Wednesday, May 30, 2012

13) Leaving Nancy

Eric Bogle preceded me. A Scottish Australian, his song is about leaving his mother, called Nancy. He asks her not to cry when he has to leave by train after a brief visit. It sounds like a song I could have written! M'Lady was indeed very brave. We parted without tears. Perhaps because I was being wheeled away by the Perth air attendant, or perhaps because of some deep instinct of not wanting to repeat sad pasts, I did not see M'Lady walk away. Even as I write, my tears well up. We just have to see each other again! The last time I saw my father was at an airport terminal in Thunder Bay, Canada, 1980. He gave me a backwards glance just before the security check in, clutching at one of my paintings. So too for my mother. She gave me one of those same last minute glances as she was being wheeled away at the Calgary Airport Terminal, 2001. Three weeks later, she was dead. Nancy, at 90, discussed death with me. But she has every intention of pursuing life, of doing our joint project to write her story, and even of coming to visit Canada yet once more. Here, let me play it again. "Leaving Nancy". You cannot hear it, but on my iPad last night I downloaded the song. It is so very poignant. So perfect. It was Nancy herself who alerted me to it, and I copied the title and its singer into my notebook. And now in this Sydney hotel, late last night, thanks to iTunes, it easily was available. A mere 99 cents! And right now, as the phrase again comes out, "Goodbye, my Nancy, oh", I do indeed fight off tears. It was only when alone on the plane, as I watched the 'City of Angels', that I found myself weeping. And at the death scene, when the protagonist stands over the dying one with such an expression of overwhelming love on his face, I wept deeply, hurtfully. Singing: "Let me hold you one last time, before the whistle blows." It is just after 5:07 a.m. as I write. From this 26th floor Four Seasons Hotel Room, #2615, courtesy of Sir Mike Jablonski, there is a commanding view over Sydney harbor. Even from the bed, through the corner window, I can see the famous flares of the white wings of the Sydney Opera House, and just to the left is the lit up span of the giant bridge. It is indeed magical. That Mike Jablonski, he does not do things by halves. Sir Justin is in room #2614, just next door. Late last night, after our fellow knight, Sir Rob, had transported our two 'feral' selves in his new Jeep around the night-lit vistas of the harbor, playing the colorful and informative tourist guide, and at last deposited us in our rooms, Sir Justin brought in his bottle of complimentary wine and cheese plate to make truck with mine, and we sat in the chairs before the magnificence of the view, and caught up with events until now. Justin's flight log is incredible, 36 hours of being in the air to get to Singapore, given that he started in Denver, went to Frankfurt, back to Nottingham, back to Frankfurt, back to Denver, and on to Singapore, then flew here. And still he beat me; he was waiting with Rob at the domestic Terminal about two hours before I arrived. Neither of us had had dinner. And now, as we devoured the cheese and biscuits, dried apricots and prunes, we were two weary but happy- chappies, indeed. It is two hours ahead of Sydney time back in Perth. That makes it now 7:54, there. I wonder, has M'Lady arisen to go open the curtains on the sunrise as usual, day after day? Here, let me replay you the song, singing, "goodbye, my Nancy, oh!"

12) The Commission

Gabby collects us. But we need to scoot back after a block; I misplaced my neck brace. Found, now wearing it, we were on our way! First time I actually got to see Guildford, let alone Perth. Blue gum trees everywhere. And suddenly we were being offloaded, Gabby with baby Giselle to keep circling past a collection point, and Nancy, at 90, insisting on pushing me with my bag on my lap into the air terminal. At least it was no more than about 50 yards! And then suddenly an air attendant was taking care of details and it was au revoire and M'Lady was gone! But I do not fear I shall not see her again. We have a strong sense of it. We have so much at stake. I have a commission! The airport lounge gave me Internet. Yes! I had but minutes before I was to be whisked away again. The iPad needed a reboot. Gone were precious minutes. To prioritize a rush of emails took up more time. So I first answered with a short letter to Linda (my Linda, not Nancy's Linda); ensured an e- contact with Gabby; and then let Justin know I am on schedule, just as they came to fetch me to board. End of Internet! Anon. As I sit on the aircraft I realize the difficulty of easily doing this kind of journey. Beside me is a squirming three year old, jiggling on her seat. Behind me some young boy keeps kicking the seat-back. Even the push to here, with the elevator gap being... But I am complaining. There is a cost we each must pay, however it be exacted for the things we wish to do. To be able to afford them we must have ... a commission! Among the many interesting emails was a request for two more paintings following my delivery of the last. The recipients loved the work! Now they want two smaller ones. So my time soon to be spent is somewhat predictable. Admittedly, there is but a small recompense for the amount of hours and energy I put into doing these paintings, but at least it keeps me motivated, engaged. It keeps me interested in the process of the day, since my physical abilities are so limited in any case. At Nancy's, despite almost perfect weather, we stayed pretty well indoors all the time, and had a few teas on her sunlit porch, but I was unable to get about to see anything, really. I'd arrived in a cigar case in Perth, was transported on an envelope to Flinds, lived for three days in a marvelous cake box, and then was taken back by yet another envelope to this very cigar case from which I now type, just before take off. Size is indeed relative, let me assure you! Anon! The size of the project Lady Nancy and I quite naturally evolved toward is enormous. The details of her fascinating and complex life would ... here goes ... fill a book! So the research has begun. A titled father, an older brother sired by the famous August Rodin, a twin brother, Denys, shot in the actual Great Escape, and a host of characters as rich as any historical romance category, it is a novel for the telling. And I am the one to do it! The commission starts now! The box of a lifetime's letters and photos travels here with me, right under the seat at my feet as this aircraft reaches cruising height on its way to Sydney; away from M'Lady Nancy, yet closer to her heart than ever before. We've had time to chat, to gather the details, to get the taped story, the visual cues, the letters and cards, and the mementoes photographed. I go with a treasure trove home to work on it. Were it to be a boys' book it might indeed be entitled The Commission. But it will be aimed at women, a true life romance, and entitled, most appropriately, M'Lady Nancy.

11) Incommunicado

An adaptive feeling, this being without internet for four days. Sydney airport had a free wifi connection. Whatever electronic connections were made by me, emails sent, messages relayed, were placed last Sunday 27th May. Then there was the four plus hours flight to Perth, with a subsequent car ride into a sense of obscurity. Not that there be anything actually wrong with this comparative silence, for Flinds Cottage here on its promontory over the Guildford billabong beside the Swan River is a paradise of its own, but the sense of being cut off from regular correspondents is quite, well, disabling. It is 5:35 a.m. as I write, Wednesday, 30th of May. The birds have not yet woken up. Sunrise is scheduled for 7:10. Yes, Nancy has a television to tell us these things. Yes, we have a phone on a cord, and yes, a cordless phone too. But we have no Internet. So we could not instantly get information on Sir Arthur Douglas Street, M'Lady's father. Nor could we check out the origins of the Phoenix story, or connect with so many others by Facebook, emails, or Skype. We had to spend time talking, or reading. And we had only each other except when there came a visitor, like Nancy's daughter, Linda, for tea. Or like Nancy's grandchild, Gabby, with her own eleven month old daughter, Giselle, and their big white dog, Hercules. Even when the little old lady across the street suddenly collapsed on the pavement, just as Linda (Gabby's mother, Giselle's grandmother, Nancy's daughter) arrives to join us for tea, Gabby has to use the conventional phone against the kitchen wall to call the ambulance; none of our cell phones were operational. And mine, certainly, appears dead without wifi, roaming charges excepted. No, being without communication, electronic, instant communication, is like being left in the dark. Well, the dark ain't so bad. Around me as I lie abed are my two bags almost ready for transport to the airport. Gabby will come and fetch us at 10:45. Sydney, and Justin, and Rob, are for tonight's adventure. Right now I still await the birds, so am content to type away and listen to music through the ear-phone of my new i-stick that Mike gave me as a present. He's put some 500 of his songs on it! Nancy lies asleep, I hope, in her room down the corridor. She is usually up by 7:30, I've learned over the last two mornings. At 8:30, almost precisely, the phone will ring. It is Nancy's health care courtesy call, ascertaining, quite frankly, whether, now that she's 90, she's alive. Quite the thing to be called upon to account for oneself so unsubtly! But comforting to know at the same time. It would be awful not to have anyone know that one is totally incommunicado for several days. At least the daily calls provide for connection. So too even for the music I hear in my ears; the Afrikaans of Koos Kombuis is alien in this land of Oz, the disparity between a time over there and a time over here seemingly too disjoint. Disjoint. That's how it feels to be without my obsession, the immediacy of e-news from Facebook and friends. Preciseness can appear so trite until we are in dire need. But for some password, some exacting string of numbers, Mike's lending of an Internet stick just has not worked. It's twin beams of blue light are so strong they've served as a night light in this unfamiliar bedroom. But despite my phoning him, and his phoning a technical expert, and that Tommy-mate trying back and forth long-distance messages with me, at least five times, we cannot crack the code. We remain essentially incommunicado. The lesson is, check your addresses, know your numbers, verify your existence, and always be in touch. Or else life indeed may seem to be without a call. Ah! It's 6:40, the tweets of birds begins!

10) Vulnerabilty and Valor

Two remarkable stories that overlap in very different parts of the world have my senses awake at this pitch dark 3:00 am Australian juncture of my continuing journey. The death of husbands for both protagonists, the paying for and organizing of families to go on far-flung sea voyages, and the vulnerability of being robbed, of losing family heirlooms, and the valor of facing into the burglary with grit and determination stirs my imagination. Like 'fate' as a word in a crossword clue (a game which My Lady Nancy loves) the kismet of these two tales has me marveling at the coincidences in our lives. Linda came for tea. Nancy's oldest daughter, it was she who had made and delivered the delicious shepherds pie as a welcome dinner for me the night before. Now, as we sat around the kitchen table with South African Rooibos tea and Scottish shortbread and Australian chocolate chip cookies, we swapped stories. Older than me by five years, Linda is casually elegant, naturally beautiful without adornment or affectation, and wears her years like a thirty-five year old. This sprightliness of being appears to be genetic in the Sinclair family. Nancy moves in the kitchen and about the house with the grace and ease of a girl, not a ninety year old, and Fiona, second daughter in line who had handled my luggage and got me settled into the cottage, had impressed me with her vibrancy too. In their warmth and immediate friendship one feels so very welcome. But the burglar certainly didn't feel welcome. Earlier, Nancy had told me during our day together about taking a six month around the world journey to see family and friends and to get over her deep grief at the loss of Denys, her beloved husband, back in 1987. She'd organized the trip herself, taken care of all the details of bookings and arrangements. So too had my friend Jessie, I thought, but did not say anything. After Jessie's beloved husband, Vic's death, she had taken thirteen members of her family on an all expenses paid Alaskan cruise. At the time of Nancy's story it did not appear prudent to interject. But now, here with Linda at tea, we were speaking of keeping Nancy's place secure whenever she's away, let alone inside! "I'd gone out into the garden, came back inside, and found this strange man at the end of the corridor, at my front door. Hello, what're you doing here?" Nancy related. "How did you get in? He gestured back at the door I'd just come through. Then you can leave the same way, I yelled, and charged at him by going through the lounge and then around and got behind him and actually shoved him in the back and he tripped over this down-step into the kitchen here and so I kicked him in the backside and he left in a hurry, I tell you! Then I went and locked myself in my room and phoned the police. But when I looked around I found all my jewelry gone, my mother's heirlooms, irreplaceable." And then I told them of Jessie's daughter, Sharon, while still on their cruise finding out that their house had been burgled, and that she'd lost her irreplaceable jewelry too, and yet Sharon and Ken kept the news to themselves, lest they spoil the family holiday. Vulnerability and valor. Wow! Yet may such a crossover event never be our kismet too!

9) Dulcinea!

So much for me arriving as the white knight on his black steed. Instead I am wheeled into my Lady Dulcinea's presence, two hours late and the very last one off a choked up plane, by an apologetic Virgin hostess, Emma. My wheelchair was still back in Sydney; it was coming on the next flight. Even at the exit door of the aircraft, when eventually they came to fetch me with a clunky red transporter chair, my first concern was for My Lady. "I have a 90 year old friend coming to fetch me in a taxi," I explained. "I just can't impose on her to wait for the next aircraft. Nor can she push me in this thing." But stories have a way of working out. As I write it is just after 5:30 a.m. and the Australian morning outside of my curtained room is a jazz like burble of the unfamiliar. Parrots and a kookaburra vie for notice. Other birds, Ozzie Oz magpies I suppose, are fluting. Some squeak like violins yet to be tuned. Some are like the horn section. The whistle and gurgle of it all is quite captivating. Distant sounds of traffic underscore the music. And quite frequently there is an alarming door-knocking bang-bash-bang besides my room in this large and wonderfully cozy cottage. I was warned about it just before retiring last night; interior plumbing. Still it did have me peeking out of the curtains into the dark the second time, just in case there was an urgent neighbor at the door. Lady Nancy, my veritable Dulcinea, was attended at the airport by her daughter. Fiona brought her car, since she lives just a ten minute drive from Nancy. It felt like meeting a familiar friend when I greeted her for the first time; we had corresponded when Nancy's health had once been of concern. And so, after establishing that my own chair would be sent to Guildford by taxi, Fiona drove us through the dark to Flinds. And there we three had a delightful snack of rolled salmon, sipped on champaign, and then Fiona went off and Nancy heated up a shepherds pie. After all, in Sydney it was 9:30, in Perth it was only 7:30. And by the time Nancy was washing up the dishes, a knocking at the front door alerted me; my chair had arrived courtesy of a Virgin airline personnel. Again the apologies, with perhaps an upgraded return flight to be arranged for my troubles. In the light of day, Flinds Cottage is a virtual museum. Named after the first five letters of Lady Nancy's children, and their last name, Fiona, Linda, Ian, Nick, Diane, and Sinclair, it poses on a slight promontory above a billabong feeding off the Swan River. Full of incredible artifacts, mementoes, framed certificates, trophies, and war memorials, it is situated in the most luscious of Australian fauna and flora. From every window and from the wrap around deck cockatiels and corella and magpies and stranger than fiction birds are in abundance. A cornucopia of shrubs and hanging baskets and roses and vines and herbs and gardener's delights pluck at the senses. Giant blue gums lean into the sky. Pastoral, verdant, and peaceful. It is so pleasing that M'Lady is so happily at home. Petite, blue eyed, vivacious, pleasant, charming, and sharp as a tack, M' Lady Nancy is a force of nature. Even the birds feed from her hands. Her famous father was knighted, Sir Arthur Street. Her oldest brother, Douglas, was actually the illegitimate son of none other than August Rodin. Her twin brother, Denys, was actually one of the famous fifty caught and shot in The Great Escape. No ordinary old biddy, my Lady Nancy is a force to be reckoned with. A veritable Dulcinea, indeed.

8) Other Memories

When still a ten year old boy I once pocketed a rock from inside the great pyramid of Giza. The size of a robin's egg, smooth and hard and marble-like, I had it well into my 30's. I loved the idea that it came from a period long before Jesus, that it came from Egypt, that it came from somewhere else. Even in my 50's, when on a visit in England, I recall retaining that same sense of wonder at the nature of somewhere else; I plucked up grass and smelt it, my first real contact with earth back in a foreign land. Somehow wearing shoes everywhere and not so much as touching the vegetation feels like one is not really there at all. I think that's how I feel about Sydney, now, as I fly here goodness knows how many thousands of feet up in the sky across the great Byte of Oz, having spent from 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Sydney, and hardly smelling the outside air much at all. We are often above it all. The soles of our feet are elevated on shoes. The clothes we wear protect us from surfaces we sit on; our touch is a great deal done to the manufactured products of man. Rubbing the soil between ones fingers, now there's an atavistic thing yet to do! Does an owl in its wisdom not have to touch the ground too? Collections of things natural was my bent for quite a long while. I retained rock-bits from places divergent as Brighton Beach, Orkney, Quebec, Montserrat, Cairo, and Spain. I could go on, but the idea here is not to impress nor to provide you with travel history, as much as to say that seeing the grass out of the window alongside the runway as my flight took off this afternoon gave me a sense of just how ubiquitous grass is all over the world, how similar the cells that go to make up the whole of everything really are. Yes, a koala bear is not the same as a moose, and tigers and bears do not live naturally in South Africa, but it is an essence of being of which I speak. It is the fact that it all exists, and that the rocks I once had have now been lost among rocks in altogether different locations, and I doubt that anyone, finding them, would say, hello, here's a strange one! A strange one is a bit in the sense of being here. That no food is served on a four and a half hour flight, unless you buy, is strange. That a brand new Virgin aircraft is up in the air with us having had to wait for a part and now without having some TVs working is strange. That accents around me are so stringently Stralian is strange. That a landmass below me appears so vastly uncultivated, even compared to Canada, is strange. But that we all are people just doing our thing is not really strange at all. Deus attends us. We are creatures in constant search of the new. We connect the dots, find that we've done Paris and Rome and London, and now want Copenhagen or Berlin. We want more and more. Is it sacrilegious of me to admit that it is not necessary for me to see Ayers Rock, nor even Perth itself should circumstances not bring it about? I fly to see my Lady Dulcinea, she who came to my wedding as my Matron of Honor. Now, at 90 years old, this very Dulcinea to the quixotic in me deserves my attentions. This side trip before seeing Simon back in Sydney is necessary; one has only so much time left. And when taken by taxi from the airport to Nancy's Flinds Cottage, an hour or so north of Perth, we shall likely not have the ability nor conveyance enough easily to go gadding about. She certainly cannot push me. I envisage long conversations over tea and lunch and dinner, and going through photo albums of her rich life, and reminiscing about the fantastic past she has led. An older brother sired by August Rodin. A twin brother caught and shot in the great escape. No, it is not stones I go now to collect, not things, but other memories.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

7) Gruntled and Disgruntled

The wait in Sydney airport, gate 39, for Perth will take two hours longer than expected. There is an aircraft spare part expected to come in from Melbourne. So said the Virgin Airlines announcer, apologetically, but so it goes. So my great Oz friend, Sir Mike, had to leave to pick up his family, and I am left to my own devices in a lounge of disgruntled people, their disappointment quite clear and dismayed at the news. Phones came out. Explanations were made. "Should have flown Qantas," someone said aloud. How very many people in Perth will be affected, I think. So it goes. Or rather, so it does not go, ha! That was the gist of what happened to one of our expectations this morning. We were just congratulating ourselves on the strokes of luck we'd had. The parking attendant's machine was not working at the International air-lot and Mike had to get out of the black Cadillac and negotiate and try with other credit cards, but finally we were let out, sans charge! "That's a thirty dollar saving," said Mike! And then, once he'd transported me to Domestic Terminal Two, we were no sooner gone through security than we came across a $20 store, with very many watches for me to select from, since I left mine behind, and Mike insisted on welcoming me to Oz with my prize. A whole year's worth of guarantee! But a thing or two began changing after that. In search of an outlet plug we parked with my wheelchair against the escalator wall and Mike, sprawled out on the hard tile floor, unpacked an arsenal of electronic thingamajickies in order to secure for me an Internet connection. But nought worked. Even his gift of a music stick to me was not able to be charged. So off we went in search of a more likely spot, an airport lounge! Being a Qantas Emerald Card Member Mike wheels me into the Member's Lounge. It looks virtually empty. Perhaps 60 or more lounge chairs. Perhaps only twelve people. Two attendants, both women, in their thirties. But at hearing that I am flying with Virgin and Mike was just there hoping to pass some time they were adamant, no way! The status card did not seem to impress them. The lounge was for when traveling only, and Mike was not traveling. "Let me speak to your manager," says Mike. But the manager does not wish to come down, speaks only over the phone, and does not relinquish on the basic premise that Mike was not flying that day. Even their calling security to remove us was mentioned, twice, by the unsympathetic girls, very evidently flustered. Mike was clearly not easily going to be dissuaded from having a seat in an almost empty lounge. But eventually, we left. We went and sat in a fast-food court, he with his coffee, me with my orange juice. Yet he enjoyed the waking up of their customer-care, he said. He hoped they were still gabbing about it! And then he told me of the time at a toll booth in Africa how he'd had a whole queue of cars lined up behind him until the toll booth operator finally acquiesced and said, "Five Rand, PLEASE." Ha! Sydney is a strange mixture of very uptight looking people and the extremely casual. In the laid back atmosphere of men in shorts and slip-slops at an airport, and the rather officious sternness of some persons, it strikes me as a country of huge diversity and potential. The cross-cultural mix is as evident here as anywhere I've been in Canada, and the friendliness of some, versus that vacant and preoccupied look of others, is as real as anywhere in the world. We really are one people, one planet, one organism all just needing each other. Wouldn't it be nice then, if Qantas and Virgin just supported each other? As the clerk said it aloud, "Virgin is the enemy!" Ha! Not all is magic in Oz!

6) Incredulity and Magic!

Seems right to be in a state of appreciation. Ever since the wheel even horses and donkeys have likely felt some relief. Certainly that's what War Horse depicted, for those who saw the anthropomorphic direction. Yet one might confess, when it comes to means of conveyance, a fair amount of taking-for-granted goes on. Trains, planes, and automobiles trips off the tongue lightly, but were they not there for us we might be a great deal more saddle-sore, foot weary, or otherwise beleaguered. Icarus had it right; there is a need in us to have some means by which we may soar above our stasis, and for the traveller, conveyances become indispensable. Wheelchair-bound persons know that much right off. We are so reliant, dependent, needy of our chariots. And in my case, since I cannot propel myself with this spinal condition of mine, I am also so grateful for the pushers in my life. Wheelchair pushers, that is, not what it sounds like, ha! So a diminutive Stacey at the Victoria airport conveys me through security, places me afore the ticket wicket. Slightly taller, my wife leaves me off after ensuring I have a Time magazine behind which to appear appropriately intriguing. It is the esoteric and the clandestine and the metaphorical and the symbolic that travels with most of us. We are seldom simple beings. We each carry our stories. About the only thing that makes my story more interesting than someone else's right now is that I write it right now, while you are reading it right now too. Conveyances do not take us out of the 'right now', writer or reader; meaning arises itself out of the very means of our conveyance. We wish for a Deus ex Machina to rescue us. To be set free. Impatience bears no truck with being conveyed. The vehicle will not, should not of necessity go faster. The time for departure should not be posted as anything other than precise. The ship may leave later, so too for the train, plane, and automobile, but it certainly should never leave before the posted time. Still, I bet that famous fellow who arrived onstage a smidgen too late for embarkation retained to his dying day a sense of gratitude that the Titanic left without him. Precisely! As passengers, we trundle along with the movement of the pedal pusher, the pilot, the driver. We are the driven. We exercise patience and live in the moment. Good time to read one's Time magazine. But behind the ease of transport, relatively speaking, goes a host of arrangements and engineering and organization and specifications greasing the wheels of progress that we tend, as passengers, to take for granted. Just last night Linda and I watched a documentary on a sixteen story ocean liner and the incredible background activity that precedes embarkation. A single mislaid passport can hold untold people up in a concert of effort to get things right. We each are so dependent on others. We each are so responsible for others. We each leave impressions, each to each, in a synthesis of smiles and well wishes and taking care. Thank goodness changed plans still can work! Stacey, of United Airlines in San Fran, left that impression on me. A model of courtesy and consideration, she ensured for my every comfort. To be pushed by a small person with a big heart is a great privilege. To be conveyed by the passage of history itself, is actually a thrill. Let us not become blasé about trains, plains, boats and automobiles. Let us go! Let's go live in Innesfree!

Friday, May 25, 2012

5) Conveyance and Convenience

Seems right to be in a state of appreciation. Ever since the wheel even horses and donkeys have likely felt some relief. Certainly that's what War Horse depicted, for those who saw the anthropomorphic direction. Yet one might confess, when it comes to means of conveyance, a fair amount of taking-for-granted goes on. Trains, planes, and automobiles trips off the tongue lightly, but were they not there for us we might be a great deal more saddle-sore, foot weary, or otherwise beleaguered. Icarus had it right; there is a need in us to have some means by which we may soar above our stasis, and for the traveller, conveyances become indispensable. Wheelchair-bound persons know that much right off. We are so reliant, dependent, needy of our chariots. And in my case, since I cannot propel myself with this spinal condition of mine, I am also so grateful for the pushers in my life. Wheelchair pushers, that is, not what it sounds like, ha! So a diminutive Stacey at the airport conveys me through security, places me afore the ticket wicket. Slightly taller, my wife leaves me off after ensuring I have a Time magazine behind which to appear appropriately intriguing. It is the esoteric and the clandestine and the metaphorical and the symbolic that travels with most of us. We are seldom simple beings. We each carry our stories. About the only thing that makes my story more interesting than someone else's right now is that I write it right now, while you are reading it right now too. Conveyances do not take us out of the 'right now', writer or reader; meaning arises itself out of the very means of our conveyance. Impatience bears no truck with being conveyed. The vehicle will not, should not of necessity go faster. The time for departure should not be posted as anything other than precise. The ship may leave later, so too for the train, plane, and automobile, but it certainly should never leave before the posted time. Still, I bet that famous fellow who arrived onstage a smidgen too late for embarkation retained to his dying day a sense of gratitude that the Titanic left without him. Precisely. As passengers, we trundle along with the movement of the pedal pusher, the pilot, the driver. We are the driven. We exercise patience and live in the moment. Good time to read one's Time magazine. But behind the ease of transport, relatively speaking, goes a host of arrangements and engineering and organization and specifications greasing the wheels of progress that we tend, as passengers, to take for granted. Just last night my wife and I watched a documentary on a sixteen story ocean liner and the incredible background activity that precedes embarkation. A single mislaid passport can hold untold people up in a concert of effort to get things right. We each are so dependent on others. We each are so responsible for others. We each leave impressions, each to each, in a synthesis of smiles and well wishes and taking care. Stacey, of United Airlines, left that impression on me. A model of courtesy and consideration, she ensured for my every comfort. To be pushed by a small person with a big heart is a great privilege. To be conveyed by the passage of history itself, is actually a thrill. Let us not become blasé about trains, plains, boats and automobiles. Let us go!

