I have always been my own worst enemy - a human paradox whose weaknesses more than cancel out his strengths.
When I was very young, I fell in love with numbers. I enjoyed making lists of times tables, sitting with my head on my chin as I scribbled away at a small white desk. Numbers plucked the strings of my soul - they were my friends in a way that stale, sweating children never could be.
It is an over-exaggeration to state that I was a child prodigy. Irrespective, though, numbers, books and writing all captivated me endlessly. This drew the attention of other people to me; and the more attention I had, the smaller and more insignificant I became. Other people eroded me - I wasn't even ten - until I became a grain of sand or a pinhead or an atom or a quark of self, retreating far into the airless vacuum that had become my body. A cavity, an absence, comprising a single quark.
Everybody loves a freak show. The man with half his face obliterated with MRSA; hirsute females; a child who spent his first years being reared by dogs; the boy who thinks numbers are his friends; the seven-year-old with the cynicism and weariness of an adult.
I blame nobody for acting in accordance with their nature, but the density of these adults' fascination sealed me shut. Not only the demand that I would spew out numbers, perfect, correct, their little abacus, but I would do so with the confidence and poise of a grown-up.
I returned, sick, to the evacuated chamber I had become; pretending to dispense cups of tea from a brick wall rather than turn around to speak. Descriptions, images hurt more and persist longer than real events, and it is because I shrank away, meek and insigificant. A video of John F Kennedy being shot through the head haunted me at the age of 11, grey leaking out of the stricken president and onto the seat below.
The Turin shroud, the mask of Tutankhamun, an anti-smoking advertisement displaying a charcoaled lung. All terrified me, and I refused to sleep in case I woke up enveloped in Christ's blanket, in case all the lights in London and Cairo simultaneously went out, in case the drawling southern American accent talking about the spillage of brain matter should be referring to me. In case my lungs had been plucked out and replaced with hideous black bellows.
I flirted with the past, and with the unlikely, permitting the possible to sweep by as I stood suspended in history and supposition, directing Howard Carter in my sickened astonishment. I pored over relics, dumbstruck, as adults pored over me and cried: he's a genius! It was only numbers, comprehensible ones. I could no more state what x * y is than I could prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
Friday, 30 January 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
Truefish.
A third leaked extract from "One Fish, True Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," publication date July 2009, leaked by a publishing industry mole to inmemoryofabsentfriends in the last week of January.
Four days of indefinite duration had passed by now; four long dreams in the mind of the being who turned symbols into fish.
Eben was aware that the transformation of thoughts into true objects was a divine privilege: the creatures to whom he gave birth would never have that right.
Those dramatic subsets of the Bluefish Calculator would long, however, to be able to act so definitively. For instance, there is no guarantee that the bluefish and the redfish will ever co-incide, despite the creation of both.
The desire for distant, ungraspable objects, indeed, would be both the highest expression and the first seed of downfall, of the new species. In distant future days, art and science would, in their separate languages, speak of the necessity to theorise (about things that might be true) and wishing for things that they wish were true.
Theorising is all well and good, mused Eben, but wishes are dangerous. They focus minds on things other than their creator, and I am very jealous. The first principle of a theory is an observation, and thereafter evidence, while the seed of a wish is a dream or madness. Such a discontinuity will forever separate the realms of science and religion (or art).
Enveloped in steam and rage, the divine Entity realised that he had just invented sin. Those who observe, and collect, are untethered from this new sensation. Those who build towers from fragments of mad dreams - their fins and scales ooze sin.
What was once awareness that the transformation of thoughts into objects could never take place then took upon the nature of an imperative: even if the laws of the Fish Tank were such that these transformations could take place, the scowling lack of co-operation from Eben expressly precludes it.
Violate that will and you are no longer one of the Truefish, the empiricists. The moral barrier transcends any physical bulwark that Eben could put in place. And this realisation, this schism, the dividing line between Truefish and iconoclasts, was the stone which shattered the simple unity of the universe on the third day.
Four days of indefinite duration had passed by now; four long dreams in the mind of the being who turned symbols into fish.
Eben was aware that the transformation of thoughts into true objects was a divine privilege: the creatures to whom he gave birth would never have that right.
Those dramatic subsets of the Bluefish Calculator would long, however, to be able to act so definitively. For instance, there is no guarantee that the bluefish and the redfish will ever co-incide, despite the creation of both.
The desire for distant, ungraspable objects, indeed, would be both the highest expression and the first seed of downfall, of the new species. In distant future days, art and science would, in their separate languages, speak of the necessity to theorise (about things that might be true) and wishing for things that they wish were true.
Theorising is all well and good, mused Eben, but wishes are dangerous. They focus minds on things other than their creator, and I am very jealous. The first principle of a theory is an observation, and thereafter evidence, while the seed of a wish is a dream or madness. Such a discontinuity will forever separate the realms of science and religion (or art).
Enveloped in steam and rage, the divine Entity realised that he had just invented sin. Those who observe, and collect, are untethered from this new sensation. Those who build towers from fragments of mad dreams - their fins and scales ooze sin.
What was once awareness that the transformation of thoughts into objects could never take place then took upon the nature of an imperative: even if the laws of the Fish Tank were such that these transformations could take place, the scowling lack of co-operation from Eben expressly precludes it.
Violate that will and you are no longer one of the Truefish, the empiricists. The moral barrier transcends any physical bulwark that Eben could put in place. And this realisation, this schism, the dividing line between Truefish and iconoclasts, was the stone which shattered the simple unity of the universe on the third day.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Proximity.
The sinusoidal curve model of human emotion outlined some time ago is a useful one, but it is not applicable - even approximately - in every case.
You will recall that the model suggests the fluctuation of mood in a fairly regular pattern: or everything that goes up must come down. 'Fairly regular' gives us some leeway, but there comes a time when we must accept that our thinking is flawed.
The idea of moving towards and away from something still holds good, though. If we take the zero line of the curve as the reference point, then any mood swing at all moves us away from neutral, and towards either complete ecstasy or bottomless misery. Only the rate of motion - its predictability - changes.
I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling extremely 'close' to everything. That is, when I looked at the cat, for example, I could not only detect his excitement as we went through his routine - showing him just enough of a finger or hand to arouse his attacking instincts, the rest of it hidden beneath a cushion, then withdrawing it just in time to miss the slashing, destructive claws - but his determination and playfulness became part of me. I was overwhelmed by a simple, feline joy, suspended in a cattish frame of mind as we did battle.
On any given day, I love the cat. I love him with a big, blank adoration - gestures of my feelings towards him are so conditioned by now that I do them without thinking: talking to him as I'd talk to an adult human, buying him food fit for human consumption. Gestures of love, in this case, are framed by humanity.
It is not the case that, on any given day, I replicate his experiences. It happens only infrequently, on the days when everything is proximate. L is close, transcending her gender; man and cat share the same small space, and neither are uncomfortable. The indivisible wonder and intricacy of nature is apparent, even though I do not claim (like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross) to be able to see the interaction of every atom.
I refer to a vision, a sentiment, which has its limits, but my eye worms in as far as it can. I can no more predict the days when my vision will be enhanced than I can predict the weather - so I treat their occurrence as akin to a gift, albeit one which perishes quickly.
You will recall that the model suggests the fluctuation of mood in a fairly regular pattern: or everything that goes up must come down. 'Fairly regular' gives us some leeway, but there comes a time when we must accept that our thinking is flawed.
The idea of moving towards and away from something still holds good, though. If we take the zero line of the curve as the reference point, then any mood swing at all moves us away from neutral, and towards either complete ecstasy or bottomless misery. Only the rate of motion - its predictability - changes.
I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling extremely 'close' to everything. That is, when I looked at the cat, for example, I could not only detect his excitement as we went through his routine - showing him just enough of a finger or hand to arouse his attacking instincts, the rest of it hidden beneath a cushion, then withdrawing it just in time to miss the slashing, destructive claws - but his determination and playfulness became part of me. I was overwhelmed by a simple, feline joy, suspended in a cattish frame of mind as we did battle.
On any given day, I love the cat. I love him with a big, blank adoration - gestures of my feelings towards him are so conditioned by now that I do them without thinking: talking to him as I'd talk to an adult human, buying him food fit for human consumption. Gestures of love, in this case, are framed by humanity.
It is not the case that, on any given day, I replicate his experiences. It happens only infrequently, on the days when everything is proximate. L is close, transcending her gender; man and cat share the same small space, and neither are uncomfortable. The indivisible wonder and intricacy of nature is apparent, even though I do not claim (like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross) to be able to see the interaction of every atom.
I refer to a vision, a sentiment, which has its limits, but my eye worms in as far as it can. I can no more predict the days when my vision will be enhanced than I can predict the weather - so I treat their occurrence as akin to a gift, albeit one which perishes quickly.
Monday, 26 January 2009
Daisy.
I always knew you would come back to me.
You, the perceptive younger woman who forced me to communicate verbally at a more than superficial level; my amanuensis. You, who in a day tied the severed vocal cords which had been cut off since birth, and gave them some sort of function.
A grating voice emerged from the strands of flesh you had pulled together. We both nodded and agreed - yes, it's not bad. It doesn't have the booming presence of an orator, but it strings words together well enough for you to pass as a human. Don't overdo it - for a while you'll cough up mouthfuls of blood when you try to speak. That's quite normal, but you'll probably find it unpleasant.
If you're sensible, you'll not try to say any tonguetwisters just yet. The repetitiveness of the sounds has been known to reach the resonant frequency of vocal cords, and shatter them like glass. Then you'll be back to square one, broken and silent.
I urge you to remember that all I've done is operate on you. You're not perfected, and nor will you be. You have the (limited) gift of speech, but you must be sparing. I remind you of the right leg which inevitably gives way when you run on it too hard, and you pull up with your blank face for once expressive, pleading for the pain to stop. So it is with the cords - they're delicate little ligaments and take none too kindly to being stretched.
A fortnight of post-operative attention, and you had gone. There are other voiceless ones to fix, and fix them you must. The reparation of voice boxes is your vocation - no time to waste talking to those who have been mended as best they can be.
Like the inventors of the computer, doing computation held no interest for them once they had proved it could be done. For you, conversation with the newly-articulate is a pain, tedious. Empowering others to make sounds is what it's about; the sounds they make are just so many vibrations. Only L is interested in the precise arrangement of sounds.
I always knew you would come back to me. I didn't know the form would be so obvious; another dark-skinned female with similar looks, similar views. Randomly asking me questions as I waited to go home following (ironically) the pulling to the point of breaking my infirm right leg. Such things are co-incidental, yet we make so much of them.
You - your likeness - sat with me the whole length of my journey; telling me about God, and how you're under pressure to get married, and how you jump into bed with anything at all because you don't like yourself. I'd never seen you before in my life, and you spoke to me as though you'd known me forever.
It occurred to me when I reached my stop that you were the doctor's representative, her simulacrum. Now that I've had one final visit - you've not experienced any complications, nogomet? - then I am finally discharged and allowed to cast you and your medical paraphernalia into the receptacle of history.
You, the perceptive younger woman who forced me to communicate verbally at a more than superficial level; my amanuensis. You, who in a day tied the severed vocal cords which had been cut off since birth, and gave them some sort of function.
A grating voice emerged from the strands of flesh you had pulled together. We both nodded and agreed - yes, it's not bad. It doesn't have the booming presence of an orator, but it strings words together well enough for you to pass as a human. Don't overdo it - for a while you'll cough up mouthfuls of blood when you try to speak. That's quite normal, but you'll probably find it unpleasant.
If you're sensible, you'll not try to say any tonguetwisters just yet. The repetitiveness of the sounds has been known to reach the resonant frequency of vocal cords, and shatter them like glass. Then you'll be back to square one, broken and silent.
I urge you to remember that all I've done is operate on you. You're not perfected, and nor will you be. You have the (limited) gift of speech, but you must be sparing. I remind you of the right leg which inevitably gives way when you run on it too hard, and you pull up with your blank face for once expressive, pleading for the pain to stop. So it is with the cords - they're delicate little ligaments and take none too kindly to being stretched.
A fortnight of post-operative attention, and you had gone. There are other voiceless ones to fix, and fix them you must. The reparation of voice boxes is your vocation - no time to waste talking to those who have been mended as best they can be.
Like the inventors of the computer, doing computation held no interest for them once they had proved it could be done. For you, conversation with the newly-articulate is a pain, tedious. Empowering others to make sounds is what it's about; the sounds they make are just so many vibrations. Only L is interested in the precise arrangement of sounds.
I always knew you would come back to me. I didn't know the form would be so obvious; another dark-skinned female with similar looks, similar views. Randomly asking me questions as I waited to go home following (ironically) the pulling to the point of breaking my infirm right leg. Such things are co-incidental, yet we make so much of them.
You - your likeness - sat with me the whole length of my journey; telling me about God, and how you're under pressure to get married, and how you jump into bed with anything at all because you don't like yourself. I'd never seen you before in my life, and you spoke to me as though you'd known me forever.
It occurred to me when I reached my stop that you were the doctor's representative, her simulacrum. Now that I've had one final visit - you've not experienced any complications, nogomet? - then I am finally discharged and allowed to cast you and your medical paraphernalia into the receptacle of history.
Invention.
When something isn't fully understood, the gap which stretches between our minds and the truth can be filled with anything at all.
It is a bridge of adultery, monsters, gods, ghosts and myths: atheists contend that man invented god precisely to prevent any other idea being poured into the chasm. I think I said before that the progression of science continually takes bites out of the body of god, and pares down his territory until he is an endangered species.
The atheist bible, when somebody is brave enough to write it, it will state that man created god in his own image and not the other way around.
(Modern atheism is gradually accumulating its own list of tenets and literature. It used to be defined simply through its absence of belief in a deity or deities. Now atheists proselytise, the most significant example of this in England being the advertisements on buses which state that there is probably no God. Disparate concepts of atheism will one day be laid down in a book of severe gravitas.)
Lack of understanding about the way the universe works prompted the birth of polytheism - one god who delivers thunder (and whose anger must be appeased); one god who regulates crop growth (and must be pleased); one god who distributes sickness to those who have sinned (and so those who are ill are heretical) and so on. By Occam's razor, it makes sense to reduce the ever-growing crowd of beings, multiplying so rapidly that they press at the edges of the world, to a single one.
There is another advantage conferred by stating that monotheism can do the job once carried out by an uncountable number of polytheistic inferiors: the synthesis of an infinity of reticulated images of the creator of numbers (who is distinct from the creator of fish; who is distinct from the creator of planets; who is distinct from the god of war, who is....) weaved into the likeness of the monotheistic rainbow.
It takes an artist of rare genius to depict such a creature: at once meek, terrible, loving, jealous, calm, vengeful, simple, taut, light, horrible, human, vain, comprehensible, nihilistic, glorious, appalling. Where does a composite image of sharp contrast come from? In what furnace is it born?
What machine, similarly, churns out the composite, dizzying images of the nightmare, where a horrendous snake sucking greedily upon the putrefying corpse of a lion, twisted in and out of the dead creature's ribcage like a long, sickening thread, represents the unfulfilled desire for carnality?
The machine is the same one, of course. What is a complicated image of monotheism is the psychotic implosion which causes us to wake up as though fitted with electrodes. I am unsure whether art begot the nightmare, or the other way around - but the visibility of terrifying monotheism and the vulnerability of the sleeping human have sustained each other for millennia.
It is a bridge of adultery, monsters, gods, ghosts and myths: atheists contend that man invented god precisely to prevent any other idea being poured into the chasm. I think I said before that the progression of science continually takes bites out of the body of god, and pares down his territory until he is an endangered species.
The atheist bible, when somebody is brave enough to write it, it will state that man created god in his own image and not the other way around.
(Modern atheism is gradually accumulating its own list of tenets and literature. It used to be defined simply through its absence of belief in a deity or deities. Now atheists proselytise, the most significant example of this in England being the advertisements on buses which state that there is probably no God. Disparate concepts of atheism will one day be laid down in a book of severe gravitas.)
Lack of understanding about the way the universe works prompted the birth of polytheism - one god who delivers thunder (and whose anger must be appeased); one god who regulates crop growth (and must be pleased); one god who distributes sickness to those who have sinned (and so those who are ill are heretical) and so on. By Occam's razor, it makes sense to reduce the ever-growing crowd of beings, multiplying so rapidly that they press at the edges of the world, to a single one.
There is another advantage conferred by stating that monotheism can do the job once carried out by an uncountable number of polytheistic inferiors: the synthesis of an infinity of reticulated images of the creator of numbers (who is distinct from the creator of fish; who is distinct from the creator of planets; who is distinct from the god of war, who is....) weaved into the likeness of the monotheistic rainbow.
It takes an artist of rare genius to depict such a creature: at once meek, terrible, loving, jealous, calm, vengeful, simple, taut, light, horrible, human, vain, comprehensible, nihilistic, glorious, appalling. Where does a composite image of sharp contrast come from? In what furnace is it born?
What machine, similarly, churns out the composite, dizzying images of the nightmare, where a horrendous snake sucking greedily upon the putrefying corpse of a lion, twisted in and out of the dead creature's ribcage like a long, sickening thread, represents the unfulfilled desire for carnality?
The machine is the same one, of course. What is a complicated image of monotheism is the psychotic implosion which causes us to wake up as though fitted with electrodes. I am unsure whether art begot the nightmare, or the other way around - but the visibility of terrifying monotheism and the vulnerability of the sleeping human have sustained each other for millennia.
Friday, 23 January 2009
Writing.
Is the process of writing inevitably always one of compromise?
I ask myself this question in the light of a recent posting on here which irritated and upset L. I refuted her suggestion that one person could efface the loneliness of another with their mere presence, and L considered this to be a refutation of the relationship we have.
On the face of it, to write is to exist in a state of compromise between being able to say anything at all, and saying nothing whatsoever: a compromise between freedom and legislation (I cannot state that nogomet is a murderer, unless it is true, without expecting to be presenting him with a cheque for all the money I have.)
It is a compromise between truth and concealment (if L is not aware that I love her, then it is perhaps better to tell her first before writing about its consequences); a compromise between what I know and what I suspect; a compromise between conscious thoughts which I can detail at leisure, and the roiling undercurrent of unconscious ones which make the shadows of their presence felt; a compromise between creation and enumeration.
To write without compromise, without barriers, what would it entail? If we start with the emptiest phrase I can think of, the one used by children when they are learning so speak, it will hopefully be possible to build on that and make it speak the truth, force it to reflect the unconscious etc:
"The cat sat on the mat."
To negate compromise in the first instance, we can amend the above in order that it is libellous:
"The cat sat on the mat which the perfidious nogomet had earlier stolen."
What about revealing anything that may have been concealed? In doing so, we exacerbate the libel:
"The cat sat on the mat which the perfidious nogomet had earlier stolen. It was not out-of-character for him, for he had a criminal record as long as your arm."
And where are the elements of the unconscious? (Not being a psychoanalyst, I can only mimic this.)
"The cat, and the mat upon which it sat (which the perfidious
nogomet had earlier stolen - it wasn't out-of-character for him,
for he had a criminal record as long as your arm) were
representations of unfulfilled and latent sexual thoughts in
the mind of the dreaming nogomet. The intersection of cat and mat is the most depraved sexual fixation."
I ask myself this question in the light of a recent posting on here which irritated and upset L. I refuted her suggestion that one person could efface the loneliness of another with their mere presence, and L considered this to be a refutation of the relationship we have.
On the face of it, to write is to exist in a state of compromise between being able to say anything at all, and saying nothing whatsoever: a compromise between freedom and legislation (I cannot state that nogomet is a murderer, unless it is true, without expecting to be presenting him with a cheque for all the money I have.)
