Broken Wing

I once had a friend I used to scare with a floppy arm.

It wasn't a fake appendage, made especially for me or of the poor taste joke shop kind, no, it was all mine: it belonged to me, but I was able to make it, at will, go dead, limp and lifeless, and for some reason this terrified her. I, however, found it hilarious, and would tease her mercilessly with it, let it suddenly flop across our shared hotel bed in Spain where we'd crashed out because the afternoons were too damn hot, the ceiling fan spinning overhead, over us and the beside tables with our personal effects, crackers and bottled water.

Lord, how she'd shriek. I guess my teasing (and her pleas not to) were similar to tickling. The latter's not allowed now, without consent; maybe arm flopping isn't either?

I can't remember if I favoured a particular arm...nor do I know if this is uncommon. I never considered it my party trick; I don't recall showing it or mentioning it to anyone else, until now. We weren't kids, we weren't adults. Just old enough to go away on holiday, drink fruity watered-down cocktails (responsibly, not until we were plastered or threw up) and get carried into bars. Girls, any girls, were a commodity bars always needed more of.

It had all been my friend's idea. The holiday. The destination. Where to stay etc. I don't remember having much say in any of that, aside from meeting at the travel agent's and handing a credit card over. Perhaps I'm wrong...perhaps I was more involved in the plan than I recall. Whatever. I happily fell in, went along with it. A jaunt. A spree of ten nights, I believe, maybe fourteen.

Yet compared to the youth of today (and even back then) we were tame. It was the night-life that called; to dance until we could dance no more because once on a dance floor (anywhere) we were rarely off it. It was all about the music. And stamina (without the aid of legal or illegal highs). And dark clubs with neon, pulsing lights. Night after night like the twelve dancing princesses who escape via a trap-door and a hidden passageway, to return with their shoes worn right through and no explanation for another pair having gone to pieces. Except there were only two of us and we had no need for a trap-door or a hidden passageway to make our nightly escape, though we did have to wait until the appropriate hour. Tiptoeing was also unnecessary, for there were no kings or queens lying awake or staying up late, long past their bedtime and fretting. We were our own bosses, not that that we didn't butt heads, though not over princes as none were met; well, none we agreed on. It wasn't really that kind of place, and if you'd gone with that in mind (which neither of us had) you'd be disappointed. Sorely and sometimes cruelly, too.

All I can say is we were young (still in college) and the young do impetuous things. And this holiday was one of them, as was conduct. Those friendship codes, never spoken of, never agreed to are harder to stick to when you don't know what you're sticking by. A good time was allowed to be had that's all I'll say. There were expectations (presumptions of character) to live up to and both of us failed in the eyes of the other, I guess, though even now I'd say the blame lay more one way than the other. But then of course I'd say that; time (and age) hasn't altered my sense of righteous indignation, but I think my friend, if I knew her still, would state the same, possibly in more vehement tones too.

Nothing happened that might be covered by the law of the stag or the law of the hen; both of us, looking back, were mere innocents in that regard, yet somehow still managed to surprise as well as disappoint each other, and learn as friends we weren't suited: the time had come to part. Isn't that a common experience on holidays though? And more especially on those where you're trying to let your hair down and find your adult feet?

So, overall I can't say I have altogether fond memories of that brief passage of time, just fragmentary memories, as if the brain deliberately stops you from remembering (in full detail) anything that's unpleasant, and of course, the arm. The dangling broken wing. The symbol of a friendship, that in the end, ironically, didn't last much beyond that early adventure. 

Picture credit: Cat Catching a Bird, 1939, Pablo Picasso (source: WikiArt).

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Sucking Lemons (and Limes)

“You're a cheerful soul”, which when said to me is not as you might think meant literally, as a compliment even, but sarcastically, and to which though they can't see me I pull a face, a long face as if I've been sucking lemons. I'd rather they said that actually: Have you been sucking lemons? Because then I could be honest: Yes I have. I like lemons. And limes.

Really, it's their attempt to change the subject. Or the record. They'd rather turn it over to the B side. I know I'm picking (and I know too I'm probably being a bore) but if there wasn't some thorn, some truth in whatever I was saying before, this remark wouldn't have been made. Of course, this stratagem only works – both ways – on those closest to you.

It's rare that 'cheerful' in the sense it's meant could be applied. Not that I'm glum or pessimistic but then I'm not what you might describe as sunny either. Ever. Obsessive, sometimes, about an interest, never people, well, not those known to me or even generally speaking alive. I'll just spit it out shall I: you have not entered stalker territory. But, hang on, are you, possibly, stalking me? If you are, I don't want to know. Some knowledge is good, some is dangerous. So, carry on...whilst I'll find another record to put on.

Hmm, bit dreary this...yet mesmeric and forbidding. Glaswegian. Written especially for a French drama. Is that the atmosphere I'm aiming for?

Ghosts. Hades. Shades of Homer. I know, I know, stop with the Homer. I said I was obsessive, didn't I? once my eyes have been opened. Tin-opened like the Trojans and Greeks from their armour as they battled on the plains of Troy, though these warriors were, I imagine, unsealed like sardines (why is it never corned beef?) with a spindly key. Just more aggressively, of course. With swords. Whereas with eyes, it's more akin to removing spectacles – the images, the words burning into your brain should be blurred but instead still appear sharp, spear-sharp, pencil-sharp, the point driven home on a body or page, and you can't, for your life, figure out why.

The world makes a little more sense. The foundations on which it might have been laid anyway. So what if it's mythical? It's obviously inspired, fed into many people's work. Like Shakespeare. Oh God, I'm talking Greek classics again. Somebody stop me!

Now I've plateaued. The record's got stuck; the needle scratching the same surface area over and over. My favourite track too.

Why is it always my favourite track that can never play right through? An instrumental halting or skipping; the vocals (when there are some) fading in and out as if he, the vocalist, is being suffocated or his windpipe squeezed so he chokes on a word, the same word again and again. Which then (again) makes me think of war. Arrows and shields. Horses.

Bronze. Iron. Clad head to toe in armour. And yet a weapon finds a gap: a strip of unprotected skin, vulnerable and quivering. Or the attacking warrior uses instead brute force, hacking and stabbing everywhere, at close range, until metal is pierced and flesh is punctured.

Homer. Troy.

Revenge. Honour. Funeral pyres. Zeus and Athena beseeched to intervene.

I have a will of iron, it seems, when it comes to this particular record. It plays even when it's not being played: just there all the time, as if all the time it's connecting dots, and won't, hates to be interfered with. It's there when I walk across a cobbled pedestrian street, my limbs heavy with fatigue; and when I enter a huge shopping centre, all glass and domed ceilings, and their shops, where my eyes refuse to rove over seas of muchness and to scout out categories; my ears to hear, my tongue to engage.

What is this landscape? Where are the dustier, emptier plains? Where are the tents and the men? Where is Troy?

Is this Hades...? The new Hades, built layer upon layer of the old, so it sits on the same level as the living and not below. A world alongside, gleaming white, with food courts.

Have I sucked too many lemons (and limes)?

Picture credit: Still life with lemons on a plate, 1887, Vincent van Gogh (Source: WikiArt)

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Of Twists and Turns

'Oh no, you've learned your lazy ways too well, you're got no itch to stick to good hard work.'

A line from Robert Fagles translation of The Odyssey that I never imagined I'd willingly stick to myself and not feel affronted by as I would have done had someone else, as they do in The Odyssey, taunted me with it.

Odysseus, however, is in disguise: in tattered rags, looking to all his island's people (and princes) like a tramp or beggar, whereas I still look like me to those that know me from way way back and know me still, regardless of my well-worn clothing, but then I'm not assisted (or thwarted) by immortal gods. That I know of; well, none have ever put in an appearance, nor have I made offerings, though, to keep me in their favour or to diminish any punishment.

I've sometimes thought if such gods exist they smile upon me only when it suits and frown when it doesn't, because like Zeus and Athena they like to play: throw thunder bolts and storms as well as choice rewards; yet at some point I must have also upset one with Posideon's nature because there have been squalls.

A god of Posideon's type is an easy one to blame for my now rather negative view of work and change in attitude towards it, but I haven't made any overtures to him so I can't really think that's the case, as if I did then surely I'd be on my knees on a hill or cliff somewhere pleading to the skies and seas, or scattering cereal and proffering vegetables hoping these would substitute for the usual goats, rams and bulls.

No, it's entirely me, though not entirely unrelated to twists and turns, though none of the sort Odysseus suffers – either at his own hands (or his shipmates) or of the gods' making. But I did, last year, return to a state I thought had left me, that I thought I'd already transitioned through quite a few moons ago. Jobless (after redundancy) nothing new, my reluctance in applying and my hesitancy over vacancies however was. My confidence shaken (it hadn't been high in my last position) and doubting if I wanted to once again make myself fit or be re-recruited into office work, even voluntary.

I stalled. I applied. I attended informal meetings and interviews. I dithered, back and forth, back and forth. I was burned by some, got no replies from others. Some I got a sniff of but which proved slippery – employers and T&Cs of employment; others were so slippery, I failed, despite heavenward eyes and ceiling-directed prayers, to land them. I gave up, I persevered: onto to the next one, I gave up again, I tried. My savings were on the downward slide.

So what in the end did I do? Instead of doing what I should: retrain, hone skills, re-jig again my CV, get a haircut, try out a new look and at least make myself into someone that might be office right and ready, or to at least feel better. Clothes and all that just don't do it for me. I turned to Greek classics and poetry. Learning. Yep, I stuck my head in a book. Correction, lots of books. I found whole areas of libraries I hadn't visited because I assumed epic poetry wasn't for me, not to read and enjoy. And the Greek tragedies, less so. All those character and place names and how to pronounce them.

Yet to my surprise, I spent a blissful week with Homer's Odyssey (all twenty-four books in one volume), literally swept away, in spite of detours to the notes and pronouncing glossary, and enjoying most of all the recurrent passages. Those fixed and formulaic, frequently repeated refrains and phrases were a joy to come across since they made me feel that like Odysseus I'd been carried away on my own journey of familiarity and awakening. Like the oral tradition when I came to a repetition I paused in my reading as if like the performer I was relishing the break to recollect the next part of the verse as well as gather myself for the next twist in the tale. I took especial delight in the rituals prior to dining: the rinsing of hands, the serving of appetizers and bread, the drawing of a table towards a guest, along with 'lustrous Calypso' and eagles as portents.

So,whilst my job situation didn't improve, Pope (Alexander) was right when he said: 'Homer makes us Hearers', because I found a skill I didn't know I'd lost.

Picture credit: Christ in the Wilderness, the Eagles, Stanley Spencer

All posts published this year were penned during the last.

Bring the Trial On

Everything that was once considered normal is now wrong. Well, maybe not everything but quite a lot.

Language. Perceptions. Thinking. All have been modified; all are still changing at such a rate it's hard to know where you stand if you say a thing, anything, or think such and such, irrespective of whether you then voice it in terms to try not to offend or deliberately do otherwise; or keep your counsel and only confide in others who you know think like you.

I could give examples of the ways in which language, perceptions and thinking have been, are being tampered with to cause friction, to create animosity but why go into that? What good will that do? Because it's not new, just something we are again living through.

A generational divide, where the language used is not the same, where opinions aren't crouched the same or shared. Neither is how time is spent and resources utilised.

I hesitated over the use of that term: generational divide, because I don't believe it – but how else do you express it? A sociological change? - since if that's the case I should side (is there a side?) with my own and I don't, nor am I, it seems, in total agreement with those the other side, age-wise, of me. They've gone ahead, moved with these changing times, and I've stayed behind, in a different age.

A age that somehow seems for all its technological ineptness less complicated. Slower, true, but not as slow as days gone past; still, nothing could have stopped that tide from advancing, and from advancing still for it has yet to slow its pace.

Am I coming across as a bit of a sourpuss? I'm not. I like where I am (I don't begrudge those that have adapted) but why, in making way for change, should my position get harder to maintain, or for my views on certain issues to be tolerated?

By issues I mean our ideas on progress, human rights, feminism, isolationism, protectionism and democracy. Is what we consider forward-thinking taking us backwards? Discuss. No don't, this is not the time, nor place.

Globalisation and interconnectedness is a fallacy (homogenisation is not however); we each live in our bubble. Which, yes, may include communicating with peoples in other countries and knowing their news, but it's still a bubble. Oh, we can be moved but that bubble still exists. And actually, being more knowledgeable about world events can do the opposite: leave you feeling unmoved. As well as also wondering why? Racking your brains, even: is it just me?? Have I grown that hard-hearted; have the roads of the world grown dark?

All this emotionality. On tap. To what end, to what purpose? To bestir or to numb? Are you outraged; are you a victim; do you not care.

There's an accepted mainstream view, an accepted (and expected) reaction, whether that be an outpouring of jubilation, sympathy or rage. Unity. As a nation. And if you differ, well, you might be cast-off, set adrift.

Except it's never as clear-cut as that: human beings are not simple beasts, nor immortal gods. Our emotions are complex and mixed. Yet, while this is played on, played with in media or channels of that nature, man in his or her natural state cannot now be inconstant. Moods provoked by sensationalism or personal crises understood; moods with no obvious causes not. Even those influenced by hormonal surges come under fire, when at certain life stages (and if not too unmanageable) they merely accompany a process. But there's a line of thinking that says: a mood that fluctuates in any way needs pills, those prescribed or otherwise obtained. To stabilise, to heighten, to drop, to flat-line. Moods are bad and need taming. What they should not do is fluctuate in response to the day, nor be experienced for their own sake. A reason as to their cause should be found and they should be helped, at least so as they don't impede or influence the nature of behaviour or thought, even in a good way.

What a thing to imagine, what a thing to say! I'm not without compassion if there's grounds for a case, and it's not, as it so often seems, just another added to the drugging of the masses. Suffering the waves and wars (of life) is very much a human journey.

Picture credit: The Wave, Erte (source: WikiArt). 

All posts published this year were penned during the last.