Gerry Fenge

Prose-Ode to Waterstones Café, York Minster and a Couple of Streets

 

Or: How to get High on One Coffee and Three-and-a Half Teas

 

I’m sitting upstairs in Waterstones café and trying to switch myself on – slot into gear, slide into alignment – but the dear old brain is too full of mush.

 

I’ve already chatted with the cheery folk behind the counter, bantered about their tattoos, bought an overly virtuous falafel-and-hummus wrap, swept crumbs from a table, sat down with my tray, stared with brain-clenching determination at the cappuccino.

 

But no gear has yet been slotted into, no alignment arrived at.

 

I could try checking my phone for sports news, always good for a semi-irritated time-waste. But that would take me away from – what? – the big slow Okay; the great All-is-Well; the Nugget at the Centre; in a word, Oomph.

 

So what else can I try? Well, some Books Of The Month seem to be nodding and winking in their box-shelf displays. There’s an idea. If you want to wake up, a bookshop ought to be prime territory. Lots of switched-on minds captured between covers of books – lasso, swoop, splat – and stretched out on the pages.

 

All those novels haunted-by-death, haunted-by-life; all those non-fictions rippling with questions, bulging with info. Sipping my drink, I envisage the hordes of them, ranged on their shelves, spread on their display racks, basking on buy-one-get-one-half-price tables.

 

But I can’t read yet. Too much sludge on the brain.

 

Focus on the café, then. Seventeen tables and – mm, let’s count the punters – dun-dun-dun – fifteen. Let’s see: a young mum has got her baby in a front sling while she chats with a pal across the table – head tilts to baby, head tilts to pal. Further along there’s a laptop caresser, with side-shaved head and multicolour bob on top – is she a dissertation drafter, I wonder, or masterpiece wannabee? – well, good luck either way. Over there, a lean-forward talker (check shirt, elbows on table) discourses at a pair of lean-back receivers (grey tops, elbows to the sides). Who else? An older bloke, suit-and-tie, sharp of face, is sitting like a resentful wedding guest as he peers through half-moon specs at – what? – ah, The Daily Telegraph. And, look, an older couple chuckling at each other – both with elbows on the table – in grey-haired, jacket’n’jeans bonhomie.

 

Sigh, what next? I could try scribbling this piece (interesting time-travel dilemma: have I already started, and, if not, how come I’ve got this far?)

 

But does it matter if I switch on or not? Fair question, which gets an even better answer, because – here’s the point – the world changes if witnessed through back-lit eyes. Beam your light out and everything becomes suddenly brighter. No need to get worked up any more (bye-bye Brexit); no need to get appalled (hey Trump, you’re a waft of passing wind).

 

But more than that, it’s an ethical force. When you see the world as beautiful, you treat it as beautiful – the great aesthetic switch from matter to morality – and that which is beautiful is loved. And that which is loved is served. People, creatures, the whole planet: beautiful, loved, served.

 

All of which brings us to the major problem of do I order another drink. (Can’t rush all this. Got to let it mellow.) Mm, let’s look around, check the décor. Pale lemon walls, wood-slat features – tell you what, try filling in the rest yourself. Call it a choose-your-own-décor café. Y’see, I’ve got to focus on this bigger problem of ordering another drink. (Cappuccino? – done that.) (Water? – done that too.) (Falafel and hummus wrap? – undergone that.) (How about tea? – possibly.)

 

There again – consider the alternative – I could skip the tea and head straight out, stride the streets, see if any Oomph is willing to stride along with me. See, there’s two ways of going with Mr Oomph. Sit still and be full.

 

Or stride out and be full.

 

We’ll try the stride in a mo, but let’s sit a while longer (with duly acquired pot of tea). You see, the more I contemplate the room – that is, the more attention I pump into it/out to it – the more it begins to buzz with fullness. Not a literal buzz, of course – not the chat of fifteen or so customers – no, not that. It’s like there’s so much energy in the air you can almost feel it – that sort of buzz – like it’s humming around your eyes, tingling around your ears.

 

Where does it come from, though?

 

Ah, here we enter the great mystery of Inner and Outer.

 

It’s like this: if I finally get to the Big Slow Okay, the great All is Well, the Nugget at the Centre, gather some Oomph – the effect can be truly metaphysical.

 

Did I ever tell you about the time Beethoven’s Fifth set a whole field on fire? On fire, I say. I’d stayed back at Uni one evening, listening through headphones to his Fifth Symphony (you know the one: bah-bah-bah boom!) and simultaneously I followed the whole thing in the score. Not missing a note. Not missing a cymbal tink. Hence – natural conclusion – the world became entirely Fifth Symphony, no room for anything other. Which was strange, cos I took a bus (a bus? what’s that?) to the Halls of Residence (Halls? Halls?), and the stop was by some fields (what’re they?)

 

Well, I can answer the last query. They were great green acres of fire, that’s what they were. Except not green at all. They were flame orange. Or green, overlaid with flame. Or green in this world, and flame in another. But – here’s the point – the other world was winning. Those fields were thoroughly on fire. Resonating with Mr Beethoven’s ferocity.

 

And that, my friends, is how you have visions. Fill up the Inner World, and the Outer World gets overlaid.

 

There’s more, there’s lots more to say. I haven’t even started on Wordsworth. Haven’t even started on Quality (and its fragmented accomplice, Quantity). Haven’t even started on the two basic premises (Is mind an emergent property of matter? Or matter an emergent property of mind?)

 

But that’s enough for now. It’s time for the walk. Finish the tea (got three and a half cups out of that pot!). Cheerio caff staff (oh, it’s last day for one of them – “Happy Lastday to you…”). Manoeuvre past the seventeen or so tables with the fifteen or so punters. Get out. Say hello to Mr Oomph. Or ask the blighter where he’s got to.

 

And I’m walking up Stonegate – with its gem-shops and clothes-shops and pie-shops and antique-shops – and, hey, the ground is bouncing up at me, people swerving before me, half-timbered frontages jumping at the sides, and the air, ah the air – it says a soft hello, breeze stroking my cheeks, gusts murmuring my ears. And way way above, the sunlight comes swarming down, rebounds off pavements, splatters my eyes.

 

And it’s like I’m swimming through liquid air – soft and surrounding. It holds me, holds all of us, parts before us, merges behind, makes all the people – Italian, Korean, whatever – sway and waver so my every straight-line motion is curved by their grace, their gravity.

 

And my shoulders relax till I feel the precise spot in the upper spine – that central point where angel wings would take root (if I should just happen to develop any). And the whole head-held-higher thing gets going. And I’m up, I’m flying. Feet on the ground, I’m flying.

 

Where to? Ah yes, the Minster.

 

Ah, the great long slow-down.

 

Ah, the entry desk and shuffle through.

 

Ah, the eventual, awesome stride through the Nave.

 

I choose a place to sit, somewhat as I might at Waterstones (though only somewhat) and it all comes teeming about me – the collected mentality of centuries. Here, if anywhere, is the fusion of inner and outer. Those soaring limestone pillars, that cream-white ceiling, those surging arches and golden bosses – together they form a massive casket of thought, a great containing cranium, a silo of mind, filled firstly by medieval intensity and recharged over succeeding centuries. You can feel it, tingling in the side-aisles, burnishing in the stain glass, shimmering from the altar cloth and the stone-flower capitols and the candle niches and eagle-wing lectern.

 

And it isn’t so much the space above that overwhelms, but the concept of that space – a space gazed at by so many packages of consciousness that it starts to make our sight melt. And the more we melt, the more that ceiling – so cream-white and golden – begins to melt too, till the empyrean is almost there.

 

Breath stalls, ears ring, flesh goes into alternative mode – forgets itself, becomes something temporarily Other.

 

Blank.

 

And I re-emerge on a city slowed down. Parliament Street, with its wide-spaced stores and tight-coppiced trees, becomes the setting for everyday miracle, the simple discovery that our ordinary world is far more than it habitually pretends. Click. The alias of grey mundanity fades and it expands to become the vastness and wonder it always was.

 

Every step is now a pulse on the Earth’s surface – my fingers shuffling as if to thicken the atmosphere, mouth muttering unheard syllables, eyes gazing thirty degrees above horizon level – to where the air swells and hypothetical other worlds hover in potential. And – maybe it’s the head-tilt, the neck pushed back on itself – but clouds at the end of the street pass like empires – pass, pass, and go – while behind them the eye-spangling blue transmutes to the wave-front of approaching revelation.

