Change – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Some people travel to far off countries and take photographs of people and buildings from different times and cultures.

11.10.01

 

Because I was mouthy the staff voted me on to the governing body. I was the staff representative. They put me there to stir things up.

I did stir things up. I wanted the school to change. I wanted the students treated better. I wanted education to be expansive, caring and interesting. The governors at that time were a conservative bunch who resisted change.

It was apparent to me that the governors were ‘old boys’ who wanted to see the school run the way it was in the 1930s, the ‘good old days’. They wanted the kids to wear smart uniforms, get caned and know their place. They wanted the school to be selective, after all, what was the point of teaching ‘thick’ kids? They never wanted anything to change, least of all their power and authority.

I didn’t agree.

At my first meeting, I encountered one millionaire businessman governor who slagged off the present teaching staff as ‘lazy people who couldn’t hold down a job in the real world’. As the bastard had never stepped a foot inside the school when the kids were there, and didn’t have a clue about the planning and marking that took place out of lessons, and how hard the staff worked, I had to put him in his place.

After the meeting, the Chair of Governors, stopped me in the corridor, grabbed me by the throat and pinned me up against a wall, furious and shouting in my face. He called me a ‘trouble maker’.

I concluded that I had to be doing something right.

You have to laugh don’t you?

If you want to build a better world you’ve got to be prepared to change the old one. If you believe in equality you have to fight for it.

Remember; once you stop fighting to improve the situation, the bastards will use every means they can to wrest power away from you. They want their privileged position maintained. They want things to stay as they are.

These people are the same elitist group who’ve always run things. They do it in the background and are slippery like greased shit. They appoint the bosses and pull the strings. The bosses are the ones who take the flak. They are the front. The real power lies behind them.

One thing I rapidly discovered was that this was a game of attrition. A person cannot easily change the big things; you keep chipping away at the small stuff until you have created a successful momentum. The big stuff follows.

3.11.01

 

My old man was in charge of an office of telephone reporters. It was a very responsible job. He was good at it and he worked hard. Many of the people working under him earned more than he did. You see they had unions that fought for their pay. My old man was management. He had to rely on the goodwill of the bosses. He didn’t automatically get a pay rise.

When he died I found copies of some of the letters he’d written to request a pay increase: ‘could you see your way to’ and ‘following the efficiency’. It was pathetic. They saw the wording as weakness and never seemed to see their way to provide him with the pay increase he deserved. He should have adopted a stronger tone and demanded a pay rise. They would have respected that.

The person who took over from him started with a salary that was over twice the level of his pay.

It makes me mad. These people will always give as little as they can get away with. They are greedy. He deserved better than that.

3.11.01

 

Some people read books that are made up stories of the lives and adventures of fictional people.

11.10.01

Ron Forsythe Science Fiction – Future Projects

Posted on by Opher

Future Projects

Please check out my Ron Forsythe Science Fiction site:- https://ronforsytheauthor.wordpress.com/

 General 

Recently I have been reading a Stephen Hawking book – Brief answers to Big Questions – and I found it extremely thought-provoking.

A lot of science, particularly in the field of astrophysics, is now stranger than Sci-Fi. Who would have imagined the 11 dimensions of M-theory? I find that aspect of science fascinating. The quantum world and time are plain weird and do not seem to make sense in terms of our own reality. But it was the other topics that intrigued me (neither of which are particularly new but both of which are on the verge of becoming real).

There were two main themes that set my mind racing. One was A/I. Stephen found this a threat to humans. He was looking at the huge advances that have been made in computers over recent years, doubling their capacity every two years, and predicted firstly that these machines would soon exceed human intelligence and secondly that they would be conscious. His fear was that their intelligence might far outstrip us and they could consider us superfluous. Now I am aware that this has been a standard theme in Sci-fi for a long time – right back to 2001-A Space Odyssey – but this is real science and it appealed to me.

