At Times

I know the internet (and life as a whole) is not so full of positive stuff right now, and here at Blogtastic, we don't mind adding to it. Oh man, what a strange time. Personally, I've been feeling pretty depressed again for a couple of weeks (unrelated to Covid-19), and my head has been feeling like it's full of scrambled eggs. Then my physical health has taken a bit of a dive (I've got a fever, and aches, so I'm currently self-isolating), and my head feels like it's full of cotton wool. Thankfully, it's not even comparable to a normal flu yet, so I feel confident I'll be back to normal after a not too serious period of layoff. But there's so much worse happening elsewhere, that I'm ding-donging between trying not to focus on it (or at least keep it in perspective compared to other causes of death), and being really sad about it. Yesterday, for example, I heard an update on the death toll in Italy, and that shocked me. I know and love a few ace people in the north, and have been thinking about them a lot, wishing them well, and to hear of such a lot of death got to me. I know their lives are radically different at the moment, and they are putting a brave face on things, so I hope that continues, and that mental and physical health bears up under it all (and that goes for the whole world).

Everywhere here has been ghost-towny for a while. The badminton group I go to had about fifty per cent fewer participants last week. That was weird, because normally we can't quite fit everyone on a court (even when four are set up), but this time, there were a load of singles games on only three courts (I mean, yeah, it was nice to be able to play singles, but you're aware that you can only do it because other people aren't there, and that's probably illness related). At work, it's pretty typically odd. I mean, there's never a normal week where I am, in terms of if it's busy or not, or when it gets busy, if indeed it does. Lately, the weeks have been alternating between getting much better, and feeling like it wasn't worth opening up (and so much of this is filtered through my warped perspective by the way, so isn't reliable, but it is how I feel). And the main thing is that it's not foot traffic that makes work weird, but the conversational focus, you know? Just constant rabbiting... It's not getting on my nerves, as such, but it's wearing me down somehow. And then there's the shopping obviously. This, along with the cancellation of sporting events, has been one of the things that's changed my viewpoint from 'this is similar to avian/swine flu, it is being over-hyped and will not be as bad as people are saying' to 'oh shit, this is definitely worse. Even if the virus itself isn't worse, the effects on society certainly are'. So much shelf space is completely empty in shops around me. I was focussing on fresh fruit and veg on Tuesday, and there's plenty of that, but absolutely no pasta or rice, tinned soup, beans, etc gone... I even looked at normal handwash, as we are down to our last tub at home, and there was nothing. Not even bars of soap, or anything antibacterial. It is striking to look at, perhaps a fifth or a quarter of the whole place cleared out. And I can remind myself that, at the moment, I do not need these products, and if I feel 'squeezed' at all, it's only because I have been spoiled all my life, and, even when I've had no money in my account, I've had enough to see me through to payday etc. Now there's a thought in my head, though; what if people carry on in this over-buying behaviour? Like I say, it's stupid thinking. We'll cross those bridges when we get to them, and I'm sure things will stabilise soon, but I'm just in that frame of depression where paranoia pipes up a little louder than usual... And again, what about the people who aren't as lucky?

Anyway, that's all coronavirus stuff... I also wanted to talk about what I've been doing that's nice. Some of it is vegging at the minute, watching episodes of one of my favourite ever programmes, The Larry Sanders Show. Also watching a good few videos from some of my favourite YouTubers, Funhaus, Internet Comment Etiquette (thanks Alex!), and Red Letter Media mainly. They really do absorb me, and make me feel happier. There's been a lot of YouTube focus on the latest DOOM game, which both makes me yearn for an up-to-date console to play it on, and also made me re-visit the original game, which still puts the willies up me, I can tell you.

Also, connection is as important as ever, so I've been keeping in touch with as many of my friends as possible. This is another area in my life in which I am so fortunate. Many of them got in touch with me, and made me realise what a lucky fella I am, offering to get supplies for me if I can't get out and stuff. I sometimes find it hard to socialise. I don't get why, but my mind just recoils from it, or spins on and on until I distract myself with something else. In this moment, however, I feel like my time is more my own (I'm not working for a bit, nor am I doing much for my dad, as I don't want to pass anything onto him), so I feel much more comfortable dropping people lines. Silver linings, and all that jazz.

My own time... This puts me on to the most important part of all: writing. I have submitted to a new competition (quite an interesting little poem, one that ended up seeming very topical indeed), have heard word about a submission of mine from last year (not a competition at all, but a fantastic opportunity to have my work broadcast on local radio :) ), and, y'know, have been working on other stuff. Obviously I've not got my blogging down to any regularity, but I'm doing this RIGHT NOW, and blah blah blah. Reading, too, has slowed a little since those halcyon days of early January, but I'm still doing a bit! I finished Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which will feed into a project I want to do later in the year), am carrying on with Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, have read a couple of pamphlets by Francis 'Drumming Up Poetry' Boua, have really enjoyed Sea Goat Who Screams Poetry's Twittering, Sheppard's latest sonnets, Writers' Cafe #18, Ailsa Cox's 'I Never Had a Mother', and quite a few things I can't remember because I read them in bursts from various different websites. So it all adds up, and I don't mean that in a bean-counting way, but, you know, you do feel more whole, and therefore more able to give more of yourself to your own work when you've been reading well. As a whole...

Anyway, there's actually some good news in this post. Here at Blogtastic, we can only apologise profusely for that, and assure you, dear reader, that normal, harrowing service will shortly be resumed.

Peace, love, and light,

Martin x

Missing the Point

My poor, poor toe...

 To the left to the left is a picture of my ill toe. It has nothing to do with this post, or my Sober For October journey, but I'm in such a lot of distress, and it really is such a shame, it's just awful... The only thing I think could possibly help me and my recovery would be you donating on my page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Martin-Palmer5

Last weekend I was at the Lancaster Music Festival. It was a lot of fun, but bloody busy. I was in one of the fine Luneside hostelries, which was so busy that they had to open up one of the back doors to let air circulate and keep things cool. I was sat near this open door and got a whiff of the old casks that must've been out back. As I was breathing in the smell of sour beer, all I could think of was how much I miss bar work. The dirt, the physicality and the camaraderie you get with your workfellows, and the customer interchange as well.

Obviously the times could be very hard. Too hard, in some ways. I remember a bank holiday shift once where the kitchen staff were rushed off their feet [I think one out of three of them was ill, so they were down to two anyway] and one of the remaining guys walked out. I had to go around and tell anyone who'd ordered that they wouldn't be getting their food, and telling anyone who wanted food that they couldn't get it, all the while having to contort my body to squeeze myself through a solid maze of customers that at least doubled my journey between gantry and glasswash room. But you knew you'd done a good job by the end of it. And, dare I say it, I wasn't the worst bar person in the world.

Also, as I've been in work at The Wineyard, I've been evaluating things. I've been asking myself the ol' question of whether I should give it up altogether. But, as pointless as it sounds, I like the chat with people about flavours, about appreciation of the products, about facilitating people having fun.

The point is, I'm a part of the alcohol trade. I have been almost all my working life so far, and though it has its downsides [which I will wisely not mention here...] there are many good facets to it. And many of them don't require you to necessarily partake in the drinking.

Well my original intention for this post was to write a hard line on how much fun there is on the world, even within the industry, that doesn't need booze consumption, and how I, or even we, could be very happy without it. But I've written a worm in there, the whole thing about being able to talk about tastes, which usually involves me drinking. And really, it's obvious that all one needs to do is spit out the drink afterwards and avoid getting drunk, but I have to say I can't see myself spitting out pints [especially not in the pub - could you imagine?]. But then, to be honest, I couldn't imagine myself doing this Sober For October thing a few weeks ago either.

Haha, how typical of me. I had a good idea, a simple one, and I was all ready to just put it down and maybe make you think. Instead, I've made myself think - too much - again, and now I'm not sure. Can I work in this trade without drinking alcohol? Sure. Reasonably easily, in fact. Can I work in this trade and enjoy not drinking alcohol? Much harder. For me at least...

Again, it's a terrible argument, but I always come back to 'humanity'. Yes it's more than probable that because of the decadent country I live in, it's rather easy to push this idea, but life's full of things we don't need, but more than keep us living, they make us feel alive. Passions in any area, you know, they're all a part of us. Beer especially just happens to be mine. I know it doesn't have to be as I can derive joy from many other areas of my life, but I do get something out of it. Right now this just feels like me trying to justify going back on the sauce to me, so I'll just stop...

I tried to make a positive case for abstinence, I really did. Right now, though, the positive case is your donations. They're keeping me sober throughout this month, so if you can and want to chuck a bit of money towards Macmillan's work, you can either do it on my page or just in a can somewhere...

Peace out.

Having a Habit Habit

I must say that I've been missing alcohol today. In the shop I work in, we offer tasters of some of our wares, which currently include three different vodka-based drinks flavoured with Kendal mint cake, gingerbread and toffee. Simply put, they are amazing, and I say that as someone without a sweet tooth. Anyway, my point is that today there was a customer who wanted a sample of these drinks, and they were obliged. After they'd left, I was alone with the pungent smells of these drinks as they lingered in the air. I noticed that there was a bit of the drink left in the bottom of the glass, and had a sudden urge to finish it off, before, like a whip, I snapped back to the reality of the situation.

Don't worry, though. I can confirm that I am still completely sober.

The thing I'm most concerned about is that I seem to be eating more. This normally happens when I decide to halt the alcohol consumption, so it doesn't come as a surprise, but it is disappointing. I don't seem to have too much a problem taking action, it's the side-effects that get me. I feel like I'm in some whack-a-mole cartoon where I'm trying to mallet a mole as it sticks its head up through holes in my lawn. Whenever I hit the mole that sticks its head through the alcohol hole [or 'alocohole'], it pops right back up the food hole. It sounds horrendous, I know. I'm so privileged that I can indulge myself in this way, and I carry guilt for it.

Basically, I have a habit habit. It's also known as 'greed'. I'm hoping that this period of adjustment is over soon, and I don't stop getting the cravings to have a drink or stuff scran down me throat. Either way, Sober October is a chance to show myself that have will power. That'd be nice, as I don't feel that I have any at the mo.

As for the general greed, that's something I'm working on too. We'll see - on both counts.


Give us yer money (pretty please)! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Martin-Palmer5

A Line A Day Keeps... Me Busy

Last year, I started a 'diary a day' thing. It was essentially an exercise in writing fitness, but I also had other hopes, such as examining/enhancing the way I look at and process the world. Anyway, whatever the results, I'm glad I did it, but this year I've been on a different 'adventure': a line a day. Already that's not accurate, because actually it's a sentence a day, but 'line a day' trips off the tongue a little easier, and in general I'm into that whole 'brevity' thing, man.

So, what's the thinking behind this? I wanted to move from writing lots about each day, to writing just a little. The idea was to 'become more poetic' - to be hygienic in my expression, but stronger in spirit. I wanted pith, humour, drama, formal inventiveness [as is always the wish], rhythm, music, soul... so many things, and so much, all inside a singular sentence. And, sure, I've bent 'the rules' a wee bit, vis-a-vis grammar, utilising ellipses, dashes, kerazy kommas and line breaks to cram in a lot, but I think I've already managed most of my original aims. Making long sentences isn't what I wanted the project to be about, originally, but it's fine that that's krept in [sorry, I'll stop using ks instead of cs now]. I still get days where I want to be 'plot focused' and record as much of what happened as I can, but then there are times where the 'more poetic' instincts lead me to express my summary in a natural breath, rather than mechanically ground out.

Another hope of this project was that it would take less time each day, therefore allowing me to crack on with other creative works [you may remember me wondering if the full diary a day doofer was sapping my time and energy each day so that my production of, say, poetry suffered]. Well, my production in that respect is still not really where I want it to be, although I have got a few new drafts to work on. I guess I can pretty definitively say how much work I do's got nothing to do with my little forays into life recording.

It has occasionally been the case that even this diddy-diary was 'too much' for me to do. I think, at my lowest point, I've let eight or nine days go by without writing anything. If I remember rightly, I was quite depressed at that point, but I got out of it at least. Other than that, at most it's been two days, and not very often at that. I've only managed to confuse myself once with respect to 'what day I'm on' [in my notebook, each sentence is literally just numbered. In hindsight, it would have been much more pragmatic [though 'less poetic' imho] to date them, so there would be no doubt, but then I guess I assumed my discipline would have been perfect for such a seemingly easy task], but I can at least say that, so far, my discipline has been better than last time. Would be a bad job if it wasn't, like, but I digress... I don't really want to dissect how/why I've not managed to diligently do every day as targeted, but I will say that life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

Another way in which this year's project is the same as the last is in what I might do with the resulting mess. After seeing Richard Barrett's collaboration with himself [not a euphemism] at an Edge Hill symposium, I was really intrigued by 'processing' one's diaries, reforming, regurgitating, repurposing and examining what remains. My hope with this, as you can imagine if you're familiar with certain language poets [or prose poetry?], is to turn it into a poem. In fact, in many ways it already is, always was and was always going to be a poem. I like the idea of it completing itself, maybe as twelve individual poems or a twelve-stanza 'mini-epic', or even something between the two. I can already imagine it being published, and where, but that'll obviously depend on the quality of the material I end up with etc. Watch this space...

