The Word Cloud

Imagine with me, that you were in a simple state of existance. Where you were concious of everything around you. Your world, or what is left of it. Yet, your body does not respond. You see your life through external eyes, unable to awaken. What would you see? What could you feel? Friends, come and gone in an instant, quickly forgetting who you once were, or those who hold on to a small scrap of hope that someday you will wake. Emotions of the loved ones around you, and the sadness when they must leave, when you long for them to speak to you. To whisper in your ear that they care. Lonliness as they slowly dwindle in hope, their visits becoming less frequent. Anger as you hear the doctors, speaking in quiet whispers of the anomoly, and the chance of survival. Longing to be held by a loved one once more. The pure joy when you can see their face again, and hear their voice as they talk to you about the days, weeks, years you have been asleep. The hope that they still cling to, despite all that works against them. Despair as you remember you cannot talk back to them, or reach up to comfort them, to say "I'm here, don't give up yet!" Frustration when you try to regain control, but your own will denies you of that pleasure. Who would be left, when time takes its toll on the relationships you worked so hard to form? Which would take the time to keep that hope strong? So very few. By their actions they show their love. By their words they show their hope. These are the friends that are forever, who hope despite all other word. Who love though you cannot love back. Clinging on that hope that one day, you will come back to them, someway, somehow. Friendship is that small glimmer in the dark of a forbidding world, that prevents the self destruction of despair. But now, it is time to come back, for the mind to return to the body. You open your own eyes for the first time in a long time, who do you think you would see?

Of the dream,
The musing of Mythwriter

Just a questions really, do you hang on to people when  you leave a job, area, club or whatever - or do you walk away and make a fresh start?

I'm terrible at keeping in touch with people.  Apart from work related stuff, I make three phone calls a week: one to my sister and two to my parents.  I text other members of my family and close friends but unless you are 'in the fold' I don't have time to keep relationships going.  Don't get me wrong I do have friends :o)

I joined Facebook a while back to keep in touch with my son's life, as he's away from home studying, and since then have received messages from people I went to school with almost 30 years ago - and haven't seen since!

Am I odd that I don't hang onto people if they aren't 'friends' but just people I've met through work, or that they live in the same area etc?

Do you Hang On or Move On?

This is the poem i wrote three years back, submitted to the local magazine, called Young World, 2 months ago and it  got published a month ago. The poem is titled FRIENDSHIP

Verse 1

What's friendship to me?
What's it worth you?
It's like an open window,
And a wide view.

Verse 2

It's a gleam of stars,
The brightness of the sun,
Spreading over the hearts,
Unpleasant to none.

Verse 3

It is a large oasis,
In the desert of death,
A blessing in disguise,
Giving me breath.

Verse 4

It is a glowing fire-fly,
In a world of darkness,
Illuminating the way,
Ridding me of weariness.

Verse 5

It is an unbreakable bond,
Full of fun but without sorrow,
Which helps the world run smoothly,
Or else I will not borrow.

They say you never forget your first. Well, Eammon was my first. He broke my duck. Got me off the mark. And here thirty years later, almost to the day, I’m taking time to remember him.

Jim came later and Christine in rapid succession. And after that, well, after that there were more – I think anyone whose early adulthood was spent back then in Belfast would have a significant list – but as I say, it’s the first time that leaves the impression. It’s the first time that sears your soul.

I noticed his fingers first. He’d had some kind of accident with fire years back, and they were all melted around the tips like the wick end of candles at the close of a long night. It’s funny how skin can do that, I always thought, trying to avert my gaze. And of course there was the ubiquitous blue curl of Gitane smoke drifting up from his left hand. Back then there was nothing so cool.

We used to sit up in the second floor snack bar. Queens University Student Union. Early nineteen seventies. And somehow in there, if you sat at the best tables, you could feel the gradual deconstruction of who you’d been; experience the blurring of the tight lines that your upbringing had drawn around you. It was a dangerous place. Sitting in the fug of the smoke, only some of it legal, joining in the conversations, wrapping your head around the life experiences of others – it was like every week brought a new mental challenge. A new frontier to cross. An old place to leave behind.

It was a strange place Belfast, back then. It still is, I guess. A hard place to call home. Home for me has always been someplace where you could grow safely. Where you could try on ideas, experiment with identity and beliefs. Get it wrong nine times out of ten, and it still wouldn’t matter because you’d still be loved. Belfast was nothing like that. You have to be right in Belfast.

And walk on the right streets.

At one of the tables near ours the “Christian Fundamentalists” used to sit. Ironic name now, given how the world’s gone. There was no smoke curling upwards from their fingers. One of their favourite games was to send a message to the porter’s office.  Would any member of Gay Rights come to the nearest black phone?  Then, when they heard it come over the tannoy, they’d watch the phone in question like hawks. Noting the identity of anyone brave enough to respond they would target that person for months with bible verses and visions of burning hell. Seriously.

I remember one time the Fundamentalists burned the Rag magazine on the steps of the Student Union. Apparently they didn’t get the jokes. Anyway, they sang a few hymns, mumbled some prayers, and lit the match. A historic moment for Ulster, I believe they said. Some of those guys are big wheels in politics now. Trying to Doctor the Agreement.

Anyway, back to Eammon and me.

I didn’t know back then how differently the city treated its children. I had grown up around the edges of suburbia in a succession of attractive middle class houses, had attended the schools of privilege and had lived totally untouched by the unfolding tragedy that was nineteen seventies Belfast. I’d even been born into the ascendant tribe. I did not know that there were children whose play patterns were constructed around the intrusion of plastic bullets fired in indiscriminate rounds through their letter boxes. I did not know that a front door was no protection from the outside world if that world appeared in combat garb carrying a battering ram. I had never visited the darkest corners of fear. I’d never met a Roman Catholic.

Until I sat, a Philosophy student seeking a context for thinking, at a table in the Student Union snack bar. Trying to make sense both of what I was reading, and of the world in which I was reading it. Jean Paul Sartre, welcome to Belfast. Kinda makes me smile now.

And that was where Eammon came in. He was one of six of us who formed a study group. At once the most unlike me and the most accessible. He’d come from a place of which I’d never heard. About three miles from where I’d once lived. Like the inhabitant of a secret room in those rambling old homes so beloved of second rate children’s novelists, where the door’s always locked and there’s a conspiracy denying the very existence of the dysfunctional brother kept inside, Eammon had grown up in a world whose existence had been denied by the keepers of the gates to my own world. My own Belfast. You’d have had to live there to understand it’s depths of denial.

He could talk a good game too could Eammon, though there was no aggression in the passion with which he opened up the life he knew outside the university. He brought me out of my ghetto and into the world in which I now live. Argued with me until I understood truth. Told me how it was in the place where he came from. And when those of a less understanding temperament would question my place at the table and would show deep frustration at the slowness with which I seemed to grasp issues, Eammon would smile that smile of his and wave one melted finger in the air. Give him time, he’d say, give him time. All the while, that Gitane smoke curling up towards the ceiling. And me, working it all out.

And so it was that over months, years maybe, I was able to come to understand that the city we called home was, in fact, a different place for each of its inhabitants. That none of us saw it through the same eyes. Or knew it painted in the same colours. I came to see how one man’s villian might be another man’s hero. One man’s crime be another man’s act of glory. That the price of privilege is always paid by the unprivileged. And that there would always be outsiders. I don’t think that Eammon ever said any of that straight out to me, he just chipped away at my pre-programmed shell, and smiled when I got the point.

It seems strange now to think of the me before Eammon. The me who was so tribally contained. Whose friends all came from the same mindset. Whose ethics and politics were all bunched on such a small wave band on the spectrum of what could be. Who had never been touched with the beauty of diversity. Never encountered the possibility or passion of another way. Didn’t know the music in the songs.

And then in February seventy five he broke my duck. In February seventy five I crossed a rubicon.

It was the Belfast Telegraph that broke the news. No friend of mine had ever been on the front page before. And certainly not the main headline. For just a moment I was excited. It’s Eammon. What’s he doing to warrant this?
He had been walking on the Antrim Road it said. Near where my grandmother had lived when I was young. Where I’d lived with her for six long years. Just down the road from the house I’d called home. The information, even now, makes stark reading. The only entry he has in the record books reads -

Eammon  _____ :  Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: non-specific Loyalist group (LOY)
Shot while walking along Antrim Road, near Camberwell Terrace, Belfast.

Of course I immediately wrote him a song, I mean that’s what we did back in seventy five. It wasn’t even a good one. It was finger pointing and crass, and the tune was appaling. The rhymes were weakly contrived. There were too many verses. It wasn’t how he would have put it at all.

And then as I say, within six months there was Jim. Gunned down beside his firm’s minibus near Bessbrook on his way home from work. And then Christine, shot dead outside her church one sunny Sunday evening (a tit for tat thing apparently). But re-runs never have the impact of your first time, do they? Don’t ever leave you just as numb. And anyway, I had no more songs to write. They were all wrung out of me.

