SELF-REFERENTIAL

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CLIMATE CHANGE: HEARD IT ALL BEFORE?

EFL textbooks “do” climate change; I have to think of new ways in to prevent students rolling their eyes. I’ll always remember the girl who told me quite happily that it just didn’t interest her at all. And, OK, maybe it’s not immediately gripping when you're used to being entertained at speed, in colour and with a cast of celebs.

At the same time, it’s got to be more exciting than home make-over shows. Well, hasn’t it?

Number of victims in Twin Towers disaster: 2800
Number of victims in Madrid bombings: 200 +
Number of victims annually from consequences of climate change – malaria, dysentry and malnutrition: 160,000
(estimate by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which excludes deaths caused by tropical cyclones and typhoons)

Warming over the past century: 0.6C
Warming this century predicted by the inter-governmental panel on climate change (3000 scientists): 1.4C – 5.8C
Possible figure taking into account decline in (cooling) smoke pollution: 7C -10C
Other factors that may yet further increase the temperature rise are the release of carbon from “die-back” in drought-stricken Amazonian forests and the release of methane from the oceans, triggered by warming.

At the end of the Permian Era, 251 million years ago, 95% of life species on earth were killed by a global temperature rise of just 6C.

And what’s the best “joined-up thinking” the US (and UK) can come up with? A war for strategic control over the remaining fossil fuel reserves in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea!

facts & figures from High Tide: News From A Warming World by Mark Lynas, reviewed in The Observer, 24.04.04

THE PROBLEM WITH IDIOMS

This is from a newspaper's obituary of Arthur Godman, a textbook writer who was taken prisoner by the Japanese army in WW2:

'Later, while he was working on the railway, Godman recalled how, after the discovery of illicit radio sets, a Japanese officer had summoned the officers in his camp to give them a dressing-down: "You British think we Japanese bloody fools," the man shrieked. "You think we do not know what you do. You think we do not know you are hiding radios. You think we know f*** nothing, but really we know f*** all." "We dared not laugh," Godman wrote, "as that would have been extremely foolish - and dangerous." '

(For this to work, you have to close your eyes and imagine the scene.)

TRANSPORTED BY BELLS

Tonight, as on every Monday evening, this lifeless suburb is transformed for an hour or longer by the pealing of bells. The sound tumbles down triumphantly from the top of Harrow hill and when I hear it, especially on a warm-scented Spring night, I’m transfixed. Now the roar of traffic is subdued and you can imagine it’s the sound of breakers on the shore - it's similar. When I lived out in Buckinghamshire, I used to hear the same sound across the fields on misty summer mornings. It makes me want to come alive in a Medieval village, reminds me of Dick Whittington and Lazy Sunday Afternoon.

It’s one of the things that has been untarnished by time. (Funny that, while enjoyment from music I used to love can pale until it's not there at all.) If I leave England, I won’t be able to hear bells without pangs of longing.

DE-STRESSING

Ha ha. Given the content of recent posts (Jesus, dreams, Crabdale, Radiohead) the banner ads for anxiety relief pills etc cracked me up. You got it right, Computer! Now, is anyone going to advertise something psychedelic to me?

THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Radiohead's OK Computer is reckoned by music journos to be one of the best albums of all time but I never thought so, mainly because it took me so long to get used to Thom Yorke's whining vocal style. After more (intermittent) plays, I've come to see it as a really wonderful evocation in music of a slightly futuristc dystopia (see Crabdale and previous blogs) where many people, despite having their material needs satisfied, are stretched to breaking point and feel utterly powerless.

I know this is a candidate for Pseud's Corner now, but I do think the album is a work of twisted genius. The title itself is about the nod of weary assent we unthinkingly give hundreds of times a day interfacing with the insanely complicated systems (computerised and otherwise) that regulate our lives. The songs are relentlessy nasty.

