Life-story part 2

This instalment has been harder to write. I’ve had to question assumptions I took for granted in my last; and to accept that there may never be answers to some of them.
“My father died in the war,” I used to say, “so I never met him.” It wasn’t true but I wasn’t told any better. In fact he’s alive today aged 96, at least he was last year when my ex-wife looked him up, took photos, reported their conversations to my daughter. She found him still sharp-witted, physically active, interested in women rather than his offspring in England—eight of us to date. Widowerhood seems to have perked him up. I shan’t be asking him any questions about the circumstances of my conception.

I’ve found a booklet called Baby Days: a Record of Baby’s life. My mother—I shall call her Iris, it’s easier—started to fill it out some time after I was born, as you can see here. The details provide some factual evidence. What I’m trying to understand is how I came to be conceived; which of the tales I was told over the years have credence; which, if any, can be dismissed.

It goes on to record details of my weight at birth: 8 lb 8oz. She told me I was delivered with the aid of forceps. I estimate conception took place around May 17th, 1941, and that she’d already been in Perth several months.

In September 1940 the Japanese invaded French Indo-China. In the same month, the Malaya Infantry Brigade, with HQ in Singapore, was augmented with Indian and Malay troops, plus a battalion of Gordon Highlanders and two from Lancashire. This was six months before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. J J Mulder acquired a job which took him overseas. He feared what could happen, insisted Iris go somewhere safe. Her best friend Margery, who’d married a Chinese Singaporean, Sin Sitt Goh, fled to Kashmir. They stayed in touch by post. Iris went to Perth.

Many years later, she told me that she’d had an abortion in Singapore. It didn’t go well, she got peritonitis. J J was furious. She told me his job was “single status” and (without consulting him first) feared he’d be sacked if they had a baby.  There can be no reason to doubt her confession. (When I was a child she told me I’d had a brother who died. I thought of him as a twin.)

When I was old enough to reason things out I asked her how I could have been conceived when she was in Australia and he was in Java. She said he came on leave, a couple of times. It’s feasible, as the Italian and German navies hadn’t reached south-east Asia and the Japanese didn’t start naval hostilities till after Pearl Harbour. But I’m sure it was invented to maintain the falsehood she never intended to clear up.

It was Margery Goh who told me and my ex-wife about my real father. She was dying of throat cancer when we visited her, and chose to break a life-long promise. If not for that visit, I’d remain in ignorance today. I chose not to confront my mother, she being unwell by this time and widowed from her third husband. My ex-wife thought differently and wrote her an angry letter from the Isle of Skye, encouraged by the friend she was staying with. That’s another story.

Iris was distraught that I’d found out. I said I didn’t hold it against her; but thought to myself that if I’d found out as a child, I’d have made a great fuss and somehow made it back to Australia on my own to live with him instead of her.

The truth is, I never got on well with my mother. I often hated her, even before leaving Australia at the age of four, then occasionally up to perhaps eighteen. I felt shame at the fact, but there it was. Perhaps hate is better than the numb absence of feeling I had thereafter. There was no mother-love. She had no maternal instinct, but gratefully followed the regime of Dr Truby King, who was held in high regard in Australia and New Zealand as the authority on baby care—as Dr Spock was later, in the US.

“Truby King’s method of raising children involved doing everything according to a routine, ignoring the wants of the child and sticking solely to the routine in place. In order to utilize baby care methods as a means to regulate behavior, King suggested implementing a uniform schedule in which each aspect of the baby’s life was controlled. This included specific times for feeding, sleeping, bathing and bowel movements. Jock Mc Culloch states in his book “Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind“, that King believed that at the age of six weeks, toilet training should commence and be continued until the child was sufficiently trained.

“Cuddling with an infant was not to exceed 10 minutes per day and there was a specific hour set aside for holding the child; this was the only time the parent was allowed to hold the child. If an infant started crying, the parents were supposed to let him or her cry without giving additional attention. The concept behind these baby care methods is that after a few days, the baby would fall into this routine and would sleep through the night, making the parent’s lives much easier. Other aspects of Truby King’s method include letting the child play by himself and bringing the child outside for some fresh air, regardless of the temperature outside.” (From this site)

Fortunately we lived in a lodging-house where the other women were kind and easy-going. I was not slow to make comparisons.

tinted studio portrait sent to my mother’s parents

So now she had some explaining to do. How Iris Gwendolen Mulder, aged 32 and married, get involved with Harold Laurence Amey, aged 18 and living with his parents?

Her answer was extraordinary. I’ve thought about it for days. Could it be true? I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably is. She said she had a letter from Jan Jacobus somewhere which would prove it. I didn’t ask to see it. He had written to tell her he’d had a dose of malaria in Java. His sperm count was affected. He knew how upset she was about the unnecessary and nearly fatal abortion; how she grieved for that lost child. He gave her his blessing to meet some decent healthy man, have his baby, stay safe in Australia till this beastly war was over and they could be together again. No one would ever need know.

I guess truth can be stranger than fiction. I did go to Australia to meet my father after I’d traced him, with the wife he’d married in 1947 after the freshly widowed Iris rejected Harold’s offer and returned with me to England. I stayed with them for about 10 days over Christmas, with my then wife and our two children (his grandchildren) but we only had one chance to talk about these matters. He had very little to say, only that he’d offered marriage but she thought Perth wasn’t the best place for me to grow up. I was a bright child who’d almost taught myself to read, after making a connection between the words someone read to me (a story about a rabbit and a carrot) and the sound that went with each letter.

He said “We have a very good University in Perth. This is a good place to live.” I have no idea whether he knew he was being used as a mere sperm donor. If not, what a cruel burden to put upon such a young man with high enough principles to honour his obligations. It was clear that he never forgave Iris. Yet he sent a food parcel to her in England, after hearing about the rationing there.

Now I have the written evidence that she never meant to acknowledge my father, let alone marry him. It’s in Baby Days.
Both grandmothers are listed, but one is simply “Harold’s mother”.

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Life-story, part 1

I want to tell the story of my entire life up to the present: the bare-bones series of events, with no fanciful embroidery. Let it be like a series of chess moves without the expert commentary. Let it be like a dispassionate ship’s log. Let the facts tell their own story. As far as possible, I will leave out feelings, impressions, memories, motives. Perhaps some of these may be deduced by an astute reader. In any case some of this ground has been covered years ago in other posts.

