Happy
They’re odd words that have many meanings,
happy and happiness,
but nothing in the dictionary enlightens me
about the meaning most people have for it.
Pleasure, satisfaction, joy, gladness –
those just don’t convey the meaning of,
“Just as long as you’re happy,” or
“She’s a happy person.”
Happiness is a complex phenomenon.
I did some rough internet research
and in a short time found hundreds
of ideas of what happiness is,
written by hundreds of people.
I can’t tell you what it is myself, though.
Although I experienced joy
when my first daughter was born,
and magnificent pleasure each time
I picked up and hugged either daughter
when they were small enough,
and satisfaction every time I’ve done a difficult task well,
and gladness every time a woman
has made herself close to me for a while,
I can’t say that I’ve ever been
all-the-way-through just plain happy –
because I don’t know how to be.
It’s a skill I just never learnt
when I was growing up,
and that’s when people have to learn it.
Forms
of Sadness
When I see images on the
internet
of such horrors as
newly hatched male offspring of
layer hens
on conveyor belts to their
doom,
and hopeless people whose lives
have been blown to rubble over
bullshit,
and on and on with other evidence
of the cruelty
upon which the world of power
seems to depend,
I feel a deep sense of sadness
and helplessness
about the nature of things,
but I move on.
When I remember images in my
mind’s eye
of my then-adolescent daughter,
who had apparently inherited
my frustrating lack of
terpsichorean talent,
spending hours on the porch
practicing for the jazz-dance
exams
which she hadn’t a hope in hell
of passing,
I weep real tears
uncontrollably for hours.
History
One of the things
that make historical
murder mysteries
attractive to me
is that I
don’t feel
any great sorrow
at the fate
of their victims,
because they’d all
be long dead
by now, anyway.
People, Patience, & Prudence
Barbra Streisand always got right up my nose.
Not only was she the sort of Jewish girl
that my inhuman mother was always pushing on me,
but she had that insufferably self-confident, self-assured attitude,
not to mention that whiney, drama-queen voice
that always made me want to puke,
and her signature song,
that crap about people who need people,
is the opposite of the way
things seem to
me.
I’ve discovered that reclusiveness
suits me better than anything else,
and that there’s not a person I know
whom I can’t get along without,
if that’s the only way to avoid
some emotional or psychological distress or another,
even if that means limiting my human contact
to the people who sell me the shit
I need to
survive.
It seems that all I really need
is a secure supply of wine, cheese, tomatoes, gluten,
weird-shit music, and mystery novels from the library.
I can cuddle and kiss my wine bottles.
Death
and Lachrymosity
I don’t know how many songwriters, lyricists,
and other types of rhyme-makers
have mined the obvious connection
between ‘died’
and ‘cried’.
I never have.
Neither have I ever cried
in response to the death of anyone.
I was just bewildered
when my daddy died when I was nine,
and no death since then has affected me as much,
not even that of
my favourite dog.
Death just inspires no emotion in me,
but then, I’m an emotional cripple,
No Meaning
I feel curiously detached from
myself
and have done so, by and large,
since my world fell apart,
doing my best to live only from moment to
moment.
The only emotion I seem able to
feel is pain,
although sometimes anger flares
up, unwelcome, for a moment,
and I deeply dislike feeling
pissed off,
so my conscious objective is to feel
nothing.
Sometimes, however,
such as when I look at the
patterns
painted on the ceramic bowls
out of which I eat,
or stamped onto the linoleum on
the floor of the loo,
my mind becomes clearly focused
on the pointlessness
of everything,
including my pain.
Failure
Failure
is a state of being
rather
than an event.
I’ve
always been a failure,
for
example,
even
from birth.
My
mother wanted a girl,
but
I failed her by being born me,
so
she never forgave me,
and
always made it clear
that
although I was sometimes
a
possession that provided her with a benefit or two,
I was always a
failure as an offspring.
One
of the strangest days of my life
was
my twenty-sixth birthday,
when
I took the most eclectic combination
of
psychoactive substances
I’ve
ever consumed
and
entered into a well-populated party
with
the theme
of “26 years of
failure”.
In
recent years I’ve consoled myself
with
the hubristic illusion
that
at least I haven’t been a failure
as
a daddy,
but
now it turns out that
that
isn’t true, either.
It’s
my state of being, after all.
Cringing
I often think of myself,
metaphorically,
as an innocent puppy,
unable to understand
when the people
scold and punish me,
but automatically,
and unreflectingly
accepting and internalising
those judgements.
Can’t Help It
When I watch Usain Bolt run on TV
I can’t help it,
but the absolutely pure
technical beauty of his stride
makes me want to cry.
Punk Politics & Love
I’m in love
with all the members
of Pussy Riot.
Their courage,
their audacity,
their politics,
their style,
their energy,
their singing,
their dancing,
their poetry,
their smiles,
their body language,
and yes, their bodies
turn me on completely,
even though
they could be
my
granddaughters.
It doesn’t matter
that none of them
will ever know
that I’ve
existed, either.
It’s not that variety
of love.
