Nodding under the paperweight

Most reasonably objective and well-dressed people will probably say something along the lines of “why?” or “make me” or “I just can’t see myself being interested enough to do so, I’m sorry” when confronted by one of those ubiquitous Follow Me On Twitter signs so very muchly favoured 'pon the Internettle. However, I recently watched myself write the following to an actual girl:

“…..although some Romanians got attacked in Belfast and Twitter seems to be sustaining the Iranian revolution. I loathe the hopeless, vacant, desolating nothingness of Twitter more than I loathe most things, in fact, but this made me stop and think. If it turns out to be true that Twitter has helped Iranians get information out of their country then I'm entirely scuppered in my attempts to think of anything sneery or mocking to say - a relief to everyone, really, especially me.” *

Between ourselves, I think it’s an absolute certainty she’ll fall for me after that smoothly erotic outburst, you know. But yes, of course, it’s too early (and crazy) to claim that Twitter could be the difference between an ossified theocracy and any other system of governance you may care to mention, that much seems obvious - and the madder mullahs will probably have a Tiananmen or two up their beards, in any event. But still, it's a relief to finally have something positive to say about Twitter (and that’s probably what matters here, historically speaking).

Good people use Twitter, lovely people, people I actively like and admire. It’s upsetting, then, to have to imagine them being tortured (with torquemadan efficiency in the dungeons of some Moldovan castle by an epicene sadist with strappado eyes and a lisp straight from central casting) and forced to admit they are insanely wrong to twitter, tweet and twat.

Oh, but I bore myself with my negativity (or realism, as I call it in moments of happy delusion). I bore myself so much, in fact – not just in this, in everything – that the urge to confront my head with a spade is powerful, present and real. I’d love to smash my stupid face with a flurry of fatal blows, begging for a forgiveness most indulgently self-denied. (I often suspect I’m a particularly fierce Catholic just waiting to happen.) Plus, there are few things less impressive than someone mocking something they don’t really understand - and I don’t really understand Twitter.

In fact, I know nothing. And not just about Twitter, either, but about anything much at all. It’s probably best to acknowledge, then, that Twitter – under certain pre-revolutionary conditions in certain countries ruled by certain pre-clever men, religious or otherwise (China comes into play here), and with all necessary qualifications, reservations and misgivings attached – is not entirely abysmal.

Incidentally, I’ve just heard on the radio that Facebook is being credited with helping the would-be revolutionary Iranians, too. I can’t fairly be expected to be as positive about Facebook as I’ve just been about Twitter - that’s an unreasonable stress to put myself under, I feel - but what I can say, however, in a slight paraphrasing of a once fatefully reviewed book, is that Facebook fills a much needed gap in our lives.

(Good grief – things move fast. Now I’ve just heard that Supreme Leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei has called Britain Iran’s most treacherous enemy. Where did that come from? Take it back, you cad. We love Iran in Britain. Love it. You’re the problem, numb nuts, now move over and give clever a chance. And be sure to take your grimly agrarian, Jew-hating puppet - the effortlessly rancid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - with you. That's one deeply unpleasant little peasant. The cheek of it. Tsk.)

*

A paradise of wildernesses

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
(Jerry Falwell: 1933-2007)

Catching up with the news is hard, limitlessly depressing work. I keep on opting-out, allowing myself to become distracted by things which have pleased me in the past. And one of those things was the news that 90% of the sexual relations enjoyed by male giraffes are homosexual. This is very old news, apparently, but I only found out in February (from a book called Biological Exuberance). That's a lot of gay giraffing. Good grief.

And if it's true, well heavens, then it just becomes a question of sitting back and waiting for all those suspiciously insecure men to make laddish jokes about not bending over to pick up the soap whilst taking a shower with a giraffe. Nudge nudge ad nauseam, for sure. Hoot. Fneek. I don't know, but it's a little strange, really, that they never stop to explain why it is that they see themselves taking a shower with a giraffe in the first place. Maybe male giraffes do team sports? We may never care.

