Mundanity

After the philosophical ramblings of the last post, it's time to return to the mundane however you wish to define that world in English. The dictionary suggests it means boring, but the origin is actually French, from Le Monde, or the world as we perceive it. If we happen to find the world around us boring, well, that's clearly the product of an inactive mind! On the contrary, or au contraire as they say in France, je trouve le monde tres interessant. .. all of which introductory word play, or jeux de mots, is really aimed at the editor of Wear and Dao, an interesting character and old friend from the days working together around the huge enterprise known as Durham County Council, where the editor worked, along with associated local authorities, somehow keeping his principles intact, despite all the corruption in such places. Anyway, he received his full local government pension, retired early, and bought a house in France. Imagine that! A Durham lad from coal miner stock, having worked in smart clean clothes instead of digging coal underground ... quite a result and now he's back and forth between Darlington and his English house, and South West France and his French one. As for editing, let's say he seems to read this stuff, mundane or not, and sometimes sends emails commenting, to show he reads it. And since to be defined as a writer depends on a minimum of one reader, well I'm grateful to the editor, and the couple of friends in Stanhope who comment on the rubbish I churn out.

The fact is as discovered by your blogger as he wandered through life in the daily games of YinYang, which is basically the Daoist form with the light in the dark and vice versa in a circle of black and white with dots in black and white too, symbolising the mundane, or world as known. How else could humans know their small self without others to argue with, or go to war for that matter! Which brings us to divide and rule and defining the other as separate from our small egoic identity ... all questions examined forensically on the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela by the way ...

Meanwhile, Christmas approaches. The Winter Solstice is a few days away, meaning the days begin to get longer every day for six months, bringing back the long days of Spring and early Summer, when the Earth warms up in this part of the world and food may be foraged in the woods again ... first greenery being the wild garlic growing abundantly on the river banks, ready for picking and processing by foragers who enjoy nothing more than food for free in early spring, and the picking of it.

So, dear readers, that's it for today. An early start in the dark means time to scribble this shite before breakfast and a walk as Dawn approaches. Maybe a trip to the village to visit an old friend from Jarrow, who moved to Weardale years ago, to serve the NHS as a nurse. Not unlike the editor, though he never moved to Weardale, but bought houses in Darlo and France! Pensions were the thing in the good old days, though all that's changing now, as the Plutocrats play their money games to keep the people at it ... the old games of divide and rule!

Never mind, it's been fun all these years, playing roles as a red under the bed in London for several years, visiting Albania to bring fraternal greetings from the British working class (how demented is that?) then becoming a Father and settling in Newcastle upon Tyne with two beautiful daughters, plus their Mum for a while ... anyway, suffice to say after trying Buddhism and Daoisim, I went walking to Santiago de Compostela to discover the formless and life's deepest meaning.

When I find it I'll let you know, dear reader. Maybe you know yourself? I'd say the main thing is to stay curious about everything and try to be kind to the humans ... they're doing their best.
Books keep arriving from Hive, the ethical alternative to Amazon, including David Icke's latest, plus the old favourite Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a classic. One thing's clear anyway, this old blogger will never run short of great books to read and to share with other curious folks who care to visit A Place to Be in Stanhope.

Time for breakfast!