Old Charlie's post3

Today I would like to talk about an affliction that is not always judged a proper disease, but in fact it is one of the most dreadful conditions one might find oneself in.

In these days I happen to read on newspapers erudite articles written by psychologists who try to explain to the lay reader why that man— or young mother, or boy— yesterday committed suicide and they have arguments galore for pointing out the responsibilities of the heartless society, the ineptitude of the school system … you know the refrain: somebody is guilty. 

In the days of sixty-five years ago when I was a teenaged boy and felt desperate and alone, nobody was discussing this matter on scientific articles and all the help I got ranged only from the suggestion “drink a fresh egg every morning” to the counsel "concentrate on your schoolbooks without wasting time in shedding tears on yourself”. Indeed few, if any, believed me to be somehow ill. The general opinion was: Carlo is smug as a bug in the rug, with his pretense to endure anguish. A Molière character with his imaginary pain.

The point is - and was - that most people have little experience on this type of difficulties: I reached the conclusion that only a person who had some kind of personal exposure to this condition can help. It is like a wild beast, which swells inside you and can grow from some sort of childish timidity into that implacable cancer of the spirit that is fear of living. I remember I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make clear my plight saying that I would prefer to be ill with pneumonia (or you die or you get healed) rather than being devastated by this endless inconceivable nervous breakdown that caused me to throw up everything from my stomach as soon as any faint emotion stroke me.

In fact in the chapter “First love” as well as in “The great parade” of my self-printed book[1] you are allured to laugh about my vomiting predisposition: any kind of emotion, both fearful - (examinations with professors Cesare Castiglia and Gianni Jarre at the Polytechnic Engineering University) - as well as desirable (the first trip to Sweden, the arrival of Hildegard) … any novelty had the effect to make my esophagus work as a high-pressure pump, and sincerely I felt thoroughly unhappy about this.

But I was fortunate to get acquainted with a wise senior friend, who taught me the most important thing to overcome this devilish torment: I passed through all this, he told me, I know that this misery is no joke and it seems capable to destroy you. But I can guarantee that it is not a definitive, ultimate status. The trick is to know that it is only a transient condition. When you know it, gradually your nervous system will get used to emotions, gradually you are going to forget all this gloomy discomfort. I am sure in the future you will do great things, sure, beyond your wildest dreams. And since I knew how successful he had been in his life, I believed him. And eventually I found out by myself that he was right, his words healed me.

So now, dear readers, after my past posts, where I tried to humorously encourage the Parkinson afflicted and other friends trapped in various types of hardship, here I will inspire my closest mates, those who are scared by their own shadows, those who panic when any novelty is announced. Look, dear friends: you are not alone in your tribulations. I am an expert, believe me.

JJJ

Once upon a time … I was lying on the sofa and was stunned by emotion and empty stomach. The doorbell rang; my mother went over and returned at once with Doctor Verna. He was a tall distinguished man, formerly a medical officer in the Navy and I had always admired him because of his gentlemanly manners.

My mother said, hastily:

<Look what a state this boy is in. Till now he was sick on the eve of each examination, always the same story that you know. In these days no exam is in sight, but from yesterday to this morning he vomited even his soul. I don’t like to play the role of the apprehensive mom, but this new crisis worries me. And even he— it was he who asked me to call for you, doctor>.

I was trying to call the doctor’s attention to my eyes, to let him understand that I wanted to speak alone with him, but he was a gentleman of sterling character and never could imagine that I might want to involve him in any sort of subterfuge. He felt silently my pulse, time was running fast and I was in despair. No, it can’t finish in this way. At this moment Hildegard is waiting for me at the Dahlia. I imagined the girl walking in the hotel’s hall; somebody is observing her, perhaps addressing words to her … who can wake me up from this nightmare?

Doctor Verna dropped my wrist. He stretched out his lower lip, puzzled. Then he said:

<Let’s check the abdomen>

Oh boundless joy! After these words my mother went out of the room, as I had hoped. I grabbed the doctor’s arm and pulled him close to me, with all the vigor I could find in myself.

< I must talk confidentially with you> I whispered. He looked straight in my eyes. His eyes were serious and loyal, and for many years in the future I would have rejoiced, feeling friendly watched by those eyes. But that day I did not know this, yet.

