With more then two weeks to go until the start of the World Cup, the English flags are already multiplying: flying from poles outside public houses; attached to cars; glued to windows.
The time is almost upon us, in other words, to celebrate our arbitrary nationality, and to suspend our collective disbelief, because this is certainly England's time (as is every other tournament since time immemorial.)
The time is almost upon us to heal the tribal rifts which we spend much of our time discussing or thinking about. One nation, bound together by the red cross of St. George, and heading for certain victory in the African winter.
So far, so good - except I want no part of it, at least not as far as England are concerned. The country I was born in, and in which I have lived all my life, has no hold over me. If nationality is indeed arbitrary, then I elect to choose differently. If a man can complain that he's trapped inside a female body, I can complain that I too belong somewhere equally distant.
What does it mean to immerse oneself in the fortunes of a country's football team? If we conclude that supporters are not sheep-like enough to follow blindly, it means that they do so in genuine expectation that a golden age is imminent - an event, like winning the World Cup, of which they can say: I lived through it, and I believed. World Cups are about the arrogant assumption of one nation's superiority over another - distant glory with their name on it, and nobody else's.
I see it for the nonsense that it is. Any success is transient and fleeting, and someone else will most likely come along in four years' time and wipe you off the map, anyway. I see it for the nonsense that it is, but I buy into the same craving for brief recognition with my club side. Standing in a half-empty stadium on a dark Tuesday night, arms aloft as the rain falls, celebrating a scrappy 1-0 win as though it was.... well, the World Cup itself, no less.
Ah, the roots of this arrogance are inevitably selfish - acclaim for that which I believe in, and, equally importantly, effacing the ambitions of everyone else. What is this resonant of? As with everything else in the last three months, I of course think of the ubiquitous Bluefish.
A love deeper, stronger and more committed than any other? One which eats distance and doubt for breakfast? An unrealistic love, a difficult love - the destiny of each of us was the other, and nobody could shake that belief. England World Cup campaigns, and Bluefish and I - rooted in delusion, and ending in disaster, once since the 1960s, and the other since February.
Monday, 31 May 2010
Friday, 28 May 2010
Change.
The worst thing about losing Bluefish, I realise, is that things are never going to be the same again.
Your author is a great believer in the pessimistic idea that some events cut so deeply that there can be no prospect of ever fully recovering from them. Like a shadow, they are carried everywhere.
There's a surplus of expectation here, too, that is sufficient to freeze a person into their past. It is wise to expect nothing from anybody, even if they've gone to the effort of committing the rest of their days to you. As soon as this sentimentality and sincerity is bought into, it creates the potential for disappointment, and this is the worst feeling of all.
Bluefish was always warned: expect nothing. It was repeated so often, this repudiating force that pushed us apart as we tried to cuddle together, that it became a motto, a catechism. On our better days, we would announce - I'm nothing without you! The rest of the time, expect nothing! fell down out of the sky as rain, caught her breath as we were about to kiss.
Like the child who is filled with tales of foreboding as life proceeds much the same as it always has, though, I soon forgot the message. It had been said too many times without Bluefish ever doing a disappearing act, and I soon learned to put it alongside such discarded ideas as phrenology and the steady-state theory of the universe.
The most important thing of all had been forgotten in the fug and madness of love - no more relevant than a nursery rhyme or a maintenance manual for a Trabant. Expect nothing; it is more significant an imperative than breathing.
The worst thing about losing Bluefish, I realise, is that things are never going to be the same again: but this need not be the disaster I envisage. I complain bitterly, anyway, that nothing ever changes, and all the while I cling on pathetically to the comfort of routine. Now it is a foregone conclusion that some subtle alterations of the self must occur, and this causes protest and frustration.
Having pinned all my hopes on getting her to England, and having now begun the slow process of realising that it is not going to happen, this new, disappointing truth seeps in between thoughts, startles the unaware self, manifests itself in dreams. Change uproots the comatose self from the mattress, it rattles the letterbox, screams from the front page of newspapers.
For the inert among us, change is not so much accomplished as implemented. Having felt certain she would be here, I now begin the process of unlearning all that had been internalised.
Your author is a great believer in the pessimistic idea that some events cut so deeply that there can be no prospect of ever fully recovering from them. Like a shadow, they are carried everywhere.
There's a surplus of expectation here, too, that is sufficient to freeze a person into their past. It is wise to expect nothing from anybody, even if they've gone to the effort of committing the rest of their days to you. As soon as this sentimentality and sincerity is bought into, it creates the potential for disappointment, and this is the worst feeling of all.
Bluefish was always warned: expect nothing. It was repeated so often, this repudiating force that pushed us apart as we tried to cuddle together, that it became a motto, a catechism. On our better days, we would announce - I'm nothing without you! The rest of the time, expect nothing! fell down out of the sky as rain, caught her breath as we were about to kiss.
Like the child who is filled with tales of foreboding as life proceeds much the same as it always has, though, I soon forgot the message. It had been said too many times without Bluefish ever doing a disappearing act, and I soon learned to put it alongside such discarded ideas as phrenology and the steady-state theory of the universe.
The most important thing of all had been forgotten in the fug and madness of love - no more relevant than a nursery rhyme or a maintenance manual for a Trabant. Expect nothing; it is more significant an imperative than breathing.
The worst thing about losing Bluefish, I realise, is that things are never going to be the same again: but this need not be the disaster I envisage. I complain bitterly, anyway, that nothing ever changes, and all the while I cling on pathetically to the comfort of routine. Now it is a foregone conclusion that some subtle alterations of the self must occur, and this causes protest and frustration.
