I am about to move house and to start a new life in a city still strange to me.  Among all the many moments I have to give to packing and managing the move, I have found a few spare to write this.

But snatching at moments seems an image for us all, in our time. So much of the time, these days, there is simply no time, none for this, none for that. So for what do we need time, when there is so little of it available for so much that matters ?

Mine is an even bigger move than I had thought. I have lived in London all my adult life. But until recently, I was focussed in my leaving on more immediate or close-in endings and transitions the move implies, and forgot the London aspect, my daily surroundings for over forty years. But in the last few days, with moving day very close now, I have begun to feel it more. It does not change my gladness in the move, but complicates it.

But at the same time I am thinking of all the other people I know whose lives feel precarious, at sea and in question, so that perhaps we all feel ever more like flotsam and jetsam tossing about, and ever less safe in dock, securely berthed. And the people I’m thinking of tend to be of high talent and integrity and I do not think I would be overstating things in suggesting that their situation is somehow symptomatic of what our Society is doing to people of high talent and integrity, in these days.

And a related thought is that I have various projects on the go at the moment, from my creative but precarious place here on the outside of most systems, but all of them bar one feel snarled up and stuck just now, often precisely because the people I have to work with to make them happen don’t have the time. They are too busy just struggling to survive, to stay afloat, ticking whatever boxes have to be ticked.

In such precariousness, and so much lack of time, the writer has to fight even harder to find an audience, to get people to pause for long enough to listen, to read, to think. Or put it another way, real exchange between people gets harder and harder, rarer and rarer. We address and properly listen to each other less and less. And just brush past each other more and more.

It makes me think of a poem I wrote decades ago, called “Loitering” (with intent). Here are some lines from it :

I loiter here between lines of thunder

poised for the sudden break

the momentary opening

my own hushed moment of interruption.

And also I find it makes me want to “bank” my material with people I like and respect a lot. I cannot expect them to read it now, as of course they don’t have time (though obviously I would love it if they could). But I would ask that they read it sometime, whenever there is time. Or if and when the times become a bit more propitious.

Thus I am presently “banking” the Speak, Parrot poem described in the post just beneath this one, with various of my friends, for when they have time. I think it might be worth digging up at some point, buried in its box, in its cage. Then open it and let the Parrot speak to you.

And on the subject of leaving, I shall add here a very short paper which I have just written. It is for workers of an organisation offering social care. The wonder of it is that the paper might be necessary to correct a growing malpractice in some organisations, by which leaving has come to mean just disappearing as fast as possible, like a casual shop assistant, without taking personal responsibility for taking your leave humanly, for parting with skill and care, for going carefully and creatively, over time.

The paper is based on a working life in mental health social work, principally in residential and day services ; also on Transition Theory in Psychology ; and on psycho-dynamic ideas on bereavement, for which “Bereavement” (Penguin, 1977) by Dr Colin Murray Parkes , is still the classic text. (Colin Murray Parkes has acted as a consultant to the UK Government on numerous occasions, following various major tragedies and incidents in recent times).

The following precepts can be derived from that material  :

1. Separation, and the anxiety associated with separation, are a matter of relationship, a two way process. They are not just things that happen to the person leaving. They happen too to the person (s) left.

2. Bereavement, and the theories and practice associated with it, do not apply just to extreme experiences such as loss brought about by death or violence, and in only intimate relationships. They apply to loss of any kind and any extent of seriousness, such as the loss of a limb, a familiar dwelling, a familiar colleague.

3. For every relationship we have, becomes in a sense a part of who we are, to a greater or lesser extent. Losing that relationship requires inner adjustment of some kind, at some level, depending on the nature and importance of the relationship. Failing to allow for that adjustment in some appropriate way is like leaving homework undone. It will hang over you until you’ve done it.

4. Loss and separation is also a matter requiring, where possible, time and process. Thus, if someone leaves close colleagues without allowing them time to process the coming separation with that person, to resolve and round off their working relationship, that leaver is committing an act of social violence. In a worker involved in care work it is simply a pathological denial of everything care means. He or she is treating people as if they are  just furniture in the room. Leaving cannot be a matter of just turning out the light and moving to the next room. To do so leaves human damage behind, on both sides of the relationship, to one extent or another, raw tissue unhealed. It is adding to human damage, not ameliorating it.

5. Thus it is universally understood that traumatic loss, ie loss that is sudden and unexpected,  is harder to deal with and to recover from for those left behind. Loss prepared for and worked through, however painfully, is less disempowering and can actually be healing and energising. Loss prepared for is a necessary opportunity to identify, evaluate and make sense of one’s experience and place in the world, and one’s attachments to it. It can even help people to review and resolve previous losses insufficiently lived.

6. There are some accepted “pathways” for helping people through loss. “Counselling” is often lightly suggested and lightly undertaken, marching the “patient” through “stages” of bereavement and transition widely known. These “stages” regularly turn up in magazines about moving house. There is no point repeating them here. They can be looked up. What is lacking too often is not knowledge, not the forms, but the basic human skills that come from empathy, sensitivity and common sense, the inner reality.

7. Here are some suggestions, in principle, for processing loss and separation in a professional and positive manner, in an organisation involved in care work :

• Give sufficient time for people simply to get used to the coming separation emotionally and practically.
• Address the coming separation with the individuals affected, both colleagues and clients, giving time to the topic not just once but over time. Explore the meaning of the relationship and of the separation, according to its importance to each. This can be done 1-1 or in meetings, or both, as judged appropriate.  Allow time for real talking, free of bullet-points and clichés !
• In close working relationships, all aspects should be looked at. It is an opportunity for unfinished business to be resolved and the maximum learning to be extracted. By unfinished business I mean negative as well as positive, if these topics can usefully be addressed. As few loose ends as possible should be left dangling, working negatively on the individual left behind.
• Obviously, these suggestions imply different degrees of application, according to the extent and degree of personal commitment to the relationship about to change. They apply far less to a departing admin worker, say, than to someone working directly with clients, or to a senior manager leaving a small circle of close subordinates. But, however slightly, or largely, they do apply to all degrees of loss.

And, finally, here are a couple of suggested applications of these ideas :

• Good  quality training in bereavement and loss and transition should become part of the in-service training programme for all relevant staff – ie for all managers and for all staff working directly with clients. The skills and practice required  for good leaving should be an integral part of staff supervision.
• Lengths of notice across the organisation should be reviewed, and should vary according to the nature of the work undertaken by each worker role, and the working relationships that person has with clients and colleagues. The optimum notice given by senior managers might be three months. The optimum notice given by ground level staff, working with clients, should surely be more than the standard month – maybe two months (as habituation time can be too short, so it can also be too long to be helpful). The notice should be seen as, and from the outset contracted to be, a vital part of the employee’s work overall and not just a chance to take available leave.  How people work out their notice should affect the reference they receive from the organisation.

 

 

 

 

 

This England

this Bling land

 

this Bling and Buy Land

this Hack and Spy Land

 

this Try a Lie Land

this Me and My Land

 

We’re all in this together

in Me and Mine Land.

 

What price the soul

in Buy and Lie Land,

 

my lord ?

“Price ?

 

The soul ? Ah yes.

The sole’s a kind of fish

 

I point at once a year

before my darling

 

orcish cameras

to show the plebs their plaice

 

and my dynamic qualities

as Prime Minister.

 

My sole is sought

my sole is caught

 

my sole is bought

at the lowest price

 

and in a trice

and tastes so nice

 

when ridden out

on an old police horse…”

 

                Rogan Wolf, August 2014

 

The above harangue is part of a much longer poem I have now produced which can be read here. It is based on John Skelton’s wonderful work “Speak, Parrot.” I intend soon to recite/perform the poem on film and put that online as well.

Skelton is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the fifteenth century. He lived in the reign of Henry Eighth (and in fact had been Henry’s tutor while the latter was still prince). For me, “Speak Parrot” is his greatest poem.

My version is in three parts. The first is an almost direct translation of Skelton’s initial stanzas (in strict rhyme royal), putting them into modern English and modern English conditions.

The second part travels a further distance from Skelton’s text, though I have selected particular lines from his middle sections and quoted them directly. I have also tried to keep close to the spirit of what he was saying. Most of it continues the rhyme royal format and that part is my favourite of the whole poem. But it ends with the quasi-Skeltonic doggerel quoted above.

