needs to see it). All I need to do today with it is finicky finishing and the Powerpoint presentation. Academic work always contains much finicky finishing.

To do these last bits, I read the written word aloud, over and over. Each time I read a sentence, I listen to discover it makes sense in its place and whether words need switching or the sentence needs moving or if the whole thing has to be crossed out and replaced with something more sensible.

This is why most of my academic papers relate closely to my current research. I used to deliver more entertaining papers, but then I realised that the closeness of the editing for a good paper advances my thought on the research. Often it’s subtle advancement, but it’s always useful. My papers are less fun, but way more useful.

After the conference, I’ll take the paper and compare it to the chapter it relates to and the chapter will suddenly make a lot more sense. Editing today, then, means editing next week and the week after. This is a good thing.

What about the talk? The talk is for Octocon, which is in Ireland over the weekend. On my Monday morning I will technically be in Ireland having delivered the talk and in Melbourne, delivering the paper, mere hours apart. This is why my talk is being pre-recorded. I will have pictures for the Octocon talk, and these I still have to find and put in order. Mostly, though, with the talk, I need to make it make sense for people who have not read the books I’m talking about (by Tolkien, by Australian writer Leife Shallcross, by Irish writer Peadar Ó Guilín, and by Naomi Novik), who haven’t studied the subject I’m talking about and who want a bit of lyricism or humour to entice them to keep listening. The subject is how space and boundaries are important to fantasy fiction. Right now there’s too much lyricism. It’s easy to wax lyrical about forests and rivers and borderlands. However, I don’t want the words to ripple and flow and to create an abstract design: I need them to make sense. I have 800 words to add, then the rest of this talk lies in the edits. More reading aloud. More making things make sense to people who don’t live in my brain.

At 10 pm tonight, I have a long meeting with someone in Montreal. She will walk me through the tech side of Octocon, sort out all the tech issues related to the talk, record the talk and… my day will finish early tomorrow. Tomorrow I have 2 meetings (one for work, one for fun) and need to finish the first draft of another talk. I have five conventions/conferences this month, only one face to face. I’m short on time because all this is as well as my research. It’s work I love, but it’s not paid, also, so other things have to happen to keep me in food and electricity. This fortnight those other things are my research (for which I have funding) and Patreon.

Also, if anyone thinks that chronic illness and disability disappear in weeks like this… they do not. This week is a very exciting juggling act. Furthermore, most of this work is not paid. It’s just part of the life of a writer. Each of us have different things we do. Because I’m partly an academic (mostly unemployed, but not entirely) and partly a writer, much of my life is spent explaining awesomely interesting subjects, but without the support of an academic salary. It’s not always terribly easy.

Welcome to the life of many writers. Some of us are ducks, some of us are coots, some of us are swans, but we all paddle madly just out of sight in order to stay afloat. Many of us (me, for example) battle significant everyday issues as well. Every book of ours you buy, every Patreon you support or Ko.Fi you buy, makes the paddling a little less frantic.

Fairies and Sarcasm

personby Gillian Polack
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I misheard someone talking about the fairies in their garden as “I’ve got theories at the bottom of my garden.” And I do. So many of them. There are people who cannot deal with me for more than ten minutes at a time because that’s the limit they have for the way my brain works. I also have friends who love to talk with me for hours because I apparently say interesting things.

I’m not going to do that today. Not so much theory. Just a smattering of reaction that may one day become theory.

Yom Kippur is over and my life is the better for it, but I’m wrapped into how Australian Jews are represented on the public broadcaster responsible for multicultural services in Australia. My latest email from them told me (on Yom Kippur, though obviously I didn’t read it until afterwards) which shows are being moved from their streaming service. One of the two lead shows that is being taken down, as announced on the Jewish Day of Atonement, is David Baddiel’s “Jews Don’t Count.”

This is the same broadcaster that, when I asked what TV programming they had for the High Holy Days last year, sent me to a Hebrew radio show (hint: Hebrew is not the standard language of Australian Jews, English is).

This year, the special show they had just before our New Year was set at (in their regular email about programming), they explained, a Jewish funeral. It may have been a comedy set at a funeral, though the detailed description sounds as if it was set in the mourning period immediately after a funeral. I don’t know for sure because it was, honestly, not something I wanted to start my new year with. I’m assured by a non-Jewish friend that it’s a good show. If they put it on again, I’ll watch it and find out. I’ll watch the Baddiel tomorrow, though, because these programming decisions make me feel very much as if there are fairies at the bottom of the broadcaster’s garden, that Baddiel’s title sums up what needs to be said about it, and that I’m far safer with my theories than watching public television right now.

