Estranged

I watched a film today and the subject matter of the film although totally light-hearted made me come to this point. It's smiliar to points I've expressed during office conversation but from a more defensible stance.

There all these people who go around espousing that they believe in God, praying to God, worshiping him ...But the moment you turn around and say God told you to do something they automatically assume you're a nut-job.

Hang-on.

If he's so real and he listens to everyone of us [sic] then surely it is not inconceivable that he might also talk to us? And indeed if his motives are so unfathomable to us mere mortals that his priests defend them with the explanation that his designs are beyond our knowledge... Then how come no one listens to David Ike?

Ol' Ike is certainly beyond most peoples rational comprehension but we've been told for the past two millenia that we're not to question and we're not privy to the levels of existential understanding required. But it does raise the point that anyone who did claim to be the son of God now would just be ridiculed and chastised.

It does strike me as odd that when we [the ubiquitous human race] were worshiping false idols such as statues of golden cows and being a little less civilised than we are now, which in itself is an arguable point I'm not willing to defend myself, God allegedly sent his only son (lets just gloss over the fact we're all his children and Jesus, God and the Holy spirit are one and the same because that just muddies the waters) down to Earth to redeem us by talking whoopie and getting himself strung up for being a wee bit fruitier than your average smoothie.

Since those heady days of cosmopolitan enlightenment, we've proceeded to deface ourselves, commit genocide on scales that only statistics can describe and the human mind can only fail to comprehend, we've used nuclear weapons against each other and partaken of countless other unspeakable crimes against the spirit of existence.

And what came of Jesus' supposed return? Not a lot.

Unless of course, things haven't yet gotten as bad as worshiping gold plated effigies to the spirit of Moo yet...

My personal favourite hypocrisy is the 're-interpretation' of the Bible whenever it suits the Church's needs to be trendier and more Nu-Liturgy. Now each to their own and their happiness, its of no consequence to me but to press my point does it not say “man shall not lie with man” somewhere in that big waste of tree pulp?

Errmmm. Now Bishop Kiddiefiddler, exactly how DO you come to a new understanding of that statement where it means homosexuality is okay and lets bag a few of our new friends for ordainment while we're at it?

And why is it that the God squad can blather on about resisting evil and renouncing the Devil but the moment someone declares themselves as a worshipper of Satan its just someone being a bit silly, or different for the sake of being different? If he existed as the juxtapose in the sermon, he must exist and therefore be an equally valid choice for those inclined?

What about the bit about clothing? This one gets my goat especially. My limited understanding of all things Biblical leads me to believe that to be ashamed of God's image is against the grain of the tome, but the moment you're naked, believers have a tendency to denounce you as wicked and debased. Oh the irony of the long skirts and high necklines amongst the congregation...

And then there's the depiction of Jesus as a middle-class white man with a neatly trimmed beard... Please, spare me.

The whole premise of that tale is borked from the outset really. Either Joseph didn't know what it was for, or was what we educated modern types would term; a retard. There is the 100,000:1 outsider that Mary was an impossibly rare fertile hermaphrodite but I'd prefer to stick with the assumption that she was a bit clever than that carpenter she'd shacked up with. Wink!

'm going to Hell now aren't I?

I was intending that maybe this post would progress into a productive piece that would have endeavored to make some sense of my limited spirituality but mostly is just been a total flame. Perhaps, I'll get on to that subject another day.

Its still shorter though than anything I would have written about America or world politics...

In a rare break of form, I've decided to go against my usual habit of posting and disappearing again for months at a time.

Maybe perhaps that says something about how I am feeling of late? I seem to have plenty of things on my mind and not without justificationr. I'm just not certain that despite my willingness to sit here armed with the power of qwerty, that even a fraction of it will ever make the page – it never does, and thats despite the fact I can go on a bit at times!

What I leave out could fill chapters, not pages. But if I was working under the assumption that no one else would ever read it, then I wouldn't be writing it here for anyone to see would I? And with that in mind, I generally opt to steer clear of gratuitously excessive naval-gazing. That, and it does me no good either - the plaster may have cracks in it but if you cross your eyes and squint a bit...

Another truth is, I'm enjoying a lot of what I'm reading from other people's pages. While it may be that I am taciturn for months at a time, it is rare that I'm ever truly absent for long. And seeing as am I here anyway...

My mother.

Ugh.

I was almost tempted to start there but no, I'll let that one stew for a while longer and head to happier pastures.

Cot Mobiles!

We have a mobile for the cot of the little one. Purchased, constructed, attached and tested, all ready and waiting for her when she chooses to arrive. And I am in love with it.

It has little plush fishes hanging from it, it projects fishes and stars across the ceiling and plays harmonious tunes that I find soothing and compelling myself.

Coming home from a less than joyous day at work on Monday, I went and sat listening to the mobile for a short while to perk my spirits up a bit.

I think it reaches to a part of me that I keep very closely protected, the part of me that treasures the total innocence of the thing and the world that it represents.

I suspect that is one of the scariest aspects for me of becoming a parent is coming face-to-face with such utterly unspoilt, untainted life. If only life were as simple and as beautiful as such an object as a child's mobile eh?

Its almost, kind of heartbreaking(?) in a sense to know that those moments of total innocence and happiness will be fleeting and that soon enough life will intrude. I suppose, that one day life will shape my as yet unborn little one too and the glimpse of pure innocence will be gone there with time.

I guess I should be thankful for the 99% of me that can be cold and project a solid persona because the other 1% really isn't hard enough to cope with the realities of the world.

It is scary isn't it? Knowing that this little person whose feet I chase across the skin of Shortstuff's stomach will reach right through and find a heart I keep so closely defended.

I could go on, but perhaps this is enough.

Having tried to finish up neatly countless times and just erasing my words I'm just going to give up. It is indeed, enough for one day! The brain has stalled!

Seriously now, I have to say I have no patience for the world any more.

I don't agree with 95% of the western world and its ways and as for those nut-jobs in the middle east... well, lets just say although they do have a point occasionally, a good old medieval crusade to thin their numbers wouldn't go amiss either!

Is there anywhere on this forsaken mudball where a little common sense and perspective still reign?

It must be an age thing, the more you understand of the world around you the less you accept of it. And I accept very little of it as relating to me in any way. The standards and accepted norms of todays society aren't of my choosing lets put it that way.

I'm still waiting for the death of political correctness and have been since the 90's passed by. I'm sorry but between 'defered successes', personal protective equipment for playing conkers, civic insurance for egg and spoon races and all the other multitude of things we can't do, or can't say out loud I think I've reached the conclusion that *drum roll* that global warming IS the best thing to happen to the Earth in thousands of years!

Thats right! The answer to all the world's problems is the one we simple little organisms believe to be the greatest peril it faces. How ironic.

All we need to do is carry on with the pollution and eventually the world will become so inhospitable we will suffer and eventually become extinct. The Earth however, will still be here and will still continue to orbit the Sun.
Without us meddling buffoons turning the glorious wonder of nature into one giant excuse to work rather than live, the Earth will recover and prosper without us quite merrily!

It would be interesting to see if you stood a politician between the train tracks how long it would be before he reached to conclusion that the train would, indeed hit him and wouldn't veer aside at the last moment. Ignorance like that over making positive, not lip-service, policy to combat pollution is yet more damning evidence that as a species, we frankly deserve to go extinct.

Whoever coined the phrase 'Save the Earth' needs a spanking too, global warming is just humanity's brush with celestial Cillit Bang... now if folks had come up with the more correct terminology of 'Save the Humans' people might actually sit up and pay attention.

Anyway, I rant on...

Maybe the next generation will do something more imperative about it... but then again by all accounts they'll be obese, diabetic and dying of heart failure before they're 50 anyways so they won't give a shit either.

Is it just me, or is anyone else waiting for a new breed of politician to arrive?

The one who stands up and says 'with all due respect, the right honourable gentleman is an inbreed fuckwit and wouldn't know his arse from his elbow!?'

The one who looks at the education system and says 'defered success??? Bollocks, its called failure. Some of them are good, some are crap - thats life, get used to it!'

The one who says to all the asylum seekers, 'If you're so scared of persecution I'd have thought you'd have been happy to settle in the first country you came to that was safe - rather than continuing on to the one with free healthcare, free housing and cash handouts'

I await the arrival of the Common Bloody Sense party.

PS.I'm not holding my breath.

PPS. Yes, I NEED a holiday... BADLY!

Its a commonly accepted observation that the longer you leave something the harder it is to deal with it. So true on so many levels, the first of which is my blog.

The longer I left returning here, the more daunting the contemplation of where to start became. Its now a case of not what to write, but what to leave out. I like to use these pages more to document the thoughts in my head in reaction to things around me rather than the events themselves and to say that my headspace is getting all over the place and very disorganized of late is probably and understatement. Which could explain why I'm here; I always come crawling back sooner or later.

Although I can't quite comprehend the distance its been over three years now since I returned to work after the events that caused my couple of months off. Three years, already? In someways it barely feels more than a few months and in others, well its unfortunate to say it, but I doubt I'd recognize myself before that time when viewed from the perspective of the here and now.

Thats probably a bit of a lie to be truthful. The truth is more likely that I'd look at myself and hate myself when compared to the care free and untroubled person I like to think of myself as having been. I also like to think, in a reasuring manner, that its not been all bad, I suppose you could say I've developed self-awareness as a result of my troubles but that in itself is a double-edged blessing - knowing you're fucked up only means you're fucked up and you know it.

So if three years have passed, it must be about two years(?) or so since I gave up on counseling. It had reached a point where to go any further would have required me giving a lot more to the process and that meant dealing with thoughts and feelings I didn't want to approach. No, even here in the anonymity of blogdom I still keep my secrets, there are some thoughts and feelings that even here I struggle with admitting. Did someone say emotional retard???
The next step suggested was to be intensive psychotherapy, whether it would have benefited me I don't know or whether it was introduced as a junction point by my counselor to coerce me into a position where I either open up or make my own way back in the world alone I don't know. The fact that I think like that is either insightful of me or unwarranted paranoia - I lean toward paranoia because I'm not known for giving myself credit that often.

Anyway, a lot of those feelings that I don't want to explore are towards my parents. Suffice to say that what I try to leave visible on the surface is very black and white. The pictures held from inside the maximum security vault that is my skull are painted in billions of shades. Some vibrant, others dull and bleeding through into each other. Most of them though are distinctly grey.

I know I'm screwed and the more I experience life with this knowledge the more I'm able to see how my reactions whether expressed or not are coloured by the truth that I'm pretty messed up on some levels and it has shaped me whether I buried the feelings or not.

A though has just occurred to me, I'm generally paranoid that people might see me as 'flaky' or perhaps inconsistent (or would unfathomable be the correct description?) because my reasonings and opinions are my own and can be subject to which ever element of my personality is closer to the surface on any given day... If people were allowed to see beyond the withdrawn shell I show to others, would they understand better or truly see how deep the cracks run?

Its a thought, nothing more. Like I would ever be that, 'open'.

Anyway, what did I learn from my counseling? All manner of things, possibly the most prolific of which were the fact that, looking at the bigger picture that my footprint in the world was getting smaller and smaller as I was withdrawing from life and just how long this process had been occurring.

I would like to say things have changed, but on reflection for a while I might have been a little more talkative but now I keep myself to myself and thats that. I've always kept my family at arms length and this holds true even now, even with the pitiful few I will still talk to.

I talk to the people at work but do I connect with them? No. I have to admit I probably keep them at a distance so deliberately that it likely shows.

Anyway, back on track... The reason for a lot of my recent inner turmoils? A lot of questions I find myself wondering for the future and how to approach it.

I found last December that I'm going to be a father. Wonderful news for Shortstuff and I after a year of trying and lets be honest, its no small an event! Which is probably where a lot of my uncertainty and axieties of late have been coming from. Stress is stress, whether for good reasons or bad and as a person I can be very blind to the effects that it has until I do something random and compulsive and wonder why I was so vulnerable to the suggestion.

As great as the fact is though, it obviously plays a lot on my own experiences and I find myself wondering how I am going to answer certain questions and approach some situations in the future. Very, very tough questions I have to ask myself about how I'm going to handle certain scenarios.

Bean, which is the pet-name Shortstuff and I have for our unborn, will come into the world surrounded by a family that received the news with joy and he/she will be loved. Bean will have two parents, two uncles, an auntie and a cousin, two grandmothers and grandfathers, even two great-grandmothers (sadly his/her great-grandfather passed away a month or so after we broke the news) and there are plenty of other well-wishing friends and extended family in the mix too.

Its not a bad start in life is it? Better than a great many others get I'm sure and despite what I write here, on the surface in everyday life I do a bloody good impression 99% of the time of being normal. I'm determined that no matter how I see myself from the inside and no matter how utterly dead I am to some people, that Bean will get my love and care. Personally its probably the task I am best suited to; making silly noises is one of my specialties. I can't wait for the Lego phase either!

I just have to bear in mind a few potential landmines for the coming years ahead like what I do when Bean is old enough to realise and to ask questions - awkward ones like why he/she has two grandfathers and his/her cousin has three. Mercifully I have a good few years to think about that one!

I'm also not entirely keen on being called 'Dad' either, but Shortstuff doesn't seem too keen on the idea of just using my name. That said though, we only tend to use our names when talking about each other to other people, so she herself isn't used to calling me by my name! Not sure I like papa either... Suggestions on the back of the proverbial please.

I am looking forward to being viewed as someone special though. Its pretty pants when you reach that stage in life where you realise that the adults around you are just ordinary, flawed human beings like yourself; it'll be nice to exempt from that crushing revelation in someone eyes for a few years.

:D

I hate this crap, not the dancing mind but somewhere, inside me, there is this doubt.

For the sake of a metaphoric description I'll call it the Anxiety virus and, like a computer virus, its running through my hard-drive looking desperately for the right files. It wants to find something to worry or feel guilty about and then use it to crash my system and slap up the blue screen of death just behind my eyeballs.

Its not a feeling I'm unfamiliar with. Unfortunately I know this only too well, but mercifully it is mild now. In the deepest part of my total wig-out at the end of 2004, this beast ruled supreme. The only way I could escape the torture of being totally consumed with angst and imagined guilt about something, was for the virus to unearth something else from the darkest corners of my mind to replace the previous issue. To continue the computer-based metaphor, I had that many pop-ups and error messages, eventually I just ground to a halt.

Like most things obsessive, it is likely to be a learnt behaviour that has become routine. A default state that part of my mind goes back to whenever I have left my immediate comfort zone and stretched my boundaries a bit more.
Its almost like I'm trying to find something to punish myself with for actually, heaven forbid, enjoying myself.

Shortstuff and I went on the lash Friday. Her friends had come around beforehand and asked me along too. Despite my feinted protestations, I had been hoping. Having lost touch with nearly every last person I ever really called a friend over the years, I wanted just to see what was out there I guess.

We went from pub to pub, I drank. We went to a club as you do, and instinct (and alcohol) just took over and I was on the dance floor in a flash. I couldn't help myself, it was music from the mid 90's, back when dance music was good and not this rehashed 80's pop-song drivel that you get lately...

And what do I feel now? I'm trying to make myself feel like a nob, thats what. Trying to tell myself I probably looked like a right twat on the dance floor. Sure, I wave my arms in the air and jig around; I probably looked like a twat when I used to go clubbing ten years ago, so now I'm pretty sure I look like an old, balding twat instead.
I don't know why I even care, I didn't at the time, I was just enjoying it. Its not like I stand there two-stepping with my arms welded to my sides like a lemon – if nothing else I should award myself points for enthusiasm! I should be objective about it, did anyone pay me any attention really? Probably not - just another person in the crowd. Besides I'm sure Shortstuff would have told me if I looked like a plank or was embarrassing her.

But thats never stopped the bit of me that doesn't seem to like me from having a good kick, and all the while the Anxiety virus is looking for something to feel guilty about.

That's what I hate about getting drunk, probably even more than any headaches the day after. Its the remorseful feeling that I might have let myself go and just gotten on with having fun; I think I'm scared that people will actually form the same opinion of me as I hold about myself should they see me without all the restraint.

Shortstuff didn't seem to mind. I think she appreciates her man keeping her company and dancing with her.

So if I put two and two together and look at the facts, why am I trying to find a reason to critique myself? I was out dancing with a fit, young girl... All things considered I should convince myself that's the bottom line and smile about it.

Still, I've stepped outside my comfort zone and now that bloody Anxiety virus is floating around at the back of my mind looking for a reason to reign me back into the tight confines of my usual existence. Oddly, though (and it was probably the calming effect of the alcohol) I didn't really feel like I was that far out of my comfort zone, it felt good if I was honest. Time was, many years ago when I'd go out nearly every weekend and get absolutely hammered and dance...

All this worry and concern just is a pointless reaction to nothing; so now I've come here, I've written it down maybe I can just let it ebb away without it gaining any credibility. Flush it down the Blog so to speak...

Twas quite a surprise to wake up the morning after on the sofa with me feet on the coffee table though. The getting home bit must have passed me by