aside – Page 5 – mil's page

Two women

Poem 1:

the day i was born

not on wings
because that's a different word 
and never simple
because that wasn't to be my fate
but to my mother for sure
in a place distant from the shores 
which my soul already knew about 
and deep in the shires 
of an oxford old and sometimes wise
and then again sometimes not 
but always where i was begotten
even where more likely forgotten 
than remembered 

and although they say your birthday's yours
it ain't as far as the memory's concerned 
because way-back-then 
is much too far 
for one's adult ken to ever recall 
whether real or not 
whether unknown or set
in the stone of societal acknowledgement 
because what's yours indivisibly 
is not yours to reproduce 
and so the only thing you have to go on
is the deepest love however expressed
of the one person who'll always know

and so i reckon this thing 
and it's this thing i now wonder 
if for the rest of our lives 
it's something we strive for 
and then again
something we fail generally to achieve at all
being the return in some way 
to the womb of that woman 
who made us the man we now see 
and being something 
that some see as a beautiful attempt 
whilst others much more coarse 
choose to resist all impulses to accept 

and if i am right about this matter of mothers 
and how we must choose 
between either embracing with equal love 
or ejecting brutally from further contact 
the reality of their power 
so compassionately ceded 
and yet also seeded 
absolutely generously and fine 
to the children we grow into 
and the adults of much later ...
for it's then when we realise the truth must become us
NEVER to eject anything brutally 
in respect of the women 

who bring us ALL into a world 
we should learn to treasure much more freely 
than we have been able to do until now
because oh -- how wow! -- 
if we follow another path from this minute on
the world in so many ways
shall right itself 
like burdened vessel
no longer slumping like sad human soul
balled out by cruel words 
and embattled by selfish business models
whose only aim
is to maim our hearts 

so let's end on a high note
being that one of birth 
and motherly strengths
and the things we know 
and the things we still don't 
about how the power that is and the power that won't 
can become the power that will and the power that shall
when people like me
being humans and men 
learn to pay attention 
to the wisdoms of those 
who know much more about THAT then:
when each of us came first into this world

Poem 2:

And so what follows is the poem which forms the second part of this pair. And yet another description of a powerful woman: but powerful out of measure and enquiry and love and reality, not out of an ambition where skies might acquire castles of siege-like mentalities …

11 lines of love, truly kinder

No, I'm not brave at all
But I find courage when I need to
Except in this matter 
Of expressing to the person 
I'd most give up my life for 
The reasons why that life would be worth giving up

So once again, in lines of black and white
No greys around
And no uncertainty in sight 
Here are the wherefores of my love for you:
The wherefores I find myself
Unable to ever rue

Because since we met
It's always been you 
And since we were separated 
That second time of awful pain 
And since all those words 
That indicated absolutely no more 

And no more forever 
And no more for a day
And no more for a minute 
And no chance to say 
Even so for my soul 
It's always been you 

Even so for my heart
My art has flourished broad 
And grown like an unseemly soul
Engaged not by ring
But blocked with stony stall
As if the marketplace 

Had to be my funeral pall
And yet all this time
In rhymes which I wrote I conserved my hope
That I was mistaken 
When I considered the chance 
You were my breaking-point

Instead of my making-point:
That fabulous moment in every lucky man's life
When he finds not a wife 
Or chattel to own
But rather a spirit who must liberate and free 
As everyone knows every woman must be

And so then no further 
May I avoid the subject of these verses
Because for many a long time 
The rehearsals have been in vain
And you can't say in any way 
(Not even myself in truth may I claim)

That more time is needed
In order that I clarify properly my view
About the person of beauty and grace 
You'll always be for me:
That's all it is, my dearest friend
If friend is the word I have a right to now use

Because really deep down and really profound 
All I now wish for is this:
That your indivisible rights 
To resist further furrows and fearful frowns 
Become the proudest signs 
Of your liberties unbound

And as in all good films, the name is under the actor it isn’t, because otherwise we’d be fighting not to be second in everything … 🙃

aside

why #neurodiversity doesn’t deserve its corner

‘truth is, if i accepted a label different from 2003, offered in good faith and so forth, then when i found something disturbing me in a public space, people would say, “hey we understand … you have a right to be disturbed …”

but since i think i’m just one more person with a right to have a zone of comfort within which i can feel consistently safe, i am accused of all manner of intolerances.

