A Very Strange Statement.

A woman told me today that I have ‘a very beautiful face.’ She really did, but the apocryphal part of the story is that she shouted it through the attic door in the hope that I might let her out so she could set fire to things.

So let’s be realistic here. This is a picture of me being told that I have a very beautiful face while manfully resisting the temptation to be flattered.

Becoming Cynical.

Do you know what happens if you put a comment on YouTube advocating reason and tolerance? You get hailed on with unripe bananas hurled by squealing monkeys.

I’m growing ever more cynical in my view of the human animal as the years pass.

And have you heard that Mr Twitterfreak is thinking of changing his mind on the Paris climate deal? That’s good news because now he might get lynched by a posse of coal miners and corporate chief executives, and then we shall all be able to rest easy in our beds again.

This is me being cynical.

The mood is sombre tonight. I have sore sinuses, a sore throat, and little appetite. And I should very much like to receive a pleasant communication from beyond the grave, but emails from ghosts are something of a rarity. I can't even go and pay my respects to the original Isabella in the local churchyard because there's an imaginary tape across the gate saying Do Not Cross.

(Anyone who has been reading this bog for a very long time might know what I'm talking about, but it really doesn't matter. I'm just rambling to pass the time until happy hour.)

Shire Tenants.

I was wrong about something; there are house martins in the Shire this year. I saw a small flock of maybe 6-10 hunting with a few swallows over a little-frequented lane down near the river. But still the numbers of both are tiny compared with previous years.

It’s always interesting to watch swallows and martins together. The martin is a little smaller and lacks the opulent tail fronds of its bigger cousin. And it flies a trifle slower, being more inclined to drift and glide rather than charge with relentless intent. It’s fortunate that they’re both highly skilled at missing one another in the melee.

As for my place in the Shire, today’s leitmotif has been oh no, not again.

On Right, Wrong, and Guilt.

We learn the list of rights and wrongs as defined by the culture in the process of growing up, through lectures and remonstrations from parents, teachers and the powers that be. We enshrine it in law and a set of vague and variable diktats called morality.

But it seems to me that a more meaningful notion of right and wrong is a much more subtle and instinctive thing, and to some extent it’s even personal. And what’s more to the point, much of it is learned through experience both objective and subjective.

I was thinking today of something I did when I was nineteen, something which detrimentally affected the lives and states of mind of three innocent people. I had no spur to prick the sides of my intent save personal interest. It didn’t seem wrong to me at the time; it was merely an adventure. Now it does.

So should I feel guilty? It’s a moot point.

There are those who say that guilt is pointless because it doesn’t change anything. I’ve said as much myself. Others will philosophise that there’s no such thing as right and wrong; there is only action and consequence on a road which might or might not be illusory. I’ve said that, too.

But maybe there is some real value to a sense of right and wrong, and maybe guilt is the tool we use to modify it through experience. So maybe we should be a little more forgiving of the transgressions of youth, because there but for the grace of God go we all.

Two North American Notes.

I just read about a man in New Brunswick, Canada who got struck by lightning while making a speech at his daughter’s wedding. Am I sympathetic? Does the phrase ‘poetic justice’ spring to mind? Would I consider playing God if only I could?

Fortunately he only suffered a slightly injured thumb, so that’s OK. Weddings are pretty awful things in my view – not least for the torturous quality of the speeches – but probably not worth dying for.

*  *  *

And I gather the good folks of Nevada are becoming concerned about a growing shortage of marijuana. Aren’t we all?

Om and a Bit of Bridge Building.

I’ve never been so affected by conditions at twilight as I have this year. They’ve started sending my state of mind soaring or plummeting in concert with their own mood swings.

Tonight’s was another cold, wet and gloomy one. I didn’t mind the rain; we’ve had some warm, dry weather lately and the earth needed a drink. What bothered me was the low temperature and a leaden sky forcing a premature end to the day. It seemed somehow disrespectful, and I think that gives the clue as to why they’re having such an effect on me now.

Twilight is the time when nature goes through a change of shifts. The bees, butterflies and birds go home, and out come the moths, the bats and the snails. As such, I’m becoming more convinced that it’s the time when the veil between this form of reality and others which lie beyond is at its thinnest. It’s the time when magic stops being quite so mysterious and begins to make sense; it’s the time when Om becomes almost audible. The cold and the clouds get in the way, and that disappoints me.

