BENCH

The bench cracked as it snapped under his bottom. Legs flew crooked like barbecue wings as he sunk with a dignified smirk to the patio slab. It drew mirth from those with the luckier disposition to be on seats of sound wood, plastic or metal.

Surely with some sort of element of poor luck, another bench, which looked passably sound except for rotten members, cracked and snapped beneath him all over again, eliciting complicitous respect from slightly less personally-acquainted company.

Benches one and two ceased being fit for purpose the second had been assembled several summers before. In itself it carried no memory, of itself it was naught but moulded iron and slats of timber that he hadn’t even treated once. Unfortunately this left him unable to blame the company who had produced “such a woefully inadequate piece of garden furniture.”

His father imbued him with the belief that a taste for accusing oneself bitterly of woeful inadequacy was as good a sport as pitilessly abusing anyone who caused the iniquity to occur. Then, deftly, once he had abused whoever got in the way, he could blame himself all over again for being abusive, which abuse was doubly inflicted because a ‘harm done to another is a harm done to the self.’

Benches are funny – garden benches, benches with tables, benches on trains, buses, the front benches, back benches, church benches, work benches. Then the scourge of strategic language: benchmark. Begs the question rather, ‘how long is a piece of string?’

Not forgetting the school-bench, how lovely: those weirdly constructed wooden slabs as long as you like and just the size of a small child. Picking them up as a group and moving them back to the side of the hall, picking them up again and making lines for my friends to sit with crossed arms and listen to their proud teachers bestowing gifts on supplicants and neophytes.

A benchmark? A mark on a bench where a thing being made is the same as something the craftsman made before, just the first template really. So when I benchmark this public service, I’m measuring it, trying to see if it is close or not to the ideal or the best I can get: value for money that I can measure and make judgements about. So I can report the findings to other craftspeople with all their benchmarks too.

Strange, the similarity linguistically between ‘bench’ and ‘mensch’, seemingly a causal or semantic link… There might appear it seems to be a little jiggery-pokery going on in the ‘nahe von’ bench and person. Must talk of my all time respect and concurrence with Martin Heidegger.

He speaks beautifully of linguistic and ontological ‘neighbourhoods.’ Best though is the Clearing placed in Being by him resulting from an Ecstasy of past, present and future, with the implication of going deeper and deeper into it, unpeeling each subsequent scale from our inner eye.

Could it simply be that I sit with my being as if I were on a bench, or, crucially, I sit on a seat purpose made for more that one person, for a community, for a Throng? I share this seat and I share this Being, I therefore share the Clearing in Being. Perhaps, the clearing only appears when I share being with others??

As far as I’m concerned, Heidegger may be the first to have bottled what some call “the Holy Spirit.” Jesus said: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there shall I be also.” Was Jesus preaching to us about the Clearing of Heidegger? The place, after all where we must sit on benches, not chairs to perceive ‘it.’ Did Heidegger give people the tool to marry faith and science, logic and myth? Are we all speaking the same language, only with a different accent?

My bum is on the bench, her bum is on the bench, our seat is the same, we are side by side on the same basis and because we are side by side, other bench-sitters are side by side on the same basis. We support and maintain thought, understanding, love and pain in our focus that only works if we share our vision. I see I see I see.

Z

Schnapps!

Tight Rope

Hola! Feminista! 50/50 split? Hard to see, you court the Earth Mother and the comforts she gives you protect your young and keep your skin soft! In extracting her "flesh" you risk deflowering the goddess you protect. Are you not behind the men who fight for national wealth and the first in line at Tesco's?. You men! Stop preening your feathers, give women no cause to pursue vanity. Guys! Thank God that women are here; they are duly respectable so not forgetting the precept that in life's lottery at every moment each woman is truly a virgin. Understand, and you will be much clearer. Woman: nothing on earth would challenge what is yours.

Z

DE VOID

"The void is 5' 6" a man from the ministry announced on Tuesday." "One in the eye for William Blake", thought I. The ministry of reality measures life, announcing its findings in "highs" and "lows", in pounds and kilos. Comparing and contrasting, assessing and evaluating, the ministry of reality has cosher sky blue credentials. Not a second longer, nor a second less: that is the span of man. There was to be a merger with the ministry of sport but reality could not be 100% certain if the ball had gone up the void or under it. So sport remained firmly anchored in supra reality ~ pseudonominously a spectacle of oximoronic words and deeds. There will be no play on Saturday given that the workings out of the ministry have evaluated void, abyss and nothingness as being jointly anihilated and anihilating from which energy (a nonsense) skips it up with form to have a go at matter, skip back (sic.) which flurry of showiness, the ministry plans to compare contrast assess and evaluate to finally diagnose that life is the death of us all.

Z

Caught red-handed showing feelings

World full of repression - how can you organise my feelings? You young chavs, have you mistaken free sexuality for freely expressed feelings? Man, your dignity is too cool, your cool ignores the pain in my eyes, d'you feel me friend? Gettin' high dude? Super-sensitive super high super nova super cool groove dude. Yeh man ure wrong - I knew free feelings now repression has won the round sex is the expression of true feeling true feeling is over-looked by the red eyes of a drugless society. Buy me the coolest tan super sexy fit chick/guy - ure so wrong man I can't get through true feeling is finally meaningless in a truly meaningful world...

Z

Rap-a-tap-tap

No to revolution! lookin' at a long game and plus ca change! 'cos we're down the line dude don' mean the sickness has gone. leetal preechy preechy on those that groove and preparations for (eventual) global collectivism. Time to tell about the work of workers both achieved verbally and non-verbally, the latter 'tis voluntary in essence and don't accommodate the sickness of The Man. Then true them's all believe what them's believe, the shit stays shit til learning's done and fightin' and lovin' persist an' slowly both mind her pal no-mind spread across the planet and lovin is fine and in the fullness of time, liberation. Amen.