It so happened that I found myself in Cyprus. Work, free drink, 45°C temperatures. Most of those in the company just like the sun, sea, beach and booze. Me, going all that way, I had a better idea. A plan. I did pitch the plan to the whole company, and while many indicated they would love to do it, only five of us did.

And it was perfect. Five blokes, road trip. I guess it is best I do this in some sort of chronological order. Roll with it, it might make sense.

We picked the car up at 9 in the morning, with a list of Byzantine churches to go see. And off we went. Head to the mountains, a vague inkling of where we were going. The sun was out, the aircon was on, nothing was going to stop us. And it didn’t. It was one experience after another, one moment of transcendence followed by another. And a few U-turns.

Not long in to the journey, we approach the first stopping point. And, luckily, there were a few big coaches, indictating tourists. A bonus, we could start with some classic Eastern Orthodox tat. Byzantine theme park for history nerds.

But wait! Tourists, you say? Those don’t look like tourists…those are…pilgrims! Considering we are half way up a mountainside, with sweeping corners and VERY CLOSE EDGES THAT WE COULD FALL OFF, this is no tourist country. A monastry, a priest with an awesome Orthodox beard, and a bloke selling blessed apples from the back of his van. What was a boy to do, but take his hat off, cross himself and go in and kiss some Virgins.

I probably let myself down by going in the wrong order, but I was entranced by the gold, the icons, the frescos, and the quiet still devoutness on display. It was mentioned a few times why I wasn’t my usual, um, combative self, but I am pious when I need to be. Bearded or not. And I wasn’t bearded.

The interior of Eastern Orthodox churches. Inspired, totally different to those damned Latins, and just so much more of everything. You can feel the mystery, and feel the loss that we have in the West.

A nod to the priest later, and in to the car, to head up further into the hills. Winding switchback-laden single lane tracks, with signposts the just appear causing more U-turns. One more stop before lunch. A village nestling in a valley, long main street, single track doubling up as a two-way road. And park where you want. Corners, no problem.

So we park. Almost on a corner, beside a huge church, evidently currently still in use. Not the Byzantium we were looking for, just a quick bonus on the way to the church of the Archangel Michael. An impressive structure, what else would a boy do but wander around taking photographs? And what else would a boy do when he sees the old caretaker hobbling by but ask him if we could go inside?

Inside. What can prepare you for a building with a centre done, three stories high, pillars, and painted from floor to ceiling and back again. With the gold, the icons, the chandeliers. The seats, the books, the fresco hidden behind golden gates, which I am not sure we were supposed to pass. The quiet, the history, the something more than austere and dour Protestantism or the secondhand Byzantine pistache that is Catholicism. No incense was harmed in the making of this sacrilege.

Of course I left a donation on the plate. How could I not? I would have happily paid an entrance fee, to see that, to be there. Helpfully, old caretaker dude (with a disappointingly shaven upper lip) pointed us in the right direction, and we moved down the hill and back seven centuries.

Most of the Byzantium buildings didn’t allow photography inside, and the pictures were taken from the door, not inside. This tiny church, this tiny place, again, was something else. You can’t get craftmanship like that any more, and to think how long that has stood, and the colours still there, the damage of time and man barely noticeable in places.

We could have stopped after any single visit, and I would have been more than happy. That it kept getting better, well, it was just making me, and keeping me, happy. The company was great, kudos to NrG for the driving, despite my Cantabrigan aversion to anything more than a gentle incline. The weather was great, as was the aircon. I am sure there are better Byzantine examples, better scenery, better cars, but I was there, right there, right then, and it was everything it should have been. Everything is context, and cultural context at that, and this was a single point in my life. A shining single point. Could it have been better? No, it could have been different. Could it have been more? No, it could have been different. With different people (most noticably I would have loved to have done it with my squawks and heart of my heart) it would have been different. Better isn’t the word, and one day I will take them. It would be more complete for me, perhaps, or maybe better is the word.

But even blown minds need to continue, and continue on a full stomach. But who wants to eat in a village? Best to drive more into the mountains, and just stop somewhere, anywhere, just somewhere local. Where they barely speak English, and we barely speak (modern) Greek. Where they bring you food. Where this food was simple, but beyond plain. Absolutely glorious, so we ate, ate well, chatted and laughed, soaked the sun, looked over the valley, listened to the trees chatter in the wind and were sated of mind and body.

You can’t see everything in the single day we had, and there were obscure turnings we ignored, major sites we decided against, and went with the flow. From our base in the south west of the island, we wound our way up through the Trodos mountains, getting as far as the Turkish border, with many high vantage points to stop and look into the distance from.

Another church to see, but this time the bearded priest was resting outside, and the purported icon museum was closed. Even though it shouldn’t have been. But who was complaining? 7th century frescos, with the Gospels depicted with Crusader livery, the tree of Jesse stretching thirty feet up to the ceiling.

Who was complaining? I bought an icon from the priest, and a tenth of the price a different, similar one was at the airport. And this one was of an icon I saw in the church. Occlude, guidebook man extrodinaire, has a list of the names of all the places we did go to. I will make a google maps track from it at some point. Without the U-turns.

More villages, more Coke Light, more U-turns. More signs that lie, more hairpin bends, more Cypriot girls in those white dresses with rather fine tans. More melons, more Coke Light, more Pervoe FM. More Beach Bar!

There was now one major site we wanted to see, a collection of ruins containing an amphitheatre, a basillica, an agora and more. Sprawling on the coast, on our run back to the hotel. This was a paid-for place, and we had to part with a whole one Euro seventy. Remind me why I live in rip-off Britain?

By now the sun was setting. Can I hear you say orange light and magic hour? On Greco-Roman stone? This was a big site, with a bit of wandering around. We got to the limits just as the sun was disappearing behind the hills. Achilles’ house, with parts of the mosaics, we our limit. Quite literally. We could go no further, so wending our way back through the ruins in a different direction, perhaps we could catch different angles and columns.

But no, not a chance. A young lady with a badge and a mobile phone asked us to go, as the gates were closing in ten minutes. Quite insistent we leave. Well, we were in a good mood, so off we stroll, only stopping for a group-hug photograph. Little did we know she had a car, and bombs off away from us. We get to the main through road on the site, and some agitated Ruins Nazi winds down his window and veritably shouts at us, telling us to get to the gate now, and one of us run to the car and drive it down.

Mr NrG saunters to the car, we saunter down the hill to the gate. Big wooden gates. One closed, three people standing tapping their feet. So we stand too, doing the usual ribaldery and jocular cracking. Eventually, NrG arrives. Three minutes after they were due to close. Take that, Ruins Nazis! We win! And we did, being there at that time of day. Magic, magic hour.

Picking a route back (eventually), another drive along the coast, through the hills, the sun now gone and everything lit in a deep red just above the horizon, the Mediterranean darkening as we look at it.

You know what else added to it? I set this up with the express intent that it was all for me. I wasn’t sure that the others would really appreciate, or want, to drive for twelve hours around Cyprus looking at churches, ruins and roads. But they did. It was a fantastic excursion. Even though there was less religosity in them than me, it was appreciated, enjoyed, and that also makes me happy. A more than fine, a more than great, a more than day was had by all.

It was just…just…just right.

