The Riddle Of The Sands

How often do we have to be told? We know the thing inside out and backwards by now. What more does anyone have to do to get us to listen?

We have all been there and seen it and done it. Others do the same every day. We see them all the time and never question it. We see the consequences too. Yet still we drift through life in ever deeper layers of ignorance. It is as if we do not exist at all. We are merely bulbous clouds of unknowing lit by sudden bursts of incandescence as we consume each new ignorance in our endless scud into utter but devastatingly dispiriting insouciance.

It all started long ago. It took years before anyone realised it had begun and many more years before anyone realised they could do something about it. A few valiant souls have been trying ever since. But even their efforts are fitful. It may be a slight exaggeration to say that we have now been brought to the brink of destruction. If this is so however the exaggeration is indeed slight. We stare oblivion in the face and have been doing so for so long we regard this is the natural condition of man.

Destruction can be achieved by one misplaced step. It all started with one misplaced step. Or maybe it was not misplaced at all. In the great scheme of things maybe this was all meant to happen. This claim is not a call to passivity. We are not to sit idly by and watch as the thing distresses itself towards inevitable flowering through its serpentine coil. But is there any hope left? We know we should do something about it but never do. We see it getting worse every day but do nothing about it. We see and hear nothing except the deeper and deeper groans of its slowly masticated victims. Time is no healer. Life is no way. All causes are fatuous. The march of progress has progressed itself into a pit from which all that can emerge are carrion insects nourished by all our broken hopes and dreams.

We look but do not see. We see but cannot believe. We believe but do not know. We know but do not understand. We understand but cannot act. We act but cannot achieve. Everything exists in a vacuum. Everything has its own terms alone and these are meaningless. We need meaning to live. We need to live to mean. We are vanquished at every turn. We are a pub with no beer or a pink which is not pink. We are football played with the hands and a softball which is as hard as the ball it is supposed to be softer than.

Contradicted by everything we calmly await the final rage of our incompetence. The day when the sun meets the moon and they ride off in the same orbit. The day when Peter Finch returns from the dead to rail at his final film. The day when the melting ice cap freezes again on the equator. The day when rabbits are hailed for their skills. The day when ducks are worth more than aces. The day when adding up and subtracting are the coin itself rather than two sides of it. The day when sense is the preserve of the sane. The day when all other days become as dust and the new order of disorder will reign. The day when Gerry Adams is given a knighthood by himself and accepts it on behalf of the British government ruling in Dublin. The day when the title of Wrong Honourable is established in law and all others abolished by the last judge left in the most lawless country on earth when all countries have become the same with entirely different rulers. The day when those who still walk have nowhere to go because everyone else has both run and hid at the same time.

Why? When? How? How am I supposed to know? All I can do is follow a reputable model. But if I really did I would live it out every day which no one fully does. So it becomes a matter of guesswork. My guess? There is a Welshman at the end of the rainbow. Why? Because conjuring up such a positive but ambiguous image is the only way to demonstrate that if you are not constantly amusing people there might be a good reason for your seriousness. There is no such thing as clinical depression. There is merely reading this far. You yourself know what that is called.