the slow, inexorable rise of kipple 



Reading more Philip K Dick now, which I like not because he's a great writer in the sense Borges is (his plots are often full of holes, his construction is often not 'beautiful', consistent or balanced) and even not so much because of the science-fiction side of it -he is not very good at gadgets and future prediction, but what he is good at is exploring the nature of that which we call reality, or rather our perception of it from our grubby lives made of toil and routines and small frustrations and even smaller triumphs  with only ever occasional epiphanies or moments of blinding bright revelation.... all in the brief, brief space in which we are, between the eternal nothingness of not having been -which, for being in the  past, doesn't seem so terrifying as the one yet to come to us, but both infinite and, if you allow them, overwhelming....

Perhaps I'm getting a bit heavy for the time of day. I'm rushing in between lessons, worrying about that grinding noise in the car, aware that a pupil is not entirely happy with his lessons, that I'm here and in spite of the shower I took a couple of hours ago I feel sweaty and dirty., life going past in a flash, grinning and teasing while I desperately try to get hold of her and grab its meaning.. for now, though, the terrifying void ahead is obscured by a mass of bills to pay, of a knee now hurting when I walk upstairs, of the little every day frustrations, the kipple's inexorable advance... the man jumping out of a dark street corner offering marihuana, the woman with the shaved head pushing a supermarket trolley full of rags and trying to sell you a dog-eared copy of The Big Issue, a man sitting with his guitar and his harmonica playing the blues on the doorstep of my local off-license. in the middle of the night... all the while, dirt and muck increasing, things breaking, relationships breaking, our cells slowly building up their own death, the world moving towards that state of lower energy of total disorder...

... but also of the laughter and tears of a friend who finds, in a birthday present, that true friends exist, even abound around her.

One hopes for the world to make sense. And for it to make sense in a way that includes us. But maybe that is too much to ask, too much to expect.. Maybe the universe just explores -or explodes, blindly in all directions and we just happen to be one of the directions possible....  

Posted: Mon - May 9, 2005 at 08:24 PM          

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