it’s not fair that society demands we have a label in order that we might be treated with equanimity. we should treat everyone with kindness, compassion and the awareness a wisely considered humanity offers our souls — whether we judge that person to be in particular need of support or not.

not only, that is, because they have an official neon sign that indicates they are human beings of the best (which they are, by the by: yes they are).

i really am not arguing against the concept of #neurodiversity. rather, i’m arguing against the fact it must exist in a corner in opposition to that which is frankly not human.

no one is #neurotypical. as laing & esterson said, when they pronounced in “sanity, madness and the family” that they didn’t even recognise the right of schizophrenia to be present in human thought as a concept never mind a reality, so i refuse to accept that #neurotypical can possibly be a cogently functioning reality of the #humancondition.

we are all #neurodiverse or none of us are. ergo, if some of us clearly are, all of us obviously must be.

why is this important? like a #mentalillness located primarily in the individual as opposed to a #mentaldistress emerging from a toxic environment, the solutions needed are different. with the former we focus on the person as cause of the dysfunction and the solutions are pharmaceutical. effectively, we blame the victim.

for me, you see, it’s the latter which is the principle cause of most #mentalillhealth these days. it’s not the individual we must fix: it’s the places and spaces, both physical and socioeconomic, both sociopolitical and criminological, both cultural and business-related, whose own profound dysfunctions have to be addressed.

an example: #rape is properly prevented by ensuring it’s the culpable men and other actors in truly bad faith we direct our attention robustly and unswervingly at, never the victim we inhibit through disbelief and victim-shaming.

equally, then, we don’t efficiently address #neurodiversity in the long-term by saying it is the challenge.

because #neurodiversity doesn’t need its space. it’s unthinking, unhelpful, dogmatic belief systems such as the idea of being #neurotypical — and that any human of minimal compassion can ever consider it proper and accurate to use the term “normal” about anyone — which need removing.

why? the dogma of normal, as sketched out briefly today, invokes its counterpoint: the process of abusive #othering that is being called “abnormal”.

and this is the high ground none of us humans must cede ever again.

aside

On loyalty and love

I’ve been thinking a lot about loyalty. When your homeland is corrupt and has been for decades longer than anyone really realised, how can you be loyal to it?

And when you have experienced not only the rank corruption of your homeland but of the two other countries you best know, then how on earth can someone oblige you to profess loyalty to such a mess as all that lived experience leaves behind?

What right does someone have to demand of you that you stop seeing things in black & white? Like if the person who raped me back in 2004 I should see as the victim of the event? Like not see things in this kind of black & white but in pleasing shades of grey instead? “Oh, it’s ok love: it was just a thing of greys … that thing you made me do.”

Because some things are black & white: that’s why the couplet exists and has arisen in the first place as a figure of speech. And tbh, as a writer I should advocate a right for anyone to say at the very least they have every obligation to write in black & white. The colour of words on paper or a screen, if nothing else.

Love is love. Yes. But sacrificial love of corrupt people and places is not love. It’s not. And the relativism that says that sacrifice as a discourse of choice of this same idea of love rather than a tragic outcome of the circumstances surrounding the same is just not on: no, sir.

Sir, lady, any-gender, all-genders … it makes no difference. It’s not what love is about.

Certain forces in our societies across the globe have poisoned our capacity to trust not each other but the fact of life’s final ability to bless us daily. It’s true. I once wrote about it: a blogpost on what I called the Petri-dish theory of creating better society. Not particularly original, granted; but penicillin representing the good people most of us are versus the bacterial cultures that are practically all powerful persons and organisations. The idea being to create our own Petri dishes out of which parallel worlds so overwhelmingly attractive would emerge and serve to quench the fire of the powerful with the water of the rest of us.

Not fire with fire any more: fire with water. Intelligent and quite stealthy victory. Without breast-beating in the least. Just achieving, covertly behind the scenes … and the bad guys realising nothing in time.

But even as I write these words and sustain their value, I’m also firm about what I call macro- & micro-strategising. The former, the big picture. The latter, the journey and its sometimes hugely unpredictable details, which unavoidably will cumulatively impact, surprisingly always, on the original projections.

This is why fighting fire with water — love — must be our big picture, whilst fire with fire is the journey, occasionally.

That is, sacrifice.

I now philosophise both into concepts I will never abandon. The first, my crime and loophole work. The second, happier cleverer societies.

And underpinning both, love on my part. For the humans we all can be.