It is a compromise between truth and concealment (if L is not aware that I love her, then it is perhaps better to tell her first before writing about its consequences); a compromise between what I know and what I suspect; a compromise between conscious thoughts which I can detail at leisure, and the roiling undercurrent of unconscious ones which make the shadows of their presence felt; a compromise between creation and enumeration.
To write without compromise, without barriers, what would it entail? If we start with the emptiest phrase I can think of, the one used by children when they are learning so speak, it will hopefully be possible to build on that and make it speak the truth, force it to reflect the unconscious etc:
"The cat sat on the mat."
To negate compromise in the first instance, we can amend the above in order that it is libellous:
"The cat sat on the mat which the perfidious nogomet had earlier stolen."
What about revealing anything that may have been concealed? In doing so, we exacerbate the libel:
"The cat sat on the mat which the perfidious nogomet had earlier stolen. It was not out-of-character for him, for he had a criminal record as long as your arm."
And where are the elements of the unconscious? (Not being a psychoanalyst, I can only mimic this.)
"The cat, and the mat upon which it sat (which the perfidious
nogomet had earlier stolen - it wasn't out-of-character for him,
for he had a criminal record as long as your arm) were
representations of unfulfilled and latent sexual thoughts in
the mind of the dreaming nogomet. The intersection of cat and mat is the most depraved sexual fixation."
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Alone.
To be human is to exist in a state of perfect and inviolable isolation.
I realised this some years ago when I was in a crowd of more than 55000, and felt as though I must be the loneliest and most detached person present.
Crowds gather because of their shared love of the same idea - music, protest, art, film - but I was painfully aware that I didn't have anything in common with any of them. Any pleasure I took from the event was a private, personal relief.
Loneliness is inevitable: it is a bleak thesis from which there is no escape. We infer the emotions of others by indirect methods - if we did not, then lying would be impossible. Do you love me? Of course, I reply, with eyes as flat and unmoved as a calm sea.
One day, it may be the case that lying will no longer be feasible. Reading the excitation patterns of my brain might result in the answer: of course he doesn't love you. I envisage that very expensive excitation-state machines will see their price bottom out as the technology becomes more widespread. Everyone will have them, little hand-held devices capable of reading thoughts.
Part of what humans have always taken for granted - the potential to conceal things - will no longer be an option. Is it the case, though, that the ability (or imperative?) to share someone else's thoughts also brings an end to loneliness? If someone else can reveal my private, internal monologue, what stone is left unturned? Is such a surgical laying-out of thoughts, one by one, like stamps or car number plates, enough to banish the lonely forever?
If the answer is no, then loneliness is not the simple sharing of thoughts or opinions. It is a feeling, a certainty, that this is how the world is supposed to be experienced; each event undertaken singly. The excitation-machine does not remove the conviction that this is the case, even as it exposes thoughts in all their nudity.
If we accept that we are alone, even in a crowd of 55000, even when inviting another person to crawl underneath our skin and sleep there, then there is truly no escape. Society becomes a weird convention, invented by others long ago to subdue the inclination to act alone; a mark of shame against those who propagate it. Solipsism is rejected because of its feeble convenience.
No, isolation is truly the lot of humankind. We are creatures of conviction, for even impossibly sophisticated tools are insufficient to tease out the hard-wired skein which states: if I cannot be another, as opposed to inferring them, then I am forever alone.
I realised this some years ago when I was in a crowd of more than 55000, and felt as though I must be the loneliest and most detached person present.
Crowds gather because of their shared love of the same idea - music, protest, art, film - but I was painfully aware that I didn't have anything in common with any of them. Any pleasure I took from the event was a private, personal relief.
Loneliness is inevitable: it is a bleak thesis from which there is no escape. We infer the emotions of others by indirect methods - if we did not, then lying would be impossible. Do you love me? Of course, I reply, with eyes as flat and unmoved as a calm sea.
One day, it may be the case that lying will no longer be feasible. Reading the excitation patterns of my brain might result in the answer: of course he doesn't love you. I envisage that very expensive excitation-state machines will see their price bottom out as the technology becomes more widespread. Everyone will have them, little hand-held devices capable of reading thoughts.
Part of what humans have always taken for granted - the potential to conceal things - will no longer be an option. Is it the case, though, that the ability (or imperative?) to share someone else's thoughts also brings an end to loneliness? If someone else can reveal my private, internal monologue, what stone is left unturned? Is such a surgical laying-out of thoughts, one by one, like stamps or car number plates, enough to banish the lonely forever?
If the answer is no, then loneliness is not the simple sharing of thoughts or opinions. It is a feeling, a certainty, that this is how the world is supposed to be experienced; each event undertaken singly. The excitation-machine does not remove the conviction that this is the case, even as it exposes thoughts in all their nudity.
If we accept that we are alone, even in a crowd of 55000, even when inviting another person to crawl underneath our skin and sleep there, then there is truly no escape. Society becomes a weird convention, invented by others long ago to subdue the inclination to act alone; a mark of shame against those who propagate it. Solipsism is rejected because of its feeble convenience.
No, isolation is truly the lot of humankind. We are creatures of conviction, for even impossibly sophisticated tools are insufficient to tease out the hard-wired skein which states: if I cannot be another, as opposed to inferring them, then I am forever alone.
Monday, 19 January 2009
Charlie.
When we make romantic gestures, L and I established, the presentation of significant objects represents something which cannot be entirely expressed with words or movements of the body.
A rose resembles a microphone: it has a mouthpiece, and a wire trailing towards the ground. To all intents and purposes, the rose catches the shape of the words (thoughts, ideas, sentiment) which burn within my body, and expresses them non-verbally to another person. This is one example of a simple romantic gesture which was discussed (but never completed) in an earlier posting.
The idea that an object can represent unspeakable, perfect ideas is a useful one, and it is time to re-visit it for a different purpose entirely. When I spent time in South Africa, I developed a relationship with the autistic brother (we'll call him B) of my then-partner. For him, and for me, verbal communication proved to be a struggle, but we got along as best we could - and did rather well, I'd like to think.
I have always considered that B's world was given greater purpose and greater beauty thanks to the presence of what I am certain is the love of his life - an African Grey parrot named Charlie; a creature who frequently showed almost human levels of intelligence. Glorious mound of feathers, I miss you more than you can know, and I truly love you.
Is it too great a leap of faith to suggest that Charlie was the manifestation of the inexplicable in B? When Charlie spoke, might it have been the derivation of the feelings and difficulties embodied in the autistic man? If this is too great a responsibility to load onto the clever bird's plumage, might he at least have been the real-world object which temporarily lifts the veil from the face of B? If a rose is a microphone, then so is the bird which speaks - it temporarily re-aligns the pieces of an incomprehensible, difficult world; and presents willing humans with a channel through which to reach those who find it hard to speak.
I am of the opinion that animals can feel, that their brains somehow occupy a different dimension to that of humans. I read (although accept that it might not be true) about cattle who flee to high land when a change in pressure or 'something' tells them that an earthquake is on its way; I used to be owned by a cat who was a weather vane - climbing on top of the gas fire, to lie across the horizontal piece of wood there, was a sure sign that snow would not be long in coming. Despite being bad-tempered, the same cat would sit quietly listening to me pour out childhood angst - she could detect when all was not well.
Charlie, I contend, and the person he owned were on the same level - a plane beyond words, although both could use them quite well when the need was there. Force of parrot and force of man, locked away in a universe far from us. Yet the shadows of that shared existence were visible around the edges of both - a unity and bond which subsumed neither but gave each a sense of purpose and belonging.
Yet the bird's life-affirming gifts are also the downfall of B, the man. Charlie demands routine and predictability, his conversation repetitive and unrelated to the material world around him. At times of joy, crisis, indifference and inertia, he still demands a cracker; still tells those who will listen that he is in the shit. Both the crutch and nemesis of autism is he.
A rose resembles a microphone: it has a mouthpiece, and a wire trailing towards the ground. To all intents and purposes, the rose catches the shape of the words (thoughts, ideas, sentiment) which burn within my body, and expresses them non-verbally to another person. This is one example of a simple romantic gesture which was discussed (but never completed) in an earlier posting.
The idea that an object can represent unspeakable, perfect ideas is a useful one, and it is time to re-visit it for a different purpose entirely. When I spent time in South Africa, I developed a relationship with the autistic brother (we'll call him B) of my then-partner. For him, and for me, verbal communication proved to be a struggle, but we got along as best we could - and did rather well, I'd like to think.
I have always considered that B's world was given greater purpose and greater beauty thanks to the presence of what I am certain is the love of his life - an African Grey parrot named Charlie; a creature who frequently showed almost human levels of intelligence. Glorious mound of feathers, I miss you more than you can know, and I truly love you.
Is it too great a leap of faith to suggest that Charlie was the manifestation of the inexplicable in B? When Charlie spoke, might it have been the derivation of the feelings and difficulties embodied in the autistic man? If this is too great a responsibility to load onto the clever bird's plumage, might he at least have been the real-world object which temporarily lifts the veil from the face of B? If a rose is a microphone, then so is the bird which speaks - it temporarily re-aligns the pieces of an incomprehensible, difficult world; and presents willing humans with a channel through which to reach those who find it hard to speak.
I am of the opinion that animals can feel, that their brains somehow occupy a different dimension to that of humans. I read (although accept that it might not be true) about cattle who flee to high land when a change in pressure or 'something' tells them that an earthquake is on its way; I used to be owned by a cat who was a weather vane - climbing on top of the gas fire, to lie across the horizontal piece of wood there, was a sure sign that snow would not be long in coming. Despite being bad-tempered, the same cat would sit quietly listening to me pour out childhood angst - she could detect when all was not well.
Charlie, I contend, and the person he owned were on the same level - a plane beyond words, although both could use them quite well when the need was there. Force of parrot and force of man, locked away in a universe far from us. Yet the shadows of that shared existence were visible around the edges of both - a unity and bond which subsumed neither but gave each a sense of purpose and belonging.
