Although it could be said there are many better things to do before dropping off to sleep, our Matt ponders grammar and the meaning of life.
It was a small gratification to discover, just the other night, that I suddenly understood what a verb was.
Grammar has never been an area in which I have excelled or even vaguely understood, and until the other night I had blamed this on receiving my primary education in the 1980s.
In that decade teachers battled just to get students to learn their own names, what with the background to their lessons a seemingly inevitable nuclear war and the somewhat more distressing Rogernomics.
With those anxiety-soaking subjects dominating even eight- year-old minds, grammar just didn't get a look in.
Or so I thought - until putting myself to bed the other night and finding myself unable to do anything except wander through that borderland between consciousness and sleep.
It is in that lawless boundary town that the mind skips freely and joyfully like a pre-ritalin toddler let loose in a toy shop. Though the train of thought is still somewhat controlled, the driver has most certainly been indulging in some form of hallucinogenic substance.
Which was probably why I was able to realise and why I even bothered to care that the word sleeping, was a verb, a "doing" word, even despite that obvious fact I was not doing it.
Almost instantaneously I realised most words ending in ING were verbs as they indicated an action was taking place. Education had worked after all!
Of course there were exceptions like Beijing, which is a very busy place but not a verb and King, which used to imply a person that did a lot of things but is now the human equivalent of a grossly inbred poodle.
Not that there is much difference between dogs and humans, genetically speaking, but we are in fact more closely related to Chimpanzees, sharing about 96 per cent of the same important bits.
In that sleepless state the other night it seemed quite plausible to me that the remaining four per cent could easily be made up with a hat, tie and an all over body wax which would leave a chimp free to integrate into human society.
This might have already been done and if so it would explain a lot of things such as teenagers and Rodney Hide.
It was a distressing thought yet a relief at the same time, but of course it did not last for long as the train then started to accelerate to near-uncontrollable speeds.
During this rush it became clear that if humans are 60 per cent water, the people I love are not that much different from a particularly muddy puddle.
So, of course, neither am I. And if I have a cupboard full of towels why is it that I cannot remember ever buying one? Do they grow like mould or are we born with them and if we are born with them why don't we get a matching set?
But then again I am always wary of people with matching sets of towels because invariably they also have matching sheets, cushions and crockery.
In a world abounding with difference it just seems absurd to have a home as ordered as the shelves of a chain store or a $90 a night hotel room.
And what happens to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner in those rooms if you don't take them? Are they thrown away, and if that is the case isn't it your duty to steal them?
So stealing is right some of the time, or, in other words it is sometimes good to be bad or something like that.
Truth and fiction, right and wrong and all that malarky are invariably little more than opinions anyway and I look very closely at anyone who purports to be telling me cold hard facts or God's honest truth.
Because often those facts have something to do with my favourite shirt or pair of shoes which I am now only allowed to wear in the garden despite them still being what I would think of as fairly decent.
Then again, it is just before you tootle off to nigh-nighs land that you realise, regardless of what anyone says, you are absolutely judged for the type of person you are by the clothes you wear. If you are a man you should know that the first thing a woman looks at is your shoes and if you are a woman you probably know what men scan first.
After all this is a society obsessed with wealth, possessions and appearances so much so it annually loses hundreds, if not thousands, of lives who cannot cope with the grind of keeping up with it all.
And this despite every 100-year- old person I have ever talked to, and there have been quite a few, scoffing at any sort of wealth except the love of their family and friends.
Now, because they have been around much longer than any of us I've always felt confident their words carry a bit more weight than those of younger folk. So while it is healthy to know there are no facts you can truly rely on in life, there are some things you can trust more than others.
Which was a pleasant thought to cross the border into sleep with.
- Taranaki Daily News
It was a small gratification to discover, just the other night, that I suddenly understood what a verb was.
Grammar has never been an area in which I have excelled or even vaguely understood, and until the other night I had blamed this on receiving my primary education in the 1980s.
In that decade teachers battled just to get students to learn their own names, what with the background to their lessons a seemingly inevitable nuclear war and the somewhat more distressing Rogernomics.
With those anxiety-soaking subjects dominating even eight- year-old minds, grammar just didn't get a look in.
Or so I thought - until putting myself to bed the other night and finding myself unable to do anything except wander through that borderland between consciousness and sleep.
It is in that lawless boundary town that the mind skips freely and joyfully like a pre-ritalin toddler let loose in a toy shop. Though the train of thought is still somewhat controlled, the driver has most certainly been indulging in some form of hallucinogenic substance.
Which was probably why I was able to realise and why I even bothered to care that the word sleeping, was a verb, a "doing" word, even despite that obvious fact I was not doing it.
Almost instantaneously I realised most words ending in ING were verbs as they indicated an action was taking place. Education had worked after all!
Of course there were exceptions like Beijing, which is a very busy place but not a verb and King, which used to imply a person that did a lot of things but is now the human equivalent of a grossly inbred poodle.
Not that there is much difference between dogs and humans, genetically speaking, but we are in fact more closely related to Chimpanzees, sharing about 96 per cent of the same important bits.
In that sleepless state the other night it seemed quite plausible to me that the remaining four per cent could easily be made up with a hat, tie and an all over body wax which would leave a chimp free to integrate into human society.
This might have already been done and if so it would explain a lot of things such as teenagers and Rodney Hide.
It was a distressing thought yet a relief at the same time, but of course it did not last for long as the train then started to accelerate to near-uncontrollable speeds.
During this rush it became clear that if humans are 60 per cent water, the people I love are not that much different from a particularly muddy puddle.
So, of course, neither am I. And if I have a cupboard full of towels why is it that I cannot remember ever buying one? Do they grow like mould or are we born with them and if we are born with them why don't we get a matching set?
But then again I am always wary of people with matching sets of towels because invariably they also have matching sheets, cushions and crockery.
In a world abounding with difference it just seems absurd to have a home as ordered as the shelves of a chain store or a $90 a night hotel room.
And what happens to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner in those rooms if you don't take them? Are they thrown away, and if that is the case isn't it your duty to steal them?
So stealing is right some of the time, or, in other words it is sometimes good to be bad or something like that.
Truth and fiction, right and wrong and all that malarky are invariably little more than opinions anyway and I look very closely at anyone who purports to be telling me cold hard facts or God's honest truth.
Because often those facts have something to do with my favourite shirt or pair of shoes which I am now only allowed to wear in the garden despite them still being what I would think of as fairly decent.
Then again, it is just before you tootle off to nigh-nighs land that you realise, regardless of what anyone says, you are absolutely judged for the type of person you are by the clothes you wear. If you are a man you should know that the first thing a woman looks at is your shoes and if you are a woman you probably know what men scan first.
After all this is a society obsessed with wealth, possessions and appearances so much so it annually loses hundreds, if not thousands, of lives who cannot cope with the grind of keeping up with it all.
And this despite every 100-year- old person I have ever talked to, and there have been quite a few, scoffing at any sort of wealth except the love of their family and friends.
Now, because they have been around much longer than any of us I've always felt confident their words carry a bit more weight than those of younger folk. So while it is healthy to know there are no facts you can truly rely on in life, there are some things you can trust more than others.
Which was a pleasant thought to cross the border into sleep with.
- Taranaki Daily News
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