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 Third Blog Of Trig - Return To Barcelona Part 1

RETURN TO BARCELONA BABY! It's been a long time coming, but I finally made it back! As I write this I am sitting in the foyeur of 'Equity Gothic', a hostel not too far from Estacion De Franca. It is Saturday 3rd August 2013, which I think might be 2 years to the day since the end of my last visit! Not sure if that has any significance whatsoever, but it does feel like I've kind-of picked up exactly where I left off on some kind of solar/lunar cosmological basis. I have two and a half days left to play with, but I'm shattered from humping my bag round town looking for a hostel and it's always good to write about experiences while they are fresh in your mind, so I'll relax and describe the wonderful time I have already had in my short stay so far while I listen to some guy play some lovely guitar behind me.

I left London on a hot sunny Thursday afternoon, 1st August 2013. It was my brother's birthday a couple of days earlier or I would have come out sooner, but I wanted to spend the day with him so I put it off a couple of days. It was a last minute 'deal' from Easyjet, which meant I ended up paying double what I would have liked, but my heart was set on it, and my good friend Derrick from the CELTA course had told me that he was moving back to the US very soon, so I wanted to see him before he left. I had told him when I was arriving, and he had given me his number to call.

My flight left Luton at about 6pm London time and I arrived about 9pm in Barcelona. I had not booked any accommodation, intending to either chance it on finding a room in Barcelona when I arrived or hoping that Derrick or another friend could lend me a sofa for the night. If not, I considered the possibility of chilling on the beach for the evening, but that was not preferrable. The day of my departure I discovered that Derrick was the only one of my CELTA pals who was in Spain, that everyone else had left or just gone home to see family. Derrick kindly offered to put me up, but he was an hours train ride from Barcelona. He went to the trouble of checking train times and called me to let me know that there was one leaving at 10:20. Part of me wanted to just find a place in Barcelona then find my way to them Friday morning, but once I arrived I was pretty tired and had time to catch the train, so my decision came easy.

I took the bus into town and then took a short taxi ride to Sants Estacion, where I bought a ticket to Tarragona for about 15 Euros, which I have been told is expensive. There are different companies operating services on the railway and they have different prices depending on how fast the journey is. You can cut the cost in half if you are willing to add an extra 20 minutes to your journey. Sounds like a no-brainer, but when the last train of the evening is the faster, more expensive one, you take what you get.

I arrived in Tarragona just before 11pm, headed out of the station and lit up a cigarette, as usual wondering why the fuck why, and before I was half way through it, Derrick pulled up. I chain-smoked it down, again wondering why the fuck why, threw my bag in his boot and jumped in the car to give my friend a big hug, thanking him for being so kind as to pick me up, put me up, and go out of his way to help me get there. 25 minutes or so later we arrived at his home in a small town called Vallmoll.

The house was lovely, a nice family home. It sat right in front of a quiet road with a small pavement in front and fields opposite, with a backdrop of vineyards and typical Spanish countryside. There was a small front garden separated from the street by a short wall with a fence on top, and a gated driveway. The car parked in the small driveway and as I got out I was happy to see a very fruitful lemon tree above me. I thought they were limes initially as they were still green, but Derrick informed me of the former.

Derrick's wife Rosa welcomed us at the door. I immediately got a positive feeling from the warmth in her smile, and was invited into their home. Derrick showed me upstairs to the room they had set up for me. I dumped my bag and then went downstairs to meet their children, Amy, 6, and Aiden, 2. They were both gorgeous kids, and they soon treated me with the kind of affection that comes naturally to happy, innocent children. Derrick and I chatted until about 4am, remeniscing and catching up on the events in our lives, and just like when we first met, putting the world bang-to-rights. I went out for a couple of cigarettes during the evening, and was told to go out the front of the house so as to not disturb the dogs. I had an image of two loud rowdy beasts, but they turned out to be two lovely, friendly animals. Amy told me that they had rescued them from the street when they were puppies, which I thought was very sweet. Unfortunately they had to give them up before they returned to the USA, and I worried that they might struggle to find homes for two old dogs, no matter how friendly they were.

Before we went to bed Derrick and Rosa asked if I minded watching the children in the morning as they had to drop their car off at the garage and pick up Rosa's parents' car for the day. I was hesitant. I had no problem with watching a 6 year old. Watching a 2 year old who had only just met me the night before I was not too confortable with, but Rosa assured me that they would be asleep until late morning since they stayed up so late the night before. She was right.

When Derrick and Rosa returned, Derrick cooked us all a fried breakfast comprising eggs bacon and pancakes. Lovely. Rosa told me that they did not normally eat such a breakfast, so this was a treat for my benefit! They got more thanks for that. Rosa's sister popped in as we finished eating. She had numerous tattoos, and informed me that she was a tattoo artist. She stayed a short while, and after she left we all squeezed into the car and headed to Tarragona.

I was sandwiched in the back between the two kids, which with their kiddies car seats was not particularly comfortable. They both vied for my attention, Amy grabbing my left arm and hugging me affectionately and Aiden grabbing my left and taking bites out of me with a kind of childish feral excitement. Amy, only six years old, spoke to me in excellent English for her age, which surprised me as well as both her parents, as she did not normally converse in English. Rosa told me that Derrick usually spoke to her in English and she understood what he said, but that she would normally reply in Spanish/Catalan. It was quite amazing that she could speak English so well from hearing her father speak it, despite not having spoken it much herself.

We parked in Tarragona and went walking around the town. Tarragona was one of the major European cities of the Roman Empire, and this is very apparent as you walk around the town. Derrick told me how developers are afraid of starting building projects there as every time they dig down they find more ruins. Work then halts so that archaeologists can survey the area and judge what can be done to preserve the remnants of these historical landmarks. As you walk through the town you can look into many of the shops and see the original walls and sometimes the stone seats that once formed part of the enormous 14,000 seat amphitheatre. It is a beautiful town.

As we walked round the town, little Aiden rode his plastic motorbike, which he called 'Toto' (motorbike in Spanish is 'moto'), being chased by Derrick down every hill we encountered. On one of Derrick's longer downhill chases Rosa took me into the bank to change up money, as you had to have a bank account to do so. She deposited the English and then withdrew Euro, at a rate that turned out to be worse than that at the airport! MESSAGE: Don't trust banks.

As we approached lunchtime I offered to buy them all lunch to say thank-you for their lovely hospitality, but they told me we were going to the beach first since we had the late breakfast, then we would grab some sandwiches on the way to Amy's swimming lesson. I had made a mental note to make sure I did something to show my gratitude, but since they were being such gracious hosts and were politely declining my offers, I decided to make an extra effort to do so.

The beach was clean, the sand was soft, the water was clear, and the gradient in the sea was very slight so it was perfect for beach games. I had my frisbee with me (as I always do these days when the sun is shining!) so after laying my towel down I headed into the water to cool off, before grabbing my frisbee and throwing it deftly out to Derrick in the water. We must have spent at least an hour and a half throwing the frisbee across the waves, launching ourselves through the air and into the water to catch the strays. On one of these launches my sunglasses came off my head. They only cost a tenner or so, so I wasn't too bothered, but I walked a couple of sweeps along the stretch of water we had been playing in trying to find them, Derrick joining me. I had given up on them when a Spanish lad came over and asked if I had lost sunglasses, and that his friends had found some. I went over to the couple he directed me towards, said 'hi' and asked if they had found sunglasses, in the kind of pigeon English you find yourself speaking when talking to 'foreigners', making glasses over my eyes with my fingers. They shook their heads. I smiled. 'No?', turning to the lad who directed me to them and shaking my head, making a kind of 'I don't know' motion with my arms. He came over and spoke to them then told me their friend had put them on and gone up the beach to the shop. He came back shortly and returned them.
"Gracias!"

We left the beach to take Amy to her swimming lesson, stopping on the way at a lovely sandwich bar, one of a chain of restaurants that have won international awards for their food, and it was pretty damn good. I order burger with cured Iberian ham, and caramelised onions, eating it with difficulty when we were back in the car. Amy chomped through her food next to me while Aiden snored quietly on my right.

