Horner's Corner

 

You would have had to have had your head buried in the sand to have missed the buzz that has been growing concerning The People’s Supermarket recently. This supermarket takes aim at the ruthlessness and soullessness of the big supermarkets in attempting to create a local supermarket that sources its produce ethically.

Chris Horner, a colleague and friend of mine, is responsible for bringing The People’s Supermarket to my attention. He is a member and thus a worker at the supermarket in Lamb’s Conduit Street, Holborn, London. He agreed to take part in a Friday Five Questions interview for Ayohcee about his involvement in the project.

It must be stressed that his views are his own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of The People’s Supermarket.

Ayohcee: The People’s Supermarket (TPS) has risen to prominence over the last month or so, thanks in part to the Channel 4 documentary about it. What’s all the fuss about?

1. We live in a global context, and the questions of sourcing and paying for our produce fairly must be addressed –TPS tries to work with suppliers here and abroad in a way which keeps them fairly and sustainably in a partnership with the retailer/consumer.
2. Food waste is appalling. TPS acts to avoid that; part of what it does here educates and shows others what can be done. It’s an ethical, political and environmental scandal to chuck the amount of perfectly good food away that the typical retailer and consumer does every day.
3. Being active in making things better is good. Co-ops are good! Taking responsibility for ones own locality and the way one’s quality of life develops is a positive thing. TPS tends to have a subtle ‘educative’ effect on all those who work there – we decide together what we’ll do and then we do it – ourselves. That changes people.

From: (via) ayohcee: Friday Five Questions: Chris Horner, member of The People’s Supermarket.

Fast Tube by Casper">September Song – Walter Huston

The Horner Theory of the Months – Revisited

This is the month that in some ways makes me most uneasy. It’s the ‘bridge’ month between Summer and Autumn – it has a dying fall – the equivalent of the month of March, which takes us out of winter into Spring.

Not Summer anymore, dying into the colder weather and longer nights, without Summer’s luxury or Autumn’s beauty. Ah well – at least we’re not shepherding sheep on a windy hillside. Avoid all work that involves heavy lifting or being outside in all weathers.

Westerne wind bloweth sore,

That nowe is in his chiefe souereigntee,

Beating the withered leafe from the tree.

Sitte we downe here under the hill:

Tho may we talke, and tellen our fill,

And make a mocke at the blustring blast.

Now say on Diggon, what euer thou hast.

 

Earlier this summer I was making my way home on the Piccadilly line, reading something by Zizek. I got off at Russell Square, thinking about some dialectical reversal or dirty joke of his I’d just read, and picturing the man himself, baggy T-shirt, beard etc.

 

Leaving the tube, I cut through the little lane that connects Bernard Street to Guilford street, looked up and saw: Zizek, in baggy T shirt etc, stood outside the President hotel, waving goodbye to someone in a car. I’d gone from reading, thinking about and now suddenly encountering him in the street.

So, Lacanians: we have the Symbolic (reading his stuff), the Imaginary (me picturing him as I’d seen him last on Youtube or at a conference), and then the encounter. If I understand it correctly the Real wasn’t the empirical Zizek stood in my street there, it was the disorientation/mild trauma  experienced in the disruption of the other modes of representation when I suddenly saw him, big and hairy, looming right in front of me.

More on Lacan’s Borromean knot here.

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.

Epicurus

Epicurus’ comment on death has been much studied, and much argued over. The idea seems simple enough: When I live I’m not dead (so no problem), when I’m dead I don’t exist and so don’t experience death (so no problem). In his Mortal Questions, Thomas Nagel makes the point that such thoughts cannot compensate for the lost life that would have been (especially poignant in the case of early death). We cannot comfort ourselves with the thought that the aeons in which we shall not exist are no different from those that preceded our birth. We are, now, and soon shall not be, ever again – and we know this. It makes a difference.

The Epicurean view did not comfort Philip Larkin (see the previous post, or click on the ‘Larkin’ tag  for his unblinking contemplation of the unthinkable).  Still, I do think that the Epicurean position does have some merit: it’s meant as a tool to counteract the very horror Larkin (and Nagel?) feel: death is not something you will ever experience, so live your life and stop worrying about it. It just doesn’t do the job for them; that doesn’t make it wrong, or foolish.

Some more Epicurean wisdom:

Nothing to fear from God

Nothing to feel in death

Evil can be overcome

Good can be achieved.

Cheer up! it may never happen. Well …cheer up, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cartoon reblogged from Chaospet

It’s time to reflect on my theory.

Here it is: there are two key transitional months, which stand as opposites to each other. One is September: it begins in Summer  and ends in Autumn. It has a dying fall.

The other is March, which starts in late Winter and ends in early Spring. The clocks go forwards; the days get longer. Just as January was the Monday of the year, mercifully short February flashed by in Winter’s final throes, March is the threshold to the really good days..SPRING April…May..SUMMER..

Not really a theory is it.

It’s not all that original either, but it cheers me up, anyway.

[..........] thou warnest well:
For Winters wrath beginnes to quell,
And pleasant spring appeareth.
The grasse now ginnes to be refresht,
The Swallow peepes out of her nest,
And clowdie Welkin cleareth.

(from The Shepherd’s Calendar)