Solutions

I’m not going to post on Sundays. In fact, after a conversation on Friday, I may not post but once a week from now on. I’ll still write something about myself every morning but then choose the best of the week and post on Saturday. So far my record on keeping to my dictates is very poor so we’ll have to see how it goes.

And. My mother has dementia. Her comprehension of the world and her ability to express what she comprehends is vastly diminished. However, either I am similarly compromised or I comprehend things that my mum puts out with a keenness that is useful for her. For example, when I met up with her in May she gave me a book. Huis Clos in French, it’s usually translated as No Exit in English. It features three people trapped in a room with a constant ganging up of two against one. I’m one of three children and I found in my mother’s gift the suggestion that this is a truth that exists in the interrelationship between her children. I myself see it as a possibility but hope for a different outcome. It seems to work best when my two older siblings gather in seeking a solution whilst seeing me as extraneous to requirements. Recently my brother was visiting from Australia. My brother, Shuni, in order to visit my mother had to communicate with my sister who finds his behaviour difficult. There was no arrangement made for us to gather as a family, an occasion that is only possible once a year. I both helped instigate such an occasion with my cousin Rajanee and ruined it, without her help. We travelled down to Southampton to have lunch and discuss family matters. It was a place with people like my niece, Chantelle, whom I’ve not seen for years, the result was that I was immensely tense and it played out in the lunch that was organised. My mother’s instinct about perpetual alienation was solid.

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to a conversation between Sam Harris and Daniel Kahneman. Kanhneman says that we have, within us, a basic instinct that is often wrong. I believe my underlying instinctual drive is based on the idea that I’m an able and gifted person who is bound to lose. It was what played out in the situation referred to above. The tricky part is that the losing always involves me aiming for the positive and to some extent almost reaching it. I’m stumped about why I aim for the positive when the outcome seems fairly locked. I’m happiest when engaging in the unanticipated with full force so that the result is a moment of clarity. So what is this mass of words that is an attempt to make rational that which is inexplicable to me? There appears to be an instinct on the part of most of those named above to keep me out, or as I suspect, no solid instinct to create a wholeness beyond that which they are involved in day to day. Yet there is a peculiarity here. For example, at least a week before the Southampton visit I asked my brother whether he was here as an uncle to my children. He refused to answer me. However, he had organised for Henry and Mia, my children, to visit their grandmother whilst he was here. That’s a definitely being an uncle in my view, though perhaps not in his. This is something none of their relatives who live in this country have been able to achieve. Thus he could have answered yes to my question and perhaps diverted some of the tension that was building in me. Meanwhile, my sister was a willing participant in a lunch which I suspect she found difficult to deal with. In my perception she is always at her best when she takes a lead and instigates things. Underlying the inability to openly gather as a family, there is possibly an instinctual sense of family at work in these people. I happen to be related to them and want to make this active, that’s my sin. The conversation I mentioned at the start of this paragraph ends with the statement this statement – It seems his thinking about the world results from a basic misunderstanding of his predicament.

I’m certainly less able and perhaps not as gifted as I once felt myself to be. I have to marshall my resources more strictly. If I get on with the task at hand perhaps there’s a chance that I can avoid losing comprehensively and rather choose my battles based on an uncertain knowledge of my ability. Every school report accused me of not concentrating and therefore getting sidetracked. I don’t post on Sundays and I always keep to three paragraphs. Don’t I?