Finite Loop Mews

Beggars’ Belief.

Mother said we couldn't afford to think. she absolutely forbade anyone getting ideas,  not just above their station, but any kind of ideas at all. at least ideas of our own.

Other peoples' ideas were totally ok. just not home grown wisdom, or clue or even inkling. "don't let me catch you having any notions, or you'll not be able to sit down for a week” she would say.

I think I was 11 and Sasha was probably 7 when we first were sent out on the streets to panhandle for some thoughts. the phrase "a penny for them" was not an idle one. we left the house with a purse full of old coins, and woe betide us if we did not return with our brains brimming with burgeoning propositions, to put to her.

Would the sun come up tomorrow? what should we have for dinner? why were people mean? How could you clean up after a cat? what was well tempered? how many lies had Boris Johnsen told? was democracy doomed? should we stop advertising on social media? did 5G infect people? Should you put peas in paella? did people really land on the moon? did the Illuminati  convene Bretton Woods? are there more integers that irrational numbers? was that true before? If a computer proved something, why should we humans believe it? what would guarantee her sourdough would work every time? you know the sort of thing.

I began to wonder what she did with all these answers we bought back. firstly, even after only one year,  there must be so many things to recall - how did she organise these into some structure, the way the rooms of the house all served special purposes, or the streets of the city made sense when you wanted to get to the cathedral, or the stock exchange or the fish market or the street we did most of our begging on, Fleet Street.

In olden times, someone told us, you could hear a lot of stories here that were important parts of everyone's knowledge, to know how to comport themselves, and to choose different paths in life, and generally make decisions that would benefit oneself but also, all the people around one. But now, we learned, things had become much less certain. We had to ask about uncertainty, and got lost for a while in the wonders of quantum physics, until a  naive looking priest explained to us about priors and posteriors (we thought he looked a bit like a nun with a big backside so we had a laugh about that).

And now we are lost as we cannot figure out what to believe. and mother won't help. she asks us why we need to believe one thing more than another. why can't we just know lots of things that are false and lots of things that are true? is it not enough just to accumulate knowledge whether it is right or wrong? who are we to make value judgements, she exclaimed often.

I wonder if the problem was that she had no idea who our father was. Of course we do. everyone told us. But that was the one thing she wouldn't hear.