What would you do if you were told that you only had one week left to live?
What about if you only had a month to live?
What if it was a year?
What about 5 years, 10 years.
And so on
What if you only had one lifetime to live?
Live every day as if it were the only one and you will never amount to anything. This is the problem for people who have seen through the red dust of the world but still, for whatever reason, continue to breath it in. Life is a miracle, the sky is an endless dream of colours, grass sings on the slopes of a volcano, a dragonfly hovers for a moment before alighting on a child's outstretched finger.
But still we must eat, shelter, mate, trade, and write our theses on symbolism in medieval Mongolian love poetry.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Breastfeeding in Iceland
On a recent trip to Iceland, I spent a lot of time breastfeeding.
I went there in the hope that exposure to a bit of raw nature might do something for the ennui. Anyway, while gazing at senile volcanoes, their slopes balding black or covered in hoary moss, I was reminded of an insight I first had in Japan when climbing Mount Fuji.
Fuji, as any half-decent volcano should, has a glorious form: a perfect cone with an areola of snow, and foothills gently sloping into the surrounding planes. Seen from a distance on a clear day it has a powerful sensuousness that makes you want to do more than just look. If only you could experience that gentle form, that soft snowy texture, more directly, more intimately. Ah, to touch, to stroke, to mount Fuji. And so, you decide that a full consumption and consummation can only be achieved by actual physical presence on the mountain.
Climbing mount Fuji was one of the most exhausting, miserable and disappointing experiences of my life. The driving rain, the strength-sapping monotonous climb up a winding grey ash path, the altitude sickness that prevented me from continuing to the very summit, all these things constituted the haecceity of Mt. Fuji, the essential nature of the thing, and as with all things, this nature was not fully apprehendable from a distance. Nevertheless, as the clouds and my head cleared, I surveyed the scene from the slope I was on and saw an exquisite vista of mountain after feathery mountain receding into the misty distance. I resolved to climb every one.
Two points emerge from this: first, we are very bad at predicting what will make us happy. I regard this mount Fuji disjunction as a metaphor for the imagined futures we spread out before us. Every ambition is a little Fuji - a new job, holiday, weekend away with a suitcase of Danish pastries, will when actually experienced consist of nothing but a fine-grained shale of unforseen moments. It is not even a question of expectations being fulfilled or disappointed, but rather that those expectations are representations of the wrong subject in the wrong media - a crude crayon sketch of a man on a hill instead of a novel about beef, played by an orchestra.
The second point is that maybe, just maybe, this strong attraction to hilly things stems from the fact that they resemble in form the breasts we suckled as babies. As a breastfeeding baby, the image of this areola-capped mound rising up from its surroundings must surely have been the most comforting, most attractive image to form in the blanky mind, and maybe it's impossible for a grown man to look at a breast or breastoid form without stirring up some deep root of comfort and pleasure. Of course I am not saying that when I see a volcano I think to myself 'Ooh, that looks like a breast, but it's too big to suck, so I'll just go and climb it instead' - that would be silly. On the contrary, I believe that when I see a volcano, some primitive part of me thinks 'Ooh, that looks like a breast, and if I climb it, maybe I'll get the milk.'
I went there in the hope that exposure to a bit of raw nature might do something for the ennui. Anyway, while gazing at senile volcanoes, their slopes balding black or covered in hoary moss, I was reminded of an insight I first had in Japan when climbing Mount Fuji.
Fuji, as any half-decent volcano should, has a glorious form: a perfect cone with an areola of snow, and foothills gently sloping into the surrounding planes. Seen from a distance on a clear day it has a powerful sensuousness that makes you want to do more than just look. If only you could experience that gentle form, that soft snowy texture, more directly, more intimately. Ah, to touch, to stroke, to mount Fuji. And so, you decide that a full consumption and consummation can only be achieved by actual physical presence on the mountain.
Climbing mount Fuji was one of the most exhausting, miserable and disappointing experiences of my life. The driving rain, the strength-sapping monotonous climb up a winding grey ash path, the altitude sickness that prevented me from continuing to the very summit, all these things constituted the haecceity of Mt. Fuji, the essential nature of the thing, and as with all things, this nature was not fully apprehendable from a distance. Nevertheless, as the clouds and my head cleared, I surveyed the scene from the slope I was on and saw an exquisite vista of mountain after feathery mountain receding into the misty distance. I resolved to climb every one.
Two points emerge from this: first, we are very bad at predicting what will make us happy. I regard this mount Fuji disjunction as a metaphor for the imagined futures we spread out before us. Every ambition is a little Fuji - a new job, holiday, weekend away with a suitcase of Danish pastries, will when actually experienced consist of nothing but a fine-grained shale of unforseen moments. It is not even a question of expectations being fulfilled or disappointed, but rather that those expectations are representations of the wrong subject in the wrong media - a crude crayon sketch of a man on a hill instead of a novel about beef, played by an orchestra.
The second point is that maybe, just maybe, this strong attraction to hilly things stems from the fact that they resemble in form the breasts we suckled as babies. As a breastfeeding baby, the image of this areola-capped mound rising up from its surroundings must surely have been the most comforting, most attractive image to form in the blanky mind, and maybe it's impossible for a grown man to look at a breast or breastoid form without stirring up some deep root of comfort and pleasure. Of course I am not saying that when I see a volcano I think to myself 'Ooh, that looks like a breast, but it's too big to suck, so I'll just go and climb it instead' - that would be silly. On the contrary, I believe that when I see a volcano, some primitive part of me thinks 'Ooh, that looks like a breast, and if I climb it, maybe I'll get the milk.'
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Hopeless monsters and tiny greenfields
Max Mosley, head of Formula One's governing body, has been (about 2 months ago - I do try and be up-to-date) under pressure to resign for allegedly indulging in a Nazi-themed orgy with a number of prostitutes. Presumably an orgy with such a morally dodgy theme added excitement and increased the prick's priapic potential.
Personally, I was more outraged recently when on an edition of the Andrew Marred 'The Weak Start' on BBC Radio 4, Professor Susan Greenfield insisted on pronouncing the 'nano' of 'nanotechnology' as 'nay-no.' (I expect she pronounces 'grey goo' as 'graggy'). This flagrant disrespect for oral rectitude left me fuming in my bed, and I believe I was justified in my anger, for language matters; incorrect pronunciation leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding, and from there it is only a short step to war.
Yet I somehow doubt that the newspapers would have even bothered to print the Mosley story if the orgy had involved a team of naughty neuroscientists shouting 'nayno, nayno' while covering Max in a grey chutney blanket.
Personally, I was more outraged recently when on an edition of the Andrew Marred 'The Weak Start' on BBC Radio 4, Professor Susan Greenfield insisted on pronouncing the 'nano' of 'nanotechnology' as 'nay-no.' (I expect she pronounces 'grey goo' as 'graggy'). This flagrant disrespect for oral rectitude left me fuming in my bed, and I believe I was justified in my anger, for language matters; incorrect pronunciation leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding, and from there it is only a short step to war.
Yet I somehow doubt that the newspapers would have even bothered to print the Mosley story if the orgy had involved a team of naughty neuroscientists shouting 'nayno, nayno' while covering Max in a grey chutney blanket.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Chutney Blankets
It is my opinion that this word pairing is chronically underused in the English language. Until now these words have apparently never appeared in this order on the interweb, nor have I ever heard them uttered together by another person, living or dead. I am not sure what a chutney blanket is, but my guess is it is a blanket made entirely from chutney, and is probably used to keep one warm in a sandwich.
The world may not yet be ready for this wordy union, yet I like to think that at this very moment, in a restaurant or library, or lazing on a hammock in a landlocked country, another person is contemplating these lovely syllables and wondering at their import. Indeed if you, gifted reader of this blog, should take it upon yourself to spread the chutney blanket meme by slipping chutney blankets into your conversations, essays or marriage vows whenever appropriate, you will be partly responsible for further enriching the English language, and your life will not have been in vain.
The world may not yet be ready for this wordy union, yet I like to think that at this very moment, in a restaurant or library, or lazing on a hammock in a landlocked country, another person is contemplating these lovely syllables and wondering at their import. Indeed if you, gifted reader of this blog, should take it upon yourself to spread the chutney blanket meme by slipping chutney blankets into your conversations, essays or marriage vows whenever appropriate, you will be partly responsible for further enriching the English language, and your life will not have been in vain.
Killing time
Just as when waiting at a bus stop or airport you might get out your novel or sudoku book or other such time-killer specifically brought along for its murderous purpose, so it often seems to me that all our goals, ambitions, achievements are just killing time between a birth and a death. At least, I myself am often overcome by this nauseating sense that in my own life this is the case. In general I find that in socially acceptable time-killing situations such as the departure lounge, I prefer to let time live, and to watch, to sit with an empty mind - my mind is invariably empty - and to do nothing. But when expanded to the scale of a lifetime, this same tendency manifests itself as a lack of ambition, abandonment of projects as pointless, a sense of futility and a wish just to watch the world pass without either attempting to engage with it or to make full use of the time by doing anything 'useful'.
Whatever I choose to do, it is simply killing time until I die. This feeling, which is by no means constant in me but is I think interesting enough to write about and regular enough to be a problem, is perhaps the result of a particular line of philosophical reflection, or of my own peculiar psychological make-up, or an interaction between the two. If I was constantly driven, if I had a burning ambition or obsession which demanded fulfillment, then perhaps this feeling would never arise. I have occasionally felt driven, and I suspect it is precisely at moments when the fire goes out, when a ballooned ambition is pierced by real experience, when - to shift metaphors - you find yourself stranded centre stage with the mask (and until now you never suspected it was a mask) suddenly peeled off to reveal a faceless, scriptless nobody, and you shuffle offstage into the dim auditorium to sit and watch as your fellow actors continue to flap their mouths and roll out their roles - it is at these moments that you realize you can either remain in the empty (it is always empty) auditorium or fashion a new mask and carry on with the play.
If, having seen into the emptiness and absurdity of it all, you choose to re-enter the play, it is with a lost innocence, but also with the potential for a greater freedom to remake yourself, to alter the script, paint your face with gold or shit. Once you have had this experience of seeing the play for what it is, I wonder if it is ever possible to lose that perspective, to forget, to allow a mask to etch itself onto your nothingface again. I don't think it is possible for me. I can play the part, but I know that my attempts at impersonation are all pretense.
Whatever I choose to do, it is simply killing time until I die. This feeling, which is by no means constant in me but is I think interesting enough to write about and regular enough to be a problem, is perhaps the result of a particular line of philosophical reflection, or of my own peculiar psychological make-up, or an interaction between the two. If I was constantly driven, if I had a burning ambition or obsession which demanded fulfillment, then perhaps this feeling would never arise. I have occasionally felt driven, and I suspect it is precisely at moments when the fire goes out, when a ballooned ambition is pierced by real experience, when - to shift metaphors - you find yourself stranded centre stage with the mask (and until now you never suspected it was a mask) suddenly peeled off to reveal a faceless, scriptless nobody, and you shuffle offstage into the dim auditorium to sit and watch as your fellow actors continue to flap their mouths and roll out their roles - it is at these moments that you realize you can either remain in the empty (it is always empty) auditorium or fashion a new mask and carry on with the play.
If, having seen into the emptiness and absurdity of it all, you choose to re-enter the play, it is with a lost innocence, but also with the potential for a greater freedom to remake yourself, to alter the script, paint your face with gold or shit. Once you have had this experience of seeing the play for what it is, I wonder if it is ever possible to lose that perspective, to forget, to allow a mask to etch itself onto your nothingface again. I don't think it is possible for me. I can play the part, but I know that my attempts at impersonation are all pretense.
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