Having pinned all my hopes on getting her to England, and having now begun the slow process of realising that it is not going to happen, this new, disappointing truth seeps in between thoughts, startles the unaware self, manifests itself in dreams. Change uproots the comatose self from the mattress, it rattles the letterbox, screams from the front page of newspapers.
For the inert among us, change is not so much accomplished as implemented. Having felt certain she would be here, I now begin the process of unlearning all that had been internalised.
Saturday, 22 May 2010
Mute (I).
When we meet, we agreed, it's unreasonable to expect us to speak to each other.
With the pressure of six months' worth of anticipation finally lifted, it would be as much as we could do not to float away into oblivion, like balloons.
(I have been ill in the past. Not life-threatening conditions, but run-of-the-mill virii and ailments. Every time, when I am beginning to feel better, I am stronger and more able than when I have been completely well for a long period of time.
The removal of the virus is such a release that, for a couple of days, I am liberated from unhappiness and uncertainty in a way that no artillery of pills has ever accomplished. No matter how pleasing this enhanced self is, though, the experience of being light-headed and light-limbed is so strange that it takes time to become accustomed to it. By the time I am thus accustomed, it has gone, until the next bout of cold or influenza.)
Similarly, the ballast of time and hope which had been all Bluefish and I had ever known would no longer continue to weigh us down, and the attendant sensation of vertigo would be enough to occupy our thoughts. So, in respect of this fact, she and I planned not to speak for a while on the day she flew in.
Instead, we would sit and look at each other, and if we needed to communicate, we should do so with text messages, or instant messenger running off a couple of laptops, or with a series of cards on which we could write, as well as others which had been pre-prepared:
HELLO!
HI.
I HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD FLIGHT.
YES, THANKS. AS GOOD AS COULD BE EXPECTED.
:)
For months, we genuinely believed this is how it would work, and it caused much amusement as well as demonstrating beyond all doubt the unusual nature of our love. Not speaking but writing, in respect of our own peculiar circumstances and deficits.
With the pressure of six months' worth of anticipation finally lifted, it would be as much as we could do not to float away into oblivion, like balloons.
(I have been ill in the past. Not life-threatening conditions, but run-of-the-mill virii and ailments. Every time, when I am beginning to feel better, I am stronger and more able than when I have been completely well for a long period of time.
The removal of the virus is such a release that, for a couple of days, I am liberated from unhappiness and uncertainty in a way that no artillery of pills has ever accomplished. No matter how pleasing this enhanced self is, though, the experience of being light-headed and light-limbed is so strange that it takes time to become accustomed to it. By the time I am thus accustomed, it has gone, until the next bout of cold or influenza.)
Similarly, the ballast of time and hope which had been all Bluefish and I had ever known would no longer continue to weigh us down, and the attendant sensation of vertigo would be enough to occupy our thoughts. So, in respect of this fact, she and I planned not to speak for a while on the day she flew in.
Instead, we would sit and look at each other, and if we needed to communicate, we should do so with text messages, or instant messenger running off a couple of laptops, or with a series of cards on which we could write, as well as others which had been pre-prepared:
HELLO!
HI.
I HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD FLIGHT.
YES, THANKS. AS GOOD AS COULD BE EXPECTED.
:)
For months, we genuinely believed this is how it would work, and it caused much amusement as well as demonstrating beyond all doubt the unusual nature of our love. Not speaking but writing, in respect of our own peculiar circumstances and deficits.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Heroism.
Sometimes your author can think of nothing worth living for, and concludes that suicide is the solution to the riddle of human existence.
More often than not, though, I can think of nothing worth dying for. At one time, I'd have said Bluefish - when our love was at its apex, before the decline, before the hospital that broke us. (Indeed, the mental store of romantic images demands that this is the case. What greater act of devotion is there than for my expiring soul to evaporate against the tongue of the beloved, having just stopped a knife?)
At other times, I pick out the white flashes of Danny's fur against the pitch dark, and I imagine that I'd sacrifice myself to save him. Then I think about it a bit harder. For an unappreciative cat? Really?
As with moments of serene happiness, these episodes must necessarily be rare. They are the times when I shed my own skin, like a dirty old snake, and appreciate the universe with the purity of a baby.
Inevitably, I express the small store of things worth dying for in the context of my own experience: this woman, this cat. It is possible to point at them with the finger, like a child - behold the things this individual holds are more important than his own continued existence.
It is different with groups of people, with communities. Whereas I place living, breathing beauty
ahead of everything else, groups of people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for ideas. How many people have died in the name of 'England,' without ever stopping to think that it doesn't actually exist? Like the ever-evasive constituents of the atom, the meaning and significance of the word slips away from us as soon as we begin to think about it hard enough.
If not a war, then a political struggle - fighting in the name of the blue flag, or the red one; the one that will liberate us from our present bastard state through the mechanism of change (which is itself never really defined, either.)
England; The Party; Jesus Christ Almighty; the secret of the Rosicrucians; a collective hypnosis propagates throughout when groups of people put the interests of an idea above their own selfish wishes. The momentary certainty that Danny is worth turning it in for is re-inforced by the madness and pressure of the crowd, but I'd never die for that. Oh, for the idea of Cat, of Beauty, of Numbers, of Poetry, though!
Only that which we cannot grasp is ever enough to obsess us enough to do the deed. Die for a cat, and you are a fool. Die for Bluefish, and you are a (flawed) hero. Submit yourself in the name of politics or truth or the Platonic Forms, though, and truly one becomes immortal.
