Pope Simon The First (FECoO)

Rubber - meekon5 - review.

2012-01-22T23:08:00.001Z

Despite a name that caused some raised eyebrows in discussion at work the next day as I tried to describe the film, this film is a little gem.
Whilst at university I had the opportunity to extend a couple of interests of mine, namely philosophy and film studies as part of one of the modules of my degree.
I also have the pleasure of a group of friends who share my love and interest in films, but more on the "Shit Film Club" (of which I'm sure any number of variations exist) at some later time.
I mention this because we tend to play silly games where each of us are looking for more unusual (read bizarre) little obscure films.Especially knowing each others likes and dislikes. This films discovery (for my group of friends) is Pete's work.

At once post modernist, and surreal in turns. Without giving too much away there is a scene early on where a character seems to break the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly,only for the the camera to turn round afterwards to reviel an audience in the film that he has been addressing.
For a film that follows a tyre that develops psychotic tendencies and goes on a killing spree.
Not a film for everybody, but a good film if you can take the surrealism, and the flip flop of dipping in and out of Post Modernism.

Technorati Tag: Rubber, Film Review, Tyre, Film, Review, Opinion, DVD, Surreal, Bizarre, Post Modernism, meekon5.

The Social Network - meekon5 - review.

2012-01-21T22:54:00.000Z

For years I followed Barry Norman on the BBC's Film (insert your favourite year here 1972 to 1998 with a small break 1982-83). Now I cant say I always agreed with his reviews, in fact I probably disagreed with more than the ones I agreed with, but what I liked about Mr Norman was that he was consistent, and in the end I could judge whether I would enjoy a film from the tone of his review even if he slated the film.
I don't think anyone (Mr Ross, or the other two) have come anywhere near Mr Normans style or consistency.
I mention this because I aim at this myself. I don't expect to be as good a film reviewer as Mr Norman I just attempt to attain his consistency. I hope those of you who read this will come to be able to read these reviews, and if not agree with them at least get some idea as to what the film is and if you would enjoy it even if I didn't.
All I have to say about "the social network" is that if this was meant to be an attempt to make me the viewer feel any sympathy for Mark Zuckerberg by telling the story from his point of view, it didn't. I started the film thinking he was a bit of an arrogant knob (imho), and this film did nothing to dispel this point of view. As far as I can see he was an arogant knob who stole a bunch of ideas off his friends then paid them off. No sympathy.
I'm led to believe the sound track is very good if you don't spoil it by having to watch the film at the same time.
I don't want to start giving films points out of ten but I think there are better films to spend your time watching.

Technorati Tag: The Social Network, Film Review, Biopic, Film, Review, opinion, DVD, Barry Norman, Barry Norman's Film 1972-98, Technology, Social Network, meekon5.

Source Code - meekon5 - review.

2012-01-20T23:57:00.000Z

OK to start with I suppose I owe you some sort of explanation. I have started to work through my backlog of DVD's. As I am now watching quite a few films in the week, I have decided to try to review them here. Each time I finish a film I will try to take a picture of the cover then blog here, rather than try to describe the plot and my impressions to everyone, I can just point them here.

I have to say I was somewhat surprised by this film. That is nicely surprised. I am always wary of films (or books) that refer other films (or books) in terms of "The New". As in "The New Lord of the Rings", or in this case "The New Inception". I always feel you can bet that any film that has to say this is of course going to be nothing like the hype they are pushing.
Having heard from a number of sources that Inception was a brain twister then being really disappointed with it, I was expecting this (Source Code) to be a poor attempt at what was a poor attempt at over intellectualised psychological sci-fi. I was really surprised, though the story is a little contrite, it does stand up on it's own and is nothing as bad as Inception.
A soldier wakes up in someone else's body. There then ensues an almost groundhog days round of the soldier returning to the same eight minutes on a doomed train. Avoiding a lot of the usual time travel paradoxes by being set in a virtual environment.
It's defiantly worth seeing.

Technorati Tag: Source Code, Film Review, Sci Fi, Film, Review, opinion, DVD, recommended, train, time travel, bomber, meekon5.

Chapter 07 - Café Take Two.

2010-05-09T12:50:00.006Z

I look in the mirror. Standard issue militia urban combats, black with a neat waist length jacket , topped off with a captains cap. I've chosen the orange piping and insignia of a captain in the local militia for the last couple of days. A sparse selection of weapons, mostly knives and hand guns will do. I don't want to draw too much attention to myself, it's meant to be a covert op until uncle has had chance to hire him.
After two years of wearing hi-tech combat make-up it's a joy to only have to apply a little cosmetic. Blusher and lipstick. I had to have a weeks reconstruction on my face and hands after the last tour of duty, just to get their youthful glow back again.
I've been following him for days now, “Good practice for you!” Uncle said.
The Café Venue for dinner every day. Just to sit and sulk there over a couple of beers as he dribbles over the refurb. He's probably been like this for weeks now, old spacers get a bit station sick if they're lock bound for too long.
The tells in his corridor squeak and the vid feed kicks in. I check the clock on my mesh. “Right on time Ramadan, my friend.” predictable as usual.
He's cautious but not as clever as he thinks he is. I see him scan the corridor, like he knows I'm watching, but can't work out where the tells are. It makes me grin. I can get to the lobby a minute or two before he hits the ground floor. I wait surreptitiously reading a mesh page or two on pad whilst waiting for him in the lobby by the concession stands. The lift chimes and out he walks. Off down the corridor towards the recreation deck and his favourite table in Café Venue. I could almost set my mesh chronometer by him.
Tipping the wink to the concierge, a man in the families pay for many years now, I follow at a discreet distance trying not to get noticed, slipping in and out of doorways until the street becomes more populated, and I can walk in the middle of the crowd, hidden in plain view.
He stops at the usual vendors. The news stand for any new off station publications he may have missed. The postal box he maintains on the station just in case any documents have arrived or other ancient flotsam his intelligent agents may have dug up, and purchased , for him has arrived whilst he's been away. Then into the dark seedy interior of the café.
I wait a minute or so, so as not to be obvious, then sneak in and take my position at the bar. Easy observation of the one set of stairs to the upper level of the bar. He'll settle for an hour or two and I can wait him out. I've taken a couple of suppressors so I can easily sit and drink without any danger of it impairing my effectiveness.
Time passes slowly. I keep myself to myself, just reading and drinking, waiting for him to move on. Playing the off duty militia the best I can.
“Hello darling.” One of a couple of Ruffs I notice crawling in earlier has decided to try his luck.
“Not interested brother.” I reply, as politely as I can.
Trying not to shudder at the thought of him getting any nearer than he is now.
“Ah come on lady don't be like that. We've been running long shift for three months now and just thought you would want to party. We've just been paid so no expense spared. How about it?”
“I said I wasn't interested brother, take a hint and back off before I have to hurt you.”
I'd forgotten, unfortunately the mods I'm carrying are special ops grade so don't really show to the untrained eye, or general issue mesh.
Their laughter rings hard and harsh throughout the bar. I see a couple of individuals skip out before things get nasty.
The nearest Ruff moves in and tries to grab me by the arm.
Just as I step back to get a decent distance to hit him hard, I look up to see Ramadan stepping out of the door. “Bollocks!”
I flick my eye up to the mesh icon to activate combat stims. Endomorphines and adrenalin pumps into my system with an audible roar. The Ruff is looking somewhat confused as his helpless hand hangs in the air where I had been standing. I push it away step into his personal space and grab him warmly by the balls. He misinterprets this gesture for a millisecond and begins to smile. I twist and push down and the smile becomes still born on his lips. The scream could be heard three blocks down, He crashes to the floor in an unconscious lump. The Barman reaches for his coms and punches the panic icon. The Ruff, his friend has raised from the chair. I leap over the prone body and land a foot squarely into the others face. His features slide sideways painfully as I bring the other foot round in a closed twisting motion. His neck vertebrae pop and he collapses to the floor.
The local militia surge through the door mob handed with weapons drawn. Unfortunately too many of them for me to take on at once. They come to a halt just inside as the site of the two ruffs and the broken furniture processes.
“Hands behind your head!” The Sargent yells with a slight quiver in his voice.
I comply, gently and slowly raising my hands, palm towards them so they can see I have no weapons. “Cuff her!” He squeaks at one of the subordinates.
Fifteen officers all standing there guns drawn pointed at little me.
“Well is one of you brave enough to step up?” I taunt
“Shut up! Shut up. When I want your opinion I will ask for it” He looks left and then quickly back to me. The barman is whispering in his ear obviously describing the events that have just passed.
“Davis, front and centre. Get those cuffs on her, and careful, she's not what she seems, from all accounts.” He nods in the direction of the barman, then towards the two lumps of unconscious Ruffs.
Davis slowly edges forward. Still pointing his gun at me. He waves down with it, so I drop to my knees. Gingerly he takes one hand and twists it down behind my back. The cuff seals itself around my wrist as he twists the other arm round and down the other cuff moulds itself to my wrist, then binds with its companion.
Another officer sneaks forward and holds my head back as Davis holds the retinal scanner to my eye.
Davis squeaks again and passes the hand-held unit to the Sargent, who in turn turns very pale and bows slightly.
His com pings, and he begins to stutter. “Mr Smith, our apologies, a thousand fold, no-one had told us she was here!”
“No, no sir, covert ops I see, no problem we will release her instantly.” He gestures with his free hand to the others in my direction.
Davis pulls a small canister from his belt and sprays the cuffs. They dissolve. Another officer hands me a rag. I wipe the residue from my hands and reapply the mono-layer nano polymer cover to them. “thank you ladies and gentlemen!” I rise with some assistance and step to the to door. The Sargent salutes and I walk out.

Technorati Tag: Chapter_07, Fiction, Junis_Redux, Sci-Fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock Five, Space, Space Travel, Writing, meekon5.

Think Like A Child

2010-03-29T15:54:00.002Z

After viewing this video “McGonigal - play videogames, save the world” on rockpapershotgun.com from one of my favourite sites TED, I was so impressed I signed up to her latest innovation, Evoke.

My first task is to choose one of thirty three “secrets of social innovation”.

This was particularly easy once I spotted this one:

And Paul Polak via Nextbillion;

“think like a child – children have no limit to their thinking”

My favourite because it is a theme I have always tried to live my life by.

I must make a distinction here between “childish” and “child like”.

“childish” is the immature self centred disregard for anyone else’s point of view on anything, the grabbing greedy child that just thinks “Mine, mine, mine!”

“child like” on the other hand is that state of grace and wonder that pervades the spirit of seeing without the detritus of thousands of years of experience. Like seeing snow for the first time and only thinking of playing in it. The joy and bewilderment of the total suspension of disbelief that fills the world with fairies and elves and magic.

I was always one of those children that would take the toy car and turn it into something else. I still remember the hours of joy my brother and I derived from a large cardboard box, it was a submarine, a spaceship, a car, and all sorts of other things. I believe it is that sense of infinite possibility that is referred to here in:

“think like a child – children have no limit to their thinking”.

Technorati Tag: Evoke, TED, Save The World, LEARN1, Child Like, change, inovation, McGonigal, meekon5.

The Good, The Bad, and The Pagan. Paganism and Neo-Paganism from a Neo-Pagan's point of view.

2010-02-24T16:55:00.081Z

“The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? ...” (Leo Tolstoy, 1879)

0 – Forewarned

It is a particularly difficult question to ask of anyone, “What is your religion, and why?”

The following is and can only be my opinion on the subject. Should you consult with any other practitioners of Paganism you may get an entirely different, maybe even contradictory story.

In preparing for this presentation I set up the usual “What, When, Where, How, and Why” list for begin my notes.

In order to present my personal view on Paganism, first I am going to try to explain a number of building blocks that I see important to the development of my point of view, and to modern Paganism. Then use them to extrapolate my position on Paganism, and Neo-Paganism.

That is I'm going to attempt to explain the term Paganism with all it's inherent problems, outline some of the history of neo-paganism as I understand it, give a brief outline of how I see the practice, and the purpose of paganism.

1 - The Legal Aspect.

In 2000 The Human Rights Act of 1998 came into full force, making it finally part of UK law. Amongst other things it enabled English courts and tribunals to act on human rights cases. Before this anyone who felt that their rights under the Convention had been breached had to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Why is this important?

Particularly and specifically, article nine of the European Convention on Human Rights

“Article 9 – Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, and to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Though the European Convention on Human Rights has existed since the 1950's and Britain has been a signatory since then (Churchill being the British signatory to the document, here seen being initiated into Albion Lodge of the Ancient Order Of Druids at Blenheim Palace in 1908) The Human Rights Act of 1998 is particularly important to certain minority religious groups especially Pagans as it confirmed British acceptance of our right to practice religion the way we saw fit. Until this point (even though article nine of the convention existed) a lot of Pagans continued to practice in secret, many still do.

So be warned that any inappropriate giggling during this presentation will be considered a direct offence against my inalienable human rights.

2 - “Pagan” The Word.

There is much debate and disagreement as to the origins and interpretation of the word Pagan, even in it's modern usage. Unfortunately there is really no consensus for the proper usage and definition of the word.

Though at first it seems a fairly obvious to most people what the word Pagan means the definitions vary widely. I was quite amused to find that Religious Tolerance dot org (a Canadian website) managed fourteen different definitions. From the highly specific conservative (right wing American) christian use of the word meaning all none christians, including atheist, or even categorising Pagans as incorrectly Satanist. To the slightly less specific all none Abrahamic religions, i.e. any religion not claiming descent from Abraham, this would include the Buddhists, the Taoists, Jainist, Hindu, in fact anything not in three, Muslim, Christian, Jewish groups (four if you include the Rastafarians). If you consider pre-christian religions Pagan, you exclude a number of contemporary aboriginal practices, and a whole raft of contemporary folk practices.

To try and shed some light here are a couple of attempts at defining the word by dictionaries.

Oxford English Dictionary website:

“pagan

• noun a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions.

• adjective relating to pagans or their beliefs.

— DERIVATIVES paganism noun.

— ORIGIN Latin paganus ‘rustic’, later ‘civilian’ (i.e. a person who was not a ‘soldier’ in Christ’s army).”

It would be interesting to ask them what they consider the “ main world religions” are, and how they measure that. Considering recent figures suggest the Abrahamic religions (all three/four together) account for about two thirds of the world population (Christianity 33%).

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website:

“Main Entry: pa·gan

Pronunciation: \ˈpā-gən\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin paganus, from Latin, civilian, country dweller, from pagus country district; akin to Latin pangere to fix — more at pact

Date: 14th century

1 : heathen 1; especially : a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)

2 : one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods : an irreligious or hedonistic person

3 : neo-pagan

— pagan adjective

— pa·gan·ish \-gə-nish\ adjective”

Generally the consensus amongst Practising Pagans, in my experience, is to take the line best laid out by the font of all knowledge that is Wikipedia:

“Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "country dweller", "rustic")[1] is a blanket term used to refer to various polytheistic, non Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Its exact definition may vary:[2] It is primarily used in a historical context, referring to Greco-Roman polytheism as well as the polytheistic traditions of Europe before Christianization. In a wider sense, extended to contemporary religions, it includes most of the Eastern religions, and the indigenous traditions of the Americas, Central Asia and Africa, as well as non-Abrahamic folk religion in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions. Characteristic of pagan traditions is the absence of proselytism and the presence of a living mythology which explains religious practice.”

So generally Paganism is derived from a Latin term used by the Romans to mean local (in a derogatory sense), non christian, or pre-christian religious practice. Corrupted (or adjusted) through usage to refer to civilian, non-christian practice.

Paganism in the context I am now going to use it tends to mean pre-christian, non Abrahamic, animistic, polytheistic, or monotheistic, and aboriginal religious practices, of the “This is a local religion, for local people” type definition.

3 - History, Continuity and Neo-Paganism.

Problems with historical context and validity.

Pre-christian.

Though there are groups that claim continuous connection to previous pre-christian pagan practices these statements prove hard to substantiate historically.

Firstly we have to deal with the “C” word.

Celts.

For a long period of time there was a general consensus that, for a few hundred years, between the beaker people and the expansion of Rome, the peoples of the area generally between the Swiss Alps and the Atlantic ocean to the west could all be coloured in as homogeneous Celt.

An opinion usually based on contemporary reports from such individuals as Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and such like imperialist expansionist individuals. Modern archaeology and advances in genetic research in the last thirty to forty years have caused doubt about the validity of these observations. Modern post imperialist reinterpretation of Caesar's writings has suggested that he may have been conveniently grouping large areas of unconnected cultures together for political means to suggest that some of his victories were slightly more significant than they really were.

Backed also by genetic research that has found no real connection between the disparate peoples previously labelled Celt, the great Celtic civilisation is looking less and less likely to have existed anywhere outside of Julius's ego.

Secondly many of the pre-christian civilisations looked to as Pagan were cultures of spoken tradition not written. Records passed down of many of their traditions were only documented well after the fact of their demise.

The Final destruction of the Druids on Anglesey.

Anglesey was one of the last strongholds of the druids in Britain. An army led by Gaius Suetonius Paulinus during the first century CE (common Era) defeated and slaughtered most of the Druids and destroyed the groves of oak trees which were considered sacred to the them.

It was Paulinus that then led his army to victory over Boudicca, who used his absence to successfully sack Londinium. The Roman army occupied the island until the beginning of the fourth century CE, when their forces were withdrawn from Anglesey. This effectively severed the link with any local British religion and placed Roman Polytheism as the dominant religion across Europe, until the conversion of the Roman state to christianity.

Post Roman.

Some groups claim that at this point certain branches of Paganism went underground for a few thousand years only to resurface early last century. But for all documentary purposes the breaking of the Druids enclave and the christian conversion of Constantine I in Byzantine marks the break in the chain of Pagan practice.

Medieval.

A small note about what many Pagans call “the burning times” being the subjugation, and persecution of, the Pagans by christians in the years after the Roman conversion. There is little proof of the systematic and organised opposition to Paganism in early christianity. Possible local action may have taken place, but no early church organisation was focused on anything other than conversion rather than oppression. Interestingly early christianity pre Constantines conversion had more female practitioners than male due to it's insistence on equality of the congregation. An early report of a raid on a christian meeting said something like out of a hundred cloaks left behind twenty were mens and eighty where womens. It was Constantines Mother that converted to christianity before he did.

It's not until the publishing of the Theodosian Code issued in 438 CE that certain Pagan practice actually became illegal.

“Theodosian Code XVI.1.2

It is our desire that all the various nation which are subject to our clemency and moderation, should continue to the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one diety of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in out judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that the shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of divine condemnation an the second the punishment of out authority, in accordance with the will of heaven shall decide to inflict.”

Even medieval “witch hunts” of the sort exemplified in Monty Pythons “Holy Grail” seem to be exaggerated, very few witch trails having been undertaken in England particularly, and of the resultant half dozen or so, the few convictions tended to be hanged. The Spanish Inquisition tended to burn their heretics which may have led to the historical (hysterical) exaggeration.

Even the dissolution of the Knights Templar (at Philip the IV’s behest) and the accusation of their “head worship” and adoration of Baphomet seem to be more fabrication to back up the attempted seizing of their wealth than any true organised none christian Pagan religion.

The Templar Grand Master (Jacques de Molay) was tortured so badly that the bones of his feet fell through his skin before he confessed to the heresy he was accused of.

Renaissance.

With the falling of Byzantium a lot of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian texts returned to Western Europe. Though many of these were important scientific documents it must be remembered that science and religion were very closely entwined in these societies.

During the Renaissance we begin to have evidence of what may be considered explicitly religious paganism again. Alchemists, and other scientists, Astrologers, often overtly Christian but employing pagan symbolism and texts, were most common during the period. Many modern movements in the Kabbalah and Tarot originate in the Renaissance, the modern Rosicrucian’s Society trace their origin to this period, the three groups forming the backbone of modern pagan symbolism. The Renaissance also saw the obscure origins of a rebirth, in improved form, of Greek humanism, technically pagan because of its suppression by Christian Rome and its use of theistic symbols. Most practitioners tended to the Occult, for instance

Doctor John Dee's Enochian Magic, and Nostrudamus Prophecies, though christian in orientation contain many references to pre-christian symbolism. John Dee was also involved in psychic spying using magic ritual and scrying tools for the Elizabethan court.

The Ancient Order of Druids (also known as the Druid Order) claims to have been founded in 1781 by Henry Hurle. You'll notice that a lot of Druid orders are founded throughout this presentation.

The Victorians.

It has to be admitted that the Victorians are responsible for the re-awaking of interest in Paganism, with their re-working of the greco-roman pantheon throughout art and literature (see particularly good examples of this in the work of the pre-Raphelites, in both their paintings and poetry), and even landscape gardening (how many Victorian great houses are not enhanced with a faux roman temple ruin?).

Pre-war Period.

It is in 1910 that George Watson MacGregor Reid claimed The Druid Order, The British Circle of the Universal Bond, had a mythic origin through John Toland, an Irish philosopher leading back to 1717. Unfortunately this illustrious history has proved purely the fictitious imaginings on MacGregor Reid's part.

Blatvasky's theories of the theosophy, and the Aryan myth, and the Theosophy Societies interest in eastern philosophy's, bringing many previously unavailable texts into English translation and

Alastair Crowley's (and Magregor Mathers) breaking an accepted tradition in occult and masonic societies by widely publishing their work and many of their esoteric practices with the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, and Crowley's own work in the field of practical magic afterwards.

The Thule Society and the Nazis.

I am now going to have to step into the realms of Indian Jones.

By the early to middle of the twentieth century The Theosophists and a number of other groups had made eastern philosophy, religious ideas, and texts, widely available in Europe. Though this created a new interest in spirituality, the pervading nationalist ethos moved groups dedicated to investigating these religious areas in the direction of attempting to re-create national, more ethnic orientated religious practice, usually based on Renaissance, and Victorian romanticised recreations. This was a pan-European phenomenon giving rise to all sorts of attempts to return to ideas of more native traditions, and an attempt to return to a more nature orientated, healthier, point of view. One of the major groups in these Volkisch movements that sprung up In Germany was the Thule Society.

The Thule Society was a German occultist and völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend.

The Thule Society was originally a "Germanic study group" headed by Walter Nauhaus, to be a cover-name for the Munich branch of the Germanenorden (or "Order of Teutons"), a secret society founded in 1911. But events developed differently as a result of a schism in the Order. In 1918, Nauhaus was contacted in Munich by Rudolf von Sebottendorf (or von Sebottendorff), an occultist and newly-elected head of the Bavarian province of the schismatic offshoot, known as the Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. The two men became associates in a recruitment campaign, and Sebottendorff adopted Nauhaus's Thule Society as a cover-name for his Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater at its formal dedication on 18 August 1918.

Anton Drexler, and the Thule Society's Karl Harrer, established the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), or German Workers' Party. By the end of February 1920, the DAP had been reconstituted as the National Socialist German Workers' Party, generally known as the "Nazi Party". Adolf Hitler joined this party later in 1919. Early in 1920 Karl Harrer was forced out of the DAP as Hitler moved to sever the party's link with the Thule Society, which subsequently fell into decline and was dissolved about five years later, well before Hitler came to power.

I mention the Thule society because it did have a number of major Nazis as members including Hess, and other members of Hitlers early entourage. Though Hitler severed ties with the group in 1920 there have been a number of suggestions (unproven) that it influenced the Ahnenerbe.

The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race, and later to experiment and launch voyages with the intent of proving that prehistoric and mythological Nordic populations had once ruled the world.

It's this group that is usually accused of undertaking occult and pagan rituals, and attempting to create a new Aryan religion, though their main function was one of historical investigation in an attempt to prove Aryan superiority, and mastership of certain regions of Europe. Though ostensibly set up as a linguistic and historical study foundation a branch called the Institute for Functional Research in Military Science did eventually become entwined in activities involving the death camps and creating statistics of the perfect Aryan physique.

It's a mixture of misrepresentation of both these groups that leads to their inclusion in the Indiana Jones films, and the likes of Dennis Wheatley's “They Used Dark Forces”. Otto Rahn who Indiana Jones is allegedly based upon actually joined the SS (encouraged by Himmler himself) to get funding for his search for the Holy Grail.

There are unproven stories of British witches, and or Alastair Crowley himself being involved in Magical rituals during the Battle of Britain in order to help the RAF win against such overwhelming odds.

There are other rumours that occult and secret society associations were used to put pressure on Hitler's (alleged) Astrologer Karl Ernst Krafft to feed Hitler adverse horoscopes to try to influence his decisions during the later parts of world war two..

Gardner and Wicca, the modern witch cult.

There is debate as to the origins of the modern Wiccan group. Gardner himself claiming he was initiated in 1939 by a subgroup of the Rosicrucian Fellowship of Crotona, in the New Forest. Other points of view have claimed that he entirly created the modern Wiccan Creed identifying the work of Margaret Murray, an anthropologist, and Charles Godfrey Leland, a self-styled folklorist and adventurer in the work. The Wiccan movement still to this day heavily denies any influence that Crowley may have had on the modern Wiccan rituals.

4 - Modern Neo-Paganism.

The sixties provided a blossoming of literature and new thinking on religion looking for alternatives to the accepted mainstream,

Modern Druidism, as it is practised by most Druids today, emerged out the 1960s. Virtually simultaneously, on both sides of the Atlantic, in 1963 on the Carleton College campus in the USA a group called The Reformed Druids of North America was created as a humorous protest against mandatory Sunday morning chapel attendance, while the following year in England a historian, Ross Nichols, rebelled against the election of a new Druid Chief, and established his own group, The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids.

Modern Paganism can be divided into the following paths (here I side with the Pagan Federations definition)

Druidry: Many Pagan Druid orders draw their inspiration from Celtic traditions, working with the Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic Pagan past. Some work with whatever spirits are within and around the people they are working with.

Female Spirituality: Women's spirituality is one of the richest and most dynamic forces in modern Paganism. Women are respected in all Pagan traditions and have enriched Paganism with a powerful vision of the Goddess - the long-ignored feminine aspect of the Divine. In Paganism, women are Priestesses in their own right, strong and proud, with their own vision.

Heathenry: Norse, Northern, Odinism, Asatru, Vanatru. There are many Heathen groups. Heathenry is a term used to describe the religious practices of two main groups of people, one historical and one modern. The original Heathens were the pre-Christian North European peoples. Modern Heathen groups around the world are reviving these old practices and call their religion by various names including Asatru, The Northern Tradition, Odinism, Forn Sed, Germanic Pagan Reconstructionism or, simply, Heathenry.

Male Spirituality: The male mysteries have always had their place in the many expressions of the Pagan religion. For a Pagan, male spirituality is honoured as an expression of the God in his many forms. Pagan men seek inspiration from the Horned God and other aspects of the male Deity

Wiccan: Wicca is one of the most influential traditions of modern Paganism. Also known by the name Witchcraft, it began to emerge publicly in its modern form in the late 1940's. It is an initiatory path, a mystery tradition.

A - There are three distinct branches to Wicca, an inherited branch that claims descendance from the original Druids and that has been handed down from generation to generation.

B – There is a traditional that calims to be an ofshute of the inherited where the “craft” has been handed to an none family member.

C – The Gardenarian as mention above and before from Alxexander gardners reformation.

Shamanism: Modern Shamanism is perhaps the most diverse of all the forms of Pagan practice and is less clearly defined as a tradition than other Pagan paths. Shamanic practices are an underlying aspect of all expressions of Pagan religion and there are those who would describe themselves as Wiccan, Druidic or Women's Mystery Shamans.

5 – My Own Path.

Hopefully by now I have provided enough building blocks with which to create a foundation to attempt to explain my religious point of view.

As an inquisitive thirteen year old I not only decoded the runes around the map in Tolkien's “The Hobbit” I actually went down to my local library and investigated them further. Producing an extensive document on their origin and use. This was probably my first steps in any form of Paganism.

My religious development into Paganism is on the whole a very common one amongst practitioners. It may surprise some of you that I was a bit of an odd child. Very early on I perceived a need for some form of spirituality in my life. As a teenager I studied Yoga, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and even a little Sufism. At one point I even professed to be a born again christian for a while, I got better though. I was part of a small Zen meditation group at one point.

The further I studied the likes of Christmas Humphreys, and Alan Watts, the more I found myself having to assimilate the history and culture of Japan, China, and to some extent India. Not that this was a problem, it was just that I was moving further and further away from my native culture, and history.

I must explain I first rejected the abrahamic religions because of a perceived imbalance towards the male, both in the spiritual aspect, God the Father, the son, and the holy ghost seemed to deny, or repress, any aspect of female spirituality, also the masonic hierachial misogynistic structure of the christian churches clergy again seemed to unbalance and deny the female involvement in religion. Buddhism and particularly Zen moved me away from a deity based religion, but this felt somewhat lacking in substance. I moved my focus to the roots of Zen, Chien Buddhism, and on into Taoism. Though I found a better balance in Taoism, being more comfortable with its acceptance of numerous deities, and it's more animistic inclinations. I still find it underpins a lot of my spirituality to this day. It's at this point I began to realise that I was looking back into history in Japan and China, trying to understand their culture and religions, looking back to an age when my ancestors were following similar animistic pre christian beliefs. I decided that it would probably be more relevant to use images and concepts from my own ancestry to build a spiritual system than to continue to try to understand what was essentially an alien culture and their symbols.

Let me be specific here. When I talk about male and female spirituality I am refering to the concept in a Taoist fashion. I don't consider that men are just male in their spirituality, or female just female. Both have aspects and balances of both male and female spirituality. This is why I believe the abrahamiic faiths are unbalanced, by venerating a male deity they are not addressing the female spirit within them. I know there are aspects of christianity that venerate the Virgin Mary, but the point is made quite clearly that she is not god, therefore inferior.

I would also like to point out that one of the major aspects of my Zen practice that I still retain, involves the concept that all of life is illusory. All of life is actually projected from within. In practical terms this means that your life is a product of what you think it should be. If you are of a scientific nature then you see life as the product of measurable cause and effect. If you are of a more artistic nature, like myself, you are likely to see life in different aspects driven by different forces. After all Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge.

The Blank Canvas.

I think what I am trying to do is explain the almost blank slate that I as a neo-pagan present myself.

To reiterate:

1 There is little or no connection to original practicers of Paganism because:

a They were effectively removed by the Romans who then converted to christianity.

B As cultures of spoken tradition there are very few records, apart from the few concurrent observers, most of who where conquering the subjects that they were writing about at the time.

2 If all of life is illusory then whatever the individual believes must therefore be true for them.

3 I have a perceived (or real) need for a religious understanding in order to comprehend my position in the society/world/universe/multiverse that I believe I exist in.

4 As part of that understanding I regard it as important that this point of view have a balance across both the male and female principles. The Belief System.

In discussion with other Pagans I am amused to find that the general consensus of opinion is that your gods find you, you don't pick them.

In my personal pantheon I try to balance Gods and Goddesses but have a slight bias to the god side.

I will now present them in the fashion of a cheap beauty pageant.

As an individual who regularly writes and performs poetry live both here in London and down in Portsmouth (where I live), my first deity has to be Odin, Woden, or Wotan, from the Norse and Anglo-Saxon. Odin is the god of the runes, fortune telling and has providence over artists and poets.

All my life I have had an incredible gift with plants, and a great deal of my childhood was spent walking the New Forest and the south downs so my second deity will be no surprise as the Green Man. Other aspects of this deity appear in tales such as Gwain and the Green Knight, and many tales of wild men across the country, at times even linked with Merlin of the Arthur cycle.

Many examples of the Green man can be found in churches in England, believed by some to be the stone masons and carpenters hinting at hidden branches of paganism still being practices during the medieval period. The green an is seen as a herder of the woodland spirits as well as a guardian of the underworld.

Bacchus the Roman god of Wine, associated with the Greek god Dionysus He is the patron deity of agriculture and the theater. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy or wine.

I have never really been a dog person, even though I grew up with many. I have always been a cat person. As such it is only logical that I venerate Bast the Egyptian goddess of cats. Bast later took on other duties to do with associations with lions and war, and later with protection for women, but was originally the cat headed woman, responsible for cats.

As an anarchist my final deity is, though originally a Greek goddess, and part of the Roman pantheon, Eris Discordia, has in recent times undergone a radical change and a resurgence of devotees. Many of you will be aware of the story of Paris and the golden apple.

Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of her reputation as a trouble maker. This made Eris angry, and so she fashioned an apple of pure gold and inscribed upon it KALLISTI ("To The Prettiest One") and on the day of the fete She rolled it into the banquet hall. There ensued an argument between Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite as to who owned the apple. Only solved by stealing Paris a Sheppard off a mountain to judge the competition. Of course the goddesses tried to bribe him. Aphrodite offering him a women as beautiful as she. Paris chose Aphrodite, she having failed to mention the woman in question was one Helen of Troy, already married, thus the Trojan wars began. Eris Discordia has been adopted by the modern faith of Discordianism.

From Wikipedia : Discordianism is (and is not) a religion centered on the idea that chaos is all that there is, and that disorder and order are both illusions that are imposed on chaos. These are referred to, respectively, as the "Eristic" and "Aneristic" illusions. It was founded circa 1958–1959 by Malaclypse the Younger with the publication of its principal text, the Principia Discordia. With the advent of the internet Discordianism has spread widely.

I also studied a number Irish traditions involving the Tuatha Dé Danann "peoples of the goddess Danu". When the stories were actually written down it is thought that what had originally been pre Christian deities were represented as mortal kings, queens, and warriors.

The Arthur cycle in it’s earliest forms including Merlins childhood is said to hold many allusions to pre-christian practice.

Practice and Devotion.

The eight fold wheel of the year.

It has to be admitted that a lot of Pagans accept this eightfold calendar for their festivals, but the inclusion of the solstices and the equinoxes are a modern wiccan practice.

A lot of Pagans will meet as groups on these dates, though there are many more “solitary” practitioners of every flavor.

I have also been involved in setting up Neo Pagan groups, for instance when I was at durham university.

Paganism Still Practiced.

The warrior god Tyrs Day, Woden the all fathers Day, Thor the god of thunders Day, and Freyjas Day the god of love, beauty, fertility, gold amongst other things, from the Anglo Saxon, days of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Apart from the roman Saturn, Sun, Moon, being Saturday, Sunday, Monday.Saturnalia originally celebrated for a day, on December 17, eventually growing to became a week long extravaganza, ending on the 23rd: Part of the Saturnalia involved the reversal of roles, the slaves becoming the masters, and the masters becoming the slaves, for one day, it is said the practice of wearing the paper crowns at dinner on Christmas day dates back to the saturnalia

May poles, an obvious one, simple phallic representation.

Christmas trees, in Northern Europe the trees were decorated with frosted fruit and gifts, to represent them bearing fruit, to celebrate the passing of the winter solstice.

Because English law is in perpetuity Mistletoe (druid symbol of fertility) is still not legal in churches.

Easter Eggs, The egg was a druid symbol of rebirth, and the ark, as the druids were an arkite religion (made reference to a great flood).

“Touch Wood” possible a throw back to the Druid Sacred Groves.

Conclusion.

Most pagans term themselves neo pagans in recognition that there is little direct connection with their religious predecessors, and the religion is a modern developing religion. Paganism in it's modern form is the perfect postmodernist religion for a post modernist age.

Now of course I may be completely off with the fairies, but the way I have always seen things is this:

An individual of a scientific nature will look at a rainbow

and will see the diffraction of light through water.

Now I did physics to "A" level standard so I can appreciate that point of view.

But I also see:

Jehovah's promise to Noah "not to do that again."

Bifrost arching between Midgard and Asgard

I am almost off to see if I can't find the leprechaun and try to pinch his gold.

I regularly talk with Gods and Demons, Angels and Devils, my life is full of spirit and wonder, I walk with my gods every step.

I ask you which would you rather have the grey boring life of the scientist, or the wonder and lunacy of mine?

Ps two notes:

1: I pinched most of the images from the web, if they belong to you please either contact me so I can reference them properly or remove them if you so wish.

2: The Time line on the Thule Nazi bit may need looking at. Though Himmler, and Hess, where members, the society was probably too involved in anti-sematic activity to count as anything occult.

Technorati Tag: Pagan, Druid, Wicca, Religion, Science, Neo-Pagan, Writing, meekon5.

Chapter 06 - In Transit.

2009-11-30T18:02:00.003Z

The transit way is separate from the pedestrian for good reason, all entirely automated. I stand by the entry port, my journey plan and insurances negotiated last night by various intelligent agents on the mesh. As I approach my transport begins to build with the all to familiar fizz of nanotech. I've opted for public rather than private carriage as it's vastly cheaper. Okay you have to put up with actually sitting with other people, the vids are all public channel (too many adverts), the hawkers ply their wares from little trolleys between the seats, and your seat disappears as you get nearer the hub, but I like listening to the other passengers chatter, I don't get to hear that much in the hauling job.
My seat completes. A couple stands behind me waiting their turn. Too intimate to really take notice of me, holding hands and staring into each others eyes. I sit down and the section slides into the roaring throng of the main arterial transit. I look back to see the couple settling down on a bench seat curled up together. Oblivious to everything else around them. This is the bit I hate. A single seat, sliding into three to four lanes of very fast moving transit. The brittle chatter of the vids no distraction. The seat gains momentum and slips sideways through the seething, continuous snake of commuters. I've spent a few credits extra so I slide ever towards the middle of the transit tube, to the faster lanes, the little bubble that is my capsule easing itself through the mass of other passengers as they go over, under and around me. The claustrophobia is intense for a few seconds then there is and almost audible pop as my seat finds it's speed and settles into the throng, other passengers almost physically materializing next to me, as the bubble dissolves and my journey joins the rest of the tube.
I'm presented with row upon row of identical sets of seats, other people heading in similar directions, occasionally a bubble forms around one and their seat peels off to an exit, only for the rest of the seats to reorganise and replace it, filling the gap.
The seat next to me begins to drift to the side and a corridor opens between us. A couple of grinning hawkers push a food cart between us, they gesticulate and jabber in what must be the local commerce dialect, obviously singing the praises of their wares. Even going as far as actually trying to push some of their cheap traveller comforts, pillows, warm towels, into my hands, both grinning and nodding as they do so. I don't succumb to their less than subtle sales banter, I shake my head, pushing the goods back and point a the vid screen, indicating I'll use the mesh to order as and when I want their services. Looking a little disgruntled they push their cart forward, like some macabre double act, scavengers in search of another corpse, looking for new victims. The seats re-align themselves and continue at their break neck speed. I feel the slight push of the g-force as we accelerate forwards, as there's a sudden bank upwards, and slowly the gravity begins to decrease as we move away from the rim towards the hub.
I notice a sudden hush fall on the other passengers around me. Then an audible gasp. Before I've had time to process what's happening I burst out into the space bridge. Right out into the vacuum itself. Even I can't help letting a small sigh of shock escape my lips. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Ejected up through the roof of the rim, into a transparent tube threaded down one of the radial arms of the station. A beautiful clear view of space in all its majesty. The closest most of these people will actually get to a space walk. A shock to the system that literally takes your breath away. Of course the palsti-glass is coated and shielded otherwise thousands of commuters a day would be fried by the cosmic rays and intense sunlight this close to the star that is our sun, but it still is one of the most impressive sights you can see on SolDock Five. It still takes my breath away. I'm told that you can see two of the other seven SolDock stations at the right time in the orbit. The radial arms are alight with sparkling tendrils of the transits, like veins of light threaded down the spokes of an enormous cart wheel. Past the inner two rings, the governing bureaucracy housed and officed in sumptuous courts in the centre of the ring, a huge spoke to the entire life of the station both physically and metaphysically. A glittering jewel of activity, all glass and shining, tiny activity, now seen for the first time since I docked almost a month ago.
Looking back the rim seems like an ancient sailing ships wheel lost at sea and left so long life has encrusted itself on and around it like coral. Tiny drones, manned traders, tugs, luggers, and massive freighters, military and commercial, ships of all sizes swimming brightly to and fro like a myriad of fish dependant on the reef for existence, the loading cranes and gantries like anemones and crabs grabbing at the less wary and ensnaring them to slowly devour, sucking their insides out first.
Again a communal grumble from up ahead. As we hit the intersection of two lines they merge, we loose our seats. Pushed from a comfortable sitting position to an upright, standing one, most of these people do this on a daily basis, but still moan as they are almost catapulted vertical. The space between us reduces and we are packed like some military transport.
I start to look around. It's only now I notice how much military black is worn by my fellow travellers. My own uniform is the equivalent of a petit-commissar, insignia and piping all in red, there are a few similar ranks. I spend a while comparing badges and branches, divisions, with my own. The majority are admin arms. I derive my rank part from the work I use to do in the Mars Commissary, and partly from a little disposal work I still do for the military. You have to be a certain rank to be allowed to take out high security trash. I also rank many of them because I can fly a ship. I have to admit to feeling a little bit of a fraud because I haven't seen any real action, but at least it affords me enough respect to have a little room to breath. The majority of the rest are lower grades, few or no rank badges. Desk jockeys and console goldfish, bottom feeders and data sifters. The sort of jobs complex AI refuses to do, or too unfathomable to be able to write an algorithm to handle. Unlogic on a level machines will never understand, and biological process alone can handle, witchcraft at its best, an inferred science at its worst. All essential to the war effort, of course. At times I wonder if the proles are not actually given work and pay just to be able to consume the goods produced, in order to shore up the whole galactic capitalist economy. There are some higher ranks. I spot the odd orange insignia, and possible one yellow. The higher grades don't tend to travel far, preferring to be billeted close to their offices. The High Bureaucrats actually live in their places of work, with small modest retinues. Considering the size of the Temples of Truth I suppose I would.
A large section slides in to position just in front of me. Filled with what looks like and off world work gang. Heavy fatigues, large hulking individuals some with intricate facial tattoos marking them as ex-gang members from certain disreputable quadrants. They chatter in a dialect I don’t immediately pick up, being somewhat unfamiliar to me. A few minutes and the translator begins to filter the standard forms and give me an easier to understand version of their conversation. It seems that the gang boss is arguing pay splits. He claims that because he arranges the jobs the rest should take lesser shares. One of the bigger individuals seems to think otherwise. A scuffle breaks out and a number of the gang pull large blades. They face each other. Then slowly lower the knives and laugh. One notices I’ve been watching and gesticulates. He begins to walk over toying with the knife and shouting. The others grin and watch the spectacle. I manipulate a couple of icons on my HUD. The left side of my face tingles as the electronically active ink in my own face tattoo reveals itself. I’ve been told its called burning Knot work. Our eyes meet. He sees the tattoo. A friend steps forward and whispers in his ear. He looks at the friend and briefly looks at me. I actually see the fear in his eyes. He quickly turns and doesn’t dare make eye contact again. The whole group shift nervously and look anywhere but at me, muttering amongst themselves about how it isn’t worth the trouble.
The tattoo itself is a gift from a neighbour in the Martian Archologies. It’s the clan emblem of one of the biggest, nastiest, most fierce street gangs from the worst quarter of Mars. Why have I got one you ask?
Simple, my neighbour, a rather frail and delicate old lady needed to deal with the Bureaucracy on Mars. Not being conversant with the proper protocols, and knowing I was something in the commissary, she asked for my help. It was only the matter of filing the correct applications to the right departments, no real problem for me and it ensured her medical insurance and living expenses continued to be paid by the company. A couple of weeks after I completed the arrangement for her she invites me in for tea. In her pre-hab are about a dozen of the biggest thugs I have ever seen, and being from a less than salubrious side of town I had seen my share. To say I was scared was an understatement. The biggest nastiest of them stood as I entered the room. Thanked me for helping his grandmother and a second member leaned forward and anesthetised me. I wake up a few hours later in a panic. Only the big one is there in my pre-hab. He explains what they have done and what an honour it is to be initiated into the gang. He explains the tattoo, calms me down again, and shows me the de-activation switch, and explains the electronically active ink that has been used. Showing me that it doesn’t come up on certain types of scanner, he smiles and says it’s the only thing they could think of to say thank you properly. It appeared family was very important to the gang. They see themselves providing a support where the company fails. I was going to argue the prostitution, and narcotics, and hideous street murder aspect but you don’t live as long as I have without knowing that one should always be as diplomatic as possible in certain circumstances. I will admit I have become attached to the thing. I’ve only needed to “show my colours” once or twice. There is of course the fact that William, “Big Willy” to his friends, also promised that if I should ever need anything he personally would see to it that the gang would provide. He then cut my palm, and his, mingling the two, and proclaimed me “blood”. Then wandered off grinning like a Cheshire cat. I do believe he is doing particularly well for himself and has risen quite high in the ranks of the gang at present. It amuses Hassan to keep me abreast of Big Willy’s progress, and passes the odd communiqué now and then from him.
There's a marked deceleration. Whole rafts of passengers bubble over and begin to peel off into the slower lanes. My own section grows a canopy and slows and dives, my stomach almost hitting my mouth. It slows to a crawl then dissolves. Leaving a couple of dozen of us standing, looking bereaved and bereft for a couple of seconds whilst we get our bearings.
I look round. The space is gargantuan. An immense void of glass, encircled by pillars the roof difficult to see above us, shrouded in a mist of smoke. Braziers hang ever few meters from endless chains from the ceiling, the light pools underneath them. I admire the High Bureaucrats for one thing, and one thing alone, their sense of the Gothic. I begin to follow the throng towards the main reception desks.
The doors to the building stand symbolically open, each side guarded by a squad of titanic battle droids. The crowd constantly washed with laser sights, scanned with every form and wavelength of detectors known to man, or machine. The droids impassive, constantly sweeping the crowd, using military patterns to ensure the maximum number of individuals are covered at any one time.
My mesh begins to chime. Set automatically it begins the arduous and complicated protocol, chanting like a mendicant, a sinner on pilgrimage, negotiating with the Bureaucratic mesh, the hub frame. I pace slowly towards the first bank of security gates to check in.
As I get into the middle of the hall my HUD begins to display the double headed eagle ripping a scroll in two. The icon is as immense as the hall it, virtually, spins in, and glittering in a way only an augmented reality event could. Looking towards the security gates and above them there now appears the slogan “Welcome to the Temples of Truth!” Followed by their motto, “Hide Nothing, Fear Nothing!” Emblazoned in six foot tall letters.

Technorati Tag: Chapter_06, Fiction, Junis_Redux, Sci-Fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock Five, Space, Space Travel, Writing, meekon5.

Chapter 05 - Morning Dance.