There is always a meaning

I was once told that the universe is bigger than my mind could hold. This is not true, the universe can’t hold all that my mind is. There is an edge to the universe, there isn’t an edge to me. And I love to stand on edges. The edge of the Iberian peninsula, looking across a boundless ocean and a limitless sky, the edge of the Fens, gazing north into nothing and everything, the edge of Western Europe, bounded in by a grey horizon. I love standing on the edges.

I was never told that I was anything, but as an angel once told me, I am everything to someone. I can’t quite get rid of my need for material things, as material things cover our heads and keep us warm. A trap of our own making, all the same. Sharper edges.

And the more I consider culture, context and edges, the more I can see. I love the idea of cultures being contemporary, in everything but time. I love the idea that upsets the arrogance of the late 19th century mindset (for that is still what we have), that we are some sort of pinnacle. We aren’t. Our science and our philosophy is just that, ours. Standing on the shoulders of giants? Sure, but don’t tell me it is more than any other culture, nor tell me it is better. You explain to me why there wasn’t the same depth perspective in pre-Enlightment painting. (Or even earlier, I guess.)

Oh laughing man, what have you won?
Don’t tell me what cannot be done.
My little mouth, my winter lungs,
don’t tell me what can’t be done.
Walking in the circle of a flashlight
someone starts to sing, to join in.

I used to write, in this place and others, of what was happening to me, around me, as seen by me. I don’t any more, probably one of the reasons my posting is sporadic. It all has to mean something, but not in the sense you imagine. εκ του κοσμου ουκ εισιν καθως εγω εκ του κοσμου ουκ ειμι if I was going to quote anything. Who are they? They that are with me, in body or spirit, they who are also not of this world. They who will be seven, but I have passed only five.

Yes, the more I think of context and culture, all I see are the edges. But not an edge to fall from, an edge to fall into. And edges are all space, time has nothing to do with. How is there anything other than space? For I loved you in a place, and I love you in this place. It is only space that separates us.

How can your mind not range, freed of life, escaping in the noise of nature, the silence enveloped by the noise, the edge cutting through the silent noise. It is all you can do not to stretch your arms out, arch your back, and salute.

Talk of loneliness in quiet voices.
I am shy but you can reach me.
Rowing on the lakes of Canada,
rowing on the lakes of Canada.

Everything is context, and I am tending to talk more in the abstract, to think more in abstracted connections, and make my speech, thinking and dealings even more rambling and convoluted than ever. This comes crashing down when my connections, my edges, range against others, who don’t like language, and what language means. Language and space. Our two edges.

She’s got perfect skin

I spend a lot of my time reading, and writing. None of the writing gets published here, the number of posts in draft is twice that I have posed over the past two years. Maintaining a weblog for over a decade, I just don’t feel the need. Or reason. This isn’t a swansong post, by any means, the first paragraph has just started that way.

I spend a lot of time reading. Mostly these days I read history, but usually nothing beyond the fall of Byzantium. And the more I read, the more it all falls in to place, history, people, place, time and disaster. There are several inferences in here, aimed even at some who don’t know I write here, some who don’t know me, some who do, some who lived before and some who will live after.

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

History on its own is nothing, everything is context. And everything is a hero with a thousand faces. Do we believe it all, when everything is twisted around the same story core? From early times, to now, everything is the same. Can you see it? Campbell could, but was only taking mythology and theology. I think it is more than that, it is also life and history. Why is this woven in? I don’t know, my search continues, and those I journey with as well, if some know it more than others.

I haven’t been wrong about those I take on the trip, except I think recently the criteria relaxed, which folds into the thousand faces in and of itself, if you are awake to recognise it.

And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

All of history pivots, and usually on stupidity or chance. Yes, no one remembers the names of those who built the pyramids, just those who ordered them to be built, and this is how it should be. But it breaks the heart. The white man does not have the monopoly on cruelty, but I still burn with a shame. And an anger.

The Crusades and the Trail of Tears are, to me, the two most indicative times. Everything before is echoed in it, and everything after will be. Not that these are a template, or indeed the worst, for others have suffered more, or different. There is no hierarchy of victims, just victims.

Pivotal points, where the wrong person gave the wrong answer, the right person didn’t reach the juncture in time to swing it all, the world just turned at the wrong angle, and everything changes.

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you’d just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy

Times change, that is all the ever do. Eras end, that is all they ever do. Who you take with you is the important part. Something went wrong, and I read the colours not quite correctly. This was a first, and I am still thinking about it, as if I was right, then another course leads to its own conclusions.

Even this post has been stripped, left like this, speaking only in tongues to some, and the gaps between unbridgeable. History doesn’t repeat itself, the mask of a thousand faces does.

So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me

The reasons to be elsewhere

I have, quite a few times, been up The Junction. I have, quite a few times, been to gigs elsewhere. I have seen most of the bands I have ever wanted to over the years, with a few exceptions. I have never seen Lou Reed before (and after reading what follows, you will realise, technically I have, but in spirit not) so I decided to go watch his Metal Machine Trio.

(You may think this is another weblog posting, and it is, but it isn’t going to be a standard review, if that is what you thought was coming.)

Sur, sur quel terrain l’ai-je semée, quels détours m’ont fait, m’ont fait l’oublier, ma colère…

What do you do at gigs? I mean, how do you conduct yourself? It is easy when you are some clean shaven grotty student, but when you are a respectable middleclass professional?

Take the Half Man, Half Biscuit show (this time round). Last time, I was at the front, swinging my hips and hair to wild abandon to the three minute ironic pop tunery. This time, I stood near the middle, clutching an ale (without the intent purpose of flinging it forward, though I would never have done that, you do of course realise) and tapping my foot while humming along.

N’ai je, plus rien vu soudain, plus rien entendu, rien…

I have been to some odd gigs over the years, ancient Sumerian sun worship on stage, bands with their backs turned away the whole time and extreme halogen lamps uplighting them, groups wearing lab coats and sweeping the stage before lifting instruments and redefining a decade, collectives not coming on stage until one am then blistering through a different definition of another decade (with girls in cages and Uzis, why do we pay homage to these monkeys?) and even uber-hip skinny white blokes with guitars, whom you would never have heard of.

Plus personne à blamer, personne à déplaire, personne à défier, où est-elle passée?

But the Metal Machine Trio was different again.

We turned up late, though there was no support anyhow. When I say late, I mean an hour or so after the doors opened. And what is it with no support bands anymore? Has that, like me, gone out of fashion? The house lights were dimmed, but still up. And there was a relentless (I am going to use that word again, later) feedback storm going on. Rather loud. Very loud. But no one on stage. Just a lot of laptops, a comfy chair in the centre of the stage, and amps. Lots of amps. With a few guitars leaning against them.

Every fifteen minutes or so, a roady would come on, move a guitar an inch, and wander off. With it getting louder. Now, as we turned up late, I can’t say when the feedback started. Maybe at seven, when the doors opened? I don’t know, but I would like to think so. How do you sound check for a noise band? Like that?

Où, où est-elle passée, où est ma colère, ma colère

There was me, standing centre of the middle, and Lou Reed danders past me to the side stage entrance. That’s great, thinks me, it is going to start soon. Maybe the feedback will dim, and we get another noise.

No. It just gets LOUDER.

