Best Of

Well, after eight months and over 160 posts my "five posts per week" regime has come to an end. I can't say I'm sorry to see it go - towards the end it became increasingly tiresome and I was sorely tempted to break it on quite a number of occasions. This blog is not about to die, but it is going to begin a more sedentary lifestyle. (read: I'll post when I feel like it) Today I'm not going to give you a big philosophical post, but more of a summary of the year; a 'Best Of' list of sorts. Of course, the selection is totally subjective, being composed of some of my favourite posts (one per month) - so if you're unimpressed with these, I can only say that there were plenty more to choose from, and sometimes it was a toss up. Without further ado then, The Top Picks of 2006! Oh, and best wishes for the New Year.

• May: Rise of the Machine
• June: Orange Socks
• July: The Right To Kill
• August: An Old Giant
• September: The King & The Mob
• October: Death of a Language
• November: A Fight To Remember
• December: The Great Aunt

Enjoy!

Great (Or Small) Expectations

We had some friends around for dinner tonight - which occasioned some of the best entertainment I've been treated to in years. Post-meal conversation (led by the two fathers) turned to the animated recounting of childhood exploits. Such as, while riding the monorail at a zoo, dropping hard sweets on the heads of humans and animals alike. Or biffing Jaffas at peoples backs when the lights went down at the cinema. Or creating havoc with an old fashioned laser. Their past rambunctious mischievousness was matched only by their present creativity in suggesting ways that they could do it better. I see little of that spirit in the children of today. And that worries me. Granted, it's all fun and games till et cetera but the human race has been lurching along for some time now; kids haven't destroyed it yet. The generally acknowledged solution was a good smack when they went too far, and that was that. Now though, instead of bouncing off the walls of this world with seemingly random energy, children rush home from school to watch TV, surf the net, or play video games. If any friends come over, they just better hope it's multi-player capable. Or what about those ones who have violin lessons after school, dance on Tuesday evenings, a scout meeting on Friday, Saturday soccer practice, and surf cadets all Sunday? But they're being so productive.... Yes - but are they being children? Or mini-adults? Both the slob mode and the high achiever lifestyle are destructive. And most kids now fall into one category or the other. Why? Why the change? Well, I'm not a sociologist, but I will go so far as to say that some of it has to do with the expectations of the parents. If they don't expect their kids to amount to anything, or don't bother to think much about them at all then they'll provide the easiest diversions possible: the sterile, automated world of television (and co). If, on the other hand, they expect their children to become super stars by age nine, a crammed, regimented schedule is the natural place to start. What should really be expected of them is simply what you'd expect from something that's small and slowly becoming larger. It's not difficult, with that in mind, to find sufficient (and appropriate) stimulus for kids. Most of the time, if you give them half a chance, they'll find it themselves.

Offensives

I had an interesting phone conversation this morning. It was one of those Gee, thanks for the present (why the heck did you get me that?) sort of calls. The kind soul had sent me pots, your standard cooking pots, and I had no idea why or what for. Naturally I wasn't looking forward to making the call. But I figured I could worm my way through the dialogue with my standard set of generalizations, vagaries and appropriate grunts (and still be fairly honest - or at least not tell a big lie). So I dialed the number, started chatting to the person, and then about three seconds into my Thank you for being so thoughtful speech, she burst out laughing. Turns out that these pots had been intended for another Christopher; the mix-up being the work of an overzealous kid who gave them to the first Chris he came across. We both laughed then - it was such a relief not to have to tiptoe over eggshells. A lot of stress could be cut out of our lives if we didn't have the strain of trying not to offend people all the time. I'm not talking about big things; it's all the petty stuff that wears us down. We're always having to consider whether Auntie Margaret is in a huff because we haven't written her a letter (ink and paper, mind) for some time, or what we should say when (female) aquaintances ask How does this look? or whether being absent from this or that function will be taken as a slight. It might seem that there's not much we can do about any of that - telling people not to get offended rarely works. But there is something we can do about the problem as a whole: we can attempt to be a bit more tolerant ourselves. There's only one person you can successfully command to toughen up or let it go - and that's yourself. If you're the only one doing it, at least it's a start. Until everyone else joins you though, keep practising those ever versatile grunts.