But 90%? I'm happy enough to believe this, of course, although I struggle to see how such things can be verified satisfactorily. Exit polls?

Researcher: I can't help noticing that you look entirely dishevelled, Sir. Would you mind terribly revealing the nature of the sexual relations you've just had?

Giraffe: Don't be so impertinent, you vulgar little man.

No, giraffes have far too much class and would never cheapen themselves in such a manner. Giraffes are Old Money. So that probably leaves extrapolation, a method which has never entirely convinced me. However, as this statistic delights me so much, I'm choosing to believe it wholeheartedly.

Asserted and assorted facts like these are often so beautifully skewering, as well. Slavering fundamentalists will be wheeching through their self-help holy books, urgently trying to find something – anything – that affords them license to shout at giraffes as they go about their weekend shopping. Although, with another 449 species apparently engaged in quite flagrant acts of homosexuality, they're going to struggle to make it clear why they view this as an affront to nature and the natural order. This is nature, you silly biscuit, in all of its glorious madness, why on earth are you so disgusted and scared?

And those wretchedly smug evolutionists (me! me!), so needlessly scathing towards all of those people (not just the maniacally prescriptive religious fundamentalists, a group richly deserving of both challenge and obligingly returned contempt) who, for whatever reason, feel the need to opt out of the new orthodoxy.....well, they'll be looking at giraffes and going “bugger, that doesn't look like a reproductive strategy, that just looks like sex. What do we say about this lot again? We say what? But I thought we were supposed to be the good guys? Somebody fetch Joan Roughgarden.”

Ho hum. No, but with their loveless inability to engage each other with anything approaching tenderness, both sides give every impression of being evolutionarily maladaptive. And when they die out, as we may fairly hope that they do, the rest of us might finally have a chance to live our lives in peace; entirely comfortable with our seeming hypocrisies and outright intellectual contradictions, never once feeling the need to senselessly deny ourselves the perpetual possibilities of the permanently inexplicable - and just as happy and proud as loons that science continues attempting to go about the honourable business of enriching, explaining and prolonging our lives. In the hands of the rational and sane, I'm not sure that these things need ever be mutually exclusive.

And giraffes – only momentarily miffed, perhaps, that god didn't seem to rate them highly enough to bother zapping them quite dead with the plague - will continue to resolutely ignore the lot of us as they get jiggy beneath their stars.

I Need. To Warn. The Police About Paul.

So that was April. You know where you stand with an April, don't you? I was almost entirely isolated for the duration: no newspapers, no television, no phone calls, not one single sighting of another human being - except for my girlfriend, occasionally - no real sense of the world at large, no real sense of anything. Silence.

Glorious.

Glorie zij aan de Vader en aan de Zoon en aan de Heilige Geest. Especially aan de Heilige Geest, in fact, although I’m not sure that de Heilige tooled-up in any meaningful way. Geest, then. (Is it possible to geest-write your own fiction? I think it probably is.)

Anyway, this is May - no, please, I insist - and I can already hear June getting out of bed, trying hard not to disturb an exhausted July. (I have a feeling July heads to Spain for the rest of the year and gets whacked on drugs; sunnily strutting all brazen and bold, hitting on people young enough to be his and her December. Tsk. This gaudy braggart only comes back to Ireland to sleep it off, you know, collapsing into a mid-May bed next to June. Poor June. And I bet July hits the snooze button repeatedly - just two more minutes already. Jesus – before getting up and acting all sheepish and ashamed in, well, July. This is why July is so apologetic in Ireland. I said this was a feeling, okay? Nobody's talking hard facts here.) 


But that’s not the point - and you’d be a fool, anyway, to get involved in the domestic arrangements of months. You just have to trust that they’ll sort it all out and present a unified front to us humans. We scare easily. (If you don’t believe me, try insisting to your butcher that this is November and that next month - any month - is Green.) We need order, we need the months to behave themselves and we need words to mean what everyone has agreed they will mean.

To rail against this feels hopeless. Like punching the rain (sore arm) or biting the wind (leave this to dogs) or dragging a child into a field and bashing him repeatedly over the head with his disgusting little rucksack and stomping on his shins and making him say “sorry” over and over again…..well, it only ever leaves you tired and disconsolate.

A friend, who very clearly despises me, emailed this clip the other day. Watch and weep. And for the deaf, a transcription:

Boy: Mum, I want to do a poooooo.

Mum: Come on then…

Boy: But I want to do a poo in Paul’s bathroom.

Mum: Don’t be silly, come on.

Boy (adamant): I’m Going. To Do. A Poo At Paul’s.

Voiceover: "Paul’s bathroom has Glade Touch ‘n Fresh. More discreet than an aerosol, it’s no more bad smells - just a pleasant fragrance. Touch ‘n Fresh.....from Glade."

No, please, did you ever hate a child so much? Did you? I refuse to believe that anyone could find this anything other than utterly revolting. Merciful Vader, in the name of everything heilige, do something. Send your zoon if you're busy. Do you not see what we're up to down here? Please, stop us.

And who is this Paul? Do other children go there to poo? And why oh why does the mum not slam her son against a wall and batter him? (Yes, yes, I know, I know - I just mean in the advert, though, not in real life.) How can anyone find this cute? And can that really be the mum and son smiling together in the loo, inhaling? Did that actually just happen? And how come.....oh, it's all too much. Too much. Lovely April is out for the count and Green feels horribly distant.

Some moment when the moon was blood

Most of the crime round these parts is carried out by one particularly grouchy donkey. A section of fence is repeatedly vandalised, wing-mirrors are chewed, plant pots are scattered, trousers are taken from the line and meticulously destroyed overnight. That's okay. It's modestly funny (after two deep breaths) and I get on pretty well with the donkey in question.

He's a grumpy rat, it's true, but I've seen how lovely he can be with the horses and I like the way he conducts himself generally. He's a terribly fine (passing) companion altogether and I welcome his visits, missing him on those days he doesn't stop by. Here he is, standing on the "road" which passes by my garden:

I find him quite beautiful, in a rough, scabby, misshapen kind of way. He's nice, isn't he? And here he is (below) with his new baby, which means, of course, that he's a she and probably always has been. I can't break the habit of calling him a he, however, and don't see that this will materially affect our relationship in any way, so where's the harm, really? Look:

(and here and here)

Outstanding, no? And he's a good mum, Demosthenes. (I've never found it hard to imagine him giving crazily malcontented speeches to the senate - I mean, just look at him. Save for his child, I reckon he sees the whole world as one great big Philip of Macedon. I have some sympathy with this outlook, to be sure.) I don't call him Demosthenes to his face, though - why would I? - only in my head or if I'm telling my girlfriend about something he's probably said or saying. After twenty-odd years she no longer feels entirely uncomfortable blanking me, okay, so don't you be worrying about her.

When he comes round these days, in fact, I tend not to say anything too controversial at all. Why spoil things? Two times I've said: "now look here, just you stop chewing that thing immediately." And two times his eyes said "or what?" Fair point.

But with this new baby of his he always seems to be saying "look what I made, Mister Man - what do you say to that?" I could point to Emma, I suppose (seen here discussing Willa Muir's Imagined Corners at her book club, I fancy), and hit back with an incredulous "you think you have a monopoly on clever, Donkeyoaty?" But this would feel churlish and I should simply hate for us to become competitive parents, always trying to get one up on each other. Those people are vulgar and transparent (and not in the good way).

If he could speak my language, though, I know for a fact that he would answer any wildly erratic questions I might throw at him in the correct and longed for manner - which is brilliant. Or a start. Or both. Everything else just follows on from there. I mean, what's not to like? And his crimes are so gentle, so hard to fault. This is one very welcome trespasser and it's simply amazing how little I miss Glasgow. (Just thought I'd slip that in.) The middle of nowhere is a very fine place and I recommend it most highly, just so long as you find your own piece of nowhere, far, far away, in the middle of somewhere quite different.

.....Life is but a dream

Swirling just beneath the tightly controlled surface, making far more noise than the babble of socially acceptable mouth-woofs we are permitted to make in any given situation, a fractious army of disarrayed thoughts continually dares the face to say something catastrophically stupid. Every transaction is fraught.

You may be gazing at a strong mechanic as he speaks, drifting in and out of his words, watching his dependable hands - or simply responding to a kindness on the street. It barely matters. The urge to do something profoundly regrettable is an ever present danger:

....and then I just melded this thing to the other thing and removed the broken metal thingy with my strong and capable oily hands and put in a new brake light and sprayed some RPX 2000 all over the big bit and I was wearing this magnificent blue boiler suit all the while. So that’s everything taken care of now and she‘s running like an absolute dream.

Can I call you “dad”?

What?

Is it okay if I call you "dad"?

I heard what you said, you crazy freak, now get the fecking feck off my forecourt.

Okay, okay. I’m going, I’m going. Jesus.

Well go faster.

Yes, yes. Sorry, daddy.

I heard that.

Now obviously, of course, you keep a lid on these things and you hold the wildly inappropriate stuff at bay. But it’s there, isn’t it? Never trust anyone who claims to always speak their mind. Their very freedom should alert you to the fact that they’re lying. (Unless you’re paying a visit to prison or the dribble factory, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever meet such a creature.)

Excuse me! You there! Excuse me! Yoo-hoo!

Who? Me?

Yes, sorry, yes, you dropped some money.

Oh. Oh goodness me. How very honest and kind, thank you, thank you so much.

Ah, pff, phewy. I’m just glad I caught you....

We should go on a trip together! You and me! I can see it all now. We’ll dress up as nudists and fuck each other better in a series of desolating motels as the police and our worried families give chase. We’ll play Pergolesi full bla....

What?

I said we should go on a trip together and that I could see it all now. Then I said.... 

I heard what you said, you crazy freak, now get the...

Wait! Stop!

What the hell is it now?

You used exactly the same words that daddy used earlier. He’s a mechanic today.

I know. He told me.

What?

Daddy told me.

But he’s n....what?

I’m a golden wish-fish and daddy whispered everything.

Okay, now you’re just starting to give me the creeps. Get the hell out of my stylised blog dialogue, you imaginary freak.

Crikey. That turned ugly fast. But you need to be careful with these things, for sure. There’s just no telling where it all might end. If certain rogue elements of your imagination have minds of their own.....well, you could soon find yourself in some rather serious trouble. (Never mind the trauma of bumping into the rogue elements with minds of their own from another person’s fevered imagination – as constructed by those elements operating outwith your imagined control in your own. Deary me, dizzy dizzy.) 

No, better to simply write it all down and then claim to have an interest in surrealism - should the police ever find your notebook. (Never even hint to An Outsider that you feel comfortable with the notion that these things are all true and may very well be happening in a multiverse of parallels. Never do this thing. Only ever mention this fact to yourself, if you mention it at all. And make sure you’re feeling calm when you broach the subject.)

But yes, those people who say that they always speak their minds? They’re lying. And if they’re not lying, oh help us, then it’s a terrible thing to have to entertain the notion that these words they speak do, in fact, represent a comprehensive verbalisation of every thought they’re having. This is too crushing. I mean, is that it? Certainty is a valuable prohibitor of thought, right enough, and the people who tend to make such claims (“I always speak my mind, me, and tell it like it is”) do tend to seem pretty certain of their own views....so, my goodness, you just never know.

Either way, clamber straight back inside your own head when you run into one of these literally limp literalists – and start taking notes. This is where the good stuff goes down and where we may chance to touch the obliterating infinities of our better angels.

It's a long way from here to better

It’s 2009 and people still drop litter. I’m no longer surprised. The proof? I saw a man drop a can in Skibbereen and found myself thinking: you know what? This doesn’t surprise me.

Do you think that’s a reasonable response, this lack of surprise? I’m told that this response is a sign of real progress - but how can this possibly be? Why wouldn’t you be surprised by such a stabbingly anti-social act? Where on earth did I go? I miss me. I was great.

Deconstructing the self-obsessed desolate guy who was never as smart as he thought: the early years - talking trash with a Freud Squad outrider

How do you feel when you see someone dropping litter?

Deflated.

Deflated?

Deflated.

Anything else?

Yes.

Would you like to tell me what else you feel?

Not really, no.

Will you, though?

Of course, yes.

Well?

Well, I feel confused and uneasy, as if something just slipped inside my head and set off a bell. I feel like things are rushing at me, denying me space – like when you see someone being stabbed repeatedly with a sword, say, something really alien, and you just kind of hear a ringing and know that something is very wrong and yet can’t quite adjust to make sense of things quickly enough. It’s like with any act of violence, I suppose, you just take a moment or ….

Wait. Sorry. You feel that dropping litter is an act of violence?

Of course.

I see. And do you feel that this violence is directed towards you personally?

Of course.

But….okay. Do you think that this is a reasonable response you’re having?

Do I think that this is a reasonable response? No, of course not, but you were asking me how I felt.

Fair enough. So what do you think of the way that you feel?

I think that it’s irrational and self-pitying, almost completely divorced from a sensible reality and horribly, horribly excessive.

Yet you persist in feeling this way all the same?

Of course.

And how does that make you feel?

Stupid.

Really?

No.

Ha. This could take some time.

I admire your optimism.

And here we all are, many, many drugs later, giving a big thumbs-up to therapy, I’m sure. The trial continues.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily....

I’ve been tagged. This is a relief. Since settling down a few days ago to complete this year’s tax returns, I’ve been variously overwhelmed by a deep and wholly time-consuming interest in The Lindisfarne Gospels (and not just the pictures), the beautiful Georg Cantor, clever slime-ball Edward Bernays and the Moldovan pop outfit, O-zone. (They are not, as might reasonably have been expected after the exhaustingly exuberant Dragostea Din Tei, a one-song band.) 

But this tagging thing feels like a justifiable prevarication in a way that those other projects did not. Luckily, I don’t feel any real need to explain such a claim. Finally, just to be clear, my annual tagging has been administered by diabolical blog-rival and love-interest, the mysterious Haggis Dinner Set. So here goes:

The Me Me Me Times Three (Times Three) Thing

Three jobs I have had in my life: Tricky. I started writing for a living fairly early on and so have limited experience elsewhere, unfortunately. It seems a stretch to call these things “jobs”. Pre-university, however: a brief stint with Historic Scotland, restoring stuff (on a menial level); being the musical “entertainment” in a bar/restaurant in a place called Reggio Emilia; working in a touristy gift shop in the far north of Scotland (really loved this, for some reason, really, really loved it).

Three TV shows that I watch: On a strictly DVD box set basis – The Wire, Lost (forgive me) and The West Wing. (The West Wing is an unhealthy addiction. My dog, Emma, has the middle names “Josiah” and “Barklet” – a cunning play on the name of the beloved fictional president, you’ll agree. This seems funny and smart and cute as all hell right up until the moment you hear it being read out in a packed surgery as you wait to see the vet. Then it just becomes excruciating.)

Three places I have lived: Ferragudo, Portugal. Freiburg, Germany. North Lincolnshire, England.

Three places I have been this week: My garden, the beach and Clonakilty. 

Three people who email me regularly: My sisters. I have three of these things. They email me. Regularly.

Three of my favourite foods: As long as I cooked it, everything becomes an instant favourite – and not just for me, either.

Three places I’d rather be: I’m not sure I’d rather be in these places, really, but I’d certainly be happy enough to find myself suddenly transported to either one of the following: Lipsi, before it became busy, eating barbecued octopus, drinking suspiciously rough Retsina that not only tastes but feels like partially blended Christmas tree, watching Greek boys dance with their arms in air; The Hermitage Museum; Aberdeen docks on a mercilessly filthy day or, failing that, sitting just out of sight in this picture of two of my aunts (see above), asking them about all sorts of stuff and ticking them off for dying messily in the future. I’ve become quite radically obsessed with this picture and quite often wish myself into the proceedings. 

Three friends I think will respond to this message: It's a nice thought.

Three things I am looking forward to: I tend not to do this.

So that's that. Bye then.

Gently down the stream....

If you survived 2008, well done. Have a biscuit.

Every once in a while you come across something that simply forces you to stop in your tracks. I’ve been erasing my unused written memories of 2008 – a necessary January custom – and here, pared down from a 4,000 word rant, is one of my least favourite stories from one of my least favourite years:

A thirteen year old girl was raped by three men. The girl’s father accompanied her to report this crime to the relevant authorities. I don’t think you need to be either a father or a thirteen year old girl to understand that this scene in itself is almost unbearable, never mind the brutalising trauma that led them both to this point in the first place.

Amnesty International wrote its first brief report of the case on the 31st of October. A few days later, the press followed suit and the episode gathered momentum. The reason that Amnesty International became involved is that the girl, having told her story to these self-same relevant authorities, was charged with adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

And the reason, if you can bear to use the word “reason”, that she was charged with adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, of course, is that the men who passed and carried out the sentence – members of the al-Shabab militia who control the port of Kismayo in Somalia – believe that this is what their god would have them do. A more obvious, less culturally-sensitive reason, perhaps, is that these men are terrible, terrible human beings.

Sanctified and certain, they dug a big hole and buried Aisha Ibrahim Duholow up to her neck. A truck filled with rocks was driven to the stadium for the occasion and roughly one-thousand people came to watch as a group of fifty men took aim and shattered her head.

For the sake of public relations, perhaps, the militiamen claimed that the victim was, in fact, ten years older than her father had claimed (the silly, forgetful daddy) - as if this, even if it were true, could ever possibly justify the manner and fact of her death. Under the laws they were trying to impose on their fellow citizens, you see, the girl might have been considered a bit young to have her head staved in for adultery. If you are inclined to feel in any way grateful for this tiny mercy, then it’s quite possible you’ve lost sight of the bigger picture. 

During the stoning, attending nurses were asked to check whether the girl was still alive. They took her out of the hole and discovered that yes, quite miraculously, she was. And so they put her straight back in so that the men could end their task, the poor girl's life and their collective right to be considered full-paying passengers on this bus as it hurtles through space. 

Oranges are the only fruit

Seville – although quite clearly Spanish – is absolutely wonderful. Who knew? I’ve never managed to feel properly comfortable in Spain, for some reason, and usually only ever concentrate on visiting Barcelona (glorious) or Cadaqués (the best). Madrid – and I set great store by capital cities, feeling that they give away a lot – has always left me perfectly cold. But Seville? Well, it feels magic. What a beautiful surprise.

It may seem ridiculous to pass judgment on a place on the back of nothing more than an extended day-trip, I suppose, but I’m happy to trust my instinct. Seville feels right. Madridistas, bless their destabilising insecurities, may be too busy admiring their own shoes to be of any sensible use. The air in Seville, however, is mercifully free of the anti-social fumes of self-congratulation. Madrid may very well say: you’re lucky to be here, so don’t be getting in the way, y’hear? Seville simply says: here we are, visitor, just do as you will.

So we did. And it was great. That’s all.