I suppose I should not be surprised how disgusting people can be, but even at my age, I have the capacity to be surprised by it.
The woman I was involved in the car accident with has invented a story that is not just untrue; it is obviously untrue to anyone who knows me even a little, and equally obviously untrue just on the face of it.
The woman is saying that I reversed into her while she was stationary and that I had road rage and did it again.
With my kids in the back seat of my car, this woman is saying, I purposely ran into her with my fucking kids in the back of my car.
And then, weirdly, got out of my car and yelled at her, what the bloody hell did you do that for?
I mean, fucksake. Let's pretend that I'm the kind of person who gets aggressive towards others, which I am not. (I might mouth off at you but I have not hit anyone in 25 years plus, and then it was in self-defence.) I ram you and then shout at you for doing it? So I'm not just aggressive, I'm insane. No one who knows me would think that I delude myself about anything, let alone that it's someone else's fault that I ram them twice!
I know that the woman is taking advantage of the fact I was angry to invent this story. She knows she did the wrong thing but obviously you cannot tell your insurance that. You cannot tell them that you tried to cut someone off and they hit your car because your claim is turned down flat at that point.
But if that was all there was to it, I would get over it. But it's worse. She has a witness who has the same, who is an offduty copper. I do not know how she got this person to say this but I know it is not true. If I had made a mistake, I would confess to it. It is not my style to blame others for what I've done.
But I did nothing wrong.
And where the hell did she get this copper from? No one approached her at the scene. No one has told the police anything. How does she know there is a witness? How did a witness even contact her insurance people? The insurance people now say that there is nothing in the notes about a statement. It's crazy.
How did the woman get this statement? The insurance company won't say. They say they don't have a statement. I can't speak to the woman who rang me about the case.
She even lied to her insurance about my not wanting to swap details. That's not true. I called her a cunt precisely because she would not write her number down and swap details. I did not have a pen in the car, so I couldn't do anything about it. I was standing in the rain listening to her mouth off at me while she fiddled with her pen.
I thought all I would have to do is go to the police station and make a statement. I would go to court if I had to, and tell the truth. I believe, foolishly, in the truth. I thought that, yeah, I might lose. Maybe the court would find that it was my fault, even though there was nothing I could do. Her story doesn't even make sense though. She claims to have been stationary in traffic and I rammed her. But how come if I rammed her I only hit the very front of her car? How come I didn't hit the car in front of her? Why didn't the driver of the car in front get out to see whether their car was damaged? (The answer, in case you're curious, is that they had moved off, which is why she had tried to get across the gap before I could pull out.) Is she seriously suggesting that the driver of the car that was parked in front of her was not even curious whether they had sustained damage?
And I want to know who this witness is. Who is their kid at the school? Obviously, no kid, no credibility. Can they prove they were in the carpark at the time? Where were they? They would have had to be particularly well placed to have seen it clearly enough to know what happened, not to mention that they would have to have been looking at the right time. It happened quickly. Why didn't this policeman arrest me for criminal damage? Why didn't he come and get my details? I didn't disappear. The woman blocked me from leaving the spot and sat phoning someone for several minutes. Why didn't the policeman approach me? Was he not worried that someone so enraged that he would ram another car might turn violent? Why did a policeman with a good enough view of the accident to corroborate her story not come forward at the time?
I don't even understand how I am supposed to have done it. In her version of the story, I waited for several minutes in my parking spot, then just said fuck it and reversed into her, where she was sitting stationary, and then became so enraged that she was there that I rammed her again. But why? I often sit in that carpark. I wasn't in any hurry. There's no point; it always takes forever to get out of the carpark.
I am actually really scared that this woman has got someone to ram her car after the fact, to create more damage and make it worse for me. Anyone insane enough to make up the story she has made up could do that. What a nightmare!
What upsets me most of all is that I know I didn't do the wrong thing, but she did. I waited for a space and pulled out when it was clear. I know that is true. I am a cautious driver on the whole, and I am aware of what a nightmare the school carpark is, particularly in heavy rain. I don't drive aggressively, and I don't play chicken with other cars. I am always the chicken. I would never risk injury to my children and the suggestion that I would is truly offensive. I hate the woman more for that suggestion than for what she did in the first place or for any other lie she has told.
But this woman did do the wrong thing. She tried to cut me off when I was backing out. She and I both know that is true. (And it doesn't matter how many off-duty policemen say otherwise: the truth is the truth, and we both know it.) People do this kind of thing. They play chicken, throwing their cars across gaps to stop each other pulling out. I see it all the time. But I didn't see her do it and that's why we crashed. She even confessed it when I got out of the car and asked her why she'd done it. She didn't want to wait.
She didn't want to wait. She risked injuring my children because she didn't want to wait for one more car to get out of the carpark.
Well, I should not be surprised that someone that disgusting would lie and would have found a friend to lie for them, should I?
On the one hand, Michael Jackson was an abused child who became an abuser (I suppose we must say an alleged abuser, because sadly he escaped conviction for what he did, and died unrepentant), a victim as much as a villain. I do not say that a man should be blamed for what he grows into when we are so strongly moulded by experience.
On the other, he was a man with the resources to get first-class help and instead used his money and power to increase his access to children. Some say that abuse is a cycle: children who are abused grow up broken and in turn abuse others, who become broken and so it goes.
This is a great human tragedy. I'm a softhearted type and a sucker for "does no one think about the children" appeals to sentimentality. But I am also a realist and believe that the foundation of a happy, secure childhood is essential for fully developed human beings.
So good riddance to Michael Jackson and may your life stand as an indictment on a world that will forgive anything of those who caper for it amusingly.
****
While I am on the subject, vale Farrah Fawcett. I was one of many teen boys who had a Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster on my wall (I think you all know which one), and it's no exaggeration to say that my earliest masturbatory fantasies featured her exclusively.
The contrast between how these two stars brought sex into the lives of boys is quite striking. These days I'm more concerned about the commodification of women than I was then, but I don't overanalyse it. I simply rejoice in her beautiful smile and hair that many women, including Mrs Zen, would quite literally kill for. And the nips. We're going to miss the nips.
Vale Farrah Fawcett, forever summer in her red cossie.
I've got to write this down because it's bugging me so much. It's super stressful.
So I am waiting in my car to pull out of a parking spot in the carpark at our kids' school. Every evening there's a long line of traffic waiting to get out onto the road that the school is on, and it backs up into the carpark. So you take your chance to back out of your spot when you can. So the guy next to me backs out, and the woman who left the space for him still hasn't moved, so I back out too. I look over my shoulder: all clear, and off I go.
Crunch! At first I'm like, how the fuck can there be a car there? So I get out and I realise that the woman has purposely driven her car into the way to cut me off so that I can't back out. I didn't see her move forward, obv., or I would have stopped. I am pretty sure she knew I was backing out. I had been waiting with my indicator on for a long time, cars are backing out wherever they can, and once the way was clear, of course I was going to go.
So I'm like, what the bloody hell did you do that for? And she's like, it's such a long line and I've been waiting ages. And I'm like, so you made me fucking crash?
Because I can't believe it. That's exactly what she has done. She has hooked it into the gap that I'm pulling out into because she won't wait for another car.
So she is getting her notebook out, and it's teeming with rain. She is yelling at me about how I ran into her. I am like, you have to be kidding, you put your car behind mine on purpose. She keeps yelling and is not doing anything with her pen.
So I'm like, just swap fucking numbers, you cunt. She's like, you set a good example for your kids. And I'm like, yeah and I suppose making someone crash their fucking car is setting a great example.
So she goes, I'm just going to take your licence plate for the insurance. I'm like, fine, and get back into my car.
So there's a notice in the newsletter from the school: the police are searching for witnesses to a car accident. I'm freaking out. It's probably just that she has made a claim on her insurance and they have told her she has to get a police report.
I suppose it's going to be expensive for me. I drove into her and that's all that's going to matter. That she purposely put her car in my road doesn't matter.
Well, that's all I need. My boss has no work for me. My big project is delayed. I have 2K dollars in my England account and barely a K in my transaction account. I am supposed to prove that I have the funds to support Mrs Zen when we go to the UK or she can be refused a visa. I am underemployed and my outgoings will be greater in the UK. I mean, I hope to get a jerb but my CV is all over the place and I haven't even had a reply from the past half dozen places I've sent it to.
I am sick of it, you know. Sick of this useless life. Sick of stress, of boredom, of people who just fuck you up because they have no regard for anyone else, sick of a boss who hires someone else to do my job because she doesn't feel comfortable briefing by email, sick of women who cause a crash because they are not patient, of people who swerve in front of me in the road, missing by inches, and flick the finger when you sound your horn instead of feeling shame that they have endangered your life and theirs, sick of fear, of emptiness, sick of feeling sick.
One of the problems a writer has, even one with no readers, is what to write about. Which is why most interwebnet writing is pointless drivel. And I'm no different from most of you: a dull person living a dull life in a dull backwater.
So we could talk about the weather. The weather is flat and uninspiring. It has rained a fair bit recently, and we have laboured under heavy grey skies. Well, you're saying, isn't that what you expect in winter? Actually no. This is Australia. We're all upside down and shit. The winter here is mostly dry, with the skies predominantly blue and clear. Yeah, we do it differently here, and kangaroos march down the high street.*
Okay then, not the weather. Iran is exciting, right? What can I say about Iran? Well, I have my doubts.
