Nearly the end of April 2021
Nearly the end of April 2021
The one enjoyable part of the recovery from the hip replacement has been working from bed. Finally, after several cancellations and changes, the surgery went through on the 9th of September. What was the worst has been the aftereffects of the sedative and then the horrid reaction to the opiates (I suppose codeine in particular). I stopped with these as soon as I could, but it became still only many days later that I began once again to feel at least semi-human. And one thing that was strange was to have a birthday under the recovery conditions. Marie-Laure was with us at the time – having come to the UK for the memorial service for Meg’s father, Lord Francis Tombs. Meg was with us for the birthday itself – along with her Covid-recovered son James who had been in and out of the hospital several times and with an imminent danger of collapsing lungs. Richard had prepared a birthday dinner for the five of us. I had about three bites, then lost it and collapsed back to bed where ‘Happy Birthday’ was sung to me. But earlier Dr. James has also stopped by on his way back from Hammersmith. He offered advice and got some other pills for me from the pharmacy across the street.
The Hockney ‘Spring 2020, Normandy’ exhibition at the Royal Academy I thought both fabulous and perfectly enjoyable. Gillie, however, who saw it more recently was disappointed in his I-pad system of drawing and did not think that the drawings benefit the transfer from the iPad to a rather large canvas. Though she loves his subject matter and most of his colours, and has been a devoted fan for years, she’s afraid that until he returns to painting on canvas again, she will not be going to his next exhibition. She suspects that age comes into this somewhere.
Age is certainly an increasing factor with most things these days, I find. An irony for me in this respect is that I have been having a most enjoyable exchange with the, now 23- year-old, founder of Astronism. Following an interview that Cometan conducted of me in July, David Bromley asked if I would write an article for the World Religions and Spirituality Project
(www.wrldrels.org) on the Astronic Tradition that Cometan began when he was 15. I think Cometan originally learned of me when I gave a TEDxLambeth talk on ‘Cultural Astronomy’ in September of 2019. It is often strange how one thing leads to another. But the conversations between one at the relative end and one just at the beginning have been engaging.
I do wish I could have something at least minimally similar with my daughter, but I have come to realise and even accept that I am not really a part of her life. How many parents experience the same? I know that ill and crippled John has his daughter now living in or near Flagstaff, Arizona where he is, but in his case she has decided to break off any connection with her father. But at least as long as my daughter is happy and her life is full, I can be
content with that.
Relationships are curious and inevitably important. I feel blessed with those I have and that include Chloe’s mothers as well as our beloved Vicky, Saint Lynne and Marie-Laure. A rather curious entanglement was gloriously depicted by Maria Schrader in her film "I'm Your Man" with Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens. We saw this two months ago, and I've seen since one or two negative reviews, but I laughed throughout much of it and found it thoroughly something intriguing and to recommend. And it became a comfortable visit to Berlin as well.
As for Richard’s naturalisation process and after waiting four to six months for the Home Office to reply, I asked our lawyer how much longer to expect and only then learned that he had screwed us up, and another bio-metrics appointment for Richard was first necessary – the first was only for the Permanent Leave to Remain. Not sure how it could be rectified – especially with the influx now of Afghan refugees. An appointment was then made for the 3rd of September, but as Richard wanted me to be with him and my surgery was scheduled for the previous day with an overnight stay in the hospital, we had the bio-metrics changed to a week later. And then two days before my appointment and the psychological process of preparing for it, I learned inadvertently that my operation had been changed to the next week without the hospital informing me and now again to the day before Richard’s identifying biological measurements were to be taken. Such seems typical of the bureaucracy of our times and of the disenchantment it creates that the sociologist Max Weber warned us about. If I look outside onto the King’s Road and see the flow of orderly traffic and the people proceeding with their shopping, the miracle that anything can work as well as it does amazes me beyond belief. Meanwhile, the Brexit erosion unsurprisingly continues, and petrol is running out and supermarket shelves have more and more empty space of unavailable stock.
A dinner with a delightful Jonah, another fresh breath of youth, we enjoyed at Balans Soho in late August. Beyond this, Richard I completed our August feriae celebrations and rituals of the Portunalia-Eides-Consualia-Volcanalia-Opiconsivia- mundus patet-Volturnalia. When
honouring the river for this last, we explored for a first time the London Power Station restaurant area. A few days later, its Underground station connecting to the rest of the subway system was opened. Interspersed with all this was working on the type-setting of my “Matter Matters” biography that Drew has graciously and more than impressively been coordinating. I have liked his idea of having running heads throughout.
I sent birthday wishes to Keith Slack and only then learned from a high school classmate that he had passed several months previously. He was one of my earliest neighbours and childhood friends after his war-widowed mother moved with her siblings to my New Jersey hometown at the end of the Second World War. And for better or worse, the US abruptly and seemingly unpreparedly pulled out of Afghanistan on the 30th of August – ending thereby a 20-year war. The following day, Richard and I enjoyed the tasting menu at Hunan in Pimlico with Gin and Rix. It was an enormous and expensive meal but delicious. And earlier this month, we were delighted with a Zoom with Barbara and Patrick as well as a dinner at Tilly’s with her and her Iris and Douglas while Edith was off in Bristol.
September’s moot was Koenraad Elst. The first half was balanced and impressive. His Indo-European stuff was more questionable and debatable, but then with this area I find that I disagree with most everyone. I still believe and affirm that our linguistic spiritual origins were more positive than Dumézil’s tripartite (and manipulated) theory allows and that the ‘patriarchal’ accusations are closer to today’s wokery than they are illuminating when examined without pre-conceived bias.
We had coffees with Padma at Vardo the day before my surgery. And while waiting at the hospital for my time, I managed to get through a harrowing exchange with Apple to for restoring my laptop’s camera successfully. I was summoned before the call had finished but was given the extra time. Others in the waiting room were exhausted afterwards as well. In all, I thought of describing the operation duration – about 15 people involved – as comparable to the coordination of an orchestra. I was near sleep for the most part but remember this repeated banging at one point and was wondering what Richard was now doing, but of course
I was not in bed at home. The following morning Rix accompanied him for his bio-metrics.
September’s Soteria was on the British poet Thom Gunn whom once in San Francisco I helped out of a bathtub after someone had spiked the punch of the party he was at with PCP. I was somewhere else at the time on LSD but heard of the dilemma and came to the venue as an ‘angel of mercy’. There were a lot of distraught and confused people. The countercultural hippy days of Haight-Ashbury.
Marie-Laure spent one additional night with us when returning to Paris after the memorial. I am still delighting in her presence from when she was here. Beyond this, there has been some inching of progress with the lease acquisition procedure after a long delay. At the Beaufort House when having cappuccini, finally I finished Joyce’s Ulysses. I was surprised to find myself teary at the end with Molly’s affirmative (and who knows what else?) soliloquy. And today, although difficult, I managed to get into the bathtub for a shower – the first since. Finally, recently, while Richard continues to be a joy, he told me that Meg and Marie-Laure had called him a ‘force of life.’ He was flabbergasted. Yes, I am he admitted to me, “but how did they know that?” I had to explain to him that he is not exactly a non-transparent person. If anything, he is the complete opposite.