THE CONTRARY MAN

I have tirelessly trained and run in the most competitive of races with the greatest of athletes and, on the cusp of victory, I have slowed my pace to ensure I finish last. I have prepared the sweetest tasting meals in all of culinary history and put them straight in the bin. I composed the most stirring musical composition that ever would've been heard had I not performed it on only one occasion, in a remote and unpopulated vicinity, with my ears plugged so even I would not hear it. Every single time someone wins a lottery and does not claim the winnings, it is me. I painted the greatest painting ever painted and then I painted over it. I wrote the greatest work of literature anyone would've ever read had I not rewritten it so that every word was 'shiteballs'. I then retitled the piece 'Shiteballs'. I have invented things that would have changed humanity's course for the better had I not placed them in a locked safe and hurled that safe into the core of a nuclear reactor. I have also learned the ultimate truth and when people ask me to share it with them I tell them a lie.

I have done all these things because I am The Contrary Man. I have devoted my life to mastering the art of living and then denied myself and the rest of you the fruits of my talents and knowledge. This is my ultimate revenge on the existence that has been foisted upon me and upon us all. An existence that, for many, consists largely of suffering without explanation. This compulsory existence is the ultimate injustice and my greatest achievement is to deny the challenges set before us by learning to overcome them and then not overcoming them. I have even discovered the secret of immortality only to cremate it and when I breathe my last I want to go to the afterlife and I want God to look at me and I want God to ask me 'why?' and I want to relish the look of incomprehension on God's face.

This will be my victory but the effort has not been an easy one. In the struggle there is a small amount of satisfaction. I have learned to love the meaninglessness of it all and I have learned that the most tragic failure, when executed correctly, is the greatest triumph. I have come to understand that the only finishing line that matters is death and even that doesn't matter very much in the dribbling staccato overwhelming context of this, ...whatever this is.

THE GOOD GAME

It's a good game despite the fact that we're positioned somewhere near the bottom. We're not at the very bottom though, so we can take heart in that. We're doing OK compared to those at the bottom. The game must be pretty good if people positioned near the bottom are having an OK time of it. It makes sense to keep playing, right?

Positioned at the top are people in costumes, robes and crowns and all that kind of thing. These people tell our minds what to do. Then there's the people who are positioned second from the top. These people wear suits and tell our arms and legs what to do. If our arms and legs don't do as they are told, people who wear uniforms (those positioned third from the top) take our bodies away and lock them in cells. When you are in a cell you are at the bottom and you have lost the game because you have broken the rules.

Now, if you haven't lost the game yet and you want to get to a higher position you can. You can't get to the top because God decides who is at the top but you can get second from the top. It's very difficult though. Most of the people who are second from the top are the offspring of people who are second from the top, but it's not unheard of for others to arrive at that position. All you have to do is pretend to do what you are told but don't. It's a good game but it's a funny game. You can only win by breaking the rules and not getting caught. If you get caught breaking the rules you lose but if you don't get caught breaking the rules you win. Those are the real rules of the game, but you don't get told that. You have to figure that out for yourself or be the heir of someone who already has.

This game doesn't come in a box. The pieces needed to play this game are all around you, you're wearing them, they are in your bank account, you live in them, they are on your resume, in the colour of your skin, the language you speak and the accent you speak it with, in your likes, in your dislikes, in your abilities and disabilities, in your chromosomes and hormones. Some of us may have more of the pieces required to play the game than others but, whatever the case, we all have to play. There is no alternative to playing. Well, there might be one alternative. You could upend the board and send the pieces flying everywhere and demand that everyone play a new game, but where would you be if you did that? No one knows. It's a scary thought. That's probably why everyone who plays the game is so frightened.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I've misunderstood the game all along. Maybe everyone playing the game is in the same position. We all start in the same position and none of us progresses from that position. That position is fear. Fear. When you think about it that way, maybe it's not such a good game after all.

Hmm.

Oh well, at least we only have to play it once.

