pointless and beautiful
Perhaps this should be split into two categories but you get the idea, this is the category for dreams and memories and recollections of events that transpired in the past!
“Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” – Alfred North Whitehead.
Kathryn suggested yesterday that I must be unsatisfied with aspects of my business or I wouldn’t keep looking for other business elements. However I would counter with the above quote from Mathematician and Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead that ideas require action!
I awoke from strange dreams.
I had been deliberately poisoned, something I was being encouraged to eat was not what it appeared to be. Yet unbeknownst to my poisoner I was able to make the poison pass from me to another. The poison flew from me in the form of the silhouettes of impossibly black rooks, and thus I was healed.
Even though I am now awake the sound of the Rooks cawing still remains, filling my head.
Since I was a small boy I have occasionally maintained that at some point in the future I am going to lose my right hand and my right eye. Whilst drunk at University and in melancholy moods I would contemplate cutting my hand off so that I was somehow in control of the action I felt convinced must surely occur sooner or later. Sometimes my contemplation would include a knife, and yet somehow I’m sat here typing this two handedly.
I have recently become distressed by the notion that I may have got the wrong side. When asked whether a certain freckle or a scratch which adorns my face is on the left or the right I become confused. This is surely because my familiarity with my own image is wholly dependent upon mirrors which reflect my mirror image rather than my true likeness.
Can you imagine my future distress if I’d lopped off the right only to have an accident which causes me the loss of my left!
For the benefit of readers of a sensitive disposition, I’m going to resist my rather gruesome urge to describe previous contemplations I’ve had relating to the removing my right eyeball.
Anyhow enough of my curious childhood auto-amputee -ism. I’m just trying to give you some background to events that culminated in my trip to A&E last Saturday. Read Part 2 for more details.
Cat’s Eyes on an empty carriageway lighting the route to the horizon…
Not the “Highway” or the “Freeway” but “Carriageway”! How long since carriages the main mode?
“I’m a human being! My life has value!”
“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”
Both quotes come from Howard in the film Network 1976.
I’ve just found this dream scribbled on a piece of paper shoved in a notebook. It clearly displays the date as: 15 July 2004, 12:58:32. I have therefore included it in Ringpull for that date although today, the day of adding is 10th of February 2006.
I leave our room and walk out onto the hot street. I know in advance what I am going to do. This is a canal dream. Although here, here in the mediteranian the heat and dust raising from the stone beneath my feet at every footfall will be in direct contrast to the cool murky water. I dive in and break the surface. Flipping through the looking glass I open my eyes expecting to be blinded by the water. I am suprised by how clear the water is from this side. I swim along the bottom for awhile before catching sight of the light above, I rise, gulping air as my head breaks the surface. I swim along the canal for some distance, and it is only when I consider getting out and attempt to make for the canal’s stone edge that I realise that there is a flowing current and that it might be stronger than me, that I might not make the shore. It isn’t that the current has just crept up like some mischievious water spirit, but because I wasn’t travelling against the current it hadn’t become aparent til now. As I reach my leg, dripping and splashing over the hot dry stone I climb from the canal. I walk along the street. There is a father and son working on a dusty building site, they watch my progress and the human slug trail I leave as I march down the street in my soaking clothes.
Kathryn is at the bureau de change. The gentleman behind the counter is plesant enough. Kathryn is explaining how much money she is passing to him. She points to some assorted change and tells him that “they are equal” or “it is equal” but equal to what I cannot fathom. The situation turns. She is rude to me, and the gentleman behind the counter is embarrassed, I am angered. I walk away. She does not go back for the money and declares that she too will walk away. I see that she means it. She says she wishes she was back at work. I know then that something is very wrong. She doesn’t need me anymore I can see it. I know that there is going to be some truth. Some truth that I am not going to like to hear. I am angered not that the situation is as it is, that being, it transpires, that Kathryn is in love with and having a relationship with someone she works with, but that she hasn’t told me the truth before now. She’s wasted my time, and time is precious. I ask who he is and am corrected but not answered, “she” she says and leaves it at that.
How can I not be enough? I just don’t see it. I would do anything, but it wouldn’t be enough. I storm away. Thunder clounds roll across my face with the knotting of my brows and the darkening of my countanance. I come to a strange room. Half indoor half out, it’s floor consists of some boards over water connected on axes, so that so long as you stand in the center they do not tip. Each square board contains one smaller than the last with it’s own axes. Paul Daniels is stood in the bottom right of the room. He is transfering gravel from something to a wheelbarrow. As the gravel disappears it reveals behind where it was quite lethal looking spikes concealed beneath the surface. Paul occasionally takes a handful of gravel and sticks it down his trousers. All the while he mutters as a gimp or a submissive. I assist him in his task with transfering the gravel. I don’t believe it was Paul Daniels. I think I just thought it was. Maybe it was, I don’t know. Certainly once I had decided it was that was whom I saw.
I dreamed I was writing a newspaper article. I was fighting with the wording of it. I was in a study but the room wasn’t mine. Object repetition in dreams is strange. An old friend of mine, Angus, used to always dream of a blue bong. It would always be there somewhere in the background of his dreams. For me also there are objects that turn up over and over again and which in some way are meaningful. A dark green standard desk lamp. Frosted glass with gold and black lettering. Sepia tones. Black coffee. A bright spotlight and darkened room. ‘H’ pencils in a jar. Blue-grey smoke from a cigarette in a green glass ashtray. …and thus this room that I find myself in is familiar, and yet unfamiliar at the same time.
Upon awaking I remembered the whole article that I had written and I felt pleased, because I knew it was the way I wished it to be, and it was finished. …The memory of the dream rapidly faded and now although I remember the intentions I had in writing the piece, the precise wording, that I had felt so pleased with, has gone completely, faded back into that dream world without me, as dreams are want to do. I can still see the title of my carefully crafted article:
The idea of a conspiracy: memes of greed
Maybe I’ll actually write it one day, and maybe I won’t. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I am reluctant to attempt to think further of writing down what I do remember of it. Already I am left with that feeling that anyone who has ever lost their work and yet been forced to attempt to re-write it from memory will be only too familiar with. The words are perhaps the same, but things are phrased not quite as they were before. Sentences do not gel together as they did in the original, and maybe, maybe it’s okay. However because it is discordant with what I remember of the original it sounds cacophonous as I speak the words in my head. It is an uncomfotable feeling.
At some point last summer, Kathryn and I, on one of our attempts at fresh air and an uncomputer oriented environment, ventured to Silverdale for a walk and an explore. Having had an enjoyable walk along the beach we cut back to the village along a path and through a field. A field with some lazily grazing cows in it. We were delighted to spot a cow that was completely black from nose to hoof, apart from a white circle all the way around its back and belly. We named it “Polo Cow”, and having giggled and marvelled at it for a time, we wended our way back to the car. I confess that I neglect to mention a slight foray to the pub on the way to the car, as this was back in the days when I still drank, but that is aside from the point.
On the bank holiday Saturday just gone we escaped Lancaster again to enjoy the sunshine! We went for a walk up and around Arnside knot, watched hot air balloons and a train crossing the bay and managed time for a quick coke in the Woodlands pub in Silverdale on the way home in the evening. As we were driving along Kathryn spotted a whole field of cows like “Polo Cow” and we began to suspect that it was in fact another breed of cow, and not your average everyday Fresian as we had assumed. Kathryn has just now discovered on-line that they are called “Galloway Belted” which is a pretty good description! I’ve included a picture for your entertainment, and to ensure that you can recognise one should you need to!
Galloway Belted also known as ‘Polo Cow’ and a Friesian for comparison.
