Nausea

From where did this illusion come?
Who fed me this illusion?
Was I force-fed it? Spoon-fed it? Breast-fed it?

Wouldn't we all sell our souls; our desires, in exchange for contentment, safety, security? We'll buy a myth, a story, a fortune cookie from any gypsy on the street, just to be able to have a prediction of the future...to kinda-know what we're in for...kinda-know what the stars hold for us.

We swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and we swallowed it because we begged for it. We begged for the appeasement. Anything to minimise the nausea of the open sea; of freedom, decision and risk. Desiring is such a risky business. Some of us titillate ourselves with wants, appeased but unsatisfied. Wants are the diuretics of the soul. We addict ourselves to wines and spirits, but starve ourselves of the waters we are truly thirsty for. We trade in our desires and the risks inherent in them, passing the responsibility on to someone else or something else.

We, who like to get caught up or swept away. We, who are the flotsam and jetsam in the turbulent river of our circumstances. We, who let it all feel like it is beyond our control. We, the passive pawns push our desires safely beyond our reach. We get to wash our dirty hands of messy, disconcerting desires. Lest we be caught in the act of desiring, and acting on it, and risking getting something close to satisfied. We console ourselves with the idea that life was beyond our control; beyond the realm of our own personal freedom, decision and risk.

Do we pray to a God to change his mind about his working in the world, or is God beyond human persuasion? Like Jesus in Gethsemane, requesting the cup of suffering to be taken away from him. We request it, we plead for it; sweat blood for it in utter desperation, and we suffer the disappointment, suffer the world that does not correspond with our desires.

The Gethsemane of the Disillusionment, when Narcissus is left without an Echo.

Of course, we crave control, as much as we crave the loss of it. Yet, oftentimes it is the fear that wins out, and we retreat to safety in the surrogacy of responsibility. Risking the world against the weight of our desires. Throwing out our voices like Narcissus, hoping desperately for the return, for the correspondence. Here we are, hooked on the idea and the illusion that the world corresponds to our desires.

It doesn't.

Sometimes it does, or seems to, but that is simply a hankering after the illusion of correspondence. That is me reading with desperate eyes and a hungry heart, trying to connect the arbitrary with the intentional. The intention of a God, the intention of fate, being looked after, watched over and provided for. My secret needs, known without the risk and responsibility of communication, and those needs being met. Ah, sweet synchronicity, blessed coincidence, the answer to prayer.

The twenty pound note on the pavement when you are running low on funds at the end of the month. The love of your life coming into your life just when you were feeling so lost and alone. The lost ticket being found just in time for the departure on a long journey. The health of a loved one returning days after the prayers have been said.

But, then there is the falling feeling. There is the nausea. I have felt it before at different times of my life. Each time I had convinced myself that I had developed my sea legs; (and maybe someday I will) the nausea had gone, but what I had really done was I paddled back to dry land. I was flicking my toes in the water, longing for the open sea, but too terrified to go out of my depth: beyond the continental shelf of my control, into the turbulent ocean of my desires.

When the world corresponds, we get to wash our hands of the responsibility for communicating difficult feelings, and we get drugged on the myth once again. We dread the thought of demystifying our desires and the complex little stories we weave around them. Like the partner who never experiences pleasure during sex, yet refuses to communicate what it is that might bring them pleasure. Suffering in silence, the dissatisfaction, the discomfort or even the pain, rather than risk making a request. All to maintain some illusion, to keep us mystified and hidden in a cloud of our own making.

Some are getting by on their own personal superstitions. They roam the streets, with nervous ticks, expecting nothing but hoping for everything, disguising their hopes through the monotony of routine and ritual. They are the magpies looking for treasure. Looking for the coins that have fallen through the hole in God's pocket. Still hooked on the illusion of connectedness, just lowering our expectations little by little, until we are waiting desperately for crumbs of correspondence. Morsels of meaning.

Still out at sea, and still looking for dry land. 