Karma Police, after an initial run-through of a comfortingly familiar-sounding chord sequence, lurches immediately into its sinister lyric about two misfits. Who they are and what side they are on is ambiguous but the malice of the assault against them ("arrest this man...he buzzes like a fridge; he's like a detuned radio") is clear. TY, in character as a weasly and paranoid collaborator/informer, asks the karma police to remove them from the scene. In the refrain, the sweet nursery piano scales contrast with the starkness of the words (of the Authorities?) and the dry rasp with which they tail off: “this is what you’ll get if you mess with us.” Best of all is the exuberant outro as the singer returns to his own path, now clear of undesirable elements; his hollow joy is emphasised by a fanfare of strangely cold voice-like sounds in the background, which evoke the soothing backing vocals you might expect at this point in songs from an earlier era. (These sounds are a good example of what one reviewer described as musical “hieroglyphs” which decorate every track.) The song ends jarringly.

Building towards the climax of the album (Lucky), No Surprises brings the theme to its logical conclusion: conform completely or get out. There is suicide by asphyxiation side by side with the pretty house and garden. What both solutions have in common is the quietly terrified plea for comfort: "no alarms and no surprises please."

It's amazing what a bunch of musical amateurs can do with a little technology and imagination. Go back and listen to it again.

MOLE REMEMBERS SOMETHING

The Mole had been working hard all the week, trying to improve his little life. First online, then from Estate Agents' leaflets; then scanning all those column inches, with furious intensity; till he he had poison in his throat, RSI in his fingertips (why had he never learned to type?) and an aching head. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little office with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder then, that he suddenly scattered all the paper on the floor, said "Fuck it!" and "Screw this!" and also "Bugger flats and mortgages!" and bolted out of the room without even waiting for the noisy computer to shut down properly. Something outside was calling him imperiously, so he wasted no time and ran into the garden with his guitar. Then he strummed and sang and crooned and hummed, and worked the fretboard for all he was worth. And he called his flatmate, who came running. The two tiny creatures put on loud music and danced in a frenzy and all the sun poured down in beneficent rays.

(Obviously there was no time for blogging!)

HOUSE TROUBLE

All week, since the key worker scheme offered me an equity loan and gave me four weeks to act, I've been worrying about property, about my future, about financial security... It all makes me feel unsettled and not in the least excited.

All the stress is an insidious effect of watching and listening to the news so much! There is a subtext in the media, not just in "aspirational programming", all about the need to shore up your defences in an uncertain, often terrifying world. I resent how it's crept into my head - my private "imaginal" space - and is making me into a "paranoid android". Having a long talk with a spiritually-minded friend this week helped me get things a bit more into perspective. What is really important in life? It's experience, stoopid! And that can be enjoyed to the full in a beach hut. Now there's a better idea...

DREAM TROUBLE

I dreamt this last night. I am on a tube train at 11pm heading into the city centre, even though I know I have work the next morning. I have two guitars and a suitcase with me - overloaded. I meet a colleague from work who has very interesting things to say, but I decide to cut my journey short and get off at the next stop. It's too much trouble and doesn't make much sense since I'm also very vague about the original reason for going.

Back home, in bed, I notice someone has left a sinister toy lying in my room. It's a demon-doll made of garish pink, green and yellow foam. It either says to me (or sends me the thought) "I'm going to get you." I reach over to pick it up. It's very unpleasant so I decide to get rid of it by scrunching it up; it becomes a ring with a little green skull mask on top, which I conceal in a drawer. Good riddance, I think.

I walk through to the living room, where my mother is having an anxiety attack about the political situation. The signal of the TV she's watching is erratic and a man is walking up and down the street outside selling gas masks. This is because things have deteriorated so badly that there is going to be a nuclear war. (I haven't had a nuclear war dream since Gorbachev, but I was reading about some Bomb scenarios in Douglas Coupland's Life After God at the weekend.) In another room, people are getting ready their last full English breakfast ever. I ask people how long we'll have to stay in the shelter -weeks or months probably. But we're only allowed to bring a small rucksack of supplies. I think about how smelly we're all going to be without enough clean underwear.

