Nicole's Cape

On a dull and windy afternoon of the fourth day of September in the year of 1778, in my first month as parish priest at Amancey, a simple carriage arrived at the humble rectory I had just moved in. The driver, a rugged peasant, handed me a note. It was written by the abbess of a nearby nunnery at M., who was asking me to come as soon as I could to hear a confession of a dying nun. Their local priest, to whom they usually resorted in such spiritual emergencies, had been held up in Besançon for one reason or another and now the speed with which the dying woman was to make her way towards the eternal light, if that was to be granted her by our merciful Father, seemed to depend, in part, on me.

We set out without delay and made good progress till we reached Bolandoz. There, two huge trees felled by a recent wild storm blocked our way and the driver, who was occasionally hired by the sisters to do odd jobs and errands, announced the end of the journey. I had none of it and told him to think of a detour. Mumbling short, vigorous prayers – or curses – under his breath he obliged and soon we found ourselves on a country lane strewn with stones big enough to perilously jerk up the landau every few seconds. We were in a forest now, surrounded by what seemed to me complete darkness. I was wondering how the man was able to steer our vehicle, but I guessed it was the horses that must have taken over the task. What little moonlight we did get, when passing clouds were kind enough to make a little opening for it now and again, only compounded the feeling of gloom and danger.

After a quarter of an hour, the peasant reined in the horses, leaned into the side window and announced that the old nun was going to heaven anyway and he wouldn’t foolishly risk breaking a new carriage into fine pieces for the sake of her receiving an chance to apologise for being late once or twice to the Holy Mass. I cut him mid-sentence and announced that yes, he was going to risk exactly that. I ordered him to stick what he was paid for, and leave to me what I was ordained for. I added, having his enlightenment in mind, that it is often the case with confused or frightened souls that an old grave sin may sleep at their bottom and it is only the imminence of death that makes the soul realise what a dangerous, perhaps even lethal, burden it could be. And even though it might be enough to confess such a sin to God and ask Him to let the soul jettison the life-threatening cargo, confessing it to God and a priest is even better, because the power of absolution was granted to the Church by our Lord himself.  With an angry lash of the whip, the man spurred on the horses and we carried on.

When the battered and squeaking carriage made it to the convent, two hours later than expected, I was instantly taken to the nun’s cell, but instead of her confession I received her final gaze. Never had I seen such a gaze in a woman’s eyes: it was clear to me that what she had to share with me was not her sins, or the story of her life, but a secret – and judging by that look, a secret similar to which I had never heard before; or was going to after.  Alas (for her sake) I was not to hear it, or any other word from her mouth, because even as I held her hand, she closed her eyes and expired.

What follows is an account of her life, such as I was able to establish in the course of a long investigation which I undertook soon afterwards and which eventually lead me to a day over 60 years back from the day when I first - and last, as it seemed - saw the woman who as a nun was known Rosalie; as a girl, Nicole; and as a fugitive, Danielle; but who in most other respects wasn’t really known to anyone at all.

Nicole was born in the parish of C.*, situated not a very far distance from mine. She was an only child of Mme V. Her father little was known. There were rumours in the village that he had been a soldier and that at some point he was a prisoner at Fort de Joux. Whether this is a fact or fable I was unable to confirm and as no one in the village had known or seen him at all, it’s best just to acknowledge that a father must have existed and leave it at that.

In such circumstances it should not surprise anyone that the mother doted on the girl. And even if Nicole were not an only child, Mme V.’s excessive love would have been justified. At the age of 15, when the story begins, the girl was the brightest, the most courteous – and the prettiest not only in the parish, but – some swore – within 20 miles around Besançon. 

 

*after some consideration, I have decided to make anonymous most of the places and people that played some part in Nicole’s life. Not that this may make much difference, as the few details that I am going to provide, or have provided already, should suffice to establish many others, if a curious reader showed some diligence. Be it as it may, I thought it prudent that I should not make the task any easier.

