Dwelling in one’s tribe

Belatedly, I discover that manual work is better than being desk-bound, better for the soul and the world too, probably. But first some words to continue from yesterday’s set of photos.

One of them shows part of the track I walked: down the hill through the nature reserve where the wild roses grew, then through high hedges, with ox-eye daisies on either side, across the barley-field, round the farm, up the zig-zag path and then it’s hidden by trees before disppearing over the horizon. Up there is where I met John Holdsworth coming the other way. We exchanged greetings, in the country fashion. To engage a stranger in conversation is less common in town, especially for me. Yet round here, sometimes when I see a mature white person, we may smile or say hello, sharing the sense of being an ethnic minority, clinging to our almost-forgotten ways in the shadow of the mosque and the preponderance of immigrants. Now that the Shopping Centre construction is over, many of the Poles who rented rooms in our street have been replaced by Africans or Afro-Caribbeans. (Funny how a black person in America is an Afro-American, but here is an Afro-Caribbean. I’ve never heard “Afro-British”.) Either way, it is refreshing to meet a white retired person like myself. Retired! Yes, I can’t fight it now. I have to accept that’s what I am, and embrace it positively. So when I stop and speak to ladies and gentlemen in their seventies and eighties, I don’t mention my Jamaican wife. I treasure the the encounters with other members of my own tribe, or the nearest equivalent; and don’t want to see their uncomprehending eyes cloud over. On Sundays the congregation of the Baptist Church next to the mosque come down the road back to their parked cars. They stand chatting and joking before returning to their suburbs, lingering as if their very presence might lighten the street’s heathenness. Naturally, they make a point of greeting the more official & better-dressed Muslims: it makes them feel good to be tolerant and ecumenical. Mostly they are white women of my own vintage and they look at me wondering for a moment if I am one of theirs. But the Baptists are a different tribe, I know them not, and they find no sign of kinship in me. In 1965 with my first wife I went on a coach trip with a congregation of Methodists to a Billy Graham convention in Leicester. They too were of a different tribe: they spake shibboleth differently. I’d been brought up by the Church of England: not as its member but its protégé, like Amala and Kamala, the wolf-girls of Midnapore, whom the missionaries could not tame.

John Holdsworth recognized me all right. Just before he hove in sight, I smelt dog. I have a pretty sensitive nose myself, not as good as a dog’s, though I may have reincarnated from one. Yes, it was the smell of damp dog, and I expected to see one at any minute. I realize now it must have been the scent of some rank wildflower, but when John appeared on the path, walking down the hill, I expected to see his dog too, for ninety percent of path-walkers are brought there by their pet. They are easy to say hello to: you can address the dog directly, as shy people do, or it is acceptable and welcome to speak to the owner in praise of the dog. John and I found an immediate bond in our doglessness and our striding the country without ulterior motive. So we exchanged life-stories; and ended up shaking hands and exchanging names too.

He’d spent his entire career in one of those furniture factories for which my town was once famous. Some are derelict now, or turned into small workshops, where the grandchildren of the men who came from Kashmir and Pakistan (& St Vincent, in the Caribbean) fit tyres, or make engineering products to order, for customers far away. John was made redundant at fifty-eight, and used the money to buy a country cottage near where we met, and found a job as a cleaner, at a railway station a few stops up the line. He did this job for seven years till he retired and looking back says it was the most fulfilling of his life; for he could see the fruits of his labours and the appreciation of his travelling public. We didn’t talk about his family, though he mentioned getting married in 1966. I may have mentioned in passing my four children and three grandchildren, but I never mention being a stray who married three times and rolled like a stone gathering no moss.

