The rain is handy, sometimes. When all your tears are spent, the sky does the crying for you.
I get so exhausted, pretending to be jolly and happy, funny and robust. The Me inside is crumbling but there is no one i can refer this to. People won't love the energy-sapping, maudlin, heavy gravity that I feel, so I switch it off. I have no right to burden them with it. Those who love me know of my sadness, but I disguise the extent of it. I'm never being fully myself though.
It feels wrong to talk about loneliness when you have people who love you, but I feel lonely in my suffering. The masks I put on are the classic clown: I make people laugh, smile, whoop with glee at my foolishness, but inside I tear my heart to shreds. Sometimes it feels like no one will ever know the real me, because I hide the hard parts. Over time I have learnt to do this masterfully. I reduce myself by putting other people first but bitter experience makes me aware that so-called "negativity" or even honesty sends people away in droves. So I dance, naked and ludicrous for their entertainment when I long for them to touch me, hold me.
The lure of chronic illness is to lose yourself in the illness and forget yourself. Or give up, commit psychic suicide. I find it hard to think of myself as well. From the point of view of total exhaustion, the lives of well people seem far too busy, far too hectic, far too removed from the peace I have to have. It seems unimaginable that that level of involvement in life will ever be mine again. Thus it seems that - for all intents and purposes - my life is over. This causes a great pain when everyone around you is fulfilling their dreams.
Of course, this is only some of the time. I let depressions be, watch them come and go, learn from them, there is no fight back. But the wells of sadness seem to tap deeper and deeper over time. And this is confounded by the fact that I don't talk about them. The loneliness and isolation feels greater each time, because I am travelling this journey alone. The distance between me and them grows and grows as I hide myself in my masquerade.
Could it be that I am being over-cautious? Maybe one day someone will be able to love the sad me too, maybe they already do and I am not secure enough to realise. Until I find this, I refuse to let my mask slip.
Goddamnit rain, why are you being so uselessly half-arsed? I want to be drenched!
A conversation with God 3
Me: So, if you don't exist, how about the devil?
God: If the devil did exist, he'd be crying into his hankie every night about how everybody blamed everything on him! He's used for everything that goes wrong in humankind. Consider "The devil makes work for idle hands".
Me: "Arbeit macht frei"?
God: Exactly!
God: If the devil did exist, he'd be crying into his hankie every night about how everybody blamed everything on him! He's used for everything that goes wrong in humankind. Consider "The devil makes work for idle hands".
Me: "Arbeit macht frei"?
God: Exactly!
Home-schooling
I recently read (apparently a bible for 1980's aspirational pedagogues, although you wouldn't have guessed) a book called "How Children Fail" by John Holt. More than any "home-schooling" book I have read - this was set within "good, private schools" in 1950's wealthy America- this has made me realise I am totally doing the right thing by home-educating my daughter.
The main points which emerge from the book as I read it, are that children "play the game of school", are smart, little psychologists, are thoroughly miserable and unnatural for the main part at school, and see learning as a chore.
Learning should not be regarded as a chore! Everything there is to learn is absolutely fascinating. But when there are tests to pass, intelligence to prove, the whole of education becomes dry and pointless. Most people discover their "talents" and their "strengths" by how enlightening and special a teacher is. But every teacher should be enlightening and special and have a relationship with every child. John Holt points out that the main problem in schools is not class sizes, but school sizes. ie that it is less possible for a teacher to understand the individual complexities of each child if the school is enormous.
I do not have a problem with teachers, far from it. They are put under the most enormous pressures, expected to work miracles, expected to help and guide children socially and emotionally - but not get too close, teach them everything that is within inside of them in order to fulfill the task. Of course, this is not possible. The most they can do is to help the children fulfill the task so that they are not exposed as a "failing" teacher, "failing" school, etc. The system is a system of systems and not of individuals. Highly motivated, bright, secure children may emerge seemingly victorious. But what is this victory?