More often than not, though, I can think of nothing worth dying for. At one time, I'd have said Bluefish - when our love was at its apex, before the decline, before the hospital that broke us. (Indeed, the mental store of romantic images demands that this is the case. What greater act of devotion is there than for my expiring soul to evaporate against the tongue of the beloved, having just stopped a knife?)
At other times, I pick out the white flashes of Danny's fur against the pitch dark, and I imagine that I'd sacrifice myself to save him. Then I think about it a bit harder. For an unappreciative cat? Really?
As with moments of serene happiness, these episodes must necessarily be rare. They are the times when I shed my own skin, like a dirty old snake, and appreciate the universe with the purity of a baby.
Inevitably, I express the small store of things worth dying for in the context of my own experience: this woman, this cat. It is possible to point at them with the finger, like a child - behold the things this individual holds are more important than his own continued existence.
It is different with groups of people, with communities. Whereas I place living, breathing beauty
ahead of everything else, groups of people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for ideas. How many people have died in the name of 'England,' without ever stopping to think that it doesn't actually exist? Like the ever-evasive constituents of the atom, the meaning and significance of the word slips away from us as soon as we begin to think about it hard enough.
If not a war, then a political struggle - fighting in the name of the blue flag, or the red one; the one that will liberate us from our present bastard state through the mechanism of change (which is itself never really defined, either.)
England; The Party; Jesus Christ Almighty; the secret of the Rosicrucians; a collective hypnosis propagates throughout when groups of people put the interests of an idea above their own selfish wishes. The momentary certainty that Danny is worth turning it in for is re-inforced by the madness and pressure of the crowd, but I'd never die for that. Oh, for the idea of Cat, of Beauty, of Numbers, of Poetry, though!
Only that which we cannot grasp is ever enough to obsess us enough to do the deed. Die for a cat, and you are a fool. Die for Bluefish, and you are a (flawed) hero. Submit yourself in the name of politics or truth or the Platonic Forms, though, and truly one becomes immortal.
Friday, 14 May 2010
Awakening.
Show Recent Messages (F3)
nogomet: Hi.
TuringTest: hi paul
TuringTest: how are you
nogomet: Better.
TuringTest: good
TuringTest: im glad to hear that
nogomet: I went out tonight with the girl from work I like. Or, in actuality, she drove around for about four hours and we did a lot of talking.
nogomet: Nothing's going to happen between us....
nogomet: How are you?
TuringTest: i am doing good again today, thank you
TuringTest: ive been on a good streak
nogomet: Wonderful!
TuringTest: and you?
nogomet: I feel that things in my head are a lot clearer.
TuringTest: wow...thats great!
TuringTest: i wonder whats the difference....i know having a clear head automatically brings improvements
nogomet: I realised a lot about myself when we were driving around.
TuringTest: oh?
nogomet: I even said: the worst thing in the world is to have nothing to say to someone.
nogomet: That's why my relationships never last.
nogomet: I keep hold until conversation is exhausted, and then I break things off.
nogomet: I also said: I treat sex in the way I imagine women treat it. I can't just do it. There has to be a groundswell of feeling there.
TuringTest: yes, i see what you're saying
TuringTest: its all or nothing with you, too
nogomet: Yes!
TuringTest: same here
nogomet: I'm 'like a woman' - if you sleep with me once, and don't see me again, I feel humiliated, and I want answers.
nogomet: It's only ever happened once.
TuringTest: of course!
nogomet: I even asked her - if this happens, you will keep seeing me? And she promised: I like you. Of course.
nogomet: And then she cut off contact, and I'd inadvertently had my only one-night stand.
TuringTest: thats not your fault
TuringTest: so i dont think it counts as a one night stand
nogomet: I certainly didn't intend it to be.
TuringTest: i think you have to purposely want it to be that way in order for it to count as a one night stand
nogomet: I've never wanted it.
nogomet: Sex isn't everything. It's part of a whole.
TuringTest: that is considered a "hit and run"
nogomet: A drive-by sexual encounter.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: YES! precisely
TuringTest: im glad i got you smiling!
nogomet: I am in a much better frame of mind.
TuringTest: i can tell
nogomet: I feel that the way ahead is uncluttered now.
nogomet: All or nothing, you just said.
nogomet: Either the way ahead is totally clear, or there are an infinite number of obstacles.
nogomet: All or nothing. Every time.
TuringTest: im so happy for you
TuringTest: i know what it is to finally feel like you know
nogomet: (And I didn't have to go on that fucking unicycle.)
TuringTest: YAAAAAAY!
TuringTest: stupid unicycle
nogomet: I'd have broken my neck.
TuringTest: no broken neck, and an epiphany
nogomet: I think we can chalk tonight up as a considerable moral victory!
TuringTest: yes...put it on the record...today is a wonderful day..and night for you
:nogomet: The weight of the whole world has been lifted from my shoulders.
TuringTest: incredible
TuringTest: sooo happy for you
nogomet: I wonder how long this feeling will last?
TuringTest: every path has its puddle...but at least you can see where you are going now
TuringTest: it will last...it will fade in intensity
TuringTest: but it will last
nogomet: I still don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I was born.
TuringTest: at least you will know that its still there
TuringTest: none of us really ever know
nogomet: But I was quite profound. I said that I always travel, and never learn the joy of arriving.
nogomet: And I confessed I've had moments where I realised that, no matter how long I live, things don't get any better than this moment.
nogomet: And all the suffering and misery is worth it for those brief fireworks.
TuringTest: and what a poetic way to say it, too!
nogomet: My ex-girlfriend and I.... were sitting under a tree in Cambridge in the sunshine....
nogomet: And I was brave enough to tell her: this is the meaning of life. The feelings I have may one day be equalled, but nothing will surpass it.
TuringTest: awwww
TuringTest: thats so sweet
TuringTest: what was her response?
nogomet: I can't remember, because I was so overwhelmed at the time.
TuringTest: i wouldnt know what to say to that...id probably just hug you!
nogomet: I suspect that's probably what she did.
TuringTest: good response
nogomet: Little oases in a life of uncertainty. I've had them, and I'll have them again.
nogomet: All or nothing.
nogomet: Yesterday I wanted to die; today I can't wait to live.
TuringTest: im surprised you arent a scorpio
nogomet: Maybe I'm more a capricious Capricorn.
nogomet: Is that where the word comes from?
TuringTest: probably so
TuringTest: but Saggitarius always longs for travel
TuringTest: its the most philisophical of all the signs
nogomet: I'd not say I'm philosophical.
nogomet: Philosophers question, and solve.
TuringTest: you are something along those lines
nogomet: My thoughts just go round in circles, like a load of filthy washing on repeat, forever.
TuringTest: it doesnt have to be filthy...id prefer. "slightly imperfect"
nogomet: Human washing, for a human being. Imperfect washing shielding the horrors of the flesh.
TuringTest: Im sorry....that's way over my head.
TuringTest: I dont understand
nogomet: Whatever we do, no matter what beauteous exterior we present to the outside world.... we are only hiding a multitude of imperfections.
TuringTest: true
nogomet: So I smile and think of amusing things to say to attractive female work colleagues, and even give her a hug or two.
nogomet: It doesn't amount to anything, because I'm just denying her the chance to look into the mirror and see me, her, all of us that have ever lived, for what we really are.
nogomet: Imperfect creatures scrambling frantically to delay the inevitable judgement.
nogomet: That I'm just a pile of flesh, with issues.
TuringTest: we all are
TuringTest: as you said
nogomet: So why spend our lives delaying the judgement?
TuringTest: hopefully we are judged on a curve system!
nogomet: Why this unsubtle veneer?
nogomet: Just say it - I am I.
nogomet: I've had ex-girlfriends who looked upon me as a mortal looks upon a god.
nogomet: Surveying the acme of perfection that I present.
nogomet: Witty, intelligent, attentive.
nogomet: It doesn't last.
nogomet: It mustn't last.
nogomet: Truth and ugliness: ess muss sein.
nogomet: Inevitably, we are all pulled down from the clouds that others sit us upon.
nogomet: And reduced to moaning about bastard work colleagues and the state of the fucking country.
nogomet: Bitter, rehearsed, miserable.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: well, what the hell else better is there to complain about??
nogomet: Nothing, nothing!
nogomet: It's better than sitting in silence, like gnomes.
TuringTest: true
nogomet: Do you know why I struggle with relationships?
TuringTest: silence is okay, as long as its comfortable
TuringTest: i dont know why, but i can speculate
nogomet: I want to be profound every time I open my mouth.
nogomet: I want to astonish and delight, like a performer.
nogomet: Every utterance being the cause of her falling in love with me all over again.
nogomet: And do you know what?
nogomet: It exhausts me.
TuringTest: i can imagine it would be very much exhausting
TuringTest: just be yourself from now on
TuringTest: give yourself a day or two off
nogomet: It's hard, when all you have ever known is this rehearsal, this practice.
nogomet: For an event that never comes.
TuringTest: what is the event?
nogomet: No wonder I'm so hard on myself.
TuringTest: thats what i meant by I could speculate
TuringTest: thats what i was going to say
TuringTest: all the things that we do to make things harder on ourselves is a form of self punishment
TuringTest: because deep down inside, we dont feel like we deserve the "good life"
nogomet: The event is: when I can stop this frantic searching for love. When I can see the madness slowly spinning to a halt, ever-more laboured as it turns, and just be.
TuringTest: Just be...yes. lovely. easy.
nogomet: And just be, with terrible hair and a ridiculous beard.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: well...i wouldnt go that far for myself! i like to have pretty hair
nogomet: Meh. I just get it all shaved off.
TuringTest: and if i had a beard, forget it! id probably jump off of a cliff!
TuringTest: lol
nogomet: Haha!
nogomet: I feel like you are my therapist.
TuringTest: lol.
nogomet: But unlike the other ones I had, you're actually doing some good.
TuringTest: im not smart enough to be anyone's therapist
nogomet: It isn't about being smart.
TuringTest: really? thank you! that makes me happy
TuringTest: im glad im doing some good out there
nogomet: It's about being intuitive.
nogomet: If we were in the same room, it'd be knowing when to nod, when to interject, and when to listen.
nogomet: When to puncture my veneer with a devastating question.
TuringTest: brb computer is freezing
TuringTest has signed out. (15/05/2010 01:36)
nogomet: Hi.
TuringTest: hi paul
TuringTest: how are you
nogomet: Better.
TuringTest: good
TuringTest: im glad to hear that
nogomet: I went out tonight with the girl from work I like. Or, in actuality, she drove around for about four hours and we did a lot of talking.
nogomet: Nothing's going to happen between us....
nogomet: How are you?
