ARRRRGH, or On Writing On People

I am terrified of writing about people.  Even in my journal, where I write without fear of being read - because, really, how many people can decipher my handwriting? - my descriptions of others are filled with scratched-out  lines and (maybe?)s and (I think)s and the occasional despairing ARRRGGH!

More specifically, I am terrified of getting people wrong.  Like the fear of dying, this is fear of a guaranteed fact - and therefore a fear both pointless and inescapable.  Obviously I will get it wrong.  Of course I will get it wrong.  Writing about people, to use an overwrought simile, is like trying to make a sketch of the entire earth by jumping up really high and drawing while you're in the air.  There's too much to cover in too little time, and you can never see nearly enough.

Or to put it another way: all I ever know about people is the tiny portion of themselves they show me, and even that is too much to write down.  So I have to choose fragments of detail from a fragment of a self.  It's like - here comes another simile - trying to write about the history of America when you only have information about the year 1823, and you can only write about people whose middle name begins with M, and you only have room to write two pages.  Hopelessly limited, in other words.

So there's no way to get it right, and that's terrifying.  These are real people with real feelings; I don't want to be wrong about them.  It gets even worse when I write outside my journal, because I try to write as though the people I write about will read anything I post with a critical, mistrustful eye.  I do this based on a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and one in which I had no intention whatsoever of being cruel or critical.  Being wrong, however you're wrong, can be as bad as being mean.  And I do hate being mean.  And I know I'm going to be wrong.

It's just overall hopeless, in other words.

But say that I try... When you write you turn people into characters.  And real people aren't characters any more than characters are real people.  This act of alchemy carries an intimidating sense of responsibility.  What kind of character do you turn them into?  What details do you pick and what shape do you give their personality?  How much room do you give them to breathe - how much do you let them speak for themselves, and how much do you let their bodies and their homes and their friends speak for them?  When do you let them use their own words, and when do you dive into guessing at their emotions?  If you can't get it right, how can you get it less wrong?



My great-great aunt drinks scotch and soda out of a Playboy glass.  She walks slowly around her house, muttering "I'm getting so damned old," but you'd never guess her real age - almost 90.  And, believe it or not, she still works full-time!  "People tell me I should stop working, and they're probably right," she says in a slyly subversive voice.  "But what would I do?  I don't play golf.  I don't play bridge.  I suppose I could do volunteer work, but I say, why not get paid for it?" She cackles and drinks more scotch.  Her niece told me that my great-great-aunt keeps her husband's ashes in a cabinet, so that when she gets angry at something she can open the door and yell at him, which makes her feel much better.

My great-great-aunt lives up a windy tree-lined road, on the edge of a golf course.  Her house is large and breezy, a gentle green on the outside and pale beige on the inside.  It's filled with Japanese paper screens and elegant artwork, plush pillows and soft colors and fresh flowers.  In an old woman's wavery voice, says she probably spends more money on flowers than on food - she just doesn't feel right if she doesn't have flowers in the house.  She walks slowly around her house, tidying up, arranging flowers and carefully slicing vegetables for dinner.

My great-great-aunt grew up herding cattle from a shetland pony, back when she was too small to ride a horse, in a windswept land where the winters dropped to thirty below.  Headstrong and independent, she later followed her sister out to Seattle, and she hated it.  "The weather was just awful," she said.  "The first day I got there it was beautiful," she said in an expressive voice, "the sunlight shining silvery off of everything.  And then I didn't see the sun for six months."  It just wouldn't do, so without the slightest idea how she'd make a living, she moved down to California.  Here the sun shines more often and the winters aren't so cold, and no cattle called her out into the cold.  Here she stayed.  As she walks slowly around her house, she looks out her wide windows at the blue sky and green grass, and she smiles, victorious.

My great-great-aunt goes to the farmer's market every friday morning for fresh local fruits and vegetables.  She walks slowly around her kitchen gathering together ingredients, and when I offer to help her she laughs. For dinner she makes broiled fish, smashed potatoes, fresh asparagus and a salad, served in a wooden bowl.  It's all very healthy, elegant, delicious, local.  Very California.

My great-great-aunt's bookshelves are impressively well-stocked: the guest bedroom alone features well-read copies of almost everything Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote, a lot of Salman Rushdie's work, some Milan Kundera, some Italo Calvino, lots of Toni Morrison, some Nin, some Mailer, a little Pynchon, and all of the James Bond books.  A massive dictionary sits on a stand near her reading chairs.

My great-great-aunt never went to college.  She left her frontier hometown when she was young and went to work at the naval shipyards. Later she worked at a jeweler's shop, then ran a drive-in restaurant, and now - at the age of almost 90 - she still works full-time in retail.  She's been a diligent, hard-working and focused woman all her life.

A raunchy spitfire?  An elegant matriarch? A determined sun-lover? A California foodie? An intellectual? A dedicated worker?

All these things, maybe, or none of these things.  And then I don't know a thing about her as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a grandmother.  I don't know what she was like when she was 15 or 50. I was with her for only half a day.  And I am audacious enough to want to write about her?

Even after an attempt at thorough fairness, I'm left with an inevitable lie of omission - and a niggling doubt.  What if these best-guesses, these attempts at accurate and generous and multi-layered portrayals, are just plain wrong?

It's terrifying.  It's just terrifying.

on dealing with mountains of data

Sorry, can't talk now, PIVOT TABLES ARE TRANSFORMING MY LIFE

also, blowing my mind.  I thought I was pretty good at Excel but I am just drowning here.  Ack I'm going to miss dinner

contrasts

I'm sitting in one of the reading rooms in Senate House library - an enormous, stone-clad tower in Central London - surrounded by worn wood shelves and dusty old art folios.  I like to work here because of the terrible wifi (which rather effectively discourages me from getting distracted) and the massive windows, which show off the gray skies about as well as anything can.  It's another chilly day, and from this window it looks like the trees are feeling rather windswept and rain is on its way.  In short, I am a long, long way from the islands!

And yet I am immersing myself in my endless pages of transcriptions - yes, I'm still working on this dang article, don't judge!  there's so much material and I'm so busy and so easily distracted and yes, okay, judge away.  I can almost feel the oppressive heat of a Manila summer and see palm-covered mountains rising out of the sea.

Almost.  But not quite.  It's still rather chilly.

I am hearing voices, though - not literally, as I've misplaced my headphones, but reading over the interviews is bringing up memories so vivid I'm almost looking over my shoulder to see if Ana or Anamaine or Bernice or Catherine is standing there.

I'd tell you more, but as you can see, I'm only up to the C's!  Much to do!

whoops

hello friends, and sorry... i was going to write a post about palawan last night or this morning, but then I decided to start reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  And then I was finishing it and crying like a baby, and to my surprise a post had not, meanwhile, written itself.  Shocking.

Anyway, I have two interviews this afternoon but maybe I'll get something up tonight?  i've run out of books for now, so that might help...

OH and I've got some free 5-minute calls to the states, apparently my phone company's reward for the massive amount of money i've thrown at them over the last month and a half.  If you want one, shoot me an email or facebook message and say when you're free.  if i call you it shouldn't cost you anything but your minutes.

so little time

i gots lots to say... what should I say first?

ya'll want political or personal? practical or purely useless?  short or incredibly long?  research update, or travel observations?  thoughtful and philosophical, or... not?  pictures?  prose?

or more talking about food?  i could definitely do more food.

see, even before the writing happens, there's this question - WHAT to write?  and it always seems like there's too few choices or way, way too many.

topics, narratives, doubts

did i pick the wrong topic?  can i possibly write about what i'm learning?

ok, ok, wrong question - I can certainly write about everything i'm learning.  and i'm going to.  that's already established.  but is a completely open question whether I will manage to write anything good, and that's where I have been worried.

it's not that my interviews haven't been interesting - quite, quite the contrary!  i will confess that I am not sure if OTHER people would (or will) find them as interesting as I am, but I think the women (and man) I've been talking to are absolutely fascinating people.  and they have really interesting and sometimes unexpected answers to the main question of my research - why did you become an activist, and why a woman's activist in particular.  there's definitely a lot to work with.

maybe too much, but it's not that my subject is too broad.  i mean, it is broad - I am talking to activists from a lot of different sectors and ideologies - but there are really basic consistencies in their experiences and stories that would make it not terribly difficult to focus within the subject.  and i could focus on just one person or group as a sort of anchor for my story.

and it's not that my choice of subject is completely arbitrary or anything.  youth activism, women's rights, the global south... those are all not-random topics, right?  and young activists in the philippines are in a fairly unique situation, with the strong history of militant activism that was inspired by martial rule that my generation never experienced.  so the question of what motivates youth activists for woman's rights in this country is not something i totally pulled out of a hat, you know.

and yet ever since I started my interviews i haver been troubled by this nagging fear that I did, indeed, choose the wrong topic.  and I shake it off and tell myself that as long as this stuff is still interesting to me, as long as I enjoy thinking about it and writing about it and reading about it, it will probably all work out.  but i'm not quite convincing myself.

here are the problems:

1. neutrality.  there is no way for me to be impartial on this subject.  i agree way too strongly with what these activists are working for to be able to really step back from the situation and give it a proper critical analysis.  i mean, i think it would be hard for any decent person to say "hmm i'm going to neutrally analyze human trafficking and maternal mortality and look at the pros and cons" but maybe somebody else could, and maybe they would do a better job on this project.

but then I think, would I really want to spend months working on a project I don't personally care about?  like... let's see... well, in the same sort of genre, i could write about development banks and the politics behind where money gets distributed.  i mean, i couldn't actually write about that, because I don't know anything about it and I think it sounds pretty boring, BUT if I were to write about it, I think I could consider both the benefits the money can be used for and the problems in distribution - balanced-like, you know?  but I can't consider the cons of dedicating your life to helping battered woman escape their abusive relationships or providing emergency medical care to teenage girls suffering complications from back-alley abortions.  I feel like I should, like at some point I have to, but I can't.

