Solitude is my heart
The cottage in my head.
She stands, proud and defiant,
Yet perfectly at home,
Within her environment.
She sits atop a cliff edge
And gazes out to sea.
There is a path,
If you are soft of foot,
That will take you to the shore.
Long rambles through the wilderness
Are but one of her delights.
A hearth in every room,
Besides which an armchair and a book,
A million little pleasures, should you but care to look.
There are pebbles in the sand
And pebbles in the well,
But none are in my heart
When in My Cottage
I alone do dwell.
My cottage is far away from humans,
I am the only one in sight.
My companions are my heart, my brain
And all the creatures
Of both day and night.
Solitude is my heart
The cottage in my head.
And I shall live there all eternity
Till my last thought is dead.
Miss von Goetz
The ramblings, both literal and figurative, of a free spirit.
Wednesday, 20 September 2017
Thursday, 8 December 2016
the search for self
The search for self is a funny thing:
Who am I?
Who am I?
A more appropriate question might be: who is the I
that is asking the question? And why do we need, or at least think we
need, to know?
What do I like?
What do I want to do with my life?
What do I like eating?
What kind of person do I want to be?
The list goes on and on. But why question? Why do we want to know the answers to these things? When you look at them in the cold light of day we see, at their core, that they are very selfish. They are self centred. They are all about that mysterious "I". And who is watching the "I"? For there must be a watcher in order to acknowledge that the "I" exists.
Just like, in our society, there must be money (or
the exchange of goods or service) for work to be necessary; like so
there must be a watcher of the "I" in order for the "I"
to exist.
So who is the watcher?
It could be argued that the watcher is conscious
thought. It could be further argued that the "I" is the
physical body. What we feed into the conscious thought directly
correlates to the judgements passed on the physical body and
therefore how we relate to and describe the "I" as being.
I am short
I am curvy
I have a high sex drive
I like food
I work hard, but I am often lazy
These judgements do not tell us who we are. They
are merely statements of fact. So, who am I?
I am a woman
I am a sister
I am a daughter
I am a friend
Is who I am dependent on my physical and emotional
attributes and how others relate to me and I to them? No. Certainly not. So, who am I?
I am kind but I have a terrible temper
I am a poet
I am a cook
I am a gardener of the mind
But surely these are things I do; not what I am!?
So, who am I?
I am an animal
I am a collection of cells and neurons
I am cosmic matter
I came from star dust
When objects collided in space and time they
forced new life into being, I am one of those beings
I am 4 billion years old
Ah. So now we see how small you are. How
insignificant. And now we see why you search for who you are. You
must be more than that. Because if you are star dust, that means
everyone is star dust. If you are 4 billion years old: everyone must
be 4 billion years old. In sentient beings there exists the ego. The
ego is the "I" - the ego strives to be more than it is. It
lays down laws and likes and dislikes, it questions our choices, it
creates a false version of ourselves and of the people we are
connected to. The ego shades everything in the tint of its own rosy
glow.
See that man? He is my one true love. He is good
and kind and sweet and I love him. Therefore he must love me.
Therefore I must have him. Therefore if he does not behave in the way
I have imagined him... he hurts me.
So you have hurt yourself.
NO! It was him. He did it. He was false, he was
not his true self. I know his true self. His true self resides in my
heart.
So you have hurt yourself. Hurt yourself with a
construct of a man. A construct of a man. A man who does not exist.
But he does exist. See he is there, living,
breathing, laughing.
The man exists yes. The physical body. But that
body is inhabited by his ego. Not yours.
The man in my heart is not that man?
He is not that man. He is a construct of that man.
He is my construct. I made him. But he is not
real. Only his shell is real. I filled him. Filled him with my hopes.
My desires.
He has other hopes and desires.
So now we see how the ego destroys not only us but
our friendships also. Constantly demanding. Judging. Claiming truth
where there is none to claim. Making false statements based on
whimsy.
All that from star dust!
From dust we came and to dust we shall return.
Let not the ego spoil you.
Let not the ego spoil you.
Friday, 14 October 2016
Mental Health in Britain
On Monday 10th October it was World Mental Health
Day and many charities involved in mental health care and research
took the opportunity to spread the word of taking mental health more
seriously. Research charity MQ released figures showing a large discrepancy in research funding for
mental health versus more "popular" medical campaigns like
cancer research: mental health research receives 22% less funding
than cancer. With funding and continued research cancer, HIV and AIDS
are all no longer the life/death sentences that they once were: while
people cannot shake the illnesses completely they can, with
appropriate medication and support, continue to live their lives for
many years. The mental health community is urging the public to
invest in mental health research with a similar passion and
enthusiasm in the hopes of seeing similar success.
As a society we have become more accepting of
mental health conditions, we are becoming more understanding of them
and more vocal about supporting people who have them. But who are
the people who have them? Pretty much everyone!! Mental health
conditions are becoming much more prevalent. Statistics suggest that
1 in 4 people have bi-polar, 1 in 5 people have depression, 1 in 100
people will experience schizophrenic episodes. Perhaps mental health
problems are becoming more prevalent because as a society we are
becoming more open and more accepting and it's actually just a case
of more people seeking help and opening up about what goes on in
their heads, rather than continuing to maintain the British "stiff
upper lip" or perhaps mental health conditions are becoming more
prevalent because the environments that are most conducive to mental
breakdowns are becoming more wide spread.
