Writing

“I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.”

Alice Munro

I have been silent for a while here. There is a need to just be quiet for a while. Some online blog listings insist on rules being adhered to before a blog can be included in their list. One of those rules is that the owner of the blog must post weekly. As for me, it is sometimes necessary to be quiet. I cannot guarantee to adhere to someone else’s schedule for postings. Ah well.

My silence has been mostly due to being busy with other things, other writing and all the other bits of life that tend to take precedence over something as ephemeral as writing. After a lifetime of being a mother and wife or partner and centering my sense of self on family, with the occasional wild leap out of the home in an effort to find ‘something more’, it is difficult to reprogram priorities. The amount of energy left available in my being to make huge commitments seems to be limited. Tillie Olsen writes of the silence of those writers and would be writers who fail to find inspiration or time or an environment or permission or encouragement to write down the words that play through their heads. I whimper and whine with excuses and reasons. I now have the time and the encouragement and the environment within which to pursue this writing lark if I desire. There remains the necessity to act, to put pen to paper.

I attended an appearance by the insightful and funny author A.L. Kennedy at the Aye Write Book Festival last week. Kennedy read from and discussed her latest book, On Writing. On page 353 of that book she describes what writing feels like for her:

“What is it like; working with words? Well it’s a little bit like taking an infinitely large box containing an infinitely large number of small, possibly furry animals – a bit like hamsters – and then trying to set them out, in order – stay still – one after another – don’t do that – and hoping that you can compel them to say their names in order – stop it – in such a way that anyone other than yourself will understand, without your having to hit them with a hammer.”

It is hard at times to maintain faith in the ability to write, to be able to make sense; to believe it is possible to touch people or to draw a response with words.

And then people say care-less things. “I guess anybody could make their life sound interesting if they wanted to.” Or on hearing a friend quote a writer’s comment “I couldn’t imagine not writing” you respond with “I don’t know how to do it” or something equally pathetic and unself-believing and your friend says, “Well…you’re not a writer then.” That’s when…

“...a little bit of you falls off, turns to dust and blows away.” A.L. Kennedy, On Writing, p. 344

I keep on returning to the page because that is where I am happiest, most myself. It doesn’t really matter if it’s any good or not…well it is better if the words and their combinations are good of course, that all the words stand up and say their names properly. I must in any case continue to do this writing thing. So…away to write some words of my own.

AMOUR

A film that is difficult to watch at times. A film that depicts moments of courage, love, caring, despair, beauty and heart breaking reality. Michael Haneke’s film presents the viewer with many of the moral, personal and societal conundrums surrounding ageing and dying in today’s world. How can we offer dignity and choice to someone we love, especially if their choices challenge the ways that society feels safe to approve?

Why shouldn’t there be safe, dignified, comfortable rituals established that honour the right of the person who is approaching death to make choices, to achieve this last great life transition in their own way? Instead we seem to give greatest power to the institutions of medicine who are most intent on preserving life at all costs and their own protection against liability. Western society today does not seem able to face the reality of death. If we could get back to a place where we as humans acknowledged the fact that we are all going to die, might we not be able to begin to make that process less degrading and powerless for the dying person? Some people find a way to accept death through religion or perhaps a philosophy, however those paths do not work for all of us. It must be possible for us to continue to search for ways to prolong life, to increase healthy living, to want to hold onto the beauty of life for as long as possible without having to deny the reality of death.

Wonderful possibilities for alternative ways to live as we grow older.

"Women may be the only group that grows more radical with age." Gloria Steinem

The Babayagas’ house, a feminist alternative to old people’s homes, opens in Paris.

“It’s been 15 years in the making but the Babayagas’ House, a name taken from Slavic mythology meaning ‘witch’, has just been inaugurated in Montreuil, on the east side of Paris…it’s a self-managed social housing project devised and run by a community of dynamic female senior citizens who want to keep their independence, but live communally.” more

Another project- this one run by a nonprofit group is in a commune-like setting north of New York City in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y.

“It’s a home for the elderly in a commune-like setting, 30 miles from Manhattan, that takes an unusual approach, integrating seniors into the broader community and encouraging them to contribute to its welfare.”

"The 33-bed adult home is at the center of Fellowship Community, a collection of about 130 men, women and children founded in 1966 that offers seniors—including the aging baby boom generation—an alternative to living out their final years in traditional assisted-living homes or with their grown sons and daughters…an age-integrated community built around the central mission of care of the elderly.

" Whether it is to avoid the nursing home, loneliness or rising rents, co-housing is the new trend for a generation of baby-boomers starting at 60 and beyond."

"This unconventional but pragmatic solution is happening all over France - dozens of house-shares have already been created, and they are giving food for thought to many in their 60s, 70s and 80s."

"According to Yankel Fijalkow, urban sociologist and author of  "Sociologie du Logement" [Sociology of Housing], "House-sharing for the elderly is a sort of group response to the ambient individualism." Fijalkow says. 'It is part of the same phenomenon as co-housing--houses with shared facilities--in Northern Europe and the United States or housing cooperatives. Faced by the fragility of the family unit, a desire emerges to recreate a quasi-family."

