Christmas

Christmas is such a monster topic that I am not really sure I want to tackle it in a blog entry. Which in part explains why I am several days late in doing so.

Christmas is colours and lights and anticipation and disappointment and memories and nostalgia and childhood and cliché and more colours and pressure and family and travelling and spending and eating and chocolate.

Christmas is a carefully-manufactured bread-and-circuses event to get us through the hard winter months (obviously speaking as someone who has never experienced a festive season in the southern hemisphere). Christmas is the ultimate celebration of the excesses of consumerism, encouraged by the minute rich elite that run this show and stand to profit. It is all the more successful because guilt is removed, as all this consumption takes place in the guise of giving, of sharing, and of tradition. I wonder if anyone has done the maths and calculated the effect on the economy, GDP, ecology etc. if Christmas, or at least all aspects of it pertaining to consumption, was simply eliminated? To take the art of bah-humbugism to an extreme, I wonder if this consumer-fest has reached such a level of excess, that its removal would alone be enough to bring human consumption of the planet’s resources down to some form of sustainable equilibrium?

Don’t get me wrong. I actually like Christmas. It appeals to the big kid in me. I like the colours and lights and the ease of access to chocolate. I like the challenge of dreaming up gifts for people – the puzzling, the reflection, the light-bulb moment when I hit up an idea that seems to suit the needs and desires of the recipient. If I had the time and abilities, I would happily home-make gifts rather than buy them. The only time I resent the gifting obligations is for certain awkward members of in-law-type families, with whom we have little in common and limited knowledge of their tastes and preferences. Then the pressure of finding something for the sake of it, appropriate or otherwise, just because we have to because they will give us something, overshadows the pleasures of present-hunting. Yet I participate in this charade, and not really for the sake of keeping up appearances, but because it seems like the right thing to do.

Then, as the cliché goes, Christmas is a time for family. The pleasures and the pressures of making time, for once, for people that mean so much to us, or else mean so much to someone who means so much to us (the whole in-law issue rearing its ugly head in a big way). I really do not want to dive into the murky waters of this topic, but further to my last entry (Waiting for the end), I want to acknowledge that I have just had the privilege of sharing a second “last Christmas” with a loved one. I have once again lovingly participated in the challenge of making a “last” Christmas together special. As with everything, we only really appreciate such privileged shared moments when it is almost too late – and I can only remain eternally grateful for the unexpected length of “almost” that we, this time, have been granted. 

The person in question keeps apologising for “ruining” another Christmas. We both had to acknowledge that if it wasn’t for the circumstances, chances are we would not have all been together for at least one of the two Christmases concerned. Uncountable numbers of people will have just spent their last Christmas together, or missed the opportunity to do so, without knowing it until it is too late. There is really something to be said for living every moment as if it was the last.

Waiting for the end

As the theme of this blog concerns my fears about the fate of humanity, I suppose it would make sense to address the fact that the world was supposed to have ended several hours ago. I am writing this at 0:33 on Saturday 22^nd December, 2012, and as far as I can see we are still here. Unless the main consequence of the apocalypse is one grand hallucination which looks distinctly pre-apocalyptic. But then, why not accept that the whole shebang is some form of brains-in-vats, Matrix-like virtual reality and be done with it?

I can’t help wondering what it must have been like for those that really did believe that the world was going to end. To be thinking that death was inevitable and imminent, that all that one cared about was about to be horrifically destroyed . . . I simply can’t imagine what genuine anticipation of such a catastrophic scenario could have felt like. Terror? Acceptance? Liberty? Or, like my own fears that are the premise for this blog (see First entry), was it just Too Much to Compute?

What is worse: a sudden, unexpected cataclysmic life-event, or drawn-out anticipation of something terrible yet inevitable? I guess the answer is obvious, and that the chance to come to terms and say goodbye beforehand is an evident blessing. The chance to really value time spent together, to really appreciate what other human beings bring to us, just before it is too late. For so many different butterfly-wing-triggered reasons, every meeting could be the last, every goodbye final, without us knowing until after the event. But when those of the medical profession pass verdict, and a loved one’s end becomes that much more inevitable and imminent, only then do we stop taking things for granted. Yet we also, somehow, resist grinding to a halt; we keep muddling on, and waiting.

My grandmother, having barely suffered a day of ill health in all her life, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 81 and given only weeks to live. And so all the family, herself included, got on with life, whilst waiting for her death that bit more consciously than before. I would find myself imagining where I would be when I finally received the news, how I would react; even how, at her funeral, I would finally meet all the people she had talked about but never introduced to me. In the end, she lived for two more years, and when the news finally came I was in a foreign country, pregnant, and unable to travel to her funeral.

In 2002 my grandfather (other side of the family) suffered a major stroke that left him severely disabled, unable to move, speak or eat. Coming shortly after a heart operation, he was not really expected to survive long. In fact he lived, bedridden, immobile and pretty much incomprehensible, for more than ten years. When he finally passed away I was in a foreign country, breastfeeding a newborn baby, and unable to travel to the funeral.

With age the waiting games inevitably move closer to home. My current "game" began over a year ago: as early as the diagnosis for some; only when chemotherapy was withdrawn for the more optimistic/naive (me). I suspect, for the person concerned, it began as soon as she acknowledged the symptoms, and chose to seek medical help later rather than sooner. Sometimes I imagine where I will be when I finally receive the news. Will I somehow know, when it happens, via cosmic resonances or some such paranormal phenomenon, before I get THE phone call? Or will I be in the room at the moment of passing, and really be "there" for her?

I know that I must appreciate the time left, value every moment, and be grateful for the fact that every goodbye so far has not turned out to be the last. But I also find myself somehow becoming numb to the anticipation. As always, I keep doing what the everyday dictates, and just keep muddling on. More to follow.

Too much music...in my head

As a little addendum to my Too much music entry, here’s what happened on the tram yesterday morning. I was wired for sound as usual when, a few stops into the journey, a distant acquaintance got on and made eye contact. I immediately unplugged my ears, and we exchanged greetings and brief small-talk about how late we were both running. The conversation rapidly petered out, and he started playing with his phone; I didn’t want to force it, especially in what was a foreign language for him, but I felt it rude to definitively turn my back and re-plug. So I left him with the option of talking further if he so desired – in my experience, some people like to practice their English when the opportunity arises – and contented myself with mental musings in the meantime.

As it happened, nothing more was said until our leave-taking as we descended from the tram. It was only then that I realized that the music I had been listening to previously was still playing – in my head. A part of the chorus, at least, was spinning round around in my mental audio machine, rather like the way snippets of songs do on restless nights when my brain is too active to sleep.

So I tried an experiment; I deliberately made the mental switch to one of my habitual tram-stop-to-office tunes (as detailed in Too much music). With very little conscious effort on my part, the song proceeded to play to the virtual ears of my brain, relatively complete in structure and texture. It was quite remarkable.

This set me thinking; perhaps this current cultural glut of wiring and memory space, as discussed in Technology in my pocket, is just a temporary stage in human evolution, a stepping stone to help train us to access and utilize the 90% or whatever of our brain capacity that is currently redundant (or is that an urban myth?). Then we will be using our own multi-GB memory space, and be able to render visual and aural mental images so vivid and accurate that external play-back equipment will be redundant.

Or, rather more likely, exercise of my over-exposed musical memory is pushing other, more functional stuff out of my head, like pin numbers and to-do lists. Oh well – at least I know I shan't be too bothered when the iPod battery is flat.

Random tram thoughts 1

In the absence of anything particular to complain or fret about, I’m going to write about something entirely insignificant that I observed during today’s morning commute. By some miracle I was a couple of trams earlier than usual, so it was not too crowded. A few stops into my journey, I randomly noticed that the two people opposite me were wearing the same shoes. I mean, hers were brown and small, and his were black and much larger, but they were very similar in model, with matching white piping detail.

