Updike

Reading some tributes to John Updike and some reviews. Not so sure that I want to read the Rabbit novels after this comment from Robert Taubman in the LRB:

I wouldn’t hold sentimentality against a writer, but he must be careful about the company it keeps. Harry’s moments of illumination are edgily close to Updike’s more malicious ones, like the revelation of the father’s buttocks. A moment after thinking of babies’ souls, Rabbit thinks that what he really wants is ‘to have Cindy arrange herself in the pose of one of those Penthouse sluts on a leopard skin and get down in front of her on all fours and just eat and eat and eat’. This isn’t unnatural of Rabbit, but Updike is too fond of the literary game of juxtapositions, and it reduces his characters to abject helplessness. The juxtapositions may be droll, cheeky, disagreeable, or just nullifying: but what they don’t do is give any depth to the novel.

Harry ‘Rabbit” Angstrom, the everyman of American fiction. What I find interesting about him is that, apart from being Updike’s most successful character, it seems to be the one that he most identified with. Updike used the novels, published at the end of the each decade, as “a running report on the state of my hero and his nation”. How the character developed is also worth noting. Previously, he wrote a short story entitled Ace in the Hole, and also a poem, Ex-Basketball Player, with similar themes to Rabbit, Run.

It’s funny to consider that, when it was published in 1960, Rabbit, Run was considered a “biting critique” of 1959 America.

Rabbit might not be very deep but he’s ‘real’.

Gather, gather

I’m updating this post to comment a bit more on the classic acceptance speech by Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes. Hadley Freeman probably puts it best in the Guardian:

They might not be a subject obviously deserving of pity but I’ve always felt a little sorry for celebrities who win awards. There really is no way to give a good acceptance speech. Humility sounds false when it emerges from a multimillionaire A-lister’s mouth, yet a blase tone seems arrogant. Tears are laughable, but jokes rarely work, particularly when made by actors.

Yet even when viewed with a sympathetic heart, Kate Winslet’s acceptance speech … raises the occasional wave of nausea, swiftly followed by a rush of hands to eyes in order to block out the spectacle.

Winslet’s use of the word “gather” alone makes it a classic. Freeman again: “It would be interesting to know if anyone has ever said this outside the Mitford family, since 1932.”

And for any non-Brits, you have to read Peter Bradshaw (also in the Guardian) to gather the full significance of this word. Simply brilliant!

Frustrations and low-hanging fruits

It’s been a week of frustrations on many fronts, which means my reading has gone out of the window. And I’ve also done very little preparation for the board exam. It doesn’t help that the Health Professions Council are incompetent. What’s so difficult about accepting an internet payment rather than a direct deposit? Two other frustrations: the geyser burst at my house in Joburg and I found out that I need to take a work trip to the hot-as-hell and remote town of Upington. And then I also agreed to do a freelance piece for the Belgians.

But since my mantra is “one step at a time”, I am trying to follow it. Reminds me of some business advice I read once that we should pick the low-hanging fruits first. In other words, don’t try for the fancy stuff while there are simple tasks you can accomplish in the meantime. Simple, basic advice which I would do well to follow. So no considered blog posts from me for a while until I get some progress on the low-hanging fruits. If I could just find the orchard and the trees that is.

Very limited options on the job front and I haven’t sent off my applications to those limited options yet either. One of the frustrations is just getting people to act as a referee. The one academic that I want to be my referee is notoriously bad about responding to emails and I’m too scared to call her. I guess I could always send an SMS (text message) instead.

On the plus side, we saw Revolutionary Road yesterday and Kate W and Leo were very good. I liked the mental patient’s insights as well. The problems of 1950s couples seem quite dated nowadays (but also still relevant). But it’s interesting to see how women’s options have changed with the times. I thought the part about sanity and insanity was well done – and I see that the novel by Richard Yates got good reviews.

We also saw the promo for “Benjamin Button” and I wasn’t convinced but I could see that P would like to see this one anyway. “What did you think of Forest Gump?” I asked, remembering how much DoctorDi had hated it.
“I liked it,” she said. Hmmm. “Well then I guess you’ll like this one as well. I suppose there’s no harm in checking it out for ourselves.” I’m pretty sure I won’t like it – and the concept just seems daft to me (he gets younger rather than older) – but sometimes it’s good to have one’s misgivings confirmed. But maybe that’s a bit like seeing that you’re going to hit your head against a brick wall and going ahead with it anyway, just to confirm that it really is not pleasant to have a brick-induced headache.

