So this week I shall be discussing a specific prefix and this week's prefix, paradoxically, is 'para'.

It is paradoxical because, like many things it means both itself and, more or less, its own opposite, depending on how it is used. Here is the initial definition from the inestimable Wikipedia. (I have left the links intact in this extract, in case you want to do follow up research on this fascinating prefix):

The term para- in English is an affix borrowed from Greek directly, or via Latin, where it is mostly used as a prefix. Its most common meaning is "similar to" or "near to" or "close to".

In Greek ???? (para) means "beside," "with," or "alongside," such as in paragraph. In Latin, para means "against," "counter," "outside," or beyond. For example, parapluie in French means "counter-rain"-an umbrella

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para

So how is it that something can be both 'close' to you and yet also 'against' you?

Well, again it comes down to definitions. Clearly you can define 'close to' and 'against' as meaning something very similar, as in 'hold this close against you, darling'. OR, you can define them as being almost opposites, for example, as in George Bush's infamous quote about the wart on Terry, "you are either with us (i.e. close to us) or 'against' us".

OK. So much for definitions.

Now for a story.....

Astoria is often a name associated with bingo, although there is a character in Terry Pratchet's Discworld called Astoria. In fact, that Astoria is the Ephebian Goddess of love; which is appropriate.

Because this week's story, is partly about love and partly about all the other things that it is partly about. And we all know that love can become a game of Bin-Go, if it is allowed to become so.

I mean you have probably all been in love. And some of you may well be thinking that you are going to be in love again. And love can be a 'been-going' kind of experience; if that's how you want it to be.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves instead of looking where we are going and we haven't actually been anywhere yet.

But Astoria had.

Astoria had been in love. Several times actually. But it hadn't worked out. For a while there had been all the usual features one might associate with love: elation, euphoria, eroticism, ecstasy, excitement, emotion, expectation and exhilaration. And then there had been misunderstandings. Miss Understanding always seemed to come in the form of a shorter skirt, glossier lip stick and an impossibly proportioned physique.

Astoria's erstwhile lover would become confused. Lips would become stuck to other lips and Astoria would end up with the short end of the stick.... on the wrong end of the short skirt, as it were...... at least, so it seemed to Astoria, although, actually, sometimes it had, in fact, been Astoria who had decided that, after the initial elation, euphoria, eroticism, etc. had subsided, the 'reality' was a little hollow; or shallow; or meaningless; whatever any of that meant to Astoria.

In fact, although Astoria was unaware of this, she was beginning to develop something of a reputation as a Paramour. Now we could go back to Wikipedia and look up 'paramour' but quite apart form the fact that it is an arrestable offence to look up a paramour in some countries, and anyway, it is time we all developed a little more independence and thought for ourselves.

Clearly, a paramour is someone who is close to love, or who is, conversely, against love, using our paradoxical definition of the prefix 'para' (see above for details, or just pay more attention now to what I am saying).

Astoria was perplexed. Every time she thought she was 'in love' it turned out she was just 'close' to 'being in love', or had just come down firmly 'against' the idea of being in love.

Of course it was all in her head..... As it is in mine...... And yours.

Now....the thing is, if you have ever found yourself in this kind of situation...you know, being close to something or someone and then finding you are against that same something or someone without any adequate explanation......whether it was to do with love, or sales, or business relationships, or your childhood (which, by the way, is not over yet; not by a long chalk...and we will be discussing what on Earth a 'long chalk' is in a future newsletter)...then you will know how Astoria felt.

Well you won't, actually, because everyone's experience is entirely subjective and unique, and as I mentioned (did I mention this?) it is all in your head anyway. But if we start down that path we will never get to the point (and it won't be the first time either), so please, just pay attention, and stick to the plot.

Astoria felt ....well....frustrated....disappointed....demoralised....deluded .....and so on, and so forth.

One by one, she fell out with her friends who said she should just be a bit more realistic about being in love. They would say all kinds of really helpful things like,

"Make the most of it...it won't last", and "Wait until you have to iron his socks, then come and tell me how euphoric, excited, ecstatic, erotic, etc, you feel", or "It will end in tears, you know that, don't you?"

But Astoria knew enough to at least understand that cynicism about love was not going to help her, and distanced herself from these rather unfriendly friends.

Until, one day, Astoria found herself hesitating. She hesitated about whether to have dinner or not because once, when she had eaten anchovies (hard though this may be to believe) she had been a little disappointed. She hesitated about going to the beach because once, when she had gone to the beach before, it had rained a little, and she didn't want to get her new bathing costume wet because it wasn't designed for that.

She even began to hesitate about whether to go out at all because now that she had had her hair dyed a rather spectacular colour.... (and she specifically asked me not to tell you that it was red so I won't, you'll just have to take it as read).... and she really didn't want to get it bleached by the sunshine.

So she sat ...well she didn't quite sit because she wasn't sure whether it would be better to sit down or lie down although it doesn't matter whether you do one or the other as long as you are really comfortable and somewhere safe and free from interruptions...so she hovered, between sitting down and lying down, when suddenly, a bingo caller popped into existence in her living room.

By the way...before we carry on...does anyone actually have a dead room? I mean, do living rooms die, and if so, is there a living room heaven (or hell) where all the dead living rooms go? This is an important question even though it may appear to have nothing to do with what we are talking about. Even more important, though, is whether you are living in living, living rooms or living (and/or partly living) in dead, living rooms?

I did ask Astoria the same question, but surprise, surprise, she couldn't make up her mind about this either. Well, at least, not until the Bingo caller appeared.

I mean it's not every day that a Bin-Go Caller pops into existence in your living room, although we have discussed elsewhere the fact that quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space bring pairs of virtual particles into existence all the time and that these particles then annihilate one another almost immediately before the universe has time to notice them (see previous newsletters - I can't be bothered to tell you which one, you'll just have to read all of them all over again and this time PAY MORE ATTENTION!)

So Astoria was a little surprised; b y the sudden appearance of the Bin-Go caller.....so much so that she did actually decide to sit down and close her eyes. In normal stories, of course, it wouldn't have been a Bin-Go caller but a fairy God-Mother, but this isn't a normal story and you are not a normal person, and neither am I.

We are all extraordinary.

"How extraordinary!", exclaimed Astoria, who was unaccustomed to such occurrences in her living room, which, by the way was in need of some positive revivification, although not actually, clinically dead.

The Bin-Go caller smiled and said nothing. Instead he simply produced a parasol and handed it to Astoria.

Now just to make sure no-one gets confused at this point, clearly there is a parallel here between the parasol and the coach and horses in Cinderella, but bear in mind this is not Cinderella and although there may be a happy ending, it is largely in your hands and not mine.

The Bin-Go caller disappeared (I could give you a load of dialogue here to fill out the story but Astoria is best when focused and to the point, don't you think? And anyway I can't be bothered.)

Astoria looked at the parasol and then looked out of the window, where the sun was still shining, and then looked at the parasol again.

'Now I can go out', she thought. So she did. And a funny thing happened. And this is what it was....well strictly speaking, this is what it is, because tenses do matter, without wishing to get too in-tense about it.

Astoria went out and put up her parasol (to protect the hair which you will have read about above, although not the bit which says what colour it was, because now it isn't; now it is yellow, and full of sunshine, so you were wrong anyway).

What Astoria didn't notice immediately, but you and I will have done so already because it was all reddy when we discussed it before, but now it is yellow and full of sunshine...is that when she erected her parasol, a parabola appeared.

Astoria is sometimes a bit slow, but she is catching up and she has noticed by now that a parabola has appeared and she, like you, is just wondering why a parabola should appear when erecting a parasol given to her by a Bin-Go caller.

The answer is, of course, obvious. It was a magic, parasol. Specifically, it was a magic, parabolic parasol. But you know that as well because you red the title.

If you are about to reach for wikipedia again, to remind yourself exactly what a parabola is, don't bother, because I have all reddy done so and here is the relevant extract:

In mathematics, the parabola (from the Greek: ????????) (IPA pronunciation: /p??rab(?)l?/) is a conic section generated by the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface. A parabola can also be defined as locus of points in a plane which are equidistant from a given point (the focus) and a given line (the directrix).

A particular case arises when the plane is tangent to the conical surface. In this case, the intersection is a degenerate parabola consisting of a straight line.

http://en.wikipedia.org

Did that help? No. Well, now you see the benefit, if you actually could be bothered, of downloading this newsletter from my website in pdf format where you would actually be able to see a picture of a parabola so that the above explanation would not only be meaningless to anyone except a mathematician, but also superfluous.

(I knew a degenerate parabola once, but he lives in the past which is a great way to degenerate into the future if that is what you want).

For those of you who have downloaded the pdf from my website, here is a picture of a parabola. For those of you who are listening in audio, a parabola is a special kind of curve which has a central point from which the two ends of the curve retreat into the distance growing further and further apart as they go.

Anyway, let us press on as some of us have lives to lead.

Astoria opened her parasol and a parabola appeared.

What Astoria also noticed was that she was standing just inside the central part of the parabola; a point, which significantly, is called the focus of the parabola. Stretching out before her, to her left, was a seemingly infinite line into the past; and stretching out and to her right was a seemingly infinite line into the future.

Astoria, in an attack of what I can only describe as astuteness, realised that she must be standing, quite precisely, in the here and now. Moreover, not only did she realise she was standing in the here and now, whenever she stood under her parasol, but she also realised that she quite liked it in the here and now.

For a start, she found that she was no longer worrying about, nor focusing on her latest love affair, which had recently fallen apart. Nor did she find herself focusing on any other past love affairs. But she did notice that, as long as she stayed in the focus of the parabola, under her parasol, in the here and now, that there were useful things from her past which could actually help her to shape her future. She could distinguish these useful things from her past from other things, in her past, which had no value as learning, because the things which had value as learning seemed to be shining brightly like the sun, leaving her with a warm feeling, whilst the things which were of no value, or were actually detrimental to her future, seemed to be skulking in the shadows giving her an uneasy sense of deja vue.

More than this, when she looked at her future, she realised that because it had not actually happened yet she could only imagine it, and that whatever she imagined to be in her future, in the here and now, began to take shape along the line which stretched off and to her right.

Astoria giggled.

She imagined something happening in her future which made her giggle. I can't tell you what it was because it was something which, had you yourself imagined it, you would not want it discussed in public.

She did try to imagine the same old things from her past, which had no value or were actually detrimental to her, happening to her in her future. She did try, but she found that whenever she did this, she got a bad feeling and so she stopped right away and went back to thinking about things which made her giggle, but which we cannot speak about in newsletters because of the puritans and Mary Whitehouse and because where would we all be if we kept thinking about things that make us giggle?

Now a parasol is a funny thing, and a parabolic parasol is even funnier. A parasol is called a parasol because...and you would already have deduced this had you been paying attention to the first extract from wikipedia, above, which clearly states that parapluie is French for 'against the rain', i.e. an umbrella.....a parasol is called a parasol because a parasol is 'against the sun'. But if you had really, really been paying attention, you would also recall that the prefix 'para' means 'close to' as well as 'against' so that an umbrella and a parasol are respectively close to the rain and close to the sun as well as being against the sun and against the rain.

So logically, and here I will have to rest my case because this has gone on long enough.......so LOGICALLY, a parabolic parasol is paradoxically both 'close to' and 'against' the past as it is, indeed, 'close to' and 'against' the future. So that when one stands in the focus of the parabola of a parabolic parasol, one is able to discern all the positive and negative aspects of the past and all the imagined positive and imagined negative aspects of the future, whilst remaining firmly rooted in the here and now.

There is just one more thing. Imagine now, as Astoria does, under-standing, under her magic, parabolic parasol, that you can actually visualise what Einstein referred to as spacetime. Students of relativity will recall that spacetime, according to Einstein, is curved. Gravity is the force which causes the curvature of spacetime. And objects which exert a gravitational force upon other objects (and they all do, whether you object to the practice or not).......objects which exert a gravitational force upon other objects frequently cause such objects to curve around them, first approaching nearby and then, as time progresses, receding away again from the said object in a classically parabolic curve.

So being an object yourself, theoretically, you exert a gravitational force upon all other objects (including your loved ones) causing them to traverse similar parabolic curves, in no less than four dimensions (up/down, forwards/backwards, right/left, and of course, past, present and future)..... in an infinite number of directions.

The non-mathematicians and the mathematicians amongst will doubtless have deduced by now that whatever direction your past was from and whatever direction your future will be in is determined by the mathematical focus of your parabola; your very own here and now.

You literally have the capacity to create an infinite variety of pasts and futures and the central determining factor in which your actual past and the future you actually create, is the focal point of the sum total of all these parabolic curves....the here and now. Bear in mind that every other object (including your loved ones) possess a similar, though weaker capacity to influence, but certainly not to determine your past, present and future as well.

So, I'm guessing you'll be wanting a magic parabolic parasol. Well, here's the good news.

You already have one.

It's called your ability to choose.

So there is one other thing which Astoria now understands, standing under her parasol, which is that love is not a random phenomenon into which you 'fall', only to 'fall out' of again, on some entirely unpredictable basis, but that love is, in fact, something which you choose to do to yourself and other people.

That's me done for another week.

Here are the disclaimers:

There is no truth in the rumour that I was paralytically drunk on some potion when I wrote this newsletter, except perhaps on the notion that I am in control of my own destiny.

The contents of this newsletter are inappropriate for anyone suffering from paranoia simply on the basis that the sudden appearance of a Bin-Go caller in a living room may serve to confirm them in their paranoid delusions about the nature of the real universe. I suppose I should have put that in at the beginning...oh well.

A NOTE ABOUT COPYRIGHT:

Basically, I work on 'abundance mentality'. The more I share, the more comes back to me. There a couple of rules I would like you to observe.

You can use the content of these newsletters in any context as long as you display the following statement in the quotes below:

"This material was created and is owned by Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Ltd. It may be used in any context for any life enhancing purpose provided this message is clearly displayed.

Where the use of this material generates a financial profit for the person or legal entity using it, these persons or legal entities will be responsible for informing Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Limited and will be required to share a reasonable portion of this profit with Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) limited in proportion to the profit generated by the use of the said materials.

Copyright © Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Ltd 13 May 2007. All Rights reserved.

For forthcoming events go to www.hbtuk.com and click on the 'Events' heading on the menu.

Copyright © Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Ltd., 13 May 2007. All Rights reserved.