The Blink That Killed The Eye - A Review

'The Blink That Killed The Eye' is the first collection of short stories written by Anthony Anaxagorou: poet and author. I am glad to have known him since I was 4 years old, when we were best friends for a few years before he moved to another school. We had virtually no contact for the best part of twenty years after that, despite going to the same secondary school, mixing in different crowds. Ten years or so later we would run into each other in town occasionally and one day we got chatting about his poetry which I'd seen online. 'Burma Makes Me Bad' hit me hard; a piece of beauty borne of harsh reality. Each and every one of his poems hit me hard, the words emphasised in their power by Anthony's flawlessly passionate delivery. He began self-publishing poetry books, going on to work with schools, universities and charities in a variety of outreach, literacy and poetry projects, before beginning a collection of short stories in 2013. I know him as a friend and as an extremely thoughtful, motivated and insightful individual. That is my personal context. Now for the book.

'The Blink That Killed The Eye'. It is an interesting title, one which draws the reader in with very little effort. A blink is a momentary lapse in our eyesight as the eye closes to rehydrate the eyeball after it has been open too long, or to shield from glare, dust, and wind. Maybe the inference is that his stories will highlight the things we miss in the blink of an eye when we are concentrating too hard on the obvious. Maybe the blink is a metaphor for us protecting ourselves from the shit flying at us as we speed through life, causing us to miss vital points that might have helped us find peace or understanding (or to avoid the shit better!). Maybe it is a broader warning to society; telling us that blinking to avoid the questions and challenges that we don't like is killing us socially. All of these are valid interpretations, and I could extract more, but to try and determine the author's meaning we must read more than the title.

Anthony begins with a man's description of his father under the chapter heading 'Bad Company'. It is written in the past tense while he describes his father, soon shifting to describe events in an imagined present; the subject is re-living experiences in his mind. The description of the father comes from a place of respect and admiration but does not immortalise the patriarch like a child might be expected to. It is written from a perspective making attempt to understand rather than pass judgement, invariably a trait attained through maturity. It hints at imperfections in the man, but attempts, successfully I believe, to place them in the wider context of his person, and they cease to be imperfections and are accepted as simply part of 'who he is'. The father is used to set the scene for the son, who is enduring physical hardships working for his uncle in the present. The story jumps between poetic descriptions of his physical struggle to successfully perform the tasks assigned to him by his uncle, his undirected, as-yet untapped interest in poetry, and the aggressive relationship with his girlfriend, who has her own undisclosed issues and is very violent in her confrontation with him. I cannot help but feel that this chapter represents the author's struggles to achieve his dreams of writing 'professionally', the physical work on his uncles roof being metaphor for the social demand for 'work', and 'paying your way', while the girlfriend plays the part of every misunderstanding skeptic and critic, not of his work, but of his personal philosophies and ambitions: 'Bad Company'. Something his father says at the beginning of the chapter echoes in my mind: "Know your worth Alex."

In the next story Anthony goes on to describe an extremely abusive marital relationship, and the psychological effect on the victim from her own perspective, drawing her torment around the reader. I feel myself wishing that every abusive husband would read this, and feel the weight of the vile abuse the subject receives. It horrifies and upsets me to read it, but I am not enduring the horrible reality of this abuse, so I count myself lucky. Anthony follows this with a story centred around security guards in a office block. They refuse to allow a woman in as she has forgotten her ID, and by the end it becomes clear that we know this woman. It links the first two stories together sweetly and subtly, and I feel water in my eyes as I come to the end of the chapter, where we start a new page joining a bunch of men in the security department of an office building. There is a minor incident with one of the workers, and this story follows the interaction between the others as they try to decide what to do. At first I am confused as to the part this story plays. It is the shortest in the book. It then hits me. I don't spot it at first because I am so used to it. The men are horrible to each other. They are aggressive, rude and abusive to each other, in the casual manner that is commonplace in many male dominated working class industries: 'banter'. It doesn't take me long to hypothesise that we have encountered one of these men in the book already, echoing his daily experiences in the most unconstructive way to his partner. The author isn't excusing anything. He isn't justifying anything. This is an examination; a study. This is an attempt to understand human beings in their overt and covert suffering. To understand why people do the things they do. No judgement.

