Manalive is a novel by GK Chesterton whose hero Innocent Smith is more of an idea than a real character (can you have a 'real' character in a novel?) as is generally the case in GKC's novels. The opposite of the characters in Dickens' work which is why Dickens is still read and GKC largely forgotten. However Chesterton did write an interesting book about Dickens' life and work which in typical style is very short on facts and very full of ideas and opinions.
Back to Manalive, the book is full of typical Chestertonian contradictions, so much a stock in trade of his writing. In one chapter our hero is being tried for attempted murder because he carries a gun but gets off by demonstrating that he uses the gun to bring people back to life. He does this by pointing the gun at a nihilist (this was written in1913 when nihilism was at its zenith or perhaps that should be nadir! The idea is still around of course. There is a even a Star Wars character, Darth Nihilus, who destroys whole planets). Anyway Innocent points his gun at a nihilist and since the nihilist sees no value in his life or indeedanything else Innocent offers to do him the favour of pulling the trigger. The nihilist responds by saying he would rather live and in that way is brought back to life.
The chemotherapy for a stem cell transplant is rather comfortingly called 'conditioning treatment'. This brings to mind conditioning as in improving something rather than the Pavlovian sense of brainwashing, one talks of conditioning beer to improve its flavour for example. In haematology it means giving you enough chemotherapy to kill you, not quite so comforting. The recurring image I associate with this process is of being pushed off the top of the Empire State Building. I'm not sure why this image comes to mind, perhaps it's because one of the few jokes I remember from my childhood is of the man who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building (it would have been an Irishman in those non PC days) and was heard to mutter 'so far so good' as he hurtled passed the second floor. In the case of a transplant the image is of a bunch of firemen rushing out at the last minute with a blanket to save me.
Being threatened with death makes me thankful to be alive. As Joni Mitchell sang in 'Big Yellow Taxi', "you don't know what you've got till it's gone". During my last long stay in hospital in June and July, the room had a view of the road leading up to the haematology department and all day long vehicles and people used to pass by largely oblivious to what what was going on inside the building, and rightly so. I envied them enormously their freedom to go about their everyday lives with all its everyday joys and problems. I felt that when I got out I would be intensely grateful for everything little thing in life.
But one cannot live as intensely as that. It would be like living the intensely overdramatic life of some soap opera character exaggerated a thousand fold. In Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot', the hero, Prince Myshkyn, is waiting in line to be shot. He realises he has only minutes to live and resolves to always live his life with maximum intensity and never waste a second. The executions are suspended for the day and he survives but he finds he cannot sustain the intensity he felt when waiting to be shot.
The nearest I get to this is on our weekly visits to the outpatient clinic. Karine and I walk up the same road that I could see from my room and I make a point of always glancing up at the window high above us and wonder who is in there and how they are getting on. For a split second I feel that intensity and then it passes. That's not to say that a brush with serious illness and a "gentle" reminder of one's own mortality doesn't have an effect and some people are changed quite profoundly.
However talking with other transplant patients I suspect most of us revert to our normal everyday lives most of the time. Nevertheless all this this does make one take stock and reflect on what is important and what is not. The limitations on my current lifestyle are very frustrating for both Karine and me, the tiredness and the weakness, the poor concentration, the need to avoid crowds, the demands of my GI tract! etc etc. Even so we try to do as much as we can and are very grateful to everyone who visits and supports us.
It is easier to live in the present with the ordinary and the humdrum. I suppose if we didn't then great art, literature and music etc wouldn't lift us in the way it can. As Eliot says in Burnt Norton
"........... human kind
Cannot bear much reality,
Time past and time future
What might have been
Point to one end, which is always present."
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