Thoughts
September 21st From the Swimming Pool
I was swimming in the medium lane when another of the regulars came alongside at the end of the pool. She is older than I am and is a most elegant swimmer. There’s a rumour that she may even be a former Olympic swimmer but none of us has had the courage to ask her. As well as being an elegant swimmer she is faster than I am so I said, “Please go ahead. You’re fast.” To which she replied with a smile, “In my day it was not polite to tell a lady she was fast,” and swam away – speedily.
September 13th Questions and Answers
It almost slipped me by. I was watching a television documentary about art in Japan. Not the one about Yayoi Kusama another documentary. The presenter said, apropos of I can’t remember what, “Who wants an answer when you can have a question.” And I thought, “That’s me.” I am far far more interested in questions than I am in answers.
Of course answers have their place and are often essential in allowing me to move on to the next whatever but it is a question that really opens things up. An answer, it seems to me, often closes things down. No more discussion. There can be a fundamentalism in having the answers that I find unappealing.
But questions are not always what they seem. And there are many different types of question. One of the Buddhist monks I met years ago in Yangon asked me what I knew about Buddhism. But what he really wanted was to make sure that I had the ‘right’ understanding, his understanding, of Buddhism. There are as many different traditions within Buddhism as within Christianity. That attitude exists in all religions, philosophies and political groups. There are always those who ask the questions while knowing they have the right answers.
And then there are those other questions when the question isn’t the question at all. I remember an old friend asking me, “What is the purpose of my life?” This was when she was alone, ninety one, on the verge of dementia, and couldn’t look after herself. She said, “There’s no point in living any more. Why am I living? What’s it for? What’s the purpose of my life?” I struggled and eventually said I didn’t know. She said, “Well you should!” I’ve had ideas about that purpose since but that was not actually what her question was about.
Her ‘should’ related to my being a priest and, as a priest, she thought I would have the answer. I think many people assume the church has the answer to most questions. I don’t. I think the church struggles with the questions and I’m not convinced the answer is always there or even if the answer really solves the problem or is the answer.
And her question may have been a question but I’m sure it was not the philosophical issue about the meaning of life that was troubling her but rather her loss of everything that she thought gave her identity. I think she wasn’t really asking me anything at all but rather was telling me, in her way, that she felt lost, adrift, alone and in need of something familiar to hold on to. I don’t think her need was going to be satisfied with words.
Early on I discovered that, “Why has this happened to me?”, usually in the face of a serious illness or tragic death, is not answerable and can sometimes be helped simply by being present in the pain of the question. And the distress of, ‘Why don’t you love me any more?’, has no tidy answer. Nor of course does, ‘Why do you love me?’ The questions open up and express so much while the answers, I suspect, lead nowhere.
Then there is an idea that questions are somehow neutral or innocent. I suppose, “Do you know the way to…,” is fairly neutral. Children sometimes ask questions in their innocence. These are often embarrassing especially when asked in a loud voice in a public place such as the supermarket, “Mummy/Daddy why is that man/woman wearing those funny clothes?” And that’s a very mild example. But adults’ questions rarely have that innocence.
I’ve often had to point out to someone who has come to me for advice that part of the responsibility for asking a question lies with the person who asks it. And I’ve sometime said, “Can you cope with an answer you don’t like or expect?”
“Have you been unfaithful?” Not only requires the ability to deal with the answer and whether or not to believe it, but also the responsibility for having asked the question in the first place. The response, “Don’t you trust me?” need not be asked because the answer lies in the question having been asked in the first place.
We all know the trap question, “Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or No?” and the question that is asked in order for the questioner to display their own knowledge or the trick question to which the questioner already knows the answer and they’re just testing your knowledge.
Despite all this I still love questions and frequently find my own answers, or what I think I think, only when I’ve asked a question that opens up a discussion. Asking questions leads to my discoveries.
And there’s the fun I find in questions. I am told I must be careful and sensitive to other people’s feelings when asking someone where they’re from as there is sometimes considered to be a racist element in the question. I hope I am aware of the sensibilities of those I ask. When I was in New Zealand recently some of the most interesting conversations I had were with Uber drivers and, almost invariably, these began with, “Where are you from?” So far I’ve not had the deflective, “Why do you ask?” nor the conclusive, “It’s none of your business!”
The “Hello. Where are you from?” That I’m asked when I’m travelling opens up a whole new world and new wonders and even friendships in the dialogue that follows. The joy of the solitary traveller is largely found in the questions the locals ask.
Having thought all that, I know I must never lose sight of local custom and the importance of answers and the security they give or do not give as the case may be.
