Ages in Chaos

Homes emptied, Worlds in turmoil, Ages in chaos, aftermath of UK riots and fires cleaned up, hurricane Louise blown out. Economies re-recovering after sub-prime fiasco, and Europe’s president Manuel Baroso tells us that integration will bring hope quite soon. But, now at last Ecomarsho has had to move from flat, as the ‘big business’ takeover, large housing management syndicate ousts old small seedy housing “coop”, and eviction, finally happened. Representatives of two housing groups, 5 burly Police officers and repossession bailiffs loomed in the doorway, while various east-europeans and squatters who may have been seen on BBC Crimewatch programme looked on, bemused; honest Eco-monk made hasty departure… but I don’t recall ever receiving a warrant notice for eviction on that date. As a point of interest, Richard Branson of the Virgin Empire has had his domestic tycoon plans revamped it seems – good job he escaped when his holiday home burnt down – street cred renewal needed after blazes in London cities maybe, or perhaps he does not take the same view as overworked, over emphasised Conservatives, not to mention the Fosters and Fossets of this world, might have it re old issues and current politics, end to Gadaffi, poison in Syria, homeless thousands in Japan and Sudan, etc (don’t be vague, ask for Hague!?). However, the upshot of it all is that I now have to use the grotty mobile phone I was sent before the syndicated assault, and being a man of unpretentious means, I have had to find somewhere, without money, security, possessions or credentials.

Hostels and cheap supermarket bargains were my survival means initially, the city’s most basicly human succourance – and fine chapel friends just seemed to think I was wrongly classified. But so many people in hostels these days use the web and mobiles… a quick check at a local library tells me I can volunteer for Crisis and/or assist Shelter in their campaign – there ought to be a right for single homeless people to emergency housing. Discussion with my former M.P. re political and legal issues. Of course, over the recent year deemed relevant, there was some kind of due process of law as the flat repossession business went through Court (- and “anyone knows” you cannot claim that little and large conflated ‘collective’ housing organisations are anything but sociable or can ever be in breach of contract when of manner so definite propelled and justified by “long overdue” road-widening scheme) …or was there? It becomes clearer now why major news events and political morality don’t fit easily as subject matter for academic works.

Religions have long been studied, but the nature of the focus changes in adaptation for explicate subject matter; possibly also why psychology of morality can generate vast amounts of direction/outcome bound discussion while of interest in intuition or psychic events, practically none from the initiate’s point of view. “How fragile this process of civilisation,” say the Buddhas. “Impermanence”. “Suffering”. The archaic view once held more widely in this country (UK) was that military imposition and familial responsibility results in empirical truth, physically, by force of pressure, social or otherwise. Thanks to my family for moving all my stuff chaotically evacuated by “team” of helpers from old place, but my bicycle, along with educational certificates and much else much “needed” is now stowed away somewhere in the Midlands. Thanks also for the support when it turned out that all the London hostels, mindful of empirical needs on the part of their managers, double or triple their fees at the weekends. However, now I am washed and clean, 300 years or more worth of cultural sophistication and intricate protocol has been swept away and I have little else to do but twiddle my thumbs, walk, and apply for an indeterminate job opportunity…

A little bird told me that all you need to have to manage and operate a large social needs organisation is to have the ambition and more than a little desire for power over others – just like the large and recently much criticised finance management syndicates and banks are said to operate. Time was when the law protected a sitting tenant who has nowhere else to go and no means of sustaining basics of life and social existence if all in the house is seized and taken from him. Surely there ought to be a requirement in law for an organisation which claims to be about housing needs to continue to be about those things when it takes over houses in which people are already resident and whose educated values, living standards and health could be severely damaged by being simply pushed out. The high faluting notion that the action was really being taken to improve properties and give chances for small families to own houses instead of mature people in separate flats will not bear good fruit. A natural sequence of events takes place when it is discovered that despite road improvements outside, still few people would want to live so near to a major traffic route, refurbishments and conversion works run over budget, and of course the garden gets full of rubbish, since the people who move in after a theatre newsagent, a brutal noise pollution engineer and a formerly diligent eco-monk can really have little idea for that which nobody has kindly prepared them for.

 

Thaw to Eco-Monk Spring

Months ago my Webhost appeared to be the worst obstacle, apart from gardening and pains in the back, as I was struggling to find an alternative to compulsory renewal of services with Heart Internet.  Of course deprivation of rights to transfer is now an old story and the website is now well established at the new URL, www.ecomarshog.eu .  I also got round to the promise made when mindful of winter energy savings (of which, more later), and so the instructions for how to make an Ecomarsho ‘Prometheus’ Lamp are now uploaded as a PDF file with a link from my writings page. 

No winter, apart from freeze up before Xmas, hence much comment but little time for it as I emerge from Eco-Monk hibernation.  Summer saw encroaching squatters’ demolition of the next-door abandoned garden project; not much to say about pumpkins anyway.   Then there was the comparatively moderate tribulation of surviving drifting smoke from barbecue, and the end of Riverlink administration of my housing, after Nottinghill hype merchants and the proverbial bulldozers began work on widening the street outside.  Despite an illegal resident with fixed version ghetto blaster taking over from the quiet one upstairs, indoor craftwork on the little old D-rack-o-9 music box has begun.

Winter in London UK is never that cold, but still we get to pass a few wise comments about energy saving and the greenhouse effect.  The coldest it got to indoors was about 6 or 7 degrees C, and today it was a mild and quite pleasant 11 degrees.  With my little lamps, electric usage is much improved.  From a maximum of 1.8 units per day over xmas period, I’ve now settled down to using 1.3 per day.  The larger solar panel with regulator was a good purchase, and, like the others, makes a good contribution once deregulated.  With bubble wrap window insulation, I’m able to keep it a little warmer for the homeless guest who comes at night and sleeps on the floor, and we have less complaints about carbon monoxide fumes seeping through from next-door’s wood burning activities.  A few draughts from the floorboards are invigorating anyway, and there are encouraging signs of spring growth from the garden anyway – not that I plan to stay here too long…

Well, the ‘Manchurian candidate’ seems to be hatching an alternative sense of engagement, having either too much or too little to say about life and death matters, and I note that David Cameron is making progress – i.e. the “Big Society” idea seems to have little changed since AFE in 1982.  As regards alternatives, the future for exchange seems obscure, but it was amusing in an absurd way to see TV news videos of Egyptians cleaning graffiti off tanks after ousting their boss and demolishing their society.  However, I digress from practical matters, things which really make one reappraise politics from an eco-spiritual point of view… 

There are positive moments amid the negatives and watching those less healthy or growing ineffectually old around one - like catching a rodent after some stolen chewed up sweets… and listening to solar powered radio again.

 

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Inertia’s Gleam, Yet Some Lustre

Gradually we are making some progress, and the news is that BP really has sealed off the Mexican gulf oil leak at last, despite shadier aspects of BPs world dealings being given some shine by industrious news reporters, mostly we have all been able, likewise, to remain calm, if slick.  Meanwhile the peace-keeping armies in training are slogging it out heavily in Afghanistan, pending the attack of the drones, of course.  If there had been a military success, democratic triumph, or even one monk trained for every news story relayed and opened up for general uninformed consensus, the world might be a better place, but so far the costs of tolerance and a long, drawn out process only pall.  However, with an odd ball in the world cup, wind swept golf, bicycle improvements, local earthworks and limbo, and the home PC performing quite well after many hours of transfer, inertia may yet have its positive side.

If it is alot of work just to get back to zero, i.e. a decent starting position, it is a sure sign that someone is heavily indulging in wrong thinking compilations, vested interests that just don’t work the way simple instructions to the collective individual self-maximiser say they do – I seem to remember our new PM David Cameron saying that years ago – not that I now remember what he was seeking to polish, if anything.  With the Liberals busily involved in government, making cuts and so forth, you’d think that an old Eco-Monk would be asked eventually to offer an economical opinion.  As it is, the Police have been into the big time in the north of the country, with high profile deployment and those two major series of shooting incidents.  Is it a coincidence that neither White –haven, nor w Roth –bury have a proper grid reference in my old out of date AA Road Users Manual? However, how a guy can sprout a Mohican hair cut just for the one CCTV news pic and not the next is also a mystery that still makes me think that even the possibility of just two right wing feudal extremists in tandem is not something a progressive culture can assimilate easily.  Does cultural inertia offer reconciliation in the latent quote: have the “Picts been at their shovels again on the M69?” or is all just another sign that for some reason the populace at large has found it necessary to overwork latent jealousies, stereotypes and cliché patterns? Had the Police asked me more about those guys I reported all those years ago, we might have had less waste, but that assumes the awakened mind is ever ready I suppose.

Much work at home in the garden and the pumpkin vines have grown fast, while all evening light is now provided, front and back rooms by solar power and battery store of energy.  The local shops that sell everything for £1 provide those little lights that can be rewired to run off a replenishable supply without so much fiddling with batteries.  However, the last two items purchased from Maplins, normally a good supplier, were rubbish.  If you want a remote control garden shed light with a shoddy design so that it flattens its batteries so rapidly it cannot be left in a “ready to respond” state, I know where to buy one for less than £10.  The one-up Eco-Monk of the decimal currency era can of course swap the lamp for one less greedy, add a non reverse diode to the panel, and reclaim any non-used parts for recycling, however many in the digital age may lack the skills and consider it not worth the bother…  Perhaps a philosophy or way of thinking for those who can otherwise get bogged down is needed…?

