mil's page

On the City of Chester UK (and why I stay …)

Chester was a place that gave a lot to me and took a lot from me.

It allowed me to grow into adulthood, with an epilepsy that struck me at ten years old, and was medicated with barbiturates until a better solution was duly found six years or so later.

In the 1970s it was a place of little attraction for young people, at least people like me … though now it has vibrant sociocultural institutions, and a small-town vibe that works for very many people.

But small-town vibe cuts both ways. It can lead to the beauty of the gentle and the unsuspected: of people who reach out to you and want to be reached out to, equally. Or it can lead to the embracing of criminal and mafia-like behaviours. Where who you know is much more important than what you describe and experience, even when you communicate it with absolute accuracy.

Today I saw in this very same town of Chester its very best side and its very worst. In its remembrance of the sacrifices of two world wars, and more before and since, it was exemplary and compassionate.

In its defence of mindsets I myself recall from my childhood — for example, things that happened at school to me and my classmates, which today would lead to criminal prosecutions — it also showed such evil people are still alive and literally kicking.

Earlier today, I was walking into the Tesco in the centre of town and a woman cut closely into my path with a suitcase trailing behind her. I had to stop. I bided my time. I then headed away from her into the shop itself, and lo and behold, she drove her suitcase, now in front of her, into the back of my left leg.

I turned round and she asked me if I was all right, with a beaming smile. I answered I was, and asked her pointedly if she was.

She said nothing. We went our separate ways. But the mindset she had didn’t. It planes over this city of two curious parts. One part, beautiful and scenic, in the physical, emotional and intellectual, and with the cultural organisation it never had in my childhood and now, obviously deservedly, manifests to the max for all who wish to value it properly:

• storyhouse.com

But there’s another part, a quite different layer of society in Chester. It’s a layer which mainly chooses to defend its own very restricting, manipulative turf at the expense of the innovation and invention the first half not only treasures as it always attempted to, but is now capable of formulating wisely and assertively.

The layer which looks to defend its always-has-been looks to the past as a justification of all current behaviours: the woman with the suitcase and her mates videoing the scene are just a silly example of how the past can be (wrongly) used to justify a #gaslighting present.

The other layer, the one of cultural vision and fabulous statements where every human being has value, meantime, looks to Chester’s past not as a justification of the nowadays and the cruelties these others are continuing to deliver, but as a way of intelligently informing a collective future-present of the most wondrous: a world where all of us fit in, strive and eventually not just live but thrive.

This is Chester UK, then: the marvellously creative, wise, generous, gentle and compassionate on the one hand. And on the very beastly other, what I experienced in Tesco in the town centre not long ago: a group of people who have nothing better to do than track, using mobile phone tech and related, the simple movements of people, like myself, who will not stop telling inconvenient truths.

It’s Brexit Britain right down the line too, is the Chester I experienced today: so many good people who just want the best for the world, on the left of politics and in the decent centre both, whilst on the extreme right the monsters who, in truth, have become one-bit mobsters.

I spent most of my youth in Chester. I’m proud of the sociocultural environment its good people have managed to fight into being in the past few years from practically nothing previous.

Today’s incidents, on the back of other things I didn’t report on other days, because even sillier, have made up my mind, a mind that was unsure, for sure.

My decision after the Chester #gaslighters of this afternoon? I now intend to work here too, to join the better half.

Why?

After being unduly incarcerated back in 2003 by the outliers and institutions of this city, you’d maybe wonder why indeed. I’ll tell you, then. Now I shall. The good people who’ve stuck it out, and made this place so much better, deserve other good people to join the fight.

The bad, the one-bit mobsters I mean, don’t deserve anything any more. They certainly don’t deserve that the good abandon them to their victory.

In fact, they don’t even deserve our disapprobation.

Just to be ignored, is what they deserve. Just to be ignored.

I do join, then. The movement of the best. Not a city of #gaslighters. Not a city of beautiful #roman even.

No. Rather, a city which has begun to learn to fight a layered criminality with ALL the tools to hand. Something which in my childhood never seemed conceivable.

All the tools. Absolutely all. And even with the written word, I say.

My contribution.

The pen wins.

As does Chester.

definition, design philosophy, rationale

on a blended approach to #totalsurveillance

background

i read a meme a while back which said:

it takes ten years ramming a new idea down people’s throats for them to get it.

i started what would become the #intuitionvalidationengine back when a discovery interview with a #liverpool university. in the middle of this interview i came up with the phrase #industrialisationoforiginalthought. i didn’t know, then, the roots of this occurrence.

i do know now.

my first university qualification, of the three i now have, was a ba hons in film & literature, back in the early 1980s. i realised a few years ago now that this was the very source of my thinking around #intuitionvalidation.

film, until #generativeai, was an example of how, despite the temptations, movie technologists chose to make a tech that enhanced and expanded human beings, rather than diminished and automated them out of relevance.

the microphone made the voice more powerful; the camera, the eye more beady-eyed; the film language of close-up and long-shot making the actor able to express their feelings with more impact; and even the stage and a wider mise-en-scene serving to extend the ability for great actors to deepen their expressiveness using the surroundings designed specifically around them.

that, then, all a clear example of the #industrialisationoforiginalthought.

and with that, a direct precursor to the #intuitionvalidationengine, and what then became #platformgenesis:

