Causa Absentiae

This is just to inform my many loyal fans out there (yes, you know who you are) and readers of my blog (me, myself and I) that the current gap in my blog posts is due to a very heavy workload (that's me opposite slogging away) which leaves me no time to enlighten and entertain my large and dedicated following. I have several ideas in the pipeline for future posts but have not yet had the opportunity to fully develop them, let alone put them on here for your edification and delectation.

So I'm just letting you all know, every man jack of you, that I will be back with another apocalyptic post very shortly and that you should be patient and not despair or worry yourselves sick over my brief absence, understandable though it is. Let's keep hope alive, shall we?

 

In the meantime I must dash, duty calls and work beckons and there's no time to lose if I'm to stay viable. My upcoming post will more than make up for the time lapse and the crushing vacuity of this post, once I've had the time to bring it to fruition, of course. And one more thing, please don't flood this site with appreciative comments, singing my praises and all that, the shock of it all would be too much for my system. After all, I've sort of got used to the unbroken silence...

Life and All That

I thought for a change I would write about something straightforward which I could just sail through and not have to think too hard about. So I drew up a shortlist of two topics: LIFE and the UNIVERSE. As I couldn't make up my mind between them, I tossed a coin and it came up heads, which was 'life'. So there you have it, 'life' it is.

So let's jump in at the deep end and ask the question: what is this condition we call 'life'? I mean, what is it? Well, frankly it's anyone's guess! But whatever it is, one thing’s for certain: we cling onto it for dear... life! Well, we would wouldn’t we? And another thing: without it, there is NOTHING else. Whatever the precise nature of the condition, it is a PRECONDITION for every other condition.

And it doesn’t have to be good and pleasurable for us to want it and want to hang on to it. It can be bad as bad can be, but we still want to keep it. Essentially, it is the Operating System on which all our programs sit, and if our OS conks out, our computer stops working. But unlike a computer, there’s no fixing our OS once it has broken down.

All of us (well, almost all of us) want to live and to live for as long as we can. It makes no odds if we’re old as Methuselah, chronically ill, or intensely unhappy, we still desperately hang on to life for the sake of ... hanging on to life. And we do it because we cannot entertain the thought of our own inexistence, though we know it must surely come one day. It's just too frightening to contemplate.

The state that we call life is different from anything else. Once lost, for whatever reason, it cannot be recovered. It cannot be re-activated, re-generated, or restored to working order. It is a one-off, a one-way ticket, a journey with the same destination for all of us. But, unlike other destinations, it is one which we do not want to arrive at, ever, as it’s a destination from which there is no return. It is literally the end of the road... for all of us, with no exceptions. And... that's more than enough clichés for one paragraph!

In the general scheme of thing, Nature has been unkind to us. The mind does not seem to age in tandem with the body. Our body wilts and withers inside and out. Our skin wrinkles and our hair falls out. Everything slows down and we become frailer and more fragile. We are often plagued by age-related illnesses and disabilities. And yet mentally we see ourselves as younger, it’s as if we’re stuck in a time warp. We may be in our nineties or a hundred plus but we’re not ready to die, we’re not psychologically prepared. We may believe in God and heaven and the whole package but we’re not ready to meet our Maker or dwell in paradise (assuming of course we’re not going to that other place!).

I have seen television programmes about people with monstrous deformities, severe disabilities, awful impoverished lives and nightmarish living conditions, and yet they all earnestly wish to carry on living and fear death. Their lives are full of suffering, physical and mental, their prospects dismal and depressing, but they cling to life and all the grief and hardship it offers them rather than envisage the finality of the alternative. In their position, would we who are more fortunate think and behave differently? Would we opt out of life before our time? Would you?

The reality is that we are all on this earth for but a short time. Some of us are blessed with a relatively long life (at least in human terms) and some of us are cursed with a life cut short by accident or illness, but both are infinitely short in cosmic terms. There’s usually not much we can do about this, barring suicide, and so we really only have one realistic option: to make the best of it while we can and avoid needless regrets in later life. The Latin expression carpe diem (seize the day), which nowadays is heard almost ad nauseam (another Latin saying), even from the lips of the relatively illiterate, is as true now as it’s ever been. Amen.

