October Song in Jacksonese.

My life is emptier than it’s ever been, my affairs are in a state of disorder, and all attempts to square the raggedy circles lead only to brick walls through which there is no passing. Stress hangs heavy on the mind; apathy smothers the body and discourages movement. I ’gin to be a-weary of the sun.

Not that there’s been a great deal of sun to be weary of this first full month of autumn. The golden sun of October which normally dresses our ancient limestone walls and edifices in glorious mid-ochre is sadly missing this year. The sun this month has been often a weak facsimile, easily overpowered by slabs of dark grey vapour despatching their watery cargo to spit on everything that moves and everything that doesn’t. Land drains continue to run, decay falls in leafy wetness from the trees, muddy pools on lane and land show no inclination to retreat, and the autumn chill clings rather than nips. The animals locked in their fields under an ever-open sky attract my sympathy.

Maybe it’s appropriate that my reading of Hangsaman has reached the point at which Natalie Waite is about to enter her darkest and most frightening place.

She has an imaginary friend, you know. (At least, all things considered it is reasonable to presume that the girl Tony is imaginary.) I don’t even have one of those. But that probably isn’t such a bad thing because maybe it indicates that I haven’t achieved Natalie’s level of nuttiness yet.

And that brings forth a question that often occurs to me: Is it better to be strange but prey to mental disturbance, or conventional and broadly happy? You see, if Natalie were to submit herself to the soothing balm of psychotherapy she wouldn’t be half as interesting, would she? It’s a question that tends to dominate my thinking every time I’m out there among strangers.

On Denial and Dissociation.

I’ve had a post running through my mind all day today about the situation in Gaza, and yet for some reason I feel unable to make it. I don’t know why; maybe it’s just laziness, or maybe it’s a disturbing sense that any public statement which questions – or may be deemed to question – the official line of the current ruling party in Britain might lead to solitary incarceration in an environment redolent of Room 101.

(We’re often presented with features in the media which talk of the fact that Russians who disagree with the war in Ukraine are reluctant to express the opinion in public for fear of being consigned to penal servitude and all that comes with it. I’m truly beginning to feel the sense that we in the sceptered isle, benignly guided by the Mother of Parliaments, are not quite as different or as free to speak plainly as we think we are.)

The post was going to cover several angles on the situation and the personalities involved, and maybe even offer the odd unconventional opinion, but maybe I should consign myself to the intended last line: ‘Two wrongs never did make a right.’

Is this me being feeble? Probably, but my world is full of troubles at the moment and I really don’t want any more.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back to the book (Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman for those who haven’t been keeping up.)

It’s becoming transparently obvious that our heroine, Natalie Waite, has some sort of mental condition which belongs within the orbit of dissociative disorders, but I still like her a lot because many of her strange perceptions are close echoes of my own. She even has fun with them occasionally, and doesn’t seem to me to be persistently unhappy. That being the case, should I consider myself to be also a victim of some variety of dissociative disorder? Personally I don’t think so, but I have been known to be wrong.

What bothers me more is the constant drip of dysfunctionality infecting systems and standards everywhere, and I’m far from alone in being subjected to it. It’s happening to me almost on a daily basis and is beginning to feel like the fabled Chinese water torture. What began as a minor tapping has now been elevated to the sledgehammer effect and my brain is close to becoming as dysfunctional as the causes giving rise to it. In short, my mind is feeling fried to a crisp.

And so now I’m curious to know whether a fried mind is still capable of revelling in the observation of a dissociative disorder, because the practice of observing is mostly what drives me. It’s an interesting thought.

On Prouncing Ghibli and Staying Alive.

For a long time now I’ve wondered how the word ‘ghibli’ (as in Studio Ghibli) should be pronounced. It’s taken me a long time to get around to it, but today I finally researched the issue and now I’m going to give the five readers of this blog the benefit of my effort.

(It’s a bit complicated, but not very.)

The European origin of the word is Italian and refers to a desert wind. It’s pronounced Gibley (hard g). The Italians, however, purloined the word from Libyan Arabic where it refers to a desert wind and several other things depending on the context. Fortunately, the Libyan Arabic pronunciation is similar enough to the Italian as makes little difference, so you’re still OK with Gibley.

Ah, but… The Japanese, who have a certain proprietorial interest in the matter since Studio Ghibli is a Japanese studio, pronounce it more or less as ‘Jiburri’. (The ‘r’ is a little troublesome because Europeans swallow their tongues, turn blue in the face, and die if they try to pronounce an ‘r’ the way the Japanese do.) But never mind; ‘Jibburi’ is close enough.

So where do we go from here?

Well, since I’m not Japanese, never have been, and don’t particularly want to die with a blue face, I feel that it would be a little pretentious – and not entirely accurate unless I’m happy with the prospect of suffocation – to use ‘Jibburi.’ So from now on I’m going to use ‘Gibley’, since that’s close enough to both the Libyan Arabic and Italian pronunciation.

Do you feel better now, all five of you? I hope so.

On the Usefulness of the Internet

A few random but connected notes:

1. A few days ago I saw what I see every autumn, usually in October: several skeins of geese flying north. (I find their honking highly evocative because it’s the sound of summer’s end.) This always struck me as odd because migratory birds generally fly south for the winter to take advantage of a milder climate, and so I Googled ‘Why do geese fly north from the UK in the autumn?’ The results I got all told me that geese fly south to the UK for the winter from on or near the Arctic Circle to take advantage of the milder climate. So was this information useful? No.

2. I was curious to know more about Lady Jane Grey (the famous Nine Days Queen) once, and so I Googled her name and read the first history site which came up. It began ‘Lady Jane Grey was the third daughter of Henry VIII.’ No, she wasn’t. Henry VIII had two daughters; Jane Grey was the daughter of the Duke of Suffolk and was distantly related to Henry (grand niece, I think) through one of Henry’s sisters. I already knew that, so was this information useful? Hardly.

3. At one time, conducting our banking affairs was a simple matter of using a local branch, but the banks that operate in the UK have now closed the great majority of their branches. They tell us to use online banking instead (because it means they make a lot more profit that way, but they don’t care to mention that bit.) And so, because my bank has no branch in either of my local towns, I’ve been forced to use this method.

I have two numbers to access my account; one is stored permanently on my home computer, but for security reasons the second has to be entered manually every time. That makes sense, but now they’ve added a third level of security: they insist on sending an OTP to my mobile phone and won’t allow access until I’ve entered it. But suppose I don’t have a mobile. Some people still don’t. Or – as is more often the case with me – suppose the signal is weak and I don’t get the text. It happens, and it means I can’t get into my bank account. I’ve thought of calling my bank to discuss this problem, but I’m sure their reply would distil to ‘resistance is useless’ and nothing would be achieved. (And have you ever tried to call a bank these days? It’s usually the very definition of a Stressful Experience.)

*  *  *

So where is this taking our culture? Is the internet really greatly improving our lives as the techie wizards and those with big profits to make claim? Is it a good thing that we should have to deal with the stresses thus engendered, and how much can we rely on the information being peddled? And I could take this much further and complain about the speed of changes which force us to be forever jumping through hoops at the behest of those who increasingly rule our lives.

But I won’t because this post is worse than tedious already. I’ll just ask myself – as I frequently do – whether I’m being a sad old reactionary, and then admit that I have no idea. (But I think I have a valid point, even though I know that resistance really is useless.)

Duane's Big Mistake.

Duane and Debbie were a young couple from the north of England (or it might have been Essex; I don’t rightly remember.) They were visiting the city of Winchester in the south, and had chosen to stay at the Eclipse Inn because Duane had heard that it was haunted by the ghost of Lady Lisle, a Cornish noblewoman who had been executed there in 1685. Duane liked ghosts, you see, and when he’d suggested to Debbie that this might be a good opportunity to see one, Debbie had merely rolled her eyes and acquiesced.

It was approaching midnight on their first day in the old Saxon capital and they were sitting quietly in bed – Debbie feeling a little tired and occupying the time smoothing her fingernails with an emery board, and Duane sipping the double scotch he had brought up from the bar earlier.  Neither bothered speaking to the other, but Duane shivered suddenly as he felt the air turn noticeably colder. He caught a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to seek recognition.

The diaphanous figure of a woman dressed in ancient finery stepped into the room from a blank wall, and began to walk slowly across the floor.

‘Lady Lisle, you beauty!’ said Duane, quite unable to contain his excitement. Look, Deb, what do you think of th…?’

He turned to discover that his partner had slid down the bed and pulled the covers over her face. Duane lifted them.

‘What the hell are you doing down there?’ he asked

‘I’m scared, you moron,’ replied Debbie.

‘There’s nothing to be scared of. She can’t hurt you,’ replied Duane encouragingly.

‘How the fuck would you know?’

‘Because she’s not the spirit of the real Lady Lisle; she’s just a wraith, a phantasm, some kind of energy still hanging around in the atmosphere.’

And then Duane heard a second female voice, low and dark and speaking with a rich West Country accent. ‘What the fuck would you know, moron?’ it said.

Duane looked back at the phantom and saw that it was staring at him dismissively. And then it continued its slow perambulation before disappearing through the wall on the other side of the room. Duane opened his mouth wide, but said nothing.

Perusing an Unpalatable Possibility.

No long or ranting post tonight because this evening has been almost exclusively given over to the Rugby World Cup semi-final and Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman. I will, however, offer a brief note which is of interest to me, if not to anyone else.

During a brief interlude in this evening’s entertainment I counted the number of pictures hanging on the interior walls of my house. There were forty six. That, in itself, is unremarkable. What I found interesting was the fact that every one of them is in a rectangular frame. There is not a single round or elliptical frame anywhere.

I considered what this might say about me, and decided after much consideration that it was probably something to which I would not care to admit.

On Tennysonesque Weather and Tricorn Hats.

Such a dark, dolorous, and desperately wet day in the dear old Shire today. I think it must have been on just such a day that Tennyson wrote:

 In a stormy east wind straining

 The pale yellow woods were waning

The broad stream in his banks complaining

Heavily the low sky raining

Over towered Camelot

~ The Lady of Shallot ~

That’s pretty close to the mark for today in the Shire. My lane, which runs downhill for about three quarters of mile, was carrying enough fast flowing water to make a river of it. I made two attempts to clear the road grids to relieve the pressure, but to little avail due to the sheer volume of water and the fact that parts of the underground drain appeared to be blocked. I gave up eventually and went for a wet walk instead, occasionally having my jeans splashed by passing vehicles sturdy enough to brave the flood. Not that it made much difference. The jeans are currently drying on the back of the sofa. (The Lady B was one of them in her big Land Rover. I wonder whether she would have braved the elements in little HT54.)

*  *  *

This evening I decided to cheer myself up with a viewing of my lady of the moment singing a sea shanty. (Jenna Ortega soon slipped from the top step when I discovered that she’s really rather nondescript. You know how Emma Watson became the epitome of ordinariness after she stopped being a witch? It’s the same with Ms Ortega when she’s not being the epitome of evil girlhood.)

So, the current lady of the moment is a Russian singer and multi-instrumentalist called Alina Gingertail, and below is appended a video of her rendition of Wellerman. You might wonder why she has become the latest occupant of the top step, and that’s easy. It’s the eyes, the eyes… And the Russian accent… And the cat in the tricorn hat…

If only I could divest myself of my usual disturbing dreams and dream instead of Gorgeous Ms Gingertail, I’m sure I’d wake up in a better mood. The scenario: I’d be sitting in front of my computer when an email would drop in:

‘Greetings, Comrade Jeffrey. Come sit with me on the banks of the Moskva. Be mine tonight. I have good wodka, and when we have taken our fill I will give you a guided tour of my tattoos. You will not be disappointed.’

Actually I would because I’m not up for that sort of thing any more. History is for the learning, not the reliving. Then again, I suppose you can do whatever you like in dreams. That’s largely what they’re there for, isn’t it?

At Home with Shirley and Natalie.

I should like to offer a small quotation from Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, simply to illustrate why I’m so keen on Shirley Jackson.

Natalie Waite, the MC who is seventeen and a freshman at college, has gone to see her English professor, one Arthur Langdon, for a purpose as yet unspecified. She’s sitting in his office thinking her usual odd thoughts while he’s finishing up some paperwork, when he suddenly turns to her and asks:

‘What were you thinking about?’

‘I was thinking about when I would be dead,’ Natalie said.

‘Dead?’ he said, surprised. ‘Are we going to die, you and I?’

‘I only worry about how,’ Natalie said soberly; unlike most of the things she found herself saying to Arthur Langdon, this was true. ‘I keep thinking that of course it’s got to happen, and even to me, but then I always think that somehow and someday this interesting person of mine will…’ She searched for a word. ‘Subside,’ she said finally. ‘I mean, I will be very suddenly aware of an ending, and that there is not going to be any more for me, and that I am not going to be with myself any longer. And that’s all right,’ she said, going on quickly as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘I’m only afraid of being caught unaware, of that terrible fast panic that comes when you’re very very frightened, and of being afraid when it happens. So then, of course, I always think I’ll kill myself before it can happen.’

