Sewer life

This could be my weekly ‘How dare you?!!’ piece.

Things people don’t understand they either destroy or hide from their view. By labelling someone or something as different and less than desirable it seems to make for the sanitised view of the world that they seek.

All fears are labelled grotesque and monstrous and war is declared with them. This could be outright murder and genocide or more subtle means of annihilation. You see, there are other means of destroying people, ideas and places as well. The ruling powers can either hide them away (metaphorically in the closet) or flush them away in a sewage-like system.

This is the way life is for many visible minorities that the ruling homogeneous groups want to achieve. You may be a Muslim in a predominantly Christian world, you may be homosexual in a mainly heterosexual world, you may be African in a mostly European world, whatever the difference that is abhorred the result will be the same: a systematic rite of ‘cleansing’.

If you take time to look at the sewage systems of most developed countries you will discover that it is the home for unwanted items of the everyday so-called civilised society. It is where things are dumped and remain ‘out of sight and out of mind’. Sewage systems are usually designed to function below the surface of the ‘usual’ everyday behaviour.  

When people want to condemn you and your ordinary life to the sewers I believe you have a right to stand up and shout, “How dare you?!!”

See like doctors?

I think children and doctors are similar in their outlook: everyone is more or less the same.

I came to this conclusion while helping a child with their reading. We were going through a book called ‘How your body works’ and the concepts were clearly laid out in those small and colourful pages.

Everybody is a unique and special person and should be treated well.

We all look different on the outside.

We all have most of the same things inside of us that work the same way.

This made me think ...

What if doctors were to decide how to treat a patient having a heart attack or stroke depending on their hairstyle, their skin colour, their sexual orientation or their mobility? Would that be a good way to provide health care? The treatment needs to take in specific individual needs but generally, it’s the same approach and care process for all, isn’t it?

Carol - Poetry by George Mackay Brown

In the first darkness, a star bled.

The war of cloud and summit, other wounds.

Hills cupped their hands

And the rain shone over knuckles of rock and dropped to the

            sources.

Precious that well-hoard.

The priests gathered in secret jars

Lustrations for the passionate and the dead.

You were blessed, young tree

With one apple.

Far on you must bear five godwounds, prefigured and red.

The deer runs on, runs on, swiftly runs on

Before bird and arrow,

Then bends, obedient to the arrow, its branching head.

A hunter’s hand has broken the wild grape

To stain and seed.

And the hunter’s hill opened with a green sound,

A stalk of corn,

And the blacksmith took from his forge a powerful blade.

Now this, a cry in our atom-and-planet night –

A child’s wailing.

A child’s cry at the door of the House-of-Bread.

George Mackay Brown (1921 – 1996)

Taken from The Twelve Poems of Christmas, Volume Three, Selected and Introduced by Carol Ann Duffy

Pay attention

I’m a walker and I’m a driver. I think sometimes I get the two mixed up.

The other day I was walking and I came up to some pedestrian crossing lights. I waited on the pavement with other pedestrians. You see, I was obeying the signal that told me when it was safe to cross the road and when it was not.

Imagine my surprise when, as the light turned green and I stepped into the road, that an old woman’s hand grabbed my left sleeve and pulled me back onto the pavement.

“But it’s green!” My protests became weak as a car swung in front of me just missing me by inches as it rounded the corner.

“He must have gone through a red light!” I exclaimed, as I started to walk across the road in the company of my new saviour.

“I just couldn’t manage if I saw someone have a bad accident in front of me,” The kind grey-haired woman continued to shake her head as she walked to the opposite pavement with me. We were both glancing over our shoulders and shaking our heads as we turned in unison to watch the errant car continue to speed off into the distance.

“I know the light was green,” I said, “green for us to walk, not for the car.”

It was then that I thought of my own experience as a driver and the times when I had driven through amber-turning-red lights. Then I was convinced that I was perfectly safe and in  control of all variables.

As I walked further into town I realised that I nearly got run over because I forgot what I sometimes do as a driver!

This incident makes me wonder why it often takes serious incidents to see things from a different perspective before we really commit to changing our behaviour.

Acting in church

On the radio there was a recent discussion about whether or not the Bible and the sermons produced from it could be viewed as literature. This led me to revisit some thoughts I had had many years ago. I wondered if the preachers were more like actors than newsreaders.

You see, in some places that I have worshipped the preacher has had more dramatic flair than some of the people I see on either stage or screen. The pastors build up the tension. They stalk the platform like tigers ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey, and they do just that – they deliver a killer verse to a nodding congregant.

They are snapped into alertness and all the focus is drawn back to the centre of the stage.

The pastor then recaptures the attention of the entire audience, bringing them back into his web of rapt attention with a few select moves (cunningly disguised as amusing anecdotes) after which he builds to another crescendo before dangling them above the open jaws of the devouring beast he has cleverly pictured; the one that will destroy them if they don’t do exactly as he says.

To complete his act as hero he draws his sword of truth and despatches the monster. The congregants all breathe breaths of relief as they relax in the safe knowledge that they have nothing left to fear as long as they follow the lead of the hero in his slick suit and silk socks.

After witnessing one such entertaining sermon, I was discussing the drama of preaching with my son and he said, “It’s like going to the theatre every week ... but without paying!”

What is real?

I am real.

How do I know this? Because I can feel it and ... because my child told me so!

That is all the confirmation that I need right now. Thank you very much.

This statement of individual perception came riding into my life on the back of some jagged doubts. There are times when nothing seems completely right and uncertainty is the only certainty.

It was one of those days and I had just managed to reassure myself that I was doing just about OK as a parent when my child pipes up un-expectantly, “You’re ... real Mummy, I know you love me!” I laugh now as I think about it because it is – to me – so funny, but at the time it was like the icing on a cake I had been (metaphorically) mixing up all day.

I was never sure that I would get it done, baked, cooled or decorated. The day was hard, really hard. But then in the final moments my doubts were whisked away like the steam disappearing from a boiling saucepan, and I knew that everything was back in balance.

After that, when I was settling back into the reality and surety of my life and love, Morgan came up to me and planted a kiss on my cheek then said, “I love you. You’re my heart Mummy.”

That just reminds me that being consistent and reliable can make something more real.

Easy life

I have heard people say that others they know have such “an easy life”. This perception is, I think, flawed. I cannot think of a single person whose life is completely happy and they are able to handle all of life’s ups and downs without flinching.

I think that realism means accepting that life may not always be easy or a constant barrel of laughs, but it is always worth it.

I know people have looked at my life and commented that it is “easy”. I wish that was true.

I have daily challenges (you can read about some of them here in my blog) however, I do have a vast amount of joy and happiness as well. There are some situations where I could easily get morose and think along the “woe is me” lines, but I do, for the most part, resist and find a positive in whatever dire situation I am facing.

This philosophy has enabled me to remain upbeat most days.

There was a time when someone looked at me when I told them my age and said, “Well, you’ve obviously had an easy life!”

I just laughed in response.

All I know with total certainty every single day is that living my life is not always easy or fun, but it is always worth it.

Here’s looking at you, Kid!

I had an unexpected conversation the other day which reminded me of a two way mirror. The fact is that what we commonly refer to as a two way mirror is really a one way mirror. There is only one side that is illuminated and the other, darkened, side is where the majority of the viewing takes place from.

Someone rang me to get information about a third party: I did not have any to give. This is because the connection between me and this third party had been broken a long time ago. Because the breach occurred a while ago but the innocent caller (Y) had decided to forget what they knew and stay in their own darkened viewing room.

You see, when the third party (called person X, for legal reasons) realised that I was no longer their puppet then their perception of me was destroyed. It was like throwing a brick into the centre of a floor to ceiling mirror: nothing can be the same again.

X took a step too far one day and I stood toe-to-toe instead of backing up as I used to do. At first X didn’t know what to do with my altered behaviour so they increased the pressure (sometimes known as bullying tactics) and I still refused to cave in because I was tired of being wronged without using my voice. The mirror cracked. Simultaneously we had both realised that our images of each other had been wrong.

At the end of this incident I felt that I was left with my pride intact and a new perception of X. Time passed and I did not follow the old script of crawling back for any morsel of conditional love that X would care to throw from the table.

What I found was that once I really started loving myself totally I was less dependent on others for scraps of their affection to make me feel better about myself.

The caller (Y) expressed a sense of anxiety about X’s perceived situation and tried to include me in it. I stepped back and explained that living in a constant state of dread and anticipation of something going wrong no longer suited me (I did not add that it also left me teetering on the edge of rejection and I was never good with heights or falling down).

So, the call ended.

I thought about X,Y and all the Zs... for a very short while. Then I exhaled again and went back to my peaceful place.

The beauty about losing the two way mirror is that I can see clearly for miles now.