 

The Solstice Walk (1)

(Intro)

Does it happen to you too every time you go for a  middle-of-the-night walk? You leave home in the middle of the night for a reconnection walk with Mother Nature*. You take in the calm of a sleeping city, you are touched again by the delicate ornaments of the built-up side of our civilisation and comforted by the little charms of the everyday house, you run into some long-forgotten side streets and squares, you unashamedly stop to smell roses and hyssop in front yard gardens. The moon is on your side and the darkness is promising rather than threatening.

And then you notice the silhouette of a person behind you - or was it just the shadow of a branch stirred by the last breeze of Spring? – so you turn round, a little too fast for such a peaceful stroll and wonder:

Is it just me or was it a psycho killer?

*just messing you up.


top photo


.

The Irrational Enlightened Class

GM drives them even madder (they're already mad)

The latest episode of an embarassingly long-running political soap - in which such a big part of European ‘Enlightened Class’ can't come to terms with their own religion, science, and swallow genetically modified foods - confirms how consistently ideological and irrational they’ve remained ever since the Enlightenment.

Whereas entrepreneurial, brave conservatives tend to embrace change, science and progress – even if very cautiously and with some misgivings – the ‘progressive’ left keeps harking back to a defunct, barbaric ideology that makes it reliably confused, chaotic and more often than not simply backward.



PS Not that I, an enlightened reactionary and a believer in consevative progress, haven't got mixed feelings about mixing genes. I'm going to enlighten you about my anxieties soon (so to speak). Till then - don't mutate too much.

The Culmination

(One to One, BBC Radio 4, today)

…there was some whoosh going over our heads…  RPG (rocket-propelled grenades) exploded at the back of our patrol base … the Taliban attackers were some 500 metres away …the mortars started coming in….we were just praying… I thought I was on my own in this, but then I asked my mates and they said: yes, we were praying too* ... every man along that wall curled into a foetal ball and waited for that final one to land slap bang in the middle of us, which it was going to… I survived…

… someone shouted ‘Medic!’ …I ran… a kind of armour piercing RPG - only this could have done what I saw … a small hole in the wall where the RPG had pierced through and pulverised the lower half of this Afghani soldier …his trousers appeared to be all that was keeping his lower body together …we grabbed this guy …half carrying half dragging him to safety … he kept looking at me, this distant stare …he was going, blood coming out of his ears, and all over his face… I remember him chiming these gentle snatches of songs…

“You were TA, Territorial Army, why did you go to Afghanistan?”

I come from a military family, I was brought up to revere achievement in the military world ... it was part of who I was  …whether you a TA or a regular soldier, you want to do the job for real…

“Do you regret having done it?”

I can’t regret it, because it is who I was brought up to be… also, if I were to start regretting this, in addition to the survival guilt and the guilt of a killing that I have, I think that way even more madness** lies …even though in essence it sent me a bit mad, with the PTSD, it’s the culmination of who I always wanted to be.

*I couldn’t quite make out the exact words. (Look it up for yourself, it’s around 8.20’)

**me (I mean I've made it bold; but then - who knows?...)

Bottom photo; top one - couldn't establish

The Only One

This rose will never die...

The Question of All Women (In All Possible Ways)

There comes a moment in a philosopher’s life when he looks around a summer beach in Narbonne, a pedestrian precinct in Cardiff or the main university campus in Warsaw and asks, philosophically: Why can’t I be with all* women** (in all possible ways)? 

Many male philosophers ask the practical, or technical, version of the question – completely outside philosophy – and most know the answers. These, however, are completely different questions from the former two, even though they refer to the same persons; or objects, depending on how the question is asked. 

So what is the answer to The Philosophical Question of All Women (In All Possible Ways)? It’s not difficult to see that philosophy will quickly have to point out some external limits, general conditions and direct us back to technical aspects of human beings, some of which - let’s face it – aroused philosophers’ interest in the question in the first place. But before we come back down to earth, and find the answers that we already know, we can try to look at the problem terms as general as our imagination and intellect allow. In other words: let's ask whether the fact that in the current circumstances philosophers cannot be with all women (in all possible ways) is simply a consequence of those circumstances or philosophers cannot be with all women (in all possible ways) because of what or who they are.

Let us imagine then a world in which we have retained all of our human faculties,instincts and urges but have been freed from deadlines, including the dreadful one.

Taking into account the fact that in this world people can, and sometimes do, divorce, become widowers, dump or kill partners and then enter new relationships, it would seem that the answer is yes: given enough time, a philosopher could be with all women (in all possible ways). But there are some follow-up thoughts are just begging to be thought here. First of all, just as is the case in this world, relationships in the new world couldn’t – if we were to retain our present type of psyche - be simultaneous. Simultaneous relationships, which are possible and which happen, are in an obviouls way - through their non-exclusivity -  of a different, inferior kind and let’s leave them out of these considerations and focus on full, proper, exhaustive and exclusive ones, which are in a league of their own.

What follows is, again - just as is the case in this world, that in order to have a new relationship in that new world, an old one would need to finish. And a relationship that finishes is inferior to one that doesn’t. If someone happened, or chose, to fulfil the all women scenario, he would end up with a history of inferior, ‘no happy end’ relationships with just a single exception, the on-going one; or perhaps two, if we count in – for reasons slightly harder to explain than to understand – the first one.

The situation might be even worse: what if the relationship with the only woman left in the entire new Universe ended in a massive, ugly fight? We can see then that it’s not difficult to imagine a situation which would make this world with its ever present opportunities and continuous hope look – romantically - like a real fairy tale, compared to the imagined one, which might have seemed so enticing to many a thinker, whereas in fact the main difference between this new imagined world and the one we’re in would be in quantity, not quality; and the quantity advantage would consist of barely countable unhappy ends.

It would be possible of course to do returning, rekindling and go through the whole cycle again, but isn't an unbroken love superior to a broken one?  How would this eternity of second-best compare to our present permanent - considering the local ratio of women to time - possibitliy of the best, one unbroken love from the very beginning to the very end?

Of course, we can imagine (or can we?), still another world: one in which there won’t be any time limits and our minds, or psyche, will be changed too. But whether such a world is possible at all how much can One change human beings for them to remain human beings could be questions beyond most sophisticated metaphysics. 

Thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, the conclusion seems to be that the answer to the question may not matter, because, in any conceivable human world, the road to romantic happiness for a philosopher - if he is to stay what he is - leads through one woman only: the only one.

*for some reason the question usually crops up in a narrower version: "Why can't I be (in all possible ways) with all attractive women?

**I refrain from discussing female philosophers in this context: philosophically they may come from the same supernatural planet as male philosophers, but the question itself may never cross their minds, because in the relevant respect they're from Venus.

***considered desirable



Ilustrationons: top - Yusuf Islam & band; middle - White Towers Swimming Club, Sandy, Utah; bottom - kootation.com

Unimaginable oder verboten?

And she means it

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the UK’s exit out of the E.U. is "unimaginable".

Did she mean not foreseen in any German directed scenario or, without beating about the bush, simply verboten.  

The Masters of the Newsstand

Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), not bad.

I’m reading it now* and keep finding attempts at big subjects and attempts at big journalism, not always successful, but - all in all - the paper's not bad; until you compare it with British press. FAZ, just like other German papers, pales into the second league when put next to The Daily Telegraph, or even the lesser local papers, The Times (gone to the dogs in the last decade or so; camp, confused and as often wrong as right), The Guardian (strangely managing to combine a surprisingly high degree of intellectual sophistication with consistently funny* and loony leftism) or even the Independent (well, I read it from time to time; and haven’t suffered any side effects yet). Again and again, I am amazed and full of respect – along with a few U.S. papers (WSJ, NYT and maybe one or two others that I don’t know about) this is the best, both in the scope and depth of its interests, its courage and its delivery, daily press in the Western civilisation.

*or rather doing my best to read. My German wasn’t impressive even in its heyday; now it’s like a Trabant that hasn’t seen a mechanic since the fall of the Wall.

