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

Prometheus

Hello. Prometheus was the immortal who in Greek myth stole fire from the gods and gave it to his favourite mortal, humans. His name means 'forethought' and fire was often used as a symbol for thought and knowledge. Zeus, king of the gods, punished Prometheus for this by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus. He also punished humanity by sending them a woman called Pandora ('all gifts') and  a box. Pandora, a curious person by nature was instructed not to open the box. She could not resist, of course. When she opened the box a great stream of plagues and sufferings and whatnot streamed out of the box to bedevil humanity.
I have written a thing inspired by this myth which I think I thought I'd share with you. It is a chained Prometheus addressing an exultant Zeus and it goes thusly:

PROMETHEUS

They were cold. They were frightened, flinching at half-seen phantasms in the dark. They were left wanting for even the most basic of necessities; left wanting by you, the all-powerful Father. Abandoned. Wretched. Hopeless. Forgotten in the dust by you whom they had been taught would protect them. By you whom they had been taught to love. By you whom they had been taught only became wroth with them when they deserved it. They believed themselves to be less than they were; to be children, subjects to the inscrutable will of the Father, slaves to the whims of the master. They were sad, scared, pathetic creatures, these humans. I heard them crying out and it wrenched my heart. I heard them say:

“Please, Father! I’m hungry!”

“Please, Father! I hurt and I don’t know why!”

“Please, Father! Some curse has fallen upon me! I’m weak, and I’m dying and I’m scared!”

I heard this. Night after night I heard this. I heard the panic, the wailing, the sobbing of these broken-hearted children. I heard it echoing off the sky until the very stars wept at their inability to help. I heard it, and I know you heard it – how could you not? You heard it and you did nothing. Nothing! You left them in their futile misery because “their nature makes them unsuitable for anything more!”

I pitied them in their pointless, helpless plight. How could you not? How could you hear their pleas and see their terror at a world not their own and not do everything in your power to soften their hardship? How could anyone refuse to give them a little bit of warmth and light?

You did, though.

So I gave them a spark, a few embers to distract them from their fears and how they marvelled. How they laughed to see that these demons they feared were nothing more than branches flailing in the wind. They fed the fire and it fed them and they started to stand a little taller.

Those few inches brought them too close to you, though, didn’t they? Too close to Olympos’ lofty heights. Secure in your storm-walled fortress you saw those scant few inches as an unacceptable threat to your power. Uppity servants need to be put in their place, don’t they? They need to be made small so they don’t think they have the power to rise further than the walls of their confines. You had them in their cage for a reason, after all. They weren’t good enough to try their hand at all the joys beyond the four walls you so thoughtfully put around them for their own safety.

You, o most myopic of deities, not only could you not see the wonders this little lump of liberty would make possible, but you actually punished them for daring to reach for it!

Did you really think, foul and impotent godling, that she would be a punishment? Did you really think she, this daughter of my heart, imbued with the self-same curiosity and kindness that saturates my own ichor, would be a burden to these mortals? She is a rock on which they can stand tall, a rocket to launch them to such heights that your Olympos will seem a squalid anthill.

Send your plagues, she will cure them. Have your wars to thin the ranks of men, she and those like her will compose epics on the joys of coming home. Sow your jealousy amongst their hearts; she will drive her race to seek pure and everlasting joys. She will light such fires in the hearts of mortals that the fear on which you depend for your power will soon be nought but ash, a poorly-remembered childhood nightmare.

So rattle the clouds with thunder, scrawl threats across the sky with lightning-charged ink howl with rage from your little throne; it will do you no good. My inquiring daughter will give them all the gifts you denied them. She will forge for them all the tools you feared they might wield. She will lead them to wonders that you in your arrogant ignorance never dreamed possible. She will end your loathsome reign.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

On Civility

Hello. The other day I was irritated on a train. I have written a cathartic, and slightly childish, thing which I would like to share with you. It goes thusly:

On Civility

If you can’t be civil, don’t be near me.

Them’s the rules.

And, by the way,

I know I mutter,

Under my gin-stained breath,

With monotonous regularity,

For the most arbitrary of reasons,

That some bloke’s a dick.

And equally, I know,

And feel some remorse,

That, at times,

I don’t even bother

To have the good grace to mutter.

But I still claim the right

To lay down

This forceful

Unilateral regulation,

Because I’m a hypocrite,

A poorly-evolved primate

Who does not pretend

To be a moral example,

So my bad behaviour

Does not absolve you

From the stern and solemn duty

To be a halfway decent human being.

So, please,

If you’d be so kind,

Abide by my rule,

And, no matter how tempting it might be,

Don’t,

For example,

Stand with headphones blaring,

And an elbow in the small of my back,

And don’t

Spend an entire train journey

Blatantly staring

Down my friend’s blouse,

And don’t -

And this irritated me most,

Which is saying something –

Shove me and shout

“Come on, I need to get off here!

And if you don’t hurry

The doors will shut!”

When the way is barred

By people refusing to move,

And I’m trying

With equal fervour

To de-train as well,

You self-absorbed, egotistical,

Myopic, fucking prick!

One hopes you're well,
Yours,
ADWoodward

The Peril of the Department

Hello. Looking for something else on my laptop I have discovered a thing about which I had entirely forgotten. Last year, my department was one of many under threat of debilitating cuts and restructuring from an over-paid and out-of-touch university management. I wrote the following out of anger at this. I wrote it before I had started this blog and so didn't post it then. Since last year the proposals were successfully fought by the department, so the piece is now out-of-date. That said, I think it's still quite good so I thought I'd share it with you. It is inspired by the Cyclops episode from Homer's Odyssey (IX.80-410) and goes thusly:

The Peril of the Department

                Striking the white surf with their oar-blades, my valiant crew and I came to the land of the University Managers, a fierce, suit-clad people who never raise a hand to plant knowledge in young heads. All the aspirations and abilities that grow in that green, red-bricked land spring up, as far as they know, unsown and untilled. Thinkers and writers and groups of young people clustered with new ways of approaching old problems that sprout with the aid of critical-thinking and research skills all appear thanks to the providence of the immortal gods.

                Not so very far from the land of the university managers, and not so near either, there lies a luxuriant island, covered with world-class academics buzzing merrily away in their paper hives and happy, flourishing students sprouting from the sun-splashed lawns. The University Managers have nothing like our ability to see the soul of a thing, no sensitive minds to see the value of a thing beyond the bottom line of a balance sheet. Such visionaries would make the isle a fine colony for the university managers.

                It is by no means a poor country, capable of yielding any crop in due season. However, unable to access its splendid meadows and friendly, intriguing caves, the University Managers, unknowing of the Elysium they destroy, shroud the land with clouds of external fees which they send up like a man with an overly-focussed gaze clears out his attic, throwing away ancient treasures glittering with jewels of the purest beauty. Ignorant of the benefits such artefacts could bring to him and his family, he piles them on the bonfire as though they were dust-covered, empty boxes of Fox’s Teatime Assortment. Such was the pall hanging over this little isle. With such pressure from overhead blocking out the sun, the natural beauty of the island faded and its crops, delicious and useful, were already struggling to burst from the rich loam in the quantities they had in recent years.

                The tide and the wind conspired without consulting us at this critical stage in our journey, forbade us from landing on this still-happy little land that reminded me so much of our homeland of peaceful, verdant Academia and drove us directly to the land of the university managers.

                Springing from the ship, the tall and much-lauded Department, I and my companions landed in this strange, foreboding land, pausing only to pick up a skin of fine, purple-red wine to appease whoever might live in this land that they might grant us the supplies we needed to continue our journey back home, back to sacred, joyful Academia.

                Trembling with the fear the rumours of these monsters had instilled in us, we swallowed our fear and made our way to the great, fearful residence. The bones of previous adventurers driven to these shores by fickle providence crunched under our feet, but we had no choice; our only hope of continuing our journey lay in the mercy of whatever creature made its home in that awful, joyless place. Entering the residence, a lofty cave hacked out of the living mountain by the sweat of thankless slaves, we were appalled. Our hearts sank as we spied banners bearing the ancient, terrible battle-cry of “Efficiency Savings.” Tears ran down our cheeks as we spied the spreadsheets, terrible trophies of battles past. Vomit rose in my throat and I sank to my knees as I saw a terrible sight. There on the floor, mutilated by the strokes of an axe but still recognisable, was the head of one whom I’d known in my boyhood back in Academia. Poor Sussex; hacked to death and abandoned in the corner like the garbage at the end of a riotous feast.

                “What’s this?” A terrible shadow fell across us as the voice boomed around the corpse-stenched abode. We turned and saw for the terrible form of Polyagnosias, King of the University Managers. One horrible eye, capable only of seeing one horrible, lifeless vision of the world, gleamed like a pus-oozing boil from its forehead. The bloated, barbarous creature wore a jacket fashioned the skins of his victims, with patches on the elbows dyed with the heart-blood he mercilessly drains from them. The sickening image stood in malignant mockery of the garb and peaceful mindset of we Academics. The trousers bulged grotesquely with the fetid, stinking masses of the creature’s half-finished meal of “bonuses”, a sickly sweet fruit no honest man can hope to taste. We learned this term from brave men who have faced these monstrosities and fled with their lives weakened and trembling, they shamble about their native homes like the pale shades that haunt the banks of the Styx, unable to continue with the work that used to give them such due to their grief for slaughtered companions whose absence they miss like a butchered limb.

                With the pallid, gaunt faces of these heroes-brought-low capering in their nauseating dance before my eyes, I approached the dreadful creature and looked into its gaze, into that terrifying window both flat and unloving. I proffered the wine which we had brought from our ship and spake thusly:

                “Sire, noble king of this ancient, wooded land, I thank you for not instantly devouring us and taking our meagre supplies for yourself. It shames us to have to rely on another’s mercy to survive, but we have no other choice. We set out with enough supplies on our great ship, The Department, to make it to our destination, with a small amount left over as well. Woe befell us when those being who shape events and control the smallest aspect of our lives placed upon our shoulders a great and massive burden. Those supplies, which without this would have been enough, are now under great pressure. We need your help so that we might return to our homeland where our crops need tending and our young require our experienced hands to set them on the right course for the future. Please take this gift and let it warm your heart towards helping us in this time of sudden uncertainty.”

                The beast seized the wine in its oversized paw and greedily drank it down. It did not pause to enjoy the gift or express any thanks that it had received it. Such thoughts of gratitude do not enter a mind that regards privilege as its due. The beast turned its eye to me and smiled a terrible, grotesque approximation of a grin. It’s mimicry of civility made what I feared seem all the more terrible. With the half-rotten flecks of previous meals visible in its teeth, the beast addressed me:

                “Who are you who rightfully honours me so?”

                “I am Nobody, Lord.”

                “Then as a reward I shall eat Nobody last.”

                With this the beast seized two of my companions and ate them whole and speedily, their cries for mercy as redundant as their attempts to get away from that terrible, reaching hand. Not sated by this first barbarous course, the beast seized another two of my companions and dispatched them in the same way. Gross excess of this sort warms the body and soothes the mind, and so the terrible beast retired to its bed of piled-up treasure, unearned and unvalued, and began to snore.

                The beast had left the entrance to its home unbarred, and left nothing to prevent us escaping and evading a further confrontation which would surely end in us sharing the same grisly fate. But what use would flight serve? Losing four of my faithful companions had wounded me deeply. More than that, though, without them we had no hope of properly steering the tall and well-built Department. We would drift, unable to properly move the oaken planking and swift painted prow through the surf, until some unseen future catastrophe from the gods ended our adventures for good.

                We were resolved. Our only hope of being able to continue under the bright lamp of the sun lay in this cave, lay in our own determination. Lying to one side of the cave was a huge staff of green olive-wood which the beast had cut to carry with it when it was out strolling to support its weight when circumstance, as it so often did, left him with barely a leg on which to stand. Spying this pole, a plan instantly formed in my mind. I called for my companions to aid me in this new task before me. The pole was so large that it took the combined efforts of all the crew-members of the Department to move it and so secure our freedom.

                We moved the pole over to the fire cheerfully blazing under the cavernous hearth and held it in the flames. When the fierce glow from the olive stake warned me it was about to catch alight in the flames, green as it was, I withdrew it from the fire and my companions gathered around. A god now inspired them with tremendous courage. Seizing the olive pole, they drove its sharpened end directly into the beast’s flesh next to it monstrous, sleeping eye while I used my weight from above to twist it home; like a man using a hole-punch to pierce a stack of papers he’d spent years of painstaking research producing while his colleagues work around him proof-reading and ensuring the piece is of the same high quality that secures the reputation and future income of their college. In much the same way we handled our pole with its red-hot point and twisted it into the beast’s flesh until the blood boiled up and the stench of scorched flesh rose up and stung our nostrils. We removed the pole and could see the unused eye we’d released from its binding of healed-over skin, the second eye that grants its owner perspective and which can fade if not used.

