About this Blogspot blog

The blog has moved to: Little Stitches in a Tapestry. Please feel welcome to pop over.

Threatening the Livelihood of Captive Turkeys

The Goldfish recently posted on one aspect of ethical eating. I was going to leave this as a comment but then decided there was sufficient content to possibly have one or two others accompany me in my state of dietary confusion.

With the option of meat, veganism, vegetarianism, probably as many varieties of these are there are seeds in a pumpkin, and religious observance, choices can be bewildering. I cannot and would not judge anyone else's stance on the morality of their diet. We should be free to make our own choices. For myself, I eat fish (cough, of course not Goldfish, gulp) and almost certainly products made with animal derivatives but I don't eat meat directly. You could say I'm a non-Goldfish, fish eating partial vegetarian.

Perhaps because of the lack of certain key vitamins I'm not always cogent enough to provide an argument on this subject but here are my thoughts anyhow.

As an intelligent, responsible and rational thinking human (these qualities are actually under considerable dispute in my case), I should be able to come to some justifiable conclusion about what I eat, and my fundamental belief is that I must do so and not remain ambivalent. That's not to say I can't change my mind, but there should be a reasoned argument for doing so.

It is therefore slightly galling that my best attempt relies on being comfortable with my own sense of guilt. However in the absence of any actual knowledge about how animals think or experience pain and distress, it's the best I can do.

I eat the flesh of those creatures I can bring myself to kill personally. I took myself out one day and caught, killed and eat fish, therefore although the rationale is somewhat shaky, I do feel reasonably comfortable with the consequence of eating fish. Clearly I can't speak for the scaly ones themselves. I have not been able to bring myself to do this with any other creature, so I don't eat other creatures. That's about it in a baking dish.

Of course, the major failing here is that I don't personally catch all the fish I eat. I caught fish once (albeit quite a few on that occasion) to prove to myself that I could do it, but now, like most other people, I buy fish, neatly killed by someone else, over the counter. I do feel though, that I could go out and kill a fish tomorrow were it necessary. I don't know that I could do this to a chicken, lamb, pig, cow or even mouse. No need to let you know my stance on humans because I don't much fancy the taste.

So what happens when I am invited as a guest to someone else's dinner party? (yes that's can be taken as a hint!!) Well I don't like to burden others with the consequences of my own dilemmas. We have to realise the world isn't black and white and that sometimes we have to do the best we can in each differing circumstance. So when others cook for me, I eat what they eat, including meat (but no snails, euugh!). When I cook for others, they get fish pie or nut loaf or a napkin forcibly inserted down the gullet, depending on preference. This is excepting the ongoing dilemma of the 26 meat eaters I'm supposed to be catering for this Christmas. I don't have 26 napkins you see.

Now I could extend this to putting myself in the shoes (or scales) of a fish and ask myself whether I'd prefer to be killed and eaten by some vast automated process where my individual opportunity to look my killer in the eye has been denied; or whether I'd prefer to be individually speared, knowing that my killer would be my eater. This argument would however be anthropomorphic (I got to use that word too) and unsound. I can have no idea how an anchovy, tuna or even chicken might judge it's own death. Of course, for any creature death by eating is probably not a desirable option, however millions of years of natural selection have made this outcome likely for many organisms on the planet.

So after all that, what can you conclude? Probably that I am at least as mixed up as many others on this issue. But I have at least satisfied my own need to have decided just what flavour of confusion to adopt.

Listening to: NOFX, "Clams Have Feelings Too"  (a lie, I'm clueless about NOFX)
Hoping: you enjoy your next turkey, smoked salmon, or nut loaf (but not snail, euugh!)

nah, yeh

Some stuff I need to record here and get out of my head.

Two quotes by Edward Bond (playwright),

"If you want to escape violence, you don't say 'violence is wrong,' you alter the conditions that create violence."

"Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future. People who do not want writers to write about violence want to stop them writing about us and our time. It would be immoral not to write about violence."

It is unfortunate and very sad that someone should have to commit suicide to have their voice heard. Unfortunate but it would appear, for Sarah Kane, necessary. Sarah was a playwright whose work contained scenes of violence, cruelty, mental anguish and psychological distress, some of which appear to be drawn from her own life. Her early work was misinterpreted and seen as brutal and disgusting. There is speculation that she intended her final play to be produced posthumously and indeed after writing it, at barely 28 she tried to commit suicide, was then taken to hospital, where it seems she did manage to hang herself with her own shoelaces. Following her death, her work has been taken more seriously.

Sarah suggested,

"that society is chronically insane and that in order to function in this insanity one needs to deaden one’s capacity to feel and perceive, to switch off a part of the mind, or ... 'to embrace beautiful lies' "

Edward Bond illustrated this type of chronic insanity,

"We live rational daily lives but our societies make grotesque weapons, economically destroy their environment, make some rich and others poor, some powerful and others impotent and in these and other ways are flagrantly unjust."

In Sarah's play, 4:48 psychosis,

"one of the voices in the play experiences just over an hour of sanity every morning from 4.48am. At all other times, they claim, they cannot touch their essential self: 'When it has passed, I shall be gone again, a fragmented puppet, a grotesque fool.' It is, however, when they regard themselves as insane and grotesque that they are regarded as sane by others ... This raises one of the key questions highlighted in the play: who defines what is and is not sane and according to what criteria?"

I guess I'm trying to express something here but I ain't sure what it is yet.

I'm reading a book at the moment, about the difficulties people sometimes have with expression and communication. It's about a group of people, unable to make themselves understood, some through physical disability, some through psychological inability. But in a way it's also about how we all to some extent, are sealed within our own minds.

It's a curious challenge this, the ability to express the true essence of our thought, the ability or inability to make someone else understand.

Pumpkin to poetry?

Blink

...

(silence)

...

Blink

These stitches are parts of a life. The eventual intent was to represent a whole, using a patchwork of parts. But for the whole to have meaning, there must be balance: silly and serious, the mind and the soul, the light and the darkness.
Some parts touch other lives. No matter what plain words I use, no matter what meaning I intend to convey, should I succeed in my intent, someone will take hurt. I don't seek this. Once words are here, whatever I do with this blog, I can't retract the act of having said them. And I could never forgive myself for acting irresponsibly.

Yet, there may be a way, a format for this dilemma. Perhaps? Maybe?

Powerful poetry that cuts to the core essence of meaning and yet remains ambiguous, anonymous, abstract. A friend recently found an example of precisely that and you can see it here

These words aren't left lying like broken glass for the poet's unknowing adversary to tread, unaware and bare-footed; and yet, razor-sharp, they cut to the quick, exposing his meaning.

"Poetry is language at its most distilled..."
I am a pumpkin. I don't even know what a conjunction is. Even I, familiar with challenge, daunt at this particular path.

Pumpkin to poetry ... it's like walking from Pluto to the Pleiades

It's so much easier to scuttle off and hide under the bed.

Blink

right! how can i say this? when i started this blog, i wanted to do a whole bundle of things. one thing was to write about particular bits that are important to me. good bits, bad bits, wonderful bits, sad bits. but as soon as I start writing about ... about ... some stuff ... like love and the sad bits .. like being held together, like being ripped to shreds, i realised i'd be writing stuff that would hurt someone else. okay, someone else might not pop in here, might not find this place, but if they did i KNOW they'd be hurt. how can i do that? how can i hurt someone like that? and yet there's things i need to say.

then a friend of mine found this poem. see, some bloke found a way to say the kinds of things what i need to say but no-one's been hurt. it's like magic but it's called poetry.

but i can't can't can't can't can't can't do this stuff, can't can't do it. but it's the only way ...

?

Blink

Astronauts on the Wobble space observatory have reported a barely perceptible puff of energy, discovered on an outer satellite of the distant Sol star system, some 18,923 million, parsecs from Pumpkin Minor. Scientists speculate some new form of infinitesimally small micro-nova resulting from the implosion of an unknown, rapidly rotating body, possibly having two floppy ears and a fluffy tail.

