Year of the bastard dragon and the samurai

I’ve been thinking, how best to walk amongst you this year and be okay with myself and the rest of you. Last year I strolled around as God; I know, I may not have looked the part but trust me, I was wielding thunderbolts and only 'Martha' stopped me from unzipping my fly and drowning you-all in another biblical deluge and if I were your God, all of you, hell I would run into the lab screaming STOP! Stop it now, this thing you’re breeding is going to eat everything, kill the power and let’s go play some golf.

I don’t know if its age or maybe the things I’ve been imbibing but increasingly it seems like the world is doomed and it will never come close to the utopia you’d imagined as a child. No pretty spaceships, hover-boards, time machines, teleporters and people who minutely care about each other, oh and ‘dude, where’s my flying car? Huh? You lazy incompetent sack of evolutionary dregs.

I’ve been in me parents’ house for the last year, technically it’s been the sum total of 5 months but I’ve had the chance to observe them. My dad is retired and my mom just left her twenty-something year bank job recently. They’re old but not as old as they would like to think and one of the things I can’t help but notice, especially in my mom, is a creeping fear of the world. My dad is mostly content to listen to BBC, watch TV and ridicule the politicians (opposition) while sipping his pint, he’s always been reserved but on occasion he’ll let it slip that ‘ this is madness! You young people don’t know what we’ve been through or what’s good for you. You and these Besigye things.’  

 As you grow older, the temptation to cement views, habits and other mannerisms is overwhelming; it offers a certain kind of ‘security’, knowing that things work and will be done in a certain way. Unfortunately, the tragedy of every generation is that the next one almost always discards the former’s teachings or at least finds them wanting, discredits its rules as too rigid and backward and generally takes a piss in their flowerbeds and vegetable patches.

My dad is convinced Bes is nothing but a ‘sick’ bitter person who wants power at all costs. The fact that he used to be Sevo’s personal doctor in the bushtime irks him so much, he can’t believe the guy could turn around and ‘snake’ his gango like so. As for the rest of the opposition, fuck em all, at least I think that’s what he would say if he wasn’t too polite. My parents though generally don’t understand ‘what the kids want’, meaning me and my siblings because we’re never short of drama. Fleeting marriages, unqualified wannabe geniuses, inadequate parents and obstinate buffoons, some of us refused to graduate, citing the sham and inadequate instruction received and deploring the idea of a behind the desk occupation when the whole wide world is out there. There are those of us who can’t take the intrusion into our personal lives and so we resort to being as elusive as that damn train of thought I was just on. The rest of us won’t even say a word, content to leave everyone guessing as to our motivations and aspirations. Of course, all we want to say is ‘it’s all alright; you don’t have to worry because it’ll all turn out fine.’ But it’s the parent’s job to worry, despair, remonstrate, threaten and finally give up and just watch, hoping that you won’t sell their last shred of dignity for a quick fix around the corner with Misty and triple nippled Jasmine.

Anyway, I’ve been slowly aging, in my head, setting myself in certain ways that I think will serve me well in the years to come and make me strong enough not to crumble in the face of fucking unrelenting life. Life is senseless, in its actuality it’s force acting on matter, period. The lumps of flesh that we are are moved by the force of mind to undertake actions that we tell ourselves have meaning behind them; that my smiling at you means that perhaps I’m partial to you and will watch your pint while you go take a leak but fuck you! I’m going to drop some laxatives in your bottle and keep you occupied while I chat up and make off with your half-wasted girlfriend, why do you think you keep going to the loos?

I’m tired of being gentle with you. I have come to think that you’ll never learn until you feel that fucking steel run through. Yes. I am going to stab you, in the back, in that ever ballooning beer belly and your fucking crotch too and then I’m going to kick you in the shins and watch you bleed and cough your innards out.

I like Bes. I think he’s one of the bravest bastards to emerge from the stupid lazy ass swarm of filth you call your political class. When the rest of you are too fuckin scared to throw a pebble at the people you think are robbing your future, he’s out there being pummelled by hired thugs and acolytes, no less paid with your fuckin money. There are people out there with the IQ of a polythene paper bag, who are no doubt convinced that there is only one way to do things and if you set yourself up against it, then you’re the enemy and must be defeated by any means necessary, it is the legacy of a militant ideology. If the most successful thing you’ve ever done is fight a war, you’re bound to love the battlefields more than the rolling green hills and domesticities of ordinary life. For you, the child flying a kite is a frivolity that should be limited and all you would teach would be the sharpening of the blade. But peace is harder than war because right now I want to carry my blade and cut you to fucking bits, the you that believes men are meant to be led, that would put itself above them, I want to see you bleed before me.

Bes is not perfect, in fact he is of the same mould as those he seeks to supplant and though he may not achieve this; his victory has been the moral one. There was a time when not a single voice was to be heard in earnest opposition to those who raised themselves above you and so they went about their business with little to hold them back or in check and the ideals we nurtured at the start were taken to the back room, raped and eviscerated, splattered on the walls, bloody handprints the tell-tale signs of what once was. She lies bleeding still, Liberty, and though you’ve raped her day and night, her spirit remains, strong and true. Now she wields the sword and you who would have her in chains shall pay your due.

The other day I sat down with you and wondering how to better your lot, you asked how best to free yourself. It’s all rotten you said and you embarked on an aimless tirade meant to display your skill with the words. “There is no one to lead us,” you lamented, having exhausted the depths your intellectual façade could approximate, the fog of indolence clouding your vision you opted to turn your head and look the other way. ‘I shall wait’ you said, until a hundred seasons have gone by and the fruit lies on the fields, putrefying and the vigour of youth is gone from your bones.

Your spawn shall eat you from within the womb, if you should attempt to pass on your half cooked ideas and beliefs, all of them foreign to you. You think you have seen war, famine, pestilence and death but when they come, there will be no pity in their eyes and your wails and cries of anguish will call the carrion birds to feast on your gouged out eyes trailing in the wake of my blade. I know you can hear them, just beyond the wall, the one you built around your little world, the one you think will scare them off or hold them back. The spikes on the top, they will rip out and thrust up your anus, again and again until your guts flow out and soil the marble floor and then they will burn it all down and leave no trace of you or your line.

He who wields the sword must be prepared to cut and he who cuts knows that it is only himself that he fells, bit by bit until there is nothing left but the sword. I shall wield the blades and all that grows to choke the head of grain will be cut and if you should stand in my way, I will cut you too.

I shall be gentle with you though, for I love you and would rather spend the days with you coaxing the land to bring forth what is our just reward and the nights lost in the tenderness of your embrace. I shall sheathe my blade and remember that these are the days of peace, the days of the free and everything can be, but I cannot forget that I wear the blade.

Now!

I am at child's play
The beginning of the universe at the start of each day
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow far far away
I have only today to say
HEY!

There is no formula for the imaginary things

Bliss is here :)

If you want to be happy, be.
.......Leo Tolstoy

Geisha Love

You can avoid being a neurotic if you stop obsessively analysing what you imagine to be your character: never mind your faults, stop moaning about your complexes, do not pour out confessions about what you can and cannot do, like or desire. Treat each meeting with a person as an independent event. 'A geisha is always ready to produce pleasure with out considering her own needs.' Put aside personal ambitions and the expectations you have of yourself. Learn to be a geisha by being, first of all, a geisha to your own body; look after it, cook meals for yourself when you are alone as though giving yourself a treat; look after your mind by feeding it with poetry and music. Avoid creating an excessively rigid idea of your desires. Look upon yourself as an amoeba, floating through life, dividing: do not be afraid of losing your identity. Or look upon yourself as a collection of electric light bulbs: do not put all the electricity in a single bulb or it will explode; allow your energy to circulate freely through the many sides of yourself. The looser, the more open and limitless your identity, the better. Treat your emotions as a garden needing to be kept tidy. Be generous, and that will stimulate new resources within yourself, new ideas. Follow the 'laws of nature'. It is up to you.

--------------------- An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin.

Happy New Year

It was an okay year. I mean, last year; it was alright.

I spent a good amount of it in your homes, as a friend, drinking or smoking buddy, guest, invited and otherwise, acquaintance, forlorn stranger, charity case, homeless bumpkin, that guy who has grass, banange the list is endless but I spent it with you.

I gave up my place of abode at the beginning of the year, the walls did not love me anymore and spent the days hatching plans with the roof to smother me while I slept and nights glaring at me with peeling paint malice and contempt. I could not sleep. The doors would let me out no more but led me down endless corridors where the clocks always struck the hour of darkest night and the paintings came alive. Bronze horses galloping, drums beating, evil eyes laughing, sharp teeth chattering, and long bony fingers peeling off my skin.

So I left and returned to my mother’s house.

I was ashamed; somewhere in my head my ancestors sat before me and tut-tutted. I was no longer worthy to be called your friend or brother for I was just another lazy motherfucker.

Still I deigned to walk among you. I could not be alone for it meant that I would slowly but surely perish, perhaps not in form but in substance I would be less here and more there. So I walked about and saw you from the other eyes and learnt that man is a lonely and scared creature, that all he does is to quell the silent despair that lies deep in his heart. All alone out here, he gathers to himself everything he can find and would tell the story of his life by the mounds of dirt he piles, one on top of the other.

I learnt that you still believe that to have a care is to be weak and in hardening your heart, you fell and lost one.

I remembered what it meant to have a home, to catch the trailing bits of the love you once knew as a child. It is no more now, the one without a price, perhaps it never was but I knew it once and it is still somewhere deep inside of me. I will give it to you, if you let me.

I walked abroad unafraid of you for I was God in my world, and I weighed and measured and found you in need. I saw your fear and felt it run through me and knew that you’d rather it was not near or something you could hear. So I kept quiet and let the cacophony of feigned laughter, disdain, and rage wash over me.

I walked to the forest to find the wild man who went to live a deliberate life and beneath the fig tree we shared fruit. He called me a wild man too, said I was very much him, true to the wood with nothing to prove.

And then I sat with you and broke bread, told you what I saw in my mind’s eye but you did not hear. Your voice louder in your head than shrieking Valkyries drowned out all that did not please. Still I sat, and waited for you to return and listen. I sit still.

I will not give up. One day you will truly know me and then I shall have no fear and you will not be afraid of me too.

Happy New Year people in my life; friends real and imagined, family lost and found, love known and unknown.

::Hold Fast::

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.

A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
.......................................................................................................................... GK Chesterton