Author: trespasserine

Three Guesses As To What Really Matters

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Suffering from another paroxysm of doubt – a bobbing on the big sea moment – Tolstoy seemed the natural choice of port for the Gen X refugee to find anchorage in. Let it be known not only common folk or mendicant monks seek to know what really matters. Kings, too, have tipped their crown in neediness of an answer to the big three – 1) When is the right time to do the right thing? 2) Whom is considered most worthy of being the beneficiary of that right thing? And, 3), what is that right thing to do in life above all other right things? If Christ could do it on a bike, and Hindus on their hands and knees around the Holy Mountain, then Arthurian types can go in search of answers, too, finding them planted in unlikely soil.

What is the right thing to do, when is the right moment to do it, and with whom should it be done? Are such questions that go to the heart of the matter to be considered existential conundrums unlike any other? Who can tell. At least, with Tolstoy we have an agony uncle worthy of trust. Let’s face it, rules are rules. Fables, myths and necromancy when they come, come packaged not into ones, not twos but threes.

Three the magic number: three wishes; three wise men; three wise monkeys; three fates, furies and graces; three the number of intelligence in the Kabbalah; the father, son and the holy ghost; Great Pyramids; the belt of Orion; three of a kind; three chances to put things right.

And so it came down to three questions that Tolstoy’s Certain King went to slay with allegorical brevity short as a cocktail stick. When he took his ruler of a faraway realm on his kingly quest, still he did so with a point, but not the kind that spears pitted olives. His was in mind. As De Troyes’ Fisher King was crippled with injury, Tolstoy’s Certain King (one presumes) of Slavic peasantry is crippled with that most chronic of conditions: indecision.

The analogies are rich as they are universal. Indecision is as injurious to the mind as a hurtling javelin is to the thigh. This moral maze, full of ankle-twisting turns, knows no bounds of credo or class. The ruler is expected to be judicious to the extent of having answers to the trickiest questions tucked into his hem. Nonetheless, it is to the furthest reaches of the forest, to the old and frail hermit living in a dacha-cum-shed, that he experiences a comedown of humbling proportions. As wisdom is the burden of the elite, so it is the gift of the obscure.

To the question of ‘what the right thing is to do’ (presumably this question extends beyond simple quandaries like Sainsbury’s car park is chock-a. Will anyone really notice if I park in the disabled space?), apparently hermetic sagacity comes down on the side of digging seed beds in pity of the old hermit shirker who claimed he was too buggered to do it for himself.

As to the question of when is the right time to do the right thing, like the old adage goes, there’s no time like the present. The when ends only when the present ends, which is never until it is stepped out from. Our king, now engaged in menial labours considered essential by Shaolin monks for attaining mindfulness, is now inadvertently digging his way to the answers he seeks by virtue of having rolled up his sleeves and working that hoe like such a demon that he stops noticing time and forgets what it is he wanted to know. Only when he stops to reflect does he realise that the right time to do the important things in life is lost when the mind is either running ahead or falling behind.

The when embedded within the what comes twice to the fable. The other most important time existing for the king in the quantum mechanics of the present moment (where either something’s nature is known but not its location or else its location but not its nature) is when he turns from market gardener to red cross medic and saves a man with a blinding bit of field dressing. Little does the king know that the man, consumed by vengeance, was out for his blood. But instead of regicide the stranger in the forest finds the king is stemming his own gushing blood in an act of compassion, for why the king does not know.

As to the question of who benefited from that right thing and that right moment, the knackered old hermit and the wounded wannabe assassin became the king’s most important task, the only thing that mattered. Just as your average Uncle Joe does not take up arms for a cause but for himself and those either side of him, so Tolstoy, through the hermit, avers that the most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows (in that very moment) whether he will ever again have dealings with anyone else.

The king has, quite unintentionally, received his true coronation. Mindfulness is the crown he wears. Presence is now in his heart, leading the hermit on to distill the essence of the good thing, which is to perform man’s sole purpose of being: doing good. Kant wrote the only unqualified, unconditional good was the good that arose from good will; goodness not to conform to norms of goodness, rather goodness for its own sake.

Our king left the protection of his realm asking three questions he thought should govern and guide a life in which he had grown dissatisfied, and for which he was deservedly awarded his Duke of Edinburgh. He left a substandard realm of irrelevance only to discover a sublime state of benevolence. He threw off his chain mail to don the saffron robe. And all because he was not afraid to invent himself in the mind of the writer whose own life needed questions answering, metaphysically-speaking. Ask Tolstoy and ye shall receive.

