Sept Jours

Seven days is all she wrote, a kind of relationship eviction note. I looked on the paper for further instructions, but none were forthcoming. I carefully folded it, and placed it in my wallet just in case some brilliant inspiration or complete collapse of memory happened in the next seven days. I considered both to be very unlikely. Inspiration doesn't come at the wave of your outstretched hand like the garcon at the high dollar restaurant at which you can't afford to eat, nor does memory just erase itself like a blackboard after a particularly difficult lesson on Leibniz's calculus. Never understood the calculus, but I could do simple maths, and that simple calculation gave me the total of 168 hours. 168 hours to convince the woman I was in love with that I am the man she needs me to be, and her long search for a soul mate has come to an end.

Of course just in case the task itself wasn't difficult enough, she decided to leave town after writing the note. So much for my charming personality sweeping her off her feet in person. Climbing the tallest building in this burg, and pouring my heart out onto its rooftops sounds a lovely idea, but if she's not around to hear it, I would probably just be arrested for criminal trespass and disturbing the peace. I suppose the taller the mountain the more enjoyment one gets upon reaching the top, but I've never really been the outdoorsy type.  Therefore the task became how to convince her of all the benefits of being in a relationship with me, whilst she was over a thousand miles away from me. Flowers? Candy?  A Kate Spade purse? All of those things are both a) predictable, b) passe, c) need to be delivered, and in the case of the latter, bloody expensive, not that money was necessarily an object. I mean how much would you spend, if spending mattered, to convince the woman you love to make this decision? Also, addressing the card, always a tricky thing to do, would be difficult. Even if you got the "message" part dead on (unlikely), address unknown would make it very hard for the postman to perform his assigned duty. Rain, snow, and dark of night might not stop the mailman, but "she's about a thousand or so miles that way" might perturb him a bit.

 With the usual suspects in the art of wooing a woman being denied to me, and not being an expert in this field, I began to despair. How does one woo a woman that isn't around? How do you convince someone you're not a liar (which I am), a cheat (which I have been), and not going to get bored with her (which is impossible, she is too wildly, wonderfully unpredictable for boredom to ever be a problem)? To prove a negative is very, very hard, to prove three of them, why not ask me to change the colour of the moon? At least that, in theory could probably be done, though I would probably have to stage a hostile takeover of NASA, and then be sent to federal prison for a very, very long time, but at least the theory is sound, or as sound as any theory can be that involves taking over a major government agency for his personal benefit. These negatives, which I have, in the past, possessed in abundance, were going to be quite difficult to overcome. She had, rot her, some very valid concerns as to my veracity, loyalty, and ability to fight off ennui. All three had been, either singly, or in conjunction with each other, the death knell of various relationships of mine.

However, time is a wonderful thing, and as Da Vinci said experience is the queen of invention, and since I am fast approaching an age that I shudder to consider, and being a "man of the world" type, I figure that I do have a couple of things going for me. One hundred and sixty-eight hours might seem a long time, it really isn't. Take away the hours I will spend sleeping, and the hours I have to work, and the number of hours that I can devote to this thorny problem drops dramatically. The good news, if there is any good news, is that even while working I am allowed my own thoughts. They might be able to chain my body to a desk, but my thoughts can take flight whenever, and to where ever they choose.  That's the joy of an imagination, they (whomever they are) might have their knee in your balls, and their fist in your face, but they cannot stop the freedom of your thoughts.

I have been called (or rather accused) of being a large "R" romantic in the past, and she even referred to as a "persistent romantic asshole". Not exactly sure it was a compliment, but I chose to take it as a non-insult, beggars can't be choosers.  I determined that this romanticism was one of the few useful tools I possessed in the task before me, and while I might be an awkward sod in the wooing women sweepstakes, I know a lot of fellows who weren't. Granted most of them are as dead as dead can be, and none of their situations exactly matched mine, but again beggars can't be choosers. Armed with as much classical education as my student loans could buy, I began to search among the shadowy recesses of my memory for inspiration. It was in the theatre  of my imagination that I eventually found it. After all, being classically educated must have some benefit other than winning bar tabs at trivia contests right?

 My first stop along the inspiration highway was Peter Abelard and his great love Heloise, a well known love story from that cradle of romance, France. Parts of it are tragic, and parts of it are magic, but that is the nature of all enduring love stories. Regardless of all the tragic details the magic of their story is that a tradition still exists today were lovers or lovelorn singles leave notes on Peter and Heloise's shared grave in the tribute to the couple or the hope of finding true love. Of course that would require a trip to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but that is not that difficult to do, and if it were to work it would be a trip worth taking.

Second is the Italian poet Petrarch and his love Laura. Another somewhat sad tale of unrequited love, but nevertheless a love that inspired some brilliant bloody poetry. Our lover boy was so smitten that he wrote one love poem a day for a year about his lady love. I have in the past written a blog post a day, and I can tell you it's a lot of work. They were simple, crude, and the opposite of poetry. To be so inspired by love to write lines such as this:

Oh blessed be the day, the month, the year,
the season and the time, the hour, the instant,
the gracious countryside, the place where I was
struck by those two lovely eyes that bound me;

and blessed be the first sweet agony
I felt when I found myself bound to Love,
the bow and all the arrows that have pierced me,
the wounds that reach the bottom of my heart.

And blessed be all of the poetry
I scattered, calling out my lady's name,
and all the sighs, and tears, and the desire;

blessed be all the paper upon which
I earn her fame, and every thought of mine,
only of her, and shared with no one else.

That, ladies and gentlemen is talent. It is talent, inspired by love and I couldn't come close to expressing that type of feeling to my lady friend even if I were to live to be a thousand years old. Again, as with Peter and Heloise, Petrarch's love story didn't end with the sun shining and the birds singing, but that does not diminish the talent or the love. I did say that the situations of all my inspirations were different than mine. I've no wish to be castrated like Abelard, nor to have my love be unrequited like Petrarch. I am merely using them, and their words/actions to attempt to woo a woman. A woman who inspires me just as much as Heloise did Abelard, and just as much Laura did Petrarch. They just have much more talent than I do with the written word.

Stage three on my trip through the land of the inspired is the Immortal Bard himself, William Shakespeare. He could provide me reams and reams of words with which to convince my lady of my love, but I chose to use the somewhat trite Romeo and Juliet, but not in the way most people would. I chose to quote Friar Laurence's speech to Romeo about his lady love prior to Juliet, the fair Rosaline. 

Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,

So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies

Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine

Hath washed thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

How much salt water thrown away in waste

To season love that of it doth not taste!

The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,

Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears.

Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit

Of an old tear that is not washed off yet.

If e'er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,

Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.

And art thou changed? Pronounce this sentence then:

Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

Rightly calling Romeo to carpet for his previous mooning about over the fair Rosaline, and his subsequent shift to Juliet, our good priest questions how love could be so inconstant. Rightfully so, our Romeo is only a 16 year old boy. The love story that we all like to think of as a prime example of true love is merely an infatuation between two love struck teenagers. Certainly there are some wonderful lines in the play, and Mercuito's Queen Mab speech is one of the greatest speeches of all time, but let's not forget we are talking about the Middle Ages' version of Beverly Hills 90210.  

I have long since left my teenage years and my teenage angst behind. I am no longer the inconstant lover that is Romeo. There are no fair Rosaline's waiting off stage for me anymore, and that is the way I prefer it. The woman I have seven days to woo is my fair Juliet (though the bloom of teenage youth has also left her cheeks), and to answer Friar Laurence's query as to where the strength in men, it is right here. In these words that I am spilling out on to this (e) paper, explaining my desire to be the man she needs me to be. I have screwed my courage up to the sticking point (to again quote the Bard), and have decided to make the effort necessary.

Next we have another Englander, one Robert Herrick. M. Herrick was a life long bachelor, and his muse was named Julia. It appears that Julia is not one woman, but more of a symbol of love. Again not a perfect match with my situation, for I have the one woman in mind, and what she is a symbol for is not in doubt. But, Herrick could write lines like this about "Julia's" voice.

 So smooth, so sweet, so silv'ry is thy voice
As, could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise,
But listen to thee, walking in thy chamber,
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. 

He wrote a string of poems addressed to his Julia, and each are quite breathtaking. Maybe for Herrick the ideal of Julia was what he needed an ideal woman to serve as his muse. Maybe there was a real life Julia, and my limited scholarship has yet to unearth her. It matters not, to be able to write those types of poems is again talent incarnate. I can only sit, admire, applaud, and steal his words to use upon my own Julia who is not an ideal, but who is all too real.

There are other points of inspiration too numerous to list, or this post would turn into an epic. Byron, Keats, Coleridge, Krudy, Roth, Zweig, and others have given me the framework for my large "R" romanticism. Each have the talent I wished I possessed in the art of stringing together words into phrases that take the breath away from the plodders of the written word such as myself. The last source of inspiration that I will quote is a fellow by the name of Tyler Farr, who wrote a song titled "A Guy Walks into a Bar".  I have walked into several bars in my life, and though it doesn't exactly happen this way, there was that one time.

A guy walks into a bar, orders a drink
Sees a girl that catches his eye
Asks her if she wants another
They fall for each other and end up lovers
They laugh, cry, hold on tight, make it work for a little while
Then one night her taillights fade out into the dark
 

And a guy walks into a bar

I'd laugh too if my heart would let me
Keeping it light will probably help to get me over you
I'm walking, talking, drinking proof
A cliché in a corner booth
Ain't nothing new

Again not the happiest of endings, but that minor detail need not detain us for very long. The feeling is still the same. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, she walked into mine. I haven't exactly been the same since. I have yet to see her taillights fade out into the dark in the terminal way that M. Farr's character does, and I hope I never do.  I have been that cliche in the corner of the bar, (I don't sit in booths), and I know how it feels, and I know that drinking isn't going to solve, replace, or prove anything. There is no true answer in the bottom of a bottle, I know, I've looked. Truth be told, if in these seven days I don't step foot in a bar, and it is unlikely I will, I won't miss it one bit. She is worth giving up the bar scene for, she is worth giving up much more than that. The trick is, and it is a hard trick is making her believe I'm willing to do it.

And so, all these words that I've stolen from all those talents fellows using their wits and thoughts to convince the love of their respective lives that she is, in fact, the love of their life, are just that words. Words that are pretty, words that are sad, words that make people happy, words that make people mad. Words are but one (albeit important) part of the equation. "They" say (whoever they are) that actions speak louder than words. I don't know if that's true or not. Perhaps actions coupled with words are the way to go. To promise to do something is easy, a mere bagatelle, we all make promises some of them we even plan to keep. To follow that promise with the action it implies is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Any damn fool can say he will be there, that he will be there for the woman they love, that they will be the man she needs him to be, but it takes a special type of fool to follow those words by actually doing it. And I'd rather love and be loved for the fool that I am, than to not take this chance. This once in a lifetime woman deserves no less. 

William Sans-Amis Part II

University is a time to explore things, your mind, other students bodies, the limits of your ability to consume alcohol and still live, and numerous other things. You may, if you are so inclined, actually crack open a book, apply yourself to your chosen field, and come out of the experience with a fine education. That is if you apply yourself. William was the type to apply himself, and the benefits of his classical education, pursued with some vigor were soon to become apparent to a lot of people.  I suppose his lack of social graces brought on by the household in which he was raised, and the stutter combined to focus William on the important things about getting an education Or maybe, more likely, he just was a shade bit smarter than the rest of us, and while we were belting out the school's fight song, and stealing the rival university's mascot, he was reading and writing, writing and reading. Good on him.

He wasn't all a dull boy, and I did manage to get him out on the town a few times, when he could be torn away from his books and his pen. To both of our surprise, we found out that after a few pints his stutter got significantly better. It was still noticeable, but it became much less pronounced. At first we chalked it up to me being in my cups so badly that I wouldn't have noticed an elephant sitting on the bar stool next to me, much less his stutter, or lack thereof. However, a couple of more drinking sessions, in which we experimented with him talking to sober people, such as the barmaid, led us to determine that our first conclusion was true. Drunk William's stutter was much hardly to detect even if you were (sadly) sober. It was probably the most exciting, and tragic discovery William could have made. Beer helped him loosen the shackles of all the inhibitors, (like it does for all of us), in his life, and gave him the ability to express himself verbally for what was probably the first time, at least to other people. Granted beer has that affect upon a lot of us, but most of us weren't born with, or raised with the external inhibitors that William was, and beer became almost a curative for him.

To his credit, he was mostly moderate in his drinking, even after discovering that it helped his stammer. He told me once that even though it was liberating to be able to speak more clearly, the problem was "o-o-other ... p.p.people j.just aren't a l-lot of f-f-fun to t-talk to." I could have told him that and saved him several days of hangover, but on the whole I think finding out booze helped was a good thing for him. If I had possessed his brains and his way with words, and could talk to people as well as he could drunk, well I might have never sobered up, but William, drunk or sober, had a plan. Or at least, I found out later, after most of it was said and done that he had a plan. William was from the old school that believed telling someone your plan was a sure fire way to scupper it, therefore, he kept his plan to himself until it was about seventy five percent implemented.

The first part of William's plan was quite simply revenge. A childhood of being verbally abused by his class mates had given William reams of material, and an active imagination coupled with creative talent provided him an outlet to revenge himself upon those abusers.  William begin writing for the school paper, and a first it was your usual school paper fare, but his talent was obvious, and he eventually convinced the editor to begin to allow him to write short stories. It was in these short stories that William exacted his revenge. Characters, under different names, shared a more than passing resemblance  to school mates of his. These characters did not come off at all well in William's stories. He was a clever man, and clever enough to obfuscate the people he was skewering just enough to have plausible deniability.  I knew, most of the time, whom he was referring to, and a couple of times had to ask him if one of his less odious characters was a literary version of myself. He shook his head in denial, but the smirk on his face raised some doubts.

True be told, I probably deserved a skewering about as much as the rest of our mates, but that didn't mean I had to tell William that, though I suspect he knew. He was fond of saying that a good story, with a good character was one that could have each different reader pause and wonder if perhaps the story was about them. At least the readers that knew him. "I-If they-y can s-s-see them-m-mselves in my s-s-stories, then m-m-maybe they will w-w-want to r-r-read more of m-m-my s-s-stuff." he would say, and then refuse to identify anyone of his characters for certain. It was wildly frustrating at times, but overall it worked like a charm. A lot of people would read his stuff, and inquire as to whom he was referring to in the story. He would smile enigmatically, and say " I d-d-do have a-an imagination, y-y-y know." I did know he had an imagination, but I also knew that he was drawing on life experiences that he had lived through, and was sticking little needles into people who had treated him badly as a child.

Upon his graduation from university, William was, not surprisingly, offered immediate employment. His writing skills had not gone unnoticed and two provincial newspapers both wanted him to join their staff. At first, he was quite chuffed, the job market being what it was any employment offer was a good employment offer. To get two of them so suddenly was a clear indication of his talent. Though he, as humble as usual, just said "T-T_They m-m-must b-b-be desperate t-t-to f-f-fill blank pages."  Not being in the newspaper business, I didn't know if it was talent or desperation that got William his job offers, but I was eager to see which paper he would chose. His annual income that had been his parent's true legacy was nearly exhausted (university is not cheap), and William needed a job just like the rest of us.

The two papers (The Voice and The Eagle) weren't exactly The Times, but for a fellow starting out they offered a chance to express himself, and to keep the wolves from the door. The problem is that William had larger ambitions, and did not care for either offer. "T-T-There's n-n-nothing between t-t-them, they a-a-are too s-similar to r-r-really choose between, a-a-and t-t-they are i-in this b-b-backwater." Or at least that what he told me, as he was pondering which one, if either, paper to choose. The problem was,for William, quite simple he realized that everyone starts at the bottom, unless their uncle owns the place. And the bottom was not a place that William thought was for him.  Of course he was right, but that didn't mean that he was going to be the headline foreign correspondent for the leading paper of the capital on his first day. He wasn't exactly a step skipper, but William had a great deal of talent, and didn't mind showing it. He never really grasped the idea that talent is great, but you still have to "play the game." 

