The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

“And you more than people think?” She pulled in her bottom lip, eyes up to the ceiling, as if seeking out a bright thread of silk from a tangle of cobweb. “Exactly that, I think. Exactly that.”

Street names in Muscat were almost non-existent. The hotel I checked into gave its address as “4th building after the statue of the ship on the left-hand side facing the sea”, before swelling into broader strokes of area and district.

“When was the last time you fucking thought for yourself?”

Permissions that the Facebook Messenger app requests when downloaded to your phone: • Allows the app to change the state of network connectivity. • Allows the app to call phone numbers without your intervention. • Allows the app to send SMS messages. • Allows the app to record audio with microphone. This permission allows the app to record audio at any time without your confirmation. • Allows the app to take pictures and videos with the camera. This permission allows the app to use the camera at any time without your confirmation. • Allows the app to read your phone’s call log, including data about incoming and outgoing calls. This permission allows apps to save your call-log data. • Allows the app to read data about your contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you’ve called, emailed, or communicated in other ways with specific individuals. • Allows the app to read personal-profile information stored on your device, such as your name and contact information. This means the app can identify you and may send your profile information to others. • Allows the app to get a list of accounts known by the phone. This may include any accounts created by applications you have installed.

Electric life, electric key, electric footprint in a digital age. CO2 emissions I have created, things I have consumed, windows broken, surfaces scratched, I am the mark my life leaves behind, I am a number in a system, I am the smell on a drunk man’s lips when he wakes, naked, in the love hotel, which he washes off in the morning.

“All thought is feedback,”

With each social rejection, pathways are reinforced in the brain which links social rejection with physiological anxiety. Thus reinforced, you are more likely to experience a physical reaction to even slight social discomfort, thus making you more uncomfortable, thus reinforcing the physical and so on and so on. All thought is feedback: sometimes that feedback can be too loud. That’s what I think, anyway.”

A woman with Perfection, snubbing the food her partner offered her at the café where I ordered breakfast. A man with Perfection, updating the app on his phone, a sports bag slung over his back, arms bulked up with protein shakes, chest heaving, sweat on the back of his neck. A teenager with Perfection, looking at the prices for the perfect haircut. Open your eyes: it is everywhere.

“All thought is feedback,” she said. “Repetition of a thought strengthens neural paths.”

“When one lives alone, one must develop strict critical processes.”

an estimated sixty million buffalo roamed America in the 1400s; by 1890 that number was down to 750.

Discipline: if you cannot trust in yourself, trust in others. If you cannot trust in others, trust in the scientific method. Everything else is conjecture and doubt, dogma, fantasy and fear. I will not be afraid. I will not be mad.

Worthy: to do the most righteous thing available to you, under a difficult set of circumstances.

Then, again: “I thought I dreamed that there was a mouse dead in my bread, and one day I cut open a loaf of bread, and a mouse was inside, and I couldn’t tell for a moment the difference between my dream and reality. Had I had this dream, or at the moment of finding the mouse had I invented this dream, making myself a prophet? Thought can travel through time, you see, memory reinvents itself, making the past something that always has been, now, in this second, now, for ever. You can’t ever really trust your own memory, your own mind. Reality, time, the past, it’s as fickle as a dream, when you look back on it.”

Card counting – a basic method: • Assign cards within the deck a value i.e. cards 2 – 7 have a value of +1, 7 – 9 have no value, and 10 – ace have a value of −1. • As the low cards are played from the shoe, add value to the remaining deck i.e. if ten cards of a value of 2 – 7 are played in a row, the remaining deck has a value of +10. The higher the value of the deck, the higher the probability that better cards are about to be played. As the higher-valued cards are played, deduct points from the value of the deck i.e. once all aces have been played, you have deducted −4 points. A negative value deck is more likely to yield low cards.

Again, silence. Again, the passing of time. Tea cooled, shadows turned, mountains rose, mountains fell, and time passed.

Knowledge. What should I do with this place inside me where experience – tears of joy, shrieks of laughter, the anxiety of work, the warmth of friends, the love of family, the expectations of the world – what should I do with that place which was never filled? I put knowledge there. And in knowledge, I find myself. This sounds like an intellectual void where heart should be, but look and you may find …