Blink

YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGH

Blink

...

(silence)

...

Blink

These stitches are parts of a life. The eventual intent was to ...

I bought books

This post is about books. Scary books, controversial books, challenging books, and wonderful books.

Sorry but it got quite long. I suggest a coffee, a chocolate biscuit and a seat. And look, you're not allowed to jump to the picture at the end (which isn't really there), see what I bought and then tootle off. NOT allowed!

The day started off badly, running on a faulty autopilot. Bookshops are in 'big town' and trips to 'big town' involve a car journey. After thirty minutes of driving daydreams, something seemed quite wrong with the view out of the window. It was ... it was ... I was heading towards the wrong 'big town'!?! Sometimes, just sometimes I really don't like my peanut sized brain! Quickly did a U-turn, feeling quite guilty for this unnecessary little addition to global warming, all my combusted fumes helping to pollute the sky.

The sky in return, wasn't at all happy. It turned grey, then black, then it rained, a torrential rain that slows traffic to a crawl. But nothing was going to spoil my book day! I'd brought a cagoule for my rucksack (it's true, I even took a pic to prove it).

So although my trainers were soaked after a few minutes and rain was dripping into my eyes, rucksack and precious tokens were snug and dry. I had gift tokens worth £22 that would only work in W.H.Smith and a £10 book token to be spent anywhere. With nine books on my list this meant £3.55 per title, or some fierce choices or even scarier, having to spend actual cash! Cash, you see, is in short supply right now.

There was one priority, one book that I really wanted! William Horwood wrote a duology called "The Wolves of Time". Now it's not about people (actually the final volume is and it's not as good), it's about wolves but look, these wolves have characters that most wobbly humans would die for. The story is a journey, and it's about courage, trust and love, murder, betrayal and hope. I bought this five or six years ago, and it's been lovingly and regularly re-read since.

So, after reading the Goldfish's excellent review of a book called "Skallagrigg" by the same Author, I was fascinated to see what a versatile and courageous writer he seems to be. There's a catch though - you can't buy Skallagrigg on Amazon unless you pay for a rare and ridiculously expensive used version.

This didn't bode well - but - today was my special book day and having spent time and effort researching, I decided to be optimistic. The shelves in Seriously Big Bookshop One, were ordered by genre and seeing as I didn't know whether the titles on my list were crime thrillers, horror stories, fantasies or general fiction, it seemed sensible to ask an assistant.

" 'Skallagrigg' by William Horwood, do you stock this?" After a minute spent trying to spell it for him, he said, "I'll have to go look on the computer, it'll be about 5 or 10 minutes", and off he went. Meanwhile I started looking for Dean Koontz. Haven't got a clue about Dean Koontz so I checked crime, then fiction, then not sure where I was but ... found it! "Odd Thomas". At first the writing seemed mechanical, mentioning lawyers and police, slightly hard work for me but then I flicked randomly to page 139:

"From the hamper, Stormy produced a tupperware container filled with shelled walnuts that she had deep-fried and seasoned lightly with both salt and sugar".

Walking slowly back along the aisle, reading more, an exciting bit of storyline was coming, this was getting interesting, then ... I almost stumbled into the assistant. He ... he ...

was holding ... A COPY OF SKALLAGRIGG Yipeeeee!!
I jumped up and down child-like, "Yesss, brilliant, Wow!"
I was being loud, people were looking, I didn't care.
I wanted to cuddle him but he recoiled so I slowly calmed down, realising it might be better for him if I emulated a sane adult, "Thank you, I had hoped but really didn't expect this. Thanks really!"

Now I knew - knew that today - today I would find and buy every single book on my list! Knew it with a certainty!! Do you ever get days like that?

