The Rape of a Girl

There is a girl, except when she was born her parents were told that she was a boy, which is a bit of a shame because that is the one thing she cannot be. You see, she is AIS - that is she is genetically incapable of responding to testosterone. Does not matter how much she is given, not a chance, not even slightly. She is, and must always be, female. It is the only biochemical option that her body will allow, no matter how hard anyone tries to fill her with male hormones. 

But, in spite of this simple unalterable biological fact, for the first twelve years of her life she was brought up as a boy. The word “male” on her birth certificate. A boy's name. Boys' cloths. Boys' toys. Boys' schools. The whole works. Her parents were determined that she was going to be a boy – only it was a lie, an impossibility, a torture. Like many intersexuals she had ambiguous genitals at birth. The doctor pronounced “bring it up as a boy – we can make any adjustments that are needed when it is older” and that was that.

Illusion, delusion, deception, misconception.

Who knows, but the little girl knew she was a girl, knew it through and through. She liked girls' things and thought girl thoughts. When she could get away with it she played girl games and wore girls' clothes. She liked girl friends and she liked girl giggles. And when she was twelve the explosion came. Breasts. Whoops. Boys do not have breasts, but there they were growing there on her chest, quite naturally. And her body was getting curvy and round. Oh dear, she was becoming quite obviously not a boy. 

The crisis lead to her being taken away from her boys' school, from her friends, from her home and all that she knew. The crisis took her to London and to a clinic where they poked and prodded and hummed and hawed and said “you are not a boy – you are a girl”. Which was fine by her, but not so fine by her parents, who did not want tell all of the people that they knew that their boy and turned into a girl; or even worse, to have to use unspeakable words like “she is a freak – a hermaphrodite – an intersexual”. They could not face the shame.

And did they make her know that she was their shame! Their unmentionable! Something never to be even hinted at in conversation. Something to be hidden and denied. When she grew up they spurned her. Did not want to know or acknowledge her. Distanced themselves from her and from any mention of what she was, or where she was, or what she was doing. Her shaming and shunning was complete.

The little girl was now a woman, but one who was ashamed. Very ashamed of her biology. Very ashamed of being different. Very ashamed that although she looked like a woman, walked and talked like a woman, made love like a woman, she was not quite like a woman, not in every last respect. She was a woman without a womb. No periods. No ghastly PMT. No cramps and pains, and definitely no babies or chance of babies. And male chromosomes. A tiny little difference that haunted her, that tainted her, that made her feel unclean.

Like most women she fell in love. Got close to someone. Began to trust them. Began to feel that she wanted more than just being “friends with benefits”. She would steel herself for the moment of revelation. Would they reject her like her parents had? 

She told. They rejected. Sometimes they threw in insults to boot. And sometimes they beat her up. Some beatings were only mild – if any beating can be mild. Others were worse, blue light and hospital jobs when she was found. Then stum. Not a word. Not a mention of the cause. Do not let on, whatever you do, whatever questions are asked, do not let on. 

And never lay a complaint, especially not a formal one. Not one that will lead to questions, that might lead to revealing the horrid truth. Not one that would unmask, would disclose and expose the shame of what she was. 

Then came the rape. And after the rape, the taunting exposure by trolling on the internet. But she dare not report the abuse. That would mean going public about her intersex; something so utterly shameful that even being raped is better.

But the taunting and trolling continued. She was being outed. Vilely outed. She was being called “freak” and being call “unnatural” and being called “sick” and being called “mutant” and being called “perverted” and being call “disgusting” and “revolting” and made to feel the shame, every last drop of the shame.

She thought of suicide. She thought of ending it. She thought of punishing the freak that she was by death, by extinguishing that which had revolted her parents, by erasing the error that she was. 

She told the police of the rape. They said they would not be able to keep her intersex a secret. That if it went to court they would have to out her big time, very very big time. Big time in the press. Big time in the media.

And then there was the question - can someone who is intersex really be raped? Would it count as rape? Would it be seen as the same? After all, not a real vagina, not a real rape. The media would have a wonderful time with that one.