She stopped, and Arthur Langdon said, ‘You have a very original mind, Natalie.'

Not only does this endear me to Shirley Jackson and her writing, it also provides me with a conjoined twin with whom to spend my evenings.

Rising a Little and Rueing the Rice.

I confess to occasionally watching those heart-warming videos on YouTube in which people perform kind, selfless, altruistic actions to help other humans or animals in distress. And I’ve noticed that the comment section is always liberally scattered with entries in which people say, in one form or another: ‘This restores my faith in human nature.’ It doesn’t restore mine, I regret to say, and here’s why: It isn’t the kind, selfless, altruistic people who are running the world and ordering the course of events, is it? It’s the other lot. That’s why Jacinda Arden was such a rarity.

*  *  *

I just ate a portion of cold rice from the fridge, a leftover from dinner two nights ago. I intended to have it with my lunch today but forgot, and I do so hate anything going to waste so I had it with my late evening coffee. The two didn’t match at all. Lesson learned.

*  *  *

Does this inconsequential little post indicate that the restrained release of steam in the last one had the desired effect of lifting the gloom slightly? We’ll see.

Israel and the Order to Conform.

I’m so desperately desirous of making a blog post, but I can’t because my mind is so crammed full of the Israeli situation. It’s not just the tragic suffering engendered by the situation itself, but the toxic air billowing around in its wake. I want to be rid of it, not writing about it.

If I so wished I could write reams on the subject, but I don’t wish it because I’m tired of the hypocrisy coming from the mouths of politicians and the media. I can do no more than groan helplessly at Biden’s empty-headed rhetoric: ‘America is Israel’s friend. We will always stand with Israel. Israel is not alone.’ This is tosh, and anyone with a grain of intelligence knows it’s tosh. Friendship is a human faculty and has no place in international diplomacy. International diplomacy is about strategic and economic exigency, not human values. It’s about winning in order to protect the power base. (And the same could be said of America’s ‘friendship’ with Taiwan, a fact which the Taiwanese would do well to bear in mind.)

But this problem is not restricted to America. Back here in dear old Blighty we’re having the same message driven relentlessly into our faces: ‘You will choose a side to support unequivocally, and it shall be the right side. Any variation of unquestioned allegiance to the prescribed cause, however balanced and well-reasoned, will not be tolerated. Resistance is useless.’

It’s making me constantly angry and cutting my mind off from contemplation of higher matters. And that’s why I’m saying no more on the subject.

Having Only the Now to Live In.

Tonight I felt an unaccountable yen to hear Ronnie Drew singing The Rare Old Times, so I loaded YouTube and listened to it.

It took me back to that day in 1996 when I encountered the three girls on the Halfpenny Bridge in Dublin, one a teenager playing the accordion, a younger girl of around twelve or thirteen, and a feisty little seven or eight-year-old who kept pestering me as I was trying to take a picture of the view down the Liffey. It was obvious that they were sisters, and they subsequently became the inspiration for my short story The Accordion Player.

I remember walking across the bridge and my eye being caught by a movement down to my right. I saw a little hand reaching out to grab the strap of my camera which was slung around my neck, and then a slightly bigger hand reach out to pull the smaller one away. But the kid was not about to give up just yet. She followed me, demanding in her gravelly little street urchin voice: ‘Give us some money, mister.’ I was irritated and we had quite an argument, until eventually my conscience got the better of me. I walked back across the bridge and put some money into the accordion player’s collection box.

Looking back I realise how different my reaction would be if it happened now. Irritation would, I hope, be replaced by understanding and the desire to learn. It was one of those situations which I would so love to relive, to go back in time as the person I am now and do things differently.

‘May I sit and talk with you?’ I would ask, and if the favour were to be granted I would proceed with gentle questioning until I had a picture of their collective story. And then I would invite them for coffee and pastries in the smart little coffee shop in Temple Bar which had become my mid-morning watering hole. Maybe I would find something enigmatic but profound to say to the little girl: ‘Keep a good heart, young madam, and you will always have something to lean on.’ She wouldn’t understand, of course, but maybe the seed would lie dormant and one day grow to bear fruit.

But life doesn’t allow us that facility, and matters would probably take an entirely different turn even if it did. It seems that memories are only there to learn from, not correct, and maybe that’s all for the best to serve whatever point there is to being alive.

On Wednesday, Just Causes, and Deliberately Overused Adjectives.

I watched a couple of YouTube clips last night taken from the series Wednesday starring some young actress called Jenna Ortega. I was impressed by the style and the idea, but I was even more impressed by Ms Ortega. Mightily so – so mightily, in fact, that my head began to swim a little and I became mildly confused. I wanted to have her all to myself in the top room of the highest tower of the Romanian castle where the series was filmed, and there I wanted to talk to her at great length.

(That’s all I ever want to do with young women these days – talk to them. It’s because I find them so much more characterful than characterful young men, probably because the character exhibited by characterful young men seems to be largely driven by some pre-conceived, culture-designed notion of masculine acceptability, whereas it has been my experience that characterful young women generally derive their characterful expression from somewhere genuinely deep inside. Maybe it’s an early step on the road to a switch in gender dominance. I wouldn’t know, I being a mere male who remembers having been young once.)

And so, unsurprisingly, I would very much like to watch the whole of Wednesday, but there’s an impediment. I gather it was made for, and shown on, Netflix, and I decline to have any truck with Netflix. I further gather that it has now been sold on to Amazon Prime, and my antagonism to anything connected with Amazon is well entrenched (I explained why in a post a year or two ago.) So why is that?

Well, a long time ago I decided that these off-campus entertainment producers were a step too far in furthering the Great Capitalist Conspiracy trend in which fat businessmen in $5,000 suits sit around tables in the penthouses of opulent office suites working out ever more flagrantly conspiratorial ways to separate the rat race competitors from money which could be better spent on better things (insert a few obvious examples if you wish.) So that’s why I don’t have Netflix, Amazon Prime, or anything else off-campus. If it doesn’t appear on DVD, free-to-air terrestrial TV, or in the cinema, it’s off limits to me.

So am I being a feckless martyr in pointlessly denying myself something I’m sure I would enjoy, or am I making a stand in a just cause? Answer: Making a stand in what appears to me to be a just cause affords me the sense that there is still a smidgeon of nobility in my little existence, and that means even more than watching the incomparable Jenna Ortega playing a teenage Wednesday Addams.

My case rests there.

Lurching to Starboard and Lots of Maybes.

The BBC carried a piece yesterday to the effect that the British Royal Navy is to send warships to the eastern Mediterranean to ‘support the Israelis.’ Why do the Israelis need the support of British warships? Clearly they don’t; it’s a political gesture, nothing more, but a telling gesture nonetheless.

On the same page there was another piece in which some arrogant-looking British civil servant warned that any public expression of support for Hamas is a criminal offence and perpetrators will be arrested. The piece went on to consider that, notwithstanding the fact that Hamas is a ‘proscribed terrorist organisation’, this action on the part of the British Establishment opens up something of a grey area. How far is it from being illegal even to support the Palestinian cause in public? (There was a big pro-Palestinian protest march in Britain today, and the same warning was given.) And is it getting ever closer to the day when criticism of the state of Israel will be a criminal offence? I remember the days when the IRA – also a proscribed terrorist organisation – was active in Britain, but as far as I know nobody was ever arrested for merely agreeing with the IRA’s cause as long as they took no part in violent or destructive behaviour.

And so I think we should be asking whether freedom of speech is being further eroded here. And then there’s the concomitant enquiry as to just how democratic our supposed democracy is. I could go on to list some examples from the past few centuries of times when the British Establishment was responsible for some of the worst terrorist atrocities known to man. So should we now be noting how brimful of hypocrisy politicians, civil servants, and the Establishment in general are?

But let’s look at the wider picture. This steady drip, drip, drip to the political right is going on everywhere – in the Middle East, in China, in parts of Africa and South America, in Europe, and even in our dear old and faithful friend, New Zealand. And the Australian public voted today not to allow their aboriginals to have a voice in parliament. (I haven’t included the USA in the list because America is such a divided culture these days, and their politics such a confusing mess, that I haven’t a clue what’s going on there.)

So what is the political right, and why is the world moving in that direction?

It’s a complex issue, or set of issues, but fundamentally it’s about increasingly autocratic state control. It’s about the total ownership of power by the elite few at the expense of the masses. It’s about deciding which sectarian interests might be allowed, and which might not. It’s about crushing protest, denying free speech, and even diluting free will. It’s about the one percent telling the other ninety nine what they are and are not allowed to do and mercilessly punishing anyone who steps out of line. It consciously removes from society such higher values as care, compassion, altruism, and even self-worth. The term ‘humanitarian’ falls out of the lexicon.

So why is it happening on a worldwide scale? I don’t know, but maybe the conspiracy theorists are right when they talk of a shadowy organisation of rich and powerful individuals seeking to create a world run for their benefit. (And conspiracy theorists have been known to be right occasionally. Take MK Ultra as an example.) I make no such claim, but I do wonder. And my reading of world affairs leaves me in little doubt that such a process is happening.

But maybe I’ll never know for certain. Maybe it will be many decades before the rightness or wrongness of my suspicions are proven one way or the other, and I shall obviously be dead by then. And if I am right, maybe it will be several decades before the masses wake up to what's happening because they've been wandering, carefully anaesthetised, through the warm and cosy den of lifestyle obsession for so long. And maybe it doesn’t matter anyway if this whole business of life is but a weak facsimile of true reality which we can all escape by embracing Buddhism and achieving enlightenment.

Life and the INFJ Mind.

I came across a reference in a Google search today to some place in America which has a club for introverts – ‘to help them find a social circle.’ Putting aside the whiff of a suspicion that there is something inherently absurd about introverts searching for a social circle, I imagined myself walking into the meeting room of a club for INFJs.

The sudden sense of panic quite surprised me. It felt claustrophobic (we INFJs are no strangers to experiencing real emotions in imagined situations because the inside of our own heads is where we spend most of our time. Ergo, it’s our natural environment and therefore the most real.)

So why claustrophobic? Well, because you’d be contained in a situation where you couldn’t get away from yourself, and that would be not so very different from being shut in a tiny cell without sufficient space to have a good stretch or jump up and down. And what about the tedium? Being in a room with a load of other people who all think the way you do would be like having roast beef, potatoes and carrots for dinner every night. Worse than that even, it might lead to the growing conviction that you’re not human at all, but a mindless robot learning to intone ‘resistance is useless’ in concert with fifty other JJBMk7 models at the touch of a button. And since the other occupants of the room would also be INFJs, how long would it be before we’d all collapse in unison and froth at the mouth before being swept up and dumped in a wheelie bin, there to live out our miserable days with no hope of escape.

The nightmare scenario didn’t last long. I made a hurried withdrawal and focussed instead on something else I read about the INFJ. It said that the union of an INFJ male and an ENTP female is ‘a match made in heaven.’ Cue to go and find the nearest club for ENTP females where I engaged my famed INFJ observational skills in determining which of the gathered multitude had the most pleasing legs. (Legs matter a lot to me, you understand, even at my age when it’s no longer relevant. Maybe it’s an INFJ thing. How would I know?) Having made my choice, I felt very much better.

And by the way, yesterday the first two lines of a new ditty dropped into my head. That’s a very rare event in these debilitating times. Unfortunately, as earnestly as I searched I couldn’t find a pair to match them. And now I’ve forgotten the first two. That’s how life is these days.

Two Odd Rambles on a Dark and Misty Night.

Imagine this:

You’re alone in your house and sitting lightly chilled and semi-comatose in your office, your elbows resting on the desk and your head languishing in your otherwise unoccupied hands. In front of you is the computer monitor displaying an inbox generating as much activity as a week old road kill, and its torpid state has become a matter of abject distraction. Outside the house the night has long since fallen into a cold, black, misty void, while your mood is an unwholesome mixture of boredom, depression, and a confused mingling of musings on the state of life in general and your own in particular.

And then some casual sense causes you to turn and look at the darkness clinging to the other side of the un-curtained window. There you see a Chinese woman, a complete stranger, looking back at you. What do you do? I’ve often wondered.

*  *  *

I don’t generally have regrets because it’s impossible to second guess fate, but one little gap in my history that I do occasionally think sadly about is the fact that I was never a fully committed rebel. I would sometimes begin a rebellious action, but give it up before it passed the point of no return because I was too lazy to be bothered with the consequences. And – for the same reason – even when I did carry through with something rebellious, I was always careful to have an ingenious explanation to hand so that I could be absolved from blame, punishment, and a deleterious reputation. It was probably the best of my list of dubious skills.

And I remember reading once in a book written by a Taoist – Osho, I think it was – that instead of denigrating lazy people, we should welcome them as valuable members of society because they rarely give any trouble. I suppose it’s also true to say that they rarely contribute very much either, so it must come down to which is the lesser of the evils.

Not Going Deep Into Israel.

I was going to make a post about the horrific happenings in Israel, a major tragedy by anybody’s standards. I was going to reference other historical events which bear telling similarities. I was going to consider the history of friction between Israelis and Palestinians, and query to what extent Netanyahu and the abusively arrogant hardliners should accept some measure of culpability. I was going to ask what aspects of human nature rise to the surface when flashpoints are reached, because atrocities are being committed in several parts of the world, not just in Israel. I was intending to pour scorn on Biden’s assertion that the Hamas attack was ‘an act of pure evil’ because that raises issues on several levels, not least the fact that it’s a hopelessly simplistic and air-headed sound bite engendered by questionable political and strategic affiliations, and because it’s a sad fact that it’s pretty much what we always get from the top table of big politics.

In short, I was going to suggest that there are complications afoot here.

But what would have been the point? I have no doubt that anything I said would have been widely misinterpreted because people don’t want complications and they’re not interested in trying to understand the background to the horrors. They want knee jerk reactions and petty sound bites from the top table. It’s why I don’t fit in, and why I didn’t bother to make the post.

Besides, what’s it to me anyway – one little recluse sitting in a little house among the relative peace and quiet of the English countryside? Why should I even have an opinion, much less express it? Why should I care? All I can say is that I do have an opinion and I can’t help caring because I’m empathic by nature and things like this bother the hell out of me. They’re one of the major roots of my distaste for the abject side of the human condition and the fact that so many people in positions of power and influence are so ready to access it.

Shirley and the Familial Prospect.

When I first discovered Shirley Jackson’s writing a year or two ago, I read all her novels except the first one (because the synopsis didn’t appeal to me) and an anthology of her short stories. And because I’m impatient to discover a hitherto unknown talent, I probably read them too quickly and missed a lot of the depth. But now that I’m reading Hangsaman again I’m taking more time over the process and discovering that depth.

Much of it has to do with her keen – and, it might be said, largely sarcastic – observation of the human condition, which suits me to a tee and helps to rein back some of my own sense of outrage. But what most appeals is her dry, laconic sense of humour, especially in the stream of consciousness asides which she often uses to describe her quirky main characters. I use the term ‘laconic’ because they’re mostly very brief and easily missed if you’re not reading with an appropriate degree of concentration.

(And I do so love quiet, quirky characters. I do. It always surprises me when I discover that most academics and reviewers seem to regard her as first and foremost a writer in the horror genre. There is an element of horror in much of her writing, but it’s always understated and readily subsumed in a highly developed awareness of oddness in a few special people.)

And so dear Shirley has become one of those people with whom I would like to become acquainted when I perambulate my wanderings through the undiscovered country. I should like to make her an offer: I’ll give of my odd thoughts freely if she’ll agree to be my favourite aunt in our next lives.

On a Fictional Twin and Frugality.

I’m reading Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman again. I remember liking it the first time I read it, and since I have no DVDs to watch I decided to read it again. I don’t often do that.

When I finished this evening’s session I turned the book over and read the brief synopsis on the back. As usual, I disagreed. I nearly always do, you know. My understanding of what a novel is about rarely accords with the received view propounded by academics, reviewers, or publishers’ editors…

(Personal note: Please don’t tell Mr Kearin I said that, Nancy. He probably hasn’t forgiven me yet for the slug-on-the-Christmas-dinner joke.)

To continue:

… I sometimes think it’s because the aforesaid are just trying to sound clever by way of self-justification, and sometimes I assume it’s because I’m a complete dimbo who knows nothing about the correct interpretation of good quality literature. The truth is probably that I simply have a different world view than that held by academics, literary reviewers, publishers’ editors, and approximately 99% of the rest of the population. And that leads me neatly into the little mystery contained within Hangsaman.

The MC is a young woman called Natalie who is shortly to go off to college (or uni as we have it in the UK.) The early part of the book is set entirely in the domestic environment inhabited by Natalie, her parents, and her younger brother. It is at once both conventional and dysfunctional, and Natalie’s relationship with each member of the family is ambivalent. And that’s because the only environment in which she can feel truly at home is the one inside her own head.

So is it surprising that I should feel a complete sense of communion with young Mistress N? In one way it might appear to be a mystery since I’m not female, I’m not seventeen, I’m not American, and I don’t have long legs. But it makes perfect sense to me. She hasn’t started falling apart yet as I recall she does later in the story – and as I seem to be doing these days – but at the moment she’s as sane as any of us loner types can reasonably expect. Natalie and I are conjoined twins, which I suppose is why I like the book.

