Situations

                 18 November 2009

Rain on the roof at the right time this morning,

all caught up on my jobs,

no reason to get up until the rain stopped.

Just one tiny job in my inbox when I do –

looks like it's gonna be a skint xmas.

              We Exotic Refugees

Refugees and migrants from all over the world

make life much more interesting and colourful

and – if they venture into food enterprises – flavourful

here in Hamilton.

It would be even better, for me at least,

to benefit as much as possible

from contact with their diverse cultural outlooks

if they’d venture out more from the safety

of the company of their own people

into situations in which I could meet and joke with them,

as I’ve been lucky to do with a few.

I know how they must feel, though,

about mixing with other people

who seem unsettling to them.

Shit, how I know how they must feel!

           Drawing A Distinction

When I’m composing and performing

these little observations, recollections,

musings, narratives, and rants

I’m completely without fear

of any audience, or of anything

in regard to trying to tell the truth.

At almost all other times, however,

I’m paralysed by constant terrors.

       Another Distinction

Solitude is when being all alone

seems to be the most preferable

of several attractive alternatives.

Loneliness is when being all alone

seems to be the least noxious

of several unattractive ones.

                    New Year’s Eve

My younger daughter was born on New Year’s Eve –

most considerate of her,

tax-wise,

there on Guam,

but it’s never been a celebratory time for me.

I’ve never been all that big on New Year’s Eve.

The last time I stayed up past midnight to welcome in a year,

drinking and carrying on and stuff,

was at the end of 1962 and the start of 1963.

The next year I was on an airplane

on the evening of December 31,

and by the following year

I was staying up drinking almost every evening anyhow,

and saw it as amateur night.

Then I got a dog whose birthday was December 30,

and for several years

entertained guests on the eve before new year’s.

Going to bed early on December 31

has become a point of honour for me.

It suits my critical viewpoint,

my social deficiencies,

and my misanthropic reclusiveness.

It’s a part of my identity,

something that my last wife

was incapable of understanding.

              My Status

My relationship status is divorced –

divorced from too many wives and lovers,

divorced from people in general,

divorced from family in any meaningful way,

divorced from nature,

divorced from life.

             I Do Have A Friend

I do have a friend –

a real friend,

more than just a pleasant acquaintance,

or a facebook cyber-friend

or somebody I get along with

the rare times we encounter each other –

I actually have one actual friend

who comes by about once every week or two

to visit for lunch and to show me her creations

and to see if I’m doing okay.

Sometimes when she doesn’t come by

she calls to check in with me –

or maybe it’s to see if I’m still alive.

My friend sometimes worries about me.

My friend confides in me and asks my advice.

My friend respects my integrity, my intellect,

and my specialist skills, and I respect hers.

My friend takes things of mine that need fixing,

and either she or her husband fixes them.

My friend hugs me when she’s excited,

or when I’ve helped her or her husband,

or when I just look as if I could use a hug.

My friend shares her triumphs and sorrows with me.

My friend listens to my weird-shit music without complaint.

My friend discusses complex ideas with me.

My friend expresses appreciation

when I help her with her English.

My friend knows when she’s upset me

and seems upset about it herself.

My friend seems to understand

and condone my unhappiness.

                            It Figures, Eh?

The only time for years that people just dropped in to visit me

was the only time that I requested that nobody do so.

                           The Last Job

Signing on in September 2005

as a contract editor with a Melbourne-based online editing agency

with the unfortunate name of WordsRU

almost literally saved my life.

I don’t know whether that was fortunate, unfortunate, or neither,

and I’m not going to explain it here.

For several years my work for WordsRU

provided me with a living,

mental stimulation,

a sense of accomplishment,

and a way to pass the time –

sometimes all too well.

I had to take a stress break in 2008 after a long stretch of working

eleven and twelve hour days seven days a week.

Then the bloke who owned WordsRU had a stroke,

his middle-aged son took over, and things started to go downhill.

The son’s management style, for example,

relied heavily on threats and bullshit,

and my talented chief editor consequently quit-got-fired.

Eventually he decided that we needed a new website,

and through arrogance and incompetence

he fucked it up,

and business nose-dived.

Fortunately, this happened just a couple of months

before I qualified for national super,

so I didn’t have to sell my house in order to survive.

I spent a year with plenty of time to compose verses,

then saw an ad for copywriters on facebook from a newish agency,

answered it, and signed on at the end of February 2012.

My last job for WordsRU was grossly undersold to an irritating client,

but I didn’t mind,

and shined on till I finished it,

and when I was done I felt a whole lot better

than I had for a long, long time.

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.