a maze of words leading to …?

Green Party Loyalists – EA Vol. VII

25 09 14

Green Party2

Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. VII …

Green Party Loyalists – some of whom reside in Avalonia – are deeply wedded to the notion that a political party is needed as the cutting edge of an otherwise blunt, wider green movement.

The Loyalists pledge die-hard allegiance to a grouping known as the ‘Ghost Cabinet’ – an inner party committee that currently shadows the Labour Party’s ‘Shadow Cabinet’, which in turn (and outside of Avalonia of course) shadows the Cabinet of Her Majesty’s current government.

Having created a Ghost Cabinet, many Loyalists have spoken loyally as to why they needed take the ‘next logical step’ and create the post of Party Leader (i.e. Ghost Prime Minister). The argument proffered was that the Party needs a Leader so that the Queen will know whom to invite for tea at Buckingham Palace when they win a thumping great majority in Parliament at the next election (or perhaps, at most, the next election after that).

All aspiring leaders within the Party are thus carefully scrutinised by Loyalists as to their table manners. But this has been the downfall of more than one candidate: Iron Sid for example, whose years in the wild Welsh mountains took their toll when his predilection for skinning rabbits with a six-inch Bowie knife proved totally unacceptable to the Loyalist-dominated selection committee.

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The Star-Gazers – EA Vol. XVIII

23 09 14

astrology

Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. XVIII …

In Avalonia they’re big on Astrology – and getting bigger all the time since interest is booming. As one local astrologer said: “… when it comes to our stars, the sky’s the limit.”

This boom was confirmed by a local newspaper (The Central Somerset Garotte) which, under the headline ’Alternative’ Businesses Boost Job Figures, reported that:

“A rush of new businesses, mostly in sectors usually described as ‘alternative’, have been transforming the local employment rates according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Retrenchment. They reveal that out of a record 50 new jobs ‘created’ in the area … there were: 29 astrologers (our emphasis), 11 workshop leaders, 19 New Age Gurus, 8 wholefood businesses, 16 therapists and 23 anarchist revolutionaries working to overthrow the State.”

Many Avalonians (especially the anarchist revolutionaries) quite openly check their aspects and transits for the day before sitting down to breakfast. In justification they point to the woman who, being a Piscean anarchist, decided one day to wait till elevenses before checking her starry portents. She thus munched her Rice Krispies in total groklessness of Neptune’s retrograde motion semi-sextile to her natal Moon in the 8th House, choked on the “free gift with every cereal box” (a miniature plastic fish) and thereby effected an early arrival in that great autonomous confederacy in the sky.

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Abstract-itis

20 09 14

Distance1

‘Abstract’, from the Latin abstractus, meaning “drawn away, detached”.

In some concepts, god is seen as immanent – meaning inside and permeating through everything. This god would agree with the saying “don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” … because an immanent god is a part of – rather than apart from – the person walking that mile. And more, an immanent god is part of everyone met on that road, part of the shoes in which the mile is walked and part of the road itself.

This is very different from Christian, Judaic and Islamic theology for example, where God is an abstraction, largely removed from the world. ‘He’ sits outside of his creation, the divine separated out from the mundane. And when we die this detached god will apparently judge us, deciding whether or not we have met his externally set standards.

Yet beyond abstract concepts of god, our world is currently dominated by the abstract in many other ways – the scientific world-view for instance. This values detachment and ‘objectivity’ … thus (for instance) deeming experimentation on animals to be acceptable, even for trivial purposes like the testing of cosmetics.

Our world is also dominated by centralised systems of government … detached systems in which the regions and localities (and individual people) become largely abstractions that can thus be herded about and socially engineered with little regard for their actual well-being or best interests.

Vice-versa,  each central government becomes largely a remote abstraction to most of the people that live under it, not least because they have little or no power over that government (nor any real connection to it) aside from – if they are lucky – a single vote once every 4 or 5 years to choose one mass-scale party over another of similar flavour.

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Green Gatherings (1)

12 09 14

Green Collective

I’d been one of the organisers of these outdoor camps for several years prior to my formally becoming a citizen of Avalonia and acquiring the associated passport. Aside from the Gathering at Molesworth air-base (of which more another time), they had all taken place not far from Glastonbury and held over a five or six day period …

I remember one Green Gathering in particular. There were kid’s areas, women’s areas, men’s areas and areas for those of indeterminate gender, age and I.Q. There were even areas for areas.

