I Guess That's Why They Call it Faith...

It's been a while since I last updated...a while since I've felt like updating would probably be more accurate. It's not been an easy few months for several reasons, but I'm hoping that the worst of it is behind me now. Famous last words if I ever I heard them, but never let it be said that I'm a total stranger to optimism...

Anyway, while I was off trying to find some order in my little chaotic corner of the universe, I managed to find some time to sort through the mountain of paperwork that I have stored beneath my bed. I'm a terrible hoarder, or at least I used to be, and I found it a strange, bittersweet experience to sift through the detritis that can accumulate in a person's lifetime. Darkly comic though it may be to imagine my relatives swearing and cursing at the rubbish I've held onto over the years when my number is finally called (which hopefully will not be for a very long time yet, because there is still plenty of internet to litter up with my scribblings), I do think that there are certain corners of a person's soul stored in such collections that would mean very little to anyone else. So, I came to the conclusion that it was time for a clearout, if for no other reason than to have more space to store more rubbish.

There were a lot of memories stored beneath that bed. A lot of my early manuscripts, in various states of completion, were the most entertaining. Some were just so cringingly awful that they went into the shredder straight away; others I deemed salvageable were tucked back into their folders so that I could work on them again in the future. But there was only one that really blew me away. It was an essay I wrote about ten years ago on the search for extraterrestrial life for a college course, when I was going through a thankfully short phase of watching 'Most Haunted' and believing that it wasn't a pile of sweaty pants. Which, of course, it is. Too many nights spent watching The X-Files, no doubt, had its influence in that, but conspiracies and paranormal phenonmenon were such a huge thing for me back then. I've always loved ghost stories, but the idea that we may be able to commune with the dead, that there are angels, miracles, truths in Tarot cards or that little green men are flying around in triangular shaped crafts are ideas that were relegated to the pre-millenium, end-of-the-world hysteria a long time ago. (No doubt to resurface again in 2012, but I digress...)

The sad thing is that I don't feel any wiser or soul-enriched for my more scientific way of looking at the world. If I think about it, I actually believe that I'm poorer for my lack of faith in all things mystical, and I feel quite nostalgic for the days when I did believe that there was more to the universe than rising petrol prices, recession, over-paid bankers and hypocritical, criminal politicians. Maybe because there was a certain peace to be found in thinking that there was something greater than all of us going on out there; an antidote to the poison of living in a country that's about to destroy everything that once made it great. A cynic's lot certainly is not a happy one, and reading through that essay, I couldn't help but wonder at the changes that have affected me since I wrote it that caused me to so radically alter my point of view to one so completely lacking in the imagination and whimsy that makes life worth living.

With so much visible change in a person's life from home decor to fashion to cars, I can't help but wonder at how much is going on that we don't even stop to notice. But I've noticed it now. Hopefully it's not too late to do something about it.

Crime or Justice?

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice. ~Charles T. Sprading, Freedom and its Fundamentals

Dashing young thieves, a daring robbery, £40m in stolen jewellery, a clean getaway and no-one seriously injured - it is a scenario that has all the hallmarks of a Hollywood blockbuster.

I have to admit to a small smile when I read about it. Obviously, it would have been an entirely different situation had anyone been hurt, and while I would never seek to make light of the fear and trauma that those involved undoubtedly felt, nonetheless the fact remains that no-one was hurt, aside from Graaf’s insurers. I have no particular love for the wealthy elite and so I’m afraid I can’t find it within me to feel a great deal of sympathy for their loss. As far as I’m concerned, that £40m in adornments to decorate the necks and ears of people who have, arguably, done little to deserve their wealth would be far better spent in helping the thousands of people who are being made homeless everyday by the capitalists who are repossessing their homes. Which is why I have to laugh at the £1m reward now being offered for information leading to their capture. When the rest of the country is struggling to make ends meet, do they seriously believe that anyone will be that outraged by a crime which only offends the upper class where it most hurts – in their wallets?

Peter Bleksley, a former police officer and current crime writer, appearing on BBC’s Breakfast show yesterday morning expressed his outrage at the glamourization of crime while he pointed out that these two men were dangerous armed criminals and that people could have been hurt but for a stroke of luck. There were a few things about his comments that bothered me, not the least of which was the health and safety credo of "could have". Yes, "could have" but "didn’t". If people weren’t drawn to the dark, seductive, inherent sexiness of crime, then he wouldn’t be selling any books. I highly doubt that people buy them because they are horrified at the things that human beings are capable of doing to each other; they buy them because they are intrigued by the criminal mind, and because of their innate desire to know that justice has been done.

Perhaps it's not so much the glamour of this crime that has seduced people. Perhaps it is more of an expression of the desire to strike back at the capitalism that brought about the recession that has ground so many people down. It is the rich being targeted at a time when the poor are suffering. It is a sense of justice, of balance being restored. Maybe that is what Mr. Bleksley should be considering, instead of condemning people for their lack of moral fiber in failing to regard the heinousness of the crime. Being seduced by crime does not mean that a person is lacking in ethics.

After all, I glamourize crime in my own writings, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. I believe very strongly that the world is a highly complex place and that the nature of right and wrong is not as easy to define as perhaps it once was. For example, whilst I disagree with Ronnie Biggs being allowed compassionate release from prison, I also appreciate his son’s remarks earlier on this week that there are teenagers knifing and murdering each other on the streets who don’t get anywhere near the sentence that his father received. Justice is a very sticky issue which comes down to many different things, and the right decision isn’t always made in courts. Is it any wonder that movies such as Ocean’s 11, The Italian Job, Robin Hood and Swordfish have such wide appeal? So what if the law is broken? True justice is being served, and that’s what really matters to people when they are morally outraged and the system has let them down.

So sue me for wishing those boys well, and for glamourizing crime. I also glamourize morality, for those who care to look deep enough.

Death by recycling

I try to avoid going to the local landfill site if at all possible because it usually ends up as some sort of examination which I inevitably fail as council workers rap me over the knuckles for putting the wrong sort of cardboard in the cardboard bin, or putting a broken up flat pack into the wood bin. I'm not quite sure whether it's the laminate that whips them into a frenzy, or the bits of plastic and screws attached to the fragmenting chipboard...sadly, there's no one to provide feedback on performance as you're leaving, but I digress... Anyway, I had to make the effort yesterday, only because I was tired of stubbing my toe on the old computer chair that was in front of my bookshelves. As I was going to the landfill anyway, I thought I may as well take the old newspapers up to the recycling bin too. I have to salve my conscience for being a petrolhead, after all...

When we got there, a woman was already parked in front of the paper recycling bins so we pulled around in front of her to use the bins a little further up. Of course, it started to rain, as it always does when you don't have an umbrella. Bugger, I thought, so I pulled up the hood on my sweatshirt as I struggled to push the newspapers into the bin before the rather aggressive shutter attempted to recycle my fingers, too. The other lady, in the meantime, had finished and was on her way back to the car. As she got back inside, I heard the distinct sound of her engaging the locks. I couldn't quite believe it, so I just glanced across to see her doing her best to avoid my eyes as she drove away...quickly.

Now maybe I did look slightly on the shady side dressed in a hoody top, old jeans and trainers, but I wouldn't have thought that I was sending out any overtly threatening vibes by recycling newspapers. I mean, I wasn't waving around a flick knife, doing wheelies on a bike several sizes too small for me or smoking on street corners. Clearly, though, I'd terrified this woman with my environmental conscience, leaving her in fear for her life as she beat a hasty retreat through the gates.

Maybe I'll just wear the hoody top, whether or not it's raining, next time. Hopefully it'll keep the council workers away too so that I can bin my old computer chair in...erm...general waste?

Nope.

Bugger. Wood?

Nope.

Damn. Think I'm going to be here a while...

