Pity the Joy Man

WHO IS IN A MESS? Not me. Not.

I glanced over the bullshit I have written over only FOUR DAYS.

Did I really think it showed strength of character to kill myself? Why do I say these things.

Then I want to switch to a drug I know will make me suffer. While it makes me cleaner. Subutex is amazing. But only for those truly ready to be clean.

Now I want to be a poet (and don't I know it).

Today I am waiting for a misery bag. Yes high grade shit is coming my way.

Last week I got a couple of free samples, one was amazing. It knocked me out, literally. I didn't blog it as I was in such depression, the heroin barely cut through.

So this is me, still lost. If I were somebody else I should be sorry for myself. But I can't pity myself. That is too indulgent.

And here we are. I'm on basic German lessons via teach yourself, to patch up the gaps in my knowledge.

And waiting, waiting, waiting on the Joy Man to show his face and a little bag of powder costing £20.

Wherever you are have a nice day. And don't pity me or yourself. Pity doesn't pay the rent and it doesn't feed you. It is a waste of love.

*******

McMannWeb best schizoaffective page I've found so far
http://www.mcmanweb.com/psychosis.html

Poetry and Truth

DOES ANYONE KNOW A SHOP SELLING HUGE WHITE SMOCK SHIRTS? I have decided to become a poet, you see. So I need one. I already have a fountin pen bought on special offer for 30p. It came with 3 blue cartridges but I need poetical black ones. And thick acid free Sketch 100 paper for manuscripts and lots of lovely red wine to leave poetic winestains all over my poetic manuscripts. I already have a special notebook for copying poems into. Problem is I haven't really written one for 20 years. And I have a halfarsed poetry blog not even I read.

Thing is if someone said "here are some oils, paint a portrait after the manner of Leonardo da Vinci" I'd be stumped. But if someone said "knock out a Spenserean stanza, two sonnets, a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan and ten stanzas in terza rima" I could do it and I've found some of my best stuff (with my habit of copying out other people's work) and wondered who on earth wrote it! It was only fragments so nothing ever got copied up and saved. Only finished stuff is saved.

Once I have the shirt and the wine and a finished opus I'll put a bit online. I have thought up a way of promoting my opus that has never been done before, especially not by a living poet and THAT is how I want my work published. If I give away my idea somebody else shall only take it so I can't tell it till it's done.

I dearly would love to switch on to Subutex but don't want to put myself in a mental hospital thinking I'm being sucked through the vortex of a spiral (ie severely manic) so I'm indulging that idea with great care. Ie doing absolutely nothing about it for the time being.

Beatrix Potter is on my television. I got the Renee Zellwegger DVD. She's just like me.


Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Isn't this sublime?

Dodgy Chinese/Ghost

I HAD HEARD staff-members at record shops could be a bit sniffy according to what you bought. I never had that problem with Sly and the Family Stone limited edition CDs or even years back with my Ultimate Rave/Reactivate II compilations. Maybe I was in a touchy mood, but I did appear to notice a slight smirk cross Mr Dweeb-Glasses' poker-face when I handed over my £3 for Whoopi Goldberg/Patric Swayze/Demi Moore in Ghost!

I took it home and watched it. I know this is old hat to y'all but I've never actually owned one of these DVD machines before. I was amazed how superior the picture was to video.

Then I glanced through Further Options and saw I could have Ghost speak to me in German. So that's what I did today. Watched Ghost in German and followed nearly all of it!

(Big wow, considering how terrible my German was just over a year ago...)

*******

I also went to NA. Crowded out. Heard the life story at the beginning, which is called the chair. Couldn't sit still longer than that. Had to go out for a cigarette and a walk home.

Majorly sweaty palms; hearing voices but the antipsychotics block most of that out.

*******

I bought a horrible dodgy undercooked Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fry rice. Not going there again. Nearly raw onions. Chicken too soft. Microwaved the second half; instincts say don't eat it. I'm saving a sample (not reheated) in case I get ill. So I could prove what caused it. I've never in my life reported a restaurant or takeaway and I don't intend to start now. I wish they'd just cooked the food properly. Ruined my favourite meal. Nearly £8 down the drain...

*******

Here's a poem I started writing years ago. I still remember it in my head. I only have one stanza and a bit I'm afraid. It recalls me staring into the River Thames from a boat and seeing fantastical shapes in the shimmering water:~~

Glance and gleam the fishes in the sky,
sun has streamed them the strong river's course,
one by one they wink into my eye,
mud-and-blue flashes of fish-force,
darting each rippling willow between ...

*******

THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (CUMULO NIMBUS MIX)



*******

THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (DEEP DUB)



*******

GHOST: FINAL WALK TO HEAVEN SCENE
i nearly cried when watching this. y'all know a big cry baby like me would just fess up if i did actually weep, but i didn't. that was a close nearly though. i love things that take you away from ordinary reality; things that are sublime



*******

Illustrated: pottery scene from Ghost starring David Hasselhof and British comedian Allan Car; hopefully not a countdown to being sick on that Chinese ..(!)

