A funny old world?
Sure is.
When the pigeons soared in for breakfast, Whitetail was among the first to settle casually on the windowsill. Other hungry birds arrived just after the starters for a competition in disgusting habits.
Then came the ones fed up and still feeling gluttony might make a change.
Probably nobody else finds any difference between the neighbourhood pigeons and those in the rest of Paris, mainly because there isn't one. Most people say they foul up the place.
Pigeons pester me at whim. They know they can't come inside, smash things and shit on the furniture. That's a Diktat. In return, they get quality bread and tell me who's what before I leave home.
When Whitetail's late or vanishes for a good while, that means I'm in trouble again.
With Eleanor.
Others also bring news of people I know. Maybe they all do; I've just not had enough months to figure out whose "messenger" each becomes during the brief daily feast.
It's all in my head.
If you bother with more, it's a ride. You're warned. 'Revolutions' are rare in a lifetime. Mine still goes on, a lot of people had a hand in it, and one in particular came along when I thought I was expecting her, but wasn't.
I fell madly -- really madly -- in love. Then I wasn't. I made a fool of myself, threw everything at her. Now it's over. We seem all set to be great friends. I'm happier now than I can remember with life, good friends and a good daughter, and find I'm sufficient unto myself. Because I like me too, every morning.
There's no way anybody can explain how a world gets turned upside down: before it happened you were miserable and a mess and when it's done, you feel great. There are no "explanations".
If it's just a story you want, as true as I can make it, maybe it'll interest you. Maybe it won't.
Next time somebody says they're "living in hell" or have been there, I'll take a long close look. If I believe them, I'll know what they mean. The same goes for anybody who's made "a journey you could never imagine" or known "a real turning point in my life". It goes for everybody's Deep Shit and Heavy Stuff -- if they're straight about it -- and Seriously Funny things.
If uou've been here before and come back to see if I'm really dead or simply hibernating, you'll know that my imagination is up to nearly anything. Like a novice Buddhist monk or mediaeval villager who believes the Hells and Heavens they have, in the Bardo or in Church, are for real.
People who work for the Factory in Africa know my imagination's working. My friends know worse.
The Shrinkess saw more. I'd never met a really good one before. As for women, I've lost count. The very notion flashes up a "Stop Thinking!" sign.
The Kid deserves a special mention. Her imagination has a wild time at Belcatja 2 aka Caleb. If good French writing's your thing, don't be taken in by gloom and doom.
Marianne knows what's she's doing. That's more than I did at her age. We have an often nutty sense of humour and she's a happy sandgirl making the most of "sad, mixed-up adolescence". She can tell what it's like better than many, because of her genes or something.
If she's stopped spreading the Words or learning Stuff, she's usually kicking or simply being with me, her mum, her man or other friends, making us laugh when she wants. You've been told her legs are powerful weapons, with a helpful picture.
Me? I'm simply back.
In one piece in midwinter. Most of where I've been is between me, a handful of really close friends, plus maybe a shaman or three..
If I've got another really good friend in the process, then all I can be for her is the same.
The difference between Eleanor (who I wouldn't name until it was done), and anyone before her is that she's still around, interested, as she is, who she is, whenever she wants.
If part of this is about Ellie, it's because nobody did what she has before. I can never be the same again, neither for her nor for anybody else. My job is simply to be there, if wanted.
It feels good.
I'm banned from writing long e-mails. By Ellie, who's fair. She simply meant the ban for her. I prefer to take it as a General Rule, rather than one of Ellie's Edicts. After I've written this, it's a "new" blog.
For Christmas, I got one material present, immaterial ones, none in shiny packets. I wanted no objects at all, apart from new pyjamas ... still required if anyone minds a few holes.
I gave only unavoidable gifts, replied to nobody's cards. That's how, mostly, it stays.
Bits of the Xmas myth are OK, but people get my presents, goodwill and good wishes when I feel like it, which is often. I did read proper letters, but trashed glittering instructions to count my blessings and glow, and rubbished and stamped hard on Round Robins about people unknown to me and meant to stay that way.
It's also New Year.
There's no point hanging around until a calendar change suiting popes, police, airlines, Her Speech-Reading Majesty the Quark and deadlines. But a Dec 31 bash is fine, as are ones had by the Chinese, Thai Buddhists and Persians, who have a good spring date at Nowruz and other spellings.
Last year's Resolution was simple:
"No more resolutions. Ever."
This year's is easier: "Break last year's. Predict nothing."
Getting here took a "Revolution".
This I was told on August 28th, in clear language which happened to begin as Chinese, in the 'I Ching'. I wrote it up the next day, without a clue what it meant.
Now I do.
What I refuse to remain, since I'd rather be remembered for other things, is a label pinned on me for a bit by, among others, Eleanor.
It was a bit of cheek, now I've given up turning the other one, but I like people who answer back to make a good point. One told me to Get Real. Another said, long ago, "it's pointless trying to be 'normal', since you ain't. If you persist in it, you'll still be a pain in the arse, both for you and the rest of us." And Eleanor suggested I "Stop Thinking", but didn't mean what I first understood.
All three got it right, but if she says I'm a fucking "philosopher", once her strong stomach's digested, almost the first and certainly the last Bunch of Stuff I gave instead of pouring over her, I might risk a pot-shot if I could afford or borrow a gun. It's unlikely.
Local police know where I am. They've popped round sometimes for a natter since the afternoon I yelled "Murder" and made a song and dance of it here. They say they need me alive and in full working order so I can help more.
Before you get any further, stop if you've started.
That's a line for anyone who thinks they know what happened to me and a woman on seeing the obvious or being told about it by anybody other than one of us.
If I did, I was often way off the mark, since most of it took place in my head, which makes some more right than me.
What really happened was to me, getting used to it, while Ellie looks after herself fine. To publish anything today to protect nobody, but set a record straight and say "thanks again", in public, "for more than even you knew when it happened."
Almost nobody did once I'd told the Shrinkess things and she used a techical term immediately understood and far more dangerous for me and my friends than I'd worked out for myself.
I pulled down the shutters.
We began work on Need to Know terms. Both of us believed I'd make it through. I have. Eleanor's one of several people short on some facts at the time, who helped out in ways they never got told until it was over.
Nobody knows apart from us what she said and did which could come only from her.
Why and how she managed the timing and gave me keys to some Weird Stuff that even I couldn't imagine remains a mystery and should. Even the Shrinkess thinks that, but she's into Weird Stuff.
All people might get out of this is being told, for sure and if they care, that life is definitely much stranger than fiction when people open very locked gates by "accident". Yes, I need those inverted commas.
You believe me or you don't. If you think it means I've "got religion", I've no more than what's hardwired into all of us: a capacity and tendency for Faith should we want it.
Name a few "born-agains" and I'll say once was enough for me, thanks. What they've decided they believe in is fine just as long as they don't become reformed addicts convinced of a god-given message or right to start telling you and me what to think and do. When they insist, they're bores. If they've got power, they're very dangerous.
Remind me I said this once I quit smoking, now I've pencilled "stop" in for spring warmth and weather.
If you're curious about what's left for me to believe in, here it comes.
You want a "worship site"? Eleanor got pages! Trashed, then restored but subbed, on orders from the White Goddess.
It's absurd to cling on to a key anybody could have to what happened to somebody who let the Big L help them round the bend almost for good. Take a gander at someone's distinction between being crazy, as I was, and merely nuts, which I am. Eleanor has a lot more sense, had a peek and didn't hang around.
Madonna has several worship sites. Who cares much?
I doubt she does. She's a woman with a healthy slice of reality and a life. When she wants she does a song and dance about it in ways I like and respect. Whatever you think of the lyrics, she knows how to be Madonna and know she isn't. OK?
Now I'll say Weird Stuff.
Sometimes, when people get into a really bad mess and spray it around, someone shows up with a message, just maybe, from the White Goddess: "Look, adjust your Focus.
I don't want Stuff I can't handle when I'm just me, your Stuff's all in your head and gets up my nose. You change or you get more lost than you are."
My message usually came more kindly. If you're as ready to listen and give it a go as I had to be, it's like having a Kid properly and just as tricky. If you get it right, the result might surprise you. I reckon we might all get a chance, perhaps several, if nobody finishes us before we spot one and use it. Agreed: shit happens and it's not always the work of other people. Just mostly.
Ellie works on the Factory's English desk once a week and became one of a bunch of reasons to zero-wipe nearly every Big Idea I ever found or invented.
People with heads screwed on saw what was happening. Hence an account of how I see it now.
Trouble began when enough people knew I'd fallen head over heels in Big L with Eleanor less than an hour after clapping eyes on her. She might have given me a very hard time about it. Instead, she fled when she needed and was still around when I was no longer kicking but extremely alive.
Once Web spiders found the 'Garden', it might have been a matter of time before some did something stupid. They haven't yet. Since it's going to stay, I'm saying who it was dug for apart from me. I can't see Eleanor staking a claim to the wrong kind of privacy. I'd rather an open Secret which isn't than ever do that to anybody again.
What "might have been" can be fun. I'm just relieved it wasn't, now I can talk openly about what happened, without hurting anyone.
That a near stranger put up with so much and gets along fine with me now, also seems incredible to other people. Those who derived benefit from the outcome have decided it's OK to go on sharing stuff with me and do more of it now. There are a lot of them.
Sure you can go to the 'Garden', but should you pay more than a fleeting visit, you've got less sense than some.
I was told to put it back by the only woman I've stopped arguing with because I always lost, the White Goddess, after weeding out and burning any Secrets but my own.
To understand that takes an act of Faith, which can never be the same as mine, because you're you. You have different Stuff in your head.
Mine's a bit strange, to make of what you will. I've got it, that's all. Faith in Weird Stuff.
I'm done with Big Ideas. But tell me it's "luck" or that gods humans invent when they put things, ideas and people on pedestals have a hand in what really goes down, and I'll say "Sorry, I think there's more to it."
For months, I tried to avoid the "Revolution" the book suggested likely once I got an inkling that it would be inside me, nothing to do with what I had in mind for anyone else. Most of me accepted the impending change the 'I Ching' considered probable.
The rest was scared witless.
I imagined "facing up to reality" would mean bidding adieu to my imagination as well as ceasing to re-invent people like Ellie, family and friends, and the rest of what I've put on the rubbish heap.
If anyone wants that, they'd better be quick before municipal waste disposal and treatment agents (known when I was a kid as dustmen) get to it. They'll probably get rid of it faster than me.
The 'I Ching' is my way of asking stuff in extremis, after studying translations of it for decades and eliminating any crap about fortune-telling. It says where you are and proposes a "wise" course to take to where you'll probably be.
If you annoy the 'I Ching' or ask unclear, unnecessary or absurd questions, it almost always says get lost and makes no bones about being direct. Since nobody can predict that either, it can also be less blunt and says: "I told you this already. Go away."
The White Goddess told me long ago that other people's Secrets are Sacred. Once that was clear, I said my friends could say whatever they like to me, whenever I'm listening and they don't haul me out of bed for no good reason.
My heart went on to my sleeve where it felt safest.
Now you know I can "do the I Ching" and find it works. For me, it's neither cryptic nor a mish-mash which could mean anything.
If other people want to ask it something, I'll lend a hand by saying I can't do it for anybody else, but can try to tell them what it says in the kind of language we use now. When I do, people are usually very surprised, then most of them say "thanks. That really helped." It's not something I'd recommend doing very often, though it has its own addicts. Nor do I need to know what their question is.
I can know what people's "shamanistic companions" are before I get to know the person. Ellie's is a while-tailed eagle, a pygargue in French. That's safe to say since she's much better at being one than a wolf who tries to fly and learns how Icarus felt instead.
The Kid? No way might I let on until she's also mature and experienced enough to be one without other people knowing who will thump her for it. In some cultures, people are free with such names; in others, it's considered dangerous to disclose them. I guess it depends.
The White Goddess feels like somebody I can ask questions and get straight answers from, but she's really just an act of Faith and of unknown identity.
There's no point asking how I know Stuff like This because I don't have the foggiest idea, that's how is.
I've simply had the most fun, since a quake high on anybody's seismic scaleand here we still are, taking most of the Enlightenment I thought acquired when last here on the log and discovering there wasn't much worth more than the trash can.
Once the Revolution was in charge, the Kid said something worth sharing with anyone.
She was getting on dutifully with her Season's Greetings. When Marianne felt she'd had enough of cards she wanted to write, she gave me a "what's up?" look.
I said nothing was really up or down, a change in itself, I was merely wondering how many Lies I might have told Eleanor.
The Kid inevitably wanted at least a notion, which was: "Dozens, possibly hundreds. But that's not it, darling. If I told Ellie so many lies, what about everybody else before she came along?
"Perhaps I've told people thousands of lies. Maybe millions."
Marianne -- I shouldn't really call her the Kid any more but will -- said if I was even thinking of saying sorry all round, "it will take you 20 years."
She thumped me hard -- she's allowed to do this more frequently than most -- and said: "Don't forget to post my cards while you're at it, like you did last year, because I still haven't got any stamps.
"And a lot of these people will be dead in 20 years."
We know what my Dad thinks about regrets and apologies. We all have and make them once done with denial, but he sees them like Wars, Fights and Politics, saying: "Fuck that for a game of soldiers."
I agree.
Unlike my Dad, I still often say "Fuck the rules."
I know enough to suggest how other people might do this on a daily need to know basis drawn from experience, not invention, which I've survived to tell the tale.
This also surprises them, not because I still say something "adolescent" at 49 instead of 15½ like the Kid, but since few people -- outside the Factory and a few government ministers' hovels with chandeliers, huge rooms, smelly woodwork, old paintings and echoes sometimes inhabited by the Temporary National Idiot of This or That and his cigars or her hairdo -- know how often I've done it and found it works as well.
These things happen in the real world, where people told me I live until I got the message. Otherwise, I had them running or swimming or crawling or flying in the opposite direction as fast as possible.
That's the news, no more but no less. And I can't see any point in trying hard to take it too seriously.
A few clues, a lot of happiness. Is this what you get once you've trashed and burned Big Ideas and High Moral Principles? If so, it's great. You can give your heart to anybody you want. If you don't ask for it back, eventually you'll discover it's still right where it was and often better off.
Life is riddled with paradoxes. Superstring theory tells us we need more dimensions than four to understand the ones we've usually got, that much I've written before.
During my first session with the Shrinkess, I said I thought I was there to learn how to build a few more barriers, like most people seemed to have.
The Condition had been a year of one kind of enough, physical. A fragmented head and life at risk of total disintegration was worse. Both came down to the same thing once she'd done her job. She helped me rip down every barrier, take on what I've been scared about and deal with it.
That let real light and life in.
I'd dare write none of this unless I felt absolutely sure it's over. That in itself took a lot of believing.
For theory, science, reviews, plenty of absurdities and such pure fun as I've managed before, this place has a search engine that works fine. But if an insurance company were to tell me it won't cough up for something I've lost because it's an "Act of God", I'd probably take it to court and say: "Fine, prove it."
If it's smart enough to call it force majeure though, that's fine. There are some very major forces out there, like last Sunday's tragedy noticed by people when it became a quake off Indonesia and places as far away as Somalia got the shock tidal waves.
That was almost when a news agency graphic designer could grab a map with countries on it, put a ring round one, draw an arrow and write, as they'd all like to do with something, "X marks the spot. It's gone." I often seem cynical. Callous and uncaring are not me, but I won't take another bashing by fretting over Deep Shit beyond my reach. If it's something I can help with, that's great.
Maybe you're here and I've said nothing new. Who does? But it's nice to look in the mirror and feel OK with what you see there. The "Good" and the "Bad", shadow and light.
I did some of it. The rest came from everyone else. I'm bored with telling people what to do and trying to fit their Trees into my Forests, rather than doing what others like Eleanor, using real Trees to make Woods.
Just to know how she does it, listen to her about France, which I merely live in. You'll find some on NPR, blogrolled long ago, more elsewhere. She's one of the people who tells me what on earth's happening here. I can talk about Stuff I've found out about why it's like what she says. That much I do know. It's as ridiculous as life is anywhere else.
Now, I'll say a bit about the police.
Since the murder I witnessed months back got a mention here, I've found out how police stations are made in Paris. The higher up you go in the lift, the more intelligent the people you meet often tend to be. At the main Montparnasse copshop, I'm up to floor six of seven. My own roof still leaks, I'll never know if theirs does.
On Xmas Eve they invited me for another chit-chat and pulled out papers suggesting I explore a different police station soon. They said it was orders if I agreed in writing, which anyone who's got a working neuron knows is what others prefer.
Signing paper to agree brought good news on four counts: it'll make a change of police habitat, then I'll have excuses to flee the Factory and anybody who tries to stop me will have to explain why to police sometimes in uniform, the fuzz have made lots of progress in the investigation -- and I'm no longer allowed to tell you or anyone else about it.
I willingly agreed to the Diktat, on condition I could make a few exceptions. A police captain gave me a filthy look and said if I even imagined having quite as much fun with a judge as I did with him and his pals, it would land me in the deepest mess ever.
My experience of this has been ample, so I asked if he was a Thought Policeman too. He said sometimes. We told each other a few more horror stories and jokes. Then he said this was fine but he had other stuff to do and wasn't I lucky to be able to go the FNAC & buy myself loads of Xmas presents? He wasn't allowed to come, you see, but I did anyway.
He escorted me out politely and watched to make sure I'd gone.
Previously, they've said "thanks a lot", shown me to suspects by mistake and thrown me out, but I did so much damage while exiting the building they changed their minds. I owned up about the time I threw up on a policeman's shoes by mistake myself and the time the first woman to speak to me on the 1st of the month was a law officer, so she had to get the "pinch and a punch on the first of the month and white rabbits" stuff with a kiss. I nearly confessed to the time ... but they said "Shut up".
That's allowed. If anybody says that there's a very good chance it'll work, but I can't predict even this, since almost everything turns out to work by Probability Theory, even Weird Stuff.
That's part of what the Revolution is about. It's not worth coming here any more for second thoughts, received ideas and any more than day to day stuff, widely useful stuff and nutty stuff. On the whole, I'll stay quiet on even small things that count, let alone deceased Big Ideas.
Probabilities, yes. Predictions, no.
If I insist on a meaning to the Big L I'm likely to have more fun with Barry, who's been where I am. Maybe he's "right" and Love is a Higgs-Boson particle.
That gave me a laugh, since what he said is what you tend to find out if life takes you places where you need to know that physicists and other scientists you've swapped e-mails with and real shamans you've met are simply using different Words and Symbols to tell us all much the same thing if we care.
That's life. Who really knows?
The Big L happens to us, that's all.
If it does, it can be anything. Should it come my way again, I hope I'll know what to do with it from the start.
Some of us find the White Goddess has been real enough since before cave men drew pictures and made statues of her. For all we know, maybe she's strange matter at a place where it's the same thing as energy. And consciousness.
Perhaps a quark. I plan to let Her Majesty the Quark of Britain and What's Left give her Speech on New's Year Day or whenever and pay no attention.
I really must get on with 'The Lotus Project'. It's coming along fine and everyone in it gets to do what they like. The plot fits them now, no longer the wrong way round.
"You do great dialogue," Eleanor said.
She thought I'd do well to write a book again instead of a blog, then the woman did something which told me I've got a film on my hands. Now you know it's called 'Lotus' and I know which director I'd like to give it to and say, "Hi. Here's 'Lotus'. Do you fancy doing what you like with it as best you know how to do?"
That will be if Sofia Coppola isn't history by then, like the "ideal cast" I've got in mind for the main roles.
Along with cinema.
'Lotus' is about a real, ordinary world where bizarre stuff is everyday life. If I do my bit right, it'll scare the living daylights out of people and give them many laughs of my favourite kind, which takes what's real and finds it all so absurd it's very funny.
There'll be a big puzzle, plenty of smaller ones, the kind of clues people leave lying around in serial killer thrillers. But not a killer in sight, except maybe some who like genocide of big or bad ideas. It has to be incredible and totally everyday.
If I know you well, there's a probability you're in it but few of you are likely to spot yourselves because one thing it isn't about is us. It's about people who sometimes behave like us and based on some I know.
I know how it feels to be raw material so I handle it gently.
As for the Big L, it's ceased to be a Word you're likely to read around here again. Further entries will be like the rest of my e-mails to anybody. Reasonably short.
I simply can't do any more Wads of Words, because these said, I can go on having a good time being speechless.
6:26:38 PM link 
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