It’s thirty years this month since Eammon made the front page of the Belfast Telegraph, and here I am, for some reasoon, thinking about the times back then. Thinking about the route my life took since those long ago days. Thinking about how all of our times got stranded.

Everybody has their tragic stories I imagine. Even today there’s a note in the paper about somebody’s brother. Shot dead in Belfast. Bullets don’t have a sell by date it seems. I guess everybody knows somebody who meant something to them and touched their soul for a moment. Who blazed across their sky and left a glow for cradling secret, deep in some hidden cavern, before the light flicked out.  Everybody has their Eammon.

And all of us, I think, keep some kind of inner space as sacred. No matter what or who it is that we believe in. All of us have a place inside us where we face up to the darkness, when the lights have all gone out. Where we remember and re-state to ourselves who it is we are. Open the jar and let the memories all come tumbling out. Face up to our worst fears. And we’re always alone when we go there. Always alone. With the wick end of candles at the end of a long night.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who once said "There's only one thing worse than being talked about .....and that's NOT being talked about." Have I got that right? Anyway I just love that quote. Sometimes I feel quite happy with it because at least if you're being talked about you must have something interesting about you even if it is negative! At least you inspire a reaction in people.

There's another quote which I love too taken from a poster that was up in an office I used to work in. it read:

Small people talk about other people
Average people talk about things
Great people talk about ideas

If that is the case then I am sometimes a great person but I have to admit I do love to talk about people. I mean we all do though don't we? Especially as I am a woman. We love it. Show me a woman who says she doesn't EVER gossip and I will show you a liar!

As a writer I HAVE to be interested in people and what makes them tick and I am sure you will relate to this too. The meaning of the word gossip has changed over the centuries from it's original definition of "kindred relation" to empty talk.  Now the Oxford English Dictionary definition of gossip is  casual conversation OR unsubstantiated reports about other people. Therefore I would say that the former is human nature-we all talk about other people and the latter is the bad thing. So gossip I think is only a good thing if we're not maligning people or spreading rumours. I've probably just stated the obvious I know but maybe we all need to be reminded from time to time about what is acceptable gossip and what is not.

Some people dream of fame but I'm so glad I am not as I think I would be having nervous breakdowns every day with the amount of gossip you get in today's media.I think that is an utter scandal in itself and people like the paparattzi and  gossip columnists should bow their heads in utter shame making a living out of other people's misery. It's worse than it's ever been.


 As long as gossip isn't malicious or maligning it can be a good thing surely. For example I really want to have a gossip about one set of neighbours on my Close to another! The reason being that one set of neighbours are being utterly grumpy sods with us these days. They've suddenly gone from being really nice to really grumpy and almost shunning me and my partner. I've tried the proper route by talking to them direct but to no avail. Now if I were to talk to the neighbours on the other side about them I may discover something useful like Bob and Linda are grumpy sods because Bob lost his job or someone in their family died. That way I would understand what is going on and I wouldn't want to gossip about them anymore!!!!

Anyway I guess I'll keep on gossiping (in the "interested in people" sort of way) because if I didn't I don't think I would have much to write about!
"Hell is other people" John Paul Sartre once said and when it comes to malicious gossip they are. But I think just talking about other people generally isn't so "small" after all.  

'Til next time,
 Jazzgirl

Hi all. Don't think I did a very good job of that last blog. It ended up as a sort of stream of conciousness really instead of a well constructed article. A blog should read like a columists entry in a paper I guess but I'm learning.

I think in order to write the article more accurately I need to let you know a bit more info really. You see, I turned to social networking sites like Facebook because  I suffer with chronic agoraphobia and can't get out to see people. No one on there apart from my closest friends know about it though. I've been wondering whether to talk about it on here just yet as it seems too much information to divulge too soon. But then I thought "Sod It". The more people know about this condition the less stigmatised it will eventually become. 

Now I won't go into explaining agoraphobia on this particular blog but I will on a future one. I'm going to call it "Inside Out-The Diary of an Agoraphobic" and I will give more information about the condition on there (and take a humourous look at it too!) for anyone who is interested. Where is the spell checker on here BTW?

Right so I turned to Facebook to help me feel less lonely because by gum as us Northerners say it sure gets lonely being stuck in a house all day with just two moggies for company. (And yes I am aware that I fulfill the "mad" stereotype/criteria for a female cat lover!) . Anyway Facebook has had quite the opposite effect. Instead of making me feel connected to humankind it has made me feel even more lonely. (Ahh! cue the sad violin again). But I'm not on here to gain sympathy. I just wanted to get people thinking about friendship and social networking sites  and maybe even re-evaluate their own relationships. 

I guess being on Facebook has made me take a long hard look at myself. Remember that famous quote from the film "It's Wonderful Life "? It goes "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends". And that is so true. 

To be frank, Facebook has made me feel like a social outcast at times. I used to go on there nearly every day and respond to people's status or "like" something they said or did, comment on their photos etc. But rarely (in comparison) did I get people responding to my site. I felt like I was putting in all the effort! I've also had (which I mentioned in the last blog) rude emails and people ignoring my "friend" requests. Now the latter has only come from friends of my ex partner who have blatently decided to take sides but it hurts none the less. Maybe I was a tad naive to contact them but I thought the split from my ex was was amicable and mutual. 

So the bad things I've got out of Facebook is complacency and sometimes rudeness and being shunned.  So if Facebook is a true reflection of my popularity and the sum total of the friendships I have collected in life then I could get very depressed about it and think nobody loves me -boo hoo. But I won't.

The complacent people who don't bother on Facebook are usually the ones I don't know very well anyway and so they don't know me very well. The thought provoking thing is there seems to be a lot of them. They are usually people that I have worked with in the past. Now this is where my agoraphobia comes in. I've been stuggling with this on and off for years and it's very hard to get to know people if you won't go out for a drink with them and generally "do stuff" with them. Maybe if I had these people would not be so complacent. They probably see ME as the complacent one. And if I do look at this group a little more closely I have to be honest with myself and say there are a couple maybe that I let down in the past at some point and I neglected them too. Friendship works both ways.

So lesson one - (Well a reminder really as I already knew this). Tackle the agoraphobia, do stuff with people and when you make friends make them feel appreciated  and valued!

As for the friends of my last ex I shouldn't take this to heart. When you suffer with a condition like mine it's very easy to look like "the baddie" in the relationship and people will take sides. I remember one occasion with my ex when we were together. We drove all the way from Sheffield to Bradford to meet up with friends for a curry but the minute we got there I had a panic attack and we had to come home. Needless to say that made me quite unpopular. However, just recently I discovered another funnier reason for their apparant dislike of me. My rather domineering and controlling Irish Catholic Mother (sorry Mum I love you but it is true) recently confessed to calling my ex some time ago and giving him a piece of her mind! She told him exactly what she thought of him and never to contact me again! Now I hadn't asked her to do that. I had been on speaking terms with my ex so now it's no surprise that he and his friends are ignoring me. How she got his number I will never know.

Lesson two- Keep Mother away from phones. Also, try to worry less about what others think of you, cherish your true friends and .....tackle the agoraphobia!

This leads me on to another group of people I keep in touch with on Facebook-the ex boyfriends spanning over 20 years. Now why on earth I keep in touch with these guys I really don't know. I am in a very happy loving relationship now so why? I guess it's becasue I've always got on with blokes better than women so when I lose a boyfriend I feel like I've lost a friend too. If I really analyse this though I discover that I really don't get anything out of these communications  (and I'm sure they don't either). Aside from the agoraphobia it would be inappropriate for me to meet up with married ex's as i'm sure their partners and my partner wouldn't like it. So I think it's time to cut loose. 

Lesson Three - Concentrate on making new fulfilling friendships, ditch the ex's and....tackle the agoraphobia! 

Another group on Facebook is the old school/uni mates. Now somone made a very valid point here on Cloud about only maintaining these friendships if you can think of things to talk to them about in more than one email. You are so right and I will take this on board.

Lesson Four - Maintain School/Uni friendships if you feel you have enough in common.

That leaves the friends on Facebook that I currently see. The ones who accept me for who I am and the ones that know about my agoraphobia. These are the people that really matter though they are pretty low in number but I can work on that.

Lesson Five- Tackle the agoraphobia! Make new friends but cherish your true friends. Make them feel valued and appreciated and they will make YOU feel valued and appreciated. Plus -I'm the sort of person who isn't into having loads of "mates" anyway and would rather have just a small group of very good true friends. So what the hell am I doing on Facebook in the first place?

You may be thinking "If you already have true friends why on earth are you bothering about the others". The answer is I guess I'm  a  little bit  insecure and want everyone to like me. But thanks to Facebook actually I've learnt that I don't need everyone to like me. I need to like myself. A corny "reach-for-the-vomit bucket"  truth but a truth none the less. 

Sorry if this has been a bit self -indulgent. That wasn't my intention. If I may use an American therapy yukky word here- by "sharing" this I hope others can gain from it too  . I think it helps us all to do a "friend audit" from time to time. Some friendships can be quite destructive to our spirit, others very neutral and others very fulfilling and I think it does us all good sometimes to access whether we're being a good friend to others as well as they to us.

I felt inspired to write this blog having had the warmest welcome from you guys here at The Word Cloud. Thank You. I will get round to commenting on some of your stories very soon. I'm a very very very slow reader (and slightly dylsexic) so I have to psyche myself up before I read anything!  
Writing for me comes easier than reading if that makes any sense.
 
Anyway, I've never actually written a blog before. This is my first one. I am a blog virgin so treat me gently, respect me in the morning and maybe we can enjoy a ciggie together afterwards .

I would like to talk to you today about my experiences with Facebook.  It's not been all bad but sometimes quite frankly it has left me in tears (cue weepy violin music). But i'll start with the good stuff:

The good thing about Facebook is that I've managed to hook up with some old schoolmates on there and it's really good to be in touch with them again. Some I don't have much in common with but there are one or two which I hope to keep in touch with for the rest of my natural now that I have found them again.

I'm ashamed to admit this but there's one friend on there that I used to "disown" sometimes when I was at school. For most of the time I was her friend but sometimes I was horrible to her.I wanted to be with the popular crowd and she was just way too eccentric with her wacky hair, unusual clothes and a passion for Georgette Heyer novels (in a 1980's secondary modern school this really was a no no. The only approved reading "literature" was Patches magazine and My Guy)  . Thing is  her eccentricity is what  I absolutely loved about her . She was different and to this day I really admire that in someone. We were birds of a feather  but  back then as a  shallow teenager I didn't have the courage to stick up to the people who bullied me for being her friend. She's a really wonderful person though because she put up with my bitchiness and now I wish she lived round the corner from me and not in Essex because I'd really like to see more of her. It's funny how the people we pick as friends when we are kids or teenagers are sometimes the people we  still have has friends today.  My friend and I still share the stuff in common that we had then-books, writing, music and horse riding. We've changed as people but our interests have endured and that's what keeps any relationship fortified.

Now for my negative experiences of Facebook:

Well, asa woman who has come to the realisation that she will never have children it's really hard to see the "we're so fertile" family pics that are so often uploaded on there. I don't blame the people who do it though. If I had fruit of my loins I'd probably do it too along with  funny stories about what my kids did or said.

The other hard thing to swallow sometimes is the pics of people having the time of their lives in exotic  or exciting locations such as the Bahamas, Thailand or AyresRock when I'm stuck here in rainy Warrington too skint to go on holiday. The nearest I get to Ayres Rock is listening to Pam Ayres reciting poetry on Radio 4. WhatI'm trying to say is that Facebook sometimes gives you the impression that other people's lives are morefulfilled. But maybe this isn't a bad thing. Feeling a twinge of jealousy perhaps makes me think about reframing my own life and finding ways to make it happier.

However what really upset me recently, what really gave me a slap in the Facebook was a nasty email I recieved from someone I used to know.

Now on Facebook  you have to use the term "friend"  quite loosely at times. Sometimes I just add people on there that I have known but they're not friends in the true sense. However I am interested sufficiently enough in them to keep in touch with their news. I think everyone on there does this. Anyway recently I put a "friend" request in to a woman who we shall call Claire. Now this was probably in hindsight a pretty naaive thing to do becauseClaire was a platonic friend of my ex partner. Thing is it had been an amicable split from him about 4 years ago now so I didn't think anyone was taking sides. Now bear in mind that I had entertainedthis woman in my home, I had bought her birthday presents and I had encouraged her with her dream of writing a novel. In short I'd never been anything else but very pleasant to this woman. She got married recently and I was admiring her wedding pics on another friends site so I sent her a brief email and a friend request. It didn't mean that I wanted to be her best buddy, it just meant that I was interested enough in her to keep in touch with her news right? Anyway she sends this horrible email back saying "I never was your friend, I don't want to be your friend. Please do not contact me again" I was stunned. I felt like a stalker.And to this day I really don't know what I've done or said to deserve that. So I wrote back an ultra nice email to make her feel guilty saying  something like "Well I WAS going to compliment you on your lovely wedding pics. Never mind. Seems I liked you more than you liked me. I wish you well"

So all in all Facebook has raised me up and dragged me down. It's put me back in touch with some great people but it's also made me realise just who my friends and "friends" really are or who they really were.