About What It's Like To Die (part II)

 


My father's coin collection intrigued me. I would often beg him to take out the box and let me inspect the coins. "I'm too tired", he'd say, "not now", and I suspected with a child's cunning that he wanted to keep them all to himself.

"Please, please, Daddy" I would pester him until he might let me see them. Once, I was presumptuous enough to ask if I might keep one of the coins.
"I'll give them all to you", he told me wearily.
"When?" I asked eagerly.
"Some day". Some Day was a handy reply that he often used when he wanted to put off stating something definitely where I was concerned. Some Day frustrated me; I had no tolerance for the promise implied in those words, made ambiguous by their constant use.
"When, when?" I would persist.
"When? When I'm dead", he finally replied.

I never again asked to be permitted to see the collection although I often thought about it, and about my father's reply - frightened into docile submission on the subject.

Years later he started collecting quarters as a way of saving money. The glittering silver hoard piled in a box was another source of wonder to me. Occasionally I was given one of the large copper pennies which were then so common and I would run to a little store down the street; a cramped, dirty little place, where I might buy a special treat. Once, I decided to take one of my father's quarters, curious to see just how much something so much more elegant than a mere copper penny could purchase. My mother discovered me in the act of taking the quarter. She was furious with me and I took refuge under my parents' bed. I refused to come out and my mother warned. "Wait, just wait until you father comes home!" Wait I did, crying in the dust-balled dark for hours, wondering what my fate as a discovered felon would be. When finally my father came home from work he spoke quietly to me, said he was certain I would never do anything like that again. Nor did I.

He was an inveterate and unrepentant smoker. There was not then the campaign against smoking that there is now, although later, when it became evident how ill my father was, it was assumed that his smoking had acted as a carcinogen. Actually, he told me once that he had begun smoking as a child, picking up cigarette butts on the streets of Warsaw, perhaps to assuage the pangs of hunter.

I can remember my father sitting at the scratched porcelain-topped table in the kitchen, rolling cigarettes. Later, he bought a cigarette-making machine, a small gadget that expedited his cigarette making. His fingers were permanently stained a hard amber, and his teeth gradually rotted from neglect.

When I was no longer living at home he was admitted to hospital with a gall bladder attack. While he was there, he mentioned to his doctor a consistent ghostlike pain in his head, but nothing much was made of it. Shortly afterward, he was diagnosed as having cancer of the throat. He was given radiation treatment and was in and out of hospital for years.

At the General Hospital I visited him, never believing that he wouldn't recover. Then at the Princess Margaret Hospital I began to realize, on an abstract level, that he might die. At the Doctors' Hospital he permitted himself to be used for new approaches to the disease; became a guinea pig. He said if anything new could be found, that had good results, he was willing to help. It bothered me that he was being used as an experiment. All through those times he was reasonably cheerful. He never gave up hope.

Later on, he would sometimes be in a hopeful mood, sometimes he might be querulous and I was always uncomfortable, somehow panicky, not wanting to reveal my thoughts of finality to him.

Once he sent me out to get him some ice cream to relieve his throat and I gratefully went out to the street and ran from store to store, to try to buy some ice cream in a small container to take back to him. I felt like shouting at everyone, 'My father has cancer! He's dying. Doesn't anyone care?!' Despite that I was then a mother of three young children I felt like an orphan child myself, lost in an alien city, everyone oblivious of my frightened confusion. Unwillingly unable to help myself, I visualized his end, comprehended his physical pain, his psychological torment, coming to grips with the inevitability of impending death.

Once when I got to the hospital he was writing and I asked him what he was writing about.
"Just writing", he said casually.
"About what, Daddy?"
"About what it's like to die", he replied calmly. But then, another day, he would tell me he wasn't ready to die, not yet. And he hung on. In and out of hospitals.

At my sister's wedding, a scant half-year before his death many of my father's old friends approached me and said, emotion straining their voices, that he would be all right, he would come through. One even assured me, "We'll see that he has the best doctors look after him. We'll raise the money. Nothing is too good for him."

When he was at home in the later months, he would sit quietly in the living room, smile grimly if the occasion demanded it; sit with his head cocked sideways, to make the indentation in his throat less conspicuous.

At first, the first year of his cancer, he struggled to give up smoking. At this juncture, after his operation, he decided there was no point and soon after began smoking again although not as much as formerly.

Then there reached a point where he spent most of his time in the bedroom, upstairs. My parents by then were living in their second house, this one on Brunswick Avenue. My father had, a few years earlier, bought a small shop colloquially called a 'convenience' store on Bloor Street, next to the Brunswick Hotel. It was a tiny store, a break-even business. Now, my mother with the help of my young brother tried to run the shop and look after my father as well.

The bedroom always seemed dark; even during the day a half-dusk prevailed and there was a palpable odour of medication, of sickness, a hint of death. My father's muscular bulk had gradually declined, his skin turned an unhealthy grey. His flesh hung from his bony arms, his cheeks were gaunt, much more so than the picture of a half-starved youngster just come to Canada. My mother fed him a partially liquid diet; easier to get down.

My father had graduated over the years, to collecting coin sets and the bedroom was scattered with coin sets sitting on all available surfaces; they and the medicine, books, glasses of water. Now, conversations were desultory, awkward and halting. What was there to say? When I brought my children over - just toddlers - they were cautioned to be quiet, not to bother grandpa. He looked at them but I wondered if he saw them. They seemed small comfort to him now.

Finally, he was admitted to Baycrest Hospital. There, in a large room with other terminal patients, all elderly, all seemingly near death, he lay in a shrouded bed. His nose, once patrician, now stuck bonily above his flesh-depleted cheeks. He would flicker a faint attempt at recognition, attempt to mumble a few words in response to a whispered query.

There was no more writing now, no reading, just a long agonizing wait. His eyes looked bruised and dark in his shallow face and his breathing was laboured. Under the sheet his form was so slight, perhaps that of a sickly youth.

I wondered if his thoughts were bitter. If he was resigned. The mechanical task of breathing was done by his body's machinery. In a way he had ceased to exist. Still, I was unable to believe my father was dying. He did, though. When no one was there, no friends, no family, he slipped away.

About What It's Like to Die -- Part I

My father had no patience with vanity. It wasn't that he was so intolerant a person, he simply had no time for frivolities. He was too busy living; earning a living and living to learn. When he wasn't working he was reading - omnivorously, anything he could get his hands on. He passed that legacy - not for work but for love of the written word - on to his children. I was the oldest.

Because he professed never to care for external appearances I was surprised after his operation to realize that he was reluctant to have anyone see him, that he considered himself, his appearance, repugnant. He had cancer of the throat.

He had always feared sickness, operations, and it was later that I was told he was given the option of an operation to prolong his life for another year or to simply let the cancer run rampant, undisturbed. By the time his cancer had been discovered it was too late to stem the tide of its inexorable growth.

He was unprepossessing in appearance. A short, broad, muscular man with black wiry hair when he was younger, his hair turned a steel grey as he grew older. This sign of age, the grey hair, had distressed me terribly; that outward manifestation of man's perishability. And his once-hard stomach gradually distended with the weight of the years which sat upon him. He was only five feet tall but when I was a child he appeared a respectable height.

My father's friends noted my fierce attachment to my father with amusement. They enjoyed teasing me, for the reaction. They would say something like: "What's so special about him anyway? He's just a little guy". And I'd reply hotly, "he isn't! He's big and strong and he's smart." Which was true. And I hated them for appearing to doubt it.

And although my replies generally brought forth gales of adult laughter, none of my father's friends disputed the fact of my father's intelligence, even as a joke. They came to him often for advice, or to have him explain a situation beyond their comprehension.

I have since learned things about my father that I hadn't known earlier, when he still lived. He had been born in Poland just after the turn of the century. Actually, about 1910. We never did know the correct date, nor did he. His family had lived in a small town not far from Warsaw. His father had been a scholar of sorts, a rebbe, but both his parents died before my father was twelve. His relatives lived nearby but they were almost destitute as were most of the country people there, so they arranged for my father to be taken care of in the local poorhouse. Soon after, an undernourished boy too small for his age, he ran away to Warsaw to try to locate his older brother, who had himself run away, years earlier.

He had no success in his search and wandered the streets of Warsaw unkempt, unfed and unhoused. He was only one of many such vagrants, children who begged for sustenance in the streets. Eventually, a Jewish philanthropic organization attempted to gather these wanderers and to provide for them. There, among other boys bereft of family, my father found companionship. Several years later the boys were sent en masse to Canada. On arrival, they were dispersed to various farming communities and my father and several of his friends found themselves working on a farm in Georgetown, Ontario, to pay off their passage. All through his life these orphan children remained steadfast friends, an extended family closer to each other than most genuine family members often are.

In the family album there was one photograph that I often looked at although it made me vaguely unhappy. The picture was that of a group of about ten young men, boys really, and the background was the farm in Georgetown. The boys wore what appeared to be leggings of some kind and underwear-type long-sleeved shirts. Some held rakes and manure forks, reminiscent of the famous American Gothic painting. The boys' heads were uniformly shaven and their cheeks were gaunt. Their eyes seemed hollow and painful; haunting. My father was the smallest among them. At first he had to point himself out to me, for I could not recognize him in the photograph.

I suppose it was because of my father's initial poor start in life and his later malnourishment as a youth that he became prone in middle age to a variety of illnesses. I recall hushed talk of Burgess' Disease and hardening of the arteries, although I'm not quite certain he had any of these. I do recall though, that once, when I was about eight years old, he was bathing and discovered that one of his big toes had turned a purple-black colour. My father rarely went to see a doctor but for this my mother insisted that he visit the family doctor, an old medical practitioner whose office stood on a corner of College Street. It was discovered that the big toe was gangrenous, or just beginning to be so, and measures were taken to save it. In retrospect, although he was never so diagnosed, I am reasonably certain that he had been an undiagnosed diabetic and it was Diabetes Mellitus which led invariably to those other disease symptoms and thereafter, his legs always gave him trouble from poor circulation. His feet were always sore and painful. Still, it wasn't the untreated diabetes nor the other ailments that took his life.

Unlike most of my father's friends who in time became quite well off,my father always had to struggle to make a living. Some of his friends ran small businesses of their own, became musicians, professionals, tradesmen, entrepreneurs. My father remained a labourer for most of his life. The earliest I can recall is that he worked at a factory, Fashion Hat & Cap, on Chestnut Street in Toronto, as a steam presser. His job was to mechanically work a steam press to block caps and that is what he did for many years.  The factory was hot and dry, dimly lit and poorly ventilated. His arms and hands became so muscular from his work that years later nurses at the hospital found it impossible to check his pulse at the wrist. He used to laugh about that. He once brought home an orange that he had forgotten to eat from his lunchbag and had placed on top of the steam presser.  The orange was light and hollow, all the moisture gone, preserved like an Egyptian mummy.

Both my parents were staunch trade unionists and voted for the CCF Party. Political talk was common around the kitchen table. I would sit quietly and listen, fascinated at the heated  arguments that often ensued, between my parents and some of their friends as my father continued to uphold the socialist ideal and others might dispute its need and even legitimacy in this country.

In his spare time my father spent as much time as he could manage at the United Jewish Peoples' Order, the headquarters of which, years ago, was on Christie Street across from Christie Pitts Park, north of Bloor Street. There was a great number of books kept there and for a while my father volunteered his time as its librarian. He prided himself at that role; he, an unlettered man who had really never had a formal education. I used to go to that same building every day after school to be tutored in a small classroom along with a handful of other children, in Jewish history and Yiddish. I had begun going to the Morris Winchevsky school when an old house on another street had been utilized for classroom purposes, before the acquisition of the Christie Street property and I can remember there were always kerosene lamps handy in case of a blackout as these were the war years.

Occasionally, there I would pick up some literature written by Dr. James Endicott and read it, impressed by the fervour of his arguments for a better, more equitable world. Once, my father pointed out Paul Robeson to me, a tall dark man, walking down a corridor of the building we frequented, and this man, this famous man, was a guest of the U.J.P.O.

The basement of the building - which was, I believe, originally an old converted church - housed a functional cafeteria set around with small round tables and wire-hooped chairs, at which there generally sat a crowd of men - talking, playing dominoes. The fragrance of coffee and doughnuts, accompanied by the click of dominoes and the murmur of bantering voices so well describes the ambiance, the homey comfort of the place.

On V-E day my father celebrated what was an especially poignant time for him by giving me a large green-covered book of short stories that I still treasure. He was forever encouraging me to read. As soon as I was old enough to understand he gave me books to read that most would consider too difficult for a child. But with these books and my father's explanations I was made sensitive to the world as it is. My father described in great detail the circumstances of the Holocaust. In this way I became extremely aware of just how special Jews are in this world; the exquisitely frail equilibrium that exists between life and death; the monumental horror of prejudice; the abomination that is war.

My father had me read Tobacco Road, introduced me to Howard Fast and John Steinbeck; tried to imbue in me a sense of fairness to other people. One of the few books he bought for me was called Palaces on Monday; it had been bound irregularly, the cover put on backwards and upside down, and I suppose he was able to pay less for it. The book described the building of the underground rail system, the subway in Moscow, seen through the eyes of a young boy and girl whose American father was an engineer on the project. Nor did he neglect the adventure writers like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson; he wanted me to read everything.

Despite the fact that our family lived in a small flat - two bedrooms between two adults and three young children; a tiny kitchen that seated us only because we were all so small, the adults and the children; and a bathroom shared with another family and a boarder - my father was determined that I would receive other kinds of stimulation normally reserved for people with money. One of his good friends was a house painter and an amateur musician and agreed to teach me to play a musical instrument. The oboe; I still have that oboe. Ancient and faded now, it must have been quite old even then. My music teacher was a kind and patient man but I was a frivolous child and had no inclination to learn, even to please my father. Oboe reeds cost $.25 each then and they were a luxury my parents could ill afford. Every time I heard the ridiculous squeaks my puffing elicited from the instrument, I would break up laughing, my teeth clamping on the delicate reed. Finally, my father decided I was not meant to express myself musically.

Another memory I have though, is confirmation that he was quite capable of musicality himself. I have a hazy recollection of sitting high in the balcony at Massey Hall with my mother and peering down at an orchestra on the stage below. There was a man sitting on the right-hand side and back of the orchestra and on his lap was an immense glittering, gold-belled instrument. My father played a tuba, an instrument almost as large as he himself. Not long ago my mother told me he had also played a fiddle, but I had never heard him play one.

Although he could never afford to become a real collector, numismatics fascinated him and he collected foreign coins. The coins held an attraction for him and when he came across an exotic coin my father would add it to his collection. He kept a metal strong box in a cupboard which he would sometimes open with a key. The box contained a few papers, a few brown daguerreotypes, and the prized coin collection.

One of the old faded photographs in the box was of a dark bearded man; another was of a young boy standing beside a wicker planter. These depicted my father's father and my father himself - and there were a few others. Once he picked up one of the photographs and showed it to me. The picture was of an oval-faced dark browed young man with black hair. The man had a thin mustache. I detested mustaches. "Who do you think that is?" my father prompted.

"Hitler", I said positively. "It must be Hitler."

A pained look crossed my father's face. He said nothing, merely took the picture from me, turned away, shut himself away from me.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "What's the matter?" Thinking about it now, I'm not certain whether my reply had been impish or whether at that tender age all mustaches were synonymous with the hated Hitler; reason compels me to believe I was just being mischievous, for why, even then, would I think my father would cherish a photograph of that hideously detestable monster?

Later my mother told me it was a photograph of my father's brother. My father, for years after the war, believed his brother was still alive. He wrote endless letters to agencies and individuals looking for information about his brother. There was no information to give, none was received. Without doubt he, like other millions of hapless innocents, provided fuel for the ovens at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka.

 

Envelopes

Envelopes - you know, those paper squares, oblongs, rectangles, whatever, with which we writers hopefully encapsulate sheets of paper on which we have typed the gleanings of our genius' Muse thereby expediting said manuscripts through the mails - intrigue and bedevil me. They are cunning little tricksters, envelopes. Not so, you say, how can they be? Doubter...!

It doesn't seem all that long ago that agronomists and horticulturalists startled an unready world with the ridiculous theory that plants respond to stimulus. Oh indeed yes, respond to care, to immediate environmental factors; we all knew that. But plants, they told us unbelievers, like to be liked. They thrive, grow lustily healthy when cooed at, encouraged, have their fancies tickled. We believe, we believe...!

But, you say, plants are animate, growing things. And envelopes - did I say envelopes? Yes, they're inanimate. So they would have us believe. I said they are cunning, and they are. They love practical jokes. Believe me, I know. I am, you see, an envelope-observer of long experience.

It all started, don't you know, when I began my writing career. Up until then I'd been just like everyone else, a normal envelope-trusting individual. I thought like you, that envelopes existed for the sole purpose of well, enveloping things. I know differently now. The little blighters also play practical jokes.

They are, perforce, not necessarily what they appear to be; have personalities all their own, enjoy springing little tricks and treats on the unwary. Myself, I scrutinize all return envelopes carefully now, before slitting their ... oh, I am sorry!

Anyway, I can be quite devious myself. I prolong the agony of opening return envelopes, carefully running experienced hands over envelope and contents before the final irrevocable revelation.

Does it feel slimmer than when I sent it out? Some of the sheaf of papers accepted, one maybe? And the larger manuscript-sized ones; some of them, returned, feel delightfully slim. Have they been utilized by an economy minded editor to enclose a letter of acceptance, nothing more?

This little game has its own built-in pitfalls, for often when I'm serenely positive before opening, I'm completely shattered to discover within the envelope all that I had sent out returned, rejected, and I, dejected, having forgotten I'd used a thinner-than-usual bond paper.

But friends and fellow scribblers, it does happen that when I'm at my lowest, I'll barge right in, slit - sorry, open that dear envelope and inside will be mayhap, an acceptance. Sometimes when I least expect it, my full-size story manuscript will be blissfully absent and an acceptance will be nestled comfortably within said envelope.

And once, upon receiving a large manuscript-sized envelope I opened (that better?), looked within and perceived nothing. Nothing!

Holding it scornfully with the tips of index finger and thumb, making my way to the waste basket, wondering all the while which editor had forgotten to re-insert my manuscript, I was startled when a frail slip of paper swooshed out, and floated to the floor at my feet. Stooping, I retrieved it and beheld, lo, no mere frail slip of paper, but a fat and healthy one-hundred-dollar cheque. Egad!

Ah, envelopes - they're curious beasties. 

 

Did You Know?

 

Did you know
that the Sea cucumber
to deflect a pursuer
can regurgitate
its stomach?

And did you know
that female monkeys
to appease the males
in their belligerency
turn backside up
in coy invitation?

Did you know
that when you thunder
through the peace
of my existence
I offer myself
to placate the beast.

The Sea Cucumber
grows a new stomach
and survives. The
monkey raises the fruit
of her propitiatory act.

And did you know?
I am armed with love.

 

On Human Race : A Humanist's View

 

From the biological standpoint, the species Homo Sapiens is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the others in the frequency of one or more genes. Such genes, responsible for the hereditary differences between men, are always few when compared to the whole genetic constitution of man and to the vast number of genes common to all human beings regardless of the population to which they belong. This means that the likenesses among men are far greater than their differences.
- Statement on Race: issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

The term 'race' is a misnomer of singular proportions, given the fact that the vast majority of people seem not to realize that there is only one true human race - that of the entire species. Anthropologists use the term 'race' knowledgeably, whereas in its popular usage the word with all its biological implications has become degraded. Among the general population, the terminology and recognition of race has a social, not a biological cast; with decidedly pernicious overtones.

Anthropologically speaking, there are three recognized sub-groupings which fall within the species of man; namely Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. From these three major sub-groupings a plethora of minor groupings identify peoples who, by virtue of a matrix founded in geographical isolation have evolved with specific physical characteristics, culture and society. All other definitions of race are informed and utilized by gross ignorance of the condition of man upon this earth.

Our condition is that we are of one initial stock; that by reason of geographic isolation and gradual adaptation there has evolved a diversity of facades - formed as much by environment as by random genetic change or by direct hybridization as a result of interbreeding. There occur naturally spontaneous random variations in gene frequencies and even the extinction of some, unnecessary genes. Even so, genetic variations between the groupings of people are minor.

People can be differentiated by cultural environment where the effect of cultural isolation will imbue a large segment of a geographic population with readily identifiable traits, ethics and perceptions. It would be more correct to call this group an 'ethnic' one.

Other groups of people are significantly affected by religious teaching and training which in large part may make up the basis for their cultural identification. This is most certainly termed a common 'religion', yet members of that religion may cross ethnic boundaries as well as geographic boundaries. There are, for example, Muslims living in the near and far east as well as in Europe and North America.

Still other large population groupings may be identified strictly by geographic location and this group of people may be termed a 'nation'. Yet within that nation there exists people whose heritage is culturally diverse, whose religious adherence is multifarious. This type of mixture is most commonly seen in the mixture which makes up the Canadian mosaic.

As is readily seen, the above three classifications are not mutually exclusive; a large group may combine a 'nation', yet have within it a diversity of 'religious', leanings and numberless 'ethnic' culturally-induced groupings - none of which should be rightfully called a 'race'.

Character is shaped and informed by immediate environment and that environment is familial, shaped by societal values further shaped by the cultural imperatives current in any geographic area. One may take focus on the American blacks who are a part of the American nation; whom society has traditionally placed in a disadvantaged position; whose culture has been shaped by such societal strictures (originally formulated to justify slavery); whose family structure is much looser than that of the whites among whom they live. This 'looseness' is based upon insecurity, an insecurity which stems from the erroneous assumption that blacks constitute another, more inferior race, than do the whites.

Man's condition is not immutable. Man, the race, has been undergoing genetic changes since he was first recognized as a separate genus, Homo Sapiens (Man the Wise). Physical anthropologists mark the changes in millennia, and even then the changes have been so gradual as to be hardly noticed. But, we are in constant flux. Yet the changes affect all of us. Differences in individuals within the same ethnic groupings are more diverse and pronounced than those which exist between the various ethnic groups themselves.

Unless complete isolation is possible between sub-groupings and genetic material common to that group is never interfered with by outside sources as by another sub-group, then the genetic pool of that particular group remains fairly stabilized and an ethnic group is formed; a group with a common, yet still fluctuating genetic pool. However, even these ethnic groups are continually shifting and in terms of historical 'time' have a limited lifespan.

And even within that group, as for example, the American Indian population before 1500, there existed a population sharing a relatively stable genetic pool, but living in separate enclaves. The genetic pool reached a certain equilibrium and there was a diversity in cultural leanings and linguistics, yet the American Indian did not constitute a specific 'race'.

And there is no such thing as purity of race or sub-grouping, to use the more correct form, since interbreeding takes place constantly within any given society. And it helps to remember that any given society which constitutes a nation is comprised of a number of ethnic groupings, religiously-oriented groupings; minor-groupings of the major groupings of the race of man. For example, it is estimated that fully 70% of all American blacks have white blood, with attendant white genes.

Apart from the fact that traditionally it was seen as permissible for white males to couple with black females (where the reverse was socially taboo), even the blacks themselves are instrumental in changing their genetic pool, by acculturated preference. Black males tend to select lighter-skinned black females as sexual partners. In this way, sexual selection dilutes the darker-pigmented genes and the resulting pool over a great period of time will ultimately mean that the black group situated in America will share the white man's lighter skin tone.

Take, for example, Jews, who are stubbornly considered by an uninformed public to comprise a 'race'. While it is true that the background for many Jews is that of the Mediterranean sub-group, Jews are merely a 'people' or segment of a population having in common a cultural orientation (historical) and/or common religion. There are some Chinese and Blacks who have taken upon themselves to be Jews, adopting the Jewish religion. This does not make them part of a Jewish 'race'.

People often ascribe deplorable social tendencies to particular sub-groupings, which they erroneously term 'races'. It is well to remember that what is permissible, even desirable in some geographic communities is shunned in others. When a people has long become accustomed to viewing certain social practises as normal and quite acceptable, these practises become established as social currency, and when transported into another, alien culture, the practises set these people apart where the resident population have a tendency to disdain little-understood 'racial' attitudes which are in fact, social and/or cultural tendencies.

We are here talking about perceptions. What we perceive is not necessarily the same thing to everyone. Perceptions are informed by experience and background. In other words, if we have been culturally induced to regard taciturnity, public display, acute economy, or extreme gregariousness as undesirable, those exhibiting those traits or habits are distasteful to us, just as the wearers of turbans or saris are conspicuous by their differences and held apart by suspicion. Because in their original environment these habits were seen as natural or fitting, misunderstandings arise engendering a mutual hostility.

Let's have a look at shylocking as adduced to Jews, in another instance of social strictures creating fallacious determinations. For generations Jews were not permitted to own land in Europe, nor to have certain recognized professions. They could not farm, the most common means of livelihood at one point in human history. They were sometimes permitted to become itinerant tradesmen. And they were permitted to 'lend' money; a practise expressly forbidden by the early Christian church to its faithful - which church ironically had itself taken the injunction from Judaic precept.

Jews then, became money lenders, eventually transmuting the practise to banking. But as they were then dealing in a Christian world within an expressly forbidden, church-proscribed practise, they were held to be 'unclean', their livelihood despised and indecent. Hence shylocks, from the immortal Bard's pen, who reflected the temper of his times; hence the term 'jewing' and the Oxford Dictionary definition of Jew as 'money-lender'. An unfortunate misnomer, since the great majority of Jews have always been and will doubtless continue to be, as 'average' material-wise, as any society which they inhabit. But all a matter of perceptions, of discrimination informed by ignorance where the apparent is more readily accepted than the actual.

There also exists among sub-groupings physical differences from their common genetic pool which further confuse matters. Where some sub-groupings can readily and genuinely be identified, as where their physical environment has gradually adapted them to their surroundings, i.e., the Pygmy of the African Congo, the Inuit of the far North, where one group has been reduced in size and colour and the second has acquired the genetic code for an 'abnormal' subcutaneous fat layer - so that they may better live in sound ecology with their environments - they are a distinctly characteristic group.

However, most 'racial' identifications are misconceived generalizations. We may think of those inhabiting the Indian continent as forming a distinctive race, yet they do not, for many confused sub-groupings have gone into the whole, and there is, moreover, an artificial sub-structure there of a social nature which will not permit interbreeding between groupings, thus causing an unnatural situation where the caste system has birthed further sub-groupings, with attendant fairly stable gene pools. The uninformed and ignorant outsider claims that 'all Indians look alike'; ergo they must be a single 'race'.

Jews are commonly perceived to be of the Mediterranean type, and some are. Yet so are the Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Spanish and certainly the Arab populations - and some of all these groups have often been mistaken for Jews. Yet among Jews there is a significantly smaller proportion of physical Mediterranean types than among, for example, Arabs.

In the same token we often conceive of Italians as being dark-skinned and hirsute, yet large groups of Italians are fair-haired and light-skinned and the same can be said for the Spanish - and among the fair-haired segment, there arises a social condition creating a hierarchy among that group. So we have the 'aristocrats' and the 'peasants'. Perceptual differences and their attribution to race have been encouraged for the express purpose of creating a hierarchy, a class of rulers and the ruled within a society, thus supporting the concept of racism.

Ethnic groups share a geographic boundary, often. They share a common culture within the geographic boundary. And most often they share a common religion. Yet the Italians, the Spanish, the French, the Greeks do not each comprise a race, but a nation. And within each nation are groups of people who do not share the same religion, nor the same dialect, nor exactly the same culture.

The human condition is constantly changing, albeit gradually and perhaps some day enough intermarriage within groups will occur to blend and weaken physical differences. Even so, cultural and geographic boundaries may remain. Yet even so, there is but one species.

The fondly-held belief of racists in 'racial' purity is a risible canard; the stronghold of culturally- and intellectually-insecure antediluvians, the substance of whose contention is as ephemeral as gossamer (without sharing any of that substance's beauty). For its purpose is to degrade other human beings.

Intelligence quotient is often used as a tool by which 'race' can be proven to point an individual toward highly-paid skilled employment or underpaid under-skilled employment. I.Q. tests are given across the board, to those from privileged and under-privileged social backgrounds alike. This, despite that we now know pre-natal as well as post-natal deprivation, both nutritional and environmental, leads to atrophying of the brain's potential.

In other words, an intelligence test specifically designed to measure the cerebral capacity of a middle-class group with background leading to middle-class aspirations is given to nutritionally-, emotionally- and socially-deprived groups of people. A tendentious practise; weighting the scale heavily in favour of racist theory of a sub-species of human.

Psychological traits and various endowments of physical and intellectual capacities exist within all groups of people whatever the ethnic background. There is no one group of people in any manner naturally superior to another, trait-wise, intellectually, or with regard to physical attributes.

Nomenclature and semantics become very important when misconceptions based on ignorance, breeding fear and prejudice, often lead the way to savage acts, one man against another. An example of how words, or loose and misunderstood terms can be so erroneous, is the example of the world 'savage'. Anthropologists commonly used that word to refer to primitive peoples. Yet now, the word 'savage' is no longer current; instead the words 'primitive' or 'illiterate' have replaced the 'savage'.

It can be readily understood why, when we recall that Alfred Wallace, an anthropologist-coeval of Charles Darwin (engaged in like studies of natural selection), in the course of his investigations into the source of man shot a black woman who had been sitting in a tree holding an infant (in Malaysia); thinking nothing much more of the incident than that he had mistakenly killed a 'savage' for an ape. The savage, apparently, then being thought nothing more than a more direct link to Homo Sapiens. She was a human being and he, the scientist, reflecting the unfortunate zeitgeist of the times, the true savage.

So let us understand that one cannot denote a group of people as a 'race'. The word itself with all its derogatory connotations has caused untold misery to millions of human beings. We divide 'races' into inferior and superior. We perceive some 'races' as being truly human, and others as merely sub-human. Subtly we do this. So we hardly notice it, but we do. We ascribe to certain 'races' distasteful practises and characteristics. The truth is that all human beings share like or at least comparable aspirations; to fulfill themselves as human beings in all dignity.

The means by which they fulfill their aspirations may differ, but the needs are the same.

We desperately need to understand that our biases regarding race are ill-founded. If some specific characteristics are found to be unappealing, it is well to remember that some which we ourselves share may be unappealing to other segments of a population; more commonly termed 'ethnic' groupings, and not 'races'. Yet, we must learn to accommodate ourselves to each other, to co-operate, to shift over and give some room. After all, this is not a very large planet, this mother Earth, and we are but one family; the human race.

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. - Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 1874.

Reflection

 

We fondle our past
with fingers
of fond memory
echoing regret
at swift passing.

You recall me
soft and round
waiting and eager
that element of danger
of quick discovery
and swift withdrawal
but always there
waiting

and you
see in me still
that other
the one who
lingers back there
dark-haired and nubile
and you smile

here
I am, Love
don't you see me?
This pale reflection
refracting the
purity of youth
is only time
wrinkling the present.

 

 

Survival Technique

 

Never would've believed
your kind existed
anymore.
Like the Dodo
and the Edsel
(generational phase
a passing craze)
extinct. Though

sometimes
I thought I caught
a glimmer
of the essence
in others
caught off guard.

There you sit
my friend
discussing the
plagues of this world
so plainly
suffering yourself.

Keep it up
my friend
and you'll become
yourself
an endangered specie.
Those amorphous others
that great majority

once they catch wind
will howl
for blood. Just
remember:
detached
rationality
is the current
formula for
self-preservation.