2009-10-28T22:45:00.005Z

The imperative to pee is too much for me, so I abandon the cosy warmth of my bed early. Zero six hundred hours UCT, or company standard time. Adopted to ensure all accounts are filed at the same time, where ever you are in the solar system. I still use it from years of familiarity, even though I no longer work in the Mars conglomerates. The alarm chimes shrilly in the bedroom. Shame I've been up for ten minutes already. I glance left to a set of icons on my HUD, computer augmented reality, I reach up into thin air to grip an icon in my thumb and fore finger. “Pinch!” I mutter, squeezing lightly on thin air.
The “Tooth Hygiene” nano buzz with activity in my mouth. I feel the ozone of the converted plaque grow and open my lips to release the gas build up with a small hiss. Just clearing up the ravages of the night before. Halfway through activating my teeth nano, I berate myself for not scheduling the job on automatic again, and not having the luxury of not having to think about it every morning. I smile subversively to myself. “Some day, some day I'll remember to sit down and sched a whole raft of little jobs like that!”
I tap the mirror wall in front of me and transparent images of solar weather radar, news feeds, and transit routes are super imposed over my image. Hotspots for the next few months are predicted against schematics of my mornings up and coming journey. Sling potentials, gravity corridors, space lanes to avoid and those to traverse.
The speakers in the walls (the walls are the speakers actually) begin to pipe a mixture of “cool classical” from my antique music database, randomly sorted, to try and listen to some of the rarer tracks I’ve collected. Hendrix begins to play 'little wing'. Again I smile wryly to myself. “Silly old bugger. Still using a bathroom after all these years. Nano covers all aspects of hygiene, but you still can't get out of the habit of standing in the bathroom each morning to clean your teeth and have a bath!”
As I say the words “bath” the taps activate and begin filling the antique bathtub, chiming stats on perfect temperature mix and volumes, beginning to calculate water usage, costs and add them to my budget to be deducted from my monthly credit, off setting the bath against drinking water and updating stats on recalculated re-syc thresholds. “Not this morning stupid twat!” I chuckle to myself.
“Cease!”
The water stops flowing, the music stops playing and the lights go out in the sealed windowless bathroom. For a moment I am standing alone in the dark, with only the familiar hum of the engines vibrating through the floor.
“Bath that is. Lights on. Music proceed! Bath empty!”
The lights flicker and return, the way only neon does. The music quietly ramps back to the pre-set volume, and the bath develops a plughole, empties, and auto cleans itself.
Shaking my head and laughing quietly to myself, I turn round, I touch the icon on the wall, which appears by the door. The door slides open.
As an after thought I flick my eyes to another icon on my HUD, it becomes central and I pinch it between my finger and thumb.
Again the fizz of ozone as body nano cleans and repairs ever inch of my skin. “Not that I wouldn't prefer a bath to that!” I shudder involuntary as the sensation tickles on the edge of abrasion all over my body.
Stepping back into the bathroom and briefly splashing some water on my face and head at the sink, then towelling off the excess nano, hair, and any remaining residue from the “bath”. My hair constantly trimmed to a close shave and my goatee neatly barbered by eN-tech.
The piped music follows me through into the kitchen area. Lights flicker into life as I move through the small utility room. Stopping briefly to remove two slices of bread from the freezer I place them in the toaster and activate it. My cup foams and fills with hot tea at my touch. Again a slight shudder. “I will get used to that at some point I'm sure.”
I sip at it tentatively as I pass back through the utility room to my lounge.
All the doors purposely left set open so I can walk easily between rooms. An attempt to remind myself how much room I have. There are families of ten or more living, in the pre-habs planet side, in less than half the space than I've managed to secure with the Lady Jane Grey. The down turn in the off world hauling market about fifty years ago meant I was able to purchase two reasonably large units and tether them together as one ship.
My mind wanders back to the days on Mars, living in the pre-habs. Huge organically grown skeletons of plexi-steel. The nano build all the utilities into the infrastructure and add standard utility couplings. Massive shells to house thousands of units can be grown in weeks. Then housing units are flown in and slotted into the spaces, attached to the utility feeds, as tenants (usually corporate landlords) rent space in the framework. Large container boxes of housing units are slotted in then occupied once activated.
The Martian archaeologies are something to be seen. Huge magnificent monoliths towering up into the sky further than the eye can see. Magnificent only if seen from above. View them from the perspective of most of the tenants, from below, and hope leaches away. Without hope there is no reason to continue to live. Hope drives wishes and gives reason to continue. If it wasn't for the constant rain. It is dark at the bottom of the stacks. The towers so high that they tear the sky itself, and she can do nothing but weep all day and all of the night long. Constant rain, day and night. It gets in everywhere. Constant rain, constant damp, everything.
The understacks at this time in the morning are less dangerous than at most times of day. Too late in the morning for the rape gangs to be around, too early in the morning for the murder gangs to be up. I smile, it wasn't actually that bad. I was stopped once by a group of would be muggers, but the piezo charge set in my coat stopped most of the would be assailants dead in their tracks. One buzz of that and they began to think twice about trying anything again. If needs be I was licensed to carry the two military grade tasers, I used to wear tucked warmly under my jacket as well. Again waste disposal accountancy had its perks when you contracted to the military.
I find myself, now, sitting amongst the debris of my life, vids and memory units piled on every surface I can find, bits of hardware, retained to fix others, at some indefinite point in the future, circuit boards from previous upgrades not yet recycled. Stims in racks at one end of the room. Ornaments, careful selected, then almost randomly abandoned on shelves around the room. There is actual order to the place. You just have to know what the order is.
Listening to the pod DJ and her “crew” mutter banally about today’s dockside traffic, politics, sports headlines. “A hope to the under educated, a promise to the ungifted!” I mutter.
“If it wasn't for the need for the human touch, a basic need for interaction, DJ's would have finally run their natural course and become extinct years ago.” I think to myself.
“If only!” I add.
Picking up my shirt off one of the ample chairs I slip it over my tee shirt and it zips itself to a comfortable neck line. Digging around under various sized sheets of clear plastic, I retrieve my regulation black dungarees, and put them on. Finding my boots in the hall by the door I slip them on and run my finger up the seal to seamlessly complete them. They fluctuate for a moment adjusting themselves to my feet then meld with the ankles of my dungarees to complete one unit.
The belt from the banister at the end of the stairs is an affectation but it makes the placement of my utility pouches more convenient. The antique glasses just make me look more intelligent. So I keep telling myself. They are, of course, next to completely pointless with modern corrective surgery, performed non-invasively, just by taking a mixture of retro engineered viruses and nano pills.
I carefully pick up two or three memory blocks from the pile on the floor, units I've spent most of the evening before preparing. As I touch each one its icon appears on my HUD, more, an icon lights up “vids” for the first, the second “pod”, the third “tools of the trade”, software hacks (some my own), tools , and my favourite AI interface. Locking them into my belt they interface with my personal net. A couple of piezo units I had fitted into my hip joints years back provide more than enough power for all the hardware and bits and pieces I run most trips.
A military style jacket hangs on the banister end where the belt was. I slip another pod unit into an inside pocket whilst throwing the jacket around my shoulders. An id badge materializes on my breast pocket declaring name rank and bar code, with the obligatory unflattering picture.
With a reluctant sigh I pick up my attaché bag. A nebulous black hole as far as I am concerned. I fold an item and place it on top of the thing and it just sinks in. No opening. No organisation. The whole thing is an extra light alloy mixed with nano. Place a memory unit on it and it will hold it securely and properly organised until you request it again. Personally assigned to me, no-one else can access anything I put in it. There are probably high level police and military overrides but apart from that my ident chip is the only one that can retrieve from it. Bonded for life with a brief case. One of the vague advantages of some lower grade military crap that I ship each trip, does mean I have access to some pretty cutting edge toys.
Picking up a couple of the plastic sheets, one A3, one A4, I fold them, they bond on themselves, sealed, and I lay them on top of the bag. They sink like a woolly mammoth into the black of the tar pit. Leaving no discernible trace of any intrusion.
On top of a book case at the end of the room six jack plugs wait. Intentionally selected the night before. I pull a clip out of a jacket pocket and clip each into place. Lifting each reveals their names in close proximity. Lifting the last I pause, “The City” flashes next to the jack. I smile and almost reverently place it into the clip. Slipping the clip into an inside pocket in the jacket. “Six should be enough for the trip I think.” I grin.
Placing my hands together, palm on palm, I bow to the symbol of two swords crossed on the east wall. I turn and bow to the symbol of the sun on the south wall. I bow towards a large chalice on a shelf on the west wall. Then bow to a sphere on the north wall. Smiling I step into the lounge again and face the huge head of a leaf encrusted man, the head of a man whose rosy cheeked cherubic face is framed by grapes, and the face of a beautiful woman. I bow again. “Thank you and bless you. Please look after the house for me and keep a watchful eye on me whilst I am away.” The three heads bow back, all smiling.
I place the cup in the kitchen. It empties and cleans itself.
I retrieve a greatcoat from the end of the banister and drape that around my shoulders, over my jacket. Again insignia and rank badges, ID and a certain amount of intricate embroidery, in red, resolve themselves and settle in the structure of the coat.
Facing the door I sigh. “Enough pissing around. Time to get on with it.”
Placing one finger of my left hand on the door to the air lock I drag two from the other hand down and open them. A screen appears on the door between them, growing with the gesture I am tracing. “Corridor monitor”
An image of the corridor outside flashes onto the screen. Sweeping from left to right then back again. No one is about. A small voice chimes “Corridor clear for two hours”
“Thank you!” The screen disappears.
Not that I don't like my neighbours. I get on fine with the ones each side. It's just some of the ones further down the corridor, itinerant traders and their children, I don’t trust as much.
I tap the release code into the door lock icon. The door dissolves. Stepping out I reach up to pinch the locking icon. The door seals itself back into the framework. The windows around the outside of the units disappear. The main quarters of the ship hermetically seal. The entire house unit is pumped with inert gas. “See you in about six hours” I kiss my fingers and touch where the door was. A trace of my fingerprints remains glowing on the door, and then dissipate like electricity running across circuits through the face of the door.
Inside four rooms, four clicks, in each room a tennis ball sized piece of metal falls from its socket in the roof with a satisfied plop. Each one acquires six legs, scanning and monitoring clusters sprout as the head of each grows from the body. Cameras adjust round the heads, six forward, two back, like metallic insect heads, each scampers, not unlike land locked crabs, to their allotted position and log into the ship net. “Security activated!” The smooth voice of my mesh mutters.

Technorati Tags: chapter_05, fiction, Junis_Redux, meekon5, Sci-fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock, SolDock Five, space, Space Travel, writing

Chapter 04 - The God Emperor of the Four Deaconates Verses Batak Inc.

2009-10-28T22:34:00.006Z

“You've been out of circulation for quite a while if you've not heard of The God Emperor of the Four Deaconates Verses Batak Inc.”
“I was not born Sol, and a lot of the work I have done for Uncle is not in the area, if you know what I mean.” again the lizard smile, I feel a cold chill.
“I suppose it all came to a head in my younger years. Batak Inc were one of the first adopters of the Junis Project. They invested heavily and even completely financed one of the Initialiser vessels. As such they got rights to whatever the probe and it's offspring returned to earth. Their CEO Roger Batak himself even managed to get his DNA accepted as clone templates for the Junis model sixes that would eventually master the extraction and distribution of resources back to earth. Time passed. Roger himself being immensely wealthy went from clone stock to clone stock. By the time the allotted resources should have been returning to Batak Inc he was wearing a Junis eight clone hybrid body. A couple of hundreds of years had passed. Batak Inc had diversified and consolidated, and was now one of the major families in the Sol colonies. Batak himself was a really big player.”
“Well fairly miffed at the lack of return on his ancient investment, and seeing the huge pay back some of the other smaller families were getting from lesser commercial enterprises, mostly conglomerate investment cartels, he raised an army. Tech had moved on a pace, so fairly soon they dropped into the expected deaconate ready for a bit of a scrap. You know a small planet side war. Possibly a year or two, nothing too expensive. Only to find the clone children of Batak had fought amongst themselves, and the one survivor had destroyed two brothers, and a sister, and announced himself The God Emperor of The Four Deaconates.”
“The God Emperor was not exactly pleased to see the Batak contingent. To cut a long story short, after some eighty years of pitched battle, across planets, and even systems, the Batak Legions lost everything to the God Emperors battle seasoned troops. Batak himself was captured, bound and sent before the God Emperor to plead for his worthless life. In his moment of ultimate triumph the God Emperor bent to receive the plea for mercy from his makers own lips. What the God Emperor had not allowed for was the Black Rod Protocol. Batak whispered a simple pre-prepared phrase into his ear, the God Emperor seceded all rights and symbols of authority to Batak, simply handed over the keys to the four deaconates he controlled, fell to his knees and went into a coma. Batak had him carted off for clone fodder to his private vats.”
“Nowadays you would probably consider it only a minor inter faction skirmish.”
“It's the first instance where there were signs that there may be problems with the Junis Six. Junis Corp denied there was any problem with any of the rest of the sixes. Quietly instigating the Purge of the Long Knives that lead to the eights destroying then replacing every six they could find. Unfortunately the eights were not as efficient as they should have been and some sixes escaped to spread the word throughout all the thirty six deaconates. The eights realising their error instigated the hunter killer class, the nines, all armed with the ultimate weapon, Bataks Black Rod Protocol. Become known as the Black Rod themselves they led legions into the stars and still continue the battle to this day. Many of the sixes don't want to give up the power and possition they have aquired.”
“In the incidents wake the Hub Temple instigated a rigorous testing of any inbound or outbound space traveller. From the slate you just passed me you were tested inbound only a few months ago, so the legislation doesn't apply. I on the other hand rarely leave the Sol system, and haven't in the last hundred years or so, and must therefore submit myself for personal testing before we can leave.”
“I will bid you good night and retire to my chambers.” I stand, bow, and leave up the stairs in the corner of the common room.

Technorati Tags: chapter_04, fiction, Junis_Redux, meekon5, Sci-fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock, SolDock Five, space, Space Travel, writing

Chapter 03 - Room Without a View.

2009-10-28T11:35:00.007Z

We stand eyeing each other suspiciously for a minute as data streams from mesh to mesh. So this is the infamous Bonetta Smith, artisan, artist, and rumoured to be one of Hassan’s greatest assassins. She holds sole command of his inner cadre, the hand picked, personally vetted inner body guard of his inner body guard. She's a young fifty if even that, but like most of the higher echelon her looks wouldn't put her past twenty, re-juve and augmented surgery. The Smiths can afford the best, and they don't scrimp on the credits. I realise I'm staring, she smiles, I blush, and suddenly feel very old.
To stem my embarrassment I scan the hull. I whistle through my teeth.

“The gods, and your uncle’s grace, have been very generous. I was just having the standard nano shielding patched. This is very high grade. E M plate, reaction seal, bio steel, the works. I must thank Hassan.” I bow towards her again, she being the nearest representative of a very generous man.
“You'll find Uncle Hassan is a particularly lavish individual. If you please him he will reward you well. If not.” she pauses.
“Well let’s say the clone banks of Antilia Five are always more than grateful for the produce to resequence for parts.”
I shuddered involuntarily. There was no coming back from being butchered by the techs for spare part surgery. Antilia Five did very well out of the war, and certain families who required a certain flexibility with bills of lading when shipping clone stock.
“Bits of people have been known to turn up all over the known galaxy after upsetting him.” She smiled, again an almost reptilian action, as though she had read a book about the action and not completely understood the purpose.
Feeling ever so slightly uncomfortable with whatever covert actions this young lady had been involved in. What ever she had seen and done, I for one did not wish to know, and whatever disaster she was being sent to pre-empt, or cause, I wanted to deliver her and be away from there as soon as possible.
I turn to hide my growing discomfort. Flicking across the stats still scrolling across my HUD about the new skin. The Lady Jane would be more than happy with this upgrade, it was almost atmospheric grade. The unseen edge of the airlock door glows in my view as I look at it. I gently stroke the door. DNA is recognised. Sparks like electricity spread out and settle, cycling round the edge of the, now, visible door. A moment passes whilst the crew areas re-pressurise, and security disabler gasses is removed from the atmosphere. A sigh as the inner and outer pressures equalise and the door slides seamlessly open.
I motion for her to enter. Huge organic LED panels flicker into life and the corridor to the crew common room becomes illuminated. She glides in, hand trailing behind her, gently brushing the wall as she goes. She gets as far as the first frame half a meter in. Her hand touches the frame and she almost recoils. Then, with her eyes closed, she gentle runs her hand up the support.

“Wood! Real wood! Oh my Señor Gaud, you are a man of particular and refined tastes! I can see now why Uncle Hassan likes you.” This time the smile she gives me is warm and genuine.
“The Martian economy was going through a boom and the hauler I bought it from was in a particular hurry to cut his losses.”
“You did extremely well out of the deal.”
“You can take any of the four crew rooms on this level, there's a galley in the common room, and each crew room has its own bathroom. You have run of the ship, the common areas, and the main decks. I have the upper state rooms and the suite there, behind the bridge. Please make yourself comfortable.”
She pirouettes as she enters the common room, the hub to the four anti chambers that are the crew quarters. The LED's here are set as beading to oak panels. The room has three large arm chairs and a sofa placed around a large table, set at knee height. Central to the room is a large antique and LED black ironwork chandelier, not only a dozen individual light sources but LED piping around and along the ironwork arms and stem, matched by similar wall lighting. A large chain anchors it to the ceiling and another to the floor.
As the light raise above ambient level she gasps. She runs over to one of the two bookcases and reverently lifts out one of the antique books.
“Paper?” She asks.
I smile and nod.

“Wait until you see the wine cellar.”
She gently opens the book and flicks through the pages.

“Uncle has a few. But not this many.”
“A long time collecting. Now where is your luggage?”
“One moment.” She raises her hand and touches the left side of her temple, closing her eyes.
“Three bring my trunk in now.”
There's noise from the end of the corridor and a large burly man in black fatigues pushes a large black box almost as large as himself into the ship. Sliding it on a zero friction plate he brings it to a halt in the middle of the room, bows and waits.
“Put it in that one please.” She waves in the direction of one of the rooms.
“You won’t mind if I use one as a dressing room will you Señor Gaud?” It is more an instruction than a question, but protocol demands, as I am the captain, so outrank her on my own ship.
“There's only the two of us this trip, so you can use as many as you feel you need.”
Again the man bows and slides the box into the indicated room. As he comes back he hands a slate to Bennetta, bows again and backs out of the room and leaves the ship.
“Here.” She hands me the slate.
I take it and it immediately starts to download to my mesh.
“Formax!” I mutter without thinking.
“Yes Formax. Is that a Problem?”
“It's out of system. That means sleeping for the majority of the trip, if you don’t mind suspended animation, and it will require the correct documentation.”
“Again I ask, that's not a problem, is it?”
“No, no it just means I have to make a personal trip to the Hub Temple of Bureaucracy. Not something I relish, but as needs must.”
“In person, can't you just net the request?”
“Not since The God Emperor incident.”
“I'm sorry I've been out of Sol politics for a while, what?”

Technorati Tags: chapter_03, fiction, Junis_Redux, meekon5, Sci-fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock, SolDock Five, space, Space Travel, writing

Chapter 02 - Water and Solitude.

2009-09-04T11:22:00.004Z

Hassan the water vendor is an acquired taste. Ex-military, very abrupt at times, but an impartial man, I have dealt with him for years, and he has always traded fairly. Very difficult to find in some sectors, a good, fair, trader.
Food and water, the basic fundamentals of life, are not good things to run out of either. There are too many little space wrecks orbiting distant stars with the desiccated, starved, crew still sitting at their posts. Most of them completely robbed out and useless now, but by tradition the bodies remain untouched. Big bad voodoo to even move them, incur a curse even. Too many are the stories of the dead visiting the grave robbers to drive them space crazy and leave another husk of a ship forever orbiting some minor asteroid or planet. This myth frequently backed up by the instances of more than one craft orbiting the same desolate piece of rock.
Personally I like to think it's statistical probability that the stupid, and ill prepared, would all congregate round similar destinations if they are attempting, if somewhat unsuccessfully, the same route, and come to a, I would say sticky, but think of it as an awfully dry, end. You can't have too much food and water on the ship, cutting corners is not a viable option. A mistake of a few degrees in navigation can send a ship off of its course by thousands of miles. If you're trying to hit some small piece of rock in the vastness of space that little mistake can take days, if not sometimes weeks or months, to rectify. Better to be over cautious than over optimistic and, fundamentally, dead.
The family Smith where early adopters of space trading. Accepting all manner of grants and licenses from the Pan African Space Consortium many centuries ago. They hold monopolies on many of the water trading franchises across many major star systems. Hold them with a vice like grip that the centuries, and many interested parties wishing to take them from them, have seen them maintain their grip.
A high security compound in the trading district. Well guarded and washed with sensor arrays, very little could get in here without them knowing who and where it is. Still I am cautious I don’t want to upset the water traders, to be left high and dry is almost as instant a death sentence as to open an airlock in deep space.
Hassan is an amazing sight himself, a huge bulk of a man, a veritable giant. Military service having required many augmentations and gene therapies to produce an efficient, robust killing machine. As head of the clan Sol, though negroid, he sports an albino gene splice to mark his eminence of seniority. I have heard he had to kill three brothers and an uncle or two to take the clan headship. Some say it was always his plan, that should he survive military service he would use the gifts they had given him to take his place as head of the clan. Though his position demands he have a small retinue of body guards I doubt the success of any attempt on his life. Scarred both ritually and in battle, he presents an awe inspiring, terrifying, ghostly aspect.
“Ramadan Gaud! It impresses me that my Martian brother is still alive, and not the smear over the hull of some anonymous cargo crate from Cygnus colony!” He booms as I enter the room.
His hand dwarfs mine as we shake hands. “Hassan, you do me great honour meeting me to trade personally. I'm sure there's many more important things you could be doing with your time.”
“Ramadan. Not only would I consider it an insult on my part, but I enjoy your company. And I trust your opinion more than many of these frightened toadies that fawn like sycophants, fighting like spoilt children for every minute of my attention.” He smiled, whilst lifting a large bottle of spirit and two glasses onto the desk between us.
Along bottle, almost half a meter tall, more like a small basketball with a spike rising from the top. A pale blue green liquid languishing within, moving in an almost viscous, lethargic way.
He pours two glasses.
I savour the aroma of mine, raise an eyebrow and ask. “The 'Sing 47'?” He nods.
“Please a glass of this is worth more than half my trades with you so far. The Martian Sing vineyards haven't had such a good harvest in the last two hundred years!”
“Again it's your company, and what you're going to do for me that I value!”
“Ah ha! Now the catch.”
“Ramadan, you insult me.” He smiles as cat would to a mouse it is about to eat.
“I have a favour I need to ask.”
I sip the liquor and wait for his pitch.
“I will give you the water you ask for plus half again, for nothing, gratis, but I need someone transported. Someone rather special to me.”
“Hassan, you know I have minimum armaments and weapons. You'd do better sending them via one of the deep space liners, with a large complement of your body guard. I refuse to believe you of all people can't afford that?”
“It's not a matter of price. It's a matter of trust. She is my niece. For years now she has lived in my household, as a guest, to ensure here fathers continued loyalty to me. Recently one of my uncles unfortunately passed away, and I need someone loyal to hold the office of that branch of the family.”
“I only have room for two or three people in my rig!”
“Not a problem. She will travel alone, incognito. I have already dispatched a compliment of my personal bodyguard to ensure that conditions are favourable for her arrival.”
I felt a cold chill run down my spine. The politics of water were often bloody and particularly Machiavellian. I realised Hassan was annexing more of the franchise under his control.
Again the predatory smile. “I take it we are agreed then?”
Only the terminally stupid would turn down an offer like this.
“Yes, yes. One run, one delivery.” Again we shook hands.
“Finish your drink, don't worry. Have another if you wish. I must attend to other matters. As you will appreciate things are a little hectic at the moment.” He stood, bowed slightly to me. I stood bowed lower to show due respect.
He stopped at the door looking back, earnest for a moment “Ramadan, you can refuse if you want, I will not hold it against you. Many would shy away from matters of family politics amongst the Clans Smith. It is because I trust you and count you as a true friend that I ask you to do this for me.”
I bow even lower. “No I can do this. And thank you.”
He leaves. One servant remains. He looks me in the eyes.
“You sir are greatly honoured. I've not heard him say such to any others. He sees something in you he likes. Possibly the fact that neither of you fit quite properly in the roles you choose to take.”
“Honoured yes, but let’s hope I'm not letting myself in for something I can't handle.”
He pours me another glass and leaves with the bottle. I sit for a while pondering what exactly have I just done.
The big problem with flying solo is, obviously, the solitude. Three months in a large four bed roomed house hurtling through space with just you sitting in it. I can sit and listen to the continuous drone of the air filters pumping recycled air round the ship. I can live with that vague buzz from the engine that vibrates through everything you touch or sit on, even with the best inertial dampening you still feel it through the very air. At times I can discern patterns, modulations, subtle changes in notes, fluctuations in the harmonics between the filter pump and the engine. Sometimes a bearing may stick or squeak. I like to think of it as the soul of the ship singing to me. I have been known to sit and listen for hours, even to the point of humming the tunes myself.
In an attempt to stave off this space madness I get Lady Jane to automatically record anything she can pick up on the station wavebands, music, gossip, news, anything. Then she randomly plays it back to me over the next few months. I also have intelligent agents scouring the station webs and inter-links for any new movies, games or mesh, based on previous choices and tastes. I'm quite proud of my collection of turn of the millennium films and books. My library has extensive mesh enhancement. I have many films converted to mesh environments so I can explore the outer story lines, histories, and step into the actors, and authors, lives as well. I spend hours just plugged into my mesh playing and watching, sometimes even extending stories for weeks or months just to see where the plot would have gone if left to develop. Other times I just sit in the lounge watching the originals projected onto one of the walls in good old fashioned 2D. Other times I'll amuse myself by tuning into the latent radio signals that are bouncing around the solar system. Dependant on our distance from certain planets, depends how far back in time you can listen, and watch. From a historical point of view it's fascinating. If you go far enough out you get to see some of the very first experimental mesh widecasts, original tri-dee, and even really early television. I even hear some academics have calculated the speed of certain radio signals and travelled out to meet them to record them for posterity.
So you can see I have a lot of mechanisms in place to stave off getting space fried. Well trying to, but if you were to see me bouncing round the ship singing filter pump songs or talking to the fridge you may speculate it could be a bit late.
So why am I telling you this?
In some way to try to explain my reaction to what happened next.
Here I am, strolling away from the Café Venue, being a fully adapted Martian I'm not as tall as many of the others but I'm a lot wider and stockier, so am making my way quite nicely away from the explosion of violence that was the Venue. That is now being urgently attended by copious amounts of riot geared, and stun stick waving station militia. Transport for the soon to be incarcerated making its way slowly down the boulevard, sirens screaming and lights flashing.
This all being a bit too hectic I am making my way back to the Lady Jane Grey to sleep. Whilst in dry dock I have special pass to continue using her as my abode. The skin work being handled be millions upon millions of nanites who ensure the process doesn't breach the integrity of the hull. It will take a week for them to eat the old hull and excrete the new one, and for it to harden properly under their protective skin, so I am happy I don't have to spend hard earnt credit on station side doss holes just to be able to breath whilst I sleep.
So nicely pacified by a days gentle drinking, good food, slightly less processed than I'm used to on board, a fight avoided, and six months water nicely brokered and to be delivered in the next morning cycle, I saunter round the corridor to see her sitting there. A frail thing. About my height, so short, without the bulk. Bright red hair, and the albino splice. I nearly crap myself. If she's a pink eye like Hassan then she's almost as important as he is. She stands, bows slightly, I return the gesture with slightly more respect.
“Here the waters loaded, nine months worth, and the skins hardened. I signed for it.” She hands me the dockside slate.
“The sins complete. It wasn't due to cook until the beginning of next week!”
“I think you'll find Uncle Hassan has had something to do with expediting things. Amazing how quickly things get done when he enquires about them round here.” She smiles mirthlessly.

