Blue Saturday

what is the world/my brain coming to that I am even feeling this feeling at the start of the weekend?

(work-related angst excised bcz hey, Friday evening, put all work thoughts out of the mind. going to buy some fruit & veg, mostly to get out of the flat for 20 minutes but also I've just realised how crisps/Coke/vodka-centric my diet has been lately)

love your post Fizzles. hope other Blue Saturdayers are well.

I just got my shoes on and torrential rain started out of nowhere

more vodka and Coke instead then

i got faggots and sprouts and Oblivion and that'll do i guess, this feels like a sentence i cd've written with several different signifiers

vodka and coke trumps torrential rain def yes

's funny i was going to post earlier because at the end of work the sky was an astonishing sunset blue fading out into whiteness before it started to darken at the horizons and there was a kind of low key ecstatic peace

I talk to God but the sky is empty.

I still feel Sundays have their own qualitatively different order of gloominess ("Sombre Dimanche"), which is of a higher order than Saturday - especially in winter months.

Sundays are the worst, sure.

the Saturday i sat down to write this was a very subjective blueness at the time.

and now I sounds too blue to fly

bad shoe cripplefeet, shambly Smiley demeanour, anonymosity writ small, a perfect little background filler removable from the scene at any point now, waaaay out in the steppe, wineskin-empty

You're lucky, these auditors have me front and centre and seem to find me absolutely fascinating

one day we shall all be called to account

I was rather hoping it wouldn't happen until I'd finished probation yknow

"Under the sword lifted high, There is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, And you have the land of bliss....." Zen Wednesday

not really humblebraggin', maybe, but why when people say nice things about me is that hard to hear, almost a gut-kick, and why do i wanna instantly spin it into "but i am terrible in all these other ways"?

it's a small sort of pleasant relief to know ur not burdensome to society even if u don't particularly respect its judgement and thus feel more isolated from it imo

Not really bitter, but in a weird place and feeling conflicted, but:

At least people say nice things about you, regardless of what you choose to do with them.

I was having a hard time the other day, and it was around your birthday, NV, so I thought "hey, you know, I used to have a birthday thread back in the early days of ILX, maybe if I go back and read people being friendly to me, that will cheer me up." So I searched for my birthday thread. And it turned out that it had been locked. Because during one of my extended absences, one person revived it to say "where is branwell?" which prompted a whole slew of people to come on my damn *birthday* thread, and start clusterfucking about me - in my absence - to the point where the thread was actually locked.

So no nice things for me.

Does that make me angry? Well, of course. But 2 years of therapy has taught me other things to do with anger, to turn my version of humour on the things making me angry, how to not-respond, how to walk away and just let the anger go. I was in seriously not-a-good-place when those clusterfucks were happening, and people, instead of accepting that I was not-in-a-good-place genuinely thought clusterfucking was the way to go. I guess it seemed like a good idea to them at the time.

But there is, at the moment, a guy tearing round ILX, who is very obviously not-in-a-good-place, venting his mental illness, and being drunk and out of control and super-aggro in ways that look unfortunately very familiar to me. And watching how people respond to him, with genuine attempts at compassion and understanding and, well... coddling. It makes me feel ... Well. It makes me feel. I'd like to take a positive view, and think that ILX has maybe changed and become kinder and more understanding of mental health issues? But it's really hard to take that point of view. I remember how *I* was treated, when I was in that not-a-good-place (and how I am still treated, in some corners) - and I can't help but compare how ILX treats this guy, to how they treated Marissa - who was also venting mental illness and out of control and kinda aggro in a lot of the same ways - with bullying and banning-on-sight.

So I really don't know what to tell you about your "people say nice things about me and I don't know how to take it." I am sorry if that sounds aggro or self-pitying or whatever else other people are going to project onto me for saying this. If you think I'm an asshole for saying this, then fine. I'm an asshole. Yup. (Who cares what a cartoon thinks!)

People say nice things about you, and you don't know how to take it. But really, think about what the alternatives are. Would you honestly prefer to have people routinely saying awful and terrible things to and about you, and you to have to train yourself to say "but I am actually OK in all these other ways"?

(I have second thoughts about this post already, but it's too overt aggressive even for the other thread.)

i don't think you're an asshole Branwell. and i'm really sorry about all of that shit that you've described and for any part i might've ever played in it.

