The Therapy Resulting from a Lizzy Palmer poem

I exchanged a series of pieces of writing with Lizzy Palmer in 2015, the below was the result of one  particular exchange that resulted in an unexpected and genuinely surprising reaction...

The Therapy...

[…]

Mp: I had just woken up and I felt sick when I read it.

BW: Yes?

Mp: Well… I wasn’t expecting it… it was like something coming in from behind me with a knife and… and I didn’t see it coming… I hate not seeing things… It felt like she’d got into my memory.

BW: Yes, what kind of memory was it?

Mp: A good memory, something I hold to my breast… something I cling to.

BW: Yes?

Mp: But what if I was wrong [about the memory]. That thing that seemed so certain and so romantic was… disdainful… What if it was a theatre production? All that pretense, playing a part… in a romance that never existed.

BW: Yes?

Mp: Giving love, intimacy to someone that doesn’t want it – doesn’t know what to do with it… thrown back in your face. “Love is bad, love is wrong… disgusting almost.” It is something you give, that you don’t have, to someone who doesn’t want it.

BW: Yes?

Mp: Maybe it’s in the giving… I mean creatively I understood it [the poem]… but it was more than that – something I didn’t control or understand. Inside my memory, changing it, suddenly it seemed like a foreign object inside me, a strange… infected object.

BW: Yes?

Mp: It used to be safe… it was always there… I could rely on it [the memory], it was never far away… now it is gone… transformed… she took it…

BW: Yes? And now it is dangerous, and new, and not yours.

Mp: They always take things from me… I always feel that they take things from me… I have lost control of it. It’s not mine anymore…

BW: Yes?

Mp: It [the memory] doesn’t belong to me anymore… and It really got me when she called me ‘Marty’ because it was affectionate somehow… personal… like she was taking it without knowing she was… like she was doing it with…

BW: Yes?

Mp: …love…

BW: So it was a good thing?

Mp: …

BW: Yes?

Mp: It was a good thing… maybe it was less an infection and more a new opening…

BW: Yes?

Mp: …Maybe she is the antidote… she tore up the script… I tore up the script… is this not what poetry is?

BW: So you can write a new one?

Mp: So I can write a new one… and learn to love it afresh.

[…]

Email to Lizzy Palmer on the above piece – 13^th March 2016

It aint very polished, but that is the way i want it i think. I think it will require a bit of context. Of course in the piece you are actually a mere symbol acting in relative terms to the structure of my fundamental phantasy - that tentatively being that people (with a special caveat for those closest to me*) are thieves trying to take something away, some mysterious tenet of my being that not even I comprehend but am terrified of losing. This is of course sewn into the Pettitt genealogy (my mother being a hoarder of physical objects for instance - in constant fear of someone taking something away from her - that first toy taken from her by her mother as a child), this is our tragedy and I like to think the piece I reacted to went some way to cementing the realisation within me that letting things go is not only necessary but also terrifying and beautiful. This is what you are and where you came in within my imaginary and symbolic relationship to the world: the one that removes the linchpin and reveals the Real, the chaos beneath, that it is imperative that we love in all its monstrousness in order to create anew; but I'm sure you knew that already ;-).


Hope you had a spiffing weekend

Mp

*"Even the dearest that I loved the best/ are strange, Nay, stranger than the rest..."

Fatal Chip Shop Strategy

I no longer want

To see things from inside

The same pillow, held.

From now on all is a ‘fatal strategy’.

Even standing in the queue at

The chip shop

Is a breath away from the

World sliding into extinction.

It must be taken to the end,

Retched out to a view

From from outside

The pit, where

There is only absurd

Laughter and one perturbed man

With a scoop full of stuff

That now has no meaning,

As he stares hopelessly

At the salt and pepper shakers.

Crusty Old Men

Fizzing and bubbling on the surface
And the crusty old men
That are in the pubs at 11.
Tragically experiencing a pleasure we all fear.
They have devoured the need for sanity
And when they laugh in that melodious sadness
There is only the ring of truth that is unbearable,
But they bear it, they have learnt to bear it.
We create worlds to avoid this naive existence
And it is we who are trapped under annoyances
We have secretly slipped into our own back pockets.
They have grey hair and ruddy skin and they perform
A pint lift with the mechanical certainty,
A technique honed, of an Olympian of the absurd.
We will never learn the hard won soul
of the men that inhabit the pubs at midday.