Yet the bird's life-affirming gifts are also the downfall of B, the man. Charlie demands routine and predictability, his conversation repetitive and unrelated to the material world around him. At times of joy, crisis, indifference and inertia, he still demands a cracker; still tells those who will listen that he is in the shit. Both the crutch and nemesis of autism is he.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Dubiety.
The small eastern European country of Moldova can rejoice, for a genius or demi-god has been born there.
Masal Bugduv is his name: a 16-year-old footballer of precocious talent. Reports on various websites in the last few months have suggested it is only a matter of time before he leaves the poor local league behind and takes his rightful place at one of the giant, money-orientated sides in western Europe.
Arsene Wenger, the man regarded as the greatest cultivator of exceptional youth players currently working, is apparently ready to pay £5million to buy the youngster - and transplant him, more-or-less immediately, into his first-choice team at Arsenal.
So bright is Bugduv's future that he made his senior debut for the Moldova national side towards the end of 2008. This is an extraordinary feat, even taking into account the relative paucity of talent available to fill out that particular side.
Perhaps the greatest footballer ever to emerge from eastern Europe is the incomparable Gheorghe Hagi - a perfect storm of questionable temperament, 360-degree vision, grace, timing, and killer instinct. Whispers on various websites assert that Bugduv, the man-child who plays for Olimpia Balti, might one day reach such improbable heights.
Wonderful footballers are like a knife jammed fast into the ribs. In an instant they have struck, faster than a snake, and left you on the floor, trying to scrape up your breath and your blood. One touch to control the ball, one touch to murder you. Masal Bugduv, it would seem, shares the calm, devastating knack of the assassin who needs no tutoring.
Except there is one problem: Bugduv does not exist. There is no panacea cure the ills of local football supporters, no Moldovan Hagi to carry a mediocre national team on his back for the next 15 years. He is an invention, a fake - one that fooled journalists the world over, one that had eager fans salivating as they waited for news of his latest exploits.
Bugduv is a practical joke, designed to lure journalists into the trap of discussing the merits of a player who, by definition, they will have never seen in the flesh. In these latter days of pressing deadlines, facts go unchecked (our hero reached number 30 in the list of most promising footballers in the world in an English paper earlier this week - the article which precipated the revelation of his non-existence) and misinformation is proliferated.
There are myriad lessons to be learned from the sleight of mind caused by Masal Bugduv, of which I shall have more to say later - not least the bovine-like lack of questioning with which your author accepts the outpourings of the media, and the damage caused to a particular world-view when one example of an untruth freezes the mechanism of the whole system.
Masal Bugduv is his name: a 16-year-old footballer of precocious talent. Reports on various websites in the last few months have suggested it is only a matter of time before he leaves the poor local league behind and takes his rightful place at one of the giant, money-orientated sides in western Europe.
Arsene Wenger, the man regarded as the greatest cultivator of exceptional youth players currently working, is apparently ready to pay £5million to buy the youngster - and transplant him, more-or-less immediately, into his first-choice team at Arsenal.
So bright is Bugduv's future that he made his senior debut for the Moldova national side towards the end of 2008. This is an extraordinary feat, even taking into account the relative paucity of talent available to fill out that particular side.
Perhaps the greatest footballer ever to emerge from eastern Europe is the incomparable Gheorghe Hagi - a perfect storm of questionable temperament, 360-degree vision, grace, timing, and killer instinct. Whispers on various websites assert that Bugduv, the man-child who plays for Olimpia Balti, might one day reach such improbable heights.
Wonderful footballers are like a knife jammed fast into the ribs. In an instant they have struck, faster than a snake, and left you on the floor, trying to scrape up your breath and your blood. One touch to control the ball, one touch to murder you. Masal Bugduv, it would seem, shares the calm, devastating knack of the assassin who needs no tutoring.
Except there is one problem: Bugduv does not exist. There is no panacea cure the ills of local football supporters, no Moldovan Hagi to carry a mediocre national team on his back for the next 15 years. He is an invention, a fake - one that fooled journalists the world over, one that had eager fans salivating as they waited for news of his latest exploits.
Bugduv is a practical joke, designed to lure journalists into the trap of discussing the merits of a player who, by definition, they will have never seen in the flesh. In these latter days of pressing deadlines, facts go unchecked (our hero reached number 30 in the list of most promising footballers in the world in an English paper earlier this week - the article which precipated the revelation of his non-existence) and misinformation is proliferated.
There are myriad lessons to be learned from the sleight of mind caused by Masal Bugduv, of which I shall have more to say later - not least the bovine-like lack of questioning with which your author accepts the outpourings of the media, and the damage caused to a particular world-view when one example of an untruth freezes the mechanism of the whole system.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Blank.
The photograph I added to my profile truly is the face of Asperger's Syndrome. A cursory glance at it erases any of the lingering doubts I might have.
Blank expression, dead eyes, behind which there is dammed a limitless cathexis, give the game well and truly away. What a textbook case I am! I searched eagerly for a mugshot which conveyed any sense of human sentiment whatever - but all are akin to staring at the unflinching bone exterior of the deceased.
Nothing stirs the shuttered, fleshless interface that was broken irreperably somewhere along the line - either that or I was poleaxed from the moment of my premature birth. I connect only weakly with all that exists outside the quiet, solipsistic boundary marked 'I.' I always felt disconnected: like neon, I shine without reacting.
A 'deficit' is the name given by psychologists to such phenomena - a cruel but accurate summation. Those who have been picked up by the corpus calossum and dropped from a great height; those who mistake dustbins for children; those who shrink away from social engagements, all are considered under the umbrella term 'deficit.'
Laughing without feeling laughter; expressing joy when there is none. This is to separate the fish from its swim, the bird from its song, and God from his miracle.
The secondary characteristics that define what it is to be human - not the strictly necessary ones of eating, drinking, sleeping, defecating - but the ones on the next-bottom layer of the pyramid relating to empathy, reciprocity, feeling, interest, understanding, are absent in those with a shattered interface.
I speak of absence, and yet it is an absence that I am aware of. Despite never having known what it means or feels like to be an integrated, undamaged human, I still can express the idea of what it means to be that way. The unending schemata, put together through observation - when to smile, when to speak, when to express sympathy.... I do all of it artificially, yet adequately enough to pass muster.
'Knowing absences' relate to things which once orbited the transience of our lives which are subsequently longed for: friends we no longer see; the cat which owned me when I was a child; love ones who are no longer here, or individual memory sets relating to single events: the night Barnsley beat Chelsea; the day I thought I stumbled on the love of my life in London; when I first felt convinced I'd written something complete.
People, and events, leave identifiable holes in our person (consciousness) which we then go about filling with a rainbow of memories and analogies. We can fill them well enough, because we know what shape analogy fits in any particular gap.
What, though, of the unknowing absence? I contended above that I observe the schematics of human behaviour, and then proceed to imitate it, and thus manage to divert the view of other humans from the vast black hole which turns within me. Is the schematic theory broad enough to explain not only the observation/imitation argument, but to furthermore explain the certainty that I know how humans feel as they are laughing, crying, being flirtatious, arguing?
"If I've lived once, I might as well have lived a thousand times, or a million."
Does this complicated, improbable idea not answer every question that can be posed about how a quasi-Asperger's sufferer nevertheless knows what it is to feel, to love, to hope, to dream?
"Old souls accumulate knowledge and are re-born with it intact in some kind of Lamarckian imperative."
And so it is the case. The South African lady, and L, suddenly find that their cyclical assessment of human existence is given some unexpected credence.
If I have lived before (as a human with other deficits, or none at all) then the residue of that existence might persist into this, my nth trip on the endless rollercoaster of homo sapiens. It explains how a person might be irreversibly detached from, yet tentatively attached, to the humour, inquisitiveness and flirtatiousness of other people, without ever being able to genuinely make such gestures themselves.
Blank expression, dead eyes, behind which there is dammed a limitless cathexis, give the game well and truly away. What a textbook case I am! I searched eagerly for a mugshot which conveyed any sense of human sentiment whatever - but all are akin to staring at the unflinching bone exterior of the deceased.
Nothing stirs the shuttered, fleshless interface that was broken irreperably somewhere along the line - either that or I was poleaxed from the moment of my premature birth. I connect only weakly with all that exists outside the quiet, solipsistic boundary marked 'I.' I always felt disconnected: like neon, I shine without reacting.
A 'deficit' is the name given by psychologists to such phenomena - a cruel but accurate summation. Those who have been picked up by the corpus calossum and dropped from a great height; those who mistake dustbins for children; those who shrink away from social engagements, all are considered under the umbrella term 'deficit.'
Laughing without feeling laughter; expressing joy when there is none. This is to separate the fish from its swim, the bird from its song, and God from his miracle.
The secondary characteristics that define what it is to be human - not the strictly necessary ones of eating, drinking, sleeping, defecating - but the ones on the next-bottom layer of the pyramid relating to empathy, reciprocity, feeling, interest, understanding, are absent in those with a shattered interface.
I speak of absence, and yet it is an absence that I am aware of. Despite never having known what it means or feels like to be an integrated, undamaged human, I still can express the idea of what it means to be that way. The unending schemata, put together through observation - when to smile, when to speak, when to express sympathy.... I do all of it artificially, yet adequately enough to pass muster.
'Knowing absences' relate to things which once orbited the transience of our lives which are subsequently longed for: friends we no longer see; the cat which owned me when I was a child; love ones who are no longer here, or individual memory sets relating to single events: the night Barnsley beat Chelsea; the day I thought I stumbled on the love of my life in London; when I first felt convinced I'd written something complete.
People, and events, leave identifiable holes in our person (consciousness) which we then go about filling with a rainbow of memories and analogies. We can fill them well enough, because we know what shape analogy fits in any particular gap.
