Question and Answer.

The question and answer session is always the same. I ask myself:

‘Am I content with my life so far?’

‘Did you feel anything?’

‘Yes, plenty.’

‘Then you should be.’

It’s an interesting fact that I’m fairly discontented with my life at the moment, but fully content with what it’s been so far. Maybe that’s because the state of discontent is just another feeling.

‘Why do I ramble pointlessly like this?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Awareness and Small Mysteries.

Been having trouble working up sufficient interest to make a post today. Too edgy from having the invading Saxon pollute my corner of the Shire. Some people – no, most people – are amazingly unaware, which leads me to propose that a mild form of psychopathy is a central component of the human condition. This is an HSP thing, you understand.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the fact of having yet another person come to my blog from Google by searching my name. (It’s an odd fact that if you google ‘JJ Beazley,’ nearly every return is me. JJ Beazley must be an uncommon name.) Anyway, this little fact creates a mystery. Somebody is apparently aware of me and I don’t know who it is. It’s like having somebody call your name out of the darkness, but when you say ‘Who’s there?’ they don’t answer.

Which takes me back to being a kid in primary school. I developed the habit of making a snowball and throwing it over my shoulder in a place where nobody could see me. That meant that nobody – not even me – knew where it had landed, and that meant that I’d created a mystery. It seemed a terribly profound thing to do at the time. Weird kid, eh?

A Challenge to Logic?

Here’s an extract from the Wikipedia article on the solstice:

‘The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, the seasonal movement of the Sun's path (as seen from Earth) comes to a stop before reversing direction.’

So, let’s expand a little further:

The rise and fall of the sun’s height above the horizon from one solstice to another is caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis relative to the path of the solar rays, plus the fact that the earth orbits the sun approximately every 365 days. Three questions therefore:

1) Since the earth never stops in the course of its orbit, how can the sun ever appear to stand still?

2) On the other hand, how can the sun 'reverse its path' without there being a brief moment of stillness as the change takes place? In other words, is it possible for something to reverse direction without ever ceasing to move?

3) If it does stand still, how long does the moment of stillness last?

Penguin Music.

I haven’t posted any YouTube stuff for ages, have I? This is one of my perennial favourites.

There are quite a few versions of it, including others by PCO themselves and a good one by Patrick Street, but this is the one I like best. It’s raw and live and actually has a harmonium in it. To me it says:

‘We’re a little off beam, but we’re rather interesting and mostly harmless.’

 

 

Mediaeval Tradition and Being Porterless.

Wednesday night is porter night. Wednesday is the day on which I treat myself to a bottle of yummy London porter (5% ABV and a picture of a raven on the label.) Next Wednesday night, however, might not be porter night, because next Wednesday will be the second day of the annual Shrovetide Football Match in Ashbourne.

The Football Match is when the rough peasantry of the town form two armies and battle it out through the streets for the honour of getting a ball (which isn’t actually spherical, but then some balls aren’t) into a goal at one end of the town or the other. It’s a mediaeval tradition, you see, and the good burghers guard their traditions with gusto. It takes place over the two afternoons and evenings of Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Shops board up their windows and lock their doors, everybody takes out extra insurance, and those of us who thought the Middle Ages ended in 1485 just stay away. You can read more about it here if you’re interested.

So, next week I’ll probably be going to the other local town to do my shopping. Uttoxeter has no particular mediaeval pretensions, but it does have a cinema and a railway station. Nah nah nah-nah nah…

But they might not have porter…

Becoming a Poet.

We’ve got the old sub-zeros back tonight.

My office gets cold

When the old

And bold

Sub-zeros

Take hold

I just can’t stop being a poet these days. I suppose I should double the scotch ration, since I’m even beginning to look a bit like Dylan Thomas.

(Welsh accent)

Do not go gentle into that goodnight

Rail, rail against the dying of the light.

Yeah, right.

See? Must be in the blood.

Money Luck.

Guess what I found in Ashbourne today. A US five cent coin. What on earth was a five cent coin doing in Ashbourne? I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I decided that if ever I make that trip to NYC, it will pay the first five cents of the taxi fare from the airport.

This post was going to progress a little further and conclude with ‘No, not the Titanic.’ Feel free to fill in the blanks.

And did I ever mention (I think I might have done) that the captain of the Titanic, the much maligned – probably unfairly – Captain Smith, lived in a house only a few streets from where I lived as a baby? Not at the same time, of course.

Serious Issues.

Serious Issues keep cropping up and raising my ire. It’s state control this time, and I thought of making a post about it.

But I’m tired of serious issues. They’re boring me.

So did I mention that I saw a big white flash in the northern sky two nights ago? (I don’t think I did.) The circumstances suggested it wasn’t lightning, so what was it? And did I once mention (I think I did) that I used to see big blue flashes in the sky when I was a teenager, ones that nobody else could see? They’re mysteries, and I like mysteries more than I like serious issues.

And while I’m on the subject of mysteries, I’ve thought of something else that’s an expression, if not actually a source, of joy: Laughing. Laughing connects you briefly to joy, and I should know because I do it at least once a year.

Dog Joy.

I was reminded in Ashbourne today of one thing I do manage to connect with, and which hardly ever fails to bestow a little of that elusive thing called joy.

A young girl was walking along the pavement with a puppy on a lead. The puppy walked a bit, then ran a bit, then stopped and sniffed, then ran some more. And all the time it was looking this way and that, and never was its tail lower than a true vertical, and never did said tail stop wagging at a rate of ten to the dozen, and its thrill at making the acquaintance of every passing human stranger remained unflagging and unbridled.

And guess what: it was mostly white and had a big black patch around one eye. Few things could be a more perfect generator of the joy phenomenon than that, I think.

What is Joy?

I was asked:

‘I went for a walk in the snow yesterday, and then had a meal in a fine restaurant. Is that joy? What is joy?’

Joy is a relative stranger to me. I’ve had plenty of fun in life, but joy has been thin on the ground. To experience joy, I think you first have to establish connection with something. Connection doesn’t come easily to me, and it doesn’t sit easily even when it does arrive. I swear I dropped into mortal life this time round intending to observe, and that’s what I’ve done.