oneward and upward

Okay. RIght. Testing, testing. Hope this is working.

It is.

Right.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this whole One and Other thing. I’ve done my smart thinking now, I’m over that. I’ve reasoned out things and I think I’m going to be okay. Just going to get up there, pose my ideas and then breathe it all in.

Been having a few emotional tantrums recently – my heart all a flutter.. ex-cetera … It all comes from me putting too much stock in this thing.

The truth is, I don’t need to get it ‘right’ or do anything to ‘please’ anyone. I’m smarter than needing to take my level from other people’s figures.

I wrote a little piece last night for my novel – “Feel bitter, feel like you want to hit me; but don’t deny the fact we made each other pretty happy. In the time we had.”

That’s what all this means, it is getting up there and just saying ‘This is me. What are you?

I am the art that can ask questions of itself, as much as of the observer. Now that is a revolution!

This morning I got a call from a mental health team member and they have invited me over to get checked over on Wednesday. I’m going to go along and tell them everything. I will write a little something for them first. A little history maybe. Something to explain better than I might be able to.

Oneward and upwards with things.

Filed under: Competition, Day-to-day, Depression, Existence, Family, Friends, Future, Happy, Re-Genesis, Reality, Sad, Training, about me, anxiety, connection, genius, genus, hopes, influences, news, novel, other people's lives, sermon, solitary, writing, writing the novel , 4th plinth, art, desire for change, escape, greet, Happy, heart, idea, london, mental health, novel, one and other, oneandother, quest, questions, revolution, truth, twitter, writing

one and other anyone?

I’m going up on The Fourth Plinth for One and Other (oneandother.co.uk)

This is my official coming out.

I’m going to get the train down on the Morning of October 3rd and go up at 7pm till 8pm. It will be night time and I’ll be lit up.

I’ll be couchsurfing whilst I’m down there.

I’m yet to get confirmed officially by the charity that I want to go and support, but that looks set.

Once it is done, I have a tent and a bit of stuff ready for my walk back.

Yes, my ‘walk’ back from London. To survive by my wits.

I have decided to walk along from London to Oxford and then up the Welsh border back to The Wirral and then finish in Liverpool.

I can’t wait.

Other than that.

I get my new glasses on Thursday. I can’t wait because they are going to make me look sexy. I need the confidence boost.

I’m loving the fact that I’m meeting more people in Liverpool at the moment.

Filed under: Competition, Day-to-day, Family, Future, Happy, Reality, Travel, Youth, about me, hopes, solitary , 4th plinth, art, desire for change, one and other, oneandother, walking

such blissful experience

So where have I been? what have I been doing? I know you are all ears to hear. I’ll reveal all.

For the last few days I’ve been having a wicked time living in Liverpool with Nightingale. Three days of wandering by myself, visiting museums and art galleries and shopping. Only bettered by evenings of film and fun with Nightingale herself, home from work. Not merely this but we also managed to squeeze in a takeaway and a french resturant and i’ve readied each to the nostalgic banks of my brainpan.

Arriving back from said few days pretty early Friday morning and the tide is in just the right place for a sail. Again I’ve the honour of steering her, while my father and his friends recline supine with only the burden of watching the distant shore in all its beauty, give way to an ever widening league of calm water.

We raced another yacht and soundly thrashed them even with their attempt to shorten the distance against our stern in a shameful attempt to make us turn off and abandon the engagement.

Afterwards was the ceremonial drinking session, my mother joining us for this particular section of the sailing lifestyle. And there we stayed until the sun dipped itself into the sea behind us and the heady air lessened its sticky grip to the call of a soothing breeze.

There is no way I cannot romantisise such blissful experience, there is no shame in showing how truely blessed you feel to have such opportunity.

This morning saw a small brick sail through the window of my idealised world though. A man, on seeing that I did not partake of communion with the rest of the flock, decsended and started to preach to me. His words laced with the smugness of a self-satisfied mind, I was forced to smell his stale breath as well as to listen to his sermon.

I told him straight. “I have no faith and do not feel myself lacking.” Except that I do feel a lack, just not the lack of a god. It is a god-shaped hole, as I have always commented, but only in that sense of it being a borderless gap. Only in the sense that nothing is large enough, it seems, to fill it.

Regardless, I carried on. “I’m very moved that you came to speak to me, but i’m not going to be a hypocrite and drink HIS blood if I do not agree with the ritual.”

That said, he smiled a sacrimonious smile and said “Son, what’s your name?…” “Son, I think next week you will drink with me.”

“I do not know I will be here next week.” I replied.

“One sunday you will drink with me. I am sorry if I have offended you.”

“No, not at all.” Leaving it here, except within my head rang the words – ‘I’m actually glad one of you people took it upon yourself to speak to me, no one else has and its pretty clear that is the reason that this congregation is flagging.’

The simple truth is that the whole building it apathetic about its faith, afraid to get in the face of the unbelievers. Afraid to say their way is the right way. That’s a shame.

I’m glad people preach, I’m glad there are outreach programs for every system of worship. I don’t see faith as bad and surely if you believed that people you meet were going to burn in torment forever, you’d have a thing or two to say. They’d do the same if you were about to walk in front of a car, and these people believe that hell is as real as that car, so you can’t argue it is bad for them to try help us. Were you convinced of its authenticity enough to be fearful of it, you’d try and help if you had an ounce of compassion. So, they are just fulfilling their duty to their fellow man. As long as it stays as a choice that one makes for oneself then it is great.

Anyway, this guy, the loon, he just smacked of ‘L’ plate christian dogmatic fanatisism, he went a bit far – if only in body language.

Now sitting at the kitchen table, I’m reminded that most of my life i’ve been battered constantly by the wind and wave and zeal of a christian family and I’ve very rarely faultered in my own conviction. That only being that God does not, as far as I have experienced, exist. I guess that I’m desensitised to preaching, that or bull-headed. Maybe both. Maybe neither and I’m just more open-minded than my parents. I don’t know, or care. Safe to say, I’m not closing off my head to sooth my heart any time soon.

-=-

My goodness, I’m late getting this onto the net. I’m currently sitting in my seat in front of the 50-inch HD tv, watching a program about rivers. Griff Rhys Jones presents. I love it.

Okay, so. We didn’t get out this afternoon on to the marine lake. It ended up being a slagging match between parents. It ended up being a massive stress which I managed to avoid, choosing instead to keep my focus on the books I’m reading.

Right now the news is on.

Did I miss anything?

Filed under: Drinking, Existence, Family, Happy, Today, about me, hopes , afternoon, escape, Happy, Nightingale, sailing, sea, twitter, writing

coast.

I’ve just come back from a little walk along the sand dunes out to the sea. We got right up to the waves and the whole place was slightly surreal.

It was the combination of the desert of sand, the small slip of land with little white houses barely visible and the huge angry clouds above us.

I talked to some fishermen who every so often waded out and cast their lines into the torrent of white surf. Bait dug up behind them, holes of torn up sand; ink stains against miles of flat, pristine sand.

We took the dogs out and it was just so idilic. Watching them run around like Anne Michael’s line ‘part fluid muscle, part slung leash‘.

I’ve got some great shells to make some necklaces out of.

Also grabbed loads of photographs as well.

Happy days.

Off to a gig at the local Sailing Club tonight.

I like all this sea and sailing lark. It is great to live near the coast.

Filed under: Family, Reality, Strangers, about me, dogs, space , Anne Michaels, beach, clouds, coast, fishermen, meols, moody, sailing, sea, shells, sky, surf, walk, walking, water

Grab your Côte you’ve pulled

Sailing

.

There is hardly a feeling like that of steering the tiller as you lead a wayfarer on its way through the water. Sails are filled lungs, as they drag the blade of the keel and send us clipping along. Ropes are released, grasped tightly and then tied off with what I must describe as ‘passion’ rather than ‘precision’. Likewise the effort of ducking the boom during tacking is one of increasingly comedic value.

Me: “Ready about?”

Father: “Ready.”

Me: “Lee-Ho!”

*THUMP*

We’d lashed the sheets on land, pulled the sail to a snare-drum tightness, checked and rechecked the brace for the rudder and tiller. Dad ran around the vessel, mentally collating the tools needed for a successful launch. Finally connected to the back of the Land Rover, we were away.

We reversed down a heavily crowded slipway and halted the car as the back trolley wheels dipped themselves into the water. Unfixing it was completed after the winch had been secured. We then lowered the boat backwards, click by click into the water.

Once in, there was nothing to stop the stern from drifting and it took a swift mind to wet the feet in time and brace it against the impending calamity. Removing the trolley we negotiated the boat round the slipway wall to the docking area and each climbed in.

The Kingfisher was away, but not quite sailing, as we pushed off from the shore. We hugged the coast unable to catch the wind. Drifting with the current we made our way through fishing wires, cast out by leather-skinned men with angry faces. The lines freed themselves without piercing the sail and we soon caught breeze enough to put some distance between us and the sea wall.

Entering the wider sea we lined up and started sailing beautifully. That is that really. My first self-reliant voyage in a boat. What a blissful afternoon.

-

In other news.

.

My mind is still reeling (excuse the pun). I can’t get it to stop. I’m reading books and books and books. Which isn’t a bad thing! However the ideas they are stirring up are beyond my ability to pace.

In Glyph by Percival Everett there is a quote that runs to explain my current condition.

.

“I cannot even say that I am smart, only that my brain is engaged in constant frantic activity.”

.

It is a euphoric state you can enter after a while. It is a state that I’m trying to steer away from. Heck, I’d even anchor myself on the idea of brain-numbing medication to avoid the level that theses ups can lead me to.

See, having a brain that is running quickly is a wonderful feeling. Except that after a while you lose yourself slightly at the back of your own mind. Ideas that raced, now flood your brain – which itself is less of a buoy floating on top of this deluge, but rather it is a shipping container dropped overboard – straining against the pressure as it sinks to the seabed.

It will hold out. It will perceiver against the enormous forces met out against its sides. Except there will come a moment when its integrity fails. The surrender is made between the atmosphere inside and the tons of sea-water that seek to replace it. At this point, it is fair to say, I lose touch with reality.

It is a very temporary thing. It might only last a few hours, but I become drunk and irresponsible. I’ll most likely be alone, but if I am with someone then the connections start being verbally translated.

I can remember a very good example of this and it was while on a car journey to Falmouth. I was in the back of the car and talking to the two people beside me. After a few moments of talking about poetry I was flung onto a circuit. I looped over many subjects and began making connections (mostly coincidental) about the people involved. Subjects and dates and ideas flung at them as they came to me. After 20mins I came back to my senses. The rest of the journey I tried to stay as quiet as I could.

It’s a balancing act this. Making sure I can harness the energy that is generated by the reeling (sorry, I love the word) of my mind and also that I don’t fall into the realm of possession. That I’m not abstracted from the capability to see how useful my observations are. That I don’t lose sight of the fact that sometimes a coincidence is exactly that. That sometimes people don’t mean to be distance, they just have their own things to deal with. That there is no logical reason why a person should be privy to the same knowledge that I am. That they are not less valuable for not understanding what I am talking about, because what I am talking about in this state is mostly just irreverent crap.

-

I am reading.

(click books for descriptions).

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

Glyph by Percival Everett

Filed under: Existence, Family, Reality, Travel, about me, anxiety, books , afternoon, brain, drifting, fishing, land rover, mind, ocean, reading, rudder, sailing, sails, sea, sheets, tiller, voyage, wayfarer, wind

been away a day or two

so where do i begin? after near on a month how have i done?

okay. really!

got loads of great photography done. made loads of new friends.

been working on taking apart a Furby and other electronic related geekery.

read and written a lot of really great stuff.

currently working on 101 things to do before i die. also 101 things to do in the next few years.

i find that i’ve got so many opportunities opening up for me. my parents have bought a boat that i can sail away on. loads more things. things, things, things. (even the option of following my dad on his business trips to European cities – he’ll work, i’ll take photos and drink coffee)

i’m really really happy, even without working (because i’m not spending a lot)

just being positive that there is life after a life lost. been a bit regretful – but then, when aren’t i?

anyway.

more will follow as i detail more about my movings.

as ever. follow me on twitter. @jensenwilder

Filed under: Bath, Day-to-day, Depression, Existence, Family, Friends, Home, Nightingale, Poetry, Travel, about me, books, compass, hopes, job, prose, writing the novel , 101 things, boat, electronics, follow, Furby, Happy, life, photography, positive, twitter

men – royalist pig-bastard dick-swinging slug-heads that we are…

No matter how hard we try to dissolve a place from memory, our mind will always hold faithfully to those moments we enjoyed there.

I am reminded of this fact as I walk into the Blue Sky café in Bangor this afternoon. I take a seat with my mother and we order coffee. Lo, there at the bar is a familiar face.

In Bath I oft frequented the larger of two café nero in the city centre. I’d been going there ritually since landing in Bath and had seen the turnover of staff first-hand. Names spring to mind, nights out with some, sleeping with others and always the running theme of friendship as though they, and I, could not help but wish to huddle together – group into One, against the Other of ignorant patrons.

Of ‘the Other’ there were people who you would see quite often. Funny-nosed man, Bridget, the lesbian sports trainers, the child magician… and many, many others.

Lo, there at the bar is a familiar face. Rook the old coffee bringer, what a gem. So we do the usual… ‘you are out of your location, can it be you’ look at each other. (I am almost sure, so near to positive, that he looked at me like ‘but legend, you have no lady candy on your arm!’ grimace of shock horror.)

In truth, I knew very little about him – I call him friend, brother, kin – though I’d die for him, I don’t actually even know his name. He is just an element of Bath that greeted me more times than I can remember with a coffee and a smile. A guy who stamped my card four times for every coffee I actually bought.

But the important thing is that it took me back to Bath, to the good elements and I got a little nostalgic for Bath in the spring. And I might have reminisced a little longer, had my mother not woken me with a question. There are good things to that city, now the dust has settled. Now the storm has passed.

And that is all I really wanted to blog. I spent the rest of the day writing and reading.

Okay, what am I reading right now… well…

Ben Okri – Mental Fight

Alessandro Baricco – Silk

(Now also… Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex)

Today I was awful and bought more, in a little charity shop with a mini typewriter in… (picture below)

Books purchased today…

Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex

Patrick Süskind – Perfume

Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf

Ben Okri – Astonishing the Gods

Voltaire – Miracles and Idolatry

tap tap tap

Simone de Beauvoir – oh how I love her. I’m doing something that I ordinarily would NEVER do… highlight. That is how much I am enjoying reading it. Sure it is a completely alien concept – women’s rights – sure I have testicles, but god damn it I AM EFFECTED.

I think secretly all men have got a screaming feminist somewhere inside – just some of us have beaten her down; like the royalist pig-bastard dick-swinging slug-heads that we are.

Filed under: Bath, Coffee, Family, Friends, Strangers, books, writing

painting and god-forsaking…

Apologies for the boring nature of this post. Nothing exciting happened today and all my thought have been compressed to diamond dust under the weight of the sadness I’ve felt due to a withdrawal from hell. Except I’m on the mend, taken the right dose again, everything is shifting back into focus.

This morning I woke up, said a blissfully fake ‘good morning’ to my mother (the sentiment existed, it just hadn’t woken in me just yet).

I had coffee, pills, breakfast (crumpets) and then set about sorting what I’d do with the day. There were two niggling concerns. 1) My head docs are coming. 2) I have an appointment at the job centre to go to.

BOTH of which I had completely forgotten the exact date and time for. So I was at a loss.

No sooner had I thought it, than my head docs came to the door. I pretended I knew they were coming all along, they came in. Had a chat. Long and short is that I’ve got to chill out and stay on the meds for a long time to see what we’re up against. Wonderful.

Regardless, that felled one bird.

The next hour a call came asking if they could change my appointment from Wednesday coming (that I now, loosely, have plans on) to Thursday. All’s good says me and up rocks another knock on the door.

Opening it to a rather funny looking bald man (nose too big for his face and fish lips) he informs me that he’s here to give my father the car. I look outside and a Mercedes is sitting by our drive.

All I can think is… my god… I wish I could key-scratch it because that tin-can could have bought a great many people a great deal more than they have.

I’m hating the fact that he’s indulging himself – I have no right to think bad things – the old man sets up orphanages in India and Africa – I think he works hard too – fair play – but that taste in my mouth wont go away. Maybe it comes from never having these things when I was a kid. You just get accustomed to being on a comfortable living and then when extra comes your way – you either respect it if its occasional – or you resent it if it becomes a more constant part of living.

My motto is – ‘we can always do more’ when it comes to helping people. Except if I really look at myself, I’m not doing much at all. That is one thing that will go onto my 101 things. Help 101 people better their lives. Ticked off after  each one, but only if I’m truly honest with myself that I’ve helped.

My bad taste was transfused with a pack of saliva to water it to palatability after my father turned and told us he was taking us for dinner. How quick high-horses trot-on.

Here is the starter.

starter - pan fried tiger prawns and sweet chili on ciabatta

And the main.

sea bass

Wonderful meal.

More driving to get home. I ignore my hatred of the capitalist pig in him, thank him. We move on.

I also did the rest of the stripping, mother and father were both impressed that I was able to finish the whole room in such a short time. My lack of perseverance is legendary. The blemishes of jobs long discarded are marked on the house like battle scars. Half-sanded banisters, half-painted doors, half-…. Well you got the joke before, but I’ll finish it… half-arsed attempts to complete things EVERYWHERE.

Now I’m in bed.

Not sleeping but drowning.

(In wonderful warm coffee to keep me awake)

Filed under: Coffee, Drinking, Family, Food, Home, Today

share a day with me…

After yesterday not much could bring about a better day.

You do struggle on though. lol

So you wake up to the sound of your alarm. It’s 8:30 and its time to get a head-start on a new day. You wake-up knowing that you have it in you to write more than you’ve yet sat down and written, in the whole history of this month’s scriptfrenzy.

You grab a shower, you grab some breakfast (a first for some few days), you dress yourself and then you are able to settle down.

Hours and hours pass, along with a shower of pages. You print out the so-far… you edit it (even though you know you shouldn’t), you draft in another regiment of scenes so you have something to do tomorrow. You start and finish your CV. You grab lunch (a whole pizza *burb* Such a pig!).  You put aside the writing and pick up the book you are reading.

More hours pass and your mother suggests you have coffee and take the dogs off for a walk around Royden Park. Lovely.

Photography is the order of the day as you almost trip intermittently around the park and meet lots of other interesting dogs and other walkers – one who wants you to email over several of the photos you took of her little bundle.

Back home and you get to read another few chapters in a wonderful novel as the sun sets into the sea.

Few days have had this level of contentment.

Filed under: Family, Happy, Home, dogs

the me of now

“Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons but one out of one.”

Dr. William Menninger

Before I sign off for a very bad good friday and easter weekend in Liverpool I should point out that I’ve been very, very happy recently. I’ve been more consistently happy than I am used to and it is a wonderful thing.

I have started and progressed well with scriptfrenzy, lots of pages down, kept my antics to a reasonable level and determined what I will do with my life for the next year.

In short – I’m back to the old me – sorry to everybody that thought I’d be changed irreparably by what has happened – sorry.

I went out last weekend and ended up getting massively drunk on scotch after finding my way to a philosophy student’s party, getting lost in the rain, finding my way back again and the rest is censored. The morning I left a little note saying “Thanks guys, you’re all magic.” That’s how I feel about what is going on right now… pure magic – everyone is enjoying me being me!

I’m just Jensen, Cup, Me… I drink, I laugh, I cry, I’m a whole person and if you don’t like it, then you don’t like me – like a new friend says all the time (though not at me) “Don’t bother me!” [said in Colombian accent].

See, the thing I’ve learned from another new friend, Sarah, is that you are you as you are… tongue tied… no, I mean – you are fractured, incomplete, emotional, prone to making mistakes..etc… but that is ‘you’. Its wonderful.

Its not an excuse to fail, but it is truly a wonderful experience to come to terms with your limits.

I’ve found out that my limits are tested when I run around with masks on.

Lots of people, even those I loved most, back in Bath knew me as this creature with a thousand faces, I put on all these masks so that I could fit with one group or another.. So that I could pretend I was happy when I wasn’t.. So I could get my own way (because I was selfish)… I just tried so hard to fit in that I stuck out like a sore thumb by the end of it.. With all my weeping… no wonder there are so few that will stay in touch, they’re not used to my sadness – and because I never showed it, it took over and became much stronger than I could endure.

I only showed the true me to two people really, in all the time I was there, Jenny the Stalker (who loved me for me, but I think a little too maddeningly) and Nicola (who looked after me on the day I was taken home from Bath). Even Laura never really saw the me behind the me that I showed her – I didn’t tell her too much about my sadness, because I didn’t understand it myself… so all I said was ‘i’m sick’ but didn’t do anything about it – knowing all too well that I’d be back to pretending next week, when I have more strength… and on and on the cycle went.

The medication is wonderful and has made me not think or worry about anything back in Bath – that is the sweetest relief I have ever known – right now I’d be thinking ‘god, my ex is with someone’ or ‘my friends aren’t my friends anymore’ or ‘my life has been stolen’ and get all worked up – but really… I can see the good so much more clearly.

So I got back to Liverpool and I had but one aim.. To make friends and make myself known only as myself.. To be my honest, open, frank and energetic sense… and you know… it paid off MASSIVELY!!!

I now know a group that I can be open with, honest with and not feel judged, because – at the end of the day – I’m not that fucked up, I’m quite a normal kid, just full of insecurity and sadness from time to time. So what if I feel down one day, so do they, so does everyone. And I know that I’ve thought this a million times before… and I don’t want it to seem like I think I’ve found a cure for all this sadness that engulfs me from time to time – but it just smacks of the right kind of remedy for me. The me of now.

Everything I have heard from Bath has been about healing and returning, but really… I’d hate to go back to that world.. It was an awful game of trying to be someone that I’m not, every single fucking day! Here I have relaxed, let down the veil, embraced the true meaning of honesty.

That you don’t hurt nearly as many people being yourself, as you hurt when you pretend you are someone you are not.

(much more to say… but i have run out of time…)

Filed under: Existence, Family, Friends, Girls, Jenny, Women, about me, anxiety, hopes, much