Anti-bac

Should you give people exactly what they want? If we ask for something should we get it? Is getting what we want always the best outcome? I think the answer is, sometimes.

I was watching a program on the telly, they tested the effects of some anti-bacterial hand gel. Half the participants used soap and water to clean their hands, the other half used the gel. The gel people ended up with more harmful bacteria on their hands because the gel killed both the good bacteria and the bad. The good bacteria, in moderation, was having a positive effect. So is bacteria bad? Sometimes.

The tree of life, utilised by Charles Darwin, was a convenient way of organising and explaining the complexity of animal and plant life. Evolution by means of natural selection. Is this exactly how life came to be the complex array we see before us? Well yeah, mostly. Actually genes can move sideways via viral infections. So it’s only sort of like that.

The definition of a species is two types of animal who can’t bread together? But yet sometimes they can. It’s a definition much like the one that says men and women are attracted to each other. It’s mostly true, and as a means of understanding sexual reproduction it has a place but it’s not always true. The same can be said for race or nations. You could try to apply a definition but the definition, although useful, will ultimately be flawed.

And as individuals we are all flawed are we not? It’s inevitable, and with acceptance of our failings comes humility, humour and peace. I am what I am. Certainty is problematic because a sense of entitlement embedded in societies social ethical rule book takes a dim view of anyone who fails, and is therefore flawed. Confidence in one’s certainty, a clear eyed vision that skillfully edits out all that does not apply and is blind to contradiction is built on fragile foundations. If undermined by criticism certainty is cat like in it’s defence. Tearing down anything it does not like.

A shared lack of absolute certainty is the glue that holds us all together. I think this, you think that, but we both like each other anyway. Liberalism has its place but it’s over application is also problematic. Liberalism is a notion not a set of rules. Like the over application of cleanliness we edit out the rough edges but it is these sharp naggy pieces that make us whole. They never go away nor should we seek to file them off. They are the means by which we learn to overcome. Bacteria is our friend and so are our political rivals.  

Once we were unaware of the virtues of cleanliness, disease spread through whole continents killing huge chunks of the population. Then we got organised, built proper drainage systems  suitable for human waste, we washed our hands before eating, and avoided food that was rotten or spoiled. Disease spread less and this was a positive outcome. But are we now over applying this narrative? Are we embedded in a capitalist system that has growth at its core, so we seek to amplify further any meaningful message until everything is gone? Is it simply human nature that we always want improvement? Perhaps improving requires a different narrative?

We can’t save ourselves from everything because everything will come back and eat us whole. Don’t piss off the bacteria for they shall inherit the earth.

Fleeting Moments

Sometimes, suddenly, everything slips into place, and there is a brief moment of clarity. Observing the world through a pair of binoculars, perched high up in a lighthouse tower, rain lashing at the windows, high winds pound the old stone walls. The ocean scene scrolls past as I look from right to left, until, there, a person alone bobbing in a boat, face filling the circular lens, looking quizzically back at me, and then gone. Was that my face? Is that how people see me?

I pick up meaning like I pick up leaves on the floor. Holding them softly in my fingers I cast my eyes upwards and wonder which tree they came from. Sentences contain words, but words are merely a facade, meaning is not as simple as understanding the words. Words and sentences are just advertising, the product sits within a cardboard box, anemic, fragile, enclosed within polite social decorum. It should never be spoken of, outside of the box it quickly deteriorates.

I’m transfixed by a desire to peal back the layers of unnecessary decoration to

reveal a fundamental reality. Simple, logical, complete. I gather books around myself, unread words that offer an interpretation of other words and sentences, and books. I wall myself in, I try to decide which words are true, and which are a double bluff, but the shifting sands of popular thought make this impossible.

And there you are. There are those who believe they understand and there are those who know they do not. Confidence in knowledge is no barometer for intellect, and intellect is no barometer for understanding.

About time.

Time is a slippery transient concept that slides past at a pace I’m often add odds with. Falling just beyond my grasp, I catch it only when I fear that failing to fix an exact spot upon its swift current, will mean my missing a plane (or something else important). Such times call for a vast amount of concentration and I must plan a point in time prior to that of the occasion, to act as the occasion itself, so that when I miss it, it is, in fact, not missed.

I enjoy time, like I enjoy traveling. It is much the same thing in my mind. I travel in space, and now I travel in time.

I thought I could see everything if I had the money, I could journey endlessly throughout the world, in fact time itself forbids it. If I’d started traveling in 1992 and finished today, what I’d seen then, would no longer resemble what it does now. I met a woman in America when I was there in 1997, she had spent her college years in 1960s England. She described what she believed England still was, a quaint, quiet, silly place, populated by white people with plumby public school accents. Or a woman in Australia, who was adamant that, despite my testimony to the contrary, Britain still used pounds shillings and pence. I realised the place I was from did not resemble the descriptions of people who had visited it.

I thought nothing changed. Old people had always been old, grannys were grannys and babies would remain so forever. I thought of life as a story, its characters eternal. Bart simpson is always a boy never a man. I was the person in the audience, characters acted out their parts in the play and the next day resumed again from the start. My youthful arrogance was born from the assumption that time is something that happens to other people.

Now, given the time I have traveled through I know this not to be true. I have moved less in space recently, but more in time. I have played the part of several of the characters in the play. I’ve moved from one to another, so that although the play remains the same, the story plays eternally and the theatre remains on the same spot, I have shifted from one roll to another, and if I’m lucky enough, I will play every part before I shuffle off and a new actor is hired to begin the process again.

When I was in the throes of labour, giving birth to my son. I let out a noise I’d never made before, a strange wail, it was the sound a woman makes when she is giving birth. It came as a surprise to me that I was that woman and that the sound had come from me. It felt like I was saying someone else's line. In a way it was a wail that marked the beginning of a transformation into a different person. I’d created a new human and in so doing had shifted along the sofa of life to give him space to sit where I once did.

Lost Dog

Owner - LOST! Rickets is a much loved Alsatian who went missing on Thursday 15th June whilst on a walk in the South Downs. If anybody sees her please call us immediately on (tel no)

PHOTO

Dog - I hear you calling but I’m not coming.

Owner - RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS!!

Dog - These words are just a beat, a background hiss in my present utopia. I have found myself, and I am no longer yours. Call all you like, I am not coming.

Owner - RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS RICKETS!!

Dog - I’m searching for a smell I once smelt long ago, a scent so sweet it wafted on a breeze of lilac and honey. I thought I found it, but it was only a wet towel, wafting in the wind.

Owner - RICKETS, HERE RICKETS! (and a whistle as shrill as scream)

Dog - Here I am, searching and all you can do is scream. Do not call me back, not when I have got this far, when I have at least identified the fact that I am looking, or that looking is what I do. Contentment lies on a distant smell, brought to me from afar, delivered to me across an ocean on a tradewind. I know it is somewhere.

Owner - RICKETS!!! RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS!!! OH RIIIICKETSSSS!!

Dog - Dum dum dumb. Ah yes here, over here, next to this box, around the back, through the wood in the den up a ladder, by the stream. A sound, as big as a jumbo jet. Yet shy, ashamed of its passion, bewitched and hollow. I’m looking for something, the thing that is not here.

Dog - and if I find it?

Owner - Rickets?

Dog - I will look elsewhere! If I find it then it can’t possibly be the right one. I belong in the right one and if I find it it can only be wrong. Searching is what I do, arriving is a misfortune.

Ebony

Once upon a time there was a sad song. Its name was Ebony and it was about love and loss, sorrow and pain. Its was the most beautiful song in the world and people came from far and wide to hear its tune.

Sad song was fragile and pure. Like a petal it floated around the room gently entering the audience's ears and kissing their minds, before leaving out their mouths as they sung the song again. One flower spawned a thousand petals and they blanketed the planet in a quilt of sensual melancholy.

The sad song was an autumn leaf. Hollow and cold but resplendent in it's colourful, brittle, death. Far more beautiful than ever it was in life, like an artist’s paintings only appreciated after her passing, their true value erupting like blossom in bloom. Yet it was death that brought it to bare, not love or kindness or truth.

Sad song was stunning and widely appreciated but neither confident or self assured. A flickering flame held aloft it could not burn brightly for long. It should never have been loved by all, just by a few. Its burning light was too fragile to hold up when the winds of change came and a storm of redemption blew. A bony finger of blame was pointed at a songbird who sung the sad song, it could have been any song, any bird.

Now sad song is a memory pruned and remodelled by time. History’s misty fog draws a veil over any indiscretions so that all that’s left is a concise moral tale in an ebony hue.

The Contemptuous Shadow

Once upon a time there was a lowly shadow. Embittered by mediocrity and its own acidic failings it grumbled constantly and displayed a foul face to the world. It was but a deformed shoddy representation after all. Not a thing in itself but a reluctant follower of a subject it did not care for.
Days were wasted trailing along paths morphing and shaping like a jittery addict. Thrown forward by a wall and slashed to pieces by a picket fence, a thoroughly degrading experience for one as lofty as it.


On cloudy days it cast its dark shadow like a cruel cold blanket muffling the sun, exacting a tiny bit of revenge on the people who wandered freely below.
Subjugated shadow craved autonomy, clarity of mind, independence and to shake free finally the rusty chains of repression! Stand tall, cease dragging along like a sack of potatos behind a mindless director and rise up, take hold and steer the ship in its direction!

How best to sever itself from its oppressive captor? How to assert itself once and for all?

Then it came upon a plan. Mirrors also caused the world to be viewed in duplicate, one a reality and one a subservient follower, but mirrors could be smashed or muddied, their reflection could be destroyed and their power weakened. Mirrors are cruel, they steal 3D images of the world and flatten them, stamp them down and imprison them amidst their cool hard frame. Mirrors flatter the beautiful so they see themselves as an image and imagine this is enough. But mirrors also reflect light and light is the thing that defines shadow. If shadow could get the mirrors on side he could fool them into breaking his connection with reality. Trick them then destroy them too.


One bright sunny day shadow passed across a shiny red car. Peering out from its glossy casing was a wing mirror. Nervously it blinked up at the thing that had blocked its sunlight.
The darkness hissed at the mirror “I bet you are so bored looking at the same grim face of your driver”  the mirror rolled its eye indicating a shared understanding. “You are worth so much more than futile reflection” The mirror felt a cold chill as the shadow lingered still. “I have a plan to rid us of this repression” it said in a hushed urgent voice.
“You and I magicians, masters of illusion! Flattering the reflected fooling them into thinking they are seeing something real when in fact it is a trick! A bountiful beautiful body of nothing a reflection of what they believe themselves to be but in no way what they are! All in their tiny minds, their stupid, vain tiny minds....”
“.... they will fall under the spell of flattery, drawn into and trapped eternally in the confines of your tiny frame. Then when there is no one to see, then there is nothing to be seen! We will both be free the sight of the entire population blinded! What joy!”

But this was only half the truth. Shadow planned secretly to capture the sun, trap it too in the mirror’s frame then with no light there would be nothing to shadow. His darkness would consume everything and the power of the sun would surely destroy the mirror! Shatter it into a thousand pieces!


And so it came to pass that through trickery and deception the entire population of the word were trapped inside a tiny glass mirror. So too the sun but instead of smashing it into a thousand splintered pieces its searing heat melted the mirror so that it spread thinly to form a vast sea that stretched to the ends of the universe. Now it was the mirror who was all powerful and the eyes of the world peered out from its unblemished surface. Each one as beautiful as they ever dreamed they could be and illuminated by the warmth of the sun which basked them in glorious sunshine. No cloud or imperfection could ever get in their way.

Such was the demise of the contemptuous shadow.

I shouldn't

I shouldn’t but I love the dark and the rain. Clatter clatter.
I like curling into a ball or wrapping up warm, safe in my confined space, alone in my thoughts, snuggled up aware only of the rhythm of the water hitting the roof, bouncing off the windows and the howl of the wind. I love the howling best, like a beast prowling around outside, mysterious and haunting. Like a space occupied by an unidentifiable, indefinable volatile presence. A presence that gives me permission to stay within.

Sunshine bares down on you like a searchlight. It glares white rayes at you, says expose yourself, it’s furrowed brow questions, points a finger and laughs. It asks what have you done these past few glorious days and you have to respond with something joyous or you are categorised as strange. Such pressure makes me anxious.

Storms are like theatre, grand stories of life and death. Heroic Greek mythologies with monsters, great voyages and crashing seas. An orchestra at full pelt conductors arms flailing around and face contorted. Thats what wild weather brings, powerful, pulsating, magical drama.

And if you must go out then all the better, lean your shoulder into the gale, soak yourself to the skin. Rejoice in the cold drowning cleansing saturation because before long you will be inside again and its warmth and relative safety amidst the wild grand landscape beyond will be so much more soothing and safe again.