What? The thing is, I'm not keen on Mousavi, who seems to be an opportunist: an Islamist when it suits, all for the unveiling of yuppies... sorry, the liberation of women everywhere when that is what is needed, and the same can be said of the faction he represents. Only in Iran could Ali Rafsanjani be considered a "reformist". On the other hand, one does want to support the populace, and it's hard to know how broad based the protests are. Hard to know because our media is pushing a particular agenda hard, and the blogosphere is aflame with the spirit of crusade.
But, you know, people talk about repression, but the regime in Iran is not deeply unpopular, and probably would not have survived if it was. It just isn't the case that the whole world shares our Western "values". And some places, such as Iran, insist that their millennia of history, indigenous culture that runs deeper than jazz and cheeseburgers and tradition of on the whole being a positive influence on the world around them entitle them to run their affairs as they choose.
So yeah, I suppose I'm all for the people, but not much in favour of posturing neocons who are pretending to be liberals (or are being painted that way by Westerners). It's tough for people of goodwill** to know what to make of the whole thing. What I do know is that I will avoid what I see at Lenin's Tomb, a blog I read and sometimes enjoy, where Richard Seymour trips over himself in trying to figure out how he can support what seems to be a popular uprising while not supporting the people behind it. Seymour's failing -- common on the left, and one he is particularly prone to -- is that he argues from what he wants to be true backwards. I'm sure there's a Latin phrase for that, but anyway, we all know it when we see it. Ideologues feel obliged to make the world fit their ideology, rather than their ideology fit the world. Seymour is a socialist of a particular type, which constrains him to see the world in a particular way. Sadly, I do not think there is a faction that the left can side with in Iran. Two rightist gangs are clashing over control of the economy of Iran, and the protests are mostly just fallout. I do not think a popular revolution will follow .***
Okay then, not Iran either. How about them Cubs? Erm no. How about football? Well, it's become a bit ludicrous. My own team -- the valiant, underachieving "sleeping giants" of Leeds -- are not involved in the hoopla, except that their young and talented squad is going to be raped by people with more money, but isn't that football in a nutshell? It's become silly now, particularly with Arab money involved. Or has it? I'm in two minds, because Arab money didn't spoil horse racing really. It just changed the colours that the jockeys wore. And football's slide into being just another tawdry form of celebrity worship (rather than the fine artform we know it is at heart) has not been caused by, or even particularly helped by, the Arabs.
On the subject of Arabs, I'd like to note that it is almost the world's problems in nutshell that a few families have become insanely rich and believe it to be their right while many of their compatriots starve. I was reading about Bahrain, which is owned by the Al Khalifa family. And as I read that, I was thinking, wtf. Some greedy shites killed some other greedy shites a hundred years ago and now their descendants, who have never done a thing to earn a cent of it, are rolling in the clover?
Well, wtf. Should I even care? I have my own problems, right? Let's talk about how I am going to make a living next month, or next year, or about my prolapsed disc, which has been painful recently, or the holes in my teeth, or the woman whose car I ran into yesterday and as I stood in the rain listening to her shouting at me for not realising that she had purposely driven into a gap to block me from reversing I lost my temper and told her she was a cunt -- but in my defence, if you are going to act like a cunt you can hardly expect me to shake you by the hand and call you sister o' mine, or the frighteningly real dreams I have in which my children succumb to leukaemia, or the loneliness and alienation of 21st century suburbia, living out in the sprawl of a dull provincial city in a dull insular island in the middle of a sea full of sharks, so that even if you swim for your life, you will not live.
And isn't that what all my problems, and most of our problems, come down to? We cannot live. We are tied up in chatter, blather, endless empty words, lies and blandishments, 24/7, on every channel, in every place we look. Isn't that all it is and if we just stayed calm for a while, it would all blow over, we would live and all would be well?
And if not, why not?
