The Monster Within

Knowing yourself is perhaps the greatest indication of a mature person.  Knowing others, well, that's more a question of life. 

You stand there chatting, by the metaphorical water cooler - in my days of youth round Finsbury Circus such conversations tended to take place in a pub at 2.40pm (closing time 3 O'Clock).  I'm told if you were a smoker, the smoking room was place to be, as by then offices were smoke free but still it was felt necessary to provide for the addicts.  Those of us who didn't admit to such passions until later in the day slopped off for a quick beer, when meetings we weren't part of went on, but invariably our bosses were, justifying their existences and the purchase of the jugs to keep the indifferent coffee vaguely warm, trying to become assertive in a 'man to be reckoned with' personna.  First person to take the biscuit lying limply by the vacuum flask was clearly not the stuff of higher echelons.

As it seems has been my destiny.  However, clutching at straws to justify my place on this planet (and not on Ark B out of here, a reference only Douglas Adams fans amongst you would understand) I'd like to state now, here, that I'm not much good at people.  Which is a bit rich coming from someone who teaches Psychology.  Or maybe that's the point, if I were any good at people, I'd teach Geography, or French, or even, heaven preserve us, Physics.  Or maybe, grip yourselves in shock, not even teach.  Psychology is such a needy subject.  You want to understand people and you frankly don't have a clue and are not that good at maths, well psychology just might be your thing.  Which, of course, is irritatingly patronising to the wide and wonderful subject that is Psychology, and perhaps I'm being just a bit self-effacing.  It does, too, play into the hands of the social misfits who won't embrace the reality our of lives and have to spend their times gazing into ponds, wellies getting colder with every passing minute, trying to count the numbers of some reasonably well represented insect for the purposes of increasing the fount of human knowledge of the world.  Why is it when biologists or the like appear, last night it was 'Ice Scientists' on Frozen Planet, we all nod sagely and look up at these people as those who hold special value, but psychologists always have to fight their corner?  We are either frighened of, or patronised.  But an 'Ice Scientist' (sorry, I have nothing against Ice Scientists, you are merely part of the argument) who gets it wrong about global warming, the deteroriation speed of ice from the North Pole and so on, is an investigator finding data, but a psychologist is a fraud or a dangerous weirdo who has his own agenda to play out and benefits from alarming others, or more or less magical.

Maybe I am a tad too sensitve, but a combination of a Psychologist and a Poet, is quite a tricky combination.  DN1 said to me recently she can appreciate my poetry but she cannot enjoy it.  For her it does not occupy a place for her to ponder, she knows me too well, and can hear my thoughts and feelings in every word.  Which brings me to an explanation of the next poem.

This is not about the Absent Father's Woman.  Not really. You see, I don't know her.  Not at all.  I have my views about her, I have heard other's opinions of her.  I have met her only once, alone, and the conversation wasn't comfortable.  But despite everything, my beloved Absent Father went and married her.  So I must have missed the point somehow.  This is a really difficult thing to process, trying to square that circle.  Trying to make sense of the madness, the cruelty.  However I was aware at some point my voice in the poetry was getting heavy and difficult.  It was almost as if I was perpetuating my own suffering, rolling in the pain.  Getting over and moving on are really the only things other people are interested in once you get to a certain time.  I've never spoken to bereaved women about this, it seems a bit insensitive and ghoulish, but at some point you are expected to dive, leave the feelings underwater, return to the surface and just get there, to the next chapter, a decent, respectable quiet space where you are happy to be you, and everyone can be grateful you've got there, even if they haven't got the faintest idea how .  If you haven't become respectable the implication is you are indulgent, and maybe even the unthinkable thought, 'he' might have had a point.

Unfortunately my journey to clear water has been long and a tad protracted.  If you speak to people who do understand such things, I have about 6 or more years before I won't wake up hurting for the Absent Father within half an hour of the day.  I've tried all sorts of ways to blot out the pain, but now I've realised I can't, and it just seems easier to greet the day with knowing it's going to hurt, let it, and just get on.  The trick is not to let the pain seep into the day too much, and I'm getting a lot better at that one. I can go hours at a time when I'm not ambushed.  However, tiredness and stress, so much the diet of a teacher, especially towards the end of term, do make it a whole lot worse, and then the demons can strike.  This is where the poetry becomes especially useful, and probably why most of it is more than a little dismal.  I see pictures in my head, strong and forming images conveying emotion and relationships.  As I'm not good at drawing, I find words to explain the pictures.  But I came to realise my voice was perhaps clouding things.  So I tried an experiment.  I created a character in my head.  She was part of me, a character formed within my mind, and yes, she is influenced by my opinions of another.  But she is of my making.  When writing the poem, a bit like the synthesia of 'Flamenco'  I tried to occupy this part of me and write from her.  The poem has a distinct rhythm, loosely based on Auden's Night Mail, which I suppose on reflection is a reference to the fact that the Absent Father and his Woman met on a train.  Funny, that has only just occurred to me, a long time since it was written.  Anyway, this is written in a voice that is not my own, and is not anyone else's, just me experimenting with inhabiting someone else.  Did it make it better for me?  Not really, but I like the rhythms and the rising paranoia driving it onwards.

 Triangulation

Let's have a party,
Don't tell her so,
To show to them all,
Especially her,
That we are together
That you are now mine,
That we are so happy,
I am divine.

We'll invite all your old friends,
Won't she be mad?
And show all the world
That you aren't so bad,
Like she must have told them
Like they must have thought,
When you left her so desperate
Didn't do as you ought

When her father was dying,
And you just ran away,
So we had the future
We have today
To throw a big party
And they will all go,
But nobody tell her,
Don't let her know.

Supposing she comes here,
Sees all her friends,
Knows that she's beaten
It is at an end.
That I have her man
He is all mine,
To make him so happy
For now and all time.

He'll gaze in my eyes
And promise the world,
As long as I make
My eyelashes curl,
As long as I never
Let myself go
And he manages never,
Never to show

He misses the dog
The cats or the horses,
Following the Hunt,
And Point to Point Courses.
A day in the winter
Trudging up hills,
A gun in his hand,
Bringing home what he kills.

How could he miss that
Now he has me?
Look at the lifestyle
I give him for free,
As long as I know
Just here he will be
To whom does he talk
Who he tells about me.

And we'll have a big party
To let them all know
It's at an end
She just had to go,
Because I am here now
So sure of my ground,
If I don't let him move
Or turnaround

To see his girls smiling
And calling him Daddy,
He's my man, I own him,
No I'm not in a Paddy,
I want a big party
I want him, he's mine
Now and forever
And for all time.

26th Feb 2010

However, it has to be admitted that 'Triangulation', a word I think I means three points to mark something, rhymes with strangulation.  That was a deliberate choice.