JAMES VALLEE, 1952 -

In the past ten months I have thought more than I expected and written down less than I wanted.  Soon this Blog will be the home of other people, my dear partner and our two intriguing children.  Having spent a total of three weeks in their company since August 2011, I've been in the position of living inside a situation where our relationship has been mostly in my head, rather than out in the world in front of us.  Living by myself has, in some senses at least, diminished me.  I have had the identity of husband, father, teacher without as much of the actuality that usually accompanies such titles.

But that wouldn't make me different or special, two conditions that are frequent aspirations for the majority of us.  Most of us strive to put our mark on the world around us, with varying degrees of success.  Some of us are inept at making an impression, some of us make an impression, but not the one we wish to make.  Being the wrong person in the wrong place is the most frequent cause of failing to impress.  Being wrong is more often what we achieve.  Perhaps if we could hear what the others say after we're gone, then we'd learn something valuable.

Nearly two years ago now we lost James to cancer.  I want to try and explain my brother to you.  It's taken me more than his absence to realize who he was.  It has taken me the time to realize how it is I exist too.

My brother can't be properly understood without his being on hand to agree or disagree with my observations.  This is why I don't offer this as a definitive view, only aspects of his life as it intersected with mine.  It also enables me to have the last word, something that was rare enough around him, the acknowledged master of the sign off line.

James was my friend in the simplest sense of the word.  He was someone whose good pinion I valued.  Having his respect and approval made my self-image more defined and secure.  I sometimes wonder if in the early years of our conscious relationship, when we became more than brothers, he filled a mentoring role.  In some ways he was my coach, which is perhaps what a big brother can really achieve.  In any case, we certainly ended up more like each other than I would have expected, looking back at the separations of school, age and career.  Although who we are is always our own responsibility, the people we invite into our lives can have the strongest influence on who it is we aspire to be.  But we always leave our own fingerprints on the record.  Jamie loved landscape and he involved himself in it with walking and photography.  I have a similar fascination, but mine is different although we both loved Derbyshire and the deserts of the American southwest.  He loved music, as do I, but again, we ended up living in different parts of the musical landscape.  No one gets to be a simple clone of their influences, unless they resign their individuality to be a pawn of another's intent and a pale echo at that.

All the years of talk, shared experience and love have made me into who I am and my ties to my beloved brother are just one part of that web.  To offer you an analogy, it is as if whilst we all live in our individual caves between our ears, who we are is as much who others perceive us to be as who we elect to be ourselves.  Shout and sing into the big outside and listen to the echoes because they prove that we exist outside our own lives.  We exist as other peoples' memories as much as we are the objects of their attention, which makes us the subjects of our own verbs.

A dear friend of mine remarked that his death had left a big James-shaped hole in my life.  That was a shrewd observation and one that has led to this memorial.  For those of you who knew him, your memories and his influences are as alive today as ever he was.  Despite slipping away from his pain almost two years ago now he lives in my life as much as ever he did, a reader, writer, thinker, talker, organizer, traveler, listener, critic, advisor, wit, joker, raconteur, lover of the senses, trees, cars, speed and the master of the apt comment.  He is not really dead, he's just living in my head, as he always has.

Mubarak bin London

There is probably a term for it, falling somewhere between arrogance and racism.  At any rate, it's an unpleasant experience, seeing it manifest in the everyday interactions of ex-pats and locals, or more likely listening to what we have to say about our hosts after they leave.  Being so far away from home - 20,000 light years ain't in it, speaking culturally, can be lonely and that has to be why the Europeans [which includes any other native English speaking nationals] clump together like the curds in sour milk.  I'm using the term with reason.  Listening to us talk about 'the way they do things around here' can shade over from telling a funny story all the way to outright racism.  I tend to leave about the time people start talking about 'rag heads' or 'camel jockeys.'  Not that I'm really any better; I marvel at the labyrinthine procedures followed to achieve anything and bitch constantly about the driving.  If my car is bugged then I'm likely to be deported any day now.

But really, it isn't right.  I should think that amongst other causes this is the source of the dislike that we run up against from time to time.  It's the arrogance of the Expat, which for want of another label I shall refer to as colonialism.  There's a subtle hint of it in all of us, whether we like it or not, the implication of superiority to which we assume a right, often with no other reason than our language and its given cultural domination.  face it, English is an All-Comers, Open Championship Language Olympiad Gold Medalist.  There really isn't any competition and having an easy command of the imperial language makes you an imperialist.  So there it is, we're over here, over paid and over confident.  Really, we should make a virtue of the fact that we are, after all, guests in someone's home.  Luckily for us, the traditions surrounding guests in Arabian culture allow us a lot of leeway for our ignorant condescension.  As a friend of mine put it they pay us more than we'd get elsewhere and if all they want is to get the fast lane to themselves, is it a lot to ask?

So it was a surprise to woolly liberal me to realize just how guilty I was of the exact same sin I've been describing above.  In different guise, admittedly, but then isn't that always the way with error?  How often do you hear in a classroom "It was an ACCIDENT!  It was a MISTAKE!  I didn't KNOW!"  Sure, I didn't know.  But I do now.  We have a system here in High School of investigative learning.  This Trimester the research statement is "The desert makes us who we are."  I decided to share my fascination with the English Arabists of the past, Burton, Philby and most of all, Thesiger.  I've been reading Thesiger and about Thesiger for some time now.  If you haven't read the accounts of his journeys in the Empty Quarter [Rub Al Khali to us old sand hands] 'Arabian Sands' then give your sense of wonder a treat and look it up.  There happened to be an article in a local magazine this month as he came through Al Ain on his way to the great somewhere else.  With that, a copy of his book and a lot of photographs I reckoned I was on my way to a great learning experience.  Well, I was, but not in the way I first intended.

Wilfred Thesiger came through Al Wagan in the late 1940's.  My students hadn't heard of him.  My sense of superiority swelled - I was going to open their eyes.

"Here's a picture of him when he was young," I said, "and here he is again, later in life.  Let's compare the pictures.."

"That is Mubarak bin London," said Hamad.

"Who?" I asked.

"Mubarak bin London," Hamad replied.  "Everyone here knows about Mubarak bin London.  He made many journeys with the Bedu.  My Grandfather travelled with him across the Rub al Khali."

It was time to sit back and listen.  Some of the students had relatives who had known, travelled with, met or otherwise knew about this man.  Me, I didn't even know his Bedu name.  Caught out by my own sneaky sense of superiority.

Charles Darwin all at sea

Charles Darwin was the original environmental tourist.  Instead of kayaking around the Alaskan Fiords and selling the footage to National Geographic he, famously, hitched a ride on HMS Beagle.

This was not a cruise and the Beagle was not a cruise liner.  Instead imagine if you will, Hornblower with added disease, poor diet and a muscle controlled, wind driven wooden ship.  This was only a few years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars [final score England 1, France 0] and the Royal Navy was once again looking for ways of staying at sea.  Oceanography was one of the ways it achieved its aim and taking Darwin as a passenger, officially as the captain's companion, was one of the ways of defraying the costs involved.

From his observations, intelligence and many years of careful study and hard work, it is mostly to this man that we owe the concept of evolution, famously the concept of the survival of those best fitted to their environment.  Those of you who disagree with this conclusion may stop reading now, but given the currency of the concept well beyond biology I'd venture to guess that even a Creationist can go with the idea of there being a purpose to life incidental to our own aims.

So what purpose do we serve?  Let's leave aside all the dualism that the Middle Ages have wished upon our modern world.  I'd not deny the concept of a 'spiritual life' but the idea to my mind really applies to the fact that somewhere in the 1.5 kilos of brain, or about 1.7% of my overall mass, there lurks something I refer to as 'me'.  Those who wish to identify this as a soul may go have coffee with St. Augustine of Hippo at this point.  You won't like the rest of this.  If the purpose of life is to breed enough to bequeath one's genes to the next generation, then as far as evolution is concerned, I'm dead.  After four children there is no further purpose to my life and the species is, frankly, done with me.  Finished.  So yesterday.  Come to think of it I'm not too struck on that idea myself.  But whilst being on the evolutionary retired list may be a bit of a comedown, it is at least quiet around here, giving one time to think.

Here's what I think: Romanticism, committed partnerships, 'The One'.  Are they all ways of sugaring the pill?  Do we want to invest any time in something irrelevant to the perpetuation of our genes because it really doesn't matter anymore?  So we invest it all with a rose-tinted view of the world because whilst copulation may thrive, it's served its purpose.

Oh how depressing.  But wait!  That's not all!  What about those of us who don't have any genetic inheritors?  If you're childless, what does that imply about your purpose?  That's an interesting stick with which to beat the childless by choice, mistake or inability.  Luckily, I don't believe any of this nonsense, but I've set it out as well as I can to get to the actual purpose of this piece.  Wait?  This has a purpose? Er, well, yes.

My contention is that we are all too willing to personalize something which has no discernable independent existence whatever.  There is no 'force of evolution' in the way there is a force of gravity.  We live in a gravity field, but not in an evolutionary field.  We may be inclined to breed, but not with a view to perpetuating our genes.  Being nothing more than a container for chromosomes is reducing to the absurd.  Families are about far more than children, parenthood is as much about me working out my own father fixations as it is in the celebration of my children's life and growth.  But for  those of you who see some divine purpose to your lives, I'd say you're as misguided as the behaviorists who want us to be puppets of a blind watchmaker.  The only easy answer is, there are no easy answers.  That is probably the core of my personal philosophy.  In addition, you may as well relax and enjoy the ride.  We're here for the duration so accept the opportunity for entertainment.  You can and probably will find your own answers to life, the universe and everything.  My answer is, the Universe doesn't care if you do or not because it isn't any more sentient than your sock and yes, Gaia can bugger off too.