BECKENHAM LIBRARY INDEPENDENCE DAY

Plus: I now know who I am
Plus: I have a new camera

Beckenham Library in Kent will mark the 4th of July tomorrow with a self-publish and be blessed day and I am one of the people invited by Michael J. Weller to come and talk about my own experiences. I'll give a short PowerPoint presentation and then perhaps have a chance to dialogue with Mike about that alternative universe known as self-publishing. 

The mikonoclastic maker of HomeBaked Books is a friend and fellow self-publisher who has described me as an itinerant rhizomath . Forgive my ignorance but I had to look it up. Here's what botany and philosophy have to say about rhizome and rhizomatic:

...a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes.....If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant.

Rhizomatic thought is non-linear, anarchic and nomadic ....Rhizomatic thought is multiplicitous, moving in many directions and connected to many other lines of thinking, acting, and being.

...rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.

Here, at last, is the answer to my lifelong question: WHO AM I?

Thanks to Mike Weller's brilliant insight, I can now carry on in my itinerant rhizomathic way with complete confidence that I am fulfilling my destiny.

I HAVE A NEW CAMERA

My old Fuji Finepix bought in January 2004 has died. Is a digital camera too old at seven? Not by my reckoning but I'm old school and believe things should last and last and last. Unfortunately I've had to accept the unfairness of its demise and start searching for a replacement. This is a process that awakens my inner anorak and there's no snippet of information, however boring, which escapes my detail-hungry eye. After weighing up the evidence concerning those cameras I could afford, I settled on the Canon PowerShot A3300 . All the options will take some getting used to and it feels more fragile than my old camera but it's too soon to say what I think of it. Here are some of the first shots I've taken with it.

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JUNG THOUGHTS FROM A WISE OLD MAN

It's many years since I first encountered C.G. Jung's autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. At the time, in my habitually over-eager way of demonstrating camaraderie with certain thinkers, I emphatically underlined many passages in this book. I have been re-reading it now and am amused to find that those passages are exactly the ones that I would underline now if I hadn't already done so. 

Here is Dr. Jung, after his trip to India, reflecting on the differences between his outlook and the Indian form of spirituality:

I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic images. I do not want to be freed from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for?To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is , not that it is not or is no longer.

To me there is no liberation à tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything that I do not possess, have not done, or experienced. Real liberation becomes possible for me only when I have done all that I was able to do, when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost. 

Amen!


A new illustration has been added to EPISODE FIFTEEN of La Vie en Rosé. Go there to see it full size.

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LIFE WITHOUT LYING

I was intrigued by an article in last Monday's Guardian (the G2 section) titled: Is it possible to live for a year without lying?
Not only does the experiment undertaken by Cathal Morrow appeal to my philosophical bent but his unorthodox way of going about it speaks to my deep-rooted DIY tendency. Unable to find a publisher for the book he is writing on his attempt to break the lie barrier, he put a synopsis of it on a social networking site, seeking backers who would finance him for a year's writing in return for half the profits of the book. It worked: a private equity company agreed. This makes me smile. I love to see rule-breaking schemes succeed and I certainly hope Cathal succeeds, both in truth-telling and selling his book. You can read a sample chapter here.
Inevitably, it makes you think about the lies you tell, why you tell them, and whether it would be morally preferable not to tell any lies at all, even little white ones. What do you think?
The really big bad liars tend to be people in high places, politicians for instance, and lying seems to go with those jobs the way uniforms go with being in the forces. But most people lie out of kindness, or out of cowardice, and often out of convenience. And then there's self-deception. Do we even know what the truth is in the conversations we have with ourselves inside our own heads?
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