The Circle of Strife

wisdom/ is the acceptance of weakness/ is the illusion of strength/ is the knowledge of dependence/ is the basis of peace/ is the quenching of need/ is the antithesis of love/ is the consent to humility/ is the embracing of ignorance/ is the beginning of wisdom

Where do we go from here?

Here's the beginning of a script my brother Michael and I started a while back... enjoy, if you can:

A room; it overflows with row upon row of defunct fridges in various states of disrepair. Charles enters, in boxer shorts. He opens random fridge doors, stares, slams them shut, frustrated. Syd enters in dressing gown.

C: No cheese… …not a single chunk of cheddar in the entire house.
S: Try number 17.
C: What?
S: Try number 17.
C: Where the hell is number 17?
S: Down in the basement.
Cut to basement, dripping, puddles. Syd holds a lamp up. Charles opens another fridge.
C: Nope.
S: Number 39?
Cut to tropical rainforest, fridge opens, birds fly out.
C: Nope.
S: What’s that at the back?
C: Dairylea.
S: [shuddering] I didn’t realise things were that bad.
C: When do you get paid?
S: Not for another six months, they’re docking my wages until I’ve repaid them for all that milk I drunk.

Niche Market

So I'm thinking about releasing a range of condom flavoured strawberries... Any takers?

Deadly Words

In silence she stalks the day-glo corridors and brightly lit wards,
her trolley laden with fiction and disease. Wide her smile is and
frail her body as she betrays none of the deadly menace she will
pass from bed to bed. 'Here my dear,' she sweetly intones, 'try the
new agatha christie. It's a real pager turner...' her sinister laughter
evades our ever-weakened senses as she wheels her squeaky
payload towards another poor premedicated fool.

Hospital staff take utmost care to avoid the spreading of infections, doctors and nurses cleanse their hands with alcohol for each bed they visit, every area has been left sterilised, cleansed and hygenic... except the hospital library and its patron. Oh yes, this little old dear never washes a thing, her cloudy grey hair buzzes with flies as she dons the apron of negligence and wheels her bookcart of death from floor to floor. Look, I have a problem even going to a regular library. Shelf upon shelf of dirty yellowed dry-thumbed plastic-covered paperbacks, germ magnets the lot of them, breeding and cultivating hordes of snot, spit and filth spread by thick mucky fingers. But hospital libraries?! That's something else... At least in a regular library you don't actually know where the books have been, but a hospital library?- they've been with sick people! Thousands and thousands of deathly sick people all holding these tomes in their clammy sweaty hands, raining down spitlets of spit with their racking hacking coughs. Uch. Sometimes the book is so crispy you can almost smell the vomit. But maybe that's how they get rid of annoying patients; 'bed 14's shouting again, send up the book-lady'. It can only be responsible for the current spread of drug-resistant superbugs, all those little germs clinging to the curtains just waiting for their opportunity, 'here comes the book-lady guys! Jump on!'

all substance, no style

I count down in the early hours, tick tick the eight hour wait slips between the doses, until finally she comes to me in the dawn. She carries a cardboard tray of needles and nirvana and I watch as she draws clear fluid up into a plastic vessel. Flush mixes with flesh as she clears the paths of my veins, preparing them, cleansing them. And now watch her, see her delicate fingers, her nimble motions as she pulls precious drops of clean wonder into the needle; gaze as she reconnects the tubes and plunges down; glaze as the liquid shoots through plastic pipes and a burning fire travels into pale yellowed arms. I wait, two maybe three seconds, and my vision splits apart; eyeballs lose eyeballs and the beds before me dance in multiplicity. My muscles visibly untense, my body falls down down down into the soft grey mattress and i feel my jaw slacken. i blink and my eyelids pound down, each shutting a thunderous drum in the hollow night. i gaze at the the slow slurred speech of the white cloth nurse as she turns out the light and offers words of comfort. i watch the walls breathe.

re:treatment

The night before the day begins, I lie awake and ponder things; Like tomorrow where I shall journey to Hammersmith hospital to be incarcerated for an unknown number of days possibly weeks as they try yet again to heal my last-gasp of a pancreas. I hate going to hospitals, going to hospital is like owning up to the fact that you are sick; that's why they call it admittance. It is a place that saps all human dignity from you, all sympathy and humanity, leaving you objectified; a lump of meat in a bed. Which I guess is how some women feel most of the time, but anyway... As soon as you enter the automatic doors as a patient you cease to count. Man, the waiting times! It makes you wonder what meaning of 'patient' came first? Was one a pun on the other? And then when you're finally seen, you're tagged, barcoded and wheeled around on a big trolley. It's like being in a Human Tesco's, the patient nearest death on special offer. People are just waiting around, queuing up to die man; one pops and the others all go 'Hey! I was here first! Take me!!' It is so depressing, hospitals are truly the worst places to be when you are sick. Every morning they wake you up at 7 with a blood test! What way is that to look after a sick person? It should be at 12 with a muffin. And a hug.

Alternative Lifestiles

'fuck it dude, let's go bowling.' -- walter addresses the Dude
                                                 the big lebowski, 1998

I carry the burden of three thousand songs on my shoulders. Music seeps into my skull through the drip-feed of my walkman and artistic wealth bears down on me with every step/breath I take. And out of this galaxy of music do you think I can ever even find one song I actually remotely feel like listening to? Of course not. I put shuffle mode on and it's just skip skip skip. Much like contemporary living, it's all a problem of choice you see. We don't need this many options, we were not designed to cope with this much freedom. Trying to choose cereal in a supermarket recently caused my brain to overheat and I collapsed. Ordering a coffee these days is like filling in a tax return, 'I'd like a skinny-capu-frappa-grande-latte-venti-mocha-ccino please, easy on the steam, and a... tea'. Bring back the simple life I say, rice and water thrice a day, for as the monks show: hoods are all you need, all you need is hoods...

Wise Guy

To me, Wisdom and Energy have always been brothers in arms; two peas in a pod. They are neither created nor destroyed, merely transformed and reshaped. Wisdom is not knowledge, or know-how, it is simply that which is. And so we absorb this great and wonderful 'that-which-is' from the vast Truth that surrounds us all, we stop, open our eyes and suddenly we become inspired; filled with breath. True wisdom is never discovered or corrupted, it is merely converted from the external to the internal, passed on and taken in. Hence any pride derived from the reception and acceptance of this gift is like swelling with ego at our ability to inhale. We need to lose the pomposity, the arrogance of the antenna. We praise not the aerial on the television box, so why should we pat ourselves on the back for picking up the Signal? I am not the revealer but the receiver, I am the blank page to which the ink is transferred, and I await to soak up.

John, aged 8

The Kindness of Strangers

I'm in Gloucester Road, an area so upmarket the stray dogs are poodles. Arriving at the address scribbled on my hand I find myself barred by the most impressive set of security gates I've ever been obstructed by, pearly or otherwise. I ring the bell and magically they swing open, displaying a porch of greatness, wide stone steps and a front door of heaven, or possibly oak. I knock on the door and the help opens it. Now let's be clear here, 'the help' has many negatitive connotations, but here this woman is treated as an equal; vital, indispensable and treasured, so let's give her the full beauty of that phrase. She makes me a sandwich which I eat gratefully with cold fingers and an empty stomach. I wait in the 'day room' and she tells me to curl up on a couch the cost of a large car, to make myself at home. A big floppy dog comes in and I play with it. All this time I want to be cynical. Truly I do. How can people deserve to be this rich? How dare they have this much wealth? But when I am greeted by the owners, a couple with pure love, pure grace pouring out like cheap red wine on beige carpet, I am humbled by their humility. They sit with me for three hours, talking, making sure I am ok, telling me it will be ok. I cry a bit. And after three hours it is ok. A bit. I have hope, a small pilot light of hope. These people who could financially give me anything I could ever ask for have given me something so much more priceless, the ability to wake up again tomorrow and carry on.

The Game of Life

I am KerPlunk. The last few months, stick after stick has been removed from the see-through plastic tube of my life. Precariously I have suspended, falling from one support to the other, balancing desperately on wafer thin branches, holding on. And then this week, finally, the last straw was gently pulled from under my feet, and KerPlunk! There I fell, my marble tumbling down, landing on that cold plastic base, defeated. But here's what happened next: a hand came down from above and picked me up. It put me in a pocket full of other marbles, and carried me on its way. And as I clacked and clicked along, surrounded by these other marbles of all different glass, colours and sizes, I realised that perhaps, all along, I was playing the wrong game. The tube is not the game. The sticks are not the game. It is all about the marbles. And whether we KerPlunk! or KerChing! there is always Someone who will take us home with him at the End.

In the Bag

I am a wandering wonderer; with all my needs in a small rucksack I ride the tube and walk the streets, occasionally stopping in libraries or cafés to write my dissertation for a while or to sip a coffee for longer. Slowly I am refilling my paddling pool of inner peace. I would have to say I feel a sadness at the moment, a humming, low sort of sadness, and it is a sad time. And slowly I am finding small bits of comfort; from my friends, from my work, and from my rucksack. You see what I've realised is that wearing a rucksack double-strapped is a little like being hugged. Like having a little small furry koala bear on your back, putting its little arms around you, hugging you all day. This thought is giving me a very small warm happiness, a little warm lump in my stomach, and it is nice to get this little bit of happy in this little dose.

one hundred fourteen daze

alone i sleep, with you beside
whilst out the leaves slow wither die
we hold each frame a short awhile
'til seasons change with life's denial

love is the silence between the pauses
the mute now broken by life's lust causes
for you possesion: nine tenths of amour
life's a fucker and fuck i feel sore

In Other Words

Psalm 51 v 1-11

Man oh man oh man.
God. Ohhhh God,
have mercy on me
with your love that unfails

according to your awesomeness
wipe out my rubbish
empty my recycle bin
and clear my history

i know the score, man,
every day i wake i recall,

it is only you I have hurt
it starts and ends with you

shake me like an Etch-a-sketch
and cleanse me from within

scrub my like a scrubby thing
and grant me hope, some hope

create in me a pure heart, O God,
renew a steadfast spirit within
don't throw me out of your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me

please.

Without a doubt

Blind faith is what keeps us going. Each morning I wake up in blissful ignorance of the radio waves washing over my slumbering body. I turn on the farsight, the television, in full faith of its reception to this invisible force, content in the contact my pocket phone provides with the wired and wireless. There is no room for questioning here, we accept the unseeable without a doubt; surely, we say, it is only natural that these things exist. And yet when it comes to a more spiritual abstract unfathomable dimension, faith couldn't be further from the truth. We are defined by our cynicism, skepticism and ambivalence towards this mysterious other-worldly order, demanding some tangible evidence. But by our very existence, our lives are either a pursuit or a denial of this Truth; no in between. And for the more fundamental amongst us, convinced they have found The Way, I offer you doubts, questions and insecurity. How can we claim discovery, understanding or summation of this Truth, when we are the pot and not the potter? My faith is the acceptance of this bedwarfment, an acceptance in our place as creations, creatures, finite beings in the presence of the Greater. All I can hope is to find a small window on this eternity, as the bricks of fallibility obscure a full revelation. So draw back the curtains and gaze out my friends.