Nocturn

It’s three in the morning, mountains have proved impossible to complete past Alps, Apennines. I could skip the Bs and get to Carpthanians and Dolomites but integrity grips me. I wonder why I think the quality of sleep would be different if I cheated in my game. I know, I’d stay awake worrying about cheating. So I move onto a novel variation; Algeria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, ... Zambia. Still no sleep. Maybe just a quick peep then on the worries. Like picking a scab, without fail they bloom and flourish from my horizontal wanderings. Does brain blood come to rest in different zones whilst lying prone? Blood fertilizer to nourish paranoia. Maybe. But at least the alphabetical exercise produced a longer list tonight; a sign of recovery from the scrambled egg I’ve been passing off as intelligence these last few weeks.

How long shall I try to sleep before trying to read back to sleep by a low light? One hour, two?

Finally, restarting the paragraph of the night before that blurred into nonsense, my mind is sharp and focussed which means sleep is way off. This is no way to start a day that’s going to stretch long, long.

Think about the wine. Being lightweight in the drinking department, one or two glasses can send me groggy so at least physical damage is limited when drinking to forget. That’s good.

There’s not a story in me. Up Close and Extremely Loud didn't supply it and the Museum of Innocence was a wipe out too. Sense of an Ending wasn't bad. James Michener’s 'towering saga of a proud land and its indomitable people' might do the trick if all the pages don’t fall out first. Vortex spin-off, lack and loss. Let’s play with that.

Hungry people may lack food but they have not lost it. The potential for food is always there but the physical manifestation is not. Tell that to the hungry. Would they feel the hunger less? Tell them there are hungrier people. Would they feel their hunger less? There is a worse war here or there. How bad does a war have to be before fear is validated? Has some agency somewhere graded the severity of war? Even before that sentence is finished one senses that the answer is yes. Which is worse? The worst war? The hungriest hunger? The unloveliest love? Sleep does not come.

I have six minutes

But now it's five minutes. Tch, there goes another one wondering whether to follow this thought and losing the one I started with. I had six minutes in between remote working and lighting the fire and finding the Scrabble and unloading/loading the dishwasher and fetching logs and planning an evening meal for when the hordat descend (don't ask what a hordat is, I made it up a long time ago). So now I have one minute left before the kindly neighbour comes to keep company so I can go to the supermarket to buy the food, to cook, to nourish the hordat, to please, to sink gratefully into a chair and say, 'could someone clear please?', to start again tomorrow, to care, to nourish, to tire. So tired.

There is always music

Not all the time, not always good. But there is always music.

Today is a good day; my fire-lighting skills are improving, the sun is shining, the frost is crisp and clean and the puppy ate his breakfast. An email arrived from an Italian PhD student I met on Thursday, headed 'The Italian Job'; a new friend. I even asserted myself with my sister-in-law. Wow to that. So now it's off to buy some lovely food to share with one of my lovely daughters. Good.

Choices

Realism or pessimism? There is a view that overly optimistic people are more prone to depression because they tend to over-estimate what they can do (leading to a more frequent sense of failure) than the pessimist who has learned to say 'no, I can't do that'. So how is that I can both over-estimate what can be done but am also dogged by a very realistic sense of my inadequacy to actually do it. Stuffed? No, not really, it just means I worry more about what I do, then get on and do it. Wouldn't life be great if all the energy spent worrying could be re-directed?

As I embark upon a course of study that relies on my need to intellectualise the daily phenomena of two people's lives, I have to realise that, what Lukacs calls, 'the clouds of mysticism which once surrounded the phenomena of literature with poetic colour and warmth and created an intimate and "interesting" atmosphere...' may be what I am trying to escape. But it's also something I need to harness to keep my reader's attention.

Furthermore, in attempting to work out an ethical position in my forthcoming creative endeavour, I have encountered a fairly simplistic binary: misery memoir -v- romance and have recoiled from both. That leaves me in limbo as to how to manage what I am about to undertake.

Hitherto my only anchorage has been Schiller's 1795 treatise: On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. Every now and then something like this comes along unexpectedly and speaks directly to a problem I have been struggling with. Although I don't recall the detail, its essence enabled me to continue more confidently, knowing that naivety - so often used as a pejorative - is a noble virtue and the pursuit of the ideal, which for me is the truth (as I see it) is far superior to mere sentimentality. Now where does romance sit along that spectrum?

Back to Lukacs then who throws another ethical lifeline when he talks about how much more genuine humanity '...attaches to the acceptance of truth with all its inexorable reality...'.

When he writes about the philosophical pessimism that existed between the last two world wars, so deeply rooted in the period's social conditions, and then says there is 'plenty of darkness around us now, he was writing from a post-WWII realistic perspective. So rock-on Tolstoy, today I am eastern European.

I've done a lot of southern European sentimentality in this blog; it's been so easy to find attractive pictures, write a little cameo, then whack in some morbidly sentimental musical accompaniment. And I've often been conscious of how contrived it all is, even to the point of rejecting a good recording if the accompanying video doesn't complement the tone of my text.

So Happy New Year from a slightly less-confused, liberal-humanist-realist with agnostic undertones who still believes in the perfectibility of humankind.

Now what music might go with that?

Trying

I'll stay forever young if everyone else will.

Climbing out of a pit is easier to do when the sky is high as it is today but who wants to know about pits at this time of year? Surely here is a festival that gives us some respite, that allows a brief escape with colour, lights, food, drink, family, friends and kindness. Surely we can resist the worst, or at least harness it, for a brief period. Away with humbug then. Grown ups need joy as much as children.

The festival brought to me beautiful, healthy young people who were not embarrassed or ashamed by their desire to escape the family home. And equally, were not ashamed to love being here.

I watched them search their father's face and I saw their plans, thoughts and responsibilities flit behind their eyes. I saw a revision of their unpreparedness and I saw their maturity, love and individuality.

The festival also brought a single ticket to the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition. Speechless.

Then on 10 March we see this beautiful woman with our friends who were also speechless when they received this Christmas gift. But first, we deal with 4 January.

Wherefore?

Today in the no where space

No where matters

Where is the no where man?

The no woman where?

Where the no where space?

Where nothing matters

Except what is real

In that space

In that time

For ever

There

…

Laugh a little

Cancelled: Report Writing Workshop, 9.30 - 11.00am, Tuesday, 13 December.

Reason: Busy writing a report.

But first, tomorrow, Monday, 12 December, we say goodbye to Betty who danced so well and had beautiful blonde hair. Her advice to me:' always make sure your hair looks good from behind; you never know who's watching.

Laugh or cry?

music later ....