* No, they don't really. I think what is most surprising about Australia is how utterly prosaic it is, what a cavern of dullness. You might imagine nothing could be duller than English suburbia, but you would be wrong. You couldn't even get stabbed around here.Return
** By which I mean, leftists. But I do not call myself a leftist too often, because for me, being on the left simply means being on the side of the people. It seems impossible to me to be rightwing if you like people. I mean, we all understand being selfish. We were all five-year-olds once. But we mostly learned that you can't get what you want like that. Unless you are privileged and basically already begin with what you want. It's just screamingly obvious that human greatness is a product of cooperation, not exploitation. Anyway, I would not be a socialist. I'd find it way too hard to be all doctrinaire and pofaced, and I don't want a dictatorship of the proletariat, until the proletariat have been freed and do not consist so markedly of people I would not leave to watch a fire, let alone run the country. Yes, I agree that an idealised proletariat would be fine for the job, and I realise that what we have now are products of a system designed to lessen, to blunt, to diminish. I have faith in us, but that is like saying I have faith that Naughtyman will learn how to swim. I'm sure he will, but I wouldn't throw him overboard from the family yacht**** to prove it. Return
*** Don't get me wrong. Seymour is a lucid and intelligent commentator, and I do recommend him. I just cannot help feeling he would be greatly improved for becoming a humanist and abandoning ideology*****. Return
**** No, we don't. Nor would I want one. I like sailing and I like yachts, but I don't want one. I am not one of these people who dreams of sailing the world on a motor cruiser. I don't in any case much like being out of sight of land. Like an ancient Greek, I prefer to hug the coast. I like to flatter myself that I could swim back home if the worst happened, although, let's face it, it's unlikely I could outswim the sharks. Return
***** I know what you're going to say though. You are going to say, but don't you have an ideology, Dr Zen? Aren't you some sort of commie yourself? Well no. If I had to be an anythingist, I'd be an anarchist. I think we are better on a smaller scale, and would have beautiful lives were we to abandon materialism and live within means that would have all comfortable and content. I could describe that world at great length and it's a fine ideal. But that's what it is. It is not our world and getting there is probably not possible. I mean, we could shoot everyone who refuses to share, but most of refusing to share is built on having the guns. In practice, I'm a bleeding heart liberal, largely a rejectionist, and I am content with that. I believe that making the world more just****** is a good thing, and making it less just a bad thing. Return
******Yeah, I know, justice is a slippery concept. We sort of know it when we see it, but we don't always allow ourselves to see it. Largely, I think it boils down to saying that we should all have what we need, including the space to think through what we need. And yeah, I know you think you need a helicopter, but you're going to have to narrow your definition of need so that it is not too much broader than what is possible for all to enjoy. Come on! It's not that impossible. We are conditioned to be greedy. I don't believe it's what we are. If we are secure and comfortable, we are quite happy to become indolent. And I do not mind indolence. The lazy only kill by inaction; the energetic are the fuckers who cause the chaos. Return
One of the problems a writer has, even one with no readers, is what to write about. Which is why most interwebnet writing is pointless drivel. And I'm no different from most of you: a dull person living a dull life in a dull backwater.
So we could talk about the weather. The weather is flat and uninspiring. It has rained a fair bit recently, and we have laboured under heavy grey skies. Well, you're saying, isn't that what you expect in winter? Actually no. This is Australia. We're all upside down and shit. The winter here is mostly dry, with the skies predominantly blue and clear. Yeah, we do it differently here, and kangaroos march down the high street.*
Okay then, not the weather. Iran is exciting, right? What can I say about Iran? Well, I have my doubts.
What? The thing is, I'm not keen on Mousavi, who seems to be an opportunist: an Islamist when it suits, all for the unveiling of yuppies... sorry, the liberation of women everywhere when that is what is needed, and the same can be said of the faction he represents. Only in Iran could Ali Rafsanjani be considered a "reformist". On the other hand, one does want to support the populace, and it's hard to know how broad based the protests are. Hard to know because our media is pushing a particular agenda hard, and the blogosphere is aflame with the spirit of crusade.
But, you know, people talk about repression, but the regime in Iran is not deeply unpopular, and probably would not have survived if it was. It just isn't the case that the whole world shares our Western "values". And some places, such as Iran, insist that their millennia of history, indigenous culture that runs deeper than jazz and cheeseburgers and tradition of on the whole being a positive influence on the world around them entitle them to run their affairs as they choose.
So yeah, I suppose I'm all for the people, but not much in favour of posturing neocons who are pretending to be liberals (or are being painted that way by Westerners). It's tough for people of goodwill** to know what to make of the whole thing. What I do know is that I will avoid what I see at Lenin's Tomb, a blog I read and sometimes enjoy, where Richard Seymour trips over himself in trying to figure out how he can support what seems to be a popular uprising while not supporting the people behind it. Seymour's failing -- common on the left, and one he is particularly prone to -- is that he argues from what he wants to be true backwards. I'm sure there's a Latin phrase for that, but anyway, we all know it when we see it. Ideologues feel obliged to make the world fit their ideology, rather than their ideology fit the world. Seymour is a socialist of a particular type, which constrains him to see the world in a particular way. Sadly, I do not think there is a faction that the left can side with in Iran. Two rightist gangs are clashing over control of the economy of Iran, and the protests are mostly just fallout. I do not think a popular revolution will follow .***
Okay then, not Iran either. How about them Cubs? Erm no. How about football? Well, it's become a bit ludicrous. My own team -- the valiant, underachieving "sleeping giants" of Leeds -- are not involved in the hoopla, except that their young and talented squad is going to be raped by people with more money, but isn't that football in a nutshell? It's become silly now, particularly with Arab money involved. Or has it? I'm in two minds, because Arab money didn't spoil horse racing really. It just changed the colours that the jockeys wore. And football's slide into being just another tawdry form of celebrity worship (rather than the fine artform we know it is at heart) has not been caused by, or even particularly helped by, the Arabs.