**or would be funny, if so many people weren’t fooled by it.

PS Interestingly, one of the first texts I come across in this old issue is a feature on Grimms’ fairy tales, which I’m in the process of re-writing. Actually, why not try…

Psycho killer (among others)

From now on I’m going to use this blog as a notebook for rough drafts and other jottings; or to be precise: to use it even more in this way. I keep losing written stuff, tripping over stuff. sleeping on stuff. Enough. Until I have a PA, an ordinary secretary, a butler and a servant and a cook, I'll try - and undoubtedly fail - to get my chaotic act together through wishful thinking and greater use of supranational clouds, virtuality and other kinds of paperless electronic facilities. It may get even more difficult for you to follow my drift* it the meantime, but you know what.

(Yes, I don’t care.)

Tossing and turning

Reconnected

Solistice

Mother Nature** speaks to me

I don’t forgive your trespassers

Cardiff shuts up (at last)

Marconi

Lavernock Point

What an achievement! (Alex Lester/BBC Radio 2)

Dark tunnel, dizzying cliff, Môr Hafren

& Psycho killer

*kidding. There's no drifting; there is direction. (Well, most of the time).

**easy - I'm just fucking with you...

Killjoys

She must have stood too close.

The eager teacher stays with the girl (15; actually a young woman then) after hours (explaining some sophisticated mathematical stuff, I bet; like, say, that one and one can still be one*), shows her how to move her hand (on the fret), then takes her to Bordeaux and no doubt introduces her to some full-bodied heady stuff. All the time, I bet, it is she who is in full control, having him wrapped around her finger (when he’s not wrapped around the rest of her). So what is all the fuss about??  

In the good old days, he'd bring back from Bordeaux a bottle – OK, maybe a crate - of decent claret to appease the dad, do the honourable thing and the matter would be closed, or rather started properly. (A bonus for the society would be that the girl wouldn’t have to waste another few years being molested by a useless educational system).

PS Great... I’ve just remembered I’m going to teach soon a bunch of Spanish and, well, French teenagers of both sexes. I may be an  bald elderly teacher, and know only three and a half cords (my Am is quite good, though; and I can do a decent introduction to Bodreaux), but now half the fun (easy – of teaching) has already gone. Acually I feel as good as paralysed now.

PS2 Bugger! [a message to Langley and Bletchley Park:] Don't do anything supid, guys; like, out of boredom, contacting the school I'm going to teach for. I, and a few creditors, badly need the money! Besides, you must know enough about me that you realise I wouldn't do anything unhonourable... OK.. if you know so much, let me try a different approach: you know I'd do the honourable thing.

*speaking of them being one: a news item has just reached me via radio - after the conviction, the student-prone teacher turned to her and said the magical words; she mouthed back: 'I'm sorry'. So what now, you killjoys? Can you jail that?

Readership Boost (Shhh!)

Bletchley Park, where they try to figure out what I mean

Not that I care (it's just a blog to me), but ever since I discovered the stats report for this blog (some three monts after I first indulged in this noble effort to summarise - and save - humankind), I do take an occasional peep at how few of you there are (I hope I don's sound like I care). And - just for a truthful record's sake -  I'm wondering: do some recent developmnens concerning the spying communities of certain two nations divided by the same language mean that I should add at least another two readers?

Actually, taking into account how ugly and bureaucratic things turn in social-democracies, I can safely add another hundred pen-pushers to my readership stats

Annoying (Dad!!)

"You're sometimes annoying,

but thank you for everything.

I hope you have a great day

& enjoy the presents.

Happy Father's Day!"

- wrote my daughter. And I was so moved by the 'sometimes'. I know how much effort - and love - it cost her to write this. What she wanted to say originally, I bet, was 'always annoying'. Which I am.

A good job

It's a good job I went for that night walk to greet this summer. Autumn started the next day (locally).

Photograph

A Moderate What?

(Just a little reminder for myself of what I was humming when thininkig what follows)

Let your intellect go to the extreme. Even if you are to end up as a moderate, reach the extremist conclusion first. Otherwise what are you moderating?

(A moderate moderate? You bore me, you’ve got nothing to say and you stall in your thinking, embarassingly. Arguments can’t be moderate, actions can be.)

Extreme intellectual bull

It’s a blog’s life

It’s one of those moments in a blogger’s life that make you think: is all this effort to save humankind, after having effusively and  gratuitously summarised it, really worth the while? You publish a good, helpful post, go to bed, wake up the next day, look around – and notice that the world hasn’t changed. Children, parents, businesses,  nations, governments, free-masons - and even the Vatican - behave as if the glaring, accusing and enlightening post simply wasn’t there. They all pretend  they have already forgotten it, or  never read it (you even being to wonder: maybe they have really skipped it?). And you realise: it’s a blog’s life.

PS Yes, the G8 leaders had a pretext to ignore what I wrote. However, when I called them ‘half-wits’, it was meant as constructive criticism. Sometimes people need to be told the truth to have their stupid, narrow-minded mind shaken into listening to me. Unfortunately, in case of those half-wits (now you know it too – have you heard of anything reasonable they had to say, tax-wise??), it didn’t work. But what do you do? Give up? (No, I’m not interested in your advice, thank you very much.) You keep calm and blog on. After all, it’s a blog’s life...

The Producer

Man, get your cheesy act together!

(Close your eyes
Let me tell you all the reasons why
Think you’re one of a kind.
Here’s to you
The one that always pulls us through
Always do what you got to do
You’re one of a kind
Thank God you're mine.

You’re an angel dressed in armor
You’re the fair in every fight
You’re my life and my safe harbour
Where the sun sets every night
And if my love is blind
I don’t want to see the light

- please...)

I bet you too keep coming across songs that immediately wake up the producer in you. You listen to a track and think: No, not like that. Like this. This is what I thought when listening (during my 5-hour night walk along the local coast to greet this year's summer) to Michael Buble’s Close your eyes. The music itself is so cheesy that you could barely get away with it playing it to close friends during an informal dinner party after they’ve already had two or three double ones. But then there are the words: they would be (barely) tolerable  when sung to the woman in question, but to use them in a song performed publically and released world-wide?

It all seems so obvious to the producer in you that he immediately wants to grab the phone and ring his counterpart that keeps botching Buble’s songs up and give him a tip: you don’t put cheesy on top of cheesy! True, some more sophisticated ways of avoiding the double cheese whammy may be beyond the reach of the average artist or producer, but there are also very simple, if not simplistic, solutions: when you sing 'I love you', you add unstettling, or at least ugly, music; when you you sing to her (and the world) that you want to do something slow, why don't you sing it fast? when you describe a calm night walk, you add a psycho killer; is it so difficult to get. So you dial the number and .... you put the phone away - the producer in you realises what artistic principle makes the other guy do the ugly, cheesy things he does: sales.

PS The Proclaimers, on the other hand, are bang on. Whatever cheesy is there, is made edible by an admixture of  energy, no-nonsese-ness, straightforwardness. Actually they sound so genuine (and Scottish, if the two are not one and the same thing; what does ‘you are gluing*’ mean, by the way?) that the producer in me hesitates whether the lyrics are cheesy at all.


*perhaps 'life didn't get her yet' because she's gluing? ...sorry, I'm being cynical (and I'm not).

NHS

An insightful observer of that evil and idiotic (if they're not one and the same thing) system that used to ravage the economies behind the Iron Curtain and did its best to undermine the characters and mess up the minds of those unfortunate enough to live on the wrong side of the Curtain noted that Socialism heroically struggles to overcome obstacles that it puts in its own way. Which shouldn't have much to do with the system I'm living in at the moment. Except that it has.




PS A lot.

Peter Paul & Mary*

A bitter-sweet coincidence

I've been listening to Peter Paul & Mary a lot for the last couple of days (having earlier recommended them to my daughter). A moment ago I decided to switch to something else, quickly made a short list in my head and decided on a nearly forgotten (by me) Torn Between Two Lovers, one of the most bitter-sweet pieces - melodically - that I know. During the first few bars I remembered, with certain poignancy, how long it was since this song first made an impact on the musical aspect of my soul - and that I don't know who wrote it. I looked it up and it turned out to be Peter Yarrow** of ...Peter, Paul & Mary (jointly with a Phillip Jarrell.). I found it a rather mysterious coincidence. And then I realised ...never mind.

*names have been changed
**it would be hard to explain my choice as being simply a subconscious decision to stay within the same style: the arrangement is so un-Peter Paul & Mary and I can't hear anything in the tune itself that hints at Peter Yarrow.

Generally nice people

Bogdan Johnson (isn't he cute?) - bottom right

Speaking of Jeffrey Osborne: the other day I read about his dad (or dad-in-law; I can't remember) laughing off ‘global warming’ nutters and I thought: what a nice family Jeffrey has. Actually, despite my occasional - or is it rather incessant? - rants I like John Cameron too. As you may have already noticed I have a healthy instinct to trust toffs and the rich, generally nice people, and I’d choose plutocracy over democracy any day, even before my first espresso and with my eyes closed.

Which makes you (or at least me) think: what a tolerable government this bunch of Conservatives* might be - if it weren’t for democracy.

*spurred on – or incorporating – Lds Tebbit, Pearson and Farage (well, not a lord yet, but soon, I bet).

Who makes you human

"Love of God" by the prankster and quasi-artist Damian Hirst

BBC Radio 2 ran a key programme yesterday: "What makes us human?" I managed to tune in just at the very end of it, but will catch up. However, I wouldn’t worry too much if I didn’t, because – as you know - I know the answer:

What makes us human is God.

Could she be?

The young woman - I noticed her a short distance from another, much fitter one - was manipulating some controls in her vehicle. A sprinkling of discreet freckles on her cheeks helped me to still see in her a lot of the fairy-tales-reading girl that she’d been just a while ago and her skin - and some air around her - was of that pale Celtic hue, which makes you think of those three warring Irish kings, the runaway princess, a nearly silent stream that cuts through a mist-clad glen and that famous legend-changing kiss.

She managed, with some difficulty, to turn a little the complicated machine she was riding, and I caught a glimpse of more of her face. It was framed by light brown hair that could have a gold note to it, unless it was sunshine, abundant that afternoon. The features were delicate and there was some sweetness about them. Maybe it was even one of those magical British faces that merge beauty, kindness and the woman herself into something breath-taking, something sublime, something that simply challenges out the noble man in you, if there is one there.

I hoped she’d be able to turn a bit more, so that I could look at her eyes, but she wasn’t doing a good job and I didn't blame her: it was impossible for her to see properly where she was going and what her hand was doing, because she was unable to move her head, permanently tilted downward; or much else of her limp, partly withered body.
  

There was another woman nearby. She was busy with something at the moment, but I was sure that soon she’d come up to her charge and help her drive that chair up a small ramp into the little van which was to take that crippled Celtic princess to wherever she is confined for most of her life.

I gave up on the hope of seeing her eyes, but before speeding up I looked at the whole of her again and wondered: Could she be - one day, in this or the next Universe - the most beautiful, and fittest, girl in the world*?  And call me a sucker, and I am such a sucker for happy ends, I thought: yes.






*I realise I may be verging onto, or plunging into, cheesy, but I'm such a sucker for music by The Artist Formerly Known As Prince (or is he a mere Prince again?), that aristocrat of R&B.


Illustration

Fit (for purpose)

An attractive woman got out of the car and made her way to a nearby building. She was wearing something tight, so I had little choice but to follow her (with my eyes). I saw that her destination was a gym. There’s something unhealthy going on here, I thought.

I haven’t had sex for a while* and I realise that not all the types of exercise that my imagination seems to consider easily doable, and regularly done, are in fact feasible at all, not to mention sustainable; and I admit that my memory may significantly exaggerate the intensity and length of a typical health and beauty session in question, but still – isn’t it a sign of things going pear-shaped when fit women need (any other) workout?

PS Actually, there may be a good business idea somewhere here. I can imagine a thriving councelling venture aiming to help women struggling with this problem, recruiting customers outside gyms with banners saying:  "Young, fit and going to a gym? Would you, or your man (but we'd prefer you), like to talk about your situation? CALL NOW: 0800..." (I bet I could get some E.U. funding for that, considering their idiocy).

*good; I mean a good while, not that it’s necessarily good; but it’s not bad either – I have never done more serious philosophical thinking on sex that in those years when I (nearly) forgot about it.  

Make it fast

Make it real (&fast!)
Or else forget about it!

PS I'm trying to connect with the wider Universe - I've connected with Cardiff to the degree approaching mutual exhaustion, it seems at times - and you know what? Either make this virtual world real or forget about it.

PS2 Why don't the bloody social-democrats (including the local variety) forget about messing up employers, employees, doctors, patients, teachers, pupils, suppliers and consumers and instead focus on building more Autobahns (no, I wouldn't vote for Hitler; you would*, probably), ueber-fast iBahns and proper, unwobbling Britische Bahn?

*sorry; I just feel I need to fall out with somebody today (and I don't mean myself; I did for a while, but after the third fall-out and third kiss-and-make-up it's becoming kind of pointless...)

Tax Evasion (Good, Very Good)

After tax evasion

I can see that among many, mostly depressing items on the on the G8 agenda, there is something to cheer those half-wits up - something that offers light on the gloomy economic horizon, something that puts a smile on our faces, something that generally gives hope to Western civilisation*: tax evasion.**

Before tax evasion

*until those idiots come to their senses, are locked up, or shot down; or until the civilisation collapses under a completely idiotic, pointless, inefficient, Satanic, lethal, evil, absurd & repeteadly shown to be absurd tax burden.

**oh, how sweet your name sounds is the ears of the economics-literate of the gentle heart and sublime mind... 

Forever & Always

Одиночество-сволочь, одиночество-скука

Я не чувствую сердце, я не чувствую руку

Я сама так решила, тишина мне подруга

Лучше б я согрешила, одиночество-мука.*

[Now it’s on the record here too, love]

Samantha loves Richard

Forever

&

Always

................
   2008**

 

PS A few decades ago I noticed an inscription in one of the cubicles in the second-floor toilet of my grammar school. It was announcing to peers that someone loved someone else (a boy and a girl type of relation). I smiled a condescending smile: to abolish democracy, to lower the overal  level of taxation, to restore Dualism for my girlfriend - maybe; but to write stuff on toilet walls?

Then, a decade or so later, I noticed a similar declaration, in a similar place, somewhere in Warsaw. My marriage - and love, born in a classroom not far from that toilet in that provincial grammar school – had developed very ugly cracks by then and was soon to crumble; or more precisely: I’d been making regular attempts at killing it and was soon to succeed***.

I looked again at that other profession of love that wouldn’t be suppressed, remembered the old-school one and thought of their authors with envy and respect: how I wished now I felt compelled to announce my love to the world, or at least to peers.

Я тебя люблю  Rwy'n dy garu di मैं तुम से प्यार करता हूँ.

*a  local Russian-speaking friend of mine keeps me posted on Russian and Ukrainian pop, which is good - I'm a sucker for Russian music, from Stravinsky to Slava. The other song I've attached is a chilling story of human eternal damnation, one of the pieces I'm going to use to illustrate my attempt at the explanation of divine eternal damnation and Hell - soon(er or later).

*Strangely, on the reassuringly coloured (Purple Pout/Mulberry Burst/Red) leaflet from a First Great Western train that (the leaflet, not the train) I found on a recent trip to the local Metropolis there was another date too: 2017 (or 2012 – the writing’s not clear). Could it be another piece of evidence that eternal love can only be God's, or miraculously God-sustained?

***Go on, congratulate me. It’s just a blog to you, isn’t it?

... sorry, that’s not fair. I apologise.