Subtle closer inspection revealed that these feet belonged to a girl and boy in their early 20s. In my pre-8am fog I hadn’t noticed when they had taken their seats, or even if they had appeared together. Now they seemed each to be lost in their own thoughts, isolated and insulated by the inevitable personal headphones (as indeed was I), showing no sign that they knew each other or were even aware of each other's presence. With nothing better to occupy my tired brain, I briefly pondered the chances of two people wearing such similar shoes sitting next to each other entirely by coincidence.

Zero, as it turned out. A few stops later, the girl turned and said something quietly to her companion, removing one earphone to do so, and obliging him to do the same. So they were at least acquaintances, if not a couple. This set off a new train of speculation; did they set out with matching shoes deliberately? Perhaps it was this that brought them together, hearts set alight as their eyes met over the white-piped-trainers section at Shoes-r-Us...

I can’t remember, on the rare occasions I’ve traveled on local public transport with my Other Half, every having felt the need to shut myself in my private musical world, as I often do when I am alone. Maybe if we made the same daily commute side by side I’d think differently, although I’m not sure that OH would approve. These two obviously had some agreement in place, as following the brief exchange, they immediately returned to their individual headphone-assisted meditation.

Then, precisely two tram stations before my stop (which also turned out to be theirs), and without any communication or interaction between them that I could see, they both simultaneously started rolling a cigarette. Hers with a filter, his without, but otherwise identical. They spent the rest of the trip fidgeting with their cigs and making lighter movements with their respective thumbs, still lost in their inner worlds.

I descended by a different door to them, and no doubt will never see them again. I don’t know if this mini non-encounter had anything to do with anything at all, but I failed to switch to my habitual tram-to-office tunes, and instead trundled along to “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones. I was so luxuriously early that for once I did not have to scurry blindly, but had time to notice that the sky was a glorious patchwork of blue and brilliant orange in anticipation of the imminent sunrise. Life felt good.

In the beginning

This blog started life on the back of a till receipt. I kid you not.

We were staying one weekend with some relatives of my Other Half, for some form of family gathering. It was Sunday afternoon, and my young son, after a few difficulties due to the unfamiliar location, had finally been persuaded to take his afternoon nap. I think the older cousins were playing a card game or watching TV. OH was taken up interacting with seldom-seen relatives. I was subject to that special kind of boredom that comes when staying with in-laws – not your house, not really your family, not your place to initiate anything.

I don’t know why I hadn’t taken a book to read and make the most of an extremely rare opportunity. In the end, I finished up piddling around with my smartphone. In the absence of a wifi connection, I used up precious subscription megabytes browsing the internet via the mobile network, and this was how I encountered a new blog by one of my facebook acquaintances.

It’s amazing how facebook has changed the nature of our human relationships. Friends of friends, that I met once in a pub, or distant relatives I would only otherwise encounter at selected weddings and funerals, have somehow become “friends” on facebook. I can learn more about them than I otherwise would have done, and often more than I want to know, and all in a sort of voyeuristic way without ever being obliged to exchange with them directly.

I’m not completely denigrating the experience, however. In my personal situation, living at a significant distance from many friends and a large part of my family, facebook has often made a positive contribution to my life. For example, it was by facebookian means that I was able to discover that this particular acquaintance, or more strictly a relative of a relative-by-marriage, whom I’ve probably met only three times, is an eloquent and witty blogger.

I had been toying with the idea of a blog as a release for my writing urges for a while, and already spend several frustrating online sessions searching for a blog name and pseudonym. The thematic idea was in place, but finding a name or title that had not already been thought up and registered or otherwise become Googleable proved more difficult than I ever would have imagined. I attached far more importance (and time) to the exercise that an as-yet-unwritten, and unlikely to be widely-read blog by an anonymous wannabe writer really warranted (but then, everything is relative: it was probably a fraction of the time some people spend online gaming or aimlessly browsing, for example).

But I hadn’t actually written anything, and wasn’t entirely sure ever to get around to it. That chance encounter via a 2” by 3” screen was the catalyst that got the ball rolling (to mix metaphors slightly). If they could do it, I could do it; more to the point, if they allowed themselves to do it, then surely I could be forgiven for some bandwagon-jumping.