Back in the living room, Blair is making a speech trying to make the situation seem reasonable - but he knows it's out of control. You can tell he's scared; his voice is strained and he's being apologetic too. I shoo some plated armadillo-like prehistoric animals out of the room through patio doors where the windows should be.

None of this makes much sense to me, although it could be about abandoning a current plan, denying something nasty, and coping in the face of an imminent disaster.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

My Dad spent several Christmases persuading me that Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a wise poem - and, yes, it is. But, to prevent my once plastic opinions becoming too hardened through contact with a stubbornly intransigent reality, I like to read and listen to people who are able to turn things upside down. Inverted, an apparently reliable old saw can be immensely revealing, not to mention hilarious. (I wish I could have some of Oscar Wilde's epigrams tattooed on my arm - impermanent, so I could get a different set once they'd faded.)

At a profound level, Zen Buddhism (and the lyrics to a Phish song I can't remember the title of) use paradoxical koans to drive home the point that reality is illusory and words are even less reliable. (One of my friends makes a habit of seeing truths in apparently contradictory propositions, especially when these purport to be guides to living.)

So I was delighted to rediscover after many years - through a quotation at the top of someone's blog - the magic of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The poet speaks some of his own doctrines (his theme: "Energy is Eternal delight") through the Proverbs of Hell, collected from the denizens of that fiery realm:

"Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth."

"Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of genius."

"Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity."

"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you."

"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise"

"The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure."

CHAPTER 8 - POST-TRAUMATIC SHOCK

After hours of negotiating re-routed machines and blackcoat cordons, Crabdale arrived back in his street exhausted in the second watch of the night, the sky misty and orange. The trees with their amputated stumps where branches had been reminded him of the nuclear war scenes he'd once seen in a museum.

Thinking the house might be all winked out, he crept in, but all in vain. A light snapped on, a door flew open and Frothie scurried out.

“Oh, they were very pleased with the new pots and pans I got them,” she began immediately, not noticing his dishevelled state. “I’d originally gone thinking that they might have non-stick ones at the market because I’d vaguely thought I remembered seeing them somewhere, only maybe not there. They had these ones which were rather a nice shape and were half the price I’d expected, though, what I hadn’t expected at all, they had,” rising to a meaningless crescendo… “METAL HANDLES! Well of course, I might have gone to the other stall if I’d thought about it. But Esmie phoned. Actually, did she? No, I was about to phone Esmie, that’s it, because I knew I had to ask her about the pots in case she hadn’t wanted the ones I was thinking of, although she had mentioned them before when I went round to see her after her autonomic therapy session…”

Crabdale let her trundle on for another few minutes until she paused to freeze her face in a grotesque frozen mask to illustrate some stray point.

“There’s been another bomb. I just got out in time.”

Frothie looked genuinely alarmed. “Oh, how awful! I should’ve seen it on the news, only I didn’t get around to watching it. I’d vaguely wondered if I should watch it – no that’s wrong, I meant to watch it, only Esmie phoned and started asking about the little infant, because it turns out he's having trouble mewling and scrunting, which is quite common in first castes now, and before I knew it another hour had gone by."

“I’m pretty rattled, actually, pretty shaken,” Crabdale said, only just controlling a desire to yell, “I think I need some of that autonomic therapy myself.”

“So where was the bomb?” Frothie attempted to show an interest.

“In the city bowels, between the Refreshments and Retail in Stocks Green; I can’t say exactly as there were so many people rushing around and all the blackcoats were directing everybody out towards the feed route.”

“Cilla wants to go too, to the therapy sessions, by the way - to help her recover from the eating disorder that I thought might have been some kind of hangover from the last time she had sloth, or else because she’s waking up before her natural wake-up time. Speaking honestly, I think she and Esmie both need something to relieve the pressure, if you see what I mean. I meant to go myself – I was debating with myself whether to, because I had a vague feeling that it might have been on the evening I didn’t have to look after the infant…”

Crabdale crept away, with some comment intended to sound final and sleepy. Frothie’s words pursued him up the long spiral staircase to his room, her voice growing more and more plaintive in another desperate attempt to connect.

FOLK CODES Vs THE MONKEY DRIVE

I was reading an interesting blog the other day by James. (The title was "James" but I can't find it any more, so no link.) He’s got a section on his philosophy, where he says that our ideas about what we should do in life derive from how we see ourselves. He uses some neat arguments to dismiss the idea that we are souls, and concludes that we are essentially animals. (Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that this last point is correct. If you doubt it, you can find the point argued in depth by John Gray in Straw Dogs.) James thinks it follows from this that the good life is just one where you breed successfully and do what you can to ensure the health & prosperity of your kids. Family values, then? Not quite. What should your attitude be towards killing your enemies, and their kids?

Let’s call James's idea the monkey drive: spread your genes, increase your territory, look after your own (narrowly or broadly defined, but certainly not running to the whole species!) It’s the kind of theory that sits well with a neo-Darwinian “selfish gene” explanation of life. If philosophical background is needed, it could be aligned with many of the ideas of Nietzsche, especially in A Genealogy of Morals.

Nietzsche – and James – present a powerful challenge to the fragmentary, sometimes contradictory, but almost universally held codes of “folk morality”. We use these ideas to “teach our kids the difference between right and wrong”, criticise the selfish motives of a politician, or say what a great guy (or girl) a friend is. From these everyday examples, right up to the defining moral certainties about Auschwitz or the genocide in Rwanda, we draw from folk codes and implicitly criticise the monkey drive.

But are we on philosophically shaky ground?

Nietzsche’s challenge would go something like this. We are animals. We are at our happiest when following the monkey drive, which he called the Will To Power, i.e. rutting, being free from “status anxiety”, lording it over others, admiring our patch of ground after its latest makeover… (These are my interpretations: Nietzsche himself would have gone into an anti-bourgeois rage over home/garden makeover shows!) Folk morality derives from profoundly unnatural Judeo-Christian ideas, which arose as a historical accident as this culture attempted to assert itself over the worldly power of the Roman Empire. (He was aware of the irony of “altruism” being the banner of a whole people’s Will To Power.)

Anyway, these codes involve continually suppressing the monkey drive, resulting in feelings of alienation and guilt in their adherents. The most extreme examples, for example those found in the Sermon of the Mount – or, more recently, in Gandhi’s ideals – are sheer absurdities. Rather than teaching us how to live better lives in the world, they derive their authority from the groundless belief in a life to come, the great hereafter.

There have been valiant philosophical attempts, before and after Nietzsche, to answer this kind of challenge, usually by watering down the monkey drive so that it becomes a kind of enlightened self-interest (although it remains clear that the version in fact “works” in worldly terms is more a kind of concealed selfishness: cheat the system, make as much money as you can, rip people off, etc. Just don’t advertise the fact that you’re doing it.)

Without a more satisfactory answer, we have no recourse to the folk codes, “the difference between right and wrong” as conventionally thought of. What is your answer to Nietzsche?

EASTER - GO WITH THE ORIGINAL PLOT

I promised a student of mine that I'd go to see The Passion with her, despite the bad reviews, as she had only ever been to see one film in the UK before and is a devoted Christian. Just like when I was a boy, I found it hard not to cry; the suffering of Jesus remains moving - and, in Mel Gibson's version, disturbing - to watch. It has the same power as any of the great tragedies (e.g. Shakespeare, Hardy) where the odds are so heavily stacked against the characters.

Oh, except the ending. The story of the resurrection, typically Hollywood, has so clearly been added on by some saboteur who just couldn't confront tragedy for what it is. It's just like a book of fairy tales I once had where Goldilocks went back and made friends with the three bears and Hansel let the witch out of the oven when she promised to be good. In a well-intentioned but clumsy effort to make the stories more palatable, the modern author renders them largely pointless and, for children, a whole lot less fun.

Gibson's saccharine final scene underlines artlessness of the ending after what stands alone as a powerful and instructive myth. Jesus is the greatest martyr of all time. There is no more hard-hitting demonstration of the victory (in the world's terms) of cynical, institutional power over idealism, nor of the eternal justification of idealism in history, which might be called the "God's-eye" view, than the mythologised life of Jesus. So why ruin it with an ending that not only invalidates the terrible sacrifice but adds insult to injury by being downright incredible?

In any case, who today honestly believes that a man came back from the dead? That blood-sacrifice is the only way to expiate sin? That what consititutes sin is disobedience to the arbtrary commands of a Father God? That this God can forgive mankind not in spite of but because of the death, in such a horrible way, of His miraculously conceived Son? (He would otherwise be powerless to forgive, because He cannot contravene His own laws about the just punishment for sin....)

Enough! The ideas here are so tortured, so utterly arcane, that their survival into the 21st Century must rank among the best testaments to that voguish psychological state - "denial" - that I know.

People who recognise the true nature of Jesus' sacrifice - brave, idealistic, final - must see that the real story is preserved from second-rate writers of whatever era.

INTERNAL FLIGHTS

When I imagine myself in certain places, I catch a glimpse of a bliss so intense it's almost painful. While mystics aim to wake to Nirvana in the present moment, I prefer to conjure up an image of scenes that capture me then leave me momentarily racked with longing. I fantasise about these (usually sunlit) scenes nearly as often as I do about sex, only for seconds at a time, several times a day.

I was writing a card this morning when the intense blaze of scarlet on a tree pictured on the front (in woodland with a wooden house) transported me to one of the destinations – Autumn in New England. This is an idealised place with no cars, malls or deadlines. Probably in the time of the Pilgrims and charged with the thrill of playing in the woods of childhood. There is always a slight chill in the air and a deep blue sky to frame the bright leaves.

Music, most recently the shattered hazy guitar chord which follows Thom Yorke’s line “it’s going to be a glorious day” (Lucky, OK Computer) had a similar effect. Despite its occurring in the context of an ambiguous, slightly sinister lyric, the one chord took effect instantly - I was suddenly in my Long Summer Day in the mid-to-late 60s, perhaps seen from a London bus or in the “stoned immaculate” smile of a hippie girl in Golden Gate Park as she moves to the music…

On a rational level, I’m aware that a summer’s day is as good in 2004 and that a bus ride more often than not holds little excitement; it is because my destinations are by their very nature out of bounds that they are drenched with beauty.

Why is it that the most intense experiences are always bound up with the unattainable? Is this personal to me, widespread or universal?

CHAPTER 7 – GRINNINGSOUL

Black screen. Cut to blurred shot of ceremonial gas-lamp. Move out, pan round. Herr Grinningsoul centre-screen. Text: First Cardinal of Hibernia. Fade text as he starts to speak.

“Today we have all seen for ourselves the utter disregard for human life shown by the unrecanted. The kind of mentality that would perpetrate such crimes as these can scarcely be imagined, and our sympathies must go straight away to the families of the victims. Drone families will be granted an extra day’s compassionate leave from grind in recognition of their irreplaceable loss, while property-owners will be granted a one-month tax credit on rental income.

“I have today asked Parliament to support me in implementing a range of emergency measures, the detail of which will be made available through the usual caste networks and grind committees. I know that you will all understand the necessity of doing this, given the grave nature of the situation we are in.

“There has lately been some wagging of tongues, questioning Hibernia’s campaigns overseas. I say open your eyes and see that the time for this frothy talk is at an end. Root it out!

“Tongues have idly wagged on the subject of our precious caste system. The unrecanted are hoisting the banner of caste war in our streets. I say know yourselves, respect the castes, pull together in solidarity.

"It is not in vain that we toil for progress and stability. I say hold fast, return to your places of grind and continue to build what the unrecanted seek to destroy. Remember that my administration will stop at nothing to generate targets towards which you can grind with complete confidence.

“We shall not be cowed! Nor shall we stumble. We shall root out the unrecanted of all persuasions and silence the wagging tongues forever. The struggle for individual enrichment in the face of those who would destroy it shall never cease.

Good evening.”

Pan out, return to gas-lamp. Fade to black.

CHAPTER 6 - HISTORIC POISONINGS

In anticipation of two whole days free, Crabdale and some of the drones go to poison themselves. They leave the Department through the arch and scramble down the steel stairway to the edge of the trunk route to catch a machine. Legs wrapped round, clinging on, Crabdale enjoyed the buzz of the motor on his inner thighs. Such a privilege to have a two-day weekend, he reflected as the machine moved off into the traffic flow; so arbitrary, having two days off every twelve.

The tide of vehicles oozed slowly through the bowels of the city and finally deposited them on the edge of the refreshment zone. Wiping the grime from their faces, the bureaucrats made their way past the dull thud of tribal and warily eyed the group of young staggerers outside as they entered the Dog and Dreck

Hekate, haply evolved for life in bars, went to order for the group of them: three gutfuckers, a rusty nail and a Moulted Old Crow. She returned to the table, ran her fingers through her luxuriant jet-black hair and took immediate aim at the Head of the Department.

“I had to take some diktat from JC today,” she began, “and I was thinking - well, do you not think he looks really like round flubber man from the Flubberjacks? Remember the Flubberjacks? They used to show it after Carnivore Parade.”

Mad Alf closed his eyes and moved his jaw around for a few seconds, as if having a little fit. “The Flubberjacks – yes!” he grinned. “All the characters were played by the same person, weren’t they? But were any of them male? Were any of them straight?” Laughter. “I loved the Flubberjacks.” His slightly gap-tooth grin lent his face a look of total bliss until the moment he snapped it off and resumed staring at a point on the wall.

“That one was a bit after my time,” remarked Crabdale, but, keen to get into the babble about historic viewing, added, “I always watched Hang ‘Em High on the other channel.”

Alf jerked into life again. “A-ha! The execution show!” He made a frightening face. “That was so great, before they changed the format. Can you own that one now?” His eyes darted to Crabdale.

“Nah, I think most of them were deleted, but they re-run some clips on Dead Entertained if you stay up that late, ‘cept with different commentary.”

Hek eyed them all mischievously. “OK – when push comes to shove, JC or Hangman Judd from Hang 'Em High?” She knocked back some of her scarlet gutfucker.

Laughter. Lots of shouting.

“What about, what about…” Alf jabbered furiously, “Naughty Nicky or Slut?”

“Both! At the same time!”

“Alf Splitter or the Baby Jesus?”

“Yeah, Alf or the Baby Jesus? Which one? Which one? Good question!”

Crabdale let his eyes wander round the bar. He felt the characteristic sickening rush of the poison and watched as the rough contours of the stone walls began to reveal an inner structure of green and red veins. Alf looked skeletal, about to fall apart, jaw clenching and unclenching mechanically. Hek, feline and gorgeous, darted Crabdale a knowing look and nestled further into her recliner. Behind her, Crabdale could see the bar was starting to fill up with plasticked-up nubiles; he lusted silently as he watched the contours of their bodies shift gently. Restlessness filled him as he prepared for the onslaught of his thoughts. JC or Hangeman Judd? What an idea! Must shake that one off.

A violent crash from somewhere close by and a tinny loudspeaker spluttered to life.

“It’s them again,” Hek hissed to Crabdale. “We’re under attack. Let’s get out of here.”

“We’re supposed to wait for further instructions, aren’t we?”

The sound of falling masonry drowned out Hek's disbelieving reply.

IT JUST SO HAPPENED THAT...

Coincidences are always taken as evidence that, rather than utter randomness, there is a strange design behind events. On the other hand, the word itself, its definition and the very surprise with which people greet such happenings show that, deep down, coincidences are recognised as the results of chance. If they happened too often and were too seemingly prescient or uncanny, people would by now have learned to shrug them off as just another sign from God.

I've had a few happen to me, but not nearly as many as friends have had. I think perhaps it's all down to how fine the tuning is on your "strangeness antenna" i.e. some people, probably the more attentive ones, recognise as a signal what others tune out as noise. They may use a similar faculty that allows patterns in clouds, or indeed in constellations, to be discerned. Whether those patterns are actually there, let alone put there, is a moot point.

