Trivial Tales Of Everyday Madness 1: Two Very Different Worlds

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes This world was over long ago. ACIM Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 1 Having somehow contrived to bring about a situation where I find myself in almost complete isolation, I have to wonder just how much this is intentional on my own part or whether I should allow myself to be tempted to see myself as, if not the unwitting victim of circumstance, then certainly not quite in control of my conscious processes as I would like to think I am. Poe’s Imp of The Perverse immediately floats into mind and not for the first time. A story that disturbed and fascinated me ever since I read it in my teens. I knew he was speaking a general truth. That he was describing the unconsciously destructive impulses we all share to a greater or lesser degree, only I was incapable of describing it as such at that time. Now its accuracy seems obvious, becoming all the more so over the years. In fact, it would be little exaggeration to say that the remainder of ones life can become a kind of damage limitation if you’ re not too careful. And that is being careful, if circumstances warrant it as I say. Worse, the present, in collusion with time, would seem to join forces to thwart all your best efforts. Not a line I ever heard in Poe I think. But one set of observations in one period leaps across an apparent chasm of time to influence little ol me in another, and my sense of wonder will never cease. Sometimes the only thing that’s kept me going I think. The aforementioned collusion, the rather abstract way of describing what impacts me as nothing less than a ganging up, a full frontal attack on my existence, my very sense of being, would also have me feel that my whole life has been oddly out of synch for as long as I can remember. Or blatantly out of synch. Oh I can put this down to the awareness of not having achieved specific goals I perhaps rather half-heartedly set myself for all the deep convictions I felt at the time. But is it also any exaggeration to say that it might be possible to say these objectives were so attractive to me, so coveted, again, on some deep unconscious level, that to have attained my goals in any real sense would have been the first step into a downward slide. That, in essence, the reality of the situation as I felt it at the time was that it was too painful an enterprise to contemplate, the ruination of which as I say, would amount to an unforgivable grievance against myself. But better to regret what you have done than what you didn’t; or might have done as they say. I’m saying that the world would seem to conspire to have you screw it up from every side if you’re not paying attention, and I all too rarely was. This at least is one of the positives of the awareness of the long haul. That going through shit and the internal hells we would subject ourselves to can also be a gradual awakening process; if you manage to come out the other side in one piece that is, with all your marbles still intact, and relatively unscathed. Matters of interpretation as are all things in this world I’ve come to learn.

A part of that very process. This, if you haven’t succumbed to some rampant if undiscerned egotism, whether by oneself or others or both. Malignant narcissism perhaps, or full blown psychopathology. Start off on the wrong foot – and most of us do, and you find the first day and every day of the rest of your life is a process of trying to get back on track. What’s more, the world would also seem to do its dandiest to ensure this will never be the case. If you fuck up, you’ve fucked up for good as far as the world is concerned. Could there be any worse sense of ostracism, of being left out in the cold than finding the world seems to have decided it doesn’t want you as a member? I’m not really asking, but stating it. Fortunately this doesn’t literally apply in my own case, but if I genuinely thought or believed it did would I be likely to tell you? You might be one of the “enemy.” You could be struggling with your own Imp of the Perverse, in which case, I congratulate you and I tentatively suggest we may be brothers or sisters engaged in the same struggle (And who am I to pretend the “battle” is won?). I say “tentatively” because you could, for all I know, slip imperceptibly over into the other camp, so to say, where the characteristic complacency and smugness of the conceits of the ego is the norm. In cloud cuckoo land. Haven’t we all. But not as a way of life, regardless of how the worlds thinking would like to have it. Perhaps I sound a little paranoid. Aren’t we all. Only time and a more acute perceptiveness will tell. But as I indicated, time would conspire to have me dwell in the past as I contemplate a potential fearful future. And that’s no way to live. In truth, it isn’t really living at all. That much I’ve come to see at least. So this is my goal now, as Dostoevsky once had Raskolnikov say, is to “refuse to go on living like this.” Enough is surely enough. I really can’t stands no more. It’s not on. I’m out of clichés now. But that out of syncness that I mentioned. I look on others, the panorama of history; which is really a history of murder, and criminal intent. A history of madness, of insanity. And I see… my own reflected in it. On the level of form, where it all takes place, after all. Then there’s that quiet part of me, discovered in childhood and through reading Poe for instance, where I can seem to temporarily separate myself from my actions, and become aware of that inner space. The same interiority I would feel sitting or lying on my back letting the sun’s rays shift in my peripheral vision as I screwed up my eyelids, and shifted the angle of my palm and shaded my eyes. A revelatory experience in its way. And wholly foreign to the consciousness of my mother for example. And who did descend into a kind of abject paranoia. But is it really always ever so simple as that? I doubt it was for her. It was obvious her life was drastically out of accord with what she had envisaged for herself. But we never talked about it, except for once perhaps. I was never a real person to her. My own thoughts or feelings were of little relevance to her. She saw no connection between my state of mind, whether relatively happy or unhappy and her own. This was her main failing, and as much for herself. This is my point, and something she just never understood or ever grasped. Few do it seems, even now. Or have I lived too sheltered and lop-sided a life. Anyway, I was older, in my thirties, and her all her relationships had come to naught, aside from other female friends and

