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Just (in) Time

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Delayed for multiple years, but finally coming out in October… the story of my journey through the UK’s Prison system.

‘Just Time: A Journey Through Britain’s Fractured Justice System’

  • A real life account of six years spent in multiple prisons across Britain, showcasing every aspect of incarceration.
  • Sheds a light on widespread inequality, maladministration and corruption in the justice system.
  • Details the experience of a litigant in person (someone who conducts their own defence), taking proceedings before High Court judges.

“This book charts, in entertaining detail, the ebb and flow of Stephen’s passage through the turbulent waters of an imperfect criminal justice system. There are lessons in it for all of us.” Eoin McLennan-Murray, President of the Prison Governors’ Association

The experience of custody is one most of us only usually hear about from outside. All the intricacies of navigating prison life – suicide watch, fights, punishments, abuses of power by officials, and  relationships – are rarely shown. This book sets out to reveal these facets of prison life in a depth and diversity never covered before. Right from the opening passages (when the author is arrested at Heathrow Airport) readers will discover aspects of the justice system that simultaneously shock and enthral. Against the backdrop of severe budget cuts, rising violence and suicides, the door is thrown open to reveal the consequences of hastily enforced policies – with legal challenges brought before the High Court. Throughout it all, a lens is cast on all aspects of the UK justice system.

Available via https://arkbound.com/product/just-time-by-stephen-jackley/

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

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The tendency towards disorder – entropy – underlies the fabric of existence. Animals, plants, entire species, even the planet itself, will move eventually to a state where life expires. That most mysterious state of self-sustaining order, of patterns repeating themselves – life. Where does it really begin and end?

Most would categorise life as they have been taught by present Western science. They may refer to what responds actively to its environment, which reproduces, respires, grows, and so forth. And yet definitions of life are as transient as the culture in which they arise. All the myriad societies that regarded the entirety of the earth and universe as living and even sentient are essentially wiped out by one that is happily in the process of destroying its own environmental and long-term chances of survival. It’s hard therefore to say which version of reality may be more accurate if we base our selection criteria on levels of intelligence.

Even within the same society – this one – decades ago certain things regarded as ‘dead’ or ‘inert’ have subsequently shifted to the category of being ‘alive’. Bacteria, viruses, certain species of lichen, fungi, and so on. Likewise, things that have been cast aside as unintelligent have been shown as having high level forms of organisation and communication that defy the Descartian notion of a cog-like, unthinking animal world. It again depends on what measurement frame you choose to adopt, both spatially and temporally. Consider things at a larger (or smaller) level or period of time and certain characteristics that weren’t previously visible start to become apparent.

We can look at a rock and a cat and say with great confidence that one is alive and the other dead. Yet, look close enough at the rock and you will discover a veritable universe of micro-organisms, fungi, and plant species. Likewise, a crystal – if viewed across the course of thousands of years – can demonstrate characteristics remarkably similar to a plant or even an animal. It grows, replicates, ‘consumes’ matter around it – all to expand or self-sustain its pattern.

Carrying this further, back to the worldview of societies since destroyed, the entire planet – even the entire universe – is living. It lives not in the sense of an animal being born into the world, or of a tree sprouting from its seed, but as part of an evolving pattern. A pattern that does not just randomly generate new things like life and intelligence from nothing and nowhere, but which already has these attributes within it.

And yet, there is entropy. For all of life’s ability to persist, to replicate, to evolve… it cannot last. That burning nuclear furnace of which the Earth and other planets orbit will, one day, no longer exist. The galaxy itself will spiral out into frigid coldness and endless dark. Where, then, is life?

Perhaps we can find the answer in the void itself. Emptiness. For in that emptiness, as quantum physics touches upon, is a seething sea of energy: particles entering into and out of existence. Part of the great Unknown that science passes over as ‘dark energy’, almost fearful of delving deeper.

Are we to look at this dark, this emptiness, this apparent inevitable slide towards chaos and disorder… and see the cold depressing emptiness of eternal death?