If

Perhaps you're wondering why a post didn't turn up last night. On second thoughts, you probably didn't notice. Anyway. It was because I was miserably sick. On Christmas afternoon my throat started to get a bit scratchy; it wasn't that uncomfortable, but I knew what it meant. By evening I was beginning to feel the phlegm build-up. I hardly slept that night and felt horrible the next morning. All yesterday I threw every resource I had at the sickness - rest, water, copious doses of a potent herbal tonic, a whole bulb of garlic - The Works, save antibiotics which I was trying to avoid. Nothing much seemed to happen, though I did have a better sleep last night. I woke this morning (feeling a lot better, though that's often the case early in the day) to find that my mom had booked me an appointment with a local GP. So I went along and (surprise) he prescribed antibiotic drugs to get rid of the infection. So I bought them and have taken them and am swiftly recovering. I wonder now though if things would've taken the same course had I persisted with the natural method as I'd intended to. I'll never know now, I suppose. Things like this happen quite often: I've abandoned one course for another, unsure in the end whether it really made any difference. It's silly to worry about such things, any relevant choices have been frozen in the past, but I can't help it. If I had just persevered, if I hadn't been so hasty, if I'd not made the jump - would anything be different? Lewis' Aslan said "No one is told what would have happened," and it's quite true. There are not, as far as we know, multiple universes in which every possible choice is played out, therefore the reality which we create is the only one which does, or ever will, exist. Anything else is just futile theorizing. Often, on this twisted earth, we do things and make choices that we have cause to question or regret later. That's normal, if a little saddening. But the only question we need ask ourselves is What should I do next time?

Let It Go

It's been a good Christmas. Perhaps not a day I'll remember forever - it was fairly uneventful - but I'm convinced that we forget many of our best times. The things we look back on and laugh about and memorialize in story were usually not very nice at the time, even (occasionally) downright nasty. That's understandable; conflict produces tension and drama and all that stuff we love in a tale. But times of peace, quiet happiness and refreshment (which we seldom recall and almost never recount) provide us with the fuel to keep on muscling through the rest of life. Maybe remembering them is not necessary - they've done all their work already; there is no reason for them to remain. We recall our mistakes (too often, sometimes) to learn from them, but what can we learn from peace? Retrospectively, very little. Some things are not designed to be learned from so much as accepted. That's a hard truth to swallow for ever curious Mankind but we'd better try, because if this is not grasped we'll find ourselves plucking apart flowers to find out what makes them beautiful. The desire to hold things in our hands forever, to be masters of everything we experience, to know why everything exists and how it works, must be reined in. The part of us that we call our mind (our reason and will) cannot file everything away neatly in drawers and label each with its uses. To attempt to do so is not only an exercise in futility; it will also irrevocably damage many of the items we most treasure. It's as foolish as trying to keep a river, because you can feel it flowing away. Leave it. Let it go. Forget, secure in the knowlege that some part of you will keep it forever.

Celebrate

Preparations are well underway now for Christmas. And they jolly well should be. Well, yes, but we've left things a little later this year. That's alright, we're not behind schedule. It's going to be a good Christmas - I can tell by the food that's being gathered. We are going to have a feast of near medieval qualities. Any thought of healthy eating or dieting will be banished into the nether darkness for one day at least. So it should be too. Sometimes I think that we in our modern society have forgotten how to celebrate. We still know how to get smashed and play loud music that no one listens to, but that's a rather poor substitute for the old ways. Celebrations shouldn't be about dulling ourselves out on mega decibels and booze, but neither should they be ascetic. At all. If anyone mentions calories on Christmas, smack them in the head. Just don't tell them I told you to. It's not a time to be frugal either - bless others without counting the cents (make sure, though, that you're giving to them for their sake, not your own). But prudence is required.... Yes, yes. Prudence is a good thing. Heaven knows I'm naturally cautious and habitually prudent. But love is more important. Joy (not happiness) is also more important. So let's get our priorities straight, shall we? Very few people have died from eating their fill of bacon or prawns or cheese or chocolate. Very few have been bankrupted by unselfishly giving generous gifts. Feast with your soul as you do with your body - there should be no room for half measures. You think I'm making too big a deal about it Remember why we commemorate this day? Yes. It is the Christ Mass. We have good cause to celebrate.

Instant

I recieved a record amount of emails today - sixteen just for me, not including the ones I picked up for the family. That's what happens when you start trading online. The problem is that you're expected to respond to all of them quickly. Not like the pre-email days, when a message actually took some time to get from A to B. When you sent a letter, you didn't expect a response for a few days at least - now, if you're a few hours tardy in shooting off a reply the recipient notices. Everyone appears to feel time speeding up on them, and subsequently our methods both of interrelating and living in general are becoming more frantic. Or is it the other way around? I've always wondered why it seems that each year passes more swiftly than the last. Could it be a result of our increasingly "instant" society? We want food now and are given McDonalds. We want entertainment now and are given television. We want health now and are given quack diets and artificial excercise routines. Oh, we've done quite the impressive job of creating an instant world, but does anyone enjoy it? I suppose some do - like an old addict enjoys a hit - all the savour and thrill gone, only the aching need remaining. Instant is killing us almost as fast as crack or heroin, it's true, but that's not the worst of it. It's leaching our glory and greatness away. Yes, Men were great once - imperfectly and twistedly great, but nevertheless they were mortal gods compared to the mean residue that society (created by our choices) has made us. We have worn ourselves out "like butter scraped over too much bread" in panting after piddling trifles. Time is not at fault. It is as constant as it ever was. The blame rests directly on our doorsteps.

Survival

I had a fascinating conversation with my chiropractor yesterday. As conversations do, it had wound its way through several topics until he mentioned an incident in which a stuntman had died while working on a film - a helicopter crashed slightly differently than was planned and the rotor chopped him in two. "At least it would've been instantaneous," I mentioned. "Yeah, as instantaneous as instantaneous is," the chiropractor replied. Seems we take a little while to die, even from the most horrendous injuries. I'd always assumed that stories of peoples lips moving after their head had been guillotined were just urban myths, but it appears that's not so unlikely. Even in a case of decapitation it's thought that the person will live for at least 10-15 seconds before blood pressure is totally lost and the brain ceases to function. A little disturbing, no? Or have you not bothered to imagine what it would be like to gaze at your own lifeless, headless corpse spurting blood towards you? Fortunately it's not likely that you'd be in any pain (extreme shock would take care of that), and vision would be one of the first senses to give out. Life is in the blood, yes, but that blood needs to be reaching the brain - anything else is fairly incidental in the short term. We discovered thousands of years ago that we don't need limbs to survive. Now it seems that we don't need a stomach or heart either, as long as artificial alternatives are provided. Just a brain. Delightful news, I'm sure, for all the utilitarians out there. Finally, a way to strip off all gratuitous excess and sensual experience; only the bare necessary remaining - pure thought. And yes, I agree that only the brain is needful for survival. But the rest is needful for living.

Does Nothing Exist?

I was reading a book today in which one character mentions that something "means less than nothing" to them. They are promptly questioned by the naive protagonist as to how anything could be less than nothing and if it was, wouldn't nothing be something? It was quite deep, considering that this is a book aimed at kids - as I've mentioned before, most childrens fiction is brainless sludge. But it brought up another question, perhaps less easy to answer: does "nothing" exist? The quick solution is no - it is nonexistence, therefore it cannot exist. My original meaning when posing the problem however was closer to Is there anywhere, anytime in which there is not something? Is the term "nothing" just a lazy, weak and semi-meaningless idea that we've dreamed up? It's possible. We've not yet discovered a Void in the classic sci-fi sense of the word, though whether we'd find any such area even if it was out there is far from certain. When we say "nothing" we mean Not very much or Nothing I'm able to perceive with my five senses or Something so insignificant it's not worth mentioning. We hardly ever use it as A dearth of any thing. Because, of course, that doesn't really pop up on our experience radar and is scarcely useful in day to day conversation. Why have such a word, then? Indulgence of a penchant for antonyms, perhaps? Good and evil, light and dark, something and . . . It rolls off the mind, doesn't it? I'm really not sure if a Void is logically impossible (though there has to be some way to figure out . . .) but it certainly falls outside of the Pale of both science and faith - giving us no reason to believe in it whatsoever. As far as we know, then, it's a false and misleading concept; in this light, maybe it would be prudent to wield this idea (and its accompanying word) a little less cavalierly.

