Euan Semple's Blog, page 18

Blue skies

I love the summer.
I love sun.
I love lying around in it.
I love beaches.
I love getting brown.

At this time of year my brain gets very confused by bright blue skies and a chilly breeze.

Time to get my hillwalking gear organised.

A grand day out

Thanks to Paolo for a smashing day out starting with Kew Gardens and ending at Richmond.

Cruising for a bruising.

I occasionally feel an overwhelming urge to get into a fight. A real fight.

If I get involved in an altercation with an other driver a part of me hopes he will get out of his car to escalate things thereby giving me an excuse to go berserk.

I don’t even care if I “win”. At my age I probably wouldn’t. I just want the release.

Release of what?

Not sure. But whatever it is it’s the same urge that is behind my nostalgia for getting blind drunk…

I suspect it has been too long since I climbed a mountain.

Digital overwhelm

So much of what we need to do on a day to day basis now depends on accessing online systems.

Many of these systems make you wonder if anyone from the organisation ever tried to use them before they went live. Obscure instructions, awful design, and lazy coding (there are only so many ways to write a phone number why can’t you code your bloody web site to recognise the format I just used?)!

Even at work the corporate support systems, welfare, staff training, HR and IT support, are now buried behind similarly badly designed intranet sites.

And the worst is, when you eventually give up trying to use their awful web site, and are sitting in the interminable queue to speak to someone at their call centre, they play you a repeating message telling you how easy it is to use their bloody web site! No it’s fucking not!!

Dealing with all of this has a significant cumulative effect. People give up. We stop trying to do things. This is not good…

Sorry, I couldn’t resist…

And another…

OK, I’ll stop now.

Another cracker…

Not playing by the rules.

There are such strong forces in place to make us conform. From our parents to our schooling, to our media and our innate herd instincts. We are faced with compelling narratives that encourage us not to think for ourselves and not to risk standing out.

But these are the very same narratives that cause our unhappiness, that make us feel that we are somehow or other not good enough, that we haven’t matched up to some standard set by others against which we measure ourselves.

The hardest thing is that the strongest voice in this coercive system of control is in our own heads. The chattering monkey that never shuts up is running a constant commentary on our thoughts and actions and is usually not a cheerleader!

But we don’t have to listen to it. We don’t have to fit in and we don’t have to behave. Even if we fear that to not behave is going to unleash some sort of second Hitler that is hidden deep in our psyche we have to ignore that nonsense and trust ourselves to be ourselves.

If we weren’t so confused and beaten up by the voices yelling at us from inside and out we would would be calm. We could be gentle. We would be kind. It is our natural state. Why on earth would we be otherwise?

Was I really there?

iOS16 lets you select various types of your own photographs to appear on rotation on your lock screen. I selected nature and cities and because I’ve been lucky enough to be to so many amazing places, and the cameras on the phones these days are so good, I keep thinking that what is appearing on my lock screen is professional clipart!

Spot on…

This, from Henry Miller via whiskey river, captures my current thinking so accurately.

“To keep the mind empty is a feat, a very healthful feat too. To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about or why people should enjoy killing one another (…)

We need peace and solitude and idleness. If we could all go on strike and honestly disavow all interest in what our neighbor is doing we might get a new lease of life. We might learn to do without telephones and radios and newspapers, without machines of any kind, without factories, without mills, without mines, without explosives, without battleships, without politicians, without lawyers, without canned goods, without gadgets, without razor blades even or cellophane or cigarettes or money. This is a pipe dream, I know. People only go on strike for better working conditions, better wages, better opportunities to become something other than they are.”
– Henry Miller
The Colossus of Maroussi