Myopia

This morning I awoke to a naked man lying prone, on his back and staring straight up at me. Huh? Where was I? In an upper bunk hanging over the side which in my haste to check whether my companion was asleep or the verge of waking meant I instead saw rather more than expected? Well, I suppose that would a logical (and the most obvious) conclusion, as would be (if you drew it) that it would be plausible to see a naked man first thing rather than, say, in the afternoon.

Yes, I quite concur, but we weren't actually in the same room, or for that matter under the same roof. Nor did I know upon first seeing his form that he was a he because to me it just looked like a pink body and one devoid of any features or distinguishing marks; even the face was a pink blank as if eyes, nose etc. had been peeled off or had yet to be situated. Similar to a cop show where the body, and the position it's been found in, is outlined in chalk except in this case it was coloured in, in one shade of pink, a slightly-too-much-sun tone.

What I did think was:

1. why would anyone (unless drunk or homeless) choose to sleep stretched out atop a bank of industrial bins,and unclothed too, when it wouldn't be the most comfortable of spots? Inside a bin or the ground would be preferable. Even better, a row of chairs or a bench, and of those there were aplenty. Why and how come will become clearer later.

2. And why did it seem strangely flat...was it fact a pink bodysuit?

My initial assessment done, I should tell you, without my glasses when everything seems more blob-like than sharp and as I drew back the living room curtains to a new day and to my regular view: an emptied, save for the seating and a few shrubs, pub garden. So a body wouldn't have been entirely out of the question, but foul play?

Some people at this point might have reached for the phone and dialled 999, hopefully because blessed with better sight their eyes only confirmed what their mind already thought: it was a human body, but with my sight being what it is I decided to locate my glasses before returning to the scene and making that phone call.

This was quickly done, and the full scene revealed: a deflated naked man, of the blow-up doll and hen party kind, with dark hair and facial features and a smattering of black chest hair, who looked happy enough lying there, abandoned. I imagine he was grateful to have escaped a horde of clutching, pinching hands and being waved aloft.

Imagine if the Police had been called out to that though? Turning up sirens blaring with plain-clothes investigative officers and a forensic team.

Or me racing down in my pyjamas to check if he was breathing; were there injuries? Better the latter than the former I suppose. I would have laughed at myself (once my heart had calmed) as I did when my vision had been restored to 20/20, provided, of course, I hadn't taken the six short flights of stairs, short-sightedly, and had my own accident.

Later, when I checked to ascertain his whereabouts he had been removed, and was now instead of lying flat across the bins crumpled up behind them, in a foetal-like position. Later still, he was still behind the bins but further scrunched up like a used Greggs bag. I almost pitied him, for this abasement, as if he was deserving of more respect. A decent throwing-away. Or at least a more sensible one. But then the pub I overlook isn't often that.

I've been meaning to bring in Gustave Flaubert's friend and literary conscience, Louis Bouilhet, also referred to by Flaubert as his 'left testicle', though other than that nickname how he's relevant I don't see; the thought however has continued to nag, largely because of his rumoured remark to a self-conscious girl: 'when the chest is flat, one is nearer the heart.'

I wonder if that's somehow also true if the body's entirely flat, pulsing and breathing but flat like a washboard, as well as when it's without life or just a different level of it. What is the heart after all? An organ that keeps us alive and/or a spiritual core that makes us who and what we are but is hard to describe.

Ever the philosopher, almost disapprovingly so when myopia's the cause.

Picture credit: Elementary Cosmogony, 1949, Rene Magritte (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Burning Glasses

I hate to be dull but that's exactly what I'm going to be so bear with me for a moment, because yet again I've learnt something new which may not be new to you but I'll pass it on anyway, although this piece of information is not as new to me now as when I first learned of it, a little over a year ago, and probably late at that because surely I should have acquired this scrap of knowledge long before middle-age.

Are late thirties considered middle-aged? They were once, but still...?

But that's another topic, one I haven't got time for, because if this is indeed middle-age then I'm losing ground: only picking up scraps that I should have learned sooner. The circumstances, however, in which to find them – organically and actively or from passively reading matter - didn't occur; the former, exceedingly rare being an introvert, and the latter, well, timing is everything and although you can hunt for books they tend to find you rather than you them, which I've always thought is something to do with being in the right frame of mind for whatever it has to impart, even if receptive you only critique or openly sneer.

Anyhow, where was I? Lord of the Flies. No, but I will be. Sort of. Because I haven't read it. Yet. Not by the time I've written this article – edited it and finalised it - anyway. By the time this is published, most definitely (it's the eighth stop on my journey) but by then it will be beside the point (and will have paled to a lesser significance) whereas at present it's very much the point, the whole point. Sort of.

Again with the sort of. Isn't that a contradiction? Writers do that, you know. We contradict ourselves all the time – in print, in opinion-giving, in plot. And it's far better as writers to recognise our own failings than have readers recognise them or invent them as they commonly do whether you're dead or alive. Yes, mistakes of that sort are ours to own or deny but the narrator is not the author, unless they've said so specifically. Who am I? A hybrid. Strange that I've come out with that when I hold certain views that are best left unsaid, because I'm not some raging feminist either and you'll think I am if I do. I can assure you I'm not. I just find myself more and more in agreement with Flaubert: I don't love humanity.

Piggy. Yes, pigs, the lot of them; but wait...you've got me all wrong...Piggy as in character, goes by the name of, and shares a common condition as well as an uncommon experience with H. E. Bates' Mrs Betteson: that of wearing spectacles and using them to make fire. Of course I thought, what presence of mind at a time when your mind is normally in free-fall, until I learned via Julian Barnes that if those glasses are for short-sightedness then whichever way they're held they'd be 'unable to make the rays of the sun converge' (p.76-77 Flaubert's Parrot).

William Golding obviously didn't realise that; did H. E Bates? Was Mrs Betteson short-sighted? I don't remember, but I think so; the sense of the prose, that I recall, made it seem that way. Is Julian Barnes' Geoffrey Braithwaite, a English retired doctor, correct? Or have I been duped again, believing everything a narrator tells me, for it must be true, mustn’t it? It has to be either universally acknowledged or a theory that is at least scientifically sound, doesn't it?

And why did I feel I had to mention his narrator was a doctor? Does that fact give the information more merit? Subconsciously it must do, on the lines of surely he would know; be less likely to blindly accept: sun and glasses (irrespective of prescription) equals fire.

Hmm, isn't that how cults start? Another's word accepted as Gospel (until you find otherwise) when what you should really do is question everything. I know, who's got the time?

So, truth or untruth I've removed one mental note and replaced it with another (or at least I hope it's been imprinted somewhere) because it might come in useful, and if it did would save me many fruitless hours squatting and peering short-sightedly at a pile of twigs under a burning sun.

Picture credit: Portrait of G A Escher, 1935, M C Escher (source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Did You Know...?

Did you know, I said to my fellow car travellers, that there are two types of plankton: phyto and zoo? Or that the commute to work, according to psychology studies, affects a woman's mental health more than it does a man?

I'm always doing that: throwing in unrelated scraps of information gleaned from other sources, not to impress but to see if they kindle the same curiosity as they have in me. They don't usually, because what should the response be? A polite hmm interesting...or why? and other questions you may or may not have an answer for. As a conversational topic, they're a bit of a non-starter. As are most things I tend to spend time ruminating on.

Like the realisation that came many months ago that younger generations won't get to know or know of certain experiences. The experiences that I was able to have even though they were on the way out, already being done away with. Not then rare but harder to find and now, some if not most, very much extinct. Like what?

Slam-door trains, where in motion with the windows down a pleasant breeze wafts through the carriage, and where to alight you had to release the catch on the outside and sometimes required help from a guard or fellow passenger; jumping on and off an old Routemaster, the conductor with his ticketing machine manning the platform as you ran alongside and hopped on, before ringing the bell to let the driver know it was safe to increase his speed; travelling on the back seat of a car without a seatbelt, even lying stretched out, and feeling every jolt and jog of the road; the squeaky ribbon-sound of cassette and VHS tapes as you continually rewound or fast-forwarded to the beginning or to your favourite place; black and white television with their flickering chalky grey images; and being without a mobile phone or any device with no fear of missing out.

And I haven't mentioned food, the meals that were still around and the ready-made products that came in but have since left: Findus Crispy Pancakes; Lean Cuisine; a roast dinner for one inside a Yorkshire pudding; fried Spam and opening its tin with the key; and pub-served scampi and chips with a wedge of lemon and a bit of salad garish. I won't start on confectionery because we'll be here all day and those around still aren't made the same anyway. Tastes change and recipes alter.

There's a reason most of these disappeared into a fog as thick and as billowing as that of a steam engine: a moving with the times, a new law, a new competitor etc. I haven't said any of those I've mentioned, nor neglected to, were necessarily good for you, they were just part of the fabric of life or became part of it for the period they were there. And looking back now, as we all do at some point, then seems more freeing somehow. The avalanche of choice and new technology (along with workers rights and feminism) had begun but it wasn't as it is now. And everything that we still have was in a different form, more rudimentary, more primitive even. Just as if you compared my decades of growing with my parents' during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Every subsequent generation has a lot to be thankful for, or not as the case may be, but like that cliché: only time will tell.

Perhaps that's why vinyl has never really gone away. Because there's something about carefully positioning the needle and the unavoidable scratch, as well as something hypnotic about watching a record turn. I think, these days, it takes less time i.e. at an earlier stage to catch yourself thinking: it was good then.

In other moments I find myself considering what else might go, what else might go that I enjoy, no, not enjoy, appreciate: the smell of wood smoke on the wind because burning wood will be banned; the revving of engines because electric and driver-less cars have a even quieter character than their modern fuel-guzzling counterparts; and picking and squeezing (for ripeness) fruit and vegetables because lately that activity has been viewed with suspicion, or maybe it's just my execution of it.

And what else...? so that decades on, myself or someone else, will turn to you and say: Did you know...? Do you remember...?

Picture credit: Time Smoking a Picture, William Hogarth (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Disarmed

The other night I had a violent dream, of violence done to another and witnessing it, of being upset, though not shaking with it, and crying, for real. The wet eyes surprised me upon waking; I'd thought they were just a dream-effect and hadn't expected a manifested welling.

It's not often I have dreams that have the power to move me, ones where I'm emotionally invested or involved. Usually there's a split of self which is heavily in favour of passively observing a weaker, projected self, but on this occasion the ratio of that divide was reversed.

And what was weird was that this particular dream placed me in a world I'd hadn't been in for twelve years, set as it was in my second office job at a time when I was well established there as Customer Relations Manager. The everyday motions were as I remember: my assistant and I seated behind our half-moon desk, heads bent over trade orders to be booked for delivery with goods-in departments.

Yes, it was that boringly detailed and really, nothing special; what you would think of as a casual remembrance when a certain task becomes routine. And when the people around you, the different teams, are getting on with their day too, as they also were in the dream: their familiar faces in front of screens concentrating, the atmosphere hushed but not silent. The kind of comfortableness that arises when a group of people are used to one another.

Thus far, a reassuring dream, with a rosy-tint about it. Yes, and it might have stayed that way, largely uneventful, had a gunman not burst in and killed a loved-by-all colleague, point-blank, then made his exit. What he came for achieved in a matter of seconds, like the appearance of an extra in a play whose walk-on part is brief but leaves chaos behind. A catalyst. An instigator. For what? Nobody is ever quite sure at the time. That comes later, possibly, when it's all played out. Dreams, however, never get that far.

There were no words or screams, that I remember, and no body. My colleague was there, then he wasn't, and the gunman too didn't leave any impression of himself - what he wore or looked like. I could have sworn he had on a balaclava, but my mind might have added that detail because I also doubt I really saw him, looked him square in the eyes or took in any of his fleeting presence; and these types of scenarios – real or imagined – would conjure up hoods and masks, and military-style or hunting apparel. I wouldn't even be able to tell you what sort of gun it was, just that I saw what looked like one which I fancied had a long barrel and that a shot was fired. I guess witnesses (to real crimes) have these moments too, so that testimonies while not false are true and untrue because the mind blocks and fills in gaps.

In this instance, the gunman wasn't the focus of the dream. I don't know how I knew that, but I did. And my colleague, though much liked and as inconceivable as it was that he was the victim, wasn't either. It was the tears and the accusations in the aftermath. As to the right way, the socially accepted way, to show shock. To demonstrate grief. The murder victim claimed by his sub-team, giving them the authority (so they believed) to point fingers at those outside their clique reacting differently, and so heightening the general emotionality of the office. An accusative finger was pointed at me for continuing to go about our business, the business of the company and my role, for having had it impressed upon me that trade orders were always a priority. Above a sudden death? Well, yes. That's how it was in the dream. Failure to meet deliveries resulted in fines. A death wasn't going to alter that.

I can't really tell you how I regarded my dutiful response, during or coming to, other than puzzled. My actions seemed rational at the time, if a little remote, but to justify it consciously is harder.

Like most dreams I'll never fully understand it...and it will be replaced, just as this was the following night when instead of being in an office I was dancing in a field, on a summer's day, around a white Cadillac, its bodywork glinting in the sun.

Picture credit: The Obsession, 1928, Rene Magritte (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Man Needs Drama

Man needs drama.

Conflict. Which in the breath it takes to say those three words sweeps up the whole of humanity, yet also separates, so that you may also take my meaning as male in sex or identity. It's my attempt to be more politically correct and not cause offence or alienate anybody, though there's no guarantee I won't do that further on. I come from a different school, a different pool to my peers.

I can't, I won't apologise for that. I have my experiences, you have yours, and those I hear about, read about, I form my own views on, which you may or may not share, based upon my understanding of the world. The world I inhabit, the world I've learned about through taught and self-taught education or first-hand accounts (my own as well as others'). The world of differences and intolerances as well as shared behaviours. And yet still I say man needs drama.

Of some kind. In one shape or another. There will never be a global peace. Peace amongst all men, amongst all kind. Because if we're not warring with other nations, we're fighting amongst ourselves (and even against our own self) or in a battle with nature, causing all sorts of damage and leaving all sorts of scars. Peoples divided, dead or scattered; forests chopped down; seas polluted. Species extinguished, by knives or guns, or poisoned, bodily with chemical warfare or in thought with propaganda.

Last year while reading a H. E. Bates novel, set in Burma as it was known then (and still by some now) about the exodus of people as the Japanese drew closer, I came across a misprint: When Paterson pulled the ear from the road...which tickled (and irked) me because I knew what it should say (and the rest of the sentence made that clear) and as it seemed such a careless mistake, but if someone had randomly opened to that page and skim-read they might have thought something very different, taken it as literal. Pulled an ear? Ugh! Had it been cut off? Got glued to or embedded in the road due to the heat or the trampling of wheels and feet over it? And who had it belonged to; where were they now?

That's how things start. It's as simple as that.

Not everyone checks the information they've given, however it's told or reached them. And whatever the truth people will always believe what they want to believe, and proceed as necessary. Respond calmly or aggressively. Take sides. Stay and stock-pile or make preparations to leave. Families may even disagree and split.

Not everyone spots the unintentional or deliberate mistake at first glance, especially not in this era of information overload where it's more difficult to recognise what is fake and what is real. The two get confused, and so create distrustful nations, suspicious of each other and of organised systems.

You can argue the causes: it's engineered by the government, by social media, by military forces in a position of power, by the West, by the East, by trade and consumerism, by bodies that have an invested interest. Yet for all that: it's us.

Conflict is human-made (and driven) however and wherever it comes about. Perhaps brought about by the single action of a single individual. It takes very little to raise an army or an angry mob, to start a campaign, a war of words – strong but civilised or threat-like and provocative - and for peoples to join that wave of demonstration and protest, of rumour.

You can't please everybody, and not everyone wants to be pleased. Or appeased or indoctrinated. They want to be enraged. By something, by anything. Individually and collectively - be a lone voice or one of many, either separated or unified in an attitude of condemnation, and to pick sides, to prove they're not one of them, they're not one of the other.

The motivations and passions that move people are related to (or are sometimes the same as) those that divide; and that, for as long as Man exists, will raise tricky issues.

Picture credit: Final Battle of the Siege of Troy, 1625, Adam van Noort (source: WikiArt.org)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.