Singularity

Since redundancy I've somewhat disavowed multi-tasking. Not in a nihilistic way of course, rendering my existence down into a prolonged loaf-fest or anything like that, no. I've realised that, especially when the majority of your life is crystallised through the dizzying and fractured lens of a computer or laptop, the sheer multitude of things to do or finish makes the entire prospect shudder to a halt more often than not. Each project or task wobbles precariously on top of another, and even in the midst of one, you can feel the encroaching pressure of the other 5000 things you should be doing pressing slowly on your mind.

So I've decided to adhere to a new philosophy: singularity of purpose. Or, in short, actually finishing things. Not just leaving a trail of stunted beginnings behind me like half-eaten apple cores.

Therefore, I'm aiming to be a lot more like THIS guy:

and less like THIS guy:

Spain Torture Diary

On my recent (and final) wee sojourn to Granada to see Alex in Granada, it was good to see that Spain had kindly upped the ante in terms of ruining my life entirely. Ably assisted, of course, by the city of Malaga and its associated travel systems.

Having missed my bus to Granada due to our luggage being delivered by what I can only assume was a seminally stoned sloth with narcolepsy, I was informed that the next bus (1 am) was also full. ‘Uh... pardona? But it does actually say on the machine there're two sea... no? Full? Oh, ok. Fuck you then.

So obviously I took my only recourse, which was to furiously storm out with a ticket for 7 am (this was at approx. 10 pm), and get the bus back to the airport to sleep in the Camp X-Ray chic of the departure area’s cold, white floor. Thankfully though, I still had my pen and paper:

'I can't really say that I expected to spend my first night in Spain huddled in a plastic seat in the departure lounge, but neither can I say that I’m hugely surprised either.

When large swathes of life have been padded out with relative convenience –relatives easily contactable, a bed that remains in one place, a means to easily travel reasonable distances, for example – there’s a certain nauseating shock or jolt that any unexpected or sudden removal of said presumed conveniences gives you.

I remember back in 2004 when I were but a mere slip of a lad at 17, spending my first proper time away from my parents at Leeds Festival. My initial reaction was of shock, nay terror, at the overwhelming sense of diminution at being but one tiny speck among tens of thousands of others – all, yes, individual just like you. Living in a perma-greased sunburnt state while subsisting on either cheap instant food or mediocre sausage sandwiches tainted by traditional festival hyperinflation, it was like living in some kind of refugee camp powered entirely by crap beer and suncream. Also, the bands were fairly good, I guess.

But the real point was the coming home. Suffering counter-culture shock from a few days in a tent a few hours’ drive away may sound stupid, but my previously pale, retiring self had metamorphosed. I was Rambo, Ray Mears and Rocky all in one, Once home, there would be absolutely no earthly convenience that could possibly stop me. Well, for a few hours at least.

On returning from Download fest this year, I crossed the threshold without any of the requisite glimpse of the ubermensch outdoorsman I’d known previously. I just slumped a little, yawned, and got back to life. I’m still wondering why exactly this is. Is it merely my jaded adult ego hopelessly desensitised to any kind of transcendent optimism myth? Or have I just been to too many festivals?

Much the same happened in my travels across America: our numerous mishaps only served to further fuel our camaraderie and sense of bold frontiersmanship. After nearly being stranded overnight at a dusty gas station in Austin, Texas en route to Nashville, we managed to somehow barter passage on the packed full bus by sitting in the aisle. It was fantastic. We were practically cowboys. We’d had an adventure.

Fast forward to now, and I’m grimly sat in a plastic chair–row with stadium lighting scorching my retinas, glaring furiously at my watch for 7am to roll around. It is now 1am. I set off for the airport exactly twelve hours ago. The strange thing is how, as I’ve said, I used to pirouette in shock and awe at adversity (not literally, of course) but now I merely harrumph and bear it with good old stoic determination and seething, undirected rage. I think, over a long period of time, one becomes so acclimatised and willingly saddled by pessimism that setbacks are merely expectations finally realised. The silver-lining, perhaps, is that I now so effortlessly seem to shoulder things and integrate them into myself that I can shrug off agonising tortures such as this with little more than a shrug of the shoulders and a cheeky blog post.’