And the discussions in court about anatomy and medical alteration, and about genetics and sexual identity. Diagrams and intimate questions and doubtful jurors. Cross questioning lawyers pulling your being to pieces, dissecting your physical identity and dismantling your intentions. 

The fear made her know: she could not, would not, must not go to court. No matter what, she could not look for relief or protection there; that is only for those that are normal. 

So it is simple: if you are intersex you can be raped with impunity.

The Premier

Stefan, let us call him, was esteemed amongst the ranks of the moderns, or those who at least purported to really appreciate the high abstraction of cutting edge modernity in music. He was a musicians musician. One who even amongst other composers of such music was esteemed. It may have only been a provincial arts festival in a small town somewhere on the coast of England, but it was a premier. A premier of his most recent creation; a soul wrenched fusion of his deep inner being. His music. His setting. His film. His editing. His playing. His fusion of vision and sound into an abstraction of intellect. 

Eleanor, let us call her, was proud, very proud of having brought this premier to the town, to its arts starved populace, especially to those few amongst them who could aspire to truly appreciate such work. There were more populist events in this years festival, stuff that less informed minds could appreciate, but this, this was the pinnacle. The commissioning and bringing to the town of this premier was her crowning glory. This was for her above all others, something on the intellectual level at which she felt at home, her reward for all the hard work of organising, cajoling persuading, booking, bullying, encouraging, chivvying, and just down right flattering potential contributors to make something of the towns annual arts festival; to shine a little light in the otherwise bleak desert of this culturally abandoned corner of England. There was some hope. The work might fall on some ears worthy of appreciating it ; might throw them a life line of intellectual stimulation; might give them a glimpse of what the human mind could achieve at its zenith: one could but try.

The town, mostly a post-Thatcherite social-security-ville, did try; or at least the washed up scattering of long since graduates of art schools, collages, institutes and other academies, now in their latter years of their not necessarily too successful carers, or passing into gentile semi-retirement and dilettantish indulgence of their fancies, did try. They appreciated the arts. When young they had been exposed to them, had viewed and listened to them, had attended events, opening, galleries, shows, had even themselves taken part. They remembered the echo through their lives of those events, and how they had made them feel sophisticated, on the edge, modern, creative, engaged. The arts were worth having – a least for one whole week every year.

The towns cinema come theatre come general auditorium opened its doors in the hope of a good sized audience to this crowning event. Stefan was to give a talk first to warm them up, then the showing of earlier, more collaborative works and finally the premier itself. He was more than willing to talk and talk at length about his art, and especially about this most recent child of his mind. He knew it was a demanding work; knew it the audience would need priming; knew that it perhaps only a few would really be able to open themselves to its complexity, to find the depths within, to yield to its hidden profundity. Such work is not for all.

The showing of the first half of the programme had created some mild appreciation amongst the thinly scattered audience. Challenging, but there had been bits that were, well, almost comprehensible; and if you made the effort there were the odd moments that were almost engaging. The film editing made some sort of sense and did, at points, relate to the music; although it did wonder, as did much of the music. There were shots that clearly marked it out as 'film as art' because they were so badly focussed and lingered so very long on nothing in particular. It was also surprising just how many ways there were of striking, hitting, scratching and banging a cello to make some sort of sound without actually fully sounding the strings.

Then came the premier.

The creator of it all accompanied parts of the film on the cello – well, at least he scrapped, plucked, banged and sounded it. There was no real discernible pattern to the havoc of sounds produced save what may have been the essential element of there not being any discernible pattern. 

Then the film progressed to its peak – a long inaudible sound poem looped around and around set against the multiple projection of offset repeated clips from home movies, the element of both occurring again and again and again. An effect was not unrecognisable to any child of the '60s who had over-indulged in hallucinogenics whilst attending a three day rock festival. A case of making the incomprehensible incomprehensible due to the complete scrambling of any sense of time or place. At least some of the audience may have had flashbacks to earlier and somewhat disquieting experiences of their miss-spent youth. The rest may have recalled rain filled day trips to Margate from their childhood and that sense of absolute interminability. 

This apparently perpetually prolonged peak summoned forth a new sound from the composer and his cello – an atonal drone of prolonged strokes each flowing into the next at indeterminate lengths: an attempt at immense, impenetrable profundity.

We can only guess what was experienced by those few scattered souls of the audience, if anything as positive as an "experience" can be thought to have occurred in response to such a loop tape overplayed continuum of sound and sight. A spreading numbness. A sense of the slow slipping away of the will to live. An increased awareness of the meaning of the words “chasmic void”.

After the performance the audience did not so much leave as creep out hoping that no-one would see them. It had ended, but so had something vital in them. There was a definite avoidance of each others eyes and a sense of needing to flee. The great premier was clearly too profound for the likes of mere mortals such as they. 

Later some were heard trying to savage crumbs of self-esteem from the wreckage of their intellectual pride – they really had, on reflection, found something in this moment or that – something not quite statable, but something non-the-less – and were definitely working on trying to relate to the rest. It had been challenging – but then aren't advanced works meant to be demanding? Surely the apparent incomprehensibility was just a lack of effort, or preparedness, of understanding on their part?

Eleanor had publicly praised Stefan for allowing the humble folk of nowhere-special to share the experience of being the first to view and hear this masterpiece, and had expressed the hope that many more could be brought to watch it, to experience it, to savour it. She begged for permission to show it again and again during the rest of the festival. 

Stefan must have been becoming aware from the depths of her over-enthusiasm that all had not gone well. The catatonic exit of the remains of the audience may have also added to his slowly sinking sense of despair. Years, years of work had gone into the making of this, to perfecting the art, to shaping, to forming, to honing the skills of sound making, of fitting image to sound and sound to image, to creating at the deepest level. Now in the darkening of the day there was only the emptiness of the abandoned theatre, the loneliness of his boardinghouse bedroom and the silence of the still sea becalmed into complete motionless by the doldrums of the coming night. 

He packed away his cello in its case, and, with relief, found his hand resting on the comfort of that bottle of vodka he kept in its recesses. A memory from home. A solace of despair. An abandonment of hope. 

He made his way along the front to the beckoning of a dark shelter. There he sat and retrieved the bottle from the cello case and opened it. Much later he dragged himself and the case down towards the waters edge. He felt so tired, so exhausted, so in need of lying down. In his hazy mind he was aware that the sea might take away his prized cello, so he carried it over to a drawn up dingy and lifted it in, opened the case, and retrieved the bottle once more. For some reason something made him untie the rope that secured the dingy. The cello would be safe there in the boat. He had the bottle and his despair. What more did he need?

He staggered on further into the dark away from the meanness of that town, sticking close to the edge of the water. He did remember a tripping feeling and a dull thud as he slumped into to bottom of a rowing boat. He did remember floundering to stand up, caching hold of a length of rope fixed to one end of the boat and, somehow, unhooking it from the edge of the boat. Then came the bliss of slipping into deep unconsciousness.

Next morning, with a sense of hangover and seasickness, he blearily awoke still awkwardly curled in the bottom of a rowing boat, but aware of a gentle rocking motion. Painfully he dragged his eyes up to the level of the side of the boat. Nothing. Nothing to see at all, just flat grey water and flat grey mist, the two almost indistinguishable from each other, and that dull sense of rocking. He did have the feeling that there was a considerable depth of water under him and that there was definitely no sign or sound of any shore. He became aware that the boat was drifting.

Hours past hours and the greyness above remained unyielding. His phone showed no sign of getting a signal. It indicated that its battery was charged but nothing else. He wondered just how far out to sea he must have floated. The little rowing boat had no ores or rudder. Nothing. All he could do was drift and hope. 

Later a slight breeze began to make the sea choppy. Out of the mist he heard a distant sound, slight, but also vaguely familiar. It was uneven and monotonous. There was something resonant, as if a sounding box was involved. Over and over again, the same dull sound of what might have been rope drawn over something taught producing a faintly disharmonious drone. Sometimes there was something suggestive of dragging over a sound box. On and on went these sound for hours. Now clearly. Now indistinct. Intermittent. Unearthly.

