Woman and Child First

Books. They're Good.

I wonder why I chose to write a novel.

Counting now around 50,000  words, I find myself mumbling, as I clack away on the laptop, 'Nobody likes this. Nobody will ever like this.'

That no-one has read it yet remains irrelevant. The whole exercise makes me want to grind my teeth and hit a table with something. One of the cats perhaps? Yegads. It would  have to be stiff and therefore dead, so I don't go any further with that thought. 

But then I watch and listen to Neil Gaiman, and I smile (it's a happy, though stupid smile). I smile with hopefulness. As Inky at Inside A Dog notes:  This is the best idea EVER.  

It is!

Have a look and breathe it in.

Literature for YA (Young Adults) and kidlets is so much fun. Even if more than half of it takes place in your own dear deluded head, the whole idea is that you will indeed connect with other same-head types. Or at least talk with types who like a good story.

Ok then. I will soldier forth towards the thing I'm soldiering towards. Yes.

Vive le Neil Gaiman!

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Download Neil Gaiman's A Calendar of Tales

Leunig to the Rescue

In response to your question 'What is worth doing and what is worth having?' I would like to say simply this. It is worth doing nothing and having a rest.

- Michael Leunig: The Curly Pyjama Letters (2001)

 

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THE AGE - LEUNIG: Just a cartoonist with a moral duty to speak

Evil Child Syndrome And It's Relationship to Love

Actor Ezra Miller portrays the troubled Kevin as a teenager.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver is a story from the mother's point of view about the entire history of her teenage son who, one sunny day, embarks  upon a kill-spree at his school. It's a story of a child who fits these descriptions: deviant, psychopathic, evil.

Understandably, the mother in the story (read 'parents in real life') resorts to harsh and punitive discipline.

New Australian research which will be presented in Paris next week at the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. It will present the findings of a 3-year study which shows  that nurturing, love, empathy and emotional warmth do in fact work.

"A University of Sydney psychologist, David Hawes, will tell the conference that contrary to earlier studies which found that the quality of parenting had no bearing on the behavioural problems of deviant children, parents who maintained a warm and emotionally engaged parenting style could protect their children from developing aggressive and anti-social behaviour."

Via Essential Kids

Obviously, the parents of these kids need a lot of support, understanding, advice and time out. But what a breath of fresh air to know that there is something to do in response to such difficult personalities, that parenting can indeed have a positive bearing, when previously the 'wisdom' was that such kids are just born evil and no amount of parenting will change that.

How sweet the one thing that looks like being influential is love. But I'd like to point out something of note:

    Why do we need constantly need numbers and science state the bleeding obvious? (This is one of my favourite moans regarding psychology, I'll try not to be too boring in my repititions).

The science means it will be made credible and therefore respected, which in turns gives a higher possibility of being acted on.... So I promise not to complain about that part.

 

 

When the World is Sick

 

The Japanese soul appears to me essentially feminine. What I am here venturing to say is far from being pejorative. On the contrary. When the world is sick, it is from woman that all is reborn.

-Jean-Louis Barrault

 From Memories for Tomorrow: The Memoirs of Jean-Louis Barrault

(New York 1974 E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.)

We're All From Venus And Neurosexism Is So Yesterday

It was a Sydney Morning Herald  front page subheading that grabbed me whilst standing in a cue yesterday. 

As brain research sheds more light on how we operate, it becomes clear that there's actually very little difference in the "hard-wiring" of male and female brains.

And to say otherwise is to be a boring and walking cliche and you will be vastly and embarrassingly out of date within 18 months.  

However.

A book about to be published by a researcher from Melbourne Uni states there are no major neurological differences between men and women. Cordelia Fine is the author of Delusions of Gender and she challenges any "hard-wiring" at all. The wiring is actually soft, not hard, she says.

Yes there are basic behavioural differences between girls and boys. They are exaggerated not because of 'hard-wiring' but because of a culture that has to delegate gender roles. Such is the view from Chicago Associate professor Lise Eliot who has written Pink Brain Blue Brain.

In short, the case against sexism and racism is always the same. As a race, humans - all of us - are more alike than we are different.

For such a viewpoint to hold any credit, science has to keep proving it.  And science is.

I like to think this science will have wonderful and wide reaching implications for the teaching and educating of children. Our brains are "flexible ...changeable" says Fine. Boys can be good at verbal tasks, girls can read maps. It goes on and on, just how much alike we can be, if only we were taught to be human and not put into boxes of boys or girls.

But it's interesting isn't it? How insecure we are - to constantly need the nod of 'hard science' to finally and conclusively prove the bleeding obvious.

Cordelia Fine pictured.

 

 

Buddha's Brain

Rick Hanson's book has a lovely slant on the new brain science and it's a Buddhist one - a great read from a therapist's point of view.

I have a great respect for Buddhism, mainly because it's teachings are so complimentary to a peaceful life and therefore helpful in my office and also my head.The absense of a rigid religious grasp (think stranglehold) on life is continually refreshing as well.

While I've never waved any particular banner in therapy, I like this book and where the philosophy comes from. There's some great techniques which lend themselves beautifully to getting the brain to behave itself and be a happy chappy more often.

Good science, good spirit. Buddha's Brain is a timely publication in the area of raising happiness levels whilst being scientific and spiritual (Buddhist) at the same time.

An Individual Life

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,
there is only the meaning we each give to our life,
an individual meaning, an individual plot,
like an individual novel, a book for each person. - Anais Nin

It's interesting that in young adulthood we adopt our own - individual - role models. If we are lucky, those luminarie's keep guiding us and reassuring, long after their deaths and long after the initial infatuation. Nin keeps speaking sense to me, 30 years later.

The Lucy Family Alphabet

"A is for Alcoholic

Shortly after my father died, I'm told that while entertaining a couple of friends I crawled into the kitchen on my hands and knees. When I asked if I'd been trying to be funny, my friend replied, 'No. You just wanted another bottle of wine, and that was they only way you were going to make it.

My attitude to drinking has been entirely formed by my parents. If your mother was essentially a humourless teetotaller and your father was a hilarious, some might say, alcoholic, who would you want to take after?" - Judith Lucy.

 

I'm reading The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy: She is an Australian comedian.I've always loved her and she has the same hair as I do.

a small but profound luxury

My favourite female author, Isabelle Allende, interviewed by my favourite Australian TV person, Andrew Denton.

I think that when I was around 5 I realised that my mother was a victim and I didn't want to be like her. My mother was a beautiful woman who was victimised by the society. My mother had no rights, no money, no power of any kind and the only way she could get attention was by being very sick. So she was sick all the time. And I wanted to be like my grandfather, I wanted to be in control. I think I was a feminist before the word was invented. By the time I came across feminist books by eh by American or European writers, I realised that there was [noise in background] an articulate way or a language to express all these feelings that I had had for years and years and so I became a raging feminist as a young woman". - Isabelle Allende.

Interesting how those we admire turn out to be, after all this time, quite like ourselves.

Enough Rope June 30 2008

 

The Arrival: Me, Ben and Shaun Tan

My curiosity whetted, I nailed the local librarian and came home with this book.

Whooee. This guy is a REALLY GOOD DRAWER.

Believe him when he says his drawings are 'visually complex'...and 'for older readers'. I was stumped by the sequence of pictures and hey I'm really old.

My really young (9 year old) son said when I showed him a page:

                            "I don't get it".

Ah hee hee, I love kids. However, The Arrival is a darkly beautiful  depiction of a migrant experience with an almost breathtaking visual imagination behind every frame. I will continue to seek this man's work out. He's very very good.