The good news is that some of my thoughts will be words at a bunch of places in October: at the Irish National Convention (I’ll be presenting online), at a Melbourne academic conference, quite possibly at the World Science Fiction Convention (again online), and elsewhere. I won’t be bored. (And if you want details of where I’ll be, let me know and I’ll post them as they are finalised.) I also won’t be able to see if SBS finally sort out why I wax sarcastic about them. They stopped replying to my emails when I pointed out that sending me to Hebrew radio was about the same as sending Australian Catholics to Latin radio.

I may be full of ideas these days, but I used to be such a nice person. I suspect sarcasm comes with menopause. Just suspect, mind. I now want to read a proper and carefully researched scientific study of the relationship of sarcasm to menopause. I shall go to bed and dream of such a study…

Minority Cultures

personby Gillian Polack
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I asked on Facebook if anyone wanted a short essay on how to check if something is reliable for the group that it’s attributed to and why it matters to let me know and they did. It was a good thing to write early into my New Year.

Today is when I introduce the wider issue. Over the next year, I’ll focus on specific cultural elements and, gradually, I will introduce cultural relativity, so that anyone following the series can understand the difference between how they see a given culture and what that culture is, in reality. Today, I shall use an Australian Jewish example in honour of the year 5784 and also because what happened in Australia over the last week is a really good introduction to why cultural relatively and precision is important.

What happened in Australia? A major public broadcaster in Australia formally celebrated Jewish New Year only on their Hebrew radio channel, according to their own search engine. SBS has a Yiddish channel (which has a report on antisemitism that I’d love to hear… but my Yiddish is very small, and learned as an adult) and a Hebrew channel that contains most of their publicised Jewish content. These two radio shows are the focus of programming for SBS for those they identify as Jewish Australians.

Programming outside these two radio shows includes the occasional recipe on the food site, news about antisemitism, news about Israel (often showing a worrying bias) and, from time to time, aspects of Jewish history and life as part of regular TV. There is an upcoming series that talks about how a part of Australia nearly became Israel, and has a Jewish presenter (whose father I once made laugh, but that’s another story). A Jewish comedy thing has just been shown, and I’ll get to that in the next paragraph.

The capacity to product culturally fair and supportive material lies within all this, but SBS gets things wrong, almost every time. Late last week, for instance, it advertised a new show with a Jewish theme. “Just in time for New Year!” I thought. I was prepared to admit publicly that I had been entirely wrong in my assessment of SBS.

The show is all about things that happen at, as the promo explains, “a funeral service.” When I looked at the detail about the show, it’s not a funeral service… it’s what SBS thinks is a Jewish funeral service. And it’s a comedy. Programming that includes anything Jewish is rare and special, but a comedy that revolves around death is not appropriate as the sole Jewish offering for the Jewish New Year. It’s the time when we celebrate life and talk about the living future.

What else has SBS done that includes Jewish Australia but also hurts it? SBS had a report on the first Australian cookbook (I’ve written about it elsewhere, Abbott’s heavily plagiarised volume) and mentioned the Jewish recipes… but the presenters had no knowledge that the recipes were all plagiarised from a very famous Sephardi London cookbook. The most crucial aspect of Jewish Australian history represented in the book was missed. This aspect is that Jews have been in Australia since the First Fleet, that nineteenth century Australian Jewish culture was heavily from London ie from an entirely different corner of the Jewish world to current stereotypes, which are mainly American.

I asked SBS themselves about their Jewish programming, a while back. They sent me to the Hebrew radio show. The languages of those two radio shows (Yiddish and Hebrew) support the stereotype that all Jews are sufficiently other that, regardless how long someone’s family has been in Australia (in my case, between 105-158 years), English won’t be their mother tongue. That became a bigger problem when the broadcaster itself sent me to the Hebrew radio show when I asked about Jewish programming. When I asked SBS about why they’d sent me to Hebrew programming, I also asked them if they sent all their Catholics to Latin radio shows. They did not reply.

The whole of the Australian multicultural broadcaster sets up a view of Jewishness that applies only to a minority of Australian Jews. The view does not reach past stereotypes or challenge racism or accept Jews as fully Australian, and they do not know how to culturally focus. They don’t even have a 101 in this: when I looked up “Jewish New Year” in the food section, I found recipes for long, plaited challah. It is not a New Year dish. We eat a round, white challah at this time of year, because we want to have a good and sweet year. This challah is readily available in those supermarkets that stock kosher food, so it’s not that hard to find out about. The problem is not the challah. It’s the conflation of search terms and the assumption that Jewishness is simple and doesn’t need focus.

The lack of focus on what Australian Jewishness is, leaves out the wider Australian community. Most people who rely on SBS and who do not speak Hebrew have no idea that it’s New Year for us. The article in a Canberra newspaper this year was inaccurate, but interviewed a Jewish local leader, so reflected some aspects of Judaism better than the publicly-funded national broadcaster.

Why is this so important? And why do I appear so consumed by it?

I used to advise government bodies on these issues (not just on Jewishness, but how to see and devise sensible government policy for multicultural Australia and its many different communities ie how to get past stereotypes and into reality), but they told me I was not someone they wanted advice from. This was when the Howard government came into power. The Howard government left a legacy that later governments took up. When I worked with SBS (on a different issue, but this subject came up in discussions) they were very aware of issues that they now ignore entirely. Some communities are more visible and have better representation than others. Jewish Australians are now part of the othered groups, and we’re a very good canary in the cultural hate coalmine.

SBS’s lack of understanding is a good template. It demonstrates a wider problem. That lack of focus, of seeing people for who they are, applies to many cultures in novels, in music, in TV, in cinema, in news reports. Given this, the skills I used to teach – how to see outside one’s own cultural boundaries and how to do this respectfully – may be handy again.

I’m going to find some of my old teaching materials, and work, bit by bit through them here, on this blog. I’ll also do interviews of writers, but not as many as I had planned. And this is my New Year promise to you. There will be silly posts, and lazy posts, but there will also be some very useful ones, that take up my past work and update it, and present it to anyone who needs it. It’s not the same as the day-long workshops or than the consultations that are in my past, but if my posts help even one person not create the sort of mess a very well-intentioned public broadcaster has made, a mess that unintentionally supports antisemitism through its support of stereotypes, then that’s a good outcome for a New Year resolution.

Turning problems into plot

personby Gillian Polack
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This week my post is for writers. This post is just as handy for readers (since, by reading this, you are a reader and yes, this is a day for bad jokes) but if you want to think of it from the reading perspective you need to look backwards to translate. We see the results of all these writing decisions as readers. This post is about those decisions themselves. It’s like taking a picture of a mountain and imagine you’re standing on that mountain looking down, rather than standing below the mountain taking its picture. Right now, I am sitting in a room at the foot of a mountain and typing. I can’t see the mountain, but I know it’s there. How I see it is the critical question. What view am I describing for my readers?

The view of characters changes depending on where we stand. But that’s not the only discrepancy. What do we know about the private lives of the characters we  invent? How do we explain them when we write? Are there any discrepancies between those private lives and their public selves? And how do we see and interpret all of this, as a writer? I’m not talking about personality. Your character might be a raging genius in public and terrifyingly incompetent around the home. That’s fine. But not today’s subject. What I want to think about today is the difference in culture between someone’s culture in the home (idioculture, private and personal and only really shared properly with people who belong in that small group – think of the Brontë children and their private invented worlds and secret shared language) and how they share or don’t share or are not permitted to share with the rest of a community.

This is as much about privilege as privacy. Where one’s private life matches public expectations of that private life, for good or ill, people know how to interpret it. That’s privilege, because, even if that active interpretation is unkind, we know we’re going to have to deal with it so we can develop tools to deal with it. Knowledge about such things is power over one’s life. Your character can benefit from being treated well because they live like someone important and are seen as someone important. This enables them to fight the racism and prejudice they see, if they see it. Your character might become a suffragette or fight for access to modern washing machines if they know that the vote or the machine will improve their life.

Most people face invisible prejudice, and this is harder.  Think of a character who uses a wheelchair. They might be left out of group activities because of the assumption that people in wheelchairs cannot enjoy them. Or think of a character who faces bigots and is being attacked (quietly, privately) by others. There are no simple ways of explaining what’s wrong because, from the outside, they look helpless or angry and the attackers are playing the long, slow, quiet game. Everyone seeing this from outside tangles things and turns bad to shockingly worse because they assume the victim is the problem. Then there are cultural differences: where your Australian Muslim character has far more in common with everyone else than the Christian characters think, but said Christian characters invent differences anyhow.

