The Party's Over Now

So: the party's over.

Well, when I say 'party', I mean, 'strange psychological journey'.

When I say 'strange psychological journey', I mean 'twenty years feeling like I couldn't get out of my own front door because somebody else's tickertape parade was passing by my house'.

I have a lot of tidying up to do. Then I can get on with being an adolescent again, like before I was interrupted. Except this time, I won't need to use a Fake ID.

Result.

Vomit, Damn It!

I used to have a German teacher who thought it was the funniest joke to say the German question and answer

Womit? (What with?)
Damit. (With that.)

as "Vomit! Damn it!" Since he was teaching a class of fifteen year old boys, his sense of humour was pretty much on the ball. ("Womit" is also Derbyshire slang for "go home", which must confuse any German tourists.)


In the nineties, I had a friend who described himself as suffering from Bulimic Amnesia ("I eat too much and then I forget to throw up.")

This thing I have going on in my chest is really challenging me. I have some stuff (some truly unpleasant stuff, actually) inside my lungs, which I need to get rid of. But I'm experiencing my symptoms as something inside me that is trying to drive me out of my own body. I have made a Major Metonymic Mistake. Meh.

I should be thankful I don't have Ariel's problem. The prospect of sex with a new partner makes her throw up. She's married now, so I hope that means the problem has subsided. I recommend her book and website Offbeat Bride, if you're thinking of getting unorthodoxly hitched.

Drinking: nothing at all
Listening: The Simpsons, through the wall.

The Seven Ages of Gordie - # 3

My Age:

What Happened:














How I Coped:

7

Writing. Fame. Death.

I loved books. Then somebody told me I could write. And suddenly, I discovered myself. I wrote stories,I wrote poems, and within a year, I was a published author, with my picture in the paper.

That same year, people around me started dying. A boy in my class, who got cancer. And my Uncle Ken, who just expired one day, and I don't remember being told why.

I think the first funeral I went to would have been Robert's. The little boy coffin, and then a while later, a different church and an adult coffin.

Uncle Ken was a painter, and my Auntie said he'd gone to paint houses in Heaven. I hope he did a good job. I hope they paid him properly.

I'm still not sure how I dealt with all of that. I'd found something that made me powerful, and something that no power could overcome. I think I began to split in two, inside. I began to think about what was and wasn't acceptable about me, and who I could safely share it with. Yes, dear reader, I became an editor.

Note to Self: Don't Die

The days are gone when I really needed this advice, and they won't me coming back. But it's a good, gritty song for an autumn Sunday afternoon.

I'm as blue
I'm as blue as the ocean is true
It's just reflections of the sky
I'm as cold
I'm as cold as the stories you told
But never sick enough to die


Note to self: don't change for anyone
Note to self: don't die
Note to self: don't change for anyone
Don't change... just lie

I'm as sick
I'm as crass as the things in your past,
You wished that you could let them go
Caged birds
Caged animals starving for class
In your house when you're alone


Note to self: don't change for anyone
Note to self: don't die
Note to self: don't change for anyone
Don't change... just lie

Who do you call when you're alone
Nobody, baby
Who do you want to be,
Figure out and just let me know

RYAN ADAMS

The Seven Ages of Gordie - #1

My Age:

What Happened:







How I Coped:

0

I was born, prematurely, into a place where a lot of people were trying to hurt my mother. Then my mother was sent away, and I was put into a box and looked after by people who communicated with me by pinching my feet.

Decided I had got off the wrong station,
and was probably from another planet.
Adopted policy of stubborn refusal.
Said 'NO' to everything.

Every One Of These Sentences Is The Expression of an Illness

This man is my hero, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I'm thinking of him today because he once found a copy of one his own books (the Tractatus) belonging to a friend (Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle), and he wrote on the flyleaf:

"Every one of these sentences is the expression of an illness."

This week, I've been writing. And last week too. My whole bloody life has been writing. And I have felt so inarticulate. I've been feeling constipated; not literally but verbally and intellectually.

I come to my blog to try and express something. I go to other people's blogs to read them and leave comments. Not much happens. A joke, a cartoon, a fragment of a song.

Somewhere inside me, I have a PhD. And once I have written it, I have a life beyond it. (Go me!) Today, every one of my sentences feels like the expression of an illness.

I first discovered I could write when I was six years old. Until then, I'd read books, devoured them avidly.
Is there anything left?
Maybe steak and eggs?
Waking up to washing up
Making up your bed
Lazy days
My razor blade
Could use a better edge.

Books were wonderful things.

As soon as I had a school teacher who encouraged me to write, I started telling stories, and didn't want to stop.

But that was then.

I've been talking to my Friendly Neighbourhood Wise Woman about the hell of writing for almost a year.

A couple of weeks ago, she suggested that maybe "constipation" wasn't the right medical metaphor for what I'm doing.

She thinks I am giving birth to myself.
Will we still be writing
In approaching years?
Stifling yawns on Sundays
As the weekends disappear?


Ummmm...

Right...

Okay.
I think I can work on that...


We could stretch our legs
If we`d half a mind
But don`t disturb us
If you hear us trying
To instigate the structure
Of another line or two
Cause writing`s lighting up
And I like life enough
To see it through

ELTON JOHN
& BERNIE TAUPIN