Pearls of Wisdom.

I’m currently vexed by the many pearls of wisdom drifting round FaceBook like wind-blown glossy magazine pages trying their best to wallpaper bushes. After prostitution scribing the pith of enlightenment is probably the second oldest profession. The problem is they make you feel good. There’s a sort of pleasure in the brain from reading something that appears to reflect one’s own comfortable astuteness. Like, “Life begins outside your comfort zone”, can be sagely nodded and agreed to whilst strapping on your slippers and drinking hot chocolate by the fire. It kind of completes the picture. It would feel somehow redundant to court discomfort when one already knows one would en-comfort it if one wished to, and anyway this mild area of irritation is uncomfortable enough to be going on with. ‘Another hot chocolate when you can manage it.’ It seems when all these piths are implanted as words on the brain the imperative to enact what they viscerally mean ceases to enthral; one simply points to one owning the T-shirt. Like (be) ‘Awake, alert and aware.’ The alliteration sends one’s brain off at a gallop with “yep yep got that, sounds great” but what does it mean? Awake is pretty simple but when we asked a hypnosis expert what a trance state was his reply, “Most people are in a trance state most of the time”, suggests alert and aware are not as easily come by. Both words reach deep into our experience, knowledge, our readiness to learn, the state of tune of our senses and the ability to minimise our conscious (trance state) processing. They require the extreme skill of a Zen Master or a sportsman ‘in the zone.’ Being offered the phrase as means to enlightenment is like suggesting to someone, “Today you can be a brain surgeon.” It’s as reckless to tell it as it is to believe one knows what it means simply by being told. Those who offer pearls of packaged wisdom are in it purely for the kudos of being the source of it. In the wonderful book, “Zen and the Art of Archery” no wisdom was told, just to do many hours of physical practice, and as a result much wisdom was gained. My conclusions; if you find someone keen to teach you wisdom ask them to pay you for their pleasure of being listened to. That should shut them up.

Male & Female Socialising.

“Men socialise by insulting each other but they don’t really mean it. Woman socialise by complementing each other and they don’t really mean it either.”


I feel a myriad of sparkles going off in my head, recognitions from many different angles. I’d love to be able to take the piss but I’m not good at it, too serious, but feel so comfortable with mates who do. Each derogatory phrase feels like a little hug of acceptance. Guys who can’t take it are often needled till they do or huff themselves out of the circle. It’s a right of passage. In a group of men who don’t take the piss there’s always an element of bonding missing, and God forbid a group that complements each other, I’d feel like a fish up a tree. So how come wisecracking insults feel like complements and are meant as such? And, come to think about it, how come complements are OK when it comes to “a most excellent fuck-up” or a “well broken leg, you twat”? I mean nearly choke to death on a popadom and as far as your mates are concerned you’re a stand-up comic. And even at the funeral, if it came to it, there’d be someone who couldn’t resist saying, “Should have put your nob in his gob, that would have cleared it”, ha ha ha. No, it’s a gross world being a bloke. And then there’s, “I love your hat” women. What’s that about? I begin to wonder if it’s all about self-ego massage. Our capacity to exit sounds on our own escaping air is primarily a personal systemic thing. It may carry some miniscule intention to be heard by others but at some unconscious level the intended listener is oneself. Maybe these modes of socialising relate to the different colours of male and female egos. One wants to be the macho survivor, the other the queen of her own domain. Insults confer one in the mind of the say-er and complements confer the other. And that’s why husbands should rib their wives at every opportunity, because it’s more important to survive than to imagine oneself royalty.

A Fine Line.

My second week volunteering at a day centre for the homeless, vulnerable and socially excluded, and coincidentally two days after reading a damning response to the forthcoming DSM-5, the American psychiatrists rulebook of psychiatric disorders. To quote its conclusion, “This is why fifty years of study and investigation…. across the Western world ……has failed to establish the validity of a single psychiatric diagnosis.” As I sit in the canteen I personally fail to establish any clear-cut boundaries between even staff and clients, and definitely, if there are ‘sides’, which side I’m on. After my brush with the doctor’s receptionist when Mothermouse in a matter of moments inadvertently convinced her I was senile simply by butting in at every opportunity I’m loath to make snap judgments. I did observe what I might call the ‘Sane Game’ as played by three middle-aged volunteers. The Sane Game is where, if we fluently reflect each other, we prove we must all be sane.

Slip in a few references to museums, a film and Waitrose and everyone’s comfortable. Sit in silence, talk non-sequiturs and smile at nothing and there ensues an unease that requires a label. For sure we’re on the look out for…. Well what exactly? Is it madness or simply our own discomfort? Sitting outside for a fag, a singleton amongst clients, I’m aware of floundering as my playing of the Sane Game comes unglued. No one’s interested in Waitrose. I watch a munched mouth turn as black and yellow fingers roll a cigarette. It’s cold. And there it is. He is suffering from my sane assumptions. He is failing my exam of expectations just as, at many past times, he has failed other’s expectations, flunked their assumptions. And thus filleted by the rules of normalcy he stitches a future of feelings, knits his self acceptance as best he…, well no not as best he can, as best he has been allowed to live his life aloud. And there but for the grace of my examinations might I be, puffing sideways on a rollup, a forgetful orangutan on a bad hair day, and really only because I can pull off the trick of normalcy when necessary. It’s a fine line.

Warm Like a Cow.

