an experience of inscribed collectivity mike gallant 090207

8/8/2019 An Experience of Inscribed Collectivity Mike Gallant 090207

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An experience of inscribed collectivity:the trace of a gendered journey (mid-point 17:10:2006

Bristol UK)

MIKE GALLANT

m i k e . g a l l a n t @ b r i s t o l . a c . u k

Fe br u a r y 2007


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An experience of inscribed collectivity

1

An experience of inscribed collectivity:the trace of a gendered journey (mid-point 17:10:2006

Bristol UK)

Abstract

This paper is an attempt, through text and other visual techniques, to convey

my own experience of taking part in a short collective biography workshop.

Through the experience of the workshop, subsequent reflection and diaries,

and through the use of writing as a methodology I have created a paper that

reflects my belief that inscribed within my body is my own local knowledge of

gender and, more importantly, intimate connection to other humans I

continue to consider how open these inscriptions are to adaptation,

development, conflation or abandonment.

This is a Rites of Passage story. After setting the context, I give a short

history of this Collective Biography, before exploring aspects of my personal

experience. I conclude by briefly considering the pain of inscription.


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Stuff and Non/sense

I am troubled and confused. Where to begin? Hesitate. Deep breath. My

God, this paper has been a challenge. My body feels tense right nowwhy

was it that yesterday, when I knew that I must finally put all my notes

together and create a text fit for my peers (and the academy), I inexplicably

pulled a muscle in my shoulder that makes it more painful to type? Why do I

know that the typing would in any case be painful? Why is my breathing

shallow breathing in this moment of introspection, of dialogue with my

selves?

Many questions; many answers:

1. A text fit my peers, I say in passing, and perhaps that is one crucial

aspect of this present writing: how to do justice to the shared

experience of others? Of course, this is no different to the prospect

of communicating any form of research that involves human beings

beyond myself. And yet that experience of Group C1 in conversation

and collaboration demands more maybe because it became so

essentially meaningful to me that I continue to hold it in aspic, to

watch it like the desired dessert whose sweetness can only be

savoured after the tedious main course. Im bloated by the vastness

of the main course of my life. I want no space to consume my just

desserts. And then there is a desperate fear that, while I look on, the


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experience may already be ossified, fit only for the mausoleum of

many group experiences.

2. I need to recognise that the subject matter of our collective

conversation (early experiences of gender) resonates with my

continuing personal experience of my daughters bullying at the hands

of older boys. There is a mouldering tanginess of disgust in the

passages of my head, and a pent up energy within these old bones. A

paradox of mildewed compost-bin history and lime pickle all in one

stumbling, continuous moment of life. I am part of this live political

experience. I am the Action Researcher in my own world. I wish to

make a difference.

3. I am afraid that I may not be able to make a difference. I am afraid

that this work today may not make a difference. I am afraid.

As Mikhail Bakhtin suggests, I become myself only by revealing myself to another,

through another and with anothers help. I cannot do without the other: I cannot become

myself without the other: I must find myself in the other, finding the other in me (in mutual

reflection and perception) (Todorov, 1984, p.96). And so it was, that in a

Gender-related stories I recognise from my own growing up experience - 1

it kind of irks me to see boys sit down unnecessarily. Stand tall and be proud. With alittle practice they can help extinguish a campfire because believe me, until you have experienced

that little gem you haven't really lived.

Jacks Shack, 2006


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significant manner I discovered more of myself, and others, in the clinical

spaces of bleached academic meeting rooms. The unbearable lightness of

being in spaces that add little sense of a historyat least, of a history that

reaches as far into the past as the stories that we shared. This in itself

impacted on the gelling of a collective who, though knowing each other,

knew nothing much of each other. Sue, Sophie, Malcolm, Mike and Christine

I salute us all!

A short history of this Collective Biography

A collective biography could simply be an expression describing the normal

method of constructing meaning within societies: we tell each other stories

of our personal experiences, and construct from this a shared understanding

of the world we inhabit. However, how we tell these stories is significant:

they may be communicated through spoken and non-verbal language in a

direct person-to-person experience, or they may be recorded (and

subsequently decoded by reader/observer) through written text or other

Gender-related stories I recognise from my own growing up experience 2

there was shame attached to being a girl in a boysworld, or a boy in a girls world. We have not yet had

time within the collective to tease out more about what itmeant to be a boy or a girl or multi-gendered.

Sue Dale (Collective Member), 2006


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recorded visual forms (e.g. cave painting, photography etc.). What has now

become known amongst qualitative researchers as Collective Biography uses

both these forms of discourse in an attempt to uncover lived experience and

throw light on unseen normative influences at work within societies2.

The very simplicity of the idea, in the sense that it directly replicates a

constructionist view of meaning making, is perhaps its strength. However,

the concept has no definition as such, having developed from the Memory-

Work of socialist-feminist researchers in Eastern Europe led by Frigga Haug

(Haug et al., 1987; Haug, 1992; Onyx & Small, 2001), who carried the concept

to Australia and into the hands of Bronwyn Davies and others (e.g. Davies &

Gannon, 2006). It was here that post-structuralism nurtured and re-shaped

this process of collective auto-ethnographic research whilst retaining the

centrality of gender as its primary subject matter.

The term, collective biography is useful because it both describes the method of

working with personal stories and the oxymoronic implication of the phrase

foregrounds the tension between the individual and the collective that is both the crux

of the method and the source of its dilemmas.

Gannon, quoted in Onyx & Small, 2001


You forgot to mention being able to write your name in the snow ;-)

Jacks Shack, 2006


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So it was that Jane Speedy (2006), in her work as a narrative therapist and

researcher, encountered the Collective Biography of Australian academia and

brought home the concept to colleagues and students in the Graduate School

of Education in Bristol. In this UK version of Collective Biography,

members of the research group (or collective) share personal stories of their

own experiences around a theme (in this case Explorations of Gender and Power).

These, or other, stories are then individually written before being

constructively critiqued by other members of the collective in a protocol

based around the techniques of Definitional Ceremony and Reflecting

Teamwork (White, 1995). At leastthat was the theory3.

In Australia the intensity of the Collective Biography process had been

heightened by the practice of holding residential workshops in the holiday

destination of Magnetic Island. These groups were always single gender,

continuing the feminist tradition of Frigga Haug and her colleagues. The

academically validated Collective Biography unit, from which this paper

results, appears to be the first attempt at work with a mixed-gender collective.

It also differed from previous Collective Biography workshops in the length

of time that the collective (in my own case, Group C) was physically together.

It was generally recognised by all participants that ten hours or less was

unlikely to be sufficient time to produce research results: it was hoped that

the experience would engender some understanding of the process, and offer

the chance of follow-up work should the collective choose.


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Collective Biography is not only story telling. Writing as a methodology for

research has long been recognised (e.g. Richardson, 1997, 2000; Richardson &

St. Pierre, 2005) and is central to the Collective Biography process. However,

although a protocol for the development of individually and collectively

written work has crystallised out from past experiences of collectives, for

many participants it seems that the simple presence ofour bodies together in a

particular place and timeis crucial to the process (Davies & Gannon, 2006,

p.118; see also Park, 2005). Susanne Gannon goes on; our collective writing

in cyberspace has been sustained by the deeply embodied experience of these bodies

together in that place(ibid., p.118).

This has been my personal experience of Collective Biography so farI find

myself pondering as to how long such a trauma (for that is a reasonable

description of my felt experience, despite its more normal negative

connotations) remains embodied.


When I was a child, I spake like a child,

I understood as a child, I thought as a child:

but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

(The Bible, `1 Corinthians 11)


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Shared experience in Collective Biography4

Journal Day 3Ive worked in many groups,therapeutic, training, definitionalceremony, supervisory, but thisgroup was different. Theexperience so profound is difficultto put into words. The differencebetween feeling a connectedindividual within a group of otherconnected individuals with varyinggroup dynamics, to what wentbeyond this description towardscollective experience. Thissomething held between uscreated a feeling deep within mybody as if these other storiesbecame embodied within myexperience. Hearing the storiesagain, becoming that giggling boyin the cupboard, the girl leftbehind crying dont go with(out)me the boaters on elastic andthe chest high elbows reminding

me that I dont belong hereanymore that small boy who wastoo big and who should have beena girl that invisible childashamed. There was for me asense of becoming multi-gendered.

The brutal betrayal of rippinghim/her apart, the bewilderment,the flatness. The movementtowards individual (ness) within a

group which hurts so much.Sharing these stories amongst awider audience needed for me tomove back into that same place ofcollective, but this time shift thestories into an older lessvulnerable place. I had becomefeeling invisible not belongingstill unfair in the cupboard alonein the rain.

