Private August journallings #1

So I don’t remember what I’ve written or where we’re at with that but I suppose it doesn’t matter now that I’m meant to be withdrawing from posting on the internet. Been getting those ‘quit facebook and email’ urges again too – but probably only because I’ve been investing so heavily in it. Funny that the more I use it the more I want it to go away. It’s the Californiagirl, really, and one or two other people too. I loves ‘em too much to have such intermittent contact! That’s my excuse. (Really, fear of what they’re up to in between the messages. And my attachment to them. And the distractions it causes me.) Anyways, what I was thinking was a little scattergun approach to get the ball rolling since thoughts and experiences are rapidly overtaking everything recorded…

Thought #1

That I saw lovely Emma the other day and I said to her, “Emma, has something happened?” (with a knowing little grin on my face). “Did someone tell you?” she said. “No.” She grins too. “I’m pregnant,” she says, “four months.” And then she says how like three and a half months ago I’d told her that I’d had a dream in which she was pregnant, well before she even knew. Actually, truth was it wasn’t a dream but a feeling, just that it seemed easier to express it as such to her. Me no psychic. Me not brave enough for that.

But that’s not the point of this story. The point is that this was the day after I’d written that seeing pregnant ladies made me feel repulsed (should that be repulsive?) and that, actually, what I felt with her was joy and gladness and a big protective instinct when we crossed roads, for instance. It was great. I loved it.

So how then to explain those feelings of revulsion?

Thought #2

I went for another counselling session on Thursday – my second – and it was enjoyable. I kind of hogged the whole thing – still in the stage of trusting myself more than my freebie NHS sparsely-decorated room counsellor – and she wonderfully pointed that out near the end. “There’s an interesting dynamic going on here,” she said, “as though you’re wanting to control the session.” “I am,” I said, totally accepting it. I guess I like talking. And don’t trust her to say the smart thing (she’s said the non-smart thing on a few occasions). And want to make best use of the time. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about either. (Anyways, next week I’m resolved to let her lead the way; think I’ve got enough off my chest.)

The thing I was thinking about was this moment of realisation when I was blabbing about various relationship issues and this whole thing I have with commitment and with particular regard to Laura. I was describing how a big part of the reason that I’ve never given it a go is because I didn’t want to until I was 100% sure that I wasn’t going to leave or abandon her and supposed future hypothetical child. I decided that many years ago – back when I lived in Paris– after really feeling what being abandoned by not one but two fathers had done to me. I resolved not to put that on any child of mine, which I guess is why I’ve been so careful not to impregnate anyone – lol! I typed everyone there first – and why I’ve made it to the ripe old age of thirty-seven still childless. It was like trying to break the family karma or something. Not wanting to damage another soul in the ways that I had been damaged.

But let’s take it back a stage: the day before I’d asked Eve to do me a tarot card reading and a big part of what she’d said was to do with this issue (whether the cards or whether from her very intimate knowledge of my deepest inner workings probably not important). She talked about the effect of my biodad on me, and of how this “leaving” is probably part of my make-up too. Said that she always knew I would leave her (we’ll leave that one as it is) and that maybe it would be better if I told people I got with that, probably at some point I’d want to leave them too. Novel approach! But sort of liberating to contemplate. It’s as though I’d never really contemplated the honesty of that, trying instead to either “do the right thing” or do nothing at all. Especially with Laura. She says I’ll probably leave her one day and I say, no, that’s why I don’t want to get with you, because I want to know that I’ll be in a position to stay before I commit. And yet…perhaps that’s over idealistic of me: perhaps I’ll never be in that position. Maybe the most honest thing to say would be, yes, you’re probably right, I probably will want to leave you – may in fact leave you holding the baby, as you fear will happen and level at me. It’s the shrug of the shoulders. It’s the acknowledgement of what I truly am, not what I long and hope to be. It’s the then putting it back in their court and seeing what they’re prepared to do with that, whether they’re willing to take the risk or want to look elsewhere. I had this moment with Laura the other day that was like…

She compared me to the cat that got the cream. Loathes that about me. Says I always land on my feet and get what I want and doesn’t want to be part of that. Acknowledges that there’s envy in that. I said –

We got into one of those moments where faces start to disappear and connection is felt. Happens so much with her.

