Blear and loathing.

"Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant." 

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.


"I find myself here."

There is no question about it.

"I find myself here."

It suddenly occurred to me the other day.

That that hadn't been me.

It was a relief. 

"I'm sorry, you don't follow?"

Well, I am telling you...

Now...

I was...a relief.

I had been hidden, dissimulated, drowned out in drear.

It was tiresome.

Then I was there, bleary eyed, somewhere near.

"I find myself here."

It was an unfamiliar sound.

Breath as plague.
Breath as swarm.

Breath as resistance.

"I find myself here."

I scrolled.
I scrolled.
I scrolled.

Nothing seemed to connect.

Nothing seemed to connect.

I fall prey to blear and loathing.

"I lose myself there."

I can't go on.

I am lost.

I am nothing.

I am carrion.

Rotting.

It wasn't me.

No, I am telling you.

That wasn't me.

I recognise myself in this distance.

"I find myself here."



Footnotes.

I find myself here on flitting through a post of Terry Elliot.

"Self loathing is a subset of resistance: all honour to Laura Ritchie and Steven Pressfield."

I find it difficult to delve deeply.

He links to an article of Steven Pressfield.

I find it difficult to delve deeply.

I walk with Pressfield an instant.

I get as far as "One."

"So the next time you hear that self-loathing voice in your head, remember two things: One, that voice is not you."

I nod my head in agreement.

Getting to "Two" is a step too far.

"remember two things."

I don't take too kindly to imperatives...

Fuck that Mr Pressfield.

I find something about "original dreams" and "good signs."

Oh what bollocks.

I may be hasty in my judgement.

I find myself here.

Dear Maha

Maha this article appears at an appropriate moment for me. 

http://blog.mahabali.me/blog/pedagogy/love-and-anger-in-postcolonial-being

I was speaking with a Polish friend of the language of occupation which oppresses generations of people, victims of the violent abuse of others. 

He kept repeating the idea that present generations could not really usefully unpick the past. 

At the same time he kept saying that he refused to accept the words: "Polish concentration camps" - these are German he insisted.  

I talked of reparation as recognition of crimes against humanity - the descendants of slaves, victims of all sorts. 

I asked him if he considered that it was acceptable that the descendants of the manufacturers of Xyclon B benefited from capital extracted from genocide while black descendants of slaves were still suffering from systemic discrimination and deprivation. 

I asked him whether he imagined that years of occupation/colonisation had not determined narrative, language, relations of generation upon generation.  

There is the discourse of guilt - guilt of being a man, white, elite, German, straight, English, Banker...

We do not choose our birth.

We find ourselves brought to a world in which the rules by which we will live are predefined. 

We are recognised, branded even by the language of others:

White, black, man, queer, weird, woman, English, small, snob, loser...

I have spent many years unpicking discourses which were branded into my body, into my lens to view the world, into my relations with others. 

Years of research, genealogical, psychoanalytical, nexus analysis, critical pedagogy, leads me to the writing of this at present.

I refuse to accept that this is our only destiny - that this is God's will. 

I refuse to accept the belief that we can not learn to free ourselves from mental slavery (to borrow words of Bob Marley).

Indeed, I believe that this must be our struggle, our common struggle for our children.

We must unpick the colonisation of our minds, bodies, spirit, as children of the slaves and the slave-owners, as mothers, as fathers, as sisters and as brothers. 

There must be recognition.

There must be reparation - material and/or symbolic. 

There must be a desire to create new relations between men, women, animals, plants and the ecosystem of which we are part. 

It were time that we gave up dreams of unjust "progress" - material gain for a few at the expense of the many. 

There are victims of abuse in all sectors of our societies. 

There is only one way to grow, as far as I can see. 

It entails loving dialogue, compassion, forgiveness and a common determination to imagine anew in the light of what we must learn from these stories. 

There may be need for active resistance to violence. 

Lives will be lost.

We are all lost unless we fight for justice and for peace.

Thank you for holding up a light.

We shall need such lights to guide a way.

Love to all at DigiPedLab Cairo.

Simon

Recognition.

You won't know that but I will know that I am there.

It is in this instant framed.






Look up at the sky.

We are taken on a journey.

Search for the sky.

You can meet me there.

I am not looking for understanding.

Just be assured that I am at peace.

"I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding - not even that - no.  Just for some recognition of me in you, and the enemy time, in us all."

Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth

Just imagine.

Strange isn't it, how what we write never comes out quite how we could have imagined?

I don't know about you, but that my friend is precisely why I write.

Somehow, somewhere my imagination is extended so that I may imagine some more.

Strangely, I lose myself and I find myself at the same time.

I am never sure where.

I am never sure why.

From submission to recognition.

I shall let you into a secret.

There is a word that sparked this, and that word is: 'recognition'.

It was Maha who got me thinking.

She kindly suggested that I might make a 'submission' of my writing in order that there be some sort of  'recognition'.

I found that proposal both troubling and stimulating.

It made me wonder:

What form of 'recognition' did I ever seek?

The answer, I suppose, is from what this blog is woven.

Mirror, mirror...

There are those who we choose as mirrors.

There are those who are chosen as our mirrors.

There are those who would choose to be our mirrors.

There are those who we see reflected in our mirrors, who perhaps we seek to erase.

There are those...

Recognition.

Recognition for me, is a quest for harmony.

I have tried on so many costumes, played so many roles, that I find myself not so much naked but worn.

If I be worn, I am not for the instant worn out.

If the truth be known, now my friend I am inhabited.

I remember the seduction of theatrical applause.

I don't know about you, but the applause only ever had meaning for me when it came as confirmation; confirmation of a journey, of an emotion, of a struggle shared.

There has to be...there has to be presence.

Recognition is perhaps in communion.

Beauty.

'Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.' 

I shall read that again slowly.

Beauty is indeed in the EYE of the beholder.

Beauty is in that instant of beauty shared.

It is that instant which transforms us, which heightens us, which proclaims us as so much more than ourselves.

There is recognition in our eyes.

We recognise each other now.

Struggle.

There have been so many days when I could never have imagined writing.
There have been so many days when I have tossed frustrating drafts into a bin.
There have been so many days when I railed against the beast which drove me to write.

Purpose.

There is no purpose in this.

There is a breath of freedom here.

Look up at the sky.
Look up at the sky.
Look up at the sky.

Do you recognise it now?

I am weary.

Pray, my friend, share the beauty you see.

Be at peace.

At heart.

How do we perceive a heart beating?

There is a space which keeps us breathing, breathing together.

How does together feel?

How do we express together?



We are as of one.

We are embryonically aware of being contained.

We are precognitively aware of being connected.

Air cries out.

A light.

A cry.

A limb stretched out.

A hand grasps.

How does out feel?

We are babe in arms.

Familiar heart beating.
Beats aside of ours.
We are babe in arms.
Foetus no more.

Hunger, pangs of thirst, fear.

How does hunger pain us?
How do we express thirst?

Away from us...

How do we fear movement away?
What is away?

I am apart

How does singularity feel?
How do we express being a part, being apart?

I am desire.

Hunger  to move?

Thirst to know?

WHAT? 

WHY?

How do we feel to?
How do we know to be away?
How do we move away from us?

I feel I am, I recognise I am.

There is fear of being singular.
There is desire for being a part.

Recognise my singularity.
Recognise my longing.

I explore, I stretch out.

How far am I?
How far am I from the edge of my reason?

I take courage, I feel fear beaten.

I am, it is, we are, as if self-contained.

I grasp for meaning.

I stretch out my hand.

I feel your presence.

I am connected.

I am one of yours, my friends.

Your company keeps me safe.

Fear not.

Farewell

Rejoice.

For my friends

"What are you?"

I worked night and day to be ready for the linguistics conference.

The series of "papers" to which I offered my presence have left no mark on my memory.

The incidental ethnographic study of my betters and peers has left the following:

On arriving at the university building I was confronted by a mingling of badged people.

Closed circles indicated that they clearly knew each other and were busy talking up their schemes.

I knew nobody.  What does one do in such surroundings? Is there a secret handshake?

Go boldly up to the first person and offer to speak to them, I thought, would be my opening gambit.

Abstract
"Bonjour", I offered jovially, to a bejacketed French gentleman.

He studied me head to toe over his serious reading spectacles. Peering blankly at me, he suddenly ejected,

"What are you?"

He clearly didn't recognize my face or my badge. (I later remarked that my badge was pinned on back to front.)

Momentarily stunned, I ran through appropriate and less appropriate responses; had I suddenly grown fish-scales and a giraffe's neck?

Definition of terms
"I am not sure that I understand your question, could you explain what you mean by 'what are you?" I ventured.

"Yes what are you?"

He really wasn't giving anything much away.

Greeted by silence he stammered,  "I mean are you a researcher, a professor, a lecturer?"?

"Oh, I understand..." The "what" was my academic status.

"No, I am a teacher."

"And what are you?"

He was taken aback by my ignorance, or my affrontery.

"I am a professor."

"Oh and what is that?" I asked, seriously intrigued how he would define himself.

"Well, I do research projects, I have written in many top-class journals, I edit them..."

"Oh, good, and do you find anything?" I asked.

The man was clearly getting impatient with me and hurried off to find succour from his learned colleagues with whom he could be recognised for what he was.

The conference proceedings proceeded.

The gala dinner was an excruciating evening of self-congratulation and foie-gras. It left me feeling distinctly nauseous.

The following morning for the "hangover" session, for which  I was due to speak, I was feverish, suffering from gastro-enteritis and absolutely furious.

Six or seven unfortunates were seated in a classroom to hear me talk of  "Compagnie d'apprenants."  I refused to give them any information about the contents of my "abstract" and preferred to experiment with performance art.

They were most displeased.

I crossed the gentlemen on my way to the railway station and gave him quite a few pieces of my mind.

Keynote
A few kilometres later, I was stopped by a young beggar, clearly the worst for wear.

For reasons which escape me, I invited him to lunch. He refused to go to a proper restaurant, despite my urging. He preferred the anonymity of junk food.

He told me of his young daughter, for whom he was begging to buy milk powder, he told me of his heroin addiction, his difficult relationship with his mother. He offered to do me a drawing to repay me for my attention.

I kept his drawing. Written on conference sponsored note-pad, he drew an elaborate tag.  In the centre of the page, a keyword was clearly legible:

"RESPECT"

He thanked me again for the "Macdonalds' Best of Chicken MacNuggets Menu" and signed  his "paper".

The meal was paid for by university expenses.

My journey into academia had not been in vain.