READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Man is a sponge.

Profound no?

What I mean by that is that we're are constantly awash with things that influence every aspect of us, our moods, views, health etc.

Recently I've felt like a puppet with a few dozen different bastards all pulling my strings at once, as if just about everyone has some kind of control over how I feel, what I think and how knackered I am, except me.

Food and sleep, of the lack thereof, the breakdown of emotional relationships, both mine and that of my parents, all these things have dragged me down and down.

Now it simply is the case that this is how our lives work, we are subject to influence whether we like it or not. You can't very well stop interacting with everything completely, (well obviously you can but the Samaritans have talked me out of that three times over the last couple of weeks.)

Instead you can only chose to limit the negative influences as much as possible, (by ignoring your ex with whom you have to live for another six weeks!) and maximise your exposure to the positive.

Over the last few weeks I have found that by far the greatest positive influence, even more so than, dare I say, my beloved cannabis, has been that of friends.

Other people can grind you down into nothing but equally they lift you right back up again too.

I have a rock of a buddy here in Leeds with me, a stand up guy who I take for granted and rarely mention on here but he's the man none the less

There are also, of course, all my most excellent friends from the blogging community. I love you all and thank you for all the support and kind words you've thrown my way recently via comments and emails. You're all brilliant

I've also been lucky enough to find myself back in contact with a couple of other friends from my past recently, the rekindling of who's relationships could not have come at a better time for me.

There's my good buddy in Cali who emailed me out of the blue to great effect, easy now my mentalist friend, and then there's an old work colleague of mine who just happens to be the coolest person I've ever met.

This second is in New Zealand at the mo but thanks to the miracle of modern technology we've been sharing scars and work, (she's an artist as you'll see below.) There's nothing quite like someone who really gets you y'know?

Now my ex wasn't big on me having close female friends, (though there were no guns involved so I can't absolve myself of responsibility,) and subsequently I never spent as much time or had as much contact with this mate of mine as I would have liked.

As it turns out of course my ex had several all too close personal male friends of her own, hence the split leaving me free to do as I please.

ANYWAY...

In the interests of celebrating my friends who mean so much to me and have been such a great help to me recently I wanted to share with you all some of my mate's work which I just can't get enough of, so here's a shot of a work in progress plus a few close ups on some of the detail:

Amazing aint it? Comment and opinions please and any prospective buyers, agents, media types etc please contact me through my email, (find on my profile,) to be put in touch with the artist herself.

Secondly I need a favour from all you lovely blog reading people.

My buddy has also been sending my photos of her time in NZ including this one:

Now she tells me this is a beautiful and elegant looking statue with a great Moari legend behind it. While I dig the story and the meaning I have to say that I find this photo to be one the creepiest things I have every seen in my life!!!

I'm not entirely sure why, but it just scares the shit out of me. My good buddy insists it's beautiful though and so this is where you guys come in.

Comments please, CAST YOUR VOTE!

is this statue:

a) HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL (running total: 2)

or

b) JUST FUCKING HAUNTING! (running total: 1)

Answers below please and if there's enough of a response I'll tally up the votes and announce the results in a few days.

(C'mon, look how spindly it is! It's as creepy as fuck and you all know it! I know that's cheating but it's my blog so tough )

READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

So I'm still off work, Got myself in on Monday but my manager sent me straight home again so here I am, just bumming about waiting for test results and wheezing.

Had a pretty rough weekend emotionally, sights and stories regarding my ex (who I'm still stuck here with for the next few weeks and fuck me is it dragging,) really sticking it in and breaking it off but feeling stronger this week thanks to a bit more sleep and lots of support from friends near and very, very far.

As I'm not allowed to do anything physical I've been putting in some hours on the XBOX360, a bit of reading, bit of writing and watching DVDs.

Got myself the first series of The Thick Of It, which is totally worth the pain in my side when it cracks me up. It is damn funny

Also been down the cinema a fair bit. For some reason, ventilation, shape of the seats, I find it really uncomfortable in their at the moment, sets my lung off a treat. However, I love being in there so much that the psychological good it does me makes it worth it.

I'm a big fan of film but not, generally, big ass cinemas. The Hyde Park Picture House however, self described art house cinema, is old school, cosy, and mint. Pretty much ever since I moved to Leeds I've been a regular visitor and I can't recommend it highly enough, check it out:

http://www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk

Anyway I've seen four films over the last few days and thought I'd note down a few thoughts about them, so here we go.

