cross fired by katharine eastman
oh yes indeed well but no maybe and anyway as I have started to notice the New Forest seems to be putting on lots of events for groups to march about and look at birds and trees and grasses and deer and yesterday it was another turn for the trees - a friend and I joined a group of about 15 people at Careys Manor in Brockenhurst and we were led by two people in identical green uniforms and we marched around Hollands Wood and beyond and looked again at the trees. Our first little lecture happened in front of Balmer Lawn Hotel as we were told about the dung beetles that sort out the horse and deer pooh and the beetles are eaten by loads of rare birds and I must admit that I am selling-out and getting boring because I found it quite interesting.
I won't go on about our three-hour walk (dawdle) because if anyone is interested in anything nowadays there is the internet to fill that interest and basically no one is truly interested in anything because nothing is very interesting. Or so I have found. But yesterday was for me much more interesting for the dilemma I found myself in later and the way I handled it. After the walk all of us returned to Careys Manor and sat along a long communal table and ate cheese on toast. My friend and I arrived last at the table and had little choice where to sit. I sat at the very end of the table, looking all the way down it to my friend who sat facing me about 70 feet away. During the walk my efforts to break the ice with the strangers around me had met with zero success and not for the first time I noticed that people tend to drift away from me and my friend.
Now here was a captive audience for me to again try out my charming witty personality. Believe me dear reader I did my very best, I tried the smallest of small talk, I tried middling sort of talk, I tried the highest level talking that has ever been heard outside of Socrates' boudoir. I was just met with shy gasps and one-word replies and nervousness and basically people just sitting in silence and chewing food like cows in the field. This was galling because further down the table, towards my friend, everyone was talking gaily. Not for the first time lately it seems that I'd found myself at the silent near-dead end of the table.
And not for the first time I disgraced myself. I am always very open about my history of alcoholism and the fact that I do still drink occasionally. It is now about 6 months since I touched a drop and I find that once I get past Day One Hundred (of sobriety) I get very ooomphy and confident and outspoken and actually a bit of an arrogant annoying cunt and I no longer care what other people think of me. During a general little quite pause at the table my friend shouted across to me how I was and I replied that I was totally fucking bored. This didn't go down well, though no one called me out about it. I felt myself going into that routine where Reginald Perrin is giving a works talk ("parsnips") just before he does a runner, and he asks what life is all about - all that stuff - as he finds himself surrounded by corporatist clones who so sheep-like go to the slaughter of their own oomph.
Most of us were fairly old, most of us had just a few years left, most of us had these precious final few chances to have a laugh, to say what we think, to be happy, to get stuff off our chest .... but no .... everyone around me just wanted to sit in silence and chew the chewy cheesy horrible food. I became very rude. I won't go into details. My friend and I were asked to leave. We left. My friend knows it is useless to tell me off because I am one of those arrogant immature arsey twats who gets all defensive .... except this time I did listen to her and I did think about her point of view - that I'd gone OTT.
She pointed out that I'd had no idea what problems/etc the people around me might be having and that I should just be more gentle, kind, accepting, tolerant. I actually agreed with her. A bit. I had gone too far. But this isn't the first time lately that I have found myself exasperated by the sullen stupid silently-suffering timidity of those around me - not the first time that I had just wanted to metaphorically shake people out of their living-death obedient nullity - (genuinely) possibly even to stir them up so much that someone would take a swing at me - just SOMETHING that would wake them the fuck up. Fuck it - are there any other LIVING people out there ? I really would love to meet them. Everywhere I find myself surrounded by nervous conventional cunts who just want to look at their phones the whole time - yes that was the inevitable mention of phones here in this gentle rant - and it's probably not the phones' fault - the people who live inside the phoney world would be just as zomboid if phones had never been invented.
It's the fact that I have been sober for so long and have regained the natural oomph that all of us would share if we didn't drink and/or eat too much sugar/carbs and/or if we didn't get fat and slow and/or if we didn't choose to believe everything we're told and/or sit forever watching TV or staring at this computer screen in front of me now or or or or a million other things. Truly, at moments like yesterday I believe that the West has killed the spirit of 99% of its people - they're not worth saving in hospitals, they've never been alive - hurrah if my rudeness and rage at the apathetic obediently-miserable cuntiness of almost everyone around me occasionally encourages someone to turn round and say something real to me or even just anything at all.
photo Hollands Wood yesterday