TuringTest: i am doing good again today, thank you
TuringTest: ive been on a good streak
nogomet: Wonderful!
TuringTest: and you?
nogomet: I feel that things in my head are a lot clearer.
TuringTest: wow...thats great!
TuringTest: i wonder whats the difference....i know having a clear head automatically brings improvements
nogomet: I realised a lot about myself when we were driving around.
TuringTest: oh?
nogomet: I even said: the worst thing in the world is to have nothing to say to someone.
nogomet: That's why my relationships never last.
nogomet: I keep hold until conversation is exhausted, and then I break things off.
nogomet: I also said: I treat sex in the way I imagine women treat it. I can't just do it. There has to be a groundswell of feeling there.
TuringTest: yes, i see what you're saying
TuringTest: its all or nothing with you, too
nogomet: Yes!
TuringTest: same here
nogomet: I'm 'like a woman' - if you sleep with me once, and don't see me again, I feel humiliated, and I want answers.
nogomet: It's only ever happened once.
TuringTest: of course!
nogomet: I even asked her - if this happens, you will keep seeing me? And she promised: I like you. Of course.
nogomet: And then she cut off contact, and I'd inadvertently had my only one-night stand.
TuringTest: thats not your fault
TuringTest: so i dont think it counts as a one night stand
nogomet: I certainly didn't intend it to be.
TuringTest: i think you have to purposely want it to be that way in order for it to count as a one night stand
nogomet: I've never wanted it.
nogomet: Sex isn't everything. It's part of a whole.
TuringTest: that is considered a "hit and run"
nogomet: A drive-by sexual encounter.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: YES! precisely
TuringTest: im glad i got you smiling!
nogomet: I am in a much better frame of mind.
TuringTest: i can tell
nogomet: I feel that the way ahead is uncluttered now.
nogomet: All or nothing, you just said.
nogomet: Either the way ahead is totally clear, or there are an infinite number of obstacles.
nogomet: All or nothing. Every time.
TuringTest: im so happy for you
TuringTest: i know what it is to finally feel like you know
nogomet: (And I didn't have to go on that fucking unicycle.)
TuringTest: YAAAAAAY!
TuringTest: stupid unicycle
nogomet: I'd have broken my neck.
TuringTest: no broken neck, and an epiphany
nogomet: I think we can chalk tonight up as a considerable moral victory!
TuringTest: yes...put it on the record...today is a wonderful day..and night for you
:nogomet: The weight of the whole world has been lifted from my shoulders.
TuringTest: incredible
TuringTest: sooo happy for you
nogomet: I wonder how long this feeling will last?
TuringTest: every path has its puddle...but at least you can see where you are going now
TuringTest: it will last...it will fade in intensity
TuringTest: but it will last
nogomet: I still don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I was born.
TuringTest: at least you will know that its still there
TuringTest: none of us really ever know
nogomet: But I was quite profound. I said that I always travel, and never learn the joy of arriving.
nogomet: And I confessed I've had moments where I realised that, no matter how long I live, things don't get any better than this moment.
nogomet: And all the suffering and misery is worth it for those brief fireworks.
TuringTest: and what a poetic way to say it, too!
nogomet: My ex-girlfriend and I.... were sitting under a tree in Cambridge in the sunshine....
nogomet: And I was brave enough to tell her: this is the meaning of life. The feelings I have may one day be equalled, but nothing will surpass it.
TuringTest: awwww
TuringTest: thats so sweet
TuringTest: what was her response?
nogomet: I can't remember, because I was so overwhelmed at the time.
TuringTest: i wouldnt know what to say to that...id probably just hug you!
nogomet: I suspect that's probably what she did.
TuringTest: good response
nogomet: Little oases in a life of uncertainty. I've had them, and I'll have them again.
nogomet: All or nothing.
nogomet: Yesterday I wanted to die; today I can't wait to live.
TuringTest: im surprised you arent a scorpio
nogomet: Maybe I'm more a capricious Capricorn.
nogomet: Is that where the word comes from?
TuringTest: probably so
TuringTest: but Saggitarius always longs for travel
TuringTest: its the most philisophical of all the signs
nogomet: I'd not say I'm philosophical.
nogomet: Philosophers question, and solve.
TuringTest: you are something along those lines
nogomet: My thoughts just go round in circles, like a load of filthy washing on repeat, forever.
TuringTest: it doesnt have to be filthy...id prefer. "slightly imperfect"
nogomet: Human washing, for a human being. Imperfect washing shielding the horrors of the flesh.
TuringTest: Im sorry....that's way over my head.
TuringTest: I dont understand
nogomet: Whatever we do, no matter what beauteous exterior we present to the outside world.... we are only hiding a multitude of imperfections.
TuringTest: true
nogomet: So I smile and think of amusing things to say to attractive female work colleagues, and even give her a hug or two.
nogomet: It doesn't amount to anything, because I'm just denying her the chance to look into the mirror and see me, her, all of us that have ever lived, for what we really are.
nogomet: Imperfect creatures scrambling frantically to delay the inevitable judgement.
nogomet: That I'm just a pile of flesh, with issues.
TuringTest: we all are
TuringTest: as you said
nogomet: So why spend our lives delaying the judgement?
