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.