Encounters of a Jogger in the Park 1

When I’m out jogging in the neighbouring park I come across all sorts and sizes of people and... dogs. Some are regulars and some I only see from time to time and yet others I see once and I never see them again. And of course over a period of time some regulars do not show up again and I can’t help wondering why. Have they moved house, changed their daily routine, or simply passed on to that great park in the sky? The folk I see there are of course just a tiny slice of the number who visit the park every day, since my jogging time window is narrow and normally around the same time in my lunch hour.

There’s the very elderly couple who used to come regularly, the woman using a walking-stick and looking much frailer than the man. Probably because of this I often used to see the old man on his own. He was a small thin and wispy figure and he had a prim little shuffle of a walk, always looking ahead, never to the side, and never gave me a glance as I ran past him. I speak of them in the past tense because it’s now been some time since I last saw either of them and I rather fear the worst for the old woman who looked very infirm and was uncertain on her legs. Though the old codger might re-appear some time, I fear it will never again be with his partner. But we shall see.

There used to be a short bald chubby chap with one of the biggest dogs I have ever seen. I think he said it was an American Bulldog, and it was a massive beast, with a jaw that looked like it could chew its way through steel bars. Just the sight of it, with its gaping mouth, bristling teeth and tongue hanging down in panting mode, scared the shit out of me, and I ended up christening its owner the “Scary Dog Man”. I think he rather liked his new nickname because he once told me he could make me run faster by setting the dog after me. I couldn’t really disagree with that, though I rather suspect the brute – that’s the dog not its owner – would easily catch up with me and have me for lunch. Well that was the Scary Dog Man whom I haven’t seen for about a year now and hopefully won’t see again, not because of him but because of the monster pet that accompanied him and gave me the shivers.

Talking of dogs in the park, I had a very unpleasant clash with one such beast a couple of years back. It seems its owner threw a stick for it to retrieve and it set off after it in hot pursuit. Unfortunately the stick had been hurled in my general direction and as I came round a curve I saw this black missile hurtling towards me at breakneck speed. It was all so quick that I had no time to take evasive action and it seems the dog wasn’t too bothered either. The inevitable happened of course. We ran into each other head on and the shock of the impact sent me reeling to the ground whilst it appeared to have little effect on the creature which ran on to retrieve the stick. As I lay on my back on the turf, trying to get my breath back and recover from the impact and the shock, its owner walked up to me and asked, in a rather offhand manner: “Are you alright, mate?” He made no attempt to help me up or anything and when I weakly replied something to the effect that I would be alright, he just wandered off again. He obviously cared not a jot and was quite happy to leave me lying there. It was some minutes later that I recovered sufficiently to get back up on my feet.

This puts me in mind of another incident with a big pooch. Not as big as the Scary Man’s Dog, but big enough. I had gone for my jog at a much later time than usual, which meant that a different crowd was frequenting the park, a much younger one which earlier in the day would have been at school or college. Anyway, there was a group of young lads with a couple of large dogs in their midst. As I ran along a stretch of the park near to the group, one of the dogs pulled away from it and started bounding in my direction. This made me a little nervous but I decided to keep my cool and keep running. The next moment I heard the rapid patter of paws behind me and before I knew what was happening the dog overtook me and swerved round to stop right in front of me. How I managed to avoid running into the animal, I don’t know, it must have been some sort of reflex action, but manage it I did and, although I came close to falling over it, I stopped just short of the creature. For its part, it did not seem to flinch in the least, as it stood its ground, its tongue lolling outside its jaw. The next moment, its teenage owner turned towards us and called the dog over, but I got no word of apology from him or anything approaching it (that’s kids for you!) and I resumed my run, muttering my discontent under my breath. I had come off relatively lightly from this encounter, unlike the one with the stick-retrieving dog.

Well, dear reader, if you have stuck with me so far, I will spare you any more... for the moment..., as my encounters and experiences during my jogging in the park are many and manifold... oh yes, there are many more... and I will come back to this subject in another post or posts and further delight you with my reminiscences. Hence the ‘1’ in the title! You can’t wait for the sequel, can you?

Football Folly

Although I am no great football fan, I find myself asking, on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup 2010 tournament in South Africa: what’s going on in today’s football? Or rather what's happening with today’s footballers, and especially with those near and at the top of the pyramid of the "beautiful game", our so-called soccer stars? Why are so many of them so surly, ill-mannered, disrespectful, bad-tempered, rude, and just plain abusive? Why are so many of them so arrogant, aggressive, conceited, smug and self-complacent? Why are they so often poor losers, graceless in defeat, querulous and curmudgeonly? Why are so many of them so.... well, I think you get the picture!

My opinion on this, for what it’s worth, is that they are just plain SPOILT. They are over-pampered, over-feted and overpaid and they have inflated egos to match. And, if the truth be told, the fault is really ours. We elevate them to the status of demi-gods and they have come to believe in the myth of their own greatness and deification and now we the fans and general public are getting what we deserve from them. The Greek Olympian gods were a tempestuous and fickle bunch and so are our modern-day soccer demi-gods who inhabit the Olympian heights of football stardom.

And what is it that they do exactly which warrants such elevation and hero worship? Are they brain surgeons? Intergalactic astronauts? Leaders of men and nations? Budding messianic miracle-workers? No, none of these or anything comparable. They are purely and simply “men who kick a ball about a field”. This judgment may seem harsh but that is what they do. True, they furnish us, or some of us, with entertainment and moments of excitement, jubilation and lamentation, but let us not lose sight of the fact that it is just a game and that the players are trying to get a ball into a net to win the game.

Given what they are and what they do, it would hardly seem to justify the near-godlike status that so many footballers enjoy today and the overblown egos they nurture on the strength of our support and encouragement and adoration. One can admire their ball-handling skills, their speed and agility, their persistence and goal-scoring ability and of course their general performance, but when all’s said and done they are kicking a ball around a field and trying to outwit their opponents so as to score goals. Many of them are scarcely out of their teens and the rest are little older and still green behind the ears. They are neither wise men, ancient prophets, miracle-workers, faith healers or intellectual giants.

It may be surmised from what I am saying about footballers in general, and one can only generalise about these things, there being always exceptions, that I am ill-disposed towards soccer and soccer idols in principle, but it’s nothing of the sort. I fully realise that a good football match can be a very entertaining event, that it can engender excitement and enthusiasm as well as suspense and despair, that good skilful players can be objects of adulation and acquire a loyal following of fans and supporters. But – and you knew this ‘but’ was coming, didn’t you? – they are what they are, that and nothing more. They are not gods, saints, representatives of Christ on earth, nor can they fly or go without food and water. In other words, they are just like us, each one of them, just like you and me. It is only because we have bestowed such a high status to their activity and chosen to apotheosise them in our exaggerated sense of their value that they bask in the limelight of our idolatry.

Although I’ve concentrated my fire on football in this post, this is just one example of what’s wrong with our world today and the intense celebrity culture that we’ve created. We put people up on very high pedestals, be they footballers, singers, actors, or other individuals in the public eye, and we proceed to inflate their already oversized egos until they themselves think they are superhuman, so that if and when they fall short of our lofty expectations we feel betrayed and cheated. What we seem to overlook in our deification of these individuals is that they too are just human beings like us, with the same inbuilt needs and flaws, and with the same potential to do good or bad. Before we give these individuals our adulation and adoration and confer upon them a godlike status, we would do well to keep in mind that they are people like us, admittedly with a certain talent most prized in one or other field of public endeavour or entertainment, but people like us nonetheless, who came into this world like us and will leave this world like us to be reduced to nothing like us.

Et sic transit gloria mundi.