• app.theintuition.space

aside

When the Borgias move in next door

My next-door neighbours
Are Borgias don’t you know
Not because of their provenance
Or origins at all
But simply because they are easy gals and guys
Who make money out of beautiful purposes
For reasons only they can fathom:
With the sole objective and aim
To maim humanity

And from very young I was taught
What was good and should and ought
And so a large part
Of this thing I was told
Was fine and bold to do
In order to become the better you
Which God always instructed us to strive for
Was bearing witness proudly
And shouting out

When the Borgias moved in next door
And began to lay a trail of whores
And drugs under the beauty
Their wealth bestows
On the historically hidden and covert
Because what such next-door neighbours do
When they show you that calling out is dumb …
All those crimes which they pretend
Are ways of doing of utter joy and compassion

When in fact really what it is
Really what it becomes
Really what the societal sum equals
Is not the devil of my Catholic upbringing
But the casual evil
Displayed by the powerful
Who without many exceptions
Prefer to exhibit brazenly
Their total absence of kindliness

And their complete manifestation
And destruction to the max
Of the taxing responsibilities
I was brought up to shoulder:
Be good when you must
And change for the better what you can
And where the Borgias next-door
Have seeped over the years
Stealthily and criminally

And ultimately
Definitively into the fabric once treasurable
And lined with threads of a good gold
Of a society worth living
But which now is lacking in conviction of any sorts
Particularly the judicial ones …
Because once the Borgias move in next-door
You might as well accept
You’ve also become their whore

These past couple of weeks …

These past couple of weeks have been increasingly hard for me. The power of the British state — mismanaged and authoritarian as it has been for so many decades now, with a direct lineage between this mismanagement and outcomes such as Brexit, pandemic graft, and the corrupt behaviours of much of its law-enforcement and too many of its security agencies — has proven too much for those I consider places of real worth and beautiful society. Where I am this minute, and where soon I shan’t be.

I have seen a new world here in Sweden: a world Britain had taught me not to even hope for. A world I had learnt not to expect as my birthright. A world which doesn’t use mental-health legislation as a criminal-justice and security enforcement tool, but treasures and values deeply the citizen and individual as the basic and yet utterly rich building-block of all society’s structures and ways of being, doing and seeing.

Yes. Everything Sweden clearly is becomes everything British politics and business have turned their backs on. Not because they don’t know its value: precisely because they do.

Next week, because I must, and it is right not to abuse Swedish hospitality, I will leave for my homeland. I will pick up medication I need, and then continue to pursue my projects as I might.

I have a gift and a talent, as my Catholic mother would say: I see the world as it really is. Everything. How the good happens and how the bad happens.

And I know now that there is much less bad in Sweden than in the UK.

And I also know that this is a choice, made deliberately and deliberatedly.

Sweden chooses good.

Britain chooses graft.

And more importantly, whilst there are good people everywhere, in Sweden they still have power to effect change for the better.

In the UK, meantime, the good lack the courage of their convictions. And so there is no going back.

For there might as well as be no good people in my homeland. Can you remember when they actually delivered? Permanently? With utility? With sensibility? With value? With compassion? With pride?

With efficiency?

aside

two things

1. my homeland — the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland — needs to publicly apologise and make reparations for unduly and improperly incarcerating me in a high-security mental-health establishment during one month in the summer of 2003.

2. once this apology is embedded both legally and emotionally for the people who knew me before, during and since, i’d like some kind of utility be assigned me, which helpfully channels the skills i have not been allowed by the aforementioned state to deliver on — before, during and since — to find an appropriate and relevant place of rest and operation.

are these two requests so difficult to fulfil?

really so hard?

aside

some reflections on “the fallen warriors of ALL our souls”

“the fallen warriors of ALL our souls” — a poem by mil williams

it's the apollo moonshot
it's the manhattan project
and we have to accept we might, yer know ...
but we must try even so:
we can be astronauts of the mind 
for this is where i want to go 

this is about john forbes nash jr 
and what he could sense 
and why they put him away 
because he couldn't quite evidence his tense that day

and it's what i can sense too
and it's what i sensed in 2002 onwards
and it's why the british and others put me away
but not because i couldn't evidence 
what i sensed then or did say 
no no no 
not at all 
rather, i mean, because they didn't want
to let me try 
and evidence right and properly 

would i be prepared now to die in the attempt?
i'll try not to 
because i want to come back and evidence it full
in order to bear witness 
to what john forbes nash jr saw in his time
but couldn't prove dear people i say
couldn't prove rightly at all them days
 
and what i saw from 2002 onwards
and wasn't allowed by the british
and others 
to share with anyone
and anything  
and after 
means i know also
what he couldn't share in his day
with the rest of the people he met and did pray 
meaning i know too well 
how his best never did find a path 
where to shine fine was allowed its trace 
outside any kind of wrath 

another dimension: one of the mind 
one some of us can access 
simply via our brains 
sometimes poorly so poorly 
that the authorities around us 
easily incarcerate us 
for what we say we see 
and what we claim to be 
and sometimes so well they may choose to dispose of us too
as if a piece of scrap paper 
so scraggy, torn and weary 
and nothing more than tatty as hell
and rattier than any role 

well now it's going to be
that apollo moonshot revisited
and a new manhattan project too
as we venture forth
as astronauts of the mind for sure
and we may die in the attempt it's true
but by golly we'll surely try not to
because this time we want to evidence it all
for the memory of the fallen warriors of ALL our souls
who died whilst being in the right 
and had their light extinguished
by the most trite of all our hearts 
where everything was lost 
to costs with no value at all at all

and time it is
as time it was 
to write the wrongs
and read everyone's rights

for nothing is now to stay the same 
and whilst days of yore
brought promises of outcome
and even of judgments deeply felt
the scores we scratch 
on sticks of loud
hollow sound
will only now keep metronomic time 
if we wish them to rhyme in this way 
because life is precious
and starting again
and time it was 
and time it's become 

for the moonshot again 
and the project 
of stranger rains 
and sometimes it's going to hurt real bad
and sometimes we'll cry as never before: 
for sure it will my dears be sad
and maybe seem to be this bad 
but if we pursue 
with a goodwill of the best 
the rest will show us fine
just one thing of grand
and so what it is
and what it will be
is to stand and act out of true charity

now some reflections on the above …

what if all my projects and ideas for #secrecypositive and related … what if they have been attempts — maybe poor, but attempts all the same — to understand real experiences i’ve had and sensed before and since i was unduly incarcerated by the uk for having them and imperfectly expressing them in 2002 onwards?

what if some of us — those of us, for example, who have been, are and will continue to be accused NEVER diagnosed of mental ill-health at some point in our lives — are actually in some fumbling, stumbling way privileged persons able to access some other ways of being?

and what if when they medicate us, we’re having the shutters and drawbridges brought down almost violently on something which could otherwise have been utterly beautiful and radically life-regenerating?

for us all … i mean … what if?

• complexifylab.com

aside

initial ode to the odious … and a final song of deep friendship

ever since that thing which happened that night in front of citibank, i was sure the goal was to make other people laugh at my expense

i suspected it soon after bloomsday 2016

but i was never sure

but i don't mind

they were wrong, all of them: mark, dermott, james et al

if you do to bullies what they have chosen to do to you, in order that is to make you look humourless, they wouldn't laugh 

that's how to work out if they are bullies or not 

which is why i know they are 

people who were laughing at your expense because they loved you would laugh too when you laughed back at them for some equal foolishness 

so mark, and maybe whilst c was his girlfriend perhaps c too, thought i needed taking down a peg or two 

but the dynamic changes when i begin to be driven to do interesting things

and the plan backfires on the irish and mi5

dramatically and drastically  

so now they have to stop me

and they haven't got a fucking clue 

and that's the story from beginning to end 

i'm not humourless at all

i've been bullied first by my ex- and k and my mother in the early years, poor mum -- i know why so it's ok ... and then my father and it was never ok, and my youngest brother, too -- but he means nothing now 

and by bland and littlejohns, of course 

and by the british state and investors all over in their small-minded networks of tiny common interests

and still i want to make a better world

because i'll never stop wanting to communicate my witness 

and communicate my voice, not my opinions

and use my capacity and ability and talent for writing to good effect 

and if i've failed ... well ... that's what we humans do

and if i'm overbearingly male and white and upper middle-aged, then i am

but when i die, someone else better than me will try to do some of what i have attempted 

it's ok

it's a life 

there's billions more to come 

and btw c, just so you know for sure, we need now to make up ... yes, we do

aside, definition, design philosophy, rationale

My new #phd online hub: an overview

Introduction

Good morning all.

