On Morality in the 21st century (A)

An old man gets on the bus on a cold Wednesday afternoon. He relies on a heavyset frame/trolley combo to keep balance, there are no available seats. He stands blocking the aisle expecting a seat to be given up for him as the patrons look on in apathetic detachment. No-body moves to give this man a seat and eventually he has to get off the bus and wait for the next one. Elsewhere a drunken man falls over at a bus station and gains a nasty gash across his head, not deep but bleeding profusely. He is asking for help while people again go about their business as if he did not exist. Help eventually came (thanks to one Good Samaritan) but for the most part people ignored this bleeding man.  Both cases are true and both are unsettling to me. I want to take a moment to say that I am in no way about to rant about how ‘the people of today are immoral sadists’ or get on a high horse about how everyone else is immoral. I was a witness to both these examples and in both I pretended to be on my phone. I am no better or worse than anyone else and so I can’t judge others unfairly when I’m guilty of the same thing (don’t throw stones in glass houses and all that).

It all comes down to incentive nowadays. People don’t act unless they gain from it in some way. That’s the mantra of our age, ‘what’s in it for me?’ and honestly that’s pretty fair enough. Why would someone want to bend over backwards for someone they’ve never met, who they don’t know the character of and who may never repay the favour. Immanuel Kant proposed an idea of Duty for duties sake. In which our ‘duty’ was to act in a way perceived as morally good. However there is argument to exactly how far this sense of ‘moral obligation’ stretches. If I hold the door open for someone am I then ‘morally obligated’ to hold the door open for every person to walk through, or every time I use the door? If I then relent from holding the door open for someone have I failed at being moral? With all the effort it would take to uphold the standards these seem to set it is no wonder many people would rather not bother.

Not all good deeds are done for a good reason. Aquinas called these interior and exterior acts. If a young man helps an old lady across the road to impress a girl then this is indeed a good exterior act but the interior act (or intention) is wrong because it is only for personal gain (which goes back to the incentive point). Likewise someone could do a good exterior act for an honest reason but the intention could be misinterpreted by a witness (for no-one can truly know someone’s intention). For example a young man could help an old lady pick up her handbag if she drops it, but the old lady could misinterpret this as him trying to steal it and so calls for help. An innocent action of good will does nothing positive to help and only damages the reputation of the good boy.

This is probably one of the other main reasons people today are wary to act benevolently. We are afraid of how we will be perceived for it. Society and the media has made us paranoid of our neighbour and our fellow man to the point of ridiculousness. As long as we don’t stab them in the back or steal their child that is acting morally, everything else is excessive. In the workplace if someone brings up an issue they feel is wrong or causing a problem they could be branded a ‘troublemaker’ and hit the formidable glass ceiling, unable to gain a promotion. The distractions that we surround ourselves with daily also contribute. Not to put too fine a point on it but morality needs social interaction to function properly and it can be argued that isolation prevents someone doing what is morally wrong it also prevents them from doing things that are morally right.  People are complacent with simply not acting in any way that can be misconstrued and leaving others to fend for themselves.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. There are many charitable people on this planet they probably outweigh the immoral and complacent too. Only it’s easier to notice when people aren’t being good. During the London riots the worst part of society was revealed but it also created a snapshot of some brilliant people. In many communities people banded together to clean up the mess and defend their livelihood. I couldn’t help but smile at how fantastic it was that apparently there were no words said, people just got to work helping one another for a sense of community. All I hope for is that if we truly need an incentive then let the sense of fairness and community be enough. 

On my Face (N)

If anyone was wondering this is my profile picture in full size. It's just a quick drawing I did when I was around my 5/3 year old cousins (the three year old, Georgia, wasn't afraid, she even watched me draw him). Anyway that's besides the point. I based it on a morphed picture of my own face because, if anything, it's an improvement on the real thing.

Ode to a forgotten Volkswagen Van in a field (P)

Lonely old van,
Left to be consumed by the earth.
Off the road and in the field
Your last journey uncompleted.

Rusty old van
It's skin burnt and flaking
Like auburn leaves in winter.
A dying metal tree.

Blind old van
Its stolen eyes
Leave only empty voids
Staring at the horizon.

Lonely old van
With only the sun and moon for company
And a cricket chorus
To sing the days away.

Home (P)

For mine is the earth, the land and the stone.
For mine is the sea, the spray and the foam.
For mine is the sky, the clouds and the birds that roam.
For mine are the stars, the space, the unknown.
All of this, this is my home.

Isabella (P)

She sits by her reflection,
Her face a pale complexion,
The graven image of death


(A knock at the door)


Her corset locked around her
She tightens though it may hurt
To eradicate the breath


(As before, a knock at the door)


She smells of the graveyard at night,
Of bones so pearly white,
And of a losing army's trench


(As before a knock at the door)


So she puts on perfumes from india
China and malaysia,
To cover up the stench


(As before, a knock at the door)


She has two glass eyes to fill
The large and black eye sockets,
Voids that stare off into space


(Knocking once more, at the door)


'Isabella my love,are you there?'
A slow reply from the girl inside
'Im just putting on my face'

The Cosmic Widow (P)

The blackest velvet of the night


Illuminated by gods shimmering plate.


It's half empty of the heavens.


Half her face is shrouded by a veil of shadows.


The night, her long funeral dress (as long as night lasts).


Is held together by evanescent pins


Some stuck well, some long since fallen


At the corners of existence.




Serpentine clouds slither through


Wisping through her hair and past her face


Flickering as demons, faces, lovers


All eternity's memories of love.


She wanders the empty sky alone.


The cosmic widow of the night.


Ever waiting above the earth


For her solar lover to return.

The scholar's folly (P)

Late a dismal night i took to finding
The ancient tomes of Occult aligning
And I found the texts justifying
My dark and dusty soul.

Though when at last i came to dreaming.
A fetid sound, my own horrid screaming.
Foreboding forms in dreams are reaving.
The peaceful sleep they stole.

For in the tome i chanced of reading.
Was written the codes of evil's scheming.
That the devils hand had been leaving.
Beckoning dark spirits to my fold.

Within my mind was a hellish feeling
Of terror's grasp and daemons seething.
Upon my form to restrict my breathing.
Caught in deaths damned atoll.

That Satan may stand before me accusing,
Of selfish thoughts and of misusing
The knowledge he bestowed through his choosing
To his wretched prophets of old.

I begged that he would see me grieving
For the Devil's secrets i was stealing.
I begged for a chance of redeeming
My long forsaken heart of coal.

I saw that he took to absolving
The matter, his demons abdicating..
Until he himself was absenting.
Leaving me alone and in control.

In the river i was throwing
The ancient books i was forgoing.
For the things i thought worth knowing
Were not worth knowing after all.

Magic Places (P)

I want to be in the magic places.
I want to see the space between spaces.
I want to charm the seas in merlin's lair.
I want to sit and think in the devils chair.
I want to see the sun rise and set in stone henge.
I want to watch the flowering of a buttercup.
I want to see the first steps of a newborn pup.
I want to see the settling morning dew.
I want to be in the fields with you.

