Farewell Madleet

 

Farewell Madleet

Keppel Sands Sunrise

My sister, Margaret, died three days ago on 26th December 2024, on the other side of the planet in Benbecula hospital, on the Western Isles in Scotland.  I got the text just after watching the most beautiful sunrise from the deck of our AirBnB at Keppel Sands in Queensland, Australia, already 27th, a sunrise she would not mark.  I was grateful for the opportunity to message with her during her final months - exchanging memories and snippets of our lives.  

A few days before she died I received the news that she could no longer communicate.  She was struggling to breathe now, and had already travelled beyond the reach of language. The next day, I sat alone on the sun lounger on Christmas afternoon after the festivities had concluded, looking out to sea.  I let my arm fall, palm upward on the arm of the lounger, and imagined holding her hand, the feel of it, the shape of it, the very deliberate and delicate way her fingers reached for things, busied themselves with the fastening and unfastening of ties and clasps; the way she carefully smoothed her clothing and arranged her glasses; how she occupied the space she inhabited, a circle of calm drawn around her like a shawl.  

Margaret has a large hand in my continuing presence on this earth.  She was the voice on the end of the phone when I was so miserable and alone that I wanted to end it all.  She was the one I called in those moments, because everyone else I loved would have told me to get a grip and eat a banana.  That kind of talk has its place, don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes you need to be shocked out of your own drama.  But there are times when you are too fragile to take the shock. She understood that.  All she did on those phone calls was state the truth again, and again, and again.  It was what I needed to hear.  No sarcasm, no cleverness, no reasoning, no cajoling, no fixing; just relentless compassion.  Obstinately and relentlessly compassionate.  That was who she was to me.  

That and someone who couldn’t follow a basic plot in a film, demanding explanations loudly in the cinema; who told me while sleep talking that her mother had eye mufflers; who crossed her eyes and made a face when she was exasperated; who spent ages arranging things neatly on a table but completely ignored the mess on the floor; who taught me the difference between 'will' and 'shall'; who sang I am butter melon cauliflower, repeatedly with great glee; who walked with me through the snow at gloaming and heard the North Wind play the frozen loch like a giant flute. She was all those things to me.  

I will not be able to go home to Scotland for her send-off, and so plans that we made here before remain, bafflingly, in place. We drove to Brisbane in glorious sunshine - Matt taking the lion’s share of the driving, while I bawled and talked and stared out of the window and dozed in turns.  It is a strange thing to feel close to a person you are losing or have lost, but be so far from them and the other people who know them.

I keep coming back to that moment, gazing out to Peak Island on the Keppel reef, imagining her sailing away from me, already over the horizon, an emigrant, never to return as I have known her, closing my hand on the warm breeze that blew in from the ocean, joining with my breath as I pulled air into my lungs with an ease that eluded her at the end.  

I can’t contain this love for Margaret.  It streams forth out of me and joins with the salty sea, blending with the currents flowing around me, through me and away.  All I can do is stand and let it go. 

Farewell Madleet. 

Margaret Keltie at home on South Uist in her studio.

We’re all leaving, Karine Polwart, 2012

https://open.spotify.com/track/5Ldc2jr2SsIamoHE5LGPs6?si=8f3243b4dc844735

The coos

I've just been watching the shiny black cows graze their way across the paddock in front of our house. The sun and warmth of the recent weeks has bleached the once green grass to a pale sandy colour. Sweet and juicy still too this herd. I love how the cows leave a leg cast behind them as they lean forward to try the next mouthful. Effortless bovine elegance! Maybe there will be an enticing smell to change course for. The leg: a backstop. Speculative investment in tastier pastures. Meanwhile two bulls (if we’re not mistaken, and Matt's a grazier's son) occupy the area of the paddock to the left. My attention has been caught by the one on the left pawing the dusty earth, while jettisoning a prodigious amount of shit in interrupted spurts. The one on the right approaches, head down very slowly behind Lefty. He bows and sways, almost cow-like. We took another good look at that animal but they're the same size and definite male features. 

I'm like: I never knew they might pasture two males together in a herd? 

Matt's all: if the cows aren't in cycle it's doable. Bulls actually get on most of the time. 

