paraphrase and experience

Sometimes I am more attracted to what a woman is wearing than how she looks physically. Not in the sense that I want to try on the clothes, that is weird, more that I just think certain colours and fabrics make goddesses out of ordinary women.

 

Been reading a lot of Thomas Merton recently. The guy is a bit of a hero of mine because our childhoods and early adulthoods are quiet similar. It seems his mind worked a little like mine, from what I understand from the essays and biographies I have read.

 

He led me to the idea of the four basic instincts or ‘roots of passion’. These are ‘roots of passion’ toward god, but I’ve never been one to apply a theory in just its established direction. Instead I’ve decided to direct them into a desire to live. And here we go…

 

There are two positive roots which don’t require much explanation, they are clearly very easy things to draw a desire for life from:

 

LOVE

JOY

 

The two negative ones are far more interesting:

 

FEAR

 

This can be a great motivation, but I like to focus on the idea of moving with fear. Using it as a method of maintaining respect for life. In the same way that god is meant to be feared. (Here starts the regurgitation of my Christian upbringing.)

 

Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”

 

I like to remove the word ‘LORD’ obviously and upon doing so, we have a whole new philosophy.

 

The fear of god is respecting him, obeying him, submitting to his discipline, and worshipping him in awe.

 

The fear of life is respecting it, not struggling in the face of its rules, accepting its limits and taking opportunities that present themselves and the last is rejoicing in life’s beauty.

 

 

GRIEF

 

This is a little more tricky, but I applied my technique in regard to depression… depression is the measure of our joy. Anything lost is only mourned because it meant so much to us. There is a balance to it, when struggling with loss, we have to focus on the feeling and move through it to pay for the joy we took in it.

 

 

Something else from Merton (paraphrased) “As if we were created to ask a question and in that creative act the question was answered. We are both question and answer in the absolute. The question is its own answer. It is an experience, ‘I am.’”

a feeling not as fickle as love.

-

I know that I write so that I can make a living, some day. But now I’m worried about my characters. Even if they are real.

God.

Most of the people I write about are real. So when they die, that is that. So I need to write about them, to capture them (if I can).

Most of the time I do that, in my journals. I write people as they are, no shields up, no gimmicks.

Without a single declaration of love, there is no one I won’t try to save the way I save people. Even the people I hate, I save.

Right, back to the work.

I do love you.

You know who ‘you’ are.

I love you, but I can’t say it to your face and will never allow myself that close to another living being. So in the absence of calling it ‘love’, I cannot live without you. Even if you are far from me, there will always be the show of affection. There will always be the place in my heart. A feeling not as fickle as love.

how to be free

.

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!

.

on gardens and old mythology

They say that just after the beginning of our race. In fact, right after our exclusion from a certain botanically-themed Auschwitz of our pure origin. They say that there were angels who came down to teach us the ways of living. Those sweet, winged creatures who taught us how to smelt metals, how to use plants as medicine, how to write and the power of numbers. Those beasts that should have taught us one thing above all else, how to survive the god-shaped hole in our hearts.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that my ‘god-shaped hole’ idea (as well as not being original) is not literally a hole awaiting the puzzle piece of the almighty to complete it, but is in fact actually a inexplicably tricky void in my life that seems to contain limitless sadness and depression without source, nor any signs of ceasing.

To the void, I raise a glass. You have not claimed me yet, though you fought admirably.

I’m coming out of a depression right now, which is good, but the transition always leaves me waxing lyrical on the miracle that I managed to keep going. After all, anyone continually in pain would not be altogether unhappy to see an end to it.

The void is a lack of purpose. A lack of meaning. The void, for me, is made of the great unanswered question. The one that I feel needs answering, if I am to make it to a ‘Notebook’-esk ending to my life. The wrinkled splendor of closed-eyes, a spittle-wetted pillow and no further need for breath.

In short, I want to know why I’m here. I want simply to have a reason to go on. I want a flicker of passion for life. I want… nay! Recklessly seek out a purpose to this mess of life. 

Back to the bible, albeit briefly. In the garden of Eden there were two trees. The Tree of Knowledge (from whence we ate) and The Tree of Life (of which we did not partake).

So did the Fruit of Knowledge give us curiosity as a form of stomach upset? Do I ache, like many questioning minds before me, because there is one question we need to find some answer to. Even if it is ‘we’ who create it for ourselves?

The puzzle for me was in the choice presented. Here’s how I see it.

Would one choose the ability to understand the universe (The Tree of Knowledge’s boon) over, say eternal life (granted by The Tree of Life’s fruit)?

I would have chosen The Tree of Life because, simply, I have the long-held belief that we’d all be living in a paradise if we didn’t know anything of the world (or sin) – (We’d still be wandering about like children without a rusty Sword of Damocles above us. Or upturned hourglass, if you prefer that analogy).

Now, I’ve met a fair few who were greedy enough to say both and excepting that there was possibly that choice, I would have to say that would have put us in a worse hell than we’re in right now. With knowledge of the almighty but no way of connecting with him. More logically with this unanswerable question and a maddening progression of days to linger on it. Or in my case, with depression and no chance of parole.

Not that I’m religious. (How many times can I say that before it becomes clear that’s how I’ve been programed since birth?) But I do put things in this format, simply because it helps me form my arguments – I know what I’m saying with these words, so do indulge me.

Not that I’m suicidal, anymore. (Not at this point anyway.)

Anyway. In the beginning angels came and gave us knowledge of very little of value, we learnt a lot for ourselves and still we’re faced with a question that we must become delusional to answer. Only the problem is, I’m not all that delusional right now. I don’t hear god. I don’t believe in anything. Indeed, some of the smartest men and women in history were driven mad by it.

Not that I’m a genius – though I am a thinking man. A man who cares (who has no choice but to) and who cannot fabricate an answer to console himself with.

So that is where I am. Tired after so long holding back an escape from my problem. This is where I’m left. Dropped off with the refreshed attempt to live, but nothing to live for. So on with the parade, until I run out of the energy needed to keep the question at bay. Until the depression looms over me again and I slip back on myself. Until I again have to hold back the cowards way out.

Or perhaps the very answer itself, what if life is a puzzle box and the idea is to find the quickest way out? (Never-mind, I’m being silly)

Anyway this is my cycle.

And… well… what’s more like life?

living with a rock at your face and a hard place somewhere else…

So I’m going to cut to the quick with this and let the marrow show.

I’m not well. I haven’t been for years. Its not a constant illness, a lot of the time I have a hard enough time believing it is there myself – let alone the people who love me, who seem to settle on the idea of my getting better like I’ve got a broken ankle and just need to get the plaster off.

I can’t sleep again. I know the signs. I’m going to wake up one day soon convinced (like never before, but just the same as every other time) that I’m different.

Just like the million times it has happened before. I’ll take my head from the pillow and a new adventure will begin, one where I change my name, my loves, my taste, my friends… everything is thrown out and I just linger on the hinge of sanity.

Fuck it.

Truth is. Every few weeks I’ll have a down spell and I’ll feel worse than hell. Every now and then (Once or twice a year) I’ll wake up and do something about it. Delusion will push me into a new skin.

Right now, I’m in the grip of this nasty, evil, vindictive and destructive emotional state. I could, in this way, be very well described as bound and gagged by life.

I’m so distraught with the way I live. I’m always compensating for one or other element of my fractured character. Who the hell am I?

Am I Ric, the boy who wanted to be a grown up so bad that he sold innocent years trying every sin he could. Who was so in practice by the time that adulthood arrived he was driven to new and lower levels of sickness and depravity to get kicks, so desensitized to intimacy that he still now feels nothing from a kiss. That a fuck is a handshake to him.

Am I Richie, who traveled to many cities with a few people on his mind. Who got so close to giving in to a feeling that he jumped ship and escaped back to the city that was small enough that he was noticed, but big enough to get lost in. Who broke as many hearts as he did because love was meaningless – not least of all because its easy enough to kill it when you first feel it stir up. Who shaved his head to ditch a girl and met another the same afternoon. Who took out his upset at being ditched by his first university love, because she left him wanting more of her, on everyone he met who fell for his innocent looking blue eyes.

Am I Young Cup, the kid who had two dates lined up and shacked up with the one he got to fuck first. Who went out of his way to be a loving partner because it was easier to live with a happy woman than an unhappy one. Who two years later cheated on her out of spite and then went on a drinking binge out of guilt for something she never actually found out? The kid who knew she’d done the same to him, but he never spoke a damn word of contempt for it. Never treated her any less. Who had a down spell at the wrong moment and had the rug pull from his feet. Who fucked things up for trying his best to keep them going.

Am I Old Cup, the kid who being single and lonely found an anarchist to fuck senseless in the grip of such a life of senselessness. A girl who his best mate fell for (who she didn’t like). Who was outed by so-called friends for tearing an  Anarchist’s heart out and then (not one month later) fucking the same girl in my hometown because she was anything but heartbroken! She was a firecracker and sure she wanted more of me than I wanted to give, but that’s no-one’s fault! No friends left in the place he’d loved, because they didn’t have the good courtesy to ask me how it went down? A lost boy, who’s ex got the city and he got the boot.

Am I Jensen, the boy genius, who became an artist and traveled to the height of traffalgar square in support of some ill-thought out agenda? The boy who determined to surround himself with artists and writers of liverpool. Who went to every writers night and hippy hang-out and made friends with so many bands he was heavy with demo cds. Who’d live without a penny in his pocket, without a voice if he could wing it. Who wouldn’t eat for days because it mades him superhuman, and it still does. Who made a promise not to lie again and kept it.

Am I Richard, the friendly bookseller and lark-about who has no trouble making friends. If friends is what you call it. Who can deal with work for as long as it lasts. Who can just about shut out the noise of the rest of his life for the few short hours he’s in work?

Am I The Boyfriend? In a relationship where there’s never been a single crossed word, where we respect each other and anticipate most everything the other needs ahead of time. So in tune its a shame its anything but upbeat. The guy who can’t lie, so he just doesn’t tell her how bad he’s feeling. The guy who can’t hide what’s hurting, so he gives up the name of the lesser stress to hide the larger. The guy who still now doesn’t want to love, for the guilt and agony it causes him in his darker moments.

Am I The Fractured Man? Who wants so much for the world to melt away. Who is in agony for wanting the world to stay the same for just one day, to get to grips with the pace of it. Who can’t deal with an ounce of stress. Who buckles and flays his wrists at the first sign of depression. Who wants to shave his head, don rags, drink bottles and bottles of whatever booze he can conjure up. Who he has been since his second university year, where he gave up on living, but didn’t have the guts to finish his own sentence.

Truth is… there is far more of me than this.

Fact is… I fucking hate the lot of it and I don’t want to keep being so many shades of myself. Because I’m not stupid enough to think that I’m actually many different people, just I find it deadening to try to squeeze all of me into this tiny little slip of a body.

I’m tired.

I want to wipe the slate clean.

I want to hit reset and go back to year dot. I want to forgo love in favor of lasting friendship. I want to ditch desire for the better elements of feeling.

Here’s who I want to be.

The guy who cares enough and is courageous enough to say so. Who doesn’t hold back his feeling because he wants to look like he’s a tough guy. I want to be anything but a tough guy. I want to be a guy that doesn’t lie, because the truth is hard enough. I want to be calm, content and able to challenge myself. I want to be able to deal with a pinch of stress now and then without getting ulcers, quivering hands and headaches. I want to make friends and not worry that they hate me, because that’s what I’ve been faced with up till now. The sudden removal of faces from my life. I want to be able to rely on people, not just myself (barely). I want to make friends and not get paranoid about them changing team, becoming the enemy. I want to admit that I loved people. Not lie to myself and everyone because it means I failed at staying in that great way of being. I want to be the guy who doesn’t just chuck about ‘sorry’ but that adds a little weight to it with some honesty.

‘I’m sorry, I was sick’ just doesn’t cut it. Truth is, sickness is no account for action. I did some horrible things because I chose to do them, because I wanted to feel something, or I wanted to prove that I didn’t. I did things because if I didn’t do something I’d have lost the fight a long time ago. I have done awful things, but I need to bury them and I need your blessing to do it. Everyone should know that I suffer for my sins, if you read this blog at all then that much is clear.

I just roll the pattern over and over in my head. Or it is a bitter pill on the tongue. Whatever cliche works best.

I’m the cause of most every one of my troubles, yet I can’t seem to turn things around. I feel like a time traveller, like every mistake I try to fix causes a bigger one. I feel like everything I do just brings its own troubles.

I’m still here, a month away from the anniversary of my first real attempt to get some help, to get better, to change. I’ve not had any appointments because the NHS is shit. I’m not a woman and I haven’t actually tried to kill myself, so in the eyes of the medical world I DON’T EXIST!

Except, I’m still here aching. I’m no better, though I am better off. I’ve a great life, except I still don’t think I deserve it. I still want to end things before they’ve even begun. I’m 23 for god’s sake!! I should be half as experienced at life as I am. I know people who are 10 years further down the road of life and haven’t had 1/100 of the life I’ve had.

Except it isn’t a matter of pride. Its just disbelieve. I can’t understand why I’ve not cracked the code of life. I’ve gone through a run of combinations and still don’t know a single way that works. I want to have it easy, but easy is hard to find.

I don’t want to start my life 9 years from now, when I enter my own Rosy Crucifixion saga. (I’m reading Miller)

Either I’m a better man now, or I’m just not worse than I’ve been so far.

Only time will tell, but god help me! I want some sort of sign – I want some idea that what I’m after is achievable. Otherwise it’ll just be another few years of holding on, before I work up the courage to let go.

I’ve never held anything back from this blog.

This is truth, this is me (all of me), laid bare.

(This was written at 3am 09/12/09 – please forgive the typos and the lyrical style is just because I’ve been writing a lot of poetry recently.)

Margin:0.0px or maybe ?0.o?

“  City of Birth

Much of the place is now just a flourish of the mind. Rivers and streets have altered position and where you might follow one in real life and come out at its proper exit, in my mind it turns about and you arrive elsewhere altogether. The whole city is a fading dream, less and less factual as the months wear on.

Except the truth is that I do not strive to remember, the death of it suits me. Rather than not leaving me at all, gradually is an accepted evil. However I lament that it could not have been torn away in one swipe. I wish the whole place burnt away, its ash caught and carried off by a wind of forgetfulness. I wish nothing ill on the inhabitants of that city in its real and present form, but its form in my heart is a solid lump that runs to the throat if I consider it for too long. I mean it not to remind me of my own failures.

In truth the city is merely the scapegoat for my own shortcomings, for my own mistakes. It is a laden creature, cast out and laboring under the burden of blame for injuries I’ve suffered. The city did nothing directly, supplant me and my life to another with the same set of circumstances and I’d be sure of similar results. The same progression of cruelty, neglect and eventual isolation. The same reasons for the breakdown of relationships with almost everyone. My own ego and lack of humility. My envy of other people’s talents and embarrassment at my own lack of courage.

No, I cannot blame a city for what was my own doing. The truth is that I lost my sight, my judgement clouded. Or, more rightly, my vision was distorted by a thin film over the eyes. An idea of how the world looked, except that in that way of seeing I could not perceive the slow corruption of my life. Each time I rallied myself and thrust forward with my creative projects, I was in fact just shuttling along in a blinkered, eager rush. I shut out the distraction of friends and lovers. Then, when I’d collapsed into the sense of futility that seems to run through me like a core, I was surprised that they’d moved on to better things.

It is a great and painful process for a man to learn of his own failings. More-often he might bury the facts under a layer of disbelief. Or else under the debris of the facts themselves; as he picks each apart with lies and self-justification. Delusion is the tonic for most things.

Myself, I’m no less the fool. Even knowing what I do I cannot bring myself to believe I was to fault. I too ignore these things and move on with what I do agree to take with me. So from these lessons comes the genesis of a new self. I do not wish to remember my sins, though I will learn from them. It is hypocritical indeed to ignore the legitimacy one’s crimes and yet still take wisdom from them; though to have the position reversed would be far worse an error.   “

—-

The above is the beginning of the novel I was speaking of, not too long ago. The tale of my life. A way to purge myself of the old crimes and explain how things progressed and perhaps absolve myself slightly through showing how I’ve bettered myself. It will however be ‘warts and all’, I hope – if I have courage enough to paint myself in my true (past) monstrous form. All names altered, no great revelations about the other people involved. I will stay in the bounds of my own head, the things that I saw and thought – I will not attempt to second guess the people around me, nor anything of their opinions of me at that time. What I do not want it to be, is a way of explaining away the evil I have done, but rather to seek to hold onto it – lest I forget – and remind myself of how far I have come so that I do not retrace the same steps. I also don’t want it to hurt anyone from the past, hence the only alterations will be to the unsavory portions of lives of others and not to my own life, wherever possible.

The NaNoWriMo novel is far more accomplished, though I do wish to return to the previous novel soon. I’m a little behind in terms of the monthly goal – though it has proven itself as necessary and so I will be moving forward with it. I’m not all too bothered about the NaNo win because NaNo has been a bit of a joke as far as I’m concerned. There’s been no proper management or communication with those involved, so the community fun was sucked dry long ago. I’m just glad that I’ve got a wonderful manuscript out of it and I can break on through with the knowledge that I can write about 2,000 words a day with very little hassle, so long may it continue. Fuck NaNo.

Nevermind.

I’m loving quite a few bands at the moment.

1) The Bicycle Thieves

2) Cocoon (‘Hey Ya’, ‘I don’t give a shit’)

3) Soko (‘I’ll kill her’)

4) The Thermals (‘Now we can see’)

5) Fresh body shop (‘My artificial sun‘)

And in terms of poetry?

1) Derek Walcott (‘Elsewhere’, ‘For Adrian’)

And I’m reading…

1) 2666 by Roberto Bolano

2) Omeros by Derek Walcott

3) The Book of Shadows Don Paterson

4) Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (again)

In other news. I’ve made a promise with myself to write a poem, take a roll of photos (34 photos), make a short film and read a book every week from now on.

Further updates will follow.

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.

One and Other: All Just Soft Machines

One and Other: All Just Soft Machines.

www.askyourselfaquestion.blogspot.com

There is a certain weight applied to the spirit when one engages deeply with the process of consideration and analytics. There are questions that will send you mad with wondering. Questions you will waste away trying to answer, so I’ve made a loop-hole for myself. A safety rope of sorts.

‘The answer never matters as much as that you asked the question.’ (I hope I’m quoted for saying that, though I’m sure it is an unoriginal sentiment.)

That is my attempt to save my sanity. That is the line that will console me, through the darkest moments of my journey.

That is what this whole Raising Awareness for Awareness idea is all about. It is about getting people merely to consider the question, if only for a moment, of who and what they are. It is what Gormley is asking us 2,400 to do. It is the question that many will have asked and many will have simply bypassed and said ‘what can I get up there and do!’ I’m not convinced it is a point of ‘doing’, but of ‘being’. I am still more intent that the aim of this whole thing is to ‘ask’.

I hope people will say – ‘What am I?’ Who am I?‘ ‘Hey, what is my politics?’ ‘How do I feel about justice/death/religion/charity/piety/immorality/sexuality?’

In some it will prompt the asking of more questions, in others it will awaken the certainty that they do not wish to ask anything further of themselves.

The safety rope will hold me back from being lost in questioning for its own, energy-draining, sake. I will keep my focus on the idea that I am struggling forward, but forever secured by my belief in my chief aim. To tone my mind, like any other muscle. One step toward being fit in mind, body and human spirit.

My ‘loop-hole’, as I put it, isn’t to wriggle free from the responsibility that comes from my starting this quest. I will not shirk away from the fact that there will be people who will reach out for an answer and gather up some objectionable theories. There will always be people who think their truth must be imposed and world should suffer its implementation. However, I feel knowledge of ourselves will lead to knowledge of a great many things. I believe that with knowledge and consideration comes empathy; and with that, unity. We are One and we are Other.

The answers may differ, but the soft machine that calculates is always of the same construction; mind, body and human spirit (or whatever you call it).

@jensenwilder

Jensenwilder@gmail.com

“And even later, more recently.”

“And even later, more recently.”

Tribute to Tom Lowe Taylor

You wrote to save your ass

from a dark emptiness

that followed its own linguistic urge.

What was obsolete

you sought

to write and newly sort,

unconscious

but wholly wary of yourself - 

a drunken rage of self-righteousness to overwhelm.

Made afraid to be alone

with your own genius,

or genus,

who can say?

But one word after another

one in another’s wake

to fuel the next

and on and on toward that

unfurnished house.

~~~




Will work on this some more – this is my first draft.