Anyway, this morning, I was taken aback by such a coincidence. At the top of this blog are banner ads which try (usually in vain) to target products at me, chosen by some more reasonably intelligent trawling software on the basis of what I write. (It makes some hilarious errors, though. For example, Crabdale's adventures in the kitchen were followed by a spate of ads for fitted kitchens, something I have very little use for as a single-room occupier.)

Yesterday, I was telling friend who is a former voluntary worker that, since my own time in Africa, I have always wanted to use my experience to train teachers to teach basic literacy to poor kids in developing countries. (I can't do this on a salaried basis without a Master's degree, pretty much beyond my means, even though I have all the skills needed.) I also mentioned in passing one inspiring English and literacy project I'd seen in Siem Reap in Cambodia.

The banner ad on my site today (one side only) was for a scheme called Room to Read, where volunteers are building libraries and supporting literacy in Cambodia. When I refreshed the site, it had gone and the kitchens were back. Weird, huh?

Please leave some other bizarre coincidences in the comments box.

HEART TO HEART

Theodore Zeldin took the opportunity of the centenary of the Entente Cordiale to restate his point about the value of intimacy. His book An Intimate History Of Humanity contends that all the most important changes in society happen in the forum of one-to-one conversations. In an effort to stimulate better dialogues, Zeldin has set up the Oxford Muse website, where people can “write self-portraits of two or three thousand words in which they set down what is most important to them”. This idea excited me immediately. I wondered what my friends would write, and what I would write.

Zeldin: “the world is still full of people who are too timid or polite to say what they think, or too conformist to think for themselves. We are schooled to be hypocrites and we all wear masks. The hidden thoughts in other people’s heads are the darkness that surrounds us.”

All of this is especially relevant now in London, where egomaniacs on both sides in the “war on terror”, by repeating slogans for public consumption, have brought us to the point where we are afraid of actually being blown apart.

How often, stung, do we adopt a rather hectoring tone as a kind of Devil’s advocate? Or, alternatively, prune the rough edges off some of our opinions to drift more easily with the general flow of the conversation? In these situations, nothing interesting results; far from being the kind of world-changing total communication Zeldin writes about, this hardly qualifies as a dialogue.

For that to happen, one thing is necessary: tolerance. Or, as someone said on the radio this morning, perhaps “acceptance” would be a better word, since tolerance implies suppressed annoyance. Dialogue cannot take place unless you recognise that, no matter how absurd a person’s beliefs may appear, given that the person is actually sane, there is a personal narrative which can explain how the beliefs were arrived at. (The same is true of the insane, though unearthing the narrative may require a specialist.)

Understanding this narrative may bring about a situation where beliefs can be quietly, effectively, challenged. And perhaps these will be your beliefs. No one walks away unchanged.

the Oxford Muse foundation

CHAPTER 5 - PAPER

Crabdale handed over his identification papers to the sallow-faced receptionist and looked at her wistfully as she checked his signature with her slender fingers.

“Drone?” she asked mockpleasantly.

“Second caste – look it says here.” Crabdale indicated the place where he had carefully inserted the distinguishing detail.

“Oh, yes. Sorry.” She eyed him thoughtfully, and then added, “you occupy your own room then, right?”

Crabdale looked down, a little embarrassed. “Yes, that’s right. It’s not that great, though. Just a small one. You must be on the ladder?”

“I’m going for my caste appraisal in eighteen months,” she made a little joking play of tense concentration, “already getting geared up for it all! Could you fill in the orange form with your name, room code and everything, then I’ll transfer it all to the entry permit for logging in. It only takes a few minutes.”

A quarter of an hour later, Crabdale was wandering the corridors of the Institute clutching his log-in receipt. He had to cross several wings of the building to get to the kitchen, but he didn’t mind; so much of his life had been spent in corridors that he felt immensely comfortable. It even gave him a peculiar sense of his own importance to be striding along empty-morningish, his echoing footsteps the only sign of life.

The head cook, Rosa Buckett, fixed him with her warm but piggy blue-jewelled eyes when he entered. (They looked so blue because of the ruddy pouches of her cheeks.)

“Hello, my darrlin’,” she bellowed “ it’s been an age and an ‘alf! We were just readyin’ the carcasses an’ I remembered you was comin’ so I saved you a few flaps and wraps.”

“Wonderful! Thank you.” Crabdale pretended an enthusiasm he did not feel.

The kitchens were cavernous; the air teemed with the sound of clattering cutlery and metallic scraping as trays were eased from gaping ovens. Vast clouds of steam erupted and dispersed below the vaulted ceiling, from where it dripped in spits on to the heads of the kitchen drones scurrying below. Even more impressive were the smells given off by rich treacly sauces, pungent roots and highly spiced carcass-cuts.

Crabdale took a moment to salivate and marvel at the vast space.

“Have the rest of my drones arrived?”

“Drones! They’re gentlefolk! One or two have started in the scullery and the second caster – I forget his name, sorry – is assessin’ the charnel.”

“I hope you’re storing the ribs separately from the entrails?”

Rosa produced from behind her back a wedge of forms, bespattered with fat. “I’ve been waitin’ for you to say that. All present and correct, Mr Crabdale, all scraped and scrotted!” she announced proudly. “I done the new returns just as you sed.”

Crabdale smiled but shuffled uneasily. “The thing is, Rosa… I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but those returns aren’t valid any more. The Department has changed the assessment protocols. You have to send the data direct to them, then they do an initial scan and pass them on to me. You can’t send those returns off as they won’t register on the new system. And we can't actually log today's work as a fully-fledged moderation.”

Rosa’s face dropped, for all she ever had wanted to do was prepare banquets.

“…in short, you need to do them all over again. I’ve brought you a summary of the new regs. But if you want to look on the glow rather than the glare, at least the hygiene and waste norms haven’t been changed – this time.” he smiled ruefully.

Rosa produced a huge handkerchief and plumped herself down on a tiny iron stool which almost buckled under her enormous bulk. “Oh, Mr Crabdale, I’m beside myself. I don’t know what to do, really I don’t! One day you’re tellin’ me this, then you goes and changes it, then we seem to be back where we started, and always so much paper.”

Crabdale put his hand on her shoulder rather awkwardly. “You and I both know that the paper is evidence of all your good work. Otherwise, how would the cardinals be able to keep tabs? Your kitchens are a shining example, you know. ”

Glumly, Rosa took the new documents and cursed. Crabdale, having failed to convince, went off to begin his part of the grind.

OUT OF THE CAGE

I think Jim Morrison said that kids got into the Doors because they needed something sacred. Rock music, in another era, did quite well in providing this, for teenagers at least, with impenetrable lyrics, quasi-religious iconography and spectacle all adding to the illusion.

In a certain type of person, including and perhaps especially young men (I was there), there is the hunger for a certain kind of spiritual stimulation. I mean this in the broadest sense, that is, experience that is out of the ordinary, charged with significance, potentially life-defining. These events occur in parts of you that mundane experience can't reach. They may be tranquil, but not necessarily.

So it makes me wonder when I hear that the papers have been asking "WHY?" in relation to the suspected bombers rounded up in the UK. Why would some Moslem teenagers have so much hate that they could plan death and destruction?

I always remember the "choose life" litany at the start of Trainspotting. There are so many things this society does not, cannot, offer to a young man in the first flush of his exuberance. Yes, you can have CDs, DVDs and any amount of plastic, but where has adventure gone? You can have casual sex, but what about the dreamed-of soul mate? You can have a successful career, but what about purpose? You can play sport, but what about heroism? You can go along to the church or mosque, but what about revelation? You can serve the community, but what about martyrdom?

And among the things that modern society must proscribe is the lip-smackin', finger-lickin', heart-racin' prospect of real violence.