An Elegy For Oprimus Prime

Megan Who? Shia LeWhat? Go to hell. All salute a real American hero:




An Elegy For Optimus Prime


Lurching space-hulk, esteemed tomb of Cybertron,
Receive the dulled shell of one who blazed through
Darkest hours. Who, with iron flex and pistoned whir, flew
Amidst unspoken phantasms of glory, soon gone
In a flicker of weakness – mercy – which, we all knew,
Was his only failing: that he was too good, would abandon none.

May he be borne aloft on steel pinions, his legend searing
The circuits of those bereft, cursing that fate should
Prise away the one clasped so close by all: he who could
Turn tides in magisterial vengeance; with honour clearing
The scene of iniquity and, with hissing doom ever nearing,
Silence armies with plangent truth, bearing the hope of all good.

Spiralling out to alien Earth; buried by the slump of history
To awaken to us, and them, bringing the sword to bear again
Against ancient evil. I, and others, of course, wistfully
Cherish the old clang of titan legs into rapt memories when
You first walked among men. Haloed in sheer mystery,
Young gazes tapered off halfway up, wreathed in clouds as you went.

Megatron! Vile deceiver, he who escapes only by the grace
Of the good he so loathes. Optimus, do you still long
For freedom? Take it, let the still-fresh vision of your dying face
Spur others to lesser victories. Speak out with ageless song
Through aeons to those who fight in your name, who race
Breathlessly to guard the hope you forged, until all are one.

Entomofuntimes

So the other night there was a gargantuan daddy long-legs lurking opposite me in bed, skittering occasionally in that freaky, unpredictable way that they're generally wont to do.

'What's up?' asks my girlfriend.

I point, with quaking finger and rictus of horror towards the flapping, twitching agent of evil framed against the white wall opposite.

'Oh it's only a daddy long-legs', she laughs.

'Only a daddy long-legs??' say I, 'Don't they freak you out, all spindly and bobbing about before they land and feast on your flesh?'

'Well... no', says the reasonable female opinion.

'But you're terrified of spiders, you curl up in a quivering ball at the sight of one.'

'Well yes,' she says, 'But spiders seem like they're on a mission, like they're going to climb into my brain while I'm sleeping.'

See, I like spiders. I genuinely do. Maybe I've just been brainwashed by the airbrushed mug of Toby Maguire clad in gleaming spandex, but they've always seemed like the intrepid little vigilantes of the insect world. Who else would stand up to the buzzing clouds of sandwich-bothering pestilence if not our arachnid friends?

Yes, I've seen Arachnophobia, but I refuse to be swayed. See, it's their very sense of purpose that warms me to our eight-legged comrades so much. When I see one passing by, his intent doesn't trouble me, no. If anything it soothes me that all is right in the world, and I respectfully doff my cap to it as one might a passing policeman. When I see a spider crawling from one place to another I see not malicious intent, but a neighbour popping out for a paper. They may well have eight legs, but by god, at least they favour good, honest locomotion. None of this buzzing, flapping and wheeling randomly around the room stuff, missing all the open windows and keeping you awake. And frankly, this means that at any given time spiders will always be at a fair distance from my face, so everybody wins.

Other than being the frenzied, evil heralds of Beelzebub, flies also freak me out and annoy me for a different reason. As with the daddy long-legs, they seem to have absolutely no raison d'etre other than to throw themselves wildly against bright colours and vomit on your food in a chaotic orgy of pointless, random buzzing. They're the very epitome of entropy, of the second law of thermodynamics. Not only do they eat rotting food or excreta (and, fair play, I'll excuse the daddy long-legs on that part, they actually eat nectar), they live brief, 24-hour lives only to frantically breed and die. At least the spider creates. At least there's some artistry in what he does.

It reminds me a little of the first chapter of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday wherein Gabriel Syme - the undercover police poet - confronts the wild, anarchist poet Lucian Gregory in Saffron Park:

“It is things going right,” he cried, “That is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.”

And flies really make me sick.

Lowell Has His Say

I feel a bit of a cheat quoting verbatim from somebody with scant introduction, but Lowell manages to so effortlessly and eloquently encapsulate what I've been cack-handedly fumbling over for years:

'Almost the whole problem of writing poetry is to bring it back to what you really feel, and that takes an awful lot of manoeuvring. You may feel the doorknob more strongly than some big personal event, and the doorknob will open into something that you can use as your own. A lot of poetry seems to me very good in the tradition but just doesn't move me very much because it doesn't have personal vibrance to it. I probably exaggerate the value of it, but it's precious to me. Some little image, some detail you've noticed-you're writing about a little country shop, just describing it, and your poem ends up with an existentialist account of your experience. But it's the shop that started it off. You didn't know why it meant a lot to you. Often images and often the sense of the beginning and end of a poem are all you have - some journey to be gone through between those things; and you know that, but you don't know the details. And that's marvellous; then you feel the poem will come out. It's a terrible struggle, because what you really feel hasn't got the form, it's not what you can put down in a poem. And the poem you're equipped to write concerns nothing that you care very much about or have much to say on. Then the great moment comes when there's enough resolution of your technical equipment, your way of constructing things, and that you can make a poem out of, to hit something you really want to say. You may not know you have it to say.'

Firing Squads Kick Ass

I have to say, I've yet to comprehend the mass hand-wringing, tutting and desultory nose-gazing against the state of Utah. Not for executing Ronnie Lee Gardner, no, but for doing so by firing squad.

What baffles me is that the shock and horror is not actually over the fact that the USA still perpetrates capital punishment - albeit almost entirely by one or two yee-haw States such as Texas - but that they've merely sort of revived a slightly dormant form of execution because a guy asked for it. And why the hell not? FIRING SQUADS KICK ASS. Despite the fact that he actually stated that 'I lived by the gun, I murdered with a gun, so I will die by the gun', we still see that 'demonstrations were held on the steps of the Utah State Capitol building'. What the hell did they want instead? Have him watch Michel Gondry films in a chair without appropriate lumbar support until he possibly develops Deep Vein Thrombosis? Have him waterboarded with warm Evian? Be force-fed asparagus that... that ISN'T organically sourced?? You sick, sick bastards.

Now, I daren't even poke at the myriad ethical minefield that is the death penalty, but suffice it to say that I oppose it in principle.

However.

If I ever find myself with a hankering for unspeakable crime amounting to an almost certain Death Row penalty, I sure as hell am choosing Utah as my romping-ground. I mean, at least Gardner got a choice. And with that limited choice he decided to die like a real man: eat a steak, watch Lord of the Rings, and then be blasted to shit by four massive rifles. How the hell can you dispute that choice against the others? Well, apart from, you know, not having to be killed 30 years after you shot a bloke in the stomach this one time, but, hey, this is America after all. Honestly though, if I had to choose between having my life slowly trickle away as I wilt like a sad little flower from a crappy injection, or have my still-beating heart explode out of my chest via the business end of four high-powered rifles, well... sign me up for the latter any day. Talk about dying like a man, christ, I want to go out the way I came in: screaming, naked and covered in bloody entrails. Even better, push me out of a plane, that'd be equally badass. Or make me fight two lions with only a paper plate and a can opener for defence. I mean, if the end's inevitable, I'd at least want it to be interesting. I don't smoke either, but I feel that smoking a cigar as you're blown skywards is also more or less a crucial necessity for the quintessential manly death.

I laugh mockingly at the other contenders. Electrocution? Jiggle about in a chair for a bit with a sponge on your head. Hanging? Dangle boringly from a wooden climbing frame like an incontinent Christmas fairy. Stoning? Be the human equivalent of a badly-done pebble drive. Lame. All of them.

Moreover, if it could somehow be staged to exactly replicate Protest the Hero's 'Blindfolds Aside' video, I'd be all the more happy. Just so you know. Check it out.

Finally, in the inevitable situation in which I've been bitten by a zombie in a war-torn post-apocalyptic wasteland and have but 15 hours to live before I devolve into a subhuman brain-eating machine, I fully intend to pick a method from Maddox's list and go with that.

An Interesting Day

Yesterday was an interesting day workwise. We usually get an interesting variety, be it the man who wanted to know if he could electronically tag his children on holiday, or the person who wanted to know whether testicular examinations were actually routine when he was at school, or whether the schoolmaster was merely sneaking a sly jingle of the coinpurse.

A lady with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) called with a medication query. It was really just a routine thing - relating to her prescription meds for her condition and her newly-announced pregnancy - but you could honestly hear the joy in her voice that they'd managed to conceive and overcome the huge odds stacked against them with her condition. It was nice to hear.

Also had a surprisingly lucid mid-80 year old woman in which we took a while to establish the real meat of her problem, which was... *drum roll* that her son hadn't rung her in a while. Yeah. Now, I'm not entirely unused to the odd confused oldie call (I've been asked to sort out their council tax and to fix the volume of their telephone to name but two), and their charming eccentricities can usually be put straight with a bit of helpful redirection. I was about to say that, basically, there was nothing we could do to get her son to go and visit her more often. But I noticed a tone of panic in her voice and recalled a recent elderly negligence call one of our nurses took (the lady had no electricity and so was freezing without any means of cooking for two days) so I erred on the side of caution. I took background info on how often her relatives visit her, how she gets around, gets food etc, and passed it to a nurse in breathless anticipation. But, of course, I'd spelt the name wrong. Very rare for me I must admit, but as a result I missed out on the note on her real record stating that the lady has Alzheimer's and can't remember anything in the short term beyond the last ten minutes or so. And, sure as day, there was in the note a mention that she often complains of her family abandoning her and taking her money. Thing is, they visit her every day. She just can't remember.

Often we also deal with toxic ingestions. Kids'll eat all kinds of crap (often literally) on a whim and get mum in a hysteric frenzy over their sampling of either her liquid foundation or a highlighter pen. 99% of the time this is the case, and occasionally we also get adults who've accidentally OD'd on prescription meds, but this one was a new 'un for sure. It was about a 34 year old male... and he'd swallowed an earthworm. 'He thought it'd be a laugh like' says dear sister. 'Oh and,er, he's also an alcoholic' she mentions. Figures I guess.

There's also a category in which I'd place a very small amount of people I speak to. It's the 'grizzled, wise veteran' category. These are the old people who've more or less seen it all. They don't piss about, and I have all the more respect with them for it. They're acutely aware of their own mortality and often poke healthy fun at it while having a robust grip on the real priorities in life. The man I spoke to was, in fact, an ex-manic depressive (which showed itself, I guess, in his sunny demeanour) who'd carved entire blocks of his life out in self-destructive stagnation. Whole swathes of his youth wiped out by his illness and by drugs, oscillating between homes and relationships, happiness and sadness. He got back on board later on, it seems. Found God, found a psychiatrist, found himself. Has a firm grip of what matters and on the importance of helping others. As he mentioned, 'I don't like to go out burping, looking at tits and shouting at footballs like the rest of 'em, so I have a bit more money left. And I give it to the kids. I help 'em out.' He acts as surrogate mentor and grandparent to a number of disadvantaged youths in the area. One of which, a 17 year old girl on the run from an abusive home life, sparked a phone call to the gentleman in question from her estranged father. The caller made sure to ascertain that this was, in fact the person who she'd been going to see recently. They then threatened to break his legs and to watch out; that they'd get him for what he'd done. Although he hadn't actually done anything. He was actuely self-aware, and more than perceptive of the social implications of what he was doing. He knew that having a beard, living alone and speaking to young people would equate to only one thing in everyone else's mind. He himself laughed at the very notion of his having congress with a girl of her age. He couldn't even if he wanted to, he said. Cheery and articulate as he was however, he was shaken, and his anxiety was worsening when he was on his own. No doubt there's more to the story, but he was a genuine pleasure to talk to. He'd made it out somehow and was, in his own way, paying something back to the world. Being a good Christian I guess.