Michael Fredman's infinite thought field
living
I am sat in a cafe watching the spiral galaxy of milk cool into being in the black night coffee before me.
I imagine a ballerina in a music box, sparkling, swirling; a segue into a memory faded in the sun and rain.
When it has settled, the liquid in the cup takes on a donkeyish colour, dun and homely.
I taste bittersweetness with a silent tongue.
And I take my time.
I am passing time.
Time.
How much do you get?
Fewer than a 1000 months.
I am wasting time.
It is as if I am stood knee deep in a shallow sea, basking in the calm warmth, waving to the shore when the memory of love hits me like a surging wave, risen up behind me to crash down with all the might the hurtling planet can summon.
I am submerged. Sucked down into the light-flecked depths, drawn into the swirling dark. Gasping in shock, my lungs fill with salted black sorrow. I ache. For the air, the light. For her. Sustaining, buoyant, love.
How much I loved her. I had never known the power of love. That is could sweep you out to sea; convey you beyond reason; beyond safety out into the expanses of the ocean.
Fear. Is what drowns you. To escape the clutch of the deadly current, you must be calm, you must follow the whims of its turning, swim with it, take your time. To struggle is to tire, to drown.
Love and fear are opposites. They fight. I wish that I had let love win. I wish I had let the current take me. Instead, I fought against it. Drowned.
I lost her. I discarded her. I drowned our love.
Now, I am cursed, like the sea, to repeat the same motions, to rest my aching head on the shore for a moment, then to be drawn back into the morass. The ever shifting morass.
In 1994 I was fortunate enough to see, in the mountains of Rwanda and Uganda, a family of silverback Gorillas, before they were fully acclimatised to human contact. I would like to avoid anthropomorphism, or unwarranted sentiment, but it was a very touching experience, my impression was that they were strikingly peaceful, beautiful creatures. I found their simplicity in direct contrast to us, their complex neighbours. Human beings had recently perpetrated a horrific genocide amongst themselves in Rwanda, and we, humans, have brought that genocide to the Gorillas too.
The New Scientist has some sound advice
Mr Topper is a chain of London hairdressers. They offer cheap haircuts. What’s wrong with that? Nothing! It’s a good thing. I am all for it, especially in today’s Credit Crunched Broken Britain of hoodies and alcopops.
The only thing I take issue with is their logo, which irritates me more than is proportional.
They have chosen as their emblem a Frog.
Frogs don’t have hair!
Not only that, not only does the Frog not have any hair.
But he’s wearing a hat!
What sort of message does that send?
Why have they chosen as their ambassador a hairless frog who wears a hat?
I need to take a relaxing walk.
In between life and death, what is to be done?
If you get annoyed by vague ‘area the size of Wales’ statistics then ‘Without hot air’ is well worth a read. Professor David Mackay has done the calculations and provides detailed models for how Britain could become sustainable in terms of energy production and consumption.
There is lots of useful information in the book, all of it with a practical and pragmatic perspective.
Don’t kid yourself that you can stop at switching your phone charger off and think you are doing your bit for the environment, for instance:
“All the energy saved in switching off your charger for one day
is used up in one second of car-driving.
The energy saved in switching off the charger for one year is
equal to the energy in a single hot bath.”
Read it online here
‘I do not like spinach, and I am glad I don’t – because if I liked it, I would eat it, and I can’t stand it’ – From Flaubert’s Dictionary of received ideas
It is easy to lose hope, it is easy to tire of treading water in the midst of a seemingly endless sea, easy to let go of hoping for a light from a ship to bring sanctuary. It is easy to give up and surrender to the deep, dark drowning depths.
I am writing this from Tavistock square in London’s Bloomsbury. For many years it was one of my favourite places in the world, to come and read and to write and to think or lie on the spring grass.
It has a statue of Ghandi at its centre, and many memorials, including a tree to the victims of Hiroshima and a stone memorial to conscientious objectors everywhere.
And I have only just realized I have not come here for nearly four years.
Because four years ago I tried to get here to escape the crowded madness of King’s Cross station, where I was trapped amongst the frightened and the dead, shortly after the July seventh bombs had gone off. I tried to get here via the back streets and I was driven back by the bus bomb exploding in the street that is behind the bench where I now sit.
There are tears at the corners of my eyes, I am not sorrowful. Sometimes relief and realization can elicit tears too. And the beautiful, brave ideas that are embodied in the monuments here.
I am happy to be back here.
Yes, it is easy to let the dark sea swallow you, those terrorists did just that, they gave themselves to hate and they murdered innocents.
It is harder and braver to seek peace, to be kind. I know this is a simplification, but there is truth in it.
At the end of a busy Friday at work I took a walk across the Heath, as the first slight bruising of evening came to the sky.
I went to the place I go to meditate and shut my eyes, birdsong trilled and the soft air played around me. Stillness and thought within and without.
When I walked on, the sky was a thoughtful blue, and the trees were set against it like fine ink sketches.
I watched a small flock of birds fleet over my head, stark against the sky.
And I was taken by the simple beauty of what I was witnessing. Behind me, over the hill, a cotton candy wisp of pink behind a cluster of trees.
So I walked on, and down towards the silver ponds. Passing by I saw a woman, obviously nauseous, holding onto the fence. I turned back and I asked her if she was okay.
She was a little embarrassed, but glad of the distraction, glad of the support.
And then we recognized each other.
Mike?
I knew her years ago, from school and mutual friends. An intelligent and pleasant lady.
It was ‘morning’ sickness, she was nine weeks pregnant, unable to tell anyone, or many people, at any rate.
So I distracted and bolstered her, we walked to her car she thanked me and I said goodbye.
It was a nice, fortuitous moment.
We found a fisheye lens in a vacated desk and so I tried to sync it with my iPhone’s own beady little eye. The results were poor, but they looked like this.
Eyes evolved over the milennia from light sensitive cells, eyes that resemble the stages our own eyes have passed through exist throughout the animal kingdom still. One of the most curious eyes, perhaps, was that of the trilobite, the long extinct creature of Cretaceous (I think) seas. It had calcite rods for eyes.
Creationists often refer to the eye as proof of an intelligent designer, yet optical illusions exist in abundance that demonstrate that our eyes are far from perfect. Not to mention the blind spot, and of course people being born visually impaired.
Nonetheless eyes are amazing objects, balls of liquid that focus and transmit light, I am glad of mine.
