Friday [13 and 14]

(1315) Afternoon all. (1315)

14.  Afternoon roundup

13.  Imagery's pretty big in my book 

... if the allegory or analogy largely holds true, then run with it, say I.

Thus the image of the three men still browsing the remaing bookshelves in the bombed out library ... they're a statement, in that case to the hun.

The image of the crossroads inn with the lighthouse, which I expanded to an inn, a chapel, stables for the horses, a workshop, the lighthouse and so on ... that really does sum up how I see N.O. operating, but there are plenty of other inns around and we all know each other.

But always there is sauron, saruman and the orcs and we must do what we can to shut them out.  Thus the idea of "all welcome", the Woke left mis-mantra, includes even those who'd destroy us. To hell with that, we say ... we worked hard to get what we have ... it's not going to be trampled by ideology and the feckless.

Then we get to macro or world issues, even universal metaphysical and physical issues ... right down to micro issues such as your own little or not so little abode.  Today, my ill health clashed with jobs needing doing, along with a majoe event with two of my neighbours, plus the house has major construction going on ... no one coordinating with anyone else. I'm staying well out of it.

Except I'm being drawn in, plus neck pain and what feels a bit like approaching stroke means I'll have to get drastic about daily exercise and what I eat, otherwise I'll not be getting through this summer.

Plus another weird legacy issue which has been around for decades, which I characterise as the Sword of Damocles, has just lowered again, hovering close above me ... it involves my abode itself, which is under threat due to cascading horrors, many of which we write at N.O., ideologically driven.

Sorry to be so cryptic ... needs must. Existential?  Oh yes ... very.  I'm watching and speaking with the chap downstairs who's taken a similar path ... he more successfully with trappings, me more with lufe experiences, not unlike Peer Gynt. I've already come in from the cold and it's a fine life I have at micro level ... but it's threatened because he's still out there, thrashing around. 

It happens.  Then there is an election and if Starmer gets in, I'm a dead man, so to speak ... so are many of you but me more quickly I think.

Which in turn affects N.O. which quite a few will regret the passing of ... in my case, it can't go on forever.

But there's a th8ng called a charmed life. Bob Dylan admitted he'd made his pact with the other fella, I've made mine with my Maker, in a Trinitarian kinda way.  And that's a double-edged sword. While there's still work for me to do, my charmed life will continue.

Then it won't.  But you see, that also applies to my age and poor heart/circulation today, with the food all cooked up and ready to eat.

My mate up the road, a secularist, if not quite an atheist ... puts my luck down to no one being interested in me. I buy that to a point but I also know scapes I escaped where it was lampshade time ... I'm just not going to argue it with a secularist in deep denial over a metaphysical element.

The scientist in me, the scholar, also led me to this view ... as it did TS Eliot:

... as it did CS Lewis. Science works on the basis of most likely case, hypothetically, see it tested, adjust, repeat and gradually build up what "seems to be". Certain things are 💯... for example, we die without air, water, food, according to the rule of threes, no?

But if the test itself is flawed, e.g. the PCR test for covid, then one gets flawed results, by definition.  Is this the view of a fanatic?

So that's where I am ... the sword of Damocles certainly dangling, but all sorts of contracts and arrangements holding me, for now, in place. My life experience is that preparing defences, systems, certainly does give us the edge but overthinking only depresses us snd makes us less capable, like a rabbit in the headlights.

The answer, methinks, esp. with all threatening us right now, is not the folly of the Uniparty or Demonrat route across the pind ... that's just insane.

But above all, those of faith keeping faith, keeping calm, carrying on, with a sense of the absurd ... maybe that's the best path.  And helping our mates and neighbours if we can.