A Memoir of Sorts

'Write until you smile'  'Look back for the humour' 

Jim Cheek

I remember early childhood being a good time. Long hot sunny summers and the occasional magical winter white out. No wet grey bleak in-between days like we get now. We lived in a tiny hamlet deep in farming country with an underused church and chapel but little else. Dad had recently been appointed head teacher of a secondary school in the small market town a short car ride away. He was young, ambitious and a happy man.

A large rambling garden backed our isolated cottage. Dad’s playground. His grey suit came off and his grubby old green shirt and baggy shorts were on before the car had cooled. Re-fuelled with a mug of coffee he would be heading for the vegetable garden with me in tow, struggling to push the old barrow full of tools. The flowerbeds and borders were ignored or dug up. His mission was growing fruit and vegetables for the year even if that meant storing every wizened apple or freezing so many beans that we sometimes ate the wrong vintage. We would work together until called to eat. Bath and bed and sound sleep awaited me. He worked on to sunset.

On occasional Sundays dad helped out at chapel as a lay preacher. Mum and I would go along when he took the service. The place smelt of pine resin and damp. There was the distraction of funny hats and hair-dos and some very bizarre singing but the sermons were long and boring for a small boy and I would drift off into other more interesting inner worlds of my own. Dad talked from the pulpit of moral fibre, I thought of Sunday dinner.

A small stream marked the lower boundary of the vegetable garden. Beyond it lay a rabbit cropped meadow, gently sloping up to some dark woods. The stream was small, clean, fast flowing and ideal for dam-making. It seems now as though I played there all and every summer. Favourite stones and rocks gave the dams shape and strength. Tacky clay waterproofed the structure. Spillways and canals controlled the water-flow from the growing lagoon backing up between the grass banks. Handy sticks became sailing craft or warships voyaging between lakeside ports occasionally threatened by clay bombs or skimming stones. The day always ended with the grand breaching of the dam and the fun of a cataclysmic flood.

My best friend at Sunday school whispered tall stories about proper school. It was built on a steep hillside in town and had two playgrounds. Only the older children were allowed up the steps to the hidden higher one. Up there, he fibbed, could be found the special fairground with merry-go-rounds, super slides and bumper cars. Everything came free. I dreamt about the fair. The colours, sounds and smells. Best of all the children were in charge of the rides. I couldn’t wait to be off with dad in the mornings on my way to school.

I somehow lost a spark of humour when I eventually got there. My carefree life assaulted by sour smells and noise. I’d always felt free to be myself and gently tease when I noticed adults playing their games and pretending. School was a different matter. A little boy in a big class quickly learnt the new rules and stored up the strange, the tedious, the frustrating and plain daft to the end of the day. Dad would pick me up from the school gate in his car and I would immediately start spilling the beans on this education lark. It was hardly the best time for him to hear this stuff and his responses were often short and sharp. Little boys apparently knew nothing about this sort of thing and should concentrate on their learning. I learnt a lot about hedges on those journeys home.

 

                          

 

There were times as we planted and weeded in the evenings when dad talked a little about childhood. He had grown up in a small seaside town backed by wild hills and moorland. Things at home were a real struggle. He hardly remembered his own father who had been killed when away in the army. His mother survived on a small widow’s pension and made a little extra in the summer letting rooms to sea-side visitors. Dad helped by camping out in the field behind the house during holidays. His room brought in some useful extra cash. His mum, who he adored, was a regular chapelgoer and took dad along. He loved the singing and admired the fiery Welsh pastor. When times were particularly hard the minister’s wife would call in discreetly with simple gifts from the more caring members of the congregation.

Dad would often spend days alone in the hills and woods. He camped out with increasing skill and confidence and brought home firewood, berries and indeed anything that could be legally gathered. He was still very young and suffered all the natural childhood fears and anxieties. When unnerved by woodland noises he thought of the pastor’s words. ‘If you are good and trust Jesus, He will protect you.’ So it turned out! With every safe awakening Dad’s faith grew stronger.

He became a good headmaster. His strength of character and endless energy and enthusiasm ensured the school did well. His hard work became recognized and he went frequently away on courses and conferences. He would ask me to tend the garden knowing that I could be trusted to weed and water and harvest the vegetables. (Mum was out shopping for quick meals the very next day) These daily tasks were happily done but for some reason the garden paths started to attract my attention. I felt some deeper satisfaction levelling the gravel, weeding between the flagstones and trimming the grass. It made a sort of immediate difference that interested and appealed to me. Much more satisfying for a young boy than watching over the vegetable patch tediously marking the passing seasons. After one long absence dad came home to a tidy garden and a brand-new shingle path winding down to the stream. He bought me an army-surplus tent and second-hand sleeping bag.

The wood at the top of the meadow could be like two different places. With dad or friends or even the friend’s dog, it was an exciting adventure land filled with bird song, rabbits and rich earthy smells. When alone I was jumpy and nervous. Later in the year, the stream began to lose its appeal. Despite the delights of clay and water, the dams became increasingly unsatisfying. Play like this was no longer enough. Real dams were in my mind from books and television. Real dams with a purpose and permanence that were built with knowledge of materials and mathematics. Part of me was ready for something new.

That summer dad took me on a camping expedition. I loved getting out the maps and laid them out on my bedroom floor weeks before we set off. Maps were the only thing I collected and I papered my walls with the world. We drove to the hills and moorland, the car topped up with supplies for a fortnight.

We walked and climbed and nattered in the mist and rain and pitched the tent wherever we fancied. On these long walks dad talked again about his school days, perhaps prompted by my impending move to secondary school. He had shone at his first school. He enjoyed learning and possessed a steely determination and sharp competitive edge. He eventually won a scholarship to a good school a long daily bus ride away. The money for books and uniform had to be borrowed this time. ‘Boys talk’, as he called it, filled the back of the bus along with the cigarette smoke. Adolescent stirrings had recently started to bother him. (As he rather awkwardly put it) He felt a clear, stark choice had to be made. If he were to really succeed at school these thoughts and feelings would have to be controlled and suppressed.

Early in the holidays he set off for the hills and woods for several weeks. This time he challenged himself, taking risks when swimming, climbing and camping in rugged, wild places. He tested himself in every way he could. Each Sunday dad made the trek back to chapel. The elderly pastor still preached passionately to his now diminishing congregation. Dad listened to those old-fashioned words about God’s rewards for those who overcome their animal instincts. At the end of the summer dad’s eyes were firmly focused on the prize of high academic achievement. His mission was to pay off that loan, strive for a career that would see him escape from poverty and ensure his mum lived out her days in comfort. He now sat alone, tough in mind and body, at the front of the bus.

It was the end of a long midsummer day. Dad and I climbed our final mountain peak and by early evening had driven off road down a grassy track towards a lake shore. We set up our wild camp in a quarry he knew from years before. We collected driftwood, cooked up corned beef stew and talked through our adventures. He settled back in his camping chair to read while I paddled in the shallows for an hour or so, skimming pebbles and building a platform from rocks and bleached timber.

Perhaps the magic quality of the light tipped me into that strange other worldly state. My body relaxing from days of tough hill walking, now bathed in a balmy warmth and stillness. Wide-eyed at the stunning natural beauty of the place. Playing mind games with hypnotically exact reflections of mountain slopes, shoreline trees and the red streaked sky. The sun was slowly setting over the hills at the far end of the lake. A shimmering orange glow formed a path right to my feet. Maybe I took that path, reached the setting sun and headed back, way up in that amazing sky. It felt very strange but I wanted to hold that feeling for a while. glimpsing my world through new eyes. This young boy, here at this very moment, on a path to his future, only needing to be completely true to himself.

It was as if a burden had been lifted- a child’s recognition that humans, without exception, have to live with complex, contradictory aspects of experience and that we all have to muddle through life to some extent. It was a childhood realization of this universal truth- humans are indeed loveable and are deserving of understanding and support. And above all, the intoxicating recognition that reality was rather strange and that dear dad, the science man, would not be the person with whom to share these thoughts.

We washed up in the lake and settled down in our sleeping bags and dad was soon asleep. I lay on my back, hands behind my head staring at nothing in particular. Thought chased feeling chased wonder. A ten-year-old, excited by some powerful but shadowed insight. Sleep would be a long time coming. That night, despite the promise of the red sky, the weather changed. A light whisper of rain stopped my thinking. We had pitched our tent well. The quarry side sheltered us from the strengthening gusts of wind and the gravel soil drained away the worst of the now streaming rain. I could relax and enjoy the pap-pap beat of rain falling from overhanging branches and the rhythmic shooshing of strong wind through Scots pine. Dad and I, safe together, in the best of places and enjoying the best of moments, for the very last time.

He set off early the next morning to pick up fuel and supplies for the long trip south leaving me to guard the camp. I wandered along the shoreline, taking in the warm sun and blue sky of a new day. I came to a steep sided valley and settled on a smooth boulder overlooking a fast-flowing mountain stream. The blue-neon cascades of water held my attention as I pondered long upon the content and meaning of the previous evening. All that remained were just hints- a map with missing icons. Perhaps I had tripped into that state of timeless harmony but my ticking conscious self, bracketed by birth and death had drawn me back to the mysteries of what it is to be human and what it is to be the human I am.

The sound of the car lurching down the track stopped this reverie and provoked a tangle of underlying worries.. Back to a new school and a tangle of troubles disturbed further by a stubborn resistance to the messages I was hearing at that time. Control feelings, focus on studies, pass exams and then you will be free to choose your future. I imagined tough times ahead but of one thing I felt sure. I would return to this very special spot some-time in the future with a story to tell rooted in this mystical/transcendent moment.

                          

Several years passed before I returned to those hills and lakes. I was leading a group of friends on a camping expedition along with other teams from the same school. I drove my group hard through foul weather and rough country to each campsite. We were usually cosily settled in and well fed in our tent by the time the other groups struggled in. On this particular morning we were marching fast on the ridge above my well-remembered lake. We were ahead again and as the weather had settled we stopped in the shelter of a rocky outcrop for a break. I could just make out the quarry and even the ring of stones forming the fireplace Dad and I used years before. This was now the last day of the expedition. We were top dogs by far. I sat and said nothing- my friends' conversations turned to school and the imminent final exams. Power, strength and any sense of purpose just drained from me as I slumped on that rock. Some things had gone very wrong since those camping days with dad. I now had no idea what to do in life. I was bored and miserable at home, confused and fed up at school. I had never made any real start at formal learning and bumped and scraped along with no enthusiasm whatsoever. I daydreamed and fantasised, doodled and drifted and did just enough to keep out of trouble. I drew lakes and mountains in the margins of my notebooks, overdrawing detail upon detail until they all turned dark.

The camping expeditions were different. In rough country and in bad weather, real risks invoked deep reaction. Meaning for a moment was survival. I focused, studied and prepared, confident in the landscapes and scenarios created in my mind. I could make things happen, be powerful, skilful and in control. I knew what would happen next. I could lead and be trusted under pressure. These periods of enthusiasm and flashes of excitement were fine while they lasted. Things held together until the wider world eventually and inevitably broke through. A world in which there seemed to be no meaning, no satisfaction and no future. I found myself on a roundabout of persistent and compulsive quilt and anxiety. Thought led to feeling and back to the same thought. There was neither a path to follow nor things to achieve. It was a grim time of stubborn resistance and quiet desperation.

                              

Things had changed at home. An atmosphere of disappointment and tension had gradually developed. Dad’s energy and enthusiasm had waned with age. It was clearly becoming very hard work. He looked permanently weary and headed alone for his beloved hills at every opportunity. We now talked very little. I thought of escape. The actual challenge of starting something completely new, in itself, did not frighten me. The problem, rather strangely, came down to ‘enthusiasm’. Surviving in totally different circumstances would demand total commitment- for a while. But for what? Would it turn out to be worth the effort? Would it last? I knew understanding lay deep within me somewhere. I also knew that false enthusiasm would inevitably mask any glimpse of real meaning. I had become so practised at pleasing people that I was able to temporarily convince myself.

It was obvious that I had to get away from home to seek some real sense of personal control. Critically, I needed to be in a situation where I could be in total command of any enthusiasm. It was vital to know precisely when and exactly how I was faking. I needed to wait in my own chosen space until something or somebody interesting turned up. I had papers and passport ready for the Outback but I chose what might have been for me a far bleaker wilderness. I packed my bag and went teaching.

I hitched a lift to college with a rucksack, umbrella and not much else. I took a love of streams, lakes and the sea, sailing skills and a fascination with maps and charts- along with the same stubborn resistance towards studying within established subjects that had marked my time at school. Buried deep but tightly held was the fleeting childhood flash of clarity- that glimpse into the indefinable dynamic of feeling and thinking set within a sense that the yearning for personal meaning is a yearning for a thing that, in essence, may not exist.

Of course, all was not well. There seemed no sense, no feeling for the situation I was in and depression chilled those early days. I had arrived at a south coast city and my room looked out over a harbour inlet. It was a place of great beauty but also fierce currents, unpredictable weather and fringed with cloying mud. One early autumn evening I watched with some surprise as two fellow students set off in a canoe just as the tide was on the turn. The risk was compounded by the obvious inexperience of one paddler as they struggled up harbour skirting the shore to avoid the increasing pull of the tide. The wind strengthened, the light was failing and the canoe capsized leaving both wallowing in the mud. I was off like a shot, rigged and launched a sailing dinghy from the compound and in a near gale reached the pair shivering in the shallows. I bundled them both in the boat, towed the canoe and made it back to the slipway just as darkness fell. I half carried the weaker of the two and tipped him into a steaming bath fully clothed and covered in mud. He eventually emerged, wide eyed with shock but grateful and alive- and so, for a while, was I.

Kingston Modern School for Boys, known locally as Kingston Cow Sheds was housed in a disused army barracks and would have been a suitable setting for a black and white film. The neighbourhood was a mess of terraced streets and alleys- many marked for demolition, scrubby bomb sites and back street work-shops. Families were mostly dockyard workers, market traders and horse owning scrap-metal merchants. Much has now long gone. I turned up with some trepidation expecting to teach English. The head master handed me a box of pencils, some notebooks and a crate of ancient text books along with a gang of lads who were struggling in class. He wished me all the best, advised me to always have sharp pencils handy and then directed us to The Annex half a mile away which held the woodwork, metalwork and art departments. This Dickensian warren behind the brush factory was staffed by ex-military men, all of whom had seen action. They proved good hearted colleagues who shared a dry and often cynical sense of humour and cheerfully supported my early efforts of ‘making it up as I was going along’ with this bunch of rascals who were to be in my charge each and every school day.

I told the boys stories and listened to theirs and fairly soon a routine emerged. Basic remedial work filled the mornings followed by afternoons of practical activity using scrounged materials, tools, a rough topped craft table and a woodwork bench. Of course, the challenges were real and mistakes were made and many of my days were clouded with doubt and anxiety. However good and interesting things started to happen. We had notebooks in abundance and in some ways, they saved the day. My early notes reflect the efforts to organise my thoughts and moderate my feelings. There seemed to be space for everything from the planning and recording of the school day to anxiety holding doodles and evening reflections, written in a script only I could understand. I notice now the humour- some quite dark, some just marked with a light hearted explanation mark. It is as if, even on the grimmest of days, I was writing until I smiled.

I wanted the boy’s notebooks to contain evidence of the morning school work and also be a link to the practical efforts of the afternoons. It was the feel of the activities I was after. The resinous smell of cut pine, the touch of clay, the whirr and sparks of a battery powered motor and the smooth finish of a sanded model were the types of experience that held their attention. I pasted designs, pictures and photographs of the projects into the notebooks along with comments that I hoped both supported and questioned their efforts. I recall with pleasure the warm buzz of those afternoons with me casting around like a fly-fisherman with a glance, an expression, a quick comment and help when needed. Things were going well.

A dissertation was demanded. It had to be done, it had to be long and this time it had to be true to my childhood experience – that crystal-clear vision almost immediately veiled with ineffability. If I failed this time, it would be different- I would be actively failing. There were things about my work at Kingston that offered clues of a sort. The interplay within and between feeling and thinking was reflected in my notebooks. The routine and ritual of writing until I smiled seemed connected to my growing intuitive skills and confidence in the classroom. And with the boys as they worked their way forward with the practical tasks they had chosen- it just felt right and eased the tedium of the morning school work. However, there was little to go on and whatever glimpses that emerged in my imagination were often lost before they could be cradled by words.

Professor Brookes, the external examiner, seemed to be chuckling as I knocked on his door. This Gandalf like figure was reading my rambles. He sat back, smiled, and made his point. If I wanted to qualify as a teacher, I would have to write something completely new for the college and also something for him. He expressed an interest in ‘my description of the complex interplay of affective and intellectual processing.’ He also left me with a note- ‘The trap is the belief that functioning is describable in the language of organisation.’ Although I had no real understanding of what he meant I followed his general advice, wrote a new and tedious dissertation and eventually was welcomed back to Kingston with a contract.

