Gabriella – Part One

By Aethelred Wong

This is the time of year when the trees are shedding their last leaves, and the days are nothing but grey skies and falling rain. The gloom this makes me feel, is my reminder that the world I once knew has gone. All I believed in, all that gave meaning to my life, was snatched away less than a year ago by events so bizarre, so terrifying, so evil, that for me to even try to speak of them is painful almost beyond words. But speak of them I now must, else I’ll go irrevocably mad.

What I will tell, is mainly of Gabriella, a good friend of many years. When first we met we fell in love, and quite madly. After some months our passion ebbed, but we remained good friends, and met regularly for dinner, our having always lots to talk about, including about the men with whom Gabriella had affairs after me.

I often wished, though, that she didn’t talk of these affairs so often, and in such intimate detail. However, any irritation I felt, was tempered by the fact that Gabriella’s affairs with other men, lasted not nearly as long as ours had.

She explained that she was finding men increasingly unsatisfying as lovers. Perhaps, she thought, this was because men are at heart little boys, and thus don’t have the capacity to engage in the manifold dimensions and expressions of sensuality and eroticism in the bedroom beyond the genital; or to realise that there are more things in life than work, football, and cars.

I, for my part, while not having affairs with as many women post-Gabriella, as she had affairs with men post-me, did find my post-Gabriella affairs disappointing. The post-Gabriella women just didn’t compare with Gabriella. Hence, whenever making love with any of them, I thought only of Gabriella throughout.

I felt this not without significance. So when Gabriella spoke of her disappointments with the men after me, I hoped we might take up again our romance. However, I put this hope aside when Gabriella spoke of her finding certain women attractive, and that she might therefore seek women as lovers. She began going to all-woman bars, where she did meet women who showed interest. When last I saw Gabriella, she said this hadn’t yet led to anything further, but she was optimistic.

Some weeks after this meeting, I got a call from Gabriella’s landlord. Where was she, he wanted to know. Her rent was long overdue and she wasn’t answering her door. I said I would ask around. I called Gabriella’s number at home, but no answer. I phoned her boss who said he’d fired her after she hadn’t appeared for work in several weeks. My calls to her friends I knew of, yielded nothing. Since Gabriella had been brought up an orphan in an orphanage, she had no parents I could call, nor siblings.

I did, though, still have a key to Gabriella’s apartment. I let myself into it, to see if it had clues to her whereabouts. At first I found little of interest, apart from business cards with names I didn’t recognise. I pocketed the cards. They had phone numbers I might call.

Then I saw Gabriella’s diaries. Due to the circumstances, I felt I should at least peruse them, particularly the more recent entries, some of which I found of interest. Some extracts:

September 5th, 2008:

Went this evening to yet another woman’s bar, this time Jasmine’s. Was sitting at the bar drinking a white wine when a woman (what else?) sat beside me. She ordered from the barwoman a white wine like mine, then began making conversation with me. Said her name is Gudrun, had just finished work, and likes coming to Jasmine’s.

While Gudrun talks, I note how striking she looks. Stunning in fact. Very tall – well over six feet, dressed all in black, and immaculately, dazzlingly, and………expensively, for her earings, by the way they sparkle, must surely be made of diamonds. So too her necklace and its broach just below her white throat. Her neck-length, straight, very black hair, frames perfectly her sculpted exquisite face. Her bright-red lipsticked mouth brings out vividly the whiteness of her porcelain-like skin. Her body, while slender, somehow radiates strength. Her sleekly muscled arms end in long, almost claw-like hands and fingers, with red-painted long nails.

Gudrun has the strangest eyes – green, flecked with yellow, expressionless. Sort of like a cat’s. They bore into me, and it’s like they see all my secrets

The things Gudrun talks about are so fascinating, so brilliant. There’s nothing she seems not to know, no-where she seems not to have been, no-one famous she seems not to have met. Next to her I feel a fool. I say hardly anything because anything I say would sound foolish. I just nod, and say aha and yes while Gudrun talks, and her green-yellow cat eyes fix me with their gaze.

While she talked I must have entered a timeless zone, because, before I knew it, two hours had passed. Then Gudrun said she must leave. She gave me her number and said I must call her soon so we could arrange a dinner date, for she so wanted to see me again. When she said this I felt both excitement and fear. So under her power did I feel, that for me not to call her, and soon, wasn’t an option.

We left Jasmine’s together. Just before we parted on the street Gudrun reached to the back of my head, pulled me to her, and kissed me. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a passionate kiss, on the lips, a long kiss. My legs became weak. I almost collapsed. Then, suddenly, Gudrun was gone.

September 8th, 2008:

Today I felt brave enough to call Gudrun about the dinner date she wants. But then, I want it too, the dinner date, desperately, yes desperately, for there hasn’t been a moment since Gudrun’s kiss on the street when I haven’t thought about her and that kiss.

I’ve dreamed of Gudrun at night too. In one dream, I was flying through the air with her, and looking down at a quaint old town somewhere in central Europe. I understood it was the seventeenth century. Why this dream, and why the seventeenth century? Perhaps because of how Gudrun spoke when at Jasmine’s. I remember now that she sounded sort of old-fashioned, like how people may have spoken in the seventeenth century.

In another dream, Gudrun and I were kissing in the way she kissed me when we left Jasmine’s. As I awoke, I was looking up at the face of a woman standing over me. It was dark so I couldn’t see her properly. The woman said nothing and immediately vanished. Was she Gudrun? A waking dream it must have been, but frightening.

When I phoned Gudrun to arrange the dinner date, she said she wanted us to go to Heinrich’s. It’ll be this Saturday evening. I haven’t before been to Heinrich’s because I’ve heard it costs a lot to eat there. It’s a restaurant at the top of a very high tower, far and away the highest structure in town. Heinrich’s is also one of those restaurants which rotates slowly all the time. Gudrun said for me not to worry about costs. She would pay for me. I said she shouldn’t, but she insisted. I can’t wait for Saturday.

September 15th, 2008:

Today is Monday. Can it have been only Saturday, just two nights ago, that I met with Gudrun at Heinrich’s? Seems years since. Throughout Saturday morning and afternoon I was in such a tizzy. However, I had expected I would be, for I was already daring to think that Gudrun would be THE ONE for me. But, would I be THE ONE for her? I doubted it, for I saw when we talked at Jasmine’s, that, next to her, I was a frump.

For one thing, Gudrun, from the way she looks, is much younger than I. She would be thirty-five at most, and likely younger, whereas I’m almost fifty, and think I look it. On the other hand, the many much-younger men with whom I’ve had love-affairs, have disagreed. Darling Gabriella, they would say, you are the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world. But then, I’ve found that men will say anything when talking me into bed.

I was still in a tizzy when I left my apartment on Saturday evening for Heinrich’s. I arrived a little early, so had to wait by the elevator for Gudrun to arrive. When she did, she seemed to me even more dazzling, even more breathtakingly alluring, than at Jasmine’s. In comparison, I felt even more the frump, even though, in preparation for the evening, I’d done all to enhance whatever beauty I have.

We entered the foyer of Heinrich’s after our six-hundred foot ascent in the elevator. The maître d’, who Gudrun seemed to know, ushered us into the restaurant and to our table. I looked around and saw why Heinrich’s would be expensive. The other patrons looked opulent. A string quartet was playing Vivaldi. The restaurant, as advertised, was rotating slowly, I could tell. Thus by the evening’s end I had seen all around, from high above, the downtown city twinkling below, and the black ocean beyond the city’s docks.

Gudrun ordered a bottle of champagne for us to share. For the main course I ordered fish. Gudrun ordered the thickest of steaks and told our waiter that it must be done so rare, as hardly to be cooked at all.

This evening I wanted Gudrun to talk of herself, for, while she’d talked brilliantly and knowledgeably at Jasmine’s, it had been about where she’d been, who she knew, what she thought. She hadn’t talked of her childhood, or of her father and mother, or of any brothers or sisters, or of her home, or of a spouse or lover, or of children, or what work she did.

When I tried asking Gudrun about herself and what she does, she responded by asking me about myself and what I do. Hypnotised by her green-yellow cat-eyes, and my tongue beginning to be loosened by the champagne, I gushed forth about myself and about my job and how I’m turned off men because they’re so silly and how I now want a woman to love instead of a man, and all of that.

As I talked, Gudrun nodded and made sympathetic noises. She said how she, too, has been turned off by men, finding them as silly as do I. She also, she said, is looking for a woman to love, and hoped that, in me, she has found her. When I heard this, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, for Gudrun weaves an erotic spell over me that no man ever has, not even close. The truth is, I’m in love with her already, truly madly deeply.

So in love with Gudrun am I, that I’m even entranced by the memory of how she ate her steak at Heinrich’s – the very thick steak she wanted done so rare, as hardly to be cooked at all.

I did at the time, though, think odd, Gudrun’s asking for an almost-raw steak. And I did think odder still, how she ate her steak when it arrived. She tore at it as a wild animal might. It was gone in less than a minute. However, she ate the other food which came with the steak – like the potatoes and the salad and the veggies and the bread – slowly in the normal way.

As I reflected on the passion with which Gudrun had eaten her almost-raw steak, I wondered if this bespoke a raw passionate nature overall. I experienced a frisson at the thought. As the evening wore on and I drank more champagne I opened myself more to Gudrun, and she opened herself more to me.

There came the moment when everything went quiet. Over our table I reached out to Gudrun and she reached out to me. Our hands locked. I looked into her eyes, and she looked into mine. Come home with me Gabriella, Gudrun whispered, the night is still young. I will show you secrets you never dreamed.

Gabriella’s story will continue next time…….

John Jnr, Brad, and Yvonne

By John Togodumnus

I do apologise for the quite long time between my last piece and this one. The truth is, I’ve been depressed, and when I’m depressed I can’t write. I’ve much to be depressed about, for I worry no end about my two boys. I’d spoken of them briefly in my previous piece on this site, about John Jnr, the executive investment banker, and Brad, the professional NFL linebacker, and how I hadn’t heard from them in more than three years.

I’ve sent e-mails, and left telephone messages, but there’s no response. This is terribly hurtful, for I’m, after all, their father. Absent replies from John Jnr and Brad, I’m forced to surf the net for news of them. I do so with trepidation, for I fear seeing the sort of bad news that every father dreads.

Please understand, John Jnr and Brad are, deep down, good boys. It’s just that each had a troubled boyhood over which they had no control, and which would have crushed them had they been merely ordinary. Somehow they transcended their circumstances and made something of their lives. How many other fathers with two sons can boast of having one who’s an executive in investment banking, and on Wall Street of all places; and the other son a professional football player in the NFL?

Of the two, it was John Jnr who was the most troublesome when growing up. He had this need to inflict pain on children smaller than him. And not only on smaller children, but on frogs too, which he would catch, then blow up by inserting lighted firecrackers into them. I found this deeply disturbing. With a cane, I would beat John Jnr till he bled, to make him see how cruel he was. Instead, it only made him crueller and more rebellious. However, he still achieved high enough marks at high school to go to the University, where he studied finance.

John Jnr began drinking heavily and partying at the University. He would borrow my car and arrive home drunk in the wee hours. One morning at about 3.00 am, a terrible noise from the garage awoke me. Upon going downstairs I beheld that John Jnr had crashed my car into the garage door. When I berated him, he raised his fists and challenged me to go one-on-one with him, mano a mano. What could I do but oblige. Some minutes later, I was unconscious on the floor, with a broken nose and jaw and fractured eye-socket. John Jnr had got his revenge for the beatings I’d given him when he was small.

When I was in the hospital someone called the police. However, I persuaded them to let things be. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that John Jnr would have been grateful for this, and to be at least a little bit contrite for beating up his old father? But, not a bit of it.

As for Brad, he, too, drank and partied when at the University, which, by the way, he had much difficulty getting into because – not to put too fine a point on it – he always was a bit thick.

A need to emulate the derring-do of his older brother may be why Brad one night held up a gas station. That there was no money in the till for him to take, was why I – as Brad’s father, and a father who was a respected professor to boot – was able to persuade the police not to prosecute him. It was a silly student prank, I said. The boy meant no harm, I said. Unlike as with John Jnr, Brad did - at least for a while – seem somewhat grateful to me for keeping him out of jail. He has always had a sweet nature, has Brad.

I’ll now speak of John Jr’s and Brad’s mother, my former wife, Yvonne, who, as I’d told in my previous piece, had run off with her gym instructor. It was a bolt out of the blue you might say, for I’d thought we had the ideal marriage. Yvonne was always very adoring of me and the boys. In our moments of conjugal intimacy, she would say how she loved me because of my brains and intellect. She loved intellectual men, she always said, not the brainless ones with the big muscles. Yet it was her brainless big-muscled gym instructor who she ran off with.

Yvonne did leave clues that she may not have been quite the adoring perfect-faculty-wife as she appeared – clues I should have picked up on. When I drove her anywhere, she would, at red lights, gaze intently at any muscled bronzed youth who crossed our view. I did notice this, but thought nothing. At parties at our home, Yvonne would flirt, often outrageously, with many of the well-muscled male youths there, who were the friends of John Jnr and Brad. Again I noticed, but thought nothing. The muscled male youths at our parties obviously liked the attentions of Yvonne, for she always was, and still is, alluring to men of whatever age. She always worked out in the gym, and it showed in her perfectly sculpted body.

Yvonne’s physical allure blinded me to the reality that we never did have much in common. Despite her saying how she loved intellectual men like me, she had no intellectual or cultural interests, unless you call listening to Britney Spears a cultural interest. I never noticed Yvonne reading a book of any kind, and she probably never had, judging on our conversations. She read, as far as I could see, only magazines like the National Enquirer and People.

You’ll now understand that for us to have had a mutually stimulating conversation was impossible. I didn’t much care because I had lots of colleagues with whom to have stimulating conversations. However, although my conversations with Yvonne, other than those during our transports of conjugal passion (but even then) bored me, I bored her too, as she told me when she moved out of our home.

It was only after our divorce that I learned little-by-little from various sources, what Yvonne had got up to when I was out-of-town, which was necessarily often. I learned of the men who took her out dining and dancing at the poshest establishments, and who, after bringing her back to our home at midnight, would only re-emerge from it at six the next morning.

I do realise this won’t seem inordinately shocking to jaded twenty-first century palettes. But consider the parties, of which I was at the time unaware, which took place in our home during my absences, and at which one hundred people and more (our’s was a large house) would attend. I learned from the most reliable of sources that what didn’t go on at these parties, and what wasn’t eaten, drunk, or smoked there, wasn’t worth thinking about.

There was the party where Yvonne, filled with drink, and dressed in only the skimpiest of see-through negligees, was dancing on a table. Then a young man, equally filled with drink, caught her and began kissing her body in full view of everyone. All the while, Yvonne screamed and laughed. Then the young man carried her upstairs to our bedroom, where they stayed nearly an hour before coming down again to drink and dance.

To another of her parties, Yvonne invited a prostitute to see which of them would wear out the most young men in a single night. When dawn came, the prostitute was completely worn out after her twenty-fifth man. Yvonne far outdid the prostitute, by continuing to pleasure men until almost mid-day.

To add insult to my injury, John Jnr and Brad had appeared to attend all these parties. Also, John Jnr supplied the prostitute who Yvonne invited to the party where she wore out all those men.

My precious boys, John Jnr and Brad. I cannot bear to think of the irrevocable emotional trauma they must have suffered, through their mother’s exposing them to such abominations. Can you wonder at John Jnr’s lack of remorse at what he did to the frogs, and to me, given his mother’s equal lack of remorse at what she did to me? Can you wonder at the confusion created in the mind of the especially impressionable Brad, that would cause him to try robbing a gas station? And not to speak of John Jr’s and Brad’s own compulsive partying and drinking.

Writing all this has upset me, so I must stop. I’ll continue another time, when I’m emotionally able to.

Fanny and John

He saw the film, “Bright Star”, the other night which he quite liked. Coming from him, this is praise indeed, for it’s a long time since he saw a film he as much as even half-liked. Is it because as he becomes older, his senses become more jaded, or he becomes more judgemental, or more cynical?

Whatever the reason, he doesn’t like almost any film which comes out nowadays.

He’s been to so many films in his life that he sees immediately where the film-maker filched stuff from movies which few of the current generation of film-goers will have seen, and so won’t recognize what the film-maker filched. For instance, the opening credits of “Bright Star” have as a musical background, an a capella voice rendition of the third movement of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds (K 361), which he immediately remembered was the background piece in a scene in the film, Amadeus, made in 1984.

Of course he can’t prove that Jane Campion (Bright Star’s director) filched from Amadeus the idea of having Mozart’s Serenade for Winds in “Bright Star”, but he feels this was so.

You may, dear reader, be amazed that he would remember so clearly, a scene (such as the above) from a film he saw twenty-five years ago. But twenty-five years ago seems to him little more than yesterday. However, when he saw Amadeus in 1984, twenty-five years before that, would, to him, have seemed a long, long time ago.

He’s sure this disparity in perception of passing time has to do with the stage of life he’s in. Twenty-five years before 1984, he was a teen, and so a long way removed from the forty-something he was in 1984. But the forty-something he was then, is almost the same as the sixty-something he is now. Or so he likes to think.

Now comes the depressing bit: twenty-five years hence – an interval of time he now experiences as almost nothing – he’ll be long dead.

Funny thing, time. Imagine a germ or some-such, which lives for, say, two minutes. Two minutes for this little germ will therefore feel the same as eighty years for you. But you, looking at this little germ, will see its entire life-span as an almost simultaneous event.

Back now to “Bright Star”. It is, if you didn’t know before, about the romance of John Keats (a poet, and a good one) and Fanny Brawne. Each was very different from the other. While John was a poet through and through, Fanny was anything but, being more interested in dressmaking.

However, having met John, Fanny discovered she did like poetry after all, so much so that, if the film is to be believed, she spent much of her time with John, and even when not, dreamily reciting his poetry. John, however, appeared not to become interested in dressmaking.

To give John his due, he had, in addition to composing poetry and romancing Fanny, to deal with a brother dying of consumption. And John, himself, also developed consumption, and thus, while reciting his poems to Fanny, he was always coughing. He had a lot on his plate one way and another.

John not only had consumption (which, like his brother’s, was terminal), he also had no money.  Thus he wasn’t the best marriage prospect for a young lady. This didn’t put off Fanny, though, for reasons likely contained in these first two stanzas of John’s poem, “Endymion”, from which Fanny and John recite throughout “Bright Star”:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways::
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.

