NEW HIP IS IN THE WORKS AND ON THE CARDS

Well, I've been given a date for the hip replacement op: 24 July. Sooner than expected but let's get it over with. The hospital tells me I must self-isolate for 14 days beforehand - not difficult since I hardly see anybody in any case. Kind neighbours will do my food shopping. May the benevolent Force be with us all! I've been lurching around like a (sober) drunken sailor so it's time to straighten me out.

SORRY STATUES

Statues of historical figures? Let them all be put into a Real History Museum where they can continue to stand or sit on their bronze horses. thrones or whatever and their factual, unvarnished histories will be told in detail with pictures and documents and film. Then everybody, including schoolchildren, will learn who they were, what they did and why they became statues.

This would make sense. Because, let's face it, who apart from pigeons and dogs ever pays attention to these monuments? How many passers by ever give them a second thought or know who they were, unless they're the big household names?

I INVESTIGATE THEREFORE AM I?

The way I approach autobiography is more like an investigation than a narrative. My aim, and my hope, is that when it’s all done and laid out in some as-yet undefined form, I will say AHA, now I get it, I can see clearly now.

I know this is an unrealistic expectation. Can we ever see ourselves and the life we’ve lived as if it were a still-life, an arrangement of objects in specific relation to each other inside a frame called Time? Truly see the elusive creature we address as “me”.

The whole idea of a "Me" both fascinates and baffles me. Yes, I’ve consulted the literature, the philosophies ancient and modern, the psychologies, the esoteric, the orthodox and unorthodox, the spiritual and the scientific views of the Self, whether capital S or lower case. All very interesting. But the only self I have ever had unlimited access to is the Moi that is sitting here typing these words. Isn’t that strange? Doesn’t it seem amazing to you that you are you? That you inhabit and are inhabited by a creature which is in some ways more or less identical to all other humans and in other ways, totally different? Isn’t that absolutely mind-blowing?

NdA. Self-Portrait, Los Angeles 1956.