It was fine for quite some time. The boys in the class changed with the years. I swapped my bike for a quirky French car, built a boat and relationships, at last, were working out. A steady stream of visitors came to the classroom and I was asked to speak about my work to other teachers and, rather bizarrely, students at my old college. However, there was a bug in the works brought out, I believe, by my writing for Bill Brookes. The better things went, the less I felt at home. The easier it became to describe my work in the classroom, the harder it became to describe why I was there. We should teach what excites us. ‘How’ I was teaching no longer excited me.

Roy, the head of a school for troubled children, turned up one morning to check on a boy who was returning to mainstream education. He spent the morning in my class and invited me to visit Waterside School. The staff at Kingston advised me not to go. Apparently, you get praise or nothing in those places as no one offers advice in case they are asked to show how it should be done. I went anyway and was offered a post on the spot. I have looked at the letter I wrote to Roy at the time. I had been reading a bi-annual journal titled ‘Therapeutic Education.’ Perhaps I hoped that such a thing existed and would prove discoverable at Waterside. I had also come across Donald Winnicott’s writing, particularly about paradox. (1) This chimed in part with the best of my work at Kingston, stimulating flows within and between the affective and intellectual modes of experience. How they could be thought of as being separated when problem forming and joined in immediate action. Both joined and separated -I was always after the ineffable. However, the primary challenges at Waterside were visceral. These children desperately needed the care and consideration that had been lacking in their lives. They had known only failure and rejection. They craved acceptance. I looked forward to being revitalised by engaging with this raw need.

Waterside proved to be a wonderful place at that time. A ‘crazy gang’ of committed staff fizzed with the energy of good people doing good work in exceptionally trying circumstances all well led by Roy, a true and steadfast friend of colleagues and pupils alike. I remember the humour, mutual support and dogged determination to help these children no matter how difficult they could be. One measure of success was the number of children re-integrated into mainstream schooling. Waterside was remarkably good at this. My Kingston skills transferred well enough and I soon settled into my role. I prepared well and worked hard and felt content for a while. I notice now how my personal journals became increasingly important as a means of coping with grim days. It could be tough- very tough. ‘Writing until I smiled’ soon became a vital routine. I also re-discovered that returning to my writing became far easier if these ‘smiles’ were tagged with a funny phrase or annotation. And here was the thing- this ritual brought about a shift in perception. I was starting to question the ‘how’ again. What was I really doing here?

I was writing for Bill again in the holidays, seeking a therapeutic model that would ground my efforts at Waterside. I came across a chapter in Gregory Bateson’s ‘Steps to an Ecology of Mind’ (2) which suggested that traps can develop in two realms of human experience simultaneously. He labelled these debilitating traps ‘double-binds.’ I had some confidence in my understanding of the interplay of feeling and thinking and the damage that can occur when adults insist only one is valid. I believed that the activities I encouraged in the classroom helped re-set any imbalance, facilitated learning and relieved anxiety associated with the practical realm. But what of the realm of personal meaning and purpose and the challenges of living an authentic life? There was a mystery here that I had not even started to unpick. Perhaps, at Waterside, just being authentic was the overarching therapeutic tool. I was not, no matter how hard I tried and the cracks were beginning to show.

As I wrote ‘leave, yes leave’ in my journal, the phone rang. Len, an old friend who had left teaching to set up an insulation company wanted me to come to a football match- flash motor, best seats, drinks in the director’s bar and the offer of a job. 'Sell the system, commission only, you will be fine'. I had a young family, a mortgage, no savings and telling no-one, I jumped. I accompanied his top salesman on a trial run. A zip round the property, a quick calculation and inside for a presentation. I took off my shoes at the door. The salesman left a mark on the customer’s carpet- no sale. I left teaching two months, later wide-eyed with worry but determined, no matter what, to survive and provide.

The game was on and I was good at this. The system sold well, paid good commission and should have been highly profitable for Len and his company. I returned to the office from my first countrywide selling trip weary but with a bag full of contracts and to rumours that the business was in some kind of trouble. This was a shock to be sure but the company took a couple of years to go under. I made the best of it and learned a lot about selling and myself in that time. If the system was appropriate and the funds available, I was happy to let my actions do the initial selling. I spoke little, took my time and attended to the details of the job and the customer. I possessed an acute sensitivity towards what was significant in their lives. The pictures, photographs, newspaper and much else, all gave up their clues. Building trust appeared to be a process of recognising the customer’s practical concerns and connecting them to their deeper hopes and fears. It felt manipulative but honest enough, if the system was delivered as expected and at a price they were willing to pay. I travelled the country for days on end, coming home exhausted but building up reserves, waiting for the axe to fall.

