Are you feeling better ?

Spending time with a cough that's becoming a burning torture.
How there's nothing like a sounding like a Spandau every five minutes to magnify every little hicup and problem until all I want  is for everything and everyone just to cease to be, now.

Two or three days spent in dressing gown and under duvet, eyes like hot marbles that ache, too tired to be tired but no strength to stand up. When I do, bent like an old man. how has this happened since Friday? What have I done to bring this unrelenting punishment down upon myself? Is it as I've suspected, the ultimate irony?Me, always imagining what The World would be like after the next great plague being its first victim. The third night of it, the most intense dream of late. Sheets of paper, yellowed and covered in diagrams, faint pencil showing me things I don't understand but I somehow know. The constant sensation that each time I understand one way of it it's all erased and I'm shown another way. All through the night my feet won't stay still and I believe I can't sleep but I am sleeping. It ends, eventually, in dim light and with the best collection of words and phrases in my head for a while. Is this the beginning of the transformation? Am I about to become the fluid and constant writer of thoughts I secretly crave to be? No. It fades back  to whence it came and I am left with the dull ache and rattle of before. It feels as though this will continue for ever.  The  concept of eternal convalescence..

Ahh, but no. Soon I'm buckling under that inbuilt insistence to be a good drone and to return to work because I feel a little better. I cough and wheeze my way through the remainder of the week, not fully able to rid myself of the feeling that being slumped on a sette coughing until I taste metal  isn't somehow  far more enjoyable than most of this. Time to pull myself up or slide even further into detachment. Even the new tidier haircut won't hide that sort of slide for long.
Before I know where I am, I'm sitting in front of someone and we're talking about things to which I  am ambivalent. The rules and how things should look. I nod, I discuss, I agree, I do really but also I want to be eleswhere and not involved. The concerning and disconserting feelings that this will not go away but not being bothered at the same time because this simply doesn't matter. Not in  the big sense. I'm getting closer to avoidance. As happens in these situations, I find myself contemplating the usual two scenarios that pop in to my head. I wonder what would happen if I were to launch across the desk and start to pummel my unsuspecting opposite? Just keep hitting him until he stopped talking, throw down a rain of blows that knocked these foolish and rigid words he's speaking from his mouth so as to never hear them again. Unleash the howl that even now grows inside me. Throttle him.
Or just swear at him in the foulest of ways. Shout out loudly what I really think of him and his ideas both. End my verbal assult with a gob of spit for good measure and stop this nonsense dead so that it will never trouble me again.

 Of course these will never happen, I am not about to do this, he is only doing a job he likes and the things he talks of are not going to go away what ever I do but will remain, from now on.

 Launching across a desk.
I am still wondering though .

End of another week,
Not a mundaneone just slightly repetitive and over filled with the expectations of others. Sometimes, that fine line of supporting crosses over into almost full on dependence and the reality that you might be baby sitting unresourceful adults creeps in and tires you out. Makes you rely on your own support or dependency methods , what ever they may be. 

People can be the most demanding of creatures when all is well. Add to that, the prospect of putting them in a completely new environment and introcding the suggestion that life can at times demand a different outlook on things to elevate a present problem, well, you can find yourself on the road to slow and niggling confrontation with those you are tasked to guide . This is a factor of the so called "rewarding jobs" that involve the Holy Grail of any employment, the chance to help people .  Often though,at first, the help isn't recognised as such and for a while  the rocky hinterland of  uncertainty is where we set up camp. It is then down to dawn raids, skirmishes and full on attacks to get the point across that people do in fact have positive aspects and can help themselves to move out of the shit they're in. 

So having been cast down amongst the unsure, unwilling and the down right uncooperative this week, I've found solace in unexpected places . The almost constant listening to of Walk Away by Mr Waits, the words of Mr Watts and the investigation in to the nature of the snake in my shared unconscious as seen by Mr Jung, have more than held up my resolve to bludgeon through the built up years of resistance, denial, acceptance of fate and unwillingness to see  inner potential. Top this off with one of the best sunsets I've seen in a long while, a full on backlit sky and clouds that spoke of other realms than this. I am amazed at how beauty decides to show itself when unexpected. A reminder of how this can all work out in ways not yet thought of if we just look . A glimpse in to that part of me which I feel I have somehow  lost or forgotten  through over exposure to all the above. But, the human spirit is all about struggle in the face of the overwhelming. The constant daily trudge through the banal and often soul destroying for a peek at the wonderous.  Each of us pushing their own rock up their own mountain of forever , just to see it roll down again time after time.

 Here's an idea.Embrace this in all its pointless, frustrating and overwhelming ridiculousness. It can only make us stronger and less reliant on cheaply priced, widely available, high alcohol content lagers   

The want to write and create is somehow off set by the mummer of the documentary on UFOs somewhere behind me. Added to this, the knowledge that at some point, I have to take the bin through the week old snow to the top of the road is another nail in the coffin of self expression. 
I've stopped now to think and the flow gets stilted. It's like I have to mentally unfocus my mind, just let my fingers move and the words come. They don't necessarily make sense but the more I do it the more I realise they don't have to. Let all this be without plot as life itself is. Let all tumble forth in unlisted and uncollected nonsense. The key to it is don't aim for a theme, leave that to those who tell me what I should be listening to and watching, how I should view others' behaviour and be aghast at the demise of western civilisation. It's not new. Time and before the same outrage at it all. This too shall pass, like all else.  Yawns and brushing back of hair. The bin waits and I must answer the call of the coloured receptacle that ,as we speak, holds the remains of my consumerism. The bones of my processed prey in glass and plastic. Again the flow stops, too much thinking and reading of what I've written. Those who would view this and expect lucid comment I apologise . This isn't for you. 
The bin waits no longer. The trudge through the underlit gloom must happen. 
As much as we try to stop it, the cold of the this alien winter seeps through the bricks and  slowly,will cover us in our sleep.

Cup o Tea...

When I was small, This used to terrify me and draw me at the same time.
A scarecrow with a mind of its own,  an old man with a black top hat, dirty black suit  who seemed to inhabit hedgerows but had power over him and other scarecrows, who would appear at certain times, and behave like the now over used undead. I remember one episode when our  hero was called before a scarecrow court for some scarecrow themed crime.Possibly vegetable based or looking through a window in the dead of night type felony. That was the one that sticks in my head, the one with the other scarecrows. They came to bring him to his trial.  Stiff figures appeared through the corn like their present day  contemporaries, silent and dead eyed. I remember sitting and watching as they lumbered through the dry stalks. Their only purpose the apprehension of said strawy criminal.  Perhaps this instance was the start of my fascination with the passed on who rise up to plague the living. The origin of my dreams of resisting  the masses of grey and rotting all the sames who want to include me in their team.

One thing about him though, was his ability to change heads. A different head for different situations.  I don't know whether or not the intention was there, whether or not the writers were trying to say something about the nature of fitting in but  as I'm now a grown up, I find I'm doing exactly the same thing. 
It's now completely acceptable for me, as part of my own scarecrow society, to wear a work head, a weekend head , an out with people from work head and all the other heads I have for all the situations I could find myself in. It's expected of me.
 Should I want to wear one head all the time, well, that's when the problems start. What if I have the wrong head for the wrong day? What if my weekend head won't come off and I walk in on any given Monday with slightly the wrong attitude? Will it all come crashing down around my wrong head? I doubt it. It hasn't so far and I've worn the wrong head to more than one occasion before now. The possible truth is that  all my heads have the same ideas. They just come out randomly, regardless of the situation and not as The Crowman would always like them to.

More worrying than having to have numerous heads, is the fact that some other scarecrows only seem to have  the one worky head. This one, they never seem to take off and seem bent on trying to fill mine with their ideas on how I should think and be. Other scarecrows seemed to have no ideas in theirs. What's the Crow man going to do about that? He could try and fill them with his but he needs straw filled turnip heads like me for that.

Let's see which head I have on tomorrow.
 I'm hoping for the Cup o tea and slice of small group size one....
  

I have decided to be more positive about things this year. 

When returning from Christmas break and being faced with the straightforward "you don't want this job , do you "? as my friend and colleague was, there is little response other than the blatantly obvious or the tactfully deflective.
 We are all agreed , they have been taking classes on how to further demotivate people who have had enough of watching them fiddle while it all goes up in smoke. 

First step towards positivity, fuck it, it'll take care of itself...or lets all apply for other jobs.
Unfortunately, I cannot live on dreams and have a spouse , cat and dog to consider, so striding about the land delivering pearls of wisdom whilst wearing robes and sporting a beard big enough to strap under my belt is out of it.  Pity that, I feel I'd take to it rather well.

So, It's back to plan B, if ever I had one. 

1. Write more for me and then put it in a chest to be discovered after my death and then be hailed as a prophet well before my time.
2. Continue to play the game in the supposed real world and look for something else to do that's slightly less like working for The Job Centre, even though I don't .
3. Try to live more in the moment and not dream my life away. This is the most difficult because I've been doing it the longest.
4. Act on my ideas, not just think about it. 

Do I really want this job......seriously ?

Last Post ???

 What if all this was to come to an abrupt end on Friday?This is predicted in a calender, devised  by a wise and ancient people, who sometimes, used substances to make them think they were birds and animals and weren't adverse to ripping beating hearts out of people. That aside, if this was definitely the end of the world as we indeed know it, what would they put in "The Earth's top 100 moments"? 
Would they  do another one about the worst (insert number here ) moments? Would they have enough time?
Which one would be on after the X Factor? Is that still on ?

Who would host such a thing...? Some generic twenty something presenter . One of the multi-skilled  multi-purpose one size fits all ones we have a cluster of now. Imagine ending your days to the accompaniment of grinning, inane mediocrity. Most fitting for the bland years we in the west have chained ourselves to of late.

No that's no way to end. Turn off your Televisions and go outside. Greet the end of this broken, fragile,nonsensical, harsh, bitter-sweet, wonderfully, wonderfully colourful fucked up world we've been clinging too for the last 200,000 years and , if you're lucky enough to find a clear evening, stand beneath the stars and look up. Look and realise something. They, depending on your views on reality, will still be there afterwards. Those distant cold glints of blue, red and white will still go on regardless of whether we see the next day or not . After The Earth has stopped smoking, The Universe may well settle down and carry on its slow,steady journey to entropy.

It may well be the fate of us all..

Don't be sad my fellow travellers in times and spaces.Be heartened by the possibility that only one of the endless versions of you is coming to its end. The others may feel it, as we all do from time to time when something comes through. Don't feel affronted because you're the version about to meet an unfair and unwanted end, at the mercy of flaming chunks of rogue planet or such. Be at peace.  Technically, they're all you. Even if some of them are living the lives you really wanted to.

Lets face it,it'll probably be fine so we can go on and keep doing things to each other because of religion, politics, greed and all the other man made foolishness we enjoy. Of course, we will be able to do it via our smartphones and in ever increasingly higher definition.

Go outside and look at them anyway. They are endlessly beautiful.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year?

Gotta have soul...

I don't belong to anything, not really.

I've joined clubs and I take part in things but somehow, I always seem to end up doing something of a singular nature.
Saturday last,I did something for the first time. I attended an all nighter, a Northern Soul all nighter with my wife and her work friends. I don't particularly have any affection for the music and to be honest I didn't really know what to expect. For starters, I was with people I don't really know well. Always a difficult one that but you have to go with it. So I donned my cup of funk, slipped on my poets jacket and hit the town.  

What I got was one of my best nights ever. I found myself in the midst of people who, although follow a certain type of music that I don't, are as it turns out my natural companions in respect to attitudes to dancing. I've never been comfortable with the "expected" type of dancing that's present at weddings and any other number of gatherings where most people let themselves go in that traditional and half arsed way we do things."Look, I'm really enjoying myself  dancing to YMCA" yes. You wouldn't be enjoying it if you were living in one .  Sorry, That's probably unfair but it always feels that way to me.This was the complete opposite to the forced and cumbersome, this was natural, from the inside to the out.

I'm not about to become an Northern Soul fan, I don't feel that braces , cheesecloth and, quite frankly, the most amazing flared trousers I've ever come across, are really my thing. What I loved about it was their passion. When you're surrounded by people who obviously love something and it's a good love, then you get caught up in it. Add to that the fact that it's all about dancing how I dance, for yourself, how you want to and not for the faint of heart. My friends I was in like Flynn. I adjusted the angle to my cap funk to cool, strode on to the floor of The King's Hall and simply went for it. I spun, slid, twirled, raised my hands and closed my eyes. Safe in the knowledge that I would be accepted by those around me, I  surrendered to the aroma of talc , delighted in the sartorial use of the side burn and let go to the subtle undertones of both jazz and funk , hidden in the back ground of the Northern Soul classics that I didn't even know. A part of me had come home. Add  to this this purchase of fine a burger from the catering provided and the sight of gentlemen younger than myself relaxing at what would be their half time with a well earned cup of tea. It was as my friend Ben would put it, completely bad ass.

Unfortunately the all nighter didn't last all night, not for us. Weariness, vodka and coke and the desire for bed and my own cup of tea eventually won out .  At about 1.30 we were done for so made our way out in to the frosty star filled night to await our chariot home. But inside , the night continued.More and more arrived with overnight bags no doubt filled with fresh  vests, talc and  amazing flares. They were set on the 7 am finish. I salute them,each and everyone.

 The feeling I got from the entire night was so different from the one I get during my day to day struggle between wanting to help people and having to put up with ever increasing levels of bullshit. I'm tired of the thing my job has become, seen it change from a decent occupation in to a race for "quality" and "targets".  Should anyone be looking for a man who wants to help others realise their potential without the want to make him act almost like a salesman, I'm waiting for your call.

For the briefest time whilst with my unknown companions,masters of the spin and high kick, I felt something good. I felt alive. And for that, although they will never know it,they have won a place in my heart.