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[ 6 and a half minute read ]

The Caveman's List

One of the things I dislike about communicating, is that there are rules to it that are not written down for the unwary to, well, be ware of. Of course, anyone who writes something down is using a form of communication. The words could be written, such like, as a shopping list. The words on the paper, or perhaps papyrus in Ancient Egypt, could be purposely recorded for a number of reasons, and the reason may even change as time passes. 

The Caveman's List 

Woolly Mammoth meat the size of twenty fist-sized apples, or at least four rabbits

So many nuts that it would take seven trips to carry them from the tree to the cave using only both hands, or one crushed handful of the leaves from the plant that has purple flowers shaped like ears

Ah, shopping lists for the people who are learning what to look out for, and are easily distracted by clashing two stones together as though they are fighting, or kissing. I found the words carved in a piece of stone I found in my garden.

Hakim, the spirit avatar I created, when I was sixteen, to protect me from harm while I am sleeping had an opinion; always welcome. Wild, or more creative, but definitely always welcome. Who wouldn't consider the view of an avatar who specialises in all things spiritual?

       'No. I think... No, they are the ingredients in a recipe.'

Harrari, the abandoned alien I discovered in a wood in which I had been living in, had her say; always welcome. Ruthless, and dangerous with it, one might think that I have no choice in letting her speak; but, her reasoning comes from a blending of an alien 'hyper-technological' existence and an absorption of knowledge on the flora, fauna, and things that we humans cannot see, on earth. As I say, always welcome and never, never denied, let's just leave it at that.

        'You both think too simply. You, Martin, are practical in your approach, and you, Hakim, are creative and living in the sensual. The writing on the stone chip is a Stone-age agreement to pay.'

It is not Hakim's job to understand bartering, but he knows that you can't get something for nothing.

       'Money?'

       'A credit note? I mused, a quiz on my forehead.

       'Money and credit is now the same thing. Your money was once a piece of something valuable that had universal value in the area in which it was used. But a merchant buying a large amount of stock could be robbed of the valuable universal 'coin', before they could hand it over to the supplier. Not only that, the accumulated 'coin' might be heavy indeed. The words are a record of a negotiation at the primary stage.'

       'That is why there are alternatives...or.' I nodded, realisation undoing the crease between my eyebrows.

It is easy to decipher the words on the stone, now under lock and key in my library, as meaning any of our offered opinions, and there is still more. It could be a purchase order that a boy was tasked to take to the cave-man shop. 

       'Run all the way there, and all the way back.' There was no expectation he would be burdened with goods.

Harrari, grateful that we understood the value of my discovery in the garden concluded with, 'Further thinking could open up an understanding into whether these cave-people understood 'bundles' of goods or were offering a Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)'.

       'Marketing?' Hakim looked up from pretending to fill his imaginary pipe. He smoked it when Harrari bothered him, because he was convinced that she could not tolerate the smell. Open to a wide scope of possibilities while he was clutching his Diploma in Creativity, he now used his pipe to show that, for him, reason had reached a limit.

I smiled, but mostly inwardly. For all I knew, Harrari could smell completely rancid and could tolerate anything I might imagine. She almost never appeared in our human visual spectrum and I had to conclude that our olfactory senses were similarly limited, and work in a narrow bandwidth, because other than a, very infrequent, floral scent that seemed to originate from nowhere, I am pretty certain that I can not smell her. Even then, I might be smelling next-doors washing on the line. Yet....in Winter, in the rain?

My final pondering on how big a caveman fist, hand, or a rabbit might have been, was broken by my wife coming in. She didn't know about Harrari or Hakim; I had never told her about my past. I wasn't really sure that she even knew that she was married to me, because she spent a lot of time keeping away from me. She had some of her friends with her; even now she separated herself from me.

       'Hello, Martin' He winked at me, the one I had seen so many times with my wife, yet strangely never alone. Neither of us nodded. Social protocol loomed before us. Should we wrestle? Should I punch his perfect smiling face? Should I shake his hand? Hug? Or should I just politely say 'Good Night' and leave them all to it, whatever they thought 'it' is. I had my own idea of one version but there were too many in her group of friends to be about to play Bridge or Monopoly; four, and my wife made five in her group.

I left without responding to him, and similarly ignored the rest. They all looked remarkably familiar, as though I once knew them, but I simply could not remember their names. I knew that I once did, but they belonged to younger people; much younger.

Back home, in my own untidy mess and glad to be away from pristine neatness, I went into the library and checked that the stone was still safely stored. That guy really bothered me. In fact, I am not really sure he exists. After all, my wife has an exceptional imagination and might have invented him just to annoy me. How she could get me to perceive him was beyond me. Hakim and Harrari, between them, would help me to figure it out, if I ask them. I hoped it had nothing to do with that photograph on her wall.

