The house is on an island, the name of which I will keep to myself for the present. The rooms are fourteen feet high, and the dining-room can hold thirty-six guests. There are only two reception-rooms. But what more could a divorced woman of my age require? The rest of the house—the upper storey—consists of smaller rooms, with bay-windows and balconies. My bedroom, isolated from all the others, has a glass roof, like a studio. Another of my queer notions is to be able to look up from my bed and see the sky above me. I think it is good for the nerves, and mine are in a terrible condition.
So in future, having no dear men, I can flirt with the little stars in God's heaven.

Don't you see that I envy you? Not on account of your husband—you may keep him and welcome! Not on account of your lanky maypoles of daughters—for I have not the least wish to be five times running a mother-in-law, a fate which will probably overtake you. No! I envy your superb balance and your imperturbable joy in life.

What am I doing here? What do I want here? To cry, without having to give an account of one's tears to anyone?
Of course, all this is only the result of the rain. I was longing to be here. It was not a mere hysterical whim. No, no....
It was my own wish to bury myself here.

What is the use of all these discussions and articles about the equality of the sexes, so long as we women are at times the slaves of an inevitable necessity? I have suffered more than ever the last few days, perhaps because I was so utterly alone. Not a human being to speak to. Yes, I ought to have stayed in bed if only to conceal my ugliness. In town I was wise. But here ...


She does not seem made for the celibate life of a desert island. Yet I cannot set up a footman to keep her company. I will not have men's eyes prying about my house, I have had enough of that.

"Thousands of women may look at the man they love with their whole soul in their eyes, and the man will remain as unmoved as a stone by the wayside. And then a woman will pass by who has no soul, but whose artificial smile has a mysterious power to spur the best of men to painful desire...."
One day I found these words underlined in a book left open on my table. Who left it there, I cannot say; nor whether it was underlined with the intention of hurting my feelings, or merely by chance.

Men have often assured me that I was the only woman they could talk with as though I were one of themselves. Personally I never feel at one with menkind. I only understand and admire my own sex.
In reality I think there is more difference between a man and a woman than between an inert stone and a growing plant. I say this ... I who ...

She compelled us to realise the things we scarcely dare foresee....
I shall never forget a letter in which she wrote these words in a queer, faltering handwriting:
"If men suspected what took place in a woman's inner life after forty, they would avoid us like the plague, or knock us on the head like mad dogs."
Such a philosophy of life ended in the poor woman being shut up in a madhouse. She ought to have kept it to herself instead of posting it up on the walls of her house. It was quite sufficient as a proof of her insanity.

"If men suspected ..."
It may safely be said that on the whole surface of the globe not one man exists who really knows a woman.
They know us in the same way as the bees know the flowers; by the various perfumes they impart to the honey. No more.
How could it be otherwise? If a woman took infinite pains to reveal herself to a husband or a lover just as she really is, he would think she was suffering from some incurable mental disease.
A few of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally discounted by some subtle deceit.
Do men and women ever tell each other the truth? How often does that happen? More often than not, I think, they deal in half-lies, hiding this, embroidering that, fact.

A woman who knows other women and understands them, could easily prove this in so many words; and every woman who heard her—provided they were alone—would confess she was right. But if a man should join in the conversation, both women would stamp truth underfoot as though it were a venomous reptile.

A woman may love a man more than her own life; may sacrifice her time, her health, her existence to him. But if she is wholly a woman, she cannot give him her confidence.
She cannot, because she dares not.

The human being dwells and moves alone. Each woman dwells in her own planet formed of centrifugal fires enveloped in a thin crust of earth. And as each star runs its eternal course through space, isolated amid countless myriads of other stars, so each woman goes her solitary way through life.
It would be better for her if she walked barefoot over red-hot ploughshares, for the pain she would suffer would be slight indeed compared to that which she must feel when, with a smile on her lips, she leaves her own youth behind and enters the regions of despair we call "growing old," and "old age...."

During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary. But has any woman reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand veils?
If indeed one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain, unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover of the book?

The more I reflect upon life, the more clearly I see that I have not laid out my talents to the best advantage. I have no sweet memories of infidelity; I have lived irreproachably—and now I am very tired.
I sit here and write for myself alone. I know that no one else will ever read my words; and yet I am not quite sincere, even with myself.
Life has passed me by; my hands are empty; now it is too late.

My will is paralysed from self-disgust. 

I am myself, yet not myself. There are moments when I envy every living creature that has the right to pair—either from hate or from habit. I am alone and shut out. What consolation is it to be able to say: "It was my own choice!"

I do not know the day of the week. That is one step nearer the goal for which I long. May it come to pass that the weeks and months shall glide imperceptibly over me, so that I shall only recognise the seasons by the changing tints of the forest and the alternations of heat and cold.

"If I were rich," she said, "I would dress for myself alone. Men neither notice nor understand anything about it."

How could I suppose it for a single moment! There is no possibility of remaining alone with oneself! No degree of seclusion, nor even life in a cell, would suffice. Strong as is the call of freedom, the power of memory is stronger; so that no one can ever choose his society at will. Once we have lived with our kind, and become filled with the knowledge of them, we are never free again.
A sound, a scent—and behold a person, a scene, or a destiny, rises up before us. Very often the phantoms that come thronging around me are those of people whose existence is quite indifferent to me. But they appear all the same—importunate, overbearing, inevitable.
We may close our doors to visitors in the flesh; but we are forced to welcome these phantoms of the memory; to notice them and converse with them without reserve.
People become like books to me. I read them through, turn the pages lightly, annotate them, learn them by heart. Sometimes I am at fault; I see them in a new light. Things that were not clear to me become plain; what was apparently incomprehensible becomes as straightforward as a commercial ledger.

The time is gone by. Life is over.
I am getting used to sitting here and stitching at my seam. My work does not amount to much, but the mechanical movement brings a kind of restfulness.

What can any human being want more than this peace and silence?

If I could only lose this sense of being empty-handed, all would be well. Yesterday I went down to the seashore and gathered little pebbles. I carried them away and amused myself by taking them up in handfuls. During the night I felt impelled to get up and fetch them, and this morning I awoke with a round stone in each hand.

We are careful about our food and our rest; we watch that our smiles leave no wrinkles.... Yet never a word of our secret terror do we whisper aloud. We keep silence or we lie. Sometimes from pride, sometimes from shame.
Hitherto nobody has ever proclaimed this great truth: that as they grow older—when the summer comes and the days lengthen—women become more and more women. Their feminality goes on ripening into the depths of winter.
Yet the world compels them to steer a false course. Their youth only counts so long as their complexions remain clear and their figures slim. Otherwise they are exposed to cruel mockery. A woman who tries late in life to make good her claim to existence, is regarded with contempt. For her there is neither shelter nor sympathy.

I blame no one for my failure in life. It was in my own hands. If I could live it through again from the start, it is more than probable I should waste the years for a second time.

Yesterday, before going to bed, I went on my balcony, as I usually do, to take a last glance at the sea. But it was the starry sky that fixed my attention. It seemed to reveal and offer itself to me. I felt I had never really seen it before, although I sleep with it over my head!
Each star was to me like a dewdrop created to slake my thirst. I drank in the sky like a plant that is almost dead for want of moisture. And while I drank it in, I was conscious of a sensation hitherto unknown to me. For the first time in my life I was aware of the existence of my soul. I threw back my head to gaze and gaze. Night enfolded me in all its splendour, and I wept.
What matter that I am growing old? What matter that I have missed the best in life? Every night I can look towards the stars and be filled with their chill, eternal peace.

His home was not mine, although we lived in it like an ideal couple, at one on all points. My person for his money—that was the bargain, crudely but truthfully expressed.

She once said to me: "There is no torture to equal that which a woman suffers when she loves her husband and is loved by him; a woman for whom her husband is all in all, who longs to keep his devotion, but knows she must fail, because physically she is no longer herself."
The life Mathilde Bremer is now leading—that of a solitary woman divorced from her husband—is certainly not enviable. Yet she admits that she feels far better than she used to do.

We most of us sail under a false flag; but it is necessary. If we were intended to be as transparent as glass, why were we born with our thoughts concealed?
If we ventured to show ourselves as we really are, we should be either hermits, each dwelling on his own mountain-top, or criminals down in the valleys.

She sits there like a shadow, an apparition, and the fog floats over her red hair like smoke over a fire.
I know nothing whatever about her. She is as reserved about her own concerns as I am about mine. Yet I feel as though during this hour of intense fear and agitation I had seen into the depths of her soul. I understand her, because we are both women. She suffers from the eternal unrest of the blood.
She has had a shock to her inmost feelings. At some time or other she has been so deeply wounded that she cannot live again in peace.