Drink Update Sunday

15:04 I'm kind of drinking but not liking it. I had no drink in the morning, longwalked to Iceland to get my £2 chunky Family Steak Pie and kept thinking "I don't need alcohol, I don't need heroin, I don't need anything, I'm OK" then I kept thinking about the drink and thought "OK well just get one then" which I did and it spent an uncannily long time unopened ~ over half an hour, which is not like me. Usually I crack it open on the street, then have to be real nice when police stop me. (They don't like people glugging alcohol in public, even from a Soft Drinks Bottle...) So if I can, I'm making this my one for the day. Knowing what I'm like I cannot be confident in this, as I'll tend to go to 2, as I said. But more than 2 I'm sure I will not do, not today. ("Just for today"). I got a phone call from my old heroin dealer yesterday. I didn't answer. Got a text from another saying will I taste some food for him (no). So I'm still off heroin. Still off drugs of an illegal nature. Still ON drugs of a legal nature: methadone; risperidone (both daily) and zopiclone 7.5mg as required. I had one last night after staying up well past 11pm. Dropped it. Sleeping like a baby by midnight. Yummmy stuff. I only ever daydreamed or loved or obsessed over sleeping pills TO SLEEP. Not to "light the tedium of the protracted evening" as Sylvia Plath said. She also said "their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good". Mine are white, so I'm OK on that score..!

Man I just checked that drink, nearly ALL there! Such a guzzler me, aren't I!!

THIS is why I wasn't too hot on going to AA instead of as well as NA. People hear that I drink, but my problem is OPIATE ADDICTION. That's the core problem. Drink only ever was a gear-intensifier and a bit of Dutch courage for begging.

As I told the dr., it makes me feel a bit better in depression. When ultra-hyper it barely does anything. Probably it takes the edge off. If say I slammed a glass into a wall in that state it would be my hyperosity NOT the drink doing that. I've drank enough over enough time to know how I behave on drink, and it's not like that! Also I was down to my bare minimum 2 on most days. Not drunk, by any means.

I know I'm walking a fine line that sounds like excuses here. I have to note down the facts for my own recollection. I WANT OFF DRINK ALL TOGETHER. I was told to cut down in stages, not just come off, which is why I can't just dump it. Though I'd sorely love to just do that, I also know I'm an addict. Which means I'm into associations. And the best association I can use to get OFF is to use a mixer and switch gradually to neat mixers with no booze. Does that make sense...? Somebody who knows please advise.

"An addict on their own is in bad company". (NA saying.)

"The heart is deceptive above all things". (Biblical quotation.)

I'll leave it there (another NA saying).



LEONA LEWIS: FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE
Nick inspired this choice with his Peter Paul and Mary video



LEONA LEWIS: see how pretty she sings? She's in the Streisand-Houston league though to listen to her singles you wouldn't believe it... Illustrated: not even I have this many empties (was this person a Diet Coke fan..?!?, Seconal 100mg (1960s sleeping pill); empty coctail glass (depressing)


Sylvia Plath: INSOMNIAC is here.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402
Brings me up in goosebumps it's so fine.

About pills: ...
... A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

And re nighttime brooding...
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.


19:34: Note to self: GABA supplements and XXXXXXX Disorder
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/nutritional-supplements-for-bipolar-disorder/
Not that I have XXXXXXX Disorder. I don't, I have no diagnosed mental disorders (apart from depression) and certainly not that one.

To be or not to be?

Here's what Google Translate made of the famous speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet (English-Chinese Traditional, Back to English, into Thai and back to English again). I swear I never altered a single word, so how "pharmaceutical sciences" got in there I haven't a clue!

In order to survive or is this is a problem.
Whether it is a noble soul.
Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or, armed with a sea of trouble,.
Opposition and end? Die: sleep;
Sleep and by sleep to say we end.
Heart - thousands of research in pharmaceutical sciences and natural shocks.
Texture those who succeed.
Pious hope that the dead sleep;
Sleep: maybe to dream: it is life threatening;
Death of a dream come true for sleep
When we roll this salad man,.
We need to stop: with respect.
This will cause a disaster for long life;
For those who would bear the whips and scorn of the time.
Oppressors wrong people proud of their disdain,.
Profane love, pain, the laws of the delay.
Office of arrogance and rejection.
The patient is not worth attention,.
But to make your own.
Simple small dagger?

High in the Chinese Hills...

This is my favourite Chinese poem, "To Tan-Ch'iu" by Li Po aka Li Bai 李白 † 762. Translated by Arthur Whaley:


My friend is lodging high in the Eastern Range,

Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and hills.