What, though, of the unknowing absence? I contended above that I observe the schematics of human behaviour, and then proceed to imitate it, and thus manage to divert the view of other humans from the vast black hole which turns within me. Is the schematic theory broad enough to explain not only the observation/imitation argument, but to furthermore explain the certainty that I know how humans feel as they are laughing, crying, being flirtatious, arguing?
"If I've lived once, I might as well have lived a thousand times, or a million."
Does this complicated, improbable idea not answer every question that can be posed about how a quasi-Asperger's sufferer nevertheless knows what it is to feel, to love, to hope, to dream?
"Old souls accumulate knowledge and are re-born with it intact in some kind of Lamarckian imperative."
And so it is the case. The South African lady, and L, suddenly find that their cyclical assessment of human existence is given some unexpected credence.
If I have lived before (as a human with other deficits, or none at all) then the residue of that existence might persist into this, my nth trip on the endless rollercoaster of homo sapiens. It explains how a person might be irreversibly detached from, yet tentatively attached, to the humour, inquisitiveness and flirtatiousness of other people, without ever being able to genuinely make such gestures themselves.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Repetition.
If I've lived once, I might as well have lived a thousand times, or a million.
The idea is not one that's ever held much water, I have to confess, yet for all that the suggestion keeps - ironically - being repeated.
There must be a probability, however small, that the life I consider to be all I have, and all I shall ever have, is but a vanishingly thin slice from the limitless block of existence held in my name; one card from a stack which numbers more than the atoms in the universe.
'Old soul' is the simple definition preferred by the South African woman who first approached the subject: such is our proximity that I'm convinced we knew each other in a previous life. The content of that statement, though, was rooted in more than idle speculation.
She genuinely believed that she could tell, by sight, those whose demeanour belied their newness, their soul as airy and light as a bubble, floating towards its punchline. "She's a new soul," she'd comment intermittently, her conviction absolute.
The more you lived, though, the more you feel the dead weight of humanity bearing down on the head, the neck, the shoulders. Old souls are, in her view, equated with weight of purpose and intensity. Old souls accumulate knowledge and are re-born with it intact in some kind of Lamarckian imperative.
I wonder if the South African view accords with the Nietzscheian one of eternal repetition; the same life repeated in an unbreakable loop, deterministically, with the same mistakes made at the same time? The same optimism and subsequent failure and contingent hopelessness - the same brutal, unavoidable death?
If I've lived once, I might as well have lived a thousand times, or a million - and I know now that at least one other person believes it to be the case.
How many consecutive lives: violent, short, bitter, unfulfilled lives, might have been terminated at the same point, in the same repetitive way as L watched on, shocked and heartbroken?
Like the amnesia victim who asks the whereabouts of a special person every few minutes, only to burst into tears when the news is broken that they have died - the cycle repeating itself indefinitely as the memory trace holding the information fades - if I have lived once, and am condemned to repetition, then L's fate is to bear witness to, and experience afresh each time, the deflection of my body up and over a car bonnet, rising fifteen feet into the air, describing a perfect arc, before falling to the ground, crumpled like a ball of paper with the sound of the vehicle's horn colouring the air.
The idea is not one that's ever held much water, I have to confess, yet for all that the suggestion keeps - ironically - being repeated.
There must be a probability, however small, that the life I consider to be all I have, and all I shall ever have, is but a vanishingly thin slice from the limitless block of existence held in my name; one card from a stack which numbers more than the atoms in the universe.
'Old soul' is the simple definition preferred by the South African woman who first approached the subject: such is our proximity that I'm convinced we knew each other in a previous life. The content of that statement, though, was rooted in more than idle speculation.
She genuinely believed that she could tell, by sight, those whose demeanour belied their newness, their soul as airy and light as a bubble, floating towards its punchline. "She's a new soul," she'd comment intermittently, her conviction absolute.
The more you lived, though, the more you feel the dead weight of humanity bearing down on the head, the neck, the shoulders. Old souls are, in her view, equated with weight of purpose and intensity. Old souls accumulate knowledge and are re-born with it intact in some kind of Lamarckian imperative.
I wonder if the South African view accords with the Nietzscheian one of eternal repetition; the same life repeated in an unbreakable loop, deterministically, with the same mistakes made at the same time? The same optimism and subsequent failure and contingent hopelessness - the same brutal, unavoidable death?
If I've lived once, I might as well have lived a thousand times, or a million - and I know now that at least one other person believes it to be the case.
How many consecutive lives: violent, short, bitter, unfulfilled lives, might have been terminated at the same point, in the same repetitive way as L watched on, shocked and heartbroken?
Like the amnesia victim who asks the whereabouts of a special person every few minutes, only to burst into tears when the news is broken that they have died - the cycle repeating itself indefinitely as the memory trace holding the information fades - if I have lived once, and am condemned to repetition, then L's fate is to bear witness to, and experience afresh each time, the deflection of my body up and over a car bonnet, rising fifteen feet into the air, describing a perfect arc, before falling to the ground, crumpled like a ball of paper with the sound of the vehicle's horn colouring the air.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Twofish.
A second leaked extract from "One Fish, True Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," publication date July 2009, leaked by a publishing industry mole to inmemoryofabsentfriends in the second week of January.
The definition of such words as 'beauty,' 'life,' 'movement,' and 'infinity' is correctly understood to be the sublime motif of the fifth day's dreamwork.
Eben did not understand them as strings of letters possessing the property 'English'; no - 'beauty' and so on are the weak attempts of a human author to conceptualise the symbols output by the giant calculating machine, the first id, which we now know to be the mental processes of the universe itself.
It had long been known that sevenths could be added to quarters, and sixths to halves, but the Water Gatherer was not satisfied with this: when Eben, in his rage and loathing, slammed the two halves of the universe into each other and discovered the Third Colour - yes, this was analogous to the carrying out of addition.
The two hemiverses continue to exist as before, but the resulting sum is greater than either blue or red alone. The prophet had therefore completed the most straightforward of the four operants, and the sum was called 'bluefish.'
Now he wanted to know what would happen when, for example, the symbol standing for 'life' was divided by the symbol representing 'beauty.'
According to the arithmetical operations derived when Eben invented numbers; when a is divided by b, both a and b cease to exist. What remains is c, a quotient. If dividing symbols is the same as dividing numbers, then when life is divided by beauty, a third property emerges which is neither beauty nor life, but nevertheless connected with the first two.
It seems, then, that all is lost for the bluefish, so recently thrust into the infant universe. Neither her life - the numerator - nor her beauty - the denominator - can persist once the division has been carried out. Yet what if her demise is merely a metaphor of a metaphor? What if the metaphor says that both life and beauty can continue to exist in a changed, diminished state?
If bluefish were able to speak, she might say that the quotient arrived at is the realisation of her own consciousness. And, once conscious, the first thing she'd be aware of is the sobering reality that there exist no other fish - no blue ones, red ones or Third Coloured ones. The quotient of life over beauty is nothing other than loneliness.
So the prophet cast his rod into the breadthless, depthless, dimensionless dream-vision, scraping the red half of the universe against the blue half until the sum was completed for a second time. There squirmed out of the wound between blue and red a second identical fish - a miracle! As it had the characteristics of the red half of the universe, it was thereafter known as 'red fish.' And that was the fourth day.
The definition of such words as 'beauty,' 'life,' 'movement,' and 'infinity' is correctly understood to be the sublime motif of the fifth day's dreamwork.
Eben did not understand them as strings of letters possessing the property 'English'; no - 'beauty' and so on are the weak attempts of a human author to conceptualise the symbols output by the giant calculating machine, the first id, which we now know to be the mental processes of the universe itself.
It had long been known that sevenths could be added to quarters, and sixths to halves, but the Water Gatherer was not satisfied with this: when Eben, in his rage and loathing, slammed the two halves of the universe into each other and discovered the Third Colour - yes, this was analogous to the carrying out of addition.
The two hemiverses continue to exist as before, but the resulting sum is greater than either blue or red alone. The prophet had therefore completed the most straightforward of the four operants, and the sum was called 'bluefish.'
Now he wanted to know what would happen when, for example, the symbol standing for 'life' was divided by the symbol representing 'beauty.'
According to the arithmetical operations derived when Eben invented numbers; when a is divided by b, both a and b cease to exist. What remains is c, a quotient. If dividing symbols is the same as dividing numbers, then when life is divided by beauty, a third property emerges which is neither beauty nor life, but nevertheless connected with the first two.
It seems, then, that all is lost for the bluefish, so recently thrust into the infant universe. Neither her life - the numerator - nor her beauty - the denominator - can persist once the division has been carried out. Yet what if her demise is merely a metaphor of a metaphor? What if the metaphor says that both life and beauty can continue to exist in a changed, diminished state?
If bluefish were able to speak, she might say that the quotient arrived at is the realisation of her own consciousness. And, once conscious, the first thing she'd be aware of is the sobering reality that there exist no other fish - no blue ones, red ones or Third Coloured ones. The quotient of life over beauty is nothing other than loneliness.
So the prophet cast his rod into the breadthless, depthless, dimensionless dream-vision, scraping the red half of the universe against the blue half until the sum was completed for a second time. There squirmed out of the wound between blue and red a second identical fish - a miracle! As it had the characteristics of the red half of the universe, it was thereafter known as 'red fish.' And that was the fourth day.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Errata.
I didn't know what would happen when I encouraged you to write.
I didn't know I'd helped you fix together the jagged ends of the circuit you ripped apart as a teenager.
I didn't know the electricity would destroy your bones, illuminating them like Christmas - and mine.
And I didn't know you'd turn the dial up, hell-bent, even as you vomited electrons.
I didn't know when I said darling, travel-writing's not beyond you;
I didn't know the only journey you'd record was the return to your own bomb-scarred history,
I didn't know you'd go back to the garage, tearing up the ghosts from under their gravestones.
And I didn't know your grandfather would barrel you over a cliff again.
I didn't know I had asked you to untwist the long screw that fastens your sanity;
I didn't know it spanned the length of your body - hair, chin, stomach, ankles.
I didn't know that even untamed lovemaking won't close the five-and-a-half-foot wound.
And I didn't know I'd done for both of us, inoperably.
I didn't know I'd helped you fix together the jagged ends of the circuit you ripped apart as a teenager.
I didn't know the electricity would destroy your bones, illuminating them like Christmas - and mine.
And I didn't know you'd turn the dial up, hell-bent, even as you vomited electrons.
I didn't know when I said darling, travel-writing's not beyond you;
I didn't know the only journey you'd record was the return to your own bomb-scarred history,
I didn't know you'd go back to the garage, tearing up the ghosts from under their gravestones.
And I didn't know your grandfather would barrel you over a cliff again.
I didn't know I had asked you to untwist the long screw that fastens your sanity;
I didn't know it spanned the length of your body - hair, chin, stomach, ankles.
I didn't know that even untamed lovemaking won't close the five-and-a-half-foot wound.
And I didn't know I'd done for both of us, inoperably.
Monday, 12 January 2009
Bluefish.
An extract from "One Fish, True Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," publication date July 2009, leaked by a publishing industry mole to inmemoryofabsentfriends in the second week of January.
1: Blueshift.
In the beginning, there was nothing at all.
Before the seventh day, there were no numbers to express the idea that the seventh day would soon exist.
Then an empty universe came into being: empty with the exception of its colouration - one half red, and one half blue, the significant outcome of a dream in the vast mind of the Master Fisherman.
It is from here that we arrive at the notion of 'one' and 'two' and 'half.' When the red half and the blue half are accepted, we can become familiar with the even numbers: a red quarter and a blue one and a red quarter and a blue one give us 'four,' and the arrangement is not impossible to visualise, even in a dream.
The odd numbers are more problematic, and until we resolve them, the seventh day cannot be known as the seventh day. It requires the notion of an inequality, the blue four-sevenths bleeding into the red three-sevenths; the concept of something being stronger than something else. This was one of the outstanding achievements of the Master Fisherman: to accept that balance can sometimes be disrupted, and this was the sum total of the seventh day - to name itself four-sevenths blue and three-sevenths red.
The universe and all that is in it; the world and all that is in it, was created in seven days, in accordance with Judeo-Christian mythology. As long as there are no conscious entities, though, to appeal otherwise, a day can be as long as the Master Fisherman desires: the Planck time, 24 hours, or millennia. So the Lightning Rod took some time off, for he was very tired after inventing numbers, and dreamed about what dream-fragments he would like to realise on his re-emergence into his deepest sleep.
He had always been known as the Fisherman: the word resounded in his head during that longest of long nights, though he had never concerned himself with such earthly, uninteresting matters as investigating what movement and beauty lived behind its string of four letters. He dreamed that when he was just an apprentice fisherman, anyway, he picked up one of the dictionaries used by the Spanish humans, and they called 'pescado' what the English-speaking humans called 'fish.' He was sure, therefore, that pescado/fish was not a value judgment, just a convenient label. Only numbers, which he invented, remain the same across the puny radius of humanity; only they transmit value.
The Lightning Rod roared with loneliness and fury upon his awakening into deep sleep, clattering the red half of the universe and the blue half (parity had been restored) together like cymbals to occupy himself. The frantic coming-together of the partitioned halves bled red and blue together at the boundary where they struck, a quantity of a third colour squeezed out from the interior of the hemiverses. Long ago had the Master realised that sevenths could be added to quarters, and sixths to halves, but this mixing of colour hurt his eyes and made him blind, dazzling him into a long period of surface, uncreative rest. That was the sixth day.
On the fifth day, the sinusoidal curve of the Fisherman's intuition rose like a balloon again, and he fixed his wounded, dilated eye on the quantity of Third Colour - red flooding into blue, and blue flooding into red - that his agitation had produced. There was movement and beauty therein, pushing through the synthesis of red and blue, and displacing it upwards and outwards.
Eben - for that was the name of the Fisherman - wished to commute with the moving, lithe aptitude whose pressure parted the Third Colour in the places where its force moved, and felt the longing and passion for this otherness. Joyfully, he drilled his infinite brain through the proliferation of depth and colour and one and two, and delivered to himself an alive, breathing something which was the same as the blue half of the universe.
If I am a fisherman, concluded Eben, then what I have derived can be nothing other than a fish - made of the same substance as blue half of the universe, and therefore I shall call it 'blue fish.' Verily, I declare that the blue fish is the first form, and all other forms of life will stem from this. The blue fish comprises, and is a representation of, the dream-words 'beauty,' 'life,' 'movement,' and 'infinity.'
1: Blueshift.
In the beginning, there was nothing at all.
Before the seventh day, there were no numbers to express the idea that the seventh day would soon exist.
Then an empty universe came into being: empty with the exception of its colouration - one half red, and one half blue, the significant outcome of a dream in the vast mind of the Master Fisherman.
It is from here that we arrive at the notion of 'one' and 'two' and 'half.' When the red half and the blue half are accepted, we can become familiar with the even numbers: a red quarter and a blue one and a red quarter and a blue one give us 'four,' and the arrangement is not impossible to visualise, even in a dream.
The odd numbers are more problematic, and until we resolve them, the seventh day cannot be known as the seventh day. It requires the notion of an inequality, the blue four-sevenths bleeding into the red three-sevenths; the concept of something being stronger than something else. This was one of the outstanding achievements of the Master Fisherman: to accept that balance can sometimes be disrupted, and this was the sum total of the seventh day - to name itself four-sevenths blue and three-sevenths red.
The universe and all that is in it; the world and all that is in it, was created in seven days, in accordance with Judeo-Christian mythology. As long as there are no conscious entities, though, to appeal otherwise, a day can be as long as the Master Fisherman desires: the Planck time, 24 hours, or millennia. So the Lightning Rod took some time off, for he was very tired after inventing numbers, and dreamed about what dream-fragments he would like to realise on his re-emergence into his deepest sleep.
He had always been known as the Fisherman: the word resounded in his head during that longest of long nights, though he had never concerned himself with such earthly, uninteresting matters as investigating what movement and beauty lived behind its string of four letters. He dreamed that when he was just an apprentice fisherman, anyway, he picked up one of the dictionaries used by the Spanish humans, and they called 'pescado' what the English-speaking humans called 'fish.' He was sure, therefore, that pescado/fish was not a value judgment, just a convenient label. Only numbers, which he invented, remain the same across the puny radius of humanity; only they transmit value.
The Lightning Rod roared with loneliness and fury upon his awakening into deep sleep, clattering the red half of the universe and the blue half (parity had been restored) together like cymbals to occupy himself. The frantic coming-together of the partitioned halves bled red and blue together at the boundary where they struck, a quantity of a third colour squeezed out from the interior of the hemiverses. Long ago had the Master realised that sevenths could be added to quarters, and sixths to halves, but this mixing of colour hurt his eyes and made him blind, dazzling him into a long period of surface, uncreative rest. That was the sixth day.
On the fifth day, the sinusoidal curve of the Fisherman's intuition rose like a balloon again, and he fixed his wounded, dilated eye on the quantity of Third Colour - red flooding into blue, and blue flooding into red - that his agitation had produced. There was movement and beauty therein, pushing through the synthesis of red and blue, and displacing it upwards and outwards.
Eben - for that was the name of the Fisherman - wished to commute with the moving, lithe aptitude whose pressure parted the Third Colour in the places where its force moved, and felt the longing and passion for this otherness. Joyfully, he drilled his infinite brain through the proliferation of depth and colour and one and two, and delivered to himself an alive, breathing something which was the same as the blue half of the universe.
If I am a fisherman, concluded Eben, then what I have derived can be nothing other than a fish - made of the same substance as blue half of the universe, and therefore I shall call it 'blue fish.' Verily, I declare that the blue fish is the first form, and all other forms of life will stem from this. The blue fish comprises, and is a representation of, the dream-words 'beauty,' 'life,' 'movement,' and 'infinity.'
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Sleep.
L can no longer sleep because I am the spike which rises through her bed and turns agonisingly in her.
L can no longer sleep because to sever our rainbow for a few hours leaves her a speechless, capsized addict.
L can no longer sleep because even the drowsy, punch-drunk tiredness that shuts off consciousness cannot nullify her.
L can no longer sleep because I feel guilty that she can no longer sleep; even though she counts the molecules of my guilt individually.
L can no longer sleep, even when I invite her to crawl underneath the blanket of my skin and close her eyes.
L can no longer sleep because there isn't an astringent severe enough to stifle the wound left when my body is ripped away from hers, and she bleeds to death, awake.
L can no longer sleep because her bed is a coffin, and the weight of my body is akin to the earth pushing eternally down on her.
L can no longer sleep because to sever our rainbow for a few hours leaves her a speechless, capsized addict.
L can no longer sleep because even the drowsy, punch-drunk tiredness that shuts off consciousness cannot nullify her.
L can no longer sleep because I feel guilty that she can no longer sleep; even though she counts the molecules of my guilt individually.
L can no longer sleep, even when I invite her to crawl underneath the blanket of my skin and close her eyes.
L can no longer sleep because there isn't an astringent severe enough to stifle the wound left when my body is ripped away from hers, and she bleeds to death, awake.
L can no longer sleep because her bed is a coffin, and the weight of my body is akin to the earth pushing eternally down on her.
Friday, 9 January 2009
Pit.
A general practitioner once told me that human emotions follow a more-or-less sinusoidal curve, its peaks and troughs not deviating far from a particular height or depth, and arriving in a fairly predictable manner.
He said this as he handed over another prescription for the 20mg bullets that rubbed out entire afternoons, a vast, mushrooming whiteness destroying the retina and splitting apart ganglion.
Oh, polluting, infinite poultice, drawing dirt and acid and inflammation from the apparatus and corrupting the senses with its layers of snow. Snow got in behind the eyes and froze them to death, snowflakes in their trillions impacted the throat, snow bit off the fingers and nose, snow immobilised the tongue and felt pleased with itself.
I could not write a word for months after the doctor pulled the trigger and blasted the capsule into the brain. It took two days for the shock of the impact to register; I was expunged afterwards, the sinusoidal arrangement crushed and extended to a flatline.
Now, more than 18 months after the medical weaponry was decomissioned, I can only create when my present tense dips below the zero line of the curve, into negative numbers. It is the pit where I starve, foreboding in my dark clothes with dark moods.
Pitch is the opposite of the deep freeze - instead of feeling nothing, I feel everything, a bleak charge of electricity to chew upon, the bit; every word or thought that I rip out of myself registers with astonishment.
Promises and flowers and sighs chopped off at their birth, I hate them all. Infestation of ants that nourish upon the trophy of my body, carrying me away infinitesimal by infinitesimal, omnidirectionally so that no doctor can recover all the pieces this time.
He said this as he handed over another prescription for the 20mg bullets that rubbed out entire afternoons, a vast, mushrooming whiteness destroying the retina and splitting apart ganglion.
Oh, polluting, infinite poultice, drawing dirt and acid and inflammation from the apparatus and corrupting the senses with its layers of snow. Snow got in behind the eyes and froze them to death, snowflakes in their trillions impacted the throat, snow bit off the fingers and nose, snow immobilised the tongue and felt pleased with itself.
I could not write a word for months after the doctor pulled the trigger and blasted the capsule into the brain. It took two days for the shock of the impact to register; I was expunged afterwards, the sinusoidal arrangement crushed and extended to a flatline.
Now, more than 18 months after the medical weaponry was decomissioned, I can only create when my present tense dips below the zero line of the curve, into negative numbers. It is the pit where I starve, foreboding in my dark clothes with dark moods.
Pitch is the opposite of the deep freeze - instead of feeling nothing, I feel everything, a bleak charge of electricity to chew upon, the bit; every word or thought that I rip out of myself registers with astonishment.
Promises and flowers and sighs chopped off at their birth, I hate them all. Infestation of ants that nourish upon the trophy of my body, carrying me away infinitesimal by infinitesimal, omnidirectionally so that no doctor can recover all the pieces this time.
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Returning.
Sooner or later everyone has to come back to themselves; the postponed re-arrival to the same contradiction, the same deficit, the same bag of bones.
The blank fascia gives away nothing; no hint of the thunderstuck machine, raging and broken, that spews out facsimile after facsimile of itself in the night. Whilst the return was inevitable, it is still greeted with the weariness of one who has carved the same furrow in perpetuity.
Violence is the answer to everything, the nucleus of creation and destruction, old superceded by new not in stria but in upheaval. Upheaval, it goes without saying, possesses the structureless and absurd mark of violence, the surprising boot in the face that sends a person crashing five feet six inches from head height to ground, confused.
Nobody is surprised anymore when I suffer with altitude sickness and need to descend because the air is too thin for me. Parents, friends, shrug their shoulders and declare that there's never been much oxygen up there, and you must have been crazy to think otherwise.
In this case, the altitude is named L, the altitude is named existence, the altitude is named fear. The latter two must be overcome, the first one must be submitted to entirely.
The blank fascia gives away nothing; no hint of the thunderstuck machine, raging and broken, that spews out facsimile after facsimile of itself in the night. Whilst the return was inevitable, it is still greeted with the weariness of one who has carved the same furrow in perpetuity.
Violence is the answer to everything, the nucleus of creation and destruction, old superceded by new not in stria but in upheaval. Upheaval, it goes without saying, possesses the structureless and absurd mark of violence, the surprising boot in the face that sends a person crashing five feet six inches from head height to ground, confused.
Nobody is surprised anymore when I suffer with altitude sickness and need to descend because the air is too thin for me. Parents, friends, shrug their shoulders and declare that there's never been much oxygen up there, and you must have been crazy to think otherwise.
In this case, the altitude is named L, the altitude is named existence, the altitude is named fear. The latter two must be overcome, the first one must be submitted to entirely.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
RIP.
They shot Jimmy Mohlala dead.
This isn't the start of more quasi-philosophising; no, this is news. Jimmy Mohlala, a senior South African politican, was murdered by a bullet or bullets because he dared to reveal the corruption inherent in the building of the stadium at Nelspruit for the 2010 World Cup.
Mohlala had the courage to speak out, and he fell where the treacherer's gun cut him down. Those who love South Africa, those who love football, those who grimace when great, heavy lives far more worthy than our own unbalance and fall back to earth with the rest of us, we will never let your memory fade. Right-thinking people the world over join me in condemning the drinkers of his blood.
Yet this awful eventuality should not be used to condemn South Africa itself, or the continent upon which she sleeps. I know already, though, that the rest of the world, its media in particular, will have an absolute field day writing about the African savages and their thirst for violence. You do not do so in my name.
The South Africa of your minds, with its undercurrent of dissonance, and fractured irreperably, is not the South Africa that drugged me when I slept in order that I woke up in love with it. It is not the terrible pendulum of sun over Mpumalanga that I knew, it is not the woman frying up fat koek for the incredulous tourist, it is not the smiling acceptance of a million little power cuts that I experienced.
Rational South Africans castigate without end those who did for Jimmy Mohlala, and this grief is more representative of a nation than his killer or killers. It doesn't stop the hard-of-thinking from rushing in and tipping a whole landmass and its inhabitants into the sea, though. Faulty Popperians see a single example of something and declare it representative of its class.
You can do this, like L and I did with romantic ideas, because ideas are fair game. Nations and groups of people, are not, and their obliteration from the realm of humanity by the realm of humanity - intentionally or not - is something that must be avoided at all costs.
This isn't the start of more quasi-philosophising; no, this is news. Jimmy Mohlala, a senior South African politican, was murdered by a bullet or bullets because he dared to reveal the corruption inherent in the building of the stadium at Nelspruit for the 2010 World Cup.
Mohlala had the courage to speak out, and he fell where the treacherer's gun cut him down. Those who love South Africa, those who love football, those who grimace when great, heavy lives far more worthy than our own unbalance and fall back to earth with the rest of us, we will never let your memory fade. Right-thinking people the world over join me in condemning the drinkers of his blood.
Yet this awful eventuality should not be used to condemn South Africa itself, or the continent upon which she sleeps. I know already, though, that the rest of the world, its media in particular, will have an absolute field day writing about the African savages and their thirst for violence. You do not do so in my name.
The South Africa of your minds, with its undercurrent of dissonance, and fractured irreperably, is not the South Africa that drugged me when I slept in order that I woke up in love with it. It is not the terrible pendulum of sun over Mpumalanga that I knew, it is not the woman frying up fat koek for the incredulous tourist, it is not the smiling acceptance of a million little power cuts that I experienced.
Rational South Africans castigate without end those who did for Jimmy Mohlala, and this grief is more representative of a nation than his killer or killers. It doesn't stop the hard-of-thinking from rushing in and tipping a whole landmass and its inhabitants into the sea, though. Faulty Popperians see a single example of something and declare it representative of its class.
You can do this, like L and I did with romantic ideas, because ideas are fair game. Nations and groups of people, are not, and their obliteration from the realm of humanity by the realm of humanity - intentionally or not - is something that must be avoided at all costs.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
PrincipLes.
A few days ago, L and I tried to confound the very nature of our humanity by dissecting what characteristics or thoughts are inherent in romantic behaviour.
This is the problem that people have with science - it takes what is natural, beautiful and inexplicable and (apparently) reduces it to a list of sober, brief statements. L and I held romance above our heads, her hand gripping one end, mine the other, and on the count of three we smashed it an infinite number of times against the ground until it gave up all its mystery. The light of reason seems to shine too brightly on the bloodied edges, and people are disgusted.
Scientists have been accused since time immemorial of tearing away what is significant and replacing it with their pragmatism. They plucked the earth from the centre of the universe and relegated it to the margins; they dragged man away from God's right hand and put him in with the animals; they told him that he no longer even has dominion over his own thoughts.
The vast space roamed by a raging, volatile God has been snipped away at by the sharp tools of scientific reason. Like an endangered animal, his habitat has been decimated year-on-year, and soon there will be nowhere left to hide. Science will catch him in its net and drag him, the dazzle of a trillion flashbulbs perforating the divine, agonised retina, into the laboratory.
When L, her beautiful, serious face belyinng the depth of her thought processes, unsheathes the bright scalpel of her intellect - I would kill to sit at its controls, even for an hour - then another square of God's territory is handed over to the freezing arts of logic, inference and falsifiability.
If L has succeeded in contaminating a square of land by writing her list of general principles, then I might steal a fraction of one by stating what thoughts or ideas are specific to her. This is not the way to do science - it normally proceeds by the accumulation of specific examples which demonstrate an overarching thesis. L went backwards, expressing general ideas firstly. Now it is time to state the case for L alone - her principLes, if you will excuse the word.
This is the problem that people have with science - it takes what is natural, beautiful and inexplicable and (apparently) reduces it to a list of sober, brief statements. L and I held romance above our heads, her hand gripping one end, mine the other, and on the count of three we smashed it an infinite number of times against the ground until it gave up all its mystery. The light of reason seems to shine too brightly on the bloodied edges, and people are disgusted.
Scientists have been accused since time immemorial of tearing away what is significant and replacing it with their pragmatism. They plucked the earth from the centre of the universe and relegated it to the margins; they dragged man away from God's right hand and put him in with the animals; they told him that he no longer even has dominion over his own thoughts.
The vast space roamed by a raging, volatile God has been snipped away at by the sharp tools of scientific reason. Like an endangered animal, his habitat has been decimated year-on-year, and soon there will be nowhere left to hide. Science will catch him in its net and drag him, the dazzle of a trillion flashbulbs perforating the divine, agonised retina, into the laboratory.
When L, her beautiful, serious face belyinng the depth of her thought processes, unsheathes the bright scalpel of her intellect - I would kill to sit at its controls, even for an hour - then another square of God's territory is handed over to the freezing arts of logic, inference and falsifiability.
If L has succeeded in contaminating a square of land by writing her list of general principles, then I might steal a fraction of one by stating what thoughts or ideas are specific to her. This is not the way to do science - it normally proceeds by the accumulation of specific examples which demonstrate an overarching thesis. L went backwards, expressing general ideas firstly. Now it is time to state the case for L alone - her principLes, if you will excuse the word.
- L delivers extended romantic gestures without even realising it; burning her ambitions to rubble at my stake such is her determination to stay up all night. I realise now that ERGs require an explanation or an insight - you don't have to explain that you are staying up all night, because I already realise (insight or comprehension) as much. With explanation, insight or comprehension, we are presented with an ERG.
- Furthermore, L exemplifies the nature of sacrifice that we discussed previously. Simple romantic gestures, as stated, require none of the three lights mentioned to understand them.
- It is possible to strip simple (non-romantic) gestures of their sentiment due to improper, harsh language. I told L that I'd sooner see her go to sleep than think of her impossibly shattered body slumping over the keyboard. She (through tiredness or otherwise) misinterpreted this, and concluded I'd rather not speak to her at all.
- Sometimes I have to sit and deliberate for a while before I'm capable of saying (or writing) words that are both mutually comprehensible and represent things (feelings, ideas) which cannot be properly expressed. L does not, however, have to think, such is her connection with her own romantic self, and with the simple object she directs herself at.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Empty.
Your author no longer has anything to say to anybody.
Even the blank, prepared statements which are dispensed from my mouth like placebo now fizz away to nothingness under the suffocating carpet that is my tongue. I am mute, because the wire that I dreamed about manifested itself and cut my vocal cords to pieces.
There is a constellation of imagery floating around as internal processes - if they were made of gas, the pressure would soon build and blow a hole in the side of my skull. The frieze of metaphor and suggestion, liberated from the temperature of its oven, would spill out and emit their heat in a time series. The heat and light I recognise as being the force behind words. Once cold, there is nothing left but convention.
I go about my days sullenly, discouraging others from engaging me in conversation. Those who do are dismissed as quickly as possible, even though they only ever request functional things: what's the time, do you have a light? Often, I won't bother to speak at all, shaking my head as I move along quickly. Those who ask the time are given an answer in a stiff, robotic voice: Itisfourteentwentysevenwillthatbeall?
This is what it means to be devoid of anything, to have allowed yourself to be emptied for the course of a lifetime. I am a stickler for convention, because the predictability of its intonation gives away as little information as possible. Answering the question 'how are you?' with the empty receptacle 'not bad' is far less revealing than 'well, you know,' or 'now you come to mention it....'
Perhaps the first line of this post should be revised. It is not so much that I have nothing to say, as having nothing that I want to say. The silent ones mark themselves out thanks to the utter paucity of the information they supply. As with some of the local phrases I listed that are at the heart of every dramatic work, sentences which are used so often that their meaning has worn away are the mechanism which turns conversations.
It is when such clichés become torn from language, and supplant language itself, that a person becomes a silent one. A retinue of grunts, short words which pin down no specific idea, these become an under-language in their own right. They express everything that needs to be expressed, yet say nothing.
Even the blank, prepared statements which are dispensed from my mouth like placebo now fizz away to nothingness under the suffocating carpet that is my tongue. I am mute, because the wire that I dreamed about manifested itself and cut my vocal cords to pieces.
There is a constellation of imagery floating around as internal processes - if they were made of gas, the pressure would soon build and blow a hole in the side of my skull. The frieze of metaphor and suggestion, liberated from the temperature of its oven, would spill out and emit their heat in a time series. The heat and light I recognise as being the force behind words. Once cold, there is nothing left but convention.
I go about my days sullenly, discouraging others from engaging me in conversation. Those who do are dismissed as quickly as possible, even though they only ever request functional things: what's the time, do you have a light? Often, I won't bother to speak at all, shaking my head as I move along quickly. Those who ask the time are given an answer in a stiff, robotic voice: Itisfourteentwentysevenwillthatbeall?
This is what it means to be devoid of anything, to have allowed yourself to be emptied for the course of a lifetime. I am a stickler for convention, because the predictability of its intonation gives away as little information as possible. Answering the question 'how are you?' with the empty receptacle 'not bad' is far less revealing than 'well, you know,' or 'now you come to mention it....'
Perhaps the first line of this post should be revised. It is not so much that I have nothing to say, as having nothing that I want to say. The silent ones mark themselves out thanks to the utter paucity of the information they supply. As with some of the local phrases I listed that are at the heart of every dramatic work, sentences which are used so often that their meaning has worn away are the mechanism which turns conversations.
It is when such clichés become torn from language, and supplant language itself, that a person becomes a silent one. A retinue of grunts, short words which pin down no specific idea, these become an under-language in their own right. They express everything that needs to be expressed, yet say nothing.
Saturday, 3 January 2009
Vernacular.
I wish to analyse not so much the circumstances, but the language and attitudes, prevalent in a printing factory which pays the minimum wage.
My job is not that of the playwright, who appropriates everyday language and appends it to situations which are plausible but fictional; in this case I take common language and report it unmodulated.
The use of South Yorkshire slang to an uncomprehending, smiling Sri Lankan man who had loaded his stack of paper into the machine incorrectly: it's wrong rooerd rahnd! tha's gorrit wrong rooerd rahnd!
Removing the Sri Lankan man and myself off one job and onto another: tek these two usless fookers, cuz the can't do owt.
Caught texting 'L' when I was supposed to be working: tha might want ter do that in thi ooern time.
Listening to a woman on the train home during a cold morning: a thowt me feet wa gooin ter drop off.
A man preparing to go for his break: am off fer sum snap nar.
On trying to get a task finished quickly during the above man's break: gerrit dun afooer that dick gets back.
On jamming the machine: tha not geein it no air.
I describe a spare language, devoid of sentiment and spat out in passing, like a drive-by shooting. It is not lifted from the pages of a book, though, but scraped from the tongues of men.
My job is not that of the playwright, who appropriates everyday language and appends it to situations which are plausible but fictional; in this case I take common language and report it unmodulated.
The use of South Yorkshire slang to an uncomprehending, smiling Sri Lankan man who had loaded his stack of paper into the machine incorrectly: it's wrong rooerd rahnd! tha's gorrit wrong rooerd rahnd!
Removing the Sri Lankan man and myself off one job and onto another: tek these two usless fookers, cuz the can't do owt.
Caught texting 'L' when I was supposed to be working: tha might want ter do that in thi ooern time.
Listening to a woman on the train home during a cold morning: a thowt me feet wa gooin ter drop off.
A man preparing to go for his break: am off fer sum snap nar.
On trying to get a task finished quickly during the above man's break: gerrit dun afooer that dick gets back.
On jamming the machine: tha not geein it no air.
I describe a spare language, devoid of sentiment and spat out in passing, like a drive-by shooting. It is not lifted from the pages of a book, though, but scraped from the tongues of men.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Principles.
A few hours ago, L and I tried to state definitively what it means to behave in a romantic manner. We were both tired, though, and although we got so far, we still have some way to go before we arrive at a definition.
I tried to provide an aswer to a similar question some months ago using the example of a rose, and, again, got so far without providing an unequivocal answer. Having spoken to L, the one who exhales happily and gives birth to a whirlwind; for whom rainbows are a prototype of her smile; I am now ready to either build upon or discard my previous assertions.
L and I more-or-less agreed upon the following statements, or principles, which demonstrate romantic thinking or sentiment:
I tried to provide an aswer to a similar question some months ago using the example of a rose, and, again, got so far without providing an unequivocal answer. Having spoken to L, the one who exhales happily and gives birth to a whirlwind; for whom rainbows are a prototype of her smile; I am now ready to either build upon or discard my previous assertions.
L and I more-or-less agreed upon the following statements, or principles, which demonstrate romantic thinking or sentiment:
- The sentiment must (for the present purposes) be something which is mutually comprehensible. I cannot present a piece of balsa wood as an 'artifact of romance' and expect it to be understood, in a culture where balsa wood is not tied to the idea of love or commitment.
- Mutually comprehensible objects are - amongst other things - ones which we have been conditioned to accept for their symbolism - in western culture roses, flowers, heart-shaped objects.
- The presentation of a mutually comprehensible object is understood to represent a sentiment or sentiments beyond both words and actions. It states that which cannot be stated, yet it can be understood upon receipt of the object. Such receipt we call a 'simple romantic gesture.'
- Mutually comprehensible objects might exist in a transitory fashion. The playing of a (mutually understood) piece of music, its significance pulsating against the air, is another simple romantic gesture.
'Extended romantic gestures' are built upon their simple relatives. As well as being extended, they require more effort in their execution and comprehension:
- Extended romantic gestures are, as the name implies, more significant - due to the idea of sacrifice which is at their core. If I have a fear of heights, then asking someone to marry me when stationed at the top of the tallest building in England is an extended romantic gesture.
- Extended romantic gestures require an explanation before they can become (extended) mutually comprehensible objects. Only when the subject of the gesture is presented with supplementary information its significance be fully imparted. So a piece of balsa wood in lieu of the sentiment which binds could be an extended romantic gesture - providing that its attendant explanation is sufficient.
- L, the flash of lightning which bisects the sky, pointed out that even a detailed explanation does not necessarily convey the full power of particularly esoteric or difficult gestures. If L is in general reluctant to articulate what or how she is feeling, then for her to do this in itself is an extended romantic gesture. I, however, need to be fed with more information than is reasonable for her to provide before the full force of her symbolism becomes apparent. Hence we speak of a discontinuity.
- L, who folds the universe symbiotically into herself as she sleeps, disagrees with the assertion that all extended romantic statements are the fusion of at least two innocuous or simple romantic statements. This needs more thought and dialogue with L before I can draw a conclusion.
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