A simple snap of the wrist: short fiction

Marcy couldn't remember the first time she was 
jerked off-balance by a simple snap of the wrist.

The technique might have been perfected at home, when she was growing up. As the TV ad for the free yoyo in the box of Malto-Meal said: "Yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-YO-yo-yo" (to the tune of the Irish Washerwoman). It wasn't so remarkable then, as her sister Molly was thirteen and Marcy had just been born. It isn't very difficult to jerk a six-pound newborn on a string so it will dance, dance, dance on your hand like a malformed little doll.

This was her not-chosen environment for years. Everything about her was criticized, then the criticism was turned back on her: 

"Oh, you should stop being so self-critical." 

"For God's sake, when are you going to develop some confidence?" 

Her sister Molly, already an adult, played with her like a doll, exclaimed over her, then dumped her down in her crib and went out on a date.

Not to blame her, she was only a teenager, but it got much worse as she grew. Marcy was left in the living room with Tom, her sister's 30-year-old married boy friend, and both of them were drunk (drunkenness being encouraged when she was 15). The inevitable groping would go on in the dark, then when Molly found out, she would stare acid daggers of fury at her and say, 

"So, you want to go sit with my boy friend in there and romance him? Who do you think you are, anyway? What kind of slut would do that?" 

Yank, yank, yank.

Marcy made a life for herself, but it was hard, and her "craziness" was often remarked on, as if her sister had nothing to do with it.  Her "wedding present" was a statement, accompanied by a hard-eyed stare: "Gee, it must be great to have your whole life all figured out at age 19." Called on it later, Molly looked incredulous, said she didn't remember saying it, and looked at Marcy accusingly: how could she even think she could say something that mean? 

When Marcy moved from a small town to Vancouver, she expressed anxiety to her sister that she might not be able to adjust to such a leap. Her response, accompanied by  a shrug and a cool, matter-of-fact expression, was, "Then I guess you'll self-destruct."

At some point Marcy came to wonder: what is it about all this family poison that reproduces itself in your friends, the people who are supposed to be on your side?  At first Roseanne seemed fine, better than fine, and Marcy began to believe she had found her missing piece, the good sister she never had while growing up. But over time, the subtle jerking began. 

Roseanne, who very quickly became her best friend, soon moved away to a small town, and immediately began to believe she was terminally ill. She had no symptoms and refused to see a doctor. Marcy became frantic with worry and flew out to stay with her. Finally coerced into seeking medical help, she found out there was nothing wrong with her at all. But no one addressed the empty abyss inside her, and Marcy stifled the grumble of resentment that she had been sent out on a desperate rescue call for nothing.

Over time, more and more things happened, gradually insinuating themselves, sneaking in while no one noticed, things that were distressingly tangled, snarled up like a ball of useless marionette strings. The writing ambition she shared with Marcy when they met was soon abandoned, or at least denied. When she asked her friend if she had considered writing a column for the local paper (and later, keeping a blog), she made a sour, incredulous face and asked "What would I write about?", as if she had suggested climbing Mount Everest or calculating the value of pi (or, more likely, doing something incredibly stupid and even offensive). Her disdain covered a failed ambition, and Marcy thought she had seen that somewhere before.

Over the years, things escalated. Most of them weren't so much attacks as examples of "here, take this and fix it" or, at least, "listen to all of this unproductive ranting until you feel weary and sick of it and get nothing in return". And there was definitely a sense of entitlement. "Just give it to good old Marcy, I can always count on her." And then, that inevitable statement: "Oh, I feel a lot better now!"

After many years of attempts, Marcy wrote a novel about a silent film star, was excited about it - never thought she'd write a novel again - and showed Roseanne one of his short movies, wondering what her opinion would be. She looked at her with her head tilted at a strange angle and said, "Was he gay?" - then changed the subject.

The gay thing came up more than once, until Marcy realized she had never knowingly had any significant contact with a gay person, not because they didn't exist in her town but because she didn't want to.  When Marcy read a book about pianist Oscar Levant and was all bubbly and enthusiastic about it, Roseanne said in a disdainful, somewhat offended tone, "I thought he was gay." End of conversation, which was then steered to her own agenda. Apparently, anyone named Oscar was automatically gay, like Oscar Wilde. The disdain was automatic: let's write him off, shall we? The narrowness of her perception was shocking.

But the worst, and this went on for years and years (and years) was Roseanne's insistence that she should write a sort of hatchet job, a fictionalized expose of Canadian literature: all the petty, arrogant, narcissistic figures, editors, publishers, writers, hangers-on and wanna-be's. 

"Oh, I still think you should write it, Marcy. It would be so great. You could really stick it to those people and expose all their vanities and power-tripping to the public." Over and over again Marcy said, "But that would surely be the end of my career." A few months later she would say it again. She'd say, "But that would surely be the end of my career." A few months later she would say it again. She began to feel like a yo-yo yanked, a mouthpiece for her friend's frustrations as she rubbed her hands together and cheered on the sidelines, not so much for Marcy as for the expression of all her own frustrations coming out of someone else's mouth, risk-free.

Yank, yank, yank.

By this time, everything was externalized; the whole world was her yo-yo, convenient for never taking responsibility. Her public persona was of a warm, earth-motherish figure who took casseroles over to people she could not stand, a "see how nice I am" gesture while seething inwardly and constantly feeling "betrayed". Finally it became a volcano of bile, with Roseanne's "best friend" the only recipient (deemed "safe" because she didn't live there). Marcy saw her friend yanking the string on her disabled husband, cutting him off from his friends because for some reason she didn't approve of them. Yanking her 20-year-old daughter around, saying it would be "better for me if she didn't date" and going crazy with anxiety because she stayed out till midnight with her girl friends. (She said she would be home at 11:00!) 

After a while it was just an accumulation, and Marcy realized her friend was basically lost. Episodes came back to her that were wildly frightful and so dysfunctional that she couldn't get her head around it. She used to call her friend her "sister", and now she realized that she WAS her sister in all but blood, a frightening and even horrifying replication.

She came to see that she had taken on the role of "safe" confessor: safe because she didn't live there and would be sure to keep her mouth shut. But the more distorted and fucked-up Roseanne's observations became, the more she realized that, far from being safe, she was a repository for a twisted reality that bore very little relation to the truth. Thus her friend could say anything she wanted to, knowing Marcy couldn't call her on it; after all, she didn't live there and didn't know what was really going on.

But of course, when she finally stepped back, it was HER fault for ending a perfectly wonderful relationship for no reason and no warning, out of the clear blue sky.  Roseanne honestly didn't seem to know what had happened between them, an infuriating situation, acres of  blank empty oblivion surrounding what used to be - what should have been - a fine and focused mind.

Marcy writes in her journal, trying to get her mind around it all: 

I wonder sometimes how and why it gets so fucked up. It's horrible to see the worst patterns repeat and repeat, to be jerked around by someone who genuinely believes she is kind and giving. Someone with virtually no self-knowledge, but with a rich library of acid criticism of others, a library she does not use so much as push her friends into and lock the door.

Once when she asked Roseanne what happened to her writing ambition, she said, "It went away." This was a bizarre statement, to be sure; not "I gave it up", not "it was too hard", not "I couldn't stand to risk rejection", but "it" "went away", a separate little entity which got up on its little legs and crept out of her life all by itself.

There has been a theme all through their friendship: Roseanne constantly worries, obsesses that people think she's "crazy". Her behaviour in her town is so circumspect as to be stifling, but she won't let herself out of the box. The craziness swirls around and around in a corked bottle like a tiny, concentrated little genie. But if the genie ever emerges, her three wishes ("escape, escape, escape") won't come true.

Or maybe they will! For a long time now Roseanne has been looking up apartments on the internet - for herself, not including her chronically ill husband - secretly, while insisting she will stay in her town "another 10 to 20 years" (meaning, until he dies). Out of a heavy sense of "duty", she is waiting it out, as if drawing chalk-lines on the wall. Marcy sees that the person she had befriended all those years ago has been replaced by a stand-in of near-Stepford proportions, obsessed with what other people want her to be.

She also sees that, aware of it or not, she has been insidiously trying to torpedo her career for a very long time. There is a slightly nasty, vicarious feeling about it, a knee-slapping sense of "wouldn't it be a hoot" (if she alienated every single person who ever helped her publish her three novels). She was an intelligent woman. Didn't she think this through, or was it a deliberate cobra-strike?

Sometimes people outgrow each other, yes, but does it have to be so painful? Does the manipulation have no end? Invisible strings still yank and twist. Roseanne will have to turn back on herself now, but the choice of looking in the mirror is unlikely, as is the chance she will make a real friend in the community that she can actually talk to.

