Re-Entropy Into the Atmosphere

Modern life, eh?

It's complicated, isn't it?

The decisions we take. 

The decisions that take us.

But what are we really doing?

In a word, I think...

in one single word...

..connecting.

Or choosing not to.

But there are rules of connecting. Aren't there?

No?

Yes?

What are yours?

It used to be simple... to avoid religion or politics.

But you're not so dim that you still think that will do? Are you? 

Tell me you are not.

Maybe you don't even think that is true?

Or have you never given it a moment's thought?

Oh god...you haven't, haven't you?

Oh, sweet Lord, no. You're a monster.

Theres is too much work to do than  I can cover here.

Please. Start. Somewhere.

You won't.  But you should.

Connecting is a note, a decision, a gift.

You create molecules, matter. Something that is more than the sum of its parts.

But there is a cost to that that the laws of the Universe demand.

The cost is risk...standing, credibility, vanity, love or whatever you may define as any or all of those.

That is the cost of risking connection.

Because that is what it takes to obey the Universe.

It is inescapable.

It is the price of creating a beautiful thing from absolutely nothing, say it again. 

It is the price of reversing entropy.

The only remaining question is...who is prepared to pay it?

One hand, one bounce

I've just seen a video of somebody playing French cricket ( Prince Harry actually)

What an utterly joyful game. That takes me back.

Skittish fun, with minimal chance of a concussion or getting your teeth knocked out.

Anybody fancy a game?

The Human 'art

The sensitivity in the artist is the price of seeing the world and playing it back.

Assimilating and re-offering it rather than excluding it.

Normally, this sort of exposure would make your skin leathery and tough. 

But the artist surrenders their innate resistance. 

Oft unwisely.

They may try to remember that being strong and being hard are different things.

It's not work-life balance. That's far too simplistic. 

It's wading in the world without getting sucked in, up or under.

Many fade, give up or resist. They build barricades. 

We all do in the end.

Your charitable thoughts may persist but you may outsource them to a registered organisation...someone to do the caring for you. Someone who will invite you to a ball.

I am not going to beat anyone up about it as long as they start to be honest with themselves.

Resistance isn't futile. 

It's sound survival strategy.

1sT Place

There's been a lot written about tea down the years, as a compass of tradition or as a counsellor, or lifter of spirits.

It's trashy badboy brother 'coffee' has tried to compete by claiming every bogus benefit from preventing diabetes to curing cancer. All nonsense curated by those who respond to the mild stimulant.

Tea wins. 

Beacuse at the end of the day, tea is the difference between immorality and immortality.

The Pursuit of Cake

How do you like to talk?

I like all types of talky talky.

But I think I really need occasional deep conversation that I can acquit in an apparently trivial way.

Thickies, of course are going to glaze over at this point. 

Don't get me wrong. I like the thick. Mainly because they don't know who they are. Which is fait-accompli-funny. They may be lawyers, teachers, doctors....but let's face it, they are lawyers mainly. The other jobs come with little free entitlement and have to process people rather than positions. They have to be more humble, more human. Don't tell the lawyers that..because they won't understand (And it's not even all lawyers, more usually it's their friends).

Go deep. And unwise people get deep on you. People not capable of remaining trivial (and so really should not be let loose in public).

So go trivial with them. 

Don't bring up anything too challenging. 

You get more cake that way. 

Because that's the way trivia works

Little by Skittle

Life is about pushing through and pressing on.

The things you knock over should be skittles not safety blocks.

You may decide you're the sort of person who doesn't stop but you still have to know when to turn. 

Ninety...

One eighty...

Three sixty...

All different decisions.

If you drill through plaster, you should know where the cables are.

That's why the same rules don't work for everybody.

People who succeed with the 'safety on' are just lucky.

But luck is informed.

The moment of luck has been prepared for.

When you walk through life with purpose and drive, then drive carefully.

It's about being a force of nature. 

Not a weapon of mass destruction.

Odd? Get Even!

Things I like

Half price tickets

Things I don't like

2-4-1 tickets  - useless if you are 1,3,5,7 or 9 people. 

I could go on!

The Connected

I have just heard the first ice cream van come down my street in possibly a decade. 

If this is Brexit, bring it on. It cannot be coincidence.

So I was barely able to disguise my joy when one of the students went out and bought herself a 99. Particular as I saw what she was wearing.

Appropriately enough, Mind That Student was writ large on the back of his van up against some Disney characters, likely uncleared by the corporation.

I'm so glad he made a sale.

Particularly as I had just had a lolly myself. A Rocket, since you ask, that I've recently taken to purchasing and storing in my own freezer.

But the spontaneous simplicity of a 99, is something even I would struggle to replicate in my otherwise highly efficient kitchen set-up.

I was pleased he made a sale. It meant he might be back and who knows.. I may take up the opportunity.

An opportunity for him of course would be to expand into Vodka, nitrous and menthol fags, and would it kill him to throw in a free pack of poppadoms for no reason at all?

No. This is the warm familiar feeling of a retro experience.

We are the connected. Social Media, 24 hour news, hearing and feeling your own phone when it hasn't rung.

But when you are connected you feel every tremor, you shake as everyone else's nerves jangle.

Everything is closer to real. 

Close and too real.

We may choose to expose ourselves to more fear if it's our wont, controlled or otherwise.

Or perhaps do everything we can to avoid it, cross our fingers that the world isn't really a changeable place and enjoy a bubble we have some influence over. 

And who can blame us?

LOLling ourselves into a false sense of security.

The Bastille

I sent a joke to a stranger earlier on today.

I was buying a bit of flooring on the Internet.... 'like you do'. Do you remember when people said that a lot?

The joke was of a mildly Carry-On risque flavour based on an accident which had changed my carpenter's name from Laycock to Lovecock. So as you can imagine a joke was overdue, and with a local Pride march happening within the next 24 hours, I had the perfect frame for it.

I want to live in a world where you can still make a joke without too much fear so I pretend this is that world.

I tempered it a little, by phrasing it with a little pomposity to increase the humour.

(This wasn't my first rodeo, readers)

And I was blessed with a quick reply which said "Oh ...you have made my day".

I re-read what I had sent and have to admit it was a pretty good joke.

In theory, there was nothing in that for me.

Just a little chance taken to brighten somebody's day.

But I will let you into the thought processes:

Chance of it meeting some humourless half-dead vacuum - maybe 20%.

Chance of it being taken wrongly: maybe 15%.

Chance of it being received well but nobody letting me know.. maybe 50%.

My assessment: WTR - Worth the risk

Outcome: the best possible, because it met with a kindly soul (and I may have mentioned, it was a pretty good joke)

So what was that ..a little exercise for the human spirit, a little boost of adrenaline. A smile for someone 300 miles away at the end of a long Friday in a likely-boring job, doing invoices for laminate.

But many is the joke unsaid. 

Many is the gift ungiven.

The 84 dead people who were mowed over by a Tunisian lorry driver this Nice morning won't make any more jokes.

They won't get to face my trivial decision-making process.

Yet too many of the living have surrendered that right and duty early.

We are fragile. 

We have bones like Wispa bars. Our underflesh is like mallow. Our sensory organs are some of the most fragile tissues in creation.

And it's because we are so fragile that we tell ourselves that we are strong.

Through our culture. In our movies and books. In Holbein and on Instagram.

We even rewrote the original verse of our traditional nursery rhymes - the ones that reminded us how brittle our bones were and how tasty our flesh might be to others.

"Little Johnny on the railway line, picking up stones, along came the engine, and broke poor Johnny's bones".

We need to tell ourselves that we are strong. 

Because we are not.

It's a story.

Stories aren't true but we need them to survive. They are oxygen. They are food. 

And hope.

For better days ahead.

"Oh!" said Johnny, "That's not fair." 

"Oh!" said the engine.

"I don't care"

The Real Deal

You know how people tell you to to "Keep it Real"

That's quite a limiting belief don't you think, keeping it real?

Don't you think we have enough Real?

Don't you think we have slightly more Real than is absolutely needed at the moment?

And if so, have you balanced it out with more Unreal, or are you in a negative balance? 

Are you in a downward spiral? 

In deficit?

I suppose these well-meaning hipsters must be meaning to encourage you in a little more honesty, a little more letting people know who you are.

Well, at least one of those is unnecessary and at least one is a given. 

So why do we need to keep instructing each other to "Keep it Real".

Surely to push, strive and achieve, you need to keep it slightly unreal. 

You need to ignore the edges, erase the lines and blur the edges of possibility. 

You don't just need to "Keep Real", you need to make more Real by crossing over those boundaries.

Keeping it Real is really just maintaining the status quo and the last thing we need more of is Status Quo.  

"Keep it Surreal" if you have to. At least that is considerably more interesting.

But if that's too much of a leap for you, I say "Keep it slightly Unreal".

I will even suffix a  "…, Man !"  on the end if you feel you need it.