Zen Exhaustion or Help! Idealism Is Making Me Hate People

One is in a very off-key mood today.

The official (not-really) scientific term for this particular brand of angst is Zen-exhaustion. One finds through serious study that liquorice allsorts do not help, and neither do macaroons. (what is my obsession with coconut, anyway?) One has the urge to send angry text messages, or make tearful, impassioned phone-call speeches that begin "Why are you being this way! All I ever try to do is be decent - *sniffle* - and fair and kind and decent and it's not fair because....!"

Ah, fairness! Why are we born with this expectation? Sigh. One can only ever reach real maturity when one realises that the world is Frequently Unfair but it is an uneasy admission. Where does one draw the line between calm and activism, between acceptance and the drive for transformation? Between holding ones peace and speaking up? Between biting your tongue and punching someone else in the gob?

And how far do we take the idea that we are creating everything in our lives?

Is it possible... gasp... just sometimes, that other people are being BastardAssholes?

I am of that unfortunate group who makes themselves accountable for every thought in their heads and tries to keep it spotless in that old noggin, sunny and sweet and clean and clear of all debris. By debris I mean: irritation, annoyance, loneliness, anger, boredom, frustration, envy... all the uglies. When I say 'unfortunate', I don't mean to say that such mental/emotional hygiene is a bad idea. When I say 'unfortunate', what I mean to say is that for such a person, Zen-Exhaustion comes along and makes one very, very uncomfortable. And when I say Zen-Exhaustion, I mean the point at which a relaxed, rumi-guzzling, hippie-type female Finally Gets Pissed Off.

It descends like a flood. The crap the landlord hasn't fixed yet. That Knob who won't return your calls. The book that won't get finished. The crappy weather. The chores that must be done. The chicken that must be seasoned. The forms that must be filled. The selfish family members. The crappy weather. Did I say 'the crappy weather' already? Let me say it again: The Crappy Weather. And Other People! Why are other people such bastards all the time?! Ok, some of the time? (another sypmptom of Zen-Exhaustion is chronic hyperbole) And beyond all of this the great ontological questions which are usually abstract and candy-floss-like that suddenly densify into something far more tooth-shattering - questions like: What the actual f**k is this all for? Why is everybody so weird (including me)? Why don't people all just say what they're thinking? Why are all the really evil people doing so well? Why are all the sweet-hearted and vulnerable people suffering so much? Why are so many horrid things allowed? And what Can I Do About It, anyway? Everyone has a theory on everything but - for goodness sake - which are the right ones and what is fixable and what should be fixed and what should be left alone?

And one is so used to being the person everyone can rely on for a smile that the least bit of angst makes one feel... well... so dirty inside. And then one feels guilty and annoyed that one must always be smiling, even though no one has explicitly asked for such a service. And the great irony of it all is that the times one most needs to talk to people are the times that one is least inclined to do so. Because one is Pissed Off, and has not much sweetness to share. Especially when God Knows if anyone is Really Interested in Listening. Yeah, I'm capitalizing a lot of words right now. So sue me! (no, actually, don't do that. I really don't have the extra).

Anyway, the big problem with trying to Be the Change You Want To See in the World and all that positive crap is that, invariably, one raises ones standards of behaviour and then - inevitably - begins to expect more of other people. And then it all become somewhat counterproductive when you start to think...

Help! Idealism is Making Me Hate People.

If any of you can figure out what I'm trying to say, please give me a shout!

Love you all! Please be nicer to people, you bastards.

Gemx

Goodbye Whitney :-(

The night gets a little broken and
a little of the stuffing comes out

the first thing you feel is old. The second thing you feel is robbed
some people are more than people -

an era -
a cocktail of longago moments
a snapshot of you in pastel-coloured legwarmers
earlyyouth and innocence
her death is not
one nervous system stopping
its more like giving up
your childhood walking into your present and
saying "i give up"!

(But wait! Before you go - tell me
where do broken hearts go?)

Whitney was the one
who taught you about love!

from whom you memorized every vibrato
every voicecrack of heartbreak
before you'd so much as held a boys hand

taught you what it meant to lose
what it meant to long
in a way that seemed beautiful - in a way that felt
safe, as if being a woman would be no different than being a girl
but more fun!

mountains of curls
a face impenetrably happy,
a face too pretty and not beautiful enough to be tragic
the face of a girl who's voice knows everything

Every line from the top of
how do I know! to the bottom of I wanna dance
made you want
to feel that quality of pain - because love
would be worth it!
that was the promise in that voice
that voice that always seemed to have a whole lifetime buried in it!

not the type of voice that dies at 48 -
before you know what happens to broken hearts!

Its a voice that's been holding your hand
since before you knew what music was

it mattered not if she was a genius
not judged and critiqued like MJ
just complete and whole and far away
like childhood

you shut your mind to what she had become
as far away from herself
as innocence to cynicism -

the stuffing gets knocked out of the night a little bit
you are thinking of how sad it is
you are thinking of her daughter

but you are also thinking of yourself
thinking

in her songs

both of you
are the same forever

Euphoria Skank!!!

1.

When I get a good idea

going like this.. MAN! Ah - just like this

all juicy in my head like some kind of bomb - some kind of bomb made out of good shit like penny sweets

when I'm like this i gotta tell you - I have to do a funny dance!

I'm gonna tell you about this cos it's time I start sharing this stuff cos real talk

I am peculiar! And if I don't tell you about peculiar stuff pretty soon I won't be saying anything at all!

So let me tell you about this dance man -

i get a GOOD IDEA and I start walking like a

chicken all the way down the hall to my kitchen and I jerk my shoulders up and down

shuffle side to side and cackle to myself

and I might clap my hands in time to some rhythm of my thoughts coming down like the kind of rain

you make with a xylophone - I might actually spin round like some kind of Michael Jackson

one-woman tribute (bandless) band

I might do something really mad and

make a cuppa tea with two bags - one ginger and one black

and NOT EVEN MEASURE THE SUGAR - just drop it in! Just WHATEVER

cos something is HAPPENING TO ME!

And its the feeling I'm always waiting to feel - when I am

finally delivered of that promise - always idling away inside me - ticking -dividing cell after cell - the promise that I might make

something beautiful - real - that I might grab reality by its head - and hear the scream

and cut the chord! - that I may fling myself across my floor and

with pen and notebook and throw my chest wide

wide open like a skylight and the heavens might come crashing

through me - this poor wretched funny-dancing little single mothering bag of peculiarities - that all this stuff - this stuff that's TRUE - and real and human might come through - might coming crashing through me like a mob

a tumult - a chaos - a hurricane - a riot - an apocalypse of diamonds!



2.

Oh yes. And I'm bout to go hit that page again like some fool that owes me money.

I'm painting again!

Talking heads says it best in that track 'Artists Only':

I'M PAINTING! I'M PAINTING AGAIN!!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYZFS7JvT0)

That cry of euphoric weirdness and doom... Just substitute 'painting' for 'writing'.

I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain.

Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You can't see it 'til it's finished

I don't have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont' have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now I'm going to take me to you.

Sitting in bed in two pairs of trousers and two tops layered up and been sitting here for the straight 5 hours that constitute my workday (there is also the 3 or four hour worknight later once maternal duties have been taken care of). I am quite wolfishly happy with myself. My hair is a mess.

I have much project at the moment, probably more than even discipline can get me through, but we'll soon see. I am simultaneously in a sturdy frame of mind and also away with the mystics. I am all emotional about everything. The snow. D'angelo being back. My boy having lost a tooth already. All kinds of crazy-eyed joyful and also Caribbean-ly practical. I am still fully of happiness that 2011, that dirty old smelly vagrant of a year, is over. Oh yes. 2012, bring it on. Whats the worst that could happen? The apocalypse! Pfffft!

ANd I am writing a book (2nd draft) and a play (first draft) and an album (just to keep shit impossible, the way I like it).

I can't share actual text from any of my official projects (that would be crack-ish), though I shall no doubt be back to whinge about them. Instead, I shall share this little free-write (that of course has nothing whatever to do with my life or anybody I know or have ever met) I posted on facebook today during my break:

You and I are eternal
eternally
eternally leaving
stuff behind hoping
we'll have a chance to come back
trying to outwit the days that faster and faster
push us along
wrenching us
from one adventure
to the next so fast the road tangles
up in itself
and trips us
into each other

and we are wily as hansel and gretel
traces must be left
so tomorrow remembers yesterday
a pair of glasses - a scarf - a book
a bracelet left idling behind the broken television
we are forever
forever leaving ourselves places
so we can come back
to the times we were loved
that we smiled all over
and felt home
home.

we leave ourselves behind and go
with a smile
and a kiss that has medicine in it
a prescription for loneliness

a silent request that you
keep me close against your dreams
wrapped tight in all your corniest
white picket fantasies, so you don't pick up one
without the other
I am forever
forever leaving
myself with you
in the hopes
I will one day
be free
to stay -

In other news: Some people have angelic timing, don't they?

Back soon with a blog that's actually, like, coherent. Promise.

Huge gigantic whale shark-sized love,

Gemxxx

ARMIES

Been a while now, hasn't it?

I started the whole Free-Write Wednesdays idea so that I could outrun my inner critic at least once a week and make something - anything. The past few months, the inner critic has [quite evidently] won. But miracles and disasters have a way of shutting her up...



Public disaster and private miracle have conspired to wake me up before sunrise and have compelled me to pound away at my laptop...

Here's the 'disaster' bit first.

Won't bore with glib musings on state of affairs, will simply present today's offering:

ARMIES

You already know it,
when you call them 'greedy'
that this 'greed' is your greed
(the army of your nightmares!)
that spares nothing, cares for nothing, consumes
everything
you have given them billboards for hearts
you have sold their futures for figures
you priced them out of everything
even their own education
but they are wily though
(the army of your immorality!)
you call them wily
but as you say it
you know it is the exact flavour of your own trickiness
robbing with one hand while you distract
with the other
from every pocket, from every continent

spreading the pain, preserving your wealth
they are 'without conscience', 'careless vandals'
'careless arsonists', lit petrol bombs, big-chested in the firelight
(the army of your callousness!)
'mindless' like mindless made-up money
bombs like your bombs, 'empty' like you are empty

of everything but lies and justifications
their 'empty' is the exact hollow
shade of your selfishness
they burn at the exact heat of your
coldness
burning, burning the houses they will
never afford to buy
burning, burning the shops they can't afford
to shop at
taking the products that mean nothing

they have been told mean everything
they run in 'gangs' like your interconnected
gangs of moneyspinners and rhetoricspitters
(your army of thieves!)
they steal like you steal from us
they are the bad children
you are the parent who neglects
who abuses, who sells your children for
cash and for control
(the innocent army of babies
on the front-line of capitalism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of racism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of class-ism!)
you stand there
stand there and tell us
GO ON! tell us
like some retarded big-jawed effing super-hero
that you're going to send the army in
but you know and you know and you know
that
you ARE
what you condemn!

Can't say any more than that right now... But maybe next time I should. Or maybe next time I should talk about miracles...

Soon,

Gemxx

Cardigan

Tonight, I couldn't speak to you. So I fixed your cardigan. Is that why you left it behind? I wondered if you were cold, right then, at that moment, wishing you'd taken it with you. I took it off and put it in my lap. I got out my sewing kit and spent a long time closing up all the holes around the neck. Lots of tiny stitches, more subtle than words are. While I was sewing I thought round and round soothingly, "that's better... That's better... that's better." It will be hard to see it was ever torn at all. I was sad when it was finished. There should be a way to stitch the night closed. Nights without you are a slow unravelling.

Inshallah... inshallah... inshallah...

