Blog types

my blog type:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Ouch! As an INFJ I had to winch at “insensitive” in that second paragraph! Thinking is actually my tertiary functional preference but one I had hoped to develop more through blog writing – so this might not be so far off!

Loss

At the moment of crisis, after the initial shock and the inevitable “why?” – the capable practical persona takes over to do what is necessary, get through the clinical explanations, the statistics and aftercare instructions. Hospitals are strange places – moments of saintly compassion jar against moments of awkwardness and unease –suffering, anxiety, relief and oblivion all coexisting. If nothing else it is a reminder of the myriad sensations of human experience.

Conservative management – letting nature take it’s course – that’s the current terminology for surrendering to the overwhelming physical effects of the next few days. My capable persona is still concerned with the basic necessities – food, rest, and pain relief. Then to break the news to close family who are so far away. Next, letting a couple of work colleagues know what’s happened, in order to clear my schedule for a few weeks. Practicalities taken care of.

Time passes, the moments of lucidity begin to outweigh the moments of collapse. Short bursts of energy allow one to consolidate, wrapped in my favourite shawl, I finish a delightful book – Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower – just the right combination of yearning philosophy, curious history and tragic fate. Then moving on to compiling a new “to be read” priority list – a tentative plan after all plans have been abandoned.

The disappointment and sense of loss seem to hang on those plans made in the last few months – hopeful for the future, the possibility of new life, a new role, a family. But the loss is more than just possibilities – even before the initial pregnancy test confirmed my suspicions in June, I felt a subtle change in energy, a discernible presence below the navel. Then the hormones kicked in with nausea, tiredness and a general lack of concentration – the physical connection, my changing relationship to my own body and the new life within was a totally unexpected experience.
The weeks rushed by – belly, breasts and hopeful plans all growing.
In the week before the scan, a greater sense of calm and capability, no real doubts or apprehension, even a little impatience to move on to the next “safe” stage.
Then the image on the screen – no preamble, just a few questions – “are you sure about the date?” “any bleeding or pain?” – and no heart beat. At the size of 26 millimetres the fledgling life within had stopped developing, unable to make the transition, or even signal distress – no usual signs or symptoms of miscarriage.

As I reach for the next book, taking comfort or suddenly moved, I’m just grateful for the myriad of sensations recorded on so many pages….

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

Clarissa thought she knew who she was, she thought she’d come to terms with her mother’s abandonment years ago and she thought she was close to her father. But following his death, she finds her birth certificate with another man named as her father. Then it turns out her fiancé, whom she’s known since childhood, knew about this all along, prompting Clarissa to flee to Lapland in search of the Sami priest she believes is her real father. Her quest takes her through the artic landscape where she meets people who once knew her mother, including the Sami priest. Still no closer to the truth, she eventually meets her mother in the far north wilderness, though this is not a happy reunion. The woman who named her Clarissa, after Samuel Richardson’s heroine “with the hope that you’d rewrite history” is intent on evading questions about her own past. I won’t spoil the ending but suffice to say, Clarissa is just as deft as her mother in refusing to be a victim of her history. The story unfolds at quite a pace, full of innovative descriptions, with a very contemporary voice.

I’ve not read Richardson’s Clarissa (the longest novel in English!) but what I’ve gleaned from plot summaries reminds me of Henry James’s The Portrait of Lady – Isabel Archer is determined to choose her a life compatible with her own ideals, resisting traditional expectations. The unforeseen consequences of Isabel’s choice, her inability to find a way out, bound by her very own ideals, is so tragic. It’s one of those books I often return to, hoping to trace where she went wrong, secretly wishing it would turn out differently! Thankfully Vida’s Let the Northern Lights has a far more optimistic ending.

On the last page Vida acknowledges Galen Strawson’s essay “Against Narrative” as an inspiration for this novel – she was “curious about the kind of person who would see their past as unconnected to their present.” It’s a thought provoking essay questioning the model of narrativity for the way the mind works – pointing out that some people favour form over narrative, seeing greater significance in episodes and abstract ideas rather than in cause and effect narrative.
Let the Northern Lights certainly explores the idea of self-narrative – though I did wonder if didn’t owe as much to an earlier interview with Strawson (published in the Believer) which explores his thoughts about free will.

Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own. - John Berger

Back from hibernation! My reading over the last few months certainly included books with wintry themes – but as often happens with reading plans, another pattern emerged – one of identity and voice.

Voyage in The Dark by Jean Rhys
An essential part of my interest in this novel is the closely biographical aspect, as it mirrors Rhys’s experiences, before she became part of the bohemian Paris literary scene in the late 1920s. She had published a collection of stories and two novels before Voyage in the Dark was released in 1934, but it draws on her earliest writing.

Anna Morgan grew up in Dominica and after the death of her father comes to England with her stepmother, who soon withdraws financial support, forcing Anna to make her own way. The social realities for a young woman with few family or monetary resources in pre-war 1914 England, are depicted with unflinching honesty. Ever present are Anna’s recollections of Dominica introducing strange ways of seeing and articulating, counterpointed with her observations of the wet, grey English streets.

“It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feelings things gave you deep down in yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat, cold; light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy.”

Anna initially works as a chorus girl but the constant moving and damp climate result in recurrent illness. Then she meets Walter, who sets her up in a hotel room in London and gives her money for clothes. As Anna becomes increasingly emotionally and financially dependent, it becomes clear that they have very different expectations of the relationship. Class and gender politics come to the fore as Walter inevitably breaks it off with Anna. She falls in with other women making their own way in London; a masseuse who maintains a veneer of propriety and caution, and a fun-loving girl who more clearly relies on the generosity of her many male “friends” to get by. The observations of the way women use clothes to bolster their esteem, and the link between hope for a better future and spending are still relevant. Anna has several short relationships, each more disappointing than the last, often prompted by being desperately short of money. As she descends into depression, a clarity of voice emerges which one hopes will see her through.

“It’s funny when you don’t want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That’s when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.”

St John 1988 by Gerhard Richter

When the novel concludes, Anna’s future is far from certain, her doctor’s reassurance that she’ll be “ready to start all over again in no time, I’ve no doubt” reverberates in her mind as “starting all over again, all over again”.  This is what Rhys does so well – the singular perspective, entailing all the messiness of memory, acute observation and painful emotional interactions – emerging as a clear and distinct voice.

Rhys’s moody style and lonely characters, especially in her short stories (my favourite is the collection Tigers are Better-Looking) prompted me to return to her work. Now I’m curious about the next phase of her life, fictionalised in Quartet, which charts her affair with Ford Maddox Ford.

Notes from an Exhibition – Patrick Gale

Patrick Gale has long been a favourite author of mine, ever since a chance encounter years ago when I was working in a Melbourne bookshop. He was looking for recommendations on gardening books, explaining that Australian natives grew well in the part of Cornwall where he lived. Before long the warmth and rapture of his description of Land’s End had me curious not only to find out more about Cornwall but to read his books as well. I’ve enjoyed his entire backlist and each new book surpasses his earlier ones in tone, form and complexity of issues. I always look forward to being reliably swept along into the heart of a family, as “real world” surroundings drop away, and the characters persist long after I’ve put the book down.

Notes from an Exhibition is the story of Rachel Kelly a brilliant artist, manic-depressive, wife and mother of four children. From the very beginning I was immersed in Rachel’s visual world, her creative impulse and the bipolar disorder that accentuates it. Significant moments in Rachel’s life depict the absorption of an artist, the moods and ideas, and inevitable distractions having a family entails. The still points are found in her art and her husband Antony, who rescued Rachel from a troubled life in Oxford and brought her to his home in Cornwall.

The central question Notes from an Exhibition asks is how best to love someone – a wife, a mother, a sibling. For Antony it was clear -

He had done the right thing in bringing her here. It was a healthier place, far away from bad associations and bad love, where she could paint again and meet other painters, like-minded souls rather than corrupt academics…Rachel would mend. She would become the person she was meant to be, unwarped by influences and needs.

Antony is a Quaker, a group renowned for their truthfulness and tolerance. It’s a faith that has no dogma, just a belief in the essential goodness of people. Meetings are held in companionable silence and The Friends, as they’re also known, form a reliable community. The quiet resilience exemplified by the Quakers provides Antony with a way of coping with Rachel’s extremes of temperament, his patience ‘the unchanging pavement under Rachel’s weather’.

The beauty of the novel is the way in which this same spirit of acceptance is extended to each of the characters – each taking a different path, as their natural propensities and individual history shapes them. Moments of clarity and insight – an artistic vision or a better understanding of the motivations of another – are the gifts of this practice.

The chapters alternate between Rachel’s perspective and those of her family, where the effects of living with someone with bipolar disorder are more clearly drawn. Here is Morwenna on her tenth birthday

She had not meant to cry. It was pointless with Rachel. It was different with Antony but tears never reached their mother. They seemed to confuse and freeze her. Laughter reached her. And affection. Had Morwenna laughed at her and hugged her she would have caught Rachel’s attention like a finger-click.

Each of the characters is portrayed with emotional veracity and glimpses of self-awareness which create a ready empathy. As in the son who takes on the role of keeping them connected

Hedley smiled on them all and made his face a mirror to give them each the version of himself that would least unsettle them. It was a trick he had learnt in boyhood: in a family of committed truth-tellers, someone had to tell a few kind lies to keep the whole thing together.

In recent interviews Patrick Gale has likened his authorial role to that of a psychotherapist, with narrative being a means to establish truth, and to my mind, create a sense of wholeness. The telling moments and secrets revealed are opportunities to get closer to the truth about Rachel. The opposing traits of creative intensity and quiet calm played out in this family, further illustrate the way people choose to live out the quest for truth.

The varied prisms of perspective all contribute to this portrait of Rachel, enhanced by exhibition notes at the beginning of each chapter. The exhibition is a retrospective where we glimpse an objective view of her life and work. The notes describe a painting or artefact from her studio and evoke images – the tools she used, the smock she wore, the colours and shapes of her paintings and the talisman objects which have significance for her children and feature in her work. This structure gives cohesion and points to the themes explored, suggesting a direction for the mind’s eye.

I was so impressed by Notes from an Exhibition, the clear prose and skilful insight making the depth of complex emotions easily grasped. True to form the family in this story has occupied my thoughts for several weeks, as have the visual images. Lastly I’m left with a deep sense of the compassion which informs the quest for truth and the whole story.