 

And the big questions dwindle away, the queries about Quality (and its fragmented accomplice, Quantity); the disputes over basic premises (Matter an emergent property of mind? Or mind an emergent property of matter?); even that vital final issue, Discarnate Survival – they answer themselves with a simple easy ‘Of course!’

 

Sorted.

 

And that, my friends, explains the transcendent merit of stopping for a cuppa at Waterstones. That, mes amis, tells you the prodigious benefits of a nice long chomp’n’ponder chillax. (Cappuccino? – tick.) (Water? – tick.) (Overly virtuous falafel and hummus wrap? – tick.) (Refillable pot of tea? – indeed.) And don’t forget to say cheers to the caff staff.

April/May 2019     

 

November 11th, 2018

But what exactly should we remember..?

A hundred years on and what have we learnt?

 

It may be Remembrance Sunday but my first (nearly) thought on waking was “I wonder how the Tony Bellow fight went last night.” Now, this may seem deeply inappropriate. Here we were on November 11^th 2018, promising never to forget the tragic cost of fighting, and here I was relishing the darned activity. (World title fight, you know, charismatic Brit against awesomely gifted Ukrainian.)

 

But stay with me. There’s a major difference. The boxing match was a case of mankind’s (arguably horrible) fighting instinct constrained by rules. Let’s put it in capitals: CONSTRAINED BY RULES. And that makes a massive difference. For instance, the combatants embraced at the end. There were tears, there was solace, there was gushing praise. (Oh, and the awesome gifts defeated the plucky charisma, but never mind, it was such a love-in at the end they all won.)

 

But let’s get back to the date, 11^th November 2018, a hundred years after the war to end all wars (they hoped) and what is the state of the world right now? Here’s my point. We are at a stage where those so-necessary rules are under massive and varied threat. I needn’t go on about Trump: rule breaking is what appals his critics and delights his supporters. But consider Brexit. The way this country used to be governed was by parliamentary democracy. It may not be a perfect system but it has well-tested rules so shouldn’t go too badly wrong. Shouldn’t.

 

And then, all of a sudden, in 2016 the government plumped for the gung-ho of a referendum. Now, the trouble with governing by referenda is we don’t have any clear rules in place. For instance, is it ‘democratic’ to make a choice in 2016 when we don’t know what’s involved – and ‘undemocratic’ to have a choice in 2018 when we do? (Potential break-up of United Kingdom, potential re-designation of Kent as lorry park, etc etc)

 

But let’s dig deeper. Why should rule breaking be so prevalent now? Let’s look at it this way. Back in 1929 there was a massive financial crash and ten years later we had World War Two. That’s the sort of thing which happens when people lose their affluence. They vote for rule-breaking populists who promise renewed prosperity (and if said populists simultaneously blame this or that ethnic group, all the better for their cause). But here comes the scary bit: in 2008 we had another massive financial crash and it’s ten years later now.

 

Well, we don’t yet have another world war.

 

Yet.

 

So keep hoping. Keep voting. But in the meanwhile, let’s look at why those financial crashes occurred, and guess what the answer is. Lack of rules. George Dubya came to office in 2001 and relaxed the constraints on Wall Street. Suddenly you could gather all the terrifyingly useless mortgages you could wish (they’d never get repaid) bundle them up with really good ones (bound to be repaid in normal circumstances) and sell them on as cast-iron certainties.

 

Light the blue touch paper, step back, wait for the massive implosion.

 

So here we are on Remembrance Sunday 2018, and the question is why should we remember? Well, if we have any sense, it is to remind us to guard our rules. Don’t let greedy swindlers inflict financial chaos on the rest of us. Don’t let resentment arise amongst the impoverished. Don’t let opportunistic politicians blame immigrants and ethnicities, directly or by implication.

 

Hold onto our rules. Hold onto our decency. We have a surprisingly beautiful world (still) (just) where we can live surprisingly beautiful lives (not ‘nasty brutish and short’) but history says it can all go horribly wrong.

 

Let’s remember the love-in between Tony Bellow and the awesomely gifted Oleksandr Usyk, and pledge to stay with the rules. Tony can fulfil his ambition of retiring with honour. He can live in comfort with his wife and kids. No one gets hurt (well, no more than other sports – cricket balls are really dangerous, for instance) and we all get to climb in our cars, drive to the local cenotaph, admire the marching bands, witness the poppy wreaths, and thank heavens for the centuries spent building peace in the west. A long, long road. A long, agonising road. Let’s not waste the sacrifices that got us here.

 

Busker

York, 27th August 2018...

 

See that old guy – portly, bent and balding – with his grizzled white beard and black-plate Stratocaster. Hear him play – cosmic licks on a crunch-bass, slick-drum backing track.

 

And mm, shall I go off-piste? Shall I picture the invisible? Cos his guardian angel, grooving behind and around him, murmurs “Go, man, go, that phrasing is so beautiful.”

 

And shall I shift further off norm and follow the angel’s phone upstairs? Cos what is God saying? “Look! Look! I made him! Isn’t he beautiful?”

 

And yes, oh yes, he is – that portly, bent and balding busker. His guitar soaring over the landscape of crunch-bass, slick-drums below.

 

I drop a coin in his case, say thank you, and go my way, floating on music. And everywhere I go God is saying “Look, I made her! Isn’t she beautiful?” (ordinary mother, plodding along)

 

“Look, I made him! Isn’t he beautiful?” (ordinary bloke, whistling and limping) “Look, I made her! Isn’t she beautiful?” (ordinary everyone, any gender, any age)

 

And all their angels are celebrating, because here and there – right now – are genuine chinks of light. And light is what angels feed on.

 

So yeah, rock on, portly busker! Rock on, my beautiful brother!

The Pause

Tea, Tennis and Treasure...

Taking a pause in the great bicycle ride of life...

 

When I was young I’d write down phrases and sentences that had a sort of resonance, the sort you get from the verge of sleep. I didn’t know if they’d go on to form portions of poems or stories. Probably neither. They just were. Here’s one:

 

Stretched nerves catapult continual motion through half-unconscious humans.

 

I’d repeat this to myself like it was an item of revelation, as though we, as a species, were all (and here comes another one): Trapped in headlong hurtle.

 

And I’d feel the waste of it, the tragic incompetence: We have sold our birthright for a handful of hurry.

 

What birthright? What hurry?

 

It’s like this. You’re walking along with your mind full of concerns, and you’re leaning forward with a scuttling motion in your legs, and you’re not enjoying the walk at all. You’re just doing it. Or maybe it’s doing you. But then you stop. And ah, the relief. Your legs are stilled and your thoughts are stilled too. And just for the moment you look about you, and, guess what, the sun is shining – never noticed that – and, guess what, the view is lovely – didn’t notice that either. And you decide you’ll stay stopped; it’s better that way. And suddenly the day is a good one. And neither the walk nor anything else can do you now. You’re doing the doing. Or, rather, the being.

 

Years ago, I read about ‘the balance giving pause’ – how it could dramatically improve your tennis skills. The idea was you’d hit a better shot if you gave yourself a micro-moment to gather yourself, get your rhythm right. Poise. It was all there in that balance-giving-moment, the difference between another net bulger and a blistering shot to the far corner.

 

Take Roger Federer, he’s all balance. You can almost see pauses sewn into his every motion. Why, he scarcely even needs to break sweat. Sooner or later he’ll develop the knack of giving a smile and letting the ball return itself. Vroom, Roger lolls on court, gives a token twiddle of the racket, and away the ball scorches for another winner.

 

Of course, the principle applies to other sports too. Think of it, you’re the star striker of – choose a team – Melchester Rovers, and you’re in the opposition penalty area with the ball at your feet. What will you do? Give a mighty swipe and hope it goes somewhere useful? Or try a balance-giving-pause? Well, good choice Sir, good choice, Madam, cos the ugly defender was just careering across to block your shot, but you didn’t shoot. Instead your pause told you to feint a little sideways – bye bye, there goes the careering defender – and now you can pick your spot. Plonk, it’s in the net before anyone can say “Genius!”

 

But I’m not talking about sport, am I? This pause, this balance-giving-pause, is a life principle. It’s being cool. It’s being groovy. It’s the mighty, far-famed mindfulness.