The second theme of Stephen’s that stimulated my creative juices was the idea that we now had the means to genetically alter organisms easily. Not only can we switch genes from one species to another but we can alter those genes and create entirely new characteristics. So we could take a gene out of a daisy or a jellyfish and put it into a human. We could take a specific gene, involved in our intelligence for instance, and play about with it to see if we can improve on it.

Stephen suggested that there was no way of controlling this. Even if experiments on humans was considered unethical and banned, there would be nations with secret labs who would not be bound by such ethics.

Stephen suggested that we were on the cusp of a revolution. Not only would our crops, farm animals and food be radically altered in the forthcoming years, but we would be too. We are on the verge of identifying the genes involved with intelligence. Once we have achieved that we could optimize them, perfect them and ultimately create humans who were immensely intelligent.

Once again, these ideas are not Science Fiction, they are real science – but my mind is already looking at storylines. Soon real science may become Science Fiction. We’ll see.

What Stephen’s book achieved was to inspire a few storylines. We’ll see if they mature into stories or novels.

Keep watching this space.

Education, careers and Captain Beefheart – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Religion is a compulsory subject in British schools. Every child has to be brainwashed every single day with a religious input, by law. Isn’t that absurd?

It is an archaic throwback to the days when religion was the cornerstone of society and schools were first conceived as places where children of the elite were schooled in Latin Grammar so they could read the Bible. Later, schooling became more widely available to the general public as society had progressed and there was a need for people with knowledge and skills to carry out the various tasks and careers needed by society.

But where does the concept of educating people to expand their minds fit in? A career is one thing but a questioning mind is something else altogether. I wanted my education to be expansive, fun, illuminating and thrilling. I wanted discovery, excitement and revelation. I received facts to learn for exams. I did not really count that as an education.

13.10.01

 

Captain Beefheart was on at Middle Earth up in Covent Garden in London. That was an event that would change the whole of anybody’s life. Captain Beefheart, complete with Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Alex St Claire, Drumbo and who knew who else. The whole Magic Band. That was worth £5,000,000 of anybody’s money!

The only problem was that it was right in the middle of A Levels.

This was a crisis.

No problemo. It was the week before my Biology. I wasn’t one for revision anyway. I always did well in Biology. Besides I needed a good night out. It would set me up for the exams. But I needed my grade to get my place at university to study medicine. No problemo. I told you, I always do well in Biology.

But this was the whole of my future!

No problemo!

There was no choice in the matter. It had to be done. Beefheart might not tour again. The world might end and I wouldn’t have seen him.

Besides – it was a whole week before.

I went. Rockette Morton was ill so they postponed. They put on Aynsley Dunbar instead. There was no comparison.

They put the Captain on the following week and made it a double bill with John Mayall, complete with Pete Green on lead.

Now that was a slight problem. That was the night before my Biology exam. But a double-bill with Captain Beefheart with John Mayall and Peter Green – who could possibly afford to miss that???

If I went I would not get back until three in the morning. My exam was at nine. That was about five hours sleep. That also meant no night before revision (the only revision I tended to do). I had this theory that it was pointless revising more than a day before an exam. You forgot it all. It really wasn’t so much of a theory as an excuse – back then my memory was very good. It was just that my mind was on other things that seemed much more important to me back then.

This was my future we were talking about! My future for fuck’s sake! My eminent career as a doctor, a surgeon even! Surely I was mature enough to understand that?

But then, Captain Beefheart might not tour again, the band might break up, and Pete Green was scintillating on guitar. Besides I always came top in Biology; I didn’t need to revise. I could breeze it.

But you had to admit that five hours sleep and no revision was hardly perfect preparation for a crucial exam.

I had to think this through for all of five minutes.

Where were my parents in all this? Where was my father’s guiding hand? My mum’s words of wisdom? I can’t remember. I think they had given up on trying to influence my choices. They had decided that I was a law unto myself. While not shining in my academic endeavours, I did seem to get by, so they tended to leave me to it.

The concert was brilliant! One of the best ever! The Magic band were storming! Beefheart was incredible! John Mayall, even with Pete Green, paled into insignificance.

The Biology exam was all right but there were a few questions that proved a little tricky. A bit of revision might not have gone amiss.

When the results came out I had missed the required standard by a grade. That could have been a single mark! One fact! One glance at one page of notes! The university was not impressed. They declined my services. Instead of studying medicine I did a Zoology degree at a lesser establishment. I went on to establish a scintillating career as a teacher. The pay of a teacher is not greatly comparable to the pay of a surgeon. But what the hell! Who wanted a career anyway? There was far too much real living to be getting on with, a whole universe to explore!

Some concerts are worth £5000,000 of anybody’s money.

2.11.01

 

Why is poetry not the only compulsory subject in schools?

13.10.01

 

There’s no doubt that nuclear energy is a big mistake in this age of global terrorism. A plane smashing into a nuclear plant could be a catastrophe.

Just imagine how many tens of thousands of terrorists, each consuming twenty tins of beans, it would take to sabotage a field of Wind Turbines?

3.11.01

A Jaundiced view – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Life rarely goes the way you plan it.

31.10.01

 

I stayed with friends while Liz moved up to Hull with Dylan so we gave up our bedsit. Kathy and Toby were good friends looked after me. They’d quickly escaped from downstairs to move into our little flat. It meant that I did not even have to move. It was only for two weeks. I had to serve out my months’ notice as a technician.

It was towards my last week at work that things started going wrong. I felt so ill. It was like flu but worse. I was so muzzy and weak and was struggling to cope. My pee was coming out brown. No amount of aspirin or paracetamol did any good. But it was my last week and I carried on.

On the final Wednesday it was all too much. I was so ill I could not function. I decided to go to the college doctor to see if he had anything that might get me through the week.

I knocked on the surgery door and walked in. I had not got more than two paces in when he shouted at me.

“Stay there! Do not come any closer!”

That was rather disconcerting but I was too ill to care. I just wanted to curl up and die.

“You have Hepatitis! Yellow jaundice. You are highly contagious.”

He actually got out of his seat behind the desk and edged away from me towards the corner of the surgery.

“I will write you a note.” He scribbled on a bit of paper. “Take this to the nearest hospital and give it to a doctor. Do not – I repeat – do not go near anyone! You are highly contagious.”

He placed the note on the edge of the desk and backed away into the corner of the room.

It was like I had leprosy or plague but I was too ill to give a damn. I wanted to go to bed and be ill. I couldn’t handle all this.

I didn’t ask how I was meant to get to hospital without going near anyone. I didn’t ask anything. I trudged over to the desk, took the note and left. The doctor was almost cowering in the corner of the room. It would have been quite comical if it wasn’t for the fact that I felt so ill. I was beginning to surmise that my condition might be quite serious.

I went to my car and passed one of my colleagues on the way.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

“I’ve got Hepatitis. I’m off to hospital,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said, edging away.

I somehow arrived at the hospital and handed in my note at the reception.

“Go and sit over there in the waiting room and a doctor will see you,” the receptionist explained curtly. I looked round at all the people sitting in the waiting room. Mothers with babies, children. There were hundreds of them.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It explains in the note. I have Hepatitis. I am highly contagious. I am not allowed to go near anyone.”

“Well if you don’t sit in the waiting room we can’t see to you.”

I was too ill to argue. I went and sat in the waiting room with all the other people.

After two hours the doctor saw me. He read the note. He looked at the deep yellow whites of my eyes.

“Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “You have Hepatitis. You are highly contagious. Why on Earth did you sit in the waiting room? You should have brought this note straight to me.” He was annoyed.

I was too ill to explain.

“We will have to admit you to an isolation ward straight away. Where have you been working?”

I explained that I was a laboratory technician.

“Do you work with rats?” He asked.

“Yes. I’ve been working in the animal house with about three thousand rats.”

“Good God! That’s even worse. You could have Weil’s disease!”

I’d never heard of it but it sounded bad.

Perhaps I was dying.

I explained that my wife was in Hull and I was meant to be going up to Hull in two days when I finished work. Was it possible for me to go up to Hull first before going in to hospital.

“There is no way you can undertake such a journey. You are much too ill. You need to be isolated straight away. You could have a very nasty form of Hepatitis.”

From the way everyone had been acting around me I was beginning to suspect that. But all I wanted to do now was to get to Liz. That was the only thing in my head. I told him I needed to go to Hull.

We had a bit of an argument. He lost his temper with me and handed me discharge papers. He warned me that if I signed them they took no responsibility if I subsequently died.

I discharged myself and left the doctor dousing himself with ethanol.

I caught the next train to Hull and tried to keep away from people. It wasn’t hard. They didn’t seem at all keen to go too near to me. That might had been because I was glowing luminous yellow. It was not a nice yellow. And my eyes were now orangey brown where they should have been white.

I arrived in Hull and got on a bus. The conductor told me where to get off. I’d only been there a few times by car and did not have a clue how to find the place. I asked a local kid where my road was. He was very helpful. He jabbered away in some deep Hull accent something about tennies and bairns and what not. As far as I was concerned it could have been Russian. So I set off in the direction he had pointed.

I found it.

As we had no phone Liz did not know I was coming. She thought I was coming up in two days time.

What she found was a bright yellow husband standing on the doorstep.

“Don’t come any closer!” I said as she stood there.

“What’s the matter?” She stepped back, alarmed.

“I have Hepatitis. I have to go straight to hospital. It’s very contagious. Don’t come near me.”

She could see I was ill. It didn’t need spelling out. My unnatural yellow colour bounced off the walls. We negotiated a way into the house. I had a cup of tea and we set off.

She got the pram and put Dylan in it. We walked to the hospital. It wasn’t too far away. But when we got there they wouldn’t see me because they didn’t have a casualty department. They directed us to the Infirmary on the other side of the city.

We had to get on a bus.

Eventually, we got to the infirmary. They took down my details but because I didn’t have a local GP they couldn’t admit me. I was instructed to go home and get a local GP to take me on.

By the time we got home it was too late. I had another cup of tea and took myself off to bed in the spare room.

The next day Liz went straight down and registered me at the surgery she had already registered with. She explained what the problem was and they arranged to send a doctor round.

The doctor was a Locum. He came and examined me, prodded my stomach, checked my eyes and confirmed it was Hepatitis. He told me to go to bed, take some aspirin and plenty of fluids.

I asked about the baby and Liz.

Yes it was contagious. I was to sleep in a different room and use separate utensils, sheets, flannels etc. That should do it. He would arrange some blood tests to see how I was going.

In London it was life and death, isolation wards and panic. In Hull it was take an aspirin and go to bed.

They’re pretty tough up North, obviously.

I was too weak to argue.

31.10.01

 

So what do you regret most? If you could go back and put it right? If you could relive it with the knowledge of hindsight how would you do it different?

The trouble is that it’s all or nothing. If you change a bit the chances are that you’d end up changing it all.

31.10.01

 

Now Jack Kerouac probably started it all. It wasn’t so much the structure as the journey; not the arriving as much as the doing. He sure did it. He wrote it. He lived it.

He wasn’t the first to search for the meaning of life, and he wasn’t the first to want to goof. He was just the first to put it together that way.

He was the first Messiah of the new age.

The fact that he lost it, messed up with booze and religion and couldn’t handle it. That was incidental.

All heroes are fatally flawed.

31.10.01

Heroes – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’

Posted on by Opher

So what is there to think about today?

31.10.01

 

Such a strange thing being a teacher. A repository of knowledge. A role-model for life. A respectable pillar of society.

I feel like an impostor who will shortly be found out. I am subversive. Yet maybe I am no longer subversive at all. I’m just kidding myself. I’ve become quite tame and harmless.

I am a teacher. I can’t help it. Sorry.

31.10.01

 

Heaven, Hell, Paradise, Nirvana, Karma, Reincarnation – what wonderfully human ways of dealing with mortality.

12.10.01

 

I let myself down. I don’t do things. I’m too settled in my ways. You forget you’re on a road that links with other roads so that the end of your road is any place on the whole planet. Your road becomes a short stretch of familiar tarmac. It is just the start.