Faced with a wide scope and scale of environments of interaction, we are constantly relying on our understanding of previous events for a template from which to work. It is sometimes said that when we are falling out of a window, our whole life flashes before us. Hakim would say that we are trying to send signals for help while flicking through a scrapbook of memories; memories that include spiritual help. Harrari, the perspicacious one in our group of three, with her analytical bent, would say that we are seeking a set of rules or formulas that have worked in similar circumstances to find a solution that matches not landing on the ground at a pace that would hurt us. Hakim wants an angel with wings, and Harrari needs her molecules to dissipate, and effectively become dust that is shifted by the wind.

Of course, it matters whether there are manuals for life; childhood; marriage; getting a job, or not. But I think I need to find a manual on how to read in an appropriate way. I need to understand why the writer wrote whatever it is they wrote, and what the writer left out. Unfortunately, there are no tests in the real world to be certain we have all read the same books and how we understand them, unless we write an essay that reflects back a good facsimile of the lessons to be learned, or in social environments, shake hands to say hello, or just politely say goodnight.

 Mental Health

[ 10 minute read ]

The Disruptor in the shop

     ‘People are placed on Earth to be disruptors, and by extension, some people will commit atrocities,’ Harrari said.

Hakim nodded. He knew that Harrari was right. Having observed me for the last decade, he knew that I sometimes deliberately try to shake things up.

      ‘Some people, he whispered,'when they have been judged to be overly harsh in disciplining their children immediately jump up and protest, ‘You have to be cruel to be kind” He didn’t mean me. He knew that I don’t make excuses for being unkind. Quite simply, I don’t lie; If I did, I would ‘see’ far less; I would be merely a human; one of seven billion, and it had taken me over ten years of acceptance to become more than that.

Harrari, as usual, was patient.

     ‘The shaking up of society is necessary. You are stumbling through your lives barely conscious. Disruptions often result in knee-jerk reactions through the discomfort of having nascent proclivities and behaviour revealed to all of you. But this ultimately results in better overall behaviour in the community and the condemnation of both the revealed attitude and the knee-jerk response.’

I thought I got it. ‘Like an explosion in the rabbit population that is ultimately controlled by the amount of food available, disruption will reach a zenith and then there will be an adjustment,’ I mused.

I was in my local shop, next in the queue. A bit of a slight argument was coming to a climax before me. I couldn’t help but overhear it.

     ‘Nobody likes you here!’ The young shop assistant warned.

     'I didn’t come here to be liked. I came here to disrupt.’

     ‘Disrupt what?’

     ‘You, plural. Your attitudes and habitual behaviours. Your blind adherence to a lifestyle that you incessantly shape to satisfy your desires to be left alone.’

‘Luxury’, I thought.

The shop assistant looked puzzled. Clearly, the advice I had heard on attackers works; if you are about to be attacked, do something weird so the assailant is bamboozled for a moment. However, this lads private school education had given him a confidence that the other ninety-three percent of us in Britain could never emulate. I could sense that he was about to throw the interesting little man out. I wanted to talk to him, but I needed to be served first. Well, I say ‘needed’, what I actually mean is, I couldn’t be bothered to leave my selected loaf of bread behind to follow the man out, and then have to come back again to buy the bread. Just lazy, that’s all.

     ‘I’m sorry, what did you say? I wasn’t listening,’ I said. Neither of them were expecting me to speak. They stopped their intense staring at one another and looked at me. It works, do something out of the ordinary.

     ‘I don’t like repeating myself’, the man said.

I noticed now that he had a long-term suntan. We had recently experienced a long period of sunny and dry weather, but his suntan was not the glow that healthy skin gets from a seven mile walk in the sun without a hat. That tan only shows that the sunlight was coming from above for a while. His tan had been given a long time to spread, so there was just a general colour on his face, neck and arms; less so on his neck. He looked to be in his mid-sixties and the young lad behind the counter was probably about nineteen. There was, most assuredly, a clash of comprehension.

‘Neither do I,’ I responded, pleased that the attention was now on me.’But I like to be understood when I speak.’

I could see this chimed with him. Clearly, he wanted to be understood and often felt that he was saying things that others could not understand.

     ‘Whenever, I repeat myself, I raise my voice so I am heard, and then people tell me to stop shouting.’ He said to me, only half jesting.

     'Me too.’ I stopped, and then it hit me. ‘I think your IQ is bigger than you know what to do with.’

Admittedly, that is not something that anyone might ever hear. It may even be the first time it has ever been said. Yet, I was overwhelmingly compelled to say it, and it just came out. Suddenly, I was a passenger in my life journey; a person in a front-row theatre seat watching a scene in which I had a walk-on lead role. The man looked at me stunned for a few moments. Strangely though, I had no desire to explain or withdraw my comment, back-handed compliment that it was. He understood though; uniquely understood. This became apparent.

     ‘I think you also have a high IQ’, he said, a slight quiz on his face.

Aware that the puzzled shop assistant was observing this interplay, I cautiously offered, ‘Us aliens need to be able to spot one another.’ The now slightly nervous shop assistant let out something between a guffaw and a loud breath. Clearly, he thought this amusingly non-sensical. Harrari, had she been there, would have been insulted by my outspoken attempt to liken myself to her kind. But the man understood me, at least on the level I was on. He knew I wasn’t an alien but I couldn’t really say anything else to mean something entirely different.

     ‘Yes we do,’ he smiled. ‘It’s just that people have difficulty in understanding what I am saying. They...’

I interrupted him, fully on autopilot now. I had to tell him that I knew what he was going to say before he inadvertently insulted the shop assistant as well.

     ‘Hmmm, now that you have seen the world that humans see, you have moved onto something else. You see…..er…. beyond the veil.’

     ‘Yes, that’s it,’

He then went on to tell me who he was. I didn’t recognise anything he said until he finished with, ‘You know; like Elohim in the Bible.’

     ‘Ah! Now I know you. I know you.’ I said, more than a little discomfitted.

I don’t know if I was fearful of being thought to be a charlatan, or I was in the company of a madman, or a angel. But this guy’s spirit wasn’t holding a banner above his head to tell me something. I was hearing something in the actual words that came out of his mouth that weren’t the words that the shop assistant heard. If I could just focus a little harder I would be able to hear it more clearly.

Whereas, Hakim is my spirit avatar, and Harrari an abandoned alien I discovered in a wood I once lived in, this man was in a liminal position holding the door wide open to the spiritual world. But something was wrong. He wasn’t a friendly guide collecting tickets to a fairyland. He had torn the veil with an unfortunate slip or a hard, one-time only, thrust of anguish, followed by a series of clumsy visitations. Right before me was a spiritual vandal. It was as though he had, aimlessly wandering, actually stumbled across Mary Mapes Dodge’s boy, Hans Brinker, in her book, ‘Silver Skates’, with his finger in the hole in the dike to save Holland, and now he was repeatedly kicking him in the nuts. At the same time, he didn’t have access to all the aspects of the spirit realm so when he said to me, ‘I just hope this war is over soon,’ and then to the shop assistant, ‘He knows what I mean’ meaning I know, I had a glimpse that the confused lad was thinking that I am the cause of a war or even a participant in a war. Of course, the lad was right, but not really in the way he probably thought. I am not a neighbourhood menace; littering, swearing, spitting and illegally parking in other people’s spaces. I am quite simply not a liar. Messes people right up, that does. For me, I am at war with falsehood; lies that people tell themselves.

If this strange little man really had any connection to the spirit world I should be able to identify that. That was me thinking though and ‘thinking me’ was running through all the available clues to tell me what to do. Long-term suntan means outside a lot; reasonably well-spoken with good enunciation; bottle of beer in his hand; and a recent confession that he could not read the alcohol content on the bottles he was trying to choose from.

On the other hand, I was engaged in a disconnect of verbal communication that made sense somehow. This however, is how people with high IQ communicate. Connecting links are left unsaid because there cannot be any other solution. In other words, just making dots for the other person to join up. The problem for ‘thinking conscious me’ though, is that this is really similar to having a spirit conversation because there is no falsehood barring understanding between spirits. Paul wasn’t kidding when he said that he looks through a glass darkly in the Bible. Putting aside falsehood is most certainly the step to take if you want to talk to God.

How do I know this? Not because I have a high IQ. No; because I know that a storyteller already knows the plot and often fails to provide adequate links in the story. A storyteller is prescient and the readers or listeners are not. Some of the dots need to be joined and some not.

Does this strange man already know the story? Or is he a brain-addled highly intelligent alcoholic that can’t afford more than one bottle of quite expensive craft beer? Could be, because his tan says he does not drive; but then why would he drive, if he lives near the village shop? And, why buy a strong craft beer and call it your favourite?

The only thing I could do was involve the shop assistant in a pseudo-conversation by making an obscure link to the strange man’s ‘He knows what I mean’.

     ‘I do,’ I said, ‘But he,’ meaning the shop assistant, ‘won’t remember the conversation we had yesterday if I say, Opportunity cost.’

     ‘Of course I do’, he burst out, insulted. To be honest, he might well feel insulted, because effectively I had just intimated that his current confusion was his own fault due to his inability to follow a conversation. However, it gave me enough time to pay for the bread, and follow the little man out of the shop.

Even without the watching shop assistant I could not get a better read on the man.

Some time ago, I could tell within the first two minutes of meeting someone if they had siblings; whether they were older or younger siblings; their siblings gender; and sometimes their age differences. The interesting thing is, a child adopted into a family of children gave the same clues as does an only child; none.

This man was indistinguishable from any other man hurrying on his way and muttering over his shoulder, ‘Good to meet you.’ Except he said it twice so I suppose he meant it.

When two people ‘rap’ it is like musicians ‘jamming’. You can’t suddenly start jamming or rapping, quite simply because someone needs to start and the threads need to be picked up by another. I had a work colleague with which we rapped, but we also spent most of our time just talking and working. This man outside the shop, back in the real world, was constrained by decades of social convention and just walked away. If there is a shroud to be pulled over someone’s spirituality, it was duly used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates