What changes and what doesn't

At some point last night, shortly after I opened my computer and start mentally organizing my column, I suffered a total black-out, lost conscience and fall asleep. The lost of conscience is complete because, although I can always track how and where I fell asleep, I can't remember at what point that took place last night. I woke up around 4 am, lights on, but was well-wrapped in the quilt, confortably curled up in the warmth. The computer lay close to my feet, but away from my sleeping action area, and I can't remember when or how or where I found such a perfect position for myself and the computer if I fall asleep inadvertently.

I was planning on writing that, at the end of the day, for certain experiences, Myself is somewhat changing. The carnivals of Notting Hill, albeit ordinary, rude, and antisocial to some extend; although pretentious, lousy and poor in general; and despite its obscenity, marginal character of some social groups, dangerous venue and treacherous character, left me unshocked, cold, undisturbed. And, as I say, I would have expected a little fussy behavior from myself, the humble performance of the good boy scandalized. But, it did not happen.

However, some typical things do not change, never do, the kind of issues that, in spite of the size of the world and its cultures, proves beyond any reasonable doubt how much alike we all are. On Monday, in between a bunch of Caribbean stalls serving jerk chicken, amidst a nebulose of bbq smells and a little apart from the main parade route, Levi Roots made his day attending the request of dozens to be taken in a photo, one by one.

The man looked to me like a king of tremendous importance but, as far as I know, he only got lucky by winning a spark of immediacy on TV after promoting the sauce's recipe of his grandmother. And I say to myself: "Self, grandmothers are the same everywhere... And so are grandsons too" (*).

                 Levi Roots: The umpteenth photograph with fans (Notting Hill, Monday, 29th of August)

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(*) Apparently, some people in New York speak like this: "Self", etc. I learned that from Miss M. years ago, a brave black woman born and raised in New York. Her mum is originally from Jamaica. The daughter, apart from working at the time from 3 pm to midnight in the library and run a stained-glass workshop in the mornings, took care of his mum, even after the poor old lady started losing her head. The day Miss M. was able to get Ms. M. in a plain to Jamaica to put her in a residence, a hurricane left the island in darkness, without gas nor water. Its name was Ivan. It was the summer of 2007.

The invisible communion

If you take Wolburn Place from Euston Road and continue straight ahead, down Northampton Road towards Holburn and, further down, Kingsway, at some point after Russell Square to your left, you will find a hidden, not-too-big, not-too-small gardened square, which name is Queen Square. At one of the sides, at the entrance, there it lays a big flowerpot with colorful flowers in the memory or something or somebody. A piece of stone sits on the ground underneath the pot and there it goes this inscription by Larkin carved in the slab:

"1952 - 1977
In times when nothing stood
but worsened or grew strange,
there was one constant good
she did not change".

The verses brought me a whole universe of powerful images around "nothing stood", "grew strange" and "she": the scene of a woman standing still when the world around is falling apart.

I like it.

In striving daily to push ourselves in life with and against this double-edged gift of individual freedom, the sweet taste of the invisible communion comes handy at times when you find a connection with someone else, someone who might share habits, tastes or illness with yourself. Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985) -not knowing nothing about him- just turned to be the last connection I am talking about.

Albeit he looks like a sexual-depraved maniac in photographs, how to dismiss an expression of awe and communion for this:

"Being brave
Lets no one off the grave
Death is not different whined at that withstood".

Or for this:

"I work all day and get half-drunk at night
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die".

Or for this:

"Isolate rather this element
That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say what it never worked for me".

Or for this:

"And kneel upon the stone,
For we have tried
All courages on these despairs,
And are required lastly to give up pride,
And the last difficult pride in being proud".

Now, alas!, communion shall travel farther than where Wikipedia leads; shall dig a deeper fruit than that facebook only lives by.

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Rave

Much the world has changed since the ol' times of Buddy Holly. Wikipedia sets the origins of the rave parties of today back in that moment. Illegal parties in many occasions, one must say. If I were to define what I understand by "rave" I would say: "gregarious and frequently illegal congregation of people in unusual places where they drink, dance, consume and abuse of toxic and illegal substances all together as a pack".

I doubt that the rave gatherings of today still share the political aspiration, literary suppuration or exotic inspiration -drugs, sex and all included- of the past, but the two very features of "gregarious" and "illegal" remain.

At first sight, the scenes of rave behavior look unstoppable, as a utter cry of freedom. But this is nonsense. It is indeed a fact that the book of History we read and remember daily is composed by big-case footnotes and margin comments, while the main body of the text is discrete and hidden in small-sized letters. And so, where we see freedom and justice in the Beat movement, for instance, we fail to recognize the core of those pages, what -I believe- it was all about: an unstopped imposition of moral degradation.

The infamous rave stuff (now a hot topic in the news in Spain, after the dead of two youngsters from excess of thorn apple in a rave party) is the umpteenth example in recent decades of moral degradation and individual dissipation. I must underline: the two very features standing still across the years in the rave movement -gregarious relations and illegal congregations- are the reflection of two evils of our civilization: the giving-up of individual freedom to the benefit of social networks (same old, same old) and the popularization of anti-social behaviors.

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A pair of tights

Finally, it looks that I am not dead worn as these past days. And so I can write a little.

The summer seems so far away here in London. The weather is random, very mild if not suddenly cold, and the rain is taking too much preponderance. Nevertheless, tonight, the night is beautiful; a timid drizzling, about 15 degrees, I don't know about the moon. I've walked down Fortis Green, had a pint in a picturesque pub. A guy is hooked to the bar and holds a chained dog for ever, pint after pint. An hour before that, H., her kids and I watched Wuthering Heights on TV and fidgeted with the computer; an interesting English scene, I say.

I looked at a cars magazine in the pub and read this article about the old times and the old cars. "Who does not remember using his girlfriend's pair of tights as a fan belt?", the writer wonders. In fact, although I can't remember that as I don't know how to do it, never did it, likely never will, I recall Dr. N., a Nasa researcher in Huntsville who told us in Materials class what he used his wife's nail file for once his car abruptly stops.

Those years indeed were.

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Coming back

Of course, I have been on vacation. Under the perspective of the distance, I find now myself a stranger to this custom of blogging, a bit more respectful to the activity of writing. I think it is a good sensation and I am happy it came after a good time of relax. I feel now that I shall continue in my purpose of writing a comment -almost- every night, albeit the rules of the game are necessarily different from those initially devised. Perhaps, I shall write less -shorter columns, I mean-, be careful with grammar and spelling, more demanding with the wording and, maybe, strive to acquire a neat and personal style. In this sense, I shall write more and less at the same time, more and more concise, better and better each time. Bearing such purposes in mind, I commit myself to this new stage, after the summer break.

Let Myself be a serious matter and so do the activities I get Myself to it. Writing could be a serious matter to me, a fully-satisfying endeavor, a worthy deposit of efforts, hopes and dreams. Nevertheless, let the sweet and deceitful looking-glass of the inactivity -ephimeral as it is- be desarmed; one hopes to be too old to take the bait.

Let this Dante's Fall corner be less personal and more vibrant, more brilliant and brave, more exposed and spread. I might go down, but my secrets will go down with me.

And for the time being, I cannot think of anything else to say.

Bad manners

Once again -sometimes the impression come and go randomly-, my daily life is surrounded by sprouts of bad education, namely by access of rude and unpolite people. I could say that the British is a form of human living rude and unpolite, pretty much against the established predicament, but I am positive I would not be fair nor right. In fact, it is just that some people is not polite anymore, anywhere.

The examples I collected during the last days are many and, today, after going through the very unpleasant experience of catching a plain, the feeling is ten-times fold bigger.

Buying groceries in Sainsbury is a nightmare, nothing comparable to -what´s its name?- in the States, where you get a nice welcome and your food stuffed in bags. Of course, some people will attack such iniciative with invectives like "I don´t want no one touch my food" (sic). Or you update your Oyster card and the lady behind the window get upset because you insert your card in the payment device before time; or you go to the movies and, after waiting for a long line to expire, a lady tells you dryly: "the popcorn is downstairs"; or you let someone pass in a crowdy street, a muslim marriage plus a young child, and you don´t even get a timid thank you -or, if you get it, the children would never be asked to say thank you.

The London tube is a desolated landscape _at nights, mostly on weekends, it looks like the Land of the Dark from the Lord of the Rings. Here, you have this young man rushing to get a seat when someone else, already in the train before the stop, has been biding time to get it first. The counter-balance for it is, of course, sens of humour. The metro stories are numberless.

Or I am in the line waiting to get my bording pass -I like the old-fashion style- and there is this long group of teenagers, careless, unfocused, noisy. The guy before me gets an exception to cut the line with his wife and kid. I ask, half-agresively "can I go as well?". The guy replies, half-agresively, as well, "do you have children?". The fact is that behind me there were people with children and they did not get the exception; and the fact is that, despite my being slightly rude, I was treated like a child by a utterly unprofessional employee.

Good manners are becoming more and more a matter of money and, even in this situation, manners come with the price. It is a game to be played. I might be getting to the extreme, but this is what I get in my daily life. I walk out the public library in Hornsey, in the Crouch End, and I say to me: "people is unfriendly to me, why?". Of course, unknown people... .

I can´t see any good prospects following this path. This civilization is called to an end.

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