Che l'amore è tutto, è tutto ciò che sappiamo dell'amore

I squinted in the night, scared to open my eyes

You were lying there, between my eyelashes

Breathing, really breathing.

If I stay awake,

Stay awake,

How long can I stay awake?

So this dream doesn't end.

Too good to be true

I wrapped my arms around, but not too tight,

If I squeezed you, you might feel me and wake up

And realise

So I just count your heart beats

Take a sharp quiet breath, to bring mine into rhythm with yours

Beat, after beat for hours

Not too loud though

Please don't wake from my dream.

Too good to be true.

Creeping through my veins,

Sunlight in my heart.

If I could just stay here, if you could just stay here

My mind and heart electric

Forever.

I'd say yes to forever.

Wake up, wake up!

You said.

This is real, please open your eyes

We gazed right in.

Our chests filled and overflowed.

I crawled in from the storm,

Straight into your arms.

The morning flooded in.

You closed your eyes. And disappeared

And I was left there with mine.

Wide open. Awake.

Alone.

Too good to be true.

I knew it was too good to be true.

I try to sleep, to find you again.

But recurring dreams are just nightmares.

That's the catch with dreaming.

Just the memory of being lit up

Leaving it darker than before

Too good to be true.

But I'll keep closing my eyes.

Every night the stars come

They are soldered to my soul.

Little hope lights.

Inconsequential deceit

Protecting yourself, with a numbing high, that trips you over lower than the pavement. The limits and boundaries opened with the flying, blur with the fall, and carnivorously rip precious flesh out of you.

Lower than the silence and emptiness after the soaring magic festival you put your guard up to, could have ever felt. 

And when you stop that high. And quit those lows. You never look back and want it. Dark self-loathing regret that you ever consented to the deceptively temporary anaesthetic. You don't even remember signing the form.

But the festival... even in the solitude of the aftermath, when you wished the gates were never closed, the jumping castles and jam donut vans were never packed away... you could have smiled about. And been grateful for. Because the music is still in your head to dance to. 

That's the difference with loving.

Green brooches in a labyrinth

We needed to get changed for dinner. Alex and Mim were waiting there when we arrived. But I took longer this time. I answered differently when asked where I had been. Astro was with me. Mim had had her dress made. She had many more dresses. She said she was a princess of sorts and she said I must be feeling great to walk beside her. She had been putting on my dresses and looking better in them. Brown, taller and lean. Each month. I wanted a tutu. I didn’t want to be compared, I didn’t want to compare myself. She kept swooping in like I had lined it all up, and came in and took it. She changed the story and my story and she took all my friends and contacts.

But she was nice as I arrived. They could overhear us talking.

The closer it came to the time, the more likely it was you would disappear. I stepped into the drain and it was your mind.

I was with two women, they knew my Gran. Going around maze that was Astro’s mind, I kept finding his black and white drawings. The women were looking for somewhere to change, but it kept getting darker and more filled with people. We were trying to move faster, but every time we took a step, we stepped down onto more steps or rocks and I would be thankful I didn’t just jump. Though I wondered if I had of just jumped if it would have been flat. The maze was forming as we moved, the ground creating itself to meet us. Was I creating the steps by not leaping with faith onto a flat landing? Or was that just because it was dark and it was all that we could do to see in front of us and the rest was already there, so it just seemed it was being created as we went.  More and more people were arriving and the types of people were changing. They were angry, frustrated many of them.

And then we saw her, in agony. And the blood. On the ground. But some coming from her chest and then in a line down. The old ladies left to go and get help, even though they had already called the ambulance. They didn’t speak to her. Her name was Sophie. She didn’t want to tell me her surname. She had a phone. She didn’t want me to call her husband or anyone yet. Her husband’s name was Peter Green. She had been three months pregnant. She lived in Bairnsdale. She whispered this. Even though she could talk.

The ambulance came. I still had her phone. I needed to get it to her. Everyone was on their way to her room. They wanted to examine her quickly so they could get out of there and collect their Easter chocolate and exam marks. They wanted to quickly get the story about how the hospital was negligent. It wasn’t. Had to get her phone to her and warn her before they got there. A man with a ginger beard was leading me in different directions, up different stairwells. No short-cuts, but it was designed to confuse the chasers.

Made it to the top. Tried to call Peter Green.

The dressmaker only just noticed. The grass green shimmer on the fabric, did not match the flat forest green. I didn’t know anything about sewing. Not really. But I couldn’t help but step in. Like the lady looking for the native animal brooches – I knew I’d seen them somewhere before and it would have been remiss of me not to mention it. It was an hour before our conversation finished.  The dressmaker was worried what the princess Mim would say. I showed her how the bright grass green popped more when bordered by the forest green. It could definitely work.

I showed him how to play volleyball. He was only small. I wanted to get him a softer ball. The other girl in the class recounted her dream – a similar story. And in both, the balls became axes or other weapons. And the children knew how to use them. They were scared. And needed to defend themselves. They had seen too much. I don’t like volleyball.

There's a Rosella under my Umbrella..under my Umbrella..ah, ah, ah...

This is a story about the time I slept with a bird and my Mum put my sister in her handbag for a week.

The two wooden rosellas on a perch, dangling off some fishing wire, were a gift from some cousins. We named them after those cousins and hooked them up over the kitchen sink, overlooking the backyard. Their job was to ‘spy’ on whatever mischief my sister and I might be up to and report back to Mum. 

Later, maybe a couple of decades later, I was up way too early one morning. Wandering towards the beach I noticed a small technicolour little flapper on the tram line. It wasn’t moving and a tram was clicking towards it. I shooed it, whistled at it, but it still wouldn’t move! There was nothing else to be done but pick it up. It pecked at me incessantly as its feet gripped my finger. 

Into the 7/11 I went and asked for a box. I took it down to the foreshore and put it in a tree, but it just stared at me blankly. If I left it there it was only a matter of time before a cat made breakfast of it. Maybe that’s why my step-father shoots the feral cats. 

And neither was the wildlife rescue service, apparently. So we walked. The bird stopped biting me. I took it for coffee. I took it to the park. We had a chirp and a chat. It sat on my shoulder. I tried to let it go on an oval and teach it to fly. But it just hopped after me. This wasn’t going well. I was closer to Dalton’s house than my own by now. I’ll just go there with the bird, I thought. 

Dalton (named like the china, but nothing as fine as china) wasn’t there. His housemate let me in and went to work and I thought I’d just chill with my multi-coloured friend until Dalton came back, or until I came up with a better plan. I was very sleepy, and I couldn’t just put the bird out in the backyard to be shredded to pieces by feline fangs. So I hopped into Dalton’s bed for a snooze and the Rosella hopped in with me.

Unsurprisingly, he was not so impressed when he came home to find a bird in his bed. Which I thought was a bit harsh. But I was okay, I had bigger Rosella things to worry about. And it was probably a good indicator of future lack of compatibility. He said I could sleep in the bed but the bird had to go.* 

Last week, my Mum came to visit. I let her loose in my eclectically spaghetti sprawled little suburb for a couple of hours and she came back from the op-shop with some ornamental birds – two blue budgerigars and a rosella. We named the rosella after my sister, who lives in New Zealand. She came in my Mum’s handbag with us for the week and we positioned her in places for photos wherever we went, pretending my sister was with us. On the beach, in the car, out for coffee, at the dinner table.

I have a cousin who once called to say her fish tank was full of tears and had spilt into the back of her car and it was flooding. A wasp was also talking to her. We sent her a photo of the rosella. She loved it. The people who don't understand normal, often understand the most absurd. Which rhymes with bird.

Even when it feels like the heavy night won’t lift and will make your legs collapse from beneath you, you can put a rosella in your handbag. Sometimes there’s nothing more to do than hop into bed with a bird**, and laugh at yourself so hard you fall off your perch.***

*The rosella eventually went to the vet

** By bird, I do not mean a female. But if there are two consenting adults, then that is okay too.

***Not in the metaphorical dying sense.

A Dreaming about Rosella is one of tragedy which triumphs with love as the ultimate victor.  A couple run away together; although she is promised to a wirrinin (magic man) who wreaks his revenge and kills her man.  She is so in grief the jealous wirrinin goes to strike her.  The Great Spirit intervenes and she is instantly transformed into the first Rosella.  She then flies off to the Land of the Dead to reach her lover before he crosses into it.  In a race against time, she reaches him.  Today, Rosellas still mate for life. Rosellas embody eternal love.

Teaching by Humiliation

Inspired by an epiphany from a friend and palliative doctor after watching this Ted Talk by Monica Lewinsky on the Price of Shame.

I keep leaving the house naked. I turn up to work, to lunch, to classes, parties, the gym, exams, weddings and funerals without a thread of clothing on. I'm no nudist. This is not by choice. I desperately want to be covered. I leave the house and it is not until I am already there and I can't go back that I realise my entire self is exposed and everyone is staring at me in shock, disgust and disappointment. They must see me as other to prevent them from seeing themselves and not just eliminate me, but make an example of me. Sometimes I am laughed at. Sometimes those I respect and love the most turn away from me. Sometimes I am raped. Duck and dodge as I might, lower my volume, do anything to distract attention from me - there's nowhere to hide. There is no hole to sink into. There is no one walking towards me with open arms and a pair of pants.

I'm vulnerable. I'm naked. I'm on a public stage with all of me bared. All of it ridiculed. In the minds of others, I am less than.

I'm humiliated.

It's a recurring dream. We've all had it. And that speaks volumes.

But if I coach my dream self to be more resilient, to be able to stand naked in front of a crowd and be proud will this solve the problem? No. I am still not safe. Someone else will have the same dream, maybe even on the same night.

Someone else will have their private stories, relationships, mistakes and conversations splashed across the internet; another politician will be laughed at and scorned not because of the values and intellect of their policy but because of a exhaustion-driven misnomer in their speech, their hair, their extramarital affairs, their human desires and flaws; another child will disengage from learning and skip class to avoid having their perceived stupidity exposed; another young man will have his self-esteem and self-respect further degraded in a court room and a news article; a medical intern will overdose after months or years of feelings of inadequacy; another woman will be raped; another genocide will occur.

A study by psychologists in Amsterdam recorded people reading scenarios that evoked humiliation, anger, or happiness and used electrophysiological measures of cognitive intensity to determine a level of perceived negative affect. Levels were markedly increased in humiliation scenarios. At most, it suggests humiliation as an emotion, is more powerful than happiness and anger. At least, it unveils the idea that humiliation is an intense experience, likely to have far-reaching consequences.

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of massive genocide. At least 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed despite the presence of UN peacekeepers mandated to protect them. But it wasn't just a tragedy of elimination. It was more. Like all genocides and many cross-cultural conflicts, it is an agonising narrative of rape, torture, devaluing, dehumanisation, and - humiliation.

Would it have helped if Tutsi were more resilient? If they knew themselves better? That they contacted a mediator about being bullied and asked for support? They were. They are. They did.

We know that examining the behaviour and character of 'victims' of bullying and abuse only further portrays and reinforces their feelings of being a victim, of feeling weak and humiliated, of being powerless. Yet we continue to use this as a strategy for eliminating it. And so it continues. What is more, we often go as far as to investigate the behaviour of 'evil' people and contrast this with 'good' people.

"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all....
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also." - Kahlil Gibran, 'On Crime and Punishment'.

A pilot study published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2015  set its sites firmly on a culture of "teaching by humiliation". Final-stage medical students from two Australian medical schools were surveyed anonymously about their adult and paediatric clinical rotations.

The development of professionalism is a huge topic of interest in medical education and most often an explicit goal in curriculums. Yet 81 per cent of students surveyed reported witnessing teaching by humiliation in their adult rotations and 74 per cent reported experiencing it. Researchers claim it confirms findings of decades of research with medical students, in which up to 95 per cent reported experiencing teaching by humiliation.

The research identified forms of abuse ranging from derogatory remarks and undermining students' abilities and motivation, to verbal attacks. Students reported public belittlement, having their reputation or career threatened, experiencing unjustified criticism, sarcasm and teasing. They experienced medical staff deliberately withholding necessary information, ignoring students and setting impossible deadlines. Teaching practises have included humiliation, contempt, harassment, discrimination, assault, mocking and demeaning behaviour. Other subtle forms of abuse included refusal to answer questions, return calls or answer pagers and use of condescending language. Reports also described a misuse of the Socratic form of teaching, known as "pimping", in which teachers ask questions aggressively, putting students on the spot and shaming them.

The report comes in the same year ABC's Four Corners program rocked the hierarchial foundations of Australia's medical fraternity with its report 'At Their Mercy: The bullying and bastardisation of young doctors in our hospitals'.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons then released a report which shocked even the doctor who first raised these allegations. If found nearly half of all surgeons across all specialities have experienced discrimination, bullying or sexual harassment. It included stories of surgeons being expected to provide sexual favours in return for tutorship, constant belittling, intimidation and public humiliation.

If we are to produce the best doctors, they must receive optimal education, and this requires an environment free of fear and anxiety. Previous research has found teaching by humiliation affects students' mental health, having an impact on their confidence, loyalty to the profession and the care of patients. A United States study found mistreated medical students were more likely to be stressed, depressed and suicidal, to binge drink and believe the faculty did not care about them.

But this is not a case of some particular doctors just being bullies. It is a medical and hospital hierarchy; a culture of competitive education; an acceptance of disrespectful behaviour towards patients, staff and students; a respect for teaching by humiliation as a right of passage. Senior and junior doctors do what was done to them as students in order to "toughen up" the young.

Those who are bullies, those who are moderately evil and those who are extraordinarily evil, who participate in, initiate and organise everything from teaching by humiliation, to scandalous 'news' articles to genocide, cannot be distinguished from those who we perceive to be good, just by their actions.

Character and behaviour complement each other. But it is not a purely evil character, an individual, who commits these atrocities against other humans. It is the character of our culture, of our bystanders, our encouragers, our collective insecurities, our religions and spiritual awakenings, our universal strive for purity of mind and of human race.

Whatever the bullying, whatever the collective humiliation, it is fostered by a system and society that fosters rational self-interest, a culture of cruelty. There is group conformity, a rejection of individual identity and thus reduction of personal responsibility, disengagement from self and others, and finally, the merger of a person's role and perceived duty to some 'greater good' with their personal character. It is rooted in the identification of the victim as the 'other', an impurity upon the higher human cause, who can subsequently be delegitimised, dehumanised and blamed.

Genocide is not a quest for wealth or power. It is a quest for a pure conscience, for freedom and happiness, recognition from a divine higher power, and a willingness to sacrifice the self and the other in this 'virtuous' pursuit. The right to an autonomous self and the need to preserve this as a human right, leads to the right to destroy an 'other' autonomous self in defence. That is why extinction of a race is not enough. To destroy them we must first detach from them, see them as less than human. The loss of individual identity and personal responsibility through conformity and virtuous loyalty to the cause, goes hand-in-hand with a need to make an example of the other, to prove their world view and autonomy illegitimate, their humanness inhuman. This dehumanisation and objectification is what leads to assaults against sexuality, rape, mistreatment of corpses and denial of civilised burials.

To prevent this from happening, it is not evil people we must examine. It is not evil behaviour. It is good people. Good, ordinary people who are capable of committing genocide. Who are capable of publishing stories that humiliate others. Capable of reading them with fascination absent of compassion. Of putting aside another human's emotions and wellbeing with a self consciousness that the ends will justify the means. Who are capable of defending and protecting themselves against shame by using humour to humiliate others, or even to self deprecate themselves before someone else does. We must examine ordinary people, good people, who are bystanders, who condone this in their obedience, their apathy and their silence.

The Aristotlean theories on virtue, that value honour, reason, self sufficiency, the pursuit of self-satisfaction must be counteracted with a new wave. It must wash away self-interest and self-sacrificing values, and make way for a tsunami of culture that promotes empathy and compassion for one another, that recognises the other in herself and understands the need for a collective movement against human destruction of each other and the world we live in.

Qui tacet, consentire videtur

Your rudimentary

Has sedimentary

And we're all holding up the fort
Raising you up
To point our finger up at you
In guilty accusation.

The banality of commonality
Is not worth the laugh
You roll your eyes
At the expose
And say my heart is bleeding
Well yes it is.

His lunch money is nowhere
To be seen.
You've been seen
Pushing him over
When he tries to stand up
The smirk on your face
Is the joke we can't take.

There's nothing grotesque
About what's in your mirror
We're all to blame
I see you, he sees me, you see him
We're from the same rock
It's a collective shame.

The jagged edges
Between silence condoning
And thoughtful battle choice
Is solved when we question
And realise
There's a coronary artery
And bleeding in is necessary
We must smudge the line.

So now you've seen
Don't shut the blinds
And rage away
Flick the filaments on
Throw those curtains wide 
Raise your volume
Lift our lowest stage.

Ella Sylviana in A Minor

'Ella in A minor'

Your room was blue cause we thought you were a David,
Your hair changed from black to white, overnight.
You pulled out mine and cut the orange woollen plaits off my doll,
I pushed you over so you wouldn't fall yourself.
Slow down little girl, slow down.

The house on the street that was wide
Faced the orange trees on one side and the river out the back.
To the side of the shed was the red gum pile
I could climb it to hop into the neighbour's yard.
It's too high for you little girl, stay down.

And Pa had his lemons and we built a cubby out the back,
But we wouldn't let you in, no we wouldn't let you in.
It was tied together with wire and string,
The password we didn't tell you...
Was Priscilla-France.

We were five hundred Ks from home when you said it,
A story so wild I just had to believe it.
You said before I was born you were here all along,
Before our parents, before dinosaurs, before us all.
You made all the hills that we drove over.

Maybe you were here first.
I think you were here first.

You shaved your hair, you died it blue, it was all for a good cause.
You ran to Europe on your own without a word not of English.
You knew love before I met it,
And your body knew it too.
Slow down little girl, slow down.

I'm the calm and you're the storm, I thought,
Just keep you quiet, keep you still so the world does not explode.
But your rain on the tin roof and your lightning in the dark,
It keeps us warm when we're crying, it lights us up.
Keep rumbling little girl, make your noise.

Maybe you were here first.
I think you were here first.

You've done the groceries, washed the clothes,
Bought and wrapped all the Christmas presents.
You've sent me letters at the right time,
Told me off, perked me up, kept me safe.
Run as fast as you like little girl, we'll try to keep up.