Rocks Around And Thinks That He's The Toughest

I have a very small carbon footprint.

Thank the Lord that I have been compensated in other ways.

Posted by: papmeister at 22:27 | link | comments (4)

I am being stalked by two people.

Well, perhaps the word "people" is not 100 per cent accurate. Because they're not, erm, people. I feel sure, however, that between them they are observing my movements, keeping track of the times of my comings and goings, feeding all that data into some manner of "Spy Computer" and coming up with some sort of print-out that tells them stuff. About me.

I shudder to think what the next phase of their monstrous plan is.

Let me explain.

Much of my life revolves around animal husbandry, or the husbandry of my dog and pigeon. Although technically I am husband to neither of them and, in fact, am quite unsure as to the gender of my winged companion. Not that I would marry a pigeon even if it was female. However, this pair are not the pair that are stalking me. But the "husbanding" of one of them has thrown me open to my stalking at the hands of others.

Basically, I take the dog, let's call her Lucy, out for a walk every night at around ten o'clock. At first I thought I was imagining things, letting my mind play tricks on me. But there has been a terrible dawning realisation that I am being followed and examined. Night after night I began to notice these two characters always in the same places, more or less, seemingly going about their innocent business. At first it didn't bother me and I would concentrate on my plan to draw flourescent dots of paint on the top of the shells of every snail in the UK to avoid stepping on them on wet, dark nights but my snail painting scheme has been relegated to the back burner as I have become increasingly paranoid.

Between them the frigging frog and hedgehog have got me so I don't know right from wrong.

Posted by: papmeister at 20:49 | link | comments (4)

Sometimes a man will dare to speak out loud. Sometimes his friends will show him solidarity. Sometimes friends become like family. Sometimes families become communities. Sometimes communities find their voice. Sometimes they begin to speak to each other. Sometimes someone reaches out. Sometimes the common ground is more important than that which divides.

Sometimes a nation sings.

Sometimes a nation speaks peace unto another nation.

Sometimes all of us realise that love of a fellow creature is all that matters.

Sometimes, all the time, love.

Posted by: papmeister at 01:58 | link | comments (4)

I spend the latter part of the day wondering at the fact that fictions provide resolution and more often than not some manner of reconciliation in the final act or reel. I feel like telling everyone that we should pretend this is the final reel and just fucking get on with the reconciliations and resolutions. And then, for no reason at all, I recall a poem. And because I'm a generous type of person, I choose to share it with you here. Good evening to anyone who reads this.

There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.

I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-frosts, and the low sly lives
Before the fauns.

My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.

But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.

And I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
Many the muscled bodies charred,
And few remember.

I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed.

Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember;

The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Left in the ground.

 

Posted by: papmeister at 01:30 | link | comments (3)

This is where I am at right now.

Right now my eldest son is a paranoid schizophrenic. At this moment he is raving and saying that he will drink himself to death to silence the voices in his head. Just now he is barricading himself in his room to stop the voices becoming manifest and coming to get him. But right now he is refusing to take the medicine that will silence the voices and calm his mind. Right now is all he has. The future is a blank.

Right now I am in a shopping mall. I see a little boy with his mother and grandmother. He is maybe eight years old. He is blind and the women in his life are familiarising him with using a white stick. I can almost feel the love between the three of them seeping outwards into the surrounding area, brushing up against the other shoppers, making my skin prickle up as though it is ten below zero. It is the infinite love that women are so readily capable of, and the trusting love of a child in return. I make an involuntary noise and my eyes swim. Right now I want to make it home without bursting into tears.

Right now I wish I was a God, or a doctor, or politician or anyone who had the power to help. Right now I just want to fix all the broken children and all the broken people and everyone who ever had a bad thing happen to them and maybe then I'll deserve to have someone fix me.

Posted by: papmeister at 01:16 | link | comments (3)

It's not all bereavement...

I still live the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. As well as mourning, I try and find time for sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, drink, gambling, random violence, socialism, bird watching, reading and animal husbandry. It's a busy life.

I live with a wood pigeon these days. It sits on my head or shoulder while I watch TV. While it sits there I ponder the fact that I am moving further East on the normal-eccentric axis. Everyone else in my house is terrified of the pigeon, and it of them. I am thinking of training it to attack. Currently the main weapon in its armoury is "loud flapping noises". You may think this rather less effective than "two fingers in the eyes" or "six inches of cold steel between the ribs" but at close-quarters it is extremely effective. Anyway, if I can teach it to carry darts I may be on to something.