 

Here’s a way to encourage it: make tea. First of all, you need to lift the kettle. How will you go about it? Make a grab? Or will you be the star striker of Melchester Rovers and give a balance-giving-pause? Just a little one. Just enough to know where your hand is and where the kettle is. Just enough to see the gap between the two. Just enough to fill that gap with awareness.

 

So we’ve another concept now: the gap. And when you lift the kettle, you give another pause, and another gap opens. And you can use that gap to watch the kettle sail all the way over to the taps. Mm, that gap is just full of awareness. And then your other hand reaches for the cold tap, except, of course, you’re giving another pause. So another gap opens, through which you see just how tap-like is that tap and just how water-like is its water.

 

Now, don’t overdo it or you’ll never get the tea made: little micro-moments are all we need. Anyway, I needn’t go on. The point is to give little pauses all the way from kettle to teapot to milk to mug and, finally, ah, just think how that tea will taste. Got to be top brew. And – special offer – every pause-brewed cuppa is the best ever. Every time. Amazing.

 

Here’s a curious thing, though. You keep opening gaps, and gaps are empty, yet the feeling you get is one of fullness. Your heart is full, your vicinity is full, your world is full.

 

Of what?

 

It’s like a torso filled with delicate treasure. A reservoir in the chest. An internal hot-air balloon that floats nowhere because you’re exactly where you need to be.

 

When you see a bud bursting with spring, that’s what it’s like. When you see blossoms pouring along branches, that’s what it’s like. When you see bushes burgeoning at roadsides, that’s what it’s like.

 

It is the dome of the sky when summer brings light to all. It is the fullness of youth which the young scarcely realise, so bewilderingly fresh are they (daft things). It is the irresistible force that revolves planets, surges waves, pushes vegetation up from soil.

 

Every time you’re in love you’re in that. Every time you’re in awe of sunset, you’re in that. Every time you’re amazed at fresh-born life, you’re in that.

 

And it’s our birthright. Just waiting to be recognised, just waiting inside each one of us – although, here’s a problem, we must clear away a load of clutter to get at it. Such clutter, the natural disasters of fear, anxiety, desire, aspiration – clear them away (it can take a lifetime) and there it awaits, patient and smiling.

 

There in that dust mote. There in that scampering ant. There in that silly wandering bluebottle.

 

Of course, we can be knocked off balance again. It’s like riding a bike, so we wobble or lurch and end up back in mundanity. That’s the way we are: with secret bicycles in our chests which, alas, we’re not very good at riding. Sometimes, though, ah sometimes, we can skim along – just a for a moment, just for a while – after which, more than likely, we’ll park the bike and forget about it. Days, weeks, months, of neglect. Till we remember the thing, get it out, pump up the tyres, and wonder why we let it go.

 

Okay, let’s extend the metaphor – there’s a good reason for this – and take a ride from York to Riccal. You see, there’s a scale model of the solar system installed on the cycle path. (It used to be a railway but now it’s an inter-planetary cycleway.) And the astonishing thing about that cycleway is the gap between each planet.

 

Remember how we were discussing gaps and emptiness? Well, you can’t beat space for emptiness. To be fair, there are bushes and fields and foliage between every scale-model planet. But in real space there’s no such luck.

 

And those planets are so tiny. There’s a little raisin-sized thing for Mercury, while 88 metres further on there’s a grape-sized sphere for Venus. Cycle another 72 metres and you get to the equally grape-sized Earth with its petit-pois of a moon. Mars, an inflated raisin, is 136 metres further along.

 

But it’s when you get to the outer planets that the gaps get really baffling. Jupiter, the size of a basket-ball, is 1127 metres from Saturn, which is head-sized (with a hat brim round its middle). Go another 2506 metres and you get to Uranus, a tennis ball (with its own hat brim), and a further 2830 metres you’ll arrive at Neptune, tennis ball number two, while Pluto, a pea, is 2454 metres further on.

 

Space just keeps on pressing pause and making these amazing gaps.

 

But here’s the thing: they may seem empty, especially when you upgrade to inter-galactic scale, but science has discovered something really weird. These gaps are actually full of zero-point energy. It keeps on sparking in and out of existence – like the snap crackle and pop of cosmic rice krispies. And, whilst we can’t be certain, it appears this zero-point energy might be the factor that drives dark energy, which just happens to be the biggest component of everything. (About 70% of the entire universe at the latest count.)

 

Time to get mythical, I’d say.

 

Once upon a time, say 13.8 billion years ago, there was a great Emptiness (indeed an Emptiness worth its own capital letter) and – as is the way with capital letter Emptinesses – it was also a great Fullness. And – as is the way with capital letter Fullnesses – it got so full of potential that it decided to take a Pause to contemplate just how full it was. And the Pause – as is the way with capital letter Pauses – formed a Gap. And through the Gap poured all the capital letter Fullness. Only now it wasn’t potential; it was actual. And so we had a universe – which came in handy for such things as writing this article.

 

Now, I’m not saying that every time you insert a pause in your tea-making, or tennis-shot making, or love making, you’ll cause a Big Bang – not too sure about the latter case – but, well, how can I put it? Try this. The other day in Wetherby, a sandwich board man proclaimed “Be still and know I am God” (though possibly not about himself). Well, here’s the bonus: with the Pause you don’t even need to sit still. You can weave stillness into your life even as you get on with living it. Knit one, pearl one. Move one, pause one. (And once you’ve got the process going, it runs so smoothly you don’t even notice.)

 

There you are, you’ve arrived. Nirvana in Samsara. (Eastern phrase that means having your cosmic cake and eating it.)

 

As for the youngster who used to write down resonant phrases (you know, the one who Sold his birthright for a handful of hurry, that one), well, if he kept on trying, he might end up as an oldster writing down stuff like this. And then he could look back on his life – that ever-extending gap – and wonder if he had paused enough.

 

Mm, maybe not. It’s easier to say this lot than live it. (Obvs…)

A Spiritual Pub Crawl

When thought stops and the deep stuff begins...

Blue sky, York Minster - plenty to contemplate

whether you're the guy on the plinth or the girl on the ground...

 

Back in the early 1980s I went on a spiritual pub crawl – well, there were so many fascinating oddities to investigate. For instance, a talk about the Knights Templars of Aquarius happened at a local university lecture theatre, not the most metaphysical of venues, nor did it at first turn out the most absorbing of talks. Ho hum, I found myself tapping my fingers, but then, halfway through, the speaker had a rush of enthusiasm and announced the thrilling news that Osiris had incarnated as Nicholas Tobin and was living in Jersey along with his wife, Isis, who had incarnated as Margaret Tobin. Our speaker knew this because, as luck would have it, he was a celebrity incarnation himself: no less than a figure than Horus, son of Osiris and Isis (though not necessarily the son of Nicholas and Margaret Tobin).

 

Well, after that I had to find out what other wonders might be on the go. One of them was Eckankar. I can’t exactly remember what this involved except something to do with an alleged Eck current (not to be confused with Ecky Thump, the Lancastrian martial art promoted by ‘The Goodies’ on vintage TV). Living Eck Masters included the Americans Sri Darwin Gross and Sri Paul Twitchell, and I confess, in shame, that their names, both gross and twitching, had me sniggering with inappropriate relish.

 

The best fun, though, was with the Rajneesh people. These were followers of ‘the hippie guru’, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and if I mention that ‘Bhagwan’ means ‘god’ you can see we were flying high. Actually, there was more than flight in later years as poisoning, arson and prison sentences accumulated around their base in Oregon (so be warned, folks, go carefully with spiritual enthusiasm; it can drive you mad). Anyway, the big news at the time, for me at least, was Dynamic Meditation. It had five stages. Firstly, you’d exhale extremely quickly for ten minutes (forget inhaling; it’s bound to happen); then you’d have a freak out for another ten minutes (shout, laugh, run around, cry, whatever); thirdly you’d have ten minutes jumping up and down with arms raised, shouting ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’ (and looking inevitably like an ape); then fourthly, at a signal you’d freeze – no motion, everything still – for fifteen minutes; finally you’d celebrate with fifteen minutes free dance.

 

Well, it sounds nuts, especially the ape aspiration, but it actually had a cracking good point. You’d get your body to a state of maximum activity, then stop.

 

That’s the key. Deep, deep stillness after a big, big build up. And what might you find in that stillness? Ah yes, what indeed…

 

I only visited the Rajneesh people a few times – well, there’s only so much “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” you can manage in one life. But I spent a lot more time with what sounded an even crazier bunch: Charismatic Catholics.

