Meditation 93

As I sit looking out of my kitchen window, the Indian summer of the afternoon has melded into the autumn chill of evening. A scent of bark wafts in through the kitchen door. I have just laid bark and wood chips over the soil in the garden borders to hopefully prevent my perennial struggle with weeds in the year ahead!

I am thinking about something Roman, which Marcus Aurelius would have used every day and something modern which we may use every day. A tablet.

You may say to yourself I do not possess a tablet myself or I pad or whatever. But is not the mobile phone a mini-tablet? We are able to make notes on it after all as well as emails and messages. I could write my meditation on it if I so wished.

This has come to my mind because a week or so ago my mobile phone was stolen. I hasten to add that I wasn’t mugged. I wasn’t alone either. I had a friend with me. We were eating outside a restaurant in Central London. My phone was taken by a beggar woman from my table. It was beside my plate and the woman used the distracting tactic of trying to grab a slice of pizza from my plate. I didn’t notice it had gone till a while later. More fool me for leaving it on display as a temptation for someone less fortunate than myself.

My friend was very helpful and called the phone company for me and the assistant arranged for my phone to be blocked. Two days later I had a new phone and thanks to that most nebulous yet essential of devices, the Cloud, everything from my stolen phone appeared as if by magic on my new one. And then all was well with the world again!

Aside from the shock of the theft and being annoyed and upset, I immediately felt rather disorientated. This feeling of being lost lasted until a new phone was in my hands. I became a bundle of nerves at times. My nerves didn’t settle until my emails and apps etc were up and running again on my phone. Even though, in the interim of only two days, I was able to use my I pad and laptop to write, send emails and texts and explore the internet. And being old-fashioned, I still have a landline too to communicate with the outside world.

This situation has made me ask myself why am I so dependent on a smart phone for my health and wellbeing? For it is dependency. I mainly do my banking on my phone, for instance, and the app provides a security code if I want to access my account on my laptop. Although my bank is a telephone bank and I could have done business that way if necessary. I have the NHS app too which has my medical records on it and I can use it to order a repeat prescription. Again, I could always call the surgery if I needed a repeat prescription on my landline, like in the old days (only a year or so ago!). So, I do not absolutely need my mobile phone, but life is getting that way!

Of course, the ability to communicate with others in such a variety of ways and so quickly on a mobile phone is a wonderful asset to have. Not to mention, taking photos, playing music, watching TV, keeping up with the news, making purchases, finding directions etc. You may be reading this meditation on your mobile phone. And, of course, they were so useful in lockdown for video calls with loved ones.

I remember watching a TV programme, around 30 years ago now, about the joys of the personal computer. Mobile phones were mentioned in the discussion. They were in their infancy then and looked like a brick against the ear – not much different from a military walkie-talkie! Someone suggested that eventually a hand- held computer will be developed. And here we are!

My worry is that not only have we become dependent on mobile phones for so many things now, but that this dependency has accelerated rapidly in the last few years. So much of our lives is now conducted on that mini-tablet in our hands. I also remember that when I was as a child, television broadcasting was promoted as a window onto the world in the corner of your living room. Now the world is in our hand – or rather the virtual world.

Did we ask for this dependency? No of course not. No-one asks to be dependent on anyone or anything. It somehow just happens slowly and stealthily. And with dependency comes addiction, if we are not careful. At the very least, the mobile phone can be a distraction, stopping us from fully concentrating or focusing on the task in hand. In fact, the phone becomes the task in hand instead unless we have the personal discipline to switch it off for a while or at least switch it to silent mode. Then perhaps true personal fulfillment will come to us, instead of the empty promises of personal fulfillment pedaled by social media.

Dear me, Marcus will be upset. I had intended to share with you my recent visit to Rome. I will save it until my next meditation.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 68

As I sit here gazing at the candle before me, one of my favourite actors has come to mind: Alec Guinness. There is a connection with Marcus Aurelius as he played the philosopher emperor in the epic movie, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ in 1965.

I remember seeing the film on of my annual visits to London as a child in the large Astoria Cinema in Tottenham Court Road. In those days, of course, there were no multiplex cinemas with screens of various sizes so the large single screen of this grand cinema fitted the epic sweep of the movie itself. Perhaps the cinema seemed larger and more palatial than it really was as I was only 11 or 12 years old then. There were many Greek and Roman epics in cinemas when I was a child and biblical ones too. My mental image of Classical times came from the movies rather than school history books or the children’s magazine ‘Look and Learn’. When I was studying Latin at grammar school, these images from the movies would flood back into my imagination. In my mind’s eye I would be swanning around in a toga as I learnt to conjugate Latin verbs by rote. But I digress.

I have been thinking about Alec Guinness for two reasons. One is that I paid a visit to him with my friend Simon in the summer. More accurately we paid a visit to his grave in the cemetery at Petersfield on our way to Chichester. We had been talking about him and thanks to Wikipedia (which has replaced the great library of Alexandria of classical times), we discovered that he was buried only an hour’s drive or so from my home. So on our way to the theatre at Chichester (where he appeared several times) we paid our respects on a glorious summer morning.

I imagined that the cemetery at Petersfield would be a small village graveyard. In reality it is an expansive undulating field. But we found his resting place quite easily (thanks to the eerie website ‘Find a Grave’) and it was not far from the entrance. His wife, Merula, is buried next to him. She only survived him for a few months or so after his death in August 2000. I had forgotten that he died over twenty years ago. This is probably because he is still very much present through his many films, which are regularly shown on the TV, not least in his role as Obi -Wan Kenobi in the first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, the character which most people would associate him with.

His film career was more extensive of course, in which he he played a gallery of detailed portrayals, too many to mention here. My favourites are his Fagin in David Lean’s ‘Oliver Twist’; the Ealing comedies ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ (where he plays six different characters) and the black comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ in which he plays a sinister crook; as King Charles I in ‘Cromwell’ and as Dorrit in the little known 1987 adaptation of Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit.’

These and many other portrayals revolved in my thoughts as I gazed at his gravestone. I also had the good fortune to see him several times on stage. As with his film performances, he had great presence on stage but he was not a ‘showy’ actor being reserved, dignified and capable of infinite stillness, even in comedy (which he excelled at). He could make the raising of an eyebrow dramatic or comic even to plebs like me up in the theatre’s balcony seats. Somehow he drew you into the story and the character which is what great acting is all about. His strong vocal presence helped in this, as he had impeccable diction of course. I remember moments from his theatre performances vividly even though I saw them over forty years ago as a young man. These flooded in as I looked at his simple gravestone with its quote from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ at the bottom: ‘The ripeness is all.’

I said to Simon as he stood beside me that it seemed so odd that this big star who is still so famous and in a way still alive to us, through his films, should be here at rest in this grave in this quiet countryside cemetery. A tinge of resurrection perhaps.

My second reason for mentioning Alec Guinness is that I have been watching two BBC Drama series which he appeared in. My visit to the cemetery led me to look them up. He played the role of George Smiley in excellent adaptations of novels by John Le Carre: ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’. They were filmed in the late 70’s and early 80’s and were immersed in the murky world of Cold War espionage before the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The first one ‘Tinker, Tailor’ had a labyrinthine plot which I found hard to follow at times but the sequel, ‘Smiley’s People’ was more straightforward. I hadn’t seen them in a long time, in fact I am not sure if I had seen all the episodes of ‘Smiley’.

Spy thrillers are not my thing really but Guinness’s performance as Smiley, the semi-retired world-weary member of the British Intelligence Service was magnetic. His reactions to persons and events were subtle, indeed, immaculate, as was his ability to register nothing with his face or his eyes if appropriate, as I suppose a spy must do in certain circumstances. It is very difficult to play inscrutable or ambiguous as an actor but he achieved it, while maintaining his strong presence in the scene. He had this amazing ability to make everything interesting, engrossing: even searching someone’s room or climbing a staircase or getting into a cab.

My own performances can be rather overblown at times, which comes from having to demonstrate in drama lessons. Perhaps now that I am away from school, I could return to the amateur stage and emulate my idol, Alec Guinness in restraint and stillness. Who knows?

Smiley inhabits a different world to us: a world of letters and notes; microfiche and rolls of film, elaborate hidden cameras and microphones and tapped phone calls on landlines.It is far away from emails, mobile phones (with cameras), CCTV and zoom meetings and hacking into computer systems. We are in a world of digital surveillance now and the Internet is rapidly diminishing the possibility of secrecy. But still individuals have to be tracked down physically and ‘safe houses’ set up, I imagine.

I don’t think I would be very good at playing a spy let alone being one: I am no good at trying to lie or being duplicitous. I was once rather close to espionage however. No: I wasn’t recruited while a student at Oxford for MI5 or the other side. Although someone who was at my college at the same time as me did end up spying for the Russians and was caught.

I was in a train either going to or from Leeds. The carriage wasn’t very busy. A man behind me was making numerous business calls on his mobile in a far from discreet voice. One involved the details of an upcoming business deal. I heard every word clearly. Had I been from a rival firm I could have written every detail down and passed it on. It would have been an act of industrial espionage but my rather indiscreet fellow passenger deserved it. I wonder if it has happened sometime or somewhere.

That was quite a few years ago now and today everyone is constantly doing business on their phones in public places or on public transport. I hear it all the time and it may have increased now that everyone is wearing earpieces with their phones. I often see individuals talking way into their phone as they walk in the street. I find it amusing sometimes as it looks as if they are talking to themselves. It is even more amusing when you see two or three people walking along and talking to themselves in the same street. They are oblivious to their surroundings just as the businessman was in my carriage ages ago.

It can be very annoying too. A few Fridays ago, I was visiting friends in South London and on a fairly packed commuter train from Waterloo East. Most of the passengers were going home from work and were probably tired. A young woman was on her phone presumably to a friend and loudly arranging her weekend social life, The call went on for over 15 minutes so she must have had a busy weekend ahead of her. But it was quiet annoying for the rest of us sitting or standing near her.

Similarly I heard a girl on a bus once splitting up with her boy friend and egged on by another friend and another one giving the results of her pregnancy test to her mother. They were different buses I hasten to add!

It is not the device that is the problem, but the way that it is used. People have little sense of privacy anymore or awareness of others for that matter. The device encases them in their own world, their own bubble. So they become oblivious to the fact that strangers might be listening in. We might as well be spies with headsets listening in to their private conversation as if we were leaning against the wall of the next room.

Some words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus (c 50 – 135 CE), who greatly influenced Marcus Aurelius’ own thinking, might be appropriate to the use of mobile devices, indeed to our lives in general:

‘We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak’

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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Neilus Aurelius

I am writing this away from home and by lamplight rather than candlelight. I am in a place that Marcus would not have known about and would not have been able to conquer, thousands of miles away from the mainland of Europe.

At present I am on a little holiday in Canada, visiting family on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I come here almost every summer. My aunt Barbara lives in a little town called Sidney by the Pacific Ocean. This afternoon, the ocean lived up its name: it was peaceful, placid and still. So was the grey heron I observed, perfectly poised on one leg in the water by the shore, as thin and elegant as a ballet dancer en pointe.

However, since I arrived a few days ago, I have been far from calm and cool and collected like Mr Heron. To begin with, dear auntie no longer has wi-fi. I find this quite irksome as I have to go down the hall to my cousin’s apartment or to a coffee shop to read my mails, check my bank and credit card accounts, What’s Ap and Messenger, see who has died recently on Wikipedia and continue with my Italian course on Duo Lingo. Not to be able to comprehensively use my I phone at a swipe has seemed like losing a limb. Of course I would have lost a small amount of money as well as a limb if, in impatience, desperation and extravagance, I had switched on mobile data on my phone thereby enabling instant Internet access.

In addition to this inconvenience, I have been able to receive texts on my phone but unable to send them. So my sense of isolation has seemed complete. I might as well have been in the far flung Northern territories like the Yukon, where they are enjoying very warm weather at the moment according to local TV here. The text situation has now been rectified but nevertheless my first text-less twenty-four hours here have been exceedingly bleak.

Over the last day or so, I have spent much of my time settling in and catching up with the family but, nevertheless, I have been constantly checking a phone that wasn’t doing anything. As a result, I have felt bereft, dare I say it, in cold turkey. I have realised how addicted I am to my phone. A prominent businessman recently commented that his mobile phone is his mistress, and a mistress to be obeyed. How right he is. We are not only addicted to instant gratification but also to instant communication. I am an impatient person, and even more so since I purchased an I phone. ‘Why haven’t they replied yet?’ I ask myself, ‘Why haven’t I got an e mail?’ I suppose, now that I am retired I have nothing else to think about.

This continual concentration on the little screen in our hand can also stop us from noticing our surroundings or the people around us. A friend recently told me that he was annoyed with people who watch movies on their phone while they are walking in the street and so slow down the people behind them. When I first tried to use google maps to find the house of a friend I was visiting, I actually bumped into a lamp post!

Headphones can make people oblivious to others around them. I have often found it amusing watching people talking into their phones in the street or on the bus or train. They look as if they are talking to themselves, sometimes quite dramatically as if they are insane. It is annoying, however, when their conversations are forced upon others sitting close to them. The other summer, I remember sitting opposite a woman on the train and being most disconcerted as she talked to her boy friend or partner on the other end of the line in graphic detail about the rampant sex they had enjoyed the night before. And this was on a crowded train on a Saturday afternoon with families sitting nearby. Private lives are becoming a thing of the past.

So I felt rather guilty this afternoon, as I observed Mr Heron, who also appeared to have lost a limb as he stood elegantly on one leg in the waves. Since arriving here, I have been so immersed in my phone trauma I have hardly noticed the tall stately pines in the creamy twilight; the driftwood on the shore, blanched white by the waves; the small islands on the horizon, like blue grey pillows on the surface of the azure sea.

As I breathed in the sweet smell of the ocean and watched a lone boat skid over the waves breaking the stillness, I decided that technology may be a wonderful tool but it is also a tyrant.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!
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I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.
Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius