File Under Mental Ill Health; A History

When I was a child I was never just a child
I was also labelled 'maladjusted'.

At the time I could never work out what the term meant. 

Whoever I thought to ask, asking seemed invasive,
it invite being rebuffed and the subject of the question
changed in front of me to save who I asked embarrassment. 

Going into adulthood I remained privately confused.
The nearest I could get to the term 'maladjusted'
was to write of my youth that I had 'mixed feelings' 
whilst everyone avoided what those feelings were.  

A second problem was having no idea
how the label had attached itself to me, 
and not knowing what my mother
-the person I felt cared for me most-
thought of how the label stuck?

I dare not ask. I knew that if I did
and time was set aside for me to be
paid due attention, the conversation
would be so 'confidential' and laden
with twisted similes that neither she nor I
 would understand what we had said
before the four walls swallowed whole
the conversation we had to deny we'd had
after it was over and I was none-the-wiser. 

I guessed that my father had dismissed the phrase
before he ever heard it; he dismissed most ideas
and all mental health labels out of hand. 
He would suggest nearly no ideas himself 
but consistently damn others given the chance. 

Did Mother reluctantly agree with the label? 
And in whose stars was it more the fault? Hers or mine? 
And why were adults never 'maladjusted'? Why only children? 

In the 1960's mental health provision/definition was scant in adults. 
In children 'maladjusted' was the most common term to describe 
the character of a child who displayed any number of behaviours 
that openly disrupted the limited adult attention span
or tested the tight adult social order where such behaviour
was not criminal, just difficult for adults to understand. 

I drew the conclusion that it was a term about children 
designed by child psychologists for social workers 
to use on the parents of the children who were disturbed
by bullying in school and beyond, where the psychologist
had ideas about what was 'normal' that parents did not.
But the alarmed parents had to be given a label
that justified putting their children 'in a boarding school'

Some bullying children were also labelled 'maladjusted'. 
But mostly it was bullied children who attracted the label, 
and got the dud schooling/lack of understanding 
that went with it in the England of my childhood.  

The Best Revenge?

The best revenge must be the coldest and most detached.

What could be colder than being a slave,
being made to buckle under,
in a system where you have no redress
-all the laws about your status
apply to those who buy and sell you,
or merely use you for your labour.

So instead you invent a saviour
who gives you strength to endure
this duress, and whose superhuman
mindfulness and obedience
gives you, through Christ,
the triumph in this life
via the freedom from slavery in a Heaven,
that slave masters don't have to believe in
-life on earth enslaving others is enough for them.

If Heaven is the righteous revenge
over so many cold empires
for ex-slaves who died in obedience
to God and his servant, Jesus
then how cold must Heaven be
to be the proper revenge
on slavery and empire
that it sets out to be?      

Radio Plays I Will Never Hear (2) The Prostate Dialogues

The Prostrate Dialogues
or, 'two arsehole listen to each other
for the first time in their owners lives... '.

In this radio play two men will be in bed together
both will be talking voices positioned
at the centre of the stereo image
when they, and the listeners,
hear two other voices that come
from further apart in the stereo image,
they start talking over the central voices,
these are the voices of their arseholes.....

A1; You know these men, they don't listen to each other.

A2; And they never listen to us.

A1; Especially when it comes to what is good for us.

A2; It is almost like we are part of their unconscious.

A; With all the sensitive nerve endings we have 

and the taboos about us you may be right abut that.

A1; Some say we talk a load of shit.

A2; That is not us, that comes from somewhere further inside the body,

the stomach and intestines I think, I blame the men for eating too much....

A1; How often do you get an itch?

A2; You mean how often do I need a good rubbing?

A1; I suppose so, I had not quite thought through the implications 

of what I was asking about, yeah.....

A2; More than you might think actually, and certainly more often

than he thinks (points to the one of the couple nearest him in bed), 

Anything would do it, I would not care what it was-for a good rub

and a bit of pressure more often, women never have this problem....

A1; Agreed, but they don't have us they don't have prostates, they get other itches......

A2; Like thrush you mean?

A1; I was thinking a bit more positive than that...... 

To be continued/updated......

Where men on stage talk to men
who listen whilst sat in theatre seats
and between them they relate how it feels
to have something women have not,
that is a source of non-procreative pleasure
which has given them orgasms beyond measure
and how some have had cancer, and had it removed.

Democracy, The Economy, And Disease

In this year of economic meltdown
one of the questions that has been asked less often
than it should have been
-though it remains germane to our present day circumstances-
is 'What did the would be fascists of a century ago
make of  the so-called 'Spanish Flu'?

The answer is not that surprising. 
The more people the flu killed
the more the Nazis liked it,
and in the longer term,
coupled with the discouragement
of a big economic depression
it aided their electoral chances,
as many more of the young with leftist views
died of the disease than died
who were prepare to vote Nazi,
if only for the restoration of the economy.      

New Lies For A New Year

Today I learnt a new term
for politicians who defensively lie
about their political opposition,
though I knew how the lie worked
before I learnt the term; 'strawmaning'.

The lie works the following way
Politician A 'I propose proposition X'
Politician B 'You do know Politician A that Proposition Y won't work?'.

In this verbal process Politician B simultaneously
misrepresents and discredits Politician A's proposal
and criticises the now distorted idea for being weak,
furthering giving themselves credit for being right
and making their opponent seem wrong
whilst avoiding sharing what might have been
an internally consistent position all along.

This process has both driven and confounded
the negotiations for Brexit from the beginning
and along with false assumptions in the UK
about how absolute absolute rule in the UK ever was
has brought politics and representative democracy
to a stand-still where the gain-sayers of whatever is proposed
stop all they dislike, and produce no position of their own.   

Reflections As An Adult On 'The Season Of Goodwill'

Why is it that so many who are used to feeling
that they are part of the human race
though how they are entertained
by films and TV all year round,
that boredom and loneliness make
such highly compatible helpmates
to each other that they multiply
when the human entertainments
industry goes stale and runs dry? 

Mathematics Made To Look Easy

         Mathematician Henry Segerman showing

            how a linear third dimensional plane 

               is only a projection of the curved 

                fourth dimensional space time

               and providing the nearest image

                that I want to see that looks like 

                    a Christmas decoration.