The Return of Personal Stuff

    The Illusion That Is Me

I know that I’m still handsome,

for an old bloke –

what a fucking joke –

and have wide shoulders,

a powerful voice,

and a strong presence,

but all this only gives

the people I meet

and even those I’ve known somewhat

for years

the wrong

impression.

I’m really

an insecure

nine-year-old boy

with no self-confidence,

low self esteem,

and no self-belief

who’s afraid of everybody,

and have been since 1955.

                      Vertigo

I don’t know if it’s all in my mind

or just in my middle ear,

but vertigo’s been a part of my life

for as long as I can remember.

It’s not that I’m afraid of heights –

I can enjoy the view

out of a twentieth-floor window or from an airplane –

but whenever I’m unsure of my underpinnings,

whether I’m walking across

the outside lane of a windy bridge

or changing a light bulb three steps up a ladder,

an icy sensation shoots back and forth

between my ankles and my knees,

I become dizzy, disoriented, or both,

my sense of balance seems to desert me,

and I have to fight to prevent myself

from lurching into a disastrous fall.

          I Am A Thing

Although some may find

things that I do

to be competently useful

or mildly entertaining,

I find it hard to believe

that anybody gives a shit

about what goes on in my mind

when I’m alone –

which is most of the time –

or about my feelings

or my pain.

My experience has been

that other people –

and even my dog –

behave toward me

as if I were a thing,

rather than a human being,

and I long ago came to accept their judgement.

                   Motivations Obscure To Me

I’ve observed these people –

on TV and when I’m out and about –

who have full beards and shaved heads,

and it’s beyond my capacity for empathy

to understand in any meaningful way

why they do.

It’s the same with elaborately trimmed-and-shaped beards

that require high maintenance,

and trendy hairstyles

that require frequent barbering

and expensive product.

Words come to mind –

fashion, machismo, vanity, narcissism,

obsessive affectation –

and I know what all those words mean,

but I’m incapable of knowing

what those things feel like.

Although I did experiment once,

extremely briefly,

with a goatee when in my early twenties,

I stopped shaving,

or allowing barbers to shave,

any part of me when I was nineteen

because I didn’t like to do it,

didn’t like the way it felt,

either during or after the process,

and could find no compelling, rational reason

for doing it at all,

and that’s it.

               A Brief Assessment

I’m just a psychosocially deficient old man

who occasionally churns out amusing words.

                        I Don’t Feel Ethnic

I don’t feel ethnic

even though I was born into a definite ethnic group.

Ashkenazic.

Eastern European Jewish.

Two grandparents from what is now Poland

and two from what’s now the Ukraine.

Still, I love most of the ethnic food I grew up with –

chopped liver and sour green tomatoes and kasha knishes

and sable, which is smoked black cod, and,

although I haven’t had any in many years,

gefilte fish with hot horseradish – comfort food, all,

but I also derive comfort from stuff from the hot bread shops,

and just about every other kind of ethnic food,

and when I cook it’s more likely to be

some form of Mexican or Italian or Indian or something

I’ve improvised

than Ashkenazic.

I don’t deny my heritage,

but the religion part,

and most of the in-group cultural stuff of it never stuck.

I guess the thing is that although

I’m a member of the tribe for sure,

I just don’t dance with the rest of them

around some metaphoric campfire.

I don’t dig klezmer,

and I didn’t dig it when another member of the tribe

came up to me at a recent function

and told me an ethnocentric, ethnic-stereotype joke,

having lost my ability to appreciate

humour based on ethnic stereotypes – except Australians –

many decades ago.

I didn’t feel simpático with that landsmann,

to mix my Spanish with my Yiddish.

What I felt was alienated from my roots,

just as I do from the wider culture.

   My Own Confirmation Bias

When I don’t feel confident

about being able

to do something competently,

but have no choice but to do it anyway,

and it comes out okay,

this result has no effect

on my underlying lack of confidence

at all.

            I Come Last

One of the many things

that I internalised as child,

having learnt it within

the dynamic of my family,

that my life in general reinforced,

and that became solidified during the years

when I was primarily a spouse and parent

is that when I am involved or engaged

with one or more other people,

my interests, my preferences,

my feelings, my desires,

my needs, my time – my life,

definitely have less importance

than those of the others.

I accept this as natural and inevitable,

but I don’t like it.

         Early in the Morning

For a long time now,

the worst part of almost every day for me

has been that early-morning moment

when I grudgingly have to acknowledge

that I’ve awakened and am unable

to get back to sleep.

From time to time, however,

things become worse,

such as when I’m at my desk before dawn

and am unable to distract myself sufficiently

to maintain mental numbness.

       Without When Within

It got to the point

at which even whisky gave no comfort

from my rattlings about in my own absurdity;

I had no children, or old men like myself,

around to connect me

with card games or dominoes

and laughter about nothing.

I no longer had even pathetic congress

with the plants in my pots.

No new facebook notifications.

No new emails.

No phone calls or text messages,

as usual.

No hugs and cuddles.

No cosy time-passing.

No sharing of secrets.

No enthusiasm or expectations

that the courage required to hit the world

would result in reward.

Of all the music in the world,

much of it at my fingertips,

I didn’t know what to play –

something that would reach me

but not really touch me

would have been most appropriate for the situation,

but the situation seemed incurable, anyhow,

even with jazz fusion.

           Within When Without

Fear afflicts me

most of the time.

It afflicts me the worst

when I’m away from my hole.

All sorts of fears afflict all sorts of people,

but – except for vertigo –

most of the common ones,

such as the fear of death,

bother me little or not at all.

What terrorises me, of course,

is people.

Okay, most of the people who take my money

in the shops and so forth

are like balm.

But when I venture into

the world of people

who may give a shit

or should give a shit

or pretend to give a shit

or who I want to give a shit,

I’ve learnt to keep my defences up,

and let the performer hide the child,

being highly suspicious of what is actually there.

My form may be within your range of vision, y’see,

but I’m not there.

Interactions

                 She Said – I Said – She Said

She said, “My! Richard, you have such good skin.

It makes you look much younger than you really are.

What do you use on it?”

I said, “I just wash it with soap and water.”

She said, “Oh, no – you shouldn’t do that!

Soap is so bad for your skin!

It ages it terribly!”

She said, “You look like you’ve been putting on some weight.

How much do you weigh?”

I said, “I dunno. I never weigh myself.”

She said, “Oh, no! That’s what anorexics always say!”

I suppose I should have told her

that I just don’t give a shit

about that kind of shallow crap,

and that I’d rather use my mind

than swallow that checkout-mag shit whole,

but I’m not that sort of person,

so I didn’t.

She said, “Well, if you don’t cook meat at home,

are you a vegetarian?”

I said, “Oh, I eat fish and birds.”

She said, “What? You eat birds?”

I said, “Yeah, y’know, chicken,

and turkey when I can afford it.”

She said, “They’re not birds! They’re poultry!”

I suppose I should have asked her

if she worked for the

National Euphemism Association,

but she was old,

and I’m not that kind of person,

so I didn’t.

             Parental Protection

I was minding a small gaggle

of small boys – six and seven year olds, mostly –

who were enjoying themselves

by running amok

in a small neighbourhood park.

One of their favoured activities

was climbing a retaining wall

that was maybe four metres high.

When they made it to the top

the more agile and confident ones

climbed back down backwards;

the others climbed over a short chain-link fence

onto a streetside footpath

and then circled around back into the park.

The mother of one of them showed up

and, horrified, ordered her son

to stop this dangerous activity.

He just said, “No!” and kept climbing.

She started haranguing him about it,

raising the spectre of being encased in plaster.

He reached the top,

circled around, and started back up the wall

to the tune of his mum’s orders to the contrary

and further dire warnings.

I just watched, smiling only slightly.

   Conditions of Employment

When people who’ve been my boss

have realised that I was more

intelligent and educated

than they were,

they loved being my boss more,

but hated me.

         Coin of the Realm

I’m afraid that I have to say

that my experience of interacting

with other people

has convinced me that cheap talk

is the coin of the realm.

                   Almost Floating

Within the space of two days

I became completely alienated

from, first, my best friend,

who had actually been my former best friend

for some time, anyway,

and then from my lover,

who had actually been my former lover

for some time, anyway.

Both situations went down the gurgler

in a froth of mutual finger-pointing

too tedious to detail,

but reconciliation seemed most unlikely in either case.

The following day I felt strangely liberated,

and, even more strangely,

almost serene for the first time I could remember.

In time reconciliation did take place in both cases,

but my sense of otherworldly detachment

remained,

and has served me well,

as I am only a thing that floats, anyway.

                    Martin and Me

Although we work well together artistically

and have similar views of our society and culture,

Martin and I are far from Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

He prefers tea, and is serious about it;

I prefer coffee, and treat it as a drug.

He enjoys tobacco;

I can’t abide its pong.

He prefers anglicised pronunciation variants;

I prefer those of the language of origin.

He’s gregarious and convivial, with easy social skills;

I’m reclusive and distrustful, with deficient social skills.

He’s knowledgeable about botany and birds;

I’m an indoorsman.

His mental processes are basically mathematical;

mine are basically verbal.

He prefers French food and wine to Italian;

I prefer Italian to French,

although we both prefer both to English.

He prefers butter;

I prefer marge.

He’s a keen angler;

I can recall catching only one fish in my life.

He was born in the early 60s;

I was born in the mid 1940s.

He’s an integral part of our community;

I’m an outsider all the way.

       My Lounge Furniture

After many years I still enjoy

the aesthetics of my lounge suite.

The legs and frames are dark wood

with stylised leaf-motif designs

carved into them.

The backs and the table’s top

are of dark-stained wicker

woven into abstract-motif patterns.

The upholstery is bold floral designs

against a black background.

Somebody once told me

disparagingly

that the wood carving had been done

by automated carving machines

and that it definitely wasn’t hand-carved,

implying that this made it inferior.

My reaction was,

so the fuck what?

I like it.

        An Impossible Situation

Whether teasingly or inadvertently

or by way of an unintentional misunderstanding –

when a lover creates a confrontation

with a possible or imputed competitor

for that lover’s affections,

it creates an impossible situation.

To show jealousy is uncool,

as that implies possessiveness.

Not to show jealousy is also uncool,

as that implies indifference.

           To A Former Beauty

There was a time when

all you had to do was wave,

and smile that thousand-megawatt smile

and any male driver who could see you

would temporarily lose control of his vehicle.

There was a time when

your boyfriend was an advertising creep

and dope dealer

and teenaged you would rollerskate into his house

wearing only a bit more than a glassy expression

and help yourself to some of his coke

when he was doing a deal,

and all he’d do  

was laugh softly and wryly and shake his head.

There was a time when

you had your pick of jobs

that just required that you be gorgeous,

and you’d joke about how much work it was

to be pretty all day.

There was a time when

you needed no make-up

and could eat whatever,

and however much of it,

you wanted,

and it wouldn’t show

on your six-foot frame.

But that was thirty-five years ago.

Are you still making the most

of whomever you are now?

Are you contributing to your world?

Or are you obsessed with what you eat,

and resting on your L’Oréals?

          Neither A Random Sample

Being addicted to reading mysteries,

many of the books with which I spend

my now-plentiful leisure hours

have as protagonists

complex, sensitive,

dedicated, violence-averse,

utterly sincere cops.

It makes me wonder, though,

since most of the real cops

I’ve actually known,

personally –

neighbours and friends-of-friends –

have been more or less

unmitigated dickheads.

                                          Deprecation

She said, ‘How could you manage to say exactly the wrong thing just then?’

He answered, ‘I dunno. I just fucked up, I guess.’

She said, ‘You seem to fuck up an awful lot when it comes to that.’

He said, ‘I guess I’m just no damned good and never was and never will be.’

She said, ‘Why do you put yourself down like that all the time?’

He said, ‘I guess it’s because I’m just no damned good and never was and never …’

She said, ‘Stop it! It’s not healthy!’

He said, ‘I’m just agreeing with you, that’s all’

She said, ‘Don’t go blaming your poor self-esteem on me! It’s your

          choice!’

He said, ‘Well, I don’t wanna argue with you, no matter how much you wanna argue with me.’

She said, ‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’

He said, ‘I think I’d better go now.’