Oh, what a surge of excitement as I read thisthat my own body is not mistaken in its feelings(though how can a body be mistaken in what itfeels?). Ive worked in many groups, early

encounter groups in the 1970s through to

facilitating therapeutic single gender groups andpersonal development groups for professionaltraining in counselling and psychotherapy.I too found the experience of Group Csomething beyond wordsso Ive freed myselffrom words and let myself create a picture toexpress this something that we speak about

deep in our bodies5. For now, as I write I cansurely feel that experience, and can touch somepart of you, Sue. And now Im feeling Malcolm

and the sun; now Christine, always upright,always held in tension, so perfectly book-learntChinese - and little girl so, so valued; I feel

water (where is that intervening image seepingfrom right now as I become aware of thistingling sensation of real living shootingthrough the physical body of mine?) and a duck

pool6in the courtyard square; and Josiesbudding breasts and confusion; and my ownlittle self, peeing up the shed wall as high as Ican, and then, yes, how could I ever be what

was demanded of me?7 To be a girl in the bodyof a boyto become multi-gendered.

As I sit for a moment, contemplating the brutal

betrayal I become aware that my left hand is

pulling my shirt and fleece clear away from mythroat. A constricted sense of being suffocated

by this demand to

belong? And this was an experience of

belongingand of keeping each other safe. Ofwalking away together to a place of lessconfusion, a place of growing autonomy, wherethe haunting memories of earlier childhood

were once more invisible. And yet, we (in somany ways an experienced group of adulteducators) did not have the immediateknowledge or experience of which way to turn.


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How I feel when I experience Group C

Figure 1. How do I feel when I experience Group C?


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A taste of ginger in Collective Biography8

Ginger helps on the boat -

A thin slice of fresh root held

between teeth and cheek

takes away a little of the rough passage

Twelve hours of tossing and turning

in my narrow cabin bunk -

bereaved

lost

such a precious time

together -

a delicious time

discovering each other and ourselves

like lovers

late adolescence tales

of drug-induced gladness in Australia, York

and ourselves

taking away the pain of earlier-year stories

told but yesterday

Green Claw over tea and toast

(1)Rebellion

(2)Revolution and then (3)

Revisionismand the banner swirls red-blood high

for just a few more moments

before the wind dies

Sick with the swell

and the rising and the yawling

I crawl to my notepad

the rhizome calling


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An experience ofCollective Biography10

After I read it out to you, you gave your first impressions - and I jotteddown some of the words and phrases that resonated with my ownexperience and added to it.

This is what I wrote:

Disappointment - feeling heavyfeeling sadchild in an adult world - not getting it

'Rain not as gentle' phrase v.poignant & sad

You were Too big - she was damaged - heavy/sad- cars punctuate events

embodiment senseraining running down awindow like tears streaming

Sense of responsibility down - lonelyfor nothing I had controlover - like the rain trapped like a feral

animalToo big - too small - animal skin of leather smell

This material should perhaps be the starting point for my contribution to the

Group C collective should we decide to pursue the issue of gender and

power through the method of Collective Biography.


It grew less to be like fucking,and more like making love

Al Stewart, Love Chronicles, 19699


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I recall the joy of really writing something that hit home in the pit of my

stomach; the pain of re-writing and the sense of validation as the collective,

each voice alone, agreed: my work was better for the immediacy, the

simplicity, the sheer uncluttered emotive phenomena of the first version (see

Appendix 2).

CB: THEY DID

IT THEIR WAY!To quote Davies, et al:

(2000 :19) this process is

not the warm fuzzy pursuitof empathy and The

questioning and challenging

of each others stories can

take on a ruthless

quality11

This was the way that

tutors broke the news to

the participants on the

Collective Biography

workshop at Toffsville Uni

last October no, there

would be no tree frogs in

Bristol because here in

the UK we can take the

strain and lap up the pain!

Well, that wasnt to be the

message the mad bolshies in

one caucus would take heed

of. They thought they knew

better! Three women and two

men (whoever heard of

mixing gender in Collective

Biography? therellalways be questions there

wont there?) played away

and claim to have done the

whole thing painlessly.

One member of the tear-away

gang, Mike Gallant, said

its all about involvement

and intimacy, caring and

contentment, its about the

paradoxes of

poststructuralist humanism

and a constructionist

worldview.Bollocks!, we say - if

its going to be proper

Collective Biography its

gotta hurt know what we

mean?

