A Chicken in the Hand.

Money is a strange concept. After your bowl of fruit has gone off, your car become obsolete, the very blood and bone of your existence has gone the way of all blood and bone, your money, should you have any left over, will soldier on for your next generations. It has this attraction of immortality, a guarantee of future comfort. Yet we know that a gold bar in the desert is worse than useless compared with a map showing how to get to the nearest oasis, the latter being far lighter to carry. If though one can reach the water hole with both, one may still hold the advantage so long as there’s an American Express Office open, a Marriott to stay in and an airport to leave from. This is not always the case. Where the map and oasis provide for ongoing physical existence the gold bar allows entry into an alternative universe, an immense flywheel of exchangeable value as nebulous yet tangible as Saturn’s rings. The oasis exists in time, if you get there in time, and the gold bar exists out of time, as in if your bleached bones were found in the dunes a hundred years after your demise the finder would happily skip home with a huge smile on his face. We are faced with a dichotomy of ‘in time’ pragmatism and ‘out of time’ emotional value, where e-motion was conceived by some visionary who foresaw the world wide web way before we invented e-mail. E-motion is the movements of the physical realm transcribed into this same alternative universe. Now anyone who has been e-robbed of their e-money on e-bay will know that all this is about as tangible as the e-motions of a holiday romance, and as such this altered universe is open to the same fluctuations and untimely death as the Weimar currency in the 1920’s. So which is to be, a frozen chicken in the hand or e-£4.56 in the bank? (as in the English saying, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”)

Gestalt on Fox.

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook and You Tube even here in the UK outback we have become aware of “The Crazy Woman on Fox News”, the ever-smiling Shirley Phelps Roper. SPR and her hundred-strong unaffiliated ‘Baptist’ crew have been picketing funerals of US Marines with placards extolling, “Thank you God for Dead Soldiers”, “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for IEDs.” Understandably this behaviour brought forth copious amounts of righteous indignation from the anchorman on behalf of the nations audience. All well and good and as it should be. Now I don’t know much about Gestalt therapy but if I stand back and view SPR as an extreme stand in for Fritz Perls say, I see her as a catalyst for the complexes of the nation’s zeitgeist. Anyone who showed the slightest alignment with this woman would surely lose friends by the lorry load. But the anger, denial and mind closure of the anchorman would also be rich territory for a therapist. It’s not as if Fox News hasn’t in the recent past ‘thanked God’ for the ’shock and awe’ munitions and decimated Iraqi army. But to thank God for our soldier deaths on our soil by one of us is blasphemy. This is a dichotomy that reaches far deeper than the emotional froth of action movies, especially in a deeply ‘Christian’ country that believes in one God: And Fox News. And SPR is hitting a nerve, an un-nameable fearful conflict that requires immediate, vehement dismissal. Could our god be the god of our enemies? Must we thank god for all things, good and bad? Or is Fox News defending a god that is exclusively on ‘our side’ and only the god of good things? SPR may be as rancid and appealing as last years left out chicken soup, but the God of all things; well it works in mysterious ways.

New York, 1984.

Long ago as I looked out from the top of the Empire State Building after sunset I became aware I was looking at time; at the energies and product of those long dead mean eating their lunch on a girder hundreds of feet up in the space above 1920’s Manhattan. Chrysler, Flat-iron, the doomed Twin Towers and a hundred others that dwarf the Trinity Church on Wall Street took the best part of a hundred years to build. This wasn’t a 1980’s eyeball snapshot; it was the massive sprawl of a century’s effort. It was as if I were the merest drop of seawater in the travelling froth atop a magnificent ocean wave; the little dealings of my day, molecular in the scheme of New York’s rolling history. To take that in was not the work of my retina. But I wasn’t indulging in some historical romance; I was attempting to hold this immense wave in my imagination whole, intricate and inseparable. Not one part could be without the other, no second misplaced in the tick of time. In my little immediacy I find it hard to know I am held in the midst of this glorious onward roll of family, buildings and builders. As the Indian’s say as they kiss the ground and enter a sweat lodge, “For all my relations.”

Khyra Ishaq.

Khyra Ishaq, seven, starved to death. Angela Gordon and Junaid Abuhamza jailed for fifteen years and indefinitely. Diminished responsibility. Birmingham, UK, 2010. Social Services are criticized in serious case review. ‘It could have been prevented.’ Is it me or that ‘fucking obvious!’ The SS could have stormed the place with police protection, broken the door down, wrestled the mother refusing entry to the ground, pinned the Muslim to the wall and snatched the child. Khyra would be alive and thus the SS would be criticized for heavy-handed brutality. A family is an insulated micro society. It may meet the outside world on its terms but once the door is closed… And it’s hard to imagine the difference between the two, especially in extreme cases like this. How can one run one’s own kids to school and kiss them goodbye and imagine parents who are systematically brutalising and starving their children? How can one penetrate with gentility the fierce threshold of this brutish enclave? Even Khyra’s birth father closed ranks and blamed the SS, conveniently overlooking his own capacity to do something. Maybe even Gordon and Abuhamza are bemoaning in their cells that ‘they could have done something to stop us.’ One thing for sure rings true. ‘Diminished responsibility.’ No one in her own family was taking responsibility for the well being of this beautiful seven year old. Britain’s long history is built on responsibility as in, “England expects that every man will do his duty.” This expectation is thus transferred to the social workers, teachers and police. In the years ahead funding for all the social services will be slashed to a fraction of what it is now. The question. Will this result in the deaths of many more Khyra Ishaqs or families like hers recognising that without this social support they must take on their own responsibility?

The Handle of Fate.

Well as there’s no rest for the, lets not say wicked lets say capable, I’ll be doing next doors kitchen shortly. Mothermouse thinks it needs “new energy”; that’s new age speak for two weeks work putting in new units, worktops, tiling, re-plumbing new sink, taps and dishwasher, tiling, screeding floor in preparation for new flooring. Unfortunately new age energy doesn’t extend past an hour in B&Q. We enter kitchen psychology land. Where a glorious garden consists of a wonderful variety of flowers and shrubs in a beautiful panoply of colour, in Kitchen Land everything must match. If for example one breaks a handle off a unit and finds the design discontinued one cannot screw in a handy nut and bolt. One must replace all the handles to match. If then one subsequently finds no handles that have the same hole centres, and would thus leave unsightly holes that multitudes of germs would colonise and jeopardise one’s future health, one must buy all new doors. Which don’t fit the old carcasses thus requiring new ones. The slightest re-design requires all this and more. Worktops don’t fit, appliances don’t match and so on. As in my case, the one-inch lip at the back of the old stainless sink reveals a lack of tiles when fitting a new surface sink. This requires hammering off all the old tiles and sticking on new ones. By this point the old flooring will be lacerated to buggery so a new one will need to be laid, probably requiring a screed of levelling compound first.

And then what happens? You stand back to admire your beautiful new kitchen and break off a handle.

Task-free Information.

So why is it our particular younger gens know the names and histories of the famous as assiduously as a racehorse trainer knows the lineages of his stabled stallions? What earthly point is there in filling one’s brain with the career histories of actors? These thesps who after years of struggle finally managed to hitch onto the TV gravy train and began appearing in everything? If one was really interested in the underpinnings of talent one would be also curious about they stints in drama school, Burger King and call centres. But no, it only extends to their bit parts in Sex and the City or being second from the left in an X Factor boy band. It’s as if one’s personal history is plotted by these career arcs; as if one is aging on the back of people you don’t know and will never meet acting make-believe characters who fought dragons or implausible plot lines you never quite got. This as I understand it is useless information of the highest order and utterly unworthy of assigning brain cells to. It’s as if useless information is the new knowledge base, the product of our super highway interconnectivity. It fulfils the necessary requirements of ‘information’ yet doesn’t include the inconvenient downside of having to do anything meaningful or useful with it. If one learns to plumb in a sink one will sooner or later be lumbered with hours of being moistly inverted attempting to make a watertight joint without burning the house down. If one’s knowledge lies elsewhere, like knowing Johnny Depp played a bit part in Home and Away circa 1997, one can justifiably leave actual work to others. If one doesn’t know where the supermarket is how on earth can one be expected to do the weekly shop?

Mice around the World.

