Saturday, May 29, 2010

Adventures on the edge of desert space


What is it about the desert that weaves a spell around me?
It is the fear of standing on the edge of something vast and totally inexplicable -
and the giddy exhilaration,
that comes with such a fear


There is a definite but peculiar exhilaration to be felt when standing on the shores; nay on the brink, of a vast ocean desert that can and will (without scruple) kill you. You think; when you are full of food and water and guts and adrenaline, that you can take it on. You want to take on the desert because you want to beat it and conquer it. But it is so much vaster and so much bigger and older than you. Compared to it you are a mere blip in time. You will always be so much smaller than it. You may 'beat it' today - but tomorrow it will still be there - unmoving, defiant. And you? You will be gone on your heels. The desert will still be there when you die and who gets the final say? The mountain or the mountaineer? The desert or the deserter?

I love the desert. But it's not just the finely wrought landscape that I am in love with. Nor the colour and textures of its surface. It is how I feel in the desert; or how the desert makes me feel. This vastness and emptiness that stretches before me, makes me feel small and utterly insignificant - thrillingly insignificant. And I love feeling insignificant! And there's no better place to feel it then in the desert.

The Atacama is doubly effective in instilling this feeling of smallness because it is really two landscapes. And when you add these two landscapes together, you'll be taken on a journey to new levels of insignificance. There is of course the usual desert landscape itself. But at night, when you are sitting underneath the cover of your tent, if you look up, you'll see another even vaster desert. The desert of stars. And if you are made of the same stuff as me - you will go blind on your insignificance. Heady and drunk and happy make you feel the stars. And that ribbon! Oh, that silvery ribbon! See how it girdles the night sky like a belt? - that is our Milkyway galaxy and it hugs the Atacama night. What am I to such heavenly wrought stuff? A blip on the highway of eternity? A tear on the cheek of time? Or a smote of dust in a sandstorm of billions upon billions lasting millions upon millions. Gazing up at the sky is like standing on the edge of a ledge - looking down at the abyss - with the stars and deep-time swirling abouts you, like singing dervishes. You are the centre, of everything and nothing. I play with this thought like a Rubik's Cube. 'I am everything and I am nothing'. Through me the world exists. Through my eyes and through my senses and through the comprehension of my consciousness I make the world come alive. And when I am gone, the world too is gone: I am everything and I am nothing.

It's all about the feeling. How a place makes you feel. That is what is most important and what you remember most. Sights and sounds and smells you will likely forget in time, but feelings...ah, feelings you will hold onto forever! The wise traveller seeks and collects not souvenirs or sights or sounds - but feelings.

And there is no better place; no better souvenir shop for collecting feelings, than at the edge of desert space.


___________



Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Starry Veldt / Atacama Caliche


He who binds to himself a joy
does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
lives in eternities sunrise




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Sunday, May 23, 2010

Desert Memories


The stars really do come out in style in the Atacama desert. This is the driest place on earth. It hasn't rained here for, well...for millions of years. In fact, an old lady I spoke to told me (whispering in my ear - lest somebody take offence at her secret wish), that she has never experienced the sensation of raindrop patter on skin. Imagine that? Never having felt raindrops on your cheeks? The Atacama desert lies in the northernmost third of Chile. It is bounded on its eastern front by the high Andes. These towering peaks block the moisture from the Atlantic travelling westwards. The western side of Chile is bordered by the cold ocean currents of the pacific. These soak up any excess moisture in the atmosphere coming in from the west. Thus, caught in the middle of these two moisture traps, lies the driest place on earth - the Atacama. Even bacteria don't survive in the Atacama. Here people don't die of infections. The desert kills them. The signs are everywhere: unmarked graves, crosses and makeshift piles of stone, bleached bones - all these litter the landscape like corpses. Memories of the dead linger on in silence. No one is watching. No one is listening. Except the buzzards circling overhead.

