August 2 - 8 Gear Change ........... you have been warned!

Gear Change ……  no recipes this week.  We are cooking “tougher stuff.”

Pour a glass of wine or something stronger ...... OK?   Off we go ....

I have been waiting patiently, for the right trigger to come along and set me off on my inner exploration and as I listened to a programme on “reality and perception” thanks to the BBC i-player a reference was made to Hugh Mearns Poem of 1899 “Antigonish”,  well this meant nothing to me either until I heard the opening line…

Yesterday, upon the stair…………..

And then of course the whole first stanza was there in my mind

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

Being a curious chap I wondered if there was more and indeed there is and it is only when we read more that we realise that this is not such a funny little rhyme but something deeper and much more significant (disturbing?).

The poem continues ……

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

The circumstances around the poem are not important, though the title refers to a town in Nova Scotia where reported ghostly sightings had taken place.

Well, ghosts, demons, dragons, guardian angels, unresolved fears and desires, the unconscious call it what you will these are what makes us what we are today. Whatever construct we choose the key is that something can open doors to our past and allow enlightenment, recognition and comprehension.  The scales fall from our eyes, well that’s the theory anyway, we have “catharsis” and walk from darkness into the light of inner knowledge …… blah, blah, blah. Yeah right!

If only it were that simple. What is nearer the truth is that maybe we get to take a step from where we were to a new place, where we can look at the change of view, and the new perspective and maybe through that small change gain insight and that insight drives us forward to the next step, hopefully forwards but it might just be one step forward and two back (sorry but unrealistic optimism has no place here) or maybe one forward and one to the side.  The key thing is that moment of cathartic insight brings change and as far as I am concerned (and from my psychotherapy training) that or any change is to be welcomed as we are no longer “stuck”.

So, yesterday upon the stair I saw the phantom of the many men who were no longer there, they were men who had entered and left my life since early childhood.   The women in my life is a whole "other thing"

My biological father, never knew him as I was adopted more or less at birth

My adoptive father, he ran off with the neighbours’ wife and abandoned my mum and I when I was five.

My grandfather, with whom my mum and I went to live, died suddenly as a result of genetic condition when I was seven.

An uncle who I saw very occasionally and a pianist who inspired me to learn music, though I was very frightened of him (he hated kids).

The mentally disabled man who molested me (not sexually) in a departmental store and gave me my first sexual thought as I recalled the feel of his rough stubble as he hugged me tight and rubbed his stubbly cheek against mine [and I think, kissed me] when I was aged around 8.

My mums best friend “John” who was gay, and who gave me the best birthday party ever when I was 9.

My mums second husband whom she married when I was 13 and looking for a “dad” but he only grew to inspired a loathing due to his weakness and appalling treatment of my mum.

The vile and dreadful pederast who took my “virginity” at 16,  (could only even start to think about this after I read his obituary a few years ago.)

There are more of course, but these will do for now ("enough to be going on with" as my nan would say!) 

The agony and the extasy of being Gay and a christian,
every sexual thought could be an arrow of self-hatred

BUT there is a whole religious flight of stairs devoted to passing men on the stair who happen to be 

“God, (ineffably difficult to comprehend)

Jesus,  (the Lord is my shepherd and he knows I'm gay....)

St. Paul, (messed up and repressed)

St. Bartholomew,  (flayed)
  
Sebastian [always the focus of homoerotic attention, I felt every arrow of self-hatred in my heart], 

Aelred of Rievaulx , (offered hope maybe with his idea that "brother should cleave unto brother in the love of Christ" - he hadn't too many hang-ups about particular friendships)

Saints. Sergius and Bacchus”  (a warrior gay couple from the more "enlightened" pre-"enlightenment" early church)

VERY SADLY this staircase led me to my own personal circle of hell, which I only escaped at age 40 …..    

 "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"   - thank you Dante!

But  thanks to a particularly horrendous display of "christian love and charity"  when I was in India I can thank goodness that I found another path to potential happiness......... (law of unintended consequences)  ........    hooray  for ..."SECULAR HUMANISM"    or more amusingly .....

 So, here we are back on that stair .....