John’s companion, Charles Brown, tried talking John out of his romance with Fanny, for he saw no good coming out of it. It could only end in marriage, and John would be so consumed in family domesticity that his poetic genius would wither. After the burning out of passion, Fanny would have become exasperated at being the family’s breadwinner, and would have told John, “Go out and get a proper job instead of laying about all day writing soppy poems”.

It was perhaps, then, a blessing in disguise for John (and for Fanny) that he died when he did (at only 25). When we read his poems we can only marvel that they were written by such a young man, and under such dire conditions. Where did John’s genius come from? we can only wonder.

Togodumnus on Dawkins and Evolution

Phoggy Days Phoggy Nights is pleased to introduce a guest web-logger, Professor John Togodumnus, a distinguished astrophysicist and philosopher, who, during his career, taught at many of the world’s most illustrious universities.

His piece which follows, about Richard Dawkins and Evolution, and written exclusively for Phoggy Days Phoggy Nights, is the first of two parts which Professor Togodumnus wrote on this topic.

***

Hi. My name is John Togodumnus. But, unlike as Phillip just did, I leave out the “Professor” bit when introducing myself, because, not only am I – as Phillip implied – retired from academe, I now write and say things I wouldn’t have when still an active professor with a mortgaged house to pay off, as well as a wife and two sons to support. You see, any straying from the academic Party Line, any embracing of academic unorthodoxy, would have meant for me, if not dismissal, then at least the plateauing of my career, not to speak of obloquy and ridicule.

Had I had no family I could have borne this. But I needed to think particularly of my two boys, who would have been taunted about their father by playmates in the schoolyard, and even bullied. Fortunately, my boys were spared this through my eschewing academic unorthodoxy. Thus they were able happily to grow into the sort of young men to make any father proud.

When last I heard, my oldest, John Jnr, was an up-and-coming executive in an investment bank; and my younger, Brad, was a professional footballer in the NFL – a linebacker so I believe. That I’ve heard from neither for three years and more, I fully understand, for young career-professionals, like John Jnr and Brad, have, today, well-nigh no spare time to speak with their fathers, let alone do anything else outside of work.

As for my wife (now former wife) Yvonne, she left me some time ago for her gym instructor, with whom she still lives, thus relieving me of the requirement to pay alimony. Yvonne did explain when she left, that she’d found me so insufferable – what with my constant professor-talk – that she would have gone insane had she continued living with me. For Yvonne’s honesty, I did thank her.

I realise all this has little to do with Richard Dawkins and Evolution. But I told of it because I want you, dear reader, to know absolutely that what I say about Dawkins and Evolution is the unvarnished truth, for I uniquely have nothing to fear by telling it.

What’s Dawkins been doing lately? Well, in response to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal by Karen Armstrong, who said we need God in order to grasp the wonder of our existence, Dawkins wrote that we need only Evolution to grasp the wonder of our existence. Thus Evolution makes God unnecessary. Evolution, said Dawkins, “…….is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip…………God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place………”. Nothing surprising here, if you’ve before read Dawkins.

And, if you’ve before read Dawkins, you’ll know how brilliant and erudite a man he is; and how elegant and persuasive a writer he is in the cause of the love-of-his-life, Evolution; and that, in addition to crusading for Evolution, Dawkins also crusades for Atheism, thus driving away from acceptance of Evolution, religious literalists (fundamentalists) – particularly the Christian – who are the very ones he would wish to pursuade that Evolution is true. Hence Dawkins preaches mainly to the already-converted (to Evolution, that is).

Considering that Dawkins is (or was) the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University – therefore making it his paid job to sell Evolution (part and parcel of Science) to the unbelieving masses – why would Dawkins, by frightening religious literalists away from Evolution rather than reaching out to them, deliberately sabotage what he’s paid to do? Dawkins seems to have such a bee in his bonnet about the personal god of the religious literalist, that one wonders what’s going on in his psyche.

Given that Dawkins crusades for Atheism with the single-mindedness of the religious literalist – making Atheism, in effect, just another religion – could it be that he sees in the religious literalist a mirror image of himself, and hates what he sees? Or could it be that, by deliberately becoming a controversial figure through his crusade for Atheism, Dawkins gets more people to buy his books, and he therefore makes more money, thus showing there is method in his madness?

Whatever the answer, would not Dawkins – given his erudition – know in his heart-of-hearts that beliefs in both an up-close-and-personal god and in Evolution, need not be incompatible? as shown by the beliefs of scientists like Francis S Collins; and by the beliefs of churchmen like……wait for it…….. the Pope, given that the Vatican – admittedly after much kicking and screaming – now officially accepts Evolution.

And would not Dawkins know in his heart-of-hearts that an acceptance of Evolution by a religious literalist of the more fanatical ilk, would inevitably ameliorate his religious fanaticism? And would not Dawkins know in his heart-of-hearts that any comfort in Evolution felt by a believer in it, can never equal the comfort felt by a believer in a god who listens to his prayers?

Dawkins, in “The God Delusion”, wrote that “…..if this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down……..”. But, since religious readers with this degree of mutability will be few, might not  ”The God Delusion” have been better titled “The Dawkins Delusion” ?

***

As mentioned in the introduction, this was the first of two pieces Professor Togodumnus wrote on this topic. Please do keep checking in for Part Two. It will appear soon.

The Great Depression

His life is in grave danger, but speak out he must.

It all began some weeks ago when he noticed the numbers of visitors to this blog sharply increasing. Instead of the usual two or three a day, there were now between 30 and 60. At first he thought this a mere aberration – like snowflurries in July – which would quickly go away. But the large numbers of visitors continued, day-in, day-out.

Why would what he said be of such sudden interest to so many? he wondered, for, despite sometimes deluding himself that some of what he writes isn’t bad, he knows deep down that all which he writes is bilge. So then, why the sudden lust for bilge on the part of so many blog readers?

Examining his statcounter, he noted that almost none of the visitors appeared actually to read any of his stuff. They clicked in and almost immediately left. None came back. He noted also that three-quarters of the visitors were American. No surprise there, for all the obvious reasons. But, what in his blog attracted all these Americans?

He had a brainwave, and went into his WordPress stats to look at the internet searchwords the visitors had used. The previous 30 days showed the following (searchword, plus numbers of visitors using that searchword):

the great depression 257
stieglitz 46
great depression 44
buntzen lake 13
the great depression paintings 5
lsd colors 3
amazon jungle rocks 3
great deppression 3
stieglitz photos 3
hallucinogen paintings 3
burning bridge 2
more old less young 2
galapagos penguin 2
amazon jungle wind 2
pictures of the depression 2
great depression pictures 2
wine cheese and weed 2
great depression photos 2
the depression 2
1880s steamship 2
dmt brain damage 2
big simple looking houses 2
history images, great depression 2
lsd colours 2
cheese 2
great depression picture 2
the+great+depression 2
first steamship across the atlantic 2
amazon jungle 2
hallucinogen+mirror 1
درو باريمور 1
great american depression 1
lake anna picnic area 1
amazon hallucinogen painting 1
therianthropic cave painting 1
falling asleep computer 1
wine outside 1
upwardly mobile professions 1
lsd looking into mirror 1
body of steam ship 1
remote grey gardens 1
galapagos penguins 1
pulling weeds in a dream 1
anna maywong 1
acer computer 1
german great depression 1
1920 depression 1
beautiful women in bed 1
“the american wife” “laura bush” abortio 1
wine and cheese party 1

Using his pocket calculator, he ascertained that three quarters of the queries had to do with “depression”, and particularly “The Great Depression”, namely the economic one of the 1930s. That so many Americans would search for information about The Great Depression, which, after all, happened some time ago, and is therefore History, surprised him, given that Americans allegedly don’t know any History because they aren’t interested, or weren’t taught it in school.

That almost all these visitors didn’t stay to actually read anything, didn’t surprise him, since, apart from making an offhand reference to it, he hadn’t written anything about The Great Depression, or about well-nigh anything else to do with the search-words which had brought this swathe of visitors to Phoggy Days Phoggy Nights. But, since he’d inserted into his posts, images which had to do with most of the search-words (including “The Great Depression”), the visitors had obviously searched Google or Bing images, rather than text.

So, looking only for pictures, they weren’t likely to read anything he’d written, which was just as well, since, as he said before, all which he writes is bilge, and is therefore not worth reading.

Then, some days ago the swathes of visitors suddenly went away. It’s been like this ever since, with visitors now only two to three a day, as it always was. Why would Americans overnight lose all interest in The Great Depression? He would understand them gradually losing interest, but not overnight.

Then a thought came into his head. Someone unknown could have orchestrated these visits to frighten him. This person would have used different proxy servers when visiting Phoggy Days Phoggy Nights, to create an impression of hordes of visitors from all over America. Then this person would suddenly stop, so to make him think the visits had been orchestrated, which would make him very frightened. And it has.

Who would wish to frighten him? for he’s a harmless little fellow who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and who writes only bilge. However, he has in the past written on other blogs he’s owned, and written as comments on other people’s blogs, and written in e-mails, and said in conversations with others, things not necessarily complimentary about America, and those who rule it.

These not necessarily complimentary things he’s written and said, must have come to the attention of people working in certain offices in Langley Virginia, and Washington DC, and they’ve decided to frighten him into taking a more favourable view of America, and those who rule it. Yes, there can be no other explanation.

So, not only is this blog, and the other ones he has, now under surveillance, but he, himself, is too, since he’s heard sounds when speaking on his telephone, which bespeak an eavesdropper.

Fortunately,  having no friends, he doesn’t get calls from people other than market surveyors, or hawkers of services. So the subject of America and those who rule it, is unlikely to come up. But, when now walking down a street, he looks around to see if he’s followed by suspicious-looking men. And when driving his car, he checks his rearview mirror to see if he’s followed by suspicious-looking cars.

Mindful of state-sanctioned assassinations and abductions, he no longer opens his front door to strangers, and, when home at night, takes care, by not looking out a window from a lighted room, not to be an easy target for sharpshooters outside. When coming to and from his house at night, he crawls in and out of a  bedroom window to keep potential killers or abductors guessing. Despite these precautions, he goes to bed each night in terror, fearing a three a.m knock on his front door, or the shattering of his windows from bullets.

How this will end, he doesn’t know. But, if you who are reading this, work in the previously-mentioned offices in Langley Virginia, or Washington DC, he would like to assure you that anything he’s written or said, which wasn’t necessarily complimentary about America or those who rule it, he wrote or said out of deep-seated love.

In fact, as he writes this, he realises he’s never loved America, and those who rule it, more than he does right now.

What Did Latin Come Out Of?

He’ll today continue to speak of Latin, which, if you remember from last time, he took when at senior school.

His Latin textbook, “Latin for Today”, in its introduction, sketched out how Latin spread:

Latin gets its name from Latium, a small district south of the Tiber, in which Rome was situated and to which Latin was originally confined. As the Romans began their career of conquest, they spread their language, and Latin became the language used not only throughout Italy but also in France and Spain and the other countries near the Mediterranean.

All spoken languages are constantly undergoing changes. The English we speak today is not the same as the English spoken five hundred years ago. So Latin, as used in Italy, France, Spain, and elsewhere, underwent changes as the centuries passed, and finally it became Italian in Italy, French in France, Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, and Rumanian in Rumania. Today these modern languages plainly show direct descent from Latin; indeed, they are derived from from the language of the Romans. “Rumanian” is simply the word “Roman” slightly changed.

But, is it true that Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Rumanian (the Romance languages) grew out of Latin, the language of Rome, which had incorporated Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and Rumania into its empire? What about the other lands of the Roman empire, like Britain, the Netherlands, North Africa, the middle east, Turkey, and Greece? Why don’t their peoples today speak Romance languages?

These questions, and others, are asked with passion by MJ Harper, in his book, “The History of Britain Revealed – The Shocking Truth About the English Language”. Harper finds it singular that today’s Romance languages are more like each other, than Latin. This wouldn’t be, had they all sprung out of Latin.

MJ Harper finds it not unimportant that today’s Romance language-speakers (well, the ones outside South America) live in countries which are contiguous, and that the closeness of any two Romance languages mirrors geography. Thus:

Portuguese resembles Spanish more than any other language; French resembles Occitan more than any other; Occitan resembles Catalan, Catalan resembles Spanish and so forth. So which was the Ur-language? Can’t tell; it could be any of them. Or it could be a language which has long since disappeared. But the original language cannot have been Latin. All of the Romance languages, even Portuguese and Italian, resemble one another more than any of them resemble Latin, and do so by a wide margin.

If today’s Romance languages had grown out of Latin, they would be more like Latin and less like each other, because:

…….languages that were once the same or merely regional dialects of one another must drift further and further apart over time in an unpredictable and multivariate manner. There’s no mechanism that we know of that would allow two such languages to evolve side-by-side in the same direction, because any innovation – in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, pronunciation – will be specific to one language and will not occur in the other language. The two languages must over time become more and more different, in more and more different ways.

So, that clears that up.

MJ Harper says Latin isn’t a natural language, since, when written, it:

……takes up half the space of written Italian or written French (or written English, German, or any natural European language). Since Latin appears to have come into existence in the first half of the first millennium BC, which was the time when alphabets were first spreading through the Mediterranean basin, it seems a reasonable working hypothesis to assume that Latin was originally a shorthand compiled by Italian speakers for the purpose of written communication………

This explains why the vocabularies of Latin and modern Italian are so similar, despite the two languages being grammatically and syntactically so distant.

In any case, Latin couldn’t have displaced the other Romance languages in the relevant lands of the Roman empire because, absent extermination or ethnic cleansing, foreign languages don’t displace the native languages of other lands.

Since there is no evidence that the Romans conquerors exterminated or ethnically cleansed the peoples of France, Italy, the Iberian penninsula, or Rumania, it can safely be assumed that today’s Romance languages didn’t come out of Latin.

If anything it was the other way around, because, it being likely a written shorthand for Italian, Latin came out of one or more of the other Romance languages.

It all goes to show, doesn’t it?

Latin For Today

His reading of Robert Graves’s “Claudius the God” (which he spoke of last time), has reminded him that when at senior (high) school he took Latin, which allegedly was the language Romans spoke when Rome was big. He didn’t at all like learning Latin because, it being a dead language, what was the point of learning it?

But he was told that knowing Latin would enable him to learn French, Spanish, or Italian more easily than if he didn’t know Latin. Also, since many English words have Latin roots, he would remember more easily what these English words meant, and this would expand his English vocabulary.

He felt, though, it would waste less time simply to learn French, Spanish, or Italian directly, rather than learn Latin, and then, after that, learn French, Spanish, or Italian. As for expanding his English vocabulary, he can think of only a handful of words at most, that are part of his everyday vocabulary because he took Latin – words like “impecunious” (from the Latin “pecunia”) and “puerile” (from the Latin “puer”).

Even though “impecunious” and “puerile” are part of his vocabulary, he never dares say them when speaking with others, because, first, those others won’t likely know what “impecunious” or “puerile” mean; and, second (and most important) those others would think him strange were he to say them. You see, although he is strange, he wishes others not to know this.

Despite his not wishing to take Latin, he was told he must. So Latin he took, but only for three years because he was so terrible at it, his school wouldn’t let him continue. However, when, fairly recently, he was sifting through a jumble sale in someone’s front yard, and he saw an old book called “Latin for Today”, he remembered almost immediately that it was the very textbook, and the very edition, from which he’d tried to learn Latin when in school fifty and more years ago in his Native Land, a landlocked British colony in the tropics, about as far away as one can get from where he now lives in North America. He was so glad to find “Latin for Today” because it was a precious link to his past, with which he has lost well-nigh all links.

As he looks at the old green hardbacked cover of “Latin for Today” he goes down a time-tunnel to 1957, to the classroom of Mr Erskine, his Latin teacher. Mr Erskine (he can see him now) was an elderly gentleman from Scotland, a patient man with a gentle Scottish (of course) accent. He wishes he’d worked harder in Mr Erskine’s class. Now it’s too late, but he at least does have “Latin for Today” by which to remember that time, and Mr Erskine.

He sees at the bottom of “Latin for Today”s preface, the words “March 1932″. This must be when this edition was published. So, even in 1957, he was learning Latin from a textbook already twenty-five years old. Thus, the today for which “Latin or Today” originally applied, may only have been the today of 1932, or, at a stretch, 1957, when he began taking Latin in Mr Erskine’s class.

So, were “Latin for Today” still to be used by today’s Latin learners, it might best be retitled “Latin for Yesterday”.

Anyway, the introduction to “Latin for Today” says:

In studying Latin you are studying the language of the ancient Romans, a people to whom we owe a great part of our modern civilization and a still greater part of our English language.

Rome was once only a little settlement on a hill by the Tiber, founded there seven hundred and fifty three years before Christ. These early Romans lived in very primitive houses. They had to fight against warlike neighbours for their very existence, but gradually they conquered their neighbours and extended their territories. During the first two hundred and fifty years, when kings ruled Rome, only a small district around Rome was conquered. But after 500 B.C., when Rome had become a republic, her power spread more rapidly. By the year 250 B.C. the Romans had conquered all Italy. It was during this period that there were performed those deeds of valour, of endurance, of self-sacrifice, of devotion to country, that have made the names of the old Roman heroes familiar to all succeeding generations, including our own……….

By the time of Caesar they had gained control of all the lands across the Mediterranean. Finally their empire included all of the world that was then civilized. Their dominion extended from the North Sea to the Desert of Sahara, and from the Atlantic Ocean to Persia and India. Never before had so many nations been ruled by one government. Never before, or since, was so great a part of the civilized world under one government……..

Would the tone of this introduction to “Latin for Today”, written in 1932, and resonating an admiration for the expansionist Roman empire and its martial values, still be appropriate for the sensitivities of today’s youthful learners?

The introduction says that the Roman empire included “…….all of the world that was then civilized…….”. But weren’t lands far, far away from Europe and the Mediterranean, and thus outside the Roman empire, like China and India, also “civilized” when the Romans were?

When In Rome……..

He’s been depressed lately, and was wondering why, because, what with the nice summer weather and all, and that nothing catastrophic has happened to him, what is there to get depressed about? Could his depression be because, despite his frequenting the supermarket where he saw Jessica Lange some weeks ago, he hasn’t again seen her, so he could offer to carry her groceries?

He was, admittedly, disappointed the first few times when he went back, and Jessica wasn’t there, for he really thought that should he carry her groceries to her car, she would invite him back to her house for a cup of tea and a chat, and perhaps more. But then, what if she had, and Sam Shepard walked in? No, it’s best that Jessica didn’t turn up again, for he wouldn’t wish to confront a jealous Sam Shepard.

He thinks most likely why he’s been depressed is that he hasn’t written anything lately. He always finds that, after writing something, then posting it on one of his blogs, he feels better, for he has created something, even though no-one will read what he wrote because they think it piffle. The important thing is that he doesn’t think it piffle.

So, it’s to escape feeling depressed, that he’s writing this post, despite that he can’t think of anything compelling to write about, for his life is so boring. Like, he hasn’t been white-water rafting, or parachuting out of aeroplanes, or fighting Al Qaeda  – the sorts of stuff done by men, tough bronzed gimlet-eyed men with designer stubble, and cigarette dangling insouciantly from side of mouth – who hammer out their accounts of their derring-do via a much-used typewriter inside a sweltering tent at night in a jungle or desert, and everyone later reads it in the New York Times.

He’s of the sort who would rather read about such derring-do in the New York Times, than do the derring-do himself. You see, he’s always been so afraid. On the other hand he hasn’t yet got killed – which happens often to the types of men who are out there fighting Al Qaeda, and white-water rafting, and all of that.

Speaking of reading, he’s reading “Claudius the God” by Robert Graves. Each times he dips into it, he’s pulled into the Rome of two-thousand years ago. Happily, he can always escape it whenever he puts “Claudius the God” down, for Claudius’s Rome doesn’t sound like it was fun for those not of its ruling class, who weren’t able to escape  two-thousand years to the future whenever they got depressed.

Even were you of the ruling class, it wasn’t all a bed of roses, for, if you got too big for your boots, you were liable to be dispatched to the world of the hereafter, and a favourite means was poison. So, if you got too big for your boots, you needed to take care when eating supper.

Claudius therefore always had to watch his back…..and supper plate……..particularly during the reign of his nephew Caligula, whom he succeeded as emperor, for Caligula ordered men killed whenever he felt like it. Caligula, being also mad, had his horse appointed to the senate. This was quite something, for even the American senate, which is based on the old Roman one, doesn’t have any senators who are horses.

Only tough guys could rule Rome, so when Claudius, by nature a scholarly and sensitive soul, became emperor, he had at least to act tough. Consider his treatment of Cassius, who, inadvertently, had done Claudius a favour by murdering Caligula. Even so, Claudius summoned Cassius and said:

‘Cassius Chaerea, you are a man accustomed to obey orders. I am now your Commander–in Chief, whether I like it or not; and you must obey my orders, whether you like them or not. My decision is as follows: If you had done as Brutus did, killing a tyrant for the common good although you loved him personally, I should have applauded you; though I should have expected you, since you had broken your solemn oath of fidelity by that act, to die by your own hand.

But you planned the murder…….because of feelings of personal resentment; and such motives cannot earn my praise. Moreover, I understand that on no authority but your own, you sent Lupus to murder the Lady Caesona, and my wife the Lady Messalina, and myself too, if he could find me; and for that reason I shall not grant you the privilege of suicide. I shall have you executed like a common criminal.

It grieves me to do this, believe me. You have called me an idiot before the Senate, and have told your friends I deserve no mercy from their swords. It may be that you are right. But fool or no fool, I wish now to pay a tribute to your great services to Rome in the past. It was you who saved the Rhine bridges after the defeat of Varus, and my dear brother once commended you to me, in a letter, as the finest soldier serving under his command.

I only wish that this story could have a happier ending. I have no more to say. Goodbye.’

Claudius, in his memoirs, then writes that:

Cassius saluted without a word and was marched out to his death. I also gave orders for Lupus’s execution. It was very cold day, and Lupus, who had put off his military cloak so as not to get it blood-stained, began to shiver and complain of the cold. Cassius was ashamed for Lupus and said reprovingly, ‘A wolf should never complain of the cold’ (Lupus is the Latin for wolf).

But Lupus was weeping and seemed not to hear him. Cassius asked the soldier who was to act as executioner whether he had any previous practice in that trade.

‘No’, replied the soldier, ‘but I was a butcher in civil life.’

Cassius laughed and said: ‘That is very well. And now will you do me the favour of using my own sword on me? It is the one with which I killed Caligula.’

He was dispatched with a single stroke. Lupus was not so fortunate: when he was ordered to stretch out his neck, he did so timorously and then flinched at the blow, which caught him on the forehead. The executioner had to strike several times before he could finish him.

The moral of this is, obviously, that should you be unfortunate enough to be sentenced to death by having your head chopped off, keep absolutely still in the moments before the sword is swished.

What’s The New Generation Coming To?

He read recently in the New York Times, a piece which said in so many words, that at the University, you learn more and more about less and less, so you end up knowing hardly anything outside your own little specialty.

This is no doubt why – in the times before he became a recluse with no friends – when he would occasionally attend wine-and-cheese parties, he usually found them boring because those he spoke with there, spoke only of that which they were expert in. But if he changed topic and spoke of that which they weren’t expert in, then they weren’t interested.

Like, he might speak with, say, an engineer, and might say “my, fancy that” and “aha” in response to the engineer’s talk of cavitations, condensates, valve flow coefficients, and hastelloys.

Being now overwhelmed with boredom, he might then try to steer the conversation into history or economics or cricket or some such. But the engineer would evince no interest.

But then, because those he spoke with at wine-and-cheese parties had been narrowly educated (or trained) at the University, they would naturally have been  uninterested in anything outside their professional ken. He, on the other hand, having never gone to the University, has always been a Generalist – a jack of all trades and master of none.

However, it’s blog-keepers, too, who are uninterested in anything outside their ken, for their sites seem only for the delectation of readers with the same narrow interests of the blog’s keeper. So, to leave a comment which is outside the blog’s ideological orthodoxy, is bad etiquette.

In this connection, he read recently a piece on blog which a Jungian psychologist keeps, in which she talked of the social, psychological, and cultural crisis of today’s teens – a crisis caused by their obsession with their cell-phones, i-Phones, laptops, Blackberry’s, and their being slaves to the siren calls of mass advertising beamed at them from everywhere you can think. The result, thinks this psychologist, is stress and emotional maladjustment in teens as never before.

She thinks today’s teens no longer have time to smell the flowers, to dream leisurely during long summer days, to write poems and stories, to paint, to draw. Where will the next generation of writers come from? wails the Jungian psychologist. Where will this neglect and drying up of the creative spirit lead us all to?

It seemed to him that the Jungian psychologist wanted to go back to the past, or, more pertinently, her own past. He wondered why, for, who of sound mind would want to return to a past where – speaking now only of North America – people not “white” were severely discriminated against, where homosexuals were thrown in jail, where the lives of women were very circumscribed, where there were polio scares every year, where cars had no seat-belts, where before leaving a party you openly drank “one for the road”, where there was no internet, where hat-wearing “white” men in grey flannel suits made the rules and had the best jobs.

He could go on, but he trusts you get his point, which is that the past was authoritarian, conformist, intolerant, and much less safe.

It seemed to him also that the Jungian psychologist was (metaphorically) shaking her head, and saying in so many words, “What’s the new generation coming to?”. He remembers that when he himself was young, his mother and his father had shaken their heads and said, “What’s the new generation coming to?”. And old people he’s spoken with, had the same thing said to them by their elders. If you read Jane Austin, you’ll come across the same thing.

So there’s no reason to think that today’s teens won’t also, when old, shake their heads at the antics of the young, and say, “What’s the new generation coming to?” Saying this is simply what old people do.

As for today’s teens, while they have their own unique problems and stresses, are they any more onerous than the problems and stresses which those who grew up during the Great Depression had to bear? Or those which the generation which fought in World War Two had to bear? Or those which the Vietnam generation had to bear? As to the Vietnam generation, is there any (American) generation which had said of them more by their elders, “What’s the new generation coming to?”?.

So then, he put into a comment on the Jungian psychologist’s blogging piece, his above thoughts about the past and the generation gap. For levity, he added that anyone wishing to talk about how great the past is, should first turn off his air-conditioner. He thought the Jungian psychologist would appreciate what he’d written, and would at the very least smile at his little joke about the air-conditioner.

But, in her reply to his comment, the Jungian psychologist wrote that she was baffled by what he’d said; and she wrote it in a tone which he construed as ever-so-slightly hostile. As for his little joke about the air-conditioner, well, she seemed not to find it even remotely funny, and appeared confused by it. So, when he read her response to his comment he, too, was baffled.

But, it is only now – after having read the New York Times piece on the state of the University, with its academic disciplines isolated from any other – that he realises that the Jungian psychologist’s bafflement at his comments made sense. She, a product of the University, would naturally have thought only in terms of her discipline of Psychology. He, on the other hand, in his comments, had written in terms of History.

As for the Jungian psychologist’s not getting his little joke about the air-conditioner, she showed, in this respect, that she was normal, for no-one understands his attempts at humour, whether about air-conditioners or anything else.

Happy Trails

He apologises to his regular readers for not having written in this blog in a while. He has been writing, but it was a piece on another blog he keeps. Keeping more than one blog is yet more proof that he’s not normal. But he finds it so boring keeping only one blog, as normal people do. And, unlike normal people who write regularly two times a week or whatever, regardless of mood, he goes through spells when he writes lots of stuff. Then goes through spells when he writes nothing.

Each spell is like a rut, which he doesn’t have the energy to get out of. But he eventually does get out of the rut because he became bored. Then he gets into another rut, which he doesn’t get out of until he gets as bored in this other rut as he was in the last.

It’s not just with writing, it’s with everything. Like, quite long ago he taught himself to play the classical guitar. Over the next few years he played the guitar at every free moment, to the exclusion of all else. Then he got bored, and just stopped. Were he to try to play his guitar now, it would be pathetic because he’s forgotten everything.

His current rut, is regularly hiking along a forested trail alongside a beautiful lake near where he lives. He walks it almost every day now, because over this last winter he didn’t exercise (another rut) and got so out of shape that he knew he must do something, else he might have a heart-attack and die.

Being terribly afraid of dying, he began hiking this trail. At first he could barely make it back, so out of shape was he. Now, some months later, he can do it easily. He should, he knows, get out of his rut and find other trails. But this would take energy, so he’ll stick with this trail until he gets bored.

Hiking this trail enables him to meet the other people who hike it. This is for him good, for he is a recluse with no friends, and so with no-one to speak with. Writing this has made him think of the shabby old men he’s seen, who sit on park benches, rocking back and forth, while talking to people not there. No doubt this is because, like him, these old men are recluses with no friends. So, talking to people not there, is better than nothing.

He doesn’t think he, himself, has reached the point where, when in a public place and sitting anywhere there, he rocks back and forth and talks to people not there. But he’s not absolutely sure he doesn’t, because when he’s in a reverie in a public place and comes out of it, he sometimes notices people looking at him strangely. He supposes, then, that he  just could have been rocking back and forth and talking to someone not there.

The other hikers on the trail seem friendly, for many say “hi” when they pass him, and he says “hi” back. And, what’s more, many are girls. At first when these girl hikers said “hi”, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven – perhaps from a heart-attack – because, all his life, girls, when they did speak with him, said only, “get lost creep”, and “take your hands off me you animal”.

But these girl hikers when they pass him, may see merely an old man. So they just feel sorry for him, and see no harm in saying “hi”. He’s careful, though, never to say more than “hi” back, for, were he to say more, these girl hikers might well say “get lost creep”, and he absolutely wouldn’t want that.

Being himself so afraid of dying, and consequently mindful of how precious life is, he removes any snails he sees on the hiking path, off it, to prevent them being trodden on by other hikers. He pushes the snails on to a piece of paper he carries with him, and drops them in the adjacent foliage, where, he hopes, they’ll safely live out their lives. He may well be the only hiker who tries to save snails. But then, he’s very strange.

He also brings a bag of biscuit crumbs to feed to the robins and chickadees who run about, looking for food on the ground at the picnic-area turn-around point, where he sits at a picnic-table to rest before going back.

While sitting at the picnic-table, he takes care not to rock back and forth and talk to people not there………