Freedom

There's a freedom somewhere that needs an invitation to my soul, because at present there is nothing, an empty bowl, a room bereft of guests; even silence stays away. Tonight I'm not drunk, but the words are stuck regardless; there's no one to tell you how to live but that voice inside which belongs to someone else and laughs at your actions when your back is turned. So it carries on, I carry on, sleep, wake, boredom, lethargy, sleep, wake, boredom, lethargy, sleep... Yes folks, I've learnt an important lesson, I'm now one of you and I know why you're scared, I know why you do it, why you showed such awe when I used to announce my bohemian status at parties before the change occurred. I know, but I still feel the disgust, for you fear losing something, letting go to the thing that you will never get back. 'I would but, but, but...money, money, money', the joke is that thing you are so scared of losing or leaving behind, is something you don't have anyway, you cling to nothing; pleasure awaits and that scares you more than the trudge through your lonely days, your moaning, your petty annoyances are the stilts that hold your world in place, so live on my friends, keep balancing on those struts because I'm there with you for now.  Will I be there for long? who knows, but there is a scream within me that says not much longer, but maybe you are the same.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother..."

How to escape, this is my question? I feel the fear, but I know, above all else, I must break out.

 

night saturday my idiots company of in the

One Saturday evening after a most distasteful day of work I attended a rooftop BBQ to celebrate my Asian friend's house mate's birthday. I never really got into the mood of the thing, the brethren was compiled mainly of chavs and gays, not that that is a bad thing, but frequent attempts at conversation flaked away like tissue in water and left eyes floating to spy on the ever more dark but lucid sky. I was left with a deft certainty, as I took a step back and watched the flickering colours of socialisation exploding around me, that the only emotion I could feel for these people was disgust; I didn't care what they thought of me, and didn't believe they had anything to offer me, they had the pompous aura of certainty in their hearts, somehow untouched by horror,they were paper images, a conspiracy against that sublime darkness hovering above and descending in ever increasing quantities. They wanted to be loved, that much was obvious, but they wore it with arrogance, denying their own fragility; through my eyes their fragility was the only thing I could see as they spewed words and laughed into each others faces. I couldn't work out whether I was alone in a crowd of idiots, or the only idiot in a crowd of well adjusted, stable, happy individuals.

Anyway, my remedy to this was to take two rather large tokes on a joint handed to me by a friend (let's call him D-gong), D-gong only turned up for five minutes with two rather unenthusiastic friends before leaving, but before he did I was able to suckle at his herbaceous teet (yuck). This joint was expertly assembled and, after the second puff, I realised very very strong, after that I was out, there is pictorial evidence.

Below is a document of my evening through text messages sent to my girlfriend (let's call her Piekna). It starts just after a phone call from Piekna to Melancholic Georges (MG) where she informed him she would not be coming to the party; see if you can see where the joint hit.


[MG] is sad you are not coming and that he won't get to hear the slender sparkle of your laugh as well as the wah wah wah when he tells a crap joke :-(. He will have to comfort himself with 'Lucozade' and sitting in the corner all night scratching his own chest and muttering compliments to himself , such as 'I really like those shoes' (whilst chewing on sheep's head obviously). Have a nice evening sweets. [MG]

-

So I'm at the party right n there's loads of people here, mostly chavs and gays. All shouting and spilling their dribbling ego's into my face. Where is your lovely face? Boredom a smooth, long feeling like a white corridor, or the anticipation of the needle touching your flesh before a blood test. I bet you are warm and snug, I'm cold on the roof, I think there is a dog staring at me from a dark corner. Why are clouds? There is a particularly fluffy one that reminds me of you (in a good way) :-). XxXx [MG]

-

Running = Woooooooooooooooooooo. There's a hole in my pocket. [MG]

-

I just asked a brain scientist what would happen if I poked out his eye and came on his brain, he said he would feel nothing because the brain has no nerves. Should I put his theory into practice? [MG]

-

Stoned in the wired forest of the night, barking dogs whistling into the smiling void of their stupidity, why there is curling infinity, quivers on thigh high coloured material. laughter like holes, cracks in wood, slithers of craggy darkness. Eyes dragged by dripping weights, falling touching, smiling, [Piekna], sublime :-). [MG]

-

I don't think understanding is within me either, I don't believe it was a friend of comprehension. U are a lovely lovey. XxX. Goodnight sweets, [MG]

Finis

MG