Hoping against hope (the psychology of hope)

Inspired by the inauguration of Obama today, I’d like to spend some time on the psychology of hope. I know I really should be studying and so on but I could do with some comfort blogging. To start off with, some points and quotes (some taken from here):

1. “To actually change yourself is a slow process and one that is extremely hard and taxing; change, if it is to be significant and long-lasting, is won only at the cost of effort, determination, insight and a great deal of strategy.” (Litlove on Change).

2. Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper. – Francis Bacon

3. Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.– Tom Clancy

4. One thing I’ve learned from counselling and life is that any incident (however small) has the potential to add to the problem or to the solution. In relationships, it’s often the small things that make the difference. You can choose whether to add fuel to the fire of one or the other.

5. Which brings me in an indirect way to the situation in Israel and Gaza. Of couse it’s an untenable situation that Israel should have to endure cross-border rocket-fire from Hamas militants. But to react in the way that the Israeli government did, which ended up killing so many innocent men, women and children? How does adding more trauma to an already volatile situation create anything but more trauma, more hatred and so on? It’s perhaps easy for me to say this but a radical solution goes to the root of the problem. Peace, justice – they’re intimately connected.

6. The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. — Barbara Kingsolver

7. When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.–Pauline R. Kezer

8. Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune — without the words,
And never stops at all … (Emily Dickinson)

9. If time and energy permits, I’ll be revisiting hope from a psychodynamic perspective (which is all about relationships). Should make for some interesting cross-pollination.

10. Lastly, what I’m liking about the Obama presidency so far is the emphasis on service, everyone making a difference etc. This is all before the inaugural speech but I found the scenes of him visiting a high school yesterday and giving a boost to usaservice.org quietly moving.

Legalese (or wake me up when it’s over)

[Sorry in advance for the incoherence below. I had a rather up-and-down weekend. Was sick in bed but also then got up to visit some charming friends of P's. I guess I'm a bit worse for wear today, and am hoping I get through the week unscathed. Below is my attempt at being funny about learning for the psychology board exam. Hmmm, I guess it's not that funny after all.]

Hereafter, and not withstanding any of the above, sine qua non ipso facto … shall be guilty of an offence in terms of the Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002. Applying these principles to section 10 of 1988, and deleting the modified sub-sections from 1985, it could conceivably be understood that my learned colleague has the intelligence of a donkey, an ass, I mean, he doesn’t have the intelligence of an ass. (If by ass is understood an involuntarily assisted person(s) over the age of 18 without the consent of their mother, father and/or social worker requiring assistance, determined under sub-section 2 paragraph s.5 (aA) of Act 96 of 2002.)

By which I mean to say that
a) the child has no parent or guardian;
b) s/he displays behaviour which cannot be controlled, not even by sitting him / her down in front of a DVD of their choice;
c) the aforementioned choice being limited to whatever is available in a standard living room;
d) which may or not measure 3 metres by 5 metres and have child-proof railings;
e) but is most likely to be one of: Finding Nemo, Toy Story (1 or 2), Barney the Dinosaur, Teletubbies or, in extreme emergencies, Tinkerbelle;
f) but not Cartoon Network if it is available.

Note:
i) This section has been over-ruled by the Constitutional Court; and
ii) Any person convicted of an offense shall be liable to a fine not exceeding 20 trillion Zimbabwe dollars (or R30), whichever is less convenient at the time of sentencing.

There. Clear as mud. No wonder my stress levels have reached “intolerably high levels” as determined by the Prevention of Family Violence Act (to be read in conjunction with the Domestic Violence Act).

Vis a vis, and a propos of nothing, or just because I’m a geek, you could always read the excellently legalistic Party of the First Part.

The Job Search (and some Wild Things)

Hoo boy! Where to even begin with this post? Two nights ago I woke up at 3am with a burning pain in my chest and thought I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t (thank goodness) but it did make me realise that I need to make some inroads into this job search in order to bring my anxiety levels down. I also need to exercise more, cut down on the sugar and the caffeine and study for my board exam. But you can’t study on an empty stomach, right? And the caffeine is fuel for the brain …

So I’ll keep this post brief. My superego is already telling me that I’m wasting valuable time and that I should be doing x, y and z (tidying, studying and applying for jobs). Not to mention the tax. But there are so many questions. Do I stay on in the military for another year? Work in a prison for a year or so (interesting connection)? Police? Locum at a hospital (if it’s even available)? Take the plunge into private? Start approaching anyone and everyone I know connected to Psychology? Not being in any hurry itself could be a problem. The temptation is to take things one slow step at a time rather than rush into anything. But I also need to be aware and open to any possibilities.

On the reading front, I’m almost finished with Sexing the Cherry and I’ve had very mixed feelings about it. In other words I loved it and hated it. I found myself drawn more to the Dog Woman than to Jordan. What an amazing character, and the fact that I’m reading a Vintage Classics series that twins this book with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein draws attention to her as a ‘monster’ (but one that’s quite easy to relate to). I saw the very grounded Dog Woman and Jordan as two sides of a single personality. The flighty, slightly manic, head-in-the-clouds Jordan and the earthy, massive, violent but also tender Dog Woman. Winterson provides a very unexpected take on gender and sexuality for a start. Will be interested to see what others thought.

Yesterday I also had a charming (and short) visit to my local library. The librarians there usually make me feel like a) a leper; b) a book-thief-just-waiting-to-happen or c) a very small boy who’s done something wrong. Admittedly these could all be my own projections but the woman in the children’s book section was quite different in that she was helpful, chatty and just generally nice. I was looking for kids’ books to help someone who suffers from anxiety. One of my child patients had a bad experience with a ‘evil spirit’ and has not been able to make progress in getting over it. I’m a great believer in talking things out and was looking for some well-illustrated stories to help her to start constructing her own story. Top of my list was the wonderful and brilliant Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak but I also took: In the Night Kitchen (another one by Sendak); Some Things Are Scary by Heide and Feiffer; The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote; and Catkin by Antonia Barber and PJ Lynch.

Not all of these deal with anxiety but I want her to see the progression of these kinds of stories. Basically the beginnings, middles and ends so we can start drawing up a story of her own. My supervisor might well tell me that I’m interfering in my patient’s process and that I should stick to open-ended play therapy and provide paint, playdough etc. I’m certainly not trying to prescribe what she should do, but I think the narrative approach could be a useful one.

Those little men

The man sitting in my office looked slightly embarrassed. How was he to explain to this white doctor about bewitchment?

“I’m requesting sick leave,” he started. “I need to be next to home.” We then spoke about bad feelings, bad dreams and being bewitched. He needed to go home for a cleansing ceremony because of the evil spirits, he said, looking only slightly uncomfortable about bringing deep rural South Africa into my consulting room. “You know,” he said, gesturing with his right hand about three foot off the ground. “The tokoloshe – those little men.”

I managed to keep the smile off my face and to keep my composure. The tokoloshe has always been for me a figure of fun. An amusing superstition which no-one really takes seriously anymore. I know that some black South Africans put their beds on bricks to protect them from the little men that can come and visit them in the night. And I also know that the tabloids have headlines such as “I had sex with a tokoloshe” since these tokoloshes are apparently quite randy and quite likely to have sex with you if you’re not careful and taking the necessary precautions. I also remember that some workers at our house got totally spooked by a shrunken sea-creature hanging on the wall of the laundry which was apparently a dead ringer for a tokoloshe.

So I did what any self-respecting mental health professional does in this sort of situation. I went to ask my OIC (officer in charge) at the sick bay. “Oh no,” she said immediately. No sick leave granted (unless the ‘bewitchment’ is of a serious enough nature to land them in hospital) and if he wants leave for a cleansing ceremony it will have to come off his annual leave. Problem solved.

But I was still left wondering about those little men. A quick internet search revealed 88,000 hits, including this un-PC (and rather ungrammatical) explanation:

The tokoloshe is a short, hairy, dwarf-like creature from Bantu folklore. It is a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by swallowing a pebble. Tokoloshes are called upon by malevolent people to cause trouble for others. At it’s least harmful a tokoloshe can be used to scare children, but it’s power extends to causing illness and even death upon the victim.
The penis of the tokoloshe is so long that it has to be slung over his shoulder. Thus sexually well-endowed, the duties of the tokolosh include making love to its witch mistress. In return, it is rewarded with milk and food. In common with European myths and legends concerning familiars, salt must not be added to food offerings for tokoloshes. The witch keeps the tokoloshe docile by cutting the fringe of hair that hangs over its eyes.
In South Africa, where many white families have maidservants, the maids would often raise their beds by placing the legs of their beds on bricks. It was an almost universal belief, among white people, that this was to keep the occupant of the bed out of reach of the tokoloshe.
The way to get rid of him is to call in the n’anga or witch-doctor who has the power to banish him from the area.

Wikipedia even has its own entry for the tikoloshe (which is the more accepted term) here. The analytical part of me immediately made the connection between external and internal loci of control, and I tried to reframe it for him as depression. No, he said, he wasn’t interested in counselling. The only thing for him was a cleansing ceremony carried out by a traditional healer back home. (I’m still not sure what to make of the pebble that makes you invisible though. That’s one for the cultural anthropologists.)

Film therapy: Kenny (2006)

Kenny is a 2006 mockumentary about a fairdinkum working-class Aussie bloke who provides porta loos (or porta potties) to festivals around Melbourne. It was brilliant and had me fooled right up until the credits. Shane Jacobson and his brother won all kinds of awards for it and rightly so. P guessed it was fictional about halfway through but Shane Jacobson was so convincing as Kenny the plumber that I was convinced there was some truth behind the whole thing.

“It takes a certain kind of person to do what I do… No-one’s ever impressed, no-one’s ever fascinated…. If you’re a fireman, all the kids will want to jump in back of the truck and follow you to a fire. There’s going to be no kids willing to do that with me. So, I don’t do it to impress people. It’s a job, it’s my trade, and I actually think I’m pretty good at it. ” – Kenny

Kenny is just a decent bloke with a real camaraderie with his co-workers on the splash down crew. He takes pride in doing a good job. And somehow manages to keep his dignity in the most undignified situations. He treats others with kindness and respect even when it isn’t reciprocated. After he retrieves a wedding ring from the toilet, the relieved women doesn’t even acknowledge her knight with slimy plunger. Kenny is sorely in need of a little respect. – Jane Segal (commenting at IMDB)

Good on ya, Ken (or rather Shane and Clayton Jacobson). Incidentally, Clayton does a great job of portraying Kenny’s yuppie older brother and Shane’s son and dad add to the authenticity. A lot of it, as you would expect, is toilet humour but it’s excellently done. Watching the scenes at the racetrack, I turned to P and said, “Wow, those Aussie guys are pretty rough. I’m glad I don’t live there.”

Here, an empathic, gas-masked Kenny emerges from the septic tank to reason with Sammy, one of his dumber employees:

Sammy: [talking to Kenny while he is cleaning out a septic tank] ….always going on about his bloody marriage. Is this gonna go right, or is that gonna go bloody right? Is he gonna marry her or not?
Kenny: [through his mask, in the septic tank] I should say so, they’ve got a wedding.
Sammy: He’s either gonna marry or, or not marry her. If he ain’t gonna marry her, I’ll give her one.
Kenny: Look, mate,
[takes his mask off, comes up from the tank]
Kenny: I… I understand what you’re saying, I really do. And I am hearing you, but, mate, what you got to understand is there is a smell in here that is going to outlast religion, all right? So can you just… give my ears a rest for a minute? Just give it a break for a sec, and we’ll talk about it later, all right? I appreciate it mate.

Verdict: The comedy will make you laugh, the storyline will tug at your heartstrings and the underlying metaphor is deep.

Reading, writing, plans (and cricket)

First week back at work after the Christmas break and already I can feel my mood’s a bit down and the enthusiasm is not quite there. It’s partly the heat but there’s also the looming deadline of finding more work by the end of April when my community service ends. I’m also due to write the Psychology Board Exam in four weeks’ time and I haven’t started studying yet. I told P that this is the Year of the House and the Job. As soon as I can find another job and can guarantee some steady income, we can think of finding our own house and moving in together.

I’m feeling hopeful but also rather anxious about the job story. At the moment I’m resisting the idea of staying on in the military because of the mandatory deployment for about 6 months to an African hotspot. I also can’t see myself staying in a military environment for more than a couple of years. The house is another headache, and I’m hoping that my tenants in Joburg will be able to buy my house there in a few months, which will allow me to buy something down here.

The reading and writing goals are much less anxiety-inducing and should be quite fun. I’ve mentioned my to-be-read books here already but I’ve since added a few. The list as is currently stands (and in no particular order):

1000 Books to change your life (TimeOut)
The Black Book (Pamuk)
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Freud)
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung)
Sexing the Cherry
Three Letter Plague
The Last Lecture (Randy Pausch)
Digging to America
Close to the Wind (Pete Goss)

The last one should be the lightest of the lot and is about a heroic Brit who sacrificed his own hopes of winning the solo round-the-world yacht race to save another competitor. It’s not my usual read but was recommended by a friend who refused to take it back until I’d read it! The Freud and Jung should be interesting and will give me a chance to revisist where I stand in relation to two of the ‘greats’. I was trying to think of a book that had changed my life, and I remembered reading Jung when I was in my post-matric year and getting ready to study a BA and then Law. I like to think that Jung sowed the seeds of a return to psychology, and I’m looking forward to reading it again almost 21 years later.

On the writing side, everything’s on hold until I write (and pass) the Board exam. I’ll probably post some reviews in the meantime, and I really want to write some psychology articles this year. My “violence project” is totally becalmed, and I think it’s really difficult to sustain a focus on a topic like that for an extended period of time. It’s a bit like looking at trauma. My mind keeps drifting away to more comfortable topics. Fun! Diversion! Making a Psychology Mix. Anything not so very serious. After my board exam I’ll maybe have another look at it or shelve it altogether.

Speaking of fun, the drama at the Sydney Cricket Ground swelled our little SA hearts. There’s nothing like a wounded captain (Graeme Smith) soldiering on in the face of a losing effort and almost saving the game to bring a tear to the eye. Reminds me of a story about the Aussie cricketing legends Alan Border and Dean Jones. Or maybe it was Jones and Steve Waugh. Anyway, the Aussies had their backs to the wall and were batting to save the test match. Jones had bad gastro and was sick as a dog. After batting for about half an hour, he walked down the pitch and told his captain (Border) that he just couldn’t carry on and would need to retire hurt. “That’s fine, mate” said Border tersely. ‘When you get to the changing-room, ask them to send out an Australian.” Ouch! Poor Jones batted on and made a hundred. I suppose it’s all about tenacity and true grit. But another part of me thinks that’s just foolish, and typical male stubborness and lack of empathy. I like to think there’s a middle ground between soldiering on blindly (and foolishly) and persevering when the going’s tough. Any thoughts?

George Saunders and the belated secret thanks

I’ll admit it. Scrooge McDuck is not the ideal secret santa participant. A late gift (which might have got lost) and then a late blog thanks. Not good form at all. But, excuses aside, and fervently hoping that my gift to Ella (from Box of Books) still makes it past the (lovely, kind) post office employees, I’m going to tell you a bit about what I got.

The picture really doesn’t do it justice but you have to imagine my joy when I got, all the way from Dubai, a beautiful big stamp-covered brown-paper parcel with an early Christmas present which was, to be honest, maybe the best present I got at Christmas. Sorry P, I loved your present as well (Ok, yours was the best) but Ella’s was, as far as presents go, up there with P’s. So what did I get, you ask? Well, lots – a brilliant book, a lovely homemade journal (sturdy, just the right size and with a weathered-looking gloss – I used this on my holiday and am still using it), delicious Turkish Delight and a personal letter. The book was especially welcome because I’d read about it on Dorothy’s blog, looked for it online here and found that it was not available in South Africa. So imagine my surprise and delight when I found that Ella had seen me comment on The Braindead Megaphone (by George Saunders) and sent me her very own copy (which she had thoroughly enjoyed too). George Saunders is very clever, very funny and very readable – on war, Dubai, on Vonnegut, fiction and American life generally. I might even venture to say that this book could be life-changing – in the sense of changing the way that I think about writing. One chapter called ‘The Perfect Gerbil’ details the rising action that every story needs to have and there’s a whole graph which I won’t be able to describe to you but trust me, it’s simple and profound.

Here he is on war: “massacres and screaming and confusion and blood and death”. If that sounds a little heavy, he balances it with the reflection that war is also “the mammoth projection outward of the confused inner life of men”. Working here at the military for a year, I totally get that. Not just men projecting their aggression and anxiety onto others but the “mammoth projection outward”. You get the point.

Ok, I’m going to wrap this up now, but Ella (if you’re reading) thanks so much again and I really hope that your gift arrives soon. I did have to split the package into two (for postage reasons) which might have been confusing. But, well, I’ll email you. Next year (if the secret santa people will still let me play), I’ll be punctual. I promise.