Saturday, June 16

Staring Right Back

Have you ever felt like someone was watching you and then you turned around to see who it was just to find … [dramatic pause] there was no one there. Scary isn’t it? Sends a chill down the back of your neck and makes the hair on your arms stand on end.

imagine that you moved out of this persons line of sight only to notice that same feeling of being watched again, and noticing another pair of eyes fixed on you


Well imagine feeling like someone was watching you and turning to find that someone was actually watching you, unblinking, unflustered by your eyes meeting theirs and unrelenting in their inspection of you. Now imagine that you moved out of this persons line of sight only to notice that same feeling of being watched again, and noticing another pair of eyes fixed on you set in an unsmiling face on top of a neck that pivots with your every move.

Well the latter scenario is my life. I feel like the uninitiated stranger who’s walked into the village of a horror movie, everything seems fine on the surface but those eyes constantly watching, they suggest that nothing is right beneath it.

Maybe I’m just paranoid, ‘wierded’ out by a behaviour that seems so foreign to me. Perhaps I should, after 10 months, accept that I look curious to them, and that’s why they stare, woman, man and child.

I once voiced my concerns to someone, and was consequently likened to an alien.

“What if you saw a Martian on the street, wouldn’t that freak you out a bit.”

What freaked me out was being likened to something that didn’t exist, and to something that in popular culture is to be feared and not trusted. Those points aside, I’m nothing like an alien, I’m a lot like any other black person, a race of people who some believe predate Caucasians, a race of people who have been part of British society predating the abolition of slavery. Seeing a black person is like seeing a tree in the fact that no one can deny they exist and where we may all be different tree’s, I’m distinctly not alien.

I would pretend that their fixed unsmiling gaze was a look of awestruck wonderment. However ...


In fact scratch that because seeing a black person is like seeing a person in the fact that no one can deny they exist and where we all may be different people, I’m distinctly not alien.

So in my head for a while I would liken the staring to a person seeing a rare car, a Ferrari or a McClaren, and I would pretend that their fixed unsmiling gaze was a look of awestruck wonderment. However the other day I saw the same unfriendly stare, the same investigative and unblinking eyes in another face.

“disrespected, unwelcome, threatening”.


As I was walking to school I had passed too close to someone else’s territory and the staring started. Curious, alert and slightly afraid, he looked right at me fixing my gaze with a stare, unsmiling, unfriendly, not shocked, I wasn’t alien to him. And as I passed him his head turned slowly to keep me in sight, and then he done something that frightened me, he got up on all fours, pulled at his leash and barked!

A dogs eyes will never hide what they’re saying, “unwelcome, unwanted”, similarly the eyes I feel on me and then catch sight of are equally honest, “disrespected, unwelcome, threatening”.
I could go on, but I feel the side of me that has been trained to be politically correct pulling me inline. I wouldn’t want to point out any one peoples social inadequacies because that is racist, better instead to accept it, leave it unchallenged and barking loudly, whilst tethered to a place in social evolution most have long since left.

Tuesday, June 12

Hunting for Truth

There’s something to be said of the wisdom of actors. I just listened to Ben Kingsley describe acting as tribal, and actors as hunters, eager to find the truth of the play, the truth inside their part. It’s a stretch for the imagination but, it felt right to me as he explained.


He said that as an actor, being trained formally, you feel that you want to hunt, want the thrill of it, want the adrenaline and the fear and the kill. You want to get out there and you want to pull back your bow and fire it. But instead you’re given a bow with no arrow, and you're told to pull it back, over and over and over again.

This teaches patients, this teaches stillness and if you’re confident that you’re are a hunter, that you have an important place in your tribe then you will happily be still, you will happily watch and learn, and pull your arrow-less bow content to perfect what you know you were born for.
that is the moment the hunter in you can be let out because then you have the coolness to temper the fire
And when you find yourself so patient, so content, so complete with no arrow, no thrill and no kill, then that is the moment you’re ready for the arrow, that is the moment the hunter in you can be let out on the stage because then you have the coolness to temper the fire. And for all those time when you wanted an arrow and only received a bow, you’re grateful.
hates when people come to into any encounter with preconceptions
I want to learn patience, tolerance, to be at one with myself, not to be at odds with myself. Ben said something else interesting as well, when asked what turns him off he said he hates when people come to into any encounter with preconceptions. It’s my own fault and it’s the fault of many people I know, and I hate seeing it in myself far more than in others.

Well, I know that I have a lot to learn, there’s a lot I can gain from just watching and being patient.

Monday, June 11

We're at DEFCON 5



Played a computer game last night… ooohhh, wow, big news right? Yeah! Big news. Don’t switch of yet though because there’s more.

I was playing a game called DEFCON. As the name may suggest the game is about nuclear weapons. You’re presented with an atlas of the world, with physical land/sea borders represented as blue neon lines and population density represented as a warm orange glow against a stark black background. It’s a clinical and unfeeling representation of the world, eschewing the greens and blues of our lush planet for a stylised, bereft and clinical representation using numbers and scant detail to represent the populous of towns and cities.

A timer counts down and I’m pitted against another human player across a network. I’m given resources, all of which are weapons of destruction, missile silos, submarines, air defence units. And although I can see where my opponent populous is I cannot see where his resources lay. I can only assume that he has similar defences as me and the ability to launch an offensive in the same way. I feel a rush of power, I realise that I can lay waste to his nation and suspect that he plans to do the same to me. The clock counts down further and a message appears on screen, I’m now at DEFCON level 3 and I set my defences up with more urgency.

A war ensues, I make a myriad of mistakes, I use a nuke to take out a ship for instance. A showy and over confident demonstration of power which backfires when my later nukes are destroyed mid-flight before hitting their targets and my planes discover subs in my sea.



The population of New York, Michigan, Texas and Ohio are decimated and I hear their screams and their moans and then silence. Their voices are muted and the silence is worse than the anguished cries.

On the other side of the virtual pond my opponents live in peace, untouched by my impotent rage. And suddenly I’m sorry. I don’t feel the same rush of power anymore and wondered if it ever really exsisted, wasn’t it always going to end this way? With anguish and screams and loss, the numbers dwindling and the orange glow fading. What once seemed like a clinical representation of the world was a dark reminder of its fragility and our ability to destroy ourselves.

I thanked my opponent for playing and left the game. Later that night I thought about Korea and my proximity to it and I thought about Nagasaki and my proximity to that place too, it’s people and the very real affects of nuclear warfare in green and blue, charcoal black and singed crack concrete grey.

So, I played a computer game last night… and it made me think.

Tuesday, June 5

Style Lama


Maybe I see irony where there is none or maybe I’m just far too sensitive (something I’ve never been accused of being…) but, let me recount a little non-incident from the Re-contracting conference for you and lets see if we can’t find the ironies together.

there’s only the will to survive the approaching snore-o-thon


So it’s the third day of the conference, I’m tired, disheveled, and glad that in a few hours all the lectures and all the self-improvement will soon be a memory, fast fading and leaving me as ignorant as I was when I arrived on Monday.

I’m wearing my three piece suit, with no tie and a pink shirt which certainly needs a tie to reign it in, I know I look a mess but it’s my prerogative and I don’t care. There’s no one to impress today, there’s only the will to survive the approaching snore-o-thon and leave. A lot of people have just turned up in jeans and t-shirts, fair-play to them, I wish I had thought of that.

I see a person I know across the room whilst waiting for lectures to begin and I go over to say good morning,

“How are you?”
“Fine, you?”
“Fine, how was last night?”
“Great! But this morning….”
“Oh yeah, me too.”


Then I’m introduced to her friends A and B,

“Hi A, hi B, Stephen, pleased to meet you.”


As soon as B has said hi, he’s telling me that he ‘simply must fix my collar’, and then invites himself to do so apparently assuming responsibility for my appearance and ignoring the boundaries of personal space.

...I’m looking about the room for anything that looks like a chance to escape their company in a manner which won’t offend


I thank him for his assistance and then turn to my acquaintance and inquire about something banal, when I’m interrupted again by person B who then undoes my bottom button of my waist-coast for no less of a reason than “that really pisses me off”… the list of things that piss me off all the while is growing.

spiritual wellbeing, coexistence or harmony. The thought confused an already befuddled and hung-over mind


So, person B has successfully made me feel awkward and unwelcome and I’m now very self-conscious about my appearance. As I’m looking about the room as coolly as the situation dictates that I should, for anything that looks like a chance to escape their company in a manner which won’t offend, B takes a book out of his bag and passes it to my acquaintance. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw what it was, The Secret of Happiness by the Dali Lama.

I wondered if such a person could have really read and understood anything about spiritual wellbeing, coexistence or harmony. The thought confused an already befuddled and hung-over mind and I decided, socially acceptable escape route or no I was leaving.

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