It's a big world, not a wee one

It's a big world, not a wee one

With its etymological rooting in Latin separatism shares the same se stem as the words segmented and segregation and severance. A segment is something that has been cut away from a larger body thing, i.e. removed unnaturally, cut away, severed. The phenomena of identificationalism is highly reliant on fracturing.

  That the word separatist has become prefixed by ecclesiastical in The Oxford Dictionary Of English Etymology is telling because the ecclesiast by necessity has to be both a blowhard and a blagger because of the nature of the product he is peddling, pie in the sky, granfaloolenery. 

  With its etymological origins in science fiction granfaloon means more or less inverse transcendence. The transition in its case is reliant on a foolish myth (a faloon) and has the effect of closing someone down rather than opening them up, clinging to itself in seclusion rather than letting go and embracing the world at large. 

  There is a poetic contradiction inherent to the nature of embracement, that to hold and be held you have to let yourself go, to hold without holding, all embraces beginning with open arms. 

  There is a book which I consider to be pertinent to how we divide this world up, called Fup by Jim Dodge, in which a boy responds to the death of his mother by building fences, his grandfather saying to him that the more you fence out, the more you end up fencing in. 

  The act of keeping something out has an inwardly coiling effect in which the subject invariably ends up disappearing into a void of self. The act of holding the imagined other at arm's length is at risk of inadvertently holding humanity at arm's length.    

  When I got off of a train in Edinburgh many years ago, the graffiti in the train station read Scottish not British, I remember wondering how far the author wanted to take his distinction, to illustrate; scottish not british, scottish not european, scottish not nothern hemispherical, scottish not occidental, scottish not worldly, scottish not of woman born etc. Scottish not British is a synechdoche of indentitifactionalism at large, the ceaseless subcategorisation of humanity. We have to wonder what gets lost in the gulf between what is scottish and what is british, or whatever something or other not this and that maybe.  

  That there are political benefits to be gained from subcategorising oneself make it an enticing prospect. 

  In his essay What I Believe E.M. Forster writes, 'I hate the idea of causes, and I had to choose between betraying my friend or betraying my country, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.' To which I would like to add the appendage, I'm not looking for the easy way out.

  In his book also named What I Believe Bertrand Russell writes, 'The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge', To which I would like to add the appendage, we're all in the same proverbial boat.

  A key part of growing up is looking up out into the timeless sky at night and making the decision to stop being scared of the dark and learning from the flowers that good light and good soil shall help you grow and realising that we should not want the best of both worlds, we should want the best of all worlds and to be a part of that.

    

Tyrannosaur

TYRANNOSAUR

He once told me that he could beat up a tyranosaurus rex in a fight. He was convinced of this, especially if he had a hammer handy. Another time he told me that he was able to throw an empty beer bottle so far that it would smash on the moon. 

  I had seen him in fights from time to time, he was the strongest man in the region. Being small it was reassuring to me to have him around. For some he reason he liked me. It would be hard to put into words why. We just liked each other. That's all.

  I had just reached the age when I decided that people should accept that I am not interested in the things that I  am not interested in. I no longer wanted to spend whole evenings feigning interest. However, I've always looked younger than my age.
  A man was talking to me about the demonisation of the working class, in that way that people have a tendency to do when they have nothing to talk about, he had done his thesis on it. I started to think about the demons of the working class. Seeing through my eyes that my ears weren't listening he raised his voice. On hearing the man raise his voice Rex told the man to leave it out. The man finished his drink within the next few minutes and left. 

  We spent all of our time together drinking, we didn't ever do anything else. When he had nothing to talk about, he didn't talk.

  One night he was talking about my parents, he said that they were nice people. He knew them as a little old man and a little old woman going gently into the night, going out to the local pub twice a week. This was not a way of going into the night he could endure himself. He thought he would die out at sea. You see, you cannot beat up the sea, not even with a hammer handy.

  The next night he was telling me about fighting. He believed that fighting is the most intimate act there is. Part of beating someone up was the healing that would ensue if you reached the right level of damage. He believed a fighter should aim for a level of damage which would not be irrevocable, GBH was a sin to him, as bad as rape, if not worse. He believed the purpose of a good fight was to make the other person a better person. 

  The next night as we left the pub at closing time he put his hand on my shoulder and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me if I fancied a quick a fight, as though the previous night he had been building me up to it. However, instead he just finished off his drink and threw the empty beer bottle out into the night sky. We watched it disappear, listening out for the soft sound of glass smashing somewhere out in the far off distance.