This Dream was found in an old diary. It was entered into this blog on the 16/09/2006 however it is originally dated 22/07/1997 and thus I have added it as an entry for that date. Interestingly back then it was only ’97 there was no suggestion of another millenium. Oddly I re-found the grey blanket yesterday.
I’m cutting through a catholic school… I am carrying my grey blanket. It is an object from my childhood. I like it’s dull colour and soft fabric. I arrive at a quadrangle. There are many people here in the quad. There is a game in progress. A confessional game… everyone circles a central figure muttering about their guilt, and then those who have been forgiven run around finding those that they have met before and forgiving them for some crime against them, once forgiven they are able to join their forgivers. I hear a voice that I recognise. A female voice. I look around. All those present wear long grey hooded cloaks. I recognise no-one. It seems a silly game. There is real fear in the eyes of those not yet forgiven. I gather the blanket around me, wrapping it, it metamorphosises into a garment the same as theirs. Unable to see the individual who’s voice I’d heard I set out to cross the square. I am half way across when a man grabs my arm. He turns to me recognition in his eyes. I think I am found out. I realise that I too feel some form of recognition. He is, although familiar, not placeable in my memory. Over his shoulder I see a girl hiding behind the pillars from which I’d walked. I recognise her face, and realise that it was her voice that I heard addressing me earlier. I am frightened that the gentleman in front of me will see her. I fear that he is a school teacher. He is still intently focused upon me and does not look around. I am much relieved. I realise that he is speaking to me and that I have not been listening. I attempt to concentrate upon what he is saying. He is asking my forgiveness. Internally I smile… it spreads slowly across my lips. I’m grinning manically. He wants something of me, and I have the right to refuse. Externally my face remains passive. I explain that I am sorry, but that I have never seen the gentleman before. That I can forgive him of no crime. He knows that I lie. He says nothing. He shows nothing. No inward sigh. No discontentment. I leave the quadrangle and my dream ends.
Date:22/7/97
July 22nd, 1997
This Dream was found in an old diary. It was entered into this blog on the 16/09/2006 however it is originally dated 22/07/1997 and thus I have added it as an entry for that date. Interestingly back then it was only ‘97 there was no suggestion of another millennium. Oddly I re-found the grey blanket yesterday.
I’m cutting through a catholic school… I am carrying my grey blanket. It is an object from my childhood. I like it’s dull colour and soft fabric. I arrive at a quadrangle. There are many people here in the quad. There is a game in progress. A confessional game… everyone circles a central figure muttering about their guilt, and then those who have been forgiven run around finding those that they have met before and forgiving them for some crime against them, once forgiven they are able to join their forgivers. I hear a voice that I recognise. A female voice. I look around. All those present wear long grey hooded cloaks. I recognise no-one. It seems a silly game. There is real fear in the eyes of those not yet forgiven. I gather the blanket around me, wrapping it, it metamorphoses into a garment the same as theirs. Unable to see the individual who’s voice I’d heard I set out to cross the square. I am half way across when a man grabs my arm. He turns to me recognition in his eyes. I think I am found out. I realise that I too feel some form of recognition. He is, although familiar, not placeable in my memory. Over his shoulder I see a girl hiding behind the pillars from which I’d walked. I recognise her face, and realise that it was her voice that I heard addressing me earlier. I am frightened that the gentleman in front of me will see her. I fear that he is a school teacher. He is still intently focused upon me and does not look around. I am much relieved. I realise that he is speaking to me and that I have not been listening. I attempt to concentrate upon what he is saying. He is asking my forgiveness. Internally I smile… it spreads slowly across my lips. I’m grinning manically. He wants something of me, and I have the right to refuse. Externally my face remains passive. I explain that I am sorry, but that I have never seen the gentleman before. That I can forgive him of no crime. He knows that I lie. He says nothing. He shows nothing. No inward sigh. No discontentment. I leave the quadrangle and my dream ends.
Date:22/7/97