A&E: a brief journal

I fell in love with the waiting room yesterday. The sort of place that usually makes me squirm and broil with general upset was suddenly a constant source of fascination. Perhaps my eyes were opened to this because I wasn’t in need of attention (my girlfriend possibly broke a bone in her hand) and also I was extremely hungover so all I really wanted was somewhere to sit and focus on nothing, possibly sleep, all of which was granted to me.

            On arriving in the taxi, we see three women waiting for a lift away. They were dressed in beautiful and precisely worn headscarves and shawls, of deep and satisfying colour and pattern. Inside, hospital staff are everywhere and attempting to get everywhere, in their various coloured scrubs with embroidered meanings on the back. It occurred to me suddenly that this place is never empty; the staff don’t close up shop when the last patient of the day leaves at 5pm sharp. The injured hordes will continually pour in, or stumble in at least (there seemed to be a lot of foot injuries.)

            The police appeared three times, an event that caught my attention as someone instantly alerted by sirens and their associated symbols. The first time they were dropping off a name and description at the reception. The second time, they brought in Barry, who was not under arrest; it appeared maybe he’d been found collapsed somewhere and they were helping them in. He looked like he’d had some form of stroke but it could’ve been something else. He wore a jumper back-to-front that should’ve had the Dr. Pepper logo on the front, but was instead of course on his back. Barry could not sit still; despite being told a number of times to remain in his seat by the patient staff, he would switch seats, converse with anyone, wander outside, wander down the hallways, and generally disappear. The third time the police appeared, they had someone in handcuffs. A short, unshaven man from the North, his arms covered in faded tattoos. From the conversations I caught between him and the officers, he was an alcoholic. He was obviously distressed, in his worn out blue t-shirt and grey jogging bottoms.

            There seemed to be quite a few Irish people working in the hospital and waiting for help. There was one Scottish man, in some deal of discomfort, with a young daughter who couldn’t sit still. She developed a slight fascination with the water cooler, and continually attempted to impress my girlfriend (who couldn’t care less what with the painful arm) with her acrobatic methods of getting onto and off of her chair. Inevitably Barry conversed with the child.

Some thoughts on WALL-E

            I can’t remember when I first saw WALL-E, but I definitely was under the age of 16. Rewatching it now, as a twenty-two year old student, I have realized what an ecological marvel it is; I was pointed to re-watch it in part by a brief analysis in Timothy Morton’s The Ecological Thought.

            I was struck by the overwhelming scale artificial objects were given; everything is gargantuan, such as the ship the Axiom, that blocks out the sky and is filled with unknowningly complex interior workings. Importantly, many giant things are defunct, and simply rubbish. A huge ‘Buy n Large Ultrastore’ sprawls in the urban wasteland, no longer used; enormous freighters are lined up in a row, rusting away and useless.

Most noticeably of all, the amount of waste rampant in the defunct planet is paradoxically larger than the environment it exists in, even in the compacted towers that WALL-E (and supposedly his deceased comrades) worked to turn it into. How can there be more waste than… well, anything else? We find this question crop up again later onboard the Axiom, where WALL-E is trapped in the waste disposal zone. Here, two giant robots work compacting the eternal stream of rubbish thrown into their compartment. Why would a ship with the purpose of conserving human life be so inefficient as to create so much waste?

Interestingly, the robots compacting waste on the Axiom are simply larger versions of WALL-E, suggesting that instead of solving the issue that has apparently followed humans onto the ship (i.e. over-consumption, wasteful lifestyles) humanity has simply upgraded the solution that was there, not necessarily solving anything, but with all the appearance of productivity.

Essay Period Thoughts: Entries Portal

In an attempt to extract trains of thought that would distract me from attempting to write three coherent essays, I have been writing them down in short entries focussed around one idea or thought. I write them first in pencil, the papers hidden behind my study notes, then later type and slap them up here.
This post is to function as a portal to whichever entry you think sounds the most interesting, to save you trudging through the long and short of my blatherings. Please browse the titles of the paragraphs within each entry and click the title of whichever entry you prefer to follow on to that post.

First Entry:
1. Manifesto to Shit in the Woods
2. Surprise with Being
Second Entry:
3. Where's my Fur?
Third Entry:
4. On Glancing at moving strangers
5. On walking in the woods (where are they?)
Fourth Entry:
6. On being Nice/ Not Being Mean
Fifth Entry:
7. Permeable Borders & Political Microorganisms

Essay Period Thoughts: Attempts to Keep Sane 5

8.05.2017

7. PERMEABLE BORDERS & POLITICAL MICROORGANISMS

            Who drew the first border? Better question: why? Perhaps clan borders were drawn on ‘biological’ terms; family ties, whose blood runs in whose veins, the claimant and protection of people-as-property (vessels for labour, breeding.) This seems deeply silly to me, although I know that many organisations persist in seeing borders as drawn on grounds of race. All biology persists in showing borders and membranes as totally imperfect and necessarily penetrable; our body is as much reliant on the non-human bacteria and microorganisms that dwell within us as on the food, air and water we must also drag into ourselves. Perhaps it was thus the imaginary narratives we create to territorialize space that has spawned the myth of the border as perfect seal. One has just to look across a map to see the wealth of permeated membranes supposedly dividing nations. Between Uganda and Rwanda, the border disappears into forest where many pass from one nation to another; the Kaliningrad Oblast sits between Poland and Lithuania, detached from Greater Russia like a replicating bacteria; various blobs and fissures scuffle up the Spanish- French border, requiring exhaustive and boring bureaucratic debate to clarify who’s a what and why. Borders are even more laudable if you try and explain them to animals. Why should a wolf care about the Finnish-Russian border when there is forest, snow and prey either side? Why would a critically-endangered mountain gorilla care that it is specifically ‘Ugandan’?

Essay Period Thoughts: Attempts to Keep Sane No.4

Fourth entry in my essay period journal.

6. ON BEING NICE/ NOT BEING MEAN

            Often people will say that things respond to love (by ‘things’ I mean animals, wild or otherwise (see: talking with meat) and children) as a posit that ‘love’ is a cure for multiple harms and also an avoidance strategy for encountering those harms (the ‘loved’ child may grow up to not engage in fights and thus avoid harm.) Are these beings not responding more to simple non-violence? The classic story is the pit bull terrier, trained for dog fights and exposed to horrific treatment, finally rescued, becoming a loving, happy animal. Is the violence removed, or the love added (or both?) When I talk of violence, I am talking of physical harm, to raised voice and even simply prerequisites and threats; disregard for a beings comfort (scaring your pets or children on purpose) which could include simply positioning your body in an imposing or obstructive manner, and, importantly, variations in eye contact. Eyes are almost a language for some beings, such as cats. I include these when talking of violence because they are pre-requisites to violence and thus suggest and embody violence. Just think: people start fights with strangers in bars with the line “are you looking at me?/ “what’re you looking at?” Also, on raised voice; you wouldn’t be expecting a balanced and interesting debate from someone approaching you shouting on the street, would you? All that said, there is definitely something tangible and constructive in what we recognise as ‘love,’ but I believe it is worthless without violence, in all its forms, removed.

Essay Period Thoughts: Attempts to Keep Sane No.3

The third entry in my essay-period journal, following my stream of conscious to the places too distracting not to write down.

4.05.2017

4. ON GLANCING AT MOVING STRANGERS

            I walk past an open doorway where a facilities worker suddenly glances at me. Obviously I walk on, and rumenate that almost every time someone walks past a window or enters a room, I glance at them. In rooms of people. I scan all faces. I am struck with the realization, the remembrance (see ‘2. SURPRISE WITH BEING’) that we are animals. The facilities man would not simply engage fully with whatever task he was approaching, as he is not an automaton. Outside of my knowledge he has friends and family, he has a running plethora of observations and ideas. We do not glide through human life in the roles we have won or been dealt with; we scuttle, our ears pricking up at sudden noises, our eyes snap our necks to pinpoints of flickering movement. We are more genetically disposed to hunt or even more to tense and scatter at signs of danger, than to fulfil our role of postman/ firefighter/ receptionist with the focus we are expected to have.

5. ON WALKING IN THE WOODS (WHERE ARE THEY ARE?)

            Where are the woods? The woods I know all have litter, ruined walls, unused building foundations. They inspire nostalgia in me; nostalgia for the previous woods I have walked in with their similar spreadings of concrete overgrown with moss and glass bottles filled with mildew, and also nostalgia for the archaic, the romantic; that which was, the ruined castle/ rusty red stripe can returned to nature. This is all (not) very well, but where are the woods? The ones with mainly trees, no paths, no rubble no woodland café. Are there any woods?