Marcy writes:

I hate it when I end up carrying someone, and it has happened more often than I care to admit. There must be some need in me, some desperation or fear that if I don't pander to that person's sick need, I won't have any friends at all. Probably that's true. It is tremendously hard to deal with and I have been struggling for some time, mostly with anger as more and more memories emerge, along with more and more anger. My sister too sees herself as a benevolent Mother Superior figure, religious, Christian, unconditionally loving and accepting, praying about everything (especially me!) because it makes her look better to herself. The truth is, she doesn't exist. I have wiped her out. Every few years, too cowardly to do this herself, she yo-yos my brother into checking up on me, making a report.  I suddenly remember the Bob Dylan line from Desolation Row:

"When you asked me how I was doing

Was that some kind of joke?"

Some kind of joke. I know that she hopes for one of two responses:

a) That I'll be a total mess, or dead, in which case she will pretend to grieve and tell herself, well, after all, it was inevitable, wasn't it? In spite of all her fervent prayers and  sincere attempts to help, she knew it was going to happen all along.

b) That I'll be doing well, and she will fly into a fury and say, how can she be so horribly selfish when she tried to destroy the family?

Is there winning here? Does it exist?

Still struggling, but no longer in quicksand - more like an insect emerging from a chrysalis - she writes:

Every once in a while I get piss-angry about all this, and my only solace - hell, it's more of a universe than a solace - is the family I have co-created with my husband of over 40 years, the one Molly said I didn't deserve and attained only through a sort of random lottery win.  (Weirdly, she even killed Rob off once, saying "if anything happens to him I'll help you raise the children" - co-opting them at the same time.) I even married into a relatively sane and basically benevolent, loving family who does not drink or use or molest little girls. I am their kin now in every way but blood.

It's not supposed to happen that way, it's the exception, causing my sister to say, no doubt, "Well, you see, nothing happened! Your childhood was fine. Everybody loved you. In fact, they loved you more than you deserved."

Get a big pair of scissors, please. Pinocchio's strings are cut.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

CA-A-A-ALL for Superchicken!

\

These are my first serious gifs of 2014 (under a very loose definition of  "serious"). I started thinking that YouTube must have a lot of very tasty cartoon openings from my youth, but I was disappointed to find that they were either missing, or piss-poor. I couldn't find the original Hoppity Hooper where the frog jumps all over the place, and others didn't even have proper theme songs, if I could find them at all. Many had been taken down: I remember a superb Clyde Crashcup cartoon where Clyde and Leonardo travel to Egypt, and now it's just in Nowheresville. I did find Twinkles the Elephant, but it was a travesty, all of 90 seconds long, with about as much animation as Clutch Cargo. Static is no word for it.

But I DID find Super Chicken!

I remember being crazy about this theme song with its rapid-fire delivery and clever lyrics. I even have a video of Jerry Seinfeld doing this song in front of a bunch of baffled TV executives.

It's not quite as effective without the lyrics (and maybe I should scare them up - excuse me a minute - oh, the internet is wonderful - )

The Super Chicken Theme Lyrics

When you find yourself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin',
(buk, buk, buk, buk)

There is someone waiting,
Who will hurry up and rescue you,
just Call for Super Chicken!
(buk, ACK!)

Fred, if you're afraid you'll have to overlook it,
Besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it
(buk, ack!)

He will drink his super sauce
And throw the bad guys for a loss
And he will bring them in alive and kickin'
(buk, buk, buk, buk)

There is one thing you should learn
When there is no one else to turn to
Call for Super Chicken!
(buk, buk, buk, buk)
Call for Super Chicken!
(buk, ACK!) 

This is my other find, and in superb shape. Who could forget Tennessee Tuxedo, with Don Adams in the role he was born to play: not Maxwell Smart, but a penguin. The walrus sidekick Chumleigh was a nice touch, along with the guy hunting them with a rifle (was that Commander McBragg or what?). The theme song was the best: "Come on and see, see, see, Tennessee Tuxedo. . ." Yes, Tennessee Tuxedo and his "tales".

If these cartoons have a similar flavor to them, that's because they were all cranked out (inexpensively - can't you tell?) by the same animators, Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who did Rocky and Bullwinkle. Back then you didn't have to spend much to make wildly popular cartoons, as witness Hanna-Barbera and their primitive creations. In addition to the Flintstones, Jetsons and the immortal Scooby-Doo, H-B also pumped out  Adam Ant, Secret Squirrel, Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Lippy the Lion and Hardy-har-har, Snooper and Blabber, Yakky Doodle, Ricochet Rabbit, Punkin Puss and Mushmouse, and let's not forget "that gorilla in the window", Magilla.)

Frustrated in my attempts to reproduce the gloriously cheap cartoons of my youth with gifs, I had to reach farther back, and blacker-and-whiter too. There used to be a show that came on, oh, "whenever", sort of like My Friend Flicka which literally made my heart pound, I loved it so much. This was a British thing called Tales of the Riverbank, a loose ripoff of The Wind in the Willows, that kept playing endlessly in Canada in various guises, at one point called Once Upon a Hamster. It featured a British narrator and a bunch of animals which were given different (all irritating) voices. This appears to be the very first episode, and it's complete in only 13 minutes, so maybe they had two of them in a half-hour. I like the interplay between hamster, and frog, and hamster, and frog, and hamster, and frog. . . In the wild, that frog would have snapped his tongue out and whipped that little vermin into the half-circle of his gaping mouth in less than a second. Maybe it was like people who own an anaconda or something, having to go through a lot of live mice in a week.

ADDENDA: I found the Tennessee Tuxedo lyrics, more complex than I remember, with more verses and even a sort of (gack) philosophy of "learning something new". We do NOT want to learn from cartoons. Period. Ever.

Come on and see see see
Tennessee Tuxedo.
See see see
Tennessee Tuxedo.
He will be
Parachuting for you pleasure
Sailing seas in search of treasure.
Anything so he can measure
Up to men
That's Tennessee Tuxedo
A small penguin
Who tries but can't succeed-o
Though he may fail
As he vies for fame and glory
Still he tries in each new story tale.
Join along with me
The club of Tennessee
We'll try each day through
To learn something new
To better you and me.
Come on and see see see
Tennessee Tuxedo.
See see see
Tennessee Tuxedo.
Though he may fail
As he vies for fame and glory
Still he tries in each new story tale.
That's Tennesee Tuxedo and his tales

(I realize I have disincluded so many - Don Adams' later, perhaps more famous character, Inspector Gadget; Underdog, voiced by Wally Cox; Linus the Lionhearted, with Sheldon Leonard. . . "and", as they say,"many more". There was even a bizarre sort of sendup of the hamster shows which ran when Caitlin was about five. She would scream with delight whenever it came on (if it came on at all). It was called Tumbletown Tales, starring a very fat cream-colored hamster called Tumbleweed. Old hamster shows never die, they just change form and carry on.)

Prayer of Forgiveness: right or wrong?

And so, another year, this one my birth year, the Year of the Horse. 

It swings around in a very wide arc from 2002, which was actually one of the

 best years of my life.

By 2005, I was at the bottom, on my belly, wondering if I would even survive.

I was never the same after that.

But I am glad I didn't die, as there was more living to do. 

As it turned out. 

But it

 was nothing like before. Now is a shedding, not a gathering up. I cling to

 Ecclesiastes, wondering who wrote it. Mr. Ecclesiastes? These days, the world

 seems to be ruled by that half-assed philosopher, 

Mediocrates.

I came across this on Facebook. I usually hate these things, whatever they're called, Little Cards of Wisdom that tell you what to do. They never suggest: they TELL, just assuming you've got it all wrong and need a lesson. 

But this one stood out. This is one that few people will even approach in a lifetime, and I am not even sure I agree with all of it.

If forgiveness means "it's OK what you did", then I do not forgive. I do not forgive the several men who molested me when I was a child and a teenager. 

If forgiveness means "I don't mind it, I'm over it, it doesn't affect me any more," then I do not forgive.

So what does it mean?

People say it's a  "letting go". If I stay angry, I'll burn the rubber down and run on bald tires (or something). So if I just let go of the memory and the damage and the way it all derailed my life, perhaps permanently, then everything will be OK.

I "should" forgive. I will feel so much better if I do.

This is some sort of psychological/spiritual imperative these days.

I don't know how to do this.

I thought I did.

But then, it has that line in it, "through their own confusions". The men who molested me were having a good time and wanted to grab someone's ass and rub up against me, and it didn't matter if it was the 14-year-old sister of the host of the party. They weren't "confused", they were drunk and lecherous and oblivious to my pain.

