In a sequel to my very first blog, An Embarrassing Secret, I have another disclosure to make.  Just as my initial embarrassing secret was a ‘coming out’ of sorts, expressing what I found unutterable; so again my  written words are a deliberate first step towards conquering new ground. The fact that I find it easier to tell the whole world than to tell those close to me is surely a commentary on some peculiar flaw in my character; but there it is.  The closer you stand to me in the intimate circle of family and friends, the more terrified I am of revealing myself.

With this in mind I have begun with Bertha.  ‘Bertha’, as you might recall, is the helpfully disarming pseudonym we give to the bevy of nursing staff who frequent Paradise to assist me with  washing and dressing.  (The collective noun for Berthas could only be bevy, wouldn’t you say?)  So most mornings I am deliberately slow to divest myself of my new embarrassing secret.  I leave it on until the last moment, so that I’m just powering down and shrugging of the tentacle straps as Bertha enters the door.  It’s just a glimpse I offer, but it is public.  It’s systematic desensitisation; but in place of the arachnophobiac’s bugs and spiders I’m using selective exhibitionism to overcome my mortification.  I am hoping to progress from Bertha to a friend or two.  In time. All in good time.

This is how I wish to look:

This is how I actually look:

For just on two years I have relied on a Bi-level breathing machine to sleep; and a fine job it does too!  Once I moved past the initial shock of artificial aeration (A Beautiful Addition to your Lifestyle), it gradually became a delicious, welcome feeling to sleep with lungs full of air.  Around the start of this year I found that a half hour or so with the Velcro Octopus was valuable of an afternoon; and the respiratory specialist said, “Fine, for a while.”  In recent weeks, twelve recent weeks, this has mushroomed from one to two, then three and sometimes four additional daytime hours; and in daylight SOMEONE MIGHT SEE!  So afraid have I been of discovery thus adorned, that I have slept under our doona – right under – for most of two years. Recently I changed the privacy lock on the door to my retreat, lest I be seen by a family member failing to knock!  We live on a quiet dead end road, where virtually the only traffic past my window is our uphill neighbours; but nonetheless I sit with a hat pulled low, and reflexively cover my face if I hear their car.  And she is a nurse!  For goodness sake.

Why?  …I am thinking out loud…  Why am I so afraid?  Elbow crutches and even my first wheelchair were nothing compared to the dread that I feel about being seen mask-encumbered. I’m not particularly afraid of the device itself; which is odd because on the day the specialist first suggested this machine he mentioned that some people need to use them 24/7 – a thought that I found shocking. I’m not afraid of the machine; indeed, it has become a friend. But I am deathly scarred of you seeing it. Why is that?  It might be that this, more than any of the other devices in my not inconsiderable enhanced-living-arsenal, strikes to the core of life.  While I live I breathe; and vice versa. I suspect that my fear is that this step is finally, after four years, too dramatic. I’m frightened that I will frighten you. I’m frightened that your fear for me, or your fear of me, or just fear itself, will distance me from you.  I can’t speak to you while this alien nymph has hold of my face, and that breach of communication symbolises what I fear most: that you and I will drift apart.  Or be forced apart, prised asunder.  Moreover, I dread the reassurance that it doesn’t matter, and that it won’t happen, because I think it already has.

Well, I’m pleased to have got that out! Now we shall soldier on. Or as my Mother would sometimes say, (how odd to only remember this now),
“On our way Rejoicing!”

 

130 Days to Christmas!

The replies generated by “13” prove that I broke my own promise not to whinge. Worse: it was dangerously close to that antisocial transgression: a miserable whinge! But I won’t apologise, because even if I overstated my own case, there are others who could claim those words. That’s the thing you see; in the Lucky Country (and probably in much of the 1^st world) the language of lament has been expunged, and anyone not ‘Living the Dream’ sounds like a poor looser.

I know, I know, I’m on the downhill yet again! Why is the villain the easiest part to play? In our school days Shakespeare’s good guys always seemed so dull (I played Theseus, or was I Lear?). Far better to be cast as Caliban, or Puck, or Bottom. Or as a Witch! The human trait keeps negativity so close to the surface makes complaint more readily voiced than, ….well, …anything.

This week I want to contradict myself, and say for all to hear that my life is as rich today as it has ever been. My life is as full of pleasure, as textured, as adventurous, and as happy as ever. A bit like Shakespeare’s heroes, this view of my life will be tricky to stage, but I really want you to see it as I do.

130 Days to Christmas!

Spring is living up to the promise in its name: bouncing out of its grey, dank camouflage to startle our unaccustomed senses with the forgotten brilliance of wide blue skies, the intimate kiss of sun’s warmth, and the welcome whiff of wattle. Inside the house another heady thrill is playing out this week with the arrival of a brand new, fire-engine red lounge. Besides comfort and striking good looks, this piece of furniture has its own spring hidden within: an entire queen sized bed, complete with an inner-spring mattress. It’s just a “thing”, a material possession; but it is our first tangible step towards a long-planned Christmas! With four of our children married we now have a biennial Christmas cycle, alternating between the various in-laws one year, and us the next. This year it’s our turn, and in this morning’s early hours our family grew by one, a precious baby granddaughter, bringing the Christmas total up to 16! Hence the fire-engine-red, fold-out lounge.

130 Days to Christmas;
and we are beside ourselves with anticipation. I’m sure a growing number of our friends are heartily sick of our single track of conversation.

Most days, but especially crisp, bright days, have many pleasures.  The first pot of tea, ideally before sunrise, is superb.  We drink our tea together, my Favourite Wife and I, in what we call the Quiet Room; home to the best furniture with a single wide doorway at one end and a glorious, northerly bay window at the other. The theory of the Quiet Room was (and you’ll note the past tense) that it contained none of the electronic gadgetry, plugged in chargers and  glowing LEDs that have strangled every other 21^st century room. Recently though, an inheritance allowed us to fill the Quiet Room (and well beyond!) with music of such quality and volume that we frequently find ourselves stopped in mid-whatever, spellbound by a clarion choir or pounding piano that you would swear was just around the corner in the hall. This is my favourite room, quiet or otherwise. We often light a candle with our morning pot of tea; a wordless witness to the prayers which, depending on the business of the day, we may or may not have time to voice. Sunrise itself is thrilling when first needle-rays slice through gums that string along the ridge above our home.  Like as not that early glow will catch on the twitching ears of a mob of kangaroos browsing for their breaky on the hills. When I call our home Paradise, I’m simply stating a fact. How we came to live here is a long story, layered with extraordinary chance and coincidence, but here we are. This wonder of it catches me unawares time and again, daily in fact, but here we are.

Hidden within the wordy tome of the Old Testament are many gems. One that I particularly love lies in the book of Ezra:

 “No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.”    

After long years of exile, Israel’s Temple was finally being rebuilt. While some rejoiced as the foundations were laid, others wept for their distant memory of Solomon’s temple; the incomparable treasure sacked and burned decades before. The noise was strident, tumultuous; mournful and exultant; a sound that carried both the grief of the past and tomorrow’s hope. This as an aspect of true spirituality: the ability to laugh and to weep in the same moment. If any faith can contain this tension it must be faith in Christ: the God who suffers while promising eternal joy. “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”

Are the valleys which I now walk deeper? Or is it just that the hills are higher? I realise that thought merits inclusion on a desk calendar, but I put the question seriously. People who cheat death of one sort or another often speak of a heightened experience of life; and I feel something akin to that. I don’t know quite why, but small pleasures are often sheer delight; and reciprocally a minor disappointment can be gut-wrenching. As for achievement, I crave the Everest-worthy satisfaction I can derive from almost any endeavour, just so long as it is strictly single handed!  Which leads me to last week’s train expedition to a family gathering, a school reunion, and a flying visit to our five day old granddaughter; but that will all have to wait for another time.

