Wednesday 14 December 2011

Monday 12 December 2011

Oh, Fickle Child

Looking back through my folder of work, which was accumulating like unswept dust, I found this. Oh how things change. But I'm glad I'm never to return to the way things were. My maxim is to never wish you could go back to a previous chapter in your life, because you don't know how good the next one will be.

"This is me. I live at the bottom end of a cul-de-sac in England, where nothing ever happens. Well, there was a burst water main once so a big digger had to come and eat the road; the bin men come sometimes too. But apart from that you could hear a pin drop here. What are we trying to be? We are all so tiny and so very self-contained, just little ants going back and forth with bits of leaf. Sometimes I swear I pass myself going home when I'm leaving.

This is constant, never changing. John will always be there in the window waving (apart from at 6pm, which is when he has his head down because he's having his tea) and there will always be a cat or two wandering around - Monty likes to sit on Ian's front lawn. Oh the monotony! And from this little semi-detached house I am living and writing, existing and getting HIGH and I guess that I'm wondering whether I can get my name in lights somewhere outside of SANDYGATE AVENUE, SHREWSBURY.

You never know. Charles Darwin came from here. He changed a lot of minds and went on some pretty amazing adventures. I need to find my own Beagle and set sail before I fade away into routine and (capitalist) society.

(surprising truths spring forth from the mushroom)."



And that was that, that comparatively minuscule nugget of time in which I almost believed things really would never change. But they did. And how they changed. Now I live in a different boring place, I see different boring people and different nice people. But the biggest, the best and the change I am most grateful for - now I am in love and someone is in love with me. It eases the boredom but not only that, it makes me stronger, makes me feel that all this boredom while I'm away from him is not a waste of time. It gives me purpose, more purpose than I've ever had before, because I know that what waits for me when I get this degree and leave this place forever... my life will not be boring any more.

Sunday 11 December 2011

Gormandising Gallophil

I cannot submit this 'poem' without my many thanks to my wonderful woman PHOEBE PATIENCE. We sat down one day last year or the year before, we 'erbalists two with my copy of Walker's Rhyming Dictionary from 1924... yes... 1924!! And we came up with this beauty!

Rife with inquisitiveness
I hunted the positiveness
I bedabbled myself with gabble
With many a fribble and hardly a quibble
I swam in the tallow, as knobbly as a mallow
It was vivific.
I rubbed it in my omnifadge.
We were junketing, spunk on the carpeting.

P.S. It's not as dirty as it sounds. Which in my opinion, makes it better :)

I was going to leave this blog entry in my drafts as tonight I've been producing many and storing them up ready to drip them through but I think I might be impatient enough to let this one go tonight, as I did laugh very loudly when I reread the lost old gem. Phoebe Patience, I miss you so much.

I Do Not Worship, I Become Engulfed

"And so the question arose in the philosophy class, a row of eager, intelligent eyes looked at me and waited for my answer, but I was not sure whether they would comprehend my deepest of musings born from routine sobriety and the swirling patterns of enlightening intoxication.

"What do you believe?" said philosophy teacher Chris, in reference to the clichéd labels which he had scrawled up on the board so as to make a tally chart - atheist, theist, agnostic, spiritual or other.

Well I am certainly not a theist; the classical concept of God sickens me. Agnosticism is a cop-out waste of time and I dislike the perceived hopelessness of atheism, it it true or imagined. I am not fond of the label 'spiritual' as it too portrays wholly directionless and badly thought out arguments.

What is 'other'? I must be shoe-horned into this uncouth and discomforting category.

For my religion, if you wish to call it that, is a special unique thing, a distant cousin of the concepts of Brahman and pantheism without the theism. I do not worship, I become engulfed. I do not bow down, I become but a strand in Gaia's complex web. I do not pray, I know there is no one listening if I talk in my head, or even if I scream.

"Catching feathers, raising tadpoles, peeing in fields..." I idly listed disjointed features of such a belief.

Because my religion is everything. Literally every single little thing - existence on such a grand scale as a blue whale, which has a heart the size of a Corsa and a gullet wide enough to swim down, all the way down to the microscopic world that no one ever sees. Blood and bones but also memories, wishes, hopes and fears. Atrocities and triumphs of love and peace. Movement and stillness, blackness and white.



All of these things have a purpose in themselves and are already divine without having to deal with painful truths like the Inconsistent Triad. In a world of contingency, there are no unmoved movers, and mystery is a part of The Everything as well. Must one need a purpose outside space and time for emotion and achievement, regardless of Maya's illusion? It feels real.


But still, one must never get in too deep. These are, as I say, simply musings, a reflection on the intense bombardment upon my senses that is known by many names. I call it Life and I think it is amazing. It must never be forgotten, however, to stop and breathe and play your cards right.

After all... it's just a ride."











I wrote this when I was seventeen at the height of my philosophical education and to be honest, haven't been very philosophical since. Perhaps I should write something a little more fresh, a little less psilocybin-y.   

Questions

Do hairless animals... tan? Like naked mole rats and hairless cats and those pathetic little dogs that only have hair on their faces? What's the melanin dealio with these little guys?

And what about jellyfish? They have no brains and are something silly like 98% water... what else are they made of? Do they feel pain? And more importantly... is there a jellyfish religion?









And does a fly caught in a spider's web have the capacity to experience dread? Cause I'd be shitting myself if I'm honest.















Jean, A Monologue

A couple of years ago I went a did a few days work experience in a nursing home, which was a real eye-opening experience! I met many people there, sadly unable to get much sense out of any of them. But there was one. This one woman, Jean, was fantastic and entertaining. It was so sad that she was there, especially as she seemed to have her faculties together even more than me myself. I wrote a monologue in order to honour her. Many of the lines included in it are ones which actually came directly from her, speaking in her darkly humorous manner. Anyway, here it is:




Jean

Three girls came to visit us the other day. It was Stacey, I think. And Sam – but not short for Samuel – Sam for Samantha no less! And Tootsie. Yes… No! Not Tootsie – Lottie. I just keep on making that damned mistake. She must think I’m mad. But I’m not. I tried to make that quite apparent to her; the fact that half the folk in here hardly know what’s going on. Take the rabbits for example – they’re both male, but they don’t act like it, if you know what I mean. They’re out there in the courtyard all day and they get closer and closer to each other until they’re… well you know. And one of the old dears’ll say to me – ‘what are they doing Jean?’ – and I say ‘they’re only playing love.’ But I know they’re not. I know what they’re doing really. But I mustn’t say – they have this renewed innocence and who am I to ruin it? They are children again.
So anyway. Two of ‘em came served me some tea and toast. I didn’t finish the corner, despite the fact there was a bit of marmalade left. I never can manage the last corner. They gave Ted some toast as well. They tried to talk to him (bless ‘em) but they were too quiet and he didn’t understand; he’s very deaf you see. A hundred in June. And I told them: ‘you’ll have to speak up. He’s a hundred in June.’ They nodded and spoke up a little but he still didn’t hear. They gave up in the end. Can’t blame them though – Ted can be hard work sometimes but he’s bound to be isn’t he. Well you would be if you were ninety nine.

Ninety nine!

So I started telling them about the home – Stacey and Tootsie. There’s Mrs. Francis, she’s a sad one. Pretty much blind and deaf, can’t even tell if someone’s walked into the room. Must be lonely. She must be very lonely. And I told them about Gwyneth. She’s a real sweetheart but you can’t get much sense out of her. Shame – she used to be a matron in the hospital. She used to be way up at the top: in charge. But you’ve got to get used to the fact that things change. If they didn’t, you’d never get anywhere. I told them about Mark. He’s a lovely one. All the ladies want his attention.
‘Where’s Mark? Bring me Mark! I want to see Mark!’
Mark works in the home – he’s not a resident. He’s such a sweetie – swings the same way as the rabbits but a sweetie nonetheless.

The next time I saw Lottie I was waiting for my paper. Takes bloomin’ hours for them to get round to bringing them to us. Sometimes I can sit here on this very chair, my chair, and I can see them all bundled up sitting on the doorstep. Just sitting there, out in the rain even sometimes even, waiting to be read but ignored and forgotten.

But we mustn’t complain. I said to her what I just said to you. We mustn’t complain, because the nurses are busy working in the rooms upstairs. What’s it to them if the papers are taken round a couple of hours late? We mustn’t complain, because this is a nice home here we are happy that we get papers at all, two hours late or otherwise. We mustn’t complain, because here we’ll get found if we fall over.
Lottie, the one with all that hair, asked about me. Why me? I’m certainly not the most interesting subject in this place. I told her about my stroke, so she knew exactly why I was there. I said that the other day I had a fall. Well, I told her, I didn’t actually fall as it were… but I sort of… crumpled. I said picture a pile of ash blowing down in a light breeze and that’s what it looked like.        
I laughed; she didn’t.

But you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? The alternative does no good at all. So I laugh and laugh and laugh. Laugh at the newspapers; laugh at the coffee which is always too weak. And I told the girls that laughter is the best medicine, although truthfully I seldom believe it. ‘Mrs. Jones is suffering from arthritis, what do you suggest doctor?’ ‘Laughter, and plenty of it!’ ‘Mr. Johnson’s got a broken rib, what do you suggest doctor?’ ‘Laughter, and plenty of it!’ I didn’t tell the girls – surely they ought to work it out for themselves – sometimes laughter is senseless. But where’s the use in sense nowadays? It gets you nowhere. What with poor old Sylvia thinking she’s still pregnant after sixty years, and Mr. Bazely lying half dead his bed all day, and that Jeremy bleeding Kyle on every television in this damned place…
But still I mustn’t say this to the girls. ‘Yes girls,’ I said. ‘Yes girls it’s wonderful here. You get your toast brought to you; you can watch television as much as you want. And there’s as many large print romance novels as you could ever read.’

And I mustn’t say these things to myself either – I must continue to accept that this really is the best of all possible lives for me. But by God, it’s hard. When you’re young you always pray you were older, but when you get there you realise the truth.

Lottie FINALLY Figures Out How To Put Stuff On Youtube!

I made a terrible video to go along with the Badgers poem this evening :) And heeeeeeeere it is........



Oh and while I was at it I made this hunk of junk too.....


My sincerest apologies.... thankyou and goodnight!

Saturday 10 December 2011

Badgers

This is a very personal poem of mine describing a vision of a scene in the future. It hasn't happened yet, but it will :)
I can never be sure about anything except this one vision I've had all my life. I've found the person who fits into the vision and in a few years (after I've got out of this boring town) we can make it a reality.

Arising cross the dew soaked, spidered grasses
Sunlight quartered, sliced through oak;
Coarse muddied mane grasped in still-tiny fingers,
Soft hands on horseback, on thigh and on heart.
Running behind in April harmony,
Claws and paws and your leather crack boots
And crooked smile and opal eyes and sturdy steps;
Scattering the rainbow through the mist
Until, on the other side
It is calm and pure; white again.

Ten feet tease the ground, two avoid.
Break for sandwiches; four more join.







I am not a painter else I would paint, not a sketcher else I would sketch. But I can bend a word around the page and around the paintings and sketches I have in my head. And this is my go at it.

Friday 9 December 2011

In Charge


This is my most recently submitted poem, although it is a reincarnation of one I wrote a few years ago. This edited and smushed up version focuses on the change we must all go through if we wish to succeed - the strength that we must learn to master and handle, and the power that comes with this strength.
It's important to remember that sometimes you will be the mouse hiding under the leaves, but one day you can be the falcon if you set your mind to it. But if you become the falcon, remember the mice are terrified of you. Be gentle. Your talons are sharp.


I’m a wounded fox, hunting,
I’m the green frog’s whisper,
I’m the suffering log upon the fire
Till I surrender and become the hungry flame.
I’m the terrified mouse beneath the leaves
Until I learn to be the falcon’s wing
And her steady yellow eye.

I will be the ink, guided and bent
Until I find the power to become the pen;
And one day, the hand, gently grasping and creating
Or mapping the direction I ought to face.

I’m the bedtime story
Until I learn to be the teller.
I’m the child who hears it
Until I learn to be the voice.