4) Anticipation

Anticipation. Children have that. They have excitement that boils. I remember it well. It is that quality of wishing away time so that one can be in Disneyland, so that Christmas day will come, so that the birthday would be today. It is an overwhelming quality, for it tends to sublimate the events of ordinary days into being overlooked, dismissed, even disregarded. If only to be in the Kingdom of Oz now! See Dorothy! Go Find the Lyon. As I sit here in Canada's Victoria on this truly gorgeous morning, with the sunlight bright and cheerful after the grey of the past few days, and hear the birds singing and the gulls occasionally squeal, and look out over the long trestle of Purgatory Bridge spanning the Victoria Gorge, I await the passage of time with a certain gratitude for the moments it affords me. There is life in the far off swish and thrum of traffic. There is life in the caw of the crow. There is life in the balancing by of the bicycles, of the paddle-past of the kayaker on the mirrored surface of the full tide, life in the early morning walkers perhaps on their peripatetic way to work down below my window along the famous galloping goose trail, and life in my breathing, moment for moment. How much longer will it be so for my friend? We take life for granted. So it is. It should be so. We are born into life with a right to be here, no less than the trees and the stars. Appreciation for the ordinary, the mundane, the daily grind, though, is another thing. Disneyland and presents and special occasions spoil us for that. We love to travel, to go, to see, to examine, to explore, to be almost anywhere but here once we've spent overlong anywhere. Even the holiday-maker looks forward, eventually, to coming home. Home is where the heart is. Restless creatures, aren't we? My dear friend lies in Oz, a magic kingdom far away, but it will not save him. Cancer reaches across and around the globe. It takes over. A single person is taken here and there, and the numbers grow. Seven billion people on this planet would seem to overwhelm the odds of it taking us all. Surely we can surmount the surface sufficiently to control every inch of our futures. Surely we can undermine the surface sufficient to find yet more resources. Surely we can survive? Those other qualities of family and friends and power and devotion and ambition and equanimity and even integration itself are the luxuries we investigate, the cloaks we wear, once we have the basics sorted out; to live! But after that, when we have come full circle to sans teeth, sans eyes, sans ears, sans everything? Where then be the value of that which we have done, seen, been to other than in the very moments of each of our moments by moment? We kiss with our eyes. My dear friend's time draws near. He will look into my eyes, and I into his, one last time. And we will know there will be no more. What sad anticipation is this? What a mixture of my getting up, and going to his Innesfree, when he be the one who there has made a life in the bee loud glen and awaits his final destiny? So too for my dearest firend of all? Time ticks away at the ordinary. The clock strikes. The bell tolls. Ask not for whom. It tolls for thee.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

3) Morning of The Night Before

Preparations are like that. A teenager spends all sorts of time getting himself ready. He might even iron out his wrinkles. But does he leave his room, his domain, his real life in any better shape before he goes? We prepare ourselves for what is out there, believing its newness will bring us yet more, but once there, experience tends to reveal, we take ourselves with us. Problem for the teenager though, with his sudden put-on-courtliness, is that he has to come back. To be himself. And the chores of real life, the expectations of the day to day, become the average of his life's progress. Not just the date. But there is certainly an excitement in the air, one must admit, the morning of the night before. Journeys can take on a significance altogether invigorating. Seems trite to say, but 'tis so! The days away for the leaver are different from the succession of ordinary days for the one who stays. Time away is rich with new images, experiences, sensations, and the quest for making the most of time is alive with possibility. Staying at home is not at all like that. Consciously. The view from the window will be tomorrow and tomorrow, so why make any more of the petty pace from day to day? But when away? Why, there is always something new to see! Some new place to be. Some new older face to face. Being natural wherever one is, is a state of grace. Wedding photos, graduation photos, photos of poses when the camera and you are aware of each other are pictures of happiness and beauty. But when caught by the camera in that moment of being all to oneself, when the face is not prepared, the wind blows the wrong way, the reality of life is not layered with drinks and fine food and swell company, there is the repose of the day to day etched into the droop of reality. We are human beings caught up in everything. As such, the big camera in the sky does not lie; it sees all. That gorgeous teenager, boy or girl, can look altogether different asleep, aged, with years yet to go by. We take ourselves with us. Pain does not surcease at the movies. We merely are able to pit present reality against the projection on the screen, and should the screen portray life bigger than it is, involve us beyond the natural narcissism of our own interests, we get transported into another world sufficiently to forget for awhile the slings and arrows of our own outrageous fortune. Such is catharsis. Holidays, dates, new horizons, they lift us out of the stupor of the self in the daily bind, give flight to fancy, and provide scope for breathing air elsewhere. Not here. Over there. Here, on the morning of the night before, I do what I can to prepare. The check list is helpful. The timing of some things needs to be precise. Without a visa and a passport and a confirmation number one might as well stay home. And then too, there are all the things back here that need doing during my sojourn, before I return. Life has a way of involving us in details. Bills want paying. Datelines need meeting. Deadlines is another matter. One posts two letters with one stamp, rather than kills two birds with one stone. This morning of the night before I watch time tick toward the journey of a fulcrum between now, and later. And even when there, or when back, that 'now' is all one has.

2) Portrait of A Painter

Seeing things clearly is not what an artist really does. He is not a camera. Rather, it is the adventure of yoking variables together that marks him apart, makes him unique, for each brush stroke, like others' fingerprints, becomes a rendition solely manufactured by him. Ugly word that, manufactured. It has the sound of repetition and multiplicity and even precision to it, all of which is necessary if one is making, say, a specific spark plug, but if one is making a painting? Oosh! Trouble is, some things in a painting just have to be right. A person to recognize, for instance. And even though right, or seemed right at the time, especially after having spent most of the day painting at such a face, the next day's light bring renewed insight, and so one goes at it all over again. As such, faces have been scrubbed out and redone, twice, thrice, if not five or even six times. Right? But life does not give a real person such chances. Real persons live from moment to moment and very seldom can one not throw the stone, once it has been cast, or retrieve the words, once they have been said, or undo that which has been done, once it has... Well, you get the picture. Only artists can do that. They wipe out the rock or place back an old owl, or do not bother to put in the tree, or like Deus ex Machina, redo a face over and over. And should no one have seen the first face, let alone the second or third, or fourth or... Well, should no one have seen them then the thing that was done is gone into the ether forever. No one knows. Well, unless you write about it. But even then the wrong face does not no never ever get seen. Unlike deeds. Or bad grammar. No. Never ever. Unlike what it is for real people. Commissions are like that. Real expectations. If you ask me to paint the waterfront and I leave out this or that building, or do not put in the flag, you may very well ask me to redo the picture more better. People tend to like what they see, want what they saw, and wish for what they want. But artists tend to recreate. Once my own choice of the cafe or waterfront is done, independent of anyone else's approbations, I display it and you like it, or not, and you buy it, or not, but the thing is done. My work. My passion. Time spent in the exploration of a subject until I feel finally done. But no, not so for a commission. The details of a commission can be very challenging. I am no photographer. I depict. I render. I give unto the Commissioner in gratitude; it provides! And when done I might be lauded for my interpretation, humored for my labors, or even perhaps ridiculed for my effrontery. The hours and time spent is up to me. The amount of times I redo and redo a given face, a robe, a frozen gesture, is up to me. And no one sees the progress (unless you happen to be my partner who leans toward the work and astutely, considerately, but firmly lets me know that it is not yet quite right.) How fortunate for me that I have such a second pair of eyes! Imagine if I accepted my own vision only, and gave up for wont of energy, or for want of surcease. Imagine if trusting only my own sight. Who'd take flight? We are all like that, real people and artists. We have the fortune of being around others to help us see ourselves, redirect our progress, comment on our product, edit our missives, and promulgate our success. We each are really artists in our own way, the painter and the real person, creating of life a canvas that is left behind in the minds of others, visually or otherwise. And when finally done, do we not then in turn go do more?

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

1) Toward Innesfree

1) The Warp and Weave of Wonder Even the most carefully laid plans contain moments of magic. They appear in the interstices of the very weave of our tapestries, such that the light reveals sight and meaning afresh, each time we revisit our intentions. Such is the sense of excitement despite their disposition as we five knights each prepare, from our different vantages, to journey to the side of Sir Simon. Disease interjects. Death overtakes. It rears as unexpectedly into the warp and weave of our ordinary meanderings as to take us by surprise, and yet we each know it is an indicator of the end for each, as indeed for all. With the sad news of Sir Simon's imminent demise there began a mustering of the possibilities of attending his side. We were knights on quests of our own. We each are so involved in the daily grind of ordinary expectations that magic itself, sometimes, has to be of our own making. So it is with the warp and weave of anyone's tapestry. Without a sense of wonder coming from within there may soon seem no wonder to be found without. The moments pass us each by, and if years be the pictures by which we might recognize our passage of progress, and months be the paragraphs by which we might describe their progress, and weeks be the sentences by which we might build the images, then days become the very use and choice of colors that go eventually to thread the whole of one's life together. Magic, wonder, surprise, and even amazement attends the moments in-between. Hours and minutes are indeed of our own makings. The Kingdom of Oz lies far off across vast oceans. Even those great and goodly knights, Sir Anthony, Sir Mike, and Sir Rob, who live within its very boundaries are put upon to re-organize their schedules, rearrange their plans, and make ready their hospitality for the arrival of Sir Justin and me, Sir Who. Five days, five knights. Five men who are friends and brothers all to Sir Simon, who awaits our company. We shall arise and go now, soon, soon enough, and go to Innesfree, where sadly Sir Simon, like a poem, awaits the presence of men such as thee and me, momentary though it must be. It is a place in the Black Mountains. It is a place to be placed in memory. To be set free. It is not that the journey be secretive, nor concealed, nor clandestine that so dictates this somewhat esoteric missive, but that its sense of specialness be preserved. There are so very many contingencies attendant upon the journey that the complexity would become overwhelming were the numbers to increase. We men have known each other since boys. Well, if not known, then known about each other. We are all of the same age. We were all schooled together. We deeply identify with the culture and the history and the colloquialisms of a common country. Hamba Gashle is an understood wish. We go carefully with each other as we grow old, for we are alive to the sensibilities of what it is to have friends who reach back into our childhoods and see us for the men we've become, not so much despite the battles we've overcome, but because of them. We have nothing or little left to prove, except a commitment to our connection to each other, and with that a giving of ongoing care. It takes effort. It takes action. It takes constant communication. And it takes love. Or whatever else one may decide to call this feeling. Soon. Soon we each shall arise and go now, and go to Innesfree. 'Tis a story for thee.

Monday, May 14, 2012

More than Marmalade!



There are people in one's life who provide sterling examples of what life could be. They are not necessarily always older than oneself. Many a young student has given me clarity and insight into how I might rather have been when I was their age, and indeed how I might adjust at my own age. And sometimes such lessons are overt, direct, with intention, yet more often the lessons are by example, gleaned from observation, and realized through re-thinking one's thinking. But the true treasure of being with someone whose every moment is filled with a sense of contribution to life, however subliminally, lies in the invigoration that their presence gives one's soul. To see oneself as one might yet become, and to feel inspired and privileged for the lessons is one thing, but then to be directly known, loved, and cared for by such a person is a great privilege, indeed.

Our last house guest is 72 years old. But she might have been 40. Her energy certainly matched a woman far younger than she. And it was not so much her physical health that impressed us as her youthful spirit; a quality of "yes, let's do that!" on any venture, a sense of "why not?" Then too, there was her perpetual curiosity, the finding out of flower and tree names, the checking of maps, the reading of my Oceanography book and then her delightful explanation of the diurnal and semi diurnal tides that affect our Vancouver Island location. There was the viewing of the memory album of her last great trip, on which she'd treated her entire family to an Alaskan cruise, now artistically scrap-booked for their posterity. There was also our driving up Mount Douglas, and her hiking up the last rocky bit from the car park with my wife to the very top, where one can see for 360 degrees. On coming back down to me in the car they went over to the outlook over the harbor, realized that they would not see the sunset from there, and hiked back up the mountain a second time, just for the better view! Why not?    

