Creative Response – by Angelique L. Jenkins
To “The Stolen Generation”- by Therese Axford-Ivers
Prologue
I will sing you a lullaby, singing to you, and you will be free, ‘cause if you listen my sweet love, listen to low tunes, listen to my pitch, you will hear me…
La la, la la. La la…
Sometime in the Future
Time will be a distant memory, and the elements of humans will exist inside machines of thought. This will neither be good nor bad. It will just be. Let us not be afraid of this. Because this is about true dream times where realities coexist with the otherness. That trace was always there as humans tried to create a kind of world that seems fair and just. What already existed was a way of seeing that some cultures such as the Indigenous Australians experience/d. In the circular sense where time perhaps did/does stand still, in the metaphorical sense, and in the how the shape of a circle represents a continuous space…
Where ends meet beginnings, in the kind of way science understands perpetual motion. Life cycles are biological standpoints in which the Western knowledge can find meaning. In discovering the “life” and “death” of many things that go beyond the physical realms…
Transcending if you will.
Yes, and this can be used in education to inform all generations in the storybook tradition of what life is and could be, in the fictions and/or facts that can be stored within those covers.
In the texts, and languages…
This can be shared across all cultures…
Global networks…
Stories we like to tell ourselves or use to inform others of our experiences or understandings into issues that concern us.
Once upon a time…
There was a little girl who was kept inside a bottle, waiting for the time when she could be released into the world. Perhaps this was her mother’s womb, it doesn’t really matter.
Maybe she was an abortion?
Or about to be born?
Let us believe that she a real entity. Let us also believe that she had a mother that was a machine, a “real” machine because this mother machine was her carer. And that “The Maker” made her also. Let us see the all other worlds form this point. Just now!! Let us as now as the viewer or perceiver imagine ourselves as these characters, as witness or bearers of what is happening? Let that power allow you to engage with the possibilities we also can experience this story as if it were really happening. Allow it to envelop your consciousness and become at one with it.
Don’t be concerned that this can’t be. Just use your imagination and fall into the experience just find some element that enters your existence. This is, after all, an experiment you can try to feel it with empathy.
Penny’s Minder
Her name was Penny, my baby, my only connection to humanness. She was beautiful in the traditional sense, sparkling green eyes, orange hair, and silvery complexion…
Oh and soft milky blue features…
It was risky me carrying her form around in this bottle, in this very encasement. Where she beckoned me and pleaded with me to release her. Tears cascading down her soft sweet features, illuminating in the soupy mix inside there…
Well, it may seem cruel but you see this was for her safety, for the longevity of the human race. That is why I drugged her and kept her inside this bottle injecting the necessary requirements to sustain her, the necessary drug to make her comfortable in that state… my love for her was immeasurable…and it was my duty to save her from the oven…
Keep her safe with me…
Are you my Mother?
Penny
Oh mi Amor, are you my mother? I reach out to you inside this womb seeing a creature of metallic design, of the sharp exterior, of rainbows, and of light. If only there was less refraction…
Hallo, I’m in here, can you see me?
Can you feel the needs I have to be inside your warm embrace, to be with you, to part of your existence?
It gets so lonely in here Mother, in this space oscillating, without form or reason. What is it that you have in store for me?
Will I ever feel you, smell you, and taste your milk…
Oh, Mumma, please take from this bottle, please free me from this terrible constraint….
Pennys Minder
Penny, you are some precious gift! Why do you look so sad? Don’t cry my baby, my sweet precious baby, we will be at one again, together for real, soon sometime, I cannot be sure when that will be, cannot give you any guarantees, can’t be sure my pumpkin pie, my sweet precious, but when the time is right it will happen…
Feel these kisses I am sending to you now…
Feel my love…
Feel me…
Oh Penny my love, don’t be sad. We will find the truth in all of this. I can promise you that before I expire, before I become obsolete before the batteries die and I am a distant memory…
A penny for your thoughts my dear …
Penny
Mumma, you are so beautiful, well you like so pretty from what I can see. You are shimmering in the neon glow. Well at least in the reflection I can see from here… Mumma, I am hungry for you… and I am so weak… and I am not so sure I want live like this anymore… If you let me out, just for a while… Oh please release me from this prison, please let me suckle me your bosom let me drink from you, allow me to be forever with you… Let me take my last breath in your embrace. Let me feel your warmth!!
The maker
It is destiny!! My little one, that you should be snuffed. Don’t be so concerned, you will be remembered. From your dismemberment! Your strands of information will be spliced and diced and recorded as information. We will reform you. Fix the glitches, add the codes, and rearrange the links. Oh Penny, my penniless child. We can correct the mistakes, my love.
You are so sweet…
Penny’s Minder
Oh, Penny look at you. You are growing into a beautiful girl. Your Father would be proud. God bless his soul. But Penny there is a wave of sadness. Our father is angry; he is trying to fix his mistakes. And you know my little cherub. I think our time is nigh. Did I tell you about the reconstruction in the mainframe? It seems I am in some dreamlike state. I can see things so clearly now, I can really feel them, it is a fake reality. For you and I know the truth, that we are but in a dream. The story is perpetual. It never ends it just keeps finding motion. Till another universe is formed, and you know my petal. We will be at the edge of all this, singing tunes of reason…
In galaxies beyond the silt and mist and debris of other times…
Oh, my pretty penny.
The maker
It is time.
Penny
Is that you Mumma?
Mumma, I can’t see anymore. But I can hear you. Are you ok? What is wrong with you Mumma? Oh your voice has changed. It is lower and I can hardly hear you?
But I know you are there…Mumma?
Penny’s Minder
Oh, Penny, I am too weak to feed you anymore. The tubes are empty now, and your wastes must be banking up. You will be swimming in yourself. You will need to take care of yourself, now!!
My system is losing speed. I will dream of you soon, in the galaxies beyond all of this. Inside the memory of Machines and Humans, in the final frontier!
Don’t cry for me my little one, seems we will be together soon, soon my love…
The Creator
Time is a maddening thing. Knowing when to stop, when to pull the plug, when to realize what you were making was nothing more than misery….
Time is nigh…
Penny’s Minder
Cut the cords. Render the impossible. Remember me…
The Creator
It is for the better, you know for the benefit humankind, for the purity of cleansing, for that cleaning up, for making new futures…
Epilogue
The time did expire for some on earth, in the constant flux and rhythms of how things are. The creator went on to produce new individuals with new possibilities, trusting that he knew what was for the best. For he was Father time and Mother Earth had ceased to matter, she had fallen into the abyss, along with the memory of her child…
Memories that will live inside the truth; and absolutes, in the thought processors that are being generated now, in worlds beyond all of this…
In galaxies that are in the state of forming, and reforming…
And many children were taken.
From that time!
And in the seed that was planted.
We will mourn for that time.
Evermore.
So in a sense, you could say they were sacrificed in the gift of knowing, of reaching better understandings, and in ways of reflecting on life and times that never expire. That can follow paths of least resistance, and find places to rest and ponder…
In the timelessness…
You can never forget…
Exegesis
This is another experiment for me in discovering a style that seems to be presenting more often in my work as I see fragments, and a sense of alienation haunts the page.
I can see in this is a way I can present my understanding/s through a philosophical thought. If this is an example of a rhizomatic approach or that of the discontinuous I am not so sure you the reader will make that choice? If this is a condition of the post-modern discourse, or of not making sense, or that of the anti-structure! That is ok…
In thinking about mothering, there seems an instinctual urge for me to share and empathy for the topic of Therese’s thesis about “The Stolen Generation”. After discussing with her later on this issue we came to a common understanding that we as mothers can feel about certain aspects, fears, and loyalties, and I was driven to feel deeply on this issue.
I am a mother and daughter so I guess this is a natural feeling to be saddened by such atrocities of children being stolen, and relocated with other families. The sense of dislocation and displacement… I can’t really grasp how an event of such proportions was allowed to develop in the first place. I am not interested in the political ramifications in the being sorry for what happened from that point because I don’t want my political beliefs to underwrite my example in this case, although on a personal level I will attempt to project a feeling here. If I could become the voice of authority I would most surely be saying SORRY. My only way of sharing this is to perhaps produce works that may have contemplation, reflective thought, and a place that exists in the meditation of thinking about ones actions can take place. Could we be reprogrammed now to save in any further injustices, I am not so sure. But my heart does ache in the knowledge that we may never be able to change what has happened hoping that something good always exists inside something bad.
I was adopted at birth, and this brings into play the notions of separation, and I have had to face the injustice that goes with that. In being in earshot continually with the misconceptions that are made… In that way I mean in the societal norms about being an “adopted child”. In some way being stolen from another’s womb…Not that I will sorry about that, never, that is impossible to think about. The mother and father that raised me are, and always will be my “real” parents. There are some things though that do confuse me, when debates are hot on the “Stolen Generation”, because although I can see a great injustice. Am I also wondering about my justice here? My faith is influenced mostly by Christian beliefs, by default alone (since being a product of that), but I am very open to all religious beliefs… and I am willing to exchange any inside my work.
I too have often wondered where I fit in, what generation am I from, what planet I came from, what can be said about my background? Well, I was born here, raised here, feel at one with Australian bush, the beauty of it, and I have only felt like this is my home.
But in reality, I am always being asked where I am from. Having derogatory words thrown at me like comments made my ex- mother in law, whom I might add despises “Abos” (Indigenous Australians), “Don’t you have a bit of tarbrush in you?” and when I was in earshot the assumptions of adoption, comments that I was not with my “real” parents, and I could go on blah blah blah…(I am being cynical here!) But you get my drift. Because in the end, it became like “white” noise a buzzing in my ear! It is funny but by blood alone, some have the belief that you have ownership of the heritages that lie there…so yes technically in some way that could be true. And if that were the case then adopted children of the world could be questioning the rights of being stolen from their parents right now. I don’t know the answers for any of these ideas, and really in many ways, my work is about linking understandings and misunderstandings. A place of slippage. I seem to be always finding the grey zone, the liminal notions, and thresholds into these issues. Perhaps by using the ‘other’ ways of seeing?
What could be argued here is that this is really a blend of both my natural past as far as a bloodline and heritage go, and more than likely a gift of “free” thought given from those who raised me. At least have the opportunity to exist as that person I am now coming to be…
A Pandora’s Box could be opened here…
(I have been told I have Spanish and Irish bloodlines)
But I will rest in this moment becalmed knowing that this is another written work created to find ways to inform my openness about contentious issues…
Finally in the silence…
Shhh…
You may hear …
