Assuming the bible story of creation to be true, there's a line of male ascendancy which starts with Adam and ends with me. I like that: me and Adam we're the alpha and the omega guys, we're the movers and the shakers, the decisive determinants: the other blokes in between us are just mere conforming perpetuators.
I do not have any children. In 1999 I had a vasectomy, dedicated to the poet Philip Larkin. I do not regret that.
Why then, am I so moved to hear mothers describe, or simply manifest, their love for their children? Motherhood seems to me to be a beautiful, beautiful relationship of love, a wonderful affirmation of humanity, in spite of all. Intensely moving.
After experiencing seeing a good mother with her child, even in the most everyday of situations, I feel slightly ashamed of my own personal little dramas and concerns.
I do know how trying it can be. I've heard that often enough. Being with my nephews exhausts me after an hour. Most mothers moan like anything about how extremely demanding and stressful it is to raise a child, and I can quite see why. Then they go and have another one.
Fatherhood? Well, from my outside position, it seems more like an optional pride. Their role in the creation is only essential at the very very start. And even then they've probably got their minds on other things. Yet many of them share the hard work, match the dedication, and feel the deep joy, for sure. I salute all the good fathers that there've been in the world.
Outsider Drodbar in his big black coat tips his hat to all the devoted parents of the human race.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Thursday, 22 November 2007
42
It is a difficult trip, this life business. Frequently painful, cruel, exasperating, so demanding, so exhausting. Surely, surely, you agree with that? (Not that there's not lots of nice parts too, of course.)
Just little things can make me not want to carry on. Almost as a matter of principle, of philosophical protest.
One such thing is junk mail. Surely, surely, in this difficult life, we need to nurture each other, support each other, however mildly? Even if it's just to let someone else go first at a road junction, or to give a little wave to the person who's done just that. But when someone's one contribution to my life is to use environmental resources to clutter my house with cynically manipulative attempts to take my money, to direct my needs and desires to buying one pack of Ritz biscuits and getting another one free, that depresses me. All that effort that goes into the creation, the glossy production, the distribution, surely would be better put in the interests of a kinder and more sincere endeavour.
Sometimes, as I've just said above, to come home to that on my doormat makes me want to give up. The straw breaking the camel's back.
But today I received a love letter.
(Letter: something from the olden days, written with a pen on a piece of paper, sealed inside some more paper with a distinctive shape, placed inside the red cylinders which they still retain on streets for the benefit of nostalgia freaks.
Love: something from the olden days...)
If everyone received love letters instead of junk mail then I suspect that there would be less muggings, wars, commercial cynicism, and (the inevitable final flippant item) that the credits at the end of television programmes would roll at a gentler, more respectful pace.
And while we're at it, lets all join hands, and wear flowers in our hair.
(I fear an arsenal of cynicism being trained on me [hopefully not by my nice friendly commenters], a barrage of sneer. Quick, Drodbar, put your big black existentialist coat on, PDQ.)
Just little things can make me not want to carry on. Almost as a matter of principle, of philosophical protest.
One such thing is junk mail. Surely, surely, in this difficult life, we need to nurture each other, support each other, however mildly? Even if it's just to let someone else go first at a road junction, or to give a little wave to the person who's done just that. But when someone's one contribution to my life is to use environmental resources to clutter my house with cynically manipulative attempts to take my money, to direct my needs and desires to buying one pack of Ritz biscuits and getting another one free, that depresses me. All that effort that goes into the creation, the glossy production, the distribution, surely would be better put in the interests of a kinder and more sincere endeavour.
Sometimes, as I've just said above, to come home to that on my doormat makes me want to give up. The straw breaking the camel's back.
But today I received a love letter.
(Letter: something from the olden days, written with a pen on a piece of paper, sealed inside some more paper with a distinctive shape, placed inside the red cylinders which they still retain on streets for the benefit of nostalgia freaks.
Love: something from the olden days...)
If everyone received love letters instead of junk mail then I suspect that there would be less muggings, wars, commercial cynicism, and (the inevitable final flippant item) that the credits at the end of television programmes would roll at a gentler, more respectful pace.
And while we're at it, lets all join hands, and wear flowers in our hair.
(I fear an arsenal of cynicism being trained on me [hopefully not by my nice friendly commenters], a barrage of sneer. Quick, Drodbar, put your big black existentialist coat on, PDQ.)
Friday, 16 November 2007
41
(Dedicated to the Scottish [anti-]psychiatrist R. D. Laing. 'Laing and others associated with him demonstrated that the 'normality' we'd had beaten and taught and learnt into us - family life, being a man, being a woman, being sane - was an excruciatingly artificial construct.' David Widgery)
Between the ages of 7 and 12 I went to a private school. It inhabited a great big mansion with a yard in the middle, where we all lined up in our 'houses', in order of seniority ('I'm senior to you in all three ways' [age, class, conferred status - e.g .prefect] was a frequent playground jibe). Need I say that we all wore immaculate uniforms, that the headmaster would tell any boy with less than totally short back and sides that he looked like a girl and order a haircut?
It's a mess, a fucking mess, the inner psyche. Our emotions, motivations, understandings of the world, are all over the fucking place. Period. Theoretically, we can choose our own meaning, we can create, against all odds, some sense of order for ourselves. Realistically, we become the victims of confusing combinations of other people's fearful, self-seeking notions of how others should be regulated, of what huge aspects of what's out there and in here should be denied and excluded.
The culture imposed on us at the school was rich and proud. It used to have an empire which ruled the waves, you know.
Every morning we all went into a charming little chapel, to sing the praises of a God who explained everything, and told us what to do. We were all obliged too pray to this God, to sing His praises, in words written by someone for a previous century.
That was the deep, sensitive side of life taken care of. Beyond that, healthy boys focused on winning or losing at rugby and cricket. All good preparation for running a country in adult life.
How the fresh, soft little psyches inside must have bled and bled and bled. Whether we were aware of it or not. Even to have thought vulnerable thoughts to yourself would have been a sissy - something rather worse than a murderer.
Have you seen the film If? I was due to attend the school where that was shot. It does capture the feeling very well. I do relate to the violence at the end. (But my parents decided they couldn't afford the fees, so I was removed to state education instead.)
Yet I was only a 'day boy'. Unlike the majority, who lived there all through the term as if serving a jail sentence, I went home at 5.30. There I was even allowed to watch television, before my homework. There I glimpsed a wholly different culture, in what was surely a different era, if not a different planet. Especially on Top of the Pops. Slade were the working-class lads we were taught to disdain and fear. But as for David Bowie, Marc Bolan... they surely approached our bruised, already scattered interiors from a completely opposite side, from some totally forbidden nether region. And they were making the most popular records in the country.
In my adult life, it has been a driving goal to unshed that stiff order. To return to the original, scary but free and sweet mess. Then to build up again, on my own terms. Slowly.
Fast forward thirteen years. I have given up my job in a bookshop, in order to become a fulltime hippy. My rented shared house was described in a national newspaper as resembling a set from The Young Ones. Tacky psychedelic posters juxtapose with holes in the plastering on the kitchen wall. I rarely get up in the mornings. Anarchists, pagans etc. pop round to smoke joints. Sometime I just lie on my bed all day, listening to Syd Barrett and Wild Man Fischer. No girlfriend though, no sex. Just an orgone accumulator.
I still get sent the Old Boys' magazine. Most of my classmates have top jobs in industry, the civil service or the law. Most have smart, show-offable families, some with sons now attending the school. (I think it even takes girls now.) Although one of my mates became a missionary. I wish you all the best, my friends.
May you yet get in touch with your inner Marc Bolans.
Between the ages of 7 and 12 I went to a private school. It inhabited a great big mansion with a yard in the middle, where we all lined up in our 'houses', in order of seniority ('I'm senior to you in all three ways' [age, class, conferred status - e.g .prefect] was a frequent playground jibe). Need I say that we all wore immaculate uniforms, that the headmaster would tell any boy with less than totally short back and sides that he looked like a girl and order a haircut?
It's a mess, a fucking mess, the inner psyche. Our emotions, motivations, understandings of the world, are all over the fucking place. Period. Theoretically, we can choose our own meaning, we can create, against all odds, some sense of order for ourselves. Realistically, we become the victims of confusing combinations of other people's fearful, self-seeking notions of how others should be regulated, of what huge aspects of what's out there and in here should be denied and excluded.
The culture imposed on us at the school was rich and proud. It used to have an empire which ruled the waves, you know.
Every morning we all went into a charming little chapel, to sing the praises of a God who explained everything, and told us what to do. We were all obliged too pray to this God, to sing His praises, in words written by someone for a previous century.
That was the deep, sensitive side of life taken care of. Beyond that, healthy boys focused on winning or losing at rugby and cricket. All good preparation for running a country in adult life.
How the fresh, soft little psyches inside must have bled and bled and bled. Whether we were aware of it or not. Even to have thought vulnerable thoughts to yourself would have been a sissy - something rather worse than a murderer.
Have you seen the film If? I was due to attend the school where that was shot. It does capture the feeling very well. I do relate to the violence at the end. (But my parents decided they couldn't afford the fees, so I was removed to state education instead.)
Yet I was only a 'day boy'. Unlike the majority, who lived there all through the term as if serving a jail sentence, I went home at 5.30. There I was even allowed to watch television, before my homework. There I glimpsed a wholly different culture, in what was surely a different era, if not a different planet. Especially on Top of the Pops. Slade were the working-class lads we were taught to disdain and fear. But as for David Bowie, Marc Bolan... they surely approached our bruised, already scattered interiors from a completely opposite side, from some totally forbidden nether region. And they were making the most popular records in the country.
In my adult life, it has been a driving goal to unshed that stiff order. To return to the original, scary but free and sweet mess. Then to build up again, on my own terms. Slowly.
Fast forward thirteen years. I have given up my job in a bookshop, in order to become a fulltime hippy. My rented shared house was described in a national newspaper as resembling a set from The Young Ones. Tacky psychedelic posters juxtapose with holes in the plastering on the kitchen wall. I rarely get up in the mornings. Anarchists, pagans etc. pop round to smoke joints. Sometime I just lie on my bed all day, listening to Syd Barrett and Wild Man Fischer. No girlfriend though, no sex. Just an orgone accumulator.
I still get sent the Old Boys' magazine. Most of my classmates have top jobs in industry, the civil service or the law. Most have smart, show-offable families, some with sons now attending the school. (I think it even takes girls now.) Although one of my mates became a missionary. I wish you all the best, my friends.
May you yet get in touch with your inner Marc Bolans.
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
40
Would you like to be rich and famous, or just rich? (Please note that I am just suggesting a topic for discussion: this is not a special offer).
(I trust that there are no greedy or ostentatious people among the readers of Solipsist in Exile. [If you are reading this, David and Victoria, please don't be shy of leaving a comment.] The benefit of being rich, of course, is that you can live somewhere nice in the countryside and not have to go to work.)
Would you like your blog to be read my millions, without anyone knowing who you actually were?
Would you like to change the world, or would you just like the world to change?
(I say, this is a rather weak post, isn't it, readers? Bit of a timemarker this one - sorry. But the next one's gonna be a star.)
(Solipsist in Exile is sponsored by British Brackets Ltd.)
(I trust that there are no greedy or ostentatious people among the readers of Solipsist in Exile. [If you are reading this, David and Victoria, please don't be shy of leaving a comment.] The benefit of being rich, of course, is that you can live somewhere nice in the countryside and not have to go to work.)
Would you like your blog to be read my millions, without anyone knowing who you actually were?
Would you like to change the world, or would you just like the world to change?
(I say, this is a rather weak post, isn't it, readers? Bit of a timemarker this one - sorry. But the next one's gonna be a star.)
(Solipsist in Exile is sponsored by British Brackets Ltd.)
Monday, 12 November 2007
39
They. They are responsible. I find myself in their world. The imperfections of their world are not my fault, the standards of their world are not mine. If I fall foul of their standards, I am not to blame, because ultimately it was they who created me.
I know it all looks very different from your perspective. All I ask of you is that you don't see me as one of they. Then you won't feel the need to present yourself as one of they. Then we will probably be able to touch, enjoying each other's differences.
Think of me now: I am going to Tesco's.
I know it all looks very different from your perspective. All I ask of you is that you don't see me as one of they. Then you won't feel the need to present yourself as one of they. Then we will probably be able to touch, enjoying each other's differences.
Think of me now: I am going to Tesco's.
Saturday, 10 November 2007
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