The Latest Excuse.

I was going to make a stream of consciousness post late last night, but it all became so jumbled in my head that I think I would have typed the words backwards. So I didn’t bother. I watched the first half of a Japanese horror film instead.

They make very good horror films, the Japanese. It’s a universally accepted fact even by the people in Hollywood who pay homage to them by producing substandard remakes, thereby demonstrating the superior quality of the original. I suppose that’s one example of life working out right.

But at the moment I’m too full of troublesome cars, troublesome plumbing, troublesome weather, the ghostly allure of a woman who isn’t dead, the anticipation of an unwelcome deed which has to be done, and the discomfort of having a living space which prevents me from being who I am… But mostly, I think, I’m becoming ever more acutely aware of that black hole, the one I’ve spoken about which should have something in it but I don’t know what. It’s getting bigger.

So should I just mention, in passing, the two women who came into my house recently (for perfectly respectable reasons, you understand)? I heard one of them say quietly to the other: ‘Isn’t it clean?’

I assume it was an example of gender stereotyping. Men who live on their own are supposed to be slobs incapable of noticing that they’re living in squalor. Their rooms are expected to have cobwebbed corners, littered floors, shelves mired in greasy dust, and sundry surfaces kept from their intended purpose by the incongruous presence of ill-matched receptacles blighted by the festering remains of mostly-eaten ready meals. And their bathrooms are known to be places which no woman with feminine sensibilities could bring herself to enter even in an emergency. Mine isn’t, even though I’m the only one who ever enters it.

I think this must be another failure of mine: dishonouring my gender. But I do write some quite long sentences.

In Defence of Fire.

I’ve long been a convert to climate change action, and so I appreciate the need to vastly reduce carbon emissions generated by humans. And yet there’s one thing that worries me slightly: I do hope the legislators won’t stop people having open fires.

The relationship between the human and his fire is buried deep in the race memory. For millions of years he has been warming himself by utilising radiant heat – from the sun during the day, and from flame when the celestial body sinks low or disappears altogether.

The tin box sitting on the wall, or the pipes lying under the floorboards, gently dispensing conducted and convected heat to warm the room evenly, are practical enough but they lack soul. The open fire is so close to the human soul that I regard it as indispensable to a species which prides itself on looking beyond mere mundane exigency.

So please, you legislators, make cars and planes which run on electricity; manufacture that electricity by harnessing the power of the sun, the wind, and the waves; fuel the factories and the shops by the same means, but don’t deprive us humans of our soul mate.

On Lifting Veils and Tomorrows.

I’ve been musing a lot today on the mystery of the Lady B’s habit of shaking me rigid every now and then, and I think the veil is beginning to lift. I think I’m now getting to grips with what made her human alter-ego so compelling and therefore her ghost so insistent.

I very much doubt that her erstwhile corporeal host knows it, and I also doubt that anyone in the host’s orbit knows it either. I strongly suspect that the truth of the matter lies in a place rarely visited by the common tread of human perception, and that she will go through life sadly unaware of a rare virtue.

But enough of the Lady B, for now at least. It isn’t my place to acquaint her with her special quality, especially since I promised ‘no more words from me.’ I’m also aware that I must seem a fool to most disinterested readers, and there are only so many times I want to be so regarded in one week. And I might be wrong anyway.

*  *  *

To other matters:

Vis-à-vis the previous post about Will’s ramblings on yesterdays. I now remember what he said about tomorrows:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

It makes you wonder whether tomorrows are worth having, doesn’t it? Admittedly, Macbeth was in a bit of a fix at the time, what with having no friends to speak of and Birnam Wood marching up the hill to snuff him out, but it still encourages a simple muse:

When you’re young you take tomorrow for granted and welcome it unthinkingly, but you get to a point in life when you start wondering how many you’ve got left and whether they’re worth the bother.

Life Made Simple.

I think it’s probably my favourite line from Shakespeare:

… all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death

To sum up the outline of a human life from birth to death in eleven words is surely nothing less than genius. And I’m quite sure that his use of the verb ‘lighted’ was far more informed than the simple nod to metrical expediency might suggest. And I wonder what he meant by ‘fools.’ Was he merely expressing a pejorative attitude towards the human creature generally, or was he referring to the ignorance of that creature with regard to its true nature and purpose? I’ve long felt it likely that whoever wrote the words attributed to Shakespeare had access to arcane knowledge.