I said:

<I made a date with an Austrian girl here in Torino, unknown to my parents. We are now corresponding long since, and my parents know it. But my mother doesn’t like the whole story, although I showed some letters from which anybody could see that she is a wise person, and even religious. Now, just thinking to go and meet her secretly, I throw up like an erupting volcano and cannot control it … I am here immobilized and she is waiting for me at the Dahlia hotel, you know, that place at the corner on Piazza Statuto— >

Doctor Verna smiled to me. Yes, for a fraction of a second he flattened his wrinkles of stern Navy officer, turning them into something that might be a smile.

<Do you want me to go and talk to that young woman? What’s her name?>

<Hildegard Andexlinger> I replied.

Oh! Thanks!  Heartfelt thanks. I felt relieved, now that I was left alone on the sofa in the empty room. I imagined doctor Verna parking his Lancia Aprilia in front of the Dahlia hotel, I tried to guess what he would say to Hildegard and all seemed to turn round, a sweet dizziness in which one feels to sink and you look forward to the coming of anybody who shake you saying that it was only a bad dream but now it’s over, yes, it’s going to its end, even though I can’t yet understand how.

Much time passed. The sunlight strip on the floor had grown longer and now lapped on the carpet edge.

At last the doctor came back. He entered the room followed by my mother and without even sitting down, without any preamble he said, in his shrill voice:

<She is a remarkable person. Nice, clever, agreeable.  We spoke a bit about Austria, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, about music in general and other things. At first she was worrying about your health, dear young man. But I explained that you are sound, only emotional and too sensitive. Miss Hildegard, too, is sensitive; but strong. She made a 900 kilometers journey, changing train twice, to come here and greet this … hmm, forgive my brutal frankness, this stupid lad who throws up at every bend on the road of life— meanwhile the doctor came close to my bolster and put friendly his hand on my shoulder— of course I reassured her: the young man is absolutely healthy, only a bit too … shy.  Time will put things to right; he will grow up and stop vomiting. And that Fräulein is a treasure not to be missed>.

My mother, standing there, had opened her eyes wide after these surprising words. Then her face turned terrified by the awful revelation.

<You made that woman to come secretly in Torino — she said in a harsh voice, not even remembering that doctor Verna was still with us — and where is she now?>

<In the Dahlia hotel> I replied without a milligram of saliva in my mouth.

<Precisely where they go your dirty companions for their rendezvous with their girlfriends of loose morale.  YOU told me that, you! To make me appreciate that you are not like the others!>

<It seemed to me a place easy to find, near the railway station … >       I wheezed. I would have started vomiting again, if only I had enough energy left.

<Any hotel can be used well or badly> the doctor joined in the conversation.

My mother suddenly realized that the doctor was still among us, and addressing him in a quasi-weeping voice said:

<Tell me, doctor, if I am wrong. This stupidone, as you yourself called him, fell in love with a never seen girl, about whom we know nothing. They began to write to each other to improve their performance with foreign languages … nonsense. She might be a grand good girl, as you say after seeing her for a few minutes, but who knows? Keep in mind that when our daughter catches a train for going to the seaside near here, on the Riviera, in a holiday hostel managed by nuns, we let her be escorted by some senior wise lady … while that one makes all alone such a long journey with all the material and moral dangers that can be met nowadays … tell me, doctor, do you understand my anguish? Can you say that I am wrong?>

The aristocratic face of the physician looked deeply carved by the trade-winds he encountered in his foregone career.

< I think that between persons who love each other, between mother and son, the point is not to be wrong or right, to win or to lose. Mothers’ anxiety is a logic and frequent manifestation of love and you — now he had turned to me — must never forget it. And to you … I allow to myself to remind that this young lady travelled one day and one night to come till here, and if one decides to let her leave without even meet our nice stupidone, this can be done. But it does not seem the best decision, to me>.

After that the wonderful man left, without adding one word.

Then I spent a long, very long time alone, stunned on that sofa; nausea and vertigo let me perceive only confusedly, at intervals, the low subdued muttering of mother and sister in the near room. I felt the klic-klic-klic of the telephone disc, perhaps they are informing daddy in his office … time was passing and I was so knocked out that probably I fell asleep, for a while.

The doorbell rang again; I heard the voice of my mother saying, without any kind inflection, <Come in> and immediately I saw her, Hildegard, yes, she wore on her head a lovely small bell-shaped hat of the type 1923-let’s-dance-the-Charleston as I had seen in some film.  She seemed very high to me, since I was lying so low on that sofa, and came fast in my direction, saying:

<How are you feeling, Carlo! Are you all right, now?>

<I am all right, now that you are here> I squeaked. What a stupid sentence I uttered, I told myself. In the previous days I had thought many things nice and brilliant, too, and now it came up only such a banality… <Take that chair, will you? Sit here close to me>

My mother was sulky with our guest: she was unable to conceal her grudge, however asked, with evident strain:

<Do you want a coffee?>

<No no, please don’t take any trouble for me> Hildegard replied

<Take that coffee, I implore you — I muttered — at least we will have some minutes more to stay together>

<Well then, I will take it, thanks> Hildegard said kindly to my mother.

And so we remained alone only for few moments, the time required by a small coffee-pot … she bent on me and I saw her great blue eyes quite near, I grabbed her arms that seemed so firm to me, while I felt so weak and even flabby.

<You believe— I panted — that we will have a little daughter, fair, with blue eyes? Like you?>

<I don’t know>.

She smiled to me and all my life I would remember that sweet chubby face under the Charleston hat. It seemed too much, to hope that she would love me for so many years in the future. I pulled her closer and closer, so she reached my stinking mouth with her lips and chastely kissed me.

<I ‘m sorry, to be seen by you in this state - I said through my arid fauces - in normal days I am not so miserable … I am totally unhappy, ganz unglücklich>

<Unglücklich? Warum? Why are you saying that? We are lucky, Carlo. We had the fortune to meet in our letters, we understand each other and we love each other. We are lucky>

<Give me a little kiss again, before my mother arrives with the coffee>

Precisely in that moment my mother came back, and I understood that I had to wait still many months more, and face many examinations at the Polytechnic, accompanied by the punctual vomiting charade, before having a second kiss by Hildegard.


By the way, right at that time, newspapers were full of alarming comments about the carbon dioxide growing emissions, with consequent polar ice pack melting, which caused the oceans' level to increase - threatening the lower coastal regions all over the world. Awful, huh? Yet I am not sure: possibly the sea level was just influenced by the huge deluge of throw-up produced by me in the eve of my examinations.


Carletto Scara

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[1] Fun for the crippled in Paris, and other stories - 

Old Charlie's post2

It’s high time to come back to my BlogSpot for a second post, taking advantage from some friends’ remarks: the first point is— why to address ourselves only to Parkinson affected people?

We are part of a multifarious universe of differently afflicted individuals; indeed everybody on earth is moving toward her or his very personal death and behind this only too obvious acknowledgment what the duce remains to be said to encourage our poor fellows? Can we devise a message that can help anybody to live a somewhat better life in the meanwhile? Are we perhaps pursuing what Henri Bergson[1] called momentary anesthesia of the heart, through some sophisticated form of wit?

Well, in fact— based on my personal experience, I had started with the idea to make easier specially the burden of my Parkinson afflicted colleagues, keeping them in high spirits - as far as possible - by means of humorous anecdotes revolving on our peculiar propensity to fall with our face on the ground and make a fuss everywhere through the irrepressible tremor of our hands.

This is why I posted my first blog piece here but sure it’s right to say that not only the Parkinson sick is in need of solace and comfort.

Thus this blog of mine ought to become something of universal purport. The inspiration comes from a club of handicapped youth, not far from my home. They are still too young to be victim of Parkinsonism: it is some other variety of illness that constrains them to move on a wheelchair. At times I am joining someone of their group to have a drink in the bar of their association— and sometimes we joke about the way “normally walking people” call us “differently able” types. We have our own kind of fun. Lately I have been called, by some of these young wheeled friends, not an old person and neither a decrepit fellow but … a differently young man!  I am fond of these new friends who enjoy frolic and would probably welcome pages written by a jester story teller like me. Thus I feel confirmed in my calling vocation, directed to each and every soul waiting for it, independently from the type of her or his ailment. 

 

Let me commence in a rather dull way, since stupidity is where I succeed best. (You know, to avoid calling someone stolid, you can say differently clever)  So: in which corner of our psyche do we humans find most of fun? What is that in our innermost drives us to laugh? Is it true that when you chuckle you are inclined to laugh off, i.e. disregard, brush aside and shrug off concerns, woes, worries and anxiety – at least for a while? Hmm!

