Testing the anger button

It has been a relatively placid time when my inner attention wheel points vaguely at the rest of the world, what with the departure from the scene of the apoplexy – inducer in chief,  GW Bush and his marauding sidekick Rumsfeld, who probably invades his own house each evening.

Settling under the broad Obama beam, there has been relatively little to instantly flick the weather vane to extremes.  Though that said, the same’s not true of domestic politics stateside, where everyone seems to be losing their collective handle and bawling at all and sundry.  There’s an interesting article on Clive Crook’s blog (http://blogs.ft.com/crookblog/2009/10/an-american-polity-blinded-by-rage/) in which he draws some fairly stark conclusions from the ongoing imbroglio over healthcare.

Nonetheless, the recent shenanigans at the climate change conference have also begun to fray at the mind of the muzzled inner mongrel, and it’s pretty disappointing to hear that the US is wanting to create whole new frameworks before it’ll engage with the emissions reductions process from Kyoto.  I will try harder to find the article with the appropriate references, think it was in the Guardian.  Anyway, it was a shadow of the way the US has often sought to engage with the world – on its’ terms or not at all.

Mind you, China are being equally unequivocal from the other side of the coin, and it’ll be interesting to see how their foreign policy develops as their influence broadens, given their internal mechanisms are still pretty heavy handed in their method of control.

There’s a bigger deal here in relation to how the UN institutions work, and how undemocratic some of the structures – in particular the security council – are.  It’s pretty difficult to see a way of real progress with exclusive clubs of rich countries defining the terms for the rest, and this latest antagonism over emissions is in a similar vein.  Interesting articles were raising how the Kyoto was flawed but nonetheless represented a framework for action which should be strengthened rather than scrapped altogether.

This is to be continued, but I thought the correlation was fairly apt, given the history of US engagement with the UN, even though in general it appears to be improving.

Hopefully this is a blip rather than a sign of things to come.

Rekindling the Olympic spirit

Generally pleased by this afternoon’s announcement that Rio de Janeiro will host the Olympics in 2016.  It was good to see it going to a new country – a new continent even – and hopefully it’ll positively affect the lives of those in the favelas as well.  There should be sufficient means, with the football World Cup being in the same country two years beforehand.  It was quite something watching the celebrations accelerate, that one will run for sure.

I remember London’s victory a few years ago, leaping about the place like a lunatic and being distinctly irritated by people muttering about transport and costs.  It’s great that this time it’s in a city with apparently the highest proportion of enthusiastic citizens.  I hope Londoners’ tendency to act the cumudgeon doesn’t scupper things in 3 years time, but not too optimistic.

Scratching a quiet tune

Brainstink hangs damp as the days turn dark, winter beckoning crassly through the oncoming gloom.  Matchstick men scurry through the fidgety wind and imminent rain.

Humdinger time, mellow bubbles of warmth snag frazzled, grim faced commuters, mind staved in but hearts yearning for warmth and ease.  Those that anticipate hurry to, those that do not merely hurry from.

Flapping across town at dusk, hat brim down and collar up, it’s an odd time of reflection, power and emptiness.  Digressing from the pulp and work and the functions of home a sense of drifting rolls through the unkempt depths, hoary and rugged the internal tide swings and surges, an echo sounding that lets the body rock.  Sucking air through my teeth, flickers of long vision briefly freeze frame, staccato emotions drawing stark lines on a flickering face.  Etch a sketch for the impatient.

Wheeling away on an early winter’s night cackling softly to myself, miming aeroplanes in the solitary zones on the fringes of the rush hour, hard shoulder antics keeping the soul in pungent spirit.

I’m not quite sure what this is all about, a bit of a tangent, side street with triangular houses, diversion from the incoming storms.  Night draws on, in, furtive humanity commences under the unyielding face of winter.

Encouraging signs

Fluttering briefly here this evening, but a couple of promising bits of news leaked through the media rumble lately that’ve given cause for a discernable change in tightened faces.  Well, just a little less sour, at least, baying in the glory of the mind’s eye.

First, I see that further to the extended mutterings about rugby that Argentina will join what was the tri-nations.  Good start, even though it’s conditional and not until 2012, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.  More pacific islands next, if there was any justice in it.

Second, I see that Obama’s speech appears to have largely hit the mark – the sceptical bloke in the FT seemed reasonably convinced, at least.  It’s still a little startling how some of those republicans think, can’t quite get my head around it.  Seems that all tax is demonised, regardless of what it might do or who it might save sometimes.

Finally, and somewhat bizarrely, I hear that Eddie Izzard is running 43 marathons in 52 days.  Just thought I’d share this striking fact with you.  I believe he is a Palace fan too.  Chapeau to that man.

Occasional sharking for oddities brings up some pleasant surprises.

The awkward patient

Sometimes through the smeared panes of passing vehicles, I catch a glimpse of other people’s lives, hearing the sawdust voice of REM’s Everybody Hurts s eking scratchily on the internal radio.   Flimsy character assassinations flit silently behind hooded eyes, swooping across the maelstrom to delve in other people’s imaginary worlds.  Everything seems much more straightforward from the outside.

Even on the occasions you get a little closer, the sureness of diagnosis can seem so easy, being on the outside looking on and not gripped by the other’s fears and weakness.

The line between the two diminishes, in the dark shadows and lean lines of the bathroom mirror, you spot yourself glowering.  Putting on your police shot face, the hankering to crawl out of your own skull and give yourself a beating gnaws insidiously at your innards, until clutching your head in frenzied hands you lean against the cold tiles, breathing eerily.  Just like in the films, you smirk sardonically to yourself.

This should be when the padded doors swing open to a beam of sunshine, and improbable looking nurses armed with clipboards and slapped on clown’s grins  march you for your daily medication.

Instead, blinking wanly in the half light,  you run your finger round the grimy basin, slide melodramatically to the floor and gaze half heartedly through the frosted window pane, fringed with mould, almost wishing it were so.  That someone else would define the way, the plan, sort out the details.

Disordered and frothy at the mouth, we stumble on instead, hoping for a schism in the haze, something to signal the right direction.

Searching for narrative

And so, clad in a shirt bought in a South African stall, I zeroed in on the Notting Hill carnival, slightly self conscious and tentative.  Setting everything up for a notorious exposure of craziness and rapture, you might think.  Well, there was a bit of both, but the overall sense was of something fairly controlled.  There was dancing, there was noise, just in retrospect a certain lack of full – bloodedness.

Stood near the end overlooking the canal, on which a boat with a blues band stoked the air with movement.  Husky rain dimpled the water, lit up by Dickensian streetlights.  Leaning against the railing, for a time the steady breeze softened the shrill squawk of trouble, and peering out of dewy eyes the world seemed mollified, open, pliable.

Shades of Venice a few years ago – night time along a stretch of urban water is a lure for me, compelling.  I recall the sense from the Waterbabies book, the vivid feeling of being able to swim away from everything angular and rusty that looms on the earth above.  But instead to dive and whirl, unencumbered by gravity, let loose from constraints, relishing the possibilities of the world.

Sanguine in the passing of the reverie, the fleeting sense of possibility echoed and faded.  Allowed the dark to encroach again, eyes pooled in heavy absence, anticipating the fallout.  The inner gears, though, added a litlte extra grip, a slight tone of lever.  Their time will come.

I did, of course, start this on the proviso of cricket.  And there I shall end it – seized a moment and a chance, collectively accosting two men with flags – got one right and one wrong.  But one may be a relative of Alvin Kallicharan, of West Indies fame.  Played in New Zealand with Otago too, no less.  I have his email, shall ask the question.

Bulletin

Dragged loosely out of the scheme of things over the last week or so, I return feeling bleached and scattergun, a bit like those cartoon characters with rubber faces, pulling every expression known to man inside a ten second frame.

Loping sidelong into your picture, I have of course forgotten what I was going to say.  Much has happened, I suppose.  England went and won the ashes in a manner that seemed almost straightforward, despite the growing apoplexy of watching England fans who would proclaim the end was nigh at every turn.  In part, yes my mind was similarly steered, but just when England could have collapsed, someone pulled through, and vice versa with the Aussies.  It’s those points when matches are won and lost, and usually England lose.  All the more head scratching then, but hopefully with less fragile performances due on the back of this.

In a similar vein, I see that cricketing titan Dan Vettori has ground his way into the exclusive all rounders club – 300 wickets and 3000 runs – especially pleasing since he often seems to be playing the opposition by himself.  The return of Bond should help with that mind you.  I remember following a match in which he has been hit for a boundary, but came up with a terrific 95 mph jaffa next, the commentator screaming ‘But this is Bond’.  NZ could do with that kind of oomph again, even if he is a bit injury prone and 33.

Over the weekend I went to the Notting Hill Carnival, and more on that and cricket for next time…

Rapid postscript

Just a quick postscript on Bolt – he did it again in the 200.  The man’s extraordinary.

And of the things that’s great is that he seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself too – none of this macho bravado, which is refreshing.  I am sure my mum would approve of him.

I am now off for a long weekend, to sit on a rock and stare at the sea.  Postcards will be postdated, will be no internet where I’m going, and will try to refrain from watching TV or using my mobile as well.  Should be fairly easy, both because and in spite of the fact of the last Ashes test this weekend.  Which is n my backyard in London.

I’ve got more important battles to worry about.  More on my return, maybe.

Note on the glory of sport

I’ve been an Olympic mood this week, gripped by fleeting glances at the sport on TV – in particular the athletics World Championships in Berlin.  I’ve enjoyed watching the raw physicality of the games, the exertion and power is quite breathtaking. There is the opportunity for such rich tragedy and glory as well, something very primal about the whole experience.

I recall a few years ago watching the seemingly boundlessly enthusiastic Philips Idowu leap from the creased sand after his final triple jump at the olympics, eyes desparately searching for the score having nailed a huge jump.  Mouth hanging and eyes on stalks, you could seem him crumble in stages as the red flag was raised. His eyes closed, gait grinded on the despair, watching his face fall was theatre in motion as weary hands clawed at the air and he stumbled, waif like, empty.

This year it was great to see that hollow pain replaced with a massive grin as he took the gold, and when you see the extraordinary things these guys can do, how much work they put in, you realise how much these are deserved.

Speaking of extraordinary, you’ll probably have heard or seen the magnificent world record run of Usain Bolt who elegantly took apart the field in the 100m the other day.  Watching him run is jaw dropping in its lucidity – the  lucidity of his movement seemed absolute, intrinsic.  A sort of return to man as beast, so natural did it seem, he seemed to run like water flows downhill., and almost as fast.  On which note I recall thinking similarly watching Mark Cavendish sprint to the finish in the final Tour de France stage this year – he has been incredible, winning consistenly and becoming termed ‘the Manx machine’.  But watching that finish from side on, as he surges ahead after the final bend I got that same sense of astonishing adrenaline, far from look mechanical he looked every inch the animal – more like a predator closing in on his prey.  I’ll see if I can dig up a video to show you what I mean.

There were also a bunch of less straightforward sports achievements on show of late – in particular the first Asian golf major winner in YE Yang, taking Tiger Woods to the sword, no less, in the final round.  Also Andy Murray became the first ever British world no’ 2, and Charles Coventry equalled the world record one day score with 195* against Bangladesh.

So on Monday I was looking forward to some good stuff in the sports pages of the papers.  Much to my chagrin then, when all this stuff was stuffed down the back of some football matches.   Links back to the media and their cyclical rehashing of the same old bollocks.  Pretty disappointing that.

Empty evening

Wanting to scrawl a marker on the tableau of life, hasty graffiti on a mundane edge of not much where not many will notice, I return here yet.  Odd flickerings of life strain earnestly for clarity in the damp moss covered mind, never quite sparking to life.  Drizle idles in this atmosphere, spreading dickensian urges between the nondescript mediocrity of clapped out o ld buildings with blank staring fronts, apathetic and vapid.

The hand is poised and cocked, ready to peter out the morning’s crumby missive, the street slow and aimless.  The dank world seems to seep through however, the shoulders sag, the mind blank.  Like an cigarette lighter running out of gas, the pointless internal frission and anger seems bland and tasteless.

Emptiness has pressed paused in this flurry of drivel.  I can hear the wheels of the cortex rust, sitting in that eternal second of indecision like the eye of a storm, gormless and slack jawed as the world froths and surges around me, spooked and clueless.

Acknowledgement is the beginning, they say, nodding heavily in an attempt to appear sober, engaging their fluffed up brain in rictus grinning mode spouting halfwitted cliches to the gazing masses.  It’s always they that’s to blame, them who are pulling the strings.  Pathetic herds of burnt out humanity baying feebly at the door of entertainment.

Sudden rush of blood and for a second I stop trying to get a spark to stay and stick out a gnarled limb into the fray, catches briefly and churns, skidding like a stone in a gasp of glory, whizzing on the air like the blasted Snowman.

Cynicism is back.  Enemy sighted at 3 o’clock.  Targets everywhere, firing scattergun in a den crawling with gremlins, back in my internal landscape watching the accursed writhe out of sight.

But I’m after ‘em.  Eyes glinting sepulchral in the shadows, sun lent through an occasional beam and still catches the air just for a moment the maudlin music hits a higher note.

Back in the foliage.  Moving crabbily on, muscles beginning to grit one by one.