Have your say log on at

www.cb.getitright.co.uk to

tell the softy lefties that

socialism just aint like

that! Ask Frigga Haug!
http://www.cb.getitright.co.uk/http://www.cb.getitright.co.uk/


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Themes in our Collective Biography

Gender and Power

Mortal, invisible

Invincible [I think of this as Sues repeating theme]

In life inaccessible

hid from our eyes

Explorative

Shame

Physical hurting, confusion and aloneness

Group Process

You tell yours and I want to tell mine (experience)

Inexplicable connection

Possessiveness

Anger, defensiveness and xenophobia (other groups dont do it like us)


Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Rudyard Kipling, If12


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Plagiarism in Collective Biography13

>

> Back to the collective. Plgiarism (can't

even spell it!) is always a

> problem to me in that as I listen to

other peoples stories, they become

> part

> of my own story and it is very difficult

to separate me from them - does

> that make any sense? This unit is a

minefield of shared experience and

> I'm

> not sure that it would be right to take

out the collective stuff.

>

Sue Dale email 27:11:06 8:34

Yes, lets get back there! And the

sooner the better

I know that Im using your ideas and

even your wordsand I know that I

will sign a form saying that these are

all my own words except the ones

that arent though God only knows

where my words come from if they

dont come from you and youand

youand you

And yet, of course I know

(connaissance or savvy?) what

plagiarism isits not this.

This is my storyand this is your

storythis is the riparian zone14 that

is such a nutrient-rich area close to

the flowing waters of the river of my

world.

Although the material products of Collective Biography can be genuinely the

work of one author (for example, the writings of a member of the collective

who is collating their own experience of the collective), an explanation of

how the product came to its fruition (a requirement of an academic

assignment such as this) necessarily benefits from extensive quoting of the

written work (or other recorded communications verbal, non-verbal,

electronically mediated or immediately experienced) of other members of the

collective. In this collective method of writing it is the very process of

savouring (savoir) the text of others that creates, through the distanciation,

another hermeneutic cycle. This is not plagiarism.


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Conclusion on this Collective Biography

Feelings are embodied; texts are inscribed. On balance I believe that my

experience of gender and power has been both embodied (through primary

experience) and inscribed (through recontextualised media). Inscribing is the

more painful of the two processes, though most of the time I cant feel it.

George MacLeod described Iona as a "thin place" - only a tissue paper

separating the material from the spiritual. To spend some time in such a

historic and inspiring setting is to be open to challenge and the exploration

of new horizons.15

I have found another thin place it is a place I can carry with me into any

spaceit is a place where I own my understandingsa place where I thicken,

sprout, nurture and fertilizea thin place where I can touch you through

the tissue paper.


(Hanif) Kureishi made the interesting point that we

are no-longer shocked: It used to be not that long ago

that to shock was shocking, but that isnt the case anymore.

Now to shock is to conform and there doesnt seem to be

such a thing as normalcy if there was it would be shocking.

According to Kureishi, we all desire to be shocked,

and art finds that harder and harder to do now

that is why he wanted to get finished early enough to

get home in time to catch Big Brothers action of the day.

Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (2007)


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Notes

1. Group C was one third of the student and tutor participants of the October2006 Collective Biography Unit of the Bristol University EdD (Narrative Strand)

course. Meeting over two and a half days, the taught course contained

substantial input from tutors and students in addition to approximately ten

hours spent in the small group Collective Biography workshop on Explorations in

Gender and Power.

2. An essential feature of Collective Biography as a research method is that,

compared to other (qualitative and quantitative) techniques there is more

substantial creation of knowledge (savvy?) through a tight (in terms of time and

space) hermeneutical cycle. An interesting observation here, and one that aligns

Collective Biography with Western Scientific Knowledge (WSK) rather than

Traditional Knowledge (TK) (see, for example, Dods, 2004), is that in common

with modernist western society, written text is relied on as the dominant

producer ofsavoir(know how knowledge). Although the distanciation that this

produces may allow for a hermeneutical cycle that thickens understanding within

the Collective, this understanding may be mistaken for connaissance(know that,

true/false knowledge) by the reader of the research product who necessarily

experiences decontextualisation and recontextualisation within the context of

its reading (see, for example, Ricoeur 1998). This is perhaps an unavoidableaspect of communicating any research that uses the pathways and

dissemination techniques of WSK! It is a strength of Collective Biography as

part of the Grand Narrative of WSK.

3. Our tutors, Jane Speedy, Tim Bond and Malcolm Reed, set the rules for our

Collective Biography workshop before we began (see Appendix 1). In practice,

Group C discovered such delight in the story-telling aspects of the process, and

such a sense of immediacy in our first written work, that we ignored rules and

created an intimate group experience that perhaps led more towards personal

growth than a Collective Biography. I was happy to take such a rare opportunityto share intimate life experience, and to enjoy the feelings engendered. For us,

Collective Biography appeared to be about the outcomes suggested by Bronwyn

Davies and colleagues (2004) though without the ruthless qualities of

questioning and without the fuzzy empathy. Empathy was not what I, at least,

felt connection and intimacy describe my feelings more accurately. The

difference is certainly subtle!


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4. The left hand column is the work of Sue Dale - shared with the collective (by

email) November 2006. I have written a commentary of my reactions to her

words in the right hand column.

5. In 2002 I kept a Visual Diary (see, for example, Ganim & Fox, 1999) that

involved a daily meditation on a particular aspect of my experience before

translating the feeling of that experience into a visual piece of art. Since that

time I have occasionally used the technique to clarify my experience without the

use of language and/or text. I began the process on this occasion by writing the

question How do I feel when I experience Group C?. I meditated on this for

five to ten minutes and then created the image, first with an extravagant pencil

doodle and then using this series of shapes as a base for pastel colour.

6. I realised later that my embodied feeling of a pool in relation to reading Sues

words (which in turn related to Christines story) might have been prompted by

Christines own words (interestingly, I had altered pond to pool in the text as I

came to the end of the phrase, as the word pond didnt feel right): Once we start

telling, each story seems to lead to the next, one persons memories triggering anothers. There is

some laughter, but also distress and powerlessness in our stories and we lean in towards each

other as the telling and responding goes round. I talk of my senseof a gathering pool of stories

in the middle which connect us. After about an hour (by this time weve abandoned the bits of

paper with tasks and timings) we have a tea break and, slightly less connected, get back

together again to write a short piece each. I move my chair out of the tight circle and turn away

to writeothers do the same. Christine Bell (Collective Member), 2006.

7. Appendix 2 is the text of the story I wrote on the first day of the Collective

Biography Unit at Bristol on 16 th October 2006. It concerns my early experience

of being aware of my gender, and how I learnt that I was the wrong gender.

8. This interlude celebrates what has been termed the rhizomatic qualities of a

research methodology that includes writing on rather than writing up the

available data (see, for example, Amorim & Ryan, 2005).

9. The second album by Al Stewart received early notoriety for including the word "fucking" in

its title track, and reprinting the word on its inner gatefold sleeve for all to see. Shocking. The

controversy thus gained was probably useful in garnering sales of the record, but, truth to tell, it

overshadowed the real reason why 'Love Chronicles' was as vital to the student population of

1969 as Heinz beans, matches and marijuana. It was, and is, for the most part, a very fine

record. Accessed at http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/599 on 3rd

February 2007.

10.After an introduction to the theory and practice of Collective Biography work

the large group of the Collective Biography unit was split into three working
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/599http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/599


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collectives. I found myself in Group C. I was not aware of any particular choice

in the division of the large group. There was an initial period of extensive story

telling and conversation around the theme of my earliest experience of gender,

before we spent twenty to thirty minutes writing a story of an early experience of

gender (Appendix 2). We then read these stories to each other, one at a time,

giving limited feedback on our immediate cognitive and visceral reactions to

each others material. That evening I re-wrote the contemporaneous notes I had

made as the other members of the collective gave me their feedback on my own

story. It is that which is reproduced here as the starting point for this section.

11. This quote is from the Guidelines for Collective Biography given out to

participants as part of the pre-reading for the module (see Appendix 1).

12.The final two lines of If by Rudyard Kipling accessed onJanuary 20th 2007 at

http://www.allspirit.co.uk/kipling.html

13. The question of plagiarism was raised in email communications between

members of the collective. There was concern about matching the needs of the

assessment process of the University with the reality of the Collective Biography

process.

14. See Park, 2005.

15. I visited the island of Iona whilst travelling with my partner at the age of

seventeen and it made a lasting impression on me. The Iona community, based

at the Abbey church on the island (though now comprising members worldwide)

was founded in 1938 by the Rev George MacLeod, is an ecumenical Christian

community of men and women from different walks of life and different traditions in the

Christian church that is committed to seeking new ways of living the gospel of Jesus Christ in

today's world. Text is from http://www.iona.org.uk/abbey/main.htm accessed

on January 27th 2007.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htmhttp://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htmhttp://www.iona.org.uk/abbey/main.htmhttp://www.iona.org.uk/abbey/main.htmhttp://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htmhttp://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm


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White, Michael (1995) Re-Authoring Lives: Interviews and Essays. Adelaide: DulwichCentre Publications.
http://simonsmithandtheamazingdancingbear.blogspot.com/http://simonsmithandtheamazingdancingbear.blogspot.com/http://simonsmithandtheamazingdancingbear.blogspot.com/http://simonsmithandtheamazingdancingbear.blogspot.com/


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Appendix 1

Collective biography: Guidelines for producing collective biography within aworkshop context: (from Davies, et al, Qualitative Inquiry, June 2004)

A process of conjointly reading for meaning, underpinned by notions of the self

as verb, perpetually in process, shaped and shaping, rather than the self as noun.

