It’s Time For Now

Hamar Williams1 Comment

It is such a shame that the idea of living in the moment has been flogged to death. It’s past the point of cliché. It’s such a shame because it’s also something that is of such importance. Recently I have been attempting to practice this and have had far more actual and empirically measurable success than ever before. It seems strange to suggest it is something measurable because it is something you experience without a computer scanning your brain waves. You feel it though and it is measurable because your conscious mind can compare it to previous memories of experience.

Recently I have been able to bring my head out of the clouds. The clouds were anxious one revolving around the stresses of a man soon to turn thirty-five and with little to show for it in a conventional sense. What we must always remember is that we are not alone in this world and undoubtedly somewhere someone is feeling very similar emotions to us in this moment. We are never alone in our worries, people have been there before and others will be there in the future. But the actualities are not important, the point is that we lose ourselves in our mind and struggle to exist in the moment. While I am thinking about the enormity of the future and the size of the task of achievement ahead of me I am not experiencing anything that life gives me while I am sitting on this boat, or spending time with friends or family, or walking up the mountain, or whatever it is.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have just spent the last half an hour coming up with a pretty spectacular plan for this time next year involving hitchhiking through Patagonia, and sailing to Antarctica or the Chilean fjords on the west, or both. This escapism into fantasy may be a hell of a lot more enjoyable than embracing the anxiety of sorting ones life out but it is equally as pointless. Of course we have to come up with plans to make anything happen but it’s important not to spend more time in them than is absolutely necessary. The moment this happens it is nothing more than escapism.

What of the success I mentioned earlier then. It’s not ground breaking. Somehow you need to find a way to step back, to centre yourself. It is as if you step out of your mind for a second, observing yourself. See your surroundings and understand you’re not in that future, you’re not taking on the entire task of fixing life there and then, or you’re not sailing fjords. Step back and see what your eyes see, what your ears can hear, nose can smell. You just come back into yourself for a second and in the process break the chain, the flow the mind was rambling on in in it’s old habit. Then you realise all you have is today, and think what you can do in this moment, today, how to achieve whatever it is the mind has been intoxicated with all this time. You can’t do anything more than you can do now, you take it one step, one day at a time. That is all, that is all you can do. Nothing else is important, but when the time comes for it to be so you’ll deal with it then, one step, one day at a time. Even then we still procrastinate, it doesn’t stop us being lazy, we continue to put things off but at least we only have to deal with little things as they come. In time who knows, that’s the future, it’s conjecture, it’s still nothing more than a fantasy. It’s not now, it’s not real.

Artificially Intelligised

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We’ve all watched or at least know the premise of the Terminator movie franchise. It feeds on a fear we have over the creation of free thinking killer robots. I’m currently watching the series Battlestar Galactica which deals with a similar theme. There are a seemingly infinite number of films or series dealing with this topic to varying degrees of success and infamy. I’ve just watched this video produced by the independent media organisation Double Down News. To suggest it’s intention is to scare you would be unfair but be prepared to be scared.

Worried yet?

What it does do though beyond that is raise an important point on the programming of artificially intelligent robots. It is important to start from the premise that we will not be able to create fully self-aware and conscious robots. We do not understand the brain enough to fully understand consciousness, so being able to create it within a computer programme in actuality is not possible. How the programme is written then is what we need to understand. As the video suggests the computer would be programmed to kill all humans or to convince all humans not to reproduce and ultimately see them die out as a species. Even I could probably write the code for the kill all humans although teaching them to recognise what a human is would be the tough part. Could a computer write that programme, not unless it had been taught the basics in the first place.

It’s the human input we need to be concerned with. The computer may be able to learn but in and of itself it will only learn what and how as it has been programmed. If we want to detach ourselves, it is easy to suggest a little like people. The video raises an interesting point too that I had never considered before. If people can easily create malware to infect your computer, what about the artificially intelligent version of that, or a robot with a virus. We shouldn’t be naïve enough to believe our governments only have our best interests when they produce anything but we should also fear the malware version of an AI robot. What if it simply malfunctions?

And of course there are the nanobots that will land on your head and kill you. Suppressing an unruly populace will be pretty straightforward if you have that kind of technology. As someone who has always romantically believed in the possibility of a good revolution one day that is rather concerning. What then too if someone hacks these miniature killing machines and the virus infecting them leads them to kill everyone. Or more positively the current people in power trying to kill the partisans. Maybe there is hope after all. No matter what one side does it simply forces the other to step up and be creative. Food for thought.

A Day Off

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I had one of those days today. In a good way. I know that sentence has connotations but I actually enjoyed myself. Last night I discovered a trip I had half planned wasn’t going to happen. I had been speaking with someone about helping them sail from Greece to the Canary Islands but he changed his route and is already in Italy. It’s not the end of the world but I had invested a certain amount of energy in this as something to do and it was disappointing for it not to happen. In this day and age of Covid-19, being able to do many things is a bit of a struggle so I was pretty pleased to have found myself on such an interesting trip to a place I had yet to visit.

One thing that really excited me was that I planned on writing these and having them revolve around the sailing trip. I’m not exactly sure how but I know when I do eventually cross the Atlantic at some point I would like to keep a log of sorts on the psychological affects of being at sea for so long. That is a rough idea and I doubt it would be exactly like that as I go off on a tangent or find myself with so little to talk about I end up writing a whole piece on a game of cards or a dolphin. That would be a psychological thing I guess but still, sailing across an ocean is from what I hear a far less exciting thing than people imagine it would be. From here to Spain could have been a test run on that to a degree but alas.

Today then I woke up and decided it would be a good day to have a holiday. I did no boat work and went for a drive. I stopped, I drove, I got a coffee, I got a beer, I swam a little, I sat by the sea. I basically enjoyed myself. Despite being in Greece for a month I have been on slight work mode most of the time and I realised today I need to know when to just have a complete day off. It also means when I have days on I need to be a little more disciplined and efficient as allowing jobs to just drag on is enough to make anyone mad.

What next then. Well I don’t really know. I’m not sure I’m ready to step away from the beach and the sun but it’s seemingly the worst time ever to be travelling around, it’s also probably the worst time ever to be in the UK though so that doesn’t help. Come January I may need to start saving my visa days in the EU too so it looks like I may just have to return to the UK. I know nobody has any sympathy for me and I don’t blame you. We all find things to be frustrated about but in truth I know I’ll just do something else. It’s not what you’re doing but whether you’re making the most out of what you’re doing I guess. I’m sure there’s some wisdom in there somewhere.

A Football Challenge

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Can I blame my obsession with football on love for the sport? Perhaps it’s the love of procrastinating and the ample opportunities the utterly obscene amount of football news websites allow for. Maybe it’s some primal instinct within me that needs to blindly support a tribe, or two in my case. One Scottish, one English. I’m Scottish so it’s allowed, there’s no other reason anyone would support anything Scottish football related. Whatever it is I do spend an awful lot of time with my head in some kind of football related world. It could be that this is inspired by my team losing the derby today against our fiercest and most loathed knuckledragging right wing unionist rivals. Bastards. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I despise Rangers with a passion and feel angry hatred towards them. This is part irrational and it’s a remarkable thing to experience and recognise within me when I like to think myself so rational and calm ordinarily. Note the like to think there. Anyway we lost and I’m not happy about it. My other team aren’t doing much better. Now may be the moment to do something extreme.

There have been days in the past where I’ve not allowed myself any technology until noon, or none all day at all. In those days I go without, I find by early evening I’ve done so much and been so productive that genuinely I’ve run out of things to do. How technology takes up so much of our day is quite worrying. But it’s not the phone or the laptop because I can make a call or do some work, it’s the things that we allow ourselves to be distracted on with these things. Facebook doesn’t really take up too much of my time but I can easily sit for two hours immersed in all things football; the latest news, gossip and whatever other click-bait I come across.