I loved exams when I was at school. Mainly because I only had to listen in lessons and watch everyone else work their socks off and I would still get better grades. It was utterly a self-serving, arrogant, narcisstic feeling. I did well at school without ever trying. But this is a hollow victory. I learnt, therefore, pretty much nothing that I couldn't have learnt from reading a few books or watching documentaries. The idea of the much more coursework based scoring which occurs nowadays throws me into a panic. What? I would have actually had to do some work! And yet, I still retain much of the information I learned in snippets from sometimes attending lessons. Most people in the pub talk about anything but what they have learnt, or else it is very small knowledge and yet I am still fascinated by bigger thoughts.
I never felt that school presented me with a challenge. I attended the best (grammar) school in the area. For the last 4 years of it I developed reading-blindness. I never read a book. I even took this so far that I had to make up a plot/book/author/publisher to write a book review for my GCSE. I think it was related to puberty. But how could I succeed at school with an inability to read if I wasn't being under-challenged? I don't mean to expouse my own intelligence, rather the lack of it. I was just the perfect model for the pedagogical structure that was in place. I know far more intelligent people than me who failed all their exams.
Back to my daughter. She is not "the easiest child", other people say. She has happiness, self-assuredness, buoyancy, confidence, a keeness to express her emotions and - a by-product of all this - extreme bossiness and forth-rightness. If I put her into a school setting, to begin with she would probably "be naughty" all the time. Her happiness would all but disappear. Her confidence would be torn to shreds. She would cease to want to express her emotions as keenly. She would not conform, so she would struggle. Maybe it's my fault, that I have raised her this way, maybe I have made mistakes. Every child is an experiment in parenting, so I will hold my hands up that I have not produced the "perfect specimen". But I can't watch her crumble, reduce herself for so little.
And that before we even start with the anti-intellectualism that is so abundant in the school-system. She is five. We recently started a project on "endangered animals" as a way to start using research techniques, encourage reading, writing, drawing, to express emotions through writing etc. I thought it best to use topics that were close to her interests to enthuse her. And i was correct in thinking that. In 3 days she knows everything there is to know about endangered animals (still a work in progress). The fact that she cares about this subject means that a reticence/under-enthusiastic attitude is completely absent. I looked to the web for resources. Most were pitched far too high for her. Not in terms of intelligence, but understanding of the world, motor skills, reading, concentration: things which progress wth age. It would appear that teaching about endangered species is something that you have to be 9-11 to really have a handle on.
But what if every child was allowed to do school projects on the things that they found most interesting? Would not their world open up, their minds work overtime, their hearts feel happy and content?
NO! There has to be a prescribed order of what it is that we should know. This is bull-shit. I had no interest in physics until I realised (for myself) that it was pretty important. "Life-long learning" as it is sold in policy, is a nonsense. The only life-long learning comes from a desire for knowledge. If school knocks this out of you, what the hell is the point of school?
The main points which emerge from the book as I read it, are that children "play the game of school", are smart, little psychologists, are thoroughly miserable and unnatural for the main part at school, and see learning as a chore.
Learning should not be regarded as a chore! Everything there is to learn is absolutely fascinating. But when there are tests to pass, intelligence to prove, the whole of education becomes dry and pointless. Most people discover their "talents" and their "strengths" by how enlightening and special a teacher is. But every teacher should be enlightening and special and have a relationship with every child. John Holt points out that the main problem in schools is not class sizes, but school sizes. ie that it is less possible for a teacher to understand the individual complexities of each child if the school is enormous.
I do not have a problem with teachers, far from it. They are put under the most enormous pressures, expected to work miracles, expected to help and guide children socially and emotionally - but not get too close, teach them everything that is within inside of them in order to fulfill the task. Of course, this is not possible. The most they can do is to help the children fulfill the task so that they are not exposed as a "failing" teacher, "failing" school, etc. The system is a system of systems and not of individuals. Highly motivated, bright, secure children may emerge seemingly victorious. But what is this victory?
I loved exams when I was at school. Mainly because I only had to listen in lessons and watch everyone else work their socks off and I would still get better grades. It was utterly a self-serving, arrogant, narcisstic feeling. I did well at school without ever trying. But this is a hollow victory. I learnt, therefore, pretty much nothing that I couldn't have learnt from reading a few books or watching documentaries. The idea of the much more coursework based scoring which occurs nowadays throws me into a panic. What? I would have actually had to do some work! And yet, I still retain much of the information I learned in snippets from sometimes attending lessons. Most people in the pub talk about anything but what they have learnt, or else it is very small knowledge and yet I am still fascinated by bigger thoughts.
I never felt that school presented me with a challenge. I attended the best (grammar) school in the area. For the last 4 years of it I developed reading-blindness. I never read a book. I even took this so far that I had to make up a plot/book/author/publisher to write a book review for my GCSE. I think it was related to puberty. But how could I succeed at school with an inability to read if I wasn't being under-challenged? I don't mean to expouse my own intelligence, rather the lack of it. I was just the perfect model for the pedagogical structure that was in place. I know far more intelligent people than me who failed all their exams.
Back to my daughter. She is not "the easiest child", other people say. She has happiness, self-assuredness, buoyancy, confidence, a keeness to express her emotions and - a by-product of all this - extreme bossiness and forth-rightness. If I put her into a school setting, to begin with she would probably "be naughty" all the time. Her happiness would all but disappear. Her confidence would be torn to shreds. She would cease to want to express her emotions as keenly. She would not conform, so she would struggle. Maybe it's my fault, that I have raised her this way, maybe I have made mistakes. Every child is an experiment in parenting, so I will hold my hands up that I have not produced the "perfect specimen". But I can't watch her crumble, reduce herself for so little.
And that before we even start with the anti-intellectualism that is so abundant in the school-system. She is five. We recently started a project on "endangered animals" as a way to start using research techniques, encourage reading, writing, drawing, to express emotions through writing etc. I thought it best to use topics that were close to her interests to enthuse her. And i was correct in thinking that. In 3 days she knows everything there is to know about endangered animals (still a work in progress). The fact that she cares about this subject means that a reticence/under-enthusiastic attitude is completely absent. I looked to the web for resources. Most were pitched far too high for her. Not in terms of intelligence, but understanding of the world, motor skills, reading, concentration: things which progress wth age. It would appear that teaching about endangered species is something that you have to be 9-11 to really have a handle on.
But what if every child was allowed to do school projects on the things that they found most interesting? Would not their world open up, their minds work overtime, their hearts feel happy and content?
NO! There has to be a prescribed order of what it is that we should know. This is bull-shit. I had no interest in physics until I realised (for myself) that it was pretty important. "Life-long learning" as it is sold in policy, is a nonsense. The only life-long learning comes from a desire for knowledge. If school knocks this out of you, what the hell is the point of school?
Freedom
I have had my mother's phone line from her B&B directed to me this week. Today, I received a phone call from the police which puzzled me. Apparently, a woman has gone missing. "The only clue they have about her whereabouts they have" is a list of B&Bs in the area that she had made. They are terribly concerned for her safety. But why? Maybe she is escaping something. Maybe she is escaping herself, an abuser, the people around her, the negative psychiatric help she is receiving, whatever. I don't know. All I know is the desire to escape. I worry less for the woman's safety if she has made plans for escape than if she is found and is put back in hell. Of course this is my own imagining. But if she is looking for places to stay, she isn't that irresponsible with herself.
But this makes me think. It is quite impossible to disappear. CCTV, police tenacity, helplines, the prospect of ID cards etc all take away part of our freedom. If one is unhappy with one's tribe, one should be free to start afresh with another tribe or alone in the wilderness. But we are not allowed to without repercussions and guilt.