Thanks to a new feature in Blogger I can now see who’s reading my blog, and it appears 6 in USA and 1 in Canada. I knew that catering for the niche Mouse Market would bear fruit eventually. Who would have thought ten years ago that mice would have the savvy and the IT skills to use human technology while they’re at work, asleep or watching re-runs of Friends and Cash in the Attic. Cash in the Attic is where you sell your old valuables to buy a larger TV to watch Cash in the Attic on, which suggests humans are beginning to suffer from the same circular logic as the snake that mistakes his own tail as a juicy morsel. And that mice have far more free time to master the intricacies of how to play mpeg4 videos on Media Player, which for most humans is an impossibility. The moral is clear; don’t let your young mice watch Cash in the Attic or you’ll be bubble wrapped and ebay-ed the moment you stop providing them with bigger TVs. Many years ago in England we had Mary Whitehouse who warned about the effects of sex and violence on TV. She had this ridiculous notion that if 30 second adds influenced the sales of cars, garden furniture and shampoo the 30 minute programs in-between weren’t actually completely influence free entertainment. Silly woman. Luckily we animals were able to recognise the difference between 2D moving pictures and real life, where as humans can’t seem to tell the difference. So if you ever find your young mouselings saying, “Mummy I think that picture reminds me of our eighteenth century pewter jug and may be worth a reasonably sized piece of cheese at auction”, gnaw through the mains lead. Yes you may find yourself the other side of the room nursing singed mouthparts but it’s a small price to pay to save our species. So welcome Mice of the World, the web will soon be ours. 

Do You?

While out with ex BinLmouse, who waited at the pub I said while I waited at the pub I meant until B phoned J, J phoned D and D walked the not inconsiderable distance between the two, I missed Big Brother. Apparently a famous mouse dancer has gone into the house to teach them a routine so they can get a million hits on YouTube to complete a task. Nice link up. And free if you don’t count the £60 a month broadband/TV/free phone calls package. But who is this famous mouse? Mousemates discuss. Could he be from ?? or X Factor or Glee even? As these shows aren’t currently airing and the outside world must be a distant memory by now no one knew. It was the same with the last Famouse Big Brother. They were all famous but no one knew who anybody else was. They had to painfully explain that they once went out with the brother of a footballer’s ex wife’s cousin, or that he had a film star brother but was famous in his own right, with God. A pattern is emerging. Not that everyone is famous for fifteen minutes but that fame itself now only lasts fifteen minutes. Not that mice can’t sustain fame for longer but because the attention span of fames followers has dwindled. If one’s face isn’t pumped into the nations living rooms on a weekly basis it drifts into a montage of a million others. On several occasions I’ve seen ‘someone famous’ only to find they served me in Tescos or the local fish shop. So for me a mouse is a mouse is a mouse. Then out with the Family Pie (party) Saturday we see, I mean actually see in reality, Richard “I don’t believe it!” I forget his second name. Well! Well actually I missed him, I think I was looking at a pigeon. So this Richard, who no doubt spent years going to RADA, acting in flea pits, learning his Second Guard line in Hamlet, being sick before his first major entrance, is now renown for saying “I don’t believe it.” Well that’s what I said when they told me, and no one laughed.

Stiffmouse on Radio.

I am listening to PM on Radio 4; it’s 5.40pm, Wednesday. Nills is doing his financial bit and Eddie suggests he should do a series about money itself. I am reminded I’ve written a fair bit about the concept of money and think I’ll email them offering possible input. I go to the PM home page and text thusly, “I have been studying the concept of money. It is deeper than one might expect. I can send notes.” OK ‘studying’ infers reading etc and I’ve just been making stuff up, but you never know. I mean I think it’s good stuff and it would be vastly more interesting to Radio 4 listeners than the usual shallow twaddle. Send. 5.55 As they sign off for the six o’clock news I hear, “And this has come in from Stiffmouse. (Actually they used my real nom de plume) ‘I have been studying……..can send notes.’ I am amazed. Mothermouse laughs; she is appreciative of some subtle humorous element I seem to have overlooked. I look puzzled. “Well it’s funny; that’s why they’ve used it.” What? “Well bla bla bla. ‘I can send notes.’ It’s funny. ‘money; send notes;.’ I realise, and have to admit I had, albeit unknowingly, made a very witty and succinct joke. I am now perplexed. Do I bask in the rosy glow of having my joke read out on the radio or do I bemoan the fact my incisive notes on the psychological nature of money and our irrational concept of the negative will never take their rightful place in the cosmology of human incisiveness? It’s a tough one. I’m coming down on the side of the former on the grounds that bullshit, provided it never sees the light of day, doesn’t smell. 

Designing Out.

As a designer I had two basic roles; one, to make something more appealing, and two, to take cost out. Notice how kitchen cabinets used to have a drawer at the top, cupboard at the bottom. Not anymore. Drawers are expensive and a cabinet looks just as appealing without it; that is until you’ve built your kitchen and can’t find a place for your knives and forks, kitchen utensils and all those odds and sods that need a place of their own. So you buy a three-drawer unit for £170 only to find the sides have been standardised to the shallowest size and deep drawers are only surrounded by a shallow rim and things fall out. Then there’s obesity. It’s a big leap but stay with me. Food is designed and everything on your supermarket shelves from fruit and veg to ready meals and drinks are designed; designed to be max appealing and min production cost. Of course you don’t mention the true intention of the latter, you construct a virtue around it. Sodas, Coke, Pepsi etc are wonderful examples. They’ve long since ceased to be a natural fruity beverage and are just water, colorant, synthetic flavouring and aspartame. Aspartame is used as a sweetener because it’s cheaper than sugar but don’t say that, say it’s low calorie Diet Coke. The packaging, the bit you throw away is far more expensive than the product. Big bottles of Coke are half the price of cans because the packaging is cheaper. OK we’re all irrational and we ‘like’ what we like, largely because we’ve been trained to like it, but our bargain hunting instincts have led us to the ‘it looks delicious and it’s a nice price’ foods that, because they’ve been designed to use the cheapest ingredients, make us blow up like balloons. Our body doesn’t have the brainpower to figure out what we’re doing to it. We feed it the rubbish that our brain has been trained to like the look of and because it’s not nutritious it feels it’s being starved and so builds fat for a rainy day. But don’t worry, obesity will be eradicated along with disease, hunger and poverty as we progress towards a fully integrated on line X Box bodiless brain housed in a fist sized MFI cabinet. It’s a marketing man’s dream and the designer’s ultimate low cost solution. It’s only natural.

It’s Over.

So much for the Dutch nice guys. Oh I’ve just cleaned my glasses and noticed my cognitive requirement for visual postproduction reduce dramatically. Wow I never realise that before, I just thought I couldn’t see. Anyway back to the climax that is inevitably an anticlimax. The Dutch must have watched the flamenco dancers passing game and decided their Nederland’s game of truth and beauty was not going to be a winning tactic. The haughty bullfighters would require a few broken ribs and legs for the playing field to be tilted in their favour, a task given to Van Bommel and De Jong. Van Bommel epitomises the changes in the State of Denmark. When truth and beauty are spurned by the world the eyes go black and lifeless. Even the noble Arjen Robben knows the world is unfairly against him. To ‘The Oranje’ Spain epitomised this unfair world that would treat them thusly. To Spain the Dutch were the players of the beautiful game and played them, as far as they could between having to periodically limp off the field, with equal beauty. The result, as well as being Thugs nil: Flamenco Dancers one, was that each team acted as they perceived the other team would act. It is an often-overlooked phenomena that when one ‘reacts’ one acts in accordance with what one is re-acting to; one changes one’s coat for the coat one perceives the other is wearing. It may be lucky for Van Bommel that he stayed on the field for 120 minutes but it’s lucky for football that Spain won. But if truth and beauty are not enough and thuggery loses, what then? Steely honour. For the world is always hungry. 

Big Brother with Guns.

Friday, 9^th July. Sky News. 6.35pm. Man resembling Raoul Moat has been surrounded in Rothbury, a sleepy Northumberland village. Woman with freshly applied peach blusher, blue eyelids, gloss lips and hair black enough to challenge even our Panasonic Visio32’s 1000:1 dynamic range is interviewed. “Yes me mother can hear ‘em talking to ‘im across allotment by the kiddies park He’s holding a gun to his head.” Newsman turns to expert in ‘talking-to-poor-fuckers-so-they-don’t-top-themselves’. Bla. Five officers stand akimbo across the main street in front of Cuthbert’s Tractor Repair garage. Newsman repeats everything the expert has just said to camera. “I’ve just been told there’s breaking news so back to the studio.” The studio shows a clip from a training video in Rotherham of men wearing body armour. Back to the scene somewhere near where it’s all kicking off. The five akimbo officers are still akimbo. “Ah here’s a special forces police BMW 3 series arriving. Bla bla.” A car drives by. 

Sky News. 7.05pm. “And now two long wheelbase Ford Transit’s normally used for crowd control. Oh we’re now going to live pictures from the scene. Apparently behind the bushes on the left is the man resembling Mr Moat. You can see an officer holding a yellow tazer T2000and the officer in the blue T shirt and body armour appears to be talking to someone, possibly the man holding a gun to his own head. He probably looks like this.” Newsman makes gesture to camera.

Sky News. 7.35pm. “I think, yes, I’m pretty sure I see, yes this is one of the new Land Rover three litre turbo diesels, DXT300 pursuit vehicles. 220 break horsepower with a beautiful beige dash. The driver’s wearing a light pink short-sleeved shirt. I think you can just make it out. Ah they’ve just flashed up a Google image of where we think the incident is occurring, less than a mile from where I’m standing. You can see the bushes quite clearly in that shot. Oh and a picture of Mr Moat obviously a muscular man and an, oh my god look at that haircut! I’m sorry but that haircut says it all... What do you mean that went out, I thought you were supposed to be showing his two year old holiday video.”

Big Brother. 7.45pm. Quiff boy suggests England’s late 1930’s foreign policy was a mistake. This goes down like Moat man’s Mohecan with Afghanistan survivor, most of who’s relatives died in it. OK I know Quiff boy wouldn’t stand a chance but maybe on balance Big Brother would be better with guns. I mean they had us watching five barely moving akimbo police officers for over an hour. Lets face it, when program makers are strapped for cash, if showing a well stocked fish tank to the sound of warfare will keep audiences glued to the screen that can’t be bad. I'm thinking give that psychic German octopus his own program, and while I'm at it, bring back Muffin the Mule; I loved Muffin the Mule. 

The Jimbo Taliban.

Apparently ordinary Afgans have had to pay over half a billion dollars in bribes to get health care and all sorts of public services from government officials, the police etc. It’s rising and being used to fund the Taliban. So it may be the case that our troops are training the army, which is, or will be as soon as we leave, controlled by the government, who are extorting money from ordinary Afgans, which they are using to fund the Taliban, who are fighting our troops. This somehow reminds me of an unsuccessful therapist who manages to cajole his client into saying the right things during a session yet makes no longer term difference. Everyone’s happy but it remains money ill spent. And then there’s this Guardian Readers offer on the back page of the Guide. “Get your T shirt in time for the World Cup, only £14.99, 100% cotton etc bla”, with “I’m with Jimbo” emblazoned across the front. Apart from the fact it’s now July 8^rd and I know it’s Holland v Spain in the final, who the hell is Jimbo? It seems our genteel democratised bribery is more sophisticated. They are only ‘asking’ me to pay £14.99 for a useless garment, which has been created by a marketing department, who are attempting to extort money, which they are using to fund Jimbo, which is a shadowy consumerist coalition intent on my domination because they know I enjoy watching the World Cup. Honestly I’m beginning to think the only difference is we don’t have to wear headscarves. 

Barbarella’s Button.

Remember Barbarella? Sci-fi film, 70’s, Jane Fonda. She had a mind sex machine. No tripping up over yesterdays discarded undies or unwanted pregnancies, just a nice press button orgasm. How we laughed and secretly marvelled. And forty years on here I am pressing buttons. Qwerty satisfaction. Or the remote for visual satisfaction, or touch screen iPods for aural satisfaction. Even the button on a Glade air freshener for olfactory satisfaction. So we’re getting there.

In fact buttons have replaced all all the things I did as a kid and as a student. I guess it’s the shortest brain feedback loop; thought-digit-button-screen-and back to thought. And as the technology pretty well exists to bypass digit-button-screen we’ll be ‘thought--------and back to thought. I tell you my brain is pretty excited at the prospect. I remember the three-quarter pound perch that got away complete with my float and line. Won’t happen again. Or the bloody knees from falling off my bike. Or the watercolour painting that split right down the middle when I applied a wash. No, so many things won’t happen again. So I guess as we move up on Barbarella’s button; sex, it won’t…………

Quiff Boy.

In the house is blond quiff boy, referred to by the tree of derision as Brideshead. The drama; will he or won’t he learn he is shit scared? A question close to my own heart. “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?”

Simple enough, but how may times, like quiff boy, do I manufacture in my noble mind good reason to choose the coward’s comfort? And though some may label laziness I know ‘tis fear. Another quote, “To know it all you have to experience it all.” (MotoGP grid, Sunday by Valentino Rossi’s crew chief no less) So to know one must first experience, and to experience one must first overcome fear. If not, one sleeps.

“To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd.”

So whether through death or our own justified refusal to live, we commit to sleep our time. 

“And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.”

If foolish action be the stuff of fools then fools alone will be the wise in time. So come on quiff boy, prove the fool, don't justify your sleep.

The Ohmm of Bum.

There is an arse facing you at the lights as you leave Archer Road Sainsburys. A pert, bronzed meter wide bum in short blue towel hot-pants; one cheek low, the other high showing its ripe under-curve, the colour of a sun tanned peach. It’s a place where I am happy to wait for the green filter light. Need a paper or a pint of milk? No problem, I’ll just pop down to Sainsburys. On my return today gazing in rapture at the best feature of a young woman I will never meet I wondered; what exactly am I processing here? Yes it’s sexy and wonderful but that doesn’t really account for the joy behind my thoughtless gaze. It captivates me almost viscerally like the ‘ohmm’ of a Buddhist prayer. My eyes make their passage over it, ohmm, and begin again; like a magnificent alpine hillside drew my vision back again and again in an attempt to take in its grandeur. That bottom is as perfect as nature. Having just watched a little Big Brother it’s a welcome reassurance that that’s possible. As the housemates struggled with each other and the program makes struggled to make a program out of them that viewers need not struggle to watch I am thankful I have my bum to ‘ohmm’ over. Thank you bottom. Oh no pasta sauce? Won’t be a tick. 

Seeing isn't Believing.

How do you really see someone? I mean really enter into their being for a moment. Sure you can hear what they say, look at their expressions, ask questions and make notes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sure you can investigate the history that made them who they are, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sure you can summon up empathy and express your felt responses, but that’s not where I’m coming from either. We meet usually façade to façade. This isn’t shallowness; our façade is who we know our self to be, what we project as our truth of who we are. It’s the source of all our constructions. It is how I meet people 99.9% of the time from strangers to my dearest friends and my client meetings as a trainee therapist. I am there doing all the things ‘I’ do, think, feel, imagine and understand. All this is not what I’m talking about. Sorry to labour the point but I want to identify a completely different experience; that of when I’m not there, when this whole constructed self of mine is not present. I can’t describe it, only to say it is unquestionably different to normal perception. I experience the being behind the façade. I’m guessing it’s perhaps how particular people who have a deep penetrating stare, who seem to look right through you, are experiencing you. It’s not primarily that they ‘can see’ but that ‘they’ aren’t there in the seeing of you. Their eyes don’t reflect the usual presence of a person. It’s not that they’re hiding but for those moments ‘they’ are simply not there. Afterwards they can use what they’ve seen when ‘they’ are back again. What I experience at least is not thoughts but an all-enveloping movie, a complete experience of another being-ness. I achieved it the first time by more prosaic means; by ‘profoundly’ imagining the person standing in front of me and then stepping and turning into their place, and just as importantly leaving behind where I was. Try it.

In this way everything has a being-ness, behind the façade we see, that can be glimpsed, people, animals, trees, the earth. Not by conjecture or emotion but by simply not being there to do those things. But it is a struggle to find the effortlessness to put oneself in abeyance even for a little while. Then again it’s a very joyful habit.