By Tom Merriman
She had a strange look
Cold, angry, bitter and fierce
And a heart of stone
If she looked at you the wrong way, you would know about it. But luckily, only for a split second or two, when you’d then make a nice lawn ornament. Best to stay on her good side… if you can get there…
Questioning Reality is an occasional series and is a complete work of fiction.
The views contained herein are nothing whatsoever to do with the author, and instead are based on the views of the character ‘Thom’. Thom is a fifty-year-old gardener who likes talking to begonias. Although, she may be a twenty-eight-year-old secretary who sings spiders to sleep. Or perhaps he’s a 25 year old panel beater who likes the history of Queen Nefertiti.
Names, where necessary, have been changed, but also where necessary, they haven’t.
Historians used to think the world is flat. Not modern historians, I hasten to add, but history’s historians. I don’t think they had time in those days, although they may have used the occasional sundial. Even though the world curved around in front of them, and they were surrounded by hilly hills, they were still of the impression the world was flat. Nothing anybody said to them to convince them otherwise changed their opinion, and fruit and vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and apples hadn’t been invented yet.
They were probably around back then, in history, but went by a multitude of different names. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1600s when a historical figure by the name of John Ray (sometimes Wray) began a vast classification project of plants and animals that existence began to take on a more structured look. From these yellowed pages, onions eventually became a vegetable and tomatoes a fruit. Presumably, before this classification exercise, they were probably known as ‘weepy thing’ or ‘squishy thing’.
Tomatoes may or may not have been red at that time. As the previously mentioned classification project was starting to take place, Isaac Newton, another historical figure, was discovering colour. Back then, red was the most light colour, and blue most dark. Or least light. You see, Isaac was working on light at the time and discovered the spectrum.
Also at the same time, research was beginning into electricity. Electricity had been a myth for thousands of years before this, even back to the times of Ancient Greece and before. Folk were regularly receiving shocks from creatures such as electric fish, or static shocks from stroking cats, but they had no idea what the effect was and put it to the backs of their minds. William Gilbert, yet another of history’s figures, wrote about a magnet in the early 1600s, and came up with the word electricus at the same time due to receiving a static shock after rubbing a piece of amber. (The Greek word for amber back then was ‘elektron’). Electricity now had a name, several years before fruits, vegetables and spectra came into existence.
Many years after the introduction of electricity into mainstream reality, James Watt (yes, another historical chap) discovered horsepower, nowadays shortened to power. The Watt was named after him. Power, in fact, is the rate of work over time, and it certainly took a lot of time for power to come into existence. Incidentally, James Watt wasn’t really looking into electricity, but steam engines.
The historical fruit, tomatoes, are a source of electricity – especially damaged ones. Lycopene, which is the red colouring in tomatoes and other fruit and vegetables, helps with the generation of electrical charges. The charge is only small, however, only 0.3 watts per ten milligrams of tomato waste, but it’s a start.
From a flat world to a flat tomato the world has come a long way.
The connections between everything in existence are quite remarkable, when you stop and take a look.
Next time: We may look at the invention of time.
The Abstract Anemone dazzles its prey by a display of light from deep within its well-lit murky lair. It’s more of a fish than an anemone, hence its name, but it has four flippers that instantly change into claws when the need arises. It’s not friendly but has no teeth.
This is where my blank canvas took me today. I splodged. I splattered. I bubbled. I babbled. I created a creature and then wrote about it in fifty words. Creativity doesn’t always need to make sense… sometimes it’s more fun when it doesn’t!
Anything is possible!
Questioning Reality is an occasional series and is a complete work of fiction.
The views contained herein are nothing whatsoever to do with the author, and instead are based on the views of the character ‘Thom’. Thom is a twenty-year-old fashion designer who likes glittery material. Although, she may be a twenty-year-old fashion model who can’t stand fussy clothing. Or perhaps he’s a 30 year old engineer who likes dancing to Celine Dion.
Names, where necessary, have been changed, but also where necessary, they haven’t.
It’s strange, life.
You go to bed one night (or morning if you’re up all night, for instance a night owl!) and awake to a brand new day. A fresh start. A new beginning. Yet we tend to do exactly the same as the day before. Same work. Same(ish) food. Same mistakes. OK, they’re different, but overall they’re the same…. they aren’t massively different. Be creative, is what I say. Given time. And other things.
Take rubbing stuff, for instance. The medication that either warms up or cools down aches and pains. Say, for example, you had a pain in your neck… or shoulder… or hip… or back… or thigh… or knee… or elbow… or shin… or ankle… (!) and you used rubbing stuff to ease the pain somewhat. Why does it have no effect on your fingers or hands? That’s very strange, that is.
Why is it when you are desperately trying to find something, you have a rough idea of where you last saw it but it isn’t there. You then go off, demolishing every drawer, cupboard and utensil you can find in said search, and then, in one final act of desperation, you go back to the first place you looked and guess what? There it is. By then, you’ve usually forgotten why you wanted the thing in the first place.
Is perception a fact, or a figment of one’s imagination? If something looks big because it’s close up, but isn’t, can we really, truly, believe what we are seeing? The Sun and the Moon look the same size in the sky, but they aren’t, but in the sky they are. Unless there’s an eclipse, and the Moon totally covers the Sun. Mind you, you can’t see the Moon in an eclipse anyway because it’s New, and then you can’t see anything else for a while for looking at the Sun.
That’s not true entirely. After looking at a bright light, wherever you look afterwards all you can see is a whopping black splotch. But is it black? When you close your eyes, it changes to green – or yellow – or red. Or does it? And as it really isn’t there at all, should it even have a colour? Although it’s probably a good thing that it is there, to serve as a warning to prevent you looking into a bright light in the future.
Still, for all of the strange things life throws at us, there’s always something possibly even more strange waiting to turn up just around the corner. That’s what makes life interesting. That and the every day things that we repeat every day.
Questioning Reality is an occasional series and is a complete work of fiction.
The views contained herein are nothing whatsoever to do with the author, and instead are based on the views of the character ‘Thom’. Thom is a seventeen-year-old spotty oik with a grudge against the world. Although, she may be a ninety-year-old grandmother who can pick up a stitch quicker than she drops one. Or perhaps he’s a 25 year old law graduate who likes listening to Pam Ayres.
Names, where necessary, have been changed, but also where necessary, they haven’t.
The oceans, the seas, the lakes, the rivers, and now the puddles are full. But just what constitutes full? The seas are full yet there is still enough room for fish and plastic. Puddles are full, yet they still have space for an Autumnal leaf to fall into, or a shoe with a hole or an irate driver to unexpectedly find, ruining new trousers. The rains still fall, and you can’t tell me that just because the oceans etcetera are already full of water the rains don’t fall there. So how full is full?
Space, on the other hand, is vastly empty. Although, that isn’t exactly true as it’s full of dark matter that we can’t see, feel, hear, taste or smell. This dark matter has recently been discovered by scientists, and may or may not be the same ‘stuff’ that exists or doesn’t exist inside Black Holes. Black Holes themselves have been known about for millennia but have only recently been photographed… and then it wasn’t the hole that was photographed, just the light around it. When you see the photo, you have to imagine that what looks like the hole in the middle isn’t there, even though it really is.
There’s a black hole in my washing machine. When its full of water and doing its thing, the black hole is shut off from the world, but when the cycle is done, and the water is drained away, the odd sock or two mysteriously vanishes along with it. Now I know that the water ends up flowing into the oceans, but we never hear about the oceans being full of odd socks, do we? So where do they go?
When you stop and think, even the most everyday of everyday objects can throw up a mystery, and it is those mysteries that make reality so interesting.
Look out for the next part of Questioning Reality. Coming soon.
This wasn’t my intended post for today, but as the intended post wasn’t ready, and this one was, this became the post for today. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but that’s how it happened! Perhaps another question… answered. Well, actually no.
I had this post in my Live Writer, where I write the majority of my posts before sending them up to the internet to appear on my blog. Only this time, I’d written (over-written!) this post on the same page I had written the previous post, and, without saving it as a new draft in Live Writer, I published it instead… and much hilarity followed!
This post over-wrote the previous post on the blog, so the comments then wouldn’t have made sense. To make matters worse, the draft of the original ‘Introduction’ post hadn’t been saved, and when I tried to recover it in Live Writer this post appeared.
I had to search through time and space, and using Google’s cached-page search engine at https://www.ipvoid.com/cached-page/ I was able to retrieve the original post, and copy and paste the text back onto the original post. That issue sorted, I then had to get this post published… and horror of horrors! this text had then been overwritten by the ‘Introduction’ post. Sigh. Luckily for me, I’d opened the blog on my mobile phone’s browser whilst looking into the debacle above, so this post’s text was there, and all I had to do then was copy and paste that text into an email, and email it to myself from my mobile phone, and then copy it into the Live Writer for this post. Simple!
Is 10 a Random Number? Don’t ask me… I just write here!
