More arguments

My ex phoned up tonight, causing an argument between my parents and, because I didn't want them to let her know I was here.

Then she phoned up three more times shouting, "You're going to jail!" - to which I thought, better jail than a relationship with you bitch.

Then she cried and then her credit ran out.

I'm still working on my art.

Strange, this game of life

Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman as Uncle Sam, crudely constructed image using prints, pastels, image manipulation software.

I find the image disturbing as it lacks the normal levity associated with this image.

Things have been really mixed since I last wrote, but mainly good in direction. My tutor was annoyed I missed my tutorial and apparently none of my material, shown here, is up to standard or goes about things the right way. I just created some stuff to show willing, especially I had missed my tutorial on account of being in the cells at the time.

The last complaint isn't going to court but the current one is apparently. I think they may deal with us by way of an order to stay away from each other. I hope that's the case as I want to finish my degree and I'm utterly finished with my ex anyhow.

I had a really lovely family day with the nephews and niece and have been relaxing at my parents' since I last wrote, it's convenient for college and there are printers and internet here, as well as company.

The ex has been back to my flat once since I wrote because there was a poetry book posted through the door and I can't think of anyone else who would do that. I feel like I'm a hostage to her there just sitting waiting for the next visit.

She's still trying to get me attacked. Some guy who threatened me in her name tried to get me to go off with him, he never even talks to me normally, then one hundred yards up the road I nearly bumped intpo her cycle tire, she tried to trip me up with it. She feigned surprise and terror but they had blatantly planned an ambush I think - the idea being to get me out the way somewhere, rob me and beat me up. It can't be long before they arrive at the college. The ex has a long history of setting ambushes up on me.

So, I'm basically still being followed by an increasingly desperate, drink and drug-addled lunatic and her lackeys. After all this time I'm used to it but now at least I've cast the viper out the nest. My flat is finally secure. The locks have been changed and the broken window repaired.

College has taken a better turn, because I've been going in early and gave a talk about my first planned proper work. I think I've got my feet under the table there now but it's going to be hard to keep up, let alone catch up with missed work.

I still don't know if I'll be physically able to attend college, because of this case and its possible consequences, but I hope so.

Either way, things have a certain finality about them now, regarding my ex. I have no regrets about finishing it. I just wish I had done so long ago, which I did psychologically, and in effect, only seeing her rarely, but I should have removed her totally from my life. There was just nothing to replace her with and she was so persistant. It's all just excuses - I can't really explain why this has dragged on so long.

For a while now all the relationship has consisted of is her turning up uninvited at my flat and me asking her questions to try to get to the reality behind all her lies and duplicity. I guess now I understand too much.

All I care about now are my freedom, finishing my course and my welfare, all are interlinked.

Off bail for three days this time

I was off bail for three days and then my ex had some kind of tumble and now I'm on bail again. I'd say she's juggling too many men and class A drugs. The knives are well and truly out for me right now but I don't particularly care too much about that.

On the other hand, and this is perhaps no accident. The same day I got arrested I met lots of lovely women in art class and wantonly bragged about same such to my ex who attacks women just for talking to me now and smokes lots of crack with dodgy guys. She had me collecting her debt on my way to college and this guy started talking about crack, which she didn't want me to know she was doing, and then she beat him up in broad daylight in the middle of our kind of main street while I walked away.

The police took my clothes for dna - because there's lots of blood being spilled apparently. I think I'm up against it this time although there's lots of clouds in the skyline, like her and her drug dealer extorting money off my Mum and Dad. God bless my Mum, she phoned the police before they were phoned on me, on account of her being extorted.

I'm wearing this DNA suit right now, apparently these things are worth over a hundred quid on account of the fact they are kind of hard to get out of a cop shop. It's all ludicrous but I must admit I always welcome a spare set of pyjamas and battleship blue seems to be this season's black. Especially if you're forced to turtle.

You see, this crazy arse whore, she wants a nice clean drug free man, like me, yet she wants this whole other larceny type life which she robs me, and apparently, my Mum and Dad, to fund.

Well, she hit a hard floor and she's fucked up and I'm on bail but I know this much. I have three weeks to be a gentleman with the lovely young women at my art course. It was so beautiful to be with these lovely clean women - I loved it so much. It was the best day I've had in years and years and years. It was proper innocent and lux.

Just like me, I'm always innocent.

Aside from the bunny boiler image I've yet to create any substantial art work, unless you count jumping up and down on my ex's head, which it's alleged I did. I've seen the photos, she is smashed. She might have been punished for not bringing home the bacon or maybe for bringing too much bacon home. Who can tell? And if they can do they want to?

Anyhow, I've been punched in the head, right above my only useful eye (again) and kicked in the shin. I felt I had to apologise for coming off so lightly, but one inch below the strike and I could have lost my sight.

Yes, by the way, I did offer warfare to my ex's crack dealer, who refused, and she threatened to phone the police on me. I asked her why me and not him and she said, "because he's a guy I know from around."

For my part I've promised never to call her a fat old whore ever again, in future I'll call her a fat old crack whore, if I call her anything at all.

Bail up! I'm a bushranger.

Women are just loving me bigtime right now. It's lovely. I met this girl at the hospital (eyeclinic) who knew me from college already. I'm basically doing okay. I don't care about my ex and the transients anymore. I'm not scared of them and I'm prepared to fight if they try to drag me down.

Nasty nightmare

I had a really vivid and scary nightmare last night, I think the most vivid nightmares aren't about the most fantastic monsters, vampires, demons, aliens, such like, I tend to enjoy these, but about the sorts of real "monsters" we might find in life.

In this nightmare I'd moved to this really squalid and run down high rise apartment block, basically a ghetto, and my flat got invaded by first one junkie, then they came in ever increasing numbers, until it got to the stage where I felt I had to leave, they were everywhere injecting heroin, drinking strong lager and rifling through my stuff, like it was their own, without the least concern for me.

In the end I had to flee and hope the police could clean up the mess. My door had been kicked in at this point and the "party" had spilled over into the landing.

This nightmare reflects an anxiety I have about my flat. I had to break a window open when my ex stole my keys, months ago. Car thieves are targeting the area right now and my ex knows lots of really dodgy people. It's too cold to be there right now, I've been ill and I've worried about being away all the time I've been here. I have recovered a lot though now.

Also, the context of the dream can be explained by the issue I don't like the company my ex keeps, drinking in the streets, alleyways and by the river - my things also represent her. In a way the derelict flat is symbolic of her too and this extends to it being invaded. She is publicly lovesick about me but she knows I don't like her cheapening herself by drinking in the gutter, yet she still does so.

To an extent she's utterly blind to herself but it goes beyond that. She has got away with abusing me, my property and my feelings so much in a past that she can't see the changes I'm making or believe they are real now.

All day I've felt a real sense of disquiet. I drank quite a bit yesterday, for the first time in a little while, and I think this is, in part, a hangover. I find myself wanting to go and see my ex, to tell her how pissed off I am with her drinking with these people, sending me messages through them, stalking me and attacking my life. I know there's no point.

You don't go and visit someone to tell them their stalking is getting annoying, it's a blatent contradiction. I don't think she cares that much what sort of attention she gets from me, she'll settle for anything rght now. Obviously, she'd prefer my love but if she accepts she can't have that I think she'll settle for anything she can get.

My best bet is to ignore her completely, not to let her know she affects my mental life.

My flat window is getting fixed tomorrow. I'm definitely feeling a lot better for being here at my parents' place. I'm going to get the internet and phone reconnected in my flat as soon as I can because it's a great diversion during hard times. It's nice to be able to write and externalise my thoughts. I wouldn't want to read a journal like this myself but I like to write it.

At least if my ex follows me to my art classes the bunny boiler graphic is done and I don't have to do too much explaining, it can speak for itself and by her actions she'll become a living part of the "art". I have set aside the bulk of my fees and there should be a cheque waiting for me when I return tomorrow to pay the rest.

I think I'll be making use of whatever computer facilities the college offers until I can get reconnected at my flat.

Most of all I hate it that my thoughts seem doomed to go around in these circles, hopefully the art course will help me break the mould.

Time with family, ex still at large

I'm spending time with my family and getting over the flu quite well. It's a nice peaceful time in the main.

I went out for a few minutes yesterday and it all kicked off about the ex again. I saw this bunch of people she knows, I just ignored them and marched past on my way elsewhere. Then this guy she only knows I've talked to once shouted my name.

