Tipping Point
The conversation went on to consider the connection between insanity and hardship. Could Sandy have avoided her illness if she had not had such a troubled childhood?
“Your descriptions of Friday nights in your parents’ home were horrific!”
The colloquy wandered. The women examined the impact of domestic violence on Sandy’ life and how difficult that made her relationship with her mother. They discussed victim-blaming and how difficult it was for any-one who had not experienced domestic violence to understand why Sandy’s mother returned to the man who beat her so savagely.
Of course, that led to discussion of the sexism in Australian society. Annie remembered the double standard that had enraged Cara – the appalling attitude of the boys.
“Why are we so surprised by victim-blaming when it happens all the time for women?” Bonnie was adamant, angry. “If a woman is raped it must be her fault, right? Look at what Sandy said about mothers being blamed for mental illness. Being a mother earns you little respect these days, but it’s all your fault if there’s something wrong with your child.”
“It’s another book about mother issues, isn’t it!” Essy suddenly exclaimed. “First Doris Lessing; now Sandy Jeffs!”
Sandy laughed. “Thanks for putting me in the same sentence as Doris Lessing!”
The conversation became intense as women raised parts of the book that had especially spoken to them.
“That stuff you said about wanting a peaceful world at all costs and looking for someone who would mother you, seems really familiar to me. Maybe they’re common experiences,” observed Essy.
“What you said about feeling sanest in natural surroundings really resonates for me,” said Cora. “I’m always most comfortable when I’m in the bush.”
“I don’t think I’d have had the strength to be as positive as you are. That quote Andrew Denton mentions in the Foreword: ‘We may never understand what makes us mad but we can seek to understand what makes us well.’ That’s inspirational stuff!” said Bonnie.
“There was one bit that really grabbed me.” Annie picked up a nearby copy of the book and leafed through, fortunately finding the quote she sought without too much delay. “ ‘Our society has its own unruly madness: an economic system based on the fantasy of infinite growth, an escalating paranoia about terrorism that threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, the systematic destruction of the environment we all depend upon. The world that labels some of us mad and lacking insight sometimes seems to be itself living in its own metapsychosis.’ That’s probably the part of the book that touched me most deeply. On-going destruction in the name of profit is the most obscene insanity I know of.”
As they continued to talk, Annie looked at the plates that had been so lovingly placed on the table when the evening began. Crumbs remained where a cake had been; pots of dip were almost empty; the cheese had been reduced to a final sliver that every-one was too polite to eat. Bonnie offered tea and coffee to her guests and the evening meandered to a close.
As the women began to clean up, considerately tripping over each other in the kitchen, Annie was able to talk briefly with Sandy.
“I wanted to ask you something about the voices.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“What I want to know is how your voices are different to mine.” Annie could not bring herself to describe her voices in their full glory. “I often have an internal monologue; I’ll find myself saying, “Stupid bitch” when I do something I’m not happy with. How is that different to the voices you experience?”
“Did you hear how you described it?” replied Sandy. “You know that the voice is your voice. When my voices speak, it’s like there’s another person in the room talking – the voice comes from outside me and is very real to me. Sometimes I’m surprised that other people can’t hear them too.”
“I remember you saying that in the book. I’m trying to understand it. But the voices in my head won’t shut up. I can’t seem to control them.” Annie turned ideas over in her mind, trying to find the right words. “I suppose what I’m trying to do is understand the nature of psychosis – what are the voices? I can’t help but wonder whether my voices and yours aren’t from the same source, essentially the same thing. Only in your case they’ve been exaggerated and made more real by your illness.”
“That might be so, but my voices are different to yours,” replied Sandy. “Do you think it’s someone other than you doing the talking?”
“No.” Not really.
“Then you’re not mad, are you?”
Later, when she had returned home and was wearily cleaning her teeth and preparing to sleep, Annie gazed at her face in the mirror.
“So, if I’m not mad, what am I? A prophet?” She wondered if, perhaps, some of the prophets of the past hadn’t been a little crazy. But people saw the good in them and accepted that prophecy came with a price.
Although, not all prophets were benign. Some had been warriors, consumed by lust for battle. They had been successful too, and sowed their genetic inheritance in aggressive dominance, tribal loyalties and blood feuds. And greed.
And some who may actually have been prophets were simply deemed mad, and driven from society.
“What voices drove those people to act as they did?” wondered Annie. An image of a hermit in a cave flooded into her mind. The clothes were ragged and unclean, barely warming the neglected wretch they covered. When it began to rain the hermit left the rude cave and stood, body slick with the rain, eyes cast upwards and laughing with joy.
Annie shivered. “That way madness lies,” she told Spud, who bustled about his business away from the back door where Annie stood, gazing up at the night sky before retiring. She breathed the vast peace of the jewelled sky, smiling to see the Southern Cross riding high.
“This home of ours is a beautiful place, isn’t it Spud?”