Ivory Towers

I spent the whole day today working on storyboarding and shotlisting my upcoming film. My co-producer and I started out on location wandering around the clearing which in which most of the movie will be set. It was valuable to actually be there; several original ideas were sparked by the environment, and quite apart from that, we discovered exactly where we could and couldn't shoot. In the past we've tried to plan out scenes mentally, and it has done some good. But often we found gaping holes in our plans and hypotheses once we were faced with the real world outside of our heads; a problem encountered by many others of greater intelligence. It's quite easy to theorise and devise and plot and plan - but going outside and getting dirty while testing the above? That's hard work. And often disappointing to boot. Most things look nice and pretty while they're fluttering around in our minds, but when dragged into the unmerciful light of day they can metamorphose into something worthy of a nightmare. This, I am convinced, is why the Greeks never ruled the world. Their wise men (most of them) were happy to philosophise and debate and ponder, but they drew the line at actually doing anything. They knew of atoms and electricity but they would not lift a finger to make so much as a wheelbarrow. This is also why we haven't had helicopters and armoured fighting vehicles since the 16th century. The plans were all there, the ideas were mature, but would anyone build the things? No. Whenever philosophy, knowledge or planning is separated from action it becomes crippled and barren. When we isolate our minds and cease to helpfully reference the outside world, decay and death (fast or slow) is inevitable. Perhaps the clichéd 'ivory tower', reviled in word and embraced in deed, is none other than the cloisters of our own skull.

Crusades & Thresholds

Last night I sat in a small pool of hot water, gazing idly at the stars and talking easily with a friend. Conversation flowed intermittantly like trickling rivulets as we soaked our stiff bones and sore muscles. Among the many wandering paths that our speech travelled one theme seemed to rise repeatedly: We have total control - and yet we have none. Let me explain. You cannot set out to defeat things like the degradation of our language, the abandonment of nature and the old ways of life, the increasing self-orientation of society - and expect to stamp them out. You cannot even expect to make a noticeable difference. It would be difficult enough if Mankind were one single entity, and we certainly are not that. These things are far too large, too powerful, they have too much momentum to be squelched by my main force or yours. But. There is something we can do. Though any crusade we launch is inherently doomed to failure, we can defend our thresholds. Forget the abstract concept of "The World". There is little you can do there. You can however choose to crush any of these things in your own life; and if you do, it will indeed be a matter of choice - you can decide whether you prevail or concede defeat. When you have grasped this truth and applied it, then you can fight these battles on other soil - in the hearts and minds of those of those closest to you. This is how any difference will be made, not by straining and striving to cure the maladies of creation. This is how any small victory or effective stand will be accomplished. Anything else will merely wear you out. I'm reminded of a wise maxim I once read: For peace of mind, resign as General Manager of the Universe.

The Great Aunt

I was discussing anthems with my mom just now, and the fact surfaced that every single national anthem refers to war. There's not one exception. Somewhat telling, is it not? Strife between nations dominates our history books; our records drip blood. It's sad, but not very odd. You can see the patterns emerging in the nursery. For thousands of year it's been the same - but now a solution has been found. Or so we have been informed. It is none other than the great United Nations. An international body that promotes peace and condemns conflict. And it really does quite a good job, considering the tasks it has given itself; the only problem is that the goals are perhaps a little flawed. The UN promotes peace with an almost insane fervour - but most reasonable people (the sort they're targeting, one assumes) have already figured out that peace is a pretty good idea. They are most vociferous and nondiscriminatory (indeed, they even refrain from discriminating between sense and idiocy) in their condemnation of conflict - but, as many parents have discovered, repeating Naughty boy! in a stern voice doesn't really cut it. The whole situation is not too far from a 50's farce in which the town busybody gets elected mayor. I keep waiting for someone to burst out laughing and then apologise for their dumb sense of humour. There is, however, no hint that anyone finds it funny at all. Maybe expecting a full realisation of their own ineptitude is a little much to ask, but I hope one day that they'll wake up and discover that Earth really doesn't need a overblown Great Aunt refereeing our fights.

