6° Of Connection To Everything

I'm often surprised at how connected things can seem to be.

Another example has just revealed itself to me, and I feel compelled to write about it in this blog. If nothing else, the way we are connected to things, however loosely, makes for a good idea for generating blog postings.

In this case, the catalyst for my thinking was in fact an advert sent to me by e-mail, after I had purchased a book through Amazon.

Perhaps Amazon have become very sophisticated in the way in which they develop advertising after you have expressed a choice by purchasing something through them.

But even Amazon couldn't have suspected the link that I have with what they sent to me.

My purchase had been The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins, first published as a pamphlet in 1924, and then followed by a more developed book in 1925.

This book was about what have become known as ley lines, the links in ancient landscapes whereby our predecessors demonstrated quite sophisticated surveying techniques, and which often link sites from very early origins in ways that are not always easy to fathom.

For example, Churches are often on sites of more ancient sacred origin, but can be seen to be oriented in ways that make them in a direct linear connection in the landscape.

Needless to say, this book was out of print for many years until in the late 60s interest in this kind of subject matter increased enormously.

My interest in it is connected to the plot of a novel I have been writing for some time, and I wish to continue my researches so that I can complete more of the novel.

I won't outline the way in which Alfred Watkins’ book is linked to the plot of my novel, but I have published the first four chapters of the novel, Sacred Places, in my collection of short stories, Mother And Child with other stories. This can be viewed free of charge online through the print on demand printer that I used, completelynovel.com.

The advertisement sent to me might seem at first glance as completely unrelated to this book.

It was for a selection of books in which the history of human curiosity is the common link.

In other words, books about freak shows and ways in which men have exhibited, in often lurid ways, people with unusual characteristics.

This is not a subject area that is of any interest to me, but one title in particular struck a chord.

It was a history of the showman that exhibited The Elephant Man, in London in the late 19th century.

But the strange connection that I have to this rather brought me up short.

About 10 years ago, when I was still working, long before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I was the Director of an Arts Trust, and for a brief period we were given premises to use as a means of support starting.

It was an elderly lady that was one of the two people that gave us the use of the premises, in which we would be based for several years whilst we developed the Arts projects that were concerned with regenerating this East Coast holiday resort in the UK.

The strange coincidence was that this woman's grandfather had been that very showman that had exhibited The Elephant Man.

We are always fascinated with discovering the lineage of famous people, but of course if we examine our own family trees, we are bound to discover something of interest somewhere eventually. Or that of our friends.

What is extraordinary is simply that I should discover some personal connection with some potentially random choices made by a computer because of my choice of a particular book to purchase from Amazon.

Although perhaps I should not be so surprised, as if everything is as I suspect linked ultimately in some form, it is simply waiting for us to piece together the connections between otherwise seemingly random events.