RAE’S RAMBLES

If they knew the lifestyle I was now leading their opinion would not be ‘I feel sorry for the stupid old fart all alone in a strange land’, but one more like ‘the lucky bastard’.

I followed the advice of Welsh bard Dylan Thomas to his father when he wrote “Do not go gentle into that goodnight, rail, rail, against the dying of the light” and decided to grow old disgracefully. By that I do not mean dressing up in skin-tight florescent lycra cycling gear that shows off your wrinkly pinkie and packet of walnuts or to go jogging in a gaudy day-glow pink sequined Liberace shell-suit. I later sent, to various relations, photos of a variety of Pattaya girls fawning attention on me, only to incur the enmity of their disapproval and opinions based on their own outmoded and insulting perceptions of what aging means.

I’ve yet to explore the sartorial delights of aged fashion as a string vest, ex-army khaki shorts with braces, and frayed plimsols still suffice. My censoring relatives would have a fit and say “You’re not going out dressed like that, are you? What if our friends should see you?” Well, relatively speaking, the older you get the less you care for those annoying relatives anyway - and as we are relatively speaking, theoretically, E = mc2, but even that is in dispute now! As for ‘Virtual Reality’ it’s an oxymoron. Virtual means almost - but not quite; and reality does, of course, mean real. That which is real is real, and cannot be less than real so it’s a contradiction in terms.

It simply cannot be virtually real! Do you remember how Jeff Goldbum (in ‘Jurassic Park’) tried to explain the ‘Chaos heory’ in speculating on the true nature of the cosmos? By using droplets of water on the back of his hand, he demonstrated that even the most basic rules of nature can occasionally behave in totally unpredictable ways. Even the intellectuals, scientists and boffins whose jobs are to investigate the true nature of the universe regard this as a hot potato — so it’s safe for me to use it as a philosophy. I can tell people what they do not want to hear and say or do as I please because if it’s wrong I’m simply investigating the ‘Chaos Theory’ and cannot  be held responsible for an unpredictable outcome. Plus, I shall acquire the sobriquet of ‘Eccentric’ in the process, which is a license to flout any convention if I so choose - which these days I often do by sounding off and banging on in my Promethean articles!

Getting older enables me to pontificate and comment with impunity on the collective madness and ludicrous sheep-like behaviour that motivates the average wage-slave. Those queuing commuters in milling flocks and droves, cramming into buses and trains, and those behind car driving wheels being driven mental by motorway traffic (often proving that although a car is constructed of a thousand parts it only takes one nut behind the wheel to deconstruct it in seconds). All bleating baa, baa, baaaa about wanting to be anywhere other than where they are; it puts me in mind of the Welsh sheep I used to see being transported down from the Black Hills, anticipating in innocence fresh green pastures but apprehensively peering through the slatted sides of the death-destined dirty lorries as they trundled by on their way to an abattoir for slaughter.

Sometimes it’s liberating to have a change of attitude as well as a new perspective on life. Those hackneyed and derogatory phrases, used mostly by those who have never truly lived, of being ‘over-the-hilP, and ‘washed-up’ are prime material for deconstruction. For a start, ‘climbing-the-hilP meant being locked into a determined career course of action, and like a blinkered sea-side donkey you had to struggle onwards and upwards not even being able to enjoy the scenic views along the way.

It often demanded the most strenuous effort that one could muster to simply stay in the same place and not be afflicted with a treadmill mentality. It could take a career lifetime to reach the ‘top-of-the-hilP and many OMAM’s (Older, Middle-Aged Men) didn’t even get that sense of achievement or to enjoy the view because on nearing the top they were greeted with a redundancy notice and the realization that it had been the wrong hill for them all along.

 Nobody chooses to go back to the bottom of the hill despite the slide down is far easier and quicker than the climb up and its nigh on impossible to muster enthusiasm for another attempt,
so why not just say ‘f*ck it’; look around at the valleys, plateaus, lakes, rivers, mountains, a geography awaiting exploration. Why choose another damn hill? If I’d been Sissyphus I would have told Zeus where to shove his damn boulder. Mythology also describes the dispiriting 12 labors sent to try Hercules but, (it would appear, nobody reads the classics anymore) only the brave or adventurous will break out of their stick and carrot trotting donkey mentality, kick over the traces and leave those others treading the rut of their career paths up the bl**dy hills. But, unlike Hercules, upon completion of his tasks they will not be rewarded with immortality.

Now I’m all washed up on a beautiful beach, flanked by swaying palm-trees and *anked by beautiful swaying maidens, surrounded by their gorgeous brown bodies in g-string bikinis and wiggling their sex in my face. If this is being ‘overthe- hilF it is an enviable condition to be in whilst the wage-slaves labour under the delusion that ‘the hill’ is all that life has to offer. No
falang was ever made miserable in a Pattaya brothel, if he is miserable when inside one it’s because he entered it that way. Well, I never had a mid-life crises, I reached the top of the career hill climb and was able to enjoy the peak, the feeling and meaning of success, and all else that it had to offer. Unlike some others who didn’t and instead began numerous
affairs, bought Harley-Davidson Motorbikes, wore aviator sun-glasses, pony-tails, Kamikazi headbands and sported Hell’s Angel’s tattoos, talked gangster rap, grooved to funky hip-hop music (I still think that M’n’M is a coloured sweet) and pursued all those things forbidden to them in their 20’s and 30’s. Their desires then become their beliefs.

My mid-life era was the most creative and productive period of my entire existence for it was then that my Jungian ‘shadow personality’ and I became united. As Sinatra sang “Regrets, I’ve
had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” (so why is he?); Most everyone has some regrets and if we really think we’ve got “too few to mention” it’s more likely a case of having forgotten most of the stupid things we have done in our lives which isn’t altogether a bad thing to do with them I suppose. To use another of life’s analogies; if this is the ‘Restaurant of Life’ and my ‘Salad Days’ (when I was green in judgment) are over, then I’ll have chicken and chips instead while I’ve still got my own teeth to enjoy it. So when I asked the waitress ‘How’s
my chicken coming along?’ she replied ‘I fine t’ank u, how r u?’ Well, what do you expect? This is Thailand after all.