Dodgy Chinese/Ghost

I HAD HEARD staff-members at record shops could be a bit sniffy according to what you bought. I never had that problem with Sly and the Family Stone limited edition CDs or even years back with my Ultimate Rave/Reactivate II compilations. Maybe I was in a touchy mood, but I did appear to notice a slight smirk cross Mr Dweeb-Glasses' poker-face when I handed over my £3 for Whoopi Goldberg/Patric Swayze/Demi Moore in Ghost!

I took it home and watched it. I know this is old hat to y'all but I've never actually owned one of these DVD machines before. I was amazed how superior the picture was to video.

Then I glanced through Further Options and saw I could have Ghost speak to me in German. So that's what I did today. Watched Ghost in German and followed nearly all of it!

(Big wow, considering how terrible my German was just over a year ago...)

*******

I also went to NA. Crowded out. Heard the life story at the beginning, which is called the chair. Couldn't sit still longer than that. Had to go out for a cigarette and a walk home.

Majorly sweaty palms; hearing voices but the antipsychotics block most of that out.

*******

I bought a horrible dodgy undercooked Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fry rice. Not going there again. Nearly raw onions. Chicken too soft. Microwaved the second half; instincts say don't eat it. I'm saving a sample (not reheated) in case I get ill. So I could prove what caused it. I've never in my life reported a restaurant or takeaway and I don't intend to start now. I wish they'd just cooked the food properly. Ruined my favourite meal. Nearly £8 down the drain...

*******

Here's a poem I started writing years ago. I still remember it in my head. I only have one stanza and a bit I'm afraid. It recalls me staring into the River Thames from a boat and seeing fantastical shapes in the shimmering water:~~

Glance and gleam the fishes in the sky,
sun has streamed them the strong river's course,
one by one they wink into my eye,
mud-and-blue flashes of fish-force,
darting each rippling willow between ...

*******

THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (CUMULO NIMBUS MIX)



*******

THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (DEEP DUB)



*******

GHOST: FINAL WALK TO HEAVEN SCENE
i nearly cried when watching this. y'all know a big cry baby like me would just fess up if i did actually weep, but i didn't. that was a close nearly though. i love things that take you away from ordinary reality; things that are sublime



*******

Illustrated: pottery scene from Ghost starring David Hasselhof and British comedian Allan Car; hopefully not a countdown to being sick on that Chinese ..(!)

Drink Update Sunday

15:04 I'm kind of drinking but not liking it. I had no drink in the morning, longwalked to Iceland to get my £2 chunky Family Steak Pie and kept thinking "I don't need alcohol, I don't need heroin, I don't need anything, I'm OK" then I kept thinking about the drink and thought "OK well just get one then" which I did and it spent an uncannily long time unopened ~ over half an hour, which is not like me. Usually I crack it open on the street, then have to be real nice when police stop me. (They don't like people glugging alcohol in public, even from a Soft Drinks Bottle...) So if I can, I'm making this my one for the day. Knowing what I'm like I cannot be confident in this, as I'll tend to go to 2, as I said. But more than 2 I'm sure I will not do, not today. ("Just for today"). I got a phone call from my old heroin dealer yesterday. I didn't answer. Got a text from another saying will I taste some food for him (no). So I'm still off heroin. Still off drugs of an illegal nature. Still ON drugs of a legal nature: methadone; risperidone (both daily) and zopiclone 7.5mg as required. I had one last night after staying up well past 11pm. Dropped it. Sleeping like a baby by midnight. Yummmy stuff. I only ever daydreamed or loved or obsessed over sleeping pills TO SLEEP. Not to "light the tedium of the protracted evening" as Sylvia Plath said. She also said "their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good". Mine are white, so I'm OK on that score..!

Man I just checked that drink, nearly ALL there! Such a guzzler me, aren't I!!

THIS is why I wasn't too hot on going to AA instead of as well as NA. People hear that I drink, but my problem is OPIATE ADDICTION. That's the core problem. Drink only ever was a gear-intensifier and a bit of Dutch courage for begging.

As I told the dr., it makes me feel a bit better in depression. When ultra-hyper it barely does anything. Probably it takes the edge off. If say I slammed a glass into a wall in that state it would be my hyperosity NOT the drink doing that. I've drank enough over enough time to know how I behave on drink, and it's not like that! Also I was down to my bare minimum 2 on most days. Not drunk, by any means.

I know I'm walking a fine line that sounds like excuses here. I have to note down the facts for my own recollection. I WANT OFF DRINK ALL TOGETHER. I was told to cut down in stages, not just come off, which is why I can't just dump it. Though I'd sorely love to just do that, I also know I'm an addict. Which means I'm into associations. And the best association I can use to get OFF is to use a mixer and switch gradually to neat mixers with no booze. Does that make sense...? Somebody who knows please advise.

"An addict on their own is in bad company". (NA saying.)

"The heart is deceptive above all things". (Biblical quotation.)

I'll leave it there (another NA saying).



LEONA LEWIS: FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE
Nick inspired this choice with his Peter Paul and Mary video



LEONA LEWIS: see how pretty she sings? She's in the Streisand-Houston league though to listen to her singles you wouldn't believe it... Illustrated: not even I have this many empties (was this person a Diet Coke fan..?!?, Seconal 100mg (1960s sleeping pill); empty coctail glass (depressing)


Sylvia Plath: INSOMNIAC is here.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402
Brings me up in goosebumps it's so fine.

About pills: ...
... A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

And re nighttime brooding...
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.


19:34: Note to self: GABA supplements and XXXXXXX Disorder
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/nutritional-supplements-for-bipolar-disorder/
Not that I have XXXXXXX Disorder. I don't, I have no diagnosed mental disorders (apart from depression) and certainly not that one.

To be or not to be?

Here's what Google Translate made of the famous speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet (English-Chinese Traditional, Back to English, into Thai and back to English again). I swear I never altered a single word, so how "pharmaceutical sciences" got in there I haven't a clue!

In order to survive or is this is a problem.
Whether it is a noble soul.
Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or, armed with a sea of trouble,.
Opposition and end? Die: sleep;
Sleep and by sleep to say we end.
Heart - thousands of research in pharmaceutical sciences and natural shocks.
Texture those who succeed.
Pious hope that the dead sleep;
Sleep: maybe to dream: it is life threatening;
Death of a dream come true for sleep
When we roll this salad man,.
We need to stop: with respect.
This will cause a disaster for long life;
For those who would bear the whips and scorn of the time.
Oppressors wrong people proud of their disdain,.
Profane love, pain, the laws of the delay.
Office of arrogance and rejection.
The patient is not worth attention,.
But to make your own.
Simple small dagger?

High in the Chinese Hills...

This is my favourite Chinese poem, "To Tan-Ch'iu" by Li Po aka Li Bai 李白 † 762. Translated by Arthur Whaley:


My friend is lodging high in the Eastern Range,

Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and hills.

At green Spring he lies in the empty woods,

And is still asleep when the sun shines on high.

A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and coat;

A pebbly stream cleans his heart and ears.

I envy you, who far from strife and talk

Are high-propped on a pillow of blue cloud.


A little film. Highly Chinese. Highly entertaining. Worth a look if you've 10 mins to spare. Chinese, English subtitles. Includes more of Li Bai's poetry:



Incidentally the "star of Venus" 白星, after which Li Bai was named, literally means "white star" so the poet's given name, Bai (Li being the surname) really means white or clear. A lot of his poems are "celestial" in theme.

Anyone who speaks fluent Mandarin might like to watch a 40-minute documentary on my random blog, here. I think it will be quite some time before I have any hope of following this link ;-)

Here's a Burmese Poem, The Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese Poem: Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese short story (also in English): http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Short_Stories/Ma_Le

Songwriter

I'M WORKING on a hit record. Here are the lyrics. As you can see, I've made every effort to avoid pop clichés... I'm thinking of phoning Andrew Lloyd Webber or Elton John and asking whether they couldn't come up with a tune for this masterpiece.

Here goes:

LOVE WAS BLIND

You didn't call on the phone
and I'm here all alone
and it cuts like a knife
coz you're out of my life

yeah yeah yeah
those words you told me
come back and hold me
babe warm me, I'm cold me

turn off the light
we can rock through the night


yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah

tonight is the darkest night
but you are my star-light
from sunset till dawn
I'll honk on your horn

but you're out of my life
and it cuts like a knife
I was too blind to see
it was all about me


no no no
my my baby don't go
I'll hug ya and hold ya
and whisper things i never told ya

it was all about me
I was too blind to see

(repeat chorus:)
and you're out of my life
and it cuts like a knife
I was too blind to see
it was all about me

ooo-wooah me me me
yeah me me me
yeah me

baby get into me
forever we'll be...
together in luurve
it's a beautiful night

in luuurve
in luurve yeah yeah luuurve
I love ya baby
love ya baby
oh baby
love me please

please call on the phone
coz I'm still all alone
and it cuts like a knife
coz you're out of my life ...

(fade-out)

I'm having a crisis of confidence over who should perform this. Although obviously I'm rock star material myself I'd really like to hear this belted out by a diva of unrivalled melodic powers... But WHO? Whitney's voice has gone thanks to all that crack... Mariah Carey's a bit old now and her whispy wobbly style annoys me... Celine Dion: NO! Christina Aguilera ~ no way. Lady GaGa?... What could she wear? She's done a song called telephone, but she could illustrate that highly original lyric "cuts like a knife" with one of those "dagger through skull" joke shop headbands... oh I know what about Beyoncé? I don't particularly dig her but she sells... Oh I don't know. I know nothing about music. IDEAS PLEASE!

AS WELL AS FLATTERING CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND MELODY IDEAS. I've already got a tune going round my head going dur-dur-dur durdur durdur DUUUR...! Maybe that will do..?

What do you think?

Poets' Corner

HERE FOR HOLIDAY MONDAY is my own little dead poets' society ~ reading their own work. If you don't like the words, you might like some of the visuals. Not everything I looked for I could find a decent version of. So I'm sorry about the "modern art" sound effects over Thomas Sterns Eliot.

Starting with the best:
T S Eliot: Little Gidding

with the immortal line:

ash on an old man's sleeve
is all the ash burnt roses leave ...



WILFRED OWEN: DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Jeremy Paxman is like a rude, British, male version of Barbara Walters. This is why he sees fit to have his own say first:



Sylvia Plath: Lady Lazarus
I didn't expect American-born, highly neurotic Plath to sound so authoritative... or so English. Not all poets are expert at reading their own work.
Sylvia Plath lived for many years (and died) married to Ted Hughes (poet laureate 1984-1998) in the UK.
She is boasting here about surviving her own suicide attempts.
She died with her head in the oven in 1963
This verse was published posthumously:



OK this isn't read by the poet but it's good.
INSOMNIAC

The Soldier

THIS, one of the best-loved of all World War I poems, is often contrasted mockingly with Wilfred Owen's darker work (see yesterday and day before) ~ it certainly was at my school.
But I still like it:


If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

RUPERT BROOKE
1887-1915



DON MCLEAN: THE GRAVE
Whoever put this video together did a spectacular job...