THE DICHOTOMY OF CROSSING DISTANCES (a.k.a. Setting Forth from New Year's Day)

I’ve recently been looking into Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox. To simplify it in an awkward fashion, imagine walking a distance. Say the exit of a supermarket to wherever you parked your car. Now that is a set distance with a set time but to get there you will need to reach the halfway point first. However, if you’re going to split distances in half, you might as well split that halfway point in half too, and its subsequent halfway point in half and so on and so forth. Now if you add up all those new split distances, the sum total would be infinity. After a moment’s consideration, the overall distance between the supermarket and your car becomes impossibly long.

            Now this paradox is easily refuted by mathematical thinking but that’s not what I’m concerned with today. I’m more interested in the kind of mindset where the Dichotomy Paradox is almost always a problem. In short, anxiety.

            I am an anxious person. I worry about great distances before I’ve even begun the journey. I imagine every distance beyond the footpath to town or to work is a great distance. It’s a journey fraught with potential perils at every step from genuine niggles like losing my bearings and having to rely on the kindness and accuracy of strangers, to outrageous fears like my glasses flying off my face and landing in the middle of a busy road. Like in the paradox, every step of the way contains a new obstacle and hold-up.

            Normally all it takes to get over this fear is to set about moving forward. The thing about the Dichotomy Paradox when applied to real life is that it is undermined by actually crossing the distance. Calculations and halving are all well and good but they are nothing compared to the human tendency to just get on with the task at hand. It’s really that simple and yet remains very easy to forget.

            Now perseverance is always easier when you know what’s at the end of the road, when you ultimately realise that very little will change as a consequence. You can fight back the concept of the Dichotomy Paradox if the task is something that won’t take long and won’t result in the end of a life or a way of life. In those harrowing circumstances there will be days when the Dichotomy Paradox will just tie you up in knots and paralyze you with fear. After all, the certainty of disappearance doesn’t bear thinking about.

            Nevertheless, my suggested workaround for this is to bypass the multiple potential measurements in that distance with our feet. Change is scary but sometimes we go through the motions of routine behaviour and motor memory and suddenly we're well past the problem. If there was ever really a problem to begin with.

            I would say Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox is something to think about now we’re in a new year and decade. It’s something to acknowledge and hopefully overcome.

A CHRISTMAS OCCURRENCE ON THE SHOP ROOM FLOOR (a.k.a. A Festive Moment of Entropy)

Closing time was an hour ago. Nobody is in the department store. The cleaner was in and out within twenty minutes, hastily vacuuming patches of carpet and splashing the main lino path with a damp mop. Since she left, the whole building has been very still.

            Then the wrapping paper rolls rustle. The thinnest is pinched forward by the combined weight of the rest and thunks onto the square of crimson carpet beneath it. This green and white roll's bottom half raises two thicker rolls and together they tip the whole box-stand over, everything spilling out.

            It all tumbles a short distance to the base of the large Christmas tree by the tills. Three low-hanging golden baubles dislodge themselves from the feeble plastic branches and roll far to the left.

            One clatters against another then another until the last bauble stops in front of a motion sensor Dancing Reindeer. It shimmies its automated hips, triggering a chain reaction of shimmying until all the surrounding Reindeer have broken out into a muffled poor-quality version of Jingle Bells. They echo each other and fill the store with life, albeit artificial. Just as soon as it begins, the song is over. While it lasts, it plays only to decorative snowmen and caricatures of Santa and his elves on chocolate selection boxes.

            The security camera won't get a clear view of the spectacle as it happened, just a black-and-white recording of a couple of baubles and the stiff mass swaying of the Dancing Reindeer. The magic of the instant will be overlooked by the mess.

            But it has happened. It all has happened in a glorious moment of unexpected life the Monday before Christmas. The staff will tidy it up eventually, sell all these brightly-coloured trinkets and decorations at discount rates. Except these will be mispriced, the department store cheating themselves out of their true worth.

            Then again what is the cost of such a Christmas occurrence on the shop room floor?

DELICACY (a.k.a. Ornamental Endings)

We have a masterpiece of a mantelpiece.

Exquisite.

Varnished mahogany. An oceanic curve to the top, a tasteful woodcutting at the bottom. A lamb in the arms of a little child.

We can never agree on the genders.

So it's a big broad mantelpiece: plenty of room for all kinds of ornaments. We are just mad about figurines.

Christmas comes and we usually have some new ones to put up.

This year was a bit outre: a tartan chicken and a black and gold painted egg.

Now the irony isn't beyond us: we've both had philosophy classes in some fashion. As well as decor.

And yet neither of us have set up either ornament. Why?

The egg was a gift from my mother.

While I have adopted the chicken from my quirky work colleague.

I was going to put up my egg first but then I'm not a huge fan of the chicken and certainly don't want that up as the last ornament of the year.

And I have a funny feeling about that egg. I can see a definite crack down the middle.

But I don't.

I just think it'll cause havoc on the mantelpiece when it breaks.

If it breaks!

Not this again. And what's wrong with my chicken?

You know what. I distinctly remember you moaning about it too.

I never moan.

Oh yes, you do.

Nevertheless the fact remains that it is the last day of the year and we both agree that something ought to go up.

To mark the year.

And we were wondering...

What would you advise?

ONE TWIN IN A CAFE (a.k.a. All the Best for the New Year)

      The following day I sat down at this little cafe I knew.
      It was quiet and the serving staff moved slowly, as if every slight movement was a new shock to their system. I didn't feel great myself, stirring my tea perhaps a little too long.
      Then the door opened and in came one half of the twins I saw yesterday, dressed in the same smart clothes. They barely looked wrinkled.
      He, however, was very pale and had this look in his eye. It wasn't quite the same hundred yards stare as everyone else in the place, his look seemed to have a more tangible target in mind.
      He flinched as the sleepy waitress came to take his order and fell back into the same reverie as soon as she had gone.
      I started devising scenarios of where the brother might be: nursing a hangover, lagging behind, just around the corner. That wasn't it though. I just knew. His absence was tied inextricably with this brother's sickly silence.
      I sympathised: not easy with perfect strangers but at the same time impossible not to when I saw the once lively old man before me.
      Except perhaps he wasn't so old. In fact he could have been middle-aged, his uncomfortable movements added years to his appearance.
      When I could bear it no longer, I finished my tea and paid at the counter. When I turned to leave, he was still there though I had expected him to be gone.
       As I crossed his table on the way out I realised something. It was natural, whatever had happened, sad but still cause and effect. They had looked too much alike: now this brother could wear his own style, be his own man. 
      While his brother had obviously been wasting away, this man had a full head of hair, no white in his beard at all. He still had time.
       Be different, I thought as I looked at him one last time through the display window. Good luck.

TWINS FROM THE TAKEAWAY (a.k.a. A New Year's Eve Vignette)

      I crossed twin men at a Chinese takeaway.
      They were well-dressed in slate grey jackets and open-necked white shirts.
      They were identical in every way from the stray grey hairs on top of  their thin heads to the scuffed black soles under their thick shoes. They even carried identical white plastic bags filled with the same tin foil containers poking out at the corner.
      Except there was one difference. While they both had well-groomed Van Dyke beards, the one on the left had a longer, whiter tip.
      Nevertheless they both seemed jovial. Their open-mouthed smiles lasted so long on their faces that it seemed to me a little suspicious. Then again they were brothers bringing home dinner on a  Sunday night.
      And it was a big night. Though I couldn't remember why.
      I watched them go. Another difference: the one on the left had a small but growing bald spot.
      While the white in the beard was explainable, I wondered how one twin could have such vastly different hair patterns to the other.
      Maybe they weren't twins, maybe one was simply dressed up as the other, an uncanny resemblance. Maybe they weren't even brothers.
      No, I thought. They were brothers. It just made sense.
      And the place they had come from, the takeaway, what was that? I had never seen it before. The name was lost in Chinese characters.
      For a moment I thought about going inside but something stopped me. It was a big night, for everyone, It would almost certainly be busy without a gormless browser dawdling in too.
      So I carried on home. With every step, I slowly convinced myself of how tired the one on the left had looked compared to the right.
      Yes, he was a little more bent over. Yes, he did seem to drag his feet.
      Yes, that smile was probably the first to fade.

2016 (a.k.a. Some Thoughts on 'F**k 2016')

There's a calendar on the wall. Pages peel off it, it's ink representing the months and the days of a year that no-one can predict nor judge nor prescribe much meaning to.
           There's a finger that keeps pointing at this calendar on the wall. As the pages fall away, things start to happen.
           Time leaves space open for consequence and reaction, allows those who perceive it to create in the blank white box of each day in the grid of each month in the sheaf of a year.
           Create and cause and change. Bold decisions are made, lousy cop-outs occur, births, deaths, naming of life and loss.
           Pictures and words stop being records of the moment and settle into the lengthy discoloured stint of archives.
           The record makers throw up their arms, extend their middle fingers and thoroughly express their displeasure at the calendar.
           It lied to them. It disappointed them. Those black lines on white paper once made sense.
           What a tease. What a cheat. What a rotten development. This year was meant to be a good year, the year on which only good things happened or nothing new happened at all.
           Through opening up to zeitgeist, the calendar made a promise it could not keep.
           The hand that pinned it to the wall, now rips it off. The fingers that smoothed it, tear it to pieces. Money is spent on the next calendar.
           The new year begins. Everybody waits for something to happen as they stumble forth, about their own and the world's business.
           The first day is marked.