On His Majesty's Service

HMS Resolution

 

Another storm during the night. Don't know how Fowler kept her on an even keel. He fought the wheel half the night. Rankin came on during the late watch, offered to take over, said Fowler looked half dead. but he snarled, told him to "hieyerself outta me sight"; so Rankin went below again.

My teeth are getting loose again, gums sore. The ship's biscuit's harder than a cartwheel and full of life. Hardy creatures those weevils, can't figure how they make their way through the hardtack. For my part they can have it all. Captain says it's scurvy, what some of us gets, says he's going to start examining us regular. Whoever shows signs of the bone sickness he's going to leave at the next port. Doesn't want his ship a sick ship, says he's had a good record and we're thick-skulled not to follow orders.

"I've provisioned enough limes to do us the voyage. Never mind those sour looks! Just follow orders, and my orders are every man-jack of you take daily portions of the fruit. Take my word for it or don't take my word, you'll do as you're told, or be dropped off this ship."

When the bosun's whistle blows three short ones we drop whatever we're doing, assemble aft and listen to him. He likes to be listened to. Anyone who doesn't listen, look halfway respectful of the man, lets his fool self in for a tongue lashing no one else can deliver half so well. Try it more than once and it's another kind of lash that's employed. Runs a tight ship, does Captain Vancouver.

So why're my teeth loose, demmit? My mouth's in a constant pucker, that demmed fruit sours me for the morning's duration. As ship's surgeon, I support the Captain, take the medicine as prescribed. Wonder how many others have trouble with their teeth? He'll notice, I fear, that I leave the biscuit. No other officers' mess serves biscuit but the captain says the officers should have it no better than the men.

As I say, he runs a tight ship. Morale had been reasonably good at first, too. We hadn't the losses suffered in the rest of His Majesty's Fleet, nor quite the number of desertions.

That last contingent of city-bred lads the press gang brought in was a sorry lot. But reputation precedes acts of desperation and this time out there was but one desertion. Captain must have been sorry for him. He'd the Cattail right, thirty lashes and then out to the small craft with him, to go from one of His Majesty's Ships in Bristol Harbour to the next. Additional five lashes in each. Total of, let's see - fifty-five. Delirious for a week. Back festering, oozing pus. But draining nicely. I've kept the night-air-miasma from him, though the cabin grows rank from decaying flesh. I feel another week and he'll do service again.

A stout Lancashire lad, he. Rambling on about his Tess. Pity, he'll never see his Tess again. Serve this voyage he may, but not many more.

More fortunate he was, than that other, the voyage previous. Wouldn't submit to the Captain's authority, the demmed fool, so he was keel-hauled. No one survives that. Betwixt the devil and the deep blue sea he was, hoisted down after the lashing, strung under the bow and pulled along from one end of the ship t'other. Brought up at the stern properly keel-hauled. Barnacles torn the living flesh from his body. Completely flayed.

Couldn't tell when he'd drowned, near the start or toward the end. Sewed him into the shroud, said the words and shipped him below. Ah, there's no glory, none at all, for them that works the ships of His Majesty's Navy.

Yet there's some strange compelling need that brings me back, again and yet again to stand on the deck of another ship and look out over the vast eternity of sea, jealous of the free-winged albatross, waiting to see the first glimpse of the Humpbacks breaking water, hear the clarion-clear call of 'Land-Ho!' from above.

This time out, we're weary of the wait. The sea a raging beast in mid-winter. It was poor judgement to sail this late, but he would have it so. The lines, the masts are devilishly iced and hands cleave to the lines as though human flesh loves the deathly cold and grieved to let it go. Leaving as surety flaps of skin behind.

Days pass, mature into weeks of nothing but the blind raging sea and the murky grey sky overhead, the swooping form of a seabird followed closely by another and we look, desperate for sight of land. Ship's water has gone bad and we need fresh. Even cutting it with rum does little good, it is so brackish. We need to re-victual. The galley crew canna do much with victuals running short.

Captain ordered Metcalf to the Crow's Nest. Him especially, known as the most sure-footed and -handed among the surly crew, but the man hung back. Fear spoke loud in his face. Pride, too. His admiration for the captain boundless, yet he was defiant, would not climb in that high wind. Captain Vancouver is a good man, but his face can assume the blackest proportions. Most threatening of any man I've sailed with. And he had his way.

We watched, bating breath, as Metcalf gripped the hawsers, drew himself upward, tortuously slow-like, his legs gripping the pole and sliding back occasionally. Then pulling himself up again, determined, swinging toward the Nest. And a cheer went up from us all, as though we were one tongue in one hopeful head, the scared-witless lot of us.

Turned to a groan as he missed and fell. Ah, Lord, how slowly time churned as he fell. Twisting, tumbling so agonizingly slow as we watched mouth agape. Fell in a languid motion in the frigid air to finally thump the deck. Head turned awry on his neck, so he was as though looking backward, over his shoulder, in the direction of the Auld Sod he'd never see again.

Doesn't do to get sentimental. Must be age advancing on me. No excuse for that kind of thing; sentiment. One less hand to reach greedily for the evening grog. One less mouth to mumble clandestine mutinies. One less man-jack to chase the aboriginal women and strip the deck to offer barter for bodies.

The Captain is a good and God-fearing man. I have no doubt this journey will conclude with a rare and new discovery. Those who travel the bosom of the sea must needs prepare for adversity.

 

 

Night Patrol

 

Shooting Stars! Meteorites!
Satellites traversing the sky
signalling Earth; the life
up here is your own
reflected back to you
courtesy of your local antennae-in-the-sky.

(Eccentricity calculated
that meteorite
just in passing
merely a practise
performance.)

Meteorite velocity
not that of humankind's satellites
collisions resonate
but in the void, however vast
there are possibilities.
The signal is the message.

Gravitational attractions
atmospheric deceleration
pre-encounter velocity
breathless potential
inertia, reference the frame.

Earth's velocity no match
for the unmeasurable speed of
that catastrophic meteorite.

 

 

Tour Guide

 

Sun	Mercury	Venus	Earth
Mars	Jupiter	Saturn	Uranus	Neptune

SUN - Our fiery disk, life-giving, life-affirming, fearsome gaseous activity. Avoid close scrutiny at all costs for the costs of close scrutiny are disastrous. Respect at a safe distance.

Mercury - Atmosphere; none discernible. An inferior planet, so say we. Irregularities in Terminator or the Cusps.

Venus - Thick atmosphere, cloud patterns, spastic interiority, 180-degree cusp studies. Details difficult to discern. Short shrift

Mars - Surface and atmospheric detail. High altitude clouds. equatorial clouds, polar hazes, deserts, frost, ice fog. Questionable.

Jupiter - Gaseous treasure. Ever-changing dark belts, polar region. Observe the satellite transits. Fascinating features, focus with care.

Saturn - Observably beautiful; blingy rings. Zone of belt brightness. Storms like bright spots of active theatre. Sere temperate and equatorial areas against giant disk. A winner.

Uranus/Neptune - Distant worlds, visible telescopic disks. Features indistinguishable (diskettes?) Upper reaches of the atmosphere. Reduced sunlight. Polar collars, brightening. Discrete clouds favouring Uranus.

Earth - Ah, yes. Uninspired nomenclature. But very nice greens, blues and clouds at times obscuring the entirety. Ozone, too. White polar regions. Visit, stay awhile, linger and observe the flora, the fauna. While you may.

 

 

Astronomical!

NASA

 

Homo Sapiens
Neanderthalensis
Lascaux ca. 20,000 - 15,000 B.C.
Upper paleolithic ancestors
extinct fossil hominid species =
extant astronomical imagery
Ah, ye eternal skeptics!

Graphic astronomical observations
imaging the heavens
that ineluctable majesty
astronomical discoveries, theories
observations and analyses;
textual presentations;
comprehension, reproduction.

Imaging, drawing,
astronomical artifacts
graphic techniques
vintage, antique observational
records in scientific enquiry
humankind's hubris
Nature's interlocutor.

Observe, query
record, celebrate.
Reinforcing, autodictatism
cumulative experience.
Man, conqueror of the Universe!

 

 

ME, LAST YEAR; 58th Installment

 

“Look, Mom”, I said and I was hardly able to talk, me and Jennifer were laughing so much, even though she was worried about Lumpy. “Look how stupid they look. They think they’re scaring the daylights out of Jennifer’s pig! I guess they just don’t realize how silly they look, waggling their bottoms like that, clicking their teeth. They’re a pair of clowns!”

“Ah, they’re exercising territorial imperative”, Mom said. Like she had just had a conversation with them, and knew all about it.

“What’s that, Mrs. Feldman?” Jennifer asked. I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t give Mom the satisfaction of wanting to know. She doesn’t have to talk like that, so no one can understand.

“Well Jennifer, an animal feels very possessive of what he considers to be his personal territory. When a strange animal comes on the scene, most particularly onto the first animal’s territory, the first animal instinctively wants to protect his property rights.”

“Boy, how stupid can you get? It’s our property, not theirs. We just let them live here.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“Do you think it’s all right for them to be together like this then, Mrs Feldman? Will they get friendly after a little while longer?"

“Probably, Jennifer. What I think would be a much better idea is to put them all on neutral territory. It’s very nice out now, all you need is your sweater. Why not take them into the backyard on the grass, so they can forget territorial hostilities? Then perhaps they’ll be more friendly to one another.”

“Okay, that’s a good idea, eh Jennifer?” I said. And she thought so too. So we did. I mean, we took the three of them outside and I made a little pen for them to stay in out of the old croquet hoops, and the short garden fencing.

But wouldn’t you know it, they just started to ignore each other! All the stupid - oh, pardon me, they’re not really stupid (not much!) - well, all they wanted to do was eat and eat and nibble on the grass, nothing else. Just like pigs. Not very sociable, actually. Very appropriately named, you might say.

“Hey, how would you like to see how I trained Lumpy?” Jennifer asked.

“Trained? You trained her to do something? My dad says Guinea pigs are too stupid to be trained to do anything but eat … and poop. But they do that naturally.”

“No, honestly. I’ve trained her to run after me. It didn’t take all that long, either. Whenever I take her out of her cage and put her down outside or something, like it’s somewhere that she doesn’t recognize, she’ll run after me. I taught her when she was small. Actually, I didn’t exactly teach her so much, it was just that the first few times she just kind of followed me. Now it gets so that if I move away and call her, she’ll come over. Or, if she doesn’t notice that I’ve gone away and then she doesn’t know where I am, I’ll call her and she follows my voice to get to me.”

“Hey, cool! Let’s see her do it, Jennifer.”

So she took Lumpy out of the wire enclosure and took her over to the middle of the backyard,and put her down. At first Lumpy just sat there, not even moving or anything. Then she put her head down and just started eating like she was starved, or something. Jennifer walked away and nothing happened, her pig just kept eating.

“Oh, darn. Sometimes she doesn’t notice. Like when she’s busy, eating.”

“That’s like always. They’re always busy eating.”

“No, really Jen, she does run after me. Wait a minute, you’ll see.”

“C’mon Lumpy, Lumpy, c’mon!”

Just when it looked like Jennifer was going to get mad at poor little Lumpy and I was ready to laugh it off, wouldn’t you know it, the little pig started waddling off in her direction with her head down, sniffing the grass. She was running in little spurts and twice stopped and did a little hop and a skip.

I just love it when they frolic like that. Munchkin and Grumpkin used to do that a lot when they were babies. Now they don’t do it so much. They’re getting to be old grumps. Just like kids playing, and then growing up to be serious people. 

 

Inscription

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All things in good time
and good things are timeless
as in 'for everything there is a season'.
For me, finally getting around to
that incomparable raconteur
the late Pierre Berton's tome
on The Quest for the North West Passage
and The North Pole, 1818 - 1909
"The Arctic Grail", that time was
long in coming. But it did arrive.

The fly page attests to the loving
gift this fascinating account represented
with its inscription: "Daddy, we hope you
enjoy reading this. I know how much you
enjoy history and I thought you might
like to take this along on your trip for
those quiet moments when you are up
and everyone else is asleep. Mimi, Sept. 1989."

Mimi might be offended that it has taken me
two decades to get around to her offering.
This touching family portrait, this brief sketch
of cherished parent, loving daughter might be
thought of as nostalgic familial memorabilia and indeed
it touches me, when I read and re-read it on
first paging through this fascinating volume.

We could not imagine divesting ourselves of books
once read, but of continuing value; mementos of
time, space, history, geography and the fertility
of authors' brain trusts, those whose literary muse
has been refined and lavished on those like us, for the
gratification of the vast public devoid of such talent.
Our bookshelves are pleasantly refulgent with
testimonies to past indulgence. Few books we have
read do not now reside there in a position of respect.

Vast are those books in number that we have acquired
over the decades, as yet unread, despite our diligent
determination to educate, entertain and lose ourselves
in accounts of the past, records of the present, hypothesis
of the future. Yet someone appears to have had little
enough personal book-indulgence as to place this gem
outside their realm of recovery, as a second-hand purchase
for us, and others appreciative of these opportunities
to acquire that which others so carelessly discard.

We are left to wonder: who is Mimi? Where did Daddy
venture on his trip ... a sea voyage to the Galapagos
perchance? 

 

 

Settling Into Winter

 

Wickedly bad tempered of late
she has sent one of her acolytes
to vent his ill tempest upon us
simply to remind, lest we forget
what forces they are that obey
Nature, corresponding to our
frail-minded clinging to puny
humankind's feeble management.

That ill wind, in intense
intercourse with a tempestuously
plunging atmosphere, and a
side dalliance with those
battered, bruised clouds venting
vapour over the land
has us cringing in paroxysms
of mortal distaste.

Trees surrender to naked despair.
Fish dive deep and anxiously hover.
Birds make frantic haste
to leave this familiar space.
While insects burrow deep
to wait out the annual tantrum.

Creatures of the forest gather
what they may to make
themselves scarce as the
landscape inexorably alters. We
grimace at the discomfort of
increasing displays of distemper.

Cringe before her directed onslaughts
of frigid air, wild wind, icy sleet, rain
and snow. Like other animals
we wait out the angry funk.
Awaiting opportunity to resume
the ease of changeable
Nature's goodly graces. 

 

 

A Tale of Two Walls

 

Unexpectedly, spectacular in its bitter resolve
to remain there, squatting mercilessly
as the symbol of irreconcilability
it suddenly, miraculously imploded on itself
collapsing, leaving a host of dazzled
confused, triumphant prisoners
to emerge, the light of freedom realized
settling into consciousness like the
heavens themselves revealed. Free at last.

Echoes of another, earlier release
from brutal bondage barely recognized
memories of the living dead released
from death camps. How precise is this irony
that the murderously irenic-averse
population complicit with the annihilation
of the pestilential Jews among them
suffered themselves a dim shadow of the
relentlessly mortal agony of official genocide.

The cleansing of the community
the nation, the continent and ultimately
the world, of the existence of predatory
power-assertive, controlling Jews.
Shakespeare would have thrilled to
this moral dilemma, the bleak humour
the black destiny, the upheaval
and the clever disposal of so many
throwaway lives, from infants to
three-legged doddering babblers.

Yet another anniversary; that which presaged
the cruel turmoil, the incessant slaughter
signified by shards of gleaming glass, goes
yet unacknowledged. There are the usual
preliminary dark clouds gathering on the
endless horizon of man's inhumanity to its own.
Another Kristallnacht abetted by the demonic
slander that soils the atmosphere. Perish
the very thought! But all the symptoms, the
signposts point unerringly there.

The dissenters - all those whose livid hatred
of surviving world Jewry become now citizens
of their very own land, their sovereign country -
speak of their own truth; their resurgent bigotry
has found its very own theme to augment
The Protocols, with another wall of desperation.
This one separating not a single nation with
polarizing ideologies, but two separate nations
one of which designs to obliterate the other
while proclaiming itself the sad victim, the
other the evil damned-by-acclamation occupier. 

 

 

Our Selves

Suspended in the primal aqueous
security of our mothers' wombs
we take presence in the genetic soup
that forms us, absorb our mothers'
plaintive whispers of accented fear
experience beyond memory the pain
and anguish that will mark our days.

Leavened by primordial nature's
ever-evolving displays of being
and the opportunities we are enjoined
to grasp, complementing destinies
fulfilling souls' desires. In the process
finding elusive pleasures. Discovering
possibilities, clasping them close
and in a lifetime hurling ourselves
into the future, the reality of life.

Neatly side-stepping when we may
the imperial realities of all existence that
inform and forewarn us, even while
we studiously look elsewhere
preferentially remain oblivious
to that long and steady journey
an imperative we cannot deny.

But then, why linger on the distant
inevitability when we can take comfort
in the meaningful present. Impressions are
what form our memory, our being,
clasped close to the heart of who we are.
While we are here, the who and what we
are is what must consume our being. 

 

 

A Plenitude of Gifts

 

There is a gossamer fragility
to the early morning sun sending tentative
filaments of light through the forest
emptied of its canopy
on this late winter day. That old
Master Craftsman has ventured
from his faraway hills to try his
creative hand at sculpting.

Frost delicately etches this landscape.
Priceless crystals rest upon leafage
encrusting the forest floor
where sun's fingers emblazon them
with an exquisite fire.
Wherever the eye strays
on bark, a revealed trail, lichen
fungi or wind-tossed branches
all carefully limned, white-washed.

Strands of glistening white ice
intertwine robustly as though carelessly
flung over fallen twigs. A magical display
soon to dissolve as the sun gains confidence
warmth, resolve. Then, crystals disappear
and all remains washed, brightening
faded glory of early spring tinctures.

A raven, silent and wide-winged
passes above, settles quietly
crowning the mast of an ancient pine.
Nuthatches call, flitting among
chattering chickadees. Squirrels
begin their quotidian treasure hunt
foraging, scrabbling, harassing one

another, intent on winter survival.

 

 

Introspection

 

Just into her teens
she is already struggling
with the perversity of
human relations, the sad
and pernicious disabilities
that young people cling to
refusing to clarify their own
thoughts, synthesize information
to reach intelligible and
just conclusions.

Why, she wonders,
speaking to her Jewish
grandparents, would some of her
classmates confidentially whisper
that Hitler was really a Jew?

And how strange it is that a
longtime friend whom she has
regularly helped deliver papers
expects her help, yet never
acknowledges it, by a nod
of appreciation?

And how confusing it is when
she cannot speak to a friend
about things that bother
for fear of offending
yet others exhibit no
such inhibitions?

Why is it that those who
are not team players
still claim their share of
a team's efforts?

And how odd it is that a friend
who never returned a
valued book, remarked in
astonishment "you already
had that one", seeing a
replacement hugged close;
no acknowledgement of her
casual shrugged "lost it".

And after all, shouldn't friends
be devoted to one another?
Able to speak with trust
and confidence, feeling
they will be understood,
trust reciprocated?

Is this carefully choreographed
dance of artful neglect friendship?

Long possessed of a healthy
sense of natural justice
evidence of the ignorance of
rudeness, incivility and bigotry
offend and perplex her.

Her future ambition: law and justice. 

 

 

Silently

Silently, cresting the blue bowl
of the sky, the snow goose
spreads wide its wings
loftily gliding in its
mundane ecstasy of flight
this mid-November day.

Well below, sturdy masts
of gnarled old pines stir in the
prevailing, insistent wind.
In the depths of the woods
stir creatures of the wild.

An owl, unperturbed or
deliberately unmindful of
anguished, irate shrieks of hawks
the racketing of mobbing crows.
He roosts, in a tree crook
master of surveillance
to swoop when he cares to
upon un-vigilant mice, hare
voles and birds not of his
distinguished feather.

Oblivious to the riotous drama
woodpeckers clang lustily
on trunks of spruce, pine, fir.
The lunatic peal of the Pileated
rents the atmosphere.

Signalling arrival of dark
scudding clouds obliterating
the wavering, late-afternoon
sun. Soon, ice pellets strike
against the landscape.
The chattering of nuthatches,
chickadees, waver, then still.

The lion of winter testing his
imminent arras. The season resists,
damping winter's ardour. Sleet
turned to innocuous rain,
thrilling the primeval moulds
mosses, lichens and ferns.

Look, there - on the forest floor
a body, swiftly decaying.
Its red breast and sadly
dishevelled feathers a mass
of compost to enrich the
leaf-dense, richly damp earth.
Tardy migration has its price.

Silence reigns. 

 

Lost In a Literary Reverie

 

Though expectations can collapse

you can so often tell a book
by its cover, if not its widespread coverage.
The comfort and anticipation of
hefting a voluminous promise inherent
in the prospect of another reading
opportunity to open the mind
introduce the reader to new concepts
words cleverly manipulated to convey
meaning hitherto never suspected.

The awe felt at the storytelling prowess
of some minds drenched with the capacity
to invite readers into the mysteries
of life seen in ways fey and clever
beyond belief; but not quite beyond
as we suspend mundane faculties
so given to incredulity and lose ourselves
in the bends and twists of a creative
process whose Muse has triumphed.

Is there any greater pleasure than the
expectation of losing oneself in a landscape
explored by a skillful creationist,
unhesitatingly transcribed for our
delectation in fantasy and fact
drawing us ever closer into an arras
of human emotions we may have
noted but never quite remotely reached
shielded by the soft save haven
of our own protected lives?

Each book sends a shiver of expectation
over our minds, into our very souls.
Each an exquisite jewel of the imagination
transporting, elevating, entertaining, instructing
us in the ways of Nature and the nature
of humankind; occasionally absent
the kind. How utterly droll. 

 

Language Introspection

 

Examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound) what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized? Carlyle.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. G. K. Chesterton.

I hate to hunt down a tired metaphor. Byron.

Language is the archives of history. Emerson.

Language - human language - after all is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature - sometimes not so adequate. Hawthorne.

Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. O.W. Holmes.

Languages are the pedigrees of nations. Samuel Johnson.

It is quite simply not so, that old conceit that a picture is worth a thousand words. We convey more meaning by the language we use and the way in which we use it than a picture possibly could. If words are not intrinsically vital to who and what we are, why then do we flagellate ourselves over our failures, when we had the opportunity, to express our deep emotional attachment in words that matter, to those we cherish?

The written word is solid, not ephemeral, like an image, fleeting and of the moment. That may or may not be recalled; certainly never in the fine detail that meticulous and loving description can describe through the use of language, words.

Words convey the robustness of keen observation, the delicacy of fine thought, and every variation of each. Words are the expressive heart of our collective souls. Their meaning can present as gossamer-light, tickling sensibilities, or bracingly emphatic, moving us to alert response.

All living things have their expressions of being, their language known to themselves; from whales to crickets, robins to elephants. Unlike humankind they cannot share the exquisite pleasure of reading their history, recalling their predecessors, sharing creative imagination. We have been especially gifted. We homo sapiens sapiens, modern humankind.

Pity the persons - and they are legion - illiterate, incapable of deep expression of drawing deeply from the peerless draught of world knowledge. To them remains the irrelevancies of mutely peering at moving pictures. Can they realize the full thinking potential that is a human life?