Three blokes come on. One with a sax in his hand, the other by the synths, the patch bays, the laptops and the midi keyboard. Lou Reed, ambles to the comfy chair, sits down, lifts a guitar and puts his head down. With lots of tall, old blokes in front of me, I barely saw him for the first half. It was also an odd audience, with me probably the youngest, and a fair few chicks.

He did lift his head the odd time, to motion to a roadie to change his guitar, or to shuffle (literally) around the stage, turning things UP, but other than that, no, he just sat there.

N’ai-je plus rien vu soudain, plus rien entendu, plus rien à confier, à mes nerfs…

None of this has defined what it sounds like. And I can’t, really. The closest I would say would be early 70s Tangerine Dream (think ‘Phaedra’) piped through Godspeed You! Black Emperor and then filtered through EXTREME VOLUME. And brought up to date. Which, if you know my musical tastes, you can imagine I appreciated. Muchly.

It was noisy. It was relentless. It was brutal. It was great. I haven’t seen a concert quite like that, and if I was to see them again, I can only imagine it would not be the same. (On the other hand, how could I tell?)

L’as tu prise toute entière, l’as tu décimée, décimée

Two hours or so, no breaks in sound. I can’t even tell you how many songs they played. One? There was a single second of Lou and the sax stopping, but the feedback continued, and the synths continued, so maybe that was some link to a different song. I don’t know.

T’es tu accaparée, ce peu que j’avais que j’avais donné, ma colère

So what did I do? Stand there, mostly, thinking. Such extreme noise allowed you to think, bizarrely. To drift, which is probably why I thought of Phaedra. Though the synth noises helped that comparison.

It was great. Unexpectedly great. I don’t expect others to agree, but that doesn’t stop me remembering this as something perpendicular to other shows I have seen. And certainly one of those bands I think work way better live.

Bring the noise.

It all stopped then

Time management, specifically time management of techies, is a curious thing. And by time management, I mean the time-following applied by management to techies. It also, as it happens, to be another one of those trigger situations (yes, indeed, I have trigger situations, not just phrases) that well, cause me to seethe.

I think I kind of lost myself again

So let’s try and lay out my thinking here, from the start, through the slippery slope, down to the OH-NO-THE-WORLD-IS-ABOUT-TO-IMPLODE ending. So, it always starts like this: I don’t have to be in by a certain time. Neither does anyone.

Day, yesterday
Really should be leaving but I stay

For my first aside, let me point out these days we are generally task focused. Therefore there is no need for me/us/whomever to be in by a certain time. We don’t have to talk to clients, and if we do, we come in when they are. We don’t need to be on instant availability (out of hours I do on call, so I am, as it happens) as these days nothing falls over before we get here than can’t be coped with until we get in. We aren’t like sales people, who need to be in 9-5, office hours, to talk to other types who are 9-5ers. No, we aren’t.

Say, say my name

For my second aside, I also have to point out that I am at my desk by 8am every morning. So why get het up about having some arbitrary (let’s say 9.30am) time of being chained to desk enforced? Oh, hey, that is the point of this whole post. I am getting there. You would think, then, that this wouldn’t affect me. And from that point of view, it doesn’t. However. And here comes my cascade of mental output.

I need a little love to ease the pain
I need a little love to ease the pain

Once I am told I have to be in by a certain time, then some of my goodwill evaporates. My first thought is to count how many hours I do a week. Does it come to more than thirty-seven and a half, the amount I am contracted to do? Well, as it happens, yes, yes it does. And my first thought is to stop that. I shall do exactly the hours I am supposed to. And not read work email out of hours. Either on my company-issued BlackBerry, or VPNing in, or webmail, or any how. I can do that in my alloted 37.5 hours a week. (There is a school of thought that says you shouldn’t even look at work mail in your own time, but hey, I am loyal, interested and do.)

So now the amount of work I do in work has decreased. By, let’s say, six/seven hours a week all told.

It’s easy to remember when it came

Next, I start to account for every half hour of my day. Not to cover myself, but so I have an audit trail. And if I get asked why I spent half an hour thinking on something, my next response is not to think on it, but rather demand then that every task be laid out for me, and I will do them. In order that they come. Because if I can’t be allowed the breathing room, then it has to be done for me, no?

‘Cause it feels like I’ve been
I’ve been here before

Then we get to proper timesheets, and hoary 70s Union-esque work-to-rule. And less thinking, less creativity, less goodwill and more obstinacy. Well, they have laid out the terms, I will stick to them. A game of squash a week, coming in at 9.30. None of this precludes doing great work, on time, to high standards of excellence. Silly, petty timekeeping rules, on the other hand, drive it in the other direction. Because it is a tiny piece of resentment, a small itch that spreads.

You are not my savior
But I still don’t go

Programmers as temperamental artists? Hell yeah. Programming, and the handling of programming types, is an art form. A creative art form. There is no formula, you can’t induce creativity, you nurture it. Yes, the crazy mental stuff done at 2am (though those days are gone, aren’t they?) needs reverted from your favourite version control system the next morning, but the ideas might bear fruit. And rules like this, or dress code, or anything else, just kidney-punch my soul.

Feels like something
That I’ve done before

See, the thing is, it is all rolled into my Libertarian outlook. And not taking the piss. The Man gives me some leeway, some privileges, and if I don’t misuse them, then everyone is happy, and I don’t feel the need to Bring Down The State. (Well, I don’t up my Bringing Down The State activities, as I am content.)

I could fake it
But I still want more

Nuking from orbit is never a viable solution. And even at that, I would wager it is all perception, and whomever this new diktat was aimed at, whatever problem it was meant to fix, isn’t really as much of an issue as it seems. Or seems to us. Whatever the viewpoint from above, it obviously differs from mine.

Fade, made to fade

This has happened to me in a few positions of employment, and thinking back on it, it certainly was the thin end of a moving walkway. And it also looks, anecdotally, that I haven’t lasted long in those places once this sort of regime is invoked.

Passion’s overrated anyway

Now, do I realise that you can’t have anarchy in the workplace? Of course I do. We all have contracts. We can’t sit on IRC all day. We do, but we don’t type there all day. So a few late comers, a few games of squash, little points in goodwill, shouldn’t cause much concern. Unless you want the office empty at 5.30pm everyday, and no one going above and beyond.

Say, say my name

It intrigues me as to why companies do this. Resentment from the non-tech departments? As in they have to be in by X o’clock, can’t wander out when they want, can’t do this or that? That we have it easier than them? That is just another perception issue, and shouldn’t be even taken into consideration. Or else have it explained what we do, and how we do it.

I need a little love to ease the pain
I need a little love to ease the pain

I can’t help thinking that regardless of the corporate culture, ethos and the like, this all just comes down to pettiness. Should it accelerate all those scenarios? Probably not, but it gets my back up, and if anything, I can huff (and sup from the deep grudgeohol well) for Oirland, and as it is for Oirland, it lasts a long, long time. Or until I leave, which is always shorter. And affords me the opportunity to bring it up on my own little dusty corner of the intertubes.

It’s easy to remember when it came

Am I being insane here? Does this all seem way over the top, for something that doesn’t affect (but causes and effect) in me? A massive overreaction? Or first they came from my timesheet, and I said nothing. Then they came for my poetical analogies, so I stopped there.

‘Cause it feels like I’ve been
I’ve been here before
You are not my savior
But I still don’t go, oh
I feel like something
That I’ve done before

It is a culture shift. Change bad. Though change good. And nothing ever changes without any pain.

I could fake it
But I still want more, oh

It all stopped then

For some reason, a month or two back, I took it upon myself to read À la recherche du temps perdu. The whole of it. The new translation, all six volumes. All six volumes making up one novel. Now, I didn’t know much of Proust really, all just culturally received wisdom. Like it was long. (It is.) That he uses long sentences (he does.) That is is hard work. (It isn’t.) That is is worthy. (It is.) But I haven’t looked at any literary criticism about it (hahahahahha), and indeed, the only thing I did know before reading it was to choose the one with the big tits. Always a good call, that.

It’s getting kinda late now.
I wonder if you’ll stay now, stay now, stay now, stay now or,
will you just politely say “goodnight”.

Having now finished it all, I thought I would try and share some of my journey through it all. The misconceptions blown away, the joy, the scale and effort of the sequences.First off, what I wasn’t prepared for was that lots of it was funny. To be honest, I wasn’t actually sure what it was all about, aside from something to do with French society in the late 1890s. And it is about that, but it is so much more than that. That is the backdrop for the human interactions, but really it is a life, a life journeying through the echelons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But that isn’t the thing that struck me the most on thinking back over the 3200-odd pages of this single novel.

I move a little closer to you,
not knowing quite what to do and I’m,
feeling all fingers and thumbs.
I spill my tea, oh silly me!

So what struck me the most? Well. He writes exactly the way I think. (Aside from him writing the way I write. Or me attempting to write like him, even subconsciously, without ever having read him before. My style is, in my head, tending towards Proustianism. And if that is even remotely true, it makes me very happy.) Take his concerns when trying to get in with the Duchesse de Guermantes, and in different yet similar ways, Gilberte, and later Albertine. The whole (teenage) male psyche wrapped up perfectly in elegant prose. The fumbling attempts at looking aloof and desirable, the misinterpreted signals, the angst and worry at trying to understand the female mindset, all is so well cast, so well judged it is like remembering what it was like when you were that age. The insight is cutting, but witty and overall funny. Truly there are some memorable comic scenes. (My favourite from the early books is when he is listening to Elstir, the painter, talk of the redemption of art (oh, how it all ties together), how to see, and how to look, and giving an insight to the narrator of how to progress in his education. So he listens. Or sort of listens, as at the end of the painter’s soliloquy, he snaps back to his present situation, having spent the whole time thinking about bewbz. Or the Temple of Shamelessness farce, that also stands out.)

It’s getting kinda late now.
I wonder if you’ll stay now, stay now, stay now, stay now or,
will you just politely say “goodnight”.

There are hundreds of characters, and plenty of names. French names, which I will never say aloud, as I will make a fool of myself trying. All of human life is indeed there, the grotesque (and the redeemed grotesque), the vain (and the fallen vain), the climbers (and the outcasts), beautifully rendered through Marcel’s eyes. There is no attempt to make them rounded characters, they are characters as seen by the narrator. So at different times in his life he sees them differently, whether it was when he regains time, or during his youthful arrogance.M de Charlus, Gilberte, Odette and Mme Verdurin, as they play a major part in the cycle. Albertine gets re-evaluated as well, but in a different way, through the whispers and the lies of others.

And then we touch; much too much
this moment has been waiting for a long, long time.
It makes me shiver, makesmakes me quiver,
This moment I am so unsure, this moment I have waited for
is it someting you’ve been waiting for?
Waiting for too?

And Albertine overshadows the middle section, as again the very emotions we feel are laid out. The jealousy, the not knowning what she (and by extension all females) thinks, the second-guessing, attempts at controlling the situation and her, the nervous intentions and total exasperation at interacting with someone so totally alien in thought. Whole sections, which he admits make him look bad, this is an honest account of his thinking, are taken with his guilt and angst. But he has the introspection to bring us along with him, we feel his irrationality and how he struggles to cope with his feelings.

But not only the personal interactions, there are the social (on the grand sweeping scale), the political and the class ones, too. For this is an era far removed from us here, but we can still relate to it all, as he is inside his mind, and explaining the way also think. Even if we don’t get invited to upmarket society salons with Ducs and Princesses.There is history (and here you do need to keep referring to the copious notes, else you lose which General was lying in the Dreyfus affair, again the whole idea tied up with regaining time), and the curtain falling on the First World War, the epoch-shifting occurances, and lastly the passing on from one generation to the other, and the whole fabric of the old guard lost on the new.

Take of your eyes, bare your soul.
Gather me to you and make me whole.
Tell me your secrets, sing me the song.
Sing it to me in the silent tongue

The descriptions of what people wear, how it affects their personality, the inverts, the little gang, the houses, the salons, Venice, Morel, Bloch, Racine, literature, art. The redemption of art.

Indeed, the redemption of art. The final novel unwinds in a haze of self-awareness, that we don’t notice the passing of our own time (and there are some more fine comic moments in here) whereas we do in others, and quarrels are forgotten as we forget others. Or not so much forget, as leave them as single points in time, when we last saw them, and not the old person in front of us. And his realisation that he isn’t alone, that others see him in this way.The stages of man laid out perfectly, each book in the novel contributing something more to the whole.

It’s getting kinda late now.
I wonder if you’ll stay now, stay now, stay now, stay now or,
will you just politely say “goodnight”

Proust illuminated my life by illuminating his own. The human condition isn’t so different, as he says, between then and the Second Empire, between the highest Prince and the lowest shirt maker. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s liking, the long tortuous overwrought prose, interjections and asides (see why I like it?) but it is great. Funny, sad, intricate, delicate, brutal, thoughtful, insightful and just damned great. The more I think on it, the more I could write here. I could go on with all the highlights, the threads that run through it all, the sheer scale of his achievement. But I won’t. Suffice to say, this has shot up my list of favourite novels. Don’t listen to whomever tells you it is hard work, and pointless. It is art. And Marcel can’t be afforded a higher compliment than that.

The experiences I am missing

Every night, I cycle home from the train station. Every night, I pass by our allotment. Given the schools have started, the summer holidays are over, time is precious, the only chance I get of watering our produce is as wend my way home. This is hardly a chore, I love our allotment. We were close to giving it up, time constraints, other commitments, life goes on, but every time we stood on its ground, the desire crumbled, overtaken by the peace it brings upon us.

South Cambs is quiet, as well as being flat. Then the allotment is set aside from the road, on the edge of the village. Or what was once the edge of the village, according to my old maps. Now there are houses either side, but even so, there is quite a bit of cultivated land there. All in use.

This evening, it was just me down there. Sometimes I see our grow-your-own neighbours, chatting to the old duffers while leaning on my fork, watching the smoke slowly snake into the sky, the smell of burning very different from ordinary bonfires. The languid, lazy smoke, the relaxed, dreaming fire, hiding amongst the vegetables all over the landscape. Small piles of smouldering leaves, evidence of the work just done. But while there was still the smell of the smoke, there no one was around.

This evening, this time of year, the sun was low in the sky, preparing to settle down for the night, a perfect circle of burnt and burning orange, a mere hand’s width from the horizon. The silence helps, the loneliness helps, I am content. Having done my chores, the watering of the newly planted cabbages, in preparation for a few months time, some weeding, and general walking up and down, meditating on all that surrounds me.