relatives who were concerned for her well-being. And for some reason we slipped into a real if brief conversation. I knew she had experienced life as a kind of hell, so I wasn’t surprised when she asked if there is a hell. Even if I had thought so I doubt I’d have said so. I found it simpler to say, as if talking to a child, that this is hell; this world. I was as surprised myself I put it that way. And felt suddenly that it may have been an even crueller thing to say. That she would likely still interpret it in terms of a self-justified guilt, as was her way I intuitively realized. That it would only make the sense of being in a nightmare more real for her if possible. On the other hand, I realized as quickly, it also indicated the possibility of release, of escape. Perhaps my brother came in and I didn’t have time to pursue it. But I felt dissatisfaction with my own answer, and thinking about it later, I knew why that was. What I had really wanted to go on to say was I don’t believe this is literally hell, as she was inclined to take it, but that it’s a hell of our own making. That hell as such isn’t real. That none of this is real in fact. An observation that would only have opened up further levels of incomprehension and possibly denial. She’d think I was as crazy as herself; crazier. Such is the power of denial. And she made existence a kind of hell for me as others had for her. A connection she was clearly incapable of making in any other way. She still saw herself as being acted upon without any input of her own and for no apparent reason. Hers was the perfect victim mentality. For me she had been as if a kind of demon at times. Possessed with an incomprehensible and constant fury. But towards the end of her life it was becoming apparent and for the instance just described, that she wasn’t wholly unaware of the split between her awareness of her own input or lack of it into situations and the denial it engendered. She had always conveniently rationalized her failings, when I once challenged her, blaming it on pills, and so indicating she wasn’t in her right mind. Which would mean most of her life, up until when I was able to physically defend myself, and even beyond that when she could or felt in her warped perceptions it was justified. I came to agree with her in part in any case, with the proviso of sorts that blaming her behaviour on pills was as much of a pretext as any other erroneous justification. But if it’s all crazy from the outset, looking for whom to blame can become to seem pointless. I can blame her doctors and the pharmaceuticals industry for believing in quick and simplistic solutions and big bucks. Logically then, I might hunt down her former doctor and take my revenge. Or better still, find a way to impact the multinational conglomerates. A tall order. Or refuse to ever take any pills myself, for anything ever. Not likely. (I've never been on medication, nor am I now). And without penicillin I’d have died of the pox when I was barely out of my teens. Or however long it takes to end you. But I know I’ll be coming back to my mother. Not to blame her as such but to fathom the situation, that I could put in a nutshell as: However was I stupid enough to ever be born into such a situation? Not that she was the only culprit. Far from it. You know how it is or can be. Maniac teachers and other loony so called adults. We’ll be getting into this later no doubt. You’ll have your own story and associations. I have a goal here as I say. An agenda even. I want to come to peace with it all. I want to end it, and the lesson learned over the years is that this can only be done in the mind. Further, the mind is the key to the matter, as it’s where it all

takes place. Or seems to take place. These are the “new” revelations. Really the wisdom of old. But when you’re young you don’t know about any of this. And the oldsters, to use Martin Amis’ phrase, are too deluded and in denial to be of any real use to themselves, let alone in the presence of the incorrigibly sane. With the exception of my granddad and the odd few. My headmaster at primary school, Mr Young, for instance. But most of the rest are either terminally indifferent, or worse, they make it their goal to beat and manipulate it – sanity – out of you. Bitter? No, just realistic. When I did acknowledge the level of hostility and hatred towards me, however disguised it might be – and it wasn’t always, I think I found the thought of it, the realization too unpleasant to contemplate in full. So once again, denial has its way, if in another form. And love becomes as impossible to contemplate if not more so, than the commonplaceness of casual indifference and plain hatred or dislike. Because as with my mother – and this is the point I forgot to emphasize, there is always the sneaking suspicion, the underlying belief morelike, that you somehow deserve this. Otherwise how else could it possibly come about or be allowed to? And, that worse, and by the same reasoning, God must have a hand in it somewhere along the line. That he’s chortling malevolently to himself somewhere behind the scenes. Snickering to Himself in the wings. An unspoken, unformed, almost unimaginable thought, but lurking there at the edge of awareness, rarely if ever to be fully expressed. Because if you focus on it God might strike you down for such uncharitable, ignominious, arrogant and grandiose notions. Or your elders and betters certainly would. The interior life wasn’t always a hazard free zone. There were as it happened, whole areas that were no-go. Something I only picked up on later. That’s the nature of dissociation and denial. And by then I had serendipitously drifted into popular studies of Freud and the unconscious. I could then go on to see myself as a mass of hopeless “complexes,” as they were described. This didn’t help me much that I was er, aware of, but any new insight at all was welcome. The sense of discovery would also correspond with a sense of getting to grips with things and so, feeling I might one day be my own master. That was the crux of the matter for me. I might not have been out of touch with my own deepest impulses whether of lust or love – though I was, and it was the same with anger – but I felt powerless to take anything I saw as positive action, and so be doing something about it. And so the slide into the sense, the conviction of my life growing slowly and sometimes abruptly out of alignment with my own wishes and desires came more overtly into awareness. I had done absolutely nothing about Lynne over the years. Attractive, possibly beautiful, highly intelligent, as I believed myself to be (it had become obscured somewhere down the line); witty, warm, she had resorted to virtually throwing herself at me. She had at some point, which I will very likely delineate in painfully exquisite detail in the near future, decided I was the one for her. For me, this was literally unthinkable as it turned out, though fathoming my own motivations as to why was a contradiction in terms. If I knew at the time I assume I would’ve reacted in a very different way. And what can seem like almost inconsequential little incidents can come to haunt you in later years. I should be clear about this. I came to see her – this, as the reason, my focus as to where and when though not why it all seemed to come apart at the seams; or at least the expression of

it. Meaning the beginning of the unshakable conviction my life was now incontrovertibly out of synch, and not only that things would never be the same again, but they would always be the same. The past can’t be changed, so there was no way I could ever change this. From then on I felt I lived a kind of posthumous existence. Now that may be a kind of Poe-esque exaggeration, but the purpose here is to attempt to refrain from denial and explore my true feelings on it. I almost said “the subject,” but that would be to distance myself from it. No bad thing I hear you mutter, but first things first, and first I have to look at it. Not wallow in self-pity, but stare it squarely in the face, without resorting to some macho-esque or “mature” rationalization of how there are plenty more fish in the sea. No, I want to explore why I often feel I’m living someone else’s life due to not having taken any actions I might have. And, while we’re on the subject, so I can stop my life descending into a hopeless litany of might haves and should haves. Of course the real irony, or even paradox is how I could have read the haunting and some would say often-morbid stories of Poe and not see any of this coming, but you know what they say about hindsight. I didn’t, it seems. Or I found my own reasons to rationalize it all away. But denial and unconsciousness is just that. Out of sight and out of mind. And I want my mind to be out of time, whenever I choose. The secret that isn’t a secret is to come to know how time can be under your control. As if I know. We’ll see what happens. So I let the girl slip by me. What else is new? It happens all the time. Not to me. In her case, once was enough. We have our one life and our one shot. In my case, with that one particular person. And being particular is the key description here. I could also have said she’s only a girl. Was only a girl. But she wasn’t any girl. And I wasn't any kid, and I don’t see why I should look upon myself that way. But just to jump ahead and spoil my own case, or perhaps salvage it, I did once feel pretty much exactly the same thing for another girl called Jacqueline Watson. Lynne wasn’t around at the time for some reason, and the girl was new in our class. I liked her immediately. There was something different about her, and not just that I’d never seem her before. She was as unique as Lynne was unique. And somehow the same – as me. I found my feelings were the same for her. It wasn’t only an infatuation. When I thought about her, the natural curiosity as to her life and circumstances would expand beyond my conscious volition it seemed. Strangely – to me – I seemed to accept my deep enthusiasm for her in a way I hadn’t or couldn’t with Lynne. Perhaps because it had been knew to me. And not least that she had been around a whole lot longer and had made her interest plain after a while. Neither did I feel any sense of betrayal. A further paradox, then - that I accepted something that had previously (and presently) scared the hell out of me. But predictably I didn’t make any moves to bring it into the realm of actuality. I was wildly flattered she seemed to like me also. Perhaps I wasn’t so repulsive as the persistent voice inside me would have me be. I say voice, but the feeling was entirely non-verbal. Out of conscious awareness even. It expressed itself as avoidance. That much at least should be clear by now. For me it was as clear as mud. My life was a fog of inexplicable feelings. And again the

sense of paradox that I wasn’t overly concerned through any conscious awareness of avoiding emotional highs and lows. I neither acted on it nor allowed myself to dwell on it at any length. But memory is unreliable, and it’s more likely I would only allow myself to think of both of them within specific contexts. I could even fantasise being with them. It was probably easier with Jacqueline and for some reason a memory of a rocky shore comes to mind. She may have been from up North somewhere. I also never imagined anything even remotely sexual. Again, what with the distance of memory, I must surely have imagined kissing them. Certainly Lynne, as we were in each other’s presence in class for years. And this has been the case for all my life. Not that I would have any reason to deny any potential sexuality in her case. I would think of sex, and more so in my teens of course. Just not with her. In primary Seven, she had been caught truanting, with others. She had been with Billy Devine. His sister Emily was in our class. I liked her in a platonic way, though I did also think she was attractive in an unconventional way. I felt very jealous watching L as she was paraded in front of the class. When she was brought back, in fact. I felt for her also. And I also felt an obscure anger at myself. It was more of a sense of loss, at the realisation she was so available; so accessible, more accurately. In retrospect it’s obvious I had her on a pedestal that may have bore little relation to the reality of the situation. The thought that we could be alone or as near as in the same room together would have been for me a kind of dream, I was so enraptured of her. Neither did I ever doubt or question my feelings for her. I somehow knew it was the real thing. That still being a child was neither here nor there. And I felt it to be real in her. She had got classmates to ask me out, not once, but twice. Maybe she had thought I wasn’t convinced the first time. Or they hadn’t carried it through. But the truth as far as I’m capable of understanding it now, was it was a combination of deeply unsympathetic circumstances, and my own overwhelming affection and love for her. If I had really stopped to think about it honestly, I would express it now as the conviction that they were two separate and irreconcilable worlds I could see no way of adequately bringing together. She was a separate universe from my mother. To have her see the commonplaceness of my surroundings, the crude indifference, or casual insults of my mother was unthinkable. Too unpleasant to even contemplate. I would cringe with embarrassment when she made a rare appearance at school. Now I can feel some compassion for her. But as a kid, existence feels too naked. Final even. The opinion of ones peers, however indifferent to me some of them might be also, was of grave importance. Stylish me in my flared blue trousers. That my mother bought at my suggestion of course. But rather than feel guilty now, I see my reaction as understandable. And the simple fact was, it was no environment for any kid, never mind complicating the situation beyond endurance as any attempt at “normalising” the situation with Lynne would have done. There’s always that element of regret of course. The sneaking thought that perhaps we could have reconciled the situation by seeing each other at her home for example. Her mother seemed normal enough (though what did I know). But that would only open up the possibility of rejection when the facts became known. But as I say, I never thought of any of this consciously, let alone in any methodical and consistent way. It would

have opened a Pandora’s Box of impossibilities. The scope and complexity was beyond me of course. All I knew if unconsciously, was they were separate worlds and to keep the real one intact, things had to say that way. I had no doubt my feelings for her were the real me, the real world so to say. But it was an existence, a state of mind so fragile I felt, that it could be negated by a word or a look. Not least from Lynne, and I suppose I was unwilling to put it to anything I saw as a test. That would be my life as it was. I could live in a sort of free-wheeling limbo, as far as my emotions were concerned. I could do no better than I was capable of. She would just have to bear with me. We wouldn’t be children or even teenagers forever. Things would somehow change for the better, even if I had no clear idea how. If she loved me she would surely still be around when I had a better grasp of the situation and myself. In effect, I lived in my own head. Not exactly a fantasy world as I paid attention and my apprehension of her was accurate. And I was correct about circumstances changing in the future, but just not in the way I might have imagined. And the fact was, I never truly broke the ice with her. It was forever unstated. Our teacher, Miss Leaburn had picked up on it and put desks in fours, two each facing each other, with her facing me. I recall my sense of disbelief and restrained terror. I wasn’t just shy; it was the beginnings of a real problem, that came to a head in secondary (or high) school. But it didn’t have me in such an almost pathologically vice0like grip then, and it had the desired effect of thawing me out to an extent, and becoming a whole lot more comfortable in her company as well as cementing out intense liking towards each other. But I still couldn’t express it in any direct way. And I would all too easily lapse back into bashful, intensely self-conscious and avoidant mode in unfamiliar circumstances as when I was going down the stairs and there she was standing outside the headmasters “office.” She smiled and looked slightly embarrassed and flicked her hair, but she was as friendly as ever. I looked and no doubt barely managed some incomprehensible grimace as I flounced on, clearly with far better things to do than waste a single second on the likes of her. It was the same story when John Reilly passed on her massage that she wanted to go out with me. Of feeling put on the spot in a way I categorically didn’t want, or so I felt. That fight or flight reaction. Everything an unbearably intense and serious big deal. No lightness at all in my response. I don’t think I even answered. I’m sure of it. Both times. Later I would see them sitting together looking at a book and feel more jealous than I ever had. My first real experience of the emotion. At least it had brought them together in a way. I must have been unfathomable to her. But then it’s not as if I clammed up for evermore. It was clear I was somehow compelled or had decided to keep her at a distance however friendly I might be after it. And I was naturally friendly and communicative. There lay the pity and the pathos of the situation, along with my unacknowledged conviction, to myself of course, that she was the most important thing in the world to me. The stage was set for a fuck-up of the most egregious kind, or it would take a miracle to see my way through this. The last time I remember seeing her was at secondary school in the corridor, and this is where I emphasize we were back to having to break the ice again, as she stood there smiling at me, waiting. Now I might finally talk to her. And I wasn’t capable of it, it seemed.