But more on what's different. Of course, I don't get that hand-numbing marathon sensation that I used to. That was quite something, burning through, what was it, eight sides? Did I get up to sixteen once? Writing that much in one sitting was, as I say, somewhat wearying. And it was interesting mentally, because you got into a flow state - always nice - but one that was less dependent on outright creativity. Sure, memory in general is a creative process, but with the memories often being less than a day old, I didn't really need to stretch the truth to fit the day-sized gap. It made the flow feel a bit more... tranquil, I suppose, than with fiction, say.

With this 'line a day', however, memory plays a different process. I have two main sentence types - the one I write at the end of the day that I have just come up with on the spot, or one that I've formed and drafted in my head, either earlier on in the day, or just before I've picked up my pen. The latter is often less of a 'did x, y and z' type report, and more of a sweeping sentence. Especially if I've come up with this relatively early, the process of memory is more about remembering the words, rather than the experiences - so that's a strange kind of inversion that's interesting to note. Speaking of notes, I believe I note that this project slots into my life easier than the last, doesn't get in the way, and also makes me feel like I'm appreciating my awareness of what's going on in life without having to obsess over every little detail and, in doing so, be blocked from enjoying things as they happen. The contemplative processes of the two activities is radically different and - apologies if I'm overusing this word and/or its concept - this year I feel it's 'more poetic'

Speaking of 'more poetic', next year I think I'll do a haiku a day, just like Neil Schiller's done. That's actually a pretty decent challenge, I'd imagine. Haiku[s] are tough to get right at the best of times, so doing them in bulk could be worse [or the practice could improve your skills?], but I'd allow myself more editing freedom than I have done these past couple of years, so that'd be cool. But hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Last thing to say is that I feel there's less to analyse about my journey this year. I think the reason is as simple as I'm writing less, the process is less arduous... there's just not that meat that there was last year for my masticating molars to malform. Or maybe I 'got it out my system' last time [lol]. Either way, good for you guys 'cause I won't be boring you with loads of posts on the topic. Although this one has built into an overly-long post. Sorry about that...

Ooookay

So, not much to write about today (why bother then) - who said that? Erm, yeah I've been really busy with uni work and also had to cover a shift at work yesterday meaning I had even less time. I think I'm on track though... Have had to sacrifice a night out with friends to be on the safe side (oh boo-hoo) - seriously who keeps doing that? As I was saying, I'm trying to be sensible so everything's done in plenty of time. Turns out my post '+ve' is all a lie too, so that's a little disappointing (aww diddums) - hey! Stoppit.

Good stuff... good stuff... Oh yeah, Liverpool beat Norwich 5-0 today, pretty impressed by that. Didn't get to see it of course... but hey. I guess that's the power of football, I still felt good about the score and the way we played just by reading text commentary (you only like winning because you're such a loser) - cut that out! Seriously, don't make me come down there.

Also feeling good about going back to uni next week. It's a very good place to be. Some good events coming up, looking forward to the next workshop, so that's pretty groovy.

Yep, that's about it. Feel free to unsuscribe at any point by the way. I don't want you to but, y'know, I can't force you to carry on...

Catch you later folks.

Effort

In order to succeed at life, it's not a bad idea to put in a little effort. To succeed at a blog, it is also nice to put in some effort. That doesn't mean that a blog is life, though they are similar in some ways. They are similar in the sense that they can both be tough. Life is tough because of money worries, drought, famine, pestilence etc etc. Blogs are tough because sometimes you can't think what to write.

I was wondering what to write a moment ago. A few ideas flitted briefly around my otherwise-empty head and then ceased to flit. One of these ideas was a shout-out to Jess, whose birthday it is on Monday, or Arran, whose birthday it is on Sunday. Another idea was something in my writer's journal. Oh yes, the journal! Why don't I check the journal for inspiration?

Because the journal is in my jeans which are on the floor away from the bed I lie on. Going over to them would be too much effort.

Granted it ain't the kind of effort that Prometheus made when trying to steal fire from Zeus. Granted it ain't the level of graft that Martin Luther King Jr. made in trying to advance the Civil Rights Movement. Also, it's not the hard labour of an extremely fat person trying to walk to the fridge. However, it is too much effort for I.

Goodbye.