Modern Halloween

really is going down the drain,
along with the rest of life,
faster than we think.

An Ontological Argument About Ignorance

The violence that modern ignorance
commits to thought and understanding,
and the longevity of the planet,
is too vast for us to account for.

St Anslem of the tenth century (regnal calendar)
was the first to write of the ontological proof
of the existence of an  all wise deity, who wisdom
more than covered our blushes at how foolish we are.

His theory was that however far we thought
whether it attempted wisdom or not, infinity was further,
eleven centuries later and his cap fits our stupidity
and it being our stupidity we just don't recognise it. 

The Past Is Always With Us, We Can See It In The Present

'They [the French government of 1939/40] had developed that technique for lying to themselves to such a degree of perfection that the term 'In good faith' no longer had any meaning; for when self deception becomes routine it ceases to be an excuse meant anything'

From page 119 of the book 'Scum of the Earth' (published 1942 by Cape, Arthur Koestler)

And again, from page 227

'The tragedy is that we move in a vicious circle, without education of the masses, no political progress; but without political progress no education of the masses'. 

Thus proving the fake sincerity in politics produces a fake representative democracy, the democratic equivalent of religions fuelled by cheap grace. Both the politics and religion end up encouraging utter cynicism.

Popular Turn Off's (15)

When a politician says of an initiative
that their party/gov't is undertaking
'It is not just about the money'
they might accidentally be honest.

But after that they will speak in lies,
in the form of managerial bromides
that will disguise their indifference
to ordinary people's lives.

It is what they are paid so well for. 

The Oldest Tradition

Every tradition and art form has it's price,
whereby it survives because it pays for itself
and it is the healthy roots of a popular culture.

The test for any tradition and culture
comes when the art is a prompt for profits
for big non-local backers who buy into it.
They have no interest in the future of the message,
everything they see is merely a medium
for increasing their personal wealth.

When in reality, a low level of sustainability
for the many is the oldest tradition of all.... 

Frozen Hospitality

I can name to the month
when I first had sex in public toilets.
October 1978 if you wanted to know.

My parents knew nothing of a habit
which absorbed more of my time
than I knew I ever realised I had
because I had no words to describe it.

One of my parents knew, he learnt
one Sunday in the Autumn of 1980.

That was when my dad and I met each other
in opposing cubicles, both of us hoping
to meet somebody, anybody, except each other
in the place where we least expected to.

He was drunk enough to be mildly confused
and evasive. I was sober, so maybe I had less excuse.
Though neither of us knew what was excuse enough
to justify our false and naive assumptions of invisibility.

Public anonymity is odd that way,
and familial anonymity in activities
that it was inevitable would be discovered even more so.
Thankfully some of my shame was wiped away
by that public toilet being demolished,
and a concrete TARDIS put up in it's place.

What is harder to date,
because of the anonymity of the sex,
and of the men with whom it happened,
is when one of my fellow cottagers finding out
that I lived alone, and where I lived.


It was one late Friday night, after the pubs shut,
in spring 1982 when he knocked at the front door
that first time and shamed me into letting him in
for only-we-knew-what. I froze every time he knocked.
My consistent lack of response made it easier for him
to insist on the one sided oral sex that he came for.

After that first time he called randomly,
and shamelessly, usually late on Friday nights.
When he had got what he wanted he left,
his silent lack of thanks getting dressed
left me feeling soiled and unimpressed.

As my anti-social sex life of giving invisible men
frozen hospitality in the discomfort of my home
progressed in isolating me I did what came naturally.
I became depressed, and my depression was added,
like it's latest cause, to the long list of problems
that for the lack of any easy to apply resolutions
could never be opened out through conversation.

There was a way out of how depression fed into invisibility
and invisibility compounded depression-leaving everything.
But finding the courage to leave and not look back came ten years later.

Monsters Inc Circa 1940

'When the French government [of 1939/40] discovered a welcome diversion for the general discontent by exploiting people's natural  hostility to foreigners, and appealing to their pogrom instincts, they merely followed and ancient recipe; the sacrifice of scapegoats is an old established institution. Up-to -date rulers however want something more spectacular than a goat: they need at least a dragon. Hitler had invented the first composite super-dragon called the Judeo-Liberal--Stalin-Rothschild-World Conspiracy. Stalin followed with the Trotsky-Menshevik-Imperialist-Well poisoning-Crop destroying-Fire spitting-Monster dragon. One of the advantages of the modern dragon over the antiquated goat was that the it received one deadly blow after another, but never died, and when slightly tickled in the solar plexus at once regained it's menacing ferocity, thus allowing the modern St George to continue to fight over an unlimited number of  rounds. Another of it's advantages is that the dragon can be re-baptised, consisted so to speak of interchangeable parts. Thus in Hitler's dragon the vital organ called 'Bolshevism' was replaced 'Capitalism' and in Stalin's dragon 'Fascism' by 'Pluto-Democracy' without the least weakening of the effect.

The French dragon, of course, was less ambitious and of a poorish aspect. They could not paint on it the genuinely scary features of 'Dictatorship', 'Persecution'  and 'Tyranny' lest the real little dragons beyond the Pyrenees and Alps should recognise their own portraits and be offended.They painted it [Communist] red but this somehow missed the point, as the enemy happened to be [Fascist] brown. Sot they had to stuff it with all sorts of old rags and trash, Prussian boots and Hun caricatures and sauerkraut and Nietzsche; It's only impressive feature, the piece de resistance so to speak, were the meteques. It was not a very splendid dragon, yet goood enough to stage a fight in a Punch and Judy show and to receive some thudding whacks amid general applause'

-Arthur Koesler from page 90/91 of his first book, 'Scum of The Earth', first published by Cape in 1941. It is about life in wartime in France and all the uncertainties thereof. I recommend it as a good read.