Tag: Jamaica

Categories
Essay

Public Intellectuals Walked, So Influencers Could Run

By Lopamudra Nayak

From Public Domain

In 2015, Shashi Tharoor’s speech at the Oxford Union exploded across social media, striking a chord far beyond academic or diplomatic circles. Framed around the motion “This House Believes Britain Owes Reparations to Her Former Colonies”, Tharoor—alongside eloquent speakers from Ghana and Jamaica—argued persuasively for moral accountability from the former empire. Tharoor’s speech was widely appreciated in India because of the succinctness with which he illustrated how and why colonial rule exploited the subcontinent, and how violence and racism were the order of those days.

“It’s a bit rich to oppress, enslave, kill, torture, maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it. We were denied democracy, so we had to snatch it, seize it from you,” he said to loud applause from the audience.

But while insightful points such as these formed the crux of Tharoor’s eloquent speech, it was his rapier barbs that had the esteemed audience (and netizens alike) crowing. “No wonder that the sun never set on the British Empire,” he says at one point, referencing a common boast used to illustrate the sheer extent of Britain’s power, “because even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark.”

The speech’s viral success revealed a yearning—particularly among millennials raised on televised debates and editorials—for a mode of discourse that is rapidly disappearing. Where once prime-time slots featured fiery discussions on social and political issues about caste, class, gender, and policy, today’s digital platforms prioritise speed, relatability, and aesthetics.

In the India of today, a viral tweet can spark more conversation than a peer-reviewed article. A beauty influencer’s “Get Ready With Me” vlog is more likely to trend than a lecture by a scholar on social justice. The thought leaders of the past were expected to speak with gravity; the content creators of the present are expected to sparkle. When public intellectuals are replaced by public influencers, the nature of cultural discourse changes. Popular culture, once a mirror held up to society, now leans into escapism. Complex socio-political debates are flattened into clickable soundbites, and intellectual inquiry is often sidelined by algorithm-friendly content categories, sorted by SEO value[1].

Intellectuals once forced us to think harder, ask more difficult questions, live with complexity.  Influencers invite us to feel seen, validated, or soothed. One expands the self, the other simply flatters it.

India’s Golden Age of Thought: When Public Intellectuals Shaped the Nation’s Conscience

Once upon a time, India did not lack public intellectuals. In fact, the early decades after Independence saw them thrive because India’s tradition of intellectual dissent is long and storied. Figures like Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Tagore—they were not just leaders or writers; they were public philosophers.

Thinkers engaged with the moral and political questions of their time, not just within academia but in public forums, books, interviews, op-eds, and essays that reached a wide, engaged readership. They helped build the intellectual spine of a newly independent nation grappling with secularism, caste, democracy, and justice.

Even in Bollywood, cinema once offered social critique—from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (Thirsty, 1957) to Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (The Seedling, 1974). They were conscience-keepers, cultural critics, and truth-speakers. They didn’t shy away from controversy—many actively courted it. They weren’t afraid to speak against majoritarianism, economic inequality, censorship, or communalism.

Meanwhile, halfway across the world in Texas, a young boy named Wes Anderson—who would go on to become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary cinema—found himself deeply influenced by Satyajit Ray. It wasn’t just Ray’s pioneering cinematic style that captivated him, but also his prolific work as a writer and illustrator, and his powerful engagement with public discourse. Through his films, Ray offered a radical and empathetic lens on Indian society, boldly confronting issues such as poverty, gender roles, the tension between tradition and modernity, and the human consequences of social change—perspectives that were remarkably ahead of their time and continue to resonate across cultures.

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was one of modern India’s most beloved and influential public intellectuals—a scientist, teacher, and former President who embodied the rare blend of deep technical knowledge and visionary humanism. Revered as the “Missile Man of India” for his pivotal role in advancing the country’s space and defence programs, Kalam also brought science into the public imagination with clarity, humility, and hope. His presidency (2002–2007) was marked by an earnest outreach to young people, whom he inspired to dream beyond the limitations of circumstance. Unlike many in power, Kalam believed in the democratisation of knowledge—he made complex ideas accessible, challenged youth to innovate, and constantly linked progress with ethics and spirituality. In doing so, he redefined what it meant to be a public intellectual in India: not someone cloistered in academia, but a leader who imagined a better future and invited the nation to build it with him.

Brains Behind Paywalls: How Intellectualism Lost Its Spotlight

There’s no shortage of brilliant minds today—but intellectualism requires both platform and patience. Neither is abundant. A YouTuber dissecting colonial legacy in Indian education may get a few thousand views; a beauty blogger with “chai latte skin” content racks up millions. But now, intellectuals are trapped producing work for journals and conferences rather than the public sphere. As a result, public-centred intellectualism has become rare. It’s not because intellectuals of that caliber no longer exist, but that the structures that once made their ideas visible have been buried under layers of institutional gatekeeping.

The decline of the public intellectual isn’t just the result of a shifting media landscape—it’s also tied to how our access to and expectations around knowledge have evolved. There was a time when intellectuals were celebrated as generalists, able to navigate literature, politics, science, and philosophy, and translate complex ideas for a broader audience. Think of Susan Sontag or Bertrand Russell—figures who didn’t confine themselves to narrow academic lanes but moved fluidly across disciplines to spark public thought and dialogue.

Today, intellectual life has become increasingly siloed. Hyper-specialization has turned academia into an insular world where scholars speak primarily to other scholars. Rather than bridging the gap between advanced knowledge and public discourse, modern academics are often locked within their own echo chambers. The public philosopher who once commented on culture and politics has given way to specialists producing work for a niche audience of peers.

Even when academics do attempt to reach beyond their field, they’re often met with suspicion. A historian writing on political theory or a physicist reflecting on metaphysics is likely to be dismissed for stepping outside their “expertise.” Intellectual authority today is rigidly policed, and interdisciplinarity—once a hallmark of great thinkers—is now treated with skepticism.

From Public Intellectuals to Public Aestheticism: How Influence Got a Makeover

Today’s cultural powerhouses operate on a very different wavelength than their predecessors. Where figures like Susan Sontag or James Baldwin once shaped public consciousness through sharp intellect and critical writing, today’s influencers—like Kim Kardashian—wield their power almost entirely through aesthetics. Kardashian doesn’t publish essays; she sets the tone for global beauty trends. With each new look—glazed donut skin, brownie lips, strawberry makeup, and the almost comically indulgent cinnamon cookie butter hair—the Kardashians and Jenners reshape beauty norms with a force that rivals traditional intellectuals.

