personal – Page 5 – mil's page

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?

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"

aside

i asked what more … and THEN i saw

i asked today

what more was needed

what more i needed to do

and i realised it’s the wrong question

quite the wrong one

because when all is done and said

and everyone seems now

to be scratching their heads

in fact what they wanted all along

was never to sing but be sung

there’s nothing more i want of here

and everything i want of there

and still i can

and still i shall

attempt to make a bit of a mancunian well

where pebbles may fall

and sounding not at all

for ages and ages

even so make a final splash

and allow me to give something back

to the country and people

who are so savagely bullying

that it’s hardly surprising their grand legacy

is called brexit

but even when i recognise this fact

and even when it’s all said and done

and even when in the uk

fun is just about

as prevalent as the sun

in parts of the world

where when they hate your guts

even garters ain’t yours to have

without them sticking their fingers in your eyes

so the bridge of sighs

becomes the abusive bridge of signs

in a place where mafias are invisible

only because nothing ain’t some kind of mafia …

didn’t yer know

and so that’s all i need to say:

my experiences on both sides of that sea

have been for me quite enough

and quite the same

involving and invoking

cruel and stupid men

who could’ve been people to be publicly proud of

and instead are people who privately sound off

without ever taking ownership

for the gaslighting they commit

hiding as they do

in the tribe that means

if you’re in you’re a lout everyone treasures

and if you out you’re the only brave one

they will ever see in their lifetimes

and this is when

i asked once more

and this is when

what i asked i saw

before the lazy slob

who considers himself so cool

actually in slovenly manner

befitting his kind of gruel

and coming from that old school

so very redolent of the fallen wounded

you’d think they’d express compassion

like a mother with a child and their milk

when instead the value of woman

for them never existed

because the women they live with

are not to be treasured

but beaten so awful

as if carpets trod regularly underfoot

and only sometimes taken and shaken

in order to deliver some sooty craven

because for this sort of man

the only thing he knows

is how to enforce his will

as if it’s good and always goes

when in truth this man and his pals

know only how to live in hell

and perpetuate it

for the object of their ire

and aspire only to the dirty dirty

of auden’s novelist

where hatred bursts out

like an explosion of pus-ridden lust

and so ultimately for me

this is my homeland

and ultimately for me

this is why i may no longer work here

and ultimately i tell you

what’s really what i missed all this time

was the opportunity

to rhyme something good

about the men who should make up bravely

and fine

this thing we call brotherhood

and fatherhood

and cousinhood

and all

and all and all and all …

and so you do see what i mean

and so of course you do you do you do

and so when in fact the only thing

in gross reality

they’re capable of making up

without equally gross finality

are the lies and rank dishonesties

of their tiny little crimes

which their tiny little minds

do so enjoin our neighbourhoods

to participate falsely in

it’s cool yer know

to know them so:

these men of tribe

and winsome smile

who grin out of hatred

and depose out of love

for the beginning

and the end

that is the fallacy of brutes:

the brutes of britain

who will never win the day

because all they can ever say is:

“hello luv … give us a kiss”

as they miss the whole goddamn point

because when they do

and when they presume

and when they assume

it’s right to demand

all i can say

is i’m ashamed on two counts:

to be a man brought up

like so many others in the uk today

and to be a wider brit of smallest silly mind

which is all i can now think

is all i must now get away from

why my place is no longer here

and so wherever it might one day become

at least i won’t be sitting on my backside

in some parochial park

where only the idiots line up their beamers

as finally and totally

their sociopathic easing

repeats and repeats

unceasingly their fleecing

of all sensible community and true life lived

as they prefer to beat the wife

before night reaches another fleeting glimmer

of what it could all have been

if only the purposeful had even just once

reigned in the british isles

of foolish signals and trivial spies

aside

“there’s a mourning … which isn’t”: a poem for #prideweek by mil

in death life does sometimes emerge
and when people you loved
hate you back
and hurt you in fact
over years and years
and all you heard was
your week
of weaknesses unbound
and unleashed
like the tease of the cruellest universe
and the poetry of decaying stanza
then nothing seems as sound
as a knife to the throat of the words
you wish someone heard in time
all those rhymes ago

