how to be free

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The book I’m reading ‘How to be Free, by Tom Hodgkinson is without doubt the best novel I have come across since reading Jay Griffiths ‘Pip, Pip’ and ‘Wild: An Elemental Journey’ – it’s packed to the brim with useful facts that do what all good books should: open the mind.
His ideas are recycled and collated, rather than being original, but that doesn’t make them unworthy. I would not have known half the information that he has presented without this tomb. So I give thanks for his care and passion in writing it.

Rather than a self-help book aimed at fixing a broken life, he instead demonstrates that there is an innate wholeness within everyone and that we need to overcome certain modern obstacles in order to access our inbuilt fullness. Obstacles like TV and working life. Like newspapers and the adverts that infect our world. Hurdles like bills and the need to outsource in order to fix our problems. He’s not a crank, not some preacher. He’s well aware of his own limitations.

What he presents is an example of the things we can do to better our position in life. By tuning out the TV’s attempt to entertain and rely instead on our own creativity; whatever that may be. Picking up an instrument, learning a language, learning a craft. We can exercise our mind and souls and come out the other side without the faintest hint of boredom.

He knows that our modern world holds a great deal of pleasures, not least of all: drink, sex, music, film, tobacco, dance, photography. However we are often at the mercy of our jobs and cannot devote the time needed to truly extract joy from life.

How, in a nine-to-five profession, can we do anything but wake, work, eat and sleep. We complain about not having enough hours in the day. His answer, do less. It’ll turn out that you’re actually doing more. We consume out of lethargy. So why not use our idleness to our advantage. Rather than going to the effort of toiling away at a job, why don’t we just spent a couple of hours a day making something we can trade or sell.

TV is just a wind-down before sleep overtakes us again anyway. Nowadays, music is something we buy, rather than something we create. Ask any musician what they would rather be doing, working or playing music and there’s an obvious response. We needn’t have to buy music to enjoy it, instead we should venture into the streets and listen to buskers and go to gigs. We should drink and be merry and bring back the tavern. We need to turn our creative out-put into a means of permitting an ongoing lifestyle. We need to start producing rather than consuming. Self-sufficiency becomes the staple, the ideal, the tool to keep the wolf from the door. The wolves of tax inspectors, debt collectors and all other deplorable types.

What I have taken, though not what was detailed, is that instead of ‘my’ pack of cigarettes it is rather ‘our’ pack. Instead of ‘my’ money, it is ‘our’ money. Money that changes hands as quickly as we eat, travel, play and read. If I make something it is only ‘mine’ for the fact that someone else hasn’t made it first. What sort of idea is that? That the food I am eating was grown on land that actually belongs to all of us, not some private force. So I’m learning the harmonica, I’m not doing that to only play for myself. So I can use that to enrich other people’s lives and they will in turn enrich my own.

So from today, if someone asks me for a cigarette I will say – “sure, you can have one of our cigarettes.”

I will work to chip away my debt and learn a new way of earning money after that. It might be hard, but it’ll be a damn-sight more enriching than working in some crummy retail space for less money than my life is worth.

Anyway, the book is a joy. It is enlightening. Go read it!

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absurdity revised…

This has always been a place for honesty, it remains that way.

The pills stopped working 3-4 weeks ago. I’ve been running up-hill ever since. Every day is a new effort to stay on top of my mood.

The doctor has doubled my dose. Little effect has been felt over the past 3 weeks, not even a superficial improvement.

I can’t tell if I’m getting worse, or if I’ve been sad all along and it has been buried. It could just as well mean that the pills never helped and I had just gone back to my default again. Just as many times before; I have recovered from a bout of depression after a month or two of rest. I sail through the storm, rather than calming it in any real sense. Calm water mistaken for a persistent force.

Now I’m back to the stage I was at before, that black hole of sadness to the side of me – stretching to swallow me, but for now just remaining a peripheral threat.

I can be intensely happy, I can run about and scream and make noises. I can read for hours and hours, keeping focus. I can play stupid little games on the Wii with a semblance of satisfaction. It seems that when I am around people I can just forget it all. Except, when it comes to trying to sleep I just lie there getting stressed. I have to take my sleeping pills to make any attempt at sleep. Otherwise I’ll lay awake and my head will just endlessly play out encounters and projects and then start to hurt.

Headaches. I’ve never had them before and now I get one a day, usually around 5-6pm. It isn’t unwelcome. It keeps me focused on physical pain rather than the inertia of melancholia. At times it will feel like my brain is breathing with the same futile effort of a bulldog.

I’m still not any nearer, thanks to this slug-like NHS, to getting any real help. The consensus is ‘swallow these and wait.’

To begin with you always take the options handed to you, because you’ll try anything to climb out of where you are. You’ll clutch at the straws of wishful thinking and convince yourself you are getting better, when really you are just subtly forgetting your fault lines run where they do.

I’m still reading. I’m still writing. I’m still taking photos. I’m sailing. I’m managing to eat a little when I can. I’m exercising. I’m alive.

None of it gives me real lasting pleasure. I’m trapped in the talons of this sickness. There is no reasoning with myself, I will just find myself sad and wishing that life would stop. It feels like I’m wired up to the taproot of human misery, I’d give anything for a little of my usual apathy. I’d give anything to have my ego reclaim me. The thing is that I just don’t care.

Selfishness, I guess. Therein lies the dilemma.

Am I so self-involved that a perceived misery is unconquerable in the face of all the joys laid out ahead of me?

In the light of all the misery in the world, what makes mine seem acute in comparison? Do I have a right to ache?

Is pain relative or is that egotistical? Is pain in fact on a scale from one extreme to a far greater one?

Is comparison to other perceived ‘greater pain’ helpful? Or does it just make one wallow even more in your own limitations and self-centered attitude?

Most recently my life has been especially given over to other people. I have put myself second in the greatest of my efforts and helped (often beyond my means). I have not done so for gain. Except that I have gained friendships that I value and make me regretful for not establishing with similar candidates in my history. I have not lied. I’m not even proud, I care very little about what people get from me. My misanthropy has now been turned on myself only. I retain my skill of apathy as a challenge to myself, making more and more elaborate efforts to assist people. I suppress my selfishness when it rears up, forcing myself to do more and more beyond my comfortable inclination. I feel I am better for reducing those unpalatable parts of myself.

It gives me a question… can you be a good person by suppressing your sinful attitudes?

Can you be human and be free from selfishness? Or is it just a quieter voice over time?

These are all questions that mean very little to me. Before they’d have driven me to madness, but now (with a little help from Camus) I have seen that they are all absurd questions. They will never be answered to any great or helpful point. What matters is that I ask them and continue to act in a way that comforts me. It comforts me to ask these pointless questions because it focuses my aims. I am content to be a good force in the world where previously I have been a negative force.

I understand that it is in my nature to be sad. That is who I am. For a reason unknown, I must ache. It is not an obstacle, merely a feature of my landscape. Just as a mountain is not an obstacle to a mountaineer, but a victory he attempts to claim. The man seeks not to climb over it, but to conquer it in the name of joy. Just as to a fisherman a sea is not an obstacle, but a landscape of harvest. Not to be skipped, but endured to obtain a bounty.

Still this truth brings no real conclusion. I am a captive of myself and to myself I must bear witness.

I continue to grow, even if there are pains in doing so.

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)

In search terms…

So, this month I have had 421 views for my blog.

These can be attributed to the fact my life has gotten a lot more interesting over the last few months. So I’m building up a little fan-base. I’m getting emails. Really though… there should be more comments on the actual blog so that all see what is going on.

So this is a call for comments.

Now, a lot of people are finding this blog by googling my name – coincidentally it is Jen’sen’ Wilder, not Jen’son’ Wilder – anyway, still others are finding it via a curious assortment of key words

My favorite two…

“is soap good for frogs eyesight?” and “real photos of santa”

I have NO idea why.

Hopefully you guys are liking the writing and will continue to be amazed by the drama that is my existence. I’m loving the hours and days at the moment and I’m actually praying for many many more, rather than that the earth will swallow me up.

So having avoided the suicidal, thanks to pills and a new aviary of pals – I now need to tidy my room and get ready for a BBQ this afternoon.

p.s. I will be working out the difference between Tags and Categories soon, so expect things to get a lot more organized in the near future…

some people never learn lessons, other lessons aren’t worth learning…

I’ve learnt lesson in life recently. Bluebird, Robin and AIG have all given me a lot of advice. That I can’t beat myself up for being me and that I just have to get over myself and get on with things. I can’t make things better for the people in my past, I just have to move forward and stop lying and cheating people out of knowing me. Also, there is nothing wrong with getting over love by being a young man and getting solace from women. In fact, AIG gave me a song by Nada Surf recently that helped a lot. It has some great great advice in it.

