Personal Blogs

Folded and discarded imagination

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Folded and Discarded Imagination

[7 minute read ] 

Fiction

In the corner of my living room are the remnants of my former self. Like a snake shedding its skin I  left it draped over a chair; a husk that resembles me from a year ago. Almost translucent, it is difficult to make out in the silver dawn light that tip-toes through the window. But when Hakim, my avatar spirit protector held it up and Harrari, the abandoned alien whom I met in a small wood ten years ago, shone a light through it I could see that it is my size and has a vaguely human shape. What is interesting about it is that it represents a better version of myself while still being obsolescent.

       'Try it on.' Hakim mocked me as though I would be able to slip into the delicate shape of former me and wear the same mantle of creativity I once had; as though there is a zip at the back that can be drawn up to make it securely fit.

Harrari, the amazing alien, pushed an image of a vodka bottle into my head. She knows that it won't make me crave it. She does it to remind me why and how I have changed. But, unusually, she is being unfair. She knows my train of thought has recently been tempered by focusing on rigid aspects of life that demand convergent thinking. She knows that, unlike her, I have had to make sacrifices, and opportunities to wander aimlessly in a fantasy world have been curtailed over the last two years. But she is, of course, correct in her decision to remind me that I have drank too much over the same period.

The shape of myself is grey as Hakim lets it drop to the floor and I wince at his carelessness. But he is not careless. It is only an artifact from my past; a useless one beyond reminding me of who I once was.

Harrari picked up on my wistful thinking, 'It is not you; it never was. I detect her voice as a soft sussuration, like a swift breeze through a weeping willow overhanging a stream. 'You are greater than this. That is not your generosity or your honour or integrity. It is a small part of your imagination; fascinating, but no longer relevant. It is the shape of your creativity bound and circumscribed by your experience. You have grown since then and it no longer fits.'

I wasn't entirely convinced and a part of me sobbed at what I had done to myself; the image of the vodka bottle still fading in my head. I was irked at Harrari's honesty at the same time as grateful. I do forget about my mind, because I sometimes want to forget about me. She and Hakim know that. In fact, I haven't seen them for a while. More accurately, I haven't seen Harrari very much at all; she is, in the main, completely invisible to humans. It is to do with phase-shifting or something. Hakim, my spirit avatar, I have ignored and, miffed he has miserably hidden in the corners smoking his imaginary pipe; the one he likes to smoke when Harrari is near because he thinks that the imaginary smoke will choke Harrari's ability to communicate with me. He likes to pretend to pollute the air. I am not sure if it is his wonderful and unique sense of humour or he really believes it. Suffice it to say I am of a mind to say he is jealous of Harrari's abilities. 

       'You did, after all manifest me to protect you in the spirit world while you slept.' He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

       'Sly and wheedling doesn't suit you, Hakim. Where is this coming from? I manifested you when I was sixteen, we know that. I did it to protect myself from my brother and you sat on my bed while I slept. Thank you. But he is dead and has been for years now. As a person he can't reach me anymore.'

       'From you! It is coming from you. I am nothing without you and you are letting things slip. That shapeless mess on the ground that was your imagination is still flexible, useless now but flexible. You have grown an armour that won't lie quiescent in nature when you take it off; if you can take it off, that is.' 

       'You are rude and insolent,' I replied. I noticed Harriri fade in and saw her nodding. My Crikeyness! She can be beautiful, but she would be, wouldn't she? She can be whatever she likes so long as she is still an alien. I had an inkling about what Hakim meant and realised that Harrari was agreeing with Hakim and not me. She winked and became ancient for a moment, like a woman who has lived a hundred lifetimes in eighty years. She probably has, I thought. Looks don't mean anything to her and she mocked my human fallibility. She stayed semi-transparent and strangely sat down on the floor. She would never do that under normal circumstances because she is ever-ready to act and that means moving swiftly to another location. This is a full-frontal attack by a united force whom I call my friends, I thought. I didn't feel threatened but I did feel unsure of myself; it was unprecedented for them to gang up on me. This has to be important, I thought, at least to them. If it is important to them they must feel it should be important to me.