Jessie Peters brought me her homemade marmalade. She came with love and greeting from her family. She brought her memories and our swapped stories of her beloved husband Vlc, and we reminisced a bit about the ravages of ALS, that awful atrophy of the muscles that claimed Vic, that claimed our friend Hank too, and that was the subject of the play I used to perform, 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. But surmounting this disease is the ongoing vitality of a friendship that is interested in the present, that is involved in our futures, and that invigorates our consciousness. She asked me questions about psycho-geometrics (my upcoming presentation on Dabrowski in Denver). Jessie wants to know.

We feel blessed and privileged to know her, to share time with her, and to be counted amongst her family as their friends too. The visits with her sisters and their kin, as well as her daughter and son, and their kin, have been treasures of themselves. One trusts that you too, reading this, gets to feel love and warmth for the people you know who are not biologically your family, but who have so connected with your sensibilities that there is a feeling of inclusion and acceptance and love for their very being in your life. Marmalade tends to make me feel that, every time I bite into it: marvelously grateful.

Jessie Peters came for a visit. A mere three days. We took her back to the airport and we felt immediately interested in when we might get to see her again. Jessie gave us the most precious gift of all, her caring, considerate, compassionate, and interested presence. So much more than marmalade!    

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Greeting the Ghost




The instant he saw her he was completely taken. They were both teenagers. She was vibrant and vivacious and bigger than any life on the silver screen, and he was huddled into himself in the dark, his face illuminated by the light from yon window that into the soul of his youth did shine. Juliet was to pervade his every sense from that moment on, nearly forty years ago. She became the ghost betwixt himself and every current reality.

Olivia Hussey, metaphor to all his aspirations, was innocent of his allusions. She almost certainly could not collaborate with the spaces he carried for her in his heart. And she certainly could not be guilty of the barriers he placed between himself and all other loves of his life; as though he somehow would be betraying that initial great love he had conceived for such Juliet as had so stirred his soul. She became the glorious ghost attending his every venue.His grail. She was the genteel spirit pervading his every sensibility of romance, connection, longevity. As the years went by he wore her as constantly as an amulet; she was there whenever he reached for her, and she was there even if he became absorbed in something else. The effect of a ghost is like that, inescapable.

That other lovers along the way were aware of her was seldom overtly mentioned. They each perhaps knew that his essential insuperability was due to some other monogamy instilled in him before their time. Juliet was a pseudonym seldom used, though her presence was perhaps suspected; like the saying goes: one never forgets one's first love. And Juliet remained a ghost traveling in the chambers of his soul, haunted his being. Everything he saw, he wondered if she too had seen, been there, might see. If not in reality, their ephemeral connection was more real than any filial or consummate attachment than anything else he ever experienced. She taught him that love is about loving without ever expecting anything back. The paradox was that in that very lesson he never did reciprocate the love given to him by others, fully, completely. His love for his Juliet was paramount. She was the epitome of his projection of what such a feeling is, should be, ought to be, could be. And no other woman was going to supplant that.

Shame was his greatest downfall. Somewhere down deep he never felt good enough for her. In his betrayals of his love for her, in his imaginings of how he could reach her, let her know that he had constant thought of her, let her know that he was growing in his successes, in proving his worthiness, in accomplishing sufficient enough accolades and honors not even to be needing to pursue such anymore, he was becoming older and older in his wisdom, his understanding, and in his love. He reached a point at which he fully accepted that he might never actually get to see her, let alone to touch her hand, embrace her, kiss her lips. It was the understanding that his soul was connected to hers so entirely, whether she knew it or not, that he could give her utter acceptance for whatever her life was, her circumstances were, her being had become. He discovered that love wants not, desires naught, expects nothing, and simply lets be as is.

But the ghost of her, he doubted, he could ever let go. Still, he was prepared to concur, what a pity that it should rob anyone else of a potential liaison between a he and a thee, but then again, so it goes between being such as he, haunted by a ghost lovely as she. 


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Contrition




Sometimes one does terrible things. And it's intriguing just how long it can take to find oneself out. The bad or selfish or egotistical or arrogant or self-righteous deed does not necessarily register at the time, at least not sufficiently. I realized I was overstepping a delicacy of social conduct, but the full possibility of its consequences did not strike me until today, two months later. While contemplating those passing below my balcony the quiet thread of my thoughts lead to a remembrance of the sad incident, and I felt deeply, seriously, remorseful. My contrition, I'm aware, might however be entirely speculative.

Two months ago I met a previous student and his girlfriend at my local hangout. I'd not seen him in over a year. They met me outside by my car, as arranged, and they pushed me in my chair inside the restaurant. My usual table was free. My chair fits nicely away from the people traffic. I do not even need to look at the menu. I've taken many a friend there. Living on an island by the sea I bring friends from the States, from Australia, from Alberta, from the mainland, and from around to share my favorite place to be, to eat that is. I am a regular! And it has often been the same waitress who has served me. A woman perhaps 40 something. She's seen me with most of my friends. But she's never acknowledged my specific presence. Never quite seemed to see me. Yet I've left her reasonable tips. I've been pleasant and polite and handed up plates to her, a difficult thing for me to do in the circumstances. And on this day, with my students, when she came to the table something of the proud Mr.P in me felt like being acknowledged.

"It's time we knew each other," I said. Instantly there was awkwardness. I drove my point, albeit gently. "You don't seem to recognize me, yet I come here often. I am... " and while I was finishing my little self-aggrandizing introduction it was evident to us she was  embarrassed, but I could not withdraw the tenor of my missive. We ordered. Someone else brought us our meals. I did not see her again. I remember thinking that perhaps it was the end of her shift, perhaps she was caught up with other tables, and that was that. But I confess, it has kept niggling at me. I have not seen her again since then. But I  never did quite resolve that moment, did not admit culpability. Until today, too much later.

Another student I've not heard from in over a year just wrote. I finished my response, made my coffee, went to sit in my favorite arm-chair with the balcony viewpoint, and wondered why I'd not heard again from that other student and his girlfriend I'd taken to the restaurant. And then I recalled my aberrant behavior, thought of my needing the attention, of my embarrassing the waitress, of her perhaps resigning that day thanks to the final straw of a customer being rude, of her feeling awkward and 'less than' in front of my students young enough to be her children, of her uncertainty and being perhaps pained by my being in a wheelchair and virtually accusing her of not recognizing me. Of her possibly feeling hurt and sad because she'd perhaps lost someone handicapped. Of her being bereft and... Well, speculation is what it is, full of fanciful imaginings.

