DAY 11) Soul Through Sole

We feel the earth through the bare soles of our feet; we feel the skies with our souls. And barefoot is my comfortable way to be. But bare souled too? For what reasons are we so careful to conceal our truths?

This is the 6^th day in this cottage, intentionally focussed on the single-minded preoccupation of fulfilling my mission to capture the lifetimes of the Street-Sinclair family, and I have but set foot on the porch for afternoon tea only once, and this morning walked along the backyard wall but seven or so steps to take a snapshot of the three Sacred Ibis that came to inspect the racket the Australian Magpies set up at M’Lady Nancy’s dolling out of peanuts. Barefoot, indeed. At least, ever since I’ve been here, I’ve not worn shoes, or socks. And as much as my soles appreciate the feel of wood floors and occasional carpet or tile (or on those two occasions the heat and texture of rough hewn brick) it is my soul that likes being yanked from person to person as the family’s characters commune with others through their very many photos, letters, and memorabilia. I am but the gate keeper, allowing their continued passage. 

One spends so much time concealing oneself from the elements of truth and clarity; is it to protect the self, to protect another, to protect posterity? (Quite the ghostly word that, ‘posterity’).

Am I obtuse? Then try wading through the myriad letters of a most complex and vital family. Their skeletons in the closet they believe they shall forever conceal, but they come rasping from the pages, seeking life renewed from the release of paper clips and the scanning of afresh eyes. And in the tap on the keyboard, and that distinctive yet irreproducible sound of the scanner now making permanent the fading sepias, new ventures are set free from the envelopes and boxes and elastics and albums that have shut up their existence since soon after they were dead. The truth shall find us out. Even after?

Perspective helps. What great grandchild should know the details of some awful death, some long forgotten scandal, or some dripping piece of gossip? What does it serve now to know that Uncle Stanley was a drunkard, Aunt Robyn had verbal diarrhea , and Steve was a.... Well, what’s it serve? We have this presumption that now that they’re dead (or that they have left the room) we may talk about them as if they were not here. We have this presumption that freedom of the press gives us the privilege exactly to know what went on in there. We have an idea that it’ll be interesting, that it’ll sell books, make a movie, and titillate an otherwise bored public. After all, why should history now be dug up unless there are the good old gory and unsavory bits too?  Then again, who dares declare themselves a censor? If the truth is that Aunt Pam smoked, then she smoked! Doesn’t give you licence. Doesn’t mean it’s in your genes.

Thing is, there is nothing really to conceal about the Sinclair or Street family. These are honourable people leading honourable lives through dreadful times. Sure, there is the reaction from this one or that one to events as they occur, but of scandal and betrayal there is none. Rather, the conflict of the saga is from dealing with the externals, the wars, the economic conditions, and the death after death due to the circumstances that vital lives tend to be drawn toward. It would have been easier for them to have stayed home and to have watched TV, listened to the radio, read the paper. But outside real life was going on, and these families ventured out, and met it square on. They met others, too. Satellite families.

Bare foot but content, determined of purpose, and with stars for souls, these are the metaphors that apply to the men and women in M’Lady’s life. And yet, at the end of the day, are they not more or less just the same sorts of people as we? In earth we grow roots. Do we but reach up to stir at the heavens? 

DAY 10) Reflected Glories

These are not 12 chairs facing us, they are ghosts. Which everyday chair indeed does not still resonate with the weight of those who have visited it? We leave not necessarily scars on the blank surface of the future, nor on the passage of the past, but we leave the record of that which was, however intangible. And how can there possibly be a certificate, an award, a plaque given for each moment of goodness, every accomplishment? Even so, many tangible rewards are allocated chiefly by competition, and the ‘also ran’, though they may have been hobbled with blisters and not had the advantage of the expensive shoes with the check mark saying ‘just do it’, what of them? It is one thing to be Chairman of The Board, but where would she be were the other chairs not in attendance? We human beings are made more by our connections, dependence, reliance, affection, care, consideration, and awareness of each other. So sayeth these Secular Sermons, indeed. (And you’d think that each and everybody would say ‘Amen’.)

“But I haven’t got a certificate to prove that I have achieved anything,” M’Lady Nancy confessed last night, in full mind of these 15 weighted-down chairs surrounding us, she who had amassed the museum like hoard of almost every conceivable scrap of paper and photograph of the history of her family. There are First and Second World War records, certificates, awards, letters, postcards from the 10 main men in her life, Sir Arthur, Douglas, Pat, twin brother Denys, and her husband Denys, with their sons, Ian and Nick; then there was Perry (who lived in the States so he and Nancy lived alternately between Oz and U.S.); after which was a man in his 90’s, called Boy. M’Lady has also every school certificate and card and memorabilia from back in the 50’s of her five children, all the way to the present. (In the twenty years of our correspondence she has keep every letter of mine, stored chronologically.) So too for the others, those silenced ghosts now alive and sitting staring at us, affirming our efforts to keep going. M’Lady has the bundles of letters and awards and certificates in folders and plastic wrap and appended by paper clips and under elastic. The 5 main women in her life have their accord too. Denise, her mother, who died when Nancy was two. Tante  Angele, her mother’s younger sister, who subsequently married Nancy’s father (Sir Arthur) and took on the role of mother to the four children, Douglas (the offspring of another man, Rodin) , Patrick, Denys, and Nancy herself. Then there are Nancy’s daughters, Linda, Diana, and Fiona. And of all 15 persons only 3 are still alive! They are M’Lady herself, and her two daughters, Linda, and Fiona (all older than me). “Makes it all seem so staggering, on paper like that,” M’Lady says, as she looks around balefully at the stirring chairs, with their name tags. “But they live on,” I say. “We honour their lives, and we leave a record for the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the future.”

A person leaves one’s mark. The planet feels each footstep. Tree roots register one’s passing. Ants are crushed beneath one’s feet. Birds are disturbed off their nests, scared away from their food. Fish dart away at shadows. Deer bolt. We eat. We breathe. We reproduce. It is at is. And we humans give each other accolades and awards and appear to depend so very much on the approbation of others. It is our joy and our curse. Perhaps deep down we know that our essential connection is made ‘more better’ by the accomplishments of any one of us. Nay, even more, our essential connection is made more-better by the dignity we accord even the most misfortunate of us; he who will not see his value to others. And in that light, we grant a certificate to such an one as M’Lady Nancy, that of gratefulness for the gift she has bestowed on all of us, Keeper of The Records. We are richer by it. We learn. Or the ghosts of each of our pasts may feel that we have not honoured their contribution, as we perpetuate mankind’s mistakes. 

9 B) QANTUM CONSIDERATIONS

------Original Message------
From: SHR CCEXEC
Sender: Helen Panourgias
To: Richard Michelle-Pentelbury
Subject: RE: Qantas Executive Relations Mr Pentelbury
Sent: 5 Feb 2013 05:12

Ref HP/2013/010371

Dear Mr Pentelbury
Penny is on annual leave and I am now handling your concerns.
I have had a look at your booking and noted the upgrade was not placed in for your flight for QF 581.
Please be assured I am happy to arrange the space available upgrade for your return flight QF 580 on 7 March.
Thank you for your kinds words that I have certainly passed on to Fiona and Penny.
We appreciate your continued support of Qantas and hope everything goes smoothly for your journey home.

Kind regards
Helen
Executive Relations Qantas Airways Ltd Address: QCE3 203 Coward Street | Mascot NSW 2020 Tel: 02 9691 3208 | Fax: 1800 613 844 | Email: ccexec@qantas.com.au

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Dear Helen (and Fiona and Penny),
I am surprised and delighted at your caring considerations, thank you! In the interest of ethics, however, I choose to apprise you that your stellar desk check-in clerk at Perth, a Julie Showbrook, (please see my essay about it from my Blog below) was most courteous and attentive, pushed me in my wheelchair herself to the waiting area (since i cannot push myself) and secured an upgrade seat for me on February 01 from Sydney to Perth. While i am most grateful for your considerations, I do not think it right that you be under the impression that i did not receive your complementary service. You may see from my Blog that i am on a 40 day and 40 night sojourn, and that the momentum of my M'Lady Nancy's Memoire project is gaining mythical proportions. That you and Qantas have been so instrumental in assisting me is noted with deep gratitude. Should you still see fit that i be upgraded on March 07 i shall not decline, given my physical limitations, but i totally do not expect it as such.
I hope you will avail yourself of the Blog. (There is even a picture of me with the Qantas bag you gave me, ha!) In the meantime, the pertinent essay relating to Qantas is appended below. I post the Blog on Facebook, where i have quite a substantial and growing following. You will find this quote from paragraph four (written on the day i travelled) to be quite germane to the gist of this letter: "We behave according to codes of conduct. Ethics, though situational, is an expectation we easily break when we are not thinking. That's why we check our change. That's why we zip up our pockets, need security, have distrust. Ethics has as its first tenant that we do what we can to make the best for all. Problem is, selfishness easily gets in the way."
In that light then, may you too become invigorated.
Sincerely, Richard   P.s. The Blog link on my web is at: www.RichardMichellePentelbury.com      [Forgive my immodesty Enuff SAID! Ha!]

DAY 9) Beyond Drivel and Dross

“One’s life flashes before one’s eyes,” that’s what they say. But for some the pictures must surely take longer than another. I know certain quite agéd individuals whose lives have been born, bred, raised, and bedded with all of their stages of maturation in close proximity, as if the caterpillar and the pupae and the butterfly never left the atrium. The richness of such a life is not at issue; the variegation is. M’Lady Nancy Sinclair’s life by juxtaposition intertwines with that of her titled father, Sir Arthur Douglas Street, and her impressively accomplished brothers. They are Douglas (actually the son of Auguste Rodin, that most thoughtful of sculptors); Pat (awarded the M.C. and a host of accolades); and Denys (actually Nancy’s twin, and the one caught and shot in The Great Escape). Their stellar lives complement her own achievements as a nurse in the war, and then as wife and mother to her five children, all growing up under the demands of having immigrated to Australia. Her husband (the other Denys) was with her twin brother in that awful concentration camp, Stalag Luft 111. And Nancy saw her husband eventually die with cancer, as did the next man with whom she fell in love, Perry, and then, meeting again at octogenarian ages for the first time after having met way back at war on a troop ship, came Boy. He died after but five years. So very many deaths, and so very much life!

In the dining room we have the twelve-person table cluttered, and ten stations of chairs piled with pertinent documents and photos being sorted for the Memoire: tagged seats that house the contents of the lives still surrounding her, all dead, except for two daughters. ‘M’Lady Nancy’s Memoires’ the master-script on the computer screen reads. And the missive is well on its way.

There is a rhythm to life that most of us prefer. Meals are preferred at regular hours. Bedtime. Wake up time. Work time. And take a break time. And our reaction to things is sometimes not so much a measure of response as it is an evoked emotion. I catch myself surprised as I wept today over the actual letter sent from the prison camp by Nancy’s beloved brother, back in 1943. That a real life wrote that, that he was truly there, and that his fate was so undeniably about to unfold into being actually shot to death has the effect of wrenching one entirely away from the self. It is indeed a catharsis. Why else do we pay to go the movies? Why else suspend our disbelief as the actor who has played all sorts of other roles convinces us that he is now yet another guy, with yet another name, living yet another lifetime? We enjoy the hardship and adventure and stress and quandary of an ‘other,’ just so long as it does not happen to us!

Equanimity is a thing of grace. To witness M’Lady (at almost 91) clearly affected by the unveiling of the past is to watch pain relived. Yet to see her swim in the stream of its passage with her eyes also on the present, her gratitude for life, and her courage and fortitude and dignity and twinkles of humor is a remarkable lesson on how to live. To respond to it, not just to react. To make choices, not just to acquiesce. M’Lady makes our meals, did the laundry (chastised me gently enough for not checking for the tissue that had her having to brush overlong at the wash load) serves up and then washes the dishes too. Yes, I do what I can to help, but mostly I am in my wheelchair at her machine and scanner, neck-brace holding my head up as I type, going over the multiple edits she still finds time to do toward adjusting my transcription of her original tapes. Life may be flashing before her eyes, but it is answering her terms. What a paragon of life being lived just for itself!

DAY 8) Unraveling Knots

Eternity has the figure eight on its side as a symbol: 00. There are no mistakes, only lessons. And holding an actual prisoner of war diary from 1943 yesterday, and seeing the hand writing, the exquisitely detailed drawings, and knowing that it was the dreaded concentration camp tome of Nancy’s husband Denys Sinclair, the person who actually played the gramophone record while the 50 who had drawn the short straw went down into the long escape tunnel of what was to become known as The Great Escape, filled me with reverence for the past. We build all our lives on happenstances, circumstances, chance, and choice.

These three a.m. sessions of my writing this Blog pale so very much in comparison to what Nancy’s husband to be, and his best friend, Nancy’s brother wrote while in the Stalag Luft 111 Gestapo Kriegsgefangenenlager. Nancy has also several postcards they were allowed to write, each of course highly censored. The past is as real as this moment of my typing. And it finds its way based on what we do, as well as by what is done unto us. I am up early because of jet lag. Yesterday was a 20 hour day. But I gain sleep; the night before I was up at two. And it was my choice to come here. And I am well fed and well quartered. There is no guard at the gate.

