Left or Right?

Years ago my father posed the question, “If one day something happened to make me turn left to go to work instead of my usual turning right – what would happen? Who would I meet? What new course would my life take?”

I’ve always remembered him saying this and have always wondered what events would unfold on the “Road less travelled”.

This is of course the ultimate hypothetical question. There can never be a definitive answer – anything could happen and there is no way of knowing if the same event would have taken place, regardless; that Fate has determined that whatever happens had to happen. 

Quatrain 51 (From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

This notion of Fate or the Fates, the Moirai in Greek mythology, the three sister Goddesses, incarnations of destiny and life has always fascinated me. There is Clotho, the one who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, the one who draws lots to determine how long one lives, by measuring the thread of life; and Atropos, the inevitable, is the one who chooses the moment and method of death by cutting the thread of life with her shears. 

Now this, death, happens and will happen to us all however we might try and avoid the subject. So I ask the question – would it not be better to prepare ourselves for this inevitable end by living as best we can, by our lights? But it is so hard to accept death, particularly when it affects someone close, someone one loves. I know it is pointless to ask the question -Why? There is no answer. It just is – the Fates have made their determination.

But it is very hard.There is a poem, a tragic poem, which expresses this in words that I totally understand but with feelings almost beyond my comprehension. But, Oh the pathos!

Were You But Here!

Were you but here!

No more with tears the dreadful Night

Would in my soul her sorrows pour;

And through the curtained door

The groaning of the Earth

I’d hear no more;

Were you but here.

Were you but here!

O, high in Heaven the pulsing stars,

Your gracious way to greet,

Would scatter all their jewelled dust

In joyance at your feet,

And through the shadows, soft and low,

The happy laughter of the Wind would go;

Were you but here!

                                    Eugene Marais (9 January 1871 – 29 March 1936)

Probably written after the death (in South Africa) of his wife in 1895. She died from puerperal fever (eight days after the birth of their son) and after just one year of marriage.

Marais, trained in Law, was a well-known naturalist, poet and writer who was best known for his seminal works published as “The Soul of the white ant” and “The Soul of Ape”. Because he wrote initially in Afrikaans his works were not widely read outside South Africa and also because of this, unfortunately, were heavily plagiarised - stolen - by American and European naturalists in their own published research.

He never fully recovered from these hammer blows dealt him and finally committed suicide.

The Fates indeed – Left or Right – who knows!

I know that I nearly wept when I first read this poem, shortly after the death of my wife, Magucha.

Intimations of Immortality

Ever since I first read William Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" I have felt especially drawn to the deep understanding of "Life" expressed in this extract from what is quite a long poem. The words seem to "fit" with some hidden wish (or hope) that this is true. I sometimes think that we (I?) need to "reconnect" with our true selves, rather than being sidetracked by the Siren song of the easy pleasures that abound around us.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

                                                                                               William Wordsworth.

All in all, to me, this is a splendid poem.

How human are we - actually?

What does this mean? Take bacteria for instance. They “work” in a symbiotic relationship with all life forms. To understand the significance of this we’ll need to go back in time – just a tad. Like three billion years (3 billion years) to when there were no recognizable life forms on earth, only a primordial ocean “soup”. Simply put, this soup contained a huge variety of bacteria (never mind where they came from – no one really knows).

Now, return to present times and follow me – it was from out of that primordial “soup” that life (as we understand it) developed. Furthermore – just to put things in perspective – the human body consists of somewhere between 30 and 80 trillion cells (no one is quite sure – it depends on the method of measurement used – volume or weight). But the number of bacteria in the human gut exceeds this by a ratio variously estimated at about 3:1. That’s right, there are estimated to be about 3 times more gut bacteria than cells in our body. Similarly, while the human genome has about 20 000 genes the gut biome has many, many times this – variously estimated at about 150 times this number.

Never forget, too, that we rely on out gut bacteria for our nutrition. Furthermore many different chemicals such as the brain chemical serotonin and many enzymes are produced in our gut. In fact without our gut bacteria we wouldn’t survive. They help digest everything we eat by reducing it to an easily absorbed form, which is then transferred to our blood affecting not only our metabolism but also our moods. 

But the bacteria need us too – to feed them!

So now, because of the symbiotic relationship between us and them (and don't forget we are inextricably linked to all the Earth’s life forms through our bacterial ancestry) consider this scenario:-

Bacteria were here first – we (and all life forms) developed from the original primordial bacterial soup. Therefore, are we just a useful host for bacteria to live in – in our case, our gut biome (recall, there are more of them than cells in our body)? Remember also they get fed at regular intervals, interact with us via the vagus nerve – which connects the gut with the brain (in fact our gut may be considered our “second” brain as there are about 150 million neurons lining the intestines). This “communication”, travelling both ways along the vagus nerve, tells the brain “I’m hungry” or “I’m full” or “I don’t feel well” and then there is that mysterious “gut feeling” that “tells” us to do or not do something. Increasingly researchers are discovering links between our gut bacteria and our general health - physical, emotional and mental.

The food we eat affects our gut bacteria (negatively or positively) and in doing so, they affect our health and our moods (also negatively or positively).

So, how human are we - actually? 

  

Love - the greatest gift of all

I know that I have written on this subject before but it is still something that, as I get older, is of interest – grief, mourning and the cause. There is after all only one end to life. But this subject, for some reason, is studiously avoided. So while I’m not sure how to introduce this I find that grief has many facets and is very puzzling. We are, after all, mortal beings. Trying to make sense of death, however, is very hard. We will all, at some stage of our life, have cause to grieve and mourn. 

There was, in my case, the death of my wife Magucha whom I dearly loved.

Then there is, now, the harsh reality, still not fully absorbed, that my life will never be the same. Her love, her intelligence, her insight, her emotional support, her wonderfully infectious laugh, her mischievous quirky humour – is now all gone.

Then, now for me, there is the settling into a new way of life that is part acknowledgement of her memory and the way we used to do things together and part acknowledgement that from now on I’m on my own without her at my side. This is still a work in progress.

Then there is most difficult part of my day, not so strange really I suppose, difficulty in actually going to bed. I defer this necessary function until the last possible moment – 12 mid-night, even 1am. Then I might read for a few minutes before I “crash”. Once asleep I sleep well. It’s just getting the “courage” to actually go to bed. Bed is not the same now, you understand.

Then there are my own questions. But I do believe in something that is above and beyond us all to which we are “attached” by the essence that common to all living things - Life itself. Call this God if you like.  And then where did my Life come from – the same place it will return to? It makes sense to me, that death is a “transition” from this life to the next – just as a birth transitioned me from “that place” to this. This is a subject we, all of us, usually avoid, ignore or change the subject when it is introduced. Why?

Then there is the problem that we humans are unable to imagine “God”, or conceptualise “God”, so we bring “Him” down to our level and imbue “Him” with human attributes that we can understand – passion, hate, vengeance, anger, jealousy and such like. Reduced to this level we now need to propitiate “God” and get “Him” to agree to our point of view – hence the requirement for sacrifices (hopefully symbolic). Is this because humans are all supposed to be born sinful (because of Adam and Eve)? With a sacrifice, it is posited, we can attach our “sins” to whatever, or whoever is sacrificed, and so be absolved of “sin” and be “cleansed”.  

Surely, surely, any God who can be “altered” by anything men do or say, or by the sacrifice of an animal or human (even if symbolic) cannot be a perfect God? God, surely, doesn’t need a reward? God, surely, cannot be bribed? Why load, even symbolically, some poor animal or human (that God created in the first place) with the wrongs that we commit?

But personal sacrifice is a different matter. Is this what grief is – a form of personal sacrifice? That the more we love the more we grieve?

I believe there is a Spanish proverb that goes something like this: “Take what you want from Life, says God. Take it, and pay.”

And so it should be – we reap what we sow! The Law of Cause and Effect applies to all. This is justice and by my book, this is Love – maybe tough love – but Love none the less.

I like to think that this place, this planet Earth, is but a school for what comes next. We all need this school, to learn to Love – and to forgive.

All this, of course, gets me no closer to understanding what Life is; that “essence” that is present when something is “alive” and is absent when something that was “alive” is now “dead”.  

To me “God” is pure Love and understanding - this is “His” greatest gift of all, even if it is the most difficult to accept.

This is all rather circular and brings me back to the point where I started. I still grieve.

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

    Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,

    Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

    There lives a prophet who can understand

Why men were born; but surely we are brave,

    Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

                                                            James Elroy Flecker

Guns

Let there be no confusion about this. Guns were invented for one purpose only – to kill living things. Generally people; people in war situations. Though this, as we are only too aware, is not always the case.

Killing people, by whatever means (outside of war) is generally considered a crime – unlawful killing or manslaughter, if not murder.

There is certainly a case for farmers and other licenced operatives, to be allowed to own guns to shoot and kill vermin. There is also a case to allow licenced guns to be used for competition purposes.

I, personally, can envisage no other reason to own a gun of any description. Who would you want to kill? And why?

I have always believed that violence, of whatever kind, is the last resort of the morally bankrupt. Now for some proponents of gun ownership to state that “It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun”, is still a call to kill. How do you stop a “bad guy with a gun” if not by killing him (or her)?

This argument about good guys with guns etc, just begs the question. Would giving everyone, yes everyone, access to a gun of some sort be a better antidote to violence in society than removing all guns and not allowing anyone to own a gun?

Of course there will always be the criminal element who acquire weapons by illegal means. But they would be very few and relatively easy for the authorities to manage.

So a simple question, everyone with a gun or nobody (apart from those with a licence) with a gun?

You choose.

Sire! Thou art not a God.

With all the news about competing military parades - President Trump now requesting a military parade through Washington, it is worth a look at the history of such events. (Note: North Korea’s parade the day before the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea; President Trump being so impressed by the French parade down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées).

They all started with the ancient Roman “Triumph”. This was a parade through the streets of Rome, organised to honour the return of a victorious military general. This was a massive and tumultuous event with trumpeters, strange animals, and wagons laden with captured (looted) treasures from far off lands. The victorious general rode is a special chariot preceded by captured prisoners.

Often the general was dressed in purple robes and crowned with a laurel wreath. Also sometimes his face was apparently daubed in red – to signify his closeness to the Gods.

But always, standing at his shoulder was a slave, whose duty it was to frequently whisper in the general’s ear, “Sire, remember thou art mortal” or “Sire! Thou art not a God”.

This was in recognition of the fact that men are mortal and vain. Sometimes those in power forget this and proceed to contemplate, vain gloriously, their own grandeur and status, and that, to use modern parlance, they needed to be brought down a peg or two.

So the parades we see today are the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman "Triumph" - without (one hopes) captured loot and prisoners of war. But sadly lacking, in these modern spectacles, is the important role of that vital ingredient, reminding the modern leader that, "Sire! Thou art not a God".

 

731 days – of “no sharing”

Tomorrow – January 21 – it will be two years since Magucha died (2016 was a Leap Year, one extra day, hence 731). I don’t want to make it into anything other than another day. But to me that date will always be very special.

That day introduced me to a “condition” that I was unfamiliar with. I don’t think there is a word for it but the phrase “no sharing” will have to do. I have always been a relatively solitary person. I have never been averse to my own company. But now? This is different.

It’s not loneliness. I don’t mind being alone. This is a “no sharing”.

This “no sharing” was revealed to me in a stark fashion the other day. Whilst in a local shopping centre that we, together, used to frequent, I sat down at a table in a little café where we had both been before. I had my coffee and a slice of apple strudel and looked around me. I was the only person on my own. All the other people were either in couples or in family groups with children.

I had no one to share the experience with. Not as a couple; a loving couple; a close and intimate couple; a couple that had grown together over many years of caring and friendship; a couple that had grown close through overcoming adversity; a couple that while together, never crowded the other; a couple that always allowed space for the other.

Magucha was my “pardalito”, my little sparrow. Always curious and inquisitive; always flying off on some errand – but always returning home.

I will quote words from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” that fitted our relationship:

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your heart, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.”

Now it is different. While I certainly have my (our) children and grandchildren whom I love dearly, it is not the same. There can never be that intimacy – the deep memories of times past and of moments shared.

Of course I have friends and many of them were her friends – but no longer “our friends”. It is not the same and, now, can never be.

So tomorrow will be a sad and reflective day; also a day of fond memories.

As some will know I find solace in poetry so I will end this post with a poem that I have used before, that captures my feelings and love for Magucha, with words that I deeply understand and are more meaningful than anything I could ever write. A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

My Wife:

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The Great Artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The Mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The August Father
Gave to me.

Saudades. My Pardalito. My little one.