I made my plans and built a working relationship with a very smart young installer. We talked and made our move just as the last dregs of the company were being drained by a rogue director who had wormed his way in at the death. Len by this time had left for France for tax reasons. I counted out the cash in front of him as he signed over the vehicles, machinery and materials necessary for us to complete our first job- which I had sold on the side. This contract returned everything I had paid over. Simon and I were up and running. We handled every aspect of the business ourselves- advertising, selling, installing and accounts, bringing in additional labour only when required. Our immediate focus was upon complex but profitable commercial projects- some tedious, some testing our technical abilities to the limit. It was a good start. Unfortunately, it turned out he had a side-line in soft drugs and some months later, in the middle of a large contract, the police made an early morning visit. I had been searching for authenticity. Well, there I was, alone in the office, at that very moment, in deep shit but calm.

I carried the company for a year, helped out by Chris, a steady and reliable chap who knew the basics of the machinery. I learnt a lot and learnt a lot about learning throughout that tough time. There was a clear difference between making quick decisions under immediate pressure and the analytical skills needed to use and maintain the machinery. I had no choice. It was time to investigate the properties of these machines and I had to study the manuals. I peered, poked, tweaked and took things apart, carefully setting bits aside in strict order. I stepped away, cleaned up, made notes and diagrams and then consulted the manuals once more. This learning effort started paying off when breakdowns occurred during contracts. Mental space was needed to puzzle away at the issues. The look, feel and even the smell of the machine parts triggered memories of previous experiences and helped tease out the significant features of the moment. Then my notes and the manuals came into play again when these features could be manipulated logically until the problem became clear. I was feeling and thinking my way forward. Solving the problem was often the easy part.

                         

 

 

Some months later Simon and I were back working hard and making good money. By now I knew what I wanted and after a series of profitable years I sold my share of the business back to him and stopped. It was time.

I sat at my study desk for hours on end looking out upon our garden as it changed with the days and the seasons, wondering where to start. This garden is a playful space enclosed by high weather-worn brick walls. There are shaped bushes, season long flowers and daft ornaments and artifacts. The swinging seat, sheltered by the north wall is overhung by an ancient oak rooted in the churchyard next door. My niece came to stay by the sea in summer and turned up with her backpack and tent to camp out on the lawn. She was a bright girl who teased me about my lack of interest and ability in the mathematics that appealed so much to her. I was woken in the early hours by wind and driving rain. A westerly gale had hit the coast hard and I looked out expecting a flattened tent and a soaking sleeping bag. I smiled. She must have moved her tent with the first squalls and was now safe for the night, hard up against the sheltering wall. We had a long chat the evening before she left. We sat on the swinging seat watching the swifts swooping and screaming through the rooftops before flying high as dusk fell. Two bats emerged from the church roof and began flitting around the oak above us. We talked of life and I recounted a little of my story. I remember her saying that she didn’t mind others telling her what to study or even how to think. What she hated was people telling her what to believe. She then said that it seemed as if I had hated and been trapped by both. She set off for the station leaving a gift by the back door. She had found an old copper tray streaked with verdigris and had made a miniature garden using moss, herbs and alpine plants gathered from the rockery. Set in the greenery was a blue water filled bowl lined with pebbles she had collected on our beach walks- a perfect gift. She also left a note. ‘I have an essay to write this autumn. Please post me the main points of your story’ So I did.

                   

 

 Dear You

Thank you for your note and the garden gift. It seems as if the combination of the two triggered a powerful memory of the moment in childhood when time stood still and my deeper thinking first started. There was something about your miniature garden that drew me in. Maybe the moss with its surface softness and perfect colour dependent upon all those tiny sharp-edged branches. I was taken back to transcendent moments when extraordinary clarity soon became veiled by ineffability. This kind of experience has been a mystery that has possessed a powerful fascination throughout my life. How was it that what seemed crystal clear could suddenly be shielded by a grey mist of ineffability? And what indeed had been crystal clear?

There were a few clues related to what I thought I was hearing at the time. ‘Control your feelings, let your intellect lead you- educational achievement will allow you do anything you really want’ I stubbornly resisted what I sensed was false here and clung to trace memories of those magical moments that hinted at the complex interplay of feeling and thinking in the realm of practical action and problem solving. It felt as if an explanation of the processes involved might not be possible but that a description might be achievable. The path ahead had a powerful appeal. It had the potential to be exciting and personally meaningful but I was lost in that mist for what seemed a very long time.

I found myself trapped in a mix of anxiety and depression unable to function, learn and enjoy life. Notions of paradox found, for example, in Donald Winnicott’s writing, resonated but felt just out of reach. However, by this time I was working and the necessity of keeping notes became the first real step. Writing to organise the routines essential to earning a living offered some space for reflecting. This place for practical thinking became a retreat from the immediate stresses of life. A habit gradually developed of writing until I smiled. Marking obsessive thinking and compulsive acting with humour eased the acceptance of day-to-day mistakes and encouraged reflection and active learning. Most importantly, I was learning not to take myself too seriously.

The humour now present in my notes made it much easier to return and reflect. A shift in my thinking eventually took place. I could see that there were times to investigate the properties of objects and situations and times to accept that these objects and situations existed. There were times for problem forming and times for intuitive action. But how to describe the interplay of feeling and thinking, of affective and intellectual processing in this context? As I puzzled away anticipating that paradox would play some part, I settled upon the notion of things being both joined and separated. Affective and intellectual processing were as one when acting intuitively and separated when problem forming. They can be thought of as being both joined and separated- a contradiction, No wonder the ineffability. Confidence grew out of this take on practical action. Feeling my way into problems, drawing out the significant features of situations rooted in emotionally tagged experience. Then applying formal knowledge and imaginally manipulating these notions until some resolution settled out. I found myself accepting the uncertainties involved when attending and acting in the moment, increasingly content with the stability of this dynamic edge of subjectivity. Things were working well enough once more.

However, the routine of writing and reflecting turned up another bug in the works linked again to childhood transcendent experience and ineffability. There had been a yearning for personal meaning and purpose, a desire to be good and to make some contribution. There was a question about whether pure altruistic effort would be rewarded through some higher plane. However, this religious sensibility was short circuited by the same stubborn resistance to agents of authority with their suspect statements of fact. I had to dig deeper and eventually came to accept that this yearning for personal meaning and self- worth was the inevitable consequence of human self-awareness and concerns relating to randomness and the inevitability of death- existential anxiety. I had grown accustomed to look for humour in the day-to-day realm of practical action. Could there be something amusing in this search for personal meaning? Can it, in essence, exist? Or is it in our own best interests to be altruistic as it eases the grip of existential anxiety? The irony of this possibility, the smile it brings and the opportunities of sharing this notion has proved enough to keep the show on the road.

And so: Write until you smile. Look back for the humour. Recognise the irony of the human condition. Stop taking yourself and life itself too seriously. Learn and enjoy life as best you can.

Bye

(1) Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) the child psychiatrist and influential theorist wrote extensively about 'potential space' which at the same time unites and separates inner and outer reality and which permits the perpetual movement from one to the other.

'My contribution is to ask for a paradox to be accepted and tolerated and for it not to be resolved.' Playing and reality (1971)

(2) Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) a creative thinker with a fascinating range of linked interests, promoted the concept of double-bind in relation to mental illness. His ideas were of limited use in terms of explaining serious illness but have proved valuable when considering mental processes and potential threat to mental health. The general characteristics of double-bind situations are expressed by Bateson in this way:

1. When the individual is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminates accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately.

2. And, the individual is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and one of these denies the other.

3. And, the individual is unable to comment on the messages being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to, i.e., he cannot make a meta-communicative statement.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

(3)  A.L. Rowse (1903-1997) the historian, poet and Shakespearian scholar wrote about transcendental experiences in his memoir, A Cornish Childhood (1942). 'What gave such poignancy to the experience was that, in the very moment as one felt time standing still, one knew at the back of the mind, or with another part of it, that it was moving inexorably on, carrying oneself and life with it. So that the acuity of the experience, the reason why it moved one so profoundly, was at the bottom it was a protest of the personality against the realisation of its final extinction. Perhaps, therefore, it was bound up with a reflex action from the struggle foe survival. I could get no further than that and in fact have remained content with that.