I tried disappearing myself, once. I ran off to live in the forest. I had this romantic fantasy of reappearing to the world months later, nut brown, toned and slim, in an unshakable trance that connected me to nature, to wildlife. Unfortunately, the dark and the mist descended at the same time. This was too frightening; to lose sight and be completely alone when I was so used to people. All I saw was a light shining from afar. I followed it and was lucky enough to catch the last bus home. I see this as my biggest failing: that I allowed my fear to get in the way of my needs; that I failed to fulfill my urge to slip away and returned to an unhappy life where I learned nothing but deeper sorrow.
But what if I the mist had not fallen? What would have happened? The people who saw me off to my adventure would have been less afraid for me than the mother on the end of an unanswered telephone.Eventually, there would have been a convulted search which probably would have resulted in my "rescue". But all I wanted to do was escape. Why would I not be allowed to?
The prospect of ID cards sent me into a panic. The infringement of civil liberties for me was all about the inability to escape, from life, from society, if you needed to. I think that is a perfect human right. Assylum seekers are a tragic example of our refusal to allow this. People survive horrors, they are judged by bureaucrats on whether their horrors are great enough to start afresh, albeit degraded. But it's completely contrary to everything that we should be.
We are a sick society that believes more in states than in peoples. If people ruled the world, rather than states, we'd be free. We submit to the laws of our countries, but many make no sense at all: they are not bound by a general human code. For me, this code is about not hurting people (except when confronted by the same violation yourself) and about helping others, about leaving the world as clean as the day you were born. What in that prescribes borders, submission, patriotism, greed, etc? We feed on statistics as if these are important. If I can feed myself, clothe myself, educate myself, breathe, I won't deny anyone anything. But this is not the society I have been raised in. It is a society of control.
The Domesday Book, of course, was the start of it all. The mediaeval king wanting to know what the inhabitants of the land he had invaded were all about. Because with that information, he could create a feudal system where he had ultimate power. Feudalism is not a thing of the past. It is as present now as it was then, only now the feudal lords have absolute control. We have submitted so deeply, we cannot begin to claw our way back, except by revolution. Our ancestors have bestowed upon us an ever-increasing serfdom, and we must try with all our mights to prevent this from becoming even deeper entrenched.
We are led to believe that with all leisure-time we are afforded, the fact that we are largely out of the fields/mines/factories that we are freer than we have ever been. But we are as enslaved as ever. For in that leisure time we fill ourselves with their thoughts, their ideologies, their prescriptions. We rarely choose that time to be absolutely free. Even the meditators, the yoga-heads, follow a regime or subscribe to an ideology. We are told what to think and then they tell us that others are brain-washed. We are all brain-washed. No man is resilient enough to completely resist every tug, every pull to society's whim. Occasionally, on the streets, you will find a homeless man with nothing but his dignity who is wonderfully free.
"Ain't freedom just a matter of opinion?" A line from a Terry Callier song. True enough. The freer see themselves as freer than less free. But nobody is free. We shall never be free unless society either crumbles or allows itself to be entirely open to whatever we as each individual is. And if we are allowed to escape. Which will be the end of our notion of society.
But this makes me think. It is quite impossible to disappear. CCTV, police tenacity, helplines, the prospect of ID cards etc all take away part of our freedom. If one is unhappy with one's tribe, one should be free to start afresh with another tribe or alone in the wilderness. But we are not allowed to without repercussions and guilt.
I tried disappearing myself, once. I ran off to live in the forest. I had this romantic fantasy of reappearing to the world months later, nut brown, toned and slim, in an unshakable trance that connected me to nature, to wildlife. Unfortunately, the dark and the mist descended at the same time. This was too frightening; to lose sight and be completely alone when I was so used to people. All I saw was a light shining from afar. I followed it and was lucky enough to catch the last bus home. I see this as my biggest failing: that I allowed my fear to get in the way of my needs; that I failed to fulfill my urge to slip away and returned to an unhappy life where I learned nothing but deeper sorrow.
But what if I the mist had not fallen? What would have happened? The people who saw me off to my adventure would have been less afraid for me than the mother on the end of an unanswered telephone.Eventually, there would have been a convulted search which probably would have resulted in my "rescue". But all I wanted to do was escape. Why would I not be allowed to?
The prospect of ID cards sent me into a panic. The infringement of civil liberties for me was all about the inability to escape, from life, from society, if you needed to. I think that is a perfect human right. Assylum seekers are a tragic example of our refusal to allow this. People survive horrors, they are judged by bureaucrats on whether their horrors are great enough to start afresh, albeit degraded. But it's completely contrary to everything that we should be.
We are a sick society that believes more in states than in peoples. If people ruled the world, rather than states, we'd be free. We submit to the laws of our countries, but many make no sense at all: they are not bound by a general human code. For me, this code is about not hurting people (except when confronted by the same violation yourself) and about helping others, about leaving the world as clean as the day you were born. What in that prescribes borders, submission, patriotism, greed, etc? We feed on statistics as if these are important. If I can feed myself, clothe myself, educate myself, breathe, I won't deny anyone anything. But this is not the society I have been raised in. It is a society of control.
The Domesday Book, of course, was the start of it all. The mediaeval king wanting to know what the inhabitants of the land he had invaded were all about. Because with that information, he could create a feudal system where he had ultimate power. Feudalism is not a thing of the past. It is as present now as it was then, only now the feudal lords have absolute control. We have submitted so deeply, we cannot begin to claw our way back, except by revolution. Our ancestors have bestowed upon us an ever-increasing serfdom, and we must try with all our mights to prevent this from becoming even deeper entrenched.
We are led to believe that with all leisure-time we are afforded, the fact that we are largely out of the fields/mines/factories that we are freer than we have ever been. But we are as enslaved as ever. For in that leisure time we fill ourselves with their thoughts, their ideologies, their prescriptions. We rarely choose that time to be absolutely free. Even the meditators, the yoga-heads, follow a regime or subscribe to an ideology. We are told what to think and then they tell us that others are brain-washed. We are all brain-washed. No man is resilient enough to completely resist every tug, every pull to society's whim. Occasionally, on the streets, you will find a homeless man with nothing but his dignity who is wonderfully free.
"Ain't freedom just a matter of opinion?" A line from a Terry Callier song. True enough. The freer see themselves as freer than less free. But nobody is free. We shall never be free unless society either crumbles or allows itself to be entirely open to whatever we as each individual is. And if we are allowed to escape. Which will be the end of our notion of society.
A Conversation With God 2
(I'm still an atheist)
Me: I imagined you'd have more compassion.
God: You imagined everything.
Me: I imagined you'd have more compassion.
God: You imagined everything.
Manifestation Phobias
The above term was coined by my good friend R. She was relating it to her agoraphobia; i.e. that she is afraid to be in the world because it would mean that she was manifest, that she entirely existed. This is the most terrifying thing. To deny the fact of your existence is easier than accepting it.
Perhaps by finally starting a blog, I am throwing myself out of the metaphorical plane. Since the conversation with R, I realise that in so many ways - different from her - I too have a manifestation phobia.
Fear stalks us all. We react in different ways. The "why" of my failings, is entirely bound up in fear. I am afraid to do in case I am misrepresented by that act. I am afraid to try because failure rebounds with a herculean force. I am afraid to be myself in case I am disliked. I am afraid to be because life is fragile and tenuous and I may just disappear.
So ultimately I avoid everything that may require me to reveal myself and languish in the fall-out. A painted face and a character fail me; I know in my heart I cannot be anything well that I do not fully subscribe to. I am not a perfectionist, and I know that I cannot submit for the world anything that is not perfect, so I can't submit anything. I watch myself bristle with tension and watch others react to that tension and find myself rejected. I pretend I know the reason for that rejection - the tension I project - but I also know it is a pretense and the reason is me.
I used to be much better at doing and much worse at living. I used to ricochet from lover to lover, pub to pub, drunken hysteria to drunken hysteria. This was a time when I cared nothing what people thought of me. I was prolific. I still am prolific, but now I am prolific for myself only and back then I offered it up to the world.
Perhaps age sinks you into a pit of fear. Your 20s are for exploration, your 30s are for knowing yourself and deciding what to do with that knowledge. If exploration and knowledge seed you in a negative reality, you can revolve and revolve in that reality for an eternity and go nowhere. I am not afraid of anything rationally. Irrationally, I am afraid of everything. I care and worry that the pavement will give way as i walk upon it. I care and worry that the people who work in the supermarket will think ill of me. I care and worry about the expressions of people as I walk down the street. How can i give anything to the world when I am confounded with these ludicrous emotions?
And why would I? Why offer anything but smiles to people who seem out-of-sorts? Why offer anything but money to people who have none? This world is very ill. By putting up my creations for examination, I can't help 1 person, I can't help 10s, I can't help 100's, I can't help 1000's. I am entirely useless. I have no desire to churn the corporate cream: I would rather languish in no-man's land than be uselessly profitable to someone else.
I justify my existence - and my belief in my existence is very tenuous (I'm not sure i haven't slipped between the cracks) - by the fact that one day I may change 1 person, and that person may possess greater potency than I. Otherwise, I would surrender to the pavement and give up.
Perhaps by finally starting a blog, I am throwing myself out of the metaphorical plane. Since the conversation with R, I realise that in so many ways - different from her - I too have a manifestation phobia.
Fear stalks us all. We react in different ways. The "why" of my failings, is entirely bound up in fear. I am afraid to do in case I am misrepresented by that act. I am afraid to try because failure rebounds with a herculean force. I am afraid to be myself in case I am disliked. I am afraid to be because life is fragile and tenuous and I may just disappear.
So ultimately I avoid everything that may require me to reveal myself and languish in the fall-out. A painted face and a character fail me; I know in my heart I cannot be anything well that I do not fully subscribe to. I am not a perfectionist, and I know that I cannot submit for the world anything that is not perfect, so I can't submit anything. I watch myself bristle with tension and watch others react to that tension and find myself rejected. I pretend I know the reason for that rejection - the tension I project - but I also know it is a pretense and the reason is me.
I used to be much better at doing and much worse at living. I used to ricochet from lover to lover, pub to pub, drunken hysteria to drunken hysteria. This was a time when I cared nothing what people thought of me. I was prolific. I still am prolific, but now I am prolific for myself only and back then I offered it up to the world.
Perhaps age sinks you into a pit of fear. Your 20s are for exploration, your 30s are for knowing yourself and deciding what to do with that knowledge. If exploration and knowledge seed you in a negative reality, you can revolve and revolve in that reality for an eternity and go nowhere. I am not afraid of anything rationally. Irrationally, I am afraid of everything. I care and worry that the pavement will give way as i walk upon it. I care and worry that the people who work in the supermarket will think ill of me. I care and worry about the expressions of people as I walk down the street. How can i give anything to the world when I am confounded with these ludicrous emotions?
And why would I? Why offer anything but smiles to people who seem out-of-sorts? Why offer anything but money to people who have none? This world is very ill. By putting up my creations for examination, I can't help 1 person, I can't help 10s, I can't help 100's, I can't help 1000's. I am entirely useless. I have no desire to churn the corporate cream: I would rather languish in no-man's land than be uselessly profitable to someone else.
I justify my existence - and my belief in my existence is very tenuous (I'm not sure i haven't slipped between the cracks) - by the fact that one day I may change 1 person, and that person may possess greater potency than I. Otherwise, I would surrender to the pavement and give up.
A conversation with god
(i'm an atheist.)
Me: My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
God: Shut up and get on with it.
Me: My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
God: Shut up and get on with it.