Masks, Goblins, & Sentinels

Hello. I finally finished writing a thing! The thing took a while to write both because of the common-or-garden procrastination and because of thoughts. Also, it's longer than most of my other things; but maybe bigger breakdown needs a bigger book. Either way, it's done, and as is my habit it's going on the blog. It's mean to create a written thing and not let it be read. The thing is called "Masks, Goblins & Sentinels" and goes thusly:

Masks, Goblins & Sentinels

I wear an armored mask painted with a grin. Its beauty isn't skin-deep, it's less than paper-thin. It squats in an ornate box whose hinges make it hiss, one which is carved to outlast eternity. A voice which growls internally whispers "You'll always need this."

You knock on my door. I move fast - more - at such a pace that I'm easy to miss as I rush to bring the cold steel up to latch onto my face with a kiss. I whisk open the door. You pause and glance away. Perhaps the straps are too loosely interlaced, because the mask is sat askance and there's something less-than-human standing in my place. We exchange pleasantries and we go our separate ways and I lament once more in this endless, abyssal list of days that I've fucked up so hard and let myself end up this way.

I don't want to stay and I don't want to go: to remain in this crowd scares me into myself until I'm painfully alone, to depart leaves me open to these ghosts in my heart which cut deep into the bone. It hurts to keep these agonies covered but I'm terrified of them being discovered. I'm scared someone will lean in near, peer at these things I fear to be true and after a quick review, having seen them in the light, agree with them and announce "Yes, this seems to me to be right."

I feel pounced on, put upon, trapped tight between a rock and a mental place so hard it's like a wall of storms excluding all the light. I know it's not right. I know thinking I'm not worthy of love is flying in the face of friendship's evidence. It's trite and adolescent. But you're not there to see it scribed in granite-hard incandescence above my bed. You're not here in my head to hear the ceaseless sepulchral litany. You can't feel the blackened, gnawed-at nails of the goblin who sits in my brain as he picks at me. He plucks on my last nerve like a tuneless violin.I hide my head under a pillow, but he feeds my every peccadillo until it grows in my mind's eye, blocks out the sky, and stands a full-fledged, devil-armored sin.

Feeling haggard and thin, I'm re-learning a core concept. Taking it slow, with deep breaths and baby-steps, I'm trying to accept what others internally know. It's a fact which is only hard because it's so rock-solid:

I am the dog's bollocks.

This thought lollops through my mind in a rare moment of mental sunshine. It's not just remembering the time I drunkenly strolled through 4am Vienna without any trousers, though I am inordinately proud of that - on that trip if one of one's chums said "man-test" it was a gentleman's duty to acquiesce to the request . It's not just that when I storm a stage my performance carries strong and loud to the back, so my character's villainy can elicit a cheerful "Boo!" and the joyous sound of an audience's hands percussively pressed . Nor is it just that I, a Classicist trained to bask in Latin poetry by the mound and the stack, am still broad enough in my approach to life to love Science - DNA, quantum mechanics, and all the rest. I don't really understand most of it, but I feel you should get points for trying - bunsen burners are like puppies in that they're nonjudgmental friends, whatever the season. I am an excellent human not merely because of any of these reasons nor the sum of their parts; but I'd be lying from my to your heart if I let you believe that there really wasn't a test.

The best method I know to ascertain the truth is to use empiricism: to remain calm and let my brain be a fountain of logical criticism. The key is to acknowledge ALL of the data and not give unnecessary weight to one fact just because it happens to fit a pre-existing, comfortably tragic narrative.

What I need is something by way of a comparative, a control group, a second opinion whose opinion of me is independent of however I happen to feel at that moment. I need a ruthless opponent, armed with concern and all the facts, one able to argue against me in my favour. Debate against the darkest parts of me - don't let your rhetoric waver - because I desperately want the goblin to be proven eternally wrong.

I am so incredibly sorry it's taken me so long to realise that this fight inside myself is one that I can and absolutely have to win. How could I have been so dim as to ignore these friendly, arms-wide-open signs? The ones which stand with laughing eyes and a recognising grin? The wonderfully detailed signs were not simple markers disappearing in the mirror down a one-way, high-speed highway. They were and are marble sentinels holding hand-painted banners inviting me to the friendly, sunlit spots which dot the road in the opposite direction from the way I was travelling.

My mind unravelling I ignored them. You'll be pleased to hear I've turned around now and am trying to beat the speed of sound to catch up to them. You see, these diamond-hearted sentinels whose was love was unbreakable, bright, and crisp were warning me away from a Charybdis-dwarfing precipice. I ignored them before but I'm rushing back again, wishing I'd done so sooner. The reason is this. I leaned over the edge and I stared into the abyss. In that yawning moment I realised, I finally learned a Matrix-level life-hack, a platinum-plated tip. The abyss is a prick. It never gets its round in. It pulls out the plug and laughs when you still try to swim. It wakes you up at four am to steal all the Malteasers from your Celebrations tin.

So now I'm back. I feel like me again. I've got some drinks in for the Sentinels - a delightful mix of grape and grain. I've burned mask in it's ornate box and I'm dancing round the flames. Normally I don't dance, but I'm doing so anyway simply because I reckon it will irritate the goblin. I mean, seriously, fuck that guy. That Moria-dwelling cunt has once more got a fight on his hands if he want to stop me from laughing under open, if occasionally cloudy, skies.


I am well, hope you are too,
yrs,
ADWoodward

You Gotta Have Friends

Hello. I have written a little bit of therapy which I'd like to share with you. It goes thusly:

You Gotta Have Friends

Or:

Three Point Two Seconds of My Daily Internal Monologue

I don’t like me, never have, probably never will.

You might say that’s silly but still,

I think I’m a prick.

Not a nice idea, but I think it’s true because it really seems to stick

. Normally it doesn’t matter because this is great and you’re great and Hey look! I’ve got a beer.

But at other times it’s painfully clear.

A law of existence,

Indefatigable in its persistence,

Something that gives the world its tick –

Matter’s made from stardust and I’m a fucking prick.

You ask:

“Why don’t you go into your own head and figure out what’s up?”

Ah,

Now, there’s the rub.

See, my brain is like a night club:

Slightly sticky, a little manic,

Full of booze and if I spend more than ten minutes there

Liable to make me panic.

You see, I don’t think I’m a real person –

There are other problems but this is the worst one.

I’m a grey, insipid figure in a series of shoddy masks –

Things that I change depending on the task.

There’s this one for being funny,

This for being smart,

This one for being practical

And this for trying to share my heart –

Which never works

Because why

Would you buy

Something which even I,

The seller,

Don’t believe is worth it?

But the real bugger

Is no matter what I mutter

Or shout

I would not be without

My precious masks,

My poorly-painted papier-mâché shields.

For when I’m out in the field

And whichever mask I’m wearing happens to slip,

Even just a bit

I lash out with flailing verbal hits

Because I’m scared

That it’s only the masks I wear

That give me any value.

But there are bad days and good days,

And I’m not in the worst of it right now

And if you’ll kindly let me,

I’d like to tell you how.

I can make me feel like shit,

So it follows I’m a prick,

QED.

But if I am a prick, then why on earth

Do I even listen to me?

The world is full of pricks who do and say things I don’t like,

But I don’t listen to them,

I just turn up the heavy metal and have another pint.

But the main reason I can cope

And life seems mostly fun,

Is that although I don’t like me,

Others do

So at least the job gets done.

One hopes you're well,
Yours,
ADWoodward

A conversation verbatim

Hello. I've been in a dark mood for about a week now, and earlier today a friend got me out of it. There is no rush like the sudden contrast of hating oneself versus being happy. I don't know whether this will give anyone but me a rush, but it was an important enough conversation that I want a record of it. There's some phrasing in the conversation that to my mind smacks like literature so I thought it might fit in here. It helped me and might help you, so I thought I'd share it with you.It goes thusly:

Me: 

How does one go about shutting off that part of one's brain which delights in delivering a rolling litany that one's a cunt?

My friend :

BEER

What's up?

Why do you want to tell people of their cuntishness?

Me:

I don't know. across the last week every time when I've not been doing something else (and a lot of the time when i've been try to do something else) I've had a rolling mass of lists of reasons whose origins i don't know but whose veracity i can't doubt of all the reasons why I have no value

it's starting to get to me

My friend: 

My delayed response is due to having just choked on my own saliva for no reason other than I appear to have forgotten how to swallow. Sorry.

Why do you think that you lack value?

Me:

I'm not an actual person. i'm a series of shoddy masks - one that pretends to be intelligent, one that pretends to be funny one that pretends to be creative and they keep slipping or they don't fit any more which prompts an impulse to lash out venomously while i try to re-affix them for even a few moments. I don't like lashing out and so I sit hoping noone actually looks and sees the poorly-painted papier machee hanging limply from my face

And I'm a prick who apparently can only speak in overly-forced metaphor

My friend:

While that's very artistic Woody, it's complete and utter bollocks

You've clearly overthought your existence a little too much

What you have just described can be applied to any human being.

The fact that you are intelligent enough to recognise it makes you special

You are an actual person and you are a genuine and lovely person. And I know this because I like you, and I am very picky over people that I feel safe around

Me:

Hurrah

My friend:

The issue here is not what you think you are, it's that you have over thought who you think you and in doing so have broken down all the little tiny things that make you special into nothingness.

You've broken yourself down into tiny parts which you are focusing on

Which makes them meaningless

what makes them meaningful is when all of the tiny, broken down, insignificant little pieces of you join together

Because that makes a person

Just as the single atoms of my bedroom floor are meaningless as individuals

But put them all together and you have a floor. Which is important or else I would have fallen into the living room

In short, you are not a cunt. Some small aspect of your personality may be a cunt, but that part is an important part of you and you should cherish it and see it in context with all the other parts of you. Because without the good and bad aspects of your personality you really would have no value.

Does that help at all?

17:47

Me:

Yes.

Thank you.

A Small Recommendation

Hello.

Have you ever been sat in the corner of a room filled to the brim with emptiness of an unknown origin, trapped by a great black dog which with drooling yellow fangs snaps off the words “you’re a cunt” in near-continuous, rumbling litany to keep you immobile and scare off any visitors you might have?

I have.

I probably wouldn't recommend it to friends.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward