SAD

.... and this is the summer season unusually damp and wet here in ireland land of mists and more mists and sixty shades of grey as well as sixty shades of green and the sun has departed and no wonder we feel sad and sad is named so well that is seasonal affective disorder and we must surely suffer from it here in hibernia named winter by the romans and so i sit here in my attic den and am slightly down and hope that by writing these few words i will exorcise the devil and these words alone bring me back to some thirty years ago and i in  a monastery fastness on the side of the dublin mountains not far from the famous or infamous hellfire club to which we used climb as young men to put in an afternoon that would not lie heavily upon our souls and i remember passing one other student who asked me what i was thinking and i said i was exorcising my demons and boy that's what physical activity does it helps us exorcise those demons that haunt our souls nay haunt our body-souls for this writer is no believer in cartesian dualism this writer is seeking a holism yes a holism that knows only this solidity that i am at the moment this solid blob of flesh this solidity or solid blob of flesh that can think and write and move and do this solidity that wants no self-pity that wants to explore its real nature of which it is at once a captive and yet and yet can fly away on paths of escape in imaginary lands of thought and i sweat and i sweat in my attic room for it is at least 20 degrees centigrade today and my keyboard has become a little sweaty with my fingers and i think of the great gerard manley hopkins sj who wrote of human beings as bearing man's smudge and sharing man's smell naked we came into the world and naked we shall leave it and as i type i realise that there are many things i have let slip many things i must do things that i have been too lazy and too disinclined to do almost like freud as if i wished to let those cares go let them fall away and embrace an ageing that knows that letting go that knows that dying and that death is so much part of this body-soul that i am so much part of this thinking mass of flesh that i am and yes it sounds so good does that phrase thinking mass of flesh that will become a stinking mass of flesh and then no more no more no more and the great freud himself called this the death instinct and he was so right so right so right and all the things i must do are pressing in on me pressing in on me and yet i know that after this writing after this stream of consciousness i must go and do something because doing something is part of my rescue my rescue of this self struggling to know itself struggling to come to terms with what it is with who it is with the shadows that fall as well as the strong sunlight of italy that i tasted for a while and these fingers now are caressing these keys as the stream of consciousness traces itself across the screen of my laptop mirroring the screen of my mind and i am calling out like the psalmist of old the psalmist of old whom the old scholars traditionally called david he the leader of the jewish nation all those years ago and these thoughts keep falling down and shaping themselves like a stream that finds a channel like a stream that finds a channel and i will find a channel and that will be my identity that channel that will be carved from the earth by the beads of sweat on my brow and i need courage to do all this diving down into the unconscious and owning all those demons that live in the shadowy corners of my mind and how i need a fellow soul an anamchara as they put it in the irish language to lead me forth by the hand and say don't think so deeply just go with life just go with life and follow where it leads...

Recognition and Identity

A younger me - some 25 years ago - playing a guitar and singing!

...and identity whatever that is and perhaps it's something to do with memories and the way they shape themselves into patterns on the brain and burn down ever inwards to form to shape the mind the mind the mind which breaks or can break like frightful waves against the jagged cliffs and so interminably ever onward until the death of consciousness and indeed it often bemuses me as i grow ever more deeply conscious of the self ever more deeply in the cavernous pits of the mind and plumb the depths of identity and wonder where does this soul belong and still it dawns and continually dawns on this mind that there would be no pain without consciousness and just now i remember the suffering of another the suffering of an eighteen year old boy-man to be more precise who is living through the pain of depression the pain the pain the pain of that depression which this writer once knew thankfully for a short period of some 12 weeks many years ago many years ago and thankfully that burning into the self that cycling and re-cycling of painful thoughts has not returned has never returned and that is more than thirteen years ago now and i wish i wish i could make meaning and significance out of all this oh no oh no the task at hand is to write on and on and on to write and continue to write ever-onward ever-onward in just because there is meaning in the act of writing insofar as something happens something is shaped something pours itself out something at the heart of whatever it is that has made these atoms and molecules shape themselves into consciousness and as i write on i wonder at the littleness of it all at the littleness of the i against the vastness of space and i was and am taken by the words of the great romantic poet and philosopher - the great s.t. coleridge oh yes those words his words made my heart burn within me so many times when i was reading him like when he told the story that his father had often brought him by the hand as a young boy out into the country to taste of the darkness and to become habituated to the vast to become habituated to the vastness of the night sky and how little and how insignificant a mite we are in comparison to the expanse of space and the looking out into the vastness that great vista of emptiness with splashes of white light dotting its surface and yet the mind the consciousness that centre point that central place that viewing point that still point that solid ground of self or of ego or of consciousness which not only knows but knows that it knows and maybe that's what it's all about and yet the pain of that knowing the pain of knowing that one pains that the heart breaks that the mind breaks on its own mountains down as the great jesuit poet gerard manley hopkins once put it and all these writers are about making sense of human experience about making sense of the project we call life about trying to throw threads of meaning across great boulders of the unknown otherness of things in the vain hope of explaining them and ah and ah but these threads of little knowledge and smaller meaning will never hold will never hold because the vast epistemological task is so daunting so frightening so terrifying and these words are coming thick and heavy now as the tears attempt to form in my eyes and these fingers tickle these keys as this little brain with its mind trying to escape trying to run riot on its captors trying to escape the bounds and boundaries placed upon it by the physicality of its imprisoning brain and that's it that's it it's consciousness that's the transcendent self and that's what it's all about all about that projecting of that image of self that projection of that sense of self that's me this self-transcendence this self-transcending self this self reaching out for identity looking for a container of self in another in another wanting to be held like a little weeping baby wanting to be cradled in the arms of another wanting to be nurtured wanting to be held wanting to be recognised ah ah yes ah yes and the philosopher charles taylor is right it's all about being recognised by a significant other or others and being open to such cherishing to such recognition and the ability to reject all mis-recognitions as alien destroyers of the self as alien destroyers of authenticity of the truth that is the me that is the me or that is the i the i the i the little the little me wanting be held and identified and acknowledge by another in mutual embrace in mutual embrace...