PART OF AND SEPARATE AND PART OF

SEEKING MEANING WHEN THERE IS NONE AND CONNECTION, JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS WITH IMPOSTER SYNDROME, TEND TO DO

I stumbled across some poets on substack just about an hour ago and was brought short with their words. I haven’t heard of some of them but some I have and some I have met and some have been incredibly patient with my own writing. Though I think it was a session where we were guided through the layers of one of those poet’s poems that finally made me realise I would never be a poet; I do not have the brains or the breadth of mind for it.

I am also impatient and imprecise; as far as I am concerned I want to say my piece and leave it be; just like I am doing now! Usually, I will not refine or edit or wait until I am content with my work for other people to read my words; which probably explains why few people read my work.

I was more careful with my memoirs but only marginally more; than with the writing I place weekly on Substack.

I am not sure I have an excuse and maybe I also have little excuse for how I read other peoples work. I escape into the words and tend to take them at face value, too naïve or uneducated or unperceptive to peer deeper into what people are saying and sometimes, with some poets; filled with a wonder at what has been said but at the same time blissfully unaware of what they are about.

I often see words and sentences I love but do not understand.

Anyway, reading on that site made me think.

Someone; I can’t remember who, commented on the challenge of meaningless, that our world is amoral not even by design but by accident or not even accident; it’s just how it is.

To me, that seems self-evident. Forty years ago, maybe more, I remember being aghast that that might be the case. I thought; if life has no purpose and no meaning then why do we try to live? I half read words by people I didn’t understand and half thought the reason I tried to kill myself was because of the utter pointlessness of our existence.

It took me years to realise that it maybe had been more because I was lonely and frightened, scared of being an adult, scared of being in relationships, that made me so sad.

A bit longer to recognise that it may have been because of the schizophrenia I was later diagnosed with, coming to the surface of my life and a bit later on thinking that an evangelical upbringing in school does that to you when you come to recognise its fault lines; that without the need for meaning and purpose that underpins religion, life would possibly be much easier indeed to live.

Now, I just do my best to get through the days; though with my diagnosis, the possibility of suicide or an early death from other causes is never that far away.

I long, long ago doubted my ability to work out meaning or lack of meaning and long ago doubted those who felt they had answers to anything at all. In fact, I went further and blamed the visionaries and the activists for much of the suffering we all go through; whether they be the fascists like Trump or Putin or more disconcertingly those I admire for what they do to preserve peace or our environment.

The arrogance with which a person can feel they know they have answers scares me; especially when I see what can be done in the name of answers.

And yet despite that, I still have a hankering for morality and a sense of good and bad. I do not like to witness suffering and where I can, I try to reduce it. To me that is part of being human and not part of some greater morality we all need to abide by. Though I do not believe in God anymore; I still think love and kindness is the key to what leads to a better world and so maybe, despite myself, I have some remnant of faith remaining in me.

I am resolute in not glorying in the presence of nature as a solution to the multitude ills we experience but despite that, know what it does for my wellbeing. Even how powerful the smell of hot seaweed on the shore can be to return me to something calmer or how much the beauty of the flowers of Jacobs ladder or the knobbly surface of the emerging acorns can do for me or, for that matter, the sound of the seagulls and children nattering at the very cheap resort we are staying at, can do to make my body smile.

These poets, some of whom I read and some of whom I now read, talking about other poets.

I would need another life time to understand their words and their culture and world but I admire the risk they take to make sense of things, the leap they take to celebrate the world in all its contradictions, to look at the order or disorder of the world and challenge it and then maybe celebrate it.

I think I am jealous that they can speak with the confidence that they know what they are talking about even if they profess they don’t. I am jealous that they have a body of work and evidence to back up all the references and words and their community that allows them the pleasure of bringing new words to life. Those words that enthral people like me even though we remain, just the reading, maybe slightly ignorant, public that in some way they perform to or maybe try, vainly, to educate.

Somehow, I do not have that community around me in any aspect of my life or do not feel I do.

I think there is a world where some people take some things for granted and do not quite know how solid those foundations then become. I failed my degree long before I reached the end of it. I had high expectations of university and had imagined many hours debating and learning and exhilarating in the learning but admissions to hospitals and asylums take that optimism and confidence away. When I wrote very bad poetry in the finals of my Natural Environmental Science exams and claimed I was doing it in protest at the learning environment of Sheffield University, I was doing no such thing. I had just failed to reach any form of adulthood and stood ill at ease with those who knew their place in life.

I think that might explain why the anarchist lecturer who then started inviting me to his parties because of my gesture, just as suddenly dropped me when I sat in the corner of them and failed to entertain with my tiny rebellion.

I saw it too just two days ago. Introduced to a group, composed not only of professors but heads of departments with lots of professors in them.

I did not understand the language, not really, and still have no idea what a longitudinal study is. They will speak to each other all the time; probably, enjoy meals together and drinks in the pub with each other but though my ‘class’ may indicate otherwise, I do not mix with such people and I do not know and will not know their partners names or celebrate what their grown up children have done lately.

It is a pleasure to be told that I can maybe see, from a lived experience perspective where they get things right and where they get things wrong, and that in some ways not having that culture or academic burden should make me free to point out the obvious that they sometimes miss but I am slightly unsure what I think of being the ‘wise fool’ who will never be a part of; however wise my pronouncements might be seen to be.

It makes me think of other people, of so many people who do not feel they fit in due to class or religion or gender, ethnicity, nationality, education and so on. So many of us uncertain because we feel we see a community of those who belong who we worry we do not belong to. It makes me wonder how many people actually feel they belong and how many feel the same as me but do not mention it.

I feel slightly the same with the writings of these wonderful poets. They live in a world I will never inhabit in any way.

In some weird way I am a part of the writing community but maybe one of the add on’s; the niche voices, the ones who do not really fit at all and certainly do not know the language; would not be that easy companion in the pub.

I lurk at the edges, I am a member of the Society of Authors, I am a trustee of Moniack Mhor (Scotland’s National Writing Centre) and a member of the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Data base. I was invited to be a judge for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival writing competition a few days ago but I do not feel a part of in any way and that I find strange.

Or maybe I don’t. Any half accomplished, writer will find this piece littered with mistakes in grammar and language that I am not even aware of or rather, I am aware enough of them, to recognise that I am no craftsman in the world of words and equally no craftsman or master of ideas.

In one of the articles I read recently, one of the authors said that another, even more famous poet, celebrated insanity. I am not sure if she meant that as a state of being, or a concept or a statement about the world and this made me pause a bit.

Because to all intents and purposes I am insane and yet able to see some of the contradictions of life. Being compulsorily treated for my schizophrenia for the last fifteen years has kept me alive and, on and off for another fifteen years before that, has slowly put me into a place where I now have enough strength to look around me.

It took me ten years to get to see a psychologist and she says up front that she will not cure me, may not even manage to convince me I have schizophrenia but she may help me question some of my thoughts.

It is just now, having read that article, that I think I could maybe glory in these thoughts outside of the realm of the medical and the impaired. Although part of me worries that poets celebrating insanity maybe celebrate the idea of it rather than its manifestation.

Maybe a committed atheist like me who wishes he was agnostic and sometimes feels jealous of those who have faith and yet, who at the same time, believes he is a devil and bringing the world to its end; someone making the book of Revelation tangible.

Maybe the impossible contradiction of that state of mind really is something we could celebrate. The liberation of insanity and unreason; the challenge to the logic we need to live by to exist. The ability to discard convention and find a world where consequence does not matter in any normal way.

I can also say there is no meaning and no point to anything but then say the banter of Wendy and the children this morning and their tussles and their laughter bring joy and meaning everyday, to me; in much the same way I imagine happens to fox cubs when they are gambling and mock fighting at the entrance to their mothers den on a summers evening in the softness of the evening sun.

The celebration of meaning in a meaningless world, the joy of words and ideas when there really is no higher purpose in which to place them. The delight that logic rips itself to threads every day in our fragile brains and minds. Knowing that love makes all the difference even if we can’t define it. Knowing our dog loves, and that the children’s dad’s dog loves, that our rabbit has been pining away ever since his brother died in much the same way I would, if Wendy died. Knowing I still love my son though I doubt I would recognise him if I passed him in the street. Making Wendy coffee every morning because she can’t start the day without it and refuses to learn how to work the coffee pot.

Knowing she loves me even though I am often silent to the point of screaming.

These are the things I would like to celebrate, I am not sure how to and now I am getting old, I may not grasp them as thoroughly as I would like but that is where I now find meaning.

Do have a look at my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing to learn more about my life and my family. Easiest found on Amazon just now.