Euan Semple's Blog, page 31

Melancholy, sadness, and insanity.

A John Williams piece written for Schindler’s List popped up on Apple Music this morning.

This triggered intensely melancholic memories of visiting Auchwitz and led to remembering the scenes from the film where the character, played by Ralph Feinnes, used his rifle to randomly shoot prisoners walking across the camp grounds.

Later in the morning one of my daughters showed me a photo, shared on social media by someone she knows, showing them sitting proudly, holding their rifle, next to a beautiful deer they had just shot.

How deeply, deeply sad this made me feel.

What goes through your mind as you willingly, deliberately, and it would appear even enthusiastically, take a life, any life?

There will be no peace until we realise just how insane we all are.

English, but not as we know it Jim

The trouble with using Duolingo to brush up on my French is that not only do I have to translate French into English but I then have to translate English into the train crash that is Americanised English in order to be deemed to have got the answer correct!

He could get used to this…

I’m getting Alby more acclimatised to the van in the hope that he’ll come away with us one day.

Assumptions

Interesting how many people assumed that me previous post on losing my grip was about impending senility.

It was meant to be about deeper questioning of our assumptions about time and space and the constructed nature of the world around us.

It’s always my fault when people misinterpret my posts. I haven’t written them carefully or clearly enough.

Maybe it’s my age?

Losing my grip

One of the best things to come out of the last two years is that my senses of time and space have got very slippery. I used to be confident about where I had been and when I had done things. But I look at images of New York or Hong Kong or Sydney and think “Was I really ever there?” Even London, which I know like the back of my hand, has become “as of a dream”.

And as for time. I look at photos of the kids when they were little and it’s as if those people still exist now, but are different from the adults that visit our house. The intervening years, and sense of progression, has gone.

My true experience of both time and place is always here and now. It can’t be anything else. The linear narrative of my life that my brain constructs is made up. It doesn’t exist. It never did.

Realising this is disconcerting but freeing.

The Writer’s Almanac

I love listening to podcasts and have, for instance, listened to Macbreak Weekly for more than fifteen years, but none have given me more consistent pleasure than the short, daily, nugget of civilisation that is The Writer’s Almanac

Rufford Ford

I know it is wrong to laugh at other’s misfortune but…

If you think the vans are bad keep going long enough to see the cars!

[H/T] Life Is Too Short for the link

I do love Wales

This image popped up today and reminded me of a wonderful walk I did near Rhayader a few years ago. It is indicative of just how beautiful and remote much of Wales is even, if not particularly, away from the honeypots.

New York, New York

This photo that I took on my walk right round Central Park popped up in my Photos widget today and I found myself seriously doubting whether I will ever be in my second favourite city again.

Anatomy of a comment

It’s interesting to slow things down when you find yourself triggered by a tweet or a comment on the internet.

The sense of outrage. The disbelief. The rush of adrenaline that can be so addictive. And then the spin off into generalisations and assumptions about the whole of the rest of the world.

Then the feeling that you have to do something, you can’t just let them get away with this.

Then the rehearsing of the clever response that asserts your superiority, the humorous put down that does the same but doesn’t make you look like a smart arse, or if called for complete verbal Armageddon that makes you feel so, so good.

And then on to the next one, carrying that increased residual tension but with an ego pleased with itself for having done its bit in defending your oh so fragile little self.

None of this has any meaning whatsoever. Your eyes reacted to some patterned pixels on a screen and your mind made the whole thing up.

How much of your day do you spend doing this?

Whatever your answer – it’s too much.