So there and then the urge to write became irrepressible. I managed to locate a pen, but learned that the only usable paper in the house was in the same room as my sleeping son. Not wishing to risk waking him (equaling immediate termination of any writing opportunity), I instead located an improbably long supermarket till receipt from my wallet. I hid myself at the foot of the stairs, ostensibly to listen for my son waking. And I wrote. These notes were later transcribed, first into a notebook and then typed, to become the first entry for this blog.

But I was on borrowed time. My son, always a good sleeper, had already gone down for nearly two hours (a naptime that I know could make many parents heartily jealous). Sure enough, he woke before my three-inch-wide strip of paper was full. But at least it was a start, and one that, albeit some weeks later, and in several painful stages, actually became something readable (if not, well, read).

Warm-glow moments

I am going to attempt a super positive and hopefully uplifting blog entry, by writing about the phenomenon of ‘warm-glow’ moments. I presume – and hope, for everyone’s sakes – that the cliche of ‘feeling a warm glow inside’ is familiar to all, and not just as a literary expression. I identify the feeling as a sense of expansion, almost exhilaration, focusing on the chest and upper abdomen; I experience it when something happens to remind me that life is actually pretty good, and/or restores my faith in humanity (and perhaps therefore, by extension, its future, although I’m not sure that long-term thinking really enters into such experiences).

I would have liked to devote a blog to collecting such moments, in the hope of extending some of that warm-glow pleasantness, perhaps even bringing something positive for others via my writing. Unfortunately, however, true warm-glow moments are not so frequent – which I accept, is probably more due to my failure to recognize them and be grateful, than lack of real opportunity.

So I will just share the few that I can remember (I’m sure that there were more, but I failed to write them down at the time);

-    Smiling at a random young child on the bus/tram/train, who smiles back and appreciates the interaction (perhaps followed by friendly conversation with the parent – ‘how old is he/she? Mine is …’)
-    Running to the bus stop as the bus is approaching, and the driver stopping to pick me up where I am and save me the trot (only happened once, but it made up for all those times tram drivers pull away just as I get to the door).
-    Being picked up when hitch-hiking home, and sharing a few minutes pleasant conversation with a complete stranger, who even goes slightly out of their way to put me nearer my door. (NOTE: do NOT try this for yourselves. I believe that where I live is one of the few places in the WORLD I would feel safe enough to risk hitch-hiking).
-    Picking up a hitch-hiker en route home, sharing a few minutes pleasant conversation, and being happy to drive a bit further to help them out. (NOTE: ditto).

On analysis, I’ve realized that true warm-glow moments, as I have defined them, have nothing to do with personal achievement or circumstance. Yes, it feels good to get a compliment at work, or achieve success or do something well, but for me these things don’t bring quite the same type of random exhilaration. Yes, a hug from a loved partner feels good, but these feelings are mixed with need and obligation. The love for, and from, a child is enormous and beautiful, but intense and anxious to the point of pain, rather than warm, fizzy and exhilarating.

It does seem, though, that one needs human interaction to achieve such warm-glow moments. Chance encounters, pleasant exchanges, unsolicited smiles, small acts of kindness: if we recognized what a hugely positive affect these things can potentially have on someone’s immediate well-being, maybe we’d share them a little more freely, and humanity would be in a slightly better place.

Too much music

To follow on from my Technology in my pocket entry, the phenomenon of personal, portable music has always raised questions in my mind. Don’t get me wrong: I love music, I need music, and have probably devoted far more of my life to it than the average listener. But the extent to which private music seems to have become so irrevocably associated with public transport, for such a large proportion of every tram/train/busload, sometimes does bother me. I fully understand the boredom and isolation of the morning commute, and the need for something to help gear up for, or help forget, the working day ahead. However, when it reaches the extent that listeners plug in even when traveling with friends, and retain their headphones when conversing, something is wrong.

I am not one of these people that put their headphones on with their clothes in the morning. Sometimes I find the close quarters of in-ear sound claustrophobic, and if I do decide to "wire up" I am so paranoid about disturbing others that sometimes I can barely hear my music over the thumping machines of fellow commuters.  Other days, I can’t wait to get to the tram stop before I'm trying to untangle headphone wires.  Then I switch off from the world and let the music take me where it will. 

I grew up with the Sony Walkman tape player, in model if not actual brand, used mainly for long school trips and the very rare occasions when I rejected my parent’s choice of car stereo music (not often necessary – my parents have excellent musical taste). Early in my working-commute career I dabbled with a mini-disc player (remember those?), then my first foray into mp3s was via a free-upgrade mobile phone. I only invested in a cheap mp3 player so I could continue learning Spanish on the plane to Mexico (either flight mode had not yet been invented, or – more likely – I hadn’t heard of it).

That cheap mp3 player served me well, eating AAA batteries and in return feeding me 256 megabytes of my favorite tunes (or language courses). However, as commuting life really kicked in, I found that I sometimes couldn’t find quite the right tune for the moment. As with so many gadgets before, I descended into the inevitable spiral of convincing myself that I needed, and deserved, something more. In short, I started hankering after an iPod.

I did the usual agonizing and waiting, carefully weighing the options and selecting a reasonable model. I knew 6-year-olds that owned iPods. Even my parents had invested in one for traveling. Surely it was my turn? Finally, when subtle (obviously too subtle) hints one birthday season came to nothing, I treated myself.

So now I have the choice of hundreds of songs to feed my ears on the go. There is undeniably something to suit every occasion and mood. BUT here is the crazy thing; ninety-nine percent of the time, I listen to the same few favorite songs, many of them via a playlist painstakingly recreated from my old 256MB player. Even worse; to get me from the tram stop to the office, I almost invariably switch to one of two top favorites, to really finish the waking-up process and put me in the right frame of mind for the day ahead. It seems that 16 gigabytes of musical choice is not what is required to get me to work in the morning after all.

No, I am not going to reveal what those two tram-to-office songs are. Oh, okay then: one is a freak Eurovision winner, and the other is about the plight of Cornish miners. And if you can work that out, you are quite possibly my soul mate.

Generation Alphabet

Today I encountered the expression ‘Generation Y’ for the first time. This generation, apparently, is the first for which the internet has pretty much always existed, and has markedly different needs and expectations concerning knowledge acquisition, time-keeping and long-term career aims, to which current educators and employers (presumably themselves of Generation X or previous) must adapt.

The concept is fascinating and no doubt sociologically useful. In keeping with the theme of this blog, however, what scares me is the implication that Generation Z, by definition the last, is only one letter away. By this time society/the planet/civilization etc. will have destroyed itself/been destroyed delete as appropriate. Trite suggestions that sociologists will simply have to start again, with Generation AA like the batteries, or Generation A+ like school grades, don’t wash with me I’m afraid.

It makes me think of a book I studied at school, Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O‘Brien, published in 1974, and apparently soon to be made into a film (thank you Google and Wikipedia). The story is set in the aftermath of a destructive nuclear war, in which possibly the only surviving girl, living in an isolated meteorological enclave, encounters possibly the only surviving man, traveling in a prototype anti-radiation suit. The title comes from the girl’s recollection of a bible-based alphabet reader, in which A is for Adam and Z is for Zachariah; as Adam was the first man, as a child she assumed that Zachariah must be the last man.

Z for the last man, or the last generation; if one is so inclined, the designation of the end of the alphabet seems to be a doom-laden portent (yes, I know they only started at Generation X, x being the unknown à la algebra, to designate the post-baby boom generation - or the “baby-bust generation’, I read somewhere - thanks again Google).

Let’s see if I cannot rationalize myself into some optimism. There must be places on the planet where the English language and its alphabet have not yet taken over, and where those born at the end of the 20th century have not had the opportunity (or misfortune) to be raised online. There must be places, in remote jungles or deserts at least, where alphabetical generational labels and information-overload technology have little relevance. Perhaps life will survive in such places long after our first-world culture has fried itself in an excess of electromagnetic radiation (X-Y-Z rays?).

Technology in my pocket

One of the most obvious manifestations of my modern-day inner conflict is my relationship with technology. I really am not a jump-on-the-bandwagon, always wanting the next-best-thing, upgrading-just-because-I-can type person. My approach to the panoply of gadgets with which our consumer society controls us is much more convoluted.

Take my recently-acquired smartphone, for example. I resisted for what I’d like to think was a respectable amount of time. I waited until my existing mobile was at least a little on the blink (well, it crashed a couple of times). I didn’t go for the latest, greatest addition to the market, but spent many agonizing hours circling around online comparison sites and reviews to choose a model and subscription that met my “needs” without being too flash. It seemed like almost everyone around me had a smartphone; surely I was missing something? A smartphone could save time, I could work during the morning commute, it would make me more efficient; in short, I succeeded in convincing myself that I needed one.

So now I have joined the ranks of those travellers who seem unable to function without their smartphone glued to a palm on the tram. We check emails we would be able to check more easily on our office computers in fifteen minutes’ time; we waste precious MB on Facebook; we play 101 variations of Solitaire; we ruin our eyes peering at e-book applications (because, of course, it is far too inconvenient to also carry a book). A journey without a multitasking phone seems like such a waste of time, and interminably boring.

Then I arrive at my destination, elbow my way off the tram, and shove my phone, often together with my ipod, into the dodgy pocket of my winter coat, worn and somewhat scruffy because I tell myself I can’t afford a new one. To this technology-fest add the laptop computer in my bag (which I can currently justify as being work-issue), and often an external hard drive and flash drive or two. The sheer volume of wiring, rare earth metals and memory space about my not-terribly-well-dressed person on an average day is, when I think about it, rather terrifying and abhorrent. And yet it all seems so necessary and normal.

I know, yet I am fooled. I am aware, yet I am ignorant. I feel the fear, but I am obviously not afraid enough - yet.

First entry

I’ll be honest from the start. I’m writing this blog because I need to write. It is a compulsion that ninety-nine percent of the time I successfully suppress beneath the obligations of work, parenthood and day-to-day life. I’m not pretending - although of course I’m hoping - that there will be anything worth reading.

So the obvious question: why inflict my self-indulgent, self-help-therapy musings on the wwworld? Well, it seems that I’m a would-be wanna-be writer who needs to at least they have the possibility of would-be readers. And now the internet makes this so ridiculously easy that I don’t even feel particularly guilty about it. I’m not making anyone read this, after all.

So why the title? The vague theme of this blog, insofar as it can be said to have a theme, is my attempt to get to grips with the inevitable fears of our times. There seem to be so many reasons to be terrified of what the future holds, soon or perhaps a little further ahead, probably in my lifetime and certainly that of my children.

It seems blindingly obvious that the current global situation is unstable and unsustainable. Society is balanced on a precarious stack of orange boxes that can only come tumbling down. I’m far from expert enough to say what will “get” us first: the collapse of the economic system, and with it the over-stretched supply lines that feed us; or ecological crisis, once we’ve pillaged and poisoned our planet to the point that life - or at least our current lifestyles and populations - can no longer be supported. I suspect both, hand-in-hand, two sides of the same coin. Either will result in immense chaos and many dead.

But what really amazes me - and this is where this blog comes in - is my ability to live with this situation. I fear the future, but not enough, it seems. I can completely put this fear aside, and manage to lose myself in the petty stresses of the everyday present - washing up to do, clothes to fold, sleep to lack. I can even allow myself to hanker after a mains charger for the mp3 player or some other such unnecessary, planet-guzzling gizmo.

It is this incredible contradiction that often fuels the small but fizzy part of my brain that ‘needs to write’ - as if, but marshalling my inner conflicts into the discipline of the written word, they will somehow become more manageable. So here goes. With any luck, this will be more about the muddling that the fear. Perhaps a better title would be “(my) life, and how to worry about it” … but a problem shared, after all…