The Distracting Business of Writing

Increasingly, I find myself wondering if there is some kind of mystical art involved in writing. For years I've been reading interviews with authors who usually express a belief that there is no magical formula for writing a book, and I guess this is pretty logical because if there were, everyone would be doing it. Yet there has to be some kind of systematic approach to it, a logical progression that leads from the first word to the final one. The trouble is that I'm a worrier, and I keep thinking that maybe my particular process is one that would be giggled at by any successful author who has been gifted with a secret knowledge that allows them to churn out novels at a rate that would impress even James Patterson's publisher.

Generally speaking, I tend to research as I go along, and usually have several Firefox windows open alongside my Word documents, which tends to slow the writing process down when I get sidetracked by interesting net tidbits that inevitably eat into my time. I suppose that most full-time writers, if they too suffer from this most mortifying of afflictions known as lack of concentration, will tolerate these momentary flights of fancy into the types of area most often frequented by researchers for Ripley's 'Believe It Or Not!' books, paranormal journalists and conspiracy theorists, because they have the luxury of not having huge slabs of their day taken up with the nail-biting excitement of analysing water samples for a living. Sadly, I don't have that luxury, which means that I'm constantly beating myself with a birch rod for allowing myself to become distracted when I should be producing another thousand words or at least rearranging those I've already committed to print into something that's coherent.

Maybe, if I ever do get over that line from having my work stuck on my word processor to having it published, I'll be able to entertain these little excursions a little more often. After all, distraction is the mother of creation...at least, that's how I've always justified it anyway. For now though I think I'd be better off sticking to what's worked pretty well for me in the past: get the bare bones of the plot down, make sure the mechanics of it are working, that there's a clear path from point A to B, that there's a continuum to the events that doesn't require a knowledge of space-time manipulation to understand, and that I do actually have a conclusion that makes sense. Then I can relax a little and enjoy the process of fleshing out and clothing the skeleton with something that resembles a book. I'm almost there...and I'm sure I'll finish today, with a little luck...and slightly fewer distractions from discussions about whether Victorian doctors used vibrators to treat hysterical women.

The Ugly Face of Facebook.

Like the rest of the world, I was shocked and greatly saddened to hear of the death of Michael Jackson on Thursday. He was a great artist, the likes of whom will probably never be seen again, and I'm sure his legacy will live on for many generations to come. He is also a great loss to his family, to whom so little media attention is currently being paid. More than that though, he seemed like a decent, polite and kind human being who was grossly misunderstood, and I can only feel desperately sorry that his life had to end in such an unnecessary way.

But what is an even greater sadness to me at the moment is the attitudes of many people whom I considered to be friends. I thought I knew most of them pretty well, but it turns out that I didn't really know some of them at all. The insidious comments regarding allegations against him that were never proved, the poor-taste jokes that border on racism, the low-brow chortling coming from quarters who really have no idea what they're talking about has been so offensive to me that I'm seriously considering whether I want to continue to be a part of social networking sites anymore. I wonder if people who have made such abhorrent, netspeak-peppered, moronic remarks would have done so if they'd been sitting in a pub or cafe or restaurant, or been taking part in any real social interaction, with actual human beings who would have likely been unable to keep the disdain from registering on their faces. But that's the problem with social networking - it's so easy to make a comment or post an opinion that you might never ordinarily air if you were interacting with real people instead of some alternate, cyber-reality mate who is usually crass, illiterate and, well, pretty stupid by all accounts.

The trouble is that, in cyber space, people seem to lose all sense of morality and social conscience that they have to exercise out in the real world. It's a pretty sick place out there, and you don't really have to look too far on the internet to find people who will encourage that ugly darkness that exists somewhere in all of us; that bigoted, racist, xenophobic, ill-informed ranting that spews forth from a thought process that would otherwise would be suppressed as unacceptable in any decent human being. All social networking sites do is bring out the very worst in people by encouraging the belief that it is actually okay to be an idiot, the kind of person who would be villified and treated like a leper in these politically correct times if they were to say such things in public.

Maybe I'm just cynical, and maybe there has been some good that's come out of these sites, but I'm hard pressed right now to see where it is. I think the only real cure for my cynicism is to sever all ties that I've been suckered into creating with such sites and instead get back out there into the sunshine where, blinking like a mole emerging from a hole in the ground, I can look around at the people who were there all the time; decent, moral, kind, generous people, who would never allow the darker, uglier side of them to reveal itself when there is the chance that they might be faced with the consequences.

Of course, that side would still be there, but I think that some things are best left under cover. And not encouraged by 'like' buttons.

A Buddhist's Philosophy of Recession

Well, the government has finally admitted we are in recession. Great stuff. Thanks very much, Mr Brown, for admitting what's been fairly damned obvious for quite some time now. With business after business collapsing, the housing market grinding to a halt and unemployment beginning to soar, I'm amazed that it's taken them so long.

When Woolworths collapsed, I was pretty close to bereft. I spent five very happy years working for the company and was sad when it became inevitable for me to leave there, as my career goals lay on another path. It was just so incredibly sad to see the shelves stripped bare, people scrabbling like vultures to get their hands on the final pieces of meat from the bones, and the staff with their forebearing smiles and adherence to customer care even in the face of redundancy. I had nothing but admiration for them. I still feel sad when I pass the empty store, standing there as though it had never meant anything to anyone.

But there is a small, guilt-ridden part of me that is so grateful that I left when I did. My life could so easily have taken a different turn, had I decided to pursue the management route, but I didn't, and I'm glad that I made the decision I did. I suppose that I was viewing the situation from what I believed was a secure platform of employment in an industry that was relatively recession proof. Unfortunately, that has turned out not to be the case, and now that guilt-tinged relief I felt at seeing Woolworths' doors closing, knowing that it could so easily have affected me on more than an emotional level, seems to be an indulgence that I could not afford.

Because my chosen field, it turns out, isn't so recession proof after all. Ten per cent of the workforce is to be made redundant, as of the end of February. Whilst the survivalistic business of self preservation begins to leak through in the form of much hand-wringing and fervent self-reassurance that my particular part of the business is profitable and therefore safe, I am also struck, rather unpleasantly, with the idea that this is something of a cosmic karma. To be in fear for your job is, quite simply, one of the worst feelings imaginable. It's not just the prospect of having no money to pay bills and all the consequences that go with that; it's also the fear of losing the friends you've made, of starting again, of having no purpose to existence, being unable to find anything else, wondering what the hell you're going to do when the baliffs start hammering at the door. Of course there are worse things that could happen - severe illness, the loss of a loved one...and I'm not totally unaware that I'm probably in a better position than most, not having to worry about losing my home. But it is the emotional impact of losing everything I've worked so hard for that I fear more than anything else.

These are very troubling times. Every day, it seems, more and more businesses are announcing restructuring, redundancies and closures. I don't even think that this is something that we can ever hope to recover from because society is changing. The way we work, shop, socialise and live are changing. The High Street is dying. Out-of-town developments and the internet seem to be the only monsters that will survive what is beginning to look like an extinction of a society; a way of life. Something else entirely has been born, and I'm not quite sure what it will become.

A friend of mine, when told that redundancies were going to be made, had a rather different outlook on the situation. He told me a story of the horse that escaped from its owner's barn. The farmer grieved for his loss and judged it to be a negative event, until the horse returned with a friend it had picked up on the way. The farmer, overjoyed that he now had two horses, tasked his son with training the new one. But his son was thrown and suffered a broken leg, and the farmer cursed his misfortune. Undoubtedly he judged this too to be a negative event, until a war broke out and all young boys were expected to serve in the army - except for his son, who was excused because of his injury. This ultimately saved his life.

The lesson is in accepting what it meant to be and believing wholeheartedly in the adage that whenever God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. I sincerely hope that my friend is right and that what seems, right now, to be the end of an era will ultimately prove to be the birth of a better one. I suppose it all comes down to a matter of faith.