Contexts Editor
Goodbye 2020, a strange disturbing year!! Recently, I had my second PCR test for Covid19. The previous Friday I’d been conducting a group at the university and was informed 5 days later by one of the students that he’d tested positive. We’d worn masks and kept a distance throughout the 2 and a half hours, nonetheless, off to the clinic I went and, to my amazement, received the result after 10 minutes. “Negative”, said the nurse smiling reassuringly, and I smiled back, thankful for the result and her work, then walked away, in the full knowledge that she could not have been more wrong. I have it, of course I have it, because we all have it, as Rieux’s friend Tarrou warns in Albert Camus’ The Plague: “Everyone has it inside himself, this plague, because no one in the world, no one, is immune.” A significant minority have tested positive, my son Conor included. A smaller proportion have died from it, but all of us have it, with varying degrees of severity maybe – too many are suffering terribly – but no one is immune.
The year is close to its end. I look out the window and there’s no snow. I always grieve its absence at this time of year. A quiet generalised grieving is all around. On Xmas eve (Nochebuena, as it is known here), after midnight, I found myself watching John Huston’s movie adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead, to my surprise available on YouTube (https://youtu.be/Rkos62UPwVk). Set in Dublin, at an annual gathering of family and friends on the evening of the Feast of the Epiphany in 1904 (6th January or Reyes, as it is known here). Gabriel Conroy, the central protagonist of the story, later in the hotel, reflects upon his marriage, after witnessing Gretta, his wife, enraptured by a song that brought back to her the sharp vivid sadness of an early tragic love with a young man named Michael Furey:
How poor a part I played in your life. It’s almost as though I’m not your husband and we’ve never lived together as man and wife. What were you like then? To me your face is still beautiful, but it’s no longer the one for which Michael Furey braved death. Why am I feeling this riot of emotion? What stirred it up? The ride in the cab? Her not responding when I kissed her hand? My aunt’s party? My own foolish speech? Wine? Dance? Music? Poor aunt Julia, that haggard look on her face when she was singing a rite for the bridal. Soon she’ll be a shade too, with the shade of Patrick Morcombe and her house. Soon perhaps I’ll be sitting in that same drawing room dressed in black, the blinds will be drawn down and I’ll be casting about in my mind for words of comfort and consolation and will find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes, that will happen very soon. Yes, the newspapers are right, snow is general all over Ireland, falling on every part of the dark central plane, and the treeless hills, softly upon the Bog of Allen, and farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. One by one we’re all becoming shades. Better to pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. How long you locked away in your heart the image of your lover’s eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live. I’ve never felt that way towards any woman and I know that such a feeling must be love. Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time, and me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world, and everything around me,and this solid world itself that they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving. Snow is falling, falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried, falling faintly through the universe, faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Of course, there’s been much grieving for the Barcelona that never happened. We fought hard for it but in the end found we had no immunity to the global pandemic. However, I am proud to say, we organised instead an excellent online event which was international and cutting edge. Very appositely, in this issue, Rita Sousa Lobo introduces us, in one of the papers she presented at the symposium, to the “The Saudade Matrix” with the words of Fernando Pessoa, “Ah, there is no more painful nostalgia than the things that have never been!” I’m thankful, in this issue of Contexts, there’s also a good amount of feedback from participants in our 1st GASi Online Symposium, as well as a few of the papers that were presented around the core theme of language: I am delighted that Maria Elena Garcia and Maria Elena Villarreal, my Argentinian colleagues from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, take us into the language of the body, while Kalliopi Panagiotopoulou explores the contrasting languages of health and disease. We also have a number of Covid related articles by Arturo Ezquerro, Val Parker and Anxhela Gramo.
Finally, just before introducing you to Vivienne Harte, who, I am very pleased to announce, has agreed to take on a one-year apprenticeship as the prospective new editor of this publication, I would like to wish us all a healthy and happy 2021.
Welcome Vivienne!!
Peter Zelaskowski
peterzelaskowski@gmail.com
As I start to write this on Christmas Day having had my plans cancelled due to UK Covid restrictions, I am aware that even before I have my “dinner for one” I have indigestion. It makes me consider how indigestible this year has been for many, including myself, due to the shocking and tragic events that have come to affect us all: murderous racism, politics of global resource allocation, the pandemic. There is no metaphorical antacid to help address these unequal, for many, challenges. But they do need to be addressed and perhaps GASi can play its part. In the midst of all this I decided to put my name forward as editor-in-training for Contexts and be apprenticed to Peter in order to learn the trade and give something back to the GASi community. My indigestion worsened as I connected to my anxiety about writing, and to that part of the editorial role where I’m expected to write a commentary in the newsletter, this being my first attempt as an introduction.
I was brought up in Blackpool, Lancashire, from the age of 5. For a number of years, I lived within walking distance of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Some of you may know of the Pleasure Beach. It is a huge landscape of mainly outdoor entertainment for people of all ages, coming together in groups of friends and families. Rides such as the Big Dipper; the Haunted Chair; Bingo; candy floss and best of all for me the Fun House – a cornucopia of weird and fun-filled activities to keep a kid occupied for hours. I loved it. In front of its entrance was a large glass container sitting on a plinth and inside it was (and I think still is) the Laughing Clown. The clown laughed day in day out whilst the Pleasure Beach was open to revellers. Before entering the Fun House, I would always rush to observe the clown, my hands splayed out on the glass, mesmerised by the clown’s repetitive laughter whilst the mechanics also enabled it to go round and round as it sat in carefree judgement of those who entered my favourite fun palace. I hadn’t thought of the Pleasure Beach, the Fun House, or the laughing clown for years until they came to mind today as I sat down to write this co-editorial introduction for Contexts. That particular clown had always held something sinister, as well as enjoyable, for me. As I consider it now, within the context of what many are experiencing in this “wake-up” year, at least for the “western world”, I think of the clown as the Covid 19 virus, clearly doing its own job of surviving and mutating in order to keep going. For years, many groups have revelled inside their respective Fun Houses and probably not considered the impact they have had on most of the world. It’s as if the clown knows and laughs sardonically at our refusal to see and act accordingly. Oddly, I do recall that my favourite Fun House burnt down some years ago. I don’t know if it was ever rebuilt but I do know the clown still laughs.
Since July I have been part of the online alternative large group, currently hosted in India. Being a member of this group has been an extraordinary journey of discovery and I value the time in it. The clown in me can sometimes laugh with joy but also despair at the experience as I observe each of our little houses on the screen. It’s a worthwhile endeavour and I do hope it continues.
I look forward to hearing many voices on Contexts.
Vivienne Harte