The facsimiles of life

I’ve always found it particularly disturbing when my actions seem to run parallel to those of others? Know what I mean? Probably. That’s probably been thought of in the past. I’m glad John Lennon is dead. He probably wasn’t the first. Anyway back to some point. Yes, when I do what has always been done. And I’ve been thinking of it a little more recently, when I get a moment. Because I have a little someone, who on occasion can say things which just send me loopy. Because I am. And I know he doesn’t mean to so I don’t let it be known (or try my best anyhow.) Yes, the point. So, Ben Folds concerts were discussed. And my little someone said that we most likely wouldn’t be going any time soon. And this was because he didn’t want me to be in the pattern of those who had been and had now wandered away or been pushed (stories are always pretty vague). Basically neither of us (I think) wanted this to be the middle of something that had had a beginning. Which is ok.
But now I’ve often been said to say things and think things, choose things and generally do things which are like others have been. And don’t get me wrong I don’t want to be completely unique, that would be lonely as hell. I just don’t want to be a replacement.
So this is all being written right now because whilst idly looking through the thoughts that have been sent out on somewhere like this I find others who have been. And I’m curious, because that’s what I am so I look. And it’s another blog, and it lasts about as long as mine before other things supervene. And it all just makes me wonder whether its worth trying to be new at all. Perhaps relationships are a sort of trial and error, to work out which bits and pieces of people work with your bits and pieces. Guess the hard bit is finding someone after that’s all decided. What a misery.

Odd

Now it does seem a little funny that when you misspell things such unexpected things happens. Gentlepetal.blogpsot.com

Dance with me

I just don't have time for this, and I just want to go dancing.

Notes from the Rat Catcher

Well my summer’s worth of work has almost reached its end and so I have decided that a few things are noteworthy.
1. When I grow up I want to be just like Ruth.
Ruth is one of the researchers who work in the lab which I have been working in and there are a good few reasons why anyone should be aiming to be like her when they grow up. For one thing she wears neon socks on unpredictable days. Secondly she is sufficiently greyed to be around 50 (or else has had some hard years) and yet still finds it perfectly acceptable to discuss rubberwear and pornography at inopportune moments. She is deaf as a dormouse and frequently comes out with comments such as, ‘Ah the soul, a robust but notoriously difficult thing to quantify.’ She recycles and cycles and in short is just great.
2. Killing rats is hard and could well be morally unforgivable, animal rights activists may well have a point.
c. It is a tricky thing spending hours and hours and days and weeks discovering something only to find out that nobody cares and it will probably not change much if anything at all in the world.
4. I don’t like new buildings on the whole.
5. Technicians are nice if you buy them biscuits.
m. And finally, Epidermal growth factor has a pro-survival effect in dorsal root ganglion neurones placed in serum starved conditions. This effect may involve the PI3K signally pathway in 0-2 day old rats and both the PI3K and MAPK pathway in 7-9 day old rats. Riveting.

Incidently rat related online diary which is very pretty is here

The snag and the handarbeiter

A couple of days ago I took a little time from work and had a little lunch with a certain fellow. Within the rather exotic menu i happened upon kangaroo sausage (an interesting concept I'm sure you will agree, not to mention the monkey gland sauce) and decided that this was to be my selection. It only occurred to me afterwards that I have now eaten but never actually seen a kangaroo.


And today, whilst walking relatively aimlessly I raised a smile to some workmen I was passing, as I like to with everyone I pass, and got a most curious response. 'Atleast you gave us a smile, that's better than most of you manage', they jested. Don't get me wrong, there was no malice in it, but I just didn't understand two things. For one, When they said at least there was the inference that this was a proportion of what was to be expected. And i dont know how big or small that proportion was. Should I have said hello, Been stark naked or Done a handstand? And secondly, when I am a representative for this 'you' who aren't managing what they should. I am unsure of which box I was smiling out of. Am I one of the up-tight intellectuals who look down of builders, female or just a wierdo?

Broken glass and great buildings

A funny little thing happened to me today at work. I imagine at some point I will feel the need for details of my work to escape, but for now it can be suppressed for the purpose of discourse.
Anyhow, I work in one of the shinier, newer, bigger, whiter, all-in-all better buildings recently constructed by the all knowledgeable institution of Manchester University. And against one glass wall of the white box, in which I spend a fair fraction of my time, is attached some rather old and rather beautiful glassware (there is a small and growing fascination with glass inside me). It was quite a spectacle, the light twisting this way and that through glass bent and bent again at another surface with lovely orbs and tubes. But today a door was shut and it all came crashing to the ground. As it happened I wasn’t around to witness the calamity and only observed the outcome, which was quite horrible.
And it occurred to me that all the walls shake when the doors are shut and make horribly unstable bangs. This is because the building has been created with one eye on it’s limited lifespan. Maybe this is because we have fostered an obsession with knowing how long things will be around for, and upon this the severe desire to control this outcome. I muttered to a colleague that, ‘Things used to be build to last 300 years and now they are made to last fewer than 30.’ But this isn’t true. The things which have lasted 300 years were never intended to last those 300 years. They were intended to last forever. Because when constructed they were conceived in the minds of those whose understanding was grounded in eternity, in heaven and perpetual existence. Saint Basil’s cathedral, Badshahi Masjid, Adare Manor; these were constructed to be magnificent, their demise was not considered because the assumption was that they will always stand.
Nowadays it seems as though the only thing that people wish to last forever is themselves, and the fear of this not being realised means that everything else must be made to feel relatively more temporary than they inevitably are.

Just a few little things

Knowledge versus wellbeing
I visited a Chinese restaurant but only last night (no names shall be named, other than Geraldine and that’s only because I quite like it) and enjoyed a meal with my family. And you could say that I was stupid, adventurous, childish, curious or any number of other equally descriptive terms. The short and long of it is that basically I ate a fish’s stomach. As it approached approximately 5 a.m. I was wholly punished. There was some bizarre combination of cramps, sweating, hallucination, falling down stairs and forgetting things. All together odd. And it is certain that had a certain rather lovely companion of mine not been around I might have made it down the other set of stairs and damaged something of some importance. In the morning when I was feeling much better he noted, still half asleep, ‘none of it is worth anything compared to your health’ (or there abouts, I have no doubt that I will be corrected). So this got me to thinking. Since I’d previously pretty much measured health per say as functionality if the functions that are being carried out in order to identify, define and be healthy somehow hinder that health, i.e. are risky, then how can we ever be healthy. After much consideration the best I could come up with was that health is the potential to do things which could well hinder that health but necessarily choosing to do them, but it is the comfortable feeling of having the option. But I may we wrong.


Conceal everything of value
I saw this sign a few weeks back, they have been popping up at various sites around Manchester. It strikes me as a little troubling. Why should we consider the thieves and concealment the necessary part of society and not the education to prevent the thievery? I may put up some signs, ‘stop idiots, educate people.’



And could someone tell me why this woman is under the impression her legs need shaving?

News and baking

Another moment of spontaneous baking, this time I was surprised at the simultaneous gory and supremely tasty nature of the product. All very good and very horrible things ooze it would seem. Yum.






Today i read that people on bicycles are cheaters, suicide bombs in Iraq, Israelis are killed, more Lebanese are killed, even more as Ethiopia is flooded, aid workers are shot in Sri Lanka, bridges collapse in Pakistan, 40 million people are known to be living with aids. On the plus side, my boyfriend isn't.