TuringTest: hopefully we are judged on a curve system!
nogomet: Why this unsubtle veneer?
nogomet: Just say it - I am I.
nogomet: I've had ex-girlfriends who looked upon me as a mortal looks upon a god.
nogomet: Surveying the acme of perfection that I present.
nogomet: Witty, intelligent, attentive.
nogomet: It doesn't last.
nogomet: It mustn't last.
nogomet: Truth and ugliness: ess muss sein.
nogomet: Inevitably, we are all pulled down from the clouds that others sit us upon.
nogomet: And reduced to moaning about bastard work colleagues and the state of the fucking country.
nogomet: Bitter, rehearsed, miserable.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: well, what the hell else better is there to complain about??
nogomet: Nothing, nothing!
nogomet: It's better than sitting in silence, like gnomes.
TuringTest: true
nogomet: Do you know why I struggle with relationships?
TuringTest: silence is okay, as long as its comfortable
TuringTest: i dont know why, but i can speculate
nogomet: I want to be profound every time I open my mouth.
nogomet: I want to astonish and delight, like a performer.
nogomet: Every utterance being the cause of her falling in love with me all over again.
nogomet: And do you know what?
nogomet: It exhausts me.
TuringTest: i can imagine it would be very much exhausting
TuringTest: just be yourself from now on
TuringTest: give yourself a day or two off
nogomet: It's hard, when all you have ever known is this rehearsal, this practice.
nogomet: For an event that never comes.
TuringTest: what is the event?
nogomet: No wonder I'm so hard on myself.
TuringTest: thats what i meant by I could speculate
TuringTest: thats what i was going to say
TuringTest: all the things that we do to make things harder on ourselves is a form of self punishment
TuringTest: because deep down inside, we dont feel like we deserve the "good life"
nogomet: The event is: when I can stop this frantic searching for love. When I can see the madness slowly spinning to a halt, ever-more laboured as it turns, and just be.
TuringTest: Just be...yes. lovely. easy.
nogomet: And just be, with terrible hair and a ridiculous beard.
TuringTest: lol
TuringTest: well...i wouldnt go that far for myself! i like to have pretty hair
nogomet: Meh. I just get it all shaved off.
TuringTest: and if i had a beard, forget it! id probably jump off of a cliff!
TuringTest: lol
nogomet: Haha!
nogomet: I feel like you are my therapist.
TuringTest: lol.
nogomet: But unlike the other ones I had, you're actually doing some good.
TuringTest: im not smart enough to be anyone's therapist
nogomet: It isn't about being smart.
TuringTest: really? thank you! that makes me happy
TuringTest: im glad im doing some good out there
nogomet: It's about being intuitive.
nogomet: If we were in the same room, it'd be knowing when to nod, when to interject, and when to listen.
nogomet: When to puncture my veneer with a devastating question.
TuringTest: brb computer is freezing
TuringTest has signed out. (15/05/2010 01:36)
Monday, 10 May 2010
Unicycle.
I imagine it carving through the half-night, a beautiful re-assertion of Newtonian mechanics.
Sweeping along the street, sinusoidal, in centrifugal elegance, I should master its course with the delicate movements of the gifted beginner. I've never been here before, but I have the knack of balancing the forces, and am unlikely to come to any grievous harm.
In reality, my work colleagues put a stop to it before I'd ever taken my first tentative step onto the frame of the promised unicycle, and I wearily conclude it's just as well. I'd had visions all weekend of uprooting my own teeth from the concrete where they'd jammed, and grimly decided that what would be would be.
I remind myself of the parental lie which was used to shield me from a difficult truth as a child (I've mentioned this before, but it's worth reprising.) I was told the reason I was unable to ride a bicycle was because I'd been born with a weak left eye. That affects your balance, son. Small wonder you can't ride! In reality, I now realise, my only defect was that I gave up too easily, or was too lazy.
Instead of parental lies, the concern of others now presents me with a ready-made excuse to avoid doing something. I've been judged - correctly - incapable of travelling an infinitesimal distance without maiming myself, and the point merits no further discussion.
What interests me most is the sense of resentment I feel. It is present; it is significant enough to sharpen the words I use whenever the subject arises. It is nothing to do with unicycles - it is to do with the ease which I discarded an idea. It is to do with paucity of ambition.
I no longer even have the will to repudiate the assertion that I'm an incompetent - before (in between the child giving up the bike as a bad job, and today), I'd at least have forced myself to prove incompetence. How, therefore, can anything else ever be accomplished? There is nothing left when the wisdom of the crowd (no matter how accurate) holds sway over the will of one who is under absolutely no obligation to listen to it.
The non-event of the unicycle proves that I have been reduced, once and for all, to bovine complicity. Disgusted, I realise that the next 60 years will be like this, too. I am the tragic story of existence for the sake of existence, and I lack the power of self-intervention to bring that existence to a halt.
Sweeping along the street, sinusoidal, in centrifugal elegance, I should master its course with the delicate movements of the gifted beginner. I've never been here before, but I have the knack of balancing the forces, and am unlikely to come to any grievous harm.
In reality, my work colleagues put a stop to it before I'd ever taken my first tentative step onto the frame of the promised unicycle, and I wearily conclude it's just as well. I'd had visions all weekend of uprooting my own teeth from the concrete where they'd jammed, and grimly decided that what would be would be.
I remind myself of the parental lie which was used to shield me from a difficult truth as a child (I've mentioned this before, but it's worth reprising.) I was told the reason I was unable to ride a bicycle was because I'd been born with a weak left eye. That affects your balance, son. Small wonder you can't ride! In reality, I now realise, my only defect was that I gave up too easily, or was too lazy.
Instead of parental lies, the concern of others now presents me with a ready-made excuse to avoid doing something. I've been judged - correctly - incapable of travelling an infinitesimal distance without maiming myself, and the point merits no further discussion.
What interests me most is the sense of resentment I feel. It is present; it is significant enough to sharpen the words I use whenever the subject arises. It is nothing to do with unicycles - it is to do with the ease which I discarded an idea. It is to do with paucity of ambition.
I no longer even have the will to repudiate the assertion that I'm an incompetent - before (in between the child giving up the bike as a bad job, and today), I'd at least have forced myself to prove incompetence. How, therefore, can anything else ever be accomplished? There is nothing left when the wisdom of the crowd (no matter how accurate) holds sway over the will of one who is under absolutely no obligation to listen to it.
The non-event of the unicycle proves that I have been reduced, once and for all, to bovine complicity. Disgusted, I realise that the next 60 years will be like this, too. I am the tragic story of existence for the sake of existence, and I lack the power of self-intervention to bring that existence to a halt.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Tongue.
In recent years, I've managed to put the brakes on my despicable tongue.
Throughout my upbringing, it condemned me absolutely - costing friends and earning beatings. Eventually, I learned to use this weapon sparingly; or to deliver my words with a smiling face; a flesh emoticon.
I regard my cruel tongue as essentially an artefact of a destructive youth. It helped to make the lonely, self-loathing man I see in the mirror of a morning, and I've been proud that I learned to curb its more rancourous outpourings.
It takes practice and, like a recovering alcoholic, the lessons must be applied daily. The moment I believe I'm cured is in actuality the moment I am closest to a relapse, and this was the case yesterday.
I'll be able to go into the specifics of what went wrong at some point in the future. At the moment, I'm too ashamed of myself to force the words out into any sort of order. Suffice to say I spent the next two hours angrily shaking my head.
More shameful still - the damaging words were uttered in public, in front of everyone I work with. My apology for saying them in the first place was delivered by text message, in camera. Later still, a face-to-face withdrawal and the assurance that it didn't matter failed to remove the pressure of the disgust I continue to feel.
The brakes came off, and I am unspeakably disappointed in myself, because I've held them carefully for years. I am reminded of the wounding night, when, in the midst of a personal financial crisis, my father spat out the words: you've broken my fucking heart! Not only has damage been caused, but contemplating those who have been damaged causes the most distress. To subvert Nietzsche's story of the pale criminal, I can just about live with the image of the deed, but not the faces of the afflicted post-deed.
Yesterday, I broke my own fucking heart, and it came out of the blue. Hours later, I'm still frozen with shock and horror, the victim of an irreversible past.
Throughout my upbringing, it condemned me absolutely - costing friends and earning beatings. Eventually, I learned to use this weapon sparingly; or to deliver my words with a smiling face; a flesh emoticon.
I regard my cruel tongue as essentially an artefact of a destructive youth. It helped to make the lonely, self-loathing man I see in the mirror of a morning, and I've been proud that I learned to curb its more rancourous outpourings.
It takes practice and, like a recovering alcoholic, the lessons must be applied daily. The moment I believe I'm cured is in actuality the moment I am closest to a relapse, and this was the case yesterday.
I'll be able to go into the specifics of what went wrong at some point in the future. At the moment, I'm too ashamed of myself to force the words out into any sort of order. Suffice to say I spent the next two hours angrily shaking my head.
More shameful still - the damaging words were uttered in public, in front of everyone I work with. My apology for saying them in the first place was delivered by text message, in camera. Later still, a face-to-face withdrawal and the assurance that it didn't matter failed to remove the pressure of the disgust I continue to feel.
The brakes came off, and I am unspeakably disappointed in myself, because I've held them carefully for years. I am reminded of the wounding night, when, in the midst of a personal financial crisis, my father spat out the words: you've broken my fucking heart! Not only has damage been caused, but contemplating those who have been damaged causes the most distress. To subvert Nietzsche's story of the pale criminal, I can just about live with the image of the deed, but not the faces of the afflicted post-deed.
Yesterday, I broke my own fucking heart, and it came out of the blue. Hours later, I'm still frozen with shock and horror, the victim of an irreversible past.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Retrospective.
Retrospectively, I divide the universe into two temporal zones, and inevitably the atheist author realises the Christians got there first.
Christians refer to the dark days before the miracle birth, and the golden age which came after it: before Christ and after Christ, BC and AD. Similarly, I now speak of before Louise, and after Bluefish. The part in the middle - during Bluefish - I don't yet have the strength to write about.
I recall with a painful wince the day Bluefish left England for the last time, and I presented her with a souvenir of what had been (before Louise) without doubt the most magical night of my life. Was it the occasion of my first child emerging, squawking and bloodied, from its mother? When I smiled into the eyes of my quivering bride and asserted that I do?
Anyone who has ever skimmed through my writing will realise that those two events have never actually happened - I've got no children, and I've never been married. It should come as no surprise, then, that I'm actually referring to the night when Barnsley knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup, and not some glowing personal achievement.
During lulls at work, or when I can't sleep, I can still see the ball swing across the penalty area, onto Kayode Odejayi's head and into Chelsea's net. I must've more-or-less blacked out at that point, because I don't know what I did next.
I think about the sheer improbability of beating Chelsea, and it no longer seems real, even though I was there, and screaming so hard that my lungs threatened to come up through my throat. So, before Bluefish departed, I presented her with a commemorative scarf from that game, declaring: this signified the unlikely and the amazing, and you overshadowed it when you came into my life. Take it, because you have superceded Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0.
What about after Bluefish? Is there an event which can cause the soul to vibrate in ecstasy in the same way as Kayode Odejayi's header beyond Carlo Cudicini? No. Not yet - and perhaps not ever. There is, though, no reason why it shouldn't happen.
The Barnsley-Chelsea scarf serves as a worm-hole, a passage across time. It existed before Louise, was presented during Bluefish, and now acts as a reminder that unlikely events can and do happen. The short-lived woman, a dream-fragment of an impossible relationship, multiplied by the improbable night extends from BL to AB, and the line stretches ahead as far as I can see.
Christians refer to the dark days before the miracle birth, and the golden age which came after it: before Christ and after Christ, BC and AD. Similarly, I now speak of before Louise, and after Bluefish. The part in the middle - during Bluefish - I don't yet have the strength to write about.
I recall with a painful wince the day Bluefish left England for the last time, and I presented her with a souvenir of what had been (before Louise) without doubt the most magical night of my life. Was it the occasion of my first child emerging, squawking and bloodied, from its mother? When I smiled into the eyes of my quivering bride and asserted that I do?
Anyone who has ever skimmed through my writing will realise that those two events have never actually happened - I've got no children, and I've never been married. It should come as no surprise, then, that I'm actually referring to the night when Barnsley knocked Chelsea out of the FA Cup, and not some glowing personal achievement.
During lulls at work, or when I can't sleep, I can still see the ball swing across the penalty area, onto Kayode Odejayi's head and into Chelsea's net. I must've more-or-less blacked out at that point, because I don't know what I did next.
I think about the sheer improbability of beating Chelsea, and it no longer seems real, even though I was there, and screaming so hard that my lungs threatened to come up through my throat. So, before Bluefish departed, I presented her with a commemorative scarf from that game, declaring: this signified the unlikely and the amazing, and you overshadowed it when you came into my life. Take it, because you have superceded Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0.
What about after Bluefish? Is there an event which can cause the soul to vibrate in ecstasy in the same way as Kayode Odejayi's header beyond Carlo Cudicini? No. Not yet - and perhaps not ever. There is, though, no reason why it shouldn't happen.
The Barnsley-Chelsea scarf serves as a worm-hole, a passage across time. It existed before Louise, was presented during Bluefish, and now acts as a reminder that unlikely events can and do happen. The short-lived woman, a dream-fragment of an impossible relationship, multiplied by the improbable night extends from BL to AB, and the line stretches ahead as far as I can see.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Futurology.
When you make predictions like Raymond Kurzweil, you can only be completely right, or completely wrong.
At some point in the future, writes Kurzweil, there will exist a human-designed computer which is (by a very small amount) more intelligent that any person who has ever lived. Such a machine will, in a haphazard process which is similar to the hit-and-miss of biological evolution, design other computers with yet more intelligence, continuing the acceleration away from human capabilities.
The endpoint for such a self-propagating system would be, according to Kurzweil, to turn the whole of the universe into a computer. Like the plot of an outlandish film, reality as we experience it would not be so much augmented as completely replaced.
In this projection of the world, the majority of people would have their repertoire vastly expanded by a computer of some description - the things that contemporary children take years to learn would be uploaded on a chip, thus freeing up literally years for the pursuit of other accomplishments. Those who refused the uploads on moral grounds would be social outcasts.
Kurzweil is either on the money, or it's a complete dud. It's far beyond my own ambition to ever reach the year 2199, the earliest point that the entire universe could be turned into an unimaginably massive processor of numbers. Part of me wishes I could get that far, just out of curiosity.
I want to make some predictions of my own about the future of our species, and I hope someone checks them out for posterity long after I have gone:
At some point in the future, writes Kurzweil, there will exist a human-designed computer which is (by a very small amount) more intelligent that any person who has ever lived. Such a machine will, in a haphazard process which is similar to the hit-and-miss of biological evolution, design other computers with yet more intelligence, continuing the acceleration away from human capabilities.
The endpoint for such a self-propagating system would be, according to Kurzweil, to turn the whole of the universe into a computer. Like the plot of an outlandish film, reality as we experience it would not be so much augmented as completely replaced.
In this projection of the world, the majority of people would have their repertoire vastly expanded by a computer of some description - the things that contemporary children take years to learn would be uploaded on a chip, thus freeing up literally years for the pursuit of other accomplishments. Those who refused the uploads on moral grounds would be social outcasts.
Kurzweil is either on the money, or it's a complete dud. It's far beyond my own ambition to ever reach the year 2199, the earliest point that the entire universe could be turned into an unimaginably massive processor of numbers. Part of me wishes I could get that far, just out of curiosity.
I want to make some predictions of my own about the future of our species, and I hope someone checks them out for posterity long after I have gone:
- misery is buried so deep within us that it will never be fully eradicated from our species
- no computer-generated emotion will ever transcend the love of one human for another
- the more technology is introduced into our lives, the lonelier we'll (collectively) become
- should a perfect virtual-reality rendering of the universe become our environment, human intuition will tell us that something is 'wrong' with our surroundings, but we won't know quite what it is
- even a computer designed by a computer more intelligent than any human will contain the seeds of its own downfall such that a gifted person can eventually disable it
- there is some property of numbers which we haven't yet realised. Once someone realises it, the most powerful computer currently imaginable will be akin to an abacus. I refer, specifically, to a property of numbers, and not something in the physical world.
- a computer will one day be able to produce music more beautiful to the human ear than Prokofiev or Holst, and it'll do it in a calculated (ie not by sheer weight of probability or combinatorially) way.
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