Salvation.

The world as we know it is at a tipping point which will determine the future of our species one way or the other.

So say the climate scientists, so say the mobilisers such as George Monbiot, and Billy Meier (whom I've only very recently heard of) has been ploughing the same furrow for any number of years.

The Mayans have darkly suggested that the end of 2012 is where our species falls off a cliff - they are the latest in a long tail of prophets and visionaries whose apocalyptic predictions have proved to be unduly pessimistic.

Short of a total wipeout when God visits revenge upon our decadent and atomised selves - I feel that a trillion gallons of Birds Custard weeping from the skies and drowning every last one of us is at least as likely - then pressure for resources is likely to cause what Monbiot frighteningly refers to as an 'adjustment' in our population.

Something must give, inevitably, at some point in the future. I remember reading that if the human population continued to expand at the same rate as in the 1990s, then in another 500 years we would have expanded to the distance recesses of the Solar System. Without a degree in scientific methodology (for reasons touched upon, sarcastically, in my last blog) it seems we have already bitten off more than we can chew.

What an opportunity for the gifted handful of people in the world who can comprehend the science, extrapolate its consequences into the future, and express it to the masses in plain, unambiguous language.

What an opportunity, too, for the legions of doom-mongers who would predict our (and point out, more specifically, my and your) demise, and promise to postpone it if some pledge or sacrifice (normally monetary) is made.

This, then, is the problem. If the planet is resonating desperately on its axis because the capitalist model is proving so rapacious and unsustainable, still the capitalists (in their disguise as concerned environmentalists, also known as 'greenwash') leak through the gaps and perpetuate the problem further still.

All of the above assumes, of course, that the premise of the earth ringing its alarm bells is based on fact and not a) horrendously bad science or b) the seed of an excuse to kick off another spurious war (in the future, when the present existing stock of cartoon bad guys has been exhausted) with an 'enemy' of whose identity we can currently only guess at.

Not to labour the point too much, because it's been made million times by more eloquent scribes than I - but even if we are in imminent danger of obliteration, it's in someone, somewhere's interest to state and then overstate that case for reasons other than concern about saving our environment.

A mass consciousness can only begin to grow, and to thrive, when access to money or embellishments is cut off. Only then can a movement begin which is for salvation, and not for itself.

Circles.

As talents go, it was more the hot little light of a match, or perhaps a candle, but it was still there nevertheless.

Now, like the overweight and panting Rabbit Angstrom, I slave desperately to recover that which once came so easily - the dual shock of time and inertia dwindling it to a nub.

It's taken 15 years of travelling in a circle and, like the religious zealot, conveniently amending or overlooking the evidence of my own eyes, before I got back to the same place I departed from without a second thought.

In a secondary school of 1200 pupils, I think I am justified in saying I was the single best one when it came to learning foreign languages. I was gripped by a paradox: the fact that it required no effort caused me to work even harder at it, and I permitted everything else - science, mathematics, woodwork, geography, history - to wither beyond being irretrievable.

My lack of mathematical aptitude is testimony to this mental atrophy. I stare blankly at descriptions of imaginary numbers, am incapable of understanding what a squared second might be, and cannot explain the difference between a vector which has dimensions and one which does not.

So whatever speck of talent I possess is restricted to one thing only. I suspect I shall probably be a happier and more stable person for having made this all-too-obvious breakthrough. A decade-and-a-half too late, then, I am re-learning Spanish - and the disgustingly easy superiority I used to enjoy is, I am pained to say, no more.

I push the preterite tense up a steep hill: is it discubrí or discubrío? Is it hizo or hico? Such things used to be spat out, perfectly, without having to reflect on them, but now I tread uncertainly. I long for the smooth, flowing correctness to re-assert itself.

Truth.

I once promised myself that I'd write down every thought I had for a brief but unspecified period - a day seemed more realistic than a week or a fortnight.

I wanted to write in a clear and unambiguous way, unaffected by perception or mood, and overcome the desire to omit anything on the grounds of inappropriateness or tedium.

The aim was nothing less than a clear but miniscule window into the soul, that I might turn the contents of otherwise idle musings into something composite and capable of uprooting the small psychological barriers which otherwise become mountainous.

That I haven't chronicled every mental cul-de-sac by now is evidence that the job was too intricate and demanding for even a decicated scribe. Notwithstanding the fact that I must be left alone for a full 24 hours to record absolutely everything without distraction, the circularity of the task is inevitably defeating.

It is never long before the thoughts being recorded are of the form: writing down thoughts in word form is pointless. It is then when censorship creeps in, and the self declares that it's safe to ignore thoughts of that self-referential nature. The playful, undirected mind sabotages the job in hand by thinking: I shall not write down the next sequence of thoughts, which is then itself written down.

The mind is a device trained upon the outside world. Like the camera, it is accustomed to surveying everything but itself.

Stars.

The black box fell through the air and punched the concrete surface, emitting bright stars against the darkness.

This wasn't the death of an aeroplane, but the end of a mobile telephone, shattering into the ground at the culmination of an out-of-character act of violence.

I'd raised it an arm's length over my head when its connection went kaput again, this time in the middle of sending a message to Bluefish. The severing of its signal - bisected by forces unknown - prompted my momentary spasm of rage.

Rage against what? Against a fusion of metals, whose functioning is, like that of my own body, a mystery taken for granted? Against the arbitrary harbingers of fate, who dispense bitter and sweet entirely at their discretion?

Rage at the violation of the capitalist transaction which permits no deviation? The society with money as it roots forgets about love and leniency and lends itself only to a transaction: I must pay, or get chased through the courts; and the phone company must deliver perfection, else I shall snap its product like a twig.

Rage because the idea of such a transaction has ever formed in my mind, thus putting me beyond the reach of nature and pity and beauty, with each and every thought poisoned with the unbending philosophy of the human-made, human-tuned market?

Rage at my own ignorance, that the device might as well be a holy turd for all the understanding I have of its working? That, even if I knew it intimately, its 'moods' are still beyond my control?

It is all the above, and it of course concerns the separation from Bluefish that the fluctuation of a mobile phone invariably brings about. Anger, rising up through the self like a wish, and then the dark thud against the pavement bringing relief and closure.

Blank.

I was suprised and disappointed at the extent I was let down by own memory following a small incident in town on Wednesday night.

Making a rare journey into the centre after dark, I was surprised when a woman came barreling out of a sidestreet as I was passing, almost knocking me off my feet.

Minus a shoe, and crying, she asked if she could borrow my mobile phone because she wanted to call her boyfriend. I explained that she could have it, but I wouldn't bet on it working: the reception has been a joke for weeks.

I was swearing at the phone, and trying to force it into some sort of activity, when the person I assume was her boyfriend emerged from the same alley, demanding to know what was going on.

She told the man to go away, pushing him and walking away into the night, leaving he and I to argue in the street.

"Did she want to ring the plees? Tell me the troof!"

"She never said anything about the police. She told me she wanted to ring her boyfriend."

"She wanted to ring the plees, dintshe?"

"I told you - she only mentioned her boyfriend. Nothing about the police."

This dialogue went on for some minutes, and I eventually left him, swearing at my retreating back after bidding him goodnight.

I can remember the conversations, but I can't remember what either of them looked like, or were wearing. Under pressure, under stress, my powers of recollection broke down - either that, or the situation was so difficult that the memories were never formed in the first place.

If my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you what colour the woman's hair was, how tall she was, what the man was wearing. I remember shaking as I emerged from the dialogue, through fear? Through the desire to flee?

I shall have more to say about the fallibility of my mental architecture in the future. For now, I am content to express sadness at it breaking at the point when I would have very much liked it to have been on my side.

Creativity.

With work winding down at close to 10pm on Monday night, a conversation began between a colleague and I, the last two refuseniks in the office.

He told me of a television programme about The Beatles that he had watched, and express his awe and wonder at the depth of their musical ability.

Talent such as theirs comes along once in a universe, he volunteered, and, besides, they happened to come along at the right time - soon enough after the introduction of the television for the device to still be a novelty, and soon enough after the Second World War for a ravaged nation to be seeking something to belong to.

Furthermore, my colleague ventured, musical notes have a finite quality: eventually, humans will have used every harmonious combination possible, and so nothing new or original will ever be produced again after an arbitrary point in time.

For one of the only times in my life, I came down on the side of the argument which declares the limitless potential and beauty of our species. As with science, fallow periods in music, in politics, in art, in any discipline, are inevitably ended by the onslaught of one or more iconoclasts who seek to redefine the field.

It is akin to the statement: at some unspecified time in the future, every sensible combination of letters will have been exhausted, and writing will therefore cease, save for the repetition of ideas already previously established.

To be iconoclastic, though, all that is required is to arrange a nonsensical combination of letters, and have it stand for the repudiation of all previously established ideas. Mqri.

Mqri is the demonstration that resourcefulness and creativity will never be expended. When dissonance is the only option that remains, people with talent will nevertheless mould it into something original and, in its own way, beautiful.

Gradient.

There are varying degrees of writer's block; the inability to translate thoughts and ideas into (coherent or otherwise) words.

One school of thought, that taken by medieval sculptors, suggests that creation and fluidity is frozen within the self. Only by working away at the block of marble, or at the reticent, unwilling meat puppet, can the as yet invisible beauty be released.

A modern perspective, based on an endless cycle of renewal and replenishment, would argue that when there is nothing left to articulate, then the end of the road has been reached. As the scientist who challenges orthodoxy once too many times is eventually shunted into obscurity, so the writer with nothing to write similarly violates his terms of service. Until the glorious, frightening spark returns, the dispossessed should take up paper-folding or gambling.

There are varying degrees of writer's block, extending from the insufficient internal consistency of an idea, to having nothing whatsoever to say. I suppose there is a further breakdown of communication possible in the event that I forget the rules of English syntax and grammar, or lose the ability to write altogether.

From that point of view, then, I am merely halfway down a slope at the bottom of which is an enforced and eternal silence, a living death. Even automatic writing, the last throw of the dice of a desperate man, and yet its most natural expression, is a distant consellation requiring extraordinary levels of talent.

Oh, to be able to automatic write, and to unwrap the many layers until whatever miserable secret that drives it is revealed! Is it really so simple, and yet so outlandish - wrenching the key from the soul which would do anything to repudiate this one event, and then standing back in disgust and astonishment when the whole game is up?

I long to write disjointed, in order that meaning is clouded and opaque, describing order and chaos, sublime yet outrageous, uncomfortable and difficult, natural yet the heart which drives it is manmade.