This kind of everyday (and it is everyday – some of it is literally my everyday, some of it is the everyday of friends) is really handy for plotting and planning a novel. It can explain why the reader knows and understands something, but other characters don’t. It can give a reason for betrayal, for social activism, for rebellion.

Know the discrepancies between your character’s home life and how they are seen in public and your story blossoms.

Zentao Verses from 2023

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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The last third of the year seems like a good time to share some of the daily senryu I write and share on social media. I call them “zentao” with the intent of echoing both the spiritual traditions of Zen Buddhism and Taoism as well as the more western joke “that was Zen, this is Tao.”

Like many people, I started the year with a resolution:

Do your little bit
to fix our broken systems.
Also, enjoy life.

I must confess that I have not done as much to address either of those resolutions as I would have liked. The broken systems are still ascendant and at times they affect my ability to enjoy my life.

My verse for January 1 was also about finding the good things. It’s a good one to remember when you’re confronted with options:

Doors open and shut.
Go through ones that lead to joy.
Slam the others hard.

A lot of my posts are social commentary of some kind, which is in part why they fit better under the term senryu than haiku, even though they have the same syllable count. Haiku are traditionally more about nature; senryu have room for sarcastic comment on things that are happening now.

Here’s a sarcastic one:

Nothing’s working right.
Phone. Weather. Health care. Housing.
And, of course, Congress.

And here’s one that recognizes the importance of imagining that something can be done about the problems we face:

First we imagine
capitalism will end.
Then we can do it.

And another about the power of imagination:

Now is the time to
use our imaginations
and remake the world.

Here are a couple that get at my core philosophical beliefs, drawn from Aikido and other studies. I strongly believe that all the life on Earth evolved to be in balance with each other and our planet, and that centering ourselves in relation to that is how we end up with happy lives.

Living in balance.
It’s not to be virtuous.
It’s how all life works.

Re-enchant the world.
Find the harmonies of Earth.
Stay centered with that.

And here is my response to the way far too many people with some power in this world approach things:

No one gets wealthy
by fixing our real problems,
so they don’t get fixed.

And the frequent reminder that humans are social creatures:

Working with others
can be hard, but it’s also
how we get things done.

This one might be more of a haiku. It was inspired by driving down to San Diego from the Bay Area after our very wet winter:

Snow on coastal peaks.
Green hills and flowing rivers.
Flowers everywhere.

And then this one from the way back home after another storm rolled in. Note that it is impossible to get from San Diego to Oakland without crossing mountains at some point unless you go along the coast. The coastal highway was flooded, and there was snow in the mountains we had to cross, so we went way east to the desert and then angled back west to cross the mountains when things cleared. The geography of California is fascinating, but not meant for travel in bad weather.

Winter storm travel:
Green desert, flooded highways,
avoiding trouble.

And a combination of weather and politics:

High winds. Heavy rain.
Glad to get home and inside.
Some folks live outside.

Some political advice from Aikido:

Don’t struggle and fight
where the opponent is strong.
Find their weakest point.

And here’s a good one to end on:

I’m always waiting
for another shoe to drop.
Life in modern times.

 

News and thoughts about the news

personby Gillian Polack
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Why do I have trouble announcing cool things? Why is it so very difficult to tell you all that I’m on two short lists?

The first list is for an Australian award for my book Story Matrices (edited by Francesca Barbini), and the second is an international one for the Sidewise Award (alt history) for my Medieval story in the amazing Other Covenants short story collection. The short story is “Why the Bridgemasters of York Don’t Pay Taxes,” edited by Andrea D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum (who I finally met, just the other day). Both lists are wonderful to be on. I’m unlikely to win either.

While both are most excellent, the Sidewise in particular is a wonderful moment. Even I can’t deny that.

There is a special, special honour in being listed along with these amazing writers. It’s taken me days to admit this. Partly this is because I’ve not had much comment either short listing. Six people have told me how pleased they are about the William Atheling one, and one of those six is my mother. Another is the editor. This means I feel a bit invisible. Partly this is because there are far better writers than me and it’s easier to talk about them than to talk about my own work. Also, partly this is because Australia is a bit odd. Some people get big shouts for all their accomplishments… I am not one of those people. One day I will discover why, but until that day comes, I will assume my writing is just not that good. There is a lot of encouragement for me to think that and very little for me to think otherwise. Except from German academics, but that’s another story.

However… there are things that no-one’s asked me about my short story and this is the moment to spill the beans. In order for me to spill the beans you need to know about my short story and about one of my novels. Bridgemasters was only released in December last year. The novel is The Green Children Help Out, which came out in 2021. The reason I thought my Bridgemasters story would go unnoticed was because the Green Children went pretty much unseen. There was, however, a much bigger reason for it going unseen than my self-doubt. COVID lockdowns and quiet hit me harder than some, because I was unable to go to any events face to face (I’m COVID-vulnerable), and in Australia it’s almost impossible to reach readers unless they see and talk to you, I’ve found. The story and the novel are linked. In fact, I wrote the Bridgemasters story (and a couple of others) as a testing ground for the world I was building for the Bridgemasters story. They’re quite different, but they’re set in the same alternate Earth. I wanted to know what sort of cultural underpinnings my English Jewish characters would have in this alternate Earth. I test these things in a number of ways, and I build the world gently and carefully, then I let it rip with a story or two. The other stories are in the volume of my collected short stories (Mountains of the Mind), which was also short listed for an award. I am obviously not good at learning.

I thought my Green Children novel was good, but I didn’t think my Bridgemasters story was anything more than a small fun piece, translating late Medieval Christian thought into a world inhabited by Jews that a very particular group of Christians are forced to protect. This just shows that some writers are not good judges of their own work. It also shows that being mainly confined to a tiny physical world for three years was not the end of the known universe. I’m working on a gentle and slow emergence. We’ll see if that changes anything.

I should just have said, “Look! Announcements!” If I win either (unlikely) I promise to do that. In the meantime, I hope a few more readers see my work and make up their own minds about it. Quite obviously I’m not the right person to advise on whether to read my work!

Flowers and garbage and invisible illness

personby Gillian Polack
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Very few people wonder how those of us whose bodies are less capable of doing this or that get anything done. I am a very good illustration. I had glandular fever (mononucleosis to my US friends, I believe) in my mid-twenties and developed many of the vile long-term symptoms that people currently associate with Long COVID. In other words, I’ve had similar symptoms to Long COVID for nearly 40 years. This is not the only problem I’ve faced in my life, nor, indeed is it the biggest. It’s certainly the one that has invited the least inquiry. And the least understanding. Today I want to talk about how I’ve achieved anything at all in a life where I cannot guarantee even an hour without fatigue and pain. The physical side of it is one story and I don’t want to talk about that today. Today is, you see, an exhausted day, when I should be in bed wondering when I will improve a bit. It’s not a day I have to be in bed, however – those days when any exertion at all just makes things worse have become rarer as time passes.

I lost my time sense last night. That is, to me, a signal I need to live my alternate life. This post is brought to you from this alternate life. It’s a half day later than usual because I had to wait until I was able to do it.

This is how I handle days like this. If others have needs I fit in with them, but the next day is worse if I fit in. I suspect Friday will be a bed day because Monday night and Tuesday nights are brain fog days (with occasional windows of opportunity, one of which is right now), Wednesday is full of meetings and Thursday is full of unexpected medical stuff. I didn’t expect Wednesday and Thursday to be the way they are, which is how I can predict Friday. One thing I’m doing to prepare is (with the help of a friend) a big shop. One of the things I will be getting is reheatable food for Thursday to Monday. On Saturday I knew that yesterday and today would be a bit of a struggle, so on Sunday I prepared food for both days. This planning is constant. And I don’t always have the energy to do it.

There’s a lot of body-awareness and a lot of planning to get through the everyday and when one of these fall through things are like a deck of cards and I have to stop and start all over again. Currently I have enough income so that if the cards all fall down, all I need to do is drag myself to the computer and order enough home delivered food to get me through. Or open a tin from my cupboard. I lived on dolmades for 3 days recently, then I advanced to chicken and chips, because that was the easiest option and I wasn’t up to more. Then I was through that phase and was able to cook again.

Knowing I’m exceptionally busy on other peoples’ schedules this week means I can plan in advance. When anyone tries to spring something on me, they can set me up for a whole week of not being able to deal and I will hide it, generally, but there are people I really do not like because they never check if I’m able before springing things on me. If I had energy on the worst days, I could explain to someone who says “I have to see you” that it has to wait because I’m unwell. In fact, I do explain “I can’t do it now because…” but I can’t get into detailed explanations. Exertion can hurt and sometimes the little things like explaining (especially if there’s emotion attached) can hurt more than the large. This is why, oddly, the chronic fatigue is more of a problem in my life than more serious problems are.

The other thing that happens when my time sense gets derailed is that I drift off into byways. The path this post has taken is one of these byways. I meant to launch straight into “This is how I get novels and non-fiction written and research done and achieve as much as some people who have never had any sort of debilitating illness.” I think the tide of emotion carries my life forward at these moments. This post is an excellent example, in fact, of how this happens.

I use emotion to get work done at times like this. I sat down at my computer to write this post, having no idea what I’d write about at that point. I saw my research document open on the desk and just took a look before opening a new file. I edited three paragraphs. It wasn’t a lot, but over a week (even a really bad week) this adds up. Then I stopped and thought, “Why did I do this? Why didn’t I go straight to the blogpost?” My answer was, “It’s one of those weeks” and then “But I should tell people”. Because the sense that something is important gives me enough fuel to write. I will sit down quietly for a half hour as soon as this is posted, and then I’ll go shopping with a friend and make sure I have food for the coming life-sapped time.

I’m the sort of person who would rather work methodically, so when I’m less beleaguered, all my work is done entirely sensibly. On days like today, I allow the wind to carry me along, and take advantage of the moments I have. Little things, done when I can. That’s how I deal with the fatigue and the near-constant pain. I factor in the physical work I need to do to keep going and, month by month, I deal. I write whole novels this way, and do my research and when I can’t do anything except sit or lie down, I think things through. Slowly. My brain stutters at times like this. It’s bad for quick thoughts and insights – it’s wonderful for deep and slow unpinning of complex problems.

A few years ago, when I realised my strange lifestyle, I found a way of describing it. That description was more useful to friends who asked “Are you OK?” than to people like the one who emailed me a the start of Yom Kippur last year, and who wanted to meet urgently. It was a week far worse than this and I wouldn’t be up to a face to face meeting for weeks. I lost my Yom Kippur over that email and lost some days after it. The person who emailed would not have understood this from my metaphor. I needed more capacity to explain than I had… some situations are simply impossible, still.

My metaphor is not a new one. I say that life throws me garbage and, bit by bit, without pushing myself into more illness, I turn that garbage into fertiliser and it grows me the nicest garden. All my published novels are flowers, and Story Matrices, the book that has just been short-listed for the William Atheling Jr Award, is a rather nice rosebush. That book was written in a shockingly bad year, but the editor, Francesca Barbini, knew this and worked with me according to my actual capacity. She didn’t try to make me into something I’m not. She helped me create the best thing I was able to create in a year from hell.

Every paragraph I edit and every thought I have transforms this strange life into a strangely interesting life. Chronic illness isn’t the end of things… it does however, change things. And most people won’t ask or won’t know or won’t care. That’s part of the garbage being thrown. That garbage can be isolating and it can be depressing, but it’s excellent fertiliser.

Now all I need to do is find a publisher for the novel I wrote when I wrote Story Matrices. It’s the fictional approach to this isolation and strangeness and is a very different COVID lockdown novel to most. My way of dealing with the difficult is rather like a portal fantasy, you see, where you open doors briefly and visit worlds you can’t remain in because remaining is dangerous. My COVID novel is a quietly adventurous version of the portal novel that is my life. Glenda Larke (a friend with a marvellous new novel) was my beta reader and she told me that it was the best love story that she’d ever read. It needs a home, but writing it was the accomplishment. Just as the publication of Story Matrices was an accomplishment. Just as editing three paragraphs of my research and writing this blog post are accomplishments.

Chronic ill health isn’t the end of things. It does, however, require a series of reinventions of self, and the ability to say “If this is all I can do today then that’s fine.”

Why am I telling you all this? Because Long COVID is not going to go away. Some people will recover and some won’t. It’s quite likely you know someone who needs to know that this kind of chronic illness is not that end of world and that, over time, some extraordinary things are possible. They probably also need to know that the vast majority of folks around them will not see or even want to see what the new life entails.

Adjusting never stops. Seeing your own needs is essential. And once you know what your signals are (in my case, that loss of time and that drifting brain and the need to dump my once-wondrous rationality) and how to handle them (when to push, when to let things slide, how not to live on chips) life can become a lot better. Your garden will be all the better for the fertiliser. It won’t feel that way, however, because no matter what you do with the garbage being thrown at you, it’s still garbage. I’m still learning to celebrate the flowers and not be personally affronted at the garbage that is thrown in my direction.