The dog trotted up and nudged at her hand, licking when he thought he could get away with it.
“Ah! Dog spit. Ya filthy beast,” she said lovingly, reaching down to hug and pat, scratching his chest.
Before she lay down to sleep, Annie checked the door to the spare room. Yes, properly shut, clicked into place. Won’t open.
It was a bad day.
She woke to snarling, digging and the guttural hiss of an angry wombat.
How on earth did that door get open? It took an effort to remove Spud and lock him in another room. When she returned to the spare room the wombat had moved to another spot under the house; she was able to replace the floorboards that had been dislodged and led to the heated exchange between beasts.
Work was exhausting and frustrating, but the worst part of the day was probably the dead cockatoos.
“Catalyst” was a favourite program for Annie. She liked to keep up-to-date with the scientific world, but tonight’s program was stirring up her fear for the future.
“Health of Australia, my eye,” muttered Annie.
The credentials of the scientific equipment measuring climate were established. The program wanted to make it clear that their “100 year health check” was credible. Data was explained. Temperature was measured and presented graphically. There were records of snow depth and flooding. Overall, temperatures in Australia had risen by over one degree in the last hundred years.
Summarized like that it didn’t sound so bad. The devil was in the detail. There was less snow because the Spring thaw was coming earlier; flowering and animal events were also occurring about two weeks earlier than the records predicted.
A seventeen centimetre rise had been measured in ocean levels – the exponential increase in flooding demonstrated in the historical records was explained. A ten centimetre rise meant three times the flooding; the next ten centimetres led to nine times the flooding; the next ten would see flooding events increase twenty-seven-fold.
Most of the overall warming had occurred in the last twe
nty years. But when they described the record temperatures and their effects, Annie was horrified: a flock of endangered Carnaby’s cockatoos falling from the sky in Perth, dead. Photos of a budgie flock that had died, now just a shimmering, feathered stain on the earth.
Annie already knew, before the scientific evidence was produced, that the south of Australia was drier than it had been. Years of drought had rubbed that in. She was surprised to hear, though, that since February 1985 there had been 330 months in a row of record temperatures. The chance that this was simply due to “natural” causes was 100,000 to one.
She had not heard about the five month hot ocean event that killed coral off the Western Australian coast and drove whale sharks from their usual territory near Ningaloo Reef, all the way to Albany in the south, seeking cooler water where the ocean stretched all the way to Antarctica.
“It’s here, in our backyards already,” Jonica told the camera, an intense seriousness in her voice. “It’s pointless now to ask is this climate change or natural variability.”
And then she expressed her concern at the results the program had presented. “Every weather system is now about a degree warmer, and when you go off and do the physics that’s actually a hell of a lot of energy added to the system in general.
“One degree of extra heat across the whole planet – that’s a lot of new energy in the weather system.” The program ended on a note of sombre questioning. “What happens when you add another degree . . . and another?”
When she turned off the TV, Annie could still see the images of coastal flooding; she could not rid her eyes of the images of birds falling from the sky, killed by heat.
“What are we doing?” she asked. Spud came over and placed his head on her knee, looking into her face, trying to comfort her distress.
As she worked through her days, Annie’s sense of wrongness was becoming sharper. Her voices would not stop or leave her alone.
At work: You shouldn’t use the photocopier.
At home: Why do you buy so much packaged food?
In the car: Too many resources are used in unnecessary cars. There should be better public transport. Fossil fuels are killing us!
Most days ended in exhaustion; not from work, but from battling to continue living in a society that relied on the products of environmental vandalism. She was surrounded by wasted resources, excessive packaging, rampant energy consumption and a media constantly telling her to buy more; consume more!
Am I the only person who sees this? she wondered. Annie was troubled.
A wise friend had once advised that the best way to deal with fear is to act. When a noise startled her at night she would get up and investigate, Spud at her side, and return to bed reassured and able to sleep.
This was not a fear faced so easily. Rather than going to investigate, Annie wanted to run into the street crying despair. “We’re all gonna die!” she could hear herself yelling. “The planet’s gonna dry up and burn! We’re all going to die.”
Was this madness? Annie had always believed that every-one had crazy thoughts – except they didn’t act on them. The main effect of her voices had been to influence her choices in an attempt to live sustainably and ethically. No-one had labelled that insane – yet.
“That’s the difference, isn’t it? As long as you act sane, you are.” But somehow doing nothing - not running into the street to scream warnings of impending disaster – somehow that seemed crazier.
Is this how the prophets felt?
“Oh, for crying out loud, Spud! Who do I think I am, anyway? How can I make a difference where better people have failed. I’m just one person. No-one special! Why do I keep feeling as though it’s up to me? As though I have to do something!”
The tears surprised Annie. She had answered her voices with her best excuse, and found herself faced with her own powerlessness. There was nothing she could do to save the world. She sat on the couch and wept. Spud rattled over to her and sat so that his body was leaning against the couch and her leg. He rested his head on her knee and looked up compassionately.
Annie leaned over and hugged him. “You don’t care if I’m crazy, do you, Spud?”
Chapter Four: The Beach
Driving through Melbourne was always the most difficult part. Roads swarmed with cars and trucks. The fumes from thousands of infernal combustion engines soured the air. Concrete had infected the landscape, covering the fertile earth with harsh, angular buildings that offended Annie’s eyes. Her voices had a field day.
Why are there so many people on the roads? Look at that! Almost all the cars have only one person in them. Why aren’t they using public transport? What am I doing here with them, driving us to destruction?
A truck carrying strawberries from Queensland! Why? What’s wrong with the local produce? Extensions to the freeway! The government should be expanding public transport instead.
Annie kept focussing on the road, trying to ignore the constant, nagging drone. The traffic jam in Geelong didn’t help. You’re wasting the earth’s resources frivolously. You should have stayed home! But when they reached the stretch of road leading to Anglesea, all thought was blown away by the ocean view. She pulled the car onto the side of the road, allowing herself to feast on the sight.
In the back of the car, Spud became restless.
“Okay mate. We’ll find a place to stop – a bit of lunch would go down well,” said Annie as she pulled back onto the road. “Won’t be long now.”
His routine was always the same when they first came down to the beach. He would hoon around madly, chasing seagulls if he could find them. Then he would rush into the ocean, stopping abruptly when the water covered his chest.
Standing in the waves, he would bark at them and bite them as they broke on his head. Between waves, or in a calm sea, he would lower his head below the water, looking at the bottom if he could.
When Annie walked into the water to swim his barking would become frenzied. He would lurch forward then frantically scrabble back to where his feet remained on a firm surface. Then he would bark, and bark, and bark, “Come back! It’s not safe out there!”
But after twenty or thirty long seconds, he stopped, whether or not Annie yelled at him. He would go to where the waves spent the last of their energy and sit, eyes riveted on Annie, whining softly.
“How can a dog who loves water so much be so afraid to swim?” He was already five months old when he had turned up on her doorstep; it must have been ten years ago, now. “What did happen to you back then, eh, boy?”
Instead of walking straight back to the campsite, Annie took a detour, strolling along the bluff that bracketed the beach. Beside the track Annie saw a plastic bag, billowing where it had caught on a shrub. It meant detouring to reach the bag, but Annie knew it was necessary. Her voices would allow no other action.
Some animal will choke on that! It will wash into the waterway and strangle fish. It will break up and birds will feed it to their chicks. It will join the raft of debris in the middle of the ocean, another small straw in the pollution that will break the Earth’s back!
From a rough lookout she could see across the beach. Gulls hovered over the water as it surged into a wave.
The swell had picked up now, and perfect crystal cylinders were arcing across the water. She watched the waves break across the sandbar then rush to shore in a flood of foam. Further out the tubes rushed across the waves, meeting in the middle.
Try as she might, Annie could not watch one wave from both ends, following until the inevitable meeting in the middle. She had to content herself with absorbing as much as was possible. As always, she was awed by the beauty that sang on the wind, the distant throb and crash of the surf, the birds that fluttered and hopped, whistling and chirping, adding their note to the symphony.
When she returned to the campsite, Annie picked up a pen and wrote:
I am the observer
?
??God” is the wave
I can see only
One
Part of the wave
Breaking over a perfect arc
For the length of the beach
A wave is poised
Then it begins to break in three or four
Different places -
I can watch only
One.
Whatever forces led to
That perfect wave
And the one that followed
They have earned our praise.
We are a product
Of the shaping of our environment
“God” made us.
It is easy to see
The metaphor in religion -
I do not worship my environment
But I glory in its beauty.
I am
Deeply grateful
For my existence
And it is not allegory
To see the carbon that was stored
By this environment –
“Mother Earth”
A small blue spot in the infinity of space –
Carbon laid down
As coal and oil “reserves”
Toxic dumps
Set up by
Mother Earth.
We have plundered them to our peril.
We have challenged the wisdom of God
Opened Pandora’s Box
But the beach remains
So far . . .
“Well,” she said, when the poem was done, “maybe I still have something in me worth saying!”
Spud strolled over and leaned into her knee.
Two days before Australia Day, when Annie gave Spud his daily brush, she noticed a lump in his throat.
“That’s not right. You’re going to have to see the vet tomorrow.”
Spud always enjoyed a trip in the car, but he was a little miffed with her when they arrived at the vet’s. The smells there were good and he liked the treats that Ben gave him as they were ushered into an examination room. But it was the vet’s, and he was a dog.
“It seems a bit bigger than it was when I noticed it yesterday,” offered Annie, holding Spud so that Ben could examine him.
“He seems quite healthy, but the lump is a worry,” said the vet. “I’ll need to sedate him to see it properly. It’s probably an abscess.”