Things Seldom Openly Admitted

I’m going to deviate a little from the norm here and not talk about myself. Okay. I will talk about myself, but mainly, this is about my sister. Explaining exactly how she is my sister is too convoluted, so just take on fact that magpies collect their families more than they are born into them.

            I have always admired her – her strength, her generosity of spirit, her energy, and, probably most of all, the ever-present grace she exudes (I know she’ll laugh at that one, but it’s true). She’s the princess of the family – and by that I don’t mean some helpless girl in a puffy pink gown. No. She is the princess who can charge in and fight when she needs to, but sees the wisdom in diplomacy first; she is benevolent and just. She is the leader you would have complete faith in to make the right decisions.

            Those things I learned about her very quickly, and they’re all qualities I hold in high regard. Truth. Loyalty. Fairness. Compassion.

            I also knew, on a cognitive level, that the things she was doing and achieving were not easy things to reach, and I admired that, too.

            Over the past few months, though, I have gained a whole new perspective on exactly how challenging those things are, and how remarkable she is – as a writer and as a person.

            Native English speakers take a lot for granted. We very rarely have to worry about not being able to communicate in our own language, even if it’s at the most basic level. Our cultures are pretty well dispersed throughout the world through media, food, the internet. Our names are generally pretty easy to pronounce (says the kid whose names are constantly mispronounced just because they’re spelled a little funny). I think most of us learn one or two other languages at some point, but very few of us bother to stay fluent (or even get to that point) once the obligatory educational demands are met. We meet non-native speakers and are astounded that they can interact so easily in a foreign language.

            (I’m sure there’s going to be some (English-speaking) person out there reading this thinking, that’s not true. I know 47 different languages and am fluent in all of them. Good for you. I’m making a point so shush. And yeah. I did just do a parentheses within a parentheses. Deal with it.)

            My sister has done her MA and is doing a Ph.D. both (and did quite well at that). And that really isn’t even scraping the surface of all the projects, networking, and creating she’s done alongside those things. And, over the years, I’ve looked at all her accomplishments with a sort of envy at the amount of energy she has to put into all of them. I knew they were hard-earned, and results that I (because ‘I’ is always the main reference point; I’m allowed to be egocentric in my own blog) would have to work equally hard to earn.

            I did not once take into consideration the additional challenge of accomplishing all these many and amazing things in a foreign language (because her foreign language is my native one, give or take some vowels), which is exactly what she did.

            A while ago, I was sitting with a group of people discussing the experience of being living abroad (which most of us are and/or had been doing), and (I’m going to paraphrase and it will not be as eloquent or succinct as it was originally said), one person said that as great as being abroad is, it’s nice to go home, because home is easy. No matter how long you live in another country, you always have to work a little bit more, you always have to be on. At home, you can just stop and go with what’s happening because it’s familiar, you know it. You don’t have to think about it. When you’re abroad, some days you just want to not think because it’s tiring.

            And it is. I don’t say that very much, because I’m an English speaker living in an English-speaking country, and for some reason people (of all sorts and cultures and languages) seem to think that that alone nullifies the foreign element.

            It doesn’t.

            Anyway, moving on. Living abroad is tough, and my sister and I had talked about this. My first year in Newcastle, actually, I’m pretty sure she saved me. Here I was this naïve little Southern boy thinking it was the thing to do to smile and say hi to everyone, and not understanding why I kept getting met by looks that indicated I might be a crazy person. I felt isolated and self-conscious, and presumed the problem was me, because no one had told me exactly how big the culture gap between the North East of England and the South-east US really is (it is a wide, gaping chasm that you will never find the bottom of, in case you’re wondering). And then she told me. No, no. I had the same experience, and this is what I learned. And suddenly, while I wasn’t necessarily happy with these new social rules, I no longer felt like a pariah. Which helped.

            This summer I broke out of my rainy little island and went to check out some other parts of Europe. Like the other aforementioned native English-speakers, I used to be fluent in French and German, but the ten years of not using it for anything at all reduced my knowledge to a smattering of basic (but useful) phrases that, coupled with the reflexive Southern smile (try it; go find a Southerner, make him/her uncomfortable and see what s/he does first) and an incredibly nice man in Paris who translated a lunch order, got me through the trip unscathed. About the third week, though, I had a mini break. A lot of the trip responsibility (namely navigating cities like an expert off-the-cuff) had fallen on me, we had a lot of long days and early mornings, and I was starting to get sick. We came back to the flat after a particularly long and very hot day, and then we had to eat dinner. No big deal, right? Food is food. But that day, the idea of going outside and fumbling my way through what was and wasn’t vegetarian-friendly seemed like an overweight behemoth perched on my shoulders. I couldn’t do it. We had to eat, obviously, but I could not make myself go back out and face that. I would have cut off limbs for something familiar and easy, even just five minutes of not having to think about everything.

            And I thought, in that moment: this must be what my sister feels. It was such a simple thing, such an obvious thing, but it had never occurred to be before because I’d never experienced it to that extent. With that little epiphany, all the respect and admiration and love I have for her just magnified. So I asked myself what she would do, then I pulled myself together and went out and fetched dinner because it needed to be done. I spent quite a lot of that trip attempting to channel her (I say attempt because she’s much more patient than I am, and nicer, and generally positive).

            Last week I had another one of those moments. I’m starting a new thing, in a new place with new people. I expected it to be harder, but the truth is, for most of my life, quite a lot of (academic) things have come easily to me, and, generally, more easily than to those around me. So I’ve done a lot of coasting. A few teachers have called me out and demanded I actually work to my full potential, but most were too busy helping those who needed it to come up with extra challenges for the kid who was already doing above average. Basically, it’s made me lazy. Yes. I am a lazy perfectionist. It is possible.

            I don’t write standard fiction. I like playing with form and structure; I’ve never been happier than when my supervisor gave me free reign to dive headfirst into experimental writing. And I’m a huge advocate of the genre-and-literary-fiction-aren’t-mutually-exclusive-camp. Which means that 1. I do still feel embarrassed when I talk to “proper” literary people about my work because their eyes sort of glaze over and you can see them just writing you off before you’ve even finished your first sentence and 2. Because of 1, I also have to work that little bit harder to be taken seriously; I have to fight for my monsters and nonlinear narrative and multiple tenses and perspectives.

            And I’d gotten comfortable. In my last life, I’d won that fight already. I could babble on about alternate timelines and supernatural powers and zombies (I don’t write about zombies, oddly, as frequently as they feature in my every day discourse) and no one questioned the least bit whether or not I could pull off a literary anything. I’d proven it multiple times so it was just taken as standard.

            In my new life, I have to go through all of that again. And I did/am. And when it happened, I felt that pudgy little behemoth climbing up my back and just the idea of waging another battle in the name of literary genre fiction made me want to just sit right down in the middle of the path and not move (I didn’t; I do know how to fake at being a grown up sometimes).

            But on that excruciatingly long walk back, I thought of my sister, who has had to fight for her work to being taken seriously every step of the way because. She doesn’t do normal things, either. She does different not-normal, but it’s outside the status quo of the literary canon, so that’s enough. I thought about how hard she’s had to fight for her work, and that she’s had to do it without anyone physically in her corner to fight with her.

            I have no idea how she does it.

            I came home and promptly called my mother (I only have to pretend to be a grown up in public) to tell me I was being ridiculous and that I am, in fact, capable of doing this thing I’m trying to do, and she did. And then my neighbour came over and did the same. And I felt better about it. So I have to prove myself a little more than the standard guys. It’s okay. I can. I will. I’ve done it before.

            But I kept thinking about my sister – every achievement she’s made, every fight she’s won, every bit of progress she’s accomplished when everything else is pushing against her – and I felt that same encompassing awe at the person she is. I know that, in her place, there would have been many times I would have just given up.

            I may never have the same patience, wisdom, and certainly not the grace that she has, but she is, nevertheless, someone I aspire to be like. I will keep trying, even if I don’t ever fully succeed. Watching her these past few years, the perseverance she has and her ability to remain undefeated – and this isn’t there haven’t been hard struggles or close moments, but, for me at least, going on through those times takes a lot more than being able to skip them – shows me that it can be done, whatever else is saying no. And, here in Zaleshkaland, all that’s needed is the faintest glimmer of a possibility to take off running.

The Language of Hate

I'd intended to write a post about what exactly "free speech" means. I started it. I had quotes from the EU Charter, and all sorts of very carefully thought out points and good intentions of sharing knowledge with the world at large. But then I realised: there are more of you than there are of me, and I ran out of steam.

I love information. I love facts and trivia and just knowing things. The most exciting thing in the world is stumbling across a trove of information about a subject I didn't know anything about before, or meeting with someone who holds a completely different perspective who can speak about it rationally and intelligently. My friends and family, at times, get annoyed by this quest for information, the barrage of questions that comes when I'm faced with something I don't understand. New friendships go through a teething period where I have to explain: I just want to understand. Most established friendships have reached the point where they know they have to say: Too much information, Sashi.

I forget that not everyone is like this. Some people are told a particular thing, and they're happy with that explanation. They feel no need to investigate further and break it down to it's smallest parts. That's not a criticism of those people. It's not saying that mentality is less than mine. I don't understand it, but I'm sure there are many out there who don't understand how I can get completely lost in researching the minutiae of the evolution of spiders (as an example).

