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The Virtual Rambler
Number thirteen: 4th February 2011
Transience
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In his Sonnets , Shakespeare is drawn to images of transience time and
again. “ Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore , So do our
minutes
hasten to their end , Each changing place with that which goes before ; In
sequent toil all forwards do contend.” Nothing lasts beyond its allocated
time , even the high and mighty. “ When I have seen by time’s fell hand
defaced / The rich proud cost of outworn buried age ; When sometimes lofty
towers I see down razed , And brass eternal slave to mortal rage . . .”. All
life-forms , indeed all forms of energy , are destined to degrade , just
as order is forever doomed to become disorder. Each of us observes the world
that surrounded our childhood years disappearing during our adult lives.
The ways in which our parents lived and spoke in their younger days have
have fared even more drastically , fast becoming extinct. That’s just two
generations’ worth of change. Western Europe has evolved or acquired about
40 languages in the 8,000 years since the arrival of Indo-European speakers
,
languages as different as English and Finnish. Over that time each of those
languages mutated , regressed and amalgamated while many others disappeared.
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle was originally written 1,100
years ago and its Middle English is unreadable today for anyone but
scholars. Language , the medium of our experience , is forever in flux.
All systems great and small are under the tyrannical rule of that arrow of
time , the Second Law of Thermodynamics(1). If time and disorder
are irreversible , hadn’t we better get a move on ? Hence the spinning
gyroscope of continuous consumption , accompanied by a universal staring
into
flickering screens on which information faucets are going at full blast. So
, too , the nervous haste of all and sundry to squeeze into the halls
of fame before they close their swinging doors. For joggers and spinners ,
the siege of advancing years is too far away for present concern. For those
so besieged , reminders of the active deeds of youth surround them. Up on
one of my bookshelves there’s a good two feet occupied exclusively by
now-redundant maps of the Peak District , the Yorkshire Dales , Scotland ,
Snowdonia and the Lakes. Translating from an open map to the landscape
set before us has several aspects suggesting subterfuge. A secret agent
negotiates a route through enemy lines , a commando unit make their way
towards a sabotage mission in occupied territory , an escaped prisoner is
plotting a way to distant freedom. In their own way , maps also call
to mind a vanished pre-digital age of log tables , ex-army attire ,
protractors and the magnetic compass , all the stuff of a 1950s schoolboy
and
rambler. Maps can also appeal to the compulsive collector. Collections
(whether of cigarette cards, rare 78s, maps, or works of art) are a way of
mastering the outside world , of classifying and manipulating a confusing
external reality into some sort of order. Freud pointed out that the love
of order is a kind of compulsion to repeat when and how something must be
done.
There can be uncongenial subtexts to the word order. Last orders ! Form an
orderly queue. Order in the court ! He was just obeying orders. Although
it’s music to the ears of revolutionaries , disorder can be distinctly
unpleasant , as experienced by so many in the twentieth century. Our lives ,
with their lunar months and solar years , are a constant struggle between
these two forces. The orderly structures we try to impose are under
constant threat from the disorderly elements of illness , economics ,
disappointment , and death. Roaming over hill and dale one minute , we’re
drooling in a care home the next. The future is always different from the
past. Structures and assumptions once felt to be the ordering principles
of human society vanish in their turn and such change is always confusing.
Hence our deeply-rooted urge towards the preservation of a lost past in
museums and archives , the restoration of churches and stately homes , the
collection and curating of old folk songs. Seeking to preserve some
keepsakes from ever-transient ways of life is really to emphasise the
unavoidable mortality lying in wait for all of us , for the sun and
eventually
for the entire cosmos.
Wig.
(1) “ The tendency for Entropy to increase in
isolated systems
is expressed in the second law of thermodynamics - one of the most
pessimistic formulations of human thought.” Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley,
Principia Discordia (1965)
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing,
9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 –
Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia,
27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha
Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General
Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure
Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to
The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human
Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 –
Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds
Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling,
22nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS,
24th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 –
Transience, 4th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional
Accents, 15th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The
Afterlife, 21st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak,
27th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night
Walks, 3rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan
and Charles Dickens, 8th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another
Nutty Professor, 16th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer
Choice, 16th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing
Shorts, 18th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief
History of Progress, 17th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth
of Sisyphus, 16th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural
History, 20th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European
Self Importance, 26th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet
Dreams, 25th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess,
17th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial,
20th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way,
21st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On
Rambling, 14th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing
Into The Abyss, 18th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 –
Intellectual Gloom, 25th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great
Human Achievements, 20th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 –
Autobiography, 20th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good
Health, 21st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 –
Deconstruction, 20th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home
Town, 19th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient
History, 21st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 –
Possessions, 20th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting
Stoics, 20th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time,
20th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't
Allow, 20th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary
Nexus, 20th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking
Liberties, 16th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or
Less, 20th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under
Control, 20th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting,
20th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose
Without Trace, 20th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger
Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 –
Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially
Mediated, 19th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20th September 2014
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