The Kingdom Coming

Between 
I and the I-dea

is stagnant space
sterile solemnity

so fuck the idea
and taste the 
sweet juices

messy and sweating
excreting and pulsating

for now 
there is 
something happening
and 
in that 
groaning interaction
there is

healing
from the 
poisoning

that toxic sanctuary

of the separation 
between

I and the I-dea

so fuck heaven

give me the
kingdom coming

Negotiating with Neglect

I love a strong black coffee in the morning, and I love a cold beer in the evening. I am sure I am not the only one. However, caffeine and alcohol are diuretics.

A diuretic is something that makes you need to piss. You end up taking in fluids, but lose them all too quickly, leaving you dehydrated. Yet the diuretics are often more attractive to us than what we really need: for example, we need water but drink beer.

We often appease ourselves in this way, with what I call, the diuretics of the soul.

We crave things, but we attempt to sate ourselves with something that falls short of the thing we crave. We crave adventure yet appease ourselves with watching action movies in the darkness of our living rooms. We let others play out the dramas we wish we had in our own lives, while we get to play it safe and appease our desires with poor substitutes.

The thirst of the soul is not sated, only suspended.

When we starve ourselves physically and psychically of the things we need to feel alive, we end up feeling empty and drained. We lose that thing that animates us…our souls! We lose the spark.

What I am talking about is not supernatural, mystical or overly complex. If we don’t get enough good quality water, or enough good quality food, we lose our energy. The equation is just as simple when it comes to our mental health. If we don’t give ourselves the balance that we need, then we will feel flat, down, and lifeless. We all know about the five portions of fruit and vegetables that we are meant to consume everyday, yet, there doesn’t seem to be the same awareness of what our minds need for that same healthy balance.

We need stimulation. We need freshness. We need to play. We need to exercise. We need interaction.

Of course, unlike with food and water, we will not necessarily die if we don’t have these needs met. They are needs of a different kind. However, like I suggested earlier, we risk losing our spark…the thing that animates us…our souls.

I am not saying that we should entirely quit drinking, smoking, eating tasty food, or any of that other stuff we love to do…for life is hard enough as it is, I am simply suggesting that we don’t live on a diet of diuretics, that we stop appeasing our souls with poor substitutes, and start giving ourselves what we need.

Self-Esteem Trees

Self-esteem doesn’t grow on trees.

It would be preferable to many of us, if you were just able to pluck some self-esteem from the nearest tree, as if feeling good about our selves were a natural right of every human being, or at least that it should come easily. As is often the case, we want valuable things without cost. We want things that have worth to us, without paying for them. So many of us, are like closet shoplifters, that don’t have the courage to actually steal anything, but resent paying for the thing they want. So, we end up in the aisles paralysed between our conflicting desires.

Pilfering self-esteem as and when we find it from the pockets of life, is a decent enough ploy, but it is a tactic that rewards the minimal effort with a minimal pleasure. You get what you give. And so, there is nothing quite like getting down to business…putting in a bit of elbow grease. For many of us, our esteem, is dependent on someone else. We glue ourselves into relationships where someone else takes charge, and takes responsibility, while we glean off some of the profits, which can never be any thing more than crumbs from the table.

What if we became self-sufficient?

I don’t mean that we become hermits who never communicate with anyone. I am not suggesting that we ought to live our lives free from other people, even though there are times when that would seem idyllic. I am, however, suggesting that the satisfaction of looking after one’s self, far outweighs the satisfaction we might get from letting others do the dirty work.

Self-esteem only comes with sacrifice and hard work. It comes with perseverance and determination, and of course, sometimes we don’t have those, and so we slip back into the quicksand of our more protective selves. The more we slip back, into feeling crap about ourselves, the less likely we are to find the tools we need to change; like rummaging for a nail in a toolbox when you have no torch and the lights have gone out. In this scenario, one can become fixated with the task of finding the nail, and not try to sort out the lighting issue. Sometimes we need to go back to basics…you’d be as lucky to find self-esteem, without looking after the basics of your physical and practical well-being, as you would be to find that nail in the toolbox. Either way, it is no one else’s job to sort it out for us; there is only you, and the journey for your self-esteem is an entirely solitary one.

There is something better for us…not out there…not in the wide blue yonder…just in here. Inside, in that little room inside yourself, where you have those million secret conversations, commentaries, monologues and diatribes that no one else ever gets to hear. Maybe in those conversations with yourself, you can find a nurturing voice. A voice from yourself, to yourself and for yourself; a voice free from judgement and criticism, and free from wish and fantasy, free from the curses that you have whispered over your self for far too long. And maybe, if you find this nurturing voice, you will encourage a movement that will become a few movements, which will over time become the makings of a journey, or maybe nothing as grandiose as that…maybe just a wee trip to some place nicer than you where.

I wish you well for that journey

Learning to Limp

Learning to limp

as natural and instinctive

as curling in foetal forms

to dampen the impending

anticipated pain

connected pains

pains of connection

as the tissue of our being

with heavy footfall

weighted unnecessarily by

our own hated burdens

on the

tarmac of our this and that

the frictions and abrasions

inevitable and impending

as certain as the passing

the

blows and grazes

contusions and lacerations

Then the injury

is gone

But loyally

we limp on

For we have learned to limp

learned to

curl

duck

clench

hold ourselves

in ways that give genesis

to their own ailments

and

counter-pains

tightened tendons

strained ligaments

Learning to live unwounded

Learning to live unbroken

Learning to live un-analysed-to-within-an-inch-of-one’s-life

Can be as hard as learning to walk…

For

The
Very

First

Time

Love Thy Neighbour

You have heard it said, love your neighbour as yourself, but I say…love your neighbour as they want to be loved.

It may come as a surprise, but, not everyone wants to be loved in the same way that we would like to be loved. Sometimes we care and love, and act that out without regard to how the other person might actually like to be treated. It’s a simple mistake, we simply forget to ask, and just bash on with our caring and loving.

This is often the case in intimate relationships. We can maintain beliefs in mystical connections at the expense of learning how to navigate the quagmire of real communication…real requests…and real listening.

It’s a little bit like buying a present for someone, and mistaking our own excitement about the gift, with the actual appreciation that person might have for it. Traditionally, the receiver has been socially obliged to be grateful regardless of the gift’s suitability. After all, at worst, it was a bad guess, and we all know we can put the rubbish present in the box with the other bits’n’bobs, or donate it to the charity shop.

However, when it comes to loving and caring, this kind of disparity can cause even more discomfort and unease, than an unwanted itchy jumper. Many of us like to believe that when we love another, the other is somehow essentially connected to us, and this can easily lead us to believing that the other is essentially the same as us.

It’s so easy to do, to mix up the pleasure of our loving intent, with what might actually end up being unappreciated, or worse, causing harm…like Bad Aid or Bad Intervention. People who are blindly caught up in the energy of their own good actions can do things that cause harm. Aid organisations injecting huge quantities of free rice or clothing can cripple the other’s economy in this exchange, whilst overbearing interference can undervalue the autonomy of the other.

We can end up caring carelessly.

But imagine this: imagine that we communicated honestly with one another, without fear of causing offence or upset, and suggested the ways we like to be looked after, cared for and loved, even if that meant we’d rather go-it-alone. Of course, the other person is not obliged to conform, but at least it would be out in the open. We could listen to each other’s differences and figure something out…something a little bit better.

And you never know, you might stop getting those itchy jumpers that you hate.

Be Blessed

When the road doesn't rise to meet you,

may you find the subtle strength in your sinews

to let one foot fall in front of the other

down tracks untrod

into fresh unknowns

that are only yours

When the wind isn't at your back,

may you find your centre

and summon a gentle energy

that brings intention to move or stay

so that you are not blown by every breeze

When the sun doesn't shine upon your face,

may you close your eyes

and find comfort in the darkness

and an inner flicker of light

that can guide you without blinding you

And when the rains fall hard upon you

may you lift up your face to it

and let it wash you

drench you

until you stop thinking your life

And when you do not feel held

by God or anyone

may you begin to know yourself

in your separateness

and befriend your self

so that you can stand strong in a sea of others

that when they do come to hold you

you do not feel like half a person being completed.

For in the blessing is a curse,

and in the curse

is a blessing