Tax your complacency

On my way to Church a man gives me a very insightful look (he must have been aware of the lethality of Democracy); a woman notices I'm in a hurry and gives way (nice one); kids run around in the Hayes, laughing (they've got a point); in the Cathedral the choir makes heaven (cool); a Hispanic family are as cute as they get (cute); the Sikh who wants to stop the Mass is stopped just before the altar, no knives involved (peace be upon His prophets); after Ite, missa est, a kid smiles to the Canon and waves to him trustingly, the Canon reciprocates, smilingly.

Then it strikes me: how come, if all is apparently so hunky-dory, the overall level of taxation is so (bloody) high??






The scary illustration taken, tax-free ('cause even if they say I owe them, I'll dodge 'em), from.

Pop be with you

We are Dualists in a Dualist world

“The young dig it”, the song* made me think. The youthful urges are hard to handle, but many of them pull (drive?) homeward. The sin of your youth may be haunting you, but hopefully the instincts of your youth haven’t left you - and Pop expresses so many of them so bang on.

Whatever its fallacies, ('Mother Nature'?? Go mother nature yourself!) in the struggle for you -

Pop is on our side.

 

*the song turned out to be sung by a 40-something, which I should have known: it's was being played by BBC Radio 2 (I'm getting on... soon I'll be listening to Radio 1; instead of the truly youthful Radio 3) and which, a cynic may say, explains all the naïve (and despite its assuredness, deep down - anxious) talk of spirituality, dualism and immortality. The song could have been written by a younger person, though.

Sainsbury's*: making the world a better place

Cute (but the new wing...)

(When did you last thank your supermarket's manager?)

Two litres of pure squeezed orange juice for two quid, a bag of decent ground Arabica for another two, some 750 (estimate), inconspicuously (by the look of them) genetically modified  Californian resins for 75p, a kilo of warmly-coloured sexy apples for a quid, discounted Brussels paté for …I’m too embarrassed to admit how little, and – last but foremost – a bottle of Taylor’s Late Bottled Vintage for half the usual price**. All in all, first thing tomorrow I'm going back to the store to thank the manager.

*but the S. wing… - no, I’ll leave it for the time being - you don't want me to spoil one of my rare up-beat, non-religious posts (non-religious?? Rubbish! Before I go to that manager, I’ll praise the Lord, the ultimate giver of all good prices - … oh, my God: I’ve just realised what I’ve written. There is simply no getting over Jesus...)

*and it wasn’t one of those phoney offers, where the wine is never sold at the ‘normal’ price;or never worth it.

You got lucky

Are you up all night to get unlucky?

Listening to this (musically) axiomatic song, I thought: what a terrifying - and at times paralysing - prospect it is: life in which you need to get lucky.

But when Christ came, he eliminated luck by securing  it for us. We already got lucky then, and the only unknown that faces us is whether we choose to opt out of luck.

(Psychologically, an interesting question remains: how can you secure luck and retain thrill, of which there is still plenty? Or we get excited about minor things?)

Hope St

Hovering on the verge of mildly-mannered depression*, a verge I reached via my – passing, I hope – inability to wield my temporal life, body, mind and all the power they give, I decided to move more and took a longer route to my destination (is it true in your case too that when you sit or lie idly a whole swarm of demons keep turning up around your head? And when you walk briskly, dance or – recently quite rare in my case – work hard, you usually bump into one or two only).

I was walking alongside a large building that I must have passed a hundred times before and, for no particular reason, I suddenly turned my head leftwards, something which I had never done in that place before. I noticed a short alley that separated what I had always thought to be a solid, impenetrable (for short-cutting purposes) steel and glass structure. The alley opened for me a convenient, and quite exciting because of its newness, route. It looked encouraging: there was a lot of light at its end. I turned into the passage and noticed a sign with the name: Hope St




*don’t worry (or is it just a blog to you?) – it normally strangles only a day or two; a week at most; OK – sometimes a month. So I can live with that. But then again, you can do a lot of killing in a day. Speaking of which: soon there's more coming up about killing love, life and babies, unless I kill myself, that is (is it still just a bloody blog to you??** …)

 

I'd hate to do any irresponsible ecouragement, but I must say that in depressive or quasi-depressive states I used to find alcohol very helpful; as far as I can remember.

**kidding; sorry; not funny.