but in truth
personal revelation of this sort
comes from the expectations
you cede to the past
and once you can do this
and once you learn how to do this
and once you yearn to do this
nothing can stop you ever again
because nothing is able to hurt your soul
and because no part of you plays a bigger role
in the human you are becoming:
the transformations are complete
and the neatest of neat
meets up with your generation

you were neither good nor bad
just madly had
as they coveted your thoughts
as the mad frequently do
and as men of alpha range
plainly play like tigers with helpless woman
of beautiful nature:
because although i am ugly as hell on the outside
inside my brain and thoughts
and my ought and my would
and maybe my could too
are the marilyns of undesirable monetisation
and so all these alpha idiots have been able to do
all my goddamn life

is covet these gorgeous wisdoms of mine
(which should have been thine
so long ago)
in order to stop the world knowing them too
because when a wisdom wails silently
anyone however resistant to evil
is easily bedevilled
by the need to screw you royally
as they toy awfully with the plain truth:
they are utterly wrong in their manly hatreds
and we in our kindly compassion
know the passions of our side of the fence
and just where the rest of humanity
needs to be
with you at my side my dear my dear my dear …

because in death life does sometimes emerge
and when people you loved
love you back
and like you in fact
over years and years
and all you heard was
your week
of strengths unbound
and unleashed
like the reasons of the most gentle universe
and the poetry of inspiring stanza
then nothing seems as sound
as a wife to the throat of the words
you now know someone heard in time
all these rhymes you PROCLAIM today

out of the deepest love
for people who are
and people who’ve been
and people who’ve seen what you have seen
and then again
and once more said
the people who grin and smile and laugh and make it out loud a thing of a fab head:
so proud and true
of their emotions and their course
and their beautiful beautiful thinking
and their utter utter lack of unwrought haughtinesses
but instead just the happiness joyfully experienced
of human beings everywhere IN LOVE

me, at a very young age; my father out of focus, in the foreground …

aside, rationale

when stuff doesn’t #onlyeyes

when stuff doesn’t stuff it’s something for sure
and maybe all life can offer
is to get by after all:
maybe greatness was never our thing
and maybe it shouldn’t ring out
and maybe from the first day we should give in
because in the end being hurt
is what life’s about
and the rerouting of a social re-engineering
is a quimera of meaning’s total absence

because why should anyone want to be purposeful:
why should anyone have any right
to expect a better shirt
than the one a man loses
when he lies in the gutter and fails to see the stars
as things of beauty
but rather sees them blinking furiously
like rabbits in the presence of horrifying headlight
whilst these encroaching tears fall
no longer tall and proud
from person with straight back
and some kind of ability to tack brave sails
which navigate something of use

and then neither burgeoning out loud
those emotions fine
that truly redeem
in an instant of grandiose compassion
absolutely every ill
that precedes still
and now even so
all these humiliations
this INhumanity dares to impose on itself

yes it’s true:
love is all you need
but it needs equally to exist not attacked
by petri dish of incessant and illogical
bacteriological warfare
where every kiss imagined
only serves to sustain the unreal

and in an existence
where true love is mainly non-existent
every kiss imagined is mainly unreal:
each becoming something
just about wholly falsified
and hardly enjoyed
and usually reprimanding
and generally rejecting
of the other person
who strives even then
to pen a love note
or speak a kind word
or have their truth somehow heard

for in its requesting and ultimate denial
the kiss is lost to the ether
and either it never had a right to exist
or it never had a right to be thought up
in the first place
where one idiot considered a space existed
whilst a savvier soul knew it didn’t
because mainly that’s what it’s all about:
love’s natural state should be one
where kindness is communicated
and passion only rides
when permission becomes a deep embrace
as a taste of freedom
is enjoyed by the parties concerned
as if with no concerns

and if mostly love
is a matter of unrequited fates
and this is its natural state
still we should not believe such a situation
or this sort of location
damns us inevitably to an experience
of poverty-stricken absences

because it’s also quite true
that the real absence of love in our lives
truly makes us value our memories more
than otherwise
we might have been able to

and so it’s clear
that whether love is real
or love is a mirage of painful fool
when the old adages tell us
it’s the only thing worth fighting for
in the life of any human being
they are absolutely right:
because if we can survive and stay alive
in the utter incompleteness
of a messy and unsustainable trajectory without love
just imagine what its presence might move
were this thing we call stuff
not stuffing us at all

aside

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 … 🙃

definition, design philosophy, rationale

“astrids trädgård”: the swedish-located bletchley park

I’ve been note-taking again; yesterday on the tunnelbana (Stockholm’s metro) and today in one particular Joe & the Juice I love because of the jazz playlist you often get in the mornings. The one near Hötorget.

I’ve taken a liberty, too. It may not be the right thing to do: but if it’s not, we can amend and choose something else. What follows I have headed as “Astrid’s Garden”, in its English translation. Because, just as Alan Turing was a man of good genius, and yet had to fight for his right to be himself, so Astrid Lindgren, in a different time, place and culture, chose to fight what she believed in. And like Turing, it was for and behalf of a society which one day might become of the good.

Here is the stream of thought I’ve had over last night through to just after this midday …

mission:

fight fire with water wherever possible; only fight it with fire when utterly unavoidable

1. all the participating organisations achieve representation in terms of the potential and promise of individuals who belong to each.

to achieve this:

we create a bespoke evaluation process which allows us to identify this individual potential and promise in ways no one dreamed of.

the basis of the project is neuro-diverse complex problems-solutioning tech architectures: hardware, wearables and software all.

• https://www.sverige2.earth/unified

stepped in stages from the first privacy-sensitive structures through privacy-positive and secrecy-sensitive to the final goal: secrecy-positive.

• https://www.sverige2.earth/complexify-roadmap

we should spend as much money on people and their brains as we ever will on tech.

why does this feel uncomfortable? when did we ever feel spending massive amounts of money on tech was wrong? isn’t that the purpose of tech — to have money spent on it? ok. well. lots of virtues in that, for sure. but why not feel comfortable with doing the opposite? spending money on people: on our strengths and our capabilities.

• https://www.secrecy.plus/hmagi | hmagi.com

why not?

what could it mean?

spending directly, with salaries that allow for correct, humane, and moral conditions and sustenance; and then supportively, re technologies that upskill, expand and enhance the capacity for — ultimately — a wholly secrecy-positive “pure thought” that each person chosen will be chosen for because they already bring it – in more or less raw state — to the table at the start.

the projects and workstreams will then be enabled to first drive with efficiency (that is, leading to hyper-nonconformist hyper-performing person-focussed inside-out tech always) but along the way also creating regularly and inclusively (that is, what i have already conceptualised as hyperteam-delivering tech) as the programme progresses.

• https://thephilosopher.space

2. the goal is, however, also unremitting. completely so. as completely as the uk’s bletchley park during the second world war.

the targets as twofold:

a) bad actors; and b) preferred outcomes

a) the first target will focus on russia and china, and others who have, equally, allowed the criminality of the aforementioned to embed itself longitudinally throughout these years: from the russian wealth and war-focussed revenue streams in the uk alongside the collaboration at, and of, all levels of the conservative party to the chinese “police stations” spreading across supposedly sovereign britain and europe, with huawei and others as pure extensions of the chinese government’s aims to install surveillance within our internet backbones, never mind on phones, devices multiple, and so forth … all these are all examples of what i have called neocrime:

• https://crimehunch.com/neocrime

things we don’t see or even imagine until usually their creators have moved on to something else, at which point they lose interest in ongoing concealment. because whilst concealment exists, it happens for one reason: those committing such criminality are clever enough not to need to show anyone, ever, exactly how clever they are.

so we simply remain unaware, thinking “random” or “life” or … whatever.

3. astrids trädgård must therefore exist to anticipate, scope, identify, protect, and serve the interests of a real, good western democracy.

there is more we need to focus on …

b) in the best traditions of the united nations, we don’t only focus on detail, which is often passing. we focus also on the overarching and inalienable: the universal; the unchanging … literally and figuratively.

this is why i would add to the word “unremitting” already introduced one other word:

4. when we are able to fight fire with water, the word already mentioned. but when fire is our only alternative, then perhaps from a related org not open to astrids trädgård personnel themselves (for everyone’s mental wellbeing and sense of proportion and focus) we must fight this awful longitudinal fire that led to ukraine in the first place, and is sustained by the joint authoritarianism of russia and the chinese since much longer than we care to realise, with an equally merciless fire of our own.

so … proportionality always:

proportionate always, i repeat: but more than what “unremitting” tells us. and you may disagree, too; we may need to refine; we might have to finesse.

but in all cases, peter levine, the american civic thinker, and one of the most humane humans who ever lived, was right: good democracy demands we be inclusive, yes, but equally … we must be efficient.

• https://peterlevine.ws/?p=6359

so if covert spending exists to fund the fire with fire side, then it must have another name and mission quite different from astrids trädgård.

5 however, one thing must remain sharply clear: the final goal of both organisations will thankfully be shared.

it must be thus:

the objectives of both fire with water and fire with fire are to preserve, expand, deliver, share, and educate everyone globally — facilitating, also, that everyone become completely versed re these arts of learner and teacher — in the virtues of what i have seen in sweden these months:

a community spirit built on the absolute sovereignty of what we all hope are ultimately the nation’s most thinking citizens. and with this i mean … everyone in their absolute diversity and dignity to be enabled to express themselves of this diversity.

we MUST, similarly, trust that human beings will prefer their innate humanity over what we see in ukraine, in london’s richest money-laundering centres, in china, in places of similar authoritarianism across the globe — just so many, too many, far too many.

but in order for a human being to prefer humanity over inhumanity when the choice presents itself, we also MUST give the humanity we want to flower the tools to make it possible for all people to FEEL that it’s SAFE TO BE GOOD.

which is why i say: nation-building and citizen-building have to be accompanied by fighting crime and ensuring global security in the ways i will never stop advocating. ways which, to date, we have absolutely never pursued.

i hope this is ok. i hope for many reasons.

and i am always open to debate, to new ideas, to restructuring it all, if the evidence says it must be so.

but i also hold true to the reality that no one believed anything i said for twenty, and maybe more, years … but twenty at least.

and so i cry now not for me, but for the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions too, of other human beings who still aren’t believed in just the same way because we knowingly, negligently, make it possible for criminals (and all similar — including those who advantage themselves of loopholes and zemiological processes multiple) to be far more creative and nonconformist in their criminality than we have dared — ever CARED! — to be in our battle against the same.

one final thought:

just reconsider this.

just one more time.

why are criminals the strongest link in their criminality whilst the security industry consistently sustains the rest of us humans must be the weakest link in security?

• https://www.secrecy.plus/fire

it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s easier to monetise a widely imposed, machine-based counterforce to criminality than it is to integrate machines closely and sympathetically with the actual needs of the most competent, existent crimefighters we already have.

finding themselves, it’s true, not only having to fight the rampant criminality that leads directly to authoritarian russia and ukraine but also the #it- and #ai-#tech which their manufacturers utterly refuse, even today, especially today, to make supportive of humans as we actually are.

would it?

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.