Indistinct Visions of Four Futures

Hello. Sorry to have abandoned you all recently; I've been just busy enough that I've not had the time to focus and get anything down on paper. In the last day or so, though, I've experienced a small lull in my commitments and have taken the opportunity to finish a thing which I thought I'd share with you. It goes thusly:

Indistinct Visions of Four Futures

                I’m sitting in a friend’s bedroom. It is late and I am peaceful. We have been watching and talking of mildly interesting things of little import, though at this point the proceedings have reached a natural lull. In the quiet I’m struck by a sudden realisation, perfect in its clarity. For each of us I see another, similar figure in the same space. The figures are larger and more indistinct; representative of a possibility rather than a concrete reality. Each figure is clearly in a different, future setting but I cannot see precisely what that might be.

                The first of my companions has paused, leaving a cigarette half-rolled to enjoy idly throwing a lighter into the air and catching it. These distinct actions both seem an incredibly worthy use of his time. If he catches the lighter it’s completely okay because he chose to do it so of course he would succeed. If he misses it’s fine because he is just messing around. He returns to his rolling and his deliberate, practised movements are entirely in accordance with some plan he’s hatched or orders he has received. The translucent animus following his movements seems to be wearing a uniform. I cannot be sure whether it is best dress or combat fatigues or a well-made but slightly over-worn blazer, but it conveys purpose. Whether it is a terrible objective or a wonderful aim I cannot be certain, but the clothes of the image seem entirely suitable for the task at hand. This is a man who will be certain of things and his place within them.

                The second young man is to the right of the first. He is reclining on a bean-bag; smoking a cigarette he was lent; lent because although the lender would not get the same fag back again there is an amicable certainty that the debt would be repaid quickly and without fuss or any uncomfortable sense of obligation. He sits up to make use of the ashtray on one corner of the bed and meets my eyes when he becomes aware of my gaze. He holds it while we share a laugh about something that I can’t quite remember and returns to his squidgy throne. He is the youngest of our group – the hairs on his chin the unshaved fur of an adolescent lion rather than anything approaching an actual beard. He also the most silent, though this is by nature and not by status. I see a confident and content figure occupying the same space as this cub. It is possibly arranging the affairs of its pride with calm, unopposed authority;  possibly improving life for those around it with a subtly jovial presence and a few carefully timed words. Either way this future will be, barring great catastrophe, of positive worth to those who encounter it.

                My third colleague in my evening of positively unproductive time-passing is the one whom I’ve known the longest. With the music idly shuffling between genres it is his ceiling at which we are staring; it is his realm and he is holding court. He is discussing something delightfully unimportant with a knowing and deliberate, patently preposterous patina of pomposity. We are amusing ourselves by not letting him make his point. He is amusing us by rising to the bait. It is an act made funnier by the times we can all think of when it was genuine irritation. He is a legitimately good man: dedicated, loyal, diligent, generous, and ready to listen. This is why I am made uncomfortable by some of what I’m seeing in the nebulous figure loitering about him. I do see all the positive qualities which make me his friend, but they have been corrupted. Pessimism at his chances of success has worn the dedication to listlessness; emotional wounds have built walls around his loyalty; without passion for his tasks his diligence has fled; no one gives to him anymore so generosity is a childhood fairytale; he is surrounded by and has learned from a cadre of closed-eared pseudo-friends. The indistinct figures may just be the idle imaginings of a weary mind, but I am worried nonetheless. The social being learns much from those who surround it, so I hope this dear friend of mine plants himself in loving soil.

                And what of myself? Can the cracked and imperfect lens be used to examine the wielder? I try. I see a man, sat thinking, with a distracted look upon his face. I do not know what it is going through his mind, nor can even guess the nature of the thought. Is it a carefully constructed network of highways linking towns across a vast and peopled plain? Is it a lightning flash, sudden and wonderful, short-lived and evading capture? Is it a vortex, spinning and consuming, sucking all into its Charybdic maw, swallowing the hopeful sailors as they strive vainly for the safety of their native harbour? Or is it an old lapdog by the fire enjoying the warmth, and content for any who wishes to give a pat and bit of ham? I don’t know – I was interrupted by a proffered bottle and a request to put something funny up on the screen. It’s probably (I decide as I take a swig of something sweet and fiery) either all of them or none of them. It might be interesting to see but futures can wait; we’ve got cartoons to watch.

