I’m just relaxing and stretching out on the couch again. I’m quite surprised some university hasn’t given me an honorary degree for this activity as of yet. But here’s hoping. Anyway, if you’re enjoying the last burning embers of the Bank Holiday weekend this piece shouldn’t tax the braincells too much and if you have nothing better to do read on, I guess.
I’m mixing some old stories with current times on the sofa and listening to some music. At times, it is important to live life in full, vibrant colour. Then, at other times, it’s just as important to luxuriate in the memories of those living times. To unearth any lessons. Often, an old life story breathes new learnings with the passage of time and so it’s important to revisit them and also to keep creating new ones, I feel.
I suppose, with a bit of reflection, I can say that the last full-on physical fight I became embroiled in occurred when I was fourteen years of age or thereabouts. I was trundling dejectedly off of a football pitch about two hundred yards away from where I type these words here today. We had lost a game by a point or two.
A short distance ahead of me, two boys were laughing and joking with each other. They were good friends and at least one was a fellow boarder in my school, as I recall. The trigger point for the eruption of temper was one I am still shame-faced about re-living in the present. One of the two lads fooling around was on my team while the other had just been watching the match, I think. Not to put too fine a point on the situation - I completely and utterly lost the plot. I took a run, jump and launched myself up on top of the back of my team-mate and wrestled him to the ground. Before starting to beat seven shades of shit out of the smile streaked across his face. It wasn’t pretty.
In the aftermath of these outbursts of temper the usual suspects often savaged me internally. Shame, self -hatred, and embarrassment. The boy I beat up is a middle-aged man now and lives in the general vicinity. I might have referenced this episode previously but I guess I’m at the stage of my A.I. and tech struggle where I can’t remember large chunks of the things I’ve written down about the past and presented to the public. Anyhow, if I ever pass that man on the street or in a shop I still can’t quite bring myself to look him fully in the eye. And in the way my brain and body is wired that is altogether as it should be.
I have only fully lost control of my temper a couple of times since that moment but I am aware enough to know it is still there. Occasionally lurking into view. I miss it sometimes and I hate it sometimes. In a strange way, my temper gives me comfort for I know when it goes I absolutely have no care in the world about what happens next. That unpredictability can be quite intoxicating so I try to steer far-clear of the room of the house it resides in.
Re-watching this video clip from my past in my mind reminds me of another old story about two traveller lads in the town who both went by the name of Brian Ward, one of whom was quite famous locally as an amateur boxer. Possibly, mentioned before here too. One of the Brian’s was down in the local dole office and encountered a new arrival working behind the screen for the Department of Social Welfare.
“ Which Brian are you, Is it Brian the fighter ? “
“ Jaysus No, I have five kids. I’m Brian the lover and I’m here to pick up the children’s allowance “
So, I guess the moral of the stories so far, for me at least, is to keep the auld life pendulum swinging somewhere between lives of Brian the fighter and Brian the Lover.
I was quite big for my age back then, believe it or not, and it was around this time I began a long-term, durable relationship with cigarettes. I reckon that should be the text-book definition of a durable relationship. A picture of someone smoking and looking off into the distance. Kinda sexy, cool in the imagination but ultimately toxic and self damaging. I should warn you again - there isn’t much point to this piece of writing other than it’s been over a week since I’ve sat down to type, think and gather up some of my accumulated rubbish and dump it into some black bin-bags for collection outside the front-door in the morning.
Spring has brought longer evenings and I’ve been chatting and meeting with folks again. My imagination and production line of tin-pot ideas has kick-started into diesel powered action again after the winter recess and are keeping me busy. Curiously, people around me have been consumed with how bad the weather has been. I haven’t really noticed this too much, but, I suppose you might say, I can make an unexpected patch of sun, found along a stretch of motorway, go a long way most of the time once the dark nights have cleared.
However, this morning I woke up lonesome for my silent self. Writing things down brings me many bounties but probably one of the primary ones is silence. My mouth zips shut and my thoughts sit into the driver’s seat. Overly confident, erratic and unprocessed. Busy as a beehive but too unstill to make much sense.
