Black Dogs and Universe Glue

I wrote this post's title a while ago, as I started to try and write a post for the first time in godonlyknowsevenhowlong.

Then, I stopped. I left it lurking while I did other things - anything else, I suppose - and now i know why.

This title was waiting for today. It is entirely relevant.

It is Christmas Day for another ten minutes - might be 26/12/2016 by the time I finish - and I want to scream and shout. I want to go at this room like I'm Kylo Ren with his lightsaber.

Last night, I went with my parental units to their church, a perfectly ordinary Roman Catholic parish church in North London. Carols followed by Midnight Mass.

Church once a year, I can deal with, especially as this is not the parish of my childhood and has no particularly unpleasant associations beyond the general, overall issues I have with Holy Father Church.

There's a great line in Dogma by Serendipity about Catholics: You don't celebrate your faith, you mourn it. That seemed about right yesterday, during the carols-as-dirges and mass that dragged in a succession of stand up-sit down-keneel-stand up again-recite some words like rote.

I'll be the first to admit that the problem is almost certainly me, not the singers and the organist, who at least made an effort. The priest seemed engaged and pleasant (I've definitely encountered worse)... but it all left me feeling sad, and then hollow.

Today, with my parents, who are generally lovely if... eccentric... and my sister L and my dearest, loveliest niece.......... even then the proceedings had a shadow hanging over them, not assisted by the Golden Child's insistence on being a two and a half year old and consequently lobbing tantrums at regular intervals. Her poor, overstimulated, excited little brain that wouldn't her nap, that wouldn't be at peace even when Gene Kelly was on TV.

Turns out, Gene Kelly doesn't hold much sway over small children.

And that was the Black Dog, snuffling at my heels. Like usual. Like almost always. Like he thinks he belongs, like he's entitled. the Morecambe & Wise 1976 Christmas Special was a hilarious band aid for a while, but a Band Aid nonetheless.

This is my life. Even when I'm happy, I don't get to be all-the-way-happy, because that fucking dog is at my heel. So far, I've been able to push it away for short periods of times, even lock in a dungeon for awhile, but this is my reality, I guess.

I once thought to myself that if I could, I'd absorb everyone's pain. No sense in us all feeling this way, after all.

*

It's been a year that I'm fairly sure will have its own special module on History courses in decades and centuries to come. I don't want to be right, but moments in actual history have acquired new resonance lately: Archie Duke, who shot his ostrich; blackshirts and rise of popular fascism in the 1930s; the horrific treatment of black Americans that led to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s... I could go on, but it's too fucking awful.

not just on the worldwide or national scale, but the amount of utter awful that has befallen the people I love and friends and those folks who share even a little of their worlds with me... My pain has been inward-facing, of my own making. Theirs? Less so.

There is so much pain in the world. Ever t'was thus, I hear some of you say. Perhaps, but it's 2016 so why are we content with accepting this form of status quo? Why is this considered OK just because 'it's always been'?

Smallpox was traditional, once. High infant mortality rates were traditional, once. Gaslamps and bows-and-arrows were traditional, once... we made them obsolete (T&Cs may apply) so why don't we make other traditional hates and pains outdated too?

We live in a selfish time, and it's by design. If we're all busy looking out for ourselves, looking to acquire what we can for ourselves, then we're not helping each other and we're not making the world a better place by holding those in power to account.

Which is why it's by design. Carthago delenda est is now common policy, it seems. Trade unions have not helped themselves over the years (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Scargill) but the discrediting of them has worked enormously well for businesses and not at all for workers.

Most of us are workers, by the way. The lie that we can be part of the elite if we just do as they say and vote as they tell us to is one of the marketing greats of the last half century.

I wasn't even going to talk about that, but you can't talk about common pain without it, I guess. And i haven't even touched on Aleppo or the many varied concerns of the people around the world who go largely ignored by us because they don't look or sound or seem like us. Even though they are also human beings with a baseline of human dignity and respect. Even here, I'm using 'Aleppo' as lazy shorthand for 'brutal human suffering' rather than considering the real humans affected, because I'm part of the problem too.

*


Are we all so fatigued that we don't care, in our selfishness, about things now? A truck got driven into a market in Berlin. Where were the 'Ich Bin Berlin' Facebook filters (Ich bin ein Berliner has been done, of course). Did we rend our digital garments then? No.

Bowie died at the start of the year. Since then, it feels like the Grim Reaper must've had a stretch target to meet. Variations on the theme of 'Turns out Bowie was the glue holding the Universe together' have littered the internet over the year.

I've started to really dread the noise of the BBC News Alert on my phone.

I'm a pop culture person, these things matter to me. I don't expect them to matter to anyone else and I don't ask you to care, but don't expect me not to simply because I didn't know someone. I don't suggest my sadness comes even close to that of the peope who loved and knew *Insert Name Here, Let's  Be Bitterly Honest'... but allow me - and other fans - to experience our own feelings in our own way.

As I was beginning to contemplate going to bed this evening, with the black dog nipping at my heels after a day which has been both lovely and taxing, and after seeing pictures of other people experiencing much more straightforward joy (as far as I can tell)... my phone pinged.

George Michael, a fixture in the pop culture around me for my whole life, died. Another one. Another one.

A friend of mine, who is awesome, thoughtful and compassionate, wrote that the 'Fuck you 2016' stuff was getting too much. That we should not turn real people into memes and joke about the year that sucked. She's right of course. I deal with this sort of thing with dark humour (see, yanno, above) but there's also a strain of prurient gossipy nonsense that comes along with it. We almost wallow in it, wishing to be the first to break the news to our group (no, we all get the same alerts...) and wishing to be seen to be the biggest fan by being the saddest. Who can rend their garments quickest? Who can be the first with a bad taste joke about the deceased?

That last point is moot: nobody can do better (worse) than Twitter after Michael Jackson died.

We have our right to our feelings and our grief, but there's responsibility there as well.

*

I remember leaving 2015 behind thinking that 2016 would 'be my year' and while in some very important ways I've made some important progress... I'm still here, Black Dog fur running through my fingers, still not living my vocation...

But I'm writing this blog post, and that's a sort of achievement. There have been moments of great joy this year, for me, for the people I love... but they seem to be so utterly outweighed by awful things.

What could possily counteract the bile and Newspeak of the various elections and referenda this year that have kicked Western Civilisation into the long grass?

This is not a competition and it's definitely not a joke. I would say "gotta laugh else you'd cry' but if 2016 has proved anything: it's that you can do both at the same time.

CW 25/12/2016

The Storyteller - From the Vault 2008

Another piece from the Old Blog of Long Ago... although 2008 is not all that long ago, surely?

 As ever, I've made a few tweaks here and there but nothing particularly substantial except an Ernie Wise-ism in the opening line that I couldn't resist.

The Great What If - From the Vault 2006

This is an odd little alternate history scribble found during my latest chunk of dragging through Ye Olde Blog for anything worth keeping. It's a bit daft and a lot of wishful thinking but amusing, I think.

It's also an interesting little precursor to the fictional magazine pieces I wrote for Walking in the Shadowlands - practice, perhaps?

The universe is odd: I am posting this now almost a decade since it was posted, and on Jim's 73rd birthday and Lennon's anniversary - this was not by design. Not mine, anyway.

The Valentino Test - From the Vault 2007

This is from mid-2007. I had discovered the deathless wonder that was Rudolph Valentino earlier that year when Blockbuster Online (cue 'remember them' gag) sent The Sheik on DVD.

I had know of Valentino forever of course, but had not understood the fuss until seeing him on film. I was entranced, enchanted and bowled over. He was a beautiful distraction during unquestionably horrendo times.

This is all still true, nearly 10 years later. I'm nothing if not consistent.

Silver

24 November 2016 passed in chaos for me. The Day Job went from 'super-busy' to 'hang on a minute, am I being trolled or something?'

A couple of times during the day, I thought 'merciful Jaysus, it's Freddie Mercury's anniversary today'.

I was too busy to say a word, let alone blog about it. The day after, despite having a half-day of leave, was much the same. I was so busy Friday that i even forgot to press 'pause' on my iPod and found it still running through shuffle mode - it went from track 7 or 8 to 120 or so, without me being anywhere near it. So much for the battery life, amirite?

Saturday dawned and I stumbled from my warm bed to the frigid November morning. It took 20 minutes to get to Finsbury Park, where I sat a Nutrition exam, completed an 'Introduction to Teaching Kettlebells' module, bashed my head on a wall at Starbucks and stared at my reworded literary agent query letter as if extra eyeball time would make it magically better.