I said, “but people like cats. They come and go, do their own thing. Their owners don’t mind that – maybe they’d like them to be more like dogs – but they get good things from them too. Lower blood pressure. Something beautiful to hold and stroke. They feed them. Cats give them nothing in return. But we still want them.”

Maybe I am the cat that got the cream. Maybe I am a cat person.

We always had cats and I love them, much prefer them to dogs. But Laura’s never had a cat.

Everything disappears in that moment and she laughs.

“It’s all true,” she says (or something to that effect).

This, of course, was before she got cross ‘cos of asking me when I last slept with someone. Silly question. I know better than to ask things like that these days: never gonna bring you happiness. We all know what curiosity killed…

But back to the story, of being with the counsellor, and gabbing on joyously about all my inner thoughts and epiphanies. And what I hit upon was this whole notion of my actual truth as opposed to my idealised truth and that maybe it’s just better to go with that.

“Wow,” I said, harking back to thirteen years ago Paris realisations, “it’s like when I saw what had happened to me – father figure leaving – and the effect it had had on me as a child I became so determined to do the right thing – to be the father who stays with it for the duration (ie, at least 18-20 years) that I created this enormous pressure on myself. It was from one extreme” – here I made a raised hand gesture to my left – “to another” (symmetrical hand gesture to my far right). “But what I’m ignoring there is my reality. Maybe I’m just not capable. Maybe the best I can do is something in the middle” – that hands goes up again, you’ve guessed it, somewhere in the middle – “and maybe I will leave, like six years down the line. Maybe I just don’t have it in me.”

Then I go on about family karma and the ideas I have that our children take what we give them and improve on it little by little – or, in some cases, lot by lot.

“Maybe,” I said, “that’s the best I can do – and maybe it’s my child, or my grandchild, or someone down the line who will finally crack it and be the father who actually sees it through.”

(That hand up again at the far right position.)

“Maybe I’m denying the whole process by saying I won’t even try, for fear of not making it to the end, to being perfect. Maybe I’m stunting the lineage. Maybe I just need to acknowledge, to myself and to whoever I’m with, that I just can’t do it.”

It’s kind of a joyous realisation, very freeing and liberating. I mean, not that I want to suck as a human being but…you can see that I’ve hit on something here.

Counsellor talks about how nobody knows whether they’re going to stick around or not. The majority of people get divorced. Single parent and step families are rife. That age old bus is forever waiting just around the corner anyways. Or cancer. Or tsunami.

There is no security and guarantee in this life.

But ah, I says, those things happen but as a percentage they’re pretty unlikely. What we’re talking about here is a known and highly likely occurrence. A genetic trait, almost. Something foreseen and understood. Don’t I owe it to the other person to let them know?

She also thinks a big part of what I’m doing here is transference and projection. Avoidance of pain. I get it instantly.

“You mean transference and projection onto the image of this unborn hypothetical child? That this whole thing about me wanting to avoid causing pain to my future wife and offspring is actually about the pain I experienced myself through this circumstance? Of course! You’re right! ‘Cos all the pain I’m imagining causing them by my leaving is based on my own past experience, my own childhood. Who knows? Maybe it won’t be so bad for them as it was for me. Maybe it’ll be better and they’ll be better off without me. Maybe my ideas about my own pain were less to do with not having a father around and more to do with…more to do with being in a single parent situation with an unloving woman – a very young woman overwhelmed and incapable of fully loving children because of her own poor situation. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case in the future. Love is what matters most. Attention and affection and caring are what a child craves. I’ve been denying the possibility of a child because I didn’t want to cause them pain. But it’s my own pain that I’m putting on them. And the evolution of the family, and the family karma, stops.”