                The pain caused the beast to empty its stomach of its foul meal. My companions came tumbling out in rush of wine and foul juices, shaken but ecstatic that what they’d thought was their end was not so. The beast awoke with a yelp and screamed in a voice that could be heard for miles around the following:

                “Nobody has opened my eyes! Nobody has helped me see the justice of using some of my grand resources to help him and his Department continue on their journey instead of keeping it selfishly for my own comfort!”

                All around him the other University Managers nodded approvingly at what seemed like a fine decision which would do much to improve their people’s reputation in the world and resolved to congratulate their king on his noble and praiseworthy action. It didn’t matter to us that the king of the University Managers was now seen as clement and wise, we were simply jubilant to have resolved this dangerous situation. As dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, we were once again striking the white surf with our oar-blades, back on course to our home of peaceful Academia

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

Arts Degree

Hello. I wrote the first bit of this way back in January an the rest earlier this week. I enjoyed writing the first bit but when I came back to it after the first session I could not get back into the tone of it. On Tuesday I got sudden inspiration and finished it. I'm quite happy with how it has turned out, so I thought I'd share it with you. It goes thusly:

Arts Degree

Or: Don’t Interrupt My Drinking

I was sat in the pub last week with a beer and a steak and sat by my plate a stack - near collapse, on the verge - a pile of Latin verse. For a while a man had been staring and with a smile he struck a bearing and spoke. My reply, though terse, failed to unnerve him or move him, in fact he just zoomed in and asked: “Can you tell me what the point is: all this toil up in that joint with the purpose to anoint eight thousand more youths (less dropouts) with certification?. They’re so impatient to fill the nation with vagrants who are qualified to debate the neighbours on the literature of Plato – they think they’re so smart but really they’re useless and vaypid.” His fallacy’s quite flagrant. Not least because it’s vapid, the ‘a’ is short, like my patience. I don’t retort because I want my steak and not confrontation. But this paragon of tedious arrogance has had a rapid thought and continues as though he’s not already bored me: “The problem with you – as in you lot, not just you here before me – is that you all think what you learn will matter when you enter the real world and scatter to earn your place in it. Why, that stack of notes right there, I think you’ll just bin it. You’ll never use it again, and so, my studious young friend, I ask: why do you do it? Why do you strive at these tasks?” He then says something he shouldn’t, just one thing: “I think it’s right that the Arts have lost all their funding.”

“Well sir,” I state, a little irate, “I don’t concur. In fact, I believe your thoughts are both daft and actively damaging. And I’m not being disparaging just to get you to leave- though that’s an event whose failure to happen I honestly grieve. No, it’s not just that you bore me and ignore me when I give you hints that your little stint in my presence isn’t a thing that I like; it’s that you’re wrong. So get on your bike and go. But first I’d like you to know the reasons you’re wrong. The list is quite long so I’ll just give you a few. In fact, only two!”

I pick up my beer and soften my thirst. “Reason the first. We ‘waste our time’ and taste the fine thought of minds from ages past to learn how to think; really think not just muse on what we will drink. We do this because – and I do hope you’re following – if we go through our lives just merrily swallowing the things that are said and the words that are spread by those in charge we’ll derail rather fast. Then, when we’re done, this all will have led to a stark inability to speak with facility to see our goals won without tanks, bombs, and guns: speaking is nicer than steel, lead, and fire.

“Reason the second, the more important, I reckon, is that beauty - the wonders that you see and hear and know and feel – is hard to make real. It’s a trophy that’s born from a half-dreamt phantasm. The true artist’s job is in bridging this chasm and in making these joys a concrete reality. This is why we need an Arts faculty. The Sciences constantly give us marvellous tools to help us survive but if we’re really to thrive we need reasons to live. These can only come if we all speak as one and support the Arts.”

Soundly chastised my opponent departs. I pause, then I grin and order a gin. A double with lime and soda. As the young people say: that’s better; rant over.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward