Hunters and Gatherers

I really don't like or trust what the human race has done to itself. We live in these teeny tiny boxes, put all of our issues, problems, highs or lows into boxes in our home, whether that be memories or secrets, and we hide them. We put them under beds, in wardrobes, in attics. We spread ourselves upwards into boxlike tower blocks and live for years not knowing who the people that surround us are.

More and more people find themselves pinned in to loneliness, unhappiness and goddamned madness because they work all day in one little cubicle of an office, staring at a square little screen and then come home to yet another empty and impersonal little box. And for what? We slave away all day to distract ourselves from the fact that without money, we can't do the things we want, but the scariest thing is that people don't know what they want a crushing amount of the time.

Asking questions to which we already know the answers to in order to sound unthreatening. Playing all the games, putting the right foot forward without stepping on anybody's toes, convincing ourselves of man-made morals, rights and wrongs, and creating our own facts of history to teach our children. Hovering in doorways, leaving pauses, manoeuvring ourselves around screens and machines, keeping busy.

Then we stop. Stop for a second and look around at the cement and the stitches and all of the things we've decided will improve our lives. And I consider the people I surround myself with, and what I might mean to them, and vice versa. We're not meant to sit at desks all day, or sleep until noon, or workout on machines or spend hours looking through social networking. We shouldn't have 500+ acquaintances who can see your day to day goings on. But it's addictive, throwing your entire life into the screen, out into the world for other people, who you really actually don't give a fuck about, to give worth.

We've created nasty mindsets, we've devalued the worth of people by filling the world to the brim. How is it that there are people who know hundreds of people, but are constantly alone? Glued to their little box day in and day out.

It's wrong. It's worrying. And these boxes create warped methods of madness. We are all lost in the labyrinth, despite the fact that we have Google Maps tracking our every step on our iPhone. We are lost, but we have no idea why. So we keep pelting forward towards the wall that seems far enough away now that you can stop in time.

When you see people, do you hunt them? Seek them out and leave them worse off than if they'd never known you? Or do you gather friends, caring mutually for a select few? Well. It's the distance that gets us in the end. There's a million miles between you on your laptop and the person sitting next to you on theirs.

Remarkable

It is utterly remarkable how capable we are of adapting. Of change, of improvement. Things that once seemed impossible, improbable and intangible are suddenly the norm, thanks to an ounce of conviction. Once we realise we do have control and choice, we can do so much more than we ever thought to initially.

Anything & Everything. Something I've been applying recently, a notion that keeps my personal demons at bay. You want something that badly? You need it? It's a daily struggle to keep focused, to keep rallying, to create logic out of fear. In battle, you can't lose concentration for even a second, or else you might not survive to regret it. I figure, when in a state of constant and acknowledged naivety all you can really do is power through until you either fly or fall. As long as you have those people around you, either outcome will be rectifiable.

I hate how much doubt and fear of loss/rejection/failure causes so many adventures to be overlooked. Despair thrives on it, in negativity, and once it's there it's like a disease that spreads and flourishes. The notion of adventure sends electricity through my soul, because it feels like a reason or a direction. An illogical certainty that comes from beyond me, that I can't change, only accept or discard. Adventure, I've discovered, can take many forms. It can be on the other side of the world, hidden in the streets by you home, or just sitting on a familiar sofa.

It's incredible how resilient we are. The human determination to stride on, to survive, even if survival means any of those things we fear. This in itself is empowering. The fact that survival trumps all, therefore determination and braveness can often be the initial cure to all of those little strikes and blows. We cure. We heal. We amble on into the definite unknown.

All I can hope

They tell you to let things go.

But I know I'll clutch the memories and the feelings close to my gut and I'll take a moment every now and then to squeeze my eyelashes together in misery and dismay. And I'll hope that my wrongs were right and that everything will be how we planned it. The people, the places, the names and the plans.

When you're too scared to win or to lose all you can do is try to damage as little of the furniture as possible whilst falling around in the dark. Brush your fingers lightly over familiar shapes and favourite possessions in the pitch blackness of your own lack of conclusion, strong enough to recognise the form, gentle enough to not break it. There are some casualties... perhaps when blinded by rushing blood this is inevitable. If I could just find the sodding light switch, I could see what I broke and try to fix it, for goodness sake.

But my blunted fingernails scrabble hopelessly against barren walls, cold against my fingertips, with no relief of comprehendible light. The only light I can find is when my eyes are closed and I forget, just for a second, who I am and what I don't know. The peace I created for myself is hollow and deadened, more like the roots of a tree suffocated by ivy than the usual notions of light and contentment. It's a surrender, a white flag, not a victory. It's a relief, a breaking point, but pitiful all the same.

We stride on. Smile carefully designed, conviction that can't really even convict itself because the damned floodgates are as broken as everything else.

When I finally find myself safely home, I'm going to get my old bear out of the attic. I think at this point, we might need each other more than ever.

First World Problems

I have a lot of questions that either can’t be answered or just plain won’t be answered. I’m getting sick and tired of not knowing what’s going to happen or how things might turn out. Simple things like what job will I get to fund my India Dream, and others that are just scared little bird thoughts which I can’t force off. You can quieten them with laughter and friends but those murmurs of curling and writhing wonderings are always there, just loitering.

It’s an odd thing, when we are confronted with the truth of the things we’ve feared all along. There is a sort of satisfaction in knowing you were right, followed instantly by that booming dooming panic. What do you do when you think you know the truth of it all? I’ve said before that I can’t quite decide whether I’m cruelly intuitive or maddeningly naïve and that I’ll never know.

You can’t get away from the things you know and you can’t get away from the things you don’t. That’s why I’d like to be four again, when the thing that worried me most was that maybe my Mum might find out I’d lit a match in my bedroom, stolen Dad’s cufflinks or laid down in a puddle. I think there is something in ignorance that us self-pitying folk often overlook. You don’t know it all, and what’s more, you don’t give a fuck. At all.

What I wouldn’t give to have that. To have all of my sorry little first world problems swept away by a brush of innocence, like pulling back the curtain to a morning light which tells you somehow it was all a dream, those things only happen in poorly written tv sitcoms. Fresh crisp air that spikes your lungs, singes your throat as you knock it back greedily.

It’s been a long time and I’ve just realised it’s still going to be a long time before I get all that back. I think that’s alright though. One just has to cope with the not knowing, perhaps even embrace it, this element of life’s many rituals that are just inevitable for the young, good-natured and mildly foolish. It’s far from ideal, debatably fixable… but it’s manageable for now.

It hits us all at some point in our lives, that abrasive truth that as soon as it’s said, we realise it’s something we’ve always known. It’s not like a bullet, more like a wind graze. You know the culprit is right there, but you still don’t see it coming. Then you get home, take off your boots and there it is. A stinging, nagging, pain. It’ll heal. They’ll heal. It’s interesting too, the way different humans heal themselves. Either licking their own wounds or seeking out others or just leaving them open to heal themselves.

There are those who inflict injuries hoping that’ll at least distract them from their own. These are the people that need most looking after I reckon. Everyone just wants to avoid humiliation and feeling uncared for. Everything is relative though, isn't it?

Being Feral

I wish I could impress upon you the notion of the stars curving round to meet the sea. It's something dark, delicate and hopeless. They can't even communicate because as magical as they look from the window of a flying tin can, they are just inanimate substance. To state the obvious. This hopelessness that I feel towards the direction of our kind can only be cured, albeit temporarily, by remembering that there are some things that we can know, innately. We know that happiness and contentment are wonderful. The knowledge that love, true love, is paramount. For family, friends and lovers alike. What other emotion is as inexplicable? Yes, there are plenty that are so strong that they can honestly kill us, lift us into the sky or render us somewhat impossible. But you tend to be able to use some smart little metaphor to explain those ones... even if it does belittle the notion entirely. But that love you can have for another human being is, as I say, inexplicable.

When all else seems dark and we cannot see, we yearn for the light. Even if that light is balanced temporarily and woefully at the tip of a match. We turn it upright so that it burns, not matter how pitifully, for as long as possible.

So, I regularly describe myself as feral. I use this word instead of wild because 'wild' has become associated with something desirable. I think perhaps I would be a little more content if I didn't view the world in the way I do... but I also think that would make me a fucking idiot, so who knows. Sometimes, a lot of the time actually, I just sit and listen to what people aren't saying. It's far more interesting than the drivel that is gushing from their mouths. I can't really explain that either. But people are either scared or blissfully uncaring, or both. Some people just have the strangest priorities, but then again, I couldn't begin to tell you what the right ones should be. I often look at society and find it illogical and ridiculous. It's not what we were created to cope with. We as a species, have done it all wrong. It makes me feel claustrophobic, and every time I feel like that, I find myself running as fast as I can towards any form of nature. And that reaction is as innate to me as survival really ought to be to most.

But if the popularity of MacDonald's is anything to go by, survival is an innate notion lost on billions.

When I think about the things I know innately and often against my will it makes me wonder. Either I know something you once knew or in fact have never known, or I'm the ignorant one and you know it all.

When we live in an existence where even our questions are questionable, and the ground to cling to can be torn from heart and soul in the space of a second, surely that means we can only find sanctuary in the immaterial and inexplicable? I find, as soon as something can be explained, it no longer belongs to us. Because where do we draw the line between imagination and ambition? Right now, they are just shapes on a page.

When I struggle most, it seems to directly correlate with a lack of love, for and from those around me. It turns into a disconnection, a realisation that due to a series of potential coincidences, you know these people. A flip of the coin, a different hand, an alternate role of the dice, and you might never know them. And you wouldn't even have missed each other, because how can you miss something you never knew?

 So the disconnection of us as people, as creatures just drifting in various directions does nothing for me, other than press upon me the importance of making those connections, of falling in love with as many people and as many places as possible.

The heart is meant to be used to the maximum of it's capacity, in every stretch. Whether it's fluttering skywards, getting wrung out like a tired old flannel or being pulled out through the bottom of you stomach by an enormous magnet. At least when you die, know that it's been worn out.

Because honestly, what else can we do with it?
I don't know nearly anything really.

So who am I to even begin to wonder what it is I fear on a nightly basis?

Sleeping shouldn't be difficult. I blame the lack of air, the blind beating the window, the little box I have to call mine. I'd like to go back to the wild please. At least I know what's there is real and doesn't care whether I'm there or not.

Complexities

Nobody is as complex as they want to be, and there is always a reason for the way people are. Humans are not complex, but perhaps the things that have happened to them are. But people are not complex at all, we are all 99% the same in terms of experience, emotion and existence. Using ones own complexity as justification for ones actions is either idiocy or weakness, neither of which I intend to be affiliated with. So that's why I get on with things, I solve my own problems and deal with my own past. To deny help and then behave poorly is the height of cowardice in my opinion.

I truly believe that we are capable of fixing ourselves and each other, in physical, emotional and mental ailments. Too few of us know too little about ourselves and what we as conscious possessing creatures are truly capable of, and that is a scary thing to confront on a daily basis. The unknown is a scary thing. Somethings can be learnt, others can't. That's terrifying. So from that we discover that actually, most of us have no clue why we are here, who we are, what path we are meant to take and how best to react to our lives so far. Scary.

It's whether you trust yourself or not. And those you surround yourself with. And whether you can take responsibility for the choices you make, and can calmly accept that they might just be wrong sometimes. 

But it's like they say, right? You can't win if you don't even try. I figure everyone should at least try to be the best they can be to themselves and everyone they come into contact with. That's the first step to learning how to heal ourselves. 

The Farmer's Wife

At a quarter to six the alarm sounds, beaks gleaming.

One slipper in the larder and the other,

with the collie, beneath the sink.

Burn the toast. Get the post. Pour the tea.

Bills and a card, all marred by spots of rain, mud from the lane

where the postman came and fled

from Pip. The spokes and chain her merry game.

Every morning she hangs her head… her friend has left again.

Feed the chooks, the cows, the bull and the Jacobs, nostrils wet and steaming.

Defrost the blueb’ries, rasb’ries and strawb’ries, ready for pie making.

Pluck the goose. Feed the dog. Biscuit and Tea.

Crumbs for Pip. Most for me.

I look out over our fields spiked with silvering shards.

Gold briefly smothered with winter’s glass.

Pip sits on my toes, pushes her nose into my grasp.

Worth more than metals. This is calm. Content.

Treading snow through the carpet, he comes home

From tending to the Autumn sown.

Coffee and “The Good Life”, a repeat,

Then he confines himself to the office to work.

Poring over papers, numbers, sums and sales.

My husband never made it past Wales, you know,

In the war, his Father passed away.

That’s just timing I guess.

I’m bored of the telly, of dissatisfied youth.

They try so hard to avoid the truth, they flatter themselves.

Kid themselves.

With fame and stardom, with unreachable dreams.

When did life become a contest?

The pining has become grotesque, the whining…

I grew up in this town. A brief spell in Scotland shepherding.

That’s as far as I go. My life is this town.

I thumb through Pratchett…no, Kipling and Armitage tonight,

Squinting through the slowly dimming light.

I wait for him to flick the switch,

“Turn on the lamp you ridiculous girl!”

Pip squeaks, coils around his feet.

“I’ll take her out for a leak, shall I Jane?”

As he trips out the door with Barbour, wellies and dog in toe,

I indulge in a grin. This is calm. Content.

These aren't even the wounds that create scars

I haven't written on here in a while, but I figure that's okay, because I have been writing. A lot of it is just incomplete, unfinished, unpolished. A lot of it I probably won't go back to. It's been like trying to repaint an important room in the house and having a thousand and one things to do, as well as not harm any of the objects in said room, as well as still needing to use that room on a day to day basis. Rooms... these little boxes we keep our lives in. Mine is often a very good reflection of the state of my life. I've been too busy to do any washing, so I guess it's lucky that I have more clothes than anyone else I know. They are strewn all over my bedroom floor, the surfaces, the empty side of my bed. Drawers are open like tongues lolling out of an unconscious head, the wardrobe doors yawning wide. It's busy, messy and disorganised. How inconvenient.

So a lot has happened to me recently, some good, some bad, but all extremely affecting. I feel affected, diseased almost. I wouldn't go as far to say I was trapped, because nobody ever really is... not really. I do crave escape and I know it's nearly here. I've written before about never wanting to hurt people. Looking back, I think I was slightly naive, due to the fact that sometimes you have to hurt people, including yourself, to do the right thing. Assuming that is, that you know that it is the right thing.

Listening to your gut can be difficult, there are so many other vital organs making such a racket. Entirely rude.

These things that have happened... they aren't even the big ones. I'll look back in 10, maybe 20 years and smile at the child I once was, how significant and brutal life's twists and turns felt at the time. These things... they won't leave scars. We'll all go on with our worlds, perhaps thinking back to that person who we gave ourselves to, for any amount of time. I'll look back, and I'll remember growing up. When you look at a scar, the moonlit rise of skin saving skin, you remember what happened, how you got it. You forget the pain. Every time. We fool ourselves, we forget what pain is, because if we didn't, we'd never leave the damned house. This will not leave scars. Only a few should haves and what ifs.

Are those harder to shake off?

Scars. They are formed in a calculated weave of cells, rather than the random formation of our natural skin. They criss cross over to cover the wound, like a patch. We darn ourselves, essentially. Funny thing is, this carefully calculated formation is less efficient than standard skin. It is of inferior functional quality. I think there is something in this. There are only so many times we can heal ourselves, and each time we do it less adequately than the last. It always leaves some form of mark, whether that shows or not. Healing ourselves, albeit inefficiently, is all we know how to do. So we do it because we have to. But there are only so many times you can darn your favourite raggedy old jumper before you have to give up.

It always leaves a mark. I have faded scars that were once far more prominent. But over the years, they have faded. I've forgotten exactly where they used to lie, and how I got them. But those are just the little things. A paper cut here, a grazed knee there. Those aren't the kinds of things that leave proper scars. Those we can fix. Those we can heal. Those we can forget. Those we can lose sight of in our own wondrous efficiency.

Such isn't Life

It's got to that time of term when everybody is flagging, feeling the pressure. Work to do, people to organise, bills, house, bins, recycling, money...or rather lack of it. If this is what adult life is like...well how extraordinarily sad.

No wonder us English are so bloody miserable the whole time! When you think about it, we are supposed to roam free, hunting and eating, because we are animals. Can you imagine trying to explain to a chimp that, for the rest of it's days, it must sit at a desk for eight hours a day doing something boring and tireing? Whose idea was it for it to be normal to loathe our jobs, and therefore a monumental proportion of our lives? Bearing in mind the rest of our time is spent eating, sleeping, doing more work such as bills and answering emails, and parking our arses in front of a tv to watch mind numbing crap, just to give our minds a rest? It seems so stupid.

I've had a glimpse of that over the past few days. Unfortunately I live with seven extremely loveable chimps. Because OBVIOUSLY it's a cracking idea to put three tea towels into the washing machine alone, it seems plain that if anything needs doing, I'm the one to do it. For example, tracking down lost bills, sorting out housing paper work and organise everyone. I resent this. It has shown me a vicious window into my future. Being furious with people I love for not helping, blowing up over things like a dirty hob and the recycling. It's miserable. What kind of a thing is misery to accept?

It requires hard work... concious hard work, to relax these days. Happiness is not a goal, it is a way of life. And I'll be damned if I allow myself to sink into this way of life, where ticking boxes and filling out bits of paper is at the top of my priorities.

It Has Come To My Attention...

That girls are ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. Obviously I've known that for many years now (I didn't go to an all girls for nothing) but I always managed to see that hilarity in other girls, never myself. The fact that a few chemical changes can cause havoc, creating nightmares out of everyday occurrences.

As different as men and women are, we really aren't. In short, we have more similarities than differences, and there are always a million exceptions to the rule. Given, that rule was laid down by the assumptions we build from our experience of society, real and scripted, but we see it as a factual cliche that 'men are from mars, women are from venus.' How narrow.

Can we really generalise to the extent that women 'empathise' and men 'systemize'? Can it really be a biological definite that men seek competition, structure and logic over the touchy feely notions supplied by women? There are millions of stats on this, and I guess there is no smoke without fire. But the eternal question lies in whether this behaviour is innate.

I often wonder how I would have turned out if I had either never gone to an all girls school for eight years or even if I had stayed there for another two instead of going to college.

We are affected, not only by those in our networks, but how dense they are. And by network I mean the people you most interact with. An example of a dense network would be my secondary school, maybe 50 or 60 girls in the year who all knew each other well and saw each other in multiple situations; school, sporting events, social events. I learnt today that the Pharaoh Islands have a fairly isolated population of around 20,000, causing their language to remain similar to Old Norse and their lifestyle to be unaltered from the simple yet satisfying rural way.

I would love to know how this affects the human, especially female psyche. Having a social network that dense based on positive things (If you've read my blog before, you'll know I'm a huge fan of the simple things and countryside ethics) is extremely beneficial to the self esteem of people. This simplicity and slight isolation, albeit unprogressive in the world, is the key to ultimate satisfaction in my opinion. Living in a hierarchy where everything depends on beauty, strength, who you know not what you know, winning everything and having the most money, the best car, apartment, designer dog... that type of network is unhealthy.

Albeit productive.

But maybe it's not that kind of productivity the human race needs anymore. Is it productive to squeeze every last bit of oil out of the earth instead of slowly integrating new fuels? Is it productive to give out money to those that barely qualify, just for a quiet life with less paperwork? And at the end of the day, who defined this to be productive any way? We've set rules for ourselves over hundreds of years, a way of life that it would be ludicrous not to follow. The ludicrous thing is actually that we have convinced ourselves of these things to the extent we can barely comprehend another way of life. Money good. No money bad. Winning good. Losing bad.

When will people stop being so worried about winning or losing and realise that there is no real competition. It's something we created. Just like the supposed 'norms' of male and female behaviour. It's just what we created.

A Husband

The fractures of his face wept, broke, withered. Ash,

anguishing for his own, curling flecks of half.

And the curtains close.

The indent in her half, cherry blossoms scent.

Those with no weaknesses have nothing to lose

and nothing to save.

A shy glance at an old frame brought him courage.

Her golden halo below his fourth knuckle,

her angelic ghost.

He picked up his speech and headed to the door.

Her Moses cradle glided down the aisle.

‘My poor darling girl,

my wife.’ And so the walls came fluttering down.