Surprise Popping Out of Just What We Expected

[Image: “What Was Lost Has Now Been Found (Badlands with Green Shoe),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.

There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
on a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is standing:
atoms with consciousness
matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.

(Richard Feynman [source])

…and:

The Map

The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.

The girl was going over her global studies homework

in the air where she drew the map with her finger

touching the Gobi desert,

the Plateau of Tiber in front of her,

and looking through her transparent map backwards

I did suddenly see,

how her left is my right, and for a moment I understood.

(Marie Howe [source])

Now, not from whiskey river…:

I’m a great admirer of author Mick Herron’s series of novels about MI5, the British domestic intelligence service. The central cast of characters work in a division of MI5 — and a single rundown building — unofficially known as “Slough House.” Says Wikipedia (about the TV series developed from the novels):

Slough House is an administrative purgatory for MI5 service rejects who have bungled their job but have not been sacked. Those consigned there are known as “slow horses.” They are expected to endure dull, paper-pushing tasks, along with occasional mental abuse from their miserable boss, Jackson Lamb, who expects them to quit out of boredom or frustration. Life in Slough House is defined by drudgery. Yet the Slow Horses somehow get involved investigating schemes endangering Britain.

In a discussion of the shades of meaning in the words slough and shed, the Merriam-Webster dictionary site says they “imply a throwing off of something both useless and encumbering and often suggest a consequent renewal of vitality or luster.” That feels about right to me.

The general tone of the novels can best be characterized as serio-comic. The situations which develop are indeed harrowing — Service or even nation-threatening — and I never find their solutions obvious or unsatisfying. At the same time, the main characters treat one another casually, often flippantly, with an undercurrent of gallows humor which reflects an awareness of their status within the intelligence community. Very enjoyable reading.

At the same time, Herron’s writing often soars, especially in the interstices among the action and dialogue. In the series fifth book, London Rules, he dwells throughout on the shadows haunting Slough House… some literal, some not. These passages are spaced out at the beginning, middle, and end as sort of rolling, percussive interludes counting out daylight’s passage through that particular location in London. Here are a couple of samples, regarding the day’s start and its winding-down:

In some parts of the world dawn arrives with rosy fingers, to smoothe away the creases left by night. But on Aldersgate Street, in the London borough of Finsbury, it comes wearing safecracker’s gloves, so as not to leave prints on windowsills and doorknobs; it squints through keyholes, sizes up locks and generally cases the joint ahead of approaching day. Dawn specialises in unswept corners and undusted surfaces, in the nooks and chambers day rarely sees, because day is all business appointments and things being in the right place, while its younger sister’s role is to creep about in the breaking gloom, never sure of what it might find there. It’s one thing casting light on a subject. It’s another expecting it to shine…

When dusk at last comes it comes from the corners, where it’s been waiting all day, and seeps through Slough House the way ink seeps through water; first casting tendrils, then becoming smoky black cloud, and at last being everywhere, the way it always wants to be. Its older brother night has broader footfall, louder voice, but dusk is the family sneak, a hoarder of secrets. In each of the offices it prowls by the walls, licking the skirting boards, testing the pipes, and out on the landings it fondles doorknobs, slips through keyholes, and is content. It leans hard against the front door—which never opens, never closes—and pushes softly on the back, which jams in all weathers; it presses down on every stair at once, making none of them creak, and peers through both sides of each window. In locked drawers it hunts for its infant siblings, and with every one it finds it grows a little darker. Dusk is a temporary creature, and always has been. The faster it feeds, the sooner it yields to the night.

But for now it’s here in Slough House, and as it moves, as it swells, it gathers up all traces of the day and cradles them in its smoky fingers, squeezing them for the secrets they contain. It listens to the conversations that took place within these walls, all faded to whispers now, inaudible to human ears, and gorges on them.

(Mick Herron [source: here and here])

Some readers may regard these as over-the-top “purple” passages. I do not: they stand like stone markers among the briars and bramble — the laughter and the frenetic, sometimes ludicrous, sometimes deadly action — of all that surrounds them. Taken as a whole, the books thus insist that while Slough House itself is often silly, its work is not… which perfectly characterizes much of human life, eh?