Aesthetics

Trip to the park.

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

My dear Oscar,

I took a trip to the park.

These were my impressions:

She knew, as soon as she walked into the cafe-cum-shop that was located in the middle of the park, that she was destined to buy much more than she actually wanted or needed.

“Oh – and an ice cream – yes, just vanilla – and one of those tray bakes – the flapjack – yes, with the chocolate chips.  Frothy coffee – large – and I’ll take a packet of those shortbread biscuits too, for later.”

She knew that she was lying, and slowly rubbing her pregnant belly she paid for all of her items, and imagined herself on a bench, sitting alone, devouring the whole lot.  It happened …

… and the breeze blew through the leaves.

His dog, old, but pert, grey haired like his master, could smell something that he found extremely attractive on the ground, and could not help himself but to roll onto his back, with his legs up in the air, and squirm and soak up the scent.

His master stood at a distance, watching, allowing this indulgence.  He was unconcerned and turned on his heel and started to saunter further away.  The little dog flipped into upright, stared through bleary eyes into the distance, was immobile apart from the quivering wetness of his black padded nose, picking out the odours prevalent, the smells that engulfed his very being.  He idly sought the shape of his master, just noticing the ambling outline in the distance, trotted towards him, was waylaid by some hot meaty and fatty sauce emanating from a child eating a burger at some considerable distance, saw his master again, trotted on, light on his feet, nimble.  His master barely waited for him, their companionship so close and so reliable that even at a distance they were always together, having learned to be tolerant, to put up with the peccadilloes.

Dinner time soon, he thought, with the burger smell still hanging slick in the atmosphere; I shall fry a fillet steak and I shall open that bag of oven chips ….

… leaves, green, twinkling in the sunlight.

… the bough of the great oak tree was a miracle, growing at a horizontal angle from the side of the trunk.  It wended a spidery web into the atmosphere, and just, … how powerful must that age old tree be to bear the weight of that horizontal bough, to keep it in place, to stop its great, great weight from crashing and falling.

Stately, and gargantuan, and forever.

“It’s nice, isn’t it, that they stayed friends”.

“Hm”, he said.

His hairy legs were out in the sunlight, manly strides as she bounced at his side, holding his hand as if she had to.  Really they looked like children, too young to be so committed, building a life together, planning a whole existence.  And it was clear that she got on his nerves something dreadful, but there was nothing to be done, they had decided, they had been kicking around together for a few years now, since university, and so their future was unfolding on a set path to which they gave very little thought.

She grated on him, with her plaintive whining, her neediness, her clinging stickiness, her ‘reward you with sexual activity’ attitude, minor sexual activity, predictable, just enough.  He knew already that the years would slip by, with a baby or two, and his hard work, his never ending work, and the mortgage, parents, get togethers, Christmases, Easters, New Years, just years and years, and already he just wanted to scream.

… a squirrel, like an undulating wave, hopped across the expanse of lawn as if nobody was there, and then scurried straight up one of the biggest trees, with a vertical climb that rattled audibly, just pin-pricked its way up tha bark, and was gone into the foliage.

He walked to the park.

His baby was dead.

His wife was alive.

He walked to the park.

They were jogging.

They were cycling.

They were out in their cars.

Everything that they were doing went no higher than two metres, just a seam of activity, babble, interaction, caution, wide eyed wariness.  Dogs and children and adults and the aged doddering along.

Just above them all, just a few centimetres above them all – the earth soared.

My best wishes to you, as always,

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Acceptance

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

So I am doing my best to be accepting, and not place myself in opposition to others. There is a popular mantra in this day and age that we should learn to be more tolerant of each other, and more accepting of human foibles and peccadilloes. Of course I have made a very good start with you, because I try my utmost not to be judgemental of you and to accept the fact that you lived the life you lived, however it may have been interpreted at the time, and by history. All I can do in retrospect is simply keep lines of communication as open as possible. The aim is then to allow your preoccupations to remain under consideration, as indeed they undoubtedly are, all this time later. You started something, Oscar. You started trains of thought and investigations that have still not yet reached their conclusion, and unfortunately you were ended before you had a chance to bring any of your lines of enquiry to a well-considered ending themselves.

