To do what? What’s the problem? Solvents, solutions, mucoid, sticky, sticky and slimy: a list plucked from your post ‘The 10% solution. A tithe perhaps? 10% of your language must be donated once a week, but if that’s the case then you owe us a lot more than four or five hundred words. And you confess to being 90% self aware – WOW! – the remaining 10% must be in the realms of sticky, slimy stuff that you keep out of sight. The place where you go to. But it’s magnificent to be 90% self-aware; that is almost pure radiance. Something that would push Gautama into the shade of his banyan tree . . . oh honoured disciple. And the word is eccentric. Ummm let me get a taste of that. One of those English eccentrics. I always think of somebody tall and willowy, with an obligatory bow tie – something with spots on – a mischievous twinkle in his eye. I know who comes to mind, Wilfred Thesiger. Tough as old boots and a boxer when the need arose. Wikipedia tells me he was born in Addis Ababa, Abyssinia and that the Emperor Haile Selassie invited him to attend his coronation in 1930. In between he managed to fit in Eton and Magdalen College where he represented the university in boxing and was captain of the boxing team. He apparently died in Croydon which perhaps could be seen as an eccentric place in which to die.
Where do I go then? You ask and then ask again. Well if you were Wilfred Thesiger you would have gone to the Empty Quarter. But I suppose whilst Thesiger literally went to the Empty Quarter those of us more mundane chaps dim the lights and go into what Eliot refers to as a ‘tobacco trance’ or some other sort of non-state, drug induced or not. Life on hold, waiting for something more interesting to happen which may suggest an argument against drug induced anything except anaesthetics when undergoing an operation, you would miss the more interesting thing that happens along.
Though no doubt I should be intent on making that first billion. Then one could get out of it full time; simply let all that dosh make more dosh, meanwhile living in some paradise. But what about the front line, what about the occupation, the barricades – should I be pushing my way on to the barricades and making a stand with the other comrades. Mind you, it’s good to have a nap now and again and I wouldn’t like to be come so agitated that I couldn’t sleep at night.
The New Labour project ran out of energy. Did Blair sense that and hand over to the sulky Brown bear something that was already well on the way to dying. The present “coalition” wants to turn the clock back to 1979 and do it all over again. It’s as though nobody has grasped what actually needs to be brought into consciousness. It is like waiting for a birth _ what sort of baby is it going to be?? What is to emerge? And when?
It seems impossible to see beyond economic growth and yet that seems to imply ecological disaster. The US and Europe, with the UK (the City of London) strung on a thread between the two, in a mess still addicted to being world leaders and the wolves are at the door and the ammunition has long since run out.
Oh, I know, I’ll read that new book* about the quantum universe. It’s all a dance,
mate, don’t fuss yourself.
*The Quantum Universe: Everything that Can Happen Does Happen by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. It was reviewed in The Guardian 19.11.11.
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