In India, the landscape mirrors this shift. Influencers like Ananya Panday and Ranveer Allahbadia amass millions of views despite offering little in terms of originality or eloquence. Much of their content borrows from what’s already been done, often repackaged with no clear voice of their own. Unlike cultural figures such as Shabana Azmi or even Priyanka Chopra[2]—whose words once commanded attention and mattered—many of today’s digital celebrities struggle when pulled out of the comfort zone of scripted, bite-sized platforms. Their polished online personas crumble under the pressure of unscripted public discourse.

What we’re left with is a curated illusion, a constant performance of identity. And the troubling part? Young audiences are watching, emulating, and internalising these facades—until, inevitably, a scandal breaks the spell. In an era ruled by surface and spectacle, authenticity has become the rarest currency of all.

If Joan Didion or Arundhati Roy represented a time when public intellectualism had mass appeal, these influencers represent what has replaced it: public aestheticism. A philosopher might spend years constructing a critique on our society, but an influencer can change peoples’ worldviews with a single Instagram post. Influence now moves at the speed of an Instagram story. The philosopher builds theory; the influencer sells a mood. In this new aesthetic economy, they are the message, the medium, and the marketplace all at once. This is not an incidental shift, but a reflection of our broader cultural transformation.

Although, this is absolutely not a wholesale condemnation of influencers. Many use their platforms to raise awareness, fundraise, and spotlight important issues. But influence has become aestheticised. And when beauty, brevity, and branding become the dominant currencies of expression, difficult truths become harder to hear.

Even figures with a platform one would consider intellectual, like a podcast or blog, tend to operate within a different framework than the public intellectuals of the past. The most successful are the ones who know how to package their ideas into easily consumable formats. Their content may demand engagement, but not necessarily deeper thinking. The most successful cultural critics of our digital age are simply a different kind of influencer, one who may sell a worldview rather than a skincare routine, but are selling something nonetheless.

Amidst all of this, we have lost the expectation of being challenged by our cultural figures. We have lost the collective memory of what it means to gather around an idea rather than a trend. We have lost the stamina for long-form thinking. We now crave hot takes instead of deep dives, personality over principle, vibes over values. We’ve also stopped expecting our cultural figures to challenge us. We ask them to inspire us, to entertain us, to market their authenticity. We no longer crowd into halls for heated debates—we scroll.

When Influence Replaces Insight: The Rise of Apathy and the Fall of Public Thought

The culture hasn’t gone quiet though. Indian influencers—fashion bloggers, tech reviewers, lifestyle curators, “finance bros”, even comic creators—are the new cultural capital. They dominate conversations on what matters to people: from wedding aesthetics and productivity hacks to skincare routines and budget investments. The currency of their influence isn’t depth but relatability, not dissent but delight. Even in the realm of “education”, we find influencers gamifying complex financial or political ideas into simplified carousels or 60-second explainers. It’s not necessarily bad—but it is diluted.

It’s also understandable why many hesitate to enter intellectual spaces today—there’s a prevailing sense that everything worth saying has already been said. We live in an age where every thought seems pre-articulated, every argument countered, every counterpoint already dissected. The landscape isn’t lacking in intellectual potential; it’s that fewer people feel confident stepping into the role of a public intellectual, believing true originality is no longer possible.

This mindset breeds an intellectual echo chamber. Rather than contributing to the discourse, many settle into passive consumption, convinced that someone else has already voiced every worthwhile idea.

But the truth is, no conversation is ever truly finished. History shows us that ideas are living things—they shift, adapt, and deepen depending on who engages with them and when. The same philosophical questions that animated thinkers centuries ago continue to evolve, finding new relevance in each generation. Feminism as it was understood in the 1970s is not the feminism of today. Jean Baudrillard’s meditations on media and hyperreality in the 1980s feel hauntingly prescient in our digital age—but our reading of him is inevitably shaped by the world we now inhabit. Every era reinterprets the past, and every new voice brings a fresh lens. That’s what keeps the intellectual tradition alive.

Reclaiming Thought: Can Intellectualism Survive the Age of Spectacle?

So, can the intellectual space be reclaimed, or has it been permanently absorbed into digital spectacle? Long-form discussions found in podcasts, essays, and forums are a great starting point. Platforms of these media types allow for deeper exploration of ideas, where nuance and depth are greatly valued.

And it’s not that intellectuals have disappeared. They are still here, writing essays, protesting laws, mentoring students. But they’ve been pushed to the peripheries of public attention. Their audiences are shrinking, and their words are often drowned out by the louder, shinier pull of influencer content.

But intellectual spaces aren’t only limited to these traditional platforms. Niche online communities like internet book clubs on Fable or Instagram create new ways for people to connect with unique ideas. You can also incorporate intellectual conversation into your everyday life. Attend local events, art galleries, or even start casual discussions among friends to make these topics more accessible and relevant. The intellectual sphere may have shifted, but it isn’t gone. We simply have to work to reclaim these spaces with people who are willing to engage deeply with ideas.

Ultimately, the death of the public intellectual may not be as tragic as it seems, it may just mean that intellectualism is taking on new forms. But we have to ensure we’re not losing sight of what really matters—the depth, complexity, and refusal to settle for easy answers in the pursuit of something greater.

Culture Is Still Loud—It Just Doesn’t Want to Make You Uncomfortable Anymore

There’s another reality unique to India: the active suppression of dissent. To be an intellectual in India today, particularly one critical of the status quo, is to court danger. Writers have been jailed (Anand Teltumbde), journalists have been shot (Gauri Lankesh), and students have been arrested for protest slogans. In such an atmosphere, who would choose to be a public intellectual?

The public intellectual, by definition, is someone who speaks truth to power. In India, speaking truth to power comes at a high cost. And so, instead, we scroll. Meanwhile, the influencer class thrives because they are apolitical by design. Their influence is rooted in apathy, in not asking uncomfortable questions. This is not a coincidence. It is by systemic design. The less we think, the more we consume. The more aestheticised our discontent, the less threatening it becomes. Influencers now perform the soft work of culture—sedating, distracting, pacifying—while hard truths are hidden behind paywalls, FIRs, and broken institutions.

But if the public intellectual is to make a comeback, we as an audience must do our part. We have to choose depth over dopamine, discomfort over convenience. We must resist the temptation to aestheticise every idea until it’s just another lifestyle choice.

Because when thought leaders become brand ambassadors, and reflection becomes a trend, we risk forgetting that ideas—not images—are what truly shape society.

The public intellectual may be on life support, but the conversation isn’t over. It never is.

[1] SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) value refers to the estimated monetary worth of organic traffic generated by a website through search engine optimisation efforts.

[2] Actresses

Lopamudra Nayak is a poet, freelance writer, and biotechnologist with a passion for literature and storytelling. She writes poetry, book reviews, and reflections on pop culture on her blog, Substack and Instagram.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Stories

Roberto Mendoza’s Memoirs of Admiral Don Christopher Columbus

A fiction by Paul Mirabile

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
From Public Domain

I, Roberto Mendoza, in this year 1550, ship’s boy on Christopher Columbus’ first and second voyages to the West Indies before my promotion to sailor on his third and fourth voyages, testify to the veracity of the eye witness events that I record for posterity. And in spite of their devastating raw truth, it is my troubled conscious that has conducted my hand, goaded my intelligence to write down these sorrowful facts. For facts they are, regardless of the prestige and boons that Columbus received from his protectors and admirers.

Where shall I begin? How do I burrow through the layers of unquestionable fame that has marked that name to reverberate with the clanking of the slave chains, the death rattles in the gold and silver mines, the gnashing of teeth, the hangings and dismemberments … the insensible apathy of the subjugation or submission of the Indian masses?

It has always appeared to my young eyes that Columbus’ achievements were enveloped in an aura of mystery or incomprehension. I may even add an aura of fantastic falsifications, mainly initiated and authorised by Columbus himself and his unquestioning gallants.

I knew him well, too well to be duped by those seductive charms of his, that subtle cunning, a mask donned whenever a fruitful occasion arose, yet under which lay a brutal, tyrannical individual bent on attaining his greatest ambition: wealth and glory, and this at any price. What was the little ditty that some fool invented for innocent children and naive adults to recite: “In fourteen ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue?” A ridiculous rime to recall that wretched year. Yes, I say that wretched year for it celebrated the Genoan hero’s glorious voyage.

During that fatal year of 1492, two other major events occurred in Spain which I believe to be in relation to Columbus’ conniving his way into Isabella’s confidence: the expulsion of the Jews to North Africa, Italy and Constantinople, and the capitulation of Granada, the last stronghold of the Muslims in Spain, to the Christian kings. Henceforth, Spain rid herself of those ‘impure’, centuries-laden ‘foreign’ plunderers. Did not Columbus write in his logbook (if we are to believe Bartolomé de Las Casas’s transcribed copy of it) that he was overjoyed by those two events: ”thus you (the Monarchs) have turned out all the Jews from your kingdoms and lordships”, and ”the royal banners have been placed on the towers of Alhambra”[1].

This being said, because of the expulsion and the reconquest, Columbus’ true birthplace had to be concealed, for any negotiation with Isabella or Ferdinand. This hero was not born in the city of spaghetti and banks, Genova, as commonly known. The darling of the Spanish monarchy was born in the land of the corsairs, in Calvi, a lovely port town in Northern Corsica, indeed conquered by the Genovans and governed by them during five centuries, but none the less born and bred far from the banks of Italy. Corsica, where for centuries Vandals, Ostrogoths, Greeks and Lombards, and ill-bred Aragonese and Genovans vied for domination, intermingling, integrating and assimilating.

Why would Columbus lie about his place of birth? Was it out of fear of a possible ‘corsair descent’? One that connoted piratry, pillage and other misdeeds [2]? Be that as it may, the rogue managed to cajole Queen Isabella into giving him enough maravedis[3] to undertake a voyage that would heighten the glory of the conquering Spanish Monarchy and the new-founded kingdom.

And that was how Admiral Don Christopher Columbus frayed his way to fame and fortune!

With the Queen’s glittering maravedis he commissioned three caravels : the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, the third of which he navigated himself, the other two by the Pinzón brothers. How I happened to be aboard the Santa Maria is a long story with which I shall not bore my readers.

So there he stood at the prow, mantled in a vaporous circle of pride and arrogance whilst we, his sea-faring companions, sweated away on deck or in the hold, were fed rotten food, furled and unfurled the sails without respite, hunted out the innumerable rats that ran amok below, withered under the insufferable heat of September. I myself almost fainted under the long, long hours of tedious work, boredom and especially fear; fear that we and our tiny caravel, surrounded by thousands of leagues of far from blue waters, would be food for the horrible undersea monsters that had swallowed many a brave crew and their vessels with yawning jaws and leathery tentacles. All of us were terrified, and the five weeks we spent crossing a swelling ocean towards the East, or so we all thought, triggered a feeling of panic, alienness and remorse. The admiral described the ocean like a river; I myself felt like a cork in a rainswept pond, jostled and jolted, no land in sight, our water and meat, taken aboard at the Canary Islands, foul-tasting, half-eaten by the enormous black rats.

Did the great Admiral not consult the stars? Eastward? There was nothing — only rolls and rolls of higher and higher walls of water battering the fragile sides of our vessels. And I, so young, asked myself time and time again, how did an incompetent sea-faring fellow like Columbus ever win the confidence of Isabella and Ferdinand ? Oh how I recall his bulky figure at the prow, oftentimes behind the helm, screaming orders or simply staring out into the watery vastitude, dreaming no doubt of gold … gold … and more gold … He had written the word ‘gold’ seventy-five times in his logbook during the first two weeks of our crossing!

How many of our poor sailors had been beaten for insubordination, had suffered the excruciating trial of keelhauling[4], one or two even hanged for attempting mutiny, so fearful were they of being devoured by sea monsters, dying of thirst or hunger or being bitten by the furry rats that thrived below in our beds of straw?

At long last I heard the cry “Land ahoy!” coming from the crow’s nest. Yes, we finally reached a cluster of islands that would be named Guanahani[5], Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the maps of future cartographers. It was on these islands that my first glimpses of a barbaric and despotic Columbus would not only be corroborated, but magnified to the heights of psychopathic insanity. For it became more and more evident to me that the Admiral, whom I considered in my youthful age as a hero, had no intentions of treating the indigenous peoples of these islands either as equals or with a soupçon of humane sympathy. He indeed judged them somewhat higher than animals, yet whose only human value was how much they would bring him as slaves sold in Spain, or how much gold and silver they would extract for him from the mines and rivers. All he saw in these peaceful peoples was the glitter of gold fastened to their noses and the rings of equal glitter hanging off their ears and arms. He saw gold everywhere, even gold stones shining in the rivers! He wrote in his logbook that gold grew in clusters and could be plucked off trees like fruit!

The way in which he ferreted information out of the Indians about gold deposits turned my stomach. His obsession with gold drove him into periodical frenzies during which time he would beat, even torture the poor indigenous man or woman who failed to locate the deposits. He spent his sweltering nights tossing and turning in bed, totally possessed by this maniacal craving.

But his brutality was not limited in this direction: The Spaniards or other Europeans who disobeyed  him or sought to outmanoeuvre him in the pursuit of power or riches were tracked down and hanged, accused of criminal acts. His barbarity knew no bounds, nor his slave-selling which began to enrich him immensely.