The next item was a challenge, "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov. The Amazon reviewers loved or hated this novel, they said things like, sinister, disturbing, paedoph---. Now you see why it might be a challenge. (I cut the paedo word short because I don't want Google thinking this post might be a discussion of that particular topic.)
But they also said:

"the book took me a long time to read, far longer than many larger novels ... alliteration, puns, word-play, allusions, metaphor, simile, poetry, lyricism, humour, wit, sarcasm".

Considering my limited attention span and lack of literary education this seemed a doubtful choice and possibly over ambitious, so I started reading, and something surprising happened, listen ... page 166:

"A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat ... Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines ..."

Carrying on, the words were honey flowing into my head, like an injection of rich vanilla fudge. Although there were snippets I didn't understand, it was wonderful. I could picture myself sitting for hours tracing through these pages, with a table and a large dictionary. Not sure how I'll deal with the challenge of the subject matter, but how could I not buy this book?

A problem was brewing, these paperbacks didn't all fit into my £10 token. I chose "Skallagrigg", got a penny in change, then thought for a minute. Rarely do I find good material to read in a stationers - previous gift tokens have left me with a large collection of pens and envelopes. But I took my optimism off to W.H.Smith anyhow ... to be pleasantly surprised: they had both Koontz and Lolita.

Browsing through the shelves, took me past a small girl at a window looking out from a title called "Roots of Evil" by Sarah Rayne. Anyone know this author? I hate being swayed by cover images, but this one has been doctored to look particularly haunting. It drew me because her facial features reminded me of Jody Foster. The back cover read:

"Lucy ... discovers the truth about her family's dark and often poignant history - a history which spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz."

Auschwitz. That word has some meaning, and a challenge, for me. The challenge is a strange, complex thing, nothing to do with xenophobia or being Jewish. Maybe I'll blog about it one day, if I can find the words. It also seemed to be about a film called Alraune and there's some blurb inside the cover about this being a real film though I haven't heard of it.

Page 251, I read:

"Mariana Trent was trying to get through the tiny window, crying out to the people below to help her. It was appalling to see her like this, the silk skirt rucked up above her knees, her legs cut and bleeding from the jagged window-frame, and her face crimson and shiny from the heat. There was a terrible moment when Lucy thought her mother's head looked exactly like a giant baked apple in the oven - just at the moment when the apple-skin had turned scarlet with the heat and was starting to split, and all the juices were running out".

Ouch, a jolt of emotive shock treatment, that was a bit raw! But the challenge had already bitten, the title joined the other two, the only purchase of the day not recommended by a blogger.

Three books, £22 worth of tokens, three pennies in change, I went off smiling and happy, to Seriously Big Bookshop Two. This one had a café, and lots of stairs to climb to the fiction floor, the aim being to find "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. Considering the title and knowing from the reviews and from Sketches that this was set in India, it seemed I may have met a stumbling block. Maybe I couldn't buy this book here?

Still, I took my optimism to the enquiry desk, "Hi, I'm looking for a something called Shantar... um, Shantar .."
Took out my list to check the spelling and show him but he just looked at me and said, "Shantaram."
"You've heard of this book?", I asked surprised,
"I've read it", he said.
"You've read it? Really? What's it like?"
"It's a great read", he took me right over to the shelf and pulled it out.
I could hardly believe it, but of course, this was the day when I was going to get everything on my list. Now I loved finding this book but I have a bone to pick with Sketches. There are nine hundred and thirty-three pages and the writing's small, and it took the author thirteen years to write!! I would risk a literary hernia here, so it seemed wise to sample it over a coffee.

On the way, looked at Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything". Liked it a lot but the first thing I read was: "it isn't easy being an organism".
Now that's the kind of thing I'd say. This will sound pretty silly but the more I read, the more this similarity left me thinking that I might blog less, because his dry wit is so like mine (although he's accomplished and I'm a peanut), that I'd end up unintentionally plagiarising. Had no choice but to put it down, even though it's the kind of book I'd love. Daft, aren't I?

I strolled past a non-fiction shelf, and saw but didn't stop to read. "Who Won the Oil Wars", published by a suspiciously named Conspiracy Books. Why does it use the past tense, is it a foregone conclusion now? "PetroDollar Warfare", "Blood and Oil in Central Asia", a whole stream of oil based views.

A political reaction crept into the first draft of this post, polluted it, polluted my happy post, I have since stripped it out!

Picked up a black paperback that had crept into my peripheral vision, an impulse, and kept walking.

The café was busy, couldn't get a good seat. You know, the tables upstairs where you can disappear into the folds of the shelving and furtively read, or observe other book-junkies (why did I say that? can't call myself a book-junkie), so I was confined to the main floor, a table already cluttered with someone else's leftovers - and the coffee was slightly too watery, too bitter and not remotely hot.

The black book was "Lila: An Inquiry into Morals" by Robert Pirsig (who wrote "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), and I'd grabbed it mistakenly thinking it might be light reading. Ouch! What weighty subject matter. But then I've always been curiously attracted to philosophy, a moth-like fascination with enlightened ideas. Read this for a while wondering if I could cope, this kind of stuff might take months-years to read.

I put it down and picked up Shantaram. Page 208:

"Bombay's lepers ... At other times they set up their camp on a swampy patch of vacant land or some outfall for industrial waste. When I first visited them with Abdullah, that day, I found that they'd built their ragged shelters on the rusty stones of a railway siding near the suburb of Khar"

I became curious about Bombay (now Mumbai) and it's lepers, but then something odd happened. It went on to describe a railway depot:

"a vast shunting area - an open space marked by dozens of railway lines and their confluences. At the outer edges, high wire fences enclosed the space."

This description, it jogged a memory, a forgotten memory, of me standing in a huge railway depot one night. India, over twenty-five years ago. It was Jammu Railway Station, and I was lying between stationary goods carriages in the dark, on some filthy, sooty ground, some distance from the main station. I had dysentery. I was trying to get out of the place. I'd forgotten this memory.

There was absolutely no doubt now, about Shantaram, but I had to wake myself from this odd recollection. There were more things on my list and time was passing.

I'd only managed two sips of coffee. Nowhere to take my mess and no space on the serving counter, so my own cluttered leftovers were added to the junk on the table for the next customer.

Having run out of tokens, I paid for Shantaram using hard cash then headed back to Seriously Big Bookshop One. Now, to avoid leaving you with the idea that I have a fascination with bookshops, I'll tell a fib and say that my body needed the exercise.

Back out, into the rain, a fifteen minute walk then up the stairs to Richard Bach's "Illusions of a Reluctant Messiah". Opening this, I read about someone walking on water then swimming in rock. A spiritual but seemingly non-religious, exploration. The format was small and thin, reminding me of a miniature book of poetry I once saw by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese author, but the price was the same as the largest paperback I'd bought so far. Cash was running short now and there was still something else to buy so this would have to wait. Tried to put it back on the shelf - a tight fit on a packed shelf - but it wouldn't go. After a minute of unsuccessful squeezing it popped back out and landed on the floor, flipping open and releasing my folded book list which I must have left inside! Dearie me, that was close, how far would I have gotten without my book list!?

Found Patrick White's "The Tree of Man" and studied it. There was something about this title and that something was nagging at me. Trying to remember, but not really a memory, more like a feeling. I think I have this book! One corner in my acre of junk storage at home, is devoted to boxes of reading material and I think Patrick White is in there. No memory of having read it though. I put it back down and resolved to search through my junk.

My last visit was to children's 8-12, reached via a journey to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, was one of those little sights that stops you in your tracks. The first shelves any basement book-buff gets to see in this shop, are Islam and Judaica, right next to each other. A large green copy of "History of Islamic Philosophy" was sitting almost alongside Anne Frank's Diary. I had been wondering what might constitute, 'living dangerously' for bookshop staff. Maybe this poignant juxtaposition of cultural reading is the result?

Was quite tempted to flick through "History" but it was an almost three inch thick humungous monster of a paperback. Perhaps some knowledgeable person can explain it to me, over lunch and a couple of lifetimes.

Foraging, I browsed and picked up "Introducing Psychological Research", a pet subject of mine (cough, choke). Um, no, what was interesting was the quite fascinating image on the front, a colour and shape piece by Kandinsky. Hadn't seen this before. See how easily I get distracted?

Finally, I found my last book, a fantasy novel by Garth Nix called "Lirael". Flipped it open, page 169:

" 'Not even time to cast a diamond of protection', Sam muttered to himself. He had never actually been into Death by himself before. He'd gone only with his mother, the Abhorsen ..."

Anyone familiar with Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy will know why the idea of "going into Death" can make refreshing and unusual reading. I knew now that I'd love this book. But there was (another) catch. It was the second in a series and the first title, "Sabriel", wasn't on the shelf.

Again I tracked down an assistant, who, after helpfully checking her computer said, "Yes, there's one in stock", but then she couldn't find it either. We hunted through adjacent shelves with no luck. She looked at me with a "Sorry" in her eyes.
"No!", I thought, this can't be allowed to happen, it's my special book day!! I desperately tried to think of a spell I could use, maybe a 'triangle of finding' ... instead I pulled a face, popped my eyes out, squeezed a pair of fluffy eyebrows together and tried to look childishly disappointed and upset. She recoiled as if some evil wizzard of fiction had suddenly come alive, but it seemed to work, "Actually we do have another children's section. Wait here and I'll go and have a look". She turned and half-walked, half-ran.

Meanwhile I browsed. Where did all these Philip Pullman titles come from? "I Was a Rat", "The Scarecrow and His Servant", "Count Karstein". None of these are mentioned in my editions of "Dark materials" or the Sally Lockhart series and I'd never seen them before. Why has no one told me of this wonderful, heavenly place called Children's 8-12? I was just about to pick up "Scarecrow" when the brave assistant, the gorgeous assistant I'd just fallen in love with, appeared and presented me with the last copy of "Sabriel".

So now what?

Here are 3,396 pages of new fiction to read. That's new fiction, and doesn't include the re-reading I had hoped to get in, of "The Wolves of Time", "His Dark Materials", "The Silmarillion" and "Lord of The Rings", totalling 3,810 pages. Nor does it include the 7,078 pages of "The History of Middle Earth" and "The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh", both of which I promised to try and get through this century.

With a grand total of 14,284 pages, I feel like a tortoise who has set himself the task of climbing Mount Everest.

How can I possibly fit all these words into such a small brain, a brain which regularly exhibits the consistency and intellectual capacity of a teaspoon of peanut butter?

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllp!!!

And ...... what to read first?

a blog that cuts

just stumbled on this blog, which i am adding to my bloglinks

i don't normally go for award winning blogs ... and even if you catch me peeking at the odd one here and there, i don't normally go linking to them ... cos for me, awards and popularity and media exposure are all just clutter ...

but this is a blog that cuts through all that shite ... cuts clean right through ... cos it's just a blog that someone's written ... and it talks about food ... and it's given me new music to play ... and in a way it's wonderful cos it asks questions ... but see, they're difficult questions

i'm not saying anyone else should read this blog
that's your choice to make

Whaaat????!

I've just been over to my thesaurus to look up the word, 'people'. I have to go there all the time you see, for the simplest things.

I looked up the word, 'people' because I was talking about 'people' and I got tired of calling people, 'people'. There's no other word for people in my small head (actually it's a big head but it echoes a lot in here), so I had to look it up. Right!! (sorry but I'm in a mood)

Anyway, while I was there I found this entry listed under Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus:

Main Entry: beautiful people
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: wealthy fashionable people
Synonyms: aristocracy, beau monde, café society, cream of society, crème de la crème, cultured class, elite, famous people, glamorous people, glitterati, ... blah blah ...

So, "Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus" ... exactly how do you get off on defining beautiful people as wealthy and fashionable, hmm????! Exactly what happened to plain ordinary beautiful people? The ones who don't need money, fame, culture or creamy bits to be beautiful!

Come on, before I take my chewing gum and lodge it half way up your left nostril. Let's have an answer!

You're supposed to be a shiny thesaurus, a reference for the english speaking world, a reliable place, but this is just complete pants. In fact it's a pile of REALLY ANNOYING NONSENSE!!!!!!!! Now I'm so mad I'm going to write the words millennium and Roget and poo and ugly, all on a piece of paper, crumple it up then jump up and down on it until I run out of puff ... then ... well then I'll just flush it down the loo ... OK!!

Needless to say, I didn't find a better word for 'people'.

my little big bang

A few years ago, a number of things went boom. Some things though, are hard to write about and perhaps are best simply acknowledged. That's what this post is for.

Choices

After reading Sketches thought provoking post which touched on drugs, hardship and abuse, I found myself thinking about choices.

When we're young we're influenced by a lot of complex factors which can be difficult to unravel at the time.

Speaking from personal experience, I had socialisation from my parents, schools, 'friends' and the wider community. My parents had strong feelings of pride, expectations of career paths and specific ideas about how they wanted me to develop. At school, I learned a little about education and a lot about abuse. I suffered peer pressure as we all do (all manner of beasties here) and then of course there was everyone else (wider family and society).

In addition to all the normal stuff, children are sometimes exposed to abuses and cruelties that they really shouldn't see. While trying to understand these alien experiences we can easily be subject to extreme feelings of anger, stress, worry, and self doubt which can be potentially destabilising.

And of course life is transient. Our developing state of mind can change radically over weeks and months because while we are young we are continually striving to make sense of all these influences and also develop within ourselves.

The older me has learned that feeling proud is something that comes from positive energy and is simply about a personal reward I get for seeing a person or an idea develop. When I was younger I had a kind of desperate pride. A destructive pride that could forgive cruelty and excuse all manner of ill deeds.

For myself, there were periods when I was terrified, in a way I simply can't describe, to just walk out of my house. I ran away from home when I was 12 and someone (how can I say this safely ...) who had a very strong influence on me, was committed to a psychiatric institution for a considerable time. I had to grow up and experience all the normal pressures with these (and other) background influences but I don't consider myself to be unusual or particularly disadvantaged. We all have ghosts buried somewhere from childhood and many people have grown through far worse.

All I'm saying in this bit is that when we look at people, things aren't always as they seem. When I hear or read about cases of abuse, drug addiction, violence involving young people, I don't find myself judging or rationalising. How could I when I don't know the full context?

So, what's my point?

When we're young we don't have a lot of wisdom to spend when making choices. Sometimes our choices are made as a result of confusion and reaction to difficult events.

I don't see anything today that will eradicate hardship, drugs or abuse. But I feel what's important for the individual is what happens after these experiences. It's how we extract ourselves from this that defines us.

It takes wisdom to choose the right path
It takes strength to come back after having chosen the wrong path.

I'd like to conclude now but I've run out of spoons and lost my thread. I might re-read this tomorrow to see if it made any sense.
..
It's tomorrow, I re-read it. The writing is awful but I'll get confused if I try to change anything so it's staying.

I wish

I wish I could've been with Vincent Van Gogh when he painted his 1889 "La Crau"

I wish the Russians hadn't invaded Afghanistan.

I wish I'd been able to speak to Christopher Reeve.

I wish I hadn't done that thing to that person. He was being a complete arsehole but I shouldn't have done that. It must have shredded his self-esteem. I still feel terrible about it.

I wish I'd had the staying power to play a musical instrument.

I wish someone I loved hadn't died in that terrible way.

I wish I could find enough of my brain to hold a conversation with the Dalai Lama.

I wish I could see my death just out of the corner of my eye, I'd like to invite him for a beer.

I wish I could share the feeling I get when I listen to this song.

Listening to: "You Don't Love Me When I Cry", Laura Nyro
Feeling: all wished out