ALWAYS HOME

The world is a great big beautiful organic ball. It breathes with its trees and has seas that teem with plants and creatures, spawning and flowing and darting about. Birds glide above in great wispy rain makers. The whole thing as an indefatigable system of indestructible life. Pure life. Even when something ceases to be it breaks down and feeds the future and gets born again in a new form. There's no end to the élan vital. It is unstoppable. Get over yourself and show me death. Where is there death? Point me to a single place where death resides outside of human perception. There is even radiotrophic fungi growing inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Life is everywhere. Death is nowhere to be found. Death does not exist. There is no death. There is only change. Change is sometimes scary and change is sometimes sad but it is never the end and you are always home.

...and those were the words I used to comfort my terrified Uncle Stan just before I pushed him down the elevator shaft and set about gaining possession of his estate.

EDWARD BURRA

A landscape, like one from a dream. Sparse with pylons and clumps of trees. Beautiful but asleep. A silent road cuts through it but where does it lead? Far, far off to somewhere that can't be seen. And you've no choice but to travel it, to follow its twilight track. You'll cross over the horizon and you won't be coming back.

PHILOSOPHEE HEE HEE!

There wasn't much on telly yesterday evening so, instead of playing Sudoku or staring at Spankwire, I formulated an astonishing new range of philosophies that will shatter all known intellectual paradigms and existential stratagems going forward.

Below is just a small selection of what I came up with. Choose one you like...

Preposterousism

The acknowledgement that everything is just silly.

Anti-antism 

An affirming enough attitude if adopted.

Post-coherence

This one is a bit tough to follow but stick with it.

Insubstantialism 

The least satisfying of my reasonings but I'll throw it in anyway.

Commuterism 

A comprehensive knowledge of public transport timetables that should come in handy.

Indeterminism 

A vague approach to life that is a sister philosophy to the piss poor Insubstantialism.

Ultra-Irrelevance 

A philosophy that can only function if no one adheres to it.

Premature Reposeitry 

Living life as if already dead.

Transcendental Transcendentalism 

What lies beyond the beyond?

Neo-Proctology

Assists the philosopher in the extraction of his or her head from his or her arse.

BJ And the Bear 

A largely forgotten American TV series that ran from 1979 to 1981.

Raidió Teilifís Éireannism  

Embraces the the passive acquisition of objective failures.

...and last and probably least...

Fuggerism 

A philosophy that is correct in all its assertions especially in its assertion that it is incorrect in all its assertions ...but doesn't really care.

To learn more about how existence can be better appreciated and understood all you have to do is learn less about how existence can be better appreciated and understood. The examined life is really not worth living. In short, just behave like a monkey.

MONKEYS DON'T HAVE WORDS

In a former life I was a monkey. I didn't have a name, just a scent. I used to drink water from leafs and pee anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on other monkeys who didn't mind at all. I jumped from tree to tree and threw berries at predators, taunting them from the safety of high branches, just for the laugh.

Past life regression therapy has brought these memories back to me. The main thing I remember is an overriding sense of urgent delight and an overwhelming immersion in what they call Oceanic Feeling. I wasn't just in the jungle, I was the jungle and I was everything else in the jungle.

I eventually got old and fell out of a tree and into the jaws of a big cat, which was a nasty end but up to that point I'd had tremendous craic. Anyway, even though I was eaten by a big cat, I was the big cat. It's hard to explain. It was a feeling beyond words. Monkeys don't have words. They don't need them. They'd find them inadequate.

In another former life I was a cartographer of either geographic land or the human mind, I'm not sure which. All I really remember is a sense of discomfort. There was a kind of fear there: of boundless spaces, of uncharted realms, of unlabelled and uncategorised things. I didn't have this fear as a child but as I grew older, and read stories of wild places, wild animals and wild people, I came to understand that categorisation was necessary. I too was categorised and this gave me a robust sense of what they call Ontological Security and this Ontological Security provided me with a buffer which I used to protect myself from the sheer randomness of what they call 'outrageous fortune'.

I eventually got old and developed dementia. I started drinking water from leafs and peeing anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on people who took offence and contacted the authorities. I jumped from building to building and threw bottles at the police, taunting them from the safety of high rooftops, just for the laugh.