Technorati Tag: Sci-fi, space, SolDock, SolDock Five, fiction, writing, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, Space Travel, meekon5.

My Ophelia.

2009-08-17T09:17:00.004Z

Lustrous dark red hair like newly burnished copper,
Glinting in the late afternoon sun.
Her piercing blue eyes,
Closed now,
Succumbed to the drowsy warmth,
The comfortable glow that envelops us both.
Her lips rounded, full, pouting, and slightly parted.
Her breath even and gentle now.
Her long locks cascading around her head,
And falling over her shoulder to cover one perfect , pert, breast.
I steal furtive glances.
Lest she catch me staring and become self conscious.
Her beauty almost painful to behold.
I am filled with the urge to just reach out and touch her.
To stroke her hair,
To run my finger across the line of her full lips.
Trace her jaw, her neck.
If it where not for the fact that I may wake her,
And to be thrown off the train and banned would be a little embarrassing as well.
Never fall in love on public transport.

Dedicated to yet another unknown beauty. Un-talked to, another beautiful ship passed close and left to continue it's voyage, unmolested. Actually that sounds bad, by unmolested I of course don't mean I physically bother people on the train, but I have been known to talk to the odd one or two and perhaps dislodge their psyche from the safe protected rails they have assumed were the way all people lived and thought, before encountering me. Even there I am not being honest. What I'm trying to say is, yet again I saw what I thought was a stunningly beautiful woman, and did the usual, dreamt and speculated but didn't actually talk to her. I could say another opportunity missed, but in all honesty I stick by the axiom that not every opportunity is an opportunity for me, no matter how enticing it appears. There is no joy nor profit made in spending your life pondering the what could have been, for reference see Ian Dury's “What a waste!”
Also refer to a TFL poster that simply said “If you are unhappy with your life, change it!”
Easy to say but difficult to do! I think not. It is you who builds the bars of your own cage. It is you who limits the expansion of your own life. Much as I do mine. We all have a monkey on our backs. the nagging doubt, the depression, the voice that assures us we cant be that good, that interesting, that attractive. What we fail to realise is that the other people around us have exactly the same doubts, the same fears. Some just hide them better than we do.
For instance. I am a man who lost a large portion of my hair by the time I was thirty. Now I live with comments and insults all the time. Even a one point when I was talking to a very attractive young lady at a bar. The barman (who was actually a friend of mine) made a comment along the usual lines of “oh my god what do you want with a slap head like him?”
I of course faltered and didn't pursue the matter any further. Two things. One, I was short, fat, balding, and older than the young lady before we had started the conversation, so why should it bother her just because he mentioned it now. My friend, the barman, was following an instinct that was ancient, the attempt to prove he was the alpha male. secondly (and to all individuals who think having a full head of hair is some advantage), if hair were really a factor in females finding a mate, then baldness would have been eradicated by natural selection millions of years ago. If women really cared they would not mate with bald men, there fore not reproducing the gene, there fore removing it from the gene pool. Quite simply bold blokes would not get laid, they would not have children, they would not reproduce.
To all you full head of hair (fascist) individuals, the day of the wig and the comb-over are gone. We no longer buy your bull shit. Don't stand there thinking that your hair is all it takes to win a woman. If all women thought like you then the only men that would exist are people that are all identical to you (i.e. vacuous tossers). Now you may think that's a good thing but I for one thank the gods your wrong.
I still didn't talk to her.

Technorati Tag: Red Head, Pre-Raphaelite, Love, Lust, Baldness, Futility, Hope, Attractiveness, Comb-Over, Ophelia, Sadness, Slap Head, meekon5.

Chapter 01 - View From SolDock Five.

2009-07-29T09:19:00.005Z

There she sits, glinting in the reflected light of the nearby sun. Dry dock, Soldock Five. The Lady Jane Grey, she makes me smile with a glow of pride. Beautiful probably only to my eyes, the black and silver paint job showing all my Pagan icons and effigies. Much to the annoyance of the local Tabernacle, SolDock Five has a very vocal minority Christian workforce. Sod them if they're refusing to handle the job. I'm getting it cheaper through some of my Buddhist connections any way, and I prefer it that way. I don't trust the god botherers to do a proper finish, I'd pay double for the Buddhist Union or Hindu Brotherhood to do the job anyway. I'm having the hull re-sealed for her ten year service, it's going to cost me a couple of mil, but it's worth every penny. Micro asteroids pierce the skin regularly, of course the auto sensors re-seal the hole quick enough to prevent explosive decompression, but much like a bicycle tyre too often patched the hull becomes weaker as it becomes more and more sealant and less and less hull plate. I can't allow the Tabernacle to purposefully do a shoddy job in the twisted idea that they may just be eliminating another godless heathen from the space lanes.
So here I am, up on the recreation deck. I've found a bar that overlooks the dry dock that she is being re-worked in. Cold beer in hand, hot meal nicely tucked away in my stomach.
She may only be a class three tug, limited in licence and tonnage, though physics itself dictates a limit on what I can move. I'm part of a dyeing breed. The new deep space catapults slowly putting the long haul riggers out of business. Huge magnetic tubes, aligned with the far reaches of space, shoot cargo at unimaginable speed to its destination like big cannons pointing into the void. Cargo lined up at one end is systematically fed in and slight variation in magnetic field sends it in various directions. The things are relentless, titanic, and fully automated. They make up the majority of the major space lanes now, constant flow of unmanned cargo bullets. You don't get in their way if you can help it. Most of the work now is the scheduled catching at the other end. Time and place, you go and wait and hope the inertia has bitten into the speed of the thing enough to hook it and engage retro thrusters to slow the damn cargo brick down sufficiently to be able to guide it to it's eventual destination to be broken down and shipped on as goods elsewhere.
I say last of a dying breed but that's just an affectation. I always wanted a rig all my life, so when I retired I sold the house on Mars and invested all the proceeds and the money from my pension into the rig, plus a couple of small investments I'd managed to build up. I couldn't afford one of the big interstellar deals, luckily it turns out, with the decline, so opted for a class three. I ply my way between certain solar stations and some of the outlying colonies. The Catapults being too expensive (and too powerful) to operate within the solar systems. I contract to catch one of the bricks maybe one or twice a month. That seems to cover my expenses. I don't think I could afford to do it as a serious job though. I make a small profit, just enough to make it worth my while. It's more an enthusiast practicing his hobby than a business man trying to take on Interstella Solar Mining GmBH.
It's getting to the point where most of us are either retired office jocks looking for something to do, or the burnt out, rejected, long haulers with no-where else to go. Downsized and emasculated, the long haulers, now and again one of them looses the will to go on, and just doesn't stop the brick, just puts the tug in the way. Not a nice way to go but a quick one. The cargo itself is almost indestructible so no real damage , or loss of profit, there. Just a bit of a shock to the rest of us as we sit there watching it happen. I've only seen a couple in the past few years I've been playing at the job, but you know what's happening. The position of the tug, the angle of approach, the attitude of the catcher. After a while you have a feeling for what's right, and you can see, or feel, when it's wrong.
Enough of this maudlin. I sit and glow with pride at my own little space ship. Part ship, part camper van, part floating apartment, part office cube. Actually a bit bigger than the condo on Mars. Command deck, lounge, galley, bathroom and toilet, and four state rooms. I can take passengers if I want but spend most of the time by myself, it suites me that way. The galley's huge, well the walk in freezer is about three times my old kitchens size. Of course you need quiet a bit of space to store six months worth of food and water etc. Beer, wine, spirits, you know the story. It all works by feeding coolant external to the hull into radiators in space. Much cheaper than expanding and contracting gasses, and fine because she never breaks atmosphere. Larder, fridge, freezer, wine cellar. It does for all functions. I've even converted one of the rooms into a library. I keep my collection of antique books, some of them even printed on paper, with my turn of the millennium classic films, all with me were ever I go. The water tank is a room in itself. I keep expecting to find alien eco systems in it every time I have to clean it.
The nasal, guttural drone of the local patois from two local dock workers at an adjacent table distracts me for a moment. Less English than many of the varieties I hear in my travels, I'm finding it hard to understand what it is they are finding so amusing. From the body language and mime in the conversation I'm guessing that a work mate trapped in some stupid, careless, accident seems to have lost a limb, the mock squealing and crying is obviously a great source of humour to his fellows. I'm sure the dock, or union, insurance will cover the bio rebuild for the dismembered individual. The dock workers stop talking, and I realise I've been staring and they have noticed. I tip my glass in their direction and smile. They grunt and nod back then continue to talk as I look out on the hustle and activity in the boulevard below the balcony.
I've chosen the Café Venue for a couple of reasons. First the excellent view of the dry dock, next the view over the Boulevard Hersham Star, so I can sit and watch the ebb and flow of humanity, if you can call some of the meta humans you get out here humanity, hybrids with animals that long since ceased to exist on their home worlds. The metas are an attempt to perpetrate the DNA to the future. A guilt payment for the terraforming and stealing of their home world’s resources, capitalist imperialism on a galactic scale.
Café Venue's not the most salubrious of locations, it's cheap, it's clean, and it's not quiet as ramshackle as some of the section twenty five industrial sector eateries. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not against eating ships rat, I just like mine to be cooked properly, with a nice sauce and some veg on the side. Section twenty five is more shanty town than anything else. Bolted on the side of the station almost like an after thought. Grown like a carbuncle from the constant influx of people from far and distant places. Silted like the slow part of the stream, having travelled light years at incredible speeds the flow of humanity slows down and sediment begins to form around the ports and cargo depots.
I can spend all day sitting here on the balcony. Quietly watching the flow of people. Quietly drinking their beer. My credit's good, and I only need to restock for a short haul, three months this time so plenty of slack in the budget.
If you sit still long enough the rest of the world starts to speed up around you, like some time-lapse scene from an old movie, the people start to move faster and faster, and you begin to see the patterns of the movement emerge. The lines of least resistance begin to appear. The pathways that people use subconsciously appear through the market below.
After a few hours I get bored. I've read all the vids I brought with me. I'm up to date on the SolDock politics, who hates who, who's in this season, who's out, who's killed who, and who tried, the new tech that's being sent down from Cygnus, and some of the other distance colonies. I may have enough from the next run to have some of the tech on The Lady upgraded after the next run.
I rise from the table. The waitress brings over the slate with my bill prominently displayed. I place my thumb on the bottom corner for fingerprint authentication and she scans the chip in my neck. A facsimile of my thumbprint appears on the bill where i touched it. Funds transferred, bill paid and a copy automatically picked up by my slate to transfer to the ship board accounts. Everything nicely logged and catalogued for the tax taken from any transactions undertaken in the industrial district. A different rate would apply if I had done the same thing in the habitat section. Downstairs and through the bar, out onto the street, hassled by vendors, bumped by fellow customers all eager to reach whatever bargain they have set their heart on today. as I move away from the Café Venue I hear the all to familiar sound of breaking glass and shouting as fight breaks out inside.
Now I need to find a water vendor to fill the tanks enough to give me six months grace before I have to start drinking re-syc again. Nothing quiet comes close to drinking your own re-cycled bath water, and sweat condensed out of the environment filters, let alone the toilet, but I try not to think about that.

Technorati Tag: Sci-fi, space, SolDock, SolDock Five, fiction, writing, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, Space Travel, meekon5.

Chapter 00 - Introduction to Junis Redux.

2009-07-28T08:38:00.002Z

My understanding of post-modernism at its most basic is everything is reducible to text. To comprehend anything one must first reduce it to words, to understand context one must textualise (I'm probably making words up here as usual) the content. Reducing it to text makes it more easily able to be manipulated. The experience essentially beyond words is corrupted in the analysis, in the attempt to understand. Schroeder’s cat, the beautiful day, the perfect kiss, become less for the attempt to describe them. The Zen axiom, he who knows does not talk, he who talks does not know. The past is the most recently, most commonly, accepted version of the lie. The past is fiction, the present is fiction, the future is fiction. Much like a political election, given time everyone wins, in their own way, despite who was elected.

History is lies, with each analysis, fact is re-work to fit another point of view. Fiction is lies, just enjoyable lies, with the imposition of the suspension of disbelief.

With a limited (finite) amount of symbols, the alphabet, accepted language (the dictionary defining proper words) mathematically there can only be a limited (calculable) number of permutations. Thus everything has to eventually have been said. The post modernist ideal of text, history, being reducible and manipulatable to any degree. Westside Story is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, reworked, repositioned, to music. Kurosawa's Ran is Hamlet, set in feudal Japan. Even the Matrix is elements of Ghost In The Shell rework with live actors. Roland’s first Harry Potter follows Ursula la Guins Earthsea story too closely for comfort in my opinion.

I don’t claim any of this is original. I am under the impression that some of the ideas are my own, and the structure and re-creation are my own. It's not what you steal it's what you do with it.

With the news that native born English speakers now make up a minority of those who use the language, I would have written all the dialogue in Chinglish (or Singlish, Hindlish/Hinglish) but for the fact that it may alienate all the reader(s) I have (yes I mean singular). Mainly because the thinking amongst those who know is that the English language is moving in this direction. So interstellar society will probably be speaking hybrid breeds of English and (my own preference) Chinese using the native Chinese sentence structures.

Technorati Tags: chapter_00, fiction, Junis_Redux, meekon5, Sci-fi, Science, Science Fiction, SciFi, SolDock, SolDock Five, space, Space Travel, writing

Writing And The Loss Of Love.

2009-07-19T21:02:00.002Z

I find myself yet again over burdened by the futility of life.
I'm watching a film about writers (“the tenants”), I'm watching a film about writers falling in love (the same film) with the same girl. I'm finding myself unmoved, but uncomfortable. Both by the aspect of love and the aspect of the writers. The main character is putting his life on hold for an eventuality (to use his phrase) “once I've finished my book!”
Recently I keep finding myself watching films, and plays, and other programmes about writers. Finding myself more and more depressed by them.
The reason I find this film disturbing is, on the one hand identifying with the writing aspect (if not in reversal), the other hand is not identifying with the love aspect.
Continuously through the film the main character is putting all aspects of his life on hold (as I mentioned to finish his book). Not being able to allow for any aspect of his life to change, lest it disturb his creative flow. He is the last tenant of a block of flats because he refuses to move as all other tenants have. I identify probably because I keep coming up with excuses as to how, and why, not to write. I identify with the dysfunctional aspect of not admitting it's me that is stopping me write, or committing to the writing.
I often talk about the long term study I am making of symbolism, and how people apply it to themselves, with particular emphasis on occult symbolism.
Why do I mention this?
On the love aspect, probably bolstered by the fact I've spent the afternoon watching detective programs (particularly Morse, and Frost). Who seem to be incredibly lonely and isolated, even dysfunctional, when it comes to women at least. As I watched the film all I felt at the romantic parts was a hollowness. I am beginning to think that perhaps it's another area of my life where I put things on hold for too long.
I think I am focusing on their dysfunction, and loneliness because that is how I'm beginning to feel myself. I'm seeking the similarity, and identifying with that which I am beginning to see is wrong with my life at the moment.
I have spent quiet a few years remaining conspicuously single on purpose. Mostly from the point of view that a relationship built from combined effort to combat problems, tends to fall apart once the opposition has been surmounted. Say if you spend years struggling to pay debts, or overcome money worries, once the problem is solved the bond in the relationship breaks down.
To this end, by my own particularly twisted little logic, I have spent years trying to get a reasonable job, decent money, and cover the mortgage without worrying too much. to this end I have avoided (apart from a couple of drunken indiscretions and what I can only describe as a very confusing period when I wasn't going out with someone, a sort of not relationship, funnily enough not the first not relationship I've been involved in) any sort of relationship, choosing to turn down any offers from friends or family to set me up with anyone.
It's this that is beginning to worry me. Perhaps I have spent too long alone to start actually feeling anything for anyone. I am beginning to feel further and further disassociated. I'm worried that I no longer know how to start the process again now that I feel I should.
OK it's back to my plain pasta (with black pepper and butter), and “Practical Magic” on the telly. Yet again (to quote Sandra Bullock) “at times my heart feels so empty, I'm sure if you put your ear to my chest you could hear the sea!”
If only magic were as simple as they portray it here. A quick rhyme, the throwing of some herbs, burn a candle and that's that. Sod all my preparation both physical and mental, drawing circles and incanting.
If only the “Buffy Wiccan” thing worked. I'll have a pinch of Eris, a little of Freya, spirit of the sky, spirit of fire, spirit of water, spirit of earth, a meeting of minds, a length of time, and a companion to hold.
I still await the next person to walk into my life with that look that just takes my breath away.
May all your gods smile upon you.

Technorati Tag: love, loss, Morse, Frost, Buffy, Buffy Wiccan, Love Spell, Witch Craft, relationships, meekon5.

And The World Gets Me Down.

2009-07-10T09:03:00.001Z

Every Silver lining has a cloud!
This morning I feel like an old man. I seem to have gotten to that point in life where, when any illness strikes, I begin to worry it is permanent. A few weeks back I had an ear infection that caused both ears to block, and the first thought that I had was to worry about how I would live my life deaf.
I don't know if it's because it's Friday, mid month (as good as), and most of my money is already spent (as usual). Or if it's just some existential ennui, but I just feel like a stranger in my own land. Even there I still, after all these years, don't feel England is quiet where I come from. Maybe all “Forces Brats” feel the same (especially when they were born overseas)!
Listen to the radio and frequently the “Ashes” are mentioned at the moment (with the cricket being played in Wales) and I feel nothing. I endured the tennis and was not moved by the inclusion, nor beating of an Englishman in the men's finals.
Whilst walking to work this morning one of the radio's in the market stalls, setting up for the day, was blaring out the cult, and the line “and the world gets me down!”
I should be careful, my life is not a bad thing at the moment. I am paid a reasonable amount of money (don't get me wrong, I can always take more if you want to pay me it). My job is actually interesting, even if I may have a little to much to do at the moment. I have friends, a house and some sort of (minimalist) social life. Careful because I am almost wishing for some excitement to enter my life. Careful because I may get what I'm wishing for, “be careful to wish for what you need not what you want, as you may well get it!” Is an axiom I try to live by.
The almost constant barrage of everyone else’s problems , with jobs, love lives, houses, money, children, that though I don’t suffer at the moment, I have and can easily sympathise (trying not to take their troubles home with me though I do worry for them), the calm collected nature of my voice being a soporific to their troubled minds.
I am just filled with the urge to pack a couple of bags and wonder off into the sunset. Time to move, time to change time to shake it all up.
Maybe its just loneliness. Every day I travel to and from work, and I blush to think how many times I see some attractive young person (see I even sound old now), and how often I fall in love. A good friend said to me years ago as I was to travel back to England, “Simon, when you fall in love on the ferry, at least try and get their name!”
The surprise contact of an old friend brings back memories of loves lost, should have been, could have been, but never were. Not to be a “what if” sort of person, but one can’t help but wonder once in a while, as one sits alone in ones lounge talking to the empty chairs about whatever film, or TV show is on.
Maybe it's the fact that I've spent the last week in an office by myself at work. Part isolation syndrome, part guilt that I could have been doing so much more.
It's just the line from Leonard Cohen “see that line across the station, I was one of those!” I frequently see myself as the subject of that comment as I shuffle through the tube stations, or rush (relative term) to get on the evening train with the rest of my fellow commuters. The endless grind, pushing shoving, trying not to take on their stress at you not being as fast, nor as important as they, and still in their way.
It could be the fact I don't feel well. There are ten spots on my fore arm (in a tight isolated group) that don't look like the usual stress induced eczema. Maybe they're chicken pox, and I should have taken the week off myself.
Or the slightly queasy feeling I have this morning, the probable result of the chicken sandwich from the “WH Smiths”, in the station last night. Note to self must really stop buying them at the end of the day, had too many food poisoning incidents from similar.
Or maybe it's just this pain in my ankle. I have been limping for quiet some time now. There is a swelling (careful nursie) at the ankle as though I have sprained a ligament and it just doesn't seem to want to get better. I was blaming it on sleeping in odd positions on the train.
I just find I am doing and saying things that are making me feel more and more bizarre, and as a result more isolated. In the morning I have breakfast before I put my shirt on, so as not to go to work wearing both (the breakfast and the shirt). The other morning I only noticed I split breakfast down my shirt when I was trying to clean up the fruit juice I'd also spilt. Massive juice bottle opening failure led to dribbling.
Maybe that's it. I should just relax into the Zen of the whole thing. Stop worrying and become that strange smelling weird old man that is lusting after girls a quarter of his age. Yes I can hear you “What do you mean become?” I feel I'm already there.
Fade to grey!

Technorati Tag: love, loss, cricket, ashes, solitude, no regret, commuting, work, relationships, meekon5.

Musing With Leonard Cohen.

2009-06-23T14:41:00.002Z

There's an honesty to Leonard Cohen that has always impressed me. Even as a teenager first finding my feet in the world of music, testing and tasting, trying to savour as much as possible. He was always the bitter sweet pill that, though most times if at the least pulling at your heart strings, at the best reducing you to tears.

I foolishly passed on the opportunity to experience him live recently when I saw an advert for his concerts in London in the papers, and failed to go and see him.

This evening I followed up on a whim and sat until the dark hours watching documentaries, concert footage (some from the concert I would have seen if I'd had my head together enough), and recording artists (or media notaries) compare their love, of the man himself.

Sitting here (in my lounge) at times in tears, at times laughing out loud, I remembered what it is, and why it is, I write.

The clipped phrases, the rhythm, the obvious beauty that he finds in his own words. The grace and modesty with which he performs. The stripped down nerve end rawness, the emotion laid bare for you to see and to experience if you can dare to risk the exquisite pain, and the brutal honesty.

I sit here now like a newly flayed nerve ending, raw and exposed, but wanting to write again with passion.

Cold as a new razor blade.

It's so long since I thought of you last.
Red hair shining in the summer sun.
Staring at me with those big green eyes.

I smiled,
At your less than subtle attempts to seduce me.
As if I would resist.

I took your drinks,
As you tried to get me drunk.
Not knowing there was no need to try.

I took your hand,
When you offered yourself to me.
With your suggestion of mutual pleasure.

And I took your heart,
With a graceful ease,
That even now makes me blush.

I never promised you anything,
But never contradicted the hope you showed me.
Just to play the game.

I held your hand walking down the street,
And felt nothing of it.
Even when spotted by someone else.

You offered me your everything,
You did whatever I asked,
When I asked for it.

I took what I wanted from you,
When I felt like it,
Which only fed your delusion.

Did you think introducing me to your mother would change my mind?
I gave you nothing.
You came running back for more.

You begged me to stay,
But I kept my word
And I did what I told I would.

I broke your heart,
And just walked out.

Technorati Tag: capitalism, greed, Leonard, Cohen, Leonard Cohen, razor, poetry, love, loss, inspiration, meekon5.

How should we tackle illegal downloading?

2009-05-29T16:47:00.004Z

In response to this BBC article.

I’m sorry this persistence by the media and Corporate entertainment companies in using phrases similar to “Home Taping is Killing Music”, also reeled out for video and recordable DVD and now mpeg etc electronic file formats, is based entirely on a false economy.

The data presented always presents figures for money lost. This assumes that if the file (music, film) were not “pirated” it would be bought “legally”. I see no statistical basis to justify this assumption. Just because some one downloads something does not mean they would buy it if there were no other means to obtain it. Just because a million people download a film does not mean the film industry would have made fifteen million quid from it if the pirate copy did not exist.

This is another “knee jerk” reaction to a new media and market that the huge corporations are not geared up to be able to act in. In fact the new economic model (i.e. bands selling directly to their audience without the need for the corporate middle man) is terrifying the big businesses.

The solution to the problem is quiet simple, reduce the cost of the individual DVD by reducing the amount of profit you’re trying to make. You will then sell more units “legally” thus making more addition to your profit (the model works for Tesco’s why not the film industry?).

How should we tackle illegal downloading?

Stop being so greedy and move with the times (Dinosaurs).

Technorati Tag: capitalism, greed, illegal, downloading, illegal downloading, Piracy, meekon5.

Modesty, Further Lessons In Simon's Bushido.

2009-04-29T08:55:00.004Z

I don't remember exactly what it was that the particular girlfriend said to me some twenty years ago, but the essence has stuck with me and distilled into a world view and way of being that is perhaps the major difference between myself and my younger brother Paul. The difference that most people find hard to reconcile because we both appear to be such different people. Irreconcilable because we share both the same nature (genetics, we share both parents) and nurture (for almost twenty years we were brought up by the same parents, be they our own or various step relatives, partnered with our own parents, both being remarried after their divorce).

So back to the essence of what was said to me so long ago. I do have to interject that I must have been a particularly arsey tosser as a teenager.

1: Try not to talk to people as though you are always right. The major problem with a world point of view that dictates everything is either right or wrong (black or white) tends to give you the belief that your point of view is right (no quarter for negotiation).

2: Always accept you can be wrong.

3: Other points of view can be equally as valid as your own.

4: Discussion is not argument. Discussion is a forum to test the level of your knowledge and faith in a subject, and a potential to learn new information and points of view on the subject.

5: There are no winners in a discussion. It is not a contest. It is as valid to both agree to disagree, rather than escalate to an argument, or fight.

6: Just because someone does not have the same educational background it does not invalidate their point of view. Educational elitists should remember academia is not the real world. There are plenty of examples of people who did not do well at school (my own favourite is Einstein, but just as valid would be Churchill) who later went on to affect the entire world. Your university is only three to four years of your life, your education a mere twenty, if you stop learning after that your life is a poorer thing (in my humble opinion).

As an aside we are all told as teenagers that we are the future of the planet (I was told this, my godson was told this, his children will be). This fills us with pride and ambition. What we are not told is that very few of us ever have a lasting effect on even the small part of the world we inhabit. Fewer still achieve anything as an adult let alone as a teenager. Even if you succeed in some form or other you are likely to no longer be a teenager but an adult who is plagued by teenagers who are now being told they are the future of the planet much as you were previously. True Beethoven was writing compositions for the piano as a three or four year old, but how many other people existed contemporary to him that we have not ever heard of.

Unfortunately yes teenagers are the future of the planet (and I may have said this before), but they are the future cannon fodder, the future office fodder, the future factory fodder. On the whole we are the fillers to someone else's history, the extras to their excellence.

6: In the grand scheme of things we are but tiny cogs. As you are rushing around your oh so important life remember if it was not for everyone else we would not be able to exists. We all hang by a gossamer thread reliant on all the other people around us, it is a little thing to be polite and courteous to each other, and it makes a great difference.

From my time studying Buddhism I was particularly impressed by one story. there was a Zen master, who, on first meeting anyone, bowed. Firstly he bowed to remind him that he was better than no-one else. Secondly he bowed to remind him self that no-one was better than him. This is an affectation I have taken on. Over much of my life it has frequently been misinterpreted as ignorance of social position or manners, but I still continue to practice the ritual despite others ignorance of what I am doing.

Live your life as an example; don't do unto others as you would have done unto you (if you are a masochist that would mean you would have to beat up every one you met).

It is by small increments that we make the world a better place. The yoga idea that if I spend twenty minutes meditating, then the world has been made a more peaceful place, even if it is only by one person, for twenty minutes, carries into all aspects of life. If I pick up some litter, then perhaps someone will see me and learn from the example, even if no-one does then I have at least picked up some litter and improved things by a small part. If I am polite to someone I don't know, then perhaps someone will witness the same and react by doing similar, even if they don't I have at least made the world a nicer place for a short period for someone.

It is in small action that the small cog changes the world slowly but surely. Large radical change does nothing but aggravate the masses and effects them to react adversely.

In the words of Bill and Ted (sorry I know, I know, but it fits):

“Be excellent to each other!”

Technorati Tag: Bushido, Small cog, Bill and Ted, life skills, modesty, humility, manners, meekon5.

Bushido (the art and the way of the warrior).

2009-04-09T09:48:00.004Z

This morning was a good morning, the sun was shinning the weather was pleasantly cool, with a light breeze, not too hot not too cold, a very balanced day. This morning was a good morning.

How often do we hear those tired and tested homilies, the ones our mothers are so often all to happy to bludgeon us with?

Twenty years ago I remember having a conversation with a friend who had realised an epiphany, he had come to the conclusion that all such axiom where actually true and was experiencing a sea change in his opinion of how his mother thought. I of course was nothing if not polite about this, and nodded, and made affirmative noises, in the right places, without actually committing to anything other than supporting my friend, who was obviously suffering from some kind of breakdown as far as I was concerned.

It is only now (over twenty years later) that I find myself in a similar situation. With at least one phrase that is.

The homily in question:

“It's not the winning, its the taking part that matters!”

I have in the past tried to apply myself to this axiom, but must confess that no matter how hard I tried the buzz of winning, the glory of being number one, always stood in the way of fully understanding this.

On the other side of the coin I must also admit that a lot of activities have been spoilt for me because of this “must win” attitude.

For instance football for me is completely abhorrent. Partly from the fact that being as completely a uncoordinated teenager, possibly left handed taught to be confused, in fact the epitome of the phrase “cack-handed”, to be completely honest one of the least coordinated of individuals, lacking even some of the most fundamental hand to eye (and hand to foot) co-ordination skills, I was not very good at it. No that's an understatement. In fact such a masterful understatement as to almost not be one at all. I as crap. I hated it, and was usually one of the last to be chosen for teams just after my mate Alex who had a brain tumour removed so wasn't one of the fastest individuals himself. Now don't get me wrong it was not as if I was one of the fat kids (the weight problem only developed later in life, about my late twenties), I practised yoga, and could have someone balance on my stomach, whilst suspended, resting just my feet and my shoulders on two chairs (like a bridge). I was just naturally crap. In the “have to be number one” world this upset me, because there was no way I could be “number one”, it also upset my schoolmates because it meant I was liability if forced onto someone's team, thus standing in the way of them achieving the number one spot. I also disliked football because there was always the one person who, though mildly better than most, insisted on being the vehicle of the teams every success. You know the sort, the one that spends the entire game yelling to have the ball passed to them, then when someone else attempts to score they are the loudest to berate the individual (usually backed up by a couple of their cronies) because they would have scored if the other had not been “hogging “ the ball. Reaffirming the “have to be number one” because you will never be as good as them. My solution to the problem was to volunteer to go on cross country runs every week rather than play football (yes I disliked it, and still dislike it, that much).

Another example is chess. My father is a very good chess player, of the sort that he used to sit there and say “check in six moves” and achieve it. Again the “must be number one” attitude that I had eventually stopped me playing chess against my father because I never won. Not my fathers fault, but what was the point if I could never be “number one”. I know the point is that by practising I would improve, but if you loose all the time then you just become disheartened not practised.

So where is this going?

I am not unusual in these experiences and attitudes. In fact the emphasis has increased over the years. It is becoming more and more important to be a “winner”, not a “looser”. I see it on children's programmes (I love Saturday morning sleeping off the hangover in front of cartoons, meant for people fractions of my age). I see it in television not aimed at children. I see it in the street. I even see it at work, not so much now but in previous jobs. I get sucked into the mindset every time I come across it. You see children chanting in the street, on television, that lord of the flies ritual, “Looser” (elongate the pronunciation of the “o”).

I am sure we all have someone (brother, sister, cousin, old school friend) who is forever brought up, either by relatives, or by our own (huge) measure of self loathing, that is symptomatic of this problem. Even in the media, newspapers, television, the examples are waved in our faces every day. We are bombarded with images, and stories, of individuals who having done so much better than yourself, with the bigger house, the bigger car, the bigger salary, etcetera, are the poster boy/girl of the “must be number one” society.

Why the change now?

Over the past week that endless fountain of knowledge in the corner of my lounge (yes the television) has been pointing me in a certain philosophical direction, or more rightly re-pointing me in a direction that I was travelling in previously but had become distracted from (now there's a surprise).

Specifically through two programmes.

Firstly through a programme called 'In Search of Wabi Sabi' with Marcel Theroux, then through Horizon ('Who Do You Want Your Child to Be?' With David Baddiel).

1) The first 'In Search of Wabi Sabi'. Now to the best of my understanding , and please do not take me as any authority, the concept of Wabi Sabi is a duality of the inevitability of decay and destruction mixed with the continuity of individual, as a part of society, all perceived as a thing of great beauty. For instance there is a Haiku (Japanese traditional seventeen syllable poetry) allegedly taught to Kamikaze pilots during world War Two. Actually accredited as the death Haiku of a samurai warrior. The Kamikaze being a re-establishment of the samurai class in order to encourage individuals to join the force. I will rant on Haiku, Samurai, Kamikaze, and ritual suicide at some future point. I digress the Haiku taught to Kamikaze sums up Wabi Sabi for me:

If only we may fall,
Like cherry blossom in the spring,
So radiant and pure.

I can not accredit the translation (unfortunately, not me own). The point of mentioning Wabi Sabi is the acceptance of the eventual futility of all things, what is the point of anything because in the end all we are going to do is die? It is an acceptance but not a nihilistic point of view, but an incredible insight into the beauty of inevitable impermanence. It is also enshrouded in the Confusion idea of an individuals worth is only what they can contribute to society.

2) 'Who Do You Want Your Child to Be?' Though an interesting journey into Mr Baddiel's the major point that was made was about the way we encourage our children to succeed. You, much like any of us, will have experienced, as a child, that aspect of childhood where your oh so over enthusiastic, parent asks where you are in the class. That pressure to be top of the top class. My own experience, though in the top bands for most things, and much to the amusement of my friends at the time, I took what can only be referred to as remedial French, again I was abysmal at the subject, but extremely good at everything else. Even Mr Baddiel admitted, as a parent, he himself fell into the trap of asking where his children were in the class, were they at the top? After some extensive (for television, and I must admit to being somewhat disappointed in Horizons recent decline in content in order to “dumb” it down for more popular consumption) investigation, he concluded with some interesting ideas. the major being that it only builds frustration and malaise to continue to drive your child to be number one. They either burn out trying or grow up somewhat resenting you.

It is here the epiphany occurred. The point being you can spend your life, as many have, striving to be the best in your field. The stupidity of this point of view is that no matter how fast, high, clever, you are, there will always be someone who will come along and beat you. Even if you succeed all your life, inevitably there will come a point where, after your death, our entire life's efforts are either render completely pointless, or just become insignificant.

The point, as concluded by Mr Baddiel, as the better way to encourage children, to help them develop in a naturally and in a balanced way. Don't spend your entire life striving to beat every one and every thing. You either end up horribly failing and destroying what life you have, or completely wasting so many incredible opportunities. Strive to be the best you can. strive to improve yourself. the question to be asking both yourself and your children is:

“How did you improve with the experience?”

“What did you learn from doing that?”

“How did that better you as a person?”

Bushido is not about being the best swordsman, it's about being the best swordsman you can be, improving yourself, beating your previous best, not beating everyone else. It is by improving yourself you become the better person, not by beating everyone else.

It is not the winning that matters; it is how you play the game.

Technorati Tag: Bushido, winning, Wabi Sabi, Zen, Haiku, Kamikaze, Childhood Traumas, meekon5.

The Sight Of Two Cranes (Probably Herons Actually).

2009-02-10T13:34:00.002Z

So here I am cosseted, warm and comfortable. Late again, due to flooding, on the slow train, catch whichever train I can manage when it's like this. At least it is better than last week when the entire country was brought to its knees.

I've already suppressed a violent passenger, Hog tying him with his own belt and leaving him for the guard to deal with (imagination is a wonderful thing).

Contemplated murdering a couple of pretentious little school children “my parents where so annoying me last night”. Bang. “and I so want a house party!” Bang. Single bullet, back of the head. Bang.

I'm still playing with poetry.

The crisp eaters, paper rustlers, waiting to get a free copy of the times someone else has discarded.

Then there's last nights dream. Vivid as usual. I'm playing a king in some thing like Shakespeare don't ask me which it never becomes apparent. Just be assured this is far less than a professional production. The lead man poncing about and refusing to take direction and trying to run everything. So no change there then.

I've taken another of my obligatory beard development photos. sorry let me explain that. A while back I had a very impressive beard length, and the most frequent question asked was “how long did that take to grow?” Now that’s a bit like saying “that’s a really interesting nose you have there how long did that take to grow?” Ever so slightly nonsensicle. So as a response to this, and only because of a personal beard styling tragedy (I cut too much off it one morning in a hurry, whilst trying to tidy it up), I have set myself the task of photographing myself at regular intervals. Knowing when I had to cut the beard back drastically (almost to the date and time exactly), my hope is that when people ask the vacuous question in the future I should be able to provide a more accurate time date and exactly how long its taken and provide them a web link to the archive of photos.

As for the title of this piece. Living in Portsmouth and travelling northwards I was lucky today to see two herons (I know I've decided they weren't cranes after all, I'm no twitcher).

Technorati Tag: trains, cranes, and autombiles, beard, rant, travel, writing, meekon5.

The Day before My Paycheck Came!

2009-01-29T11:00:00.003Z

Sitting in my lounge at six twenty this morning, having breakfast, listening to the inane prattle of Christian O'Connell. A man that must bring hope to the moronic, inspiration to the undereducated, and joy to the truly banal. I almost bought a copy of his recent book, but it would have meant buying a new set of coloring pens. The only reason I really listen to him is because he annoys me so much I have to leave the house to go to work just to get away from him.

The toast is dry. No butter, that ran out a few days ago, no spread that ran out last month and I forgot to get some more. Actually “No Butter!”

Who uses butter nowadays? What with all those years of the margarine fascists telling us how bad for us butter is (salt, fat, and all the other things we dearly love to eat). Actually I believe there is modern research that suggests that butter is no better or worse for you than marge, but I have the habit now so am unlikely to change back. I suppose I could have put tomato sauce on it, I still have some of that left.

The tea, made with dried skimmed milk. The semi skimmed ran out days ago. The last dregs of any squash, the water just colored not flavoured by the addition. The little heat lamp belting out light and heat to keep the room warm for a little while.

Every thing I open, or look at, I think “Must get some more of this tomorrow!”

Everything is running down, or out.

Tea (evening meal, not drink) this evening is a stew of what was left of all the last stews I have been eating for the last few weeks. Every week I just add something else to the pot, veg, beans, meat (if I'm lucky), and cook it up again. This week I added a load of sausages. I must now stop myself from picking the best bits out in the morning whilst waiting for the toast to cook, thus leaving the beans and veg slurry in the pot, to come home to.

There it is back to the toast. O'Connell, me, the heat lamp, and the toast.

I think I'll have steak for tea Friday, with a nice bottle of red wine, and may even get myself a new game or some DVD's to watch (like I need more DVD's).

The day before my pay check came.

ps. yes the title is a play on the ABBA song title (sad I know).

Technorati Tag: OC, virgin radio, absolute radio, oconnell, rant, dark, beans, pay, poor, meekon5.

Just Smile

2009-01-21T12:24:00.002Z

I posted this on PaganSpace.net.

There is an adaptation of a Buddhist practice that I use.

Laughter and smiling is very important in Buddhism.

The idea is, that if you smile (or laugh) you will feel happier.

So what I do every morning is force myself to smile for at least a minute to a minute and a half (the time it takes me to walk from my house to the other side of a small park on the way to work).

The principle is that by smiling your body actually begins to produce the endomorphins (not a doctor so don’t jump on my case if that’s the wrong thing) that help the body and the mind to feel happy.

This has been born out by medical research.

Also mentioned in "The Secret" as well.

It’s the yoga principle of the little wheel (mind) driving the bigger wheel (body). Like in meditation where you quiet your body, to quiet your mind. Here the principle is working in the opposite direction.

By forcing yourself to smile (mental activity) your body begins to respond in return.

Try it it sets me up for the day, and I assure you I am not a morning person.

Technorati Tags: Pagan, Laughter, Buddhist, Smile

Of Childish Things!

2009-01-20T13:26:00.002Z

On this day of all days I'm not going to write about Obama. Everyone and his dog are doing that today. Please don't get me wrong, I am perfectly aware of the implications. ‘Black man in the White House’. I do get it, But think everyone else will be having their word about it, so what is the point in me adding to the debate?

Though it does occur to me (yes all right I couldn't resist it). I am put in mind of Margaret Thatcher. I greatly admire her for getting where she did, A woman Prime minister (in the UK), a great achievement that I don't see being bested in the near future (say a coloured Prime Minister. Say a coloured, lesbian, woman Prime Minister). That is as far as it goes, I despise everything Thatcher did as Prime Minister, and truly believe nothing worse could have happened to the country. She left the country with a despicable mess that we are only now beginning to pay for. Unfortunately British politics is a thing of short term goals, short term gains. The Conservatives still congratulate themselves about the state of the economy as she left power (any longer and we would have had to shoot her).The problem is we are only now receiving the backlash of many of her policies. The credit crunch is a direct result of Thatcherite usury and letting the financial sector run itself without Government interference (In my humble opinion, slyly kicks soap box back under table).

So enough about not writing about politics.

What I actually want to write about are two people. Actually two programmes I watched On television last night about two people.

The first is Oliver Postgate.

Ashamed as I am I have to admit it, until his death I did not really know about this man. Amazed as I am how much he actually touched my life (my childhood particularly) through such classics as ‘Ivor The Engine’, ‘The Clangers’ (my own personal favourite. I have the DVD), ‘Noggin The Nold’, and even to some extent ‘Bagpus’.

Why mention him now (and not when he actually died a few weeks ago)? Because of a quiet amazing occurrence last night. I was watching Charlie Brooker's ‘Screen Wipe’. This episode lambasting children's television. Much to my pleasure the usual heavy serving of bile and vitriol was forth coming from Mr Brooker as usual. Until the last five or ten minutes. Now this is going to seem needlessly sentimental (but what the hell!). Almost as if the whole show had been an excuse to include it, Mr Brooker then introduced the fact that whilst making this particular programme, Oliver Postgate had died. What followed was one of the most heartfelt, moving and beautiful eulogies to the man I have heard or read since he died. A lot of very poignant points were made by Mr Brooker

It actually left me with a tear running down my face, especially using the Bagpus mouse organ theme for the end titles.

The second person is John Mortimer.

Again, not having V+ (or Sky+) I am subject to the vagaries of the schedulers’ whim. So actually get home and watch TV the old fashioned way (i.e. just watch what’s on).

I have to say again I was very surprised. There was much I didn’t know about the man and this little documentary was very informative.

I was impressed by the gentleman’s ideals and the way he lived his life. Much impressed by his attitude, that if you are not enjoying life, just change it. As indicated by his three changes of career in his own life. Paralleled in my own life where I started out as an accountant (didn’t like that), changed to working in the retail catering trade (a horrible industry to be in if you are in the UK), and am in IT where I’m quiet enjoying myself (at the moment).

I was already a great lover of Rumpole of the Bailey but this just totally endeared the man to me and actually made me a little sad that I had not realised his wit and intelligence, even as a wheelchair bound seventy to eighty year old.

I was much amused by clips of his debate against the arch fiend Mary Whitehouse, over pornography.

Most of all I was impressed by his joy of life. His almost unending persistence and refusal to give up.

Two very interesting people.

Technorati Tag: Obama, Not Obama, Mary Whitehouse, Rumpole, John Mortimer, Charlie Brooker, Screen Wipe, Bagpus, The Clangers, Oliver Postgate, Thatcher, meekon5.

Try Again!

2009-01-20T12:31:00.003Z

A while ago I tried to set myself the task of writing something every day (failed). But I'm trying that again.

Much as Charlie Brooker's "Screen Wipe" writers special said:

Just Write!

Technorati Tags: writing, persistance, try, blog, meekon5.

You Lost The Game!

2008-12-04T13:23:00.005Z

You Lost The Game!

Technorati Tag: Fun, Games, online, lost, Death Rites, global, interactive, socialnetworking , Life, music, weblog, meekon5.

Dyssing Monadys

2008-11-14T15:53:00.006Z

To many of you this may appear a trifle late in the day. A couple of weeks ago there was a national dyslexia awareness week.
Many of you may have missed that fact. To most of you it would have meant very little even if you did notice the fact.
It personally meant quiet a bit to me, as I was not personally diagnosed as dyslexic until I was twenty nine and already a mature student at Durham University.
I was a little perturbed the Museum didn't actually do anything during the week in question, or if they did I, much like yourselves, didn't notice it.
Having a special interest I should have perhaps raised the issue myself.
Why am I bringing this to your attention now, you will be wondering?
To share with you what I have been doing for the past two Mondays of this month and what I will be doing next Monday, and the Monday after as well.
I have actually spent the last two weeks travelling over to Old Street, to a bar called The Troy, to spend the evening listening to poets, plays, and watch excerpts from films. All written, performed, directed, and even acted by dyslexics.
As a response to dyslexic awareness week Lennie Varvarides and the Misfits Production company, have produced and populated the Dyssing Monadys festival as a celebration of talented dyslexics from all walks of theatre and literature.
Again why am I waiting until now to bring this to your attention?
Self publicity. Because next Monday yours truly will actually be performing some of his own poetry at the venue in the evening.
Now don't get me wrong this is not the only reason to attend (though from my point of view a very important one), the evening is a pleasant mix of entertainment and well worth the visit even if I were not performing.

I urge you please come along and see or yourselves.

Technorati Tag: Dyslexia, Poetry, Theatre, Writing, London, Performance, meekon5.

Pagan Posthumous Repatriation.

2008-10-21T12:07:00.003Z

I have worked for the museum (The Natural History Museum) for six months now. I joined a while after the media hype surrounding a Pagan campaign to have many of the (human) palaeontological specimens re-buried. Those of you who know me are reasonably aware that for the majority of the last twenty years I have been a practising Pagan. You may be surprised to find that I am somewhat at odds with these proceedings.
As I understand a group of well meaning but vocal Pagans took the museum to court over its possession of certain ancient Human remains. Their argument being (and backed by certain UN and EU bills and treaties of human rights on the protection of religious practice), the individuals were buried with religious reverence, and just because we (or our predecessors), being more enlightened (read christian), educated (read scientific agnosticism, or atheist) did not share that religious (read ignorant) point of view, we were allowed (read obligated by scientific need) to dig them up, dissect them, then file them away (by correct taxonomy) never to be returned to where they had been (reverently) placed by their family and loved ones. This was not a pleasing situation, and the bodies should have been returned to their resting places, to be allowed the dignity any other (modern, christian) person would be given. The court action was an attempt to achieve this.
This point of view I whole heartedly agree with. If I (as a Pagan), dared to suggest such a procedure to be taken in a christian cemetery all hell would be let loose. Witness the vast problems even such high profile archaeological groups as “Time Team” have when they are excavating a known christian burial site, or even a christian church, or they accidentally come across one such location. The vast amounts of permission, documentation, and protocol, that is applied to the “dig”. Observe the care and reverence, the respect, the site and it's participants (be they living or dead) receive. Then, in opposition, compare the almost obscene contempt (from certain leading “media” archaeologists in the team) that, for instance, the objectors to the team digging up a Pagan “wood henge” on the coast received. Also please delight in Tony “fascist” Robinson's palatable anger, when a reasonably wealthy and organised Pagan individual has a court order placed upon the dig to stop them just destroying the site. It has to be one of my favourite episodes of the program. But is entirely indicative of the academic attitude. If you are a practising christian, and a scientist, then you may be somewhat eccentric but your point of view is accepted and respected as intelligently misinformed. If you are a Pagan, on the other hand, you are instantly perceived as some woolly headed tree hugging hippy who should have spent more time getting a job instead of getting stoned and destroying their intellectual faculties.
I have previously outlined my own path to Paganism. Very similar to the one trod by many individuals with whom I have had the opportunity to discuss such things with. Basically, as a teenager I sought some line of spirituality. So I went forth and studied. At the age of thirteen I was reading texts by Christmas Humphries, Alan Watts, Richard Hittleman (to name but a few), and many others on such diverse subjects as Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, Hinduism, even christian mysticism (Brother Lawrence for instance). I even embraced christianity for a brief period (I got better though). Actually I rejected it as being spiritually biased, unbalanced to the male dominant, misogynist side of religious practice (blame the Romans with their misogynistic, skewed society, and need to dominate everything they met, capitalism, it's all their fault. Perhaps a rant another time). I found that I was spending more and more of my time acquiring the cultural symbolism, and paraphernalia, of more and more ancient and distant cultures. Until one day it hit me that there had to be a closer solution based on my own culture and heritage, thus Paganism.
As an aside my family (bless them) having lived through this period of my development, and much as families tend to not forget (i.e. treat you as though you're still sixteen not forty three), or not realise you live a full and interesting life away from them. My younger brother at his wedding a few months back still asked me “What religion are you claiming to practice at the moment?” I have been a clear and practising pagan for about twenty years now, I have lead Pagan groups (with a good friend of mine) whilst at university (fourteen to fifteen years ago), I have publicly given blessings, but still members of my own family are completely unable to comprehend and accept it as a valid religious point of view. Much like society at large.
Microcosm and macrocosm each reflecting the other. Society reflects family that reflects society.
So where are my objections? I hear you cry (or more likely “get on with it!”).
It is in the proliferation of the tree hugging myth. I have hugged trees. When you live in Stockton-on-Tees, where one of the local councils measures of ecological sustainability is a tree count, and you previously lived in a small village nestling in the shadow of the south downs, you will understand how pleased one can be to actually find trees occasionally.
The objection I hold is with the ceremony that the group committed over the bodies as they returned them to their previous resting places. I am a Neo-Realist an obscure branch of cynicism developed by myself and a couple of friends in opposition to a small group of Neo-Trotskyites who opposed us during my college years. My own branch of Neo-Realism follows the path that life is never quiet as pretty an wonderful as one would wish it was. To this end I am completely happy to practice Paganism knowing that I have no connection what so ever to pre-christian practitioners of the same faith. I am perfectly happy to accept that the branch of the faith I follow is a Victorian supposition based on little historical fact. In fact I am perfectly happy to accept that my version of Paganism is in fact Neo-Paganism. I do not accept that, just because this makes it a “new” faith it is any less valid than any other. Paganism for me is about re-balancing religion against the ultra doctrinal Roman catholic faith, the organised religion of many other faiths as well, and the general unbalanced misogynist line the Abrahamic faiths follow generally, and in some cases very specifically. I choose for my religious iconography the symbolism (that that we have, or can infer from eye witness accounts, or later documentation from oral tradition) of those pre-christian faiths that were endemic to the regions my ancestors inhabited thousands of years ago.
I have no quarrel with any tree hugging, dancing with the fairies, crystal waving (I am a crystal carrying Pagan myself) branch of Paganism that you may wish to partake in. The problem I have is that the more dancing around with fairies we do in public the less credible we appear to other none Pagans, and the more open to ridicule and derision we become by the hard line christians.
So accepting that we don't have a provable connection to pre-christians who used the same set of symbols we have subsumed, and that we may only be tolerated as a slightly less harmless sub group of society than many (newly perceived) fanatical branches of other more “accepted”faiths. i personally think the instance of the group who won the moral victory to re-bury the “specimens” was completely undermined by their insistence to perform some crystal waving, poncing around, hippy drawing down the moon, ceremony, over the bodies as they were re-interred.
I have stood for my rights to practice my religion as I see fit, when i see fit, where i see fit, for the majority of my adult life now. I have ridicule based on ignorance from both society a large and from close family for most of that period. I just think it a shame that with a little fore thought our point of view could have been very firmly, intelligently, and coherently placed in the public eye.
I must admit trying to get any group of Pagans to agree is much like herding cats with a stick, but that is also part of the joy I find in practising Paganism. This piece can only ever state my own point of view. I just think an opportunity was sorely undermined by the bad organisation of the participants who let the media undermine their credibility in an endeavour that was very well meant.

Other Links:
Sacred Sites, Contested Rights/Rites project.
A British Reburial Issue?
Give us back our bones, pagans tell museums
Pagans for Archaeology

Ps it takes quiet a bit of work to “paganise” your spell checker to let you write christian with a small “c”. :-)

Technorati Tag: Pagan, Archaeology, Reburial, Death, Death Rites, IMHO, Paganism, Posthumous , Posthumous Repatriation, meekon5.

Homeward Bound.

2008-09-22T11:56:00.002Z

Tonight I have walked the surface of the world.
A couple , or so, pints after work. A good conversation. Lead to me returning home much later than anticipated or wanted. A swift traverse of the city, subterranean. The familiar rush not experienced as I am travelling much later than usual. Fifteen minutes after the hour and they finally announce the half past train. I am petulant only because they are following the usual pattern (announce the next train I want fifteen minutes before I am due to catch it). Petulant only because I chose to walk the surface for a change. Usually I am whisked at breakneck speeds under the surface of the city by various underground systems. Tonight I chose to leave the underground at Embankment and walk across the bridge to Waterloo.
And what a delight it was. Exiting the station on the north of the river, heading south, the first delicacy I am presented with is a half moon, a pastel peach, resplendent above St Paul's the skyline broken by the virulent blackness of the tower blocks counter pointed by the variegated jewellery of their lighted windows. I join various random people in stopping and just experiencing the beauty of the vista.
I am drawn on by the need to get home, else I could (would) still be standing there now. I promenade onwards exchanging fleeting looks with other passers by. My ear is delighted by a strong blues riff played by a very competent busker. I express my regret to him that I only have ten pence to give him. I wonder if he realises that I have actually donated all of my liquid assets to him, all the currency I will hold in the world, until next pay day.
Onwards still, I am assailed by the delicate scents of the Chinese restaurants south of the river, briefly opposed by the succulent relief of cooking beef from the burger bar underneath the bridge end.
Down the stairs and past the vast overspill of the various restaurant, that I still promise myself I will partake of eventually. The massed revellers spilling onto the pavement, in both their need to smoke and their need to socialise, and getting in my way briefly. The joyously camp exclamation of a restaurant patron as to his choice being this and how it was his particular favourite “how loverly!” The joy of a tiny boy playing “kick about” with a beach ball getting it stuck above the door of one of the little establishments. One final look back across the river, the lights ablaze, and onwards into the station.
Onwards under the train tracks, avoiding the homeless beggars, no longer holding cash so of no use to them. Assailed by the discordant rhythm of an African musician, never sure if the unfamiliar rhythm is actually music or just discordant random noise.
Across the dual crossing and past the stairs where past weeks ago a seller of the “Big Issue” had attempted to smile me out, chastising me into buying a copy by smiling so much I had no choice. Unfortunately I am emotionally bullet proof to such tactics, I buy where I choose not where I am bullied. On into the station past the, now, disused “Eurostar” terminal. Boarded and disused. Finally to stand, amongst vastly less people than usual on the concourse awaiting the announcement of my train home.

Technorati Tag: Train, Tube, Walk, Walking, London, Surface, meekon5.

From my original Disertation some 15 years ago.

2008-09-19T12:24:00.003Z

This is a piece of writing that was going to be the introduction to my dissertation a while ago (15 years ago). Sorry was digging through some old files and found this.

Introduction
At first I found this very hard to put ideas down on paper. How can you attempt to even begin to represent an entity, a concept as vast as this in such a limited arena, text? All the time my mind changes direction , becomes distracted by tangents that seem to fit but not in places where they could be useful or not. The problem is the liner form of dissertation that does not directly reflect the subject of the internet the way the internet would reflect itself. Without “hyper-links” and hot buttons to whisk the reader off too ever more divergent sources as the writer wishes this piece of writing must remain clinical and antiseptic in the least. Perhaps at some point I will have the opportunity to translate this document into hypertext as it should be. Babbage, much like Oppenheimer, was only trying to solve a short term problem when he designed the difference engine and his analytical engine in eighteen thirty five. Like most scientist he could not have envisaged the resultant effect on western culture in the late twentieth century.
“The internet, that great big anorak of world culture!”
Billy Connolly (Billy Connolly’s Tour of Australia BBC1 2-12-96)
Are we become a society of Shelly’s Frankenstein’s? Creating monsters we can no longer control! A culture that has used all means to describe itself, so must turn to the dissection, re-organisation, and re-animation of those icons and ideals that we see best fit ourselves? Some Postmodernists masturbation fantasy. Where Eco reigns as Pope of the new order, in his own terms, where schisms exist on the basis of the near religious level of the catholic Mac user against the Protestant DOS user. Where the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie begin to remove the means for production away from the masses again, as the few begin to control the implementation of the new technological age. Gibson becomes god in his own right, iconoclast by ‘netheads’ who only grasp the name but not the content of his work. Where Leary does rely exist on the net long after his physical demise.
We as a generation are lost! Born in the sixties and the seventies we have just missed out. We are unable to recreate the ‘Beat’ generation, the ‘Mersey’ boom, the ‘Swinging’ sixties. As is long discussed with the generation ‘X’, all our possible taboos have been broken, all our frontiers breached. Our music is merely the reiteration of what has gone before, our films merely video remakes of the classics. In a post modernist society creativity is dead and all we have is the text of the past with which to rewrite history and make a pastiche for the future. We have no where to go, nothing to do any more that some other can not say ‘I did that’, ‘I saw that first’.
We are not feasibly able to take to the skies and ‘Go where no person has gone before’. We must create for our selves the place and the direction that we are to be the pioneers of. For us this will be the virtual reality, the internet and all it sporns. The potential that is the internet is the final frontier, the edge that the generation is in search of. If Gibson is to believed! Or is it? Gibson oft quoted as the ‘guru’ of the internet actually writes about a future where everything has become the true development of the commercial, the logical extrapolation of the capitalist ideal.
In a society where interest patterns and concentration spans reduce (the MTV effect), to the point where the adverts are the lasting impression (see Stallone's “Demolition Man”) that we retain as opposed to the film that we view, where Politicians speak in ‘sound bites’ so as not to confuse us with too much information. What else do we crave but a totally disposable environment that is ours to manipulate and create and destroy, just to recreate again at will.
I was surprised to find that, in conversation, a friend of mine did not realise the extensive history that already exists to the internet. She knew nothing of it’s fledgling beginning in the American universities as a military experiment history of the internet in thirty seconds. “The Americans wanted to get their spy info back in tact, the academics saw it as a great opportunity to communicate with each other around the world, then someone realised you could sell stuff on it.”). For me the history of the system that was to become the Internet (and the myth that is the Internet) lie in the end of the sixties as the American government attempted to improve the communications between it’s various out lying information gathering stations and the academic institutes that were dealing with certain government projects at the time. Setting the first four nodes of the fledgling internet system in four hand picked universities. As part of the innate paranoia of the western governments at the time the system was built with certain safe guards in order to stop the intrusion and tampering of the ‘enemy’ with the integrity of the system. To this end the software was developed to re-route the communications if the line became blocked or disconnected. In the early seventies the US government make it's ARPAnet (Advanced Research Project Administration network) public and including England and Norway in the system to make it truly international. The level of electronic ‘traffic’ became too much for the military to handle in the early eighties so the US military set up it’s own net exclusive to the military and the US National Science Foundation take over the administration of ARPAnet, creating it’s own NSFNET in the mid eighties. The ARPAnet is eventually switched off in nineteen ninety. The early nineties saw the introduction of information retrieval software such as Gopher. CERN release code for ‘hypertext’ which leads to the development of the World Wide Web and web browsers such as mosaic and Netscape. The growth of the internet is now becoming immeasurable by nineteen ninety five there were some six million servers and fifty thousand networks connected to the web. The question is now where does it go?

This is where I was hoping to go with it:

DISSERTATION PLAN

The Internet - Hope For The Future ?

The Internet is not the infinite forum, or next step in human evolution that the popular media has built it up to be, but a self perpetuating myth, an intellectual toy for computer professionals and academics alike.

Simon Kennedy

SUPERVISED BY : Sylvie Gambaudo

Introduction:

Re-iteration and expansion of theorem.

Definitions:

What is the "Internet", Cyber Space, Virtual Reality, WWW (World Wide Web), HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language), URL (Universal Resource Location), {Gopher, Janet, Telnet, FTP}.

History:

US military. Accademic involvement. Private individuals/business on line. US dominance, development of own country search engine (eg try searching for "football" with american bias search engine).

Developments:

Video conferencing. Voice control keyboards. Direct mind control keyboards (sun system spinal colummn reciever transmittter [based on amputee reasearch], and minds trained to think in certain patterns to be read by computer [new scientist]). Pc (personal computer) Vs Nc (network computer), economic implecations to Nc of 2nd hand Pc price drops (imminent). Interactive Java Script HTML. Interactive netstites (remote robot control). Inteligent Agents +ve (see also control!)

Media Hype:

Modern pre-conception. Study in america of effect on underprivilaged families given net access. Compare Hackers, The Net, Johnny Mnemonic, Lawnmower Man (I+II) with previous Sci-Fi/techno films. new trend with company URL's (eg Virgin Radio, Kellogs etc why?).

Attempts at Control:

Clipper vs Cypher Punk. Exon bill against indecency. Wirless Telegraphy Act. Saudi- Mullah sysop constantly checking viewing. Net nanny, safe surfer, ID subscription sites. Inteligent Agents -ve (see also development!).

The Net Will eat Itself:

Copy write implecations of public domain materials. Individual material reproduced in a number of sites (eg Star trek pages, x-file pages etc). Quote “Future dream is a shopping scheme” (Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK).

Social actualities:

As the modern city/nation state decays the virtual landscape increases. Further splitting of society into those who have info and those without (control of the means for production [Marks]). social profile of users (how? possible set up net site for people register information voluntary census [see Matts politics voting site]) vs stateless sites. Social effects isolationism of home workers (american paranioa traits).

Extrapolation of datum:

copies of surveys to be requested

Myth, the internet, and man:

Barthes Postmodernism.

Conclusions:

Brain Storm:-

History, US military, Media increase, access by individuals, Company interest (Kellogg's internet site), Universities, gopher, janet, telnet, netscape, WWW, HTML, intelligent agents, encryption, network computer vs. personal computer, data base function, library, interactive real-time web sites, copyright implications, publishing on the web, govermentality, exon bill, clipper chip (deceased), cypher punks, virus, hackers,

Technorati Tag: Internet, Gibson, Cyber, Cypher, Too Much Thinking, Dissertation, University, ARPA, meekon5.

In Memory Of JK Burningham.

2008-09-06T14:11:00.005Z

Myself with John at my brother Paul's wedding.

This appears as I read it at John's cremation.

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. I am Simon, to quote John “we have all sorts of relationships in this family, steps, halves, allsorts” Myself one of Johns step sons.

I won't go into the complications of my pagan point of view of things here. needless to say I feel this is not, and should not be, about the passing of the vessel that bore John through our lives. It is a celebration of what it was that made John the man he was, and allowed him to touch so many of our lives.

The vehicle that is going to continue to carry John in our hearts and our minds from now on is that of stories. Stories of John that we as friends and family will continue to tell each other, about him, and the things he did.

To this end that is what I propose to do here, tell you some of my favourite stories of John.

You must turn to others to talk about Johns early life, myself having only known him since my late teens. Please be assured these are my collection only, you, I am more than certain, will have your own to share with each other later.

Firstly I remember loosing my grandmother (A difficult enough lady to loose in her red polka dot dress) during Johns inauguration as chairman of Horsham district council. John receiving his badges of office the rest of us running round trying to find Grandma. Only to find later that she'd popped down the pub for a quick Holsten Pils.

Then there was the time, Mum and John at an official function, when he was chairman of the council or some such official role. Leading the procession away at the end, in front of the Mayor of Crawley, he in his chauffer driven black limo, Mum and John in one of the many clapped out old mini's they owned at one period or another. Resplendent with the cake that Mum had won in the raffle that day still on the roof.

My own favourite, from what Lynda calls his “mental” phase, just after his car accident, is the period he spent convinced he was a midget submarine captain who had his legs removed from the knee down to fit in the boat with his crew who where entirely dwarfs.

The Christmas Lynda bought John a Max Bygraves video. I can still picture him sitting in the lounge by himself, the rest of us hiding in the kitchen, as he happily sang along to all his war time favourites.

John always well known for appearing in one of his three piece suites, and not just for gardening in. When John went to sit in on a hearing for some trouble David had at work, suitable attired as usual, David being told he couldn't have a solicitor present.

Or Mark, Paul, and myself, finding election posters for each of the divergent political points of view we held, decorating the windows of the house with them, especially for the visit of the local Conservative MP, whilst John was campaigning for one of his many elections. The amount of leaflet dropping, canvassing and general running around we did for him during those periods. Despite the three of us not ever being, or ever wanting to be, anything to do with the Conservative Party.

Please don’t get me wrong. The humour wasn't only one way. Being use to John buying up every “Pick-Your-Own” produce there was locally, and having every type of bean one could find thrust upon us dependent on season. There was no surprise when he presented us with a Shepard’s pie one evening to warm us up, resplendent with many such styles of bean. Not realising the warming element he'd planned for us was the four whole chilli's he’d placed in it without telling us.

Enough has been said about the drunken nights at the Black Horse in Amberley, cocktails, and driving home, all of us hanging out of windows singing along to the music at the tops of our voices. Whilst driving through the Sussex countryside in the middle of the night.

Picture John at another official function, planting flowers by a roadside. Jonathan, as a toddler had joined him, as fast as John is planting them, Jonathan was gleefully digging them up behind him.

My own personal recollection. Returning to University as a mature student. Needing a grant, they were still giving them back then. Marching into the county council offices with John by my side. Not a quick process for those who know, John being an extremely well know individual in those quarters, so many hands were shaken. On reaching the particular office, having a small bit of trouble with one of the officials, John stepping up and requesting the gentlemen’s superior, who was more than pleased to see John again, and more than pleased to help with my problem.

That’s perhaps one of the main things about John, which I hope I do alike as much as I can. His ever readiness to apply whatever resources or connections he could to help anyone who asked.

I mentioned Christmas earlier. Another year John and I had risen early Christmas day. Having had breakfast we had settled down to watch the usual repeated rubbish you get on early in the morning. The pair of us sat pretending not to cry as we watched the miracle at Christmas together.

I have used enough of your time and I think you now get the idea.

Finally (at last I hear you say). Whilst myself and a couple of friends were running our theatre company, we had the opportunity of using the old town hall in Horsham (the same location as the lost grandmother I started with). In the main entrance hall, half way up the stairs, on one of the walls, is a large plaque, holding various names of previous chair people of the council. A grid of four by five names apart from one, due to it's length, that has it's own line, as the full title reaches across the entire width.

On remembering this a a couple of weeks ago, just after hearing the news about John, it occurred to me that,

Group Captain J K Burningham MBE (Retired),

Has finally received three more initials to his more than illustrious title,

Group Captain J K Burningham MBE (Retired) R. I. P.

Various Train Based Rants.

2008-08-26T11:47:00.007Z

Once again caught amongst the hassled, the harassed, the homeward bound.
The air fraught with tension, thick with aggression, and testosterone. Too small a train stuffed to the gunnels with too many people. The more often I travel this way, the more palatable the taste of the stress around me. I feel the stress around me, building in myself incrementally, almost by osmosis. Irregularly see people around me shouting at each other, gesticulating, or just marked deeply, dreadfully, in their faces. The down turned mouths, the deep-set eyes. What gets to me, both on the train and on the tube, is the silence. An almost brooding, loathing, pre-going postal, aggression. An incredible morgue like vow of silence broken only by the occasional conversation carried onto the train, the tube, from outside. Or the incidental loony who insists on expounding their latest theory on where the country has gone wrong this time. Insistent that some one listen to their diatribe, in this case usually me.Just for my friends the spirit of the “Portsmouth Lift Riders” still burns strong in my heart. I find it a terrible trial to NOT engage everyone in conversation. Or to leap from the tube screaming "Banzai!" at the top of my voice.

Perspective.

It occurs to me that no matter how rich, how famous, or how powerful, in the ultimate reckoning you are in fact completely unimportant. The human race itself can entirely wipe itself out. Destroy the planet, the solar system. It is all eventually unimportant. Environmentalists for ever argue we are causing global warming, total toxicity syndrome, and many other global catastrophes. They omit the fact that the world from it's beginning has passed through many differing climates, changed evolved and survived. The case in fact is the dinosaurs. They “ruled” the earth for far longer than we have been in existence. In radically different (globally warmer) climates. In all likelihood the human race will destroy itself. The earth may be damaged but will re-adjust, re-balance and some other species will quiet happily rise to dominance. In the ultimate reckoning we do not matter. As individuals we fight to attempt to control our little corner of existence. We fight by conforming, or not. We fight by reproducing, or not. We fight by annihilating, or not. Murder, genocide, violence, pacifism, love, hate, everything is insignificant, we just don't matter. From the great Roman leaders through despots, to dictators, humanitarians, and even pacifist like Ghandi, we don't matter. All we are, all we were, all we are destined to be, will wither and fade to dust, everything we represented will cease to be.
Nothing really matters.
Your opinion, does not matter.
Your work, does not matter.
Your family, your wealth, your status, does not matter.
You scrimp and save, you graft and toil, and nothing of it matters. You build castles and empires and dynasties, and nothing of it matters.
So remember that next time your rushing around thinking only about yourself, your own self important little bubble, I must get to work because I am important.
Remember that as your pushing into me on the tube. Knocking me out of your way. Huffing, tutting, and sighing, because I don't want to walk as fast as you do. Don’t want to crush into the tube just so you can get to your oh so important job or engagement because I am in your way.
Because I am not as important as you think you are.
Well I'm not.
But the news is, neither are you.
Nothing really matters, all will be reduced to dust eventually. Then what will have been the point of all this?
So next you’re on the tube, driving your car, on the train, just calm down and be grateful for what little or great measure you've got. Because you don't matter, it doesn't matter, nothing really matters.

Thursdays Tube.

05/06/2008

“This is a district line train to Ealing Broadway”,
Crowded morning tube,
Smell of suntan cream,
Wafts with it,
Memories of lovers lost and past,
Reverie only broken by the incessant rustle of the free papers,
In the tomb like quiet,
Self conscious laughter,
As unfamiliar proximity,
Causes momentary embarrassment.
“Mind the doors please this train is about to depart!”

Technorati Tag: Commuting, Trains, Whimsy, Life, Too Much Thinking, Journey, Tube, Who do You Think You Are, meekon5.

Life As A Backwards Train Journey.

2008-08-19T10:23:00.002Z

"Life is understood backwards but it must be lived forwards" - Soren Kierkegaard

If you sit on the train with your back to the engine you get an entirely different perspective on the journey. You see things only as places you've been as they move away from you into the past. Of course you can see the parallel that I'm thinking of here. Much like experiences in life.

We are only able to see what we have done or where we have been as though it were the train journey, a brief instance parallel, in the moment, then it slips away into the past. Objects near to us seem more immediate, objects further away more distant. The station we pass through like a fleeting acquaintance, the station we stop at a slightly more well know friend. A town we know from the nearness of some buildings and the continuation of the suburbs, someone known well but become familiar and almost viewed with the contempt of over familiarity.

Even the people we travel with are much in parallel to life. Someone can sit right beside you for the entire journey and you don't even talk to them, or a complete stranger can strike up a conversation and for brief moments you have some connection. You can cause discomfort to each other through your disregard of personal space or be as adjusting, making as much allowance for their comfort, and they will still look upon you with scorn as they leave.

Much of the time I find it difficult not to fall in love on the train (all too frequently), but these (much like my life) are only fleeting crushes that never reach any level of requitement. I often wonder how many other lonely people there are travelling back and forth only millimetres from someone who could be their very soul mate.

Even here the better off exclude themselves from the “riff-raff”, cosseting themselves in their elitist first class carriages, economic circumstance standing between us and them. Less people in more space with slightly better furnishings. The rest of us left to be cramped and fight for the poor crumbs and little space that our meagre money buys us to travel with.

Even the activities we undertake separate us further. The intellectuals reading books (even differentiating amongst themselves by what they read). The workaholic salary men catching up on e-mail, memos, reports they just didn't have the time to cover during the working day (may the gods forbid they “drop out of the loop” by not being up to date). Mothers organise children over the phone. Fathers admonish sons for the weekend misconducts. People like myself with laptops demarking hierarchies again based on size and power. Even I myself tag my position in society by using a cut down laptop running Linux (yes techno-geek as ever). Children text each other with the urgency of people that haven't talked for seconds, therefore could be missing out on the minutiae of each others existence. Or more importantly who “fancies” who this week, and what dreadfully uncool thing their parents insisted they did this weekend.

Every day, every morning and evening these parallel microcosms spew out of the suburbs and co-mingle in any number of London stations. Only to do the same that evening in reverse, exploding from London to seed the suburbs with commuters. Being born from our station of departure to end your brief commuter life at the station of your destination, only to be re-born the next morning to run a similar route through a similar life.

Though I do feel somewhat like Methuselah. Joining the journey at it's beginning and not leaving until almost the end, I see many people begin the trip but very few of us last to the end of the journey.

Technorati Tag: Commuting, Trains, Whimsy, Life, Too Much Thinking, Journey, meekon5.

Performance.

2008-08-11T22:46:00.004Z

The following is (to the best of my ability) a transcript of a performance (in the Florence public house, Portsmouth, during one of their infamous “Tongues and Grooves” sessions) of a certain piece of poetry.

To set the scene:
“Tongues and Grooves” is a, once monthly, night of poetry and music performance, by any number of individuals who turn up on the night with something to perform. Which myself and a couple of friends used to frequent on a fairly regular basis. At which two of us built up what I can only describe as a fairly decent reputation for performing our own poetry.

So there I am, it's my turn at the mike. Picture a small hobbit like man with a hotly clutched wad of paper and a large glass of red wine. This is something I've been plotting for almost a month now.

I had something of a reputation for being a little humorous in my performance and choice of material (please refer to the poetry linked with this site as proof) so when I stood up and said the following it's not surprising it was met with some giggling.

“This evening I am going to do three things!” I said.
Minor giggling from the audience ensues.
“I am going to make a statement, I am going to tell you a story, then I am going to read you a piece of poetry.”
Still some giggling.
I pause for a moment.

“The Statement is this, I Am An Ex-Beaten Husband.”

I don’t say this too loudly so there is a mixture of incredulity and a small ripple of people asking me to say it again.

“Allow me to repeat myself, I Am An Ex-Beaten Husband.”

Silence, and a little embarrassment from some of the gigglers.

Pause for a sip of wine.

“Firstly the Story:

The first time my wife walked into my life I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Malay Chinese, fine skinned and petit. I was working behind the bar at an engagement party for a member of staff, a waitress was getting engaged to one of the regulars. So we had all agreed to do an hour behind the bar each then join the party proper. So I was all dolled up in my best finery, drinking gin and tonic from a pint glass, each new drink was just added to the rest in the pint, pure elegance. The evening had been fairly slow until one of the waitresses walked in with, what she'd told us, was her sister. Every man in that bar turned to look at the pair of them. They were stunning. I believe I knew at that point that I was going to marry this beautiful young lady. They ordered a drink at the bar but quickly went into the party as some of the less pleasant customers were beginning to bother them. I couldn't wait to finish my stint behind the bar now.
The minute my watch was over I wondered round to the restaurant where the party was happening. My good friend Gerry, a diminutive red headed Irishman from Limerick, had been waiting for my arrival, as no-one could drink at quite the pace we kept, so everyone else was boring him.
I looked round the party and there they were, like two exquisite jewels, a clearance of some six foot around them was a ring of hopeful males, all pacing back and forth, trying to get up enough courage to actually approach these two goddesses.
I'm not sure if it was the Gin, or just bravado in the company of Gerry, I marched through this human cordon and sat straight down with the pair of them, Gerry gleefully in tow, not believing that I had the audacity to try what everyone else (male that is) was just thinking of.
Well, to cut a long story short, the evening went very well. What with dancing in the children’s area (outside the party), and everything, after a week she came back to “see her friend at work”. Captain stupid here had to be taken to one side and have it explained (I’m not particularly clever at this understanding women thing) that she had of course returned to see me again. Weeks led to months. I would go and see her in town. We would spend so much time together I was actually falling asleep as I walked home (if you've not done it, it's quiet an experience waking up because your foot has hit the pavement, as you walk along).
Well she asked me to marry her after six months. Phrases like whirlwind, too quick, and stupid, come to mind, but I was head over heels in love. I said I would think about it, and a week or so later I asked her to marry me.
Six months is not a long time. I believed we were highly compatible (and despite what certain members of my family still believe) I thought we were both heavily in love.
Here I did something perhaps I shouldn't have. I am actually sorry that I didn't invite my father and my step mother to the wedding. Probably from the point of view that they would have asked me if I really thought I was doing the right thing, and with twenty twenty retrospect I should have perhaps left things a bit longer. I didn't do it to purposefully exclude him (sorry Dad). I just didn't invite him.
I rang my mother and asked what she was doing the next Monday. She asked me why. I said would she like to go to a wedding. She said who's. I said mine.
The Honeymoon was spent in Croydon Immigration Offices. We went straight from the registry office. It's this point that certain members of my family think is entirely indicative of what she really wanted from me. In fact certain members of my family still make a point of bringing this up every time we meet (family weddings, etc, etc he offers me his “maid” who it appears is looking to get a British visa) even though its some twenty years since I was actually married.
We moved into a two room bed-sit in central Worthing. I say two rooms, a lounge and a very big wardrobe that the previous occupants had been using as a bedroom. She insisted we buy a new bed, it seemed Chinese tradition insisted that you have a new bed for the new relationship.”

(Dramatic) Pause for a sip of wine and to ensure the audience is still attentive.

“It was then that everything went horribly wrong.

Somehow my (now) wife had managed to conceal from me, for the last six months, that she had a premenstrual problem possibly linked to the fact that she was sexually abused as a child.

It seems incongruous to see that written down now. A very small phrase for what was such a devastating problem.

My beautiful, almost child like, bride turned from an absolute angel to a deamon. I have regularly talked with others who have suffered in similar circumstances. I find there is much agreement. It's not the physical violence that is the problem. I'm not the slightest of people but she was trained in Tae Kwon Doe, I had done some very basic karate. She kicked me in the mouth from standing, “roundhouse” style. She threw pieces of my stereo at me. She even attacked me with a serrated edge knife, where the very basic karate I had done years ago allowed me to disarm her.

As I suggested it's not the physical violence that causes the problems though, its the mental abuse. The constant attempts to belittle. The constant fighting. The uncertainty, will it be as bad tonight? The absolute mental, and emotional, exhaustion, having spent the previous night talking her round to a reasonable point of view, only to get home to find she had an answer for all your points from last night so you have to think of a completely new set this evening.

The most devastating aspect was to be able to talk her round to the point where she actually was sorry for what she had done and said. Only to return the next night to face the same again.

I had a reasonable job, I was training as an accountant at the time, I lost that job.

I believe I had a nervous breakdown.

After thirteen months I finally broke, hit her back and walked out on her.

My divorce papers cite me as the violent one. My families solicitor said I had two choices the way the papers had been drawn up, Sign the papers uncontested, this would cost me nothing, not even the half hour I had spent with him. Or I could oppose the whole procedure, which could drag on for months and possibly cost me a vast amount. Much to my friends, and families, disappointment I signed them there and then.”

Finally (the third part ) I would like to present a poem. The original is, for the moment, lost to me. This version is based on what I remember of the original. There were a lot of times in those thirteen months where I found myself unable to go home directly, and found myself wandering the streets of Worthing with no aim, or purpose.

Sunday Evening Worthing.

(In memory of an unfound original) Simon Kennedy 09/02/2004.
Performed 28/03/2004 (Florence).

So here I am again.
Alone.
Walking.
Going nowhere,
Been nowhere.
Forcing myself to take a short detour behind the station.
Other people’s conversations,
Drift from open windows.
The drummer practices.
The TV plays.
The noise of other functional lives.
The crossing bleats randomly in the night.
Almost seeming to call me back.
I finished work ages ago.
And still I wonder the streets.
All the time the hope in my heart.
That tonight is the night that it stops.
All the time not wishing to go home,
In case tonight it starts again.

It will get better!
It will work out!
But every time the demon waits.

I watch your face change.
I see the child dissolve,
And there she is!
Someone I never knew.
Some one I never married.
Someone I never loved,
And who never loved me.
The bile and venom spits.
Every action hurts.
The equality of our martial arts,
The only thing keeping me alive.
What can I say to convince you.
Every word a lie.
Round and round,
And round the arguments spin.
Every night a new repost,
For last nights reasoning.
Every night a new tack,
For every new direction.

It will get better!
It will work out!
But every time the demon waits.

Until,
Finally,
The angel returns.
And I can collapse,
Bruised mentally and physically,
To fitful sleep,
If I can.
With remembered words,
“One Night I will kill you in your sleep!”
“One night I will cut it off!”
Ringing in my ears.

So here I am again.
Alone.
Not wanting to open the front door.
Not wanting to climb the stairs.
Open the bedroom door.
And there you are.
The beautiful child I married.
And all you say is “Sorry!”
And I believe again.

It will get better!
It will work out!
But still the demon waits.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Technorati Tag: writing, bile, return, History, Domestic Violence, Wrong, Husband Beating, Violence, Relationship, meekon5.

The Charles And Eddie File

2008-07-21T16:25:00.002Z

*Warning Extremly Bad Taste Humour Follows*

The following are copies of corispondence taken from the files of the infamous Chief Inspector Pilkington-Smythe during investigation into certain incongruities that appeared during the investigation of the death of one Strangley-Browns close relatives.

Chief Inspector Philip Blythe. Aug 1934.

Letter One:

Received: Thu, 7 Mar 1931

E,

Just been playing a spot of golf with Balko and Strangely-Brown. Top chaps. Do a bit of family-tree pruning themselves you know. Who do you think got the fortune after the sudden death of Lord Samuel Brown and his entire immediate family? Strangely had a cast iron alibi as to where he was when those intruders broke into his uncle's mansion during the family gathering and grusomely hacked all the guests to death with a scythe. He was at my Mayfair pied a terre with Cheif Inspector Pilkington-Smythe. Gave me a huge cut of the will for helping him out. Bought myself new tweeds the next day, couldn't shift the blood from the ones I wore. Fancy a spot of luncheon. I know that Capt. James Harrington's wife is lonely after his sudden and mysterious death on the Ivory Coast. I was there at the time, old boy. Terrible, terrible how he fell into that great hot-mud pool weighed with so many unusual objects in his kit-bag. I'm sure she'd like to dine and have a spot of flagellation for afters.
Whoops-poop-twiddly-dee!!

C.

Letter Two:

Received: Wed, 6 Mar 1931

What-ho!!!
Splendid to be back in Blighty, old boy!! Came back to find £1,399.09 in one's Swiss bank account. I inherited the vast amount after Henrietta D'Arnee passed away in her sleep whilst staying at my Norfolk house. Amazing how these wealthy people leave me so much in their wills, isn't it? Apparently, the old girl had drowned in her own vomit after drinking heavily. The funny thing is, she was the leader of the Ladies of Norfolk Anti-Alcohol Society, which begs the question, how did she hide her mysterious closet-life for so long? Of course, there is pubic outcry, and the LoNAAS has been dis-banded, leaving my distillery's actions un-criticised. (Eds, it was a bugger to pour that brandy laced with tranquilisers down her gullet, but pressing on the bint's stomach until she threw-up didn't take long). So how's things up there? Good to hear that the parents of that 14 year old girl have withdrawn their complaint against you. Exactly how many fingers did you actually break? I take it that you are still buggering the little harlot. Anyway, must go and whip some locals.
Give something resembling my length to that hussy of a daughter of yours.
Adieu,

Charles

Letter Three:

Received: Mon, 19 Feb 1931

E.

Tally -ho, chummy. I say, one had an amazing time at yours the other week. Should do it a-bloody-gain, what? Frightfully nice to see the whole gang again. It'll be a month or so before my presence will be felt (and stroked and oiled etc etc) in the North again, so keep those musketts and elephant-guns at the ready so we can hunt some riff-raff. Thankyou for your most warm hospital-ity, old Edds, and give my regards to all the nurses. Hope Pandy can sit down now. As she said, rectal orifices weren't designed for inserting root vetegables, but there's not much a young girl can do when tied up and greased, but accept. Must go, old boy, Samantha Briskett-Hawthorne is coming. (It is a bit of a predicament writing a note with my todger deep in a girlie).
Chocks away,

C.

Letter Four:

Received: Mon, 29 Jan 1931

E,

Bloody charming of you tiddly poop. Can't wait to see the old gang again, what? (just sent a telegram to that Dutch Bonnet girlie in your vicinity, we must pop out and get immensely blottoed on champers, Edds, old boy).
Heard from her that your b-day is damn soon, hope I'm up to celebrate with you - shoot some peasants, torture children etc etc.
Must dash - keep in touch,

C.

Letter Five:

Received: Wed, 24 Jan 1931

Eddy,

How are you, my worthy companion? I am wondering whether it would be feesable for me to come and spend some time at your Northen retreat on the weekend begining 9th of Feb? Pilky-Smythe told me I'd better lie low for a while after The Yard became suspicious following the workmen digging up the remains of a few bodies in the grounds. I had all the workmen tortured and shot by the gamekeeper of course (you know me, Eddy!!) The oily common ticks. Had a telegram from Ollie Brenkinsop today. He's still on safari on the Zambizi Plain, as you know. He told me that the local population growth has doubled ever since you left three months ago, and there have only been four gunshot accidents compared to the seventeen a week when you were there. I sent a telegram back telling him if word travels, pooh-pooing any of my chums, I shall personally give his youngest daughter something to hang her towel on, and I wouldn't hesitate in giving his wife the photos of him and M'niri, the huge trekker, in action. I think I might give his daughter a dose of meat enema regardless.That's all for now, chappy, the slaves have come-to, and are screaming again.
Bloody twelve year olds!!
Keep me posted,
Chin-chin,

Charlie.

P.S. Talking of screaming twelve year olds, give my love to Pandora.

Letter Six:

Received: Tue, 23 Jan 1931

Jan 23 1936

Evening Eds

Well tally-bally-ho-my-codger-badger-chum-old-boy-jolly-good-show-et cetera. How absolutely spiffing to hear from you once again. 'Fraid I did a bit of a faux-pas regarding which relatives of yours were conviniencely disposed of. Nothing like pruning the scraggly branches of the old family tree, what?!

You remember old batchelor and recluse Bilky De Grace, the art dealer with the Frog father, well, apparently, he had an accident recently. He was at his Buckinghamshire art studio valuing some Gochs and Vinccis when lo and behold one of the heavier picture frames (the heaviest actually, I checked before hand) fell on top of him, and bounced a few times on his head, crushing his skull to pieces. The funny thing is, only a day before had he signed a new will, leaving all property in my name. The Bucks' cheif constable was a bit dubious of the irregularities in the handwriting, but good old Pilky-Smythe had a few words with him, and now he agrees that all documents are tip-top, hunky-dory and whoopie-doo.

Looking forwards to visit Kenya again. Those Umbitzi children did taste well after grilling, didn't they old boy? Might bring some home with me to one of my country halls (Can't have them scampering around London can we, if I aimed at one of them in Oxford St., people would surely get suspicious. Who wants to step over an Umbitzi child bleeding in the street?)

Pip-pip then, old boy, must go and get ready for Finchlay-Topper's little cocktail affair at his Mayfair pad tonight. I've not been invited, but I know how I can get into the wine cellar unseen and help the guests get legless (arsenic affects the feett first, then upwards) Also I know where his 15 year old girl sleeps. You know her, the one you locked in your bedroom for a week last year. Have you seen her lately, last time I saw you & her in the same castle together (Quentin Howllet's, if I remember correctly) she started squealing and twitching like a little frightend animal. You did a good job on her, Eds.

Must away,

Charlie.

Letter Seven:

Received: Wed, 10 Jan 1931

Good morning, Charlie here with a yipp-yapp-zing-zang-zpilipp-don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs. Langford-nicky-nacky-hey-nonny-now-whoops-poop-twiddly-dee.How in the name of rat's wedding tackles are you old bean?
I'm as happy as a man who thought a cat had done its business on his pie, but it turned out to be an extremely large blackbery. Must go and abuse some adolescents while in this mood, what?
Money still non-existant, so I'm afraid it's still a long time away before I come to see you in the North. I'm hatching a plot involving Uncle Pierce "Rolling in it" Protheroe III, and his Spitfire aeroplane. It's all a bit hush hush at the mo'. How unfortunate it will be for him.
Give my love to evrybody,

E.

P.S. Have Bertie and Farquhar Johnson-Smithe got e-mail numbers? If so, could you give them to me please, for as I said , I'm hatching a plan - Uncle Pierce.....

Letter Eight:

Received: Tue, 9 Jan 1931

Tally-ho old chappy,
Happy New Year, you royster-doyster-doorstop-pal-chum-ho-ho-have-one-on-me-type-matey-corker. What an absolute rotter; I have to find £1,600 to pay this establishment so I can stay and learn something. You see, my local branch of authoritarian type-chaps don't think I need any cash, so I have to find my own way 'til next year. therefore, my 'oh-so-social-life' is no more. I am a goddamned recluse. I never thought I'd say this, but Charles, one will have to find work, My old woodwork teacher was stabbed and murdered on his doorstep on new year's eve. I never forgave him for caning me with a two by four in the lower sixth. Couldn't find any darned money in his house, though. Must dash, the children are comming-too, I'll have to tie them up a bit tighter.

Toodle-pip

Eddy-poos.

Letter Nine:

Sent: Wed, 20 Dec 1930

Charlie

Anyway how was Bora-Bora, hope there were plenty of natives to molest. Having a wonderful time with the house slaves. developed a blister on the old tadger was using it so much. One of the charming young things has this very interseting trick she does with a marrow (it has to be seen to be believed). Fraid the postie delivered your last message as an empty envelope (or perhaps I lost it on the way from the door to the living room).

Alex and Panda send their regards (something along the lines of "Hope the smelly old goat catches VD from some forgiegn slut and dies slowly and horribly, blind, mad, and dripping puss from every orafice"). They've increased the man traps on the front lawn on the off chance that your apel to the home office succeeds and they let you back into the country, also they've offered the game keeper an extra thousand guineis if he can just wing you so they can indulge in a little torture (red hot pokers and anal orafices you know the sortof thing {sounds quite fun to me}).

love to the kids (Bestiality is best).

Ed's

Letter Ten:

Sent: Mon, 11 Dec 1930

Ed's

My matey-do-dah-tiddly-pom-down-the-prom-oh-I-do-like-to-be-beside-the-sea-side-ho-ho-ho-hoist-the-jolly-roger-and-heave-hoe-three-bottles-of-pop-on-a-dead-mans-chest-type-chap so nice to hear from you at last. Finally slipped back into the country after the storm died down about cooks death. Wonderful time hacking and slaying in Africa but one can only do so much don't you know (along with the odd rape and pillage of course. One has to keep up the old family fortune What!).

Nearly sold Pandora and Alex into white slavery for a bakers dozen coloured tottie (Asian, Black the whole selection). But they convinced me to I could shoot the slaver (horrible little tike) liberate the girlies adopt them and take them home (Lovely idea I thought). So one has replenished the house serfs with a gaggle of willing (and able) Succubines. This is why its taken me so long to reply, as you can guess I've been rodgering them sensless since returning.

Luckily.

Love to hear from you

Charlie.

Letter Eleven:

Received: Wed, 22 Nov 1930

Eddie,
How fares it me old muckka chump tick-tock-tish & pish salty crumpet trumpet yo-yo dog's bollock? I think I might have given you my e-mail no. in the most uncorrect fashion. Sorry. I saw on the silver screen that you in the north, had the misfortune of being blanketed in frozen water dropplets that we call snow. Awful for you I'm sure. Must find some more peasants to burn, what?! Good for ski-ing on, though. It's quite pleasant here at the mo., which isn't surprising really seeing as I'm at my Bora-Bora retreat (the one my Great Uncle Bertram left me after he mysteriously died whilst attempting to break the world record for holding one's breath underwater in his swimming pool. It's baffling how he managed to tie himself to that huge weight, with his hands in chains behind his back. Good fucking show that I play tennis with Seargant Finnlay and Dr. Ashley, the coroner, what?) My fanancial situation is desperate to say the least, and that's why I haven't come up North to "sort things out" as it were. I will be up soon, as I promised, but not until my second cousin, Deborah (the one you buggered sensless at Topper's wake) has come up with the £300 I'm asking for in return of the pictures. Anyway, I must dash, young Bora-Borans don't sexually abuse themselves, you know!
Give hugs all round,

Charles.

Letter Twelve:

Recieved: Fri, 31 Mar 1930

High Grove Hall
Farwood Grange
Buckinghamshire
31/03/1931

Dear Mr. Kennedy,
How the hell are you, dear chap ?! It's been a frightfully long time since I last wrote to you hasn't it ? How is Alexandra, your dear wife, and Pandora, your nymph-lesbian-cock sucking 15 year old daughter ? Tell them I look forward to taking them in every possition in the barn again. You will be pleased to know, Charles, that I have nearly come into money...you see, Great Aunt Maud left me some inheritance in her will to the sum of œ1, 150. I will have to wait a month or so for the transactions to take their course, but the money will be mine. I do hope that Anthony Partridge III doesn't talk to anybody in relation to the way we drowned the old bag in her bath. I shall end this letter (rather abruptly) here, Charles, for Farquar Bingley-Smithe's 16 year old daughter is about to give me head.
Till we meet again, Adieu, my good and trustworthy friend.

Edmund.

Letter Thirteen:

Recieved: Thu, 2 Mar 1930

Oh , cunning devil... Now that I have tried your love and doubled all your reaches, I am not wounded. The pistols held no bullets, 'twas a plot to prove your kindness to me and I live to punish your ingratitudes.

I'm not fuckin bad thanks, matey. And how the devil are you, Sirha?

BYE THEN!!!!!!!

E.

Letter Fourteen:

Recieved: Wed, 25 Jan 1930

Well, me old jim-jam slap-dog sea-fearing flap-jack yo ho ho matey-doo-dah bacon and egg on deck for breakfast kind of morning if you know what one means, jock-strap piano-tuner larks-allalley and so on and so forth, this that and the other, How the devil are you, me old mukka' ?! I'M BORED. But not for long, coz this time tomorrow, I'll be on my way to Holland to partake in that interesting pastime of " Turning my head to jelly ". HOORAH !!!!! So, 'till after the I.S. break, I'll bid you adieu, and a smooth and pleasant crossing.

Love,
Charlie.

--(Alright these are yet again stuff from the vaults. Correspondences between myself and a good friend Rhys. There was more but it's lost now)--

Technorati Tag: writing, bile, return, History, Charles and Eddy, Wrong, Humour, Bad Taste, meekon5.

Tell your friends about RockYou.com! (Like I Have Some!)

2008-06-26T12:09:00.000Z

Postcards From The Edge of Reality. 22/11/2000

2008-06-10T16:31:00.004Z

Occasionally I find a piece of writing I've squirreled away not wishing to dump for one reason or another. well I was looking through some disk transfers (floppy to pen drive, I did a few weeks ago), and found this (a letter to some one I was particularly interested in at the time). These are of course old opinions things have moved on since then:

Postcards From The Edge of Reality.

Went walkabout last night. Walked from Percival road down to Southsea through Fratton. Spent loads of time staring into shop windows at the sparkly objects like some strung out acid head. It's amazing what not wearing my glasses does sometimes. I get natural light flares. Reality warps and changes, I see one thing in one glance and another thing when I look back. The rain kept the rest of the Proles off the streets. I was walking with my ghosts last night. Nothing depressing just an interesting point of view. As I walked through Fratton it occurred to me that the buildings and the walking in the night, and the rain, was like Worthing when I was splitting up with the wife, I use to walk a lot then. That only lasted a few minutes. Then I remembered my Vampire clan in Stockton (My Role playing group actually, but we liked to indulge in a little LRP [Live Role Play], in the dark and seedy pubs and clubs round Stockton). They always make me smile, doped out of our heads playing some really complicated game and not being able to hold it together, for too long anyway, without one or the other of us laughing, or trying to make everyone else loose it. Stockton reminds me of my Grandmother, such a small coffin for such a large persona. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to visit her before she died. And just as I'm thinking about her I walk past a road named Darlington Road, the same road name that she lived off actually in Darlington in Yorkshire. I realise I'm in Southsea, and start to remember an ex-girlfriend that I spit up with to go to university, she came down here to Portsmouth and lived in the area I am walking through. Then I hit Abbots Road in Southsea, all those little junk shops, and coffee bars, trying too hard to be like Soho, or Brighton. Damn do I miss Brighton, half my youth spent wondering the back streets behind the station, in and out of record shops, down the lanes. Last time the stupid brothers organised a trip to Brighton (that's Pete and I) we hit a diversion. Then there were thousands of cyclists passing us by. Two hours later we managed to find a parking space in the lanes, but boy do I never want to see another piece of lycra again. Trust us not to have noticed that the day we pick to visit is the day of the London to Brighton annual bike race. And as I'm walking out of Southsea I realise that I'm walking the apposite direction on the route I usually take to walk to Southsea. I'm walking from dark thoughts into happier. I pass Scandals (the night club that is owned by Nordeen who also owns Springs in town, my Saturday office), Pete and I haven't been to one of their head banging nights in ages. Load heavy metal and thrash at the volumes it should be played. Also a DJ that when you ask for Limp Bizkit or Metalica, she just says yes next track or something a bit later (rather than looking blankly or laughing uproariously). As I head out of Southsea I dump the ghosts, and just begin to concentrate on the walking, and the getting wet. I pick up a couple of bottles of white zinfandel for Pete and myself, and a bottle of Colombard for Jo. Pete is listening to a classical FM compilation, and Jo is stoned off her box watching Jerry Springer (she can't help it) when I get home. I sit till one in the morning just nattering with Pete and drinking the wine. Just feeling very calm, having exorcised a few ghosts.

This morning, as I reached the middle of the bridge across the duel carriage way I had to stop for a second. Before me, behind the offices and the sewer works, there was a rift in the clouds, so dramatic it took my breath away. Above me was a roof of dark, homogenous gray cloud. Before me the rising sun shone directly at me. Behind the sun was stratified cloud like islands disappearing into the horizon. In front of them was a tableau reminiscent of the Himalayas. Endless mountains of cloud against a clear, almost painfully bright blue sky. As I looked at this all I wanted to do was grow wings and fly away.

What an interesting night. Went out to pick up a small bottle of wine (litre and half of Claret). Jo went out with her boyfriend but for only half the night. Jo's friend Helen rang whilst I was out, asking to pop round for a while. Hold onto your hat, here we go (questions will be asked after). Now Helen has just had a baby. Helen's best friend was living with Helen's husbands brother. Helen's best friend and Helen's brother-in-law split up recently when Helen's best friend moved in with another bloke and his girlfriend (interesting). Helen's Sister-in-law's roof was blown off in the recent storms. Helen's sister-in-law is expecting a baby. Helen's sister-in-law has moved in with Helen whilst waiting for the builders to replace the roof. Helen's best friend was badly beaten up by the bloke she is living with so has moved back with her mum. Helen's brother-in-law (who use to live with Helen's best friend) took this badly, had a nervous breakdown, dropped acid over the weekend, had a bad trip, tried to kill his brother (Helen's husband), who had to knock him unconscious, so that he could move in with Helen and her husband, and spend most of the day sitting in the corner of the kitchen rocking backwards and forwards like some vegetable. Helen's brother-in-law feels he can only talk to Helen about his problems, he believes that he has some blockage in one of his major chakra that is projecting negativity and bad luck on anyone around him. So Helen popped round for some piece and quiet. Jo came home about this time with her latest boyfriend. Jo's boyfriend got into an interesting conversation about creativity, calligraphy, and poetry with Jo's ex-boyfriend (Pete), and the lodger (me). This displeased Jo because her boyfriend and her friend were spending more time with Pete and I and not with her and she hates not to be in control, especially when she is pissed. So she joined us to be loud and obnoxious, and proudly announce that her friend was going to kiss one of Pete or I because she was pissed, and that it didn't mean anything. Luckily it wasn't me. Probably Pete, because he kissed Helen's best friend, because they were both pissed and she's not the sort of girl one would that with without half a dozen medical certificates being up to date and wearing a full body condom just in case. Add some more wine and some herbs and I'm sitting in the corner like some Martian "Earth Lander" collecting data ready for the mother ship to come and down load all this data I've collected.

Did you see the mist this morning?

It was great. The street lamps given that gas light ambiance. I was walking down the road minding my own business, when for the first time in ages I was back in "the city". The city is my long term project. An endless horizon of buildings. City planning by DaDa and Kafka, on acid. It's very "Billy Liar". But there are people in the city, millions of them that are all my creation. Occasionally I flip backwards into the city whilst walking somewhere, and the stories begin to create themselves. For a tiny moment I was there this morning. The little embittered Imp walking the streets in the smog, watching the passers by, trying to get his head focused enough to really make that change in his life.

Again this morning I am stunned into inactivity. Impressed by the livid purples, and blues of the coming storm front, contrasted against the azure blue sky. To my amusement a huge cloud in front of the storm resolved itself into a giant sailing ship, fully rigged sailing off to the horizon.

Technorati Tag: writing, bile, return, History, As it used to be, meekon5.

New Job, New energy.

2008-04-25T15:53:00.005Z

Watch this space I feel the creative juices flowing (though rather sluggerdly at the moment).

I'll be back!

Technorati Tag: writing, bile, return, I will be back, boy have I something to say, meekon5.

Pre-Samhain Rant.

2007-10-15T17:56:00.001Z

The wheel turns again, another cycle. I fell no older than I did last time. I feel no younger than before. Time passes of this I am sure, very little else seems to make sense any more.

It’s strange to read ones own words again. Though I have not posted on the blog since last June, it’s not that I’m not writing, it’s just I spend so much time at work I don’t seem to have the inclination to write for the blog that much. A shame. Perhaps it’s also the fact I am going through a period of what I can only describe as defeat. I am almost crushed in any ambition to do or say anything creative. Not intentionally, but just by the continued flux of chaos that is the company I now work for.

Part is the lack of ready money with which to pop down the pub and make little asinine comments, sometimes actually writing them down to come back to later. Part it is the almost mind numbing turnover of staff, leaving me with an almost distasteful recognition that I have been left here, behind.

Also I don’t travel to work on public transport any more, so don’t have the luxury, or time, to sit and observe. The only time I have is to work and then get home and collapse in exhaustion, suffering from a mild form of post traumatic stress disorder.

I don’t get as depressed as I used to, or perhaps don’t have the time to notice that I may be as bad but can’t afford to take the time and step back to analyse the fact that I’m feeling depressed any more (time off sick = no pay). Actually maybe in places I am more depressed because I am less able to get out of this hole I find myself in (spiritually, physically, and mentally).

If anyone wants a Forty two year old Ex SQL, Ex DBA, Ex Accountant, Ex Buddhist, Poet Artist Philosopher Anarchist Neo-Pagan who seems to have lost his way, (please drop a note here and I will get back to you eventually)?

Perhaps it’s the fact that I am now working with a workforce, the majority of which are, on average, half my age or less. I know I was an obnoxious twat when I was in my early twenties. I know I can be so now. The majority of the people I work with are fine. It’s the cumulative effect now and again, everyone thinks they know best (and I of course know better than any of them). I finish the day feeling I have been tumble dried in a vast washing machine of everyone else’s opinion.

I spend all day under the glare of vacuous day time TV from one of the major players that we all work for here. Much like Nineteen Eighty Four, the TV is on all the time in the background, grinding out drivel twenty-four-seven, interwoven with the latest must have, TV, DVD, high def, internet enabled, hair product, big Mac burger. At times I not sure the thing isn’t actually watching me back.

Perhaps it’s just the prospect of having to get my thoughts together tomorrow for a Personal development assessment.

Where do I want to go? I don’t really know. What do I want to be? By the gods they have been asking me that one since I can remember. Gone are the certainties of childhood where I was going to be a astronaut, or a mad scientist. Well one out of three isn’t bad.

There does come a time when you do eventually realise that the mothership is not actually going to come back for you. It’s then that the loneliness actually hits. Perhaps that’s the easiest way to describe properly how I feel most of the time. Like the one left behind after the rest have fled. Still recording data in the vain hope that one day they will come flying back to lift me away from the trudgingly, begrudgingly, mundane, salary man life. Until that moment I must attempt to fit in the best I can with the indigenous primitive life forms that surround me.

Gone are the nights in dingy clubs sipping on champagne at some one else’s expense. Gone are the days where I’ve smoked so much I can’t even be bothered to leave the flat (the kitchen, the chair even), just let the world flow past and around me just sitting observing. Gone are the nights where I would drink and laugh with friends until the sun comes up. Gone are the nights out with someone else’s sister.

That is defeat.

Technorati Tag: Samhain, Depression, Pagan, Mothership, The Mothership, Rant, New Year, Subculture, Dead Dog, meekon5.

In Response To BBC’s Heaven And Earth Today:

2007-06-24T13:57:00.001Z

I must admit that getting any number of pagans to actually agree with each other on anything is much akin to trying to heard cats with a large stick.

These are purely my opinions.

I've been a Pagan since I was about thirteen. That's when I started the (spiritual) journey I find myself still on now. I always say that at least I questioned (and still question) religion as it is presented to me rather than just accept what I am fed by state or parents, then made my own decision.

I disagree with your panellist as to exactly what constitutes Paganism. I do agree that most of my Paganism is rooted in an attempt o be more in touch with nature and natural rhythms. I differ as to the spirituality of my practice. First I am an animist (all things have spirit). For me Paganism is about balancing the Male and Female principle in spiritual practice, in an attempt to make amends for two thousand years of unbalanced male dominated religion. My spiritual practice is very important to me.

I often term myself a Neo-Pagan to be more correct, mostly because I hold no pretention to any link to pre-Christian Paganism. If anything the revival of Paganism can be traced back to the Victorian age (with roots in people like Blavatsky, George Watson MacGregor Reid, also please refer to Ronald Hutton's opinions).

How old does a religion need to be before it gains the respect that others do. Perhaps it's the unfair link to "New age" hippies that causes that dreadful smirk many people meet my claim to being a Pagan with. Two thousand years ago Christianity not only was frowned upon but probably raised a smirk on the faces of "traditional" roman Pagans when mentioned in polite company. Or is it the number of practitioners, but then regard the like of Zoroastrians, a minority religion of Iran (now, reputedly only 140,000 members), or Voodoo which has gained more mainstream acceptance and that as a religion is only a few hundred years old.

Subdivisions of Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity spring up on a regular basis, why are they more credible than Paganism?

In fact there is much evidence that Christianity practiced by modern exponents is radically different from that of a few hundred years ago let alone to what would have been practiced by the original disciples (ask practitioners of the Arian, Coptic churches and many other churches destroyed by Roman Catholicism).

One more point I don't see that Christianity has any more impirically (scientifically, historically) provable link to its creator than Paganism has. after all St Paul (the man that sold christianity to the Romans) didn't even actually meet Mr Jesus Christ in person. Another place and another time is needed for me to expand on the changes and political abuse in re-writting and changing the Bible since the original texts were written down.

Do we (as Pagans) perhaps need to take some militant action? Say declare a religious war and go into the kidnapping game?

Finally under both EU and UN human rights legislation:

Every woman, man, youth and child has the human right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These fundamental human rights are explicitly set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief and other widely adhered to international human rights treaties and Declarations.

The Human Rights at Issue

The Human Right to Freedom of Religion includes the following indivisible, interdependent and interrelated human rights:

The human right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

The human right to manifest one=s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

The human right to freedom from discrimination based on religious beliefs or activities, or because of refusal to conform to a certain religion.

The human right to freedom of expression and of association.

The human right to conscientious objection on grounds of religious belief.

The human right of parents to choose schools for their children which ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.

Which as far as I can see means if I wish to practice my religion in any form I choose that is my right. Which if one were to sit a broad collection of Christians together I 'm sure there would be almost as much difference of particulars as there is amongst practitioners of my own religion.

I actually object to the movement, and display, of the bones on the basis that if the people who placed the bones did not care what happened to them then they would have not bothered to put the bones in that situation in the first place. I am not apposed to scientific research but the bones should be returned out of respect for what is obviously the intent of the people who placed them there.

It's not about dissenting because I am a Pagan, but when my mortal remains are laid to rest I wish them to be left in that situation. As I wish for anyone whatever their religion, whether they have representatives alive to represent them or not.

Technorati Tag: Pagan, Religion, meekon5, Bones, BBC, Rant, Subculture, Druids.

The Beasts Speaks

2007-06-23T00:59:00.000Z

Or one too many martini's.

Please stick with this to the end it brings tears of laughter to my eyes and it's me thats actually performing it.

One too many Martini's.

This is as much an experiment as anything to see if I can get it to work.

Also this was recorded previous to the proceeding piece.

Technorati Tag: Conversation, Humour, meekon5, MP3, Depression, Talking To Myself, Subculture, Martini .

Reflections On The Solstice.

2007-06-21T21:09:00.000Z

I took the last three days off, one to get a pay meter fitted (which of course they couldn’t do unless I have some plumbing work done to the meter cupboard). The other two to cover the solstice.

OK I sit here again having performed the usual hotchpotch of ritual and farce that goes hand in hand with my attempts at some religious practice in line with my Pagan beliefs.

Farce as I attempt to light a candle, having read somewhere that previous (historical) Pagans would capture the last light of the setting sun using some polished crystal. Keeping the flame over night to be extinguished with the rising of the sun the next dawn. Using the light from that (the new dawn) to ignite the temple flame for the next six months. Farce As I stand in my back door attempting to light a candle with a magnifying glass and only succeeding in burning the wick away to nothing. I even attempt to light a lighter from the suns focused rays, which of course doesn’t work as well. I get more and more frustrated with myself and end up just lighting the candle in the rays of the setting sun. Farce again as I can’t help but fiddle with the burning candle and can’t leave it alone. Of course my intervention causes the flame to go out. So have I not only failed to light the alter flame (candle) from the sun but also managed to extinguish the same by pissing around with it. Well long ago I realised my only purpose in existence was to provide amusement for the gods, which I succeed at in all quarters.

Well forensic evidence, post three bottles of rather pleasant Rosé (alcohol for the reverence of Baccus), suggest that Eris made her presence known as well (Eris Discordia do look up the Principia Discordia). Even to the extent of some burnt offerings and the liberal anointment of the kitchen (It looks as if I cooked something and then tried to get the cooking oil back into the bottle, spilling it liberally over the washing, the kitchen surface, and anything that stood there on). Also the candle has burnt (slightly) some of the area around where I left it to stand (putting it out this morning with the first light of dawn). Though I must say that the oil has actually lubricated the cooker ignition switch that was sticking. This now fixed, I can leave the cooker actually turned on at the electric switch. Though completely failed to notice this evening that the oven was actually turned on, only noticing that the kitchen was warmer than usual, for an hour or two, before realising and turning the thing off.

My understanding of the solstice is as the reflection (and opposite) of the winter solstice. Here the Holly King regains the thrown by defeating the Oak King. The days become shorter and we begin to think of winter again.

Enough of the pantomime. So there you find me. Deep in my post alcoholic depression, having only nearly set fire to the house twice in the last two days, completely unable to find my suit trousers, finding most of the rest of my clothes infested with moths, or fungus, or both, deep in reflection as to what the last six to twelve months has brought. My life still the blueprint for some sitcom as at yet unwritten.

So where am I then?

Scared shitless that the job I’m doing at the moment is the final destination. The rest of my working life doing a job for half the money I was getting to do the exact same job (mostly databases and spreadsheet manipulation) for half the money, but generously allowed to work myself to death by doing twice the hours. At a creative low because I have no energy, or time (once I’ve finished my thirteen hour days), or inkling left to create anything. Feeling both used, and abused, and ignored.

My only options being much of the same with another company, merely changing location and employer not solving the problem. I spent many months going to interviews and just seemed to be going round in little circles (no one wishing to employ me until this firm. Circles, ever decreasing, ever reducing, the time I have to create and destroying the very impetus to create itself.

Frightened that this is “it” I will no longer do the things I enjoy. No one will let me play with computers the way I enjoy (and am so good at). Twenty years left to work. Twenty years finally to trudge through the work-a-day drudgery of soul destroying boredom.

Spent all the last few days trying not to watch daytime TV as it only depresses me even more. The continuous repetition of the same programs. Not meeting the demographic, continuously bombarded with debt management and loan adverts. Does ever one who watches daytime TV have money problems or do I just watch the same programmes as the needy.

Scared shitless that this is actually it. This is all. This is as far as I’m going to get, a bi-monthly rant on the web on some obscure blog. Left moaning about the fact I thought of certain concepts first but had neither the money nor opportunity to pursue the ideas and publish them.

I haven’t written any poetry for ages.

Has the joy really gone? Is this it finally? Too qualified to do most jobs, not qualified enough to the ones I want to do. Are my whites really that grey?

If only I could just slip back into academia and disappear into study and not have to face the real world on a day to day basis.

Technorati Tag: Conversation, Humour, meekon5, Discordia, Depression, Religion, Subculture.

Conversations I Should Have Had With My Godson.

2007-05-27T14:56:00.000Z

Please don’t assume this is about “The Birds and the Bees”. To be honest at the age of twelve he probably knows more about that subject now than I did at his age (actually thinking about it my first instance of sex education was about that age, but in London, where things seemed to be explained earlier than they are in other parts of the country. Experienced from having to sit through the same rubbish a few times as we moved around the country as I got older).

As you will probably appreciate I spend a lot of time thinking about things. Possibly too much for some peoples liking.

One of my favourite pastimes is the dialectic, to my understanding conversation taking two opposing points of view discussed in an attempt to bring some understanding to the particular situation, philosophical point, what ever.

Dialectic in my case usually occurs most of the time internally, with idealised versions of individuals. Actually quiet shockingly occasionally when the conversation or imagined opponent takes their own point of view and begins arguing their point independently.

What I’m trying to say is I spend most of time wandering round Portsmouth deep in conversation with myself like some muttering loony. Listening to the voices in my head argue with myself or each other. It can be quiet amusing when I burst forth with a witty replay only to realise that I have spoken out loud, and I could actually be frightening the other people on the bus.

One of my favourite dialectics at the moment is the conversation I should have in whole with my twelve year old godson. I have managed to broach the subject with him already in part. But the real version of the conversation is so much more spectacular (in my head).

Life is all about compromise and negotiation!

All of life is about compromise and negotiation. Every relationship, love, marriage, friendship, sex, work, is about compromise and negotiation.

You live with your parents and the things that annoy them about you is the lack of compromise (hasn’t cleaned his room, never does the dishes, could make his own breakfast). It’s only later that you appreciate the work that was done for you because you have to do it yourself. Like pay the bills, mortgage etc.

I don’t share my life (on the whole) because I am essentially a very selfish individual. I don’t want to “negotiate” watching “eastenders” to be able to watch a Star Trek episode. I don’t want to negotiate the fact I’ll be home at seven to see her parents, just for a quiet life.

I have frequently compromised my circumstances. To allow for the fact that I worked in pubs I “lived in”. They paid my bills, fed me, paid my council tax and even gave me wages (pocket money), so I worked seventy hour weeks and only took a day and a half off a week and didn’t complain (no blog then).

In my older more cynical years (actually more cynical is not really achievable I’ve always been this bad) I have become more and more convinced that love and marriage are purely compromise and negotiation for regular sex. Or in some cases (my own included here), for any sex.

Work is purely compromise with your employer for what little you can get away with doing, for as little as they want to give you for doing it.

(It’s at this point that I descended into a darkness that could only see relationship, and marriage as just an excuse for each to try and get something off each other, so I left it at that.)

As a P.S. last night I dreamt that I had two axalotals and two newts. The newts where actually huge hairy versions of the axalotals. The two huge newts killed and ate the two axalotals. Now taking the biblical precedent (Josephs interpretation of the pharaohs dream of the cows), I’m taking this two mean I’ve had two years of shit and now my luck is going to change drastically.

Technorati Tag: Conversation, Humour, meekon5, Obsession, Depression, Dark, Axalotals.