One hopes you're well
   yrs,
      ADWoodward

Pogonophilic Nonsense

Hello. Pogonophilic means 'beard-loving', which will be the theme of this post. Because it's my blog and I can do what I want with it, that's why. Incidentally, you may be interested to know that my browser's spell-checker doesn't recognise the word 'pogonophilic' and, when I right-clicked to see if I'd misspelt it, instead offered me the word 'necrophiliac'. This post will in no way be about that.
I have a beard and I love my beard because it's soft and comforting like a bunny made out of a half-forgotten childhood memory; and because today is the two-year anniversary of the last time I was clean-shaven  I thought I'd commemorate this important milestone by sharing with you a number of the thoughts I've had about the exciting world of beard-wearing in that time.
I suppose I should start off by admitting that mine is not the most spectacular beard in the world, and lends me less gravitas than those of other men and women (I do not ever knowingly discriminate on my blog). My maternal grandfather's beard, for example, made him look like Tsar Nicholas II; mine, by contrast, makes me look like a pokémon that might one day evolve into Brian Blessed. I acknowledge that this particular joke would work better if you could see me, but if you picture a pale creature with the contents of an unblocked bathroom sink's drain glued to its face you'll get a rather close approximation. If you want your image to be more accurate give it a gin-glazed expression and a puerile smirk. Oh, and damn sexy legs, those are an important part of the picture.
I originally grew the beard simply because I'm naturally a rather hairy man and it's a bugger to stay clean-shaven. In fact I'm hairy enough that I was once helping a six-year-old with its maths with my sleeves rolled up when it put down its pencil, stroked my arm and asked me if I was a cat. I'm not.
Despite the fact it's origin came out of practicality and laziness, over these two years my beard has grown on me. (Grown on me! Ha! Oh, what a shining wit I am!) Nowadays I wouldn't be without a beard. There is not a single moment in life when stroking one's beard is not an appropriate response; joy, anger or boredom there's always something it can offer - it's basically the Swiss-army knife of facial features; both because it has many uses and because a lot of the people who resisted Nazism had one. The moments when it is most useful are those in which I am upset or stressed because it's soft and comforting like a kitten made out of Kinder Buenos.
A beard's uses extend beyond being an emotional crutch (which is different from an 'emotional crotch' - my beard has never got drunk, put me in a headlock and shouted about how much it fucking loves me. This is fine, my beard and I have that deep sort of love that goes beyond words. It doesn't need to say anything, I know it loves me; I can tell.)
Like all relationships this one does have its ups and its downs, and its lefts and its rights, and occasionally a sort of spiral motion that makes me dizzy so I have to go have a bit of a sit down and a glass of ribeana (which the browser's spell-checker thinks is me attempting the word 'Caribbean'). The first downside is the fact that when I go drinking, as I am occasionally wont to do, my beard generates an unseemly fascination in some of those around me. I know it's a wonderful symbol of manliness, I know they're incredibly jealous, I know they see that it is soft and comforting like a puppy made out of a mother's love, but can these drunkards not at least ask my permission before they grope my chin? One time a particularly pissed bloke licked it. I felt violated.
But the chief downside is that I now get followed around by the staff whenever I enter a toy shop. I am in fact there because I'm killing time waiting for friends and want a look at the Lego and for all they know I could legitimately have a nephew or niece for whom I need to buy a gift, but no, they take one look at me and think I'm there for a bit of toddler snatch-and-grab! It's not my fault I'm a naturally sweaty man, my house doesn't have a cellar, any sweets I happen to have me are for my own use, and I don't even own a van! But they see the fact my Gillette doesn't get that much use these days and all these valid excuses start being ignored. They never say anything, but they don't have to; I can feel them judging me with their lifeless, glass eyes and mocking me with their neatly upholstered fur. ... I may have got toy shop workers mixed up with teddy bears there, but I think the point still stands.
But despite these minor annoyances I still love my beard because it's soft and comforting like a guinea pig made out of a joke that probably doesn't bear repeating a fourth time.
One hopes you're well,
Yrs,
ADWoodward (and beard)