This guy, he gave me this really intricate message from my ex. Apparently she's been round mine and found me not in, so, has gone to my local pub and left her new phone number (so obviously she has another phone lost or stolen). She told this guy, twice, over two days, charges have been dropped but I just said there are no charges to drop, so this guy said she must have meant bail conditions.

Anyway, apparently she was down the river waiting for these people to come back and I was asked along. I told her, through them, to forget it.

She was probably just after my cash and a bit of attention / drama, maybe getting me sent to jail / hospital on Halloween for jollies.

Anyhow, about thirty seconds later I met jilted jon, a guy she left at the altar who I've known since we were both seventeen. We gave each other a pep talk, talked about punk rock, folk, etcetera and then went our separate ways.

Later I went to the police station to check my bail status, still on.

Anyhow, I figure there's two big things about her statement against me now. One she has no sofa and I was specifically mentioned as sitting on one, two she says she is my ex at the point this so-called event is said to happen and she has since proven she's stalking me. So, we'll see what we shall see.



From here -youtube - jilted john

Better sound quality here youtube - jilted john

Introspective disjointed collection of fragments

This is just going to be a kind of stream of conscious, an old post I found and various fragments of thoughts about nothing in particular, which I'll probably edit after it's done.

It's just my way of keeping my mind active for a while and kind of running amok inside my own head. Its been approximately a year since I was released from prison, a wasted and unpleasant year, and I'm almost back where I started, back on bail, though not on charges at the moment.

The ex has again tried to send me back to jail for bail breaches. I'm back where I started emotionally, a sort of sense of regret at wasted time and opportunities but with hope for a better future without my ex, and now a structure planned to attain it.

I remember how I got released. The ex had to spend her birthday without me, because I was in jail, and she sent me a self-pitying letter complaining how much of a scoundrel I was to be in prison instead of with her on her birthday. A year later I'm back on bail and she's posting notes through my door explaining how she wants to spend her birthday with me despite my bail.

So, this video continues the theme of the last post and is kind of ironic. It also leads down some alleyways of the mind where I'll be travelling.

Old found post on Dreaming, possibly my first.

I had a weird dream last night. I was sitting in a church and completely bored with the service. I felt really ill at ease in the environment. I was with a load of vagrants and was trying to persuade them to leave with me but was making too much noise in the process.

Then this redhead turned around to face me, our eyes met and I was struck how beautiful she was. She climbed over the pews and sat on my legs, putting her arms around me.

The word robot comes from the Slavic to toil. In the "history of ideas" the concept of a robot exists a long way before the actual capability to produce one. Since when I cannot say but in Gogol's Diary of a Madman there are words along the lines of, "he was functioning in a machine-like manner, a mere tool of the English". It seems clear the Gogol means robotically. In Meditation II, Descartes wonders if it is not impossible that the other people he perceives do not really have consciousness akin to his own. Perhaps they are like puppets, sort of tools of a evil genius out to deceive him; it's hypothetically possible.

So, where did the concept of a robot come from? Now the association between robots and dreams has been struck in my mind.

Wasn't the woman in my dream a sort of robot? My subconscious prodding me with a metaphorical stick?

Isn't that what "people" in our dreams are, aren't they tools of our sub-consciousness, puppets used to explore its glitches and needs?

Now I am wondering if they do not have wider import in our nature as a species. Perhaps we formed the whole idea of tool use from a sort of secret semaphore of our dreams. Where did the idea of slavery come from? To make people unfree, as they are in our dreams. The people in our dreams are empty shells without ego and consciousness. They are instruments like robots and tools.

Moral philosophers are continually trying to find a limit where humanity begins and animal ends. Both consciousness and tool use have served as definitions of that limit but I wonder if they are not one and the same.

This is just an idea I wanted to explore a little.

I should have spent longer writing this, it doesn't read properly. What I am really wondering is where the essence of the idea of a tool came from, in abstract, distinct from any actual tool use and also where the idea of slavery came from. To use people as instruments.

We dream of flying and falling, we fly. Can't really explain it properly at all. It will take me ages to work this one out, it's just a start.

I've been reading and writing about Sartre, here and elsewhere, since writing this piece, and Sartre's concept of instrumentality provides one valid answer to the question I raised.

In waking life I feel I'm being treated like an instrument, a mere possession, that if I don't fulfil my function, the one that's intended upon me from without, not my freely chosen "function", then I will be punished through whatever means for not fulfilling my projected function. I think my ex thinks I'm just a kind of automaton that feels what she wants it to, which is an utterly insane projection because an auomaton cannot feel, it can only toil.

If I recall correctly Sartre touches on this attitude to The Other in The Existence of Others and elsewhere, more specifically, in Being & Nothingness.

I've been having some really vivid dreams lately. A few involve conversations with my ex. I had one really intense conversation with my dead brother and woke up not quite realising he was dead initially, being relieved he'd escaped before the realisation dawned. I too am turning these people into tools, in my dreams, to work through my issues.

I don't know if I mentioned this already but I found a large ball of hair, sewn together in the lining of my tracksuit, a sort of charm, it can only be my ex's doing.

Jethro Tull, Witches Promise

Lend me your ear while I call you a fool.
You were kissed by a witch one night in the wood,
and later insisted your feelings were true.
The witch's promise was coming,
believing he listened while laughing you flew.

Leaves falling red, yellow, brown, all are the same,
and the love you have found lay outside in the rain.
Washed clean by the water but nursing its pain.
The witch's promise was coming, and you're looking
elsewhere for your own selfish gain.

Keep looking, keep looking for somewhere to be,
well, you're wasting your time, they're not stupid like he is.
Meanwhile leaves are still falling, you're too blind to see.

You won't find it easy now, it's only fair.
He was willing to give to you, you didn't care.
You're waiting for more but you've already had your share.
The witch's promise is turning, so don't you wait up
for him, he's going to be late.

youtube video link - this video is hilarious and it's a great song. My old friend had an insane bottom feeding fish we called Jethro, after Ian Anderson's appearance in this video.

Almost a complete tangent now - the best dream was about my family on a holiday by the river. We all rented various water craft. I got a jet ski that also worked on land, at first the panorama was fairly mundane, my home town, which I love but am used to. Then I rode further and further toward the sea and back in time. The scenery remained modern, in the classical and grand sense of architecture, but the wildlife grew more and more exotic - viscous copulating giant salamanders on heat. Then came great lumbering dinosaurs in a huge man made tunnel big enough to accommodate them easily.

I was weaving around them, between their great legs, in the tunnel. After that I reached a tidal estuary with great waves and leaping carnivorous primitive swordfish to dodge, surrounded by the architecture of our rotten old court building. The dubious thrills of sex and danger in a dream's imagery.

So the cycle of ideas in this post returns to some sort of sense of completion and cohesion, jumping around time media and waking and living text and hopefully like a dream dreamt you get some sort of sense that it has some kind of meaning.

Or maybe it is just some meaningless sequence of disjointed events, like one of those dreams you don't really understand, just experienced, or it's just a rant into the ether of cyberspace that will dissipate like a dream in the morning, sanity being just a mouse click away.

Remember what the dormouse said, "feed your head".

Well, that killed a couple of pleasurable hours at any rate.

How is a raven like a writing desk?
"It is nevar put with the wrong end in front." -- Lewis Carrol

White Rabbits

youtube page - someone's put a lot of effort into this.

There's also an Alice in Wonderland video for Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit, a great song!

I've got a new archive site now. My copy course work is there: copy.zip (2mb) and also my portfolio.zip (16mb). I completed a draft of my essay today, as well as all the other stuff - the coding was the worst part of all.

More work on "The copy" module

I went college today and found out I'm officially on the system as enrolled and I just need to pay the first instalment of my fees to enrol. I got my disability today and I get another cheque tomorrow so I can enrol tomorrow and still have enough to survive.

It was half-term so I couldn't actually go to classes though.

My "art therapy" continues though. I'm was still working on my "bunny boiler" copy image and I'm going to make a web page to explain it's evolution and how I made it as the written component of my course work. It's what I'd rather do than write an essay.

I was kind of glad the course wasn't on since I'm really ill and still kind of drained. I feel a bit guilty, like I'm making Stalinist propaganda rather than art but it makes me feel better anyhow.