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alexsarll"Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we'll send a second and a third ship and move on out to all the planets and, later, all the stars. We'll just keeping going until the big words like immortal and for ever take on meaning. Big words, yes, that's what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved in our mouths, we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as space goes on, for ever. Individuals will die, as always, but our history will reach as far as we'll ever need to see into the future, and with the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we'll know security and thus the answer we've always searched for."
Sunday afternoon, and I'm sat in the John Snow. I'd been at a birthday which was perfectly pleasant until the pub staff literally started pulling the stools from under people because it was apparently going to be standing room only for the Eighty Years War retread of an accursed footballist finale. Later, I'm going to hang out with Bevan 17 in the studio as they answer the question, what if, when John Cooper Clarke was living with Nico, they'd made a record together? But for now I'm sat watching the dust sparkle in the sun in a pub which still feels like pubs should feel on a Sunday afternoon, where etiquette has not been upended and nobody looks like they're in a Tango ad, and I'm reading Ray Bradbury. And just before I reach that passage above in 'The End of the Beginning', I am gripped by terror as I apprehend something monstrous: we're all on Earth. Well, yes there are a handful of people in near orbit, which amounts to the same thing, but all our eggs are in one basket. We are the last. As should be abundantly clear by now, I love London, and I think Arthur Machen was right when he described it as an emblem for infinity. But imagine knowing that beyond the last of London's lights, there was no one. That's where we've let ourselves end up. My copy of The Day it Rained Forever was printed in 1963. That story sat on this paper on a shelf somewhere as man fulfilled its promise and went to the Moon...and then sat there still as we turned our backs on the moon, mothballed even the poxy Shuttle, decided to stick to Earth after all. It's not a good feeling, being ashamed that your species has betrayed a yellowing paperback.
Sunday afternoon, and I'm sat in the John Snow. I'd been at a birthday which was perfectly pleasant until the pub staff literally started pulling the stools from under people because it was apparently going to be standing room only for the Eighty Years War retread of an accursed footballist finale. Later, I'm going to hang out with Bevan 17 in the studio as they answer the question, what if, when John Cooper Clarke was living with Nico, they'd made a record together? But for now I'm sat watching the dust sparkle in the sun in a pub which still feels like pubs should feel on a Sunday afternoon, where etiquette has not been upended and nobody looks like they're in a Tango ad, and I'm reading Ray Bradbury. And just before I reach that passage above in 'The End of the Beginning', I am gripped by terror as I apprehend something monstrous: we're all on Earth. Well, yes there are a handful of people in near orbit, which amounts to the same thing, but all our eggs are in one basket. We are the last. As should be abundantly clear by now, I love London, and I think Arthur Machen was right when he described it as an emblem for infinity. But imagine knowing that beyond the last of London's lights, there was no one. That's where we've let ourselves end up. My copy of The Day it Rained Forever was printed in 1963. That story sat on this paper on a shelf somewhere as man fulfilled its promise and went to the Moon...and then sat there still as we turned our backs on the moon, mothballed even the poxy Shuttle, decided to stick to Earth after all. It's not a good feeling, being ashamed that your species has betrayed a yellowing paperback.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 10:10 am (UTC)But now I see that I have read it all wrong and that the John Snow is acting as the footie-free sanctuary in this instance. Phew!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:24 pm (UTC)(obviously I would draw the line at the mayonnaise - filthy stuff)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 01:59 pm (UTC)お店の新入りたちが、みんな支店の店長とかFCのスーパーバイザーになっていて、自分たちが、検品ルームで検品しているのが不満？
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 10:52 am (UTC)Not that I'm averse to further exploration of ideaspace (or whatever you want to call it), obviously. But I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive; during the last great age of exploration, we could happily have parties deep in the jungles and trekking across the tundra without any conflict of interests. Sometimes it was even the same people doing both.