ageing – twenty-one words

This world

October 8, 2025Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, nature, Only connect!, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, Running, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the beach, the seaTagged algal bloom, books, Clare Chambers, despair, fiction, Intimacies, poem, poems, poetry, reading, Small Pleasures, writing2 Comments

Other people’s words about … kindness

He knelt down to undress her, his shaking hands fumbling over every button and zip and hook, until she was naked in front of him. Then he stopped and looked up at her with a troubled expression.

‘I haven’t done this for seven years. Will you forgive me if it goes badly?’

Jean laughed, amazed at her own boldness in displaying her body while he was still fully clothed. It was the strangest feeling, placing herself in someone else’s power with complete confidence. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

‘Well, I haven’t done it for longer than that. But it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re kind.’

And so even though they were unpractised, they were kind and that made it all right. And afterwards they lay for a long time pressed together, her head on his shoulder, his hand stroking her hip while the night deepened around them. There was no urgency to move apart; morning and work were a long way off.

From ‘Small Pleasures‘
By Clare Chambers

Depictions of sex are notoriously hard to get right, and what sets those that work apart from those that don’t isn’t always obvious (although personally I feel that it helps if the writer avoids analogies with mountains and valleys, and doesn’t refer to a man’s ‘member’!). But I think the passage I’ve quoted above, from Clare Chambers’s lovely novel Small Pleasures — a novel set in 1957 — is one of the most moving sex scenes I’ve ever read.

It’s also somehow shocking. How many sex scenes have you read recently where the lovers were explicitly kind to each other? I can’t remember a single one. So when I say the scene is shocking, I mean, not that Chambers sets out to describe something graphic or taboo-breaking, but the opposite — that this is the word she uses, kind. And so even though they were unpractised, they were kind and that made it all right. How beautiful is that?

Deep Creek, September 2025.

I’ve been quiet over here for a while, not because I haven’t wanted to write a post, but because I didn’t know how to find the words to do so. Earlier this year, a toxic algal bloom hit the coast of South Australia. It began in regional locations but then spread to the metropolitan coast, killing marine animals in its wake and turning the ocean into a graveyard. Although scientists originally predicted that it would disperse during the cooler weather of the winter months, it hasn’t done so, and as summer approaches it’s clear that the bloom will remain for some time to come. There are thought to be several causes for it, among the most obvious of which is global warming: we are experiencing a marine heatwave in South Australia.

When I think about the algal bloom, I feel powerless and devastated. I have lived the whole of my adult life around the sea. My house is within walking distance of the sea. My holidays and camping trips are centred around the sea. I walk and run by the sea. I go to the sea to remind myself that there is another world beyond the human world — to tune the rhythm of my breathing into the rhythm of the waves, in and out. In and out.

But now what I feel when I go to the sea is grief.

Deep Creek, September 2025

It’s impossible for me to write a post here, on this blog in which I have for so many years celebrated my life by the sea, without acknowledging the algal bloom, and yet I find it almost equally impossible to write about it. And so this is the reason for my quietness. These words, even as I write them, do not come easily to me.

The effects of climate change are not kind. This is not a kind world.

Deep Creek, September 2025

I will finish by saying that the photographs that accompany this post come from a recent trip I made with a friend to Deep Creek, to the place where I spent a week on a writing residency around the same time last year.

Wait — let me rephrase that: I will finish by saying that Deep Creek is a place of stunning natural beauty and I am grateful for my time there, but that it, too, like the ocean, is vulnerable to climate change, because this is not a kind world.

It is not a kind world.

Lately I’ve been reading …

I want to say one thing. And that’s this: if anyone ever tells you that you can’t write about the same thing over and over again, or that you can’t sink into your obsessions with a pen the way someone sinks into a couch or into a hot bath, show them today’s poem, ‘Hurry,’ alongside this other poem, ‘Walking Home,’ published by Marie Howe nearly a decade after ‘Hurry’: Devin Kelly, discussing the poem Hurry by Marie Howe. Kelly is passionate about poetry and I’m thankful to him for introducing me to many poems I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. But also I love how he explores and acknowledges in this essay artists who explore recurring themes in their work.
These poems remind me that one reason why I turn to poetry is because of the ways that some poems acknowledge, so often, our ever-present inability, and, in doing so, they perform exercises of coping. They reimagine lives. They repeat. They open doors. They enter: Devin Kelly again, this time exploring Matthew Nienow’s poem For What it’s Worth.
Thank You For the Tulips: more poetry here, perhaps because I need it — this time a poem by Lisa Bellamy on motherhood and love.
At 50, Choosing New Make-Up: one more poem for good measure, this one by Wendy Barker. In fact, there are several others by Barker if you scroll down the page, though this is the one that first drew me to her poetry.

Soar

June 26, 2025Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, books, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, My published writing, on writing, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, staying humble, staying true, Winter, writingTagged All Fours, book-reviews, books, despair, fiction, Intimacies, Miranda July, poetry, reading, writingLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … tea

You made me tea
while I shook the rain from my jacket
You stooped to fit into the kitchen
but handled the cups as if they’d been
the fontanelles of two young sons
whose picture sits in the hip of your 501s.
We spoke of — what? Not much.
You weren’t to know how your touch
with the teaspoon stirred me,
how the tendons of your wide, divining hands
put me in mind of flight.

You wouldn’t have known
when you bent to tend a plant
that your shirt fell open a smile’s breadth.
You parted the leaves and plucked
a tiny green bud. Best to do that
with the early ones, you said.
I thought of the salt in the crook
of your arm where a fine vein kicks.
Of what it might be like to know
the knot and grain and beat of you;
the squeak of your heart’s pips.

From ‘Tea’
By Tiffany Atkinson

Once upon a time, I used to describe myself as someone who drank ‘endless cups of tea’ — which was indeed true, once upon a time — but these days I’m sensitive to caffeine, and so my morning pot of tea, the treasured pot of tea, is the only tea I drink for the day.

And while I drink that pot of tea, I write. Some years ago, when I decided to make a commitment to writing something every day, no matter how little, I linked the commitment I’d made, very strategically, to my morning pot of tea. That way, I told myself, even when I’m filled with doubt about whatever it is I’m writing at the time, even if every part of me wants to give up on it, even if procrastination and writer’s block are overwhelming me, I still put myself through the process each morning — because of the cup of tea that accompanies it.

That’s how I wrote Ravenous Girls, in fact — one pot of tea at a time.

Morning pot of tea, June 2025.

Tiffany Atkinson’s beautiful poem Tea — which I found in a book that a dear friend gave me, Sophie Dahl’s Ten Poems about Tea — isn’t about tea, not really. It starts with a simple, everyday gesture, a man making a woman a cup of tea, and then, like all the best poems, it takes flight. It soars.

It’s a poem to be read slowly, to be savoured, just like a pot of tea.

Lately I’ve been reading …

Bluebells are popping up and there are patches of bracken: Phoebe Weston explores the ‘ghost woodlands’ of England, tracts of land that have been grazed for centuries but are now being returned to their original woodlands.
I am actually grateful that I have an opportunity to correct the record on this because I think people have the wrong idea about my path: Brandon Taylor, in an interview at The Republic of Letters. I am a huge fan of Taylor’s fiction, and perhaps for this reason it has come to me only slowly that I am less enthusiastic about his online presence. I don’t know why this realisation astonishes me — this is true about many of the writers whose fiction I admire: it’s their work I love, not them. Be that as it may, this is a fascinating interview in which Taylor articulates his thoughts on writing, writing success, the state of fiction in the US today, micro-agression, and literary criticism.
The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel”, which is incorrect – not because you could easily name 10 others, rather because what it ignited was not an honest heart-to-heart about hormones, but something far more radical. What if a woman just told the truth, about sex, monogamy, marriage, mortality, domesticity, friendship, the life of the mind?: Zoe Williams in conversation with Miranda July, author of the novel All Fours. This is an interesting interview, even if, like me, you are not a fan of All Fours. Disclosure: I didn’t plan to read this novel. I felt that I would loathe it, for reasons that are essentially encapsulated in the quote I’ve used here. Having now (reluctantly) read it, I can say that I found it both unexpectedly better than I thought it would be and just as irksome and loathsome as I had thought I would find it. Mostly, though, I think what I object to has less to do with July’s writing (which is at the very least thoughtful and entertaining) than with the way that since publication All Fours has been heralded as ‘the truth’ about ‘perimenopausal’ women. Why do we even need to look for one single ‘truth’? July’s truth is not mine, but in all fairness, she may not have set out to write ‘the’ perimenopausal novel in the first place. What do you think?
One of the admirable things about All Fours is that July lets her protagonist have such ugly feelings: Okay, or maybe the reason I didn’t enjoy All Fours is simply that it offended me? Here’s Garth Greenwell on why it’s important to set aside your offence as a reader.
The dog barks only at pigeons, no other bird species. The amount of discussion the owners have given this topic could constitute a peer reviewed paper: And finally, a piece of short fiction, Weike Wang’s hilarious and poignant story about dogs and their owners.

A sad place

April 19, 2025Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, Autumn, books, depression, favourite quotes, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., out & about, reading, resilience, solace, staying humble, staying true, the beach, the sea, the sky, walkingTagged AI, books, Childhood, despair, editing, fiction, Intimacies, novel, reading, Tove Diveletsen, writing2 Comments

Other people’s words about … accessing feelings

The exams are over and we’ve had the graduation party at school. Everyone cheered now that they were leaving the ‘red prison’, and I cheered loudest of all. It bothers me a lot that I don’t seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people’s reactions. It’s as if I’m only moved by things that come to me indirectly. I can cry when I see a picture in the newspaper of an unfortunate family that’s been evicted, but when I see the same ordinary sight in reality, it doesn’t touch me. I’m moved by poetry and lyrical prose, now as always — but the things that are described leave me completely cold. I don’t think very much of reality.

From ‘Childhood‘
By Tove Ditlevsen

Some years ago an older woman said to me that she had noticed she didn’t cry very much anymore. She said that when she was younger she had been someone who cried easily, when she was sad, when she was angry, sometimes when she was happy. But now, in her seventies, the tears didn’t well up anymore.

I remember thinking that that wouldn’t be the case for me. I remember thinking that I would always be someone who cried a lot — too much, probably, rather than not enough. I have always cried copiously and easily and very often self-piteously. I have cried at the most inappropriate times, during moments that weren’t about me at all, moments when I should have been comforting someone, not dealing with my own emotions.

Largs Bay Jetty, April 2025.

And yet here I am, mid-fifties, and it’s happening to me, too. In the passage I’ve quoted above from Tove Ditlevesen’s memoir, Ditlevsen is describing the way she felt as a teenager, but the feelings she expresses in this passage describe the way I often feel now, the way the older woman I mentioned above also expressed feeling. It’s a feeling of seeing sad things, being moved by them, being aware that I’m sad about them even, but not being able to access the sadness itself directly. When I do cry, it’s usually, like the adolescent Ditlevesen, when the feeling is being conveyed to me through another medium — a book, a film, a poem, a song.

I miss crying. Perhaps that sounds odd or self-indulgent, but I miss the feeling that came when my eyes grew hot and tears fell down my cheeks and my throat tightened and my breath snagged. I miss the feeling of being there with my sadness, right there. I miss the feeling that follows a crying bout, too, that feeling of being healed, even if only temporarily.

The world is a sad place right now. People will say in response to this that the world has always been sad for someone somewhere, and that’s true. Partly, then, I say that it’s a sad place from a place of privilege, because I’ve experienced times when it seemed that there was a lot of hope in the world, if you could only learn to access it. Still, when I think about the climate crisis, when I think about Presidents Trump and Putin and Xi Jinping and Yoon Suk Yeol, when I think about the rise of Artificial Intelligence, the world seems to me a very sad place indeed. Would it help if I were able to cry about this? I don’t know. Like the adolescent Divletsen, I don’t think very much of reality.

Lately I’ve been reading …

Technology appears to extend our connection … (but) while that’s true, it can’t replace intimacy: Willow Defebaugh on loneliness and longevity.
Sure, it’s voyeuristic (or pornographic if you like), and that’s part of the fun: T M Brown explores reality TV and his curious passion for it.
Our innocence is chipped away, often gently but sometimes brutally, by what happens to us. Gradually, innocence is transformed to experience, and we begin to understand who we are, how the world is, and what matters most to us: James Bailey asks people what is the meaning of life and receives a variety of answers.
The great American biologist EO Wilson predicted that human life would not long survive the demise of the invertebrates. But he also devised a plangent term for this epoch from ancient Greek: the Eremocene, a new, isolated place. Our era is not just the human-dominated Anthropocene; it is an age of loneliness: Patrick Barkham reflects on the role of invertebrates on Earth.

Sad place

June 13, 2024Posted in a thought, ageing, anorexia, books, Cairo, eating disorder recovery, favourite quotes, health, Lately I've been reading about, My published writing, on writing, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, staying humble, staying true, Winter, writingTagged Chetna Mario, Western LaneLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … funfairs

Deep down, the funfair was a sad place. You couldn’t hear yourself think. Everything was too bright and too big. The floor was covered in sawdust and underneath it, dirt. On the other side of the Round Up there was a wire fence around a patch of muddy grass with a few bits of hay, and inside the fence was the saddest horse you ever saw. Chestnut brown with white socks, covered in flies, its nose more or less touching the ground because its own head was too much for its neck to bear. It wasn’t just sad: there was something mean in it that wasn’t its fault. When I whispered to it, ‘hello, horse’, it slowly turned its whole body away.

from ‘Western Lane‘
by Chetna Mario

In my memory, the Cairo Zoo is a little like the funfair that Chetna Maroo’s narrator describes in the passage I’ve quoted above.

I visited the Cairo Zoo thirty-two years ago, just once. I didn’t take any photographs or record it in my diary at the time, and the man I visited it with, the man I was living with in Cairo, an American man, is no longer in regular touch with me, so I don’t know how accurately I’m recalling it. But in my memory the zoo was a place where the animal enclosures were small and narrow with bare ground and no grass, a place where the animals were thin with their ribs showing through their mangy fur. It was also a place where families wandered down the paths with an air of celebration and festivity, where children carried balloons and mothers pushed prams and vendors walked past, selling roses and snacks. It was a sad place. That’s how I remember it.

Largs Bay, June 2024.

In the camel enclosure, a camel stood before us, a camel whose toenails had grown so long that they curved down towards the ground. The American man and I stared silently back at the camel.

‘That’s cruel,’ I said at last, my voice wobbling. ‘They should cut its toes.’

‘I know,’ the American man said back.

He laughed helplessly and then he looked as though he might start to cry instead.

‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Oh God, Rebecca, let’s get out of here.’

And we fled.

How did we get to the zoo that day — by bus or train? I don’t know. Where did we go afterwards — back to our apartment in downtown Cairo or to the fiteer place that we loved for lunch? I don’t know. Is any of this memory true? I don’t know.

And if it’s not true, this memory, this story that I’ve just told you — even though I remember it that way — do I have the right to tell it to you?

I don’t know.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- The sobriety narrative is appealing in that it organises life into a tidy before and after, the epitome of a transformation story, powerful proof of the capacity to change: On the subject of telling troublesome stories, here is Sara Martin exploring the recovery narrative. In my novella Ravenous Girls, the narrator, Frankie, longing to understand what her anorexic sister is experiencing, devours memoirs written by people who have recovered from an eating disorder. It’s only slowly that she realises the inherent faultiness of these recovery narratives. This, in part, is what Martin explores in this piece.
- While eating disorders are more prevalent among adolescents and young women, eating disorders affect people of all genders and ages, including those in experiencing perimenopause and menopause in midlife: On the subject of eating disorders, here’s the Butterfly Foundation on the growing recognition of the prevalence of eating disorders in older women.
- Disappointment isn’t self-indulgence or a lack of gratitude; it isn’t a failure of character or a threat to my wellbeing. It is the natural byproduct of wanting something that has not come to fruition. To desire is to make ourselves vulnerable; to come up empty-handed hurts: I am usually wary of people who write about their mindfulness and spiritual practices. I find the language they use, somewhat counterintuitively, self-absorbed, and the practices they preach alientating. Despite this, I found this piece by Benjamin Schaefer, on how writers often mistake disappointment for jealousy, thought-provoking.

Unrequited

May 30, 2024Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, Australian bush, Autumn, birds, books, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, native coastal vegetation, Other people's words about ..., out & about, reading, resilience, staying humble, staying true, the beach, What I talk about when I talk about running, writingTagged Cursed Bread, Sophie MackintoshLeave a comment

Other people’s words about … a woman’s desire

The meat was ready, steaming, when I lifted the lid of the pot. As I sliced it up I pictured meeting the ambassador in the hotel room. First, he will open the door and clasp me in his arms, I decided, putting a plate in front of my husband. He will kiss the hollow of my throat very softly, and then he will gaze upon me, I decided, like he did today, but with much more tenderness. I cut my potatoes up into tiny pieces. My husband chewed and chewed, with the mouth that never kissed me. He will lay me down on the soft white bed and undo the buttons slowly, I decided. He will kiss my eyelids. I will place my hands on his smooth back, I decided as I chewed. I will clutch him to me but not too hard, not like a drowning person. The light will be dim. The bedding will be spotless. He will tell me that he has seen what nobody else has ever noticed. He will say, ‘It’s you I’ve wanted all along, Elodie. I see you, Elodie. You. You.’

from ‘Cursed Bread‘
by Sophie Mackintosh

I came back to Elodie’s story again today, having quoted from it once before. Elodie’s story continues to compel me — her longing for her husband to desire her, to see her, oh, to want her. Though Elodie is young and has her life ahead of her, I wonder whether the feelings and desires she expresses in her narrative, those feelings and desires that in her tiny village community are so forbidden, are a little like those an older woman might feel, a woman my age, on realising that the desires she once thought might be realised are now out of reach.

I wonder.

Largs Bay Jetty, May 2024.

I’ve spent the last few weeks quietly. Post-Covid, I still feel tired. It’s a funny kind of tiredness, not so much a feeling of lethargy as a feeling of being tissue-thin, emotionally and physically. I don’t know how else to describe it. Still, I’ve been walking and reading and even writing (a little), and I had a quiet moment of celebration a couple of weeks ago when I saw ten hooded plovers at Aldinga Beach.

Yes, ten. I have never seen so many before, and I walked home feeling quietly jubilant.

Bracken fern, May 2024.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- You see, just because she can’t articulate her desires, doesn’t mean she doesn’t yearn for something more: On the topic of desire, here is Mesha Maren on quiet women who are filled with longing.
- But the land where we pitched our tent is no longer there. It’s somewhere in the North Sea: Rachel Keenan on her disappearing town. (Okay, I confess this story particularly got to me as someone who is employed by local government and has previously worked in positions in both state and federal governments. If you read it, you will see why.)
- Novel writing is such a personal and idiosyncratic thing, and there’s rarely a good reason to do it apart from fulfilling some serious internal nagging: Ladette Randolph interviews Carolyn Kuebler, whose words about writing — why she writes, how she writes — seem to me some of the wisest I have stumbled across.
- [Antimicrobial resistance as an] issue is ‘more acute’ than climate change: Kat Lay on how the Covid pandemic may have been relatively minor, as far as pandemics and illnesses go, as we look into the future.

Becoming

March 10, 2024Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, solace, staying humble, staying true, summer, walkingTagged Anne Enright, The Wren5 Comments

Other people’s words about … leaving home

Much as I love my mother, much as I love that fabulous fridge, the free heating, the coffee grinder with whole, organic beans, much as I love reading on the sofa while she shifts and grunts over her Sudoku, I really did need to get away.

Meanwhile, some oozing, inner self knew what I was doing when I loaded up the boot of her car and broke her heart. When I made my mother drive me across town to a damp room in a run-down street, whose only attraction was the fact that she was not in it. I was going to fall apart. I had been so good, I had done all the things. Now, I wanted to sleep under a hedge and wake to the rain.

I also wanted to move out of this crap, overpriced town but I had not figured out where to go yet, so I was in a house in Ballybough that belonged to someone’s dead granny, first of all with Lily and, when she left for London, with her friend Stuart and one other randomer in the box room. Every time I went online, I found light-flooded interiors with potted plants the size of our kitchen. Outside, the red-brick streets were starting to look curated and I was just flicking through a life that wasn’t mine. Just flicking through.

from ‘The Wren, The Wren‘
by Anne Enright

I remember going away, leaving my childhood home, like the narrator in the passage above, Nell, does when she leaves her mother Carmel. I found it harder to break away than Nell and so I bought a plane ticket and flew overseas, because that was the only way I could make myself leave —- it required money; it required fear; it required loneliness; it required a non-refundable, one-way plane ticket to the other side of the world. I am not speaking figuratively here. As soon as I was on that plane, I felt afraid but I could not jump out —- that’s the thing about planes; you can’t jump out —- and so I went on flying away, leaving home (although, like Nell, I grew up and came home again eventually).

Path to the beach, Silver Sands, March 2024.

Last year I turned fifty-three and yet the stories that most move me, the books I most often read, are still, even now, about young people coming of age —- or if not young people, then people at moments in their lives when they become bigger or older or wiser or sadder, when they become in essence someone new, which is after all another form of coming of age. Perhaps what I mean is that I love stories of becoming.

Being fifty-three is a time when you come of age in another way. It is, you know, especially for women. I am right in the throes of that now, my last coming of age, perhaps.

It’s funny in some ways, because all the things I taught myself to do when I was younger, all the things I taught myself to do in order to grow up and look after myself and find a way of moving through the world with more ease (which is perhaps the very definition of finding a way to grow up) no longer work, not at fifty-three. My coping mechanisms, that is to say, are no longer effectual at helping me to cope — not because they no longer work, I don’t think, but because I simply can’t do them anymore.

Crooked tree and seat, The Washpool, March 2024.

For example.

You teach yourself to be intimate with other people -— a man you love, a friend you adore, another friend you trust. You teach yourself to be fit and strong. You teach yourself to drink a little wine every now and then, because it helps you to relax. You teach yourself to be okay with solitude. You teach yourself these things -— I taught myself these things -— but now these things, most of them, are slowly becoming inaccessible to me, simply by virtue of the fact that I am fifty-three. And fifty-three, I am finding, says no to these things. Physically, I mean. It says no.

Cracked mud, March 2024.

So I look down the tunnel of my fifties and I see what every other fifty-year-old before me has seen, no doubt. And I do not feel, no matter what decision I make, as though I am growing bigger or wiser or sadder or in any way newer. I am growing older, definitely. There is that.

But then there are books like The Wren, The Wren. Because I lied a little when I said that all the coping mechanisms I taught myself as a younger woman no longer work for me. One of them still does. I read. I read. I read.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- Within the strictures of neoliberal capitalism, one of the few ways we can now relate to the old-fashioned concept of morality and being ‘a good person’ is through our brand and speech, where we spend our money, the businesses and causes we align with, and how we present ourselves to others. We don’t have commandments, only hashtags: Ahona Guha explores the ethics of using social media to protest the violence in Gaza (or not). This clear, thoughtful essay is less about whether we should speak up or not than it is about what it means to speak up or not, why we use social media, what social media means to us and how we can use ethical principles to guide us in our lives.
- Inevitably, Waylon would lie down beside him, gingerly resting his enormous, wart-covered head on Austin’s thigh. They could remain that way for five or six hours at a time: Peter Holley explores why a wild animal will always be … a wild animal.
- Women and racial and ethnic minorities are 20 to 30 percent more likely than White men to experience a misdiagnosis: Liz Szabo explores the biases and prejudices that cause medical misdiagnosis. For reasons that may be clear from the content of my post, I find this article particularly relevant right now.
- ‘I reject the world’: Oh, Sinead. Jonno Revance looks at the legacy of Sinead O’Connor, a woman ahead of her time.

Unfathomable

February 16, 2024February 16, 2024Posted in ageing, books, depression, favourite quotes, health, Lately I've been reading about, Other people's words about ..., reading, staying humble, staying true, summerTagged Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh2 Comments

Other people’s words about … unrequited desire

My husband saw me watching him over dinner each night and never asked me what was on my mind. Maybe he knew it was all terrible, unfathomable. Maybe he knew me better than I realised. And isn’t that a perfect cruelty. And isn’t that a marriage. Two people locked in a box together. I still talk to him, Violet, as much as I talk to you. Even a mouse in a trap will self-amputate rather than remain stuck, I tell him. if you’d only touched me, I tell him. All that summer I was dying over and over, I tell him, but I’m only telling the air, the empty room.

from ‘Cursed Bread‘
by Sophie Mackintosh

I don’t think I’ve ever read a more powerful, fevered narrative of desire than the story that Sophie Mackintosh’s narrator, Elodie, tells in Cursed Bread. Elodie desires her husband, who once desired her but doesn’t any longer. She desires him and she tries to make him desire her. She kisses him. She touches him. She climbs on top of him. He rolls away every time, which only makes her desire grow stronger.

Elodie’s longing for her husband, and her longing for him to long for her, is not the only thing that Mackintosh’s novel is about, but — for me, at least — it is the most powerful element of the story. I’ve been looked at in pity and in fear and I’ve learned that the only way to really be seen is through desire, Elodie writes. To be looked at and found whole. Found alive. Please look at me. I promise you that I am here.

Summer bike ride, Aldinga, January 2024.

There is an element of tragedy here that the only way Elodie can imagine herself being acknowledged and seen is as a sexual being, and yet this, too, rings true to me. As she herself might say: And isn’t this the story of desire. Isn’t this the story of every woman who has ever wanted to be seen.

At fifty-three, I find myself intrigued by stories about desire in a way that I wasn’t as a younger woman. Perhaps it’s because I understand at last how much we, all of us — all of us women, at least — long to be seen. Perhaps it’s also because I understand at last how easy it is to confuse being desired (and desirable?) with being seen.