Most often, it can take awhile to settle them down and halt them from careering off down the highway at breakneck speed on their own. The key to success is to plot out an eventual quiet destination and then pull in off the road and switch off the engine. I sometimes worry that one day my thoughts will refuse to return the keys of my car. But, today, I shudder away such sad vistas and sit quietly in the passenger seat. Then, buckle up the seat-belt and surrender to my thoughts and keyboard, excited by the places we might visit and discover on the journey together.
Eventually, a lone portrait slows things down. First, the picture skips into view but slides away just as quickly. This repeats again and again and again. Slowing a little on each revisit. Finally, the painting stands stillish enough to observe. It is of a man swimming naked across the width of Lough Nafooey, the mountain lake, high in the mountains. He’s over halfway across and his breath mists the air with white thought bubbles. It is night but a pale moonlight torches a path across the waters and illuminates his bobbing head and awkward arm strokes. He is tired but his mind is empty and seems at peace.
“ What’s your agenda ? “ the mountains whisper above the noise of his splash.
Puzzled, the man contemplates the words but keeps on swimming steadily.
“ Agenda? “
“ What are you going to do while you swim across our lake? ” the surrounding hills reply. An aroma of irritation is heavy on the spring breeze. Soon, the wind picks up further and the oil canvas dissolves back into a swirling sea of competing notions.
I suppose, the times we live in are both unpredictable and predictable simultaneously. So, it was predictable to me that about fifty percent of the Irish alternative media/ activist class/ citizen journalists and content providers would succumb to the temptations of the political road. This could be good or it could be bad or it could be a mixture of both. Time will tell and in most instances I wish them well. However, a switch instinctively goes off in my head with each latest candidate announcement from this group of people. I must take a half-step back from them and view their content with that in mind. Regardless of whether I really like them and champion what they hope to achieve in this arena or not. There is a simple reason for this reaction and it goes something like this:
Each one of them is asking us for the same precious commodity. In short, they are asking us for some power. Some of our collective power as a people. From my personal perspective they must now be held to a different standard for the duration of the upcoming political campaigns and then obviously past that point if they achieve success as political candidates. So, the question I must ask them is a simple one and not policy based in the first instance.
Can they handle the acquisition of some power?
Will power corrupt them quickly or slowly over time?
I have my biases like everyone else. There are people I am quietly, and perhaps not so quietly, rooting for in the European and local elections. In many ways, though, I am a complete and utter contradiction in terms. I have stated previously I am not going to vote and that the political foundations and landscape of Ireland need to be totally re-imagined. I believe that too. But, equally I love politics. Love talking about politics, love writing about it and love the shenanigans of elections, election campaigns and chatting with election candidates. There are many things I would personally like to see happen in this country, and regular readers will know what some of these things are, I’m sure. Upper-most in my mind on that score is rigorous accountability for the mess of the past five years and certain accountability for the next five years would be nice too. To achieve any of this, though, requires me to start by asking a tougher question.
Can the people asking for a vote be trusted with the power of that vote?
Do they have an agenda and are their agendas fully known or largely unknown?
Agendas are not necessarily a bad thing. I’d just like to know what they are and whose they are - in complete and full transparency. Which brings me back to my own agenda and swim across the lake.
Well, I’d like to spend the rest of my life scribbling down words and having interesting conversations. Sometimes alone and sometimes in company. Free from interference and free to point the car in any direction I choose. Whether that be driving or sitting back in the passenger seat of my car following the trail of my wandering thoughts.
I’d like people in possession of power to facilitate my freedom.
Buy the author a coffee. ☕️
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Love the meandering and the consciousness of being a 'passenger' to thoughts :) I read the last line as a neat finish to that idea because ultimately, no people will ever have as much power over you as your own thoughts....
Now that's a brilliant line: I'd like people in power to facilitate my freedom.
That's not one for the back pocket. That's one for my wallet.