i'm going to have a gripe day

It's s very busy week, as i shall be setting up two local exhibitions, 

Of my art and photography, at the outset of August. 

Lots of frustrating problems, 

Which you didn't know existed suddenly start beating at you. 

Like why have printers started printing smudgy inked photigraphs?

Why isn't your intellectual property respected

When it comes to insuring your art work for exhibition?

Why is masking tape only available ib art shops now.

What are these idiots doing to standards of supply and demand

And aavailability of quality goods?

This is today's society, where many of the things, 

which were of value have ceased to be so, 

in terms of increasing plasticity and cheapness

And the removal of anything of any value at all, to be replaced by tat.

This plasticity will destroy any sense of anything of quality,

Even our old beliefs and myths and the sense if magic in the world.

Where nature is given a montary value 

In order that it can be protected.

I'm sorry, but nature needs to be protected per se, 

without dragging it down to our debased level.

I also think that we are too dependant on change. There are

And always will be things, which we shouldn't change.

The old ways, the sense or intuition of the world we're in, 

our need not to find even existence totally frustrating,

Because some politician, doctor, scientist, 

Or other educator or businessman wants us to follow this or that 

Diminishing of standards and quality

For the sake of their earnings at our expense as a species.

Let's revert to the sense of the bizarre and wonder at the world,

I can't feel any wonder for this sick society at all!

evil 2

My mother claimed that when she went to Aston Manor 

In Birmingham, she had to leave there quickly, 

as she had an overwhelming sense of something evil there. 

It is hard to see what would be left as residue in a house,

 if there was something ugly, 

which had happened there, but the idea is that some sort of photographic imprint 

could be topped up with emotion.

I would expect to have some sense of Aston and Birmingham 

generally as being familiar, because of family history associated with both areas. 

If there is a huge genetic memory pool, then there's 

as likely to be negative as positive memories stored there. 

would each carry a weighting of its own, or would that depend upon 

each person, who became aware of any of those memories,

 and their predisposition, if any, towards what their senses might pick up?

We all have the nature of good and of evil within ourselves,

To a lesser or greater extent.

the evil in a place 1

Evil

I have had a difficult weekend trying to get a website to work 

in a way useful to me, rather than in a way useful to its owners.

That made me think about the nature of evil.

Supernatural evil.

Well, as a writer of ghost stories, it's a subject of interest to me, obviously.

There's a lot made of "evil" in modern fiction, film, etc,

basically in terms of cruelty and fatal violence.

That is only one kind of evil, and a very human one.

Usually supernatural forces are only tacked onto that to justify the story.

My view of evil is that it represents nothing more than a different agenda from your own.

Hence my thoughts based on my experiences over the weekend.

That does not necessarily mean that "evil" necessarily 

intends harm to you. 

It simply is, and works to its own rules,

 and causes problems only when you confront it.

 Hence the adage in Asian belief that you can't win against demons

Especially if they come from inside of yourself. 

You have to feed them somehow to reduce their effect, 

This is true of any type of evil, perhaps. 

The haunted house is often thought of as a place of evil intent.

How can a place have an intent?

The story of Hill House - Shirley Jackson - had an evil intent.

That ended in Eleanor's hurried departure, and tragic death, but

evil probably doesn't work like that.

Poltergeists are not evil in intent, 

Unlike the atrocious and unintelligent recent version of the Enfield haunting

which was recently made with Timothy Spall. I was appalled, and 

shouldn't wonder if Maurice Gross is turning in his grave.

I have a story of a plsce, which felt evil, which i'll tell tomorrow.

old straight track 3

 it does seem to me that the idea of parallel dimensions 

Depends on the idea that the results of different actions in one

 would have to match different actions in another,

At least in terms of outcome.

If the results of a  chain of events in one 

Were that different surely it would not take long before

The appearance of the different dimensions 

Were so unlike as to be unrecognisable.

If someone died in one, who didn't in the other,

Surely it wouldn't take many generations before their separate histories

 began to be incomparable?

If this difference was repeated for everybody, 

How long would it be before there was no cmparison at all?

On the other hand, if the outcomes had to be the same, 

to maintain the same population, so that they could remain parallel, 

How could you foster difference?

You would need to envisage the same people living and dying at exactly the same time, with the same relationships, but a distinct "culture"

In my view  parallel worlds are much more likely to be either wildly divergent 

Or basically the same.

I guess i've gone off the old straight track theme a little.

But what if it's time itself that shifts, and you find that the other

side is just like 'red shift' moved a little bit forward and backward,

And that events are basically the same?

old straight track 2

I prefer the oriental view as in Feng shui

That there are natural energies, life streams,  

Rather than being tied to recognisable landmarks.

Energies, which flow through the landscape, 

Perhaps in association with water.

I think it's typical of our materialistic viewpoint that we have to look for

A physical substance to a spiritual fact,

If you look at why roads are sited where they are or

Why buildings are placed in the landscape, its more for fastest access, or to keep 

Sightlines open.

A military road would want to be as direct as possible, with the clearest view around 

To protect from attack. A landowner would want clear vistas. 

A church would be built to be visible from a wide area, as a landmark.

It might be built on a pagan site, but it would have been selected 

For the same reason

Tieing lines of energy in with this is mixing two entirely different things.

If there are ways across, between dimensions, 

Would you really expect them to be normal ones?

I think that they may symbolically select doorways,

Which would be because doorways function in that way normally

Maybe individual roads could as they would symbolise a route between, 

But if they all did that, moving between dimensions would be commonplace

the old straight track 1

I was watching "weird or what" at the weekend,

Not a program i like very much, as it does this popular and revolting facie thing

Of shoving a picture of an "expert" right up in your face 

In full on the screen. I find it an enormous invasion of space,

And some of their "experts" leave a lot to be desired,

In terms of crankiness.

But they were talking about teleportation, 

By which i guess is meant crossing boundaries

Between dimensions.

Dragging in leylines and government experiments, and shadowmen

A hotchpotch. 

I don't credit ley lines much. 

I read Watkin's Old Straight Track, in a book from the library, when i was a teen.

I wasn't a believer then. i can't see why i should be expected

To believe that landmarks would all be aligned with others, by different builders at different times, although to some extent i agree that some might have a connection 

With natural local landmarks. 

 i couldn't envisage a huge spider's web of hypothetical links, 

When there were no roads or paths in between. 

I do accept that our ancestors thought like that.

E.g. the stonehenge landscape. 

Maybe the idea is with us because it is a throwback to how

 our distant ancestors perceived their world. 

That idea i like.

Shirley Jackson

 it's extremely hard to write a long ghost story,

Without it becoming simply a horror story.

To keep the attention of the reader for that long without

Cheap shocks. (I mean gory ones)

The only person that i know to have done this successfully

Was Shirley Jackson in her The Haunting,

The true and ONLY Hill House story.

And perhaps the greatest ghost story film ever.

Every other version is a poor joke

It holds off violence mostly, but the threat is retained

If there is a threat it should be off the set, not thrown in your face

That's what makes the ghost story's bastard younger brother, the horror story.

The frisson is the point.

The long drawn out fight against unknown elements.

That's what makes Shirley Jackson at her best. 

Look out for The Bird's Nest too...

An interesting novel, 

Although not a ghost story, and

Whst i suppose is on the fringe of horror...

Maybe...

 WE have always lived in the castle.

I'LL  like to praise the old masters, and the ugly

Modern horror writers can go to hell.