Hunting Rabbits

 You've probably seen all those posts on Facebook and Twitter that go, "You know you're a writer when...". They end with something ironic like "when your best ideas come just as you're dropping off to sleep." Well, here's mine.

 You know you're writer when your brain just will not stop working out ideas and problems, even when you have almost no time to write.

 With my shift pattern at the moment, and with two small children, my time is tight. For the first time I'm not writing every day. I'm doing an edit/rewrite, but even that is catch-as-catch-can, an hour one day and ten minutes the next. So I'm not actually creating new work... and my mind won't shut up.

 I've got a new idea for a story set in a growing empire, one just realising that the old government systems aren't capable of managing the new, larger realm. Blocked that out yesterday. I've got an idea for a trilogy set in a place like ancient Egypt, where a band of adventurers set out to find the source of a foundation myth. There's the Heikegani crab idea, where crabs with shells like human faces turn out to be the carriers of wronged souls. Also I've thought of a story for a tribe of plains folk, who've heard rumours of a new people to the east and who then begin to die of a disease they've never seen before. Ideas all over the place, and no time to write.

 I think the two things are linked. Because my mind isn't occupied with the tangles and plots of a novel, it's spending all that nervous (creative?) energy on ideas. It's better than spinning its wheels to no purpose, isn't it? But it's frustrating as all hell. I'm really keen on the Crabs, that's a great idea, and the Egypt story just bursts with potential. And all I can do is block them out for the future. It's like being a cyclist with no bike, his legs pumping on pedals that don't exist. A dog hunting rabbits in his sleep.

 (Hmm. Saying "I'm really keen on the crabs" could be taken the wrong way.)

 Now, as of this morning, I have an idea for a prodigal son who left the city years ago, but promised to return if the girl he loved (and married someone else) needed help. Now he gets the call and returns, laden with knowledge gained in the world, and finds things are not at all as he thought they'd be. I can juxtapose a normal, humdrum city (sorta) with the mysteries and wonders - and even fantastic beasts - of the wider world. Cracking idea, simple as you like but teeming with possibilities. So it's back to blocking out, even though I won't be able to start it until New Year at the very least, and probably spring.

 Bugger.

 But... the old mill is still churning, eh?

Leave no Footprints

 There was a report this week that in the Cerrado region of Brazil, the savanna is being cleared for fields to grow soybeans. Huge areas are being burned all the time. It's doing enormous environmental damage and driving species to the edge of extinction.

 It made me think about the idea today that we can save the world if we go meat-free two or three nights a week. But we can't. If we abandon beef the fields will just be converted to grow soybeans, or sugarcane for bio-fuel. That's already happening - the orangutan is in critical danger because of forest clearance for bio-fuel crops. So we reduced fossil fuel dependence to save the world, and instead smashed the ecosystem of Borneo.

 The truth is that there are simply too many of us. Too many humans. We need too much land, too much water, and using one product instead of another only moves the disaster to somewhere else. We have to reduce our demands on the land, not just change them. And we know it can be done, because there are cultures from the past which did it. Most famous of these are the Plains Indians, whose ancestors slaughtered pretty much everything except the buffalo, leaving a threadbare ecosystem to their descendants. The Indians learned to take what could be taken without damage - "leave no footprints", they said, no mark that you'd been there at all. In a different way the Garamanta of North Africa did it too, living in one city amidst the Sahara as they did. It must have meant tight restrictions on water use and on food, and population control too.

 Those are our choices. We could leave fewer footprints, by taking less from the land. It means a drastic reduction in standard of living; we'd have to use half the energy we do now, half the water, and much less food (at least in the developed world). Or we could reduce population, globally, by several billion people.

 Both options are unpalatable and both are ridiculously hard. No voting public is going to elect a party that limits the right to have children. Even if it did, how do you enforce that abroad, in Africa for example? Or India? As for reducing our standard of living, don't waste my time. Voters opt for whoever they think will give them the most money and gadgets the soonest.

 But here's the kicker. Another report this week estimates that the number of vertebrates worldwide has fallen by 60% since 1970. More than half of nearly every species except humans gone in half a century. And with losses like that the ecosystem will soon collapse, and human beings will see a catastrophic fall in numbers and living standards anyway. And we can't stop that happening, because we won't vote for it.

 In a thousand years there really might be no human footprints left on the Earth.

Before and After

 Life's a funny old thing, y'know.

 There are people who want to live forever. I don't really understand that. Even in forever there will be something you didn't see, and anyway your regrets will pile up and pile up and maybe in the end choke you. In any case, if the old never die, what jobs will the young people do? How will they get a job at a physics department or shoe shop if the people who have those jobs never retire?

 Immortality means stasis. Nothing changing, nothing new. I think people take risks because they know their time is limited anyway .Even if you die, it's only popping off a bit earlier. But if you have forever in your sights,well now... why take a risk? Why go near a road if you might be run down, or board a plane that might crash? Immortality just means you don't die of natural causes. It doesn't make you immune to bombs or bullets.

 On the other hand (and how many lunatic ideas started with "On the other hand", do you think?) there's so much I want to see. I long to walk on Mars. Did you know the sky there is pink? I want to see my daughters get married and have kids, or become artists or activists or thinkers. Or serve coffee at Starbuck's, if that's what they want to do. I want to see Liverpool win the league title again. So many things, and I won't see them all. (Especially Liverpool... sigh) Life flits by like blown leaves, every leaf a year, and suddenly you're on the edge of fifty and wondering how the bloody hell you got there.

 But it's strange, because I like the different perspectives I've had as I've grown older. I've learned not to be certain of things, because much of what I once thought was obvious and clear turns out to be shades of grey. I've found that experience (and maybe a little wisdom) are better friends than energy and hot blood. I like myself, too. That took some learning, and a lot of forgiving myself for mistakes made and hurts done to others. I think I can face that final curtain, when it comes, with a little bit of a smile.

I'm not afraid to die. What matters is the life lived, not the avoidance of death. I want to teach my daughters what I can, and send them out into the world confident and brave and loved, and ready to sort out their own shit. I want to love my wife, who's broken my life into Before and After like I'm two different men, one emerging from the shell of the other. And after a bit of these things, as much as I can deal with and life allows me, I'll die. That's no cause for sorrow. Not if we can say we lived our lives well.

 Pip pip.