On our second and third voyages, which led us to the islands of Granada and Tobago, the abundance of gold extracted was tantamount to the number of Indians he enslaved for his own ‘household’ purposes, and those he sold into a slavery which by then had become a thriving, lucrative business. We navigated from island to island sowing the seeds of destruction as the stoic Admiral described their beauty, the exotic animals and birds, and especially the immense, awaiting riches buried under that beauty. How many of the indigenous he had killed when several tribes revolted against him, and how many committed suicide cannot be accurately tallied. I would learn much later that Las Casas put that tally at 1,500 Taion Arawaks.

Indeed, as time went by Columbus’ wrath found merciless outlets against Indians and Europeans alike as the settlements grew in economic and political importance. Indians who failed to extract enough gold from the mines had one of their arms cut off[6]. On many occasions he had rebellious Spaniards dismembered in public much to the outrage of the governors appointed to the settlements by the Spanish Monarchy.

The governors of these settlements began sending reports to the King and Queen relating the horrendous behaviour of Columbus, his obsession for power and riches, his masquerading as a ruling god-like figure over the ignorant natives. Testimonies piled higher and higher on the Queen’s pearl-inlaid writing-table, relating cases of rape, murder and mutilation.

On his return trip to Spain she immediately had him seized, chained and thrown into prison. She also expropriated all his extorted possessions, be they gold or land. There he rotted away for six weeks, so enraged was the Queen, betrayed by this ‘foreigner’. However, his brother Bartholomew, on his knees, pleaded tearfully in favour of his brother’s heart of gold, his innocence in all matters of governance, having been slandered by the governors and their lackeys who wrote defamatory reports to wreak vengeance upon a man whose glory and greatness surpassed theirs. The Queen hesitated. It was King Ferdinand who decided to have him released.

His release from prison had puffed up his ego, unlocked his megalomania.

Columbus’ fourth and last voyage, between 1502 and 1504 with four caravels, took us to Martinique, Honduras, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I had been appointed a full-fledged sailor by then and relished the idea of accompanying the Admiral, jotting down all his actions, prudently of course, so that I would not to be arrested for bearing witness to his ruthlessness, perhaps even hanged as a traitor. The ‘civilising’ process undertaken by him included plundering, murdering, enslaving and mutilation. Amidst the unbridled violence and sadism, he posed as an evangelist, a disinterested zealot deeply desirous to convert the ‘savages’ into God-fearing Christians, into ‘civilised’ beings like himself.

Columbus returned to Spain a hero of piety, magnanimity, sanctity. The impostor even wrote two books : the Book of Privileges[7] in 1502, an indecent mass of statistics which enumerate all his accumulated rewards wrested from the Crown under which lay the beaten and mutilated bodies of the indigenous, and the Book of Prophecies[8] in 1505, a shameful scream of smut comprising hundreds of citations from the Bible, all of which spell out in his vapid style his Christian ‘mission’ in the New World, ever so charitable and lenient towards the ignorant, child-like ‘natives’ ; a mission, indeed, pure in spirit, rightful in act.

With Columbus’ death the unwarrantable fervour that he had kindled slowly shrivelled into ashes. I retired from sea-life and found work in the Custom’s Bureau, a most comfortable employment. Besides, I was disgusted by all the tales told about him by the sailors, especially their bawdy narratives about the native women in the New World. I wished to leave my sea-legs behind and tread more earthy paths. Furthermore, my new tasks gave me ample time to read the posthumous reports about Columbus[9], many of which belied the benignant deeds and bountiful achievements of the monarchial and New World idol. It was after these important readings that I decided to begin my memoirs …

The rogue’s Book of Prophecies created quite a stir amongst the aristocratic castes : Columbus’ fantasies of promoting Isabella and Ferdinand as heads of a new crusade to the Holy Lands to defeat the Muslims, and there spread Christianity kindled many a nostalgic and gun-ho heart. The monarchs, wary of the old Admiral’s apocalyptic inaccuracies and religious bigotry, never took him seriously. I wonder if they had even read his book …

None the less, Columbus certainly provided an excellent example for other freebooters to follow in the wake of his doughty adventures. The slave trade between the Old and the New World thrived as well as the gold and silver that flooded the Spanish markets. It is no mere metaphor that this period in Spain was called as El Siglo de Oro (The Golden Century).

.

[1]          Bartolome de Las Casas (1484-1566) a Dominicain priest who spent forty years in Hispaniola (Haiti and the Domican Republic) transcribed an abstract of Columbus’ lost logbook. How accurate or truthful is this copy is difficult to assess. Journal of the First Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1492-1493), translated by Clements R. Markhma : London, Hakluyt Society, 1893, pp. 15-93

[2]          Corsica : Columbus’ Isle, Joseph Chiari, edition Barrie and Rockcliff, 1960.

[3]          Gold coins used in mediaeval Spain during the 11th and 14th centuries.

[4]          A maritime punishment by which the sailor is ‘hauled’ under the ‘keel’ of the ship with ropes.

[5]          As called by the Indians. Columbus called this island San Salvador. Today it is called Watling.

[6]          On this point see Howard Zinn, Christopher Columbus and Western Civilization, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, 1992.

[7]          El Libro de Privilegios. The English edition : Book of Privileges, The Claiming of the New World, John W. Hessler, 2014.

[8]          El Libro de Profesías. The English edition : Book of Prophecies, Repertorium Columbianum, Blair Sullivan, 2004.

[9]         Columbus and Las Casas : Two Readings on the Legacy of Columbus (1542 (The Devastation of the Indians. A brief Account) and 1550 (In Defense of the Indians).

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Stories

My Christmas Eve “Alone”

 By Erwin Coombs

Courtesy: Creative Commons

Years before I became a teacher, I found myself in the sad position of having a four-year BA and being in the middle of a recession. The recession was the economy. On a personal level, I had a pretty good depression going. Not being able to get into a Faculty of Education and not being able to find a decent job, this newly married fellow was forced to take the only job he could find as a security guard.

Now I don’t mean to disparage security guards. They have a nasty job with a nastier pay. But you’ve seen these people. They are usually on the cusp of what we might term the unemployable. When I say cusp, I mean they are leading the parade of that group. And it’s not their fault. Many are new immigrants whose education credentials have not been recognised. Or they are retired men who cannot stand to watch their lives fritter away at home so come to malls and office lobbies to wear a uniform and do the same. And then there are young people, as I was, who are caught in hard times and have no other choice.

