The Statistics For Selfishness

In the 1970's the Kinsey Report
was much misreported
when the phrase was coined

'a man thinks about sex once every seven seconds'

which went viral. How could it do anything else?

Someone in advertising coined the phrase
and they lied to increase the machismo
in their television adverts; they believed
that men controlled household spending.

They were wrong on all counts.

The women were the ones
who made the purse strings stretch
and they did not think about sex
as they collected Green Shield stamps,
to make ends meet in the society
where thrift and greed were brothers
who strove to appear to be like each other
the better to make the consumer their war zone.

For all that, I do remember men
who saw random sexual encounters
as a virtual currency, which made sex selfish
when they thought they should have more
of this invisible currency than anyone else.

The Quiet Page

When people say 'Don't live in the past'
what the usually mean is 'Don't talk to me
about your pasts when I was never there'.
Which would be fair enough if as we lived
we lived fully in the present moment
and shared everything there was to share
and shared the next moment equally fully
sufficient for the past to not be an issue.

But we don't live fully in the present,
fully in the past, or fully in any state
between them. All is conditional
and the noisier and fuller our lives
and the more conditioned we will be
to go further away from sharing fully
in any present. Instead we will be tired,
irritable, and prone to error
in how we talk, listen and act.

But there is a way of going back.
In the quiet of this page let me urge
you to enjoy the still moments
that you find yourself in as much I try to.

Unworthy of these still moments as I am,
they always accept me as I might be.   

From Experience To Reusable Memory

I live in the sticks where thoroughly enjoy
the life around being uneventful.

Recently I could have gone to see
a musical legend who was past his prime
and in his older and more reduced form,
for what I imagined would be a modest fee
-in the nearest very big city.

But legends will charge legendary prices.

I was not going to spend that much
to be able to show off on facebook
that little bit when the bootleg of the gig
appeared there as it would, when I said
'I was there, I can recommend this'.
  

The Inattentive Society

To prepare me properly for old age
my new hobby and spiritual practice
is going to be relearning loneliness.

It will save me trying to renew old interests.
many of which are well past their 'use by' date,
and require less of the time thought or effort
that other people feel less need to give.

I still want to live
but what could be cheaper
for everyone
than me living for nothing?

Courage In Absentia?

Woody Allen once quipped  'I don't mind dying,
I just don't want to be there when it happens',
as if the 'just' in the phrase was his courage
in the face of his temptation to cowardice.

Now we need not be there when we die,
particularly not when we get dementia
or have our Alzheimer's diagnosed
too late to stop it taking permanent hold.

In this absentee life
everybody except the sufferer
makes the decisions
for the limited life on offer
for those with short term,
and absent, memories
and are made acutely aware
of memory's limits as they care.
  

A Yoruban Proverb

The Yoruba are a West African people of over 100 million
who mostly occupy Nigeria. There 90 %
of the original rain forest has been destroyed.
 The remaining 10 % is in steep decline,
as population pressure on the land
and short term commercial interests
continues to assert themselves.

What the axe will do when there are no more trees
to persuade of the value of their being cut down
and the land loses all value for those dependent
on it has yet to be seen.....   

Strength And Memory?

There is something odd about memories
the longer we get from when we made them
to when we want to recall what they were
the more fragile their substance seems to be,
and the more they reflect our fragility
until it seems that for us to appear strong
we are best seeming almost deliberately forgetful.  

Meet Mr Hilbert.....

German mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943)
was the first to distinguish between mathematics
and metamathematics.

 He was also the first to discover the invariant theory.
At the Paris International Congress of Mathematicians
 in 1900, he presented 23 important questions that intrigued
 mathematicians over the century.

The founder of computers Alan Turing
was one of the mathematicians
who solved one of the 23 important questions,
thus paving the way for the 21st century
whist still in the first half of the 20th century
without which you would not be reading this. 

Is Your Tiredness Worth It?

When I was young and naive
many adults I knew worked hard
in jobs that were exacting
and left them constantly tired
for no particular reason
beyond the consistent defence
of the principle of ownership.

What they secured was being owned
by the jobs they did. Their defence
of their reward being theirs
leaving less for other people
was worse than weak reasoning,
whilst others readily accepted
having less and still worked hard.

As a person who had less to work for
I was told I had 'no right to be tired'
when others strove so hard for so much.

We can be as tired from enforced inactivity
as we can for work either for gain or no gain.

It baffled the strivers
that I would not admire them,
but I was admitting defeat
when I could not be like them.
 

The Blind Guides That Rule The Internet

Today I put the above image 'The Good Samaritan' by Aime Morot
up on Tumblr who let me show it, but only to myself.
They mistook it for pornography. Maybe an illustration
that shows generosity is arousing and therefore pornographic
but it was mostly meant to arouse greater generosity
in anyone that viewed it. I still does with me.....
  

Bad Entertainment

If, as some say of american politics,
'Politics is showbiz for ugly people',
then would that make televised sport
showbiz for people who cannot stop
being competitive with each other?
Who have to be constantly active?
And who yearn to be at the centre
of other people's attention span
with how active they have to be?

I'd rather give my attention span
to something, anything, with less ego
attached to whether it succeeds or not,
the better for it to engage for longer.   

The Greater The Need, The Harder It Is To See

Cheap grace will be comforting,
and it will feel like the pietism
where we believe we have the best,
and we can only share it with others
who are as worthy of it as ourselves,
in only the best of all possible worlds.

Resisting such fake ease is hard.
It seems logical to feel calmed by comfort.
But look deeper and we will see
that our greater need is to be disturbed
by the surfaces that surround us.

We need to see beneath them.

Dead Airwaves

You know that there has to be life elsewhere
when you avoid the news as it is presented
because you are simply tired of the lies,
bored with the contradictions in terms
and aghast the sheer lack of elan
in the guests who say that they
have something to say when they haven't.
  

Picture Set Of The Month - October - The Pottery Of George Ohr

Vessel with asymmetric in body twist 

crimped vase with four colurful bulls-eye indentations

Crimped irregularly inverted vase

Vase (1890's).

For more about the man, his moustache,
and so much more about this legendary potter click here.