Over the years I have come across plenty of books that were destined for landfill. Whether through the various work places I had been, the charities which moved individuals from independence to “assisted” living and then the charity shops places themselves which can’t afford the bin fees to dump the excess they receive. Among these books, I have come across notes and journals. Small increments of intimate writing, sketches from a human past long forgotten but for these ink spots on paper, they remain as remnants that once mattered.

I had the intention of writing something cynical or even dreary, instead I found in the handwriting of those now long dead, some thoughts that seemed important enough to type up. From the minds of those who in their lives, a century or decades ago had a future ahead of them, reflected and observed, or even lashed out at a world around them.

Perhaps, this is a follow up to the meandering prose The Inner Light, or maybe inside of these words is an illuminating energy for any who care to read or ruminate upon. As we as a species once did.

In a diary, I found at a woman’s house who had passed away, she was in her late eighties, her family wanted, “everything thrown away,” so accordingly her life’s possessions reduced to landfill and the precious real estate she had lived in, the priority for the living, those who knew her and those who professionally gain from such occurrences. I salvaged what I could, to donate, or even keep. There is a tragic inhumanity to discarding photos, and notebooks like this. Physical media, technology once impressive now reduced to, meh, thrown away. The technology most often to be discarded, the book, especially those handwritten by regular people. A person like Mary and her diary.

Dated 1962, Mary wrote, “the birds have the idea to fly far and wide. They don’t see boundaries or care for language. They fly, high and wide. They visit where they please. It’s for us, mankind, to bury them inside cages. Imagine that, a creature capable of freedom, to clip their wings and cage them so we may watch them, make them sing for us. Imagine that.”

Imagine that. It’s with eerie camaraderie of thought that I reflect upon a piece, I wrote almost a decade ago which carries similar observance. Mary added further down the page, “I clipped my wings, or had them clipped for me. Who knows any more?”

She wrote in lovely handwriting in 1967, “I see they have sent more young men to another country to fight a war. I wonder what the gain would be. To stop communism? That’s what they claim. I wonder if they send warriors to fight the Viet-Namese over there so the politicians and powerful remain safe here. It seems pointless.”

And from 1968, “I have stopped believing in love. I must hear it in every song lyric. I don’t care for it. I will not have it. I have loved twice. Alistair and Nigel. Both loved me, I them. Alistair and I were young. Nigel, he should have known better. He picked a career over our love, now he travels the world and I stay here, lost and heartbroken. It’s what a man must do I am told. And, what a woman must wonder, hope for his safety and remain locked at home in blue tears? I will not have love spoken to me again.”

Many books have in them inscribed on the side of pages in tiny hand writing notes and thoughts to accompany the prose. One such book, a Penguin edition of The Essential James Joyce, Devesh had written his name in the early pages, along with the date 1995. I am assuming it was around that time when he wrote his notes.

“Why must he select words so ugly? He for a moment can write with elegance and superior texture and now he must be ever so dreadful.”

A few pages later, he wrote, “I wept.”

Among a pile of family bibles dating back to the late nineteenth century, I found a note book dated 1933 with glorious penship. The author, I am assuming a woman by the name of Bea. Much of the writing is on Christ and the human relationship with God. It is a selection of biblical quotes and additional thoughts relating to them. Beyond, I found a gentle sentence, “if I could find it in my heart to love my brother as much as I do God, then I would be a better sister.”

The following page she had written, “the measure of a man is in his character. Not his words. The measure of mankind is in the wisdom it finds from words.”

Another lady whose home had been reduced to a house for sale, had a library full of mystery and crime fiction. Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell and vintage Dorothy L Sayers books. Alongside a row of books, she had a pile of notebooks filled in her handwritting, picking through clues and her own thoughts. Adding dates and page numbers, accordingly. Attempting to solve the crimes along with the author, page by page and sentence by sentence. At the end of one page full of notes she had written, “it’s never the most obvious lie, only the most ambitious truth told over and over again.”

Other journals and notebooks were less profound, slight monuments to the mundane of life. Bills to be paid, shopping lists, items to be bought. Others are notes on income, accounting for a household. What may seem ever modest in today’s inflated world, was dear and went far in a time before easy credit and debt dependency. In one note book payments and incoming money written light, along with slashing sentence written by a heavy hand, “You are a failure!”

And near the end of one such notebook, “Kill yourself, no one will miss you.” Many of the books, were from suicides. I am uncertain as to whether this one was. They all remain clumped together, thrown and discarded. Unimportant pages according to the living. Landfill.

When Bradbury imagined his fireman who burned books. The symbolism was dystopian and obvious. We live in a world now of proud illiteracy, it’s not just that books are seen as a hindrance in their physical form. Even online, they are things not to be read, unless they are trending, and forgive me, light escapism. In the many piles, I was unable to rescue, re-home. Were countless thoughts and whispers written in ink along with the printed words telling stories, revealing knowledge and recording history. All to be buried beneath dirt and rubbish.

Other books I have saved from landfill, to be pulped into cat litter. Feline toilets. An excess of books with no readership is one thing, a disdainful public above reading is an all together fascinating state of humanity. As the online content creators produce digital slop, artificial bots generating streams for the feed to be forgotten and many books what may reduced to memes and vapid quotes. There lies countless millions of words, wrapped in wisdom and experiences. Glimmers of alien and familiar viewpoints. many now lost to the edge of time.

In a page from a water soaked journal written by John, dated 1978, “I hope what comes in the next decade is a better world. A smarter age. To think soon it will be a new century, to call it the 21^st century. The time will be a bright future and wise, smart people every one well read and enlightened. Healthy in mind and body. No more wars and slavery when the people are secure with knowledge. The 21^st century.”

John also wrote, later on that year, “I love my wife. More than ever now that she is gone. Burying the woman you love is the hardest thing a man can do. I wish it was me and not her. I wish I took the cancer from her body. I hope in the coming years we learn to beat cancer and other diseases. I wish I had the answer and was a smarter man and a better one. I love you Carole with all of my soul. I wish I was a better man and husband for you. I am sorry. You deserved the promises I made. I failed you. I love you.”

Lost inside of pages, are human moments that are not fabricated for the frenzy of diminished attention spans. There are intimate moments, and triumphant ambitions. Language allows us to frame and understand things beyond the material, the present. The abstract, to spiritual and the elements beyond us.

I will end on one final entry, Jane, from perhaps 2005 wrote, “I was blessed with another grandchild. Five now. Tabitha is healthy and like her mother a little shit. I don’t have favourites, no mother should. If Tabitha grows to be a shit like her mother, I will have grey hairs. Too late, they are already grey!”

Good story telling allows for us to experience the many human emotions that we understand, and know intimately. Despite its more recent incarnations, Star Trek told stories rich in life. An exploration for philosophy and humanity, challenged through narratives and character exchanges. Presented before, at times gaudy backdrops or technobabble laden jargon required to embed us into a place where technology itself is magic. In an episode from Star Trek – The Next Generation, Captain Jean Luc Picard found himself pulled into another life. One beyond a star ship, and the obligations of command.

The Inner Light, is about an alien probe infectingCaptain Picard, once under it’s influence he falls into a coma. Or, so it seems to his friends and colleagues. Picard is in a dreamstate, living the life of another man. A man, from the civilisation that had sent the probe out, on it’s journey.

Picard finds himself living as a husband, a father of two children. He is Kamin, from the planet Kataan. A lifetime of memories. Intimate and vivid. As Kamin, he loves his family. Proud and protective. He learns to play a flute, sitting beneath the sun which would soon doom the planet as he plays. Picard loses himself in his life as Kamin.

The score by composer Jay Chattaway gives us a simple and iconic sound. The flute sounding as though played by a man, a father, a husband. The music basic, though living. Optimistic and yet, sad. Twisting into a haunting melody, one that becomes an epitaph to the planet. Kamin, his family and the community he lived with and loved are long dead. Desperate to save themselves, all they can do is send out a probe. A lingering legacy of the planet and all who lived there. To be known. Remembered.

There could be no salvation, not from the might of ones own sun. Instead, the people lived and died beneath its cosmic indifference. And the probe, wandering the stars until it finds a mind to implant a life worth of memories. For Picard, it was Kamin. It is not that he learned about the people of the extinct planet, he lived them. Picard also understood himself better. Through the eyes and life of another man, another people.

It was a gift. A joyous life. All things must end.

Such story telling when written well, and with a human regard, can be a message of consideration and life or, in the Rick and Morty age, a punchline.

In the Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour film, Somewhere in Time, the planet is not alien and far into the stars, but the past itself. As a college student in 1972, an elderly woman approaches Reeves handing him a gold watch, “come back to me.” Eight years pass and Reeves in a hotel, sees a beautiful young woman in a photo. It was taken in 1912, when that elderly woman was young. In a, ‘don’t think about it’, writers trick, Reeves returns to 1912 and falls in love with the woman from the photo.

Pretty and sentimental, carried by the music of John Barry, we have a movie that is not meant to make logical sense. Instead it’s to be felt, a romantic embrace assuring us love can overcome, in this case the tyranny of time. For, Picard as Kamin, it was also a tyranny of time, though one where the very people had been long extinct. In both depictions, life is precious. Moments are sacred and time, moves fast.

I loved a woman, who had in her room a poem written long ago by a poet on her death bed. I forget the poets name, only some verses and the meaning of the poetry remain with me. In her final years, the poet wished that she could have told her younger self to enjoy the hum of the bees, the scent of a flower and to gather them in fields far and wide. It’s only when the sands of youth have fallen by that we realise the wisdom of our elders all too late. The poetry of one with regrets, a barb beneath a flower.

The poem was dear, and majestic in its place of my then girlfriends mind, that years later she would have it as a tattoo. The words spiralling around Kamin’s flute from the episode, The Inner Light. For the real poet, and the fictional Kamin, the light had been long snuffed out. Though, through memory and their words they linger in our minds, our hearts. They can be washed by, not regarded or they can touch us, inspire thoughts and become so precious that skin permanently stained for them. Or, twenty years later I find myself writing on such a thing.

It’s with the distance of time that we can find ourselves lost on islands of regret, wandering the beaches with uncertain steps, only to see those impressions from others who walked the sands before us. Or, are they our own steps, we find ourselves re-tracing them, over and over again. Unable to reclaim them, or to steer ourselves in another destiny. Only to be reminded, of those footprints. For better and worse. The beach endless, until eventually we come to learn, the sand itself is us. A grain, washed by the waves of time, crashing or steady or in an hour glass, one by one running down.

In subsequent episodes, Picard would hold Kamin’s flute. His mind no doubt returning to a life he had lived, even if as a rationale man, he knows it was not his, or not even really a life that he did in really live. Those memories and moments ever as precious. His wife, unlike Jane Seymour to Reeves, can not hand him the flute and plead, “come back to me.” None of us can, even if we wanted to.

So what good are memories? If we don’t learn, and cherish them. If we don’t embrace them with dignity or misery, or joy and disappointment. We cannot learn without them. We can’t improve, or guide ourselves better if we are not reminded of regrets, shames and pains. We also don’t appreciate and value, life and those who we lived alongside, without those memories.

There is no inner light, or somewhere in time for any of us, without those memories. There is no future either if we can not understand our pasts, or what we did or did not do. We will repeat the worse of ourselves, if we do not reflect. Do not regret.

Through the eyes of Kamin, Picard felt love. Something he never truly experienced in his life as an officer in the federation. Family would become a dear character point, with the loss of his estranged brother, and then his nephew. Picard would be alone, the last of his family. He had chosen the stars, a career above all else. It had steered him into a life of objectives and ambitions, not love and tenderness. But for the memories of Kamin, The softer underbelly of a man who now could understand the depths of life, it would become his inner light.

There are stages, or maybe geographical points of our time lines we once lived and it was for that time, all we knew. All we had. We travelled through it, whether we wanted to or not. In time, that past becomes a distant memory, a place we once knew. Our own Kamin. Dare we return to it, what would we find?

Through the eyes of Kamin, and the probe, a planet of people can be remembered, not through cold demographics and archaeological data points, rather as living beings. With each, single being who is touched by the probes memories, a lifetime is shared. Precious. Not as a great empire of monuments, with statues and imperial might, to be remembered for its plunder and war. A people, familiar, and living who now are lost to the depths of the past. In living memory, for those who like Picard found their inner light.

Pick more flowers, smell them, listen to the bees, feel the touch of a lover, swim in the feral waters, look to the stars, find shapes in the clouds, the things that you think matter, in the end don’t. The things that truly do, are taken for granted. They pass on by, play the flute beneath the moon and sun. Unlike Kamin and his people, there is no probe to share our living world into the minds of another, only fabricated depictions and theatrical exhibitions. We only have those who know us, and who we know and knew for ourselves. What Picard experienced as Kamin was real, truth, a memory of life. Felt.

“ Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”

There is a conflict for fighters to endure. Not the most obvious of overcoming oneself, the obstacles leading to competition or the opponent. Finding the balance between pride and self preservation. Too much pride, means we become reckless. Brave but stupid. We take risks and go blow for blow, toe for toe and allow the ego to overcome us. We do silly things that can risk the fight itself while also hurting us long term. This goes for training as well. When we should be working, practising and developing skills we can get into gym wars to settle a score or prove a point that never needed proving.

“Giving it all away for free,” as one veteran pro once noted while two young fighters slugged it out inside an empty gym.

No one remembers their names.

And on the other side is self preservation, the unwillingness to stand and fight. Instead a fighter will avoid the hard work, making sure to always remain fresh and to win safe. This does them no favours as a draw card and when they need to put in the effort to snatch victory, they have become so familiar with the safer approach they remain guided by their self preservation. Their health as a person and longevity as a fighter is always on their mind, they are wise to do so. For the fans and as a competitive fighter, it’s less than exciting and can see victory slide away from them.

Over the years, I wish more fighters did lean into the self preservation. The respect for themselves, their training partners and the dignity of combat. Instead of relying on brutal thinking and hoping to win over a forgetful crowd where they leave it all in the ring-cage and gym only to return to a life outside with injuries and ill health. The spectators mostly forget the wars. Forget their names and move on to the next spectacle of violence. The pornographic appeal of the combatants providing the voyeurs with as much ejaculatory concern, once it’s done. They move on and most often forget what aroused and excited them for that brief period of a fight. The warriors to be disposed of by the promotions and fandom.

Only their fellow combatants remember, know who they were and what they did. Those of us who still have our wits and memories, should it not be claimed by the dementia of the arena. We remember, we know. We also regret.

It is with an educational clarity that young fighters, and even those longer in their teeth should watch the first two Sugar Ray Leonard versus Roberto Duran fights. The first meeting is great, a toe to toe battle between the best in their era. Duran a veteran of violence, the encapsulation of brutal pride and machismo. Versus the sweet moving, Olympic golden darling of his age, Ray Leonard. In the lead up to the fight, Duran was able to throw barbs at Leonard, enticing his masculine pride by mentioning his wife in a deplorable manner. Leonard hated Duran and wanted to beat him, Duran’s way.

Instead of boxing and moving, using his skills and supremacy of footwork and the movement that made him great, Leonard traded and fell into the trenches with Duran. There he got muddy and bloody, elbows, low blows, shoulders and foot stepping against the ropes and in small perimeters of violence. Leonard proved himself as a man, as a warrior but at a cost. He would lose the fight, hoping to satisfy a dignity against a man who had little regard for such a word or the politeness of a world beyond the violent sport. Duran shoved Leonard the moment he dared to raise his hands. A “fuck you” to a fellow warrior who had stood with him for fifteen rounds, so deep was the pride and hate. It was always personal, never professional or competition.

Some months later, Leonard would have his revenge. The vulgar curses and repulsive slurs from Duran no longer had any effect. Leonard held to his self preservation, he had a game plan and would stick to it. His fight name was Sugar for a reason. Duran had enjoyed the first victory and was certain of winning again. His arrogance, his pride was confident in its certainty that he would beat Leonard with ease, again. Instead, we got the famous No Mas fight. No More! Duran declared. He submitted, yielded out of frustration to the disciplined supremacy of Leonard. No excuses can be offered, other than Duran could not draw from Leonard a proud toe to toe war, instead he and the world witnessed a boxing master class. It would take several fights for Duran to beat away the stigma as a quitter.

To quit is an ugly word in boxing, in all combat sports for that matter. Even those which allow for submissions. The crowd and promoters prefer for the fighters to go out on their shield. To suffer great pain and punishment, a cuckolded sadomasochism ensuring those watching feel gratified in knowing that others suffered and endured for their entertainment. Whether amateur or elite level pro, to quit is a slight, a disgusting act. Considered even so by those to lazy, ill disciplined and cowardly to enter the arena themselves. It’s one of the understood elements of sport, especially fighting.

Another example from that eras four kings, occured between Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. Both on top of their divisions, meeting at Middleweight for Hagler’s crown. Both men wrecking balls with considerable skill as boxers, and knockout power. It was anyone’s fight. Instead of feeling one another out or moving with his reach from behind his great jab, Thomas Hearns went blow for blow with Hagler. And instead of wearing his man down, and searching and destroying him, Hagler dug in his toes and threw every shot with the intention of knocking Hearns out. The world got a short but intense war, with a cut, a broken hand and in the end Thomas Hearns was laid out. Pride over coming any sense of self preservation, despite breaking his hand, he did not relinquish his desire to stop Hagler. So Hearns went down fighting.

Social media and incentives from promotions push for fighters to take risks and stand and trade. Even if they really don’t need to. It will excite the mob and satisfy the ego which most of us fighters carry around with us. Unfortunately in each combat sport we have cautionary tales of warriors whose bodies and mind were snatched from them, not all at once but over time in the arena and gyms. The stagnant camera positions for the phone viewing has invented sports like slapping or leg kick competitions, no self preservation or skill other than to endure punishment. Pain, and damage. The mob watching from their screens eager to bear witness to proud stupidness. Courageous beings performing for uncourageous masses.

Footage of young fighters recklessly beating on each other for social media content creation or to bully sparring partners is meaningless and wasteful. It does not help them grow and learn, it may satisfy their ego or win them points with their friends and the ignorant alike. But to use the words from that old veteran again, “why give it away for free.”

The impulse to over train is ever apparent. Especially now that we tend to film everything. Instead of working it out, every session leans into being a work out. Strength and conditioning coaches, most of them virgins of competition with their academic theories will tell fighters buzz words full of bullshit in the hopes of making them the centre stage of the athletes performance. The art and craft of violent competition transcends mere athleticism. Learning to be efficient, composed and wise under pressure is an important element of fighting that can only be learned from experience and application. Training hard to burn out and exert can in fact have the opposite effect in combat, especially when injuries and age begin to take their toll. The fighter is a human being, not a machine. Some who insert themselves into the equation don’t understand the distinction.

The older versions of George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Bernard Hopkins were able to do what they did through their understanding of the craft of combat. They trained hard, certainly. They also did not over train. Instead they leaned into experience and their pride was a fuel, in keeping them competing and in the gym. Their pride kept them from partying and indulging recklessly. Their pride kept them on their feet, moving forward and staying up with much younger men. Their self preservation ensured longevity and they earned their mastery over the sport and the art of fighting. They understood the subtle and elements of fighting that fans overlook or simply refuse to know. They understood the nuance and subtext of violence that only fighters at high level do. An understanding that comes from experience, there’s and those around them. An understanding born from the marriage of pride and self preservation that younger fighters tend to learn when they are being handed defeat by someone they should or are meant to beat.

These lessons transcend the arena of combat sports. They can be applied in our wider lives. The urge to always win an argument or be proven correct, can ruin relationships and in the end achieves little. The excessive need for self preservation soon turns into cowardice or at least the voyeurism of the inexperienced. Certain of absolutely nothing gained from witnessing others from afar. It keeps one healthy and away and out of danger but it gives them no insight or experience. No character. Our character and reputations are built on what we do, what we have endured and risked. How we overcame and how we dealt with adversity and defeat. To get there, it required both pride and self preservation. Finding the balance comes with experience. Yours and those around you who have done and endured. Never be too proud to always hurt and know more than you think you do. And never have too much self preservation that you never risk or experience, because in the end life is too brief and careers in the arena, all the more so.