Well, it depends on how you look at it and the context in
which the philosophy is being considered. Personally, I think it’s very
important, but no matter. What matters to me at the moment is that I’m bored by
my enforced idleness and need to find something to say before I wither on the
vine and go pouf, so…
…this morning I woke up with the uncomfortable notion that a
big component of my own reality had suddenly dissipated into the mist of
illusion. I don’t want to say what it was because it’s private; I just think
it’s interesting that a part of our reality can be whisked unceremoniously away
with little or no warning and no recourse to personal choice. It leaves a hole
waiting to be filled, but you can’t yet see anything to fill it with. And maybe
nothing fills it; maybe you’re just left with less substance in your personal
inventory; maybe it’s like having a kidney removed which requires the surrounding
tissue and organs to move over and take up the space. Here endeth the first bit
of gobbledegook.
* * *
But one of my problems these days is that I’m feeling less
of a sense of attachment to the material world around me. I walk around the
town feeling that the people, the buildings, the roads and the vehicles using
them amount to an environment that isn’t where I come from. It feels as though
I’ve been sent here to observe, make notes and report back. And I think it
fortunate that I so like strong coffee and warm cheese scones spread with real
butter. Such a predilection can be very grounding when you’re getting
frustrated because the spaceship hasn’t turned up yet and none of the clouds
have rope ladders hanging from them.
(My state of mind is perfectly fine, by the way, but I can’t
vouch for anybody else’s.)
What’s really interesting, however, is that I do feel a
sense of attachment and belonging to certain places around the Shire. It isn’t the
physical landscape itself which draws me, though, but rather the sense of
something more subtle and mysterious evoked by the combination of physical
forms. It seems there are places where I can hear the singing of the wood nymphs in the magic glade, even though I can't yet find the path to get to it.
OK, so maybe my state of mind isn’t perfectly fine. Or maybe it
is but it’s tuning into some little-known radio station at the far end of the
spectrum. I really don’t care. Do you?
* * *
And on that note I have to make mention of the furore
surrounding Melania Trump’s jacket. I find myself warming to that woman – maybe
ill-advisedly – and feel the need to make a suggestion:
It seems that good Americans from New
Mexico to New England are
gnashing their teeth at the fact that she should visit the refugee camps
wearing a jacket with I really don’t care
do you written on the back. ‘How could she be so insensitive?’ runs the
general tone of the wail.
Well, maybe she wasn’t being insensitive. She doesn’t strike
me as being an insensitive person, so might there be an alternative
explanation? OK, here goes:
It’s considered a well established truism in Europe that
Americans don’t generally do irony, whereas we in Europe
generally do. Mrs Trump is only American by adoption; she was born and brought
up in Europe. So when you look at the
occasional indicators that Mrs Trump is not Mr Trump’s biggest fan, maybe she
was making a subtle point which went over the heads of her American detractors.
Obviously I don’t know, but I like to think it eminently possible.
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