I owe this effort to posterity, or rather that tiny section of it which might take an interest; and most of all to myself, so I may belatedly grasp my true identity and nature; then devote myself to being that person.

Gensing Manor, watercolour by my great-aunt Olwen
Here is a photo of Iris Ward aged 4, with her parents on August 13th, 1913, at a family gathering at Gensing Manor. She wants to sit on her mother’s lap, but my future grandmother is big with a second child. A second photo  shows that she gets her way.

Click to see the full group photo

She is a wilful and determined child.
Click to enlarge
As soon as she reaches 21, old enough to escape parental jurisdiction, she books a passage to Malaya, invited by Doris Holdsworth who’s gone before, and invites her to join her dancing academy. Both ladies have been influenced by Isadora Duncan, that fast-living dancing queen who took Europe by storm in the Twenties. Both are doubtless swayed by the lack of eligible young men in England after the Great War. Up to the nineteen-seventies and beyond, St Leonards-on-sea was notable for the number of its elderly spinsters, many still dressed in mourning for the loss of a first love decades before.

In Singapore she meets a Dutchman and marries him in St Andrews Cathedral

Jacobus Jan Mulder (b. Jan 4th 1904) & Iris Gwendolen Ward (b. Aug 31st 1909)

He wants her to give up being a dancing teacher. Together they run an outlet of Ciro Pearls, then acquire The Gap RoadHouse, on the East Coast Road. It was an idyllic life: servants, white privilege, tall handsome husband, dancing in the midst of society, everything she’s dreamed of.

But the Japanese are threatening Malaya, Singapore is the cherry on top. Jan Jacobus is called outstation to other islands, does secret work under cover of a job in the radio network. He’s in the loop of what’s going on, tells Iris to get out while she can, go stay with someone they know in Perth, Australia. He gets caught up in hostilities. They never find his body: he was either shot or drowned. Iris doesn’t get confirmation till the war ends.

In Perth she meets a boy. She’s 32, he’s 18, lives with his parents on a farm. They meet at a dance in a community hall, where the boys are one side, the girls on the other till shyness is overcome. He takes her on to the floor, they converse, he talks about horses, they agree he’ll give her lessons. I piece this together from what I’ve been told. All I know for certain is that I popped out on March 3rd, 1942, “the day that Java fell”, as she used to say. Her husband was probably in Java at the time. I never heard of Larry till I was 48, from a friend of my mother’s who’d promised never to tell but felt she ought to, just before she died.

Harold Laurence Amey, my real father, enlisted as soon as he was 21. Before that he would have needed his parents’ permission, which I guess under the circumstances they would not have granted. I met them when I was three, with no understanding of who they were, nor was I ever introduced to him, when he was eventually demobbed and returned to Perth. Learning of my mother’s widowhood, he offered marriage. He’d had time to think about it while while half-starved in the Malayan jungle, wondering if he’d survive.

My mother said no. She couldn’t wait to get back to what she saw as civilization, longed to see her parents again. She’d sent numerous letters and photos of me, to show how bonny I was. Surely they knew the truth? I’ve been told that but now I doubt everything. My birth certificate showed I was the son of Jan Jacobus Mulder.

My mother and I came back on the Rangitata, heavily loaded after being hastily converted back from its wartime role of transporting troops. We were on the Aliens list, being technically Dutch:
click to enlarge. Note that H/D stands for Household/Domestic—or in my mother’s case “housewife”, I guess
Lacking maternal instinct, my mother had largely left me in the care of other women during her time in Perth. I had no idea corresponding to “father”. I wasn’t exactly an orphan, but my grandparents were shocked when they met us at Tilbury and first first heard me speak. This wild child of a wilful mother must be baptized, and taught manners.

Breadcrumbs . . . . . . . .

Click on the link to see the new diagram

. . . . . . . and how a new diagram was born.

Ever since abandoning all idea of publication in book form, I’ve been looking for a way to help a reader visiting this site. 325 posts have been reissued after editing & classifying their themes. Expect the same number again trickling through over the next few months.

We like real books, especially hard-backed. They look good on our shelves, we can pick them up anytime and flick through, perhaps years later. E-books are good too. They remember where you left off, no need for a paper bookmark. You can easily annotate them or add highlights and marks. But you can’t lend them. You can do word-searches but you can’t flick through easily looking for a particular description. Non-fiction books benefit from being indexed.

Wayfarer’s Notes is too big to go in a book. It has too many images, some of them copyrighted by others. It is stuffed with copyrighted quotes; some of them might run the gauntlet of “fair use” but others not. It is subject to authorial revision day and night; open to reader comment ditto. It doesn’t belong in a book, which is necessarily static, necessarily copyrighted because it costs time & money to produce. It belongs here, free to whoever arrives with knowledge of the English language and a suitable device to pick up the Internet. Having once beaten a path to its door, readers are free to return any time, to share an odd moment, perhaps add a comment, no matter how long ago the post was written. Time?—not a barrier in this world of literature. Here you’ll find nothing but bite-sized chunks, large breadcrumbs, but there’s no reason for them to go stale. They’re safe from birds & vermin.

In the Pacman game, you try to eat all the breadcrumbs before a ghost eats you. Here you can take all the time you want. “Wayfarer’s Notes” is not going away.

The difficulty has always been to offer a guide for a wayfaring visitor lost in the forest with all its criss-crossing paths. Every tree is different, but how to find one’s way? In the fairy story, Hansel & Gretel rely on a trail of breadcrumbs; but the birds come and eat them, they’re no better off than before. Breadcrumb navigation is now a standard term in Web design: a way to know where you’ve been and how to get back where you started.

This is not a blog in the sense of offering anything topical, in the world’s view or my own. It’s simply a loose collection of essays that gets added to occasionally. Like any reader, I’m interested in what’s new; yet anything from an author I like is new if I haven’t come across it before. “Latest” has no special value; not for me, not for my ideal reader. All the same, it’s interesting to know when something was written; and to see how someone’s ideas and style have evolved over time.

I’ve tried offering elaborate arrays of clickable topics, designed to encourage the wayfarer into the forest labyrinth. Only the breadcrumbs were lacking. There’s a snag in WordPress. It can’t keep track of visited links; or rather, not on my free subscription. I would need to upgrade to a Premium Plan at £7 per month. Stop paying that? Advanced Design Customization lapses. The golden coach reverts to a pumpkin, the white horses to mice, scampering away in all directions.

So we’ve taken a walk on the wild side, leapt not for the first time into Vincent’s own webspace. I pay a modest subscription, but could migrate to GoogleDrive; which I imagine will remain until Kingdom Come and Cyber-Apocalypse.

Take a look, hop on the Site Map; hop off at any theme of your choice. SITE MAP

The moment; and The Rainbow

At Hambledon Lock, trying to capture a momentary eddy in the tumbling water
(post first drafted on 5th Feb)
These days, I find little impulse to write. The process of dusting off more than a decade of posts for reissue, especially classifying them by topic, keeps reminding me that I don’t have anything new to say: only the same in different ways. A single set of themes can be traced from the start until now. It’s not a narrative, but a series of notes and snapshots, which may sometimes rise to the status of essays. Their chronology might interest a scholar, just as it interests me; but not the casual reader so much. “Two or three gathered together”, or scattered—wherever you are I’m forever in your debt. Without your encouragement thousands of well-spent hours would have been diverted—possibly frittered—elsewhere.

Never mind the might-have-beens, those alternate universes which, if they were to exist would be infinite in number. There remains only what we have now. Its possibilities are without limit. How shall we choose our way, moment to moment? It’s easy to think and behave as if we run on rails, like a tram or train, our route determined already. We could think of ourselves as motorists, free to roam at will; but then we’re constrained by the road network and all the rules enforced for safety.

One day, having returned to full-time office work after a long interval, I conceived the image of an aimless pedestrian and changed the name of this blog to “A Wayfarer’s Notes”. Walking seemed the ultimate symbol of freedom, especially for me after dramatically recovering from decades of so-called CFS. What do I mean by “aimless”? When there is neither agenda nor baggage.

So long as we have unsatisfied wants or needs, we have an agenda: to fix that lack. I started these writings when, for the first time in my life, I had everything; and knew it. That awareness has held to this moment. Still, there was baggage to be discarded: every vestige of belief, the notions of salvation that we cling to—some path to love, money, God or ideology. Sometimes we may see it as simply vanquishing our enemies, be they agents of malign Fate out there the world, or demons within our own heads.

Of the various arts, literature is the one I’ve been drawn to most: both reading and writing. But for me, writing is a craft not an art, a kind of making. If there are different parts of the head for “engineer” and “poet”, I’d guess at a proportion of 70-30 in my case. I can brood endlessly about clean functional design in things I make with my hands. It’s more satisfying than tapping with these fingers, or scribbling in my notebook.

And when it comes to art . . . I like to think in universals, that every man can be his own artist.* Each can acquire to some degree a skill in living gracefully. Someone asked me what I intended to do with my retirement. “Grow old gracefully,” I replied. “Surely you mean disgracefully?” said he, having known me since 1984 when I recruited him for my quality control team at BACS†. I know what he means though. Those shackled by family, debts and other cares sometimes dream of freedom as being able to say “F— you!” to the world.

To me, living gracefully— forgetting the “growing old” bit, when it doesn’t nudge at one’s elbow—must always involve some ongoing project, preferably making. And so I shall go on dusting off this site, cutting and polishing, as one might do with a stone, to reveal its translucency, veins and strata. Classifying & indexing each post according to the mix of topics takes time. In a labour of love, you don’t count time. It dissolves into eternity.

It’s impossible to write about the moment in the moment, because it passes so rapidly, to be replaced by further moments, bringing further feelings and ideas with them‡. In truth, there is plenty to say.

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* Man, in the old inclusive sense: “A human being (irrespective of sex or age). Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now frequently understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people.”

Not being “many people”, I’m grateful for the OED’s acknowledgement that the English language transcends the centuries and resists the tyranny of activists.

† BACS = Bankers’ Automated Clearing System. We worked together on several projects after that and still keep in touch, so he knows I’m an unpredictable maverick. He’s ten years younger and still working, so we can’t really share that kind of language any more. Furthermore, he does secret work now, which of course he has to deny, so we can’t talk about it at all.

‡ Could anybody write up moments like D H Lawrence?  Here’s how he ends Chapter 1 of The Rainbow, “How Tom Brangwen Married a Polish Lady”:

  “I came up,” he said, speaking curiously matter-of-fact and level, “to ask if you’d marry me. You are free, aren’t you?”
     There was a long silence, whilst his blue eyes, strangely impersonal, looked into her eyes to seek an answer to the truth. He was looking for the truth out of her. And she, as if hypnotized, must answer at length.
      “Yes, I am free to marry.” The expression of his eyes changed, became less impersonal, as if he were looking almost at her, for the truth of her. Steady and intent and eternal they were, as if they would never change. They seemed to fix and to resolve her. She quivered, feeling herself created, will-less, lapsing into him, into a common will with him.
     “You want me?” she said.
     A pallor came over his face.
    “Yes,” he said.
     Still there was no response and silence.
     “No,” she said, not of herself. “No, I don’t know.”
     He felt the tension breaking up in him, his fists slackened, he was unable to move. He stood there looking at her, helpless in his vague collapse. For the moment she had become unreal to him. Then he saw her come to him, curiously direct and as if without movement, in a sudden flow. She put her hand to his coat.
     “Yes I want to,” she said, impersonally, looking at him with wide, candid, newly-opened eyes, opened now with supreme truth. He went very white as he stood, and did not move, only his eyes were held by hers, and he suffered. She seemed to see him with her newly-opened, wide eyes, almost of a child, and with a strange movement, that was agony to him, she reached slowly forward her dark face and her breast to him, with a slow insinuation of a kiss that made something break in his brain, and it was darkness over him for a few moments.
     He had her in his arms, and, obliterated, was kissing her. And it was sheer, bleached agony to him, to break away from himself. She was there so small and light and accepting in his arms, like a child, and yet with such an insinuation of embrace, of infinite embrace, that he could not bear it, he could not stand.
     He turned and looked for a chair, and keeping her still in his arms, sat down with her close to him, to his breast. Then, for a few seconds, he went utterly to sleep, asleep and sealed in the darkest sleep, utter, extreme oblivion.
     From which he came to gradually, always holding her warm and close upon him, and she as utterly silent as he, involved in the same oblivion, the fecund darkness.
     He returned gradually, but newly created, as after a gestation, a new birth, in the womb of darkness. Aerial and light everything was, new as a morning, fresh and newly-begun. Like a dawn the newness and the bliss filled in. And she sat utterly still with him, as if in the same.
     Then she looked up at him, the wide, young eyes blazing with light. And he bent down and kissed her on the lips. And the dawn blazed in them, their new life came to pass, it was beyond all conceiving good, it was so good, that it was almost like a passing-away, a trespass. He drew her suddenly closer to him.
     For soon the light began to fade in her, gradually, and as she was in his arms, her head sank, she leaned it against him, and lay still, with sunk head, a little tired, effaced because she was tired. And in her tiredness was a certain negation of him.
     “There is the child,” she said, out of the long silence.
     He did not understand. It was a long time since he had heard a voice. Now also he heard the wind roaring, as if it had just begun again.
     “Yes,” he said, not understanding. There was a slight contraction of pain at his heart, a slight tension on his brows. Something he wanted to grasp and could not.
     “You will love her?” she said.
     The quick contraction, like pain, went over him again. “I love her now,” he said.
     She lay still against him, taking his physical warmth without heed. It was great confirmation for him to feel her there, absorbing the warmth from him, giving him back her weight and her strange confidence. But where was she, that she seemed so absent? His mind was open with wonder. He did not know her.
     “But I am much older than you,” she said. “How old?” he asked.
     “I am thirty-four,” she said.
     “I am twenty-eight,” he said.
     “Six years.”
     She was oddly concerned, even as if it pleased her a little. He sat and listened and wondered. It was rather splendid, to be so ignored by her, whilst she lay against him, and he lifted her with his breathing, and felt her weight upon his living, so he had a completeness and an inviolable power. He did not interfere with her. He did not even know her. It was so strange that she lay there with her weight abandoned upon him. He was silent with delight. He felt strong, physically, carrying her on his breathing. The strange, inviolable completeness of the two of them made him feel as sure and as stable as God. Amused, he wondered what the vicar would say if he knew.
     “You needn’t stop here much longer, housekeeping,” he said.
     “I like it also, here,” she said. “When one has been in many places, it is very nice here.”
     He was silent again at this. So close on him she lay, and yet she answered him from so far away. But he did not mind.
     “What was your own home like, when you were little?” he asked.
     “My father was a landowner,” she replied. “It was near a river.”
     This did not convey much to him. All was as vague as before. But he did not care, whilst she was so close.
     “I am a landowner—a little one,” he said. “Yes,” she said.
     He had not dared to move. He sat there with his arms round her, her lying motionless on his breathing, and for a long time he did not stir. Then softly, timidly, his hand settled on the roundness of her arm, on the unknown. She seemed to lie a little closer. A hot flame licked up from his belly to his chest.
     But it was too soon. She rose, and went across the room to a drawer, taking out a little tray-cloth. There was something quiet and professional about her. She had been a nurse beside her husband, both in Warsaw and in the rebellion afterwards. She proceeded to set a tray. It was as if she ignored Brangwen. He sat up, unable to bear a contradiction in her. She moved about inscrutably.
     Then, as he sat there, all mused and wondering, she came near to him, looking at him with wide, grey eyes that almost smiled with a low light. But her ugly-beautiful mouth was still unmoved and sad. He was afraid.
     His eyes, strained and roused with unusedness, quailed a little before her, he felt himself quailing and yet he rose, as if obedient to her, he bent and kissed her heavy, sad, wide mouth, that was kissed, and did not alter. Fear was too strong in him. Again he had not got her.
     She turned away. The vicarage kitchen was untidy, and yet to him beautiful with the untidiness of her and her child. Such a wonderful remoteness there was about her, and then something in touch with him, that made his heart knock in his chest. He stood there and waited, suspended.
     Again she came to him, as he stood in his black clothes, with blue eyes very bright and puzzled for her, his face tensely alive, his hair dishevelled. She came close up to him, to his intent, black-clothed body, and laid her hand on his arm. He remained unmoved. Her eyes, with a blackness of memory struggling with passion, primitive and electric away at the back of them, rejected him and absorbed him at once. But he remained himself. He breathed with difficulty, and sweat came out at the roots of his hair, on his forehead.
     “Do you want to marry me?” she asked slowly, always uncertain.
     He was afraid lest he could not speak. He drew breath hard, saying:
     “I do.” Then again, what was agony to him, with one hand lightly resting on his arm, she leaned forward a little, and with a strange, primeval suggestion of embrace, held him her mouth. It was ugly-beautiful, and he could not bear it. He put his mouth on hers, and slowly, slowly the response came, gathering force and passion, till it seemed to him she was thundering at him till he could bear no more. He drew away, white, unbreathing. Only, in his blue eyes, was something of himself concentrated. And in her eyes was a little smile upon a black void.
     She was drifting away from him again. And he wanted to go away. It was intolerable. He could bear no more. He must go. Yet he was irresolute. But she turned away from him.
     With a little pang of anguish, of denial, it was decided. “I’ll come an’ speak to the vicar to-morrow,” he said, taking his hat.
     She looked at him, her eyes expressionless and full of darkness. He could see no answer. “That’ll do, won’t it?” he said.
     “Yes,” she answered, mere echo without body or meaning. “Good night,” he said.
     “Good night.”
     He left her standing there, expressionless and void as she was. Then she went on laying the tray for the vicar. Needing the table, she put the daffodils aside on the dresser without noticing them. Only their coolness, touching her hand, remained echoing there a long while. They were such strangers, they must for ever be such strangers, that his passion was a clanging torment to him. Such intimacy of embrace, and such utter foreignness of contact! It was unbearable. He could not bear to be near her, and know the utter foreignness between them, know how entirely they were strangers to each other. He went out into the wind. Big holes were blown into the sky, the moonlight blew about. Sometimes a high moon, liquid-brilliant, scudded across a hollow space and took cover under electric, brown-iridescent cloud-edges. Then there was a blot of cloud, and shadow. Then somewhere in the night a radiance again, like a vapour. And all the sky was teeming and tearing along, a vast disorder of flying shapes and darkness and ragged fumes of light and a great brown circling halo, then the terror of a moon running liquid-brilliant into the open for a moment, hurting the eyes before she plunged under cover of cloud again.

Sail Away

click here for lyrics and more
I can’t remember the train of thought, or musical musing, which led me from Laurie Anderson to Randy Newman. It may have gone in the other direction. I ordered “Sail Away” on the 10th of Jan., then posted the piece about Laurie (O Superman) 2 days later. They patently have much in common, being led by ideas, with the music often an ironic accompaniment. They both subtly invoke America as a favourite butt for their satire. Moreover,

[their] best songs implicate the listener *

and

[they] presume an intelligence and literacy in [their] audience *

as I do too, with visitors to this site. Accordingly, I present without further comment God’s Song (that’s why I love mankind). It opens in a new window or tab. Here are the lyrics:

Cain slew Abel, Seth knew not why / For if the children of Israel were to multiply / Why must any of the children die? / So he asked the Lord / And the Lord said: Man means nothing he means less to me / Than the lowliest cactus flower / Or the humblest Yucca tree / He chases round this desert / Cause he thinks that’s where I’ll be / That’s why I love mankind / I recoil in horror fro the foulness of thee / From the squalor and the filth and the misery / How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me / That’s why I love mankind / The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree / The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV / They picked their four greatest priests / And they began to speak / They said, “Lord, a plague is on the world / Lord, no man is free / The temples that we built to you / Have tumbled into the sea / Lord, if you won’t take care of us / Won’t you please, please let us be?” / And the Lord said / And the Lord said / I burn down your cities—how blind you must be / I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we / You all must be crazy to put your faith in me / That’s why I love mankind / You really need me / That’s why I love mankind

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* See article in Popmatters: “What does Randy Newman say when he talks with God?” which includes this:

Greil Marcus suggests that “His best songs implicate the listener” (Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. New York: Plume, 2015. p.108), while Kevin Courrier argues that Newman “presumes an intelligence and literacy in his audience” (Randy Newman’s American Dreams. Toronto: ECW Press, 2005. p.xvi).

The article also saves me from trying to set down my own thoughts after listening to the “Sail Away” album, and goes beyond them. I particularly like its use of the word “maltheistic” which cannot be found in the OED. Wiktionary is helpful though:

maltheism: The belief that there is an evil God or gods.
Etymology: macaronic nonce coinage from mal-, from Latin malus (“bad”), + theism (compare misotheism and dystheism). Attested in Usenet discussions from 1985

O Superman

O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad. Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone. Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don’t know me, but I know you. And I’ve got a message to give to you. Here come the planes. So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go. And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the hand, the hand that takes. Here come the planes. They’re American planes. Made in America. Smoking or non-smoking? And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. ‘Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice. And when justice is gone, there’s always force. And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom! So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms. In your arms. So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms.

In homage to the avant-garde diva and prophetess whose song reached #2 on the British pop charts on this date, October 17th, 1981.

I used to have a cassette of her album Strange Angels. I liked it so much that I gave it to my elder daughter as a generous gesture; her tastes being off-beat and eclectic, even more so than mine. She was horrified as if I’d given her a live scorpion. My younger son had a trick greeting card once. I think he got it in Malaysia. When you opened it, a dried scorpion leapt out on a concealed spring.

I’d place Laurie Anderson in whatever pantheon houses Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, only her irony is more acerbic. I don’t see Americans in general or the Nobel Prize committee taking her to their hearts.

Here are the lyrics to her “Hiawatha”. To listen to her unearthly rendition, click here (opens in a new tab).

By the shores of Gitche Gumee
By the shining big, sea water
Downward through the evening twilight
In the days that are forgotten
From the land of sky blue waters

And I said: Hello Operator, get me Memphis Tennessee
And she said: I know who you’re tryin’ to call darlin’
And he’s not home he’s been away
But you can hear him on the airwaves
He’s howlin’ at the moon
Yeah this is your country station
And honey this next one’s for you

And all along the highways
And under the big western sky
They’re singin’ Ooo oooooo
They’re singin’ Wild Blue
And way out on the prairie
And up in the high chaparral
They hear a voice it says: Good evening
This is Captain Midnight speaking
And I’ve got a song for you
Goes somethin’ like this:

Starlight Starbright
We’re gonna hang some new stars in the heavens tonight
They’re gonna circle by day
They’re gonna fly by night
We’re goin’ sky high. Yoo Hooooo hooo
Yeah yoo hooo Ooo Hooooooooo
So good night ladies
And good night gentlemen
Keep those cards and letters coming
And please don’t call again

Geronimo and little Nancy
Marilyn and John F. dancing
Uncle took the message
And it’s written on the wall
These are pictures of the houses
Shining in the midnight moonlight
While the King sings Love Me Tender

And all along the watchtowers
And under the big western sky
They’re singing Yoo Hooooo
They’re singing Wild Blue
And way, way up there, bursting in air
Red rockets, bright red glare
From the land of sky blue waters
Sent by freedom’s sons and daughters

We’re singing Ooo Hoooooooo
We’re singing Wild Blue
We’re singing Ooo Hoooooooo Ooo Hooooooooo

And dark behind it rose the forest
Rose the black and gloomy pine trees
Rose the firs with Cones upon them
And right before it beat the water
Beat the clear and sunny water
Beat the shinning big, sea water

 

Rooted here

Sunday July 29th 2007, near the prehistoric Ridgeway Path in Saunderton Lee: Karleen in front of a single beech tree, once part of a much-pruned hedgerow, then left to grow on its own

I’ve been hors de combat for a few days, still not fighting fit but enough sometimes to let my fingers walk across a keyboard. It’s time to explain what’s going on here at Wayfarer’s Notes. Some weeks ago I realized that its words, reader comments, links and pictures belong nowhere else but here. No e-book, no anthology in paper or hardback.

I’m slow to grasp what may be obvious to others, ever proceeding * by trial and error, obstinately persisting in mistakes.The fool who persists in his folly, that’s me. It’s the only way I know, but seems to work  in the end.

Just as man and all his fellow-creatures evolved specifically to live in the climates and land-masses of Earth, to migrate, mingle and multiply on terra firma, so did these writings evolve as a blog, discrete pieces each written to stand on its own, published across intervals of time. Occasionally they’ve reflected the seasons, or even world events; but I don’t see them as being anchored in time, merely parts of an ill-defined whole. They are rooted where they are: any attempt at transplant will only denature them. Why bother to migrate? Hannah Arendt asked a similar question, when space travel became a possibility:

The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition, and earthly nature, for all we know, may be unique in the universe in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice. †

There’s vanity in being a book-writer, I’ve not been immune to it, and see no reason to call it a vice, but a legitimate spur and provocation to take up one’s lance, to joust at the lists, or vie for a place on the best-seller lists. There’s ambition: to be rewarded for one’s labour with a bid for fame or fortune. Maybe a shot at immortality, a means toward the denial of death, as I proposed when reviewing Ernest Becker’s book of that name:

. . . he succeeded in repressing death himself, by attaining personal distinction, proving superiority to the others and attaining a kind of immortality. What else is a Pulitzer Prize? ‡

I prefer to be realistic, and admit that I do this for immediate satisfaction. One committed reader is spur enough. Failing which there’s my own self.

I’ve loved printed books from an early age, sometimes in loco parentis,  when left with them in lieu of a baby-sitter. They have a longevity which we mistake for permanence. They have a physical presence: you can use them to decorate your walls, recall their content by scanning their spines. And then again, there is the Internet, accessible from a small device which can fit in your pocket. I imagine it’s here to stay.

So, having decided to stay here, on this WordPress blog (just as Karleen and I have long decided to stay here, in this house, this neighbourhood, these Chiltern Hills), the thing to do is to improve the place and make it more welcoming. It wasn’t till I’d transferred every post, plus many illustrations and comments, into a single formatted Word document§, that I started to grasp a clear sense of its existence as a kind of unity. There are certain themes which run through its lifespan. They are its life-blood. They convey meaning and intent, as veins on a leaf convey water and nutrients, rising from the roots of a tree through myriad capillaries.

From the local hospital, October 2010

I’ve never been constrained by any sense of what this blog is supposed to be about. It’s always arisen from the urge to write a post, in the context of this moment in space and time. The topics have been innumerable, but after all these years I’ve realized there’s no need to index them, when you can search a word or phrase. Come to that, WordPress offers the option to feature links to related posts, determined without human intervention.

Recently I set up a “console”¶ showing a set of themes which in my judgement have permeated the writing of every post since the first in April 2006. They weren’t consciously chosen, but discovered retrospectively. Together I think it’s fair to say they are the reason I write. They link my life in an Ariadne’s thread of meaning.  Until I started, I had no idea where my thoughts would go. Following your nose like an excited dog takes you places you might not reach by other means. When you have no plan, and go where the feet take you, or let your fingers do the walking on the keyboard, you find answers to the question “Who am I?”. This gets us to the heart of true knowledge, as opposed to the hearsay we are taught. Ramana Maharshi says it’s the only spiritual path needed. When I know who I am I can be it more single-mindedly, not waste my life trying to be someone else. Nor should I side-track myself into pursuing any other ambition. Let my loyalty be to the moment. There can be nothing more strenuous. The reward is freedom. Everything else is escapism.

Freedom allows us to start again as often as we wish. As I proposed in a recently updated post ^,  true learning requires us to set aside preconceived ideas, and begin afresh. Every day a new beginning.

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* in “Adaptation”
† from her prologue to The Human Condition, 1957, quoted in “Hannah Arendt on Action”
‡ from “The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker”
§ 2,500 pages, 682,000 words, 416,000mb. Couldn’t upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing. It frequently crashes during updating. Compared to the native blog, it’s riddled with compromises.
¶ Console
^ “Beginnings“

jotted psalm

We cannot own love, only glimpse, feel it touch us, pass through, dwell in us.
We are more or less feeble receivers, picking up signals from an unknown transmitter.

Science is a petty thing before love, for it wants to know,
grasp, possess, dismantle to fragments
harness, claim, proclaim.
Yet science is a thing: wonderful, intricate, quasi-infinite in its macro- and micro- reach.

The fool has said in his heart, there is nothing, no one, no power greater than I.
When this “I” becomes small, it can enter through the eye of a needle
to see what has always been here, hidden in plain view.

What has to be done? No more and no less
than what you and I can do.
We are creatures. Yet in making
we can be raised up like prophets.

Something comes into being
that was not there before,
the miracle of creation re-enacted.
It is seen through the eyes, heard through the ears,
tasted, felt.

It is lauded and sung
through voice and writing hand.
It is described through the dancing of limbs.

If we are not grateful, we know nothing.
If we are grateful, we know how little we know.

Adaptation

I wasted some time crafting a graphic: a virtual keyboard for mouse or touch-screen, fingertip-ready for the curious adventurer. The idea was to provide a console, like an array of organ-stops—or a dashboard, in current IT jargon. In this way, I would offer the reader the choice of themes running through this blog like the multicoloured threads of a tapestry.

Tapestry, Edwardo Paolozzi, 1966 (reproduced sideways)

Favouring a retro design, I thought of the circular keys on old-fashioned typewriters, but there wasn’t enough space to fit the theme names. Anyhow, the software I use to draw hotspots on graphics does rectangles by default. So I ended up with a simulated computer keyboard, getting a single blank key and then cloning it; splicing parts of another to make a space bar.

keys on the top row have been linked. I welcome feedback on whether this works on your device

Many of the best pics on the Web come from stock image suppliers who protect their property with watermarks, so as not to give them out free. A little tweaking using my Windows 95^® version of CorelDraw—better the retro you know, clunky as it may be—was enough to wash out watermarks from the fragments I needed. I’d forgive myself this peccadillo, but the international company  I “borrowed” from is based a mere 30 miles away, northwest of the Chilterns (one of my principal themes, see top-right key). The sin, if it’s that, seems greater when the victim is almost in my backyard, as opposed to say California. Not that I’ve regularly cheated Microsoft, in case you’re wondering.

It strikes me that geographical loyalty goes back to tribal pre-history and shouldn’t be judged harshly by global-liberal* standards. I’m primitive in this way, but since my closest neighbours come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Poland and Romania, this localism doesn’t have the chauvinistic connotations you might imagine.

I digress, for my point is that the virtual keyboard, lovingly crafted as it was, doesn’t work. It’s all right on my desktop but not on my tablet, so it wouldn’t work on a smartphone either because the graphic would be resized leaving the hotspots unshrunk. I’m sure there’s a way round this but in any case the thing isn’t adaptable. Takes hours to set up and then you want to change the theme-set. For example I soon realized that “muse” was redundant, not meriting a theme on its own†. All in all, my efforts were “a waste of time”. One makes the judgement retrospectively. It’s easy to beat ourselves up about all the wastes of time and money that have filled our years. How otherwise would we have passed the time? In my case, I’ve made such a speciality of trial and error, it could be a theme for this blog.‡

It’s common for offspring to blame their parents for bad example, or bad genes. I know my children do that to me—in joke, I should add. I’d take it further and blame our characteristic behaviours on our entire line of ancestors and cosmic antecedents stretching back to the mythical Big Bang. Or Eden, if you prefer. One characteristic is to get it wrong and gradually learn from mistakes. God was not exempt. His Humankind project had to be rebooted more than once. It made a bad start with the expulsion from Eden. Then things went so wrong there had to be a Flood, and an Ark, to see if that would fix it. Unfortunately it’s never yet been right. Evolution is littered with extinctions. Are they failed projects? No, they are simply part of the universal modus operandi, known as “survival of the fittest”.

Nature is resourceful, tries all kinds of mutation. Adapt or die. In the case of my virtual keyboard, it was condemned by its rigid carapace. Creatures with exoskeletons, such as  crustaceans, are disadvantaged compared with us vertebrates. Did we not evolve from fish?§

There can be no moving forward without some falling by the wayside.

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.

Nature is imperfect. What makes us think we can do better? Still, we do. And I’m glad. It’s our built-in reason for living. We can adapt individually, this is what life is for. And then we die, anyway.

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* “Globaliberalism” gets only two hits on Google, so it’s not a word yet.

† “Spirituality” is a dubious word, in my opinion. I’m not sure it’s really a thing—it’s more of a bin to throw things in. But that will have to wait for a sequel. Angels, God, blessings, eternity, on the other hand—these have subjective existence in a person’s experience, disregarding any beliefs attached.

‡ I’ve made it a theme now.

§ See “Do Fish Have Souls?“

Farewell Christine Keeler

Click for the personal obituary I wrote a year ago

I’m no fan of the Daily Mail: neither its headlines nor its content. Christine and I  met one afternoon and had an interesting conversation. I was a gauche boy of seventeen with no experience of girls but there she was, ready to be chatted up. We were exactly the same age, but she was already entangled in the connections which were to bring her downfall, with wide-reaching consequences in British politics. According to journalistic cliché, her influence spread wider, as in this from today’s obituary in the Telegraph:

The scandal somehow defined a generation. When Philip Larkin wrote that “Sexual Intercourse began in 1963/ Between the Lady Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP”, it was to Christine Keeler and John Profumo that he was assumed to be referring. A devastating, leggy beauty, Christine Keeler became an icon of the times in her own right through a famous (and much parodied) Lewis Morley photograph in which she sits, naked and pouting, astride a Jacobson butterfly chair.

I remember the gist of our conversation. She was a bright girl from a fractured family background. I believe they lived on a low-life caravan site (trailer park)*. She’d already found her escape route. It was all too easy to see herself as a one-trick pony, a fascinating bait for rich and powerful men. Not that I had the perspective to grasp this at the time. I remember we talked together as equals—Innocence meeting Experience. Solemnly, almost like a concerned parent, I offered the opinion that she couldn’t simply rely on contacts in high places. She needed marketable skills to fall back on. But no, she had to fall back in her own way.

And did she fall! I feel no sadder than I did last year when I wrote “The Girl Who Rocked the Government”. Somehow, she died long before she died.

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* “Christine Keeler was born on February 22 1942 in a converted railway carriage on the edge of a gravel pit at Wraysbury, Buckinghamshire. In the absence of her real father, who was away in the Army, her mother took up with a man whom Christine was told to call ‘Dad’, and who, she later sometimes claimed, molested her.” (from today’s Telegraph obituary)

The Damage was Done

Karleen was going into town, it’s fifteen minutes’ walk, and as usual asked me to check the weather. The Met Office said 10% chance of rain, so she didn’t take an umbrella.

I thought it was time to write something, it often starts with dictation then you can just say whatever comes and I started with this:

What I have been given is what I can give back. In order to know what I’ve been given, I need to know who I truly am. If I am alive at all, I have been given something. To give back provides a purpose in life.

Dictation goes with walking, and so I went out the door, only to discover that it was drizzling slightly. OK, so I would take Karleen’s umbrella and meet her in town. As giving goes, it was the tiniest thing. On my way, I passed down Ashridge Road, at the end of our road. Nothing ever happens there—except sometimes extreme parking, all over the sidewalks, double yellow lines, corners, making it risky, whether driving or on foot. We have parking wardens to catch these things so it’s only a hazard on big days at the mosque, when godliness claims special protection and the authorities are more indulgent.

I say nothing ever happens, but there was an incident there once which still makes me feel guilty. A huge truck, so long it had difficulty going round the corners of these short narrow streets, stopped to ask me the way to Ashridge Road. “Do you know it?” said the driver. “Sure, I’m from round here”, I confidently replied, while confusing it with Linsey Avenue, which runs parallel fifty yards away. It’s one-way only, so my instructions were rather involved, as I thoughtfully took into account the truck’s inability to do a U-turn. The driver was grateful and it was only after he’d gone that I saw the road sign behind where the truck had stood: Ashridge Road. If only I’d told him, “This is it! You are here.” But the damage was done.

Anyhow, this time, on this road where not much happens, I beheld a man coming my way. His face was hideously disfigured. He was wearing an old-fashioned fawn raincoat, which I found incongruous because you see all kinds of people and outfits round here, from several far-flung corners of the globe, but that kind of coat signified elderly white middle-class. You never see them. Unless other people think I am one.

When I got close to the man, I saw the “disfigurement” was actually a set of tattoos, most prominently three horizontal bars on each cheek. All in a deep black. There were more in other places but my glance was oblique and hasty. At all costs I didn’t want to stare, even though it’s fair to assume that flamboyance desires to be looked at. So it was the swiftest of glimpses, before he could catch my observing eye. What I saw in him, unless it’s my imagination, was regret, grim and inconsolable. There’s something in us, I’ve found, which presses us to live up to the way we look: to meet the expectation of others.  So I guessed he felt pressured to address the world with aggression, or at least defiance. Thus to carry the results of some drunken bravado for his whole life, stigmatized at his own hand. The damage was done.

From this, I see that it’s easier to forgive our enemies, or to accept the cards dealt us by Fate, than to deal with what we have done to our own selves. Strangely enough, I’ve written before about a man with a tattooed face, eleven years ago, almost to the day. At a certain stage of his life, he owned a tattoo studio in Minnesota. Now he devotes his life to giving back. He changed his name officially to “The Scary Guy” and preaches the abolition of bullying, across the world, starting in England with presentations to schools.

It’s taken me all my life to see that there’s little difference, if any, between the damage we do to ourselves and the knocks that life gives us. Either way, there is a choice: succumb or transcend. A theoretical choice: we cannot do these things on our own.

What I have been given is what I can give back. In order to know what I’ve been given, I need to know who I truly am. If I am alive at all, I have been given something. To give back provides a purpose in life.

I wonder what the tattooed man I saw on Ashridge Road will do with the rest of his life. Or did I imagine it? Either way, shit can turn into fertilizer. It’s nature’s way.

“outnumbered by blessings”

It was one of those “whisperings” that I get occasionally when the conscious mind is quiescent. The brain can do funny things. Shostakovich had a fragment of shrapnel lodged in his, left over from WWII. When he held his head at a certain angle he heard music. All he had to do was write it down, or so the legend goes.* In the Bible, long before neurology was a word, the whisperings would come from angel or devil; sometimes the Lord himself.

Thus I woke up in a strange bed with a phrase in my head: “outnumbered by blessings”. I recalled we were staying in the Blue Piano Guest House, on Harborne Road.

It was the first time we’d slept away from home since our trip to The Island at the end of January. We meant to visit Jamaica on September for a special occasion, but were forced to give it a miss. If we’re going to make it early next year I’ll have to get used to being away, for days at a time, far from the security of these four walls. My doctor thinks I should be OK for it, but I have to assure myself and get into training. So we decided on a tentative venture: two nights in Birmingham.

Aunt Avis lives there, she’s actually Karleen’s cousin. With looks like that, you wouldn’t think she was eighty. Being black helps, the skin doesn’t wrinkle. She’s frailer of late, less mobile, but still her blessed self. We didn’t stay long, didn’t let her fuss and treat us as guests. Before leaving we held hands while she prayed over us, invoking God to keep us safe comprehensively and in many detailed particulars. I do not mean to make fun of her religion and its mannerisms. She is living witness to the blessings of grace, radiating from her to other souls far and wide, the hundreds she has practically helped. Yet in earlier life she endured hardship, after being grievously wronged. When Karleen asked about an aspect of this, she said it was not to be spoken about; there being no good in digging up bad memories.

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Her words stuck with me as we crossed the city back to Edgbaston, to visit the campus where I’d been an undergraduate from 1960-63. I had some good memories of the place but they were eclipsed—outnumbered indeed—by others; whereof I shall not speak. Five years ago, when we’d come up for Aunt Avis’ 75th birthday, we’d done the same thing. The campus had changed so much it was like an archaeological dig to try and uncover relics which had survived the years. The most moving thing for me that time was the Arts Faculty building where my studies had been based. Most importantly, it had smelt the same, fifty years later. I’m guessing that for our pre-human ancestors, what we call “memory” was little more than a hard-wired encyclopaedia of aromas. It had made me feel almost that I’d left something of myself there. Suddenly I’d thought that some molecules of my DNA remained in the building, dust fallen into crevices that generations of cleaners hadn’t succeeded in hoovering up. The nostalgia of that visit five years ago was deep-dyed in sadness. I’d gone to wrestle with ghosts but couldn’t find enough of them.

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This time was quite unlike five years ago. I’ve embraced everything, and seen how tired and tawdry the university had become by 1960, despite the new buildings that had recently sprung up even then. It’s a Birmingham thing: half the city centre has been razed, yet again. As you weave around the barriers, along temporary paths between earthworks and constructions sites, sometimes the only way to guess where you are is the lie of the land, from memory, as not much of it is level.

the city centre earlier this year

To embrace everything. I’m tempted to list the wonders and beauties of our trip in detail. The vibrant energy leading to visible renewal in every aspect of the university. Wonderful encounters with strangers. The way they’ve made everything better but kept the best of the old. I’m glad they razed the old library: many good reasons, some personal. 

[click to enlarge] The new library is up and running. The old building has been demolished. The space left will be absorbed into a landscaping project, see bottom pic

The Arts building has been completely refurbished. The nostalgic smell has gone. The Students’ Union has been transformed. I see now that the changes I hated five years ago had to be made, though you could not see the full result. Now there has been further progress. It dazzles with brilliance.†

Entrance to the “Barber”

Finally, we went round the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, a gallery and concert hall on campus opposite the Union. This is one place whose changes are few and imperceptible; where the past is cherished and illuminated with insights and scholarship. We loved it so much, I wished we lived near. I’d go once a week, and eat at Joe’s Bar in the Union. It felt like a second home, Unfortunately it’s 86 miles away. .

at the mermaid fountain

Then on Sunday evening I got a phone call from a student there, inviting me to participate in a project—their 10,000 Lives Appeal. As if my desire to participate, to reconnect, to dwell there in spirit, had been heard. I’ve volunteered for their mentoring scheme & signed up for a regular donation.

a pint of Guinness in Joe’s Bar

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That whispering in the night : “outnumbered by blessings”. My unconscious mind was touched by Aunt Avis and her prayers for us. have What that meant to me was: the blessings are more than the curses. This immediately struck me as wrong. I don’t see blessings that way. Other than blessings there is nothing. Curses are all in the mind. Where we can’t see blessings, it’s a kind of darkness, emptiness, vacuum, something we cannot understand. There is much of this void in the world, always has been. It will drag us down if we let it.

projected view of the campus when current works are complete

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* About Shostakovich and the shrapnel in his head
† I discover new inspiration from this reborn university daily, for example here