Conspicuous Compulsion

 CONSPICUOUS COMPULSION

Addiction is a terrible affliction.  In most cases it'll not just harm the addict themselves, sometimes ending their life prematurely, but can often cause huge problems for the people around them, or even to complete strangers.  Clinical addiction is a disease that needs to be treated.

But when we say there's something we "can't do without" we don't usually refer to the kind of chemical dependency that addiction covers.  We mean things that feel as if they make our lives better in some way, be it exercise or chocolate, and there are times when those feelings become near obsessive, compulsions we can't shake off without a sense of having given up.  Over the past year of lockdowns and a life devoid of much in the way of social interaction I've found that having a few obsessions has been not just benign, but beneficial.  So here's four that have made my pandemic life a little bit better, helping to maintain my physical health, mental health, emotional health, and... whatever.

Firstly, with most of our entertainment now online, it would be easy to slip into full on couch potato mode and allow my fitness to decline.  I, like so many people nowadays, wear a step counter on my wrist, set to a target of eleven thousand steps each day.  I could easily accept that, with all the guidance telling me to stay at home and there not being anywhere to go anyway, I should accept that not hitting that target every day is inevitable.  I was forced to when  we were ill and had to self isolate.  But once I was able to get out again, and my fitness gradually came back, I soon regained the habit of wanting to hit my target.  Every day.  With the good weather we had in Spring and Summer it was no problem to get back into it, albeit less so in recent months.  

But I kept going because it's become an obsession.  Each day adds to the streak, and as that grows so does my determination to extend it to 365 consecutive days.  There are times when it becomes more chore than challenge, when it's cold and wet and there's not even a reason to go to the shop.  But I've kept it going, even if it means the hall carpet gets a battering some days, and that a few days ago I only hit the magic 11k figure about 23.45.  Obsession does that. 

My other must-do daily target is writing 750 words into the fittingly named website 750words.com.  That's something I've now done for over 1100 days in a row.  But with so little in my life to write about  it too was becoming a chore.  So I've upped the stakes.  I found a list of 365 (there's that number again) writing prompts, giving a daily suggestion from which to create a story or poem or description or, well, whatever you feel like writing.  I started on the first of January and already it's become an action I MUST undertake.  Each night I look at the next day's subject and start thinking about it.  Each day I am forced to think creatively, so use bits of my brain that might otherwise lie dormant.  The resulting prose and verse has been, shall we say, of inconsistent quality (OK, a lot of it's shite...), but in this case it really is the taking part that's more important than the winning.  

My emotional life is doing just fine, has perhaps even benefited from so much time at home, as Barbara and I have been reminded that we do quite like each other.  But you can't get everything you need from one person, so it's good I have this wee face in my life.

My daily life needs time with Zoe.  Be it as a playmate, a lapcat or a solid lump on my stomach in bed, Zoetime is another must-have.

Which leaves the whatever.  A bit of sweetness.  Most nights, before I go up and brush my teeth, a spoonful (or so...) of chocolate spread seems to find it's way from jar to mouth.  It's like I'm not involved in the process.   

Compulsion, obsession, Pavlovian habit, call it what you will, but it's what helps keep me fit and happy.  What do you do?

A beautiful mind

 

Until a few years ago, if you'd said the name Hedy Lamarr to me I'd have vaguely recalled a beautiful Hollywood actress of black and white movie days, and a running gag in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles.  Then I listened to the opening track of Findlay Napier's excellent album, VIP : Very Interesting Persons.  The title is 'Hedy Lamarr', the melody memorable, the lyrics simple.  

"You know your place, You're just another pretty face."

"Every time the lights shine down, you disappear"

"If only they'd seen beyond that silver screen."

The sleeve notes hint at the person behind the image, saying she invented the process which became Bluetooth and WiFi.  Clearly there was much, much more to Ms Lamarr than my scanty knowledge even hinted at.  So I did a bit of reading, watched a documentary, and felt sad for the frustrations she must have suffered in her life.

Lamarr, originally Hedwig Kiesler from Vienna, was once touted as the most beautiful woman in the world, a big name Hollywood star who never really got the roles her thespian talents deserved.  She achieved a major success as Delilah to Victor Mature's Sampson in 1949, but was mostly typecast as the femme fatale because of her East European accent and astonishing beauty (and her refusal to have sex with the powerful men who dominated the industry).  As the Napier lyric says, "too beautiful".

Bored with the limited demands acting made on her, she frequently turned to inventing.  Early in World War 2 she and composer George Antheil came up with a radio guidance technology for naval torpedoes that would be impossible for the enemy to jam.  But it wasn't adopted, partly because the  insular military was guilty of not-invented-here syndrome, partly because a (mere) woman was involved in it's origins.   Their invention would eventually be adopted in the fifties, and became the basis for the aforementioned protocols we all use now in our everyday lives.  She and George were finally, posthumously, inducted into the national Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

There is so much more to the remarkable Lamarr's life, but those frustrations I mentioned must have a huge influence on the way she saw the world.  Would such a major talent have had greater recognition in today's world?  Hollywood is still misogynistic at times, as the #MeToo revelations have shown, but has still seen huge improvements since the forties and fifties where the stars were so much more closely controlled by the studios.  It isn't hard to imagine Lamarr becoming a much bigger name, and a director, in the twenty first century.  And that the intellectual resources and access to collaborators the internet can provide would have seen her practical imagination and inventiveness able to thrive.  A modern Hedy could find it easier to overcome those frustrations.

Lamarr is largely remembered as a beautiful face, a beautiful body, a beautiful woman.  Findlay and others are doing their bit to have her best known for having a beautiful mind.

Hope in the thaw

 

OLD GAMMON OR NEW EGGS?

The crows nest, silhouetted against the pale blue above the horizon, still sits firmly perched amid the uppermost branches of the tree before me, a few shrivelled brown leaves clinging to a pretence of a life, no buds yet apparent.  The nest is silent testimony to the industry and construction skills of the birds who built it, and who return year after year to renew their family.  Their time will come.

If I look down I see more green than white now.  There was a moderate snowfall a couple of days ago, covering the graveyard in brightness, setting the gravestones into sharp relief, making them more real and a stronger reminder of the life events behind those monuments to death.  It rained yesterday, the resultant slush then turned into a treacherous low-coefficient topography.  Today only sunshine which, despite the chilled air, steadily removes the watery blanket, only a few stubborn patches of shade putting up a fight.  It's a beautiful day, a day to walk and breathe and enjoy.

It's the First of January.  An arbitrary human marker in the natural flow of the seasons.  A marker of plans and promises, a time of recounting and foretelling.  But who dares make predictions for 2021 after the indecipherable potage that was 2020?  There are few certainties, but that does not mean that we are without hope.  Last night marked the end of one dark saga, our ties to the EU finally snapped after years of lies and bigotry and uncertainty.  The full implications of the Gammon Curtain will be made plain in the coming months.  

But the leaves will return to the naked branches I look out on, the green will flourish and the cemetery adopt it's summer character for yet another cycle of planetary movement.  Diamonds might be forever, but winter, and the gammonist regime, are not.  This was not a direction Scotland chose, but, like the crows, we can rebuild our nest and give birth to something new. 

 The crows will be with us again, there will be eggs, and new life and hungry mouths poking skywards.  They do not need other birds to tell them what to do.