And that is what I wanted to write here, write now, right now, without thinking. How is it that a simple piece of ground, whose surface was broken by my own hands, where I toiled, Cassandra toiled, our progeny toiled, where we watched, over the past years, the successes and the failures, the pain of ignoring it and coming back to more hard work, but overall, the special connection, the communion I have with this piece of this earth that is mine.

This time of year helps. The special halflight, the huge East Anglian skies, but mostly the silence. My silence. Over the years, I have come to enjoy solitude, I have always been able to keep my own company, but this is different. I enjoy the sharing of the work too, but even then, there is still the silence. Work to be done, but also enjoyed. I guess it helps the time I am there. People are home from work, eating their dinner, settling down for the evening. Some of us have longer days, longer commutes, longer reading time, but the lack of human activity doesn’t concern me.

Lots of people talk of the benefit of manual work. It is true. Your mind can soar, your thoughts are your own, as they always are. You can wish your life away, regret your past, plot and scheme, or not even think of anything, just be a void, a creature of the very ever present. There isn’t a past, there isn’t a future, there is only ever now.

None of that, I think, really comes close to saying what I am trying to say. It is the air, the air circulating through me, the light, the light flowing around me, the ground, the ground absorbing me. One hundred and twenty square metres of soil. All it takes to calm me down. While I am there, at any rate. I still want a pipe, to draw on slowly while I survey the land, fork embedded in the ground, adding to the languid ending of another day.

And the day ends.

If we were, we would be violently happy

You never know where a weblog post is going to go. It gets started, mangled, moved, removed, restored, stored and rewritten. This one followed that whole path. I am not going to talk about the application of the disparate knowledge in my head to my everyday working life. Or how that doesn’t work. No. I am going to talk about leaflets, and the trustafarians who hand them out. And have handed them to me, both in the past, and recently. Let us start with recent.

Outside New Scotland Yard, there is an enclave of hippies. One url on their leaflet was 9/11 truth. This leaflet was obtained by my fine self before reaching the Pigs’ headquarters, so I had time to read it, glance at it, summarise it before I hit their stall.

Just try to see in the dark
Just try to make it work
To feel the fear before you’re here
I make the shapes come much too close
I pull my eyes out
Hold my breath
And wait until i shake

So, the usual conspiracy stuff that has been doing the rounds for years now. Most of which is disprovable, and they are repeating what they have read on the intertubes. But regardless, how could anyone pass up the opportunity to test their kookiness? I couldn’t. At least for ten minutes before getting bored. I really should have brought Amahlia with me. I should do so tomorrow.

All very nice cleancut middle class boys. Earnest-looking CompSci grads, I would say. When one attempted to hand me another leaflet, I mentioned I had one, and if he minded me asking a few questions. Was he taken aback! Man, I made his day. Alas, there weren’t any raven-haired, alabaster-skinned, doe-eyed chicks for me to quiz. Shame, but I am aware of where they eyes are, I don’t need to be told that. Nice boots, though.

Yeah yeah, says me, all very well, I know all that stuff. But there is no mention of the instructions from המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים‎ to make sure all Jewish types (‘cause they are all one hive mind, and in constant contact, dontchaknow) were out of the Twin Towers. Nor were they aware of the Pentagon plane stuff. So whomever is telling them their lies was doing an oddball selective job of it. I couldn’t understand why, and probing them was useless, they were mere vessels parroting some weirdo party line. To that end, it was no fun, really. They learned more than I did. Entertaining nutjobs always make my day, but they were dullards. Maybe there will be a better selection next time I pass.

But if i had your faith
Then i could make it safe and clean
If only i was sure
That my head on the door was a dream

But rewind a few years, more than that, but still to do with leaflets. However, in this case, I wasn’t given one, whereas others around me were getting them. this intrigued me. Did I look like I was avoiding taking one? It was a desk, or more precisely a wallpapering tressle table, you know, the flimsy ones you get in B&Q, with books, flyers and more on top. I like to take badges and stickers, but there didn’t seem to be any. Regardless, I wasn’t being given a leaflet, no matter how obtrusively I hung back fishing for one. Quelle bizarre! Usually these types are desperate to thrust their output down your throat. And into the next bin.

It was hard for me to make it more obvious, so there was only one course of action left to me, I would have to explicitly ask for some of their literature. What is the world coming to when the mentalists don’t want to engage?

I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish i’d stayed asleep today
I never thought that this day would end
I never thought that tonight could ever be
This close to me

Not good. To start with, they wouldn’t look me in the eye. At the point at which I got their attention, things started to go wrong. Very wrong. Firstly, there was the aggressive look in their eyes. Their eyes which where head and shoulders above mine. No. They said. You should move along, there is nothing for you here. Go. Hmm, whyso? What is wrong with me? Easy, they said, or rather, snarled. You are the problem. Really? Do your pamphlets say that? Can I see? Two more of their fellows sidled in from the crowds, in behind them, providing more than moral support. Four against me, that would never end well. These days I might take those odds, but not then. Actually, looking at them, remembering them, I wouldn’t even take those odds these days. I would be able to run faster away, though.

You ain’t our brother, you are the problem. Leave us now, leave. Go. Allah be merciful on you, as we won’t. Now I seem to be getting it. You think I am some cultural imperialist out to diss the brutha. You speak more and we will hurt you. It isn’t just us, it is our Moslem brothers everywhere. But can’t I be one? You presume an awful lot. السلام عليكم says me, and turns away. Hey! Jew-lover! We will own your country, you wait and see. Truth is on our side. Of course, I could sense this was all going ugly, so with my back turned they couldn’t see my eyes rolling.

The Nation of Islam welcomes careful drivers. But no honkeys who know one phrase of Arabic.

But if i had your face
I could make it safe and clean
If only i was sure
That my head on the door
Was a dream

I do know someone who does (Reminds me of an old webcomic)

“Long long long ago when you were a toaster I was a confused 20 something who read your blog and one day was found by you and you made a comment on my blog entries every so often and made me feel loved by someone who didn’t have to love me because they weren’t related to me. I never said Thank you for that, so Thank you for that.”

Which, gentle reader, you have no idea how much that made me glow inside. Enough that I thought I should record it here. As one of the other original reasons for here was to act as an extended memory for me. (The other reason? That I should develop my writing, that I should attempt different forms of writing, that I should improve. I think I settled into writing in the way I speak, and if you have ever spoken to me in one of the contexts of my life, then you may recognise that. If you exist in certain other contexts, then I am rather prone to not speaking much at all.)

But what of those other contexts? This has, when I have neglected to honour them, caused confusion amongst some people, and even jealousy in that I don’t act the same with them as I do others. But context is everything. As is history, philosophy, situation and the people. People and context. With some, I can have conversations that move at the speed of light, with leaps and gaps not needing to be filled in, as the agile minds dance over the topological truths and head to new areas of discussion. But try this with others, and you get blank responses, and worse, disdain and contempt. Or the belief that I can’t speak on certain subjects, as how could I ever know anything of them? I am way smarter than people think I am, but nowhere near as clever as I think I am.

Now, back when I was a toaster, and may yet return there, as evidently I was a better person then, was indeed a while ago. I can also recall somewhat of her confusion, if not precisely what I said (oh, that is a lie, I do so remember, some of it at least). Time defeats me, as I have pointed out before, but I can recall. However, none of that is going to be retold. I think that something over the years (time and life, I would say) has moved me somewhat away from that. Oh, I still am receptive and responsive, but I pick and choose the times, and places, for them more carefully.

Those contacts I have made over the years via the medium of weblogging have been interesting. There are those I still know, follow, comment (now and again) but still read. There are others who came and went, never to darken my doors again. Some I have even met in real life, believe it or no, some even multiple times, and I will no doubt meet them again. There are a few I would also like to, but that is a different issue. My circle never grew overly big, shrunk somewhat, but there is a core of fellows I just adore.

Then Cassandra pointed out that it isn’t just for me that I should maintain a social network presence, it is for others. That doesn’t overly work in my head, as it isn’t about other people. She says I am not that good at keeping in touch with people, so this helps. Them and me. But if it bores me, why should I? Maybe I need to ground myself in the intricacies of life again, with the minutae of the mundane. Maybe I do read the wrong books. But I doubt I will stop.

None of that is what I meant to say in this post. None of that conveys anything other than I should really think before I type. None of that adds value to the chamber, echo or not.

All that, all that about me, aside, going back to the original note I received that prompted this post. Those we touch, regardless of how we do it, has a consequence. And to have some words of mine remembered after a period of time, to have such a wonderous sentiment thrown towards me, can’t do anything other than humble. And for them to have remembered this, and found me after this time, well. And then to remind me of what there is, what there isn’t, and look to the sky once more.

So, no, actually, thank you for that.

Why don’t you know by now?

It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there
I was just watching from over here
And besides, I couldn’t afford the bus fare
In Hollywood and Washington
They shake and smile through the harm they’ve done
But it’s your little red wagon and you gotta pull it

Yes, it was all about the stray toaster back then. But step back before that. Go back to my usenet days, ‘93 onwards, even then, I had made the conscious decision not to use my real name. (There is one slip on the intertubes that has my real name, I must change that soon.) Having said that, even when others use my real name, if they know it, odds on they spell it wrong. Not everyone, but you know. Anyhow, I am used to that, had it all my life.

It’ll take a lifetime to clear your name
Under the bridges of fame it’s always nighttime
It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there
I was stone drunk, it isn’t clear
And it doesn’t count cause I don’t care
The years transform my memories
Of all the countless decades of grief
It was cut and run in ‘91

But going by another name does not mean anonymity. Not in the slightest. Just because my real name has a zero google footprint, doesn’t mean my pseudonyms don’t. (Plural, yes, go figure.) If I thought that was a way of hiding, I thought wrong. I wasn’t trying to hide, I was just not using my real name. Paranoia still looms large. Someone told me once that there will be a time when if you have no net presence, it will preclude you from getting certain jobs. What happened to CVs? Interviews? Do you need to read the inane outpourings of yet another egotistical nutjob to know whether to employ them?

Put yourselves in a straightjacket
But when you’re pleading
Saying it’s no cheaper than humiliation
That’s free…
That’s free…
That’s free…

But I was challenged to avoid social networking sites for an afternoon, and now, as I type, over a day later, I still haven’t looked at them. I don’t need to. Sure, it is a fine way of keeping up with other people, but as someone else pointed out, what is the need of a surveillence society (which we do have, natch) when the likes of facebook or twitter tell them all they need to know about you. Echo chambers for self-aggrandisers.

I’ve gone and quit my worshipping
Of the false gods and golden sins
Cause we’ve made love in the Tower of Babel and it fell down

As I said, there are a few, those I have worked with truth be told, who can tie a few of my identities together. So time to move on. That isn’t the only reason. There was a time I would post several times a day, or more, then the posts got longer, then less frequent, and I don’t feel the need anymore. I have other outlets. I am never going to be a best-selling author, never going to be a philospher debating, never going to be a mathematician musing, never going to create something akin to Yanqui UXO or White Blood Cells (probably my two fave records of the past ten years), however I have got to where I am, the course is set.

It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there
That was not my love affair
That is not my lover, that’s not even my friend
It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there
I was stone drunk, it isn’t clear
And it doesn’t count cause I don’t care

It doesn’t fill any purpose. Despite what others think, I don’t use the net that much. Email is useful. All the whizzy-bangy-2.0-y apps leave me cold. To me, print isn’t dead. I am not a Luddite, I know the usefulness of the intertubes, hell, I make my living from it, sort-of. But whether it is because of that, of my age, or whatever, I don’t require it to fulfil my life. If I suddenly went blind, I could always have audio books, but the loss of reading those semi-regular sites I visit wouldn’t phase me overly. Even the usual news sites I read are using more and more video, with the articles lessening. More pictures, less words. This distresses me.

But I use a pop song to clear my name
Under the bridges of fame it is always night time

And what else in those ten years? Now I live in a different country, in a smaller house, make more money, with less to spend, have the same amount of children, wives and mistresses, am stronger, fitter, thinner and read more. I am, as it happens, smarter, if not wiser. (Despite the fact that some don’t think so, I know I am.) I can feel that, my mind is vaster, heading towards (and has seen) enlightenment. The angels talk to me, walk with me and the edges of the universe peel aside for me. Ten years of turning down offers to go out due to financial constraints, ten years of watching others have the lifestyle, while I wonder what it is I chose. But I chose it, so I live by it. All the things I have missed, never had, never will. All the things I couldn’t give my children, so I tried other routes. No family holidays, nothing that cost money. No extras, just what we could imagine ourselves.

Ten years is enough. I’ll let Jenny have the last word, not me:

I’ll end with a closure and say goodnight

Burning the fields

The heat wasn’t as bad as I thought, the thought of me even being in a steam room was not one I would have entertained. But I was enjoying it. Despite everything. There was a menthol tinge to the dense steam, and with every passing moment I was becoming happier, euphoric even. Eyes closed, breathe slowly, nothing but the heat, the damp, the steam and the silence, broken only by the sound of water being poured onto the coals, or the slosh of the hose as someone snaked water down their back.

There is a vale which none hath seen,
Where foot of man has never been,
Such as here lives with toil and strife,
An anxious and a sinful life.

Can you imagine it? The wooden benches, the occasional snort, or wheeze, but mostly the aloneness of yourself with your senses. An atmosphere so tactile someone getting up to leave caused a tidal flow around the circular enclosure. The lights behind my closed eyes swirled, collided and helped me drift to the third stage, my thoughts expanding as my lungs did, my world collapsing as my lungs did, myself here, but nowhere.

There every virtue has its birth,
Ere it descends upon the earth,
And thither every deed returns,
Which in the generous bosom burns.

But overhearing snippets of conversation, and stretching memory in this limited environ, the time came to leave, and douse my body in fresh water, rinsing the sweat and impurities down the plug holes. But there was a choice. Several showerheads rained cooling water in differing patterns, at differeing rates, at differing places. There was one, however, that caught my eye. It was a shelf, set up ten, eleven, twelve foot up the tiled walls. No water fell from this outlet, and no one waited in line for it. It couldn’t be broken, German efficency wouldn’t allow for…and a sheet, a foot wide, of water cascaded down from the height, crashing with force on to the ground, only to finish a few seconds later. But even so, no one was paying any attention to it.