Back in 2013 Dr. Ed Mitchell, a clinical fellow to
NHS England's Director for Long Term Conditions, wrote that "Mental
illness causes almost a quarter of our burden of disease (22.8%), yet
receives only 11% of NHS funding. (For comparison cancer causes 15.9%
of that burden). Whilst 92% of people with diabetes are in
receipt of treatment, only 28% of people with mental illness get
treatment for their problems. Yet we know that people with serious
mental illness are at risk of dying 25 years earlier than those
without such illness." - see the rest of his article here.
Those are some pretty big discrepancies! And not
much has changed in the past three years; in 2014, Heidi Ledford
wrote this
for nature.com where she explains
that "more than 350 million people are affected by depression,
making it one of the most common disorders in the world." She
goes on to say that "two thirds of people who commit suicide
have the condition." Despite this there is a continued lack of
funding. If this were a physical condition there would be,
understandably, huge public outcry. Yet the silence surrounding the
lack of facilities, care, services and research funding for mental
health is deafening. For years in western society we have dismembered
our minds from our bodies. Our medicine is reactive rather than
preventative. We live in a state of exertion to the point of collapse
both physically and mentally but when we collapse mentally we are
told to "pull it together" and "carry on".
In 2015 the BBC reported that mentalhealth services had their budgets slashed by 8%: a reduction
reportedly worth £600 million, while at the same time referrals to
community mental health teams had increased by 20%. It's not hard to
see, with figures and numbers like that, why so many people with
mental health crisis's are falling through the cracks and not
receiving the treatment and care that they need. If we, as a society,
aren't taking mental health seriously then the doctors in our society
aren't going to either. I spent Monday in the Accident &
Emergency department of Whitechapel Hospital with a friend who has
been depressed for almost two years and has been steadily falling
into suicidal thoughts yet when she approached her GP months ago and
cried in his office while telling him about how suicidal she was he
merely handed her a leaflet and told her to refer herself. After a
rejection like that it was weeks before she was able to pluck up the
courage to call the people on the leaflet, only to be told that
someone would call her back within 24 hours and no one did. Later we
discovered that instead of calling her back they had called her GP as
they had deemed that she needed more immediate help and they had told
her GP to call her and provide that support. Her GP never called her.
Once again faced with a rejection from the system she spent another
few weeks battling suicidal thoughts and fighting with herself to
prevent her from cutting herself (so that she could "prove"
she needed help). Feeling that what she was dealing with wasn't
"serious" enough to warrant a visit to A&E she instead
went to her local walk-in clinic who had to tell her that they
weren't equipped to deal with such things... At what point does it
become "serious" enough to visit A&E? The minute you
feel suicidal. That's it. There's no wiggle room or 'maybe I'll feel
better in the morning.' If you're feeling suicidal you need to talk
to someone about it and you need to talk to them about it then and
there. That's why we have the emergency walk in services for mental
health. And the more people who use them the better; because talking
to someone there and then in that precise moment in time may prevent
a suicide or a suicide attempt; because it may circumvent a
full-blown mental health condition from occurring later down the
line; because the more people who use them the more the need for them
will be recognised and the more funding can be secured for them.
Throughout 2016 the BBC have been reporting on
various aspects of mental health including diagnosis, care,
facilities and underfunding:
January: Mentalhealth: 'One in four adults in England has a condition'; Risein serious incidents at English mental health trusts
March: NHSchild mental health money 'missing' despite investment; Mentalhealth – “We must have change”
April: Mentalhealth patients wait 'years' for treatment; Mentalhealth deaths under-reported, says charity; BBCPanorama Investigates “Broken” Children’s Mental HealthServices
July: KentNHS mental health boss: Changes 'vital' to care; Pregnantmental health patient 'pinned to floor'
September: Face-downrestraint continuing in NHS mental health wards; Takingmental healthcare to the homeless; Youngwomen at 'highest mental health risk'
October: Youngpeople's mental health care is 'inadequate' according to specialistnurses; Mentalhealth campaign Time To Change gets £20m boost; Suiciderisk 'higher in community'
We need to start changing the conversation around
mental health. Yes, being in a depression is horrible, but it's not
the end of the world and you do come out of them. The more you focus
on how horrible it is and how much you'd like it to stop the less
time you are spending on having a conversation with yourself about
why it's happening in the first place. You and only you are
responsible for your mental health, if you don't tell people you're
struggling they're not going to have any idea and they can't help you. It's not like having a
fever or a broken arm - people can't see into the mind and witness
all the twisted things that are going on inside. They'll either think
that you're having an off-day/week/year if it goes on longer they'll
just assume that you're a moody person, that you're an introvert,
that you like to keep yourself to yourself. The longer you leave
matters of the brain undiagnosed and untreated the worse they become.
Imagine you have a broken leg; you splash a bit of cold water on it, maybe go lie-down
in a dark room for an hour, cover up the pain with some
paracetamol and hope for the best. Eventually the wound is going to
become infected, the bone is going to set in the wrong place, walking
is impossible, you're in constant discomfort, pain, irritation. You
stop going to work, you hide in your room, you don't want anyone to
see the horrible mess that is your leg. Eventually you drag yourself
to your GP's office and they make an appointment with a specialist and tell you to go home and wait for the letter, they don't know how long it's going to take. It takes 2 months to arrive. You see the specialist, they ask you to
make notes about the changes in the colours of the bruising and the
weeping of the wound and keep a diary of what your range of motion is
with the leg on a daily/twice daily basis... You come back two months
later with your diaries and notes and they tell you: you've broken
your leg, it hasn't set properly, it's hideously infected because you didn't get it seen to sooner, they make an appointment
with another specialist and you have to wait for three months to meet
them just to find out if there's something they can do to help you,
they say no they can't actually help you but they can send your file to
another specialist whose remit you do fall under. You wait
another three months to meet this next specialist, they say they can
help you but they're very busy and they don't have any spaces
available to fit you in at the moment and they'll send you a letter
in nine months to one year with the details of your first treatment
appointment. They promise that if an opening comes up sooner they'll
be in touch. All this time your leg is growing worse and worse, it's
a dead-weight latched onto your body that gets heavier and more
grotesque with each passing day.
How much easier would your life have been if you'd
gone to A&E to begin with? How appalling was the service that you
received? Would you stand for it?
Now imagine that instead of a broken leg, an
illness has taken root in your mind. Now take yourself through the
exact same stages laid out above. That's what using mental health
services is like for too many people. This has been my experience of using mental health services over the past eighteen months. I'm still waiting for that last letter outling the details of my first therapy appointment. On average it takes 10
years from initial mental distress for a person to seek help, by the time they have sought
help the problem is already deeply rooted. We need
to make a change in the way we think about mental health, we need to
stop side-lining it and saying "it's okay, it's just in my head,
I'll be fine." The longer you leave it the bigger it grows, the
deeper it sinks in its claws, the weaker your grasp on reality
becomes, the longer it takes to find the right treatment for you, the
longer your healing process takes, and, the more likely it is that
you will harm yourself while waiting for help.
Seeing the world in a different way to other
people is nothing to be ashamed of. I think that that is the biggest
hurdle for people with burgeoning mental health problems. They don't
want people to think they're 'crazy.' They're afraid they'll get
locked up in an insane asylum and that their lives will be over. That
they'll be injected with drugs and abused by staff and turned into
zombies. So they keep quiet. A lot of us have been raised to believe
that there are things that are polite to talk about and things that
aren't. Financial and emotional crisis's fall into those categories.
It's not 'nice' to ask how much someone makes, or what their turnover
is, or if they can afford to feed themselves and their families
tonight. It's not 'nice' to pry into people's minds and really and
truly ask them how they are coping after the loss of a loved one, or
their job, or their house. Being 'nice' basically equates to ignoring
your fellow human beings and pretending like we're not all in the
same boat, that we don't all have the same issues and struggles.
Being 'nice' basically also means that we make everyone around us
feel worse because while they're struggling to maintain a façade of
wealth and happiness they believe that for you it's not a façade,
they believe that you've got it all, that there's some kind of secret
to success and that if they work hard enough and put in enough hours
they'll find the secret too.
There is no secret.
Everyone is struggling with something. None of us
have achieved total health, and by TOTAL health I mean:
1) Nutritional
2) Emotional
3) Mental
4) Sexual
5) Physical
6) Social
7) Spiritual
8) Medical
How healthy are you in these eight areas? What
changes do you need to make to your life to make you as healthy as
you want to be in the areas that you most want to be healthy in?
Are you currently depressed or do you ever gets
bouts of depression? Think about why? What part of yourself are you
ignoring or suppressing? Why are you doing that? Keep asking yourself
why. And if asking yourself isn't enough, get other people to ask you
why. Volunteer as a patient to psychology students, ask your GP to
refer you for therapy. Do something about the way you feel. Don't buy
into the "Keep Calm and Carry On" mantra.
It is your life and only you can be in control of
it. Don't give that control away and don't wait till it's almost or
too late. Do something about your mental health now.
~
Friday, 22 July 2016
Embrace Your Shadow Self
For over a century in western society anyone who
displayed any level of consciousness or other worldly intelligence
that wasn't socially acceptable was carted off to a mad house where
they were locked up, drugged, experimented on and generally
treated like second class citizens and abnormalities of the human
race.
Yet, if you read world history and ancient myths
you soon discover that people who were gifted with extra-ordinary
mental abilities were generally hailed as seers, oracles, harbingers,
prophets, fortune tellers, soothsayers, mediums, channellers,
psychics, diviners, clairvoyants, augurs... The majority felt it
better to live as hermits or, at the very least, as loners. Seekers
would often have to go to remarkable lengths in order to find the
desired oracle at their hide-out either atop a mountain, down a
cavernous valley or in a distant wilderness. They were scary people;
they moved and spoke in strange ways, did bizarre things, lived in
unconventional fashions but they were as necessary to some
societies as their judiciary systems and water works.
If you rifle through the annals of
western history you will come across exceptional thinkers, painters,
musicians, writers, all of whom (excerpts from their letters and
diaries have told us) suffered heavily with mental strains -
depressions, elations. Tchaikovsky
said "Life is beautiful in spite of everything! ... There are
many thorns, but there are roses too."
Rilke
has said so many beautiful things on the subject of melancholia
(which we so ineptly call clinical depression), two of my favourites:
1. "How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths
about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps
all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to
see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in
its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
2. "You mustn’t be frightened if a
sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if
an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and
over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening
to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its
hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your
life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you
don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
Why do you want to persecute yourself with the
question of where all this is coming from and where it is going?
Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions
and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything
unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the
means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one
must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to
break out with it, since that is the way it gets better."
It is not hard then to come to a realisation that
most of us, or at least most of those who have left their biggest
mark - either on us or on history, have tumbled to the very depths of
their souls and thrashed there in wild torment. How else can they
have risen again, and with such words of wisdom and clarity?
Zen teaches us that until we have felt and
experienced something ourselves we cannot know it. We can
intellectualise, we can surmise and ruminate but we cannot truly
understand till our hearts have melded with our minds though that
most challenging of tasks; feeling. Feeling all the feels. Sitting
with them patiently. Watching how each feeling expresses itself in
each part of us, in our physical, astral and causal bodies. And how
those feelings loop back again and come to us in words and thoughts
that we can grasp and express. Not just to ourselves but in ways that
we can vocalise and teach others of our experience.
If you see a mental breakdown you immediately
attempt to file it in your brain in a way that you can make sense of
it and understand it. That is the nature of humans. If you experience
a mental breakdown yourself you do the same. Only it is much harder.
Reality has slipped through your fingers, you can't tell what is
truth and what is not. There are no signposts. There is no guide. You
are all alone in a world you do not understand and have never heard
of. There is no logical way to file what you are seeing and feeling,
not least because you cannot be sure what you are seeing and feeling
is real. And here's the kicker: it is real. All of it. Even the
fantasy. Even the not real. It is all real. It is your experience.
And all experiences are real. Let us say you have two heads, you know
you don't really have two heads, so you refuse to acknowledge the
existence of the other head. The other head grows bigger and more
demanding it shouts at you and demands you pay attention, you
steadfastly refuse to give in. You believe if you give in to the
madness of admitting you have a second head then there will be no end
to the insanities and non-realities you may start admitting to. So
the head grows bigger still, and more twisted and grotesque and
finally, you snap. You believe you have gone mad. You believe that is
the end of it and you give up. It is never so conscious as all that,
but that is the general gist of it. And then you are mad. But you
have been mad from the moment you refused to acknowledge that you had
a second head. Because it was there. Right in front of you. Talking
to you, trying to get your attention. It was there and real the whole
time. It was real because you saw it. You made yourself mad by
pretending it wasn't there and that it wasn't real. You did not
acknowledge it and it grew into a monster that you could no longer
control. And then it consumed you. This is the society we live in. We
are taught logic and reason and nothing else. If logic dictates that
we all have one head then in order to maintain your standing in the
society you live in you can't risk admitting even to yourself that
you have another head. But if, at the very beginning, you said "Hello
second head what do you want?" you might have ended up having
rather a nice conversation and learning something about yourself or
even the world and then perhaps the second head would have gone away
because all it wanted was a chat.
The more we struggle and push against things that
we don't like, the more stressful and overwhelming they become. Every
human has the capacity to completely and utterly lose all sense of
reality. Genetics plays a big part, as does environment. But even if
you have no genetic predisposition to insanity, anxiety, depression
it does not mean you are immune. Even if your environment is
conducive of peaceful, loving and caring thoughts and feelings,
again, you are not immune. I believe that the universe sends us
challenges and obstacles to overcome only when it feels you are ready
for them. Or, to put it another way, I believe that we ourselves do
not see the next challenge or obstacle till we know we are ready to
take it on. Sometimes we freak out, even if we are expecting the
challenge, we think we're not ready, we're not strong enough, not
prepared enough, whatever, but that negative cycle of thinking is
what disables us from succeeding. As soon as we've got to the point
where it is make or break most human beings will end up making. They
will put aside, temporarily, all the doubts and feelings of
inadequacy and take the challenge on, because there is no
alternative. They have to. And they give it their best shot and 9
times out of 10 they pass. Which gives you a feeling which is a
little like a power boost: I did it! I can do anything! Like a
character levelling up in a video game - their health bar increases,
their power bar increases, they have access to better and more
powerful and more interesting items and areas of the game. Game
makers take all that from life.
What then about mental health? Those of us who
have mental health challenges are at a disadvantage in our society.