If they had it to do over again, they'd still do it, because the fact is, they enjoyed it and were not concerned with how much it might damage me. They did not think of that at all.

So do I forgive them? What does that mean? "It's OK that you very nearly brought about my suicide"? It will never be OK.

What IS OK is that I have a life. 

In spite of an incredible amount of personal pain, 

I have reclaimed it. I don't entirely understand this. I don't want to hate. I feel sorry for those sorry sons-of-bitches. I pity them (and a couple of them are dead), though I also feel considerable contempt.

Feeling sorry for, and feeling pity - are these things closer to "forgiveness", or to "hate"? This may be as far as I ever go on that glorious, impossibly idealized Buddhist path.

(But that last part, well. This is something I need so badly, 

I can't even tell you.)

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Happy New Year, Harold!

 

Odds n' ends, fresh today

 

Sums up my feelings about 2013. Keep watching it for five seconds and your eyeballs will fall out.

A Harold Lloyd whatever. Minifilm.

I've started making this jewelry, see. . . 

Today I found this, the last of a set of three (I think). What movie it is, I don't know, but Roy Brooks is in it, so it must be relatively early. Candid shots on Harold's movie sets are hard to find. Harold seems to be cutting up as usual, but probably for the cameras. Mildred looks like she'd just like to get back to business. Roy Brooks is a bit of a puzzle - I'd like to try to find out more about him, but I'm not sure it's there.

This reminds us once again that Harold Lloyd looked NOTHING like Harold Lloyd. How tiny Mildred looks between them! The men's protective attitude is obvious, but who wouldn't want to protect Mildred Davis?

Roy Brooks appears to be holding a large bottle of milk. Presumably, the same one Harold was drinking out of in the first shot. No nipple in it, though.

Closer shot. She looks cold. Not sure if Harold is watching an airplane ("Plane! Plane!"), or just throwing a peanut up in the air.

I love the titles - love them, love them! They seem to be made of black velvet and make great Facebook covers. These are all from Dr. Jack, never one of my favorites until I watched it again recently. He is sexier in that one than in any of the others - relaxed, confident, and looking closer to his "real self" because for once he doesn't play a goof. He's a country doctor, a respected member of his community, and looking after one hot dish who isn't really sick to begin with! Does it get any better than playing doctor with Harold?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

'Graceful Ghost Rag' by William Bolcom - Barron Ryan

2014: you say you want a resolution

“We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and in others.” - Albert Camus

If anybody's following this blog, they'll be aware that I'm not a big fan of Crimbo Limbo, that dead and empty time between Christmas and New Years.

I mean, what are you supposed to DO during that time? Sit there eating dried-up turkey because somebody's gotta use it up? Take down Christmas ornaments (and what could be more depressing than un-trimming a tree and un-decorating a house?). Realize how fat you are?

It's a time when we're supposed to make "resolutions", which when I was a kid I called "New Years Revolutions", with images of fiery overthrow, exploding bombs, anarchy. But not much exploded, and not much changed.

That sense of a fresh virgin page, of a whole book of virgin pages upon which nothing is yet written, seems to snag a lot of people this time of year. It means we can start all over again. If our lives are lousy, if they're threadbare, if we're overweight or a smoker, if we haven't found "Mr. Right", if we hate our jobs, hate our friends, etc., THIS year it's going to be different. THIS year we'll change ourselves and the world around us, page by virgin page, for 365-1/4 days until the next chance swings around.

Right.

I have an old-fashioned desk calendar on my kitchen counter. I am surprised they still make them, in fact. The refills can only be found at Staples. On this calendar I scrawl everything. Doctor's appointments, phone numbers, recipes, complaints, etc. etc. One year I decided to do it differently. I would write everything in pencil, and if I had fulfilled a task at the end of the day, I would erase it.

At the end of a week or so - no, three or four days - no, TWO days or less - I realized I had erased my life. I immediately went back to the ugly, messy scrawl I had to scribble over and cross out again and again.

We DON'T start again - not really - although I am very big on personal transformation (though you'd never know it from the whinyness of some of my blog posts). But it's more of a process, and it happens on its own time, usually when we're not looking, a unicorn appearing in the corner of your eye.

I am a huge fan of Bob Dylan's philosophy-in-a-nutshell, a single song line that speaks volumes about the human struggle: "He not busy being born is busy dying." I wrote a much longer version of this post and decided to stow it (though not delete it) for the time being, as it could very well be misinterpreted. This was the year I had to leave a significant friendship behind, though I am sure I am perceived as the "heavy", the person who abandoned my friend for no reason at all except, perhaps, meanness. Since I know she won't read this, and I won't mention her name (and no one in her town knows me anyway), I feel I can proceed.

When we met, we had an equal commitment to the writing life. She had taken even more writing courses than I had, and was committed to writing a novel. But then the family moved away to a small town. I have every reason to believe she hated this, but would never admit it and said nothing.

After a few stabs at writing for the local paper, her passion dimmed. Her fantasies of escaping the whole thing (searching for apartments on-line by the hour) finally collided with a grim, joyless sense of duty, though she insisted she would never leave her community until her (disabled) husband was dead. 

It all culminated in a long, sour, bilious rant that made my head spin. She was clutching hurt to herself, playing the martyr brilliantly. Somehow or other she had learned the subtle art of making everyone around her feel bad. There was also a sense that it was perfectly OK for her to unload all her frustrations on me, thus making herself feel a whole lot better, and me, a lot worse.

I don't know what happened to my friend except that she stuffed her passion into a closet and threw away the key. It's still there hiding under the bed, rotting. When I asked her about her writing recently, she said, "It went away" (an external agent which somehow stood up and left under its own steam). 

Abandonment of the urgency of the creative need can turn a person permanently sour. In a way, it's the abandonment of self, and if we do that, there will be hell to pay. "But I don't have time to write." "But I'm afraid to send it out." "But I won't make any money." Yes but, yes but, yes but. (This is exactly the kind of attitude my friend disdains in others: "When are they going to stop making excuses?" But then, she disdains so many things in others.)

I remember staying up until 2:00 a.m. when my children were babies, writing plays and short stories that, of course, went nowhere. But when I moved to a small town in Alberta, I walked into the newspaper office and offered my services as a weekly columnist. They said yes, and I have been publishing my work ever since.

I'm not painting myself as superior. I'm saying that we MUST make our own needs, passions, talents, a priority, or we can end up puking bile on our best friend, who is finally forced to go away. If you take no risks, you take the biggest risk of all - that you will lose yourself, implode. It's a choice, unfortunately, choosing safety over fear. It's hard for me to forget my friend, and it shocks me to think that I just don't like her now, that I don't like what she has become. It isn't a fight - it's profound alienation, and an awful realization that I have been used.

This has become pretty long after all, but I guess I have to post it. My own life hasn't exactly been brave. I haven't been a Valkyrie charging through the heavens or a large-breasted Amazon (except that I order stuff from them a lot). But I am proud of the fact that through all the toils and snares of my life, which included grappling with addiction and dealing with a lot of illness of the type we don't like to talk about, I have kept the writing going. It has had an urgency which I felt I could not ignore or repress. And I TOOK the bloody risks: I have a third novel coming out this year, for God's sake, and can you imagine how - oh, never mind. You can guess.

I don't know what will happen, but I do know I have to stay clear of my former friend. I am not willing to receive the curdled, caustic sludge of abandoned dreams. It is simply wrong for both of us (for how can she ever face herself if I am busy supporting her dysfunction?). I have to move forward into another year - hey, it's nearly 2014, the Year of the Horse, and an "even" year (for I simply hate odd numbers, spiky and asymmetrical). Though if you add up the numerals, you get 7. Never mind, it's lucky for other people for some obscure numerological reason. 

The Year of the Horse is my birth year, which makes me a Horse. I have had a mostly-unfulfilled passion for horses my whole life. I simply can't get near a horse now - it's impractical - though those couple of years when I owned a horse as a girl now seem like a slice of Paradise. Long, lazy days riding beside the railroad tracks. I might as well get behind Chinese astrology because it's about as accurate as anything else in predicting the future. And if I do get behind it, it means it's "my year" - finally, my turn - my turn for WHAT, we don't know yet. But I know I will not hide my light under a bushel, nor shove my dreams under the bed.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Here we are in Crimbo Limbo, and it would not be so bad if I didn't have certain medical issues that have been "postponed" until after the holidays. I have been asked to wait "two or three days" to refill certain vital prescriptions because "we ran out" (and no one told me they couldn't refill it, so now I can't even take it somewhere else and avoid all this bullshit). I have been put on hold, but my pain and discomfort hasn't, and I won't be able to reach my doctor for a full week. So I am basically screwed, and no one is listening to my complaint because they just don't think it's very important. More than that, they have that hazed, vacant look of too much plum pudding and booze. Their mouths are hanging open and they are drooling slightly. It's Crimbo Limbo, that deadly week at the end of the year when everything just stops functioning.

But I found this, and I think it's good. I am so preoccupied with other things that this blog is running a bit thin lately. Maybe it will go on that way, who knows. I need to get feeling better and moving forward instead of sideways.

Russell Brand: my life without drugs

Russell Brand has not used drugs for 10 years. He has a job, a house, a cat, good friends. But temptation is never far away. He wants to help other addicts, but first he wants us to feel compassion for those affected

The Guardian, Saturday 9 March 2013

'I cannot accurately convey to you the efficiency of heroin in neutralising pain.' Photograph: Mark Nolan/WireImage

The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday. I had received "an inconvenient truth" from a beautiful woman. It wasn't about climate change – I'm not that ecologically switched on – she told me she was pregnant and it wasn't mine.

I had to take immediate action. I put Morrissey on in my car as an external conduit for the surging melancholy, and as I wound my way through the neurotic Hollywood hills, the narrow lanes and tight bends were a material echo of the synaptic tangle where my thoughts stalled and jammed.

Morrissey, as ever, conducted a symphony, within and without and the tidal misery burgeoned. I am becoming possessed. The part of me that experienced the negative data, the self, is becoming overwhelmed, I can no longer see where I end and the pain begins. So now I have a choice.

I cannot accurately convey to you the efficiency of heroin in neutralising pain. It transforms a tight, white fist into a gentle, brown wave. From my first inhalation 15 years ago, it fumigated my private hell and lay me down in its hazy pastures and a bathroom floor in Hackney embraced me like a womb.

This shadow is darkly cast on the retina of my soul and whenever I am dislodged from comfort my focus falls there. It is 10 years since I used drugs or drank alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and generally a bright outlook. The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational.

Recently for the purposes of a documentary on this subject I reviewed some footage of myself smoking heroin that my friend had shot as part of a typically exhibitionist attempt of mine to get clean. I sit wasted and slumped with an unacceptable haircut against a wall in another Hackney flat (Hackney is starting to seem like part of the problem) inhaling fizzy, black snakes of smack off a scrap of crumpled foil. When I saw the tape a month or so ago, what is surprising is that my reaction is not one of gratitude for the positive changes I've experienced but envy at witnessing an earlier version of myself unencumbered by the burden of abstinence. I sat in a suite at the Savoy hotel, in privilege, resenting the woeful ratbag I once was, who, for all his problems, had drugs. That is obviously irrational.

The mentality and behaviour of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help they have no hope.
This is the reason I have started a fund within Comic Relief, Give It Up. I want to raise awareness of, and money for, abstinence-based recovery. It was Kevin Cahill's idea, he is the bloke who runs Comic Relief. He called me when he read an article I wrote after Amy Winehouse died. Her death had a powerful impact on me I suppose because it was such an obvious shock, like watching someone for hours through a telescope, seeing them advance towards you, fist extended with the intention of punching you in the face. Even though I saw it coming, it still hurt when it eventually hit me.

What was so painful about Amy's death is that I know that there is something I could have done. I could have passed on to her the solution that was freely given to me. Don't pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn't easy: it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring. Not to mention that the whole infrastructure of abstinence based recovery is shrouded in necessary secrecy. There are support fellowships that are easy to find and open to anyone who needs them but they eschew promotion of any kind in order to preserve the purity of their purpose, which is for people with alcoholism and addiction to help one another stay clean and sober.

Without these fellowships I would take drugs. Because, even now, the condition persists. Drugs and alcohol are not my problem, reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.

If this seems odd to you it is because you are not an alcoholic or a drug addict. You are likely one of the 90% of people who can drink and use drugs safely. I have friends who can smoke weed, swill gin, even do crack and then merrily get on with their lives. For me, this is not an option. I will relinquish all else to ride that buzz to oblivion. Even if it began as a timid glass of chardonnay on a ponce's yacht, it would end with me necking the bottle, swimming to shore and sprinting to Bethnal Green in search of a crack house. I look to drugs and booze to fill up a hole in me; unchecked, the call of the wild is too strong. I still survey streets for signs of the subterranean escapes that used to provide my sanctuary. I still eye the shuffling subclass of junkies and dealers, invisibly gliding between doorways through the gutters. I see that dereliction can survive in opulence; the abundantly wealthy with destitution in their stare.

