By: Patrick

I rarely feel strong bonds to people I have never met, especially not those who were dead before I had even heard of them. Yet the other night, I got this lovely image in my head of the late comedian Bill Hicks and the late writer David Foster Wallace sat in a bar together drinking and laughing. I found this a very comforting image. I think they would have been good friends. Both were very funny people in their different ways, both were very spiritual people in their different ways, both were profoundly courageous moral thinkers in their different ways. Slavoj Zizek wrote that film directors Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky had offices in the same building towards the end of Tarkovsky’s life. Yet he writes that: ‘Although the two directors had deep respect and supreme mutual admiration, they never met, but carefully avoided each other, as if their direct encounter would have been too painful and doomed to failure on account of the very proximity of their universes’. My feeling is that Hicks and Wallace would not have engaged in this paradoxical avoidance strategy were they to have crossed paths. They would have got on. They would have got drunk and put the world to rights in between tears of laughter. They really seemed to care about people. From their hearts. This seems to me to be so rare. I remain deeply touched by both of them. I feel something like love for them although strangely enough this is rarely motivated directly by their artistic output, so much as the details that emerge in photos, interviews, biographies. Two tormented souls struggling to find love and compassion in a cynical and inauthentic world. I feel so sad that neither are still with us. Yet the image of the two of them giggling like children over a beer in the corner of a smoky Texan bar fills me with utter joy. And sadness.

By: Patrick

It seems that as a society we do not take boredom very seriously. I recently went to a conference on the theme of boredom, and when I mentioned it to other people, most of them chuckled. “Was it boring?” was the standard response. Fair enough. For most people, boredom as a mood is of a similar status to minor moods such as frustration or awkwardness. It does not hold the same status as moods like depression or happiness, which keep academics and self-help gurus busy. And yet David Foster Wallace, referred to by many as the greatest mind of his generation, has just had his final unfinished work, The Pale King, published posthumously. It is a book about boredom. Why would such a great mind be so focused on boredom? Wallace even went so far as to say that: “To be, in a word, unborable…. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”. This is just a preliminary piece to try and place boredom in context. I hope to expand upon this theme, looking at questions like: what can boredom teach us? Are we living in an age of boredom? Is boredom a ‘pathological’ mood? Is boredom a taboo subject? I am hoping to explore some books and movies that touch on the theme of boredom in order to try and make my own ideas clearer to myself. I hope shortly to submit a few thoughts on a book I am reading at the moment called The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. It is considered a boredom classic!

By: Patrick

Written 25 April 2012

Fernando Torres broke his long-standing goal drought last night, scoring Chelsea’s winner in a crucial European match. It was interesting to hear the discussions afterwards on the radio. Apparently some psychologists had suggested that his goal drought may be ‘fatal’. It seems interesting that psychologists feel able to make such comments. Their opinions only have any authority as they are supposed to be scientific (psychology is, after all, the science of mind/behaviour), but it is difficult to work out how scientific the claim that Torres’ goal drought is ‘fatal’ can be. As irrelevant as much of what psychologists say in the media can be, there do yield plenty of power. What if Torres had heard a supposed scientific expert tell him that his goal drought may be fatal, that he may as well just give up, that it is basically all over for him? This may well have led to a self-fulfilling prophecy and only lowered his confidence levels and expectations of himself. We can see similar things in the field of mental health – professionals have often suggested that certain forms of mental health problems are chronic or incurable, in effect ‘fatal’. This must have a devastating effect on people who are told this (numerous patient narratives suggest that this is the case). Many contemporary accounts of recovery from mental health problems force us to question these rather pessimistic statements. The thing that troubles me is that statements from experts, especially scientists, have power to shape how we think about ourselves – experts increasingly have come to govern our souls, to use Nikolas Rose’s phrase. Fortunately one suspects that Torres would not take too much notice of such nonsense, but I find it troubling that such statements continue to be made by people who make claims from a supposedly scientific perspective. Psychologists, psychiatrists and other similar professions wield great power in determining how we think about ourselves and each other. Yet there is good reason to be suspicious of much that is taken to be scientific orthodoxy. Robert Whitaker’s recent book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, is an extraordinary piece of investigative journalism that exposes the corruption and deception at the heart of the modern psychiatric project. Ivan Illich suggested that we should take less notice of professionals, that we should de-school society. People may find it re-assuring to have professionals guiding their decisions from the cradle to the grave, but I find this quite depressing, especially when most it is bad science. Torres’ goal last night made a mockery of opportunistic psychologists offering their supposedly scientific perspective on the fatality of his goal drought. Yet most of the rest of us probably care a lot more about what scientists tell us about ourselves than Torres does. That’s the worrying part of it.

By: Patrick

I am thirty-one years old. I seem to have reached a stage in my life where I am struggling to find meaning in a lot of things that once seemed so important. Not all things. I do not feel depressed, but rather I am finding that in most crucial areas of my life, things just do not feel quite right. I am often bored, and if I am not bored then I am busy and distracted, which is basically the same thing. So I guess I am trying to connect/re-connect with those things that nurture and feed my soul. I like words like soul and find it (along with others that are increasingly under attack by scientific materialism) comforting and important. Lots of people and ideas nurture my soul, while others do harm to it. This blog is an attempt to explore these people and their ideas. I hope to focus on the former much more often than the latter! I also hope to explore some personal ideas and experiences so that it is not exclusively about other people and their ideas. I look forward to seeing how it shapes up and what directions it will end up going in. I feel very excited about writing it. It is something that I have been wanting to do for a long time. For some reason, I am at last ready to do it.

By: Elysia

Leave it there, my love,
Lest you disturb far more
Than dust and bones
And corpses of flies
Who withered in the attic there
During long, hot summers
When the room’s dead air
Was still and thick,
Yet safe.

Leave it there, my love,
Lest you lie in bed
Awake at night
Scared and alone
As her voice wails high
Through the summer air
Long after dark, and dry
Creaking wings beat
The night.

Leave it there, my love,
Lest I wake in the morning
And find you gone,
Switched for a changeling
Of grass and straw
And though I’ll weep
I will see you no more.

Leave it there,
My love.

Concealed shoes: Australian settlers and an old superstition

By: Elysia

Dig, dig, scrape, dig, dig.

Bark, bark, bark, BARK. Bark. Bark. Bark.

“Bugger.” (In Spanish.)

Paraguay: Stray dog’s barking foils prison break

By Elysia

A silence in the corridors,
A silence in the halls.
Then: whispering masses out of sight,
Out beyond the walls.

A low thrum of humming
Echoes from the lawn,
Ever getting louder:
The battleline is drawn.

The songs are almost deafening now,
The walls begin to crack.
Finally they start to see:
They are not turning back.

Gold-encrusted mannequins
Are shaken and they’re stirred:
Power to the people,
Voices must be heard.

By: Vague

The first time I heard the phrase, ‘Flotsam and Jetsam’, was when I was first reading The Lord of the Rings, where it is the title of a chapter. At least that is how my memory deems it; I may have known of it before, but it certainly stuck in my mind with that reading. I think I was ten years old, or thereabouts. A long time hence.

It is a beautiful phrase (at least I think it is), adding a lustre to what is essentially rubbish. How I wish I had access to my Shorter Oxford, so as to verify the etymology of the words. I guess the first is from ‘float’ and the second ‘jettison’ – but that would be a guess.

Again; rubbish.

Les Stroud, AKA ‘Survivorman’, frequently makes the point that one can be on any coast in the world, as far from another human as possible, and still find other people’s rubbish. And the vast majority of this is plastic.

I have discussed our ongoing love-affair with oil and its derivatives before; I cannot remember if that was on here, or elsewhere. It is a pet hate. I often try and imagine what this beach or that cove would look like without the garish smattering of plastic items strewn across the tide mark, like so many bright poisonous fruit festooning the seaweed, wood and bones that should be there.

Plastic is an interloper. It takes many, many years to decay. It is eaten by sealife across the globe, and is a major problem we care little about.

Yet.

And here we return to our title.

Yet, like Mr Stroud, I try and follow the adage the Wombles preach. One man’s rubbish is another’s treasure. And, when you are miles from the nearest shop, and with no way of transporting heavier items anyway, this treasure can become very valuable indeed.

To give an idea of just how much litters our coast I have brought up the following items to the shelter; there are far more still down below on the beaches that fringe the forest.

• Two two-litre fizzy drinks bottles
• One glass 1.5 litre bottle (whole!)
• A plastic spray bottle, such as you may buy containing cleaner, anti-bacterial spray etc (battered but not cracked)
• Two bleached rib bones (deer or sheep)
• A three foot length of six inch pipe
• A plastic barrel, the bottom cut off to make a bucket
• Three large fish boxes (100cm x 50cm x 25cm)
• Two plastic trays, also used on the creel boats (60cm x 40cm x 8cm) – these also yielded ten cable ties
• Part of fish box, cut so as to most likely act as a fender on a boat, with rope attached (150cm)
• Plastic pipe, six inches again, corner section
• Several pieces of driftwood, including a very useful pine pole, fifteen foot in length
• The other half of the seal skull I found last year, canine tooth still attached
• A plastic bucket, the sort used on boats, about 50cm diameter at the top and 50cm deep. This was slightly cracked at the bottom but is now perfectly usable as I wove paracord into it to fix it. Both handles also work fine and are undamaged.
• Two children’s beach toys; a small plastic rake and a plastic spade with a wooden handle
• A milk crate
• A ‘Plastimo’ buoy. 23 x 85. Made in France. Two holes/mooring points at either end of the 85cm. With 90cm rope.
• A flat rock, now used as a chopping board. (Ok – this neither floated, nor was jettisoned, but it was carried up from the beach.)

There are still a few other items I intend to collect, mainly driftwood, but also a selection of netting I am pondering a use for, a steel rod and one or two more fish boxes.

The items I already have, rubbish though they are, have started to prove their worth. The spade is surprisingly strong and has been used rather a lot already. One of the fish boxes is used when I collect moss and leaves for adding to the thatching, another has been sawn in half lengthways to make two shelves nailed to some wood and one of the shelter uprights.

The milk crate and buoy are being sat on as I write; very comfortable they are too.

Other items are already earmarked for a purpose; more shelves, a low table etc. I intend to use everything that I carried up here (buoy was carried by another, but that is another tale, and I mustn’t get ahead of myself).

One item there seems to be a proliferation of here is plastic containers for marine lubrication oil. Unfortunately, beyond the one cut down as a bucket and now catching run-off from my tarp in order to keep the shelter floor drier, I cannot think of a use for these. Unless I make a raft, as was suggested!

So, flotsam and jetsam it certainly is, but I am turning more and more Womble, making good use of the things that I find…

Note: Having thought about it some more, I think the milk crate is probably a lobster crate.

By: Vague

It is now over a year since I left my ‘proper’ job and ventured, quite literally, into the unknown.

I have returned to the shelter I built, to once again spend the Fall out in the woods, along the beaches, across the moors and up the mountains.

I started a blog piece a couple of weeks ago, after my company left to return south to her ‘proper’ job. Unfortunately the blog became turgid, incoherent, rambling and generally rubbish, so it was shelved, never to see the day.

Instead, I went over this piece and drew up a list of bullet points I wanted to write about. It occurred to me that the reason that the original blog had become so dire was that I had been trying to put too much into too small a space.

By writing the list I have effectively made the writing process that much easier (you’ve got to love lists) and normal service should once again resume.

I had intended to write a few pieces over the time since I left the wilderness, especially about my Brittany adventure, but I failed. Probably due to wine.

Hopefully I will be able to furnish these hallowed walls with a few thoughts and notes. I will be out here for a few more weeks so there should be plenty to discuss.

By: Vague

As some of you may already know, I recently spent some time living out in the wilds, in a shelter I built myself, heated by fire, quenched by Scottish burn water (I had to get that phrase in, it amuses me to think that if you didn’t know a stream was a burn in Scotland, you’d be perplexed). During this time I filled several Moleskines with notes, musings, observation, idea and poetry. I tried to distil what it means to be me into words and I have certainly made a satisfactory start. As you may also know, I am now dedicating the next few months to finishing my novel, but I also intend to write other pieces; drawing on the notes I made and purifying these thoughts into essay format. Not only do I want to continue my investigation into the reality, if such exists, behind my existence, but I am also aware that to do so will keep the novel from stagnation, allow my mind to explore a different form of writing – and will give you something to read too.

It has been a fascinating process to put myself directly in the spotlight, addressing issues past, present and future, many of which I have shelved and tried desperately not to revisit for many, many years, others are more recent, more raw. With hindsight, I probably began this process when I started seriously thinking about leaving my wife, over two years ago, after I had actually done so it gathered pace, speeding up with whatever it was The Muse and I shared for that brief time I documented here and continuing its headlong dash into the unknown over the last year, with another complicated affair and then the time I spent alone. I will warn you now, these pieces may contain things that may surprise, possibly upset or even offend, so please don’t read if you are of a sensitive nature. For the one thing I have learnt above all others is that in order for this skin sack of flesh and bone to succeed, I have to now be honest with myself and all others. This honesty differs from the ‘no lies’ policy I have followed for some time, as I have become adept at sidestepping issues, disguising truth within layers, behind smoke, in order not to offend or upset – now I have realised that I am who I am and that should be good enough. Like it or leave it. This is not to say that the forthcoming essays are designed or intended to shock, sadden or worse; some will be about subjects that are unlikely to offend. But you have been warned.

Expect tales of my past too, I know several of you have enjoyed one or two of these I have done previously and a portion of my notebooks is certainly taken up with remembrance of things past (À la recherche du temps perdu, of course). Keeping a journal is something I have mentioned before; even a few lines about an event or day can act as a trigger for the memory, and it is now time to draw on these observations, these lost times, in order to ensure they are preserved. An analogy for this process can be found in a box of memories, that place so many of us keep items that have great personal and individual meaning, yet to others are simply rubbish; a cinema or rail ticket, a letter, a pressed flower, a stone, a tiny three word note on a post-it. When we die these items lose any form of connection to the event, beyond their face value, their simple physical self. If a list is not included with them (‘leaf collected on walk with X, fell from a tree as we sat in the park on xx/xx/xxxx’ or ‘bill from meal with Y, we argued, I just wanted to hold and kiss her’), then they will be thrown out by whosoever finally goes through our collections when we are dust. Without recording these memories, they disappear, as Rutger Hauer so elegantly stated ‘all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.’ The more memory we leave behind, the greater our legacy, our resonance down the ages. As is stated in the Hávamál; ‘ Cattle die, and kinsmen die, and so one dies one’s self; one thing now that never dies, the fame of a dead man’s deeds’. Other translations remove the word ‘fame’, replacing it with ‘reputation’ – is this not what a legacy is about? Fame, defined as being known by many people, is different from reputation. It can be argued that we have come to associate fame with the acquisition of wealth and synonymous with reputation (and celebrity, as I have blogged about here). And this then raises the question of what I want to do with my work, why I write (as per Orwell).

I have been a writer for as long as I remember. It is something I do for pleasure first and foremost, I have an ongoing love affair with words and their structure. To be able to string together a series of symbols that can be deciphered across the globe is something we all too often take for granted. But; tell someone you are a writer and the next thing they say will be ‘are you published then?’ Even the OED includes a reference to writers doing so as a career, or job. Another thing people nearly always add is ‘I’ve always wanted to be a writer too’. Well, call me a fool, but you can’t become a writer. You either are, and write, or you are not, and don’t. I disagree that writing can be conveniently lumped together with accountancy, factory work, teaching, dog walking or any other job or career. It is more than that, it is a calling, one that can be difficult to explain to those who aren’t creative themselves. But what is the point of writing without a readership? This is something that Mr Will Roberts recently touched on; and he was right – what is the point of writing without a reader?

I’ve mentioned before my decision to stop writing and concentrate on gaining experience of life before recommencement and how this has certainly been more than successful, surpassing any of the shadowy forms of the future I envisaged all that time ago. The things I have done, the people I have met, the events, the women, the places I have been; all of these things are now being chopped and simmered, ready to add flavour, realism and variety to the final recipe which will become my novel. And, let’s face it, there’s plenty to go around, enough for many more meals. Now is the time I start to reap the rewards of a life lived. Time to entertain. Time to write. For, as Tove Jansson states in The Summer Book; ‘sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realise that they had forgotten.’ (Incidentally, I urge you to track this book down, it is a top five novel as far as I am concerned, capturing both old age and childhood and addressing massive questions in a way which never fails to entertain. Why it isn’t more well known outside Scandinavia, I don’t know, especially as the author is known for the also excellent Moomin books). She was right – I don’t want to start too late, nor risk forgetting my idea. That would be a travesty (for you as well as me). No, now I have the time and will. I haven’t forgotten once that I am a writer, I have doubted whether I would ever reach a point where I could write as I want, I have questioned what it is I actually want to write, I have debated the reasons behind my obsession with the written word – yet I have never lost sight of the fact I write.

I may keep you updated with the novel writing process and the trials and tribulations of publishing that will follow (although I am quietly confident about this, having a few aces hidden up the proverbial sleeve). I may not. Reading back over several of the pieces on here the ones I enjoyed revisiting most were those in essay form and those where I retold a tale of my past. To my eye I can see how many of the others reflect an attempt to recreate my success with TOB, yet do so for people who really know me. It was an interesting experiment and one I am unlikely to return to; I have plenty of people on TOB who are more than happy to provide commentary and discussion on what happens in my life, why confuse matters? A better discussion of this was given in the last piece on here.  Perhaps the reason I am still keeping TOB and moving from blogging on here is because of the two way process it enables; I can chew through an idea, ruminate on my own thoughts with criticism, support and occasionally derision from others. This gives me a more complete analysis of an event, leading me in directions my mind may not have taken without the input of others. The lack of commentary on here (when it was possible to comment I cannot recall receiving a single response) adding to my choice of taking a step back. A one sided discussion is not what a blog should be about, at least as far as I am concerned, all very entertaining for the reader I am sure, discussed perhaps when I am not present, but where’s my fun in that?

To, to conclude, I guess what the above is really saying is ‘I’ll see you when I see you’. If you want to hear from me sooner, send a message or write a letter.