Sunshine

Sunshine
Originally uploaded by Bella the Cat.

Dove Grey Sky

A dove grey sky
My pigmentation
Has leaked
Into the stratosphere
And the heavy evening air
Is oppressive
It bears down on me
And the chuchgoers
They babble in tongues
For they are the enemies
Of mercy.

Eternal Differences

'Don't you see that this all leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences - eternal differences - planted by God in a single family so that there may always be colour.'

Howards End, E.M. Forster

I have identified two new mental illnesses: pathological nostalgia (the fixed idea that the past was always, always much better than the present; that it was not only another country but also a Utopia). And Polarisation Complex: the pathological need to divide the world into two neat halves - be it by gender, race, creed or sexuality. I do hope the pharmaceutical companies come up with a cure for these newly identified illnesses soon.

Life is a whirl. A mad, mad whirl. I saw a council official last week about Little Miss Pyromaniac but I got the impression that she was a mere cog in a wheel, sent to temporarily placate me. Meanwhile LMP continues to crash and bang upstairs. Want your flat refurbished? Want that new kitchen? Then set fire to it! Doug was present at my interview and the official waltzed off to make her report. I saw a light on in the window of my neighbour from hell - they've only gone and artexed her ceiling - crime really does pay. My mother, as always, is urging me not to rock the boat. Well, sorry, Mother, I don't take after you. I am not naturally masochistic. I do not suffer from Terminal Doormat Syndrome.

In the meantime my father is very ill.

And on that uplifting note...

That's all folks!

The Bureaucrat's Betrayal

A decade ago
In a university town
It was 0ver
I was bereft
There was nothing left

And this small city too vast
Even for me..............

So I stepped into your office
And words exploded in my brain
And Serendipity was to dictate
What followed, of that I was certain.

So I stepped beyond the threshold
And the man to whom I was introduced
Patted by hands and covered me in chocolate
Which I later used for finger painting
On the Public Ward.

You took me aside
You promised me the world
Or at least a fragment of it
That is all I require, I replied

And a decade on
I have my fragment
And the first Mrs Rochester
Bleeds above me
And the psuedo-messiah
Leads his disciples in prayer below me

How many times has the world turned
Since we first met - a decade, I think
And now you fail to acknowledge me
And you turn away. You harden against me

And nothing has changed
For either of us
And perhaps that is at the core
Of your bitterness

And I step out into the small city
A city still too vast for me

My Week

So what has my week been like? Strange, surreal, frustrating. A week of banging my head against a solid wall of bureaucracy until it bled. On Monday morning I went to see the 'eating disorder' specialist. What a waste of time that was. As you can guess I was not the good little girl who sat in the corner. And, as you can imagine, this probably will not go in my favour. She concluded the meeting by saying she would recommend Zyprexa. More meds then. Later the afternoon I grew so tired of Little Miss Pyromaniac's crashing and banging that I marched down to the council office to demand an explanation. The reception I got was hostile to say the least. My own ex-boyfriend (who works there as a housing advisor would not even speak to me. So much for loyalty.) The officious little man stood over me and told me that if I had any suspicions I should go to the police. I said, surely that should be your job. Then I was ushered into another part of the building where a woman uttered words of pseudo-sympathy and took notes. The odd thing is they (the 'authorities') are behaving as if the whole thing is my fault - the 'blame the victim syndrome' rears its hideous head once again. What is one supposed to do to be heard around here? Oh, I know, set fire to one's flat. Aggression and bullying pay, right?

Okay, if that's the way they want to play it....
Meanwhile, Bertha Mason is still living above me. A terrifying thought as she managed to burn the Rochester family seat to the ground.

Streets of London

Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
with his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news

So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind

Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She's no time for talking,
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags.

Chorus

In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven,
Same old man is sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his tea-cup,
Each tea last an hour
Then he wanders home alone

Chorus

And have you seen the old man
Outside the seaman's mission
Memory fading with
The medal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city,
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care

(Don McClean)

Sleep

I am too terrified to sleep.
I am terrified because there is an arsonist living above me. I hear her banging and crashing. She is not even trying to disguise her presence. She is not even embarrassed about what she has done. I have telephoned the council (yet again) and have received no response. They are not interested. They have implied that I am overreacting, that I am the one who is at fault.

Yet again: Perpetrator: 10, Victim: 0.

Am I surprised?

Well, yes, actually. I shouldn't be but I am.

The prospect of throwing myself off Hanover Court is becoming increasingly enticing.

Perpetrator: 200, Victim: -200

'And I think to myself, what a wonderful world'

'I can see clearly now the rain has gone'...wonderful music to die to.

I am to see the ED specialist today. She'd better be good. Damned good.

No More Witches

All this darkness
All this darkness gathering
As the rain falls
And the floodwaters rise
And our crops are destroyed
And there are no more witches
And there are no more witches
For us to burn

And so we create them
And then we seek them out
And then we magnify them
And we rub our hands against the warmth
Of the flames, as we reduce them to ashes

And yet the floodwaters still rise
And yet the darkness still gathers
It gathers
It gathers

You'll laugh

You'll laugh and laugh and laugh some more. You'll roll around on the floor laughing. You'll die laughing. The woman who deliberately set fire to her own flat back in January after having unsuccessfully done so three times before (once when her baby was in the flat) is back, not just in our neighbourhood, but in the very flat in which she started the fire. She is now living above me once again. Great, a homicidal maniac below and an arsonist above and a pyrophobe in the middle. And when I mentioned this to the council official, his response was, 'Can't you find somewhere else to live?'

Well, fuck that.

I'm not that selfish.

I won't let anyone else go through what I've been though.

I was greeted by a perplexed silence on the other side of the phone.

'Rest assured, I will do everything in my power to stop this. Everything.'

Little Mad Girls

Those little mad girls
Are such a delight to treat
So alarming
And yet oh so charming
He lays his calming
Hand on their brows
Electricity passes through them
Destroying the monsters
That lie within
Unsuitable notions, he says,
Are the road to madness
My dears.

New Orleans

I am not the only person to be disgusted by the ugly, triumphalist (is that even a word), gloating way in which the European media is covering the catastrophe in New Orleans. (What part of the word 'unprecedented' don't they understand?) I am, as you know, a chronic insomniac and I often find myself listening to Digital Radio's equivalent of that truly dreadful newspaper: The Sun: Sky's TalkSport. One of its 'shock jocks' is an American journalist called Charlie Wolfe and I never thought I would agree with anything that man has to say but I have been proven wrong.

(Will provide appropriate links later.)