I was thinking about that line while having my lunch in the car the other day, and ever since then I’ve been obsessing a little over all my tomorrows.

The Lady B Mystery.

I went to the bottom of the garden this evening to watch the bats flying, and as I stepped onto the lane I was suddenly – and surprisingly powerfully – swamped by the ghost of the Lady B. Being entirely unexpected, it was a shock and an oddly enervating one. This needs explaining because my chequered but relatively narrow history has not afforded me this experience before, and so I’m unprepared for it.

In life our relationship – if such a minor liaison can be graced with such a grandiose term – had little of identifiable substance because there were many impediments which precluded anything other than brief and irregular episodes of verbal intercourse. I could claim in truth that she was the fairest maiden who ever blessed my path in the current vale of tears, or I could be more prosaic and say simply that she was the most beautiful woman I ever met. But it isn’t enough; it’s nothing like enough, even for someone with a nature like mine. Such a minor matter should be easily consigned to history and left to lie quietly in the drawer of pleasant memories along with all the others.

My problem is that it won’t stay there and I really don’t know why. My limited brain appears incapable of working it out and there’s nobody to ask, so I suppose I’ll just have to ride it until the haunting stops of its own accord.

And I know I shouldn’t be posting this. It’s just that mysteries, and a pint of Abbot Ale, have a habit of making you impervious to the danger of appearing foolish.

Giving Customer Satisfaction.

I went to a Sunday market once where there was a stall selling DIY and garden tools. The person operating the stall was an attractive young woman wearing a transparent rain jacket with nothing underneath, and I do mean ‘nothing’ quite literally.

You might imagine that it was the best patronised stall in the marquee, and that the patrons were all men. And you would be right. They were arranged in layers fronting the trestle table, all jostling to get closer so they could pretend to be appraising this hammer for strength, or that trowel for comfort. And many of them were buying things, presumably to salve their consciences and excuse their lascivious loitering.

I asked myself the obvious question: ‘Is this a mild form of prostitution or merely a commercial expedient?’ I couldn’t make up my mind at the time, but I’ve since decided that there is no definitive answer.

The Fear that Drives Commitment.

I read the word ‘commitment-phobe’ somewhere the other day. I’m familiar with it, of course, because I’ve been called one myself often enough. And it’s largely true, although it did occur to me today that there’s one principle to which I have committed myself all my life. It goes like this:

I was never much influenced by my parents. Whatever ideals or modes of behaviour they told me to adhere to largely went ignored, either because I disagreed with them or because I’d already worked it out for myself. As a young child I was more influenced by certain passages in the Bible – like do unto others as you would have them do unto you, for example. And certain individuals occasionally said something which made a mark, like the white witch I knew in my early twenties who told me: never use magic to get what you want. Only ever use it to achieve what you believe to be right. But my greatest influence was Arthurian mythology with its emphasis on those cardinal virtues to which humans can aspire – courage, compassion, honesty, fair dealing, equal justice for all, protection of the weak, and the pursuit of truth.

And so the one guiding principle of my life, and the only one to which I have been consistently committed, is to strive to be a better person. But I’ve failed miserably on many occasions through giving in to anger, fear, laziness and self-interest. That troubles me because I’m an idealist, and so I have to keep on trying because that’s what commitment is.

And I’ve asked myself often why I bother to strive for ideals while others seem to sail happily through life being untroubled by, and often unaware of, their imperfections. Is it the possibility of a looming appraisal at the end of the road which drives me? I suppose it might be on a subconscious level, but I think it’s mostly just the fear of failure.

A Metaphor for Talking.

Just lately I’m finding that I’m dividing people into three groups when it comes to holding a conversation.

First there are the great majority of people with whom having a conversation is like trying to dig into builders’ rubble. It’s all on the surface, so you pick among the stones, half bricks and bits of broken glass, getting nowhere. Eventually you tire of the effort and say ‘well, must be going.’ And that’s that.

Then there are those who resemble soft sand. Digging is easy and you feel you’re getting somewhere, but only for so long. Eventually you hit bedrock and there’s no point in digging further. You say ‘well, must be going.’ And that’s that.

The third group is the special one and composed of a very small number of individuals. They’re like soft sand, too, but this time there’s no bedrock. You can dig for as long as you like, but as you get deeper the air becomes thinner and the light level drops to inky darkness. When you get to the point of becoming blind, suffocated and confused, you have to hightail it back to the surface and try again another day. They’re the people I talk to. I don’t talk much.

(There’s a fourth group, too. They’re the ones who let you do all the digging while they keep pace and watch in silence. I only know one person in that group and I’m not allowed to talk to her any more. That’s why I put it in parentheses at the end.)

Getting the Hang of Lucy.

Remember Lucy, the ¼ Greek ex-dental nurse who now works in the coffee shop and distinguishes herself by remembering me? She was on the counter again today when I went in (she was wearing a multi-coloured bandana which looked quite splendid holding back her naturally dark hair…)

‘Hello Lucy,’ I said.

‘Hello Mr Beazley,’ she replied with half a hint of a smile.

‘I would rather you didn’t call me Mr Beazley, if you don’t mind. Mr Beazley was my stepfather and I wasn’t too keen on him.’

‘Oh, right… erm… Jeffrey, isn’t it?’

(Where does this woman come from? She even remembers my forename, for heaven’s sake. She just cemented her place in my good books.)

‘Jeffrey, Jeff, JJ, buggerlugs, monstink… anything other than Mr Beazley. But tell me: what persuaded you to abandon blue pyjamas and the medical profession for the mufti of middle England and the role of a serving wench?’

She said it was to do with going travelling and becoming stressed by the protocols and regulations of modern medical mania, but that isn’t the important point. The important point is that she was singularly unimpressed by my elegant and well constructed vernacular, despite the fact that I even managed to slip a bit of alliteration cleverly into the mix. I was hoping she might draw her hand across her brow and fall into a swoon, but she didn't. Instead I imagined her thinking ‘why doesn’t this guy stop being a pretentious jerk and speak proper English?’ Now, if she’d actually said that, I could have explained:

‘It’s because I’ve been writing for the last fifteen years and writers have to keep on finding new ways to say things which fall outside the parameters of normal English. And then we find ourselves doing it naturally as a matter of course and people write us off as pretentious jerks.’

But she didn’t, so neither did I. And since I wasn’t prompted to explain, I thought it better that I should shut up. So I did.

But then, guess what. I saw her again in Tesco, minus the multi-coloured bandana. I decided to keep it simple that time.

‘Hello again,’ I muttered with something approximating to a disinterested smile. (Was that simple enough?)

‘Hello Jeff.’

Mmm… She still remembers my name and uses the diminutive to boot. The air in Tesco turned a mild shade of cerise and then I went home.

The end.

Awaiting a Favourable Wind.

I was watching a DVD tonight in which the phrase ‘purity of heart’ was a leading theme. It’s one of those concepts which are difficult to define – if definition is possible at all – and yet it has the ring of something grand and meaningful about it. So I took to wondering (as I always do when I encounter a concept which is difficult, if not impossible, to define) and it led me to a recollection.

A long time ago I made a promise to somebody and kept it when it was called in. Doesn’t keeping a promise indicate purity of heart? I really don’t know because things went badly from there.

It plunged me into a period of torment which echoes frequently to this day, but that’s all right because I was the architect of my own fall and can have no complaints. The problem is that I wasn’t the only one to suffer. Innocents suffered too, so what should I have done?

*  *  *

The sky has been unremittingly dark and gloomy today. The wind has been cold and fresh, the air laden with drizzly rain. There was a sick robin in the garden this morning which I could do nothing about, and there was a dead mole on the lane which would have looked as cute as moles always do had it not been for the unnatural red ribbon streaming from its open mouth. Add mild waves of nausea and periods of intestinal discomfort, and the day has been more dolorous than most.

I do so wish I could escape from this run of remorseless dolour. It loads my shoulders with that suffocating earnestness of which the doldrums are well stocked. I’ve said often enough that I dislike and mistrust earnestness. Oh for the days of ditties, ironic humour and general silliness. One day, maybe.