The Lady of Shalott

The longer this lockdown lasts, the more often my thoughts travel in the direction of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous narrative poem, The Lady of Shalott. I quote: “And moving thro' a mirror clear/ That hangs before her all the year,/ Shadows of the world appear./ There she sees the highway near/ Winding down to Camelot:” The poet may have written his narrative in 1842, but he seems to have exercised a curious prescience in the matter of social media. Because what else are our computer and television and telephone screens but highly technological mirrors presenting us with shadows and images of a world that we have been forced to withdraw from? And like the hapless subject, we are finding the lack of human contact more than a little irksome: "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott.” Our longing to interact once again with the physical world parallels her yearning for the ebullient Sir Lancelot, with his coal-black curls and silver bugle, as he rides purposefully through the purple night. Hopefully, when we do eventually emerge, pale and blinking, from our ivory towers, our fates will not be so devastating as the cursed, lady: “her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darken'd wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot./ For ere she reach'd upon the tide/ The first house by the water-side,/ Singing in her song she died,/ The Lady of Shalott.” Reader, take heart; it cannot be for much longer.

The Evening Star

From a blue sky tinged with western fire
The evening star looks down upon a pink-tinted Earth;
Fulgent, shimmering in the great beyond;
Proud over this hushy, dusky blanket of ground;
In vain do our house lights seek to rival her brilliance,
Feeble tinsel glints against the majesty of gold.
What secrets does she harbour? I wonder
As I gaze awe-struck at the glittering orb;
What ancient sagas has she beheld upon this,
Her companion planet? Slyly, she winks
Revealing only her fabulous light
And bids us dwellers upon Earth “good night”.

I read, therefore I am....

There was never a leader in any field of law, politics or business who did not improve him or herself by reading. Sure, Genghis Khan was illiterate at the outset of his career. Then, he invaded China – and found the natives reading and writing. Next thing, he had hired himself a personal tutor. Abraham Lincoln’s political career began after he ploughed through a pile of law books. HG Wells spurned his family's many attempts to turn him into a respectable shop assistant. Eventually, he won a scholarship to train as a teacher….and the rest is science fiction….I can’t stand it any longer, these television journalists showcasing their vast reading collections – I feel obliged to add my own version of bookcase chic – and cheek! So, get an eyeful of my collection of history, art, philosophy, psychology, mythology, literature, poetry, drama, fiction, biography, critical theory….books….

This, that and Schroedinger's Cat

On a winter's evening, many years ago, I happened to spot a delightful moggy lying upon the bonnet of a car, attracted no doubt, by the still-warm engine. So, I whipped out my camera and - snaaap! When the picture fell out of the developer's wallet - remember those? - I gawped in astonishment at the reflection of the beast in the bonnet of the car, the rendering of the amber patches in the dark fur and the feline features all spookily distorted - no, Marie Kondo, I have never considered throwing this one away. The more often I look at it, the more often Erwin Schroedinger's thought experiment springs to mind, that is, in the world of quantum physics, a body can be in two states at the one time, both alive and dead.
Just now, I reckon, we are all a bit Schroedinger just now, having retreated to an indoor world of video phone conversations, spring cleaning, pursuit of long-neglected hobbies, DVD dance marathons, rolling news bulletins, and waving and clapping off of balconies. The big question is, which world is the "real" one, the quieter domestic sphere or the ebullient life outside the domiciliary walls? When the present difficulties are over, which world will dissolve into vapidity, and which will stay stubbornly real - or perhaps there is no "reality", only an ever-present present, dictated by a raft of circumstances in combination with personal inclination? - and "miaow" to all of that. One thing is certain, given the age of the photo - 25+ years - this marvelous moggy is now ascended to cat heaven, where her glorious fur continues to draw aaaahs of pleasure from the denizens of the Above. Whatever, stay well, folks.....

The Real Caped Crusaders....

"Only talent filled with humility is of real use to humanity"
is the April 2 quotation on my Brahma Kumaris perpetual calendar....ah, the wisdom of that man - and the number of years I have read that platitude (I have had the calendar for over ten years) and barely paused to think what it might mean. Well, there is a time for everything, they say, a season and a reason, and that time is now. The new hero is not a celebrity in a Boss suit nor a Balenciaga gown, nor gold watches, diamonds and pearls. He or she does not fly over cities by night nor scale tall buildings, busting drug cartels and stopping equally glamorous gangsters in their tracks - though the new hero does engage in shift work. He dresses for the part in visors and masks, gowns and gloves, halting the progress of the invisible - to us - enemy, and caring for the distressed. He works in a grocery outlet, stacking shelves and serving food and medicine to all comers. He keeps the communication wires buzzing and the power supplies humming. He drives buses, delivers post, unblocks drains, regulates traffic. One day, it will all revert to the old norm. but for now, I bask in the succession of the real caped - and masked - crusaders.

The Last Man

First published in 1826, and set in 2093, The Last Man by Mary Shelley is an unsettling account of a plague that descends upon earth and wipes out humanity. The novel charts the thoughts and experiences of narrator Lionel Verney, who is left alive when everyone else has died. Just hear this:
"We will fight the enemy to the last. Plague shall not find us a ready prey; we will dispute every inch of ground and, by methodical and inflexible laws, pile invincible barriers to the progress of our foe. Perhaps in no part of the world has she met with so systematic and determined an opposition. Perhaps no country is naturally so well protected against our invader; nor has nature been so well anywhere been assisted by the hand of man. We will not despair. We are neither cowards nor fatalists....remember that cleanliness, sobriety and even good humour and benevolence are our best medicine".
Guh! I wonder what Shelley meant by cleanliness - hand-washing? - and why does she imagine that plague is not of nature, but an unnatural outside force? Scarier still that she published her book almost one hundred years before the 1918 pandemic, and all of the others we had encountered since. However, in the world she created, health and social care did not exist. Whatever, it is a thrilling story, beautifully written and a pleasure to read, filled with rounded characters and cliff-hanging events all the way through. However, the puzzle remains: just why did the story never attain the popularity of Shelley’s earlier novel? In answering this, we have to consider the Victorian psyche. In Frankenstein, the Monster was an outcast from the beginning. Not fully human, a comfortable readership could seize upon the feelings of security that he engendered, a smug thank goodness that I am not like that. No wonder the Monster launched a thousand other similar stories and was ripe for the movie industry when it happened. But Lionel Verney is fully human. He is every man, anywhere, and the majority of readers possibly found it too unsettling to contemplate such an end to humanity. Nor is The Last Man anyway like a techno-thriller of today. There is no pro-activity by a mad scientist here, no dirty bomb, no stray gene. The plague simply descends and annihilates everyone - except Lionel Verney. Like I said - Guh!

A blast from the past through the Time Tunnel...

Ah, bless Horror channel for its revival of that gem from the 1960’s, The Time Tunnel. From the intriguing Saul Bass-type animation as the opening credits roll, to the hypnotic gyrating of that fabulous op-art tunnel, to the plausible control centre with its spinning mainframe cassettes – remember those? - to the crew of quasi-nuclear scientist operators, it strikes me how well this television series has stood the test of, well, time. Already, stars James Darren and Robert Colbert have been on board a sinking Titanic – though I could have told the set designers that the ship’s fourth funnel emitted no smoke – joined a US space flight to Mars, and convinced a remote community that the advent of a comet did not herald the end of the world – and Darren and Colbert have just landed in Japan on December 7, 1941! Here, I add how odd that a very US-definitive piece of programming should adapt a piece of Eastern bloc music, in this instance, the infectuous Sabre Dance by Aram Khachaturian – born in Armenia under Soviet rule – to synch with rolling credits, spinning tunnel, et al – but what’s a Commie or two between ad-breaks? Overall, a glorious trip to the past. I anticipate future episodes already.