The stars really do come out blazing here. The Atacama desert is the best place on earth for star gazing. The complete absence of moisture and wispish clouds coupled with stable winds means that the clarity of the night sky above the Atacama is second to none. Here you can peer farther into the universe, and further back into time, then anywhere else. And all with your own eyes. No telescopes required. As soon as the sun dives behind the horizon, when you look up at the deadening sky, you will see a remarkable sight: a meadow of stars. A nursery of stars sprouting more and more of these twinkling balls of light as the sky darkens. Here you can literally download the universe! Up there the suns of the heavens blaze. It was up there, in amongst the galaxies, that the very minerals of the desert you are standing on, were forged. Forged in a celestial foundry.

But don't be mistaken. The stars may bewitch and beguile you into a trembling stupor when the velvet curtain falls at night; but during the day, the sun is king. As the first blast of morning rays shoot out from the top of the Andes, the desert undergoes a rapidly fluctuating play of colours. From lighter shades of fawn to orange, then red and yellow, and at midday - platinum. Burning hot white platinum. Nothing grows here. No shrubbery. There is no shade to hide under. This scorched land has not known water - ever. Since the Andes were formed not a single drop has fallen on these here parched and thirsty lands. No creature stirs or scuttles across the surface here like it does in the Sahara. Nothing. No life. Like Mars perhaps.

Oh! it's a landscape of solitude and extreme introspection. You are forced to look inwards, in on yourself. Here, more then anywhere else, you will find yourself. And at night, when you look up at that field of stars, you will certainly get drunk on it. Drunk on infinity. You will taste it on your tongue. And you will hear eternity throbbing in your ears. Like the beat of your mothers heart. In her womb. Moments before you were born.


__________

Friday, May 21, 2010

Artificial life, gods and youtube


Imagine you live in a world containing two distinct types of things. Actually children have a good intuitive grasp of this: there are things that are alive and things that are not alive. It is obvious to a child what a living thing is. My seven year old niece Alisha, has a solid grasp of the idea that a carrot or a rabbit or a snail or a tree is a fundamentally different thing from a rock, a cloud, a mountain or the moon. It's not something she was taught at school. Nor was it something she learnt at home. She just knows. It's instinctive. Like the way she is picking up language.

But why am I talking about my niece? What has she got to do with artificial life, gods and youtube?

Patience my friends, we'll get there! - but I need to build you up, slowly. I must nudge you up the ramp - gradually, gently. Not push you to the top in a single bound so you'll collapse in a heap! Once we reach the top you'll see the vast view. You'll see everything in one sweeping arching all encompassing gaze.

Back to my niece. So there she is. This seven year old bundle of girlhood. A sweet little thing to. Totally mad, naturally! - but sweet nonetheless. The reason we love children so much (by 'we' I am assuming that you too fall within this category) is because they present to us the naked truth of what we are. There is no pretence or pretending in children. They are like a mirror through which we see our true selves - if only we'd care to look. The same applies to pets I suppose. A dog is a dog and always a dog. Pets and children do and say what they want and feel. We grown-ups hide our true colours under layers of geological stratas and sophistry. An example of this is the different way we react when we see a disabled person. We adults will avert our gaze. We won't look too long. Staring is forbidden; even though secretly, we may wish to look for a little longer. We want to see how the disabled person copes with getting through the train ticket barrier, or getting on the bus or whatever. A child will just look. It will stare at the disabled man despite our entreaties. It does what it feels. It does what it is - and that's why we love children so much! I suppose, also, the fact that we too, without exception, were once children must play a significant part - a sort of vicarious reliving of our carefree childhood through children's play is part of the joy of being in the presence of children.

But I seem to have gone down a narrow alley I wasn't supposed to! Let's head back onto the main street and continue our discussion!

So, as I was saying. Children have an intuitive grasp of living and non-living things. And it would have been the same for Stone-Age man of the Palaeolithic era from 50,000 - 2,000 BC. For ancient Stone Age man life was throbbing with a vital force. If I had been born then; as a stone age man, I too would look around me and it would be 'obvious' that a body is merely a shell. A vehicle you might say. And while the person or organism is alive it has something in it that makes it alive. But when that person dies that something that gave it life disappears. A dead person is nothing but an empty shell. You prod it, you nudge it, you stab it, it moves no longer. It's no longer the living talking smiling lover it once was. But it's still there in front of you! What has changed? Why is it no longer living? To stone age man, and even to myself, if I had been born then, it would have seemed obvious, that when something is alive it has something in it, a something that seeps or escapes outside when it dies. A vital force. A spirit. A soul! It's common sense. It's obvious. It makes total sense!