 P.S.  You won’t let the fire-engine comment get back to my Favourite Wife, will you? She’d be mortified.

P.P.S. The maths around our little new arrival’s age won’t work (if you read closely) because I began writing in one week, and finished in another.

P.P.S. On the same basis there are now only 93 days till Christmas. I can’t wait!

 

As more Sundays pass without this essay reaching completion the prospect of it ever emerging in readable form is increasingly remote. But right now my frustration surpasses the difficulty of writing, so let’s have another crack!

This is going to be miserable, but I promise not to whinge.

The London Olympic Games ended this morning, Monday August 13^th (that’s how long ago I started this!), and I am mourning their passing. Just why the Games exert such profound emotional control over someone as disinterested in sport as me remains something of a mystery; but for weeks beforehand I was conscious of neurons and tear ducts secluding themselves in training camps, straining for perfection in their individual events. I can’t count the number of times I have watched Australia’s Sally Pearson run that blistering 100 meters hurdle, then wait in awful  tension for the announcement of a photo finish, and then, after interminable seconds, collapse and explode with an indelible mix of victory, disbelief, astonishment, joy and tears. I laugh out loud every time I see the replay; but I could just as easily cry. If I were to cry I am almost certain they would not be “tears of joy” (whatever they are); my feeling is that they would be tears shed in the usual manner, tears of grief. This is my theory: the elation of winning is not easily divided from the desolation of loosing; the two are a hair’s breadth apart. My Olympic tears are stained with the triumph and the failure of everyman; with the knowledge of our perilous existence on earth; with the grand theme of divine reward (“Well done, good and faithful servant.”); and with my own most personal hopes and fears.  

Monday August 13^th, the first anniversary of the day we farewelled my dear mother. Memories of our family’s sadness; and memories also of a beautiful day we spent together.

Monday August 13^th. Just yesterday we were an hour or two south of Paradise, savouring spectacular views of Lake Eildon, along with curried king prawns, local olives and roast beef; all in the company of family gathered from near and far; as far away as London.   

That’s today, but tomorrow will bring more to tell.

_________________________________

Tuesday.
The day I dread the most.

I am loathed to admit that my dependencies are no longer merely mechanical; they are now chemical as well. I have become worryingly reliant on painkillers for day to day life. The problem with painkillers is that they eventually stop working; and so plain old Panadol is fortified by analgesics; and before many months have passed the prescription includes opiate derivatives. And then you’re hooked.

This happens all too often; you only have to watch the evening news to see people taking great box loads of codeine and oxycodone. It’s surprisingly hard to avoid this; and difficult to find alternative medical advice. So, with the GP looking on I have been conducting my own experiment with various pills, and have stumbled into a fairly effective weekly routine of this and that on different days, and most critically a pair of days every week without the big guns: the very effective but equally addictive synthetic opioids.

All good, up to a point. But those two “opium free” days are a bugger (and there is that terrible, terrible word again! A linguistic dependency?….) I took my concerns back to the GP, and she put it into plain, simple, alarming English: Opiate withdrawal.  Every Tuesday my world falls apart. No matter how I prepare myself, nothing will avert a shredding, aching tide of melancholy slowly leaking into every thought, and occasionally back out through my eyes.

This state of affairs is perfectly encapsulated – centuries before capsules were invented – in the words of the thirteenth Psalm:

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him, ”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

My life now bears little resemblance to anyone I have ever met, and yet these 3000 year old words are explicit in their detailed, accurate depiction of my very thoughts. Week by week these first two stanzas have proved so apt that they now hang on the wall above my desk, purely so that I will not forget the third.

I promised that I wouldn’t mope,… I hope I haven’t. What I wanted to know, back on the 13^th,  was whether the ups and downs of life are common to us all. We may look pretty different, but do we feel the same? The ache might stem from the calendar of life or from something as artificial as drug dependency, but I suspect that it all feels much the same.

One last question then appears: is there a universal hope for the common grief?  Again, I think there is, but I can only speak for myself. It’s the third stanza. The final four lines of the ancient psalm. I’m tempted to expand or expound, but I know that is a serious error (which preachers so often forget) because the words are plain and perfect, just as they are.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Psalm 13.

Rejoice!

Many weeks in the making.
Rather than tell,
I will show…

 

Midwinter, with its icicle fingers creeping under doors and lazy winds that blow straight through instead of going around, brings with itself a particular delight. I’m eager for its annual arrival, and I mourn its parting, even as the returning sun thaws out my bones.  This is winter’s hidden treasure: staying out after dark!

A relatively recent passion; my secret pursuit is only as old as Bugger herself.  (New readers may need an introduction to Bugger, or B4, the snappy red power wheelchair with the big heart and bald tyres). This is something we do together. Come to think of it, we do almost everything together. We even sleep side by side, and we always visit the bathroom together – which is why I had to spend a great deal of money making it larger, just so we could both fit in. We are an unusually close couple, and now and then, on especially wintry days, we stay out late. Even after dark!

The thrill lies in the improbability of a wheelchair and voiceless occupant wandering the streets in the dark, complete with head and tail lights. It feels dangerous (only because it actually is dangerous; it was a night time roll in the traffic on a back street lacking both lights and footpath that prompted the lights), and  positively furtive. Sometimes (come closer, I have to whisper this part…) sometimes I deliberately miss the late bus home from town, so that I have to catch the last bus!Honestly, this is what I do, and I feel so conspicuous. I drive up the main street a couple of blocks of shops and back, with a purposeful look on my face, just to hide the fact that I have intentionally missed a bus. I’m actually loitering, which used to be a crime, didn’t it? If I miss the last bus there is nothing, no way home. I could be stranded all night. The risk I take is life and death! Well, not really; I would have to call for my Favourite Wife to rescue me. But how shameful would that be? As in, “It’s a shame that didn’t come off”. The last bus takes a different route to every other homeward bus. It skips my stop completely, heading instead along a road with no kerb or footpath, i.e. a road on which the driver can’t set down a wheelchair. But this just adds to the challenge; I have a special card to show the driver which asks him to make a slight detour, just for me. Ah, the guilty pleasure of my foible!

This is all very childish, I couldn’t be more aware of it; but isn’t that exactly the point? It seems to me like only yesterday that I was walking on shorter legs in the early dark of a drenching, windy afternoon, wearing the standard issue wet weather gear for children in the 60s: yellow rain coat, stylish yellow rain hat with elastic chin strap, and those rubber things we pulled over our school shoes. What were they called? Galoshes? How do children survive modern precipitation? There I am, eight years old, bedecked in yellow, striding home through the cyclonic torrents, bound for safety, a warm home, a mother to fuss over me, and – blissful reward – a strawberry jam sandwich.

I laugh at myself, the ‘crazy cripple’, but the better part of my laughter (which very occasionally slips out on the bus, doing nothing for my public profile) comes from the continual and delightful discovery that I am still very much alive. Do you think I’m foolish? Or are many of us on the same road, each with our peculiar ways of testing ourselves, pushing out to touch a familiar boundary; confirming to our troubled hearts that safety can be found, or that we are not alone, or that life makes sense?

Rejoice
(I dare you!)

(Or: For Goodness Sake, not Another Story about Snow!)

Turning back half way down the mountain was indulgent.  It snowed in the very last hour of our three days on the mountain, and we were exhilarated after long, watchful hours spent beside our hotel window, desperately hoping that the torrents of rain would give way to buckets of snow.

We have been chasing snow for two whole years since arriving in Paradise; and being strictly off-season (i.e. cheap!) visitors we are always hunting the first or last snowfall of the year – so far with modest results. This had not been an easy trip for me, and I had wondered more than once if we would come this way again*.  Finally we had farewelled our favourite places, snapped our cameras and thrown snowballs. We knew it was time go home, but instead we turned the van around and drove half an hour  back up the mountain for one more, final play in the snow.  Turning back half way down the mountain a second time was just barmy.  On or second descent, after our second round of farewells, we reached the very same spot in our descent and once again turned back! Up we drove, as high as we could, where snow was falling fast, whipped around by the unrelenting blast that had battered our building for 36 hours.  This time we sat in the car, lonely pilgrims in a blizzard, and I sobbed loud and wretchedly for the good times past. The memories, the things we have lost, the adventure we have shared, and all that we may never see again.

I want a perfect life; and I ache terribly when perfection slips through my fingers.  I want perfection for my wife, my family, and – I can’t pretend otherwise – for myself. I am greedy for an unreasonable perfection.  I want idyllic weather on important days.  I want a smile on every face.  I want to find the perfect gift for every special occasion, time after time.  I want happy endings, big surprises, chance meetings, clement weather, long life, good health, scrumptious meals.  I want friendships that last forever. I want deep conversations and good humour every single day. I want to savour love. My perfect-wish-list is boundless, infinite, eternal.  

It takes me several sombre days to come down from a mountain, but eventually I return to normal life. When a simple, ordinary day finally arrives with its routines and responsibilities I feel a reassuring tide of joy that deeply satisfies.  The perspective on an ordinary day is reliable and true; it is a wide-angle view.  From an ordinary day I can see the order in my life. I can grasp the timeliness of events that are separated often by decades, and yet which are so connected that they declare the hand of Providence.  

Mountain peaks and valleys deep are unavoidably tied to moments of singular experience; and each must give way, eventually, to the level country of everyday life. There is an order and congruence to life that I can see only on an ordinary day.  On the mountain top there is too much adrenaline, and in the valley to much sorrow.  Ordinary days have a spiritual beauty.  Only on an ordinary day can I truthfully know deep contentment and gratitude. I cherish an ordinary day, lingering in its sameness, nourished by its texture and hue. Many a night I stay up late, unwilling to quench common joy.

___________________________________________

 

I’ve cheated.  I wrote those words last winter, but then put them aside; reckoning that my readers would throttle me if I uttered another word on our hapless obsession with snow! But I know their time has come: I’m startled as I read them again to find they speak about today. (And besides, pre-typed words are very attractive to me right now; on account of the real thing being so evasive. It’s bizarre: I can do just about anything, slowly perhaps, and briefly, except type! Tomorrow I’m going to finish some shelving in the shed, but here at my desk I’m beaten by a trackball).  

More than ever I am captivated by ordinary days!
I love the week’s routine; each day unique within a rhythm of expectation.
I’m living a High-Fidelity life.
And I ask myself this question: Why?

 

Rejoice!

___________________________________________

* But we have been back since then, and we will do so again! It’s odd what you can think at times.

Wednesday* dawned exceptionally bright. The hill paddock was whitened under a deep frost, and we later discovered water in the wheelbarrow frozen a quarter inch thick across the top. The cold was no hindrance though, because a much anticipated astronomical event could be observed straight through my window, right beside the heater!

Only 8 years have passed since the last Transit of Venus, but no one living today will see the next. The Transit will not occur until a fortnight before Christmas, 2117; making it one of the rarest of heavenly happenings. Wednesday’s Transit was watched through countless telescopes and other devices, professional and amateur, right around the globe. From the fractional shift in the sun’s ambience astronomers glean data that will reveal similar planetary star-crossings in far flung galaxies; but the phenomenon was more fundamental when Jeremiah Horrocks recorded the first observation in 1639. From the Transit of Venus Horrocks was able to calculate for the first time the distance between the earth and sun.   By the time of the following Transit in 1769, the event was considered so important to science that Captain James Cook was sent around the globe to observe it from Tahiti; as a consequence of which I am writing in English today.