I briefly told him about my new job. Yes, dear reader, told him before I told you! It’s only occasional at present. I work as a handyman, that role more lowly and humble than builder or plumber. My customer pays me, but I may only claim expenses, sending all moneys received to an old people’s charity. Its aim is to provide services to the elderly so that they can go on living at home and not be scooped up into one of those waiting-rooms for death known as care homes. I visit my customers in the luxurious “new” car I mentioned the other day, which itself is near death, reprieved from the scrapyard only for this task, being capacious enough to hold my tools, step-ladder, fence-timber etc. At least I cannot be stereotyped as belonging to the tribe of “white van man” notorious in British society. Yes, I am lucky because the car (nickname “the Gift Horse”) arrived the day before I started the job, as if on purpose to facilitate my new career.

Don’t imagine I will tell you interesting anecdotes of my customers. I shall rigorously protect their privacy. Suffice to say that they want to talk to whomever provides congenial company in their lives; whilst I want to get on with the job. Life-stories are exchanged, as well as an exchange of views as to how the job should be done. Sometimes I may stand patiently with the paint ready to drip off my brush, waiting to go back upstairs and continue. So the challenges are on many levels, both interpersonal and technical. I could not ask for more.

When I took on the job, I had it in mind to develop my skills and confidence to the point where I could work for customers directly, without the charity in the middle. Just as I was writing this piece, the doorbell rang and a neighbour wanted to know if I would consider doing some painting and decorating in her house. I haven’t put the word around, but they see me pottering in the front yard or carrying tools to the car. She wanted to know my price of course. That’s the hardest part: I don’t know how to work it out yet.

I seem to be lucky. The more I get what I desire, the more modest are my requests from the Universe. A dear friend who never reads my blog writes:

“I am glad, on the other hand, that you are so involved with & immersed in your writing. That is a noble occupation, and I know you were always fascinated by the world of the word. Do you still keep a blog? It’s funny but I still can’t understand the reason for blogs. I mean, if something is worth imparting to the world at large, why not try to have it published? At least, then it might have an impact.”

She edits a literary magazine and is too noble herself to see how ignoble the occupation of writing can be: just another chase of fame and fortune. Make an impact? I used to imagine signing books at some prestigious bookseller’s, or being wined and dined by publishers: pathetic dreams of glory which have no value in reality. Though I get what I desire, I remain destiny’s child, loyal to the source and not the froth. Of all the hymns I had to sing as a child, the words which stick in my mind, apart from John Bunyan’s To be a pilgrim, mentioned in an earlier post, are these:

“The trivial round, the common task / Will furnish all we need to ask.”

I shall dwell in the tribe of the Senior Citizens, and cultivate the present moment.

Country walk

Just taking a rest from words ...

Downsized

Why do I have to be so like my grandfather? He bought a cheap Ford in 1935 and didn’t give it up, just replaced parts as necessary, till his younger daughter in 1967 told him time was up. Then he drove her VW Beetle till, in his late eighties, he managed to turn it upside down on a bend, and she weaned him off driving altogether.

For the past two weeks I have been without wheels. The root cause becomes plain in retrospect: sentimental attachment. My Volvo, bought new in 1993, has been “so reliable” that I’ve hung on to it, nursed it, bought the workshop manual when I could no longer afford to send it for a regular service. Well, to tell the truth I dared not send it for a regular service after I’d done certain modifications. For years the engine had overheated. Crawling in busy traffic, I had to put the heater on full with the windows wound down, uncomfortable in summer heat or a rainstorm. The engine cooling fan didn’t always come on when it should, so I modified the fan to bypass the thermostat, and mounted a manual switch on the dashboard. The trouble was, the temperature gauge stopped working too, so you had to guess when the engine was hot and turn on the switch, but then remember to turn it off afterwards: otherwise it drained the battery overnight. I pasted warning messages on the dashboard, very artistic ones in CorelDraw6 (software almost as old as the car), and rewired the switch so that a red light showed if the fan was left on. As time went on, I had to replace the alternator and the coil. The dashboard gauges one by one ceased to operate. No speed indicator, mileometer stuck at 147,000 miles, no fuel gauge. I just guessed. Finally it wouldn’t start, even after I poured in some petrol from a can.

I took it to Paul W’s garage and he said there was no spark. He thought it might be a worn-out crankshaft switch, and ordered one. At least it was the cheapest of the things that might have gone wrong. This afternoon, he presented me with a “dilemma”, diplomatically and “with all due respect to your car”. Essentially, the cost of the parts, never mind the diagnostic work and installation, would exceed the car’s current and any possible future value. He has a bedside manner, like a doctor who doesn’t tell you straight out you have cancer. He let me realise in my own time that the car had aged gracefully---at least in my eyes. Others might say disgracefully. Now it was terminally ill. I had run it into the ground. I was flogging a dead horse. This “so reliable” car has been limping the last five years like an elderly pet that its owner could not release to deserved oblivion. I’ve agreed with Paul (who performs the undertaker’s role as tactfully as the doctor’s) to have it taken to a knacker’s yard.

I do need wheels. This morning I walked into town to buy a set of new dinner plates and bowls. It came in a neat box, rather heavy when balanced on my shoulder. In any civilised place, like India or Jamaica, there’d be a willing youth ready with a handcart. The idea of a taxi didn’t occur to me. So I found a place where they sell cheap shopping trolleys, such as the elderly use, and strapped on the box with bunjee cords. Even this hurt my back because the handle was too short. Only when I reached home did I think of the taxi. Never mind, the trolley will be useful for my trips to the supermarket. It’s slightly more elegant to carry two heavy bags than trundle them in a tartan bag-on-wheels, but so what. I sawed off the handle and lengthened it with steel tube, using Milliput for the joints. From a modified Volvo to a modified caddy-cart, that’s downsizing.

But I still need wheels. This week I was supposed to visit my son in Guildford, and a friend in Babylon Town (my code name for the place I worked in 2007, at “MaxiRam Corporation”). I could have gone carless, on buses using my free pass, but the travelling would have filled the day.

I went back to Paul to settle the bill for his work on the Volvo. He mentioned he had a cheap car if I needed one to tide me over. I’m now the proud owner of an air-conditioned Ford Granada with automatic transmission and leather seats.

He charged me £100, the same price that my grandfather paid for his Model Y Ford in 1935.

Accompaniment

When I practised as a therapist I would sometimes get frustrated at my patients’ use of the pronoun “I”. Despite being taught that the sense of self is composed of “head” and “body”, they couldn’t stop speaking from a head-mind which functioned in proud isolation, peopled with its own constructs. They often remained deaf to the messages from their more instinctive, autonomous, primitive brain. This is the part that performs the same function for every animal: to put survival first, warn of danger, make an assessment of the total situation, inner and outer, from the evidence of all senses. The first role of head-mind, I told them, is to heed body-mind when it nags, and take appropriate action. When the nagging stops, the appropriate action is complete. Body-mind uses emotions, not words: fear them not, for they are friendly messengers, and their purpose is to sting you into doing something. The sting, like physical hunger and pain, comes from Nature’s benign wisdom. Just as a medical student is taught “First, do no harm”, Nature teaches us “First, remember you are an animal.”

It was a struggle to get my patients to do this. There were tricks to help them of course, ways to bypass the head-mind, but some were reluctant to make this adventurous journey. Still, I made my own good progress in practising what I preached. “Physician heal thyself”: as if becoming a therapist was just my way to consolidate the learning that had come to me so suddenly through the miracle of my own healing.

What is this thing called “I”? It’s not one voice, but many. Its from those voices that gods, devils, angels and saints have been modelled like puppets from thought and feeling, to enact their dramas in the theatre of consciousness.