• gb2earth.com/tools | gb2earth.com/pgtps

if we take 2016 as my baseline of these later ideas, though not where the ideas originally connect back to, of these ten years i allude us to, ramming a new idea down everyone’s throats, i’m in year 8 of the aforementioned decade.

what next …

i’d like now to make something firmly tangible of all this.

and this, for two reasons and two reasons only:

1. under the current #totalsurveillance philosophies, 9/11, putin’s russia, and hamas all flourished. i’m not saying those who promoted these solutions, where machines have humans as extensions of their processes and procedures, wilfully ignored an alternative i’ve been proposing for a number of years now: that is, humans with machines as extensions of themselves. but if it does continue to be rejected, the ignoring of them does become wilful:

2. the second reason is more personal. i’d like to think that some good people at the highest levels of #tech begin to recognise that perhaps everyone — all of us, that is, without exception — should have considered other options sooner.

9/11 was a horrendous event we considered absolutely singular and, thankfully, unrepeatable.

but then came along the utterly illegitimate invasion of ukraine by putin’s russia, where we still even today — some of us, that is — choose to see him as a man who stumbles into one misadventure after another. only this isn’t true at all. he’s a horrible nonconformist whose awful capacity to think out of the box is left untouched by our machine-driven teams and ways of working.

and so, finally, 9/11 does repeat after all. with, you can’t say no, hamas’s dreadful attack on israeli and palestinian people, both. and under the very same philosophy of #totalsurveillance which didn’t succeed as it could’ve done the first two times round either.

my ask

so what do i say? what do i want? what can i get reasonably from you?

what can we all, ultimately, achieve together?

it’s not #totalsurveillance that’s the problem: it’s a #totalsurveillance which upscales exclusively machines over humans for every security, law-enforcement, and espionage process ever.

it’s the philosophy and implementation, not the need or the instinct to protect and defend absolutely: because the latter is absolutely spot-on. meantime, 9/11, ukraine, and now hamas surely question the former in ways we never cared to in the past twenty years.

this is why i am now looking proactively and openly for a powerful and paradigm-upturning partner who can provide the runway to get this blended approach to #totalsurveillance all underway: an approach which i have proposed with so many challenges to my own person all along.

and the aim of these ideas?

simple, tbh.

no more 9/11s, invasions like that of ukraine, or attacks like that of hamas on israeli and palestinian peoples both.

i want to save us all from future pain.

that is the gain i most want out of my legacy.

that is what i want my ideas around #totalsurveillance to begin to deliver: a more secure world which feels, also, so much safer …

aside

the geology of me (at least)

it's funny because the word resolution has multiple meanings 
and one of our glories as human beings is precisely this 
where our capacity to understand what was meant 
outdoes by far what was apparently sent

but sometimes it's not so hot 
and sometimes it hurts a lot 
when knowing well what was really intended 
undermines the secrecy with which one meant to convey 

the essence of the signs to hand:
for perhaps this is la la land not happy happy hollywood 
and the resolution wherein we understand ending 
is final in the sense of something more akin 

to a legal compliance of cold and shrugging shoulders 
and a terminology of delivering soldiers of life 
as further cannon fodder 
not the pleasures of neverending love

and so as i begin to sense you didn't choose me 
i hold no resentments or hatreds at all
because above all it is truer than true these days:
i love you now and more than when i could've in yesteryear 

and as i said in previous words 
this choice of years no longer hurts 
because although i'll never live again 
with other woman as future kin

it'll free me for sure 
if i survive my instincts for self-immolation 
in the 62nd year i have in common 
with earnest ernest himself 

to concentrate on my work:
a work i cannot judge more important than you
but that in your absence 
will become all-consuming for me

and so dear c and so be it:
your final resolution not mine at all 
goes clickety-clack and snappety-snip
as horse and trap down dublin streets 

and so just i guess one more thing to rhyme:
because although this ain't ever 
the case in my life 
and plenty more in time i'll surely write 

about the muse and beautiful person
who made me man and this is true 
where so many lifetimes lost with two other women
at such a terrible and awful cost 

had served only to dismantle my desire all told  
to show the world what's what about mil
i'd like instead to make my resolution true
but not to show you how much i might do

but rather to demonstrate 
never remonstrate 
how gentle i really can be:
for whilst i only wanted the best for you 

never the people around you or me it's true 
it wasn't out of a desire to break anything or anyone 
nor tumble any fragile house of cards
but simply because when one discovers the truth 

in what's what about someone (both another and oneself)
it's like a prospector panning for a gold suddenly filtered 
where it's impossible any longer 
to see life in different way 

and so that's what it was and that's how it's been 
because with you dearest c 
i've climbed the highest summit any man in love has ever seen 
and stood at the very top as foothills all around proclaimed 

showing as they did that in climbing back down 
to where mortals do reside in cities and towns 
and villages of kindly compassions
and expectations of mindful passions 

it just makes it easier for me to prove 
that all i have now for you (and for yours it's also true)
is a deep and abiding respect and affection 
where love may triumph and trump all
circumspection  

and only this remains as clear statement of fact:
i love your strong and clever sinews 
like only tradition is capable of renewing
and hope one day all our paths might cross again 

