Self-censorship

I could stop myself from writing. I could. Unwanted images appear in my mind though I give them no permission to be there. I must accept they are there, but despite their insistence, I push back at them. I want them to budge. I tell them to get the fuck out.

I censor them. I do not give them voice. I choose not to speak them, or write them.

My opinions, however, are a very different thing. If i have a side on which to sit there will be a side about which i am compelled to comment. If the other side is faulty, i may bark. The structure of my opinions may be compromised occasionally by misinformation or pre-existing prejudice. I may have overlooked this malaise of an earlier, more naive time. With a flick of the tongue, my error can be corrected and i will be gracious and thankful for that. I will be thankful for the education. It can but make a better person of me.

But i won't keep quiet now. I've been silenced too many times. I was young once, and when i was young, i was really bloody young. You wouldn't believe. Why? The reason- it was inevitable. I was a seen-and-not-heard child. What comes from this? Awkwardness. Insecurity. Un-sure-ty (Is that a word?). Either way, it infests, and manifests as shyness.

Shyness is crippling. You become an observer of life rather than a partaker in it. I wanted to play an active roll, but had to watch others enjoy the experience.

My shyness despised me, as it despises anyone who has first hand knowledge of it. It would slander me and shout out to those around me: "Look at this guy. What a twat! Take the piss out of him!!!"

And they did.

They had their fill and my shyness metamorphosed into an inferiority complex. I couldn't defend myself- i was too shy.

So i was inferior. But i was also intelligent- to an extent. I knew i had a brain and so took the opportunity to prove it. You can't just say you're intelligent though, you have to show people by saying intelligent things. Impossible for a person who can't speak. How ironic. You give me an exam and i'll excel. Ask me to write a speech and i'll run one off in a flash. But give me an issue to comment on and i'll shake my head and tell you timidly i don't know.

"Better remain silent and be considered a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt." My shyness would prod at me. Well, fuck-tee-doo...

But i'm not a fool. I'm smarter than all these intellectual pygmies that surround me.

So, i had an inferiority complex and a superiority complex. This really fucked me up. Imagine being looked down upon by those who couldn't string together a coherent... a coherent... a coherent... what's the word?

Sentence?

So, i was in my late teens and I knew my life was going to go bad, but i still hoped...

Hope. A Cardinal Virtue, but in actual fact the worst of the Deadly Sins. Nothing holds you back- nothing promotes long-term procrastination like hope. Remove hope and we stop waiting and start doing.

I lost everything. I lost everyone i ever loved and everything i ever had. My family checked their watches, kicked lazily at a dusty floor and  pointed at non-existent marks on the wall just so they didn't have to acknowledge my struggles, rather than have to reach out and help me.

I lost everything. And while i was losing everything, i had no opportunity to speak. Those with the power to control my fate had twiddled their thumbs, sat back, had a massage, gone for brunch, attended soirees, then, when sufficient time had passed, informed the world rather blithely, "well, all this palaver has being going on for so long now [completely our fucking fault] and the damage has been done."

My words were worth nothing. So i was advised to stay quiet, despite having so much to say. I had so many things to say that would disarm my attacker. I had so many weapons to throw back. I knew i should be victorious.

But I was told to be quiet.

And i did.

And when i went to bed at night, my mind would not forgive me for my taciturn capitulation.

[constant pain]

My mind will not forgive me. Not now. Not ever. With every spare moment my mind has to relax and recuperate, it shows me everything i lost. It leads me through the words i should have said and the arguments i should have raised. The things i should have said but didn't. I stayed silent. And pain gets greater. I'm pushed so far beneath the surface of the ocean of my mind, whenever i re-surface, i feel like i have the fucking bends. And the damage is accumulative. The pounding against my skull is constant.

Because i was censored. Because i stayed quiet.

I was told to stay quiet today, because i was talking about politics and religion. "Do something about it, or stop posting shit on Facebook."

My brother once told me to shut up. I was 13 and Margaret Thatcher had done something to piss me off so i began to voice my annoyance with her.
"Shut up, Chris!" He said with disdain.
I didn't talk about politics again. I stayed quiet. I shouldn't voice my opinions. I shouldn't even have a voice. Voices cause embarrassment. And a shy person does NOT want to be embarrassed. They'd rather die!

I'm older now and my shyness is more or less behind me. More or less. There are times i'll feel insecure in other people's company, but on the whole, i can open my mouth and issue forth with the best of them. Maybe not the best of them, with the better than average of them. I can certainly flap lips better than any shy fucker by god!

The person who told me not to voice my opinion today was a cousin. Is still a cousin. But, when the life has been beat the hell out of you, your resistance, or your ability to resist is greatly diminished. I know i over-reacted. It's what i do now. I over-react. I have no buffer. It's been eroded. It's been annihilated. My cousin, and my cousin's brothers and sisters (yes, they're cousins too), are now no longer in my present or future. 'Having fewer people to hurt you' is a stronger driving force than 'having more people to give you love'. Love can be taken away. When love is taken away, the pain is absolute. I have no ability to absorb or deflect this.

The incision has been made and the tissue removed. Without a body in which to mutate, the cancer cannot propagate.

But, this also leaves me without a body in which to live. I have not censored myself, but it seems i have once again found myself in silence.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the sweet uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.


Mary Elizabeth Frye 1932

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
          Old time is still a-flying;
And the same flower that smiles today
          Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven the sun,
          The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
          And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
          When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
          Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
          And, while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
          You may forever tarry.

Robert Herrick

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

by William Henry Davies

The Secret

I loved thee, though I told thee not,

Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.

And when I saw a stranger face
Where beauty held the claim,
I gave it like a secret grace
The being of thy name.

And all the charms of face or voice
Which I in others see
Are but the recollected choice
Of what I felt for thee.

John Clare

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Solitude

Solitude

LAUGH, and the world laughs with you; 

Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message ‘He is Dead’,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Wystan Hugh Auden  (1907-1973)

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can, 

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master Speech:

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

W H AUDEN

Two English Poems

I

The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-

      corner; I have outlived the night.

Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves

      laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with

      things unlikely and desirable.

Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,

      of things half given away, half withheld,

      of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act

      that way, I tell you.

The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds

      and odd ends: some hated friends to chat

      with, music for dreams, and the smoking of

      bitter ashes.  The things my hungry heart

      has no use for.

The big wave brought you.

Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily

      and incessantly beautiful.  We talked and you

      have forgotten the words.

The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street

      of my city.

Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to

      make your name, the lilt of your laughter:

      these are the illustrious toys you have left me.

I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find

      them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and

      to the few stray stars of the dawn.

Your dark rich life ... 

I must get at you, somehow; I put away those 

      illustrious toys you have left me, I want your

      hidden look, your real smile -- that lonely,

      mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

II

What can I hold you with?

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the

      moon of the jagged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked

      long and long at the lonely moon.

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts

      that living men have honoured in bronze:

      my father's father killed in the frontier of

      Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,

      bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in

      the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather

      --just twentyfour-- heading a charge of

      three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on

      vanished horses.

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, 

      whatever manliness or humour my life.

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never

      been loyal.

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,

      somehow --the central heart that deals not

      in words, traffics not with dreams, and is

      untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at

      sunset, years before you were born.

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about

      yourself, authentic and surprising news of 

      yourself.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the

      hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you 

      with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling