Coming soon...London New Year Celebration Pics!

I am,

merely a Were-

Wolf.

Of light on shadow

Immaterial

Inconstant

Immature.

Maybe.

Wandering the wayfare

cos waylaid

wherefore,

whereart

my wherewithal

A black&white sepia fixed,

in time. Like the hands in my pocket.

And the thoughts in my head

that smell

of madness.

Maybe I should...

Whereto?

Where-but!

Waythere

Way

Over

There.

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Once upon a time...

Once upon a time in a land far away, whilst on my travels, beyond the wide blue sea, I was accosted by a couple of bad fellows, who proceeded to deprive me of my wallet. They were an ill mannered navvy sort though they allowed me to keep the clothes on my back; but they took everything else nonetheless. It was a difficult time and I wish to relate my story here. Luckily I had paid my landlady's rent in advance; so for now at least, I was safe from the streets. It is curious. I had always wondered what it would feel like to be destitute and starving. And now here I was. Literally starving. Starving is not so bad if you have drink coursing through your veins to keep the mind from concentrating on the stomach. In a way it's a kind of release. Here you are. Penniless. Starving. Filthy. No girl will look at you on the street cos you reek. You're no longer a man in their eyes. More like a mangy cat. Yet, there's a morbid pleasure in knowing that you can take it and that you don't care.

Do you know, mon p'tit, do you know what it's like to go without eating eh? Forcement, otherwise you wouldn't be scrubbing dishes. Well, i'm not a lowly plongeur; and I went five whole days without eating. Five whole days without even a crust of bread - Jesus Christ!

I tell you, those five days were the devil. Luckily I had my rent paid in advance. I was living in a dirty cheap little hotel in the old quarter. It was called the hotel - , after some famous prostitute who was born in that quarter. I was starving. Do you know what it is to starve mon ami? It is a curious lowly feeling. Too weak to do anything even find work. Can't even go to the cafes cos I hadn't the price of a drink. You can't even walk down the street without fearing you might bump into a friend and have to pay for their drink. It's a intolerable life. Life? It's not even an existence. All I could do was lie in bed and get weaker and weaker and watch the bugs crawl like soldiers in zig-zags across the ceiling. After the fifth day without food I went half mad I tell you. I was staring at the wall. There was an old faded print of a bearded man's head hanging on the wall of my room, and in my delirium I took to wondering who the devil it could be. After an hour or so of serious cogitation I realised it must be some Muslim Saint. I had never taken any notice of such things before. Saints and the like were never tangible things to me. But here, now, as I lay withering and etiolated on these sweat infused dirty bed-sheets with my cheeks sunken in like hollows, an extraordinary thought occurred to me. 'I shall pray!' I said to myself. 'By god I shall pray to this Saint and see whether he helps me!'

So I got down on my knees and clasped my hands together in the form of an open book and read a 'duaa' (prayer).

At first I didn't know what to say to the man. How do you begin? So I thought maybe the best thing to do at first was to ask for forgiveness for not praying as often as he would like me to. I asked him how he was. Asked if he was OK. And then I told him at length of my sorrows. I related my story of the hole in my heart (left ventricle to be precise) and I told told him at length of the emptiness in my stomach. I told the old Saint of my love for chicken drumsticks deep-fried in bread batter...

[to be continued]

Tonight we're watching...Fantastic Mr Fox!

I'm taking my nieces to watch this tonight at the Odeon Mezzanine. Though my nieces are only an excuse really. Been meaning to watch this since it was first announced. Like many I loved reading Roald Dahls' indefatigable Mr Fox when I was young. This fresh and new incarnation Directed by Wes Anderson promises to be a quirky and somewhat philosophically inclined existential affair. I'm expecting great animation. Quirky plot. And plenty of food for thought. Will post a foxy and fantastic review afterwards.

Last night I read...Batavia's Graveyard

Undercover Lonely Planet

The planet is swarming with the faithful. Like iron filings in a magnetic field they gravitate towards places of worship. Prostrating themselves before the steps of white-washed temples, encircling the ancient ruins of old, visiting the divine caves of the Lady of Fatima for a quick fix, dragging themselves on all fours; heels and elbows, bloodied and bruised, across the high Tibetan plains, and here; in the muddies and eddies of the river Ganges - that floweth from Heaven.

Why? What all this activity? There is much we humans don't understand about the world. Why am I poor and he wealthy? Why did she die? Why the struggle for a bowl of rice? So these rituals; when you look at the pained expressions on the peoples faces, are a grasp in the dark for, what I like to call 'The Grand Mystery', or the infinite unknowable. A grasp in the hope that something of this Grand Mystery will be revealed. But ultimately, though these are journeys to physical places of rock and stone and water, the real destination lies within us - in our hearts and soul. For that's where the mystery lies and where it will be uncovered.

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and now for something a little different...

Favourite part: 0.57 secs

Undercover World

Francisco de Goya's 'Los Caprichos'

In the twilight of the 18th century Francisco de Goya made a series of etchings which he called Los Caprichos (The Follies). One of the etchings; my favourite and perhaps the most famous, features a man slumped over his desk in deep sleep. Around him in the dark his unconsciousness is awake in the form of a swarm of threatening night creatures that emerge from the shadows. On the side of the desk facing the viewer is an explanatory inscription that reads: 'El sueno de la razon produce monstruos.' - 'The sleep of reason gives birth to monsters.'

It is almost a cliche that the world is ruled by unreason. It is easy to see the monsters that stalk us, created and fuelled by emotion, especially those of anger, resentment, intolerance, greed and fear. But reason has been with us throughout history too. Just marvel at the archaeologist's trove of flint axes from the dawn before memory. Admire the street planning of the ancient Pakistani city of Mohenjodaro, the irrigation canals, husbandry, the jewellery of dynastic Egypt. Look at modern life and wonder: consider our cities with their clean and safe water supply, sewage system, telephones, electricity, schools, roads, supermarkets - these are the forethought's of reason and planning. The fruits of applied science. Or, as it say's on my Zanussi washing machine: The Appliance, Of Science.

But reason has not always been benign either. It was reason that converted the spear into the guided missile. It was reason that gave us the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and the torture chambers in the fortress of Spilberk in Brno. It was reason that heralded the extermination of the Amazonian Indians. But from dentistry and central heating to human rights and the rule of law, for every backward step caused by malign use of reason, we take two steps forward. It is because of reason that the average life of today is better than the life of our ancestor's. But beware. Two thirds of the world still live under the pall of unreason - of superstition, ignorance and the associated malaise of negative emotions that fuel conflicts.

Goya's etchings teach us to be wary. We mustn't fall asleep - we mustn't. For the darkness still harbours demons. And our dominion is anything but assured.

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London Unchromatic

The Grand Inquisitor (and what he tells us)

Probably the most celebrated chapter in Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, is the one in which we are introduced to the Grand Inquisitor in the poem composed by Ivan Karamazov to his brother Aloysha. In the poem Jesus returns to the world during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Though he comes down 'softly' and 'unobserved', it is not long before he is recognised by the people, and taken prisoner by the Grand Inquisitor. Jesus is locked up in the ancient palace of the Holy Inquisition, he is questioned, but refuses to answer, only to say that he has come down to give mankind back his freedom.

The Grand Inquisitor laughs in Jesus's face and tells him that humanity is too weak to bear and appreciate the gift of freedom. He say's that man does not seek freedom but bread. People will worship whoever gives them bread - for the cravings of the stomach are staunchest of all. And that humanity needs its rulers to be gods, or if not gods, then at least, to be put there by the blessings of gods. The Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that his teachings have been amended to deal with the reality of man's true nature: 'We have corrected Thy work and have founded it on miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift of freedom that brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts.'

The Grand Inquisitors assertion that men want bread not freedom is closer to the truth than you might want to believe. Man will always demand miracle, mystery and authority. Look at the world we live in today. Today, man gets his sense of the miraculous from science and technology: television, mobiles, the Internet, jumbo jets, artificial fabrics, non-stick pans. These things nourish man's sense of the miraculous as magic did in the past...Dostoevsky's diagnosis of human nature rings true and is unanswerably correct: man will always submit to tyranny and authority. Man does not want to be free. But to be led, because...man is too weak and stupid to make up his own mind about the things that matter. Just look at the film at the top of the charts this week, Paranormal Activity, about...yes, ghosts - look at the Iraq War Inquiry - look at Afghanistan - look at the quagmire in Pakistan - just look at Burma - just look, and you will see, that man prefers to be led by politicians, than the fruits of his own reasoning's.

For some, science is the know-all and answer-all of our problems. But here too we must be careful. Science promises that our most ancient needs will be met. That sickness and ageing and poverty and disease will be eradicated; that the human species will become immortal. But to believe that science alone can and will transform our lot into universal happiness is a myth of gigantic proportions. Science cannot help with ultimate meanings because, their are none. That is not a criticism of science. That is a fact of reality.

The truth that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor teaches us is that humankind has never sought freedom, and never will. We are told by secular religions today that humans yearn to be free; and it is true they find restraint of any sort irksome. Yet, it is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort and repose and non-thinking numbness that comes with servility. It is much easier and more comfortable to be servile and have guaranteed bread than to be critical and worry about whether there will be any bread.

To think that, just because a few people sometimes seek freedom, that all human beings want it, is like thinking that, just because there are flying fish, it is in the nature of all fish to fly.

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A little tittle tattle

St. Valentines day is not about love or sex. It is about romance. Romance is that something from which one hopes, one will be led, to love and sex. Romance is the route one must take to love and sex. Romance is not the destination. It is love and sex that are the destination. And therein lies the problem! - for too many people, especially women, confuse the route with the destination. And when they reach the destination (love and/or sex), they are not satisfied, for they ask themselves: 'but where is the romance gone?'

Romance is not love. It is the dream of love. Romance is not sex. It is the foreplay of foreplay. Romance is the spring of loves year. It is the rosy dawn of an effulgent passion-full bright day. When romancing one gives one's desired one flowers and chocolates. These gifts are more apt than you think. A flower seduces a bee with pollen to do its service of fertilization. Chocolate contains phenethylamine (something I learnt in biochemistry class), a chemical produced internally in the brain by people undergoing sexual infatuation. Presented together, both flowers and chocolate, are the ultimate seducer of the seductee. This is also the reason why on Valentine's day sales of lingerie outstrip sales of kitchen cutlery by 10:1, for whereas cutlery is an adjunct of blissful domestic arrangements associated with long-term affections, lingerie however is part of the invitation process as in - come hither sorceress of my loins!

In the austere days of republican Rome, Cato the Censor expelled Lucius Manilius from the Senate for kissing his wife in public. And then since then we have the explosion of chastity that gripped the Middle Ages, Christianity and Islam from AD 400 onwards. Recognising that female beauty is the most powerful drug in the world, theologians have since then, sought to nip the bud of romance, by requiring women to disguise, what biology hath given them; namely their flowing hair and curvaceous hips, under veils and shapeless robes.

In the Middle Ages the fact that birds began to sing and pair and mate in mid-February gave rise to the association between St Valentine's Day and courtship. Chaucer said: '...for this was on seynt Valentyne's day, when every foul cometh there to chase his mate'. Oscar Wilde once said that romance is deception. Deception it may be, but who can deny that romantic illusions; be they delusions, add colour to reality's monochrome, and enliven hope, and are thus a good and welcome illusion therefore!

Oh, the pleasures of love

the deeds of St Valentine's

The silly thoughts that sail

right through my lovestruck mind!

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ADoseofPhilosophy - reading & the good life

Reading is one of the essentials of the good life. It is not just the familiar pleasures that come from responsive reading that matter (like fear, excitement, a swashbuckling plot), but rather the effects of these on how we live our lives and see the world. The truth is, that in our society, reading is no longer accorded the respect it deserves. Let me tell you a secret: reading is much more than you think it is.

Reading, compared to alternative forms of media, is a particular focused form of activity. By reading I am of course referring to books (and not magazines and newspapers and comics and billboards and breakfast cartons). Reading books is a peculiarly focused activity that takes place in private-time and makes a fundamental difference in the way, say, a movie cannot. A play cannot be stopped and reprised in the way pages can be re-read, whether to relish something extraordinarily good or to understand something better. How many times have you re-read a sentence to saviour its meaning or prose? Exactly. A novel is present all at once, and can be gone over and back, re-entered, skimmed, sampled, devoured, and written all over in the margin, at your leisure. This adds a certain value to its contents. And it is the contents that matter most.

What is the difference between watching a movie and reading the book of the same movie? It is only thorough a book that you can see what someone is thinking and really feeling. Think about it for a second. You can enter some one's mind much better in words than on the big screen. The big screen shows you what the character is doing. Only the written word can tell you what they are thinking. Books allows us to consider our own experiences, seeing in the mirror of the story reflections of our own world and life, and the universal aspect of oneself, at the revealing angles that result from seeing them refracted into other guises. It's like stepping into another's shoes for awhile.

Another is the opportunity that books give us to peer into experiences we ourselves have not had, and might never have, in other lives and 'exotic' ways of life. This gift of books is in my opinion priceless. Being restricted to personal experience and observation of only what lies in one's immediate circles is no guarantor of becoming wise and perceptive. But, to be a fly on the wall in a foreign land, or a far away place in time, observing different lives, watching peoples do things differently, understanding their world view and how they see the world through their eyes; the chance to sympathise with people you will never meet, to partake in choices and desires that have never occurred to one, to feel the fear of a long sea voyage, to understand what it means to be a slave, to trek on a long desert voyage with the Danakil - that is the gift that comes from thoughtful reading. The better the novel, the richer the possibilities it offers in this and all its other dimensions.

Most importantly, good reading promises an enlargement of our sympathies. And sympathy is the basis of the fair moral community. To sympathise and empathise with others is to understand their interests, needs, choices and motives. Because reading promotes insights into oneself and others, it thereby helps promote the good life in the good society.

Please read more. It's good for you! - A dose a day - keeps the devils at bay.

Thevoraciouscaterpillar.com

Readingislikevitaminpills.com

Readingexersisesthebrainmusclestoliftcontinents.com

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