*  *  *

And I haven’t posted any music for a while, so I thought I’d offer this current favourite:

 

It’s clearly Chinese, and yet there’s a hint of Blue Grass in the melodic structure. It would be almost as much at home in the Appalachians as it would on the banks of the Yellow River, and I like to think that music builds bridges to counter the walls prescribed by little souls like Donald the Dunce. And don’t Chinese women have beautiful hands?

Changing Colours.

Something I find pleasant about a mixed rural landscape is watching the colours in the patchwork of fields act as a seasonal marker.

Through winter and early spring the pastoral fields remain green, but the arable fields are the dull brown of ploughed earth. As the spring develops and the arable crops grow, the view becomes uniformly green. When high summer comes around the wheat and barley fields are gradually gilded until the patchwork is coloured green and yellow. After the harvest it’s green and tan from the lying straw. And then the land is ploughed, the muck is spread, and we’re back to green and brown.

The only time I don’t find it appealing is when there’s been a snowfall and the landscape is uniformly white. Most people find that strange. ‘But you’re supposed to like snow,’ they say. (Actually they mostly don’t, but that’s what they’re thinking.)

A Very British Reply.

I wonder whether there’s a friendly American in the audience who might tell me whether Ronel is a male or female name. It sounds feminine to me, but it’s too close to Ronald to call.

It’s just that I had a reply from someone of that name to a query I sent to MS Outlook. The aforesaid Ronel said that he or she hoped I was ‘doing great today’ and followed it up with ‘let’s work this out together.’ In my reply I said that I rarely do great on any day, and working things out together sounds like something Americans do.

But then I looked at the clock, assumed that the support centre is in California, worked out the time difference, and wished him/her a good tiffin.

(I didn’t correct his/her ‘your’ for ‘you’re’ error since that would have been churlish and inexcusably un-British.)

Am I doing great?

Being Shackled to Unsuitable Parents.

Today I was watching young parents walking past with their young children, and some of the parents were the sort I wouldn’t even want to live close to, much less share a house with. I thought of the children and how awful it must be to be trapped in a house with parents like that, and I wondered whether parents should make a conscious effort to be amenable to their children’s personality types. Or is feeding them and clothing them and not being abusive sufficient discharge of parental responsibilities?

My parents didn’t suit me, you know. By the age of 11 I couldn’t wait for them to go out so I could have the house to myself, and when I finally left home at 19 I was well ready for it. They fed and clothed me and weren’t abusive (well, that’s a moot point where my stepfather was concerned, but he wasn’t physically abusive and my mother was a very nice person.) They just didn’t suit me. And it wasn’t merely the usual teenage rebellion thing. Looking back on it now I realise that they’d never suited me because they hadn’t a clue who I really was.  I don’t suppose they cared, and that’s the problem.

On Atmospheres and Magic.

This evening’s twilight was one of those during which I stand enthralled by the version of reality in which I’m living.

The air was mild, still and damp. Midges danced and drifted; moths flapped and flitted; bats plunged and pirouetted; a mixed sky of greys, blues and pinks sailed lazily northward, dropping the occasional few raindrops on a grateful earth. The view across the river valley to Staffordshire’s ‘top country’ beyond was comfortably hazy, and the only sound was the cooing of a wood pigeon in a nearby tree.

Such a mixture makes a most seductive cocktail, and there was one more ingredient to turn the material into the magical: the mind’s capacity to perceive the abstract which transcends the particular.

I felt something similar when I was a boy walking along a familiar street in an industrial city on a cold autumnal night, huddled against the stinging sooty mist, smelling the carbon fragments which mingled with the wholesome aroma drifting from a nearby fish and chip shop. Different scenario, same sense of seduction. Different detail, same magic.

And that was what I meant in a recent post when I referred ‘to the unique atmosphere which touches every place at different times.’ Oftentimes it’s bland, but sometimes it’s compelling. It can be light or dark, sharp or dull, uplifting or depressing; but it’s always there to feed the hunger for abstract perception. And I suspect it’s the easiest way to hear the hum of what lies beyond a world ruled and impoverished by juvenile souls.