That wasn't in strict chronological order, but you get the idea, which is likely a notion that my life consists of semi-regular head injuries, procrastination and a willingness (if not happiness) to give multinational tax dodgers a chunk of my hard-earned spondoolicks in return for soya milk and bad coffee.

Anyway, I ended up heading from Finsbury Park to Tottenham rather than home, to visit my mummy and daddy. I was hoping I'd get sympathy for being hurty. Fat chance. But I did get to check out the Amazon-delivered Crimboid presents for my niece. And yes, more multinational tax dodgers.

I don't like capitalism, but I do rather have to live within it, and my niece needs her toy doctor kit, damn you.

None of the above is remotely relevant to the subject matter at hand, but it does provide some context to the wearying grind I currently find myself within.

On the bus from one part of North London to another, my iPod ticked through some tracks which I listened to with the half-conscious attention of someone who has listened to all 5000+ tracks at least twice. I'm finding it difficult to focus at the moment (see above) so it was on Shuffle Mode to see what it threw up.

As I got off the bus, These Are The Days Of Our Lives by Queen pinged up... and I nearly burst into tears on Tottenham High Road.

You see, I listened to that song a lot in the winter of 1991. My daddy bought me the Double-A Side cassette of Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days Of Our Lives because he is stone-cold awesome sometimes. I was nine years old then, and dealing with my first 'hero death' and the stresses of primary school (chiefly: crayon wars, trying to game the system to be first in line for lunch, gaming the system to produce a nice maths to story-writing ratio).

What I didn't know then was that other heroes had died, I just didn't know it yet.

Anyway, I listened to that tape a lot. I had neckache for weeks from the headbanging to the second half of Rhapsody as if I was Wayne and/or Garth.

Over the coming years, I returned to Queen on and off. I listened to These Are The Days Of Our Lives with a vague understanding of what it meant.

As I listened last Saturday, I wanted so badly to cry. For us living 25 years without the fabulousness of Freddie, of course, but also because I am increasingly part of the demographic for whom the song actually means something.

When I was 9, I understood what Freddie was singing about. Now, I find that I am living it. I have enough time behind me to be able to look back. To miss, to regret. To truly feel that I have lost things.

Now, we are all old enough that my friends are married, have children - increasingly more than one of both - and I bear witness to their many joys and sorrows and wonders. I am still much the same as I was in 1991, if sadder and more tired and with less hope.  

And yet, also in a position where there is fresh hope. I see it in the bright, shining face of my beloved niece, for whom the world is truly her oyster. In the newness of my dear friend Louise's brand new son.

Now, Louise is an even bigger Queen fan than I. We became friends when she moved to my primary school when we were about 7. She is a full 10 days older than me, and the only person to stick with me all this time, truly. She now lives on the other side of the world. I couldn't go to her wedding because I could afford neither time nor money, and I regret that dearly.

As I walked up Tottenham High Road, I wanted to cry. For Freddie, for the shining children we were once, with all our hopes and dreams stretching out ahead of us. And for the promise of now.

There is something we have now that we didn't have then: history. We were dear friends then, Louise and I, and the rest of the gang. Now, we are the roots of a tree. Those roots might go off in all sorts of diffeerent directions, twisting in odd ways we didn't expect, but we are still part of that tree.

Golly, that's a laboured metaphor. I do that when I'm feeling sentimental.

I wanted to cry for everyone and everything I've lost since. I wanted to cry for the self I lost and rebuilt and lost again. I wanted to cry for the friendships that have broken, for the ones that faded. For the potential I threw away with laziness and procrastination, that I never reached for through fear or lack of belief in myself.

I wanted to cry for everything I left unsaid with people I have loved, and who I will not see again. I wanted to cry for everything I said or did that I ought not to have said or done.

I wanted to cry for those shiny-shiny children we were... and I smiled for the people we have become. Louise is an even more amazing grown-up than she was a child. Smart, brilliant, beautiful. She is an outstanding human being and I'm proud she and I remain dear friends, even though I have not always put in the effort I should've.

My tears were stayed, just. I smiled for Natasha and Rachel, Ebony and Nancy and my other Louise, and Anna, and the people I have in my life now that I couldn't have dreamed of in 1991.