Think of descriptives, how they limn the individual by the nomenclature human verbal ingenuity has evolved to describe individuality: repugnant, resourceful, comical, tempestuous, covert, beguiling, benign, brilliant, avuncular, mystical, iconic, solicitous, evanescent, fragile, contemptuous, grovelling, malleable, mesmerizing, compelling, bestial, autocratic, miserable, mischievous, creative, bumptious, fearful, tragic, snivelling, riotous, joyful, youthful, grim, aged, beautiful, serene, contemplative, scornful, tendentious, manipulative, scheming, loving, overbearing, intrepid, wise, lethargic, buoyant, uncompromising, tender, wistful.

Any one of these words, or in combination with one another paint an instantly recognizable personality, type, shape, appearance. In the mind of the reader, or the recipient of the verbal description, there is clear and cogent recognition of type and stereotype. Can a picture adequately portray those idiosyncrasies of temperament and behaviour?

Abrasive, sardonic, surly, repressed, calm, assertive, dominating, obsessive, obsequious, dismissive, genial, all descriptive nomenclature identifying and delineating human character, instantly conjuring opinion and observation at a remove; introducing personality. Sweeping the reader into a state of personal presence, through the charmed recognition of the nature of language.

Language challenges us in other ways, as well, as instruments to offend, to hurt, to bully. Belligerent and violent it can most certainly be, adversarial in the extreme, leading the listener or the reader to profound conclusions and encouraging them to match those words in self-defence, meeting offence. The antidote for that kind of language is expressed as compassion, patience, acceptance and understanding. Language has led to war and it has led to peace. It can confound and it can clarify. Invite or reject, bring anger or solace.

It speaks of our common interests yet often fails to ignite a necessary passion among antagonists to surmount differences. But if carefully and honestly constructed it has the capacity to close wounds and narrow great chasms of mistrust.

Language and how we use or abuse it, is a reflection of who we are, our desires and aspirations; our humanity, failed or triumphant. It is our responsibility to value its potential and to use it well; creatively, carefully, reflectively and honourably with conviction and respect.

And to value its capacity to elevate the human spirit, imbue us with hope. Transport us to a better place inside our minds, very often outside our immediate experiences.

Language is the memory of the human race. It is as a thread or nerve of life running through all the ages, connecting them into one common, prolonged and advancing existence. William Smith.

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. R. C. Trench.

Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language. Noah Webster.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Edward Gibbon.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language while in fact language remains the master of man. Martin Heidegger.

So? Xmas Lights!

 

It is only November. The third week, to be more precise, of that moodily morose month. Inflicted again. Aesthetically afflicted once more; the tedious annual ritual imposed upon me by neighbourly congruity with a stranger. True, stranger neighbours could exist, but these two happen to irritate me beyond belief.

No sooner has Halloween twinkled by, then out come the coloured lights, the orange ones festooning their house and grounds hastily collected and put away for another year. The Halloween decorations, strings of orange blinkers, ghostly figures that sway in the breeze, skeletons, headstones, and a recorded eerie scream that resonates across the lawn when an intrepid, costumed child approaches, have had their three weeks of display. They've been dismantled in favour of an obviously-anticipated, more seasonal arrival.

And not just strings of lights twirled over their greenery, from shrubs to tall, spindly firs and spruces, but others outlining the house. Some, in fact, are never removed and remain hanging there, from the house eaves, throughout summer. Giving the house an unfortunate aspect of a perpetual snot-dripping roofline. A profusion of execrable waste and taste. Perfectly in synch with these peoples' values. The square of their lot strewn with lit-up cut-outs of Rudolph, Mother Goose, Santa, a gift-laden sled, and a creche.

These are not religious, church-attending people; they are barbarians. Witless dolts.

Living alongside them for the better part of fifteen years, we've exchanged those socially-obligatory surface greetings of casual acknowledgement, never anything deeper. Evidence, if any were needed, that they are incapable of conceiving meaningful thought and expression.

Between them, I'm finally convinced, they couldn't form a lucid, thoughtful observation betraying a glimmer of intelligence. They're born to consume. Nothing more, nothing less notable about them. They consume, therefore they exist.

Pathetic mummers in the theatre of life. Perfect fodder for the trite political promises sending the apathetic public to the polls.

Unfailingly, they conclude each of their declarations with an upward, affirmative-seeking thrust. Then scurry back into their comforting burrow.

Government employees, they work what was once quaintly termed 'bankers' hours'. He's a technician of some sort, she's a clerk. When they roll into their driveway their van radio thunders, the air around and about seems to descend into a moist despair.

How fanciful this all is, this wryly ironic descriptive of my neighbours. Look at me, turning into a seasonal grouch.

What's up, Steve? You could have worse neighbours. So yours grunt and mind their business. Think of the possibility of living beside raving psychopaths, or just plain anti-social thugs? These are law-abiding, simple-minded, unpolitical zombies, with no ideological axe to grind. They're irritating, it's true, but what harm do they do you? Don't like their public displays of seasonal enthusiasm, close your eyes!

Can't. They've covered all avenues of visual escape. The backyard too has been transformed by their juvenile yearnings for a living, incandescent fairyland all their very own. Front and back. I'm situated higher, so I look down - no pun, really, none at all intended - on them; impossible to escape those lights! Lights twinkling everywhere, front and back. If it's an early twilight, fog settling in at half-past three, say, on come those throbbing lights, puncturing the dim ambiance, the peaceful progress of descending night. Blighted by three solid months of artificial jollity. They won't come off until three weeks after the New Year has introduced itself.

Hippobottomous and her clueless mate think that's cool.

They're paying the bills, Steve.

I'm living with a tawdry display of gauche sociability.

Their choice in a free society, Steve. Now, what's really bothering you? Why the unease, the trepidation every time the phone rings? Surely you're not concerned about the results of routine medical tests? Be reasonable. Your symptoms, distressing as they are, could be related to a host of conditions, some fairly innocuous, readily treated....

Steve, you're not listening. C'mon, get yourself out of this funk, man.

Damn gut.

The kind of people who, confronted with a book, even a newspaper, would be genuinely puzzled about its purpose. Timid little anti-intellectuals whose sole interest is in public display of useless bought objects testifying that they "get it".

Bloody hell, there's the telephone. Tele-marketers.

The garish pause-timed and choreographed light displays entering my night world in a way that the people who display them would never dream of doing through civil social discourse.

What's that famous line again, "Cough and the world coughs with you, fart and you fart alone". Well, they fancy themselves coughing to a popular beat, but they're really farting in isolation, their reeking emanation smogging my world.

Not helping my chest pains one bit either, as it happens.

Their pernicious embrace of ignorance and rampant consumerism offends me mightily.

Who are you, Steve, to stand in judgement? Each to his own values, no?

No. Well, maybe yes. I'm not ... judging, merely observing. What? Can't I have an opinion!

Have your opinion. But do not condemn so harshly. They quite simply are what they are.

Why, why not? This is, after all, between me ... and you. And you still happen to be me.

Life is complex and disordered enough, Steve. Give it a rest.

Arrest my perceptions, my impulses, my thought-processes, my right to express myself, even to myself? Not bloody likely!

You're just giving yourself needless grief, heartburn.

Get lost, would you? And while you're at it, take that .. whatever it is you're waiting for - test diagnoses - with you. Don't slam the door, please.

 

Immaculate Conception

You are composed of three parts; body, breath and mind. The first two merely belong to you in the sense that you are responsible for their care; the last alone is truly yours. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

She has a precise, orderly mind. Well tuned to detail. She has her priorities set right. Knows what is of high value. Sets her intent on accomplishing, completing what she begins. A point of pride; discipline, sequence, co-ordination, orderly habit, concise, meticulous, appropriate, meaningful. We must know what it is we set about doing, convince ourselves it is worth doing well, and throw ourselves into the effort. Therein lies pride in accomplishment.

She was convinced she had been born with the pre-ordained instinct of an orderly mind. Deep within her genetic code lay that insistent urge. Her DNA was imprinted with an urge to tidiness. Not that this was her only genetic inheritance of note. She had, she thought, modestly, more than her share of intelligence. And was not the least bit averse to demonstrating it, when called for.

Even as a child she recognized the difference, the vast difference between disorderliness and order. In one lay confusion, the other satisfaction. Her mother’s household, she quickly realized, was of the former variety. Her mother’s slovenly slap-dash approach to housekeeping had offended her even-then impeccable sense of order, when she was so very young. It was a cause of personal shame to her. That entry into her mother’s domain was to be confronted with the mess of a life overwhelmed by detail. The detail of everyday life that some people seem functionally incapable of settling into with the needed measure of complacent order. She little realized at that time, that her mother had surrendered to an exhaustion of the spirit.

Then, she had been convinced that those, like her mother, who readily threw up their hands at any attempt to make order of chaos made the choice - through the sad failure of faint heart - of living with detritus, cobwebs, objects strewn everywhere; a tableau of dysfunction. Stumbling through the course of their days, bewildered by the incessant calls to duty in raising a brood, attending to their needs. Attempting, fruitlessly to pay attention to household duties, to children’s ongoing crises simply overwhelmed them.

She soon discovered, that while she hesitated mightily to ever invite playmates into her mother’s household, her playmates felt no such compunctions about their own homes’ state of dishevelment, for unfailingly, it was also brought to her attention through exposure to the worn and weary atmosphere prevailing in the homes of others that her mother’s failings were shared by legions of others. Everyone seemed to live in a shambles of piled-up laundry, newspaper-littered couches, broken and disdained toys haphazardly thrown in rejection, and never quite discarded. Kitchens humbly, unapologetically strewn with unwashed cutlery and dishes, pots stained and dented, nothing ever placed out of sight into kitchen cupboards where they belonged. Disorder reigned.

Everything limned with weeks’ worth of dust, hallways tracked with the outdoor muck brought heedlessly indoors on unshed shoes. Bedrooms unshamefacedly musty with unwashed linens, the beds themselves never made up neatly for the day; windows never thrown wide to air out the night-time atmosphere of rude and peculiar bodily emanations fogging the air. Poverty, it seemed to her in retrospect, appeared the guiding framework though it took her many years to come to that understanding.

She aspired, even while she despaired over the state of her mother’s house, even while, if she complained, her mother set her to washing floors, scrubbing bathtubs, wiping down kitchen cupboards, cleaning the grime-bespattered stove - none of which really helped, since this was never a regular routine, merely a convenient, sly punishment - to a different kind of everyday home life for herself. She would be proud of her home, and make her home proud of her determination to ensure it was a hygienic, comfortable atmosphere for everyone who lived there, even if she would be the only one to be aware of it. She had also noted that most people felt comfortable enough in their homes, whether or not measures were taken to instill an environment of cleanliness and order, through someone’s dedication to achieving that distinction.

All of this was important to her, but this was all background to her life. Her insistence to herself on achieving an orderly, neat and tidy life, internal and external in all its manifestations was merely a hovering shadow upon which all else rested; it represented a scaffold upon which a satisfying life could be built. It was not an absolute requirement for happiness and fulfilment, merely the appetizer that would welcome all invitations life might offer her, over courses she would avail herself of throughout the length of her life.

The course of her life encompassed a fairly normal passage to maturity, and that included a youthful marriage, and a growing family. She was never, ever a martinet. Quite content, for the most part, to live with her husband who had the in-gathering instincts of a crazed magpie. Unlike her, he was genetically driven to collect. He had fine instincts, a marvellous sense of curiosity, an aesthetic appreciation of fine things, and a burning need to learn how to proceed with anything that took his interest. His sense of comedic timing, his finely-honed and often sardonic sense of humour never failed to amuse her. His wide-ranging interests in history, geography, science, fine art and literature astonished and impressed her.

His one failing remained his unalterable dedication to gathering objects around him. Books, magazines, broken appliances, picture frames sans pictures, light fixtures, plumbing pieces, electrical bits, odd pieces of porcelain tiles; in short anything that he felt might have value at some point in the future. Nothing should be heedlessly discarded. He too came to maturity in a household lacking material comfort. He remained suspended, the young boy who acquired and accumulated all manner of potentially needful items, a boy whose pockets always brimmed with elastic bands, string, emptied pill-boxes, electrical discards. On the theory, become habit, that you never quite knew when something might come in handy. He had acquired the habit of scalping an object of its parts, to be used for the repair of other objects. The-then incomplete object would be carefully stored in the basement for possible future use. Over time, the accumulated debris constituted a mountain of reproachful trash, insulting to her sensibilities.

Once, when they were young, only their first child yet born, living in their first little house, she thought she would surprise him. While he was at work, she laboured to clear the pile of objects from the basement floor, under the stairs, and hauled the things out to the curb, to be picked up by the garbage collectors. After she had completed her task, and thought with satisfaction how grateful he would be that she had done that, she answered a knock at the front door. A man, well dressed, asking if it would be all right if he took the large elaborate frame on the pile she had tossed out to the curb. Garbage, it was garbage, of course she didn’t mind; help yourself, she said graciously.

Little did she then realize how stricken her husband would be when she informed him loftily of what she had accomplished on his behalf. He rushed down to the basement, stood there, aghast at the clean open space under the stairs. Her alter ego’s lust for collection, included an eye for recognizing items of value that might be used at some later date. The frame in question was hand-made, laboriously and beautifully carved, mid-19th Century. She never, ever repeated that indiscretion. It became a standing joke between them. Over the years he might, on occasion, point out another that resembled the one she had thrown out (she never recognized any similarity, hardly took notice of the original; to her it was just junk to be got rid of), lamenting its uniqueness and loss. But he had never really held it against her.

They worked out a system that had the value of reasonable accommodation to them. She would be in charge of everything in the living quarters of the house, and the basement was his precinct, to do with as he wished. Of course, over the years, they had owned a succession of homes. In each of which, over time, he ended up finishing the basement; dividing portions of it into additional useful living spaces, and keeping part of it unfinished, for his workshop, and in his workshop he would collect discards. Until they began, inexorably, spilling over into the finished spaces. As with books and magazines whose ownership could not be defended in the numbers he lusted after, but their allure for him could also not be denied.

As for her, she reigned supreme in the upper stories of their homes. The two floors, ground and second, were always immaculate. She dusted, mopped, washed, wiped, scrubbed, and polished. She developed her routine so perfectly well that even though she spent far more time than most women doing all these things, they did not, after all, take all that long; she was inordinately efficient. She took short-cuts when she began working outside the house once the children reached their semi-adult, secondary-school stages of life. But no one would have noticed a lessening in her determination to ensure their home was clean, neat and well-presented.

So too with their meals. Always an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, comprising a large part of their diet. Well-prepared and -presented meals, wholesome and appetizing. No short cuts there. No pre-prepared or take-outs, thanks a bunch. She had assembled a nice collection of cookbooks. Favouring especially those dedicated to delicate baked goods. When the children were small they were often consulted. When they were small, they were sometimes permitted to ‘help’ their mother bake cookies made colourful with candy sprinkles. They were allowed to knead bread dough and shape them into fanciful objects that could be baked. Grey from too much handling, of course, and inedible, but a lark for the children. Over time, although she retained her cookbooks, particularly one her husband had bought in self-defence when they first married and her initial attempts at cooking had been lamentably pathetic. But she no longer really needed to consult them. Recipes, or her interpretation of them, had been consigned to the orderly files of her mind. She remembered the ingredients required, their sequence and baking time perfectly. Not merely a few favourite family recipes, but an impressively large number of various recipes for breads, fruit pies, cookies, savoury pies, salads and puddings, main course-dishes and everything in between. Solidly, confidently placed in orderly fashion in her memory files.

She also became a good and enthusiastic gardener, by default. That default being watching her then-grown daughter with her own home and garden, effortlessly and with knowledge in hand, working in her garden. The same daughter who had inherited her mother’s passion for neatness, but who had outdone her mother in method sans madness. Whose professional expertise in architectural design and project management seemed an outgrowth of her own fascination with order. Her daughter, however, utterly ruthless in her decided determination to rid herself of all items extraneous to her current need.

Their sons, on the other hand, inherited more of their father’s compelling and fascinated sense of creativity. Expressed through their own choices in biology, woodworking, pottery, astronomy, history, musical performance. Their children surpassed all their expectations. Amend that: they held no insistent expectations, were mostly content to expose their children to the world as best they could, certain that inspiration for their futures would compel them to follow their own road less travelled, complemented by their parents’ well-imbibed values.

An immaculate mind, she has, this now-elderly woman. She would be horrified to know how her grandchildren laugh fondly between themselves about Grandma ‘losing her marbles’, confusing their names, never remembering, it seemed clear enough to them, from one visit to another, what they had last talked of, and repeating, endlessly repeating the same observations they had heard so many yawningly times before.

Observe, she said to herself, she had become skilled at circumvention, circumlocution, smoothly talking over lapses in memory, slyly forestalling questions she felt incapable of responding to, confident that no one had noticed. No one but herself, for example, would know how some of those mind-garnered gardening files had begun to dissolve. The names of flowers eluding her, their habits and needs becoming confused with those of others. No, not during the growing season, not then. But as summer faded and blended into fall, then winter, those files became distorted, began to fade, were difficult to call up. But then, be reasonable, she chided herself, what need might there possibly be to keep those particular files accessible during the months that gardening became a dim memory itself? No need to be concerned. And actually, truth was, there was no need to be concerned, for as soon as spring asserted itself to be followed by summer, those names seemed to pop back into neat rows of botanical nomenclature, readily available for use. What a clever brain, what a methodical and efficient filing system…. Firing perfectly on all synapses. Or, rather, they did, fairly reliably.