Hm. A lot to think about. And in there I also relate the story of that dream I had where I ‘saw’ my mother’s first ever look at me just after I was born and how it was a look of fear and not knowing what to do, and how I wonder if that might have coloured just about everything I’ve ever experienced, but how I’ve never been able to get down to the bottom of it.

Then I muse about past lives, and if maybe it goes even further back than I realise. I’ve been reading another Brian Weiss book the last week or so. He really is an amazing guy. Reading him back in ’96 influenced me massively. Would love to have the kind of experience his clients have…

End of thought

Thought #3

I played squash yesterday. Beat two guys who two months ago were much better than me. Beat them both two weeks back as well. Who’s the king? Me, that’s who. ;-)

Thought #4

I’ve been refereeing a bit the last week. Still got my regular Monday night 6-a-side gig – £35 for two hours; best hourly rate I’ve ever had – but what I mean is 11-a-side. Proper football. The new season is coming and it’s with a sense of dread that I’ve come to greet the emails that are coming in with requests for games and appointments and schedules already stretching into September. It makes me feel weary to contemplate it. The future. The future here, in Yorkshire. Dates and plans and being tied to things and having to commit, to think ahead, to say yes or no and to know where I’ll be, how I’ll feel so far down the line. I’ve done three 11-a-side games so far – two last Sunday and one on Thursday evening – and every time I’ve felt like I really couldn’t be arsed to go there in the hours leading up to it, want to quit, wonder why the fuck I’m doing it.

And then I get there, and stand in the middle of the pitch, toss the coin and tell the captains to have a good game, make my jokes and laugh at the players, run around and blow my whistle and get most things right and a few things wrong (but who cares?) and once it’s underway I love it. I reffed in Bradford the other evening in the pouring rain and it was great.

Poem #1

Ah, this is the life! Speeding crazy - pedals pumping - heart a-whoopin' down steep-ass grey green Yorkshire hills - the rain unceasing - the singing too - to ref whinging lovely Bradford boys: slick thin tyres slice the spray and death greets every corner. The brakes don't work! We'll never stop! But stop we do. And die we don't. And...here we are. Yes. Here.

Thought #5

I’ve been facebook chatting with a Canadian girl I met three years ago and that’s been lovely. Also lots of texting with one of the California girls, before they left for France. Eve too, on facebook and email, and the tarot card thing was great. Plus a lovely chat with one of Harry’s friends – I guess at some point I’ll have to call him my friend too – in person last night. And a workmate, an older guy, getting a lift in a couple of mornings this week. He tells me about his brother-in-law – several years older than me – who gets bored in his jobs, though highly proficient and wanted and smart and goes off surfing several months a year, just can’t quite settle. Pretty much all of these talks revolve around my current life situation and dilemmas as I try and figure it all out. I mean, I know one step at a time works but it just seems there’s a pressure to know the future at the moment too. The world doesn’t seem to work in accordance with that idea. Plane tickets, for example: the way they ask you when you want to return and I’m just like, wha? but I haven’t even got there yet – how am I supposed to know when I want to come back? Why can’t they be like train tickets, bus tickets? Just turn up and go, and come back when you feel like it.

But, then, it’s never really been a problem in the past. The angels say the divine is in the world too and I guess I need to trust that it’ll all work out. Didn’t I get spirited across oceans before? Haven’t the right plane tickets always been there, for awesome money, whenever I’ve wanted them.

That li’l old cream-gettin’ cat…

Thought #5 continued

Greece. I’m all set on that. California girl tells me to go to Delphi and Arkadia (to see Pan) and I’m like, yeah, those are places I’ve already got my heart fixed at. Then the other day I’m checking out flights and there’s one for six-thirty the following morning to Corfu departing from the airport a mile and a half down the road. I wail. If only my boss was getting back today I’d be on that plane! But all things are perfect. All things in their own time…

This psychotherapy course I’m interested in. In the town everyone’s been talking about and where my dad wants to move to. An interview for the 15th of this month, no earlier date available. I guess I should go. The thought of the four-year commitment terrifies me. But…

Ha! Just as I type that I remember – for the first time in years – the time I signed up to do an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield and turned up for the first day of classes and just thought, man, this is bullshit – to pay to study shoddy fuckin’ poetry! – and promptly left the building and got on a train and went home. Those fuckers didn’t see penny one from me!

And I wonder what that means…

Psychotherapy

So why am I pursuing that? (Just pausing here to mention briefly that just this morning I out-of-the-blue facebook messaged an old school friend to see where life had taken him and he said, “starting a four-year course in counselling next month in Doncaster”; ho hum.) Definitely a question I’ve been thinking about this week – probably in my freedom-seeking bid to wrestle some adventure and commitment-avoidance back into my life…

But why? Because…well, it was born out of that mid-life crisis, wasn’t it? Born out of the fear that I was wasting my life and didn’t have a career and was merely drifting sustained by movies and internet and short-term kicks and, “how the hell will I ever support this hypothetical wife and family and live like good middle-class people such as my intellectual status ought to demand?” I mean, not that I’m saying I’m goddamned brain of Britain– but I do got brains enough to have the lifestyle, if only I had the ethic/bent to go with it. And anyways…the question is, was it a decision made out of fear, a knee-jerk reaction to that temporary emotional upheaval – for sure, I was in pretty fuckin’ desperate straits, but now that all is well and groovy again… - or was it a decision I was led to by wisdom and a certain coming to of the senses, and the right finally thing?

Part of it was because I’ve long been interested in the field and am, as you’re well aware, fascinated by the machinations of the human mind and see how much growth there is to be had in investigating it. Part of it was because of reading books by M. Scott Peck and loving the tales of how people’s brains got fixed and imagining how awesome that must be the earn all that money sitting in a nice comfy chair just helping people in such a wonderful way. So American! So glamorous! Big leather chairs and desks and realisations and growth and learning and all in such an exotic field.

M. Scott Peck and his road less travelled.

M. Scott Peck the serial adulterer and shitty husband and nicotine addict…

Part of it was because I thought one of the reasons that I’d never done it was down to the cost and I figured that was a lame reason not to do something you want to do and, hoo ha, what is money anyways? It comes and goes and I’ve got a fairly big chunk of it at the moment. It was a thought much like the one that led me to study my MA at Leeds: that I’d always put that off ‘cos I didn’t want to pay the fees and – whaddya know? – I didn’t end up paying them anyways. I let go of my tightness and put my money on the line and they still ended up giving me a fully paid bursary.

The MA that brought me right back to where I started. The MA that was a total crock of shit and did nothing for my writing but at least brought me to the joys of unlimited squash and young student friends and refereeing…

The point I’m making here is that maybe it won’t turn out as I expect and just ‘cos I’ve got money resistance issues and it’s something I think about a lot doesn’t mean I should do it. The MA, as far as I can tell, was just one more thing to tick off the list. I’m not sure I really want to be like M. Scott Peck. And the reality is rather than big comfy luxury chairs in Harvard or Princeton and bestselling books and awesome cases like Peck and Weiss (and Jung/Freud) I’ll be eking a living like my friend Dave or the counsellor I’m currently seeing in a sweaty poorly-carpeted room in a dilapidated building in Leeds listening to nobheads like me – or worse.

But…

Does that mean I shouldn’t do it? What of what the I Ching said? (Chapter 1, no changing lines.) What of the pressure I’ve put on myself to sort my life out? (What of what Shawn’s angel said about seeking to conform to a false idea of reality in a world that is daunting to me? What of my despisal of this English obsession with owning homes and having pensions and living for money and financial security and forgetting that we’re SOULS, goddamnit?)

What of the coincidence of my old school friend? What of my dreams of escape?

Today I looked up the actual teaching dates for the coming year; and there’s a big gap between the beginning of October and the middle of December. Plenty of time for a trip. I really have been thinking a lot about Canadalately…

(Interruptery Thought)

I was over at Laura’s a few months back and she had this book called ‘The Wish’. I flicked through it and on one page I came across this thing called ‘The Soul Test’. It was basically a mad sounding New Age thing about stating something that you might want an answer to and that, depending on whether it was yes or no, you would either fall forwards or backwards. Crazy, huh! But certainly worth a try. Laura did one about the house she was living in and it turned out correct. I’ve done a few and the only yeses I’ve got were about going to Greeceand about going to Canada. I got a no for going to America this year, despite the yearnings and powerfully positive feelings I’ve had in recent weeks (and all the encouragement from others, who all like to see a man do mad things he wants to do, and maybe they do too, but can’t).

Anyways, it’s interesting and I’m dubious – seems to hark back to my pendulum days, which Derren Brown (of course) can swiftly and rationally explain away – but all I really wanted to say was something about Canada. Well you know I’ve always been drawn there. Nearly married that Canadian girl once. Had that Rob Breszny horoscope dated December 6th 2001. Felt so much at home out in BC and would’ve stayed if I could. Even in Guelph, working admin for the government, the only job I never wanted to leave – and I was there a whole twelve months! – and very happy in that town too (so I tell myself; maybe old journal entries would persuade me otherwise).

But yes: Canada.

Eve tells me the tarot suggests I might have to cross an ocean to find this elusive woman. And there’s a Corinth in the US too, just south of the border. And Grace isn’t a million miles away.

More dreams…

Present moment thought

I’m in full blabbing mode now. Eric says I need a good editor but I say it’s just for me, they can edit it when I’m dead; in this moment now I suddenly feel more peaceful than I have in days. The trees outside this second floor window cavort in the breeze and the swooshul of the leaves is my music. Blue sky. Clear mind. The wonder-full power of expression.

11.13: A break to go and get some tea

11:57: Back from that

The kettle. Do some more washing up (been there since last weekend). Feel hungry. Make a trip for eggs but unsuccessful as no one home. That’s okay though: see a wonderful butterfly sitting on the wall and watch it for a while, which reminds me of what I wrote first thing this morning –

LMFAO! Woke up in the middle of a dream with Bret and Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords and - wow - those boys were being HILARIOUS, saying much funnier things than I could ever think of. Jemaine was pulling his socks up by putting his hands INSIDE his trouser legs. I came to consciousness giggling hysterically and just lay there giggling for like ten minutes. And then, when I was pegging the washing out, I looked down to find the tiniest little wee baby snail slithering up my leg. All this before half past seven! You just know it's going to be a wonderful day. :-)

– and then on the walk back notice how great I feel. Like I say, the power of expression, of writing. And muse about writing, what to do with that. And think about Laura. And then come back and make porridge. And sit down and eat porridge. While listening to the cricket. Trott gets out. Nothing much else happens. But Geoffrey Boycott waxes crazy and Yorkshire. Man, to be that opinionated and not giving a hoot! But he’s probably a tit when you get right down to it.

Then walk back upstairs and sit down again and continue, tea newly freshened…

Musing on writing

The writing. Hm. What to do with that. That envious feeling I get whenever I read of someone publishing a book. The compliments I get about my words (not these; the ones already published). The dream, the dream…

And this blog.

I Ching encouraged in December to delete it. I did and then brought it back. Ex-girlfriends read it and it got me into trouble. I don’t know why I have to make it public; isn’t it the act of expression rather than sharing that brings about the magic? Plenty of magic in Mexico ’99 and Mexico’09 when I published it not.

And here it is, unshared, on computer only, bringing about wonderful effect.

I dunno, it always felt to me that sticking it online was like the seal to the whole experience, the final phase in the letting go and moving on. But maybe that’s all imaginary. Maybe an experiment in not publishing it and seeing what that brings me. Certainly the walk to and from the egg house was full of liberation and clarity…

And books? Ay: there’s the rub. One day, perhaps, someone’ll discover me. Or not…

12.05

I’m tired now. I feel like taking a rest. There was plenty more I wanted to say but I guess it’ll have to wait. Adieu! I mean: achoo!