EPISODE 74: FEELING FRAUGHT

Welcome to my blog which today will be driving to Birmingham to attend my grandson’s tenth birthday party. It will be a day off from putting little ticks by my lists to infer that something useful has been done. As time flies past it’d be nice to think that things are being achieved, that the event is taking form but whether we are any closer to the goal than we were a week ago, I don’t know. It is a while now since I consulted my books and rectified my thoughts. What thoughts would be helpful?

All is going to plan

Is that the best thought I can come up with? 

Everything that can be done, has been done.

There’s something not very inspiring about these thoughts. Maybe as I dash up North, I’d be best conjuring up a bit of panache to inspire myself, if no-one else.

Meanwhile…meanwhile what? Meanwhile, I can’t think of anything else to write about so I might as well get ready for the journey.

…

It is difficult to judge at this stage what my failings have been.  Probably the reliance on email rather than the phone, coupled with a reluctance to go out and meet people, has let me down. What I’ve caught myself saying to myself is that ‘there have been no nice surprises’, no donation out of the blue, no surprising encouragement from an unexpected source, no relieving letter on the floor, no big name volunteering themselves for free.  This feeling of wanting something like that to happen isn’t new…always wanting a publisher to contact me, to win a prize, to receive unexpected confirmation. I guess this pattern began in childhood and maybe then, through the grace of a grandparent or a birthday, my desire for magical solutions was satisfied.

…

Back home; no emails, no post, nothing on facebook, no phonecalls.

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My grandson was lovely and his friends enjoyed the party; ten year old boys having the greatest funding jumping on balloons. He has known most of these kids at school for five, even six, years. They are used to each other. Whether Steiner education is theoretically sound, I’ve no idea; certainly it could seem to do with some modernization; however, for my grandson it has been nourishing and successful. What happens as secondary school approaches remains to be seen. The parents have to make a choice; to stay with Steiner or transfer to a ‘normal’ school. My daughter is tempted to move him because she doesn’t want him to be disadvantaged academically. The danger is that it will mess him up socially and the state of comparative innocence that exudes from him will become disturbed if not destroyed. A year or two ago, I would have supported a move but now, with my communistic hippy values to the fore, I tend to think the further away he is from mainstream culture the better.

…

It was sad to see my daughter’s mother still being ripped apart by her husband’s death earlier this year. When you’ve got so used to being two, being one can never feel right. For someone with a career or a strong sense of purpose, then maybe there is something to fall back on. For her, who has usually reacted to situations rather than having a plan, then this a life-crisis on many levels. How she can get out of this, I don’t know. Really she has to start all over by finding a new way to see herself and for this she needs either revelation or to expose herself to a damn good teacher – a Byron Katie perhaps. Although she’s the same age as me, I’d guess that all being well she’ll outlive me by ten or twenty years. It’ll be a hard hard road unless she finds a spiritual answer.

…

The story of a 31 year old teacher running away to France with a 15 year old girl titillated the media this week, alongside a much darker story of the organized sexual abuse of young white girls by Pakistani men in the North of England. 

Clearly the teacher has erred badly and until one hears his excuse, there is no excuse for him. As a man myself, I can hardly pretend that being susceptible to perceived Lolitas is extraordinary or even unusual or, for that matter, morally wrong. It is, however, undoubtedly legally, socially and professionally wrong and I imagine he’ll pay a high price for it.

A woman I know, who was sexually abused for a number of years from 11 onwards, has frequently tried to explain to me the guilt she feels for her complicity. Once the initial abuse took place, she sought it out and made it happen. Much of it she enjoyed in the moment though clearly there was much she didn’t enjoy. She cannot free herself of this guilt. She understand in her mind that she did no wrong but inside that isn’t how she sees it and that makes the abuse even worse.

And this was often the problem with the girls in the North of England. They were addicted to their abusers so at the same time they complained they got on the bus and went back for more. Many referred to the men as their boyfriends. The attention they had from these men was the only attention they got and attention makes you real to yourself.

As for these men…well, they are men. Moslem culture makes their women unavailable so they take their frustration out on the girls. Stupid men, stupid religion, stupid culture, stupid stupid world.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Send a call out for Mr Positive.

EPISODE 73: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR HASN'T GOT MUCH BETTER.

Welcome to my blog which this morning isn’t very happy. First, the minor things; the sweating body, the running nose, hacking cough, toothache and general lethargy. Then, the more serious stuff. I open my emails to find one of the headline bands wanting to pull out because they feel under publicized. Already I’m struggling because my big investment, Copperdollar, don’t seem inclined to do very much and, according to my son, should be dropped. Meanwhile my artist friends tell me that I’ve left it too late to get the art exhibition together, despite having spent six months trying to get my main artist, Katrina, to decide what she was doing. A couple of weeks ago it looked as if the children’s program was coming together but since then one of the stalwarts has moved to Liverpool and the other boked herself a ticket to Australia. All in all, not a morning of unhurried grace and contemplation.

What to do?

I’ll reread the letter from the band later; too much to think about right now.

I could try my discouragement drill which consists of taking five positive actions to counterbalance the disappointment. Or is that whistling in the dark? I’ve written a couple of emails and made an appointment to pick up the first batch of tickets. Nevertheless the feeling that it is all going tits up predominates.

So I drove first to Wells where I picked up forty posters, half of which may be redundant if the two acts cancel. In fact it should have been 50 posters but he’d forgotten the fifth poster. I then drove to Bristol and collected the printed tickets for the first event. On the way back I received a phonecall saying that the owner of one of prospective venues, for the cinema program, had suddenly died. By time I got home, my mind was full of confusion about the wanting-to-pull-out band so I then spent the best part of five hours answering his problems with a long email. I did admit to him at the end of it, that if I cancelled their part of the show, it may be a good idea and would limit my potential losses. I didn’t make a final decision.

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Next morning. Still feeling ill. Later on today there is a big festival on in Bristol which has been organized by my youngest son who actually is an event manager. 20,000 tickets sold out. At 7pm my other two sons will be playing in their band at the event. They want me to go. At midnight I have to pick up my partner from the railway station. I really don’t want to go to the gig which involves tramping around fields in big crowds but if I don’t go I’ll feel I’ve let the boys down. Feel so tired. Whinge, whinge, whinge.

---

I feel I let myself down by not going. On the other hand, I’m still ill.

--

Sunday morning. Woke-up feeling awful. The phone was ringing. My eldest son, on his way to the airport, wanted to know if there was anything he should have done before he went. I explained the situation with the band and the theatre group.  We agreed straightaway that shifting venues but keeping the two headliners was the way forward. If the lead singer agrees (and it was his suggestion) then I’ll feel the load has lightened.

--

My latest hero is Peter Wilberg whose works I’ve mentioned a few times. He likes to succinctly dispel myths, such as this one.

‘mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances of the brain’. Wrong. This is the myth of biological psychiatry and the pharmaceutical corporations. The myth is based on the fundamental misconception that consciousness is rooted in the brain. But since the brain itself is an object of waking consciousness, to claim that it is the very foundation of consciousness per se is like claiming that some particular object we dream of is the foundation or cause of dreaming consciousness per se. Science has not yet grasped the simple yet fundamental philosophical principle that consciousness as such  - what I term ‘awareness’ or ‘pure awareness’ – cannot possibly be explained by any particular ‘thing’ we are conscious or aware of - such as the human body or brain. To seek to do so is, again, like seeking to explain dreaming as such by something specific thing we dream of.   http://www.peterwilberg.org/

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The unreliability of memory is something we recognise in others but can’t be so sure of in oneself.  It so happens that two or three twenty-somethings who  I know have attempted to find things out from their parents, only to discover that not only do their (separated) parents disagree but that the parental memory is different from the child’s. A girl I know asked her dad why he had left her mum. He said, ‘It was because of your mum was involved with John and I felt she’d never let him go.’ The thing is that the mum hadn’t met John (me) at that point in her life. In fact I only appeared on the scene when his daughter was 2 years old. (And the mother did leave me.)

..