because if there's something true i've learnt from your countrypeople
and then again from others this year 
it's that only sensibilities can solve our problems 
and only by including everyone who acts in good faith 

can faith become 
a force of good again  
for this human race 
we all run uncertainly  

and so just as much 
in public and society's
i'd like to also assure you 
in our most private realms 

that i'm sorry to all of us i hurt as i have 
just sorry i say and just this i mean too:  
just all those beautiful words like this 
i begin now to feel 

never tolling like funerals
but only ringing out like weddings of joy  
no longer sensing hatred of the other
no longer wanting to fight sister or brother 

no longer caring 
what my father did to me
nor how your mother destroyed 
deliberately

my joie de vivre and ability to see
that womanhood didn't have to be cruel after all
and that now after everything that flooded my soul
what's left behind is that geology of me (at least)

where the tectonics of all of us do slide along 
each other's shelves and plates 
and rocky granite outcrops 
as if in massive intercontinental shifts

and then together as humans of the rest 
we lift the entire race to mountains of the best 
as we really do find it in ourselves to forgive 
before the coffins of each of us should bid the quiet farewell 

just love then just love my love 
just seeing how it might be forever 
for it's the unending story of this i see: 
the love of this man for the woman of his dreams

definition, design philosophy, rationale

NUESTRA huída hacia delante

I lived in Spain for around sixteen years. My Spanish is quite good; but I’m not a native in the language and never learnt it formally.

But the poem below, for some reason today, I felt obliged to write in Spanish: that is, castellano. Because there are a number of sometimes quite different languages the Spanish state and peoples communicate in. I know only castellano.

Mainly, in the street — and then receiving correction via an assiduous daily reading over the years of a linguistically ferocious Spanish newspaper called El País.

I wrote the poem below in response to a post that came my way an hour or so ago on LinkedIn. So the poem is dedicated to the man who posted that post, and made me want to write the poem.

Comments, as always, welcome always.

NUESTRA huída hacia delante 

sí lo es 
una huída 
hacia delante 
sin querer en absoluto 
y sin preocuparse por nada 

porque es hora de ver 
si tienes razones 
por pensar 
si hay personas e instituciones 
que te quieren 

y que quedan -como debieran- 
para que quererles 
a su vez y de vuelta 
sea sensato 
o no

porque he llegado 
a la conclusión 
que necesito
estar sólo 
con gente de buena fe

NO las que te hacen reír ...
pero entonces nada más que desde sus estupideces 
y desde sus más profundas idioteces
donde crecen sólo sus mentiras
cuando no las tetas de sus nenas

por arte 
del instagram
o del tiktok 
de las narices 
y de los gobernantes chinos que sólo te miran 

porque sólo quiero estar ya
con personas buenas
quienes saben ya de mi mundo
desde su interior:
para que otras explicaciones ya no son necesarias 

y porque ellos también
lo han experimentado y sufrido 
en el presente
igual 
que en el pasado 

y entonces si eso significa 
que a la gran mayoría
(que solo parece 
que sea la mayoría y -desde luego-
constituida en nada de "gran") 

me veo obligado a dar mi espalda
es porque tengo ganas
no de dar la espalda a nadie 
pero en su lugar 
mirar con firmeza de frente 

a caras como la tuya:
es decir 
a otra clase 
completamente 
de gente 

gente que sólo cree en un mundo
donde el jugo que se derrita 
no son las sangres 
de la población mundial entera 
ni de sus cuerpos frágiles 

llenos de las bondades 
por encima 
de cualquier abuso 
cometido por vicio 
y por medio de la violencia corporal 

de todos los hombres 
y mujeres 
autoritarios ...
pero para que -de otro modo 
bien distinto y precioso-

lo que echamos 
no es nada de menos 
a nada que hemos valorado
desde hace siempre 
como lo mejor de todo ser humano 

ni que hayamos querido derretir   
los jugos de nuestras vidas 
en campos de guerra 
y en apartamentos donde bombas
despiertan al bebé recién nacido  

para que pueda morir en el acto 
en charcos de su propia sangre 
con los cuerpos de sus hermanos enfrente
proclamando el adiós cruel 
de los violentos tan poderosos ... 

pues NO: 
no ... 
no ...  
no ... 
no paso más tiempo con gente así 

no es ésta la vida que elijo consentir:
y estar con la gentuza 
que sí prefieren consentirla
con las sábanas rojas de esos niños
todos los días de las semanas tan agredidas 

NO es donde voy a quedarme:
porque ya pido más a la vida 
y no me quedo con el lujo
de beber el mejor vino por un lado  
y derretir la humanidad por el otro 

como HAMAS nunca JAMÁS 
debiera haber concebido 
y ya no digo lo que pudo llevar a cabo
porque ellos sí han sabido siempre 
todo lo que han hecho y han querido hacer 

y así -en profundo recuerdo 
de ukraine y de 9/11-
damos la vuelta al verso anterior:
bebemos todos YA 
de las humanidades que más nos hacen nobles  

y derretimos únicamente 
a partir de ahora 
os ruego -por favor-
sólo los vinos 
de mas esplendor 

de los viñedos con más sabiduría  
y que nos sean capaces de bendecir BIEN
con sus alegrías 
de amores bien vividos 
y de muchos ciudadanos y ciudadanas viviendo ahora 