Yet, and yet. There have been lapses, entirely too many. Puzzling how they seemed to accumulate. No, not recalling and speaking of the names of peonies, roses, phlox, pansies or rhododendrons. The names of everyday objects, like the little seeds she ground for daily use to be sprinkled over breakfast toast - what on Earth were they called, now? She could hardly recall the name of her daughter’s penultimate boyfriend, could only remember the current one by association. A slight pause in conversation, then a quick dredging down into the recesses of her mind, where odd name-associations were stored, to come up with “Mutt and Jeff”. How’s … Jeff? She would casually ask.

She is certain she has caught a strange whiff, from time to time, elusive, ephemeral - as though she has momentarily captured the essence of her brain’s slow journey into decay. Now, how absurdly fanciful, ghoulish, in fact, is that? Yet, she mused, one molecule after another could, for all she knew, be gradually succumbing.

But why, it’s far too soon! This is inordinately wrong, unfair. Why her, with her immaculate obsession with order? This speaks loudly of disorder, a gross violation of the meet and the just!

She has tended her life carefully, marshalled intelligence, ordered memory into neat rows of prominence, priorities and values. And the years yet before her promise ample maneuverability and capture of those neat files. She is, quite simply, not prepared to submit to chaos, not yet. Not ever! Her anguished being cries out to her external awareness. She will ensure this sinister awareness of the breakdown of her mental faculties remains her secret. She is, it is clear enough to herself, entirely too sensitive, imagining what is not there. What she interprets as portents of a moving fog of loss leading to a dark abyss reflects her own heightened sense of the imagination, a surreal nightmare of sub-existence.

How else explain that her husband, he of the steel-clad memory sometimes grasps to recall an errant, elusive word? Try, he tells her gently - so obviously attempting to allay her fears - try to use word-association a little more often. Sometimes it works, she knows - more often, for her, it fails. How can it work, if her memory bank is slowly depleting? Where are those words evaporating to? Wispily whisking, floating dreamily, the letters dislocated, the words bereft of their meaning, off into the ether?

She’d always loved the challenge of cross-word puzzles, with their subtle hints to a mind’s orderly files of language. Now they try her patience, pain her, and she thrusts them away from her. She thinks, from time to time, she should resume working out the answers, as she had always done, and in that way exercise her mind, extract those elusive words from their orderly files, anticipate, expect the words to be approachable. But no.

Since she began experiencing lapses in the neat array of her memory files, she has become wary and worried. Words simply got mislaid. Oh, not arcane, little-used words, but ordinary, oft-spoken parts of her vocabulary. Which had always been proudly extensive. She began to feel as though the sturdy fibre of her mind’s filing cabinets had begun to corrode. As though by some odd quirk of the flesh an excess of moist, unpleasant forgetfulness had assaulted her hitherto spotlessly-reliable summons on her memory bank. Atrophy. Her mind, after all, is who she is. What is the mind but a lifetime of memories? Slowly, a quiet terror had overtaken and suffused her sweaty night-time dreams.

She hears that old familiar refrain, spoken internally to herself: “A place for everything and everything in its place”, and she gasps with disbelief. Am I mocking myself? Having chiding little interior conversations? Unable to stop herself, she wails aloud, to an empty room: But I have put everything neatly away, where they belong, all those words that express the experience of my life. I always have. It’s just that I appear to have mislaid words. They’re not where they should be, readily extractable for daily use. They’re not where I left them. They tease and elude me. I’ve always been good to them, used them well, appreciated their power, their meaning, their indispensability to human contact. I’ve stored them diligently, tidily.

Why is this happening to me? I have always venerated words, the language of our womb-tutored tongues. How else to communicate but by forming words, those exquisite conveyances of understanding, emotion, contact, need? Now they lie shattered, meaning trivialized, the wholeness of retrieval eviscerated. I stumble in my every breath to recall, invoke them. To no avail.

Fix your thought closely on what is being said, and let your mind enter fully into what is being done, and into what is doing it. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Generational Profiles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insistently, the telephone rings.
A frenzied cacophony of excited
communication loops from the
child's mouth to her grandmother's ear
in a blur of bubbling confidence:
"I'm laughing so hard my stomach hurts."

Tumbling word after giddy word.
Grandmother stifling that impulse
to commiserate, enquire whether
child has had her daily movement
signifying overall good health
as though it might likely appeal.

Out tumbles the diffused
incoherence of jollity, the nexus
a shared hypothesis of "what-ifs" with
another giddy friend, both
collapsing in convulsions of
appreciation at their cleverness.

Deference to their wit and wisdom
a testament to the tentative
uncertainties of approaching, yet
elusive maturity in adolescents
as yet devoted to light-headed
affirmations of self, alternating
with morose defences of same.

Condensed as "not my fault!"
that declaration of being hard done by
misunderstood, and treated unfairly.
A sad lament to which grandmother
is treated during these quotidian dialogues.
The decrepit and the delighted, the frail
and the robust, one hard of hearing
the other strong on cheering.

These conversations, initiated
by turn with petulant growls, bemoaning
oneself as victim; on the other hand as
brilliant over-achiever, in modest self
recognition. Take your pick; it's either
the piercing lilt of delight in the absurd
or the miserable pathos of self-pity
 

In the absence of justice as in "it's not fair!"
Naught but extremes, no median.
The language, syntax and imperatives
spoken by each remains forever foreign
one to the other. Confidence restored
by the closing argument: "Love you!"
Loving forbearance, above all. 

 

 

Creation, Time and Space

An imposing cathedral of

unparalleled beauty sheathed in

crystalline grandeur lifts its

imperious grace to the ceiling

of the sky velvet with approaching

night, a halo of moon and the

boldness of stars impassively

observing a landscape unlike

their own of frozen gases and

ancient minerals. The one below

with its living atmosphere

responds to the distance of its

sponsor-sun in a frigid pause

of the clamour of growing

things unlike the inert nothingness

of cold and distant space. This

most familiar place of time and

seasons, liveliness and curiosity

a highly specialized experiment

by nature in randomized creative

adventure. And so, her creations

look up and peer beyond the

darkness of the unknown, certain

of discovery and revelation.