Achilles & Aristotle

Wax on, wax off

Nine hours: aches in the triceps and the biceps, the adductors and the back, the shoulders and the groin – and a right pain in the butt cheeks.

Two bruised knees and the gait of an eighty year old – but it is done. No, not a karate training montage, but an old wooden floor made new.

Karate Kid’s Mr Miyagi would be proud. A front room floor is scraped and chipped free of decades of paint splashes, sanded and hammered and oiled and waxed.

And I am physically whacked. If I sit down I’ll be stuck down, so staying on my feet is the only option. But you can’t beat the sense of achievement of a laborious job well done. As TV Tropes rightly has it:

“Before Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.
After Enlightenment, carry water, chop wood.”

— Buddhist Saying

Children, Life

Libraries

I rediscovered the eighth wonder of the world today… lying largely idle, but substantially reinvented – the library.

The Girl-Wonder and I had a super afternoon in our seaside town library. Enrolled in five minutes, then books galore and her poem written (albeit at times sullenly) then typed and printed for free (counted as homework) on the library computers.

As a gale raged outside and rain lashed and lightning cracked, we sat snug and quiet in gentle and genteel comfort. The librarians were kind and welcoming, offering us upwards of 30 books at any one time – and free internet and wifi to boot. What’s not to like?

And the briefest of browses threw up ‘The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World and How they were Built.‘ Exactly the kind of book you’d never think you’d want to read, never search for and certainly wouldn’t pay £25 for. But, in fact, it’s well worth skimming – in an evening – for a whistle-stop tour of what the Ancients built and how.

A good few edifices I’d never heard of in this tome. But the Pyramids still stand proud – built a clear 2000 years before the other seven ‘Wonders of the Ancient World’ which all went up after 600 BC.

Perhaps there’s hope for libraries yet. Well done to our local council for looking after theirs. Not quite the Library of Alexandria, but not half bad for a seaside amenity. We were back the next morning for more…

Life, Philosophy

Pax Romana

Spending time with friends at New Year, a penny dropped – I do like my peace and quiet. I can do ‘gregarious’ in bursts. But in the main I’d rather be a respectful distance from folk having a good time. Ideally in the next room.

Perhaps, with the passage of years, I’m more interested in knowledge than conversation? The Platonic ideal of ‘justified true belief‘ appeals far more than the garrulous Socratic Method – especially when Google and Wikipedia are such reliable and immediate alternate sources.

I’m far more up for the first two legs of the Reithian ideal of inform, educate and entertain – although one excellent rediscovery this New Year’s has been a tall, well iced Gin and Tonic which puts me far more in the mood for the latter.

And perhaps this is the crux of it. As Russell Crowe famously said to a baying crowd in Gladiator: “Are you not entertained?” I recognise a duty to engage and take part, but after a few thrusts and parries, a lap or two around the sociability track and a couple of good conversational gambits – I’m done.

More booze and I’m nodding off, more chat and I’m reaching for the iPhone for facts and data… And so to the kitchen for my reliable friend the dishwasher. A pot, porcelain and pan-based puzzle of stacking and arrangement, which doesn’t answer back – peace at last.

Children, Life, Work

Blood, Sweat & Fewer Tears

Interesting to realise – on my last day of work in 2013 – that something I’ve been responsible for a long long time is no longer going badly.

In truth, it was never going quite as badly as some made out. But looking back on 2013, you have to say it is now going pretty well.

When a baby is crying, it’s hard to focus or get anyone else to focus on anything else. But, just like when a baby stops crying – or when your kids stop waking you up every night – you quickly forget and simply get on with everything else.

Still, it’s progress. So here’s to even fewer tears in 2014.

Achilles, Life, Philosophy, Psychology

Sisyphus

Albert Camus, the French Algerian Existentialist, challenges us to be happy as Sisyphus. That Greek King was damned by Zeus to forever roll a boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down as soon as the summit was achieved.

For Camus, the human condition requires us to face the futility of Sisyphus – that we are alone in the universe without meaning or destiny, each pointlessly rolling our own boulder uphill. But Camus’s challenge to us, is to smile and be happy in the face of this futility – not sad or downcast.

And the lot of Sisyphus, was mine yesterday – faced with several hundredweight of miscellaneous building rubbish to shift, in a biblical downpour. Badly bagged, paint dripping from it, from a narrow alley to an unknown refuse site without proper parking or help.

Three bags in – I was Sisyphus. Drenched, cold, back stiff and a hamstring already taught. With dozens more bags and wood and board and plastic and blinds and rubble and cement and soaking dustsheets and rags and sharp stuff and awkward stuff and worst of all paint-dripping stuff. A ball ache to match the back ache.

Toying with chucking it in, taking shelter or hoping it would all go away, Monsieur Camus came to mind -smiling enigmatically, with the collar turned up on his French trench-coat…

All human existence was momentarily encapsulated in sacks, rubble and timbers. To be happy as Sisyphus, the triumph of the spirit over drudgery – the satisfaction of a thankless task well done.

And it was done. Drenched, back-breaking, four car loads of dripping, spiky, heavy building debris bit the dust. And a happy Sisyphus was I.

So much so, that after a couple of celebratory beers and a pepperoni pizza, I cheerfully armed myself with two chisels and cleared two staircases of carpet staples and nails.

Zeus himself would have been grudgingly impressed and Camus was right. Sisyphus, happy, is the satisfaction of a thankless task well done. And that’s about all there is to life – chin up, put a smile on your face and keep rolling that boulder.