Amusing, serious, sometimes deep.
Between visiting galleries at the weekend and being at home, my life doesn’t speak of much. In fact, yesterday I was extremely bored, so much so that I really couldn’t get anything done. Anything I turned my hand to was met with a ready excuse that it didn’t need doing.
This was supposed to be a sort of review and reprise of George Orwell’s “The Decline Of The English Murder,” only my point of view is very different to his. Which makes his essays the more appealing to me. Add Orwell’s beautiful and evocative writing and you have a blissful read.
Not that murders are blissful, but that’s the point of murders – and the point of Orwell looking at their decline. Orwell’s books were written to be read by those who enjoy reading, those who read the story as much for the writing as the story itself. But that is what makes literature; if it’s only a story thinly interwoven by lumpy descriptions, it’s pulp fiction.
It is 1916 and an English gentleman is sitting in the shade of a trottoir café in Limassol on the island of Cyprus. Next to him is a Greek Cypriot tailor. They are both drinking coffee and discussing the events of the day. As they are about to part, the English gentleman says, “as soon as you have definite information, ring up 8456 and ask when it will be convenient for Mr Crowder to try on his new suit.” And adds that if he’s not there, he’ll phone back later in order to confirm the meeting.
So you’ve already spotted that something fishy is going on here, haven’t you?
It is the middle of the night and all is quiet. Routine on a naval ship is the normality; the routine in the small hours of the night is even more crucial, because that’s the time when people are at their least aware. It’s nature: humans are better asleep in the depths of the night. Standing around in the dark is simply not as interesting as standing around during the daytime. Even at sea, there are things to see in the daylight, like a seagull. At least there is something; when it’s dark, it’s just one fug of nothingness. The blackness becomes boring for the rating standing lookout on the bridge of the USS Porter.
Life is everywhere, it is the metaphor for our earth. It is there that things might live. I want to take a generalized look at the various kinds of life that exist on earth, and take a rational look at what this implies about these forms of life.
In the world around us, the simplest class of life that we can see is the plant. I will leave aside the microscopic organisms as we cannot see them; indeed, I have dealt with these on my private blog, for the misunderstandings about them are legion and it takes some seriously clear thinking to wade through the various illusions.
Occasionally I share something from a blogger who is truly remarkable. The way she looks at things is something that each and every one of us can learn from. This time, it’s the way she describes her friend’s eyes.
I’ll let her tell you what she saw:
Source: Dedicated to a friend (2)
I was in conversation with a wannabe biochemist a few days ago. I say ‘wannabe’ because the gentleman in question is a retired electrical engineer. Well, you can imagine he knows a lot about electrons and a lot less about biochemistry.
That doesn’t stop him from believing in things – and the nature of belief is that it is unexplored and thus the belief is unfounded. In common parlance this is called an illusion. Continue reading “The Unthinking Biochemist.”
