The man who walked through hell

Every gay man over a certain age has stories to tell of prejudice, disdain, contempt, unhappiness, loneliness, of being an outsider, of being shunned and excluded.  In my own life, the way I have been treated by straights, by the crackpot religious has scarred me, physically (I am blind in one eye as a result of bullying at school, and I was bullied because I was "effeminate"),  and mentally.  

But mankind is hateful to mankind.  This interesting article tells the story of a man who was imprisoned by the Japanese and forced to endure intolerable things, yet has somehow survived and is happy.  He does what I try to do, which is to focus of the good things.  Life brings good and bad, joys and woes.  This doesn't excuse the vile behaviour of the bigots and the narrow-minded religious fanatics.  But it's how we live that matters.  And to be happy we must count our blessings, not just all the bad things in our lives.

She'll be right

For the first time since the Henrik disaster; since my father-in-law, my best friend's wife and my mother died; since the GFC and all that meant for me and our income--for the first time I feel OK.

People always equate sadness and depression.  But they're not the same at all.  Believe me, I know.  Sadness is pain; it hurts.  It's alive.   Depression is a nothingness, an emptiness, a greyness.  First there was sadness and grief.  Then came depression.  But slowly that greyness has faded.  I won't say I have the energy and joie-de-vivre I had 7 years ago, or when I was young, but I feel  better.  It's been a horrible journey; I've been to hell and back, but I've survived.

I've learnt some good lessons.  I shan't trust love or men again.  I shall go on looking for things to be grateful for, making my little lists each day.  But I shall be content.  Which isn't the same as 'happy' but may be better in the end.  Contentment is far better than depression.

I think I'm going to nuke the secret on-line diary I've been keeping all this time.  It helped when I needed it: somebody to vent to, somebody to let my bitterness and anger and depression out to.  None of my 'friends' helped.   That too is a useful lesson.  Just because I'm no longer depressed doesn't mean I don't remember.  Even if I forgive.

And start saving for our visit to Paris, one day.  I want to see it once again before I die.

Onwards and upwards.

Saturday night thoughts

In The Curse of Chalion (which I will review here one of these days), Bujold says at one point, 'a young woman looking forwards and up not backwards and down'.   It is a characteristic of youth, or at least more fortunate youth, to look forward in the expectation of up.  But surely most ppl my age look back.  And down.

Friends who are gone, for whatever reason.  Failing health.  Things you always thought you would do, but didn't: take the number 1 tram in Budapest, for example; or visit the forests of Washington;  or see Venice; or climb Sneeukop one last time with someone you love.  Things you will now never do.  Failure.  Loss.  The realisation that love is transitory and ... not enough.  The awareness of your own arrogance and folly when you were young and the certainty (given your own experience of life) that you will surely be foolish and  make more mistakes before you die.

The greed and short-sightedness which ignore the inexorable logic of global warming, to postpone as long as possible the necessary and inevitable steps needed to fight it.

Yet such are the ironies of life that your horizons contract as you age, and what you need to make you happy is less.  That is not to say that I don't sometimes find myself staring into the distance filled with melancholy.  Of course I do; life is filled with grief and loss.  Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.  Yet as you look back and down there are simple, ineffable, pleasures: a bowl of home-made mushroom soup.  Music.  The deep love which grows between partners in a marriage.  Family.  The first hope-filled creamy green spikes of the daffodils, knowing before we do that spring is on the way.  I am very conscious after recent health scares that I may not have much more time here.  Yet I am happy.  How odd.

I loves ya

Gratitude

One of the maple trees in our garden

Today I was humbled by a tremendous sense of gratitude.

Someone I know has serious throat and tongue cancer, and has just had an operation to remove these tumours.  She will have to learn to eat and drink all over again.  She has another op this week to remove other tumours, and then the chemo starts.  She's not even 50.

Another friend has a severely disabled daughter, who can only get about in her motorised chair, has to use a mechanical hoist to go to the toilet,  and will always need a carer.

Someone else I know is destitute, homeless and living on charity.

Despite everything, I still have reasonable health, enough money to buy second hand books, a job I enjoy and am good at, a wife and children who love me, and the good luck to live in a country which is safe, prosperous and has free medical care.

I have come to terms with my sexuality after a long journey and feel happy--very happy-- to be who and what I am.

And it's autumn.  My favourite season

Please ignore all previous complaints and grumbles!

I loves ya

So beautiful and heart-warming.  How can anyone think this is wrong?

You know you're bisexual when ...

This morning I woke from a powerful erotic dream of ... my wife.  We were making love, doggie position, and it was, well, very satisfying.  It would not have been a good idea to wake her too, at 5 am, to finish off what my subconscious clearly wanted.  Not a good idea at all.  So I lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking about our life together, nursing a massive hard-on.

The day before, I was woken from another erotic dream, this time with a bloke.  We were in a hotel room, high up, with a view over some city.  He was very handsome, with dark curly hair, pretty much like the bloke in the pic.  Perhaps that was where the dream came from.   Anyway, I was impaled on him in an entirely pleasing, sexy and fulfilling way.  In this case, I also woke up before the climax.  (Is there some hidden pattern here?) Perhaps the nicest part of the whole dream was that I could feel his desire for me.  I could see it in his smile, in his face.  Definitely wish fulfillment, that!

Your subconscious doesn't lie.  When you dream of a man or a woman sexually, or of both, it's reflecting a profound reality, a truth, from deep inside.  There was a time when I thought bisexuality was a con: a transition phase to gayness.  And for some people it is.  Many straights I've mentioned this topic to are inclined to believe that if you desire or love another man, you are by definition gay, even if you also love and desire a woman.  If you have one drop of gayness in you then you are ipso facto gay, just as it used to be considered in regard to black blood.  Which is rubbish.

Our culture likes nice convenient labels and divisions.  Somehow, if we can just say 'it is thus', we can come to grips with complex phenomena, we can make the world less scary because we have labelled it.   We confuse the label with reality.  But reality is much more diverse and complex than these simple categories.  I am what I am.  I respond emotionally and sometimes sexually to men.  But I also respond emotionally and sexually to woman.  Some people would call me 'gay', others 'self-deluding', or 'in a phase'.  Some 'hypocritical' or 'dishonest'.  Actually I have news for all of you.  I am me.   Put me in a box at your peril.

Meanwhile, later today, after my lady gets home from work ....

I have written about this a lot.  Here are some more blog posts:

Labels

Queer but not gay

Saturday Night Thoughts

Special

Thought Experiment

Gay Sex by Any Name

Letter from Thomas

What Makes Us Gay

Happy list

Each day I make a list of things to be happy about.  It's a little technique I've found which helps when I'm down.

Here's today's list:

Arctotis/Gousblom

The perfect little white daisies (bellis perennis, I think) are thickly sprinkled on the lawn, startlingly white against the spring green.  The annual gousblom (arctotis) is everywhere, the little flower heads turned and turning towards the sun.  The pin oak (quercus palustris) is budding as is the nyssa and the copper beech (fagus sylvatica purpurea) has its wonderful copper/bronze buds.  Such beautiful trees.

White Bellis Perennis growing in a meadow

My knee is getting a little bit less sore.  And I'm slowly losing the weight I must to eliminate pain completely.  I am otherwise well.  My back isn't too bad.

Copper beech foliage

I'm writing again.  Not much, not fluently, but I am writing.  I even wrote on the train today, for the first time in weeks.

We are paying off our debts

Played clarinet today, and I'm determined to do it every day from now on.  My technique has gone to hell, but my fingers remember where the notes are.  Lips not yet strong enough though.  Will have to build their strength up over time.

At work, I'm beating the All Ords index, which is VERY hard to do.  Especially in volatile markets.  Don't expect it to last though.  The Goddess of markets is readying herself to punish me.

Advancing in Spanish.  Perfectly understood Lesson 5 of the course today for the first time.  And I'm committed to doing some every day.  Progress!

I might not have any friends, but I have my lady and my children and they compensate!  I'm so glad I have them.

