Parcequedonc - Curvature of Certainty

The Curvature
of Certainty

A Rare Privilege

This rare and relatively recent (the written word has only been with us for the last
couple of thousand years – a tear drop in the river of passing planetary life) privilege
allows me to form words which are spoken by the small voice in the very centre of your
brain; gives me the chance to articulate among the resonances of your own private mind.

A writer needs readers.....

Back to the top....

Introduction

It is in the nature of the human condition to experience a “life”
which ultimately culminates
in an ill defined and poorly understood state of being known as “death”….
The only solace life seems to offer is that,
at least up until death,
we may look back upon it....

Although the transition from a “life” state of being
to a “death” state of being
tends to be associated with huge sadness and trepidation,
it is above all else its inevitability
which makes us what we are…

The certainty of our ultimate transition
can be ignored in the course of a busy, stressful, exploitative life
but in the home straight
it is an equaliser beyond compare
or reproach…

Back to the top....

After Henry

After the old man died
my back locked up big time…
Hilarious really…
Couldn’t move properly for months…
It had been a little suspect before I left for the funeral,
and I had pushed it a little harder than usual just to keep up appearances
but I hadn’t expected this kind of trouble….

Managed to keep it under control for most of the stay with the family
but got drugged up for the flight home…
By the time the plane got to Heathrow
I could hardly stand
or sit
or walk…
I was locked pretty solid….
Naturally, for the first time (in my experience),
none of the conveyor walkways were operating…..
I had to drag my useless butt through those endless tunnels
from the plane to the baggage collection,
then from there through the customs and ID controls,
and then down to the underground to pick up the train to Acton Town,
dragging the frigging suitcase and shoulder bag the whole way…

By the time I got off the train, the pain was beginning to move down my legs….
Jane picked me up and helped me clamber in and out of the car,
but I couldn’t stay long at theirs…
I was dreading the 2 hour drive home,
but, wanting desperately to get it over with as soon as ever possible,
I dragged the bags out to the old van, hauled my carcass into the driver’s seat,
and set off….

Driving was actually significantly easier than walking…
Grating nerve ends with each gear change, but no significant lifting.....
Reached home and dragged my wasted self and clobber into the house
and immediately headed for bed….

...........only to discover another tortuous irony.
Bed, that delusional goal of the last day and a half,
was just another trap….
I couldn’t get comfortable
but every move, every millimetre of re-adjustment
was associated with lightning-strike, creasing agony…
Couldn’t stay down for more than an hour
but getting up was also associated with screaming pain…
Imagine about 400 exposed tooth nerves
converging in the small of your back
and being spiked with a foot long syringe.....
Began to realise I needed some “professional” help….

The “osteo” was just down the road, so he was the first port of call…
(Strange as it may seem, I pedalled to these various places
because it was easier for me to gently ride my bicycle than to walk…
Had to stand in the pedals though…
Sitting or, indeed, any unpremeditated stopping or turning
jarred the nerves harshly
and set off the screaming diodes…)
He decided I needed some manipulation
and proceeded to tear out some vertebraec nerves by the root…
The next day, in much worse condition, I straggled over to the GP
who gave me drugs and a recommendation to a national health “specialist”….
However, couldn’t see the specialist until I’d been processed and interviewed….
As I waited for the various processes to sort themselves out over the next week or so
I began to settle into a routine
of one hour down and two up
throughout the entire 24 hour cycle….
I became more attuned to the night time
and more rat-arsed about and indifferent to the outside world….
My pain was personal and impossible to explain….
I could feel myself recluding….

When I finally got to see the “specialist”,
she said, “Right, what seems to be the problem…?”
Surprisingly, considering I had arrived there specifically to talk about my predicament,
I was caught unawares by this intrusion into my private hell…
I suddenly realised I hadn’t properly spoken to anyone for some considerable time…
As I started to try to pull together a coherent sense
of what the past few weeks had been like,
I found I couldn’t speak….
Instead, a well spring of emotion formed in my lungs
and slowly, majestically, forced its way up through my throat
and burst out through my eyes and nose in a welter of tears and snot.....
All the pain and the seclusion seemed to have built up
into a massive spasm of self-pity and inarticulacy….
Seemingly not too taken aback by my strangled, guttural curses and mutterings,
the specialist watched me patiently as I tried to articulate through the gushing mess…
She got the drift, and, overlooking my wretched slobbering state,
began calmly to explain what she thought had been taking place…
As near as I can remember
she said that each of the vertebrae have tiny holes at the back
through which nerves pass
to join the central nerve column travelling the length of the spine….
When these nerves become injured, they inflame,
and become trapped in the little holes….
Any subsequent movement (such as an osteo’s manipulations)
then exacerbates the pulling on the nerves,
dragging them screeching through those holes,
for which they are already dramatically oversized,
straining, pinching, and inflaming them yet further
such that the oversizing increases yet again
and the shooting pains escalate exponentially
and careen almost randomly off through the central nervous system
to give impressions of stabbings and stickings and slashes and ice pickings
in various not directly related parts of the body
- most notably the legs, where the “sciatic” nerves,
particularly sensitive to these situations,
take up hysterical signalling to the brain with the electric fervour and enthusiasm
of Hitler youth ecstatically reporting the whereabouts
of hiding ethnics…..

Dear Maker,
why in the name of all that’s holy
would you ever come up with
such a stupid design...?

So,
what can you do…?
Well, nothing really, it seems….
Take anti-inflammatories and painkillers
and try not to use your back…!!
“Try not to use my back….?”
Yes, that’s what she said…
Bit of a tall order, n'est ce pas?
As I pedalled my electrocutive way home, I realised I was in for a long run....
A long run of torment, isolation, anger, and inertia…

Back indoors, I resumed my life
of slowly accelerating crabby solitude
(crabitude)
in 3 hour segments – one hour down: two hours up…
I had no choice…
I could only sleep if I was exhausted
and only until I awoke to the first vicious stab from an inadvertent sleep movement...
As soon as I moved, the pain flashed up and down the back and legs
like a hideously animated torturer’s electrodes...
Staying still became impossible – as did moving....
Caught in stasis, cursing and spitting with rage,
moving eventually becomes the only option
and one is forced to proceed towards verticality
through a series of horrendously jagged pain barriers....
One time, quite early on,
half way through one of the barriers
I made the mistake of trying to retreat back to a previous one
and was punished so fiercely
that my vision began to tunnel
and I almost blacked out...
Drawn and quartered on the serrated fulcrum,
I cursed and swore and spat
as I strained to reach out and grab a nearby railing
and haul myself across the incommunicably searing threshold
into a pathetic half crouch
there to await the fortitude for the next stage....

In the long moments between pain barriers
I would find myself contemplating pieces of floor
or items of domestic detritus
(never knew I had so many dust balls)
in prolonged bouts of forced meditation....
Stuck in strange, unnatural, contorted body positions,
I could feel the pounding blood pressure in my face
and the trapped air in my lungs
occasionally escaping in a sort of involuntary feline whine…..
I could hear the outside world passing by;
traffic mostly, but occasional snatches of human voice....
I would wait for a moment of calm before gambling my nervous system
on trying to extend a crouch
or take a next step....

I very soon learned that you can’t piss about with unplanned movement....
Everything requires careful consideration,
and over the next several days I completed my isolation
by rigging my home for the accommodation of non-negotiable pestilent pain....
I tipped a mattress on to the floor
under the ladder to my sleeping platform
and abandoned the platform altogether....
I rigged a rope from the ladder to near where my head and shoulders lay
to serve as additional leverage in the matter of getting up....
I kept drugs and water near to hand...
I didn’t bother to switch lights off....
I didn’t shave or bathe for days on end....
I basically limited most movement to getting from the mattress on the floor
to the computer work station about 6 feet away...

Occasionally, hunger or thirst would force me to make my way downstairs
to the kitchen...
This was a whole new experience in humiliation and self-loathing....
Like a man of ninety
I tottered along a series of potential disasters,
close brushes with vertigo
combined with assaults from normally inanimate objects and furniture.....
Planned resting/meditation stations had to be worked out every few feet;
places where a man could lean
without fear of interruption or sudden unpredicted movement....

As it happens, my isolation was not complete anyway....
I had lodgers
and much of the planning also included the avoidance of other occupants of the house....

A disturbed mother and her disturbed 13 year old second son had recently arrived
and were in the throes of separating themselves
from an allegedly even more disturbed husband/father and first son/elder brother.....
They came my way by word of mouth
and, possibly, because nobody else would have them....
Much of the time I managed to steer clear of them
just by listening to and learning their cycles,
but the occasional exchange of pleasantries in the shared kitchen
were inevitable....

The mother’s disturbance could be very other-worldly at times,
and, much as I might wish to avoid “normal” contact,
she became attuned to my nocturnal wanderings
and began to appear out of the silent darkness at the kitchen door
and endeavour to engage me in conversation....

Initially, I resented these intrusions into my bitter solitude,
but, over time, I became distracted by the weirdness....
She occasionally worried that she might “upset” me with her ramblings...
She actually asked me once if she was frightening me,
but, quite to the contrary, I began to find the workings of her mind
hugely diverting from my own shit – the petty but brutal hate relationship
I had going with my own central nervous system...
For example, during one of my nocturnal 2 hour shifts
I found myself in the kitchen, quietly cursing and wincing and muttering,
only to look up to see her early hour wildly staring eyes
fixing me from the kitchen door....
She was clearly agitated and asked did I mind her sitting down and talking....
I said, no not at all,
and she began to explain about how she feared her own powers....
The whites of her eyes stood out in the half light as she explained
how she could control the wind....
As she spoke the windows rattled and a wind I hadn’t noticed earlier
suddenly sprang to life....
“See...?” she said....
I didn’t feel competent to pass judgement on either her state of mind
or the extent of her powers,
but I was certainly enthralled by the idea...
I asked her to explain the origins of all this in some detail
which she happily did – in considerable detail, in fact....
She seemed to have no qualms about revealing the inner workings of her mind
and seemed to appreciate my similar lack of qualm
about hearing whatever she had to say....

Over time, as my private struggle with a useless and hatred-inducing back
and the 1 hour down and 2 hours up sleeping / waking cycle
and the regular flashes of searing pain punctuating the ongoing bouts of steady agony
stretched into weeks and months,
my only real contact with the outside world
was through my lodger’s weirdness.....
Through our irregular nightly rendezvous
we became regular rencontrants,
regular confidantes as we each grappled with our own hellish misery....
Her stories continued to enthral and distract me
and she continued to see me as a sort of non-judgemental auditory receptacle....

As it turned out
her family really was pretty dysfunctional,
and I became reasonably convinced that her state of mind
was more a product of the mind-fucks of her husband and sons
than any inherent madness she might have generated for herself...
They really were quite piggish....
Sort of thing you might expect from a nuclear husband in this day and age,
but picked up happily by the sons,
mirroring their father’s strange combination
of meticulously calculated cutting indifference
and overwhelmingly deliberate desperate helplessness...
He sometimes dropped by and hovered in the middle distance
not sure whether I was a threat or competitor....
Even after he’d received reassuring signals from me
(plus the obvious fact that I was usually propped up against something for support
and couldn’t move more than about a centimetre at a time)
he still didn’t seem to know what to do with himself...
It seemed he was there primarily to induce guilt
and occasionally whinge about the destruction of the family.....
The eldest son appeared once or twice, and seemed nice enough,
but had that slightly foreboding air that apparent imbeciles can sometimes generate...
He sort of wavered between peering shyly and glowering menacingly
from under his tilted brows....
I later discovered that he regularly threatened his mother with violence –
throwing furniture and such like....
Sometimes she would cower in her car outside the family home
rather than go indoors and confront him.....

These glimpses, plus the domestic presence of number two son,
gave deep background and credence to the sometimes chilling tales I was hearing
in the silence of the night.....

Number two son, even out of the “proper home” scenario,
seemed to be progressing down the same path as father and number one son
and taking on many of the same characteristics
with regard to treatment of the mother.....
Initially an apparently shy, retiring boy,
his confidence grew in the light of the fullness of her attention,
her desperate attempts to compensate for having “broken the family”,
and his confrontations with and dismissals of her
seemed to grow both in strength and in sheer effrontery.....
One day,
stooped over the kitchen counter, in between pain barriers,
trying to gather the strength to achieve the next threshold,
I was a prisoner to their argument......
I was forced to listen as his cruel deliberation skewered her
and I suddenly found a huge anger swelling in me
and I turned my eyes to him sitting at the kitchen table
and slowly began to lurch toward him.....
He sat like a bunny transfixed in the headlights,
his mother hovering uncertainly by the door,
as words began to spew from my mouth.....
“If you HAVE to speak to your mother like that,”
I began,
“if it is absolutely essential to you
that you treat her like a DOG,”
and, concerned that I was losing his attention
as he sensed that I was resorting to hyperbole,
I raised my fist as I advanced,
“Do NOT”, I said,
and brought my fist down with such a crash
hard on to the table just in front of him
that everything on the table, including him,
jumped about two inches, and, with my face centimetres from his, hollered,
“EVER
do it while I am within earshot....
I can’t STAND it.....
It drives me CRAZY.....”
By this time we were eyeball to eyeball
and I was staring at him through the red mist
and added, more softly,
“You understand?”
He nodded,
and I tried to straighten with dignity
and headed, hobbling, for the door,
wordlessly passing the stifled, confused, distracted mother en route......

One night,
we got to talking about the difference between male and female love....
She was talking about how she reckoned she’d failed her boys
by not loving them enough....
I said I thought that there was a profound difference between
the love she was offering
and the love she was ever likely to get in return......
Hers was bottomless and unconditional;
theirs was reflected....
I said I reckoned that men are made stupid by woman’s love....
Woman’s love is so strong and unwavering
that men make the mistake
of thinking they deserve it....
They don’t realise that it is not a case of their attracting love
by virtue of their own “unique” qualities....
It is more a case of their happening to have had the good fortune
to be in the right place at the right time
just as a woman happens to be looking for a chance to beam
her love.....
I said I thought it is like the goslings which fix on Konrad Lorenz....
He is the first living thing they see and they assume he is their mother.....
Women seem to have times when their love is ready to switch on
and at those times, they too assume
that whatever they choose to love
deserves it....
Men, standing in the beam, puff and swell as if in sunlight
and begin to conclude that this is also how the rest of the world should see them
and yet, strangely,
as the rest of the world continues to demonstrate indifference,
they begin to turn their rejective bitterness not on to the indifferent world
(which wouldn’t notice)
but on to the source of the beam….
Her wide eyes stared at me
and I could see she was probably deriving considerable comfort
from the fact that I
was clearly madder than her.....

Over time, this symbiotic relationship
ran its course.....
She and number two son eventually found a house of their own
and our lives separated....
My back eventually straightened and,
if I am careful,
should last me to the point of brain death.......

-

So,
was there a connection between Henry’s passing
and my useless back…?

In truth, I don’t feel as though we had that much in common…
In his presence I inevitably felt compromised….
On the one hand he could talk such rubbish,
on the other I was certain I didn’t wish to criticise or compete….
On the one hand he was hugely entertaining and funny,
on the other I always felt I merited less of his attention
than any passing stranger…..
As it happens,
the lessons of my own life have led me to conclude
that paternity, just like everything else in the cosmos,
is coincidental and circumstantial….
That I happened to be a son to this father
came to have little meaning for me…
But for not particularly complex twists of fate
I feel we could just as easily have ended up
playing these roles with completely different partners….

Perhaps I’m intellectualising….
Perhaps I’m avoiding emotional issues hidden away deep in my psyche
and getting it in the back as a consequence,
but I doubt it….
They say that paternal death brings a man face to face with his own mortality,
but I don’t feel any more or less face to face with it now
than before…..

What fatherly stuff there was is too far removed now anyway…
At this stage in life, it is no longer significant….
I think that what happens is that, as one passes into adulthood,
one has the option of becoming friends with one’s parents
and he and I didn’t take up that option…..
I remember him best as a separate human;
an acquaintance almost…..
I’m not entirely sure I necessarily wanted it that way myself,
but I remain pretty sure it suited him
and I was certainly happy to go along with it…..
I left home fairly early and kept away quite a bit
partly to avoid having to examine this any more closely….
There were one or two occasions when I made what I considered to be an effort
and found little in the way of intelligent response…..
I also didn’t wish to compete for his wife’s attention….
The man was so clearly in love with her
that I couldn’t bear to interfere, however subliminally or unintentionally….
As it happens,
I feel I paid a price for this…..
When the option of becoming friends with my mother availed itself
I think we both took it up with some considerable enthusiasm
and we became and remain very best friends to this day
and I love and value her beyond words……
But this friendship was constrained by his presence
and it wasn’t really until we began to meet on our own
that our friendship flourished
in the way it deserved….
As his medical problems and then his passing took him away,
I felt a belated surge of partnership with and affection for my mother….
Again, I would stress that I don’t think this stems necessarily
from the fact of our relation…
I know many people who are not friends with their mothers….
Although, as a mother and having experienced what only mothers can,
she might have deeply contrary views,
I’m reasonably sure that our friendship arose out of an adult recognition of commonality
over and above any chance biological connection…
And that recognition of commonality never took place
between me and Henry…

But even acquaintances can have a major impact on one’s life,
and his passing was an emotional time for me too…
The sheer “not-there-ness” of someone you’ve known for a long time
is going to make itself felt….

In his last years he suffered the indignities of graduated memory loss….
For the latter part of the long decline he lived in an institution,
physically cared for but mentally in the wilderness only sufferers can know….
I avoided going to see him….
I didn’t want to see him in that depleted state, and,
strange as it may seem,
I thought he might resent my witnessing his final helplessness….
Nor was I there when he died,
but my younger brother, to whom I am indebted, read these emailed words to him
through his dying dementia
in the final stages…

“I remember many of the things you've said to me; things which were simple and
succinct and often in the form of a sort of "sound bite". Many of these have stayed
with me to this day. Especially that "good communication is the responsibility of the
communicator" and that "all ideas are derived from the convergence of two or more
previously occurring ideas". They still permeate my world view. I still use them in
presentations. Also, one of the most consistent memories of my childhood is of laughter
and the buzz of conversation emanating from the dinner parties you and Mari-Ann used
to put on so seemingly effortlessly. I used to go to sleep against this gentle acoustic
backdrop. But I also have a clear memory of, on occasion, sitting at the dining room
table with adult guests and struggling to figure out how they could converse so easily,
marvelling at how they could think and construct their sentences at one and the same
time; often embarking upon a sentence without apparently knowing how precisely it
might end. To me as a child, this seemed overwhelmingly impressive. I suppose these
are skills I would have picked up eventually, but it was those sonorous evenings which
created my appetite both for conversation and for the sound of humans nattering. In
fact, I have, sometimes, in the past, fallen into the trap of regretting that I did not
receive a specific skill from you. Many fathers seemed to pass on tangible practical
skills, such as those of a mechanic or a musician. But you were a generalist, in the Bucky
Fuller mode. And that's what, I eventually realised, I got from you. I think of you more
than you might suspect - every time I go to Bedford, for example, and every time I
emulate your technique of wiping the surface of the kitchen counter into the palm of
the hand. But I didn't come to see you. I was afraid. I didn't want to see you as you
are. I still remember playing ice hockey with you on the beaver pond. You're still the
big, strong man you always were, and it’s my desperate hope that you know this.
Your loving son….“

Even now, years later, the sheer exuberant joy of that last scrub hockey match
is still with me…..
It took place during one of my rare visits as an adult…
Played on the small pond
nestling like the palm of a hand in the silence of the surrounding hills
with the crackling winter air cascading down from the high white trees,
shafted with the kind of sunshine you can breathe,
dusted with the sounds of calling voices and skates and sticks on ice,
and sprinkled with the frosted exhalations of intent players of all ages….
He was as up for “winning” as ever
and being, for once, on the same side,
we were able to shout encouragement to each other…
I vividly recall shouting “Henri, Henri!!” in absolute hysterics
as we emulated the past greats of the mighty
Montreal Canadiens…

At his funeral I said:
“I don’t know where Henry is now
but I reckon that I have a better idea of where he might be now
than I have had for the past few years of his incoherency…
And I’m guessing it may even be easier for him to observe and hear from us now
than it was during those past few years……
“But I also reckon that we humans are not just individuals….
It is ridiculous to think of a human being existing alone...
It is a contradiction in terms….
We are who we are, but perhaps even more so,
we are also the composite of memories and impressions
in the minds of the human communities and networks we create.
And few people could create communities like Henry….
In that sense, Henry could be said to be very much here, now, among us….
He is the common thread running through those of us here today,
and through many others of us scattered across the globe.
We are all parts of many communities,
but Henry brought this particular community together
and this Henry community has its own characteristics
and as I look out at you people here assembled
and think of others who could not be here today,
I suddenly realise what an enormous pleasure it is
to be contained within it
and that alone probably says more than I could ever say
about the man himself….”