que deben luchar con una ferocidad 
que corresponde SÓLO 
a los que han intentado por todos los medios 
buscar otros caminos por esos medios 
e incluso cuando no queremos pelear así en absoluto 

porque cuando la guerra te toca a ti
tienes sólo dos opciones:
ninguna es fácil 
pero sólo una conduce 
a una muestra de lo que es firmemente mantenerse humano

y puedes ceder en todo por supuesto 
y quedar con lo que te dan si eso
o puedes luchar 
para otro futuro 
bien distinto 

y aunque yo sé lo que es para mí
y -ciertamente siempre será así-
no puedo ni debo definirlo para ti ya
porque ser un humano es eso:
la elección de cada uno ... elección bien propia 

pero lo que sí reservo -sin sentirme mal-
es el derecho a decir a la fecha de hoy 
y la de mañana 
y el año que viene
y desde mis escritos 

que quizás durante cientos de años 
pueda que perduren 
o -a lo mejor- solamente 
en las mentes de muy poco gente 
y a lo mejor ni eso ... ni eso mi amor 

pero a decir la verdad
me da igual ya
porque lo único que quiero 
de la vida que me queda 
en los años venideros (y espero llenos de amor)

es encontrarme con mis gentes
y NO con sangres encharcándose
y ni de hombres ahorcándose ...
pero sí -y eso sin duda- 
con mujeres y hombres tiernos 

capaces de vivir la vida 
correctamente y de manera noble 
incluso cuando 
nos han tocado los campos 
de la inhumanidad más espeluznante

aside

when it’s time to give up on placating loss

this is a short poem describing my arrival at a series of conclusions about life’s real nature.

i’m going to dublin ireland, month-end: it was always where i said it was the place i wanted to die — but therefore, naturally, live first too.

things have changed since those affirmations: i visited sweden and saw a much better way than anywhere i’ve ever been to of organising society: for the first time in my life, for example, i felt it cool to be old. i felt able to enjoy being old, i mean.

i don’t now know what my life holds for me. tbh, this is the truth. i have seen reasons for what has happened to me and others in the world since i was born, and i have been ignored consistently at best and prevented brutally from acting at worst.

i sense there’s nothing more i can do to share better and more productively my perceptions of what we are all collectively doing wrong these decades; and so i ultimately find it impossible to comprehend any chance of my utility arising before i die.

i therefore sense also it’s better i die sooner than later.

*the cs lewis reading room in qub, belfast*

the pain is become too much: to know why and be both aggressed for it and, minimum, ignored for it and simply passed over always … well … it has become just too much.

i hope you appreciate, at least, right now, for the minute, the technical skill of the poem that follows. but for me, right now, at 61 it’s not a technical act of putting digital pen to paper, at all. (nor, frankly, has it ever been.)

i hope this you also may find it in yourselves to understand.

see you all in dublin … yeah?

“when it’s time to give up on placating loss”

no longer a love poem by mil williams

you loved him because of his words 
and the words were finer than you ever could 
but it wasn't just the surfaces
it was the undercurrents too 
and the grace under pressure
and the pressure under the mace
that life is becoming
now
and even then was already 

and he did the right thing that day he did 
at that wondrous age of 61
and so it's when you knew you should too
it was just finding the way 
the right way to do the thing you'd wanted to do
for so long and long ago 
because whilst the violent ones hurt your so
and continue to violate your intimacy to this day 
all you can see now for sure is no one else cares 

and as he at his 61 
realises the world doesn't care for him 
enough to see why he's right 
and they're quite wrong in all their cruel uncertainties
he sees it's time to leave the world to suffer alone 
because there's nothing to be done any more 
because the people in charge are whores
to the totem that is the pursuit of money 
at the expense of humanity

he curls his digit around the figure
that is the trigger  
and fingers it 
like no woman ever cared to embrace him 
because grace under pressure 
is what that's all about:
doing what's right not doing what's pleasant 
never hesitating as the pain beckons 
and the abuse reminds him

that justice is criminal
never natural 
and so that's been his life 
and behind him beautiful books and words 
and things heard that were untrue
and others that really weren't 
and so that's the nature of the east
as it grinds democracy to pieces 
which i no longer want to put together 

so i admire and feel inspired
by my man of 61 all those years ago 
and by the things he found it in him
that he was able to get out 
to better a world he knew 
was awful enough 
to have to escape one day 
in mode of personal obliteration 
because in my case i don't know if in his

only five people of my closest family
save themselves in my memory 
as it stands before i act 
and no friends at all
have ever been more than hidden fiends in ruth:
enemies as the swedish say in their tongue
of the truths i have possessed
but will never be able to hand on now
because now is much too late to placate the loss 

which i feel deep inside the soul 
that lays beneath my every step 
as they have made of ALL my life 
something i have wept so fully 
as dully i come to the final conclusion 
that nothing out there 
has ever understood 
a single thought 
i ever had

just remaining that act i too must pursue
at the age of 61 that currently possesses me 
at month-end when in the country 
i knew i would cease ultimately to be:
when my life WILL wend its way 
to exposure of necessary closure 
and where with one last text and webspace 
i will try and communicate 
all the things you all should have done 

which really you didn't 
and possibly deliberately didn't 
and which have led directly 
to the funding streams 
and mafia-like revenue pots 
that enabled 9/11
and putin's russia 
and hamas's terrifying abuse  
of both israeli people and its own so-called "own":

because i ask you i really do
why no one dares today to describe hamas 
as availing itself these horrifying weeks 
of a million or more human shields
caring little 
for their integrity 
and zero appreciation 
for their sovereignty 
as blood and flesh in fragility ... 