At green Spring he lies in the empty woods,

And is still asleep when the sun shines on high.

A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and coat;

A pebbly stream cleans his heart and ears.

I envy you, who far from strife and talk

Are high-propped on a pillow of blue cloud.


A little film. Highly Chinese. Highly entertaining. Worth a look if you've 10 mins to spare. Chinese, English subtitles. Includes more of Li Bai's poetry:



Incidentally the "star of Venus" 白星, after which Li Bai was named, literally means "white star" so the poet's given name, Bai (Li being the surname) really means white or clear. A lot of his poems are "celestial" in theme.

Anyone who speaks fluent Mandarin might like to watch a 40-minute documentary on my random blog, here. I think it will be quite some time before I have any hope of following this link ;-)

Here's a Burmese Poem, The Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese Poem: Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese short story (also in English): http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Short_Stories/Ma_Le

Songwriter

I'M WORKING on a hit record. Here are the lyrics. As you can see, I've made every effort to avoid pop clichés... I'm thinking of phoning Andrew Lloyd Webber or Elton John and asking whether they couldn't come up with a tune for this masterpiece.

Here goes:

LOVE WAS BLIND

You didn't call on the phone
and I'm here all alone
and it cuts like a knife
coz you're out of my life

yeah yeah yeah
those words you told me
come back and hold me
babe warm me, I'm cold me

turn off the light
we can rock through the night


yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah

tonight is the darkest night
but you are my star-light
from sunset till dawn
I'll honk on your horn

but you're out of my life
and it cuts like a knife
I was too blind to see
it was all about me


no no no
my my baby don't go
I'll hug ya and hold ya
and whisper things i never told ya

it was all about me
I was too blind to see

(repeat chorus:)
and you're out of my life
and it cuts like a knife
I was too blind to see
it was all about me

ooo-wooah me me me
yeah me me me
yeah me

baby get into me
forever we'll be...
together in luurve
it's a beautiful night

in luuurve
in luurve yeah yeah luuurve
I love ya baby
love ya baby
oh baby
love me please

please call on the phone
coz I'm still all alone
and it cuts like a knife
coz you're out of my life ...

(fade-out)

I'm having a crisis of confidence over who should perform this. Although obviously I'm rock star material myself I'd really like to hear this belted out by a diva of unrivalled melodic powers... But WHO? Whitney's voice has gone thanks to all that crack... Mariah Carey's a bit old now and her whispy wobbly style annoys me... Celine Dion: NO! Christina Aguilera ~ no way. Lady GaGa?... What could she wear? She's done a song called telephone, but she could illustrate that highly original lyric "cuts like a knife" with one of those "dagger through skull" joke shop headbands... oh I know what about Beyoncé? I don't particularly dig her but she sells... Oh I don't know. I know nothing about music. IDEAS PLEASE!

AS WELL AS FLATTERING CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND MELODY IDEAS. I've already got a tune going round my head going dur-dur-dur durdur durdur DUUUR...! Maybe that will do..?

What do you think?

Poets' Corner

HERE FOR HOLIDAY MONDAY is my own little dead poets' society ~ reading their own work. If you don't like the words, you might like some of the visuals. Not everything I looked for I could find a decent version of. So I'm sorry about the "modern art" sound effects over Thomas Sterns Eliot.

Starting with the best:
T S Eliot: Little Gidding

with the immortal line:

ash on an old man's sleeve
is all the ash burnt roses leave ...



WILFRED OWEN: DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Jeremy Paxman is like a rude, British, male version of Barbara Walters. This is why he sees fit to have his own say first:



Sylvia Plath: Lady Lazarus
I didn't expect American-born, highly neurotic Plath to sound so authoritative... or so English. Not all poets are expert at reading their own work.
Sylvia Plath lived for many years (and died) married to Ted Hughes (poet laureate 1984-1998) in the UK.
She is boasting here about surviving her own suicide attempts.
She died with her head in the oven in 1963
This verse was published posthumously:



OK this isn't read by the poet but it's good.
INSOMNIAC

The Soldier

THIS, one of the best-loved of all World War I poems, is often contrasted mockingly with Wilfred Owen's darker work (see yesterday and day before) ~ it certainly was at my school.
But I still like it:


If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

RUPERT BROOKE
1887-1915



DON MCLEAN: THE GRAVE
Whoever put this video together did a spectacular job...

English Haiku

THAT HAIKU I posted yesterday, by the way, should have begun ON a withered branch ... bloody computer chopped it off.

Here are a couple of good ones I know in English. I got them out of an old creative writing manual. (I only ever read two good ones, both by Dianne Doubtfire.)







The delight I feel
goes stamping up the road
in this little boy's coat.








This blank page
glares at me ~
white with rage!



.

Lost (again)

I WENT TO MY COMPULSORY DRUGS MEETING (if I don't go I get it in the neck off my Hitleresque drugs "worker") and despite the usual happening (a small collection of folks not nearly as long or as sorely addicted to drugs as me ~ even talk of needles leaves them out cold as they tend to cracksmokers and not junkies and so, in this "therapeutic" setting I must constantly check myself for what I say ~ very healthy) I decided to put out (for once again) exactly where I was coming from and how off I felt this past week and how it's called "depression" and comes in waves and comes back back back and predated my drug problem by over 15 years and how the Mental Health Operative seemed to think certain of my experiences denoted "bipolar" disorder rather than straight depression (though I really, in personal actuality, see depression as personal weakness and my more extreme experiences as evidence of spiritual warfare against me. Psychiatry is a religion just like Roman Catholicism with its own sacraments and "holy" grail. And personally I do not believe in it.)

I don't feel too bad when I keep moving. But once I stop, the blankness and meaningless of nonexistence hits me hard to handle...

So now they're on to re-book my missed psychiatric "picking over my open-hinged sinister worm-a-wriggling-strewn brainbox with psychological chopsticks and soy sauce" session that I only heard about the day AFTER it was booked for me.

Like most religions and their pantheons and philosophies, the great gods of Psychiatry are after me to confirm and prove I'm an irredeemable nutter or (as experienced more normally these days) to devalue my current suffering and put it all down to drugs. Even though it all began more than fifteen years before I ever was into heroin. And ten years before I ever smoked a spliff or dropped acid.

In other words all is meaningless.

On Margate Sands
I can connect...
nothing with nothing...

as the poet said.* And that's about all I have to say....

"Cheer"-io folks...

*T S Eliot The Wasteland III "The Fire Sermon" 301 ...


Does anyone know anything about "la lingvo internacia ~ Esperanto~??"
Here's a filmclip, starring William Shatner, speaking in the international dialect ...

On the Dotted Line...

FINALLY and at long long last I have signed the paperwork for where I live!

This after more than six months of floating in a noman'sland of computorial nonexistence (despite signing weekly registers TO both "nonexistent" addresses; despite receiving council tax bills at both)...

Yes finally! And at long, long last...

(Of course I was late for today's appointment and a bolshy woman said I would probably have to wait for ages. So I sunnily replied "that's fine" and spent nearly an hour at my old internet cafe, the one that was always interminably slow, where I used to live and hated living ~ the place where I hardly ever posted because I couldn't find a netcaff to accommodate my basic needs...)

Then I saw da man and he was fine about it all. I had all the appropriate papers (a first ~ for they were actually on me) ~ I signed up. When he asked whether I had any questions I flickered and glibly bowed out of the issue of my alleged half-year of nonexistence and the arrears I would supposedly owe for that.

I'm thinking of taking the council to a formal complaints tribunal for their negligence in that matter. Knowing full well my "mental" and "druggie" situation (I actually said I was on heroin on the original application forms) it is to THEIR negligence not to have furnished me with the appropriate payment slips and plastic swipecard immediately ~ let alone six months down the line...

I will be getting a Housing Services Payment Card "in the next three days" ~ but that's for this place. At least I shan't be running up arrears here ~ I'm resolutely determined not to.

This charge is minimally just under £10; but I would owe more because I so-uniquely WORKED ~ for over TWO YEARS before plunging into the morass of "welfare" I get National Insurance Contribution-based benefit which is slightly higher. Except what the government give with one hand the Council's Housing Department swipe back with another. Meaning I'd actually be far better off (and in a less complexicated situation) if only I'd not bothered working to start with.

And that's my biggest gripe against the British Government. Hard work is rarely rewarded. If you're stupid enough to save thousands and then need nursing care in old age you're expected to burn up these savings ~ and yet profligate folks who drank and gambled every penny in their lives will get such care absolutely free! Which is one more reason I fell out of love with this cursed country and want out as fast as possible.

I shouldn't gripe because anyway I exist now. I really do! I'm on the computer. I've signed the forms. I exist! I exist!! I exist!!!

THERE WAS A KING IN ORKNEY:

Here's another favourite Goethe poem (from Faust I again). Der König in Thule The King of Thule ~ Thule was a mythical isle to the "far north"; it is possibly Orkney (north of the Scottish mainland) or Shetland (the furthest north isles of Britain) or even Greenland...


Es war ein König in Thule
Gar treu bis an sein Grab,
Dem sterbend seine Buhle
Einen goldnen Becher gab.

There was a king in Thule;
faithful to the grave,
who, dying, to his mistress*
a golden goblet gave...

You can read the rest of this in translation here.

Or in the original here.

Or with music, here.

*I haven't a clue what a "Buhle" is anymore. I thought it meant a kinsman; but the internet says it's a mistress... does anyone know any different (and hopefully better ...?)

This is quite funky. Not the sing-song tune I know, but very good. With silent footage of Faust:



Here's the original poem in German, narrated with illustrations:

My Peace Is Gone!

THIS is what drugs have done to me ~ as told in another favourite poem by Goethe. MY PEACE IS GONE:

Mein Ruh' ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer;
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr.
Wo ist ihn nich hab'
Ist mir das Grab,
Die ganze Welt
Ist mir vergällt.

Mien armer Kopf
Ist mir verrückt,
Mein armer Sinn
Ist mir zerstückt.

Meine Ruh' ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer;
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmermehr...

This "lied" comes from Goethe's Faust "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (Gretchen at the spinning wheel). (Gretchen is Faust's fancy-piece...) In the play it is usually sung rather than recited and has been put to music eloquently by Schubert among others.

Here's a pretty accurate translation I dug up online:

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.
When he's not with me
It's like a tomb,
the world around
a bitter place.

My poor head
is turned upside down.
My poor senses
are torn apart.

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.

For him only, I look
out the window.
For him only, I go
out of the house.

His lofty bearing,
his noble air,
the smile on his lips,
the strength of his gaze,

his talk's
magic flow,
the touch of his hand,
and, ah, his kiss!

My peace is gone.
My heart is heavy.
I'll never find peace,
ever again.

My heart pines
for him.
Ah, if I could touch him
and hold him

and kiss him
all I wanted,
in his kisses
I would be lost.

My peace is gone.

You see they don't name the drug after a "heroine" for nothing ... the parallel between heroin addiction and a kind of love affair is highly pertinent ...

My Favourite Poem

... (IN GERMAN!!)

Wanderers Nachtlied II (Wanderer's Night Song II) by JW Goethe Germany's "national poet" who has been deified more perhaps than any other poet who ever lived. He wrote it on the evening of September 6, 1780. "A moment preserved in history" (you could say...)...

Here goes:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

An internet-found translation:

Above, all the summits
are still.
In all the tree-tops
you will
feel but the dew.
The birds in the forest ceased talking.
Wait: after walking
you shall rest, too.

I'd translate it (prosically) thus:

Over all the peaks
is peace.
Over all the treetops
you feel
barely a breath.
The birds silent in the forest;
just wait
... soon
you
are calm too ...

Isn't that excellent?

Prior to my Central European escapade, I'm reading all the German I can ...

Night-Night Gran

MY GRAN DIED AT THE WEEKEND. She had been battling terminal cancer for over a year and was living life in such a medication-blurry daze she barely knew what was what or where or whether she was coming or going. Not that "coming or going" was an issue any more; from my understanding she was almost totally bedridden for the last months of her life.
I sent some letters and got one extremely shaky reply, which was touching. To see my Gran, who had been a secretary all her working life and wrote immaculately, fading before me on paper as it were, in tiny, shaky writing, just about said it all.

In the end, letters had to be read aloud as and when she was conscious enough to take bits in. Not fully realizing this there was one particular missive in which I really did prattle away, yakking on about the intricacies of the Japanese writing system (because very gradually I am learning Japanese) and illustrating my descriptions with characters from the Chinese. My poor Uncle, who'd had to battle through all this, (I heard months later) had said they were fascinating...

She left me some poetry books. Here in tribute, by William Wordsworth, was one we both liked:

"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

MUSIC

AGNUS DEI sung to BARBER'S ADAGIO by the CHOIR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
THIS is the musical tribute I wanted my Gran to have. It's the best version of this classic tune ("music from Platoon") that I know:

Thrown

REGULAR READERS may have noticed a sudden change of tone in this blog.

This is down partially to my having discovered ~ through my blog's followers who somehow found me ~ a new set of bloggers either using or going clean, writing about their experience the way I used to ~ when I wasn't drowning in trivia! You can access this new world (new to me) via my "users' blogs" link up top. In a way you could say I'm replying to what many of these people have said. I also feel I need to leave a witness statement of how life is ~ scungy as it may be ~ while I am still using. Or swaying between temporarily on-methadone-clean and back-on-heroin dirty.

I must leave details of where I am, especially as I intend to move away from this place.

I hate being like this. The pain of living stuck between two intentions, totally at the mercy of the whims of my illness hurts too much.

What also depresses me is the realization I've come to ~ via some of your comments @ that Clean is something I might want. And sincerely desire it. But I just don't want it enough. And that hurts me.

When people really turn the corner, they say they would go to any lengths to get where they have to be. I've shown myself unwilling to do this.

Yet I want it. I do want it.

I'm also depressed that methadone doesn't hold me enough. The dosage I'm on should replace all the feelings I can get from heroin enough that some people say that, at this level, they can barely feel heroin at all. Yet this is not the case with me. Some years ago I used to be able to take 70mg a day and feel a bulletproof hold around me. Now the hold feels all too frail and ragged... Perhaps addiction has marched on with sister time...

Nowadays on the methadone I wake feeling like an ice block every single morning. I'm not withdrawing, I'm not "sick"... but I do feel blank and empty and under the weather. Heroin of course takes all this away...

... So I don't know what to do.

I'll leave you with a hamsters song I sing to "Baby" Itchy ~ my One Tame Robbie ~ when I'm feeling dur:

Itchy's covered in fur
Itchy's covered in fur
Eee-aye-a-dairy-mouse
Itchy's covered in fur

Hmmm: hardly liable to win me poet-laureate-hood, is it?

Here's a classic from Youtube... from a Japanese TV show (hence "hamu-STAAA!" CAT AND HAMSTER... this lil' kitty seems to think the winter-white Russian hammy is her OFFSPRING..(!)
And I take it the cat IS a "she"... (somehow looks that way...)



And last but not least, here's something more inspirational I'm sending to my Gran, who's slowly dying of cancer in a nursing home. She's so morphinated she's barely conscious these days. I know William Wordsworth is her favourite poet, so maybe it'll bring back some sparkle from days of yore...

The following lines from Wordsworth

Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

PS WHEN I WAS LOOKING for pictures of a "secret diary" I stumbled across this reference to the Secret Diary of William Byrd... has anyone out there heard of this guy?

Oh and BTW here's the Mamas and Papas: I got Creeque Alley back again (as some of y'all may have noticed, the one on my sidebar hasn't run for about 35,000 years...) so THAT has been replaced by THIS herebelow... which DOES indeed run very well indeed. The clip is from the Ed Sullivan show, which I know OF well but have never seen in my life...

Not Waving But Drowning

I AM DROWNING IN DEPRESSION. I feel it pressing on me like the cold earth on my coffin. Not sleeping; waking at five a.m. like a block of ice and craving heroin (the ultimate body-warmer; junkie's equivalent to an early-morning cup of tea)... so I drink methadone instead, turn on the fan heater that my landlord's too stingy to give permission for me to use (citing "fire hazard")... I stick my head under the sheets and hopefully go back to sleep. I don't actually possess any tea right now TO drink "of" a morning, so that particular remedy shall have to wait till another day ... (next week) when I've funds enough and have not been hitting up "B" in the bushes as wire foxes come terrierorizing past...

My Paris Dream has degenerated into a nighmare of the most degraded kind. Dreaming I was on the train, only it's open top and rollercoastering throughout a large house (as you do in dreams). This house is full of what the French would call "Anglo-Saxons" (that is Brits, Yanks and Aussies: ie Anglophones), all of whom are junkies. Dirt is everywhere. Barely there's a space for any more sleeping bags. And I'm freezing cold, friendless and alienated in this foreign town. Even more rootless than I am over here. Perhaps it's a warning: the grass is darker...

I had a look in at my trotters this afternoon. Great activities have been taking place, with Bashful taking a lead in the newspaper-tearing (home-made bedding: they far prefer making their own to being lumbered with the so-called "luxury" shop-bought cottonwool type), and running from one bedroom to another (they've at least four sleeping places) self-importantly, scraps of the Sun newspaper hanging from her tubby chops.

I've come up with some roborovski songs. Not very original or brilliant, I'm afraid, but this is what I coo to poor long-suffering Itchy on occasion. And no I do not deny I may well be clinically insane...::~~

BABY ITCHY'S TROTTING
Baby Itchy's trotting!
Trotting!
Trotting!
Baby Itchy's trotting!
And she's covered in fur!

...THE TINIEST ONE!
Of all the Little Trotters you're the Tiniest One!
Tiniest One!
Tiniest One!
Of all the Little Trotters you're the Tiniest One:
Baby Itchy's trotting into town!

TROTTING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN
She'll be trotting round the mountain when she trots;
She'll be trotting round the mountain when she trots;
She'll be trotting round the mountain;
Trotting round the mountain
And Bashful's blind and Spherical's covered in fur!

(Well I never did claim to be Shakespeare...)

SONG OF THE DAY:
ELTON JOHN; SACRIFICE
Superman Smallville Vid...



SONG II
ELTON JOHN FT. BLUE
SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD

This song got really slagged off on its rerelease a couple of years ago... but I thought it was really good. The melancholy tune, not to mention the words: rhyming "word" with "absurd": classic!



Commemorating the shock death of Diana, Princess of Wales that dreadful week at the end of summer 1997...

Abscess Pus and I Know the Bach Tune Now...

I DRAINED THE FOUR baby abscesses on my thighs the other day. I didn't even know anything was wrong until I clonked into something on the bus and went YAROOOO!! in full Billy Bunter fashion. Closer inspection later on revealed a lovely boil-sized hot-spot on my right thigh. A couple of celulitis attacks aside (and not to mention the great barbiturate burn of February that I thought was going to put my in hospital) I've been very lucky with abscesses. You have to realize these can get bad enough to hold literally 100s of mls of pus. I went to a draining session at my friend Rebsie's house and the abscess had burst already the night before: all over the carpet. It looked like somebody had been violently sick all over the place and that was the pus! Mother Hubbard did the kneeding and squeezing whilst I was the one who dashed to and from the kitchen boiling up sterile saline to "irrigate" the newly emptied cavity in Rebsie's thigh. She was lucky, for though it was big (like a packed-out wallet under the skin) it hadn't tunneled inwards towards the bone. I've seen one that had, both pre and post surgery. This had to be packed with tampon-like material and I saw for myself two pus-tunneled "fingers" (that you could literally have stuck your fingers down, had you felt so inclined)... stretching right into the flesh of the thighs and dangerously close to the bone. Bone infections are the very worst kind (apart from bacterial infection of the heart)... they really can call for amputation. And I've met anough people with missing legs in my time...
... yes this was all down to my "skinpopping" habit, which is what you do when you can't get a vein. The gear is injected under the skin rather than direct to the bloodstream, which gives any nasties a longer chance to fester, and just occasionally they do...
... do I drained all four of mine with a giant blue needle and got nowt more spectacular than a few beads of pus and some runny bloody weepiness, all of which I carefully mopped up with alcoholic swabs and lots of tissue paper...
... Hmmm.

Poor Baby Bashful's still lost and peering fruitlessly in the dark. Makes me want to cry...

I've been researching my new literary project. My longest cherished ambition in life has always been to be a writer of fiction. My trouble has been that as a youngster I just didn't have the inspiration of anything much to say. Now I'm older (though I won't claim to be wiser) I do feel I have a certain grasp of human nature. This I shall apply to my story (an historical tale)... and let's see where it takes us!

I was inspired today to dig out my old poem tome and if you click herebelow you can read three of my works on Gledwood's new Poetry Blog!
Please comment profusely under each "work".. many thanks!...

All this talk of pomes and tomes has made me starving hungry for cod in batter with intellectual tomatoes and oven chips, so I really must dash now...

VIDEO:
I had been wondering for AGES what on earth this tune was called. It sounds fantastic when played any way except in that dirgy off-key cello style (which I think it was written for) but really ruins the potential of the tune...
This is well worth some moments of your time...
BACH'S PRELUDE played by the most sublime guitar...

Pile of pompoms/Eggfried bread...

MY ROBOS have taken up living outside in the far corner of their tank. Suspicious that they had mites, their teabox had to be removed. So now (despite a wealth of tubes they would ordinarily sleep in still on hand (or robo-paw...)) they've taken up residence in the far corner, in broad daylight, like a pile of mini-hamster pompoms, all grooming, clean and sleeping and alternately itching and dozing and leaning upon one another in the most hilarious manner. E.g. Itchy ends up the most squashed-against in the furthest corner, her head thrown up and down as Bashful vigorously washes. Then Spherical falls asleep sideways banana-shaped against Bashful with Bashful preening her most private of parts for her. I've had to be ever so restrained from laughing at their predicaments...

NOW: on to eggfried bread. There are three possible variations.

1. Plain fried bread. For this you heat a generous amount of good oil in a small pan, preferably with black pepper and chili powder (if liked). Fry the bread until golden brown and crispy. That is ordinary fried bread.

2. Soft egg fried bread. Crack an egg on to a medium-sized plate. Mix yolk into white as if scrambling. Dip bread both sides. Fry until brown. If the bread is nontoasted and nonfried it will be fairly crispy on the outside yet soft on the inside.

3. Crispy egg fried bread. Toast or ready fry (as 1 above) bread. Then dip into beaten egg (as 2 above) and fry. This potentially gives the best of both worlds. Fried egg on the outside (which is not eggy, more cheesy actually) and yet lovely and crispy in the middle. The chili/black peppers are optional but a good thing to consider (along with Lea and Perrons) as you perfect your technique...

And then, my friends, you may well turn out the perfect breakfasts for yourselves...

Poetry of the season:
(Both are extracts; click to read the rest...)


T S Eliot: Little Gidding

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon...


Wordsworth: Daffodils

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze...


IN THE NEWS:

Australian Courier Mail: Horse-Surfing. Mad poms' latest beach-sport...
The Sun: Gored of the Rings. Matador gets horn up bum...


Photo-blog of the Day: GusGreeper. Amazingly sharp ultra-real pixx... clickonit and see...

Life With Dogs... this blog contains fabulous snaps of the Cote d'Azur as well...

Larchmont Daily Photo... this one has a beautiful mirrorbuildinged NYC shot up top...

AND THANKS MERLE for this Award:
The You Cheer Me Up Award
;->...
Excellent stuff!

Resolutions!

DO YOU LIKE PRINCESS MARGARET (the late Princess Margaret) with her drink and fag? I was sure every other photo I'd find would have her with drink in one hand, cig in the other: that's how I remember her. Seems in actuality she was more discreet than that - as you can see the rum-&-Coke's been quickly stashed behind her and the fag put down in the bottom of the frame but not quite out of shot... Rumour even had it that Princess Margo's drunken dropped Dunhill that sparked the great Windsor Castle fire of 1992 though Buckingham Palace still vigorously denies this ...

Actually I am writing this on Sunday night the 30th of December. And I am all forlorn and lost-feeling and depressed. Hmmm. Also I've had the heating on and working so very successfully I am now sweltering...

Well, whatever: on to Resolutions.

I don't actually make New Year's resolutions these days, having always believed that just doing things, whatever the time of year is by far the best course of action. Also, January 1st is but an arbitrary date to me. I've always felt my personal New Year began around September - in line with the academic year.

Having said all that, here are some things I'd like to accomplish in 2008:

~ Finish Memoirs
~ Write Baying Gwendolina novel
~ Get 1000 hits a day on blog (as if - I think it would be easier to sell five million books and at least I'd get paid handsomely for that)
~ Learn to cook just like Chinese takeaway (and save £££s)
~ Move out of present craphole where I live (by choice; not eviction)
~ Cease all nonprescribed drugtaking and immoderate drinking
~ Give up smoking

If I manage just one of these I'll call it an achievement; all 7 and it's a genuine miracle!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 EVERYONE!
MAY IT BE FAR BETTER THAN YUKKY OLD 2007!!

Aargh! I am sposed to finish here. And yet the emptiness is killing me. So here's a poem I really like. (From Shakespeare.)

Fear no more the heat of the sun
nor the furious winter's rages;
thou thy wordly task hast done,
home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown of the great
thou art past the tyrant's stroke.
Care no more to clothe and eat;
to thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physick must,
as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone;
fear not slander, censure rash;
thou has finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
consign to thee and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee
nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee;
nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consumation have
and renownèd be thy grave.

Cymbeline 4:2:259-282


The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
he makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside the still waters.
He resores my soul;
he leads me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the prescence of my enemies;
you annoint my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of God
for ever.

Psalm 23


R: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
J: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
which mannerly devotion shows in this;
for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
R: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
J: Aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
R: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!
They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
J: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
R: Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. - (they kiss; woo!)

from Romeo and Juliet 1:5:93-106...

After 3am

I KNOW WHAT my real Resolution should be: to have some respect for myself. Because some couple of years ago, feeling suicidal and yet unwilling, when it came to it, to actually perform the act. Though even the train drivers (well, one driver in particular somehow saw into my eyes at 90+ mph. I wasn't being stupid, either. Wasn't acting out or hanging off the edge of the platform.) He just saw my eyes and frantically waved his arms across each other as if to say "DON'T!"

Something else along those lines happened another time.

And I lost all respect formyself. Let everything go. RAtcheted up my beloved bank account, which allowed me a Visa debit card with holographic flying wings, right far past the max until the entire account was suspended on me. I had kept that card through thick and think and the pits of homelessness and addiction. It represented my future and a nominal place as a respectable member of society. I was the ONLY junkie I knew who'd managed to hold on to such a relic of past life. Most had never had Visa cards. Because, being fulltime junkies since 18 or even 16, they'd never had jobs or normal lives...

I used to cradle this Visa card in my hand, as I slouched on a damp mattress all alone by flickering candle light in a raindripping cavern of an abandoned industrial building. I would tilt the card and watch the birdie flying free.

While I lived out this subterranean life...

And every day, when I woke I felt like I was lying face-down on the pavement, banging my head on the ground. "This does not work. I cannot do this any more."

And so I hit rock bottom every day. And yet lived on.

FOR MY SINS.

***

Video of the Day:
Queens' Speeches Go International -
This one is the:
Dutch Queen's Speech!!

***

I was going to post lots more blarble but I've got Thai chicken babycorn egg fly lice wafting mysterious oriental aromas out of a plastic bag so I must go back and devour it!!

***

Meanwhile, New Year has kicked off in Australia, New Zealand and many South Sea Islands already. It's nine minutes to 5pm as I write... Japan to get it very soon... America and Canada, you are still late morning in New York and the eastern seaboard; not even 9am in Vancouver and LA...

I will not be able to get to everybody's pages in time to say this individually, so I'll say it again here:-

HAVE A MARVELLOUS 2008 EVERYBODY!!!

STOP PRESS ~ 19/01/10 ~ someone put the most disgusting picture on my hyperlink here. If you click on this you either get needle and candle or a starfish. (Clue: not sea variety...)