"This system is being adopted all over Europe. Colocation Seniors, an organization in the western French city of Nantes was inspired by a similar project in Belgium, and has already helped dozens of seniors set up house-shares in the last three years, offering continuing support even after the house-share has been organized."

What's To Be Done?

More of us are living longer and there are many problems associated with that development. The Alzheimer’s Society estimates that more than “320,000 of 400,000 people living in care homes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland now have dementia or severe memory problems”. The Care Home Census 2012 showed that “more than half of Scotland's care home residents have dementia, up 22 per cent since 2003”. There is not enough understanding of dementia or training in how to care for those suffering from dementia in old age.

This is obviously a growing dilemma. We all need to think more about how to address this problem and what we can do to help those suffering from dementia. This is our own future we are talking about not just that of our parents. What do we want to happen for us when or if we face such suffering? What can we do to make things different, to ensure our parents and ourselves experience peaceful, dignified later years? I have no answers but I am going to begin looking for some possible answers.

Feminist Crime Fiction - Sara Paretsky

In Writing In An Age of Silence, 2007 Sara Paretsky says her character V. I. Warshawski came into being because she “wanted to create a woman who would turn the tables on the dominant views of women in fiction and society.” Paretsky’s first novel, Indemnity Only was published in 1982. She says it took her almost a decade of reading and thinking to find her voice for her novels. She continues, “The more I read, the more I realized that a woman’s moral character was determined by her sexuality; if she was chaste, she was good, but helpless, unable to act. If she had sex, she could act, but she could perform only evil deeds.”

V. I. Warshawski is definitely not helpless. Helen Craine tells us that in Hard Time, 1999 Warshawski “... writes a letter to her good friend and mother-figure Dr Lotty Herschel to tell her how much she loves her, she explains that fear of helplessness is the force that drives her as a detective, and not 'the old masculine swagger that I couldn't love you if I didn't love honour more'.”

Paretsky’s novels are written within the tradition of the male hard-boiled loner detective structures of crime fiction written by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane to name a few. Sally Munt describes the genre as “Characterized by action, violence…The private eye works outside the social order with his own moral purpose.” That purpose is presented as a clear choice between good and evil. Munt tells us that Warshawski fights ‘corrupt institutional crime’ such as insurance fraud or industrial poisoning to restore order and safety to family and society. Munt also states “…the effects of male crime upon women are frequent issues.” Warshawski is a loner, she has no family, and both of her parents are dead. Warshawski is sexually independent and unmarried, although she was married once for 18 months, and she has no children. Although her father was a cop, Warshawski, herself, operates outside the ‘norms’ of society for women although many of her actions are geared toward maintaining the family in society and the ‘law’ of society. Paretsky herself says, “I knew what I didn’t want my detective to be…I put her into the mainstream of the hard boiled form—orphaned, with a Smith & Wesson, drinking whisky--instead of thinking about what special role a woman detective may play.” (Writing In An Age of Silence, 2007)

As a feminist icon Warshawski is inspiring. I have held V. I. Warshawsky as a role model ever since I read my first Paretsky novel. Although I might not agree with all of the political or philosophical underpinnings of her books, this character represented a sorely needed alternative way of living as a woman. I do not imagine myself as a private detective, except by identifying with the character as I read. What I have taken away from these readings over the years is the possibility of defining myself without reference to a man, the possibility of leading a meaningful life outside society’s proscriptive constraints on women. I haven’t always been able to translate that into reality, or not entirely, but it has helped to provide a way to envisage myself toward which I might aim.

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." Woody Allen (1935-)

Gaea Yudron, as well as many other bloggers, references Carl Jung’s7 tasks of aging in her writings.  I would like to join that discussion with my own thoughts on and personal responses to these tasks.

Carl Jung says there are 7 tasks of aging:

1. Facing the reality of aging and dying
2. Life review
3. Defining life realistically
4. Letting go of the ego
5. Finding new rooting in the Self
6. Determining the meaning of one’s life
7. Rebirth – dying with life

Facing the reality of aging and dying is a difficult task for any of us to tackle. This demand runs counterintuitive to our self-preserving instinct to deny that death is ever going to happen to us. Perhaps to others in the world but surely not to us. When we are young we feel invincible, we have our whole lives ahead of us. Such riches! Why allow even a glimmer of the truth to permeate our consciousness? If we allow this truth to gain ground in our minds we might well be paralyzed, unable to do any of the necessary tasks that are paramount for us during our youth, adult and middle years. For myself, although I have always been terrified of the thought of death, of not being, I managed to ignore the harsh reality of my death.
Now at 70 years of age I can no longer avoid thinking about the inevitability of my death. My partner’s mother died a few years ago and the immediacy of this event created strong repercussions in my awareness of my own mortality. It seemed I must now face this approaching life event. I struggled, and still struggle, with how to go about this. At first it seemed prudent to become extra careful, avoiding the possibility of dangerous activities or accidents. That promised only a dull and meaningless life. Learning to accept death as part of life means letting go of the fearful attempts at avoiding that end. It will happen. It seems the best way to negotiate this last part of my life is to find as much joy as possible, to experience as much as I am physically able to handle. Instead of narrowing my life I am intent on broadening my existence to include those things I don’t want to leave undone and those things that I haven’t even thought of yet. This seems likely to be challenging as well as full of possibilities.

One Million Rising video.