Reality came crashing down with a thud

Happy New Year!

An indeterminate period of time ago I wrote an introductory piece to revamp and reboot a little project of mine, this blog. Unfortunately, as ever, life gets in the way of living bit after my call to “down your coffee, grab a pen and join me on a whirlwind tour of intellectual possibilities!” I somewhat petered out. 

I have, however, for not all too positive reasons, been able to get my nose back to the grindstone and get some [hopefully] interesting writing done for my readers, some of whom, fingers crossed, may exist outside of my imagination. What stalled my regular life and reinvigorated my creative impulse was an unfortunate altercation I had with a spiral staircase with a handy pillar at the bottom. Unsurprisingly I came second and managed to fracture one of my neck vertebrae. Needless to say I have in fact been very lucky, no permanent damage was done and I am able to write this, neither of which were inevitable outcomes. I am extremely grateful to everyone for the help I have received and have tried to negotiate the difficulties such a situation presents with a good sense of humour, a healthy dose of bloody mindedness and ample patience.

A couple of days prior to my altercation I was writing some whimsical poetry in the mad coffeehouse atmosphere that is the Edinburgh Fringe during which I found myself asking that basic philosophical question, ‘is reality actually happening?’. I have often found that need to pinch myself to check that the incredible cacophony of experience known as reality is actually occurring and is not just some sort of dream. I would argue that such musings are made a great deal easier by having the necessities of existence readily provided by one’s circumstances i.e. knowing where your next meal is coming from. It seems that things most often seem to take on more of an air of sublime unreality when life’s essentials, at least temporarily, are satiated.

The answer to this type of question seems a lot clearer since losing my footing and receiving a thorough slapping from the combined effort of stairs, gravity and a pillar when reality came crashing down with a thud. There is of course the very small possibility that we are all living in the Matrix, that we are brains in jars in some alien’s experiment or that certain aspects of reality may be unknowable to us. Personally, I am content to accept the empirical pillar shaped reality in front of my eyes and leave such thoughts to better philosophers [i.e. A.J. Ayr in ‘the problem of being’].

What I am quite sure of, aliens and existentialist thoughts aside is, that with one slip, my easy happy little life could have escaped me and this has very much brought my intellectual lenses into focus.

With this in mind, and my enforced extra reading time, I can hopefully produce some thought provoking, relevant and above all interesting articles for you to read. I do hope you enjoy and feel free to comment!