Allow Me This, 14/09/25
She’s gone
Seriously, mate, she’s gone. It’s done. It’s over. She isn’t thinking about you anymore. There’s little more irreversible than a woman whose mind is made up.
What is it with these men? They talk about their ex-girlfriends—often whilst with a new girlfriend, married, or even married with kids—as if, at some future point, the stars will align, time will go back, and they’ll be together again. Mate, she is gone. It’s done. Goodness gracious, move on!
Mate, she’s gone.
Is this it? - II
She keeps going on about a loaded mac bowl,
And that trip to Thailand with her henpecked hubby.
Yet, before heading out, she packs the Omeprazole,
Her ‘best friend’ in tow, who can’t get a chubby.
They met on a Tuesday. Pilates class.
She liked his smile, his stature, his eyes, she said
And he liked, he liked, he liked her ass.
Now they’re married, both wishing to be dead.
Goodness me, they got really fat, together!
And they’re what? Having another baby!
You think, truly, they’ll be married forever?
Oh is it possible, that the union, was just a ‘maybe’?
Most nights he plays vidya, then spanks his rod.
Downstairs, 4am, bleary eyed for a final cig
Back upstairs, tucking in, off to the land of nod.
But then, why not? Why not give it another frig?
Kid at the bus stop talking sus and cap,
Bussin, slaps, aura and bae, something bout Chad?
I, a new old man, give him a slap,
He’s crying now, the new child, and I feel bad.
Friend’s wedding. No one looks cheery.
I want to speak up, but haven’t been cast.
Should I do something? It’s all a bit dreary.
Oh, look, 25 years have passed.
A new Jungian archetype, after all this time,
A gargantuan woman and her stick thin bloke.
He follows her around, as if having commit a crime,
But then I guess, occasionally, he might get a stroke.
Seeing the world and eating good food,
That’s what her dating bio said.
I wonder to myself, would it be crude?
To message her outright, asking if she’s dead?
Quatrains for a Seaside Town
Old man looks to his wife, do we need these?
She doesn't even turn to him and says Whatever!
The item in question, special edition cheese.
I wonder what on earth initially brought them together?
Kid with a batman car shouts 'Robin's dead!'
An Irish wolfhound walks by, the name tag says Laddy.
The kids rotund mother is going rather red,
He's in the middle of the road, having a paddy.
'You can fruit and veg from supermarkets now mum'
She looks into the distance, remembering her youth.
Seriously, you can get anything, even mint gum.
She's bemused, lost, sucking her last remaining tooth.
Henpecked husband wearing a bright football cap,
Wife nagging him to take it off, he got it as a prize
Then she clutches her stomach, says she 'Needs a crap.'
He looks at her, dead inside, smiles and sighs.
I smell donuts, bread, fags, and more bread,
I hear radios, engines, and incessant whining,
I sense anxiety, impatience, and underwhelming dread.
I feel...nothing, emptiness, hearts resigning.
There's an overweight seagull that looks depressed,
And everyone's got ice cream, clutched by a fist,
And though they've done nothing, they need a deep rest,
But then again, I'm not really sure they know they exist.
Are you really listening?
To listen means to be open to what the other person is saying—present tense—in the moment. To listen is to be open. To be open is to not hold a position of any sort, be it emotional, psychological, intellectual, or bodily. To be open is to not hold.
There is no difference between being and listening in the present moment.
From this listening, a response is not just a held data-point that you desired to fire out as soon as the other person was done talking, but a relay of resonance, something that fits, something felt right. A response might not even be a seemingly coherent sentence, maybe just a word, a gesture, a noise, even.
Jottings:
Then again, it could be worse, I could have been named Eugene. Vernon, Eugene, Gary, Toby, Liam, the list goes on, there’s a whole canon of names that are merely signifiers for a vacant life. When one comes to be conscious of their name, if it rolls off the tongue with weakness, one should resign themselves to a life of banality.
~
Remembering when I rolled my car. A meager flip and slide. Not a window cracked nor a single bruise. My first thought, ‘I guess I’ll have to sort this out now.’
~
Can you imagine, a drawn-out childbirth, the pangs of the cosmos vibrating to the hum of new life, and the fat, tired, and dumb-as-socks nurse says ‘It’s a boy, an ugly baby boy!’
~
A design for a roller coaster with no rises of falls. A circle of a mile. It takes an entire day to go round. When you leave the ride supervisor says ‘It’s more than you deserve.’
~
Addressed to my dear Granny from the heroic, saint-like Dr, ‘Do not worry Madame, this little thing will keep your heart ticking, you can rest easy now!’
‘Thank you Dr, thank you. And what if the battery runs out?’
‘Then you will die. Can’t have everything I’m afraid.’
~
Philosophy, when correctly studied, becomes solely a regret.
Note on Stoicism:
We have our internal life. Our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our worries, our reactions, our associations, our opinions, our biases and our subjective leanings, one can, if they like, emphasize each case of the word our in this sentence for greater effect. The important thing to remember about one's internal life, is that it is solely theirs, and as such, is entirely under their control. That's right, your emotions are your responsibility, and your reactions to the world are entirely of your creation and development. If you are angry, it is you who is angry, and not some misfortune placed upon you by the external world, even though it may seem that way. Which brings me to the external world.
The external world is everything which exists outside of our subjective experience. It is all political events, it is weather catastrophes, it is our day at work, it is our morning and evening commute, it is physical illness and pain, it is the loss of a loved one, it is surprise events, it is all events, it is the entirety of worldly chance as it keeps on turning itself over, time and time again. The Stoics were some of the first to outline this difference in relation to what is known exoterically as 'self-improvement', understanding that one could face adversity with a 'brave face', leading to the general acknowledgement in contemporary society that those who can face the harshness of the external world without emotionally reacting are 'stoic' in nature. Except that from the Stoic perspective we're still left with an unchecked permanence of subjectivity. For the Stoic attitude leads one only to form a 'stoic reaction', you don't get to the kernel of the supposed external adversity, but merely develop a reaction to it which apparently allows one to not be bothered by it, except, when viewed like this, one can see that the Stoics are still bothered by adversity by the fact it's still understood by them as adversity. And so even if the emotional reaction is dampened, and the subject is made more stable in the face of trials, the trials are still taken as trials.
The Stoic, he stands before his adversity, understanding it as adversity, and from this position attempts to dissolve it with a reaction seeking to somehow inoculate himself against it. Yet, all the while, he does not realize that in doing so his is bolstering the notion that the on-goings of the outside world somehow control our internal world. As if because a certain subjectively 'bad' thing happened we must react in an emotional way, and the Stoic's point of nuanced pride is in their ability to rise above this emotion, and develop a counter-emotion all of their own; an emotion of fortitude, subtle-vanity, overcoming, pride etc. It is very easy for would-be Abrahamic traits to become quickly Luciferic. In abstaining from the pleasures of the modern world, we can quickly, yet unknowingly, develop a sense of pride in our internally won battles. So, how could it be?
The Stoic has never truly dealt with the externality they award much power. They deal with it by way of reaction, by way of counter-reaction, or counter-association, still within the same loop; still, by the very fact they are still reacting allowing the original external subjective adversity the very same definitive power over their psyche. The position of Zero between the internal and external experiential modes of existence is the position of reset; never absolute negation, only ever a re-appropriated recurrence. For when one begins disbelieving in one thing, their belief is merely replaced with another; we cannot escape religious structures. He who doesn't believe in the power and mercy of God, believes in the power of money, the mercy of fame, the forgiveness of vanity; the internal abyss of our momentary experience in this life is never empty, and we must strive only to fill it with light.
So what does one do then, with 'adversity'? One must perform a sort of conversion, whereby the collectively agreed upon 'adversity' of the external, is transformed into something completely other by your internal process. Let us take the example of rain. Commonly, we collectively consider rain to be a bad thing, an annoyance, a frustration, an external event which promotes negative emotion within us, which seems - and is generally agreed to be - justified. The Stoic would of course approach rain in the sense of if it still being an adversity, something which they have armored themselves against internally and are ready to overcome. However, what truly an be done is to transform the event of rain into a matter of...nothing. A questioning, why exactly should rain be adversity? Why is it when someone cuts me off in traffic I instantly react in an emotionally negative way? Why does it seem that various external events in life are out to simply cause me pain and trouble and annoyance? Could it be that my mental acts of association make them so?
And how is it then, we can begin to transform these external happenings which we once deemed negative, and caused us much distress, into something completely other? First, we must focus on the temporary nature of everything which is external to us. The rain will pass, the bad driver will carry on, and our anger will cease, and we will forget everything in a matter of minutes anyway, letting each moment drag us to-and-fro. The Stoic doesn't return his associations to Zero, he keeps them either positively or negatively leaning, and thus is never able to draw them closer to a sense of psychological objectivity. What is to be done? A retreat, a retreat back to life itself. It is raining, that is how it is in the external world at that moment. The person who is driving erratically isn't doing so in spite of you, or in any relation to you - you created that connection - that person is just like that at that moment. For when you are angry, you should state, 'This is called being angry'. And when you are anxious, you should state, 'This is called being anxious', and so on, for all negative emotions, and watch them dissipate - slightly, at first - in the face of psychological division; you are not your associations.
Off the back of a rather kitsch New Age quote "Live everyday as it it's your last." - a quote I may do an entire post on, as it genuinely includes deep Hermetic truth - we can develop this internal journey a step further. The rain is temporary, the anger you feel is temporary, all negative emotion is temporary...unless you allow it to become permanent. Things are built in this sense of permanence. Stage sets are built to be temporary for they are only needed for a time, buildings are built - apparently - forever, for they are needed for a long time. When we solidify and re-solidify our negative emotions and associations to the external world we are building - and re-building - an internal emotionally negative permanence, we are not allowing things to be temporary; and in allowing things to be temporary, they begin to become nothing at all, for why would that which is a detriment to us matter at all if we know it shall pass?