Behind the Shed

Bush Lemons
Billinudgel
 

Following are the opening paragraphs in Craig’s essay: The Lemon Tree: A Conversation on Civilisation, based on a series of meetings Craig San Roque had with the late Paul Quinlivan:

 

There are places that haunt the mind, strange sites of human settlement, sites of dire conjunction. This place where I live, this house of concrete blocks and concrete floor, this house in Alice Springs, in winter; a refrigerator. In summer, the surrounding sand, the yard, the concrete, all bake in obliterating sun. Out the back, across the fence of corrugated metal you could see claypans and resilient trees, Eucalyptus Coolibah Arida, set amid camouflage grey-blue old man saltbush. It’s long been known as a place where visitors meet. Hidden in the saltbush, Aboriginal men camp at nights, or come for a quiet drink in the hot days. Women come.  The coolibah trees, in the local cultural story, are said to be people dancing, waving in ceremony, welcoming an incoming group of ancestral Yeperenye caterpillar beings. The area is a sacred site, perhaps a Yeperenye fertility site.

Today, women arrayed in loose black skirts and multicoloured tops, swaying, waving, are calling out to family members; “Jungarai, Jungarai, over here.”  Men come to meet them; some shouting hoarsely, some remorseless in their intent, some with beer cans, in party mood, all escaping from the vigilant eyes of police and liquor restrictions. Hidden in the saltbush.

Geese under the bush lemon tree
Source: witcheskitchen
 

In my yard, on this side of the fence, seven citrus trees like seven sisters bearing fruit. One tree, a lemon, suffers from an ailment that has eluded diagnosis and treatment. Between the lemon and the mandarin, a round table; on the table, expecting a guest, I have placed two small coffee cups. I will give the visitor Greek coffee–or Turkish–if this morning, like those who live in disassociated places, he prefers one side over the other. We seem to live, these days, in divided selves. My visitor is one of those who work both sides of divided local ethnic associations. The town of Alice Springs is a “contact zone” where many people, in genetic code or in temperament, occupy a kind of “in-between” position. In this part of Australia the Aboriginal presence is alive and resilient, incorporating and exploiting the resources that come with the white people. The relationship is sometimes symbiotic, interdependent, maybe predatory, and at the same time illuminating, delightful, surprising. There are individuals placed in this region of overlap who can speak the truth of contradictory things; to do so requires a mind capable of holding contradiction. It is the experience of the “in-between” people, the people of the “contact zone”, who I am seeking for this book because I believe it is in difficult places, where racial, cultural groupings grind into each other, that the insidious influence of unconscious pressures felt.

If this were the city, I might seek such impact edges in places frequented by recent immigrants. The restless northern world has poured into Australia countless memories of loss – and countless hopes for a prosperous future. The cities have conquered, and are now developing a mind of their own, but here, in the remote places of indigenous Australia, ambition and a sense of immigrant entitlement continue edging into Aboriginal lands, inducing original peoples to conform to the ambitions of a westernised civilisation – or so it is said. I place my story in the region where the raw edges of Aboriginal mentality and Western mind dominate the scene. If a cultural complex were to surface, it would surface here, in a place of ambivalent contact.

My visitor is part of that hybrid workforce that plays the chess game of white and black interests. I think “chess” because of intricacy, but you could as readily think “poker game” – big money is on the table in government programs, projects, services. All get their cut in this mosaic of Aboriginal territories – in this mosaic of greed.

I am turning your attention to certain people, those whose lives are spent driving thousands of miles (or kilometres, depending upon which measure you  prefer) on remote red-sanded roads, passing through the musical landscapes, entering and leaving the business of remote Aboriginal communities. These are the “border linking” people, some indigenous, some not, whose task it is to work between cultures, in schools, clinics, stores, in Aboriginal art centres, police stations, churches, roadhouses. They translate, mediate, and negotiate; they work to support, teach, tend, facilitate; and they handle drunks, suicides and fights. Some play for personal gain, some labour under the discipline of altruism, some are dedicated to preserving cultural integrity. For some few (both black and white) the reciprocal engagement becomes a vocation, an enterprise of illumination and hardening, a tempering pressed always between the heat and cold of paradoxical states. Here in this region of contact there are signs and symptoms of borderline cultural complexities.

Girl With the Silver Hands
Artist: Claire Partington



 

No Canon of Normalcy

Eagles Nest intertidal rock platform, Bunurong Marine National Park.

Image: Mark Norman

Source: Museum Victoria

 

 

 

 

Scott Haas Ph.D  clinical psychologist, foodie and author of the book "Hearing Voices: Reflections of a Psychology Intern", has this to say about psychiatric hospitals after his intern year at Boston's Commonwealth Mental Health Institute.

 "The malingerers and the mentally ill I meet at Eastmark share the intensity that comes from being alone in the world. Embracing their feelings makes me aware of my own loneliness. When I am able to imagine their suffering, and their dignity in the face of it, I feel hounded, too, and disliked, and cut off from society's enterprise.

 

 

I think that's why the Them and Us mentality prevails in the mental health profession. By cutting Them off, we create the illusion that They are not at all like Us, and that We do not harbour the thoughts and feelings that They embody. If we view madness on a continuum, however, we have to become aware of those features of our souls that we would rather pretend do not exist.

 

 

The constant shuttle of patients through Eastmark confronts the commotion inside the clinician who observes as if from a distance. But in the end, there is no faraway pain, and there is nothing remote about their suffering. In many ways, They are just like Us. Their misery and their madness are fundamentally human experiences. I believe that's an important part of why the mentally ill are quarantined; to know that They are simply more vulnerable to the horrors of existence is intolerable because it means that the horrors, whether real or imagined, are familiar, and that it is the reactions to them that vary most. The mentally ill realize this better than any of Us. So We separate Them in order not to be reminded of what We all know to be true: that the world is unsafe, unpredictable in how its cruelties are meted out, indiscriminate about its choice of victims.

 

 

 

There is no right and wrong. There is no foundation, no canon of normalcy. Through no fault of their own, children and adolescents emerge as adults having experienced horrors within their families and within their societies and, as a result, they become the mentally ill I meet at Eastmark."

The Engrailed

New Zealand Regiment embroidery detail embroidery detail on Matron Kathleen Lloyd's linen cloth.
Source: BIRRC-H0013, Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham

 

 

 

Australian and New Zealand soldiers came to Birmingham in 1914 to be treated at the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall, then called the 1st Southern General Hospital.  In the university’s collections, is an embroidered quilt that was produced by convalescing soldiers. Made up of nine panels, it includes an Australian panel depicting a crown with ‘Australian Commonwealth Military Forces’ written on a scroll underneath and a New Zealand panel featuring an intricate fern with ‘NZ’ over the top.

 

 

Source: University of Birmingham

 

 

Passing Out of Polite Society

 

It is difficult to know whether the aspects of the way I am in the world are a product of nature or nurture and probably for me this is academic. However, I am sure that crashing out on my upper middle class life has been  powerfully influential. I recognise my terrible hunger for praise which I seem unable to give myself, my need to prove myself constantly to me as well as others, the fact that despite a National Human Rights Award and other signifiers of fame I know I am nobody of any import in my old world.

 

 

The difficulty I have in accepting well meant criticism, my volatile interest in politics, my tendency to want to verbally assert myself (listen to me, listen to me) and the myriad of other behaviours I so wish were not me. I know that some clinical psychologists would have a field day with this but I don’t give them permission. The knowledge that has most helped me to understand my world is sociological in  origin and not psychological.

 

 

Crashing out of one’s social class is a reality that deserves and needs sociological attention.

 ~ Merinda Epstein

Bertha Rochester in the Time of Medicated Deinstitutionalisation

Bromeliad pink

Charlotte Bronte was sincerely horrified when it was pointed out to her that her depiction of an insane person in Jane Eyre (1847) had been devoid of sympathy for this most terrible of human conditions. 'It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation,’ Bronte wrote in her mea culpa: ‘and equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that feeling; I have erred in making horror too predominant.’ 

Whilst Charlotte Bronte may have feigned horror when it was pointed out her depiction of Bertha Rochester was devoid of sympathy, the fact is that she was not the bowels of compassion when it came to her only brother's psychiatric illness.


It galls me that a cult of personality has developed around an emotionally immature narcissist such as Charlotte.  Her depiction of Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre troubles me less so than her role within the Bronte family as a skilled liar and manipulator.


In the modern age of medicated deinstitutionalisation, families are forced to be the primary carers of members with acute-on-chronic psychiatric disturbances with little support.  The general public tends to only hear about celebrity lunatics on their way to 5-Star rehab with a  signed contract to give an exclusive interview to Vanity Fair in hand to defray the cost.


In the time of the Brontes, opiate-derivatives such as laudanum was all that was available to calm the thought-tortured mind.  It is regrettable that Branwell is still perceived as an opium-addicted inebriate when he was nightly subjected to his father's misguided yet good-intentioned attempts at a DYI exorcism of the "demonic" impulses that Reverend Patrick Bronte was certain afflicted his only son and heir.


Much is made of the oppressed and restricted roles of women in the 19th century, yet how much freedom from cultural tradition and societal expectation did an only son with three unmarried sisters and an aged father really have?  How much did Charlotte, Emily and Anne contribute to the deterioration of their only brother's psychological wellbeing through not seeking out and acquiring husbands?  Was Branwell the first documented victim to fall under the bustle of emergent pre-First Wave feminist insensibilities?


For my part, I have always questioned why Charlotte Bronte "blinded" the love interest of her protagonist, Jane Eyre: such a violent act and disturbingly controlling.  Sister Lottie was quite a nasty piece of work.

 

The Good Doctor Snow

Blue Mountain, Aotearoa

 

 

 

 

Peter Snow was a leading medical researcher who helped identify chronic fatigue syndrome (or "Tapanui flu") while working as a dedicated country doctor who served his West Otago community for more than 30 years.

 



He was a family man, a country doctor, a researcher, a photographer, a deer farmer, an entrepreneur, and a man of the community whose impressive and wide knowledge was often called on by various sectors.

 

 

Locally, he was at the forefront of efforts to keep open the doors of Tapanui Hospital in the face of Wellington's demands for centralised health services, and, like most rural doctors, he was virtually on call in the West Otago area 24 hours a day, seven days a week for more than half his working life.

Nationally and internationally, he led the research effort to identify and suggest the means of alleviating the effects of chronic fatigue syndrome.

 

 

 

Being a GP has its own rewards, especially if you are part of the district. In time, the country doctor has the privilege of becoming a confidant of the community—on hand at births, deaths and all the life in between.

 

"It's hard to put a price on the satisfaction of watching someone you helped deliver into the world grow up, reach adulthood and have families of their own."

 

Image sourced from The Dreamstress

 

 

 

Perhaps his greatest claim to fame was his key role in identifying chronic fatigue syndrome, or what the media termed "Tapanui flu". In the early 1980s, farm stock in West Otago were suffering various selenium deficiency characteristics, and he noticed some of his patients seemed to have a similar syndrome. He and two University of Otago academics studied the outbreak—of what came to be called chronic fatigue syndrome—and their research conclusions, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, attracted international attention.

 

 

Dr Snow had been concerned about the intense media interest in the syndrome at the time, fearing it would make light of the issue. But, on reflection, he believed that interest had actually been positive because it revealed the extent of the problem, both locally and globally. The media had also uncovered the medical profession's initial disbelief in the existence of chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as the widespread dissatisfaction among sufferers of the debilitating condition with the profession's lack of understanding.

 

 

Since then, much research has been carried out, including an unpublished study by Dr Snow and his University of Otago colleagues that revealed chronic fatigue had multiple causes.

 

 

Dr Snow was also nationally influential in raising safety awareness about the use of farm bikes, after several West Otago farmers suffered severe injuries from accidents on their farms.

 

 

Dr Snow was a man of wit and intelligence—one who always relished the stimulation of quick minds—and hosted many New Zealand and overseas student doctors in his practice. Dr Fox said he had maintained a lifelong interest in seeking knowledge and he was at the forefront of general practice research.

 

 

It was noted in his citation for the fellowship that Peter had:

 

 

 "the farmer's ability to perceive the connections between what to others might seem unrelated things".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr and Mrs Snow moved permanently to their Lake Hayes home after selling the West Otago practice to the West Otago Health Trust three years ago. The couple had initially planned to operate Venetian-style gondolas on Lakes Hayes and Wakatipu, but decided to shelve the idea due, Dr Snow claimed, to stifling by "red tape".

 

 

Text swiped from The New Zealand Medical Journal

Aramoana: Pathway to the Sea

As long we continue to buy the convenient propaganda that spree shooters do what they do because they are mentally ill or otherwise defective, the more the thugs who trade in the commodities of cruelty and harassment will be held unaccountable for their participation in sponsoring massacres such as Aramoana.

The tipping-point for David Malcolm Gray was being informed that he had to pay $2 for a bank cheque to draw out his own money.  He was unemployed, receiving benefits and living frugally - $2 is money that he needed for food, to pay a utility bill. Sometimes the only difference between insanity and humanity is a gold coin donation.

In the wake of the Aramoana massacre, did New Zealand banking institutions abolish their practice of charging customers for bank cheques?   

Memorial to those who died at Aramoana
13 - 14 November 1990

The Aramoana Massacre

Book of Whoa Nelly!

Shopgirl,
 September 8th 1906
Kensington Church Street
 

DSM III and subsequent iterations pulled psychiatry out of the dark ages of Freudian ids and Jungian collective consciousness, and at least pointed it toward a scientifically testable structure. Unfortunately as it has become the bedrock of not only research, but also for billing codes and benefit eligibility testing, it has skewed the thinking of its users in maladaptive ways.

I always tell my students, when it comes to psychiatric problems in your patients, don’t treat diagnoses… treat symptoms. Address the individual symptoms the patient is having as best you know how, whether at the neurobiological level with medications, or at higher integrated levels with cognitive-behavioural or even psychodynamic techniques, or whatever combination seems most appropriate and seems to work best. And remember that all these symptoms exist on a continuum, whether sadness, or anxiety, or inability to concentrate, or personality problems.

Another analogy: Think of it as multiple gauges on your dashboard for various emotional, cognitive and behavioural states, rather than warning lights that light up with a diagnosis. Treat when they’re problematic enough to warrant the risks and costs of treatment. ~ compulsive empathy

Garry Greenburg Blog


 

The House of Mirth: Sustained Denial

The House of Mirth is one of my favourite books and a cautionary tale as relevant now as it was then, to how easy one can cultivate an unlived life.


Wharton's wrote a chillingly stunning book about the vanity of human wishes and the damage a superficial culture can inflict on those who do not know how to play by its rules, or who play by the rules in a manner too incompetent to be successful. 


Lily Bart is a fictional character whose descendants are the help-rejecting thirty- forty- fifty-something women of the 21st century, caught between the twin gears of career and domesticity; the laudanum of yesteryear has morphed into the chronic fatigue and constant guilt of now.


In 1905, Wharton displayed an uncanny understanding of the power of shame to control behaviour and crush hope and like the changing leaves of Autumn, nothing is more entrancing than the last burst of life before it is snuffed out.  As Sim Rosedale observed:

".....the dark pencilling of fatigue under her eyes, the morbid blue pallor of the temples, brought out the brightness of her hair and lips, as though all her ebbing vitality were centred there."

Nougat and paisley corset made by
The Dreamstress

The House of Mirth, published in 1905, novelist Edith Wharton tells the story of a beautiful unmarried socialite, Lily Bart, age 29, and her precipitous fall down the social ladder of New York society. Eight years older than the average age for marriage in 1900, she's nervous about her precarious position within New York society. She runs with a fast crowd, and she must keep up appearances. She needs clothes, fine accessories and the means to travel abroad, and unfortunately, she requires available cash to bet on cards at her friends' gatherings. Toward the beginning of the story she loses three hundred dollars in casual gambling. She's vague about how money works, and it gets worse from there.



Lily shouldn't be betting on cards, but she's not aware of personal finance, and she's caught up in pastimes of her wealthy friends. The women with whom she plays can afford to lose money; they're engaged in the games as just another idle pursuit. Lily, whose father lost money before his death, and her mother, who was excellent at keeping up appearances, requires the money in order to maintain her own illusions of social stature. She looks down on the shabby genteel or indeed anything shabby. She's even dismissive of her best friend, Gerty Farish, a woman who works on behalf of the poor and lives contentedly in her own place. Lily thinks she's above all that.



Lily's circle of friends in New York do not just have money but they have serious money, the type circulating in Fifth Avenue circles in 1900. We're talking Astor money, Vanderbilt money, Morgan money. In November of 1900, the marriage of Louisa Pierpont Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, to Captain Herbert Satterlee, in New York City was the social event of the season. In addition, a whole new class of bourgeois muscled their way into the city, building one ostentatious house after another up a swath of Fifth Avenue. Outside the WASP establishments, many prosperous Jewish merchants sought the same sort of status afforded to members of Old New York.


In The House of Mirth, the character Simon Rosedale courts Lily to be his wife in order to legitimize his rise and break into the establishment. With his rapidly accumulating wealth he repeatedly presents her with a way out of her financial predicament, but she wants nothing of it. It's just not done. In a real life New York equivalent, she could have married someone like millionaire B. (Benjamin) Altman, but for her, and presumably for Wharton, such a proposal could not be considered.


Gus Trenor, a wealthy married man with a Fifth Avenue mansion, offers to help her out with her financial predicament. He suggests a little Wall Street transaction. Wharton writes, "She was too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog."



More like a deer in the headlights. Initially, Trenor makes money for her in investments, and Lily resumes the shopping spree. What she doesn't understand is that Trenor expects something in return. When he demands some of her time and company, friends and remaining family members take notice and start to gossip. Her reputation starts to slide. Her ailing aunt is likely to leave her much of anything, and suitable suitors fade away. Her reaction to her predicament is to sustain denial as long as possible.

Found at Walking Off the Big Apple