       'Armour? You mean I am using subterfuge to protect myself from something, don't you?'

Hakim was still rude but I could see he didn't really want to be so. His, 'Bingo! Give the man a prize!' came out as 'By Jove! I think he has got it!' I mentally thanked him for putting in the effort but still felt humiliated. It was, I suppose, his temporary and fabricated wont to make me feel that way.

Harrari, devastatingly ruthless and violent if she chose to be, could not be dishonourable or mean. 'You have lost your way. You have given yourself over to become fertile ground for the seeds of dishonesty and hate. You once held a idea that hate comes from believing lies and now you are listening to unfounded ideas built largely from heuristics. That is not you as you were when I first met you in the wood. If you was like you are now, I would never have let you see me, or offered you a place to join me.'

       'I know.' I didn't know, but I cast the template she had woven over my current life and compared it to how it fitted over my life in the woods. She was right, I had and have changed; each time a little further from how I once was, never returning to a better me.

       'You was about to do it, but you stole from a homeless man and that marred your beauty', she said.

       'I didn't want to die, Harrari, and he wasn't a homeless man. He was an undercover policeman spying on the Greek kebab shop. In any case, I only took what I had given him, the cakes he had thrown into a corner or another operative had moved for him. I know how close it was; you even deleted all the contacts in my phone.'

       'It's no good feeling sorry for yourself' Hakim chipped in. He kicked my old imagination disdainfully to add weight to his point. I winced again.

       'Hakim, stop it! You are kicking my good imagination.'

       'No, he isn't.' Harrari breathed, 'He is kicking something that you yourself spoiled and cast off as being unimportant to you. You humans like to honour the bodies of people who have died but you did not give the same courtesy to yourself. It might only be a shaving of yourself on the floor but your imagination is your greatest asset and you treated it as nothing.'

I knew she used the past tense but only just. I felt that she was hovering on using present tense and only decided not to because she realised I was listening. I should be kinder to my imagination. I felt her smile when I imagined digging a hole in my garden and having a ceremony for my past imagination. It wasn't a kind smile. I felt a chill. It was the wrong time to be facetious.

       'At least it is working now.' I countered. She made that moue of passive and weightless agreement. 'Meh!' is not in her lexicon; Nor mine as it happens, so it seems that I borrowed it from Hakim's current truculence. That must go, I thought. And right there I fully realised the scale and scope of what they were saying. I had given Hakim full autonomy to do as he pleased once my tormentor brother had died. Yet, here I was foolishly believing I should shape him to my will. What would be the point of doing that? I would be listening to myself mocking myself and only Harrari would have an independent say. I say 'only' Harrari. I should make it clear that she has, in the past, telepathically entered my head to smooth my thoughts so I could sleep. And I know she guided unwanted visitors away from my camp in the woods; except for the man who wanted to honour the loss of a Stirling bomber crew in 1943 in the same wood; the man who broke my tent zip. It was time for me to move on then and Harrari knew it, and he was an honourable man.

       'What would you have me do?' I asked them. Hakim picked up my cast off, and now torn, imagination and folded it. He placed it on the chair he had been sitting on and walked towards the door. 'I think you know what to do', he murmured.

       'What's going on? Are you still miffed at me? I asked what you would have me do; you and Harrari.' 

       'Do you want me to be so crass as to say you should treat me more kindly and listen to me more often. I would be like you have been for the past year if I said that.' He raised his eyebrows to make an arched quiz on his forehead.

       'But that is what you mean, isn't it?' I was annoyed because I like straight conversation. 'It's not about what I like, is it?'

Harrari saw where this was going and stopped me going any further. 'You are being confrontational, Martin.' She never uses my name and I could almost hear her patronise me with, 'We are only trying to help.' But she detected that I had picked up her intent, which was to show me how I have been; a pontificating pillock in my neighbourhood and in the supermarkets; patronising.

Hakim gently picked up the folded and dead imagination and handed it to me. He sat down again where it had been and just looked at me. I knew it was a kind look built from concern. He didn't need me to imagine him any more. That day had long past. He is as real as me. Harrari, of course, I have never had any control over; I should never try. One doesn't try to exert will on a entity that might be described as a Supreme Being by overly-religious people. She isn't a Supreme Being or God. She is an alien abandoned by her brothers when she didn't get back in time for their predestined departure. She had used the high tension overhead electric wires that cross the country to signal them but they never came back for her. Ruthless is not strong enough to describe her species. She reminds me of a Praying Mantis sometimes, but she was very young when she was left behind, and she grew up along with the flora and fauna on Earth, and the spirits that initially haunted her. She is truly an enigma.

We three sat looking at each other until Harrari faded and only Hakim and I sat in silence. I had gotten the message, and he is kind enough not to rub it in. He too faded, and then, sad for Harrari; she must be incredibly lonely, I told myself to wake up a bit and stop feeling sorry for myself. I hoped that I had reached the nub of my malaise and I might now focus more on preservation and not consumption. I hoped it would be exciting and the future would be spent more with Hakim and Harrari. If it was to be so, I knew it would be at least intriguing and that will be enough.

I knew that Hakim would chat up the spirits of dog-owners with his opening line directed at the dog, 'Hello, Bob! Have you got that five Francs I lent you in Paris in your previous lifetime?' I also know that Harrari would sometimes run behind cyclists to eavesdrop on their conversation. She clears the way of potential accidents for the ones she likes by making them stop to pick blackberries or flowers or tie their shoelaces or something, even puncturing their tyres, which is quite hard for her to do. She hasn't done it for me for a long time and I have run into trouble a dozen times in the city. I must make myself more attractive.

       'Talking to yourself?' My beautiful wife, from we know not where; she was adopted, was leaning against the door-jamb in her pyjamas. Her jet-black hair normally in a high bob hung around her shoulders and she tossed her head to remove a strand from her eyes and then slowly shook her head at me, her eyes locked on mine, unsmiling. She turned her back and, with our two infants in tow, went into the kitchen. I could hear the smile in her voice, 'What shall we have for breakfast leetle ones?' I knew she was kneeling on the floor stroking their heads with her finely shaped fingers and kissing their foreheads.

I really must make myself more attractive, I thought again.

So many books

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

So many books

[4 minute read ] 

Opinion

I have so many books to read; fourteen! It is not a lot over the six month academic 'year'. Yet, they are not books I would read for pleasure. I absolutely have to forget that they cost me more than £125 otherwise my resentment will interfere with my focus on why I am reading them. I am beginning to think, though, that I don't like the omniscient point of view; a narrative that allows the thoughts of characters to be written in stories. I know that it helps to develop characters in the readers' minds but I am an action kind of reader.

Having detached emotions by default I tend not to put much effort into connecting my emotions to moments of relaxation; not that reading these fourteen books is relaxing for me because in the absence of OU guidance for my module I have to make copious notes on anything I consider to be remotely relevant. I am just wildly guessing, but I suppose I am focused.

Having been steeped in marketing and logistics for many years, studying with The OU is like a crash-course in a different subject, even over four or five years. Even during summer, which is not my academic term, I cannot realign my studies back towards marketing, economic and logistics. These subjects which are really a bunch, are so familiar to me that I feel so much more comfortable wallowing in those text books than the ones I now find myself compelled to read in a preliminary fashion. 

I probably have a different style of learning to most people. It is one that I established when I think I was about eight or nine. back then we had BSA (I think) assignments to complete that tested for comprehension. There was a little story of perhaps one hundred and fifty words and and then some questions that related to the text. I would read the questions first and then read the text, mentally marking where the answers were. Then I read the questions again and write my answers one by one. It was efficient to do that and it had no negative effect on my secondary school achievements. Given an outline of what I am supposed to learn in October onwards I would be able to make notes much more efficiently. In fact, by October, I think I might have finished the modules before I even start them. Achieving a good degree is secondary to understanding the wider scope of the subjects, to me. 'Getting it right' is key in contrast to proving academic ability to others; at least it is for me. 

       'Yeah, I got a third, but I know the subject inside out and back to front. I spent a lot of time reading outside of the scope of the degree modules. I find that not being constrained by bindings and circumscription allows me to approach my work and social life with a fresh attitude that brings with it some novel questions. Can I have the job? or do you want me to just keep my head below the parapet and nod when you speak?'

It would never be a good thing to say that, I propose. I approach my future in a bipartite way though. Everything I study can be applied to both PAYE employment or self-employment. So, I am fairly flexible in my speech. Some might say, careless. Hmmm, I suppose so; too much free-reign and hedonism in the past perhaps. But, I was left to my own devices when I was sixteen and two months old so what can we expect of me? Should I have run away from my bullying enabler older brother guardian and put myself in care? I think, in retrospect, that is precisely what I should have done. I did run away from him once at 5am, to live in Sherwood Forest. I was a bit of a romantic fool then. I got tired and hitch-hiked back again; more fool me! However, it was around this time that I bought my first thesaurus and set me on the path to autodiadatic education and then further education at night school, and then daytime college. Who knows what I would have become if I had been in care? A misogynist? A plagiarist and cheat? An invisible banality? A kind and thoughtful community leader? I am none of those, but I do get my emotions in gear sometimes now my fraternal tormentor is dead and I help my community.

I am inclined to rewrite history in my head and imagine different futures lately. I like my imagination, no, I love it! But it is intangible and ephemeral and having no substance and there being nowhere to direct it, it is an invisible gim-crack, a bagetelle, a folly. Oh, I frame it so negatively with blunt but tasty words. It is almost believable that I am distracted by my disdain. That is not so; but most people might chuck a reality-checking statement at me such as, 'You have your head in the clouds', or 'You are off with the fairies again.' or 'Daydreaming won't pay the bills!' Because I know all this I have to check myself and manifest something tangible from something intangible if I am to deny opportunities in other spheres of my life. Most people, I think, would immediately think of writing for a living. I shan't be doing that though; there is a reason why not, but I can't quite see enough of the future to know precisely what it is just yet.

I can't help thinking that I have wasted enough time and i really have to leap to the capstan and haul my anchor up. Yet, I also feel like I am still on a lee-shore (wind blowing onto the shore making sailing away extremely problematic for square-rigged ships - like HMS Victory).

I suppose my imagination is a sailing ship with no engine and since I espouse modern assistance, a metaphorical engine, I shall find myself becalmed and adrift. I really don't like the trail and impact that modern technology has though. Analogue books are on the verge of obsolescence and only those who plan for the world to be knocked back to the same kind of existence the people of the 1960s and 70s had, can be inclined to honestly believe that publishing only analogue books will provide sufficient money for the opportunity to write to be viable in the near future. 

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Have we met and what did we do in the future?

[ 5 minute read ] 

What chapter are you on?

It seems I am a ghost or a zombie and quieter than a cat. Sally, my next door neighbour, was cutting her hedge and didn't notice me when I walked up to her, bare-footed, with a handful of strawberries for her. The look of horror on her face will stay with me for a long time; probably the whole weekend. What did she expect after she jumped out of her skin?

We just stood there, staring at each other; she with shears in her hands and me with my right arm extended as though I wanted a fist-bump. Eventually, she placed one open palm under my fist and I released the strawberries. I wouldn't say there was a sense of relief but I would also say I felt a change in her. She didn't smile and thank me; she, instead, turned away and started walking towards her front door; not a word. I told her, to her retreating back, about the damp and mould experts who visited me in the week. She smiled then.

It puzzles me.