My Heart

My Heart - Free-Write 20/10/10 I am not afraid I am not afraid to stand all alone I am not afraid to stand all alone with everybody I am everybody I am everybody's love I am everybody's love tearing open I am standing I am standing with my feet in the soil I am standing with with my feet in the soil of the earth I am standing with my feet in the soil of the earth that is my earth (mine!) I am standing with my feet in the soil of the earth that is everybody's earth all alone with everybody's love tearing open with my feet in the soil with my head in the clouds puffed up and floating all a-mingle with everybody's vapourish dreams of thunder crying rain down into the soil of everybody's earth soil of everybody's love dancing to my heart everybody's heart My heart is sweet, scarlet music. I am not afraid! ________ Every so often I get a leap in understanding, a leap closer to myself, and everything in my life becomes clearer. An actor/writer friend wanted me to take a look at a play he'd written, so in return, I asked for a little help with my performance technique. This was the day before yesterday, and it was all very informal. We just went through a couple of poems and he told me what he saw in them, and how to access the emotions of my work. As often happens in life, this exercise was illuminating in ways that extended beyond my performance technique. I realised that I try to shrink all the time, apologize for myself. I pull back when I long to go all out, I flake when I need to commit. I realised that I spend a lot of my time half-trying to express myself and half-trying to disappear. I had that little tutorial and it all clicked somehow. My entire being said: "ENOUGH!" So the next day(yesterday), I did a poetry performance that was filmed for an internet TV show, Manorlogz. It was a poem I'd done before, but something had changed in me. I wore red heels. I stood up straight. I didn't bother with my habitual 'look at me, I'm a poet but I'm like, suuuuch a mess' schtick but just paid attention to the piece and allowing myself to be alive on stage. It was liberating. It seemed like a microcosm of my life! All my shrinking had to stop! Fast-forward to today and I did my Free-write Wednesday offering, and the feeling crystallised into words. Every so often, I read something back and I get that feeling, 'yes! that's exactly what I meant!' And it's almost like being understood by somebody else. My eyes welled up. It seemed to mean something. No dexterous wordplay, I haven't excited myself with form, but I've shocked myself with the epiphany that I am full of joy - from nowhere, from everywhere, just to BE here. I got that feeling again where it seemed there was a clue to the order of things inside me, and that everything was connected.. I think maybe all artists - maybe all people in general - are stretching their fingers toward the light, trying to feel the pattern, order and beauty of the universe under the suffering. I am here. I'm here and I want to be here, deserve to be here, and need to be here exactly as I am, doing exactly what I do, feeling exactly what I feel. And you too!!! Jeez, I'm such a hippie... lol! Peas and gloves! xxx

To Whom it May Concern

Dear Everyone,

I am sick of writing. I would rather do anything else instead of writing. Writing makes me very scared and tired and leaves not very much time for speaking with friends or watching television. It makes me scared because it's so big, and I am such a small part of everything, and it feels like life is speeding by while I sit in a corner with a dunce cap on turning words this way and that to catch the light and going 'duuuuuuhhhh'.

I'm sick of constantly trying to find the right words to say things when there are so many words and so many things but at the same time too many words and not enough things and too many things and not enough words. I'm afraid that life is going to speed over my head like rush hour traffic.

I'm afraid that everyone is forgetting about me and talking behind my back and saying "where is she? Dead?" and saying what a rubbish friend I am because it doesn't seem like I'm ever really around and I barely go anywhere or do anything and what a weirdo and what exactly is she trying to make, anyway? I am sick of writing because so far it has taken me 432 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, a day, an hour and10 seconds to do this one draft. Or at least a year and a half.

I am sick of writing because everyone else has much more interesting things to say and report on Facebook and Twitter about all the shinier things they are doing and all the cooler things they are doing with words on various stages and theatres and even on TV instead of alone in ratty exercise books. I'm very scared a lot that I'm not big-brained or deep-souled enough to say all the beauties I'm desperate to put in this world.

I'm sick of writing because it creates this weird compulsive seeking of loneliness where you pray someone will call but then if they do, you don't pick up, and you're not sure what call it is you're really waiting for because it's pretty certain that God doesn't need your digits to reach you. Or really what you want is a warm, re-grounding hugging and loving and sweetness that's unavailable on a regular basis as yet because Things Are Not Established even though there's this guy who completely abolishes you with light like having the sun in your eyes.

I am sick of writing because my back is really painful from hunching over and falling asleep in my notebook and as a consequence I am never comfortable in any position apart from maybe in a hot bath which I very rarely have time for. I would rather be racing my son in the park and teaching him how to count with cotton balls. I would rather be listening to music. I would rather be eating pizza. I would rather be kissing. And I am sick of writing because no matter how sick I get of writing it is always the only thing to do because it's the only way I get to keep all of those things, the running and the kissing and the pizza, turning them this way and that to catch the light and going 'duuuuuuhhhh'. Even if I one day get senile dementia, or when I'm completely extinct or even if the world has ended I will have written those words and writing is the only way I get to say things like 'being abolished with light' which makes love always an especially beautiful thing no matter what becomes of it because this way I get to keep it all even while I'm giving it away and maybe now I've said all of this I can [sigh] finally... get back to work.

Free-Write Wednesdays

To help ease the feeling - neck-deep in my second novel - that I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing and will witness the complete collapse of Western Civilisation before even a first draft sees the light of day - I started a little group on Facebook called 'Free-Write Wednesdays' where members post/share a free-write every Sunday. Okay, I'm joking. Every Wednesday. Check it out here if you want to get involved: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=21727182150&ref=ts From now on, I'll be sharing mine on this blog as well as facebook, but here are the last 2.

Enjoy...?

Gem xx

Freedoms and Hungers - Friday-written Free-Write Wednesday 13/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 13, 2010 at 1:11pm

Now let me tell you about Johnny, do you know Johnny? Me, not so much. Johnny most of his life has been a free-wheeling, shiny-shiny man with his body always sky-angled and every movement in life he takes in the pursuit of open spaces. I don't know what to write about him except there is a lot to be learned from this man about freedom, what freedom is and what freedom does. It's a slippery word, he says. If you've pinned it down, then you've lost it, if you chase it, then you're a slave to freedom. And to be a slave to freedom is an oxymoron, no? He has an interesting turn of phrase halfway between an academic and a madman. He tells me the problem with human beings. He says the problem with human beings is that all human beings want a home, and all human beings are natural runaways. Sometimes they just want a home to runaway from. Sometimes they just want to runaway so they can feel that pull and tug of home deep down in that deep down swamp of their hungry bellies. He says to be human is about hunger, and that freedom is one of those hungers that sometimes directs you away from food. There's that pull always between the man who wants love, a wife, a room, a house, an ideology, a passion, a life-work, a God, and the man who only wants the freedom of wanting nothing. But what the hell do I know, I say to himself. I'm not Johnny anymore. I'm just a pile of rags piled up in the subway of Old Street Station. I've not been Johnny in a long time.

Love - (late) Friday Wednesday Free-Write - 06/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 4:22pm

Your profile over there, waiting
eases my face open, smiling, eases
my chest open, loving, and the night open
with dreaming, that universal dreaming
of embraces and homecomings.
We lead each other through the dark,
blind and deaf to the noisy cityscape. All is hush.
So good to see you. Good, right, true -
affirmative. I don't have
much more to give than words
but I cooked you dinner
I like watching you eat. I would do much more.
many days of conversation have piled up.
Gestures, insights, complaints, enthusiasms
and steep drops sometimes between words
when I am just -
looking at your face. I know this face
with more than my eyes. Our kisses are
too much joy for one body. I'm meltiiiing! I joke
Gosh, didn't God knit you beautiful
I'm clever just to make you laugh
so He can hear you.
What a sweet tangle we are
the smell of your neck makes me cry secretly
i haven't cried many years just
from awe! A great love is in me, bigger
than the sound of rivers or the
depth of sky outside my window
big, and deep, and quiet
I don't know big enough things to do with it
my mind is an orchestra of silence
the quiet after goodbyes with you is
like a blanket of snow on christmas morning
all is hush and sacred, and a train platform
becomes the scene of great humility and
passion
I surrender. something has happened to
me, is happening to me, and maybe we are
happening to each other
maybe -
i want to write something clever but my my mind
is drunk, all real love is mystical
all real love is God's -
(thank You)