I couldn’t talk to any girls in class, except the unattractive ones, not surprisingly. I had no emotional or psychological investment in them. Anyone whose opinion I might care about, I was a wreck. When I was at my mother’s that time – she was in the process of being “decanted” (a word she seemed to love to use, as she kept repeating it – and new to me) temporarily from the council house we had spent most of our lives in – some repairs or other needed done (I can’t remember to be honest) – to another on the same street as the school my brother and me had went to, along with Lynne of course. I couldn’t believe her luck; meaning mine. Visiting that New Year, or was it Xmas, I thought it would be silly not to take the opportunity for a closer look at the place now I was older. In my thirties in fact. I’d passed it often enough when in Dundee, once even having a walk around the playgrounds. The main one leading into the school proper was very small, but that was irrelevant of course to the myriad memories it could conjure up, as did the shed adjacent to the toilets. (I had once tormented Stuart Anderson, a bigger kid in the class above me – it was a small school of only 150 pupils – by repeatedly gobbing on him and running off, ignoring his warnings. I wasn’t that small myself, but I could be quick. Idiotically, stupidly, I thought no more about it, when at the end of the day as I was almost at the few steps that led down to the school gate and out, I was all of a sudden in this vice-like grip, my head pulled up to face him as Anderson looked down at me casually, snarling that I would see how I liked it, before drenching me in phlegm and spittle while I struggled ineffectually. “Like a girl,” he might have said if he was so inclined, but as he was too intent on grim revenge he couldn’t even laugh at my plight or the state of me after it. And he was right; I didn’t like it. But if he’d wanted to he could have given me a good kicking, not that I was inclined to appreciate it at the time. We’d meet again on better terms). The school was now a further education centre for the handicapped. I toyed with the notion of going in and having an unaccompanied wander; that I could leave it to others to challenge me and was still considering it after I’d went inside and walked up the stairs and by the headmaster Mr Young’s office, where Lynne had been waiting outside all those years ago (Presumably sent there on some petty misdemeanour, but he had shown himself to be an exceptional and perceptive man, so it hadn’t occurred to me to be anxious in any way for her). My nerve failed me as I walked by a couple of classrooms, each of which I had spent a year of my life in, the first one and my first day at that school was Mrs Marshall’s, a slightly bulbous eyed woman. I would describe her now as tough but fair. How she managed to toss those keys up and down as she presided over us in the dinner hall I’ll never know. Balls of steel. But I was of course projecting my sense of insecurity onto her. She was in charge, so what did she have to concern herself about. But for me she may as well have been the Who’s Roger Daltry swinging the microphone around before he caught it mid swing. The woman was beyond my ken. Another classroom and some of my classmates took shape. There was the tall, slim and to me, rather regal Helen Webster. Alex Roberts liked her. There was also Sharon Scott who I was interested by and attractive to me. I had once see a new kid, Charley McLaren kissing her during the break over the

railings at the front of the school and that separated us from each other. I was fascinated and stunned. And slightly sickly jealous that she would allow it so easily. Again, even at that age it was a level of involvement with a girl I couldn’t contemplate. And there was Rita Galazzi, small and brunette as I recall, and Valerie MacManee, and of course, others whose names I’ve forgotten because they were of less interest to me. Oh and there was Heather Borland, a plumpish and quite attractive redhead who sat beside Lynne. And there was Alan Anderson who I really liked along with Alex, and John Reilly. And there was Colin Heron and others. It’s simpler to say I felt a deep affection for most of them, which was mostly returned, though not always. But it’s remarkable to think on the level of contrast between the warmth I felt for them and the interest I had = an overflow of my general interest and enthusiasm – and the demonstrable lack of it shown towards the girls, when in reality I was as intensely curious about them also, needless to say, and would have loved nothing more to have spent as much time with them as I did with my classmates. I had once spent some weeks at Macalpine School where girls and boys shared the same huge playground, and it was a kind of revelation to me. They played games together. A girl I liked was Marianne Wily. She liked a fat faced kid with a crew-cut named Bruce. One lunchtime – dinnertime to me – I was climbing some semicircular playbars just outside the school when a girl, slightly younger than myself, looked up at me to say something and I was struck by the blueness of her eyes. Short-sighted and shy I had rarely looked into another girls eyes. She seemed to me at that moment the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. My mother has been afflicted with cancer, benign, and my brother and me had been shipped off to cousins, mostly girls. An experience to treasure. Then when my mother recovered, we were back at Mitchell Street, where I was now, fascinated by the very texture of the place. The wide space that served as an Assembly Hall, where kids were selected to give out readings. I would experience a primal fear one day when the possibility arose I would be selected along with others. For