I'm having problems with locomotion. In the last six weeks both my beloved bicycle and my beloved walking boots have finally given up the ghost and had to be replaced. Then a week ago my motor failed its MOT so completely as to make repair uneconomical. And on friday, when I was out on my new bicycle, I got hit by a car.
Not badly. I wasn't hurt. But I was enraged and I swore quite a lot at the driver. He hadn't looked. He pulled out straight into me. If he'd accelerated I'd have been toast. The worst thing was that I could see it all about to happen, like one of those dreams where you're paralysed or moving through treacle. I think I may have croaked out an incredulous 'no no no!' but all I could do was watch.
The mortified driver stopped and checked if I was OK but I was so angry I couldn't face talking to him. I cycled off and it was only a mile later that I realised my back wheel was pringled, a mistake that has cost me forty quid. Not a good day.
But ever since I've been wondering what it all means. Why did my life suddenly and unexpectedly collide with that of a stranger? If I'd dawdled at home for just another thirty seconds it would never have happened. Why did he hit me? Maybe the shock of it (and he looked ashen) will ping his life in a quite unexpected direction. Maybe mine too. Maybe he saved me from the lorry round the corner.
The self-help/new age/pop-psychological habit is to literalise the metaphors. Our worlds collided. He knocked some sense into me, made me question my direction in life. Actually, we all do it but grasping at language in this way has always struck me as rather tenuous.
A mechanistic account would suggest that the collision was inevitable, that it was necessarily laid down in the starting conditions of the universe, that those events played out with rigid determinacy. If we could rewind time and set it all going again then that everything would happen exactly as before. The philosopher Henri Bergson derided such a view a hundred years ago, and I agree with him that it seems absurd.
All mainstream science would say on the subject is that the collision was random, one of those freak events that bedevil an uncertain universe. I can't help it. I find such a view fundamentally unsatisfying. I want to wrest meaning from the world (though, of course, even by saying that such events are random and empty of content the naysayers are still engaged in a process of meaning-making - we can't help ourselves: we make meaning even when we think we're not).
If I have any philosophy of life then surely it is the art of hitch-hiking. The trick of getting a lift is not in persuading someone to stop. It is in being at exactly the right place at the right time such that the person who would give you a lift and is heading your way just happens to be passing. Being in the right place at the right time. The Taoist rule of thumb. Effortless not-doing.
Nothing beats the feeling of flow when lift gives way to lift and you're carried to where you want to be. I got picked up in a stretched limo once. Really.
The hard bit is dealing with the times when it doesn't , when you're stuck by the motorway in the pissing rain and it's getting dark, and someone looks right instead of left and you're left wondering what hit you.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Friday, 20 January 2012
2012 and all that
So here we are. We've made it to 2012 and I doubt that anyone can have failed to pick up on the millenarian prophecies for the year. Mayan calendars, fractal timewaves and astronomical alignments all point to a major shift occurring on December 21st. What, exactly, that shift will be remains unclear. Perhaps it will be a radical new form of human consciousness. Perhaps mind will finally extricate itself from matter. Time might collapse or maybe the aliens will finally step out from the shadows and usher us into the galactic citizenship we always knew was out there.
Anyone who's read Shroom will know that - how can I put this? - I'm yet to be convinced by 2012. Indeed, I recently wrote a chapter on the subject for the forthcoming book from David Luke's excellent Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. It's not that I wouldn't welcome any of those predicted changes - I like sci-fi remember - it's just that it all smacks of Christian millennarianism to me. I find that way of thinking...unhelpful.
It is, of course, a great shame that the two architects of 2012, psychedelic guru Terence McKenna and hotline to the 'Galactic Maya' José Argüelles have both left the building and so won't be there for the great reckoning (though it's probably good prophetic practice to place the end of the world beyond your allotted three score years and ten). McKenna did have the good grace to admit he could very well be wrong, something that sets him apart from his erstwhile, and frankly loopy, partner in time.
But, of course, we should never underestimate the power of the human imagination. If enough people think that something extraordinary is going to happen then perhaps that will set something extraordinary in motion (God knows, we need it). And if all this talk about psychedelics raises their profile again and gets people thinking about them in a more critical way then that can only be a good thing. Perhaps we should harness the power of the zeitgeist and declare 2012 the Year of the Psychedelic. It can't hurt.
On the subject of which, take a look at this latest piece of research by Robin Cahart-Harris, who gave psilocybin to volunteers and looked at their brains using an fMRI scanner. It seems that what psilocybin does is reduce activity in certain parts of the brain, so perhaps Huxley was right after all?
To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system...Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of delibrate 'spiritual exercises', or though hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception 1954: 12.
Anyone who's read Shroom will know that - how can I put this? - I'm yet to be convinced by 2012. Indeed, I recently wrote a chapter on the subject for the forthcoming book from David Luke's excellent Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. It's not that I wouldn't welcome any of those predicted changes - I like sci-fi remember - it's just that it all smacks of Christian millennarianism to me. I find that way of thinking...unhelpful.
It is, of course, a great shame that the two architects of 2012, psychedelic guru Terence McKenna and hotline to the 'Galactic Maya' José Argüelles have both left the building and so won't be there for the great reckoning (though it's probably good prophetic practice to place the end of the world beyond your allotted three score years and ten). McKenna did have the good grace to admit he could very well be wrong, something that sets him apart from his erstwhile, and frankly loopy, partner in time.
But, of course, we should never underestimate the power of the human imagination. If enough people think that something extraordinary is going to happen then perhaps that will set something extraordinary in motion (God knows, we need it). And if all this talk about psychedelics raises their profile again and gets people thinking about them in a more critical way then that can only be a good thing. Perhaps we should harness the power of the zeitgeist and declare 2012 the Year of the Psychedelic. It can't hurt.
On the subject of which, take a look at this latest piece of research by Robin Cahart-Harris, who gave psilocybin to volunteers and looked at their brains using an fMRI scanner. It seems that what psilocybin does is reduce activity in certain parts of the brain, so perhaps Huxley was right after all?
To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system...Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of delibrate 'spiritual exercises', or though hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception 1954: 12.
Using fMRI to Investigate the Effects of Psilocybin on Brain Activation and Blood Flow - Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D. from MAPS: Psychedelic Science on Vimeo.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
More on Lundy
Since being back in Oxford I've had a fairly hefty pile of work to do preparing my teaching for the forthcoming semester, so not much time for thinking or musing or blogging. Sigh. But Monsieur Jacques Centime has just posted this video from our time on Lundy.
On our last day we awoke to the sound of the lighthouse thrumming to a storm force ten. Over a porridge breakfast I recalled a natural history film from the 70s in which presenter Jeffery Boswall attempted to eat a bowl of Rice Krispies in a sandstorm in the Kalahari (I may have made this up entirely for I've yet to find anyone else who remembers it). Suitably inspired, Jacques suggested we recreate this seminal moment in TV history with the following results:
On our last day we awoke to the sound of the lighthouse thrumming to a storm force ten. Over a porridge breakfast I recalled a natural history film from the 70s in which presenter Jeffery Boswall attempted to eat a bowl of Rice Krispies in a sandstorm in the Kalahari (I may have made this up entirely for I've yet to find anyone else who remembers it). Suitably inspired, Jacques suggested we recreate this seminal moment in TV history with the following results:
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Lundy
After a slightly frenetic Christmas shuttling up and down the Michael Line, visiting friends and family in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, we went to Lundy for New Year. Lundy is a three mile island in the middle of the Bristol Channel. It is difficult to get to, particularly at this time of year. You've got to want to go. Happily this was my fourth visit - I knew it would be worth it.
We were supposed to fly by helicopter from Hartland Point but the weather was against us and we were forced to spend the night in Ilfracombe, about which all I'll say is that it's seen better days.
We had to be at the ferry, the MS Oldenburg, in time to board at 5am.
The wind was blowing a force six and we headed out into pitch blackness against an incoming tide. The boat was knocked about in the swell and with no horizon to steady ourselves it wasn't long before the sea-sickness kicked in, two hours of unremitting hell. The crew were fantastic, however, and they administered to the sick with kindness and good humour. But we arrived with the day and it wasn't too long before we were tucking into a large breakfast at the Marisco Tavern, followed by what was to be the first of many sessions.
We stumbled over to our accommodation in an eighty mile-an-hour mist.
We were staying in Old Light, a nineteenth century light house that was eventually abandoned for being too tall and so quite invisible in fog.
A failure then, but we fell instantly in love with it. We climbed to the top at all times of day and night, playing music in its extraordinary acoustics, or just listening to the ever-present roar of the wind. We felt privileged, as if let in to complete some long-forgotten steampunk experiment.
When the weather cleared Old Light became the landmark it was meant to be.
For New Year we played a short set in the Marisco Tavern, then retreated back to Old Light, where, at midnight, we lit two candles, bringing the old girl back to life. In the gloom the lantern platform looked like a giant mushroom.
It was a reflective moment, a chance to be still after all the rushing around.
Over the next few days we walked the length and breadth of the island, taking perilous paths down to the water's edge.
We saw peregrines and ravens, soay sheep and sika deer. At Brazen Ward sixteen seals came swimming in to watch us, as curious of us as we were of them (apologies for the dreadful photo but you get the idea).
It was over all too soon and alas the force ten gale subsided in time for us to be helicoptered off.
In less than ten minutes we were back on Hartland Point, just where our adventure had started.
But there's a part of me that is still on the island and I'm counting the days until we can go back.
We were supposed to fly by helicopter from Hartland Point but the weather was against us and we were forced to spend the night in Ilfracombe, about which all I'll say is that it's seen better days.
We had to be at the ferry, the MS Oldenburg, in time to board at 5am.
The wind was blowing a force six and we headed out into pitch blackness against an incoming tide. The boat was knocked about in the swell and with no horizon to steady ourselves it wasn't long before the sea-sickness kicked in, two hours of unremitting hell. The crew were fantastic, however, and they administered to the sick with kindness and good humour. But we arrived with the day and it wasn't too long before we were tucking into a large breakfast at the Marisco Tavern, followed by what was to be the first of many sessions.
We stumbled over to our accommodation in an eighty mile-an-hour mist.
We were staying in Old Light, a nineteenth century light house that was eventually abandoned for being too tall and so quite invisible in fog.
A failure then, but we fell instantly in love with it. We climbed to the top at all times of day and night, playing music in its extraordinary acoustics, or just listening to the ever-present roar of the wind. We felt privileged, as if let in to complete some long-forgotten steampunk experiment.
When the weather cleared Old Light became the landmark it was meant to be.
For New Year we played a short set in the Marisco Tavern, then retreated back to Old Light, where, at midnight, we lit two candles, bringing the old girl back to life. In the gloom the lantern platform looked like a giant mushroom.
It was a reflective moment, a chance to be still after all the rushing around.
Over the next few days we walked the length and breadth of the island, taking perilous paths down to the water's edge.
We saw peregrines and ravens, soay sheep and sika deer. At Brazen Ward sixteen seals came swimming in to watch us, as curious of us as we were of them (apologies for the dreadful photo but you get the idea).
It was over all too soon and alas the force ten gale subsided in time for us to be helicoptered off.
In less than ten minutes we were back on Hartland Point, just where our adventure had started.
But there's a part of me that is still on the island and I'm counting the days until we can go back.