One of the things I've learnt is that what makes a body alive is not a single thing or a spirit or some sort of life-force. A body is alive due to the industry of many different processes going on inside it at the same time. And it is these processes, in all their bewildering variety, that imbue inanimate matter with the spark of life. Let's take a simple bacterial cell as a quick example. We know it's alive because it grows. It needs food. It reproduces. We feel the effects of this reproduction first hand when we get ill because an infection will get worse before getting better.

Let's think about some of these processes:

It grows: what does that mean? It means it absorbs material from the outside world, it breaks this material down into smaller parts, and then uses the building blocks to fashion its body parts, to add more to the parts it already has and make them bigger, or to change their shape.

It reproduces: It makes an exact replica of its own DNA (if it's not sexually reproducing) and shunts it into another nucleus and cell, with an outer membrane and voila! You have two bacteria now! A mother and her baby.

It eats and generates energy: It has these large protein pumps in its membrane that pump specific food molecules from outside to inside the cell. These food molecules are broken down to give energy. The energy is used to power life processes.


Now, all these processes we have just talked about are indicative of life. Who or what controls them? How do they get started? Answer: DNA.

DNA is basically a recipe for making a living organism. All the instructions on what to do and when to do it are embedded in the triplet genetic code of DNA. Don't worry I'm not going to throw a biochemistry textbook at you! So, if you want to create artificial life in the laboratory, the question you need to ask yourself is: What is the bare minimum of DNA that I need, in order to make a living bacterial cell that can grow and eat and reproduce into baby bacterial cells?

That is what Craig Venter and his team worked out! That is the genius of their achievement. How did they do this? Well firstly, they created computer models into which they threw in the genes they thought they would need. Since the bacterial genome has been completely mapped by the World Genome Project all they had to do was look up the database of all bacterial genes and start whittling them down to the bare minimum required for a bacterial cell to still do the things that we would describe as living (i.e. reproducing, growing, eating etc). For example the computer model told them that they would need a gene for making an enzyme that makes a protein that makes a transporter molecule. This transporter molecules attaches itself to the cell membrane and 'eats' molecules from outside bringing them into the cell. The models told them they would need another gene to tell this gene when to switch on and when to switch off at the right time - otherwise what's to stop the cell from making endless transporter molecules? A cell has a limited number of resources and it must make 'cost benefit' decisions. Remember these 'cost benefit' decisions are unconscious.

In nature cells and organisms that make wrong cost-benefit decisions die. Those that make good cost-benefit decisions survive and they are the one's that pass on their genes for...? For making good cost-benefit decisions!!

So you can see that the world becomes populated with organisms that are good at surviving. It's a sieving process. Over time living things become better and better and come up with more elaborate contrivances, to survive. Your heart has been beating non-stop from the moment you were a foetus to the moment you will die. That's a lot of beats! And not once (except when you first lay your eyes upon the love of your life) will it skip a beat! It will beat day and night. It will beat on the train. It will beat when you're on holiday. It will beat in the rain or in the sunshine. It will beat and beat and beat. That's quite an amazing feat if you give it a moments thought. How is it that the heart is so good at what it does? It's almost perfect! It is. And the reason it is so good at what it does is because your heart, and my heart, and the hearts of every heart-beating organism on this planet; all these hearts I've just described, have been 'perfected' over time. They've improved over the aeons. If your heart is not so good it will die. Hearts that were not so good in the past killed the bodies that possessed them before those bodies could make babies. The genes for making these under-performing bad hearts were never passed on to children. They were lost. But the better performing hearts did better in the struggle. The bodies that possessed them were able to live at least long enough to the age of reproduction - thus passing on those same genes for making good hearts to the next generation. You can now see what I meant by sieving process.

And thus you have the grand mystery explained. Of why we are so good at what we do!

OK, now let's head back onto the road. The truth then is, that if you know which are the bare minimum genes required for something to be living - you can then go ahead and make yourself...something living! A brand new living organism! Just identify the genes you need, look them up in the world gene catalogue, place an order, pay, DHL man (or woman) arrives, unpack the box, join the genes (DNA strips) up, add in-between bits of DNA code to let the bits know when to switch the genes on and when to switch the genes off, put the whole lot into an empty shell of a cell...and then watch and see what happens. And what happens? Well in the case of Venters' team the cell started dividing. It started growing. It started eating like any normal living cell. It was alive! The only difference being that these genes and this cell was designed on a computer by the hand of man - not the hand of God.

It seems to me that God is becoming more and more redundant as the zeitgeist creeps along. What more is left for Him (or Her, or It) to do? Today's God is a watered down individual. He no longer makes the rain fall. He no longer makes the mountains climb. He no longer makes the stars shine. Or the rivers flow. And now he no longer is needed to create life. He adds nothing to our understanding of the world we find ourselves in. We've learnt so much without Him. So what is He now for? People still hang onto him don't they? There must be a reason for his popularity? I see plenty of young teenage Muslim youths turning to god for the answers that society can't and hasn't delivered. And it is true. Modern Western society has created a world in which the god of 'consumption' rules head over shoulders above the rest. 'There must be more to life?' is a question these youths ask themselves.

The truth is that science will provide the best answers of how we got here. 'What is the nature of the processes that got us here?' - that's the sort of question science excels at. And we need to know how we got here before we can even begin answering in a meaningful way the question: 'Now that we are here; where do we go now?'


How to love?
How to live?
What is a good life?
What is a life worth living?

For answers to these questions we must turn to secular philosophy.


____________

News Story: Artificial Life

Craig Venter and his team create the first ever life-form in the laboratory - from scratch. No 'life-force' was breathed into it. No force locomotif. No divine grace or powers. No prayers. No quivering transcendental jelly. None of these. Just merely some DNA containing the bare minimum of genes.

A gene for creating an enzyme called DNA replicase to replicate DNA.
A gene for transcribing DNA into RNA
A gene for making messenger RNA.
A gene for making transfer RNA.
A gene for making ribosomes for making proteins from amino acids.
A cohort of genes for cellular replication.
A couple of genes for microtubules to initiate the cellular dance.
A gene for making protein transporters to take up materials from outside the cell membrane. And a few others.

All these genes were put together on a computer programme. Then spliced together from bits of DNA from mail order catalogues. The resulting genome was then placed in the nucleus of an empty shell of a cell and...voila! There was thunder! There was brimstone and lightning! There were infernal sparks! The gods bellowed and from their nostrils black plumes of gangrene smoke! They rained wrath down upon our heads! The gods were angry and sulking because now that mankind had taken this step - there was nothing for them to do! They were out of a job.


retire oh gods
to your home of the aged
or
the unemployment office.
Live out your last days
staring out of the window
pane
of your retirement home
for your joints ache
and your heads hurt
and your fingers
once so nimble
that they could fashion
remarkable creatures
so beautiful and strange
now
can barely
stay still.


Thursday, May 20, 2010

Waiting for the sunrise


What is going on here?
what is the 'hurt' they profess to feel?
once again, it's easy to stir them up
they're like toys you wind up
and watch them go!

...boy, just - watch - them - go.

but it's not a small thing
they'll kill - these wind-up toys
it's always ban! ban! ban!
obsessed with banning stuff!
that's a negative, right?
what about building stuff up
adding something? Not always wanting to
take away?

why do I feel so strongly about them?

because within this exterior dwells an iconoclast
I see dreams of freeing the world of this senseless
tyranny

and what happened to me as a child - only he can know that

I was made in the crucible of childhood
tyranny.
that's where I was forged
and like marble
my striations run deep
And deeper
than those of my
brothers and sisters


It is he.
He who binds himself a joy -
does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies -
doth live in eternities sunrise.



_________

Monday, May 17, 2010

WiseManMe



WiseManMe
In mirror
See?
OldManMe
Flaky and dry
Cranky and wild
You fancy?
Me?

GreybeardMe
Ripped and torn
Sheepish and shorn
Forlorn
You like?
Me?

LightGetsInMe
Through holes in Me
See?
Still like
Me?

LoveGetsIn
LoveGetsOut
Through hole in mouth
To the sea
See?

