On agony. Pt 2.

“That's all we have, finally, the words, 

and they had better be the right ones.” 

- Raymond Carver.

I've never fallen asleep knowing that I would wake up to one less mother, and I'll never have to do it again. Three nights ago I dreamt that I was sat at her hospital bed and she had been trying to conceal something from me. Her attention to deception slipped for a second and I noticed that her ears were clotted with blood. She looked apologetically at me. I asked her how long it had been and she told me that she had only ever heard noises and never what they really meant. She looked apologetically at me. The cleaner knocks at my door, I pour a glass of wine and walk outside for a while. When I return I know what I have to do. It is my craft; my torment and tourniquet. 

If I may trouble you to stand -or at least raise your attention to its feet. I'd like to offer a toast.

There will be days in our lives when whiskey tastes just like water, and our appearance and odours are none of our concern. There will be moments when you realise that crying is for when you were half way up that mountain and you are now poised -not so elegantly- at the summit where the air is too thin. Another few glasses and I can take the tightrope back down to the bottom so I can water the plants on my way back up, but all good toasts start with a backstory.

Having done the same on multiple occasions, but with less formalities, I learned to understand why she had left my father in the pursuit of more animalistic tendencies. I was eleven, and in some ways I know I still am. The brain is wizard-like in its ability to shut down the parts of its host that are experiencing agony, but those parts will eventually wake up banging on the glass. Courage will take you to the glass to listen. Fortitude will allow you to process. Fear will make you walk away, but who on earth would leave an eleven year old in distress on their own?

Some of us fear ourselves as dualistic and others, at some points, insane, but the truth is that there are plenty of chances along the way to have us fragmented and disorientated. I suppose the differences between us and the others are the differences between love and fear. I often find it hard to work out what concerns me most about the people I try and meet: Those who are afraid of love or those who need it. 

The toast-giver stops and lowers his head. Takes a deep breath; grinds his teeth, and exhales through a smile of sorts...

Imagine, if you will, walking through a door to meet someone, but that door is in fact many doors. Sometimes the door opens and a well dressed man with a gentle intensity greats you. Another time he is topless and bedraggled, somewhat lost and a bit too much wounded animal. You may be greeted by a verbose madman, strobing at life. On occasions it may not be a man at all. One might begin to wonder what on earth that person is doing.

Have you ever sat down and asked yourself 'how do i cope with agony?' I would imagine that the common denominator in the average socially functional human being is to have people around them. For others, perhaps they digest as much in the way of distraction as possible. Just in those few lines I am beginning to wonder how telling a person's coping methods are in regards to the rest of them? It is impossible to prescribe coping mechanisms: The self help gurus try, and then the onlookers watch with worry and offer advice. Truth be told, I have dealt with agony with company, alone, drunk, drugged, running, boxing, writing and some times sat perfectly still contemplating just how the mind can make blood feel like acid. It would appear that I have made it through on all accounts, although I would like to add that eventually agony becomes a part of your essence. As I said before, it can be turned in to fire and used, but it is still there. Before I spaz around in circles, this is what I wanted to say... I think the fundamental important part of dealing with agony is this:

As a human being. A compassionate and caring thing. An entity that looks around and involuntarily gravitates to those who are in agony, you notice things. The human being has developed a perculiar habit of retreating away from pain. Walking around at this precise point in my life I do worry. I worry what this agony must look like and when I sit alone like this I can only assume from looking at the empty space around me, it must appear terrifying. Either that or it appears as if there is not that much agony at all. More circles. We even retreat from our own pain. There is an avoidance epidemic. That which may cause pain should be avoided. Ladies and gentlemen, this includes love.

So here we all are protecting ourselves from the things that make us human. There is but one way to do that and that is to stop truly living. So we no longer make love, we fuck. We no longer imagine, we watch. We don't taste, we eat. We robotify ourselves for the sake of avoiding the agony. Well, the joke is on you fuckers, because there's a hell of a lot of agony in not being true to yourself. It will be slow and gradual, but you'll need an extra cigarette every now and again. You'll feel like you need more sleep. You'll begin to withdraw in to yourself, or do whatever you can to stay away from yourself. Much like the slow steady drip of grief, the slow steady drip of following a lie on the back end of some advice from fear is going to eventually knock ten bells of shit out of you. If you can still shit by then.

The fix? Even in agony I love you all. Even in the kind of pain that ends lives, I will always open my arms. Why? This is the greatest teacher we have. Agony has taught me to be available at all times. Agony has taught me this because I have been surrounded by people who aren't. I have learnt this from the funny looks of the opinionists whilst I have been losing my mind, and they have judged instead of placing a hand on my shoulder and asking 'are you okay?' I have been taught by those who disappear in to silence as my intensity explodes. For every wall I have lashed out at simply because I have not being able to find a truly emotional available human being I have learnt to become one. A living breathing thing free from layers and layers of self protection; someone who is perpetually there in their entirety -in calmness and violence, sense and nonsense; pleasure and pain. NEVER! And I raise my voice for this part...NEVER think for a second that you should be being something else, just allow your self to be. There should be no thought to it, your gut should drive you through this. At times you will demolish chunks of life, but that is the cost of living, and from that debris will come a personal experience of greatness. If nothing else, I will die proud that I never turned myself down for a single fucker. My loves...it seems the human being is finding it difficult to be a human being. It also seems that I am becoming heated and need to do some push ups. so, 

Agony has taught me that if I can tolerate my own pain then I can absolve some of yours too. I know all too well what it feels like to have nowhere to put your pain, and so this ends like this: I am always there for you, whoever you are. My mouth, my ears, my arms, my eyes. They exist for those who are experiencing the too much, because in doing so I feed back to myself that for which I am starving.

love.