I eventually fell from the top of a multi-storey car park and dashed my brains on the pavement below and was taken to a morgue where a little label was attached to my toe, with a little number on it, and I was put into a drawer that had another number on it and then I was put into box that had my name on it and then I was buried under the ground in a plot in a cemetery that had a saint's name on it and then I could have sworn that I felt a nameless monkey walk right over my grave and I think it took a pee.

TiTs!

My funeral will be held at the titty bar. That's where I want people to remember me. I want my ashes poured on Wendy's boobs as she gyrates and flashes her nonjudgemental grin. Wendy is my favourite of the dancers. Bendy Wendy they call her. The trace of scorn that is faintly detectable in the eyes of the other girls is absent from Wendy. She enjoys her work. She takes pride in it. Have you seen the way she transforms herself into a spinning human pretzel? It's incredible. It's beautiful. It's so much better than the lethargic swaying of those who would rather be glamour modelling or assisting a magician or working as an usher in an adult cinema. Bendy Wendy gives me reason to rise from my bed each day and this is why I ask that her cleavage be my final resting place. This is why I request that her mammaries be my memorial. I can see her now, slowly moving to the Funeral March as I am laid to rest on her generous breasts.

Some complain that Wendy's whoppers are 'fake'. That her charm would count for nothing if she was sans silicone but I see it a different way. I prefer the term 'enhanced' and aren't the best things in life enhanced? Nature gives us the raw material and we work with it, enhancing its qualities. Master chefs enhance flavours, all Wendy has done is enhance her knockers. She has knockout knockers. I told her as much. Just the other day, I shouted at her, 'Wendy, you've got knockout knockers'. She seemed complimented. Her grin broadened a little. Some of the others said she didn't understand me. They say she doesn't even speak English. They say that she is from a cold and bitter country and that her name isn't even Wendy. They say that she goes backstage after every performance and gazes at a creased photograph of a child that she keeps amongst her personal effects. They say that she sobs. What they say just makes me appreciate Wendy all the more. What a trouper. Despite all her troubles she comes out dancing and gives everyone a good time. 'You're a real trouper Wendy!' That's what I'll shout at her tomorrow. Even if she doesn't understand me, she'll get the sentiment. I'm a sentimental man. My send off will be similarly sentimental. It will be the saddest day ever at the titty bar but Wendy will be grinning because she knows that you've got to keep smiling no matter what knocks you take. Yeah, Wendy may have taken a few knocks but like her knockout knockers, she always comes bouncing back.

And, in a way, aren't we all heartbroken topless dancers at the titty bar of life? And rather than lethargically swaying and visibly wishing we were elsewhere, shouldn't we all just grin and gyrate and make the best of it? Gyrating and hoping that someone will slip a few bucks into our garter to send home to little Fedor so he can save up and one day, maybe, have enough to slip into the garter of some other heartbroken topless dancer that reminds him of his mother and causes a tear to come to his eye as he recalls the day she left him in the care of his grandparents and hugged him and kissed him a final time before walking out the door and leaving Slavingrad forever. Isn't that the way things are?

I think that is the way things are and that's the kind of thing I want everyone at my funeral to be thinking as Wendy wobbles and mourners weep and the whole world spins around again.

MYSTERIOIUS BUILDINGS

(Picture by Chris Reynolds)

Mysterious buildings. You see them all the time. Nowhere places in places near places between other places. Intermediary architecture, filling the gaps. Perceptually vague. Both ugly and beautiful. Wind moves around them. Sun beats upon them. Traffic sighs beyond them. You don't know what's in them or who built them. You don't know what they are for. Maybe no one does. You rarely remember them and may have just dreamt them. Sometimes there are words writ large upon them. Words without context. Words like 'Paradigm', 'Felt', 'Sunrise', 'Best', or maybe a name like 'James Reid' or 'Tom Evans'. Imagine if you saw one with your name on it. Would you go inside? What would be in there? A load of filling cabinets containing the details of your life. A distant descendant asleep behind a reception desk. A crackling Tannoy playing soundtracks from obscure and forgotten moments in your past. Corridors that look like the streets you were raised on, played on, bought property on, started a family on. An endless maze of such. If you went inside a mysterious building with your name on it would you find your way out again? You might be frantically running around trying to get out and pick up where you left off. Maybe there'd be an emergency exit or maybe these are buildings you enter when you are dead. Once you go inside you stay inside, forever.

****

Maybe all buildings are mysterious. Even buildings you are familiar with can become mysterious if seen at an unfamiliar time of day, when caught off guard. A closed down supermarket. An off season holiday home. When I was a child I broke into my school at night. Empty classrooms and halls. Silence. Could this place really be my bustling school? This is what it was like when we weren't around. This is what it really was. Unoccupied, inert, indifferent. Not lonely, just alone. Staring into space. Bereft of the human life that provides meaning and purpose. The world without people is just a stone. Buildings without people are just so much concrete. People without people are the same, revealing normally unseen, emptyish aspects. Once, as a drunken teen staggering home in the early hours, I passed the father of a friend in an empty car park. He was sitting on the bonnet of his car. He was normally an ebullient sort, the life and soul, jocular and genial, but not at this time. He didn't notice me as I walked by. He was zoned out, expressionless. He was rolling a cigarette. I could have sworn I heard him muttering the word 'cuntish'. I wonder if that would've been the word writ large upon him if he was an empty building. All I know is that he passed away soon after and I felt duty bound to scratch that word into his tombstone in an effort to commemorate a facet of the man that was not widely known. To help people appreciate that there was more to him than just a 'loving husband and father'. His family didn't understand. They were hurt. They assumed my intention was disrespect. The court made me pay for my work to be removed. I tried to explain but was misunderstood. 'Misunderstood', I think that might be word writ large upon me if I was an empty building. That or 'Dickhead'. I get called that a lot. Sometimes, I even mutter it to myself. I hope no one scratches it into my tombstone.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART ONE: THE LONG WORD

(pictured: an extract from The Long Word)

I've invented a new word. It is an unsayable word. It is actually impossible for a human to say the word. This is because the word is very long. So long that I can't type it here, it would hog up loads of the blog. While saying this word you need to inhale but you can't because you are saying the word. You die from lack of oxygen before you get to the end of the word. Even if you somehow devised a means by which you could take in breath whilst saying the word it wouldn't help because it takes longer than the average lifetime to say the word. This is ironic. The irony being that this long word I've invented is a synonym for 'why'. You never get the answer. You never even get to finish asking the question. You may as well not bother and that's probably the point.

THE CADAVERS OF THE FUTURE

The cadavers of the future rise from their beds, not yet dead, to face the day ahead. They wash their bodies and slide into their pants and skirts and blouses and shirts and slip on their shoes and eat something. They leave their homes and go out onto the streets of Ambivalence.

Ambivalence is an average sized town that resides on the borderline between the boroughs of Abominable and Abundant. There are a lot of things to like about Ambivalence but there is more than enough to hate. It is a town of contradictions and restrictions and no restrictions. In Ambivalence every good day is a bad day for someone and every bad day is a good day for someone else. It is a rare occasion when everyone is happy at once. So rare an occasion as to be non-existent and you don’t get much rarer than that. What Ambivalence has, it’s one constant, is a status quo. Ambivalence is as good and as bad at it gets and that is about the best the cadavers of the future can expect. 

Those that run Ambivalence are as crooked as crooked can be and those who complain about them are as crooked as they can manage to be without getting caught and going to prison. Not much makes sense and people rarely mean what they say. The cadavers of the future don’t worry too much about the future in which they’ll be cadavers. They leave a lot of messes for future generations to clean up, just as they have been left a lot of messes to clean up by their predecessors. Leaving messes and the required infrastructure to maintain these messes without turning the whole thing into a total mess is the Ambivalent way. That is the status quo. What more can you expect? It’s pretty good when you think about it, unless it seems really bad. It’s up to you really. An optimistic outlook is generally considered preferable but it isn’t compulsory. There is no rulebook here. Well, there is but those that adhere to it won’t be winning the game of Ambivalence. The rules of the game are to work around the rules whilst claiming to be sticking to them. To actually stick to the rules is naïve and naivety is the cardinal weakness in this town. The more naïve a cadaver of the future is the sooner in the future they are likely to become a cadaver.

