Blindness is not just lack of eyesight.

I wonder if anyone recalls the tale, by H G Wells, about a mountaineer who finds himself in a hidden valley where all the inhabitants inherited a disease that causes all new babies to be born blind. Now after several generations everyone is blind. 

When this mountaineer arrives and tries to explain what sight means no one believes him. He realises that his sight gives him an advantage over the community and attempts to take control. He gets angry when the populace ignore his ideas. In fact they resent it and accuse him of having dangerous ideas and an unhealthy "obsession about sight" and a doctor suggests they remove his eyes that "are greatly distended".

Before this happens he manages to escape and climb his way back out of the valley. 

But I wonder if the moral of the story (as I understand it) - that blindness is not just physical but a mental shortcoming as well; that those who don’t see the world as you do must be guilty of an obsessions or accepting "fake news" as the truth, can be accepted today?

Similarly those with disabilities, real or imagined, are usually considered "inferior" and not worthy to live in the community. 

This seems to be quite a common refrain and not just in the social media "world" but in the political and business spheres as well. 

Pity - but the old saying " there are none so blind as those who will not see" still holds true. Unfortunately. 

Just memories.

There are so many memories. But they are mine and wouldn’t have the same resonance if I tried to share very many, I don’t believe. 

 

You see, tomorrow, January 21, will be five years since Magucha died. Now it never has been my intention to solemnize this day into a “mourning” day.  Magucha would never have wanted that. It is after all just another day – the sun will still rise in the East and set Westward over the Indian Ocean (viewed from Perth).

 

Tomorrow will, in a sense, be a day of celebration for a life well lived. Magucha refused to be cast down. Her whole approach to life seemed to be “Life is to be lived. Live it. To the full!” And so she did. She was never still, just like a sparrow – my pet name for her was “pardalito” – Portuguese for “little sparrow”  – always busy with something or someone. 

 

Rather than adopt an attitude, “What can I expect from Life?” Magucha approached it differently with a, “What does Life expect from me?” So she was always up to something – more often than not helping some wayfarer who has stumbled on their journey through life. 

 

And I was glad to be part of that. And I respected her, almost unconscious, desire to help others. And I hope I helped too. I loved her, you see! 

 

But in retrospect one always remembers the better times – the many rushed journeys to hospital and the many days spent in hospital, just became part of the background and tend to recede further as time goes on. Just as does the fist full of medications she had to take twice a day – I still have her hospital pharmacy list.

 

Magucha was  tough. Ever since her late teenage years she had suffered from kidney failure – she died just short of 63 years old – so nearly 50 years of illness. This she endured with stoic fortitude, never complaining, always ready for tomorrow! She was like spring steel – always bouncing back with a smile and a thank you.

 

In many respects I think that what the American rebel and “Gonzo” journalist, Hunter S Thompson, wrote gives a good insight into Magucha’s whole approach to life:-

 

“ Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow! What a Ride!”

 

And it was a ride – being her partner, lover and friend! I wouldn’t have missed any of it. But it is the memory of her gentle side that I remember so fondly. She loved children. Having been told not to have a child - that having a child of her own would overload her compromised kidneys, she was so proud to give birth to a healthy little girl. Her love for Caroline was palpable and wonderful to see. 

 

Being the person she was she gave equal loving attention to Rob whom she refused to call “step son” but always “MY son Rob”. And I loved her for that – her innate kindness and sense of justice.

Then when the grandchildren arrived she was always there to offer help. She was their beloved “Vovo” (Portuguese for grandmother).

 

So, as you can see there are so many memories.

 

As the anonymous poet Atticus wrote:-

 

“What a beautiful thought” she said,

“that even death does not conquer love and sometimes even makes it stronger.”

 

And:-

 

“She had an uncanny energy for life, 

thankful for every little miracle it bestowed –

and it made her entirely impossible to live without.”

 

I know I have used this poem before but it fits my mood so I’ll end with it:-

 

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. 

             

                            Robert Louis Stevenson

We are just sojourners.

As always at this time of year many memories come flooding in. And I know, all too well, that they do fade over time even as I grope for more clarity. They lose much of their urgency and potency. This is a blessing I believe, bestowed on us mortals, so that all our days are not darkened by grief and other past matters.