Now a new wet Monday morning. It could this week is crucial to my enterprise. I await news from the band and enthusiasm for me. Abscess and flu remain. Have to rescue my mind and put it on the right track. Here's a picture of the mess that is my room along with a picture that is me in typical pose, staring at the computer blankly.

EPISODE 72: TOOTHACHE.

Welcome to my blog which is having some trouble with toothache, or rather, ache caused by lack of tooth. Taking the tooth to the dentist is harder than it sounds and will probably be unproductive. My dentist, who was old when I first started visiting him in 1982, is now even older and disinclined to retire because he has a wife at home with Alzheimer’s who no longer knows who he is. Since 1982, my dentist has got no better, even when we swopped from NHS non-treatment so some obscure insurance plan, his dentistry remained kindly but inefficient. Eight years ago I moved to another town some thirty miles away and breathed a sigh of relief, only to discover that through the arcane rules of the insurance company it was almost impossible to change dentist without paying over £100 in transfer fees. 

My suspicion is that my dentist is well over 80 years old now. For the past 15 years, he has been regularly fixing the same tooth by building up a pretend tooth on the small root that remains to build on, or, as the dentist says, used to remain to build on. There’s nothing there now, he says. So what is hurting? Could it be that his sight has gone and he just can’t see it anymore? I’m taking painkillers – which I say I never do – and am soaked in teething pain concoctions, none proving successful. I couldn’t sleep last night and today each sip of tea inflames the pain. Ahead lies a day of quietly moaning to myself. I suggest you don’t listen.

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According to Robert Fritz, erstwhile guru of this journal, the two keys to planning successfully are describing the goal and then the current reality. I’m not quite sure whether the sickness in my stomach is a correct response to my present situation, or the toothache or hunger, but when I try to contemplate exactly where I stand in relation to where I need to be, gloom and doubt arise. This week the facebook hits dribbled down and no progress seemed to get made for all the huffing and puffing and meeting and talking. Deadlines set three months ago pass by without anything being done. Last Monday we highlighted three things that had to be done that week; the printing of fliers for one of the gigs, the design of a new poster, and a decision about the Art Exhibition. None of these happened.

There’s only six weeks to go now. Maybe I should be doing something rather than sobbing into my computer. I’ve been trying to pick-up my negative thoughts as I go along because otherwise they settle in and put their feet up. This week I’ve had a familiar feeling which carries with it a monologue about over-reaching myself; getting too excited and going over the top, emotionally or financially. I feel like a drunk who gradually recalls what he did the night before, the undying love he’d declared or the fight he’d got into. I see myself walking the empty streets of Glastonbury on nov 3^rd with my friends and family feeling sorry and embarrassed for me. There are worse things in the world than feeling squashed, of course, like toothache, but I hate the bit where I have to pretend to myself that I wish I hadn’t fucked up or got so carried away.

***

The radio is talking about the situation in Libya. They seemed to have forgotten that the British and French sorted it all out last year. Like they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. I bet the Syrians can’t wait for our help. Here’s more guns than you can handle. Kill each other; that will do the job.

***

How much sympathy do I have for people feeling pissed off because their (imaginary) religious leader has been insulted? Less than zero. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

***

Enough of me. Let’s try Einstein.

‘A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison…’

***

My tooth continues to throb. I’ve felt fuck awful all day, lethargic and sick. (And yep, I do fuss, or would if there were anyone here to fuss to.) I’ve sat all day in the kitchen, staring at the computer and trying to write two press releases, one for the local paper, another for the Bristol events magazine. Here’s how far I got with the local paper one.

MEXICAN DAY OF THE DEAD COMES TO GLASTONBURY. 

On Saturday November 3rd Glastonbury will host its own version of the annual Mexican festival of remembrance, called the Day of the Dead.

 

Like its Mexican parent, the Glastonbury day will include parties to honour loved ones, celebratory food, mask, costume and memento making activities for all ages, candle-lit ceremonies and vibrant procession. In addition, there will be a program of talks and workshops, theatre, a kids program, cinema and an art exhibition.

Headlining the events which will take place across Glastonbury will the UKs only authentic Mexican mariachi band, MARIACHI MEXTECA; England’s most vibrant hip hop act, THE FOUR OWLS, psychedelic masters FLIPRON and the amazing theatre group COPPERDOLLAR who will lead the Remembrance Procession.

Although proud of the entertainment available, co-organiser and retired bereavement counsellor, John Heston, is keen to point out that the day has a serious purpose.   ‘The Mexicans have a playful relationship with death,’ he says, ‘and that makes it easier for them to help one another through grief and terminal illness. Most of us avoid the subject and this makes it more difficult to know what to do to help when we want to.  This is why we have invited all those concerned with bereavement to use this occasion to help the community know better what they and we can do together to provide compassionate care for all those affected by death and loss.'

As part of the free daytime program at Tor Leisure, the Taboo Theatre Company will put on a performance of the play ‘Home Death’ by Nell Dunn. Afterwards there will be a discussion about this vital topic led by the author who many will remember as the creator of ‘Up the Junction’ and ‘Poor Cow’.

The Glastonbury Day of the Dead is run by a Community Interest Company and relies on volunteers to do its work. ‘Of course we’d like funding and sponsorship,’ says John, ‘but we’re committed to the project and have been inspired by the amount of assistance and advice we have already received. By putting on a mixture of ticketed and free events, we hope to cover our costs and set a standard for the future.’

Cover costs? No chance.

EPISODE 71: ON SABBATICAL

Welcome to my blog which today is not happening. I have agonised over this. Quite simply I haven't had the time. Or made the time. Part of me thinks that if i don't get my 1,000 words done, the whole enterprise will fail and that if I don't succeed in my goals it will be because I didn't keep up my discipline. This is magical thinking but i do feel guilty that on saturday when I could have been writing this, I took a day off and went to the beach. (Did the sun shine? Sort of. When we arrived at the coast, there was a thick fog which meant we could sit ten metres from the the sea and still not see it. After a couple of hours, the mist slowly lifted and we had about twenty minutes to slap on the suncream before the cloud returned and the shirts and jumper went back on. The woman I was with likes to think of herself as hardy and she teased me about going in for a swim. As I find even Australian waters chilly, the idea of going in didn't appeal at all but as a gesture of good will I agreed to paddle alongside her. The water was freezing. If I'd been by myself, notihng would have persuaded me to brave the cold but the knowledge that this was the only day this year that I'd be in the water (plus the presence of a woman who was obviously looking forward to calling me a wimp) persuaded me to display a little ore fortitude and so it was that I became the first to immerse myself to shoulder level. Fuck it was cold! Immediately the breath was knocked out of my body. 'Stop panting,' ordered my companion. 'I can't,' i replied, though after a while I just managed to breathe normally. As soon as I accomplished that, I got out of the water and left her to take her own time. For a couple of minutes on the beach, I was really warm and quite pleased with myself. Then, having dried and dressed, I sat on the shingle to watch the world which had appeared after the fog lifted. Ten minutes later, I felt my body shivering inside as the shock set in. My fingers turned yellow and I felt extremely odd, sitting on a relatively warm beach, dressed in all my clothes and still getting colder. My companion then bounded out of the water, full of vigour and wows wasn't that amazings. Ten minutes later, she, like me, was fully dressed and chilled to the core to such an extent that it was only after we'd driven all the way home and she'd had a hot bath, did she warm up again.

Maybe, sometimes, it really is too cold to get in.

***

 The reason i think I haven't got time to write this is because not a lot seems to be happening to my Day of dead project. Is it the nature of things, or the nature of my life, that often things 'feel' like they are gathering to happen, and then they don't? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, last week, seemed full of potential progress but after that nothing cemented, no relevent emails arrived, the facebook ran out of steam and it felt like it was all beginning to drift away.

On Thursday, now I remember, we went to a meeting with the palliative care team at the local hospice. ( I say local, it's 40 minutes drive away and god knows how long on a rural bus, should it be running.) The plan was to get the team on board because i wanted the future customers of the team, ie maybe all of us, to meet the people who will midwife their dying. 

The team were very sweet with us and said they were honoured to speak with us. They were keen to take part.

 But.

 But they didn't like the 'dead' word, didn't want hospices associated with dying and death. Although this seemed extraordinary to me, my colleague assured them that we would tone down the references to death on any publicity involving them. After an hour, we all shook hands and the manager said she would report back to her superiors.

Afterwards, Alison and I argued over this concealing death point, especially when I read a number of leaflets from the hospice, none of which mention death and dying. While appreciating their concern to position themselves as pain management specialists, I felt more and more that to deny their connection with death was a crying shame and only added to the problem, which is the lack of acknowledgement of the realities and meaningfulness of being a person at end of life. For a few hours, I fretted, writing and rewriting emails arguing the case before finally disciplining myself into a 99% agreeable thanking for the meeting, acknowledging their difficulty and promising to do my best. Even so I couldn't help but point out that in my opinion more people would come if it were called 'Day of the Dead' as opposed to 'the day of life limiting illnesses'.

So it goes.

Oh, I've written my blog after all.

EPISODE 70: THE SCREWED

Welcome to my blog, where it is still raining. There was a moment yesterday when the sun shone. Once upon a time I’d take out a stool, place it by the front door and bask in the sunshine with a cup of tea and a smoke. Now if I do that, I’m on view. Amazingly the neighbour has found even more green life to burn and last night we woke up unable to breathe because so much woodsmoke had made its way into the house.

So it goes.

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Today I’m going to copy out of another book, partly because I am short of time but mostly because I keep meaning to give/lend the book to someone else but don’t because of this bit.

The book is ‘The Uncomfortable Dead’ by Subcommandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo.

So he was explaining that there’s two agendas, the agenda of the powerful and the agenda of the screwed. So for them it’s the agenda of the powerful that’s the most important, cause they want to get more powerful and richer. On the other hand, the agenda of the screwed is what is more important to for us, which is the fight for liberation. And then Alakazam explained that the powerful – that is, the rich and the bad government leaders – are trying to convince everyone that their agenda, the agenda of the powerful, is the only good one for everyone, even for the screwed. So they are constantly telling us about the concerns of the powerful and convincing us it is all important and it is what we have to be concerned about. So you see, they have us looking one way while they’re stealing everything and selling the country down the river, and our natural resources, like our water, oil, electric power, and even our people. And when we finally see what’s going on, then it’ll be too late, cause there won’t be anything left when we get through looking the other way. And the worse thing is not that we’re looking off where there’s nothing to see, no sir, the worst thing is that they get us to think that their concerns, the concerns of the rich, are our concerns, and we take them like our own. So then, according to modern politics, Alakazam says, Democracy is for the majority, the screwed, to be all concerned over the well-being of the minority, the powerful. And the other thing is for all of us who are screwed to look the other way while they steal our lands, our jobs, our memories, our dignity. And on top of it all, the powerful want us to applaud them and give them our votes.

And that’s when Alakazam said how there’s black magic, which is the one you do with demons, and there’s white magic, which is the one Alakazam and other magicians do, and then there’s dirty magic, which is the one politicians do.

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My favourite poem, not that I read much, is by the Nicaraguan poetess Michele Najlis. I have it in Spanish and English. Because I can’t do the  Spanish accents on the puter, here is the English translation.

WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN

We are the children of the sun are we,

Who write in the shadows of the evening,

Who walk in the dark of the night

Who arise in the light of the dawn,

Who go barefoot in the womb of the world,

Who sow the field,

Who grow the daily bread,

Who know the language of the wind,

Who are learning to fly on a bird’s wing.

We are the people whose blood is of lagoons,

Whose bodies simmer with volcanoes,

Who see the rain fall on parched land

And on tired faces.

We are those who live the intensity of a look,

who plough the furrows of the old

who bring the bones to bloom,

who consecrate bread in our own flesh,

who break chains and discover the way.

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6.30 in the morning, a quiet english autumn morning.

Autumn!

The tor is covered by mist.

I am lucky. At this moment I have nothing to worry about and am at peace. I wonder  how many people across this world are waking up to tranquillity. A privilege. And if my blog is a little short, who cares?