Pasteurised Politeness

is the language the masses
use to miscommunicate
with each other every day.
No wonder, then, that I find
my mind curdles and shrinks
with the distance I have to keep
from false bonhomie and freshness.

Welcome To The Past As It Never Was

Every industry dies, eventually.
And governments always say that tourism
is the means for the stranded locals' future income.
But kitschy tourists always quench localism.

Even as the locals survived past rip offs,
tourism is the end of the line for local life.
First come the speculators, in the know
with government, looking for cheap deals
on property who talk big to the local press,
based on futures built on bendy planning laws.
Their plans always shrink as markets elsewhere
dictate that futures will be shorter and cheaper
than predicted. Then comes nothingness,
in many flavours as can be mustered.

Tourism creates so little long term paid work,
comparable to any economy that pre-exists it,
that the biggest change it promotes is small booms
in second homes, for the rich who live far away,
who are looking for somewhere for their money
to work without them being even remotely active.

If Only

people would find rest in rest
-and do least they could, well,
and for the best of  reasons. 

Calculating Risk

Be kind to well kept animal, a pet,
and how well it will repay you is set
by how well it has been kept.
Kindness to a feral animal is easiest-
and best for the animal-when done distantly,
the less to disrupt it's instincts and environment.
But be kind to a fellow human
and you have little choice,
you engagement will be close.
There are too many of us for the planet
and the language that cuts us off
from nature binds us to the appearance
we offer to each other.
What binds us blinds us too.
So often we have little idea what reception
our aspiring good will will receive....   

Good Company

Honest mad folk do not judge each other about their (relative) sanity.

It Is Merely A Matter Of Time

Before shrunken returns seem entirely natural.

Rape

is the pride in the prick,
the thorn in the flesh,
that stays under the skin,
decades after it's sufferers
initially endured it.
The worst part comes after,
with how hard it is for 'the victim'
to own their part in how it happened.
The event freezes it's sufferers
until long enough after the event,
that as it is remembered it feels
like it happened to somebody else.

Insurance Needs To Be Wise

Teams are gangs who need to think
that they are always doing good-
regardless of what they do.
For as long as I was breakable
enough to be forced into groups
I was always unwillingly chosen-
for thinking myself useless.
Now such thoughts
seem like a wise insurance....

So That Accounts For The Bust And Booms In Housing Debt

Whilst neighbourliness as a currency is like life,
 consistently uneven. 

Something To Read

Whilst waiting nothing to happen, which it will do many times over.

A Small Salute to North Korea And Cuba

-the only two countries in the world
where Coca-cola is not licensed for sale.
Beyond the repeated images of their leaders,
who knows in those small countries what passes
for symbols of liberty? I don't know-but I am sure
in the countries where those images multiply
they believe their leaders are ripe for export.
But with fizzy drinks so cheap and formulaic,
and the images of them so similar, who's buying?

Do Human Sheep Dream Of Becoming Human Beings?

In a world that we have rendered mechanical through programming,
where conditioning is the way we normalise how life is seen to work.
Our ultimate freedom is simultaneously to believe;-

 1-we accept our programming by choosing
what we are programmed by-unassisted and it always works.

2- As the programme gets us to the right place
in the video game of the caste system
that contains us we try to make our choices
fuller than they actually are through a blanket
denial of the systems that shaped us.

Publicly we make 'self belief'
the idea that to be programmed
only happens to other people.

The White Death

Painters today usually put their pictures
on the web so that more people see them.
They know that the digital background
against which they will seen will be neither white,
nor plain, and it is in the nature of paint and canvas
as a medium that a picture looks different on-line
than it will be in it's pigment.
And yet the habit persists in open art gallery spaces
that the walls should be mental hospital white
-for neutrality's sake-when anyone
with life behind their eyes can observe
how the white kills the life in the paintings. 

Thank Goodness

and not just acceptable, but vital-many idea(l)s in life are worth failing....

The Measurers And The Measured

I have never understood 'self made millionaires',
they seem like enslaved slave owners to me,
unable to see the binds they put others in
for being blind to their own bondage to money/power.
I understand well enough how when they get rich
their wealth means they are to be deferred to and obeyed.
There is the double trap there, where for some
their wealth is an aphrodisiac that blinds them to their vanity
and still leaves them attractive to others.  
But who does the physical work that founds their fortune
without real future gains to themselves for their efforts?
Who wrote the laws which they employ lawyers to warp
for their gain and comfort?
What do their wives think when for most of their lives
these men choose to be willfully absent from their marriage,
as if they were polygamously married to their jobs?
Who likes them without being paid to be in their company?

I am left thinking is that the love of money is a subsidiary
effect of patriarchy and it makes men lonely aliens in a world
they constantly busy, noisily sucking the life out of.
St Paul was right when he wrote
that 'The love of money is the root of all evil'.
What he was meant to infer was that the measure of life
is to be a good neighbour (the 2nd commandment
-Mathew 26-40) and money can be good servant
in this cause, but it makes a very bad bad master.

The Bubbles Of Life

On my recent rest in France I was being
my usual virtuous self, taking empty bottles
to the public bins, for recycling.
Tidying up the area by the bottle deposit
where others had left their bottles on the ground.
I picked up a champagne bottle,
that was full with it's seal intact,
the label scratched, faint and faded.
I took it home, and saved it for a meal
with a friend. By some odd chance
it had matured beyond the usual maturity
and it was less bubbly than usual,
and it proved heady and delicious.
It was truly a memorable drink.
My only disappointment was that on my return
with the next batch of bottles for recycling
there was not another bottle left there 'for me'.
Serendipity brought me hope but would not repeat it itself.    
 
 

 

The Perpetual Revolution

Because even when 2+2=4 many other 'truths' get occluded.

The Bird Who Resisted All Cages

When Jimi Hendrix headlined bills he made his music an event,
that would be recalled long after the time he lived his moments
there and moved on to something else.
He was a gypsy, his life was in his fingers.
From family connections broken down early,
his life was restless with subterfuge.
To escape the army he feigned homosexuality.
He was frustrated by backing musicians
more famous than himself, like Little Richard,
than for longer than he was backed
by his idea of a free and loose rhythm section.
Where he found musicians to work with,
they never really kept up with the music in his head.
As a star his management changed, alas not wisely.
Along with Janis Joplin, The Jefferson Airplane
and The Doors he reinvented rock music
for vast and inattentive audiences to consume.
What struck me most was he merely tested the studio
he inspired others to build, for him to work in,
which he then opened and then left. But he died
mere days before he was meant to start mixing his first project there.
44 years after he is gone that studio has since
become a bedrock of modern recorded music.

The More Symbols

proliferate to signify our gender,
our sexuality, our wealth or pride,
and whatever else we take store by,
the more this diversity of design
divides us in it's multiplication,
to become a gridlock of information,
in which, unintentionally, communication
grinds us down rather than aiding our ease.

The Best Of God

is in his ruins.
I know this-I am one.

A Youthful Prayer

from the hindsight of misbegotten middle age.
'Lord, help me to find the experiencees
I can have, in their unfolding sequence,
and to know beyond doubt those things
that I can't have and I really should not want.
Most of  all let me have the solid reasons why
-the better to withstand the jealousy
of those who insist they are my elders and betters. Amen'

In That Apogee

of Capitalism and Democracy,
the USA, it is ever more clear
that there is there is nowhere further
to go than in the court systems.
There, awash with money,
the clients' duty is to be stupid.
The better to further the sophistry
of their lawyers, who's job it is
to make black seem like white,
and white an unidentifiable grey,
until only the richest care what shade
it is, because their shelter is the colour
of money, which they need the judge
to declare is within the constitution.   

Bigmouth Strikes Again

after the too-big-for-itself appetite struck, leaving the pigeons to tidy up.

Certainty vs Science

Particularly when their arguments are sharper than they realise.

Our Unscientific (But Perhaps Enlightened) Past

was maybe kinder than we would like to remember.
Below are listed acceptable reasons for being admitted
to the Trans Allegheny lunatic asylum 1864-89.
Some of the reasons are more humane than we moderns
would have expected, inspite of their absurdity
at first reading. List taken from here.   

No Nation I Know Of Has A Wholesome Founding Myth

I was not surprised when a short time ago
the town of Tuam was in the news,
for the discovery of 800 odd skeletons
of infants found poorly buried in a cesspit.
Philomena started this thread.
There is a lot more to come out of this old story
of poverty, psuedo-virtue and open neglect yet.
We are presently a mere eight years
before the centenary of the 26 counties
setting themselves free of the British state.
By the time 2022 comes around
we will all be so tired from seeing
'Mother Ireland's' entrials being paraded
around the media that the idea of Celebrating
The Centenary will become repugnant.
But to look on the bright side,
no nation state I know of has a wholesome
founding myth. Ireland is no different.

The Art Of Conversation

I went to see an exhibition of paintings
by the amateur society in the town
where I like to take my holidays.
As I made to leave the ladies manning the mounts
eagerly asked me 'Did you enjoy it?'.
Being tactful I replied 'Oh, these events
are always Curates eggs-good in part'.
As we further engaged I spoke of my experience
of working on my own, painting abstract paintings.

I explained how I did it for my sense of colour
and enjoyment of the moment. 'What I don't get'
I said to the ladies 'Is how as amateurs
you coach each other, or how do you recieve external help?
And how does each of you choose the subjects for your art?'
Some of the subjects chosen were clearly beyond
the skill of the artists who had chosen to paint them.
To finish I said 'But where it looks good on the wall it is fine.'.
I sought to bring some elan to the conversation,
whatever the level of finesse coming from the paintings. 

The Unexpected Vector

is the the one that gives force and aim when both are lacking.

Seperate Worlds

'There is no money in poetry,
but then again
there is no poetry in money either'
-Robert Graves

Looking At French Houses

in bright sunlight today,
I realised that I don't mind
getting older-time improves
the best wrecks.
They merely age better.

The Cinderella Theory Of Homosexuality

My faith in the resurrection
increased recently, when on my radio
for the curious I learned about 'The glass closet'
-one writers metaphor for why the culture
in Britain's highest paid boardrooms
is so completely hetero-sexist.
For myself I realised that my education
was a glass coffin in which I was left
to a dreamless sleep, or left for dead,
or maybe instead to become a restful zombie.
Until a prince awoke me.

Only In Heaven

are other people Heaven too.
Everywhere else we are a Purgatory
for each other to work through-
according to our strengths, some terms
with people are less burdensome than others.
Where we cease to work through others
but insist they work for us we become
their Hell-a loss for them of our own making. 

Revenge Is Best When Prepared Thoroughly

One aspect of Islam that has often foxed me
is how it's patriarchies define female honour
in terms of the needs of the patriarchies,
and seemingly solely for their own gain,
though one other effect is to further internalise
the competition between men for ownership.

The issue must be more than tribal,
though that would cover quite a lot masculine aggression
over the virtue (and suspected lack of same) in women.

If women as a matriarchy defined their honour
by and for themselves first, and for men second
would they be more forgiving than men are in defending it?
More consistent? And what gentler and more merciful
punishments might they judicially commit on male offenders
who besmirch women's self defined and autonomous honour?
The jury on those questions can only meet in secret at present
but in the meanwhile I will admire how the person
who photographed this cutting beheaded the word 'revenge'....    
 

Signs Of Greater Age (28)

1-when you leave the house the last two questions
you ask yourself are 'Which hat shall I wear today?'
and 'What bag do I need to take with me?'.
That is after it took ages to vouchsafe
for your list, house/car keys and purse/wallet.

2-admiring Morrissey for his media profile
rather more than the music he puts out-
he puts so much energy into being awkward
with the people he ought to want to help him
that he makes being maladaptive an art form.

 

Opinions

are like arseholes-we all have one.
It also takes some cheek
to share them with other people.

Like Cruelty

kindness is something we make
through our thoughts and actions.
It does not come out of a tap-
we are the source of both,
and we so easily turn off the kindness-
in favour of indifference.
Worse, we can come to think
that the good we do is not ours
to do, but for some other person
to tell to deliver on our behalf,
and still claim it as our kindness.
Worst of all is the belief we deserve
far more credit for our kindness
(or our cruelty) than we get.

Brotherly Love

In my parents fractured lives
there were two subjects above all others
which were banned from polite conversation.
Saying conversation should be polite was rhetorical
-there was no choice-all conversation had to be polite.
Talk of any other type occasionally crept in
but only when life really hurt. Pain had to be veiled
enough to be shared that the pain was deepened.
The listening was always just enough to make respite
appear possible but actually be impossible.
The two subjects utterly banned were homosexuality
and organised religion-the only sort of religion
they knew about, for being theologically illiterate.
It is odd to me how I have been enriched by my experiences
of both banned subjects, these two have initiated me
in a deep sense of loss, and (rarely) great elation.
Even now both subjects are mirrors of truth to me.
For my parents their biggest taboo was the pain
of disagreeing with each other, which they did rarely
and never civilly, which they deny they ever did at all.
In their avoidance they created their personal catch-22,
in which the more polite they were on the surface
the less they said to each other, and they meant less
by it, until they froze in the atmosphere between them.

The Appreciation Gap

The greatest luxury ever
is to live in a comfort
we affect to despise
but refuse to repudiate.

Note To Self

For when that self runs off the rails.
J. Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 34 (1969)