2.  context.  there is SO MUCH. starting with colonialism, you know?  and now this sounds like one of my lolo's stories - "well, first I was born..."  but then the marcos' and martial law and the first quarter storm and EDSA - and then after that the rejectionists and the reaffirmists, the soc-dems and dem-socs and nat-dems, the Catholic Church, the activist tradition at UP, the struggles of women and feminists within the nationalist/communist movement, the NPA today, the root causes of violence in Mindanao, the pressures causing women to work in call centers or as OFW or to seek foreign marriages... i mean, there's just no way.  I can't fit all of that in anything remotely a decent length without oversimplifying to a criminal extent.  so while my topic itself isn't necessarily too big, everything necessary to understand it... well, that's another story.

3.  general interest.  this is actually the big one.  and while I said above that my topic isn't pulled out of a hat, I think it might seem like it is.  i am trying to imagine writing about this for a mainstream audience, imagining a readership that while not antagonistic ('cuz that's no fun to think about) is, at the very least, very busy and distracted.  because aren't we all.  and the question I am stuck with is, why should they care? I know why I care, but personal curiosity certainly can't be generalized.  i could write on this subject for an activism-oriented publication, or for a global-south oriented organization - and maybe for a woman's rights organization, but probably not, but maybe that's just cynicism talking - and certainly for an academic publication where i'd pretty much assume the reader will be bored and only reading because they have to - but my point is that I haven't figured out how to frame the stories of these activists in a way that is of any evident interest to people who would not be interested to begin with.  except for pulling cheap tricks like starting with a dramatic hospital or street scene and then pulling a fake-out to focus on the activists instead of what they're fighting.  which i guess i might do but i would hope i could do better.

4.  narrative. i'd like to have some sort of arc that I can use to make my project seem less like an assortment of individuals and more like a part of some sort of pattern or story.  and i can pull a story out of these interviews... i can pull out lots of stories, in fact, and take my pick.  but none of them are very honest.

for instance:  after the fall of marcos, filipinos thought the need for activism was over, and now that the younger generation is seeing the problems still plaguing society and returning to activism - but through new, tech-savvy methods.  or: after the fall of marcos, activism - in the traditional, rallies-and-demonstrations sense - remained strong, but it is only now that modern technologies are distracting the youth and they are turning to weaker "armchair activism" and the social movements are flagging.

or: after the fall of marcos, the tradition of women's rights activism strongly linked to the communist movement began to go out of favor, and the new women's rights activists are more politically diverse - and young activists represent a wide range of views.  or they don't.  or forget history, i could just tell the story of how the new generation of activists is motivated by what they witness in others, not by their own experiences.  or i could say the opposite.

and they are all supported by the interviews i have.  what do I do?  how do i pick?  it feels very wrong to just choose my favorite - i should be trying to write something true, right?  but how do I stay honest to what i'm seeing and hearing when it's all too damn complicated?

that was long.  you don't care about this.  but it's what i've been spending a lot of time thinking about (although this hastily-written post probably doesn't seem like it - what can i say, i got four hours of sleep and walked about fifteen miles today, don't hate)

i am beginning to formulate a plan - i've been working on it for a while now.  i keep having interviews, focusing on my main topic, but also diving more deeply into a few of the issues women's rights activists are working on - specifically rep. health (and the bill thereof), sex ed (and the controversy over an education official's decision to incldue it in the schools), and VAW (and the law that was passed a while ago).  and in those discussion talk not only about what youth activists are doing/thinking, but what trends they observe in their peers.  and then also talk to some non-activists (which i have already done a little bit).

i still feel like it will take some squeezing to make a coherant story out of it - but i'll wait and see.  so far there are some definite patterns in what i've been hearing on the subjects.

what would those stories look like?  youth activists try to motivate their peers - who support the RH bill but are not very vocal about it - into pressuring politicians to support it.  (problems with this story... i'm not quite sure yet if youth activists actually are working to mobilize their peers.  they don't bring it up unless i ask about it - obviously problematic).  or: young people, with new sexual practices (in call centers) as well as old ones (young pregnancies) have a high demand for sex ed, which is being denied them by the cath. church and gov't.  as the gov't pressures the education ministry to go back on its plans to teach sex ed in elementary schools, young volunteers both petition for sex ed in schools and provide it on the streets themselves thru various youth RH groups.  (this one has some serious class issues - access to contraceptives and info is readily available for the middle class, not for the lower classes.  but middle class kids are the ones who are more comfortable talking about sex - and therefore, i am thinking (need to hear more about it) more likely to actually petition for sex ed).  or: while the phils have a long tradition of silence about abuse within families (b/c of the shame it brings on a family to discuss it) young women who have experienced abuse themselves are fighting to educate their peers to help end the culture of silence.  (sounds good, huh?  pity it's way more complicated than that).

anyway.  those are my working ideas.  my strategy right now is in my interviews, after asking about motivations (and talking for like an hour), i throw out - "so, how bout that RH bill?"  i try to keep the questions open-ended at first (to avoid just completely making up a story) but after a while push a little more on the intergenerational question.  repeat this for a few more weeks and then look over it all and see if a less-troubled, more-true story pops out at me.

not sure if that's what i should be doing, though.  this is all rather new to me.  and rather overwhelming.

good thing it's also really interesting!

AHHHH I NEED TO SLEEP