and so yes ... it's true too
that these are the things 
i have seen every day from birth 
and all i have ever received in exchange 
is to be treated by an extended family 
and their friends and work partners 
as a piece of facile inconvenience 
to be disposed of like human kleenex 
regularly

wherever i attempt to go that is 
and be the human i needed to be that is 

and so that's why now 
i conclude he was right my man of 61
when he determined there was one place he could go
where none of them could follow him ever
and just one place to be safe 
and one place to find peace
and one place where the good people
no longer had to pretend 
they couldn't see what the violent ones did to me ...

this i why i consider therefore 
the number 61 to be so beautiful:
clearly NOT because of karen williams's birth 
nor for the horrors she has visited 
on so many men over the years 
just as my own pain 
was never allowed to subside 
by her buddies 
and confidantes

(people exactly like 
my brother tugomir too 
having been her lover 
before and after my own idiocies)
nor die down humanly 
and reach some degree 
of resolution and proper forgetting ...
so NOT because the day she arrived 
the world would become a better place

because it clearly didn't  
no it didn't 

and then again 
neither because 
where turned upside down
it's the year 91 of her daughter's birth too
being that claire brett 
of such violent cruelties and instincts 
and so obsessively ridden
(via her techie mates 
mark kelly & co) ...

so neither for mother and daughter 
nor for daughter and mother 

but simply because 
i'm also 61 too this year do you hear 
and this time of life confers many truths it does
and it's time to do and NOT write any more 
as i realise the wisdoms of the ages 
cannot be denied:
for the world is a wonderful place 
despite what it is
and not because ...

definition, design philosophy, rationale

“the cooler elements of THAT day’s picnicking”

a #poem by mil for you

we went to school that day though we thought it was only adultplay

but we were learning to be the best we could be -- even and ever and just like that

and it's been a long haul since i saw the burning red tip of your cigarette

as it glowed like your verbal flow so sharp and kinda hard-like: a map of sorts

but your hard really ain't that tough as they might think in all those lost places of clink

'cos you're a woman of justice and if occasionally icy

it's only because the person in front of you ain't nicey at all

and you've had quite a few of these to deal with in your time

whilst all i could do was rhyme as i do and always have: funny that, imho

but not too funny because whilst you and i were suffering like we have been

the bombs rained down on ukraine -- and all we could say or do was rue

instead of act and make factual the suspicions we had all this time

of those who don't know even the beauty of a rhyme

never mind its point ... which tbh is a far harder construct

to get one's head around if stupidity and falsehood are your foundations

and touchstones and millstones -- and then again the wretched melancholy

of all that pain as the balding blame issues forth and the recriminations bloat

like ships in the night as we pass each other's floats

and those buoys (where not boys who refuse to play ball but simply condemn women

like they were toys to be habitually abused and NEVER embraced

with the gentleness and gentility of lacier feelings over the racier)

because one day it's true that we'll have to knuckle down

to the job in hand and make that band absolutely resistant

to the invasions of trust which over the years all of us have heard

and which have mined our capacity to be sure that everything raw

was as true as we saw and sensed and knew to be the case

'cos that's what in the end it's all about -- and this i will shout out:

for being human sometimes means being really inhuman ... whether we like it ...

or NOT!

and so whether shot of it all out of pure and simple disgust

or hugging it all because violent man i realise i am

either way -- when the battle ain't of choice -- it's a royal endeavour

of aggressions enjoined and mouths overheard

and all those FUCKING hurts and wounded bodies and struggling minds

as all we'll ever fight for still is a bit of kindness and compassion

amongst the fields of the deceased and passed away

when that beautiful picnicking day we met first on the liffey during bloomsday 2016

and so it is that now we know and now we understand it's time we walked

hand in hand in order to dismantle little by little the causes of ukraine

which aren't distant at all from the communities we've both been living in all these years

and which even we sometimes support with our weaknesses

into the crime that stealthily funds the bombs

in distant countries no longer distant any more in any way whatsoever

that makes any sense to either me or you or even maybe the populace too

which populates with an awfully casual polluting inconsequential instagramming

the brains and sanities of all the ones we love and treasure

and measure our daily actions by ... for that is what it's all about really ...

just being together as one in the good -- and then supporting as the many

when the bad attacks our ability to soldier on and be the warriors we need to be

and should have remained all those years our pleas went unheard

and then again at night when so dark sometimes finding a pleasure

snatched and scratched like the desolation of experiences lived

all those once upon a times ... and then perhaps out of hope and now i guess out of scope

but then again and again maybe it is now time to give up on the rhyming

and begin fighting fire with fire once more just as the irish lyre and the swedish lion

and the british grit bleeding and sweating and crying its ways back

into the place it always felt was there even when the russian whore

knew so much more about uk politics and its moneying instincts

and ALL their swirling contaminating wealth alongside that covertly stealthy ill-health of spirit

and how it took plainly apart the integrity of a democracy

because now dearest c that's what this is all about:

making sure the loudest voice becomes ours

without a shadow of a doubt or a hesitation or a single demurring intention

because all that's left for us to do today is fight the putins of this world

with the tools we must use as we know full well (and we did too)

and so in the end they shall lose it all it all it all my friends

(and how grand it will be when they absolutely do

and how grand how grand how grand it will be when they finally do ...)

compensifyme.org | #compensifymeorg

aside, rationale

On acquiring an osmotic skin of true love

Good morning all.

