[Content Warning] The struggle (poem)

Sorry: the formatting has been bloody lost when I added the Content Warning - on several posts, and I don't have the time to fix them all so I won't fix any.  

 This post is a bit different: it is my reaction to seeing my mother as she lay dying in palliative care, after a 2,000km drive. I had it worded so much more clearly when it came to me, but I couldn't leave her to go and write it down. Maybe the words will came back again, and I'll be able to better it. Kayleen White The struggle What struggle is this I see before me of spirit and form! This spirit I know so well, that nurtured me, cared for me, inspired me - as when a dying bird a pet, held your finger for comfort - much as I do now: hold the hands of your form, the skin of your forearms, mottled with age, against mine, one white, one brown with the sun of the driven days to get here. Your form, so clearly so recognisably still you, though the flesh has shrunk with age and illness, I can still see you and know you - your bones still hold your form. Your bones. Your form's inner strength, that strength which even now, as spirit calls, still holds to worldly life. I can see them here Pop, your father, doughty Scot, your mother, our Nan; they're here for you, - they're here to help you go, for go you must, as must we all. A poet once wrote: "d not go gentle into that good night" Aye, go not gently: - shout, and call out, and dance about -celebrate this life! Rejoice - we'll help with that, your family, both those in spirit, and those not yet, for we're all here for that, for it is time to go, to let this battle of spirit and form come to truce; no more rasping, struggling breaths, just one last rattle in that loved chest, and free from pain you'll be, free with your family, both those in spirit, and those not yet. © Kayleen White, 2007

Cultural Cringe

I undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit, of course :)

Please also note that I check only occasionally for comments, so if you make any, please be patient.

Kayleen White

Cultural Cringe

The clichés she’d read all described heat as a thing that hit you from the outside, as “a wall of heat”; but this was different - this was an monster that reached inside you and pulled a plug to instantly deny you all energy, almost as if your very life force was being held hostage against you leaving this place.
She was proud of her strength – she liked it, liked being strong, competent, in control of herself and able to move with a lithe energy. But that had left her now, and the only litheness was in the people around, the people who knew this heat, who lived in it and grew up seemingly immune to it’s insidious attentions. Thank God she hadn’t had her period as well on this trip.
She had a job to do, so she still to play a role: the capable foreigner who was here to pass on her knowledge, and show how to work the foreigner’s equipment. She’d been well briefed by her boss, so she’d been polite, she’d waited in queues, she shown respect to the elderly – she’d even been taught a few words of Vietnamese.
Cháo bá, for the women, and cháo ông for the men. Hello.
She supposed it had helped, but it had been her downfall, as well.
Her boss had been very clear about how she was to conduct herself: “Remember, while you’re in Há Nôi, you’re not just representing us, you’ll be the basis by which all Australians are judged. Right or wrong, many of these people won’t see another Australian, another person from Úc, and I’d like to think that they’d have a good impression of us.”

So be polite, and restrained, and conduct yourself well – and here’s a few token words to show that you’re a safe, semi-civilised foreigner. But the words had grown, and the growing had been her downfall. It seemed right, somehow, to get to know people you had to talk to them – although she’d communicated well with the Chinese workers with nothing but a few diagrams and the language of working with machinery in common.
At least there’d been no problems with her being a woman – not like back home. No fights with traditionalist parents or possessive brothers here.

Thuyên probably had parents – and, given what she’d seen of families here, she would have had many brothers and sisters. What had they thought of her coming to the city? Did they known she worked in a hotel, cleaning the rooms of foreigners?

It wasn’t a big hotel. It was a small place, looking much like the other constructions thrown casually up in the thirst for growth and recovery. Occasionally she saw some of the older buildings that had survived without damage, and sometimes the buildings that were basically still just standing ruins of war. Inside, the place was neat and clean, and the paint plain and well enough patched – the rich timber furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl actually contributed to the sense of elegant decay she felt, but the staff had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome. They’d even started making the noodle soup she had for breakfast for her – the pho bá and pho ga. And it had been Thuyên’s broad, wonderful smile that welcomed her to her first breakfast there.
Thuyên.

She’d wanted to learn more of their language, the language with the tones that were so hellishly difficult for people from Úc, as they called Australia, so she’d started chatting with the young man who was then cleaning her room – work at the site she had come there to attend to was erratic, and she often had many hours to pass as she chose, whether that was wandering the streets buying postcards from the street beggars, hiding from the monster in her air conditioning, or learning – or teaching. The night porter was more assiduous than she at seeking words - English words for him.

They all seemed to want to speak English so desperately. Her boss had said you pick the generations by their second language: the oldest generation spoke French, the next Russian, and now they were choosing English – the key, to them, of being part of the glamorous, prosperous western economy. She wanted to see their culture, like the thousand year old university, with its stone carvings with the names of graduates: they wanted the key to her economy.

Thuyên was a key – a lithe, graceful key in her loose, flowing slacks and blouse, whose cool and effortless movements in this sweat box dripped an unconscious sensuality. The young man had struggled, and then he had brought in Thuyên, and said, in his faltering way, that she was another cleaner, knew more of the English language and could better teach her.

Thuyên had said her English language skills came from her husband, but having met her husband, his skills were, sadly, a bit overrated. She understood his attempts to bluff his way into jobs on the alleged strengths of his English, though: almost everyone here was poor, by her standards, and getting jobs with connections to the west was a way out of that trap. She admired his bravery, and his commitment to his family.
Her boss had said “You won’t get to meet any of the local people in their homes, of course.” Well, she had. She’d made a deal with Thuyên: teach me your language, and I’ll take some photo’s of your kids. It had given her more time with this shy beauty – more time to torment herself.
She didn’t know what the local views on lesbians were, but given their general conservatism, with the insistence on long sleeves and slacks (she’d been warned that bare limbs were considered disrespectful), and the recent years of puritanical communism, she suspected the views were rather dim.
And she was a stranger in a their land. If she got into trouble, who would help her?
She would normally have just shut that part of herself down for this short trip, but there had been something in Thuyên’s manner, something that she read as a hint – or maybe it was just her desperate longing. Sometimes she tried to reason with herself: what would she have been like, if she’d grown up in a culture torn by war, and fanaticism, and poverty? At other times she just called herself a fool.

But there had been yesterday, when Thuyên’s words had failed her – or maybe it was the accent. She hadn’t understood at the time, but later she had thought, was I being asked if I had a boyfriend or a girlfriend in Úc? The thought had left her in an agony of un-satiated lust – and a battle royal with her conscience. She’d never had this much trouble before, being celibate for a week or two – and any girlfriends at home had seemed quite pleased by her fervour when she came home, but now she ached, and was so tempted … She just didn’t know – it was all the doubt and uncertainty of sussing out whether any desirable woman was lesbian, or bi, with all the terrifying uncertainties of a culture where she was told to expect a dossier on her – and she couldn’t even speak properly to her!

Well, the philosophers said to live in the moment; and her moment now was the agony of waiting till tomorrow’s torture, tomorrow’s macabre three headed dance with manners and caution on one hand, desire and Thuyên on the other, and her in the cultural no-woman’s land in the middle.

© Kayleen White, 2007

Dragon Kind

I undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit, of course :)

Please also note that I check only occasionally for comments, so if you make any, please be patient.

Kayleen White

Dragon kind

She always found it mystifying, why humans thought her kind’s skin was leathery. She thought they’d probably never bothered to really check - but then, her sister-friend thought they were actually feeling their kind’s age, power and strength and, as they associated age with things like wrinkly, old skin, they created an association of leathery, tough skin.

Whatever the explanation, she didn’t have to have much to do with humans, and she was relieved.
She was resting, just now … enjoying the warmth of an unexpectedly sunny day in winter, gazing across the quiet valley, watching the flow of energy - Qi, some humans called it - much as humans watched water playing on a beach or dancing down a river. Much as otters or dolphins played in the water, she could see other entities that humans generally didn’t, fairies, playing in the flowing energy.

Their blindness amazed her - she could remember back to the day, as a youngling, when she first came across a human. The creature had been bending over something, swinging its arm, and she had closed, eager to make friends. But when she had got closer, and found that it was hacking a still feebly living animal, she had backed up in horror.

She’d sent a blast of energy at the creature, which had swung round in alarm, but then returned to its grisly task.

Her mother and an uncle had come to her side and, using the rich but silent imagery of their telepathic species, explained that this was how humans kept themselves alive - by eating other beings, both plant and animal, and that humans lacked their own sophisticated awareness and ability to communicate.
Humans had changed since then: they now no longer wore crudely fashioned animal skins, and almost every part of the planet had been touched by them - most catastrophically. Some had shown themselves to be exemplary - like the legendary George, who some humans had made into a saint for supposedly killing one of her kind, when all that they had been doing was having a farewell game.

She was glad she had so little to do with them, though: most had an unformed mind and vague emotions that were like a sticky, repulsive bog to experience - and their almost universal lack of awareness made them clumsy and rude without them ever knowing it.

She returned her awareness to the valley. The sun was moving further, and the patterns were changing their flow. Creatures, both physical and those beyond, responded to the change. It was now late afternoon, with a dusk approaching and the clear night to enjoy.

Ah, but here was a calling. She repositioned those marvellously expressive, flexible antennae that humans called wings and “listened”. She could feel her sisters, and a couple of brothers, calling for some patching of the world’s web, the flowing pattern of energy. She was closest, so it was her task.
She didn’t need to fly: she just thought herself - or rather, “felt” herself, as she worked with the energy that humans called “emotions” - to where she needed to be. Humans called it teleporting, and then went on clumping slowly round the world.

And she could see it - one of the human’s mechanical beasts was tearing across a small stream of energy. She could see the energy being damned up, like a pool of lava trying to find a way out: the longer it built up, the more explosive it would be when it found a way out. She had been “told” that many humans didn’t think such energy existed, but she could see this pool leading to arguments between the humans milling about the machine - the trapped energy always found a way to vent, and this particular outlet she had seen before in these circumstances.

She looked carefully: yes, there were two other pathways that the energy could take, but one would need help to form the channel. A quick query to the spirits of the land, and they were crying back for her help, to fix the flows that had been so rudely interrupted: they, fairies, pixies, elves and gnomes, would be content for her to try. Hmm … she could do with some help, though. Ah, but that human’s aura looked more alive than the others … was that one perhaps aware? Hmm. Maybe so - she could perceive some sadness, a wordless sense of regret - an apology, without even knowing the feeling was sorrow, that they hadn’t asked the Mother before opening her.

She changed her wings’ position, and sent a query to her sisters and brothers: could she use this human? Moments later, she felt the reply come back - yes, she could, and she was given some guidance on how to approach the task. A mother explained how to use the human to focus energy, much as the humans themselves did in a very crude way with crystals and trinkets. She was wise, and old, that mother - she had known George, and transferred some of the knowledge of humans she had learned from George … including their strange restrictions on who they could call mother, or sister or brother, although some groups applied to titles to roles, as with her own kind.

Sated with knowledge, she moved herself behind the human, and wrapped her wing round the creature. Gently, she applied some pressure, and the human strolled, without really knowing why, away from the others, to a place facing a nearby hill.

Content with the position, and the angle, she slowly unwound her wing, and positioned both wings carefully. She could feel the others tying-in to her, connecting her to every other part of the planet, connecting her to the forces flowing through the universe, in all it’s myriad forms coloured by the multitudes of forms of life … and she could feel the shared power building in her, thrumming, throbbing, building to a crescendo just as she released it down her snout.

It blasted its way through the pooled energy, through the human, now startled by the unexpected image of a “fire breathing dragon”, and carved an unseen pathway to the hill, and then back to where it should be. She would have to do more work here in future weeks and months and seasons: maybe the old ways could be re-established, once the humans had taken their machines away: if not, then the new ways would have to be healed and nurtured, and she would get to see and watch the many layers of life respond to change: some would die away, others would grow and flourish where they had new energy - and her unwitting human helper would return again and again to the hill, puzzled by the growing fascination with glittery things, and power - wondering about the world of nature, and what true power could be.

At least this one had not reacted with fear - the unfamiliar and strange had not conjured twisted tales of “terrors unimaginable”. Perhaps this one she could work with, and get to know, and nurture some growth in, like their little fosterling … maybe she could even find one like old George, who had enough power to appreciate the scale of their work, and to share a part of it. She and her kind had enjoyed working with old George, and had been perplexed that his kind had twisted their closeness and called him a slayer of their kind. Were they really so afraid of her kind?

She settled in front of the human, thought of the flow of energy and power binding and innate to the Mother, and watched the dreams of riding dragons form in her charge’s mind - there was no sign of fear here. She smiled: her kind treasured the light and glow of energy, and in those few humans they touched in some way, the mother she had communed with said she had often seen that show as a desire for glittery trinkets.
One day they would come to understand - at least this one’s mind had tendrils of the questing energy, seeking to be more open. She would help this one now.

© Kayleen White, 2007