Sunshine

Wasn't sure about this one. Looked a bit too big budget and cheesy to have any depth but just wanted to get out of the house.

As it turns out I was actually very impressed, (despite some pretty dubious astrophysics here and there, but not so much that I couldn't suspend disbelief.)

So here's the setup: our sun is dying, gradually fading away and with it any chance of survival for mankind.

Seven years previous a crew was sent in the Arthur C Clarke style ship, Icarus, to deliver a vast nuclear device, (the size of Manhattan,) to the heart of the sun to reignite and save us all.

It didn't work and they never came back.

Now everything mankind and the earth has left has been put into one last ship and one last bomb, the imaginatively titled Icarus 2.

It's all or nothing, they succeed or we all die.

I found this to be a classic sci fi film in the true sense of the word. Not derivative or unoriginal, but just sci fi as it was originally, a microscope cast on mankind against the awe inspiring backdrop of the inconceivable hugeness of space.

As the mission proceeds not all goes to plan, especially once they get so close to the sun that they can no longer communicate with earth and promptly pick up a distress beacon from the first ship!

Tough decisions and tragic sacrifices abound as the old lesson that man is at once his own worst enemy and yet his own greatest saviour is retold with subtlety and confidence.

I found myself really giving a shit about these people and their mission. When things went wrong I was cringing, desperate for hope, any hope at all. When things were pulled round I was genuinely relieved. Then back to despair, and back to hope etc.

In short it was a rollercoaster that managed to swing me back and forth without becoming irritatingly regular. I'm tempted to put this down to the fact that it's a film adaptation of a book but that's not necessarily the defining factor.

Despite the incredibly limited cast and scenario, (you can't exactly have long lost relatives or mysterious government agents popping up out in space can you,) the film manages to surprise and produce unexpected plot twists.

Things seemed to fray a little towards the very end and I felt a few minutes could have been shaved off to make it a bit punchier. Also there's a character or two that I felt were just thrown away in the end as if they ran out of time to bring their stories to a conclusion.

Overall though I found it a rewarding experience and would watch Sunshine again.

This Is England

I fucking love this film! Made me laugh, made me cry, it is a beautiful piece of cinema that everyone should see. Just brilliant.

I loved it so much in fact that I've been back to cinema tonight to watch it again!

It's a shame that the way the film's been marketed gives completely the wrong impression as I suspect this will mean it ends up being seen by far fewer people than it deserves.

Looking at the posters and the trailers you'd think it was another skinheads-battering-asians Romper Stomper style piece.

We seem to have a bit of a middle class obsession with skinheads. They're the monsters we just love to hate aren't they?

Full of all the visceral violence part of us secretly longs for we love to see them go then, after the excitement, tut and shake our heads, condemning them utterly and feeling so fucking good about ourselves up in our ivory towers.

Well if that's the kind of trip you're looking for you will find yourself entirely unsatisfied by This Is England. In fact if that's the trip you're looking for you will find yourself distinctly disturbed by this film as you will, I guarantee, leave the cinema feeling both affection and sympathy for the booted, tattooed 'thugs' you'll see on screen.

I cannot think of a film that lives up to it's title more accurately.

This Is England attempts to paint a picture of what it was for certain sections of society to live under Thatcher in the 80's and succeeds gloriously.

Against the backdrop of conflict in the Falklands, much of the commentary on which sounds sickeningly familiar to our current involvement in Iraq, we follow Sean, a twelve year in a small coastal Yorkshire town.

Still grieving for his father, who we gather died fighting Mrs Thatcher's war in the South Atlantic, Sean is miserable and alone.

At first the story seems both familiar and sinister. Outcast from society and simply craving those things that all human beings do, to be loved, respected and to belong, Sean finds everything he wants in a local skinhead gang.

Here however This Is England breaks with convention and, instead, paints a picture much more controversial but realistic in two key ways:

joining the gang is a hugely positive thing for Sean,

the gang, including a young Jamican lad called 'Milky,' may be suited, booted and tattooed, but has no interest in racism or far right politics,

It's not until an old acquaintance of the gang is released from prison that the more traditional skinhead cliche is fulfilled.

Even at this point however, where the viewer think: finally, right, here we go, it never really happens.

