53 and imploding – I believe in fairness

Posted on by Opher

Every day is a critical time in life but some days, some years, feel like watersheds. 53 years of age was a watershed. At least that’s how it felt. I wrote this novel as a biographical antinovel – a journey into a mind – a stream of consciousness. I wanted to destroy all structure.

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

I have decisions to make. I am making this up as I go along but the ideas are beginning to gel. I have a lot of anecdotes and ideas that have come together. The rest of the book is coalescing in my thoughts. You see I am conceiving this as a book. I can already visualise it sitting on the shelf with crappy photocopied cover that I will design, spirally bound on the cheap binder and arranged along with all the other ‘books’ I have produced. Jan views them as more clutter, junk and dust gatherers. I view them as accomplishments.

I conceive chapters. I have already placed this in a period of time. I have selected characters. They are real people – my friends and acquaintances. Real places, real anecdotes. The time sequence is a little jumbled up. The problem is the names. Should I stick with them or change them? Some of what I am going to describe might not be considered flattering or accurate. It can’t be accurate. I am describing a poorly remembered event. I am embellishing without even being aware that I am. In trying to be accurate I am bound to misrepresent. I am already working out how to simplify the myriad of possibilities by amalgamating things. The chronology is hopelessly jumbled. Should I use their real names? I cannot use real names because I am going to jumble things together. These characters are amalgamations. None of them are real.

I have just taken two annadin extra for my hangover that is busily getting worse. I have made a coffee and have a plate of bread and humus. I have no hope that the headache will ease in the foreseeable future. These sorts of headaches rarely do. It will go when it is ready. I should be fine after tea.

Jan is tidying her room next door. My sister arrives tomorrow evening with my mother. There is much to be done in preparation. I should be helping. I am writing.

The Humus is delicate and tangy. The dog waits patiently for a tit-bit. He has his head on my thigh and he is drooling. He never takes his big black eyes off me.

We are products of our culture and our upbringing. We are taught, no – trained, to believe and do what we do. Even our rebelling is programmed. We have no escape.

Religion is hot-wired into our very cortex’s. When we pray and worship chemicals are released that alter our brains, our states of being. We are biologically programmed to worship. That’s very worrying!

I’ve just returned from New Grange, near Dublin, I’ve seen the Mexican pyramids, the cathedrals, temples and henges. Is nothing sacred? Is nothing more holy than a fix? Is there nothing behind that enormous expenditure of energy involved in the construction of such monumental edifices?  The universe seems such a cold and empty place.

There are things I believe in with religious fervour.

I believe in fairness.

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53 and imploding

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this when I was fifty-three years old. A stream of consciousness, an antinovel. I still like it. I’m visiting with myself.

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Excerpt – 53 and imploding

I am a watcher, a commentator, and a masturbator in the winds of time. I am an idealist and a dreamer. I am the ultimate optimist and the perennial pessimist. I write to change the world and I write even though I believe nobody will ever read anything I’ve ever written.

I often tell people that when I die they will make a huge funeral pyre out of my books. They will burn me with my own words. I write so that my flaming voice will roar me higher into the heavens in one last spectacular display of ineffectual verbosity – one final impotent gesture of defiance.

That’s all we have – gestures of defiance!

I am a watcher.

If only I believed that there was a part of me able to see that last dramatic gesture. I would love it. But I don’t believe anything will remain. Life is ultimately futile. Yet in defiance and idealistic struggle there is substance and worth.

I am standing on this mound surveying the plains before me. Society, with all its control and expansion is consuming the natural world. The forces of the establishment, with their mantra of growth and greed, are like a forest fire sweeping down to destroy the whole planet. I see the scurrying of helpless individuals and species defenceless against the holocaust of mindless progress. I see the entourages careening off each other like terrified billiard balls. I see the luxurious penthouse suites towering imperiously above feeling they are immune to the destruction. We are impotent. Even my funeral pyre of a lifetime’s words isn’t going to create much of a fire-break. What the fuck!

Semaphore messages across enemy lines. Are you out there? Can you understand me? Do we share a language? I think I am alone.

If you could see me now I am smiling ironically.

None of it really matters. If not this fire then it will be the next or the four billionth. What does it matter? Eternity looks over my shoulder and is smiling with me. She likes what I am writing. She knows it ranks among the very, very best. There is none better.

I am happy that there is none better.

All these symbols I am arranging. No other mind could do it the same. No one has. I am unique. The conveying of meaning, the portraying of scene, the characterisation, the pace, the setting. There is none better. This is as good as it gets. My words are right up there with the very best. Roll over Shakespeare your time has gone.

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Shamen, campfires and me – 53 and imploding

Posted on by Opher

I have to laugh to myself. I am reading extracts from the past – some kind of memoir/diary posing as a novel. I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty. Is it a novel? Is it an antinovel as I imagined? Is it anything?

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

The phone rings.

Tom has just rung and I have to go and pick him up. He is working at a pub a few miles away. I will be gone fifteen minutes.

……….around camp fires, our ancestors…………

It is twelve ‘o two. I have brought Tom home. He was chirpy.

…………passed on their tales and metaphors while we listened in awe and ran our own pictures in our heads. They embellished life with gods and power and sought to understand the weather, seasons, heavens and life. They failed miserably but they did shed a little light and make it all seem so feasible and interesting. We all loved it – the mystery; the wonder; the answers. It made everything so neat and tidy. It was structured, salutary, educational, practical and made sense of the awesome chaos of the universe in which we tenuously teeter. It made us feel protected and secure.

The shamen had immense power because of their supposed knowledge. People were in awe of them.

But this is an anti-novel. I am no shaman. I offer you no comfy solutions or havens, no eternal life or nurturing gods. If you find yourself tied to the rails with a steam train thundering towards you awaiting the intervention of a hero the express train will certainly decapitate you. This is reality. I write of a heap of tangled spaghetti that inevitably twists, knots and breaks. I slide along the slimy entrails of life, real life. I realise that I have not had a piss yet. Ironically Tom is cooking pasta. That is one of those coincidences. He has come in while I type and complained that there is no fucking food in the house. Have I got any goodies? I have two kit-kat chunkies hidden in my drawer but I keep quiet. He went off to cook pasta. He is coughing and clattering in the kitchen even as I write that he is coughing and clattering. He is making a coffee. I wonder if he will make me one? I call out ‘Yes please’. He grumbles. But I think he is making me one.

This is a heap of life served up with a mess of sauce. Fuck knows what is in the sauce. Everything is in the sauce. This is no delicacy served up by a chef, arranged on a plate with a garnish of fresh parsley and a twirl of rich sauce. This is no result of following a recipe. This is a mess of whatever comes to hand. This is how I live.

Tom brings me a coffee. He asks if I have any dope. I have not. The dope has been smoked long ago.

I am making no sense of this. It is twelve twenty and I am getting tired. I am also approaching the end of the first page of red scribble. This is the scribble that I wrote yesterday morning when I arrived at work. I conceived it in my head at about 8.00 to 8.30 as I drove in to school. Unfortunately I forgot most of what I had mused over before I came to write it down. It seemed interesting to me at the time, interesting enough for me to write out here. I am sure that the stuff I forgot was even better but none f us will ever know. Us. You see – I am presupposing an audience. After twenty eight books and no sign of a spark of interest I still imagine someone actually reading this. In reality I am both the recorder and the audience. Even my wife gave up on me years ago. She would not deign to even glance at a single sentence I have produced. This is some stupid hobby, an indulgence, a pointless exercise I go through. She does not even bother to question it any more. There is no logic to it. I am satisfied. Strangely, knowing that nobody would ever bother to read this, gives me a freedom I would not otherwise have. I do not have to worry about the effects of my words as they rattle other eyes, jiggle neurones and skid across synapses. Are they clear? Do they convey? Will they change anything? Do I create empathy? Who gives a fuck! I can write what I fucking like! There is no audience.

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53 and imploding – a slice of reality.

Posted on by Opher

I’m finding it interesting to visit myself from twenty years ago. This antinovel is a slice of reality.

Excerpt – 53 and imploding

You can already discern from the way I meander that life is not very organised. There is nothing neat about me. Around me, on my desk, are stacks of unsorted CDs. And junk. I type in the midst of this chaos. My dog sleeps beneath my desk with his head on my feet. He is thoroughly content. He does not have to ponder the state of the world. He will know if I move. That is all that is important. As long as I am there, there is food in his belly and he is warm he has everything he needs.

Life is not like some well-constructed tale. I do not see things clearly. I do not understand too well. I see life as convoluted spaghetti of intermingled lines. Each strand’s a life. Each has two ends but they are so intertwined that this is not obvious or important. And the sauce is a corruption of greed, avarice and cruelty but worst of all indifference. No. This is no novel. This, if anything, is an anti-novel.

Yet more 53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

This is another short instalment of my stream of consciousness antinovel. I think it is thought-provoking and different:

53 and imploding 

Does death scare you?

            The universe is so big that our egos do not even have the significance of a speck of dust; our intelligence is laughable. From my perspective your Leah jet can’t get you there and your wealth can’t buy a single star. Your beliefs won’t gain you a second more and all your possessions will be passed down to others and decay.

            The only good thing is that one day all traces of us will cease to exist and our place in the history of the universe will be as if we had never breathed.

            All we have to play with is the present. We can build futures. We can stop suffering. We can care. We can make this second perfect. Surely that is a worthwhile aim?

I hear the ticking. Each tap on this keyboard could have been spent differently. I continue to tap until something more important comes along. I would like to see what that might be.

I would like to be happy. I continue to send reports from the termitarium. These are the sermons on the mound.

I am sitting at my computer in my room and tapping in the contents of my mind. Can you glimpse me between the words or is the person you think you’re seeing merely a shadowy fiction?

            The first rule is that whatever starts off in idealism usually ends up bogged down in practicality.

That is the way it is planned.

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Extract from the antinovel: 53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

I live in a nice house that is three hundred years old. The doorways and ceilings are low because people were smaller back then. Even I have to occasionally duck. It used to be a farm, a pair of two-up two-down cottages, and a shop and now it is my home. The mortgage is completely paid off. I own it. Except in reality I am merely passing through. I will leave it to my wife and then my children. It will be lived in by others after me. It will be altered, decorated, knocked around, improved and no evidence of me will remain. I am passing through.

I love this house. It is warm and cosy. It has room to stretch out. We have invested much time and energy into making it a home. It houses my books, records, CDs and computers. I am comfortable here. There is a sense of history in the walls. They lean and tilt, the floorboards creak, and the ceilings sag. It is happy with the way it has settled into itself and redolent with the memories of unseen people. I have grown into it and lean and sag to the same extent in sympathy.

I am passing through.

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53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback – another extract

Posted on by Opher

Here’s another short extract from my antinovel:

The first rule is that whatever starts off in idealism usually ends up bogged down in practicality.

That is the way it is planned.

            We have rich social lives – all those friends, all weaving their strands into that tapestry, changing and going their own ways. We have shared many seconds, many values and much fun. It would be so fine to go back and be there again. These memories are so flawed. I would like a taste of the real thing to savour one more time.

Events seen from different perspectives can seem incredibly dissimilar. Taken together could they possibly reveal a greater view of those seconds of reality? Would anything alter your own subjective experience? I hope not!

The first thing you have to understand is that there are no rules.

You just read that. It did not cause you to drop to the floor in horror.

It should do.

There are no rules. You can do whatever you want.

Apart from the physical laws of nature that permeate the whole of this universe there are no rules. You can make them up. There is no morality. There are no rights and wrongs. There is no evil. There is no good.

We made them up. That is good. We have both compassion and intelligence.

There are no rules.

You can live your life exactly how you want. There was no God handing down a structure or a blueprint on how to live your life. We made all that up.

There is no ultimate reason why you shouldn’t fuck your children and then eat them. There are no reasons not to be cruel.

We can decide.

Why not give this unique book a go? You will find it shocking.

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Another excerpt from – 53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

I wrote this novel twenty years ago. I am currently writing a book on Ian Dury but I am visiting with my old self when I need a break, to clear my head. I love Ian Dury but concentrating hard for long periods is tiring. I need a break. Reading this autobiographical novel is like visiting with my old self. Have I changed? No, not much. I’m still happy and irascible.

Here’s another slice of the cake:

53 and Imploding:

Does death scare you?

            The universe is so big that our egos do not even have the significance of a speck of dust; our intelligence is laughable. From my perspective your Leah jet can’t get you there and your wealth can’t buy a single star. Your beliefs won’t gain you a second more and all your possessions will be passed down to others and decay.

            The only good thing is that one day all traces of us will cease to exist and our place in the history of the universe will be as if we had never breathed.

            All we have to play with is the present. We can build futures. We can stop suffering. We can care. We can make this second perfect. Surely that is a worthwhile aim?

I hear the ticking. Each tap on this keyboard could have been spent differently. I continue to tap until something more important comes along. I would like to see what that might be.

I would like to be happy. I continue to send reports from the termitarium. These are the sermons on the mound.

I am sitting at my computer in my room and tapping in the contents of my mind. Can you glimpse me between the words or is the person you think you’re seeing merely a shadowy fiction?

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Extract – 53 and imploding Kindle/Paperback

Posted on by Opher

How can you be happy with so many little nations all spending their wealth on defence and obsequious religion instead of solving problems, limiting population and living in peace and harmony with each other and the environment?

            You can create and not destroy you know? You could be part of the solution.

            You don’t even notice me sitting on my bench watching you. I am small, scruffy and insignificant. Do not worry I am no threat. I merely watch and wonder.

            I can’t help but wonder.

            How can you be happy when it could all be so different? When we could limit our numbers, clean up our act, leave enough natural environment for the rest of the planets depleted life and build societies more tolerant and equal? When we could look around us, appreciate the simple things and be sensitive, pleasant, helpful beings leading creative lives, harnessing science and technology for the good of all life and protecting our delicate planet? You could look in wonder, paint, dance, sing, write and do a million things.

            `Life could be idyllic.

            We could have a future as well as a past. We could have exulted seconds.

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Extract – 53 and imploding – Paperback/Kindle

Posted on by Opher

There is only sharing. I am sharing some thoughts in a one way conversation for no purpose other than to stimulate response. I shall not be aware of that response as likely as not there will be no one to read this and if anyone ever does I’ll likely be already dead. That makes me smile. Still it has the same validity as you watching Brazilian magicians juggle bladders immaculately.

That is the essence. Whatever you do with or in those seconds we call life I urge you to make each one of them a honed jewel. They all count. Do it with all your spirit. It’s all we ever have.

I am writing into a mirror. There are no pretty stories, no vignettes, no cameos and no ends. Even the very end, when the whole universe is a bunch of cold cinders and dissipated heat, will go on forever.

But I deceive you. This is not a beginning. This is not even a middle. This is merely somewhere down the road.

Opher 8.05.02

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