And so a typical day for me is as follows: get up, walk dog, feed pigeon, feed self, walk round house with pigeon on shoulder pursued by barking dog, go out to bookmakers and lose money, drink alcohol, sleep, get up again, walk dog, eat, walk round with pigeon on shoulder, brood about money lost at bookmakers, watch the History Channel, read books, clean shit off shoulder, go back to bed.

I left the sex and drugs stuff out in case kids are reading this. You can sort of add those details yourself. In your imagination I could well be a remarkable lover and Keith Richards-stylee drug taker. I'll leave it to you. And if kids are reading this, what's wrong? Has your playstation broken?

As I type this the pigeon has moved from shoulder to head. I think this is some sort of signal. I'll say goodbye while I try and figure out what sort of signal it is.

Posted by: papmeister at 11:55 | link | comments (1)

It feels cool to be speaking Spanish after so long. I stand with my buttocks resting on the edge of the desk wrapping my hand around a cup of tea and cradling it into my torso, feeling its warmth radiate through me from within and without. We smile at each other, both pleased with ourselves that we can have this conversation in his mother tongue. He is maybe six inches shorter than me and dressed in a short sleeved shirt but with a sleeveless quilted jacket over the top in recognition of the fact that it is 4.20am and there is a slight chill in the air of another breaking dawn, another summer's day in need of heating up. I stare at his arms and notice how incredibly hirsute they are. 

"So, where are you from?"

He grins, maybe betraying a little civic pride. "Mexico City."

"I've never been. My Mum and Dad went a few years ago."

He stops smiling. "I'm sorry for your loss."

And then he takes from me the details he needs to write my mother' s death certificate.

Dr Fuentes' piece of paper will let the world know that the woman who carried me, who nurtured me, who cherished me, who moulded me, who never stopped believing in me and who lies in a room only feet from where we stand, her own heat fading as that of the day grows, is dead.

We shake hands.

"Gracias."

"Hasta luego."  

Posted by: papmeister at 20:51 | link | comments (2)

Eight days past, I am on a plane returning from Dublin. The city is a metaphor for my life. Flux. Resistance. Flux.

I'd been there for a gig at the Point Theatre. Came So Far For Beauty, An Evening of Leonard Cohen Songs. You should google it and then I don't have to take forever telling you the line-up; suffice to say that I am chiefly there because Lou Reed and Nick Cave are on the bill. And so it goes that I sit there for four and a half hours listening to Leonard Cohen songs sound, well to be honest, mostly better than when Leonard sang them. A great gig. Of course, as you know, Lou Reed cannot sing to save his life but that is not why we go to see him. As the rather drunken Dubliner a few seats behind me kept shouting every time the legend appeared "Go on, Lou!!" And he did.

It was my second time in Ireland since my mother died. The first time was only a week after the funeral (more on that another time but to give you a clue on how it went, my brother and sister now refer to me as "The Chief Mourner").  The Ireland of my youth, let alone that of my mother, is dead and gone and for the most part it won't be missed but I worry for the pace of change in a city like Dublin and wonder whether one day someone will look back and cry over lots of little things that are now gone in the days.

Just like I keep finding myself in tears over little things I have lost. But I too have come so far for beauty and would change nothing of my past. Nothing.

 

Posted by: papmeister at 17:26 | link | comments (2)

Son of Papmeister...or whatever.

Hey, long time, no see.  How are you?

What's changed? Well, some things have. I live with three humans - one adult sized, two short - a dog and a wood pigeon. Plus spiders and stuff, I suppose.

My cat died. He was a really fat cat.

My mother died too but there the similarity with the cat ends because my mother died weighing half what she had weighed throughout her life and wearing a mask of pain that months of suffering had eaten into her face like acid eating into a metal plate. I didn't cry when she died - although I more than made up for it later - because you can only watch someone die for a certain amount of time before you start to die a little yourself. First slowly and then with gathering pace. Drip, drip, then a torrent. I'd watched enough of her dying.

And now I don't sleep. When she was dying I slept like a baby but in the eleven weeks since she died I have been unable to sleep for more than four hours at a stretch. Some nights I don't sleep at all but get up and sit downstairs waiting for dawn. When I have slept, my dreams have been garish; lurid visions that I have tried to force myself awake from.

My doctor says that I was severly depressed. The adult sized human says that I ams "like a black hole". This makes a change as she usually substitutes the word "black" with "arse". 

Son of Papmeister, The Black Arsehole.

To Be Continued......  

Posted by: papmeister at 21:50 | link | comments (3)