We are taken to a prison where a man has begun serving time for murdering his wife. We are informed of his being a victim of rape and other physical abuse as a child. The author does not make excuse for him on account of this, it is simple fact: this man, this murderer, this monster, this human being was once a child with a clean slate that was dirtied by the inherent corruption in the world. No father ever told him to 'know his worth'. His perception of worth was dictated by his abusers, left to deduce his place in this world off the back of the contempt shown for his existence. No justification, just facts. Here they are. Don't flinch.

Young love. Anthony takes us into the setting of a single solitary mother living with her daughter, the mother having few friends and relying on alcohol to numb her loneliness, the daughter growing up in an environment where the dominant male role model in her life is a plastic cowboy figurine planted amidst her doll collection. We are quickly spirited across a decade or so to the point the daughter has her first boyfriend, a man who reminds her of her cowboy figurine. This precipitates a violent confrontation between mother and daughter. I imagine the mother filled with the fear that her daughter is going to leave her, for a man who in her mind will undoubtedly leave her like she was left, while simultaneously robbing her of her only child and source of companionship. He would hurt her like she was hurt. The author however, alludes to jealousy as the source of her anger and aggression. I think loneliness and depression are the root cause of that jealousy. Under the influence of these negative emotions, coupled with the angry confusion brought on by the alcohol she consumes, the mother succumbs to her misery and assaults her daughter after being told that she is moving out to be with 'Alex', which, I remember, was the name of the young aspiring poet from the beginning of the book, but this Alex does not sound like the aspiring poet from earlier. We follow this story with one of separation, and Alex's sorrowful reminiscence connects us back to the young man in 'Bad Company'. We explore a young man's first encounter with love's rejection. His attempts to rationalise his feelings of sadness and loss. His reminiscence of times passed. Most of us can relate.

'The Blink That Killed The Eye': The final story briefly explores Alex's emotional recovery, his attempts at writing, then taking us into a world of physically and mentally disabled persons as he tries his hand as a carer. He meets people who have 'acquired brain injury', leaving them incapable of taking care of themselves or living 'normal' lives. The blink is our inability or refusal to see past the surface of these poor souls' lives, past the often barely intelligible speech to scratch the surface of the person that once shone from within, the person now trapped within; the happy child, the doting parent, the motivated worker; within the broken body we are presented with, within the fragmented speech and simple conceptualisation are the memories of a human being; memories of being considered a human being. The blink is the means by which we maintain a position of judgement. The blink is the mechanism of wilful ignorance with which we dismiss that which we are too damn lazy to consider: that behind every short story is a wider biography, experienced in the singular realm of the person, waiting eagerly in a lonely corner of the library for a willing reader. This book is not an easy read though. It requires patience and consideration. Empathy. Open eyes and open ears. Open heart and open mind. Realities that are too broad for newspaper headlines, too elaborate for teleprompters, yet elusive enough to be missed in the blink of an eye. Anthony is asking us, encouraging us, pleading with us, for our own sake, to consider, reflect, contemplate what makes a person who they are, the ugly and the beautiful, the good and the evil. Each thing has it's origin. Is the seed evil? Or the rain? Or the farmer? Or the very ground itself? We all too often accept the most basic explanations of the world, of society, of people, but the individual realities are infinite in their number and complexity. We hide behind our ignorant, externally imposed preconceptions of people, society, life. At those moments when we catch a glimpse of something truly real, really true, we panic, flinch, turn away, blink. We hide from that which might cause us to change the hard coded beliefs that come with 'maturity'. Anthony wants us to stop this cycle of stagnation, to face that which terrifies is most - that which we do not understand. This extends further than human interaction. It extends to encompass the entire sphere of human experience - when you are confronted with that which makes you uncomfortable, that which challenges you, that which you are most afraid of, face it! Stare it down without flinching and observe without the fog of pre-conceived thoughts. Try to learn that which you did not already know. In the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti:

"The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."