We get to an outdoor swimming pool about 50m by 30m, on a small hilltop amidst rolling green hills, very quiet and tranquil, with only a few houses nearby. Kids all swim lengths in groups of three or four as the mothers cheer them on or sit by and chat in Spanish. I relax and watch, popping out of the area for a couple of cigarettes. When the swimming is finished the kids play around and I go with Derek to pick Rosa's grandparents up, then we drive to the garage and pick up Derrick and Rosa's car. When we arrive we notice that thieves have stolen the covers from the side indicators on her grandparents car at some point during the day. The mechanic says he can easily get replacements.

We head back to their house, have showers and change. I ask if I can take them all out for dinner to thank them for their hospitality, but they are hesitant because of the kids. It seems as though they might decline for a while, but then they decide to take the kids to Rosa's parents place, which is an amazing country house converted from an old farm, down a bumpy rubbly dirt track. I meet Rosa's cousin and her boyfriend and say hello to her parents again. They have all kinds of mushrooms drying in the house, some of which Derrick tells me are very rare and sought after. I learn that the family have a passion for mushroom hunting, taking frequent trips to find them. I am told that they are frequently asked to reveal where they find some of the rarer ones, but they keep it a family secret.

We leave Rosa's parents' place and drive to the restaurant, after a short while heading down an unlit road much like the one that leads to their house. I feel like I am being let in on some local secret, as you would never find this place unless you knew exactly where you were going. We are driving for a good ten minutes down the dark track before we find the place.

Out of the darkness emerges a faint light and we turn into a rubbly car park with what I estimate to be at least 40 cars. This place is popular! We head through into the restaurant. The eating area is open to the sky and contained within walls covered with green foliage. I am happy to hear dub and reggae playing from an unseen speaker hidden in the foliage somewhere, loud enough to hear clearly but not so loud that I have to raise my voice in conversation. There is a lovely atmosphere.

As we enter, Derrick and Rosa speak in Spanish to one of the waitresses, who is surprised that they have turned up without a reservation. They know her as she is a teacher like them, but she also waitresses in the summer. We are given the choice of waiting for a table to become free or eating in the waiting area, which looked much more chilled. We sat down and it took Derrick to point out to me that the entire area was constructed of packing pallettes, even the seating, which had large cushions spread across it. I never would have noticed if he hadn't pointed it out.

We order a beer each and then look at the food menu. It all sounds very good, and we decide to all choose something and then share. I order 'coca bread pizza', which is a traditional Catalan pastry with raw pizza toppings: goats cheese, peppers, rocket and olives. Very tasty. I also order guacamole nachos for us all to share. I forget what Rosa and Derrick ordered, but I remember all the food being delicious.

When we have finished our meal I pick up the bill, which is surprisingly cheap given the quality of the food and the popularity of the venue. We only had a bottle of beer each and shared one after we finished eating, which probably explains part of that! We relax and chat about all kinds, I tell them what I have been up to in London the last couple of years and they tell me what they have been doing, and their plans for the future. It was a lovely evening and I feel happy that I have done something to thank them for their hospitality.

We leave and pick up kids, who are curled up asleep on the sofa. Rosa picks up Aiden, who is completely naked and out for the count. Amy wakes up and throws her arms up at me so I pick her up and carry her to the car. Makes me feel a strange sense of comfort, and I consider the idea of having my own kids one day. We drive home and all go straight to bed, ending a long but lovely day.

I wake up leisurely Saturday morning and start going through Derrick's large collection of E-books and copy a load of them onto my hard drive, everything from science, to languages, philosophy, cooking, gardening, and more. I spend a good hour and a half going through them, only getting about half way through before deciding I have enough for the time being.

I pack my bag up and tidy my room, then dump my bag down by the door and sit in the front garden with Aiden, who keeps picking his toys up and thrusting them towards me with a big smile, making sounds that appear to be randomly combined syllables. His happy confidence tells me that he knows exactly what he means, even if I don't!

Amy has been inside with a piece of paper and coloured pencils for some time, and she emerges with a big smile on her face, presenting me with a picture she has drawn. The page is decorated with delicate coloured swirls and red hearts, and has two people, a smiling man with a kind-of Tin-Tin haircut; me; and a girl with big black curls; her. At the top of the page is the message 'Ilofiu'. I cannot describe the feelings I felt at this sweet young girl showing me such affection. I can only say that it made me look forward to having my own children, and gave me a sense of how protective I would be of them, as I felt for Amy after less than 2 days in her company. I felt admiration and perhaps even a touch of jealousy for Derrick and Rosa having such a beautiful family. Seeing happy children really gives me hope for the future of humanity in this world.

I intended to catch the train to Barcelona at 12:40, but after a scramble to find their car keys, which Aiden had picked up and dropped behind a garden wall, I was aiming for the 13:20 instead. On the way to Tarragona we talk about the influence of the world's media upon children. We share a sense of disgust at the way children's social and emotional development is guided by television, and even if you have no television, by the other children around them, most of whom undoubtedly do. We discuss how a child can be excluded from social groups if they do not watch certain TV shows. This does not just apply to children. We discuss the influence TV has on children's perceptions of sexuality, which when you look at it, is hideous. Children grow up watching 'artists' such as Rihanna, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and others, parading their semi naked bodies in sexually provocative ways on TV throughout the day, and if you've seen the way young girls dance to western pop music, you cannot tell me it does not influence them. On the flip side, many young boys will hear some male Hip Hop stars speak of women with absolute contempt, glorifying the abuse of women as objects of sexual gratification no more important than a vibrating sex aid. People have been conditioned to accept these things as normal. If you don't believe this, consider how your parents or grandparents view such subjects, then tell me we haven't deviated from the morality they tried to instill in us. It didn't happen spontaneously. It was fed to us, and all along people involved in the decision making processes that determine what is fed to us have decided to allow all that is broadcasted. I think that is a very important thing to remember; that this is all a result of conscious decisions by people in positions of power. Follow that thought to its conclusion and you will find those conclusions quite disturbing.

We arrive at the station but are a bit early, so we continue our discussion at a park nearby while the kids climb about. We talk about how parents can guide their children and warn them about the things we have discussed without making them mistrust the world, and without breaking their innocence too soon or alienating them from you or the world. It is a difficult question. Not one that I feel I can answer, even if I was confident of one. I tell them I feel it is of paramount importance to be as honest as possible with your children. Every time they find our you have told them something that is not true, they trust you a little less, respect you a little less, and your guidance loses its influence. That is the best opinion I have to offer them.

We walk round to the station and I buy a ticket, before popping outside to smoke a cigarette quickly. Derrick joins me and I tell him again how lovely it has been to stay with him and his family, wishing them luck for the future and promising to try and get out to the US one day to visit. He tells me I will be welcome any time. I put my cigarette out, pick up my bag and head to the platform.

And so it's goodbye! I give Derrick a big hug and thank him again, telling him how lovely it has been to see him again. I kiss Rosa on both cheeks and give her a hug, thanking her for putting me up with her lovely family. I bend down to Amy's level and give her a big hug, thanking her for the lovely picture she drew, promising to come visit them in the US one day. Aiden looks like he doesn't understand what's going on. I give his hair a ruffle and say goodbye, then turn back to Derrick and Rosa and repeat.

I am leaving from the opposite platform so I head down the stairs and walk through a tunnel to the other side. The whole family waves goodbye to me from across the tracks and then walks out of the station. I feel quite emotional. The train arrives ten minutes late, and then I am on my way back to Barcelona again.

'Return to Barcelona: Part 1' - DONE!

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 Thirty Fifth Blog of Trig - Schizophrenic's Escape

I open my eyes but I can’t see anything. I am lying face down in my bed and my clothes are on. I lie here for a while longer, drifting in and out of dreamy places, before I start stirring and stretching a little. Streetlamps illuminate the curtains so that there is enough light in my room to see the things around me. I check my phone for the time and it is exactly 3:30. If it had been 3:33 I would have frozen for a moment, thinking of the 666 connection. Have you ever woken up to find it is 3:33 in the morning? I have. It is a little unsettling. Then I remind myself that I don’t believe in ‘God’ or the ‘Devil’ and laugh. But it was 3:30 on the dot, and I sat up and looked around me. There is a joint and a small bud of cheese wrapped in cling film next to me, my phone near my feet, and a cigarette box next to that.

Last night I came to my parents house after work, which was goddamn awful. I’m suffering a severe case of holiday blues having just come back from Thailand. I had dinner with my parents and then rolled a joint and smoked it outside. Then I asked my brother if he was ready for a game of chess but he was doing something, so I sat down feeling rather stoned and played the guitar. I can’t play much but I love messing around. I strummed the few chords I know and exhausted the variety of styles I could find to play with them today. When Mat is ready we play chess, but he is not on form and I decimate him quickly. Then I say goodnight, roll a joint in my room, and grab some porn and have a wank, getting scared once or twice that someone might walk in. When I’m finished I wrap a tissue, put my cock away and fall asleep on the bed.

I awake and it is 3:30am. The joint I rolled earlier sits by my side, eager to be smoked. I am happy to oblige. It is cold outside and I send a moment’s thought to all the hapless smokers and outdoor people who must endure a bad winter. Then I wonder why I am smoking this joint at 3:30am. Then I wonder why anyone in this world does any of the pointless, horrible, unbelievable, mundane, and downright fucking amazing things they do. Maybe they do it to escape, as I think I do. Consciousness is a curse in this concrete and metal jungle we’ve been grown into.

The next morning I wake late due to the joint at 3:30am, which was followed by an hour or so of writing, and by 9am I am on an underground tube train watching people mind their own ‘busyness’. I think the reason most people avoid eye contact on the tubes, and pretty much in general, is the coldness in everyone’s eyes. It reflects the emptyness and dissatisfaction in their hearts. People are told to separate their work and personal lives, to forge split personalities that they switch on and off each day at times designated by a contract. The tube is where the have their ‘transition time’, where they prepare themselves to transform from ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ into their daytime personas.

We are Jekkyl and Hydes, but unlike Dr Jekkyl we did not inflict this upon ourselves. That implies free will. We were born into a family then sent to school and maybe shipped off to uni, and by the time we are able to acknowledge our ‘free will’, it is so bent that it can no longer be called ‘free’. We are more a list of career potentials now, picking our careers with no idea or maybe no interest in the persona we will have to adopt every day in order to ‘do well’, and usually no idea or interest in the ‘bigger picture’ of what our work will be contributing to.

Some people absorb their work-imposed ‘job description’ personalities and have trouble maintaining a ‘healthy’ ‘social life’. Some people shun their positions and try desperately to hold on to something ‘real’, stopping them from ‘doing well’ for the company. Most in this category will break under the financial pressures of wanting a partner, a family, material possessions (which are usually requirements for the former in today’s ‘civilised’ ‘Western’ society), and to a large extent (~60-80% of their waking lives) they will become their jobs. Politicians make changes which promise for a harsher, more corrupt world in the future, then cuddle their children to sleep and tell them it was just a bad dream. Parents drink and smoke, but tell their children not to do touch either on pain of cancerous death. Couples fall out over lies told, but the lies go both ways. Parents sell drugs to the local kids, but tell their own kids not to go near them. Of course the same kids will be selling the drugs back to their offspring in a few years, and the cycle of dishonest hypocrisy perpetuates. Let me repeat that: DISHONEST HYPOCRISY PERPETUATES.

Dishonesty perpetuates itself. I think there is a belief among the dishonest that life is easier if you are able to act with dishonest intent when ‘required’. This is a fallacy. I was brought up in a non-religious family, but had a strong moral upbringing. The honesty I have attempted to maintain throughout my life has been infinitely easier to achieve than the perpetuation of some of my smallest lies. The only way I could ever be whole is if I could eliminate all dishonesty from my life, and unite all the subtly different yet distinct personas I have created for dealing with the different people in my life.

Have you ever told a secret to someone you had been dishonest to or even just kept quiet about an issue around, and felt free and refreshed? I have. That relief is the breaking down of a wall separating two personas; you, and the filtered you; which is you minus the ‘lie’ you had been sitting on. That lie has been hiding behind a wall of dishonesty, a subconscious barrier which you erected through a conscious decision to keep something from someone. Breaking this barrier brings you closer to that person. These barriers split you into pieces and prevent you from being whole.

It seems impossible to completely unite all the personalities you store for the different people you encounter, but it is not. Only fear prevents this. You are afraid that some people might not want anything to do with you, because they don’t like the aspects of your life and personality which you normally keep hidden. Well fuck those people. Be yourself! Those who matter will be there still. Those who don’t will be gone. You will be an honest, complete person, with nothing to hide. The people who really matter will still be there, whether they have their own personal feelings about your life or not. Make sure you are always honest, to those around you and to yourself.

Some people may try to impose their ideas onto you; allow them this; and allow yourself to listen and understand their words. You do not have to follow them if you do not agree. You do not even have to explain to them why, but be honest as far as possible, even if your honest position is to tell them that you don’t want to explain yourself.

The weekend worship of people working 9-5 is due to the fact that for most people this is the only time they can be themselves. The reason most people don’t enjoy their work is that it is not their work, it is someone else’s. They are adopting a personality dictated by the rules of a job description. Create your own job description.

Unite yourself.

'Thirty Fifth Blog Of Trig'

The Twenty Third Blog Of Trig - High Definition

One day long ago, I remember trying to remember something (!), and in the process of attempting to remember that thing, whatever it was, I noticed that my thought mechanism had changed. Thought had up until that point seemed something separate from language. Thought was a liquid, formless thing which I translated in approximation into the finite mechanical medium of language, but on this day I noticed that I was different, that my thought mechanism had been changing in a fundamental way since I began to learn the words for things. My thoughts had adopted language, slowly abandoning the clarity that existed before lingual definition, separating my psychological being into components which argued with each other in words rather than working together harmoniously. The fluidity of thought that I remembered seemed to have been highly objective, as I observed and interacted with the world with a limited knowledge of the definitions that link memories together. As I learned the words we have assigned to things, I linked together my memories involving each definition, creating a database associated with every single definition I held. As I grew more experienced and the memories associated with each definition expanded, the colonies of memories and experiences linked to each definition became the thing being defined, and my thought and experience grew increasingly more subjective, seeing the world as the memories I had for each definition. Subsequently my thought had become less and less objective as I got to 'know' the world, and my thinking became a construct of words more than free-flowing ideas.

The Indian philosopher/psychologist/preacher Jiddu Krishnamurti often asked how we can know that which is new, that which we do not already know, and his conclusion was that anything that was a product of thought could not be new, since it was a product of that which we already know. When we name things in language, we create a title within our minds, a definition, under which we place experiences and memories, which link to each other through associative connection and similarity of definition. When we are young and someone points out a dog, and tells us that is 'a dog', we will refer back to that the next time we see a dog, or something that resembles a dog, and call it such. We will place that new experience under the same category as the last that resembled it. A child sees the differences between one dog and another, but will classify them as the same thing through similarity and association and place them under the same title; every 'dog' is 'a dog', and is defined by the chain of memories placed under that title of definition. Does this influence perception? Undoubtedly. A person who is bitten on their first encounter with a dog will hold that memory under the dog definition for ever, seeing every dog as a potential bite.

Can we revert back to the clarity of thought we practiced before language categorized our minds, without losing that which we have learnt? It is a difficult idea to practice, since it involves 'thinking without thinking'. It is certainly something that must be studied through the kind of mental practice we have named 'meditation'. It cannot be attained through 'conventional thought', which is a complicated associative process working through an increasingly experienced lifetime of memories and definitions, involving more and more processing as our experience of this world builds. It must surely be achieved through a clear mind; clear of the languages we have learnt to define everything by, clear of the resulting thought processes we have accustomed ourselves to over the years. We must re-learn the underlying structure of our minds by unraveling the lingual definition structure we have built; easier said than done, and not particularly easy to say.

The irony of all this post is that I am using the definitions of language to describe the psychological limitations that the definitions of language impose upon us, and advocating their deconstruction in that very same medium. I am attempting to make a creation of language which advocates its' own destruction. Can it work? Who knows.

This is 'The Twenty Third Blog Of Trig', signing off.