My first reaction when confronted with an opposing viewpoint is to evaluate it for credibility. Is it stated in a clear manner? Are there facts to back up that position? Are those facts verified by unbiased sources? If the answer to any of those questions is "no", I ask questions. Hell, I ask questions, anyway, but that's besides the point. If I find weaknesses or flaws in the argument, I point them out, and usually have a handful of resources to pass on, because that's my way of being helpful. If I wrote something littered with inaccurate information, I would hope that some kindly person would come along and say so. If they offered resources, all the better. More information for the magpie!

So when things like Julie Burchill's article come along, I find myself profoundly baffled. (You can read my my response to the article in a previous post.) I don't generally understand hate, particularly impersonal hate. (This is another trait that often tests the patience of friends and family; I can't count the number of times I've heard how can you defend that person? - simple: I don't have enough information to judge.) Hate, I think, takes an awful lot of energy. It also doesn't seem particularly productive. So to see so much hatred crammed into so few words temporarily short-circuited the language centres in my brain. I just couldn't process it. So I went back and tried to ferret out the purpose of the article. I tried to find some reason in it.

I couldn't.

Apparently neither could a lot of other people, and the article has since been taken down. Now Twitter is awash with cries of injustice and the infringement of free speech, the oppression of journalists, etc. ad nauseam. Again, I spent several hours watching the Twitter feed throw up claim after claim that Burchill is completely within her right to express her opinion, trying to wrap my head around the fact that a very essential fact was being overlooked: freedom of speech is not a limitless pass to say whatever you please in whatever form you wish. The issues was not in Burchill's opinion, but in her language. There are many, many ways she could have addressed what she felt was an injustice to Suzanne Moore in a composed and dignified manner, without reducing a very wide and diverse community to the cheapest insults. In fact, many of the people targeted by her article addressed her in just such a composed and dignified manner.

Freedom of speech does not protect you against libel, slander or sedition (among other things). Beyond that fact, however, is the matter of personal responsibility. Even if hate-speech were protected under freedom of speech (it's not; countered by the rights to dignity, safety, and protection from discrimination), and even if her article hadn't been littered with factual inaccuracies about the transgendered community, where is the personal responsibility involved in dredging up and perpetuating so many stereotypes that a highly discriminated against minority (and its allies) have fought long and hard to try to correct?

But, enough of that. Burchill is not the only culprit, and the fact is: I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired that I have to fight. I'm tired of scrambling to make my voice heard among the cacophony of anger, hatred and ignorance that just feed each other. I am tired of wanting to shut myself away from the world because everyone is screaming and no one is listening.

I'm an American. I live in the UK. If I criticise the British (though I tend to specify 'English' because those are the people I'm around), I am brushed off, ridiculed, or slapped with the label "insert negative adjective American". Sometimes all I have to do is ask why they do a particular thing here to get the same result. At the same time, I hear a constant barrage of criticisms and derogatory statements about Americans with varying levels of legitimacy. I'm not allowed to contradict these statements, either, though, because again I'm just being a "insert negative adjective American". I have one lecturer who somehow manages to include at least one derogatory statement about Americans per lecture - I'm actually a bit amazed at her ability to slip these in considering the lectures have nothing to do with Americans or the United States. No one speaks up. I don't even speak up. Why? Because I have been taught that pointing out that something is offensive is wrong.

We've all been taught that. If you're offended by someone's statement, you're minimised and illegitimised. You're told that you're just "too sensitive"; others are told that you're "throwing a tantrum" or "having a hissy fit". At best, you are patronised and pandered to, if not out and out attacked.

Back home, guns are a big topic at the moment. Every time there's a school shooting, guns are a big topic. Except. Is anyone talking about the propensity in American society for individuals to take guns into public places and shoot people they don't know for no particularly identifiable reason? No. Everyone is screaming "Don't take my guns away!" because it was mentioned that part of solving this quandary of public shootings might be examining the gun control regulations already in place. The real issue - why this happens so frequently in our country - is completely ignored.

What does that have to do with hate? Well, my dears, it's very simple. It becomes a form of hate. Meme posts depicting liberals as illiterate idiots for wanting stricter gun control laws, sensationalist articles written on both sides to further their agenda, two camps of people screaming bile at each other and no one bothering to listen.

Pick any topic and you'll see it - over and over these cycles of animosity impeding the channels of reasonable discussion, impeding progress and resolution, impeding acceptance and peace.

Don't you ever want it to just stop? Don't you get tired of it?

When are we going to stop reducing each other to impersonal labels and accept that we are all human? We are all vulnerable. We are all flawed. We all want the same things - safety, health, happiness. The rest doesn't matter. Strip us down to the barest principles and we are all the same. Why can't we talk to each other? Why can't we come together and work towards finding practical solutions to the issues - whether it's the issue of a journalist who abuses her role or the vast number of people without food or ensuring everyone has access to adequate health or - dear god there are so many problems to fix in this world, why are we wasting so much time slinging childish insults back and forth?

When are we going to stop hating?

PS You have to be brave.

"One has to have a complicated kind of optimism. You can't refuse to look at how horrible things are."

Many, many things have happened since last we spoke, but I'm not going to talk about them. Enough has been said and said and said about them that adding anything more at this point would just be rehashing things already done and sometimes, sometimes we all need a little space to breathe.

"Sometimes it's like watching a delicate flower surrounded in snow, and it tries to stand up, but the snow just keeps crushing it."

There is a certain weariness that attaches itself to life. We're taught and told that adversity breeds strength, that the injuries we suffer build character and enable us to move forward. Persevere. There's a lot of importance attached to that. The ability to persevere. It's noble. It's honorable. Whatever happens, we shall hold our heads up and comport ourselves with dignity. We will conceal all wounds and smile blithely even while blood soaks through layers and layers...

"Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone... Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way."

I wonder about that. Is our strength founded in the pain we feel, or do we only discover it at the bottom of the box when everything has already been taken out? Is it just that thing we are left holding in the end, pushing us to move breathe sleep eat because ultimately, whatever we would like to say or believe about ourselves, we are programmed to survive and even when our cognitive identity crumbles, that innate, unignorable programming kicks in and demands you will carry on. Is that noble?

"I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of feeling like shit when I didn't do anything wrong, and being angry when there isn't anything I can do to fix it, having to be the one responsible for knowing how to fix it - like I have any idea - and just. All of it. I wish it would just stop and go away."

There are those who don't, I suppose. Those who get so much piled around them that all they can do is collapse beneath it. Are they less noble for their inability to persevere? Are they damaged, flawed, unsaveable, deserving of pity because obviously they must not be imbued with this strength that is so vital, so admirable, so indicative of someone worthy of respect?

"Respect the ecology of your delusions."

There is a comfort and a danger in spending too much time in a nonexistent world. In the things we create, the stories and lives and events we manufacture, there is an order and logic to the messiest of situations. Every line of speech has significance. Every action is meaningful. Nothing is arbitrary, and you can be assured of that. But if you linger too long on that side of the glass, you start interpreting life itself with the same codebook, when the truth is there are no layers of metaphor to unwind. A mess is a mess and nothing more. The virtues - the ideals, the beliefs - you try to hold on to break down, wear down, are stolen from you. Sometimes without you even realising. You think you still have them and one day you find yourself in need of one, so you reach into the box and pull out something that looks vaguely like honesty or integrity or whatever else it is you might be seeking, but it's not quite what you expected. It's not quite what you remember it being.

"I'm not suited for this. I'm not designed for it. I don't like it. I can't even remember to breathe regularly without thinking about it, and that's supposed to be automatic. I'm trapped in the teeniest of cages without even any door that I might try for an escape. And maybe I could bear it if there were more room to move around, but I am pressed and squeezed into this limited space until so often I feel like I'm just going to burst out of it but it never yields. I don't think I am a creature that was ever meant to be forced into corporeal form. I find it awkward and unwieldy. And maybe that's why I have such difficulty trying to place myself amongst tangible things - I don't spend much time in the physical realm, and the things that exist there don't hold any importance to me." 

And maybe it's better that what you pull out isn't quite that thing you thought it was, because the world has no use for them. They're a little like fairy stories; things we tell ourselves at night to make the dreams easier to catch. Take honesty. We are, generally speaking, expected to be honest, but not too honest. If you are too honest, you're mean. You're heartless. So we develop a practice of speaking in half-truths, reading between the lines, accepting the little lies we give each other to spare someone's feelings. This is more acceptable than true honesty, but no one knows why. I've asked.

"You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty an kind but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and kindness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be."

Inevitably, because we're trying so hard to be careful and respectful, to follow these proscribed standards of behaviour that allow us acceptance as members of the whole, there are misunderstandings, complications, confrontations, those injuries that foster that much-sought-after attribute of strength. It's part of life, they say. Everyone experiences it. Just keep your chin up, kid, and remember that smile. Maybe, even if we weren't expected to perform two contradictory actions simultaneously, these things would happen anyway. Maybe they wouldn't.

"But failing in love isn't the same as not loving. It doesn't let you off the hook, it doesn't mean... you're free to not love."

So we misunderstand each other. We hurt each other. We hide from each other and we scream at each other. We allow moments of great silence to fill the cracks that had been made. We try to replace those silences with words that mean nothing in the hopes that over time they'll start to mean something again. We tell ourselves to be strong. That the strength we've discovered or developed or however we came by it will see us through every moment of shaky ground. We try to put our faith back together. Perhaps that is the most difficult thing of all. Once the yelling is done. Once the silence has lasted too long. Once all parties sit humbled and hurt, there is still the matter of faith, and whether or not it has been truly lost. If there is still even a hint of faith left, or maybe even just the desire for faith... Maybe, in the end, that is all strength really is.

"It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet."