On Self-Isolation (Entry from the Dementia Diary)

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash 

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After 2,440 days in exile and isolation - of which the last 520 days have effectively been spent in solitary confinement (only a demented old woman and a cat for company) - I can vouch for the fact that:  

 

"The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit." 

 

- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, trans. Kenneth Burke, (The Dial, 1924).

I Wish I Was Skiing (Fragment from the Dementia Diary)

Stan Laurel (c. 1920)

 

 

When you are living in exile and singlehandedly caring 24/7 for an elderly parent with dementia, then, trust me, all days are bad days [1].

 

But some days are worse than other days and feelings of entrapment, isolation, and violent frustration are overwhelming. Today is one such day. 

 

But, for some reason, at times like this, I always remember Stan Laurel on his death bed telling the nurse that he wished he was skiing: 

 

'Oh, I didn't know you could ski, Mr Laurel', she replied. 

 

To which Stan jokes: 'I can't - but doing anything would be better than this.'

 

Amazingly, thinking of this and of Stan's smiling face - or whistling Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme [2] - always manages to bring solace and make happy. 

 

It's not that the latter promises a better tomorrow; rather, it reminds one that in the grand scheme of things there is no grand scheme and life is patently absurd. Ultimately, we are all descendants of Sisyphus, forever pushing a giant rock uphill, or, in the case of Stan and Ollie, a piano up a long flight of steps.      

 

Notes 

[1] For an idea of what a typical day involves, click here. 

 

[2] Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme - entitled "Dance of The Cuckoos", was composed by Marvin Hatley. For Stan, the tune's melody represented Oliver Hardy's character  - pompous and dramatic - whilst the harmony represented his own character; somewhat out of key and only able to register two notes: Cu-coo. 

      The original theme, recorded by two clarinets in 1930, was re-recorded with a full orchestra in 1935. It was first used on the opening credits for Blotto (dir. James Parrott, 1930). A full version of Hatley's absurdist masterpiece can be played on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

 

Fragment from the Dementia Diary: Day 2000

Ich und meine Mutter (SA/2021)

  

 

Day 2000 - much like any of the previous 1,999 days spent here (continuously) since 2 April, 2016:

 

08.00: get my mother up, washed, and dressed ...

 

09.00: do my mother's breakfast and administer medication ...

 

10.00: do the shopping and pick up my mother's prescription from chemist ...

 

11.30: start preparing my mother's midday meal ...

 

16.30: start preparing my mother's tea ...

 

19.30: do toast and tea for my mother's supper ...

 

20.00: administer more pills ...

 

21.00: put my mother to bed ...

 

In between the above routine tasks: do the washing up; do the laundry; clean the house; do the gardening; pay the bills; make cups of tea, take my mother to and from the toilet, feed the cat, etc. Very little time to read, write, think, or breathe.  

 

As I said on Day 1, I repeat now: caring is tedious and depressing. Any small joys are fleeting and what we extol as blessing depends on what afflicts us as plight [Heidegger].  

 

 

Perdurabo (Notes from a Hard Knock Life)

Becoming hard is the really distinctive sign 

of a Dionysian nature

 

 

One of the things I hate being asked - usually in relation to my role as a full-time carer for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's - is: How are you coping? 

 

It's a question that entirely misunderstands my situation and reveals that the questioner has failed to grasp the fact that, for me, this is not about finding a way to cope, but is, rather, all about endurance ...

 

What's the difference? 

 

Well, I suppose we might say - borrowing a term privileged by Nigel Baines - that coping is the attempt to stay afloat when feeling all at sea; i.e., learning how to deal effectively with a set of challenging circumstances in order to manage and minimise one's own stress and keep one's head above the water. 

 

Endurance, on the other hand, is the ability to withstand an extended period of trauma and fatigue; an affirmation of suffering and a willingness to go under - at the risk of drowning - in order to explore the depths and confront the horrors thereof.   

 

In other words, whilst coping is a psychological technique for self-preservation, endurance is a philosophical test of one's physical, mental, and emotional reserves in the face of danger. That's why Nietzsche valued only those individuals who could endure: 

 

"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures." [1]

          

That's a diamond-like teaching from Zarathustra's school of hard knocks. But perhaps my favourite quote in relation to this topic and the providing of care for a loved one, comes from a letter by the American writer Willa Cather to her younger brother in 1916:

 

"The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please." [2]

 

Precisely! And those charcoal souls - always planning how best to cope - will never understand this ... 

  

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1968), section 910, p. 481.   

[2] Willa Cather, letter to Charles Douglas Cather (8 July 1916), in A Calendar of Letters of Willa Cather: An Expanded, Digital Edition, ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout, The Willa Cather Archive: click here.    

 

Surprise musical bonus from the soundtrack of my life: click here. 

 

 

In Praise of Denial

Mike Brennan: Denial 

(Acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30")

mikebrennan.me

It will surprise no one to discover that Shakespeare is the most oft-quoted of all English writers.

Whilst it's probably impossible even for literary scholars to definitively say what his greatest lines are, the good people at No Sweat Shakespeare have kindly provided a list of 50 famous quotes, beginning with To be, or not to be and ending with What light through yonder window breaks.*

It's not the worst list in the world, but it's hardly an imaginative or controversial selection. And, what's more, it doesn't include my own favourite line from Shakespeare: I know thee not, old man ...

This line, from Act 5 Scene 5 of Henry IV, Part 2, has particular resonance to me at this time and deserves much greater critical attention, because the need to deny - our elders, our loved ones, our teachers, our leaders, and, ultimately, ourselves - is an absolutely crucial requirement in the process of becoming what one is.** 

Prince Hal, upon assuming the crown and becoming king, knew it; Zarathustra, who instructs his followers that they must ultimately lose all masters and learn to hate their friends, knew it; and even Jesus, who accepted the kiss from Judas and predicted Peter's triple denial, knew it.

Indeed, Christ himself denied his own mother, when he notoriously put the question to her: Woman, what have I to do with thee? As a reader of Lawrence, I have long viewed this remark made to Mary as a sign of failure. But now - in the position of a long term, full-time carer for an elderly mother with dementia - I'm rather more sympathetic.

That is to say, I'm tempted - in order to preserve my own health and sanity - to turn my back and walk away, because too much love and loyalty to another, or to the past, can be deadly and anyone who wishes to live and fulfil their own destiny has to offer a seemingly cruel denial of someone or something at sometime or other, regardless of the consequences or the pain caused.  

We deny and must deny, says Nietzsche, because something in us wants to live and affirm itself.

There is even, we might suggest, an existential imperative to sell out (i.e., to compromise one's integrity and betray one's principles); not necessarily for personal gain, but in order to leap into the future and carry forward the banner of life. A creative individual must repudiate the familiarity of the past (including old relationships) if he or she is to adventure onward into the unknown.

But this isn't easy: far easier to martyr oneself and to shrivel away inside an old life; a victim of that moral poison and great depressant called pity.  

Notes

 
* Readers interested in the full list of quotes provided by No Sweat Shakespeare should click here.

** Obviously, I'm not talking about denial here in psychological terms, i.e., as a coping mechanism used to avoid confronting an emotionally disturbing truth, or denialism in the political sense of denying historical or scientific fact.

The line from Jesus can be found in John 2:1-5 and the line from Nietzsche in The Gay Science, IV. 307.

On the Difficulty of Death for Old Ladies

Tony Luciani: Internal Reflection,
 from  Mamma: In the Meantime (2016)
(A series of photos and paintings featuring his 93-year-old mother, Elia.)

The comic actor, Steve Martin, once conceded that he'd never made a great movie. But, he went on to say, he had made several films that contained genuinely great scenes. I think something similar might be said about the verse of Michel Houellebecq; no really great poems, but many that contain genuinely great lines. 

Those critics who characterise his work as callow and clichéd, or dismiss it as insipid and ineffectual, are not so much mistaken as beside the point. For these things, of necessity, belong to a body of work that is bold enough and big enough to incorporate them; a form of writing that affirms what Nietzsche terms a general economy of the whole.

In other words, the secret of really interesting poetry, like Houellebecq's, is not the fact that it contains powerful and original elements, but that it's unafraid to make mistakes and display its weaknesses. Further, it parades intertextual indebtedness with pride and invites readers to hear echoes of other authors.
        

But this post isn't intended to be a defence of Houellebecq as an artist, nor a comprehensive review of his new dual-language selection of poems entitled Unreconciled. Rather, I want simply to indicate how some of Houellebecq's reflections on old women approaching death resonate with my own observations and experience ...

Death is difficult for old ladies who are too rich, says Houellebecq, referring to the kind of women who own antique furniture and wind up in cemeteries: Surrounded by cypresses and plastic shrubs. But, actually, death is often difficult for many women - even those whom he calls the council-flat old / Who imagine till the end that they are loved and wind up at the crematorium: In a little cabinet with a white label.

For many women - particularly mothers - simply refuse to let go and die. Men, as a rule, die sooner and with less fuss, less bitterness; they know when the game is up and they'll be best off out of it, as my father would say. Women - particularly mothers - aim to stay for as long as possible in their sordid bedrooms where they keep little objects tucked in their wardrobes - the insides of which reveal just how cruel and how futile life can be.

On and on these undying women persist; watching TV without quite catching what is said (despite the increased volume) and eating their meals without appetite (despite the added salt); growing older and increasingly feeble in mind and body: You see clearly the nothingness awaiting them / Especially in the morning when they rise, pale, / And moan for their first cup of tea.

In a very moving couple of stanzas, worth quoting in the original French, Houellebecq writes:

Les vieux savant pleurer avec un bruit minime,
Ils oublient les pensées et ils oblient les gestes
Ils ne rient plus beaucoup, et tout ce qui leur reste
Au bout de de quelques mois, avant la phase ultime,

Ce sont quelques paroles, presque tourjours les mêmes:
Merci je n'ai pas faim, mon fils viendra dimanche,
Je sens mes intestins, mon fils viendra quand même.
Et le fils n'est pas là, et leurs mains presque blanches.

This is mostly true and, sadly, often the case. Though, not wanting to be defined as a son by my absence, I'm doing what I can to provide care and ensure my mother doesn't become just another unloved body dying without mystery. It's hard work though; depressing, tiring, frustrating, boring, etc.

But so are many jobs and at least caring affords me the opportunity to listen to the little birds in the garden and read poetry on my birthday ...  


See: Michel Houellebecq, Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013, trans. Gavin Bowd, (William Heinemann, 2017). All the lines quoted, in full or part, are Bowd's translations from the French and are taken from three untitled poems, pp. 29-33. 

For those interested in the work of Tony Luciani, click here to access his website, or here for information about his exhibition, Mamma: In the Meantime, at the Loch Gallery, Toronto, Canada.