Is it not marvellous that all those who are out of work have to do while government makes selective austerity programs is rise and shine and get down to a Jobcentre to fit a less than helpful test of absurdity?  The polish squatters next door have a plentiful supply of wood to cook with and make smoke and even get their mobile phones charged up occasionally, and mostly ignore my gardening attempts.  However there is a sense of need wrongly focussed on my resources that are not really available, my smoke alarm has the pip, and even the pumpkins are discouraged, growing thin, spindly, with small fruit.  Bless their hearts – the diligent workers at my last webhost always seem to be able to send a reply to any query, even if they cannot tell you how to transfer away from their unwanted webhosting services – it’s just that they do not know how, it either does not work for them or they do not have the training!

This mindfulness of the latent value of Ecomarsho Philosophy offers much latent clarity and illumination but also alot of work to write it all up….  …funding also required in large amounts for projects, would enable one to make that worthwhile move.

 

Chaos, Natural Updates, Energy stores, Politics

Read Ecomarsho’s almanac for strange events; better still, read his Eco-Monk blog… If history can be stored in a similar way to the way in which energy is stored in a battery, it sure has some strange results. Smaller holes in a scottish golf course were blocked by fine dust after a volcanic event… Meanwhile, what of the Four Noble Truths? Russian president and Poles reconciled after the former flew to Poland to attend funerary service after deaths of national leaders; twin brother of late polish president in bid to take over presidency in early election. Tibetans in China’s Chichuan region much devastated by earthquake and chinese government extensively involved in rescue and rebuild; possibly 1000 bodies could be consigned to cold river; leading tibetan intellectual arrested for criticising chinese fund raisers as corrupt. You’d think it possible, maybe, for a guy in UK to get a job while frustrated travellers were stranded around the world due to airlines being grounded for safety – now being returned home by various means, including military. Further delays expected, but volcanos do not explain why my Notebook PC was messed up, just before elections here in UK. Despite the expense, delegates from all round the world are now going to China for their world trade exposition, While Greeks discontent with changes to average retiring age of 53 have taken to burning bank staff.  So much is stored and invested in quite ordinary workings of society, and ordinary people have such full agendas that, not being able to see the wood for the trees, they maximise their own role only – we have self maximising empowered bankers, self-maximising empowered computer organisations, self-maximising empowered street rioters, each and every one unconcerned that force of effort and maximising accepted habits begin to work to destroy, rather than to preserve the whole.  Something is needed to update, if not logic or entertainment. 

It is getting on for… more than… a month ago now, but during preceding weeks, I felt a sense of something malevolent aiming at me, accumulated irritations of Chronos, maybe; …mostly mundane weeks however… after taking into account a somewhat novel approach of volunteering to work free-lance, and arranging to transfer my projected trust to a different Jobcentre for good luck.  Relying on nifty little stored solar energy lamps for evening light requires adjusting sleep cycles accordingly.
 But not all cycles turn out to be adjustable as stored energy so easily flips into catastrophe and I must mention something about the bike crash, or its precursors. Precursors to bike incident… 
Someone at Enfield Homes meeting was talking of a copper bicycle.  Persons gathering outside the Jobcentre after it closed, averaged, irrelevant, except one spoke of mysterious clicking of hs bike, and invited to non-existent gig. Ominous occurencess around the home which don’t normally occur.
Bike crash was on day I was due to attend environment exhibition at Olympia, UKAware. Eventually I made it. Last ditch perpetuated animation?  Sports pundits recommend the value of exercise – really back and general fitness exercises are to be recommended before any injury occurs, because resilience enables a faster recovery.  Even so, I have been hobbling around on two dynamic exercise sticks for speedier locomotion for two weeks.

One drawer of the fridge is still full of diced pumpkin, but my 2010 pumpkins have sprouted and have been planted out – all but for the largest of the seeds I collected are growing, with plenty of rich dark compost and added minerals.  The largest of last year’s "sports" a sickly yellow monster, that grew late in the season and, due to damage, had to be harvested before it was fully orange, did not produce good seed, even though left a long while to ripen further before opening. However, makeshift peat pots made from a small roll of newspaper filled with compost are not a good idea – the newspaper harbours fungus and absorbs much needed nutrients.  Signs of a new lot of squatters inspecting the empty house next door – just hope they learn to use the garden gate.

 

Large fox hits fence in daylight with a "blam!" – when last seen, it had mange on its back and tail, so probably wil not live long.

 

My safe user concern versus the Mafia, bike crash info upd ….  also offered witness re prang on N circ one night (29/04). Politics – the news is still full of UK election debates, projected results, etc.  David Cameron unethical in attempting to use murder case for publicity without permission, but all parties, even those long discounted decent society should know that force and dirty tricks will not store up any good for the public.

 

However, real news, projecting a stockpile of environmental irony for years to come, is the ongoing high pressure oil spill, quite some distance from the Haiti earthquake zone, and some time after, in the Gulf of Mexico, which turns out to be another BP fiasco, not absolutely since not their rig but actually, since they will have to pay; to cope, all new drilling is banned until the cause of he disaster is ascertained, but question ought to be raised as to why capping the well was expected to take months when days would be better, and according to recent news, capping has been successful.  Deep water and bad weather make the situation worse.  Neanderthal man did not have those kinds of problems with operatics – er – operating mundane systems – or politics and IT. Default update – we are modern, of course!?

 

Meditators aspire to the best of all possible worlds – from one point of view, that is, a world in which it is possible to become enlightened.

 

Mundane Spring Progress and Precursor Logistics

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps on this petty pace…" 

 (Line quoted from speech by the scrunchback king Richard the Third in Shakespeare’s play)…
 
The air temperature difference is quite noticeable – it is now spring at last, time to experiment with what will grow… maybe even large pumpkin seeds, and moldy ones!?  There are signs of one pumpkin seed (at least) beginning to germinate.  With more daylight comes the chance to invest in available resources and put into effect spending cuts, after relatively horrendous gas and electric bills for the last seasonal quarter.

 

Having a good relationship with Maplins, I swapped one item that did not seem ever likely to work for a mini solar briefcase – a fine increment to my PV charging capacity, but now there’s the concerns about probable battery overload during the summer.  One answer might be to run a fan via a 12.5v zener diode to use the excess, but I guess the battery would still reach 13 volts.

 

However, I’m now running a 4.5v kitchen LED lamp on 12V, using a voltage regulator circuit and storing enough solar energy to use it daily, except for a slight battery sag after an overcast day and when I spend a long time preparing food. Previous to today I was thinking maybe too much dandelion can have cumulative side effects, or I’d not want to stomach vast amounts of it continually, but also one begins to show signs of age when alot of work just to get to a good starting point (file back-up on new Notebook PC) combines poorly with lack of sleep and extra exercise.  Gautama (family name) Buddha of course tested himself to the limit before coming up with the "middle way" theory.  Locally, we have had the Police in and across garden, searching… maybe for lethal skinheads, drugs, bombs, illegal migrants and criminal fugitives… now there do not appear to be any squatters in the house next door.  One prefers to reserve ones energy when there’s little to be said about anything.

 

Newsflash: Ecomarsho’s plans to move north for work guillotined after receiving news from the head of MI5 in Watford about single-minded cranks working the streets of Knightsbridge!!

 

Despite sunny-side up bulges, a small 9 volt block battery will not hold very much, but there is the advantage that it will charge up quickly ready for use. It is quite a pleasing social fait-accompli that the cheap LED torch I have now runs on solar-power 9v without voltage reduction, but via a current-reducing device.  And the simple charging circuit I designed allows a trickle-charge, and shows a red LED light when charge is high enough.  Maybe I’ll get space yet, for a seat in a Faraday cage, so as to pop off through an intergalactic gate, i.e. a recluse contribution to answers to the population problem.    Problem is what to do with such useful bits of info – maybe I’ll publish any useful items on my website, and have a password entry for paying guests and friends of Ecomarsho, when I get round to it.  Meanwhile, if anyone wants a pic of a transistor, they can copy the PNG in the public folder.  In Windows Paint, you can convert to and from Bitmap, flip it around, alter the size, etc…

 

Well, progress is being made with bills – paid and unpaid, but I’m curious as to what will appear on my bank statement after going international with payments (eh… what about time for receipts?) via PayPal.  It seems a long time now since I attended the local Unitarian chapel meeting, when directions and accounts were so briefly discussed, and a humanistic statement of principles agreed on.  OK, necessary progress is made collectively, even though apparently small assets are better considered in "cash-value", and major items such as cottages owned do not appear to be listed assets, but greed, such a problem in politics of the larger world is, in Unitarian circles, latent, rather than actual. On the positive ethics of humanist aims and direction, the variance in actual experience, legal precedents and practicality of collective humanistic evaluation or catharsis mean that still very little can be said about things in the depth of my experience that principle might suggest ought to have been disclosed – or disclosable.

