Dont forget to take your pills

Some days feel so unutterably old, so worn out. The future seems devoid of either joy or pain. All I see is a vast emptiness. The people around me, loving me increase this feeling of aloneness or worthlessness it actually hurts.

All I desire is to run, to leave, to disappear, to leave them a letter to tell them how mistaken they are in loving me, that I am not worth this love. That their lives will be so much the better without me.I know my leaving would cause pain and anguish. Hurt and confusion but ultimately you will be so much the better without me.

That somewhere there is a place where I can hide from all the world. A place where my body and mind can grow old, where I don’t need to pretend – a hut, a flat, a cave. A place where I can drink tea and sleep. Sleep until this weariness leaves me or invades my soul, a place where I can give in to the nothingness and you will not see the shame I feel when all the fight leaves me

Blood of my blood

Though we have walked seemingly alone
we carry the blood of those who came before
The unseen torch of survival
Handed silently from mother to child
We have traveled forward with surety
Pools of light on the road ahead 
The ground under foot has been paved
With the dreams and courage, suffering and tears
Triumph’s hard won
Failures from which wisdom was born 
These things gifted to us when first we drew breath
And now we the guardians, 
The ones who shall add both pain and glory
Whos heads shall be bowed with gratitude
As the flame moves from our hands to the next
Then you and I shall take our rest
We shall watch as the light moves forward 
As our daughters dance holding high the torches
And we shall lean against one another
As we have always done

These are a few of my favorite things

These are a few of my favorite things

Hot buttered brown bread toast

Thunder storms & the sound of rain on a tin roof

BBC period drama’s

Snuggling in bed in winter

Staying up late

Driving with music

Standing alone in airports and imagining different lives

Laughing with the girls

Long hot baths

Roses, poppies, hydrangeas and stocks

Candles in churches, incense in temples,

Coffee, coffee and more coffee

Mazowe Orange – the only orange cordial in the world worth drinking

Grainy Cheddar

Having my face held when you kiss me

Seeing the seeds I ordered on amazon flower in my garden

Perfectly thin china mugs

A cup of tea after a funeral

Pablo Naruda poems read when your heart is breaking

Painting badly with gusto

Janet Hill’s beautiful paintings

Velvet

Anything guided

The smell of yeast

Cake

I'll see you on the other side...

Is giving up the same as letting go –

Some days ago I let go of a friend, the friend probably thinks I abandoned them, that I gave up on them. For me the jury is still out on what the difference is.

In my mind I know that I have to be less invested in the outcomes of other peoples lives, that I have no control over the choices and decisions people make, no real influence at all in fact.

That when a person is in the grip of an addiction their only salvation is themselves , that you may look upon someone you love and see a drowning person that you think you can save. The truth, the reality is you cannot.

Addiction is defined as among other things “an enslavement to”

You can stand on the shore and watch the black swirling waters of this, you can hold out your hands, begging cajoling and threatening the person you love, willing them to choose you, to choose life and to choose love over the addiction that is killing them.

I have had to wonder at what the view from the depths of addiction are, from where I stand all I see is blackness sucking you deeper and deeper – I see no good outcome, no happiness, no “big party” I see turmoil and great chunks of life breaking away being destroyed. Friends and family being smashed against the rocks of lies and deceit .

But what do you see…..?

Do you see me standing on a self righteous pillar? Do you see my desire to separate you from this thing you think you cannot live without?  What gave birth to this resentment in you, this hatred? This place where I am standing does it look barren to you filled with a nothingness, an endless tedium does it look dull and dreary?

Perhaps you pity me as much as I do you? Perhaps you think all life ends in death and if yours does so at the bottom of a bottle of the end of a line it seems better to you than age and decrepitude .

And what of my addictions – my addiction to rescuing, my fulfillment  from saving, from loving without love in return, the cigarettes I smoke, the coffee I drink, the enormous amounts I feed my ego the food thinly veiled as success?

And this is where I thank you, I thank you for seeing myself in you, for allowing me to find my own personal hell for seeing the addict that lives in me.

For understanding that I cannot erase this thing in me but just as I see you and wish you had the fortitude not to pick up another drink to be able to walk away from the drugs, I am challenged to stop doing the things that I have done to just stop, to “just say no” – to quote Nancy Reagan

This is why I am letting you go, this is my healing, my salvation – this is serenity. I accept I cannot change you.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do, the most loving thing – is to do nothing at all, and in this I honor both of us.

letting go

 have been saying goodbye to some things in my life lately, and in biding my farewells I have learned some new things….

We don’t say goodbye to people we say goodbye to the relationship, the association, the amorphous blend of you and them, this itself is not a farewell but a parting. It is the extraction of the nebulous you that floats around outside your body and has become entangled with the soul of another human.

This “parting”  is where you  call your spirit back to yourself, I discovered that this is not like whistling for a dog, it is more akin to trying to fill a jar with smoke.

However as the hours stretch into days and those add up to weeks you seem to find bits of  yourself, little solid chunks of you, that you lost somewhere along the way.

I have been gathering these little bits of me, some of them no longer fit into this multi dimensional jigsaw puzzle called being, I have looked at them carefully and examined myself to try and find how this idea or belief that I had temporarily let go of belongs, some have had to be gently placed back down as there was no place for them, others I discovered where like finding your old soft sleeping shirt, worn in and comfortable and fits back into as if the parting had been brief.

Then as the weeks become months you put that which is past behind you, in a very real sense, you learn the lessons at best, acknowledge the pain and the unpleasantness and let it all go. What to do with the good memories, the times you laughed, the times you believed yourself happy? I have looked at those things to and careful packed them away – they will live forever in a box in my mind, they do not exist in my present and have no place in my future, but somewhere I believe the lesson must be to never forget the best version of you on the days that were good.

The anatomy of IF

I wonder how it is that such a seemingly small and insignificant word carries such immense importance in our language? When people are being taught English as a second language is a day devoted to “if”, is it explained that this is the fulcrum of the seesaw of life?
If I knew…
If I had…
If …………..
This is the very word that sits waiting for us at every crossroads in our lives, if I turn left or if I turn right. And it remains there like a ghost to torment us on our mental voyages back to those very moments If only I knew then what I know now, If I had said no instead of yes, if I had asked why, If I tried harder.
The very word “If” should give you a greater sinking feeling than any other, because it carries with it all the responsibility of how something turned out ….
…..or will turn out.
If you try harder
If you practice
If you do
If you don’t
When I lie it down and dissect this little word, open it up from stem to stern – I find responsibility, guilt, shame, regret, sadness, floating in hopelessness. It says you could have changed the course of events and you alone are accountable –
It’s a terrible word.

The Jersey

Is truth really the child of time, Will a day arrive when the truth will set me free, or have I sacrificed it to many times of the alter of my vanity? Have I modeled and shaped today’s truth to please you? Like a gift with elaborate wrapping, ribbons and bows to distract us all from this hard implacable thing with sharp edges.
There is a jersey with a small hole in the sleeve, on the days that I am the wearer I twist the tread that is coming undone, make a small knot and tuck it back in on itself. On those days I am warm, the hole is there of course it is, it will always be there. Other days I watch the mantle falls to someone else and they wear the imperfect jersey, my friend worried at the loose thread and soon there was nothing but a great tangle of wool – I wondered at them looking at the wool and calling it the truth as they stood there cold and I wondered at myself for preserving this imperfect broken thing that was not whole and never would be. Was it less of jersey for having a hole in it? Did they think that I to did not know it was only wool cleverly held together?
Jersey or wool? Whose thruth, mine or yours?

Absent

My blogging absence has been due to a sudden and ferocious iphone scrabble addiction. Being of addictive proclivity I do all new things to the extreme with total absorption at the expense of all other activities.
So I have been absent not just from blogging but have had to edge out time from elsewhere as well.
Thankfully my obsessive scrabble playing is easing into hobby phase so I am able to raise my head and notice the world from which I have been absent.
And to consider what absence means to me and others –

Obama has effectively killed Osama – the coincidence of the one letter difference their names struck me as being positively Nostradamus, I have never been much of a fan (of Nostradamus) all to bleak and with a complete absence of hope.
Osama’s son of course has been amusing to say the very least – I extend compassion to anyone who looses a parent – however questioning the legality of the assassination of his father left me dumb founded. In a perfect world (my perfect world) all the rules apply to all the people except of course me. I can do what I like, how I like and when I like but the rest of the universe must comply with the rules, it would seem that Osama’s son thinks the same thing! Demonstrating a complete absence of logic, lets hope his career path is not politics or terrorism.
My maternal grandmother who was about as uplifting as Nostradamus, was fond of saying absence makes the heart grow fonder, chased very quickly with absence makes the faint heart wonder, we all knew of course that she believed the hearts of men where faint coupled with wondering eyes add a dash of absence and nothing good was coming your way.
Absence of hope I rather think is a blessing – of all the cruel motivators hope must be the very worst, hope keeps you from facing the truth, of seeing that which is real. Hope is the thing that can stand against your rational mind and say but it might change, maybe tomorrow it will be better. Hope is the thing that keeps you where you are instead of walking towards where real happiness might be. The flip side is the very same hope keeps you alive when you think you may just die, the hoping for a better day enables you to live through your very worst ones. For me the jury is still out on hope and whether or not it is a blessing or a curse.
And lastly a toast to absent friends – which is in fact my favorite wedding toast, gives me a moment to think of the dead with whom I shared life wile they were part of the living, in my minds eye I run through the faces of my friends, in this mental rolodex of pictures they are laughing or smiling – I remember the living and the shared laughs not the dying and in some small way feel I have taken a moment to honor them and for a moment acknowledge their absence but have real gratitude for having known them. Which brings me almost full circle to quote my grandmother yet again better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
So I raise my glass this week to absent hearts and friends lost fathers, mothers the bitter wisdom of grandmothers and hope….

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. “– John Donne

letting go

Unclench your hands, release and let the circulation return. As the blood rushes in you may feel some pain but this will not last very long.
Unclench your hands, release, you will feel yourself falling this can be a scary but it is not painful – you will land somewhere. You might be lonely at first because you are somewhere new but in due course you will find your way.
Unclench your hands, release – the wild animal you have been holding onto will bolt. You will need to clean yourself up a bit and tend to what are mostly superficial scratches and wounds, but you will notice the thing that you were holding onto was what was creating the wounds and in time you will find that you are no longer in pain You will notice that your hands are now free you could –
Enjoy the peace of the darkness or turn some lights on
Learn the art of picking things up and putting them down
Understand the difference between touching and feeling
Find a torch to hold and light your way into the future and stop walking like a blind man with your hands held out in front of you ready to cling to the first piece of debris that comes past.

Safety Santa Myth?

I flew to Joburg this week with my two sons, one of whom is a panic pants, he listens to and watches the safety video avidly, he then wicks out the safety sheet in the seat pocket in front of him and studies it like he is going to be examined by St Peter at the gates. I look around the airplane and it occurs to me that he is the only person who actually listened to the safety talk.
He undoes his seatbelt and scrabbles around under his seat to check if his life jacket is there – my patience is wearing thin and I snap at him to get up off the floor and sit down. He insists that he needs to check if his life vest is there. I insist that we are not flying over any water so he will not need it.
We go back and forth with this ridiculous debate.
All the while I am thinking…..
It takes them days to find the black box if a plane crashes.
If the news footage is to be believed there is a minuscule amount of debris floating around in the ocean.
Doesn’t ever seem to be a single survivor, I am not sure there is even a fully intact body to be had?
So why do we bother with that safety talk that airlines want me to listen to even if I am a frequent flyer?
Never in the history of anything I have ever seen or heard of plane accidents has there been a picture of twenty or so shoeless, bag-less people rowing about in the slide which turns into a boat with their life vests securely fastened?
In fact I would like to know for my safety, so that I can make an educated decision what the real chances of anyone surviving if a 737 smokes in?
It is clearly a man that writes the copy for the safety talk, tell a mother to secure her mask before coming to the aid of her child……really?
Separate people from their laptop bags and women from their handbag – not happening.
Of course we have all seen people get on and off planes under completely normal circumstances imagine what it would be like if there was some panic thrown in – needless to say some idiot would definitely think their closest exit was in the wrong direction!
I would really like the airlines not to bother, with the life vests, the rubber slide / raft, the leaflet in the seat pocket in front of me, the oxygen bag that will not inflate and the emergency exits, the floor lighting for my additional safety as we all stampede toward the exit that could be behind us. I am especially suspicious of the brace position and see my neck being snapped with hangman like precision.
I go for the seatbelt – but only because I don’t want to have the top of my head stoved in like a boiled egg if the plane drops and we don’t actually go spiraling towards our certain deaths. Outside of that the whole lot is a waste of time and money – I would happily trade it all for an extra person at the check in counter.
All of this flashes through my mind as my son asks yet again why he cant check for his life vest, I snap again because he will not ever ever need it – when he asks why I resist saying because we will all be dead before you can locate the whistle or the mini flash light and instead say because the plane is not going to crash.
Did I mention that my son is seven?

Marriage.....?

Two people enter into a union – a contract, with no clear terms…..

To love?

Assume here that the good stuff is easy

Does that mean I will mostly be nice to you?

Tolerate the things that irritate me?

Find your shortcomings endearing?

To honor?

Now this one really is tricky – its not even a word we use very often!

It means respected, exalted, with distinction

So lets stick with respect…”due regard for feelings wishes and rights”

Assuming of course either party knows what the other feels, or wishes for, or what their rights are.

Bizarrely the honoring bit is a whole lot clearer than the loving bit.

So if you say mean things to me when you are drunk, because I love you I will forgive you, despite the fact that you have disrespected my rights as your spouse in expecting to be treated with due regard, assuming of course that I had not in fact misunderstood your wishes and deep feelings of sexual need at the time and rebuffed you, failing to honor my obligation to love you….

In good time and bad….even if you were the cause of the bad time?

In sickness and in health …..do STD’s count? Or is there a no penalty opt out clause to cover you here?

For richer or poorer – well I guess that’s ok, you should have been able to work out where you would land financially.

For better for worse – completely ambiguous – no one actually knows what that means

And my personal favorite – To have and to hold??? Really ?????what could that possibly mean? Does it mean I can touch you whenever I want? Does it imply ownership over one another?

If the waters are not muddy enough for you already, having entered into an extremely unclear contract – there is a third, silent party in on the deal! God..you have also entered into a covenant with God, I am uncertain as to whether this is each of you singularly or as a couple – anywho, God is the silent partner in your contract with whom you have made a sacred promise – I take this to mean that on pain of hell fire if you cods up on any of the very clear terms laid out above God has the right to send you south bound when you snuff it.

Personally I don’t know why they took obey out – we all understand what that actually means

Also – no clause for if your partner is in breach it would seem that regardless of what they may do or not do if you break the sacred promise your just as culpable in the eyes of God – very fair!

Why all the gay people wanted in on this continues to baffle me….?

However there must be something to be siad for the people that all march determinedly down aisles signing up for this dewey eyed with hearts filled with hope...

For Parents

Believe me your children are not gifted.
They are not an extension of your ego.
I think given the current life expectancy your child is more likely to be a nobel laureate than be an international sports star.
They are your children from your bloodline and your failures are because of who you are, not because your parents where not supportive or pushy enough.
All babies are ugly, as are most spotty teens, all young people are ok looking (unless they are really odd) and most people grow up to be average looking - which is why we have an AVERAGE
The only young people who deserve to go to university are those that would get scholarships - everyone else should learn a trade.
Being a plumber is better than having a BCom - if your child is the former he will actually be able to earn a living and is less likely to have a serious drug problem.
The reality is your children are unlikely to be any better than you, in fact if you take your spouse and your parenting into account they could be a lot worse.
My advice pray daily for average

Things I think but dont (always) say

Your mother's cooking is disgusting.
And I would take relationship advice from you why????
Me saying you dont look fat in that is not going to change how you look or the level of your self esteem , only eating less and therapy can help you.
I am in therapy because you are not.
If you tell me to calm down when I am angry the angry doesn't go away its just going to come bursting out somewhere else - maybe I have a right to be angry.
Funnily enough the reason I pay more to travel business class is so that i dont have to share a bathroom with 200 people, eat extra bad sandwiches not of my choice, have no place to put my hand luggage and be jostled forward by you when the plane is disembarking
Short people dont want you to touch them on the head they think you should concentrate on not being so clumsy
Clearly your main value add to the universe is to be decorative so shut-up so I dont have to listen to your meaningless drivel and be decorative
I dont like pasta - its whole purpose is to feed alot of people with a tiny bit of good stuff (sauce) thinly covering a whole pile of tasteless just cooked rubbery stuff
Money is not the root of all evil - jealousy, greed and envy of people with money def breeds a little evil
I wish people got married in private and we were only invited to the reception - am bored of being a witness to a contract I dont understand, that has no clear terms, and no obvious breach clause.
Lawyers defend pedophiles,  rapists, thieves and politicians - is there anything else to say
The purpose of insurance companies is to scare you out of your money when you have some and then fight you to the death when they are supposed to give you a little back