On 4 July I started using the new TweetDeck again because the classic version was ballsed-up and on 8 July I worked out the secret of Nabokov’s ‘Ada’ having read widely and having, in recently weeks, spent time with ‘The Blacklist’ a crime drama starring James Spader. The next day Basia went to the Blue Mountains and I dropped her off at Central Station. A few days later she went to Newcastle to be with friends so I had more time alone. I got a file from Stephen Whiteside a cousin on 14 July it was a set of reminiscences of about 20 pages made by great-aunt Madge including scenes from her childhood in Victoria in the teens of last century. It was especially poignant as it contained stories about my Henri’s great-great-grandfather Harry Dean, who I never met, along with rendered ideas about what it meant to be a child in the first half of the 20th Century. I sent the file to my family in Japan as well as to my brother and cousins then I set about organising the family photo explanations mum had made for me in 2008 or 09 when I was still in Sydney or when I had just moved to Queensland to look after her I think it was both it took a long time to get the captions made.
I understood things about myself so it was clear to me why I’d had to wait from July 2016 when mum died until July 2023 to get around to observing at close hand these photos and the associated text. It also took some work because mum’s handwriting is not always clear, and I spent a couple of days transcribing, saving the document to PDF before sharing with family and friends. Cousin Trish Allen told me that Madge’s recount had been made on the instigation of Uncle Geoff but as a young man – it had been finished by about 1979 – I never knew of its existence. Trish told me furthermore that it was Madge’s document that had started her (Trish) off on her own project, a short family genealogical history of the Deans.
As well as ‘The Enormous Family Album’ (TEFA; see later in this memorial) in July 2023 I finished organising mum’s reminiscences, making an album. The photos below are from the album in question.
Above, what mum called her “domestic goddess” shot. Mum and her brother Geoff made these imaginative scenarios using a family camera. This is fabulous, like a Cindy Sherman.
Above: mum and her mother Bea in the CBD of Melbourne in the 50s.
Above: mum on her birthday one year looking grumpy.
Above: mum dressed up as a fairy for a school event.
Above: mum with snapdragons.
This project actually started in 2008 when I was living in Sydney before my move to Queensland. I had some family photos mum had sent and had photocopied them onto A4 sheets sending them back with an order to mum to write notes about each of them. It took a lot of prodding over a number of years – it wouldn’t have happened unless I kept nagging mum to sit down with a pen and write about each photo – before she completed this task, presumably in odd moments. It was when she was living in Beach Parade in her groundfloor unit; I do remember mentioning the task to her on occasion if I went over to make dinner (which I did every evening you must keep in mind).
It was in July that I got the notes in mum’s lovely fluid handwriting and transcribed them into an MS-Word file, then made an album with, for each of the photos, (1) the photo (2) the handwritten notes on blue or yellow paper and (3) the transcription. When I was making TEFA I also added to the ‘Reminiscences’ with sticky corners the appropriate photo in each case so the final product is layered and complex with artefacts betraying the existence of a process of construction that happened over time, in fact a number of years. I even didn’t order (much like TEFA) the photos chronologically, just leaving them in the order in which they presented themselves to me as I was making the thing. This contingent surprise might be destabilising for a reader, I appreciate that, but the degree of discomfort that such a state of affairs inspires in the casual peruser of the Reminiscences must be allowed to invoke the degree of discomfort that TEFA and the album inspired in me.
It wasn’t easy to go back there. You have to keep in mind that, as I mention elsewhere in this memorial, I am the last of the Joao Luis da Silvas to live in Australia. After me there will be nobody, the children and grandchildren growing up in other countries. This sort of displacement involves naturally a degree of pain. Something must’ve happened to make this situation real, it isn’t out of a sense of perversity (or maybe it is) that I left in disarray the order of entries in mum’s fantastic Reminiscences, that I allowed casual contingency to put its mark on TEFA, which has now BEEN SENT TO JAPAN as it is there that it can have most meaning. Fewer people in Australia are able to understand TEFA and the Reminiscences. The race of readers located potentially in Australia has been almost exterminated by forces beyond my control. Obviously if I had been able to preserve the traces of that forgotten people I would have done so, but it was not to be. They have migrated. I am part of a race of travellers. Where we will eventually end up is a matter for Fate and the Gods of jet propulsion to decide. It is not my choice any more.