The blink hides that lesson that we don't like, that we find difficult, but this is not mathematics, science or language, this is humanity. Every person has the ability and capacity to learn and improve their understanding, if we keep our eyes open long enough.

The Forty Second Blog Of Trig - Torture

I expect there's lots of people who could say that they torture themselves psychologically. I think that perhaps if we were honest with ourselves we could all probably say that we torture ourselves to some extent. We torture ourselves with worry. We torture ourselves with fear. We torture ourselves with lust, jealousy, hatred and anger. We torture ourselves with regret. We torture ourselves because we do not understand these feelings we have named within ourselves. To understand them is to overcome them. We should study ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, see how they arise, understand them and conquer them. In conquering them we conquer ourselves.

I have sometimes consciously imagined my worst nightmares happening to me. I have pushed my mind to face my deepest darkest fears. It used to happen from time-to-time spontaneously, and it was something that disturbed me somewhat. Over time I progressively faced these demons, stared them in the face and called them out. As I defeated these demons, I found more ready to replace them, more difficult ones, and I defeated them too, but they just kept on coming, getting bigger and more powerful. I still have many powerful demons to defeat, but I believe that to defeat these demons is to achieve peace. I feel confident.

The Thirtieth Blog Of Trig - You Can Quote Me On This

I'm not saying love angry offensive people in the traditional sense, so much as loving the experience of life with no fear, not wasting the amazing miracle we are priviledged to witness on negative emotions that reduce us from our natural higher state of ecstatic participatory engagement with the world. In that state we are also in the best possible place from which to react to angry offensive people in a way that can better the nature of the exchange. You can quote me on that.

The Twenty Ninth Blog of Trig - Why We Shouldn't Smoke

My mother's father Sam was a wonderful man. Many of my earliest most prominent memories are of him spending time with me, teaching me to play snooker, badminton, cards, carpentry...I remember his patience as I got something wrong again and again, and he would calmly explain what I was doing wrong and tell me to try again.

Sam and my grandmother Ida; 'nanna'; owned a successful upholstery business that they had built from scratch. My granddad was an amazing craftsman, taking care of the carpentry, and my nanna took care of the upholstery and the business matters. They had a factory where they built luxury sofas with matching curtains and drapings and anything else their clients wanted. They were good to their employees and paid them fair wages. Nanna since told me about how she argued with Sam because he was paying one of his carpenters more than he was paying himself. "He's a hard worker and he deserves it," was his reply. Nanna was certainly the 'business-brain'. Sam took on a troublesome young lad as an apprentice at the pleading request of his mother. My granddad taught him well and he later went on to run his own successful business, doing very well for himself and his family. He was kind and generous, as is my nanna, but he was more so.

Sam served in Europe in the second world war. We have a stand-up cigarette lighter in our living room which he made from a piece of a downed Messerschmidt wing in France. Ida served with the British army in Germany after the war, liaising with Russian and German diplomats as they broke Europe in half.

They married fairly late in their lives, not long after Sam's brother married Ida's sister, bringing the two families closer together. Nanna tells me that Sam was the kindest man she ever knew, but his brother, "if he was any more difficult he'd be impossible!"

My mother was born in 1962 and they devoted themselves to her, raising her as an only child, but surrounded by the extended family of an already extended family.

In January of 1983 my mother turned 21, and on June 27th of that year I was born in Barnet Maternity Hospital. Not much more than a year later my mother had a stillbirth. I don't remember much of that, but I remember the morning of July 30th 1986, waking to hear a baby crying, and finding that my mother had given birth, in her bedroom as planned, with her midwife by her side. I had a baby brother who my parents named Matthew Luke.

When we were both very young Nanna had an aneurysm close to her heart. She was given a small chance of surviving the operation which saw her chest opened up, leaving a scar which remains a reminder to this day of how close she came to death. But she did survive, and she went back to work with Sam until he got ill.

Our Granddad Sam was a smoker. He also smothered every meal with an excessive amount of salt, which contributed to what happened to him. I think it was early 1991 when he got ill. He had a swelling on one of the main arteries leading from his heart and spent some time in the Royal Free Hospital where I remember us visiting him. I can remember not wanting to go there, maybe because I did not like the hospital, maybe because I did not understand the seriousness of his illness, but probably a combination of these and my desire to go out and play. He was pretty much his usual self in the hospital, and I remember getting in trouble with the nurses for pulling the panic cord in his bathroom. I thought it was the light switch.

He was sent home from the hospital because of a lack of beds. I can remember my dad being angry at Margaret Thatcher and the other 'Tories' for pulling the money out of the NHS. He was sent home and while back at home he collapsed, within a day or so if I remember correctly. He went to hospital, but was again sent home because of a shortage of beds. The next time he collapsed it was because the artery in his chest had burst.

My brother and I were not allowed to visit him in intensive care, our parents not wanting us to have memories of an unconscious granddad with tubes and drips protruding from him, so we recorded tapes of us both telling him to get well soon and sending our love, which they played to him when they visited, and although he was not conscious, I'm sure he heard us. My mother spent many nights staying at the hospital, and we were sent to stay with our dad's parents in Salisbury for a week towards the end of June, to give mum and dad some rest, especially mum. I remember having panic attacks many nights, unable to sleep and crying uncontrollably for no reason that I could find, until I fell asleep from exhaustion. We returned home at the end of the week, after my 8th birthday on the Thursday.

I think it was after school on the Monday that our parents both picked us up, fighting back tears. My mum was obviously distraught in my memory, but I was too young to put two and two together. We went home and they bought me and Matthew ice cream from the van outside the house. Matthew and I went into the garden and were eating our ice cream when they came out and told us that granddad had died. The ice cream dropped from our hands and we ran inside to our room crying uncontrollably. Our parents joined us on the bottom bunk of our bed and we all cried our eyes out together for some time.

One of the main reasons Sam died was because he smoked. Other things contributed, like the salt, and of course the evil scumbags in government who decided to drain money out of our hospitals leading to bed shortages, but the fact remains that the smoking played a major part.

It was more than twenty years ago that he died, but it still affects our family, especially those of my mother and nanna. Nanna, having lived alone for the last twenty years, has become increasingly depressed over time, despite the attention, especially my parents, have given her. She spent her life working, going on to marry a man she loved, continuing to work with him to build the home they hoped to retire in. Shortly before he died Sam finished making a beautiful suite of furniture with which to furnish the front room they had almost finished decorating. We uncovered that furniture recently, and it finally graced the room that it was made for twenty years ago. It looks beautiful.

Sam and Ida spent their entire lives working hard, paying their taxes in contribution to the society they live in, making an undoubtedly positive contribution to society, and hoping to retire in comfort. Then Sam died and left a hole in all our lives. Nanna has been alone for twenty years in the lovely home that they built together, and the loneliness and depression has ruined her mind despite everyone's best efforts. My brother, only four years old when he died, missed out on many years of love and teachings from one of the best teachers I ever had. My mother's life is fraught with worry and stress due to the fragile state of her mother, who simultaneously hates being a burden but demands attention from her every day. The entire family was robbed by fate.

Every time you smoke a cigarette to deal with some stress in your life, think to yourself; does your stress arise from your efforts to provide for your future? Imagine spending your life struggling to provide a future for yourself and your family, smoking to deal with the stress, only to die early and undo all the work you have done. Think of the faces of your loved ones as the tears wash their face with the salt that could have contributed to your early demise. Think of the struggle the people you love could face after your heart gives in when it cannot pump past the crap that has clogged your arteries. Think of Sam, and stop smoking.

'The Twenty Ninth Blog Of Trig'.