As things darken there is no great build up to a spectacular or brutal climax, just the far too common petty agonies of ordinary people and terrible mistakes that are made far more shocking by the fact that they're so unimpressive they could be real.

If you want middle class race hate snuff go elsewhere.

If you want to really feel the futility of a society that ignored huge swathes of it's own people; if you want to really understand the dull, grey truth behind violence and hatred and if you want to really know what England is, this is it.

Fast Food Nation

So how do you make a fictional film from a non fiction book? How do you describe all aspects of a monolithic industry from top to bottom in graphic detail while maintaining a personal, one on one connection?

Well, you get the almighty Richard Linklater to do it!

Ever since was mesmerised by 'Slacker' as a kid, (a film in which nothing happens, the camera simply floats around a town listening to people's conversations,) I have been fascinated by Linklater's work.

In fact, earlier today I purchased A Scanner Darkly on DVD, yet another of his triumphs.

What blows my mind about the guy is his approach to film making. Almost every project he approaches breaks the mould in one way or another, be it a real time film set in a single room (Tape,) or using a cross between live action and animation to create a literal dream world, (Waking Life) so Fast Food Nation is not such a surprise after all.

As I left the cinema, having been moved and shocked even though I long since stopped going to burger chains, I was trying to put my finger on what it is the Linklater does.

I realised that his talent is in creating another reality as opposed to a film. Despite the star studded cast, (you're bound to recognise at least half the people in their, from Bruce Willis to Avril Lavigne!) you find yourself thinking you're watching real people have real conversations.

It's another story about real lives and real people presented with a marked lack of cinematic convention or comfort.

A rancher who won't sell his beef to the meat packers, illegal Mexican immigrants working at the meat packing plant, the suburban teenagers working behind the counters and the marketing executive on a mission to find out why "there's shit in the meat".

By dipping in and out of the lives these and various other people, and delighting in very subtly crossing their paths, Linklater builds up a picture of the industry as a whole. While maintaining an unavoidably human perspective on the whole thing.

Engrossing, moving and occasionally genuinely shocking, Fast Food Nation is worth a look even if you don't feel you need / want to be saved from the Big Mac.

Amazing Grace

As with Sunshine I really wasn't expecting much here it was just something to do away from this here pressure cooker. Not sure this was a great film as much as a great story.

I think you would have to work pretty hard not to make this a moving and ultimately uplifting film. To be fair it wasn't as cheesy as i was expecting and features some truly great performances from several of the cast.

I was a bit miffed that the story of slavery was presented as a classic Hollywood 'one man's struggle against the evil British Empire' style yarn when one of the main things about the British abolition of slavery was that it was the first real popular political movement, ie. the first time a change major political change came about because so many people wanted it! rather missed that point out I felt.

Was also a little pissed that William Wilberforce, the hero in question, showed absolutely no traces of his Yorkshire heritage. The fact that he hailed from my very own beloved White Rose county was actually mentioned only once, and then only briefly in passing.

It was what it was I guess, a Hollywood blockbuster. My old hack of father often reminds me of the journalistic maxim: "never let the truth get in the way of a good story".

I was interested and uplifted, moved and amused, but couldn't shake the feeling of sticky violation.

What I tend to find with a lot of mainstream cinema is that it plays to the back of the brain rather than the front.

Instead of challenging and engaging your mind, requiring some effort from you, as the films described above do to varying degrees, Hollywood tends to just ram it's thick, clumsy fingers straight into your chest to pluck your heartstrings or into your groin to tickle your fancy.

I welled up in places but resented it because I knew I was supposed to, it felt like someone tapping your knee with one of those little hammers, as if my body were watching the film and I just happened to be there.

Of the four I'd probably have to place this last but that's not to say it's actually a bad film by any measure. It's worth watching, just bear in mind that it's popular entertainment rather than a history lesson.

So there you have it, four in a row.

Coming up at the Hyde Park Picture House are various great films but I'm intending to see the following over the next few weeks:

Zodiac,
true story of the failed hunt for a San Francisco serial killer,

After The Wedding,
Danish drama I wasn't sure I fancied until I saw the trailer, main reason I was tempted was because Mads Mikkelsen is the lead. Best known for his recent role as the bad guy in the latest Bond film Casino Royale, (which I loved btw,) I saw him in a Danish black comedy called Adam's Apples (absolutely brilliant!) at the Leeds Internationl film festival before last and he just blew me away!

El Topo
apparently insane 'western' with huge cult following,

Magicians
from the writers of Peep Show think Mitchell and Webb as rival magicians, I'm sold! oh and it's got Jessica Stevenson from Spaced in it too!

Can't wait!

READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

I am pretty fucking miserable today. Not in the grandiose, suicidal manner of earlier in the week, seemed to have got a bit more of a handle on that now, (thanks in no small part to many people's kind words of support for which I thank you all ) no I'm just fed up.

My chest is really hurting again today for no good reason and being stuck in the house all the time is really starting to get on my tits. Something v cool did happen yesterday though that picked me up a bit. Received an email out of the blue from a mate I'd thought I'd lost contact with about ten years ago!

Turns out my mentalist Californian cyber chick as was is now a Californian wife and mother of two, still pretty mental though by the sounds of it! (hello there if you're reading this ) So that was pretty cool, well timed too.

Anyway I was tempted to write a post about Bliar finally fucking off but after watching about ten minutes I decided that I was already sick of people banging on about him and that I didn't want to add to the melee that is no doubt making his head swell even further as you read this.

Let's just say this, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out Tony you utter shit and hopefully we'll see you in the Hague one day soon to answer for all that blood on your hands.

Instead I thought I'd distract myself by writing up a post I've had planned for ages, nice and abstract about the effects of technological 'progress'. And so here are you three:

homo urbanus

According to a recent article in the Economist(1) at some point over the coming months humanity will finally reach the tipping point wherein for the first time in our history more than 50% of the human race will live in an urban rather than rural environment.

For the first time the majority of us will live in man made environments rather than our 'original' natural habitats. Now many would take this as a positive sign of progress, of the advancement of the race and I have to concede, city dweller that I am, that it is not necessarily a bad thing in of itself.

What concerns me however is the inherent assumption that underlies this opinion, namely that technology is always better than nature. It's worth bearing in mind that when the urban environments we're talking about here are not, for the most part, the great shining cities we like to get all misty eyed about when thinking of human progress.

What's tipping the balance are the vast and increasing numbers of people living in abject poverty amidst gargantuan megaslums as it is no longer safe, viable for them to live in more rural areas. This move has less to do with dragging us all into a golden age of silver towers and more to do with industry and warfare displacing whole populations of people.

Be it by choice or compulsion, more and more of us are insulating ourselves from nature, from the 'real' world and wrapping ourselves in a pretence of our own design. I've written in the past that a fundamental floor in democracy, (and most other social systems,) is that people are detached from the consequences of their actions.

It's a limitation of humanity that we cannot feel the same about something by hearing about it as we would by experiencing it. Now apply that to our relationship with this planet which, as much as people may like to scoff at hippies such as myself, is in fact the only tiny fragile bubble within which we can exist in the entire known universe

Is it any wonder that we fail utterly to recognise the damage we are doing or, more importantly, the potential we are wasting when we have so removed ourselves from nature? It's worth remembering that this shift in social circumstance has happened in the relative blink of an eye.

For the vast, vast majority of our existence mankind has had no choice but to be unavoidably connected to the natural world around us. A deep and detailed understanding of where our food comes from and how everything fits together and impacts on one another has been, until recently, an essential survival trait.

Hiding behind our technology however, ignorance has now become possible. And this is the point, we like to think of ourselves, and of our 'progress', as being a gradual accumulation of knowledge.

Day after day, millennia after millennia, we're gradually adding to a vast stockpile of information and building from it. Is this actually the case however? How long would you survive without modern amenities? What would you do if you fell and broke your arm without doctors and hospitals?

The argument would be, I suppose, that this knowledge is now superfluous, free to be replaced by more important things, like how to text and order things from the internet. Again though there is a disturbing assumption behind this seemingly acceptable answer.

The assumption is of course that our technology and societies are indestructible, that they will be here forever. This is an understandable assumption of course, given that it has been effectively true of our original environment for most of our existence.

Anyway, next time you're cursing the weather as an alien enemy invading the smooth running order of our society maybe it'd be worth questioning which was here first and which, let's face it, will be here longest.

drugs glorious drugs

Now I've written at length before about how great I think drugs are. While I do have deep and detailed arguments(2) to back this up I like to express this opinion in a more flippant and controversial manner simply to drive back against the anti-drugs rhetoric and propaganda that swamp modern society.

Basically as I've researched and written in the past, drug use is an inherent part of human culture and was, I believe, the catalyst through which we evolved from animals to people.

Drug use was one of the most fundamental ways in which we connected with our environment and with ourselves. Before the written word, (see my last post for details of the 'mirror of the self' properties of writing,) the only way to gain anything approaching an external perspective on ourselves was to change our perceptions.

Besides just enjoying getting fucked up, drug use played an essential role in shaping and our maintaining our society. Hand in hand with our withdrawal from nature has been our rejection of drug use.

Vast sums of knowledge and experience regarding drug use have been brutally exterminated moving us back to a level of understanding probably lesser than that of prehistoric man.

Instead we have replaced this direct connection with ourselves and the planet with systems of social control based on the imaginations of individuals.

which brings us nicely onto....

sun worship

Now few things are seen as more primitive than worshipping the sun as a god. The idea conjures up images of people with flint spears in animal skin loin cloths and rough stone monoliths. A dim and distant age, utterly alien and removed from our civilisation so noble and advanced.

Looking at it objectively however it's not quite as ignorant as it first appears.

Personally my own 'religious' or 'spiritual' faith lies in humanity. I don't believe in gods or souls or spirits, I believe in people, here and now, and what they choose to do to one another.

If you are going to project your faith onto some external body however i think you could do a lot worse than the sun.

I've written many times that I believe that religion is responsible for more pain, death and suffering than pretty much anything else there has ever been, and that the damage it does infinitely outweighs any positive benefits it may well have.

The main problem with religion, it seems it me, is that there is simply no room for manoeuvre. It's the ultimate get out of jail free card for any argument. The response of 'because god says so' cannot be rationally argued with.

Of course everyone's god is different and says different things, yet because they are god they are infallible and so cannot be wrong. So much conflict in the world today comes down to this fundamental disagreement about who god is.

Now when you look at how people's ideas of god have formed you generally find that they have been shaped by cultural and geographical history.

Now it seems to me that one benefit of worshipping the sun is that it is one of very few things that is universal to all humans. It's real, it's right there for everyone to see and share.

Also, again taking a footing in solid reality, the sun actually is the source of all life. Even those rare sea creatures don't directly take life from the sun take it instead from super deep ocean floor geysers fuelled by the molten core of our planet.

That molten core was formed as a by product of the formation of the sun. It really is top of the tree for absolutely everything that is, ever has been or ever will be.

Finally, one thing that we get very excited about with our technological advancement is the shrinking of the world. The fact the people anywhere on the planet can read my words here is cited as a sign that we are conquering our world, gaining a global view and thereby stepping up.

The thing is that within that we dismiss the sun as a ball of burning gas and so don't really recognise it.

In fact, by recognising and valuing our relationship with our star our ancestors, knowingly or not, were taking their place not in the global scheme of things, but in the solar system!

Would it really be any crazier to worship the most physically significant and universally recognised physical object in the know universe than to worship some unseen magical being who appears differently in the imaginations of each believer?

It would certainly make for a more peaceful world I'm sure.

Anyway, in conclusion, and for the benefit of those of you still locked into the whole polarisation game, I am not for a moment suggesting that we should cast off all our comforts and achievements and go back to living in caves.

I'm simply suggesting that there are many things we could make great use of and many problems that could be solved by repairing and maintaining the relationship with our planet that we've so recently turned our backs on.

Technology is great, I write online and have science masters so I'm certainly no technophobe, I just feel that it should be a tool rather than an end in itself and that we have a machine all around us that has been through so many hundreds of millions of years of 'beta testing' and refinement that we would be abject fools to ignore it's potential.

footnote

(1) 'The World Goes to Town' The Economist 03/05/07

(2) Find my article 'Prohibitive Costs' in the tags list for a full breakdown of my position here.

READ MY WORK

Ideas Above Our Station
new collection of shorts, one of which was written by me,
http://www.route-online.com/routev7/page.asp?idno=292

Nine Stop Trip
even newer collection of shorts, all of which were written by me,
http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=65

Well it's been a while.

In my defence however, I have a bit on. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is without a doubt the most stressful time I have ever experienced in my life.

We'll get to the details later however, seamlessly integrated as they will be with the more philosophical content of this post.

A few things came together to inspire this one, all around the theme of us not simply being ignorant but actually somehow coming to believe the exact opposite of what's true.

Funnily enough the three for this post fit nicely into my own personal category system: mind, flesh & metal.

I find these three to be a useful system of looking at pretty much anything but people in particular.

The definitions are loose and open to interpretation but roughly speaking it goes like this:

mind: you, the unique bits of you that make you you, the you that's reading this right now,

flesh: your body, the bits of you that you share with everyone else, the eyes in your head that are reading this right now,

metal, us, the ideas and creations of us all, the things that hold us together as a society, the words you're reading right now and the technology you're using to read them,

If it helps clarify this concept a bit I tend to think of life on earth as breaking down into these categories quite nicely:

Plants are just flesh, purely responsive with no central information processing.

Animals are flesh and mind, being aware of themselves and the world around them.

Humans are all three with the metal, mainly in the form of sophisticated communication, distinguishing us from the rest.

Anyway, on with the post, ignorance and self deception:

mind

We had a training session at work some weeks back in which we were asked to discuss the idea of communication. What does it mean, how does it work etc.

Now clearly this particular subject is one of my favs and I could have banged on about it in the most abstract ways for days on end.

The workplace isn't exactly the right venue for my own brand of endless hippy ramblings however so I kept it to a minimum.

Now at one point we were asked to come up with some Golden Rules of communication and one of my suggestions was: 'know what you're talking about'.

This was pretty much dismissed as a given but I fought to explain that this really isn't as obvious as it sounds.

I love the written word. It is, in my opinion, by far the most significant invention of mankind, fire and the wheel can fuck right off, nothing is more powerful or significant.

Aside from the communicative uses of writing it also allows us to hold up a mirror to our minds.

It's amazing but you can really believe you understand something, you can think about it, talk about it, and be entirely confident that you have a solid grip on it. Then you try to write it down and suddenly you find there are gaps.

The thing is that when thinking and talking about things you can hide those gaps from yourself with phrases like, 'y'know' and assumptions.

There is nowhere to hide however when you come to put it down in black and white.

I have to admit that, while it's neither the only nor a foolproof way, academic education does help you realise ad address this.

I regularly encounter this problem at work when I need a piece of information from someone. They'll give me their explanation of a situation but omit the specific detail I need.

I ask for that specific bit and just get the same explanation over again because they don't recognise that there's a gap in their knowledge.

I also do this to myself when writing. I'll think about a piece and feel it's ready, I know where I'm going with it, but then find when I sit down to write it I can't actually find any words.

This is almost always because, despite my conviction to the contrary, I don't actually know what I want to write.

I find this a bit scary to be honest, it shakes my trust in myself a little.

The most difficult / dangerous thing about this kind of ignorance is people don't address it because they don't realise they need to.

My faith in the written word, ie the 'metal' however sees me through because, as already stated, it provides a mechanism by which to gain external perspective on ourselves.

If you think you understand something you can check to see if you really do by trying to write it down in full detail.

flesh

This one may be a bit more familiar, basically the idea of your emotions convincing you of something that is utterly false.

I've got a whole tangled raft of these at the moment, let's start with a summary of my current circumstances:

been looking for a single job to replace the two I work now, (had a successful interview the other day,)

been looking for somewhere to live, (luckily found somewhere the other day,)

spilt up with my girlfriend, (and found she'd been seeing someone else for a while behind my back,)

found out my parents are getting divorced, (and had them both lean on me for support,)

still periodically caring for my Grandma, (who doesn't know who I am anymore,)

had an emergency medical exam yesterday for a suspected collapse lung, (not collapsed, just enflamed, lots of meds and no Mary )

So now I'm laid up, unable to smoke with every single aspect of my life, family, work, relationship, health, turned upside down, every solid object turned to sand.

Hurts when I move, hurts when I breath, just forced to sit about popping pills secure in the knowledge that my ex (who I still have to live with for a few more weeks until my new house is ready by the way,) has 'gone away for a few days' (so said the text,) presumably with her new bloke, bonding, falling more in love and no doubt fucking like bunnies.

Like she also said in her text though, my lungs and I aren't her problem.

Bitter? Well yes, I am to be honest, just a bit.

One at a time I might have been able to handle these things but all together I'm in bits.

More relevance less whinging I hear you cry, fair enough.

So let's pass by the obvious ones, my assumption that my girlfriend loved me and wasn't fucking someone else, that my family would always be there, that whatever happened I could always escape to Mary's sweet embrace.

I 'knew' these things to be true and yet clearly they were all just lies.

The biggy came a few days ago when after another exhausting night of horrendous nightmares, (a familiar sign that my depression is in full swing,) I woke to find that the real world was far worse.

Now the previous night I'd done a little tour of my local shops. When I was in my teens it was easy, you could buy paracetemol by the hundred. Then they introduced this law that you can only by them 16 at a time.

Luckily for me not one of the retail outlets round here paid any attention to that and so after buying a few packets from each shop I had a decent stockpile.

At the time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, just wanted the option of escape to hand I think.

Waking to a text from my ex telling me she'd spent the night with this guy however was the straw that broke my back and enough to make me need to get the hell out of here once and for all.

And herein lies the rub. My 'mind' in the sense described above, didn't want to die (and drove me to call the Samaritans who eventually managed to talk me down,) but my 'flesh' just couldn't bear any more pain.

Quite obviously life will go on, quite obviously 'this too will pass' and everything will be better in just a few short months.

In that darkest hour however every instinct in me, every fibre of my 'flesh' knew with unwavering certainty that this was my life forever and so I had to escape.

A metaphor for my depression that I thought of ages ago has never been more apt. Those times are like holding my hand over a lit match.

I know if I just hang on the match will burn out and my hand will heal, but everything in me is screaming to pull my hand out of the flame, myself out of life.

The problem is that what the emotions of the 'flesh' lack in reason and rationality they more than make up for in intensity.

I guess it's like someone trying to convince you that black is white. It's obviously not true, but if they tie you to a chair and scream it in your face for long enough you will end up believing them.

The solution here? Well I guess it's faith in the 'mind', belief that, contrary to every single sign, the sun will rise again.

The 'metal' can help here too as no-one else is feeling what you're feeling about your life and so everyone else has a better perspective on it than you do.

Trust in yourself an others would seem to be the key. This is no easy task though and, to be honest, there must be some kind of limit.

I don't know exactly how much pain I can take but it would seem I haven't reached my limit yet. As I said to a good friend the other day, I always seem to stagger through these things and come out the other side, dazed and unsure how I got there, but there none the less.

metal

Couple of examples here. Firstly the non-sensical but almost universally accepted belief that democracy and capitalism are the only possible methods of running a society.

The concept that there is any single idea that will fit all the billions of people that make up the human race for all the billions of years that will make up the future is quite obviously laughable nonsense, and yet it had become a universal 'truth'.

What makes this really crazy to me are the daily and horrific examples of how these systems fail us.

I started thinking about this in relation to this post after the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and NASA.

My initial reaction was distaste at how mortified we are by such events while at the same time being so apathetic about the thousands and thousands of people we are paying to have slaughtered elsewhere in the world.

Beyond this however the following occurred to me:

we're told that the literally hellish death and suffering in Iraq is due to the lack of a capitalist, democratic society, if only they were 'civilised' like us they'd be happy and safe,

at the same time however, the most recent US shooting sprees are clearly the result of the exact same system,

We're sacrificing our children and breaking our backs to pay for a war in order to spread a social system that, as we see on our own doorsteps, creates people so unhappy they turn to dramatic, televised murder.

How does such a dichotomy go unrecognised?

I think the source of the self deception here is the other edge of the sword I mentioned above. Trusting in other people is vital however not questioning the people around you can also be fatal.

The 'mind' is our defence here. Instead of just passively accepting information presented to us we can use the most powerful computer known to exist in the universe (your brain!) to analyse and contrast that information.

I believe the 'flesh' can also help here too.

Some people would describe it as some kind of non-physical spiritual magic, I believe it's the result of natural selection because it works, but either way when you see something and instinctively feel it's not right, then it probably isn't.

Trust and belief in yourself is the key.

So there you have it. We're all walking round in our own little dream worlds, our perceptions of what's real, right and true utterly and unavoidably skewed; each of the three aspects that comprise us fatally flawed and deceptive.

Before we all start buying pain killers in bulk however, let's remember that if we can balance the three, counter each one's weakness with another's strength, it is actually possible to gain some idea of just what the hell is really going on.

balance the three and keep on keeping on

what else is there to do?