Upgrading WordPress broke this blog, and the fix I found was to change the theme. So that’s why it looks different. It has the combination of colour and minimalism which i was looking for.
Edit (January 19): I noticed that the theme I’d chosen doesn’t display comments at all on the front page, and also refuses to work with Twitter. Changed again… :)
I was thinking about end of term, new year, resolutions, timekeeping, watches…
I had a cloth-strapped Casio when I was 10 or 11. I remembered dipping under the cool water of a swimming pool and illuminating the watch face. The sharp ‘beep’ carried through the water, the sound is right here with me now. *Beep*.
It would time my lengths of the pool, count down the hour I’d set aside for relentless chasing. I can feel the tightness around my wrist, the goggles pressing against my brow, pale hairless skin…
Held by my watch, caught in the water, the world was mine to escape, disguised behind those yellow goggles. At first, my mind would be full of thoughts and observations around me, like ticker-tape or a receipt. As the actions became more repetitive, my mind was focussed to physicalities, on the blue-yellow water and my diving hands, the sound of plunging and white crashing as the waterline was broken for breath.
After some time fatigue would set in and there was an overwhelming desire to just stop, to lay serenely like a lilly in a pond. Some hidden momentum allowed my body to operate mechanically whilst my mind rested in this lagoon of weariness.
Not to say it was unpleasant, just apathetic. This time also comes and goes, giving way to a trancelike beating where even the smashing water becomes background hiss. I lose track of lengths, minutes pass like hours – though time has ceased to have any significance.
I can’t remember what happens next. I was never particularly fit, so I guess I gave up or I felt I had done enough before the second wave of fatigue ever crept in.
I miss swimming.
To add some context, the swimming pool was Wells Leisure Centre. After swimming we’d order jacket potato with cheese and beans at the canteen – situated like an observation deck above the pool I’d come from. Fans would spin endlessly above to try to abate the hot humidity. A party, someone else’s, was had once here; periphery group of other children only vague in existence. The place must have ben full of vending machines because i count at least 4 in my mind. They wore the most ridiculous checkered clown trousers for uniform; i was instructed to pity them. I would never be able to find potato as fine as that… it is only now that i realise it was the exercise which made it so wonderful. Maybe we’d buy bouncy-balls, or a pack of Cadbury Tasters. 25p, a solid metal dispenser at head height.
Although I’d soon forget, it was the serenity of those countless strokes which brought me back every week.
~~~
So when i had the thought of the Casio watch, was it best to gain an extra half-hour of sleep or has some good come of this post?
What do people mean when they say someone is naive? It’s normally said with scorn, it’s in fact used as an insult.
Insults tend to take two forms. The first kind is of the sort “You’re fat / short / ugly…”, something which the person has no immediate control over. It’s insulting someone’s biology or personality, both of which cannot be changed overnight.
Is this what we mean when we call people naive? In other words; “you go about life with foolish credulity, without any proper awareness of the ‘real’ world”.
In that sense, what we’re saying is “you better watch out, cause with that attitude you’re not going to survive in this world” or worse “if you act like that, oblivious to reality, you deserve the inevitable hardship you will suffer once you realise your imaginings are just that; fictitious fantasies that defend your own lack of pragmatism”.
But it’s not generally acceptable to insult people based purely on how they are; it feels much more reasonable to criticise the choices someone makes – something which they have direct control over.
In the second sense, to call someone naive is to say “what you have just said, the decision you have just made, was a naive one”. That has a much more constructive tone to it, implying a lack of wisdom and experience, which might not be a nice thing to say but at least isn’t so personal.
There’s a more sinister side to this name calling though. If someone dares to hope, to believe in a future outside of whatever afflictions are suffered under, they are “naive”.
Now the word seems to be an antithesis to Art. If we are to take Seamus Heaney at his word, then poetry is “a revelation of potential that is denied or constantly threatened by circumstances”. In other words, the small but obstinate voice which turns a blind eye to doubt in order to give hope.
According to Vaclav Havel, hope “is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how well it turns out”. Here, to “make sense” is to honestly reflect the best course of action.
It is only in this context, that the OED’s definition of ‘naive’ truly makes sense;
“1. Unaffected, unconsciously artless. Also, foolishly credulous, simple”
Hence, to be naive is to be ‘artless’, or to disrespect the high forms of art and aesthetic of which we are supposedly the product. To ignore the repeating cycles of history which tell us unconditionally the consequences of our repeated actions, all we are doing is affirming “nothing will change”. It is unforgivable to place blind faith in the security of a consistently bettering future, but let’s not insult those who dare to imagine how that future might be enacted.
The German girl who talks too loud is sitting right behind me this time. Last week there was this piercing German voice coming from somehwere amongst the bobbing heads at the Hub. It wasn’t so much loud as…jarring, crystal clear, sharp, pointy. I had to leave; it sounds pathetic, but you can’t concentrate or read when something is that distracting, I shouldn’t have let it get to me. Anyway now I find myself sitting back-to-back with her, and her passive spineless boyfriend. His accent is a bit irritating as well; maybe they’re like that couple who have their own vomit-inducing dialect which they use only for each other.
Today’s motivation and super ‘fresh start’ diligence evaporated after about two sentences. Does that ever happen? The motivation I have is quite energetic, just totally unresilient. Hence why i’m sitting in a cafe eating a sandwich and not deciding if Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Burial at Thebes’ is a good example of poetic redress.
Actually the sandwich is worth commenting on. The name ‘Argi Bhaji’ sounds kinda familiar, and I associate it with uncultured people – whoever they are – for some reason. I’ve just been told that having an ‘argi bhaji’ with someone is like banter, a minor dispute. Wow, the sandwich sounds even nicer after read the marketing speel… http://www.cranks.co.uk/products/view/34
The list of ingredients takes up an entire panel on the sandwich box; amazingly tasty too. I now have two sandwiches to choose from in my new arsonal of healthy eating options. This, and Cheese Ploughmans. You might be thinking that that is decidedly unhealthy food…but believe me, compared to Subway, this is like celery soup.
If i had to describe my feelings for university at the moment, it would be somewhere between ‘disollusioned’ and ‘insightful’, depending on how positive you want to be about things. I can hardly write a sentence or read a chapter of a book before throwing it down with a sense of hopeless futility. It’s part of my personality type I think (not suggesting it is an inherent unchangeable characteristic, just that the following is a specific interpretation of an overall psychological type). I tend to be immensly interested in topic which are new or unknown to me. But once I’ve immersed myself in a topic for a bit, understood it, mentally mapped it, it’s of no interest whatsoever and revisiting it is like breathing stale air.
And i cannot help but feel like I’m wasting my time, and always will be if i continue studying literature. i saw this scholarly looking man, pouring over a book in the library. Why is he doing that? I know i can’t guess at his intentions or mindset, but i honestly can’t think of anything in the actual detail of his task which appeals to me. And who is it befeniting? What can we learn of any meaning from studying sociology? I’m using sociology in a broad sense, an inacurate sense, to mean any qualitative analytical study of human behaviour.
Given that we now have a new perspective, the perspective of the universe, how can we possible concern ourselves with anything else? I simply can’t make myself care about the tiny intricacies of kinship vs the state, whether that’s an inter-dependent relationship, or a construct which divides itself, or some kind of Hegelian opposite…all the time i have to suppress the question: “why does this matter?” I have always argued that perhaps although there is a purpose, that purpose is not known to me at this time, and can only be viewed from outside the study itself. But that has a definite religious feel to it…it assumes that it has a purpose, for no good reason other than I’ve already committed a lot of my energy and effort towards this subject.
I love literature – but so what? I simply can’t justify spending my life doing what i love; and that is one hell of a misnomer as well. “Literature” is a straw man in this sense. What i love is the personal relationship between myself and the poem I’m reading, the novel I’ve spent the past 6 months reading. But reading poetry is not a job, not a career. All careers are in some sense productive, in the sense of creating something for ’society’, i.e. creating something for other people.
So when you look at jobs which lead from English; publishing, writing, teaching, advertising, management…wait, this has nothing to do with poetry! Nothing to do with redress, with big ideas about society, with tragedy and romance and the position of humanity in the natural world. Perhaps this can all be studied, make a career about research. But again, my lack of enamour for that path suggests a fundamental flaw with what i think of as “my love of literature”. I enjoy reading not writing. To research literature is to write about it, ultimately, and so i can’t pursue my ‘dream’ here either.
So literature must be forever relegated to a hobby, a pet interest which may be more important than my career itself, but nothing to do with how i earn money.
This isn’t such a bad thing; I have this in built unexamined assumption that how we earn money is also what is most essential to our existence, or that it has to take up most of our time.
Anyway. I’m in the middle of a conversation, a number of interesting things has come up;
1) Rebellion isn’t a verb with a subject and object, but more a state of mind. An emotion; the dialectical opposite of conformity. You can conform without being aware of the societal norms; you can rebel without being aware of what you are rebelling against. (…but there is necessarily something to rebel against, but the subject is just unaware of it?)
I don’t know why i numbered that. There were more things, but I didn’t write them down at the time.
Will this essay ever get written? Not if i keep distracting myself. But why motivate myself to do it? Unfortunately, ‘because i have to’ isn’t a reason i will ever be able to use. Well, okay it isn’t a reason which i have developed enough to rely on, at the moment.
~
Me: “Is anyone sitting here?”
Her: “No, no not at all”
~
Sometimes you just hear conversations, or read things, which have their own profoundness. It’s best when the words are humbled, or from some inconsequential origin, but have a lasting and true impact on the people who are lucky enough to stumble across their words.
“iv never had something good happen to me
iv never had someone to care for or someone who cares if im here
and so im just living
and living
and trying to help others who are in circumstances i’ll never be in, makes me feel that it might happen to me (delusions)
why haven’t i cut the cord?
cos i find happiness when i look at a bird trying to build a nest, when a bee just buzzes by me, it looks so vibrant and full of hope..
and i like that..
so i try and prolong this living.. just because i would miss the next beautiful sunrise and sunset.”
The above was posted anonymously on help.com
It reminded me a lot of Douglas Adams’ perspective;
“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it’s just wonderful. And . . . the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”