David Hadley's Blog, page 92

The Nameless Ones

The Nameless Ones

Indifferent

We stand at the edge

Names

We are nameless

Call our names

Naked in the darkness

I could touch

Only broken stone

As old as the forgotten

Cold to the fingertips

Her name

Her name is unknown

She walks

Dressed in white

Find that path

What else is there

Going down that path

Slip underfoot

Only forwards, never back

Only names remain

I remember so few names

They are gone

But the faces still haunt me

Like the woman

Dressed in white

Who haunts these paths

Like someone searching

For a place and a face

She could put to a name

That haunts her memory.

A World As It Ought To Be

It began as a normal day, which is a worry. After all, normality isn’t really what we expect any more. What is the point in severing the link between cause and effect, if things are still going to keep happening one thing after another?

Of course it had to happen eventually, for far too long the scientific hegemony has been oppressing the ordinary peoples of this world by insisting that things happen for a reason. For there are so many of us, these days, who feel it is our right to have the world ordered to our own wants, needs and desires. All without having to reference the needs, wants and desires of others. After all, we have certain rights and what are the rights of others, especially those who don’t share our world view, compared to our own inalienable right to have the world fitted to our view of how it should be?

However, since the scientists, and all the other evidence-based oppressive dictators, took over control of reality and started telling us how the world is, rather than how we wanted it to be, there had been a complete loss of democratic control over reality.

Back in the good old days, we all had our separate religions. Often with each one having a different world view and imposing that worldview on its adherents. In the end, what can be more democratic than that?

For isn’t – in a way – a religion just a method of making the world into something you want it to be? All without having to go through all that unnecessary nonsense about it having to avoid conflict with the world out there as it is. Therefore, if your religion says the world began last Wednesday, then surely it is your absolute right to insist that fossils and geology are nothing but an elaborate practical joke by the gods to test the devotion of the faithful.

So, therefore, the UN General Council last year, after fierce lobbying from a coalition of religions, voted to abolish the hegemonic power of science. They overwhelmingly voted to revoke its power to make laws about how the universe worked and relegated it to just one more belief system amongst all others, without privilege or greater validity. They also decreed on the disestablishment of the link between cause and effect forthwith. They then – in effect – gave the peoples of this world the power to each have a world according to how they want it.

Thus was true democracy was established worldwide at last.

Surely, not having regular mornings – or for that matter any certainty at all – is but a small price to pay for that great leap forward.

 

The Book Of The Law

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes.’ Jan nodded.

‘What, he was into all that devil worship and raising demons from hell and all that?’ I raised an eyebrow.

‘No, nothing like that.’ She shook her head and half-turned away from me.

‘What then?’ I touched her arm, cool where it lay on top of the bedclothes. ‘Come on, I am interested, really.’

She glanced at me.

‘Really.’

Really?’

‘Yes.’ I plumped up the pillow under my head and propped it up against the headboard behind my back as I sat up.

Jen settled herself, also propping herself up with a pillow behind her back. ‘Of course he wasn’t a devil-worshipper or anything like that. He knew it was all nonsense.’ She looked at me for a moment. ‘In fact, he didn’t believe in god, either. This at the time was far more dangerous. The church was so powerful in his day and it wouldn’t tolerate atheism at all.’ She smiled. ‘In fact it was much safer to be a devil-worshipper than an atheist in those days; at least then they’d only burn you at the stake for being a Satanist.’

‘So, what is this mystery book all about then?’ I was puzzled.

‘Oh, the good doctor knew there was no such creature as the devil, there was no god. In that he’d be quite at home in our world.’ Jen was silent.

‘But, what?’

‘He discovered what lay beyond all that, beyond the supernatural, the religious, the non-religious.’ She stared at me. ‘He claimed to have discovered what really rules the world, controls the cosmos, created the universe. Something far beyond any mere god. He discovered The Law.’

‘The Law?’

Jen held a finger out. ‘Watch,’ she said.

She drew a shape in the air and then – somehow, I couldn’t see how – she took the air she’d drawn around into her hand.

She held the clenched fist out to me.

I shrugged. ‘So what?’

Jen opened her hand and I cowered back, almost falling out of the side of the bed, as I saw the tiny universe rotating there in the palm of her hand. She laughed. ‘You may now worship me,’ she said.

‘Wha… what?’

‘I’ve created a universe, so I must be a god.’ She lay back on the bed, the tiny universe sparkling in her hand. ‘Come on and worship me.’

So I did.

 

A World Waiting

I wanted to walk away. I wanted to close the door on this life and walk away. There was a street out there, waiting for me to walk down. Then, down at the junction where this street met the main road there was a world waiting.

I was tired of this narrow world where I lived and the narrower world where I worked. The same people, the same rooms, the same voices telling the same tales from their own small worlds.

I wanted something bigger.

It is not easy, though, to step off the familiar paths and set off in a new direction. There is the weight of routine, the weight of expectation, your own as well as everyone else’s.

There is safety in the familiar.

There is comfort in knowing that today will be the same as yesterday and that tomorrow will be just the same again.

There is fear in the unknown too. What if the world out there turns its back? After all, it can come as quite a shock to many of us, just how indifferent and unaware the world is of us. How easily this world can shrug us off. No-one noticing or caring that we have been left behind as time hurries everyone else on to wherever they must go next.

There were mornings when I stood at that crossroads, hesitating. The familiar road looking the same as every other day. While off I the opposite direction, lay a world of mystery and possibility. I needed to take one step, then another and the chains that held me to this routine, to that old life, would snap and break as they stretched way beyond anything I’d ever known before.

But, then, each day I would sigh and turn back and take the same step along the familiar road. Always, though, I’d promise myself that maybe tomorrow….

 

International-Level Competitive Dining

It came out of the sky… sort of.

She had – quite recently – perfected the art of overarm bowling. Consequently, those of us around the table have had to develop our own reflexes to professional match standards.

There are some who say that International-level meal serving is going out of fashion in British homes these days. Mainly as more and more people move away from traditional sit-down meals and into kitchen grazing and meals in front of the TV.

This trend, if it continues will, of course lead to a steep decline in the standards of British teams wanting to compete at international level in many meal-based sports. This includes such sports as the 100 Metre Supper, the Mixed Doubles Dinner-Party and the Freestyle Petit-Dejeuner, where the traditional Full English completely outclasses the much-weaker foreign breakfasts. Especially the tactically-naive Continental Breakfast, which had a tendency to fall apart in the chicane, as anyone with any experience of a crumbly croissant will no doubt appreciate.

Of course, as alluded to above, the great strength of the British Meal sports teams is in their at-the-table tactical ability. They have, though, been let down in the past by the weakness of their kitchen to table delivery system. Mainly because the British waiting staff are notoriously less able then their Continental competitors. Apart, that is, from the French waiting staff, of course, who traditionally refuse to compete at international level.

Hence the research going on at the UK’s Sports Science facility dining room. Here the technicians and scientists there have developed, through the extensive use of computer modelling and wind tunnel experiments, the use of the fast overarm meal delivery system. This has already shaved seven-tenths of a second off the current Olympic world record set by the Dutch master Hennrick Van Fingerdyke for the apple strudel.

However, as the British team do admit, the high-speed waitressing service does still have a few teething problems. In particular with the fast bowling of such things as gravy, sauces and, especially, that great British tactical strength – custard. Still, though, the British sports technologists, working in complete custard-proof dining rooms are experimenting with laser-guided gravy delivery. They are also testing the use of jet-powered roller skates for soup serving. Both of these tactical techniques are allowed by the somewhat arcane rules of the sport. However, The German team, following the great Sauerkraut tragedy of seven years ago at the Beijing Olympics, have asked the international dining sports federation to outlaw the use of artificial aids such as jet-powered serving skates and laser-guided gravy boats.

Therefore we can only wait and see if this very traditional – if not conservative – sport governing body rules this exciting new technology in or out of bounds. We must, therefore, await their the consequences of their ruling for the future of this fine old sport of which the UK is now a major contender for future international honours.

 

The Lucky Ones

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What could be done?

We were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives until the day it all changed. None of us knew much about how the world around us worked and was organised. We all just got on with life as best we could, while around us this huge complex beast that provided us with food, water, power, law and order, security and everything else that went about the business of keeping us going.

So, when it all fell apart that day, most of us were left stranded like fish left behind on land after a flash flood.

Later, when it was safe to go back, we found so many bodies with a phone in their hand as though they’d died on hold waiting for someone… them, the authorities, society, to come to their rescue. We’d all become so use to having someone to call, to come to our rescue. So we did not know how to cope when it was that system itself – not just the emergency services, but the complexity of society – that failed.

Of course, around the fires at night we sit and speculate about what went wrong, how it all came to end so completely, utterly, and so suddenly.

The morning of the day was not special, unremarkable, just another Tuesday and then – without warning, out of the blue, or more accurately out of the grey November sky it happened and everybody’s world fell apart.

I don’t think any of us realised just how fragile the system was. Or how thin a veneer over our animalistic instincts society was.

It all fell apart so quickly. There are still – even now – those amongst us, me included, who think those that died that day were the lucky ones, not us who still survive somehow.

 

Cairn

Cairn

Such moments taken, used as a new sign.

We have seen all these signs before and now

we know how understanding hides itself

in distant places and we see it there.

So should I let it go and watch it fall?

I see it all then float away on down

the flowing river of our memories.

The water washed us clean and quenched our thirst.

And what else should we need to take on journeys

across these landscapes? Knowing it ends here

at these few stones all piled up, signifying

a pair of reaching hands that cannot touch.

 

Memories Fade

There was nothing left. This place had once been our home. Now there were only burnt-out ruins, scars on a landscape already healing itself. The ruins now were overgrown, becoming landscape. The only traces of what once was soon would live in our memories alone.

Memories fade though as we grow older and time takes us on new journeys. Then we too are gone and nothing remains.

I knew it was a mistake to return. I could feel how tight my hands held the reins, making Whitecloud nervous. She snorted and I ran a hand through her mane, calming her.

Beside me, the woman looked around, probably wondering what I was looking at. Now there was little more than overgrown stone, haphazardly heaped up. All in shapes that bore no reminder of the building that once had stood up on this hillside dominating the valley below.

I looked around. What had once been our family’s land for miles around was now bare of grazing animals. What remained of the crops was wild and mostly overgrown.

Our hunting forest, though, still remained. A memory came back to me of a place where we would be safer than out here on the open ground.

If word of my return reached certain ears, then I knew they would come after me… again.

I edged Whitecloud closer to the woman’s horse. The woman leant away from me as far as she could without falling from her saddle. Obviously, she knew how to ride… that was something.

I checked the bonds around her wrists were still tied tight. She had made no attempt to escape for the last two or three days. I wondered, looking into her still fearful eyes, if her memories of her old life were fading too.

Then I turned Whitecloud to head for the forest and the secret waiting deep inside. I tugged on the rope leading the bound woman’s horse and it followed. I hoped that this remembrance of a place of safety was one memory that had not faded and grown false.

If it had then I would soon be dead, just like the members of my family whose hasty graves we passed on our way to the concealing trees.

 

A Legal Grey Area

As she said at the time, even though that time was not entirely propitious, there is not much you can do about it.

Apart from running for the hills, of course.

However, there is a school of thought that leans towards the idea that running for the hills whenever these incidents occur is less a matter of doing something about them and more a matter of not doing anything…. Apart from buggering off with alacrity, that is.

Still, there are many of us including all (both) of you gathered here today who see discretion as the better part of valour. Or – at least – the least painful option.

Anyway, it is a well-know fact that with most forms of alleged ‘music’ being out of earshot is he best of the available options. Even though the culling of amateur musicians is somewhat of a grey area, legally. Or, at the very least, it ought to be open for discussion amongst reasonable people, and even lawyers (if you can afford to attract their attention).

Still, although most people’s grasp of history is a bit shaky for any major historical period preceding what was on the telly last week, there are some who have heard of the Highland Clearances. Those that know more, are aware that this was not some reality property TV show from the 18th century, but a forceful clearance of people from the Scottish Highlands. Although, until now, the role played by the traditional Scottish bagpipes in removing these people has been downplayed somewhat. Mainly under pressure from the Scottish tourist industry and bagpipe manufacturers. But it can no longer be ignored.

Nor can the role of traditional folk musics in the flight of the peasantry from the countryside to the cites during, especially, the early stages of the industrial revolution.

Consequently, there are several laws dating from this period which have never been fully repealed. This despite the UK having an amateur musician, and even more amateur politician, as Prime Minister during the dark days of the 1970s.

Therefore, as surprising as it is to some people, it is not that illegal to cull amateur musicians. Especially so if they are caught out in the wild or worrying sheep… or, for that matter, perturbing cows.

Nor, for that matter is it against the law to take armed action against those who think their young child is a musical prodigy in the making.

However, mainly as a means of getting revenge on the voters of the EU countries for not taking the EU elections seriously, there are moves afoot in the EU parliament towards outlawing, or even banning altogether, the hunting of amateur musicians. As well as the culling of the more dangerous types, up to and including street buskers. Many see this as yet another threat by the EU to long-standing British freedoms and traditions, if not a further erosion of of our cultural identity. Others though just prefer the peace and quiet that comes after the guns fall silent.

The Halls Of Mirrors

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It was not that simple. These worlds grow complicated, the more we find. The more angles there are, the more degrees of separation. It is like turning a corner in a corridor in you dreams to find more corridors, more corners, stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see. It is a bit like putting two mirrors facing each other so a multiplicity of reflections in each one snake off far into the distance.

Ashlyn did call it the Hall Of Mirrors, back when we we together. Since then, since we lost each other that time, I’ve found more mirrors., Thousands upon thousands of them, and more halls too. Each time I step through, I have no idea if I am moving towards Ashlyn or away from her. Or – even – if she is doing the same some worlds away from me. It is quite possible that we are only one mirror or two away from each other. Both endless chasing each other only a step or two behind.

All I know is I want to find her. Ashlyn too, is probably searching for me. If she is still alive, that is. For there are many dangers behind each mirror. Many worlds hold dangers and it is impossible to tell what lies beyond the reflection staring back at you before you step through the mirror into the new world.

At first we would sit and watch the mirrors, Ashlyn and I, trying to divine what world lay beyond each flat reflecting surface. Would it be a world of horrors, or some paradise where we could be together and free? Safe at last.

I never expected, when Ashlyn contacted me, out of the blue, that the job would turn out like this. We hadn’t seen each other since school, when she went off to university and I joined the army. A long time ago now.

There she was, a scientist with a secret and I was an unemployed freelance bodyguard.

‘I need some protection. I was browsing the websites and when I saw your name… your company… I couldn’t believe it.’ She shook her head, looking down into her coffee as she stirred. I remembered that, the way she stared into things and saw beyond what us more mundane folk could see. I’d often thought, since we said goodbye, that she could have easily been a poet as much as a scientist, if those things are not the same. She always used to say equations were beautiful, lying there in my bed.

‘You? Protection? Why?’ I could never be eloquent, especially around her.

‘I… I’ve found something,’ she said, looking up at me at last. ‘And… it goes beyond everything we – humankind – have ever known.’ She was silent. ‘And there are people out there who will kill to own it.’ She reached for my hand. ‘Will you protect me?’

‘Of course,’ I said. But now I’ve lost her and I’m to blame.