Tuesday 18 August 2020

The Ghost of Lack

Lack has haunted me
Like a ghost on my trails
Lurking in the corners of my insecurity

The ghost haunts me, and terrorises me,
But I am fixated by it, and cannot stop myself
Looking for it in every corner

So I carry a little box around with me
A little box of projections and presentations
Like a miniature museum
Of trophies and charms
To remind me of my lack

The things I don't have
The knowledge I don't have
The lifestyle I don't have
The friends I don't have
The lover I don't have
The craic I am not having

The little box, reminds me of who I am
The "I am" that was born from the lack
Left by the separation
When I fled my raw, unadulterated self
Into the arms of protective fictions
About who I am

But these gluey gleaming reminders
Of these fictions, become
Obstacles and diversions
That prevent the return
The return home
To the self that is ours
by birth right

The ghost of lack was maya
An illusion with no substance
But I used substances 
To fill the lack, the void
To protect me against it
To ward it off
And the ghost didn't go away
The ghost became more tangible
It was given body and substance
It became like a twisted guardian angel
An ever present apparition

An apparition that 
If you feed it, it grows
And demands more

But there is no lack
I am not lacking
I am everything I need



Sunday 2 August 2020

Narratives of Need

Maybe we do not need the objects of our needs, but need the need itself, and wrap ourselves up in them. With our needs, we play out dramas, of needs met or not met, and rely on our selves or others to meet those needs, or we blame them for not meeting them. 

Some play out the drama of self sufficiency. Self-sufficiency seems safer, less risky than relying on others. They long for freedom, but create their own prison of needs, and they will stay in that prison, and make it their home, as long as they can fulfil those needs and rely on no one else to meet them. If they then reach a point where they are unable to meet these needs, the myth of their independence evaporates, and they are brought back to the original pain of loss.

Others play out the drama of having needs that are some one else's responsibility to meet. They are well aware of the need they have; the hungers, the cravings, but will not supply themselves with the means to sate those needs, and wander around in the unpredictable forest of people, hoping to discover the world to be adundant, and able to provide. But sometimes the fantasy of the abundant forest, disappears like a mirage, to reveal no oasis, but a barren desert of despair; a land that doesn't care.

Others so revile the idea of needing anything, they will create mansions of adundance, hoarding wealth like a magic charm. They despise the needy, the spongers, the scroungers. They distance themselves from them, and live behind walls and gates, to separate themselves, and to hold back the flood waters of their own deepest darkest fear.

Yet, we don't even need the need. Not the object, not the idols, not the amulets and charms, or the need itself. They are an illusion that we use. They are a suffering, that we often wear like a badge of honour, a badge that reaffirms our identity, and we will continue to persevere dutifully down the road of our particular sufferings. 

However, sometimes people find an object who's power is so great that it consumes them, it swallows up the person whole, gobbles them up and devours them. That is a need of another category. Some people, are so traumatised by life and living, and having been born, and feel so homeless in the world, that they want to lose themselves in the darkness of wombs, or in the ultimate womb of death. 

They need to be swallowed up, because when they are swallowed up, the pain is swallowed up, the loss is swallowed up, the despair is swallowed up, the helplessness is swallowed up, and the terror of vulnerability is swallowed up. 

They give themselves up, and sacrifice themselves on the alter of that God.

Some Gods are monsters. 

Generation of Men

A Generation of Men A generation of men, that didn't cry a generation that weren't allowed to a generation of strong soldiers ...