 [This entry, subbed as best I can, made disclosures I saw as useful, at first, before recovering a sense of perspective.
If I've made a bad job of it, I'll try to do better next time. What's most important is a good quote I took to heart and a timeline at the end on events over the past couple of years or so I can't explain. At least I can meet a request from several people to know roughly what happened when.
This done, it's off to bed for a long night's sleep! Tomorrow is another day.]
The card was an unexpected treat in this week's post from "'Cindy (squip just so you keep your 'Cindys' straight".
It was so nice of our New York neuron-dusting friend I have to share it and tell her Ms Hula will indeed "find a place [... not in the flat, but yes] somewhere on your desk @ the Factory."
You bet she will.
After all, the Squip's gone all quiet, hopefully by accident, after being smitten by cynics and penny-pinchers, for daring:
"Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back."
- Thomas Sowell (Dusting My Brain).
I often say "Fuck politeness, there's far too much of it about." [OK. Guilty. I wrote that, far too facile. What I mean was banal; I cannot stomach politeness from people who use it to hide what they mean.] Consideration, however, is very different.
I don't want to clutter up pages any more than they are, it's been unfair on EB -- though she hasn't complained, because gets on with her life -- that she's the only person so far bunged into the "long shorthand" glossary on the right.
How might I describe the Squip, the Kid or the Wildcat? The latter's a fine writer, currently blocked by a routine dilemma for any fine writer who draws directly on their own experience and sticks it in stories.
If she read enough interviews given by those she admires, I think the respect she grants the privacy of the people in her life would no longer be a hindrance to her talents.
Writing anything decent requires, for most novelists, shedding guilt about revealing some the "secrets" of your source material in real people.
During one of our latest "talking about writing" chats, I acknowledged the pain it can cause, especially when you're starting out on truly original and good work, to have to rehash bits of your own life.
It can be painful. Auster does it as "a matter of survival".
But when the Wildcat said of one character, "He's too real," I was lost until she explained that for her work, "I want to say just what I really thought of him!"
"Then do it," I suggested. "Set all qualms and guilt aside. In the unlikely event that on publication it's soon translated into a language he knows and he finds it, even if he's only thinly disguised, the man will probably be quite flattered."
But that's what the Wildcat would call a tangent ... along with thinking:
"Wildcat (the): beautiful woman; expensively impeccable fashion sense; intriguing blend of paranoia and total lucidity; reluctant high-maintenance drama queen turned writer of consummate talent; "femme fatale", particularly to herself (see mistakes*); now useless at hysteria, compensates for the loss with exciting insights."
Mind-mender and blogger Kathryn Petro-Harper this weekend quotes from ... well, who else but my criminally neglected friends Natalie and Augustine, to say something so sharply relevant to this entry I'm hard put to take it for coincidence:
"There is a secret cry inside every heart, sometimes so deeply hidden that it may not even be audible to the person who hides it. Whether they are complete strangers or someone you think you have known all your life, if you can hear a person's secret cry then all your defenses and criticisms crumble. You become one with them and you cannot do anything other than love them as yourself" ('Blaugustine', via 'A Mindful Life').
Indeed there is such a "secret cry".
Truer still, it's "sometimes so deeply hidden that it may not even be audible to the person who hides it".
Those words bear repeating and meditation.
My job is simply sometimes to be a guy who "gets" all this stuff, completely tuned in when I'm doing well, and play my part in putting it together.
Here's a Timeline, the way I eventually gave Cathy one:
Feb 24 2003 - this log starts. The first entry may be about 'Solaris', but my real motive, as soon becomes apparent, is I'm so deeply pissed off by mass media coverage of pre-Gulf War II I'll know if I don't give myself an outlet, I'll have a meltdown as bad as Chernobyl.
Mid-2003 - as with increasing confidence, I find my personal interests are so often shared or get feedback when I write about them, the subject matter becomes very wide-ranging. At the Factory and in other media machines, others like having my place as another one outside the System where we can push the rules to the limits. Non-journalists, meanwhile, show genuine curiosity about what goes on behind the scenes to give you the news.
