Game Over

A man in his sixties strode, with a purposely gait, from the pavement onto the road and into the path of the traffic that flowed as if like Jesus he was walking on water, and therefore expected these seas to part. There was no pause, no minute yet identifiable hesitation, not even a look left and right; he just walked. The traffic didn't stop nor did any drivers angrily beep their horns or yell out of hastily rolled-down windows, so untouched he made it to the other side and without a look back carried on down the High Street, obviously not struck by his lucky escape from serious injury or death.

His body could have been ploughed into, thrown up into the air to land on a wind shield and bounce off, to then roll off a bonnet and be driven over, and finally to lie scraped, bleeding and broken on the tarmacked surface. And that's the worst case scenario. I can't tell you what injuries he might have had had that occurred as I'm no medic but I think they would have been either life-threatening or life-changing.

It may not have gone like that, of course. Drivers may have taken avoiding action, thereby causing serious injuries to themselves or to other innocent bystanders. The walker himself may still have escaped unharmed or with only minor cuts and scratches, yet through his thoughtless deed left a trail of beaten up bodies and cars. The emergency services on their way, the sirens already wailing in the background.

I, a law-abiding and safe-conscious citizen, had watched this miracle, of fortune and stupidity, unfold whilst waiting for the green man to appear, which he duly did some time after that risky strategy had been played out and others too had crossed less dangerously but still not when it was entirely safe.

Nobody these days can afford to wait, it seems. Even their own life (or that of others) isn't precious enough. Drivers, too, are not altogether blameless. Some don't slow if they can and will clip a jaywalker deliberately, thinking it's just desserts for crossing when they shouldn't. Maybe it is? But incidents have a erratic habit of spiralling to become nasty accidents. Is it fair that witnesses get drawn into a road-spat? This ongoing war of swear words, impolite gestures and potential mangled bodies...I think not.

Gaming has made us seem like skittles to be knocked down; like animated figures gunned down, blown up, with more lives to lose than we need. And where if you don't get back up it doesn't matter, a brand new (and unhurt) version of you will appear; where wounds magically heal and leave no scars, no physical suffering, no trauma.

Gamers hide behind these self-cloned armies, killing, maiming, car-chasing or using them as missiles, slashing with knives, so in time (and if played obsessively) the sanctity of life is disrespected, which could cross over to reality. Could. I don't know; I've never been a gamer, but isn't it plausible that in some individuals it could warp the brain? Make real life seem like a game?

Which it is. But on a grander, more intricate scale. Where choices and actions have far greater and far reaching consequences. And where people are more dandelion-like: wispy and cobweb-fine compared to their resilient humanoid equivalents, though the players living life might think otherwise. Or even believe the only part of themselves that could be mortally wounded is their pride.

There's a level of violence accepted in gaming which, in my opinion, has transmitted itself to our cities, our streets; but where violence might seem justified in a game, here, in actuality it's not. Ever. No act, random, premeditated, or unthinkingly committed is meaningless. It will cut someone metaphorically speaking, cause pain, grief and tears. Loss. Is our consciousness becoming that numb? Unfeeling?

I don't think so and I hope not. And yet there's not just violence done unto others, but a disregard for ourselves that seems, to me, almost virus-like i.e. contagious. Copy-cats of each other, and in what seems like minor trifling ways since it's now so normalised that nobody tuts, bats an eyelid or admonishes. What's one more life?

Picture credit: Lemmings, White Wilderness, a Disney Nature Documentary

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Space for Thoughts to Echo

City of the Winding Mists. My first thought: Chicago. No, that's the Windy City isn't it? Oh, San Francisco. Of course, the fog. I should have known that.

The mornings were certainly misty and the evenings chilly when I visited in April 2008. But when that mist disappeared, oh, the days were beautifully bright and clear, for the most part as sometimes there was a bit of haze or a few perfectly formed white clouds. Funny how some memories of places stick with you, seemingly forever, as I'm sure they won't have dimmed in another ten, fifteen years, although possibly only because I won't ever go anywhere outside England on my own.

As I've no doubt moaned before: I don't like lone travel. Perhaps that's why it remains so vivid in my mind...my senses were heightened and therefore retained internal photographic-like sensations. I stepped a long long way out of my comfort zone, but didn't in many ways make the absolute most of it. Still, you live and learn, although not necessarily how to do it better. Yet now it has a nostalgic feel, how strange.

Come to think of it, I don't recall hearing San Francisco ever called that: City of Winding Mists. Oh, it's not. It's just the name of some new exclusive apartments in Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle. Hmm, but I think I'd rather refer to it as that than as San Fran or Frisco. Maybe I just like the Asiatic sound of it...I'm somewhat a sucker for that type of thing: names and titles that are almost poetical yet also literal in their description. Perhaps Philip K. Dick thought the same?

It took me a while to come round to the man as I have to do everything in my own time and not when it's trending - that has the opposite effect - and so I only came round to reading his most celebrated (and probably most normal) science-fiction novel last year. I was quite prepared not to like it (although why I thought I wouldn't when I like J. G. Ballard I don't know) but the attraction was instant, like noticing someone as soon as they walk into a room, and let's be honest, how often does that happen? In my case, not very, but then my days of going out, as in going out to mingle, are long gone. I much prefer the company of books, minus the small talk and fizz. Yet to get the same magnetic pull (from a book) you have to first make the decision to read it and secondly to open it; you won't get it from an author photograph if there is one, and if you did that, it would, in my view, be fairly shallow of you, although I do have to say, in order to be completely transparent otherwise you'll never trust me again, there was a picture on the back (of this Modern Classics Penguin edition) and I did think he was bit of a looker.

As you may have gathered, if a novel rises questions (and by only the second page) then it's got me. I'm invested in it, regardless of how it continues to unfold or the eventual outcome, not that I'm one for neat tidying-ups, which is another irony because in the home I like things spick-and-span. Move something an inch and I'll know it, and I do mean if I wasn't there to see you do it. I like order but I don't mind if it's not there in stories; there, I prefer things a little messy, a little undone like a piece of clothing with a busted zip or missing button. It's not perfect, though it could easily be made so, but then such repairs are usually put off until they're either worse than they were or beyond saving. Sometimes when you do nothing, nothing to rectify something, you then continue to fulfil the prophecy by doing precisely nothing. That nothingness becomes routine. Do I know what I mean? No! Do you??

Is that philosophy 101? Certainly not! Whose anyway?

What a load of rubbish I'm sprouting! Plant by name, plantlike nature.

Why does it always turn out this way? And why don't I scrap it, start over? Because I can't; I can't go back to the start. I won't be in the same space. A thought captured can't then be recaptured with the same degree of intensity or interest. It has to change. Its echo can't be the same. Even the echo itself can be discordant: it echoes back something different to the thought freed, instead of reaffirming what I was thinking or what I wanted answered.

Picture credit: San Francisco, 1917, Xul Solar (source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Grains of Sand

“I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life.” Oliver Sacks said that almost, not quite, ten years ago, in October 2009 to his partner Bill Hayes. Admittedly when he said that he was at a more advanced age than I, already in his seventies, but it made me instantly think upon reading it: why don't I feel the same way?

I don't fear death and I don't fear wasting life. Looking back at over three and half decades of it, I see I've done a lot of that – wasted life; I didn't mind then, and I don't mind now. Upon reflection. What would be the use now in regretting what's been done?

Death is a subject matter for another time, but which I'll sum up by saying: I don't fear my own but others', their decline and final departure, and the after. Maybe then, I share Sacks' opinion...? if that's what he meant, more in relation to himself: his own parting.

And indeed some pages on, and after I'd written the above, (on p.124 of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me, the paperback edition, in case you want to find the exact paragraph) he does comment on picturing his own death that he's “not troubled in the least- not serene, but...as if it is the right thing at the right time. And so it will be.” I share that certainty though I'm younger and aren't as yet dealing with the frailties of the mind or body since who can tell how many years are allotted to us. Seeing those changes in others however can be painful, and difficult to acknowledge and accept. Time is so transient when it concerns those you love.

And I said I wasn't going to talk of endings!

But do I think when I, if I, reach a more senior status I'll think: what a waste! It's possible. There are many things I could have been and done; I realise that even now, and yet that's my biggest problem because I'm not great with choice, weighing something up against another. It always becomes about what I stand to lose rather than what I stand to gain. And in those types of scenarios I'll always select: no change. It could be a job, it could be love, it could be the idea of moving home. It doesn't matter, because when your mind, even for a short time, feels it's not your own, then sameness appeals, and usually wins. Or in my case that's how it goes.

How boring! Is it though? I like what I like. I like 'wasting' time reading, thinking, observing, questioning. Yes, it's a singular life and a luxury. An impractical, and some would say, a 'no fun' one. But for me it's akin to breathing. Take it away or stifle it, over and above what I was willing to compromise, and I'm not really sure who or what I am. I go around in more of a daze, if that's possible. My mind running at a speed that I can't keep up with and all of it a jumble and concerned with tasks I don't really care about. There's no gaps for the real me, to just be, or to enjoy those leisurely pursuits in the same manner as before. I can't sustain a life like that. And yet life, if you engage with it: people and work, often requires it of you.

Oh, what a waste! Yep, it is. Now I really consider it. It's a selfish way of living and yet I'm not uncaring, the opposite in fact, though I don't always know how to show it and I'm not too keen on intimacy, but you know, living, I've not really cracked it. You could opine Oliver Sacks didn't until his later years, that he hadn't really lived until he fell in love or opened up to more 'normal' experiences associated with the everyday. Perhaps that will happen to me....? like him at a late stage with somebody junior so that it will surprise me and I'll find I'll go with it. Age can do that to one. The grains of sand that make up your personal time are fewer; you catch what you can, hold in your hand and taste of it.

At least I like to think I'd do that, if say I lived another thirty, forty-odd years and suddenly had new experiences presenting themselves to me. Yet as I write this I think: But you don't have the same temperament of Sacks! You're not sunny or positive like him.

No, I lean towards melancholy, yet we share the habit of random pronouncements (his are recorded by Billy in 'Notes from a Journal') which seem to come from nowhere, as if plucked out of thin air, although of course to the speaker, they're not; they're perfectly logical.

Still, I'm hopeful...not much, but a little, that if I attain his age I'll be as wise and won't (as I do now) want to steal all time for myself and reserve none for new or late comers.

Picture credit: Broadway Desert, a P R Francis original

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Some Broad

I wouldn't have been surprised if John Cheever had described Justice as 'some broad' in his tale of Falconer Jail; he doesn't however, though the phrase is used later, on the last page, in reference to a coat, when, and I quote, looking as if about 'to meet some broad in a very expensive restaurant and buy her lunch.' But he does describe her, at the beginning, as 'blinded, vaguely erotic in her clinging robes and armed with a headsman's sword.'

He's right of course. That's the conventional image most of us recognise and usually see positioned outside or above judicial places where hearings and trials are held, where sentences are served. And yet I find her figure far from assuring and more troubling, though I'm not sure I could tell you why. Not because I'm holding back, worried I'll offend, but because I don't really know myself. Something about her, depicted as she commonly is, pricks my conscience.

No, this is not going to be a case of revision (you breathe a sigh. I hear it before it's even reached its end) because I don't agree with all this tearing down and redesign, though she does smack of 'Olde' whenever she's found. Not that there's anything wrong with mythological symbols, assuming that's what she is? because I've deliberately chosen not to research her but have instead presumed from my small amount of knowledge she was either a Greek or Roman goddess, though I'd rather she was just 'some broad.' Some broad picked up somewhere: on a street corner, working the counter in a shop or diner, sitting in a hotel lobby or a train carriage like in a Hopper painting yet even those images, that slang dates itself to the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, to detective novels and to America, where the streets are laid like girds and, to a Brit, confusedly numbered.

An ordinary dame. A housewife. A secretary. Dated. Dated. Dated. I know, but nowhere near as old and more familiar than Justice.

Do I offend you with this view? with this slang? of the hard drinking (and hard smoking) era, of the (still) more masculine world where people dressed more sharp than they do now and spoke either in clipped or soft tones, of the sort you don't hear now. I know, I'm romanticising a time I didn't live in or even get to experience for one brief moment, when actually being in it wouldn't have been like that at all. I'm looking back, or through, a window that can never for me be recreated exactly and so it will always be some place I'd like to be but can never go.

And that's just one; there are others: even earlier moments in time, which if mentioned progressive peoples of today would say I was mad. We've come so far...and yet too far. Some of our struggles now are more sensitive than worthy. These attitudes are even clouding my view, in spite of separating myself (as best I can) from them.

Maybe I'm being a prude. As couldn't it be the eroticism, some people see (in her), that disturbs me? That somehow it's undignified for Justice to be perceived in that way, though I quite understand why. Is it my modern eyes? which instead of seeing an impartial figure sees a seductress (oops shouldn't say seductress but seducer) like a praying mantis who entices, then, once the deed is done, eats her lover or in this case beheads them.

But is that not a fitting token if they're guilty? Her sword straight and unbending; its swing unimpeded by the silk scarf blinding her eyes, the blow delivered swiftly to the neck. The head rolls. Justice served.

In those bygone gladiatorial and unmerciful days that was justice, whereas today, as more usually happens, those found guilty are carted off and locked up. Their punishment served in months or years with time off for good behaviour alongside a regime which is too comfortable; in the States where the death penalty is still enforced, they swell in size, and appear freakish, like those that used to be exhibited in a circus show. What do they do to them in there? Or does incarceration inflate a man's ego? Prisoners should, if they return to the civilian population, come out clean, and lean as in sinewy, not starved, and hungry to continue their reformation and not go back inside.

Justice now, even wielding a sword, is too blinded.

Picture credit: Office at Night, 1940, Edward Hopper (Source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

An Elevated Chair

Being high up does something to one.
Apart from making one feel crazed if faced with a view of snow. Although that too is a problem. The picture window you look out from filled with a crisp clean white, with only the outlines of structures seen. Those shapes you know but covered in white against a pure white or dove-grey sky makes them instead of friendly inhospitable.
Yes, the sight of white does something to your brain and your naked eye, though I'm not sure what. Correction: my brain, my eye, because that's the only firm evidence I have to go on, sitting up here in my red and white block that's not constructed of brick but of who knows what – mortar and what? - and which therefore moves when washing machines and dishwashers are in use, when windows and doors are slammed and when a wind has turned island-wild: gusts only a small isle can experience and sometimes withstand. The floors bounce and vibrate, the ceiling shakes. The walls hums with the neighbours' activities. Framed pictures shift on their hammered-in hooks and partitions oscillate. Your own refrigerator thumps and clunks. The bathroom extractor clicks when you enter and exit. And somewhere there's an unidentifiable and intermittent beep.
But those are the internals, which living up, raised off the ground so you're more in the sky, sharing it with the birds that fly in it, does not really bear upon; it would be the same anywhere, in close quarters or even in converted properties and terraced housing. It has nothing to do with the number of floors, it's the build, though a documentary once enlightened me that a moving structure is better in an earthquake. So, it has that going for it at any rate, though the earth, as of yet in this small part of the world, does not quake, or if it does it's rarely reported and even rarely felt. Touch wood. I always touch my writing-dining, dining-writing table (I couldn't decide which activity should be mentioned first and which was more important: dining for energy or writing for sanity) in such instances though I'm not convinced it's helpful. I do so now. Ah, what's this! A new indent. How did that occur? And when did I last rotate the table and chairs?
Never mind. It's so easy to become distracted by domestic chores and forget there's an outside at all, excepting as I said when it's white, or so bright it's dazzling and the room in which I sit grows humid so that I feel like a plant mistakenly labelled as a hothouse variety when I'm longing for a gentle breeze to move the drapes and a refreshing drink, on tap. Make mine a Pina Colada. Because that's when from outside all I hear is clink-clink-clink. Glass on glass. And whoops of laughter, that tittered, screeched, whooped, inane and boastful. Look out and I see bared arms and legs and dresses that waft or show a lot off; from up here I have a whole new angle and it's not always pretty or forgiving. The wearers' flesh turning pinker like rashers of bacon as they crisp and not as they think like sausages browning. Neither is good, but the latter, I gather, is more desirable.
Pale English rose, or vampire if you like as I shun this 'Glorious Weather!', sweating indoors and pounding this here keyboard, occasionally halting to exclaim: 'Oh, do shut up!' in reference to the infernal chatter and boom boom boom of music. A very short pause to think ahead to the scrape of chairs on concrete when I may get a golden half hour of silence in which I won't write, properly, due to the hour, but will be able to collect my thoughts, perhaps even scribble them on a post-it and find they still make sense come morning.
And that's some hope, because they usually don't. But the satisfaction at the time, although it was fleeting, was there.
A flat for all seasons, then, from which to observe life and wonder about it and get riled up over. An eagle's nest, a high castle, an ivory tower, though as I've noted it's not that and never will be any of those because I'm nowhere near as high up as that – only three floors yet I make it sound more (and it feels more) since it separates one, and places you in the unenviable positions of either a boss-like figure watching his workforce from above or a prisoner removed from the situation, otherwise termed as normal living.

Picture credit: The Chair, 1975, Salvador Dali.

All posts published this year were penned during the last.