William was not adept at "playing the game" his isolated childhood had not prepared him for the office politics of a major (for the provinces) newspaper, and he didn't want any part of it. He was filled with horror of the idea of an office environment, seeing it as just a grown up version of grade school were people are just cruel to each other in more adult ways. He was not enthralled with the idea of writing about "ladies socials, and the local football club's poor form" for a few years, and moving up the editorial ladder in the conventional way. That's why he made the decision he made.

That decision was to say no to both of them, and cash in his annual earning to "see the world" and to attempt to live by his pen. It was a bold decision, and I must confess I was a be jealous that he had the ability and the balls to make it. That was around 4 years ago, and I haven't see William since. I have only recently heard that he may (or may not) be in a Turkish prison, and that we "may not be seeing him for a while, if ever again". That is why I felt compelled, and free to write the sad tale of Billy No-Mates. I hope for a good result for William, and as one of his few "mates" hope to someday hear that he is out of the Turkish prison (if that is, in fact, where he is), but for now not all stories have a happy ending, even Billy No-Mates would have told you that.



 

William sans-amis Part I

This is the story of William. Actually, it is only part of William's story, the parts that he told me over a few painstakingly lengthy pints, and the parts I actually saw or put together from other people who did. No story such as this can be complete unless written by the fellow that lived it, and even then there are going to be gaps. William did not want to write this story, and might be a bit put out if he where to find out I have written it. Since that is very unlikely, considering his current location, I am going to write it the best way I can, it will still be poorly, but I owe it to William to tell his tale.

William did not know his parents, some sort of 'horrible accident' claimed both of their lives when William was only three years old. He always said that those particular words 'horrible accident' were used when describing his parents deaths, and then no further details were forthcoming. I don't think William ever got around to investigating what that 'horrible accident' was. I don't know if he just did not care, or was just afraid of what he would find, but I looked into it for him afterwards. The term accident was a misnomer, or perhaps it was just William's remaining relatives way of describing the unpleasant truth as to the fate of his parents, hoping that those two awful words would preclude any further conversation about the subject. It did for William, and it did for me for quite a while, now that everyone involved is beyond the pale, I can relate that the 'horrible accident' that made William an orphan was that his father murdered his mother, and then committed suicide. The reasons behind, and the details of that tragedy need not detain us here. It is just a bit of background on William that may or may not have altered the course of his entire life. I will leave that to the fellows with letters behind their names to figure out, I was just a witness to William's life, and we all need witnesses to our lives whether we realize it our not.

After the 'horrible accident' William was shunted off to live with an uncle, a cold and distant man who took little joy in life, and gave even less. His wife, William's aunt, is best described as a spinster that got lucky. She married late in life, there was some hint that William's uncle had debts that needed paying, and William's aunt had some small fortune. If she had a fortune, and he had debts, then I guess it wasn't exactly a love match, and anyone going to their home, as I did on several occasions, would be struck by the emotional distance between them.  William's uncle worked at some factory, I never really cared enough about the man to find out which one, went to his local for a few pints with his mates, came home and read the paper in his chair, and gave not one whit about either William or his aunt except that try to remain as quite as possible during their shared waking hours. William's aunt, saved at the last moment from spinsterhood was merely content to be a house wife, nothing more, nothing less. She was content with cooking, cleaning, and making the dinners that William, his uncle and his aunt ate in relative silence. She looked upon William as just another chore, like a sink full of dirty dishes that weren't going to wash themselves, or the dusting which she did not care for at all. 

There was never any hint of children of their own being brought into this loveless marriage, and when William was presented to them, all his uncle said was "Right, you must be H_____'s boy, terrible that."  William was raised to be neither seen nor heard, which was probably why the thing that most affected his life came about. William, when he got around to learning how to talk, did so with an awful stutter. It was to become his defining characteristic, and would eventually led to him being dubbed by the rest of his classmates "Billy No-Mates."  Children around the world are cruel, whether they are in the schoolyard playing cricket, baseball, lacrosse, or football, and our lot was no exception. Uniformity is king with children, and if you are different in any way, fatter, skinner, have to wear thick glasses, walk with a limp, or stutter, you will be singled out and ganged up on by the rest of us. It is a great way to hide our own insecurities and flaws by mercilessly pointing out the real or perceived flaws of others, no matter that those flaws are what makes the human race so wonderfully diverse. How dull would life be if we were all flawless physical specimens with pretty blond hair and lovely cornflower blue eyes, and straight teeth?

 Don't mistake me, William was not abused or anything quite so dramatic, he was just raised by two people in a loveless marriage in a loveless household.  His childhood was not exactly Oliver Twist, but not quite Pollyanna either., It was, like most of ours somewhere in between. Not being in love with each other made his aunt and uncle almost physically incapable of expressing love for anyone else. It was a sad fate, and to his credit, William accepted it with as much grace as possible. Maybe things would have been different for him if his parents had lived, then again maybe not. The two most dangerous words in the English language are "What if?", and William's tale, just like many of ours, possessed numerous "what ifs".  When his stutter first manifested itself, his adopted parents reaction was "pity, that". A reaction similar to and about as heartfelt as their reaction to William's parents deaths. The uncle was probably, though he'd never admit it, pleased at least with that horrid stutter William would have no trouble with the "not being heard" part of his uncle's rules.

The house William and his adopted parents lived in was not big, and it was rather isolated from the rest of the community. Therefore, William was raised mostly alone. The uncle wasn't there, and when he was could not really be bothered to show any interest in teaching William the things a 'normal' boy child learns from his male 'role-model'.  Some of us have an almost innate fear of being alone, we have abandonment issues that probably need to be worked out on a professional's couch (the type with letters behind their name, not the type you pay for 'going around the world'). One would have thought that William would, when he was faced with the enforced social circumstances of public schooling, seek some relief for the loneliness he suffered through whilst at home. Not so, he was very much a solitary child, the stutter was probably the main cause, but I like to think that even if he had the flawless diction of a Parisian songbird, William would have been just as much as loner.

In full disclosure, lest you think this is some buddy tale told by a Dr. Watson-like character about his best mate Sherlock Holmes, I was just as brutal to William in the school yard as the rest of our class. Picking on the different, not siding with them, is what wins you friends in the tyranny of the school yard, and I was not a strong willed enough child to swim against that particular stream. It is to my shame that I recount this but, while I was not in the front rank of teasing Billy No-Mates, I certainly had an nearly unobstructed view of it while it happened, and did my fair share. We didn't know it at the time, and most of us would not have cared if we did, but Billy No-Mates was hiding an absolute cracker of a mind behind that funny, awful stutter that we couldn't stop laughing about long enough to give him a chance to be our friend, and if we had known what he was going to do with that lovely imagination, we might have been just a shade nicer to him.

Of course that is one of the many problems of our schooling system, unless you're some toff that gets sent to the right type of private school to help prepare you for a career in the foreign service, your classmates are your classmates from beginning to end. If you stick it out, don't move, or get sent to juvenile, then the lot you came through the front door with the first time, will be in the main the same lot you leave with X amount of years later.  It has the potential to be a blessing or a curse brought on by three accidents of birth, timing, location, and wealth (or lack thereof). The down side for William was the group that teased him from the start, except for a few of us that sort of grew out it, were the same group that was still teasing him on graduation day. Certainly we were surprised when he won top honours, but were bitterly disappointed when he declined to give the traditional speech at our graduation ceremony. I suppose we wanted one last chance to chant "Billy No-Mates" for all the school to hear. Good on him that he denied us that opportunity. I had long since outgrown my desire to fit it, and had actually talked with William on several occasions. His stutter was much less pronounced in one on one situations. Being a bit of an outsider, but not quite as far out as William was we did eventually become what would be called friends. I am almost sure that title, in relation to William, was one that was bestowed on a very, very limited number of people. In the intervening years, I have become quite proud to have that distinction given to me.


Some government agency had, at the time of his parent's "horrible accident" settled upon William a type of annual income. I was never sure what it was about, or even how much it was. I suppose it made his uncle's decision to take him in easier to make. Raise the kid, and maybe make a little money to boot? That was probably an attractive proposition to the uncle, and William wasn't really in a position to pick and choose where he went. I do know, or rather found out later that the uncle wasn't quite the bastard he appeared to be, and the money that set aside for William was actually given to him, it was what allowed him to go to university, that and I suspect, some scholarships that our headmaster helped him obtain. He, at least, could see beyond the stuttering child, and see the questing mind that William possessed.  A few of us attended the same university as William, living in the provinces has a tendency to limit one's choice in these matters, and it was there that I truly got to know him. Or, rather, I got to know as much of him as he would let me, after all those years of teasing and abuse, William wasn't about to open up and become all emotional after a few speech therapy classes had helped his stutter significantly.

It was not a great shock to me to discover William was pursuing a major in Literature/Creative Writing after all, a stutter does not show up on the page now does it? I was at university struggling with inorganic chemistry when I first started to get to know him, and we soon became fairly fast friends. It was here that I found out most, but not all, of the facts that I have related so far. I was struck by how seemingly well adjusted, using the term broadly, that William was considering the sad circumstances of his childhood. When I broached the subject he would just shrug, point to the wall of books cluttering up his flat, and say "w.w.w. well mo. most offf my r.r.real friends a-a-a-are d-d-dead." Meaning the authors that he had read, and used to escape the teasing that was his day to day misery. I still blush with shame when I recall my part in the torture of "Billy No-Mates." One of the wonderful things about William was that when I did awkwardly try to apologize for my role in his childhood misery. He waved it away saying " d-d-don't w-w-w-worry abbout it, w-w-we were c-c-children, and k-k-kids are c-c-c-cruel." It was a gracious reply, and it cemented our budding friendship. I vowed then, that while I still might gently tease him about his stutter (with his acquiescence) no one else ever would, at least while I was around.


Understanding that the mind can only process what the ass can endure, I have decided rather that short change William's story, to break it up into parts. This is the first part, part two is shortly forthcoming. I hope you enjoy it dear readers.

Unterseeboot Frankenstein

"You need to be loved" she said with conviction, she was like that, a strong women (not in the circus woman type of strong but strong willed) which was also part of the problem she also said "that I need a weak woman." She seemed to have definite opinions concerning me, and they seemed to be less than positive. The irony, in the American sense of the word, was that the "you need to be loved statement was made moments after her telling me that she "no longer loved me." Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway this was quite distressing, both the no longer being loved and her opinion about my needed to be loved. I have been accused, I prefer to think of it as an accusation, of being a romantic by numerous people before, and I always replied that when my name is mentioned in the same sentence of Byron, Coleridge, Shelly and Keats, then I would own that title. That has yet to happen, and I fear it will never happen, at least while I am still wasting my breath on this planet.

Maybe, just maybe, she and the others offering this opinion are correct. Maybe a part of me is a romantic in search of his muse. I have had muses before, and most of them ended in tears, as these things are wont to do, and each time a little of the romantic in me died. Therefore, I became a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, a dual person. After the last Titanic like disaster (nearly three years ago), I shut down the emotional side of myself (the monster). Frankenstein is the scientist the rational thinking, logical side that merely wants to see if creating life is possible. He also possess a god complex, but that isn't important to this particular story.  He creates his monster, only called such  because of his appearance, I guess being sewn together from the human scrap heap makes you less easy on the eyes.

Creating that monster took massive amounts of energy of various types, and once created the monster could not be controlled. That was where the good Doctor failed, in attempting to control what was in effect his other half. The monster, despite his appearance, is not evil or bad. He is, in fact, quite gentle and just has a bit of a problem being accepted which leads to the fatal misunderstanding that makes the tale the tragedy that it is.  The monster part of me, i.e. the romantic/needed to be loved also took a lot of energy of various types to create. A lightning storm was not necessary, and I had only one brain available my own, which may be part of the problem. I am only one man, whereas Frankenstein had his monster to create his emotional doppelganger, I am stuck in the one body that I have possessed since the wolf that raised me brought me into the world in the more conventional manner.

Recently the above mentioned strong-willed woman helped to bring the emotional/romantic/monster part of me 'back to life' as it were, and it also took a lot of energy, both physical and mental. It wasn't exactly an "It's alive!!!" type of moment but it was fairly close. Parts of me that the logical/doctor/asshole side of me swore were dead and buried experienced a revival, and were quite happy to be back in the game. That monster part of me wasn't nearly the gentle giant that the real monster was, but he was still a lot more of a sympathetic character than the other side of me. Once alive the monster side of me took as much advantage of his time as he could, even he knew somewhere back in the dark recesses of his underused mind that his time was probably going to be very limited.

He didn't ransack any villages, nor was he blamed for the death of any small children, but he still managed to make enemies. I understand this analogy isn't perfect, few are. That the real Frankenstein's monster did some horrid thing that were quite obviously criminal. The argument there is that he was driven to them by the rejection, based upon his looks, by his fellow man, those details need not detain us here. Sometimes being happy is an affront to Mother Nature (the bitch) and/or the gods, and they conspire to ruin that happiness in a fit of fickleness that boggles us mere mortals minds. The monster side of me probably created, or was at least present for most of his own problems. Again not being a fictional story, I only have the one body/mind, and even when he is running rampart, the monster doesn't exactly have full control over the train wreck that is me. We are both manning the controls the monster and the doctor, and sometimes we have very divergent opinions about where the ship of our state should sail.

To mix an analogy, and to help make the title of this post make at least some sense, we are like a U-Boat with two captains. Any sailor worth his salt, will tell you that any boat U or otherwise can only have one captain. Captains are gods on the quarterdeck, or on the con, and just like most religions these days, there can be only one god. There is not room for dissent, and little or no room for discussion. The captain's word is law, and that is just the way things are, accept it or get the fuck off the boat. Hope you enjoy your swim home.  These two captains are of two minds, does one hunt in a wolf pack, and take advantage of the safety in numbers theory, or does one go it alone, forever a lone wolf on the fringes of society, and sailing very close to the wind? It is a conflict that can only end badly, and it has on more than one occasion.

The crux of the problem is that once created, once the switches have been flipped to bring the emotional side of me (back) into existence, it become increasingly harder to flip those switches back and bring the logical side alive again. This dichotomy is not a pleasant experience either for me, or I suspect, for the few people unlucky enough to see the struggle. It is brutal, it is not pleasant, and people, besides myself get hurt. That crime for which both sides of me should be brought to book for, is the most hideous part of this battle. Hurting one, or both parts of the house divided that I've become is fair play, but other, mostly innocent, bystanders should not have to suffer because of my permanent state of idiocy.

Frankenstein's end comes,fittingly enough, at the North Pole. He has chased his creation to the absolute ends of the Earth, and there he dies of exposure. His monster finally comes to some sort of self-actualization, maroons himself on the ice floe that is the doctor's funeral pyre. It is a good death, it is our kind of death, and it is, for the doctor and the monster at their point in their shared story the only solution left. Just like a U-Boat captained by two diverse personalities is bound to be sunk by the depth charges of the destroyer above, Frankenstein and his monster sink into the cold, dark water. And as that cold water engulfs them, as the dark ocean floor that is to be their tomb comes into focus below those waves, they come to the same realization that struck me at the end of the above conversation, they have lost the woman they loved.  

Ouragan

"Write something about me" she said earnestly. She was an earnest type of girl, or I probably wouldn't have shown her this blog in the first place, it wasn't my fault that she liked to read poorly written stuff that try to pass as intelligent.  "It's not really as easy as that, I am not talented enough to write on demand. I am not a radio station that takes requests, and can play them within the hour." Which is only sort of true, I do take requests, but it generally takes me a lot longer than an hour to fulfill them. It takes some thought, and if you know me, you know thoughts are sometimes thin on the ground in my world.  She also decided that the request wasn't difficult enough and added the further restriction "that no one can know it's about me, but you and me." That really helped to narrow the focus, and made it a lot harder to write, which is why it's nearly a month later, and the following is the best I can do, and it will probably not be good enough, either for her or for me.

