Grains of Sand

“I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life.” Oliver Sacks said that almost, not quite, ten years ago, in October 2009 to his partner Bill Hayes. Admittedly when he said that he was at a more advanced age than I, already in his seventies, but it made me instantly think upon reading it: why don't I feel the same way?

I don't fear death and I don't fear wasting life. Looking back at over three and half decades of it, I see I've done a lot of that – wasted life; I didn't mind then, and I don't mind now. Upon reflection. What would be the use now in regretting what's been done?

Death is a subject matter for another time, but which I'll sum up by saying: I don't fear my own but others', their decline and final departure, and the after. Maybe then, I share Sacks' opinion...? if that's what he meant, more in relation to himself: his own parting.

And indeed some pages on, and after I'd written the above, (on p.124 of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me, the paperback edition, in case you want to find the exact paragraph) he does comment on picturing his own death that he's “not troubled in the least- not serene, but...as if it is the right thing at the right time. And so it will be.” I share that certainty though I'm younger and aren't as yet dealing with the frailties of the mind or body since who can tell how many years are allotted to us. Seeing those changes in others however can be painful, and difficult to acknowledge and accept. Time is so transient when it concerns those you love.

And I said I wasn't going to talk of endings!

But do I think when I, if I, reach a more senior status I'll think: what a waste! It's possible. There are many things I could have been and done; I realise that even now, and yet that's my biggest problem because I'm not great with choice, weighing something up against another. It always becomes about what I stand to lose rather than what I stand to gain. And in those types of scenarios I'll always select: no change. It could be a job, it could be love, it could be the idea of moving home. It doesn't matter, because when your mind, even for a short time, feels it's not your own, then sameness appeals, and usually wins. Or in my case that's how it goes.

How boring! Is it though? I like what I like. I like 'wasting' time reading, thinking, observing, questioning. Yes, it's a singular life and a luxury. An impractical, and some would say, a 'no fun' one. But for me it's akin to breathing. Take it away or stifle it, over and above what I was willing to compromise, and I'm not really sure who or what I am. I go around in more of a daze, if that's possible. My mind running at a speed that I can't keep up with and all of it a jumble and concerned with tasks I don't really care about. There's no gaps for the real me, to just be, or to enjoy those leisurely pursuits in the same manner as before. I can't sustain a life like that. And yet life, if you engage with it: people and work, often requires it of you.

Oh, what a waste! Yep, it is. Now I really consider it. It's a selfish way of living and yet I'm not uncaring, the opposite in fact, though I don't always know how to show it and I'm not too keen on intimacy, but you know, living, I've not really cracked it. You could opine Oliver Sacks didn't until his later years, that he hadn't really lived until he fell in love or opened up to more 'normal' experiences associated with the everyday. Perhaps that will happen to me....? like him at a late stage with somebody junior so that it will surprise me and I'll find I'll go with it. Age can do that to one. The grains of sand that make up your personal time are fewer; you catch what you can, hold in your hand and taste of it.

At least I like to think I'd do that, if say I lived another thirty, forty-odd years and suddenly had new experiences presenting themselves to me. Yet as I write this I think: But you don't have the same temperament of Sacks! You're not sunny or positive like him.

No, I lean towards melancholy, yet we share the habit of random pronouncements (his are recorded by Billy in 'Notes from a Journal') which seem to come from nowhere, as if plucked out of thin air, although of course to the speaker, they're not; they're perfectly logical.

Still, I'm hopeful...not much, but a little, that if I attain his age I'll be as wise and won't (as I do now) want to steal all time for myself and reserve none for new or late comers.

Picture credit: Broadway Desert, a P R Francis original

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Some Broad

I wouldn't have been surprised if John Cheever had described Justice as 'some broad' in his tale of Falconer Jail; he doesn't however, though the phrase is used later, on the last page, in reference to a coat, when, and I quote, looking as if about 'to meet some broad in a very expensive restaurant and buy her lunch.' But he does describe her, at the beginning, as 'blinded, vaguely erotic in her clinging robes and armed with a headsman's sword.'

He's right of course. That's the conventional image most of us recognise and usually see positioned outside or above judicial places where hearings and trials are held, where sentences are served. And yet I find her figure far from assuring and more troubling, though I'm not sure I could tell you why. Not because I'm holding back, worried I'll offend, but because I don't really know myself. Something about her, depicted as she commonly is, pricks my conscience.

No, this is not going to be a case of revision (you breathe a sigh. I hear it before it's even reached its end) because I don't agree with all this tearing down and redesign, though she does smack of 'Olde' whenever she's found. Not that there's anything wrong with mythological symbols, assuming that's what she is? because I've deliberately chosen not to research her but have instead presumed from my small amount of knowledge she was either a Greek or Roman goddess, though I'd rather she was just 'some broad.' Some broad picked up somewhere: on a street corner, working the counter in a shop or diner, sitting in a hotel lobby or a train carriage like in a Hopper painting yet even those images, that slang dates itself to the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, to detective novels and to America, where the streets are laid like girds and, to a Brit, confusedly numbered.

An ordinary dame. A housewife. A secretary. Dated. Dated. Dated. I know, but nowhere near as old and more familiar than Justice.

Do I offend you with this view? with this slang? of the hard drinking (and hard smoking) era, of the (still) more masculine world where people dressed more sharp than they do now and spoke either in clipped or soft tones, of the sort you don't hear now. I know, I'm romanticising a time I didn't live in or even get to experience for one brief moment, when actually being in it wouldn't have been like that at all. I'm looking back, or through, a window that can never for me be recreated exactly and so it will always be some place I'd like to be but can never go.

And that's just one; there are others: even earlier moments in time, which if mentioned progressive peoples of today would say I was mad. We've come so far...and yet too far. Some of our struggles now are more sensitive than worthy. These attitudes are even clouding my view, in spite of separating myself (as best I can) from them.

Maybe I'm being a prude. As couldn't it be the eroticism, some people see (in her), that disturbs me? That somehow it's undignified for Justice to be perceived in that way, though I quite understand why. Is it my modern eyes? which instead of seeing an impartial figure sees a seductress (oops shouldn't say seductress but seducer) like a praying mantis who entices, then, once the deed is done, eats her lover or in this case beheads them.

But is that not a fitting token if they're guilty? Her sword straight and unbending; its swing unimpeded by the silk scarf blinding her eyes, the blow delivered swiftly to the neck. The head rolls. Justice served.

In those bygone gladiatorial and unmerciful days that was justice, whereas today, as more usually happens, those found guilty are carted off and locked up. Their punishment served in months or years with time off for good behaviour alongside a regime which is too comfortable; in the States where the death penalty is still enforced, they swell in size, and appear freakish, like those that used to be exhibited in a circus show. What do they do to them in there? Or does incarceration inflate a man's ego? Prisoners should, if they return to the civilian population, come out clean, and lean as in sinewy, not starved, and hungry to continue their reformation and not go back inside.

Justice now, even wielding a sword, is too blinded.

Picture credit: Office at Night, 1940, Edward Hopper (Source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

An Elevated Chair

Being high up does something to one.
Apart from making one feel crazed if faced with a view of snow. Although that too is a problem. The picture window you look out from filled with a crisp clean white, with only the outlines of structures seen. Those shapes you know but covered in white against a pure white or dove-grey sky makes them instead of friendly inhospitable.
Yes, the sight of white does something to your brain and your naked eye, though I'm not sure what. Correction: my brain, my eye, because that's the only firm evidence I have to go on, sitting up here in my red and white block that's not constructed of brick but of who knows what – mortar and what? - and which therefore moves when washing machines and dishwashers are in use, when windows and doors are slammed and when a wind has turned island-wild: gusts only a small isle can experience and sometimes withstand. The floors bounce and vibrate, the ceiling shakes. The walls hums with the neighbours' activities. Framed pictures shift on their hammered-in hooks and partitions oscillate. Your own refrigerator thumps and clunks. The bathroom extractor clicks when you enter and exit. And somewhere there's an unidentifiable and intermittent beep.
But those are the internals, which living up, raised off the ground so you're more in the sky, sharing it with the birds that fly in it, does not really bear upon; it would be the same anywhere, in close quarters or even in converted properties and terraced housing. It has nothing to do with the number of floors, it's the build, though a documentary once enlightened me that a moving structure is better in an earthquake. So, it has that going for it at any rate, though the earth, as of yet in this small part of the world, does not quake, or if it does it's rarely reported and even rarely felt. Touch wood. I always touch my writing-dining, dining-writing table (I couldn't decide which activity should be mentioned first and which was more important: dining for energy or writing for sanity) in such instances though I'm not convinced it's helpful. I do so now. Ah, what's this! A new indent. How did that occur? And when did I last rotate the table and chairs?
Never mind. It's so easy to become distracted by domestic chores and forget there's an outside at all, excepting as I said when it's white, or so bright it's dazzling and the room in which I sit grows humid so that I feel like a plant mistakenly labelled as a hothouse variety when I'm longing for a gentle breeze to move the drapes and a refreshing drink, on tap. Make mine a Pina Colada. Because that's when from outside all I hear is clink-clink-clink. Glass on glass. And whoops of laughter, that tittered, screeched, whooped, inane and boastful. Look out and I see bared arms and legs and dresses that waft or show a lot off; from up here I have a whole new angle and it's not always pretty or forgiving. The wearers' flesh turning pinker like rashers of bacon as they crisp and not as they think like sausages browning. Neither is good, but the latter, I gather, is more desirable.
Pale English rose, or vampire if you like as I shun this 'Glorious Weather!', sweating indoors and pounding this here keyboard, occasionally halting to exclaim: 'Oh, do shut up!' in reference to the infernal chatter and boom boom boom of music. A very short pause to think ahead to the scrape of chairs on concrete when I may get a golden half hour of silence in which I won't write, properly, due to the hour, but will be able to collect my thoughts, perhaps even scribble them on a post-it and find they still make sense come morning.
And that's some hope, because they usually don't. But the satisfaction at the time, although it was fleeting, was there.
A flat for all seasons, then, from which to observe life and wonder about it and get riled up over. An eagle's nest, a high castle, an ivory tower, though as I've noted it's not that and never will be any of those because I'm nowhere near as high up as that – only three floors yet I make it sound more (and it feels more) since it separates one, and places you in the unenviable positions of either a boss-like figure watching his workforce from above or a prisoner removed from the situation, otherwise termed as normal living.

Picture credit: The Chair, 1975, Salvador Dali.

All posts published this year were penned during the last.