I have beauty, shelter, food, books, music, passable health, a decent job, people to love.  My life is full.    What more do I need?   There is so much to be glad about.

See?  That was easy.  :-)

Down

I am often very happy.  Sometimes I find myself filled with joy.  I look at the world and despite everything it seems beautiful.   The daffodils coming out now; the spring air, the soft light, the new buds, and the unbearably sweet calls of the birds.  Yet it always seems that something comes along to screw that up.

Tonight my knees and my feet and my back ache.  My big day is over, the children have gone back to their homes.  My lady's watching films with headphones on.  The aging dogs dream and snuffle.  There's nothing I want to read; I don;t feel like writing; and I don't have any films I feel like watching.

So I am ... down.  Not as bad as I was a few years ago, but not as filled with joy as I was just before I went for my swim last week.

I expect it will get better.  Tonight, though, all I want to do is crawl into bed dosed up on painkillers and sleep until morning.

Happiness

Last Friday, just before I went into the swimming baths to have my swim I was suddenly, intensely, inexplicably happy.  The years of regret for lost love, the betrayal and indifference of so-called friends:  all seemed irrelevant.  I was filled with joy.

When I came out from the baths, I was much less joyful.  I'd done something to my knee.  No idea what but I could barely walk.  Only, of course, I had to walk.  From the car to the station.  Along an endless platform at Southern Cross station.  From the station to the office.  And then, to crown it all, on Thursday and Friday, I had to go on business to Sydney.  And you know how much walking there is in airports.  Kilometre-long passageways, aerobridges, queues for taxis ....

So this morning, Saturday in Oz, I'm assembling all my threadbare philosophy to be joyful again.  And later on, I'm off to the chemist (pharmacist to Americans) to rent a walking stick.

Happiness

Joy

Can't remember when I last had a moment of sheer undiluted joy.  Satisfaction, yes.  Even happiness, yes.  But joy?  Not in years.

Not like this dog.

I loves ya

A bit low

Jane Austen writes, in Sense and Sensibility I think, about one of her heroines that she was "struggling against a tendency to feel low".  That's how I feel right now.  And I'm wondering whether it's worth doing all my writing and blogging and editing.  I do it for fun, but sometimes .... I wonder whether it's worth all the very hard work.  Certainly, I make zilch from it.

My back hurts, my knees hurt, my feet hurt ... LOL, I'm a proper catalog of tedious ailments.

Never mind.  It's almost the weekend (Friday here in Oz) and it's my lady's birthday this Sunday so we'll celebrate.  Meanwhile, I'll list (again!) all the arguments about why I should be happy.

Majorca Flats -- 224

Gups,

You're right. I won't listen. But it's weird. Last night after I got your email, I had the strangest dream. I've been having these recurring nightmares about Brent, seeing his body, his head blown apart, the blood and brains and stuff everywhere. But last night I dreamt that Brent came into my bedroom here, and sat on my bed, and smiled at me. He spoke to me. I can't put what he said into words, because it wasn't as if we spoke English but he smiled at me and it was quite obvious he loved me and forgave me. I will always live with the wrong I did. But just seeing him again, knowing that he still loved me, has helped me so much. I say “knowing” even though it was a dream, because it seemed so real. Maybe it was just some figment of my subconscious. But I believe it was real.

The Laird Hotel beer garden

I don't see how mum and dad can stop you going to Australia or even comment about it. You earn your own living now, and you're old enough to do it. So, if you'd like to come, come! I'd love to see you.

I should tell you that I'm not using any of my money from the trust. I decided that it had perverted my judgement and helped lose me Brent, so I am a working man now. And poor with it. At the pub I work (a gay pub!) my hours are long and I work late at night. But I feel so proud working for every penny I spend. I've even managed to save a bit! I'll need some money because I want to go to and see New Zealand because it's supposed to be so beautiful but also because I can only stay here 6 months before my visa expires. And two months of that have already gone by.

Write soon.

Love

Jace

First Majorca Flats post       Previous MF post (#223)       Next MF post(#225)

Episodes 1 to 220 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Surfing

Surfing used to often put me in a very meditative mood. The cool blue and green of the water, the warm sun, the way you were one with the world, the way the problems of your life were set aside, if only for a while. Magic.

Hammock Grin

Such a warm-hearted image.  Love.  Affection.  Warmth.  Comfort.  Pleasure.  Joy.

Look at the happy smile of the guy on top, his head nestled into the other's shoulder.  The cheeky grin of the guy underneath.  The casual possessiveness of his arms and hands.

So much here, a whole story.  A happy story.  One that makes us smile ourselves, feel better about life.

How can the troglodytes be so hostile to something so manifestly good?

Baby Steps to Happiness

Nyssa Sylvatica

I used to wonder why old people would go into raptures about what seemed to me to be small things.  "Those roses are so beautiful," my mother would say, admiring a newly picked vase full of roses from the garden.  Or my grandmother, sitting in the chair she sat in all day until she went to bed, barely able to walk or see, would admire the colours of the pin-oak as its leaves changed in autumn.

But now I am myself d'un certain age, I know why they did it.  They did it because you can't rely on the big stuff.  Friends desert you.  People you love die.  There are earthquakes and bushfires.  The Christian-fascists go on relishing their hate.  Your health deteriorates.  You lose your job.  Your young hopes are unfulfilled.

So you learn to be happy in small things.

Nerine

Cyclamen Hederifolium

Claret Ash

Today is the second day of autumn here in Oz.  In our township's gardens, nerines are in blossom.  Strange lilies, their trumpet-shaped pink flowers appear long before their leaves.  The cyclamen hederifolium, which I first saw under venerable beech trees in the south of France in a carpet of pink and white the size of two rugby fields, also flowers before its leaves come.  Brave little flower heads of a flawless white are thick under the claret ash.  The maples are tinged with hectic red, and purple and orange; the pin-oak has a new scarlet or crimson or peach leaf every day; and the nyssa's leaves are one by one turning a perfect salmon.  We had our first mild frost this morning, but the sky is cloudless and clear, and it looks like being an utterly perfect day.

Like my mother and grandmother before me, my happiness is made up of these small things.  Just as well, really.

Compassion

 

 This is (more or less) the three-hundredth post to this blog.  Time to pause and reflect.

I found this at The Slab and I thought it summed up my own spiritual feelings pretty well.

.My call for a spiritual revolution is thus not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow other-worldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical re-orientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self towards concern for the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others' interests alongside our own.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

You cannot yourself be truly happy unless you consider others. Selfishness makes you unhappy. Greed makes you unhappy. Unkindness makes you and the person you are unkind to miserable.

As the Dalai Lama says:

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

and,

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions

and

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

[Quotes from this website]

When we are at our most miserable, this seems like nonsense.  I know.  I've been there.  Yet I do what my lady does and count my blessings.  And there are so many, so many more than my problems.  And gradually, even though things are far from perfect, you find joy in small things; in a flower opening; in a cup of coffee; in a smile; in those who love me and those I love.  Yes, in a world dedicated to wall-to-wall false values, it's hard.  But never give up hope.


Christians seem to forget this all the time, though He kept on reiterating the messages:  love one another as I have loved you; the widow's mite; the story of the prostitute (let him who is without sin cast the first stone); judge not lest ye be judged; God is love.  Even St Paul, a bit of a bully, talks movingly about charity.  And he doesn't mean giving to the poor.


That so many Christians are so filled with hate is horribly sad.   That they hate us for what we are, which we can't change, and which in any case hurts no one, is dreadful.  Yet in our relations with each other we must not forget that we can if we try make a small difference, and that if everybody did it, it would make a huge difference.  It isn't easy to be brave or compassionate or to love without judgement.   I have to try again every day.  And I keep on failing.  I get enraged at the evils of the world and I have to scold myself into happiness.  Again and again.

We gay-shaded guys know what it's like to be on the receiving end of hatred, ignorance, disdain, prejudice, bigotry and violence.  Let's not do the same to others.


Onwards and upwards.