I’m definitely amazed…!

I picked up the book in the image — a book I had been anticipating for weeks — and was crying by page 2: recognizing elements of both myself and my son in the first wonderful description of John’s autistic offspring James (the principal character); then, a few pages later, in John himself — although, as I wrote to my son, “the tables are turned with us, I think: me, the autistic father; you, the mega-talented [one]”. Autism can be, and frequently is, a family trait: inherited — at least partially, in my case, I am pretty sure — from my amazing dad. How much of it I have passed on myself I am not at all sure. Plus… it really doesn’t matter. What I do know is that my son truly is multi-gifted, musically (and technically): probably with the encouragement of a whole bucketful of helpful genes from my erstwhile concert-pianist mum, and a few random droplets from me.

And so is James: incredibly talented! (And, like my son, plays the bass southpaw, despite being right-handed.) Many people who are autistic have a ‘superpower’ (or defiantly and knowingly claim that autism itself is their superpower): and his includes in-depth knowledge of huge swathes of rock/pop music; the ability to perform that music to a very high standard indeed, singing, or playing different instruments; as well as absolute, or perfect, pitch.

James, though, struggles to communicate: he “has experiences that he cannot express in words”.

Would in thy palm dissolve…

Conditionality
Provoked by yet another hospital visit — this one more promising than most… — and therefore composed over a watchful, thoughtful night.

…but be sure
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty and to be fear’d, than my condition,
Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down…
— Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I

Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
— Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

smooth is a soft word; soft is not — it speaks
of a lover’s leaving: the latch that drops,
catches and calls; a lapse of the caution
that pulled the stillness of the prior world closed

closed is not ever close — bodies touching
may hold unknowable souls, or stories
consciously untold; can cling to silence
fashioned from flints of fear, pointed with pain

pain is anything and everything we
wish it were not — the short sharpness of a
cat’s playful claw; the ceaseless cremation —
deep within its eye — of stars undying

undying is not living, nor is it
the phoenix’ echoed resurrection — mere
hope-filled fancy for a latch that never
lifts nor falls; for a blade pared soft and smooth

Listen to the waves against the rocks…

It was the top of page 212 that unlocked the floodgates I had been blinking back all day:

For people who are in continual pain, the relationship with bodily risk is different. Pain is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to limit your time with pain, not encourage it.
    For people who live with fatigue, the relationship with effort is different. Exhaustion is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to preserve yourself from fatigue, not encourage it.
— Polly Atkin: Some of Us Just Fall

Anyone — and it probably is a one (so thank you, dear reader!) — who has followed this blog over the last eleven years or so (even when it has vanished into the haze of forgetfulness, or weirdly veered down the path less travelled by) will understand my cathartic tears: disability, along with (for me) its constituents pain, fatigue (sans sleep), and an overwhelming desire to walk (when I shouldn’t), are the chief characters found amongst the subplots cunningly pushed through these pages, as they are throughout my life. Since three other motorists did their best to render me immobile (or worse), and (much later) my heart suddenly stopped (ostensibly because of a drug I was taking to alleviate one of the main aspects of the disability caused by those earlier collisions, but actually caused by a congenital genetic mutation), disability and illness have become intertwined both in my life and in my mind (although possibly in different ways). They have also become my necessary guides (although possibly not always in a good way).

The weight of this sad time we must obey…

I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the house-top.
– Psalm 102:7

It may have happened a million times. Or it may have happened just this once. Not that it matters. Not to me. Not really. But to the birds, almost certainly. Preeminently the lone shadow which still sings… – Shakespeare’s “substance of a grief” made manifest.

Lockdown diary #2: Spare your arithmetic, never count the turns…

And then – suddenly; startlingly; steadfastly… – it is Sunday. The chilling, seemingly fixed north-north-easterly – ferrying in yet one more ferocious (but not this time vacuous) official foreboding of its own, in the form of a frigid wind-speed alert… – seemingly purifying the pavement of all pedestrians. All the silver/grey/black cars, however, immune to its volitions, are stationary: as they still – thankfully – remain locked to their owners’ homes – many warmed with the rainbows and soft toys that demonstrate love, hope, and temporary happiness. [Andrà tutto bene. “All will be fine.” (We wish. Fervently.)]

The cooling breeze – the cooling day – it brings is concretely cleaner; and, as I circumambulate the churchyard (the building at its heart now closed even to such prayer), I launch my atheist’s supplication quietly upstream: craving continuing clarity, and everlasting expanded green spaces to breathe within. At the exact instant I traverse the main, southern entrance, the air resonates with the midday chimes. I feel blessed. Perhaps this presages something. But… – and I hesitate…. Benevolent… or… the other kind…?

I choose the former; and ramble onwards.

Lockdown diary #1: By St Mary’s churchyard, I sat down and wept…

Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
– Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (Scene III)

Every day is Sunday now. Lawnmowers hum in the low sun like the reinvigorated bees that surround them, joyous in the warm spring light. Pelotons of mouthy mamils speed perilously through the village, leaning inattentively around busy, sometimes blind bends. Small happy huddles of prattling people descend from the windmill in their mudsome wellies. And yet a peculiar – (mostly) car free? – silence presses sharply on my eardrums more painfully than any aeronautic descent. This time it is my mind – my soul – tumbling rapidly (once more) towards perdition.

I find myself again with my dear old friend, William Shakespeare…

I never thought to hear you speak again.
– Shakespeare: Henry IV, part II (IV.v.90)

I was walking back into the arms of a lifelong friend – sadly, one not seen for quite some time. Hence the ferocity, sincerity, and length of the resulting hug. I wasn’t quite sure why I was there, though, to be honest. Although I had enjoyed the plays I had (relatively) recently seen him perform in – Henry IV, part I, Henry IV, part II, and Death of a Salesman – I was not a major fan of Antony Sher; and his presence on stage is therefore usually not enough to pull me in.

This is not why I had avoided his King Lear, though: that was because Michael Pennington’s incredible inhabitation of the role had ‘spoiled’ the play for me: in much the same way as Pippa Nixon’s perfection (in 2013, goodness me!) had ‘ruined’ the RSC’s current production of As You Like It. Which is one reason why a short run of a new two-hander was the occasion for my re-entry into the RSC’s hallowed headquarters – particularly to be enfolded in the arms of my favourite theatre, the Swan – rather than one of Will’s very, very best, in the main auditorium.

With being away from the place for so long, physically and mentally – I had bought too many tickets in the interim, only to cancel them again and again at the last moment because of my health… – I wasn’t aware that Kunene and the King (directed by Janice Honeyman) even existed. However, Michael Billington’s perspicacious review lit a spark deep inside me. Although it would take a while for the kindling to fully ignite.

For going out, I found, was really going in…

Yesterday – coupled with a developing desire to prove my brittle body once more able – the weather beckoned me far beyond the longing windows of home: with the high-cloud-shrouded sun at my back, and a sluggish breeze easing its surging heat. My first thought upon fastening the garden gate was of the church as objective; but primal instinct pushed me further – to revisit last year’s iterative ascent through Tysoe Hangings, and onwards to Upton House. With every initially uncertain step taken with conscious pain and caution, I crossed the main road close to Church Farm Court; eased my rucksacked self through the metal gate; and prayed that my body (and resolve) would be resilient enough. All I could do was walk, and discover if I could also achieve my heart’s desire….

Where, last year, there had been wheat, was now linseed (and where there was linseed – on the plateau beyond Sugarswell Cottages – I would find wheat): a four- to five-year rotation that seems increasingly fashionable and profitable. Sandy soil under this brilliant cobalt crop was beginning to fissure, though; and the meadow’s margins were dune-like in their desiccation. (Even in so sparse a crop, skylarks nested: their sweet purling such a soothing soundtrack.)

A sequence of opticalimericks…

A diminutive detachment of double-quick-drafted ditties… to thank the wonderful people at Dr C P Grey Opticians for being so friendly and considerate.

A helpful opticians named Greys
Took all of my glasses to glaze:
     As, transpiring with age,
     My view of the page
Is blurred, like a work of Monet’s.

I need quite a large range of specs
As my long and short sight are both wrecks:
     So some are for local;
     My best – varifocal –
Can see, though, the tick and T Rex.

I have goggles for typing and Tweeting,
And others for reading and eating.
     The former are focused
     At a tad further locus;
The latter are much nearer meeting.

My eyewear for outside must fade,
Or at least be a much darker shade:
     As I can’t face the light
     When it’s overly bright;
But at night I can unbarricade.

Making a spectacle of myself… – or something….

Paradise Regained…

So let extend thy mind o’er all the world,
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend.