 

When a friend told me about their existence I could scarcely believe it. You see, I’d been raised a Catholic and had imbibed the black-robed message that everything important happened centuries ago, leaving nothing for now except obedience. But ‘Charismatic Renewal’ didn’t sound that way. It sounded wild. It sounded weird. I had to find out.

 

Conveniently, the local group needed a guitarist, and I wanted an excuse to learn the guitar, so I morphed myself into the Music Ministry (as the jargon went), playing rhythm on their sometimes jolly, sometimes meditative, ‘Songs of the Spirit’. Now, one of the big features of Charismatic Renewal was – maybe still is – ‘Speaking In Tongues’. What would happen is we’d start with an upbeat song (thank you, Mr Music Ministry), then there might be a spontaneous prayer or a spontaneous Bible reading, then maybe a stretch of silence or a contemplative song. After a while a murmuring might start. Mutter mutter, murmur murmur, lots of syllables with no overt meaning. Other voices would join in till there were mutter-syllables all over the place. But here’s the thing, it worked. Felt deep. Felt strong.

 

What really blew the head off, though, was ‘Singing In Tongues’, especially when the local groups gathered for a big session each month at a school hall in Longbenton. How to describe it? People would start off chanting the syllable speech and this would form a note. Then others would join in, chanting at different pitches. My guess is we were singing notes on the chord of C. Some would go with a low C, some with the E next up, others on the G above that, and some would go for the higher C. But I always found the best intensity was with the E even higher. Now, if you have lots of voices, male and female, holding a spontaneous harmony, you can – if daring – go melody surfing: slide down from the high E, give a twirl en route to the C, rise a bit then skim down to the G, build again, and so on.

 

As I say, that stuff could blow your head off, but what followed was even better. Silence. The singing ceased as though by spontaneous agreement, and the stillness afterwards went as deep as the singing flew high.

 

And that’s what I’m talking about in this blog, the alternation of intense activity and intense quiet. You thought I was talking about amusing groups and cults, didn’t you – but no, the topic is stillness after intensity.

 

The deep, deep stillness after the big, big build up.

 

It’s actually how hymns work in church. You need to know the tunes of course, so it’s best at Christmas when the old favourites come out – Hark the Herald Angel, Silent Night, Once in Royal David’s City, and so on. You can really give singing like that some welly, and the more you give, the more you’re energised.

 

But that’s not the best bit. The best bit is Communion. Everything goes still – relatively speaking of course – while the communicants shuffle up the central aisle, stop at the kneelers, then return along the side aisles (I’m talking about York Minster here). There’s something about that movement, it makes a circular breathing pattern, a ritual with its own resonance. But the Communion, ah what can I say about that? Firstly, it doesn’t always work, but if you’re ready for it, if everything slots into place, well, you can step into the next dimension. A symptom, for me, is tears in the eyes. And the tears are there because your carapace has been penetrated. And your carapace is the thing you need most of the time so you don’t get overwhelmed by everyday stuff – you know, the ups and downs, the contradictions and impossibilities. Fair enough, we all need a carapace. But when it gets penetrated – shattered – then you know how life could be, if only.

 

If only what? If only gravity could get switched off. If only the weight of necessity could get switched off. If only the confusion of fitting and not fitting, of asserting and not asserting, of obeying and not obeying – if only all that got switched off, and we were free. Ridiculously, simply free. Clearly, obviously free. Gloriously, amiably free.

 

What’s it like? It’s like grass and trees and sun and skies. That simple. That obvious. All as it naturally should be. So of course your eyes are wet. You’re lucky to avoid breaking down and doing the full dramatic blub in mid aisle. And you get back to your seat and you know you’ve made the connection.

 

The deep, deep stillness after the big, big build up.

 

As I say, it works best at Christmas – sometimes anyway – not guaranteed. (I felt poorly this year). But what else is there if we want to continue our spiritual pub crawl? Well, something I love nowadays is fast walking in York – threading through the holiday makers and the shoppers in all their dawdling variety, striding faster than people half my age, a third of my age (hey, indulge an old guy’s pride, it won’t last long). Ease the shoulders, lift the head, zoom along Coney Street, stride up Stonegate. And one of the key aspects is there’s no room for thought. It’s all focus and go.

 

And when thought stops, the deep stuff can begin. This is stage one.

 

Stage two is York Minster. Go as a visitor, no special time of day – afternoon, if you’re me. And, of course, you’ve got to slow down to get through the door, but the main point is to stay slow. Wander to the back of the nave and look up so you see all the way along the cream-white ceiling, soaring with tracery, spangled with golden bosses, and hinting of heaven’s proximity, just a quarter inch higher, just the other side of that furthest lick of paint.

 

Then walk the centre aisle, slow, dazed and magnificent. Drink it all in. Know the great fluted pillars, the sprouting side aisles, the vertiginous stained glass, the choir screen guarded by fifteen English kings.

 

Drink it in, for this is stage two. The body has raised its energy, and now the soul can take over. Let the energy pour into the vast astonished cavity of the torso, that strong thing, the throbbing motor, the self within.

 

Afterwards, as I walk the streets of York again – slow now, wondering now – it seems I see the city afresh. Doorways appear that were never there before, secret between shop fronts, doorways to who knows where, to mystery, to unknown adventures. New buildings sprout, upper storeys loom, it is the perception of Eden, and the world is afresh, exactly the same as before, yet tasting utterly changed.

 

Better yet, find some open space, somewhere with lots of sky (Park and Ride outside York will do nicely). And when you look up, the sky is, yes, the same as normal, with its ranks of puffball smudges, white on azure, multiplying to the distance. Yet the whole domed spread begins to appear like a skin.

 

A skin? What lies behind?

 

It’s as though we have a soul-sized launch pad inside us, and the more fuel we pack in it, the more deep feeling we give it, the more it can launch our perception – till we glimpse through the skin of the sky and sense another, far vaster, soul behind, so vast that calculation withers. So lovely that description – like calculation – must surrender with a smile.

 

And is that the end of the spiritual pub crawl? Of course not. It goes on, independent of time or place, regardless of building or ritual, just as amiable, silly, tremendous or deep as you wish. It’s all a matter of perception. All a matter of glimpsing, sensing, tasting from the throb of the soul.

The Jewelled Sea

Considering the Fate of the Dewdrop...

Tenerife: Los Cristianos

 

In 627 A.D., King Edwin of Northumbria considered converting to Christianity but first he consulted his advisers. One spoke up approximately as follows: “The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me like to the flight of a sparrow through the house where you sit at supper with your ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes and the hall is warmed. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out another, is safe from the weather for a short space, but then it vanishes from our sight. That is how our lives appear, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing certain at all” (adapted from Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, chapter XIII).

 

For many people “nothing certain at all” remains more or less the verdict, though there have been attempts to remedy that.

 

In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was set up to collect and scrutinise the numerous accounts that suggested some sort of afterlife. The accounts kept coming, mostly published independently of the SPR. For instance, in 1940 Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding, the victor of the Battle of Britain, was sacked for saving world civilization so decided to fly even higher by investigating the Beyond. Casting about for the best sources of information, he chose the likes of Life Beyond the Veil (Rev. G. Vale Owen), The Living Dead Man (Elsa Barker) and Gone West (J.S.M. Ward), publishing extracts from these in his resulting book, Many Mansions (1943). More recently, celebrated mediums such as Betty Shine, Gordon Smith and Doris Stokes have published well-received volumes of their experiences.

 

Not everyone is impressed by this. A frequent verdict is the revelations are either too saccharine or too mundane. To put it flippantly, post-mortem existence reduces – in some accounts at least – to a matter of mixing with nice people in nice places and finding nice things to do – unless, of course, you’ve been nasty, in which case you find nasty people, nasty places, and not much nice to do.

 

Some descriptions, however, are more inspiring, carrying a sense of extra dimensions. Like actually seeing the sap in a tree. Like actually perceiving the life force in each creature. Like actually seeing the soul inside a person (so there can be no fibbing in “Summerland”; you’re an open book.) And the colours are more glorious. And everyone looks closer to their ideal self. And everything shimmers at the edges.

 

Of course, the sceptic can retort, “Nah, it’s just a load of wish-fulfilment” but such a verdict, though pleasingly emphatic, is hard to prove. It’s a bit like claiming the town of Los Cristianos in Tenerife cannot exist because, for some people, it fulfils their wishes as a holiday destination.

 

Talking of holidays, let’s stay with Tenerife because the island provides a handy angle on travel writing, which is what we’re talking about here – for both the saccharine accounts and the inspiring ones are travellers tales of a sort, albeit to destinations where return travel is notoriously difficult to arrange (though not impossible if we’re talking about those deathbed resuscitations known acronymically as NDEs – or Near Death Experiences).

 

Consider it like this. First-time visitors to Los Cristianos might be delighted to find Irish pubs aplenty and no lack of cafes serving full English breakfasts. Their postcards home might therefore describe the pleasures of quasi-familiar treats, along with a certain amount of adapting to local practice. In effect: “mixing with nice people in nice places and finding nice things to do.”

 

Other travellers, though, may head out of town and send back very different reports, enthusing about the volcano and its quasi-lunar surroundings, or heading away from tourist spots entirely to seek the lesser known spots in the island.

 

So far so familiar, but let us now despatch our correspondents further into the metaphorical Beyond. Some will explore so far they send back tales of scarcely describable scenery, scarcely describable experiences, scarcely describable relationships.

 

After a while, they go so far out that words can’t do the job any more.

 

And eventually “the dew-drop slips into the shining sea” (as Sir Edwin Arnold put it: The Light of Asia, 1879).

 

So let us not despair if a few accounts are thuddingly mundane. Descriptions will be as variable as the people who send them.

 

If this analogy doesn’t do a complete job, let’s try another. I’ve always quite favoured the great water-cycle view of human existence. The idea is we fall from clouds in the form of raindrops, then arrive on earth where we have various adventures – soaking into the soil perhaps, getting drawn into grass, eaten by a cow, leaving the cow by a milking machine, arriving in someone’s kitchen, being poured onto Weetabix, getting scraped down the sink with the portions that weren’t eaten, flowing through various pipes, becoming cleaned in a sewage farm, and so on. The analogy is somewhat rambunctious, but the key point is all the adventures happen in or on solid ground, and can therefore represent earthly existence. So far.

 

Eventually, though, the myriad drops arrive at a river and move away from solid ground. They have now arrived metaphorically at the first part of the Beyond, staying approximately within sight of terra firma and therefore maintaining semi-earthlike outlooks and concerns. Finally, however, the river widens, the banks recede, and they flow into the sea, leaving the land behind and becoming absorbed in the magnificent rolling immensity.

 

(Ah yes, how I loved to play on the beach at Whitby – age eight or nine – stopping every now and then to stare at the great blue yonder. Just that, stopping to stare.)

 

By the way, if you favour reincarnation, the droplet can always evaporate again – maybe from the sea, maybe the river – and return to the clouds, ready for another episode of earthly ups and downs.

 

Here comes a big question, though: would it be the same droplet? Let’s remember that line from Sir Edwin Arnold: “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” Does the drop lose its surface tension and thereby merge entirely with its neighbours, thus ceasing to be itself?

 

Annihilation or expansion?

 

There’s actually quite an appeal to the great merging, the great absorption – even the great cosmic loss-of-self. (Come on, it can be a drag, can’t it, staying relentlessly tethered to yourself?)

 

But there’s also a substantial appeal to not getting annihilated. After all, it would be a mighty waste if, at the end of a life – or perhaps numerous lives – well spent, with lessons learned, virtues stacked and merits accumulated, we promptly cease to exist.

 

So what’s the solution?

 

Well, let me tell you about a dream.

 

To be honest, it wasn’t a dream but a session of hypnosis. I’d decided, somewhat untypically, to indulge my curiosity and try some past-life regression. The hypnosis itself was a delight: you’re both awake and not awake (a state worthy of much pondering), but the results were mixed. I found the alleged past lives tedious – can scarcely remember them now – but the in-between portions were thrilling, especially as follows.

 

A tedious ex-life had just finished, and I was most likely travelling towards another, but in the meantime I was afloat inside a jewelled sea. Diamonds, rubies, amethysts, sapphires, emeralds, citrines, aquamarines, every colour imaginable – and you can add a few that aren’t. They floated over and about me, welcoming and rounded. Maybe the resulting environment should have been sharp-edged and jostling, but my clear recollection is the jewels were soft as bubbles, amiable as balloons.

 

Nonetheless, they still had their facets, myriad and glittering.

 

Now, those facets seemed – and this is a key impression – to be hard-won personality traits. I felt I was surrounded by actual beings, human or otherwise, each jewel shining with hard-won virtues, its rough edges smoothed, honourable scars perfected, and facets dizzyingly multiplied.

 

But how did they shine? Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and the rest are dull unless light passes through and around them. They need an environment of light. Otherwise they are scarcely worth calling jewels. Blank. Empty.

 

At this point I must go beyond the dream – extrapolate from it rather than just remember – because it seems to me that the light can provide a response to the great mystical question: are we ultimately annihilated? Or not?

 

The latter, I would suggest.

 

What happens, arguably, is the light renders each jewel greater than it ever was. That light – here’s the mystical paradox – gives each being access to the entire universe. The furthest jewel is joined to all others by light, as if via a vast cosmic internet. The most obscure details and wonders become shared because of the light that shines through all. It is omnipresence. It is the fibre-optic cable without need of fibre. It is the whole universe. It is home.

 

Well, anyway, that’s how it appears to me when I contemplate the dream from afar. And yes, it was a dream under hypnosis, which may or may not affect its validity. But – getting back to earth – does it have any resonance? I mean, we’re all built on standard mammalian lines: head, thorax, abdomen, four limbs, five senses. We are regrettably delicate creatures, with easily lacerated skin and cringingly vulnerable innards. So, here’s the thing, can we really contemplate ourselves as jewels?

 

Not physically, no. Not literally either. But how about imaginatively? Could I envisage you, the next person, the creature in the mirror, as a jewel – unlimited by size or situation, lit from within and without, facets shimmering till they swallow the entire person in dazzle?

 

Well, we all have our aspects, our hard-won struggles, we are all multi-talented authors of our own lives, amalgams of scarce imagined capacities, midwife helpers of others, co-creators of the planet around us. Connected. Shining. Being.

 

So let’s not rule it out.

 

No, let’s not do that.

 

And the raindrop that fell to earth may have had a Dickensian life of tough luck and lowly transformations, poor thing, but every now and then it could nonetheless catch the light and sparkle with riotous glee.

 

And the travellers to Tenerife may have rolled drunkenly from pub to breakfast caff with only a few snores in between, but they could still exult in the glorious sun and smile its reflection to each other.

 

And the sparrow that flew across King Edwin’s feasting hall was not so much a refugee from harsh weather as an ambassador from regions of infinite rolling colours – swarming with light, nay dazzling with light, indeed jewelled with light unending.

Tracking It All Back

A Journey Into The Creative Mind... 

Sitting around, having a think, creating a world...

 

The world is full of objectified thoughts. Buildings, streets, fields, farms, none of these occur in nature but are thought into existence by humans. Similarly, books, films, songs and paintings are products of thinking. They originate inside us and manifest outside. Well, let’s reverse the process. Let’s track the process back and find out where it all starts.

 

When not overtly creative, we still do a great deal of externalised thinking. In every conversation, we clothe our thoughts in words – quite a mysterious process when you think of it – and speak the words out to the world, maybe to other people, or maybe just to ourselves as we wander round the kitchen deciding whether to have a coffee or a tea.

 

So far so objective, but let’s have a think about that tea-or-coffee decision. Do we really ask ourselves out loud: “Come on, Me, is to be a coffee or a tea?” Occasionally perhaps, but other times it might be just a grunt: “Uhh, tea.” And yet other times, the words may be entirely internal: Hmm, tea? Coffee? Dunno, maybe water. But – and here is the big point – we frequently don’t use words at all.

 

We simply visualise the drinks and decide which feels more attractive. Actually we don’t even do that: we experience impressions of them. Tea – good old standby, dobble of milk, oodles of refreshment. Whereas coffee – more bite, darker, better for grabbing and giving you a good shake.

 

Notice I’m translating these impressions into words. That’s what writers do, they translate. And it’s cheating. If we take writers seriously, we believe that humans are forever soliloquising. No, we’re not: far too much effort. Impressions are much easier.

 

Let’s try some other thoughts. Say I’m looking for my glasses. Did I leave them in the bathroom? Bedroom? I could go striding from room to room, and, if sufficiently exasperated, probably would. But the easier option is to check those places in the mind’s eye and see if any memory gets jogged. Bathroom – how about the window ledge, the surface by the sink, the clutter beside the radio? Let’s try the bedroom – what about the bedside table, the desk, under a pile of clothes? And so on, till I remember what I did with the wretched things. (Hanging round my neck.)

 

Once again, I had no need of words (beyond “dammit” or “bugger”) but how did I visualise the locations? Full photographic detail? Or a sort of swimming effect, more settled at the centre, blurred at the sides – like trying to see a face in your mind’s eye. Easily done till you try to focus on details, then they melt. Impressions again.

 

Now, the key thing about impressions is they form a link between the conscious and subconscious minds. A good example is trying to remember a word. We know the pesky thing is there, but will it come to mind? We can almost sense the shape of it, the feel of it, even the oomph of it, but no, it won’t come.

 

And then it does.

 

How does that happen?

 

Like this: we switch off the conscious mind, think of something else, and let the little filing clerks in the subconscious trot along with the requested item.

 

But how weird is that? It’s almost as weird as our need to sleep every night, which, of course, is the biggest switch off of all – barring death. Every night we let the conscious mind dither, dwindle, snuffle and snore – till the mighty, mysterious subconscious can take over. And if we don’t, we’re in trouble. Get ill, maybe die.

 

So let’s look at this all powerful monster, the subconscious, starting with those strange phenomena on the verge of sleep, that half-awake-half-asleep state where we perceive all sorts of detritus floating in and out of perception. Sights, actions, sounds, songs, music – all unconnected, like a session of drunken channel-surfing.

 

Maybe we perceive, say, a car riding over a bridge, a market stall loaded with fruit, a cloak-wrapped figure, a child skipping along – one disconnected impression after the other. We might also get nonsense phrases: “the pink of robotics... armature sledging in Cambodia... four carrier-bag Houdinis...” and so on. A musician, more attuned to sound, might notice melodic impressions, or atmospheric noises, or grating effects.

 

Eventually, we sleep and the disconnected impressions can join themselves into dreams. The car that rode the bridge might crash into the barrow of fruit, the cloaked figure might hurry forward and scoop up the trotting child. However, the stories rarely sustain themselves, and just as we hope the child might escape, the action morphs into a common room full of students, or some half familiar hills we stride along.

 

The point is we are unstoppably, relentlessly creative, our minds churning away, a constant river of reassembly and invention. And what the mind works on, of course, is the world. Theoretically, everything we have ever experienced gets swallowed and reorganised, ready to re-emerge whether bidden or unbidden.

 

When we write creatively, it is bidden. There we are, wanting to send our investigator into his great bathroom crisis (he’s searching for the victim’s glasses: on the window ledge, surface by the sink, the clutter by the radio – but there’s a murderer in the heating cupboard), and we have a great gush of images in our subconscious, just waiting to come out and cram the story.

 

Of course, we’ve got to control the process. So we navigate the flow. We ride the mighty currents in our swirling coracle, frequently biffing and butting the river bank, but pushing off again and riding back into the surge. Now, how do we do that? How do we know where to aim as we scan the shape of the stream ahead? Impressions, of course. Specifically, impressions of life and hope.

 

Let’s put it this way. Whenever I ransack my memory for instances of choice I always come up with the same answer. I chose because there was life and hope in the choice. If we humans decide to go on a holiday, or buy some furniture, or write a book, or propose marriage, or embark on a career, or learn a musical instrument, or try adventurous cookery – the reason is always the same. We do it because it looks good. We envisage it, in a vague and semi-abstract way, and what we envisage seems to shine with life and hope (unless, of course, we’re feeling a bit psycho, in which case we might favour death and despair).

 

So it is with stories. We wouldn’t bother starting a project if it didn’t look promising. And as we get into it, the next chapter, the next section, the next scene – all these must shine to us with life and hope, even if some characters have more of a psychotic outlook. (Well, we need negatives in a story for the positives to bounce off).

 

And the fascinating thing is we can somehow envisage all these items in our mind’s eye, moving characters and events around like chess pieces, seeing which might fit best. We’re not dealing with tangible items here – neither tea versus coffee, nor those spectacle-concealing bathroom locations – we’re dealing with concepts. Impressions of this or that situation. It’s almost like thinking in hieroglyphics, albeit very smudgy ones. And we choose, of course, those which seem to offer most life and hope. Yay, the book’s gonna go well. And, thus enthused, we charge ahead with enhanced energy.

 

Now, this energy might – just might – take us to our deepest level. You see there are various qualities of output. Level one, let’s say, is junk. We’ve tried, we’ve failed. We need to switch off, sit on the sofa, stare into space, and ask the subconscious please to get itself attached because we’re direly in need of oomph.

 

Level two, we’re getting better, but we really didn’t switch off enough. So we have a scratch. Sigh. Wander over to the sofa, give it a vague kick. Return to the keyboard and suddenly, wham!, we’re onto level three. And the stuff is just pouring out of us. We’ve got the flow, we’ve got the oomph, and we’re directing it, navigating it. More than that, we’re lighting it.

 

Remember that feeling of life and hope, well we’ve got it, and we’re aiming life and hope at that keyboard, at that screen. We’ve got thoughts and impressions sorted. We’ve got the conscious and subconscious sorted. And next day we look at our work and say “I didn’t write that, did I? How could I write that?” Because we’ve hit quality. Let’s award the thing a capital letter. We’ve hit Quality.

 

And isn’t it interesting: we were intensely conscious whilst doing it but afterwards we can scarcely remember.

 

We have levels, we humans. And our deeper levels are way beyond everyday consciousness. They are also our best. They are the real Us. The real Me, real You, real We. And it’s scary that these levels are so inaccessible. And it’s glorious that they’re so paradoxically accessible. We can hit them every day if we’re on form.

 

There is no one on Earth – absolutely no one – who is as good at being you as you. And there is no one on Earth – absolutely no one – who is as good at being me as me. We’re total geniuses at being ourselves. Sack the million monkeys with typewriters, they’ll never get close to human capacity.

 

Okay, should we go for a big ending now? (Reader advisory: the following paragraphs contain unsubstantiated assertions.)

 

Let’s put it this way: thus do we create the world afresh, its stories, its sculptures, its architecture, its cities and provinces, thereby contradicting entropy and building up the world of thought, infusing and nurturing it with life and hope.

 

Or shall we put it like this: thus do we come to write our most significant story, that of our own life. And the pilot who guides this narrative – the head-and-heart, conscious-and unconscious navigator – is our own mysterious, often forgotten, but always available, soul.

 

Or shall we say: thus do we echo with our limited humanity the first-cause-creativity of Divine Mind, privileged to join, in howsoever small a way, the cosmic project of mirroring back the Original Perfection till all Creation shares in its Power and Exhilaration and Love.

 

Or perhaps we should go for a smaller ending: that guy in the heating cupboard, we really do need to let him out.

August 1990

Twenty seven years later...

The Aga Khan Hospital, Nairobi

For me there were two crucial events back in August 1990, one personal, the other international. The personal one is I didn’t die, which had its merits, although it was no great treat as I lay there in the Intensive Care Unit of the Age Khan Hospital, Nairobi, desperate for the next shot of pethidine.

 

Later, I transferred to a private room and could hire a night helper for personal needs and also, crucially, to switch on the T.V. The only English language channel available right then was CNN, so I had a front-bed view of the crucial international event of the time. The First Gulf War – preparation phase.

 

By this stage I was beginning to assemble something like a brain and became curious as to which countries might be involved. Some part of me knew there was more than just America, but CNN didn’t seem to realise. I had no way of knowing if the BBC attained a comparable level of bias, but, as it was, I only knew that the uniformed combatants with their mighty, bulging kitbags came from New Jersey, Montana, Illinois, Rhode Island, Missouri and suchlike. And I saw them boarding transports away from their proud but anxious relatives, whilst simultaneously, I guessed, filing past phalanxes of TV crews and reporters. All of this in a different continent from where the action would take place.

 

About the Iraqis, nothing. About the Kuwaitis, nothing. About other Arab states, nothing.

