Touching Base.

So, it’s been twelve days since I wrote a post to the blog. Same reason as usual: the heart was willing but the spirit was weak. There’s a post around the question of whether there is any intrinsic value in saving a life currently sitting half written in the file. When it became a little complicated I couldn’t be bothered to set the logic in order and translate it into well constructed ink blots. Maybe I will some time.

But I was reading through some old posts last night when I came upon a comment which directed me to the priestess’s Tumblr channel from ten years ago. Having nothing better to do, I took a peek at the first three or four of them and realised something. I realised that the apparent connection which we both appeared to believe in was at least a mystery, if not an illusion generated by a sense of something unfulfilled. The persona she projected through her activities and attitudes was such that we were about as ill-matched as two people could possibly be, and so I set to wondering why she had ever shown any interest in me.

Speculation led me to only one conclusion. I reasoned that there must have been an empty compartment somewhere in her consciousness which was rumbling like an empty stomach, and she needed something to occupy it and keep it quiet. That, presumably, was where I fitted in.

It occurred to me, you see, that I must have been the most boring person she’d ever encountered. So straight-laced, so highly principled, so perfectionist, and so much given to the idealistic tendency. I considered whether it bothered me that I must have been the most boring person she’d ever encountered. I decided it didn’t because, after all, being the most anything is some sort of position on some sort of podium, and I’ve stood on very few podiums in my life.

*  *  *

Off now to watch another episode of an old Brit TV sci-fi series called Primeval. I have to say that it’s not of the highest quality. Much of the acting is overcooked, some of the direction is lacking finesse, it’s littered with glaring plot holes, and the death scene of the main character which occurred in the last episode is hopelessly implausible. It struck me that it’s how Charles Dickens might have written the demise of Tiny Tim if he’d allowed an unrepentant E. Scrooge to oversee the event.

And yet it retains the capacity to entertain. (And it provides some ballast in an empty compartment of my currently jaundiced consciousness.)

My latest book, by the way, is Umberto Eco’s last – The Prague Cemetery. He takes an awfully long time to get anywhere, but I like his style.