Thursday, 31st March 2005
Reading list
Reason 7 billion and 23 that eb is the most amazing person in the cuntiverse arrived in my letterbox yesterday - a copy of “Mystics, Masters, Saints and Sages: Stories of Enlightenment”. (Take note, dear reader, you too can up your status in the cuntiverse by purchasing me items from my wish list as well.) I love books like this; ‘this’ being a compendium type work whereby one can learn a little of a person, then choose those you wish to learn more of. (I have a great book on revolutionary figures like this as well, but since the English Channel and a large expanse of land is between me and 99.99% of my books, I can’t linky up your life.) I’m only a little way in, but so far Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross) interests me greatly, (mostly for his poetry), as does Yeshe Tsogyal. The latter I am thinking would make a great subject to research more at school - yay for the cunty womens!
I’m also reading “Anger” by Carol Tavris, which I consider an excellent bargain since I bought it for $0.49 as a used paperback in bad condition, but what actually arrived was a hardback in decent condition. Weee! It’s a bit laborious at times, but I am enjoying it. The highlight for me so far was the idea that, “the explanation Jane believed [about the cause of her anger] is the one that will guide her future actions.” Not surprisingly, I’m liking the essential theme of responsibility that runs though the work thus far.
“The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins is fantastico too. Again, I’ve only partially read it, but he has infected me with this wonderful sense of myself. I keep feeling all tingly when it read it, as if I suddenly become aware of every single cell in my body. I want to scratch myself all over so as I can free the gorjus little souls! This book is a definite way to infuse yourself with wonder over the human condition and more generally, life. He’s an amazing writer too - full of wit and charm.
Will Self’s “Cock and Bull” was a complete disappointment. I finished this one a week or so ago, only after forcing myself to get through it. I think I may be going off fiction because technically I should have loved this book. It contains 2 novellas - one where a woman grows a penis and t’other with a man growing a vagina. Right up my alley, no? No. It was irritatingly full of gender stereotypes - woman gets a penis and becomes aggressive, assertive and ends up murdering her husband; man gets a vagina and becomes passive, emotional and ends up committing suicide. However, the idea and the excellent quality of Self’s writing should have captured me. Alas, no…
Finally, a while ago I read “The Line of Beauty” by Alan Hollinghurst. I bought it because I read some scandal about him only winning the Booker because a panellist was gay and the book is a “gay novel”, whatever the expletive that is. (I am, however, willing to entertain the idea of a gay novel if we talk about heterosexual novels as well.) Anyway, I am by my very nature drawn to anything scandalous and/or obscene, so I bought it without a moments hesitation. Lovely hardback copy too. I have to say that I was entirely unprepared for how absolutely brilliant a novel it is. I was desperately sad to put it down in the end and in thinking of the protagonist now, I actually miss him. I never would have thought that a book about 80’s Thatcherite London could be even remotely emotionally evokative, but my god it was! It’s quite a marvel that the author can make you empathise with such vacuity and wasteful decadence, but he does and in an achingly poignant way. And the end - ouch! - there’s a lesson in there for all of us about privilege, exclusion and the dangers of a naive yet arrogant selfishness. I really, really recommend this book.
In other news, Maynard makes me puke. I mean that in a good way. It’s me insides! Me insides are all in a knot! When are Tool going on tour?
Books up me cunty,
Books in me brain, heart full of
Words and a small pain.
You’ll no doubt be pleased that that is the last haiku I will be subjecting you to. 
Wednesday, 30th March 2005
If I could say something to a child
“Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valour and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.”
(From “Some fill with each good rain” by Hafiz)
I can’t get that verse out of my mind. I recite it to myself over and over, accompanied by admonitions to myself. Every single wound I bear is because I disobeyed that cardinal rule; all of them were strangers and none of them were bold.
I wish I had been read that as a child. I wish that instead of “hush little baby, don’t you cry”, I had been whispered the above refrain, over and over until I walked it. Whispered it until my repulsion from cowards was instinctual, unquestioned, a response to the stiflingly small lives, hearts and minds that the cowards world is peopled with. Aren’t you cramped, cowards? Aren’t you claustrophobic?
Children should never be told not to cry, they should be told to be brave and to keep tight the precious coins until they find a fellow warrior. How many of us have plied these coins into junk food people who offer nothing but obesity and a sickly pallor to ones journey? We carve our souls into golden gifts, yet still the hunger, still the searching because the cowards are eating instead of weaving. No, be a spendthrift when it comes to those few precious coins, guard them wisely. The cowards can feed off echoes for years, so save those coins for the weaver, for the person you should honour. Save them, but scatter crumbs randomly.
I wish that instead of being told to give people the benefit of the doubt, I had been told to revere, at all costs, bravery. I wish that I had been told to doubt the coward was worthy of me, not to doubt that I was worthy of more than a coward. I wish I had been told that most people are cowards and that tears were solace for the lonely. I wish I had been told that loneliness and a brave heart were more important than a forging a common bond with a coward. I wish I had been told “cry, little baby, cry” so as the tears could hydrate my skin and act as some saline disinfectant to cut through the detritus that the sickly, slick coward smears on.
Oh, valour and daring! If I had only known what I should be looking for, what I had the right to expect, I should have saved myself from most, if not all, negative situations. Bravery shines, hard, glinting, warm but cowardice smothers perspective and analogy to save itself from recognition. Bravery is unmistakable, but cowardice is. Cowardice seeks only to be mistaken because it knows how ugly it truly is.
So if I could say something to a child, it would be to cry, kick out, scream. It would be to invoke all the anger that will save it from the cowards smothering embrace. It would be to take the very own knife of its very own heart, and use it to rip holes in cowardice. Use it to ventilate its life. Take that knife and use it like a sword so as the cowards are kept at bay. Those with their own valour and bravery will come armed with their own sword, and you will know them for the sound the metal makes on walls. You will know them for the glint of metal in eye. You will know them because they are not afraid of your knife or your tears, since in them, they can see the reflection of their own.
I am looking at my hands and they are cracked and they are worn - they are a fighters hands. True also, they are the kind of hands that weave, that have woven and shall continue too. I want to tell my hands that they don’t need to fight anymore because I am going to let myself learn how to cry. I am going to sip loneliness quietly in a corner and let the tears flood over me so as I don’t get so tired again. I’m going to sit and I’m going to meditate on those few, bright, sharp pennies and I’m going to put the whole of the world back in them. So the next time I meet a warrior, I will know her, because I will have seen her face before and I’ll give her my penny so as she can see herself and see how much I love her.
In the dark, smog, rain
Through cowardly pollution
Bravery shines on.