I’m preparing for a #phd proposal I would like to submit:

• mils.page/phd

A previous approach

A shortened version of a different but related matter from a few years ago — my first delivery of a #phd research-level roadmap — can be found in the form of a slide-deck here:

• omiwan.com/the-humans

Other new and historical ideas

There’s plenty of other material on the historical, current and brand-new hub already. An initial objective-set dating a year or so ago now can be found in the gallery below:

“Building the FEARless CITIZEN” … to deliver #NoFutureUkraines

Meantime, here we have my most recent strategy to eliminate the scourge of legal societal harm (that is, loopholes or — more academically speaking — #zemiology): “Building the FEARless CITIZEN”, so that we ensure #NoFutureUkraines …

On a mental distress sourced in the environment

Keeping in mind that mental distress — ie a human dysfunctionality which has its roots in a sick environment, rather than a mental illness with its location inside the individual — is obviously on the rise, we need to operate on two fronts:

1. Change the environments.

2. Change ourselves.

And it’s clear, also, that both actions will serve each other: if we change the environment, our wellbeing will obviously improve. And if we change ourselves to be this FEARless I suggest, to be FEARless citizens in everything we do from now on in that is, the environment automagically changes, too.

Here’s that #phd online hub link again:

• mils.page/phd

Comments on- and off-post, as always, always welcome …

And have a really safe day!

🙂

aside, definition

“the creativity of sublimation: some reflections” — a #poem by mil williams

just so it's clearer 
in my day-to-day
i'm now 
interested only 
in affection not true love 

whilst meantime in my work 
i look for love
as well as respect:
suddenly it's the way of it 
after 

a lifetime of hatred 
in the matter
that is private
and the horror 
that is this thing 

we call 
casually 
relationship
when in fact 
it's more a luxury yacht

where money
is the 
exclusive tool
to measure 
if i am worth  

anything at all
to you
in this deep dark
chasm and
abyss that is all that

which you and i did miss ...

yet conversely and
surprisingly
in the 
fields 
and meadows 

of deep
thought 
and intuition
the growing recognition 
of those 

who know exactly 
and simply 
what i've been   
through these decades
means that curiously

love is to be found
not in springs 
of creaking bed
in early mornings 
of terrible dread

but rather 
during the daytime smile 
and sideways glance 
of colleague 
and teacher 

because whilst ALL my life 
my women
refused to recognise 
in me
any worth to be proud of 

that is ... all my life 
this happened
i insist
and persist 
in insisting ... yes i do

lately i sense 
not only 
for the obvious pecuniary gain 
but maybe
truly 

because
at LEAST 
the thinkers 
i begin to know 
out there 

see me
at LAST
as human 
and worthy 
and even a kindly man

and deserving 
at ONCE 
of being 
not trampled on
but valued 

as something 
more than a diagnosis 
of a security cruel 
and a hallucinatory 
THEM

for sure 
much much more 
than i 
have 
ever seemed  

in all my dreams 
rejected as i was
by every mouth
i wished 
to deeply kiss

and so i NEVER 
once thought 
my saving graces
would not be 
romances 

as wished for 
and desired so long
and experienced 
so badly 
and hurting so 

GODDAMN wrong 
but that instead 
my real saviours 
would be cells of grey 
and small 

that occupied kindly 
other parts of my body
because born of reality 
not the fakery 
of younger hearts 

who know mostly 
how to damage 
a peer 
as if a pier 
battered in terrible storm

because this is it 
and that was all
and there you go 
and here we know 
that human salvation 

really does not lie
in a daily bed of lace 
and stuff like that
but much much more 
in a thought and hug

and an embrace of an idea 

without letting go
for years and years 
and then tying them all up
and together
and tight 

and then loosely too
as if that kiss 
i mentioned before 
which i've never had 
all my time on this rock

to say goodnight 
and to say hello
and to say why not
and never to bellow 
but just ... to whisper

"i love you"

and so still i wonder 
if my life 
could've been other 
than one of hermitage 
and then again if it had 

whether i'd now be achieving
half as much as i might 
and as almost certainly 
i'll now 
be able to cite  

for it was not the muse 
who enabled 
my love of life
but the sublimation 
that still causes me 

so much strife ... 

and so it's 
in the absence
of daily kindness
that has been 
my existence 

since forever and all 
we see 
our capability grow 
to better view 
and see the #whirled 

fully unfurl as it ought

as it must be seen
and as it must become 
perhaps as song 
and perhaps one day
no wrong either not at all 

and then its essence 
too true it is
it was never me and you 
but the experience 
of precisely this:

NOT getting 
what you want 
but instead
getting 
exactly

what you NEED

for this is the seed
of human creativity
being the felicitous 
discovery 
of things ... we've never known