Poetry – Sparking with eccentricity – a poem about the wondrous jelly in our heads

Posted on by Opher

AppleMark

Sparking with Eccentricity

I sit and wonder where the thoughts come from, where the words appear. There is a process happening inside my brain but the manner of it is not clear.

Under my skull there is a large pink gelatinous mass that is my brain. It flows with blood and electricity – a jelly of cells with intricate neuronal networks of trillions. It throbs. I like to imagine it glowing even though I know it does not.

Within this jelly my thoughts and dreams are formed. My awareness of myself is constructed and my consciousness created.

When I stop to think about the physical and biochemical processes involved I am astounded. It is magical. To think that chemistry is the basis of my personality.

When I stood in front of others to speak I was so in awe of the process that I was never confident that the right words would ever form. I could imagine myself standing there with an empty head.

As I get older the words often play hide and seek with me. But I eventually track them down.

The wonder of consciousness is one of life’s great mysteries. But it does not make me believe in even more esoteric beliefs. Life is amazing. But I believe we will understand it in time to come. Science adores a mystery.

The incredible spectacle of the universe, life and consciousness are part of the phenomenon that gives life purpose and fills me with ecstasy.

That’s enough.

 

Sparking with Eccentricity

I have this pink blancmange

Full of electricity

That houses the thoughts

That are the essence of me;

Convoluting tubes

Sparking with eccentricity;

Grooves and ridges

Retaining my imaginative

Elasticity.

 

I spark!

I light up!

And I fly!

That gelatinous

Jelly

Throbs

With the warmth

That is I.

 

Opher 1.1.2016

Miner’s strike – Orgreave and the travesty of law! Not just the police – also the BBC!

Posted on by Opher

Orgreave-logo orgreave2 orgreave Orgreave

The Tories planned out the whole debacle of the Miner’s Strike before hand in the Ridley Report. They put in laws and made contingencies. They bought off the police and transport and stockpiled coke at the power stations. They then blamed it on the miners!

That’s politics.

What is not politics is the scandalous brutality and confrontational approach of the police. They are here to protect the public; not to be politicised and used in such a way. They were belligerent and brutal.

There is obviously a need for a major enquiry into the way the police behaved. The fact that it is once again being shelved is scandalous and displays the attitude of the establishment.

That is bad enough but the way the BBC behaved is even worse. The portrayal of the ‘conflict’ on BBC News was not merely distorted and biased; it was, in my opinion, deliberately, editorially politically manufactured to misrepresent the facts. They used editing to put events out of sequence and deliberately portray the miners as the aggressors.

Channel 4 documentation showed film evidence to show the miners being charged by the police and then retaliating. The BBC reversed it to suggest the miners attacked the police.

If you cannot trust your media to present unbiased news you cannot have a healthy democracy.

That is even worse than the violence of the police.

There should be a full public enquiry! We should know who made the decisions on Police tactics and who made the editorial decisions in the BBC.

Heads should roll!!