After a couple of humiliating jobs waiting tables in chain restaurants where I would remarkably come home with less money than what I would take to my shift, I jumped at the offering of a job as a security guard. The next time you’re in a chain restaurant, I want you to look kindly on those employees too. They are usually bright and assigned the all-important tasks of making sure the salad bar is inviting. And while you’re in there take a closer look at the salad bar. It is old and crusty and sprayed with oil to make it look shiny. But we had to make it look less toxic. Any idea how few employees eat that salad? Lots and lots.

Okay, when I say jumped at the job, that might be an overstatement. One doesn’t jump at that sort of employment. One stumbles, slithers or falls into it. But here I was offered a job at $5.75 an hour!! It was an olive branch. That very phrase has a biblical origin, apparently. But there was nothing biblical or God giving in a job like that for those wages. Don’t get me wrong. I was raised in a white trash upbringing where one didn’t expect anything necessarily good. Instead, one only hoped very hard that nothing too bad would happen that day that might lead to a poor night’s sleep — such as the arrest of a family member, an eviction from your apartment, or the like. As a survivor of this sort of upbringing, the prospect of a job didn’t seem that bad. What, after all, was I going to do with a specialization in English Lit. and a major in history? Apparently, I was going to guard office buildings in the wee small hours of the morning.

But while that might seem a sad conclusion to years of study, there were some perks. Imagine, for example, the sheer utility of having to wear a tie that clips on! Think of the minutes, and in the totality of a year, the hours saved not having to struggle with said tie. Pop it on and you’re ready to do whatever it is that fellows with clip on ties do. Oh yeah, that would be security work. The assumption being giving workers like me, those ties in the event of an altercation, you wouldn’t be choked with that tie.

When you are making $5.75 an hour, and you are brandishing what has appeared to be a useless university degree over your head, what’s going to happen if an altercation does occur? Let me tell you, you are going to, to put it politely, not intervene. There was no chance of my tie ever being touched by anyone except my sad, trembling hands before a sad, trembling shift at wherever they put me.

And for my second shift of what was to be my “permanent placement” I was assigned to a tall office tower in downtown Toronto. It was a plumb job, high end lawyers, businesses that made obscene amounts of money doing God knows what God knows where. And they had entrusted me to keep it safe throughout the long dark winter nights. Was I honoured? No, I wasn’t honoured. I only felt deflated. And to make matters worse, my first shift was on Christmas Eve, the graveyard shift, from nine p.m. to nine a.m. Christmas morning. Envisage if you will a bleaker prospect. Here I am, a young man, head full of ideas (granted, not his own) and lines of poetry and hope for the futures of his world and the world in general, newly married and, yes, making minimum wage, working on Christmas Eve. Gradually the poetry and the hope faded.

But to be fair it wasn’t entirely without a bright side. My wife had gone to visit her family outside of Toronto for Christmas. Had I not had a shift to cover, I would have gone with her. Her family were a small-scale variation of a war zone. Nobody got along and there was never a peaceful moment, instead there was only a lull between battles. There were tears and accusations and more tension than one might find in a tightly strung tennis racket. When I told her that I was expected to perform my duties as a poor imitation of a cop for this special night, and that she would have to go enjoy the majesty of her family without me, I was not as sad as one might think. In fact, I had a novel to read, a thermos of tea and the prospect of 12 hours of not watching a family engage in a bench clearing brawl over two days.

But fate had other plans for me. Other plans of a Christmas Carol variety.

I showed up early to get the very precise instructions of how to get through the night. My boss, a veteran of many years, who commanded all the respect one might command when sporting a polyester jacket uniform, was very specific.

“There’s no one in this building tonight. Except you. There is a fellow on the second level parking garage, but he never leaves his cubicle. And, uh, between me and you, that should make you feel safer.”

“Safer. Why?’

I started having visions of a madman on some kind of a parole programme given parking duty having committed the most heinous offences.

“Well,” my boss continued…” he’s one of them.”

He let that comment hang in the air for me to absorb and be shocked at. Of course, I knew what he meant. This was 1987, and the world was still in the throes of homophobia and misogyny and racism and all the other features of Neanderthal thinking that was, thankfully, about to be knocked on the head by people with fully developed brains. But I wanted to have a bit of fun with this monkey boss.

“You mean, he cheers for the Montreal Canadians?” I tried to sound both outraged and frightened that such a man would be my workmate through this long night.

Bob, the Neanderthal boss, was a little shocked that I hadn’t picked up on his primitive subtlety.

“NO… he’s a fag!”

I pretended that it would take me a while for that to sink in and put on a shocked face.

“You mean, he….?”

“That’s what I mean.” He said, almost in triumph of having gotten his point across. “But don’t worry, as I said, he never leaves his cubicle, thank God.”

Within ten minutes, Mr. Meathead had left the building and I was alone. Except, of course, for the serial homosexual rapist that I had been warned about. I went right down to see him two floors below to introduce myself. And there he was, sitting in a tiny cubicle with classical music playing and reading what looked to be a fairly serious book.

“Hi, I’m Erwin, tonight’s security guard. It’s my first shift so if there are any problems please don’t call, I’ll likely be napping on an office couch somewhere.”

He laughed and we joked about Bob the Ape man and how if were both in this job one year from now we would have a mutual murder/suicide pact. I left him alone and went upstairs to begin my action-packed shift of watching. And watching. And, if there was time later, watching.

Now as this was my first shift, I thought I should probably do some of what was expected of me. We were told to go on perimeter patrols. These were walks around the out and inside of the building looking for narcotics dealers and nuclear terrorists and generally the sort of high-end criminals who intrude into empty offices in the night. And we were to record in our little make belief police notebooks where we had patrolled and at what time and what we had discovered. After a couple of weeks, it dawned on me that the patrols were not necessary. But I was dedicated enough to still record the patrols in my book. Had I been a little more honest I would have recorded the following:

10:15 p.m. went to office lounge and took delicious 15-minute nap

11:00 p.m. found cookies in staff lounge… ate same

12:30 a.m. finished latest novel…surprise ending quite good

2:00 a.m. considered the merits of suicide as I peered over 15th floor balcony onto atrium…. otherwise, no unusual activity

4:00 a.m. wondered why my cat sleeps so damn much

But as I said, this was my first shift, so I dutifully walked about and scribbled down my report. All had been very quiet until I got to the first level of parking. There were literally no cars in either lot, everyone with lives being at home while I celebrated Christmas Eve in their empty building. But it was not as empty as I thought it was. There, across the lot, I spotted what was obviously a homeless old man who had broken in no doubt to escape the frigid outside. My several hours of rigorous training had taught me what to do in this situation, so I called out the lines I had learned that might save my life one day.

“Hey! You!! You shouldn’t be here!!” I yelled in my deepest, most authoritative voice. The old man, who was shuffling more than walking turned his head to look at me and gave the most peaceful smile. And then he hid behind a concrete column in the middle of the lot.