 

Gradually, I managed to eat, although my first attempt at the longed-for bangers and mash lasted but a few mouthfuls before the effort of digestion sent me asleep. Some nutrients must have reached the brain, though, because two thoughts occurred to me. Firstly, I hoped those much-filmed soldiers wouldn’t suffer bullets or other damage because I suspected it might hurt rather a lot. (Oh gosh, that night of stomach cramps as I tried watching ‘A Bridge Too Far’ – waves of cramp rolling my eyes up, and the picture rolling up in sync, so sometimes the Bridge was on the ceiling, sometimes the floor.)

 

My second thought was this: giving consideration to the enemy is a good idea.

 

General ‘Storming Norman’ Schwartzkopf presumably gave sufficient consideration to Saddam’s Imperial Guard to opt for his ‘Hail Mary’ manoeuvre: move the play to the flank and pray it works. It did, and the war was won. But the peace wasn’t. President Bush, the first, called off the advance when it turned into a massacre (or Turkey Shoot, as the saying went) and decent liberals like me – out of hospital a few months by now – considered it a good and compassionate decision.

 

It wasn’t. It was a postponement. An invitation to resume the war at a later date. If my newly restored brain had worked well enough, I might have remembered Churchill’s insistence on Unconditional Surrender at the end of World War Two. He’d seen the indecisive end to World War One and how it made Round Two inevitable. He understood the wise choice was being nice to your enemy AFTER the surrender. Not before.

 

And it worked very nicely. Generous amounts of Marshall Aid ensured the Germans felt too comfortable to consider any more insanities. What a smart idea. Should be the blueprint for every post-war settlement – that and proper attention to politics, security, education, health and suchlike. Germany became arguably the most decent liberal country on Earth, but there was no such luck for Iraq. It was left with Saddam in 1991, and with chaos in 2004. In the meantime, a war in Afghanistan was won, and the peace was lost.

 

I remember in 2004 thinking Tony Blair mightn’t exactly walk on water – but hang on, there’d been the Good Friday Agreement, and Kosovo, and Sierra Leone – so maybe he did. There’s nothing like disappointed belief to whip up the anger, and yes, many of us did believe. Suckers like me. It just never occurred to me the intelligence they were working on was so bad. Naïve. Crass.

 

But the worst thing was the failure to make post-invasion plans.

 

Here comes a rule of history. Evolution is preferable to revolution because revolutions create power vacuums, into which step the butchers. Think the French Revolution. Think the Russian Revolution. Think the aftermath of Saddam’s fall. Think what was brewing in Camp Bucca. Think Isil.

 

And now I look back again to 1990 with me propped up in bed at the Aga Khan Hospital, so feeble I was down to seven and a half stone – which at a height of six foot two isn’t a lot. It means there’s no extra oomph for moving your muscles – ah, those gasping, tottering attempts to walk a few steps. And it means there’s no extra oomph for moving your brain – ah, how I stared at the walls, the bananas I had to eat (“for potash”), the TV showing CNN.

 

And yet, even then I realised – in a dumb and dazed sort of way – that you really do need to think about your enemy. How do you disarm not just his weapons but his desire to use them any more? How do you ensure there’s a Marshall Plan for every aftermath of war? How do you turn every opponent into decent liberal Germany? Maybe I didn’t put it to myself quite like that, not at the time. But it did seem scary, this oblivion to what the other person might be thinking. Or feeling. Or potentially planning.

Wot? No Ghosts, Brian?

 

Last Tuesday morning (27th December 2016), I listened to the Christmas Special edition of The Infinite Monkey Cage, a ‘witty, irreverent look at the world through scientists' eyes’ (as it declares on the webpage).

 

The topic was Ghosts, and after the initial introductions, Brian Cox had this to say: ‘Before we ask the first question, I want to make a statement. We are not here to debate the existence of ghosts because they don’t exist. If we want some sort of pattern that carries information about our living cells to persist, then we must specify precisely what medium carries that pattern and how it interacts with different matter particles out of which our bodies are made. We must in other words invent an extension to the standard model of particle physics that has escaped detection at the Large Hadron Collider. That’s almost inconceivable at the energy scales typical of the particle interactions in our bodies. And so we need not discuss this further. Does anybody object to this at all? No? Excellent. Carry on.’

 

A few moments later Neil deGrasse Tyson, guesting on the show, asked: ‘Brian, if I understand what you just declared, you just asserted that CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear research, disproved the existence of ghosts.’

 

Brian Cox: ‘Yes.’

 

Now, I know it is a humorous show, so it wasn’t surprising to hear Brian Cox make his statement at a pace that overwhelmed our capacity to register the details. It’s sort of funny to do that. It’s also a naughty debating tactic. Overwhelming pace can easily be mistaken for overwhelming evidence.

 

So let’s slow down and have a think.

 

First of all, is it scientific to be certain about anything? Once certainty creeps in, investigation ceases, and science comes to a stop. For example, how many scientists are seriously investigating Near Death Experiences, Out of Body Experiences, historical case files of the Society for Psychical Research, ‘impossible’ reincarnation ‘memories’ amongst small children, etc, etc? How many would dare, bearing in mind the likely funding issues?

 

Secondly, is it philosophically feasible to prove a negative? In a closed system, yes. For example, we can be reasonably sure there is no elephant in the room. But can we be 100% sure there is no monster in Loch Ness? (99.9% perhaps, but 100%?)

 

To exclude any sort of interaction between ghost ‘reality’ and physical reality would require an elephant-in-the-room level of certainty. Brian Cox thinks he has it because he knows, via CERN, everything there is to know about particle interactions in the Standard Model (perhaps).

 

But are those the only possible interactions? Here come two exceptions. Quantum entanglement allows instantaneous interactions between charged particles at cosmic distances, a phenomenon so unlikely that Einstein famously dismissed it as 'spooky action at a distance'. Nonetheless it works and is the basis for quantum computers.

 

Another weird phenomenon is gravity, originally dismissed, pre Newton, as an occult force, and for the same reason. It appears to be action at a distance, without any connecting medium. However, post Einstein, it is understood to result from the curvature of space. Oh yes, and what is space? Well, mostly emptiness. Nothingness. So gravity is a curvature of nothing. And that’s how the Earth makes the Moon go round it. By curving nothing.

 

And so, encouraged by these two non-CERN interactions, let us see what might be a candidate for the link between ghost ‘reality’ and physical reality. Step forward please Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Centre, and let us quote from his February 2013 YouTube article, ‘A Universe is a Free Lunch’: http://bigthink.com/videos/a-universe-is-a-free-lunch

 

‘The leading candidate for dark matter today is called the sparticle. The sparticle is the next octave of the string. Now look around you. Everything around you, we think, is nothing but the lowest vibration of a vibrating string, the lowest octave in some sense. But a string, of course, has higher octaves, higher notes. We think that dark matter could in fact be nothing but a higher vibration of the string. So we think that 23% of the universe, which is the dark matter's contribution to the universe, comes from a higher octave of the string. Now, the standard model, which we have ample verification of, only represents four percent of the universe. So the universe of atoms, protons, neutrons, neutrinos – that universe only represents four percent of what there is. 23% is dark matter, which we think is the next vibration up of the string, and then 73% of the universe is dark energy.’

 

Let’s not get into Dark Energy: it’s too weird to contemplate. But Dark Matter, ‘a higher octave of the string’? Can anyone see the possibilities there?

 

Let’s put it this way. Anyone who plays a stringed instrument, say a guitar or a piano, knows that a note vibrating at one octave can set the same note vibrating at a different octave. For instance, hold down a middle C on a piano – don’t play it, just hold it open – then play a C one octave below. Bingo, the middle C sounds even though you haven’t played it.

 

So here is an idea to play with. Perhaps ghosts inhabit some sort of dark matter. There’s plenty of the stuff (even more than Michio Kaku says, 26.8 % according to the 2013 Planck probe). Thus when a ghost moves within its own ‘octave’ it sets up a resonance in our ‘octave’ which some of us may detect.

 

How would we detect it? Because arguably we all have – as the saying goes – a ‘ghost in the machine’. That is our bodies, and brains, might be very clever machines, but we drive them with our minds (our ghosts). And when we die, our ghosts (souls, spirits, astral bodies, dark matter selves, whatever) continue functioning in their ‘octave’ – only there’s no physical matter distracting them any more.

 

This can be so scary that some ghosts immediately refocus on the physical world and get round to a bit of haunting. (Think films like ‘The Others’ or Patrick Swayze’s ‘Ghost’.)

 

Obviously there can be numerous objections to all this. For instance, the vibrating piano strings need a connecting medium – air – ‘In Space No One Can Hear You... Play the Piano’, so what would be the medium between one octave of the string and another? (The string itself perhaps?)

 

And how can we test the way that Dark Matter interacts with Physical Matter? Answer: we can’t. That’s why we call it Dark Matter. Because we can’t detect it – except at vast gravitational scales. Therefore, it remains hidden, undetected, occult. (Go on, check it in a thesaurus: that sort of ‘dark’ means, amongst other synonyms, ‘occult’.)

 

And how do we know whether there’s much, or any, Dark Matter in our vicinity? We can’t. It’s dark. There may be oodles. There may just be spitty little bits. We don’t know.

 

And why should we believe Michio Kaku and his String speculations? No reason. Just so long as we don’t go trusting Coxy cos he looks good on a mountain in jeans. Let the scientists fight it out – but they’ve got to play fair and not try inflicting any naughty unscientific certainties on us.

Lindy Hopping and Stool Bopping

The Thrillsville Way to Health and Happiness...

 

It started with a slice of serendipity. Late July I was in York, no reason, just a good place to be. And what I found at the centre, Parliament Street, was a set of buildings getting put up – temporary halls, some truly ornate. So I asked the story and found the Great Yorkshire Fringe was about to hit the city of my birth.

 

Excellent, I got a programme, looked over the events, discounted comedy items (can’t be bothered with ain’t-life-shit humour – cos it ain’t, it’s great) but found a Swing Music event. Yess! My sort of music: trumpets, saxophones, trombones, rhythm section, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, count me in. Lindy Hop dancers too, whatever they were.

 

My-my-my! Whatever they were!

 

Forget the music, cos when we turned up I was just mesmerised by the dancing. It was such a superb load of flash and cool and show-off and turn-on and skill and casual and, well, my words run out but my enthusiasm didn’t. Right then I wanted to Lindy Hop.

 

See, I’ve got to tell you a story. I’ve got type 2 diabetes, and that’s a total lie except it’s true. But how can I have it when I’m 6 foot 2, and 12 and a half stone? That equals one skinny-malinks-me, and you fight type 2 diabetes by getting yourself skinny-malinked. See what I mean? I was pre-skinnied. I didn’t need the diet. I was already good.

 

But the numbers said different. Score 42 on the blood test and you’re borderline. Score 60 and you’re well in, not drastic, not needles and the rest of it, but you’re in. And I scored – guess what – 60. Sometimes 59, sometimes 61, but average 60.

 

So what else could I do? Answer: get mega fit. Answer: Lindy Hop. I mean, come on, I’m not going to a gym, all that self loathing and self love and self flagellation and shared showers and shared dressing rooms. Ugh. And I can’t run, dodgy knee, and I struggle to walk fast, plantar-fasciitis in the right foot. But Lindy Hop, yeah, I’d go through the pain barriers for that, wouldn’t even know they were there.

 

And that’s what I did. Went to Pure Lindy in York, Tuesday evenings, run by Sian and Julian, lovely people, lovely sessions, mm that’s what I wanted. But the first week I went, the beginners were on 6 count moves and that made no sense cos I know there’s 4 beats in a bar, not 6. (Remember I love swing. I play swing – piano – I sing swing – sawdust throat. I know how many beats there should be to a bar.) So that was humiliating, total dyspraxia, first-time hopelessness. And that, my friends, is when you give up if you’re going to.

 

I wasn’t.

 

No, I studied YouTube. I analysed the moves (they’d be onto 8 count next time). I worked out exactly where each foot would go. I drilled myself. I turned up. I was good. Not spectacularly good, but good enough.

 

And here’s the big bonus, I’d go home and teach Chris the moves, half from the lessons and half from YouTube, and we’d practice together, an hour a day. We weren’t very good at first, but you know what practice does? That’s right, gets you very hot, very sweaty, and – bit by bit – very fit. Not too bad at Lindy Hopping either.

 

After a few weeks we had a routine – you’re not meant to, the guy’s got to lead, the gal’s got to follow, swop genders if you wish, but the thing is there’s leading and there’s following. Well, we didn’t. We just got our routine and stuck to it. But we were slick. I tell you there were times we flew.

 

We’d do the Lindy Circle and she’d throw back her hair and the gravity as we spun was just awesome. We’d do the Flip-Flop and we’d fly past each other, perfect sync. We’d put on Benny Goodman Taking A Chance On Love (vocalist Helen Forrest) and we’d be back in the 1940s, dancing in imagination with her mum and dad, dancing a dance without limit of time. And folks, I wouldn’t know if the earth moved cos we were flying two feet above it.

 

But let me tell you something about that Great Yorkshire Fringe show, the one where I got hooked on Lindy Hopping. An image that stayed with me afterwards was of a couple dancing past us, in the side-by-side hold, kicking and hopping in perfect unity. I still see it in my mind’s eyes. I wanted to do that more than anything, that perfect kicking and hopping.

 

And then one week I did. It was the Forties version of the Charleston, and what that involves is an 8 count, where on the 3rd count you kick (left foot) and hop (right foot), then on the 5^th 6th and 7th you kick (right foot) and hop (left foot). That’s a lot of hopping. A lot of kicking too, but it was the hopping that counted, cos, listen, I’d got it (practised off YouTube beforehand) and I was kicking and hopping with everyone else in a line. Couldn’t wait to get home, practise it with Chris, get our own perfect unity of kicking and hopping in action.

 

Can you feel the story building to a climax? It’s got to, hasn’t it? Something’s got to happen. Well, you know what? Ping.

 

That’s it. Ping.

 

I felt my achilles tendon, left foot, give a ping as I hopped. Not a bad ping, didn’t stop me dancing at the time, only really stiffened up next day, but gradually I came to realise this was serious. Bust your achilles and you’re in plaster for weeks, out of action for months. Well, I hadn’t bust it, only pinged it. Not even a pop, only a ping.

 

But I’ve got to take care. If I want to get back to Lindy Hopping (8 count, 6 count, forget the Charleston) then I’ve got to let this ping re-knit itself. But that leaves a question, and maybe you’re asking it already. What about the diabetes? Had all that manic practising paid off? Well, guess what I scored on the latest test? 53! That, my friends, is a spectacular drop. You can’t go much lower once you’ve actually got the dire-beaties. So I was kicking some serious diabetic ass! Yeah, I was smiting some serious diabetic goolies! I was so fit I couldn’t afford not to stay fit.

 

So here comes the question. How do you stay fit when you’re nursing your achilles? I tried exercise biking. Nope, Mr Achilles didn’t fancy that at all. I tried again and Mr Achilles liked it even less. So what now? Come on folks, you’n work out the answer. Let’s make a sum of it.

 

The only way I can get fit is dancing + I can’t move my foot around = sit on a stool and dance.

 

That’s right. Put on the up-tempo stuff – Nena, 99 Red Balloons; Madonna, Ray of Light; Lou Bega, Mambo No.5; Los Del Rio, Macarena; & so on – then punch, dab, elbow, shoulder, shake, shrug, nod, use weights, drop weights, go go go. Takes a while till the arms and torso are geared up, but today I got real hot dancing on a stool. I got real sweaty. I released a whole bucketful of endorphins. And I kicked that diabetes so bad it dropped its head and slunk out the door.

 

Now, I can’t say how long it’ll take the achilles to stop sulking. It’s had three weeks, maybe it wants another three. Maybe another five. Whatever. Can’t rush cos, fair play, that’s a 65 year old achilles. It’s lived the bulk of its life in another millennium. But one day I’m gonna get back to Lindy Hopping. One day I’m gonna do the 8 counts and 6 counts. One day I’m gonna partner the love-of-my-life, and we’re gonna fly. Oh yeah, we’re gonna fly.

 

P.S. LOML has just done in her knee at zumba. Mm, could be a bit of a wait for those flying sessions...

 

  ***** 

May I invite you to make certain purchases? (I may? Why, thank you...) 

*

(a) The Salamander Stone (by my most excellent and trusty pal, Mrs Me) from one of these outlets: 

Direct from the publisher, Burst Books: click here 

Amazon UK: click here 

*  

(b) The Two Worlds of Wellesley Tudor Pole (by Mrs Me’s most excellent and trusty pal, Me): 

Amazon UK: click here 

Amazon.com (US): click here 

 * 

(You’ll be getting both of them? Well, that is an admirable choice, if I may say so...) 

*****