When the cadavers of the future eventually become cadavers they are buried in a big cemetery on a hill overlooking Ambivalence. Tributes are paid to them and nice things are written on the stones that stand at the heads of their graves. The best of the worst is emphasised. A man who evaded paying his taxes his entire life is remembered as a good father and a man who was a bad father but paid his taxes all his life is remembered as someone who always paid his dues. This is the way it is in Ambivalence; most of the cadavers of the future prefer to look on the bright side and rarely acknowledge the dark. It is considered impolite to consider the dark so the dark goes unconsidered but everyone knows it is there. The cadavers of the future are both the bright and the dark and that is what makes Ambivalence tick. But you aren’t to go mentioning it. You aren’t to go saying as much. To point out that Ambivalence is a town that could only exist with good and bad in equal measure would be to point out that, although things will never get worse, things will never get better. Such an acknowledgement would lead the cadavers of the future to despair. Not many could handle the fact that they may as well change the name of Ambivalence to Limbo and that the only guaranteed progress is the progression toward a place up on the hill. Under a stone with a nice tribute to you written on it.

THE GHOST OF A LAUGH

Every Halloween all the ghosts have a fancy dress party. 'What does a ghost dress up as for Halloween?' I hear you ask. I'll tell you; at Halloween ghosts dress up as the living. Eugene (beloved husband and father, 1927 – 1988) is particularly enthusiastic. He gives everyone a good laugh, donning a wig and a suit and clomping around in heavy boots. He puts on a real show, shouting out statements like 'oh boy, I think I'm going to be late for work' and 'I'm really angry at the government'. Eugene's mockery of the piffling concerns of the living is always of great amusement to the other ghosts because the ghosts have passed on to a realm that transcends all trivia. From their vantage point, the whole of human life seems an unimportant charade. The ghosts regard living human concerns in the same way that a living adult might regard a child's concerns. A kid breaks a toy and it is the end of their world, they weep and wail and curse unjust fate, but the adult knows that it doesn't really matter. The adult knows that the kid will grow up and forget all about that toy. Likewise, the paltry triumphs and petty indignities experienced by the living every single day are regarded by ghosts as inconsequential.

The ghosts see us live, suffering or thriving, laughing or weeping, and they know it doesn't matter because they can also see the great astral engine, grinding and shaking and generally being monumental. All dwarfs in comparison to the great astral engine that powers the cosmos and beyond. So, the ghosts guffaw as Eugene mocks, pretending he is in love or at war or going for a haircut of returning a faulty product to the shops. 'I'm going to write to the newspaper about this', says Eugene, feigning outrage in his dopey living human voice and all the ghosts hold their transparent tummies and laugh and laugh and laugh. And then Eugene gets tired and sits down as spectral tears of uncanny mirth are wiped from eerie eyes. The sense of fun abates and a lull descends. 'What'll we do now?' asks Katja (beloved daughter and drug mule, 1969 – 1997). 'We could have a bit of float around the place', suggests Bill (shot for cowardice, 1891 - 1917) but no one likes that idea. They can do that anytime. It's usually around now that the ghosts once again become aware of the astral engine, churning and coughing and keeping them here for ever and ever. They may mock the trivial preoccupations of the living but, deep down in their former hearts, ghosts envy the highs and lows experienced by those still alive, no matter how naive or piddling. The ghosts miss the innocent exuberance and even the incidental despair. Ghosts envy the living in the same way an adult might envy the simplicity of a child. It may be silly but it's life. The ghosts silently reflect on this as they sit in their cloudy prison, hearing the great engine chug and being haunted themselves by the ghost of a laugh.

AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

I doubt you're wondering how I'm managing to leave blog posts from beyond the grave but I'll tell you anyway. . .