The Ninth Blog Of Trig - Distr-Inter-Actions

We are all so wrapped up in our daily lives that we rarely stop to investigate it all. We accept the definitions and explanations provided to us without question, and this acceptance accompanied by familiarity breeds contempt and complacency.

I often try to visualise everything through the mind I had before I learnt language, inevitably taking me back into the experience of a person that was still trying to establish spacial awareness. As a mobile being this is mandatory, or we would bounce off walls like flies off a light bulb. And we do, for a short while.

Before I learned to discern between a small, close object and a large, distant object, my perception of the world must have been very pure. I would have initially had no technical distinction between what we call 'objects', with growing familiarity giving rise to what could almost be described as contempt for the familiar; 'I know this'.

The initial influx of senses into an untainted mind must be amazing. Imagine opening your eyes for the first time to see the world without any definition of it. Un-named colours, shapes, lights, shadows, hots, colds, all these and everything in between, with no description except that moment as you perceive it. Trees stop being 'trees' and return to their amazing fractal forms, without familiarity and description. The earth becomes another fractal, with infinite complexity and repetition at magnification. The beauty of the Earth reveals itself to you, and you are amazed, until you are told that it is nothing, that the important things in life are ideas made by man. You fight this, you scream, shout, but you are lucky if all you get in response is a smack on the bum.

"Ignore your amazement at this amazing experience that has been thrust upon you. Listen to us and learn these words and forget about experiencing this amazing life in its purity. There is no profit there...we'll tell you about 'profit' later, when we have conditioned this fascination with the world out of you completely, and you have gotten over the shock and settled into a comfortable state of placid acceptance."

We occasionally glimpse fleeting moments of the beauty that we have been distracted from. This is sometimes when the sun shines, when we are at leisure to relax and enjoy it. The brilliant beams of light bounce off of the world and hit us with such force we have to squint and hide until we have accustomed to it again. We breathe deeply and smile and look, absorping every moment of, well, the moment we are in, which of course, if you have read any of my writing, or any of the writing of the many people who have influenced me, is all that really exists.

That's all for now. Writing this is distracting me from the beauty of experiencing this moment : )

This is "The Ninth Blog Of Trig", signing off.

The Seventh Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 1 - 30/06/2011))

So, Barcelona here we are! You're probably gonna ask me how my first day was, so before you do I'll tell you, it was pretty epic.

On the plane I sat next to a lady with lovely legs, exquisitely planning what seemed to be months of travels. Her daughter was sat next to her doing maths problems which I momentarily considered offering my help with, but she seemed okay with it, and I suffered a migraine on takeoff which I was still recovering from. I listened to music and then started watching a film on my laptop which I tired of quickly. Flight was uneventful. A bit of a jittery takeoff but otherwise peaceful. Lovely view of the mountains as we approached Barcelona.

I landed and grabbed my bag from reclaim, then headed outside. Lovely weather greeted me, which was to be expected really. I looked up and down the strip in front of the airport for a bus stop and saw one, got on for a fare of 5 Euro and chatted to a couple of Aussies a while, before suddenly realising I was in the centre of Barcelona with no idea whether I had missed my stop or not. Up ahead was a massive busy roundabout, in the centre of which was an enormous, beautiful monument with fountains and waterfalls. I decided to get off here and find out where I was.

I was in one of the main junctions in the city, full of tourists, cars, police, and buses whose destinations I could not for the life of me understand. Behind me in the shot above was a large building with an enormous stepped square in front. Many people sat on the steps, some older, some young couples. I wandered around a while, trying to make sense of a couple of bus maps, and failing, before approaching two police officers to ask for help. I had the address and directions written in my phone, but I had to find my way to where the directions began for them to be useful. Unfortunately, the police were in the process of searching two young lads for what I assumed to be drugs, so I wandered about the square pretty aimlessly a while until they had finished. They were not much help though, so I called my host Alan for assistance.

Alan was very helpful, quickly figuring out where I was and explaining where I had to go to find his house. He said it was a 25 minute walk, which it was, plus some for the weight on my back. It was about a mile and I finally made it soaked with sweat, finding myself in a small side road, very typically Spanish, with fairly simple but pretty looking houses either side.

He answered his door and shook my hand with a strong grip, which I tried to return without seeming hostile. The interior of the house was beautiful, with lovely art on the walls, nice furniture which had obviously been chosen carefully, well-kept terracotta floor tiles throughout, and a visibly high standard of building and decorating. He took some time to show me around, being extremely friendly and welcoming, beaming as I commented on how lovely it all was. And as I look round while I write this, it really is.

Alan took me up to the roof terrace, where we had a nice open sky and a view of surrounding buildings but no horizon. It was nice and quiet. He showed me the balcony. He showed me his garden, small but nicely designed and well kept, with some enormously leaved plants dominating the area. 

He showed me my room, not large, not small, clean, tidy, cosy, tidily furnished and flawlessly decorated, as was the rest of the house. When my tour was finished, I had no questions. Alan seemed to have thought of and covered everything. The time was about 5-6pm and I was desperate for a shower after my sweaty march through Barcelona. Before my tour of the house was over he offered to take me around the maze of surrounding streets and show me the local amenities. I gladly accepted, and out we went after I had showered my grimy self.

We left his house and he took me round the surrounding area, which was very much full of locals rather than tourists. He showed me the local Metro station, supermarkets, fresh food markets, restaurants and bars, indicating which were reasonably priced and which were not, and which offered the best quality food. I tried my best to remember where we went and maintain my sense of direction, but I was very tired.

As we approached the end of his tour, he asked me if I was hungry. I told him that I was starving, and he suggested that we grab some food somewhere. He told me that his wife and himself had agreed that he would treat me to dinner on my first night. I was overwhelmed. This man had just met me, taken me into his lovely house, shown me around the town, and now he was offering to buy me dinner. His hospitality was humbling.

I asked him to use his expert judgement on where to eat, and he took me to what appeared to be a lovely delicatessen from the outside, with amazing smelling dry meats, rare game and seafood. The proprietor was a collector of Coca-Cola badges, which were neatly displayed in frames covering the walls throughout the cafe in the middle of the shop and the secretive restaurant area up some stairs in the back. The central cafe area had a few stony-faced local gentlemen nattering away in Spanish, some eating tasty-looking food. Alan introduced me to the owner in effortless Spanish, telling him that I might pop in by myself for some food. He smiled and shook my hand. 'Mucho gusto senior'.

We walked up a narrow staircase in the back into a small but tidy restaurant area. Sitting next to us was an oriental couple, and there was a couple of tables of locals talking and laughing. I looked at my menu, turning a few pages before the realisation that I do not read Spanish hit me. I left the ordering to Alan.

We ordered beers, which were lovely and went down beautifully. Alan ordered a starter of bread, cheese and ham, but this was not any old bread cheese and ham...this was Marks & Spencers rustic Spani......no, sorry, wrong advert. This shat on M&S.

The ham slices were arranged in concentric circles on the plate. On the outside was 'Jamon Iberico Bellota', or 'Iberian Acorn Ham'. This costs as much as £185 per kilo, coming from pigs fed only on acorns. It tastes amazing, certainly the very best ham I have ever had. Next circle was 'Chorizo', then 'Fuet', a peppered salami, and finally 'Lomo Iberico Bellota', or 'Iberian Acorn Fillet', which is the fillet of Iberian acorn fed pigs, dried and sliced. Again, amazing. Alongside this was rustic bread drizzled with olive oil, and 'Queso Manchego Semi-Seco', or 'Semi-dried Sheep Cheese'. Wow! What a plate! It was amazing, and that was just the starter! My main course was not as impressive. I had a steak, which was a bit tough, a bit fatty, and far too big for me to finish. Still tasty though. I brought the last of it home to stick in a sandwich.

Alan and I talked and ate. He told me about his wife and their history in Barcelona. He educated me on the food we were eating and other foods on offer, such as the Kobe beef, which is fed beer its entire life and treated to massages to keep the meat tender. I'd be happy with that life, but maybe with a happier ending!