-

Henri,
with every ounce of my being,
with every particle
of my soul,
fare well……..

Back to the top....

Emotion

In his work throughout the 1960's and 70's, anthropologist and psychiatrist Paul Ekman
proposed that there are six facial expressions recognised consistently and instantaneously
across all cultures. This reckoning is based upon scientific (well, anthropological) crosscultural/
cross-lingual research. Of the entire range (infinite when you think about it) of
possible human facial expressions, only 6 were considered to be truly instantly recognisable
by any human in either hemisphere.

These were/are: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise.

This generates the knock on conclusion that all other facial expressions and associated
emotions are derived from these 6 elemental expressions/emotions. All non-elemental
expressions/emotions, therefore, are combinations, in varying ratios, of two or more
elemental expressions/emotions.

In the 90s he added the following to the elemental expressions: Amusement, Contempt,
Contentment, Embarrassment, Excitement, Guilt, Pride in achievement, Relief, Satisfaction,
Sensory pleasure, and Shame. (What about Love? I hear you ask. I refer you to Tina
Turner who said: "What's love got to do, got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a
secondhand emotion?")

Personally, I'm not so sure about these later additions, but if these too are elemental, the
same knock on conclusion applies – all other emotions are derived from combinations of two
or more of these seventeen.

In these left brain driven times, there is currently, among the chattering classes, a sort of
back lash which celebrates "intuition", "feelings", and, of course, sensitivity to emotions.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is worth voicing a note of caution as we strive not
to forget the black hole out of which we Europeans were fortunate enough eventually to
climb during the Renaissance. As we squirmed under the crushing weight of a “christian”
hegemony gone mad – a system of insubstantiable belief-statements based largely on
superstition, hysteria, and the urge of the few to control the many – news of mathematics
and libraries and logic and critical thinking began slowly to seep in from what was then the
largely arab/muslim world to the south and east. Much of it had of course accumulated
during classical times but got driven out by the non-negotiable belief plague. It was these
mischievous and subversive concepts that eventually began to undermine the beliefstatements
of the christian rulers and erode their hysterical power base.

However, having noted the caution above about black holes and the importance of avoiding
them, and assuming that centrally manipulated superstition does not again become the ruling
force, we might give restrained and measured welcome to the re-advent of intuition and the
subjective interpretation of events.

Back to the top....

Rennes

From years ago, when I still lived by the river in my lovely ground floor centrally heated
flat, I have a vivid memory.

I awoke, sweating, from an intense dream. I had a clear vision of low lying hills and
stone buildings over which I was flying. I had heard a voice repeating, “The child will be
looked after. The child will be looked after.” I was terribly shaken. I felt as though I
had been delivered of a wonderfully comprehensive all-encompassing and unifying
explanation. I was still glowing from the completeness of the explanation, but I was in
tears because I realised that, by waking, I was losing the details of the explanation. I
was scrabbling around for pen and paper to write down the vestiges of the memory, but
could already feel it dissipating. I could feel the last strands slipping through the
crevices in my brain. By the time I was writing, I could only remember the
circumstantial evidence. I was profoundly distraught. I didn’t know what to do. I
couldn't sit still. It was the middle of the night; there was no place to go. I got up. I
had to go outside, clutching my writing clipboard. The river was flowing by in the
darkness. I was hoping I might find a clue as to this explanation, but the dream was
already another dimension - a separate reality. I stumbled down to the river. I walked
along it. No clues. I had this terrible hollowness, a vacuum in my guts. I looked up and
saw a light in the window of one of the flats in a big house near the river. I knew those
people; young guys renting their own flat, just getting used to not having parents
around. I went up to the window and peered in. They were all smoking dope, spaced out.
I watched for a moment or two. No movement. I rapped on the window. They jumped
about a foot. One of them came over, opened the window, and invited me in. I crawled
through and sat down with them. They said what are you up to. I said I had just lost
this dream containing this comprehensive explanation and wondered if they could help
me. I was actually weeping and I had to say, “Ignore this, it’s meaningless.” Through my
tears I explained the situation. I asked them if they would look at my notes and simply
comment in any way they saw fit whilst I took further notes. I was so desperate for
the return of the explanation that I felt I might get a clue from their collective
unconscious, as it were. They agreed and solemnly passed the notes around among
themselves and said what came to mind. They did their best. No melodrama; no
condescension; no egotism, but it was no use. The explanation was lost; gone without a
trace.

A couple of years or so later, I happened to be passing near Rennes Le Chateau. I had
read about the place in “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail”. For obscure reasons
probably related to what I felt at the time was the profundity of the book, I felt I
couldn’t just go up there. I felt I had to have a reason or a signal.

I was playing music in the area between Toulouse and Peripignon; a sort of busking tour
with my musical co-adventurer, Nick. We were living in a transit van and at the homes
of the more hospitable people we met. This was about February time; a bit wet and
grey on occasion, but often sunny and benign as you would expect a winter to be in the
south of France. The valleys in this area were full of refugees from the seventies -
hippies who had moved there from various places in search of a different lifestyle.
Different valleys had a predominance of different linguistic groups. The German hippies
had converged in one valley; the English in another; the Dutch in another, and so on.
Each valley had a sort of central culture spot; a cafe or a bar. We used to play them
when we could get the bookings.

On one occasion, we played a bar in one of the German valleys, but our reputation (on
the local level, we’d had some local radio time) was such that people from the other
valleys had come along as well. The gig was straight forward enough; we were good and
the people loved us. But at the end of the second set, a fight broke out. Two huge
French guys (brothers, I found out later) got into an extremely heated argument and it
wasn’t long before furniture and crockery began to move through the air. Everybody
was completely pissed of course, including the woman who ran the bar. She actually got
embroiled in the epicentre of the fight herself. Nick and I carefully rushed our guitars
and amps into the safety of a back room. There we sat, had a spliff and some brandy,
and awaited the outcome of all the noise and confusion out front. One of the women
came through to the back room, pissed, but wanting to chat up the band. We had the
sort of chat you might expect in such a pissed situation, leading nowhere and meaning
nothing, until I heard her mention that she lived in Rennes Le Chateau.

Suddenly my brain cleared for action and concentrated. She was mostly talking to Nick.
He was younger and prettier. But I extracted the full story. She lived in Rennes with
her husband who was out in the bar (possibly fighting). They hardly ever listened to the
radio, but this very day they had happened to switch it on, happened to tune to one of
the local stations, happened to hear a couple of our tracks with a mention of where we
were playing, and happened to like the music enough to come out for the evening. I
reckoned this must be the set of circumstances I was waiting for; my excuse for going
to Rennes. I tried to talk a bit more about Rennes itself, but she was too pissed and too
interested in Nick. However, she did say, “Why don’t you come on up and stay the
night?”

Hey, just the words I was anticipating. Great stuff. The signal from the other reality.
Come on up to Rennes. I began to hustle. Hey, lets pack the gear up. Phew I’m so tired,
I could really crash out right now. Lets do it to it. Nick and the woman were ignoring
me because now they were kissing and slurping. I nevertheless hustled on out through
the last throes of the fighting masses in the bar to start to stash the gear in the van.
As I stepped outside, I sensed, in my state of “heightened awareness”, that something
was very different. I paused.

It was snowing.

I’m such an emotional fool, particularly under the influence of intoxicants. I stood
there in the soft night, listening to the snow falling. I hadn’t heard the snow fall for
years and years. I was transported straight back to my childhood in Canada. Big soft
flakes falling. The ground slowly, quietly submerging under the cover of the thick white
bedding. I stood there transfixed.

I was still stood there transfixed when the others started to come out. I snapped to,
and we loaded the van. Yvonne, for that was her name, had told her husband that we
were coming up to stay the night at their house. He and one of his pals were lurching
into their car. Yvonne told him she was coming in our van to show us the way.

There’s a mood associated with the sound of windscreen wipers working against heavy
snow. We were silent most of the way. She gave directions at crucial points. Visibility
was almost nil. Once we had to stop to get out and look more closely at a crossroad.
We went up and up.

We finally reached Rennes in complete night-time whiteout. We could have been
anywhere. More likely somewhere in Canada except that the buildings were all stone.
We pulled up near their house and had coffee and brandy and listened to Michel (the
husband) and his pal explain the intricacies of the fight back at the cafe. It turned out
that the house was so small that there was no actual room to doss inside. Nick and I
later had to withdraw to the Spartan comfort of the transit van.

I awoke early the next morning. I could see bright light through the frost and snow on
the van windows. I crawled stiffly out of my frost encrusted sleeping bag, my breath
fogging, and lurched over to the back doors. They were frozen shut and took a bit of
hefty leverage. They sprang open, the ice taking yet more rubber lining off the door
seal. The sun was shining. Thick, thick snow lay everywhere. The light was blinding.
The air was crisp and sharp to breathe. There was not a sound. I struggled into some
clothes and got out of the van. I looked round the front and saw that Nick was still
completely out of it. I closed the van doors and set off to explore.

I walked out of the main gates of the town. White hills spread away to a haziness in
every direction. As I looked out I had a strange rush of half-recognition, but couldn’t
quite place it. I turned left and began to walk around the town, just below the walls.
The walls were not immense, but were majestic nevertheless; peaked in snow and with
patches of white giving emphasis to different features. My boots scrunched - just like
in Canadian snow. In some places I was up to my knees. Years since I’d been in snow like
this. As I walked below the walls my eyes were constantly drawn to the hazy white
hills. I still couldn’t quite place them though they were obviously tweaking my memory
banks. They weren’t Canadian hills. White enough, but not enough trees. They weren’t
English hills. Far far too white and somehow too regular.

I came around to the south west corner and saw, just as illustrated in “The Holy Blood”,
the priest Beranger Saunier’s folly; the rather extravagant house he’d built himself
next to the little church. He had built huge picture windows to allow him to gaze out
over the hills and his flock. It seemed like a little chunk of Beverly Hills poked up on
the hill top, peering out from the walled town. I turned to go down the hill to where a
stone cross was meant to be standing. I passed a number of little stone huts for the
shepherds to crouch in. No one home on this occasion. I found the cross and looked
back up at the little town. Yes, just like the drawings and photographs I had seen.
Perfect fit; although the cross was rather small. I looked back out behind me again. I
supposed the recognition I was getting from the hills must be coming from the photo’s
and drawings as well. But even as I supposed this, I knew it wasn’t the truth.

I went slowly back up the hill, breathing the cold air, studying the silent walls,
wondering about the snowclad and hazy hills.

When I got back to the van, Nick was still passed out. I went into Yvonne and Michel’s
house. They were just getting up and making coffee. Love the smell of that coffee;
specially after the exhilarating air outside. Sober, they had much more of interest to
say. Michel was actually illustrating a “bande desinee” (one of those hard cover comic
books like “Asterix”) on the subject of Rennes Le Chateau and the various conspiracy
theories. He promised to send me a copy in exchange for a couple of our tapes. Yvonne
offered to take me over to the old chapel. Okay, just what I was hoping.

After coffee, we went to look for the old lady who keeps the key. We passed a sign
prohibiting something which I didn’t understand. Yvonne explained that it was
prohibiting the use of metal detectors. Apparently foreigners, particularly Germans -
the cultural shock troops of modern Europe - were coming in such great numbers and
digging around so much for the supposed great treasure, that they were undermining
some of the buildings and generally making a mess and a nuisance of themselves.

The old lady needed a few francs to make coming out of her house and over to the
chapel worth her while, but she even gave me a receipt. The chapel looks very small
from the outside. Through the great doors, the first impression is of crowdedness.
Just like any other small church in most respects, but the impressive difference was
the amount of religious clobber. It looked more like a mini cathedral in terms of the
quantity and quality of ornamentation. The priest had scoured France for these pieces,
and obviously had the dosh to bring it home. There was so much stuff that you couldn’t
sensibly find space for it on the walls or in the ceilings, so it had to be left on the floor.
The most striking piece was the evil looking horned Satan by the door, snarling and
writhing and emitting a chilling hatred.

We stayed another night. All the snow was melting. Astonishing really, when you
consider the amount of snow there was. I got up out of the van again the next morning.
It was bright and warm. Again I went down for a wander to the gates of the town. I
looked out at the hills now partially unclothed; their brown bodies revealed. This time I
was smacked so hard by the recognition that my knees gave way and I actually
staggered a few steps back. This time I knew where I had seen them before.

They were the hills from my dream of nearly two years before.

Back to the top....

The Eye of the Hurricane

I couldn’t bring you in
any closer...
I couldn’t
meld our souls…..
It was like trying to get close
to a slowly exploding bottle
or trying to reach the eye
of a hurricane….

The whole time, right from the beginning,
I had a sense of what it was like at the centre of the hurricane....
Perhaps the first few glimpses, I missed;
took for granted,
assumed to be part of a standard getting-to-know-you....
I also missed them because my first impulse (still, after all these years)
is to experience guilt….
Instead of properly seeing the still moments
as respite from an ongoing gale,
I assumed they were moments of forgiveness
for wrongs I hadn’t fully understood I’d committed…..
I didn’t know enough then
to know that any wrong I might possibly have committed
paled into insignificance
against the circling walls of the hurricane…..

We, you and I, frequently
found still moments….
You were concerned that they weren’t “proper” or “normal” “happy times”
as defined by your experience and your pals……
One time you woke up with a start in the middle of the night,
staring at me in horror….
As I awoke you were asking me if I was a werewolf…
I couldn’t help laughing, but you were trembling,
poised, like a deer, ready to spring out of the bed….
I tentatively reached toward you and eased you gently back under the covers….
You relaxed and I could begin to feel a restored flow of warm energy
passing between our embracing bodies….
In moments like that
I loved you so totally…..
But I think you thought
those moments were too strange…

One time I came to see you in my old diesel camper van…
It was late, and unannounced….
I knocked on your darkened door and stood back to look up….
You appeared at your window in the moon light
in your pyjamas,
but you came down and out, arms folded, into the cold
to look….
We got into the van and under the covers
and listened to music on the new sound system
until the early hours….
You held my head
in your arms….

One time you said,
“Don’t ever leave me
when I’m angry….”

We didn’t do a lot of verbal…..
We didn’t talk endlessly and repetitively about which pals were now in or out of favour
and for what obscure reasons…..
We didn’t endlessly and repetitively reminisce
about good times past…..
Sometimes we just lay and communicated through limbs
for hours….
Sometimes I would just listen to your breathing
and feel your body rise and subside….
Sometimes I would listen to your heartbeat,
even your stomach…..
But those would be in the close sections of the ellipse
along which my mind would be wandering…..
Sometimes it would be out in the rarefied zone of the eternal question,
sometimes a lot more pragmatic and day to day,
but inevitably, inescapably, inexorably
it would swing back on the long curve of the ellipse,
thudding back into the sound of your lungs,
the smell of your neck….
I would become conscious again
of where exactly my limbs were
and signal
- a squeeze, a puff, a stretch -
and wait for a response…..
You were doing the same thing,
but your ellipse would have taken you elsewhere
which to me didn’t matter
but which to you did…..
To me what was so good was the synchronicity of the return curves;
to you what was so bad was that we were thinking about different things…

But the time I remember best,
the first time I was certain I was in the eye of the storm
and not in some temporary, falsely created lull,
was when we stood on the bridge in the park
after I’d finally gone and ordered a second ticket to Canada…..
For twenty or thirty minutes we just stood there,
intertwined against the railing,
looking at the water and the ducks in the sunshine…..
You were calm because you knew how much I loved you….
I was calm because I felt that at last
I had done something completely right
and that, at least for the moment, you believed I loved you…..
By then I knew the consequences were still far from predictable
but, for the time being, it was the right thing,
and for the time being
we stood together
in the eye
with the distant winds racing on the periphery
out of sight and sound
and out of mind…..

Months later,
after Canada had fucked up and passed by,
I came by your door, in winter….
I wanted to see if you really hated me
as much as you seemed to want me to believe…
We had some angry talk, but as I was leaving to go to a pre-arranged meet,
I turned and said, “You want me to come back after?”
and you said, “…….…Yes.”
And I did,
and it became evident that you didn’t hate me at all,
and our lust carried us through several unquestioning days and nights,
and then, for better or for worse, we began talking
about how to find out if we should or should not
be living together………..
And then, over time, for better or for worse,
we reckoned
we ought to get married…..

As you knew, I’m not a great believer in the institution of marriage…
In economic terms, I consider it to be the base unit
of the engine of rationalisation
for western greed, surfeit, and exploitation,
but I felt ready to make a significant gesture,
a fully obligating commitment
as a signal to you
of the strength of my feelings for you….
I wanted to give you an indication of the lengths to which I would go
to bring peace and calm to you
so that I could bask in the presence for eternity
of the peacefulness and calm I know is in you;
in the extended moment of that time on the bridge,
in the eye of a hopefully dissipating hurricane;
in the presence of the warm and loving nature you exude
as the walls of the hurricane recede….

But,
it was not to be…..
Very soon after the ceremony,
at which I wept like a loon
as I heard the words of commitment spill forth from my flapping mouth
calling on the people there assembled
to witness the measure and extent
of my resolve,
you said,
“Well, that was only one day….”

I guess I knew it was a gamble….
Either the formal commitment would bring us peace and tranquillity,
or it wouldn’t….
I felt, at that point in my life, I had nothing to lose
and everything to gain….
We got married and went away and lived in the hills of southern Spain
for three months….

How good could that be?
Who would not have looked upon us and said,
“Those two are blessed with good fortune
to get such a start to their life together…”
And we were,
blessed and off to a good start,
but it wasn’t enough….
Somehow or other, the formal commitment
and the idyllic start
were unable to provide the assurances you required…
The hurricane, gone for some weeks, began to return,
whirling at first on the periphery of our lives
and then, periodically, closing in
and wreaking havoc…..

Gradually, I knew the game was up,
even before we left Spain….
The overland journey home was tortuous and joyless….
Back home, we maintained a periodic balance
but the hurricane was never far
and I knew it was only a matter of time
before it blew up in our faces…..

For me, the big learning curve at that stage
had to do with the recognition
of the limitations
of my supposed neutrality….
As the walls of the hurricane closed in,
as I could see the clouding signs in your eyes,
my vanity was such that I thought I could resist….
I thought I could remain my usual calm and detached self
as the winds hurtled past my shoulders…..
Your perceptions and your anger were not mine….
I stood outside them….
But such was the force of the hurricane
and, perhaps, of your natural genius,
that I became drawn in,
dragged into the vortex
and dealing with your perceptions and your anger
on your terms
and within your context
such that I began to lose my bearings
and no longer knew which way to turn
to find either my own calm and detachment
or the stillness of the eye….
In those terrifying moments the hurricane ripped through me
and I began to find myself hollering as loud as you
and almost as bereft of inhibition and social restraint….
And, meta-infuriatingly, as the raging counter anger welled up in me
I could see you begin to calm down….
Through my tunnelled, clouded, raging eyes I could see you begin to smile….
For you the storm had now passed….
It passed, like a possession, from you to me,
escalating even, as I witnessed your now growing serenity….
I would be left in the grip of the whirling hurricane
as you stepped calmly back into the eye
and watched me twisting and turning and hollering….

A few sessions like this
and I began to realise that my supposed detachment,
my supposed neutrality and balance,
were fast eroding….
I was being drawn into something much bigger than I could handle…
As the storms blew and receded and then blew stronger again,
and the police and the lawyers became involved,
I began to feel out-manoeuvred….
I began to feel a force in you blossoming
as the very rights and institutions I normally campaign for,
and for which you bitterly resented my time away,
swung to your support….
Eventually, the time came
when I had to grab myself by the fucking throat
and drag myself away through the raging winds,
back towards the outer periphery,
away from the allure of the stillness in the eye of the hurricane,
away through the frenzied charging of the circling windstorm,
buffeted, wracked, and pummelled every step of the cursed way,
beyond the spill and tumult and chaos of the outer edges
to again stand outside
and to then look back
to see you standing there in the eye, calm and alone,
as the furious battering gusts hurtled around you,
now between us,
separating you from me….

As I looked back,
across the chasm, across the violent raging torrent,
I could see you now weren’t smiling…..
I could see how hurt you were…
I could see you feeling, perhaps not for the first time, abandoned….
I could see you watching me betray you
as I bailed out…….
As I looked back,
through the shattering tempests,
obscuring our vision
with the flotsam and jetsam of our lives together,
I could still see how beautiful you were…..
I could still see
your confined, wounded, demented loveliness….

As I backed away,
as the last vestiges of the gales
ripped and tugged at me,
I could see, completely and perfectly, at one and the same time,
the crystal essence of the complete and perfect case
for both
why I should
and why I should not
be there with you…..

I had to abandon ship because I wasn’t strong enough….
I had to bail out
because the ramparts of my neutrality
were too fragile….
But don’t ever think
that I didn’t
or don’t
love you…..

Back to the top....

The Common Understanding (patois)
A welcome to new borns and other recent arrivals to the planet....

De caman undastandin
a de fund a knowledge
in a weh we bawn ;
From a weh we spring
pan we journey trew
uman conshusness…
De beauty a de caman undastandin
a dat
it put togeda long time
an a som sefless people….
In a dem journey trew human conshusness
plenty people fe get de na cha
a de task weh a face dem, cause it hard…
Dem fe get sey dem deh ya fe learn
an fe ge a lickel supun back…
Cause we a fe get,
plenty a we start tun stupid an craven…
Mine u, it only gwen las fe a lickel wile
Cause people dem ded
and trew dis ack decent
dem lef behine
all weh dem lern an discova
in a dem journey…

The wole a weh we discova,
Weh dem weh still deh pan de journey ca member or recall
a de caman unnastandin…..

The wole a weh we record an rememba
a de descovary a de bes ansa wah we,
fram time can get to de question
“a wah mek we de ya?”

But a de question, no de wole heap a ansa,
weh bring we togeda.
An a dis we gee all a unuh weh de ya todeh.
De wole heap a ansa hav dem own kina prettiness bout dem,
Dough a de question weh bring all a wee togeda.
A de question weh mek we breadren

So………………. Mek dat be a lesson to the wole a un noo.

An mek me jus sey,
wid every ting weh de inna me hart
An evry peace a me soul….

(ole out an tek de baby han)

“com join we..”

For translation, see elsewhere on this web site.

Back to the top....

the Wail

I’m standing with a bunch of the inmates. They’re mostly black. Rudy comes over with a
new guy – just admitted. Rudy has his arms around the new guy’s shoulders and, looking
straight at me, he says to the new guy, pointing, “He de one”. The new guy looks sullenly,
blankly at me. He and Rudy sit down on a bench with John Mac and some of the others.
Then I realise that they’re all looking at me, fixing me with their huge dilated pupils. I look
around at them, standing and sitting. Completely uncontrollably, a smile breaks out on my
face, a huge massive sunshine grin. My eyes fix on the new boy. Just starting his time. I
stare into his eyes. I see the defeat, the cornered-ness, the dread of the long wait, the
wasted time. Staring into his eyes, my sunshine grin covering him with love, one hand
reaches out and rests on a shoulder standing next to me. Still staring deep into the new
guy’s darkened, sullen eyes, I lean forward and put my other hand on his knee and, slowly,
feel a huge sob rising from the bottom of my chest. With my hand still on his knee, my head
drops. The sob rises. It comes up through my chest and I open my mouth. A low tone emits
and just keeps on coming. All the agony, all the injustice, all the lost love. The tone rises a
little in pitch and volume; gets more gravelly. It begins to take over my lungs and body. All
the pointlessness, all the lost time, all the lost life, all the desertion, all the failure, all the
isolation, all the indifference, all the deception, all the duped-ness, all the suffering body
pain, all the lost good intentions, all the mis-interpretation, all the mis-representation just
keeps coming. The sound just keeps coming until it’s a very loud reverberation, shaking me,
my down-turned head, and probably those around me. It just keeps coming and I’ve lost
control. I am holding on to the new guy’s knee and the shoulder of someone next to me as I
bend forward, almost vomiting. The wail keeps coming. Saliva drips from my mouth, snot
from my nose. The volume increases and the reverberations intensify. The room is
absolutely filled with the sound, shaking the rafters and the cell bars. It still keeps coming
as I struggle to look up. I barely see John Mac through my vibrating eye-balls. He is sitting
next to the new guy, on the other side. He is staring at me and quietly nodding. I lurch my
hand to his knee, staring into his eyes. The sound intensifies and swells and resonates, my
cheeks and eyeballs shuddering to the same frequencies, and then, slowly, almost
imperceptibly, the reverberations begin to become echoes. The resonance begins to drop.
My lungs must be fully flattened. The last vestiges of air are extracted, forced into the
now diminishing sound. Then, suddenly, all that’s left is the departing echoes. Then, silence.
Long deep silence. I peer around at the gathered prisoners. I close my eyes and take a
deep deep deep breath. I open my eyes and look again at my fellow inmates. They’re dilated
pupils are still fixing me. I’m struck by how funny they look. Slowly the sunshine grin rips
over me again, helplessly splitting my face again from ear to ear. I stand up straight as they
all begin to smile, and then laugh, and pretty soon we are all, even the new guy, completely
and utterly helplessly convulsed with laughter. Tears stream down our faces, our bodies
contort and stagger and convulse. Rudy gasps, “I tole you, he da one…” and everybody
creases up all over again.

Back to the top....

Return Curve, Real Time

I first met you at that music festival in the Forest of Dean.
I had that spoofy church stand up routine
mixed with a sort of skanked up blues musical act...
I never got very many groupies, but, always the optimist,
I spotted you in the audience,
drawn first by your long legs, then by your hypnotic eyes...

That night you and your friend came and stayed in my hippy van...
You and I became friends
but I was too stupid,
too caught up in hurricanes,
to appreciate what I had stumbled across....

I was trapped in other currents when your mum lay dying....
I forsook you,
and yet, we stayed connected....
Postcards and phone calls here and there,
and later, sporadic emails....
We occasionally passed each other at the festivals,
always mis-timed, always out of synch....

Then, much later, you dawned on me again like a new day,
like a slow realisation,
like the slow returning curve
of a certainty....

You swept in
with your total love...
Wrapped in stresses and anxieties,
you crept back into my life....
I had no business deserving you....

Your love is unwavering....
It's intensity is convinced and convincing....
I'm engulfed and overwhelmed by it....
I am cured by it,
even though I'm sure you must be mistaken...

You brought luck into my life;
beneficial coincidence,
positive serendipity.
You trigger happy events....

You brought your sunshine child
who keeps teaching me so much....
And, even though I was largely uncertain
and it made no rational sense at all,
you brought me
another life....

Back to the top....

Letter Home

Well, where to start on this one....

As I'm sure you've worked out, I've always been a hopelessly late developer. I'm still
falling off pushbikes and motorcycles. Didn't even learn to play guitar till I passed 30.
Steady job - how long was it before I ever experienced that? And still no sense of
what a proper "career" might be. What a walking disaster!!

As you know, many moons ago Georgie and I got together after many years of not being
together when perhaps we should have been. Regret is a terribly self-indulgent
extravagance and I don't often immerse myself. Nor does Georgie, but occasionally we
have lapses. If we'd got together sooner, could we have done this and that? Could we
have avoided a lot of unnecessary non-happiness? But who knows? It's rarely a
productive road to go down and hardly entertaining. Nevertheless, history is there to
inform us and it might be foolish not to look back from time to time – if only to adjust
the rudders and fine tune the headings. One of Georgie's regrets, may heaven forgive
her, is that she never had a child with me. I've never considered I am much in the way
of fatherhood material and nor have I felt bringing new borns into this world a
particularly useful or constructive thing to do. Nor have I ever had much curiosity
about where my particular genetic strand might lead. But perhaps, as they say, I just
haven't been in love enough. Despite our sometimes fraught living situations – what with
custody strains and property dead ends and periodic job dis-satisfactions against a
backdrop of global meltdowns – I regularly count my blessings and chief among them is
this home (wherever it may be) that I can come back to with this lovely woman and her
lovely child and all the trappings that seem to come with it. I don't think I've ever
been happier. I don't think I've ever been as regularly side-tracked into laughter. I
don't think I've ever enjoyed the sub-routines so much – from excursions to the
allotment or the coffee shop to taking Isla to school on a Monday and a Friday.

With all of this in mind, Georgie and I found ourselves occasionally wandering down a
minor regret road associated with missed opportunities for joint parentage. It goes
without saying that we both love Isla big time and her happiness is always the chief
consideration. But even she has wondered what it might be like to have a brother or
sister. So, against all notions of common sense and plain old applied intelligence, Georgie
and I took the decision to leave open a "window of opportunity" for a couple of months
to see if the cosmos itself had any suggestions or inclinations.

Well, the cosmos has responded, and the answer seems to be – damn the torpedoes; full
speed ahead. Within, it seemed to me, a very short period of time, I found myself
drifting in the hammock at the allotment, gazing up at the blue sky through the green
leaves of the little fruit trees, when Georgie's gentle face hove into view and looked
down at me with such generous smilings and outpourings of love that I felt transported.
Her smiling face, those eyes, and, beyond, the leaves and the sky. I gradually realised
she was speaking, and eventually clocked what she was softly saying. Can't remember
the exact words, but I'm afraid I didn't have one of those Hollywood moments where
the lead male is instantaneously ecstatic and leaping about and treating the whole thing
as if it was the announcement of the second coming. To be honest, I think my first
reaction was something like, hang on, we've only just opened this window. I think
Georgie may have been a little disappointed by my initial reaction (hey, I was having a
good time in that hammock), but over time I've found myself adjusting. We haven't
mentioned anything to anyone apart from a few medical people. The only other person
who has been brought into the loop is Isla. We put it off as long as we could pending
test results but she seemed to sense something. Georgie wasn't really showing then but
Isla seemed drawn to her stomach. Kept stroking and squeezing and putting her head
against. So we rehearsed a couple of scenarios and eventually, when we were all loafing
on the bed one morning we eased the news out. A little off-puttingly, she cried at first.
We were both there caressing and consoling her until we mentioned that any names
would have to be agreed unanimously by all three of us. She instantly began reeling off
names and hasn't stopped since. The other day she even asked if she could make the
baby's sandwiches when it's ready for school (talk about long term planning; wonder how
long that will last?).

One of Georgie's concerns has been Down's syndrome – the likelihood of which allegedly
increases with the age of the parents. So scans and tests have been undertaken, all of
which now seem to have given the all clear.

So there, in a nutshell, it is. I'm sure you'll think I'm as mad as a hatter. I sure do.
There is absolutely no sense to it, but it is gradually seeming so right in so many ways –
some expected; some unexpected. Who knows? Time will perhaps tell (although in my
experience time rarely tells you anything at all).

Back to the top....

Letter to Hazel

I think I’m slowly getting over the staring phase. I sense that you can pick up on my
staring and that this can be unsettling for you at some level. And I’m careful to try to
manage the staring process such that what staring I cannot refrain from can be done
discretely, from a distance, not in your face so to speak. Even now, as I gaze upon you, I
get emotional. Perhaps even more so now that you’ve started smiling so much. You’ve no
idea of the power of your smiles. Your lovely mum warned me about this, but even so I
find myself swept away. You too get swept away I think. I see little spasms of ecstasy
shudder through your tiny body as you crow with delight at successful smile exchanges.
Sometimes you seem so delirious with happiness that the tail end of your crowing
culminates in a distinctive throat catch on the cusp of your return to inhalation. That
sets me off again and for short periods of time we both teeter on the edge of complete
hysterical breakdown.

But something you perhaps don’t know about and that I feel I’ve strangely rediscovered,
is the power of the back of your neck. I look at it and quietly crumble,
without you even being aware. You’re staring at a flower or a fly or a table cloth or
inner space, and I’m on the verge of tears behind you. Why is that? What is it about
your neck?

Maybe it’s something to do with already being helplessly behind as you march out into
the “real” world. Something to do with that combined with the evident high
vulnerability of that small area between your consciousness and your locomotion. It’s
such a tender space at such a critical junction.

But I said “re-discover” because it suddenly struck me a couple of days ago that I had
seen necks like this in close proximity over extended periods of time before. You will
think, “Hang on a minute, aren’t I your first and only child? And wasn’t my sis already 4
when you came to know her?” – and you’d be right. Where does this familiarity come
from? I certainly learned a lot from your lovely sister, but that couldn’t include
realisations about infant necks. Well, a couple of days ago I had a flashback and
realised it comes from the early days of your youngest uncle and auntie. That was my
last period of extended contact with babies.

But mostly I wanted to tell you what a privilege it is to be your dad. Your mum granted
me an enormous and largely unanticipated (in terms of strength of feeling) emotional
gift which I will savour
to the end
of my allocation
of time and consciousness......

Back to the top....