Noah, Ham, Eggs, incest and Arne Naess.

We never go out as a family...well, barely ever.  Should it worry me, I wondered?  I asked one of my family-friendly friends about it and she laughed bitterly.  'Sure, we go out,' she said.  'But it always ends in tears. Someone has a hissy fit, someone gets drunk, someone sulks, someone stalks off and we all come back not talking to one another.'  

'But at least you try,' I said wistfully.

So last Sunday I watched people talk about trips to the beach, to the park, to the cinema, to the...well anywhere and everywhere really. Even church.  And I thought, well really, this is ridiculous. If you want something, you have to do something about it, don't you?  You can't just sit and wish. Adrian was in Amsterdam, so he was out of the equation.  But surely James and I could do something?  So, when he came home from work, I smiled brightly.

'What's going on?' he said, suspicion etched across his face.  'What do you want me to do?'

'Nothing,' I replied.  'I just thought we could go out.'

'Go out where?'

'Taunton.  Grab a pizza and then see Noah at the Odeon.'

'What?'

I shrugged. It seemed pretty self-explanatory to me.  'Well?'

'Nah.' 

What?  

'Not today.'

And he switched on his XBox.  I shrugged, lit the fire and sat and watched The English Patient until it got just too sad and so I switched off and just watched the flames instead wondering which would be worse - to be dying in the dark in a cave or to be unable to rescue the person in the cave.  And I figured the latter was definitely the worst.  By a long shot. 

Then, suddenly, on Tuesday.  

'So, are we going to the cinema tonight, Mum?'

'Huh?'

'Yeah.  Y'no, Noah. Pizza. Pizza.  Noah.'  

'Er...okay.' 

It felt weird.  I haven't been to a pizza place for years.  Literally.  I don't even eat pizza, for pizza's sake.  But it was fine.  And Noah?  Well, having booked the tickets, we read the reviews. Yup, wrong way round, I know.  Dire. Really dire.  

But, you know, it wasn't that bad.  Okay, so every time someone shouted 'Ham!', we whispered 'Eggs!' to one another.  And I can't remember the Bible saying The Watchers helped Noah and Co build the ark, nor that they looked like stone giant transformers, but hey.  And it was quite a neat idea to turn Noah into a sort of deep green eco-warrior (Arne Naess might have approved) - though, again, not terribly Biblical.  And, of course, you have to suspend disbelief at...well, everything really.  But hey...

'You know they've still got a problem,' said James as we left the cinema.

'Huh?

'I mean, they'd have to wait for the babies to grow up and, even then, it's still incest, right? Pretty much.'

'Yup.'

And then we fell to thinking about the animals. Whether the moment they woke up from their incense-induced sleep and got off the ark, the meat-eaters would just go nutty and decimate the herbivores or whether they would give them some kind of headstart.  And how would the carnivores survive if they were expected to wait for their food sources to get up their numbers?  

Not to mention the fact that, having been asleep for all that time, none of them would be able to move anyhow, cos of muscle wastage. 

'Why are we even doing this?' I said. 'You can't take the Bible literally.' 

'You can't take the Bible at all,' said James.  

Anyhow.  We did it.  Half a family outing.  In fact, we even managed to tie up all the ends very nicely and pick up Adrian on his return from Amsterdam.  And the fact he hadn't seen the film didn't make one iota of difference.  In fact he had far more opinions on it than we did.  *smile*

What about you?  Do you do family outings?  Are they a generally 'good thing'?  I mean, you could argue that there's Noah and his family off on a boat trip (with the family pets).  And how does it end up?  Bonding exercise?  Or... someone has a hissy fit, someone gets drunk, someone sulks, someone stalks off and they all come back not talking to one another?  :-)

Does it matter?

But seriously.  I’m sitting outside in the sun, hearing the church bells ring the hour.  Noon.  I’ve just had an early lunch (chick pea dahl) and have fed the dogs (not chick pea dahl).  And I’m sort of half thinking.  My thoughts are a mess these days, a total mess.  I keep retreating to meditation, to the place of no-thought, but then I wonder – should one always seek to escape?  To run away?  Isn’t it opting out?  Just another form of distraction, through no-distraction?

And meanwhile the world is so screwed up.  Or rather, we’ve screwed it up so badly.  Recently I have been re-reading books I read when I was young and, in particular, the ones that nudged my green sensibilities.  The ones that probably partly influenced my book Walker.  Shabono.  Ishmael.  Have you read Ishmael?  It doesn’t make for comfortable reading.   

And  then (this morning at the gym) I finished Liz Jensen’s The Uninvited.   It was a cheap Kindle download and I picked it up because I’d quite liked The Rapture and Louis Drax.  I’d wanted some mindless entertainment, some frivolous distraction but there again – those uncomfortable issues: our over-population, the non-sustainability of growth, our greed, our living so out of kilter with the rest of the planet… and despair washes over me.

And then I ponder – does it matter?  We are born. We live.  We die.  Like all animals.  Yet, unlike (as far as we know) other animals, we make up stories.  We call these stories things like ‘True Love’ and ‘Challenge’ and ‘Work ethic’ and 'Happy Families' and ‘A Good Life’ and ‘Personal Growth’.  Or maybe for some of us the only story is ‘Survival’.  It just depends on our circumstances and our personal bent.

‘You’d be happier in an ashram,’ Adrian often says to me.  Maybe he’s right.  But I’m not sure that an answer either – it’s just another story.  Probably there is no answer.  The thing is, nobody knows. 

I let my mind wander over the D.H. Lawrence story, The Man Who Loved Islands (my second favourite DHL story, after The Man Who Died).  Have you read it?  I haven’t revisited it for years.  But, as I remember, it reinforces the idea - you can’t run away.  No matter how I may fantasise about a simple life…a little hut…in the deep woods… on a shoreside…on an island even…I know it won’t solve anything. 

Should we be trying to save the world?  It’s tempting to say so but nothing is changed for sheer force of will, is it? You can't change people.  You can only change yourself.  Big changes will probably only come by internal change.  One person at a time.  Can we change enough?  In time?  Should we?  Who knows?  

And, really, does it matter?  Yes, I’m repeating myself…I told you, my wondering whirs around, a cloud of unknowing.  Does it matter?  Probably not.  But it’s still sad.   And now the church bell rings again.  The half hour.  And I'm just wandering in my mind out loud.