This one hour, with its cruel enlightenment, sufficed to destroy Jeanne's joy in life for ever. At the same time it filled her mind with impure thoughts that haunted her night and day. She matured precociously in the atmosphere of her own despair.
There was no one in whom she could confide; alone she bore the weight of a double secret, either of which was enough to crush her youth.

Her sole reason for going on living is that she shrinks from seeking death voluntarily. I wonder if there exists a man who could save her? A man who could make her forget the bitterness of the past?

How do you know that for years past Lillie has not felt some longings and deficiencies in her inner life of which she was barely conscious, or which she did not understand?

Karin Michaelis -- The Dangerous Age

alsof je het bijna verstond...

Het al te volle leven

Er zijn dagen dat het leven, door zijn volheid, bijkans niet te dragen is.

Meestal verschijnen die dagen tusschen het einde van den herfst en den aanvang van den winter -, het loof is dan dood, de zomerbloei vergaan, maar nog niet is de wereld reukloos en kleurloos geworden, een laatste zweem van bitter-zoeten mijmergeur waart in het donkere onder de boomen rond. Het vreemde van die dagen nu is dit: wat anders geluid is, wordt dan stem. Er is de waterstem, die onvermoed tot je opfluistert uit de diepte, wanneer je eenzaam staat op den hoogen dijk en over het vlakke rietland kijkt en over de witbeschuimde plassen - zacht heen en weer strijkt je haar langs de slapen, ver-weg zijn de geelgrijze vegen van bewolkten zonsondergang -, en daar heelemaal schijnt de waterstem vandaan te komen, over de witte golvenkopjes nadert hij vliegensvlug en fluistert naar je op en je deinst achteruit, alsof er ineens een onzichtbaar mensch naast je was komen staan en vlak aan je oor had gefluisterd, zoodat je zijn adem voelde, iets dat je niet verstond en dat je toch, tot diep binnen in je lijf, doet rillen!

Dat is de waterstem; dan is er ook de windstem. Die ijlt je achterop onder de boomen als je uit school naar huis gaat, en achterhaalt je en lispelt in het voorbij gaan iets aan je oor, vliegensvlug, en is weer weg, een heel eind je vóór, maar schijnt dan achter langs je heen of hoog over je hoofd terug te keeren, want is even later weer achter je, komt je weer achter-op, zoodat je het duidelijk voelt in de holte tusschen de schouderbladen, alsof je daar werd aangeraakt, fluistert weer, bij het langs je gaan, vlak en vlak aan je oor, suist opnieuw voorbij en is al een heel stuk verder, terwijl je nog narilt van schrik. Nooit versta je iets, maar het is wel altijd, alsof je het bijna verstond, zooals je het licht dat je naast je oog kunt laten verspringen, wanneer je tegen je oogappel duwt, nooit heelemaal, maar altijd bijna niet.

De waterstem en de windstem laten iets in je na, dat je wel verlangen kunt noemen, omdat het daar het meest op lijkt, maar dat toch eigenlijk geen verlangen is.

Want je vraagt je-zelf: waar verlang ik eigenlijk naar? Verlang ik naar den zomer? Naar vacantie? Naar lekker eten? Naar feest? Naar een pakje van den post? En duidelijk voel je: neen, daarnaar verlang je allemaal niet. Moeder klaagt soms over een hol gevoel in de maag -, het lijkt op honger en dan heeft ze toch juist in geen een ding trek! Daarom.... je noemt het maar voor je-zelf verlangen, want het lijk ter op, het voelt zoo in je keel en boven in je buik, maar het is het gewone verlangen toch niet.

Je zoudt wel graag windstem en waterstem willen verstaan, ze tegenhouden, even in je oor, je zoudt ze willen smeeken duidelijker te spreken, maar ze zijn zoo ijl en zoo overal tegelijk en ook zoo groot - immers zoo groot als wind en water zelf! - en ze varen zoo hoog, en zelf sta je dan zoo plat op den grond en ben je dan zoo klein.

Op zulke dagen beduiden alle dingen veel meer dan ze anders doen. Kom je uit school of van de wandeling thuis en is het waschdag, dan hoor je vrouw Komeijn in het schuurtje of in het waschhok zingen; helpt ze moeder in de kamer, dan hoor je haar zingen vlak-bij. Zelf moet je natuurlijk ook wat doen en zij kiest meestal aardappelschillen, dan zit je stil met je stoel en je stoof en je mandje op schoot, je hoeft op je aardappels niet zoo erg te letten, als je den slag eenmaal beet hebt, en je kunt denken aan wat je wil. Je moet schillen van je af, niet schillen naar je toe, dat heeft moeder haar geleerd met een grappige geschiedenis. Er stond eens, toen moeder nog klein was, op de kermis een tentje en de man vertelde aan iedereen, dat daarbinnen een kunst werd geleerd, waar elk mensch voor zijn heele leven nut van hebben kon en dat kostte maar een stuiver en iedereen ging erin en binnen zat een vrouw op een stoel en schilde aardappels en ze zong aldoor:

‘Snij maar van je af

En dan bezeer je je niet....’

Dat was de kunst voor je heele leven! Vader noemt het bedrog, maar moeder zegt: het was een eerlijke fopperij. Want het is toch een nuttige kunst voor je heele leven.

Sinds schilt ze altijd van zich af, maar heeft toch vaak een duimelot. Je kunt ook al te weinig op je aardappels letten.

Wanneer ze in den schemer van zulke dagen, dat de geluiden tot stemmen werden, in de kamer zit met stoel en hooge stoof en de aardappelen schilt en vrouw Komeijn zingt de liedjes, die ze altijd zingt, soms langzaam, soms hard, al naar dat ze vlug of langzaam boent en wrijft, dan schijnen ook de woorden van de liedjes veel meer dan op andere dagen te beteekenen.

Ze zingt:

Daarbinnen in de schaam'le hut

Geen vuur, geen stukje brood....

Dat maakt altijd bedroefd. Maar op zulke dagen lijkt, wanneer vrouw Komeyn het zingt, de heele, heele wereld één meer van droefenis te worden. En hoewel ze niet eens weet, wie er wonen in die schaam'le hut, doet haar keel dan pijn van medelijden, het lijkt, alsof daar nu nooit weer vuur en brood zal komen en terwijl verschijnen er voor haar oogen prentjes van plekjes die ze kent en die ze niet kent, die ze gezien of onthouden van verhalen in boeken heeft en die ze gepeinsd of gedroomd heeft en overal staat die hut, soms aan het water, verlaten, en soms midden op een groote vlakte, onder één hoogen, kalen boom, waar de wind mee speelt en soms tusschen de hooge donkere hoopen turf, die zoo somber stonden tegen den grijsgelen zonsondergang, en dan weer in dat vreemde, diepe dal met lage boomen, waarvan ze eens heeft gedroomd, het lijkt jaren geleden....

Dan ineens zingt vrouw Komeyn:

‘Hieronder leit begraven

Een schoone, jonge vrouw

Die scheiden moest uit het leven

In de ure van haar trouw.

‘Trouw’ moet trouwen beteekenen. Ook dat liedje heeft ze vaak gehoord, maar op de dagen dat de geluiden tot stemmen geworden zijn, klinkt het heel anders, en het beteekent eindeloos veel meer. En vreemd, zoodra vrouw Komeyn dat liedje zingen gaat, verandert opnieuw de wereld, alles is en blijft wel doodsbedroefd, maar anders bedroefd en met de schoone, jonge vrouw heeft ze ook wel medelijden, maar niet datzelfde medelijden als met de schaam'le hut. Het medelijden is tegelijk nog veel grooter en veel minder pijn-doend in haar keel en borst. En weer komen er prentjes voor haar oogen, uit andere gedachten en uit andere verhalen en uit andere droomen; niet arm en vaal is de wereld, maar somber en rijk, overal staan treurboomen, donker en zwaar, wazige kasteelen, alle ramen gesloten, ten teeken van rouw en droefenis en heele stoeten langzaam-rijdende lage, vreemde koetsen - waar heeft ze die toch ooit gezien? - met zwarte bloemen bekranst, alles wolkig, wazig en op de heele wereld niet anders meer dan dat, de heele wereld overneveld rouw-zwart....

Soms zingt vrouw Komeyn:

Ik heb U lief, met al den gloed

Van mijn jonkmaagdelijk gemoed

O ja, voor U alleen

Vliedt steeds mijn leven heen.....

De wijs kent ze omdat het orgel van Jan Stap die elken Maandag speelt. En daarom ziet ze dan het orgel van Jan Stap voor haar oogen komen en de glijdende prentjes, met het hel-blauwe water en de fonkelbonte bloemenperken, maar dat is dan weer vreemd: ze ziet veel meer in de prentjes, terwijl ze er toch alleen maar aan denkt, dan anders, wanneer ze er vlak voor staat en er naar kijkt.

Zoo zingt vrouw Komeyn al haar liedjes. En op de dagen, die vreemde dagen, dat de geluiden tot stemmen geworden zijn, wordt het al voller en zwaarder in haar, want daar ligt dan alles wat van den ochtend af bij haar binnen gedrongen is, dat wat wind en water fluisterden onder de boomen, of tot haar op, langs den eenzamen dijk, en het vreemde verlangen, dat ze gaande hebben gemaakt - verlangen was het eigenlijk niet, maar waar vind-je een beter woord? - en al het medelijden met al de menschen en al de prentjes van al die verschillende werelden, die toch ook weer één en dezelfde wereld is, tot één zwaar, somber brok is het allemaal in haar samen-gezonken.

De aardappels zijn klaar en de avond staat aan het raam, ze wil maar niet kijken, het is nu zwaar genoeg, daar binnen in en ze is blij, als ze eindelijk de lamp aansteken en het stil-lispelende schemer buiten uit sluiten mag, achter het donkere gordijn. Dan komt zacht-aan de rust en den volgenden morgen zijn de diepe poorten dicht. Stem verstilde weer tot enkel geluid. Droefenis niet zóó hartbezwarend, deernis niet zóó keelbeklemmend, het fluisteren verstomd, aan de dingen niet langer die vreemde, diepere beteekenis, alsof ze meer zijn, dan ze tonen mogen.

Dat is dan beter, dat is dan goed.... want er zijn dagen dat het leven, door zijn volheid, bijkans niet te dragen is.

-- Carry van Bruggen

...wie lange ein Mensch sich selbst überlebt habe...

 Carl Spitzweg

Obwohl gewöhnlicherweise keine Grab= und Lobschrift zu bemerken pflegt, wie lange ein Mensch sich selbst überlebt habe, so ist dies leider eine der größten und nicht seltenen Merkwürdigkeiten menschlicher Lebensläufe. Lange kann man, wie die Gestalt seines Grabmonuments, mit lebendigem Leibe umhergehen : der Geist ist von einem gewichen; man ist der Schatten und das Andenken des vorigen Namens.
Vielerlei Ursachen können zu diesem frühen Tode beitragen, Eigenschaften des Geistes und des Herzens : zu große Wirksamkeit; zu träge Geduld; Erschlaffung sowohl als auch Überspannung; zu schnelles Glück; zu lange dauerndes Unglück.
Diesem Morden menschlicher Kräfte und Verdienste stehet ein anderer entgegen, den man den feinsten Selbstmord nennen möchte; er ist umso bedauernswürdiger, weil er nur bei den erlesensten Menschen stattfindet, und ihr köstliches Uhrwerk nach und nach zertrümmert : Menschen nämlich von äußerst zartem Gefühl haben ein Höchstes, wonach sie streben; eine Idee, an welcher sie mit unausprechlicher Sehnsucht hangen. Wird ihnen diese Idee genommen, wird dies schöne Bild vor ihren Augen zertrümmert, so ist das Herzblatt ihrer Pflanze gebrochen - der Rest steht mit welken, unkräftigen Blättern da.
Vielleicht gehen mehr Erstorbene dieser Art in unserer Gesellschaft umher, als man es anfangs glauben möchte : eben weil sie am meisten ihren Kummer verbergen; ... und das Gift ihres langsamen Todes, als ein trauriges Geheimnis ihres Herzens, selbst dem Freunde verhehlen....

Arno Schmidt -- HERDER oder vom Primzahl=Menschen

Lees maar, er staat niet wat er staat.

Martinus Nijhoff: Awater

'ik zoek een reisgenoot'

Wees hier aanwezig, allereerste geest,
die over wateren van aanvang zweeft.
Uw goede oog moet zich dit werk toe keren,
 het is gelijk de wereld woest en leeg.
Het wil niet, als geheel een vorige eeuw,
puinhopen zien en zingen van mooi weer,
want zingen is slechts hartstocht van een zweer
en nimmer is, wat ook, ooit puin geweest.
Een eerste steen ligt nauwelijks terneer.
Elk woord vernieuwt de stilte die het breekt.
Al wat geschiedt geschiedt nog voor het eerst.
Geprezen! Noach bouwt, maar geen ark meer,
En Jonas preekt, maar niet te Ninive.

Ik heb een man gezien. Hij heeft geen naam.
Geef hem ons aller vóórnaam bij elkaar.
Hij is de zoon van een vrouw en een vader.
Zodra de rode zon is opgegaan
gaat hij de stad in. Hij komt langs mijn raam.
De avond blauwt, hij komt er weer vandaan.
Hij werkt op een kantoor, heet daar Awater.
Zie hem. Hij is bekleed met kemelhaar
geregen door een naald. Zijn lijf is mager
gespijsd met wilde honing en sprinkhanen.
Niemand heeft ooit hetgeen hij roept verstaan.
Het is woestijn waar hij gebaren maakt.
Hij heeft iets van een monnik, een soldaat,
maar er wordt niet gebeden, niet geblazen,
wanneer men op kantoor het boek opslaat.
Men zit als in een tempel aan een tafel.
Men schrijft Arabisch schrift met Italiaans.
In cijfers, dwarrelend als as omlaag,
rijzen kolommen van orakeltaal.

Het wordt stil, het wordt warmer in de zaal.
Steeds zilter waait dun ratelend metaal.
De schrijfmachine mijmert gekkepraat.
Lees maar, er staat niet wat er staat. Er staat:
‘O moeder, nooit zult gij de bontjas dragen
waarvoor elk dubbeltje werd omgedraaid,
en niet meer ga ik op mijn vrije dagen
met een paar bloemen naar het hospitaal,
maar breng de rozen naar de Kerkhoflaan...’
Dit staat er, en Awater's strak gelaat
geeft roerloos zijn ontroering te verstaan.
Hoe laat is het? Awater's hoofd voelt zwaar.
De telefoon slaapt op de lessenaar.
De theekopjes worden teruggehaald.
De klok tikt, tikt, slaat, tikt tot half-zes slaat.
De groene lampen worden uitgedraaid.

 ....

Care for thy soul as thing of greatest price,
Made to the end to taste of power divine,
Devoid of guilt, abhorring sin and vice,
Apt by God's grace to virtue to incline.
Care for it so, as by thy retchless train,
It be not brought to taste eternal pain.

Francis Pilkington

lynda, or the opposite of mortality

well it's one of those things, carpe diem, or the like, ars longa vita brevis. you went to a book shop, where you previously did some volunteerwork, some years ago. you thought ah well, to prowl around a bit, and why ever not, a few quid to spare and maybe you get to see this person with whom you had worked together. well there you are, some also former volunteercolleague scurries around and then - you have an inkling somehow - a foreboding, something is up. and you don't know what, but - bad. well he said, i got to tell you she died. so -
you knew she had cancer, but you thought she was up and about and it looked somehow under control, in the sense it might get better... last time you saw her, earlier this year, which in retrospect must have been quite close to her death, she was just about to go to get her nails done. and see you later...

ah well. so you stood there and let it sink in, if it's ever possible to let that sink in.

this sort of acquaintance sort of relationship you had to her, sort of people you don't see every week or months even, not superclose, but when you meet it's always nice. so that's why, well you thought fuck.
and you thought how you wanted to go round and see her, but also not wanting to be intrusive, she was not alone, had plenty of friends, obviously closer ones than you. and you find out two months later that she died, don't you read the newspaper...tempus fugit.

and when you worked together, it was sort of - you were the responsible one, bc you had the key and could operate the till and all, you were also like 30cm taller than her, so you felt somehow protective,  as you tend to do with small people, sort of: i get this from the high shelf for you. but then in another sense she was much more protective over you, it was more like situations you often feel no one gets it or takes your side. she'd get that. and you felt comforted. not huge situations, but unexpected. you thought wow, finally someone gets it. she was that sort of person. and generous. that's what your colleague said too, remember that incident with x, she really got that exactly. sort of person you were grateful to have around, grateful that they still exist. who make life somehow more special. so she and you were hanging out there. coffee and tea and books and all. then you stopped working and occasionally met, sort of you went to the bookshop, or on the streets, she lived not far away from you, but also not round the corner. one christmas you were baking cookies and put them in a flat box and brought them to her, through the letter box. they all crumbled of course. well that sort of thing you did. because she knew about your special norway connection she gave you her cora sandel books. it took you a year or so to read them and you felt guilty. but it was the right thing, right sort of books for you at the time.

so you stood there still. and he told you about the funeral, how it was more a celebration and how in an odd sense it felt really good. a celebration of her spirit.
and you reminiscenced about how you're not so young anymore, and your former colleague said: well i have 20 years maybe. don't know about you, but i lived a bit. he said, sad acknowledgement, ah well. your not yet very visible, but already present grey hair, you both look younger than your actual age. got to make the most of it. this acute awareness and also this numbness while time passes. also scary. the hours, all wound you and the last one kills: vulnerant omnes, ultima necat. it is as it is. how he'll be missing her at work. and how it's odd she's not there anymore, after all you thought too you might see her today. he's got her stereo. so he'll always can think of her. you got the books to think about her. the grey edition with the paula modersohn becker picture. he still can't believe it. he asks whether you knew that about greenham common and yeah you knew she did that sort of thing, but - not the extent of it, how high profile she was. all the right things she did. if you'd do a small percentage of that count yourself lucky. but then it's not about imitating the other, but making the most of your own stuff...

and all the missed chances to do things together. you know that's life in a way, too much stuff happens, and one can't do everything. that was something she knew too. you feel a sadness for that, but there's no grudge or guiltfeeling. just somehow: why does everything have to happen so fast... and then: it is as it is.

the way you felt you needed to write about her, because of the way - the way your relationship was. not close, but somehow in its own distance very reliable. the way she stood up once for you, defended you bc of something, not something major to the superficial onlooker, but to you it meant a lot. because people not normally stand up for you they tend to think you have weird ideas. you feel you owe her. but she never made you feel that you owe her, all voluntary - free. space. but no time...

where's she buried you ask, so you can go and talk to her spirit and apologize for being late. (but i love you anyway). which as a special point is that she was always late and came in giggling and you were all disciplined and punctual and serious (which is why you were the keyholder). is this the legacy that you ought to giggle more? that's her spirit, a knowing sort of giggling. it's not something you're capable of, especially not now (maybe later, you'll try). and somehow it all remains unfinished, one of those things that won't fall into place, or sink in...

 

The Right to “Gender Identity” : A Clash with the Rights of Women – submission to the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill – Professor Sheila Jeffreys 

Submission to the public consultation on the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 21 December 2012.

From: Professor Sheila Jeffreys, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. Author of a number of book chapters and refereed journal articles on transgender politics and law.

The right to ‘gender identity’: a clash with the rights of women

This submission addresses the addition of a new ‘protected attribute’ in the Human Rights Bill, that of ‘gender identity’. The protected attribute of ‘sex’, under which women are protected from discrimination, is still in the list, but adding the new category of ‘gender identity’, could potentially create a clash of rights between male-bodied transgenders on the one hand, and those disadvantaged on the grounds of sex, women. In other jurisdictions, such legislation has seen the emergence of successful legal challenges in which malebodied transgenders have sought access to spaces previously reserved for women, including women’s services such as sheltered housing, women’s toilets and women’s prisons.


The demands of transgender activists to have ‘gender identity’ included in human rights legislation were first articulated in detail in the US in the 1995 International Bill of Transgender Rights (Frye, 2000). It demanded the right to express the ‘gender identity’ of choice in whatever way the exponent desired, particularly in any spaces previously reserved for women. An important right in the Bill is that of entering spaces set aside by or for women, ‘The Right of Access to Gendered Space and Participation in Gendered Activity’ (Frye, 2000: 213). Since then, equality and human rights legislation has been updated and created in states across the western world that incorporates the ‘right’ to express ‘gender identity’. Women’s and feminist groups are not invited to contribute to consultation on such changes as if they would have nothing relevant to say, despite the fact that men may, under such legislation, gain the right to be recognised in law as ‘women’. Women are the ‘absent referent’, not officially referred to, despite the fact that it is ‘women’ that the majority of those persons who wish to express their ‘gender rights’ seek to emulate. There is no suggestion in legislation advancing a right to gender identity that women will be included in or advantaged by the developments. Rather, in an increasingly vigorous feminist challenge, critics argue that such legislation creates two singular difficulties for women’s interests (Brennan and Hungerford, 2011). It removes the possibility of women only spaces, and it promotes gender stereotypes that have long been recognised by feminist theorists as the basic organising mechanism of male domination (MacKinnon, 1989; Jeffreys, 2005). The definition of gender identity in the Australian 2012 Draft legislation clashes with protections on the basis of sex, through a confusion of the two categories.
Gender identity will cover people, ‘born as one sex who identify as another sex’, in other words it is a mental condition. There is no requirement that to acquire protection on the grounds of gender identity, a person should have embarked upon hormonal or surgical treatment to change ‘gender’. Indeed it does seem likely to cover both those men who cross-dress occasionally, or on the weekend, as well as those who do so on a more permanent basis. Women’s need for sex-segregated spaces that offer protection for women’s dignity and privacy, and which take account of the vulnerabilities that women suffer in a society in which too many men are violent towards women and girls, hasgenerally been recognised in exceptions to anti-discrimination legislation. The right to gender identity, however, has the potential to void this protection. 

The retrogressive nature of the idea of ‘gender identity’
Feminist critics argue that the concept of ‘gender identity’ is founded upon stereotypes of gender, and, in international law, gender stereotypes are recognised as being in contradiction to the interests of women. The idea of ‘gender identity’ is retrogressive. It depends upon the notion that there can be an ‘essence’ of gender in a person of one sex, that more clearly approximates to the ‘gender’ that is expected of the other sex. Feminists and researchers for many years now have challenged the idea that there is an essential behaviour of‘femininity’ for example, that is appropriate for women. The importance attributed to the elimination of these stereotypes is exemplified in the wording of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which feminists advocated for throughout the 1970s until its promulgation in 1979. Article 5 of CEDAW calls upon States Parties, to ‘take all appropriate measures’ to ‘To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudice and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women’ (United Nations, 1979: Article 5). ‘Stereotyped roles’ are, according to feminist critics of the practice, the veryfoundation and sine qua non of transgenderism, and the notion of ‘gender identity’. Whilst women and feminists seek to unwrap the boa constrictor of gender roles from around the necks of women and girls, the notion of ‘gender identity’ supports and maintains them.

Women’s spaces
In this submission I shall concentrate on two contexts in which the admission of men wishing to express their gender rights directly conflicts with the rights of women: women’s toilets and women’s prisons.

Women’s toilets
Under the right to gender identity, male-bodied persons, in many cases with penises intact, are likely to be permitted to enter women’s toilets. A situation that has arisen in the US in October 2012, in relation to male-bodied transgenders entering women’s toilets, may be instructive as to what may transpire in Australia. In this case, a 45 year old person born male, thrice married, the father of five children, possessed of intact male genitalia, and who lived as a man until 2009, Colleen Francis, has established the right to use the sauna in the women’s locker room at Evergreen State College (Golgowski, 2012). The locker room is used by the girls from two neighbouring high schools and some parents complained that this male bodied person was naked in the locker room in the presence of their girl children. The college said that it had legally to protect Colleen’s right to be naked in the women’s locker room, directed the girls to a smaller, less adequate facility and then put up a curtain in the main locker room saying the girls could change behind it. In this case, Colleen’s right to ‘identify’ trumped the rights of those born and raised female. Men who do not cross-dress commit serious offences against women when they are able to enter women’s toilets, and these include taking photographs of women urinating and defecating for circulation on upskirts sites on the Internet, rape and assault. Unfortunately, men who dress in clothing more usually associated with women are not immune from the commission of similar offences. There are a quite surprising number of cases in which men wearing women’s clothing have been arrested for engaging in behaviour in women’s toilets that harms women. The range of acts they engage in includes secret photographing of women using the toilets and showers, peeping at women from adjacent stalls or under stall dividers, demanding that women recognise them as women and becoming aggressive if women do not, luring children into women’s toilets in order to assault them, and sexual assault.
In a British case, a man dressed up as a ‘mannequin with a mask and a wig’ to enter a cubicle in the women’s toilets in a shopping mall, where he ‘performed’ an unspecified ‘sexual act’ (Ninemsn staff, 2011). The 22 year old man told police he ‘found the sound of women on the toilet sexually exciting’. The man had filmed women’s feet from beneath cubicle doors on his mobile phone, and recorded the sound of a flushing toilet. In another case, a man dressed as a woman was observed peeping at women and using a cell phone to photograph them in a UC Berkeley women’s locker room (Rufus, 2010). In a Little Rock, Arkansas, case, a 39-year-old man wearing women’s clothing was arrested after exposing himself and masturbating in front of three children and trying to lure them into the women’s bathroom (CW Arkansas, 2010). Male sex offenders can use women’s clothing to make their access to children easier. In Oregon, a registered sex offender dressed as a woman entered the women’s locker room at a swimming baths and talked with several children before being apprehended (KATU, 2011). In this incident, the 39 year old man, ‘put on a bra, lipstick and eyeliner’ and entered the ‘Aquatic park’ where he,‘wandered around the center talking with children, went in the women’s locker room and took a dip in the hot tub’. This man had a history of entering women’s locker rooms in women’s clothing, as well as a conviction for sexual abuse. He was listed as a “predatory” sex offender who targeted girls aged between five and nine years old.
It is not possible to know whether these are male-bodied persons who consider that they are expressing a ‘gender identity’, or just men adopting women’s clothing in order to facilitate their access to women and children, but the problem of allowing persons with male bodies to enter women’s toilets persists in either case. The cases covered here are likely to represent a fraction of the situations in which male-bodied persons, dressed in clothing stereotypically associated with women, enter women’s toilets for various forms of sexual satisfaction. Usually women are unaware that they are being recorded or observed.

Women’s prisons
Women’s prisons are another space that male-bodied persons are seeking the legal right to enter in order to express their ‘gender identity’. Male prisoners in western countries are using human rights laws successfully to gain access to transgender treatment at public expense in prison, and the right to then transfer to the women’s estate. The men who are being given the right to live alongside women in prison are often precisely those who are most violent and dangerous to women’s safety, having been convicted of grave crimes, including the murder of women.
In Australia, thus far, there has been no successful case in which a male-bodied offender has been placed in a women’s prison in order to express a ‘gender identity’. But there have been cases in which such demands have been made. A case where permission to transgender was refused, concerned Australian serial killer, Paul Denyer. Denyer killed three young women in bayside suburbs of
Melbourne, over 7 weeks in 1993. He sought, during his sentence, to ‘wear make-up in jail, have a taxpayer-funded sex change and formally alter his name by deed poll to Paula’ (Dunn, 2012). In July 2012 it was reported that police were investigating four alleged rapes by Denyer of men with intellectual disabilities who were fellow inmates. The Denyer case illustrates the problems that might occur in the recognition of violent male criminals as ‘women’ and their transfer to women’s facilities. There is no reason that a belief that they are ‘women’ will alter such men’s tendencies to engage in a form of sexual violence which is specifically and clearly male. In another Australian case, in 2012, Derek Lulu Sinden was refused permission in the Queensland courts to start hormone treatment for gender identity disorder. The Queensland Corrections Department argued that the refusal was consistent with its policy of only supplying hormones to men who started to take them before entering the prison system (Smith, 2012). Sinden had been convicted of an attack on Beryl Grace Brown, 71, in April 1999, in her home, which caused her to suffer a heart attack and fatal stroke.
In other jurisdictions, male bodied persons have acquired the right to hormones and surgery in order to express their ‘gender identity’ in prison. The question of transfer to a women’s prison is intertwined with such decisions. In 2009, an appeal from an unnamed male prisoner in the UK to be moved to a women’s prison was successful. The petitioner in this case was found guilty in 2001 of
the manslaughter of his male lover who was strangled with a pair of tights, allegedly for refusing to fund the murderer’s sex change surgery. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Five days after his release he attempted to rape a female stranger and was sent back to prison (Allen, 2009). In order to obtain gender reassignment surgery, the prisoner was told that he must engage in the real life test,

that is, 2 years living as a woman, in a women’s prison. The women in the prison where he was to be housed were not to be told of his identity or of his offence. His lawyer told the court that the crimes were all linked to ‘a desperation to become a woman’. The judge declared that ‘her continued detention in a male prison is in breach of her rights under Article 8 [the right to private and family life] under the European Convention on Human Rights’. Unfortunately, there seems to be no acknowledgement here of the more serious and pressing right of women to avoid being compulsorily housed with violent men. The notion of human rights is trivialised thereby. In response to the judgement, new guidelines were issued for the treatment of prisoners seeking gender reassignment in UK prisons in March 2011, which enabled prisoners to have treatment and to be located in women’s prisons. The guidelines state, ‘A male to female transsexual person with a gender recognition certificate may be refused location in the female estate only on security grounds
– in other words, only when it can be demonstrated that other women with an equivalent security profile would also be held in the male estate’ (Ministry of Justice, 2011). Gender recognition certificates in the UK can be obtained without any need for hormonal or surgical treatment.

Conclusion
Persons of one biological sex who consider that they have a ‘gender identity’ stereotypically associated with the other sex do suffer discrimination and need protection. A problem arises, however, when ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are confused, to the extent that male-bodied persons gain a right to enter spaces set aside for women. In such a case, a clash of rights is created. Persons who wish to express a gender identity not usually stereotypically associated with their biological sex need to be accommodated in ways that protect them, but do not conflict with the rights of women.

Recommendations
* That there should be a recognition in the legislation that possession of a mental ‘gender identity’ is quite different from ‘sex’.
* That the legislation should be constructed in a way that does not allow a malebodied person to have a right of entry to spaces that need to be women only (i.e. female only) for the purposes of security, privacy, dignity or in order to enable members of that group that suffers discrimination on the grounds of sex, to meet separately for political purposes.

References
Allen, Vanessa (2009, 5 September). Transsexual killer and attempted rapist wins ‘human
rights’ battle to be moved to women’s prison. London: The Daily
Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211165/Transexual-prisoner-wins-High-
Court-battle-moved-womens-jail.html
Brennan, Cathy and Hungerford, Elizabeth (2011). “Gender identity” legislation and the
erosion of sex-based legal protections for females.
http://radicalhub.com/2011/08/01/gender-identity-legislation-and-the-erosion-of-sex-basedlegal-
protections-for-females/
CW Arkansas (2010, 10 March). Friends of man arrested for sexual indecency are
shocked. http://www.cwarkansas.com/mostpopular/story/Update-Friends-of-man-arrestedfor-
sexual/ehozQqRzrEmKVIfjZgGHLQ.cspx
Dunn, Mark (2012, 26 July). Serial killer Paul Denyer quizzed on four jail rapes in six weeks.
Melbourne: Herald Sun. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/true-crime-scene/killer-pauldenyer-
quizzed-on-jail-rapes/story-fnat7jnn-1226435264343
Frye, Phyllis (2000). The International Bill of Gender Rights v. Cider House Rules
International Bill of Gender Rights. William and Mary College Journal of Women and the
Law. Vol. 7 (6). 133.
Golgowski, Nina (2012, 4 November). Parents’ outrage as transgendered woman is permitted
to use the women’s locker room ‘exposing himself to little girls’. UK: Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227562/Colleen-Francis-Outrage-transgenderedwoman-
permitted-use-college-womens-locker-room-exposing-himself.html
Jeffreys, Sheila (2005). Beauty and Misogyny: harmful cultural practices in the west.
London: Routledge.
KATU Communities Staff (2011, 6 July). Detective: Man dressed as woman went into pool
locker room. Milwaukie Katu. http://milwaukie.katu.com/news/crime/detective-man-dressedwoman-
went-pool-locker-room/441693
Mackinnon, Catharine A. (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA,
USA: Harvard University Press.
Ninemsn Staff (2011, 18 April). Man dressed as mannequin found in mall toilet. Australia:
Nine News. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8238380/man-dressed-as-mannequin-foundin-
mall-toilet
Rufus, Anneli (2010, 12 October). Cross-Dressing Peeper Infiltrates Cal Women’s Locker
Room. California, USA: East Bay Express.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/92510/archives/2010/10/12/cross-dressing-peeper-infiltratescal-
womens-locker-room
Smith, Anthony (2012, 25 July). ‘Granny-killer’ refused hormones in prison. Gay News
Network. http://gaynewsnetwork.com.au/news/northern-territory/7973-granny-killer-refusedhormones-
in-prison.html


http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=legcon_ctte/anti_discrimination_2012/submissions.htm no.408

your right to self-identify does not trump the women's right to safety

here's a good illustration of my problem with the behaviour of - not all of them - a certain segment of male to female transpeople (fairplay to everyone else unassholeish, wether trans or not -- so that makes me assholephobic and not transphobic):


so, I was working in the drop-in when this guy came in. now, this is a place that’s for women–but it’s this weird kind of parallel universe where you don’t really have to actually have been raised female, look female, act female or talk female in order to be considered female. never mind that the gender training you received well into adulthood was to be a man–you can just sashay in there and say, “yea. i’m a woman. I got a piece of paper from this doctor who says i’m female.” or not. whatever. makes me wanna set my fuckin’ hair on fire. So…here we are, a big man with a goatee, track pants, big belly, deep voice, “I was born female”, he says, “i don’t understand what your issue is, I’m a woman and I should be here.”

yea, I think, I’m a fucking dolphin and they still make me pay to go to the aquarium, and then i never get to swim with my people…suck it up, princess…

My co-worker says, “i can’t even talk to him, i’m so angry–that’s not a woman’s beard, that’s landscaped.”

another co-worker came in at the same time as upon our man, and was the first to speak to him. whew. i don’t like it when it’s me, ’cause there’s been a ‘draft’ policy for years that kinda changes all the time, and I’m the most outspoken proponent of having the place be “women only”, so i fear that people think I hate trannies, which is not the case, I just…dammit, I just want there to be some place around that’s for women only. please?

Anyhow…so my co-worker, you know, we’ve all been in these fights about being essentialist and exclusionary and bigoted and oh my god transphobic , and she doesn’t want to do the wrong thing, and she wants to be inclusive and good–so she does the wrong thing. lets him walk through the women’s centre to get a coffee, the crowded women’s centre–and promises that we will bring him lunch outside.

give ‘em an inch…

As he walks, there’s a ripple of murmur and grumble in his wake. I hear women say, “they shouldn’t let it in here”. Which, you know, is true–except for the “it” part. He’s human, he deserves dignity, respect–even if he does not offer it. He’s damaged, he can’t–letting him walk through the centre was no favour to him or to the women who are there. he gets his coffee, ambles back to the door, leaves. but hangs out close to the door, looking in whenever a woman opens the door to come in or go out.

i go out to ask him to please move to the back door, where my co-worker will give him a lunch. he asks why he can’t come in. I say because your right to self-identify does not trump the womens right to a safe place. i wanted to say, ‘if you are, as you claim, a woman, you would understand immediately what the problem is, and take care of the women around you’. If he were a butch woman, he would not have behaved with such entitlement and belligerence. No way. Even the women who become constructed men, ‘transmen’, and want to still use women’s spaces–they (because, hey, they’re women) will ask in advance if they can come in. They will call a meeting or something–and they’ll back off if told ‘no’. They won’t shout and holler and call in the lawyers. Not in my experience, anyhow.

I suspect, too, that transmen don’t have any trouble getting into all-male space because men don’t gather together to protect each other, to figure out what it is to be male in a world dominated by women–they do it to protect unearned privilege and power–they are not under siege. Unless they are Aboriginal men or refugees or African-Canadian or in some category of “other”. And I don’t know about the intent or structures of those groups. I suspect they need women in them, though, to help them be human.Plus, men don’t really see women, unless they’re, you know, ‘girl from ipanema-ish’. So women can ‘pass’ for the most part, seems to me.

anyhow. so. buddy ate his lunch outside. He pouted. We ignored him. He left. i have no doubt he’ll be back. There are more and more men who come in there. They do not all live “as women” outside, they say they are women when it suits them. Some are consistent, they go around claiming to be women and accessing women’s spaces and we make room for them because, oh, you know, it’s so hard for them (and perhaps we are afraid of them…as we are afraid of men, as a class–isn’t that so? hell hath no fury, I tell ya…). Yea. they do have it hard, but maybe they feel bad because they know, whatever it was that drove them to get all hacked off and tucked in and implanted is still there, they’re still not who they want to be, but there they are now, among women, and they still don’t fit, and how uncomfortable is that? and because they’re men, they get all weird and entitled and defensive.

and dangerous, as well. nothing worse than a damaged man powerless in the world and cornered. yikes. And the women in the women’s center, they know all about the harm that damaged and angry men can do. Even here, in a place that’s supposed to be for women, they are not safe from the rage of men. good lord. The centre has had to ban some of these guys because they’ve harassed women outside, gained access to them inside…not all of them, for sure, but c’mon. Not ONE woman has been found to be a danger to the rest of the women as a whole like some of the men (trannies) have been. What does that tell ya?

ach. apparently there are ongoing discussions in staff meetings about what to do about the men. this is a divisive and troubled discussion here at the drop-in, as these discussions are at every space that women have carved out. once again, men getting in between women’s relationships with each other, sucking up resources we could be directing toward women’s liberation (or at the very least, a little solace in captivity).

argh. see? all this energy on a post about men. i’m gonna write a paper about prostitution and harm reduction now. and go to the gym. Squats, Deadlifts–Core strengthening for the glorious revolution. I’ll tell ya about the two memorials i went to this week, too–some time, i promise. later.

http://easilyriled.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/man-troubles/


emphases mine.

different than true

needs, necessities.

robert browning, born may 7. why you have a soft spot for him, because of the running away stunt. maybe one should judge men according to whether one can run away with them. the running away criterion.
you had meant to write about robert browning last year because then there was his big anniversary but you couldn’t back then. it was too difficult, too upsetting in a way, oddly painful, even though you've written about maybe - more painful things. the running away thing is of special importance to you because you did a similar thing as well.

it’s not become any easier or less necessary, in the last 200 years or so, running away.

and the perplexity of this all...how often in your life can you say: you’re leaving the country with robert browning (well, your version of robert browning) and it’s actually true. also how it always feels so different, those socalled things in life that could be out of the cinema or: if you put it in a book no one would believe you (forget about that one, no one's believing you anyway).

how this feels different than true, it was true of course. but it still feels different. as if there's some additional layer of - what, inexplicable meaning ? - over it all.  how to write about it without making it sounding dramatic but just as - something of a normal consequence, of some kind of daily necessity, as something that just happens, like so many things...: although it was dramatic in some ways, in others also not. in some ways very straightforward, after all, it’s running away, you can’t procrastinate too much, but in a way, it's too fast an action for your rather slow nature (and you wondered how you can get the slowness back). it sounds romantic which it was, to some extent, but sad too. something one shouldn't have to do. it was many things. also you weren't running away with a writer, but from a writer. you did run away on your own as well, but it's nicer together.

and of course the right to stay where you are, to your very own conditions. that's something that was never in your power.

---

you write as someone who has given up on many things, - important: on some also not -
you write as someone who wonders whether resignation and serenity are indistinguishable.

the recurrent thought of rereading - again - virginia woolf, why? and what? for a long time the waves were your favorite. since the last five years or so it’s jacob’s room. you don’t know. maybe the diaries. that is a research interest, so you have an excuse.

you cannot really exist without some quiet and distance.
and the way that this need has become stronger. more important.
it was always more easier for you to cope with solitude than with too many people. too many people always stress you out, hinder your ability to focus.


Jegliche Berührung mit Anderen setzt erfahrungsgemäß meine Leistung herab und stört mich auf Tage hinaus - mein letzter Versuch in dieser Beziehung, meine ‹drei Jahre Darmstadt›, haben mich endgültig darüber belehrt. -- Arno Schmidt.

Er schrieb winzig und sorgfältig, angespannt. Ihn interesierte nur sein Schreiben. Und alle Störungen mußten draußen bleiben, nicht wahr? Wart nur bis sie dich zum Schutträumen holen, wenn du keine reguläre Arbeit nachweisen kannst....denn er wollte schreibend in sich hineinschauen, sonst nichts. Hermann Lenz (iv 36)

tat weh - ich : wollte wohltun - tat ihr weh : mit-fühlend - dies wie das - ich : und ich streichelte weiter an ihr entlang, langsamer, weicher auch, und verbarg mein Frieren und strich und strich - langsam in sie zurück, was doch in ihr gefangen war und blieb -

h wollschläger -- herzgewächse

blackberry

Meditation at Lagunitas

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

-- robert hass

“Feeling” will always interfere with the advised (and really I mean masculine) reading of such texts but feeling (how about we try substituting “being female” for feeling just as a stunt) is always a problem (a good one) in literature and feeling, and if you remember, feeling, i.e. “feeling compelled” was language poetry’s (for Perloff) downfall. And still I want to know who or what was compelling language poetry to feel that way. The women already in the language poetry room? New Narrative writers in the Bay Area. The fact that people wanted grants or jobs or just realized they looked bad. Maybe something great. That’s possible. But all of it gets compacted in Perloff’s aesthetic (whenever she has to dispense really swiftly with “others” she tends to say “and so on” as if unwilling to recite the interminable list of outsiders clamoring) as identity politics or the politically correct. Which is stunning language for a scholar to use. It’s media speak. It’s transparent speech. Because while not self-identifying one as a sexist, racist or homophobic it does offer a way to speak over the fence to those who know what you mean. But what do you mean? Do we know? Among language poetry’s sovereign powers Marjorie nostalgically cites: it “demanded an end to transparency.” Meaning the refusal of the direct and indirect speech that women and people of color and queers and assorted weaklings of the underclasses have always employed so they don’t bump into each other, die of boredom at work or get killed.

Eileen Myles -- Painted Clear, Painted Black

because you have always approached your books by the individual writer, you never somehow could ascribe your loyalty to some epoch or group of writers, some genre, style of thought - 

why you are writing this, because you were reminded by it because you were reading benn, about the animals that create pearls and therefore they are withdrawn, they lie quiet and only know the sea [Tiere, die Perlen bilden, sind verschlossen, sie liegen still und kennen nur die See;]

why you have a reluctance, now,
you want to go inside

instead of kant, you could always so much more identify with schopenhauer's imperative....
neminem laede - immo omnes iuva quantum potes.
(do harm to no one ; but rather help all people, as far as lies in your power. - on the basis of morality part ii) 

to always be wrong:
the accusation against photography:
to always capture the wrong moment (and knowing it)
to assume that this moment is the whole (i don't)
to deny the infinity of becoming.

but i've let go of that denial. i'm not even hunting the moment anymore
which was a serene decision. you didn't stop hunting it so it could come in via the backdoor.
maybe you need another word for the description... you accept the ineffable as your neighbour who is never at home...


to go inwards to:
describe it like this:
the external self that buys onions for instance and the self that makes all those wonderful discoveries in books. let's call it the other self. the self that takes photos, or writes. the task of my life: to find out about that other self. a highly private activity. which is why you want to bring your thoughts about books and so on back into that area. what you mean by 'inside'.
cutting out as much intrusion as possible. which is not to be understood as offence. it's just a focus on what's important. which is not the same as might be important to you - it doesn't matter, that difference. the main thing is to live that self, if possible.

Aufklärung - 'Was ist das?'

Sie verstellen die Stimme, mein Lieber: - soll ich ernstlich darauf antworten? Ich sage mal nur hinterher, was sie auch ist, nämlich nicht nur die eigentliche Moral von der Geschicht', die sonst gar keine hat, sondern die Ironie der Menschheits-Geschichte schlechthin: die einzige Möglichkeit, über das Mächtige zu lachen. Die Summe ist immer das Wissen, daß der Welt nicht zu helfen ist, aber dies die Gar-nichts-Wissenden wissen zu lassen, ist die Hilfe selbst - und die einzige, die unserm Zeitlupen-Dasein in der endlosen Evolution, dem letzten Warum, beschieden ist.

Hans Wollschläger.

to translate towards yourself and from yourself (jellema vii)

a new book by jellema, a posthumous book - and a new hope: how many books will be there, to come...

a small book, hardcover, of the size of your hand. how it feels exactly right that it is a small book. essays. images. a small publisher (kleine uil - little owl). small essays too, the ones that weren't included in his collected works, jellema died before plans for the collected works were finished but he left directions for the literary executor what was to happen with the other things. this small book is a gentle edition, according to jellema's wishes chronological so that the connection between his literary interests and self-reflection could become visible.

the book, it's called: een open plek - an open space/place.
the immediate association: it reminds of heidegger's open middle from the origin of the work of art.... the open middle seems so far to be the right kind of characterization, that is the sphere in which - one cannot say inhabit - but drawn to? drawn to is too accidental, it's somewhat more, it's just where those thoughts belong to, their nature is that of an open space.

- the first essay [ruth. een droom en een gedicht], about dreaming and translating. how he dreams that someone asks him to translate something from the bible, the book of ruth and how this turns into the writing of a poem...

Het kernwoord uit de droom is het woord vertalen. In zijn dubbelzinnigheid. Ruth vertalen betekende ten eerste dat ik het verhaal moest lezen en begrijpen als een parabel voor mijn eigen levensmoment, het verhaal vetalen naar mijzelf toe. In de tweede plaats dat ik dat moest doen door er opnieuw taal van te maken, het verhaal dus vanuit mezelf ver-talen. Twee niet van elkaar te onderscheiden activiteiten: verstaan als uitbeelden, begrijpen als herschepping. 

to translate that story means first that i have to read it and to understand it as a parable for my own moment in life, moment meaning the time in which this story has meaning to oneself. therefore: to translate the story towards myself. then: it needs to be put into language again, i need to translate it from myself. two activities that are hard to distinguish from each other: understanding as giving image to something and understanding as re-creation.

and how he then finds that this form of translating is just like writing a poem.

that this relates to aesthetics and truth in the following way:

to be not a pure aesthetic person but primarily looking for truth. aesthetic reflection is necessary because it helps finding form. a poem can be true only in the right form and the poem looks for its truth by way of form. this truth sometimes lies outside aesthetics. the nature of truth is such that it generates itself inside the poem. the truth is not valid for all times. it's a painful truth, sometimes. a temporary truth. a truth that is personal, connected to some 'I', a truth of something of which you know where it is, and it is somewhat beyond of what one is able to think [Naar iets waarvan 'ik' weet waar dat is. Iets verder dan hij denkt.] - and it is where, - maybe in that open space. that isn't stated. poems are always written about things that one doesn't know, they are one step beyond one's insight and one's knowledge. one doesn't write poems about things one knows.

one could think that this requires a knowledge of one's own alienation and also one's capacity to serve one's own creativity. the way he reads the book of ruth is that there are also the people that are locked up within themselves and that there is a specific sort of suffering of people who have to eat their dreams and lose some very elemental things while in the service of others. that often the only thing they can offer is service, but it's not a service towards their own creativity, but one that aims for mere survival. the dreams are eaten, the self is disappeared in a big hole of self alienation, all one's own strength is lost in a fear for punishment. all that's left is a service not to the self.
yet to not know things - and to not know oneself, to not have some insights was one of the preconditions of writing poetry.... poetry is also always about the unknown and the insight possible only after the writing, the writing only allows for insight.... insight is not at the beginning, it is at the end. at the beginning is an attempt to understand something, to try to put it into images - and words.


Ruth
voor Miep Kamphuis

Zij at haar eigen dromen op omdat
de moeder - niet haar eigen - van haar wilde
dat zij ging en zijn voetendek optilde
om te verdwijnen in een groter gat

van zelfvervreemding. Dat. Koren en kaf
weer ongescheiden; als de dorsvloer trilde
onder zijn vlegelslagen 's nachts verspilde 
zij heel haar kracht aan een gevoel voor straf.

Haar dromen at zij, kauwde met geen woord
de moederkoek van koren uit haar schort,
en raakte zo voorgoed haar goden kwijt.

Eenmal de schoen uit voor de open poort
nam 't lot zijn loop: haar schoot bleek niet verdord.
Maar wat zij baarde heette dienstbaarheid.

Once you feel the lack, the emptiness, you can never again remember, recall anything with the same objective clarity. p31

You can't lock the door against yourself, forget what you are bound to remember, quell desire from a distance of years, deny your nightmares and believe that if they aren't there when you wake that they were never there at all. p32

I don't even look up because I wouldn't be able to handle the eye contact. p 39

You still wake in the morning, wash with cold water and look out of the window. You switch off the illuminated moon of your clock. You have to go on, and it doesn't make any difference to anybody what you carry or what you've done. So they think that you are old or young, or distance means miles and experience means age, and desire begins static at one point, peaks, and ends just as abruptly.
No, I'm screaming it. No, I'm announcing it to all the beautiful careless irreverent beauties of this world. No, I'm saying that age isn't going to help. The things time will heal are just countered by the things it will destroy. p53f

I don't want to hear anymore that I'm too young or too something else, because maybe people don't know what it feels like to be young and hot. And it feels like forever with Emmie walking and her heels shuffling in her black loafers and her anklets turned down and sloppy. Young and hot. How can people go around being so careless, just running down other people's lives like some bus out of control? You don't know if maybe somebody's father died, or if somebody is in pain, or if they just feel raw inside and their arms and legs don't feel like they belong to the same body. I don't think this because I'm young and don't know anything about the world. I think there are only so many things you can know, and everything after that becomes some version - just some same shirt in a different colour. The things that change are the people.
I don't want to hear that I'm too young or too shy, or too aloof and it will all pass. The passing doesn't bother me. I just can't stand hearing the words when I know that there must be something better that people are ignoring. Look, I know this for myself. I'm set with it. I'm always going to be alright because I understand this, but it's for Ricey, you know? I'd like to tell her that sometimes it hurts for no reason, and that's not something you can explain in a postcard with a pretty picture on it or in polite conversation over dinner. p56f

Norah Labiner -- Our Sometime Sister

a difficult little world to inhabit p.1

norah labiner ii

second attempt, and again writing about books you haven't finished reading.
you have two books by norah labiner. miniatures (2003) and our sometime sister (2000)
there are two other books: german for travellers (2009) and let the dark flower blossom (2013)
you started with miniatures which is the second and as you understood, somehow (not really properly, but somehow too) a sequel to our sometime sister. but miniatures was first in the mail and because you were curious you started reading that one first always with the feeling: this is wrong and you ought to have waited for the first one.
you read it also with the feeling that there is something really important going on but it escapes you.
it was a very strange mixture of compelling you to go on but at the same time you were repelled too by some things. which you thought cringy but also in some way that they are absolutely part of the 'design' of the book and are also absolutely reflected upon by the writer. two things basicly: that the story is somewhat vaguely modelled on the sylvia plath/ted hughes couple, the way certain writers are mentioned and the other one has to do with style (which might be more a matter of taste, preference, there is nothing wrong with the writing). it's a strange mixture of vigorous reflection, a fast telling, and you missed the slow, the sensitive, the pausing, the tentative (maybe the book is too strong for you - written by someone with an acute mind and the undercurrent of intellectual strength is palpable - but in which direction will it go - if direction is the right word). while this is there too, but in such a  - you don't know. different way you haven't properly understood. at the same time - and this is the compelling bit: a zillion of interesting insights that go on in all kinds of directions. and you like difficult little worlds.

the book resisted and at the same time attracted you. and you are curious of what constitutes the nature of that resistance.

anyway. 150 pages long in miniatures you fought the mental fight of whether to continue or starting our sometime sister.
you did the later. things improved. on the first page you read how labiner describes her writing as a difficult little world to inhabit. well that was exactly the experience with miniatures. nevertheless, you settled in with our sometime sister quite easily, you read, and suddenly things, reading felt right again, those strange contradictory forces of compelling/repelling disappeared, but in a way an attractive resistance still not gone. you also like the title, our sometime sister. instead you wanted to know what's going on, what happens next. you feel strongly that this writer has something important to say, you only don't know what is just yet - or will you ever.  you are on page 27 and you already feel compelled to write about this strange inaccessibility of the book.

there are hints of course. (but is this ever all. are hints ever all- of course not, it's in the nature of hints to - hint...towards - what? that difficult little world?).

you found also a hint how this book (our sometime sister) connects to the second (miniatures), and it does connect little worlds to miniatures and to the self: I long for the tiny world, when we were miniatures of ourselves, when the fishes were pink, and I can still - please don't make me, no, stop - recall the screams of delight in the summer that we cried among the garden at the sight of ants, big and sturdy, crawling deliriously over peonies. How sweet. - this as the epigraph to our sometime sister, and written by the - socalled - sylvia plath character of miniatures, frances warren lieb.

from the preface to dear reader, written by the fictional protagonist:
(the book is basically described there as a failure towards the real thing.)

the reader is adressed, as a specific sort of reader: I wanted to impress you, in specific, reader, not the collective reader out there, but you. Because I like your contrary nature. Because you are in the business of refusal, and so am I. You refuse to accept the limits of belief, story, dream, and history. Maps are useless to you. You want to get there, to find it, on your own. You're so undeniably headstrong, so firecely original that you don't even want an antecedent for it. I can't, I won't keep any secrets from you. How could I? I confess to you that I failed, but I kept trying... p6f

one another such hint is: written in not linear prgression, but circuitous association. p3

it's about instances rather.  - I am forever swept back into instance p3

then the eternal question whether the book is about - you/the writer - how authors write themselves into books in order to live among their characters. there is the problem personalization in this novel, the fictional protagonist says she wrote herself into the book after feeling a lack when previously having ommitted personalization in writing.... and then there is the serious question: to whom does this story belong? it's not very easy to answer....

If there is any mystery in this book, it is how we ceaselessly manage to create ourselves through rags and scraps and forgotten things; recreate ourselves again and again in both the stories we tell and how we choose to tell them. p8

You may in the end lose sense of who is real and who is not; I say this not to insult your intelligence, but this was my own experience. p 9

the real exists alongside the fictional p9

the real enchantment set in when you read this: But to me, the strange aspect only begins now, to part with it all now, to say it is, in fact, over. To say that it all happened a long time ago. To say it is, for me, over, when for you, how lucky you are, how I envy you, how I have always envied you, it is only just about to begin. Please, turn the page. p9

it's in a way, where or how this difficult little world came to live - some call it this contract between reader and writer and the reader wakes up this little world - also the moment of this being permanently out of time, always be able to restart and reading, the sheer joy of it, not bound to a when - rather bound to a whenever.

The Still Centre

...
till home became somewhere outside;
everywhere and nowhere his own.

At the still centre of the turning world
I found myself.
But now I am flung
to the open circumference, no longer pinned
by converging spokes, no longer young,
able, needed, upheld by the pace
of the wheel running on.
I am lost.
I am no one
seeking a hold where the grips are gone,
learning to be
in the great Alone,
learning to find a foothold in rock
beyond my grasp
till I take my hand from the rope.

Phoebe Hesketh

As soon as I see the incredible

Peter Handke: Changes During the Course of the Day 

As long as I am still alone, I am still alone. As long as I am still among acquaintances, I am still an acquaintance. But as soon as I am among strangers—

As soon as I step out on the street— a pedestrian steps out on the street.
As soon as I enter the subway— a subway rider enters the subway
A soon as I enter the jewelry shop— a gentleman enters the jewelry shop.
As soon as I push the shopping cart through the supermarket— a customer pushes the cart through the supermarket.
As soon as I enter the department store— someone on a shopping spree enters the department store.

Then I walk past some children— and the the children see an adult walking past. Then I enter the off-limits zone— and the guards see a trespasser enter the off-limits zone. Then I see children running away from me in the off-limits zone— and I become a guard whom the children flee because they are unauthorized persons in an off-limits zone.

Then I sit in the waiting room as an applicant. Then I write my name on the back of the envelope as a sender. Then I fill out the lottery ticket as a winner.

As soon as I am asked how one gets to BLACK ROAD— I become someone who knows his way around town.
As soon as I see the incredible— I become a witness.
As soon as I enter the church— I become a layman.
As soon as I don’t ignore an accident— I become a busy-body.
As soon as I don’t know how to get to BLACK ROAD— I am again someone who doesn’t know his way to BLACK ROAD.

I have just consumed the meal— already I can say: We consumers!
I have just had something stolen from me— already I can say: We proprietors!
I have just placed the obituary— already I can say: We mourners!
I have just begun to contemplate the universe— already I can say: We human beings!

I read the novel in the mass publication— and become one among millions.
I don’t fulfill my duties toward the authorities— and am no longer a dutiful citizen of the state.
I don’t run away during the riot— and I’m an inciter of riots.
I look up from the novel I’m reading and observe the beauty opposite me— and we become two among millions.

Then someone does not leave the moving train— someone? — A traveler.
Then someone speaks without an accent— someone? — A native.
Then someone has a vis-à-vis— and become a vis-à-vis.
Then someone no longer only plays by himself— and becomes an opponent.

Then someone crawls out from under a thicket in the park and becomes a suspicious subject.
Then someone who is being discussed becomes an object of discussion.
Then someone is recognized on a photo— and becomes an X.
Then someone takes a walk in the country— someone? A wanderer.

And then the car makes a sudden stop in front of me— I become an obstacle. Then I am seen by a figure in the dark— and become a figure in the dark.
And when I am then observed through binoculars— I am an object.
Then someone stumbles over me— and I become a body.
And when I am then stepped upon— I become something soft.
Then I am wrapped up in something— and become a content.

Then one notices that someone has run barefoot over the dirt road and that a right-hander has fired the shot and that someone whose blood group is O has lain there and that I, judging by the my shabby looks, must be a foreigner.

As soon as someone challenges me then— the one who’s been challenged doesn’t stop when challenged.
As soon as I am then far enough away from the observers— the object is nothing but a dot.
As soon as I, as an observer, challenge someone— I give the one who has been challenged quite a fright.

Then, finally, I meet an acquaintance— and a single person remains behind alone.
Then, finally, I am left alone— and a single person remains behind alone.
Then, finally, I sit down next to someone in the grass— and am finally someone else.