An article by Margaret Attwood - my favourite writer

Time capsule found on the dead planet by Margaret Atwood

In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to try to reach a global deal to tackle climate change. To support the launch of the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions, the Review asked some of our greatest artists, authors and poets to produce new work in response to the crisis



* Margaret Atwood
* The Guardian, Saturday 26 September 2009
* Article history

1. In the first age, we created gods. We carved them out of wood; there was still such a thing as wood, then. We forged them from shining metals and painted them on temple walls. They were gods of many kinds, and goddesses as well. Sometimes they were cruel and drank our blood, but also they gave us rain and sunshine, favourable winds, good harvests, fertile animals, many children. A million birds flew over us then, a million fish swam in our seas.

Our gods had horns on their heads, or moons, or sealy fins, or the beaks of eagles. We called them All-Knowing, we called them Shining One. We knew we were not orphans. We smelled the earth and rolled in it; its juices ran down our chins.

2. In the second age we created money. This money was also made of shining metals. It had two faces: on one side was a severed head, that of a king or some other noteworthy person, on the other face was something else, something that would give us comfort: a bird, a fish, a fur-bearing animal. This was all that remained of our former gods. The money was small in size, and each of us would carry some of it with him every day, as close to the skin as possible. We could not eat this money, wear it or burn it for warmth; but as if by magic it could be changed into such things. The money was mysterious, and we were in awe of it. If you had enough of it, it was said, you would be able to fly.

3. In the third age, money became a god. It was all-powerful, and out of control. It began to talk. It began to create on its own. It created feasts and famines, songs of joy, lamentations. It created greed and hunger, which were its two faces. Towers of glass rose at its name, were destroyed and rose again. It began to eat things. It ate whole forests, croplands and the lives of children. It ate armies, ships and cities. No one could stop it. To have it was a sign of grace.

4. In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.

Some of our wise men turned to the contemplation of deserts. A stone in the sand in the setting sun could be very beautiful, they said. Deserts were tidy, because there were no weeds in them, nothing that crawled. Stay in the desert long enough, and you could apprehend the absolute. The number zero was holy.

5. You who have come here from some distant world, to this dry lakeshore and this cairn, and to this cylinder of brass, in which on the last day of all our recorded days I place our final words:

Pray for us, who once, too, thought we could fly.

Plastic men with plastic hats and coats

I confess that I have been following the X Factor on TV. It is a warped sort of occupation as I loathe virtually everything about it. The "judges", with one exception, are plastic and mindless and the contestants all seem to be utterly desperate to become celebrities, having no ideas what else they can do with their lives. Part of the morbid fascination comes from those who have even less talent than i do, and yet they stand up on a stage and produce performances that would humiliate most of us, while seeming surprised that they are rejected. Many of these no hopers have sponsors who must have put them up there just for a bet; I can think of no other reason. There are some who seem to have a modicum of talent but what people seem to forget is that this is not a talent show, it is a selection process for a wealthy entrepreneur who is looking for someone to fill a very precise mould, and inevitably increase his wealth further. It matters not a jot how good the contestant may be unless they can tick the boxes that are essential for a commercial success. The modern Pop industry is primarily aimed at teenage girls, and has been for decades. Hence the surge in boy bands and girl bands who may have presence and adequate voices but little else to offer. We are in an era of session musicians, invisible talents who provide background music for the hothouse reared mayflies of the industry, the one hit wonders who will be forgotten within a few years.
As an antidote I have been digging out some of my old vinyl albums. I had a thing about sampler albums and these albums contained tracks from many bands who never really made it bigtime, and yet the quality of the music and the musical ability of the performers was first rate. Most of these bands learn their trade from the ground upwards and only made records when the industry deemed them good enough. Bands became famous by playing live gigs and for very little money compared to today. I saw the Beatles for 50p and Cream for even less. Status Quo played a college dance for 40 pounds, and yet now that 40 pounds wouldn't get you a ticket.
I know there is still talent out there, there are some good bands and some wonderful singers including my friend Holly, but it would seem that it is necessary to play a particular set of games if you wish to become successful. For now though, but I hope not for long, the inane, the plastic and the clones are in the driving seat.

Breakout

As I write this, I can barely see out of one eye, my head, face and upper torso are all covered in hives yet again. It is only a week since the last outbreak and frankly I am sick of it. I have seen all the specialists and they say that it is ideopathic, and that is really helpful. I take double doses or more of the antihistamines as soon as it appears and yet nothing seems to make any difference. It is a strange ailment and always makes me feel very ill in an undefined way; and I live in hope that it will be short lived.
Fortunately I am in a position where I don't have to go out at all. In fact I go for days without seeing people, and that sometimes suits me. I have a propensity towards a hermit's life style and that is something that I have no wish to adopt. I can see how it can creep up on one though and must remain on my guard.
On a positive note, yesterday I received and installed the latest Mac Operating system. I did hedge a little as mostly, new OS often means bugs and troubles, but the reviews have been good so i bit the bullet and am so glad that I did. For months now I have been unable to use Adobe Illustrator, one of my favourite programs; it clashed with an upgrade and there seemed no solution. I was on the cusp of spending out a lot of money to replace it with a new version, but now I find that it works again - deep joy.
I now have a faster and leaner computer to play with and that should help me through until the inevitable subsidence, but in the meantime I'll continue to scratch and silently scream to myself.

Hidden treasures

I have been reading about the recent find of saxon treasure in Staffordshire. It would seem that a guy with a metal detector has unearthed one of the biggest and most important finds of its kind just lying there beneath a farmer's field.
This taps directly into boyhood dreams of buried treasure, and though we always hoped that we'd find hoards of something or other we never did. It never stopped us hoping though, and now and then, we'd create our own little boxes of treasure and bury it. Of course we'd quickly move on and forget where we'd but it and so out there will be the rotting remains of tin soldiers, buttons, sweet wrappers, hastilly scribbled notes and who know what. We did understand that our tins wouldn't last long and so we'd wrap eveything in layers of polythene bags. One day perhaps someone will find the bits and pieces that we buried and wonder what we were like.
This activity has been formalised these days with schools burying time capsules, designed to preserve things forever. No doubt our antecedents will take great pleasure in examining the past that way, but there is no sense of discovery in such things.
Finding what has been lost has always been pleasurable, and throughout life I have lost much that I held dear. To rediscover those things have probably brought joy to others and such is the way of things.

Time flies like an arrow - fruit flies like a banana

My greenhouse is infested with fruit flies. I don't really mind as all that is left in there are overripe tomatoes and they are welcome to them. They are fascinating little things with beautiful red eyes. For decades these little creatures have been at the cutting edge of genetics and in the wild there are many different species and within those species hundreds of weird and wonderful mutations.
Some have white eyes and in others eyes are sepia coloured, some have no wings and there are even individual with legs where antennae should be.
Mutations occur naturally as a matter of chance but many of these mutants have been produced in laboratories by exposing flies to radiation or to mutagenic chemicals. Such experiments have advanced our understanding of the way that genes work and no-one has ever complained that these creatures have been badly done by. There are no fruit fly liberation groups, or save the fruit fly campaigns. People do not get excited about genetic manipulation when it comes to these little beasts and yet they have been subjected to our attention for so long.
They are easily kept as pets too - all you need to do is mash a banana, put the pulp into a glass bottle and leave it open for a day or so. After that plug it with cotton wool and watch the little dears breed to their hearts content. Within a few days you will find the banana crawling with tiny larvae and a week or so on you will have a brand new crop of flies that think the universe ends in a hard shiny wall. Oddly there will not be any evidence that they are forming groups or societies, they don't fight and they do nat appear to be looking for answers to life the universe and everything. They don't hold meetings and have no economy and yet they seem to rub along quite happily.
Spiders love them too - if you have a pet spider then you can keep her in food all the yearround by maintaining a breeding population of flies. Try it - you know you want to!

Happy mondays

I have been checking my broadband speed this morning. I do it from time to time just to satisfy myself that my ISp is failing to keep its promise. I am paying for 10Mb/s and usually manage to obtain about 2. Now this is actually adequate for my needs but I do feel that I am paying over the odds for the service that I get. I know that the contract says in very small print - "up to" but it still seems a little unfair to generate such optimism, whilst guaranteeing disappointment.

It is of course the fashion to be upbeat and positive about everything, to make promises that cannot possibly be delivered upon, whilst looking down or realistic viewpoints and branding their holders as cynics.

I agree that there is a place for optimism, after all burying one's head in the sand can generate a wonderful feeling of security, but some that I know make a habit of this while being shafted by those who prey on them.

I'd love to be able to see the good in everyone but I firmly believe that some are born bad, and as such, lack any redeeming features. Of course many are made bad by their circumstances and the world is generating more and more "bad" people because of the way that we are running it. Here we have a growing underclass of young people who do not fit into the moulds that are available to them, choosing to live outside of the laws and social mores that keep society in order. They are failing to recognise authority and authority in it's turn seems to be losing the advantage. the police force are spending more and more of their time dealing with kids, and the news reports habitual offenders as young as three years. Kids have become untouchable in all senses and more and more of them are becoming feral. I know that if kids vandalise my property that I can do nothing about it. To defend myself against them is illegal and should I do anything then i am liable to be prosecuted. Like most adults, I now avoid any dealings with kids out in the wild and that is a shame.

On an optimistic note, I do have a broadband connection that seems to be reliable most of the time. That means that I can access the world virtually, which seems so much more pleasant in some ways than the harsh realities of a human race that is rapidly heading for self destruction.

The courage to fail

I remember a wonderful documentary series on the TV tilted “The Courage to fail”. It described the history of heart surgery and showed that the almost narcissistic arrogance of the pioneer surgeons, drove their progress, and that it had been necessary to take huge risks with patient’s lives in order that their techniques and procedures could be developed.

Western societies drive the world along in terms of technological evolution. For centuries , scientific progress has been in the hands of Europe and America and with every step forward, someone has been prepared to take a risk. Jenner risked the life of James Phipps and his own reputation in his demonstration of the first Vaccination, John Hunter infected himself with syphilis in order to show that it was a disease in its own right, Marie Curie accelerated he death in her search for Radium and so on.

The newspapers would like us all to believe that the new particle accelerator, due to be switched on again this year will, create a black hole into which we will all vanish, and maybe it will. In the end would it matter? There would be no-one to sue and no protesters to complain about it.

The world sits on the brink of a food shortage. It may not seem likely as we see our own population getting fatter and fatter, but there are occasional reminders in the form of footage of children starving to death in far flung regions of Africa, where a farmer’s productivity is at the whims of weather and whatever insect pest happens to be in abundance that year.

Somehow in this century, food production must be increased by 50%, and that is a monumental task. We do however have the technology to do something towards increasing food productivity and giving the African farmer a helping hand. GM plants can solve some of the issues producing more and in some cases better foods than we have ever had before, and yet, the very mention of GM brings out the protesters like wasps at a jam sandwich picnic.

All that we eat has been the product of genetic manipulation anyhow, where, by selective breeding of livestock, we have produced plants and animals that are geared up to feed us and provide for other needs too. GM is not new, it is largely the sensationalization of the process by the tabloid press that has generated the fear that stems from the ignorance of the masses.

Risk taking has become a rarity. Health and safety regulations and exponential growth in the population of lawyers means that we all walk around on eggshells, afraid to step away from the path. That way lies stagnation and disaster.

The garden of eden?

I am a poor gardener. In fact i am not much good at anything really, but I potter and some things do well despite my efforts. I love plants that thrive on neglect, but when it comes to vegetables there are few that do. My courgettes all grow when i am not looking into monster marrows that have very limited culinary use, my beans tend to mature spasmodically so that there are rarely sufficient in the right state to eat and by the time the others catch up, they have become old and stringy. I give up with onions; i am sure that my onion sets actually shrink rather than grow, and my tomatoes - well does anyone want some - they seem to frow like weeds and I have no control over them at all.
My one big success this year has been my wormery. I have this device into which I put all my kitchen waste - uncooked stuff that is- and the worms feed upon it and out of the bottom comes a rich brown liquid that is supposed to be a good fertilizer. Maybe in more skilled hands it would be, but I am happy that the system works. These worms breed at an incredible rate and if i open the layers, each one is alive with pink wriggly things that seem to have just three real functions in life, to eat, to breed and to crap. They have everything provided for them and seem content with their lot. None seem to have an urge to escape and I am pretty sure that they don't fight among themselves for the supplies that they are given.
How they interrelate is a mystery, and although they do have nervous sytems, i am pretty sure that they do not have the facility to devise philosophy. Were this possible, I suppose that some bright wriggler with nothing better to do would have realised that each time the lid was removed, that abundant delicious treats were provided by a huge entity, and that this entity must be the creator.
Humans are good at anthropomorphisation, and many believe that all animals have the ability to think or to reason. How silly is that? i know some people who are unable to reason, and yet some think that animals can apply thoughts in human style. I am sure that some creatures come close to that but it is a truism that man is the only animal not trapped in the present.
Worms have no memory, no ability to think for themselves and therefore ........................... wow, maybe they do have a religion!

Searching for the truth

Watching with a sense of awe the latest batch of pictures from the enhanced Hubble Telescope, I was taken away from my reverie by a comment about the money that is wasted upon space exploration. There are millions of people out there who do see such a program as a waste of money, and while there are huge problems in society and desperate poverty in the world, I can see the argument. However, the same millions of people are quite happy to support the obscenity of the organised religions, that do nothing to solve the underlying problems faced by those that support them.
On the same news broadcast I was appalled by the attitudes being expressed in the USA regarding Barak Obama’s attempts to bring a new humanity to the American health system, where everyone, regardless of their wealth, would have access to medical care. There is so much anger that seems to come from profound ignorance of what a National Health service is all about, many people opposing the idea on the basis of an ideology that has been driven into them while education has failed. America seems to magnify the enormous divides that exist within the world, and with their obsessive views on freedom, the whole world can observe them on their best and worst behaviour.
As a society, the world is being pulled apart. We seem to have learned very little from history and still allow ourselves to be ruled by the irrational. Politicians are afraid to oppose those who are led by fantastic theistic philosophies, and so the churches still wield their powers, albeit in covert ways.
The money spent perpetuating ancient middle eastern mythologies would go a long way towards solving many of the real issues faced by people today. What is spent on space research is insignificant in proportion, and I for one would rather spend money seeking the truth than in the perpetuation of lies.

Ownership

Most women that I know (not all) love to go shopping. Most men that I know - do not. It is women by and large that drive the economy and some seem to be in a huge spiral, a maelstrom of acquisition that fills wardrobes, drawers, kitchens and eventually whole houses with stuff.
I look around and know that much of the clutter that I am surrounded by is utterly superfluous and yet I do not have it in me to throw things away. I am not a shopper but even so I seem to gather stuff like a magnet gathers filings, and my office is a mess of bric-a-brac that only I am responsible for. I know that most of the books will never be read again, and much of the music collection will remain unplayed. I can listen to whatever i like online now and that is so much easier than putting a dic into the machine.
I have two computers, one is a reserve in case this one should let me down, and I justify the retention of most things in a similar way. I have painting materials in abundance and yet I haven't painted for years, I have lino and cutting tools, I have a plethora of add ons for various electronic things and cameras both digital and otherwise that I no longer have any use for, and yet I cannot bring myself to pass these things on.
We are by nature of our genetic disposition nest builders, and as such we are programmed to collect things. Does it make us happy? Of course not; in fact it would seem that the more we have, the less happy we become. Modern society is about instant gratification and everyone seems to want everything and want it now. When i was a kid, if you couldn't afford it you couldn't have it, plain and simple. Now it is a case of buy it now and pay later, regardless of the mountainous debts that build up.
I often wonder what it would be like to shed all posessions and start all over again. I suspect that it would mean that I'd just collect a whole new batch of rubbish!

Waiting for the wolves

Every now and then, I realise that my opinion counts for nothing, and that tends to block me from writing anything at all. It fades of course and i return to the delusional state in which I imagine that someone somewhere might give a shit. We are all the centres of the universe and everything spins around us. We all imagine that we are all important and indestructable but the reality of it all is that we are all islands. John Donne got it wrong. LIke all islands though we do need interaction with others, we need to trade and to share ideas, but when the sun goes down we are alone.
We journey through whatever paths we choose and we may leave traces of where we have been, we may even influence others and in turn be influenced by them, but our path is unique and we tread it the way we choose.
Many believe in some sort of afterlife; whether it be reincarnation or a paradise populated by virgins ( seems like an oxymoron to me!), and this seems to give some sort of hope to the extent that their whole lives are devoted to preparation for the next one. That seems like spending all of one's income on life insurance, or placing a huge bet on the world ending tomorrow. I believe that we just have the one life and that one day the end of the path will be reached; beyond that there is nothingness and we take that last step alone. If it is possible we should endeavour to link our paths to other's while we can, and to make the most of whatever encounters there may be.
The spectre of old age is a frequent visitor, and elderly, frail parents are a constant reminder of one's own futility. The prospect of vegetation in front of a TV, or worse, in the cabbage and urine saturated atmosphere of an old folks home terrify me as i am sure they do others, and i hope that by the time i get there, that there will be alternatives. Being left festering in a home is no better than being left on the outskirts of the village and waiting for the wolves.

Excuses

For the past few weeks i seem to have been not here more than here. Travelling hundreds of miles by road is not the pleasure that is once was and this last weekend was a bit of a nightmare. Traffic density is getting to ridiculous levels and most motorway streams now run in pulses. All it takes is for a lorry to begin an overtaking manoevre on a steep incline to create a backup of traffic that goes on for miles. So, like millions of others, i spent a significant portion of the weekend sitting in traffic queues and muttering "never again" to myself.
The situation can only get worse unless something is done to reduce the traffic on the roads, but nothing that has been attempted so far seems to make any difference. Maybe it is time to bar some drivers from using the roads and to enhance the availability and affordability of public transport. I would happily trade my drivers licence for a subsidised travel pass, but with fares as they are, public transport is neither desirable not economic for anyone unless they are alone.
Anyhow, it is good to be home and away from the seething masses. I must get back into writing again.