On the subject of Arabs, I'd like to note that it is almost the world's problems in nutshell that a few families have become insanely rich and believe it to be their right while many of their compatriots starve. I was reading about Bahrain, which is owned by the Al Khalifa family. And as I read that, I was thinking, wtf. Some greedy shites killed some other greedy shites a hundred years ago and now their descendants, who have never done a thing to earn a cent of it, are rolling in the clover?
Well, wtf. Should I even care? I have my own problems, right? Let's talk about how I am going to make a living next month, or next year, or about my prolapsed disc, which has been painful recently, or the holes in my teeth, or the woman whose car I ran into yesterday and as I stood in the rain listening to her shouting at me for not realising that she had purposely driven into a gap to block me from reversing I lost my temper and told her she was a cunt -- but in my defence, if you are going to act like a cunt you can hardly expect me to shake you by the hand and call you sister o' mine, or the frighteningly real dreams I have in which my children succumb to leukaemia, or the loneliness and alienation of 21st century suburbia, living out in the sprawl of a dull provincial city in a dull insular island in the middle of a sea full of sharks, so that even if you swim for your life, you will not live.
And isn't that what all my problems, and most of our problems, come down to? We cannot live. We are tied up in chatter, blather, endless empty words, lies and blandishments, 24/7, on every channel, in every place we look. Isn't that all it is and if we just stayed calm for a while, it would all blow over, we would live and all would be well?
And if not, why not?
* No, they don't really. I think what is most surprising about Australia is how utterly prosaic it is, what a cavern of dullness. You might imagine nothing could be duller than English suburbia, but you would be wrong. You couldn't even get stabbed around here.Return
** By which I mean, leftists. But I do not call myself a leftist too often, because for me, being on the left simply means being on the side of the people. It seems impossible to me to be rightwing if you like people. I mean, we all understand being selfish. We were all five-year-olds once. But we mostly learned that you can't get what you want like that. Unless you are privileged and basically already begin with what you want. It's just screamingly obvious that human greatness is a product of cooperation, not exploitation. Anyway, I would not be a socialist. I'd find it way too hard to be all doctrinaire and pofaced, and I don't want a dictatorship of the proletariat, until the proletariat have been freed and do not consist so markedly of people I would not leave to watch a fire, let alone run the country. Yes, I agree that an idealised proletariat would be fine for the job, and I realise that what we have now are products of a system designed to lessen, to blunt, to diminish. I have faith in us, but that is like saying I have faith that Naughtyman will learn how to swim. I'm sure he will, but I wouldn't throw him overboard from the family yacht**** to prove it. Return
*** Don't get me wrong. Seymour is a lucid and intelligent commentator, and I do recommend him. I just cannot help feeling he would be greatly improved for becoming a humanist and abandoning ideology*****. Return
**** No, we don't. Nor would I want one. I like sailing and I like yachts, but I don't want one. I am not one of these people who dreams of sailing the world on a motor cruiser. I don't in any case much like being out of sight of land. Like an ancient Greek, I prefer to hug the coast. I like to flatter myself that I could swim back home if the worst happened, although, let's face it, it's unlikely I could outswim the sharks. Return
***** I know what you're going to say though. You are going to say, but don't you have an ideology, Dr Zen? Aren't you some sort of commie yourself? Well no. If I had to be an anythingist, I'd be an anarchist. I think we are better on a smaller scale, and would have beautiful lives were we to abandon materialism and live within means that would have all comfortable and content. I could describe that world at great length and it's a fine ideal. But that's what it is. It is not our world and getting there is probably not possible. I mean, we could shoot everyone who refuses to share, but most of refusing to share is built on having the guns. In practice, I'm a bleeding heart liberal, largely a rejectionist, and I am content with that. I believe that making the world more just****** is a good thing, and making it less just a bad thing. Return
******Yeah, I know, justice is a slippery concept. We sort of know it when we see it, but we don't always allow ourselves to see it. Largely, I think it boils down to saying that we should all have what we need, including the space to think through what we need. And yeah, I know you think you need a helicopter, but you're going to have to narrow your definition of need so that it is not too much broader than what is possible for all to enjoy. Come on! It's not that impossible. We are conditioned to be greedy. I don't believe it's what we are. If we are secure and comfortable, we are quite happy to become indolent. And I do not mind indolence. The lazy only kill by inaction; the energetic are the fuckers who cause the chaos. Return
I am glad to have known P. All people enrich you, if you will let them, and sometimes even if you don't let them, they bring you something, sometimes nameless small things, but all the same, pieces of you that were not before you knew them.
I feared for P. that she was entering a wilderness, but of course people do not want to hear that they are on a path into a desert when they think they are making progress. You might say nothing, but I'm not you. I'm more than that to P., so I don't feel that holding my tongue is right. When you are more, you must risk more.
I am glad to have known P. because she loved me when I did not love myself. And that is a gift that you should not scorn, and me being me, I did not scorn it. I did not pay for it either, in a way you might think I should have done, but I do not think like you, and anyway, a gift you have to pay for is no gift at all. I remember the letters the Reader's Digest used to send my dad. The gifts they offered seemed so fine to me then. A brass cannon, a memorial of something or other, ten thousand pounds. These gifts were enough to fool a child. But I loved to read the Reader's Digest anyway. I did not know that it was conservative then, and anyway, I am innately conservative. I don't see the need to break what works well in the name of progress. Of course some things that work well are not right, but we too willingly discard the good along with the bad, just because we know some is bad.
I loved the homespun and I still do. I do not crave sophistication, because it is so often just a way for the rich to show their disdain for the poor. I wonder whether my fellow feeling for the poor is simply a matter of not being rich, but I have to conclude that sympathy at least, if not empathy, is innate in me too.
I used to love the gentleness of the Reader's Digest, its belief that we're in it together. It's curious that the left, which takes as its philosophy that we're in it together, is so often lacking in regard for the notion that we have to rub along, its insistence on credos and shibboleths. It has been curious to see the American right become an echo of the left: insistent that you must believe in this, that and the other to belong. The Reader's Digest insisted that you believe in human decency, that is all. I know it does so cynically, so that it can appeal to the softhearted, basically conservative middle class, who have a good life that they do not want to be broken.
But if you are going to lie to me, I prefer you tell a lie that my neighbour is someone to love, rather than someone to hate. And after all, even if its editors, its journalists, everyone involved do not believe it, its central message is that people are good at heart, and I believe that too. I will never stop believing in us. We may be weak but we are not evil. Everything for me proceeds from there.
I believe in P. She is more capable, and has more ability to cope with reversals in life than most people I know. She does not know it herself, and has diminished her own power by refusing to know it, but it is why I have remained her friend for so long, and why I miss her now. I do not mean she is tough; and anyway, I would not, and do not, admire toughness. I mean she is tender, capable of tenderness, and that is worth more, for most of us it is a source of deeper power, because when we try to confront the world, we are like stones that crush it and call the bleeding mess victory, but when we caress it, we bring it to heel.
I am happiest when I can be honest, and allow the warmth that forms my core to spill out and illuminate my world. I have feared death for a long time, and recently I have realised that I need not: I will not fear death if I do not fear life. I know that going home for me allows me to return to the track I was once on, to become real, to shed illusion and become who I am. I have feared that because I have feared that once I had reached inside the accretions of life, I would find a villain, a black hole or nothing at all. Well, maybe there is nothing at all, I don't know, but I am choosing to believe that there is a small flame that flickers but is never quite extinguished. And I know that I was talking about P. and it became all about me, but how else can I tell you that believing in her is not hollow, but the product of something, someone, who it is worth being believed in by?
Okay, so let's talk about my favourite subject. Me. And because we're talking about things I want for me, don't be surprised that world peace or a socialist republic is not top of the list, because those are things mostly for you.
Actually, I don't want a socialist republic. I mostly find socialists unappealing and way more interested in formalism than in people. It's possible I find that appealing because it's something I don't admire in myself. Anyhow, an anarchy would be more my cup of tea. We are mostly good at handling things on a small scale, with "rules" that work on that scale, and mostly bad at handling them as a bigger picture. That's because we're monkeys, with psyches resolutely fixed on the scale of the family and the troop.
1. Hair dye
I don't mind growing old half so much as I do having become old. It's not that my hair is going grey, it's that whole what the fuck happened to the last ten years thing. It's like my days are a constant doubletake, where I'm like, I'm how old? Yeah well, I am, and I doubt I will be using the next ten years any more wisely, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
I want to pretend to be (at least) ten years younger. I want to be mutton dressed as lamb. Not so much dressed as lamb as seeming to bleat. (Yes, I know I don't need to bleat more -- please just go with the metaphor.)
I want my ten years back so that I can live them better. I was pretty much insane for three of them, and most of the other seven were dull. I can't undo any of that, of course, but I don't have to labour under the consequences.
No, I'm not asking for the clock to be rolled back. Yes, I'm asking to be allowed to pretend my joints don't ache. I want to have fun. I haven't had enough, and everyone should get enough.
2. Sex
I used to think I wanted love, but no, actually, I just want sex. I have no idea how to get it. I mean, I know I could pay for it, but I have strong quasi-moral objections to that. And otherwise, how does someone like me get sex?
I'm not entirely repulsive. One reason I hate the grey hair is that it makes me look like a grandpa, when actually I'm still reasonably freshfaced. And handsome. I'm not flattering myself. I don't put myself quite up there with Brad Pitt. But I'm no dog either.
But that doesn't get you a root, and I've never had any idea what does. I suspect that the problem is that I don't seem to have much to offer and that I am rarely in any position to offer it.
What's that you say? Yes, I am married. But if you think that means that you have sex, you are clearly not married to Mrs Zen. If she is ever struck with sexual urges, she is pretty good at resisting them.
3. My name on the cover of a book
So write one. But that's a lot easier said than done. Sustaining interest in a novel-length project is not easy, and I realise that I don't have anything I want to say.
Or rather, I have lots of things I want to say, but they don't amount to a coherent narrative.
See, whenever I start thinking about writing, I start making excuses. There is always a reason I don't bother. No one likes my writing. No one encourages me. No one wants another boring novel. All true and false at the same time, and none any reason for not just doing it.
4. An acid line
I enjoy writing music, although I have no ability at it at all. I think that is why I like doing it though: there's no pressure, no responsibility to myself, and it's not hurtful if people don't like it, because I don't expect them to.
I have been figuring out music, working out bit by bit how you make the music I like. It's not easy if you don't have a good ear, but I have been dissecting the songs I listen to, figuring out how they are constructed, so that I can do it myself.
However, I can't figure out acid lines. I can't work out what makes them sound the way they do. It can't be that difficult because people do it all the time, at will, and I doubt they are all musical geniuses. I have a program called Rubber Duck that emulates a 303, so I can write random acid lines, but that doesn't help any, because I don't know why they sound the way they do. I think that's my route to getting it though. I'll have to look at lines in Rubber Duck and fiddle with settings until I have it nailed.
I'd also like to be able to get Ableton's Arpeggiator to do what I want. I can randomly get things that sound nice, but it would be good to know how to get things on demand. In case you don't know, an arpeggiator is a pattern generator -- an arpeggiated chord is one in which the notes are sounded one after the other, up or down, or up and down, or some combination, rather than together. You can make intricate rhythms with one, and I do, but I don't really know why it's doing what it's doing.
I'd love the facility to make the music I hear in my head into music in my DAW, but I will never have that. So I'll settle for a slightly more informed approach to making it.
5. An understanding of what I don't know about poker
I'm not going to drag on about it, but this is a real stumbling block for me. It's not that I'm not good at poker and I want to be better, although I'm not and I do. I'm a realist. I know I will have to work to improve.
But the problem is, I don't know what I need to learn. If I did, I'd learn it.
See, if I wanted to improve my French, I can think straight away of ways to do it. Okay, so extemporising, maybe I could take the same approach.
What would I do to improve my French? Use it more. So that works. Use my poker skills more. But here's the problem. I don't know whether I'm bolstering weak skills by experience, or entrenching mistakes.
I'd study vocabulary, because there's no substitute for having the tools. Okay, that works too. But what should I study? ICM? I'm not sure that's the key. I mean, yes, it's going to help, but I find it hard to structure my study, because I'm not sure what I'm aiming at. Do I want to construct charts? Do I just learn by osmosis, by seeing so many situations that none is alien to me? Do I need more formal understanding?
I dunno. And the thing is, I'm goal oriented, so I find it easy to accomplish tasks where I know what the end point is or is supposed to look like, and pisspoor at openended tasks. Ask me to edit a newspaper article and I'm fine. Ask me to write just something about something and I'm hopeless. And this paralyses me. I become unable to bother with studying, because I can't decide how to approach it. My mind meanders and I lack focus.
So I don't ask to be transformed into having the ability to win at the level I want to, nor do I ask for more luck, although it would be nice. I ask instead for an understanding of what I'm lacking, and how to gain it.
Actually, fuck it, I'll settle for being lucky, because the suspicion is dawning that poker is just a luckercoaster for most of us. 6. A million dollars, at least
See, money may not be everything, but it buys most of it. I don't like working and never have, and I don't have any great need to do it beyond the need of money. I have a million ways to waste away my days, and I am not contributing a damned thing to the world doing what I do.
Not that I would. I don't need more leisure time so that I can do things for others. I need it because I feel like someone is kicking me in the nuts for seven, eight or more hours a day. 7. People who are into what I'm into
I feel I missed out some when I was younger, because I didn't ever meet people who were into what I was into. Did I just not go to the places they went to? I don't know. I don't think I am the kind of person who could have gone to nightclubs and made friends. Sit in the corner wishing I could go home, yes; actually talk to someone I don't know, no.
I'd love to be able to talk music, politics and books, but where are the people who are into that?
I dunno. Maybe I will be able to learn Ableton well enough to make my own mixes. Maybe I will be able to play them out in places, and make myself the focus, rather than someone at the fringes. Maybe I'll stumble across people.
Actually, scrub the books. I've never actually enjoyed talking about them much. What's to talk about, after all? Most people don't have much insight, and can't go beyond "I enjoyed that" or "I liked his characters" or whatever. 8. Something to believe in
I don't mean Jeebus. It's silly to believe in a cosmic zombie. But I'd like not to be so deeply cynical about everything and everybody. It would be easier if you stopped proving me right though.
9. A mentor
I've always needed someone who could just see the answers for me. I see them easily for others. I could guide you to a happy, fulfilling life easily. But I have never been able to be my own mentor. Not that I couldn't, if I tried. But I am blocked from trying.
It's the monkey. I imagine a switchboard, like those they had in the olden days, all wires going into holes. You make a call and the operator plugs you into the hole for whoever you're calling. Except the monkey doesn't. He fucks up the wiring, plugging me into fear and lassitude wherever possible.
I need someone to show me which wire goes where. But all I ever found were people who had no idea what the wires even look like.
I'd settle for good friends. Or friends, actually. Not people who see me as something to use up and cast aside. Not people who think I'm a tool they can use for whatever purpose. People who just like me. And that doesn't mean, someone who likes me as far as necessary to get what they want out of me. I'm sick of that. I mean, someone who likes me enough to give.
10. A stone cottage with a walled back yard, a pear tree therein
The biggest mistake I ever made, and I didn't just make it once, was to believe there was anything good about being unconventional. I was obviously equipped to have been a doctor, a lawyer, an investment banker, a journo, whatever, something fulfilling maybe, but even if not that, something that would have paid. I could have taken a mortgage, and yeah, I would have been tied down by it, but how was I free anyway? Sigh.
I suppose it's too late for all that now. Now I need the millon dollars.
But I haven't given up the hope of happiness. After all, I have managed my way to going home, and when I am there, who knows what might happen for me? Maybe I will meet the people who I need to meet, maybe I will become lucky, maybe I will set myself free and soar. Who knows? At least I have possibilities.
And who could want more? I mean, really, nothing I want is out of my grasp. Nothing I want is unreasonable or unobtainable. I may not know how to obtain it, but I do not fear that it is impossible.
I think of myself, you, all of us as twinkling lights in a dark firmament. I believe that if we knew, and I mean knew in the deep way we can know things, what we are, we would be able to rise above this mean world, and become great.
Instead, we chain ourselves and call that freedom. We have invented religions, money, material world that serve to enslave ourselves. Many of us believe in a god who has created us as "special", separate beings who should hate others like us if they are not quite like us.
But we are nothing like the naughty children who require outpouring of blood to become whole that religions paint us as. We are no more, no less than outcroppings of the flow of energy that makes this universe. We are the latest twist in a chain of becoming, winding and unwinding, that leads from the heart of stars, through many combinations and permutations, through generations of beings that gradually shifted, roiled and turned, and became us.
***
(Acid Eiffel by Laurent Garnier)
It is inspiring and humbling. Inspiring to feel part of something that is much greater than you. Humbling to feel how meaningless and small you are.
Yet meaninglessness need not be oblivion, and we need not mean nothing to each other. We can provide meaning. What a beast we are to feel that is true!
***
(Falling by Spicelab. A somewhat truncated version. The original is a wonderful journey into headfuck.)
My whole life, it seems, I have been alienated and isolated, as though I was marooned on the wrong planet. But of course I am in the right place. I would not find it beautiful if I were not.
And I do. On fresh, clear days, the world can seem a huge splash of colour, as though untouched, unseen, unchanged from Eden.
***
(Light through the veins by Jon Hopkins, from his wonderful new album Insides--who knew he had a shoegazer in him)
And I know love. I do not know what it is, what miracle of chemistry, and I don't care. Does it matter what the things we feel consist of, if they are "real"? Does any of this matter, except that it feels good?
***
(Sweet harmony by the Beloved, remixed by Nathan Fake)
I still spend my wasted life alone and lonely in a basement, wishing always that I was somewhere else, doing something else. I doubt that will ever change.
Sigh. I don't know where I was going with this, but I didn't get there. Do I ever?