Yesterday I posted the below on LinkedIn:

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mil-williams_ive-just-had-a-conversation-with-my-mother-activity-7108004021184950273-6mxc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

I’ve just had a conversation with my mother. It’s redrawn my sense of my whole life. And therefore of myself.

Nine months after I was born — my birthday being the 16th of June 1962 — I was placed in a secure facility in Warneford Hospital in Oxford. I was there for a month: so not, in the end, the only occasion I was placed behind closed doors, after all.

My mum was suffering at the time from acute post-natal depression. I knew already that in 1968 she had received electro-shock treatment. What I didn’t know till today — because I had never been told — was that at the age of nine months I stayed with her in the aforementioned hospital, whilst she underwent a course of eight separate electro-shock events.

However, the seventh one went really badly wrong: she had such a painful headache as a result that she passed out. They tried to explain; but faffed, tbh. Her words, not mine.

So she refused the eighth, and after a month in Warneford, we left.

She’d married my father in 1961, but couldn’t recognise him during those weeks in 1963. I wonder now if at the time she was able to recognise me … or perhaps not at all.

Or not clearly enough for it to make any difference.

And then if not, when actually it was that she finally became able to remember and know me — her son — again.

Yes. It’s important to speak to people. You don’t know what you don’t know. And others, even close others, might never know what maybe you did need to have known, but didn’t get the chance to comprehend ever.

Because history is important, and people who tell it well are dangerous. Telling history right is a subversive act, too.

In this case, though, maybe a healing act more than anything else.

I am closer to my mother now than I was half an hour ago. And half an hour ago we had already been as close as … well … thieves. Thieves not of trinkets or jewellery or gold: thieves, rather, of our truths.

Because I see I was broken for the rest of my life because I see she was broken on becoming a wife. And no one of any decent mind can attribute any blame to the broken for breaking another. And here, though it’s still hard for me to admit, I really must include my father as well.

And so I am at peace.

And I know today … so is she.

I’d suggest you went to the original post, too. The comments are some of the most valuable ones I’ve ever had.

Anyways.

Today, just this last half an hour or so, I’ve been thinking now: reflecting on fallen veils.

‘Had the night to do so. ‘Reasons to do.

I once worked with a beautiful mind whose job was one-to-one in a local prison. Their goal, their unique and only goal, was via a personalised conversation over a period of sometimes lengthy time to help a prisoner find their core: what had driven them in their life to do good and what had driven them in their life to do not so good at all.

I’ve had a lot of therapy in my life, tbh. Fits and starts: either ameliorative which is an excuse for not addressing a clearly systemic challenge at the same time; or attempting to find core whilst never being able to.

Along the journey this has taken me I have wondered whether a lot of people, who manifestly chose to hurt me, were the cause of my melancholia or the result of it; that is, that their behaviours were the result of my own and the blame was better located in me, or instead that their acts served primarily to deepen my core — at that point, for me, still undiscovered — and therefore meaning the blame for all the pain still present in my daily life, even today, lying equally deeply with them.

And so after yesterday’s conversation with my mum, I realise this morning on awakening just three things:

1. This thing that was revealed yesterday in conversation with her is my core. A nine-month-old baby suddenly not recognised by his mother. And living for a month with this very same mother I continued to recognise for sure, even as she could not see herself to consistently providing the flicker of reciprocation, that in its presence makes a life and in its absence breaks a young heart. This is my core: why rejection is impossible for me to survive, never mind thrive after. Rejection of any kind in any area of human endeavour: rejection by all in the smallest of ways, too, wherever.

2. If you cannot work out how to thrive after rejection, everything anyone does to you will be interpreted sooner or later as being such. And the people who have most broken me since … well … most of them I still believe did it deliberately. Businesspeople who chased me in bad faith whilst manifesting a superficial good; a lover who knew only how to shame and ridicule and pursue and condemn and gaslight me over decades, and who never ever let me be free — not even to this day; and then again, half of a family that knows only button-pressing and knife-twisting, yet is capable of calling it “simple advice”; and still more re a security state — that of my homeland — which decided early on I needed neutralising, and when I didn’t kill myself, realised reputational disgrace was the next best thing; and finally, maybe worst of all, all those people who stood by all those decades, so many of them on all parts of political and sociocultural spectrums, in full knowledge of what and who was doing what to whom … in full knowledge of the pain being deliberately delivered.

3. And yet my final insight is this: spending a month in the same room as my breaking mother, with the hospital-smelling, former lunatic asylum breathing down our necks all that time, isn’t a matter of assigning blame. My mother broke me that month for the rest of my life; but she was broken by my father the year before; and he was broken by a bullying upbringing that had failed to treasure what in hindsight should’ve been a beautiful gender- and neurodiversity. And so it reaches back … so it reaches back.

On building the FEARless CITIZEN …

And so this, then, is where I am: where I find myself this morning. All the people who hate me now, and have actioned so much deliberated ill on me all my life, maybe since birth too, will find plenty of reasons for them to continue kowtowing to their hatred: still profoundly embedding in their deepest places.

I, meantime, realise equally now that what I need to do is accepting that this thing we call rejection is my core — because for a month all I experienced was the deepest kind: that of a mother blanking her baby — my future job must then be to find some way of acquiring a different skin: but not a thicker one … no.

Rather, an osmotic one that leads me to manifest much more finely and grandly and enthusiastically that better capacity to love everything human, which our humanity today so sorely, so surely, needs.

aside, definition, rationale

on seeing the #whirled as it ain’t

when you see the world as it is
you prefer to see the #whirled as it ain't 

and then it's like a super-injunction 
'cos it's not just you tell people 
there's something you can't say 
but 'cos honestly you can't even say you can't 

i learnt how the world worked a long time ago
when i was born or maybe when reborn 
not as a child 
but rather a man 
who for a period of time 
got sand kicked in his eyes 
by other men mainly
but a few women too
who chose to do ill
'cos that's what some of us choose to do

and in those days this man before you
didn't wear glasses at all
except perhaps when the sun would shine 
like no one's business might run

and so in those days 
when ray bans were the thing 
and prohibition of any activity 
didn't seem to be 
what the uk wanted to be about  
he just sipped sooo gladly on his wine glass
fine and shiny 
and then slipped madly 
on his dad-ass of rhymes imploding 
and yet still managing in some way or other 
to conserve 
and to preserve 
a sense you kinda saw 
of that occasional semblance of dignity 
all humans should access occasionally 

but what mainly he mostly learnt on rebirth 
when all was said and done and hurt 
was that people who know they do what's right
and people who doubt all the time their might 
are not the same at all at all
oh not the same at all

'cos it's the latter 
who when they think they're bad
are really the best of humans by far
whilst it's the former 
who demanding allegiance to their had 
are the people you'd never ever 
want to meet or see
even at rally or show in full public view 
never mind that alley of ancient dark review 

so if i had to say one thing just one 
about the world i now ignore
it's that whatever happens next to me
i know i was the latter 
yes i do i do

and although it seems a rank contradiction 
of humility's dreadful absence 
there are times in your life
when you know you did wrong 
and even so equally 
other times more blessed 
when by golly you know you did right 
and right as rain 
and rain and rain 
and right as any rain at all

and so straight upfront 
and straight in place 
i wish right now 
that if we all had some other chance 
to make a #whirled of brand new utter
from this tawdry world we have instead
a world we have so me and you 
and maybe sadly so at that 
i'd be first in line to do some things
and the two things i'd do 
'cos two it would be
would be these two cool things 
which surely could change 
all the bad there is
into the good of this one
and the fab of that other 

and that number one would be really dead easy
where first we simply tipped our hats
even when we had no hats at all
out of respect and deference 
but not to hierarchy 
nor a desire to avoid all creative anarchy 
but simply because in front of us we saw 
a human like ourselves and nothing more 
and yet again and yet again 
whilst nothing more and nothing more 
nothing less than anyone else 
we'd ever get to greet 

and so that would be the first thing out there 
i'd try to inculcate quite differently 
being a respect for the other
based on equality not position  
and so not on how much wealth you had to show
or didn't care to manifest or even just to know 
but simply the fact that nothing was hidden
and no one had power over any other person 
as a result of a violence of stealthy kinds
and abusively speaking and never one's mind 
being committed again and again and again 
and so nothing of this sort would i enable 
at all in my #whirled ... 
of just so round tables 
and so arthurite haul
and kiplingesque too ...
and then all wrapt up proudly 
in one beautiful zoo 

and so what then my dear 
would the second thing be? 
what next would i do to remedy the world?
what next ... in my #whirled 
i'd imagine oh yes ... 
being this mad thing of grand ...
could i attempt to right rightfully one good day
standing as i stood and prayed?

simple really and simple as simple 
'cos i think all i'd do 
is be a man who lived his own life
on islands quite deserted 
and absent of human strife 
because if one thing i've learnt all these years
it's a sad reality 
but a truth all the same
and this is what it is i have to say
and this is what it's come to weigh on me too
like stone of anchorage 
or baggage of love's futility 
when we realise eventually
that no one is to be trusted
when push comes to shove
and here 
not even love 

for the only two ways 
in the world today 
we can trust another fully 
is either by blindly joining a tribe 
in which case nothing is real inside 
or alternatively never meeting 
another person out there ever 
or at least not more than once in your life
and no more than that 
not even to doff that hat 
for where they only know 
how to deliver 
like carrier pigeon of conflicted nations
a message of war unjustly conducted 
what's the point of trying again ever?

really what is the point oh lord oh lord ...

yes oh lord ...
i mean of trying once more?

definition, design philosophy, rationale

qcdocu.com — my new quality control and proofreading service

Hope today is a better day for us all, even as we must always commemorate its awful awful tragic and terrifying past.

Just to let you know, where books and content are your thing, and if so it’s fab that it should be like this, that my new quality control and documentation proofreading service is now up and running.

