53 and Imploding- An extract

Posted on by Opher

I’m now seventy-three, just short of seventy-four. I’ve had a further twenty years since writing this book. A lot of life has passed under the sewer.

I called this an antinovel. I was trying to capture the ideas flitting through my head, the dreams, attitudes, views, observations and thoughts.

There is no reality or story. It’s a glimpse inside my head. Nothing more.

53 and imploding: Amazon.co.uk: goodwin, opher: 9781512343014: Books

Chapter 1

I am a watcher. I spend a lot of my time watching the people around me going about their life and looking for some signs of intelligence, understanding, planning; even a few hints of consciousness might be a novelty. I can make no sense of it. I can see no sense in it. The more I study them, all caught up in their tiny lives, the more they appear like termites in a huge termitarium, building ever more grand mounds, rushing around doing important things earnestly, importantly, frivolously, while a forest fire rushes towards them. I look around at the different mounds and see that they really believe each one will last forever. I look back across a huge flat plain of history littered with mounds that did not last forever. We live in the outer atmosphere of the sun.

I am merely the watcher. I don’t expect much. Some purpose would be nice, perhaps an aim or two, something to work towards, some greater purpose than self-aggrandisement. After all there’s enough to get your teeth into. We could set about proving Jesus wrong by eradicating poverty. We could make a fool out of Malthus by solving the population problem. We could save all those hundreds of thousands of species destined to die. We could end pollution, solve the energy crisis, transport dilemma, end all wars or simply protect the erosion of our environment. Oh, there’s no end to the possibility and scope that we are presented with. On the face of it we are, of course, doing precisely that. Pompous politicians set out plans to tackle this problem and that, seven-year plans, ten year plans. But I am the watcher. I see the money being siphoned off, the pockets being lined; I see the extravagant life styles as those that purport to be solving the problems set themselves up; I watch the political juggling as they build and protect their power base and defend themselves. One set of politics against another – intrigue – manipulation -dirty tricks – undermining – power struggles – wealth – opulence. Amidst it all the purpose is lost and the problems mount up. Nothing is solved. We act like termites building bigger piles, seizing thrones and gaining followings.  In amongst the amassing and gaining the problems go on and we continue to prove fucking Jesus right.

Liz tells me I do not notice anything about people.

I am fifty-three. I am comfortable and secure. Perhaps that is the problem? I’ve got something to loose. I can see those seconds ticking. I can see them. The ones that have ticked and the ones to be ticked – they have conspired to trap me here.

            How the fuck can you be happy?

            Even as you read this millions are starving, getting ill and dying. The numbers of humans are soaring, forests are being chopped down, and animals are being tortured and killed.

            How can you be happy when people are being blown apart in wars? When stupid money grabbing corporations are deliberately sewing landmines to blow peoples’ legs off?

            How can you be happy when the air is full of carbon dioxide, sulphurous oxides and nitrous oxides; while ozone is being destroyed by CFCs? When water is contaminated by sewage, mercury and radioactive isotopes; our food is full of pesticides and herbicides and the land is eroding and saturated with a cocktail of harmful chemicals? When species are being eradicated faster than at any time in history?

            How can you be happy when inequality creates such extremes? When history is littered with the horrors of the rich and powerful? When all life is hollow and the rich and powerful pull the strings and all they want is more power and wealth and they don’t give a fuck for you, the seas, forests or wild-life?

            How can you be happy when religions all claim they are the only way, there is but one God or many Gods and they will fight to the death to prove it and convert you.

            How can you be happy when every single thing you see and hear is lying propaganda? – When you are being manipulated as a consumer, a member of a target group, a potential voter, a potential problem. Know your place and shop.

How can you be happy when each new panacea for the world’s problems is a system run by leaders with vested interests who cannot be trusted?

How can you be happy when the aim of dominant males is to dominate even if that means annihilating everything as long as they end up top dog. Better to be undisputed leader of the last ten rather that a leader of a billion among many leaders of billions or even one other leader.

            How can you be happy when your life is all about owning a third DVD player, another TV and a swish car and feel shit because your phone is the wrong colour, shape or size? When you are obsessed with the label on your clothes, your body shape and muscle definition?

            How can you be happy when the world is being covered in concrete, corporations buy off politicians, MacDonalds has a branch on the Amazon and music is a product?

            How can art be a commodity?

            How can you be happy when nobody cares about the 600 Mountain Gorillas so that a rich millionaire can pay a fortune to get hunters to kill three precious gorillas in order to capture a baby so he can have it for a pet?

            How can you be happy when a moronic footballers salary is hundreds of thousands a week, stupid selfish, greedy Rock Stars, actors and actresses earn millions and babies lie bloated for want of a bowl of rice? A millionaire buys a trip on a spaceship.

            How can you be happy when you’re sitting there gloating, smug, arrogant, superior and pampered, thinking that your wealth, power, beliefs, abilities, intelligence, make you superior. Don’t you realise that you’re a rich, wealthy, arrogant, empty fool whose whole life is built on greed and is utterly, destructively hollow. You are no better or worse than the green slime on my pond, except the green slime performs a worthwhile function. You selfishly exist to make your stupid self feel important. Are you cultured? – Knowledgeable and superior? Pah!

            How can you be happy living in this pointless little existence?

            How can you be happy putting you £2 sop into Oxfam when government policy necessitates the starving of millions for the good of the economy? When the G7 could eradicate poverty and inequality if they wanted but it might mean you can only afford three tellies and one car.

            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 can be part of the solution.

            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 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.

            We could have a future as well as a past.

            Does death scare you?

            The universe is so big that your ego doesn’t even have the significance of a speck of dust; your intelligence is laughable; 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 your possessions will decay.

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

            All we have to play with is the present. We can build futures. We can stop suffering. We can care. 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.

Opher 26.5.02   8.5.02  2.7.02

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

That is the way it is planned.

2.7.02

Thoughts, love and wishes to Jack Jabbour!

Posted on by Opher

A year and a quarter ago my friend Jack went down with Covid. He was on a ventilator for months and his lungs are messed up.

This is what he just sent through. Makes for tough reading.

‘Unless a miraculous healing or a lung transplant comes through in time, it appears I’m losing the battle to that nasty old CO2. Not enough umph in my lungs to pump that stuff out, so it’s gradually suffocating me. That’s what happened in mid-January, and the good folks at St. Francis were able to revive me with intubation. They’re not sure a second go-round would be effective, so I thought I should try to sing a fare three well… with hopes that it’ll just be a Ta-ta, for now.’ 

All the best to you Jack!! Our thoughts go out to you! Much love from all of us!!

Poetry – The Best Minds of My Generation

Posted on by Opher

The Best Minds of my Generation

I watched the best minds of my generation struggling to discover the truth,

Striving to establish equality,

Learning to respect the universe in which we find ourselves

And dreaming of discovering a better, more meaningful, way to live.

I watched the best minds of my generation applying their whole being

Into filling their lives with wonder,

Celebrating the beauty of existence

And expressing their lust for sensation.

I saw them laugh, rant and argue,

Rabid with passion,

With bulging eyes and wild gesticulations,

Desperate to communicate the ideas in their heads

Before they dissipated into the ether,

Until their tongues were too exhausted to sing,

Their limbs too exhausted to dance,

Their organs too exhausted to love,

And their minds too numb to think.

So that they finally subsided

Into contemplative ecstasy

And slept wherever they found themselves.

Opher 20.8.2019

I was fortunate to find myself among a group of artistic people who were eager to expand their horizons and were never content to lead a mundane life. They were explorers of inner space, travellers and creators.  They were as eager as me to delve into the possibilities and mysteries that surrounded them.

They were not prepared to accept the ordinary and always strived to unearth the extraordinary.

I was very fortunate.

Poetry – Inside my head

Posted on by Opher

Inside my head

I was enjoying myself playing with this idea. This was the second in my tumble drier trilogy. I didn’t quite get the scan quite how I wanted but I found that if you say it in a certain manner you can get it to work. (Thanks to Ian Cropton for getting me to address that last stanza.)

Communication is amazing.

All those neurons firing away in the dark, creating patterns of electricity that somehow have meaning. Evolution is wonderful.

I know that if I really peered inside at an operating brain all I’d see is dull grey blancmange. But I can fantasise.


Inside my head

There’s a hurricane inside my head;

A firework display of sparks.

Ideas spin like electric storm

In crescendo of fits and starts.

A tumble drier churns them round

As around they spin and fall.

A blizzard of electricity

In a scintillating squall.

I round them up like a herd of cats

And try to tie them down;

To translate them into the black and white

Of advective and noun.

This is them upon this page

Frozen as if in blocks of ice

No longer spinning in a rage;

Words will have to suffice.

I hope that when you read these words

The energy cascades.

That you see the colours that were in my head

And you will be amazed.

Opher 5.9.2015

Poetry – Rumble, Tumble, Rumble

Posted on by Opher

Rumble, Tumble, Rumble

I don’t know how this creative process works. I just imagine my head as a whirlpool of electricity, all those sparks jumping around. Each one is an idea. They swirl about in a hurricane of madness. My job is to catch them, tie them down and translate them into words.

The words are symbols for concepts. The concepts are wild, free and glowing with life but the words are black and white.

If I do my job right (which I occasionally do) those black and white symbols will light up as iridescent jewels in your mind and live again.

It’s a nice concept isn’t it?

This is part two of a trilogy on the same theme. I seemed to need to rework it in different forms.


Rumble, Tumble, Rumble

Rumble, Rumble

Churn and Tumble

Sparks and Electric Storm.

Fireworks and explosions

In scintillating form.

Within the tumble drier

The ideas come and go

Spinning in their fury

In their iridescent flow.

I trap with my magnetic net

And attempt to glue them down.

But I know they will lose their sparkle

Trapped in adjective and noun.

Opher 5.9.2015

Poetry – I Hold My Breath

Posted on by Opher

I Hold My Breath

I find it amazing that I can have ideas, thoughts and images in my head that I transform into solid words. I can write those words as symbols using letters. Someone else who I have never seen can come along and scan those symbols, fused in ink upon a page, and translate them back into thoughts, ideas and images. They can communicate the same visions and feelings I was having at the time.

My visions are frozen into concrete meaning forever.

Long after I am gone people will be able to scan those symbols and understand what was going on in my head.

Isn’t that astounding?

From the universe within my head I speak to the universe within your head via coded messages.

I hope we see the same pictures!

I  Hold my Breath

I hold my breath

And exhale it into these words

Trapped in ink upon a page.

I scan my thoughts

And pour them out

To be imprisoned in symbols.

I snare the moments

In my mind and freeze them

Forever into this ice.

I sense my feelings

And express them in inadequate

Markings on paper.

I speak from here

Inside the depths of my head

To you who might be reading.

Somehow against all the odds

You see the black and white

And recreate the colour pictures

That I envisaged.

Communication is the wonder of life!

Opher 23.8.2015

Poetry – Across the bounds of reason

Posted on by Opher

Across the bounds of reason

From here in my head to your eyes

Across the bounds of reason

Is a leap of imagination.

Between us lies the universe

A tangled web of conjecture

With reasoned insinuation.

From here to there is too far

To be sure of anything

Least of all substantiation.

And from here to here is too near

To form an opinion

When all life is just infatuation.

What I see may be as it seems

Or just one of my dreams

Without seams to separate me from the gleam

That streams

From your eyes

Across the enormity of size

Despite it all we may yet be real

With time stood still

In a smile

Opher  8.12.96

We all live in universes within our own heads. Nobody knows what goes on inside that world; nobody can be sure that the colours are true or the symbols we use convey the same meaning.

I have my philosophy and who can ever understand?

We try to communicate between the polyverses of our existence. Reason tells us that we must fall short.

Our consciousnesses are islands; our words are semaphore messages across a void.

Poems are written in Morse Code with rhythm and rhyme to make the journey sweeter.

Even our own perception of reality is partial and subjective. We do not even see the universe we inhabit. I am in love with the mystical force of celestial magnificence. I cannot convey it.

Yet communication is all we have, and we love and reach out with sight and touch to taste each other’s worlds.

Has Everything Become Cheapened because of the Technology Boom?

Posted on by Opher

Once upon a time there were just two channels of TV. Once upon a time there were phone boxes and, if you were lucky, a home phone. You had to book a call to Australia. Music was on vinyl. We had BBC Radio and the odd Pirate Radio station.

Now we have computers, TV channels coming out our ears, mobile phones that take photos, videos and do your shopping for you. Music is digital. You can buy it with a flick of the thumb.

But is it better?

4 million channels of crap. Everything available 24/7. Shop til you drop. You can watch anything, anywhere if you’re willing to pay.

Where is the fun of anticipation? Where is the excitement of discovery?

When something is rare or not easily available it seems to me that it takes on a greater importance. It is valued more and savoured.

Too much choice; too much availability has taken the spice out of it, devalued it. Everything is now consumable and cheapened.

“57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” – Bruce Springsteen

I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a trunkload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past down
There was fifty-seven channels and notin’ on

Well now home entertainment was my baby’s wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond
There’s fifty-seven channnels and nothin’ on

Well we might’ a made some friends with some billionaires
We might’ a got all nice and friendly
If we’d made it upstairs
All I got was a note that said “Bye-bye John
Our love is fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”

So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
‘Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they bsted me for disturbin’ the almighty peace
Judge said “What you got in your defense son ?”
“Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”
I can see by your eyes friend you’re just about gone
Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on
Fifty-seven channels and nothin’…