A Message From Your Friends at the BNP

Hello. As much as anything else recently I've been endeavouring to catch up on the news, particularly political news - solemn duty of all citizens of democracies and all that. This made me remember that I'd written this piece. I thought I'd share it with you because I enjoy it; it's the closest thing to satire I've written. It goes thusly:

A Message From Your Friends at the BNP

I’m here from the BNP to make a party political broadcast. We here at the Belgian Geologists are Nasty party want to warn you about the grave threat Belgian geologists pose to Britain. Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – every single Belgian geologist is evil and out to destroy your way of life. Belgian geologists are a naturally backwards and jealous people, it’s ingrained into them at birth. Belgian Geologists - all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – even the little ones you see playing in the park, every single Belgian geologist bases their entire life on one holy book – the Manuel belge de géologie- which if you read it you’ll find is full of gross, outdated barbarisms. I’ve not read it- eugh books- I don’t need to read it, I know it’s evil, my mate Barry told me so.

The Belgian landscape is made up of mud, boredom and occasionally and an irate Colin Farrell, this leaves Belgian geologists very little to study. That means Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists – even the nice ones at your work - every single Belgian geologist is part of a conspiracy to bring all other geologists down to their level. Now the English are fantastic geologists, as our language exhibits. English contains the word ‘homilite’ which is both an ‘association’ and a ‘borosilicate of iron and calcium’. Belgian geologists don’t have access to such a brilliant word for ‘borosilicate of iron and calcium’, if Belgian geologists want to discuss borosilicates of iron and calcium they can’t use homilite, they have to use another word, a Belgian word. I don’t know what that word is, obviously – I’ve not done any research to back this up. Who needs research when your opinions are informed by blind prejudice and things I’ve barely understood from internet chatrooms? And that’s just one example of the evil of Belgian geologists – which you would all know about if you weren’t blinded by the liberal media who are too cowed by Belgian-geological extremism to bring you the truth! That’s right Belgian geologists – all of them, not just a small minority of extremists - even the ones who are entirely integrated and don’t even know that much about geology - every single one of them believes that if they sneak onto British public transport and suddenly and violently explain the differences between igneous and metamorphic rocks then they will be rewarded with 72 samples of homilites. We can only hope that if it is true there’ll be some great cosmic joke: “I was promised 72 homilites!” Yes but did your holy book state whether they would be borosilicates of iron and calcium, or simply rather fancy synonyms for association?

One hopes you're well,
   Yrs,
      ADWoodward

Smiling Eyes

Hello. In keeping with my self-appointed task of updating this regularly I thought I'd share this with you. I wrote this almost a year and a half ago, but I thought you could enjoy it while I'm working on a few things that should be up here soon.

Smiling Eyes

Oh, shall I see her smile again at me?

She whose eyes sparkle like the starry sky?

Of all things on earth it is this I’d see,

Though offered sun-kissed views that eagles spy.

I’d gladly turn away the wealth of kings,

And eminence I would with scorn deride

If some god would grant my meagre words wings

And give me one more minute by her side.

By what magic might I complete my task,

And so attain this most glorious prize?

Would hiding my oddness with polished mask

Grant the precious gaze of her smiling eyes?

Eyes transfixed by thoughts of such blessed sights

Refuse to close and grant me sleep-filled nights.

But when I do succumb to sleep

I grin in wonder, overjoyed.

I see a vision floating there

With joyous face and smiling eyes.

All nourished by those shining orbs

Of sweet, translucent purity

This fitful sleep I sought so hard

Invigorates my weary limbs,

Electrifies my clouded mind

And sends me springing from my bed.

The energy within that sight,

I sought to keep upon a page

So when my spirit feels like lead

I might return and see her gaze,

And by the things I find therein

Rejuvenate my weighted soul,

And make the world seem good again.

One hopes you're well,
   Yrs,
      ADWoodward

Thunder and Silence

Hello. I have decided, as much to keep in the habit of putting things up here as anything, to share with you a short piece of fiction. If I ever get the time and the idea this might become the opening of something longer; as is I think it's rather good as a piece for its own sake. This started off when the opening sentence came to me in the pub and was written in two spurts of activity across the next few days. It goes thusly:

Thunder and Silence

Thunder crashed around the valley, its echoes shaking the misted glass of the old house. Well-maintained, despite its age, the red bricks of those stoic walls were the only sign of human artistry for a hundred miles around. No broad, flagstoned highways scarred the silent, sylvan, surrounds; indeed no paths at all save the winding, scarce-seen tracks along which wolves stalked the nervous deer. This was a primeval land. No booted foot had dared pick its way through the uninviting undergrowth for three hundred years; not since a grey-robed man had willed a house into existence at the bend of the stampeding river in that sly-shadowed valley.

                Watching the river through the stinging hail, from the warmer side of the lead-fixed panes was a man whose beard now matched the grey of his robe. Lines that had been formed by several lifetimes of studious scowling were being deepened as the man watched the raucous play of the storm-gods with irritated disdain.

                “Go blow yourselves out somewhere else,” he told them in the kind but firm tones of a harassed parent. “Some of us are trying to work.”

There was a pause while the bruise-coloured cloudbank digested this. The next crash, an unobserved observer could imagine, sounded angry and defiant, like a child refusing to accept it was bedtime. A blue-white streak of blistering light flung itself from the petulant sky towards the man and his window. The observer might have thought a lightning bolt would not have been able to look taken aback; they would have been wrong. This one, unused as it was to being stopped by an unseen barrier, managed it quite well.

“Stop that.”

 The words, though calmly said, filled the entire valley. The cloudbank flinched then rumbled sullenly.

“I mean it. Right now.”

The wind suddenly ceased, dropping its hastily-snatched cargo of forest-floor detritus. In the now-thunderless calm the tiny percussive sound of the last few hailstones completing their fall could be heard. The robed man drew breath for another reprimand. The clouds parted instantly and obsequiously, letting a shaft of warm sunlight fall onto the window and the man it framed. He suspiciously regarded the sky for one long moment, harrumphed and returned to the leather armchair and battered scroll he had abandoned.

                He was so engrossed in the arcane spider-scrawl in front of him as to be rendered almost-uninteresting, so the unseen witness might now take this opportunity to leave the wild-haired scholar to his reading and nose about the room, leafing through the draws in search of a spare cigarette. It was cluttered. Books and papers lay where they’d been discarded, half-obscuring the esoteric apparatus that occupied all of the many tables, desks and workbenches. One of the benches was conspicuously free from the academic snowdrifts. It held the studious man’s current project. On this bench, stood under the room’s large sky-light, sat a stone. In the light from the globe hovering a few inches from the ceiling it seemed to have sheen about it. First red, then green, then the blue of deep sunlit waters could be seen from its apparently perfect surface. About the size of a child’s skull, it was held by heavy, black iron vices that were themselves screwed to the work-surface. If stones could escape, someone had ensured this particular one would struggle to do so. If asked what it was, the man would, depending on his mood, answer either “None of your concern,” or “Something fascinatingly dangerous.” If he answered with the latter, he would then indicate the scorch marks along one wall.

                A gnat, bored with aimless flitting, settled itself on the stone. It burst into flame. The smell of a tiny life extinguished without care filled the room and failed to break the man’s concentration. With enough exposure and apathy, people can get used to anything. The light from the globe wasn’t the clearest ever seen, so an observer might have missed the stone’s adding of half a millimetre to its circumference.

                “Jumped-up, new-age rubbish!”

                A scroll, written a hundred years before the birth of the oldest person in the world outside this room, landed in the grate under the undusted mantelpiece where it crumpled despondently. The paper became even more dejected when the robed man felt the evening’s chill and ignited it with a small, precise gesture. The little ember was fed on thought and mild irritation directed down that gesture until a respectable blaze at in the grate, denying all association with the barely-warm little squirt that had recently occupied the space.

                The bewhiskered man turned his attention and his chair towards the workbench. The stone stood still. He frowned. The stone did nothing. He glowered. The stone, if anything, became slightly less animated.

                “Right, you. That’s enough of this brooding-in-the-corner-threatening-the-whole-of-existence business.”

                Two ancient consciousnesses reached decisions, gathered their insurmountable wills and focussed on their opponents. One took a couple of goes to roll up his voluminous sleeves; the other wished it had sleeves to roll up.

                The air in the room took on a dense and pressing aspect, thickening enough to delay the glow from the ceiling-globe and trap the heat from the fire. Sound could not move through that immobile mass. Time was held in place by the full force of millennia of mental mass meeting at high speed. It strained against the steel-clad thoughts blocking its path. The immense wills used the energies of supernovas to force their opponent one proton back.

                The old man felt like one for the first time in centuries; he could no longer spare the energy to maintain his physical strength. The thought that had been sent into the world to create the fire rushed along the psychic highways to defend its native home; the force that had created the house abandoned its colony of mortar to fight for the capital of flesh and bone; the bricks themselves melted to dust then to unbound force to rally the broad-cuffed commander. All reported for duty and promptly charged from synaptic gates to scream their battle cries at the massed opposing legions. An enemy rank fell. Then another. The whole barbarian horde was in full rout! The marshalled thought of three hundred years and more charged across the space and threw its weight at the red-streaked black of the hostile citadel.

                The stone cracked.

                Sleeves fell back to wrists. Now-white hair hung limply down.

                The ancient Sage of the River’s Bend fell backwards and dust settled on his barely rising chest.

                Thunder crashed around the valley and it started to rain.

                                                                                                                                                 

One hopes you're well,
   yrs,
      ADWoodward

Why Can't I Sleep

   Hello. I wrote this a little while ago and those I shared it with then seemed to enjoy it. I've just reread myself and am inclined to agree with them so I thought I'd share it with you.

Why Can't I Sleep?

Is it: the hastily scrawled essays hanging Damoclean above my pillow, waiting to be marked and, free from light, stringy restraint, to plunge?

Is it: disappointment at unwon kudos cavorting in orcish glee, jabbing with gouging pikes of self-doubt and unreal, fever-dreamed success?

Do mind and soul rush down untrod roads, hoping to catch a glimpse of some unknowable, unseen monument to my greatness?

No. ...

So why can’t I sodding well SLEEP?

Why do thoughts spin and make me nauseous?

Why do visions of beauty and joy frolic, teasing, out of focus, of reach, of sound?

Why do my eyes swim with sights of one met but barely met, known but unfamiliar?

All so similar to angsty dross, so in need of exorcising, of recognising it for what shit it is.

Fiction.

Fantasy.

Guff.

You don’t love her – because you don’t know her! That’s why! You’ve hardly met!

And yet...

And yet it IS an intriguing thought – one which one ought to dismiss as idle fancy.

But if you act she MIGHT accept or at least not laugh full derisive in your face.

Mark this place and seek HER face to ask, to test, to see –

Ah...

What that face does to me – it’s a buzz, you see; a joy for me

One quick smile and this boy is floored by she who hoards my dreams and keeps them.

Let her keep them.

Or perhaps we could share them, be a pair, then, and all content lie back and stare ten hours at stars and lights and at each others’ eyes and talk of all the things we ought to have done but didn’t.

We didn’t because I wouldn’t, not if I had the time with you: I couldn’t - I’d be ensnared and scared to tread on this joyous bubble and be befuddled when this flimsy hope takes my weight and takes on shape and becomes reality. That would be really quite Okay for me.

But for now

I dream.

But still don’t sleep.

   One hopes you're well,
      Yrs,
         ADWoodward

How to Help a Small Hope Grow

Hello. On and off again over the last three or so days I've been writing a thing. The following is it:

How to Help a Small Hope Grow

                Not too far from the nearest, joy-filled group of people, there is a shadowy dell, or perhaps the right word is depression. Looking at it from the outside it doesn’t seem particularly deep nor its sides all that steep, but if one were to find oneself at its bottom there would be a certain difficulty in escaping. Perspective is a strange thing: from a slight distance outside one would think it a pleasant enough spot in which to enjoy a few beers and some intelligent chat with friends, even though it’s a tad removed from the beauty of full sunshine or the excitement of the unrestricted gale. But if one takes the time to peer in tentatively, we find ourselves looking down on a fetid quagmire that traps the feet of the playful hopes that unwittingly built their nest on the side of the depression, so near as to be almost unavoidable.

                Hopes are a strange and wonderful species of creature. They have soft coats of varying hues; some are a clean white which might hurt the eyes, some are deepest red, some blue, some green some black but all are pleasing to the eye if seen if seen in the right light. Their eyes are large and darting, full of unfocussed curiosity as they look for new meadows in which to frolic. Their soft feet are unsure when young but as they mature grow into an agility that lets them mount all but the sheerest of obstacles.

                Look! Timidly emerging from its nest is a newborn with fur like a blushing poppy. Its long-lashed eyes shyly search its surrounds for another being with whom it might forge a connection and then perhaps a friendship. It sees the grasping, sodden bog and sags in resignation. It knows it is not strong enough to leap that loathsome dell. It mews softly. It mews its cry of desperation, unable to make the leap itself, needing another, an outsider, there to help it jump but it’s afraid of being scorned by whomever hears and thrown off balance to into the depression to feed it with its death.

                A short distance away, but close enough to be just visible over the lip of the depression from the low, lowly vantage point of a young, helpless hope, there was the top of a brown-haired head. The hair was just light enough so as not to be black and in this light had two locks crossing at right angles in the wind that verged on red. That red cross was aid and salvation to the poor hope, and it mewed slightly louder and longer than before: a salutation, a call to parlay.

                The newborn immediately regretted its rash action. The owner of that hair would not want to be bothered by a thing as weak and pathetic as itself, there were far better things to do with one’s time than help a pink weasel out of a puddle. The hair probably hadn’t even heard the tiny wretched cry. It was probably better this way. Everyone know proper young hopes should be able to solve their own problems, and if this struggling, scared little one couldn’t then it probably wasn’t trying hard enough; bigger problems than a dell get overcome every minute of the day. The hope sagged again.

                But wait! The head has stopped! And now it is moving closer, revealing eyes, a nose, and a concerned but caring frown. It is the head of a young woman in navy blue. The little hope’s heart soared at the thought of someone else taking time out of their day to engage with it. Light sometimes plays tricks with your eyes, but if you had seen this moment of uplift you would have thought the fuzz-covered hope had grown a little larger. The young woman reached the edge of the depression, saw the tiny hope on the far side of it and her concern changed to determination. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a seed. You might think this seed to be a little thing, not worth anything to anyone, but you’d be wrong. It contained the hope’s salvation.

                She stuck the seed into the ground with a decisive thrust of a finger. The hope, definitely bigger now, looked on in anxiety and anticipation. There was a pause. The simple gesture had no discernible effect at first. But then a lone shoot emerged from the soil. It swayed, its tip barely an inch from the loam that had bore it. It swayed, its tip barely three inches from the loam that had bore it, then six, then a foot, then more. Much thicker than it had been, the shoot’s weight bent it down towards the depression and the hope waiting for an escape within it. The hope, itself larger and more sure-footed, stepped onto the vine the moment it touched the earth near the nest. Though shaky, the plant proved a perfectly adequate path for the hope’s egress. A fond, quick lick of the hand was all the thanks the hope knew how to give, but it was accepted by she who watched it with a warm grin as it scampered off to find food and grow into a full-fledged reality.

                The young woman, or others of a similarly caring disposition, regularly comes to the plant to check it’s still there to serve as a highway for hopes. They tend it with genuine concern and chase away the sharp-toothed doubts – vicious, buzzing creatures that seek to gnaw through the plant and leave the hopes once again stranded in the depression. This is a continual task, and not always properly rewarded, but it is thanks to considerate people like this that the hopes which emerge, unsure and barely-formed, can have a chance at growing up and loving life.

                I for one would like to thank them.

   One hopes you're well,

      Yrs,

         ADWoodward