In a fantasy medieval world, I might have been paying a token amount for entry into her secret areas:

       'This is the last time, Martin. I know you serve the community well and I suppose I can contribute to the goodwill we all want to offer you, but I am a good Christian and I have only myself and sanctuary in my home to give. You know I live frugally.'

On a spiritual plane, we might have once met before and she thought she had killed me but I am alive or re-incarnated:

       'I see I was not ruthless enough, and left off from drowning you too soon, and I have failed to suppress your force long enough to make it last. What now?' She walked away in silent resignation.

She was alarmed! Both of those imagined scenarios are steeped in resignation, aren't they. Yet, she might have simply been confused. How did I manage to suddenly appear next to her when she is convinced her hearing is so acute that she can hear the hedgehogs munching outside with the noise passing through double-glazing, and she is woken by her cat walking towards her bed?

Of course, Sally has a very loving cat and I know Sally is affectionate and caring. I am pretty certain that her cat recognises the change in Sally's breathing as she starts to wake up and pads across the floor towards her for a cuddle. Hearing hedgehogs is a bit of a mystery to me though. I am no expert but a passing car is pretty loud and cannot really penetrate the double-glazing. Maybe, Sally leans out of her window and listens.

It doesn't signify. That is an old expression I got from the writer C.S. Forester in his books on Hornblower. Through some kind of magic transmogrification it means 'It doesn't add up' or 'It doesn't make sense as it stands'. Just like Shakespeare wrote in a language that the people of his time could understand, but modern people need a translation book for, it seems that Sally and I speak different languages, or have lived on different planets and now both find ourselves bumping up to one another on Earth.

If Sally and I were reading the same book but separately, I imagine she might have gotten to the pages where we know each other much better and either we are close, as in relaxed in each other's company, or have fallen out for some reason. It isn't hard for me to lazily lean on an old and obsolete notion that she might be, as a woman, absorbing the passion of a story of love and betrayal, while I, on the other hand, stereo-typically, as a man, might be reading the same book but enjoying different parts; the interplay of characters but with a bent towards understanding the function and progression of relationships; work-like, if you will. It is difficult for me to put this notion aside. Of course, this is glaring sexism, even misogyny, by the back door. Yet, I would offer that I have detached emotions and all people are romantic fantasists to me; people who skillfully and silently weave their own lives into stories, with a hope for a future they have already secretly enjoyed.

Sally, is an intelligent woman. I admire her. She is not silly; she is practical. I sometimes think I have had glimpses from the future. Certainly, when I was driving throughout Europe I have had a prescience that there is something blocking the road beyond a blind bend and braked almost to a crawl as I rounded the curve. Yup, loose cows or broken-down vehicle. I think Sally might be a few chapters ahead of me in the same 'book' we are reading. Actually not, she has somehow flicked forward a few pages to read a passage or two and then returned to the 'story' in the right place, where ALL of us are reading. You know, when something is happening in a story and we simply must know the resolution; will they, won't they?

I have had a few relationships, both romantic and platonic, in which there was an expectation that I would fill a role. The classic one in the romance realm is when a long-term relationship breaks down and then, unbeknownst to me that there ever was one, I turn up; perhaps even having been snared by a well-prepared web, and innocently think I am entering a fresh relationship, only to find that it is stale from the outset. I have had to fill the role of a long-term lover, even a married man of many years. It is really sad. I see new relationships as green buds of potential growth that are shaped by the environment and nutrition that the people involved in the relationship give to it. Old relationships, of course, need fertiliser, just as plants and trees do.

I married a woman who had a notion of how we should be. She didn't tell me. The marriage failed after only a year or so, but trundled along for another three years. Her fantasies had advanced our relationship so far that even with a limited amount of prescience I was left only guessing. Truth be known, I never tried to guess or work out what was going on because I was always wrong-footed.

       'Why won't you comply with what I imagined you to be like?'

       'Why, are you not in the now, without ever having read forward to see what the resolution is in a fantasy novel?'