There were just three issues of Rejoice last year, and only nine the year before that.  So far this year I have penned seven. A poor effort! Beyond difficulties with the keyboard and other small hindrances lies a simple admission: I don’t know what to say.

A couple of years back, when “B4” was my transport, Little One (who, having now turned 15, and having ceased being little, I shall now call Teen Girl) and I spent a great many happy afternoons playing various power wheelchair games in our sheltered little cul-de-sac. As a student in a Special School, there is little about driving a wheelchair that my daughter doesn’t know. We played Powerchair Tip most often, and then Duck Duck Goose, Marco Polo, Hide and Seek, and several games with spectacularly complex and wildly variable rules which I suspect Teen Girl made up on the fly. Wheelchair Macro Polo is wacky enough, but Hide and Seek was our strangest game by far, principally because hiding anything in a bitumen cul-de-sac is a challenge, let alone a power chair and teen aged occupant. In fact in our dead end road (and how perfect is it that we should have our very own safe, secluded and wide stretch of tar on which to play?) there is just one spot that could be construed as a hidey-hole: a largish, wayward bunch of gum leaves on a single drooping branch that overshoots the kerb. Every time we played, this is where she hid. Every single time.

I played my part to the full, of course. I would ‘beep’ my wheelchair horn for the required twenty counts, end with a long ‘coming ready or not’ toot. I then headed off in the opposite direction, feigning complete bewilderment, ignoring the rustling and giggling while I scour the empty road for any sign of life, visually inspecting all the kerb and guttering, until at last she feels compelled to send me a clue; a little mimicked bird call perhaps. On very cheeky days it might be a loud burp … or something worse. But gosh, I still couldn’t see her!  Even when I am just six feet away I remained completely puzzled.  She calls out, yells out, “You can’t see me!” to shrieks of laughter. She is still invisible. There is not a skerrick of doubt in her mind, I’m sure; she is supremely confident in her camouflage. And then I would at long last drive around behind the hanging frond and – goodness me – there she is! The innocence of this repetitious game was sheer delight.  The whole thing could be repeated two or three times in one afternoon and then again the next, and the next.

Not for the first time, my daughter’s innocence illuminates my world: who and what I am is starkly on display, but not to me! A revealing feature of our anatomy is that we are physically unable to gaze at ourselves; even a mirror reverses the image that others behold. Instead we might go about looking for reflections of ourselves, hoping to catch a glimpse in the words of others, or in the face and eyes of a friend. But to truly see ourselves the conversation must be deepened. Relationship is the only avenue of self discovery. Am I willing to be seen, or will I hide behind a bunch of gum leaves?

A willingness to be found by others is necessary to ward off isolation; of which I am increasingly aware.  My sense is that remaining hidden confines us to a small patch of our own self-understanding, and this is bound to become stale, repetitive and in the end negative. Whenever I penned an essay for Rejoice I would discover a degree of clarity within, and the space I occupy would feel wider. If a reader or three were to reply, so much the better.

And that’s why I am going to try hard, once again, to write more.  Knowing that  a reader will take seriously what I write makes all the difference.  It makes every word a challenge to produce, it makes me read, read again, re-read, edit, read, leave it a few days, read it a few more times, always with the question: is it true? Tomorrow night I will be on a train – a train! – again! – retracing the lengthy trip I took last year to visit my grandsons in Queensland. So I will post a report on my journey. I hope you’ll join me.

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Rejoice!

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Drop me a line while I travel …

Back again to my hand written journal from September 2014
……. now long past:

The Fifth Day

7pm

I am 1580km north of Paradise, in a tiny 8 sided cabin we have christened ‘The Yurt’. This is the furthest I have been from home since I last visited the Gibson Desert in 2010, travelling about double the length of my current trip. My very dear eldest daughter and her family joined me here yesterday morning for one night and two laughter filled, blissful days of talk and all the fun and exhaustion that two little boys bring with them. My grandsons, four and six, are such a delight. I love them all dearly and would miss them achingly right now, if their voices and their presence weren’t still echoing around me here in The Yurt some hours after their departure.

I am elated not simply because we were together, but because I am able to be here. When my daughter first asked months and months ago if there was any possibility of me visiting it seemed to her and I both that there probably wasn’t.  It was an impossibility in my mind, no matter how often I approached the idea. From mid 2010 onward B4 and I had accomplished so much together, goodness knows how far we travelled; but late in 2013 we abruptly parted company. The partnership had ended. I was making a simple bus trip to town when breathing became rather restricted, feeling it would soon be near impossible. It was one of the few times I have had to ring to be rescued. An unpleasant moment, and for several weeks after that I only left our home if my Favourite Wife was home from work and able to drive me in our van. I consulted with a physio, an occupational therapist, and a wheelchair specialist. The problem was simply posture. So much technology is crammed into every spare inch of a power chair that it leaves room for only one position for sitting, one that becomes confining as far as breathing is concerned. The exact opposite of the inflexible posture provided by the ridiculously expensive, custom designed power chair seat is the limitlessly flexible and more physically engaged posture of my faithful old Manual Chair, known far and wide as Bugger. Of Gibson Desert fame! The advantage it gives is being able to lean and twist this way and that, and tuck your feet and legs right under the seat – just where the batteries would be on a power chair.  There was an even greater advantage to ‘going manual’ that I was not expecting: a far more energetic lifestyle. I’m certain that this transition back to a manual chair was one of the big factors contributing to my climbing of our hills that I wrote about a while ago. I realise now that I had become trapped in B4, and it was good to get out.

But, in returning to good old Bugger there was still a problem.  Even around the house a manual chair is limiting: there are only so many times that I can push it from one end of house t’other!  After a couple of weeks of this contained style of living (which goes very much against the grain), I began to wonder if I couldn’t somehow pull my wheelchair around with a motor of some sort.  Finding nothing very effective for sale (I checked with my wheelchair expert, and google, of course), I took the seat off a small, older style power chair; leaving just the wheels, motors and batteries in the base of the chair; with the electronic joystick controller on its cable, unscrewed from the arm of the chair. I then tied a rope between the wheelchair base and Bugger.  Holding the joystick in both hands I set off up the hall on a maiden voyage.  It was a funny sort of test flight, jerky and difficult not to crash into the power unit in front of me, or indeed the walls of our hallway, but it was definitely a drag in the right direction.

Having tested the prototype around the house I started to build some additional features onto the power wheelchair base.  A tray, a shelf for the second ventilator, a transformer drawing 12Volts from the 24V power system, and importantly a rope with a hook.  A couple of weeks later it came away with us on our annual holiday, where I couldn’t resist a road test!

Possibilities suddenly abounded, and soon I had taken my invention, now christened ‘Chug’ (Char+Tug=Chug), on a trip to the city by train, a tour of the old convict shipyards on Cockatoo Island, aboard the Manly Ferry, and scariest of all: a Sydney Bus.  The bus was nerve wracking, because I didn’t know exactly how or where we would fit on the bus, and the early evening crowd was somewhat intimidating. But, without shadow of a doubt, the wide and wonderful world was once again accessible, and open for business!

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Rejoice!

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My current trip has been accomplished with Bugger and Chug Mk II, which I can see over in the corner of the train carriage as I write.   Compared to the roughly $12,000.00 price tag on B4, Chug Mk II cost $400 for an older power chair on eBay, $20.00 worth of

plywood, and a few other odds and ends.

I will devote another post to the numerous features of the new Chug – which is now in it’s second year.  It has proved so incredibly useful …. but I will save that for next time.

Drop me a line!

After 50 days as a Student of the Oboe, it’s time for a Report.

Allen’s Law – as it will be known in the future, once my theory gains a broad following – says that:

The energy applied to one endeavour
will enhance all of one’s endeavours.

Applied to Oboe playing, for example, Allen’s Law predicts that the more I practice the Oboe, the cleaner my dishes will be, the better my lawn will be cut, the clearer my diction in Spanish, etcetera, etcetera.

Allen’s Corollary – which naturally awaits the much anticipated recognition of Allen’s Law before it can in turn be acclaimed – says that:

The harder the endeavour,
the greater the peripheral gain.

Now, let’s also apply the Corollary to the practical example of Oboe playing. Mastery of the Oboe is said by some to be the supreme human achievement, and certainly the most demanding, which directly explains why the rest of my life is going so well.

Allen’s Hypothesis – which is somewhat theoretical and further from universal acclamation than either Allen’s Law or Allen’s Corollary – says that:

The most effective way to tackle any problem
is to devote your entire attention to something else.

So let’s have one last practical application, and consider how the Hypothesis might apply to Oboe playing. I am making the greatest strides in learning the Oboe by throwing myself wholly into weaving a full scale reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry.

The bottom line: I have, in fact, got my fingers around two octaves in C major, One and three quarters in D major, and mastered the first 22 notes of Satie’s Gymnopēdie No. 1.  Well, perhaps not quite mastered.

That wasn’t the bottom line after all, but this is:
Allen’s Law might not be as silly as you think.

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Rejoice!

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(The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long and 50 centimetres (20 in) tall, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  More than 9 centuries old, if you’ve never heard of it you really should click here.)

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I have come to prefer private email over the public ‘comments’ section previously found on this page. I will endeavour to reply to an email sent via the form below, and I’d love to hear from you!

(continuing journal excerpts from Spring 2014)

The Third Day … still

7pm

As I was saying … the problem is the number of hours between leaving our hotel room this morning and arriving at the cabin on the Maroochydore River.

The number is 27.

27 is not a huge number, but it is a lot of hours to power the Ventilator (or in less clinical terminology the breathing machine, as I prefer to think of it) that I can no longer be without. It’s more than two years since I learned how to power the breathing machine from the batteries of the power wheelchair (B4, remember her?) through a car-fridge transformer; with considerable coaching from our electronics shop (a real shop, with real advice!). More recently I have discovered how to power the machine from 18 volt cordless drill batteries, which is invaluable because B4 is now parked in the shed and I  use a manual wheelchair almost exclusively. Ryobi Lithium batteries are brilliant, durable things. But how many of them do you need to make a 27 hour dash between power points? The answer I have come up with, checked and double checked, is three 4.5 AH (amp hour) batteries. They cost $100 each, but that is a fraction of the cost of the proprietary batteries for the machine.

So, here I am on-board the train bound for Brisbane, ten twenty-sevenths down, seventeen twenty-sevenths ahead.  One 4.5 AH battery spent, as expected, so far so good! If my maths is wrong, or if something brakes down, there is a fail-safe system as well, built into what used to be a power wheelchair (a story for another day). The ‘Tractor’ for want of a better name, is sitting across the isle of the train and contains a complete spare system that I rarely leave home without: a second breathing machine, back up 18 Volt, 24V, and 240V power supplies; spare air hoses, spare masks, a bag of tools, and two 15 AH wheelchair drive batteries. That sounds like a lot of power, but using it will reduce the driving range needed for catching tomorrow’s  train from Brisbane to Nambour, and then a bus to Maroochydore. Flat driving batteries would be a nasty setback!

Travelling with a sense of calculated risk is energizing and scary. I’m a little less scared and a little more energized with every mile of rail that passes beneath the train, but an indisputable fact remains: I am a very long way from home if something goes wrong!  I feel irresponsible, especially when I think of the inconvenience I will cause other people if the wheels do fall off. And there are so many wheels!

A Journal is a valuable possession throughout life, but an essential one when travelling. Something happens to us when we leave one place bound for another; something so significant that it has fuelled endless books, films, songs and every form of art for centuries.  The changing scenery flashing past and the slower evolution out at the horizon summons an aspect of my soul.  Motion changes every facet of perspective. I become reflective, satisfied, curious, inventive, ambitious even. I love it! A Train Meditation from the pages of my journal …

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.” (1^st Peter in the New Testament).

My paraphrase (a habit of years; a good way to explore a passage):

Family of God-loved People, listen! Because you are foreign to the world, without a home until we are Home, don’t give an inch to greed, self-interest or other self-demands; these things will deplete your soul.

I am not at home. I am on a long trip and I need to conserve, conserve, plan and save. I have limited batteries for breath.  I have two small Thermoses of tea! I have the smallest of wheelchair batteries for mobility.  So it’s a matter of careful planning and reserving.  People of Faith are also away from home.  We are exiles, aliens, strangers in this world of horrors as much as it is a world of beauty.
Use Sparingly – Save Our Souls. Keep everything primed and sharp. Don’t sleep, remain alert, fit to fight.

Rejoice!

To be continued …

Journal of a Land Voyage III

 

 

(I have come to prefer private email over the public ‘comments’ section previously found on this page. I will endeavour to reply to an email sent via the form below, and I’d love to hear from you!)

One version of my halcyon, daydream life is a life without decisions. A life that follows a calm and satisfying plan, never throwing up unexpected obstacles, never detouring to offer an alternate path; a predictable, safe life. Obviously that life is dull, and absurd, but tempting still.

Decisions, it seems to me, are sentient beings. They hide away to formulate their strategy of attack, fermenting complex blends of promise and fear. They arrive unbidden, timing their appearance with care so that they manifest before The Decider at the very moment when he or she feels most at peace with the status quo.  I suspect they learn their subtlety as we age: decisions that presented themselves in my youth seemed relatively simple and impulsiveness was generally rewarded.  I was, after all, invincible.  But with every added year decisions gain cunning.  And, especially, with every added child decisions baffle me more.  If you’ve been the parent of a teenager asking to borrow your car, or your money, you will know all about this (and my home has seen a grand total of 37 teen-years; 5 still to go….). Today’s decision: will I or won’t I catch a train to Northern NSW, where some of my longest friendships lie.  While I decide – a task that habitually takes me a week or two – I am turning back the pages of my hand written journal to another train trip, just a few months ago:

Journal of a Land Voyage

The First Day

A Wednesday in September 2014.

Tonight a big adventure begins:  first to Sydney, then on to Queensland.  Now that it has finally arrived the day feels neither as thrilling nor as terrifying as I had expected.  I the past weeks since I decided to travel again I have sometimes felt quite intimidated and frightened at the scale of the plan, and by the possibility of things going wrong with me or with my equipment so far from home. Now that all the preparations are complete, it feels modestly secure.  I don’t know how many days I have spent at the workbench with a soldering iron, rewiring and reinventing the breathing machine caddy which hangs behind my wheelchair. Many! The helpful folk at the electronics shop have taught me all sorts of things, but I still need to head back there with projects like this; electronics is such a tricky thing I reckon, and all I’m doing is wiring up switches and LEDs.

Midnight

“The (pause) XPT (pause) service to (pause) Sydney”,

we are loud-hailed every quarter hour in perfectly stilted robot-girl English,

“is approximately (pause) 2 (pause) hours behind schedule”.

Furthermore, we are loudly hailed, robot-girl apologises for any inconvenience.  It’s the “ANY” that I find increasingly annoying, in 15 minute increments.  As if inconvenience is optional: it may be, or may not be inconvenient to spend 2 hours in the middle of the night on a railway platform.  Why can’t she just come clean and simply apologise?  The same thing happens in politics, and sport, “If anyone is offended by what I said then I apologise”.  If?  IF?

1am

Thankfully they have axed the loud-hailed quasi apology, and a uniformed, living being has come around a couple of times to assure us that the train is still expected within the well advertised 2 hour delay.  The living uniform told us with some pride that it was he that had placed the call to someone higher up, suggesting that the quarter-hourly loud-hailing had to stop. And he brought us tea and biscuits!

The Second Day

Midnight

We have returned, my Favourite Wife and I, from a commanding performance by David Suchet in The Last Confession.  On the train platform last night we had listened to Suchet, famous as Agatha Christie’s Poirot, in a wide ranging interview with the ABC’s Philip Adams. Suchet is wonderfully candid about his conversion to Christian faith in his 40s, and the issues of faith, power and unbelief in tonight’s play were all the more poignant knowing that the gentle and humane lead has explored them personally.  Favourite Wife’s birthday celebrated in great style today!

The Third Day

Breakfast in the restaurant of our rather flash hotel, celebrating our 25^th Anniversary.  From our floor to ceiling glass window we look down 30 feet or so onto the top of the old Post Office clock tower in Martin Place.  Our trip has been a success! Lots of planning and no small amount of apprehension about various decisions, especially the timing of leaving home just before one of our daughters was due with her first child, has all paid off and our adventure has run perfectly to plan (but is that a contradiction?).

2pm

We have parted company.  She headed south, by air, homewards with the promise of a new grandchild only days or even hours away. In fact it was our soon to be mother who met her at the airport: I bet that was fun!  I am heading north, by rail. Fourteen hours on board another train to see two little grandsons that are two states away from our home. This leg of the journey is the one I have worried about most, and worked hardest to make secure.  The problem is the number of hours between leaving our hotel room this morning and arriving at the cabin on the Maroochydore River where my family and I will stay for a brief time.

To be continued …

Journal of a Land Voyage II

Rejoice!

(I no longer use the “Comments” section previously found on this page, but I will endeavour to reply to an email sent via the form below. I’d love to hear from you!)

Oboe OO1, the first time in my entire life that I held an oboe,
was just three days ago.

For many years I have held an idle sort of longing to play the oboe, and once I came quite close to being loaned one; but in all my time I have never actually touched an oboe.  I don’t think I’ve even been very near one, never mind holding one, much less being invited to blow it!

Putting aside my lifelong hankering to play the haunting, famously complex double reed woodwind, this story really begins in fourth term last year. Just as my daughter and Favourite Wife were preparing to go back to school (the very same school:  one as student, the other as staff), I was stopped in my tracks by the striking, random, out-of-the-blue idea of taking music lessons on the first instrument I had ever played (other than the den-den daiko, でんでん太鼓, a Japanese drum given to me one Christmas by my grandparents, presumably to vex my parents and drive them to distraction), the humble recorder.

When I tell people what I am learning, I see their eyes widen a millimetre or three, and their eyeballs quiver on the edge of rolling back in their heads. But in fact the recorder is a serious instrument, capable of very much more than massed, excruciating renditions of ‘Hot Cross Buns’.  Our primary school teacher (who, incidentally, I am visiting next week and who is over 80 and still teaching music) was terrifically enthusiastic about recorder playing, to the extent that she would bring a harpsichord into the classroom sometimes, and entered some of us in the City of Sydney Eisteddfod.  We performed IN the OPERA HOUSE! Below water level from memory, but it was IN, and we were awarded a SECOND! Not that silly after all eh?

Albury has a Conservatorium, and a week after my bold idea I was in a slightly musty, converted garage at the back of the same, where the drum kit lives, and where people on wheels are generally sent.  I met an engaging woodwind teacher whose eyes, when I told her that I did not want to play through a book of tedious exercises but wanted to begin immediately with a particular Vivaldi Concerto, widened a millimetre or three, and then quivered on the edge of rolling back in her head.  Vivaldi’s Recorder Concerto in A minor, RV 108.  Here it is.

By year’s end and with 9 recorder lessons under my belt I had the Largo (slow) second movement going quite nicely, the Allegro (flat chat!) third movement at least recognisable, and the Allegro (not quite as hectic) first movement coming on well.  This only happened because I enjoyed it abundantly, profoundly even, and put in a ridiculous amount of practice every day. As I write now, on Oboe OO4, I can report that the whole Vivaldi concerto is now passable, some of it bordering on acceptable. An unexpected benefit of recorder playing has been significant improvement in breathing and dexterity.  It’s a perfect exercise.

And then soon after Christmas I had a second, striking, random, out-of-the-blue idea: Oboe lessons!  It’s odd they way a brand new thought can arrive. I have played Clarinet and Flute in the past, but the Oboe as a serious instrument had never had really occurred to me. The oboe has a widely held, daunting reputation as the most difficult, most confounding, most unplayable member of the woodwind family.

Before leaving home for our annual January holiday, I booked an Oboe teacher at the Conservatorium for 1st term. Then I read as much as I could find on the WWW (incidentally, did you know that Powwow is the only word in English with a double-double-U?).  About the oboe, it would seem, there is much to learn.

And so to Oboe day OO1.

At the first opportunity in our holiday schedule I rolled on and off a couple of trains and into the door of a woodwind supplier on the other side of the city.  The sales assistant I spoke with said I was fortunate because their oboe specialist was in the store that day; and soon I was in a serious conversation about all that I had so far learned.  Oboes come in a dizzying array.  The student oboe has a lot of keys, the intermediate has a great many keys, and the professional oboe more keys than a locksmith. Then there is the choice of material for the bore, the key work and springs; and the important option of renting before buying, just to make sure the Oboe really is for you; and on it goes………

And so I found myself holding a real, actual, OBOE for the very first time.  And the oboe specialist said, “Would you like to play it?”  And Lo and Behold, I actually got six notes out of it!  I was rather impressed, and so, for the record, was the musician.  A couple of hours later, having previously resolved that I would rent an oboe initially, as is universally advised, I naturally purchased the very first oboe I had ever held.

Oboe OO2: Deliriously excited by this exotic, wondrous, pristine instrument in it’s case; silver keys shining beautifully, promising much! Played the six notes again, and once or twice more.

Oboe OhOh3: Oh dear. Spent a little more time with the Oboe out of its case, and sank slowly into a deep well of buyer’s remorse. I discovered that the thing is ridiculously difficult to play for any more than six notes. An octave makes your face feel like you are blowing up a rubber hot water bottle while simultaneously dangling a spinning acrobat from your teeth.  Words can’t be found to describe my shame and doubt, my stupid indulgence in squandering a rather healthy lump of our modest family fortune, or the idiocy of thinking I could play an oboe.  A dismal day, no doubt you’ve had one too.

Oboe OO4: Today I played octave scales in C and G major!  More than once! Hallelujah! Sounded terrible, but there are 8 notes in an octave, not six, and 8 more going down!  My decision in the music shop had been carefully made, despite the crippling doubts of yesterday.  Perhaps, just perhaps, I will eventually play the oboe.

Rejoice!