Hmmm!? Laid up, unwell, at home. Ironically due, I think – thinking and knowing are two different things; a theme for this post? – to our 13th wedding anniversary meal, at the above pictured pub, on Monday.
Teresa’s birthday was last week, and the day after was ‘friday the 13th’. She always remarks on being grateful not to be born on the 13th. And I usually reply that it’s only a number.
So next I’m looking for a ‘lucky 13’ image for another blog post. Poss’ even the one that mentions going out for the meal? Anyway, here I am, thursday, having had to come home early yesterday, just over half way through my teaching, due to the diarrhoea I’ve had ever since said anniversary meal on monday.
Next comes the dystopian experience of trying to see a doctor locally. Even just trying to contact the doctor is so thoroughly depressing – the amount of time and effort required, to only eventually be fobbed of with a totally inadequate response – it’s truly appalling.
When I reflect on this train of events, I’m not at all inclined towards superstition. But for some reason I think that puts me in a minority. And not a happy one either. I can’t recall who said it. But someone said the most common element in the universe is not x (carbon, or whatever element from the periodic-table it may be), but stupidity. I’m inclined to agree.
This connects to another long term theme of interest to me. The ‘human condition’. Or, for that matter, the ‘animal condition’, or – why not go the whole hog? – life. What’s it all about, Alfie?
Robert Crumb’s Mr Natural is apt here: ‘Mr Natural! What does it all mean?’ ‘Don’t mean sheeit!’ Or, coming at it all rather differently, this one:
What’s the point of the pursuit of truth or greater awareness if the truth is unpleasant and greater awareness just leaves one depressed? This is obviously why the human mind/brain favours encouraging or reassuring (or in some other way utilitarian) nonsense.
But, to get back to Nr Natural, and his frequent partner, Flakey Foont, for a moment… there’s also this’n:
I’m 50 now. And without kids. For most of humanity’s brief existence on this planet I’d be unlikely to have lived so long. And what have I done? If I was anything like Crumb, I might be far more candid than I’m going to be. But unlike Crumb I haven’t turned confessionals into a form of self-therapy livelihood. So I’ll keep schtum!
But, just as with my life writ large, this post lacks focus. To try and tether it to earth and bring it back; I was motivated to post it very largely due to the dissatisfactions of certain aspects of modern life. And in particular the gulf between the whole ‘promise of fulfilment’ that the cyber-domain so powerfully exerts, and the reality of social isolation and disappointment that it all too often actually delivers.
But try as I might, I cannae help but digress (although I do feel my wanderings are all connected!)… As I move through life I see that some folk appear much better integrated into things than others. But that still leaves a great many less so. And appearances can be deceptive. One might be even worse off if compelled to appear to fit in happily if it’s just a front.
Such lines of thought are totally normal for me. And possibly just habitual. Maybe they’re even/also not useful or productive? But I seem unwilling or unable to wean myself off of them. For better or worse such thinking seems to have become my nature.
And then I think about folk I know, eg, some friends and/or some family, who appear to go at life differently. I’m thinking now of the religious believer folk. To me their belief seems like a form of madness or mental illness. It seems to totally fly in the face of easily and daily observed reality.
But I can see, sort of, why they might behave as they do. It might be – I believe it’s clearly the case – that humanity has evolved such that in order to function we need to be capable of believing utter nonsense. That in fact we might function – possibly both individually and collectively – better, or even at our best, only by labouring under delusions that bear no real scrutiny.
I have to confess I find such thoughts rather scary and depressing. But then again I also find quite a lot of life scary and depressing.
And, rather strangely, given my stance on religion in general and Christianity in particular, it makes the Biblical myth around the tree of knowledge, in which awareness/consciousness is a curse on humanity, a very apt and powerful if disturbing insight.
But then again, having said all this, maybe, as Shakespeare (and many other writers) was occasionally wont to do, I can attribute all this dark foreboding to impaired digestion? It’s certainly true, in my experience, that physical ill health is a breeding ground for the toxic germs that also feed into mental ill health.
All this rambling discursive cogitating seems to me to eternally run circles around the plethora of thoughts that teem, inchoate (I love that word!), on one’s mind!
Another prompt for this post was the state of public healthcare in the UK these days. I’ve already alluded to this above. And a similar thread, but possibly even worse, could be spun regarding dental health, as well. But that’s another story for another post.
Rather serendipitously, whilst typing this, during a quick Facebook fix, I saw a post from a fellow drummer, on a drummer’s FB Group. That post concerned the ‘black dog’. And I wanted to chip in with my ha’porth. But I decided not to. ‘Cause, although I’m a lot better (I think?) than I once was, I felt the overall current state and my ‘outcome’ might not be helpful to the OP.
Is one of the reasons I’m happier these days due to my having more or less abandoned my musical dreams? If one is continually barking up the wrong tree, at what point does one concede this and adjust, rather than battering one’s fragile ego against a hard unrelenting reality?
And – uh-oh, getting ‘deep’ – what is reality? The great thinkers and the more subtle philosophies all converge around ideas of our perception of reality as an illusion. And yet, deep down, we all know, intuitively, that, to use the parlance of the street, ‘this shit is real’.
And so my post comes full circle. From wildly discursive digressions back to my bowels! And I can’t escape the reality that right now my digestive system is screwed. And I can also see how it’s been affecting me psychologically. As well as being washed out and queasy, I’m pissed off and angry!”