There love is warm, and youth is young,
And poetry is yet unsung.
For Virtue still adventures there,
And freely breathes her native air.

There have been few times when I have reached actual έκ-στασις. As I took my place beneath the unused shower, others below the standard showers were looking at me, some with amusement, some with awe, and some with unbridled horror. The anticipation I felt added to my inner peace, as the heat and dampness from the steam room still clung to me. The air above me changed, only slightly, and I knew, the instant before it hit me, that there was water wending its way down towards me. It hit, and hit hard. But the strength of the downpour was nothing to the temperature. To say it was icecold would be to do it a great disservice. As soon as it hit, the very instant it broke over my head, I lost all breath. I lost the ability to breathe, to think, to do anything other than recoil in shock. A mental recoil, not a physical one, as there were colours breaking inside my head, time meant nothing, and a joy I can still taste the edge of, for it etched a message on my very soul. How I stayed upright, I have no idea. There was chattering without, and when I did open my eyes, the others were looking at me now with something beyond actual horror.

And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by,
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.

As well as the brief perception-altering experience, it physically changed me, for I haven’t had a warm shower since that time. Nothing as cold as that, certainly nothing to cause the shock I can still remember. Until tonight. For some reason, the coldest setting on our shower was colder than normal. Stepping forward under the spray, and finding it colder than I was expecting, caused me to again lose the ability to breathe, to chase the colours under my senses and leave where I was and connect. But this time, there was no break after two seconds, I was in control of the flow and time. But flow and time were too mixed up, too separate, too ephemeral to catch, so I was left to try and regulate my breathing, where there was no breathing. Pure έκ-στασις, pure not-me. (I said a few times, that would be the fifth, I would say, three not induced by myself, and two caused by myself.)

Rumors from an Aeolian Harp — Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

The loss of breathe was frightening and uplifting. An instant of unbridled happiness, nothing like I have had before, and impossible for me to describe properly. I tried, but it could well be subjective. And I attained it twice now, and will wait before I try to savour it again.

How can your eyes only

But there are some words that I would have thought wouldn’t really have changed over time. It is quite funny reading old late 19th/early 20th century literature, for both the spelling and grammar construction. Take Golden Bough, the abrdiged version, not the entire multi-volume edition, though the spelling will be the same in the latter. It is just I don’t own that.

The three that I can remember are Hindoo, Esquimaux and Esthonia. (As an aide, Hindoo is also spelt as such in the 1938 paperback edition of Walden I accquired from the charity shop next to the office. So that predates Fraser’s work, although not by that much.) I have run out of anything more to say on that, really, I have, just lost the will to say anymore.

While I am on language and pretention (I was, honest, I just removed several paragraphs I didn’t like, so please do keep up with the mental leaps) there, I have to mention the instructions that come with every single java app. If you want to build it, using, say, ant, then what you get in the README is something like this:

ant build
ant delpoy

(there are variations, but most cover something like that.) Now, see the arrogance in there? There is nothing to say if it goes wrong. Nothing to say what should be set in your env, what in your classpath, nothing like that. Every single java app is the same. They presume it will work. On your machine. First time. It doesn’t.

So maybe you should read the install instructions. Excellent, there it is. But no, even though you have downloaded the source package, are going to build it from said source, you still get: For installation instructions see the manual in the docs subdirectory. I am on the command line. I don’t want to be firing up a browser. I just want to install your damned software. More java arrogance. So I end up converting the html in the doc directory to plain text, so I can read it on my terminal. Do you think it is in anyway helpful? You do? Can I live on the planet you are from?

This is too fractured. Can you imagine the spaces in-between? Can you really dive off the top board with me in that position?

Swing down

Do you see what I see? Does Occlude? (Who is, as it happens, an exceptionally talented photographer, and a rather clever programmer, too. Yeah, yeah, jealous, I know.) You may, or may not, already know that I spent some time recently in Marrakech. Five, ten years ago, these here pages would be full of tales and adventures, but I don’t tell such things any more. Not here, at any rate.

Yeah, there was a time I didn’t like the love, I liked the climbers,
I was no sister then, I was running out of time and one liners,
And I was afraid, like you are when you’re too young to know the time, and
So I watched the way you take your fear and hoard the horizon,
You point, you have a word for every woman you can lay your eyes on,
Like you own them just because you bought the time,
And you turn to me, you say you hope I’m not threatened

After travelling for over twelve hours, with about ninety minutes sleep, Occlude and I headed out in the early morning for a wander around Marrakech. Away from where tourists normally go, out to the ‘burbs. Or what passes as their ‘burbs. We both took our cameras, and now I am getting to the point of this post. As we walked towards the city walls, we passed sights, took pictures, chatted, used my old skool compass to navigate, but mostly took pictures.

Oh — I’m not that petty, as cool as I am, I thought you’d know this already,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.

And it is the pictures I want to discuss, for my own benefit. As I might learn something by working through this post. But first! The imagery!

Look here

What is the first thing you notice in this picture? I like the light, the shaft that flows horizontally across the bottom third of the frame. The overall lighting is also well composed, the warming sun on the native’s back, a little specular highlight on his hat.

So now were at a club, you watch the woman dancing, she is drunk,
She is smiling and she’s falling in a slow, descending funk,
And the whole bar is loud and proud and everybodys trying, yeah.
You play the artist, saying, “Is it how she moves, or how she looks?”
I say, its loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks,
And as long as she’s got noise, she’s fine.
But I could teach her how I learned to dance when the music’s ended

And another image!

Look there

So what is the first thing that strikes me about this one? It is too close. There isn’t enough light let in, the whole frame is more crushed, with no room to breathe. Without the splash across the subject, it seems dark and claustrophobic, even though it is an open air morning shot.

Oh — and thats not petty, as cool as I am, I thought you’d know this already,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.

The choice of the red brick in the background of the first, contrasted with the green doors, helped by the pervasive tiling patterns, allows the eye to rest easily behind the foreground subject. A shame about the battered garage doors, in that they weren’t as photogenic as the ones further up the shot, but that isn’t to detract from it, more a shame that the more picturesque ones weren’t repeated.

You tried to make me doubt, to make me guess, tried to make me feel like a little less,
Oh, I liked you when your soul was bared, I thought you knew how to be scared,
And now its amazing what you did to make me stay,
But truth is just like time, it catches up and it just keeps going,

The introduction of a further figure in the second, at the head of the donkey, disrupts the balance that might have helped the crampedness of this picture, and her walking into the picture, with the driver leaving, adds an irritating friction to the overall effect.

And so I’m leaving, you can find out how much better things can get,
And if it helps, I’d say I feel a little worse than I did when we met,
So when you find someone else, you can try again, it might work next time,

The almost pressure of looking at the second is negated entirely by the lazy ambiance of the first. The sense of unhurried workday beginnings compared to a restrictive and suffocating journey. Given there is only a few metres of difference between the shots, it seems to have not only altered the mood, but the entire outlook has changed. Two different eyes, two very different takes.

You look out of the kitchen window and you shake your head and say low,
“If I could believe that stuff, I’d say that woman has a halo,”
And I look out and say, “Yeah, she’s really blond,”
And then I go outside to join the others, I am the others,

Photography is all about light, and how the light hits the sensor. How to see light, and capture it. The first does, the second pretends to. Neither has been cropped, neither has been post-processed, and even at that, the naturality of the first exceeds the forced (almost intimate) closeness of the second. I am sure others could do a better analyse of these, but that will do me for now. I might do this again, as we took enough shots in the same areas that I could do.

I was originally going to use my oranges versus his oranges, but alas I did a portrait shot there, and it doesn’t fit in with my nice grid layout here. Or it does, but it stretches down the page too much. Ah well.

I don’t like my writing any more. But I still like writing. There are other places, at the end of the circle.

Oh — and that’s not easy, I don’t know what you saw, I want somebody who sees me,
I will not be afraid of women, I will not be afraid of women.

Fly to me

I was asked recently why I don’t write in my weblog as much as I used to. Well, over the past decade (true! Ten years of blogging) things have changed. These days I like to write extended pieces, not barbie-blogged trivial drivel. It has to mean something these days. So I stick to stories and reviews. This is a review.

Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo. A book it itself claims to be of two halves, so saves me saying it. The first, a summary of the problem, the second, a solution.

In some time-honoured chronological method, let’s take them in order and comtemplate them. But first, the executive summary. I like to do this at the start, or thereabouts, as if a review has the summary as the last paragraph, it tends to negate all the writing beforehand.

Well, it was certainly an interesting read, I flew through it, which is generally an indication I loved it. But I have caveats, and I will come to them. The second half, the solutions part, was definitely the stronger of the two. Which is slightly unfair of me, as if you have read any of the literature about aid giving, then you will know the arguments. You can see it as a primer, or prelude, to you going to get White Man’s Burden. That is a review link there, reviewed by Ms Postrel swoon. Actually, Ms Moyo swoon too, but I am trying to make this a serious review. Clever chicks, mmmm…stop. On with the review.)

My main problem with the first section is that it comes across like a sixth-form debating chamber argument. Or, worse, something you would read in The Economist. No, I take that back, Ms Moyo’s writing, thoughts and ideas are way beyond that dirge. I apologise for the offense. Though I guess (here it comes again…) I am not the target demographic for that section, she is preaching to the choir there.

As an aside, before I continue, which is the very nature of an aside, I disliked the whole ‘an African giving Africa and African solution’ quotes from others. That attitude seems quite the reverse paternalism Ms Moyo herself rails against. Me, I prefer that an idea is good if an idea is good, regardless of where it comes from. But yes, those on the ground are best placed to know how to implement the procedures so it works for them, but you can take advice from those old white middleclass dudes, you know. But then again, taking Ms Moyo’s background into consideration, she is eminently well placed to speak on this without coming across in a superiorly imperialistic way. But moving on, as that didn’t come out the way I meant it to…

Glossing over the aid-doesn’t-work section, we come to her solutions. And, I have to say, this was the stronger section. Again, I am an easy audience for the free market/trade solution. Yes, even in the current climate, which says more about governance than markets, and yet more still about human nature.

All her ideas, including leaning more on China, seemed sound to me. Or at least try-able, and see-what-happens-able. Anything is better than aid. Seriously. I have known that probably since I first thought of it, when Live Aid came out, and I asked if this was the first time we had tried to give money to Africa. The answer shocked me, even as a self-obsessed thirteen year old.

Her mention of Kiva, which I was vaguely aware of in a meta contextual way, intrigues me, and I shall probably, once a bit more settled, use their services, as it seems to me exactly what we over here should be doing. I am not a hand-wringing bleeding heart liberal. In case over the years you thought I was.

Given she is talking about a whole continent, it sometimes descends into parenthesised lists of countries (this applies to Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, DRC and so on) quite a few times, but I guess she is just qualifying her statements. Also a bit heavy on percentages, to go with those lists, but hey, she worked for the World Bank, so I guess they love their stats.

I have been saying for years that Africa would be a place to go to make a fortune, but Cassandra wouldn’t stand for that. This book made me wish I was in a position of power to make that phonecall, or try to get into an African cabinet and build up the country into a powerhouse, but the chances of a grumpy white middleclass programmer who reads too much philosophy, politics, theology and physics doing that is slim. Not nil, for I can do what I put my mind to (or what Cassandra allows me to put my mind to), but certainly vanishingly small.

While I don’t think this is a bad book, and yes, it is certainly an important book, I feel it is a stepping-stone book, and that Ms Moyo has more than several more in her, and it would suprise me if they don’t all increase in quality as they go on. You should buy this book if you have even a passing interest in the affairs of Africa, or even if you don’t, and want to complain to Those In Charge about another misuse of our tax pounds. Maybe I read too many dry scholarly tomes, and need to remember that most books aren’t aimed at me. I don’t wish to be negative about this book at all. It is full of fascinating ideas, concisely thought through. Not much I could disagree with, and the articles against it I have read seem somewhat wrongheaded and point-missing. Another caveat, in that I agree with her conclusions, so I am bound to look favourably on it. But even so.

Her ideas need more widely disseminated. Go buy the book. Meet me in the pub and I can tell you more. But don’t ignore the problem. Don’t throw aid at the problem. Remove our self-subsidies and trade barriers. I am no protectionist. But don’t think about it in old ways. They don’t work.

That wasn’t quite the review I meant it to be. A bit incoherent, wasn’t it? Oh, and I will be buying her next book, too.

The second best time is now

Find your way to me

It was quite incongrous, and it was also the first thing I noticed. Perhaps not the first thing I noticed, but certainly this (not those, though they did too) stuck out, or in, like a sore thumb. It is odd, pondering on it, whether it is an affectation or not, but it has been a long time since I have seen an adult sucking their thumb.

I wish I were
A singer
A dancer
Dancing for your love

But then it struck me that I haven’t seen any children sucking their thumbs in a while, either. But this brings up the question as to if that is a true observation, or whether I am just not noticing them as I am removed from their world, and I am filtering them from my recollections of daily life. It has been a long time since my progeny would have been of a thumb-sucking age, and they never did, as it happens. Nor did we profer them dummies, as I am not a fan of those at all.

Am I somewhere in the middle
Do I count at being special
Is there a sincerity in anything I say
Do I know what anything means
Can I see

But how am I seeing the world? How am I even seeing the parts of the world that I am aware of? How much am I missing? A while back, I took to looking up more. There is so much hidden, unnoticed, along the tops of buildings where they prop up the sky. Not even the gargoyles, the dates and birds, though those are all there, it is amazing what most people are missing. The windows of differing and mismatching shapes, the guttering running at angles, sections missing, along and disappearing around corners.

I listen to the radio
Not music but the talk shows
I watch a lot of PBS and BBC
I don’t want to meet the press
I’m scared, I’m scared of what I see
The only thing I recognize
Is the pain in my side
And the hunger that I feel
Is the only thing that is real

One of the books I read recently (a disappointment, actually, not what I thought it was going to be) explained this in different terms, and the mode with which you view time. I know I have issues with time, and while the book might have explained some of it, it was more like a self-help book that the ‘Psychology of Time’ it proclaimed itself to be. Looking around you, taking notice of what is happening, demands you live in the present, not the past failures or the coming day’s schedule. You can’t take time, you can’t buy time and you certainly can’t have it back.

I wish I were
A singer
A dancer
Dancing for your love

Look up. Look around. Look.

When life is down there