variability and consistency

How inconstant is the human brain? Actually, I am not sure it is. Just
over a litre in capacity, it contains a complex and mysterious
cocktail of hormones, neurotransmitters, electrolytes and lipids, all
bound up in, well, basically as far as I can tell, something akin to
lard. (actually, my memories of my great-granny feeding me brawn on
toast seem to reinforce this, nasty, pasty goo that it was).

So, given that the concentrations of these very active compounds can vary depending upon died, depletion, exercise, how amazing it is that we even manage to remain recognizably the same personality from day to day let alone can expect a reasonably uniform performance from it.
The morning after a major alcohol binge, where lungs release fragrantly the ethanol excesses from the bloodstream to the air, the chemistry of the brain must be in chaos, surely.

Ok, I must confess I am no neurochemist, but reading the figures for the miniscule changes in concentration of testosterone needed to turn me from the sexual equivalent of a docile herbivore to a ravening lustful maniac when the right stimulus appears, I realise the profound effect that a small chemical change can have upon behaviour and perception. Indeed, I have observed during a monthly cycle the prodound effects of a change in concentration of a chemical which results in the sweetest and most demure of ladies turning into absolute demons for no discernable reason.
I do wonder then that soaking my neurons in alcohol doesn't turn me into some kind of stupor-encased zombie, all process deadened with the resulting functionality degraded commensurately.

So, the vagaries of "mood" aside, which I confess, I find difficult to rationalise as it seems to be both chemical and situational, it seems we are far more consistent in mental weather than our inconsistent chemistry would cause us to believe.

And yet.. Writing this is arguably more difficult than other episodes of writing. Over the last month, certain privations in my experiential landscape, that is the absence of certain characters who provide unusual perspectives and unexpected stimuli, results in what feels like a dumbing down of my faculties.
Oddly, the lack of these inputs has resulted in a much dimmer me and several more astute aquaintances have commented that my "spark"appears to be missing. I concur because its feels so on the inside also words are harder to find, vocabulary is elusive or even absent.
The cascade of concepts which usually results from a single thought given free range to roam and ricochet off others just doesn't seem to be happening.
So how does this happen? Is this too chemical somehow? Or organisational?
How can a brain or rather, its function, atrophy so just from the want of particular exercise? I suppose we are used to the idea of this happening with muscles. But the brain is not a muscle so we can draw no logical inference of there being an equivalent process of atrophy for it.
So where is my brain? What can I use to jump-start the processes of spurious chaotic thought that I so enjoy?
Interestingly, although it took me ironically ten minutes of (enforced due to the "fasten seatbelt" Sign illuminating for landing) contemplation to locate the word "elusive", I have found the very act of writing this to have awoken areas of my brain which I had not consciously missed until now. Perhaps this is the key: if one just uses it, the rusty wheels, feared forever immobile, might creak into motion and before long, greased by the lubricants of musing and whimsy, run free on bearings of curiosity, wonder and humour.
And so spinning with frictionless ease, the machinery of the mind turns out nonsense by the page.

So, given the amazing electrical and chemical complexity of the machine that is the human brain, i continue to marvel at the reliability, misplced car keys aside, of this incredible machanism.

And now, i am going to see if I can affect it with a pot of tea.

Inertia

Sitting, thinking about doing. But not doing. Its a scourge, isnt it! How powerful a well of gravity there appears to be in the continuing state of inactivity.
It is a rainy evening and I have done little all day. I could go to the gym. I could go out for a run. But somehow the situation holds me in a grasp of apathy. I sit. I put the telly on. I have a beer. Well, after alcohol, no point in thinking about the gym or running, is there?

I sit in the office. I need to write an email about some stuff or other that requires a bit of research but somehow, moving from this grey equilibrium of comfortable stupor seems an insurmountable obstacle. I need to get up and walk across the building to talk to an engineer about some device or other. But It means stopping my music halfway through a track and oh, why don't i just have mooch through my inbox for a bit longer, or look up the weather forecast?

And so it goes on: Why don't I join a dance class. Yes I will! On Tuesday, i will go down to the Pavillion i Bath and dance. And Tuesday comes and, oh, its been a long day, I am too tired. Maybe I will just read the paper for a bit. Oh look, its too late to go now. Oh well, never mind.

Only I did join that dance class. I do go on tuesday evenings and it is bloody marvellous.

I think inertia is the main force that stops us doing things. What is it abou the current state one finds oeself in, assuming it is not too uncomfortable, that prevents us from rising from it and doing something more stimulating? Laziness? Indolence?
But it happens and it is pervasive, pernicious.

So, I am going to get up off my arse and go to my yoga class.
Yes.

Cornwall

You would have thought that in the course of two weeks in August, the sun would shine reliably and warmth would be available for at least a couple of days, wouldn't you? It seem not in Cornwall. A week and a half has brought rain, cool temperatures, and now gusty winds that move the clouds skidding across the sky like they are hurrying somewhere to drop their load of rain on some other poor unfortunates.
Only, on their way, they are dropping quite a lot of it here.
It was very busy on the roads yesterday. We popped to Bodmin to shop in Siansbury's, it being the only supermarket we can buy food in where there isnt "May contain traces of nuts" on absolutely everything, including flour, fizzy water and porridge.
The roads were pretty choked and i wonder at how the locals cope with this. It would drive me mad. I know that economically, tourism and farming seem to be the mainstays, but having the road outside your front door full of bike-bedecked people carriers all day must be a bit of a drag.
And so it continues to rain. What to do? Well, the Camel trail was lovely, but after a while the mud built up so thickly between the mudguard and wheels that they wouldn't really go round.
But what a beautiful trail! Makes the Bath/Bristol path look positively suburban.
And the sea! Oh, I had forgotten just how clear the water is here compared to further up towards Bristol. The blue translucence allows the sea bed to be seen until quite a long way out.
The weever fish was a bit of a surprise. I had not realised that British waters held such a nasty little surprise. I have been bitten by adders and this was more painful that that.
I did let loose every expletive i could muster which actually, does help. swearing does have a slight analgesic effect which is not to be underestimated as a source of relief.
I wil always, henceforth, wear something on my feet when paddling, to avoid experiencing the sting of the weever fish.
And so, as the wind howls arounf the nrodic lodge which is home for two weeks, threatening to distribute the plastic outdoor furniture across the cornish countryside, I consider what today may bring. What does one do in a place where outdoors is the value proporistion, and outdoors is uninviting due to inclement weather?
Bugger it! I am going in the sea anyway!

Mental weather

I write. I cant help it. It clears the decks and makes space to get on with things.
When thought overwhelms me, I write it down. A tangle of confusion becomes a coherent (to me anyway) thread. I am not good at thinking. I never learned formally. But at least I learned informally. To arrive at a conclusion from information, albeit necessarily provisional, is a process I have at least a dim understanding of and in a rudimentary way, can put into practise.

What I find harder to put into words is the confusion that fills my head. To liken it to a cloud of static is the best I can manage.
When a situation has multiple aspects which interact, my grip on one is shaken loose immediately by all the others and my mental fingers seem coated with some slick, slippery substance that allows the grasp of any of it impossble. The thoughts and pieces of relevent information swirl around me and I cnnot grab hold of any of them long enough to slot them into somewhere where they will fit with all the other pieces.

And so it is that I remain bewildered and frustrated by complex issues. Planning becomes impossible as each thing I try to list wriggles away from my pen before I can get it down to the business end and onto paper.

Well meaning friends and colleagues suggest mindmaps, thinking that the "creative" nature of the process may somehow help. It doesn't. I just stall on pictures not words, wondering where to put things that belong to several branches or if I have put items in the right places.

And yet, writing is soothing. The funnel that takes some of the components, allows a single thread to be followed, ok, ignoring all the others and leaving them still floating, but quieter. But coherence is approximated.

And phases happen, like weather; there are storms that arrive, filling my head with lightning and howling gales, blowing everything around and causing the mental landscape to be as thay refer to in the forecast as "unsettled". This is not unpleasant. In fact it is very fertile and I enjoy it.

Then there are the warm, sunny periods where indolence is induced and the only thoughts are idle and whimsical. Thoughts may hint at themselves, as distant sounds from faraway activity does in the garden ona hot summer’s day (remember those? Although its shaping up nice today)

Other days are like thick fog on an oily sea where nothing moves. Thoughts lie there just below the surface, but to lift them above the surface would be like hoisting a submerged suitcase, still filled with its load of water, heavy, unwieldy and all just too much trouble really. On such days, there is no echo inside as the sounds of thoughts is absorbed by the deadening aspect of the vapour that fills the spaces.

Lately, it is pleasantly warm but overcast with barely a breeze to rustle the foliage. Vague feelings float about like cabbage whites in the allotment. They make themselves mildly troublesome but overall do not really impinge on consciousness. Occasionally, a red admiral of a thought or a painted lady whim might flutter past, but, somehow I am not inclined to chase them to see where they go. The faint buzzing of flies on the compost heap of daily banality are all I can hear and it does not produce anything much of value. Except a sort of psychic compost in which, at least maintenance of foliage is possible, if not small growth.
Of all of these, I think I enjoy the storms best. I dislike stability and order and find chaos exciting and fertile. I know others find it unsettling and sometimes regard it as a nuisance or problem, but chaos has so much more going for it.

But words seem to flow given any chance. Writing about nothing calls forth an internal dialogue on the nature or experience of nothing. There are always words, even on rainy days.

People whip up the breeze. Not all people, but some. A static and dull mental vista can be set into exhilarating motion by a stimulating coversation, or even a passing comment. It is this that keeps me ever hopeful that dullness will never become the status quo.

A sense of place

Spaces produce feeelings. The arragement of objects in relation to each other can influence how a space creates its atmosphere. This is implicit in interior design and gardening.

In a garden, for I know something of that, as opposed to nothing about interior design, borrowing the landscape behind your garden can make the garden seem bigger. Indeed even painting your fence green or brown behind the shrubs can imply extra spaciousness. Strategically placed trees or bushes can imply some extra room behind, creating a sense of curiosity as to "what is back there then? I wonder what is through there."
It constantly surprises me the effect a place can exert by dint of its configuration.

Temperature and climate and time of day can make the same place feel different; a forest in sunshine of the afternoon with all the birds chirping can make it easy to see the figure of a dryad draped around a majestic tree, her smile inviting mischief and promising sensuality with her lithe feminine form.
But that same wood at dusk can seem filled with flitting spirits, intent upon deceiving the eye with swift flitting movements between the trees. Fireflies, such as I have seen in special places really can take on the occluded forms of Oberon, Puck, Peaseblossom and the fairy horde. You can easily see how such legendary creatures took shape in human culture.

Take that wood at midnight, however, on a cloudy moonlit night and threat lurks everywhere. Our primal fears of the Wolf in the darkness, come to eat us up after his eyes, yellow and luminous in the dark, have appraised us hungrily and unseen fron the cover of the undergrowth.
How places play upon us seems very much to be determined by our own sensitivity and awareness. It is much easier to view the forest as a benign mystery full of mischevious sprites if we are feeling poetic and have the wit to imagine them.

Our wolves may take many forms, although Our dryad could be fashioned from a real object of desire, possibly painted green for artisic effect and most alluring in her arboreal intertwining, the place of fear inside us from where the wolf springs has a common source from our ancient past.
Some of this we choose imagine and have consciousness of. Other feeings such as oppression can be involuntary and influenced by such simple things as a badly placed doorway, tasteless wallpaper or ghastly intrusive curtains.

And how did we, creatures of the savanna and forest, come to have this influence of place upon our psyches? What is is about a maroon and mahogany study that calms and comforts to creatures who only devised these things in the last evolutionary eyeblink?

Wolves in the forest are an old feeling, spirits of rocks and trees ans water also it is easy to imagine being with us since before we even clothed ourselves as species.
But yellow three piece suites, spacious kitchens of stainless steel and plumped up pink boudoirs seem odd things to feed our sense of place.

I have more to expand on this, but as usual, so little time. And the plane is landing so I have to switch off, as so often.

Oslo

I am 35000 feet above the North Sea en route to Oslo. Somehow, I got booked business class, which is was an unexpected treat, not, seemingly because of legroom: the arbitrary curtain the marks the boundary between expensive and cheaper seats can apparenty be placed anywhere.

No, the good thing is DINNER. Dinner was very good and catching on quickly, I indulged myself with a glass of champagne. I am aware that champagne is often seen for its own sake as the height of decadence: us proles in years gone by would raise our glasses loftily and appreciatively to our uncultured lips and feel we were partaking temporarily in an elevated social ritual where the drinking of champagne made us momentarily equal with those rich and priveliged sophisticates who could be glimpsed on telly at expensive receptions. We felt we must certainly be improved by this action and maybe have absorbed a small but significant increment of poshness by the act.

Anyway, I digress, as so often.

A twenty year old muscle injury in my hamstring starts to trouble me with pings of sharp pain and so I self-medicate with a gin and tonic. This is not a drink which I feel entirely comfortable with as it has certai iffeminate connotations which the invoking of the idea of colonial gentlemen in pale suits cannot dispel.

Staring out of the window, I am struck by a thought I often have but which I rarely articulate: the irregularity and randomness of natural phenomena such as clouds and the shimmering of the sun on the waves that I saw earlier, actually seems to have a pattern to it.

The clouds are all different shapes and spaced irregularly below us. But if eyes are allowed to lose focus, they apear to have a regularity about their spacing. Like a shoal of synchronised seahorses, they cross the sky in a coordinated formation.

It seems to me that the universe is lumpy. This is why space has lots of, well, space, with galaxies peppered throughout, and buses always come three at a time. Probabilities seem to hold to this too, with events clustered together less randomly than might be expected. Or maybe its just me. Humans bein creatures that like to spot patterns, even when there are none.

Looking down npw, a strange optical/atmospheric effect creates a column of light that appears to link the sea with the sun.

This is physics: a way of looking at things such that phenomena are seen and appreciated and a cause wondered at. And how we discover springs from there. It doesn't have to be about equations or research, just about noticing and wondering why.

Always woner why. All the time. That way, you will never be bored and, though you may elicit odd looks when you wonder out loud, you will never be boring.

Hungarian beer blog

Hello
I had a few beers and, when I used to write on myspace, the feedback was always that my foreign beer blogs were the most enjoyable. So I thought I would resume the tradition. I have had a few Leffes and this being my favourite beer, the effects are probably disproportionate.

I am in Hungary. (and this is not just for the hungarians reading ;-) i like it here. The people are really cheerful and friendly. It makes me reflect on the default nature of us Brits:
"How are you?!"
"Oh, mustnt grumble i spose.."
So why then do we? Is it the weather? Enthusiasm is so infectious. It leaves us feeling so happy and glad we encountered it. Sometimes we don't even know why.
Maybe it is the weather.
We drove here from Vienna. its the nearest international airport. Oh! And what a storm! I have never seen such! Two or more hours of gradually darkening hungarian sky lit every few seconds by a blinding flash that was momentarily brighter than day. Over and over again for hours.
And rain! Huge rain! Bug hot drops like pure passion from the sky.
Is this part of what makes the people?
Too tired tonight. Small devils of tiredness and fatigue are playing around the inside of my cranium. The vagaries of dealing with different cultures has depleted the reserves of my intellect.
Goodnight