Armless thought processes

I asked my father today, ‘How do you know that your arm is your arm and not the arm of another, that it is part of your ‘self’? He replied, ‘Because I can intend for it to move and as result of this intention it moves.’
This seemed sensical enough so I gave it some further thought.
So, if our arm is ours, is a fraction of our self, because we can control it, decide its movement after a plan is formed, then what of the cup on the table? If we see this cup, we want for it to be somewhere that it is not, we attach it as an adjunct to our very own arm, and based on an intention move it from one place to another, after which it is then detached, has this cup been part of our ‘self’? We have intended for it to move, it has moved in accordance with the will.
If the answer is yes, this cup has been part of us. This would seem to make the entire environment which we have altered, by whim and fancy, part of us. We would therefore stretch out almost infinitely from a central point into our environment, which is not separate at all from our selves.
If the answer is no, the cup is external, it has been moved by me, it is not inherently me. The this would seem to make our ‘self’ infinitely small, as our arm, our skin, our skeleton, our viscera are environmental, are moved by intention, but are not ‘me’. But where am I? This would make me an infinitely small spot in the centre of the things I move by intention.
If we are to reject the negative, accept that the cup has been an additional finger, then what of ‘others’? If I were to have a spiteful thought, to shove, push, knock into some body, they have moved, moved because I wanted them to, not because they have their own plan of motility. In that contact have they been me? Where has their ‘self’ been placed for that moment? Would it be extending into the things which they have made their own plans for? If they made action to steady themselves on an unstable chair, which was then to crash to the floor, would this be where they lay?
And so I say to my father, ‘Well what if by some awful misfortune, some accident, you have your arm paralyzed, you are no longer able to move this appendage, and it will hang limply by the rest of your ‘self’. Is this arm still you, more than simply yours?’ My father responds, ‘Yes it is still my arm, for I have moved it, it has been my intention, even if it is not so now. It is no-one else’s arm; it is still part of me.’
And so I consider. If our possession is lingering, on these objects of our, ‘It is my arm because I have had the intention and I have made physical change’, then does this cup remain a part after the moves have been made?
If this is to be the case then are these particles of self overlapping? If I have left this cup, and my good friend then enters the room. If he/she/they decide that this is a ridiculous place to allow a cup to be, they then attach themselves to the cup. The cup is incorporated; it is moved by their intention back from whence it came. Has this part of self, of ‘me’, been overridden, wiped clean? Or are these selves now overlapping, accumulating in the ceramic of this very cup?
Remember the really nasty one in Terminator? I’m just not sure at all as to whether I am very very big, or very very very small.

It's ok if they are deformed, I can just eat them first.

How easy it is to stray from the written word into the mirky world of practicality. So here I will record some of the more active moments which have occupied me.

Spontaneous gardening
After much deliberation I decided that a garden with weeds with the ability to tower above me can only be a dangerous thing, plus there is definitive consideration regarding my wish to actually see out from my kitchen window.
So I spontanously sprung into an evenings gardening early last week.
The plans have been made to replace the in enterprising Galium aparine and Senecio vulgaris with their prettier and more edible counterparts. More word when something wonderful grows.



Midnight baking
Last night, after much less deliberation, I decided to make gingerbread men (and possibly women.) I couldn't really tell you why but I don't suppose you have asked so there isn't yet a requirement for reason. I stray, back to the point, so I got together the ingredients and set about my baking expodition in the uncultivated setting of my kitchen. Needless to say the affair became somewhat of a marathon as I was, lets say, optimistic regarding timing. I too was optimistic about my shaping abilitities and my first crack at human creation was limited to a single vital organ, and quite mishapen they were too. Although this did give rise to the interesting thought process of, 'Its ok that those ones are deformed, I'll eat them first.'












Visiting a fraction of myself
This is my grandma, I went to her, I will give more words to her later when i can think of even one which deserves to describe her.

Sleeping in an unfamilial bed with an increasingly familiar body
The night before last, when I was still to have yesterdays thoughts, my boyfriend (I hate to use such an 'insert label here' term but it does save sentences from excessive length i suppose) and I, pushed by intense heat and the desire for turbulent air, slept in an unfamiliar bed. What was more noteworth was just how familiar he felt. In such an embryonic state as time has granted us thus far, still fresh with interest of what we are yet to know of one another, it occured to me how quickly this apoptoses and is replaced with the fervent desire for comfort, for predictability. He calls himself old, and me he calls new. And i call myself juvenile and him grown. It's difficult to tell what will come but I don't want to forget how known you felt. And believe me, if I was not of absolute confidence that there is no chance of his looking at his own face here he would never be placed here (as he would be most likely to have some stern words.)










Look a Jukebox
Yes a Jukebox inexplicably arrived in my living room. Yes it was beautiful and broken and now it is fixed. Although it plays at the wrong speed. Any ideas on a button which may alter this.

Spoons?

Being the good medical student that I sometimes like to be, I spent some of my day trauling the depths of the British Medical Journal.
You’d think that this would be dreadfully boring, and indeed on the most-part it was. And then I happened upon the most ridiculous of fantastical pieces of research. And it's even better than a single silly person within the medical profession (not to mention those who funded the project, those who published the findings etc etc.) There is infact multiple responses and a whole body of evidence surrounding this apparently contentious subject. A personal favourite within the responses is a beautifully ludicrous theory regarding the metamorphosis of socks into coat hangers within washing machines. Have a look over here!

It can be fixed

Thank you to a good friend who just yesterday taught me that an inherent property of the majority of broken things is the possibility of fixing them.
In other news, want to be the coolest geek? May i suggest www.pentrix.com

A picnic in Tintwistle

I did have a most peculiar evening at the end of this very day. Riding home on my bicycle I bumped into an acquaintance just by curious chance.
He suggested that we go and eat and that we do this out in the countryside on the gentle slope of the nearby hills (I might add not in so many words did he make this suggestion.)
I agreed. I was hungry. I live alone.
Now I know for a fact that this is someone whom I share very little. Its fair to describe him as the most selfish individual I have come to know. The other half of someone who is barely half herself that I would describe as a friend to others.
So off he meanders into the local shop to steal some food for us. He steals. He is not ashamed to be selfish and to steal.
And as it goes on I drive deep into the full countryside and find us a pretty evening light in the town of Tintwistle.
We sit, and eat, and talk of his ideals of which I agree with not a single one. And he raises the issue of moral value and the requirements of one over those which surround them. And he believes in the ideal of evolution. That we exist to compete, to beat others. And I argue and say that this is wrong and drink expensive wine.
And it occurs to me that all the time I am eating his food, and listening to his words, and taking joy which is not mine. And who has done the stealing? I haven’t stolen. I have done nothing. I have done plenty wrong, and I believe this to be one of the most lowly wrongs which I have done. And I am sitting now, with a full belly, feeling decidedly sick with myself. So who has wronged 'more'? And what exactly should be done of this?

The birthday of an independent lover.

Today it occurred to me, as it does every year on this day, that it was an old lovers birthday. I don’t wish to be mistaken and so its worth clarifying that I don’t mean lover in what would seem to be a simultaneous modern and traditional sense. Not a personified sexual partner but an individual onto which I have projected feelings of great affection. His birthday was on this day, the day of independence of one of the lesser nations, which is probably why I am most tended towards noting it each year. But it bares thinking of, especially seen as we are now so very independent of one another. He was my first experience of intense longing, of the overwhelming trust that someone can only give when they have no reason to yet believe all those stories of heartbreak and still hold a profound belief of their own immunity to loves great despairs. It is fair to say that he did succeed in squashing such an honest dependence with a boyish clumsiness and I will almost certainly never experience such a feeling again. I don’t hold him accountable for such a thing because we do not always know that we are one side of a triangle for another, that we support them without a single intentional push. And having not held him accountable, I do not feel the need to hold any sort of anger against a nearby inanimate object in place of him. I do not need this because I am aware that we all must fall, having our sides left unstable to know the cruel horizontal ground. And that having occurred a new form of dependence may be built. A stronger, deeper, informed dependence. A dependence which whispers, You know full well how much this could hurt, you have not forgotten, and you are willing to gamble that with them.
I may well have lost a dependence seated in youthful unawareness, but now I am able to knowingly reject independence with a wilful hand. Thank you always to my independent lover.