Our society deems that there is something wrong with us. Something
that needs to be fixed or taken away or stopped. We need to be made 'whole'
again. And because this is the pervading thought process we ourselves
begin to think it too. We have an episode and it debilitates us, we
shout and curse and wish it would go away, we swallow their pills
because they say it will make us 'better'. We live in shadow states,
not quite mad, not quite sane. We feel like we are half a person. We
are not. And it is shameful for society to make us think along those
lines. We are whole people, we are just whole in a different way. We
need guidance and acceptance for who we are as we are. Not as society
thinks we should be. The more society teaches us to rail against our
conditions and aberrations of mind the harder it is to sit with and
converse with those episodes when they do occur. If we are told there
is something wrong with us we are naturally going to push against it
and wish it gone. If we are encouraged, on the other hand, to have a
conversation with ourselves and sit with and explore those episodes,
however hard it may be, we may see, as Rilke suggests and I know from
personal experience to be true, 'that sickness is the
means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one
must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to
break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.' It is very hard to be both patient and doctor but
that is what you must be in order to fully understand and learn from
what is going on in your mind. No one knows you better than you and
if you are feeling at a loss and like you don't know yourself at all
then perhaps that is why you are being sent these mental challenges:
so that you can get to know yourself and become all that you were
meant to become.
Imagine then my horror when a well known mental
health research group emailed me a short while ago to ask for
feedback on their proposed new advertising campaign to be launched
later this year:
"We swear to stop it, if you swear to help"
Mental health is not something that can be
stopped. It can be supported, accepted, nurtured, alleviated, but it
cannot be stopped. No amount of drugs or therapy or research can stop
mental health. Each individual needs to find their own best preferred
and effective method for them, but even then it does not mean they
are 'cured' - it does however mean that they have come to an
agreement within themselves that it is part of what makes them who
they are and they have accepted that within themselves. All society
needs to do is come to the same level of acceptance, and thus
facilitate and help those who are struggling to accept themselves.
The above type of marketing lies at the core
problem of society's attitude to mental health: that it is bad and
that it needs to be got rid of. If you take away all the nasty bits
of life then you cannot enjoy the roses. For without the endurance of
misery there is no real appreciation for the beautiful. If life were entirely a bed of roses the roses would lose
their beauty for lack of a contrast. It is the contrast that makes
life beautiful and ugly. Both are necessary. Both must be embraced.
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
Touching Lives
It is quite amazing how deeply and despairingly we can fall into a "depression" - such an ineloquent and unexpressive word for so profound mind altering feelings. A far more apt word would be "melancholy" there is something graceful about it; and suggestive of more obscure and vastly tangled roots. Which is what it is like when you are in there. Thrashing wildly, desperate for release from the oppressive stifling darkness. Methodically ruminating over each root and trying to find, in the tangled web, some meaning, some logic, some reason, some escape either to the light - a lifting of the melancholy - or an escape to the darkest of the dark places; an everlasting escape by spilling blood or suffocating breath. Which to choose? What way to turn? It is not a choice. Not in that place. There are no choices there.
Life. It goes on around us endlessly in ever decreasing, repeating, increasing spirals. On and on and on. Relentlessly. Even in the quiet still of a desolate field there is a relentlessness about life. Standing on a bridge in a busy city centre watching the waves as they lap at the supports. Never ending, never ceasing. There is no end game. There's just is. It is what it is, we are what we are, they are what they are and, ultimately, we are all one. Passersby rushing to and fro trying to get somewhere, to do something: rarely if ever taking the time to simply breathe and notice. Notice. Not change. Not modify. Notice. See. See what there is to be seen, acknowledge and move on. And still the little waves smack, smack, smack on the bridges feet. The birds fly over the desolate field. There is quiet all around. There is noise all around. The hum of traffic burning in our ears. And still the little waves smack, smack, smack on the bridges feet.
" ... it cannot be communicated by words or mental concepts but by subtle insights, gradual glimpses of the wholeness and connectedness of life. There is a quiet grace under all this ..." ~ Carl Faure
Why do we exist? We know that life goes on around us regardless of our participation in it therefore what difference does it make if we are active, inactive or simply no longer exist?
We have no answer to that. Life is experiential. We exist to experience.
If we do not participate in life then the lives of others are poorer for not having been touched by us. If we actively participate then the lives of those around us are profoundly richer, as are ours, for the mutual exchange. To no longer exist? For some an unthinkable thought, for others a part of their daily lives - do I stay today or is today the day I leave? But to no longer exist makes us the poorest of all. We rob our future selves of future experience no matter if it is good or bad. Out of the bad comes the good out of the good comes the bad. There is no bad, no good. There is no free, no trapped. There is only experience and what we make of it. To no longer exist robs those whose lives we have touched of future exchanges. It robs from and impoverishes the lives of those we would have and were destined to touch had we not left.
To live is a burden indeed. To die a greater one.
Thursday, 26 March 2015
Those Two Little Words
Me: Baby mice, I'm looking for Cookie (farm cat) to feed them to him.
Me 2: Lemons, courgettes, random other vegetables and groceries.
Me 3: An amber brooch worth about £10K
Them: Of course you do!
My Aunt: It's raining here, be safe cycling over, are you wearing your waterproofs?