I decorate my house. I go to work. I hoover. I clean.

Where’s the fucking madness?

11.11.01

 

Muhamed Ali is a person I greatly admire. He was so full of life. He took them all on and did it all his way. The young Cassius Clay from the ghetto with the dancing feet and outrageous predictions delivered in poetic bursts of machine gunfire. The arrogance and self-assurance. The intelligence. The taunting ridiculing. The strutting defiance. He refused to play anybody’s games. He did it his way. He was so alive, so dynamite. He got up people’s noses. Cassius the mouth.

He walked a line. There were a lot of things you could have despised. All the things I’ve listed above. But it was the panache and the human warmth that pulled it off. He was a gangster of the ring without a machine gun.

Then when they were after sending him to fight in a war he did not agree with, he stood up to them and refused to go, so they stripped him of his titles, refused to allow him to box, and robbed him of some of his best years. But he did not bow to them and later came back to reclaim his titles and spite them.

He became a Black Muslim and changed his name. He stood for Black Pride and demanded respect.

Then we were witness to the strength and determination in some of his later fights – the depth of his character.

He was sensationally exciting to watch in the ring but what sealed it for me was the human being that shone through.

31.10.01

 

All heroes let you down.

31.10.01

 

Life is about experience. What else is there? You gotta get out there and experience everything! Change your mind! Go everywhere! Meet everyone! Find the best minds and rap the hell out of them! Do everything once and avoid the ruts! Avoid the humdrum! Avoid the rot and decay. So much more than fun! So much more than sex! So much more than children!

There’s a galaxy out there! It spins! There’s a mind in here! It thinks. It spins. I wanna know what makes them spin!

11.11.01

Starsky and Hutch and a carton of milk – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

You couldn’t walk in most of Los Angeles. There were no sidewalks. Everyone drove.

I drove to the supermarket, just two blocks away, to get some milk. I pulled into the huge car-park and was cruising along in my VW camper van looking for a space near to the entrance when a car shrieked past me at huge speed and, with a screech of tyres producing a cloud of smoke, broadsided in front of a big Chevvy van that was chugging down the next aisle. At the same time a similar car performed the same action from the other direction so that the two cars were now blocking the van in. Simultaneously two other cars screamed up behind the big van and also screeched to a halt in a pall of smoke. The van was now completely hemmed it in. For a moment it was as if everything was on pause. The van had halted. I had jammed on the brakes and come to a stop and was watching the scene on auto. The blue tyre smoke slowly drifted off over the parked cars. Then it went bananas. All the doors of the four cars flew open and armed men jumped out. Sixteen guys crouched behind the open doors pointing guns at the Chevvy van.

My mouth dropped open. This was like the movies. I was frozen.

I could see one of the guys from behind the Chevvy come out from behind his protective door, edge along the side of the van with his gun cocked up in the air at the ready, towards the front of the Chevvy.

A helicopter buzzed down overhead.

The guy reached the door, reached up to the handle and flung the door open, jumping to the side and levelling his gun at the occupants, young white guys in their twenties, who had their hands raised in the air. He then reached in, grabbed the guy in the passenger seat, yanked him out of the van and roughly flung him on the ground. Most probably the same thing was happening on the driver’s side but I couldn’t see that. The other guys with the guns began coming out from behind their doors, still training their guns on the van, and fanning out to cover the van The guy I was watching stood on the passenger’s head with his boot and pointed his gun at his head. There was a lot of shouting.

I was twenty feet away stationery, gawping like an idiot at a scene that was like something out of Starsky & Hutch. It had all happened so fast.

What if they had started shooting? I was right in the middle of it. What was it all about? A drugs bust? Some gang or other? A routine check? Even for America, it was a bit OTT.

“Excuse me sir, can we see your driving licence, please?”

Where was my camera? I always had my camera with me. I’d left it at home. How could I have done that? I would loved to have had some photos of the action. I could have taken some stunning shots of men with guns, helicopters and action.

Just another day in LA.

