Crumbs Of Luck

You wonder how much luck is involved when whom you argue with most is yourself. Arguments appear from nowhere and remain everywhere, for spells.

Invisible and private. But firing across all directions below your skull. Associations and tangents, back and forth and across. Knotting woven patterns on repeat.

Frustration, anger and hatred appear prominent beacons. Not a lighthouse in sight. Except for flashes of practiced kindness for balance. It’s affects soon fizzle out to letting go.

Leaky wounds and tears awaiting healing, pounding pavements, early and late. On-call on these cold January days.

Plates once full. When struggles fade, you know others are bound to surface at some point. Life right there. Looping along with many other matters and situations.

And all thats left are crumbs. And you wonder how much luck is involved. And what story could be next?

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Encrypted truth is lies

Truth?

In plain sight, not so strangely. Know what I mean? A wet brown trout back and forward across his cheeks.

Words useless against weighted acts of deceptive wand-waving. Dark magic, double-forked tongue’s connive, wink wink nudge nudge!

Pallets of wasted money, smouldering here and there.

Microscopic perceptions examined and put to a ‘right-honourable-gentleman’, receive constant and moronic telescopic defence. Defies intelligence meaning with all his crowing bluster.

He looks dreadful, despite his pale four stone loss. Impressions of body odour linger by his tribal sty.

Truth remains an impossibility from his fowl mouth.

Onto now and in this chamber, times of backslapping amongst the narrowed few.

Connect one moment to each next lie, meticulous in his committed war, only too willing to show that brazen head and speak that noise.

Read these legible thoughts, descriptive of feasible events, happenings across a ripped-off population. The disconnected explain inner and outer anguish, sick to their back teeth of this poorly rated circus, starved of dignity and integrity.

Truth. Again, in plain sight.

They care not one iota. Not a crumpled tea-leaf.

Storms ahead.

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The fear of tell

Rich sat in the busy cafe and pondered his next move.

It was noticeable that there has developed inside a tendency to veer clear of people who, in objective perception, attempt to tell him what to do, how to live, how to resolve etc.

Easier said, harder to embrace. but when walking the line, make sure its a line you yourself has created.

When walking that line, he realised there are two worlds. The one he carried inside and the one he was walking in and about. This to him was a profound reveal. The world out with created so much opportunity for diverse engagements, noise and stillness. The world within was once very reactionary to the exterior environment and its inhabitants, until the death of a loved one made him think, deeply about life and living.

Then again, everyone is in the same position but not everyone is aware of their perceptions and how they can alter how and what they interpret. Look at the local refinery with all its pollutants rising into the sky and seeping into the ground. Look at the make up of the creation. It’s a wonderful construction considering all the thought and deeds that went into its manufacture. Cause and effect does good and bad.

But people hide in veiled cloaks regarding the reality of the harm that is cast out into unsuspecting public is horrifying. That’s when your awareness alerts you to move away. They tell you one thing but research shows different. The pollutants take their toll over time, slowly infecting living particles inside.

Time then, for one world to leave the other behind. At last, a corridor of nature beckons.

 

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Buried

An Italian earthquake quashes and affects the lives of many.

Grey rubble stacked where village buildings once stood along the Main Street, the sky beautiful in blue above.

People forage in the background, uniformed and not. Desperate to locate life.

Journalists clamber and then face the camera speaking their sensational sound bites

Their fingers pointing behind them.

Places now where dust rises and dreams are buried.

Pictures embed in and touch many lives, arresting attention, while

Words can fade and be forgotten

Unless carved in gravestones.

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Against tides

Dear son,

Please post this to the BBC, Sky, ITV, The press media, especially the Guardian and Cameron. Send one to the Royals, Mr Snow at Channel 4 and Amnesty International. Feel free to send it to anyone else who may take notice.

I’ve loved you when I’ve been here, I don’t know what happens next, but hopefully I might get to love you and watch over you from wherever.

Thanks for being a great son,

George Hickey.
I am no longer lost but Resting in Peace, I hope.

Here goes,

I didn’t like the wars, being posted over seas, away from home, for years of my life.

I know what I signed up for but the reality is far different. There was no sight nor smell of blood on my application.

Not like the films show either. I lost many many friends over the years. Many in battle. Many after I came home. I lost ‘me’ for many years. Felt cast aside. Lost relationships too. That’s cast aside. In the films people get to go home at the end of their project and sleep in their opulence. I battle with the pain and  the  longing for forgetting.

Truth is, I hate all the memorials. I hate hearing about them on the news. Some ex-colleagues ask me to go along. I see them sometimes in the newspaper. No, not my scene. Gory glorification.

I hate seeing the politicians and dignitaries standing there in all their designer best. Probably all millionaires with big ego’s, houses, big cars and bank balances.

I stopped watching the news when colour TV arrived. War wasn’t colourful. My memories remain grey and black. The radio is more my cup of tea, although the clever grandchildren like to see Dora and The Muppet’s in colour, so my neighbour gave me a colour TV when he was buying some Japanese curved screen contraption.. The written word is my thing especially second hand, black and off-white pages, musty with all its treasures housed in old red binds.  Books that have been cherished, poured over and where emotions have been moved.

I don’t like being reminded. Not even about winners and losers. Not even about ‘they died for us’. I hate that type of talk. People dispatched us inhumanely to fight battles, some not even involving me and my neighbours. Just bullshit. They have no idea. I wish they would respect that I want to forget.

They must spend fortunes on it. They could use the money to help people who have no homes, little or no support because of wars or just in general. They seem to find money when they like, from wherever, and spend it as they wish. Lavish showings perhaps, to bury their collective guilt or abandoned compassion.

I don’t need reminders of  all the despair war has caused, its carved deep in my memory.

Bloody anniversaries, they concoct these grave events time after time.
1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 21 years, 25 years, 30 years, 35, 40, 50 years and so on. All the money that gets spent organising it and reporting on it might feed a small town for a year. I didn’t fight, nor I’d imagine did any of my battalion to create space for growing hunger and deprivation. The ‘beaks’ have the audacity and cheek. They’ve no idea. They just seem to like dragging the past into the present and scaring people of the future.

Pain after pain dredging up. I think I’ve lost, grieved and cried enough, thank you.

Just leave me be. Bye bye.

G.H.

Broken webs

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Disliked…mostly.

The interaction is unpleasant, the conflict is getting worse. He is an argumentative shite, I am too open and adaptable. Stress and worry appears mutual. He stresses, i worry. We are friendly… mostly, but not friends. I couldn’t.

Tom is too much of an attention-seeking dramatist. I am an introvert, quiet and clam, he hates that. His friends call him Pinocchio. Hollow and a liar, at times to his advantage. Seemingly spoiled, yet I have seen him raw and vulnerable when his brother died suddenly. A car accident in the garage, crushing.

He wept openly when the mask failed him. I was humbled. It changed how I approach him. He never refers to it. A moment of weakness I think he muttered, his eyes streaming and his nose sniffling heavily.

Hardening his bullying exterior rather than loosening his meek interior. especially with Miriam, his wife left him, for a mature women. I know this added to his loss, his grieving, as he was attached to both through love. His fostering childhood experience left him hardened, to lay it gently, lacking in intimacy and nurture.

His Teflon shell rebuked all approaches of assistance nonetheless I shall continue to keep at my forefront, a flow of compassion.

It can be done. He deserves it. The people who love him deserve it and eventually…him.

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Act now…before grave lateness.

Recent difficult times have alerted change
Inspiring a different perspective
While understanding the power of suffering more
Wishing to act to suffer less.

Change has been easy, driven by necessity
Waking to whats truly important
And remembering it and living with this daily
Growing a greater kinship with the suffering young.

Broken pathways, poor example, recklessly led
Painful in the realisation, its unnecessary.
A slow dawning of an inherent desire to wish to help
To steer towards better choices.

Before it maybe too late.
And life’s tenderness ebbs and waste is awakened.

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“Awayness and distant reflections”

Dear Sean,

Hows Africa?

Hope you are well, just writing a few words to share some thoughts as you are the only person I can trust.

Awayness…a new word I recently discovered and now like. It’s very relevant as it can describe my time away from my birth home, people and my mind. Profound?

Yes,  there has been many changes since I moved to a new place, 17 years ago. A long time, you’ll agree no doubt? Similar to your good self, I guess.

Changes? Yes, you would expect there to be some, of course you would. However assessing a recent visit to my previous home, has led me to look at things more differently, exploring things with a little more insight, a little deeper, I believe.

It’s probably me that has changed mostly, to be fair, and to be honest Sean. More so now than before, I am finding more difficulty in coping, in tolerating and  accepting  attitudes and ways of others. Strong words you may think, yet words and reflections that come to mind when exploring and discovering where I am at the moment. Where I am at the moment with my relationships, with some in my old home and reflections on  the place itself and even its culture.

Difficult to explain for me maybe, and to put into words that make sense and to mean what I mean and articulate my experience. Now I realise that I don’t need to explain anything to anyone,  yet I feel an obligation, a kind of force, to share my thoughts on the recurring matter.

It may be selfish, yes it may well be, nonetheless I am considering my emotional wellbeing. Sharing, to share is a good thing, right…well, I suppose it can certainly depend on the receivers and the content. Perceptions as well. You’ll know what I mean, having been through what you went through.

An attempt to create an emotional balance sheet perhaps. The idea of  a balance sheet may sound a bit matter of fact, a bit bizarre.But bear with me please my friend, bear with me.

Please remember, I have been in love with the place and its folk for many years, even holidaying in several places over the past decade. Terrific. Been in love with the  culture also. And yet I wonder if there can come a time when this so-called love dwindles and even fades ?

I wonder if loving relationships can fizzle out due to a variety of reasons? Differences in beliefs, in perceptions and understandings, in attitudes and ways of being and even looking at relationships and the way we live our lives? Hmm, I wonder? Change is…is change!

Qualities such as tolerance, patience, acceptance and forgiveness, qualities such as  understanding and empathy, I have learned the importance of. Tell me, are they enough to withstand the frequent barrage of negativity and  avoid creating a chasm through once areas of commonality? A wedge between belonging and distancing? Please tell me Sean.

Like minded people and all that noble mullarkey?…seems to be a strong resemblance of a current predicament. Mine.

Sometimes families and friendships do fail, I know they do,  they can fall to ruins quickly, or, or even slowly grow apart. I have many times, listened with sincere empathy reducing me to tears, to anger and frustration. I have  heard about many people’s experiences and maybe its now time to experience and express my own, to question that blood tie, sad as it may seem. To question dignity and integrity.

Distance is an apt choice of word to describe geography and indeed relationships that become fragmented, torn and failing. After the severing of the familial umbilical cord many years ago…isolating distance can creep in  alongside us and just sit there for a while, aware or unaware, consciously or not. In solitude. In melancholy.

Responsibility? Yes I am only too aware of mine.  The role I play. And maybe, just maybe the glue is becoming weaker, a fading interest threaded together or unravelling apart. Unknitted and losing its adhesion.

It’s not a blatant deed, mine. This feeling has been chipping away, or being chipped at, which seems more accurate, as I become more and more aware of differing levels of attention and contrasting and conflicting levels of interest, or importance, ie whats important to sides, it seems to have shifted as we live our separated lives.

Age? Maybe its a factor. Experiences, levels of  understanding through education and flexibility of mind and even personal adaptability to change and to  others stagnation, maybe there are all factors. Factors, sadly,  to fading feelings. Losing intimacy.

Listening? I am an acute listener, well practised. I hear the various tones and the emphasised pronouncements in voices. I get to a point where, due to these inflections, I just want to tune out, switch right off. Myself, I do not feel listened to.

 Humoured? maybe, but not listened to. It’s almost as if there is a gulf of a mismatch in acting out of values, of beliefs, where once, there was not such a gap, it was once different. Maturity? Maybe a gulf of a mismatch is too strong an analogy, sorry.

Hence the balance sheet mate, the pluses and the minuses. The logging and recording of…what…how can I describe it…the word disconnection springs to mind again , perhaps my sanity is my defence. Disconnected seems appropriate and yet it feels wrong, almost tainted with self guilt. The expectation of a son can be one of compassion.

 And where does compassion lie when there is advice to surround ourselves with folk who are of similar mindsets and attitudes. Lots of mileage in those words, agreed? Building a wall of guilt, resentment littered with feelings of not wanting to be around a persons aura. The isolating and protective moat is also coming. Because things just are not the same, fact. Not for me anyway and I sense that the feeling is close to  mutual. I strongly sense that!

So, does love in its many forms change? It can be. It can change for better or worse, stronger or not, it seems to me.

Once again this word change, slots into my mind, its key in my evaluation, in my solo personalised conversation.

I can say that both my feelings and thoughts do not feel right. I feel that I must face them and reconcile them to help me move forward. These emotions are speaking to me, urging me to move me, nudging some progress, perhaps. For the good of my authentic way of being and how I want to be. And how I wish my children to be.

Distant and its uncomfortableness. In my daily work I see, hear and experience real misfortune, deprivation, poverty and disablement amongst people. they have a desire for dignity, for independence, for acceptance, for friendship, for enough money to pay rent, mortgage, food and bills. Real hardship.

And perhaps this is part of the reason why I tend to switch off from the moans and frequent utterances of dissatisfaction, the idle chat and complaints about others, with a familiar cutting tone. As if she hails herself above others and always of the self-opinion to be in the right. Not putting herself in a position to listen, to forgive, to accept and move on with grace, maybe empathy has run dry. There is no acceptance that she may be wrong. No understanding and comprehension of an acceptance of a difference of opinions. And thus, little respect follows or flows, being strangled and eventually cut off.

I wonder if there is an ”ology’ for this Sean? I hope can deduce meaning from my ramblings. Thank you for being there as a sounding board.

Looking forward to your visit in September!

Kind regards my friend,

Teanastellen.

Simon

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