The thing about the photos was that mum had never explained details of her life as she lived it before moving to Sydney in 1962. Not with any with much completeness. In fact I had prior to reading her notes only the most basic knowledge of her Depression and War years. I find it hard to accommodate the feelings of disappointment I feel when faced wtih this lacuna, and ask just how hard would it have been to colour in the gaps in us boys’ knowledge of a formative time for the person we relied on most in our lives? Perhaps mum was ashamed of her associations in the years around 1945 when she was reaching maturity. Perhaps dad was jealous. Certainly from reading the notes I can see that she was an intelligent and spirited and independent-minded person. Perhaps dad was jealous of her boyfriends so she couldn’t talk about anything related to that time. I just regret that I didn’t do more while she was alive to preserve the past as documents.
On 19 July I contacted one of the clothing suppliers I had paid for goods to be delivered to my daughter because the package hadn’t arrived. In fact I’d left the wrong address when making the transaction online. The next day I went to Broadway Shopping Centre to get the car washed and picked up the rest of the Rousseau posters I’d bought. I also did some grocery shopping, bought petrol and picked up a newspaper to read while I waited for the car washing to finish. I’d gotten to the end of season eight of ‘The Blacklist’ and was feeling strangely melancholy, I had in fact brought along to read N Mailer’s ‘Harlot’s Ghost’ but in the end compensated for the feeling of boredom I had by reading a couple of stories in ‘The Australian’ it was enough to fill up a quarter hour or so of unclaimed time.
I dreamed of Pixie O’Harris on the night of 23 July and also of cutting shapes out of paper with scissors, shapes so complex I wished for finer scissors. When I woke up I realised that all those years ago my silent pleas for help had gone nowhere. I used to visit Pixie on the way back from mum and dad’s house on Sunday night going back to St Paul’s College where I lived in 1981. I would sit for a long time talking or not talking and I remember that Pixie must’ve gotten annoyed with me when I didn’t leave, they were probably tired by late evening and wanted free time before going to bed, but I just sat there looking morose. It occurs to me that Pixie never asked me if I still wanted to study literature, I did not want to, I wanted to be a painter, but it was necessary to complete the Arts degree to appease dad and because if I chose to be a painter it could only happen with the support of my family and doing that would’ve potentially involved dad spending money, something he had a natural aversion to.
Nobody thought badly of my father I think though some family members had reservations (Uncle Geoff and cousin Chris’ wife Paula said things within my hearing once or twice). These were reservations that on occasion one of them might discuss quietly with me I seem to remember, but the general sense of most people in my world at that time – so long ago memories flit about like butterflies in a storm – is that people thought that dad was a good father when he was a manipulative gaslighting bully who always got his way. A malignant narcissist is more likely to tend to shut down discussion, at least serious discussion (jokes aside) by controlling the tone or direction of the conversation. If my art teacher said nothing when I told him I had to keep doing French because of the timetable clash in Year 11 then nobody in the family was going to risk incurring my father’s wrath by mentioning the fact that I loved drawing and was talented and that I should be given the chance to find my future in art.
Even in 2023 my dreams point me in the way I should have gone all those years – decades of boredom, failure, and suffering – all those years ago, those years! How hard it was how hard I tried to fit the mould set out by my father intent on making me into his own image. Of course I crashed. I burned, and now I need three different medications daily just to stay something like normal, and small exertion makes my heart race like I’m being pursued by a bear, and I cannot drive on many roads out of fear. I certainly won’t risk flying by plane to see my grandson so have to wait until the family comes here so that I see his little face. I routinely have to put up with people’s prying questions about this inability to fly – for why would a grandfather absent himself from his grandson’s side? – and I have to think up strategies to enable me to avoid such routines, they make me feel like a freak or as if I am disabled. Not that there’s anything wrong with being disabled (which I am) it’s just that I barely cope with this type of scrutiny from probably well-meaning humans. I get along better with dogs.
The irony is that if I tell people of my suffering they immediately try to downplay its severity, possibly on account of my circumstances. Yet this is who I am. I am a man who has been everything but mortally damaged by someone whose first duty was in fact to protect him just like I protect my own children, and now my grandson Henri whom I babysat from overseas in July via Zoom.
Yukiko, Ada, Henri and I did a four-way Zoom conversation on several occasions in July sometimes with me singing songs such as ‘Waltzing Matilda’ making him fall asleep. Another favourite – from my point of view at least – was ‘C’era una volta un piccolo naviglio’ which I learned when I was a teacher with COASIT back in 1985 teaching primary school students Italian. I still had the song on mute in my head to use whenever I wanted, so it came in handy because Henri didn’t like to be left on the floor alone and uncared-for. He likes to be with people.
No comments:
Post a Comment