 

So, it is easy to see why the logistics of the mystic way always seem to imply both going quietly amid the noise and bustle, and also a breathtakingly grandiose glimpse of the larger scheme of things, combined with odd snippets of current science and know-how aligned in oft absurd manner.  In UK local version of worldly politics, we have recently had the much as expected budget (meanwhile, news full of various collective ego boosting concerns threatening strikes) with many spending cuts in the aftermath of war.  Before that we had polarised clashing demos, of non-fundmentalists appalled at the karmic ineptitude of desert-trained fanatics.  And before that, the gross spectacle, an abuse of parliamentary procedure, of a UK Indepencence party rep, apparently paid wages solely for doing so, crudely haranguing the newly chosen president in European parliament.  Prince Charles’ very recent extravaganza George Bush-style trip to visit troops in Afghanistan did not convince that character-inflated dramatics can secure real political answers for modern aspirants.

 

Spring is come, if sap is rising, surely, someone must be benefitting from maple syrup, or the equivalent precursor to frennet.

 

Generally useful, much simplified amplified transistor diagram.

 

Of Life and Death, or, What should the modern mystical Eco-Monk blog about?

While there are a large number of persons in our western world who think it quite normal that they should aspire, or even conspire to deprive selected ‘others’ of a social life, we are confronted daily with news of the fragility and ephemerality of life itself in many parts of the shuddery globe.  It seems only a short while ago that I emerged from hibernation, and I’ve been able to do very little about sending aid to victims of the earthquake in Haiti – apart from helping to fill two cash buckets in the local supermarket, that is.

 

Bank statements are over 120 quid down, pending a serial informal committee decision on whether the guys at the government Jobcentre are likely to agree that they have equal opportunity in catching up with my more oblique intellectual comments and education.  But that is not a serious subject, any more than the comments on TV entertainment or politics in the last blog entry were – were the bouyant, ever practical and not bogged down Mr M. Marsh to offer more comment on what news the media have brought, Ecomarsho the Eco-Monk would possibly be as daft as Walderson’s Watch (the latter I think was a quote from my cousin from many years ago).  Mystics, down through the ages, have always written or spoken on the theme of Life and Death – too early in the year and no sign of spring flower bulbs – I think maybe I’m stalked by the ghost of that millionaire foster chap, seeking a more dignified epitaph than an open verdict or a living death perhaps.

 

First signs we get of a cold winter and the some of the empty headed (i.e. replete with agendas of computer games yet to be played) average citizens are starting to moan that maybe scientists have it wrong about the signs of climate change.  Apart from the ongoing sense that those themes that the modern mystics are so concerned about are really so essential to having an alert mind and to civilisation itself, little is offered for political poachers to comment on. After a brief warm period, we are promised cold again – the usual great macrocosmic mystery of an oscillating pattern we have every winter, but as an Eco-Monk, one recognises a different scheme in microcosm, because it is not the temperature, but adjusting to changes that is the problem, along with the partly non-existent heating system, that is. One can wander about the house padded out with weighty layers of extra clothing and blankets, something which may give inspirational ideas to designers of the future, but mild exercise has a tendency to cause symptons of RSI if one is not careful with manoeuvres.  People need to know that, hence the blog of a true mystic can entertain in pointing to the truth as something that would be difficult to portray in terms of ordinary stories and local culture character-building.

 

To keep yourself going is an art, a skill of mature years (which young men in the building trade always know, too early perhaps, from experience).  But the continual rebirth phenomenon is nature’s way also on a subtle level, and the prolific outcomes of it remind one of spring, just as pumpkins and other plants generate more seeds than can ever grow, which explains why the seed companies are always able to offer so many packets of seeds of the really quite rare truly giant pumpkins.  I think maybe the guys at the seed co sit in their kitchens with trays of seeds drying around them, all in a good cause.  I have a fridge full of pumpkin cubes and a demi-jon full of elderberry wine yet to be bottled, and musical craftworks progressing towards creative realisation, so always things to keep me busy.  It seems that the nearest an Eco-Monk should get to Life and Death as a theme is the discovery that dandelion coffee blend is good against tropical parasites – not that most people need a cure, nor ones blog, nor even an answer to why mystical enquiry can have a tendency to touch on military or political concerns but actually has nothing to do with such as that, i.e. popular furtive avoidance and insistence on enquiry on any and every major theme!

 

Just add the obvious answers together and you get a balanced answer as to how progress did occur and will occur, at least that is the version of things often put forward by those who think that a standard version of intelligence will help you to get a life and discard death. Those who seek a spiritual path (or alternatives to propping up the polished path of glossy PR production) in modern times, whether they be based on trad Buddhist scripts or some other mystic way of transcendence are seeking to relate modern lifestyles and know-how to those recurring themes and questions that still have to be asked about, and to some of the ‘modus operandi’ that "have already been made known". So, whether you write it in your blog, or to the government department of work and pensions, it is not that the Tories want to seize power and instantly make cuts, nor even that Prince Charles wants to come to the fore and go on the rampage before anyone else does, nor yet that force of necessity obliges those with most power to inflict the results of recession on those least able to defend themselves.

 

Doubtless the Roumanian girls I saw in the squat house next door in warm weather last autumn, but who have not been seen since, are well catered for by the men who frequently enter and leave, and people up and down the country and elsewhere are beginning to improve their energy saving solutions, even if not into compleat space-age recycling, and the next cosmic quest.  Humanity will still need its goals and purposes, and Mr Obama’s decisions on budget, although wise and welcomed as a solution to current needs, do not give much for the stuck-in-the-mud averaged Brit to blog about.

 

Ordinarily hot and cold media?

Much time spent with goggle-box, having transcended most latent storms in teacup. Seasons pass on… it is no longer autumn and the more or less obligatory xmas pud is over… time to tidy up the rest of 2009 before the New year begins. A needy little Roumanian guy moved in to the disused house next door with his two female friends; they were busily working away like elves for the first day or so, clearing, tidying, repairing… every day since, a few short sessions of banging, indicating more construction and repairs.  Apparently the guy has work in construction, from what I could make of language interpolations.  I conservatively offered him water on tap if he wanted to do the work so I could run a pipe from inside, but so far the need has not motivated him. However, I brought in the rest of the garden produce – green unripened tomatoes will go to make chutney, and leaving them, once chopped, in the bottom of the freezer is a low energy way of evaporating some of the excess water.  After that, there was snow, so no chance to find even a miniscule beetroot.  A couple of english cockney speaking men went into the house after Xmas; now, whether the Roumanians are still there also, and if they are OK I cannot say.

Here, indoors, I have bottled up the last brew of dandelion and burdock ale in recycled plastic milk containers, and I try to keep the temperature above 6°C.  The transcendent mind is not concerned with attachment to form, but even so, warmer hands move better in playing guitar. Plenty of thermal layers makes one ready for the assault of Christmas TV on the senses – oh for the balmy life of a troglodyte!  No person has actually asked me for an experienced opinion or perspective on any matter, so it seems I have to limit myself to comment on the media, signs of our times of effervescent foment, when every show has to be more powerful in its dramatic effect on viewers than the last – Merlin went beyond expected limits in releasing Uther’s penned dragon and getting let off for nearly destroying Camelot, now Dr Who and the Time Lords are set to mediate the end of time itself for us, and  the TV Network premiere of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a sheer poetry-transcendent psychedelic chaotic vamp of a celebratory pantomime powered by computer aided media effects, with all roles assumed well known and not a single one credible beyond its temporary artistic impact. In contrast, the older 1998 film version of Merlin, shown the other night, had an archaic 1950′s style reminding of an older story-telling tradition, what Marshall MacCluhan would have ordinarily described as a colder medium.

Just recently, news media reminded us of the other, utterly ruthless side of drama in power politics.  British politicians condemned the insular Chinese government attitude for their decision to carry out the execution of a man who had no other story to tell than that he was mad enough to be devoid of responsibility.  Amnesty International and others gave voice to moral concerns in the face of no account being given of the ordinary human’s apologist for simple understanding, but I could not help wondering if the man had not possibly brought his own tainted karma on himself instead of heroin addicts.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the US president had to be recalled from holiday after a facetious attempt by a nigerian, with the backing of multiple plotters and schemers, to blow off his balls with plastic explosive on a plane landing in Detroit.  It is typical of media response that we get to hear about such things whatever the season, but computer games featuring maming and destruction remain popular toys, while eco facts, such as education statistics and population figures are dry facts that don’t compete as well as sporting results.  It is now a couple of months now since the big russian neanderthal type guy, ValueV, lost out in the boxing world title clash, but it was, in a way, sad to think one was seeing the last or the best of him.

Neanderthals, so the anthropologists told us in the popular BBC series not long ago, were physically larger and more robust than modern human types, and some had a larger brain size, but, although they had tool use and capability for swift hierarchical thought, as far as is known they lacked the imaginative power to indulge in art and religion (Homo erectus, much researched by chinese anthropology had less brain than both).  Perhaps sport means more than the game – but what?  Of course, I did not watch the big match – it is a precept for a Buddhist to observe, that one should not misuse the senses.  Interestingly enough, the visiting speaker from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, who came to give a talk recently in a series of meetings organised by local Unitarians, had it that the precept should be read as instructing the devotee not to indulge in sexual misconduct, but for those mystics and lay people who seek via meditation, the concern in retaining the possibility of tranquil ity has wider implications.  Maybe there would have been better conditions for decisions to be made at the recent climate change conference at Copenhagen had protesters not insisted on breaking into the building and assaulting the senses of participants.  News media reported Prince Charles pontificating, Danish PM taking over, an African group of nations holding out against limited token, Obama latterly encouraging strength of purpose, and protesters fighting against Police and property much as with every other issue, but mention of the overall carbon footprint was considered so unimportant that it is surprising that the meeting ended with some accord, even if not really all that conducive to enlightenment.

Perhaps we should be solving more problems – more talk, less unconsidered action, and not so much talk.  The month of December was ushered in, prior to the festive season, with reminders from BBC Crimewatch TV of horrors that society has yet to fully deal with, and ents are not always helpful in focussing thought.  In one terrrible, apparently motiveless and non-political atrocity, a Midlands woman was set alight outside a church and Police appealed for information.  Problem solution: if it was an outlaw drug Gang, their thinking would not offer an option of asking Police to investigate something similar done to them elsewhere (not near a church or in same town), so their chaotic option would be to punish where they might have influence.  One that was not in the Crimewatch content was in news previously – an asian woman was found with hand cut off near London’s Sunrise radio building.  How can an ordinary person free their perceptions from such things or even get near to knowing the truth?  If only a matter of continuing on a previous theme, I would be looking for a art guillotine missing from my old school up the A1 40 miles away.  Let’s hope the real culprit is caught.

My old school classmates were not really so bad as that, and not always as bad as one might have guessed from my last blog entry. They would probably, like me, deplore the ritual execution of a physicist for purposes of social satisfaction in the recent final episode of the TV drama "Paradox". However, one can participate in a season for goodwill whatever ones cultural mind-set, although right mindfulness is such as that cannot always be communicated.  Attending a ceremony celebrating pagan connections with our local Unitarians, I overheard two people in conversation over coffee afterwards, one referring to "far-right wing associations" of some pagan adherents and groups.  It is a fact, and thought is little facilitated by fatuous, entertaining but undetailed BBC news reports such as was given, of "an increasing widespread interest" in pagan activities.  A redeeming factor is, perhaps, that the modern activity, motivated by humanistic psychology and women’s sense of simple connectedness to nature is alot different.  Buddhist culture embodying acceptance of nature is different again – I also enjoyed celebrations held by Tibetans in mindfulness of the aspirations implied in Dalai Lama’s Nobel Peace prize achievement. The rhythmic dance, music and food was also good.  Now I am looking forward to the New Year, and also to some better answers to what bugged me in the last year.

 

If the war must go on

If the war must go on – I am reminded of a book by Hermann Hesse with a similar title.  In earlier years, I found his books had much appeal to me in their themes – others with titles such as "Journey to The East", "The Glass Bead Game", "Siddhartha" and "Steppenwolf" – although the stodgy translation and archaic style made reading them a little more of a struggle.  The TV news reports that the ex-boyfriend of murdered Rachel Nickell is now playing the Courts for a big-time payout and whether or not he was still seeing her was not mentioned – pity about the identikit double and Colin Stagg the builder, who seemed innocent enough when as a handyman I travelled in his Land Rover. I doubt that the Police will want to pay, especially if anyone guesses that Napper was pushed aside during a rape by the real heavy guy murderer.  I’d wonder why how come my father managed to get his photo taken in a distorting mirror when the rapist happened to be Johnny Cash on a beyond limits UK binge tour, but then, memories of a somewhat more energetic past have been, since school days, the bane of my life, to use an archaic term. 

 

It was over two weeks ago now, awake in the middle of the night, I heard a bit of a dog-like bark or yelp and a cat-like yowl.  I was wondering whether to intervene. Standing listening in the dark kitchen, I heard the sound repeated with the yelp reduced to a plaintive whistle… …then again at intervals, a whistle followed by a "yiaou!" every 8 seconds or so, for what seemed an interminable time.  Evidently a neighbour’s cat had a fox cornered in a garden nearby – no immediately local, but one of the houses further along the bleak north circular road.  I eventually took a look out the front door, but the sound had stopped on return indoors.  Brer fox was let off, I suppose.

 

The news is full of ‘plebiscite debate’ on the Afghan problem and which wealthy world power will pay for an arid triumph.  A wonderful result of education for the masses is that everyone who knows little about the situation has a moral viewpoint to advance.  A serious difficulty still remains in maintaining a position in a country where culture emphasises tribal warfare and the means to embroil.  If no investment in arms by the civilised, aspiringly eco-friendly nations then can one justify attempts to educate people, who have shunned peaceful meditation, in the dignities of democracy?  But, would anyone in charge ask my opinion?  I found it not at all surprising that so many ballot papers were the same, but it probably really only meant that the people wanted the counters’ jobs to be easier…  …and a simple answer for the military would be to just get rid of the Taliban and get the hell out; return later if need be.

 

The autumn season has brought a battle of attrition to the garden.  I have gathered in vast quantities of tomatoes that did not ripen, and just now I don’t recall what I was suppose to have gleaned from the annual "Battle of Ideas" in October, that I mentioned in my website "London Arts and Futures Events" news.  Several days, I have been out across the road and brought back a large dustbin bag full of fallen leaves.  The local Jobcentre is too full of training needs, unfilled government quotas, and petty staff ambitions to consider my accumulated totals running into thousands of job applications made over the years, and must-needs try to monitor my every movement to prove that, however enlightened he may have been, an average(d) man must be made to fit into the ancient british regime of performance by goads and pressures.  So, they have paid me nothing, and it is now me who is looking forward to dying of cold or starvation, once they have stolen everything gleaned by thrift.

 

Feasibility – there must be limits, and with market demand when one is not in vogue; I remember that I had such vague thoughts many years ago, when in the solar heating business – years before independent work on philosophy and psychology studies studies.  In the most recent BBC TV Question Time programme there was a young guy, with well-tempered anger, bemoaning the fact that it is difficult to find work in a recession, and asking how it could possibly be so that immigrants should naturally find work so easily.  Perhaps the answer is that our educated working men lack the ingredients for crazy scheming hothead nature, but more likely it is that education creates the individual as a personalised exception and recruiters find the social process of enlisting people to join the UK cultural mix an easier task.  Simple – they don’t have to face the political task of teaching Afghans at home.

 

Early education in politics was, for me, a non-starter.  One of the two big guys in our country market town school class in Bedfordshire was not content with a new guy, who happened to be called G. Brown, and who had "big ideas" because of mentioning that he might have political ambitions (even though he was not called Jim or James like so many US presidents).  I was asked, could I borrow G. Brown’s protractor – so of course, as a school boy challenged to a trivial prank, I did, but there was some discussion of permissions.  Some time later, G.B. was lying down on on the school rugger field, after play had gone up the field, and I playfully prodded him with my foot, asking why he was still there, apparently unharmed. Perhaps it was another Jim, but a boy then turned up and showed me how to be more vigorous than prodding with my foot, then others came up and set upon poor G. Brown en masse, one also pushed me into the gang, before the teacher belatedly arrived.

 

The results of education were that G.B. gained his school boy credentials with an eye like Odin the norse god, I left school with the implicit task of understanding the whole of human culture, but soon wandered into a gang of boozy politically biassed viking and medieval pageantry anachronists.  It took a few years to work out which ones should be reported to the Police and why.  Left alone, it might have made a good book, pages in the wind, or letters, I suppose.  Life prior to embarking on the holy way, right mindfulness, etc…         

 

Emerging Projects in a Garden of Hobbies

Hobgoblins more likely, only I have not chopped them all up yet. Time flies, and of the vast number of serious and momentous subjects I could have written of in my blog, hardly any time now for a mention of any, and there are sure signs the summer season is over. Fresh edible leaves are getting hard to find on the grapevine, while many bunches of grapes are lying on the ground rotting in wet grass, where they have lain since the vine was irreverently hacked down by warlike trolls masquerading as housing workers. However, I’m still bringing in a few air-dry grapes, also tomatoes, small onions, mini beetroots and tucking into pumpkins – such are the benefits of extending the gardening hobby into abandoned land next door, giving an additional three times the size of the available area for cultivation.

 

The London Mayor did advocate bringing disused land back into cultivation – he must have meant eco-projects run by eco-monks. There is news of Ecomarsho’s Pumpkins Project, 2009, at:

               http://www.ecomarshosgame.com/Pumpkproj.htm

I have included a useful little program for anyone with an uncarved halloween pumpkin, that they might consider to be of reasonable size, to estimate the weight of it – without even having to pluck it from the vine, since all one has to do is take the two measurements in centimeters.

 

Garden produce in the form of two brews sits quietly in the kitchen now – Elderberry Wine only faintly bubbling now, and the Dandelion and Burdock Ale has stopped pushing its lid up. Aside from that, there has been much chaos, and I sense the cold air of winter gradually cooling the house, the need to don more clothes. Potential for trivial gripes locally, but one month on and I am still amazed at how that fair haired youth managed to get through a triangular hole in the back fence, 25cm wide at the base, to play some kind of surreptitious role in stealing more than half of my crop of sunflower seeds – perhaps his hobby was keeping some kind of pet like griffin, parrots and gerbils, which I’m sure he will learn something from.

 

Meanwhile, not a whiff of money here… time for changes… Not a mention of the Posties while the powers that be are finally getting round to solving problems of prior importance to any recession.. …oh, apart from that one.

  

 

The spirit of the season?