 

For this I am grateful. But, as always, there is a consequence. If I want to recall the sound of Magucha’s voice and her sometimes (deliberately) mangled English – what we all knew as “Magucha speak”; if I want to recall the sound of her infectious laugh; if I want to recall the feeling of her “pata” (Portuguese for “paw”) - what she called her little hand - as it sought mine while we walked side by side, or resting on my knee while driving. I can’t. Those memories are lost to me now. 

 

But then, and maybe this is a good thing, I now can’t recall the sound of her angry voice either! Magucha had a quick fire Portuguese (Latin) temperament and was not easily crossed. And she didn’t mind who knew it!!

 

Also it matters not who we are, what we do or where we live, we are all, I do believe, just sojourners in this place. Or, if you prefer, wayfarers, on our journey through life.  

 

We meet wonderful people, as sojourners or wayfarers, and maybe fall in love and marry, as I did – rather, as we did - Magucha and I. For in us all there is a hunger for love, there is also pity in love, there is a power in love but also in a strange way, a kind of fear. To love someone needs courage. What will love bring? That is the unknown and the unknowable. Life is a grand adventure for the heart (always thought of as the seat of Love and many other emotions) but the end and what that entails is the mystery. I, however, also believe that love is eternal and is beyond knowing.

 

Behind all this philosophical conjecture the perennial, perplexing, questions remain – what is it that is present when someone or something is alive but absent when that same person or something dies? And why? What is the purpose of Life? We will never know of course, as it is beyond our understanding but, and I repeat but, I cannot believe that Life (however defined) appeared, ab initio, from stardust.

 

If, as is postulated, Life – or the bacteria from which Life, as we know it, is believed to have evolved – was deposited, carried by stardust, on the newly formed planet Earth over 3 billion years ago, the question remains, where did THAT bacteria come from?

 

I think I have always been an optimistic person and never been cast down for too long. Always have I tried to greet what Life has dealt me with a “what now?” rather that a  “why me?” It seems to work. For me at least. But sometimes it is hard. 

 

I have dreams and I can dream, can’t I, that in the “undiscovered country” to which we will all eventually travel, I will, again, see those whom I have loved? 

 

So, as always, it is poetry that I turn to for solace or, maybe, a better way to express the way I feel. Therefore, with no excuse or apology I offer the following by Max Ehrmann.  He, I do believe, must have experienced deep grief to write something as poignant as this:-

The Dead Wife

 

O thou whose lips I’ve pressed in hush of night,

Whose tiny hand has trembled in my own

Beneath the talking boughs the wind has blown,

Hid snuggly from the evening’s starry light –

O thou, my all, why hast thou quit my sight?

Thy straggling curls will no more touch my cheek,

Thy voice and smile are gone where’er I seek

With my watchful eyes and my strong passion’s might.

If all my soul’s deep grief thou now dost see,

If thou dost know the lonely inward tears

My heart hath shed along the saddened years,

Break through thy silent doors to life and me,

Who hourly watch and wait with trembling fears,

Lest in the realm of death I know not thee.

What next?

Sometimes it is difficult to formulate my thoughts into some semblance of order. So I stare at the screen wondering what is next. And this time of year always brings forth a host of memories, as is natural I suppose.

 

I know all to well that nearly five years have rolled by since Magucha died but that indisputable fact doesn’t make it any easier to accept. And, while I know that I have written about this before I just cannot believe that with her death Magucha’s indefinable “spirit” that was evidenced by her courage, her utter fearlessness (I never saw her afraid of anything, not ever), her intelligence, her mischievous sense of humour, her innate sense of justice and, of course, her love, have just disappeared into nothing. That doesn’t make any sense to me. 

 

Her presence is all around me. Or at least it pleases me to believe so.

 

Therefor as always when I feel the need to express the inexpressible I turn to poetry. I offer the following:-  

 

Journey’s End

 

Knowe’st thou where that kingdom lies?

            Take no lanthorn in thy hand.

Search not the unfathomed skies.

            Journey not o’er sea and land.

Grope no more to east or west.

Heaven is locked within thy breast.

 

Splendours of the sun grow dim,

            Stars are darkened by that light.

Thoughts that burn like seraphim

            Throng thine inner world tonight.