I’ve been working on motorcycle warmth, on how do you keep warm in a 60mph cold blast? The wind chill factor at that speed is ~ -16*C so it’s very easy to get below zero. The body produces between 70 and 800 watts of heat energy with the 800 being when we’re doing strenuous exercise so I guess at rest it’s around 2-300 watts. From my experiments for example the hand produces around 16 watts which, when you consider the skin surface area, is why we wear gloves. A comfortable hand temperature is around 17*C and those 16 watts will only maintain a temperature a few degrees above the ambient so less than say 14*C and they begin to feel cold. We’re all aware of central heating and that an average house requires some 30Kwatts to heat and maintain it at 20*C. That’s 30,000 watts! And that’s why we add insulation. Now without going into R values and stuff my calculations suggest if our 300 watts of heat output was insulated by say a 5mm layer of expanded polyurethane it could maintain a temperature difference in excess of 15*C so the house need only be maintained at 5*C i.e. only needing energy on the coldest days. Or to put it another way, if we developed a 2” hair layer like gorillas we wouldn’t need central heating at all. I mean they don’t do they? Cats don’t, dogs don’t. But no, we’ve opted for heating our whole pile of bricks and plaster, wood and furnishings to a comfortable 20*C.
Derrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
In fact if we focused on heating ourselves I'd imagine combined with some clothing insulation we'd need less than 100 watts to keep us nice and warm.
I’m thinking it all went wrong with the caveman fashion of getting a full body Brazilian. “OMG Julian it’s not growing back! Now we’ll be fucked come winter.” And now it’s like we’ve forgotten why we invented cloths in the first place- to keep us warm! We’ve forgotten that we’re warm blooded and we produce heat ourselves and keeping warm is about keeping that heat in, not warming the whole bloody neighbourhood. That’s why I’m wearing my cow onesie I got for Christmas.

The Middle of Islam's Road.

The Alawites are Muslim and 12% of the Syrian population. For centuries they were oppressed by the Sunni majority. At the end of the First World War France and England drew the usual arbitrary state boundaries because it’s easy to draw lines on maps and present day Syria was created. The new secular regime needed security, army and police, and the poverty stricken Alawites jumped at opportunities never given to them before of regular meals and warm uniforms. In just a few years they formed the majority of the army and security forces who as a side benefit were also provided with guns. Thus, as in the nature of unintended consequence, the Alawite minority had a coup d’etat and came to power over the Sunni majority who’d oppressed them for centuries. Now even without this festering background there’s nothing a Muslim hates more than a different Muslim so the brew evaporated down from beer to bathtub liquor as the Alawites cemented their grip on power under the family Assad. After years of inter-Muslim hatred there arose a faction, as might a good guy in the middle of the road, calling for a secular state and an end to the Assad regime. In the ensuing unrest, as in the nature of unintended consequences again, the Assad Alawites saw their oncoming genocide and the Sunnis saw an opportunity to regain power. And the guy in the middle of the road… well you know the rest. Now even the Alawite Muslims who never liked Assad cling to his regime as their only chance of survival and the Sunni Muslims are going all out for a Muslim Brotherhood state, which actually isn’t to different from Mohammed(the general)’s historical life. Islam by its very nature is an inseparable mix of state and religion, inflammable oil to secularism’s water. As with Egypt and Libya the guy in the middle of the road doesn’t stand a chance. 

Painful Dancing.

I love 5 Rhythms dance. It gives me brief glimpses of my own perfection, my being transported back into muscle and movement, tension and release, poise and anger, my brain a mere dispossessed onlooker. But last night I was troubled by the more practical matter of slippy heels and by having stayed up till 4am watching the Super Bowl the night before. I was having a lovely time but for these two factors so decided to remedy them by moistening my feet and face in the toilet. In retrospect it would have been easy to moisten said feet with my hand or a paper towel but from lack of sleep decided to put my foot in the bowl. Thus with one foot and both hands in the bowl and the other foot on the floor I formed a sort of plane of body parts. If I’d cared to thing about this construction, a plane supported at two co-planar points, I would have realised it was inherently unstable, but I didn’t. A brief period of “Oh no!” was followed by a huge ‘crack’ as my plane almost literally disassembled onto the floor. Like a Disney cartoon I reassembled and checked I’d put myself back together correctly and felt for damage. Bruised hip, scuffed elbow and right hand immobile from its fingers being bent back unreasonably. Considering the loudness of the crack I’d heard I was amazed my skull wasn’t broken. I still don’t know what it was, and I’m not inclined to ask. Back in the dance I sat by a wall and went into healing as animals do, just sit and wait, it will pass. Well dancing wasn’t quite the same after that and this morning my hand is fine if I don’t move it.

Today’s Funny Story.

In conversation with a therapist friend of mine apropos his reference for me volunteering to fly over a cuckoos nest one day a week he related the following tale. Years ago in his long and varied experience he lived in a psychiatric commune, patients and therapists cheek by jowl together in a big house. Much nearer the present day he was giving a lecture on something or other and as the mature students filed in one woman on seeing him screamed a little and clasped her hands to her face big eyed in amazement. I began to imagine someone had prematurely told her he’d died. Friend continued with the lecture also probably wondering the reason behind the response, especially as he had no recollection of ever meeting her before. At the end she came up to him and asked if he’d been in a psychiatric commune years before. He said he had. She said she was in a group that was shown round that commune by a delightful young doctor who in a whispered authoritative aside described my friend as “he’s a perfect example of a schizophrenic.” Thus she was temporarily alarmed on entering the room and seeing this clinically diagnosed schizo giving the lecture. He explained the then obvious truth that she had actually been shown round by a patient. It’s a fine line, and as my dad used to say, “They’s all mad ‘sept me and thee, and I’m not so sure about thee.”