 

I meet them all on the stair, passing shadows but as the poem goes on to say

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me 

Always waiting, always passing, on the never-ending stairs

Oh the terrors of “three in the morning” our body clocks and bio-rhythms are at their most depressed, it is the time most people die in their sleep (or otherwise), and the time people have the worst nightmares. And at the dreaded three in the morning  “the man is waiting for us”  That staircase that takes us deep within ourselves and we only perceive whom we passed in the night “two ships passing in the night” but each affected by the other.

Suddenly in the poem we realise that it is not a funny little rhyme anymore but something more sinister and we don’t like it …..

Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Leave as you entered, by the door BUT quietly don’t cause an upset is the plea but normally the man goes and bangs the door sending reverberation throughout our psyche and leaving us to suffer the consequences and pick up the pieces.

And round we go again, but in the first stanza we “met a man” and now we “saw a little man”. For me, sometimes it the same man being shrunk down to size, sometimes the “met a man”  means he came unbidden passing me but “saw a (little) man” means that I see him on the stair but I am not on the stair myself so there is no passing and gradually the man is loosing his power to affect me.

BUt there are more men “waiting”  and so they have to be dealt with; and having been dealt with I will see them on the stair one final time as they open and pass out the door, which they close quietly and disappear from my life, for good.  I can and will have control of their entrance and exit in futrure.

So now I start to look at these men (listed above) and start to analyse just how to enable them to pick a door and leave quietly.  The means is half the battle, I have the motive and with the time available to me here in Spain I have the opportunity.

Means , motive, opportunity  - lets “murder” a few ghosts!    


 

As the saying goes "the devil is in the detail"  and for me the details are at times painful, and disturbing.  But it is important to reduce an dif possible make them impotent and rid of any power over me, as an adult today.

Thought:   Like Fairy Tales,  Cautionery Tales,  and the like , this Poem has a benign outer skin, but as we peel away the layers and move from the exterior to the core, it’s true personality is revealed … just like the apple offered to Snow White …. hearts of darkness …  and those “long dark nights of the soul!”

More interestingly is the fact that each tale, story or poem, plants in us (normally as an “innocent child”) the seeds of something much darker which has our entire life to grow develop and reek whatever havoc they may!   Especially as these tales were read to us at BEDTIME!  At the top of the stairs down into our subconscious!..... “Grim(m) indeed!”

 Small wonder that my favourite book was  "Wind in the Willows!"  and I identified 100% with Mole!   (more on THIS in a future chapter!) Another book which was a great favourite was "Stig of the Dump."

Mole, looking for companionship and an older wiser head
to explain the mystery of life.......  I identified with him!

My next task is to find a way to narrate all this. I don't want to do it in the first person, nor do I want to do it all chronologically and I want to be able to ponder, question and surmise ... and to fill in the gaps and blanks!

I shall just wait for the next catalyst, and hope that six come along together!

AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS

………. And in other news

1.   Still awaiting my NIE, process changed necesitating an additional stage. Hope to have the NIE by Monday. I can then open a bank account here and buy my new laptop.

2.   Connected to the above, blasted the estate agent/conveyancer and told him using the “broken record technique” of assertiveness  I wanted the process complete within three weeks. With every excuse he gave me I just repeated the phrase “OK but I want the process complete in three weeks. (August 31).”

3.   An old friend of mine from my days in Guatemala is here in Spain and plans a visit to me just after my birthday for a few days.

4.   The Life of Brian  “La Vida de Brian” is being shown in the open air as part of the summer festival of activities here, so I want to go and see just how some of the puns works in Spanish!   “Welease Wodderick”  “Blessed are the Cheesemakers” etc.

Footnote: oh ironies of ironies ...... the film was shown projected onto the wall of "the Church of the Conception" ........ which I thought very funny, and by chance I could watch the film albeit at a distance from my terrace, no sub-titles, dubbed in Spanish and no sounds of laughter either :-( 

"He's not he Messiah; he's a very naughty boy"
 






And finally just to reduce the tension a bit ....

 Thanks to  

Fino Sherry  (2 glasses)
Junilla Red Wine  (half a bottle)
Pedro Ximenez ( 2 glasses)
Coffeee with shots of caramel vodka

without which this blog could not have been written!