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Published on April 20th, 2013 | by admin
In September 2011 Nicola interviewed the author and activist, Isabel Allende, for The Ancestral Continuum. She gave generously of her time as she talked about her childhood, the inspirations for her books, and the loss of her daughter, Paula, who inspired her first memoir. Her epic bestseller House of Spirits began when, living in exile, she heard that her grandfather was dying. She began to write him a letter and just continued writing and that became the manuscript for her debut novel. Ever since she begins writing a new book on the same day ? January 8th and doesn?t emerge until she has finished. Her new novel is Maya?s Notebook. Isabel is a master storyteller, her books are enchanting tales of family across generations, of eccentric characters and love and loss. The House of Spirits is based on her grandparents? home in Santiago where she grew up. Isabel is familiar with the realm of the ancestors and regularly calls on them for inspiration and support, none more so than her beloved daughter, Paula, who died from a rare genetic condition when she was just 29. Here are some unpublished exerts from the interview.
On Childhood:
?Everyone of us is marked forever by childhood so if you have a strange and unusual childhood it really helps in becoming writer. I had a very unhappy childhood, as most kids probably do, but it was also an unusual one. I was born in 1942 in Chile in a very patriarchal, conservative Catholic family. Being born a girl at that time in Chile meant that you were trapped into a certain way of behaving and thinking, there was no way out.? In a way I was lucky that my father left my mother when I was three because it meant that my mother went to live with me and my two brothers in my grandfather?s house. And so it was that I escaped from the normal family life. Although I always noticed how different my mother?s life was from her brothers. How little freedom she had so I always wanted to be a boy. I think that is what turned me into a feminist and an activist.
My grandmother was an extraordinary, lovely, spiritual person who died very suddenly from leukemia. I was only four or five but I was very attached to her. So first my father left and then my grandmother died. So we were left in the house with my grandfather. He was a very tough, severe but wonderful man of Basque origin. He was the kind of man who would never complain about anything, was very hard working and disciplined and he instilled those qualities in me. That is the way we lived: According to him life was not supposed to be pleasant; life was a veil of tears and you were here to work and serve especially if you were a girl. He turned our house into a place of mourning after my grandmother died. My grandfather painted part of the furniture black and dressed in black from head to toe. There were desserts, no parties, no music, no radios, no flowers. It was a sad and masculine house.
My mother was there but she was very lost, very young with three kids. So I would hide in the basement reading. It was the only way out of this kind of life. I was a good student. I was very lonely and very imaginative and I imagined that the spirit of my grandmother was in the house leaving me messages, hiding them here and there. The house was full of souls; all kind of stories that I created in my mind. That environment, that house, my mother, was very inspiring later in life when I realized I had all this wonderful material to work with in my stories.
I can?t say how much was imagination and how much I really lived in another world. I really believed that my house was full sprits. I couldn?t look in the mirror at night because the devil might appear. These were the stories that my grandfather told and I was young so I really believed them. I wasn?t a particularly spiritual kid. I wasn?t religious and I walked away from religion and the Catholic Church when I was 15 and never came back. But I grew up with the idea that what we perceive in this world is only appearances and I still have that idea. There are many dimensions of reality: there is much more that we don?t know, energies and currents and influences that we don?t control and they do exist and they change things and they determine things.
On the Voices of her Ancestors:
The voice of my grandfather is inside my head all the time. I have been in therapy for years trying to tell that voice to ?fuck off? because it?s the voice of responsibility, of hard work. The voice that tells you that you are never good enough, that you don?t complain, you don?t whine, you just take whatever comes. And that tough voice is the voice of my grandfather. I always have it and I have to make an effort to push that voice away as it hinders my writing and my life. I like the voice because the voice is him and I love him but it really doesn?t help me much. But my love of nature is also to do with my grandfather and the journeys we went on with him. He gave us the incredible experience of raw, wide nature in the South when there was no modern transportation. We would take a train, a jeep, then a mule and horses and go over the moor and be picked up by the gauchos on the other side. He also gave me the love of stories. He was a great storyteller; he would repeat anecdotes of the family and every time he told each tale it was further enriched and a little changed and those are the stories in the House of Spirits.
Then I have the other voice that is not so potent or so clear. That is my grandmother. That is the voice that I hear in meditation, when I am alone for hours and hours. When I am writing I can hear my grandmother. She was always about the lightness of being, spirit, the mystery of the universe and how complex everything is and how similar people are and how we can connect spiritually without words. She really believed in telepathy. And that comes when I am writing.
And then I have another voice which is the voice of my daughter Paula and that is the voice of my close companion. She helps me in my relationships. I have a large tribe where I live here in California. There is always some kind of drama going on and before I make any decisions I talk to Paula as I know she will always give me good advice. Nora and Hilda often come to me in my dreams and Paula?s presence is always around.
It?s amazing to me that all those voices are in Spanish. I have been living in English for 25 years but all the voices, all the stories are in Spanish. And I can only write in Spanish.? I think that it is the language of childhood and my youth and also it is a very emotional language ? for me English is very practical, I communicate well in English but I cannot express subtleties in English and I have no sense of humour. In Spanish I am very funny, actually.
Talking of ancestors, I have two other ancestors that are also present in my life. Nora was my former husband?s mother who was adorable and I loved this woman. She lived next door she helped me raise my kids and she was very close to Paula. When we had to leave because of the coup in Chile she died of sorrow in less than two years. She really could not live without the two kids. I always have her in my mind and I have pictures all over to remind me that she is there.
And then there is Hilda, our adopted grandmother who was the mother of my brother?s first fianc?. They were 14 years old, fell in love in school, married then divorced, then got back together and had two kids. He was not the right man for her but the mother of this girl was the right grandmother for my children. She lived with us on and off for years and she accompanied me everywhere. She was only one who would get in the car when I was driving because I am a terrible driver. She was my companion, this abuela, this grandmother. She died four years ago. She stopped eating and drinking and just decided to leave. With great elegance and dignity she died in a month or so. But the interesting thing is the person sitting with her said that she woke up and she said, ?Pass me my bag, Paula has come to fetch me.?
I have photographs of them all around me and I live with them, I really do. I carry them with me as I have been a traveler, an immigrant, a political exile, I have lived abroad all my life and started from scratch several times and you leave everything behind, you know, so all I carry with me are photographs and the letters of my mother.
The whole of Western culture is beginning to forget our ancestors. We live always in a hurry, we live in the noise, always about the next step and we are never present in the moment so we never remember. But I am a writer so my job is to remember. I spend so much time in silence and alone and I can have the luxury of having my ancestors around and remembering them.
We don?t know what we carry inside. We don?t only carry the physical genes, there are spiritual genes as well. Many people believe that we carry our ancestors? vices and their virtues. I believe we carry their spiritual legacy as well.
?
On her Daughter, Paula:
Paula?s untimely death broke my heart. She was a graceful, spiritual young woman, the light of our family. We have done so many rituals for her. I have little ceremonies with her and for her often when I feel like it. When it is her birthday, when we are celebrating something. She died on December 6th so this day is for us a very intimate and sacred day. We go to the forest where we scattered her ashes. We light candles, we bring a little picnic, we bring a photograph of her and we put flowers in the pond where we scattered her ashes. And every time I finish a book I will take a CD of it to the forest and bury it so it is there for her to take care of.
She is very, very present in my family?s life.? She died very young and she was such a huge person in our family: She was the first-born grandchild, the first-born child, she was smart and already mature when she was two years old so we always treated her like an adult. She was like a mother to her brother so for my son her loss has been really hard. People always think that the parents suffer the most but in this I think her brother, Nicolas suffered her loss just as much as I did. He was very close to her. ?When we finally bought Paula home from Madrid in a coma, Nicolas had two babies in diapers and a sister in diapers as well and he would take care of them all with such natural skill. It was impressive to watch. And so moving.
(Paula fell into a coma in Madrid following complications arising from porphyria, a genetic condition. Isabel brought her home where she nursed her for a year before she died.)
Ten days before her death I had a dream. Paula was sitting on my bed and she told me that she needed to go. The dream was so real it was as if she was really there although I knew she was completely paralyzed so there was no way she could come to sit on my bed. It was very clear that she was telling me we needed to let her go and take her journey. I called her husband Ernesto in New York and he flew to California and we both locked ourselves in her room and got into her bed holding her, telling her that she could go. As we both said goodbye, something shifted in that moment. Ten days later she died. It was very strange that she died on December 6th, exactly a year after she had entered the hospital.
People often ask me how I ?got over it? or whether I have healed the loss. What is healing, really? Is it getting over the pain? Is it forgetting? What is it? I don?t know how to answer. The loss of my daughter left a sadness that is like sediment at the bottom of my heart, like a fertile soil where the best thing grows and I don?t want to get rid of it. I want to remember her and I don?t mind when I am signing books and someone comes with Paula?s book and says, this is the most important book in my life and I cry. I don?t mind crying. When I think of her and talk about her, I am moved always and sometimes to the point where I cry. It?s fine. I think that is the way it needs to be and if healing is getting over that then I don?t want it. I want to remember.
One of my questions after she died was ?why did you stay so long?? She should have died at the beginning. We had kept her alive artificially. Why didn?t she die sooner? I think that, maybe, she needed to teach us something. Everybody changed during that year. That was a time when my youth ended. I turned fifty. I became another person before and after Paula. The whole structure of the family and each of us individually changed. It was a time of deep mourning and suffering but there were many gifts.
One gift was strength. Any mother will tell you that the worst fear of their lives is that something will happen to your child and that you will not survive it. Paula?s death showed me you that I had a strength that I didn?t know I had. That was a gift. Then there was the gift of love: of Willie, my son, my parents who were by my side no matter what. That was a gift. And she gave me the gift of understanding unconditional love for I loved her through that year when silent in her bed, my daughter couldn?t give me anything. I had to love her as she was, without even knowing whether she knew that I was loving her. In the years that have passed I remember that love and try to repeat it as often as I can. She helped me to realize that the only thing we have is that which we give.
She also helped me to lose the fear of death. I felt as though I went with her into the void when she died and there was nothing frightening about it. I am afraid of the suffering still, but I am not afraid of the end.
Paula?s Foundation
During her short life Paula worked as a volunteer in poor communities in Venezuela and Spain. She cared deeply for others. When in doubt, her motto was: What is the most generous thing to do? So I set up the foundation supporting women and girls, based on her ideals of service and compassion to continue her work.?And this has been another great gift for I am in touch with extraordinary women. I am in touch with women in Congo who have been terribly raped and tortured and they have never recovered from their physical and emotional wounds yet these women can hold hands and stand in a circle and dance.
I am in touch with immigrant women in this country that have left six children behind and they haven?t seen them for years and years and years and yet they work day and night to feed them. And they can still make empanadas and have a party and dance.? I am in touch with people who are really spiritual in the real sense ? it?s not about hanging crystals around your neck and sitting meditating like the Dalai Lama. No, its about being in the world, serving the world, knowing that there is something else, that there is spirit, that you can always get back on your feet and you can always help someone get back on your feet. That to me is a spiritual practice and that is what keeps me connected with the other dimensions of reality that is not practical or visible and it is not easy to talk about because it is so personal.
It?s a wonderful truth that things we want most in life ? a sense of purpose, happiness and hope ? are most easily attained by giving them to others.? My most significant achievements are not my books, but the love I share with a few people, especially my family, and the ways in which I have tried to help others.? When I was young, I often felt desperate: so much pain in the world and so little I could do to alleviate it! But now I look back at my life and feel satisfied because few days went by without at least trying. A day at a time, a person at time; in the end it adds up!? In every human being there is a core of shining dignity and courage.?
?
On Dreams, Writing and Nature:
I write the way that I live. I write the things I care for. For me a dream can be more important than anything that happened during the day. The dream can haunt me and force me to make a certain decision and makes me look at something that I have avoided. Consciously and unconsciously it starts to bother me when I am asleep ? so finally I have to pay attention. So I am connected to the dream world and to nature. I am thoroughly convinced that trees have a soul, they are giants that are alive, and they have memories. I live in the most beautiful place in California with the beautiful sequoias and the red woods. They have witnessed 3000 years of human life going on underneath them. They are such a strong presence. That is why we scattered Paula?s ashes there ? to be with her ancestors, to be with the trees.
On Chile:
I feel totally Chilean when I am in the US and yet when I go back to Chile I am a foreigner there. The first week I love it and then I have the feeling that everyone wants me to leave because I don?t fit in and my mother is terrified that I will go on TV and talk about abortion, for example, or gay marriage. So, I am in the end forever an exile. There are still scars and wounds in Chile. Truly, I think that the last person who was a victim will have to die for the healing to really occur because what we have done is bury everything under the rug. There is no real healing if the truth is not exposed and the victims are not honored. There is a sense of ?lets forget the past, the country is doing well.? And now there is a generation who are the grandchildren of the victims and the healing will come from them. We need to honour the past to move forward.
On her Mother:
Although my mother is still alive at 90, she is already my ancestor. She is 90 and she has lived a long rich life. She is the closest person in my life, the only one I can talk about anything with. She is very smart and very lucid, with a great irony and cool sarcasm that I love and I cannot use in the US as it is politically incorrect. We write to each other every day. We promised each other no one will ever read those letters so the plan is that whoever leaves first is going to burn them. But of course, I?m not going to burn her letters because when she is gone I will be able to open a letter a day and have her with me forever.
I asked one final question: whether can she imagine herself as an ancestor communicating with her descendants. I love her answer. It suggests that we can all have the experience of hearing the voices and feeling the presence of those who have gone before us, we just need to cultivate openness towards it.
Unless my descendants use their imagination as I have and they cultivate that imagination and care for it, they will not hear any voices at all. It is not the spirit who decides to whom it is going to talk, it?s the person who is open to the experience. You are the recipient and you create your experience. With Joan of Arc, I don?t think God was talking to her, I think that she was hearing His voice. And there is a difference. It all depends how open you are to the mystery.
Source: http://www.theancestralcontinuum.com/interview-with-isabel-allende
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