I have read enough detective novels to know what my next step should be. I must go to the other side of the column to find him. That’s the kind of skill set one acquires from reading. I did, but the shuffling old fellow was a bit faster than I imagined, for he had run around the column to avoid me. I followed. He ran, I followed. Before long I was running around the column chasing no one, and the image of the dog chasing its’ own tail came to my mind. There was no way he could have escaped my most professional pursuit, but he had. I stood there, out of breath and dumbfounded. There was an intruder in the building, and I had let him, somehow, get away. And now I had to report it.

I jogged down to the serial rapist one floor below. He was surprised to see me, perhaps because I was not the same calm looking fellow who couldn’t give a flying damn about this job. I looked worried. Mostly because I was.

“Listen, Mark, not to alarm you, but you should know, there’s an intruder in the building.”

“An intruder?” he looked concerned enough to put down his book.

“Yes, I think it’s a homeless fellow. I’ve got to call it in to headquarters and then notify the police.”

This all sounded very by the book and what ought to be done. Naturally, I was making it all up. I had no idea what procedure was, and I had never read “the book”. And as far as headquarters went, I knew it was staffed by the same South African lunatic who had trained me, if he was even awake. And as for the police, I supposed that made sense as this guy was, strictly speaking, a break in sort of fellow. I was hoping for some guidance from Mark who looked, sadly, like this wouldn’t be his last year at this cubicle. He must have had a lot of great books he wanted to read.

His attitude became casual.

“So, what did this guy look like?”

“Well, he was old, with a gray beard…”

Here is where he cut me off.

“Long gray coat, shuffled when he walked, pleasant smile, fairly short…?”

“Christ, you saw him too! Did he come up to you?’

“No, he never does. He just walks and smiles and disappears.”

Now at the idea that Mark allowed this guy to walk about at his leisure my security guard instincts (never very sharp) kicked in.

“Did you report it??” I asked accusingly.

“Oh, Erwin, you can’t report a ghost. Well, you can, but why bother?”

I looked at him in a predictably stunned way.

“A ghost?”

“Oh yeah…I see him every so often and he just comes and goes and just goes. He has disappeared before my eyes more often than first dates I’ve had. But unlike my first dates, he always comes back with a smile. Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”

Now here’s something else to imagine. You are alone in a big building, you’ve seen a ghost, you have the prospect of many more hours alone and you are told you’ve seen a ghost and that you might see him again but not to worry as he’s harmless. I don’t doubt that ghosts exist and never have. I also believe that they are harmless.

Does this mean that I want to be with one overnight in a building alone? Nope.

I can also tell you that security guards do several things most people aren’t aware of. They pilfer little things, like pens, staplers, cookies (as I hinted at earlier) and they sleep. Sitting alone for a long time and trying to stay awake, it’s tough. Sure, you can play a radio, you can read, you can make plans for an escape from this life that you couldn’t have had nightmares about when you were younger. But ultimately sleep stampedes towards you and you nestle your red eyes into your polyester shirt sleeve laid out on the desk and sleep. But not when you expect the old ghost of Parking Level Two to come by for a Christmas visit. That was the only night I stayed awake for a whole shift. And it was purely from fear, not dedication to my profession. The paltry pay was compensated for with this experience, so I have no regrets about having taken this job. Who knows what adventures lie in the most seemingly bland corridors we travel through!

Erwin Coombs is a retired teacher of philosophy, history and literature who has rejected all forms of retirement. He is an avid writer, reader, and observer of life. When not observing and reading and living, he is writing. Erwin has lived in Egypt, Jamaica, England and travelled a great deal but, in his mind, not enough. His writing is a celebration of people and opportunity, both of which life gives in abundance. These stories are from his, as yet unpublished book, Dusty the Cat: Her Part in My Downfall.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Slices from Life

Getting My Nemesis

By Erwin Coombs

You might be wondering how on earth Dusty, the cat, played such a huge role in my downfall. I suppose I should use the defence that the title of this piece is nothing more than literary license because for one thing, I have never had a downfall. Oh, I’ve had many falls and stumbles, but no major catastrophic tragedy that cast me into the pits of despair. I suppose rather than the pits of despair, I have just visited the suburbs of despair. And having lived in the suburbs, I don’t mind equating these two. That is one of the many wonderful things about life, that we can fall, but invariably we rise again, as it is said in a part of the Bible I can never remember, though I fall I shall rise. Confucius said it as well: that our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. The title of this book is misleading, to an extent. I never fell, absolutely, and Dusty had nothing to do with my stumbles. In fact, she was a factor in helping me to get up again and again. A cat? Yes, one might be amazed at the soothing companionship that pets offer generally. I don’t mean all pets. I can’t imagine a turtle, for example, offering solace at the end of a rotten day at work or after your partner has just told you that you are now a lone wolf and good luck with your future. But let me get back to when I finally decided to get a cat.

I was on my own and had rented a bachelor apartment. I was determined to have a pet, particularly a cat, as cats had been a big part of my life since I found the stray Dickens twenty years ago. It was the first of the month, moving day, and as I had not a lot to move for reasons to long to go into, I thought I wouldn’t go a day without company, so I asked my daughters to come with me to the Humane Society to pick one out. My eldest daughter was a little hesitant as she and her boyfriend had adopted a dog few months earlier and had to return it, for reasons once again too long to go into. As a result, she felt that she was blacklisted and that her picture was up on screens and walls and would somehow be subject to abuse at the hands of the workers there. I tried to explain that these people were very well intentioned and likely not wanting to seek revenge for the return of an animal. I mean, I asked her, what could they possibly do? Shame her in front of the other caged animals? Sick a wild pack of rabid pooches on her? But she was nervous enough that she left the choosing of my cat to me and Josie.

My other daughter and I went cruising through the rooms looking at the imprisoned beasts. Any visit to one of these places can be sad. They really do look like prisoners as they pace their small spaces and when you pass by a cage, they seem to do their best to be alluring, realizing on some level, that this stranger might just be their ticket out of Sing-Sing. They rub up against the bars and look at you with these pleading eyes that seem to say, “Please like me, take me home.” It’s every meathead’s dream of what a single’s bar should be like but isn’t for meatheads. My daughter finally found one that she connected with and told me to come over and have a look. It was an American Shorthair, grey and with lovely kind, green eyes. The assistant opened the cage for me and let me put my hand in to have a pet. It was a lovely meeting until the blood was drawn. Mine, I mean, not hers. She lashed out not too fiercely at my hand and I pulled back too late. Josie looked up at me and said,

“Dad, you moved too quickly!”

