The Most Modern of Goals

Life begins at forty. If that's the case, then what are all the years before that for?
To grow, you dimwit.
(That answer came from some deeper part of my subconscious, about the size and shape of an unshelled peanut, marking the beginning of a dialogue that came out of nowhere on a wet afternoon, which I will continue to record here for your amusement and hopefully mine after an interval, because, as you will see, it was mostly frustrating).
So, in reply to that encased nut: That's an awful lot of formative years: to learn, make mistakes and repeat them. And I still have two years, give or take, to go until as they say: Life Begins. Then what?
Unshelled nut: Live as if you've never lived.
Me: Huh?
Unshelled nut: That's right, start over. Not from scratch, just from an entirely new position. Be you but not the same you. Leave that old skin behind.
Me: Right...so basically you're saying everything I've accumulated up to this point and everything I'm still accumulating was, is a gigantic waste of time?
Unshelled nut (in a condescending tone): Did I say that? When did I say that? Haven't I just stated the exact opposite? You can be so dense sometimes... thank your lucky stars I'm the patient sort, though it pains me to dumb down my perfectly-good explanations to accommodate your...
...I interrupted here, bristling with indignation...
Me: There's really no need to take that tone or be borderline offensive. You haven't really told me anything – nothing concrete, just vague, hippy, self-help sh...
Unshelled nut: Stop! Don't stoop any lower, not on my account. We're one and the same. I'm you aren't I, so you're wasting your breath if you do – I'm not beneath you and you're not above me. And I was going to say 'analytic ways.'
Me: Like hell you were.
Unshelled nut: For goodness sake let's be civil rather than quibble so early on. There'll be enough of that to come later when we reach the preparation stage for the level three examination...I had hoped you'd get there on your own, but that's obviously not going to be the case, not at this tortoise pace. And you used to be such a good student...
Me (in a less gravel tone): I may not be as learned as I want, or you'd like me to be, but I read and explore what interests me further. I set my own course of study.
Unshelled nut: True, but your sponge-like abilities have declined massively. You barely retain anything from one week to the next....well, we'll work with what we're got. It's not a lot but we'll get there...hopefully before you turn the Big Four-Oh. Notice what I did there?
Me (ignoring that clever remark): And if we don't get there?
Unshelled nut: No matter, except the transition to the first module of level four will be harder than it needed to be.
Me (more to myself than to the nut): So, I've been going through life being tested at the end of each decade...I don't recall this happening when I turned Three-Oh? Then in a whisper: I can do it too – ape your clever intellect.
Unshelled nut (overhearing everything): Ooh, yes it did, but you scraped through. You were in crisis mode at twenty-six and then at twenty-eight you really ballsed things up.
Me (slightly worried): Did I? I don't remember...why don't I?
Unshelled nut: Least said, soonest mendest.
Me: What?
Unshelled nut: Never mind. Shall we get on?
Me: Wait! If this new life you talk of, that's apparently mine for the taking at forty, could be lost in the prep years, then why bother contemplating taking it at all?
Unshelled nut (with an audible sigh): Growth, dear, personal growth.