I was buried alive and died and then it went something like this:
My body blew like a gasket and my spirit split like steam and slipped between a crevice near the lid of the casket. I plumed up through tiny worm tunnels and came to the surface, scaring a gravedigger and causing his mange encrusted blind in one eye terrier to bark. 
'Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!' went the dog. 
'Hey, I'm floating away', went me.
I went upward past the clouds and joined a million soaring souls as they stretched throughout the cosmos like some moaning astral motorway passing by the space junk and the planets and the stars and headed toward the light. The light, the light, the cliched light. And then I saw a meadow and the smiling departed stood with their arms outstretched and greeted their relatives but there was no one there for me, not even my old dog Jake or my cat Rupert (the latter was a mercenary little bollix so what would you expect) and I was aggrieved but then someone called to me. Was that my Aunty Dolly? It was, it was, it was Aunty Dolly. Dear old Aunty Dolly! Darling Aunty Dolly! Only problem was I never had an Aunty Dolly. 'It's not your time', said whoever's Aunty Dolly it was and I found myself falling back to the Earth and seeping back down through its pours and plopping back into my body like a shite plops into a toilet bowl and then I came back to life and screamed and screamed and then I remember being unearthed by the gravedigger and his terrier savaged my arm and fucked my leg and that familiar sense of vague degradation informed me that I was alive . . .again. AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

THE BOOK OF MY LIFE BY ME - UNFORTUNATELY

Regarding my life from the lofty position of prostrate upon my sofa, I came to the sudden realisation that I am a work of fiction. I am a character in a book and the book isn’t very good. It dawned on me that I had to seek out the author of this book and demand a rewrite. Then I realised who the author of the book, and therefore myself, was. The author was me. Me when I was younger, when I had a preposterous worldview, when I thought curmudgeonality equalled depth, when I couldn’t write for toffee. (‘You still can’t, gerroff’ says you).

We are all characters in books written by our younger selves. Our younger selves create the narratives we end up peddling to others and thinking to ourselves. Our younger selves don’t literally write the book we end up living, instead they construct the story that our existences must adhere to with their minds. Instead of typing, our younger selves engrave these tales of the self into our cerebral networks, putting in place cognitive associations, aspirations, anxieties, prejudices and traits. The little fuckers make us all who we are and we just have to get on with it. Wouldn’t it be better if it was the other way around? Wouldn’t it be better if the older versions of us got to write for the younger versions of us? Wouldn’t it be better if we retconned our way through life, approaching things with a measure of maturity, not making so many mistakes and not missing out on so many opportunities? What would be so bad about that? Would it deny us the magic of life’s little lessons? Is that what life is about? Life’s little lessons? Well screw life’s little lessons! I’ve learnt so many little lessons by this stage that if I have to learn one more little lesson I’m going to do a Columbine and blow the whole University of Hard Knocks away.

Ahem, Ok, excuse me for that digression. I hope you’re not too perturbed. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, when I discovered that I was my own author, I felt a new sense of hope. I realised that my destiny was actually in my hands. This piece of shit book I was trapped in could be rewritten. ‘Yeah’, I thought to myself, ‘a whole new me, new possibilities, new achievements’. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Some of those character traits were engraved pretty deeply into my neural pathways but with a bit of perseverance (and perhaps some cognitive behavioural therapy) I could get this narrative under control. ‘The future starts here!’ I told myself.

But it wasn’t to be. There was a snag. I should have known.

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that I had lost the publishing rights to myself. The younger me had sold them. The younger me had sold them to someone he really respected and thought could write me a dynamic and exciting future. The younger me had sold the rights to all future adaptations and alterations to my life to Frank Miller. And so I find myself here, waking up next to a headless prostitute, talking in crudely over-wrought similes, in trouble with both the mob and a particularly unrealistic branch of IRA dissidents. This is even worse than the wannabe John Osborne nonsense the younger me had written for myself up to now. Now that Miller is in charge, things are going to get ludicrously violent and more than a touch adolescent. But I’ll not go along quietly. Hell no! Even if it’s ultimately futile, I’ll resist. I’ll not make it easy for this jaded and past his sell-by date hack. He’s gonna have a fight on his hands. Oh yes, because ‘these are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. They're back! There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war.’