Intelligence

I was listening to a podcast about the Psychological study of intelligence at the time, on my bike. Joel spent all Saturday afternoon fixing it for £20 and a jar of what Penny calls "neighbournnaise"- home made mayonnaise (which I'm rather good at) and some home grown spinach. It looked like something that had dropped off a kids costume, not a pound shop one, it was too densely sparkling for that, something from maybe Sainsbury's meant for middle class kids who dress up with their parents self consciousness around not looking like a chav, but still wanting to sparkle and join in. I imagined it in that split second to be a shoulder strap for a glamorous witches costume, or something that had perhaps fallen off a wand or a wizards hat. I slowed down, I was on the pavement near that bit where I always feel a bit vulnerable to unexpected cars, and criminality. It would be a good place for a spot of crime, a mugging or a stabbing: it's hidden, there's a big wall on one side and tall terraces which don't contain curtain twitchers or doleys on the other, with some locked gates hiding driveways and historic farmhouse and barn conversions and it's just around the corner from the scene of that murder that lead everyone who doesn't live nearby but does live in the same city to say things like "oh it's always been rough down there, hasn't it?".

I pick things up if they're curious. We're collecting such things for a project. We aim to make some kind of sculpture from the dolls head, the bicycle pedal, the wire cutters, and all the other bits we've found just lying around that have seemed interesting or unusual. So I gazed down to look, see if it was worth picking up and saving, ready to transform it in to an eye or a tail end perhaps.

The metallic movement was fascinating, there must have been hundreds of greenbottles, sub species of calliphoridae and genetic sibling of the bluebottle - feasting on it. I imagined the soft horror of one of them, disturbed, going up my nose or near my mouth. It was the consequence of neglectfulness, of a dog ignored, or a cat with no space: a misunderstanding and a deliberate ignorance of what being a responsible owner means. Like when that man said to me "well so have I, so what?" when I told him that bread gives ducks irritable bowel syndrome. The stunning carelessness of someone so unmindfully "caring" for an animal, whilst at the same time utterly neglecting and ignoring the bigger picture of being part of their same world and kingdom, our shared responsibility in living in proximity to others and sharing space meaning nothing at all. Fortunately for the employees at the University, the groundsman washes away all the traces of metabolic processes early in the morning, so the visitor can enjoy the grounds for himself, throwing bread without visible consequence. Not so with the dried brown shrivelled tail that the greenbottles now have deserted on the pavement around that corner. No groundsman washes up there and no street sweeper machines go that far in. But the issue for the perpetrator is not neglect, it's about them themselves. The internal neglect of those that just exist because that's all they can do and existing is so hard, there's no space or time for considering consequences. Perhaps though, there's no brain capable either.

I shared photos of the fly tipping near there on social media to the local council who agreed it was ugly and unnecessary. But what I've become indifferent to is what I imagine coats the inside of the skulls of those who perpetuate this stinking insanitary neighbourhood becoming ever worse. It seems to give them permission to be depressed, disengaged, disgusting in habits and language. It's not just dog shit and sofas that are thrown out in to the world, it's neglected children, it's chaos, relentless noise, dogs barking, shouting as though everyone were involved in their orgy of chips, skunk and white lightning. I water my plants in my back yard. I've made a container garden and the bright red geraniums will soon be bursting forth alongside the yellow marigolds and the oregano. I feed the cat that prefers my company to home, and I check the soles of my shoes and the tyres of my bike. Joel says I can swap my neighbours for his if I like and we laugh in the knowledge that they would be indestinguishable. My survival is of a higher order somehow. I can navigate my way more easily around the world, I am capable of writing a CV and I have something to put on it, I am capable of learning to use new technologies, of reading the news and of asking for help and explaining myself with a degree of self knowledge and insight. My neighbour's son appeared to miss spell his own initials that time he had the blue car paint spray can and should have written LA over the walls by the park that his bedroom looks on to, but instead wrote LD. Now several months on, he can't even see it whilst I imagine the shame and embarassment I'd feel. There's no useful and engaged place in the world for families who can't spell or read or understand and who are immune to sensivitiy and insight. So there's no teaching or learning can go on it seems. We report the fly tipping, we walk around the shit and we hope to god that we don't get stabbed for a fiver to buy drugs down a back alley.