Picture credit: Peppermint Patty, Peanuts

Life is Absurd

Where does that adage: life gets easier as you get older come from I wonder? Because now I'm older (not old and not yet wise) it's not true. If anything, it gets more complicated. Although I doubt, no, know I'm far from the first to realise that, and I don't think this is my initial realisation of it come to that. It's just the first time I've considered it in print; I was going to say put it down on paper, but this isn't paper is it? It's the virtual equivalent and about as far as I go in terms of new technology. Still, it's a blank canvas on which I can type (and delete) to my heart's content; progress for a perfectionist who would otherwise waste a lot of time whiting-out and waiting for it to dry, to then write over in an unsteady hand.
I had hoped to write a witty article and yet here I am writing a gloomy, possibly another self-deprecating, one. I always imagined I'd be able to wield more control over a keyboard, as opposed to a pen; the reverse is true. But I'm sure I've put this down on 'paper' before, so I'll leave that philosophical tirade unsaid. Perhaps, I should have said it was more spiritual than philosophic? Because something else governs it – my fingers on the keys – not I.
Anyhow, I said I wouldn't repeat so I won't, in spite of my fingertips, all eight of them hovering and the thumbs lightly placed on the space bar. I'm on a roll, you see, words tripping off the tongue; article after article, way ahead as if a part of me might know something I don't. Should I be worried? Is all this advanced effort going to be posthumous? Languish unpublished on the desktop of a dusty laptop, even?
Do I care...? Nope, when your time's up, it's up. I'm not going to question it. Or buy more time from the Angel of Death if indeed Death has such an accomplice. I'm satisfied with my lot, the little I've done.
Perhaps, I'm just riding a wave right now. Because something BIG is about to happen, and then this time won't be selfishly all mine any longer. It will get consumed by an advent or a departure, not that I mean it will necessarily be biblical or spiritual. Just a change, a force of nature that I or nobody else can reckon with.
Sometimes I feel like Nostradamus, as ludicrous (or as egotistical) as that may sound, though he in his heyday wasn't taken seriously was he? I don't think I baffle people, well, not in this regard, but in others, undoubtedly, yes.
I'm not an easy person to get to grips with – is anybody? Each meeting with me (I imagine) is different and you never learn anything new. The sort of person you pass time with but never get any deeper. Unless I'm wrong about that and I give more than I think I give away in what I hold back. Nobody tells you that's the trouble, and most of us are mildly content with what I term 'surface relationships'. There's nothing bad in that since we're all multi-faceted anyway: reflect different sides at different times with different people, and with different levels of intimacy. I even like that whole chameleon approach, not that I set out with that intention to be vague or to say a lot in no great detail, and yet I'm aware an autonomous part of my brain is rating my comfort, then computing the dialogue for me to spill or to contain. The larynx either trips over itself or clamps itself shut until the moment has lost itself again.
Too many it-selves? I thought so too. But hang it, I can't be bothered to re-phrase.
So, acquaintances sometimes get rather more than they expect (or wanted), like when a GP hits your knee with a hammer (one designed for that purpose, not a hardware tool) and your leg, calf and all, jerks upwards, because it's easier to blurt random bits than in an intense one-to-one with someone you have more of a history with and so know better. Acquaintances are less likely to want to pick over, or away at, what you've said and are more content to leave it be. In a way, even if their time is short, they're the perfect listener: they hear and maybe make the appropriate noises which is all you really want, and not the well-meaning advice that better-known persons offer.
I wonder what Nostradamus' stance would have been on that, or any of it really? Though his concerns were worldly and not as localised as mine. I can't speak for the man (or any deceased visionary or philosopher) but something tells me he would have thought: Piffle!

Picture credit: Disasters of War, Plate No. 71: Against the Common Good, Francisco Goya

The Luxury of Destruction

And these principles, to continue from where I left off, only lead to more high-minded mistakes, which I'm then almost too ashamed to admit to. That I do admit, somewhat sheepishly, demonstrates that I seek to be reassured or consoled for my actions, as well as possibly someone to join in the inner beating from outside.
Sometimes I think I would benefit from a strong talking to (or someone telling me what to do) but then I cause myself enough anguish, and nobody I think wants to heap more onto that. Actually, in the moment I probably wouldn't listen. My hackles might instead rise and I might speak with derision, or stiffen, permeate the air with hostility and silently fume, saving my inward rages until out of sight and sound where I could allow my frustrations to boil over. And then further allow them to simmer, under the surface, because they won't be entirely spent until I've analysed what was said in relation to my own behaviour; only after that may I concede that they might have a point. Acknowledgement of it however is rare, and if given is usually inserted flippantly in the next conversation so as not to provide immense satisfaction to the one who had the wisdom to see it but made the unfortunate decision to remark aloud to the very person it concerned.
It's true that principled and honest persons don't like the cruelty of truth when this medicine is applied directly to them, for not all such persons are tactless, some are over-sensitive. It's best to leave us to our own mistakes, for we are as stubborn in making them as we are in taking corrective remedies. Often, we don't unmake or rectify them at all, preferring to do nothing because we're not sure what's right and so doing nothing is preferable, but of course that doesn't stop us bending others' ears.
No action is decidedly better than action that is regretted or later withdrawn at a stage that causes problems (to others) and conflicted emotions (in ourselves) that could have been avoided had no decision been reached or impulse acted upon. And I've done both a few times. Retreating is unpleasant though relief can follow to lessen the blow you might have dealt not only to yourself but to an intermediary, whereas regret is a curse, like that wished upon a new baby by a vengeful sprite. It lingers for days...sometimes longer, even putting in appearances long after the deed's been done, when really you should have moved on.
In some, no all, situations it's difficult to know how culpable you are. How much of a beating do you deserve? Is there any strength in the argument: you were played? Because there's always the responses of another or others to consider. It's never just a one-person show. But if you're unwise it's easy to be tricked without even realising it until you're further in than you would like, and so then when you wake it's not too late but the blame in any change of circumstances is all yours. There'll be no recognition from the other side that maybe, just possibly, they gave you the wrong impression, inaccurate information or could have acted differently. They had a goal, a deadline, and were going to reach it by any conceivable means, and you just happened to be there. Not quite right, but not a mismatch either.
You, however, come off worse, because of the type of person you are: always taking things not on the chin but upon yourself. The mistrust (of yourself), the doubt sets in. The positives, if there were some, pale, as do the instinctive and euphoric-type feelings that determined the weighing-up process. Should you not have listened to your internal discourse on the matter?
Why do this when it's gone? And when, regardless of your moroseness, nothing now will alter. Precisely! Nothing will change and that you take comfort in, and yet you want some sort of change. No, not want, need, because there are also necessities that require practical measures. And what you've just achieved, with some aplomb it has to be said, is impracticable going ahead. How much farther can you go at this stagnant pace? when any hard won progress is swiftly unmade by your own hand.
Aha! Self-sabotage is the lesson here, and how not to fall into such traps, but of that, as you may have realised, I've not been victorious; nor indeed does it seem I'll learn to curb this masochistic luxury. 

Picture credit: Photograph of Rex Whistler's In the Wilderness, 1939, by Angelo Hornak

Unsparing Conscience

I confound people with my honesty, though I fail to understand why they are so shocked. Are they shocked because they think I'm a fool for not keeping my cards close to my chest, shocked because it's direct though I don't think I deliver it as such, and in truth I'm not good at it but I'm less good at concealment, or shocked because everyone else, to a large extent, plays the game and plays it all too well.
As I've confessed, I've never understood the reaction I get when I give it. That honest opinion or statement. I'm by no means an open book or a straight-down-the-line kind of person which honesty and transparency automatically suggests and yet when I feel backed in a corner, rushed to form some decision (before I'm ready) then it comes with no pre-thought. I don't like, I won't play games, even if to do so would be in my interests. Somehow I always put the other thing or person's interests first.
Yes, I'd be a poor survivor in a 'of the fittest' competition or catastrophe and, yes, it occasionally annoys me that I don't have that self-preservation instinct in certain situations, but it seems it's not a behavioural trait I have control over.
I can pretend vagueness and refuse to be pinned down, but even this light form of pulling wool over eyes doesn't sit well, like how eating an animal that was stressed at its time of slaughter can give you indigestion. And yes, I do believe that. It's not, I don't think (well, I wouldn't), just a vegetarian fallacy since I've heard some farmers and game-keepers espouse the same view. Stress, as we all should have learned by now, produces many mental and physical anomalies, and I'm sure the toughening of meat is one of them.
It's a pity that it (stress) doesn't, on the whole, strengthen you mentally rather than, over the long-term, weaken. Or at least that's been my experience if not dealt with or prolonged. In short bursts, I grant, it can be useful, productive even. Otherwise, it bleaches or heightens your colour, induces depression or mania, causes your pulse to race or your heart to beat erratically, your hair to fall out or grey, depletes or increases your appetite and deprives you of precious sleep, that if it could be had (or found) would restore you.
Can dishonesty be considered as corrosive? I guess, but the process would be even slower like metal turning to rust or lime scale building up in appliances, and then only if you're a sensitive and not a desensitised person.
If only, like Pinocchio, our noses sprouted like a branch every time we told a falsehood; there'd be no hiding then and no other undesirable visible or invisible guilty symptoms. But as you might have gathered fairy tales are my mainstay in most arguments, which surely isn't in itself healthy in a woman, or anyone, who has reached maturity: a middling level of adulthood. That being the case, as I've so honestly stated, is my judgement sound? No, it's just honest and from my own particular perspective, which may, at times, be subject to the sort of morals fairy tales and Aesop’s fables employ.
But don't think, for one second, this principled stance is not, whilst it may be lauded, burdensome too. Truth, even if tactfully given, makes you, the truth-giver, lose out because although it may be praised, at the end of the day people don't, as I mentioned earlier, understand it, they distrust it even. Look at whistle-blowers, when do they ever receive only cheers and applause? There's always abuse or ostracism, and if that wasn't enough they can lose in other ways too: their job and along with that financial security, their reputation.
Truth and honesty is too often seen as manipulative, malicious or threatening, presented by those with an ulterior motive, whereas usually (in most cases) their nature is more altruistic. So life, in effect, penalises you for being good.
I, for example, can't agreed to a proposal with a clear conscience if I know I may retract later, although others would do that and more. For me, it's too duplicitous, but to some it's not unscrupulous at all – it's good common sense and business intelligence, which is obviously, others would say, what I don't have in spades, just highfalutin principles that never pay out. 

Picture credit: The Good Shepherd, Pieter Bruegel the Elder

A Kink in the Brain

I have an all-male star cast of principal characters and extras. No women like in the olden days of putting on Shakespeare's plays, although no men take on these roles either. There just aren't any women. As in A, B, or C-listed women, just ordinary mortals playing their God-given roles, whereas some of the very ordinary men permanently in or who fleetingly enter my life have stand-ins. Substitutions made for a star. And at times usually when those men aren't present. Absent for one reason or another, death, of course, being the fatal one, or due to a chapter being knocked on the head, though there have been occasions when both: the real and the stand-ins have stood side by side and each vied for my attention.
The stand-ins however, although composed of flesh and blood, are ghostly. Brought before me by the mind's eye; the people they substitute for, I can reassure you, are very real.
I wouldn't be able to pinpoint how, when or why this came about, so please don't ask me, nor was it put to me as one of those getting-to-know-you questions that I've since given too much thought to, perfecting my answer so that when, if I'm asked again I'll have it down pat and can reply with some smugness before turning the tables on the asker.
And the same goes for why it only affects (for me) the male of the species, to which the only answer I can give is: I don't know. I guess I could fashion a logical argument if I wanted, but I don't really. I'm happy with it being what it is: a quirk.
It does make a good dinner party or dating question though doesn't it? If you had to put together a star cast to represent your friends, family, and acquaintances who would you choose?
This quirk, as I've determined it, is however nothing like that, for I didn't decide. I didn't choose. I didn't go through resumes or portfolios, and select or reject. Who would play who was fixed, settled by something other than the conscious part of me. It could be framed as above for entertainment, but let's be straight, this isn't how it was, how it is, for me. This male cast existed (and exist) before I gave any serious consideration to it. I thought this was normal. It's not as it turns out, which no doubt you will have deduced if you're a rational being. So, I guess (to help you along should you not share this kink in the brain) I should, as it does in a theatre programme, list the principal male characters and their players:
Pop W. - Sid James
Pop P. - Ronnie Barker
Uncle L. - Tony Robinson
Pa* - Derek Thompson (Charlie Fairhead from TV soap, Casualty)
*Due to 'Casualty' commitments the role of Pa may be played by Wallace, of Wallace and Gromit fame, with the kind permission of Nick Park.
Why it should be these particular public figures and not others I again don't know, except to repeat that my mind has obviously made these associations without any intellectual input, although it's not as if the characters or the actors resemble each other in appearance or manner, so what that association is I couldn't rightly say. There must be something, some similarity that may be so small my conscious brain misses it or at the very least can't put into words, and yet I've never disputed these decisions. In other matters, sure.
This kink also extends to males I interact with briefly, so I don't for this effect to happen have to know any male for any length of time, time that is measurable say in weeks or months. For example, last year I was interviewed by a nice chap who I associated immediately with the comedian, Jack Whitehall, for no instantly obvious reason; and years before that I was seeing someone who became fixed in my mind, as well as in others I might add, as Jeremy (Jez) Osborne from the British sitcom, the Peep Show. And then there's Ronnie Corbett who I forever associate with Rupert Bear because of their shared love of the tartan trousers, yet otherwise the link is illogical, and somewhat disrespectful to Ronnie though hopefully (if he were still alive) he'd see the funny side.
Perhaps he does from the male wing of my mind-made stage?

Picture credit: Ernest Thesiger, 1925, by  Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein)