Approximately

i think motion is the most fascinating thing. The motion of people about their lives from place to place. A person is there one moment, with another, then gone. Motion took them there and now they are both gone.

It eclipses the sun.

And though plans are made and hopes are drawn, you cant help but look to the ephemerality of it all. Where we move and hope. I’m here you are there and so am I. At least i hope I am.

Throw a book accross the ocean and it might never reach your destination but at least it’s moving. And hit it’s mark in dreams and hopeful desire.

nothing changes when one moves, at least one lies to find that conclusion.

Teddy Mo approximately

So it finally happened…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7120263.stm

Read the story and you’ll quickly get the gist of what’s happened, if times too tight for you to do so however…a British teacher has been jailed for blasphemy…considering the sudanese legal system is one based on Islamic law this is understandable, blashphemy is a serious crime under Sharia law. However the blasphemy in question was naming a teddy bear after Islam’s most important prophet. This is lamentable. Britian, and no doubt the larger international community, will rally for her early release, but this is largely symbolic…she has only been sentenced to 15 days. However, more lamentable is the continuing distance parts of the Islamic world are putting between themselves and the ‘common sense’ of the West and liberal Islamic communities. The jailing of this teacher will, no doubt, start another wave of people damning Islam as a brutal, reactionary and inflexible religion and give further ammunition to those already adhearing to the view of Islam as such a religion. This is lamentable, for Islam is no worse than Christianity with this regard, it is only the interpretation of the former religion that, currently, makes it impossible for us to regard it as anything but a brutal religion in some countries. If, having had this woman jailed, we continue to damn Islam, adhearing to the interpretation of this religion as evil then we do no better for the world than fundamentalist terrorists and those using religion as a tool of political suppression. We have the power to further the cause of fundamentalist Islam as any terrorist or autocratic political leader and we do this by criticising Islam using the same reading of Islam by those said fundamentalists. It is just as dangerous and just as irresponsible.

this happens to be one of the main themes of my novel

chain fic nummber 10

The first link is http://matt-boothman.livejournal.com/8136.html#cutid2

and the last link http://matt-boothman.livejournal.com/10085.html

” I tried to remember the first time I had ever met him. I don’t think I ever did. No one ever really first met him. His really was a reputation that didn’t only precede his first meeting anyone but damn well shoved its way to the front, pushing grandmas and pregnant woman over as it did so. He looked over his shoulder at me. In his mouth was that fucked up pipe again. He always had that fucking pipe in his mouth. I asked him once what it was all about, who he was trying to impress. When I’d done so he said fuck all and looked at me as though I’d shat on his mother or asked him what triskaidekaphobia was, well somewhere between the two. Having held the silence for long enough I told him I didn’t know no fuckin’ women who found pipes p’ticularly sexy. Two weeks later, walking home from…fuck I can’t even remember where, I saw him sat on a bench in one of them parks little kids play in. He got his pipe out and started blowing on it ’til some kids went over to him and began hassling him for a blow. It all began to make sense. Cunt.

Housemate approximately

For those of you know me, or have frequented my lovely house, you may know that it goes by the unnofficial title of “The White House”. It’s big and white you see. My fellow classmates Matt ‘mighty’ Booth and Ciara Flynn both live there, as well as my very good friend Chris Lee, a strange French girl called Stef and lovely Fran. It is however an 8 person house, that leaves two rooms previously unfilled…until this week. One of my two new housemates happens to be an economics student, third year and looks forward to a job in a bank, a job she hopes her degree will make her easily qualified for. I know this because last night i took the initiative in talking to her, she being quite a quiet little thing, we not having a chance to talk properly previous. Needless to say, as social etiquette demands, she asked me what i was doing and what i proposed to do in the future. In reply, and taking my usual grandiose tone, i declared my intention of becoming a writer…at which…she laughed…asking what on earth i bothered doing a degree for if all I wanted to do was write…

And you know what…maybe she has a point. I mean, if one disregards the fact that by taking a degree I might become a better writer, what is the point? why don’t we just write as opposed to suffer the horrors of university life? The answer is simple and reflects the times in which we live.

When Samuel Beckett went to Trinity College Dublin he had no idea what he wanted to do when he finished his course, he certainly didnt see his degree as a definite passage to a defined career. But that thinking would suggest a degree is merely that, something for the CV, something to help distinguish yourself from others. I can’t help but feel this highlights the wholly ‘Scout badge’ generation in which we live. Everything done for the CV. A petty little pin on a lapel of good achievments. Volunteer work for example, done to help others? in most cases i know of my friends do it for the CV. I’m no better. I write occasionally for The Founder and Orbital (college papers) and I do so because it is one of the few extra-curricular activities I partake in…and those look good on a CV.

My degree, however, is different. I knew three years ago, deciding upon this fruity little creative writing course, that I would not take a degree that would lead, at least with greater ease, toward a profession, be it a dentist, doctor, accountant or banker, I took a degree in something I loved doing and wanted to explore its further possibilities. Is that lazy? irresponsible? of course not. And this, I believe, is just a good a reason to do a degree, if not the best reason. If I’m working in a Woolworths in ten years time then so be it, and though my father will resent my lack of fiscal knowledge or anglo-saxon capitalist drive, at least I’ll understand that sentences shouldn’t end in prepositions (thanks Adam) and that, though split infinitives are grammatically wrong, I enjoy doing it from time to time.

And, anyway, whereas her economics degree begins in the lecture hall and ends when she closes her books after studying, my little chat with her gave birth to a, somewhat dissillusioned if not closed minded, character who might just end up in my first novel…

…I think I know who’s winning…

Nocturnal Restlessness approximately

I couldn’t sleep easily last night…again. It seems the nights persist on drawing out. I think it was because I started trying to understand the eternity of death again… I can never get to sleep when this happens. I, however, went about my attempt somewhat more proactively than i do usually. I went to my laptop and typed in death. The first website on google was that freaky (and for someone like me terrifying) deathclock. You know the thing, the calculation website that after a couple of questions will tell you your own date of death. It would take a whole lot of Jack Daniels to get me to click on there. below this, however, was the wikipedia entry for death. Aah wikipedia…much nicer. After a brief browse through medical definitions of death i came accross a link called ‘evolution of ageing’…just fascinating…i always assumed we age because we wear ourselves out…humans aren’t supposed to live to 80 right??? apparently it’s not so simple…and the reason for ageing is one of the biggest unsolved problems the scientific community are still facing. I implore you to have a look yourself…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_ageing

Kodak moment approximately

What a fascinating picture. If you can’t figure it out I’l give you a clue…It was taken in New York Sept 11th. I have only admiration for the photographer who took this, frankly amazing, picture. Beautiful? Stunning? Hopeful? A commentary upon an apathetic nation?? i think it could be any of these things. Innappropriate? Maybe, maybe not.

I am not one for this trend of asking other people to write about or from something I’ve written here (dont we have enough work already???) But this is certainly quite a picture to start a story from. More interestingly I’d like to know what you think of the picture itself. Irresponsible??? Opportunistic???

Pray tell.

About the author approximately

…the author isnt dead…he isnt even poorly.

My subjective perspective

I am a chronic hypochondriac…like all men. Read Jerome’s three men in a boat and you’ll see it put perfectly. Sometimes i stay up nights staring into the dark, the only nothingness, and thinking about the nature of that put into reality. And by that i mean a true nothingness. Not a vaccuum or the hole that defines a doughnut but that nothingness where waiting doesnt exist. It seems to me so unimaginable that we will one day die and even after a thousand years not be given the chance of life again. This is what frightens me. Like not being invited to a party…i want to see what happens next…after my days.

But I’m also a realist…and by that I mean Pessimist. I don’t want to live forever, that would be terrible. But it comes to be that one realsies that one can’t experience the nothingness by which death is characterised. That is obvious enough. we can only experience that which any being can experience from the subjective perspective. With this regard death is upsetting, frightening because we don’t like to lose people, we are animals accustomed to stability…of not noticing age as much as we might because we age in proximity and time to those we choose to care about. This is the problem with death. We experience it only with regard to anothers passing and we associate it with sadness. We can’t, however, experience our own deaths, dying is a circumstance of life, an act of living but death is not. The philosopher Anthony Grayling goes as far as to suggest that from this perspective we are immortal. That may be a bit far thinking, but should give those afraid of death some solice i suppose. That, really, death is rather boring…nothing for us to fear…hmm??? maybe not though.

Shit….is this lump normal???

My Review

My review of the holloway production of “End of the rainbow”

Keeping in accord with ancient japanese performance, the Noh theatre was home to Chris Lee’s production of Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow last week. Rainbow foregoes a career spanning retrospective and focussess on her attempted comeback in London in 1968 to present the, wholly tragic, Judy Garland story.

It was a relief to see that the set design took away attention from the hidious Noh stage itself. An autumnal glow blanketting the stage worked to give the setting, a hotel room, real authenticity; commendable considering the venue. Taking the role of Garland was Prudence Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s vocal impersonation of Garland was uncanny and quite brilliant, a virtual testament to imitative performance. In fact vocally Chamberlain was almost wholly successful, conveying Garland’s despair, anger and humour with authenticity that was among the best I have seen at Holloway. Physically, however, the performer looked occasionally awkward on stage and as much as I wanted this to be intentional, by way of portraying Garlands age and vulnerability, it never really came off this way.

The two men, Anthony and Mickey, were played by Nicholas Fleming and Ed Pemberton respectively. The balance between humour and awkwardness rising from their relationship in context to their interest in Judy seemed, occasionally, misjudged. As humourous as their confrontations were it seemed that opportunities to portray the truly uncomfortable dynamic between the men was lost by playing for laughs. Specifically Fleming’s performance was nothing short of a tribute to restraint which made his British homosexual pianist all the more believable considering how hammy, giving the character description, the performance could have been. Having said this even he couldnt resist an archytypal flick of the hair in order to rebuff an insult from Mickey; something not wholly keeping in character. Pemberton seemed to take a short while to get going but having done so he achieved moments of delicacy that truly gave the impression his characer loved Garland. Indoingso Pemberton made Mickey’s resort to forcing drugs upon Garland all the more tragic; if we were happy to believe that she was loved by him then we were by all means the sadder for realising how she probably wasn’t by the play’s end.

Considering how short his production time was, four weeks, Lee should be commended on how successful much of his play was. I have no doubt given more realistic rehearsal time both cast and director would be capable of achieving great things.

Tuesday afternoon competition

Hello kids…are you a little bored this reading week…? wanna get boreder?

im researching a little thing called Zeno’s Paradoxes with regard to my dissertation on Samuel Beckett. They happen to be very…thought inducing. Here’s an example. Zeno’s dichotomy paradox states that in order for an object, we might as well say a person, to travel a certain distance, he must first travel half the distance before he arrives there. But having reached half the distance he must then, of course, pass the next half way mark between where he stands now, having moved from his starting place, and the end of the distance. This can go on until infinity. Zeno’s point being that motion suggests an impossible number of distances to travel. can anyone think to solve this paradox??? a signed picture is the prize!!!!!

‘citing.