I've written about people I've known, people I've encountered, random people marked by random incident. Some I've written about many times, not because other lives inspire less but that they have for one reason or another been 'present' more frequently. Errol Alphonso, for example. This was from three years ago, first published in the 'Daily News' to which newspaper I wrote a daily column titled 'The Morning Inspection' for a little over two years between 2009 and 2011.
Errol Alphonso, my friend and benefactor, rarely calls me. He did, recently. He was gasping for breath and were barely audible. He called to say ‘goodbye’. He said ‘I don’t think I am going to make it’. In what he believed was his last few minutes on earth, Errol called me just to tell me not to pick up the phone if I got a call from someone from the home for the elderly where he is currently a resident.
‘I
don’t want you holding the can.’
Errol
pulled through. He had got a call through to a doctor who had arrived not long
after the line went dead. I was
relieved.
Errol
is the most e-savvy 70 year old I know.
A voracious browser of the internet, Errol has the knack to pick the
most pertinent and best argued pieces on any particular topic. In many instances he’s directed me to sources
and information that I have found invaluable.
He knows words, Errol does. He
is a word seeker. I sometimes feel that
he has dedicated his life to vocabulary-expansion. He’s interested not in words and meanings
along, but etymologies and applications, onomatopoeia and
metaphor-potential.
He
sends me words, almost every day.
He
sends me words and he sends me quotes.
He’s a quote-giver. In fact, as I was writing the above paragraph I
received an email from him. A
quote.
‘Do
not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do
not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and
keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many
times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it
— and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion,
only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you,
that no power can take it from you — for only the truth that builds up is truth
for you.’
The
quote is attributed to someone called Søren Kierkegaard. Never heard of him/her. So I checked the internet. It’s a ‘he’.
Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author
who lived and wrote in the early 19th Century. Wikipedia says that
Kierkegaard’s philosophical work highlights the importance of personal choice
and commitment.
It’s
the respect that I have for Errol’s intellect and integrity that made me read
the quote and explore further. He does
that often. If he finds some grammatical
error in something I’ve written or suspects that I have not mastered some
grammar rule, he would send me a link that enlightened me. Errol’s English lessons are quite
charming. He slips them into my inbox
without referring to the particular error or rule. He doesn’t tell me why he picked that
particular moment to send that particular link or message.
Errol
is a craftsman, a refiner of the crude, polisher of rough edges. This is why I always copy my articles to him
when I fire them off to the particular editor.
If they are sent early enough, Errol goes over them meticulously. There
are invariably many errors. He picks them all from the comma that should be
semi-colon to the awkward sentence. If I
get this done quickly enough and he happens to check email, I have no doubt he
will send it back with lots of ‘corrections’.
And
it is not only grammar. Errol makes
things read better, by suggesting word addition or sentence deletion. Thereafter, if he came across any material
that he believes would help enhance my knowledge of the subject, or was capable
of provoking fresh insights, he would point me to it.
His
quotes could be random pickings, but I doubt it. Errol is a teacher, and one
who knows how to rap knuckles without seeming to do so. When I started writing
this morning, I wanted to play with a quote that Errol sent me a few days
ago. The one I copied above is related,
and could be seen as an elaboration. Both empower. Both are humbling. And both speak to the courage of a man who
overcomes the constraints of situation by keeping his mind alert and his heart
young.
I have never encountered someone
with so little to call his own who gives so much.
The quote I wanted to write about but which is an essay that has to be
postponed or left unwritten, is one attributed to Khalil Gibran, ‘You can
muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall
command the skylark not to sing?’ That
was a personal note, a comment on a particular situation and a word of
encouragement as well.
I will not write that article.
It’s already been written. Errol
Alphonso cannot be asked not to sing. He
was a skylark even as he mumbled into a mobile phone what he truly believed
were his last words. Still is, I am
happy and relieved to report.
Malinda
Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com
3 comments:
Beautiful. Is Errol Alphonso still alive, Malinda? I seem to remember you wrote a sort of eulogy for him.
No, sadly. He empowered me so much that his going has impoverished.
Like Malinda who is a skylark in his own way....
Post a Comment