Some women swan, some trundle, and some when they walk, merely tread upon the ground. Not her, she came into my life, and my bar like a hurricane blowing through a coastal city in the height of thee stormy season. It was a stunning entrance, and myself, and the other local swill drinkers were all duly impressed enough to look up from our pints, and pause in whatever lies we were telling each other to mark her arrival. I had the advantage over my fellow wrecks, because I knew, that despite me not believing she'd show up, she was there to see my dumb ass. Which was about the only advantage I ever had in relation to her. It didn't last, the advantage, just like that coastal city beset by the hurricane, I was blown away. After all, I am not much to look at, and I am probably even less fun to talk to, and I figured that this was going to be a quick "one drink and never talk to me again" type of "date". I've had all too many of those in my career as a loser.

Writing something intentionally vague is really not that difficult, it merely requires careful consideration, and a general willingness to bend the truth a bit. Facts must be carefully inter spaced with the obfuscations that are required to not give the game away to everyone. And yet you have to be careful, you can't even say "she was tall with legs like a new born colt" without giving part of the game away, after all how many truly leggy women do you know? You have to get creative in the description, and use things that only she knows are about her, but still may open you to the charge of well it could be about "X" too couldn't it. The answer to that is the paradox that started this post to begin with, how to write something for one person, where other people don't know it is about that person, but that other people can't see themselves in the details as well. You have to get creative.


 Creativity is a very tricky thing, it is very much like the most delicate of flowers it can wither and die in an instant of inattention. It has to be nurtured, and yet still allowed room to breath if it is going to bloom. Even when carefully tended, and blooming it could still end up like the delicate corpse flower which smells of rotted meat when it blooms. It can be stifled as well, like a child that cries too often, and is smothered to death by some desperate mother than doesn't want the North Koreans to find them.  The artistic side of one's nature doesn't pay the bills, and must give way to the practical side, the side that goes to work, pays the bills, and provides the necessary steel in our collective spine. One of these days practical me is probably going to have to kill artistic me. It will be, when it happens, a mercy killing.

Hurricanes, to return to our subject, are formed in areas of extreme low pressure. Those two words in that combination would not ever be used to describe her. She was high maintenance, high strung, and high class. Nothing low about her, except maybe a few of her opinions about certain people in the world. Luckily for me, at least at the time, her opinion of me had not sunk to the current level at which it currently resides. That first date did not go as poorly as I had expected, in fact it went as well as possible. It was like my fairy godmother, that inattentive bitch, was finally paying some attention to my life, and giving me what she considered a dream match.  Perhaps, when the lazy bitch that is my fairy godmother sleeps, she has different dreams than I do.  Hurricanes operate on something called a Carnot heat engine, a complicated (too complicated for me) system that provides them their main energy source. I was never able to fully ascertain her main energy source, she was a driven, uber bitch about a lot of things, and the water around her would literally evaporate from the heat, then she would just as quickly cool down, and be an ice princess that would freeze the blood in the stoutest of men's veins. Thus, in a idealized nutshell, is a Carnot heat engine explained.

The key part to a hurricane is the eye, the center of the storm where it is relatively calm. Of course that is a relative term, and the eye still has it's dangers. Sure it's calm, but the way(s) out, if they exist at all are full of peril and storms. It behooves you, if you can, to stay as close to the eye for as long as possible. After all, no one wants to be flattened like the unsuspecting coastal city that one is beginning to feel like. Hurricanes cause damage, generally they don't discriminate they just merely flatten anything that happens to be in their path. And I had willing placed myself in her path, it was a decision that in theory I should have regretted, but in retrospect would probably make again if I had the chance. 

In the late 60's and early 70's some idiot government employee came up with the not so brilliant idea of trying to artificially dissipate hurricanes by seeding them with silver iodine. It didn't work, in fact it was a fairly spectacular failure. When her Carnot heat engine got truly going I would attempt a similar idea but with alcohol which also usually wound up in a spectacular failure. It was an idea that I quickly abandoned best not to feed the beast anymore than necessary, just batten down the hatches, hope it blows over quickly, hope you survive, and pray that the pieces left to pick up are enough to rebuild the relationship you so painstaking put together. 

Double Dip Thursdays

She swanned into my life on a Thursday. Thursday is my favorite day. I don't tell the other days that because I don't want them to be any badder than they already are, but Thursdays are my favorite. Perhaps, it is just an off shoot of my Viking lineage, it is Thor's day after all, or maybe I just like the drink or drown specials I partake of, but Thursday are the best. Sure lazy Sundays are fun, but for my money it is Thursday that is the best. Like the cute, but not too cute younger sister of the hot girl you dated in law school, Thursdays takes time to mature, but boy when it does it is worth the wait.

This particular Thursday was waning when she swanned into my local. It was closer to Friday than I had intended out staying out, but some boon companions of mine had convinced me to have 'just one more pint' before staggering off to our respective (empty) beds. That one pint was to prove a lot hard to finish that I thought.  It wasn't like I noticed her when she walked in, no great light was following her around, and she didn't walk in on moonbeams. No theme music announced her arrival, nor did time seem to stand still. She just walked in, sat herself at the bar about 5 feet away from me, and ordered a drink. The rest is hazy history, and I will struggle with some of the details in the re-telling.

My boon companions decided to abandon me about the time that I actually noticed her, if I were a wise man, which I have never been accused of being, I would have trundled my happy ass home to snore away the few waning moments of a happy Thursday. However, being a damn fool, and a little drunk to boot, I decided to engage her in what passes for conversation.  It went exceedingly well at first, it seems when I am a bit in my cups I can become quite the charmer. I don't believe this to be true, but by the time I hear these stories I have sobered up, and have reverted back to my misanthropic ways. She told me her name, which I do remember, but can not with iron clad certainty prove it was her real one, and we begin the age of dance of the 'chat up.' Charming me must have paid his dues to the gods of luck, because she decided that once the local closed, we needed to go to another bar, and continue this little dance.  Being, by this time, drunk as a lord, I agreed.  It was now deep into Friday, that day of regret that I loathe more than most, and I figured I was in for a penny why not go in for a pound? 

The details of what happened at the second bar are a mystery to me, and what I said, or did to convince this woman to come back to my house are lost to me. I remember bit and pieces, but none of them add up to the actual result that happened. I suspect it was something important, but I just simply can't remember. She did come back to my bed, and kept it from being empty that night, and part of the next day. We did the usual things men and women who are 'getting to know each other' do, and all in all Fridays suddenly didn't seem so bad.  I remember details of our talk, details now which make the end of this story more obvious, but which at the time did not stop my wretched behaviour.

It was made apparent to me that she belonged to another, and had for some time. Why she was populating my bed was and still is a bit of a mystery, but at the time I didn't ask too many questions. I never claimed that my moral compass was tuned to due North.  We did exchange phone numbers, and some vague promises of future meetings, but I figured that I had just partaken in a completely unplanned, absolutely immoral, "one night stand." Not exactly my proudest moment, but I am, for the most part, an utter bastard. Being convinced that I am nothing special helps me rationalize my actions. After all, I am not James Bond, and if a woman will come home with me, then I figure it was just something she wanted to do, and she wasn't blessed with the highest of standards. Not an insult to her or her behaviour, we all have needs, and I was there to meet hers, but I am not so vain as to think songs are written about me.

Not surprising to the cynic in me, but quite a blow to the romantic in me, I did not hear from her for about four days. I tried to start a conversation with her to no avail, and figured that I was a fellow traveler in her life, and that we had went our different ways. She was like a ship that had slipped it moorings and had drifted away from me on the morning tide as I stood there on the quay waving a silent and forlorn goodbye. Tides are funny things and do funny things to us humans, some pull us apart, and some bring us together. I am no tidal expert, and  I figured this high tide had passed, and I would be left with nothing but fond (thought slightly hazy) memories.

I was again reminded of the fickle nature of fate when, to my surprise, I received a communication from her expressing interest in talking to me more. I was a little taken aback, but not unhappy with the idea, and we did 'get to know each other' a bit more in the non-biblical sense. It seemed the other and her were not the greatest of places (shockingly enough), and perhaps things between us had room for growth.  Growth is a very tricky thing, and sometimes what is planted is not always what blooms, and things end in tears, as these things are wont to do. Tears were never really my strong suit, but endings, well endings I can do like a champ.

However, before the ending, there was the double dip. Again, to my surprise, as I was once again out celebrating the existence of Thursday, I received a message from her asking me where I was. I told her, and lo and behold, twenty minuets later she appears. It was not an exact repeat of our first meeting, but it was damn close, and it ended much like the first one, with her populating my bed, and making Friday not so bad. And then poof, she was gone. Like a haze of fog on an early summer day she just evaporated. Nothing but the memory of it to remind me it happened at all. She was something that I felt like I was holding between breathes, and when I let out that second breath she was expelled both from my bed (lungs), and my life.

The little I know about her, and the little I can remember about her may or may not be true, or it may have been some elaborate fiction of an disturbed mind, hers or mine I am not sure which. I don't think I feel any sort of loss about her disappearance, after all, she was barely there in the first place. A double dip of Thursday does make for any sort of lasting bond. Even if her leaving hurts, it doesn't hurt too much. The name she left me, may or may not have been her real one, the tale she spun may or may not have have been real, but the time she spent in my bed was certainly all too real. For that, and for making an interesting yarn out of my life so boring, I will always have a very small, soft spot for my Thursday girl.


Of course, after two months of not writing a word, a disclaimer is necessary. Writing even as poorly as I do, is a skill. Skills go bad without practice, therefore the poor construction of this post can be hopefully forgiven.  Secondly, as with a lot of my writing this is a work of about 99% fiction. The most exciting Thursday I have had in a long time involved finding a five dollar bill in some jeans while I was doing laundry.  If Thursdays can't be exciting, they should at least involve clean drawers. 

Double O Seven

j'

Pictured above is Hollywood's latest version of every one's favourite spy, James Bond. There have been many actors that have played the super spy, and everyone has their particular one that they like the best. For me, it's Connery, but that could be because he was my first James Bond, and we always hold a special place in our hearts for our 'first' of anything. Whomever is your favourite Bond is your own choice, and no one should be able to change that, if they do, then you weren't very attached to your choice in the first place were you?

If you have read the books (as I have done) and/or watched the movies (as I have also done), you will know that they different from each other in many, sometimes significant, ways.  However, the main outlines of our hero are the same. Born in Scotland, raised there till his parents died, came to England and became England's answer to its post World War II realization that it was no longer a superpower.  Bond, probably on purpose, was created by Ian Fleming as a way of making the English feel that overweening superiority they had always felt in relation to the world in general, and the "colonies" in particular was still valid. He is an English hero, a man that all men aspire to be, and a fellow all the ladies want in their bed (or their in the shower, on the floor, or just about anywhere two people can screw). He is also, and it pains me to say, a right and proper bastard who cannot be trusted.

At his core, before he is anything else, James Bond is a spy, he is not your friend, not your mate, not your lover, he is a spy. With apologies to Tyler Durden, James Bond is, in fact, his job. It is what he does, sure he does a lot of cool shit, like jumping out of airplanes, or driving a tank through downtown Moscow, but all of those things, and every other little or big thing he does, revolves around one simple home truth about him. He is a spy.  Spies can, and I am sure have been nice enough blokes. I guess they all don't cheat at cards, borrow money from friends without paying it back, or treat women like they are objects. James Bond is not a nice bloke, he is guilty of those, and many, many more sins. All his sins are forgiven by everyone (at least the ones that are still alive after encountering him). After all, he commits all his 'sins' in the name of the Queen.

That last bit is the important bit 'the name of the Queen or for England.' Those lines give James Bond both his license to kill, and his carte blanche  to do whatever the fuck, he (and it is usually only him) deems necessary to stop the bad dude from achieving his evil aims. Certainly those bad dudes have some really bad plans for the rest of humanity, and Bond doesn't generally have the time to try to steer an anti-hacking law through the House of Commons.  Since he is not an MP, it would be rather impossible of him to do anyway. Easier solution is to just blow the every living shite out of the bad dude hacking things for his evil purposes. Problem solved, cue the hot girl swooning "Oh, James" as he ravages her, for England. Hey, England needs to get laid too. 

However, the most important thing to remember about Bond is simple, he is a spy. Spies owe their loyalty to exactly two people, themselves, and their handler. In Bond's case that is a fellow called M. M is the only person alive other than himself that Bond is loyal to, and even then it is not really M, but what M represents, England. Some would say Bond is loyal to the Queen, but spies and Queen's do not normally have tea together in the Palace. The Queen is not a Bond girl, she as a person, holds no interest for James Bond, she is just another object, perhaps if she were hot, he would take her for a spin, but she a bit too long in the tooth for all that noise. The Queen is an object but not just as a woman, she embodies England, and Bond is loyal to England. "Close your eyes and think of England, son, and it won't hurt a bit."  England is not a person, not a mate of yours that you can pop around to the local and have a few pints. England is not your whist partner, England is a country. Bond is loyal to it, but doesn't really have time to worship the actual ground the country is composed of.

It falls to M to be the only living person who commands Bond's loyalty. However, M is not really a person, after all there has been one than one M.  M is the human representation of England, and a more accessible version of the Queen. In some of the books, M invites Bond to his club, plays cards with him, and shares some horrible Algerian red wine with him, just like a proper mate would. That is as close as any living being will ever get to James Bond, even the woman he married (who dies rather abruptly after) wasn't that close. Bond isn't capable of the 'normal' human interactions that the people he is saving are capable of. If he was, he would be a poor spy indeed.  Bond may save your, and countless other people's lives, but he doesn't either have to like you, or give you any explanation of his actions. If you, or a loved one gets in the way of his tank chase through the busy city streets and gets killed, that is your problem not his. Do not expect him to send flowers to, or attend your funeral. You died, but England lives on, that is the important bit, also James Bond lives on, and that is the really important bit.

Remembering that James Bond is, at his core, a spy, is really important when you interact with him. He can not and should not be trusted. He doesn't trust you, except in so far as he can use you,and he doesn't owe you a fucking thing. If you have something he wants, be it a piece of information, a floppy disk, or a sweet piece of tail, he will do whatever he thinks necessary or wants to do in order to get that off of you. He is not bound by the moral code your dear Mum tried to impart to you whilst you were slurping down her nearly toxic oatmeal.  He is not bound by the moral code your frazzled third form maths teacher tried to beat into you with a ruler when, in his opinion, you strayed off the straight and narrow path that you were supposed to tread while becoming a proper gentleman. He is not bound by the 'don't sext your boss at 3 a.m. code' that your company or organization considers one of its 'unwritten rules' that the HR guy has to call you into his office to explain. He is not bound by the moral code your long suffering girlfriend or spouse thinks (mistakenly perhaps) that you adhere to in your loving, but not too loving relationship. James Bond is a spy, he is not bound by ANY moral code, forget that, and your loss, and you will lose something, is in many ways your own fault.

James Bond is a spy, when he interacts with you it is for a purpose, his purpose not yours. You are an object like a spade, or a heated dildo, nothing more, nothing less. Forget that to your cost. James Bond is under no obligation to report back to M the true and real content of any conversation he has with you. He may choose to relate it honestly, or he may not. The trouble you face is you won't be in the room, and your side of the story will not be heard. You can only hope (sometimes forlornly) that James Bond has a continued use for you, and will be honest (or at least honest enough) to M about your interaction with him. If he isn't, the best you can pray for is that the men in the dark suits that come to take you away are gentle.  

Still despite his being a right and proper bastard, the world needs James Bond. His skill set is something that will always be useful to the world. Perhaps he could, you know, stop fucking my girlfriend, or running over my dog in high speed tank chases, but that is wishful thinking. Even knowing what a bastard he is doesn't stop him from being one of my heroes. I still want to be him, I may even want a bit of a cuddle with him, I think he's the bomb, but I will never, ever, no matter what lies he tries to get me to believe, no matter how soulful his eyes may be, or how misty his accent makes me, trust him. 

Sisyphus, the Idiot

I have made many, many decisions in my life, most of them poor decisions brought on by poor lighting, poor judgment, and too much alcohol. Most of the (bad) decisions I have made have faded into the mists of my personal history. I may be living a life that is partly based on the sum total of those (bad) decisions, but the actual point of decision making has long since passed, and been mostly forgotten.

However, there are two (bad) decisions that I made that still attract interest from third parties, and I am still asked, years later, to try and explain them. I usually do a poor job of it, because, after all who wants to explain their two poorest decisions over and over? I generally attempt to deflect the question, or to obfuscate the answer so much that the person asking just walks away in confusion. These two decisions are intertwined like a strand of DNA, there is no real separating one from the other. In many ways, they were a love song followed by a song of farewell and departure. They do not exist in a vacuum and they are almost entirely dependent upon one another. Strap up ladies, and gents this might be a bumpy ride.

We all know (or at least we should) the story/myth of Sisyphus, but for those who were not chained to a book as an ungainly, isolated child like I was, we will run through the highlights. Sisyphus was a King of Corinth, the one in Greece that is, and it was his destiny to be punished by the gods for chronic deceitfulness, in other words Sisyphus was a lying sack of shite.  It seems that his major problem was hubris, he just figured that whenever he went he was the most clever fellow in the room. That is all well and good when there are just men in the room, but trying to be more clever than the gods is not a wise decision.  Sisyphus eventually managed to piss off the HMFIC of the Greek gods a fellow by the name of Zeus. He betrayed one of Zeus' secrets to the river god Asopus, and that did not sit well with Zeus.

As punishment, Zeus sent the personification of death, Thanatos to chain Sisyphus in Tartatus. Sisyphus managed to trick Thanatos into locking himself in the chains, and suddenly things started to get a little crazy. Death himself was chained to a rock in the underworld, and that meant that people, those average everyday slobs that we all are, could not die. There is a Family Guy episode that is very similar to this story, but that is a blind alley that we need not follow.  The god of battle, miffed that his wars had lost their fun, what with people stabbing and burning each other and not dying and all, freed Thanatos, and it seemed order was restored. Except of course, for Sisyphus. His trickery wasn't quite at its end, and he pulled a couple of other stunts before Zeus devised a special brand of punishment for Sisyphus.

That punishment, as we all know, is to push a rather large boulder up a rather steep mountain for all eternity. Doesn't sound that rough right? I mean it gets you out in the fresh air, and after a while of struggling, I would suspect you would eventually work yourself into fine shape. Nothing works the glutes quite like pushing large rocks up steep hills. However, Sisyphus had one small problem with all this rock moving. Zeus was angry, and Zeus was clever, it is wise not to make Zeus angry, as many a Greek hero has found out, and since Zeus was also very, very clever, he devised a special twist to the Sisyphus Rock Moving Company's task. That twist was that every time Sisyphus got the bleeding rock to the top of the bleeding mountain it would immediately roll right back down the bleeding hill to the bottom, as it was his task to get the rock to the top of the mountain for keeps, Sisyphus would then have to start his task all over again, for all eternity. Thus, the gods punish hubris.

Sisyphus was the subject of a wonderful book written by the French writer/philosopher Albert Camus, again those of us with poor social skills, and too much time on their hands have read this book, more than once. In that wonderful book, M. Camus takes Sisyphus and makes him an absurdist hero.  He becomes the everyman, the man (or woman) working the same job in the same factory day in and day out at the same task in order to make the money to keep body and soul together. 

 "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious." Albert Camus

That quote from the book, defines Camus' point, he is trying to use Sisyphus' fate to show that even the absurd can quickly become tragic. But, in order for the tragic to take effect, man has to realize the absurdity of his fate. Most of us live that life of "quite desperation" that Thoreau discussed, but for Camus it is possible step beyond that by the conscious realization of the absurdity of modern life. It is a huge step for your average factory worker, lawyer, secretary, or turkey masturbater and it is not always a rewarding one. Realizing that your day, your every day is much like a record placed on "repeat" is soul-crushing. It takes a lot of the Joie de vivre out of one's existence, and replaces it with a version of Sartre's Nausea.  Camus becomes interested in the thoughts of Sisyphus as he marches back down the hill to start his task anew, he believes that Sisyphus realizes the hopelessness of his condition, and that he rises to the occasion. A condition that would crush the spirit of lesser men, makes Sisyphus the hero of the story. All hope is lost, and understanding that, and the fact that "there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." allows Sisyphus to acknowledge his condition, and to keep pushing, just like the factory worker that clocks into his job promptly at 7 a.m. everyday. Camus believes that once Sisyphus, and by extension the rest of us, realizes his fate, he comes to an acceptance of it that leaves him contented, and happy.  Camus believes that in that instant of turning back to walk down the mountain to start his task again, Sisyphus awakens to the absurd nature of everything, and is content with his lot in life. No matter how meaningless it may seem (and be) to the rest of the universe, it is HIS task, no one else can claim it, and no one else can do it. It is for Sisyphus alone that this punishment has been devised, and once he accepts it, an odd type of contentment follows, much like Satan after being thrown out of heaven, takes a look around his new domain of hell, nods, and says "so be it."

I am not French philosopher, nor am I am Greek hero (I am not exactly chiseled from stone), and I am not the Prince of Darkness, despite what a few people who used to know me may think. I am also not the saintly idiot of Dostoyevsky's novel. I am a modern man in the modern world, and as much as I admire Camus and his version of Sisyphus, I have to disagree that he is a hero, absurd or otherwise. Quite simply put it is my firmly held belief that Sisyphus is an idiot. Attempting to out-clever Zeus is not just hubris, it is rank idiocy taken to its highest form.  The "nuts and bolts" of Sisyphus' idiocy need not overly concern us. It is easy enough to find the simple details of his silly attempts to place himself higher than the gods, it is the abstract nature of his idiocy that we need to plumb.

It is a longly held firm belief of mine that you should not send an idiot to repair the damage that idiot has wrought. Be it in car repair, horse racing, or real life, sending the idiot to fix their mistakes rarely leads to anything but a larger mistake. Most of the time, that just simply means a non-idiot, if one is handy, has to take time out of their day to fix the now worse disaster that the original idiot created, and made worse. The gods are wise, they do not send Sisyphus out into the world to repair his mistakes, they just devise a suitable punishment for him, and sit back to enjoy his horror show.  If Sisyphus is, as Camus imagines him to be, content in that moment of turning back to his task, then it becomes clear (at least to me) that he has in fact, learned nothing. This is no longer a test of wills against the gods, they punish, you pay the price. That is how interactions with angry gods work, they do not negotiate with people who can not do anything for them.

For me, Sisyphus' rock is a metaphor for life. It is your task that you are condemned/born to, and you may push it as much as you like, or as little as you dare. We all hope the direction our life is going is the proverbial "up", but the reality might be a little different for most of us. It is your burden, you are the one that needs to shoulder it. Certainly, at least in theory, we all have people in our lives that help us with our burdens, but remember they have burdens of their own. No matter how much they may or may not love you, they still have their own rock to shift, and if you want to be a member of any type of meaningful society, you need to give their rocks the occasional push as well. It seems a simple enough task, focusing on the rock in front of you, but it very rarely is. There are distractions too numerous to count, that divide (and sometimes conquer) our attention to, and our ability to shift our rock. Sometimes we get the unique pleasure of picking a person that we think can help us (and by extension we try to help them) shift our rock to the glorious summit of our particular mountain. Those occasions are as rare as hen's teeth, and should not be undertaken lightly. Shifting our burden means sharing our burden, and sharing is sometimes a whole lot harder than just trying to shift it.

Shakespeare wrote that "when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions" and sometimes those battalions of sorrows can overwhelm even the most dedicated rock pushers, be they singular or in tandem. Some people (myself included) have an annoying tendency to want to hoard their sorrows, and not to share them. It is not any sort of altruistic behaviour, but a knee jerk, selfish reaction born of immaturity. Those selfish individuals, of which I am one, think that no matter how many battalions of sorrows that are laying siege to our lives, we can handle them ourselves. For the most part, we are wrong, spectacularly wrong.  Certainly, helping someone with their burden does make things slightly harder, but receiving their help in return is the main point. Shifting rocks is harder than Chinese math, and a little help is sometimes necessary, and vital to the continuation of the species.

Of course, the crippling point to my metaphor is the fact, that just like Sisyphus, I am an idiot. And in the grand scheme of things, I will probably remain an idiot until I 'shuffle off this mortal coil.' The sorrowful part of this is the fact that I am the only one shifting my rock, and I am an idiot. I am the one that pushed my rock into its current perilous position, and when I look around at the framework of my life, I can only see myself available to fix that problem. Hence the conundrum of sending an idiot to fix the problem the idiot created. Those two decision which were and remain hopelessly intertwined are a prime example of why the 'fixing idiot' solution just doesn't work. In my idiocy, I created the first problem. It was an unmitigated disaster, and it was, almost entirely, my fault.

Being an idiot, and having no one else around to fix this problem, I was forced to attempt a solution of and on my own, with predictable results. The 'solution' I arrived at created another disaster of slightly larger proportion, and one that continues to vex me to this day. This second disaster has a solution, this I am convinced of, however two problems prevent me from implementing that solution. One is that I don't know what the solution is, which is a considerable mountain to climb, and two, even if I were to somehow miraculously  hit upon a solution, I remain an idiot.  It remains a pathetic form of refuge that I hide behind because, since I am an idiot, I do not know, or am unable to do any better.  Je suis desolae.

Je ne suis pas Rome

I am not Rome, just in case your silly barbarian ass was confused, I am not Rome. I am around 1600 stinking Roman miles easterly of Rome, and I am as different from Rome as night is to day. I am a port city, my districts contain the quays and docks that a Roman would have to get off their olive eating arses and trundle the 17 or so miles to Ostia to find. What is it about nations that makes them send their scum to sea? It is an article of faith that port cities are full of odd fellows, hard men, and shady characters from foreign shores that are only looking to cause trouble to the local gendarme. When the barbarian from the story below washed upon my shores, I didn't even spare him a second glance. After all, I had seen his type before, in fact, I was home to a few thousand of his type already. Why should he be any different from the rest of the exiles, reprobates, and various other losers at life that I was already 'home' to?  Being escorted off some stinking tub of a merchant ship coming from nowhere, and bound to nowhere, by two husky Roman centurions is no way to assure yourself a hero's welcome in my city. It hardly warrants a second glance. That, I think, hurt his pride almost as much as being exiled here in the first place.

Make no mistake, I've had my years of glory. Long before  stinking Rome was espousing the myth of being founded by twins suckling at a wolf's teat, I flourished.  I was founded by those "boy loving" Greeks, and I blossomed. I was the place to be on a well traveled caravan route, and became a mini version of Rome itself. I founded colonies, issued my own coinage, and even for a time was the capital city of the Kingdom of Pontus. Just because my glory has faded doesn't mean that it wasn't as bright as a summer's sun when it was new.  But, along came those stinking Romans, and their well trained, over sexed legions, and I was conquered. It wasn't hard for them to manage, after all, who can resist Rome? Not I, and I was duly colonized by the stinking Roman Julius Caesar. Of course, being the arrogant bastards that they are they duly renamed me Colonia Julia Felix.

A name is just that a name, it does not have to define you, or who/what you are. It is a place holder for some po-faced geographer to engrave upon a map, so that real men with real senses of adventure can find you without sailing off the edge of the Earth. I've no doubt that countless screaming, whoring Argonauts would have had a whole lot less fun, without the maps they carried leading them to my sheltering port. Being the difficult bitch that I am, I did have to place a small obstacle in those intrepid sailors path. A small island named (yet again a name) Scopelus that made the bigger ships take a 40 stadia detour. I may be an open city, but I am open on my terms, not theirs.  At least that is what I like to think, Rome of course had different ideas, and I was duly Romanized like a multitude of cites before and after me.

All the proper Roman buildings were erected, and the forms were duly followed that allowed me to become part of the great Empire that Rome has become. I've had many peoples claim to be my master, and I allow those temporary fools to indulge themselves with the notion that anyone can master me. Therefore, when another exile washed upon my shore I didn't really consider him any sort of threat, or any sort of potential problem. It seems I was wrong, there is a lot of detail about me, and his time in my environs that he left out of his short little tale, and I am here to set the record straight. He wasn't a large problem, those are reserved for fires that sometimes burn out of control near the quays, and wipe out large swathes of people's homes, or the occasional plague brought by some unkempt sailor staggering onto my shore.  He was just another damn fool in a city of damn fools, and I rather figured his loud mouth, and his bragging about being from Rome would get him stabbed fairly quickly.

To my surprise, he was a bit handier with a blade (and not the cooking kind) than I, and a couple of my more enterprising citizens had figured. He survived that first hard, cold winter that serves the purpose of weeding out the weaker exiles to my shores. However, I knew he wasn't built for me, the purpose driven life he was leading had one goal, and one goal only, Rome. That bitch of a city and empire that exerts a pull upon all damn fools of a certain type, and he was a damn fool of that certain type. I have a lot of damn fools like him just idly passing the time within my borders, and the "chance" meeting of him and that other damn fool Stairaid was bound to happen sooner or later. It happened sooner than I expected, but surprises are kind of like that, sudden and unexpected. Perhaps the surprise of his survival would have turned into that most rare of surprises, a pleasant one, but once he toughed out the first winter, I knew he would not be around to see the leaves change colour again.

He will complain, and tell you that while staying with me he woke up "cold, hungry, and alone." He is not the only citizen/exile in my districts to experience those feelings, and many of them all at once just like he did. It does not single him out for any sort of sympathy, and probably made him a better person in spite of himself. My winters can be harsh, food is not usually free, and he seemed loath to steal (one of his few good qualities). Perhaps he had a "lady friend" back in Rome that he was being loyal to, there were rumors that it was an affair of the heart that was the major cause of his exile, or perhaps he wasn't as charming as he made out to be. I am a city full of women with the talent to warm a man's heart and his bed at the same time. If he was cold, he had options, a warm blanket or a warm woman, which would kill two birds with one stone, if he was hungry, day labour unloading the ships that swarm to my docks is always available, and the price of a meal is easily earned.

Truth, that rarest of commodities, was something that he did not share willingly, it was, as I found out later, almost constitutionally impossible for him to trust anyone. Fair play to him for that, but his lies, which few people believed, became a source of real contention between him, and my fellow citizens. Rome was beyond compare, Rome had it all, Rome was the beginning, middle, and end of all human endeavour. That may be true, but eventually one gets tired of being compared to stinking Rome, and losing out on the comparison. I have my charms, and a fair number of men have succumbed to them.

 Certainly all roads lead to Rome, but just as many lead away from Rome as well. His obsession with "conquering" Rome will be his downfall. He is just too blinded, stupid, or angry to see it, or perhaps it is a combination of all three. He eventually screwed his courage up to the sticking point, and together with his boon companion left me for one of those roads leading to Rome. I do, once in a while, hear wild rumors  concerning him. He was killed in a shipwreck, he was captured by pirates and is being held for a ransom that there is no one to pay, he made it to Rome and was welcomed back with open arms (perhaps by his "lady friend"), he made it to Rome, and was thrown off of Tarpeian Rock for being a criminal and a traitor. All of these reports remain just rumors, wild tales told by drunken fools in low taverns, until I see either him, or his body, I will remain cautiously optimistic about his fate. He left me with that burning desire to conquer Rome, or die in the attempt. I wish him luck.