The idea may have been inspired by me being annoyed at losing but I thought about giving up football for a year. Absolutely no news, gossip or even games. That would be extreme but what I was curious about was what I would do to fill the time that everything football takes up. That excited me. But it’s also perhaps a bit too extreme, and unnecessarily so. Let’s say I only watched the games and nothing else. That would be less than four hours of the week taken up which really is very little. Imagine not knowing anything that has happened leading up to it, whether a player is injured or even whether the coach has been sacked. So perhaps the hour leading up to kick off and the half hour after as the result is digested. Get the team news and find out what’s going on prior to kick off like people did before twenty-four hour everything. Even then that’s a maximum seven hours a week. I am in no doubt that there will have been times that I spent that much time doing football stuff in one day alone.

The thing is that football itself isn’t bad or a waste of time, it does serve a purpose. Everything around it these days seems to be the thing that causes the problems. It has become a soap opera. Who needs Eastenders when you’ve got public rows between players and managers or whatever nonsense the media create and inflame. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it though but I want to. As much as anything I want to do it to see if both I can and what will happen, as in what will the outcome be in regards all that extra time I find myself with. If I can do this blog everyday for over eleven months I’m sure I can challenge myself to a new game of discipline. Which is what it all comes down to. This writing is about finding the discipline to do something while that would be about finding the discipline to deny something, or more positively, to do something else. It’s actually quite an exciting prospect. I’ll need a new challenge once this finishes in about four weeks after all.

Anger & Despair

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Tonight was very nearly going to be a little rant. It’ll likely still contain elements of one of course but there is now more calm in the mental air surrounding my mind. Anger and despair. This was what I was feeling. Anger and despair at the immediate and direct consequences of political decisions made by the people masquerading as the leaders of my country. Anger and despair that my passport is now useless. Of course that’s not entirely true and I will not cry at my own limited suffering when people can still not enter Europe despite escaping war, violence, poverty and the early affects of a future climate catastrophe. We need perspective and my complaints pale into comparison and I’m aware I sound like a spoilt child having his special privileges taken away but the fact they’re clearly only privileges in the first place shows how utterly wrong the whole thing is. It’s just so completely pointless and self-inflictingly stupid.

Yes I’m taking about Brexit. And no I don’t believe the EU is some kind of beacon of hope and goodness, but I do think it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative on offer. There is still time and today’s little video by a remarkably happy looking Boris Johnson is likely part of negotiations. It still makes you worry. Mainly because this mob have given every indication so far that they would actual prefer a no deal Brexit. Come the end of this year and with no agreement in place British people will be able to spend no more than ninety days in every one hundred and eighty within countries in the EU. This is how it is for Americans, Canadians and others outside of the Schengen or EU and those fortunate enough to be able to get holiday visas for Europe. I spent time in Greece with friends who had to go to Turkey for a few months before coming back or who just stayed illegally. I generally spend more than half the year within European Union countries. This is a direct and immediate consequence of Brexit.

That’s the thing, when we put aside ideas of what will happen from leaving the European Union, be those positive or negative and be those coming from leave or remain, they are simply ideas. It’s all hypothetical. People may have a fair idea but unexpected events can alter the moment very easily, look at this last year for example. We must understand things by real and measurable events. Freedom of movement is gone. The pound is getting weaker, thankfully we’re dragging the euro with us but that won’t last forever. The general economy has nosedived. Brexit has already cost us more money than we have ever put into the EU since we first entered, that’s not even counting the divorce bill. The benefits are only going to be seen in the long term they’ll say but long term is only an idea. Their dreams are not my dreams. All I know is the direct and completely unnecessary repercussions I can see, experience and measure. So yes I am still feeling a little anger and despair. But you know what, England, you can have yourself. Enjoy your American canned whole chicken and pig shit sandwiches, not to mention the chlorine and hormones. 58% and rising in support of Scottish independence. If it carries on like this there’s no way we’ll be stupid enough to believe the lies a second time. You’re on your own lads.