The sound was becoming maddening to Stefan. It scrapped on his nerves as he tried to hear beyond it, longing for the distant sound of a motor, for some craft that might betoken his rescue. But nothing but those odd sounds against the background noise of the sea and those of his own frail craft. Nothing. The sounds dug deeper and deeper into him, haunting him – he, whose ears were so finely attuned to music, to sounds, to their possibilities and interweaving complexity. The sea, the faint creaking of his boat and those intermittent, distant, peculiar, resonating sounds, as if made by a ghostly cello struck now and then by something drawn across it. He began to have forebodings that they were in some way his obituary.

He was found the next day, delirious and on the verge of death faintly crying to himself in the bottom of the rowing boat. Close by was a small sailing dingy rocking gently in the sea, its boom arm now and again swaying from side to side trailing a loose rope down into its body wherein lay an open cello case with a cello exposed string side up.

The Museum of the Mothers

Ah – Welcome.

So glad you could make it.

Come this way.

Follow me.

Through the revolving doors at the end of this corridor.

You have been expected: most people make their way here in the end.

We keep the lighting deliberately low. Too much and the exhibits begin to fade, as we wouldn't want that, would we?

Now, who was it you wanted to see?

Ah – I see. You are not really too sure whether you want to do this or not.

I know: it is hard, very hard.

Most people find on their first trip that it is, how can I put this – challenging?

I mean, it is the answer, well, a sort of answer to some of those very dark questions, isn't it, and if the answers are not quite what you expected, well, that is disturbing - I do understand that.

I have seen some very strange and very distressing reactions to what we have in here; but that can't be helped. We only have the exhibits in the condition in which they were deposited, and then time does take its toll.

The more we expose the exhibits to the light, the more they deteriorate. Come in quite complete they do, but then, visit after visit, they get exposed, more stripped away. Some are really quite tatty, you know. Viewing, after viewing. What is to be expected? What was it that the visitor wanted to see? They do not seem to realise that with each seeing they take something away. After all, that is why you all come, isn't it?

Mind the steps.

I know that the lighting is dim, so please be careful. You really wouldn't want to crash into someone else’s cabinets would you?

Now – here we are.

Gather round.

Are you a party or have you all just arrived at the same time?

It is important to know. You see, if you are all together it is so much simpler - we don't need a separate guide for each of you then as you all have some interest in seeing each others exhibits. But if you are all separate, then I must ask you to wait here until we can get enough guides: one each I am afraid - unless you are in groups that is?

Much simpler if you are in groups.

So are you a party?

Ah – some of you are.

Oh good.

If you are part of a party would like to stand together so we can see what groups you are in - then we can assign you to an escort.

Now - what about the rest of you?

Are you all positive that you want to do this alone? Some people do find it very hard.

A little support? A bit of company?

We do find that people who do this in groups or pairs stay a lot longer. I like to think they get more out of it. Besides, seeing other people's exhibits does give some sense of perspective to seeing your own: So much more balanced.

We do find that sole viewers often leave in a very distressed state, and, judging by the ware on the exhibits, they have taken very little away with them.

Hardly worth it for all of that distress I would have thought. I don't know. Perhaps we all need the insight that viewing with others gives us - makes it possible for us to take more away; to benefit more. But who knows? It is not for me to say what you should get out of this visit, now is it?

So I shall let you decide - do you want to view on your own, or would you like to pair up, or even, perhaps, make up a small group?

I shall let you deicide what you want to do whilst I sort out those three big groups we have got; I do need to go through the preliminaries with them before they set off with their guides; meanwhile you can decide what how you would like to do this. I does help us if you are in groups, but that is only incidental - it really is up to you. What you want will dictate what we will do - but it will all take so much longer to organise if you all want to have solo viewings. Anyway – I shall be back in a while, when I have sorted out the others.

Ah – sorry to have been so long; was not quite as simple as I thought; they were groups, but not groups of relatives. So much easier to organise when it is relatives; then at least they all have known the people they are seeing. No need to go into all that background, you see, well, not as much anyway. Relatives should all know the history of the deceased, at least in broad outline if not in fine detail.

Surprising how much extra comes pouring out when they start the viewing with relatives though; each one seems to remind the other of this or that.

Women especially seem to want to tell each other some much more detail, as if they have to work out a whole web of family history before they are free to go.