He asked me what my ambitions were and I told him about my love of writing, which he coincidentally also shared a passion for. I inevitably began talking about my many philosophical ideas and research. Luckily he is of a similar disposition, and this led to interesting discussions about the pursuit of truth, the liberating force of Empathy, the one true moment of reality we experience and the subsequent illusion of time, and other related ideas. We chatted until our food was gone and our coffees were finished and headed back to the house.

When we arrived home we went to the balcony and continued our philosophical discourse. We discussed Empathy further, with Alan relating it to his coaching work. When he is coaching someone, he must honestly Empathise with the person, in order for them to trust him and believe his show of interest towards them. This means that they then feel they can be honest with him, enabling him to do his job to the best of his ability. If a student senses that their coach or teacher is not genuine, they may not feel comfortable enough to be completely honest about themselves, and the quality of the exchange is reduced along with the effectiveness of the coaching.

We continued talking until our discussion was interrupted by the burglar alarm downstairs. We both looked at each other bemused. He got up and went down and I followed, pondering the strange possibility of him being broken into the first night I stayed. He had earlier given me the code to unlock the alarm, and a keyfob with lock, unlock, and panic alarm buttons. There had recently been changes made to the system and we assumed a bug. The phone rang and he assured the security company that everything was okay, then chatted for a short while in Spanish.

He got off the phone and we went back to the balcony and chatted more. Alan described his novel ideas and I shared ideas for my own half-finished projects, when the burglar alarm went off again. Alan again went downstairs to speak to the security company and I sat on the balcony wondering if I had jinxed it somehow. As I went to bed a little later I took the security key fob out of my pocket and something clicked in my head as I realised the possibility that the panic alarm button was being pressed in my pocket. This seemed to be the likely cause. I told him of my theory, apologised and we both laughed. Problem solved.

We chatted a while longer, dissecting life and the universe and getting on very well, before it was time for some rest. I had had a very long day. I thanked him for his unprecedented hospitality, for the lovely meal and his guided tours, and went to get some sleep. Barcelona day one, done.

This is "The Seventh Blog Of Trig", signing off.

The Third Blog Of Trig - A Common Philosophy

Okay, blog number three...'three'...'three'...where do I go with 'three'..?

'Three's a crowd'...'crowd'...'people'...'life'...'philosophy'...I'm off! Here we go!

Differences in philosophy are a major, dominant factor in the wars of humans. Of course, common philosophies do bring pockets of people together in agreement to some degree, but ultimately the petty differences between the different world religions/cults/beliefs can lead single minded egotistical humans to become very angry, to the point where they will hurt, maim, rape, kill each other to punish the other for not agreeing, or to simply rid them from this Earth. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that this is the most devisive issue in the world today. Where does it stem from?

More often than not in this world, people neglect their enquiry into the nature or purpose of their existence and latch onto someone else's explanation or conclusion, or else they simply abandon their enquiry altogether and chase material or physical pleasures. The late preacher-teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti famously said, "truth is a pathless land." By this he meant that each individual can only find truth, god, enlightenment, peace, through their own path, that as individuals we inevitably all tread different paths, so to all follow one spiritual path led out before us is folly. He also said that in order to embrace our own true path we must embrace the moment we pass through, which is the only real truth we ever encounter in our lives.

The world needs a common philosophy, without doctrine, to bring about peace. My logic tells me that this could only be based around the realisation of the indisputable fact that life, the one moment of unity we all occupy and pass through, is an amazing miracle. Don't take that statement as having any relation to religion. I refer to the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, between living and not; to be born out of nothing that we can recall and be presented with an ongoing moment of perception, from within a strange unchosen body, faced with challenges, and questions we may never see answered, as part of an amazing, infinitely varied yet unified world.

It IS a miracle, this moment. How can you willfully depress the miracle of another person's life under that realisation.

This is "The Third Blog Of Trig", signing off.