Dying Men

Have you ever, while sitting  quite still or perhaps engaged in some mindless manual task, felt life seeping out of your body? I have, regularly. It's a curious sensation. Like sand flowing from a holed hessian sack, or the last dark sluggish blood draining from a long ruptured artery. The sand scatters back into the beach and Earth opens its mouths to suck the blood away. They are both lost; there is no recovering them. No second chances. It sobers every time I experience this. I forget so quickly, you see - I can read All flesh is grass and agree completely, then close the book, walk out the door and think that I'll live forever. Or if not forever, at least a very very long time. Memoryless fool. Oh yes, I believe in an afterlife, but doesn't that make it more significant, not less? If death really was The End, then life (or at least what was done with it) would matter little. But if we depart this world for another in which we are to spend eternity (think about that word, don't just glaze over it) then I can only guess that this dimension is a testing ground. One which will lay the foundation for our endless sojourn in the next world. If decisions we make now will continue to effect us (in one way or another) perpetually then it's probably a good idea to be circumspect about how we use our small share of corporeal existance, no? And it is a small share, as I've said before. I don't know how we know this - we outlive most animals - but each of us is aware, to whatever extent they will allow, that for us time is short. We don't have much space to achieve great things even when fully concentrated and dedicated. In truth, we are all dying men - let us live like it.

No Fear

I read an article in a magazine not long ago about the things we fear and why we fear them. For example, many more people are afraid of flying than of driving a car - in spite of the fact that automotive accidents are one of the most common causes of death, and airplane disasters one of the least. Spiders vs. Crossing the Road . . . etc. Our fear instinct obviously has a few quirks in it that don't quite line up with the real world. It's kept us alive this far, but it does occasionally play games with us. Oh yes, it messes with our heads sometimes, but would we really want it to go away? Nobody enjoys it when it kicks in (except maybe horror fans, and only then in a controlled environment). Fair enough. But it saves our bacon regularly by providing a powerful deterrent - in other words, it hinders us from acting stupidly. What would a person with no fear look like? Dead, I suspect. Aside from that, though: how would they act? What would they say? Where would they go? Would you be able to pick them out in a crowd? Ultimately unanswerable questions, I suppose, as we have no specimen to examine. It is interesting to ponder them though, from our fear-bound state. It almost makes me envious to think of someone like that, dangerous (and short) as I know their life would be. Because they would have no boundaries, no limits, no "prudent" voice saying You'll regret it. All counsels and considerations would be stripped away, leaving only the naked moment and choice. And then that bright unselfconcious flame would be snuffed - but I ask you: would it not be worth it?

A Gloomy Affair

My search for a video camera goes on. I was watching one particular camera for sale on the auction site TradeMe - it was just under my limit. I hoped that when it came to the last minute people might forget about it and I'd be able to nab it while still staying within my budget. Nope. Seems someone else had the same idea as me and a slightly higher price limit. But what could I have done? Just kept going up? I have the money, but I set a limit (with good reason) - should I have ignored it? Maybe I could have got the thing for only a couple hundred dollars more; it was worth almost twice that anyway. Yes, that might have worked - but I would've lost much more than a few extra beans. I would, in fact, have lost a battle to myself. Impulse would have driven reason from the field. As it was, reason won the day - a victory, yes, but as Bilbo Baggins once observed It seems a very gloomy affair. It's never much fun to follow your head in spite of opposing emotions. Pop culture (not very surprisingly) tells us that it is actually wrong (or at least really stupid) to let your mind overrule your "heart" - possibly because if people started doing that, pop culture as we now know it would die. Fast. It lives off people following their feelings. And few resist - it is, after all, the easiest thing to do. How often do we hear I can't be bothered - It felt right - But it makes me happy - I don't feel like doing it . . . ? As far as real life is concerned all that baggage can be kept between you and your shrink. Yes we have emotions, yes they are valid, yes we should acknowledge them - no we should not make decisions based on them. It's landed too many people neck deep in the proverbial. Sorry. That's very plain and cold and horribly unromantic and it pains me to say it but it's true.