Because of this, that. Because Nancy’s twin brother, Denys, drew a short straw he was one of the 50 to escape. And because he escaped, like all the escaped prisoner of war pilots of Stalag Lufte 111, he was caught, and he was shot. The verbatim transcript from a German officer, stamped Top Secret, reveals Himmler to be the comptroller. Because of Himmler’s decision despite much dissuasion, because of Himmler’s unyielding ardour to provide example to all other Prisoner Of War would-be escapees, the famous 50 were shot. Famous? Who will still know their names? Who knew them, besides family and friends, even then? Recently we’ve had children killed with a heroic teacher trying to defend them from a crazed gunman. I cannot recall her name. Do you?

Nancy's shock still could not bring to recall the year of the suicides. “I think it was weeks, maybe months apart,” she told me last night, around 9:30 p.m. And her body subtly writhed with pain in the relating of a dreadful period in her life when both her beloved sons, in their 30’s, took their own lives. Ian was found hanging from a tree. His younger brother, a short while later, out of great grief and inability to deal with what his brother had done, tied a rope onto a balcony railing, and jumped over. Both left a wife, and both had two children. Because of this, that. Then Nancy’s second eldest daughter, Diana, just as recent as 2008, having contracted cancer, died. Contracted? As if we bargain and sign and seal and deliver our lives? And yet, we do.

Choices. Denys Sinclair, the best friend made in the concentration camp by Nancy’s twin brother, Denys Street, subsequently sought out Nancy, and married her. And they had five children, and in 1959 they immigrated to Australia. The confusion arises in names. A twin brother shot at wartime, Denys Street. That brother’s best friend, Denys Sinclair, finding Nancy and then marrying her. Add to that Nancy’s Belgian mother, Denise, and clarification attends whomever we discuss. Linda, Diana, Ian, Fiona, Nick. Or Arthur, Denise, Douglas, Denys. Nancy. Pat.

So too for much of life. Clarification becomes paramount. Lest our mistakes are ones we pay for. 

DAY 7) Precise Accuracy; Impeccable Correctness

Precison has its place. This computer certainly exacts it. No misplaced comma or mistouched key tap is forgiven. It is either right or wrong. My iPad has an intuitive Word Processor program (rarely a disadvantage). It will make of me writing disavantaage automatically the correct spelling. Not so for Nancy's computer. It has as yet no Microsoft Word, and so it clunks away on a noisy keyboard with the unmistakeable need for absouute, precise and imeccable accuracy.

In our typical ease with synthesis, Nancy discusses with me the future of children being implanted with micro-chips so that the acquisition of knowledge (accurate bytes of information) is no longer the primary focus of education, rather, the ability to synthesize, process, and manage knowledge will be. Ha! Imagine a child not programmed with a Word Processor (like this computer). The inequality of it would be outrageous. Yet as soon as we establish pricing (and one can foresee that coming) we shall indeed have inequality (again). "Oh, you want Google Earth Australia, well that will cost you $X's more!" In fact, my Canadian Garmin GPS upgrade maps to include Australia wanted more money, so I declined and did not bring it. Is that why Anthony Brink and I got lost in the Newtown suburb of Sydney? Is that why Nancy's daughter could not fine the turn-off to the shortcut? I was not equitable to the task; I did not have sufficient wherewithall to be precise on the given occasion.

The marriage of art and science is everywhere. Even this 'HP All-in-One PC and Monitor ín one gives you a simple, elegant, and tower-free desktop' the label on the right top corner reads. It is a thing of beauty. But it it is entirely unfogieving. Not a single mistke is allowed! It will record it, leave it on the otherwise blank page of your progress, and it will not auto-correct, make further suggestions, prompt for better accuracy (as if accuracy can be graded by superlatives, ha!) and will not marry your art with its science. It wants impeccable truth, absolute honesty, and actual factual precision.

Human beings actually progress toward that predominant need. Were the word predominant to be left out of the aspirant's ongoing progress one would become a robot. And stay there. Indeed, many a movie has been made about the need to program a robot with emotions. As if emotions are scientific, karma like: because of this, that. There is a Newtonian need for reaction endemic to the impulse; an equal and opposite reaction to overcoming inertia. Lost you? Go download a Garmin, download the Smithsonian, download the Guru. Oh, cannot find it? Cannot afford it? Well then, you should have taken the other exit, the one that says free parking but only for ten minutes: don't waste my time! You're cut off. The program you want will not run. And no, you cannot share the blinking Blink www.blinkit.net.au stick! It is registered to one user only! And even if you could, if you bypass the firewall and use Nancy's password (as if the thing was your own) you could not use the other most important tool to your progress, the printer. The Epson Stylus NX635 series cannot be shared on your own brain-space, er. your computer. It is licensed to one user only. Go get your own. (Well, if I did, I might not call my offspring Epson, ha!)

There are seven Memes in the First Tier of Spiral Dynamics. (Yes, they are heirarchical; real life is not fair). Within each big Meme of predominating behaviour are smaller memes of predominating habits. The dynamic interchange of all small meme habits as well as big Meme behaviours allows for the fluidity of mankind to interact. It is only those persons who create firewalls of impeccable need for compliance that frustrate those who would otherwise circumvent the laws, the covert expectations, the unbreakable traditions, the sacrosant regulations. As much as we clealry need our planes to fly safely and accurately, our vehicles to stop when told, our microwave not to overcook, and our ir-conditioning to work, it is the fluidity and flow of our response to things that defines us. We keep at the computer until it works, or, as Nancy has offered, we "Thow the damn thing out of the window! Let's go buy a better one!" Ha! Life, indeed, is not always given so simple a solution.  

 

DAY 6) Seeped In A Sixth Sense

Sepia is the tone of the past. At least for me. Not quite rendered Chaplenesque in its reconstruction, but certainly not seen in vivid colours. The 1959 videotape of the arrival of M'Lady Nancy's family by ship to Australia, their five children happy and vital, the sky very blue and life as instant as is the present was at odds with my preconceptions. The past is like that, often at odds with what we think it really was. The indistinct edges and grainy imagery of that which has already passed is romanticized, or often conversely made worse than it actually was, or made even more particular and precise. We omit details. We conjure others. We restructure. We imagine. Even our feelings become a fantasy.

My Australian friend Mike Jablonski once gave me a memorable analogy about memory. He likened it to a computer's Word file that you open to view, make even the smallest of alterations, and then close down in save mode. When opening it again it is the new file that you alter yet again, and so on, each time, ad infinitum. Ha!

Ninety year old Nancy leans forward on occasion, peering deeper into the motions on the TV monitor, her family growing up before her eyes. A DVD has been made of a collection of old family handy-cam videos, impressively patched together. We watched the children grow through the years from infants to her eldest daughter Linda's graduation as a nurse. Sometimes Nancy waves at them, exclaims, blows her long deceased husband, Denys Sinclair, a kiss. Both sons and one daughter are dead. Dead. It is a word with finality. I ask her if she's alright. "Oh yes," she responds, genuinely."It's all in the past. Some of it was awful, but the children were happy, and one cannot change the past, you know. We have to get on with living!"

There is a movie called The Sixth Sense. It would have us believe that ghosts are commonplace. As I type it is 4:32 a.m. in this dark old house. There are unfamiliar noises everywhere. The next door neighbours were up at 2:10 a.m., doing an electric guitar and drum practice, their riffs and laughter and beery sounds penetrating across the way, waking me up. But by 2:30ish they fell into silence. And I, now awake and restless, hear this house breathing in the dark. Eventually I arose and used Nancy's computer to check my email. Now I am back in bed, typing on my iPad. The twin bed next to me has my ineffective lap-top computer on it. All my hanging clothes are packed in the cupboard. The fold-up items are in the bureau. The room is declared mine, but the ghosts of other people are come to watch. In this space much older men than I have slept, Perry. Boyo, and passed away. And the cottage itself, cracked and creaking and belaboured in its very existence, has a story after a story to tell, or to bury.

Nancy and her eldest daughter Linda (also older than me) picked me up at Perth airport. Getting away from it became an ordeal in the intense heat of the day. The meter swallowed up her ticket. The gate attendant was not there. The turn-off to the short-cut was not found. The car's air-conditioning was broken. And then, once the 30 odd broiling minutes of the drive to Guildford was achieved, we came inside Flinds's Cottage to delightful coolness, to a glass of welcoming bubbly, to presents of Canadiana, and to toast the recapturing of history. Really, her-story. Yes? The sixth sense surrounds us inasmuch as we remake ourselves based on memory (even if in sepia tones) and then, in a spirit of acceptance, let it go.