19.9.01

 

I’m one crazy, innocent, fifty-two-year-old mother-fucker. But nowhere near as crazy as I think I am.

18.9.01

The ‘liberation’ of Berlin – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

I have a dream of a better world based on intelligence, not superstition or greed.

21.9.01

 

In America, the teacher in the classroom next to mine was a German immigrant. Strangely enough, she taught German. I taught Biology and Science. She was very friendly.

One day we were sitting in the canteen talking and I asked her what made her come over to the States. Her eyes went a bit glazed as she stared out the window for a long time as if staring into the past.

Eventually, she told me that she had been a fourteen-year-old girl living in Berlin at the end of the war. She said it had been terrifying. There was no food. The city had been bombed to rubble. Horrendous stories circulated. They were petrified that the Russians were going to get to them first. They’d heard that the Russians behaved like depraved monsters. As it turned out it was the Americans that ‘liberated’ them. On such moments are the fates of individuals determined.

She went very quiet for a long while before continuing.

“The Americans were fresh-faced kids.” Her eyes met mine. “By the end of the war they were drafting seventeen-year-olds, the older veteran soldiers had all been killed. They had called up all the available men. They were drafting in boys.” She gazed thoughtfully at her hands. “They were boys, younger than the boys I teach.”

She proceeded to talk in staggered sentences in a neutral tone, as if looking inside herself to relive the past.

“Those boys had fought through Germany…………….. They had seen sights that boys shouldn’t see……….. That people should never have to see……… They had seen their friends killed………. They had seen people dying in agony……….. They had had all their innocence and security stolen from them. They had seen how fragile life is. They had experienced all the emotions imaginable………. They had been so terrified they were emotionally blank. They didn’t think of hope, or an end to this madness. The war had become their life. They lived it. Their faces were fresh but their eyes were old.”

She lapsed into silence, all turned in on herself. You could see her mind turning over those old memories. She didn’t tell me any details of what had happened when the Americans moved in. I realised later that she had never really told me anything about why she had come to the United States – yet she had. Perhaps, she had come to put her ghosts to rest?

After a bit she looked up and her eyes met mine.

“If the mothers of those boys had known a fraction of what those boys did in Berlin ……………….. they would never have let them back in their houses again,” she whispered and then looked away.

18.9.01

Death – An extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

The crux of the matter, the root of the problem, if I can be allowed to mix clichés, is that we have a problem with death.

Death is something we don’t like talking about. We don’t even like thinking about. The fact that we are going to die, that our loved ones are going to die, is an anathema to everything we think and feel. It destroys the egocentric way we view the universe and makes it all pointless. How could the universe exist without us? Surely all this is here for a reason?

We see order in the universe and mistake it for a planned design. Death upsets that plan.

Death is disturbing. It seems contrary to order and negates purpose.

Our own death indicates that the universe really doesn’t care about us or need us. It carries on regardless. That seems illogical to us so we have invented an afterlife. Our deceased loved-ones are now with the angels or are now stars in the heavens.

That seems absurd and stupid to me. I prefer death. But many people find these ideas of an afterlife comforting.

We don’t even want to acknowledge death! It is too frightening a concept. Our whole lives are based around routine. Each day is much the same as the last. Life goes on. Nothing drastic is going to happen. We don’t doubt that we will wake up tomorrow.

Then – BAAAANG!!  We are knocked out of kilter by some religious madmen flying planes into skyscrapers. We watch in horror as the buildings collapse. This cannot be happening! Those buildings are permanent! Like mountains! It is not possible that anything that permanent can disappear so quickly and unexpectedly! That shows how impermanent we are! That shows us that death is real. We are going to die.

Buddhists meditate in graveyards to think about impermanence. They don’t avoid death. They try to accept it and come to terms with it. That seems healthy to me. They also don’t believe in gods.

If I had to choose a religion I’d be a Buddhist.

The answer is to pretend that there is no death, When we die we go to a better place. Problem solved. Death is a rebirth. Life is an interlude. No need to worry. We can go on thinking about all those everyday important matters. Life and death will take care of itself.

The next step is to get there quicker. If it is such a good place to go, after you are dead, let’s get there quicker!

‘Hey, injun, meet yer maker!’  Bang. Just like in the Westerns.

We are doing them all a favour by bumping them off.

Put your faith in Jesus!

But inexplicably, in the real world, these guys are flying planes into buildings because they are buying in to eternal paradise. That’s real commitment!

People actually believe these things.

Maybe I should start a new cult – ‘Nutters for death – the gateway to eternal life!’

I could have a series of decals made up with catchy mottos:

‘Put an end to all worries – kill yourself!’

‘In debt? Can’t solve your problems? Put a bullet through your head and wake up in heaven!’

‘Unhappy? Lost a loved one? Be reunited forever in paradise!’

‘Don’t like other religions? Think yours is the best brand? Show God you really care by blowing a whole bunch of them to fuck and fly an airbus into them!’ ‘God’ll love you for it!’

It’ll catch on!

We could sell the merchandise and turn a nifty profit.

Green plastic luminous exploding heads with ‘death for life’ on them.

Car stickers – ‘Make someone happy – kill a friend today!’

‘One God – kill anyone who says different. Save them from hell!’

‘Jesus loves you to death!’

There’s a big commercial franchise to be established. Surely we can’t allow the religions to corner the market?

But in reality, death is real. Death is the end of everything. All we have is the time between birth and death. We really have to make the most of it.

31.10.01

Grand Canyon and mules – extract from Farther from the Sun

Posted on by Opher

We arrived at Grand Canyon, parked up and moved into a travel lodge – my parents, the kids, Liz and me. A snowstorm had gone through and coated everything in a couple of inches of pristine white. Icicles hung off the lodge. The sun shone and the sheer faces of the canyon glowed red in the evening light.

It was decided that my dad and I would go down on the two-day mule ride while the rest stayed up at the lodge.

We got on our mules bright and early and set off on the crisp and icy trail. It was exceedingly narrow and the mules were wide. I kept looking down into the seven thousand foot drop and wondering about the footing of our mules on the glassy ice. There were times when I was hanging out over the drop. One slip and you fell thousands of feet to your death. But the mules were sure footed and as we progressed down the temperature rose so that the ice turned to slush and then was gone altogether and I began to feel more secure.

It took a long time to zig-zag down and I had ample time to look at the amazing view of the steep, red, striated sides. Did one river really do all this? It seemed hard to believe.

At the bottom we got off our mules, our backsides sore and aching. We were not looking forward to the return trip the next morning.

Though it was late afternoon the sun still burned – thick winter coats at the top and T-shirt weather at the bottom.

We stood on the bridge and watched the red rocks glow in the evening light, fluorescent, like they were shining with some inner light. The shadows crept across the whole bottom but still shone on the escarpment on one side. It was magical.

Neither of us spoke. We looked down at the muddy waters of the Colorado, rich swirling chocolate and soaked it in. It was one of those shared moments that live in you forever.

Later we watched the moon reflected in the river and stared up at the stars through a clear sky from the bottom of this great crevice in the world’s crust. The sky was a mystical pool.

At least we’d experienced it together.

I wonder if it meant the same to him as it did to me?

The next morning we set off early, back up the same trail, with our legs stretched wide over the leathery hide of our mules, our sore arses bumping and aching muscles cramping. The ordeal did not feel so bad. The memories eased the pain. We finally reached the top and dismounted. Though I did not know it at the time, our last adventure was over.

I have a photo, taken by Liz, of my dad bent, bowlegged wincing as he stood at the top, having just dismounted from his mule. I doubt that I looked much better.

5.9.01

 

So what makes me angry? Rudeness, injustice, cruelty. I can’t see why a human being would want to do those things – to hurt other people. I wanna put them right. A lot of people see that as weird. Wanting to put things right, that is.

“Why? Just grab what you can for yourself. It’s your life. Forget the losers!” They say. “They deserve it!”

Nope. They don’t deserve it. It bothers me. I am compelled to at least say something about it.

I believe in gestures.

18.9.01

The Iran Hostage situation and war fever – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Someone has stuck a huge pin in the map in my American classroom. That map is a map of the world, and I had stuck that map up on the wall deliberately. It was a statement of intent. I intended to broaden the minds I was temporarily in contact with, to widen their perspectives. A map of the world symbolised that. This was quite a strange thing to find in America for, when you are there, you could easily think that the rest of the world does not exist. All that is reported is American news. Even the sport is only a record of American victories with token mention of other countries. For fuck’s sake, they even call the baseball and American Football the World Series and World Championship despite the fact that no other country is allowed to compete. It is more than a little Americocentric. The pin has a big flag on it. Written on the flag in bold letters is: ‘NUKE IRAN’.

The pin is stuck in Tehran. You’ve got to give them credit for that. A few weeks ago and they wouldn’t have had a clue that there was even a country called Iran let alone a city named Tehran. At least they can now find it on the map.

These are my kids that have done that. We are in the middle of the Iran hostage situation. My great friendly American kids are all wrought up with war fever. They want to kill.

I am in a privileged position as a foreigner in their midst. I can be detached. I am not directly involved so I can bring logic to bear in the midst of emotion.

I look at the flag. The class look at me. I decide that today we will abandon Biology to discuss war.

I bring them around the front. Their eyes are already gleaming as they sense what is coming. If I had any sense I would have given up that stupid idea straight away and gone right on with the lesson I had planned but these were my kids. Some of them were very bright. We’d enjoyed good discussions. We’d gone through stuff on drugs, race and religion. We’d got through some difficult topics and built up a good relationship. I was sure I could handle this.

We were still in the midst of the cold war. I took the map off the wall and showed them where Russia was in relation to Iran. I asked them how America might react if the Russians took out Mexico. I mentioned Cuba. I talked of the effect of using nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, it seemed that this wasn’t the time for reason.

They howled at me. They stood on chairs and pointed and chanted. There was a pack mentality. They gave off a scent of madness.

I stood there standing in front of them, taking in their hysteria and was amazed. These were intelligent students but they were full of adrenaline and as high as kites. This was naked aggression. It was not directed at me. I was safe. But I had set loose a pent-up force that was now uncontained and raging and there was no way of getting it back in the bottle. It had to take its course. It was just that there was so much power in their rage, so much hatred, and it was like a monster with many heads and no brain. There was nothing to reason with. It had no ears. Its brain circuitry was fused.

There could be no discussion. There was nothing to discuss. The Iranians had dared to insult America by taking their people hostage. It was an outrage. They wanted them obliterated.

I could certainly see how easy it was for dictators to wind up their people. I could feel the group dynamic. When I’d seen all those crowds on the streets in Iran, Iraq and Palestine it had been just like this.

I had never experienced anything like it before. I felt as if I was trapped within Orwell’s 1984 and they were beaming in that period of group hate. This was the half-hour of hate. The aroma of adrenaline filled the classroom. The crowd were all directing hate in some sort of hysterical, self-perpetuating cloud.

Debate was not possible. It was not open to question. They didn’t even care if the hostages were blown to atoms in the process just so long as the whole world knew, and revenge was seen to have been carried out.

I had never experienced the irrationality of war fever. It was foreign to me and very scary. At that moment, it was obvious that Carter could get himself elected by a landslide, simply by sending in the marines or actually nuking a few cities, and hang the consequences. Instead, he had a fiasco of a rescue mission in the desert that went horribly wrong and got himself kicked out of office.

I respect him for that decision though. The alternative, if he had have gone in with full force, might have been another Vietnam or could have easily blown out of control into that fabled third world war. But it didn’t.

I repeated the lesson throughout the day with every class I taught. I never learn. It always met with the same impassioned response. America was beset with war fever.

I came home shaking my head.

That could only happen in America. The British were far too level-headed and rational to get carried away on such a jingoistic tide of emotion I thought. How wrong I was.

29.10.01

 

I have a dream of a world where enjoying yourself is not frowned upon and laws are just and equally applied to all – where a person has freedoms.

21.9.01