Set thy heel on Death and find

Love, new-born, within thy mind.

 

In that kingdom folded lie

            All that eyes believe they see;

All the hues of earth and sky,

            Time, space, and eternity.

Seek no more in realms apart.

Heaven is folded in thy heart.

 

                                                Alfred Noyes

 

The importance of order.

As this turbulent and extraordinary year of 2020 draws to a close I think we should all take time to reflect on what we, as belonging to the species Homo Sapiens (“wise man”?), can start doing now and keep on doing into the future. 

 

We need to reflect on the full meaning of the term “civilization” and how this is expressed by our current ways of life and the general disorder we generate.

 

Such reflections may, just may, help to redress the disastrous and damaging ways we, as a species are despoiling the very Earth, the Nature, we need for survival.

 

To this end I offer the following extracts from quite an old book – but the sentiments expressed are, to my mind, still very true:-

 

From “African Genesis” by Robert Ardrey, (Fontana Books paperback, 1970 pages 393/394) - as an aside, Ardrey was one of the first people to suggest that human beings first evolved in Africa:-

 

“But no animal compulsion stands alone in the debate of our instincts. And so I return to my second assertion, that civilization is a product of evolution and an expression of nature’s most ancient law. Far antedating the predatory urge in our animal nature, far more deeply buried than conscience or territory or society lies that shadowy, mysterious undefinable command of the kind, the instinct for order. And so, when a predatory species came rapidly to evolve its inherent talent for disorder, natural selection favoured as a factor in human survival the equally rapid evolvement of that sublimating, inhibiting, super-territorial institution which we call, loosely, civilization.”

…….

 

“The choice is not ours. Never to be forgotten, to be neglected, to be derided, is the inconspicuous figure in the quiet back room. He sits with head bent, silent, waiting, listening to the commotion in the streets. He is the keeper of the kinds.

 

Who is he? We do not know. Nor shall we ever. He is a presence, and that is all. But his presence is evident in the last reaches of infinite space beyond man’s probing eye. His presence is guessable in the last reaches of smallness beyond the magnification of electron microscope. He is present in all living beings and all inanimate matter. His presence is asserted in all things that ever were, and in all things that will ever be. And as his command is unanswerable, his identity is unknowable. But his most ancient concern is for order.”

……

 

“He does not care about you, or about me, or about man for that matter. He cares only for order. But whatever he says, we shall do. He is rising now, in civilization’s quiet back room, and he is looking out the window.”

 

One thing leads to another

I know that I have written about this before but to me it is of never ending interest.

 

What started it all? Every effect has a cause. But what? And why? That we can never know – which is why I’m attracted to the Ancient Greek idea of the Fates. Those mysterious "forces" which the Greeks portrayed as three women. Each of the three Fates had a different task, revealed by her name: Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured its allotted length, and Atropos cut the thread with her shears. 

 

Just to go back a few steps – I studied a Bachelor of Commerce degree at university. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had been working in the bush as a surveyor’s assistant when a bloke I met suggested that I could better myself by going to university (he must have seen my potential!). So I did.

 

Science and mathematics were not my strong points so I thought Commerce would give me some scope. My employment history at the beginning was more in the managerial area.

 

I met my first wife, Frances Hunt (born in England), an attractive brunette, on a blind date and we hit it off straight away and were married within 3 or 4 months (not sure exactly, now after nearly 50 years). Seven years later I was working at the (then) Rhodesia Herald newspaper, as an Assistant Manager when our African maid phoned to say that, "something is wrong with the Madam. Please come quickly."

 

That I did, and found her unconscious on the bathroom floor – she had started the process that ended in her death four days later. Leaving me a widower with a 4 year old son.

 

Then about a year later, after I had quit the newspaper and started auditing with a well-known accounting firm, I was helping to audit a large department store in (then) Salisbury in (then) Rhodesia when I saw another, attractive but very small brunette. Anyway after nearly two years of persistence on my part Maria Augusta  (Magucha) Bandeira de Lima agreed to marry me. Now Magucha had some quite grave health issues – glomerulonephritis – a serious kidney disease. She was advised that pregnancy was not a good idea because of the strain it would place on her kidneys and the fetus. She persisted and in the hospital just before she was to give birth I was given a form to sign – given the state of her health, in a life or death situation, did I want the mother to survive or the new baby!! That was the hardest decision I’ve ever made.

 

Very fortunately both survived!

 

Then, after a series of both political and personal events we decided to emigrate to Australia.

 

But then going even further back. My parents left South Africa for Rhodesia, in 1950, because they did not like the way the Apartheid regime introduced by the Nationalist government in 1948, was being implemented. 

 

Also Magucha’s parents were more or less driven out of the then Portuguese colony of Angola because of the 1975 revolution in Portugal and the granting of independence to the colonies. So, after a number of incidents, they ended up in Rhodesia in 1976. 

 

There is a confluence of events developing here. 

 

Even further back in time my maternal grandfather Henry Matson, born in New Zealand, as a young man ended up in Demerara, previously a Dutch colony in what is now Guiana. There he learned about the cultivation of sugar cane and the extraction of sugar. Then through a series of events he ended up in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) in South Africa on a sugar plantation owned by the Acutt family. There he met and married Grace Acutt. My mother, Marjorie Matson was the second of three children.

 

My paternal grandfather (Dugald Campbell Watt) was a Scottish medical doctor who emigrated to South Africa to join his brothers. He became a very well known doctor in Natal. He met and married a girl 19 years younger than he was (he was 38 and she was 19) – Johanna (Annie) Anderson. My father was the younger of two boys born to them.

 

Then naturally, of course, my father, a journalist, met my mother, also a journalist and they married. This is where the "plot thickens". My mother was very ill after the birth of my older brother and very nearly died of septicemia – almost a death sentence in 1936. Dr Campbell Watt’s intervention saved her life. Otherwise I wouldn't be here writing this!!  

 

Then in the natural course of life, Magucha died nearly five years ago from complication brought about by the combination of the significant side effects of the many immunosuppressant drugs she had to take after her kidney transplant. These were too much for her little body to bear.  

 

I know that similar stories abound – everyone has their story. 

 

The Fates played their part (in my case) to perfection. Apparently. 

 

So you see one thing led to another – certainly completely out of my control.

 

Be careful. Be very careful.

Here are a couple of quotes from a book by James Lovelock “Homage to Gaia” (Gaia, for those unfamiliar with the term, in this instance, is not the Greek goddess of the Earth, but refers to the now accepted concept that life on Earth is a self regulating community of organisms interacting with each other and their surroundings. By doing so the Earth controls its surface and atmosphere to keep the environment always benign for life). 

 

However, I thought these quotes quite interesting:-

 

Ø  “If, in caring for people, we fail to care for other forms of life on Earth then our civilization and we will suffer. I wonder if in the 21^St Century, when the grim effects of global warming become apparent, we will regret the humanist bias that led us to continue to burn fossil fuel and plunder the natural world for food.

Ø  I soon found out that salinity greater than five percent damaged almost all cells, whether from animals or plants…… This knowledge stayed with me and when later the idea of Gaia, a self regulating Earth, first came to my mind I began to wonder how the salinity of the sea had always kept below five percent. It has done so for over 3 billion years, otherwise marine life would not have survived. We still do not know what regulates salinity……I still do not know how ocean salinity stays below five percent; it is one of the puzzles posed by the notion of Gaia.”

 

----////----

 

We dig up huge quantities of minerals leaving massive holes in the earth; we rip up millions of hectares of trees, cleared to plant crops; we use millions of tonnes of chemical fertilizers to try and replenish the soils degraded by over cultivation; we diminish the natural flows of rivers with unfettered irrigation; we poison the rivers and the oceans with chemicals which are the runoff from the degraded soils; we discard millions of tonnes of plastic, which end up in the sea; we overfish certain species of fish causing havoc with the food chain. 

 

We must all recognise that what we do individually or collectively, has consequences. And these are totally out of our control - we might not like them when we see what eventuates.  

 

But that is ok. There is money to be made, you see. And money is paramount. Cash is king.

 

Remember that we humans, all 7.4 billion of us, are like a thin layer of dust on the surface of the Earth. If every human being suddenly disappeared the Earth would quickly recover from our depredations and return to it beneficent state and a natural peace would be restored to that beautiful “blue” planet so evocatively seen from the surface of the moon.