History is a weapon to be used against your own prejudice

Today saw family, kiddlies and sunshine. This was a good thing. It was wonderful to see Kevin after such a long time.

I'm astounded by the palpable presence of racism from some parts of the city I live in. It makes me physically sick and I refuse to accept these opinions and remain silent about them. I always reply harshly to racist comments and I don't give a fuck if it gets me in trouble. Pfft. I'm too angry to write about this subject sanely or logically.

By the way, Journey = yay. Stadium rock wins today.

So what is there for little ol' me to write about now? I refrain from jabbering on about anything psychiatry related because I refuse to let any illnesses I have define me. It's just something I'm battling through, like cancer or the flu.

I learnt today that in some parts of the world people are still sentenced to death for just a suspicion of witchcraft. Why am I surprised by this? Amin, Pot, Stalin, Hitler: you ain't got nothing on Christianity.

That is all.

'Eyes that watch the morning star seem a little brighter'

I hate to complain about the NHS. We're so lucky to have something even close to our health system in comparison to many other countries but you know what? I'm going to complain anyway, because when you hear your doctor talking on the phone to a health professional and telling them that the matter is urgent and they must get in touch immediately, you do not expect to wait over a month for a letter telling you an appointment is available over a month from then. I rang them at this point to tell them that when my doctor said this issue is important, it really is important, so they gave me an earlier appointment and I waited two weeks for that letter. They've now put that appointment back. I will make my feelings strongly known when I arrive at the appointment, although I suppose I ought to bloody pray it happens at all.

RANT OVER.

Cor, I haven't listened to Morrissey in ages. *dances*

Tonight I spoke to Ewan on the phone for quite a while. Those kids are like a boiling, steaming pot of energy from which I can drink. Not in an I'MAGOFF psychic vampire type way but in a grounding, inspiring kind of way.

I've also realised that people (including me) use the exclamation mark way too much. It is only supposed to be used for an indication of a command, or extreme emotion or astonishment. So there. Stick that in your punctuation pipe and smoke it. Actually, I'd bloody love a punctuation pipe - those of you who know me well will be all too aware I'd be an addict.

I think that's enough for tonight. Hazel and Kevin are visiting soon with the squiddleyiddleykiddleys and I physically can't wait to see them all! <-extreme excitement.

'Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.'

'Don't wanna be a hollow man'

Richard Cribben. You were the first resident I really took to at Lennox Wood. Many people didn't understand you but to this day, you were wonderful to me.

I wish I could have known you when you were of stable mind and under less stressful circumstances.

You are not forgotten. You fought for your country but the fight for your mind you lost and I wish I could have done more.

I hope you can hear me.

Wherever you are.

'Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast'

Heidi-ho campers. Yesterday mum and dad visited and we went to the Black Country Museum, we went down a mine which beat some of my claustrophobia into submission!

I'm so exhauted.

Oh, and I've just seen this. Go Obama!

Songs of Myself

I remember life when I could joke, and I meant every light-hearted comment, and the future and the grass all glistened towards me.

'I have gotta stop smiling - it gives the wrong impression'

I've got to be honest here: I'm worried. I'm worried that people will find hope in the BNP just as they did in the Nazis, ignoring the most fundamentally worrying aspect of their beliefs (namely racism) and pull out the hope and the prospect from a party of contradictions and bigotry (lol, I originally wrote 'bigamy' here!). Call me dramatic in comparing the BNP to the Nazis if you like but if you look at Germany's history and the political and social state of the German people before chancellorship was given to Adolf Hitler you may see why I worry about such things. That's all I'll say on the subject for tonight because I am rather tipsy.

In other news, everyone should buy the new Manics album.

In other other news, I miss my friends although I feel I need to be further away from everything. My dad once described me as 'an enigma wrapped in a labyrinth inside a riddle' and I'm beginning to wonder if this interpretation might be accurate or not. Either way I really don't think it's a bad thing. I'd hate to be shallow, simple, easy. If I were I might as well not be alive.

I might write a book called 'Songs of Myself'. If Chinua Achebe can take a line from Yeats then why can I not take a title from Whitman?

'A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. '

'Art is born of humiliation'

The inclusion of the world's saddess poem was nothing to do with my mood, in fact I'm in a phase of mania induced by a general crazy brain. I've had my weeks of depression (which lasted too long this time, quite frankly) and now we're onto the creative, hyperactive, manic aspect of my existence.

I have decided to go and see someone again. I have only now truly realised just how much this have cost me throughout my life.

Enough of the self-indulgence for now though: I am just trying to make my brain stop on one idea/subject/thought long enough to either write it down or talk about it in a relatively-sane manner, and slowly enough for people to keep up!

Toodley-doo!

Thank you W.H.Auden...for being born

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I've just thought - one of the worst things about today was that nothing...nothing could be done by me to prevent or help any of these things. I'm an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.

We've made tomorrow's world a Nirvana for the damned

'Stick around one minute more...
I'm smarter than you think:
Do I sound like an old bore?
Oh man, it's just the drink.
I didn't always hit the gin,
there were times when I'd fit in -
they'll never know how much I tried,
did I tell you my cat died?'

The sound of almost everyone you love telling you you're wrong, making a mistake - not an unfamiliar sound to me. It gets no easier each time you hear it, especially the times you really need them to bloody well take a thought to really listen to what you're saying. One of the problems of coming from a middle class family where 'failure' is a scent obscure and any mental ailment is dismissed as foreign, strange, and trivial. If depression came along with skin boils and hair-loss my life would be a lot easier. Or maybe I shouldn't have got so good at hiding it.

Only positive words in this post: things seem to be pretty much sorted with Kevin. He needs check-ups and such, monitoring, and recovery but apart from that let's hope it's all over.

So, today we found the cat dead on the front lawn because people seem to find it terribly difficult to drive at the speed limit, which I can understand really - those rules of the road are just put in place to stop people from having fun after all, and why the hell shouldn't they? And I sympathise with the fact that they didn't stop because they probably had to be somewhere and it wasn't their cat anyway. Oh, and my mum had her handbag snatched in Hempstead Valley car park, which is also understandable really - if you see a vulnerable old woman by herself with a trolley full of shopping why shouldn't a group of cowards steal her handbag? She obviously won't be able to chase after them, and she's probably confused so unlikely to act very quickly about the situation. Really she's just asking for it - being silly enough to go shopping for some dog food and some cake ingredients in the light of day.

You know what human race? You can just fuck off today. Just fuck fuck fuck off.

'And my whole body's in flames'

How is he so patient?

Luke, you are an angel.