Another Covid Ramble

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This virus eh, what is coming next. I was feeling a little tired today and this evening felt my arms and neck a little sore. Strange I thought, am I ill? For the best part of an hour I felt myself getting weaker by the minute until I remembered I had been waxing the bottom of a catamaran for a few hours and that holding the waxing machine up while looking up had understandably left a little strain. What a silly boy. I laughed a lot, much of it at myself and the rest in relief that I wasn’t about to become another statistic. I wonder if there’s anyone left out there in the world who hasn’t at some point worried that they may have caught it, just a moment of weakness. Of course there will be but undoubtedly there’ll be more who have had that moment. Even those who think the whole things a scam will have for sure had a little moment. Good luck getting them to admit it though. I wonder too how many people have still not heard anything about it. There will be some interesting stories getting released in a few years.

Checks the news

The Queen has had her first official public engagement today in nine months. I forgot about her. Ninety-four years old and still going strong. Why she felt the need to be out and about meeting some scientists though is beyond me. Does she really need to be doing that, what’s the point. Seems like an unnecessary risk for a very old lady to be taking while there’s a virus running around taking very old ladies.

There seems to be some kind of tier system going on in the UK. Not everyone’s happy about it though. Liverpool and Manchester seem to be in full on tier three but are then being left to rot. It doesn’t seem too unfair to give a little support if you expect people to give up everything. Seems like something you would do if you actual gave a shit about helping people through this.

In unrelated Covid news, the Tory’s are still arseholes. Actually that’s also Covid related. It turns out Wetherspoons, that chain of pubs made famous for being cheap and shite as well as being run by a major Brexit supporting Tory donor, have been reclassified as eating establishments. In Liverpool then while all the pubs are forced to close they’ll be allowed to stay open. This mob are becoming less legitimate by the day. They’re not even pretending to hide anything either which is an actual genuine concern because it means they feel untouchable. Judging by the response of the media and the opposition, they seem to believe it too and are quite happy with the situation. It’s not that we’re going to morph into Nazi Germany, of course we’re not, but we’re looking more and more like Viktor Orban’s Hungary with each thing. You won’t get a Nazi Germany again and people will use this extreme example to delegitimise the debate, but Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey, genuinely these are becoming distinctly possible. Anyway, this is probably better saved for a full piece.

BR#12 – The Fratricides

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The is something about literature that allows us to understand in a way our eyes cannot always. Perhaps it simply allows us to first see what is possible to understand, doing the hard work for the eyes and mind to follow. When in foreign lands I enjoy reading books by native authors or sometimes those by foreigners set in such places. The foreigners can frustrate as they show they have learnt another version of a place to you but this can be important to realise there are more versions than your own. Natives of the land you are in though will always understand their own people in a way you simply cannot. You only have a formative childhood once, an adult visitor will never be able to truly replicate such a learning experience and understand a people as their own. As I am in Greece then I shall read something Greek. While it is easy to fall for the classics, two thousand years later the Greeks are a very different people and with that comes a necessity to understand now and not then.

Nikos Kazantzakis is probably most famous for Zorba The Greek and The Last Temptation Of Christ, at least with non-Greek readers and likely because films were made of the two in English. The Fratricides deals with the Greek Civil War which took place almost directly after the Second World War between the Communists and the Fascists – the Redhoods and the Blackhoods. It follows the fighting over a small miserable village in the mountains of Epirus and revolves around the local Priest Father Yanaros stuck in the middle. He chooses to be neither red nor black and instead laments the killing of all. In his eyes we are all brothers. It is an indictment of both sides as they destroy Greece in the name of Greece and for Greece, as well as an indictment of the Greek Orthodox Church for the role they played and their heartless corruption.

Nobody is a winner in a war which is being fought for an illusion, fought for someone else’s power. It is ultimately an intense and sad story in which unsurprisingly everyone loses and everyone, including Father Yanaros, is broken and fallible in someway or another. He may be incorruptible but he too makes mistakes. Kazantzakis exposes the grim realities of war and especially civil war, the utterly pointless and divisive nature of such beasts. He deals with the real social and religious problems of the time with a deep understanding of both. Importantly while this may be set seventy years ago, if such issues are resolved through violence and hate, he makes it clear they are never resolved. Something modern generations could learn from and continue not to. It may not be from ancient times but like those it continues in what feels like another chapter in the archetype Greek story, that of the never-ending tragedy of life.

Drama In The Yard

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There was a little drama and excitement in the boatyard today. While I was having a great time last night having a danger shower in the rain and lightning storm, a boat went and fell over. Exactly how this happened is unclear as I wasn’t a witness and whether it happened in the night during the storm is also unclear as they were only messing around early afternoon rectifying it, but I am going to create the link. There wasn’t the greatest deal of damage, only some chips in the gelcoat as you can see from the picture below and in another spot what appeared like a small hole in the fibreglass which will be easy to fix.

I remember a few years ago a friend of mine, the guy whose boat I sailed on that very first time actually, had a similar situation with his yacht. He was unfortunate enough that the boat next to his toppled along with a few others in a wild storm, smashing a big hole in the side of his. Purely by fortunate chance todays boat somehow managed to find itself leaning in an empty space between two other boats. While watching them lift it up I did what all boat people do and decided the people actually doing the work were doing it wrong. As you can see from the picture they appear to be using the keel for support which seems completely crazy and must be putting so much strain on it. I would not like to sail that boat without some kind of structural engineer giving it a thorough check.

Boats are stressful. They are worth so much money and I can see why people spend most of their time worrying about their own. The yard were very lucky the owners weren’t around, I can’t imagine the drama had they been. I hope it wasn’t anyone’s fault though and simply a result of the weather. Let’s hope they’re insured for an act of god though otherwise in the worst case scenario they may have just lost themselves a lot of money. Saying all of that I decided recently that I would like to have my own boat, probably to live in. The problem is that likely I’ll go for some cheap thing I think I can do up and it’ll all be great until some engineer tells me that the keel is structurally unsound because of a likely incident in a boatyard. That’s twice I now know of, perhaps these things are more common than first thought.

Procrastinating, Corruption, Meritocracy and Showering In The Rain

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Yesterday I had a little ramble about nothing at all and tonight may just evolve into similar. There are times when I can’t think of anything and they turn into some of my favourite pieces and other times when well, they don’t. I contemplated procrastinating a little more but it’s already after nine o’clock at night and this thing can’t be allowed to drag itself out too late. That and I had a quick moment of trying to be present and realising life is about one task at a time. I think I had been watching something random or a few random things which involved beautiful people or successful people and realised they probably don’t procrastinate. Or maybe they do they’re just really good at what they do in between. One day at a time though and one step at a time. We won’t achieve these anxiety inducing dreams any other way.

Politics is always an easy one to bring up, which I’ve said already I imagine. It appears a few MPs and The Good Law Project have decided to take legal action on the Government over their awarding of contracts during the Covid-19 crisis. Anyone who simply watches the mainstream media news cycle will be completely unaware of this but it turns out they’ve been spaffing a lot of tax payers money up against the wall awarding contracts to their mates, or companies with links to their mates. Quite often these companies have little expertise in the area they get the contract and in most cases they’ve completely messed up whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. For an obvious example think of the test and trace app which in itself would result in people going to jail if we didn’t live in such a corrupt society.

Talking of meritocracy I was listen to a podcast tonight called The Partially Examined Life which I’ve only recently discovered and haven’t listened to enough to give too much of an opinion. It was their discussion on The Graduate which led me to watch it the other day. I never got through the whole podcast tonight as I finished cooking my dinner and preferred to watch an episode of something crap instead but they were discussing and interviewing the author of On The Tyranny Of Merit: What’s Become Of The Common Good – Micheal Sandel. It was reasonably interesting but I had heard some of the ideas before; namely that it can result in those at the top lacking empathy as they believe they have achieved what they achieve purely through their own ability which is rarely ever the case and that it can lead to a disconnection between them and those deemed unsuccessful. It is idealistic in that it is not cohesive with modern society. He discussed about in relation to our polarised politics, or more precisely America’s but it relates to the Brits too. Basically as the title suggests he’s totally against it. I missed bits as I was distracted by cooking and also didn’t listen to it all but as I said it’s not the first time I’ve heard this and it’s an idea I have sympathy for.

Where I am in Greece is currently enduring what is apparently day one of five days worth of storms. I just had a rain shower which is always a pleasure and not one I get to experience enough. I remember dancing around in monsoon rains in India, the locals thought I was completely mad. I’m right in front of the yard security cameras with the boat so decided against taking my undies off although I doubt anyone would ever be watching. I was a little concerned about the lightning tonight as it only seems to be a couple of miles away but I’m banking on all the boat masts getting it before me. Just in case I’m unlucky though it’s also a good reason to keep the undies on, it seems to be a slightly more dignified way to go out for some reason. Isn’t human conditioning an interesting barrels of intricacies.

A Covid Ramble

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Well it appears with winter on the horizon the world is settling for a miserable one. If we thought enduring lockdown while Britain basked in what was likely the warmest April and May on record was hard just wait until we hit January and the recently lifted Christmas restrictions are firmly smashed back into place. Thankfully I’m not in the UK now, in Greece you wouldn’t even imagine there was a virus, not where I am anyway. They’re handling it the most Greek way possible and just getting on with things. Saying that despite my ridiculously ignorant attempt at national stereotypes when they did have a lockdown it was a hard one apparently. It allowed them to open up for the summer and despite a few flair ups wherever the Brits like to holiday, the country has remained reasonably virus free. Last weekend in Thessaloniki the guy working in the hostel told me Thessaloniki had about five cases a day and Athens had two hundred. I think I may have mentioned that at the time but looking at the rest of the rates around Europe, well into the thousands, that is quite remarkable.

In that knowledge leaving this country, which I’m likely to do, seems a little silly. It’s like seeing prison and deciding you would like to go spend some time there. I never fully experienced lockdown the last time because I was working delivering bread and being clapped every Thursday like a hero. This time I would be going full power and disappearing for a couple of months. At least I may find the time to read those books I had for so long complained I was too busy for. Sounds quite exciting. I might study something too. There is so much to study. Look at me getting all excited about something everyone else is dreading. In truth I am too I’m just not sure what I’ll be experiencing enough to dread it.

I can’t wait to read the literature that people put out in a few years about this time. There will likely by films or television series in 2021. Perhaps the aftermath will be more of an interesting topic. Stories set during lockdown would likely focus on the psychological elements of the experience, but events after would likely be either on human versions of flowers opening up in Spring or will be about system change as Brexit flounders, the economy crashes and people overthrow the government and create peoples assemblies.

Either that or I’ll just be gloating about how I finally put in that application for Irish citizenship. Twelve to eighteen months and then probably another one or two for me to get off my arse and apply for the passport. That’ll be it. I give up on the Scots for being the only country in history suffering from Stockholm Syndrome bad enough to reject independence and the Brits for being a typical version of a people incapable of accepting their glorious history of domination and empire is now nothing but an illusion. If it were ever anything else. Fuck it the Irish seem like they’re having fun, I’ll go see what they have to say for themselves. Apparently too Covid rates below the border in the Republic are a fraction of those in the British controlled North. Well that’s telling. Handling it well are you Boris. I hope history is harsh on you.