I am starting to wonder though just how far acceptance can go. If it is true and honest and open acceptance then it will have to also be willing to incorporate views that might be so counterpoised to one’s own sense of moral, social and cultural propriety, as to put it all in question. Do we have to, for instance, accept that there will always be a murderous element to human existence, as there always has been? Would it be possible to launch some sort of cross-societal and multi-cultural investigation into the causes and consequences of such behaviour and therefore to eradicate it? It does not have to be, and I think there is probably never a real justification for it. There is always some way in which such an act can be challenged and avoided. Does our sense of acceptance have to incorporate it because it keeps on happening, or perhaps should we be collectively working towards the point where what we accept is only the best of each other, which in itself would outlaw such negative behaviours? It cannot possibly be argued that a murder is the best that any individual can do. It must be argued that encouraging us away from behaviours that might lead to such an act would be the best that we can do.

There would be countless examples of challenging all that we tolerate, but may not wish to accept. Apart from crimes against each other there would also be the collective unacceptability of corporate agencies. Logging companies in the Amazon, petro-chemical companies pillaging world resources, over-fishing of the oceans, the denying of basic elements for life to swathes of the global population; I cannot help thinking that there is some awareness growing that such challenges need to be underway. That fills me with hope, Oscar dear.

As you do, Oscar. Whatever your failings may have been you have influenced a legacy of hope. Sometimes it is hard to see, but if we keep on expecting the best of ourselves I cannot see that anything other is possible. Working on, and thinking through, levels of acceptance may well be the dilemma with which we all have wrestled through time; I am sure you did.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Equal

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope this letter finds you well.

My preoccupation is with a phrase that sprang to mind when I was preparing to write to you, which is:

We may be equal in our suffering but not in our success.

I do not know where the phrase came from, nor why it should come into my mind, other than that in seeing the levels of association I have with you made me think that my understanding of your suffering is because I too share it. No, I have not had the same experience as you, and not lived the same life, but there are elemental points of reference that would bring us close together. The classification system which makes of us ‘homosexual’, our shared origins in Western Europe, our racial inheritance, and our state of gendered being (as it is defined binarily). These become over-arching and definitional, at least in the ways in which the societies around us will wish to make us known. In effect it is how we will be reported, even though what we actually share is a sort of very common humanity, which we share at the root with everyone else. The systemic reference points by which we are known only come into being once others and their judgements, culturally governed, come into being. We might be able to look at each other simply as human entities, and it is at this point that I can share your heartache, your indignation, and your suffering. In essence it is the same as understanding anyone else.

But what I would not be able to share with you is the level of your success, which grew from privilege; it is the sort of privilege experienced by only a few. There are not so many people on the planet who have the sort of access to success that you had, who move in circles where the currency is self-promotion, and where works and sayings and the very presence of self are celebrated. You were a very fortunate individual. As you scan the full span of humanity and history you must be able to see that you were far more fortunate than most, and that it was advantage, of class, of rank, of consequent education and access to an intellectual marketplace which brought about your glittering career. In some strange effect it was not you. It was not actually you who made it all happen, but it did all happen because of the world that surrounded you.

It is odd to note that I can easily assimilate your pain, but not your glory.

With best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

My own best friend

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder what sort of a friend you would have been to me, and what sort of a friend I would have been to you! I know there were those – Robbie Ross, for instance – who were devoted to you and endlessly supportive, but I fear I may have been the sort of person to be slightly wary of you, and not be particularly supportive of your worst crimes. I do not know, it is very hard to say because we are from different eras, and different social milieus.

I think I am a little judgemental, even to myself. If I were my own best friend I might well be quick to criticise, and also to condemn should I ever step out of line about anything. If I am ever speeding in my car, then there is always a voice in my head which slows me down, keeps me within the legal allowances, points out, as a friend and a confidant would, that there will be a heavy price to pay if I am found out, or if I cause any sort of accident. I am something of a sage counsellor, always thinking through the various ramifications of any course of action. I sometimes try the experiment though of being my own best friend, and of imagining what it would be like if I were looking at myself objectively, and could offer advice as only a friend can. Would I encourage myself to be more adventurous, to break the rules, to be more selfish and self-seeking? The position of the best friend may not always have in mind the best outcomes for the one who is befriended. In fact it might be argued that because it is something of an objective relationship, then the friend can project on to the other all of the possibilities that s/he is too averse to taking.

I think you would have ultimately been a caring friend, Oscar, someone who cared for the others who were in his life, as I must be to myself.

Best wishes, as ever,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Frustration

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope this letter finds you well, even though I am writing from a selfishly frustrated position, and will as usual simply offload my own preoccupations and thoughts, rather than give any consideration to you. In my mind I am writing to you while you are in prison, but I should more realistically acknowledge that I am communicating with someone who is dead. But you see, Oscar, I cannot help wondering what that actually means.

In this day and age it is possible to see performances by long dead entities. I believe there is a stage show featuring Elvis Presley (1935-1977) with tickets that can be purchased today, put together through some form of hologrammatic digital re-mastering; similarly of Whitney Houston (1963-2012), and no doubt other famous names who have departed. It is also possible to hear your own voice, Oscar dear, in a recording made over a century ago, so that even though you are no longer with us we can hear what you sounded like, your pitch and cadence, your accent. What we seem to be preserving is an essence of a self, not of course, an actual self, not a thinking, reactive individual, but at least some form of acknowledgement to what actually was. It is this process of actualisation that interests me. If I am never to meet you, do I meet you when I hear your voice? I will never be able to question you, human to human, but do I need to? I know everything there is to know about you – certainly a lot more than you know of me. You see, Oscar, your heart may have stopped beating, but I wonder if you are dead.

The frustrations to which I do not allude are those of everyday life, the normalities of everyday life, which the dead no longer have to endure. Perhaps you are now dead because you no longer have to experience the frustrations of the living, that are not worth remembering, and not worth taking to one’s grave.

Best wishes, as always,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Of this time

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Just to let you know that I have not forgotten you.

The genger battle of our age is no longer solely about sexuality but increasingly about transitioning from male to female, or vice versa. There are now, in certain countries, protected rights to choose gender, and the more I research into it the more apparent it is that some level of choice has always existed. It is about whether or not one accepts the interplay of gender stereotypes as they exist within any given culture or whether one subverts or challenges those self same stereotypes.

The debate also undermines the definitional stance that many cultures assign to gender as a concept, something I am increasingly coming to question. Oppositional definitions and binary polarities seem to me to do a disservice to the potential of whole human experience. It seems to me that the possibility of merging opposition would be preferable, and that losing the pretence of clear cut definition would serve humanity better.

Were you a saint or a sinner – who is to decide?

As ever, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A competition of priorities

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

There are those who think that freedom is the absolute priority, freedom to say and do and be, and to some extent I understand the argument. But it also has to be recognised that absolute freedom would mean that people are free to undertake acts of atrocity, and I could not subscribe to that. So the question comes to be: freedom on whose terms?

I am sure you believed in your life time that you should have been free to lead the life that you wished to live, and there has now been over a century of civil unrest and political challenge throughout the world in order to try to achieve that. I suppose the attainment of such a level of freedom would have to ask the question as to whether these ‘freedoms’ were being won at the expense of others, and if that is not the case then all well and good.

But then again surely priorities should be far more basic, and commonly shared. Food, shelter, warmth, water; from such basics everything else can be built and developed. But it pains me to report, Oscar, that even in the advanced state of human evolution that we currently exist, there are still people who experience hunger, thirst, lack of protection against the elements. It is as if overlooking the plight of the weakest is somehow acceptable, with states, religions, charities, all looking the other way. Of course no single person can achieve enough to change it all, but so much of the collective consciousness seems to be about now knowing, not recognising, not responding. Preserve the self before you make any attempt to preserve the other – that appears to be the overriding philosophy. Again, I can understand the argument, but surely some awareness of the plight of others would benefit the whole.

I have travelled, Oscar, in the country of Vietnam, in the capital of Hanoi. What impressed me the most is that crossing the road was about simply stepping off the kerb, with awareness, with due care, and mingling with the hubbub. All traffic would give way to the weakest, so that pedestrians were given right of way, and motor vehicles would work around their needs. Just as cars would work around the needs of motorcyclists, and lorries of cars. It looked rather a chaotic system, but it seemed to work very effectively. What was most impressive, was that ‘giving way’, and understanding the needs of the weaker, were the order of the day. It seems to me that this could be translated in a much broader sense into our understanding of each other, and our recognition that selfish squandering is of little benefit to the whole.

Did you care, Oscar, for those who were weaker than you, less influential, less powerful, with no voice, no right to be heard, no social recognition? I think to some extent you came to, but only as you experienced levels of privation.

Best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Under pressure

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder if you will be able to relate to anything that I am about to tell you.

You died over one hundred years ago, which seems to me to be a blink in the eye of the earth’s history, and just a moment in the history of humanity, and yet in that time there have been so very many minor changes to everyday existence, that I wonder if you would recognise at all the lives that we now have to lead. Your death, let’s face it, which was horribly premature, really only occurred a couple of generations ago, and had you survived into a ripe old age you may well have seen many decades of the twentieth century. To a young whippersnapper of today you could be a great-grandfather, and to me, teetering beyond middle age, you could have been a grandfather. But I fear my life experience would be totally alien to you, pressured as it is by the nonsensicalaties of the humdrum.

I think that even the language that I am about to use would not be easily understood, and have just put into quotation marks all those elements that I think you will have difficulty with. I know you cannot correct me if I am wrong, but I am not expecting to be wrong, able as I am to chart developments over a century or so.

So, these are the events that have put me under pressure today:

The ‘batteries’ in my ‘remote control’ for the ‘television set’ which I own have ceased to work, and so they needed to be replaced. Before I left my home to go to the ‘supermarket’ I needed to remember that given the effects of the current ‘pandemic’ I would have to take a ‘face mask’, and, because of the effects of ‘global warming’, a ‘reusable plastic bag’. I checked my ‘bank balance’ ‘online’ via my ‘mobile phone’, and set out. The pressure was building because funds were not as high as I had expected, and the ‘elastic’ on the ‘face mask’ is given to snapping under duress. At the ‘supermarket’ a ‘traffic light system’ shone green and allowed my entry, and I used the ‘hand sanitiser’ before wheeling out the ‘trolley’. Now the ‘face mask’ steams up my spectacles, so I had to remove them and put them into my pocket, along with my hat, because I could not put the ‘elastic’ of the ‘face mask’ over my ears until they were suitably revealed. This meant my head was cold, and I could not see clearly; I certainly could not read the all important ‘small print’ which accompanies every item under consideration for purchase. However my quest was underway, and the suitable ‘batteries’ were found, and there was a selection of different ‘brands’, all ‘advertising’ their differences, and their ‘price ranges’. Again, this prefigured more pressure; I had after all checked my ‘bank balance’, and wasting money on a supposedly superior ‘brand’ seemed foolhardy. I opted for ‘mid-range’, paid by ‘debit card’ at the ‘cash desk’, removed the ‘face mask’ outside the store, replaced my spectacles, and put the hat on to my now distinctly chilly head. I had not needed the ‘trolley’, so it was pushed back into position, but not before locking it and retrieving the coin which had allowed me to have it in the first place. Back at home I have been able to replace the ‘batteries’ in the ‘remote control’, and so can now happily while away the hours watching the drivel which is ‘beamed’ to me ‘digitally’ should I really wish to do so. A source of more pressure, I can tell you, besieging one’s mind with nonsense, empty aspiration, and of course endless ‘product placement’. Whatever you are able to understand, Oscar dear, I am sure you see that basically one can bring on one’s own demise in this day and age through ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’, through interminable pressure, and all for nothing, or very little, at all.

Forgive such selfish tripe, Oscar; I know you had greater concerns, but I do wish to highlight to you that what you miss by having lived a century or so ago is actually not so much. All of the significance of our current age, our successful mass communication techniques, our digital economies, our ease of availability and of indulgence, seem of little real value, bring endless personal challenge and discomfort, and their insistence adds to feelings of unending pressure.

Ah, to breathe.

I took a walk in order to achieve the above and so was able to breathe fresh air.

To breathe fresh air.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

As if nothing is happening

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope you are at peace, rested, unassailed.

The daily assault of the mass media has already come upon me, as it is absolutely unavoidable in this modern age. I believe that you had newspapers to read, and even some black and white pictorialised magazines to consume, and that in the major cities young lads would stand on street corners and yell out the headlines in order to attract the purchasing of these organs. I believe that may have been the sum of the media. Apart from the theatre performances for which you were so famed, only accessible to the chattering classes, who would then chatter about the contents of the plays they saw upon the stage. Nothing more. Nowadays barely a moment goes by without mediated stories assaulting the populace from all angles, most pointedly now in the palm of one’s hand, as the mobile telephone ‘pings’ its unending importance, bringing us all what is termed ‘the rolling news’. It seems to be of significance for our culture to note that something is happening all of the time!

The peculiar thing is that once one sits back from it, mutes all of the noise, even ignores its insistence, that nothing really seems to be happening at all. There are endless sensationalised fusses made about supposed advancements in human achievement, both negative and positive, with details pored over and ‘evidence’ presented, but none of it really seems like very much at all. Man (or woman, or to my mind, human personage) climbs yet another mountain, and another one, and another one. It is as if humanity has to prove that it can overcome hurdle after hurdle that is set before its way – much of which, it has to be said, is self-imposed. We will defeat climate change (something that we, apparently, caused); we will restore the earth’s resources (all of which we greedily consume); we will conquer any threat to life that comes our way (even though we are the greatest threat to human life, over and over again). It is that last mentioned quality which hits me so hard the more that I think about it; the fact, dear Oscar, that it is ‘over and over again’.

These supposedly grand achievements dominate the headlines, relay to us all the victories and the conquests, the heights that we are able to scale, the grandness of our being, as a race, as a human race. I cannot help thinking that it is in our smallness that we are actually greater, far greater, and under-reported, under-represented, and under-recognised. Kind gestures; smiles; encouragement; the old person diligently avoiding the purchase of plastic; the young person deciding never to own a car; kisses; concerns; delivering shopping; singing a song, under one’s breath, on a bus, on a train; generosity which means sharing a meal, dropping a coin into an outstretched hand, buying a coffee with no requirement for payback; writing to a condemned man, a man condemned by history, martyred, remembered with reservation, and pledging,

I am, as always, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Contemplating agedness

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

You did not reach a ripe old age yourself. It is a great shame that your treatment at the hands of the judicial system basically contributed to the foreshortening of your life, so that you reached only your 46th birthday. I for one am sorry that this was the case. In fact in your age, the late Victorian age, life expectancy for men was not too dissimilar from the age that you reached, although the prevalence of infant mortality skews somewhat the recording of accurate death rates. Nevertheless, lives on the whole were not long, and certainly not as long as they have come to be all these years later. Now it is common to hear of people living until they are over 100 years old, at least in the West, where not only medical advancement, but also economic plenitude, ensure that many are well cared for into their dotage.

What happens to them though is a different thing altogether, and comes to be slightly alarming. In the countries you inhabited, in Ireland, the UK, France, and even America that you visited, it seems to be the case that the aged are not treated with veneration, but are more often than not parcelled off into care homes, to be kept out of the way, and to lead quite restricted lives. Any health issues become the dominant issues of existence, and since the medics have plied these people with drugs for half of their lives, very often there is the onset of dementia, and of Alzheimer’s disease, taking their toll upon any quality of life. Through this age of the pandemic of Covid 19 the very aged are kept isolated completely from the rest of society, even from their loved ones, in efforts to keep them alive and well (something which of course fails because these people are already old and frail). I must say, Oscar, I do find it bizarre that such efforts are made to keep people who are at the end of their lives going, celebrating the fact that 96, 97, 98 year olds keep on living within their peculiar rest home scenarios, while young people are sent out on to battle fields, are put in dangerous positions everyday, sometimes losing their lives pointlessly. Cars still zoom around cities, polluting the very air that we breathe, mass production of plastics persists, choking natural resources like waterways and seas and oceans, landfill sites become poisoned deserts where certain members of humanity have to eke out a living – and yet, where there is privilege, where there is plenty, keeping a few doddering old folk going beyond any version of a natural end is the priority.

Now I know I am being controversial, and that one day I may well be one of those ancient crones, but I pray to the memory of you Oscar, that should I find myself in such a position I will be fit and healthy and compos mentis. From my standpoint, as it is, in the present, I cannot think of anything worse than a gang of experts making decisions for me and choosing to keep me going no matter what state of being I may be in.

Oh, and it does have to be said – being very very old and very very gay may be a mix that is difficult to endure – unless of course I happen also to be very very well and very very rich too!

Your friend, as always,

Algernon B.Duffoure.