chance and neccessity

well, it's been one of those very interesting evenings. it started with the loose plan to see my father this evening, and went on from there. so i went with him to the metropol, that old stalwart of didsbury social life, and then went to the newer bar next door to meet his old friends les and ged.



it was like a meeting of the original grumpy old men - not least when mitri was complaining about 'last of the summer wine' moving into hdtv (like the picture quality is the problem with that show). we started inside, until they turned the lights down and the music up. then they moved outside, and complained about the noise from the glass chute. then they moved over to the fire, and back again, because as les predicted, it was actually warmer just outside the door. then a wierd couple turned up who they knew, and everyone knows everyone, and talked very excitedly with us about everything, and i tried to reinforce my belifes about everything onto them. i told them about hoftstadter and gave them a mix cd. les didn't know that 'mad' rita had died, and i didn't know that els, our old next door neighbour, had died a couple of weeks ago. i was surprised to learn that les's mother, a jew (i have recently com eto think of myself as jewish, but not 'a jew'), had died recently too, and it was his first jewish funeral. always an interesting perspective, not that i've been to that many myself. then i went for a curry at the kathmandu with mitri, which we couldn't finish, so i brought it home. it was already late.

so i was listening to 65 days of static's 'hole' ep on the bus and reading jaqcues monod's 'chance and necessity: on the natural philosophy of modern biology', which i picked up in the great bookshop in ashbourne. an excellent book. i felt a tap on my shoulder. a fellow traveller wanted to know what it was because it looked fascinating. i would have given it to him but i really need. it so then he asks me: 'do you take any drugs?' i say, 'not much,' of course i mean, 'not at all, but i'm open to suggestion', and he says, 'have you ever done dmt?'

wuh?

i first came across dmt when jeffry rowland introduced us to the idea of self transforming machine elves. i found the idea so exciting i just had to investigate. you may remember my trip down south a couple of weeks ago, i was asking everyone, even my mum, about this drug - no-one had heard of it. i would have thought that rach or some of her friends might have heard of it, but it turned up blanks.

so this stranger i've just met on a bus into town is suggesting that this book i'm reading would be a great prep for a dmt experiance. can you imagine? a drug for molecular bio-chemists?, based on first hand experince? i find myself quoting neil innes/the bonzo dog band more and more often -

There are no coincidences
But sometimes the pattern is more obvious

like when i read two things in the same day that referred to karl popper's 'the open society and it's enemies', (including monod) clearly indicating that it should be my next read. but dmt sounds fucking serious. and i know we can talk about coincidences until the cows come home but shit man. but this isn't bumping into an old friend in a bar, that you both go into because you're the kind of people that like it, this is a stranger on a bus. like when a person in the bell asked anna if she lived on a house boat, because she looked like a 'boaty type'. she didn't, but that very day she'd been talking to someone who did and had been convinced of the house boat arguments.

i tried to impart hoftstadter to him to - well, it was fresh on my mind, and if we're talking about meaningful books then that's where i would start, without trying to be preachy about it - but i'll guess i'll have to text him.
and now it's gone half one on a school night and i'm boiling hot.
natch.

btw, i put loads of photos up on flickr, and found this great article on this interesting website.