My argument was that the quick move was the result of having been assaulted and not the cause, but she was intent that this was the one for me and so, naturally, I agreed, as I held my hand up to prevent my life’s blood from escaping.

“There not used to being touched, poor things.” said the worker.

I looked at my gash and wondered if there would be any pity for me, or only another condemnation at having been doing jazz hands in a cat’s cage, but there was none. Nevertheless, I agreed to take this one home and started the paperwork. The woman across the desk took my particulars and my cheque and told me, quite casually.

“And we won’t charge you for the cream.”

“Cream?” I asked, “What cream?”

For a moment I thought that they were going to offer an antibacterial tube for my hand given that one of their inmates had attempted murder on me. But not even close.

“The cream for her backside” came the “as if you didn’t know” response.

“Why would I need cream for her backside?” I asked bracing myself for an answer I knew wouldn’t be pleasant. I mean, any conversation around creams and cat’s backsides is not going to work out well, and this one didn’t.

“As you probably noticed, the kitty is a little bit bigger than she should be.”

A little bit? This was one fat cat. Cats as a rule are about as sedentary a creature as you’ll find so being a little bit chunky is par for the course, but this one was two pars for the course. I didn’t mind as I thought I’ll get her slimmed down with a gym membership and controlled diet.

“And the cream on her anus will help her lose weight?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh no, it’s just that she is so big she can’t really reach her anus to clean it, so she has a wee bit of an infection. The cream will help clear it up. Twice a day, but I suggest you wear a glove as you do it.”

If there was one thing I didn’t need a suggestion about as to when to wear a glove it was that. I didn’t relish the idea with a glove anyway. We took her back to my sparsely furnished new apartment and put her down on the floor while I set up the all-important pooh box and, more important to her, the food and water bowl. She was still a nameless cat, so I asked the girls as I was busying myself rushing about, as much as one can in a bachelor apartment, setting up for my new roommate,

“Well girls, what should we name her?”

“Dusty.” Came the immediate response from Josie. And it made sense as she was a gray furred kitty with lovely white bits as well.

“Because she’s gray?” I called out from the bathroom as I scooped kitty litter into the target box.

“No.” said Josie. “Because she’s eating a fluff of dust.”

And that is my cat, Dusty. As if being so obese that you can’t clean your own backside wasn’t evidence enough, she has an eating compulsion that will not stop, even at dust. But we forged strong bonds and became good friends. As a matter of fact, there is a gay theatre in Toronto called Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Company, and they are quite good. So, from day one I would refer to Dusty and I as just that, buddies in bad times. Of course, the times weren’t bad exactly, but they were certainly getting better.

Erwin Coombs is a retired teacher of philosophy, history and literature who has rejected all forms of retirement. He is an avid writer, reader, and observer of life. When not observing and reading and living, he is writing. Erwin has lived in Egypt, Jamaica, England and travelled a great deal but, in his mind, not enough. His writing is a celebration of people and opportunity, both of which life gives in abundance. These stories are from his, as yet unpublished book, Dusty the Cat: Her Part in My Downfall.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Categories
Slices from Life

It’s Amazing the Things We can Do

By Erwin Coombs

That’s the title of a narrative that needs explaining. I have to start off by being quite honest: I was raised in a cloud of cynicism and despair. As I’ve already hinted — my upbringing was classically dysfunctional with a broken home at age six and all kinds of attendant problems. Poverty was one. Actually, poverty is never one problem because it has a ricochet effect like shooting a gun in a metal room as it leads to a whole bagful of treats that make life that much more difficult. Apart from the outward signs of misery, there were all kinds of internalised ones.

I am a huge optimist by nature and why I don’t know. It might have to do with a faulty IQ or some brain injury suffered in youth that I can’t recall, for obvious reasons. Mind you, I did fall out of my highchair when I was a toddler in Cairo, Egypt. I don’t know if the highchairs at that time were substandard or perhaps my mother didn’t bother to do up my safety belt, but I went down like a ton of bricks to the non-carpeted floor. I’m sure there was no permanent damage, except for the fact that there is an indent in the middle of the top of my head.

When I was young and had hair, I remember occasionally coming across that indent and thinking “Thank God I have hair to cover THAT thing up with!” But God has a delicious sense of irony and between Him and gravity, or rather with gravity working as his foot soldier, time chipped, or rather pulled away at my hair. And as my hairline receded like a Maple Leaf fan’s playoff hopes, that deformity became a feature of mine. I’m not a vain man, by any stretch, but this was a bit to deal with. Over time, I got used to it.

I recall one day I was helping out in one of my daughter’s grade two classrooms. I was sitting reading a story to several cute little kids when one of the girls asked, in a completely good-natured way, “What’s that big lump on your head?” I wanted to explain that rather than a big lump it was actually a crevice which gave the appearance of a big lump, but how lame would that have sounded? Instead, I did more of that thinking on my feet thing and said, “You see, Ariana, I have so many smart thoughts that I don’t have room for them in my brain. So, I store them there.”

She looked wide-eyed at this new marvel she had never heard of before and I could tell she was impressed. I had turned what could have been a potentially embarrassing deformity for my daughter into a point of admiration. I had new cache as the really smart guy. Score one for Dad.

Thinking back on that highchair fall, there was another potentially brain damaging incident that took place in Cairo. Given that there were two such events it’s amazing I can even remember them. But I guess the damage was fairly minimal, though I’m sure several former teachers of mine would claim otherwise. We had just arrived in Cairo as my father was posted at the Canadian embassy, but our house wasn’t ready yet. That meant a two week stay at the Cairo Hilton on the public coin. Being a toddler, I couldn’t entirely appreciate how cool this was, but my family did and when Dad was at work we spent a lot of time at the pool. I couldn’t walk then but neither could a lot of the guests who made good use of the pool-side bar. My Mum no doubt did, and my siblings were busy playing childish games. I was plopped on the steps of the shallow end of the pool to bake in the sun and hopefully not teeter into the water. Hope is a fine thing, but you don’t want to risk a toddler’s life on it. And sure, as shooting I did the teetering and as with the highchair, toppled to the bottom. The landing wasn’t so bad, it’s just that there was no resurfacing to go with it and so I sat comically at the bottom, no doubt waving my arms and looking wide eyed.

Meanwhile, on terra firma, someone thought to look for me.

“Has anyone seen Erwin?’

If I had a toddler that was missing poolside, I would have phrased it a little more urgently. But the whole family circled the pool until my brother Eddy spotted me at the bottom, now fairly blue through lack of oxygen and called out.