some reason it never came to pass. I would happily have slit my throat to avoid it. Not quite, but I well recall the sense of horror. How other children could be so in control of their emotions and perform without a qualm in front of pupils and adults was an unfathomable mystery to me. I had once had to attempt to sing in front of the class for the Lang medal competition. I had a good voice but I was useless; too selfconscious to find the right key to carry it on as some teacher tinkered on the piano. She quickly gave up, no doubt picking up on my self-consciousness. I assume. Another one was reading out poetry. Burns’ Ode To A Mouse. I had little interest in the poem. I preferred stories. I don’t recall my bland attempt. A little kid called Willie Henderson won it. Whatever he won. Perhaps nothing, and he was only the best in the class, according to the teachers who ooed and aahed over his wildly lilting pronunciations… “Wee, coorin, timorous beastie…” I liked him. I had no reason not to. He was a pleasant kid. But sitting there, listening to their crap, I would happily have shat on the floor if I wasn’t so fearful of the consequences. I liked the more progressive chart singles of the day and Tamla Motown. These people were idiots. They would have you prance around like a performing monkey if you were silly enough to buy into it. I preferred to be in control, make my own choices. That meant

being unresponsive to anything where it was required I express emotion. The whole idea was absurd (I felt). The very notion robbed it of all spontaneity. I never sang at home except when by myself, or oddly enough, if I was excited as with friends, and I would forget my self-consciousness and jump up and down on the settee, singing along with the Beatles. I loved music. I did better at school writing stories, once basing a story on H.G. Wells’ short story, The Red Room. I called it The Red Room. My own story went nowhere, but it was precociously literate compared to the rest of them so Mrs Leaburn read it out, to my barely disguised glee. Probably because it was an opportunity to shine in the eyes of Lynne. If she was there. She wasn’t always around. This was in Primary Five. Sometimes in my proclivity for getting into an overexcited state – I saw the humour in most things, paradoxically, and was almost constantly in a state of high spirits – a teacher had got into the habit of making me take my desk outside and sit in the corridor. (Possibly Leaburn, more likely McDonald. But then it was Primaty Four, and we'd had MsDonald in Three. Odd, because I really came ot like Leaburn. I did have Mrs Palmer twice; an attractive, tall, dark-haired woman, but I'm sure it wasn't her, Iiked her too, as she was considerate; she could also be pretty blunt when she wanted to be. I think it was Leaburn; attractive also, with fairish hair and a badly pockmarked face. I came to take incredible liberties, treating her almost as a schoolfriend, and she tolerated it. I must have grown on her later. What is noticable is that they didn't belt me). A form of solitary confinement, as I wasn’t allowed to have anything to occupy me during it. I had gone to take something and wasn’t allowed. That surprised me, as it seemed needlessly punitive, though I was incapable of formulating it that way to myself at the time. So my education was temporarily and frequently on hold. I didn’t need anyone to encourage me to read. It was part and parcel of daily life for me. Not to be allowed to felt like an unwarranted interference into my personal choices, my psychological space. This obscurely perturbed me. These people missed the point somehow, I felt. Again, I had the conviction, if obscurely as I say, that these people were idiots. And clever. That was the disturbing part. She was utilising time, and my very existence against me. It was a sentence to boredom through non-activity. It was simple enough to keep my mind occupied, but the underlying sense of resentment made it weigh heavier on me than it need have. I accepted I had to go to school, and had went along with my side of things I felt, and now I was having the rug pulled out from under me in some infuriatingly understated way. I was beginning to feel the stirrings of an intense dislike towards her. I wanted to walk back into class and say, “look, this is ridiculous. I’ve had enough now and I think you’re overreacting, and it’s about time you were reasonable.” In so many words. Sections of my life were being unfairly stolen from me I felt. I pictured going back into class and throwing her out as I carried on with spontaneous gags, followed by some singing and dancing. After that I would allow any of the best looking (and kind) girls to ask me out. I considered going for a walk, but knew I’d be discovered. I fumed impotently. But occasionally, when she had deigned to make an appearance, fortunately without rubbing it in any way, I would discover I had slipped into reverie by being brought abruptly out of it, and then feel vexed for that reason. I had been enjoying it and had

virtually forgotten my surroundings. Later I would get into the habit of slipping into an almost contemplative state at will, in passing moments between class on the way to dinner or gym. One train of thought centred on the concept of infinite regress. I soon gave up when I realized it was infinite, which was extremely interesting to me. Another episode was when we were waiting in a line to go back into class, and as I looked at the serrated boards that made up the top half of the wall beside me, my mind stilled again and it came to me with all the sense of the obvious that clarity brings, that there is only now. The future will definitely take place, short of some unforeseen mishap (accident, I would have said), and the past has come and gone. It’s in the past. Yet each of these moments I’m experiencing as I focus on them are all future moments. No, they are also of the past because each one has come and gone as I think of it. And as quickly I thought “There are no future or past moments, because at best you can only say they are both at the same time – as the same time I think it. So there is really only now, and past and future are the same thing. Now” A paradox as unfathomable as it was unarguable; to my mind. There was no one I could discuss any of this, or if there were it never crossed my mind. This was a part of myself, an interior life I preferred to keep to myself. I didn’t want some adult condescending me or worse. I would figure it out myself and in my own time. Wasn’t that what time was for? All I needed was more time in which to make further discoveries through any reading and thinking on what I read, if that came naturally. But these musings seemed to be my own thoughts, somehow the essence of me in some obscure sense. I never directly made the connection, but they were my minds response to the sense of injustice I would feel at having my freedom of mind restricted. That was somehow more disturbing and sinister than the relatively straightforward abuse and beatings at the hands of my mother. It could also generate a sense of being hounded from both sides. On an unconscious level – and consciously, I was feeling victimized. The anger stemmed from what I sensed to be an accurate perception that all was not quite right in the socially acceptable and friendly persona the adults, the perennially responsible, or so they insisted on presenting themselves. There was the glimmerings of awareness they used rules to hide their less creditable emotions and personal reactions to hide behind, so that where the difference between them was obscured, each fusing into the other. It wasn’t only my mother who could be petty and personally malicious. I would forget it of course, until the next time it would happen. My reveries, unbeknownst to me were providing moments of timelessness in time. I was escaping into true sanity, if temporarily. Yet in another sense, the temporal had nothing to do with it. On a behavioural level, outside of school, I was going off the rails. I had no idea of what my musings, my contemplations could mean. At best, I was becoming aware that when you thought about it, when you got right down to it, existence was an unfathomable mystery. I didn’t have to voice it to any adults. I knew by their attitudes, their likes and dislikes, their silly fawning and pettiness over relative inconsequentialities they would be as in the dark over these questions as I was, if they ever thought about them at all. Mrs MacDonald when I was in Primary3 and when I learned the twelve times table, had once told us that God is everywhere in the middle of some lesson on other,

so it was in context. A remark that inspired some curiosity in some of us, and a notion I was deeply intrigued by but it seemed unlikely. She never elaborated and we took it literally of course. “Is he in my schoolbag? Is he in my ear? I quipped, to a classmate. But this crazy old bint at some point tossed my copy of POW! into the bin, when I had looked at the cover lovingly, contemplating the future joy of reading it, before putting it away and out of sight as I intended. Issue number 10, it was the one where Spider-man tackles Doctor Doom. There was little in life more exciting for me than the thought of reading this as soon as school was over and I got back. I was outraged, if restrainedly so. I even contemplated taking it right back out of the bin when class/school was over. At least when she wasn’t paying attention, but I chickened out at the last second. The woman was self-evidently a buffoon. A cretin. I didn’t question my own tastes. I knew what interested and excited me and superheroes being winners in an often hostile world along with themes of future evolution in the present as with The X=Men was of a value that wasn’t open to interpretation. As for Spider-man, his alter ego Peter Parker would grow in significance and stature through the years as I came into my teens. Like millions of others I would project many of my deepest fears and aspirations on to the character. The loss would haunt me for weeks if not months. Was there no end to these myopic minded lunatics and their petty interference? I was almost as keen on Batman and pounced on a badge with the bat logo as soon as I saw it, pinning it to the centre of my pullover. Fortunately that didn’t interfere with my lessons as she interpreted it, so it stayed, though your guess is as good as mine as to the actual sequence of these events. I also got into the habit of drawing Batman until I could rattle one off in a few minutes, which I did for 2d. It was the sixties. Batman was on TV and later in the cinema, I was captivated. The metal model of the Batmobile was a work of exquisite craftsmanship to me. The BatCave a place of limitless fascination. Robin less so, but it was natural to me that Batman would have a sidekick and buddy to share their adventures as well as gags. Even Superman had his own special aura. A boy’s mind brings them all to life almost to the point of reality. The world could be a mundane but also very unpredictable place. But it couldn’t be so bad, surely when it produced things like this where all was made right in the world in stories that rarely condescended but only seemed to surprise you with their increasing complexity and psychological subtlety. Sometimes the good did die young and bad things did happen to good people. But there was The Watcher keeping his eye on it all, somehow above and beyond time if not space as he had to exist somewhere in the panels of a comic. And there was The Silver Surfer to question it all for us. Not only that, but he seemed to have lost his girlfriend, or I should say, the love of his life. Again I never made the connection. I could be very slow to pick up on things, “Romantically” dense to a fault. When you’re a kid you think you’ll live forever. That everything will somehow come out magically right sooner or later. A childish dream that turns out to be true as it happens, just not in the way I perhaps thought. Or didn’t think. I think to say there was denseness there isn’t an exaggeration though I don’t want to be too hard on myself unnecessarily. It was more than difficult at the time after all, and I’ve touched on some of the reasons for that before, not least the question of denial and only being capable of coping with so

much, psychologically and emotionally, under the circumstances. But I would run down the Pend as we called it, a narrow and enclosed lane that led onto Lochee Road and the foot of Cobden Street, with Joni Mitchell’s refrain of “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,” from Big Tellow Taxi ringing in my head – it was also a fantastic melody – not in the least grasping the later (and present) significance of it to me. It was the same with Smokey Robinson’s The Tears of a Clown; another sublime song that was peculiarly haunting to me. This song more than any other somehow fused into my feelings for Lynne. In a profound way, they became indistinguishable, by which I mean my inexpressibly intense feelings towards her. A specific and intense, yet also diffuse emotion that also became associated with anything even loosely to do with her, such as the surrounding area and where she lived, though I only had a rough idea of where it might be. The end of the street perhaps, from where my mother had been temporarily moved to. (I had once nipped into a likely close and upstairs to gawk out of the windows that look over the back green. Had she ever traversed this area I wondered). These truly bitter-sweet, if sublimely condensed works of art. They also became associated with a large chestnut tree off Benvie Road, which intersected Mitchell Street. A bunch of us got into the habit of going there every lunchtime for a while. I threw myself into it with my usual obsessiveness for anything I became enthusiastic about. For me it was an oasis of nature in our back yard, literally. It as good as finished when one lunchtime after a session of kicking and shuffling our feet through leaves to find the precious greenish and yellow shells that housed them. I, typically, in my engrossed state had ignored the growing urgency of my bladder and relieved myself in a nearby close, along with another kid. A neighbour had heard us and went on to inform the school, presumably the headmaster. Suitably nervous when called into his office along with two others, I was surprised my legs were shaking a bit. This was a new one to me. But both the offence and the headmaster were relatively unknown territory to me at the time, though I had been used to punishment for as long as I could remember, so perhaps that accounted for it. That I had no idea where this would go and how it would be resolved. A brief explanation from each of us that it wasn’t meant intentionally, and we were free to go. It had been the sense of shame and guilt, the disapproval of the “dirtiness” associated with the act that preyed on my mind, elevating it to a seriousness it neither deserved nor warranted. The new headmaster, a Mr Young seemed to be aware of this. I had made a token effort to play “conkers” with the chestnuts, where you push a string through the centre of each of them with a bodkin, a large pin, then proceed to try and obliterate as many of your opponents guys as humanly possible before it’s his turn. One downward swipe and smack for each conker. They rarely shattered in one swipe, and if your opponent combined inaccuracy with aggression or meanness you were as likely to get a part of a hand smacked or the string and conker wrenched out of your grasp. There were too many variables. I settled for putting all the conkers I had accumulated over the days into a string, a necklace that was around twelve feet long when I’d finished then left it in the drawer and forgot all about it. Later, my mother, unusually, asked me if I would throw it out as it was gathering mould there which was or would spread over the

inside of the drawer and cabinet. I was slightly reluctant, partly because she seemed to be giving me an option. But in reality, the effort I had put into it wasn’t important. It was the indirect acknowledgement of it by asking me that made a difference. Usually she would just throw out whatever she pleased without a so much as by your leave. She wasn’t having my endless junk cluttering up the place. When it’s my house, then I can do it she would say. This included reams of sketches, often in colour – I liked to copy other drawings from cards of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not curios - and even the very occasional painting, when I got my hands on some paints whether through a present or stealing them. Inconsistently I would be given some cheap art materials or other over Xmas only to have nothing to show for it later. Some years later, my younger brother mentioned she was once about to throw out what she had taken to be a small photograph of David Bowie, circa Ziggy Stardust period. It was a drawing I had done in my teens in ’73, from the inside of a cassette cover, with Rembrandt-like precision, in pencil. For me, it only begged the question as to why she was throwing it out at all. And where it was now. At the classroom at the other side of the corridor a man called Mr Patton had taught us. A rather undiscerning one-dimensional dullard of a fellow.