*  *  *

I’m experiencing a terrible attack of the munchies tonight. I keep reaching for things to eat, and they’re mostly not particularly healthy things. It’s probably because I had a Caesar salad for my dinner tonight, and Caesar salad is pleasant but unsubstantial.

I’d never heard of Caesar salad before I went to Toronto on a photographic assignment for a UK publisher. I saw it on the hotel menu and decided to give it a try. I liked it and it had the added advantage of being the cheapest option on the list. I was on a fixed rate contract, you see, so it made sense to use as little as possible of the agreed fee on things that didn’t matter very much. Accordingly, I had it nearly every might for 2½ weeks because I was brought up to be frugal in all things.

(I might just explain that both my parents had been poor kids from the back streets of a northern industrial town where frugality was life’s first principle. The rule was that you spent as little as possible on the necessities, and the rest on alcohol to keep you sane. It rubbed off on me.)

Three Questions and Three Notes.

Should I explain to those few hardy souls who read this blog why I’ve not been very forthcoming lately? Should I explain to the priestess why I’ve become distant towards her over the course of this year, being no more than polite in response to her infrequent emails? Should I berate myself for being so insufferably egocentric?

Answers:

1. I think it as near certain as makes no difference that nobody out there would have any use for an explanation, so no.

2. I think it unlikely that the priestess is unduly concerned about my distance. Unlike me, she counts among her attributes the inclination to be a party animal, a fact which must greatly dilute any value my presence in her life might convey. So no.

3. My egocentricity is not of the pathological variety exhibited by a narcissist, but rather owes its genesis to a complex set of circumstances and reactions. So no again.

*  *  *

On my twilight walk this evening I encountered two small gypsy-style caravans parked on the verge by the side of the road, and saw a sturdy piebald nag grazing in the un-gated field opposite. I exchanged a few polite words with the young man who appeared to be the custodian of the vehicles. The young woman engaged in some activity inside of one of them remained silent. And then I noticed a Jack Russell terrier tethered to the nearby hedge, rolling and twisting and squirming to such an alarming degree that I feared it might soon tie itself into a reef knot at least, if not something more complex. I had the impression that the little canine was eager to make my acquaintance. Naturally, I acquiesced.

After several minutes of pattings and scratchings and belly rubs I thanked the young man for the dog fix. ‘Do you have dogs of your own?’ he enquired. ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I use other people’s. It’s cheaper.’

*  *  *

Having seen the headline concerning the plague of bed bugs currently creeping out the residents of Paris, I’ve begun to feel nervous about the prospect of going to bed. Paris is several hundred miles south of here, but the wind in these parts is currently southerly. And when I studied a map of north-west Europe I discovered that my house is substantially closer to Paris than Paris is to Marseille. Geography can be very strange sometimes, can’t it?

*  *  *

I saw a woman in a shop recently who dropped her debit card as she was about to pay for her purchases. As she picked it up she turned to the woman behind her and said ‘If I had a brain I’d be dangerous.’ I’d never heard that expression before, but I liked it. I assume it must be a Derbyshire expression. My origins are in the next county to the left.

Being Out of Step As Usual.

I looked out of my bathroom window at twilight tonight, and the first thing I saw was a bat flying around the house in search of airborne creatures to eat. And then I noticed something white and rather bigger flying across the back field behind the house, and soon realised that it was a Barn Owl in search of little ground dwellers to eat. It was an entertaining and stereotypically bucolic thing to witness, but it provided a hint of a problem:

I might be prepared to give credence to the likelihood that my consciousness is a tiny fragment of the phenomenon generally referred to as ‘God’, but I’m clearly not the whole deal. If I were, and if I’d been responsible for this more visible phenomenon generally referred to as ‘reality’, I would not have designed the whole system in such a way as to condemn lots of living things to eat other living things in order to remain alive. I’m much too sentimental to contemplate such a state of affairs.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, a video I saw on YouTube last night reminded me that there is a heated debate afoot over the question of whether the photograph posted below is a genuine record of the real Brontë sisters. My own reading of the evidence suggests that it is, and was probably made in 1847 which is the year in which their first three novels were published – Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s Agnes Grey. The Brontë Society disagrees, but I find their objection verging on the absurd in parts so I’m sticking with my suspicion for the time being at least.