It was an email from my good friend Paolo that did it. Not directly, of course. Just a little nudge; which, in turn, morphed into a diminutive, but nagging, suggestion; which, gnawing at a widening area of brain-cells, wouldn’t let go. Thirty minutes later, I had changed into some light walking trousers, a thin T-shirt, and a medium-weight fleece. (Although the only marks in the sky were man-made – the number of planes travelling over Tysoe having seemingly increased in the last year or so – the Met Office warned of northerly twelve mile-an-hour winds: making seventeen Celsius feel like fourteen.)

A double whammy (of hits and histamine…)

Two migraines at once is a massive achievement:
Like banging your head on the wall, then the pavement.
One stems from the nerves that are totally frizzled;
The other from food that I shouldn’t have sizzled.

Please click on the two ‘Poems’ tabs, above, for more of the same (and even more of the different…)!

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none…

Until this musical year (because my health has become both a priority and a burden), on one Tuesday each month – and throughout that long day – you would have found me sat in Stratford ArtsHouse, behind the Orchestra of the Swan’s remarkable cello and double-bass sections, laptop or iPad (and keyboard) on my lap, basking in the splendour of their talent and sound: as they rehearsed for that evening’s concert; whilst I started to make notes for my ensuing review (despite frequent, extended drifts of concentration: when either those notes would be left untouched; or the score I was following would be left unturned).

Here was a refuge – and of the most glorious and comforting kind – away from the daily tribulations and devastations of disability. Here, my increasing deafness no longer mattered; nor my Asperger’s. I was amongst friends – people (impressively gifted ones, at that) who would not judge me, but would treat me as their equal (which I am not) – absorbed in some of the greatest creations (instruments and music) that humanity has managed to conjure up.

Look, Ma! No wires…!

I know it’s a little late in the month for an epiphany; but – despite its tardiness in not only time, and some other dimensions – Tuesday morning was the occasion for a rather remarkable and personal one.

I have written on here, before, about my struggles with increasing deafness: particularly my hard-won aural relationship with music and theatre. I have also detailed how – in the process of enabling these acts; of wringing out every single gram of what is left of my hearing… – I have begun to morph into something of a cyborg.

Until Tuesday, all of my efforts had been based around maximizing the amount of sound entering my head through my ears: either via my hearing aids, or with various combinations of headphones and amplification. My latest (and longest-lasting) setup (sans hearing aids) – after much experimentation; and taking into account the recommendations and experiences of those also ‘deaf’ – consists of a pair of AudioMX AX‑05 circumnaural headphones, plugged into a FiiO K5 desktop headphone amplifier: into which itself was slotted FiiO’s Alpen 2 DAC and headphone amplifier (which could therefore also be used on its own outside the house); and into which (finally) was piped (or, rather, cabled) the sound from my iPhone (on which I keep all my Apple Music playlists).

He knew how to keep Christmas well…

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!
– Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Three months ago, I wrote about my inchoate struggle with food allergies. And then went perfunctorily wheesht… – especially concerning the related battles I ended up fighting as my former fine fettle fell away….

A man’s whole life can be changed by one book…

Dear Ta-Nehisi –

I am truly sorry. I did not know. (And had not searched, researched, or inquired.) I did not know the burden you have always worn – and still wear. I did not know what – or how; or why – your eyes bear witness; your mind carries; your heart feels. And I apologize for being afraid – lost in the humid canyons of Richmond, Virginia – when I did not know what it was to fear.

But you loaned me your eyes; shared fragments of your soul with me. And, perhaps, I began to understand. A little, anyways. Thus, even if I make mistakes in doing so, I had to reach out to thank you – as well as apologize. To say thank you for the streams of tears; the laughed recognition of the similar and the dissimilar; the sympathy and empathy. (It is not hard to make me cry, to feel; but this was something fresh, which filled me anew.)

And the courage never to submit or yield…

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell
Pain, it appears, has no appointed programme; nor consequent sleep any scheduled assignation. Alive (afterwards) to the fact that I had spent too much of my day in writing – itself a diversion from the devouring distress of a deepening migraine, gnawing at my left eyeball like some resolute rodent after rotting fruit – it was, however, the subsequent clumsiness – born of fading concentration; my proprioception misty and maladroit (even at the best of times) – that was the crucial moment’s mainspring: an instant unwinding, a lightning strike cascading through my stricken, confounded limbs; rapidly unfurling its coercion, before reconvening all its clout, condensed, at the accustomed spot, speck… the spike where my circuits were sabotaged so very long ago.

What hath night to do with sleep?
No manner of oscitant opioid, lethargic anxiolytic, or torpid tricyclic would rid me of my wretchedness and wakefulness: an expected early night failing fast; successive struggles satisfying me that the only remedy – however short-lived – should be yet more distraction: my boots, recuperating by the front door, cajoling me, inveigling exercise and exploration; demanding to get back on my feet.

Windmill Hill revelation…

The village yet damped-down beneath the oil of night; the only report, the high-pitched, mock-bark fracas of fox-cub. In the nucleus of nautical dawn, all is grey: green-grey grass; mauve-grey cloud; brown-grey stone; black-grey horizon – the world the colour of mallard, wood-pigeon, blackbird, and rook.

Leaving the Shipston road, the burble of an old valve radio being spun between stations grows with the wheat. My footsteps and stick-falls are silent, here: but still that splashing of song sooner turns trickle; soon turns stream; turns river; turns waterfall – drenching me in an incessancy of resonant comfort; drowned merry in a sea of skylarks. To my right, a crisp rustle of stalk. Then muffle of noiselessness. Only as I move on, the blades once more immobile, threat dissipated or dissolved, does the torrent of Matins restart.

The soul that sees beauty…

Sunday
There is a hierarchy, it seems, to Tysoe’s with-sun-rising birds. As the first sodium-bright slash of dawn slices the horizon, the barn owl – its wings the shade of the night-mourning sky it haunts – yet circles the windmill: peeved, perhaps, that my presence has quiesced the small creatures in the verges, trembling umbellifers, ruffling daisies. The hedges here serenade me with the river-runs of goldfinch; the gossip of sparrows; the bossy robin; the caution of blackbirds. The crops, a sea of skylarks: effervescent; ubiquitous. But none yet leave their roosts. It is the raptors which rise pre-eminently on the cool air: a lone buzzard, one lazy, subtle flap of its wings propelling it yet higher. A glint-eyed kestrel shearing across my path; grasping the dead branch of a wayside oak from which to study me. There is nothing here to interest such a hunter; but yet he waits until I have passed before busy wings pull him beyond my sight.

A male pheasant, paranoid, dull-witted, staggers away from me: its drunken pose and anguished cacophonies aimed at naught; only rendering it more manifest. Thirty paces I tail this manic meandering, before remembrance of cover emerges between those frenzied eyes.

Is this now My Hill…?

As far as I am concerned, the only thing that can be achieved, when both my mind and body are suffused with deep, thick, viscous torment (echoed by repeated, random interference in both ears: stereophonic sussurations of spite…) – as I have stated so many times before – is walking. Apart from summoning lurking asthma, I know there is little worse I can subject my aching frame to. Plus, of course, my depression will ease, the further my journey. And on a morning like this – clear skies and concomitant summer balm; goldfinch twinkling in the hedges; chaffinch in the fletching oaks; buzzard and skylark floating above; sheep lazily grazing (heavy in their winter coats); and cattle uniformly resting in the shallow corrugations of ancient fields – what else am I to do? It is too generous a day to be shackled by sheets and shocking stair-rods of pain.

The first mile is hard: as if battling through stacked mattresses. But, reaching the sown fields, resistance fades, and my limbs begin to move with supernatural ease. Through my second gate, the path flowing beneath me, last week’s fresh cowpats have been grilled by the new heat, drilled by flies; but fudged treachery lies beneath the further stampede of hoof-prints, incised as the cattle migrated to new pasture. Despite the surface-split soil, moisture lurks. I wonder for how long.

Anything different is good…

Introduction
I didn’t know it was National Time to Talk Day until the closing moments of my assessment in Warwick Hospital’s Clinical Health Psychology department – but it seemed such a neat coincidence that my appointment (last Thursday) should have taken place on such a significant date that any doubts I had rapidly faded. By the way, it was Groundhog Day, also. However, I’m still struggling to find an apposite correlation with that….

I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It’s inspiring in a way.

My hesitancy had concerned the publication of what follows. But, if we’re going “to get talking and break the silence around mental health problems”, as I had previously done, eleven months ago – and without any real qualms – then this is what it’s going to take. Not just wearing “my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at”. But allowing those who care to have a wee peek inside: and see that “I am not what I am”.