Memories in an Attic

The other day, on going up into the attic (or loft) to put away the Christmas things for another year, I decided that, since I was up there, I might as well see if I could put some order into the piles of assorted objects lying around higgledy-piggledy and growing every year. The main constituents of the mounds of clutter ranged around were clothes, books, magazines, mattresses, black vinyl records, CDs/DVDs, newspapers, school text and exercise books, the inevitable old trunk, a disused water tank, the indispensable outgrown doll's house, as well as old Xmas trees and a variety of other bits and pieces. There was even an old-style school desk, the sort with a lid that lifts up to reveal storage space for your books and things and with a hole in the top right-hand corner where an inkwell used to go. Now they don't make children's school desks like that anymore, do they?

As I stood there, looking around at the sea of clutter, feeling slightly lost and wondering where I should begin, I started thinking of all the years' living that all those articles represented. The items discarded over some 18 years were scattered around the loft, each piece the custodian of a memory, and if they could but speak there would be so much to tell, some of which was doubtless now forgotten. And to think that everything was wanted at some time, had its use, served its purpose, played its role. Now it all lay around in the darkness of the attic unwanted, unused, abandoned. And yet for some reason or other it was not thrown out like a lot of other stuff. It was not seen to be so much junk that should be discarded forever. At least not at the time or since. But now, as I surveyed the clutter, there would have to be some casualties in the general tidying up that I was undertaking. If nothing else, space dictated that there should be.

An attic full of stored objects and bric-a-brac is a storehouse of memories and reminiscences. It is a repository of objects that once were part of one's life but are now consigned to the oblivion of an out-of-the-way corner of the house where they are gradually forgotten. As the years go by and more objects join the ones already stored there, the time-span increases and eventually encompasses a complete lifetime of one or more people. It is a treasure trove of historical artefacts that tell a story, a story of the human lives that were lived out in that house. In many ways, the attic is a sad and forlorn place, the past always is, because it is something that can never be recovered. And it is made all the sadder if some of the stored articles are associated with someone who is no longer with us. They now gain an added force, as 'stand-ins' for the departed person. They may belong to children who have long since left home, a parent or grandparent who has passed on, or a partner who has left us. Each article there tells a story and represents a moment or period in the life of a person who had something to do with the house.

I finally got down to sorting through some bags, plastic sacks and boxes, trying to put things in some order, reduce the number of containers, and discard what was really useless and had no historical or sentimental significance for anyone. It was not easy, I can assure you, and it was not long before I was feeling too tired to go on. There had been some progress but not very much and it was only some time later that I realised I had earned myself a bad back for my pains! Nevertheless, I will have to go up to the loft again some time to sort through more stuff and will have to make the same trip several times over before things are in a satisfactory state. But there's no use rushing it - you just end up making things worse. A little at a time and properly is best.

Objects stored over the years in an attic, loft, cellar, or other place of storage take on greater significance as they grow older and one day assume historical importance in addition to their personal and sentimental significance. Probably the most fascinating objects are those that have outlived the person to whom they used to belong, as now they constitute an invaluable source of information about that person, probably more information than that person would have been willing to disclose were he still alive.

Contemplating the heaps of paraphernalia strewn around an attic brings it home to one that when we leave this world we leave with nothing. Everything but everything is left behind. No matter how earnestly and frenetically we strove during life to acquire and accumulate things, as our possessions no matter how cherished are not part of us, they must all remain behind when we make that final trip to wherever we end up after death. We come into this world with nothing and we leave it with nothing. The attic is a good witness to that and an eloquent testament to the vanity of us human beings who so prize possessions that our whole lives are devoted to their acquisition.

I descended the ladder, folded it up and closed the trapdoor to the attic and to all those memories conjured up by simply contemplating the profusion of objects amassed and stored over many years. I was experiencing emotional overload and needed to rest up with a nice hot cup of tea!

The Mobile Phone (cellphone) and Us

The mobile phone (or cellphone)... now that's a subject and a half! It is today's great totem and a very emotive issue. The mobile phone delights and enrages at the same time. Some people love it and others hate it. Some swear by it and others swear at it. Yet neither can live without it! Or can they?

Well, I am old enough to recall a time when there was no such thing as a mobile phone, when the only phones one had was the landline connected to a socket in the wall or the public phone in a telephone booth. When you were out and about, you were beyond contact unless you chose to use a public phone, whether in a street-located phone booth or in some other location, like a train station for instance. Otherwise, when you were out you were out. Now when you are out you are in, so to speak. You may be in a bank or post office queue, at the pharmacy, in the shopping mall, at the barber's, in a railway station, at the park, or even in a public convenience doing what comes naturally, but none of these is an adequate excuse for not answering the phone when it goes off (I say 'goes off' because few mobile phones nowadays actually ring - they usually start blasting away with some maddening tune or other). And of course every phone call must be answered on pain of failing to save the world if the call is left till later. All calls now are a matter of life and death and must be attended no matter where one is and with whom one is. You may be, say, in a restaurant chatting with a friend, but that won't stop you from breaking off your chat to answer a call that may drag on and on whilst your companion patiently waits for you to come off the blasted phone and give them some attention!

But of course the mobile phone has long ceased to be just a phone... it's become a watch, a calendar, a camera, a calculator, a messaging device, a computer, a music player, a games console, ... and I understand it has also been used as a trigger to detonate a terrorist bomb! It is our constant companion and our link with friends and family. It is also the West's answer to worry beads... now we can fiddle around with our phone when we want to kill time. In short, it is truly a most versatile gadget and comparable to the motor car and the computer in terms of its coverage and utility. The cellphone is one of the twentieth century's greatest success stories and it is still going from strength to strength. And there is already at least one generation of people who neither know nor can conceive of any other world than one with the mobile phone. In the relatively short time that the mobile phone has been with us it has already shaped and coloured our world to such an extent that our way of living has been left changed forever and many of us seem to organise our lives around the mobile phone!

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And of course every new and good thing gives rise to new problems and undesirable consequences. In the case of the mobile phone, it has become so intrusive in our lives that our privacy has been seriously curtailed. As already touched upon above, we can no longer plead unavailability on the grounds that we were out when a call came. After all, is a mobile phone not portable?* And if we protest that we forgot our phone at home, we are regarded as simply lying or as having done it deliberately to avoid calls. We have left ourselves with very little room for manoevre.

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Another problem stems from the very popularity of the mobile phone. With many millions of phones in circulation and with constant upgrades, millions of mobile phones are discarded in the course of a year. All have to be treated and disposed of in some manner or other, whether to be destroyed or recycled. Some are just dumped or binned. But all will end up somewhere and in some form.

The other principal problem created by the widespread use of the mobile phone is the common tendency to use it even when out driving on the public highway. We've all seen drivers with one hand to their ear, holding up their phone, chatting away with a caller, leaving them with just one hand to drive the car. What's more serious than that is the divided concentration which necessarily occurs when a driver has also to conduct a phone conversation as well as drive. This inevitably results in reduced alertness, slower reactions, less accurate driving, and consequently in an increased risk of accident on the road, with all the concomitant dangers of that. And this goes on even though it may be illegal and therefore punishable by law.

Finally, there can be no doubt that a great many people are literally addicted to their mobile phone. It has to be with them every waking moment of their day and in some cases by their bedside when they are asleep. They are constantly using it (even when there's no real need for it), playing with it, fiddling with it and pawing it, presumably to derive comfort and security from it. It has become a sort of mascot, talisman or magic wand for them. This being so, one can imagine the effect on them should they mislay or even lose their trusty telecommunications friend. It is a state not far removed from utter despair and the loss of the will to live!

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And now the inevitable question: Do you recognise yourself in the above description? Are you wedded to your mobile phone? Are you afflicted by a condition known as "cellphonitis" whereby your phone has almost turned into a life support machine for you? Is the company of your cellphone more important to you than the company of human beings? Are you in a state of complete cellphone dependency? Do you break out into a cold sweat at the very idea of losing your phone? Is your worst nightmare the possibility of forgetting your mobile phone at home and being caught out and about without it? If the answer to one or more of these questions is 'yes', then your relationship with your phone is an unhealthy one and you should seek help. Find a good psychiatrist and get treated for cellphonitis!

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* Strictly speaking, a mobile phone is not 'mobile', this is a misnomer, it is 'portable', and this is what it was called when it first came out. A car or a train, for example, is mobile, a phone has to be carried and so is not mobile in the true sense of this word.

The Final Years

The long dark night of winter presses hard,

cold hard days give way to colder nights

that freeze the limbs and stiffen the bones

in this unkind time of the northern year.

Lord, this chill is unlike any that went before,

and now at my age it is one that unsettles me;

I have seen good times aplenty in my halcyon days,

and I know this coming age will not spare us.

Senhor, tem misericordia de nós...

This winter has outdone its rival seasons,

taken Nature hostage, given it tooth and claw;

the cold and wind to prime and pierce us,

the sleet and ice and snow to unmake us.

Lord, are these the wilderness years foretold,

the barren time of otherworld temptation?

is this the moment when we must be parted,

when our lean souls are driven out from us?

Senhor, tem piedade de nós...

I feel the icy sting of a cold wind, oh Lord

as it sweeps across these stony desolate places,

in these stormy times of unfolding prophecies.

I fear the finality of what must come to pass,

of the union of life and death in this end of days.

Senhor, mal aguento este frio...

Life's About-Turns

Funny how life is. One moment everything is going your way and you think you have it all sewn up... health, job, love, relationships, popularity, worldly success, in short you’re riding the crest of a wave, you’re unbeatable and indestructible; and the next, that same wave is engulfing you and your world and everything begins to unravel and come apart around you... your health begins to flag, you lose your job or work becomes scarce, you split up with your significant other, friends drift away, family rows break out, and you can see your life going down the pan. Funny how life is, eh?

The thing is that life itself is very precarious and our happiness actually hangs by a thread. It does not take much to change our fortunes, whether for the better or for the worse. The magnitude of the change required to take us from success to failure in life may be likened to the magnitude of the change required in climatic temperatures to bring natural disasters upon humanity: tiny. And it is when we are at our strongest that we may suffer the biggest setback and the heaviest fall. When we stand at the pinnacle of achievement and are the happy recipients of the best that life has to offer, there is only one way to go if we should slip or misfortune strike us: down.

So as we go into a new year it would be well for all of us to bear in mind that fortunes can change at a drop of a hat in spite of our best efforts to keep on an even keel and avoid stormy seas. Even more importantly, we should not be so intoxicated by short-lived success as to believe in our own immortality. The great and the good have come and gone over the centuries, never to return, and are but a blip in the passage of time. The most successful, the wealthiest, the most celebrated, the most adored and feted man or woman, will grow old, feeble, and die one day... that is, if illness or accident does not claim him first. In this we are all equal before God, Nature, the Giver of Life and Death.

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The comments I make here are not meant to be taken as a counsel of despair, nor as a sermon of righteousness, but as an acknowledgment of the way things are, and, this said, I now wish everyone a very happy and prosperous...

New Year

Carry on blogging, folks!