This Product May Contain Nuts

I’m having a great deal of trouble typing this because some twat tipped a whole gin & tonic over my keyboard on Saturday, and the top three rows of keys are all sticky. If I could restrict myself to typing things consisting only of the letters z x c v b n & m, then I’d be fine. For some time now I’ve had a suspicion that I do too much entertaining; now it has been confirmed. All anyone gets from throwing open their doors is a trashed home, groaning sacks to be transported to the bottle bank, and neighbours whose disturbed sleep causes them to cast you black looks in the corridor the next day. Might be some time before I do that again.

It’s been one of those weekends. Both daughters were home – staying with their mother – and I joined them for lunch on Saturday which was opened with champagne and closed with a round of ‘mad dogs’ (a powerful concoction first discovered in Poland). This was following an evening on Friday when a friend & I had watched the film version of ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'. As if Elizabeth Taylor’s heaving bosom and Paul Newman’s smouldering blue eyes weren’t heady enough stuff, the prolific guzzling of whisky by said Mr Newman seduced us into believing that we should do the same, and it became a very late night indeed.

Back at my apartment, Saturday evening turned into a riot. It became more difficult to recover from the delirium tremors on Sunday, having lost an hour’s sleep from an already short time in bed. However, recover we had to because my father was celebrating his birthday by taking the entire family out to lunch. I had written a rather cheesy poem – an ‘Ode to Jimmy P’ - which I read to the assembled crowd. Both he & my mother were very touched by this, and the rest of the family thankfully didn’t notice the poor quality of the writing and concluded that I am a natural performer with flair, charm & wit. How wrong they are.

On Sunday evening I went for a few quiet drinks with a friend. Firstly we encountered a man who succeeded in masquerading as the stereotypical ‘pub bore’ without even being drunk. He spoke in incomprehensible metaphors, made even more unfathomable by his dense foreign accent. My friend and I decided to hide from the crowds by removing ourselves to an obscure pub – only to be confronted by more lunatics. We were approached by a strange man who pretended that we had previously made his acquaintance (we’d never seen him before in our lives) and what’s more, that we knew all of his friends too. He sat down as if to settle himself for the evening and so, because he was interrupting our conversation, I asked him to stand up again and depart. Later, a woman approached me who seemed to think that I could solve a very personal problem she had. No introduction, no ‘excuse me’, just: “Right, I’m in a serious relationship, okay? But he’s bastard, right? Well...”

Is it something about the way I look, do you think?

Horace said this: It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.

Old Ways, Old Days

This is turning out to be a really good week. My lovely daughter has been with me for a couple of days before she returns to Geneva, which has been great fun. We went to see a film one evening: Love In The Time Of Cholera which was possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen – made worse by the fact that it was actually masquerading as a clever film. How wrong it is. It is (very) badly scripted; (very) badly acted; and (very) sloppily directed. In truth, it might be a bit unfair to say it was badly acted because with such a weak script and such shabby direction, what were the poor actors supposed to do? Someone in charge of this debacle presumably thought that stunning shots of the Amazon basin and a few bits of evocative music thrown in was all that was needed to save the picture – it wasn’t.

By contrast (almost) was Chabrol’s latest offering which we saw yesterday: L’Ivresse du Pouvoir, badly translated as The Comedy of Power. Clearly designed as a vehicle for Isabelle Huppert’s inimitable talent, it did its job admirably. It’s a very French flm in as much as we are (as usual) denied any real dramatic action, but the acting and sexual tension were inversely proportional. That is to say that the acting was out of the box; the sexual tension, typically understated. This film is in danger of slipping into the realm of having defrauded us, but narrowly manages (just) to cling on to the roots of credibility.

Anyway, my other daughter is now joining us at the weekend. This is a remarkable achievement – they’re so very rarely both in this country at the same time that’s it’s a real treat. We’re celebrating my father’s birthday at the weekend too – we’ll all be having a meal in an hotel (he’s paying!) and it will be rare occasion for all the family to be together. I think there are about twenty-two of us in total.

I had a visit from the stray cat last night – he just walked in out of the blue and started purring loudly. I don’t know where he’s been all this time but someone has been looking after him because he’s put on weight and is now all sleek and glossy. I’d forgotten how nice it is to stroke a cat when you’re lonely, especially this one. Anyway, he walked out this morning and goodness knows if I'll see him again.

Today’s Horace: Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it. Too right!

Credulous as Hell

I don’t watch much television, but the other evening I watched a fascinating programme about the Turin Shroud. Apparently (although it’s not yet proven), there is now doubt being cast upon the carbon-14 dating methods which declared the shroud to be a medieval hoax, manufactured in about 1350. There is now a suggestion that the shroud may, in fact, be genuine.

Well, whatever next? Personally, I couldn’t give a flying fuck whether it’s genuine or not, but the TV programme was interesting in as much as it presented a series of facts (well let’s call them hypotheses), all of which challenged the 1988 announcement that the shroud was only 600 years old. It’s far too complicated to recount all of these hypotheses here (even if I could remember half of them), but some of them were based on newly-discovered inaccuracies of the caron-14 dating methods (apparently, there needs only to be a 2% variance in the accuracy of the test to throw the date out by as much as 1,100 years); some of them were based on evidence of paintings and descriptions of the shroud that exist from as far back as 500 AD (sometime before 1350); some on the fact that if it were a medieval hoax, nobody can explain how it was done (and the programme featured international experts in cloth weaving & dyeing who all said it was impossible); and some on the fact that the position of the nail holes in the image of the body is inconsistent with the usual depiction that appears in all other medieval art , but yet consistent with Roman practice in Jerusalem in the year 33 AD. Spooky stuff.

However, notwithstanding that the programme makers (and the presenter too - that adorable little Christian reporter, Rageh Omar) seemed to be desperately trying to get us to believe the shroud’s authenticity, it all seemed rather sad. It made me wonder why people are spending millions of dollars (yes, millions & millions & millions) trying to prove that a piece of cloth is actually 1,975 years old rather than only 651 when even if they succeed, it still doesn’t prove that it was used to bury the body of Christ. These are people who clearly need their faith to be bolstered by something as trivial as a rather questionable old relic. Does this not suggest that they should really be questioning themselves about why they believe in the first place? The altars of Catholic Europe are full of the interred bones of saints who, if their existence is to be believed, must have had more limbs, ribs and skulls than your average man in the street had! It's all nonsense.

Of course, this is nothing new. People are forever displaying their pathetic desperation; forever trying to underpin their own insecurities or inadequacies by chasing the elusive ‘truth’. I mean, look at Mohammed al-Fayed with his obsession that Prince Philip drives a white Fiat Uno on his Saturday nights out; look at Ralph Rene (one of the main exponents of the theory that the 1968 moon landings were a fake) who believes that the USA staged the whole lunar hoax in order to distract the American public from the Vietnam war (as if American citizens could be that gullible). These people are out there, and they want to let us know that.

So as I say, I don’t care either way about the Turin Shroud. Whether it was really used to wrap up some insurgent’s corpse following a Roman execution in Jerusalem in the year 33 AD, or whether it was whipped off the table of some medieval lord and daubed with a bit of gravy browning to present the image of a (suspiciously European-looking) man – it don’t mattah! For while there are lies and truths to be told, someone will continue to make television programmes about them. Furthermore, people will continue to watch them.

Today's quotation from Horace: "We are free to yield to truth."

Save Tibet from China's Aggression!

I read this morning that a group of Chinese dissidents (mainly writers and lawyers) has defied government threats and the enmity of irate nationalists by calling for talks with the Dalai Lama and an end to the latest attempts by the government to refute the current situation in Tibet. Twenty-nine leading intellectuals, risking abduction and censorship, have written an open letter saying that the current turmoil demonstrates that China's policy towards Tibet has failed.

It said: "Adopting a posture of aggressive nationalism will only invite antipathy from the international community and harm China's international image."

I find one phrase here to be particularly disturbing: Aggressive nationalism is hateful in all its forms. There is a dichotomy for us to grapple with here – sure, most of us would wish to have pride in our country; it is like being proud of one’s family, only on a bigger scale. Pride in our country helps place us in the world; it is part of our heritage and identity, without which we might feel adrift and misplaced. Nationalism, in this respect, is not a bad thing; but aggressive nationalism (on the other hand) is always pernicious and arrogant. I hate jingoism because it is always chauvinistic and it always breeds hatred.

Horace (the Roman poet, that is) said: It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country. I struggle to accept that it is ever ‘sweet & seemly’ to die for anything, but I think I know what he meant – he was presumably referring to patriotism in defence of one’s country, not to dying in xenophobic aggression for the sake of where we were born.

Nothing has ever been achieved by aggression except for oppression, of course. Tibet is clearly being oppressed by its monstrous neighbour and whereas I have previously written that I don’t believe this year’s Olympic Games should be jeopardized, I’m now beginning to wonder whether peaceful non-compliance might be effective. I read that one Chinese official has unleashed an angry attack on the government’s opponents. He says that China's critics are welcome to stay away from the Olympics. "If you don't want to come, don't!" he says. "If you don't want to participate, don't!" I think that perhaps we should call his bluff, don't you?

Tomorrow, I may give you another Horace quotation but in the meantime, I think I should carpe diem.

Spring Forward

Today is the Vernal Equinox. Not the best day for vampires, perhaps (because from now on the days are longer than the nights; less time to play) but I love it.

They say that hope springs eternal
Especially at the Equinox Vernal

I just made that up actually, but don’t worry – I’m not about to lapse into rhyming couplets in the Pantomime style I used earlier this year. So today is the first day of spring (in the Northern hemisphere at least) and it’s quite true – I feel a certain spring in my step. Only a couple of days ago I was feeling very sorry for myself indeed. I was having difficulty working out where this life was going – but now, even though I still don’t know where it’s going, I don’t care. Hurrah!

If you think about it, most good fiction is either based on the tradition of Bildungsroman – where there is a quest for self-development of some kind – or on a conquest against adversaries. The adversaries don’t have to be physical; they can be spiritual, emotional, even self-created. I suppose my life (as anyone’s) has been a mélange of both themes, and whereas I find it surprising in one respect that I haven’t yet been able to bring about the climax to either struggle, in another I think it’s completely understandable. All good films depict a journey; a labour – why should the story of my life be any different? You often hear people say ‘His life is a like a Hollywood movie’ which is usually a rather vacuous comment made without proper reason - but when examined with sufficient care, most people’s lives truly are. Mine is.

So, today we begin a new season and with it we cloak ourselves in a new fortitude. This can only be good. In view of that, it was fairly propitious that the sun was shining again today. The sun gives a welcome step-up to enthusiasm. I went out in the car this morning and put the hood down with the stereo blaring. Even though I was bloody freezing and the wind was blowing like old boots, it didn’t matter. On the first day of spring, it just had to be done. Later on, I might even open my balcony doors and play the jagged rhythms of Stravinsky. Very loudly. My neighbours will love me - as indeed, should everyone.

Powerful Beat

The problem with the sun shining (which it is today, almost with a vengeance) is that it highlights the layer of somewhat greasy grime lying on the outside of my patio windows. This reminds me that there is work to be done – not only on the glass that sits under the blank-white sky, but everywhere I look. Dead and faded flowers wilt in my vase; dust gathers like tumbleweed in my bathroom, almost concealing the evidence of the odd darting silverfish, scurrying seemingly to nowhere. I’ve another play to write, and a novel to finish too, as well as two businesses to run. And yet I am gripped by lethargy; wrapped in its grasp of despair while matters of the heart cause me to sink further into a bubbling pit of debilitating bewilderment.

I spoke recently of how, since my marriage ended, I had set out on the road to the Emerald City and that at last, I was going back to Kansas. Somehow I appear to have mis-read the map and now find that the yellow bricks beneath my feet are beginning to crack and fade; leading me forever in the wrong direction. Unrequited love is a sad business because there are never any winners. The outcome is always messy – either one party has to suppress their emotions to the point where they become lifeless, or the other party gets their bunny boiled.

No matter. In the words of Sammy Davis Junior, the rhythm of life has a powerful beat and therefore it will always sustain me. The good thing about the sun shining is that – whilst not exactly putting a tingle in my fingers nor a tingle in my feet – it does lift the soul somewhat and also gives a waking call to the lurking spirit of enthusiasm. I am going to London today for the launch of my dear friend Nicola Monaghan’s latest book Starfishing. This will be a fun event and a chance to meet up with people I haven’t seen for a while. I’m even going to catch up with my lovely daughter Imogen which will be an added bonus. I’m quite excited.

So, while I now wallow in the lassitude that my misery brings to me, I know that it won’t be long before I spring back to my cheerful, jolly self. Perhaps I should try a de-tox programme to sharpen my faculties? Judging by the groaning sacks that await transportation to the bottle bank, it’s probably exactly what I need. A particularly close friend of mine – also in danger of straying from the path of righteousness – could join me. We could be like the Tin Man & the Cowardly Lion, supporting each other along the long and snaking road towards endeavour. What a good idea. Who needs Dorothy?

Whatever

The weekend starts on Thursday, according to some people. Well, some people would say that the weekend starts on Tuesday, but presumably they’re just reprobates, so we’ll ignore that. My weekend started on Friday after I’d finished a whole load of work and I was able to switch off and begin the fun part. First off we had a critique session where we had an opportunity to appraise my lovely friend Maria’s latest novel. It’s fabulous – an evocative tale of life in a nineteenth-century Italian peasant community, filled with colour and intrigue and mystery, and with a bit of night time eel-catching thrown in for good measure. It's definitely ready for publication and it's possibly award-winning stuff too, so well done Maria. After the critique session we retired to the pub for some refreshments and some of us, at least, later consumed too much whisky back at my place. The evening ended badly.

Then on Saturday, there came a visit from my crazy mad sister whom I love dearly. She’d been to a wedding locally and had clearly drunk too much champagne when she sailed into my apartment like a stately cruise ship, bubbling with her boundless enthusiasm. We went for a brief drink in a local hostelry and met up with a writing friend of mine who was sitting in a quiet, scholarly fashion reading a book. After my sister and her husband had departed for Wedding Party Part Two, I remained with my friend and our activities became less scholarly as the consumption of wine became more acute. Again the evening ended badly, I’m afraid.

On Sunday we’d been invited to a lunchtime party hosted by a nearby Indian restaurant. There was a huge array of delicious (and free) food on offer as well as an unlimited free bar. We were in delightful company but unfortunately I was unable to take full advantage of the bar because I had a play to finish in the afternoon, so I came home to work. With the satisfaction of having completed some work (however badly), I returned to the Hockley vortex to embark on yet another bout of wine-tasting. The evening did not end well, but on a separate issue I notice that this area appears to have become overrun with the Irish – they’re everywhere you look. Or could it be that they’re just being flushed out of their homes by the impending St Patrick’s Day celebrations? Hang on to your hats lads, we’re going back to Tullamore!

Beware

I decided to go ahead with the Pecha Kucha event after all. I’d already prepared the presentation anyway, and various people I spoke to had advised me not to let the negative people in my life prevent me from having fun, so as a final act of self-humiliation I showed my life story to the assembled crowd. Apart from some inconsistencies between my 2007 version of PowerPoint and the version running on the host, it went well. There was a nice mix of styles too – from the merely frivolous and personal exposé (like mine), to the more esoteric searches for the truth of life – it was exactly what the organizers wanted. It was a good event and apparently, the first in this country outside London. We trailblaze.

In the meantime, I should like to thank the kind-hearted people who left encouraging comments on my previous blog entry – well, except for one who tried to disguise his duplicity by feigning consideration and support when he knew he was actually responsible for the whole thing. Nobody I know was fooled by that by the way, so it doesn’t really matter.

Tomorrow is what the Romans called the Idus Martiae – the day when the Libatores assassinated Julius Caesar (according to our old pal Shakespeare, at least), and a day when we are all meant to be prepared for some doom that might sneak upon us from the shadows. Well, I’m prepared for anything. Notwithstanding that I have a whole load of work to do today, and am probably deficient in the number of hours in which to do it (as usual), I’m up and running.

My friend Darmachari Jinaraja tells me that all suffering can be eased by meditation. That’s all very well, but I also learn that in meditation the state of sexual dimorphism is transcended. Who wants that? I like being a man – I might not fit easily in this skin but at least I don’t have to wear a bra and panties (there's probably more to being a woman than that, but you know what I mean).

And if anyone wants to approach me with a dagger in the night merely for scoffing a packet of biscuits (Et tu, Bruté? Response: “You ate the whole bloody packet, actually”) then I can defend myself. Bring it on, I’m stronger than I look.

Lock Down

I sometimes wonder about the sagacity of being an open person. My problem is that the curve of my life had been largely silted by secrets up until a short time ago, so when I finally emerged blinking into the sunlight (please excuse the cliché), I probably went too far the other way. This has resulted in too many people knowing too much about me – and subsequently believing that they are qualified to hold opinions about me and to make judgements about me - when really it’s none of their damned business.

It’s all my fault of course – I’ve been too generous with information about myself, and certainly far too generous with my time and money, and this has given people the idea that I’m an easy target for abuse and other acts of near recidivism; a soft touch perhaps. I’d have said before now that I’m as tough as old boots (another cliché – gosh, this is bad writing isn’t it?), but recent events have hurt me. I don’t know what people see when they look at Richard Pilgrim, but my guess is that they see a palpable fool with no sensitivity and even less dignity. Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling (and that’s not a cliché, it’s an adage).

I am booked to perform in a Pecha Kucha event tomorrow evening. This is a show where individuals are given six minutes and forty seconds to present the essence of their lives in a series of overhead slides with a commentary. The presentation is meant to say everything about ourselves: Who are we? Why are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? It is not intended that anyone should take themselves too seriously in this, and any attempt to use the event as humorless self-promotion will result in a ‘yellow card’. I’ve seen these events before – people are staging them world-wide - and they’re fun.

However, my problem now is that by presenting my life story in the light-hearted way I was planning to, I will be willfully exposing myself to further ridicule from people who think that my generally open demeanour gives them free licence to sneer and scoff at me. Right now, I’m hardly of the disposition to deal with this, so I’m tempted to contact the organizers and withdraw.

What I ought to be doing instead, is closing myself down to the rest of my so-called fellow humans and turning my life into a sort of mobius curve – one where the real surface of my personality becomes slightly difficult to fathom and where the fragilities of my heart become locked inside an internal circle. I need to behave with more dignity in future, and I need to stop being so generous with myself – then at least I won’t get continually slapped in the face by others who use my generosity only to debase me in order to boost their own (already bloated) egos.

Now I know exactly how Greta Garbo felt. But it’s good; it’s positive.

Danse Macabre

Well, they say a weekend wasted is never a wasted weekend. I disagree. This life we are given is rather short and we really ought to make it as worthwhile as we can – surely we have a responsibility to create some meaning to it all. Aren’t we supposed to leave a beneficial impression of our lives when we leave this place? Something more than just the boosted profits of the various alcohol victuallers and tobacco purveyors?

Sadly, I have made little contribution to the tapestry of social wellbeing this weekend, and I don’t feel terribly proud of anything I have done. I have been relentlessly cruel to my liver and other organs, as well as being abusive and uncaring towards my diminishing financial resources. Where are the great works of literature that I’m meant to be producing? Where is the art? Where is the inner purity and clarity of mind that I claim to be seeking? What is the point of trotting along to Buddhism classes every week, only to discharge the precepts in the swirl of a wineglass and summarily to reject the teachings by wanton abandonment between the sheets? Where is the value in that?

Far from leaving a meaningful impression on this yearning planet, the only thing this weekend’s activities are likely to leave from me is a rather nasty stain. I am dancing with the angels of oblivion here. Methinks it’s time for some reassessment. Time for action.

Back by Popular Demand

I learned something interesting tonight – I learned that depression is actually the body’s way of telling us that we’re in the wrong place and that we need to change direction. Likewise, suicidal feelings should not be taken literally, but should be recognized as a signal that we’ve reached a cul-de-sac in our lives and that we must (as the person we are) die. The sad thing is, that many people do not realize that these feelings are just a message and they do take them literally, and therefore kill themselves.

This is all very sad. I sometimes get depressed, and have sometimes even considered ending it all – but these feelings have always puzzled me. Now I know why. Even though I’ve often woken in the night and thought that if I had a gun under the pillow (as I’m sure many Americans do), I’d put it to my temple and pull the trigger, I know that I’d never really do it. I’m too curious about life; too nosey I suppose. There’s this theory about all those young people who have committed suicide in Wales that they view death as a romantic notion and have never really grasped that it’s quite fatal. Death is terminal; it’s final. As a potential Buddhist I suppose I should hold a different view – reincarnation is of course the answer – but who wants to risk that?

When you’re dead, you can’t drink in Muse Bar until 1:00 a.m. And when you’re dead, you can’t continue to hope that life – just around the corner – won’t throw up just the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. We’re told that we should try to suppress our ego – but if we do that, we kill ourselves. Wouldn’t it be better to make friends with our ego, and walk alongside it to make us a better person?

I think so.