Greetings from the Vat...




It's possible that I'm not living in the world I think I am. I may in fact, be just a brain,suspended in a vat of life giving nutrients, connected to a  computer, vastly superior to the one that I think  I'm using to write this now. All my sensations, memories, thoughts and feelings are merely illusions , constantly streamed through  artificial neural connections. I may simply  never have existed in the time and space I believe I have. Every single thing I think I've experienced may just be a simulation brought about by very advanced software that is able to construct a totally believable 3D world, maintaining the deception of my unreal life.


 All of this may have just popped into existence...then...or now I'll never know.I may have lived the same situations a thousand times before: first kisses, seeing snow for the first time, sun sets, the feeling of rain on my skin, delighting at seeing frost in the hedgerows, the taste of chocolate, the feeling of love, anger, sadness and laughter all just code, run and rerun again and again by whoever or what ever presence keeps me there.


 There is no defying of gravity or other such miracles in this illustrated world, though I may hear or read about them or think that I have, there is only the everyday, the stuff that normal is made of.There is nothing to make me question that the world around me isn't solid and real. I can tap my finger on top of a table but it will never go through it,though I may wish for it to do so,the walls will stay stubbornly solid  no matter how hard I push against them and the possible truth of  why I should be made to exist in this way will remain outside that which is held to be true.


I have nothing to give me reason to doubt my reality in any way....


Apart from sometimes, my own doubt.

The Art of Doing Nothing..

I decided not to make the bed

Instead,

I sat on the edge

and fell back onto unmade sheets

I didn’t polish round.

But lay looking up at the ceiling,

eyes following shafts of warm sun

lazy arms stretched out,

pretending to fly
upside down.

My search for dust

had instead found a smile,

discovered a laugh
which ,making its way  

from my head

to my

feet.... went out through the window

and into the summer,

where it danced with the sounds

that came in from the street.

Is this me ?

So many times in my  job, I find myself having to wear that mask of grown up indignant response to people I deal with and only because they're doing something I'm supposed to deem irresponsible and not what they should be doing or how they should be behaving.


It really makes me question what it is that I'm doing and also re-enforces my own belief that life is just  ridiculous at times. When we take on a job, we have to take on it's values, be that person who has them. For me this has always caused a problem. I don't think I should be working in an office, in a job where I have to point out to people that their attitudes are stopping them getting that all important job, so that they can contribute to the all important system and be seen as useful and obedient members of society. I care about people but I don't care about pushing them into things they don't want to do. The old excuse about draining the system through not working, has been overshadowed somewhat by the revelation that we're led by greedy selfish bastards who continue to run us all into the ground.




I can't help but wish I had the blatant and open honesty that some individuals can have in the face of overwhelming odds. It does of course mean that they are seen as idle and shy of the never ending rat race we others gleefully take part in for most of our lives until we drop dead at 65. I don't see it like that.It's pointless to expect everyone to fit into that same shape mould of I want to go to work all week and even more so to expect to get something out because you've put in. The longer we do this, the less likely that gets anyway.


The reason behind this out pouring of thought ? Today I was due to do my job with someone who disappeared from the building I work in, only for me to ring him and discover he was in the pub across the road. It was 10 o'clock in the morning I wanted to laugh and shout at the same time. The part of me that isn't the work me thought" I can't fault you" the other didn't know what to think. 


And there it was and it's been with me all day, that grudging admiration for the man, knowing his actions would bring about repercussions from those who want him to be employed but still aware that it echoes my own want sometimes to just get up, walk out and tell The World it can go  and fuck itself.

Listen sometimes

I spent part of this morning talking to a gentleman from The Sudan, who used to spend his days diving into the deep blue waters of The Red Sea.


 Personally, it always makes me feel very lucky to meet someone who comes from somewhere else and has stories to tell. I forget all about my job and just want to listen, form  pictures in my head from the accounts they give me.


Sometimes their stories are like  a lot like mine but shaped differently  due to their culture, other times they're very different and so far removed from my own experiences of living in  a system based on democracy. It's one of the things I love about doing what I do, meeting different people.


Unfortunately in life, we have no option but to look at things from our own perspective and because of this, many will always only see the darkest side of things, it's not anyone's fault, just human nature to seek a cause for our own ills in others actions. We are none of us immune to it.


I feel that it comes to a certain point about people and how they perceive  the world around them.  
Some see it as harsh and react so, some see it as life and the flow of things and are able to accept it with grace and  gentleness .


I envy them, for I am only able to do this fleetingly and am prone to cursing things when wants and hopes fall flat.


At least now I have the thoughts of  sunlight and warm blue water to keep me going under the dark November skies...

MOON




One body holds another at just the right distance.


 no fear of collision through familiar proximity,


 no cause to drift, breaking of invisible ties




 obeying the rule of unspoken attraction


 silent partners


 in the dance that lasts the life of a star

All Part of the Grand Design ???

The  dealings, over the weekend, with a broken washing machine and a major electrical retailer have only served to reinforce my belief that the Universe needs to be broken to work properly. All systems just seem to be geared to run contrary to their design and any information that you may be given by anyone involved in the process should be treated as a best guess.


Is it the same when we die?


When I pass on from this place to where ever I'm going next, am I destined  to be met by someone behind a desk ? Will they look at me,take my details and tell me that  due to some error with administration, my arrival date is in fact next Saturday, between the hours of 8 am and 6pm, and not today? Will they look at their little flat monitor and tap at keys, will I hear the disembodied voices of countless others , stretching into infinity , sorting out endless problems?


What happens to the cancelled or lost orders....?


Will they ask me to fill in a form while I'm waiting for it all to be sorted out ,sitting next to an ethereal potted plant,......one that will help them improve their service...... ? 

The Plane  Boss, the Plane....








Airports,


They can either be places of wonder vast ,modern buildings that are gateways to exotic places or  small, cramped,hellish and filled with pictures of the East Midlands.Travelling to Spain, as we did recently, meant using a small one, one filled with pictures of the East Midlands.Please don't think I have a problem with anything Midlands related, I'm from them myself, it's just that big airport shoved into a small airport thing they have there.

It's me really, I have this thing about space, I like it, apart from when in bookshops which should be small and crammed by default. It doesn't work when everything that goes into a big place comfortably is crow barred into a small space, it highlights everything, including peoples' misery. It was early, we had a six o'clock flight ourselves so had been there since four in the morning, neither of us was a picture of freshness but some of the people I saw  slumped and wedged into the one shape doesn't fit all seats that populate many public buildings these days, just made me think about railways stations in 1940's Europe and one way trips to places where work didn't really make everyone free, no matter what it said over the gateway. This of course was made all the more painful to witness due to the fact there were other people not twenty feet away laughing and drinking alcohol at five thirty in the morning. There's another thing, people undertaking that drinking early in the morning because they're on holiday ritual What is it about us that makes us do these things?. I couldn't, not now or any other time I could think of, except for one lost weekend in Bruge. As pointed out, in a large airport no problem, enough space for all acts to be played out but close together, it's  just like tectonic plates slowly scraping against each other, juddering towards the inevitable earthquake, jarring, magnifying the cattle market like discomfort opposite and stuck between it all, there we stood, us and our boiled bacon bap that cost four pounds.

The most hellish of all things though, is the shopping experience. The prospect of seeing people stuck together like the contents of a forgotten bag of Jelly Babies is nothing to the concentrated sell of the high street in a box. From the moment of having to redress your self after discovering all your clothes now set off security metal detectors, you can shop, straight away...don't think about it!! Again, I'm not a complete hermit, I do enjoy some forms of shopping,looking for important things like rucksacks, books and second hand X Box games. I enjoy walking around and looking at things and observing people while they shop. I enjoy doing this in spacious open areas where I can let the flow of  the day take me where it will. When it's decreased in size but not volume everything screams at me that a lot of the images we're given when shopping, images of the ideal in everything are just so much bullshit times ten.I was constantly reminded that the magazine I was buying wasn't part of the "Men's lifestyle" section because it said it in big blue letters over the ones that were. I don't have a lifestyle, certainly not a mans one, and I don't really want one either . Small duty free shops are matchless in giving a true picture of what it is to live in a consumer society. There's no disguising the intent behind of any of the images plastered over the shiny things for sale. This is the life you really want, buy it..


