Too Much To Declare

A strange word, "deranged".

Can you be "ranged" - as in really together?  If not, why not?

Home on the range.  A kitchen range.  A range of cars, jeans, possibilities...

Can "derange" be a transitive verb?  "He was so angry he deranged the kitchen."?

"Her enemies were ranged against her, but she was determinined to derange them."

"The sabotage was complicated to plan, but he had made all the derangements."

High time I went to bed, methinks.

Too fast.  Much too fast.

The worst thing about selling my home is having to tidy up all the time, to make it look good for prospective purchasers.

No, one thing even worse.  A "helper" tidying up for me.  Where did the bastard put my comfortable shoes?  The passport renewal form?

I'm going to bed now.

It would be nice to return to my Grandfather, where I left him.  Perhaps he'll know why he figured in my last night's dream.

Meanwhile, you'll have to blog and comment away without me.

Sad,  but even if I were the kind who could sleep through the morning, tomorrow I have to see the dental hygenist, an on Wednesday a property developer.

What a wonderful life.

At last, I had a long  conversation with my literary editor today.  She has spent the last four months in the U.S working on a project.

During the phone call, I decided, finally, that I am not going to self-publish Low Life Games.  For now it will have to stay in a drawer and and on my hard disk.  If she had been around during the early summer and been available to sub edit it, I probably would have published it.  But I have lost the momentum - or rather my energy has moved to my next project...

... is what I have needed to write all along but have studiously avoided for years, for fear of offending my family.

It will be the story of my childhood and my parents' divorce - part of which is outlined in the post below, and also the post on My Imaginary Friend which I republished recently (maybe on my other blog - Where the Rainbow Begins) and some other stuff I have mentioned here over the months, and lots I haven't.

When, over the phone, I started to tell the story to my editor - and she reacted so positively - I realised, at last, that I would be a fool not to write it all up in novel form.

[It reminded her of Fanny and Alexander, which was one of Ingmar Bergman's best films.  When she told me he had just died, I shed a few tears. The Seventh Seal was the first 'heavy' movie I ever saw.  I once picked wild strawberries in a wood near Gottenburg... Out of fashion now, the guy was a stupendous film maker.   And let no one tell you he had no sense of humour]

Anyway, the 'high' concept would be to write my novel from the point of view of the Imaginary Friend.  But I have a feeling that it will be simpler, more direct and morepowerful to narrate the story as a five, six, seven year-old child.

We'll see.  Early days.  I will change my mind a hundred times.

I'll keep you posted.

(a long post, written just over a year ago; today, I dedicate it - pretentiously, maybe - to the memory of Igmar Bergman, who knew about these things)

If I ever wrote at length about my parents' divorce and the battle for my custody I would probably do so from my own point of view as a bewildered child, or as my Imaginary Friend.  But that would a near novel-length epic.

It's much quicker, if less emotionally affecting, to describe everything from an adult's viewpoint, being as objective as I can be.  But the description is bound to be one sided, because, while my father never stopped talking about the battle for the rest of his life, my mother blanked everything out as soon as it happened; I'm pretty sure she had a nervous breakdown, never treated or even diagnosed. Blanking out has given her power of a different kind.

Of course, over the years I tried to find out more of the truth from the few other witnesses. But they're all dead, now.

My father kidnapped me from my mother a month after my fifth birthday and took me firstly on holiday to a farm in Somerset.  "Kidnap" sounds dramatic, but it is the best word. My little sister was considered too young to kidnap, and anyway a girl.  My father's sister, M, who he felt  close to, was who really looked after me.  I loved her and she helped me feel happy.

My mother, helped I think by Father Dennis, the fat priest who had recently converted her to Catholicism, and advised by a lawyer, sent a telegram to my day demanding the restoration of "conjugal rights" ie marital sex.  Infact according to my dad, she had been refusing conjugal rights for some time.

My father - as well as having ambitions to write a philisophical book about the future of Liberalism in the 20th century: first title Creative Man in the Machine Age - was also a Surveyor, Auctioneer and Estate Agent.  That year, he bought a run-down country estate, and we (me, him, my aunt) went to live in a flat above the stables while he supervised the conversion of the manor house into several units.

I went to a new school.  The estate's gardens were beautiful.  The sun seemed always to shine.  One day I might upload a photograph to show you.  I felt good, and as far as I can remember, I never missed my mother.  She came to see once, but she was so miserable.

Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, the Battle for little Alec was raging - first in solicitor's letters and then in the courts.  My dad lost in the first court, but appealed.  And in the Appeal Court, the judges split 1-1, with the third (Lord Denning, no less.  He only died a few years ago) giving the judgement of Solomon.

In the first court (records confidential and unpublished) my father lined up several neighbours to testify what a bad mother my mum was (years later, one did appologise to her): She didn't let me have any friends, she seemed very distant from me - honestly, I don't know what they said. 

The most sensational aspect of the story was the role of Father Dennis, who my father maintained had provocatively interfered in the marriage.  Certainly, his relationship with my mum seems to have been odd. One they arranged to meet in the women's underwear deparment of Harvey Nicholls (or that's what my dad anyone who cared to listen, for the next 40 years).

He had found (stolen?) a bundle of letters the good Father had written to my mum, including some poems - sonnets he had written in praise of my mum.  Love poems?  I really think they were Platonic.  He was a philosopher, too.  A published philosopher, unlike my dad.

I believe these poems could have won him my custody.  Certainly they would have got the Catholic Priest into a lot of trouble.  But, instead, my father did a deal.  In order for them not to be produced in court, he got a promise from my mother - who, now a Catholic convert, believed marriage was insoluble - to grant him a divorce.

He wanted to marry M....  T....  Of course, five-year-old Alec didn't know about her.  As far as I knew, (when I was told anything) the court battle was about who was going to look after me.  And he kept telling me it was going to be him.

But he lost the case, appealed - and the good judge Denning decided I should be brought up by my mother, but as a Protestant. An Anglican  No one, including myself, could change my religion until my 21st birthday - without permission of the court.

When I heard I had to go back to my mother, I became very ill.  It was Christmas Day.  I had to be rushed to hospital.  I had double pneumonia, my life probably saved my antiobiotics, only just invented.  And a writ-server stalked the hospital lookiong for my dad who was sleeping in my private room.

Eventually the writ was delivered, I was returned to my mum.  But I didn't want to live with her.  Whether it was my father and aunt's propaganda that had cause me to feel this way, I'll never know.

But, is it any wonder that I still feel guilty about my mum?

I have just dreampt about my father's father.  I didn't know I remembered what he looked liked.  (Tall, thin, lined, good looking). We were walking around a building site area of a large provincial town.  Leeds?  Nothing to do with him.  20 years ago - but must have been 40.  "The A/Z" by election - the Liberal party did well.  (The previous night, my mother had been to the BBC to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this by-election, in Ashby de la Zouche.

My stepssister turned up and I introduced her.

Still asleep.  Will have to sort this out in the morning.

(in morning) why are my dreams always so complicated?

Wot, no messages? mkfunk?

It's gone.  The sadness dissipated. 
Everything back to normal, which is possibly as it should be. 
Except that normal hasn't served me well so far.

I can't help wondering if it would have been better to have lingered with the feelings more, rather than tried to put them into words. 
Blogging has its limitations.
Thoughts can kill emotions.. 
I need to nourish them, however awakward, be patient until they turn into possibilities.

I'll try again.

Indescribable sadness.  Overwhelming.

Everything else stripped away - depression, panic, anger, false hoping, pretensions. Bravado.

For the first time since god knows when I have let myself feel sad.

Sad, of course, that I'm having to sell up home.  But not because it won't be good to move on - but because I have made so little use of it.  So few friends. No lovers, except for Vanessa, haha, who - besides all else - never even spent one night here.  And she was no more than an interlude.

Such a lovely space.  So little love.

My cupboard...

I'm in danger of descending into self pity.

But sadness is different.  Sadness is too hard to describe in the present tense. Too hard for me now.

Perhaps - oh, please god yes - I need to feel this sadness before I can reach out to life again.

What's the quotation?  Si le grain ni meurt.

I don't want to write this.

I'll wait for a while.

where are you

when

i need you?

A literary critic in Budapest once said that Shakespeare's work, translated in Hungarian sounded better than the English original.

I love that kind of arrogance!

 
De komor tél volt tőled távol élnem,
ki a futó év boldogsága vagy!

for example.

It's tempting, sometimes, isn't it?

If you've been blogging for a while.

Destroy. Annihilate.  megsemmisít упразднять.  Cancel and start again.

Or just cancel.

On the other hand, it could be only me.

Too much baggage, too many clothes in the wardrobe.

Too many compromises and iota sized dishonesties.

Too much left out.

Too much explanation

It's not going to happen of course.  I want that poet from Perth to visit me again. More poetry and hope from Moscow.  I'm going to make another attempt to be almost perfect. Not at all perfect.  Be myself.

But self-destruction - for a second it felt like a way to become immortal.

See where I'm going here?

The dye is cast.

I have no choice in the matter.

It's inevitable.

Only you can save me now.

-
And you won't.

Fickle.

There's nothing I can do about it.

If you try to find Platform 1 at Clapham Junction, you're in for a shock.  It no longer exists, excapt for strip of weedy wilderness and a railing to stop you falling into it.

But - if memory serves - in 1897, Oscar Wilde was spotted there, in chains, between policemen, waiting for a train to take him to Reading Gaol.  Passing passengers jeered, and some accounts say threw things at him as well.  Righteous disgust.

Every Saturday I rush to the adjacent platform 2, on the other side of the railings, determined to catch my connection to Kensington Olympia.  No time to waste.  No space for an historical memory.  So many other things to hurry-worry about.

Poor Oscar.  Perhaps I should campaign for a blue plaque on a platform that no longe exists.

Off to beyond Guildford, for my weekly visit to my mother.  Change at Clapham Junction.

Soon I'll live in Brighton and make the pilgrimage from there.

But my sleepless-night fantasy, my destiny, is to move to Vienna.  Equipped with fluency in three languages hitherto unlearnt.

No sleep.  No Nothing.

Indigestion.  Its been the problem so far all night.

First bad sleep for ages. 

A chance to get in touch not with my Inner Child (everyone always tells me) but my Inner Adult - unconcerned with opinions - who hasn't been given much of a chance recently.

I promise - before I die I will grow up

A blank screen
An empty page
An open book
So many possibilities
But something is telling me to forego them.

There is knot
And when it unthreads I rush in too many directions.

I will sleep, perhaps, and hope to embrace
Nothing

according to a post on this great site.

The suspense is killing me

Treated gently, morning can have its own dignified calm.

Off the menu, chucked away.

Lighten up, said a Friend on the phone, just after I finished writing the previous post.  Enough with the ansgt.  Grand opera doesn't suit you.

Get in touch, she said, with your Inner Bitch.

I remember in my forties, meeting a guy in a therapy group who was 62 - younger than I am now.  A musician.  And I thought, brutally "what are you doing trying to sort your life out?  Your life is nearly over..."

And - although most of you are too polite to say it out loud - probably the same thought, if less brutal, has crossed the mind of even my closest Friends here.  This Alec guy - all this talk of growth and change and new beginnings - at his age!  It's a bit sad.

The only time I ever feel old is when I visit my GP and he reminds me.

Maybe I am in denial.

But today, down in Brighton again - I felt a little wave of panic.  What a nerve I've got, to think I can start all over, again.  All this excitment I'm feeling - can't I remember the excitements, and then disappointments, I felt before?

Isn't it hubris to think this time can be any better?

Now, don't get me wrong.  I have changed a lot recently - not least because of blogging here.  And for the first time in my life I'm confident I'm a good fiction writer.  Even a poet sometimes, much to my shock.

What's more I now have a therapist who is helping me confront many things for the first time - especially the narcissism in both my parents, and almost all of my ex-girlfriends.

In other words there's a case to be made for these panicky thoughts not to cross my mind.  I'm as old as I feel etc.

Nonetheless...

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...there are some truths that only God and Google know

Now - while I type, while you read this - millions  are sitting in front of a keyboard typing, too.

Pouring the hearts out, trying to be funny some succeeding, chatting, expounding, being profound.  Fantasising, fictionalising, pornogriphying. Hiding, putting on a front, exposing, selling, deceiving, expounding, accusing, denying, revealing, quipping, provoking, hoping for an audience, hoping to prove no one is interested, hoping what they write will bring their lover back - or to  hell with the bastard.

So many blogs.  The odds are that, at this very moment, in Mandarin, Urdu, Spanish someone is writing a post just like this one.  Like this one, but different.

Or not.

So many words.
.
.

Words don't matter.
.
.
.

It's the space between them that I care about.