I learned that lesson many years ago in Singapore when asking Chinese friends to dinner. They would always accept but not necessarily turn up. It would have been rude to say no on first asking. The custom there, at that time, was that you asked and the person would say, ‘Yes’. A couple of days later you would ask again and they would say, ‘I do hope to be able to come.’ On the third asking you would be told, ‘That is so kind of you but I will be away in London so will not be able to come.’ They’d known about London all the time but customary politeness came first.
I thought that strange until someone reminded me of having people to tea in Manchester where I was a curate. After the first cup,
“Would you like another cup?” – “No thank you. That was delicious. So refreshing.”
“Are you sure?” – “Well, perhaps I might.”
“Oh please do have another cup?” – “Yes I believe I will. Thank you so much.”
September 8th Laetitia Saves the Day
(With apologies to Angela Brazil)
A picture fell off the wall above the fireplace in my bedroom. I had rehung it without checking the wire. It fell with a crash. A great crash. The watercolour by E A Hope of a village square somewhere in France I inherited from Cousin Mary who must have bought it in the 1930s. It is large and was in its original frame with the original glass. The glass shattered and there were shards everywhere. After I’d gathered them up I picked up the fragments. I could still see the light reflecting on even tinier pieces of glass so I got to work with the Hoover. Even after that there were still dangerous pieces of glass left behind. I went downstairs and fetched Letitia. I pressed ‘auto’ on the remote and left her to it. Two hours later she was still at work but her dust container was full of dust and the remaining pieces of glass. Not a trace of broken glass was left on the carpet. Well done Laetitia!
September 5th Black and White
“Colour images tell a story, whilst black and white photographs move us a step away from reality, as none of us see the world in black and white. But by subtracting colour, we as viewers, are prompted to add our own emotion to the images.” So wrote Father Paul in relation to a black and white photograph by Alex Majoli, ‘Paramedic spraying down Hospital Beds’ that he had chosen for the front cover of last Sunday’s Service booklet.
His thought reminded me of how, when I went to see the film of a book I’d enjoyed, I was frequently disappointed. It was because the way I had seen in my mind the characters in the book, as I read, was not the way they were portrayed on the screen. And it wasn’t only the characters, sometimes the landscape in the film, the light and even the atmosphere was ‘wrong’ – to my mind. I had ‘added my own emotion’ to the words. So I invest myself, perhaps, more in the black and white of a photograph than I do in the colour.
Of course there was a time when photographs could only be black and white. My early photographs, taken with a box brownie, were black and white because that was all their was for the ordinary photographer. Photography was never my strong suit which is why I took to travelling with a notebook rather than a camera. Now it’s not necessity it’s a stylistic choice, to chose black and white, that encourages the imaginative investment in the photograph.
Then again I know, from listening to the radio and from my own broadcasts that the image people have of who is speaking can be quite different from the reality. It’s obviously the case with radio drama. But more than once when I met radio listeners for the first time, listeners who had heard my programme, they said, “You’re not at all how I imagined you.” And when I asked in what way, I was often told I was taller than they thought I would be – from my voice. Do I have a short man’s voice?
From another angle the tone of voice in the spoken word can be totally and completely different from the tone I choose to hear in someone else’s written word. That is why I have had to teach myself to pause when I read what seems to be an unappealing or downright rude comment made by some public figure or even a friend. I need to hear their tone in what they are quoted as having said, not mine.
A ‘throw away’ comment in conversation is, literally, thrown away whereas in print it can’t be. It’s there for all time. A spoken witticism or comment can be quite appalling when seen in print and out of context. This surely is why so many ‘blogs’ get people into trouble. Reading is quite different from hearing. Perhaps also this is why I was brought up never to send a difficult letter I’d written until I’d slept on it and then, in a new day, read it again to get the feeling of it. I choose the colours when I look at black and white.
Somewhere in all this, when I am investing my emotions in what I see or read, I must also consider the comment made to me when I’d made a fairly critical remark about someone else, “Do not ascribe to others the motives you might have in their situation.” That shut me up. It must have done. I still remember the incident very clearly. It seems nothing black and white is black and white. Even a black and white photograph. I add the colour.
September 3rd No Manners
It was bound to happen and now it has. We in the slow lane of the swimming pool were joined by someone new. Someone with no manners. They are fairly rare – those with no manners. So now there were two. Two people, totally oblivious to the existence of others, in the same lane of the same pool at the same time. To be fair they may each have a condition or be on a spectrum but, be that as it may, the inevitable happened. They collided. One of them once with me and I coped but more importantly with each other. And not just once. And neither was pleased at all. They each seemed bewildered the first time it happened and rather cross the second. The third time it was not good at all. And they made it known. I happened to catch the eye of one of my fellow swimmers, one with good manners, and we smiled. We didn’t gloat but for my part I didn’t mind that it had happened. What I now wonder is whether either will have learned from the experience. Perhaps time will tell.
PS They are both of a similar age, gender and ethnicity.