I'm griping and shouldn't be.I'm lucky to be able to go to different places.Many people don't have the choice, especially at this point in our uncertain times. I bought what I wanted and ignored the rest.


I just hope the man I saw, who had slumped so much in his seat, that I wasn't sure if he'd actually given up and decided to travel to the next world and not Europe had a good time where ever he went because we did.


 I may have massive hang ups about the big sell in a small place but I love flying. Just don't get me started on the in flight safety information......

Just a short scather ...

So, The World continues its slow descent into panic.
Glad to see that they're still keeping it all afloat by bunging more money at it, well, what else can you do? There's  far too much at stake for those who know to let it all come crashing down.

What else would we do anyway? 

 So much of how we are, as a society, is central to the system we hold so dear. Technology, life styles, diet, cars,sex  all of it wrapped up in a neat little package of consumerism . We are sold a way of living and we love it.

We'd have to reassess everything we do and everything we hold dear. We talk of alternative lifestyles and wanting to live in a different  way, be closer to The Earth. Even that's  based on money. Someone sells us something that makes us feel better about our purchase because its got words like "hand crafted by really poor people" or "made from sustainable wood source " on it.
It makes us feel like we care, we're being good, not just taking, giving back.

It's as simple as this really, the difference between wanting to change something and having to is becoming a very real possibility in our life time.

So my friends, what should we do? We could always carry on and hope that it all works itself out or perhaps start thinking  about what it really means to live a different life, because we might be one day..soonish.

None of us wrote this one.....

A fellow square peg ,who for reasons known only to himself, decided to become a teacher.
 On the last gathering of the pegs, he informed us that a fellow educator who teaches History, was under the impression that The Battle of Britain and D Day were both from the same time period of The Second World War. He also let us in on the fact that the song Tax Man, penned by Mr George Harrison, was in fact going to  be credited to Mr John Lennon, in a lesson dedicated to the 1960s and the influence of said musician on the decade.

Small matters you may feel but ask yourself this. What if the above were in fact the case and what we know as history and accept as the truth wasn't? What if everything we've been told was in fact based on the whim of those who told us, and not how things actually happened?

How  many of us know what we believe to be  the truth  actually is that? How much of it is based on what others have told us and ,honestly now, how many of  us really care?

When we think of the past, we tend to think about it in terms of things we can't touch or feel anything about, unless we have some personal link to it , sometimes through a well known or documented event. It doesn't matter because it's  gone and not our here and now. We are distanced by time. It has no effect on us, it is black and white and hung on museum walls. I sometimes think of the present in terms of a rocket that's just blasted off. One minute we're at the very tip of the nose cone, right at the centre of the heat and friction at the sharpest point of  what's happening then suddenly, we slip and we're after burn.


Our times will be left for others to record . The minutiae of who we were will  never be known. We will form part of someone elses' depiction of the past  and become a vision of the truth for those who come after to accept just as we do now with what came before us.

 We don't have to.

Now, as never before in any time in history, we have the capability to make our own voices heard. To leave behind our stories, our own accounts of our lives, who we are,what we felt and thought. It isn't about any kind of fame or status, it's about saying this was me, this is my truth.


In his colleagues' defence, my friend did point out that some people who teach, know a lot about one thing and very little about anything else, it's called being a specialist I suppose.
 This did nothing to lessen the indigence of the other pegs, who were all of the opinion that at least a general knowledge of other things was preferable to a general ignorance towards them.


Anyway, I'm off , got a good book on the go about how The Victorians invented the last 600 years...and I know they didn't..........

Sirens
Before he set sail,

his course all set out
on a home made chart,
they told him about the rocks


"Don't go near"!  they said
"They're sharp and the women who live there will sing,
thoughts of deep salt kisses will  fill your head,
they'll sigh and longing for limbs entwined will cloud your mind,


Remember the rocks,
you'll bleed
you'll drown,
you'll go down


So, he promised not to go near the rocks
and, as he sailed away he waved
and he shouted he'd write,
when he hit land
when he got there,
he'd let them know
all things would be fine,
he'd be alright 


A few days later down on the beach
something was found,
pulled from the surf,
tattered and dripping,the words on it blurred  by the salt water
taken back, it was laid out on the ground,
the home made chart with a course set out


They cried and shouted,
between the sobs
how they wished he'd listened to those who knew


They should have saved their breath
and their tears too
because,
from the moment they'd said don't go near the rocks
that was all he'd wanted to do..

I PREDICT A RIOT...I THINK

So, The  abandoned  and neglected young generation so much in the press over the last couple of weeks , have gone back to being just that. They are once again relegated to the sidelines in favour of more exciting and up to date issues. We are all let off from being responsible for their situation and can go back to worrying about the housing market or  some despot who stands in the way of Westernisation of the rest of the World


There will be , of course, those who championed the young before the events of last month and who still will no mater what. Stick with it, don't give up on them..seriously. 
I say this because I spent part of the day with people from the other end of the spectrum of  social neglect, the 50 plus. Not to be too much of a harbinger of doom people but the majority of us are closer to them than the ones who ran about the other month updating their televisions and stocking up the local Cash Converters.


My job involves making positives out of negatives. I help people to look at the situation they are in and hopefully, give them some way of seeing things in a better light. Help them feel they can do something to help themselves. It works with most but the unemployed 50 plusers are a different breed, especially the men. For the most part, closed off, impervious to changing and victims of the unspoken truth that is age discrimination, they present the biggest challenge of any delivery session I could give. They have life experience and skills. For the most part, they turn up but when they do... that's when the problems start.


They sit and look at me with that look and body posture, usually arms folded or leaning forward on the table, which radiates "I HAVE BEEN SENT HERE, WHAT IS THE POINT" like nothing else.


Then begins a battle of wills that quite frankly, beats any I've ever had against teenagers or self assured younger people that I've worked with. They interject, they talk about the past...they debate, they make me work...and I champion them for it.


The fact is this, we have more than one generation that's being ignored. We have two. The 50 plus are as much victims of our system as all the young people we were made to feel responsible for who ran about causing damage because,apparently ,they were angry. They know their age is against them and so do I. I'm aware of it every time I tell them to follow up their feedback and keep trying because, what else can I do? If I could change how it is, I would.
Being over 50 and finding yourself in the strange and unholy land of unemployment is a terrible thing, make no mistake. It's something I guarantee some of us 40 somethings will get to see.

Come the day we get there...lets get angry about it..............

I have the same shaped hands as my Dad,
The full palm and the lines.
Before now, I've held them in front of me,
turning them
marvelling at the sameness


I don't use them in the same way,
not with a hammer
or saw
not to build with or turn a spade


Not to feel the satisfying weight of something home grown,
the full softness and ripeness of something brought out of summer


I let the Devil get into my hands


because,
they're the same shape as my Dad's  

If the pinnacle of success were sitting in front of a PC, feeling  wretched and having had a banana and a rocky bar for breakfast then this morning I would have reached it. 

This English Couple went on holiday to Spain.....

You can guess where that one went. No defence of the late Mr Manning, I just needed something to grab the eye. He does, I suppose, give one of  the best examples of someone with an attitude not many would admit to sharing.
Where does that go, well....

 I read today  how a certain French actor, has been in trouble for peeing in a bottle on an aeroplane. From what I can gather, he stood in the aisle as he did it and caused the plane to be delayed for two hours. I don't know what happened next, I didn't read any more. I only had to look at his photo in the paper and imagine the rest. The gentleman in question is someone who I've always imagined to be full of life and, being French, this will be magnified ten fold. I have no concerns over the actual incident, I wasn't there. I found it hilarious. Things like that I do ,being, for the most part socially and morally ambivalent, so the prospect of a larger than life French man reliving himself  in an empty bottle, probably Evian, doesn't really spark up my middle aged indignation. He was more than likely full of red wine anyway and I know from experience when that's a factor we're in the realms of the unknown


 There is always the possibility that he did this simply because he has a different attitude to the accepted ways of relieving ones self than most people on the plane. Lots of people in places like London and Birmingham showed that they have a different attitude to some things than most over the last week or so . I am of course talking about the rioting or I as prefer to call it , the mass nicking, that went on over a few nights in cities across the country.This display of difference in attitude has of course, raised of few questions about our society as a whole.


 As when  these things happen, we are asked to wonder why, what makes people do these things? Experts and politicians then expound as to the cause of such break downs in the moral and social fabric that binds us together. we are told, not for the first time, that whole sections of society are being let down, neglected and abandoned. We, as a whole, are responsible for this.


You know what....they're right and wrong. I've met and worked with people who are all of the above . I've worked with young men who have no role models other than men who want something from them or are thousands of miles away, living lives of violence, gang crime and opulence that can never be matched, depicted in the culture adopted by these young people. There are those out there who through birth, circumstance or numerous other routes and choices,live lives most of us would never wish for . Many of them, who I've met, have been intelligent, funny, capable and genuine people just looking for a break.


I've also met people who weren't and who lived the lives they did because they liked it and no amount of social inclusion would ever alter that. Not everyone has the same social ethics. Unfortunately, this type of life outlook doesn't benefit anyone who tries to sell lifestyles, otherwise we'd have celebrity riots instead of Big Brother.


 Attitudes are shaped by what's around us, what we see and what happens to us and those close to us. Things are,on the whole, not always  fair but some ways of reacting to this don't benefit anyone, as we've seen. We all need to admit to our own failings with others sometimes and how that affects everything else we do. We all have the capability to change something, even our attitudes but again, that's up to the person.


 Some will ,some never and in a way, it's those I feel saddest for.They'll never allow themselves any chance of changing anything.


A bit like Bernard....

The Sun'll go out ...tomorrow

Everything changes, it's what happens.
 Favourable situations, friendships, relationships, technology..everything. We are told to accept this as a part of life. It's going to happen whether we want it to or not

One day, The Sun will change. It will expand go really, really red  burn The Earth and then  contract  becoming really small and dense. There will be no more Sun.


 This will of course happen , a long, long time form now.Albeit 13 or so billion years but when you consider just how quickly we've done the last 7 billion or so since all this was kicked off, it really starts to look pretty short in the grand scheme of things.Although people will say and quite rightly, that this is something that will never affect us who scuttle around on our little blue dot today so it's pointless to even consider such things. "Live life"!  they will say and make the most of what you have..don't waste your life thinking about it. Wise and sensible words with out a doubt, I know they are .I'm  the fool for dwelling on such matters and not being contented with my time here.
This is my point though...it's going to affect someone...some day.
  
Bringing things back to the present day, what about the way we live, the system we live under, when does that reach its expiry date? It has to, it is after all at the mercy of entropy just like everything else. 


 There are ,of course, good and bad sides to the way we live in the Western World. History has shown us that there are much worse ways of living than in a society loosely based on the principles of freedom in many forms.  Cracks have started to show though and lately, we've started to see a little more of the bad and how people can become victims of their own greed and stupidity and that of others.  All systems are of course open to exploitation and even those whose existence has been born out of the need to make life fairer for people, they have for the most part,eventually cracked because of the human traits of wanting that little bit more and the fact we can't help dreaming of greener grass. It 's what we do, for good or bad.


 How much longer do we have before it changes and what do we do then.....seriously?



Think about it and...enjoy the Sunshine

Starry, starry night....


A few nights ago, I went out with some work colleagues to commiserate the end of their employment with the company that we, between us, have worked for for roughly ten years. They went home at some point but I stayed out and drank a lot more. I'm 40, binge drinking is what we do at  my age and  it's all part of the coping strategy for working in "people" based jobs.
  At some stage in the early hours of the next day, I found that I had, by means of money changing hands and jumbled conversation with parties at a taxi firm, been transported as if by magic back  to my own dwelling. Before I began the well practiced routine of entering the house in that way  that I assume is quiet as a little mouse and involves me "shhuusshhing" myself so as not to awaken those parties who, have already woken, because they've heard  the little mouse banging about being quiet, I did  what I always do at these moments,I looked up at the sky.


 I'm very lucky to live somewhere that's not too affected by street lighting so on clear nights I get a fantastic view of The Universe even in this suburban setting. And having stopped to look at the stars, I then proceeded to do what I always do next, I stared to ask them questions. Yes,I'm the worst kind of drunk, philosophical  veering towards the metaphysical. 


Not for the first time, I asked them when would all this start making any bloody sense, when would my hidden destiny that I knew was out there somewhere, eventually show its self . When could I get on with being who I'm supposed to be and not bounce around from one thing to another looking for that all elusive eureka moment....why some much beauty in things if it's all just pointless??


As I've said, it's not the first time they've heard all this and it won't be the last and as usual, they kept their own council, just twinkled at me and continued burning off their hydrogen.  


The rest of the night passed away in drunken slumber and more mixed messages from my subconscious that are either telling me that I do have a problem with fitting in or that I really will be fighting off the undead in a shopping centre somewhere in the near future.


I shall always love looking at the stars. They're wonderful for giving me a sense of where I really am in the scheme of things but they're useless for careers advice... 

You can't help everyone...no seriously, you can't....

Working with people,

It's a noble and worthwhile occupation and before I go any further, I'd just like to salute my fellow strugglers who, like me, suddenly woke up one day, like all the others before them, and for some reason decided that that was the day to make our lives more fulfilling. How we were going to do this we didn't know, all we we knew was.....that we were going to help people. It didn't matter how and to be honest, it was quite vague ,more like that "If I help people I will be a better person" thing than anything else but we knew that it was something we were meant to do, something we'd been putting off for too long, still working in jobs that no longer gave us any satisfaction and only highlighted the struggle within to better ourselves and The World!

Again...well done..for even thinking about it.

How many of you are still there?  How long did it take you to discover that not everybody can be helped how you wanted to?

Perhaps it was my own foolish sense of idealism that made me think I could be all things to all men. Don't get me wrong in any way, I'm glad I did this. I could of stayed in my previous job that frankly was a bums paradise and suited the young long haired and beardy me. Though, if I had, I wouldn't be writing this now and would much more likely have been a toothless drunk. I didn't stay I did this instead.


 Through this I've had some very successful and personally rewarding  experiences and I have actually grown and developed as a person. I've met  people that have inspired me with their strength in facing things that I would  never be able to and I 've come across situations that have more than reinforced my own belief that life at its easiest is all shades of grey  but 10 years down the line, there have been some shocks and some jading has certainly taken place.


Over exposure to successions of Government funded programmes, that seem to be designed to ignore everything that's human about people and  the way we all have different wants, needs, dreams , fears and hopes and conceitedly assume everyone is meant to work in some I.T or office based environment, has dulled the bright young spark that filled my inexperienced head..... made me harsh,sometimes, to those who have least deserved it.

Somewhere along the line, the whole help thing became something else, something more like smacking  square pegs into round holes and it made those who wouldn't fit, no matter how hard they got hit by incentives and programmes designed to get them into "normal society" all the more...square, all the more unemployable by today's standards, made they somehow guilty for not being able to fit into the expected mould and contribute to the already bloated and slow dying system that even now is so near fucked it's easier just not to even think about it.


And now here I am, all the way from being put in front of a room full of 16 year olds and suddenly being called a Life Skills Tutor, to finding myself practically working for The Job Centre in some farcical and sometimes hilarious situation as an Employability Tutor...how did that happen?


I could turn this blog into a forum for ranting. A place to spill bile and scorn on those who I come across on a daily basis but I won't. This,like every other thing I feel the need to write something about is just a single thought in a whole  long meandering line of thoughts and I don't really know where I want it to go but go somewhere it will.


Just to put some sort of lid on this particular biscuit tin I'll end with this. I've learnt a few things from all this, there are people who need help and always will, there are those who are more than able to do things for themselves and just need a little push in the right direction and there are the others, those who can't be bothered to do anything because it's easier to be a smart arse and blame others for the shitty way their lives have turned out.


I have learned about people....

What is it about the Sea?
It draws us and yet at the same time, we're frightened by it ?
Perhaps it's because deep down, in the back of our minds, we still resent it for throwing us out and making us walk...making us stand on our own two feet as it were.

 We are like children living the lives of adults,wanting  to return to the safety of our first womb we are soothed by its roll and swell, its sound on shingle but  knowing we can only look and think of the distance we've come..