The tiny Venutian shadow on my square of card was delightful and mesmerising. I’m grinning with delight even now as I write, recalling the elements of that morning of science. My telescope, for example, is an old friend that has been travelling with me for forty years or so, since childhood days when it was in constant use on our dining table, identifying every vessel that passed through the heads of Sydney harbour. The day had a palpable sense of history; wrapping the globe in an observatory community of which I was part. Dimly recalled high school trigonometry afforded me a vague connection with the mathematics of the seventeenth century.  And the weather! Crystal-blue skies were surely a heavenly imprimatur stamped on the moment. But something else had also begun to steal across my field of view.

 

As the second brightest object in the night sky, Venus can actually cast a shadow; and in a corner of my mind a memory was awakening, threatening to darken the morning’s success. I knew that I was courting disaster, tempting a particular aspect of my character to engulf me in a lethal shroud of nostalgia.

I had witnessed the previous Transit of Venus in a curious way. In 2004 I was spending a couple of days each week in a building yard, fabricating roofing trusses. I worked under a high, corrugated iron roof which sheltered the timber stacks and machinery, but offered no protection from the bitting June winds. We would have had a fire bucket well under way before the bright winter sunlight shone through a score of old nail holes in the roof, each sunbeam projecting the image of its star above, so that  by noon the shaded concrete floor was pocked with a constellation of Suns, each traversed by  a tiny Venus dot. I had seen this effect once before, while feeding hens in a chook shed during a solar eclipse. My Favourite Wife brought the children past the building yard after school, and we caught the image again with binoculars and cardboard. This was a beautiful, happy season in life, one of our golden years. The family was young and mostly still at home. I was strong and fit, there was no wheelchair-shadow on my horizon, and life was good. So very good! Dangerous, dangerous thoughts for anyone prone to fits of wistful longing.

Ever my weakness, sentimentality crouches frequently at my door, eying me with predatory lust. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour”. Yet on Wednesday the monster did not bite. It was the words of a friend, observing my observation, that brought things into focus.   Having seen my mobile-phone photos he wrote back, “… the sight of that little Venus tracking boldly across the face of the sun brought tears to my eyes; I don’t know why really – the glory and mystery of the universe, the wonder of being human and being able to observe and reflect on such things, the sheer beauty of the image, the glory of looking into the heavens on a telescope – all those reasons, I suppose”.

It was Venus herself who delivered the lesson, and saved me from sentiment. The delight and the thrill of observing the Transit come from its brevity, its rarity, its remoteness; at once timeless, ancient, and present; its steadfast adherence to time and place. Its transitory nature demanded my presence, and reminded me how to live. Within time’s precision there is such beauty.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Rejoice!

 

 _____________________________________

* That would be Wednesday a fortnight back. Writing speed according to ‘Dasher’ is hampering my attempt at a weekly blog. I know… Venus is so old hat now!

 

I had resolved, subliminally, not to write this weekend. Not only because it’s so darned hard to get the words onto the screen (I was startled earlier this week to find myself physically breathless by the full stop of a single Broadmouse sentence) but because the effort required to write seems to sap imagination and will.   But…..    I came upon the sharpest piece of advice earlier today:

Take possession of the land and settle in it,
for I have given you the land to possess.
(Numbers 33)

It comes from Moses; divinely inspired words for the Israelites poised to enter the Promised Land. Read literally, this is a brutal chapter in the old, old story; one that I find increasingly difficult to countenance from a modern standpoint. Allegorically, however, it’s superb!

This artwork from my Little One’s brush illustrates this perfectly:

 

 

In point of fact, “Turtle” does not illustrate my allegory well at all – fatherly pride just compelled me to show you her work of art!  But there is a connection: life is a lot like colouring in. The first law of colouring is almost a paraphrase of this morning’s piece of sharp advice: “Within the lines shalt thou colour, neither shalt thou trespass beyond the line, nor shalt thou behind the line fall’. The boundaries of life are largely given to us. Despite our cultural fascination with choice, life within its confines is a gift. So often the things in which we take the greatest pride, things such as our appearance, our intelligence, even our nationality, are simply a matter of birth.

These lines, the black-line boundaries of life; I need to think a little more about them. Some would say emphatically that there are no lines at all. Life, they claim, (often enough before a captive audience), is without limits; all that is needed is more courage, or a new paradigm, or more faith, or the how-to book – including a free DVD – on sale at the door. I don’t believe it for a minute, even though I’m sure I’ve spruiked the self same pitch at times. The great surprise of life is to discover that true freedom is found in obedience and trust; not in the expression of individuality. But what are these lines? There are many and varied boundaries within which we live. A finicky debate might be held concerning the thickness of the line, or the possible existence of grey areas; but essentially the lines are those innumerable things in life that are beyond our control. Some are benign, such as the colour of our eyes. Most are more consequential, and many are defining. Most obvious in my case is the existence of Bugger; with the regrettable phrase, “confined to a wheelchair”, proving the point. At times the black lines tower ominously above me; an insurmountable, silent wall of isolation. I feel cut off from the living, quarantined from those I love, expelled from ordinary joys. At times the boundaries roar with the deafening, paralysing din of a vast cascade, ravenously consuming hope and strength and providence itself, until everything becomes nothing.  My instinct is to flee the suffocating, gut-socking precipitous edge. Run and hide!

While it is natural to react, even to panic, it doesn’t help much.  To reword Moses, just a touch: “Choose a colour from the box, chose carefully and set to work. Begin again, over and over, colour on colour, until the lines are filled. There is no need to rush, be patient, this is a lifetime’s work. Colour minutely, colour with flair, and with intent. Rest, but do not stop; reach out  to the farthest corners, right to the very edge. In every direction, wherever you can, colour your life to the fullest degree”. 

 

Rejoice!

It’s coming up to five weeks since I contacted my speech therapist asking for some suggestions to overcome my sudden-onset typeopathy, or keyboardosis, or was it  stenographer’s blight?  At present that line of rescue is deadlocked in a triad of disappointment: the therapist, the librarian (with the useful gadgets for loan), and the all important GP (without whose signature I cannot pee!) are frozen in a circle of missed phone calls. It galls me to read another plaintive email saying, “We just keep missing each other!” I the meanwhile I have greatly improved on last week’s piece of wood and double sided tape:                       

Like its predecessor, the Broadaxe,

or its famous cousin the Broadsword,

the Broadmouse is a double handed weapon:

The thing that baffles me is that I made this in the shed without too much difficulty, but even brandished with both hands the Broadmouse still takes every scrap of dexterity I can muster to squeeze these few lines out of Dasher.  I can’t seem to manage the keyboard, or the mouse, or the trackball,  but I can still use a saw  and a router in the shed.  It seems too unlikely to be true, but there it is. I assume it has something to do with the line between fine and gross motor skill – but I know as much about that as any parent who has read their child’s pre-school report.

And that’s it from me. I can’t tell you how incomprehensible it is to find yourself physically breathless at the end of a single sentence. It’s ridiculous, stupid!

KBO.

I’m determined – so far – to write a blog post this weekend. It’s a challenge, and a bewildering one. Two weeks ago I wrote an ode to the demise of typing, a farewell to my dear keyboard. I’ve considered several topics, most of which I’ll write about one day, but the burning issue, the unavoidable concern, is another farewell.

The Trackball Mouse I bought twelve days short of twelve months ago scarcely works at all. Come to think of it, that means there are still eleven days of warranty to go! I could send the useless thing back! But conscience prevents me; and a refund won’t solve the problem with the trackball anyway. Because the problem is me, not it. I can’t do it!

From this point onwards in my essay I have written, deleted, tried again, given up, walked away (that’s “rolled away”, of course; more than two years on and these major changes still haven’t  taken root in my vocabulary!), given up, rolled back (got it!) and so on. None of that is unusual in the least, that’s how I often write; but today there is a bleakness over it all that I can’t shake off. It’s a new and recurring Sunday Bleakness that I should soon explore in print. And so, right now, with everyone else safely tucked in bed (until our Little One’s nightly 2am expedition down to our room; which she still manages even with a broken leg, and even though we hide her wheelchair!)  I’m going to finish this off, partly because many people have written saying, “Glad you’ve started writing again”, but mostly to fend off the despair of another defeat.

(I discovered this afternoon that a piece of wood and some double sided tape doubles my control over a mouse. So that’s a start; I might develop this two-handed concept further tomorrow. I’m energized by that already!).

 

Almost as long as I can remember I have experienced the odd black day; rare but awful hours where nothing makes sense, where energy and ambition jump ship, leaving only that cold, lonely despair that many folk know too well. But for me this is invariably a passing cloud, whose shadow casts only over hours, never over days. I’ve learned that I only have to wait – but wait passively, not digging deeper into the hole – and the sun will shine again. I feel its end as abruptly as that, and I often think I am most fortunate in this way. And because I know that fact, I feel sure that my current mood of trackball-induced despair will soon give way to something better.

I know the age of my trackball with such accuracy only because I bought it on eBay, and a very quick email search brought up the receipt. But its age is a good symbol of my mood. I’m despaired at the speed of yet another change and at the senseless, pointless, impotence of my life these days. I’m frightened too, but after so long there is no one left to tell. The eleven-and-a-bit-month lifespan of a trackball raises poignant questions about the longevity of any number of other aids and technologies on which I depend; these inanimate things become best friends!  And beyond that lies the distant but very obvious question of mortality itself; an unvoiced question that an undiagnosed patient is not allowed to entertain, much less actually pose. These thoughts are among my private obsessions; they are chilling and they are real enough.

Which brings me to Gertrude the Great. (Does her name immediately cause you to wonder about ‘Gertrude the Lesser’?). Gertrude’s view of life, which I recently came across, is not the current fare. In her eyes body and soul are closely tied in an inverse relationship: for one to flourish the other must travail. Saint Gertrude was a Christian mystic of the 13th century, and her thinking belongs to an age of mortification and magic, penance and purgatory. Nonetheless, her distant perspective is a valuable counterpoint to the cures and comforts of the modern world:

“When your body is touched and troubled by pain your soul is bathed in air and sunlight, coming to it through the painful body, and this gives the soul a wonderful clarity. The greater the pain, the more general the suffering, the more clarification goes on in the soul.” (Paraphrase).

These days I think our view is the opposite: psychological health springs from general well-being, and vice versa; so we prescribe exercise to treat depression, and we might even say – some do – that laughter will cure cancer.  Gert, on the other hand, receives physical suffering as a gift; opening her to great vistas of inner clarity, the like of which no hale and hearty mortal could ever comprehend.

I’m unconvinced, but something in her belief rings true. Suffering can ruin more easily than it perfects; the results of pain and strife are all too often bitterness or reproach.  It’s not inevitable, many escape this trap, but intense challenges such as prolonged grief, cruel isolation, or chronic disease may bind a person in a thickening cocoon of isolation; distorting their view and corrupting their voice.

Gert has another thought that brings this all together,

“But remember that kind actions – more than anything else – cause the soul to shine with brilliance.”

I do like her grounded, simple thought. I like the plainly stated prompt: live a kindly life, regardless of the circumstance. It addresses many of my taunting doubts, and as it’s now tomorrow it’s a fitting place to end.

 

Rejoice!