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.

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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.