You can find the site here:

• https://qcdocu.com | #qcdocucom

Meanwhile, a five-slide case study can be downloaded here in pdf format:

• https://qcdocu.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/qcdocucom-cs_3levels.pdf

I’m currently focussing on two markets: Britain and Sweden. Note: this is NOT a translation service but a brand-new quality control plus more traditional proofreading service in one for English content, whether created by native speakers or by those for whom English is a second or third communication skillset.

To summarise

We take English-language documentation from our clients — whether developed by them in-house or with their agencies — and ensure it’s both functionally and linguistically fit for our clients’ target audiences: usually (though not necessarily) C-suite decision-makers.

So if you are starting to use interactive and other more complex documentation formats, we don’t only check the English (in multiple region versions, too), we check the navigation, the flow and readability, and the interaction between video, photos, and/or graphics on the one hand and the text-based information that makes it run on the other.

If this is something you’d like to use, and you’re not in the UK or Sweden, we can invoice in euros and US dollars, too.

Our plan is to focus on the first two markets and then expand to others. But if demand emerges elsewhere sooner, of course we’ll follow the trail wherever it takes us.

My email address is:

• mil@betterbiz.me

And here’s the website itself again:

• https://qcdocu.com | #qcdocucom

aside

on not following the napalm that day (or how i’d love to dm you, too)

"i'd love to dm you"

"and i'd love to dm you too
but you told me not to a long time ago
on pain of being reported 
or taught a lesson
which a boyfriend of yesterday 
remains to this day 
desiring to deliver me
like a patchy amazon white-van driver 
although now they're a kinda charcoal colour
but can we really say grey-van driver
after all these years of white
as it's been?
can we, my dear? 
can we? well ... maybe so ...
maybe we can 
even so 

"and i'd love to dm you now this minute 
but the minutemen 
are getting ready to weep again 
though to be honest 
and sure
and certain 
they never stopped crying 
since they heard those terrified voice messages 
falling like big stone 
hurtling to the ground
like a terrifyingly soundless lament 
of wounded heroes 
amongst those zeros of binary digital
which has led the most horribly creative of criminals
to activate with evil beyond understanding 
or comprehension by any ordinary soul
the goals of hate and cruel latitude 
as my heart beats in terror 
and my head finds itself unable 
to feel safe any more 
in a world where these things happen at all 

"and so my dear 
in the personal 
which i hope we may be able to feel again soon
i'd so love us to go forwards to the past 
never back to the future 
because for me you're a picture of the best 
and always have been
and where friendship could now be a thing 
for us to enjoy fully 
and with ourselves together as we should
being just you and me forever now 
as we might sing ordinary tales
of quiet firesides
and wintery sales ...

"because it's absolutely true
that as human beings of common interest
none of us
absolutely none of us at all
deserved that 9/11 
not of famous sporty car   
nor of emergency calls from fire or ambulance
usually able to offer the succour and support
that make one want to trust more
our common humanity 
and goodness and truth 
and then again  
perhaps some sort of reality of the sincere 
and frank 
and fine and grand and honest 
and all the things that look to love 
and that which doesn't bite to the core 
and doesn't gnaw like rotting teeth 
at empty bone 
or a traumatised loneliness 
which drags down 
like plummeting gannet 
all human alone ...

"and so yes i say
and yes i weep
like the minutemen 
who failed without fault or blame
to defend in necessary measure 
the land of the free
from the curse 
of the unseen horror 
that still stalks this gomorrah
of latterday paintings
that draped the walls
that tumbled down in biting minutes
and that found their bloodied end 
as the skies rendered that day 
the warning of the shepherds
who refused to stay  

"the 9/11 not of all that other 
but rather of this
and that 
and no tipping of gentlemanly hat 
and of fateful and awful roll call
in the thousands and more 
of fallen bodies and souls  
who will never receive a dm again 
because that kind of message
is one of life
and life is what we all should treasure
now beyond any measure 
or remaining capacity 
to resist out of solitudes
the embracing of enemies
who may (one never knows) 
lead to a reconciliation 
without blows or rancour
nor deepening canker
of human letter 
and actions that lead to despicable act
instead of words that lead 
to rightful fact ...

"and so to all the good who cried that day
and to all the good 
who became unable to cry
out of shock maybe
or out of clock lately 
or out of broken body 
and splintered tones 
and then again without rhyme 
to make any sense 
of that time 
all i can say
is i am alive still 
and yet still your absence touches me
and hurts me 
and has me sad
and maybe behaving badly
but even so 
even so
even so
the day the towers fell
and although so far away
something inside me turned as cold as hell 
and since then i have never quite trusted 
any human again 
except that dublin day i met you
on the beautiful liffey 
being that day of my 54th
and that's when i saw a good person 
for the first time 
since the planes rammed the concrete
over and over 
with aviation fuel splashing the humanity
like napalm to our aftershaven chins
as the skin begins to peel
and the horror is fully revealed

"and so yes it's true
and it's always been you 
and that's what's saved me
from my 9/11 in the end
for the goodness 
(even where the love just ain't poss 
and this i know full well)
of a woman who knew me 
better than i ever would 
is what's made the difference 
between me following the napalm that day
and since 
and staying alive as one may instead 
in order to be here to fight another day
as brave as one can
in defence of one's land
minútemen and women and genders-all
to the very end ...

"love you my dear ... i really do

xxx"