Righty nuzzles Lefty in the neck. Lefty leans in. 

Matt: They play-fight. They like hanging out with each other. 

Me: yeah I guess you see it in most mammals. It's just economics that keeps the bulls isolated. Fuck. That's a bit on the nose. 

Matt: You're reading a lot into this, you know. 

Me: Yeah OK. Hey look, they're giving each other a massage!

At this point, Righty lifts his head over the back of Lefty, nose in the air, as 6 more cows slow- motion jetée their way along the fence. 

Lefty moves around to face Righty. 

Me: Oh here we go!

But instead of an altercation, they lean on each other's foreheads. In the foreground, one of the new arrivals arches her tail and enjoys a long, unhurried piss. 

Is this what they mean by bucolic? 

Me: I know, I'm anthropomorphising. I mean not that they're all over there making up stories about the animals in that box over the road, but you and I, Matt, we are mammals. Maybe we understand them better than we think?

Matt: yeah nah. 

The Unsaid Sea

 The Unsaid Sea

Down deep

A vast sea churns

Below the surface

Roiled by all the unsaid things

Between us. 

I have done my best

To contain and suppress,

To make space for more,

Bottling the excess,

Smuggling drops here and there

In tight verse. 

It’s dry

Where we stand

Unyielding, solid, dependable

But it’s bare. 

The cracks 

Only hairline fissures

Are still there

The urge

To rain blows

On the dusty earth

To smash this carapace

This protected space

To fall through 

With you

Into that place

Where the unsaid 

Finds an ear

Where we can truly be here:

That urge is building.

The Unsaid Sea

Simmers in the dark

But the tide is rising. 

© 2023 Mary Goodman

Escape from the Matinée

Escape from the Matinée 

I have pondered at length, 

Sought to find

Out whether or not 

I possess the strength,

The resilience of mind 

To be with him.

It cannot last, you know. 

It ends in pain

Inevitably. 

Why seek out woe

Or try to detain 

What will come?

Flee from the Stalls

Before the lies

Before the curtain falls,

The light of day 

Harsh on the eyes

Before you lose.

Run!

It is not what I lose

But what I gain

From being with him

That is why I choose:

I will feel pain...

...

For him.

RMIT Strike Action by NTEU members

As an National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) member, I am participating in Union strike action from 1230 Monday 25 March to 2359 Thursday 28 March 2024.  

The Union has proposed industrial action on the basis that: 

• It is over 1000 days since the expiry of the last enterprise agreement for higher education staff, and close to 800 days since expiry of our VE enterprise agreement and progress towards a current agreement has been too slow.   
• Wage increases proposed in current bargaining are not in line with cost of living increases, putting many lower paid staff into stress.
• Unsafe workloads continue to perpetuate across the University.
• Job security continues to be an issue for a large proportion of the University workforce. 

I am not taking this action lightly, and I am not taking this action in my own interests.  

Relative to many of my hardworking colleagues, I am lucky to be able to absorb the rises in cost of living at least in the short term.  I am also lucky not to have an unmanageable workload where I am required to work significant and sustained amounts of time over and above my contracted hours.  

Sadly, this is not the case for many of my colleagues.  Effectively we have been hiding the cost of further and higher education, and research by trading on the commitment and good will of staff who believe in learning and knowledge for public good, while the sector is governed by assumption that education and research are commodities to be bought and sold at a market price. 

Realistically there will always be a gap between the cost of and remuneration for work, particularly for those who bring their whole selves, their values, and their vision to their work. Higher education is full of these sorts of people.  Most are able to tolerate the gap while it is relatively manageable.  There are other trade-offs like job satisfaction, a sense of achievement and fulfilment from supporting students and making a positive difference in the world.  However, with a career spanning over 20 years in the higher education sector, my observations have led me to conclude that the human cost of this arrangement is now becoming untenable. 

Every day I meet staff who are burnt out and who are unable to do their work to the quality they would like to achieve because of workload and time pressures.  Every person I have talked to on campus recently identifies time as the main resource they lack to do their jobs effectively.  Not only is this demoralising and devaluing for staff, it is having a knock-on effect to RMIT's ability to achieve its strategic aims.  My own team's contribution to the University's strategy is entirely dependent on voluntary engagement by colleagues requiring time that they simply do not have.  My experience demonstrates that the problem is both structural and deep-rooted.  

Meanwhile the Executive simply refuses to acknowledge this, choosing to believe that the issue stems from individuals' own inability to prioritise tasks.  By making this an individual problem, the institution (as well as the wider sector) seeks to abdicate responsibility for structural change in favour of its human capital - upon which the entire higher education endeavour depends.  This position not only lacks credibility, it could be interpreted as gaslighting.

The problems faced by the RMIT workforce are mirrored in the wider sector.  It is a problem that is bigger than one institution.  However, RMIT, as one of the few dual sector institutions in Australia, has the opportunity to be a leading light in the sector: to work smarter towards rewarding goals where quality of output matters at least as much as the quantity, and where its people are truly empowered to deliver valuable and innovative contributions.  

It is for this that I join my comrades in industrial action this March. 

Mary Goodman

The table is everything

Nearly two years ago now, my therapist and I were exploring the world of difficult conversations and confrontations particularly in the context of professional relationships.

Although I didn’t think of myself as being someone who avoids difficult conversations, I had to admit that when I had some degree of responsibility or ongoing involvement in a situation, I would either avoid them like the plague, or become in turns aggressive or defensive, and sometimes both! I knew these were not productive behaviours but I didn’t seem able to interrupt the reaction long enough to change them. The damage was piling up. I was overwhelmed.

She told me this:

In every interaction with other people there is an imaginary table before you. When someone raises an issue, makes a demand, identifies a problem, offers you something, imagine this as an item they place on the table. Imagine the same for the things you raise, request, offer, or identify with others.

Someone may think they are passing responsibility for the issue to you but, like it or not, they have to place it on the table before you pick it up. If you don’t know the table is there, the tendency is for you to catch it to stop it from falling. But the table is there. Let things come to rest there a while and consider your choices: whether or not to pick them up, whether to examine them some more before deciding, whether to consider alternatives. There is always a choice.

It’s taken me a while to realise the value of the table. But it is everything! At first I thought it was just a way of temporarily stalling the inevitable. I realise I’ve been conditioned to see differences of opinion or perspective as battle-grounds. I was on a continuum of conflict – either fleeing for my life, digging in, or pressing the charge. The table transforms any encounter from a battle to a buffet. Now, rather than fighting an opponent for who has to take away the responsibility, you are conversing with a dinner companion, getting to pick from the items on the table, what you’re hungry for and what will be good for you, always acknowledging that some of the stuff you bring with you, you will be taking home again.

I’ve started mentally saying to myself: “there is a table” when I become aware of a potentially difficult conversation, or when one takes a turn for the difficult. I still forget about the table in these situations as many times as I remember it but the result, when I do remember, has been surprising to me.

It’s not the positive outcome of such encounters that surprises me. Sometimes the outcome is not a success in terms of what is agreed between parties. There are times when we leave the table with a problem still to solve. The surprising difference is in my attitude to the other parties. I have more space for empathy because they’re people offering a choice, not forcing a reaction. I have more space for finding a solution, finding the right words to communicate an idea, finding peace in my choices. I am free from the continuum of conflict for a time.

The table is everything!

Relational displacement

 Relational displacement

I sailed across the sea.

A fool,

Who clung to hope that

There might be a welcome

At the other end.

The smiling embrace of a friend, perhaps.

I dreamt a homecoming.

Not one which nailed down 

Time and space,

Or one, which 

Blood or earth defined,

But something like a sense 

That, while tomorrow here

Might next be there,

That's where we'd be - 

You and me. 

Constant motion; constant still.

I cast away with this in mind

And lived adrift 

For so long that the dream,

Playing over waves,

Made me sick.

I now no longer know.

Is this a trick?

I look down.

Somehow I came to be standing on the shore.

It doesn't seem so solid any more.

There you are!

Shall we begin?

But in your diary it seems

There's no space, no time

To fit me in.  

Next week maybe, you say, 

As you wave and walk away.

Mary Goodman 28/6/2013