so..................................

what if

2010-11-25T15:10:00.002-08:00

What if none of us is responsible for anything? What if we are like children in an arcade, holding onto the steering wheel of the driving game, aware that no money has been put in and yet holding the steering wheel and turning it back and forth anyway, pretending we are driving? What if we do not own our lives and the directions they have taken and continue to take? What if, instead, we are thrown into and through our lives, like leaves on a breeze, able to have no more control over our direction and experiences than to adjust our attitude to what is taking place and the sense we make of it - as a man falling from a cliff may cry out, or clutch to the rocks beyond his reach, or notice that he is flying and be aware of the cool wind on his face, and the cry of the gulls above?

The wealthy in our society believe that their wealth is an achievement of theirs, the reward for a series of choices and activities that they have undertaken throughout their lives. As an inevitable corollary of this, they believe that those with less material possessions or financial income are in that position because of their activities and choices, and by implication that as a result those people are less able, intelligent, diligent or responsible. Similarly, those for whom life is defined by constant, gnawing shortage - of money, of affection, of family or property or a sense of security - believe that their lives are a failing of theirs, the punishment for choices and activities that they have failed to make, or made wrongly throughout their lives, with the resultant self-criticism, anger and lack of self-confidence that is its equally inevitable corollary.

But what if no-one - not wealthy people, nor those in prison, nor hedge-fund managers, nor homosexuals, nor liberals, nor murderers, nor the Prime Minister, nor pensioners in state care homes, nor children, nor Olympic sportsmen, nor paedophiles, nor schoolteachers, nor priests, nor florid psychotics nor my cats are really responsible for what has happened in their lives? What if it were to emerge that all the decisions we believe we and other people make, all the choices that we so tenderly hold to be at the heart of our 'freedom' in fact take place in a part of the brain that is entirely unconscious? What if every choice you have ever made turned out to have been made when you were, in effect asleep or elsewhere? What if it should emerge that what you actually do is to attempt to claim these choices as your own at the point at which you discover that they have been made after the fact - saying your are a genius if the choice or behaviour you have just noticed yourself engaging in turns out to have a pleasant or positive outcome, and a fool if the outcome turns out to be unpleasant or negative?

Brain-scanning during the decision-making process - where the pattern of brain functioning can be mapped in real-time in an MRI scanner while a subject is selecting between options - appears to suggest that this scenario is actually the case. It appears that when we are asked why we have made a certain decision, we answer by creating a rationale for a decision that was actually made in our non-conscious minds - that we attempt to account for ourselves in the same way we attempt to account for everything else, by creating a rationalisation that appears to explain what has taken place. In the same way that we might say 'I suppose the reason he didn't leave his car unlocked was because he was scared it would be stolen in this area', we should say 'I suppose the reason i resigned from that job was because i was bored with doing all that paperwork'. The truth is we resigned before any thought had taken place.

There is a strong case then, for viewing life in this way, where society comprises of a collection of lucky and unlucky people, all thrown into their lives and having no option but to undergo the lives they find themselves experiencing - some days seeming to 'achieve' things, some days appearing to have 'made mistakes', some days loved, some vilified - but in fact spectating, with only their awareness of the experience of living something they can truly lay claim to.

What are the implications of this for our day-to-day lives? What if the rapist and the internationally successful singer-songwriter have simply found themselves in their respective positions in society, and neither has any responsibility or agency over the course of their lives other than for the attitude they are taking to what seems too be happening? What are the implications for the criminal justice system, for our relationships, for our political life? What if we were to cease using the different positions we find ourselves thrown into as justifications for congratulating and punishing eachother and ourselves? What if those who find they are parents stopped pitying those who find they are childless couples, and those who find they are policemen tempered their anger toward those who find themselves to be criminals, if those who find they are poor ceased blaming themselves or those who find they are rich, or if those who discover they have passed an examination tempered their pride, or those who have discovered that their house has been burgled tempered their rage?

What if we are all in fact the same, that this 'thrown-ness' is something that links all of us, and that the misunderstanding of this has created all the walls we have built between eachother and between ourselves and the world that is around us and within us?

2009-03-03T13:22:00.001-08:00

So, Matt and I shared a fiercely untidy home together for three years. I remember he would cook delicious meals more slowly than I had previously known was possible - on one occasion it was 2.30am before he flourished in from the kitchen holding the plates aloft like trophies with that infectious, silly grin plastered on his face. I remember him in the garden during some drinks party we were at, with seven kids all simultaneously riding on his back (he was, to anyone with the eyes to see it, a dragon). And I remember looking out the window about an hour later to see him STILL carrying seven children - all screaming with the giggles - around the garden, on his back. Playing. Playing the computer game 'Civilisation' with such fascination that I once came home from work to find him sitting at my computer with his trousers round his ankles, smoking furiously with his face an inch from the screen. He explained that, hearing me coming in, he had lunged toward the bed to put his trousers on so that I wouldn't know he had not moved from his chair all day, but that when they were half on, he had been attacked by the Chinese, and was going to lose his capital city if he did not muster a defence. Matt was the kindest, warmest most honourable man I have ever known. He took care of everyone around him all the time. He took care of me. One day I received an email from him, while I was at work. It was a huge photo of Nansi's smiling face and under it he had written ":0)". Over the next year he seemed less concerned with Civ2, and happier, and calmer until he was simply shining; with that love that shined so bright you could see it from outside on the pavement of Matt, Nansi and Abigail's little flat off Green Lanes. Bless you Matty. And my love to everyone who loved you. xxx Paddy

2009-02-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

.....so, Christ, this country! I spent Monday walking round a winter wonderland Hackney with happy children making their first snowmen of this lifetime and jaded urbanites greeting eachother like old men in country lanes, everyone's face a default smile between specific expressions. A day in Narnia, with no work, no buses, no school, no sound of combustion engines - a heavy blanket of silence everywhere. For one day the city was the country and everyone had a day off that routine death that we all call life. Then, that evening I turned on the news (never a wise decision) to hear Londoners being egged on by nasty, self-serving reporters to complain about the lack of road gritting and the outrage of children not being made to walk to school through blizzards. Someone said that living in London was like living in the third world. Someone else said that closing the schools was 'sending the wrong message to children' as it implied a lack of determination and ambition on the part of the adult world. What wank. London WAS like the third world for one day on Monday, though in one sense only. People were brought together in (minor) adversity, and suddenly, momentarily, became responsible for themselves for one day. The complainers - that tiny minority of infantilised whiners who seem to have been handed a charter by the media recently - never complain on behalf of others. They complain because they have been forced to spend a day playing snowballs with their children, or because they have lost a little money, because their little ears have been shocked to hear someone cursing on television or because they have been forced to learn that cars are dangerous tanks, or that on occasion - despite the efforts of the Government - even those with comfortable incomes are forced to experience momentary inconvenience. There is a proportion of the British population who essentially demand that the government parent them - providing them with a child-friendly, child-safe society which will protect them from pain, inconvenience, fear, shock or adulthood. And they say they are claiming it on behalf of their children, when in truth it is themselves they are speaking for. The snow-closed schools is a classic example. The kids want to slide on street-ice and sledge and throw snowballs. They want to graze their knees on the ice. They need to. And they will remember doing so for the rest of their lives, as we do. A snowy day is a revelation. It is only certain adults in this country that want the government to provide compulsory knee-pads for the entire population. Hurry, apocalypse. We need you. We are becoming fat, needy, incompetent children.

2008-05-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Marion Baskerville

1912-2008

so my grandmother died. she said only two phrases by the end of her life, 'kiss marion' and 'darling' - and occasionally this amazing, shining smile.

she used to cook me and my twin sister plaice and chips, and get pork crackling from the butcher for me, because she knew it was my favourite thing in the world. she chased my mum round the garden with a tie-stretcher when she was young. she was tiny and cheeky and incredibly resiliant. survived both the Wars, working in marks and sparks all her life. her identical twin sister knew something was wrong last night via the air. friday nights always glow a little special for me, freedom-time, because it was fridays when we went to Nan's house for a night and basked in her warmth and jokes and non-negotiable, infinite generosity.

infarct dementia gently dissolved her down to some sort of essence i think.

there is a beautiful poem by tony harrison called 'songs and love' about a group of elderly ladies he lived with for a while in a hospice, all of whom had progressive dementia.

songs and love were the only two things that his friends in the home retained until the end. it is as if they are written in every cell of the cortex of our brains, so that no matter what disappears they remain untouched and intact - they are in your breathing and your saliva and your walking. As long as you are alive they are here. And in unnumbered ways afterwards.

kiss marion

darling

2008-02-14T11:56:00.000-08:00

.....so, I am not too bad. winter has been hard, and work has presented a lot of challenges, but I feel the first whisper of spring in my blood, and my love is coming back. I had some luck, and managed to claim a £1,200 rebate from my money, which means I have paid off some of the loan that was weighing me. The only reason that debt was important to me, is that I have come to see that london, or MY london, is not always very positive or welcoming place for me, and that it can push down my creativity, and my warmth, and money matters because whatever change I am going make next, and it is time for one, needs escape vouchers..... but I am learning a lot at work, about how to manage people and working with clients has been inspiring, and I have been taking loads of photos and have been offered a place in a gallery show here in london so might be able to sell some which would be VERY exciting for me, so its all good. And it has been so sunny and warm in the days, with sharp frosts at night and beautiful sunsets, and I have found lakes and parks and forests around london that I never knew were there.

2008-02-02T06:42:00.001-08:00

...so I am quite taken with the idea at the moment that every step forward is a step backward, and every added convenience creates the phenomenon of inconvenience in ever increasing amounts for us. I saw a piece on Newsnight the other evening in which the case was being put for the removal of traffic lights altogether from junctions in the UK. The idea has been piloted in Sweden where it works very well. Essentially instead of traffic lights and yellow boxes and road markings, the rules are simple: Only go when your route is clear, and pedestrians have right-of-way over all vehicles. The idea is that people being drivers are just like people being pedestrians, and fully able to avoid bumping into eachother and letting other vehicles pass if it is not safe to do anything else. The bigger idea, and one that I am keen on at present, is that external control infantilises us, in that it removes our motivation to internalise discipline and caution and patience, and take and own responsibility for our own choices and actions. If there is no traffic light ahead of me, I will not speed up in an attempt to get to it before it turns red; if there is no mechanical controlling device at a junction, I will slow down for it, and scan the other roads leading into the junction cautiously before I pull out. And if I do not, I may be killed. Remove risk, and you remove the host of skills, psychological developments and behaviours that are generated in order to mount an effective response to the existence of those risks. I can keep my child 100% safe if I lock him or her in their bedroom for the first 20 years of their lives, but the day they leave - or break out - their vulnerability, naivety and weakness will do for them within 24 hours. Similarly, it is slowly emerging that our attempt to minimise risk and maximise safety though pumping our foods full of artificially added vitamins and dietary supplements, and generating media campaigns warning against the dangers of fats or salt etc is having the exactly opposite effect on our dietary health than intended. We die later than we used to, but almost always from a diet-related illness - heart problems, cancers, diabetes - while obesity is becoming a norm. Another example: as I was playing my Xbox the other day, I noticed that the design of the game requires that I wait and watch a 20 second film sequence before I can begin to play each time. I noticed that I was incredibly frustrated and angry at having to wait each time. Then I remembered the 15 minute wait to upload programs via a magnetic tape recorder on my ZX81 on the early eighties. I realised that I minded the 20 seconds in 2008 much more than the 15 minutes in 1984. The added convenience of things taking less time seems to come with the hidden price of increased expectation and impatience, such that, as the things get more 'convenient', I find myself experiencing the frustration and anger of inconvenience much more often and intensely. Then I thought of the children my friend Zuni and I had walked with in Ladakh in the Himalayas, whose walk home from school every evening took them an hour. Not one of them complained about the length of time it took to get home every night - that particular frustration was simply not a part of their lives. My journey home in London takes me about 20 minutes, and - unless I remember to meditate - is a constant experience of frustration and impatience, as I know it is for most other road users. Stay stationary for 20 seconds after a traffic light has changed to green in London and see what happens, if you doubt me. So. Half the journey time, double the anger and frustration. What is 'convenient' about that? Less and less is demanded of us every year, and with it our ability to rise to challenges continues to erode, and our expectations of 100% safety and 100% convenience rise up, and torture us. People in London are more scared of crime in 2008 than they were 20 years ago, while, as a result of the surveillance culture, cameras on every street, DNA testing on arrest, mobile phone tracking and internet monitoring, crime rates have fallen sharply in the same time. More fear, less crime. And the criterion which effects whether we have more or less policing and surveillance is not the crime rate, but the levels of fear of crime, as this is a democracy and thus people's perceptions are far more significant and instrumental in effecting change than facts. So lets extend the graph in order to make a guess at what the future will be like. As crime continues to decrease, thus becoming a phenomenon that people are less and less accustomed to encountering, fear of it will continue to increase. We will continue to be informed of every single interesting or frightening crime that takes place via our all-pervading media no matter how far from our own homes and lives they are,, and will therefore continue to demand more and more protection against it. Pretty much the rarest crime at present is terrorism. Which of you have been a victim of it? How often is the crime committed in this country compared to, say, 30 years ago? How many hands would you need to count the incidents on your fingers? So, slowly, the protections will close in around us - iris scans, ID cards, cameras, road markings, road bumps, traffic lights, email monitoring, centralised databases, data-sharing between the world's secret services, and as the net closes in our fear of the things it is there to protect us against will increase. I do not posit anything sinister on the part of our governments as this future is built; they are simply doing what we want, attempting to address our growing, inexplicable fear and anger. We will continue to increase the percentage of our lives spent sitting in front of electronic entertainment devices, as will our children, and thus our craving for entertainment will continue to grow unabated, as are bodies grow fatter and less and less serviceable for physical activity. We will strive ever harder in our schools to make the information that it is imperative that our children learn 'entertaining' for them, as education increasingly finds that it has to compete with entertainment-dedicated industries, and continue to shake our heads in concern that our children do not seem to be engaged or interested in any activities that do not derive from or move toward the media. Our frustration and anger that all our needs are not met immediately will spiral. Take a Londoner to India and expect them to wait an hour and a half for a meal in a restaurant, and watch them. Eventually, as inevitably happens in human societies, someone cynical will find themselves sitting atop this new society and decide to misuse the people in some distinctly non-democratic way. What will happen? What has often happened historically when some despot begins to commit atrocities against the people? Rebellion? Revolution? How will this express itself? Will it be in the form of rioting? Or armed struggle? The people will be too fat and scared. The mechanisms which have been put in place to prevent anti-social behaviour, crime and terrorism are the same mechanisms which will be more then capable of suppressing rebellion. In fact, if one wished to permanently prevent a society rising and overthrowing its leaders and ruling class, they are exactly the mechanisms which one would seek to put in place. We are fat, unhappy, frightened, frustrated, addicted to entertainment, poorly educated, physically weak, increasingly isolated from eachother, dying in ever rising numbers as a result of the diet we are fed, infantilised by the mechanisms of control that we have demanded surround us, alienated from the our own subsistence, distanced from the natural environments that created us and more vulnerable to being misused and enslaved by the powerful few than at any time in human history. So. Lets look at banning traffic lights.

2007-12-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

. ..so my friend nikstikcrouch just just facebooked to invite me to Guatemala for Christmas. She is living in a tiny village on the side of a volcanic lake looking brown and peaceful and holding dogs and monkey's hands. My hold on my life here is so tenuous and light nowadays. I had to actually look at the flights to remind myself that an additional two thousand pounds of debt was not my best strategic move forward at the moment. But this life and this city and even perhaps this country are so so far from how my spirit cries I need to be living. There is a distinct shortage of monkeys and volcanos. Note to self: increase monkey and volcano quotient in life. .

2007-11-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

. So, smoking like a bitch. Full of grand plans and sucking as many of the little beauties down as I can before I reluctantly side with the angels again - and watch myself filling-out like a seal, like Jay Leno - so having to join a gym too, and run on machines while watching the 6 o'clock news through headphones. So undergoing a motivation holiday. London has been Autumn, and the leaves in Epping forest - looking, after an uncharacteristically wet summer (which as you know is saying something), like New England. There's some pics in my album. London has been hard too, in the ways that it truly is hard. A US comedian on telly tonight, on hearing that recent psychology research has shown that people who look you steadily in the eye and smile are perceived as being 8 times as attractive as if they do not, commented 'except in London, where everyone will think you are a 'loony' to huge recognition laughter and applause from the audience. Its sometimes hard when you move through a world of feelings and their expression all day - as I do at work, to then live somewhere in which the opposite is an agreed behavioural norm. So a bit chilly sometimes. I must EARN. And i must work. And the beautiful leaves give way to a peculiarly urban winter here, as the foliage hides and softens the city. But finding a bona fide forest just 15 minutes from my house mitigates it significantly, as forests sing with beauty all year round. I had no idea it was so near, till I looked on google satellite to see where the nearest, biggest area of wild land was, and saw it stretching for miles just to the north of me. Its sort of cultural in London that you tend to look inwards toward the centre, so I had missed it. Hooray! I have a forest! .

2007-11-07T18:26:00.001-08:00

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2007-11-06T10:04:00.001-08:00

watch this all the way through

2007-10-30T19:03:00.001-07:00

2007-10-09T06:03:00.001-07:00

2007-09-30T17:27:00.001-07:00

Ghost caught on surveillance camera

2007-09-30T16:25:00.001-07:00

2007-09-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! .

2007-09-27T10:44:00.001-07:00

BBc reports collapse of World Trade Center 7 building HALF AN HOUR BEFORE IT ACTUALLY FELL

2007-09-16T14:52:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky Interview on CBC

2007-09-15T16:01:00.001-07:00

Russel Brand vs The Sun

2007-09-12T03:20:00.001-07:00

2007-09-07T18:11:00.001-07:00

2007-09-06T17:11:00.001-07:00

2007-09-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

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2007-09-06T16:00:00.001-07:00

the colour is in you

2007-09-06T15:55:00.001-07:00

2007-09-06T15:37:00.001-07:00

2007-09-06T15:26:00.001-07:00

Stanley Jordan

2007-08-31T10:04:00.001-07:00

2007-08-30T16:49:00.001-07:00

2007-08-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

Lyre

2007-08-30T16:27:00.001-07:00

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2007-08-29T16:30:00.001-07:00

2007-08-29T16:15:00.001-07:00

2007-08-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

. Mormonism is FUN by the way, for any of you that have never looked into it. This is a statue of the founder Joseph Smith as the Sphinx. Lookin' a bit like Margaret Thatcher, I acknowledge. http://www.tv-links.co.uk/listings/9/7175 ...and this very low budget, Christian attempt at debunking Mormonism contains a wonderful cartoon description of Mormonism, showing just how inspiringly Blavatsky-nutty some of the ideas that underpin it are, and some fantastic horrified voice-overs from twin-set Christians. ...for those of you who do not live alone, spend time with those you love instead.... :0) .

2007-08-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

. http://www.tv-links.co.uk/listings/9/5218 .

2007-08-24T08:15:00.001-07:00

. http://www.tv-links.co.uk/listings/9/4752 .

2007-08-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

. www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/7011 .

2007-08-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

. ...and the range of free watch-online movies is kind of amazing too... http://www.tv-links.co.uk/listings/4 .

2007-08-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

. this site is a goldmine of free online tv documentaries: http://www.tv-links.co.uk/listings/9 .

Walken Scene - Pulp Fiction

2007-08-19T08:00:00.001-07:00

2007-08-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

. ...the rich, thick smell of a red wine casserole mixed with the sound of an ice-cream van in the distance and the thumpthumpthump of my cat scratching... england.. .

2007-08-06T03:01:00.000-07:00

. reality is what you focus your attention on - there is only so much room in the pipe of your attention at ony one moment - think 'do i really want my present moment filled up with this?' intellectual intelligence has no useful purpose men are not, as many women secretly think, lazy women - they are literally different when everybody tells you something, they are proobably right - or so everybody tells me fear is no gift to give anyone when a car is driving very slowly in front of me, i consider that they may be preventing me from being involved in an accident further up the road by forcibly slowing me down - this scenario is just as likely a future as any that i am using as a reason to get frustrated or angry eat breakfast if you don't want to be fat from time to time ask yourself 'am i hurrying?' as a reminder not to overlook this moment in a scramble to get to the next remind yourself that you have never seen or done anything before - the river you wade into is always a new one, even if this event happens in the same place it did yesterday if i had experienced your life, i would be you too, and your choices would make sense to me, and be my most skillful response to the world never draw on an inside straight do not expose yourself to advertising that imitates other forms of information, and actively argue with it if it is attempting to mislead you its important to have a hobby try not to make decisions while experiencing emotion energy in equals energy out - take care of yourself as a means of taking care of others god dresses up as the ugly and frightening people and walks among us from time to time to see how we will respond to him - stay alert what goes around comes around what comes around goes around get the love right and everything else in existence will take care of itself resist scratching itches on a regular basis - if this choice is available to you, anything is possible the more you expect from life, the greater the shortfall you will experience concentrate on your breathing and any sensations in your body whenever the thought occurs to - the rewards are astonishing eat vegetables ask yourself 'what are my instincts about this?' whenever the thought occurs to - you cannot trust your instincts if you do not know how to assess what they are and this requires practice your instincts are always wiser than your thinking everyone has a piece of the puzzle and their piece is exactly the same size as yours we are always an us even when everyone is behaving as if they were a me cats are good buddhists the brain is part of the body - exercise makes you cleverer thinking is only for solving problems that present themselves in the present never take advice you read on the internet .

2007-08-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

. ...haven't i been relentlessly negative so far... enough of that. .

2007-07-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

...so i was just idly staring into space (one of my hobbies) when my eyes fell upon the box of 'Taylors of Harrogate YORKSHIRE TEA' that my friend left in my house while i was away. yorkshire tea. so local, so natural, so english - because tea IS english isn't it, its been our traditional brew since, oh, for centuries hasn't it? and yorkshire tea, from that county of tradition and english values - you're not from round here are you, the jukeboox falling silent when a southerner walks into the pub, james herriott, geoff boycott saying 'i just don't understand it' on the cricket commentary - so tea from yorkshire - that's as english as you can get, isn't it? like tea would grow in yorkshire's climate, like the english have EVER grown it, like there is any relationship at all between tea and yorkshire - but you know what they mean, don't you? you can FEEL the tradition as you look at the 1930s font saying 'YORKSHIRE TEA' - you can even here the music to the hovis advert somewhere in the back of your mind... we are full to the brim with these fictions, they make up a huge proportion of the tapestry of reality in which we live and it is only in exceptional periods of clarity that we become momentarily mindful of that fact. i had a client once (i am sometimes a counsellor - despite the screaming irony inherent in that) who was obsessed with an idea of the sort of man he should be and very hard on himself for the numerous occasions on which he failed to live up to his ideal. after some conversations about ways he could be less strict and punitive with himself, and reality-testing some of his ideas about what people should ask of themselves (none of which proved to be very helpful), we eventually got round to the question of where he had derived this archetype of the perfect man from - had it been someone he'd met in the past - a teacher, maybe, at his school or a priest? after some time he was able to admit that in fact he had been beating himself up for years because he was failing to be David Carradine's character in the '70s television series 'kung fu'. He had never known any real human being who was able to consistently behave in the way that this fictional creation did, and thus it was no wonder that he found it so hard to achieve his 'goal' as it was, quite literally, unreal - derived from fiction - someone's idea of how they would LIKE the world to be rather than from the world itself. Now this is not new, of course. i am sure there were many sweat-soaked nights spent by the daughters of english country parsons in emily bronte's day as they awaited the arrival of their own personal heathcliffs. what is newer is that much of the fiction upon which our unconscious ideas of reality now rest derives from advertising and branding rather than, say, novels or television shows. these value-soaked ideas have been injected into our meaning-schemata for no purpose other than to increase the likelihood that we will buy a given product when we next come upon it - any alterations to our perception of the world or ourselves that results are considered mere irrelevant collateral damage or, most commonly, are not considered at all. the results though are, i believe, far-reaching.

2007-07-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

. ...have you noticed how Will Self has to add one polysyllabic term that only crossword enthusiasts would know to every article he writes? i think it is a deliberate measure designed to create the illusion that he has superior intellectual status over his readership. actually its fucking annoying and excluding - akin to writing every 5th word in mandarin chinese. twat. .

2007-07-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

. ...coming back from india has made me realise that there are two sorts of freedom - the freedom TO do things and the freedom FROM things being done to you. in India I was astonished at how free I felt - free to ride a motorbike without a helmet, sit down in the road, buy valium from the corner shop, dress like a fool if I wanted, not wash, play a guitar in the middle of a city street, buy charras on the beach - and it felt like it was my personal responsibility to protect myself against the things that other people might do to me. i met a very idiosyncratic dutch biker and we disccussed the differences between riding in india and europe and he said that he preferred india - where there is a sort of brutal, darwinian chaos on the roads and where a moment's lapse in mindfulness is highly likely to end in your death - because in europe the roads are so over-designed, the traffic lighting systems so perfectly timed, the roads so clearly marked and the etiquette so precise that it is possible to drive for hours without ever really paying more than 40% attention to what you are doing. The implication is that in europe, where we hand our trust and our safety over to the state, like children assuming their parents will warn them if it is not safe to cross the road, we are in fact far more vulnerable as day by day we incrementally lose our alertness and our vigilance. Apparently free from danger, actually bloated and sluggish and easily frightened - entirely reliant on the kindness of strangers for our safety and unable to risk ourselves in many of the ways that would teach us to be more mindful... oh yes, the bitter taste of my return has still not passed... :0) .

2007-07-27T19:50:00.001-07:00

. fuckin' .

2007-07-26T20:41:00.001-07:00

. paintin' .

2007-07-26T20:03:00.001-07:00

. lovin' .

2007-07-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

. pickin' .

2007-07-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

. dancin' (keep on watching this one....) .

2007-07-26T18:18:00.001-07:00

. singin' .

2007-07-26T18:14:00.001-07:00

. pickin' .

2007-07-26T18:07:00.001-07:00

. dancin' .

2007-07-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

. warnin' .

2007-07-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

. jugglin' .

2007-07-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

. dancin' .

2007-07-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

. lyin' .

2007-07-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

. ...have you bloggers noticed how the mood of your blog and the mood of your day may be very different? any theories? .

2007-07-24T04:26:00.000-07:00

. ...those guys with the sandwich boards - 'the end is nigh' - we need them, they are part of the essential variety of human communities - like the schizophrenics who look you straight in the eye and say 'liar' - its dirty work, but someone has to do it, like a child who sits on their hands for an hour at a polite dinner party and then suddenly starts shouting 'fuck! fuck! fuck!' to the consternation of her mother - what is pushed down by the parents pops up in the children. .

2007-07-24T04:19:00.000-07:00

. ....so tammy in Vancouver finds her life to be almost unsupportable - and cannot share the values of those around her after three years wandering lost and bereft and free in China and India - and marina here in London is overtaken by the thought on a regular basis as she walks through the neat, white trinket markets of Notting Hill that 'you are all gonna die' - a piece of information that she can tell from everyone's behaviour they are clearly not paying heed to.... .

2007-07-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

. have you noticed how germanic we all are in angle-land? its all so fearfully organised, every inch of space is formally allocated to someone, every field fenced, every path clearly marked. and how unfree in the face on the shared common sense that tyrannizes us. but i WANT to kill the grass along the edge of this path by walking on it, and I WANT to risk myself by not wearing a crash helmet (i can almost feel my life sometimes when the death is blowing through my hair) and i WANT the risk of walking sometimes while NOT on film, even though i know that any assault i may undergo or undertake may go unrecorded.... because sometimes, deep deep down, i want you all to go fuck yourselves and get out of my garden... .

2007-07-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

... so I blog. look at me, everyone, look at my tight little buns. i can bend quite a long way backwards.... ...so lucky, lucky middle englanders, thrown out of their homes by biblical floods - their routines smashed, days off work, rides in helicopters, hands cupped round civil defence regulation mugs of emergency tea, having conversations with people they have never met before, complaining about the rescue effort and the insurance companies with a gusto that could almost be mistaken for real passion - free, momentarily free. for a few days at least, their lives broken and occasional moments spent in the dangerous present... no floods here in london, there is an impenitrable barrier to prevent them. no conversations with strangers. no passion. we are safe. .