19/2/09

I have been unable to watch a great deal of trauma in other people's lives while in this situation. It is as if it is more heightened and it affects me - almost too much. The news on Gaza and the bushfires have made me feel defeated at times. Perhaps it is because I am a captive audience - watching morning breakfast television's postings from the fire scene etc - which I would never normally watch. Perhaps too it has to do with that sense of vulnerability and fragility. Do we normally watch this type of thing in a more "balanced" way?

I cushion myself from it all and, sometimes, I do this through music and now, reading. Strange, but I have not felt settled enough to read till now. But I think it has also to do with the fact that I have not found the type of reading material I wanted. I have needed poetry rather than novels. The insight that this gives on the human predicament. I am therefore reading "Stepping Stones" - a book of interviews with Seamus Heaney.

He talks of himself as a child........having that inner core of being that gives us our sense of "always-alone-self" as well as being the way through which we experience those little epiphanies in life. "..............I have a sense of being close to that unsatisfied, desiring, lonely, inner core. He hasn't disappeared but now he dwells farther in behind all kinds of barriers he learned to put up in order to keep the inwardness intact...........................and I had this visitation of humanist joy? Awe? A tremendous sense of what human beings had achieved on earth. Something akin to Wordsworth's revelation on Westminster Bridge." Is it this inner core that allows us to empathise, sympathise with both the woes and the joys of the human struggle? I can hear some cynics saying - I just have too much "time" on my hands...........at the moment.

Each day, after listening to the Throsby interview, making various phone calls and checking my email, I retreat to "The Libary." This is a pleasant space that overlooks the main Rd and connects me more with the outside world. Also light and airy. It is a strange little procession that trundles down the corridor as my small world moves with me. There's me in a wheel chair then, what follows, are two "over-bed" trollies piled with books, folders, magazines, drawing equipment, radio, drinks and my lap-top. It's like the procession of the Queen of Sheba. I am aware that it is a cumbersome manouvre but I persist as it ensures sanity. I think too - how small one's world can become when necessary. Rather like when one is travelling. All I have is on these trollies.

I too am a type of traveller. Nothing, except these bits and pieces of possessions, belongs to me. Sometimes I try to remember the ambience of my own bedroom. That lovely big window which overlooks the garden. My little photos and notes and poems that make it mine. Everything here reminds me of being "temporary." I look into the other rooms sometimes as I pass and see small efforts at individuality - a different couch, a painting, a light - but they are so "sparse" the sense of temporariness is still overwhelming. I have an urge to plaster the walls with posters and things - like a teenage bedroom - just for that sense of "anarchy" that one needs in life. There is an air of sedateness and neatness and blandness that stubbornly persists. I don't have to feel any sense of belonging really but, I wonder about the residents who are here for the rest of their lives. Do they ever feel "at home?" Or has that sense of "home" gone forever?

I present a strange "problem" to some. I have had to explain my story because many think I am here permanently. Some find it difficult to treat me "normally" and want to treat me in an almost child-like way as they do most of the other residents. It's not really a condescending way of speaking to people but it verges on it. The soft lilt. The clear pronunciation. The upward inflection. Perhaps it comes from the fact that I am somewhat physically helpless so they assume I might be mentally a little "clouded" as well. It also has to do with being "in bed," in a "wheelchair" and not standing eye to eye.

Last night I heard my neighbour, a gentle woman, trying to settle to go to bed. She is known as "the wanderer" (happy, I hope) and I have often heard her at about 3am coming out of her room and muttering......."where have they all gone?"....."Joan" is then led back to her room and put to bed. But last night she couldn't settle. She kept coming out of her room and then going back in and slamming the door several times. It seemed as if she wanted to make a definite "cut off" from being out in the corridor. The slamming was a type of ritual of dis-connection. To talk to, she seems fine until something you've said, causes some difficulty in her mental processing. It's probably why all or most of the conversations around here are so polite and bland. Nobody dares dig too deep.

Today I fill my time well. I tutor this afternoon. I keep some sense of normality.