During the Rainy Season…..
Dad’s poems
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Ode to the Third Age
Turn back the clock! And turn back the mind! Now is the time! Turn back the clock! against the flow, tick by grudging tock Rebellious youth imprisoned in your old age. Regain the sense, the very essence of who you were and who you are. So in your Third Age you may achieve insight into your rage. Written in Normandy Tuesday, 08 May 2001 |
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View from the Gîte
At the far edge of the
land the line of poplars stand, naked and swaying, outlined on the sky. Taut
branches grope, piercing the clouds prying into their top grey secrets. The land swells like the
sea, order and rhythm, with white horses, towing the plough. Leaving behind, precise as logarithms neat shining waves of clay. The clouds grow weary, shed their soft rain upon the landscape, and the afternoon. Thursday, 10 May 2001 |
Repeat
Performance
Something very peculiar was going on. At first he could not decide whether he was dreaming. If so, no point trying to make sense of
things. For dreams are peculiar. They have their own logic, their own momentum. He knew –but how did he know? – that there were such things as lucid
dreams, observing your own dreams.
The test was then to force yourself to wake up.
He took stock. He was
lying gazing upwards, but he could not move.
Not strictly true. He could
move his eyes. Up, down, side to
side. He took a childish pride in his
skill, although it was limited since he could not move his head. Everything here was faded, almost in
monochrome, a grey and white gradation.
He tried to focus his brain a little more on his surroundings, extract
some meaning. Now he came to think of
it other senses were weak: There was
no sound. Perhaps there was nothing
to be heard, or again perhaps in his dream he was deaf. No smell, but again his olfactory function
had always been quite feeble.
Olfactory there’s a good word!
He could barely locate his limbs; feel the weight of his head on
the pillow, the cool whiteness of the sheet under his chin. Depressing his eyes to the utmost he could
see the twin mounds of his feet, at the end of the bed, but they were foreign
objects, beyond his control. He was
in bed then. Relief! Problem solved. He must be dreaming. Now to wake up. He
willed himself, gripping his brain with his mind, but nothing seemed to
change. Panic. He was stuck forever within his dream,
within his mind. Perhaps if he shut
his eyes and then reopened them, something like switching a crashed computer
off and on, he could cure what can only be a glitch. Another thought. How was it he knew about computers and glitches when he did not
even know who he was? Try it anyway. He closed
his eyes, screwed them tight for good measure. The usual regression of glowing fractal shapes, colours
coruscating, diminishing to the horizons of the mind. Good, he thought, the optic nerves are still firing and all
complementary colours are intact. And
again he astonished himself at this scientific concept. Then with his eyes still closed he was back in the Lecture Room,
at the focus of the amphitheatre, with a hemisphere of earnest student faces
like pale intelligent moons, taking frantic notes, spectacles dipping and
rising and semaphoring flashes at him, reflected from the brutal blue
fluorescents overhead, noses aimed at him. The senses were back in operation and working overtime. He could see sharp as an eagle, zoom in,
zoom out to any part of the room, smell odours like a wild beast, dote like
an artist on the impact of colours, feel surfaces and textures in exquisite
sculptural detail, reap gestalt in vast creative impulses. In a queer manner the sensory modes
linked, convoluted, colour with smell, sound with touch, music with warmth. There he was on the podium, standing confidently behind the
lectern and the microphone, waving his arms in emphasis, coming as he already
knew to his peroration. It was all so
clear, so crystalline, as if engraved on the inner surface of his mind. He
was an observer observing himself observing.
It was all so inevitable, so déjà vu. He listened to himself with professional pride, admiring the
architecture of his ideas, the choice of words, the cadence of the phrases,
the deep mahogany texture of the voice.
He really must be somebody, he thought. It was very important he should know whom. “As to the whole problem of the Self, recent studies suggest that the
relationships between mind and body may be aided by realizing that, within
our brain, we have a virtual body. I
speak in computer terms.
“An outdated and simplistic idea was that within the brain
was a little man – a homunculus – depicted as looking out through the eyes,
listening at the ears and so forth. A
more up to date model, confirmed by brain scans maintains that the cortex
houses a complex set of dynamic neural maps.
These are maintained as an extra level of remembered
feelings and experience in neural circuits throughout the somato-sensory cortices
and the upper brainstem nuclei. It is
posited that these circuits are in fact the enduring proto self with instructions that govern basic life
regulation, emotion, feelings, and consciousness. How long these circuits will continue to reverberate without
continuous experience and neural input is a matter of speculation.
I wonder whether it would be feasible in the course of time to
maintain a conscious Self “in vitro” with suitable computer input.
Right! Are there any questions you would like to
put?”
There was a whispery hush
while students conferred amongst themselves, and then on the far side of the
theatre, a man with a heavy beard, a lecturer perhaps stood up: “Professor Stenbridge, are you suggesting that
your neural research coupled with Information Technology may well be heading
towards the prolongation of life. In
effect towards assisted immortality!” The professor turned
sharply, caught one foot in a microphone cable and toppled headlong. As he fell he struck his head with a great
echoing clump on the corner of the lectern, and everything went dark. ***** He opened his eyes and he
was back in his monochromatic world. At least he knew who he was, knew where
all the technical terms came from, but little more. Now his eyes were fixed on one spot on the ceiling and he had
no more muscular tone in them. And
all the greys and whites were merging into one neutral unsaturated hue. His eyelids gradually drooped shut. Then the fractal shapes at the back of his eyes began to coruscate, retreat
into the inner recesses of the mind and once again he was back in the Lecture
Room, standing at the focus of the amphitheatre, with a hemisphere of earnest
student faces like pale intelligent moons, taking frantic notes, spectacles
dipping and rising and semaphoring flashes at him, reflected from the brutal
blue fluorescents overhead, noses aimed at him. “As to the whole problem
of the Self, recent studies suggest that the relationships between mind and
body may be aided by realizing that, within our brain, we have a virtual
body. An outdated and simplistic idea
was that within the brain was a little man – a homunculus – depicted as
looking out through the eyes, listening at the ears and so forth. A more up to date model, confirmed by
brain scans suggests that the brain houses a complex set of maps, dynamic
neural maps… The
whole sequence unfolded in his mind like a computer loop, a “GOTO line 1”
instruction. With one last effort of
the will he forced his eyes open.
He
spoke slowly to himself within his mind, while the world without grew dark:
“I was quite right in my hypothesis.
The self, however precarious, does exist, caught in the web of the
brain. But I feel myself fading. There is no repeat performance for
me. I was Professor
Stenbridge. I really was…” |
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I was high on the green swelling slope of the hill still warm with the
setting sun. Down below were the streets
of the town, latticed with long sharp shadows and yellow street lamps. The place where I sat was a gentle mixture
of peace and muted sense, suspended between thought and reality.
Then I saw him, not for the first time, coming over the brow of the hill,
eminently alone. He always walked about
by himself, and each time I almost but not quite recognised him.
He came down past me, frail, grey and transparent as if not quite
there, smiled, made as if to speak, held out his hand and I the same, but then
walked on. As always, the moment was
past, and I was left with nostalgia and a need.
I closed my eyes. It could have
been only for a second, but of course you can never tell. For time up there on the hill is different, and
when I opened them he was a distant silhouette.
Now the sun was drained and swallowed by the night and there was no
good reason to stay up there and every slight reason to go down. For in the dark oasis at the centre of the
town a nova blossomed in a silent explosion of fairy lights and colour and
motion and the Circus came to life.
Before I knew it I was walking through the commercial outskirts of the
town, between the canyons of the buildings with their pools of powdery sodium
yellow light and their lakes of mauve darkness. There were few people about and those seemed aloof and deep
within themselves.
Then on towards the centre, joining the throng young and old, making
their way to the delights of the Circus.
Like trout swimming upstream, instinctive, happy, sensation seeking, escaping
from apathy, escaping from their linear history and their all too predictable
urban future.
Jostled and elbowed I was swept along with them, , imbued with their
communal need for distraction, bathed in their body smell, with a need to
immerse myself in their common joy, and abandon my individual angst and
egotism. And bobbing along, jumping up from time to time above the level of the
rest turning to make sure I was still there, I could swear I saw the frail
figure of the man on the hill.
Happy as trout
mounting the flood,
bobbing about
on jets of blood.
As the park drew near so the euphoria grew and the expectation. Under the rickety trellis arch over the
gate, beaded with twinkling bulbs that spelt out in multicolour:
All was vulgar and gaudy and blaring. blatant with noise, smells,
colour. It was all so natural and naïve
and honest, brazen and discordant. I
could not but compare it with the experience on the hill, but could not find it
in my heart to condemn. It was of a
completely different order.
Happy the steam organ
strident pop music
howling orgasmic.
With no rhyme or reason,
churning the same refrain.
Candyfloss competed with
hot-dog, hamburger with barbecue ribs, cheap scent with sweat. The oily smell of machines clashed with
cooking fat. Fluorescent lights of all
hues fought with each other. Brass band
music and steam organs and pop music blasted out in infernal discord and counterpoint
and the thrum of generators provided the bass.
Screams of delighted fear as machines whirled and abused people to the
limit of endurance. Yet all mingled
into pleasure, maybe commercial and synthetic, but within the grasp of
everyone.
I wandered around, looking perhaps subconsciously for the man of the
hill and caught tantalising glances of him as I passed between the stands. I don’t know why he should preoccupy me –
there were plenty more interesting things to see and do. It was the people and their pursuit of
happiness. I stopped for a while at the foot of the helter skelter, gentler and
more traditional than the more modern devices.
One couple, a redhead and a gipsy looking lad, swished down the chute, intertwined, again and
again Then exhausted they took a more
genteel ride, this time on the Carousel, but there was no opportunity for body
contact and the swarthy lad was content to wait and watch and be glad
Happy the ones in love,
on their helter skelter.
Happy the redhead,
on her white steed.
Happy the swarthy lad,
waiting and glad
Unashamed and unembarrassed a man with the aspect of an undertaker,
perhaps Father Time himself but without the whiskers and the scythe, was
standing by himself in the nacelle of a Swing Boat, hanging on to the rope,
performing mad gyrations and gymnastics, oblivious of the stir he was creating
and the ribald comments and ironic cheers of a group of young lads.
Happy that man in the black coat,
standing in the Swing-Boat
Moving majestically but at some speed through the crowd and equally
oblivious was a large lady, leaving behind a wake of amused onlookers. She was towing a large blue and white paper
kite that looped and swooped perilously close to the ground only to recover
altitude when she lugged at the string,
Happy the fat lady,
towing her paper kite
Woolly toys, and meretricious
prizes, Hoop-la and Smash the plate, anything for males to display their skill
and prowess before their intended – but what was their intention? One very rotund gentleman, grand-fatherly,
bald pate shining, with apparently no need for any audience except his ideal
self, was hurling wooden balls one after the other in an orgy of destruction at
the crockery stand. By his side an old
high-sided old-fashioned pram, rocking gently on its springs.
The old boy off his trolley,
happy smashing the crockery.
Happy inside his pram
a tiny baby
Youths strive desperately to be complete and happy and self respectful,
but do not quite succeed, even to their mates.
They fire and fire, wreaking imagined and unimagined havoc at the
shooting stands. Bang! Clang! as the
puny 22 calibre bullets strike home on
metal plates behind the bobbing ping pong balls on jets, and hearts on
swinging targets outlined in red. A
cinch they think. They swagger and leer
at their empty success as they walk off, with their girl friends painted and
cinched. But the girls are equally
empty.
Sad the youth
of the town
taking careful
aim,
again and
again,
at the shooting
gallery,
with hearts in
their sights,
but their own
hearts,
their own pain,
their own
anxiety
trembling up
and down,
and giggling