Tag Archives: napoleon

We scorn what is under our own noses

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We scorn what is under our own noses. If I was a European coming to London for the first time how excited I would feel to arrive at London Bridge station and look up at the Shard towering above the platforms; to see the towers of Guy’s Hospital next to it where perhaps Sir William Gull lobotomised Annie Crook to start off the 1888 Autumn of Terror and the myth of ‘Jack the Ripper’. To then pass by Waterloo Station named after the Battle of Waterloo where English, Austrian and Prussian forces joined together to defeat Napoleon once & for all. How amazingly evocative it must all seem from afar.

When you go through life alone you are skinless and defenceless

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When you go through life alone you are skinless and defenceless, and all and sundry can land blows on you. When you have someone you care for, their love protects you against everything; only they themselves can hurt you then. I have noticed, however, that whenever you split up, or seem about to split up, your enemies re-emerge from the woodwork and full upon you with savage glee, the savage envy of the dunces, like the Russians on Napoleon’s army on the way back from Moscow. The enemies, subdued and cowed by your love for your partner, are just waiting their chance to fall upon you again; like a virus lying dormant in your body, just waiting for the moment when fighting some other virus has left you momentarily weakened and vulnerable. I feel I have an intimate understanding of enemies; I have moved bemused and surprised through their futile attempts to throw themselves at me and destroy me over the years. They did not know who they had taken on. They bit off a bit more than they could chew. They threw themselves at me like Foreman at Ali. Like moths against a lighthouse. And could not understand why their blows just kept bouncing off. They grew increasingly enraged, and increasingly frustrated, and increasingly frenzied, and just smashed themselves to insensibility more and more. Meanwhile, I played them as one must always play one’s enemies: like a piano. I flaunted myself in their faces more and more. I provoked and provoked and provoked. They could not understand the secret source of my Nile; what kept me going. Their jealousy fuelled me. Their electricity brought me to life like Frankenstein’s monster in a most terrible thunder and lightning storm. Nietzsche I think termed it the great separation; only after the great war has been unleashed upon you can then occur the great separation which at last gives you the space you need to achieve great things. But then you fall in love, and one slightly cold response from your beloved can destroy you in a second. It is this your long-forgotten enemies are lying in wait for; this moment to come out of the woodwork, to crawl out of the pond, and fall upon you again, when you are low. I once sat on a park bench in a state of absolutely abject misery while in Australia, Brisbane I believe. I watched a wasp attacking an ant. As the minutes passed by more and more ants came streaming to attack the wasp, until the wasp was completely overwhelmed, subsumed, murdered by these ants, who then proceeded to drag the wasp away with them. I have never forgotten that.