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rockofeye · 6 years ago

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It'd be nice to see sort of a "Creole for beginners" post that talks about what terms are common in Vodou and maybe explains the grammar structure. I've noticed a lot of Creole I can mentally translate myself if I think about it long enough since many French words were taken into English awhile back, but French itself I don't actually know so sometimes it's quite a reach. The evolution of the language seems parallel with the evolution of Vodou and that's really interesting to me.

So, this ask has been sitting for awhile, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot as I am just finishing up an intensive month-long Kreyòl class.

Haitian Kreyòl/Kreyòl Ayisyen is a fascinating, gorgeous, succulent language. In some ways, it is super straightforward and in other ways, it is deeply complex as befits a language that has roots in Romance languages (more than one!), African languages (more than one!), and Indigenous languages. Like vodou, it is a language that embodies the history of Haiti and it has and does evolve as culture and the world advances.

Outside of Haiti, there is the idea that there is no common orthography/common way of speaking and utilizing the language. This is wrong wrong wrong. Largely, this stems from the fact that, until about 50 years ago, Kreyòl was almost entirely an oral only language because of colonialism–Kreyòl has only begun being taught in schools in the last decade, yet almost every Haitian speaks it fluently (the elite class speaks French, but that is largely a class marker–everyone knows Kreyòl). Many Haitians do not know how to write in Kreyòl, and write the best that they are able which leads to widely varied output….which leads outsiders to say that there is no commonly accepted orthography.

It would take a long, LONG time to really deconstruct and explain how Kreyòl works in practice so I’m not going to go there entirely, but here are some basics:

Kreyòl has 32 letter/symbols in its alphabet. Within that, there are 15 vowels/vowel sounds and 18 consonants/consonant sounds. Kreyòl only utilizes one accent (grave accent/aksan grav). Things with the alphabet that trip up Kreyòl learners who are native English speakers include:

‘C’ is not utilized except as a compound sound in ‘ch’, which is a soft sound like ‘shh’ and not a hard sound like ‘chair’.

‘U’ is not utilized except in compound sounds with other vowels.

‘G’ is always hard, never soft.

In Kreyòl, everything written is spoken–there are no silent letters, ever. A professor of mine terms Kreyòl as a truly democratic language; every letter has a sound that is expressed orally.

Basic sentence structure is Subject-Verb-Object (Li se yon bèl fi/She is a beautiful woman) and Noun-Adjective (Li bèl/She is beautiful). Within that structure:

Tenses and conditions (positive/negation) are assigned by separate verb markers/particles. Absense of a verb marker makes the tense automatically present.

Verbs largely do not conjugate, with some exceptions.

Articles are placed separately from the noun–definite articles are ALWAYS after the noun, indefinite articles are ALWAYS before the noun, and this gives speakers of other languages fits because it is different than the Romance languages most closely related to Kreyòl (my class had several folks who spoke several European-derived languages fluently, and the folks who spoke French or Spanish fluently struggled the most).

Adjectives are mostly after nouns, except when they are not.

Kreyòl is a language of double speak, both in general and in vodou. Words carry multiple meanings depending on context and tone, which can be a struggle when learning and can lead to confusion and sometimes awkward conversation. For example, the word for walk and market is spelled and pronounced the same way, the word for pen can also refer to internal genitalia and/or pubic hair in a female-assigned person in a somewhat rude/abrupt way, and utilizing a nasal versus open vowel sound in ‘I would like to meet you’ in Kreyòl changes that sentence to ‘I would like to fuck you’. Luckily, most Haitians are extremely accommodating to outsiders and understand that mistakes are honest mistakes (but they will laugh…).

Tone and composure (how you fix your face when you speak) is super important. How a sentence is said communicates as much, if not more, than the actual word. How I say ‘yon fanm sa a la’ can change ‘the woman over there’ to ‘can you believe this biiiiiiiitch over there’.

Kreyòl must be spoken with mouth open: no mumbling, etc. To get words across accurately, the mouth must open to make all the sounds.

The language is an independent standalone language with piece of French, Spanish, English, and multiple African languages visible. Much of the sentence structuring is African-derived, particularly from Bantu and Yoruba sources. There is a recent and evolving movement to claim identity of the language as Haitian only, not as Kreyòl.

The language also reflects the lived history of the country and it’s people. A lot of common phraseology reflects the history of enslavement; one of the more common ways to ask where someone lives in-country is ki bò ou ye/kibò ou ye, which translates to ‘what side are you from’. This is directly related to how enslaved Africans lived; plantations were huge and sprawling and so when enslaved Africans met others who were on the same plantation, how they related where they lived on the plantation was in that manner. Like vodou, the language is it’s own living history.

In the religion, language gets more complicated. French is utilized in some specific instances and some spirits, if/when they speak, only speak French, but Kreyòl is the liturgical language of the religion. All the songs and majority of the prayers are in Kreyòl, the community speaks Kreyòl, etc. In general, French is falling away as being a conversational language in Haiti–it is often used in business and medicine, but that’s about it.

There is also langaj, the language of the spirits. This is largely untranslatable language that spirits sometimes use in possession–it can be a combination of Kreyòl and African-descended sounds that are not complete in any African language. What langaj means is often private between the spirit and to whom that spirit is speaking, with the most common uses become accepted parlance (think ritual exclamations, like ‘ayibobo’, ‘awoche Nago’, ‘alaso’, ‘djarvodo/djavodo/djavado’).

Kreyòl is also spoken differently by spirits than by people. Kreyòl in general has many dialects throughout the country, and it follows that the spirits have many dialects as well. Kreyòl in general is spoken very fast by Haitians, and the spirits follow suit with that. In addition, some spirits speak more rural or localized forms of Kreyòl depending on what part of Haiti they are from. Some spirits speak very nasally, some speak so softly it almost sounds like they are only letting out soft breaths, some mix Kreyòl and langaj, some only speak/yell at top volume. All of that is super different than what a language program or even an in-person class can teach, and soKreyòl learned and used in religious settings is picked up contextually.

LearningKreyòl can be a daunting pursuit. Since it is SO orally focused, the best way is to learn orally in an immersive setting; either an intensive class or in Haiti or the Haitian community. There are some language programs, most of them are not great. Here’s what I like:

Ann Pale Kreyol by Albert Valdman is an excellent place to start. Though it is older and some of it is dated, it is still pretty foundational and his teaching methods are still used in classroom teaching. It is pricey for a used copy, but there are PDFs easily available online.

Valdman also produced a bilingual English-Haitian Kreyòl dictionary and it is FANTASTIC. I have several dictionaries and this is by far the best–you get definitions of words, what parts of speech they are, and how they are used both in English and in Kreyòl sentences. It is pricey and you could beat someone to death with it, but it is worth it for learning.

Pawol Lakay is as useful as Ann Pale Kreyol is, and it also comes with CDs (if you can threaten Amazon into making sure they send them with the book). It can be a little weak on sentence structure and what parts of speech are, but it’s good. There is a forthcoming language learning system for Kreyòl that beats the pants off of anything else on the market but it is not out yet.

MangoLanguages is good for basic hello/goodbye/my name is fluency, but I did not find it useful for conversational use. Good introduction, though, and the pronunciation in-program is pretty on-point. Most public library systems and college/university libraries have a free subscriptions for this, there are also pay options.

There are other books that are aimed at travelers and casual users which can be useful, but the above are the best resources I have seen so far. I do not like the Pimsleur system for Kreyòl at all, as it is super limited to essentially picking up women in Port-au-Prince which is great if that’s your jam but not useful for much of anything else. Youtube is full of Kreyòl movies and television and music, which is good to throw on in the background to absorb the sound and cadence of the language. Several professors have cautioned about listening to Haitian radio unless it originates in Haiti, saying that most Haitian radio originating in the US is a broadcast in a mix of Kreyòl and bad French, which can trip up a learner.

I hope this helps! Let me know if I can offer more info.

#vodou #haitian vodou #kreyòl #kreyòl ayisyen #haitian creole

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hookysblog · 7 years ago

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Isreal, Australia and New Zealand.

BARBY CLUB, TEL AVIV, ISRAEl!

MERCH SITES...PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MUSICIAN

https://the-hacienda-uk.myshopify.com/

https://peter-hook-uk.myshopify.com/

Our second trip to Israel!

Complete with me nursing a really bad sore throat and chest;(

Not too many death threats this time I believe, what a world eh! Quite a long flight, but flies by with the boys. Immigration is easy until our sound guy gets dragged off for questioning about his granddad (who he never knew?).

He is kept for a long time, which is a little worrying, but is eventually let in and never really found out what it was all about?

His Big Bad Grandad sounds interesting!

The road works (in the centre of Tel Aviv at midnight???) hold up our arrival at the hotel for a couple of hours, with all the roads leading to it closed. What a mess! We end up walking, which with the equipment isn’t easy;(

A lovely day dawns and our wacky little hotel called Hotel Cinema, has film posters and projectors everywhere. I am in the actual projection room at the top of the old theatre, complete with hole for the lens to poke through, really weird. I grab a haircut by the Mighty Zohan and a lovely pizza. The area we are in is very vibrant, in other words …..Rocking! The gig looms and we being joined today by Hadar Goldman, an Israeli violinist from the punk band Ciam, whose other claim to fame is the purchase of Ian Curtis’s old house, 77, Barton Street, Macclesfield. Hadar wanted to open it up as a museum but has not been successful so far, sadly. Could be a job for me in my dotage as a curator, like Night at The Museum eh?;)

Anyway, he is very nervous but the lads are on top form and the gig goes great from start to finish. Hadar is great on Atmosphere and Autosuggestion, and the three hours fly by! The lads are off early the next day to OZ but I don’t follow until the night of the day after, so have a bit of time to kill.

It is Yom Kippur here and everyone seems really worried I will starve to death. So like a real student, I invest in two Pot Noodle’s and a load of chocolate and after raiding the breakfast buffet, I think I will survive;) I sleep again after brekkie and wake and walk down to the beach. Spending the whole afternoon just watching the world go by.

Yom Kippur lasts from dusk until dusk the next day and as the sun goes down the noise levels decrease, until the only sounds you can hear are the children playing in the deserted streets. Breakfast is provided on Sunday for us and my wonderful hosts have hired me a mountain bike for what is called ‘Childrens Day’ here.

I have not cycled for years so am a little apprehensive to say the least. I get the bike on the street and it is really strange…..There are no cars at all! The whole place is deserted with every shop closed. The only problem is my chest….I am like puffin’ Billy.

In the old days there would be no power or phones in the city I am told. The leaves soon settle in the road and it gives a post apocalyptic feel as I cycle along topless the leaves blowing round me. I go down through the deserted market to the beachfront, and there the place is completely alive, with thousands of kids on every size and kind of bike, motorised skateboards and tons of electric scooters everywhere. It is completely magical, it really is.

I AM SPELLBOUND;)

I love the bike and watching the kids in huge groups cycling along the freeways and empty streets is heart warming, it really is and I only give up because I am worried about getting sunburnt, heading back to the hotel for a hat and a T-shirt and a Pot Noodle. I go back in the afternoon suitably attired and ride and ride, until I have to give up because my arse is so sore (no 50p jokes please!). As the sun sets the city gets back to normal all too soon with the noise level rising to it’s usual roar by 7p.m. On the way to the airport for my flight to Oz the busy, noisy streets seem so coarse compared to how they were a few hours before, what a shame. I sail through Immigration/Customs, my granddad must have been ok? (Didn’t know him either;(

I begin a to long trip to Australia, one of my favourite places on earth.

METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Throat and chest still bad but we persevere;)

I arrive the day of the gig so by the time gig time comes I am completely addled. It reminds me of being drunk, it really does. This Joy Division ‘2 album’ night was added at short notice after our Japanese gigs fell through, but is very well attended. Great to play Closer again, wonderful. Martin our new keyboard player is top from start to finish, a great response. I crawl off to bed exhausted. Not much time to relax because we are off the next day for a gig at….

CORNER HOTEL, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Lovely to be back, a beautiful city, very Parisien. It was here that I wrote most of The Hacienda Book funnily enough, when I was Djing at Parklife in 2008, you got the week off in-between so I thought it was a great time to start. Australia looms large in my books lives, as you will see later;)

The on stage sound is tough at this place, which I remember all too well from last time, but the gig goes great and is Sold Out! Too. Great reception for both Unknown Pleasures and Closer, yet again! An almost humane leave sees us off to……

THE STUDIO, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

Another beautiful country and now we have a lot of English friends living here now. Hi Carol;) Back to Substance tonight, which is nice.

I have to give in here, I am finding it hard to sleep my chest is crackling that much, so a trip to the Doctor’s beckons. Strangely both me and Pottsy have the same problem???

The Doctor says I am ‘crackly’ and he is ‘wheezy’,

‘Where’s Grumpy?’ I ask?

He doesn’t laugh;(

$350 Dollars light and we are both Amoxcycillined up and off we go.

Gig goes great from start to finish. Still struggling with my throat which is really annoying Grrrrr! I am waiting for the Biotics still to kick in. But I take it easy by cycling all over the place puffing gently. It’s my new thang!

It’s wonderful how both countries are completely suited, and go out of their way to encourage cycling. I follow the river past the Zoo all the way down to the centre of the city. Then get embarrassed because I am the only one topless? So head back. Hard on the chest again but well worth it! Grab a Kebab before the gig and I am ready!

The place is packed and gig goes great. The lads are on fire.

Ecstatic reception to both records!

Catch up with a few old mates, lovely to see you again Platty;) Next stop…

THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

Back to Substance and another Sold Out gig. This getting boring….only joking, after all our hard work it is the best compliment ever, thank you all.

Nice venue and everything goes well, recovering nicely;) Off early tomorrow so after more smashed Avacado we are off to…

THE GOV, ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Another beautiful place.

Nice, quiet and very suburban. Lovely old theatre venue that is packed and of course….Sold Out! Bit of an altercation with some fans at the front, but it is soon sorted and the bouncer tells me it’s the same guys he threw out last time we were here….go figure? Very cold here at night in spring, so wrap up if you are visting. Up earlish to hop over to …….

CORNER HOTEL, Concert’s 1, 2, AND 3, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

1.I feel marginally better today, thank god!

So have a lovely first day here, visit the Dior exhibition at the Museum along with The Great Wave exhibition by the Japanese Ukiyo-e artist Hokusa

A very cultural day indeed! Enjoy a lovely stroll back to the Hotel and struggle through a short gym session, which does make me feel better.

It’s gig time before I know it and it’s back to The Metro for the struggle with the foldback.

Gig is a struggle and I cannot get the vibe, but it goes down well I must admit. Nice early night.

2.Have a lovely Big Morning out for breakfast/Brunch with Viv (Big Day Out owner and very old friend) and one Zombie film later am ready for round two.

DING DING! Better gig tonight, great audience, sound still shit. The only place that sounds worse than this place is our very own Fac251 The Factory, where there is nothing you can do to combat it, believe me we have tried everything.

Lovely to see Viv Lees, with his son at the concert too. God we are getting old!

3.Last night and we turn down a bit onstage and magically it sounds better for it. Play really well and great reaction gives us heart for our long trek to…….

THE ASTOR THEATRE, PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

This is one of my favourite places on earth. It really has to be seen to be believed, and that’s despite nearly dying from food poisoning here once see Inside New Order for details;) I am so happy we are finishing here. Stay in a wonderful Casino Hotel that is HUGE! Great pools inside and out, huge gym and as I am feeling a lot better I get in there and have a great workout, so good to be back to normal. Finish off the day sunbathing with a Virgin Mary and with dinner at their very own NOBU, am ready for whatever the concert brings.

Tonight we are back at one of my favourite venues. It’s an old Cinema complex transformed into a great gig. The dressing room used to be one of the smaller theatre’s but they have normal dressing rooms now….Boo Hoo! Do the meet and greet like a Old Mancunian Santa Claus then it’s the show, Sold Out show did I say? Hee Hee!

The sound is great, the audience is great, band is great!

What a wonderful end. I thank everyone and we are done ready for home, but Oops…… I forget to thank Phil Murphy and Steve Jones and they will not let me forget it either, sorry boys;(

Nice to see Brian Jary (I used to sit next to him at Salford Grammar in 1967) and his wife, along with Ken and Georgina our old friends too;) Wake to a huge storm, which is beautiful to watch.

After a fantastic breakfast with the biggest Las Vegas style buffet I have ever seen, Dan our Tour Manager takes us to the airport for the first of our three planes home.

Thank you for such a fantastic time…..EVERYONE!

Cheers Hooky, ’17.

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poemsforuni-blog · 8 years ago

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Please help me with my creative writing module by reading my short story and giving me feedback. Any help would be much appreciated

The Hospital Journey

“Here are some earplugs for you, the machine is very loud. Put your head here and lie very still.” A doctor, who seems to be of a similar age to me, instructs. As he assertively pushes me towards what is essentially a table on wheels, I cannot help but notice how aggressively robust the machine my head was about to be placed into seems to be. “No, don’t cross your legs…” He continued to talk, but is either unaware that the hard foam he just placed around my head is blocking my hearing, or he is too rushed to care. A nurse places a button into my hand and gives me the thumbs up gesture, mouthing at me to relax. I can only assume this is a panic button for when my claustrophobia hits. As soon as I shut my eyes I can feel the bed moving. The inside of the apparatus is so blindingly bright I close my eyes but still need to fight my eyelids to stop them from twitching. My mouth is already dry and subconsciously I have started to clutch onto the panic button. A chainsaw like noise is growing in intensity, bursting through the protective layers surrounding my head and raging against my eardrums. Can they see the stress levels in my brain right now? I have seen some photos from MRI’s before, and I have heard that emotional responses can be shown in them. If so, I hope that the doctor knows his aloof welcome is partly to blame. As I swallow, a high pitched (but thankfully short lived,) screech jerks my body. Surely I do not have to be so still I cannot even swallow?

Relax.

The machine scavenging my brain for imperfections is not in fact an MRI, it is the Roller Coaster my Dad and I repeatedly rode on in Blackpool, when I was around ten. The clicking noise is not magnetic fields or radio waves passing through my body, it’s the struggle from the chain on the ride as we rose up the incline of the first drop. Any moment now I will be able to see the ocean once again; I can clutch onto my Dad’s hand whilst screaming at the top of my lungs. The image in my mind is becoming so vivid I can almost smell the crisp sea air…

The sounds change. I am no longer sat beside my Father on a family day out. No longer am I carefree on a ride at a pleasure beach. Now I am stood in front of my neighbour’s dog, who once got out of his garden and pinned me against a wall for almost an hour. His ears were clasped to his head, his snout snarling to show his fearsome fangs. Wolf like in appearance, any sudden movements could’ve been the aggravation he needed to attack. He was usually kept in a muzzle, even in his own home. I can only assume it must’ve broken off as he scaled the fence which marked the area in which he was usually confided. My hand clamps to the panic button once again.

No. Relax. The noise is not the neighbour’s dog who gave me ten stitches that day. Instead I am entering the imaginary suit from the game my cousin and I used to play. Kitted to the bone in futuristic looking armour I prepare myself to join the war against bloodthirsty aliens, situated on a foreign planet the human race is about to take over. The arena seems metallic. Everything is either silver or white, except for the open sky. The darkness emitted from the horizon is enchanting, planets oozing in purples and oranges dazzle me from the distance above. Whilst my army may be outnumbered, we are far more advanced than the enemy. For one, I am carrying a loaded gun which has advanced accuracy and damage. This is a battle I cannot lose. I sprint to hide behind a rock before shooting. The gun grows similar to the dog, however this sound is now exhilarating. There is a box floating not far from me. I have played enough games to know that this will help me to win the battle. As I lunge to grab my target the atmosphere changes (yet again).

This noise seems almost unfamiliar to me. Almost as if someone is knocking three times on a large, old, wooden door. The kind of doors you would find marking the entrance of an old castle or a little wooden cottage, hidden amidst a village which would have a singular pub (strictly for locals), a butchers, a bakery, and would exist miles away from the rest of humanity. After the three knocks there is the sound of a buzzer, similar sounding to the buzzers apartment complexes have to allow a visitor access to the building. This sequence lasts a while, to the point I can almost envision myself living in a mansion located on hundreds of acres of land, buzzing in my friend’s so they can stay in one of the many rooms of my new home.

This new noise is loud. So loud it is rattling my whole body. I wonder if the MRI is picking up on the fact I am recreating stories in my head? I’m not stupid enough to believe the MRI is acting as some kind of portal so that the nurse can see what I am imagining, but I wonder if my creativity is causing a certain area on the images to light up? The rattling sensation is getting worse. I feel like I am sat in a rocket taking off from the Earth’s hemisphere. Instantaneously I imagine myself strapped into a large chair, in front of a dashboard covered in levers, buttons and monitors. There is a bright light out of the window, similar to the light shining into my eyes from the MRI. Blinding. I can only assume this light is from the sun reflecting off the glass, or from the speed in which I am travelling… I hope the bed shaking is normal. Through my internet research I never read that I would be shaking. However, I did also read that I would feel on edge and would struggle to relax during the process. Once I had overcome my initial fear of the unknown, however, I have found myself to be half enjoying my experience. I’m guessing I have only been in the machine around ten minutes. I’ve now become accustom to waiting. Despite the fact I only arrived around five minutes before my appointment, I found myself talking to an old man for around forty minutes before I was seen by a nurse. I guess the time spent at hospitals allows people to have the chance to reminisce, because in this time he told me his whole life story. Born in the time of the war, he joined the RAF after finishing his Grammar School education early. He has been to the hospital very few times for injuries of his own accord. This time he was here as his wife needed an X-Ray. Once as a child he broke his arm, I mentioned how I broke my nose at a festival. He stated how he was once at an RAF festival and an engine failed, killing the pilot and a few people in the crowd who were stood not too far from him. “That’s awful, that must have been so scary.” I gasped, trying to seem involved in the story as I was unsure of the correct response. “It was awful, but all I could think was ‘Thank the Lord’ because that could’ve been me. It reimbursed my faith.” He replied. “You know, I was once in Jerusalem. It was beautiful there. Anyway, there was an Arab beggar. I gave her some money and I was handing her a Bible as a Jewish man ran over. ‘No, no, don’t touch that! That’s not for us!’ He must’ve assumed the Arab was Jewish. Anyway, I replied with ‘Yes it is. It’s for all of us. There is no difference between you and I. We believe in one God. Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew and will come back as a Jew.’ He seemed rather taken aback by this. We ended up shaking hands.” As he was recounting this story he was searching through the inside pockets of his suit jacket, then he passed me a small blue Bible, filled with prayers from the New Testament. “Keep this, I always hand them out to people in need.” I’m not really sure what he meant by that, I’m not in need, however the Bible that is now lining the inside of my pocket is making me feel a lot safer.

The bed stops moving. A camera shutter starts. I’m back on a beach in Wales, sat on a wall feeding the seagulls with my Nana, watching the sun set. I’m around fifteen on a camping trip with her, my Dad, my Sister, my younger Cousin and my Uncle. My Dad is taking our photo. I never really saw my Nana, and I had hardly ever spoken to her on the few occasions we did meet. This trip had given me the opportunity to get to know her a little better. I have always felt a little intimidated by her blunt attitude, but at least I always knew her true opinions. Unusually for Wales, the sun was almost unbearable. It was so warm we could comfortably swim in the ocean that morning, which my Sister, Cousin and Uncle took full advantage of. I’m scared of the ocean, though, so chose to eat Ice Cream and Sunbathe. We had spent the night before eating bacon butties and melted marshmallows (cooked on an open fire), so I wasn’t really hungry, yet I spent half the day walking down the high street with my Nana looking for places to eat. I doubt she was hungry either, rather she just wanted to take the time to talk with me about something. We ended up bitching about how arcades are a waste of time and money, and reconfirmed those beliefs after spending £10 on the grabber machines to only walk away with a tacky stuffed bear. It still sits on my bookshelf next to the photo my Dad had taken of us.

Silence. Is it over? I open my eyes but I am still inside the machine, the bright light is burning a hole into my head. This silence is making it hard for me to picture anything in my mind. It is so quiet I almost feel deaf. Not a footstep, not a cough, not even a low rattle from the machine’s engine. Possibly I could now be in outer space, looking down on Planet Earth after the journey I envisioned earlier? It’s hard to picture. Maybe this is the silence that followed that day at the beach with my Nana, and I am now lay in my tent waiting to fall asleep? No. I could hear crickets and the distance laughs of other campers that night. It was not this silent.

I’m starting to get a feeling of sensory deprivation. I cannot see, cannot hear. All I can smell is the putrid odour of hospitals. The smell which puts me on edge. When I was relaxed I dropped the panic button, now I am frantically patting my body trying to find it. The high pitched screeching is back, the one warning me not to move. This is unbearable. The bed is moving and I can finally open my eyes. “That’s it, your results will be sent to your GP. Don’t forget your jacket as you leave.” The doctor rushed as he quickly pushed me out of the room so the next patient can enter.

#short story #creative #creative writing #english #degree #first person #help #feedback #university

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wendyimmiller · 5 years ago

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The Randomness of Branches

Ever look up at a grand old tree and marvel at the randomness of its branches? They dodge and weave. They angle off. They roam this way and that. The complexity is a wonder to look at. Exhilarating, sometimes. And the sum of these parts makes for a living thing that defies gravity, shakes off weather, and mocks time.

I am not an organized person. Describing my life as “a reign of random” might understate the case. And this has caused me untold stress. You see, I’m mostly of German heritage. Some fragment is Irish, and, somehow, inexplicably, this tiny genetic minority has made itself dominant, dragging my poor frustrated autocratic, goose stepping, timetable-oriented German side into whatever unplanned and unbudgeted “shiny object” direction my Irish eyes catch a sideways glimpse of. And, so of course there are no records of any of my adventures in gardening. Cultivar names, when plants were acquired, and where they got planted, all left to a construction-grade memory corrupted by time (too little at any given moment; too much overall), maybe an electrical surge or two, and, of course, plenty of Guinness. My inner Patrick shrugs and wonders why anyone would worry about any of this when the result has been a green and growing garden in which one can wax poetic over a pint or two, while my inner Wilhelm storms off to holler at the dog.

The work space of a disorganized person.

Always within arm’s reach!

So it was with great joy that I recently exhumed a forgotten bucket of plant tags that I had squirreled away over several of my formative years. The result: a warm, pleasant immersion into nostalgia. Who remembers Etera? The name means what? To me, it sounded like an evil plot concocted by a Bond villain. But I bought a bunch of their reasonably priced plants. Came with steel name stakes that lasted in the garden–I still unearth them on occasion–and each plant came with its own little booklet with cultural information. Of course with so much front loaded expense, Etera was doomed from the start, but a good way to load up on plants while they lasted.

A tag from Eco Gardens reminded me of a story regarding that mail-order nursery. It was the nursery of legendary plantsman Don Jacobs. A friend and I combined on an order, but somehow, between us, we managed to drop the ball on payment for several months. Eventually this resulted in a card written in the shakey, elderly hand of Don himself pleading with us to pay. “Achtung!”shouted Wilhelm. Patrick immediately wrote a check, including an apologetic note full of silky words, flowery passages, and an at once lyrical and perplexing side narrative about potatoes. Meant to keep the card–it was, after all, an autograph of sorts–but, of course, one of us lost it.

Don Jacobs. Photo taken from the jacket of his book on Trillium.

Heronswood Nursery. I say the words with reverence. I bought so many plants from there. I might have one left. But I loved Heronswood, and, like so many others, took perverse pride in the number of my Heronswood failures. I went on a dream trip there for an open house with my friend Pete Zale back in the early 2000s. Dammit, I miss my friend Peter. We were best buds once. Both of us nobodies. Actually, I was a nobody. Him? He was a younger, better-looking nobody with a mind that could potentially make him a somebody. Why does time happen? Why do people move on? Now he has a PhD, travels the world tracking down plants, works for Longwood. Actually, I think he’s the owner of Longwood. Not sure though. He’s still a good friend. Usually answers my calls. But neither of us are really any good at staying in touch.

Peter Zale (far right), pre-PhD, at the gardens of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Now Newfields).

The potager garden at Heronswood. Not really representative of the place, but the best and most accessible picture I have from that pre-digital age.

Anyway, Heronswood was the finest garden I’d ever seen, and I still count it as one of the best. But Hinkley moved on. Mail-order nurseries burn people out. The nursery mercifully closed pretty quickly after that. Without Dan’s guiding hand and beautifully written catalogs that introduced us to new, exotic, and oh-so tantalizing rare plants along with tales of the epic adventures that found them, the magic just disappeared. His prose was why everyone gambled on these gems. No one cared if they lost a plant from the mountains of Vietnam to an Ohio winter. Dependable garden performance was never the point. Thankfully, Heronswood, the garden, was eventually bought and resurrected by a non-profit.

Heronswood catalogs cost $5 and were the top selling item for the nursery. Used copies can be found on Ebay at around $80.

At the other end of the catalog-writing spectrum was (the late) Bob Stewart from Arrowhead Alpines in Michigan. Grammar? Spelling? Hell. His catalogs read like a loner’s manifesto. Rambling, opinionated, offensive, and, yet, for those of open mind, intelligence, and maybe a dash of imagination, informative and hilarious. In a completely different way these catalogs inspired gardeners to try things they otherwise wouldn’t. I killed a bunch of Daphnes because of him. I miss each and every one of them. And Bob.

Bob and Brigitta Stewart, photo taken from: http://greenstreettree.com/in-memory-of-bob-stewart-genius-behind-arrowhead-alpines-in-fowlerville-2/

I met Bob and Brigitta on the second of two trips to the nursery. Because I’d read his catalogs, I was nervous, but they couldn’t have been more gracious! Spent so much time with my father and me. The ride home, however, was starkly unpleasant. My German side was just giving living hell to my Irish side. “We went to Arrowhead,” he shouted over and over, “and you bought a boxelder!” In fact, I had. It had beautiful blue bark. But the scolding quickly ended when my truck’s transmission burned up, and we–my father, a trailer-load of not hardened off plants, and both Patrick and Wilhelm–coasted to a stop at a forlorn and freezing exit outside of Piqua Ohio. The whole fam damily was mobilized in multiple sorties to eventually get us all home.

More tags from Woodlanders, Plant Delights, Oikos, Arbor Village, Roslyn, Forest Farm, Greer, and others reminded me of what a blessing it is for gardeners to have sources of rare and cool plants, and how much better we need to support these companies. They give us possibilities. They lure us into trying things we otherwise wouldn’t. This is–I’ll argue–for the greater good. Expanding ourselves is important, and certainly better than the alternative.

All this remembering and reflecting eventually got me thinking about my gardening journey. On the surface, so spontaneous, random, and Irish. So many different phases that got me from there to here—organic veggies, heirloom roses, alpines, Irises, natives, Asian maples, and more. Travels to great gardens and nurseries, drifting into new ideas, old friends, new friends, new associations, nights spent in questionable places, and nights at home poring over catalogs and websites. I’m so glad my Irish DNA dragged my German side into a forever meandering and widening delta of experiences.

Reminds me of tree branches in a way. So remarkably random when you’re amongst them, but from a distance, a place of perspective, you can see they’re really not random at all. They have but one purpose: aim towards the light. And because they do, there’s growth.

This post is a re-write of a column that first appeared in Ohio Gardener Magazine in 2017.

The Randomness of Branches originally appeared on GardenRant on July 17, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/07/the-randomness-of-branches.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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turfandlawncare · 5 years ago

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The Randomness of Branches

The work space of a disorganized person.

Always within arm’s reach!

Don Jacobs. Photo taken from the jacket of his book on Trillium.

Peter Zale (far right), pre-PhD, at the gardens of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Now Newfields).

The potager garden at Heronswood. Not really representative of the place, but the best and most accessible picture I have from that pre-digital age.

Heronswood catalogs cost $5 and were the top selling item for the nursery. Used copies can be found on Ebay at around $80.

Bob and Brigitta Stewart, photo taken from: https://ift.tt/2O0Aw7X

This post is a re-write of a column that first appeared in Ohio Gardener Magazine in 2017.

The Randomness of Branches originally appeared on GardenRant on July 17, 2019.

from GardenRant https://ift.tt/32o5zxA

#GardenRant

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erraticfairy · 5 years ago

Text

Podcast: Family on the Run: A Story of Delusional Disorder

When Pauline Dakin was 10 years old, her mother took the family into hiding to escape imminent danger. Fifteen years later, Pauline was told that they were on the run from the mafia.

At first, accepting of this explanation, Pauline’s doubts grew until she could no longer deny the truth: that there was no danger and she was being misled. Join us as Pauline shares how she came to this heartbreaking conclusion.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Delusional Disorder’ Podcast Episode

Pauline Dakin is the bestselling author of Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, a Canadian bestseller and winner of the 2018 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction.

For many years, Pauline was a trusted voice on health and medical issues as the national health reporter for CBC News. Her reporting and documentary work has been recognized with many regional, national, and international awards. She is a three-time recipient of fellowships from the National Press Foundation in Washington and is a fellow of the MIT/Knight Science Journalism program on medical evidence in Cambridge, Mass. She currently teaches journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax, N.S., Canada.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Delusional Disorder’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: Welcome to the Psych Central Podcast, where each episode features guest experts discussing psychology and mental health in every day plain language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hello, everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. And today I will be talking with Pauline Dakin who is the bestselling author of Run Hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood which tells the true story of her mother’s misguided belief that their family was in constant danger. Her book also won the prestigious Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction last year. Pauline, welcome to the show.

Pauline Dakin: Thanks for having me, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: Well it’s an amazing story. Normally I say hello, thank you for being here, it’s wonderful, and we make pleasantries but I want to jump in. I became aware of you by reading I believe a New York Times article on your book and I just I absolutely had to know more. First off, can you tell us just maybe like a brief synopsis of what the book is about and then we’ll get into the details.

Pauline Dakin: Ok, well my brother and I grew up with some very strange things happening. Twice my family disappeared. So it was me, my mom, and my brother and twice we moved away without telling anybody and started a new life. And of course, my brother and I would always say why what’s going on with the why is everything always so secretive? Everything we were always told you can’t talk about this. Don’t talk about that. And the answer was always well when you’re older I’ll tell you. And then when I was 23 my mom and a longtime family friend named Stan Sears met me in a motel room halfway between where I was living in my mom was living and they sat me down and told me that the reason for all our strange behavior and disappearances was that we’d been on the run from the mafia and that my dad was involved in organized crime. So you know and it seemed like a very far fetched idea. You know why us and there was quite a complex explanation for that. That had to do with the fact that Stan Sears who was a United Church minister and a psychologist did a lot of counseling for an organization that dealt with family members of alcoholics and that he had counseled somebody who was involved in organized crime in the Vancouver waterfront. And that that was where it began that he came to the attention of the mob and then a variety of things came together that sort of connected my mother in with that. So a very complex story was still very hard to believe but I did believe that for some years.

Gabe Howard: The very first time that your family picked up and moved. How old were you.

Pauline Dakin: So that was the summer that I turned 10.

Gabe Howard: So your brother is even younger and you said it was your mom your brother and you and that your father was somehow involved. Was he concerned that you were fleeing from him how did he react to all of this.

Pauline Dakin: Yeah well my parents were divorced and my dad was alcoholic and there was a lot of legal conflict about his access to us. So the courts at some point had decided that it wasn’t safe for us to be with him. So there were issues around that. You know he. He was the kind of dad that you know back in the day dads weren’t as involved in parenting and I think he was kind of dad that was more interested in older kids and didn’t quite know what to do with the younger kids. So I know that he was concerned at some point but he didn’t really come looking for us for quite a while.

Gabe Howard: So your mom and your brother and you and the Family Minister when you were 10 years old abruptly left in the middle of the night and took off you were running. I mean they told you were running. This wasn’t like a planned move I assume.

Pauline Dakin: No. What happened was. And so it was the minister, Stan Sears, and his wife. So we were family friends and we often went camping together to families together. And so that’s how it started. We went on a camping trip cross country and when we arrived at our destination that’s when my brother and I were told we won’t be going home and you can’t tell anybody.

Gabe Howard: What, did they change your names or anything? I mean it seems so cloak and dagger.

Pauline Dakin: Yes. No names weren’t changed. And you know I think I often think about how connected the world is today that I can find anybody online.

Gabe Howard: Right. Right.

Pauline Dakin: But in those days it wasn’t so and nothing was computerized. So I guess there were not the same ways to trace people.

Gabe Howard: And that probably helped it. But what year are we talking here.

Pauline Dakin: So we’re talking about the mid 1970s and you know there were no cell phones. There was no Internet. It was a very different world.

Gabe Howard: So here you are you’re 10 years old and you’re starting over you’re starting a new life. You thought you were going camping but you left most of your stuff at your old place and now you’ve started a new. What was that like. Did life go on as normal for a while. I mean I imagine this was very shocking but did things just settle in. I mean a lot of things are shocking to kids you know.

Pauline Dakin: It was our normal in some strange way it became our normal and we became used to this. You know don’t talk about what our family is doing or where we’re going or what’s going on. I mean we always thought it was strange. We always tried to say you know what’s going on with our weird family. But yeah it just became kind of the thing that you would just sort of shrug and go there mom goes again. In other respects we had a very stable home. I know that sounds like a crazy thing to say but you know my mom had a beautiful Sunday dinner on the table every Sunday it was sacrosanct. You didn’t miss Sunday dinner. She played catch with my brother in the backyard after dinner every evening when he was trying out for the baseball team. We were up early before school to do drills for our math you know. So there was a lot of stability and support. And my brother and I have talked a lot about this and said there was never a moment that we didn’t feel loved and cared about. And I think that that’s very protective for kids. So even in the midst of all of this chaos that you know with these moves and other bizarre things going on there was some consistency and some sense of stability around being cared about.

Gabe Howard: And how long did this new life last before you moved again? And what was that move like? Was it in the middle of the night? Did you go camping again?

Pauline Dakin: No. So this time I was 13 so it had only we only stayed a few years. My brother was eleven. My mom said OK I’m we’re going to move again and I’m sorry that the way that happened last time and I won’t do that to you again. But it’s a secret you can’t tell. And so she was going to sell the house that we were living in and we just weren’t allowed to talk about where we were going. And so the house finally sold. And Stan and Sybil Sears, his wife, had already moved away a few months earlier and we were going to join them this time at the other end of the country so we’d gone from coast to coast now. And that I have to say that that was the most difficult move for me. But by far I was a 13 year old I had great friends. I loved my school. It just felt like it had become a good place for me. And then just to sort of get ripped away from that I found very hard. And I went to a new place that was a smaller community. It was a smaller town and in fact in the neighborhood that we moved to. Nobody could remember anybody moving into the neighborhood. It was none of the kids my age could remember anybody ever moving in. It was just you know one of those more small town places. So it was tough.

Gabe Howard: And the way that you make friends is by sharing details of your personal life. And this was expressly prohibited. Now all the kids at your new school are like Hey where are you from what are you doing here and you’re like.

Pauline Dakin: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: What was that like?

Pauline Dakin: Oh that was a huge issue for me because this was a town. It was had a pulp mill it you know it didn’t really have a lot of things to recommend it. At least the people who lived there didn’t think that. And you know I kind of agreed with them and so people would say well why would you ever move here. And I thought yeah but I wouldn’t have if it had been my choice. But you couldn’t say that and I said to my mother What am I supposed to say when they say well why would you ever move here. And she said just tell them you know that we wanted to live by the ocean again which just sounded like such a lame thing to say as a 13 year old we wanted to live by the ocean. It was very it was hard. And yes having a secret that you’re keeping is like putting a wall between you and everybody around you. And I didn’t really understand that until really I stopped keeping that secret. And suddenly I felt this huge relief and I could allow people to really know me. And so I was. My relationships improved dramatically as a result.

Gabe Howard: We will be right back after a message from our sponsor.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: So eventually you become an adult. Do you go off to university? You go off to? What happens to two adult Pauline?

Pauline Dakin: So yes I went off to university you know got my own place. I became a reporter and so I was a new very young reporter at the time I got this phone call from my mom. Hey I know that you’ve been very frustrated about all the secretiveness in our lives and so on. It’s time to tell you. So that’s what was going I was just about to graduate from university I’d been working part time for a newspaper as a reporter and I was about to start full time. And that’s when the call came and I learned this crazy story.

Gabe Howard: And here you are. You’re in a motel. Your mom is there. Stan is there. And the two of them together tell you about the danger the mob the running and just the whole dramatic story. What’s the first thing that went through your mind.

Pauline Dakin: Well the first thing was this can’t be true. But why would these two people who are that he was, Stan was like a dad to me. He was wonderful to us as kids because our dad was never around and so it was like this cannot be true. But these are two wonderful people who really care about us. They’re respected in the community they have responsible jobs. Why would they make this up? So it was just mind blowing to me and then they started saying hey do you remember the time that this happened? Remember the time that happened? And they started sort of putting these puzzle pieces together convincing me that this was true and you know you can, well. It was somewhat convincing. I mean I was still struggling with it but ultimately, I decided if I can’t believe these two people who have never been anything but trustworthy and supportive in my life then who could I ever believe. So I guess I decided to believe it despite the fact I really was struggling. My second thought was if this is true maybe I should go to Australia and try to get lost.

Gabe Howard: If it is true you’re potentially still in danger but if it’s not true your family lied to you for half of your childhood. So your choices are not great.

Pauline Dakin: Yes. Yes.

Gabe Howard: And one of the themes that sort of runs throughout your book is that you know your mom was not a bad person you love your mother very much Stan was not a bad guy you looked up to him and respected him and there’s no I’m going to ruin the ending for everybody.

Pauline Dakin: That’s OK.

Gabe Howard: They were not fleeing from crime the ending of this is not that they robbed a bank and we’re trying to outrun law enforcement. There was none of those things. They were good people who broke no laws who did nothing wrong but they had this belief that although not true impacted you very greatly.

Pauline Dakin: Yes that’s right.

Gabe Howard: And you’re trying to put this together. So you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place on what to believe but eventually you start trying to put this together and prove definitively about whether or not you’re in danger or about whether or not your mom is wrong. Can you talk about that a little bit.

Pauline Dakin: Yeah well I mean it just became harder and harder to continue the belief in this. And you know part of it was that my mother that Stan had gone inside so he had essentially disappeared into a secretive world that was kind of like a… a protective custody situation. But anyway is a very complex world and it was a big part of the story. And then my mother decided she was going to go inside and the big surprise was by the way Stan and I have been in love for years we’ve never done anything about it but civil has decided not to go inside. We want to be together and I’m just you know my head is spinning and eventually I reached the point that I just had to know I just had to know. And so I kind of did a sting where I mean the problem with a secretive thing is it’s very hard to prove something is true or not true because every time you say well what about this? Well, that’s a secret. So there’s no way

Gabe Howard: Right.

Pauline Dakin: To prove or disprove a secret. So I pretended my house had been broken into and I called my mother at a time. So Stan used to come out to visit her from inside and at a time I knew he was visiting her. I called her and said My house has been broken into what should I do. And she said I’ll call you right back. I’m going to talk to our friend. And of course you do you talk that way because your phone is probably bugged right. I hang up and I wait for her to call me back. And it was just excruciating. And then she called and she said yes. He says that two people have been picked up outside your home. They broke in. They were looking for certain things. They’d been following you. They had photographs of you. So you in all this crazy stuff. And in that moment I knew none of it was true because there hadn’t been a break in. So oh it was just like having the rug pulled out from under you. And so eventually I confronted them and they were very upset mostly because they were afraid that if I didn’t believe the story I would not take precautions to protect myself. And so it began a time that you know we still all loved each other very much. I still loved my mom. I don’t know. I was struggling more with Stan but but you know we were looking at each other from across this abyss of this story that they believe deeply and I could not any longer believe at all.

Gabe Howard: Now in that moment right before you did the sting Were you still open to the idea that it might be true. As soon as this thing was over you were 100 percent positive that everything was was a lie. Where were you the moments before you incorporated the sting.

Pauline Dakin: Yeah I think I’d been creeping up the spectrum towards disbelief for a long time. And by that time I guess I was probably about 90 percent sure it wasn’t true but I had to know because of everything that was at stake and for me to say definitively you’re not telling the truth to me it was you know an understanding that I was going to do terrible damage to some of the closest relationships in my life. My mom in particular.

Gabe Howard: And you did so after the sting you. You’ve sat down with your mom and you looked at her and you said Mom there was no break in. You told her the whole story. You know this is untrue. What happened then.

Pauline Dakin: Well she was very upset and you know how could I have done that. And now I you know I couldn’t be part of the Inside group of insiders you know it’s either you’re with us or against us kind of thing right. And now I might be in danger. And so on and I just said Well there is no particular danger and then I confronted Stan. We went back to where he was and confronted him together and he was very sad. His reaction was that he was very sad because now I was no longer part of this circle. And I had the sense and this has been borne out that you know this was always Stan story. He was you know there were letters that came from the what we called the weird world like the inside from people who had been involved in organized crime and arrested. You know I would receive letters from these people some of whom were supposedly family members of mine who’d been involved in or like on my dad’s side. And so you know they all this stuff always came through Stan. He was the arbiter of all information and all contact and so on and so I knew this was his story. And I guess my mother just sort of loved and had such regard for him that she just adopted his story. She couldn’t believe that he would ever lie.

Gabe Howard: And these letters were fake? Were they written by Stan? Made by Stan? I mean just.

Pauline Dakin: They had to have been there and how he had the time. There were hundreds of them.

Gabe Howard: Oh wow.

Pauline Dakin: And how he ever had the time to do that I don’t I can’t imagine the whole the whole thing is there’s still some real mysteries around the story.

Gabe Howard: That is incredible. So where are you now? Did the rift heal? Did you find a way to continue on? How did Stan react? What happened to you and your family after all of this?

Pauline Dakin: Well my brother and I got together and talked about how could we essentially rescue our mom from this situation and he went to the police and the police said she’s an adult not nobody’s being hurt. Nothing we can do. And so we just kept on keeping on. And you know I struggle my mom and I struggle a lot to maintain any kind of a relationship. Then I got married and had kids and so we just had this relationship where we agreed to disagree and not to talk about any of that stuff and if she raised it I just shut it down. I’m not talking about that. I don’t believe that. And she continued to worry about me and my brother and would we be OK. And then she got very sick. She’d had cancer twice and she had a recurrence of cancer. And she came to live with me for the last nine months of her life. And you know we weren’t we were never able to resolve this between us. But what we were able to do was come to a kind of peace where I know you believe that I don’t believe that but I really love you. And you know, she was incredibly grateful to be living with me when she was sick and dying. And so you know there was some grace there for us not resolution but some grace.

Gabe Howard: From the time that you confronted your mother until the time that she passed away how long of a period of time was that.

Pauline Dakin: So from the time you know of that initial confrontation until the time she died would have been almost 20 years.

Gabe Howard: And so for those 20 years you did find a way to stay in your mom’s life. And what kind of a grandmother was your I mean your children had a 20 years a long time. Your children had a relationship with their grandma. What was that like?

Pauline Dakin: Yeah you know she was always a very loving person and she was thrilled to have grandchildren and they were all very close. Things kind of changed because Stan died. And so then the whole kind of story went underground and there were only a couple of times that she said things that made me know that she still believe. But it was important to me that she not be talking about that stuff to my kids. So we were clear about that. And outside of that she you know she loved my kids and they really loved her. I’m really grateful they got to know her.

Gabe Howard: From the time of the you know the sting operation to the time that Stan passed away How long was that.

Pauline Dakin: Only a few years maybe four or five years.

Gabe Howard: So your mother outlived Stan by 15 years. So did your mom and Stan’s marriage end in divorce?

Pauline Dakin: Well they never got together really. You know they wanted to be together. They wanted to go inside and be together in protective custody. But that never happened. And so you know she would see him on these visits and he would phone her and so on. Yeah. So the way she found out that he had died was that she got a letter from his wife. So he had never you know he was still in his primary marriage at the time he died.

Gabe Howard: This is absolutely incredible and it’s all chronicled in this book Run Hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood and from a personal level you had to recall all of this. What was that like for you to relive all of this, in writing the book?

Pauline Dakin: You know what, it was a very hard time. But I think you just reach a certain age and I had spent a long time just thinking OK forget about this. This was a terrible thing it happened but forget about it put it behind you move on. Focus on your family and your career and so on and that’s what I did for a long time but then I think at some point you just have to stop and shake your head and say what the heck was that. What happened there. And so I began to think about it and then I began to write out to write about it as a means of trying to sort it out for myself and knowing that someday I would want to tell my kids this in a way that wouldn’t make them hate their grandmother who they loved so much I wanted to be able to tell them about this in a very nuanced way within a context. And so that’s why I started writing. And actually it was while I was writing I was doing research thinking so what could have been going on with Stan? I was a health reporter for the national broadcaster in Canada for a while. And so I you know I read a lot of medical journals. And so you know I was looking for information about you know he didn’t show any. He wasn’t schizophrenic. He didn’t have any of those other symptoms you associate with major mental illness. What was going on? And it was while I was doing that that I made a big discovery which was became the impetus for me to share this story more widely. I mean initially it was just for my family but then I when I made this discovery I just thought nobody has heard of this before and I need to share it because it essentially had such an impact on my life and my brother’s life. Other people should know.

Gabe Howard: And what was the discovery. Because I think to the average person listening to this story they’re like Oh Stan was a con artist and your mother must have given him a lot of money like that. That’s where I’m sitting here right now thinking that’s got to be it. And I’ve read the book

Pauline Dakin: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: So and I still want to believe that.

Pauline Dakin: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: But what did you learn?

Pauline Dakin: Well so first of all no he no. My mother never gave money in fact he often helped support her family. So what I discovered was an article by a professor psychiatrist at Harvard writing about something called delusional disorder and he described it as something that at least in the literature is extremely rare and in fact you know I called him up and said OK can I can I talk to you about this. I mean as a reporter I was used to calling people up and interviewing them so I can I talk to you about this. And so we had a very long conversation where I described what had happened and he was fascinated of course. And so you know he said during that you know most doctors will never see a case of this because these people appear completely normal. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with themselves. And so they don’t go looking for help. They don’t turn up as an issue in society unless they have you know there’s some subtypes of delusional disorder that occasionally you hear about. But with the kind that Stan had persecutory delusional disorder where you believe that somebody is coming after you somebody is trying to harm you somebodies hunting you down that that rarely comes to anybody’s attention because they keep the secret. Right.

Gabe Howard: Right. For their safety.

Pauline Dakin: You know he was able to have a completely normal life in a very public and responsible job. Retired. People loved him. People come to when I do a book reading people come and they cry and they tell me what a wonderful man he was and they just how could this have happened. You know so it’s a very bizarre condition.

Gabe Howard: It really really is. What did you hope people would take away from this.

Pauline Dakin: I think there are several things. One is that children can be so vulnerable and I often think about you know the teachers and the adults in our lives. And you know did anybody raise concerns when a couple of kids just kind of disappear from school and after school activities in the neighborhood and so on. Again I don’t know that this could happen today just because of how connected we all are. But I just I wanted to say you know you never know what’s going on in somebodies life and kids there needs to be ways of protecting kids. So that’s one. But you know on the other spectrum I think there is a remarkable story about you know everybody always says to me how did you survive this. Well it’s a resilience thing you know and resilience isn’t. Either you got it or you don’t. Resilience is something that you can develop in your life. And I believe that my brother and I have the resilience to get through all of this because of how well loved we are. And I know it’s paradoxical. So a parent who puts you in jeopardy but at the same time who gives you the resources and the support to become a resilient person. It’s a crazy thing but that’s what I believe. And I guess the other thing is I really wish people would pay more attention to delusional disorder. I wish somebody would try to do more research on it. I’ve heard from people all over the world who’ve said to me Oh I never knew what was wrong with my son my aunt my father my husband. You know that must be it. So I doubt that it’s really as rare as the medical literature would suggest.

Gabe Howard: Where can we find you and where can we find the book.

Pauline Dakin: You know the book has been out for almost two years now. So at one point it was available around most bookstores in North America. But if it’s not Amazon’s a good spot I have a Web site PaulineDakin. com with links to places that you can buy it. And I really appreciate your interest.

Gabe Howard: Thank you so much Pauline. I just I really appreciate having you on the show and thank you everyone for tuning in. Wherever you grab this podcast if you can give us as many stars as humanly possible and use your words tell other people what you liked about it or Hey what you didn’t. But we like fans more. And remember you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counselling anytime anywhere simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Psych Central Podcast. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at GabeHoward.com. PsychCentral.com is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, PsychCentral.com offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. If you have feedback about the show, please email [email protected]. Thank you for listening and please share widely.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar and anxiety disorders. He is also one of the co-hosts of the popular show, A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. As a speaker, he travels nationally and is available to make your event stand out. To work with Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2L2zEwA via theshiningmind.com

#World of Psychology #child psychology

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disorientedblog-archive · 6 years ago

Text

Zhoushan Island

by Kevin Mei / photo: the author

do i even have a(n) accent, argot, brogue, cant, dialect, enunciation, elocution, idiom, inflection, jargon, language, lexicon, lingo, lingua franca, localism, locution, mother tongue, native tongue, parlance, patter, patois, phraseology, pronunciation, provincialism, regionalism, slang, speech, street talk, talk, terminology, tone, tongue, vernacular, vocabulary, voice

For many travelers, the disorienting experience of going abroad is the encounter with a foreign language. The inability to fluently express yourself diminishes your identity, circumscribes interactions solely to the realm of practicality, of greetings, farewells, and thank yous, of “my name is” and numbers and directions, yes’s and no’s. You understand what it's like to be an immigrant, the guesswork grammar and telltale reproduced pronunciation. More easily reduced to a concept than a person. You feel like you're complex, that the people around you similarly hold multitudes, but if only you could understand and be understood, be islands connected by oceans of words.

I don't think I ever really bothered to interrogate my origins. What can I say? In elementary school, I filled out forms that inquired about ethnicity and language. Asian > Chinese. Primary language > English. Language spoken at home > ... "MOM! Do we speak Chinese?" "Yes." "But what kind of Chinese... I've heard Mandarin; what do we speak?" "Shanghainese." Good enough, until I met enough Shanghainese classmates in high school. "Oh yeah, Shanghainese is just easier to say because everyone knows Shanghai. We actually speak Ningbo." Ningbonese. By the time I had met enough people from Ningbo to know that my words didn't quite sound like Ningbonese, I turned to Google to figure out what I spoke at home. It's the Wu dialect. After I graduated college, my dad wanted to take me on my first trip to China. It was only then, at the cusp of adulthood, it was made clear to me that my parents come from someplace called Zhoushan. Really, I speak some variant of Wu that we can just call Zhoushanese. A city and a suffix make a language and a people.

On the night I fly out for Zhoushan, my mom drives me from Flushing, Queens (2010 U.S. Census: 69.2% Asian, 9.5% White) to Canarsie, Brooklyn (2010 U.S. Census: 81.0% African-American, 2.6% Asian, 5.9% White), and drops me off at a corner a block away. I take my deteriorating suitcase (empty, for the salted eel I would smuggle back) out of the trunk and she watches from the car as I roll up to an indistinguishable red townhouse. She drives away. Uhseh ("the third" of three brothers and my dad), uhnya (“grandma”), and uhya (“grandpa”) are sitting in the living room, China Central Television playing on a small boxy cathode-ray screen. We sit around smiling and appraising each other. The damask pattern on the red-and-gold velvet wallpaper looks to me, at times, like the stares of sinister samurai masks.

Our wordless reverie is interrupted by a Pakistani driver from some unknown and quasi-professional car service come to pick us up for the airport. Uhseh tries to cajole our driver with wildly misinformed assumptions about the Middle East. His voice crescendos with each expression, as if building up to something, but there’s nothing at all. In the backseat, Uhnya, who doesn't speak or understand any English, also gets the sense that Uhseh is acting daft, and tells him, "Shut up, you imbecile." (Aside to me: "Sick in the head, amirite?") Uhseh doesn't handle embarrassment or shame well. He blusters at our driver and tries to haggle the price down. The driver can't take the nonsense. "Listen, I also drive for Uber. Why didn't you just call an Uber? Like everyone else does! I could've driven you for a third of the price." The same scene recurred throughout my maiden journey to the motherland. Uhseh likes to flex his poor social-animal faculties. At the airport for our return flight, he "strikes up" conversation with some Ukrainian workers who were in China for employment on oil tankers.

—Ukraine? Excellent country, right?

—My man, we are being invaded by Russia.

—Oh, Russia! Russia is so strong! So powerful. You don't want to mess with Russia. If I were you, I wouldn't mess with Russia.

[...]

—You guys make excellent yogurt! Yes! You guys! Very popular, very famous for it. Good job!

[...]

—Me? I'm from America. Yes, I love America.

I don't like the way Uhseh talks… halting gravelly stuttering and stalling words tripping, falling down, treading over each other, slurrrrrring loud intimidating covering up nothing-words… not speaking… properly… Mandarin. I can't believe I never noticed this inability. Of course, he can make himself understood, but what came out of his vocal organ was still the mish-mash of someone confused between his patois and putonghua. It came across whenever I asked: What does that character mean? How do you say this word properly? What's the tone? What's the pinyin? And unable to admit his ignorance, he'd ply me with palaver and circumlocution. What does that sign mean? Rumble ramble power of tigers fighting against mountain fires. All the sign expressed was: "No smoking."

We landed in Shanghai, when it was too early for airport shuttles, so we overpaid to take a taxi to a bus station. The sky was overcast. The city covered in murk. Was this pollution or just a foggy morning? It rains. My dad is irritated and getting into arguments, feeling as if he is being constantly cheated. ("Why didn't the taxi driver let us off exactly in front of the bus station?! TA MA DE!"). I have my iPhone stolen at the bus station. I'm disappointed that, not one day in, I won’t be able to take any photos of my month-long stay. Everyone else expresses more upset about it than I do. The drive to Zhoushan is full of soupy loops of white vapor, at times lifting their ponderous loads so I catch glimpses of cranes and partially-started construction. Amazing how much construction is happening in China. My dad decides to sit next to me at one point and impress me with the landscape. Look over there, he points at a spot in the thick opaqueness. Your [disreputable family member] taught there (like Trump praising dictators, it irks me Uhseh is so enamored of this person). It's beautiful and one of the most well-regarded schools in this region. Cool.

Hours later, we happen upon a red sea. I always imagined that my parents came from some poor rural village in the hinterlands of West China, deep in central Asia. Instead, they come from some poor rural village in an archipelago in the East China Sea. Zhoushan consists of more than a thousand islands, and before the investment of billions of yuan in the twenty-first century and the construction of cross-sea bridges, was only accessible by boat. Our bus takes us across the second longest bridge (G9211 Ningbo-Zhoushan Expressway) in the world, over water the color of ochre, clay that formed my ancestry.

Wikipedia on Zhoushan: Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China in 2010 gives a population of 1,121,261, with 1,109,813 Han Chinese. I did the division: 98.98% Han Chinese. I long to speak English. To meet someone else and have a conversation in English. People didn't know who I was here. I couldn't make jokes. I hang around a shopping center most days. I read Moby Dick at Starbucks. The unfortunate thing about wanting to meet another foreigner is that I don't look like a foreigner myself. Before I open my mouth, no one would know my background, but the moment I try to order a pork bun: "What?! Putonghua please. I don't come from this part of China. Xiaodi, are you aboriginal?" Once, I see a hipster in KFC. An American hipster. I couldn't square myself up to say hi. He takes his ironic graphic tee and beat-up Herschel bookbag, hops on a skateboard, and glides away. I walk after him, but he gets farther and farther until he's turned a corner and gone. Another time, I see a group of Slavic laborers with a Chinese translator and lingered near them, taking in their rough inflected declarations for coffee and chicken. I send desperate emails to friends at night, but it doesn't make up for a verbal lack, a desire for complex portrayal, here.

My mom told me to seek out her childhood friend Le Jun, who foresaw that automobiles would one day populate Zhoushan Island, apprenticed in the niche trade of auto repair, and is now a successful business owner. He invited me often to extravagant meals at his resort restaurant and to his family's New Year's dinner, where I entertained people through my Zhoushanese. For all that I benefitted from his hospitality, he gained by making me his novelty item, showing me off to business guests and political patrons. I was always introduced as that American who can't speak a lick of putonghua but is fluent in Zhoushanese.

I wasn't fluent. I wrote my college essay on the language barriers that existed in my household. I spoke English with my brother, Zhoushanese with my mom, and she spoke Mandarin to the man cohabitating with her. I imagine this is a problem for many children of immigrants who never fully learned their parent tongues. When my mom got into arguments with that temporary stepdad, I didn't understand. When I got into arguments with my mom, I couldn't express simple concepts like "you're being controlling," never having learned the Zhoushanese for "control." Intimacy is difficult without mutual intelligibility in the diction beyond practicality. I still can't share the things that occupy my mental space, except in English. My Zhoushanese is utterly practical. And unless one becomes a linguist, these provincial "dialects" aren't something one can easily pick up.

Around New Year's is when people my age came back to "rural" Zhoushan for the holidays. I met many of my cousins, who used slang like niubi around me. Because they couldn't communicate well with me, they mostly ignored me, felt me to be a burden or a potential danger ("don't tell my dad that I smoke"), but they reminded me of the joys of fluency, the ease with which they joked and made their personalities felt, with friends at a bar, playing Overwatch at a wangba—what Bakhtin calls "heteroglossia" in the novel, I saw in their languages that expressed their hip millennial culture, their Internet-speak, their negotiations between being "good" twenty-something-year-old sons and with their twenty-something-year-old desires to live. They said no one really speaks Zhoushanese anymore in their generation. You go to school as a kid, you learn putonghua, and that's the language you dream in. Zhoushanese isn't common and therefore isn't useful (although I've always loved that I could always assume that others couldn't understand what my family and I said to each other). As a language, it's functionally defunct. Moreover, my expressions were antiquated, vintage. Zhoushanese had moved on from Zhoushan, had been carried away by my family into the pocket world of our domestic life in Flushing and hardened in the amber of our speech. Le Jun would tell me: "Nobody says that anymore. I haven't heard that phrase since I was a little kid. You speak my grandparents' language, an old dialect." He made fun of my word for fish, "awng," explaining it's what adults might teach children when they're trying to learn "fish," but I had never lost it, never been corrected about it. Perhaps an approximate analogy would be the hypothetical scenario of calling a cow "moomoo" as a kid and ordering a "medium-rare moomoo" as an adult.

Though it's difficult to recall specifics, I have a general sense of constantly trying to explain something, but failing, ideas becoming mangled and warped and all that trying too hard and being incoherent making me appear and feel foolish. Yet despite all this frustration at being unable to communicate, unable to translate what I can express in English to everyone I met in Zhoushan Island, how ironic that I'm unable to adequately express my experience in Asia with English. My friend showed me pictures of her own trip to China, particularly these food stalls in which dung beetles, scorpions, silkworms, starfish, and centipedes are served on skewers. While the scorpions and starfish were recognizable, I asked her what the other critters were, and she had no idea. Zhoushan being an island is famous for its seafood and I can't even describe the variety of aquatic life I saw on display in supermarkets and restaurants. Ribbonfish, cuttlefish, blobfish (my most joyous discovery of something I didn't expect to find in real life and especially as a comestible). I can't describe them because I just don't have the words for all of them, not in Chinese, not in English. I wonder if I knew the words in Chinese, if they would be translatable. Other foods I am very familiar with and have never been able to translate. What does it mean to know the names, in English now, of food items like nilou (Bullacta exarata) or arbutus? Because surely, when my mother serves those tiny salty mollusks packed in reused plastic jars and tells me stories of her childhood picking them out of muddy beaches in Zhoushan, or when the arbutus wine (also in reused jars) is broken out and I'm told I can only have a few of those dark purple berries max, that these experiences have been a part of my identity, experiences I couldn't articulate before without knowing what the hell to call the Korean mud snail.

I have had an inordinately hard time thinking about "self-discoveries" in experiencing China. My sense of identity has not changed. My trip to China was not an experience in how I perceive myself but in how I perceive others, how others perceive me, and how I can communicate my identity, and seeing that all the aforementioned has been for a great part dependent on language. My sense of identity has not changed but my means of talking about it has, though still limited by what I can and can’t express. I feel my relatives in China are stuck with only a vague sense of who I am that I have very little influence over. It’s been a great loss that I’m not fluent in Mandarin or Zhoushanese, not only on the trip but throughout my life, in my familial relations and growing up in a predominantly Asian hometown. And despite my fluency in English, by never learning the vocabulary to talk about my ethnic identity, from not even previously knowing the name "Zhoushan," I have not been able to talk about certain aspects that make up my cultural and ethnic identity. Self-making through language-learning—it will always be a work in progress. Language, in the broad sense of what and how we speak, reveals both indirectly and intentionally so much of ourselves and reminds us what islands we all are.

Kevin Le Mei visited Asia for the first and only time in January of 2017.

#china

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famoustv · 8 years ago

Photo

The Baptism of Melbourne Silent Victorian Silhouette Spiritual Culture

Living in reinforced concrete forest of the big cities, used to seeing the trend of fresh clothing anger, once set foot on Australia's land, the hustle and bustle of the metropolis will be gone. From the Melbourne Airport, the car Mercedes-Benz on the highway, at that moment, even the desolate farms on both sides to me is also a broad feeling, all the way to travel, a small house began to appear, I could not conceal the inner curiosity

Blue days, white clouds, green grass, very fresh air, all of which is the initial impression of every person who first arrived in Australia. Here the sky blue is not like in the country people can occasionally see the kind of shallow blue, but very three-dimensional, there are levels, pure blue, see these like gemstones color, often surprises you :Is this true? How the same as painting ah?

Because of the wind here, so the sky clouds move quickly, I think, it is these rapid flow of air to the land to bring high oxygen content of the air, oxygen, is necessary for people's lives, adequate Of the oxygen has made many of the disease dead and more. Can really make fun!

In Melbourne, walking is a great enjoyment. Breathing the sweet air, watching the roadside like a huge thick pile of carpets like grass, looked at the families of every family planted flowers and fruit trees in the yard - a clump of narcissus, swaying the roses, like open Of the palm of your hand so big camellia, bending the branches of the lemon tree, there are a variety of can not say the name of the flower. Just as I was listening to the flowers, I could see that the huge cat was looking at me carefully. It was close enough to me, and people here loved animals, so they were all Pet's brain full manure, and not afraid of people, one day I stood by the roadside, a noble pure white Persian cat came to me elegantly, in my trousers on the rubbing back and forth, feeling when I was a pillar friends .

The birds here are particularly large, seated at the seaside, seabirds will fly around you, they expect people to feed them bread, the family has some people who will be out of the bread to feed birds, groups The doves, pigeons, thrush, magpie will chirp quack flying over, as is played a symphony.

The people here are friendly and simple.

Here an average of less than 3 people per square kilometer. Because people are few, the country is rich, sick insurance, unemployment benefits, retirement pension, which people do not have a sense of urgency, wages are sent once a week, they are money to spend, anyway, this week's flowers finished , Again next week, neither near nor worry. The relationship between people are very cordial, there is no need as people in our country as the shoulders of heavy pressure, there is almost no competition and the like.

In this environment, people grow up, the mind is not simply hell. They do not harm the human heart, there is no anti-human heart.

Buy tickets on the bus is entirely by the conscious, no one is no one ticket and no one ticket, everyone to the ticket machine where the ticket. With the increase in immigration, there are often some fare evasion of people, said a year to escape the fare of hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars. Recently, the Government has stepped up check-in work, and uniformed ticket workers went to various vehicles for spot checks. They check people here are particularly humane, Yigai is on the train from the front door, slowly came to the car last, and then start from behind to check one by one. This is actually the first to inform the passengers, so as not to buy a ticket now quickly to buy, and this time the car will stop at least one or two stations, people really do not have the money to buy tickets have the opportunity to get off. According to regulations, was found not to buy a ticket to a fine of 100 Australian dollars. Check the staff's attitude is excellent, smiling, if you do not find a ticket, as long as you can tell them they will believe that, for example, I will not buy it, do not understand English Yeah, they will help you Buy, will not be fine.

See them not only reminds me of our law enforcement officers here, hiding behind the tree, suddenly appeared in front of the illegal people to fine to the greatest pleasure for the money, the psychological dark, is simply a world of difference!

I went out to the hotel for a walk, the enchantment of the beautiful environment, farther and farther, and later lost his way. How can not come back, had no choice but to break into a store inside, which sat a gentleman, I will only use a few English words and hotel card, to him I can not find a place to live, and that person to me Said, I drove you. Then put the door on the store put up a stop sign of business, opened his beautiful small sleeper car to me back to the hotel. This kind of thing I believe no matter what people will do so, they are like this. In our words, everyone here is Huolei Feng.

For me, language barrier is the biggest obstacle, but it is not as difficult as people think. Previously learned English words, to the English environment actually often suddenly jumped out from the depths of my mind, it makes me overjoyed. Again, Australia itself is an immigrant country, walking in the street, although English is the mainstream, but in the vicinity of Chinatown, Cantonese, Mandarin, or a lot of people talking about.

I found living here, as long as you dare to speak, probably meaning others will understand, because people have facial expressions and body language can be used to it! Just remember the word, a word jump out of a word, you can not speak the grammar, others can understand about, but they do not blindly embarrassed it wants. The other side will be very patient with a smile trying to get to know what you want to express the meaning, so that both sides of a child, understand!

Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, is Australia's most extraordinary city, set art, culture, entertainment, food, sports, shopping in one. In the Queen Victoria era has been the rapid development of Hull, the city still retains many Victorian-style buildings, the city's well-planned streets like a checkerboard-like clear; the city's tram is the only Australian fruit remaining a traffic tool.

More than a quarter of Melbourne's urban areas are covered with greenery. The main streets are lined with elms and plane trees, and many beautiful parks such as the Fitzroy Gardens, the Royal Botanic Gardens and other parks serve Melbourne's " "The name. When you are in a shade of grass, smell the smell of grass, looking at the blue sky, really kind of a feeling of aloofness. The amicable, old-haired couple in the park and the friendly Melbourneers often greeted with a sense of concern, which shows the tranquil, warm and friendly character of the Melbourne people.

Speaking of entertainment, the world's only comparable with Las Vegas Crown Happy is located on the left bank of the Yarra River, an area of 140,000 pings, in May 1997 grand opening, is definitely not to be missed. This new landmark in Melbourne is Australia's largest building and is a very large integrated entertainment complex. Located in the center of the five-star Crown Sadian has five hundred luxury suites, each suite is equipped with Jacuzzi and fax machine. There are more than 50 sprinklers and fine restaurants, fourteen 24-hour cinema. Crown Escape and the introduction of Australia's first All Stars Cafe and Melbourne's first Planet Hollywood theme restaurants. In addition, there are 34 brand-name boutiques, including well-known clothing accessories and merchandise stores. At this time no one can complain about Australia's night life is too quiet and simple, I 'm afraid you can not digest one by one. At night, from the Melbourne city center, across the Yarra River, into the hustle and bustle of the crown, this is another people bloodburn Melbourne.

A trip to the spiritual and cultural baptism, the most European-style city of Australia has left an indelible impression.

#Melbourne

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