 

 

Gall Stones that Crack the Mirror Pool

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“It wasn’t until middle age that narcissists became depressed, because of their failed relationships.” So writes Zoe Williams in this morning’s guardian.com, quoting the authors of The Narcissism Epidemic. So how else could causation flow through these variables? Relationships failed because narcissists grew depressed and depression stemmed from hitting middle-age? Was it that relationships failed because depressives hit middle age and this aging process arose through being a narcissist? Or that it wasn’t until relationships failed that narcissists became middle-aged, and relationships failed because who the hell wants to cuddle up to a depressive? Where does narcissism begin and depression end? For that matter, where does middle-age end? In failed relationships? In depression? In a late blooming of narcissism? In a toxic brew? Most pertinent of all, where does middle-age begin? And have I left the solar system of youthful vigour and entered the Kuiper Belt of wrinkling despair?

“Don’t worry, son. You’re very much in the game. The solar wind has just died down a bit today. Take it from an old timer, you’re as young as the woman you feel.’

“Let me illustrate, Dad. It’s almost as if I’m cruising through deep space billions of miles from Earth. There’s Neptune out my starboard porthole. Still, I’m not sharing the view, if you catch my drift.”

“You don’t have to paint elaborate pictures. Come out and say it, son. You mean you’re lonely?”

“Hell, yes. I don’t feel women these days. Haven’t sniffed an opportunity since I left Earth. Tell me, how old does that make me?”

“Look at you. You look great for your age, lad. What I would give to have looked that good when I was any age, far less the age you are now.”

“You’re trying to imply I’ve entered my middle years without actually giving it an ‘official’ title, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be soft. I’m sure you’ll find someone who’s, er, not like the others, and you’ll put all your troubles behind you and she’ll be the one who’ll go the distance. And I mean to Neptune and beyond. You’ve got time still, lad. Oodles of it.”

“What are you trying to say? That I’ve flunked every relationship because I’m in a funk I can’t free myself from? A bit too self-absorbed, eh? No room for others? That’s basically what you’re saying.”

“Well, son. Now you mention it, you’re your own worst enemy. A bit too caught up in yourself, at times.  Sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but you need to learn to consider others a bit more. Give a little to take a little. See ourselves as others see us.”

“You mean I’ve got narcissistic tendencies?”

“Well, hmm, narcissistic is a bit strong. It’s not like you’re always try to catch your reflection in shop windows or anything. When you’ve lived alone as long as you have, it’s not easy to give up all that self.”

“Your not really painting a rosy picture of me here, Dad. I can see my dating profile now: solitary, sociopathic type. Scores high for misanthropy, low for empathy – a real plus these days. Has the advantage of not often being wrong about anything. Loves watching people and animals suffer. Carries around a small vanity mirror for those times he forgets just how much of a catch he is. More boom than bust type of guy, although does love getting to the point(s) with women. Brilliant company by his own admission. A bit of a silver fox. Is aging so gracefully that he has been compared to Clooney, not once but twice. Age not an obstacle as his charisma is transcendent. Looking for a sexy twenty-something. Personality not such an issue as he will be doing most of the impressing. You thought the koh-i-noor diamond was one of a kind. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

That’ll go down a storm with the ladies. Tell me where I went wrong, Dad.”

“Well, I suppose we’ve all got to love something or someone, son. We’re only human, after all.”

Narcissists are by definition excessively preoccupied with protecting and aggrandizing the ego, and since the ego’s primary motive is the preservation of self, why not experience the inward tugging of the self-serving soul the closer one comes to their own eventual auto-destruction? So it stands the test of reason that it can never be too late to develop that life-saving proclivity for narcissism. And if narcissism got you feverish when you were younger, early middle age seems about the right time to let delusions of grandeur mellow into a warm mug of mindfulness, easy on the ego.

From the moment the toddler accepted it was not mum’s thirteenth paired rib bone, more a pivot around which the universe was spinning, is it not the case that narcissism cut a swathe through little Lord Fauntleroy’s life practically undetected? Vaunted self-importance ain’t the preserve of the selfie gen. We were over-inflating our tyres long before Mr Dunlop showed the wheel the way. The difference is, now narcissism has found an instant digital outlet for a population of smart phone-conscious lemmings where previously it needed developing in a darkroom. The difference is, now viral self-love drives extinction of countless species and the worst kind of  relationships are those we have with nature. It’ll be in our species’ middle years that the aftermath of the man-nature abusive relationship will be felt as a source of mass depression.

It is axiomatic that only at the onset of middle age do we fall into a slump. It explains a lot about personal midlife crisis and catharsis, the slow onset of rigor mortis, adoption of new creeds (Scientology and Kabbalism not exempted), and all that other life-begins-at-40 mantra. It explains how the coming-of-age personality can crash and burn (by descending into anguish, alcoholism, discontent, pill addiction, and other chemico-ontological pitfalls) only to subsequently emerge rebuilt, lightened and more philosophically lean from the experience.

For all those failed relationships staring back at you from the millpond of your mind, for all the remorse of not reacting with the soulful completeness of the post-you instead of that room full of mirrors from where the pre-you used to look out in confusion, bear in mind that the task of being one of billions of little living deities is not simple when advancing years makes peeing feel like breathing fire through the urethra, and the stiffness on waking like one’s bloodstream has been transfused with embalming fluid while they were sleeping.

There are more reasons in this world of ours to be insecure than there are to be narcissistic. To make an omelette worth being, one needs to find mirrors worth cracking. The 21st century narcissist really is walking on eggshells.

Where Oil and Water Mix

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Oil tankers button up the horizon bright as warning beacons. Beneath the blackness of the ocean sky at night, their floodlit decks abut one another such that from the shore the view could be peninsular. That daisy chain of bow and stern stretch for untold kilometres from the port terminal to where anchor is weighed and each vessel drops off the edge of the visible horizon and into the Indian ocean proper. Some will ride the Agulhas current around the South African cape, but for most their laden hulls will cut the water south and east, curving under Sri Lanka until they reach the oil thirsty Orient. Few places in the world but here can give the straight profile of a coastline a proboscis it never had before.

Down at the port meanwhile, the 300km Habshan pipeline from Abu Dhabi has to gush in to something. Set out like mythical checkers pieces stacked three high, oil storage tanks are epic of proportion. Each cylindrical tank bunkers more cubic metres of refined oil than crystal blue seawater lost in the Great Blue Hole of Belize. Perhaps not depth-wise, but diametrically these oil bunkers could be scooped-out sinkholes. The barren, serrated mountains lying behind them seem to shrink in their grandiose presence. There are few bigger statements of a globalized economy paid for in petrodollars than this. Nor is playing dumb an option. Turn your back on them and still they find a means to remind you they are the reason you are ultimately there. For those downwind of it, the air that carries the gas condensate is acrid and unpleasant but otherwise hard to pin down. It smells, as you might expect, like any compost fermenting in the infernal bowels of the earth since the Carboniferous period.

The mountains themselves saw action long before the tankers. They came through like a row of tiger shark teeth ninety million years ago when the Arabian plate was ordered to hump the floor of the Tethys Ocean, but instead slipped under it. The stuff that made the sea floor buckle and the saltwater rush in was so heavy with plutonic rocks that after it rose up it refused to bow back down, so after all this time this petrified lower jaw bites into the sky hard as the day the upper jaw crawled out of that now rearranged ocean to bite the land.

Ninety million years of gentle wind, fitful rain, and desiccating sunlight could not do the work of erosion quite like a bundle of dynamite. At intervals along the steep pitch of the peaks engineers have blown their tops to make room for giant pylons that power towns and villages running on 56 degrees of longitude up to the Straits to Hormuz. The electricity cables form a cobweb over a landscape that had little interference to contend with for all but the last few seasons of its long geomorphic history. If it weren’t a suicide mission, zip-wiring those cables from mountaintop to flat bed would be a thrill and a half. Time changes the work of everything and everything changes the work of time. In which order, our world in flux does not reveal.

The settlement just north of the terminal consists of shabby roadside buildings wide enough to take an oversize 4WD in for cleaning. For all the dust and fine-grained sand that blows up and over from the western desert, settling evenly on everything moving or otherwise, the big cars remain improbably clean. If not for the army of poorly-paid labour drafted in from the Sub-Continent cleanliness would scarcely be the next best thing to godliness. All this spit and polish shines in an ethnocultural context, where religious piety comes in a shroud of either immaculately-laundered white for males or a beautifully-tailored black for females. Ironic when you consider it, the black syrupy source of national affluence – one of a dirty duo alongside coal – stains fabric like nothing else. Yet the white kanduras and black abayas, for all their over the ankle length, never show so much as a minor blemish. Same score with fleets of $80,000 Toyota, Nissan and Lexus 4WD desert tractors that continually roll off the big boat from Yokohama. White is the shade of choice and not only for reasons of Bedouin sartorial tradition. As any driver of a black car will testify, as no woman in a black abaya will, white reflects the phenomenal heat of summer and black does not. Until familiarity breeds contempt, which it often does in an indigenous population spoiled by oil wealth into treating anything of value as easily replaceable, the new eight cylinder heavyweights are as shipshape and immaculate as the kanduras sitting in the driver’s seat.  Are cars and kanduras (dishdashas) white in defiance of the colour of oil, or did oil come out black as a defiant warning to those who would wear white never to get too close?

These are strange days we live in. Fuel is the fuel that sends heads spinning and markets trembling. The blood that makes the world’s economy boil is transfused into everything from heaters that keep the hearth burning against winters that never seemed so cold to boats that deliver desperate refugees to a premature end, from American aircraft carriers plowing dying oceans to Russian jets zipping over a Syria they have neither seen nor cared for.

In a country that reserves the severest punishment for drug dealers, these storage tanks are meth labs on an industrial scale. High is the feeling from the fumes, empty is the feeling when the tank runs dry. Pure as crystal, dirty as the thoughts we ascribe it. How many more drug runs before the peninsula sinks under a rising ocean?