A TALE OF THE COMMONPLACE

A TALE OF THE COMMONPLACE

Janet injured her foot a few weeks ago. This was a minor injury, but it was too sore to walk on for a few days, and later on when she tried she discovered her leg could no longer bear her weight. This distressed her. Actually, distressed is too clinical a term. This frightened her. She became scared of moving and falling, and gradually her mind just seemed to fall apart. She went from rambling a bit, to a kind of word salad, peppered with loose associations, and from walking with a frame, to being hoisted into a wheelchair.

In the rest home where she lived, Janet was part of a group of fierce and witty women who always lunched together. One lunch time, I was called over to their table because Janet couldn't manage her eating. She couldn't organise her utensils and she didn't seem able to find her mouth. I assisted her to eat the softer parts of her lunch, forking food for her.

All of this is commonplace and unremarkable. (I love the unremarkable!). It happens every day in a rest home near you. Most interesting was the responses of Janet's friends. It was they who called me over, and as I assisted her they were all watching my every movement with the intensity of birds. And they critiqued my actions in detail.

What was this about? I spoke to them, and said, it must be hard to watch this, because Janet is your friend. They all agreed emphatically. They know how this one goes. Janet is assisted to eat from now on. She is moved to the ridiculously named ‘feeds table’. She no longer sits with them, no longer socialises as much, spends more time in her room. This has happened to other friends. It will happen to each of them, in one form or another. They feel for Janet and they want the best for her. They feel for themselves, too. And they want to know some important things, which they learn by watching me and critiquing me. When this happens to them, how will I care for them? Will they be safe with me? How will they get their needs met, when they are no longer able to express them?

The responsibilities of those caring for the elderly are simpler when the elderly are unable to speak for themselves, when they are really ill. Then the responsibilities are great, but simpler. Caring for the elderly who are their own advocates is less straight forward, but just as great. Honouring their sense of selfhood is not just an immediate, day to day task, it is a very tangible insurance policy for uncertain and frightening future.

THE DOOR OF PERCEPTION

THE DOOR OF PERCEPTION

Do you go through, or do you go around?

I was walking in a forest the other day and I came across a door, a bit like this one. Actually it was much better; it was taller and narrower and set right on the path,and it had a picture on it of Thing One throwing away a key. It took up only a little of the path, and there were signs that people had gone through it, and gone around it, although presumably not at the same time.
I wish I could include the photo of it, but Blogger has changed its settings on me somehow so I can't publish pictures. It was a very cool little door, on the path, in the forest.

A door is always magical. A door is a cause for a pause. You can't go through a door without a shift in consciousness, even if it is too slight to be noticeable in the business of the day. A door is always a portal, and if induction is as impoverished as Hume says it is, you never really know what is on the other side, even if you have been through it a thousand times.

It is no wonder that the door is such a potent magical symbol. Doors lead us to other realms, Narnia or secret gardens or whole other realities. There are forbidden doors in castles. Open the door and you will never be the same again. Behind the door is always knowledge, whether you want it or not. Entheogens may open psychic doors for us, as may meditation or autonomic driving such as drumming. In songs there is a door to your heart, and maybe even a key. New feelings may live behind that particular door.

When I came to the door in the forest, I could have walked around it without breaking stride. Many others had done so. What do you think I did?  I turned the door knob, of course, and walked through. And the forest laid itself before me, and I walked for three hours in it, and there were rocks and a stream and honeydew on the black beech trunks, and sunshine and shade, and it was good.  

DON'T WEAR BLACK, THEY SAID. HOW TO AVOID PAYING RENT

Since I am semi transient nowadays, or as I prefer to put it, peripatetic, I am keen on ways of avoiding paying rent. This is how to manage without having to live in my car. I mean I love my dear Fenriz Car, and I half live in him anyway, but I do like a roof over my head and a shower.

So I have taken to house sitting. I do this for an agency, and while I don't get paid, I do get to stay in some very nice houses, and look after some wonderful animals.

The first time I did it, I envisaged writing scathing blog entries about the class war. I envisaged snooty humans and snootier pets. Unfortunately for literature, I really liked the family I house sat for and I adored their dog.

The cats, however, well, the cats. They were two Birmans, very beautiful and aloof, and they looked so similar I could not tell which was which at first. For the first twelve hours, I saw them only one at a time. I checked on them, found one, and was missing the other. I checked again, found what seemed like the second one, but may have been the first one again in a different place. I ended up going from room to room, in this huge beautiful old house, trying to catch them close enough together so I could be sure they were both present and correct. I became convinced they were gaslighting me. I began to panic. I checked again. One cat. Again. One cat. Night fell. Still one cat - or were they taking it in turns? Had I lost a cat? Someone's expensive furbaby? And so I ran screaming into the night... and as I was led away by kind people, I looked up at the lit window and damn my eyes if they weren't high fiving each other's paws and lifting glasses of champagne. It was then I realised why so many house sitters never returned...

After a while I became the Mary Poppins of house sitting. I learned how to pack minimally, how to have a house clean and sheets fresh the minute the owners walk back in, and how to use only my own stuff in someone else's house. I learned I dislike porcelain butler's sinks and I really appreciate anything easy to clean. There are principles - you leave it better than you found it, you don't use the owners' food, and you take such good care of the animals that when their owners return the animals look up at them and shrug and go 'meh'. I specialise in writing witty and informative emails to the house owners, and sending photos of their pets doing cute things. So far I have had good reviews.

As for the animals, after the terrifying Birmans, who did settle down after that night, I looked after wild birds, Pit Bull crosses who weren't allowed inside, a Devon Rex cat who wasn't allowed outside, some very aerial but quite stupid Weimeraners, and others. The Devon Rex specialised in life threatening neck massages in the middle of the night (Oh no! I'm sure that was my carotid!). She shed white hair everywhere; don't wear black they said. And they were right. The Weimeraners were obsessed with cats and would wildly jump at anywhere a cat had once been, or might be, or even spin about on their leads trying to get to cats that really were there, or stare at them until they didn't go away. The Pit Bull crosses I would race across the yard to the door, because then they would block my entrance and jump on me mercilessly as I grappled with the door handle. I always lost the race.

I can get away with house sitting because I still appear respectable, as a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances. Nobody asks my story. I interview well. I am well and truly Police checked (for every job I go for!). And I get good reviews because I take it seriously; I treat it like a job.

I wonder about Mary Poppins. No really I do. Where did she come from? Where does she go next? Does she have a family? She doesn't have a back story, although she clearly has knowledge of a world outside the household's ken. She is a function, a mathematical symbol, a cipher. I am too. I arrive, engaging and helpful, and I leave. Where do I go? Who knows where people like me go?

There are lots of ways of living nowadays, for those of us who are interstitial creatures. Soon I may not be able to live this way, moving on and off the heights, alone but connected to place, drawing the thread of my life across the city, pinning it at points on my mind map, drawing it out again. But for now I continue.