The third part returns to rhyme royal but is entirely my own and is even more particular to present times and individuals than the above few lines. Galathea has persuaded me, more effectively than she did Skelton, to speak “true and plain.” But again, I am writing in the spirit of what I believe Skelton was fighting for. In his “Speak, Parrot” poem, he is of course saying that, while sounding off against ill-doing and abuse of power is a necessity, a requirement for health, both individual and communal, so it is also difficult and even on occasion dangerous. He makes a game of hints and allusions throughout the poem, as gradually he is persuaded to name more clearly the Beast of his time. He ducks and weaves. He builds up his statement, his attack, through hint and allusion, with his rhyme royal stanzas marching along in stately fashion, and his references and truisms often spraying out like arrows from between stanzas, like archers hopping out from behind the phalanxes.

But while he is playful in these games, his playing is dead serious. He needs a hearing and also support. He looks to the classics and to scripture for his authority. He teases but also woos and educates his audience. He prepares his dangerous way.

Carrying his truth, Skelton advances behind the screen of his protecting strategies, like Birnan Wood on Dunsinane, where Macbeth is waiting for the reckoning. Just so, in my version, I advance behind Skelton. He is my Birnan Wood, but also my mentor, my guide, my authority.

Skelton’s Beast was Cardinal Wolsey, who had accrued and for a few years held a dangerous amount of unaccountable power over large areas of England’s life, both temporal and spiritual, during a time of immense and bewildering upheaval and unrest. But as upheavals come and go, so Beasts change, however much the lust for and abuse of power seem pretty constant through the centuries. So the Beast and Beast’s creatures whom I fear to name are different from those of Skelton’s day.

But ultimately I think the poem is about more than speaking out and truth-telling and individual ill-doing. It asks what sort of lives we want to lead, what sort of Society to live in ; and what altars should we worship at – those of God or Mammon, love or hate, grace or greed ? And what sort of world do we want to leave our children ? The followers of Baal burned their children, to assuage his wroth. We show every sign of being willing to burn our children too, for the sake of our own greed and fear and comfort.

I think the poem is topical, urgently so.

As far as I can tell, the title of this post – “Where One is the Other must be” – comes originally from descriptions of the Christian Eucharist, that can be found on the Internet. I saw the phrase in the Summer of this year hung in upper case at the eastern end of Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden, above the high altar. It was part of a commissioned art work by Mats Hjelm, in turn part of a Swedish exhibition called “Heaven is Here.” http://www.himlenarhar.se/?lang=en

I have used the phrase repeatedly in my version of the Skelton poem. For Life and Soul, (he set out the phrase in both Latin and Greek), belong together and without One the Other is not. It is possible to live as a human being as if without soul – by mere calculation, or by mere drowning franticness. But we destroy life in doing so, in all senses, and we are running out of time. Where One is, the Other must be.

Soon after returning from Sweden, I noted another telling phrase that included the word “Other”, acting as an uncomfortable counter-point, or gargoyle outside the cathedral door. It appeared in a Guardian feature article by Roxane Gay, dated September 2nd. She was writing about the recent hacking and publishing of previously private images of female celebrities in the nude. This of course was an action taken by people separated from soul. Because the celebrities were women, because they were therefore Other to predatory and sorry males, and because Other is Fair Game, Gay cogently argued, the thieves and hackers who committed this crime felt they had a right to steal the women’s privacy from them and offer them up as male masturbation material. The women had been made mere objects for Me and Mine. The phrase was at the head of her article : “There is always danger in being an Other.”

And we are all, finally, an Other to some one. Each of us is One. Each of us, simultaneously, is Other.

 

I wonder when the point of exhaustion is reached, north of the border. By now, most people know what they will vote tomorrow and many have anyway already voted, casting their die. But some there will be who even now don’t know and may be agonising tonight. They may be the best of all the participants, refusing simplification, exploring all aspects. living the quandary. “The best lack all conviction.” I wish I could sit with them.

I began by enjoying the intensity and vigour of the arguments. I end by suspecting this whole business is a con, a terrible irrelevance and red herring, a diversion and waste of good energy.

We are faced as a race with terrible predicaments, brought on not just by our flawed nature but by our genius. But we don’t know what we do in making the world we have made. We don’t know what to do with us or it, with the future that threatens us, with the Earth we threaten. We are desperate for the answers. We grope around for them.

And yes, the line the “effing Tories” take is a pathological disaster, the obvious response to difficult conditions, but the worst. Compete in preference to co-operate, measure your worth by the size or quantity of your possessions compared to those of your neighbour, cut back on government, cut back on tax, cut back on community, on libraries, on Legal Aid,  on quality, cut back on truth-telling, screw the poor, punish the vulnerable, fear the foreigner. Hooligan and useless answers to our predicaments. A pathological and to a degree an infantile response to things as they are. Things as they are demand the best of our humanity, not this wicked nineteenth century old hat from the southern shires. Things as they are demand co-operation, creativity and adulthood such as humanity has never shown before.

So small wonder a good half of the Scots want clear of the English, who persist in succumbing to these puerile, oppressive, anti-social philosophies and practices.

But will a re-building of Hadrian’s Wall secure their escape ?  It will not. It is just another distraction, as useless as the Tories’ own pernicious pie-in-the-sky. “Independence” secures nothing. It merely absorbs great energy, far better used for real solutions.

I believe this whole and evermore fractious debate has been a huge – and merely destructive – misuse and diversion of generous energy. Whatever the decision, the main result will be a nation split. Tomorrow Scotland may have split from England. But tonight, Scotland itself is split in half, dismantled, distracted.

And, in consequence, further than ever from finding real solutions to the real questions facing all of us – how to shape and harness, nurture and restrain human nature, so that we as a race can live in the world without destroying it and us. Tonight, we on these small islands, on the northwestern edge of Europe, discussing ever greater fragmentation, are surely further than ever from the answers.

 

 

 

 

This short piece examines the topic of fundamentalism and offers some thoughts on its origins in human nature and behaviour. The piece opposes any notion that fundamentalism is limited to religious faith, or – for that matter – that false or idolatrous worship is limited to issues associated with religion. But there are principles that are common. Here is a link to the piece.

This is the sixteenth and last of a collection of essays called “Fables and Reflections.” The series has been commended by Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist who is also author of an important book called “The Master and His Emissary—The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”. This is what he has to say about the Fables : “When I wrote a book about the structure of  the brain and its influence on culture, I did not expect for one minute that it would inspire artists, poets and musicians in the way that it has. I find it deeply touching to be asked by Rogan Wolf to write a brief forward for these clever and  insightful  prose poems – for that is what they are. He feels my book provides a fitting context for them. But their beauty and the imagination that created them are all his. They are full of wisdom that we need very badly to hear. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do..”

Each Fable takes just a few minutes to read. I have been uploading them one at a time, every month or so. The idea behind this approach is that people running all day just to keep up, are more likely to read them in short doses and at intervals.

But for those who prefer them all at once, here is a link to the sixteen together.

The series was written in a time of pause after a working life in mental health care. But it is not specifically about mental health. In some ways it tries to offer a few sign-posts for times in which it seems particularly easy to get lost. Above all, perhaps, it explores the issue of what makes community healthy, what secures connection, how are we to live in the world in such a way that neither our neighbour nor our world suffer that we may briefly thrive ? In a sense you can say that, in exploring the constituents of community here, and at this time of strain and fragmentation, frantic materialism and crude zealotry, the series asks and discusses what are the binding and redemptive skills of true human connection, the skills of being human, the skills of love.

The series is soon to be published in book form.

If you find value in “Fables and Reflections”, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply pass on this blog address, or, alternatively,  I am happy to e-mail them as attachments to people who would find that easier. I am already doing that for some people.  I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail.  If that is your preference, just send me your address.

Morning, first thing.  Before packing and leaving, I booked some train tickets online, for another journey due in a week‘s time. I hate and still fumble at dealing online. I feel lonely and a bit panicky in the whole robotical procedure, with the pretend friendliness and informality of the words onscreen only adding to my disorientation. Will I disappear down some cyber precipice ? Or fall for some small-type cyber-trick, luring me into spending extra on something which I don’t need at all and will merely add to some senior manager‘s unearned bonus ? I journey deep into robot cyber-space as I click on this and that and record my private details. When the process is over, I feel lucky to have escaped back to Earth and my own human skin. Or have I ?

A few minutes afterwards, I receive an email from the Trainline people. “Great News !” it begins. Great news ? Have I been randomly selected to receive some comfortable pension until I die ? Have the Israelis stopped killing Palestinian children ? Has Cameron offered yet another phoney apology to the cameras, on the advice of his spin doctors ? “I’m terribly sorry for being such a jolly nice chap that I gave my close friend the criminal and liar Andy.orc a second chance.”  No, the great news is that my train journey booking has just been registered ! I am apparently overjoyed. Great news ! I dance click click all over the room.

Midday.  Motor-way service station half way up England. It is a multiple franchise, a whole circle of retail outlets, some of them with big names, clustered round a central atrium full of café tables and seats. But what about acoustics ? Did the architects forget about securing our ear-drums, in their concern for emptying our purses ? The amplified voices of around a hundred travellers, many of them children, bounce around the domed roof, accompanied by frantic vacuous music over the PA system. Instantly, we decide that we need to grab some sandwiches, have a quick pee and then out, fast.

At the till, a cashier delivers her question, “do you need a bag ?” For the nth time that day. Then she hisses something very intense sideways to a colleague at the second till. They are both probably still teenagers. “Do you need a bag ?” asks her companion, addressing the customer in front of her, before hissing sideways back.

Escape with sandwiches and hurry to the gents. In the men’s urinal, I pee to the same frantic loud music as out in the foyer, only even louder here, as the speakers are closer. Then there’s a sudden furious roar behind me as someone starts to dry their hands under the dryer. It’s like a jet engine starting up. Then another starts.

Hurry out through the atrium – that shriek machine and echo-chamber, those market hooks, lures and shoddy, useless knick-knacks – and into the car park. Head for the car, on high alert for other escapees around the car-park, who have started driving away before us. Return to the relative peace of motorway speeds.

All the above is plain reportage and it happened in one day, exactly as described. In a sense, though, it is also all happening all the time.

Conclusion.

I propose that the above succession of small incidents in a single day of inland travel offers an indication that our way of life is out of hand and heading (at motorway speeds and deservedly) for utter breakdown across a broad front.

Perhaps I should add that the end of this particular day offered more sanity to us travellers than the earlier parts. We arrived in working countryside in the north of England, real fields, real harvest, real tractors – and the slower pace and greater quiet associated with those things. It was a calm and balmy evening and a woman, perhaps lonely, was watering her lush garden, guarded by a rather lovely setter dog. A cyclist was out alone in the lanes, riding fast, feeling the evening air on his skin, under those huge skies, getting back in touch with self and other.

That evening, in that place, was productive of the following thought. How about, after the referendum on Scottish Independence, we hold a referendum on whether or not the North of England should be self-governing as well ? The people smile at you up here, as if you are human. They have manners. It feels a bit like a foreign country, not having supported the Coalition Government to any significant degree, nor having benefited from it at all. On the contrary. The whole area seems to be altogether more sane and more civilised than the constituencies further south.

And then what about Cornwall ? What reason has Cornwall to remain part of the United Kingdom ?

And having got this far, let’s export this foreigner-making principle and suggest de-uniting the United States of America, for instance, turning all those states into separate countries, each with its own frontier, closely guarded with armed drones, barbed wire and bayonets. Why not ? Let’s really promote this idea.

Or take it further in other ways. For instance, how about every street in every nation becoming a separate country ? All those lovely frontiers, closely guarded with armed drones, barbed wire and bayonets ?

Actually I live in a Close, not a street. About thirty people live there, all ages and several ethnicities. We of the Close have been inspired by the Scots who want to say yes and – equally sick of Davey-boy and his horrible crew of Oxfordshire hooligans, toffs, liars, tax-dodgers and persecutors of the poor – we want to say yes as well. And for  months now, at nights, I have been creating a frontier around our Close, using a tenon saw. I am sawing us into separation and very soon now I’ll have finished. And then we’ll push the severed Close on wheels to the Wandle, a mighty rolling stream that passes nearby, and we’ll launch the Close onto the waters and sail it down to where the Wandle disgorges into the Thames, beside the Wandsworth Council public tip ; and thereafter we’ll head for the Thames Estuary and onwards, east to the North Sea, hoping then to be swept north by the tides, following the route of the Spanish Armada. And after that, we shall apply to join the EU and will buy a few fireworks with which to defend our national integrity.

Easy. As easy as joining UKIP, As easy as blowing bubbles.