WiseManMe
Boney and dry
Forlorn and shy
Forsaken and why
Desert and sky
The Ocean, Heaven and I...

Best friends aye!


_______


Friday, May 14, 2010

A million reclaimed scenes of every day life

This article is about the small things in everyday life that we neglect and don't think about. So much of what we experience in daily life is lost - hidden under a veil of subconscious non-perception. Many and dense and varied are the scenes that barely register as we go about our daily lives. Scratch the surface and ye shall find a teeming forest of sensations just waiting to get out! For example, at this moment, I am sipping a glass of sparkling water with a lemon in it. It's something I have done often but without giving it much thought. Probably because I was thinking of something else at the time. Let's think the experience through. What does drinking sparking water feel like? How would you describe it to someone who has never done it? Well, there is the initial play of gas bubbles reacting with the tongue. The slightly caustic acidic taste of carbon dioxide, the pleasurable release of the ensuing burp; the zesty lemon hidden under the gaseous miasma, and visually, the way the bubbles of gas always line up along the surface of the plastic straw. And the straw never stays put in your glass. It always topples over. Why can't they design a straw denser than the liquid so that it stays put?

As I write this my awareness is on transcendental mode. I can sense the toothyness of the extra-fine nib of my pen as it snags on the microscopic hairs and fibrils in the non-smooth paper. I prefer to write my thoughts down on coarse paper because the roughness adds inertia to the writing experience. And inertia is good because it has to be overcome and this mechanical tension forces one to write more daringly. And it must be an extra-fine nib. A medium nib let's down too wet a line and renders words and thoughts less precise and difficult to wrap around my thoughts.

What other sensations are there that slip beneath the radar of everyday consciousness? The pleasure of the first sip of the day's first cappuccino. That moment when your upper lip pierces the thick film of frothy milk, to get to the rich black coffee underneath. And then the mind awakens and pen and paper embrace in a romantic medley. You never know where pen and paper will lead you - down a dark alley, or up a mountain. There is the confidence and feel of a perfectly fitting blazer. A blazer snug under the armpits and wrapped perfectly around shoulders. You can walk down Stokey High St. with a big greasy grin on your face. You're the master of the universe with Darwin and Schopenhauer running through your veins and a pair of brown brogue shoes running under your feet. There's a spring in your step because you know the absurdity inherent in the myth of Sisyphus.

What other everyday sensations are there that we rarely think about? The slimy texture of the skin of Sole fillet pan fried in a knob of butter - its edges curled crispy brown. The crunchiness of it in the mouth is as much a part of the eating experience as the taste. The emotion of holding a tiny newborn baby on your chest - both chests heaving in unison - its tiny heartbeat chirping against the booming drum bass of your own heart. The sensation of tearing open a bag of 'Salt and Vinegar' crisps - out comes the smell of fish and chips doused in salt and vinegar. Is this what salt & vinegar crisps seek to recreate and exploit? - the smell of childhood school lunches at the chip shop?

What about the feeling of potential when you have filled your fountain pen with ink? - 'What shall I write with this reservoir of ink I have at my disposal?' The feeling of satisfaction upon opening a parcel from Amazon. The frenzied tearing of the bubble wrap with sharp nails. The holding in your hand of a hefty book. Brand new. Pages white as a virgin and smelling fresh and chemical. You justify book purchases by convincing yourself that you're building a library. The sudden realisation on a Sunday evening after a weekends perambulating and thinking; that you make your living and earn a respectable salary via the skillful manipulation of data on a spreadsheet! You wonder how you; a Schopenhauer gorging, misanthropic, empirically inclined child of the secular revolution became a poster child for the capitalist manifesto. Karl Marx eat your heart out. Karl Marx spin in your grave.

Ah, the dizzy anticipation of an evening's Schopenhauer! The satisfactory feeling of going to bed tired and knowing that you would not change a single thing about the way you lived today. The manner in which the pretty french-speaking English girl in your local coffee shop keeps looking at your Schopenhauer no doubt wondering when you will finish it! And - more importantly, when you will tell her all about it...

'What does he write in the marginalia?' she wonders playing with the frills in her hair

'The mysteries, baby. The mysteries' he says in response to her thoughts.

The way a girl looks at you across the table; her eyes filmy from sheer pleasure in being in your wonderful presence; her lips curled at the corners in a lop-sided smile loaded with contentment. And you? You're feeling like a god because you can't believe you've made another human being feel like this. That is amazing. That is a miracle of life. The way we sow seeds of emotion in other peoples brains.

And finally the mystery of why; whenever you put your headphones in your pocket and take them out later, the wires always end up tangled in a bloody mess!

It's all weird. It's all wonderful. It's all a million shards of daily life.

________


Monday, May 10, 2010

Saccharine smiles of Pret a Manger

Professional Cheeriness is the latest craze to sweep our service sector. Professional Cheeriness is about serving a customer with a cheery expression, drained of all subtlety and nuance and infused with exaggerated brightness - in short it is the demeanour an adult presents to a child (squeaky squeaky smiley smiley). But our rapidly expanding service sector has hijacked this 'adult-to-child' demeanour to present a more friendly user interface to customers. Not only is the customer always right, but the service always has to be bright. The worst culprit? ----- Pret a Manger.

Here's a question: how will a Pret-a-Manger staff member serve you? Answer: with exaggerated smiles. They are soooo happy to see you! So happy to serve you! So happy that faith has conspired for them to meet you! Pret employees are always young, usually attractive European girls, and they have cute smiles, and they will never ever reject you! Never ever will they say: 'Sorry sir - you can't have that coffee sir' - 'Apologies sir, we can't make that for you sir'. No rejections! And that's the genius of it. To be served by young nubile pretty European girls - who are always always happy to see you - who will literally giggle at everything you say - who will always laugh at your jokes - who will always be polite. Going to Pret for lunch is like going on the best date of your life! And you can keep returning for more! And they'll keep on smiling.

But just poke your finger a little at the surface of these nubile pretty creatures and what happens? The finger rather easily pierces the thin film on the outside, to reveal an interior devoid of saccharine smiles and professional cheeriness - but an interior of profound depths, Yes! A soul doth lurk in them! They're not just all smiley-faced-puppet. They are daughters - they have mothers - they have brothers and sisters - they have hopes - and they're far from home. And our society, with its insistence on 'service - service - service' (£$profits£$ - $£profits£$ - $£profits£$), has turned them into automatic robots with perpetual cheery smiles. How does one keep a smile permanently affixed on one's face? What if that smile never comes off? When they go home in the evening - is the smile still there? - do the smile muscles ever ache?

We force chickens to lay eggs all year round. We force cows to grow monstrously big. We force grapes to grow seedless. We force carrots to tan abnormally orange. We force sunflowers to grow quick. We force Pret employees to wear fake saccharine smiles. Think about that the next time you pop into Pret a Manger and are confronted by a smile - a bright beaming saccharine smile. Remember: behind that smile lies a human being. That smile is not a brand. It is a person.


__________

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Romantic meal for two

There is nothing more appealing than an intimate romantic candle-lit dinner for two.

But first, Aha! First, one must choose a place to eat. One can go someplace local, but local restaurants lack variety and they're so old fashioned. So last century! Indian - Chinese - Italian - Mexican, so old school. No, let's go someplace farther, so much more exciting, so much more contemporary. Let's do fusion. Fusion cuisine is so now. Just like us. Fusion Vietnamese. They enter the restaurant and she requests the window table and the maitre d' explains with an apologetic frown that this table is reserved. What is the man thinking of? Not only should a sophisticated and attractive couple be placed at the window table, they ought to be paid to sit there and attract clientele from off the street! So, no window table. Instead they must squeeeeze round a tiny table between whispering distance of two other occupied tables. So much for intimacy. The menu arrives. He points out the considerable difference in price between the house wine and the others. She reminds him that house wine tastes invariably like vinegar. In fact it is vinegar. He orders the expensive Rioja Reserva. The waiter pours the wine. But there is another problem. The waiters in this restaurant rush forward and pour more wine as soon as a sip is taken - thus ensuring more is drunk since the glass is never empty. Not a good thing. Should we complain? No, can't do that. We'll be exposed as cheapskates. Jesus says: 'Swallow thy pride. Swallow thy wine'.

As for the food. She insists that they order different dishes so that they can romantically taste each others forkfuls. He hates eating off other peoples forks. Germs. But he can't actually say that. She'll murder him. So he goes along with her suggestion even though; secretly, he wishes he could just order what he likes. So they order in coalition. And only now when the waiter has left, they notice that their table has no candle. Every other table has its billowing flame of candle light. Not theirs. Theirs is missing. So this waiter insists on pouring wine as soon as a sip is drunk, but infuriatingly, neglects the one essential thing. Bring a candle, asshole.

But, even by candlelight, romance is not easy.
Indeed so numerous and varied are the illusions, difficulties, demands, resentments, burdens and strains that beset a romantic meal for two - its a wonder anybody bothers. She hates the way he looks at the other diners. He can't stand the way she eats her chicken. And they both can't stand the waiter - an oily, ingratiating weasel of a man with hairy ears and bushy nose hair. And still the fucker insists on pouring wine after every fucking sip. What's wrong with him? And where's my candle, dogshit?!

The couple sitting next door; the woman a pretty blonde with pert breasts and fellatio lips, the man an ugly gargoyle with sebum complexion and shiny nose and forehead (what does she see in him), fascinate. He must have a hell of a sense of humour.

The problem with relationships is as follows: No one is the 'right' person. No one is easy to live with. This is a fundamental axiom. Let me repeat it: No one is easy to live with. There are only degrees of difficulty - and it is important to realise that the other is encrusted not with scintillating diamonds, but with irritating habits, beliefs, superstitions, neuroses, moods, ailments, indulgences, bodily dysfunctions, bad-tastes, not to mention evil relatives and even more evil bitch mother in laws. Living together exposes all this squalor and banality! Her lustrous hair that gleamed so seductively in candlelight becomes a matted wad in the shower plug, and his penis that was such a thrillingly erect tiger (gggrrrrrh!) becomes a flaccid, shrunken fillet dribbling urine over the toilet seat. Love is never final. Love is work in progress. Love is a joint-venture. Love is an investment in a joint-stock company.

The secret to love is autonomy and detachment. Not total surrender and immersion. But autonomy and detachment. The growth of the partner, often perceived as a threat, can be a source of renewal. What benefits the individual - what appears as selfish at first - benefits the couple. So a couple will grow together more surely if each encourages the other to grow separately - and the paradox is that in mature love, detachment encourages attachment. So to succeed as a lover spend more time alone. Do a little of your own thing. Don't give up your friends. The problem is that almost everyone, as soon as they enter a relationship, throws all their eggs into one basket. They expect their partner to be a 'one stop shop' for all their needs. Don't throw your eggs in one basket. This is radical advice.

The candle finally arrives. The waiter finally stops pouring wine after every sip. They look into each others eyes. She wishes he'd stop staring at the imagine-a-blow-job-from-her-lips blond. He wishes he'd ordered that fucking steak...

C'est la vie - C'est la vie.
__________

Sunday afternoon DVD Fest: The Vanishing of the Bees


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Someone once said that if the honey bee disappeared off the face of the earth, then man would only have four years left to live. Why? Because: one in every three bites of food you eat at the dinner table depends on the industry of the honey bee. Without them there would be no pollination of flowers. Without flowers there would be no more apple pies, no more oranges, grapes, water melons, coffee, cucumbers, broccoli, valentines day, onions, sunflowers, cherries, cows, chickens, lamb cutlases, citrus fruits, tea, chocolate...

This fascinating documentary tells the bizarre tale of various beekeepers who woke up one morning to discover that their hives had emptied - their lives had changed - their bees had literally disappeared, overnight! The bees are disappearing...nobody knows why...nobody knows where. They're leaving in drones. They're leaving us forever. Off to another world presumably. BeeHive World! - It's a mystery buzzing to be solved. What's causing the bees to vanish? The silence of the bees...

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

The World Without End


So ?...

So I head for the great wall of books, extending from floor to ceiling, from left to right, and arrrrround the bend, all along the bedroom wall. My bedroom wall. If you sit cross-legged at the foot of the bookshelves in my room, and look up, you get intellectual vertigo. On the top shelves, where the air is thin, its tough out there. The wind blows harsh up there on the top shelf, and there is a real risk of death - from exposure. So high - to the sky - they stretch - forever - worlds - and books - of possibilities. Every book I read. Every book completed - understood - absorbed - breathed-in, written on, strengthens my force field. A force field that protects me; like rubber padding, from the unpredictability of the world, and the caprices of its bipedal inhabitants. With every book I read I ingest the person that wrote it. I swallow them. And thus I have become many people - plural - destroyer of worlds. I am invincible. Reading has made me so. I am a superhero. I have in me the souls and minds of many men. Many of them dead - but a flicker; a faint candle of what they were once - burns in me. Nothing can harm me now. I cannot be hurt no more. I feel no want or lack thereof. It's all inside - my wealth. Everything I need is within me. Nowadays I am always smiling, though you will not see this on my face. The smile is etched on my mind. The strength of it though, if you look closely, radiates through my eyes. Next time take a peek. Look how my eyes shine so bright. But do wear sunglasses if you plan to stare at them. They shine like gold dust on the rings of saturn.

To write well, is to write truly. To write truly, is to search deep and hard - for eternal things. I do not wish to impress with elaborate Gaudi-esque wordplays. I want to write so that when you read me - you feel that I am writing to you. And to you only. I am profoundly interested in the nature of man and the nature of existence. That is my subject - everything. I want to stand outside of man and step out of existence - and watch from the sidelines. Watch man at play. Man at war. Man at love. Watch what he does. Watch how he does. Understand why he does what he does. It is difficult; I admit, to be objective because I am as much a part of that which I wish to understand. I am man and I exist and this makes me part of the subject I wish to study. So it is difficult to see through the veil. But there are times however - moments actually, when the veil lifts momentarily, like tufts of cloud burnt off on a sunny day, and I see then with such clarity and force and vision, things of such comprehensible truth - that it leaves me stunned.

At such moments it feels as if I am untethered from the umbilical cord of the world. As if I am floating freely in my own watery tank of muffled sounds - with nothing to hold me down fast. With naught to belong to me but my thoughts. People don't belong to me at such moments, nor lovers, nor friends, nor anything else. I feel like a child that has nothing serious going on in its life. But then what is so special about serious anyway? It does make me a little melancholy though - to see people but me, firmly rooted in life. Firmly planted: children to take to school, things to do, doctors appointments, family visits, colleagues to slag off, careers to climb, ladders to fall down, walls to paint, garages to visit, washing machines to fix, moments to share. My time is spent thinking about things that matter to no one but me. Like the moons of Jupiter for example - and what it would be like to live on them. I think about the 'thin blue line' of our atmosphere - and how something so tenuous, this slither of blue, could be the only thing that protects us from the cold and life-unfriendly vacuum of space. In trains, looking out of the window, I see green plants and imagine their photosystems arrayed like radio telescopes pointing to the sun - eating it up.

When I have lunch I don't just eat my Pret 'topside beef with mustard and rocket' artisan baguette. I think about it! Oh yes! I think about the beef that came from a bovine creature that has evolved from a fish, I think about the rocket leaves and their chloroplasts with their thylakoid membranes stacked together, and the fact that the rocket leaves came on the morning flight from Italy. The baguette makes me think of (I don't know why) sun-basking wheatstalks bobbing in the breeze! When I see a pretty girl (and I do see plenty of these) I don't wish she was mine. Instead I smile at the silliness of the brain inside my skull that makes me want to have her. I do find her attractive. I can't help it. I am after all human! Many times I wish I could escape and not be buffeted by these random capricious winds that blow my way - nudging me, bothering me, picking on me, making my heart jump through endless hoops, making me blush, making me hungry, making we want, making me love, making me desirous of things. If only I could switch all such things off and be at peace for once. Sometimes I can be so sensitive to stuff - like a lightning rod charged with static. Sometimes I just want to hide in my bed, close my eyes, shut out the world and me

...and pretend not to exist.

and still she pops into my bed, smiles a little, and melts my heart,

into a puddle,

that's licked up by a dog...

called 'Spite'.


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