Dreadfully superficial some of it. That is the down side with family groups.

Superficial!

So much that cannot be said, you see: so many little family taboos and fictions. Some times it take lots of visits before they can even being to look at the obvious features of the exhibits. Sort of unsayable so much of the time.

Then very often, they have to sneak back, one at a time, to look at the bits they dared not mention when the others were there.

Non-family friends are so much more forthright about the exhibits. Get through it all so much quicker. And everyone seems to take away so much more.

So. Have you decided whether you would like to view on your own, or would you like to go in groups?

AH – groups. Oh good. So much simpler – and I am sure you will get so much more out of it this way.

Now. Mixed groups or single sex?

We do find that women work very well together, but men tend to be a little reluctant if they are in an all male group. Some groups of men are almost impossible. They just freeze up and will not look at what they are seeing.

Others are not too bad. But if they have been to boarding school, or have been in the forces, it is more or less pointless. Nothing happens. They could come a thousand times, and nothing has changed. It is as if they want to turn the exhibits into shrines or something: too holy to be even looked at. Mostly men on their own do that.

And Man who has been to boarding school and then in the forces, they are the worst. When they die the exhibit is still here, just as pristine as when it came in, then what are we to do with it? There might be other relatives, in which case there is hope. Someone might do all the viewing necessary – but is is only a hope.

But women - now that is different. Dissection! Especially if they come with close friends. They really go at it. They really won't let the other not see what they are seeing. They will just keep on and on at it until the other gives in and looks fully. Close friends are good, as they feel that they just have to tell them everything, every last detail, no mater how intimate. Nothing is left unsaid eventually. Works wonderfully. In not too many trips the exhibit is quite used up.

Ah good – you have all decided.

OK. If you are five groups – that it, two or three together does work well!

Not quite so sure about you seven though; always get the feeling that some get left out a bit when the number is that big; too easy for the quiet ones not to say what they need to say, and then they only find they have to come back so much more often. But if you are happy with such a big group? - OK – your choise.

The other guides are on their way. They will be with you in a minute. If you would all just stay in the groups you have chosen.

And you sir, if you would stand over there, a guide for solos will find you.

You are sure, sir, that you want to do this on your own?

Ah well!

I have arranged for a special guide for you. They are fully trained in shock recovery. Some people just are not prepared for what comes out of the experience, and we wouldn't want you permanently injured, now would we?

Some people, men in particular, do not handle the emotional recoil well. They do not know what has hit them and are left either totally confused or in compete denial. Either way they have not benefited as they might, and it may take months, no, even years of remedial work for them to recover the ground they have lost. Such a shame. After all, the point is to dissolve the exhibit over time. And that is never going to happen if they are covered with an extra layer of hubris each time, now will it.

OK. If you two would like to come with me. I shall take you through the initial briefing before we proceed to the viewing hall where your exhibits are.

First, you must understand what the exhibits are.

When people die they not only leave a body, but they also leave a extra-personam. It is a bit like the skin a snake leaves when it sheds its skin, only it is made up of all they ever did or said ossified into a shell. A sort cast of what they were.

It looks like them. It sounds like them. It speaks like them – only it is frozen in place, stopped in time the moment they died. We get these extra-personam brought here and we put them into display cases.

Far better than having ghosts drifting around all over the place, with the advantage that they can be viewed whenever relatives or friends want.

Ghosts are just so unpredictable and unreliable. Besides people are usually so disconcerted by ghosts turning up at random, that they do not make the most of the opportunity. What we found was that there was a real need for more orderly viewings – hence this museum was established.

We decided to focus on mother's first as they seem to be the one's that people most want to see – hence the name of the museum – but we are expanding the collection to include other relatives and acquaintances. Should cover the entire range in time. I believe copies of our museum are springing up all over the world.

We do discourage vicarious viewing - preferring only people with whom the exhibit was actually acquainted in real life to view them; or friends of those people if accompanied by the acquaintance. We do find that viewing with a friend, or at least a mentor, is far more fruitful – a soul guardian ad litem is quite a good idea if a good friend is not available – very professional they are.

You may find the exhibits look a little strange at first. You must understand what you are seeing is a condensate of all that that person was, so it contains all the visual images that they were, from babyhood to death. Many people find this rather difficult to focus on at first, but, if you stick with it you will find that the swirling of images stabilises, and the one that you are most used to will emerge as the dominant one. It should be quite recognisable as the deceased at one or other times of their life – usually that stage that the viewer most wants to understand about.

Occasionally some exhibits are more unstable, but we find that is often to do with the agitation of the views; although there are some that are simply utterly unstable; we wonder if they might have been like that in life?

It is a good idea when viewing to have clearly in mind what it is you need to know or what it is you want to show about the exhibit to the people you have come with. It is not ever possible to get a fully rounded view of the exhibit, so it is better to focus on just a few things. If each visit you make you choose a few different things to deal with, then in no time you will have got though the whole process of decomposing the exhibit, and all we will have is a nice empty display case ready for the next occupant.

Sadly, there are not that many visitors who manage a complete decomposition, who reach a point of resolution for each point they they needed to examine about the relationship they had with the deceased. Many give up the process and leave us stuck with a part decomposed extra personam. Most unfortunate.

But we cannot make peole come can we? Shame really, but there you are.

Now, I do hope you have a clear mind as to what you want to discover today - what aspect of the exhibit it is that you want to deal with. You will find a number of buttons on the front of the display case that should help. They each activate some aspect of the exhibit – anger, laughter, sadness, happiness and so on.

We do advise uttomost caution when using the lust botton.

Finally, I do have to warn you that you will be entirely responsible for any damage you do to the case. Please, no matter how enraged you may feel about the exhibit, remember that it is only an image in there, an extra personam, not the real person any more. It cannot respond to you in any way.

All that you are doing is carrying out a process of slow exorcism. When you have taken away all that you came for then they will be completely decomposed and we can reuse the case.

And now, if you would like to follow me I will take you to meet your deceased's extra personam.

Jung & I

Pretentious of me, but, well, why not? Am I not also just a human-being attempting at being? Stumbling and fumbling, tripping and falling, and mostly failing – or is that last point my labelling myself with negative spin? I don't know. And perhaps that is the point. We cannot know, not in some deep, organised final, absolute, truth from all points of view, ultimate frame sense. In a relativistic universe all we can aspire to is some sort of truce of understanding – a partiality that functions – a survival map.

The very paradox of life, at its core, is that we must believe in the world we inhabit, believe the fiction that we impose, take that mind-trick as reality. If we do not believe whole-heartedly then we tear ourselves apart. We deny the reality of reality - or at least of the only reality we can have: none other is on offer. We must have absolute conviction that the ground under our feet is indeed ground under our feet, that the sky over our heads is indeed sky over our heads, that what we touch and feel is as we perceive it to be. We must not step outside of that illusion. Yet at depth we know it to be an illusion; know it cognitively; know it logically; know it scientifically: but if we dare to know it with our whole being then we walk the path of madness.

Such a place is a place of gut wrenching fear, or numbness, or terror. To dissociate from the reality of reality is to enter a very dark hell. The longing that you have for reality to be real once more, to walk and talk, to wake and sleep, to feel and touch, to hear and see once more as when you were a child, when reality was truly real and sharp and pressed upon you with a keenness, that longing is unbearable. So we live the paradox, no, more, we embrace it, oh how we must embrace it.

It is as if we were passengers upon a ship at sea, a ship with no windows or door to the outside. A ship that contains all that we know and all that we can know. It furnishing and light, its rooms and spaces are the sum total of our world. They are the limits of our being. Yet it is but a ship tossed on a vast sea. A vast sea with deeps and shallows, with storms and calms, with unending skies and dark nights. A sea in which lurks who-knows-what monsters and apparitions, for it is a sea which we will never glimpse.

At times we may get intimations of the sea's existence. Our world is tossed by its storms and we are thrown about by its tumults – but yet we have no way of referencing it. It is the outside that we can never access. We can, by act of imagination, by picturing, by turning down the volume of the rush-a-day life of the inboard, of what we take to be the totality of our reality - this dance of life - and just for a time sense the dark sea on which we travel. Then we will understand that all that we see, all that we know is but the inside of an ocean tossed ship.

Like Jung I suffered, as do many, perhaps most even, a mid-life crisis. Perhaps it is no more than the shedding of a younger skin, something that we must all do, so that we may grow old usefully and not trapped in our youthful follies. There is something sad about older people who are still try to be no more than their younger selves. The Peter Pans of this world, be they male or female. The older women dressing the same as their daughters and going out clubbing, competing together for the same men. The older men still trying to be seen as young and vital, with flash cars, gold chains and designer watches. A face-lifted society forever pretending to be what they once were.

To survive we often feel that we need to devise a map of this existence we are in – to help us come to terms with it, to help us to regain a sense of sanity. To put the “reality” that we know it into place. To understand it in a wider context. To see the life-ship upon the sea as it were. For Jung it was the mandala, the recurrent pattern of the quaternion and the circle that provided him with a key. With it he built his map - the cross sectional view of the levels of the self. For me it was the pentagon emerging from a scattering of rune stones.

The insight inspiration, the leap of imagination that produced my map was, when it happened, overwhelming. It poured into me and swamped all other thoughts and activity. It was a knowing of a deeper understanding, a wordless understanding, an emergent eureka. I felt so much at peace – a feeling of a great mental battle won - and yet I had not been aware of the battle, just the angst, just the nausea, just the perplexity, the grinding sense of unease. Worse, a sense of a world pattern in which I could no longer live arranged as it was. I felt the sharp edge of the paradox. I knew reality to be an illusion within an illusion, and it made no deep sense.

My world had crashed. I was no longer fit for purpose. My occupation had gone. My house had gone, carried away on a tide of debts that were not of my making but on a whirlpool of chaos generated by the flounderings of my wife under which we were sinking. My daughter had tried to kill herself, the opening salvo of a creeping guerilla war that was her own struggle for sanity and her own attempt to survive her own life-pain.

All this left my emotions mind-wrenched. I had an unvoiced deep fear that at bottom all of these were due to my inadequacy, my falling short of being a proper man, of my being a halfling, a biological error, a freak. Being a man was outwardly an illusion, and inwardly a delusion. In the end the double subterfuge had been shown for what it was – a mockery of adulthood. I was simply a non-real person, a botched attempt of biology that was so dreadful that it could not even be named. A hermaphrodite masquerading as a human. I knew with absolute certainty that I was only tolerated if I hid under a cloak of shame, that inner truth of what I was utterly unmentionable – the masquerade to be preserved at all costs. And in my shame and because of the shame I colluded with this – struggling to maintain the pretence.

Jung built his map. Four diamond quaternios stacked one on the other, reaching from the fuzz of the “Rotundum” to the purity of the “Anthropos”. It was his ladder to sanity, his map of the soul.

Mine was the pentangle. Each point an aspect of being, united in the middle in a pentagon.

Each aspect of reality was necessary as a part of the map of what it is to be human and the realisation of the internal truth of each aspect of reality was essential to gaining a balanced view of being.

The Material world was the description of the world that might be given by science – at bottom little more than an energy fuzz knotting into ever more complex field and forms.

The Raw world: the experienced reality without human language constructs projected upon it. The world of things-in-themselves. The world touched on by Zen. A world without purposefulness, without intent; the very ground of being through which life flows by accident as no more than a temporary phenomena. 

The Word world: the projected world of human intention and meaning – a shared illusion, an artefact of language; the place we inhabit once we are inducted into the shared mythology of its existence; a children's game made real – a lets pretend played for high stakes. 

The Life force: that which burns through each living thing starting from that first spark aeons ago, and which will burn through each of us and on beyond. We are but fuel to its passage. 

The Vital world: that which charges each and every place, each and every thing, each and every moment with emotional richness, with love and wonder, with its own energy of person and place, of timeliness and potential. It is what enchants or alienates, petrifies or enthrals, chills, stagnates, enlivens, deadens, bores or enwraps. It is that by which we engage with the world. It calls us forth to wed it with our being. It is, if you will, the spiritual reality, that vitalisation that is the very magic sparkle which can intoxicate us with the mere act of living by its burning presence.

Some sort of map. A little temporary sense, or semblance of sense. I am not about to suggest that it is in anyway a good or useful map. It helped me for a while, that is perhaps why it emerged. But in truth little more than some rickety scaffolding that was helpful in rebuilding an illusion of sanity – something that could be hung onto as I attempted to crawl back into life. My compromise of understanding held against the prospect of its all being swept away: my survival map.

It still helps.

Pennies

In dark corners, against dark boards copper coins lurk almost unseen. Unseen that is except for the sharp eyes of young boys whose games involve much crawling and creeping close to the edge of things, close to the corners, close to the dark places where coins have lain unseen since they slid there unnoticed by their owners. Coins of many reigns: Victoria, Edward, George V, George VI and, brighter, new more easily seen, Elizabeth. Some with Britannia on their tail side, some with a ship in full sail, even some tiny ones with a wren perched on a branch with its tail upright. Coins lodged between floorboards. Coins half stuck under the edge of skirting boards. Coins just under the edge of carpets, down the sides of chairs, under tables, in cracks and crevasses, undetected by all who stand full height, but visible to those whose games take them crawling under and over and through. 

First one coin, and then. A new game? “Can I find more?” One here, one there. Try another room. Try the landing where no windows add light to see these hidden treasure. Try the stairs. Try down the side of the wickerwork settee. Try under cushions and under the front of the dresser. 

Find one stuck edgewise between floorboards. Get a compass and use its point to jack it up and out.

Collect, seek, find, until a little trove is collected. Ah, the delights these could become. Sherbet dips, liquorice – specially the whirls, or even better the ones shaped like pipes – or perhaps a packet of sweet cigarettes, with their bright red ends. Such joy pretending to be grown ups smoking, blowing pretend cigarette rings, offering one another a “fag”. Best of all, perhaps, a bottle of frothy Corona ginger beer with its rubber stopper and “3d”¹ back on the bottle. Good days when finding six empty bottles to take back to the shop would get you the price of a new full one. Then the “pop” sound and you prized back the stopper and it flipped on its hinges going “clink” as it hit the side of the bottle. Pop, clink, fizz. Pop, clink, fizz. The sound of childhood joy. The expectation of the tingling, fizzy warm slightly burning sensation as the pop was guzzled down, the bubbles frothing up and making your nose tickle, followed by a satisfying “burp” as the gas came back up. Looks of approval for those who could produce the loudest or the most frequent.

Full of expectation and wide eyes with the success of the hunt, take the handful of coins to Mother to say,

“Look what I have found! Can I go to the shop and buy some pop?”

A pause. A look of questioning. A frown. These looks were not expected. Then the awful question -

“Where did you get those?” 

“I found them”

“NO YOU DID NOT – NOW TELL THE TRUTH”

“I did, I really did, I crawled all around the house and found them”

“NO YOU DID NOT – YOU ARE LYING – YOU NAUGHTY BOY – YOU STOLE THEM OUT OF MY PURSE. GIVE THEM TO ME AT ONCE.”

An hand comes down from above and seizes my arm, holding it firmly and shaking me.

“Tell the truth - NOW”

The anger and disappointment in the voice is too hard to bear. The injustice. The confusion.

"Give me that money immediately and tell me the truth”

I hand over my hard found treasure trove. Gone all hope of sherbet, or liquorice. Gone all hopes of sweet cigarettes. Gone all hopes of fizzy ginger beer.

The anger drives me down lower and lower into the floor. The look bores through me. I can not look into her face any more. My eyes cast down, my knees weaken. I can feel tears forming. I begin to shake and to hold back the sobs that want to come. I have mortally offended. I know shame and confusion. I know that I have done immense wrong - but have done no wrong. I am condemned and cast out, accused and convicted. There is no appeal. The court has been held and the judgement has been given. I taste the bitter edge of justice and know its unreason. Punishment will now come like an awful pall over the day. There will be no fun or joy. 

Later an uneasy kindness with undertones of disapproval sends me to bed – the repentant double sinner redeemed by living an untruth – as a boy who steals from purses and tells lies.

---

1: 3d = three pence in UK pre-decimal coinage