NV yr too hard on yrself and possibly on the world and yr one of the greats imo and if that makes you either squirm or just think of ways to discount the sentiment or the source of it then eh don't care really man tough.

i'm not bemoaning my fate tbh, it was more a sudden revelatory glimpse i got last night about how uncomfortable i get in a situation and what wrong-headedness i probly still need to work on so's i can just listen to other people's feelings and accept them at face

i don't take compliments well either. i like to think of ways i can flip it and compliment the other person as 'revenge.' i'd rather get to that place in a conversation where you're both comfortable and just talking about whatever.

god you know what gives me the major anxiety is 'group' conversations where you're all in a sort-of-circle and there are various little alliances and you have no fucking idea what to say ever.

i guess a lot of us are taught that big-headedness is a bad trait and that's part of training yourself not to take credit for things or to feel comfortable hearing other people's estimation of yr value. on the other hand i guess these things will definitely happen when you've had a few drinks, and i guess self-criticism is also sometimes a form of narcissism maybe

it is. not taking a compliment and moving on is a form of big-headedness imo. the issue isn't whether or not you truly deserve it, it's that the other person is making the observation.

i do thank people in the end and accept it in that sense, but the kick in the gut says something like "you'll prove them wrong and let them down somehow, eventually"

Yeah there's that but idk you have to value/trust at least some of these ppl and then acknowledge anyway the ?vanity? in always thinking you know better from a position of solipsism or w/e

right, the 'history' part of it, i mean i think it's ok to be sad about it but it's there to be proven wrong imo, or however you want to make a space for alternative outcomes.

the 'kick', i think i know what you're talking about. ok to feel that way.

yeah, i shd've called this thread "all is vanity" :D

it's easy to take compliments v personally, but they probably tell you more about the complimentor than complimentee ime. compliments are chill though, it means there is or was some goodness in the world

I would like to issue one (1) compliment to all blue saturdayers

Gwan so

http://www.outofeden.co.uk/prodimg/4150_1_Zoom.jpg

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1294891240745_8226679.png

are "left-handed compliments" derogatory of left-handed people?

The correct term is 'back-handed compliment'.

The root of my "hate getting complimented" thing was partially rooted in "I don't deserve happiness"

Get up in the night and wobble my way tiptoe thru the lacustrine waste and slime of the park, come home in the night but not home, straight to Haworth to wrap up in alcohole and group therapy what's missing, absent fathers, absent minds, fear of failing my own childers in ways material and paternal, up again in darkness, back to the bus thru more wet ooze, stab of reality that hand-me-dwn money is no legacy, chokey tight cig-throat and aboulia rising always. Struggling.

don't really know what to say but companionable hugs to you nv

Thanks. Just January plus biological obsolescence I guess

No chance at all its just January man?

it might be a cliche but someone who worries about being a good father as much as you could never be a bad father imo/ime

speaking as someone whose father really didn't give a fuck

thank you. i know i project too much - i worry about some disconnection with my kids that mirrors my disconnection my parents, but where there's a problem with communication the two things are totally different really, i know.

there's something unsettling (to me) about looking at pictures of my children, younger. they're people who've gone, even tho that going is necessary and inevitable and the only route to whatever being alive really is. winter is like 2 in the morning, every look back is thru a false sense of "could've done things better". but i know it won't always be winter and it isn't always 2 in the morning and the only real mistake is to fixate on the decisions i've already made.

something has always been inside me that desperately wants to connect somehow with other people and can't quite, and on bad nights i guess my children feel like the closest can't quite of all

<3 NV

desperately wants to connect somehow with other people and can't quite

oh I know that feeling well, so the rest of that sentence is like a truth bomb from another reality for someone who sometimes regrets not having kids (99.9% too late now). I must note that when I see photos of you + kids on ILX there seems to be a real warmth and connection there in the pic tho

anyway take care of yourself

clouds otm, and also lots of <3 for u nv

There have certainly been periods of more bitter distress and of even more harsh destitution, more unbridled atrocities and infinitely more conspicuous cruelty; there never was any so coldly, widely and radically dangerous.

While social ferocity has always existed, it had imperative limits, because labour resulting from human lives was indispensable to those who held power. It is not any more. Instead, it has become a burden and those boundaries are collapsing. Do we fully understand what that means? Never has humanity as a whole been so threatened in its very survival.

Whatever the history of barbarism over the centuries, human beings until now were always given a guarantee: they were essential to the function of the planet as well as to productivity, and to the exploitation of the instruments of profit - of which they themselves were part. So many elements that protected them.

For the first time, the mass of humanity is no longer materially and even less economically necessary to the small number holding power, and for whom human lives outside their private circle have nothing to recommend them, even have no existence - it is more obvious every day - but as utilitarian assets.

Radios? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don’t see any reason why not. The cinema? Three cheers for darkened rooms. War? Gave us a good laugh. The telephone? Hello. Youth? Charming white hair. Try to make me say thank you: "Thank you." Thank you.

Whoo I think for a while here I got real lost in midwinter darker than blue. Forget that noise.

Some people really get off on petty oppressions, like how can they feel good unless there's hierarchies to hold them up?

Vice-President Bastard - A slice of raw Bermondsey thug life from this 17 year-old MC who describes his sound as "nu-post-post-post-Grime". Packing raw tales of drug deals gone bad and Green Street 2 torrents that cut out at 97 percent, look to Bastard for tabloid provocation and uncompromising controversy once he's finished his BTEC ND in Music Technology come June.

― Shanty! Shanti! Shanté! (Noodle Vague), Monday, January 3, 2011 6:56 PM (5 years ago)