Until recently I believed Arthur Koestler to be outstanding for his “Darkness at Noon”, then after discovering in the Encyclopaedia Britannica an article of his about humor[2] …

If you manage to read it, you’ll enjoy the whole of it, starting from the very explanation of how and why fun is rooted in the story of the marquis of the court of Louis XV who unexpectedly returned from a journey and, on entering his wife's boudoir, found her in the arms of a bishop (here is the tension that waits to be relieved). After a moment's hesitation, the marquis walked calmly to the window, leaned out, and began going through the motions of blessing the people in the street  (here you begin to suspect where the relief of tension is coming from).

It’s like a click of the Geiger counter indicating the presence of radioactivity!  To produce the comic effect you must compel the reader to perceive the situation in two self-consistent but incompatible frames of reference at the same time; his mind has to operate simultaneously on two different wavelengths … When a comedian tells a story, he deliberately sets out to create a certain tension in his listeners, which mounts as the narrative progresses. But it never reaches its expected climax. The punch line acts as a verbal guillotine that cuts across the logical development of the story; it debunks the audience's dramatic expectations. The tension that is felt becomes suddenly redundant and is exploded in laughter. Simple, huh?

Here we have, as Koestler notes, an odd mechanism of reflex quite unrelated to the struggle for survival: no comparison with motor reflexes, such as the contraction of the pupil of the eye in dazzling light, that are simple responses to simple stimuli whose value to survival is obvious. Laughter is a reflex but unique in that it has no apparent biological purpose.

One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only function seems to be to provide relief from tension, and it plays a subtle role with aggressiveness. On the other hand, psychologist William MacDougall believed that “laughter has been evolved in the human race as an antidote to sympathy, a protective reaction shielding us from the depressive influence of the shortcomings of our fellow men”.

Be it as it may, here I’m going to give you a taste of humorous anecdotes of mine, i.e. a brief history of tension-and-relief on occasion of our last year’s trip in France.

Let me be sincere with you, friends. I don’t feel to be an unlucky fellow. So no strong tension is building up— in the early stages of the process.

First of all, Hildegard’s health and spirits are as good as ever, and that is the most important bliss. In the second place, I am not yet - and perhaps won’t be for a while - completely crippled. I can walk some ten meters with the help of a stick and only seldom indeed I fall ruinously with my face on the ground and need the help of at least a pair of robust people to regain my vertical standing.


And then I can still drive my glorious Punto car and that’s the most delightful gift of all. Forget any airplane trip, with the handbags to be agonizingly dragged around! My car is quite the thing needed to reach many a place in continental Europe.

I can easily drive up to 1,000 kilometres a day, just crawling out of the car for a few moments when I need to visit restrooms, restaurants and fuel stations. That’s marvel­lous, undeniably. And so I am going to report here my last trip to Paris on last July, to make clear how humor is driven by tension-and-relief.

The opportunity was given by an engagement of my daughter Carla, the physician, who was expected to lecture at a conference of geriatric doctors up there in those days. My daughter’s son, Fabio (who just finished his primary school this summer) was eager to join his mother in Paris as a prize for his promotion, so Hildegard & I proposed to be ourselves in the Ville Lumière on the same days, to keep the boy happy during the hours in which his mother would be busy with her geriatric audience. And so we did. When the young couple arrived in the Novotel at the Défense after a night sleeping on the TGV train from Torino, we, the old couple, were already there waiting for their arrival after a 930-km drive on the previous day. (Torino - called Turin in English - where we live, is the capital city of Piedmont, Italy’s north-western region bordering on France and Switzerland just beyond the Alps).

I had enjoyed every moment of that trip, first through the alpine mountains and then through the lovely French countryside. I was a bit less pleased with the time we spent in Paris, because we had to go around in the Metro and the stairs down and up the underground system are not the most desirable exer­cise for a half crippled old lad. However, I had also some long moments of rest on a wooden bench near the Tour Eiffel, where I sat immobile a couple of hours waiting for the return of Hildegard and the boy from the top of it, and then my glutei were thoroughly flattened and hardened for the remaining hours of the day. We had some abrupt cloudburst showers in those days, and found refuge in various cafés and bistros, as well as navigating on the Seine on the very same Bateaux Mouche we had appreciated many decades ago when we were young— Paris is never disappointing, always the same charming enchantment.

In the late afternoon of the third day our dear guests took the train to return to Torino, thus Hildegard and I had a last chance to have a good time in the evening, alone by our­selves, as we had some 55 years ago, and on many an occasion later. We both remembered a good place for oysters close to Place de la Bastille, but we were unsure whether the huitres were still served there: and surely the walk from Châtelet along rue de Rivoli and St. Antoine seemed incredibly longer than we remembered it to be. I trudged grasping Hildegard’s arm and every now and then had to stop leaning against a wall for a long while.

So we arrived very late at that posh restaurant, and seeing the huge crowd queuing up at the inner barrier where the service staff allotted the seating places, Hildegard proposed to take a taxi at once and go back to our hotel at the Défence. But I wasn’t sure that we would ever return to Paris, and addressing myself very privately to an old wise-looking senior waiter,  I confessed to being René-la-canne (a renowned French racket­eer just discharged in those days from prison with his con­spicuous orthopaedic stick and sun-glasses, as he appeared on the evening paper of that day) and said that I had wanted for years to taste again their excellent oysters and putting in his hand a wad of Euro bills, I suggested we could bypass both the cloak-room and the staff barrier— so he guided us through a “personnel only” door and we arrived in the dining room, in­credibly full of properly dressed people and baroque mirrors. 


Our dripping umbrellas and wet rain jackets were looked at disapprovingly by our neighbors at the near table, and I felt a scornful glance darted by the lady sitting on the long wall-seat near me, when I awkwardly, unwittingly pushed my umbrella right in her soft flesh, while trying to settle myself down at the table with my stick and umbrella. Hildegard felt a bit embar­rassed by all this, and by the fact that I ordered an enormous quantity (two dozens) of the largest oysters – while she was content with a simple onion soup.

But this was only the beginning of her apprehensions: the wine was an excellent Chablis that pleasantly warmed up my brain neurons (what’s left of them) and while I was eagerly confirming my “Carpe Diem” philosophy to my wife, a most intense tremor moved my hand out of its trajectory and I over­turned the glass and the divine wine was poured on the pre­cious Flanders table cloth and, what is worse, abundantly sprinkled the naked right leg of the prim lady near me. We were in July but the unrequired refreshment did not seem to be welcomed by her – and in fact she started to shriek like a goose plucked alive.

I felt ashamed and confused and overwhelmed and in the total irrationality of the moment I bent down to wipe her right calf with my left hand— what a horrible moment, dear friends!

The whole hall was filled by the lady’s screams, I re­member confusedly a squad of waiters guided by the maître, all equipped with towels of various sizes to dry up the table cloth, while a super-maître was humbly apologizing to the neurotic husband of the neurotic lady and gazing at me with terrible eyes - oh boys, you can imagine how much I wanted to disap­pear. The adrenaline level in my blood could hardly be higher, no relief for my inside tension was possibly in sight.  

In point of fact, I have a sort of black-out in my memory (probably the benevolent Gods grant us, for such painful mo­ments, some sort of trance). I only remember being accompanied with Hildegard at the back door on a narrow dark alley by a by-no-means-loqua­cious man who strongly recommended that we should  keep away from the main entrance and tète-de-taxi, so we walked as unnoticed as possible to the Metro station down at Place de la Bastille.

Hildegard, who had not been in a trance during those dramatic minutes, told me, when finally we sat in the Metro carriage, that apparently the furious husband was a functionary at the police headquarters in Quai des Orfèvres and probably the idea of impersonating René-la-canne was not quite the best choice. We even noticed too late that there is direct Metro line from Défence to Bastille, so we could have been spared that terrible, long and time-consuming walk on rue de Rivoli!

The following day was a bright, lovely day. On our way home I pulled up to have lunch at Beaune, the picturesque capital city of Bourgogne, where I was lucky stumbling against my own stick right while going into the restaurant (so I could never be sus­pected of falling on the ground because I had drunk too much!) and there I enjoyed a fantastic dozen of escargots à la bour­guignonne duly accompanied by a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and in the relaxing atmosphere of the cosy place I asked Hildegard which had been her best moment in those three-and-a-half days in France.

She said: <The moment that I felt I was your moll, Carlo>

<Moll?>

<Yes!! At the age of seventy eight I eventually was be­ing looked at as “the moll of the gangster” – quite an exciting experience> … and a text-book example of tension relief.






Carletto Scara

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[1] Actually Bergson was meaning the absence of sympathy with the victim of a joke

[2]

Britannica style: "humour."Ecyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed April 2, 2012].