Tears

As a child I learned independence at an early age. I also learned to keep my emotions well under control. It was unseemly to display any form of emotion, we were seen and not heard for much of the time.

Last night I cried. I am changing, I know that; inside me things are happening and I do not know what they are, but frequently nowadays I find myself on the brink of tears.  It was a film that triggered it this time. The tree of life tells the story of a relationship between a boy and his father; a father who does not know how to let his son know that he loves him.  The father comes over as harsh and a bully, and the son is incapable of understanding and dealing with the situation. His own love and affection are centred on his mother and he takes out some of his feelings on his younger brother.

There were so many echoes of my own childhood in this movie, and so many long forgotten memories came flooding back. I remember now my parents fighting. They frequently did while we were in bed supposedly asleep, though the house was small and everything could be heard upstairs. I still have no memory of what they were fighting about but can still hear them shouting at each other, my mother in tears and myself hiding under the bedclothes, powerless and clueless too. It seemed to happen a lot and I remember crying myself to sleep, quietly of course, so many times. Eventually you can get used to most things burying the negative thoughts under layers and layers. I learned not to cry, I learned also that I had to escape, and that I would never put any children of my own through the same experiences.

I have no memories of hugs in my childhood. Living at home was mainly about getting through the days. I never had a meaningful conversation with either of my parents; everything was boy appearances. My father was right, it was his house, he paid the bills and that was it. I may be being unfair to him but it is how I felt at the time and those feelings all came flooding back last evening and I was unable to hold back the tears. I felt stupid, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it. maybe it was cathartic but today I don't feel very different and the recently exposed memories are as fresh and newly turned earth.

The film is beautiful. Powerful and moving with little in the way of dialogue. There wasn't much dialogue in our house anyway and maybe that added to the state that I found myself in.

Terry Pratchett said that some people believe that before you die, your whole life flashes before you. It's true, it is called living.

Fakes

I remember a time when plastics were a novelty and then came a time when they were the in thing. Now we are surrounded and becoming buried in the stuff. Things that once were of aesthetic value have been replaced by plastic that has no real value at all.

We live in a counterfeit world, often glued to TV, through which we are bombarded with information, much of which is pure propaganda, generated by the media owners and backers. We become absorbed by programs that allow us to experience vicariously, fake plastic lives. Our politicians, under the glare of the media, cannot speak freely and so adopt personalities that they believe will be acceptable.  We live in a world where appearance is everything. Cosmetics industries are vast and we probably spend more on our appearances than we do on health.  Women in particular are pressurised into being something that they are not.  No-one enjoys getting old, but the cost of preventing the appearance of waging escalates and some will stop at nothing to ward off the ravages of time. Breast implants, botox treatments, and enhancements of virtually every body part are available  at a cost and I won't even start on clothing.

Images in magazines are often photoshopped, enabling anyone to shed years with a few pixel manipulations. Make up and hair treatments also mask what really lies beneath, to the extent that we cannot believe anything that we see.

Political campaigns are base on anything but the truth. The truth seems to be whatever a political party wants it to be. The recent referendum was an example of this, the successful side basing their drive on fear and a hatred of foreigners. It worked.

Plastics are made from oil and as such contain a lot of carbon. This is effectively sequestered for decades, if not centuries as most are not easily degraded.  The oceans are riddled with the waste plastic that we don't have the wits to deal with properly and so wildlife suffers.  In turn we will suffer but it seems that most people couldn't care less. We are taught to consume, and to live for the day, to put on fake faces and to ignore reality. We do so at our peril.