Euan Semple's Blog, page 12

The wonders of nature

On my walk this morning in grey, drizzly weather I heard this really weird, deep, whooshing sound. It was quite disturbing, especially in the gloomy, moody weather.

And then I realised what it was. It was a murmuration of starlings flying around in formation and moving a lot of air.

Proud Dad

Yesterday I was watching people getting excited online about the new Apple TV+ series Silo and then realised that my daughter Mollie was a featured extra in it!

She only says a couple of words but being in a significant scene with Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins, is pretty cool.

She has also written several plays, the most recent of which will performed on the Brighton Fringe.

She is seeking crowdfunding so if anyone feels inclined to support a young aspiring writer…

#writing #WritersOfMastodon #playwriters #theatre

Happy birthday blog

21years. Would have been hard to imagine keeping going this long when I first set up my blog on blogger.com all those years ago.

Big Data My Arse

Sadly Shell’s database that tells their app that my newly installed “smart” meter doesn’t work isn’t connected to their marketing database that is still sending me cheesy emails about how much I must be enjoying being better informed about our electricity usage.

Loosen the shackles

So much of our sense of self is a result of cultural conditioning. This little self, being unreal, needs constant tending and defending. This is knackering and the source of most of our suffering.

Rather than freaking out about LGBT people questioning rigid, inherited identities, we’d all be more relaxed and kinder with each other if we followed their lead.

Bloodlust

On my walk, today, I saw a bird rising vertically off the surface of the field next to me, and as soon as it started its wonderful song, I realised it was a Skylark.

I’ve written before about having killed a Skylark with an air gun when I was a young teenager. Every time I see one, I say sorry. The guilty feeling hasn’t gone away even after five decades.

Later in the walk, I heard shotgun fire from a nearby wood and found myself musing, yet again, about what makes someone set out from their home, on a beautiful, still, sunny, day thinking “I feel like blowing some beautiful animals out of the sky – for fun”

I mean really, what goes through their minds, both in anticipation and in the act?

Autodidact

Having already achieved a high degree of success in emulating our ability to speak, our cat Alby is now sitting at my desk, setting his sights on reading and writing.

The field of dreams

The other day Mollie and I walked out of our house, up the farm lane opposite, and were greeted with a breathtaking view of woods and fields bathed in a wonderful wintry light. Yet again we were reminded that these fields sit there patiently waiting for us to come and look.

But do they…?

The fields don’t exits independently of me being there to see them. “The fields” is a concept that my brain makes up in response to patterns of light and sounds hitting my sense organs and being compared to my filed away concept of “fields”. On close examination those fields have no boundary, the view has no boundary. They both blur into infinity in every direction. Their existence in this moment depends on my consciousness. They exist nowhere except in my consciousness.

Sure, there are particles and energy there (themselves both concepts made up by brains but hey I’ll let that go). Anti- solipsists needn’t worry that I am claiming that I am making up the whole world or saying that without me it doesn’t exit.

But is that your real world, or my real world, and where does one end and the other begin…?

Losing myself

Losing myself

Being absorbed by winter mountain wind and rain
making a mockery of my thick skin.

Feeling the hot sun on my skin as the sound of waves breaking on a beach
fills the empty space between my ears.

Looking into the eyes of someone brave enough to fully look into mine
exploding the space where I assume my head is.

Resting my forehead against our cat, Albert’s, tiny head
filled with a gentle vastness that I will never know
in the hope that somehow it seeps through…

Ever decreasing circles

Thinking you have achieved some sort of profound insight and then discovering that you wrote the exact same thing in your journal thirteen years ago but had forgotten.

I may have to stop keeping a journal…