Freedom

I was listening to my favourite Youtube person this morning - excellent channel, beautifully named, The Functional Melancholic. His slow, thoughtful content covering philosophy, political madness, cosmic dread and staring into the void at 3am, all delivered under a great collection of hats and with subtle absurdist humour never fails to inspire, and always leaves me feeling that I have been reminded of what is important in life.

This morning's offering was on freedom, and was as ever thought-provoking and strangely uplifting - for me anyway. 

So my takeaway was a reminder on what real freedom is, and how often it is something quiet and unremarkable, such as choosing to not pick up the phone and scroll during a spare moment but to lose oneself in the narrative of a novel, or to gain real, lasting information from reading something informative - and fascinating about the natural world/philosophy/history/whatever . . . from a book. I remember stuff I take the time to ingest via a page, rather than a quick Google glance. 

Of course Google et al has many uses and is invaluable for: 'shit, a flat tyre - quick, Google Renault Kangoo info on spare tyres/jacks etc' - as we don't even know where the spare is on our car. Or, map apps are great for when you are utterly lost in the middle of Paris and late for a meeting, but consulting an actual paper map, realising where you are on the world's crust and then working out the desired route is another crucial aspect of freedom, and brain nurturing. 

Like my grandmother was fond of saying, a little bit of what you fancy does you good - if you can restrict the internet content to 'a little bit'. Have the freedom and practised mind to be able to use it when you want or need but also to have the skill - and it possibly is now a skill - to be able to say, ok, enough of that, and pick up the book/paintbrush/instrument/knitting needles/welding iron/bike helmet/join a friend for a walk, or a game of chess; cook something experimental that doesn't require ChatGPT to give you all the steps.

Oh, yes. A1. I'm aware that Google is hyper old fashioned now, but that's probably where I'll stop. 

Having access to info on absolutely everything from: when was custard first invented to why is our dog afraid of balloons? to why would anyone think that living on Mars was remotely possible or desirable? is really quite enough, thanks. 

My current utterly absorbing read. Fall into another world, nothing but the slight sound of paper pages turning, and your imagination decorating the author's scenes.

3 - 1 = 2

It's a week since the lad departed for art college and I am now able to go into his room or find an odd sock of his under the sofa and not feel sentimental - too much anyway.
The first few days were not unlike being dumped after love has gone astray, and I don't mean that in a weird way! But after listening to a Ted Talk about love and the brain, it does make sense. The     'hippocampus' (still can only see a large grey lumbering mammal wandering around a university grounds on seeing this word) deals with all this emotion stuff and when the love object is removed the 'hippo' part of the brain increases the desire and longing to see them constantly. Of course the difference is that he still seems to like us, will return home and we will, hopefully, slot back into all the stuff we usually do as a family, rather than the 'being discarded by a lover' situation - unlikely to ever see them again apart from odd furtive glances behind the cheese section in the supermarket if you are still live in the vicinity of each other.
So what have we learned and discovered?
I still like Mark (husband) a lot (phew) and he, me. Good. The bathroom stays clean. I am becoming aware that there is actually more time available, in fact several friends after listening to my pathetic sighing about absence of lad said 'Freedom!' and, 'just give it a couple of weeks and you'll be VERY happy with just you two'.
I don't know, but I think about him a lot, wonder what he might be doing at various parts of the day. But then I do that a lot about family and friends anyway - I wonder what Katherine might be doing now, or Mark, or Rosemary, or Penny, or Jo, or you, dear reader. Are you sitting with laptop, cup of tea and pile of things you should be doing nearby?
Fascinating that, isn't it . . . imagining everyone you know engaged in all these different things we all do all the time: eating, walking, driving, thinking, queuing . . . but then if we were telepathic, we'd all know what we were all doing all of the time. Social media would be even more exhausting.
My current novel, at the moment called Brassica, features a clan of people from some future Earth time who are telepathic, have more or less forgotten how to speak but are having to converse with my main character, 'Hamish', who has arrived from 1992.
How did I get onto this. Anyway, the point being, my brain is no longer solely occupied with 'is the lad okay, or not'. Onward.

                                        

The Hippocampus, which is actually Greek for Seahorse, not large grey, university-haunting mammal