WRITING ON THE INSIDE OF MY EYELIDS
FINAL WRITINGS 2003
These essays were dictated at Misericordia and at Taché during Patrick’s last fifteen months. The evidence from Loc Lu’s hand written copy show very little editing. Patrick would have already done that, lying in bed or in his wheel chair to be ready when Loc Lu came to take dictation. These writings truly were composed on the inside of Patrick’s eyelids.
Not having access to his computer he stopped keeping his journal but in the essays and poems he dictated he explored a deeper level of expression.
Earlier Patrick wrote stories to entertain the reader. He did not think that his physical condition was the subject for creative writing. Only in his journal did he speak personally. In this his last year, writing about his memories, he learned to draw on his experience of MS to portray both tragedy and humour. His imagination remained no less active.
Some earlier journal entries sketch a possible fantasy followed by an incomplete first draft.
Patrick finally got around to writing about Malabar, where he had first worked after university. An earlier journal entry refers to it as one of his "shames" probably because he felt he had wasted five years of his healthy younger life there, not realizing his life would be truncated.
The Quality of Co-incidence
January 2003
This is one of those moments when the intersections meet. I don’t know whether or not this is a memory or a fantasy or something spawned by a nightmare. At different times of the day, depending upon how well I’m physically feeling, I would swear on a stack of bibles it was one thing. An hour later, caressed by the joys of fatigue it has mutated into another. I cannot believe I was fortunate enough to have witnessed this event, but then again, maybe it was nothing.
Such are the qualities of coincidence. They’re more than a brush with celebrity and more than the elation of epiphany. They produce such a strange mixture of emotions. Curiosity, confusion, respect and awe swirl together to produce a moment which you cannot forget. At least, I didn’t. It was baggage I carried my entire life and it disquiets me to this day.
There are spring nights when the evening is perfect. When the light and the air and the buildings hang together to create a space so poignant that it carries your heart away. I am not usually a devotee of architecture but there are places so arresting they will not be ignored.
The centre of the University of Toronto is one such space. Universities are usually built near the perimeters of cities where the land is inexpensive and plentiful and there is room to grow. Cities respond logically to their presence and grow around them in a predictable genesis as if the city actually had a brain. The design of the initial buildings is crucial, however, and sets a tone that will carry the institution forward for years to come.
The central buildings of the University of Toronto are low stone affairs in what is possibly a period gothic style. Each is part of a perimeter surrounding a doughnut-shaped roadway with a small patch of green space in the middle.
I was working in downtown Toronto that summer and finding my way home after a very long day’s work. I rode my bicycle just into the circular roadway and was stopped by an older police officer who asked me to remain where I was for a moment. His manner was so courteous and the evening so fine that I was more than willing to comply, with curiosity. I was surprised when a procession of stretch limousines, like a dark stream of low-slung barracuda began circling the little roadway and progressed toward a building called Hart House. At that moment my fatigue abated and I remembered that the city of Toronto was playing host to a meeting of the leaders of the G-7, who were being treated to the finest the city of Toronto had to offer. They were having supper at Hart House. Amongst the curiosities for the leaders’ amusement was a tent city for use by journalists close to the leaders’ meeting spaces and corporate-sponsored gardens of flowered logos lining the highway between the meeting place and their hotels. I remained where I was, made even more curious by the spectacle and stood, one leg on the curb and one straddling my bicycle. The limousines continued and in twenty seconds they were gone.
These were during the days of my innocence. This was Toronto in the early 1980’s. The entire city was feting the imported leaders and their retinues. The economy was booming as a result of the deficit financing of Reagonomics and everyone was in an upbeat mood. This was in the days before the Battle of Seattle, the protestor death in Europe, the Quebec Wall, the Kananaskis Hideaway. These were in the days before terms such as globalization had come into common parlance and had fired the imaginations of youth. Little wonder I stood rooted to the spot and watched with nothing more than a vague sensation of disquiet.
This is a murky half-forgotten memory despite the fact that a subject of my Political Science Masters’ study was the meetings of the G-7 and the subject of my thesis was the attempts at financial coordination between G-7 countries from 1970 until 1990. I write these words in no attempt at falsehood. I both knew that this event happened and I cannot certify that I witnessed any part of it.
Interesting work has been done by researchers into the psychology and psychiatric properties of memory. Memories which produce powerful emotions were thought initially to be immune from distortion. Sophisticated work has been done, however, into memories of both pleasurable and traumatic events. Researchers have attempted to degrade subjects’ memories by producing inaccurate variables. One such study took place in Russia following an explosion in a large apartment block. Researchers asked witnesses if they remembered seeing the large white dog. There had been no large white dog present at the time of the explosion. Witnesses replied "no", but upon being re-interviewed several months later, changed their answers to the affirmative. They concocted elaborate stories about the dog, the injuries it had sustained, and what actions passers-by took on its behalf.
Another such study took place at Euro Disney. Subjects were asked if they had enjoyed meeting Bugs Bunny. The answer was invariably "No." Nevertheless, upon being re-interviewed months later, subjects elaborated at length about their meeting this cartoon character. These meetings had to be a product of their imagination though, because Bugs Bunny is a product copy written by the company Hanna-Barbara and is not ever present in Euro Disney.
Memories, as any defense attorney will attest, are both malleable and subject to manipulation. Sadly, they do not provide an infallible history of our past. Knowing these things, how could I currently have faith in my memories of witnessing the limousines of the leaders of the G-7?
There had been too much time and too many variables in between, which may have degraded my memories. Further to this, I must add the things I know about the adverse affects of Multiple Sclerosis on the human brain. It leaves me in a place where I am left to question the qualities of my past, the qualities of my future, and even the legitimacy of the actions I endeavor to take in now.
As I watched the limousines parade before me, I could not discern if there was anyone inside or not. They exited the centre circle, turned a corner beyond my view and processed away.
Such a strange experience. I was told by the constable in charge that I was free to go. I slung my leg over my bicycle, not knowing the profound effects this experience would have on me. I pedaled off into the darkness not knowing that in ignorance there is bliss.
Canada Employment Centre
April 14, 2003
Children dislike transitions Take a child who is involved with a number of toys and suggest to him or her a different activity, no matter how much the proposed activity is liked and enjoyed, and that child will invariably put up a fuss. He or she will make excuses or outright refuse or at worst throw a temper tantrum, telling you in the innumerable ways of children that they do not want to stop what they are doing. They have that right. They have expended a lot of energy, preparing their environment, getting it arranged, and developing its future. It is as real to them as conscious reality is to us. Hardly surprising that they do not want to see it disturbed.
Some adults never move beyond the scope of those children - possibly most adults. Many people work toward getting their jobs, getting their homes, raising their families, and trying to be happy. There is nothing wrong with this. I do it myself. Perhaps this reflects an unwillingness to accept the future as an opportunity to be embraced and triumphed over. Little wonder that none of us look forward to the prospects of actually having to look for a job.
Perhaps I speak only for myself, but I do not really think that this is true. No one I have ever spoken to looks forward to the prospect of job hunting with anything but depression verging on outright dread. It is not surprising that Canadian Employment Centres came into existence. The idea may initially have been some bureaucrat’s idea of cleverly matching employer needs with the unemployed population, but in reality there was also a powerful psychological impetus. These centres have never been welcomed whole heartedly by their user populations, with both employers and job seekers dissatisfied with their results.
Job seekers inevitably find the process dissatisfying, with the job postings either inadequate or unappealing. Employers, on the other hand, usually are dissatisfied with the quality of applicants who arrive from these centres. Job postings are often outdated or already filled as well. With these centres serving as an individual’s first forays into the job seeking experience, a cycle is usually set up which condemns some "types" of job applicants into some "types" of jobs . How quiet and convincing is the hierarchical process of class structure. Only the best jobs for only the best people.
There is another level to add to this experience, and I had the unpleasant opportunity to have to address it. I had received an important piece of mail. It informed me that, as a consequence of continuing developments in my disability, I was now eligible for moneys provided to me under the Canada Pension Plan. While I had looked forward to this moment, I also faced it with displeasure. I knew both that the moneys I would be offered would be small and that it meant a curtailing of future possibilities. There was no denying my several disabilities. By this time I had difficulty both seeing and moving. I would never again live without the aid of my wheelchair and I had already lost substantial amount of movement in my upper limbs. Obviously, retirement from gainful employment was the only practical option. I did not look forward to this new stage in my life, since it was both premature and obtrusive. I read the piece of mail, realizing that I was turning a cornerstone in my life while unsure about what the future held.
The letter required that I present it at the nearest available branch of the Canada Employment Centres in order to begin completion of the necessary paper work. I booked transit, waited the required period for my ride, and went down to the centre.
It was weird. It was weird.
I will not forget those moments. I left the best behind me and entered the centre. The first person who greeted me was not a job seeker, as I had expected, but a young member of the staff. He took one look at my face and an exuberant grin spread across his face. He said something exalted in recognition. Something like, " the very last time" or "Is it all over?" It was as if my answer would signal his liberation from that place, instead of mine. I got the impression he wanted me to share in his rejoicing. It felt so odd.
The rest of the staff processed my paperwork without comment and without outward emotions. It was easily obvious to everyone involved that the likelihood of my continuing employment was remote at best. I sat waiting and wondering what the appropriate emotion for this moment was.
The strangeness did not continue, however, until I was sitting by the double doors exiting the building and waiting for my return bus ride. The doors were double doors in two senses. There were two doors side by side as well as two doors spaced apart with an entrance foyer in between. I sat staring at those doors, waiting for my ride when the feeling of oddity returned.
Entering the building was an older gentleman, probably in his early 50’s. He was well groomed in appearance wearing a cardigan and slacks and nondescript in every way. He came into the building from outside, let the outside door close behind him, then turned, pulled the door open behind him, and released it to close behind him. He repeated this unusual ritual with the inside door. The door was pulled open, he walked through it. He turned around, made certain the door was re-opened behind him and then released. He was deliberate, he was methodical, and he executed the activity without a fuss of any kind.
He ambled quietly into the room and began surveying the job postings. Five or ten minutes later, he was back at the doors, leaving the building and repeating the process exactly as before. I did not know what I was watching but I had some suspicions. I had recently completed reading a book by a noted psychiatrist, Dr. Oliver Sachs, entitled "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." Sachs used the book to detail a number of case studies of unusual brain/body interactions that he had observed. I suspected I had observed what Sachs had described as Tourette’s syndrome.
According to Sachs, Tourette’s syndrome were odd forms of compulsive behaviour that individuals manifest despite their willingness to unwillingness. These mannerisms could take many forms. Inappropriate shouting, strange ticks or faces, or walking or moving upper limbs in strange manners. The persons with Tourette’s were capable of complex and very difficult skills, but the strange behaviours would always manifest themselves somehow. I did not know for certain, but I thought I had witnessed an individual with Tourettes" Certainly if it had been the case, it would have gone a long way in explaining why he would have been at a Canada Employment Centre. He gave me pause to wonder if indeed he was a harbinger of things to come. I felt very much as though I had entered a very strange new world.
A Cautionary Tale
(undated)
This is a story for a little boy and a little girl. Hopefully, they will never need it.
On the Cabot Trail, on east side of Cape Breton Island, there is a beach which is strikingly beautiful. So strikingly beautiful, in fact, that the provincial government recognized its beauty by building a parking lot right beside it so tourists could make use of it. One of the things that make the beach so striking and so unusual is that the north end of the beach is marked by having a waterfall. The waterfall is not large, perhaps sixty or seventy feet high. It does not so much cascade as it trickles in a very determined fashion.
If you were to climb the shoreline beside the waterfall you would notice immediately a rough path leading upward. This pathway would in turn lead to a bridge which traverses the creek which feeds the waterfall. On the other side of the bridge the path is more pronounced and has obviously been trod by many feet.
The path continues on through several hundred yards of beautiful woods and emerges into a striking vista. You see the rocky promontory first. Then, to the east is the Atlantic Ocean, all the way to Europe. On the other side of the promontory is a very narrow and incredibly beautiful cove, the perfect size and shape for swimming. The promontory on the cove side curves down into a cliff that is ideal for jumping and diving. It is fifty feet or so to the water and you can see the bottom about ten or twelve feet below the waves. The water is blue and clear and the bottom is sandy. It is so inviting to leap from the promontory into the cove below.
I first saw this cove on a gorgeous day in July. My friends had gone down before me to the edge of the cove and I so wanted to leap. I didn’t. I didn’t know how cold the water would be but I expected it would be very cold that early in the summer. Also, I had never swam in that cove before and even though the bottom looked deep enough to leap off the cliff, I didn’t know that for sure.
I went back to that cove just once more in my life on a day that was not suitable for swimming. So I looked on not having jumped from that cliff as a glorious missed opportunity.
Later in my life I became a wheelchair user and rode the bus frequently with other young men like myself. They had made sudden irrevocable choices which had marked their lives. One had tried to ski between his friend’s legs. Another had tried to back flip off a floating dock. Both had ended up with broken necks. They had been 19 years old, at the most dangerous time of a young man’s life. They were at the height of their physical abilities and at the lowest point of their mental ones. They would have tried anything.
So I didn’t try leaping from the cliff. I ended up in a wheelchair anyway. But I did not have to live with the fact that I had done something incredibly stupid and very horrible to myself.
Night Traffic
May 12, 2003
There are times when the distinction between memory and fantasy becomes clear. Perhaps this is as a consequence of shared memories that, if we verify a memory with another person, we can then be more confident about it as a fact. It is as if we humans accept certainty in numbers and are most confident when we are granted that reassurance. Maybe it is a result of the social origins of the human race; maybe it is a result of the corrosion of human memory by the technological developments of the preceding centuries. Who knows? These answers are probably too biologically or technologically deterministic, but I consider the evidence of the general thesis incontrovertible. We believe our memories when somebody else says that they actually happened as well.
The following is one such memory. ….
Traveling along a two-lane highway that twists and turns through mountains covered by dense forests at night-time is an experience I encourage anyone to engage in at least once in their lives. The closeness of the trees to either side of the road, the knowledge that mountains loom somewhere out in the darkness, the security provided by the sanctity of the enclosed space of the car, of movement through darkness – all these combine to instill a sense of fragility and confusion. Those were the feelings I shared with my companion one night. We were traveling on a north-west route toward the city of Kelowna in British Columbia. We were young. We were foolish. Despite the bravado that both of these qualities are blessed with, the passage on that night became so surreal that eventually we both completely stopped speaking and stared out of the car without really knowing what to expect.
We had no reason to be afraid. We had experienced no traumatic moments. Our car, although old, was working properly and we had no doubts that it would keep working. Still, there was that strange sense of vulnerability, and it was about to be tried.
Without street lamps, without bright markings to provide confidence, a midnight ride through the mountains makes one particularly acute. Two city boys, half lost in the country, can be forgiven for nearly jumping out of their skins when they were suddenly confronted by two luminous orbs in the roadway ahead of them. These strange lights were about five feet up and moving slowly across the road. As soon as the first two appeared, two others appeared behind them. Then there were more – how many I don’t know – but I slowly guessed that we were seeing the eyes of deer, and I could scarcely believe how bright, how shining, how like spotlights they were.
We did the obvious and slowed. We chuckled at our misgivings over what must be commonplace in this strange new environment. The night was to become stranger still.
A few miles further – how many I couldn’t tell you – as the road turned to the left, we came upon a sight guaranteed to create more misgivings. On its side on the shoulder of the road before the start of the wall of trees was a huge logging truck. The driver had obviously been negotiating the turn, missed it and the truck had flipped. We pulled over and jumped out. We had no way of knowing whether the accident happened a week earlier or five minutes ago. Was there a driver somewhere near? If there were, how would we find him? If we did, how would we be of help?
We clambered closer to the truck. No one appeared in any immediate danger. The truck was somewhat damaged but had the stillness of something that had happened a long time ago.
While my companion and I stood staring at the enormous truck and the considerable violence the accident must have caused, a large late model car pulled up behind us. Four men eased themselves out of the car, commenting on the state of the truck. They were large. They were beefy. They were obviously fortifying themselves for their evening’s passage with two large bottles of Wild Turkey.
They quickly reached the same conclusions as we, and went on their way. We watched them climb into their car and quickly motor off into the night. My companion looked at me and said, "Let’s give them lots of distance." We laughed quietly, got into our car and proceeded cautiously, the lesson of the truck fresh in our minds.
Our travel that night ended shortly with our arrival in Kelowna. I wish I could report that we drove more cautiously thereafter, but we didn’t. I wish I could say that I finally came to understand the meaning of that night and any lesson it provided, but I cannot.
So I am left with the feeling that I had a memory but I do not know what was its import or how it could be interpreted. It is a memory, nothing more and nothing less. It provides me with the sense that, despite our memories, we get no reassurance and continually are left strangers in a strange land.
Memories, Metaphors, Magic
June 2, 2003
Antonio Gramsci wrote his Prison Notebooks. If only I can find the strength to write my own.
At some point in life each of us comes to the recognition and the personal admission that we are not what we always hoped we would become. The child’s dream of becoming the sports superstar falters as we recognize our own physical limitations. The dreams of the scholar change as we recognize the immensity of the problems we confront. Our comprehension of existence dwarfs us so completely, as we broaden our understanding, that we are almost always humbled into emotional impotence.
Something of this nature also happens as we confront our aging bodies, our inability even to shuffle in the places where we used to dance. On becoming disabled, and recognizing the limitations of your failing body and the immensities of the barriers that confront you, it is hardly surprising that some sink into places of despair. Nevertheless there have to be solutions to this conundrum. Life has got to be worth more than a simple striving with absolutely no hope of success.
One such solution lies in the delights of metaphor. The ability of human beings to suggest that two things – objects, but also ideas or feelings - can be likened one to another, no matter how apparently incongruous. This provides us with the possibility of hope. You could say that it is like watching a frog eat a toaster. It won’t get very far, it’s a senseless thing to do but you gotta give that frog points for trying - and it’s kinda fun to watch.
When we poor humans attempt to understand our selves and our world, we are like that frog. We may be futile and senseless but perhaps we’re also fun to watch.
When I was in school, I had to deal with the fact of my failing eyesight. A great deal of reading had been assigned. By dint of technological aids, human assistance and academic kindness I got by. But there were always more interesting things yet to read and more to discuss and not enough energy to do it. So it was that I was confronted by the work of Antonio Gramsci.
Gramsci was a puzzle that delighted me. I understood only his personal story and that by way of hearsay. I never studied his work. I never even read his work - but I so wanted to.
Gramsci may have been a genius. Gramsci was definitely determined. He had unflagging confidence in the importance of the ideas he was determined to convey. Who was he? What did he do? As I understood it – and, remember, that I might be wrong - Gramsci was an Italian put in prison for union organizing and he probably died there. No doubt I display my failing intellectual abilities by writing this without researching the particulars of his life story. No matter. For the purposes of my understanding of Gramsci it is more important to me that I don’t know of the things he wrote. For me, what is important is that he was put in prison, wrote a number of notebooks about his ideas and died. A jailer smuggled his notebooks out of prison and so Gramsci is known to us today.
It is a story of unflagging optimism in the face of impossible odds. Odds so impossible that they actually consumed the man himself, even though the ideas live on. How could I not feel akin to this man?
I currently inhabit two prisons. The first prison is that of my living arrangements; they provide me the necessary support to continue my existence but also constrain and limit my aspirations. The second prison is that of my disease which provides only constraint and limit.
How arrogant and egocentric to compare myself to Gramsci… He wrote in prison. I write in the lap of luxury. But therein lies the magic. That I am prepared to make this particular leap of faith. To dare to say that I feel like Gramsci whom I have never read, and whom I am probably not at all like, given our dissimilar circumstances. Maybe he and I are both just frogs trying to eat a toaster - futile, ridiculous, arrogant, possibly courageous. I flatter myself in thinking that there are parallels.
And if there are not, so what? These illusions are indispensable: they make some of us human and render us foolish enough that we continue striving to survive.
Four Angels
June 12, 2003
Like Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ classic story ‘A Christmas Carol,’ I have been visited by four spirits. My spirits, however, were not interested in having me celebrate an annual holiday, nor were they dead. My spirits arrived dressed as women, one by one, each carried by her concern for another person. Each was grappling with facets of the same problem and from each I received a gift.
The first was the youngest and as such her emotions were the freshest and most vivid. She came to me during our street’s Block Party and we sat on my front porch and watched children gamboling in the street while we discussed what was, for her, a most difficult subject.
Her favorite aunt had been diagnosed with MS a few years previously. Her aunt had become increasingly worse, having more and more difficulty with her living arrangements. Her aunt had become depressed and had chosen what was, for her, a logical solution: she had attempted suicide. She had done a bad job of it and, now, people like her niece were left to deal with the consequences.
I said what I could. That I had been there. That the disease often appears to curtail options. That the suicide attempt might have been no more than a cry for help that was being heard. But throughout all my kind words I was left to consider all the times that had I the option I would have used it.
The second came to me at a party. She and I were introduced by friends and she was in many ways the easiest of my four angels to deal with. She had MS. We talked of her symptoms, we discussed her management, her choices with respect to medication and her coping mechanisms. She seemed to be in a more precarious situation but she was coping. I liked her and it pleased my heart.
The third angel appeared at my bedside, acting as an attendant and giving me aid. She wanted to know about MS desperately because she was in love with a man whose first marriage had fallen apart, possibly as a result of the fact that his wife had MS. I told her of the strains the disease had put on my friends’ marriages, about how no one could be blamed, that there was no purpose to blame, that the disease was stronger than any single person and that there was no reason that it would not be stronger than the union of two people. I had seen this so many times before.
The fourth was a nurse who came to me to discuss a friend. Her friend persisted in climbing steep, precarious stairs up to her bedroom on the third floor even though there were different living options possible and the ascent had become dangerous. I thought then of all the things that I had done which were dangerous, which were foolhardy, which were my means of proclaiming my resistance, my unwillingness to submit to this pernicious, stupid disease. I told her to have confidence. Her friend would die as she lived, as we all will.
After they all left, I sat reflecting. They had come to me searching for answers because my personal experience might have given me some particular insight. I am not sure it goes beyond what they could have found inside. But I may have provided them with something of a touchstone to direct them to where they needed to go.
Four Angels
August 5. 2003
Four battered angels by night came searching,
A tiny flickering candle each held, in one hand,
In the other their love for a dear friend,
Their certainty vanquished before cold remorseless quicksand.
Disguised in appearance as women,
Each came privately to my quiet island’s lee
Asking questions of responsibility and duty -
Unfortunately, they asked them of me.
So I spouted some platitudes and truisms,
Silly nonsense that all of us should know -
How to take heart, how to give heart, where to find comfort,
When to hold tight, when to stand back, when to let go.
Perhaps I said something that helped still their nightmares
Perhaps I said something that helped them hope
Perhaps I said something wise despite my misgivings
In the end though, I think I just helped them cope.
Folklorama
June 16,2003
I can’t blame the guy. It was a good focus for the beginning of the performance: hammering on his bongo drums, holding them before me and playing them just to me. I was a good way to start a performance. All eyes turned toward us and I was the centre of attention.
I had never before minded being the centre of attention. I was always prepared. I always had something to produce for the audience’s amusement, or their amazement, or their sympathy or despair. It was my stock in trade. It was what I had done, both recreationally and professionally. I know how to work an audience’s emotions.
But at this moment, I felt naked. Like a little child in the dream when you are inadvertently exposed before the classroom. Beyond embarrassed – I was disarmed and confused.
His attention was directed to me because I was in a wheelchair - something that made me just want to blend in and not be noticed - and here I was the centre of the crowd’s attention. They did not watch to see what he would do; they wanted to see how I would react to what he just did. There was no ill will on their part toward me. I was not being depended upon to do anything to warrant their attention. But I was on the spot and I knew it.
Strange, that such a memory should be my moment of incapacity. I have overcome hurdles which would embarrass the most resolute; I have held the attention of many on a word or a gesture, and I was left at this moment incapable.
Our weaknesses are strange. This disease has given me some new ones.
Questions
June 16, 2003
It’s all about the same thing. Everybody always thinks it’s so different because each one looks so different. But they’re not. The differences are not important. Because at essence, they’re all the same.
When a Ballerina floats up, apparently effortlessly, on point, when a running back cuts and is gone, when a pitcher places a hundred mile-an-hour fast ball in exactly the right place sixty-six feet away, time after time, they’re all the same thing. We catch our breaths and our excitement explodes. We are left holding our chairs and saying to our companions. "Did you see that?"
It’s all the same thing. The fascination with the precision of motion must be rooted in genetics. In the life and death struggle that tells us when to hide and when to flee. How else to explain our interest in the tiger which is caught exposed in the open, bounding toward shelter. That incredible beauty, when form has entirely met function and there is no purpose in the action but to achieve the animal’s end.
How often do we touch it? That moment when we have one purpose, when that and nothing else matters. Do you remember those moments?
I know I did. I know that I remember them still.
Sometimes they are for sharing. Sometimes they are not. But those moments become a critical part of our memories.
No wonder we remember our youth. The strength we exulted in, our delight in our own motions. They were more than just the relentless monotony of assembly line manufacturing. Most of that has been taken over by machines. More power to them. They have stolen the jobs of a generation, they have taken from us monotony and that type of stupidity, but they have also replaced the pride of our youths and our imaginary glories.
Does our genetic legacy condemn us to this? To the liberation from our confinements? Possibly so.
It is the little things that get remembered. There was running over grass on a warm summers day, there was the intake of breathe by the audience at the making of an impossible ping-pong ball return, there was looking at the route of a successful ascent and thinking to yourself. "I did that. I know I did that." Following that, to go home content.
I can see it on people’s faces when they look at me and they know such precision is gone. In its place they expect a moral wisdom. Too often I feel not up to the challenge. I have not been cursed by the fates. I have not been blessed by the gods. I would that I were now a better man by virtue of this apparently divine touch. If this is the case I haven’t been able to discern it. So be it.
Keep reading, I might still come up with something that surprises you.
The Emperor of the Air
April 27, 2002
My best time of the day is the middle of the night. At 4 a.m., after six hours of sleep, I lie awake, a body rested and cramp-free, and dream dreams of fantasy and desire and longing and reflection. These are the moments when I am most myself, when I do that thing which I am best able to do and which no one is capable of doing in that way which is unique to me and, of all things I can do, most satisfying to myself. These moments I would take into my day if I could, but only seldom can I even glimpse the monuments I earlier stood atop. The concrete hurly-burly of the day sweeps aside these fragile less-than-nothings and I am left with disquiet and frustration and the necessity of inadequacy.
Little surprise that I write. Little surprise that I dislike my writing. The painful selection of words and phrases and punctuation and cadence trying to replace the inspiration of thought! What a folly, what a weakness, what a trial is this!
Although they do describe me and my situation, I could put these words into the mouth of the Emperor of Imagination. This will be a story in which the emperor lives in his cathedral of the air, with its altars of emotion and its shower of words. It also contains its wellsprings of longing from which are drawn buckets of effort and endeavor. Each altar covered by a cloth which is removed to reveal the well which is beneath. The emperor has tremendous power because he creates the fantasies we all choose to submit ourselves to. He does not have any power to either persuade or coerce. Indeed, he seems completely uninterested in such realities. The emperor is scrutinized, no matter what he does, by the magpies. These beings, half human and half bird, flutter between the cathedral and the ground, dazzling everyone below with their flamboyant plumage and gabbling incessantly and confusedly about whatever tidbits they may have observed as they argue with one another. The emperor knows what he is -- an ideal, a nightmare, and, in the end, a metaphor.
Empire of the Sun
June 23, 2003
Strange, so strange, so very strange, indeed! The first words I remember hearing. The first words I remembered hearing and understanding, later to repeat. Strange, so strange, so very strange, indeed!
They were the first things I remember ever seeing. An iris – no, two; openings, portals into possibility surrounded by color. Before I had words, before I had concepts these beacons stood there before me with the promise of hope. Were these the eyes of a he? A she? I did not know and it didn’t matter. I looked into those eyes and I knew without thinking, I knew in every bit of my being that I looked on the wellspring of my purpose, on all that was and could be and all that I could be and was. I looked into the eyes of everything and nothing, and everything made me look and nothing could have made me look away. In that instant, I sank within those eyes and surfaced into that face and realized that we were two. I looked in and not out, was distinct and at a distance. A very short distance indeed: an arm’s-length away.
It is no use and there is no purpose trying to describe that face. The colors, the planes, the very indentations themselves were subject to change without notice, in a heartbeat, in an instant, a glimmer of time. This was more than the play of shadow and light. The face and the form were a dance set in motion, like leaves rustling, like a breeze, like waves upon a sea. He laughed and his music put the lie to indistinction. "Such confusion," he said. "Fear not, you shall learn. Come."
We began to move and I swayed with the motion, on the end of that arm. I rode on that fist, air brushing against my face, and I knew sorrow at the birth of shadow for we were traveling into darkness. Leaving that balcony, a parapet open toward the sunlight, I learned the harshness of decision, the permanence of action, the loss of the path not taken and the folly of ever leaving the sky.
"Hush," he murmured, stroking my body; my heart was both stilled and fired at the comfort of that touch.
He strode beneath an archway of magnesite and granite, and turned down a hallway of filigree and cut glass. Hangings of rice paper and flowers in cane baskets sprouted from the walls; statues of small horses grew from pedestals in corners. Stretched between a microscope, sitting on a table, and the top of a flower in a basket there was a single strand of spider’s web, bisected by a sunbeam. So many things, so many ideas and so many ways to describe them! We passed through a doorway into a room full of mirrors and plants and waterfalls and he placed me on a ladder standing unsupported, all by itself, resting on nothing. I noted the insignificance of this feat.
"Stay here," he said as I wobbled on this perch. "It is time for my morning ablutions."
I noted the sudden admission of physicality.
"This," he said, "you will find hard," and he stood before me and aged.
(What is the plot of this monstrosity, this allegory about the human race? Gulliver traveled from place to place in order to have a quest, an adventure upon which the story was hung. On what does my description of the Emperor hang?)
Such a way to enter consciousness: a gigantic face before me, muttering words in a tone of support and approval. The words? I didn’t understand them. It didn’t matter; I didn’t care to. I was too busy extracting my body from the eggshell, flapping what were to become wings, and squeaking.
"Such a beautiful magpie. You’re going to grow into something beautiful. Ah, what I won’t have to do with you!" The face looked different: gentler, fuller, capable of a tenderness and devotion that a moment before had been less obvious. "Don’t worry, little one. Breathe in. You’ll feel better. Life is more fun than the other. You’ll get used to it. Just take a few moments."
I did take a few moments. I breathed in and out. I squeaked in protest: what was this? Where was this? What was right? I shook my wings - although they could hardly be called such, as I had barely grown feathers. I breathed in and out, each time feeling stronger, and with a little more comprehension of my surroundings.
"That’s right, that’s right. I told you you’d feel better. You’ll like this." The face was back. It was earnest and concerned and dedicated to practicality, with more lines, more planes and more harshness than the last time. "That’s a lot better. Just wait, you’re gonna be a big one. You are going to be the master of everything that you see. Just don’t tell anyone."
And the face laughed. The explosion of noise was almost too much for my timid ears to manage. Head thrown back, the noise spilling out from its mouth in all directions until I was left with no shelter, no place to hide. The giant receded.
Another giant appeared on my other side, frightening me near to oblivion. I was to be eaten! There was fear, but no flight. I fell forward on my face and the hard surface of the nest, and eggshell, awakened me to hard realities.
"It fell down!" said a smaller voice.
"It’s all right," boomed the first. "Life deals hard lessons. It’ll be alright."
And I was. I was already struggling forward, freeing myself of eggshell, struggling for freedom - for something. I wanted to survive. I couldn’t see - not really, just barely.
Go away. Feed me. You’re not right.
"No, no, don’t touch it. Your smell is already on the nest. The baby will be alright as long as we don’t touch it." The same voice again - the first giant, the strange one. They make more noise than birds! They don’t understand anything.
I needed so much. Even breathing was strange. There was an ache in my belly. It had to be filled. I was cold, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything. How could I know about cold?
"No, No, as I said before: don’t touch it. Don’t even touch the nest unless you have to. Oh yes, you did right. You brought me the nest. You showed me the treasure. Everything will be alright."
So, I have your attention… Stop your gawking and gabbling and pouting. Stand there and listen. There’s so much that you’ll learn. You can learn it from me. Me, just a bird. Sit on the ground, shut your mouths, open your ears and listen.
Of course, I didn’t really remember what they were saying. I guessed at it from the memory of what must have been going on. It is the truth of fiction. I can make it up. Maybe it is what they said - maybe it’s even better.
"Step back; pick up the nest. Show me where you found it." That was the first giant, the big one. I was flying in the air – no, that’s wrong. I was in the nest! I shouldn’t have been in the nest.
"It was over here. It was behind this tree. It was on the ground. Oh! What are they doing?" These were words from the little giant, nervous and questioning. I couldn’t see any of them. There’s no way I could have. But I can see it now, in my mind’s eye. I know how it must have looked.
"Oh, don’t move: just keep watching."
There was a pause and then the voice of the big giant again. "How strange, how sad. This is something not many people see. Look on this and remember. Oh, my little refuge, that has such strange beings in it."
The big giant was quiet then - and safer, I think. I have never felt it before. I could feel the softness throughout the nest, even while in the air. Like a blanket of warmth on my being. But what did I know of warmth? There was a noise that I would in time come to know as clapping, and then there was a rush and I knew that whatever had been there had gone.
"You did well. You were afraid, but you did not stop all of them. What you have seen is not seen by many human beings."
Calculation
June 23, 2003
It’s a strange use for the wasting of time. I wouldn’t do it but for needing a justification. Some reason to explain myself to me, to forgive myself for the harder realities of this existence.
As near as I can figure it, it’s all just a matter of numbers. In the Province of Manitoba there are approximately one million people. Neurologists studying this disease estimate there are approximately 115 cases of MS in a population of 100,000 persons in Canada. This means approximately 1150 persons with MS in Manitoba.
There is a huge range within that group of 1150 persons with MS with respect to the severity of the disease and the disabilities that result from it. The absolutely worst cases end up living in nursing homes and care institutions. The nursing home I live in has about 50 residents with MS. I do not know how many nursing homes there are in Manitoba. Nevertheless, I suspect the severity of my disease places me in the top one percent of the group of people with MS. I’ve become a member of a pretty select group. Nor is anyone really struggling to join the group.
The situation does make me feel better, however, when I think of my children and my reasons for leaving them. It was not a matter of choice. I stayed in my home as long as I was physically capable of doing so. This will not make the moment any easier when they ask me why I did it, but it may in some way explain my absence from their lives.
My fixation on this probably has something to do with the fact that my father died of a heart attack when I was seven, and all I can think of when I think about their childhood are the losses in mine. Oh well, I cannot change what I cannot change – either for myself or my children. So much for being psychological.
Just in passing, I noted that the MS Society was motivating people to participate in their fundraising walk by reporting that 3,000 people in Manitoba have MS. I am not going to blow their cover. But it’s pretty obvious to me that they can’t do math. In terms of honesty, it’s right up there with the weights boasted by professional wrestlers or the assertion by Olympic athletes that they don ‘t use drugs.
The Folly of the Finest Moment of Young Men’s Lives
July 28, 2003
Do you remember that moment? When you had it in your hands or could see all around you? The possibilities were infinite and the choices yours to be had.
It had been coming for the better part of a week. The radio had kept mentioning it, and when that morning finally came, nothing needed to be spoken. We all knew what we were going to do. It was Toronto in the early 1980s. Reaganomics was creating an artificial economic boom in our town. Real estate was being flipped and house prices were skyrocketing. Investors were making money hand over fist in a way no one had ever dreamed of before. There we were in a four-storey building amidst all of this on a fine hazy summer day, and at noon an unprecedented event was going to occur – an event which we knew we had better take advantage of because it probably would never happen again.
At 11.50 all the young men in the building began to congregate. We didn’t exchange words. We didn’t need to. There were three floors to climb up, steep with high ceilings. We raced up them with the agility of youth. On the top floor, racks of costumes to negotiate, onwards towards an unobtrusive corner where stood a steel ladder bolted to the ceiling. It was underneath a trap door that was locked shut. By now our group was virtually incoherent with excitement.
We raced each other as we tore up the rungs of that ladder. The padlock of that trap door was open in an instant and we were on the roof. It was hazy, but we could see. The roof top was unimpressive. It was simply a square of tar with little pebbles that hurt the feet but we were all strained into the distance towards Lake Ontario, because we knew it was coming.
The wait was rewarded. There it was on the back of a huge 747, being carried like some strange aerodynamic turtle, the space shuttle, on its way from its landing strip in the western US to its launching pad in Florida.
This was in the innocent before period: before disasters which destroyed a space shuttle during ascent and another as it returned to earth traveling eighteen times the speed of sound. This was when the space shuttle meant possibility and hope and would bring us things like the Hubble space telescope and all the mysteries of the universe.
We were there, on that rooftop, watching it circle downtown Toronto three times and we were all certain we were experiencing a special moment in a special place at a special time. We all knew that it was horse shit, but the elation was true. It could not be denied.
We looked at each other and our faces all wore broad grins. We had it all. So that was the finest moment of my young life. I had yet to experience falling in love, the heady confusion of a wedding, planning a life together, watching the birth of my daughter. Compared to what I had thought was everything, there was so much more besides. That doesn’t detract from that moment. It was unique. We were almost dancing on that rooftop. But it is a cautionary tale: no matter how magical, no matter how magnificent, there will be more. Always. There will be more and there will be change.
The Legacy of our Ancestors
July 30, 2003
It becomes a problem of nature vs. nurture. It becomes part of the process of being human and the evolution of that process. It becomes our legacy from our ancestors.
It’s part of the greatest mystery of all time. Children are fascinated by it. Where did they go? What took them away? Can we bring them back?
It’s a harkening to the biggest kid on the block. The kid who cannot be triumphed. The kid who is secure from all opposition and therefore safe. What happened to that kid?
Human beings have been on this earth for approximately 3000 years of recorded history. Cave paintings are older and suggest earlier origins, but they’re not very exploratory. The big mystery goes back way further than people. We’ve ruled the earth for maybe 20.000Years. That’s what archeological information suggests and it’s hard even for biblical scholars to argue with big, gigantic dinosaur bones.
So, where did they go? If they were so phenomenally successful, where are they today? Children’s storybooks notwithstanding, they did not get up on rocket ships and fly away. Archeology, one of those branches of deterministic science, suggests an answer. Recent work in China suggests that the continued evolution of the dinosaur species was toward that of birds. Think of that. Dinosaurs turned into birds. It makes your trip to the corner park an actual journey into a Jurassic Park.
For years I loved the biological interdiction "grow or die". Perhaps the better suggestion should have been "evolve or die". Because that is what they did.
So birds wear the legacy of their ancestry on the beaks on their faces. Human beings wear the legacy in their shoe size and shape and that is used by archeologists to categorize us. How tremendously frustrating! It is also biologically deterministic! That we are condemned by virtue of our ancestry to cope with the tensions of compassion and conflict,
Our teeth are both incisors and molars. Our front teeth are for tearing and rending flesh. And our rear teeth are for pounding bones and nuts. We are omnivores. At least that is what our teeth suggest. We can consume anything.
Maybe that was the failing of the dinosaurs. Maybe with the evolution of flight, they just learned that there was a more successful evolutionary path for them to take.
I don’t know. It’s another one of those questions I don’t know, and will never find out. Part of being human is that we must be content to live with unanswered questions.
Is it nature or is it nurture? Can we evolve beyond our evolution? Can we find an evolutionary path that predisposes us to survival better than violence does? I hope so. I do not want the human race to become the cattle for a more aggressive species to feed upon. But at the same time, I do not want us to be the feeders. Let us hope there is another way.
Dead Kitten
September 22, 2003
The lessons of life come in all shapes and sizes. Often we don’t recognize them as such.
When I was fourteen or fifteen, during the summers, in an attempt to subject my brother and me to French immersion, my mother sent us to Lac Saint Jean in Quebec. Once there, we spent our summers working on dairy farms, learning about the life of a farmer, hard work, and animal husbandry. It was a great experience, but it was stranger than anything an anglophone Ottawa city boy had ever seen before.
One of the most vivid experiences was my education into the realities of life and death on the farm. This education has colored my understanding of animals ever since, and my perspective has often seemed hard and cruel to my fellow city dwellers, even though I have meant for it only to be seen in a practical light.
Cutting and baling hay was a difficult and laborious job, which seemed interminable but one which I always enjoyed. It gave me the opportunity to throw around bales of hay, to stack them and organize them in symmetrical patterns. This was the type of work that suited the abilities of a fifteen-year old boy.
Where there is hay, there are mice. The second floor of every dairy barn is stacked to the ceiling with hay, which is used to feed the cows over the winter. Every dairy farm keeps a few barnyard cats to keep down the mice population. and not too much attention is paid to the cats or the kittens they inevitably produce.
A dairy barn is full of large, clumsy, stupid animals, and is a dangerous environment for a kitten. Each summer the cats would produce another litter and each summer that litter would be winnowed naturally by inconsiderate cows. I became conscious of the fact that our cat’s new litter the day that I saw one dead kitten in the manure trough after it had been stepped on by a cow. Such accidents were grizzly but inevitable. A dairy farm is a dangerous place.
Not only for kittens, as it turned out. One day as I stood in the barn watching the cows moving into their regular stalls, one cow was noticeably different because it was staggering and moving disjointedly. The farmer did not hesitate for a moment. He reached over to a shelf and pulled out a knife; he gripped the knife so that only an inch of the blade protruded beyond his fingers. Then he stabbed the cow carefully along its spinal column.
He must have known precisely where to do it because the cow dropped to the ground as if it had been shot in the head. I looked on amazed as he calmly continued to apply the tubes of the milking machine to the teats of the other cows. He did not seem dismayed or upset. Later that afternoon, two men – officials of some kind – came by and inspected the dead animal. By that time it had been raised slightly in the air so that the mucous from its nose drained into the manure trough and the veins in its neck had been nicked so that it was bleeding profusely. To my immense fascination, its stomach had been sliced open and had expanded enormously. I do not remember how the body of the cow was disposed of. Perhaps it happened when I was away from the barn doing something else.
The lesson of the death of the kitten and the cow should have prepared me for what came next, but it didn’t.
The remaining cats from the litter were becoming larger. There were two remaining. One was a strikingly beautiful tabby, large and strong. The other was a smaller, unattractive grey and black kitten that did not appear to have many redeeming qualities.
One day the farmer called me over to the back door of the barn. This was where the manure trough began its slow ascent up a steep slide until the manure fell over on to a great pile behind the barn. The farmer was talking to me in quick, heavily accented northern Quebec French. I didn’t understand what he was saying. My brother and I worked very hard to find the most English-speaking member of the family and spent most of our time talking to them. Now here was the francophone farmer holding the kittens, one in each hand, and talking to me. I thought he was asking which one I liked more, which was the more attractive. There was no contest. I reached out and touched the tabby. It was obviously the finer of the two kittens.
Quietly, suddenly, he turned the hand holding the tabby and slammed the back of its neck on the corner of the manure trough. The move was decisive and complete. I knew the cat was dead. He casually tossed its carcass onto the manure pile.
I stood there in stunned silence. The kitten I thought little of was walking by my feet. The kitten I liked was dead. It was not the fact of death that stunned me. It was the part in the process that I had unwittingly played.
It was a lesson I have often thought about since. We often do not understand the import of our actions, yet they have deadly consequences for something or someone else.
Wet Behind the Ears
September 29, 2003
It really was inevitable. My health had been deteriorating to the point where I could not move at all. I had always suffered recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI) and it was inevitable that one day I’d develop a UTI at the same time as one of the bouts of pneumonia. The pneumonia put me in the hospital and the UTI kept me there while I received drug treatment. When it came time for me to leave, I realized I didn’t have the strength to manage at home any longer. Even with the assistance of my homecare workers I was now too weak to manage safely. This was not an unexpected twist but it had happened sooner than I had anticipated.
Following discussions with my doctor, it was decided that I would move into the Misericordia Interim Care Facility. This was a small, converted downtown hospital where residents stayed while waiting for placement in a nursing home. I had been on the waiting list for the Taché nursing home for about a year so I didn’t expect I had long to wait.
The first day I was brought into the facility, I realized that I’d entered a new stage of my health care. The health aides at the Misericordia were mostly of Filipino descent. They seemed very jovial and, very obviously, they had their accustomed ways of doing things. The first thing they wanted to do was to give me a bath. This was standard operating procedure for a new resident. Five of them had me in a plastic tub chair very quickly and my clothes off. I tried to explain. I had previous experience with bathtubs. People with multiple sclerosis are unlike individuals with conventional neurological systems. When our limbs are immersed in hot water, they immediately become flaccid and weak. I tried to explain to these five smiling, laughing women that I was about to give them a great deal of trouble. But no, they had dealt with reluctant residents before. They were undeterred. They were bound and determined to give me that bath.
The bathtub was an immense apparatus, with the chair being picked up in a sling and lowered into the tub. The women had wrapped two straps around me that appeared to be sufficient for any difficulties. I knew they weren’t.
They lowered me into the water. Immediately upon hitting the warmth of the water, my limbs relaxed completely and I became Mr. Jello. I quietly told them that we had a bit of a problem, as I started to slide out of the chair.
At first they didn’t take me seriously. Two minutes later, I was in the bathtub with five women trying valiantly to stop me from drowning.
I wasn’t frightened. I’d seen this before. My response was standard and organized: "Ladies, ladies, one at a time. I’m not as young as I used to be. Just promise me, nobody tells my wife." They hoisted me up and got me out and took me to an available bed nearby, where they changed my clothes and then took me back to my own bed. By now they were laughing, but they hadn’t been laughing earlier.
Once back in my bed, I reflected on the experience. Five women in a bathtub, the dream of many a young man… Be careful what you wish for, I thought - some day you might get it. I wished my partner had witnessed this. She would have laughed her head off.
Thirty seconds more and I would have drowned. How close humor and death are.
I will have to keep my eyes open for what comes next.
April 24, 2002 Journal entry
… I have, in the past, been ashamed of my shames. Even the reading of science fiction was a shame. Malabar was a shameful indulgence. Someday I am going to have to write something about the shameful indulgences.
Malabar
October 7, 2003
Malabar’s physically expressed the convergence of the human imagination. It was dedicated to the creation of a possibility, one within which we each played a part. It took from you your desire and gave it a physical impetus; everyone who climbed the stairs to the front door knew that was what was happening. You could see it on the customer’s face, whether that of the oldest jaded professional or of the most naïve youngster. They were there for the experience and they were going to be a part of it.
Who was responsible for this morass? Who created and fostered this possibility? How did it continue? Why? How to explain its strange existence?
Like I said, it started at the front door. To the right was a doorway into the men’s department. To the left a hallway opened onto makeup. Directly in front of you were the stairs, surrounded by posters advertising everything artistic in the neighborhood; these led up to the second floor and the mysteries of the workroom and the ladies department. Beyond that was another flight of stairs, up to the opera department, where some of the best and most beautiful costumes were stored. The men’s and ladies’ departments maintained stocks of costumes appropriate for public rental, or for rental to high schools and community theatre groups. Completely unseen were the warehouses, a couple of blocks away, full of even more costumes.
Need to rent a sword? First, we don’t do it unless you’re an opera company, and willing to negotiate. Then, ‘We’ll mail you the swords, but it’s going to cost you.’
The props department was in the basement – that was where the magic really did take place.
Who was the source of this inspiration? Probably old Lady Malabar. Although she was long dead and gone before I arrived. So was her son. It was he who had separated the business into sections and sold them to people who were already working there. Each had carved up a piece of their specialty.
So there it was, a four storey building in downtown Toronto: not so much a unified project as one that contained divergent directions and separate goals. But everyone in the building was committed to one single goal – satisfying the human imagination - and we all conspired with each other to reach that goal.
I was the lowest and least skilled of the artisans in that place. I greeted customers and assessed their requests. I had to determine exactly what we had that they would like to rent, and I assembled it for them. The request might be for a marvelous costume to attend a private party. The request might involve a Santa Claus costume for Christmas. Or it might be for a high school or civic production of My Fair Lady or Guys and Dolls. Regardless, I would try to match the vision in their minds with the costumes we had on hand. The goal: another happy customer – and, mind you, some of these requests were phenomenally good moneymakers.
By the time I worked at Malabar, it was a successful business. There were probably upwards of one hundred people working there and although the owners weren’t getting rich they made a living. I loved the place. I worked there for five years and although I was paid virtually nothing, I felt a great deal of loyalty toward the organization. Everyone who worked there felt the same. Or, at least all the costumiers did: the workroom and the props department were well paid so their outlook was different.
It took a very special kind of brain to work in the props department but if you had it, you could make a fortune.
Here’s a little test. A coffee urn, full of hot coffee, had been put on a table with a plastic tablecloth. The tablecloth had immediately glued itself to the hot coffee urn. How is it possible to separate the two? Remember, the coffee urn has been allowed to cool on the tablecloth and they’re welded together as tight as steel. A problem like this baffled everyone in the building except one genius from the props department who didn’t even bat an eye.
Did you figure out how to get the coffee urn off the table? It’s so easy you might feel as foolish as I did when I learned the answer. Remove all the coffee from the coffee urn. Pour in hot water. The tablecloth will re-melt and you will be able to just lift the coffee urn off.
Like I said, their brains were constructed differently from everybody else’s.
A Treatise on Imaginings
Have you ever considered your considering? Have you ever reflected on your reflections? More specifically, for the purposes of this examination have you ever spent time with your imaginings? What are they? Where do they come from? What purpose do they have? What and where is the line between nothing and imagining and between imagining and activity?
First, what to call these strange things? Human language is so clumsy in its construction. I have already used three terms -- considerations, reflections and imaginings. The human language has used so many terms with so many varied definitions, each descriptor emphasizing some different nuance and shining its particular light on a different facet of the same thing. Imaginings? Ideas? Fantasies? Visions? Dreams? Each colours the thing with its own perspective and comes burdened with its own unwarranted…
We have all been progenitors of, observers of, participants of, recipients of, and victims of these strange things which serve as the wellsprings of human activity. Possibly they have their genesis in human need, that desire for food or warmth or companionship or reproduction. But perhaps that is too biologically deterministic. Perhaps they begin with the possibility of possibility and are fueled by curiosity and the desire to answer the eternal question, what if?
At their most innocent these are the moments of the child's exploration of the world, when the questions of what, and where, and why, and how, and eventually when, are first asked. Of these questions, how and why become those most critical for the purposes of this discussion. How does this work? Will it work if it does this? Can something else be done? That first step begins so early. Perhaps it begins with the first comprehension of cause and effect, such as when the child cries and the mother's breast is offered. But the question grows in complexity. With the recognition of the separation of the child and the object comes that first critical question, what will happen if I do this? The child's understanding of the world enlarges and continues until the most rigorous questions of science and arts are being asked and investigated. At their most innocent and most detailed, these imaginings can be the most beautiful and most elegant achievements of humanity. They can contribute to both the quality and quantity of life, to our understanding of the universe and to our understanding of one another. But at their most dangerous, these imaginings lead to cruelty and domination and injustice and such nightmares as genocide.
May 26, 2002
…An oddity I have been giving some consideration to. Namely, that as the attention span of children has lessened and their understanding of their environment has become more literal and their use of the imaginative has been dulled by television, and video games have trained them into the expectation of immediate gratification and response, the type of people we are creating may have changed. We may be creating individuals who are evolving, not with the creation of new or specialized body parts, but through the creation of changes in the pathways of the brain. Not new pathways, just that the brain is being re-organized. What the shape of this reorganization would be, I don't know. But, it could be a good topic for speculation.
May 26 2002
It happens when I least expect it. Probably when I am well rested, and well fed, and my bowels have moved recently and I have eaten enough, but not too much. It happens usually in the middle of a fantasy about something else, about somewhere else, when I am not too engaged with my reveries but am prepared to go elsewhere and follow that thought. It happens when I think about an old thing, but think about it in a new way and begin to walk along that new path. It happens when I am prepared to think about it, when I am prepared to let things go, to not let the hurly-burly of life intrude and am prepared to ignore my own impositions, the negativity which denies creativity and stifles the possibilities of new thought…
Dreams:
I had a dream last night. I had another just before I woke. They were so strange. I have a lot of dreams. I think I have them because my body is uncomfortable while I am sleeping and is trying to tell me something. But, that's just a theory. I don't really know for sure. Maybe aliens are trying to communicate with me through my dreams and I am just too stupid to understand it and answer back. If that's the case there must be lots of frustrated aliens out there somewhere, because I don't think anybody is consciously answering back either. And I know other creatures are dreaming, too. Even dogs twitch in their sleep. If that's indicative of them dreaming, then those aliens are probably really pissed. There they are, up all night, dialing, and at the end all they have to say for all that effort is, "I don't know, I think I got another dog. Whatever it was, it just kept barking and chasing this stupid squirrel." You think aliens would have the good sense to hire better switchboard operators.
My dreams are so strange. I don't seem to have much of a gap anymore between consciousness and wakefulness. I transition so nicely. I am asleep and then I have this strange state where I remember night dreams so vividly and they seem so accurate and solid and real that there is no distinguishing them from information I know to be correct and then I move into complete consciousness and I know they were just dreams and, wow, really stupid dreams at that. I once dreamt I was so lonely because I had MS and because of that I was unlikely to ever get married or have a family and then I woke up and remembered that of course I have one and of course I'm married and of course I'm pretty happy except for the stupid MS. Although, I am sort of learning to enjoy the weird dreams.
Which brings us to the explanation of my dream last night and my dream before I woke. Last night, I dreamt that within two generations no one would be communicating by printed words any longer. It was so powerful. It came to me with the clarity and accuracy of a vision from God. I have never had one of those although I have had experiences where the beauty of nature gave me a feeling like I was in the presence of something greater than myself. I feel a loss at the fact that I never had a vision from God or that I never saw a gigantic blue whale. I felt a very great loss at the idea that no one would communicate by reading and writing anymore. I have always suffered from the pleasure and condemnation and isolation of imagination…
Jan. 5, 2002
…Yesterday afternoon, Deborah and I got rid of the children and went to see the film, "A Beautiful Mind." It was the story of John and Alicia. He won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work in mathematics. As well as being a brilliant mathematician, he was schizophrenic. He struggled with both his whole life and was awarded the prize for work he had done as a young man that had very wide-ranging influences. It was a cautionary tale for me about the dangers of too much imagination -- the pitfalls in beginning to withdraw too much into the pleasures of your fantasies. I may have to watch that. Imaginings are of use, but must be used. They must be a tool toward an end product.
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