Walking down Memory Lane

Naturally I've beeen selective in what I've written so far, but it is as close to the truth as is possible, given a gap of sixty years. There were many other moments that I could have chosen but they were either too indetirminate or else too much like something invented after the fact and a justification of later feelings. Once I had dipped my foot in this pond I pretty soon saw how I'd distorted and used many of these events as a well of disappointment. What had previously been loaded with rancor was suddenly bled dry of negative emotion and I began to see how those that had had such an early influence on me had acted within the framework of their own beliefs and not out of malice. It was unfortunate that my mother, who was still relatively young - forty-nine when my father died - had been saddled with a child that barred her from a more liberated widowhood. That I was not her son must have made her abandonment all the more disastrous. My aunt who, as a schoolmistress, worked with children seemed to understand exactly what I needed; if later on she was critical of my lifestyle and appearance, it was because she had the prejudices and expectations of her proffession. In other words, whatever events I recall involving these people and others who will be introduced later on, I must always bear in mind where they were coming from, even if their actions were often absurd and even cruel.

I am indebted to three women for my upbringing. My mother, my aunt and my mother's best friend, Morag Park. My aunt brought stability and an uncompromising sense of the world as it is; my mother, for better or for worse, introduced me to the whole spectrum of emotions and Morag Park encouraged me to paint. Male role-models of any substance or virtue were completely absent: My brother by adoption and seventeen years my elder, was a childhood hero but an inconsistant presence and he himself was damaged in ways that I could not have understood then. Nevertheless my love for him persisted and his sudden death marked a turning point in my life.

With my father's demise I entered a dark tunnel; that much is clear from what I've already written but I am equipped for such a journey. I'm already a person, albeit dependant as every small child is, but nevertheless anarchic, self aware and imaginative. It is exactly the latter quality which will save me in the end, but I still have a long way to travel.

But what about the shoes; don't they have something to say in this matter? Are they the worn out but dignified emblems of a long voyage or just a pair of dirty old clogs that should have thrown in the dustbin long ago?