Anvil of stars
I’ve just finished reading Greg Bear’s Anvil of Stars, the sequel to Forge of God. In Forge of God, Bear has the Earth destroyed by alien machines – but a small portion of humanity is fortuitously rescued by a second group of alien machines called the Benefactors. Anvil of Stars is concerned with what happens after, which is that groups of humans travel to the stars in Benefactor ships to enforce the Law. The Law is simply that intelligent beings that create self-replicating machines that destroy worlds are themselves to be destroyed. We follow one group of children as they grow into young adults and encounter the Killers and other aliens. So far, so good (if you like that sort of thing!), and it’s not a bad book, if not his best work. However, I was surprised to read on the back cover a puff quotation “Greg Bear has majored in vastness. Infinity is his playground”, and the cover blurb claimed that the novel is “driven by a godly sense of wonder”. I can see how people get this impression – his novels always deal with events and objects on huge scales of space and (often) time.
The thing is, this isn’t what Bear actually writes about. What he seems to be more concerned with is human smallness. His characters are crushed on the wheels of forces that they cannot understand. Even where they can act purposefully, they are usually acting in ignorance or fear. There is little greatness in his characters, only inevitability; little love, only passion; little wisdom, only thirst for knowledge.
And that is why I don’t always enjoy reading Bear’s novels as much as those of other authors. He seems to think that the sheer size of the universe makes us insignificant and unworthy somehow, as though physical size possessed moral or ethical significance. For a sense of wonder at the disparity between the size of the universe and humanity, I prefer authors like Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan, even though they can also be depressing, or (for a more optimistic view) David Brin.
pax et bonum
Track with co.mments
Track with del.icio.usHunting
So, the UK government has won its vote to abolish the hunting of foxes with dogs. The Prime Minister has promised to push the bill through the House of Lords and make it law despite their objections. I find myself oddly disagreeing with this. Not for liberal reasons or civil rights reasons or because “it’s traditional”. Rather, I think it’s a symptom of the “civilised” approach to life. We city types sometimes find it hard to reconcile our sanitised lifestyles with the real world. Food doesn’t just appear in supermarkets wrapped in plastic. Somewhere, there are animals living on farms that are then killed, cut up and shipped off to us. There are huge fields growing single crops for our convenience, at the cost of fertilisers, pesticides and loss of habitat for everything else.
Children
Thursday is my day for looking after Adam. Anne’s at work and it’s just him and me – I’m very lucky that I can arrange my work to allow me to do this (the advantage of working for myself). In many ways, it’s my favourite day of the week. Usually, we go swimming in the morning, or something else that we can do together, then eat lunch and Adam naps while I do housework or just play on the computer. Once he wakes up, we play or read, or go out somewhere, then I cook dinner.
Complications
What a tangled web we live in! Dependent on so many little things for my life to run smoothly, I skip along blithely until one of those little things goes wrong, when my life screeches to a halt. This morning, I had narrow escape. Dropping my son off at nursery, there was a problem – a gas leak! The hall stank of gas and, although the gas man had been called, he would be at least another half an hour, with no guarantee (of course) that it would be simple to fix. Fortunately for me, the weather is OK today, so the children could play outside while the staff waited for the gas man. Even if the problem was serious, they could drive the children to one of the other nurseries for the day, so my work wasn’t threatened (and a good thing, too, with the deadlines I’ve got today!).
Solitude
Being alone is a very precious thing – space to stretch out, to breathe, to see; time simply to be, without pressure to perform or deadlines to meet; silence in which to think and meditate.
Alone-ness is, I find, hard to achieve very often. Perhaps, when out at the park, I might steal quarter of an hour while my wife takes my son for a walk, to lie on my back and watch clouds scud above me. Or, when on holiday, I might find half an hour simply to sit in the quiet of a hillside and feel the breeze as it rustles through the grass. Time and space to think my own thoughts, to catch up with myself, to unravel the tangled skein of my mind and be at peace.
Solitude helps us to break down the illusions of our life, to encounter reality unsullied by external forces, to see through the distortions of our individual reality, other people’s reality, social reality. Growth cannot occur without stripping away illusions, and the individual (like the community as a whole) can save herself from deceit and confusion only with solitude – the opportunity to cut away those things that distract us from the truth, the ultimate reality.
But company puts that reality into context. Facing truth all alone is not something for which human beings are made. We need others to support us, to encourage us, to reign us in when we stray too far. Allowing each other our own time and space so that we can search for truth ourselves, this is the heart of community.
Solitude and community are different sides of the same coin, and we have to toss that coin occasionally.
pax et bonum
Wind speed
Leaves fluttering in autumn breezes speak of hidden travellers around us. Branches bending, flowing, giving way before imposed forces. Trees standing firm, pliable but unyielding. The moving and the unmoved, the refugee fleeing before the storm and the rock upon which they are dashed.
Washing on the line, drying. Clothes fluttering, swaying, flapping; bright colours flashing. Wind carrying moisture away; warmth, air and time doing their work unasked and unthanked. Sunlight shining down, finishing the job of cleaning, bleaching stains away. Our many-textured, varicoloured clothes, fabric wrappings, returning to us refreshed.
Rubbish on the street – crisp packets, magazine pages, plastic bottles – scurrying, rattling along, busy on their way somewhere, anywhere, away from the bins. Reflective foil sparkling as it is tossed on the wind. Things discarded but with their own beauty, their own joy.
Above, clouds rush along. White puffs speeding across the sky. Behind them, grey clouds, heavy with rain, the ground ready for the cleansing, refreshing shower.
But, for now, the sun still shines down on the leaves, the washing, the rubbish and me. Travelling together before the wind.
pax et bonum
Timewasting
Time, they say, is an illusion.
Certainly, I find that my time vanishes just as easily as the sight of a desert oasis – get close to “free time” and it recedes further into the distance.
What eats time? Work, of course. Being a freelance editor, my days are spent at home in front of a computer. But “working time” itself gets eaten up with family time (changing daughter’s nappy, entertaining son, long lunchtimes, “just for a minute” interruptions), but mostly through my own fault – checking web news sites, reading the funnies, catching up on mailing lists, chasing errant thoughts down on the web.
Family is also a great eater of time. With one son of two-and-a-half years and a daughter of five months, there’s a lot of looking after needed. And what little remains obviously also has to help maintain my marriage!
So, what is left? Sometimes, it seems like so little, but I try to squeeze in some reading and computer gaming (City of Heroes is addictive, in a good way), and TV of course! Indeed, TV is good for me – it lets me wind down after a day spent staring at other people’s writing, and is a social activity (of sorts) that Anne and I can do together without being too distracted by children.
With so little time (and such an apparent need to whinge about it), why have I started a blog? I am hoping that spending a short time every so often to formalise my thoughts, jot down some ideas or simply blow off some steam will give me a feeling of control that is sometimes missing. If anyone gets anything out of this venting, do let me know 
pax et bonum