Three important rules for breaking up

Don’t put off breaking up when you know you want to

Prolonging the situation only makes it worse

Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly

Don’t make a big production

Don’t make up an elaborate story

This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene

If you wanna date other people say so

Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected

Of course the same goes for a flip of gender. I failed badly when my last relationship ended, instead of getting smart and getting it over and done with back in October, I struggled on getting more and more unhappy. More and more annoyed with her for not being lovable enough. Which is stupid because it really was my failing not Her’s.

I kept up the pretense of love so that I didn’t lose a friend. But, in the end, she didn’t want to help me and wasn’t that good a friend. She didn’t stay in contact, she was too self-involved, which doesn’t help when I am too. We always were very similar – she wont talk to people if they don’t make the effort to talk to her often and neither do I – I just give up on them.

So hopefully she’ll understand that and not hate me. Maybe she will understand that being apart is better this way because we wont annoy each other. I can get on with my fun and not have her all upset that I’m not getting ‘better’ by her standards. I’ve got a lot of respect for the kid, I’m more angry at myself for not having balls to be a real man about things. For confusing myself into a mess. I wont make that mistake again.

Throughout the relationship I just couldn’t shake the feeling that we might grow to understand each other better with time. Not annoy each other quite so much. Even tried to make her see how I thought, the process, so she could understand. Didn’t work. I hoped that she might mean a lot to me one day… but I didn’t ever let myself ‘fall in love’ her. Being too scared of getting hurt. What you don’t realize is that you hurt yourself anyway, because no one is close enough to lift you up when you are sad.

I prolonged things, I made a big song and dance number and I told elaborate stories – I lied and cheated and I’m sorry I did, because it made me feel rotten at the end. I wasted time when what I could have done is ended it long ago and maybe salvaged something from it. We could have been friends and I could have stayed in Bath. I have no real regrets, as if I did then I would be disrespecting those new connections I have made. Instead I have come to terms with it and moved on.

So this time I’m just rolling with that side of me. That I have a problem letting people get close, I put up barriers and now I wont.

I know that I can’t feel all-loving at the moment… I can have great respect for people, treat them well, care for them – but romantic love is beyond me, for the moment.

AIG has said that I shouldn’t betray myself the opportunity to find someone wonderful by shutting myself away and pining – instead I should dress up smart, get out there and take a stab at finding someone to love.

So that is what I’m doing. Not setting out to hurt, but not sparing people at the expense of my own happiness either.

on reviewing the recent and the far-reaching

“I am disheartened again. It’s busted I think. My heart, that small seed was the start of my unhappiness. It is my heart’s doing. It sulks. It languishes in the pit of my chest. Fallen from a branch of bone. I ache for comfort, for encircling arms to close around me, to hold me. I want to be secure with a warm someone. A hug. An embrace. To hold on for dear life. For how dear that person is to me. For not wanting to let go. For wanting everything to melt into the atoms they consist of and leave us, untouched, as we are. For wanting alone. For the wanting. The passion. Lust. I want for everything that comes of wanting deeply. Of wanting so deeply that there seems to be no part left of me that does not exist for that other body. That there is no stitch, no essence, no section that is not saturated with the flavor of them.

Taste is something I think I am currently obsessed with. I’ve learnt the value of herbs and spices. I’ve started to take care of myself again. So by that, I mean I’m eating but doing nothing more to prolong myself. Sorry if you thought this was me turning around and grabbing hold of life or something equally benign. But have no fear, I’ll not starve. You all understand why I neglected myself; too many other people to save and “When you over analyze, you tend to neglect your own well-being? as I have said. So really, it was spending time and money on people, rather than on food; and doing so because people are more interesting to write about than pasta.

Due to my months of eating next to nothing, I am now down to nine and a half stone, which I am secretly proud of, because it was that weight I was before I got with The Smile Reverser when I was fifteen-years-old. The first reason I became The Raining Man. I can do the same trick with a scarf; wrap it around my waist to show how skinny I am. To show how clothing alludes to me being in them and really I am only half there.

Bad points? I am starting to see signs of muscle wastage. My sheer skinniness puts me at a disadvantage when confronted by anyone on nights out. I have very little strength at all, to the point where I have to move chairs one at a time, rather the trademark, grab two and go. When I went to buy food this week I could hardly lift the bags.

Good? I do have more of a regard for the workings of the human body. It seems that bone and muscle does indeed move us, as I am now lifting and flexing my arm to see the motion actualised.

So yes, taste does tie in quite well with the need for someone. The fact that, that someone would have the grace to look after me. To feed me, or at least make sure I feed myself. It isn’t that I can’t do it, rather that I will not, I’ll neglect to, it’ll slip my mind while I am writing about how sun warms the stems of dry grass, how the wind makes music from them. Or something equally picturesque.”

I wrote this some 3 years ago – I wrote that I was depressed and wanted someone to love and look after me. It happened and it didn’t save me to have it happen. I still had the same cycles, I just had someone there with ‘the grace to look after me.’ At least, for a short time.

I maintain, and always will, that I don’t need someone who will be a carer for me – just someone to care. I’m worth keeping around, I shouldn’t wonder. If only for the amusing tales I can tell about the time this girl did this, that girl did that, or another girl almost didn’t but did.

Life has gone back to a worrying simplicity. I wake up, I read, I write, I go for a walk, I flirt, I drink, I come home, I flirt via text/IM, I sleep. Scatter in some screnzy madness in there and that is existence and I’m pretty bored of it. The sex is good, but its not really making me want to stay alive and active. I guess only apathy is the force that is keeping me breathing now.

Pavlova

On the evening of the dinner party my Father was always demoted to little more than a fixture. He was reduced to a useless mass that took up space in the living room with the rest of the inefficient males. It would be a good few years until I joined their ranks, till then my games took on a new dimension. I used to play at being a spy. I’d hide in the same places, but report my observations into the freckle on the wrist of my right arm.
I’d be forgotten about while my Sister and Brothers were sent to bed. I’d be left to observe the drunken stumbling of the adults around me. After a few close calls I’d realise that it no longer mattered if they saw me or not. If my Father saw me walking about he’d mention bed, take another sip of red wine and then carry on talking to his friends.
If I went into the dining room to grab a bite to eat, my Mother would put down her glass of white wine and call me to her. She’d place a hand below my chin and lift my head, then use the other to crush me to her waist. She held me in a way that with one swift twist she could have easily have broken my neck. She’d then turn to her friends and carry on talking. Her grip would loosen. Eventually I’d be allowed to wander off with a large piece of homemade Pavlova.

Demijohns

Whilst my Mother cooked I used to hide below the stairs next to the dusty wine racks; below the hem of winter coats. I used to write my name on the tops of the empty demijohns at the very back. Used to suck on a mint cream that I’d stolen from the jar on the counter. Used to listen to the CD player that my Mother kept in the kitchen as it blasted out Enya at full volume. It was either Enya or Crowded House, or some other CD that was increased to such a level that one could hear it above the extractor fan.
My mother had found the fan a delightful novelty when she had first ordered the fitted kitchen, but quite soon its usefulness was outweighed and it became simply bothersome. The problem was that it lacked a switch and was mercilessly attached to the lighting in the room.
I used to hide myself under the dining table too. Listen to the noise of my parents as they argued about the theme for the party. I used to scoot out from under the table, enjoy the brief intimacy of a tablecloth as it brushed over the back of my neck.
I used to surface as my Father laid his heavy, awkward hands on my Mother’s shoulders from behind. Watched as he attempted to massage her too forcefully, digging his fat fingers into her shoulder blades. He’d always mask his mistake. Pretend that he was being cruel on purpose, but inside I knew that he wanted to be gentler. It was in his eyes, there was sadness. He wanted to relax her, rather than put her on edge. My Father has a hard time being gentle, he was a slim man but his hands always seemed to defy the fact.

Lasagne

“I can cook,” is the catchphrase of every girl who wants a guy genuinely and drastically; it is also the death knell of a relationship. So that was the format of my relationship with Lucy.
We struck up a relationship at the halfway point of my second year at university. She’s my Twerton girl, much to her dismay. I caught her spying on me from across the street while I waited for a bus and when our eyes met she picked up her light feet and breezed over the road toward me, smiling.
We shared a few nights at mine and she lit up that awkward little room with an energy that seemed to linger even after she’d left.
“I can cook,” was a statement that lured me, and my grumbling stomach, over to her house.
After a serving of ‘where our lives will go’ and a portion of ‘I love you’ I didn’t have the appetite for the burnt lasagne.

Hell

Last night was the first time I had been to bed without drinking a bottle of wine and passing out.
I called it an accomplishment and almost overslept.
Tonight I’m off to a dinner party and won’t drink. It’s going to be hell.