Touch: Stories of Contact by South African Writers

TOUCH : STORIES OF CONTACT BY SOUTH AFRICAN WRITERS
Karina Magdalena Szczurek (Editor)
Zebra press, Cape Town. (Hardcover, 226 pages, Isbn 09 781 77022 046 1.)

This is a book that looks like it is worth reading – an investigation into the act of touching, through narrative.

Earlier this month Zebra Press published a collection of short stories by twenty-two of South Africa's best writers on the theme of 'touch'.

According to the publishers some of the stories remember lost love or intimate encounters; some deal with everyday and chance meetings that are in some way transformative; others deal with familial interactions; one or two explore the idea of 'staying in touch'.

All royalties will be donated to the Treatment Action Campaign.

Here follows a review of the book by well-known Afrikaans poet Joan Hambidge. It appeared in Die Burger on 27 July 2009.

Sterk kortverhale oor aanraking in al sy vorme vra vir herlees

Waarom moet ’n mens Touch, ’n versameling kortverhale onder redaksie van Karina Magdalena Szczurek, aanskaf?

Aanraking, en die afwesigheid daarvan, bepaal ons lot. Vir my was dit ’n besonderse leeservaring omdat dit die belangrikste aspekte van die kortverhaal bevestig.

Daar is onder meer verhale met ’n verrassende slot of wending:
André P. Brink se “Surprise Visit” is ’n gedronge verhaal waarin die konfrontasie met die moeder in ’n siekeboeg komplekse herinneringe aktiveer. Die misverstand oor die herkenning van die moeder, ’n verhaal gelade met oedipale spanninge, bring interessante per¬spektiewe na vore. Dis vintage-Brink, met fyn toespelings vir verdere naspeur en herlees.

Met die wete van die slot lees jy ook Emma van der Vliet se “Threesome” anders, omdat sy jou verwagting ten slotte ondermyn. Die driemanskap is nie seksueel nie, maar die vrou se ervaring van durende aanraking, naamlik die ervaring van moederskap.

Damon Galgut se “The Crossing” ondersoek die impak van ’n toevallige ontmoeting of aanraking. ’n Vrou op haar wittebrood het ’n gesprek met ’n vreemdeling.

In die terloopsheid van dié aanraking word die spanninge in haar huwelik uitgespeel: wou die man haar dalk besteel? Wat sou gebeur het as sy wel die oorvaart meegemaak het? Tentatiewe ontmoetings, huidige en afgelope verhoudings word saamgebring in haar gemoed. Die aksie, of die afwesigheid daarvan, verander haar lewe.

Die vreemdeling het verdrink. Sy gaan hom nooit weer sien nie, en in dié Katherine Mansfield-verhaal word die leser aan die binnespraak van ’n karakter voorgestel. (Dis ook belangrik dat mans in dié boek met groot gevoeligheid oor intiem vroulike emosies skryf.)

Imraan Coovadia se “File Under: Touch (Avoidance of, Writers); Love (Avoidance of, Writers). (1000 Words)” is ’n metarefleksiewe verhaal wat die struk- tuur van die opdragverhaal onder die loep neem met ’n Duisend en Een Nagte as ’n subteks.

Die verwisselbaarheid van karakters en hul universaliteit kom ter sprake, soos in Maureen Isaacson se verhaal waarin Tolstoi se Anna Karenina ’n interteks en romantiese toespeling is.

Nooit sal reis weer meegemaak word sonder die herinnering aan Ivan Vladislavic se “Lullaby” nie. Wat ’n verhaal! Die atmosfeer wat in dié verhaal opgeroep word, die uitbeelding van ruimte en die onafwendbare slot is so pakkend dat dit ’n mens se kop laat draai.

Die dood van ’n toeris op ’n reisbesoek, en die impak daarvan op sy ervaring van ’n vakansie en van die terugreis, aktiveer die boodskap van weerloosheid. ’n Moeder se wiegelied vir haar baba kry ’n groter, dwingende impak vir al die reisigers op die vlug wat onder hul babakombersies slaap.

Willemien Brümmer se “A Cat of Many Tales” skep besonderse atmosfeer; ’n inbeweeg in die “unheimliche”, nes die verhaal van Alistair Morgan, “Living Arrangements”. Laasgenoemde lewer fel politieke kommentaar op ons huidige situasie en die kwessie van haweloosheid.

Fokalisasie en perspektief kom knap aan bod in Michiel Heyns se “Long Perspectives”, waarin die hede en verlede gesinkopeer word.

Die verhaal speel af in ’n skoolbadkamer. Rondom ’n seksuele aanraking met ’n skolier kry die hoofkarakter perspektief op homself en ’n jeugmaat, nou die onderwyser in die skool. Twee wêrelde, twee perspektiewe, wat beklemtoon word deur die hoofkarakter se bril vol vingerafdrukke. (Waarom die voetnoot dat die omstrede gegewe fiktief is? Dis tog onnodig!)

Vanselfsprekend het elke kortverhaalskrywer ’n eie styl, maar in die algemeen is die kort en kragtige segging, die amper poëtiese aanslag, van hierdie subgenre algemeen bekend.

Die tema in dié boek is aanraking in al sy vorme. Die kort, kragtige impak van die kortverhaal waarin ’n situasie of konflik uitgebeeld word, is kenmerkend. Dit is ’n sterk versameling en die meeste verhale tref ’n mens so sekuur dat jy ’n blaaskans moet neem om eers ’n verhaal of vinjet te verteer.

Goeie kortverhale werk soos gedigte: jy lees ’n tweede, derde keer om ’n beeld se effek te verstaan: soos Mary Watson of Susan Mann by uitnemendheid vereis.

Al die verhale is nuut, behalwe vir Nadine Gordimer se bydrae, ’n wonderbaarlike verhaal waarin die leser uiteindelik moet besluit of die man werklik ontrou was. Ons weet egter dat net die vermoede die vrou se verhouding met hom verander het.

Interessant hoe mans (Brink, Johnny Steinberg) oor die moeder skryf. ’n Klein kragtoer is “Your Stop” van Byron Loker. Bekendes en bekroondes, minder bekendes en debutante, lewer boeiend verslag oor menswees: letterlike, simboliese of metafisiese aanraking.

Hoekom is daar net twee Afrikaanse skrywers in vertaling?

Die opbrengs gaan na die Treatment Action Campaign.

(Bronne: An Approach to Literature deur Cleanth Brooks et al. [Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1975]; Principles of a Story deur Raymond Carver: www.theshortstory.org.uk/downloads/Essay-Carver-3. pdf [oorspronklik in die New York Times Book Review, 1981].)

Massage and Embodiment

Article by Keith Eric Grant, PhD, NCTMB in Massage Today June, 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 06

Grant reflects on touch and the two best known paradigms of massage in the U.S. context namely massage for relaxation and massage as health care. (Despite legislation in South Africa attempting to bring all types of massage under the same umbrella, the same distinction exists here - EK)

He then discusses a third paradigm of massage that has an impact on the quality of body-sense or embodiment of the person, an approach that has been largely ignored "by those looking at massage as tissue-specific health care".

According to Grant, practising massage as sensory re-framing has no lack for material to draw from. He points to the work of:

• Maurice Merleau-Ponty who sets out a philosophical framework more than a half century ago
  

• Deane Juhan, best known as the author of Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork and

• Donald Bakal who lays the same stress on developing body awareness as a path to healing in his book Minding the Body: Clinical Uses of Somatic Awareness.

Read the full article at: http://www.massagetoday.com/mpacms/mt/article.php?id=13431

---

Emotional pain hurts more than physical pain, researchers say - Telegraph

Pain caused by emotional distress is more deeply felt and longer lasting than that caused by physical injuries, according to a new study.

In a finding that calls into question the old saying that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", psychologists used four experiments to discover how people get over emotional or physical pain.

In their paper "When Hurt Will Not Heal: Exploring the Capacity to Relive Social and Physical Pain", the authors propose recent discoveries suggesting social or emotional pain is as real and intense as physical pain.

The researchers asked participants to relive their past painful experiences by writing in detail what had happened and how they had felt.

In the first two studies, students were asked to relive both emotional and physical pain, answering a series of questions and then recalling in detail an experience of physical injury, or an experience of betrayal by a person who was close to them, or both.

Each experience was to have occurred in the previous five years.

The students were asked to note how long ago the event happened, how much it hurt at the time, how many times they had talked about the experience, and how painful the experience felt now.

Participants in the emotional pain condition reported higher levels of pain than participants in the physical pain condition, found the researchers from Purdue University in the US and Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

The students also reported less pain when they relived the experience than they had reported before writing the account.

In experiments three and four participants were given cognitive tasks with different levels of difficult after reliving a socially or physically painful event.

Again, those in the emotional pain condition performed worse than those thinking about physical injury.

One of the authors, Dr Kip Williams from Purdue, said: "While both types of pain can hurt very much at the time they occur, social pain has the unique ability to come back over and over again, whereas physical pain lingers only as an awareness that it was indeed at one time painful.

"Why aren't we always suffering pain by recollections of social betrayal and other forms of social pain? Because we are pretty good at keeping these memories at bay.

"We had to induce our participants to think about the details of the social painful event in order to get them to feel pain at the present. Merely saying, 'oh yeah, my boyfriend cheated on me once...' is insufficient to cause current pain. They have to steep themselves in the memory, and that's something we don't ordinarily do."

The results are published in the August 2008 issue of the journal Psychological Science

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2639959/Emotional-pain-hurts-more-than-physical-pain-researchers-say.html

Psychology of Pain
Created by Gary B. Rollman, Professor of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London
http://psychologyofpain.blogspot.com