Forty Two

In 2007 I was Forty Two. That was about three years after I’d stopped smoking, so the old lungs were still in recovery mode no doubt. I’ve just looked through my photos to get a picture of what was happening back then -

- that year we got a visit in Campbeltown from Australia by a wonderful man called Mikel Azure who I had got to know online, in the early days when the idea of developing friendships via that method was quite unusual. (We are still in touch via that horrific Facebook thing, which I have actually come to hate using these days, coz its famous Algorithms don’t know shit about shit).

And coming back to the present? Well, as I recently reported, one of my foster sons has also been visited this year by his girlfriend in America. That relationship developed online too, and is still going strong. He’s planning to visit her next year.

Plus ca change!

Everything does look very different today of course. The changes that had begun back even before the early Noughties, have sped up exponentially, and are now feeding with complete abandon off our willing supplied online data steroids. All part of a completely unplanned plan to take us to some unknown, and possibly unwelcome, destination. It’s gonna be a ride folks.

In the meantime I’m reading a book (The Way Home by Mark Boyle) about a fella in Ireland who eschewed every single form of modern technology (including electricity) in a life experiment that is far from the mere grand gesture of “Look at me being different!” Rather, it’s a very genuine and impressive examination of our modern world through the lens of a life fully lived, as though the modern world, to as large degree as can be imagined, didn’t exist. In the process he discovers physical community in a place where physical community is just about hanging on. He makes and grows everything by hand. He lives by the sun rather than a clock. And he writes the book with a good old fashioned pencil and paper, posting (snail posting!) the results to his editor.

Of course even that world is effected by modern life. His letters travel by the miracle of combustible engine for instance. But it’s a refreshing and challenging read which I recommend as a way of at least getting a clearer perspective, a little bit above and beyond the confusion which seems to be affecting us all to a lesser or greater degree.

Of course the answers to life, and how we should live it, and if we can carry on living it, are multiple and complex. There is no final answer to everything.

Well…apart from the Forty Two one, announced a few years back by Deep Thought, with a little help from Douglas Adams, after seven and a half million years of, um, deep thought.

Anyway, excuse me, I’m off to destroy the printing presses, throw my Laptop into hell fire, and stand bravely before the throne of Ai to announce my resignation from the land of the barely living.

Ach, no I’m not. This is the only stab at life we get, and I’m going to eke out every last morsel of preciousness I can from the privilege, albeit very haphazardly and imperfectly.

Life was a very messy process seventeen years ago, and nothing has really changed.

Plus ca change! Je ne regrette rien!


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