Ask, And It Will Be Given...

I went on a scavenger hunt tonight - we had to come back with various photos of this and that, always including at least two team members in the shot. Extra points were given for innovation and creativity, which inevitably led to some interesting moments. Some of our team were occasionally a little hesitant to bowl up to complete strangers and request permission to photograph them (doing weird things, no less), but we all pushed past that and got some really cool shots in the end. In fact it was amazing how willing people were to help out when asked. It's something that I've been ignorant of for years and am only recently coming to realise: if you're nice, many folks will go out of their way (at least a little) to give you a hand. Not everyone will, of course, but far more than I ever expected. I suppose I'd always worked on the assumption that everyone pretty much kept themselves to themselves and couldn't be bothered (why should they?) to aid anyone else. That was the theory I'd lived by, and it affected the way I operated. I never asked anyone for anything unless I knew that I could repay them. Well, for some odd reason, that's not necessarily the way it works in the real world. So now my motto is Well, it never hurts to ask. Oh, I'm not completely reformed - old habits die slow - but the idea (and its consequences) has opened up doors for me that I didn't even know existed. The biggest block for most people to flat out asking for help is plain embarrassment (read: pride). Others however don't want to become bludgers - parasites who are always taking from others. That's a valid concern, but there's a way to make sure you never fall into that trap: when roles are reversed and someone is requesting your help, give them all you can - and don't send a bill.

Littered With Gems

I've just come back home from two full days of doing ADR (re-dubbing) for The Warren. An update (with photos) should be up on the site by Sunday. It was a lot of fun, but there were definitely times when things weren't looking bright and chirpy. Like when we had to redo a line for the eleventh time because someone couldn't get their words right. Or when I was retching after voicing a vicious screaming beast. Or when we were sitting in a room that was tight shut, had probably reached 35 degrees C, and stank of overheated computers and sweat. At no point, though, did I ever think I don't want to be doing this. Maybe I really wish it wasn't happening this way or This hurts - but it never occured to me to want to skip any part of the experience. That's not always the way though. Far too often I live through things wishing that I could be doing something else. It's stupid really, because it doesn't take away from the onerousness of the moment at all, nor does it allow you to enjoy any highlights (small though they may be) that come your way. We're stuck in our current timeline and circumstance - we might as well embrace it. There are people who go through their whole lives striving to be somewhere or something else, and in the end they're disappointed and empty. If they had just concentrated on squeezing every experience for all it's worth they'd realise that their prescribed lot was not barren at all, but littered with gems. They're hard to find sometimes but if we manage to step out of the cloisters of our expectations, a brave new world will present itself.

An Insistant Advisor

I got accepted. Yeah, you read right. And (drumroll) with no interview. Why? I have absolutely no idea. This afternoon I got a call on my cellphone - congratulations, you've been accepted for the South Seas 2007. . . Pretty much out of the blue. Anyone who knows me well is aware that I dread phone interviews; I was massively relieved. And pleased to get accepted. But excited? No, funny enough, not really. I should be, there's no reason for me not to be - and yet I'm not. Feelings often fail to line up with reason. I noted this the other day as well, as I waited to start my interview - I knew the director was a nice guy, I knew I had a good application, I wasn't worried that things would go wrong - but my stomach was still churning, and no amount of mental calisthenics was going to help. For us average peons, "mind over matter" only goes so far. At a certain point our bodies go maverick on us and there's little we can do to keep them in line. It's a wee bit scary at times, if you think about these things - it's roughly analogous to driving a car that occasionally decides to run at whatever speed it feels like. Note, however, that the driver can still choose where to go. That's our one comfort, I suppose. No matter what our body does or what we feel like (are the two really as segregated as some think?) we can still control our choices, though not always exactly how they're worked out. This is the point that humanists (willingly?) miss - the body, though unbelievably strong, does not have the last say. In the big things, the important things, it can only play the part of an (impertinently insistent) advisor.

The Caprice of Chance

More complications cropped up with my South Seas application today. I sent it off almost a week ago now, but when the school director called two days ago to interview me by phone, confusion soon ensued. He kept alluding to how my application was a little "thin" and how he'd prefer something a bit more substantial to present to the selection commitee. Turns out my attached submissions never came through at their end. That considered, the director was being extraordinarily diplomatic. Thin would be an understatement. I re-sent them, then called today to make sure they got there. They had. But apparently no one realised that I still had to be interviewed. I finally got that confusion sorted out - they'll ring me back to confirm a time. I hung up, kneading my forehead in frustration. I don't expect a lot of life. But occasionally I have this fantasy that something will one day happen like it says in the manual. You know, just kind of normally. Needless to say, it has yet to become a reality. It seems (almost) like a universal law. Perhaps it has something to do with Chaos Theory. There are just too many variables to allow for good odds of getting what we want. We really are very self-centered at heart. Every time something becomes complicated or our goals are obstructed we conclude that we are being blocked or foiled. What we never consider is that the same set of circumstances could very well be giving someone else a leg up. We can't expect the odds to run in our favour every time. They don't do that - that's why they're called odds. If we could grasp this fact and embrace it it would give us greater peace of mind, if nothing else. We would also be more likely to watch out for others who are floundering when chance shines our way.

Useful As The Useful

I watched a very interesting film last night - Quentin Tarantino's Hero. Having never sat through a whole martial arts film before, it was fairly new territory for me. I'd always held the genre in a certain amount of contempt, and expected little of this movie - Unrealistic fight scenes cobbled together with a poor excuse for a story was my opinion. I still think that summary is an accurate one, but I know now that it leaves one important characteristic of this film (and its ilk) unsaid: Hero was beautiful. Beauty has been shunned as "old-fashioned" in the West, leaving films like The Lord of the Rings and Finding Neverland few and far between. We consider ourselves more adult, preferring works like Saving Private Ryan, Thirteen and Silence of the Lambs. Beauty is a childs bauble, we say, to be set aside when maturity is reached. It's a lie; deadly and pervasive. You can see its influence in our sprawling concrete cities, in the utilitarian harshness of modern household objects, in our increasingly spartan language. Beauty is as necessary for the welfare of the soul as food is for the body. As Victor Hugo's bishop said The beautiful is as useful as the useful. Perhaps more so. Children know this. But there is no question of "outgrowing" the need for beauty: children must sleep - do we think that one day we will not need to? And I would point out that any line drawn between beauty and reality is deceptive. Men did not create beauty - it was there before they walked the earth, and will always continue to be, though we fail to see it.

Why They Hate You

This afternoon I read a quote made by the late Spike Milligan - Money can't buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy. It reminded me of the fact that, as yet, "enemy" is an abstract concept for me. Oh, there are people I dislike and there are those who dislike me, but enemy? No. I suppose they are one of those things (like experience and wrinkles) that accumulate as you get older, whether you like it or not. If you could make it through your whole life without gaining one enemy. . . what would that say about you? It's a desirable thing, certainly, but is it a wise goal? What sort of compromises would you have to make, how many opportunities would you have to pass up, which principles would you have to violate? Would it be worth it? Should we even worry about it? No and no. Too many people worry incessantly about how others will respond to their actions, and in doing so lose their own life. They become merely extensions on the lives of everyone they know. Be kind, be thoughtful, be loving - and then do the right thing and follow your own road (in that order) no matter what. No matter who will turn against you, no matter who will blacklist you, no matter who will seek to shoot you down. It will be painful, it will be lonely - but you will know that you are alive and of some worth, and are not just a superfluous meaningless cog in an ailing machine. It is as stupid (and as vain) to try to avoid enemies as attempting to hide from experience. Enemies, whether low class or high, will come. It's out of your hands. What you can decide is why they hate you.