Conceptual symptoms

 

 

Lostness   (68)

 

 

I seem to be reinfected by philosophy

 

and hope this relapse proves temporary

though thoughts
(some off-topic)
soon erupt like symptoms
through my head…

 

 

1

That single acts hold meaning
lacked in a totality

As each sentence, not whole language, makes its sense

So life could have many meanings
bound to separate events
rather than reflected overall.

Hence micromeanings
without a macromeaning.

 

2

If character results from experience plus memory
living fully in the present
might depersonalise.

 

3

Are death-instincts glimpsed via powers of shame
akin to programmed cell-death (apoptosis)
scaled up on social terms?

Feedback from others keeping us alive
while prolonged isolation fuels rumination,
even entropy.

 

4

Potential instability in those whose hatred of authority
masks desire
for its love.

 

5

People quoting “God is dead” as atheism:
neglecting metaphysical
bereavement.

 

6

Religion also stuck at the denial stage of grief.
For millennia.

 

7

Pride in our originality
aided with ignorance of history.

 

8

Ends corrupted by means.
An ethical sentiment.

 

9

Consciousness distributed
letting organisms tap into it
at a neural interface.

 

10

Screens replace ancestral campfires
gaining an attention primed across evolution
to motion
indicating agency…

 

 

 

Here occurred my own distraction.

 

Once hail began
tapping
upon the windowpane

beneath deep grey skies
of an England
where summer
may not quite
arrive

 

yet somehow
autumn

always does.

 

 

 

 

(2000)

---

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(art/atheism/blogging/drawing/ideas/lostness/mental health/opinions/poetry/thoughts)

 

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Restlessness

 

 

 

Lostness   (67)

 

 

 

This pen, urged across a page
by underlying restlessness…

 

Wrote:

“Is my needing to create, another form of bondage?”

 

If writing springs from lack
one could attempt a floating-free

leave laden bookshelves to the intellect
move through uncluttered psychic space
not chained in data’s thrall
with knowledge indexed and textual
fortified
against mere being.

 

Supposing only heart heals heart
hence words, alone,
fail to suffice

So
fearing the day
we must release
safe grip upon
our guarded selves

yet feeling fully unprepared

missing any surety
to compensate such doubt

 

Here, atheism can spread
an elemental isolation

while believers sense
non-visible observers

risking judgement
via unseen eyes.

 

 

 

(Might it shrink life’s dignity:
providing brief distraction
for imagined deities?)

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

Does “god” explain
if we cannot explain god?

 

 

Religion correctly identifies
problems of existence
but gives
those certain answers
many struggle to accept

where notions act
as sustaining
cultural glue
absence seems both actual
and conceptual

 

Easily mocked
are stories people tell
helping rouse their tired souls
to try again

How well, then, may
questioning enthuse
or scepticism motivate?

 

 

 

When time is all we have
comes dread at wasting it

Anxiety
about a fruitless search
for purpose

Remembering
some lost interest

(perhaps obsessive,
even held essential)

which led nowhere

now discarded

 

 

Like old things
left broken

that once

were loved.

 

 

 

 

 

(2000)

(Artwork on the blog is mine. I hope you like it!)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/lostness/love/mental health/poetry/thoughts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tortured reason

 

 

 

Lostness   (66)

 

We can torture reason in the name of spirit

 

Once doubt begins to doubt itself.

 

Am I on a path already
or only lost?

Does depression cloud my sight
through defensive negativity?

 

That charge appears unfair
when striving at belief
not for comfort
but for truth

and trying to add beauty
rather than
be a dark
in darkness

 

Yet
after words fall away
what remains, except
this void from letting go
of everything
while lacking faith
in anything

unless, perhaps,
Buddhism
minus rebirth
equals more than emptiness?

 

If religion gives no consolation
why make those efforts
it demands?

 

God is an answer
breeding questions…

 

upon originating origins

whether malign outcomes
excuse a cause

people still worship higher powers
without responsibility
keen to punish weak mortals
over almost universal faults.

 

How often are we willing
to put aside
hard-won convictions

even briefly
sense them teeter
at a brink of chaos

recoiling from imagined shame
before life’s enigma
like cryptographers who
forget their key

 

Doctrine and rationality
might both prefer
leaving flesh behind
one to be pure soul
the other to be pure mind

 

Urges for transcendence
revealing alienation

 

Melancholy
also shown uncertain
noticed by an ebb and flow
where moods change faster than
philosophy

 

just as daylight
now grown brighter
across my room
cuts around these
half-closed blinds

 

so

thinking it was dust

I tried to wipe a sunbeam
from the tablecloth.

 

 

 

 

(2000)

 

 

(Any artwork on the blog is mine: I hope you like it.)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/life/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some slight romance

 

 

Lostness   (65)

 

Belonging: arisen by separation
from what does not belong.

 

Inclusion that excludes.

 

Identity involves division.

 

Though minds may meditate over
problems of personhood
immune systems must decide immediately
between self
and other…

as, at tribal levels, xenophobia
might protect a culture
against outside influence.

Nerves aroused in fear
attend to threats;
hostility defending
survival
under stress.

 

For anger
the world is full
of opportunity.

 

Talk being often democratic
feeling tends to bias
seeking affirmation
until a story sets
or grows mythic
exaggeration aiding recall
hence, perhaps, our ancestors
built memories around past glory
then those exemplars
gained rank
among heroes
turning, later, into gods
with legends read
toward heaven
and marked across stone.

 

 

Amid conflict
some attempt neutrality
though sitting on the fence
extensively
can make it harder to stand up
for anything.

Like learning ways to doubt
while lacking any method
of belief.

 

 

Even romance has downsides
reflected in my slight experience
on dates
where her needs seemed met
yet mine remained postponed
when she took a certain pride
at how much had been withheld.

 

Thinking back
the great reward of sex
for me
was assisting female pleasure
sharing which
to my surprise
(after such intense aloneness)
could still be done.

 

And thus I
went on clinging
to an idea
of love…

despite its long
continued
non-occurrence

here.

 

 

 

 

 

(1999-2000)

 

(All artwork on the blog is mine. I hope you like it.)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/life/loneliness/lostness/love/mental health/opinions/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

Random news

 

 

 

Lostness   (64)

 

 

Unshared experience is lost to the world.

 

During struggles with oblivion
might fatalism offer solace
for a botched existence
by transcending the indignity
of randomness?

 

Infinity, god, and zero

 

flash across my mind
as if not quite understood
like signs in search of full meaning…

 

A sudden racket, from outside, interrupted these thoughts.

 

Noise invades private space
against our will.
Triggering vigilance.
Becoming harder to ignore
or endure.

 

I reached for distraction
via a bedside newspaper…

 

Reading, first,
that psychopaths share great success
at producing children.

(Possibly a better evolutionary strategy
than writing poems?
Though not the best advertisement
for female mate-choice.)

 

Next, an article on cryogenics.

Thus some rich Americans aspired to avoid
life’s traditional twin certainties:
death and taxes.

(“Truths are not self-evident,” I mumbled,
“Men being made unequal.
Rights find wishes, recast as law.”)

 

A headline mentions “Community care”.

Yet cities lack community,
and nobody cares.

(Presumably
“Neglect in the community”
sounded less appealing?)

 

A reader’s letter, praising divine creation,
bemoaned devilish influences.

(Why god created Satan
went unconsidered.)

 

A book review questioned fiction
spanning barriers of class and gender.

(Autobiography
should be a safer option;
given approved opinions?)

 

A survey revealed
celibates suffer twice the mortality rate
of men getting regular, weekly, sex.

“My situation is one long touch deprivation,”
I mutter, gloomily.

Having gone without such pleasure for years
perhaps there could be more
than mere hyperbole
to an admission that,

yes,

“I’m dying for it.”

 

 

 

(1996)

 

(anxiety/art/blogging/depression/drawing/ideas/illness/life/mental health/poetry)

 

 

 

My mirror is an enemy

 

 

Lostness   (63)

 

 

My mirror is an enemy…

A zone of continual dissatisfaction
for someone humiliated by their own appearance.

In maleness
I already sensed myself
on eternal probation
under wary female scrutiny.

While, by beauty’s natural aristocracy,
fated to remain
hopelessly lower class.

 

---

 

 

Scanning a newspaper
next to the bed
it struck me how modern liberalism
looked aberrant amid history’s cruelty

(where “forgive, but remember”
seemed more prudent
than “forgive and forget”)

Much politics involved an imposition of will
by one group upon another
via law or force
as media stirred up complacency,
anger,
and impotence.

 

 

---

 

 

 

In illness-prone lives
biology
may assume greater interest
than missions to the stars.

Given my current
exhausted state
going out has a value
above staying put;
like hunting over gathering
(though these days women also get to hunt,
men stuck at home might still
lose status and esteem).

Here I cope with exclusion
from normality
but since sexuality
refuses to die
peace
proves elusive.

When loneliness drives me,
pushing through symptoms,
to social events
at times I experience an inkling
of being selected against
by evolution.

 

 

One recent challenge
to say something positive
about my life
almost provoked this reply:

“However submerged with uselessness
I have not entirely spared myself the effort
of attempting to think.”

 

Yet, that sounded a little too grand
so, instead,
changing the subject
by counter-question

I obtained a refuge
in silence.

 

 

 

(1993-1996)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/depression/drawing/illness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

Too ill to blog!

Apologies…

 

 

Having not missed a Sunday post since August 2017, today I am laid low by fever.

Cannot get my mind together or focus on words.

Appetite is gone.

Collapsed twice yesterday and hurt myself.
Everything went dark.
Retain no memory of entering the kitchen, but came to, on the floor, looking at cabinets above me. Wondering how I got there.

Cut my ear and arm.
My head caught on a box as I blacked out the first time.
Seem to have injured my neck toppling backwards.
Just could not stay upright.
Fell heavily.

This experience worried me, as I am already fragile after decades of chronic illness.

Paramedics were sent to check blood pressure, heart, etc.

I imagine this must be the influenza, that I managed to avoid during winter?

Very sorry not to be able to blog.
Need to lie down again, now.
Am in a great deal of pain from the falls,
as well as aching and disoriented due to high temperature.

 

Hope you are well?

 

Please visit again next week.

 

Best wishes to you all!

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

(blogging/illness/life/loneliness/lostness/mental health/thoughts/writing)

Breaking a spell

 

 

Lostness   (62)

 

 

 

Chess often resembled my life:
an unsuccessful search
for a mate.

 

I grew slowly possessed by the game.

On empty days it was simply too interesting;
mesmeric with alien beauty.

What began as something to exercise the mind
could gradually take it over.

I had made a bad choice
since laborious progress in this skill
meant little to others;
whereas similar efforts at art, writing, or music,
might attract some attention;
reducing isolation.

Better, then, to reverse course,
giving up an unproductive pursuit…

But I seemed unable to break the spell
or rekindle dormant passions
(though still frustrated by their loss).

Creativity had been eroded
through illness and depression
plus, a more disturbing possibility:
self-sabotage.

 

 

---

 

 

Later, I considered why these opinions felt compelling.

 

In a sense, we are also victims of our beliefs.

They may make us defensive, predictable, rigid.

(As extreme doctrines mould extreme followers.)

Should one expect people to criticise what they find essential?
Surely, too much is at stake?

A humble incentive for faith could be
being weary of thinking
and wanting another to do it.

Yet would pride admit such a reason?

 

 

---

 

 

Suddenly
sunlight
touched my arm

I thought of a particular girl
for the first time in years
which felt slightly odd
though
as I never ended a relationship
they all seem somehow unfinished
to me.

 

Perhaps only love
redeems
an existence like mine.

 

Will it ever

arrive?

 

 

 

(1994-1996)

(beauty/blogging/chess/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the blues

 

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (61)

 

 

Flamenco speaks into my wounds
like the blues…

Sounding through
this lost life
that may soon go unmourned

Vibrating
across these empty hands
no child will ever reach for
as I stay unmarried
and unloved.

 

Coping
with so much darkness
absorbs spiritual resources

mine feel almost
used up.

An existence of mainly
lying around
exhausted by illness
trying passive activities
which fail at masking grief
while missing creativity

Unable to enjoy
what little I can do
or fully escape inside
some heartless cocoon
of the cerebral.

 

Struggling again
with self acceptance
and embracing imperfection
I ponder
how easily hate arrives
once we interpret action
in negative ways
how hostility takes offence
where not intended
(justifying
preformed antipathy)
eroding consideration
or even the social lubricant
of manners.

 

I muse over advice for happiness
listing:
purpose, relationship, variety, attitude, health,
inner peace.
My score is zero, out of six:
aimless, alone, in monotony,
misery, sickness and turmoil.

But does seeing my plight
in tragic terms
shield me
from its paltriness?

 

I might need a decent fuel
of lies
to push aside depression

Since recent dreams fill
with the dead
a situation
unexpected
before middle age.

I have merely learned
helplessness
facing slow destruction
by inexorable forces
in crushing
isolation.

 

And it occurs to me that

among other things

love
is also
not always wanting
to be somewhere else.

 

 

 

(1993-1994)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/mental health/music/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

Underlain by sex

 

 

Lostness   (60)

 

 

I need a metaphysical vacuum cleaner
for the soiled carpet of my soul.

 

Where are higher powers
when you want them?

 

“No lie in the sky!”  sounded one atheist slogan
during unbelieving rage
days upon which, looking at our planet, it seemed
maybe gods should also ask forgiveness
from creatures suffering
subject
to such creation

Here happiness appeared an irrational state
with misery and anger
taking typical positions
behind morality
against onrushing evil tides

Refusing contentment
until situations were put right
thus assuring vexation

(As argument demanding agreement
ensures its own frustration)

Perfectionism
defers living
to search after unreachables

Trying too hard
denying animality
buffoon versus baboon
or remembered child
that messed his pants
shamed before a looming parent
when my arse followed me
like a judgement.

 

There
beneath ethics
lurks aesthetics.
Beauty
underlain by sex
fired through hormones
hence desire overcomes distaste
then other bodies turn
ingestible.

 

 

In the end
at two extremes
we find
those seeing all
as evidence of divine presence
opposing those seeing the same
as showing only
divine absence.

 

Yet
if people who abhor reality
require religion more

what about this particular
isolation…

Might it grow so intense
I’d begin mumbling at deities
(while lacking faith in their actuality)
merely from an urge to complain?

Perhaps
even confessing
I need
a metaphysical vacuum cleaner
for the soiled carpet
of my soul.

 

 

 

(1993)

 

(art/atheism/blogging/drawing/life/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)