May-Nov 2003 - the Condition. My insides fall apart. This arouses more curiosity, bewilders doctors and me, makes me part of a network of people who blog about health, usually funnily, everybody thinks I've got Crohn's Disease and I become an expert in the toilets of Paris.
The log acquires a Cast, prominently including local heroes and the Wildcat, whom I'm fighting as often as loving.
I begin consciously to set about recovering important lost fragments of my life, especially music and the other arts, join Blogcritics, and my readership grows apace. People also start coming to read what most tell me is a entertaining mix of nonsense and insights into Life, especially its absurdities.
Towards the end of this period, when the Condition is medically found to have multiple causes, I start opening up about the non-physical ones. Those who care find out what a fucked-up person I am, parts of why, but not yet that I'm already in treatment for it.
Dec 2003 - With friends made here, some met for real, the Wildcat and me have our biggest fight ever, no holds barred. We're both very bruised, but it has a hilarious side and we realise we're fantastically good friends.
Meantime, the Kid has started blogging (the Kid then thinks the Wildcat, me and her mum are all mad, just to varying degrees) about how yucky it is being a messed-up ado. She's not but does an excellent job of telling how it is if you are.
Jan-Aug 2004 - Science and technology become fixtures along with the rest. My interest in adding much to everything written about Macs (as a founder-member of a help site anyway) diminishes to rareties except when I'm at war with Apple. I come clean about the Shrinkess and throw in lots more psychology, bio-chemistry and physics.
March 2004 - Eleanor walks into my life, says "Hello". My world turns upside-down yet again, but worse than ever, and as long I can stand it, I keep my gob firmly shut about her. Except to the Shrinkness. I am convinced that Ellie was long awaited. All she had to do was show up.
April-Nov 2004 - the log shuts, opens, closes, reopens, goes haywire. So do I.
Between them, the Shrinkess and Ellie speed up the process of being shrunk. The shrink proves also to be a shaman, with whom I have weird ideas in common.
The log ceases to be "an experiment", gets its first overhaul, I get in thick with the police as a prime murder witness. I acquire friends like the Squip, get in trouble with some for declaring an interest in 'Bloggers with Boobies' [apparently now just Dana? this requires investigation since mass mastectomy is hard to fathom] because they find this offensive without looking to realise some of those women are really good writers. I ignore the ones whose politics I find loathsome.
Science fiction gives way to music as the prime subject of reviews. On the media front, having abandoned the trade union front benches after 20 years then the Condition, I join networks of journalist bloggers.
Aug 2004 - I'm completely confused about EB. We hardly see one another, yet when we do, she plays an instrumental part in my life. I can't understand it, the Shrinkess-Shaman thinks she can.
I emerge from a summer with some of the funniest and saddest writing so far achieved. My close elderly friend Tony, still more in possession of his marbles than he cares to admit, understands it completely. He may be alone!
Ellie starts getting annoyed by long mails and saying so. I open a secret 'My lady's garden' for her. She doesn't go there. I don't realise it's really mostly for me. She's usually very nice to me, though I'm laying everything on her.
Sept 2004 - progress with the Shaman becomes such I begin to understand with amazement and horror that people's lives make real sense, however bizarrely.
The more she helps me take my own existence and almost multiple persona apart, the more I sense an underlying pattern to life. For everyone, not just me. The 'I Ching' has announced a 'Revolution' and I don't know what it's talking about, I just logged it.
Activities at the Factory go on apace, faces change with the French "rentrée" or new working and academic year.
Oct 2004 - it doesn't get logged much, but my sense of a "natural order" in life, an intangible meaning religions can help some with when they're not too organised or wacky, grows stronger. This worries me: am I going to have to start believing in God? I prefer not to, so don't, but make increasing connections between science and "mystical" or "paranormal insights".
I begin work on what becomes the 'Lotus Project'. It's a screenplay of limited ambition about some perplexing aspects of relationships between women and men. The central character is a man with huge memory loss, my own is still such a black hole sometimes I don't realise how autobiographical it is.