There were hot showers and even hotter sweat lodges. There were domes and pyramids. There were workshops on a hundred and one subjects, including one on Advanced Telepathy … which was not advertised because the attendees would know when and where. There were drugs and hugs. There were geese, goats, rabbits, mice, cats and dogs, horses and donkeys. There were stalls, cafés and Vinnie’s Cider Palace. There were puppets, clowns, jugglers, acrobats and Wild Tree Man Jumping Crazy drumming live up a tree.

There were also The Milk Float Wars, police road-blocks and a mass outbreak of amoebic dysentery.

In short (with the exception of the dysentery, which lasted pretty long), we aimed to provide something for everyone, including the doctors.

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The Picts – EA Vol. XV

09 09 14

Picts3  Picts5

Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. XV …

The Picts migrated to Avalonia from the far, far, faraway North. Even so, they have kept many of their tribal memories intact … and this is reflected in a curious rite held each year on January 25th in the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms.

Known as Burns Night, it commemorates the ancient Pictish practice – now mercifully discontinued – of pouring huge quantities of melted candle wax all over their bodies. The celebrants would then steel themselves, despite writhing in agony, to sit down and write poetic eulogies. Anthropologists from the University of Avalon speculate that this custom stemmed from an even older Pictish belief in pain as the best stimulant of the higher creative faculties.[1]

Nowadays, Avalonian Picts content themselves with pouring huge quantities of melted whisky[2] down their throats, to steel themselves against the pain of eating a disgusting blob of steaming, blood-sodden cattle entrails known as “haggis”. Those who can manage to force down these intestines without vomiting are then said to have “a lot of guts”.

In deference to the ancestral roots of its Pictish minority, Avalonia established diplomatic relations with Findhorn, a small statelet bordering north-east Scotland. But this overture soon turned sour, for it seems that the Findhornians, whose somewhat humourless theology centres on “light energies”, objected to the “dark underworld” aspects of Avalonian mythology. Matters came to a head when the Findhorn State Censor ordered a package of Glastonbury Communicators[3] stopped at the border and sent back. In response, Avalonia withdrew its ambassador and – on the basis of no smoke without fire – broke off relations with Scotland as well.

The Picts:

  • Tribal refuge: Whisky
  • Tribal motto: “Guts are everything”
  • Favourite food: Fried entrails
  • Favourite bakers: Burns the Bread (Glastonbury High Street)
  • Favourite poem: The mickle mach’d muck’d o’ wyld wee willie
  • Hobbies: Burning the candle at both ends; vomiting.
  • Favourite TV program:  Casualty
  • Twinned with: Findhorn   Loch Ness

[1] Prompting the Romans to demonstrate – by building Hadrian’s Wall – that they already felt creative enough.

[2] Melted whisky is whisky that’s already been malted … as per the following past, present and future-tense verb sequence: ‘I melted’, I malt, I mult (i.e. I must malt).

[3] A newsletter from Unique Publications: http://www.unique-publications.co.uk

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The Crop Circlers – EA Vol. III

08 09 14

Crop Circle1

Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. III …

The Crop Circlers are a nomadic tribe, constantly moving in a great sweeping arc from Avalonia to the Wiltshire Downs and Salisbury Plain – and back again. According to tribal lore they must continue to make this endless circling journey, renewing the energies of the land, or else the crops will fail.

There is little or no crime amongst the Crop Circlers, though a local anthropologist who studies their intensely nomadic habits puts this down to sheer exhaustion. The only recorded crimes were committed by a cereal killer from the Root Crop Clan, whose members have in any case always had a somewhat muddy reputation.

Sightings of the Crop Circlers – who seem to pop up overnight out of nowhere – are more common during the summer months. Periodically they gather at tribal meeting places – or moot points – to hold what are called “Cornferences”. Very little is known about these apart from the fact that discussions occur on tricky questions – or moot points.

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Irish Rovers – EA Vol. IX

07 09 14

  Irish Rovers4

Encyclopaedia Avalonia, Vol. IX …

The Irish Rovers (plural) should more accurately be called the Irish Rover (singular), because this tribe – with the exception of the Hobbits, and also the Church of the Unitarian – is the smallest in Avalonia.

The Irish Rover would in fact be surprised if you told him that he is in Avalonia, for the only thing he remembers each morning is the punch that knocked him out the night before. Sporting wild red hair, a battered red face and a boys-o’-the-black-stuff bobble hat, the Irish Rover has achieved a unique double in bodily-status: the only living being to be both permanently drunk and punch-drunk at one and the same time.

He has reached this exalted state by means of several, carefully-planned techniques. For starters, he never stops drinking unless overtaken, one way or another, by unconsciousness.

Secondly, he is master of the gratuitous insult. On discovering that someone is English, for example, he immediately shouts “You English bastard”. In the tourist season his repertoire expands, with variations ranging from “You German dickhead” and “You Finnish swine” to “You Estonian wanker”. If all else fails he seeks a different target group and lets fly with “You fucking biker” or “Sod off, you pig-faced skinhead”.

Thirdly, he never gives up. If an insult does not at first succeed in provoking, he tries and tries again (being indeed very trying). Such patience brings its own reward, often in the form of a visit to the local hospital.

Anthropologists from the University of Avalon have placed the Irish Rovers on their list of endangered tribes.

Irish Rovers:

  • Tribal refuge: Currently the Rifleman’s Arms
  • Favourite colour: Emerald Green, spangled with Scrumpy Orange and flecked with Bloody Nose Red
  • Favourite drink: Rubbing Alcohol, or else Punch
  • Favourite food: Guinness
  • Favourite film: Rocky XXIII
  • Tribal motto: “Veni, Vidi, Vinsulti” (I came, I saw, I insulted)

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Goldilocks as Buddha

06 09 14

buddha Goldilocks

There is a fundamental divide – let’s call it The Divide – running through our world and ourselves. It pitches the masculine against the feminine, quantity against quality, economics against ecology, hierarchy and ‘power-over’ against empowerment, the external against the internal, and ‘doing’ against simply ‘being’. And these are just a few examples drawn from the many in the same theme.

The divide runs either side of a middle fulcrum point. But the scales are not in balance, having long been tipped over to one side.

The modern world slides down this incline. The prevailing quantitative and material view of things fuels the ongoing drive to try and turn pretty much everything (even fresh air and dreams) into either a saleable commodity or a mere numbers game where the questions are reduced to ‘how much’, ‘how many’, ‘how big’, ‘how fast’?

Thus economics – the study of the dimensions of our home (our world, our planet) – usually triumphs over ecology, the study of the inter-relationships within our home. And so the world mostly focuses on that which is measurable, whilst generally downgrading that which is not measurable or not easily measurable … or even deeming it not to exist in the first place.

This same drive has now entered even into the sphere of the mind. The dominant medical model attempts to categorise more and more incidences of emotional, personal and mental distress, turning them each into a neatly labelled ‘disorder’, ‘illness’ or ‘syndrome’. And the people involved become mere patients … passive recipients and consumers of the doctor-prescribed drugs that the commodity/material/bio-physical world-view – here in the shape of mega-businesses like Johnson & Johnson or GlaxoSmithKline – wishes to sell as the best treatment.

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Stonehenge Freedom Fighters – EA Vol. XVIII

05 09 14

Stonehenge1  Stonehenge4

Encyclopaedia Avalonia Vol. XVIII …

The history of the ‘People’s Free Festival’ at Stonehenge is long and complex. It’s nearly as long and complex as the history of Stonehenge itself, and far too long and complex to do proper injustice here. Nonetheless, a brief summary is desirable …

Way back in the early 1960s, Mods and Rockers were in the habit of spending just one night, at the time of the Summer Solstice, on opposite sides of a very narrow trackway at Stonehenge. During the brief hours of darkness a temporary truce to hostilities was called, but this always ended when the first rays of dawn hit the Heel Stone. There were never any serious fatalities.

The first real Stonehenge Festival took place in 1975; the last in 1984, when Big Brother was watching just a little too closely. The Stonehenge Freedom Fighters took shape as an underground movement soon after, gaining especial impetus following the notorious “Battle of the Beanfield” in June 1985, when over 500 travellers on their way to Stonehenge were rounded up and arrested by the police.

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We’re all levitating now

Quote

atom2 Levitation1

Every material thing is made of atoms. Even a small chunk of ‘thin air’ the size of a sugar cube will contain – at sea level and a temperature of zero degrees Celsius – around 45 billion billion atoms.

But of course each atom is tiny. Comparing one to a line that’s just a millimetre long is about the same as comparing a sheet of paper to the height of the Empire State Building. And if you wanted to see with your naked eye the atoms in a single drop of water, you’d have to somehow enlarge that drop until it was more than 14 miles across.

But even atoms, small as they are, are mostly empty space – the solidity we experience around us is an illusion. If an atom was the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would only be roughly the size of a fly in the middle.

Buzzing around the nucleus are a cloud of even tinier electrons. We know that these are negatively-charged. We also know that when you try to push the negative pole of one magnet against the negative pole of another, you face resistance because the one pole repels the other.

So when you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting on it but instead levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimetre) …. because your body’s electrons and those of the chair are implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

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Written

on 03/09/2014