I smiled for my Pollyboo. When I was nine, I imagined that I could love someone as I love my niece, but I didn't know what it felt like to love someone more and more fiercely as they grow into who they are. I didn't know the steely determination to help them become their best self... I do now.

For all the dark moments I still have, for all the frustrations of not being what and who I really want o be, for all the lost potential.... for all the Awful in the world right now, I am still surrounded by outstanding human beings. My nine year old self might be irritated in some ways, but I reckon in others she'd be pretty impressed with who she became. Because that kid understood that song more than any nine year old really should...

Those really were the days of our lives, and yet, so are these.

Freddie, George and the Decade that Changed Everything - From the Vault 2006

 The following piece was written ten years ago, and was concerned with a single decade, 1991-2001, five years later.

Perhaps next I should take on 2001-2011... or the entire quarter century that has now passed...

Freddie, George & The Decade That Changed Everything

I noticed a funny thing recently. Within days of each other, it will be the fifteenth anniversary of Freddie Mercury (24th Nov) and the fifth anniversary of George Harrison (29 Nov). Barely ten years separate these two events, and I find that a strange quirk of the universe. This post is less about them than it is about me.

The Spinster

This started as something for a character in my soon-to-be-published-online novel Tbe Bright Side O' Life but I think it became something broader. I don't think it really reflects my own personal opinion of spinsterdom, although perhaps some of its fears. It is perhaps a worst-case scenario with a slice of light.

What say you?

*

Spinning, not moving

It comes on gradually until it hits you like a train. Sitting quietly at a family event, watching your loved ones grow and develop, watching them change. Yet you are the same as you always were. You are the same; you are treated as you were five years ago, or ten, or twenty.

To your parents you remain a child; to your contemporaries you are an anomaly - at least until you finally settle down.

Your single income household cannot afford mortgages or flashy foreign holidays, so you listen to the minutiae of property deals and tropical islands with a smile frozen between interest and frustration. You fall behind in ways big and small, obvious and subtle.

You are excluded from topics because you wouldn't understand. Much experience is kept from you, and you have to remind yourself that it's not the 19th Century anymore. Even if it was, you know that Mr Darcy isn't coming for you. The Mr Darcys look through you to prettier girls, to sweeter girls, to girls that know how the game is played.

You are not the romantic lead in the film, after all. An extra, perhaps. Odd, given that this was supposed to be your life. Perhaps the genre is wrong...

People who love you will soon give up asking about finally settling down. Maybe they already have. Curiosity will sour into pity.

'But are you happy?' you are asked repeatedly, but the only acceptable answer is "of course not". Any variety of 'yes' is met with disbelief or suspicion. Nobody believes you can be happy alone.

You are mostly happy. Sometimes you wonder what is 'wrong' with you to have had this life thrust upon you. Can you pinpoint a single moment that sent you into the lonely direction?  Was there a missed opportunity or was fate just that capricious?

Your friends say they envy you the single life, but they are never quite sincere. They mean that their own lives are not quite 100% satisfactory, but nobody's life ever is. They would like a break from their responsibilities from time to time; often it is you who provides the opportunity for that break, and you love how those adored younglings light up at sight of their fun auntie/godmother.

People move away. It is the way of the world now: seemingly casual migration. Life gets in the way. Bonds break, as they sometimes do, and nobody is to blame. Those babies you welcomed into the world have lives of their own and Auntie is low down on the list of priorities. It is as it should be, but the world spins with you still in the middle unchanging.

All is as it should be within the order of life as commonly accepted. Milestones only touch you to make you older. One day, you are essentially invisible.

Strangers address you as 'Mrs', not considering that a woman your age would be anything else. Corrections invite pity.

Despite the effort, you are ever more alone. Everyone has their lives. You take joy from their successes and you are there with comfort in their sorrows, but you are still alone at the end of it.

You are depended on: the universal donor. You have the time, don't you?

You wake up one day and you are eighty-two years old. Your limbs don't work like they ought; your brain is slow and quick to tire. When did you become the old crone you once pitied, when you were a pretty girl with the whole wide world for the taking?

When did life unfold without you? When did you replace one set of dreams with another?

Perhaps those were never really your dreams?