Tag: pain

Well Blue Me

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’ve found a new thing to class as possibly the worst job ever. I mentioned sanding the boat yesterday and discipline. Well I managed to discover a little more discipline today, not as much as I hoped but more than the day before. It’s a process so I’m not unhappy with that. I am unhappy about sanding a boat though. It is simply awful. The goggles steam up, the suit is hot in the sun and so on. What makes it worse is the blue sanded paint just gets everywhere and even when you cover yourself you still end up covered in it. Yesterday Smurf is back again. Throw in the fact you sweat and it opens pours but the stuff stings. It’s actually toxic too which is concerning but I doubt it’s so bad it’s going to do me a lot of long term damage. But it stings and I’m not happy. It’s such a shit job. Now I know why boat yards charge so much. Give me a door that needs sanding anytime. I will never complain about such a thing ever again. Thankfully it’s going to be raining tomorrow so I’ve no chance of feeling I should be doing any. I’m not even half way yet either. It’s certainly taking long enough. Fuck this. I need a drink.

Well tempting though it is I haven’t done my minimum four hundred bloody words yet. My face is still stinging and it’s now night time. This is nearly worse than toothache. I have one more hull to do and there will be no messing around next time. I’m not sure what the opposite of life affirming is but this feels like whatever I imagine it must be. I wonder if it’ll finally make me ‘do something with my life‘ if only so I don’t have to ever do this again. But I will, I know I will. I’ll get a boat myself one day and it will be in a condition that warrants this kind of work needing to be done on it. Fucking boats. This whole swanning around and drinking gin thing is such a fallacy. Maybe it’s time to buy some rum like a real pilot. It’s the pirates life for me then. I was thinking if I ever lost an eye and was still sailing would I be able to credibly wear an eye patch or would it just make me look like a twat. Probably both a twat and credible. Doubt that would stop me though.

A Strava Wanker & A Pint

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Something remarkable happened to me today. Firstly I promise I’ll never become an exercise wanker, apparently they’re called Strava Wankers in honour of an app that allows you to record your run and post it online for all your friends to see how great you are. I admit I do have the app but it allows me to take the piss out of my friend when I run faster than him which probably makes me a hypocrite in some way. Anyway the point before I went off on one, twice, was that something remarkable happened today. While running I stopped hating everything about existence in that moment, usually the twenty five minutes worth of moments I run for, and found myself looking up and around myself at the sun and the fields, and realised I was actually enjoying myself. I felt that happy feeling I’ve heard people get from exercise. Apparently it’s not all about pain, suffering and just wishing you could either walk or magically be at the end of the run or life. It’s possible but I might actually get something from this exercise thing other than competitive pride sores on my feet and ego.

What my ego doesn’t like though is the realisation that I am not unique. I’m thirty-four and I’ve taken up exercise. It makes me want to vomit. I was cool once. Soon I’ll be wearing lycra and high vis jackets, and leaning against the bar in country pubs on a Sunday talking too loudly about the incredible milage I’ve just done on my super duppa bike. Well I probably won’t but I never thought I would take up exercise either. I must say though that I really can’t wait for the pubs to be open, to just drink a nice pint in a beer garden or in a nice cosy corner by a fireplace. Chat a little shit with people and stumble out into the night air. The worst thing is I can’t see this happening until the end of the summer just in time for rain and cold dark nights. Fireplace it is then. Maybe someone can create Strava for drinkers although I can’t possibly think how quickly we would get distracted from it and move on to being interesting again. Interesting in that drunken and barely interesting kind of way but you’re drunk so you don’t give a shit. I’m hardly in quarantine, I still work and while some things have changed not a great deal has; but my god I hope this bloody thing ends soon. I’ve just about had enough of it now. I want a pint.

What’s The Fucking Point

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Jonathan Pie said it best “What’s the fucking point” and you know what the man is right. He’s also not but he is. We drink with our paper straws, carry around our tote reusable bag and eat organic tofu before driving to work in a Land Rover. Those are also more or less his words.

I gave up trying to save the world about ten years ago. I had just given up being an environmental pescatarian – completely missing the point obviously. Those were my dark days when I was oblivious to the stupidity I’ve now just learnt to shut out or laugh at. Then there are vegetarians who lead a completely pointless life; don’t eat meat but keep them in pain as slaves until they don’t serve a purpose just so you can have milk in your coffee in the morning, the dairy cows still need the soya from what was once the Amazon, they still feel pain. It has to be vegan or just eat meat and be done with it. Despite what people attempt to say there are no ethical or rational arguments for continuing to eat meat, you just eat it because you want to. I still eat meat but I do so because I like it, am lazy and manage to shut out the little voice.

But back to the main point that there really is no point. About the time I started eating meat again all those years ago I also started flying again. Apparently a return flight from London to Melbourne is the equivalent of 16.8 tonnes of carbon. If we are to do anything positive in regards climate change we need to cut emissions by two tonnes per person per year, or at least that is what it was ten years when I gave a shit. Now fuck knows, most likely a hell of a lot more. When in Greece with the refugees I discovered they weren’t all escaping war but many were arguably climate refugees as their homes had now been made inhospitable. This isn’t talked about. Nor incidentally was the massive amounts of carbon produced from the many flights people took coming out to rescue them. But then that doesn’t mean fuck all in comparison to the one hundred and two thousand flights per day in the world as a whole. It’s good business you see. Creates jobs apparently.

Clearly I am frustrated but ultimately I am just frustrated with myself. I’m not going to tell anyone what to do when I still eat meat and buy vegan vegetables which been flown in from Spain, Israel and South America. Maybe I’ll buy the vegan burger from McDonalds to show I care. The television series The Good Life sums it up best; life now is so complex it makes it almost impossible to live a good life. From the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books we read, the vehicles we drive, the jobs we work, the batteries for our phones to virtually every aspect in our lives we are simply doing harm one way or another. If we really wanted to save the Earth we would just commit suicide as a species. That or end this ludicrous system of constant economic growth. We can’t have both. I would say it was time to choose but lets be honest it has probably been time to choose for a while now.

Chi Nei Tsang Me Baby

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I’m keen to give an update on how I feel after the cleanse I wrote about on Saturday. I’m wary of going on about how great these things are and how simply magical I feel because the mind is powerful and can convince us of many things, but mainly because I’ll sound like a wanker. Yesterday I didn’t feel a great difference in mood but today I have felt energised and like a weight has been lifted. It is one of those things that were someone else to read it, it wouldn’t really mean anything to them, and I can accept this because I would probably be the same. Like I said I’m wary of getting carried away but there is a distinct difference between today and this time last week or last month. I am sure you’re questioning how I can possibly give credit to a salt water cleanse for this but the gut is such a complex organ, our second brain some describe it. When it is not functioning at it’s peak then holistically speaking, we as one entity cannot either.

I back this up by an experience I had in Thailand years ago, actually just before that time I went to Burma and got the super farts. It was off the back of my travelling India and she had been a hard mistress. At one point I had spent three weeks really ill, everything passing through me and losing weight rapidly. I was down to sixty-five kilograms, or about ten stone depending where you’re reading this, and I’m six foot three or about one metre ninety. This was not a healthy look, I could see the ribs in my back. That three weeks took it’s toll on me mentally, for months afterwards I felt a heaviness to life. When I got to Bangkok, on the recommendation of a friend I tried an abdominal stomach massage called Chi New Tsang. When she had had it she said she just cried through the whole thing, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. The premise of Chi New Tsang is that by massaging your internal organs in a particular way you release all the blocked negative emotions which have been stored within them. This idea of the body storing pain is one you can find in many eastern therapies and healing practises. I’m naturally a sceptic but I also want everything that could be good to be real. I will try most things and hopefully with an open mind, some therapies I’ve not got the same response others have from them, but this stomach massage was incredible. I never cried or anything like that but I walked out of there and especially the next day felt like a new person. I had spent the previous weeks hiding away in a dark corner but for the last week I was there I got involved with things and was happy again. I took a beating and I stored it all in my gut. This was the release.

For some bizarre reason the Chi New Tsang massage is not that easy to find in Thailand, everyone just wants beaten up by attractive young girls as they crack your body back into position. I found one practitioner in Edinburgh but she was on maternity leave when I tried to contact her, a few in London and none in Athens so finding anyone is not going to be straight forward. The point is this massage works on a similar principle to the cleanse, you’re not just purging the physical detritus from your guts but in actuality the mental waste too.

The next mission is to keep myself from storing this suffering. I’ll start by hopefully listening to what my second brain tells me about what I’m putting in it. Unfortunately I have noticed butter has been making me itch which is a shame because I love it, I haven’t touched milk or cream, and I have lost all desire for coffee and alcohol. Why must those that we love most be the ones to hurt us so. Again, all I do is give my experience and as I said I have got little from things others have had strong responses to so there is no guarantee either the cleanse or the massage would do anything for you. These things are out there though, sometimes it may just be worth giving them a shot, the ol’ fuck it moment.

Trumps Misery

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I was thinking a little more about what I said yesterday about why people act in ways seemingly detrimental to others, such as assassinating a leader despite the inevitable risks of what will follow. I mentioned Donald Trump and how he just wants to be happy and I will elaborate on that further. It is also worth mentioning the two big events coming up in American politics which could explain why such aggressive and dangerous actions in search of happiness were undertaken.

Firstly there is nothing quite like a war to give someone a boost in the polls ahead of an election. Trump himself warned Barack Obama was going to attack Iran just prior to the elections in 2012 so as to boost his chances of re-election. It’s a time honoured tradition by leaders and it appears Trump has simply fulfilled his own premonition with the 2020 election coming up. Secondly there is the small issue of him being impeached. While invading a foreign country, going to war or just making the move they did will not make impeachment proceedings go away, they will certainly draw some of the attention away from them. Theres the old adage of look for what they’re not reporting and it’s very easy to hide some bad news with something exciting, triumphant and reportable, it certainly takes the heat away from his current ordeal at home.

None of that takes away from my statement that he just wants to be happy because both of these incidents if played out as he would desire should give greater opportunity for some element of happiness in his life. However it is never as simple as that and it’s now that we try to find a way to describe that approach to life while avoiding using words like wrong or unacceptable, as ultimately that is my version of morality and a discussion on some kind of universal morality is probably best saved for another time. Such behaviour though is certainly selfish, self-serving and uncaring. If somebody acts in a way which is uncaring and destructive then it is not far fetched to suggest they are born out of anger and unhappiness. Trump may just want to be happy, which is looking compassionately at his actions, but if it is the negative emotions inside of him driving his actions then it will only lead to further negative emotions for himself and others no matter how much happiness and gold he believes lie in wait. Actions like yesterdays assassination are nothing more than another moment in the perpetual cycle of misery for people like this. While that may be his trip, the problem as is clearly evident, is that when someone on such a bad trip holds such power, it is impossible for us not to be dragged into it and into his reality. Unless we can separate ourselves, difficult though it is, our search for happiness will involve nothing other than being dragged into a world of fear, paranoia, misery and pain, because make no doubt about it; that fat cunt has it all.