BUDDHA THE YOUNGER, ALLAH THE EDLER, KRISHNA THE MIDDLY
Do Gods have siblings, and if so, are they mortal?
RAOUL MOAT IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
Turn the telly on now.
SELF HARM WITH A PIG’S BLADDER
I don’t mind admitting I like football. I wish I could say I ‘did’ after this afternoon’s debacle, but the tense is still present. I do like the games that go belly up, even when it’s us on the receiving end. Sure, like you I want the players to accept their penance and volunteer 5 weeks community service when they return to the UK but I know they’ll be forgiven by amnesia-ridden fans in 4 weeks once the new season starts and they’ve run out of things to say about goal-line technology. The knobs.
As a national football team, we are destined to fail when asked to succeed, yet there exists this superiority complex holding hands with a delusion of grandeur every time we talk to the media about it. But failing is the language of Beckett. There is something poetic and scientific hiding here - the choice to fail when they are given every chance (money, facilities, coach, easy opposition, etc) to win. It’s a form of self-harm. A highly knackering public form of masochism. Maybe I should tape hacksaw blades to my typing fingers to truly understand. Or celebrate that we lose with more sadness and drama than France or Italy, and more ego and selfishness than Australia or Serbia, or more comedy and chaos than South Africa or New Zealand.
Stevie Wonder just said playing the final act at Glastonbury’s 40th birthday was fun.
Play for fun.
Got that Fabio?
THE EARTH AS THE MOON
Imagine we all live on the moon.
It’s a clear night.
There are no street lamps.
And we’ve left our torches in the rocket that has since disintegrated.
The question is does the earth shine bright enough for us to see in the dark?
CLAIRVOYANCE REVISITED
Is the future going to be as anti-climatic as the past?
Will all the mistakes I make add up to one decision I get right before my time comes?
Is a wish just a regret in a time capsule?
How pissed off is the present moment with peacemaking?
Do the tea-bags know more than tea leaves?
Is an ache a no-through road?
If we were able to jump two lifetimes ahead, might we rue the one we leapfrog?
Is it true that Mystic Meg & Russell Grant have a lovechild, but he was born before them?
Are cats tired of reincarnation?
GET ON WITH IT
Patience isn’t a virtue.
It’s an excuse.
And excuses suck.
Time, as we know, can expand and contract at will - so never assume you’ll have plenty of time to do something, to fit it in because you won’t.
Assume you have no time and all your dreams will materialize. It’s not to say that nightmares won’t as well - so try and get them over with quickly too.
Once you’ve lived a few dreams, they stop feeling like dreams and become errands, albeit pleasant ones.
BEFORETASTE
There is a queue. It’s long. They are all waiting for their full fat morning coffee. They’re drooling as it takes a while to make good coffee. They look agitated. The ones who have their drink are in a moment. Then they leave. Miserable as ever. It’s the aftertaste. It wasn’t as good as they’d hoped. And they still fall for it every day. It’s a slow torture. And expensive as 2.30 x 5 x 52 = £598 testifies. If only they could stop at the drool.
THE TRUTH ABOUT STAIRS
The people you meet on a staircase when there is an escalator or lift available are the people who change your life.
OTHER PEOPLE WITH YOUR NAME
If they’re older, are you a fraud?
If they’re younger, should you sue?
If you’re the same age, were you separated at birth?
If they’re dead, would their grave give you the spooks?
If they’re in the same profession, should you take your middle name or change career?
If they’re famous, then aren’t you too?
If they met you, would you have anything else in common?
If you killed them, might the murder trial sound like suicide?
If they gave their child their name then befell a tragic accident, would you be able to foster their child?
If you were both gay, might you get it on?
If you had the same name, met up, fell head over heels and got married, would you keep your maiden name as a matter of karma?
If you met several people with your name, might you start your own private club?
If no-one else is ever born with your name, might you feel extinct?
If you’re called Peter Kirby and you’re reading this, am I you and are we us?
THE WEIGHT OF HAPPY
No, not the first of seven dwarfs. Sure, he was a lump.
I’m talking about Happy - the emotion, the state of being happy. The one that is immeasurable according to the pall bearers of joy. Their shoulders cannot lie.
Or can they? Happy is a complex condition. It is also rarely whole for more than a millisecond. Weighing happiness is akin to throwing a mercury dart at the treble twenty. Just as you think you’ve got it there in the palm of your soul, it evaporates into thin something or other.
As a remedial scientist, I think there may be another way to weigh happy. Not in weight, but in mass. And not in mass in the conventional sense as density, but mass in its radiant quality.
Still with me…because I’m not. Keep going into the blindness of hope.
Mass as atmosphere. Mass as aura. Mass as good times. Now, we’re talking mass language.
Happy can be measured in its contagiousness. As it passes from one person to another, it has two options. To fade or to build.
As my energy fades, I kneel before you all and wait to see if a post will arrive and take this Olympic flame somewhere new, somewhere happier.
Or whether, sadly, this is:
The Elegy Of Happy.