Lancaster Lessons (second half)

 

We are about to leave the Mosquito when the young man pauses. He turns toward the other side of my display table. He points at the music-speaker to the right, and leans forward to inspect another model plane atop it, displayed seemingly to float on the air. “And this one is an Avro Lancaster, yes?”

 “Yes. Even more significant to me. Had a model of one as a boy. Played thoughtlessly with it.”

 “Hm. Boys play. But now, like that Mosquito there, you knew someone else who’d flown one?”

 “No. But M’Lady Nancy Sinclair’s twin brother, Denys Street, flew one. His plane was also shot, and he also had parachuted out, but he too was captured and sent to Stalagluft Three, just like his counterpart, the Mosquito pilot, Denys Sinclair.”

 “Counterpart? They both were called Denys?”

 “Yes. And more than that. They met on the prisoner train when on their way to Stalagluft Three, became firm friends, and were in the same bunkhouse for the next four years in prison. Not only that, but Denys Street, Nancy’s twin brother, told his pal, Denys Sinclair, all about his beloved blue-eyed and beautifully intelligent sister, Nancy; so much so that after the war, when Denys Sinclair was finely free, he searched Nancy out, and the rest, as you’ve learned, is history.”

 “Well, not quite. What happened to Nancy’s brother, Denys Street?”

 “He was one of the fifty caught, and then shot, in the so-called Great Escape.”

 “Really? Wow. There was a movie about that. Right? With Paul Newman?”

 “That motorbike-maniac story was entirely fabricated for the sake of the movie. But Nancy’s pain at the untimely loss of her brother, that way, endures to this day. They were born in 1922, see, and that means he too would’ve been100 this year, had he lived. But neither the mighty-might of the British air force, back then, nor the luck of drawing the right straw was with Denys. And the tragic story of those fifty brave souls who tried to escape has resonated through time. Denys Sinclair did not draw a short straw. Denys Street did. And what followed is a very sad story.”

“All sad? But what about the Sinclair story? After the war, when Denys Sinclair got free, what happened to them? He, and your M’Lady? You said they moved to Australia?”

“I did? Oh? Good listening skills. Yup. They first had their five children. They tried to make a go of a vegetable farm in southern England, a place near Godalming, but the economic after-effect of the war was too strenuous on them, so they emigrated to Oz. Ended up near Perth. Denys taught flying lessons, and M’Lady Nancy taught French lessons. She also did pottery, paintings, furniture upholstering, pot-pourri flower arranging, and recorded-readings for the blind, among other things. She is a most gifted person. But eventually Denys died too. She’s lost a lot.” 

“And she’s still there, near Perth?”

Yup. But she’s here too,” and with that I reach up and touch my heart. “Always.”

 “A bit like these boy-toy planes of yours,” the young fellow smiles at me, “constantly alive with very real and quite profoundly significant memories. Always.”

Mosquito Memories (first half)

 

“And why do you have that one? What is it?” The young man asks, pointing at my model. 

“A Mosquito. They were used extensively in World War Two, for reconnaissance especially.”

 He looks at me askance. “You were in World War Two?”

 “Ha! No. Number Two had a 1941 date. The First World War, as you may know, was during 1914. I was born in the early 1950’s. But the plane in question signifies much to me, particularly since it was flown by the husband of one of my very dearest friends, M’Lady Nancy Sinclair.”

 “A real Lady?” There is no artifice, nor disbelief in him. “Was her husband a Lord Sinclair?”

 “No. But her father was Sir Arthur Street, minister for Air Defense in Great Britain. So, Nancy, quite appropriately methinks, got called M’Lady, by me.”

 “Hm.” The fellow leans forward. He inspects the camouflage and bomb-riggings of the model plane, set on its plinth. He is about to turn away, but I persist. “So that particular plane means a lot to me, since her husband, Denys, flew it, even though I never met him.”

 “And why is that? Did he die during the war?”

 “No. Thank goodness. He was shot down, over Germany. He escaped his plane by parachute, but then was captured, and taken by train to Stalagluft Three. It was a prison encampment for flying officers. Several years later, and only after the famous Great Escape, in which he was not one of the men selected to escape, thank goodness, he was at last set free. He found Nancy, proposed some seven times over to her, and at last they were married. They had five children, three girls, and two boys. Had I been one of their children, I’d be their very youngest.”

 “Hm. So, how’d you meet her then, this Lady Syn…, this Nancy?”

 “Denman Island.”

 His hand lifts, and he points up the channel of Canada’s Georgia Strait, about eight miles from where we now stand in my sea-view den. “Denman? What were you two doing there?”

 “She came up from Down Under. Visited her dearest cousin, a war bride from those olden days, whose husband had settled on Denman. I was busy building my own house there, back then. It’s now nearly thirty years ago. We met by chance, through a mutual friend. Took to each other, right off. She came to Canada every three or four years, back in those days, and we saw each other as much as possible. Then too, our correspondence never let up. With the advent of emails becoming possible, she undertook to get and to learn how to use a computer, back in 2012, despite her being ninety years of age at the time. She still writes to me, to this day.”

 “Still writes? Started emails at 90? Why, that makes her over 100 years old? Really? Wow. So, what do you put her longevity down to?”

 “Asking questions. Curiosity. Being interested in everything and everybody. Like yourself. You might not have asked me about that plane, and we’d both be poorer for bypassing that little Mosquito. Pesky they may be, questions that is, but at least they produce answers.”

 “Ha! Mosquitoes. Pesky. Still, if you don't ask, you'll not know.” Yet still, he asks no further. Still.

Elemental Excavations

 

“Bull!”

“No, it’s true!”

“Then how come you’re climbing down these steep rocks, like a mountain goat? ‘Twelve years in a wheelchair? Hardly able to walk five paces. Then decided to walk again’? I mean, really? You’re having me on,” the younger man scoffed.

Adam, at seventy years of age, fixed his eyes steadily into the young fellow. “It is the years of self-discipline, inculcated since childhood, that has helped. At boarding school, not wanting to be caned instills self-discipline. At conscription into the army, not wanting to be singled out, or to be responsible for the whole troop having to suffer, also establishes self-discipline. And so, bred into the bone, as it were, it was easier, six years ago, to make the decision to be mobile again.” 

The young man stopped talking. He leaned back on his huge and now silent yellow excavator. He puffed on his cigarette. His great bare belly protruded above the beltline of his grease-smeared jeans. Adam waited. The workman pulled out his palm-held very thin phone. He squinted at the little screen. Then, smoke curling up from between his gorilla-like fingers, he tapped with both blackened thumbs at the miniature keyboard. 

Adam waited. At last, feeling somewhat intrusive, Adam tried: “Our modern age, particularly in countries without real strife, allows for persons to become reliant on something else to interest them, to entertain them. Intrinsic reward is not much realized. Most of our interests come from external things. We are easily bored if something doesn’t make things interesting for us. It’d be better perpetually to practice making everything interesting, from within oneself, yes?

“Uh-huh,” the disinterested rejoined. And scrolled through something on his flat little machine.

“Yup,” Adam continued. “We seldom ask the five W’s of others anymore. The television has taught us to not have to question. And curiosity is all but gone. Except for our phones. We always seem to want to know exactly who is binging, or buzzing, or ringing us now.”

“Yup.” The young man’s energy perked up. “You know, this device has more computing power than the first one that landed man on the moon. Everything I want to know is in here. So… why should I learn anything if I can get it instantly? Corrects my spelling. Gives me pictures. Checks my email. Plays my music. Even does my banking. So… what’s your problem with it?”

“With it? Nothing. A great tool. But some of its operators are not as deft with it as you are at handling this giant machine. Not as sensitive at the controls. And while you are constantly having to assess the possible consequences of each maneuver, and the damage it might do if you’re not utterly careful, as isolated as you are in the cocoon of that iron cage atop it, the rest of us can only watch, and listen to your cantankerous noise. Those rocks you pluck out; they have not seen the light of day for perhaps millions of years. And now too they shall have a renewed life, as it were, gathering new dust, arranged according to our whim. Interesting, so to excavate old things to a new light. So too for our habits, our thoughts, our history, our feelings, and… Ha! But at least with it you are making progress. The earth moves.”

The chap looks up at Adam. “And while I must be careful, moment for moment, so too do you, old man. A slip. A fall. It could have serious consequences, not just for you. Your wife too.

Adam smiles. “Yes. I admit it. Consequences. Ha! Glad we dug into this little chat. Thanks.”

Subtle Self-Centricity

This is about you. And me too. We cannot help but see things from our own point of view. Yet some of us are overtly, deeply, self-centric. We can stand in another’s studio and prattle on about a relative of ours who also paints. We can stand among another’s library of books and prattle about the book they have not yet read, or worse, haven’t yet got. We can stand in a custom-built home and prattle about the grand view to see from some other home. Our sense is about ourselves, and how the world, elsewhere from the immediate, affects us.

In the immediate we are a paradox of being. We exist in the moment yet are full of stories about the past, about other things, or about other people. Our own ideas can be limited to a restructuring of what we know, have seen, or can interpret. Naturally so. Yet often the lack of compassion, awareness, insight, or empathy can speak volumes about ourselves, like it or not.

To advocate here for inculcating, as a habit, the 5 x W’s can appear didactic, or patronizing. And yet it is remarkable how little we can practice it. Which of us engages in another’s presence fully, consciously? When with another, how much of that person’s life-story do we absorb, or easily recall? Why can there sometimes be a sense of disconnect? Who among us is so much in ‘the now’ that we can sensibly integrate the other with compassion? What is it that imbues our immediate interests: the evidence before us, or some memory of the past? Where does it end?

Often, during someone else’s speech, we interrupt easily, and draw attention back to the self. We listen not to understand, but to interject with our point of view. Worse, often in our own speech we speak on and on without pause for the other to intervene, easily, with their response, interpretation, or intervention.

Self-centricity is subtle. The ‘I’ in almost everything we apprehend deeply impels our lives. It is a small-meme behaviour at best, but can also be a large-Meme attitude, to our disadvantage. We like certain colours, music, food, fashions, and even vehicles. These things can easily change over time. But not so easily changed are the large Meme adoptions we’ve acquired. They are the ones of our culture, political persuasions, religious affiliations, and sense of morality. At times so very constrained by our childhood beliefs, we eschew the shift we can feel toward having to enlarge, accept, integrate, absorb, or include yet something other into the oeuvre of our own cherished contentions. And thus, evolution, in all its tugs toward enlightenment, gives pause to one easily overcoming oneself.

Self-centricity, at its worst, tugs us away from the other. It tends to make everything directly relatable to the self. It engages life in terms of how life itself affects the self, with little genuine inclusion of the other, for the other’s sake. It can bloat the self. It can diminish or negate the other.

And so, in having read all these words, do they prattle on about you, or are they meant as a subtle reflection on me? At the baseline is this: Do we predominantly give, or do we chiefly take? (And in giving, do we indeed get to feel sufficiently good about ourselves?)

Such can be one’s not so subtle self-centricity.

Doubting Dichotomies

                             (Passing Through Too, oils, 6ft by 3ft 6 ins, by the author)

Series of threes consistently tug at us. Vacillations between the left and the right, or the up and the down, are an awkward thing. Easier to make a stand. Growing up, we mature somewhat easily; we make many choices throughout the seven ages of life, from mewling infant to being big bellied to our arriving at sans sense at all ⁽¹⁾. But perpetually caught in the dichotomy of left or right choices, we generally make Dabrowskian Level One Factor Two decisions ⁽²⁾ and live quite happily within the moral, religious, and political contentions of our ilk. It is in our indecisiveness with too many choices, or with too much time spent in a quandary, that we can feel debilitated. What to do? Inaction can lead to abstention. Without knowing all the facts; with our having too personal an attachment to one side, or the other; or with being bombarded by contrary dis-information; just how is one to decide? And so, ‘sitting on the fence’ becomes a balancing act. But for how long?

Then there is the sheer volume of one’s counterparts that can sway our choices. For whom did you vote? Why? And how dare I be contrary? (That is, unless there be sufficient counterweight to support my own contentions.) But how can we then dance to the same tune?

In the current crisis of dis-information, of the threat of war growing yet more dastardly, of the disappearance of freedom to speak, to protest, to promulgate and publish truthfully, authentically, we are caught up in the fear of being ostracized, jailed, penalized, and dismissed. How to contend ideas without the reprisals of angry, hateful, and personalized projectiles? How to accept that out of 106 essays in the book of Our Stories the diverse participants mentioned The Torah, The Bible, Theory U,  and The Blank Slate? (See images).Then again, how do others get to share their views without being humiliated for still being immured by what occurred in Grade Two? ⁽³⁾ How to nurture maturation to the next Meme? ⁽⁴⁾

Dichotomies, which are in frequent symbolism as revealed in plant seeds, in the structure of our brains, in the fact that we have left and right sides to our bodies, are sometimes overlooked in their essence of being rendered together, in the first place. The one side supports the other; the two sides are linked; the whole makes for the life within. So too for the membrane that divides the whole; it is a semi-permeable line allowing for osmotic transitions ⁽⁵⁾, and as such the division filters out that to which it cannot relate, but certainly feeds off the very chemistry of the ‘opposing’ side. And therein rises the riot; it is in the objectionable sensitivity to ‘the other.’ We eschew those who use big words. We discard those who come across as too fancy. We vilify those whose reactions are evidently immature, hateful, hurtful. We want to beat the bully; kill the killer; and subject those who threaten us to go to their own jails of isolation, cut off from our communication, and blocked at the passes.

Détente appears to be lost. The restoration of friendly relations, the agreement, compromise, and amity that might be forwarded, gets caught up in the division between the dichotomies. East versus West. North versus South. Me, versus You. How sad it is that we do not get on. And is it all because one of us is Liberal, and the other Conservative? Or for that matter, Ukrainian, and not Russian? Or is it because of the lumbering elephant in the room? It is this division-line itself that is the third tug at us; are we not surely best to meet at its interrelationship points, share in the transfer of our talents that it could afford?

We are at a crossroads. The choices are no longer quite so clear, unless they be to be kind, caring, compassionate, considerate, loving, gracious, forgiving, accepting, and integrating. But then again, history has proven that we simply cannot, collectively, do that. Well then, how about you and me; let’s start with us. Hmm? (But then again, indeed, as the song goes, “It takes two to tango!”)

................................................................................................................

(        (1)   Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT 2, SCENE 7

         (2)   Dabrowki web: https://positivepsychology.com/dabrowskis-positive-disintegration

 The theory of positive disintegration (TPD) by Kazimierz Dąbrowski is a theory of character development. Unlike some other theories of development such as Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, it is not assumed that even a majority of people progress through all levels.

         (3)  See Original Grade Theory: Mr. P's Words: Gradual Gradations (mrpswords.blogspot.com)

         (4) See Gravesian Memes: Mr. P's Words: Aspiraling as we Aspire (mrpswords.blogspot.com)

          (5) Osmosis:

[äzˈmōsəs, äsˈmōsəs]

NOUN

1.      biology

chemistry

a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane.

synonyms:

soaking up · sucking up · drawing up/in · taking up/in · blotting up · mopping up · sponging up · sopping up

2.      the process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, etc..

"what she knows of the blue-blood set she learned not through birthright, not even through wealth, but through osmosis"

 

 

Given Gaps

 

(Cover design by Justin Neway; painting by author.)

“Mind the gap!” Loudspeakers in London’s Tube Stations bark out. Between concrete platforms and going elsewhere, one needs mindfulness. All of history would have one aware of the gap between ‘then,’ and now. It is not so much the voids as it is multiple periods of transitions; one is best to practice caution, consideration, and consciousness.

Mind the gap. So it is that five months of intense focus on a project has separated thee from me. Or has it been even longer? Communicating only occasionally, rarely seeing each other, we can feel these great gaps between us. The minutiae of days smudges into months of ordinariness, unless some major event occurs that might best be shared in the moment: Weddings; Funerals; Birthdays; and significant happenstances. These are the milestones of our lives. The rest can be m. o. t. s. (much of the same.) And the days churn into Time’s gap between us; you do not write to me, nor I to you. Compassion for all is our métier.

Mind the gap. So it is that over one hundred Old Boys from The Class of 1970 have each contributed a two-to-three-page essay about the last 50 years of their lives. Intending to encourage and inspire all youths who follow us, the resultant book of Our Stories is to be published, next month, and all proceeds and royalties that the book-sales make shall go as a gift to The School, in perpetuity. And given the privilege of collecting, editing, and formatting the works, as sent in from far-flung outreaches, it has been an intense five months of correspondence, and computer-based focus, and the re-integration of others into our collective lives. The 106 stories are humbling, fascinating, engaging, and challenging too. The gap years between 1970 and now, for each, have proven a trial of searching, encountering, attainments, and enduring. Some essays are profoundly vulnerable. En route the proponents have achieved a sense of enlightenment, wisdom, insight, and peace. For some. For most. Then too, some are still struggling. Living is not equitable. The gaps we mind, for each, vary by degree. Our lives are indeed lessons in the making.

Mind the gap. As differentiated as we are, as long as Time drags between our seeing each other again, between our sharing news, between giving each other a hug, we each have had our days and energy focussed on doing, on being, and on living within the scope of our various interests. And in the background, however subliminally, we’ve been aware of others, been aware of each other, been aware.

Mind the gap. Yes, you’ve been in mind, however ‘now and then’ such mindfulness may be construed. Like leaping from rock to rock in a stream, or turning from day to day in a calendar, the gaps between are vitally important, however minimally we may attend to them, breath for breath, or even in memory.

Mind the gap. Between grade levels, between paradigm shifts, between stages of enlightenment, between you and me there exists the gaps that make for the transition from the concrete discussions about things and people, to the exploration of ideas and hypotheses. That’s where the mind lies, where it creates, in the gaps!

Mind the gap! Distances can be deceptive. Between my shore and that ship, or raft, or the other coast, an ocean of meaning and intent, even as yet unrealized, lies between. It is a gap into which one could drown, or metaphorically, keep swimming. Mindfulness is all. Who?; Where?; What?; When?; are each interesting; but it is the Why? that really intrigues.

Mind the gap! What lies between is the now for now for now. And as we move we are indeed best to appreciate not just where we are going, but how we get there. Step for step. Breath for breath. Gap for gap. Keep caring.

Selfies And Such

 

Each keystroke matters. We too easily make mistakes. It is too bad. When in too much of a hurry to write, between the two of us, we can get too sloppy. It’s its own reward. And a lot depends on our knowing the allotted homonym differences, sure, but somehow, nosing in among the typos, a sense that our standards are slipping, builds. We grow careless. We grow carefree. We grow inordinately causal.

The Buddhist monks, somewhere, make these beautifully wrought mandalas, pebble for pebble. Each piece is carefully handpicked, methodically, and patiently, added to the whole. It’s a meticulous exercise of being aware of the now. And when all over, in historical times, they forbade a capture of the result by camera, and swept the thing over, giving the product but a momentary and brief conclusion. Life is in the moments. It is not a product as much as it is a journey. Thought for thought. Choice for choice. Word for word. Action by action. But nowadays, for whatever reason, the monks not only allow pictures taken of their final product, but some even pose for ‘selfies.’ Indeed, one needs not take oneself too seriously.

‘Selfies’. Is it not interesting how language grows? Even a word like ‘interface’ was not known when I was a boy, let alone ‘internet’. And so too shall communication be affected, such that the effect will be that new coinage and new nomenclature and new syntax and grammar and spelling all meld into what might eventually become the new Esperanto. Back in the 1960’s there was an actual Esperanto school syllabus, and at the time it was no silly-bus for a boy to take a ride on. (Or does my attempt at humour but elicit a hmm from you?) Thing is, like taking selfies, we are nowadays so very self-referenced, and unless we’ve had a direct relationship with something, like having been there, or seen it, we easily are distracted away from the unfamiliar, yet do seek the sensationally new. Old things; old stories; old ideas; historical lessons; these are like old language: stiff and formal and demanding and rigorous and up-tight.

Editing others’ work brings with it a host of compositional and structural rules, yes, but the individual idiosyncrasies of matters of choice are best to prevail. After all, the ancient Egyptians likely imposed a very strictly controlled depiction of human representation in their art. (The song, “Walk Like an Egyptian,” resonates.) But it is difficult to conceive of not one Egyptian, not once, in over three thousand years, being able to render a person as anything other than one dimensional. Nowadays one fortunately has very much leeway. We have sped up individual evolution to absorb, assimilate, include, accept, and have understanding for the very many differences among us, let alone the variegations of speech, spelling, and our inept tapping away at a keyboard. (Predictive spelling can prove quite embarrassing!)

But it is of a larger picture that I write. It is of the differentiation between the fluidity of a generalized acceptance, and the awareness of a preference for precision. Might one be better off to take one’s time to dot one’s I’s and cross one’s T’s? Might one be better off to pause and re-read, before sending, before posting, before implying, before negating, before arguing, before contending, before averring, before bruiting abroad one’s private and heartfelt sentiments, (or even, hereby, proffering one’s pretentious intellectualisms?) In other words, is there a better selfie to be taken, before showing the world one’s mental picture?

Vanity would have us overly aware of what someone else is seeing. We wish to impress. And we do need to feel pride in ourselves. Security allows us, by contrast, not to worry overmuch about a bad-hair day. In the casualness of every-day living, it matters not really what we look like when going out. Nor does it matter, overmuch, what we type like, in messages, and in email, and communication with others, particularly if they are firm friends, or family, or people we instinctually know will not judge us.

But when we leave a picture for posterity, it might be best to have shown off our best, in the first place.