Cool Shades of Blue

The sun, a pale yellow disk in the sky, was going down. She thought of childhood. She thought of freedom. Memories thrust themselves upon her. She did not invite them in, they simply arrived, pale ghosts wandering through her head.

Her swim in the calm sea beneath a serene sky had been all too brief. She scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle down her leg. She wanted to make this moment forever.

She tried not to think about where the car was taking her -back to the bin. She wanted to sit here, on the back seat, forever, reassured by the comforting rhythm if the motor, travelling into an infinite golden sunset.

A place in which night was banished and sky and sea merged and she immersed herself in their cool shades of blue.

Myself: A Case Study

Myself: A Case Study:

This will be the bleakest blog entry for a while and for that I apologise. The breadcrumbs have been devoured by the birds and there is no way back. I have to create a new future for myself.  This is a kind of SOS.

This is actually about me but I am writing about myself in the third person. What shall I call myself today: Susan perhaps.

My diagnosis was, until recently schizoaffective disorder but the powers that be have chosen to change it to ‘schizophrenia’. Schizophrenia is a cruel disease. It attacks every aspect of your being and even after a successful medication regime has been established there are problems that may seem unsurmountable but they must be faced up to and overcome. At the moment I am experiencing residual symptoms of my disorder: loneliness, social isolation, suicidal thoughts, panic and anxiety. However, my greatest enemy is poverty of expectation in myself and in others. I find myself longing to give into the temptation to curl up into a ball and lie there forever, to succumb to a dreamless sleep.

Right now I am terrified of the future. I have a tendency to catastrophise. I am finding the world almost impossible to navigate. I am nothing, I am passive, a mere observer. I am characterless, A tabla rasa. My self esteem has been ravaged. I feel socially disenfranchised, as if I have no place in the world. I am living on the edge of darkness, huddled down deep inside myself, wondering whether I will find myself again. “it is my portion to die out and disappear.”

I need to bear constantly in mind that there is a solution to every problem. Something as simple as making a list of problems and solutions can be immensely helpful as it helps to put them into some kind of perspective. I have got to this stage and the darkest hour is just before the dawn. I will not let this illness win. I must triumph over this nameless dread. A life lived in perennial fear is no life at all. Time propels you forward. There is no turning back.

https://www.livingwithschizophreniauk.org/

 

 

Armageddon

Promised Land

Birmingham Halls of Residence

Baby, I Got a Plan!

This was my response: Gavin, where did you serve again? Given that you are almost exactly the same age as I am, I would imagine that you served in one of the two Gulf Wars. I have a modest proposal: bearing in mind that I come from a military family, and despise the very idea of an individual impersonating an ex-serviceman, you could come and stay in my late father’s house on the other side of Birmingham and we could drive out to Ladywood and confront this man. We could take film and sound equipment and expose this dissembler for exactly what he is. You name the time and the place will be in my hands.

This will not appear let alone receive any kind of response.

I hope that Gavin responds to me privately with answers to my questions.

Or he may believe, as his psychiatric idol believes that ‘Many servicemen – who appear to have joined up imagining that war was a thing of the past, and that armies are now purely ornamental or a form of disguised unemployment – returned home from the Gulf deeply traumatised psychologically.’ (http://www.gulflink.org/GulfWeb/uk_news/te080397_1.html)

I’d bet my bottom dollar on the latter.

TOMMY
Rudyard Kipling

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint of beer.
The publican ‘e ups an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me.
They sent me to the gallery or ’round the music-’alls.
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! They’ll shove me in the stalls!

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopships’ on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, making mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy ‘ow’s your soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O, it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;

While it’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of his country,” when the guns begins to shoot;
Yes, it’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

Stepping Out of Hell

You must exist
In a state of perpetual profundity
Always venture
Beyond the safe, shallow waters
Eschew the minutiae
The messiness of daily life
Inanity, Vanity
Doesn’t do that much for me

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

A young woman has lost her mother toç. She is my friends and she is bright and vivacious in a way that belies the psychiatric diagnosis that lurks beneath the surface.  My friend was devoted to her mother, in old age at least.  After years of bitter family infighting they had at last arrived at a form of rapprochement.  They parted on good terms

Then she remembered the back handers that left her face momentarily claret coloured.  Her mother took care never to leave bruises.  She recalled the conversations she had had with her, unforeseen, curving, shifting, turning.  You never could tell when she would snap, when she would reach out and push her over the precipice and then you would be falling, falling down some vast canyon.  And still the blows reigned down like bits of masonry and falling stone.  It was not a fair fight.  She was far too small to retaliate.  And then she would detach herself from reality.  She would escape inwards, into a land with valleys and swelling rivers and the sharp peaks of mountains.  A higher land of bent trees and shrunken shrubs. Then in her dream world the banks of the river burst and when she came round her mother would be grabbing her hair and slamming her head against the wall.  And then she was well and truly back in reality once again. She could feel her fondness for her mother fading.  There was a grotesque chasm between them.  They would never be close again.  And that made my friend’s heart feel like it was about to crack open.

But then we must never speak ill of the dead.

Stepping Out of the Inferno Alive

Allow Me A Brief Reflection on India

In the light of this:

http://blog.skepticaldoctor.com/2012/08/17/india-is-heading-for-mars-it-doesnt-need-british-aid-money-to-pay-the-bills.

An extract: “Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine.”

Ad infinitum. Or until his oesophagus finally gives way beneath the weight of all that bile. (Enough to fill a thousand oceans.)

How are the Dalit People getting along these days?

Now, that’s the way you measure the calibre of a country: the way in which it treats its ‘untouchables’, not by the technical quality of the probe it dispatches to Mars.

Long Live Phoolan Devi.

Or maybe not cos she is dead.

‘Raj’ is a really good word to use in scrabble, by the way.  

And if you want to read a magical, kaleidoscopic novel about India, the Great Game and the North West Frontier, then you could do worse than Rudyard Kipling’s  ‘Kim’.