Late Oct-Nov 2004 - Ellie gets an iPod from me. She eventually says "Thanks" and knows why she got it, but was very reluctant to accept it.
She says something, again. Then more, always pertinent, often without knowing it, to where I am with the Shrinkess.
The log is increasingly sporadic, probably often boring. I feel kneed in the groin, my heart torn to bits when she tells me her truths. To be fair to myself, part of me always stays lucid enough to know she has her own life.
The Shaman says we're going really going places. I'm more bewildered than ever, especially when she starts talking about Navajo ideas and "natural thinking".
Nov-Dec 2004 - winter kicks in hard.
Factory work becomes really heavy going, but with the Shaman I go so far back after another key "accidental" comment from El I have to lie down for the sessions, close my eyes, feeling big changes are happening and I don't understand them. Memories start returning in huge waves. The Shaman calls this "healing", to me it feels like everything but getting better. Never have the Shrinkess's smiles been so intensely irritating.
Christmas 2004 - I'm exploded.
I start throwing away Big Ideas like mad. They all seem irrelevant. It's too confusing for me to know what happened or when, but I realise the 'Revolution' is inside me like an alien inside Sigourney Weaver, nowhere else.
It may have been alien, it no longer scares me, I begin to understand I've been as far inside as anyone can go, confronted my worst fears and most repressed memories and I'm in one piece.
I feel like a raw baby child in a 49-year-old body. The world is new, its colours blinding. Everybody outside me becomes fascinating, I have to reassess everything around me. The Shaman says: "It's over. You're better."
About now, I tell Ellie I'm no longer in love with her.
Jan-Feb 2005 - I trash everything that no longer makes sense. I start more regular logging again. The first thing to get wiped is every mail exchanged between me and Eleanor, apart from the first two.
My mind races, insight after insight. I see the Quiet Revolution clearly for what it is, begin to meet fellow QRs.
Synchronicity with people becomes almost routine.
The police start chasing me again, with frequent murder enquiry stuff and events wilder than in the movies. Also I realise my Mac has been hacked again, I don't know whom by, but it's not the first time. I tell the police about this too.
Jan 1, 2005 in particular - I issue Diktats at the Factory, in one of my most subversive actions to date. I subsequently get a severe reprimand and several medals. I'm glad my first conscious attempt at QR practices works: people don't know what to do about it!
Feb-early March 2005 - my brain is now functioning so fast it's scary! I sleep little, absorb tremendous amounts of data, my whole life comes back to me in amazing detail.
I leave Eleanor almost completely alone, while writing prodigious amounts of Stuff intended "for her", unsent. I do this out of pure, astounded gratitude. A lot of what gets written is funnier than ever for others I share it with, they love it.
The bank begins to squeeze my testicles, I have too little time to worry about and go to see "those bastards" because of my workload.
I see lots of people, call many others, rebuild relationships. The Quiet Revolution becomes so apparent I realise it's what "Ellie's film" is all about, no longer hers, something people tell me to do.
I fully open the garden, turn it into an orchard, invite all comers without restraint. I tell EB it was silly to say I'm not in love with her. It's true I'm not, but I am. It's a different kind of love, that's all, one I have for several people.
I get so annoyed at the ability of some singer-songwriters, especially women, to say everything I feel much better, faster and more beautifully than me I decide to start promoting them, particularly if they're at war with the music industry or other aspects of the System.
Mid-March-early April 2005 - "Heck, this is awful," I think. "I can't possibly live the rest of my life with my brain working like it's on speed, cocaine and mushrooms or some other infernal concoction. It's too exhausting!"
At some point around now, maybe before, I'm very stupid. I assail even Eleanor, among others, with long attempts to explain what's happening when I still don't really know, just more about every day. Ellie calmly observes she didn't know I'd had such an odd life.
I find her calm infuriating, but don't say so, since it strikes me she may well still be running scared.
Early April-April 29 - shit hits my flailing fan on all fronts at once.
Tony is suddenly dead.
I miss him horribly, but am glad of his life.
The bank, now using tweezers and hammers, squeezes more and more money out of me while shutting down my accounts and blacklisting me. I engage hostilities. If it's war, then it's war they'll have. QR-style. They threaten me with further Banque de France proceedings, I return the favour, telling me I'll see them blown out of the water by the same institution.
I get sick with apparent but quite unwanted warfare with El, who says she was uneasy with the start when that strikes me as unfair. She wasn't. I just made her that way!
A last bid to say: "Please, really I just want to start over, here's for why," earns me the "4,000 words about nothing" jab, which cuts far deeper than I'll admit. She's also, however, so hard on herself I understand this is a common human situation bigger than the both of us, thus worth much meditation.
I promptly get mildly depressed.
Catherine gets an iPod too. Marianne, the Kid, has already been given hers.
My Factory workload becomes almost unbearable, though it's "nobody's fault". It's tough going for everybody.
I declare war on depression as it gets worse, refusing to go down that road again. This time, I know it'll turn out OK.
April 30 2005 - I forget a brother's birthday (and still haven't phoned to say sorry). The bank declares a ceasefire, tells me I'm off the blacklist. I finish saying thanks to all parties who counselled and helped.
May 1-3 2005 - total, black depression wins the hours. I doubt everything, lose faith in myself, entrust heart, ideals and projects to friends to look after them until I've done yet another "inner journey" to find out why.
If people who say a lot of what I believe is all "nothing" are right, then I'm in bad trouble.
May 5 2005 - it's over. The friends helped, but going inside helped even more. I've got my sense of humour back and my bearings, I know I'm OK and so are my ideals.
El, I decide, is a friend whether she likes it or not. Anyone would be a fool to let people that important to them go, it's crazy, because there is a sense to this after all. I realise what she doesn't understand simply doesn't matter.
 May 6 2005 - Cathy says "People are so important, Nick!"
She's speaking from Brittany, where she's with the Kid. We've been having another occasionally deep, friendly conversation on the phone. She tells me about the glorious full-mast sailing ships gathering for a nearby festival. What she's really saying is that she has come to the same conclusion as me:
"Life is great. You can fuck the rules as much as you like. That's partly what they're there for, to be turned upside-down and obeyed only if they're of the slightest use.
But you don't fuck with people, not your friends.
All the ones you love are there for a reason. You need them and they need you.
It's what we are to each other."
"Have you sorted out what happened yet?" she asked, more or less.
"I think so," I said, more or less. "My brain just needed an awful lot of rewiring! That's what it was doing to itself when I thought I was on speed. And the more in harmony with myself and with life I am, the more attentive to detail, the more the 'psychic stuff' happens."
The Kid has no such preoccupations. She discovered sex last year, that's enough. Her card says: "Hey Dad! Guess what, there's sun here! Incredible!"
Jealously duly aroused, she goes on in typical fashion that her friend "Servane and I are passing our days watching films ('Bowling for Columbine')..." which is doubly mean since she refused to see that with me and also, what's she need the sun for?
But she then thinks safer of it and goes on "...and going out to see the sea." OK, now I mind less.
It's no big deal, the Weird Stuff.
I reckon, like the Shaman, we've probably all got these capacities in us. To find them, though, I'd tell almost no-one to make "inner journeys" like mine. Especially people like Ellie, who hate them.
Some people I will tell to pursue them, since I know who they are. They're the ones who, as once happened to me, reached the point where there is no turning back. I was warned, several times, and those warnings were timely.
Now I can pass on that warning: if you're seriously into the search for self-knowledge, there comes a point when you cannot say, "Whoops, this was a bad idea" and turn round. It's too late.
I've given a Timeline.
As for synchronicity and other 'psychic' stuff, I don't believe there's anything supernatural about it; but I hate charlatans. If I can be a "walking 'I Ching'" for some people sometimes, that's fine. It seems really to be applied probability theory, that's all.
I've told you, again, a different way, what's happened to me. But I've got no more idea than anyone else what's going to happen tomorrow.
You can say, if anything, what you like. All feedback is welcome.
9:04:29 PM 
|
|