Point is, we do or say things out of ego, out of a need for something we do not get or did not have, caught up in the moment as we are. Or is that really: caught up in our own future or past? For myself, I am contrite for what I did then. Contrite. But does it suffice?


Friday, May 4, 2012

Bede's Bird for the Bard




Bede's Bird for the Bard

Dreams have a way of disturbing the psyche. What is the significance? What is the symbol? Why have that particular dream? Why have it as a recurring theme? What began the subliminal trigger? How possibly does the dream and me configure?

Back in history, before English was a known language, there was Bede. In about 700 a.d. he authored the Ecclesiastical History of England. In one of his famous passages there is a sparrow that flies out of a winter storm through an opened window into the great hall, is briefly warm and protected, but then in consternation at the goings-on flies out again. (Actually, it was a door, and the passage is about the conversion of King Edwin.) But that sparrow image, fleeting and disruptive, pervades my subconscious. I had to translate the Anglo Saxon as an exercise in my undergraduate years, and the concept has stayed with me. In fact, in my painting of Passing Through Too, the sparrow flies in through the open window of the train carriage, flustered and fragmented in its depiction, while all within are solidified images, surreal as is the work in its entirety.

And now there are my dreams. The sienna-colored sparrow flits about in a cavernous dark burnt-umber colored hall, like being trapped in an old Colonial School prep room, and it perches on the edge of a silver garbage can, or pecks about on the stone-paved floor after crumbs. Indistinct others are reposing about, caring little or not at all about its presence. In my dream I feel concern for its safety. I see it adapting. I see it free to roam about, but still trapped within the confines of the edifice. And the building, I am sure, is a university or school. My compatriots are young people, teenagers, but there is no sense of their sex or physicality, near as I can recall, other than that they pose a threat to the bird by their lack of compassion, their possibility for cruelty. At times I dream it to be on the floor of a corridor. At times it sits on a window sill. But the window pane is opaque, glazed in the pastel of pewter. And always, the bird needs someone to set it free. Me.

We travel from one known into an unknown. We may become warmer, more easily fed, protected from the rain, but we are uncertain, fearful of the indistinct, suspicious of the movements around us. Vulnerability accompanies our journey, our breakdown from the paradigm we know. Whether it is a trip away from our home, our country, our familiar, or the simple intrusion of a stranger, our delicate sensibilities can be so disturbed that an overexcite-ability of apprehension can threaten to overwhelm, perhaps subconsciously if not overtly. Perhaps our fears take the bird-like form of the flitter-flutter, found in a place unusual, possibly life-taking. Cloistering. And like Bede's venerable bird, we seek escape, even if it means yet once again out into the very winter of our initial discontent.

It is adaptability that most indicates intelligence. The facility to take on a sea of troubles, and by not so much opposing them as integrating them, end them, is the ability to fly above the perch of being caged in one place overlong. That one may take flight is not necessarily so much a sign of cowardice as of a desire for mobility. Perhaps it is the soul yearning to be free of the cage of one's very bones, particularly if they burn and burn unendingly. A bird for Bede, and a bird for the bard. Ha! What poetic license may one not take on one's flights of fancy? To dream of a bonded bird again, or to fly free?


For full painting please see: WWW.RichardMichellePentelbury.com

Tuesday, May 1, 2012


The Code of Silence                                                       



Pecoste Trugg taught me a valuable thing or two. His real name was Neil Anderson. Back in 1970, he shared my Solomon House prefect study at Pretoria Boy's High. Neil liked that exotic name, Pecoste. Perhaps his avowal one day to adopt it is why I never found him again, or why at our Boys' High 40 year Reunion, October 2010, he could not be contacted. In many ways, I owe him a thing or two.

Neil taught me the value of words. "That's a powerful word," he would say, and I would immediately weigh in, and revise my options. He taught me the value of body language and the value of the smile; he advocated Dale Carnegie. He taught me the value of accepting an other's and others' values. He was casual to my formality, precise to my carelessness, and laconic to my intensity. And Neil showed me the value of hard work, for he was almost always at his desk, intending to study to become a brain surgeon. He taught me chords on the guitar, Dylan's 'Lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed,' and Cohen's 'Bird on the wire'. Though I still do not feel comfortable with the former, I cannot help but think of my long-lost friend whenever I play and sing the latter. But of all the lessons Pecoste taught me, the most valuable would be: The Code of Silence.

No, it was not that rather debilitating boyhood code of don't fess up or squeal on another; it was that experientially empowering practice of seeing to it that 'what the right hand does, the left should not necessarily know'. It involved doing works of good, of leading from behind, of living in the grace of an inner power thanks to the self silently knowing it'd rescued the fallen bird, given to charity, helped out another, or instigated a productive project without overt or known reward for the self. In fact, without either of us able then to articulate it, Pecoste was advocating the highest of mans' virtues in each of the very many epistemological models: the selflessness of action on behalf of others without the need to be acclaimed.

Well, there have been times in my life when I've been the recipient of such actions by others. The essential lesson of leading from behind was affirmed for me during my undergraduate studies in the late 70's in Canada, by Dr. Mary Richardson, who pulled me aside and first introduced me to the concept of gifted education. "True giftedness," she intoned, "is in the art of giving of the self to others; it is at the top of every hierarchical model. Begin with Kohlberg." 


Well, Kohlberg began in me the acquisition of an upwards spiral of evolutionary paradigms, such as Maslow, Johari, Gregoric, Dillinger, Dabrowski, Clare Graves, and Wilbur's Integral Holonics. Each concept empowered me with yet more articulation, yet paradoxically, in the very esoteric mention of their models, perhaps they now leave you feeling lost in my wordiness, disassociated by my ramble. "Knowledge is just a tool," I can hear Pecoste Trugg remonstrate, "never presume someone without knowledge doesn't have the potential." 


"But even more important than having a specific knowledge," Professor Mary Richardson would remind us, "would be to inculcate a sense of enduring interest in and generosity toward others."

Well, as the continuing recipient of such generosity, I am humbled, grateful, and indebted. I owe a thing or two, indeed.


The code of silence? Pay it forward.

What Judas would not say, Amen!