May 30, 2017. A Tinker's Cuss – Raymond the Bulldog

The photo above is of Raymond, our bulldog. Raymond is on his way to a doggie farm where he'll stay whilst Kelly and I visit the USA in order to work on my writing. I've been planning a book for about twenty years now. There has always been something or other in my way and usually it has been me. I am my own hangman. Many of us are I guess. I usually don't think I have anything worthwhile to say. That's what depressives do. That's where they live.

This blog will be posted after I have safely entered the USA. I always get a second interview at Homeland Security because of narcotics convictions (the last one being in 1979) and a conviction from 1992 for assault with intent to injure. Hell, I was really beginning to like jail at one point. In prison you know who your mates are and things are very simple: You bash me; I will bash you. You look after me; I will look after you.

I always get sprung by computers at borders. Those computers remind me of the past and they make me feel dirty. But, I done the crime and so I must do the time. This time is measured out in shame and disgust.

I've been clean for a good number of years now and I have tried hard to mend my ways, but I'm thin skinned and that makes many things difficult. I have to think a lot (rather than simply react) and often I've gotten things wrong. I've said "No" too many times to the ice-creams that have come my way in this life as I've sometimes thought they were shit sandwiches.

I think this second part of my life has been about making amends and I think reflection is good for people. But I'm just as likely as anyone else to go off the rails.

So, today I'm packing up my Paul Butterfield compact discs and we should be in Illinois by the weekend. I aim to be putting up a few poem posters around Abraham Lincoln's house in Springfield, Illinois.

I've read a lot about Abe lately and it seems to me he was able to live under considerable duress without acting out. He was a depressive anyway and so he probably had more of an internal dialogue going on than a need to lacerate others. There are people out there who disembowel others first, and then they ask questions.

In the age of the internet, laceration has become a full time job for many. They might disguise themselves as critics because that term might seem less harmless than being a prick.

Lincoln did not generally lose his temper and there is only one recorded incident where he hurled his stovepipe hat to the floor and uttered a swear word. On that occasion one of his generals was heading away from the Battle of Signal Mountain rather than towards it.

There was a television show on Sunday night here in New Zealand where a young bloke had committed suicide. It was heartbreaking to watch. He was probably 22 and had some problems and ended up in Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch. A shrink had described him as a narcissist. The word narcissist is almost a new swear word which people hurl at each other these days. I think the 22 year old read the report and that night he committed suicide.

When I was in Cherry Farm mental hospital in 1975 waiting for a court report, a shrink had described me as being unable to express negative feelings. This has stayed with me for over forty years now and I've proved him wrong millions of times. But it was a dangerous label.

Six or eight months ago one of my best mates died. He was with me in Sunnyside Mental Hospital in 1973 or 1974. Me and my mate would climb into the same bed and read Hammond Innes novels together. Seeing this, the shrinks would send the nurses back to give us more drugs. There are some very positive things to be said about Hammond Innes novels.

My friend had about three major things happen to him at once before he died – a heart attack, a stroke, and a cancerous growth in his liver. We hadn't talked for at least twenty years and so we connected together over the phone. I was in the USA, he was in Melbourne. In 1972 we lived together in View Street in Dunedin and we had the time of our lives.

I called my mate and on the phone everything slipped away and we touched each other again. The rubbish and the airs and graces of our lives slipped away and we were whispering the truth into each other's ears once again. This was the most incredible experience and we repeated it three or four times before he died. His wife arrived from a distant land to look after him and she died of a Heroin overdose before she could. He knew this and then he died.

There were no airs or graces, no lacerations and no disembowelments, just the vital chemical stuff of closeness and intimacy which people need if they are going to have a satisfying life.

We all die for it.