Hospital waiting room, February 2024.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- The present tense can exacerbate both bad prose and loose ideas; to harness it like a flashlight and not a hammer requires delicacy: In this fascinating piece, Grace Bryon explores trans literature (including whether it exists, or should exist, at all) through exploring fiction written in the present tense. I found Bryon’s essay interesting on two levels — both her discussion of what trans lit is or isn’t and her discussion of what makes any writing good (or not).
- One habit that those born between 1997 and 2012 are keen to endorse is reading –- and it’s physical books rather than digital that they are thumbing: Chloe MacDonnell explores the apparent love that Gen Z have for reading print books and asks, is it a genuine response to the noise they experience from the digital world, or is it merely a performative love (which, presumably, contributes to the digital noise)?
- Adulthood, in any case, is a socially constructed concept that varies across places and times: Lila Shapiro explores age-gap relationships.
- I sensed that the overworked and underpaid health care professionals I saw didn’t believe I was seriously ill because I wasn’t producing the beginnings of a corpse. This was, after all, the height of the pandemic in Florida; death was going door to door. And here I was, complaining of a fever. I had just turned 30. I was —- and still am, or so I like to think —- a young man. I could still walk my dog, grade papers, and post on Twitter. I’d lost some weight and wasn’t eating much, but I wasn’t incapacitated. These doctors concurred, gave me a once-over and moved me along. In hindsight, I could have demanded blood tests and better care, but deferring to doctors is what patients are supposed to do: Evan Grillon — survivor of cardiac surgery, former crisis centre counsellor — on illness, being a patient, and living with death.
- I had only just turned 52 one week before the September evening I collapsed. But the year from 51 to 52 had been a remarkably bad one: To accompany Evan Grillon’s piece above, here is Tom Seneca, also a relatively young man, with his reflections on his own experience of illness.

Ravaging

June 19, 2023Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, books, depression, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, staying humble, staying true, WinterTagged Fat Girl Dancing, Kris Kneen1 Comment

Other people’s words about … growing older as a woman

The things they don’t tell you about menopause are multiple and ever-changing, newly horrifying with every fresh wave.

I know there are positives. Apparently you no longer care what people think about you. Apparently you have come into your power, you are a wise elder, you don’t give a shit about what anyone else might say.

Only you do. The thing no-one tells you about menopause is that you look like you don’t care because your face is set that way, because you get used to trying not to care until you imagine it is true. But you do care. It is ravaging and you do care, you really do.

from ‘Fat Girl Dancing‘
by Kris Kneen

I can’t think of a time when I didn’t care about what other people think about me. I have always been someone who cares too much about this, who compares myself with others and finds myself wanting in every way I can think of to be found wanting.

This hasn’t changed as I’ve got older. Like Kneen, I’ve heard the truisms around ageing; I’ve listened to and read the interviews in which famous older women tell their interviewer that at fifty/sixty/seventy they feel wiser/calmer/happier/more beautiful than at any previous stage in their life — and I’ve believed them. (Let it be said, I am somewhat suggestible when it comes to what other people say. It comes with the territory.)

Sunset, Taperoo Beach, June 2023.

I was thinking, when I first read Kneen’s words, about writing a post here about how we as women are objectified; about how that’s why, when we reach menopause, we feel the way Kneen describes; about how, though objectification feels odious, being silently discarded feels even worse. But this morning as I sat down to write this post, I found that what I wanted to say was something else.

What I really want to say is that one of the things I have come to realise as I grow older is that the pieces of received wisdom I’ve absorbed over the years rarely work for me when I try to apply them to myself. Over and over again over the years, I’ve had to discard those generalisations — about living, about being a woman, about growing older, about finding some level of happiness or contentment or peace — and find my own truth.

At fifty-two, I certainly don’t feel that I am coming into my power, and I could not feel further from being a wise elder. But I do know that in the years that lie ahead of me, if I am lucky enough to live them, I will continue to need to find my own path through life. I will continue to need to turn away from those truisms and pieces of received wisdom about how my life should appear to me. And I will continue to need to be less suggestible. Because I do care; I really do. I always will.

Black and white, Taperoo Beach, June 2023.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- No one can tell us what we must surrender. They can try, but, if we have options, we can form callouses over our eardrums: Amy Benson on giving up air travel to save the planet.
- When I tried to get out of bed today I simply collapsed: Ross Benjamin quoting Franz Kafka on the torments of juggling a creative life with the necessity of a day job.
- There’s only ever the same, finite amount of water churning around in our water cycle. Every drop of water on Earth has been here since the beginning of time, constantly recycled: Tim Smedley on the scarcity of water as climate change escalates and why it will cause the next pandemic.

Replenish

October 18, 2022Posted in ageing, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, rituals, solace, South Australia, spring, staying humble, staying true, walking, What I love about ...Tagged Cold Enough for Snow, Jessica Au1 Comment

Other people’s words about … being alone

As the train left the station, I felt a sense of relief. I wanted to walk in the woods and among the trees. I wanted not to speak to anyone, only to see and hear, to feel lonely.

from ‘Cold Enough for Snow‘
by Jessica Au

I’ve been thinking a lot this year about solitude and loneliness, about participating socially and withdrawing. Though popular scientists and the mainstream media continue to exhort us to maintain our social connections as we age, both for the health of our brain and for our psychological wellbeing, I have come to believe that it’s just as important to be comfortable in your own skin as it is to be comfortable in a social context.

Garden pickings (1), October 2022.

Some years ago a friend said to me that what she admired most in me was that I am a person who has a rich inner life. I have often thought about her words and what they might mean. I tend to think of myself as introverted and shy, a social choker, and I often find myself wanting because of this. But the truth is that when I let go of my expectations of myself as a social creature, I am happy wandering the avenues of my mind.

I think that’s why I find such accord with Jessica Au’s words in the passage I’ve quoted above. What if loneliness wasn’t just a negative version of solitude? Why not embrace it for itself? In fact, why not seek replenishment from it?

Truly: why not?

Garden pickings (2), October 2022.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- [There is a] difference between love that makes me feel happy and love that makes me feel possible: Carrie Jenkins, in a fascinating piece on romantic love, polyamoury and internet trolling. I’m not sure which part of this piece I found more moving, Jenkins’s exploration of what she now calls ‘sad love’ or her mention, almost in passing, of how the commentary on social media can eviscerate someone. Food for thought.
- It has long been held that humans are social creatures, and mental health experts are quick to warn against the debilitating effects of loneliness. But weighted against this are numerous stories of those who have discovered great solace in the solitary life: Talking of loneliness, here’s Chris Wheatley, with a reading list about people leading solitary lifestyles.
- What I thought of, reading this, was the friend I no longer have. I’m not attempting to claim Pedersen’s and Hsu’s grief as my own; my friend didn’t die, and I don’t mourn him. But our friendship did, and I mourn that: Dan Kois on platonic friendship between men, with some words about friendship that ring true for me, too, as a woman.

Mysterious

May 27, 2022Posted in a thought, ageing, anxiety, Autumn, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the sea, the skyTagged ageing, anxiety, books, conversation2 Comments

Other people’s words about … ageing (yes, again, but bear with me …)

I was not a happy or a healthy young person. I had chronic asthma exacerbated by smoking; I was unfit; my diet was ordinary. ‘Orphaned’ by 29, I spent most of my 20s and 30s in grief. I was deeply anxious with little confidence, my fretful neediness causing relationship problems. For many of those years, I cried every week.
The day I turned 50, I felt a mysterious surge of what I could only think of as power. A deep optimism, energy and peacefulness took up space inside me. Give or take a few crises since, it hasn’t really left. In my mid-50s, I’m physically and emotionally stronger, healthier, more calmly loved and loving, more productive, more organised, smarter, wealthier and exponentially happier than I ever was in my youth. In the past four years I’ve really cried about three times, on one occasion because a good friend died.
From ‘The Luminous Solution‘
by Charlotte Wood

In my last blog post I talked about how a feeling of invisibility is something many women complain of experiencing as they grow older — and about how that feeling of invisibility doesn’t have to be (only) a negative experience. I talked about how feeling invisible can confer a certain grace and dignity to the way we live our lives.

It was my mother who reminded me subsequently of Charlotte Wood’s words about ageing. I have heard other women in their fifties and sixties express similar things and while so far I can’t say I share their feelings or their experiences, I find a certain comfort in their words. In my early fifties, I am, unlike Wood, neither more energetic nor healthier than I was as a younger woman; nor am I more productive or smarter. And I certainly don’t cry any less frequently.

And yet. The words optimism and peacefulness resonate deeply with me. I have fewer expectations of life than I did in my twenties and thirties — less hope, perhaps, but also, strangely, more joy.

Optimism, peacefulness, hope, joy. These are all invisible things. Maybe that’s what makes them feel so profound.

Shining sea, Late May 2022.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- When I’m alone, I can work or lie facedown and cry and no one knows the difference; no one is alarmed by my grief or astonished by my joy: Seema Reza extolling the virtues of solitude and the way it allows you to be, simply, yourself.
- So here’s what sends cold fear through those who study the global food system: Dan Saladino in a chilling piece about why the global food system may be on the verge of collapse, much like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008 — and for many of the same reasons.
- I used to love the city because I thought of myself as a people watcher. But I realise that I just enjoy watching —- people, plants, animals. Noticing is a gateway drug to writing: Naheed Phiroze Patel on tending creativity until it blooms.
- We praise the canonical authors for their imagination, so why does the plot of each of their works sound the same? Off the Fence magazine has some fun with the classics.