Or is it, too, part of the cycle and patterns of life – encompassing all of existence?

Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form

Such levels I cannot hope to define; they would require more than mere words to convey, anyway. So, as the world spins around to another mass extinction; as its magnetic shield slowly loses the strength to maintain future cycles of complex life; as the sun itself edges even more slowly to extinction; as the very atomic elements degrade…. the universe remains. And with it, somehow, so does life – even as it drifts beyond the borders of comprehension.

Forgiveness and Letting Go

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Always forgive, no matter what. If you can’t, just walk away and invest your time elsewhere. Never harbor resentment – it will do far more damage to you than it can ever do to anyone else. Even if you feel it is justified, and it may well be.

The world is full of people who consider themselves good and decent, indeed few don’t believe themselves to be these things, but most are hasty to condemn others. And you will pass many a ‘friend’ who turns their back on you, even after assuring loyalty, dedication and respect. It’s part of life.

To dwell on perceived slights is to linger in a valley of darkness. To forgive is to press on and to look ahead to sunlit plains. The ‘strength’ that is sometimes felt in anger and resentment is, at best, a flaming cinder that is just as likely to burn the one holding it as to leave them cold and alone soon after. Far better to smile, relish the feeling of letting go, and move on. As Rudyard Kipling said in the poem If:-

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Forgive Kipling for his masculine assumption, for we are as much a product of our culture and society, so replace the Man with Human.

To be Human is to forgive.

Prison Book Poetry and Musings

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A few ejected diary entries from my forthcoming prison book.

11th September 2009

I can’t quite see them

But I know they are there

Shining light years away

Blazing in ancient glory –

The stars.

Trapped in the shadows, unable to

Gaze upon a starlit night sky;

For too long the ocean has receded

With every passing month

And tree leaves fluttered down to dust.

It seems an Age has passed

When last I walked beneath

The canopies of trees, feeling

A fresh wind blow across the open horizons.

And yet the memories of what was

Still haunt me

And the dreams of what could’ve been

Still come

27th April 2010

So much has happened in the previous 4 years that it seems I can do little in the next 4, assuming they even happen. Why can’t they just set me free in a wilderness and leave me to die?

The will to go on, to fight, has not left me altogether. How I wish Time was not the only measure of progress; that each day had to be the same slow step towards freedom, or one more rung on the ladder to crawl up. There’s 1,400 of ‘em. 1,400.

From 22 to 29 years old, imprisoned.

7 Summers trapped in darkness. 7 birthdays spent in levels of hell. And I’ve only done 2 of that 7.

God, give me the strength to go through

These troubled times with an uplifted heart,

The will to go on despite my surroundings,

And the peace and knowledge which comes with understanding.

Diary Entry: 24th July 2010

A voice on the air – whispering –

Gliding on a draft from frozen deserts

Foretelling what is yet to be

Lo to the rivers ceaseless current

And lo to the waves crashing

It’s all of one and the same;

Energy interlacing for eternity.

A memory is like a pattern

On a sandy shore

But some are like stones

The tide of time is slow eat

And just like memories, every edifice erodes

From Pyramids to courthouses

And manuscripts and nations and dreams.

Diary Entry: 31st December 2010

There will be many amongst the bad and broken

Who will seek to cast you down,

Whose aims are dark and devious –

Don’t let them succeed!

Tread paths of strength in rays of Light;

Remember what Lasts, what has importance,

Keep on going on,

Weather the storm, and draw strength from each battle.

Seek the Truth amongst Lies

And don’t give in to anger

For Love is everlasting.

Know yourself and your enemy,

For oft both will be the same.

On one world, in one Universe; one planet orbiting one star –

Only Mystery. Beauty. Majesty – infinite and everlasting…

Remember this.

Take heart from the fighters of Freedom and Truth,

Look beyond the bars and over-arching roof

To fields, to rivers, to mountains, oceans and valleys

And the stars, so close and yet so far,

All around Life and Light…

Remember.

Diary Entry: 30th January 2011

The clouds grow darker in these ending of days; gone are the times of renewal, discovery and hope. Now only a looming horizon of hardship approaches, replete with famine, pestilence, decay and inequality. The world is dying. Humans are destroying it. Thousands of species, ecosystems and environments are being reduced to ashes. I can only wonder: how many more summers and springs remain? Five in Hell – hopefully less – but then how many after that?

But, upmost and above all, life goes on. Nature is resilient. She dwarves mankind by any measure, insomuch as a mountain dwarves a town, or an ocean a city. Yes, there is hope. For as long as a grass blade grows and a seed sprouts. Even the glory of humanity glimmers like a diamond in mud, evident in the few who stand up to oppression and injustice, putting themselves after others.

Diary Entry: 9th March 2011

The days pass as they always do amidst the shadows. Clear, sunny skies serve only to highlight the darkness. My 25th birthday is in two days.

Today a group of girls came from Derby University to put on a drama performance about racial equality and diversity. Just to see these beauties brought a mix of warmth as well as inner pain.

Muse! Of science and magic;

Of poetry and philosophy,

Come to me, oh far off spirits,

Who float on silver-crested clouds

And skin the tops of mountainous waves.

In the darkness of this prison, come

And shine your lights, like candles upon a

Writer’s desk at night, providing the insight and illumination

To compose and create.

What worlds will you unravel? What dreams will you reveal?

The mighty sun alone outshines the wonders of all the Earth

And even it, bedecked in robes of uproarious light,

Could not touch the complex beauty which is Life –

Life! So renewing, so wondrous – spreading out, growing,

Evolving, Being.

From the volcanic vents of deep ocean trenches

To the icy, arid wastes of mountain peaks,

And lo, right to the tops of clouds, where flecks of spiders webs

Drift like roads of some invisible realm.

Then Death, which is nout but Life’s renewal;

Like a supernoving star, spreading out its essence, dissipating its core –

To reform and condense on new worlds, giving rise like seeds

To yet more complexity.

On Earth, just look, remember…

Behold the peace of a summer’s eve!

Where swallows trace the last sunrays

And crickets uplift a song to the rising stars

As shadows lengthen, bringing colour out of contrasts…

A hinge upon the splendours of dawn and dusk

Rising as one sets.

Behold the rolling valleys of Spring, so green,

Where trees unfurl their new-found canopies

As birds declare their homes.

Behold the river flowing, gushing forth like the very essence of life,

Sparkling to sunlight, a gem in a priceless treasure trove.

Diary Entry: 5th November

Remember, remember, the 5th of November…

Future generations, stand up to injustice!

Rise and fight against the tyranny of governments,

Uncrowned kings and barons of oppression –

Break the chains which bind your hands!

Smash the walls that enclose your dreams!

Rise, and build anew a better world;

Where all are Free and treated with equality,

Where Hope and Opportunity are given to everyone,

Regardless of their creed, colour or country.

Let Power be given to the People,

And all boundaries overcome!

Diary Entry: 19th March 2012

46 months in Hell.

In the smallest one can see the largest, as a Fractal pattern is repeated across all scales.

Fields, trees, cliffs, rivers, but most importantly – sea. That is what I miss the most: the ocean. Her waves of blue echo in the silence of my sorrow. The crystal caress of her unfolding beauty is only remembered. Storms that merge the horizons in one wavering interchange no longer tremble, except within my heart. It could be the touch of a faithful lover, torn away by merciless enemies, or the taste of honey dew after a 40 day fast. One thing I know: life is painful and ironic.

Diary Entry: 22nd April 2012

Finished reading ‘How Green Was My Valley’ by Richard Llewellyn. An epic book and a true elegy to a lost world. One of Queen Victoria and Welsh valleys and coalminers who sang and fought like the best of men. A sad story, sadder than any I have read, for the simple fact that it describes a better world; a world that has been lost, destroyed, heartlessly forsaken. And yet it gives hope, showing that all men and women are born with a dual nature – one of goodness and virtue; one of cruelty and injustice.

All things pass… and with their passing one cannot help to look back with mixed sorrow and triumph, seeing that the good times will never come again.

In memory they may live on: the people and places we loved so well. For what is muscle and sinew, bone and blood, but an eloquent construction of matter, shaped in the same way as a clay vessel? What is this clay when stood next to ideas; to thought, emotion, feeling?

When surrounded by the black swamp of man’s worst nature, what does it matter, when all is destined to disintegrate, to move on? And who can say if each step forward is for better or worse? Who can point to the future’s shrouded pen and say what words it forms?

All things pass… and some day all this will be but ashes – brief echoes of a lost past. The valleys of my home will also disappear, long after I die. It is not the destruction that matters, but the journey.

Think of green fields swept by breezes

Their emerald carpets rising and falling

As with the ocean’s multitude of waves.

Think of summer, an amber jewel

Splintered into crystalline rays,

A sky that seems never ending

And trees that branch into birdsong.

Think, for one moment, of mountains

Lined by jagged storm fronts,

Brushed purple and white and grey –

Rising, rising, right to the stars…

And deserts, stretching towards

An unyielding horizon.

Think of day and night,

A world amidst the stars,

Circling silently in perfect harmony,

Alone and yet connected.

Diary Entry: 2nd September 2013

When the people realise they have nothing left to live for, some will seek a cause to die for – a vision of the splendour that could have been; a world where all are born equal and given equal opportunity. Where dreams are not cast away and enclosed by a wall of material wants. Where money and lies are not more valuable than blood and tears. Where the struggle for justice and freedom is not a pointless quest.

In the days of tyranny, woe to the fighters for equality – for they shall be hunted, persecuted and punished by those in power. But their legacy will ignite the embers of revolution in the masses. In the ashes of their struggles, there will rise a Phoenix… a body of truth and virtue, of strength and courage. This will be the light by which the people see the chains that bind them. It will then only be a matter of time before they throw off those chains.

But the question remains: is the capacity of technological control so great that it negates revolution? Do the elite – the status quo – have so much power that they can avoid any real change? Can they neutralise or liquidate all threats so effectively that a revolution can never happen, or rather, can never gain momentum?

Diary Entry: 2nd March 2014

Russia has invaded Ukraine, with some vague rumblings about ‘a new Cold War’. The ides of March?

69 months in these hells – 15 to go.

69 months of the nightmare train…

Punished, condemned, half-destroyed

Surrounded on all sides, the enemy advancing

Smashing their way past every living barrier

Grinning in delight at the damage they have done.

To fight on through drowning darkness

Reaching for that solitary light

In the murk, amidst the chaos, how can it be discerned?

Pushed and shoved and kicked

Every step a bruise of torment,

Every breath a scar of loss.

Alone in a wasteland, eating ash and dust,

Chased by fiends determined to destroy

A barbarian army relentless in its wrath

Blood-smeared shields drawing in, edges iron-spiked.

They’ve taken what my life could have been

Drawn away my youth and dreams like vampires

Thrown me down into their Pit

Amidst the blindly cruel and twisted.

Through dungeon cellars and federal jails

21 nightmares in 69 hells

From box to cage

The system fuels my rage

And somehow I still get up after every fall.

Diary Entry: 14th August

I’m reading a book about the loss of liberty and democracy: ‘I Fought the Law’ by Dan Kieran. 7 years after being published, there’s still a ban on protests within 1km of Parliament. 7 years later, there is a sudden announcement of emergency legislation to monitor and record all emails. And I’d bet it will be here, if not in a more tyrannical form, 7 years hence.

When the State is distinct from the People, when a government has become a separate entity in itself – this is when tyrants and totalitarian regimes arise.

The national political apathy – a feeling of disillusionment with the ultimate sovereign power (Parliament) – has only intensified. Democracy must be continually affirmed and fought for. When it is not used, promoted and developed it can only fall into ruin.

Diary Entry: 13th April 2015

The forms of nature, endless and free…

How can man, with all his mindless destruction, be part of it?

As birds sketch curves in a darkening sky

Humanity scars and bruises the land –

Forests falling, rivers taken hostage, oceans plundered,

Species and ecosystems sent to ruin –

Yet still Spring-time buds unfurl to warming rays

And trees sigh with mountain winds.

How can it be, a world so full of life,

Reduced to a vessel of man’s struggles?

12 years…

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The moving finger writes…

And having writ, moves on…

Ah, time! Or rather, entropy. With each second, whispering a message of loss. With every year, telling us of things that can never be changed, no matter how hard we would wish it. Always inescapably increasing disorder and chaos, though life’s self-sustaining patterns fight back.

May 19th 2008 and 12 orbits round the Earth later, I look back on a day of endings. All that has passed since has been akin to a shadow-play, where the brightest dreams and potential lies only before. From youth to age; from opportunity to pre-judgment; a horizon defined by a history instead of an attribute. Might the olive tree sawn down to its very base at the dawn of its first blooming feel as I do? Might the plumed eagle, wings clipped on the day following its first flight, feel the aching sense of loss?

It should not have come to pass. Whatever reckoning was due could have been enacted through death – sudden, violent, and glorious.  So why float on 12 orbits later? What pushes the pulse onwards?

Today I saw a river that came to a small pass – an artificial barrier of stone and mortar, with a gap that the water funneled through. Looking at that flow, you might think it is constant. It’s the same river, rolling on down from its source, with a constant velocity. But no – every second the flow changes. Sometimes it bubbles up with extra spray; other times veering left and right, forming endless variety of eddies and vortices. It does this because of Chaos – tiny changes up-stream, which result in gradually greater ones downstream. Perhaps a frog leaped into the water; maybe a leaf landed somewhere. Whatever the case, the smallest change can result in a noticeable difference to the river’s dynamics at the dam.

You bring together things at a crucial point, and everything before matters.

We, as individuals, might not think that anything we do now makes the slightest difference, and yet further down in the current of time… who can tell?

Thus I float on, almost out of duty, until the possibility of changing the flow vanishes.

 

Keep Trying…?

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‘Never give up…’

How many have clung to this saying, with the advantage of something to fall back upon or people to turn to?

One can keep trying against adversity only so many times, and with each failure it is inevitable that part of one’s strength and resolve crumbles. Yes, it can be restored – but not from nothing. That strength imparted within the fiber of one’s being can only be sparked so many times before it must draw upon other fuel, or take heart from another.

Never give up, it is said and written – a call to fight on, to keep going. Far too many times I have heard these words echo, even as the waters of strife crash over my head. Against organisations that proclaim one thing and do another; following threads of hope that just vanish into the abyss; building and creating even as the layers beneath are destroyed and taken apart by others. Running, even when knowing the pursuer will eventually catch up. Dreaming, even when accepting it will end in a nightmare. Making a difference, when at every turn that very act is reversed. Standing at Thermopylae, in the darkness of 10,000-1 odds.

Never giving up.

I don’t know though; I really don’t. There is a part of me that would rather hold up two fingers to the rest of humanity and vanish on some boat (dropping every reminder of ‘civilization’ in the process). To see all those facades of respectability and people rooted in privilege ‘making a positive difference’ for what they really are: illusions, created for self-gain, striving when all their strivings – even those rooted in good intentions – will one day count as nothing.

Yes, to surrender to cynicism, to drift unresisting on the current that goes – to where? And not care less.

Fantasy and Reality

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‘The past may be more brilliant than the future… but imagination is better than both.’

 

Imagination is the most wondrous thing. It can create better worlds than the one we walk, losing you in new journeys and roles, even in the midst of turmoil.

One day I walked along a quiet country lane, surrounded only by birdsong and all the peace of late afternoon. In the distance, I saw a group of three men – too far to hear, yet close enough to tell they were quite old. What were they discussing?

And then it came to me. One was a great king, wise and benevolent, and the other two his close advisors. A general on one side, perhaps, with a sage of civil affairs on the other. They were discussing the invasion of an unknown enemy, who was savagely overrunning their country’s north. What could the king do? Suddenly the kingdom started to take shape – his cities, his people, his character. A landscape of deserts, lakes and mountains, with a great sea far in the north which the enemy had crossed.

Battles were on the horizon – and this king was courageous. But my heart, knowing sadness and lost, painted a picture of sorrow for him. He would give up his only daughter, who he loved deeply, to a savage king in the South – in order to gain a shaky alliance against the encroaching enemy. But this other king only provided some battalions, and the northern enemy reached the capital city, surrounding it. The kingdom’s troops were far outnumbered. All peace attempts were ruthlessly rejected, and each small victory only led to the good king’s people becoming diminished in numbers, whilst the enemy numbers were just added to with mercenaries. And thus, despite all the king’s clever stratagems and advanced technology, the city was lost. Maybe the king and some of his people managed to forge a path into the mountains… but at this point another story opened.

It was the past, when the king was but a young prince. Rumours spread of a magical Eastern kingdom ‘in the clouds’, one of great knowledge and wealth. Thus the young prince – who would be king – journeyed Eastwards with a small group of elite soldiers and his most trusted advisor. They battled desert bandits before stopping in a city akin to Babylon, full of marvels but also temptations. They journeyed on, led by an old and cranky guide, through the plains and into the mountains. And they found it – Aleusia – the kingdom in the clouds. They were a strange people, who had taken the path of mystics and magicians. Their white city, full of gardens, was beautiful. Their ways and beliefs were hard to grasp – a ruling Council of wise elders, chosen by peoples assembles; the renouncement of war and competition, in favour of searching for knowledge; the inclusion of women in important positions. It was all contrary to what the prince accepted as civilised, yet he learnt much. And in that kingdom he found a woman he loved – yet it was forbidden by her father for them to be together. For this to be, he had to cast aside his royal title, face the prospect of never going home, and pass the tests of this strange kingdom. Into the mountains he journeyed, learning new things with each day – lessons that changed his very outlook on life and which enthused him with greater knowledge.

He passed the test, and with his soulmate returned home through more trials and battles, to become the king he was destined to be… only to lose it all many years later.

A tale of love, mystery and adventure – but enthused with lessons and principles of relevance to any world.

To become lost in such fantasies, and yet in deepest imagination the boundary between this world and what we create in thought is like a veil. To vanish from this one, permanently, and enter the next… what greater thought could be conjured!

We scarce have no better understanding of what we call ‘reality’ than the ants looking to the sky, thinking our science explains all, when really it just skims the surface. Only a few hundred years ago we deemed the Earth to be flat and for us to be at the centre of everything. A few hundred years in a species that has evolved for millenia – in turn part of the life that evolved over billions of years. Intelligent? That is a relative term. And thus the notion of reality fades, and with it new possibilities emerge.

 

 

Incompleteness and explicandums

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Humans like to think they have an understanding of the world, when really all things are but theories and perceptions. All is seen through a lens, even after thorough scientific experimentation, just as Newtonian physics gave way to Einstein’s theories, which in turn break downs in certain conditions.

Mathematical theorems, too, are incomplete. Each are dependent on premises, set from the beginning, as proven by Godel.

Yet humans kid themselves that they have such an understanding of ‘reality’ that anything unexplainable is dismissed, or squished into the shallow crucible of existing knowledge. Thus do we find accounts of UFOs and ‘the paranormal’ mocked – even as scientists fail to explain the nature of dark matter/energy and time itself.

Even as science advances, it is impossible to say what ‘reality’ is. The atoms that make up all things – are they there? Look deep enough and even these building blocks of existence disintegrate into fizzling emptiness.

Is our perception of the world somehow superior to that of a cat, or a dolphin, or other animals? Or is it simply yet another perspective, with our theories shaped as much by our psychology, sociology and biology rather than the things they profess to explain?

‘Every explanation is itself an explicandum; any theory about human behaviour is itself a piece of behaviour, which needs to be fitted into the theory. Thus no theory can ever be complete.’ – Jessica Kuper, The Social Science Encyclopedia.

What then, is ‘reality’?

Just as our sight of the world only skims the surface of a tiny fragment of the light spectrum, just as we can only hear a small range of sounds, might there be other layers of  existence that even science has yet to touch upon?

And yet there are those who are arrogant enough to deem our small span of development – some tens of thousands of years against the universe’s billions – to endow us with a capacity to understand almost everything, exactly as it exists. No matter that a mere two hundred years ago it was ‘established’ that the Milky Way was all the Universe and two hundred years prior that the Earth was flat, at the centre of everything.

There is a hidden under-layer of connectivity to existence that all human discoveries tend to skim across, sometimes at deeper levels, but never quite grasping the core. The Constants of Nature, the nature of time, the unity of all physical forces… all these things remain mysteries.

Would it ever be possible, though, for any species within the universe, which has evolved as part of the universe and in a tiny part thereof, to truly understand what it is?

Should we so lightly dismiss the idea that other species may have reached a deeper level of knowledge and mastery of existence than ourselves – with barriers that seem insurmountable being overcome?

 

The Winds of Change

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The Winds of Change…. threading through the channels of thought and feeling, I feel them once more. From so long ago they saw me traverse the world on a quest for discovery, for self-actualisation. Again they come, calling out for a journey, pulling me from the last remaining chains of imprisonment.

The existential calling around and within my soul… is it the result of months of constant negativity, attacks, betrayal and utter loss? Or is it something greater?

Alas, this island, country of my birth, has never been a home to me. Just as the seedling drifts from its dying tree, so too do I feel the need to cast roots elsewhere.

Isle where my life began, the hopes I had for you have not come to fruition. The people have again and again opted for a government whose only interest is to preserve the status quo, who care nothing of fairness and equality. Any who dare stand up and challenge things are crushed by a right-wing dominated press that for all purposes resembles a State propaganda machine. More or less every positive initiative that gets promoted is nothing more than an empty vessel of rhetoric. Meanwhile, the voices of the marginalised and exploited remain unheard or suppressed.

The capitalist system that has ravished the planet for two centuries and enslaved entire nations remains stronger than ever. No alternatives have arisen, and if anything the hopes of newer generations have been quashed. Perhaps the only real chance to overthrow it was in the late 60s, when there was the semblance of an alternative political system and the minds of people were opened through psychedelics. Things like LSD and MDMA – that hold no risk to users, but which are ruthlessly outlawed by states fearful of the new insights they enable.

Now people are closed minded, obsessed by the self, and mistrustful of anything save those that hold the baton of authority. They do not see the inter-connectivity of existence, the unity and common purpose that can unite all human beings, bestowed by the beauty of God.

It is a nation of regulations and stringent hierarchies; of government-media-corporate collusion, where thousands can sleep homeless on the streets as lords and magistrates live in mansions at the taxpayers expense. This isn’t the place I want to live.

One can live in harmony with nature, growing food that one needs, in a community that shares and cares for each other. This is the natural state of human society, but instead it has become the exception. And because of that, mankind is slowly destroying this planet through the aberration that some term ‘laissez faire capitalism’.

Years ago, I sought to change it. I thought, through drastic actions, a new future could be created. This was a delusion, and it resulted in more harm than any good. But the winds of change call once again, reminding me that I have become another cog in the ruthless machine of work-produce-consume. And to do so is to become an accomplish to the world’s destruction, something I cannot continue to do.

To lands free I seek to wander, to discover minds open and accepting, where obstacles are dwarfed by possibilities….

As young as I was, as old as I am, it is still not too late.