Crashes and Crushes (S)

It was a Saturday in the bustling streets of London and three blackbirds flew from the high reaches of a skyscraper down past the veranda of a downtown cafe, just brushing outside of the sight of two friends talking over a mid afternoon coffee. They talked about their lives and kept one another up to date. They had not seen each other for quite some time. having lost years in the chaos of everyday life and the sheer hurricane of humdrum activities they find themselves in. The last time they talked was five years ago. At her wedding reception. She was young and marrying who she thought would be the love of her life. He was watching the loss of what he thought was his. Now theysat and talkeddue to the breakdown of that union. They looked so happy in the photos. Happy and fulfilled. The woman and her fiancée had been inseparable as a couple. And nothing could break that bond. Nothing that wasn't two Asian hookers and a marriage bed that was.Now she was a different person to how she used to be (happy, bubbly and energetic) now her posture and mood suggested loss and pain and a crushing realisation that he wasn't what she thought and a paranoia that nobody ever is. He on the other hand was exactly how she remembered. Cool and collected and willing to help a friend he hadn't spoken to in years. They sat upon chipped white decorative patio chairs, he sat casually, she sat exhausted, white t-shirt tight around her breasts but loose around the arms and waist. She felt good in it, legs crossed in the safety of a plaid skirt and black tights. He sat with his legs crossed in his knee less blue denim jeans, red and white converse trainers gleaming in the sun. (They were caked in mud, suggesting the feet of a man who walked a lot.) His right arm rested upon the table to hold his cooling latte (two sugars) while his left hung behind the back of the chair with a cigarette in between the fingers. (Giving up, on the patch, not working) this made the black blazer he was wearing open to reveal his 'guns 'n' roses' band t-shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow to cool off in the mid afternoon sun. He could tell she was downhearted and could use a pick me up. So he told some joke he heard at work (computer programmer, nothing fancy just basic numbers) she laughed, her button nose wrinkled up and her small mouth curled into a cute and petit grin. He felt a pang of something. Must just be indigestion, he'll look into it later. He sighed and shifted in his seat, changing legs to get the feeling back in his right one. 'don't worry, you'll find love again soon' he smiled, it made her feel a little better but did not change the timbre of her reply 'I don't believe in love, not anymore' she moved her head to the side slightly, covering her face with her drink as a single tear rolled down her cheek. 'Lauren...don't be like that...' he pushed his rose tinted sunglasses back to his brow and swept the ginger hair out of his face. He needed a hair cut.
'Why? its just a load of shit, you read about it but you think it'll never happen to you and when it does it is only so that you get hurt by it, always love and lose and its shit!' she said in a small outburst. She had been keeping this inside for a while. Her cheeks went a little red and her blue eyes shone in the light. 'I just don't see the point of love anymore, if love was so 'real' then why does it only lead to broken hearts, divorce and misery' silence from the man as Lauren waited for an answer. She sighed and slumped back in her chair, fiddling with her pink and black studded belt. 'Please Nathan; give me some reason why it's worthwhile because I really don't know'
Nathan sighed again and looked almost meditative. Lauren thought he came across as slightly arrogant and patronising at times, though it may just be her. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out and she could tell he was thinking about it carefully, his mouth moved from side to side as if chewing the words. 'That is love, that's how someone knows they've been in love. I cherish those moments, yes they hurt like hell but it makes you feel such strong emotions and makes you feel more alive than you've ever felt. Men have killed each other to define it and most can only vaguely grasp upon the subject of this profound emotion ' he was well educated, no hiding that. He could say things only a dictionary could know. And he was poetic. But that's the tools of the trade for a part time musician isn't it? Lauren laughed again, 'well, when you truly fall in love, promise to tell me' she chuckled, he was naive, she thought, and it was adorable but annoying.
Something caught her eye. It was a Honda civic, brown, it didn't really have much significance to anyone else but for some reason it was all she could look at. a strange sensation came over her, it was the unshakable sense of deja-vu and a sense of displacement, as if she was there and not there and her mind floated just above the ether beyond reality, a real what the fuck moment that made her feel light headed. She shuddered. As soon as the Honda was out of sight she realised Nathan was looking at her with concern in her eyes. 'Everything alright?' he asked slightly slowing the words a bit. 'Yeah, just...I don't know must have just seen that car before' she muttered, not really focusing on anything in particular. Nathan stretched and gave a little sigh of relief and amusement, 'deja vu I get it too' he laughed.
'As for what you just said my dear girl' he put on a fake posh accent 'life, love and music are my muses. And ive fallen in love before, many times.' he frowned and closed his eyes for a minute, something painful went across his mind, 'to my own downfall' he said solemnly, 'have you ever been in love?' he said, changing the subject.
'No' the answer was quick and a lie. Not what he was hoping for, 'Then you'll feel differently when you have' he picked up a napkin and began folding it, over and over and over again until it made a flower, he put it in his coffee cup (now empty) and the sun made the white of the napkin blazingly bright, it hurt Laurens eyes a little, she looked for a little while then turned back to meet his eyes. A look of hope in her face and a curious tone in her voice ' what does love feel like?' she looked right at him and rested her head on the palm of her hand.
'Better poets and passionate men than me have gone mad trying to describe it' he said, and he looked down at the tissue-flower, 'Try, for me?' she asked and pulled a puppy dog face that she knew no-man could resist.
He sighed and leaned back on his chair, looking up to the sky and letting his ginger hair flow down. 'put simply' he began and trailed off, then he lurched forward and surprised her a little, he leaned forwards with a silly grin on his face and eyes wide 'its both wonderful amd terrible, its addicting and its devastating' he laughed 'but its worth it just to have that special someone in your arms and watch as eternity passes you by' she looked puzzled, 'I don't understand it' she moaned. 'If it's so great, why does it cause so much pain?'
Nathan shrugged 'balance, no great joy comes without great pain' he rested his head on his arms on the table and looked up at her, like a tired bloodhound, knackered but content 'That's just not how life works' he yawned. He was unusually tired today; maybe he just needed more sleep. She did ring him in the middle of the night to be fair, but he could hardly ignore her, she was in tears and 'needed someone outside her loop' to talk to.
Lauren looked at him bleary eyed, tears formed in those pools of blue 'I don't want that pain' she whispered 'not again' 'So to avoid it, I won't fall in love' she laughed weakly and accidentally grabbed the tissue flower to dry her eyes with. She looked down at it and apologised, he said she didn't need to.
'You can't control whether you fall in love or not, and if you can you're missing out.' he said, holding her hand reassuringly. She laughed 'No im not, nothing is worth that pain' she murmured loud enough for him to hear. 'It's like a cut' he sat up and looked deep into her eyes, deep into those pools of blue. And the feelings all came back to him. She was his first crush he could remember, and one of the longest and what was a huge devotion had now bubbled and cooled into a curious affection and comfortable desire. And his failed relationships came back to him, all that hurt over the years that left him crying on his bed for days at a time. He went silent for a while and it was becoming uncomfortable as he remembered the loss and the despair he felt and the hope that came after. and it was these experiences that made him able to sum it all up into one realisation, one philosophy that made it all worthwhile 'it hurts at first...Infact its agonising, but it heals and you look back on what you had and remember it fondly and you'll be glad you felt so bad, so sick, so alive and so utterly human.'
She stared at him for a moment stunned, then she realised she was blushing and shied away, her phone rang (la cucharacha, it was a cheap phone) 'sorry, I have to go, they need me back at the shop...' she took up her brown Prada bag, turned and started to walk away, then turned back. 'hey...Nathan?' he was about to get out of his seat and go, somewhere, not the apartment, too many memories right now, the park, he'll go to the park, 'yeah?' he turned and saw her there, hands knotted and legs bent...like a schoolgirl talking to a teacher 'are...are you free tonight?' she blushed again.
He smiled, 'sure...let me give you my number' and the sun shone still on that hot Saturday afternoon.
* * *
They had dinner at one of the typical trendy restaurants of London. The kind of restaurant that was named 'Da-Vinchi's' or 'leonardo's' or something like a foreign fruit. She hadn't really noticed the sign; she hadn't really noticed anything about the outside of the bar. Infact she couldn't remember anything about the previous day's in-between her being there and the previous afternoon in the sun at the cafe. They sat at a polished wooden table covered by a light violet table cloth. looking at her glass she saw it was empty, she had ordered champagne and he had ordered water not five minutes ago and yet here it was, empty, she couldn't remember drinking it.
'Nice atmosphere here huh?' he said, obviously noticing her discontent and trying to distract her from it. He wore a blue blazer now with blue jeans and a black shirt and tie. She wore a white dress, she didn't even know she had this dress, that was what she did, she thought, she must have gone out dress shopping with her friends. She always thought that was tedious, and that must be why she doesn't remember it. It made sense...at least Lauren hoped it did. She was drifting off.
Nathan cleared his throat to bring her back into reality as a waiter came by to take their orders (Hispanic, teenager probably paying for college or uni. or whatever) she ordered the lobster and he had fish and chips, keeping it simple huh Nath.?
'Remember, when we were kids, and you scraped your knee on the pavement after falling off the fence we used to sit on?' he asked, staring intently at the glass of water as if he was trying to lift it with his mind. 'Yeah I remember, I cried for hours. You carried me home, that was sweet' she reminisced. Suddenly her mind was awash with sepia toned memories of her, Nathan, Jessica, Billy and gale all having fun by the creek, good times, simple times, where the fuck did they all go she wondered. She frowned at how serious her life had become, and then came that odd sense of displacement again. The colours of the room blurred and warped and moved around her, she closed her eyes tightly and shook her head. When she opened her eyes it was as if nothing had happened, it probably seemed a lot longer than it was and Nathan probably thought the lights were making her eyes hurt. He was still smiling.
'What made you bring that up?' she asked, still slightly dazed but steady. 'I was just thinking how if you've been in trouble ive always seemed to be there for you no matter what's going down with me.' he cupped his hands and propped them up on the table, he rested his chin on the backs. 'Seriously, remember college?' she did. Again the sepia flashback hit and she remembered a boyfriend, Charles? John? Barry? One of the many, god she didn't realise how much of a slut she was for them. ah well, times change and you do stupid people when you're a kid, then she remembered the end of one of them, she was sitting in her room alone at their shared flat and Nathan came in with a pizza and beer (how American) and had instantly cheered her up, he sat on the bed with his arm around her consoling her all that night. She came back into the room, no dizzy feelings there. 'Yeah I guess you have kind of'
The waiter came back with their food. The lobster sat on the plate like a fat sunburnt sunbather on the beach. The butter like the pathetic was of sun cream applied to say 'there I tried' and its beady black eyes staring up at Lauren. Suddenly she had no-idea why she ordered lobster, she hated the things they made her feel sick. Nathan however had already finished his meal 'god damn you're quick' she gasped in astonishment 'im a fast eater what can I say?' he smirked; he burped a little to illustrate his point and took a swig of water, a gulp even, downing the glass in one. Lauren looked back at her plate and noticed it was being taken away. It was empty. Again she did not remember eating it. this was starting to weird her out so she stood up and picked up her black leather coat and turned to go to the bathroom ' I have to go for a sec to breathe. 'She rushed. she didn't see the other waiter carrying empty and used dishes from the adjacent table, they collided and a rain of metal forks and knives and the clatter of the plates resonated through her mind, she heard a crash and screaming and again she felt that strange sense of displacement, only now with a massive headache and the unpleasantries of nausea. She collapsed to her knees and Nathan leapt to her side 'Lauren, what's wrong?' he held her and helped her back to her feet. She was shaking and she felt tired and weak. Tears welled in her eyes again. 'I...I think its time for me to get home. They gathered their things and left. The lobster was carried off lonely an uneaten, Nathan paid the bill.
* * *
The next day they met on a corner a few streets back from the cafe. Nathan had dropped by and offered to take her for another cup of coffee. This was good, she thought, the third date and nothings gone really wrong, well with him anyway. She seems to have been all over the place lately in her mind. It took about five or so minutes for them to get to the street the cafe is on. Its normally quiet and humdrum atmosphere was today a buzz of shock and excitement as an ambulance stood guard over a nasty road accident. As they crossed, a police officer was diverting both traffic and curious onlookers away from the scene and urging them to continue with their lives.
Nathan had to stop and ask 'what on earth happened here?' The police officer (a gruff stout man of about thirty, small stubbly beard and the tired eyes of someone who works unfairly long hours) only told them that 'it was a road accident, nasty one, all you need to know, move along' But as they crossed the kerb Lauren saw a young woman, bloodied and in a neck brace being wheeled to the ambulance on a stretcher, she had an oxygen mask on her face suggesting that the poor girl wasn't breathing. Though she was sure the workers moved fast the scene was in total slow motion for her. What really stood out however is the type and colour of the car involved? A brown Honda civic. She turned away, suddenly sickened by the scene and just wanted to focus on Nathan.
She ordered an espresso, no sugar. She needed something strong for today. Today she felt like crap. She felt like she hadn't slept in weeks and had a killer migraine that started up when they got to that accident. It must have been the ambulance she reasoned. The flashing lights and bright greens and yellows must have set something off. She felt a bit nauseous too but it wasn't that bad. At any rate it made her need to drink her coffee slowly. He just sat and watched her, even more intent that she should notice he was there.
'Lauren...how are you right now' he asked quite coldly and seriously. He was concerned. 'You seem a little, well, peaky to be honest.' 'im im fine I think, im just tired a lot and, yeah I think the ambulance gave me a headache' she was not focusing, her attention drifted back t the girl on the stretcher, something clicked in her head about her that seemed important. But she didn't know why. 'You sure? You've been phasing out a lot lately, like at the restaurant a few days ago' 'Wait, a few days ago?' she was sure it was yesterday. 'It was last night!' 'no Lauren, it was a few days ago, ive been calling a few times since then, ive left a couple of messages on your phone too' he was surprised, his eyebrows raised and met his fringe. She didn't like this. Suddenly she felt like the birds had stopped singing and she couldn't hear anything else around them. She felt like everybody was watching her, waiting for something indescribable to happen. When she looked to them though they clearly weren't looking or listening but that general unease crept back into her spine, Nathan was messing with her, she was sure of it and she hated him for it.
'fuck you Nathan' she blurted, holding back scared tears 'if you want to fuck with me and mess me about then just fuck you' she choked on the words, he had seemed so nice. Still he sat there, looking at her, unflinching, slowly he closed his eyes and laid back, a pang of something on his face then, coming forward again, he wiped his brow and sighed. 'Okay Lauren...you need to realise what's going on here. Ive been silent enough but im just going to have to tell you because you're too stupid to realise it on your own.' he muttered. This shocked Lauren, how could the man who seemed so nice call her stupid. 'Fuck you' she said again but the words had lost all meaning. She was numb all over and scared, very scared. She felt like she couldn't move.
Nathan got up and walked to her, almost gliding. 'There are things you haven't realised about the last few days, things that aren't right isn't there?' he asked, she knew what he meant, the food, the memory loss, the flashbacks. 'Lauren what I tell you now is as your friend.' he looked older now and solemn, almost grave. 'I don't exist' he said 'I never have, you haven't been talking to anyone' he croaked. 'im just part of your psyche, a guide you made to help you through a rough time'
Lauren knew this was bullshit, how could he call her, how could he order food? 'no Nathan fuck you, if you don't exist then someone would have told me I was talking to myself' she shook with fury and wanted to punch him, that would prove he's real, a solid punch on a solid torso. The only thing stopping her was the doubt that what if he was right? What if he didn't exist? No, her mind went back to the factors of why he should.
'Maybe, but what if this world is also part of your imagination?' he gestured to the scene around them. People chatting and talking, cars speeding by on the road, she could feel the air and smell the coffee, how the fuck wasn't that real? 'You're lying, why you are lying?' she couldn't help but cry now. She had never been this scared. 'am I?' he growled now 'look at their faces, really focus,' he looked at the old woman next to them, she looked too, slowly, no need to rush one of the biggest freak outs of her life, she felt sick, the feeling was now a throbbing pain in her head and she tasted iron, blood. The old woman had no face. It was just pale skin but no immediate features. She screamed right in the old woman's face and no-one noticed 'what the hell is going on? What are you trying to prove?' she said, exhaustedly looking around, none of them had faces. 'Want more? Look at the cars' he said. The cars didn't have drivers, none of them did. Just empty cars running about on a road that might not be there.
'What the fuck is going on? What are you trying to tell me? im dreaming, im insane, what?' she screamed, she hurt her throat and felt out of breath but the people around them paid no attention or care to the drama happening around them. 'im saying' he took a deep breath 'you should sit down somewhere' he pointed to a chair that appeared behind her.
'You are in a coma. The signs are there, the brown Honda? The crash? The headache and sickness, the scene from earlier?' he hurried up and the world around them became a hazy red whirl. She felt dizzy and fell off of her chair onto the pavement and couldn't get up, she couldn't fucking breathe and the world was going dark and all she could hear was Nathan screaming at her. 'There never was a Nathan, im a part of your mind, you found your husband in bed with whores and screamed in his face and brained him with a chair. In shock you ran out of your apartment where you were hit, by a brown Honda civic. You didn't eat the food you had earlier because you never had it, you only had the meetings with me because im inyour subconscious trying to get you to move on and wake up but your to stupid to do that right!'
She was crying and bleeding and she felt the warmth on her face, was she going to be trapped here in this hellish place for the rest of her life, no she wasn't because blackness seeped in at the corner of her eyes. gradually getting bigger, she was going into the black, she was dying she could feel it, she could hear the beep of the heart monitor and the rushing of the nurses and it faded in and out, in and out until all she heard was noise, horrible static, white noise that hurt her ears and made her scream.
Then came silence.
* * *
The electric pulse of the defibrillator surged through her igniting every pain receptor in her body.A massive jolt that smacked her fucked over brain and demanded it go back to work and wake her up. The doctors and nurses rushed about to get her aid and she felt a massive headache on the side of her head.
'Miss Do you know where you are?' a grim looking doctor asked slowly, she said yes but it was apparently too weak to hear. So she just nodded feebly. 'Do you remember anything about who you are and what happened to you?' he asked, in an annoying condescending way. A word came to her mind, no a name. she whispered it too quietly for the doctor to hear 'pardon?' he asked and leant closer, she whispered again 'Nathan' and went to sleep little knowing that Nathan was the name of the body that had died when they had arrived at the hospital when hisbrown honda hadhit her just outside of a nice downtown cafe. Outside it was a sunny saturday afternoon and three blackbirds flew down past the window off into the streets of london.

A Note on Instincts and Morals (N)

It could be argued man has two primary drives in life, to procreate and to self preserve. It is because of these (think of Aquinas' primary precepts) that men created 'absolute truths'. For whether anything is purely absolute is debatable, after all 'someone' had to think them up in the first place and they at that point would have been relative to  their creator. It should be more apt to say that an 'absolute moral truth' would be a moral standard that applies to a base instinct. 'Thou shall not kill' applies to the instinct of self preservation, the moral abhortion of rape stands to  the instinct of procreation and it is wrong to steal counts  for the hunter gatherers  among us. The moral of 'thou shall not kill' serves not just to protect you should you adhere to it but also acts as an assurance that those who follow it will not harm you. A double whammy of moral safety that fulfils this instinct of self preservation.

An artist's perspective (N)

Take an object in your home, try to get the most bland and mundane object in your house or even get the most interesting. Get a sheet of paper (it doesnt matter what kind). Now draw it, it doesnt have to be neat, doesnt have to be detailed, doesnt need  to be a picasso  or da vinchi-esque mural to the selected item just make sure you get the vauge shape of it. Done? Okay good, Now colour it (i  find pastels the best for this but it hardly matters what medium you use). Colour it not as it is but as i want you to see it, look at the faintest shades of colour and bring them out to the extreme. Make a bland grey or white cup yellow with  red highlights and a teal shadow blazing with vividity and passion and personality. Make the  colours so utterly magnificent that you cant HELP but be proud of it. Dont be neat, Dont be tidy just make it so full of emotion that people cant help but  feel moved by it.  Now do the background. Do swirls of two or three colours and blend them together. Make a fantastic aura around the object of whatever you desire, swirls, flames, spikes. Anything and everything is beautiful in this insane medium of colour.

Look back at it, its nice isnt it? Ii want you to apply this way of seeing things to how you live your life, bring out the vivaciousness of colour in the most drab and mundane days. Thats all that we really see in the world, colour, things are never purely black and white. The night sky is of the deepest blue and the pure white of the arctic snow  is still a fragile glass prism ready to reflect light into a wonderful plethora of colours. Even the most depressing or gloomy circumstances can yield great  beauty if we apply this method of seeking out the good parts and bringing them forward, its a nice little view of life i want to share with you and i hope it alteast  makes the pessimists amoung us feel happy, and hopeful, for just one sublime moment.

Pantheism and the cosmic nautilus (N)

Aristotle's prime mover is the source of all knowledge and is unaware of our existence only thinking of itself. This is a problem for philosophers because it begs the question 'if it only thinks of itself then how can it create us?'. However this problem only applies to the theists that believe in a separation from god and the universe, or a transcendent god. For pantheists (like me) this is not an issue.

Pantheism is the belief that 'god is whole' or 'the whole is in god' i.e god essentially IS the universe and so the prime mover can be explained that it still 'thinks of itself'. However it can still know of us as 'itself' is now 'all of existence'. To put it in a different metaphor inside us are contingent beings that are 'born' and die' these are the various cells of our bodies. This can be compared to how we live and die in the universe. We are the cells in the body of a universe.

Now what about the nautilus thing? Its mainly an artistic expression to personify the universe. To think of a being that contains our 
whole universe and isnt a specific 'form' as we would know it is difficult, So the symbol of pantheism on wikipedia inspired me 'The symbol for Pantheism is the spiral as seen on the curves of the nautilus shell, or the spiral 
arms of a galaxy, showing the link between the vast (hundreds of light years) and the small.' The spiral represents a variety of things, it means evolution, eternity, spirituality, growth and above all it is fantastically Lovecraftian.

Bat out of hell (S)

Adam began to share his exile from Eden with his wife Eve and with her he conceived their first child, Cain. Eve had both received and gained a man with the help of her lord and in due time she bore another son, Abel. In their growth they became close. Their brotherhood knew no rivals, no contempt or hate and their childhood years were happy and peaceful. When they became old enough to rear the animals and tend the land Abel became a keeper of sheep where Cain became the tiller of the ground.

Their parents did not falter to teach them about the ways of their lord and maker so they knew that an offering was demanded from both of them to their creator.  Cain brought the lord an offering of fruit of the ground and his brother the first born of his flock. The lord looked upon Abel with respect and regard for his offering but looked upon the offering of Cain with only contempt and disregard.

The lord felt a rising tide of darkness within Cain and spoke to him ‘my child, you bear a terrible sin within your heart. It crouches at your door; you must be its master.  Your brother is more natured in this act and has resisted the urge to sin more so than you. Truly he is more pious and it is this reason I have chosen him’

Within Cain boiled the rage of seven hells and the dark winter of depression. He fathered resentment to his favoured brother. Why should he, a man of more youthful beauty and untemprered heart be favoured by their lord? Had Cain not already suffered enough and done more than his fair share of work whilst his brother as nursed on his mother’s breast?

That night under a shroud of darkness and unplanned and brash desires he led his brother to the field. As they tilled Abel turned to his brother and spoke ‘my dearest Cain, you have said hardly a word to me since the offering and I have been told by our father you talked to god, tell me what did he say about me?’

Cain looked at his brother, bitter bile rised in his throat. ‘He said nothing about you. He talked to me and me alone!’  He snarled, his brother was taken aback by his brother’s countenance and his jealousy became clear. ‘Cain, do not be moved by the sins of jealousy and hate. Resist them and I am sure god will find favour with you as he has with me’

The words twisted in his mind, his rage took on motion and he struck at Abel with his tool. ‘My fist will find favour with your head and my lord will find favour with your death!’ he struck at his brother’s head thrice and stopped. He was dead and crimson blood lay in a pool at Cain’s feet. As a final act of sacrilege upon gods lamb he tore out his brother’s heart with his knife and devoured the still beating flesh. He looked up at the thundering night sky and roared ‘I have killed and devoured that which pleases you, it is now a part of me as it was a part of him, his heart that resisted temptation and sin now resides within me, O lord, do I find favour with you now?’

Upon hearing Cain’s declaration the sky boomed with fury and the voice of god roared across the earth ‘What have you done? The Voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground! You are now cursed by the earth that has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand! When you till the ground it shall no longer yield to you its bounty. You shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, a degraded outcast to be in perpetual exile.

Cain cried to the lord in defiance ‘Behold, you have driven me out this day from the face of the land, and from your face I shall be hidden and I shall be a wanderer on the earth. I am a savage but you have made me forever in your image, you are the same as me!’

‘You are not of my image you are of the devils and I now mark you as such. Your very skin will burn with hellfire upon the mere utterance of my name and I forever forbid you to enter a domain of my presence. No food will save your hunger and no drink will satiate your thirst other than the very blood you have spilt this day. I send my dogs of vengeance to hunt you to the ends of the earth and rip the flesh from your bones for infinity. You will walk among man for eternity, not as a kinsman but as a scourge and they will curse your name. In time so will you as you shall act as a harbinger for peril and doom to all you meet. Now begone from this place and cease defiling your brother’s remembrance with your very presence!’

Thus Cain felt pain for an eternity. Indeed no drink could quench his thirsts and no foods satiate his glutton but the lifeblood of the creatures of the land. No home could welcome him and none of the lord’s houses could provide for him a room. His father and mother wept not for their elder son but for the dear sweet Abel, who now lay cold and blue with the hue of death upon his face.

Cain was set upon by hounds in human form, with eyes of wild rage and coats of black fur. They made his travels only possible at day where the very sun burned his flesh unless he consumed the blood of man. At night the wolves come out to hunt him, hungry for his flesh. And always able to find him for his hair was scarlet, his eyes crimson and his skin of the palest marble hue. Thus was the origin of the vampire.

_____________________________________________________________

Cain’s curse entailed that he should be functionally immortal. No man could harm him and no beast could feast upon him. He evaded death at every turn and devoured the blood of his would be assailants to keep him mobile. This undying immortality was the only power that god gave him; he was still doomed to a misshapen mortal body. He tired from hunting, tired from walking and tired of the beasts at his back, baying for his blood, the eternal hunt. As quick as those next eighty years went by spent traversing the vast and lonely deserts of the lands to him an eternity was hell to suffer with only the powers of a human.


Eventually Cain came to a halt. He had resigned to his fate of either being devoured by the beasts in pursuit (though far off in the distance now, he could feel them still trailing his scent) or simply letting himself drop there, immobile but conscious and buried by the sand to become as much a part of the desert as the rocks and dunes that littered it.

Then a shadow stood behind him, blotting out the sun. Cain turned to find a human figure with skin stained  an unearthly cobalt black  with two massive feathery wings adorning his back, each jet black and quivering with power, extended so far as to reach the very end of the horizon itself. The figure stared at Cain with wonder and amusement wit blazing amber eyes that left trails of embers wherever they went.  ‘Stay back, I warn you that I am cursed so that no-man or beast may harm me’ the creature laughed and it echoed past the mountains and silenced the carrion birds above ‘Oh poor lost lamb, forsaken son of Adam and punished child of God. It is true no man can harm you but you know well that I am no mere man’ his voice was beautiful and well-toned, like an angels chorus but it had a hollow and cruel resonance within that growled slightly beneath his speech. ‘Know that you now look upon your equal in God’s eyes, a forsaken soul, a vagabond of life and a victim of his cruel machinations! I am Lucifer the enlightened, betrayer and traitor to the heavens and like you I am cast down from his grace!’ He declared, the setting sun cast an unearthly scarlet halo behind his head and made his fiery eyes all the more startling from beneath his shadowed face.






‘However, unlike me you are so much more than you once were; you think this new-found immortality a curse? You are untouchable by blade or blunt, immune to disease and capable of single handedly winning wars. God is a fool to give you such power’ he praised. Cain’s respite was obvious; he dropped the stick he used to support himself on the weary days. ‘Damnable being, it is not only mere immortality that makes up my living damnation, I am spurned by the light of the sun, it’s very touch right now burns me so that in my waking hours I am subjected to agony and pain, my nights are spent running in fear from the hounds of god who wish to rip at me and extend my suffering.  To propagate this I must feed off of the blood of the living to have the strength to continue this unending farce! I bring suffering and misery to all I meet and those who know me know only pain. You would have me win wars? I would wager a war against god himself by now if that was true but I am still only a man, I have a man’s strength and a man’s stamina. ‘


Lucifer smiled once more, wicked silver teeth behind sinister black lips ‘Yes, but I offer you a gift of truth’ he said while producing a small scarlet apple. ‘I have the last remaining Fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge, after the eviction of the custodians of Eden, your progenitors, the garden withered and paradise died, the fruit of knowledge rotted and decayed so that no man may taste its honest flesh. However I managed to salvage one last seedling and kept it alive with my own soul and craft.  Come, partake in the sin of your father so that you may know the truths behind the world’ he extended his arm, the fruit glittering in the dim light.  Cain was hesitant to believe him; indeed would any sane man believe the fallen angel? ‘You trick me, surely you must trick me, and you would not give away knowledge if you wouldn’t gain. Tell me what dark truth lies beneath your generosity’ Cain asked accusingly. 


‘There is no trickery here Cain, this fruit symbolises true knowledge, were I to even attempt to mislead you or betray your trust it would be revealed to you by this. I offer you this fruit in all honesty for what it is, the key to the powers behind the soul and the world. This is access to the dark arts and gifts I am blessed with, god may have made you immortal but it shall be I who shall truly create you.’ Lucifer’s voice was indeed truthful and honest and Cain was tempted by this promise of power. Night was soon to fall and the hounds would be upon him again ‘I shall not have to run any more if I accept, men will fear me and power will be mine, is all of this true’ asked Cain once more, clearly and slowly. ‘Take this and let the power of the ethereal world fill your mind and become like a god’ Lucifer answered, Cain took the fruit from his extended hand and had taken only one bite before the wealth of knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, life and death rushed at his mind, barraging him and burning inside his mind. He could hear Lucifer’s joyous laughter as he blacked out.


When Cain regained consciousness he found himself alone in the desert, the setting crimson sun replaced by a velvet sheet of darkness.  Cain’s mind and body burned with power unimaginable by man. Far off in the distance he heard the hellish barking of the hounds. Wasting no more time he took off at the speed of a desert wind in their direction, eager to end the pursuit once and for all.


He advanced upon them quickly; it was a pack of three, Blue eyes glittering in the moonlight, each as big as a man on all fours. The pack circled the unflinching Cain; he could smell the blood in their veins and hear their heartbeats. One growled and threw itself at him, snarling and roaring with fury. Cain was however able to grab the beast by the throat and tear it from its body, he flung the corpse at another advancing wolf and heard the bines in its skull crack as it hit the floor.


The last to attack was the largest, the alpha of the group. It reared at him and went for his throat, tearing out chunks of flesh from his chest, Cain’s own innards spread out in a sinister plethora upon the sand, sending blackened blood flying and covering the both. Yet still he fought on. He ripped and tore at the beast, ripping eyes and chunks from its bulk. He was so consumed by bloodlust and rages that he scarcely noticed the beast changing into a humanoid form, it grabbed him with clawed arms and threw him against a nearby boulder.


Cain would waste no more time, he was bleeding profusely and the pain from the wound in his torso was too great to bear. He leapt at the beast and with all the strength he could muster he tore the head off of the neck, sinew and bone cracked in an insidious chorus. Wasting not a drop of blood he drank from the wound, as he drank his torso healed, organs regrown from nothing and flesh replacing flesh. Cain understood the true knowledge Lucifer’s fruit had given him and as he stood in the midst of blood and death he truly understood what he had meant. He was now a god among mortals.

The City in the Sand (S)

Exploring is an occupation that I find the most gratifying, I suppose the urge to roam the darkest most mysterious reaches of the world first took hold of me when I was about eight. My father was quite well read and I came from quite a privileged family. I was the latest in the Oswald family name, a family that made its name out of coal and industry. My name, for those wondering, is Harold Oswald, but that is immaterial at the moment. I read his books of the tales of Christopher Columbus and the like and it gave me a taste and a fancy that there was still much to explore. I was young and naive and the world was a much bigger place.

I was in my mid to late twenties when I graduated from the queen Mary University in London with degrees in geography, ancient history, languages and sufficient knowledge to support my endeavours with. It is upon my travels I began to learn that every culture had at least one old folktale, myth or legend about cities that fall victim to horrible disasters that served as a cautionary tale to its beholders.  Intrigued I delved deeper and found that each of the tales involved an ancient civilisation that forsakes a powerful deity, Atlantis, Camelot, Lyonesse and countless others that fade only into distant memories.

It was during my travels in Mesopotamia and whilst on a search for the lost city of Lagash when I happened upon a discovery that yielded a very different culture. Tales came from the east to the locality I was staying in that a huge temple and the portents of indeed a large town or civilisation had recently been uncovered after a series of sandstorms had cleared away. Piqued to have possibly found a metropolis unknown to the entire civilised world I organised a team of expeditors and local men to search and seek out the strange constructs.

The travel across the desert took days and I soon began to feel disheartened that I would not find the source of the rumour. It was just as I began to seriously contemplate going back to the hostel that I found the temple. It sat in the deepest of chasms I had seen in all of my years illuminated by the sunset giving it an ominous crimson glow. It was a pyramid much like the ones found in Egypt but it had only three sides that were segregated into vertical columns reaching to an apex. It sat atop what I can only describe as an elegant ziggurat base. In essence it blended both Sumerian and Assyrian cultures into this strange new and wonderful one. It stretched out to the back for about a mile before it was cut short by the sand and it loomed above us about a thousand cubits in height and half that in width and its great stone steps loomed before me to a sealed entrance. Where I am sure it once had colour had faded to only dim orange and red stains on the rock. It was adorned upon its two levels by a hundred statues of sandstone soldiers kneeling behind their shields with swords drawn and flanked at three corners by beasts of indescribable ferociousness and stature. They were not like any I had seen, being a mix of a lion, a bird and a dragon poised to attack any mortal fool who  was careless enough to approach.  The soldiers while lean and muscular knelt behind circular shields engraved with one swirling symbol and many patterns of squares and triangles. The top section of the temple was triangular in design and flat at its face had it not been for the idol of a sitting bearded giant, upon first impressions a noble king, robed and armoured and with a plaited beard. His face was a mix of sternness and of a look focused out on the vastness of the desert as if contemplating the existence of each grain of sand. He was flanked by two symmetrical statues of Nubian looking priests again with shields of swirling lines, triangles and squares, ever in service to their powerful contemplative master.  Each statue was weathered by the sand, some missing arms and some missing heads all a testament to their grand age.

Indeed the fact that it still stood was as much a miracle as its discovery. Surely it was a sight to behold and I nearly fell to my knees and wept had I not been excitedly ordering my workers to excavate the entrance immediately.

As they worked more and more of this hidden world became apparent, we uncovered building upon building from the site in the same style of inverted triangles and squares. We found elegant statues similar to those seen upon the pyramid of the noble bearded king. All buildings followed the basic ziggurat shape and what we assume to be the housing of the previous inhabitants were big enough for a medium family. Each hovel possessed one chimney hole, one door and the remnants of wooden shelves for bedding.

However the excavation laid out discoveries less serene and more morbid but no less enthralling. Mummified bodies of the inhabitants were found dried out and crushed by the weight of the tons upon tons of desert sand. Some were contorted into horrible malefic grins and grimaces and all were tanned brown or black by the time we unearthed them. The eyes and outer flesh long since gone they stared at us with empty black voids of desolation. But perhaps the strangest thing was the shape of the heads. They were much like our only the skull had been elongated outwards and so were slightly conical in shape, this baffled my men and myself as to why and more importantly how such a vast disproportion could occur. They were also much taller than us as humans each averaging around six feet in height.

The sheer number of corpses found suggested to us all that the city was lost suddenly to them, perhaps overnight and they had no time to prepare. Perhaps the towering chasm proved to be too high for them or maybe they were simply resigned to their lonely fate. Nevertheless they were dead now and these were their relics, their inheritance passed to me and my crew. Their bodies being valuable among the finest riches we found in the city.

We also found the vestigial laying of ancient roads and pathways and within three months we had uncovered a large part of the city centre. However even in the wake of this great feat much of the chasm still laid buried and a desire burned within me to search more and find out how expansive this societies tomb had been. But that was not the task at hand. The entrance into the ziggurat had been cleared and I stood before it, trembling at the thought of being the first living being to set foot inside this wondrous building in decades.

The entrance beheld a face similar to the one upon the top of the ziggurat. It was again of a bearded man. But it was enraged and snarling, its mouth opening into a corridor of darkness within and glaring down at me, the intruder, with contempt and extreme prejudice. The windswept plaited beard flowed to the very edges of the building in wild locks. I could almost hear the beings screams of anger forbidding me to step inside. Taking an oil lamp (the only available light) I ventured deep into the unknown. I was eager to quench my thirst for knowledge and discover one of the deserts many buried secrets.

The inside was adorned with treasures of their age, a time capsule of their culture. I saw ornate blades that twisted like serpents upon the walls and I saw statues of their various gods, one of whom being the statue above me on the throne and the other three being vastly different to him. One was a female with braided hair and a long flowing robe that showed her finely sculpted breasts and gave her a sense of serenity and tranquillity. 

The statue’s robe had no end instead being seemingly connected to its base with what looked like water around her feet.  The other two were male and again very kingly. However where one closely resembled the idol outside the other was very different. He had no hair and his face was contorted into pure rage. He wore the armour of the warriors outside and was decorated with waves and curls that mean the same to any culture. He wore fire upon himself and burned with a fury like none I had seen before in a statue. The detail of their faces was a marvel at as he held his flaming sword out to me. He was clearly put here as a deterrent to early and impressionable grave robbers. The one remaining statue was much like the first one I had discovered but it lacked the beard instead having longer braided hair tied at the back. Instead of being a figure of battle like the seated one or the fire one, he wore robes and the crown and the neck guard of a king.  He again was calm but his face showed the potential for fury illustrated also by the fact he had one hand on his sword. These figures alone gave me an insight into their religion and culture. I admired each face and each figure, astonished at the level of detail. The swords were actual swords. The robes flowed as a real one did. Their sculpting ability seemed to rival that of  even the renaissance artists.

Upon the walls I saw a crude symbolism. It was similar but not akin to Hebrew or Sumerian and was alas rendered unreadable to me, its meanings lost to the ages. I could however pick out the egyptian-esque murals. They depicted a humanoid race, robed in full length robes for women and waist skirts for men. They wore headdresses of gold and silver (inlaid into the murals) and as I progressed down the temple I began to gain hold of their history as the murals flowed together to paint a story before my eyes.

they had once lived and prospered as we do today, they had carts and slaves to pull them and the indications of education, literature, music and art indicated by the scholars, writers, the players shown blowing on strange elongated horns and the artists sculpting the very temple I stand in. another mural showed the people worshipping their god (which I now understood to be the colossal seated king atop the ziggurat) by engaging in a human sacrifice at his feet. The gods to them embodied vital aspects of their world, the blazing burning sun, life giving water, the air which we breathe and of course sand. Each of the elements to them could have both beneficial and malevolent aspects. To avoid the latter they worshipped them all fanatically. They would sacrifice willing members of their own breed at the feet of the statue of the earth god (seemingly their chief god) and danced in a grisly ritual of blood.

As I pressed on I soon found myself in a large chamber. At the centre of the room stood a pedestal and atop the pedestal was a totem-esque statue similar to the seated king. The murals continued in this room but the style had changed, they were more frantic as if intentionally rushed in a state of panic. They depicted the people turning away from their gods and refusing or even questioning sacrifice as a method of worship. This enraged the gods and they turned against their patronage. The sands and the seas became violent and uncross able, the air became thick and carried diseases and the sun burned down relentlessly than before. These once proud intellectuals and masters of masonry began a downward spiral of decadence. Eventually the sacred idol of the earth god behind me was stolen from the temple.  In a violent fury unlike any they had experienced before he sent down a sandstorm powerful enough to bury the entire chasm in one night.

Irked but not disillusioned by this I approached the pedestal. The statuette was made out of pure gold. No apprehension seized me and no conflict grappled with me. I had to take this to my partners and tell them of the tales have learned.

 I grabbed it without a moments thought. As I held it in my hands, remarking at its beauty a hollow wind echoed through the entire tomb. A gushing roar of a breeze that knocked me to my feet, the screaming of my acquaintances roused me to come rushing out the exit towards them where I found a sand storm brewing overhead, furious and powerful. This hurricane sounded like the enraged war cries of a mad god, though it may just have been fancy after that story, but nevertheless we scrambled out of the chasm and hid in tents as a violent maelstrom of the deserts anger whirled around us.  I swear to god that I heard the bellowing of a man in the wind and could see black shapes roaming about in the sandstorm. I put it to tricks of the light or my eyes and waited for it to end.

After some hours it finished. An eerie calm descended over the desert and I slowly emerged from the tent. One of my older guides looked at me, terror and bewilderment in his eyes as he looked upon the golden totem in my shaking hands. He became angry and grabbed the figure and began to scream at me in fury 'Terra’th!' just that one name over and over again. It eventually dawned on me he was naming the figure; he was Terra’th, the god of the sand, the face upon the entrance to the temple and the colossus atop it.

What had become of the people who hadn’t made it to the tent was horrific; they lay out on the sand slain, not only by sand but by many grievous cut wounds and injuries that stained the white sand a deep muddy red. As for the citadel I had found that the desert had once again claimed back its secrecy from me and the sand had once again filled to quarry to the point that, had I not been previously standing in it, I would not have known it was there. Nothing suggested the corpse of a great people except for one detail. It was the one sign that shocked me more than the sandstorm or the murder of my people. This last sign was to me the breaking point of all I could bear. It was of one solitary mummified body, which had half emerged out of the sand dune before whatever force imbued it with movement fled its remains, a sword in its mouth and blood on its hands.

Do Good and Evil exist? (N)

Besides human intervention to the obvious i cant help but wondering if there is such a thing as 'good and evil'. I no longer know whether they are divine concepts that are integral of themselves or if they are simply ideas conjured up by the human mind. For example if i were to murder somebody the punishments i would face would not be outside of humanity. 

Oh i would still be tried by the law and sentenced by my own kin but outside of that i would feel no wrath of god or divine  rapture for my deeds other than that judgement handed to me by my species. However many religionists would argue that the divine  punishment is enacted through humans and in this i guess they are right. If indeed they are right about a supreme being and that  i will be judged in an eternal afterlife. There is always the potential for error in matters of considering the transcendental situations of death..In my theories i may also be wrong and i acknowledge this. But if others are wrong about an afterlife. If the cynics are right and an unending oblivion truly does await us then what reason is there for good or evil if everything ends up the same, dead and screaming in a dark void of absolution?

The Bio-energy cycle/ Natural reincarnation (N)

Right so i havent done anything philosophical in a while. And i dont know if anyone actually reads these or not but here goes.

I cannot vouch for the belief that there is a soul within every body, nor can i completely prove that there is an afterlife waiting for me after my passing.

(yes its about death, you should know me by now)

However i CAN prove that our bodies are run by bioelectrical signal and various chemical reactions releasing energy. We eat so that we can produce energy, we think by energy firing in neurones.

Energy is not destroyed but it is transformed from one state to another.

When we die this energy for life cannot be destroyed but also cannot continue its previous use. So it is converted to motion and heat (the act of rotting) and provide energy for the various carrion-eating organisms. Plants and funguses are given various beneficience from the body and the energy is passed on.

The carrion-eaters  have their natural predators and so on. Eventually the cycle will repeat so that it inevitably comes back to humans (being one of the top predators) being passed on in various foods for life. To take it even further some of this energy could be used for contraception and birth.

We may not remain the same person but the essentials of our bodies, the energies that have made it run are eventually found in another form or body.

Think about it.

The storm that shook the heavens.(S)

It was mid-autumn when the thunder came. The grey skies made for a bland and vast contrast to the trees of muddy browns, ruddy maroons, and vivid oranges. A breeze in the wind kicked up sending some of the older leaves scattering in the breeze. Urias looked up at the rolling grey seas of cloud above him and wondered what his people did to warrant such an impending storm. Once and again the thunder roared from the depths of the swirling mass like a snarling beast caught in the heavens.

'It looks like the gods are angry again' cooed Sara, Urias' wife of two decades and still going strong.

The fire of youth will burn in this one for long he thought, there’s no doubt about that.

'Aye, pity the sailors' Urias lamented, he was good at that, he was a philosopher he made it his life’s work to feel sorry about everything.

'Pity our son' she paused and looked out of the porch way into the mass above, wavering a moment, then she went back to her task of sewing tunics as another belt of thunder bade her goodbye.

When their son had become a merchant sailor and a man of his own accord Urias and his wife moved to the higher reaches of the mountain of their quaint island. To escape the cities and the towns where noise became constant and the people seemed to succumb to sin and vice like diseases, needless to say Urias found it distracting. Too much had changed in these times to what he knew, too much too fast. Sin knew a place in the city and the devil could always find a home to rest. The old gods were fading, forsaken and replaced with a new one, singular, one god, this still made Urias laugh, one god, the simplicity of it all.

This belief in a great god also bought about great evil and men fell to it in legions. Whores lined the streets selling themselves for food and wine and sometimes for the pure sake of it. Murderers and thieves lurked in every dark corner waiting for the right fool to tread their way. The rich ate well and lived on great excesses like golden furnishings, wine spooling fountains and the great shows of the amphitheatre. While the poor grew sick and died in the gutter. The land was a place of total moral abandon, and Urias seemed the only righteous man, he liked to believe so anyway.

He gazed out dreamily at the autumn leaves in his back garden. It was not so much of a garden as it was an outcropping out looking the vast wilderness of the mountain range but it sufficed enough to stir his imagination and his old probing mind. He wondered what labours his son was enacting as he dreamt. Struggling with a baited rope out to sea and reeling in a huge leviathan of unfathomable imaginations aboard his humble vessel. With the other members of the crew fighting the beast as he did so. All of them holding their own against Poseidon’s realm, water roaring at the boat and turning it over and over, making it lurch nervously from side to side. With the first flickers of lightning starting to appear he drew back inside to his own reality and to his home to prepare for the working day,

He 'worked' in the city along with fellow philosophers, these wise men took refuge in a building of marble and granite to sit in comfy seating and think about everything and all things for nothing more than the sake of thinking about  it. philosophy was one of the most misunderstood occupations by those who did not enact it. It is both useless and all important at the same time. To them it was a noble profession, cast by the gods as a part of human wisdom. To others however it was only highly paid layabouts wining and dining and doing nothing in particular other than being an annoying questioning child with impressive facial hair. The common topics were affairs of state, laws and morals of their fellow men, the gods and new ways of doing things. However today's topic went to the overhead storm.

The thunder went on ahead completely unperturbed and indifferent to the fact that men talked avidly about it below. It rumbled its lazy roar and began to drizzle softly. Urias stood outside the building and basked in the rain, it felt...unnatural, so pure, so clean and fine. He did not want to leave it and trek inside to listen to other old men talk and think. Urias could not stand other philosophers. He ran his hands through his grey thinning hair and felt the rain stain his clean white tunic. it felt like it was cleansing his entre being and he was completely bewitched by it but soon the feeling faded, 'it was just rain' he resolved and eventually but reluctantly he made his way inside past the ornate marble pillars and through  the wooden door.

The hall was a dark cavern of a room but was bathed in a bright and comfy glow of a waning candle. It cast its light over the room far beyond its normal reach by mirrors on mirrors in a wonderful fixture made from crystals and glass arranged in a conical pattern suspended from an ornate brass fitting on one of the ceilings. It twinkled and glittered in the light and made Urias think of the rain. That unearthly beauty that he was almost lost in. he was almost once again lost in it and barely heard Sohcas' ramblings about the gods. He phased back into the room.

'The city is in such a state of decadence that i fear we will feel their wrath upon us soon’ the thunder roared angrily like a stirring beast and he seemed to shy away from this.

'the rich are robbed by the poor, the poor robbed by the rich and damned if the enforcers aren’t a part of it too' he grumbled, he was the old man of them, the moaner, the complainer, nothing  was as good now as it was in 'his day'  then again that was the same with all of them.  Urias was possibly the youngest there being barely fifty and the others around sixty odd or even pushing seventy.

another elder pitched in 'surely our great island is not truly beyond redemption, we simply have fallen on economic troubles, send word to the senate in Greece to help us out, we are their kin and they cannot shut us out of the empire' he whined.

Urias felt the unrest within the room. They were scared, not for themselves but of their country and their leader. They were scared for their very mortal souls and beings. This was beyond petty thinking; they wanted to be redeemed and free of this sin.

'Greece does not care for us anymore, we are on our own' a solemn old man proclaimed from his lounger. 'We are past the times of redemption, all we must do now is simply await our fate'

'So we are consigned to fate now?' Urias retorted, he was never a strong believer in fate and believed that man made his own path in life 'are we seeing that as a certain thing now?' he asked the room, gesturing to all of them with his arm.

'So what say you Urias? Surely you know of us mortal men down here in the quagmire...even from your mountain palace' the others had never approved of his seclusion.  They could not understand that it helped him think 'forgive me but the matters of men are better handled by those who live among them' it was Racus, a hot headed old goat just older than Urias himself, His rival in thinking and living.

'I say, that although we are in a desperate state of affairs, this storm of the gods is just a storm. And it will pass...' he began

'ah, the sceptic of us shows his head and denies the gods power, 'just a storm' he says, in that case then i say we all leave our doors and windows open to the breeze...if we keep them on the ground for long enough' said Racus

'If Racus would let me finish,' he growled it loudly and glared at Racus, sensing his time will come later he sat down and waited for his turn.

'It will pass, but not without precedent. It will damage and it will destroy, to what extent i do not know. but i know this, pity the men who do not fear the gods  and also to those who are naive to see their actions in all things when a storm could  just be a storm, a day could be just a day'. He sat down as Racus rose. He puffed out his chest and let his snowy blonde hair grace his back as he stroked his matching beard and paced the room.

'Perhaps...You are right on this occasion, perhaps' he consigned, Urias felt triumphant and took a celebratory sip of the wine that a slave had just brought in. 'But perhaps not. I have been in the rain and believe me when i say that the gods have filled up the cup of the heavens to overflow onto us, i have felt its cleansing touch and have experienced its ethereal taste. It is not of normal rain for i could not bring myself to leave it until i was soaked through to the skin and sodden like a dog. You 'pious Urias' have felt it too as i saw before you entered, you too were enthralled and enslaved by its power!' Racus stole the look of triumph from Urias' face, it was true he was a slave to the rain, he could not deny it, nor could he form a rebuttal. Racus was superior and had won this argument...for now.

Upon a large recliner a heady voice coughed, it was Sohcas once more ' I think, for the sake of Racus' throat and the two old dogs risk of hurting one another we should adjourn to our homes and to our wives and think again another day' with that the men left the hall and returned home, all the while the rain steadily increased its pace and strength.

That night Urias woke to hell in the skies, thunder boomed constantly in explosive vibrato off of the mountain and the flash of lightning was relentless. An earth shattering quake hit the house, Rushing outside the old thinker saw that an entire building had been demolished by a lightning bolt so that only charred rubble remained. Black rain relentlessly beat down upon every inch of the city and dyed it all a foreboding cobalt blue. That was not the strangest of all though, for even though they were amidst chaos itself there were no screams to be heard, no cries for help or angered pleas at the gods. Instead all who were caught in the rain advanced only to one spot, the well of Poseidon in the centre of the city. They were all enthralled by the rain, all looking up towards it with love and awe. Within the mass Urias could just make out his son Joseph happily drinking the downpour. Urias ran out of the house as fast as possible, he had only one thing on his mind. To get his son away from the rain and to try to get off of the island, rubble exploded in fiery bursts all around him as Zeus' fury stormed above.

Soon however he forgot why he was flustered, forgot why he was running for he too had fallen prey to the spell of the rain, and so he too walked to the statue of Poseidon, looking merciful in the apocalypse and crying black tears. Urias along with all other citizens of that island kneeled down in the rain praying to the god of the sea. As their island city slowly sank down into the depths of the seas...Atlantis had fallen.