Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 8

8/14/2019 Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 8

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Profane Exegesis/Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 8

I feel that sense of morose sadness coming upon me again. Like a bitter-sweet

melody. Corny, but that expresses it perfectly. Like distant music, imperceptibly,

drifting in on a breeze. Unknown worlds, modes of being, lives lived elsewhere, at

the very edge of consciousness. Anywhere out of the world. Sometimes I think Imust hate this world. But everywhere can seem interesting, almost quaint. This flat.

Untidy, poky, unkempt. Even the odd cobweb. A single mouse running around

occasionally. Its very discreet. An elusive pet for almost no upkeep. My only

companion for months now. Except for the dreams. As persistent as ever. When

youve lived quietly for a while, with not too much distraction, not too many

interruptions, dreams seem to develop a life of their own. The vivid becomes very

vivid; your very own utterly surreal home movies. More like an alternative world.

Oft-times Ive been imagining what it would be like to go back in time, to see

old shops etc. This likely stems partly from recalling the two grocers on the corner ofthe street where I grew up. Thinking back to that, and becoming aware once again of

the unreliability and imprecision of memory. And of language. Vague snatches of

images. Some pillars, the rows of shelves, perhaps a door near the back of the shop.

Just asking to be explored as a kid will, but out of bounds. I was a terrible thief as a

kid, but rarely tried it on with these shops. Too close to home.

My mother, commenting once on the solidity of the old council flat we lived in,

remarked that they had been built in 1938. Perhaps thats how long it took to

complete them, because I once saw a photograph in a window of the Courier Office

of the whole area from the Law Hill, taken in 1932, and the row of flats were in the

process of being built (We lived in number 38 on the top floor). I find it impossible

to picture that time as a reality. I do understand its all relative. That a knowledge of

history helps, not least local. But the irony there is it can increase the sense of

frustration. Of distance from it. As if the reality of it can come so close, but not quite

close enough. You know that everything you can think of is a kind of fiction. The

reality of it forever out of reach. And if you were there, it would be no more

remarkable or tedious or demoralising than the present, forever culturally based. Our

perception of others, and ourselves, dictated in any society by ones place in the socio-

economic system. Everyday demands. Making sure the bills get paid. Or just

striving to keep body and soul together through the random demands and sadisticpeculiarities of an arbitrary school system and aberrant parents. No question of the

reality of the world and ones everyday experience there. The world too much in your

face. Then you just wish it would go away. Its so easy to fall into the fantasy of the

past being a more pleasant period. Like dreaming of living an idyllic life in the

country.

I have to ask myself where the impulse comes from. Is it solely based on a kind

of wishful thinking an inability to face reality? A form of escapism? That

sometimes we can feel weve fucked things up so badly we turn into a kind of Billy

Liar? We all want to be heroes or at least seen as heroes, just as he did, to make upfor the ordinariness of his life. What if your life is so extraordinary in a way, that you

didnt recognise it? So much so, you would do anything to lead a ordinary life?


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whatever that is exactly.

Sept 10. The weird thing about childhood is how it can seem more real

than later life. Every experience is vivid and new, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

Every perception seems magnified. Supremely unconcerned with such adult

necessities as having to make a living, one naturally gravitates towards what makeslife worth living with barely any conscious volition in the process. If its interesting

and isnt too threatening, then its worth pursuing. Insects, birds, comics, books,

animals, all were fair game especially birds. There were few things more

fascinating to me. Girls maybe, but that was far more problematic. Birds could be

observed and even interrelated with in a way that wasnt so different from following a

story or watching TV. I could feel myself more as the observer than the observed. It

was another aspect of the world I could explore with a sense of relative detachment

yet feel deeply involved. They were alive conscious, sentient beings I could feel

affinity with. They experienced fear and apprehension as well as had a form offreedom I could never experience; they could fly whenever and to wherever they

wanted. They even flew to far off countries in the summer or some of them did such

as Swallows or Swifts. I was stuck in the here and now with my crazy mother and

having to go to school.

But in the summer holidays I was free for the most part for six weeks and could

read and explore to my hearts content. I could draw for a bit then stop when I wanted

to do something else. The notion of drawing or even painting for most of the day

most days would have seemed like a kind of prison. I didnt write much if at all as I

knew my mother would read it and that made it impossible to be natural writing

was for school with a set project or subject. It was a different situation and mindset.

At home a whole other dynamic was in place that had nothing to do with expressing

myself except in my head which was where reading came in. I lived what I read and

took it out into the world with me as the books brought another world to me. When

Bunter and the gang visited Egypt or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did the same in

their Road Movies, I was there to, each blending into the other for me, yet strangely

similar. After a long period reading that Bunter story to stop for tea when my mum

came in, it was as if a part of me had been there with them. The present felt less

solid, less real than it usually did. It was a natural high. I could feel oddly detached

from the world, from the overbearing present even though I knew it to be real in away that a film or a story ideas werent. Or so I assumed.

Nor would I have wanted to read all day, every day. I didnt set a timetable or

draw up involved plans or a complicated series of graphs for what I wanted to do.

When I felt like going out I went out. It helped if the weather was fine. There was

the whole neighbourhood to explore. Oddly enough I enjoyed reading in the sunlight

I was as liable to stay in and set up a cosy nook by the window, even closing off the

rest of the room and that world, by pulling the curtains together so that I had my

own little cocoon-like space, and Im sure that was the objective. My womb with a

view. My little timeless moment, protracted for as long as I could make it last. Mysnowballs gambit in hell. But it seemed to work as a mood arose in me like music

and the world expanded I only had to look out of the window; there was a whole


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world out there and then some. The shining sun alone was proof of that.

My mother and others might think they ruled the world and me along with it but

none of them could equal the might of the sun or fathom its origins along with the

rest of this world and the limitless universe beyond. Whoever made the sun and the

stars was clearly in charge, and that was the same being who made me. They didnt

own shit. My mother seemed to be wrapped up in self-created woes and trivialities itseemed to me. The world could be a fascinating place if only she could see it, if only

she would stop and look. But I was beholden to her for what freedom I had of

course. Wherever she got the money, it was her that fed and clothed me and found

the (council) flat we live in that kept a roof over our heads, as she would sometimes

remind us in her belligerent, nerves at the end of her tether way. Everything became

a means for her to see herself as unreasonably overburdened and victimised in the

pursuit of making us mainly me feel more guilty, ungrateful little wretch that I

was. My books, such as they were, were merely a reflection of my selfish

acquisitiveness and self-centredness as well as a reminder of my father who hadaggrieved her so much, as he was a reader as well. My talent and occasional

inclination for drawing at least she couldnt read it only served to reinforce that

perception as if these were intolerable provocations I had set up intentionally, clearly

possessed by some malicious or devilish intent designed to push her over the brink of

what sanity she had managed to retain in the face of such protracted and fiendish

onslaughts to her innocently good-intentions and well-being malevolent little fucker

that I was. If ever she might have felt this was all a little nuts, her natural self-pity

and sense of self-righteousness would save the day like any good tunnel-visioned

fundamentalist.

Not that she was religious in any way, but she was a true believer all the same

in hatred and guilt. The actuality of it was that it was to repeatedly experience it in a

haze of bewilderment and incomprehensibility. On other days she seemed reasonably

calm. I likely picked this up on some level and that was when I stayed in and read for

a while. But my immediate world was to be explored, as intimately as possible, and

in the naturally acquisitive way of boys, that meant accumulating a collection og

birds eggs in whatever way I could. They would be the stolen, forbidden fruit of my

endeavours, the potential and future life of the embryo chick within, a necessary

sacrifice for the artistic beauty and uniqueness of my feeble little collection feeble

compared to the riot of colour, texture, and even shape, contained in my littleObservers book of birds eggs that I carried around with me in the hope of finding

or ferreting out something rare. No wonder we wolfed down hens eggs; they were

the dullest of the lot. It also made it easier to make the progression to seeing it as

relatively harmless to decimate the offspring of other birds.

I think I was motivated by greed mainly. Mostly it was Blackbird or Thrush,

distinctive as they were, with the occasional Starrys Starlings, which to me, were

quite exotic, as they reminded me of small crows, for which reason I felt a bit more

sorry for them with their odd stilted gait and charmless rasps. They were like the

outsiders of the species unattractive and awkward. That just about covered my ownself-image. After I had two or three each of their eggs there was no reason to take

any more. House-sparrows eggs were as common, but I came across others such as


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Linnets and House-martins and possibly Goldcrests and Bluetits. It could be difficult

to differentiate between some of them as they were quite similar and as there was

only a single illustration for each in the book, that made it all the more ambiguous,

whick of course, only made it all the more tantalising, increasing my reluctance to

give them up. It was a question of balancing the scales of a subdued but tangible

sense of guilt along with the usual drive to please myself and keep them just in case.I had developed my own code of (mis)conduct to keep my conscience in the red as I

saw it. That was to take up to two eggs if there were five in the nest and desirable,

and one if there was three, and one or two if there were four, depending on how much

I wanted them. Two was more problematic, but my acquisitiveness often got the

better of me and Id take one anyway. I can vaguely recall taking three from a four or

five, as I felt guilty enough at the time to recall it now. I probably let one slip through

my fingers as I blew it, or it burst with the pressure as happened if I was too

impatient or the egg was more delicate. But first you had to put them up to the sun,

holding it between thumb and forefinger to see if it was guggit close to hatching.If it was, we put it back, as carefully as we had extracted it. Sometimes it could

be difficult to get ones hand into the nest again while still holding the egg; then it had

to be left to roll the rest of the way, again as carefully as one could. That always

worried me as I could never be sure if any of them had cracked. There was no point

in trying to blow a guggit egg sticking in the pin through to the other end and

swirling it around as the hole would be too big for the contents to get out. Sometimes

this happened either due to impatience or carelessness, or because it was a dull day or

as with pigeons eggs whose shell was thicker, it could be difficult to gauge just how

developed the embryo was.

This was also when the eggs were more likely to burst. A case of Ive started,

its dead, so Ill finish, as a partially shaped snot of gloop would dangle obstinately

from the bottom of the egg like some obscene horror movie in the making, as ones

ears popped with the effort of huffing and puffing. I could feel my bad karma

mounting by the second. It was an eye-opener to realize many other kids didnt give

a toss either way, as when, standing by the old deserted tenements close by where we

lived, we saw some older, tough lads we knew climbing the stairs of the tenements

opposite, on their way to decimate the group of pigeons that nested there, only I never

saw that coming as I assumed they were only out for the eggs. Their procedure was

to give the eggs all of them a perfunctory glance and broadcast its state to theothers, though I only ever did it in twos on my own. Guggit one or two repeated as

they smashed the eggs to the ground.

I felt this was needlessly callous and destructive. Then one or two having

cornered a pigeon or three, held them, letting them go at the last second as they tried

to kick them like a football. This only had the effect of making me feel angry and

helpless. More shocked than angry -that they could have such utter disregard for

feeling, sentient creatures. I never questioned how our sausages or chicken came to

be on our plate but I took that to be a matter of convenience and commerce; that as

with my eating them, it was nothing personal. I couldnt get my head and emotionsaround it. This wasnt indifference but indifference to their own sadism. It was

gratuitous sadism for the sake of it.

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Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 8