Random Notes on Today.

There are a few people I occasionally bump into on my walks around the Shire – people who are apparently in the habit of taking regular walks at the same time as me. And because I see them quite frequently, the habit has developed of stopping and chatting for a few minutes. Most of them are predictably conventional, but one is particularly so and therefore unacceptably boring. He’s suddenly started walking by with no more than a brief ‘good morning’, which leads me to wonder whether I should revel in the fresh, chill breeze of rejection, or bask in the warm zephyr of blessed relief. I choose the latter.

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One of the little known side effects of chronic depression is that it suppresses the ability to firmly connect with the rare few compatible people. And even when the will to connect is still there, making the effort to communicate becomes an intolerable burden. And even when lighter moments occur and the desire to communicate re-surfaces, the stern voice of intractable authority reminds you that you’re not worth knowing anyway, so you let it go. It’s all a bit counter productive.

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Today I read the Wiki article on Noam Chomsky, and discovered that in terms of our political and social views we’re almost identical twins. But there are two notable differences. The first is that he has an academic background and is possessed of the mental energy and will to write books, make speeches, give lectures, and submit to interviews. I come from peasant stock and can’t be bothered with that sort of thing. The second is that he appears to restrict his interests largely to politics and his major academic discipline which is linguistics, whereas I’m endlessly driven to seek whatever reality might exist beyond the one we humans routinely inhabit. In other words, he’s driven to rationalise the known, while I’m driven to search for the unknown. Our birthdays are eight days apart.

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It was cold but sunny again today, and a woman I passed in the lane said ‘it’s a lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?’ I concurred out of politeness and the desire to avoid a conversation, but I felt inclined to point out that she was on her way to a warm house, whereas I was going back to a cold one. It makes a difference in the matter of general perception. And on that note, it appears I’m about to have another fall out with the humanoids (vaguely so) in the corporate world because it’s possible that my core heating (two storage heaters) might not work after 31^st March. The corporate world is fast becoming my arch enemy. I think I’m on my way to becoming a committed anti-capitalist.

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I encountered two horses with which I was previously unacquainted today, one skewbald and one piebald. They ignored me. They were carrying on their backs two teenage girls with whom I was also previously unacquainted. They gave me strangely searching looks. If I’d been beset by tedium, the four of them would have relieved it. I wasn’t, oddly enough; I was idly musing on the reason my fingers get so cold even when I’m wearing top of the range mountaineer’s gloves. (It’s an old problem which leads me to suspect that my mother probably smoked during pregnancy.)