Me: I've got my shorts on.
My Aunt: Of course you have!
People: Why aren't you wearing shoes?
Me: I couldn't be bothered to put them on.
Them: Of course you couldn't!
People: What are you knitting?
Me: 50 egg cosies for my neighbour.
Me 2: A bra for a client's runway show.
Me 3: A pair of boxers for a friend to have a laugh with his Mrs.
Me 4: A giant bonsai cherry blossom tree.
Them: Of course you are!
People: What's that funny bump under your jumper?
Me: My hot water bottle.
Them: Of course it is!
People: Why are you wearing a bright orange dress and reindeer antlers?
Me: Because I'm going to my friends funeral.
Them: Of course you are!
People: Why are you lying on the floor under that desk?
Me: Because I was sleepy so I decided to have a nap.
Them: Of course you did!
Person: I don't think I've ever seen you wearing lip-gloss Rachel?
Me: It's not lip-gloss. It's German nappy rash cream.
Person: Of course it is!
People: Rachel, what are you doing?
Me: I got cold!
Person: So you decided to cook yourself? How long did it take for that idea to go from logical to bat-shit insane?
Friday, 20 March 2015
A Question of Sexy
About a year ago I got into a conversation on twitter with a fashion magazine about what sexy is and how and who defines it. We agreed that I would write an article for them, but in the end it never got published: so now I get to post it on my own blog!
* * *
‘Sexy’
is many things. It’s a look, an action, a thought, but mostly it’s
a feeling. ‘Sexy’ is pretty much anything that illicits sexual
reactions whether physical or mental. By its very nature it is wholly
subjective and, as such, a one-size-fits-all formula for what sexy is
cannot be defined. It’s not enough to say “you are” or “you
are not” sexy, for no better reason than what rings one persons’
bell may not even jingle anothers’.
Sexy as an
image is what drives common understanding and use of the word. Sexy
as a concept is much more intangible and harder to comprehend. Take,
for example, a man playing in a park with some children, four
straight women observe him: one wonders where their mother is and why
that man is playing with them, she worries he is a paedophile and
keeps a wary eye on him and her own children. Another admires the
active role the carer or father is taking in the care of his charges.
The third finds him mildly attractive for his obvious fatherly and
husbandly qualities. And the fourth simply can’t take her eyes off
of him and can’t stop thinking about how great sex with him would
be. A fifth woman is completely oblivious to his presence. If you
substitute the women for gay men or the man for a woman and the
straight women for men/lesbians you will still observe the same basic
reactions; some people are interested, some more so than others, and
some are oblivious, not interested or actively turned off.
When we
meet someone that we are attracted to, two thoughts invariably shoot
through our minds, 1) “Wow! That is the most
dreamy/sexy/gorgeous/fuckable person I’ve ever seen!” followed
quickly by, 2) “How do I look? What am I wearing? Do I have
anything on my face/in my teeth?” Sadly, the second thought
invariably includes “I’m so ugly/plain/boring, there’s no way
that heavenly creature would ever look at me” along with a wish to
look more like a favourite actor, musician or idol. This is
the legacy of years of saturation that we are not “good enough”
the way we are. The fashion industry has turned human bodies into
instruments of sex appeal. If you don’t look like what’s in vogue
then you are not sexy ('good') enough. “But that’s okay,”
whisper the fashion intelligentsia, “You can buy this and that
product and these or those clothes and all will be okay. THEN you’ll
be sexy enough.” In fashion, sexy has become an ambiguous word
coined as a generic term for whatever is in season but even in the
urban dictionary, users describe the term to mean: ‘the whole
package, including that certain something you can’t put your finger
on: it may include the persons attire, voice and attitude.’
The many variables that make up the fashion industry have a vested interest in
making (and then keeping) people dissatisfied with themselves and
feeling inadequate. Just imagine what would happen if everyone in the
developed world realised that they were good enough, just the
way they are. If we all woke up one morning and said “I’m pretty
damn satisfied with the way I am.” … It would be conglomerate
apocalypse! What most people come to realise, at some point in their
lives, is that it’s all a big farce: physical appearances are not
what matters. Not to mention the massive waste of time, money, energy
and resources that go into creating, marketing, buying and applying
the latest fashion must haves.
The
clarion call for ‘sexy’ has been sounding for a long time, but it
has been so perverted in recent years that conscious Gen Y’s and
disenchanted Gen X’s are actively fighting back: ethical
consumerism and realism are part of the new sexy. The ugly sides of
the fashion industry (such as animal testing and the fur trade) are
steadily being sidelined; the modern consumer does not want to be
sexy at the expense of another creatures’ discomfort or life.
Although non-photoshopped images are being demanded, and released,
the doctoring continues and the “sex sells” mantra is still
widely, if not solely, used in all aspects of the fashion and beauty
machinery. ‘Sexy’ should not be a commodity. What is the point of
having millions of people thinking that a select group of individuals
(and only those individuals) are the epitome of sexy? The vast
majority of their fan base is never going to meet them, even less
engage with them on any meaningful level. ‘Sexy’ is part of what
keeps a species growing; sexy, is all about having sex. What
good does it do you if the person you desire not only does not know
you exist but is never going to? Being a geek and having a
crush on one of the most popular kids at school is one thing; you
actually have a chance, you are at least in the same locality. Having
a crush, sometimes to the point of obsession, on a famous person
(living or dead (eek)!) is entirely fruitless. They will never know
you exist, much less reciprocate your feelings - especially the dead
ones. You’re setting yourself up for loneliness, and potential
partners up for failure.
The number
of social media sights dedicated to hook-ups speaks volumes of the
desire to meet and sleep with ‘sexy’ people. Sex will, of course, always be extremely relevant, and as a society we are working on better communication between lovers as well as creating more, and better, user-friendly devices to bring the amazing benefits of a healthy sex-life to more and more people. That being said, the
new wave of Gen Y is fast moving away from current attitudes of sex
for the sake of sex. They are far more interested in socio-politic
affairs than personal sexual gratification; the very existence of
A-Sexual Awareness Day is a small hint to changing trends and what to
expect in just a few years. Gen Y are looking for connections on a
deeper level than the purely physical can provide.
But what of 'sexy'? What is it? True sexy is four fold: visual, chemical, ideological and emotional.
On first attraction (which is usually visual and/or chemical) what we
find sexy is what we perceive the other to be, and how much pleasure
we think they will provide for us or that we think we can provide for
them. In other words, it’s all about individual gratification. When
and if secondary (ideological and emotional) attraction comes into
play the desires become about us. And that’s when the sexy
really hots up. It’s no longer about the singular. It’s about
what we can do together to create something great. Whether
that’s in the bedroom, at a protest or in a boardroom, when you
work together to achieve a common goal, and you reach it, the
euphoria released by a climax that has been achieved by connected
parties is the most sexy thing you will ever experience.
The only
known formula for individual sexiness is being true to who you are:
you know that feeling when you’re happy and float on top of the
world? When you are oozing confidence and aren’t even thinking of
whether or not you are ‘sexy’ – that is when you are at your
most sexy. And if you need some help turning it on, you can always
try “breathing through your genitals” as they say in the
theatre...!
.
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Socially unacceptable conversations
"You
shouldn't be talking about those sorts of things in front of Charlie,
Rachel!"
I am
often told that I shouldn't be talking about "those sorts of
things" sometimes
it's because really they don't want me talking about it all, and at
others, as in this instance, it's because of a gender difference. I
was talking to two female colleagues and one male
colleague about a new self-love
device that
tracks the reactions of the individual user and then adapts and makes
suggestions based on the data that it collects during arousal. A
female colleague came into the room, quickly gauged what the
conversation was about and immediately condemned it because there was a man participating in it. My reply to this (as it always is) was: "It
is precisely because he has different bits that it is so necessary to
have him included in the conversation! If the opposite sexes talked
more about sexual pleasure and shared more information with each
other there would be a lot less confusion around."
Why
is it that talking about the most natural part of
being a human is so frowned on in so-called "polite"
conversation? We all think about sex, if not all the time at least a
great deal of the time. We all play with ourselves, some more than
others, some with societal guilt attached, some with social stigma
attached - for a large sector of society masturbation is not just a
dirty word, it is also a dirty deed. Why? I mean, okay, so depending on how you like your syllables to roll off your tongue it's possibly not
the prettiest of words, but it's definitely a beautiful thing to do.
Beautiful not only for how it makes you feel in the moment but also
for how it makes you feel the next day and the day after and the day
after... The more often you do it the better you feel, the less
stressed out you are by day to day life, the more irrelevant that
office crush is, the more casual you can be about asking out the
cutie at the local coffee shop, and, much more importantly: you will
have better sex. If you know your body and know what you like and
when and how, in all your different moods and times of the day, the
better you will be able to communicate those needs and desires to
your sexual partners.
Relationships
are all about communication. Your relation with your genitals is a
very deep conversation that not enough of us are having in a truly
meaningful way. Going to your room or the bathroom to knock out a
quick one is only half the conversation. Sometimes a quick she-bop is
definitely what the doctor ordered, but too much dynamic masturbating
can lead to all sorts of physical as well as mental blocks and
injuries. You need to balance out the fast and furious with a bit of the slow and
gentle, to really feel into what you are doing with your body and how
it is stimulating your mind and where it is telling you to go next to
get to that all important orgasm. If you don't feel comfortable doing
that 'thing' that your body is screaming out for you to do, then
you're not going to feel comfortable asking your partner to do it
either and both your body and mind suffer for the lack of fulfilment in that area.
All for want of a tiny, but loaded, and often overlooked question:
"What do you like?" it's not a hard question to ask,
really. What makes it hard in our society is the perceived judgement
that we attach to our answers. That is the key. The answers are
what freaks us out, not the question. The question is simple. The
answers are anything but. One woman might need clitoral, vaginal and
anal stimulation to have a really good time, another might need
gentle (or firm) choking to reach climax, still others might only
need vaginal stimulation but their partner might have to be dressed as a fire-fighter. There are so many, many ways to turn a woman on. Not just
because there are so many women and our sexual wiring is always
unique and individual to us, but also because each woman is different
every day, at any given point during her cycle different stresses and
hormones will trigger different sexual needs. If we don't know how to
use our own bodies or how to ask our partners for what we want, we are
not going to have as fulfilling a sex life as we are capable of. If
we can't have these conversations with ourselves or with our friends
(regardless of the sex or sexual orientation of those friends) how can we explore these
intimate topics fully and comfortably?
I'm
so sick of being told that I shouldn't discuss these things with my
guy friends, with my married friends, with my teenage friends, with
my friends mothers or fathers, with my friends who are mothers
and fathers, with my friends who are grandmothers or grandfathers -
there is such a wealth of information to be tapped amongst all those
groups of people, so much information sharing that can be used and handed out to everyone else. I have girl friends who have been sexually
active for decades and have never climaxed, I have guy friends who
have just started on their sexual journeys and are trying to figure
out how they can keep it in check to last a bit longer with their
partners, I have friends of both sexes who are completely
disinterested in sex, and also friends of both sexes who find that
they've got to a state where they can no longer find any mental
relief or let-go when their bodies are ready to orgasm and so the
orgasm leaves them feeling empty and unfulfilled rather than on cloud
nine like it did when they began their sexual journeys. At some point
we've all had that one amazing night or nights (mine was two years
ago: seven times in 15 minutes, and before that it was six times in 40
minutes) and we've all had those really shitty nights where it was boring,
stale or just plain hurt - and we didn't come. With all our cumulative knowledge and
experience we can answer all our friends queries, we can give advice
based on proven results, we can help that friend climax for the first
time, last a few minutes longer, find interest or satisfaction in sex
again, or for the first time. Sex is great! We all know that sex is
great. Usually when we find something amazing we try and share it
with our friends - our favourite restaurant, perfume, clothes shop,
hair stylist - when we find something good we share the knowledge so
that more people can benefit from it. Let's bring sex into that
category of sharing. It's by far and away the best thing on that list
of good things when it's done right.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
That Nasty Little Voice
"Do you have a voice in your head?"
"What sort of voice?"
"I don't know, just a... a voice. That says stuff..."
"What sort of stuff?"
"Just silly stuff, like 'you're not good enough' that sort of stuff."
"No. I don't have one of those."
"Oh."
"Do you have one of those voices?"
"You're lucky not to have one of them."
"I said, do you have one of those voices?"
"I suppose so."
"What do you mean, 'I suppose so' ? What does that mean? Either you do, or you don't. Do you?"
"Well, yes, if you want to put it like that, then I do."
"What does it say to you?"
"That I'm not good enough."
"You said that already. What else does it say?"
"... that nobody likes me..."
"Oh."
"..."
"Who does it sounds like? The voice. Is it your voice?"
"I think so."
"You're so tiresome. Either it is or it isn't. Is it your voice?"
"Obviously it's my voice! Whose else would it be? It is in my head, remember."
"Well I don't know do I. It could be your mothers voice."
"Why would my mother say I wasn't good enough?"
"Why would you say you weren't good enough?"
"I don't know. That's why I asked if you had a voice in your head."
"I suppose I do have a voice in my head."
"What do you mean you 'suppose' - either you do or you don't. Do you?"
"Well, yes. I do. But not one like the one in your head."
"What do you mean? What's your voice like?"
"It tells me to eat things that I don't want to."
"You can't blame being greedy on voices in your head. That's not fair."
"I am NOT greedy!"
"You ARE! You ate all the sweets that my mother made, for me, and you ate them."
"But that's exactly what I mean. I didn't want to eat them. I knew I shouldn't. But the voice egged me on..."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"How did it egg you on?"
"It just said how nice they were, and how good they'd feel in my mouth and before I knew it they were all gone. I am sorry."
"That's all right. I'm glad you ate them as it goes. My voice just tells me I'm too fat and it laughs at me when I eat, especially sweets, so I'm glad you ate them."
"Your voice sounds horrid!"
"It is horrid."
"What do you say to it?"
"What?"
"What do you say to it? You must say something to it? Mustn't you? You don't just let it say all those horrible things do you?"
"..."
"You DO! You just LET it say that you're fat and that no body likes you!? Why?"
"What can I say? I mean, it's in my head, it's me isn't it? I can't tell myself off!"
"Of course you can!"
"What!?"
"Try it! Next time that horrid voice says anything nasty to you, tell it to, tell it to... tell it to Fuck Off!"
Monday, 29 December 2014
A Very Special Cushion
On the last leg of my Aussie adventure I stayed at The Witches Garden in Mitta Valley. There I stayed with the delightful, charming and sometimes (hilariously) lewd McDonald family. They were the best part of my trip. The love, warmth and inclusivity in their household and amongst their friends and family is something I have hitherto never experienced. They are the sort of family I have always dreamed about but never really believed existed, much less that I'd ever find one!
As a parting gift I knitted them this cushion cover:
As a parting gift I knitted them this cushion cover:
![]() |
front |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)