Later in the morning, after writing the above, I went out on an errand. On my return, I passed the Public Library, which has just reopened at its grand new premises. After striding through its three floors of offerings, with more staff visible than visitors, I left incoherent with rage. It was hard to formulate what I found so offensive. I’m glad I resisted the urge to accost one of the librarians, for I would have put myself in the wrong and upset them pointlessly. I don't want to rant about the details, only enough to give you the gist. The computer terminals seemed more important than the books. The music CDs and DVDs were displayed as proudly as the meagre selection of books. I couldn't see anything of interest: only political correctness in every set of shelves. The gay and lesbian magazines were prominent, and the books in Urdu and Chinese. The proportion of “ethnic minorities” who cross the threshold, along with the other “minority groups” (if they could be identified as such) must have been major tick-boxes on their mission-statement-conformance audit forms. Most of all they seemed to feel that empty space was more important than lots of books, having got rid of all the old ones over the years. Now you can see only what they allow you to see. Classics? Oh yes, we have those---in new editions with instructive notes; as long as they are fully on-message. Joseph Conrad? Oh yes, we have Heart of Darkness: that’s what the kids read in school, so as to write essays on whether it is racist or anti-racist.

“So what would you do, Vincent?” To me, a library is a citadel of learning and literature, an open door to the past. Nothing would be thrown away. The stock would simply increase forever, so that you could discover not just the past through the politically-correct lens of 2008, but through the eyes of the past itself. So there would be books from the 1930s about the Victorian age (and not just Lytton Strachey’s 1918 Eminent Victorians, included “because it is a classic”).

End of rant. Trying to pick up the threads of where I left off before that, about emotions as friendly messengers, I wanted to study what “appropriate action” my unquenched fury was demanding. Should I go, like blind Samson in Gaza, to the temple that the Philistines had built to their god Dagon? Should I grasp its pillars and use my renewed strength---not residing in my hair, but in my words---to pull the whole abomination down around their ears?

No, not directly. I shall not protest to the librarians or the County Council. I shall not organize a candle-light protest march of outraged citizens, if any. My anger just made me realize how important learning and literature are to me: where “learning” includes in particular how people thought yesterday, and the day before that. For I don’t see today as any better. I worry that we are losing something, and I worry that I am not doing enough myself, being lazy about fulfilling my own destiny: a foolish worry of course, but I’m working on becoming wise.

My anger, if it’s a “friendly messenger” as I believe, isn’t to warn me that my life is in danger, but something equivalent: what I hold dear is being trampled upon. Till now, I never knew I held it so dear.

I shall endeavour to get my local library to ban my next book, by including a little rant like the above. They already have several copies of my last: it meets their criteria par excellence, being about a black immigrant who became the town's mayor. The last time I checked, no one had borrowed it.

Nature too is a great library. In the leaves of trees we can read the past. These trees, these nasturtium flowers outside my window, the different kinds of bees and wasps: they are like books preserved from long ago, the companions of our distant ancestors. If the librarians are guilty of wanton destruction, then so is civilization itself, for jeopardizing what Nature has taken so long to create. Most of today’s species were here before my own; just as most of the extinct ones were wiped out before man came along.

The message I received is not conservation. I’d be happy for my local library to burn down: the resultant carbon emissions would be worth it. Even the loss of a few species through human thoughtlessness doesn’t rouse me to fury as much as that library.

We need to find the deepest reason for our emotions. The clue came in something delivered through my letterbox yesterday: a “journal for all women interested in spirituality, theology, ministry and liturgy”. It’s not my normal reading, but they sent me a complimentary copy in return for printing one of my recent posts (Getting Unblocked). In the same issue is an article by a nun, Sister Zoë, writing on Carmelite spirituality. It’s not about contemplating, she says, but doing. She analyses “doing” from three angles: the Art of Living, Presence and Witness. Prominent in the art of living is Accompaniment, and it was this which particularly caught my eye.

“I am told that I am under the Spirit’s tutelage, but there is also a wealth of human companions, ranging from the writings of Theresa and John of the Cross to the community with whom I live, and those people who have particular responsibilities for my initial formation.”

The solitary need accompaniment as much as those who thrive in company. The pettiness of the present-day, even when garnered in the net of the world’s media (or the net of the Net), is as stifling as living in a house with your next-door neighbours. A curse on those who would have us believe that now is always better than then!

Old books and Nature: companions which transcend time. Now, via the Internet, we can have “accompaniment” which transcends space too. I’m talking about you, dear readers and friends!