The idea is to make visible the discourses through which we make meanings and

make selves, including the discourses informing the collective biography

workshop itself, not just those informing individuals in their daily/previous lives

1. generate stories on chosen themeeach one threading on to the last

2. tell stories, others listening carefullyprobing where necessary for further

images and details to support the imagined story in their own minds eye

3. to take off, in new directions with new stories noting linkages anddifferences.

4. repeat the process

5. after about an hour of this process, participants go off and write on this

theme by themselves for half an hour or so writing not only

autobiographically, but also with the aim of writing into the space that makes

discursive processes and practices transparent, ie: noticing the histories in

which they have been caught up (eg: as Europeans, moral beings, music

lovers, etcetc) and developing an explicit awareness of the constitutive

process of writing

Questions for listeners to ask of a first draft:

1. Is it plausible/does it ring true?2. Does it work for me?

3. Was it well remembered/clearly described?

4. Was there sufficient detail for listeners to imagine it?

5. Could listeners make sense/meaning of the story?

6. Were there clichs generalisations, value-laden pieces where sharper clearer

language might have been?

7. Have other details, memories, particularities come to mind during this process

that shed further/new/unexpected light on the story?

By removing the general, the vague, the unclear (as far as the collective

imagination goes) we are not trying to get closer to the real, but rather,exposing more of the discursive processes and imperatives that are at play

To quote Davies, et al: (2000:19) this process is not the warm fuzzy pursuit of

empathy and The questioning and challenging of each others stories can take

on a ruthless quality

This perhaps seems a little stark but the purpose is not to tell the original

storytellers story to their own personal satisfaction, it is to tell it in a way that

can be vividly imagined by others (for which sharply accurate and specific

reflections and questions from others are required)


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The writing thus becomes, itself, a self-conscious, reflexive, and

innovative act that seeks to avoid the repetition of well-practiced ways of

knowing and includes, instead, detailed, embodied memories (2004:372)

Davies, B. (2000a). A body of writing 1989-1999. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira

Press.

Bronwyn Davies, Jenny Browne, Susanne Gannon, Eileen Honan, Cath Laws,

Babette Mueller-Rockstroh, and Eva Bendix Petersen (2004) The Ambivalent

Practices of Reflexivity, in: Qualitative Inquiry, 10: 360 - 389.


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Appendix 2

Ive lost control. Im not who I thought I was. I was I was me. I was a child if I

was anything at all, and now Im not who I should be and theres even worse. But

Ill come to that later first things first.

It slipped out. My father speaking, you shouldve been a girl. One boy, one girl.

Maybe I looked aghast. A dumb pause. Hes speaking again, after your brother,

mum and I wanted one of each. He looks thoughtful for a moment, and now she

cant.

Blank silence. Im not understanding. I look up to his matter-of-fact face, curiosity

written in my young childs frown. She got so damaged having you, she cant have

anymore children - you were too big.

The shock, the momentary re-writing of a life so far. I am the guilty one, The one

who has taken away everything that my father and my mother want. How can I put

this right? I have to please them. They dont want me. I have to please them, the

doctor said it would be fineyou were a month overdue. But I wasnt listening

now. I was wondering how to make amends.

The car pulls up outside the school gates and I pull open the door. Its a boys

school. A boys preparatory school. Can I be prepared anymore? How to please my

parents, to be the girl they want but somehow cant have because of me?

My God! If Im not going to be a boy, perhaps I cant be part of this. The noise of

the slammed door.

The car pulls away, the engine gently moving things on. The exhaust still steaming in

the autumnal dampness. The leaves, perfect symmetrical figures, intense orange and

red, fallen on the tarmacnow marked with the tracks of tyres.

I become aware that the rain is not so gentle as I thought. The heavy drops are

tumbling on my life. I put my satchel over my head, the smell of comforting wet

leather closer to my face. I check in both directions and cross the road.

an experience of inscribed collectivity mike gallant 090207

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