In My Mind's Eye by Jan Morris

Author:Jan Morris [Jan Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571340934
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

DAY 93

‘Chaos’, the dictionary tells me, is a state of complete confusion and disorder, such as existed before the cosmos was created. I know it well, and I know that, whatever the ancients thought, it is a perpetually renewable condition. It grows more completely frightful, in fact, as civilization progresses, at least as it can be estimated by the condition of desks. Just think how ordered our forebears’ work desks must have been, before electronics arrived, let alone cybernetics. The steam age presumably made little difference to Great-Grandfather’s working conditions: a notebook or two, a pen rack, a bottle of ink and blotting paper, a simple address book, some writing paper and a pen, and he was perfectly equipped for senior management of the workhouse, or at least for family authority. But look at your own desk – or more pertinently, look at mine. To an almost legendary, pre-biblical degree, Chaos is here. Beneath my feet there is a sinuous confusion of wires, twisting and coiling down there as though they are about to squirm up and throttle me. They may even be hissing. Other tentacles come wriggling out of nowhere among the miscellaneous computers, telephones, iPads, printers, discarded mechanisms and scrumpled packets of wine gums that litter my workspace above.

And yet, and yet … I do not resent this minor maelstrom. That song about old familiar places – remember it? – comes into my mind as I untangle myself from those electronic coils, hazily work out the right thing to click, optimistically ignore the blue light blinking on that black box over there and invite into the morning old friend Google. Oh good, there’s one wine gum left. Contentedly humming that tune about familiar places, I start work on my ninety-fourth Thought …

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.