I believed them, the local authority, when they said the lights in their building next door to my house, wouldn't be turned on before eight a.m. It was wonderful. For one night. One night. One. So wonderful, a sense of security, of being listened to and heard, being able to sleep peacefully. And the next day, the signs of aging began to slip away: my legs didn't ache, I could walk properly and so on. Almost a miracle.
And the next morning, the lights were on again - snap - well before dawn and I was snapped awake. And I my legs ached and I was shuffling again, all confidence stripped from me, again. snap. And now, again, I can't sleep at night, again; I am sensitised and expect to be snapped awake.
Interesting, isn't it, what sleep deprivation can do to a person; and being stripped of free will by bullies. I do resent it. In England, I believe, one is entitled, by law, to the right of peaceful enjoyment of one's home.
I know I'm naive, but I do expect the Local Government to adhere to the law of the land.
(I wrote the above for the local authority and emailed it to them. They seem now to have fixed the problem.)
1
When George was old and not long before he died, he began to fall down; suddenly he'd drop, crash, just fall down. He wasn't firm on his feet, anyway, and then this added problem. (Apparently, it's common in old people.) He didn't understand it. Let's see.
He was old, dependent on others. He was being lied to and misled by someone whom he trusted implicitly, undermining his work and his judgement. He didn't know. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he didn't know consciously that she was lying to him.
He had been physically very strong but was becoming weak and frail; for some time he had difficulty swallowing food, something wrong with his throat, until for months or maybe a year, he was fed by a tube into his stomach; he had digestive difficulties.
I identity with George. Now that I am old and share some of the same physical difficulties - though I do eat, quite a lot, and don't know how he survived, really - I have some idea of what may have been in his mind.
It seems to me that in falling down, which is common in old people and toddlers, he showed that he wanted to give up; he'd had enough; and the same in not eating, which is why I suggest that he did know unconsciously that he was being lied to, and even perhaps who was lying to him, but he couldn't accept it consciously.
And it seems to me, that while George Frankl struggled with all this, his spirit, the unnamed essense of him, his psyche, or the universal in him, was crying out, 'Enough! Let me go. Let me be free.' And if that sounds over-passionate, that's how it seems to me. It's how I feel.
2
We seem to think in terms of life or death. I always have: alive one day, dead the next. But isn't it different?
Isn't it more balanced than that? Isn't it all life? But we are so confused, so frightened - for causes we've looked at here - that we cling to what we know, can see, and shy away from what we can't see, and increasingly refuse to see. (This isn't quite what I thought at 4 o'clock this morning, but couldn't write down as eyesight demands I now must write in daylight.)
Toddlers re-live the phylogenic experiences of our ancient ancestors, and from the age of about four years grow into the ways of homo sapiens, and there is a division between ourselves as infants and as adults. Then, in old age, we have 'second childhood' and there is a division between the old and the younger adults, ie any adult who is not yet old. Where Shakespeare has 7 ages, let's say for our purposes here, 3 ages, children, adults, olds.
Babies live within nature; adult homo sapiens are rather more than somewhat divorced from nature; we may begin to recognise that olds in second childhood are slipping into nature. Let us investigate.
3
As far as I remember I haven't read any first hand accounts of being old. I think Laurie Lee in Cider with Rosie writes about two very old women in his village, who strongly dislike each other and who eventually dry up and blow away, like autumn leaves. It's a memorable passage, beautifully written, but we don't know what the old women think about things.
The old and old age are interpreted by the young, who cannot know what it's like to be old. I'll try and give an idea of what it's like to be old from the perspective of being old.
First, the brain. There is a vast hinterland to the brain. We have the forebrain, the new brain, pre-frontal cortex; years ago, I read something about the fore brain being empty, and wonder if that is possible; perhaps I misunderstood, which is very likely. But perhaps the fore brain (located in the forehead) may be thought of as a blackboard on which we write our equations and questions, and do our working out, and find our answers, make our intellectual discoveries and are satisfied until the next question arises, and so we progress.
With George Frankl as my teacher, I have, of course taken the forebrain on trust, particularly as necessary for conscious understanding and recognition. But now that I am old, in my second childhood, I'm finding that there is a hinterland to the brain, obviously; the forehead is only a small area, and there is the crown and back of the head in which are the areas of the brain which work with the eyes, guts, memory and everything, (the motor areas, perhaps?). But I am also becoming aware that the hinterland of the brain is teeming with life and vast, a universe of innate knowledge, instinctual understanding.
Babies, naturally happy, live inside the natural world of instinct, and we may begin to recognise that they are within and surrounded by the universe of the hinterland of the brain. And we may begin to understand that the old are naturally going to that instinctual state. We may speculate that dementia in many cases is not a disease, but is part of a natural process; and furthermore we may recognise that if the aged demented were simply allowed to fade away and die naturally, it would be better for them and for society.
Personally, I begin to see that I am far less afraid of dying than I am of being kept alive unnaturally.
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It's terrifying, whatever 'it' is, and that's the point: what is it that is so frightening? I could cry, but that wouldn't do any good; nor would anger; can't run from it; and the quacks with their drugs wouldn't help. I'm powerless against it.
I reckon I became old when I was 72 (nearly 73) and finally realised that the bastard builders who put a hole in my roof, weren't going to mend it as they had promised; and I was powerless. Powerlessness seems to me to be a feature - a defining feature? - of being old.
But I can face this fear, and must try to understand it.
As an old person, I usually wake 2 or 3 times a night to pee. Recently, I've been waking at around 3.30 am and can't get back to sleep. And that's when the fear grips me. My brain seems somewhat scrambled, not because I'm half asleep - I am wide awake. Or maybe I am half awake - trying to get back to sleep.
Perhaps the fear is ever-present and is kept under control by sleep? And when the sleep pattern is often disturbed, the fear rises nearer consciousness. Perhaps the fear is reaching out from the deep unconscious?
But what is it, this fear? It's in the brain, that's for sure.
———-
A healthy baby is born with the brain in good balance. But life goes on; the baby encounters phylogenic difficulties; and whatever the adults (and/or older siblings) might inflict; and what life might inflict, until by old age, the brain might not be in such good balance. This is not universal, there are individuals who may live well into old age, healthy in mind and body, body includes the brain, of course.
It seems likely that we are afraid because we are homo sapiens; that whatever first prompted us to split from nature - the Great Catastrophe? - was so terrifying that as a species we have carried the terror within us; and that being so separated from nature as we are, exacerbates, makes the fear worse and prolongs it over the millennia.
'It' isn't the devil, or hell, or ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggety beasties. And 'it' isn't caused by our inborn sinfulness, Frankl's Proof scotches that. The fear is what is in our memory as a species, trauma unresolved, and we have pursued the ancestral remedy relentlessly ever since; while all the time our species has been and is still haunted unconsciously by that disaster, which we repeat over and over and over again, in different-seeming ways, which are in fact and in effect the same.
And it seems to me that senile dementia might be seen is an almost rational response to a lifetime spent in the unreality imposed on us because we are homo sapiens.
New Page 5 (Me)
Sometimes I have trouble breathing. This is surely ontogenic, about my own evolution. But breathing difficulties are very common, and gut disease is hugely common.
According to Google AI, respiratory disease affects 1 in 5 people in the UK (20%); Google AI doesn't give a clear figure of numbers in the UK with gut problems, but indicates the numbers are very high. So it's certainly not only me, and I can legitimately investigate.
Bronchitis when I was a child, starting at 9 years old until 13, which if I've remembered those ages correctly, they coincide with leaving the orphanage in the clean (glorious) mountain air of Switzerland where the adults liked us, and returning to live with my parents and going to school with the nuns for 4 years (nasty).
I have most certainly remembered, is that as a child I observed within myself a connection between bronchitis and constipation.
Now, at 75 I have very frequent breathing difficulties, which are frightening.
(I must write this down, I must think it out, but it is very frightening and therefore difficult.)
Right. Tracing back my own experience, I come up against my mother. But I refuse to believe that the 20% of people with breathing difficulties, and untold numbers with gut disorders all had or have mothers like mine. That cannot be. (Can it?)
No. When I look at my breathing problems, I realise I want a cuddle, reassurance, kindliness. I am a small child, very upset and brushed away, pushed away; no one around me wanted to hold me, not even my father who didn't cuddle us. Now, that infant isolation was probably very common, and probably still is. Remember the great, heaving breaths when the toddler recovers after passionate weeping? That's something like what I feel now; I feel, re-experience the physical effects, though I'm not suffering the same traumas - I'm remembering what it felt like as a small child, and it is kind of a bit desolate.
Another aspect of this, is that the toddler feels a responsibility towards the happiness and well-being of the rest of the family, particularly the mother: if the grown ups and bigger children don't want to cuddle you, it would be unkind to persist in being unhappy. Or worse, they might be right and you are nasty. So smile. And the trauma, ontogenic or phylogenic, remains unaddressed and unresolved.
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To understand these common ailments and diseases, we must think of infancy. We must remember consciously what we felt during the phylogenic phases when we were toddlers.
Let us remind ourselves of those three phylogenic phases: yelling and lying (A); exhilaration (B); terror and rage (C).
Many of our early ancestors at C will have been scared shitless. What happens to your body when you're that frightened? The body tenses; the muscles pull up, making defecating difficult, and you don't want to shit; perhaps because you don't want to reveal your location to the 'enemy' - the source of the fear.
These ancestors were enraged at phase C. In addition to the toxic mix of rage and terror, they were also confounded, confused; they didn't know what had happened, and they didn't know what to do. They will have regressed, and felt betrayed - by nature itself. They were in a terrible mess. Our infants at 3 1/2 re-experience all this; and in second childhood, too, phase C re-echoes, and old people are vulnerable to somewhat similar experiences.
I don't like to write about these things. As a species we've spent millions of years blocking it all out of memory. But that doesn't work; our toddlers experience the same three phase, every generation ever since. And the attempt to pretend 'it (C) never happened' means that we are trapped in a cycle of horror, blindly trying to carry on as normal, but 'normal' is a continuing and worsening disaster. We must free ourselves.
Another effect in old age is being unsteady when walking. I know about that. My back is tense, shoulders raised - pulled up; my gut is tense and pulled up; my legs are tense, and the muscles are pulled up. It is easy to reckon what is happening physically. The common label of second childhood is a helpful clue as to what is going on psychologically - if that is the right word in this context. It is eminently reasonable to speculate that in old age we are experiencing echoes of the phylogenic phases A, B and C (especially C). Personally I have no doubts about it at all.
New Page 7
We're divided from ourselves; I'm divided from myself, and that seems to be a condition of being human.
The three stages of infancy, A, B and C, lead to an estrangement, particularly C, the Great Catastrophe, the great shock to our ancestors. A child now, screaming suddenly in terrified rage at 3 1/2, forgets. Most people forget; adults generally don't remember being an infant, (though some say they remember being born, which they may). So there is a division at that point between adults and toddlers, but a self-division in the toddler, who forgets. We're homo sapiens; the events of C split our ancestors off from what they were before, and our infants now must do the same: to be homo sapiens they must split from what they were before they were 3 1/2 years old.*
I have a good memory. I remember all three phases, A. B. and C. This is unusual but is not unprecedented. But it is only now that I am becoming aware of the extent and consequences of the divide, the split which has made us strangers from ourselves.
As homo sapiens we are, have become increasingly split from each other, other life forms here, from nature, and from the 'unknown', which is really part of nature. What the other creatures and life forms on the planet all know, has become strange and frightening to us. Now that I am old, I see why we are frightened to die. It is the split.
———- * it seems likely that people diagnosed as bi polar are caught between the exhilaration and creativity they experienced at stage B. and the terror of stage C.
New Page 8
Peter is nearly 90 years old and has been diagnosed with dementia. He has become very sensitive to noise, cries out as if in pain at any unexpected sound, even something as slight as a spoon knocked against a cup. It is very distressing for his wife and daughter caring for him.
My sister, Paula, found a lovely blue silk blouse in a charity shop, but was reluctant to wear it because every time she wore something made of silk she spilled wine or dropped food on it and ruined it. She was upset, and puzzled. I thought about it - she's family, I know her quite well. I know that she was sent to an orphanage aged 2 and that her mother was very upset, and not well. I concentrated on that: 2 year old child: anxious and unhappy mother. It seemed to me that when the mother handed her little child over to the woman from the orphanage, the mother's anger infected the child, who felt the negativity in her guts so that she vomited on the woman taking her away; and it seemed obvious that the woman must have been wearing a silk blouse. I told Paula these thoughts. (Paula later wore her lovely blue silk blouse and didn't spill food or drink on it, so it seems my thoughts were right.)
The baby, the young child is very close to the mother. We know that all babies are born good and loving; the child must obey the mother. The baby and small child learns from the mother, does what the mother does, feels what the mother feels, as the story of the blue silk blouse seems to confirm.
It is possible that at an early stage in his life, Peter's mother became very sensitive to noise, or that she became ill (or angry) and that the baby associated his mother's distress with noise.
————--
A few days ago I had a sense of 'sufficient unto the day' (or cross that bridge when we come to it) there's no sense in worrying about things until we have to. Marvellous feeling! But it soon wore off, I'm too bloody human. Heigh-ho.
New Page 9
The baby is so close to the mother. Peter's mother may have been suffering from post natal depression - 90 years ago there there probably wasn't much understanding or support - and Peter, the baby felt what his mother felt. The baby is so very close to the mother, whatever strong and lasting negative feelings she has her baby also feels; and now in second childhood, those feelings re-emerge and old Peter responds just as he did when he was a baby. It is no one's fault; no one is to blame, not the mother, anxious, depressed, enraged, overwhelmed by some strong negative emotion, certainly not the baby, and not old Peter.
—————-
I feel oppressed in spirit. The quacks would surely diagnose depression, but I'm not depressed, the essential me. It's as if I am being oppressed from outside me, a familiar feeling.
Peter is a family friend, I've known him since I was a child. We're not close, but thinking about his dementia and realising that whatever it is that troubles him now must come from his babyhood, his relationship with his mother then, has evoked thoughts of my own babyhood and relationship with my mother. Which wasn't ideal; but this isn't a misery memoire, so it's enough to say her own babyhood and childhood wasn't ideal. No one's fault, no one is to blame. But it is passed on down the generations…
———————-
I can't say that I have memories before the age of 2, but there are and hints, intimations of or from my earliest days.
Over the past few years, I've had a sense, a mental image, of blissful pinkness; it's like a memory but I haven't been able to place it anywhere in my life. I've thought that perhaps it may be my experience of the hospital where I was born.
In the past week or so, having been told of, and trying to understand Peter's present difficulties, the pink image has recurred and so I've thought about that.
My mother often told me, that in the labour ward giving birth to me (her 7th child), she had demanded pain relief, as Princess Elizabeth had giving birth to Prince Charles; the medics said, 'Come along now, mother,' so my mother sat up and crossed her legs and told them she wouldn't have the baby without pain relief; the medics caved in and she had me. She was very proud of this.
On the net, I found out this treatment is known as 'twilight sleep'; it involves a number of drugs, notably morphine. A sense of blissful pinkness makes sense: it may well have been my first experience of life outside the womb, my first memory.
But was it my memory, or my mother's first conscious thought or memory of my lifetime, transmitted to me? The baby is so very close to the mother; this is well known. But until I was told about Peter's condition, I hadn't quite thought about the implications.
—————--
Of course the baby is close to the mother; we may say that 9 months growing in the womb, developing, is eternity to the baby; when it comes out, the baby is separate, physically, and begins to become an individual in its own right, emotionally, morally, psychologically, but it is at first joined to the mother in all these ways. What the mother experiences, her baby experiences, just as in the womb.
The baby learns what the mother teaches; and nature demands that the baby must obey the mother, must learn whatever she teaches, and we may say, that the mother teaches through experience.
Thank God for George Frankl.
New Page 10
''You must be honest'' George Frankl
When I was about 45 years old, my mother proudly told me that she had begun potty training me at six weeks old. I didn't say anything but had a mental image of my enraged mother holding me, a tiny baby, over the toilet bowl and screeching, 'Piss, you bastard, piss!' and a sense that the baby didn't know what was going on. It isn't a memory exactly, but it could well be what happened; my mother always screeched when she was angry, which was often, and her self reported behaviour was entirely characteristic, she would hold a 6 week old baby over a toilet bowl and expect it to urinate and defecate on demand, and she would think her behaviour was entirely right and praiseworthy. She wasn't an easy woman to live with.
Let us put this into context: we lived in a slum, without running hot water; there was no bathroom, only the toilet, which we shared with potentially 15 other people in the house; my parents and at the time 3 children lived in two rooms and had a small kitchen. I was born in 1950 when such living conditions were very common, I'm sure, after the bombing during the second world war, and before replacement housing was built. We can see that my mother had cause to be - dissatisfied, as many other mothers in similar circumstances surely were.
OK. Obviously, I understand all that now, but as a very young baby? What I would have understood as a young baby was that my mother didn't like my product, she didn't like that I pissed and shat - she didn't like me.
Babies, even new born babies, are sentient; they are conscious; they have brains which they can and do use…
This is difficult to write: though I was very young, there is a moral issue here which I must now address. It's no one's fault, no one is to blame, not my mother, not even the filthy nazis for their blitzkreig, and certainly not the baby I was.
A baby is very close to its mother; a baby is sentient, conscious and has a working brain; the baby must obey the mother. I will have recognised, by empathy, my mother's displeasure; I would have sensed that the cause of her infuriated distress was to do with my defecating; she taught me that defecating made her unhappy; I had to learn this lesson and I had to save myself. It is reasonable to speculate that the baby tried to obey the mother by not shitting, and by this means to make the mother happy and to save her own self. Of course, this course of action would make the baby ill, and the make the mother anxious and so on. I think that this is when my father recognised that she wasn't an ideal mother and intervened, thus saving his baby daughter.
But the moral issue is that I, the baby, acted to my own detriment. My mother didn't make the decision, she behaved irrationally for sure, but I made the decision to please her, obey her wishes by not shitting. Babies can, and do, make decisions of this kind, and bear the consequences, moral and physical.
In second childhood we become aware of what happened in first childhood. And that's another question: why do we become aware? And also, why do so many old people fall down?
But at least I can easily guess why I'm fed up. Where is the happy and fulfilled retirement that the social myths promise? When do I get to live my own life? pfff.
New Page 11
Why do the difficulties of infancy resurface in second childhood?
We repress so much of life, as individuals and collectively in our societies. As individuals, we are required to repress our fundamentally good and loving selves, our naturally good instincts and impulses, and we may speculate that in old age people naturally want freedom from this repression and freedom to be free. We may further speculate that for many individuals this natural desire for freedom is blocked by difficulties experienced in very early infancy, difficulties which have been repressed from conscious memory and which try to break through into conscious memory in second childhood.
As it might be: light heartedly, you go for a walk in the country on a lovely day; you aim for a beautiful, sunlit view ahead, at which you gaze; until you find you've wandered into a bramble patch or a bog, a treacherous morass, and you're stuck and have to struggle out; and when you do, it's raining or growing dark…
But there's always tomorrow, so we try again and keep trying for as long as it takes because it is a wonderful place we have in mind.
Courage
It's Spring!
All over the place people are living out their dark fantasies, imposing their miseries on the innocent -
But here it's spring. And in the garden the process of rebirth and regrowth is proceeding, wild flowers are blossoming and soon caterpillars will come to feed on them, and then beautiful and extraordinary butterflies and moths
And I'm taking a day off. Some say the 3rd world war has started, and predict civil war, and nuclear holocaust, while others calculate how to make money out of everything.
Investigating second childhood, a strong sense memory of my own early days came on me; followed by a stronger memory of my father, and survival with him, despite my poor mother's excesses.
And it's spring. Nature doesn't care about us and all our dark works.
Naturally, the early days of a child's life are most important, and though we overcome and strive and may succeed in Homo Sapiens ways, all the sense memories from birth - however strongly repressed - will re-emerge in second childhood,