Spurred by Amy's death, I've tried to salvage unwilling victims from the mayhem of the internal storm and I am always, always, just pulled inside myself. I have a friend so beautiful, so haunted by talent that you can barely look away from her, whose smile is such a treasure that I have often squandered my sanity for a moment in its glow. Her story is so galling that no one would condemn her for her dependency on illegal anesthesia, but now, even though her life is trying to turn around despite her, even though she has genuine opportunities for a new start, the gutter will not release its prey. The gutter is within. It is frustrating to watch. It is frustrating to love someone with this disease.

A friend of mine's brother cannot stop drinking. He gets a few months of sobriety and his inner beauty, with the obstacles of his horrible drunken behaviour pushed aside by the presence of a programme, begins to radiate. His family bask relieved, in the joy of their returned loved one, his life gathers momentum but then he somehow forgets the price of this freedom, returns to his old way of thinking, picks up a drink and Mr Hyde is back in the saddle. Once more his brother's face is gaunt and hopeless. His family blame themselves and wonder what they could have done differently, racking their minds for a perfect sentiment; wrapped up in the perfect sentence, a magic bullet to sear right through the toxic fortress that has incarcerated the person they love and restore them to sanity. The fact is, though, that they can't, the sufferer must, of course, be a willing participant in their own recovery. They must not pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. Just don't pick up, that's all.

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had "brought it on themselves"?

Peter Hitchens is a vocal adversary of mine on this matter. He sees this condition as a matter of choice and the culprits as criminals who should go to prison. I know how he feels. I bet I have to deal with a lot more drug addicts than he does, let's face it. I share my brain with one, and I can tell you firsthand, they are total fucking wankers. Where I differ from Peter is in my belief that if you regard alcoholics and drug addicts not as bad people but as sick people then we can help them to get better. By we, I mean other people who have the same problem but have found a way to live drug-and-alcohol-free lives. Guided by principles and traditions a programme has been founded that has worked miracles in millions of lives. Not just the alcoholics and addicts themselves but their families, their friends and of course society as a whole.

What we want to do with Give It Up is popularise a compassionate perception of drunks and addicts, and provide funding for places at treatment centres where they can get clean using these principles. Then, once they are drug-and-alcohol-free, to make sure they retain contact with the support that is available to keep them clean. I know that as you read this you either identify with it yourself or are reminded of someone who you love who cannot exercise control over substances. I want you to know that the help that was available to me, the help upon which my recovery still depends is available.

I wound down the hill in an alien land, Morrissey chanted lonely mantras, the pain quickly accumulated incalculably, and I began to weave the familiar tapestry that tells an old, old story. I think of places I could score. Off Santa Monica there's a homeless man who I know uses gear. I could find him, buy him a bag if he takes me to score.

I leave him on the corner, a couple of rocks, a couple of $20 bags pressed into my sweaty palm. I get home, I pull out the foil, neatly torn. I break the bottom off a Martell miniature. I have cigarettes, using makes me need fags. I make a pipe for the rocks with the bottle. I lay a strip of foil on the counter to chase the brown. I pause to reflect and regret that I don't know how to fix, only smoke, feeling inferior even in the manner of my using. I see the foil scorch. I hear the crackle from which crack gets it's name. I feel the plastic fog hit the back of my yawning throat. Eyes up. Back relaxing, the bottle drops and the greedy bliss eats my pain. There is no girl, there is no tomorrow, there is nothing but the bilious kiss of the greedy bliss.

Even as I spin this beautifully dreaded web, I am reaching for my phone. I call someone: not a doctor or a sage, not a mystic or a physician, just a bloke like me, another alcoholic, who I know knows how I feel. The phone rings and I half hope he'll just let it ring out. It's 4am in London. He's asleep, he can't hear the phone, he won't pick up. I indicate left, heading to Santa Monica. The ringing stops, then the dry mouthed nocturnal mumble: "Hello. You all right mate?"

He picks up.

And for another day, thank God, I don't have to.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm 

Lost Elephant Babies