“There he is!” I believe he said it like a child finding a hidden Easter egg in a hunt instead of a drowning sibling. But for all that they did pull me out, dry me off and I was not much the worse for wear. Here’s a funny follow up lest you think that our childhood experiences don’t have some kind of resonance in our adult years. I was never told of this almost drowning incident until I was well into my teens, for some reason. Yet my whole life I had been, and am still, subject to a recurring nightmare where, you guessed it, I am at the bottom of a pool, gasping for breath and I wake up panting. As the song says, take good care of your children. If you don’t they might end up with misshapen heads and poor sleeping habits.

There was a third incident in Cairo involving a camel and the pyramids. My God, but it sounds like I’ve had this exciting life but really most of it has been spent holding onto a channel changer and dreaming of better days. While in Cairo the family decided to take a tour around the pyramids riding camels because, hey, that’s the thing to do there. And it would have been a grand idea except that my Mum had just strapped the baby me onto the camel before she got on when the camel decided that one passenger was enough, and it bolted. Camels are ornery beasts and when they get a mind to something they do it and apparently kidnapping the blonde baby was a bee in its bonnet so off it went. Soon one of the camel instructors leapt onto another camel and chased me down in the Sahara after a few minutes. Had he not, I might well have wound up as a Bedouin being raised in the desert as some sort of a poor man’s Lawrence of Arabia. Looking back on my time in Egypt, it seems clear that my parents had decided to do away with me but lacked the foresight for a proper plan or the energy to keep at it. But I hold no grudge. They did have three other mouths to feed, after all.

Despite all those damages to my brain at an early age I have managed to negotiate this old world with some degree of success. And one of the points I want to make in this narrative is that people are extraordinarily able to do things they think they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, if that doesn’t sound too convoluted a sentence. In other words, we can accomplish things under the most enormous pressure and under terrible conditions that we think we might not be able to do even under ideal circumstances. What this says about human beings is that we are to be marveled at and not despaired over, as we so often do. We look down on our species and God knows we look down on ourselves countless times a day.

The old ‘pop’ psychology of examining the self is not just a cutesy way of filling up self-help books with advice. Self-help books are generally, a dark alley to visit. They are great at momentary inspiration but generally don’t last beyond the initial reading. That’s why people keep poring over them again and again. And here is one of the problems with self-help books; they tell us what we already know to be true and what should be done. The advice is common-sensical. But following advice is much more difficult than just seeking it out and so we repeat the patterns of dumb behavior. And as long as we are seeking advice from a friend or a book, we get the feeling we are doing something. It calls to mind the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who said, “No longer talk about what a good man should be. Be one.” Or in the words of my father, “shit or get off the pot.” I’ve always thought a good title to reveal this problem with self-help books would be Breaking the Self-Help Dependency Cycle: Volume 8.

Returning to my narrative highlighting the amazing things people can do and not even realise they can do it. I have a life and death example from World War II. I knew an old woman whose life had been a series of tragedies. Sure, she had had some joy. She was born in the First World, had children she loved and grandchildren, had friends and all manner of hobbies from knitting to crocheting and everything in between. Mind you knitting and crocheting are close so there might not seem a great deal in between, but there is, and she pursued them, getting a joy out of the little things in life. This despite the fact that she was raised in Nazi occupied Holland, had a brother who died in a Nazi work camp, one of her children was killed in a traffic accident while just a boy, her husband had died of cancer, she had defeated cancer, well, the list goes on. But despite the list of reasons to give up and surrender to despair she found joy where she could, displaying a strength of character that people who have suffered much less and whined much more would do well to learn from.

Here is her story of doing what you think you can’t when circumstances demand you step up and find a solution instead of an excuse. This lady, Gail, was living on a farm near some woods during the Nazi occupation of her country. One of her two brothers had died in that German work camp so the other one who was at the same camp, decided that he was not going to stay. He escaped from Germany and somehow made his way home to the farm. His family hid him, but he had to spend a lot of time living in the woods to avoid the SS (Shutzstaffel) who knew he was there but couldn’t catch him. One day he was at the farm splitting wood when word came that the SS were coming for him. He naturally ran to the woods. Here was the trouble. The Nazis arrived and demanded to know where he was. Gail was the only one home and denied that he had been there for over a year. The crafty head of the unit spied the partially split pile of wood and asked who had been doing this job. Gail calmly said she had, and as the Nazis had taken away the men, she had no choice, now did she? The head of the unit nodded calmly and in an equally calm manner took out his revolver.

“You are doing a very good job. You’re pretty skilled for a little farm girl, aren’t you?”

He looked at her smilingly and gestured to the pile of logs.

“Show me how it’s done. If you can prove it wasn’t your brother who did this, well, that will be fine. If you cannot, you die here and now at the hands of an officer that you’ve lied to.”

He stepped back, keeping the gun pointed at Gail. She told me she had never picked up an axe in her life, but she knew that if there was ever a time to do it and to learn how, this was it. She said that she was trembling inside but knew that that fear had to be kept hidden. She also knew that if she failed and was killed it would redouble the SS man’s commitment to track down her brother. Even when her life was hanging by the swing of an axe, she was concerned with the fate of someone else. And this also speaks to me about the true nature of humanity. Despite the fact that whatever selfish tendencies we have can be played upon to act in more selfish ways by people who make a profit out of selfishness, we are fundamentally a caring species with streaks of unselfishness that are not merely streaks but represent our true colours.

Gail stepped up to the pile, picked up the ax and said a silent prayer of desperation and hope while she put on a brave face,

“Dear God, please, just let me swing this axe true, just this once.”

She had seen others do it and tried to replicate their movements, placing a log on the stand, shifting her hands down the shaft and giving a mighty swing. The log split in two with the softest sound. She hid her own amazement and looked at the man holding his gun and her life in his hands with a bored “See?” sort of expression. The Nazi uncocked his gun and placed it back in the holster.

“Couldn’t have done better myself. Carry on,” and he and his men walked away to continue the search for the brother that I’m happy to say was never successful. That’s the brother whom I knew as a delightful old man who had given me those sharks teeth all those years ago. He, like his sister, was so full of life and happiness despite all they had gone through. Or perhaps not despite but because of all they had gone through. From the wonder of a hundred-year-old shark’s tooth to the smile of their babies in their arms, they loved all that life had to offer because they knew how precious and, surprisingly, readily available joy is in this world.

.

Erwin Coombs is a retired teacher of philosophy, history and literature who has rejected all forms of retirement. He is an avid writer, reader, and observer of life. When not observing and reading and living, he is writing. Erwin has lived in Egypt, Jamaica, England and travelled a great deal but, in his mind, not enough. His writing is a celebration of people and opportunity, both of which life gives in abundance. These narratives are from his, as yet unpublished book, Dusty the Cat: Her Part in My Downfall.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL