I Love You Kafka Tamura!

The boy shuddered and drew closer ever closer to reality
like some fantasy
Had betrayed the very prefix of his being
And there was nothing left there
Not do do anything but wait for the buses
And the trains
And all those things that take you places
Otherwise.

It was still and silent and gasping for air
On the rocks of a beach made of strawberries
Like some ancient candy had taken away
A vast amount of sandpaper
And turned it into glass,
Fragile and aching and needing
Of something it didn't quite know how to describe.

We all edged in ever closer to the child
Who jumped around in endless gardens
And fed rain to the snails
While the cats went around searching
For their lost hearts and eyes
Everything was golden, everything was sunlight
And we paraded in joy,
Every morning.

A Lovelorn Play In Three Voices (Fragment One)

You think you'll step out of the bus and into the world and the adventure begins. You're wrong. Sort of. It's almost like you left your soul back in Iowa and it takes a couple of months to get here, and in the meantime you have a little identity crisis. Ever heard of culture shock? It's not what you think it might be. It's not about learning the customs and social graces of a strange land, it's more than that. When you move somewhere else, you have to move with it, and that takes time.

In part it's about learning where things are and making friends, but there's also a part of you that's completely new. You're a blank slate to everyone, and you get to choose the parts you keep and the parts you hold back. Believe me when I tell you, sometimes it's worth holding back a few things. Otherwise you end up vulnerable.

You have to adjust to to the rules of the city, and all it's many games. You might think you don't want to play games, but then you're just feeding yourself to the lions. You try and retaliate against it and think yourself innocent and honest and full of morals. That's all very beautiful, but you end up hurt. Life isn't the storybook you might think, and you think this doesn't apply to you but it does. Look around at all the people bumping into each other. Tell me who has long stable lasting relationships out of everyone you know? Practically nobody.

Don't look to your parents and your grandparents. They don't count. It was a different generation where divorce was frowned upon and the sexual liberation almost hadn't happened. A world devoid of internet dating sites and nightclubs. They practically didn't have a choice. If your parents had been given a choice there's a strong possibility you might not even exist.

It is a game, and there's nothing depressing about it. I admit, it made me depressed when I started learning these hard truths, but nothing felt better than realising what lay before me. Without this blurred view of romance, all that lay ahead of me was freedom. Everything felt less precious, and it dawned on me that making things precious stemmed from a fear of losing them. When possibility stretches out in front of you like an endless highway, you make things less precious, because you have nothing to lose.

I remember when my grandfather died, and I was out walking with my grandmother while she told me about my cousin's latest boy trouble. She told me “You know what? When your grandfather died I was angry. I was angry because he left me behind”.
That's the price of love, someone's always the first to go.
“Look at your cousin” she said, “so ready to give up, jumping from one boy to another. In my time we worked at marriage, we didn't just give up and leave”.
I shrugged. “Maybe things are more honest now, grandma. People can do what they want, and they realise they deserve better.”
She looked down at the floor. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I wouldn't have put up with half of his shit.”

When you haven't been touched, truly touched by anyone, the globe surrounding the mystery of it becomes larger. Your skin becomes fine porcelain and your lips are ripe exquisite fruit, and you wrap them up in muslin. You dream of princes and white horses and rose petals on the bed.
Then you enter the club scene and end up giving it all away on a dirty mattress in someone's dank apartment. You convince yourself you love them, and they chew you up, spit you back out in pieces and keep the part of you that held together your innocence. They break you, and then they run. It becomes your fault for not knowing any better. It's a rite of passage for anyone, and it messes you up for a while. The freckles on your nose disappear, and the smell of jasmine on summer nights makes it out of your hair.

To My Bad Romance...

I was wondering whether to write this or not. Part of me felt like silence would be more "dignified" somehow. My friends have told me to just forget you, that I deserve better. I agree. But I also feel like if I don't write this to you, my mind won't start to rest easy. Somehow, I feel more grown up these days, and in proof that I am a better human being than you, I won't curse you with the immature silence you have provided me. At the very least, in this capacity, you will never be able to accuse me of simply taking off without a word of explanation. I'll even try to write as clearly as possible.

For starters I am well aware there is the chance you will never answer this letter. I've made my peace with this. Even if you do reply, I don't expect it to be with a lucidity I rarely see from you. I know the answer will no doubt be cryptic, offhand and dismissive. I'm fine with that. I was hoping to speak to you in person, all these words would be given face to face, but you won't grant me that luxury. This isn't the ideal, but it's the only thing I have. I've written you handwritten letters if you must know, letters I knew I would never be able to give to you with their original intentions. They now exist torn up and broken, in the bin in the staff room at work. Overemotional maybe, but definitely honest.

What do I want to say to you? Many things. I'd like to ask you many questions, questions I know you will never answer. There will always be conflicts and defence in the answers too. I'd like to know why your attitude suddenly changed on Friday, I'd like to know why you feel the need to bear such a huge grudge, why you say you don't want revenge when every action you made seemed intent on making me pay for something. There's things I want you to know, things you don't seem aware of, or don't seem to care about. It makes me wonder how you can be so cold about it, it makes me wonder who else has hurt you so badly in the past you feel the need to shut down in this manner rather than try a conversation that could bring us both some healing. I want you to know I am well aware I hurt you in the past, and as you know I have fully apologised for this.

I have practically crawled in the dirt for you. There's not much else I can do. You felt the need to hurt me for this though. You say it's not revenge but I was on my knees on Saturday night, trying to wonder why you wouldn't answer your phone. You looked me in the eye, and said words I will never forget. You said “Now you know how it feels”. You then said it wasn't revenge, but what are those words then? You say you're too busy to answer the phone, to send me a simple message when I tell you I'm hurting. When you truly have feelings for someone, there's no such thing as busy. You find two minutes of the day to make someone stop hurting. You give them time. You look them in the eye and you stop playing around with your phone and watching X-Factor when they're pouring your heart out to you. You take a moment to step outside with them and talk about it rationally, like two adults who want to fight to make things better. You don't take two weeks to “make up your mind”.

If you cared about me the way I cared about you, you wouldn't spend a moment trying to avoid them, ignoring them, keeping away from them and resisting the temptation to get in touch with them. If you felt what I felt on Thursday night, you'd want that feeling forever. You'd try and look to the future, you'd want some happiness, you'd try and start anew so you could spend every night curled in the arms like we were. Every word you said to me that night, that brilliant wonderful night is in doubt now. You had me so convinced, and then with your actions you took it all away. Why would someone cut off their nose to spite their face?

Because by making me hurt, you're making yourself hurt too. You're losing out on the chance to have someone who could really care for you, who could really make you happy. Someone you feel comfortable and wonderful with. And don't lie and say you don't feel comfortable and wonderful. How many people do you know carry on where they left off three years ago? And for it to feel so right, to not feel so awkward.

You keep judging me on the person I was three years ago, without even giving me the hint of a chance to prove myself. You're so wrapped up in your own hurt you fail to see mine, and if you do see it you certainly don't care, or maybe it makes you feel avenged or satisfied in some capacity. I may have hurt you three years ago, but I spent the rest of those three years genuinely trying to start afresh with you, to make amends and wipe the slate clean. And you would proclaim to want to, and then ignore me all over again, preferring to hear what other people had to say about me than what I had to prove about myself. You made me hurt for those three years, you should know this now.

You said something quite deep on Friday morning, about how we keep going about in circles. You joked about us, you said we'd keep going about in circles. Maybe you weren't joking. I think you know the effect you have on me, like no other man ever has. You know I love you. You know even know, in my deepest hurt and my messed head over you, if you said “come to me” I would gladly go at any hour of the day. Maybe this is what drives you, I don't think I will ever know.

I'm going to break this cycle, because as much as I love you I love myself more, and I need to look after myself. I have never felt so low as I have in the past week, unable to take you out of my head and wondering what your real intentions were. You may know this, it may make you happy. If your intent was to hurt me, you succeeded. If it wasn't, I don't know what the hell goes through your head.

I don't feel the need to make extravagant claims and block you. I could say I'll try and forget you but I know I never will. You're like a thorn in my paw I'll just have to live with, eventually some skin will grow around it and the pain will die down. You could make the thorn come out if you wanted to, maybe some day you will. I know it won't take days or weeks, it will probably take years or maybe never even happen. Maybe you'll never realise what you're losing by simply not sitting down and talking to me. A friendship. A relationship. A deep love. A comfort. All because you want to spite me, punish me, because you're too scared of taking a chance. Life, life lived well, is always about taking chances. I was fully prepared to take that chance with you.

I'm not writing this for you, I'm mainly writing it for myself. For my own peace of mind. To let it out and know that you still laid claim to silence, you still decided to reject me after I gave it my absolute everything. This time it was you who walked away. Ironically, because you were so scared of losing me you've pushed me away totally. Maybe one day you'll see me dancing with another man and realise that could have been you, because I truly believe the satisfaction you get from what you've done won't keep you warm for very long.

So what I'm telling you, in brief, is that I am not going to ignore you. But I refuse you as a friend, and as a lover, and as a part of my life. I refuse this vicious cycle. I refuse to let you dismiss my feelings as not being genuine, or hysterical. I refuse to let you keep punishing me for something I have claimed full repentance for. I refuse to let you see me as a monster. I deserve better.

I never leave a door closed though, but I won't open it for just anyone. Maybe one day I'll let you come back in, when I feel like you've really understood everything I have written here. Maybe you don't want to come back in, that's fine, the door is always open. I will say hello to you, I'm not going to be dramatic and ignore you. But that connection we shared? You've broken it because you've wanted to, and until you say the right words and make the right actions and want to repair it, it won't even start.

I feel a lot better after writing this, I hope at least part of it gets through.

Love always (because love is just more than the sunny days),

Jonathan.

I'll Never Be Your Rimbaud

I used to think there was something essential about having to suffer for art, and if it involved another, then so much the better. I thought it was a certainty of life that I would live passionate affairs that would lead to my creative peaks yet ultimate destruction.

This was before I discovered freedom. The fact I have a choice.

I'll never destroy myself for you, because of you. I have seen the effects of madness on people in love, as if it were some ideal of fixation to gurgle and shatter for the want of another. The thing about Romeo And Juliet is, apart from the fact they are fiction, they die at the end. What good is that to anyone?

I refuse to bend myself for any man who thinks he can have me on his terms. I find no feeling of production in crawling through the mud for anyone's attention or approval. The person who that truly belongs to won't make you crawl through the mud in the first place.

So no Mister Man, I'll never be your Rimbaud. I'll never have you shoot me through the wrist and drive me crazy, I'll never die insane and broken so you can honour my memory when you should have been honouring me when I was there. I will never crawl into your flesh like purest heroin and make you itch. You won't see me breaking for you, I refuse. I will not drink to the bottom of the glass in the hopes that I will find you, I will not inhale every last gram of tar in order to make my lungs forget your breath.

I will live for my art and myself, and those who love and respect me. It is really quite a simple task. I'm not saying I will not suffer and try and shed tears and want for a man, I know I will. It will not consume me, however. I will not wait around in turrets combing my hair while you leave the horse outside the pub and think you can come rescue me at any time you see fit.

The ones with men at their side, they look at me with disdain. Such indignance and bitterness, they call it. The ones who are searching desperately for husbands and a dream straight out of Austen, they feel the same. How wrong of me, to not want a man. To not spend my entire life being a scaffolding for a broken house that constantly leans ever towards me instead of wanting to fix itself. To get to the point where my youth is a speck and to see that I have done nothing except be a crutch for a man sorely lacking.

The ones with sense they whisper secrets in my ear. They tell me to never settle, to never compromise and sacrifice and give in to someone who truly doesn't deserve it. They tell me to be free and to relish in the flight.

I will not give up my art for you. I will not die abandoned and lonely and burnt out. So take your revenge elsewhere, take your empty promises, your lies and games ("I don't play games" he says, with such a straight face it would garner applause). See how long that satisfaction keeps you warm at night.

It could have been the warm curve of my hip on your searching hand instead of a pillow.

Nothing of him that doth fade...

But doth suffer a sea-change.
Into something rich and strange

81. Dear Oprah

Dear Oprah,

I heard the news today that your show was going to end. It feels like some things should never end, like your show for example, and The Simpsons. I'm not particularly worried about never seeing you again, because you are an amazing woman who believes in her work, and I don't think people like you ever really retire.

It is the end of an era though, and that makes me reflect.

It is always easy to be cynical, and satirical, and poke fun at overly emotional things. I think you've been the butt of many a joke as regards your ideas for a world. There is certainly a lot I disagree with, I think deep spirituality and opulence are at odds with each other. I couldn't for the life of me make the millions you do, talk about those poor and starving in the world, and then spend thousands on a Hermes scarf. I realise that now, perhaps some day you will.

The truth is at least you are not one of the thousands who simply buys the Hermes scarf. You give back, and I don't think anyone could ever doubt you for it. You work within the limits of this capitalist society and you try and better yourself while not denying yourself luxury, that is your choice and I can only be thankful and admire all the good work you have done.

People talk about the cult of Oprah, but they just don't know. When you came on television, you lightened up my whole world. Afternoon television for this awkward young teenage boy was all about watching families fight each other and gossip about the latest celebrity romp. Ever the outsider in school, and a great part of that coming from my social awkwardness, intellect and penchant for literature, there was nothing more heartening than coming home to you in the afternoons.

Yes it wasn't just me, you enlightened a world. You got people reading, and thinking, and touched upon subjects that people wouldn't even consider. You discussed things in great detail, with much sensitivity and compassion. You helped change body image, and promoted a healthier life. You promoted human empathy, and you did more as regards relief during Hurricane Katrina than the government ever embarrassingly did.

I'll never forget your interviews with Toni Morrison, this great powerhouse of a woman, the very embodiment of the writer I wanted to be. I never had a chance to read her books until I was eighteen (and how they floored me) but I watched Beloved very late one night (with you in the starring role) and I was compelled. I borrowed I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou from the school library and it broke my heart, then sewed it back together stronger than before. At nineteen, I won my boyfriend at the time over with a reading of Refusal. Still I Rise remains my motto for life. Every word of The Color Purple by Alice Walker is tattooed in my heart.

You nourished me with great things, when I ran home from school to watch you attentively. Where else would a fourteen year old boy learn of Toni Morrison, or Maya Angelou and Alice Walker? Where else would I begin the debate in my mind about what it meant to be different, and what rights people had to stand up for themselves in the world? You gave me strength and intellect and food for my soul and mind, and I don't think I would be half the person I am or write half as well as I do if it wasn't for you.

Take a long holiday, you've earned it.
And from the bottom of my heart, I offer deep gratitude.

80. Pro Patria Mori

I was not asked to wear a Poppy at work this week, I was told to. For those of you not in the know, a paper Poppy is worn during the week of Remembrance in the United Kingdom in order to honour those who have served in the British military. The proceeds are then used to support war veterans and their families.

The question you are probably asking is, why would I not want to wear a Poppy in the first place? When I have told this story to several people, all except one have given me that answer. Surely I want to honour those who have died to defend this country and the freedoms and democracy we now enjoy.

Let's try again...I was TOLD to wear a Poppy at work this week.

It goes a little deeper than that actually. The reason I was told to wear one was not because any of the managerial staff felt it was fitting, it was because a company called Body Care was not allowing their staff to wear their Poppies in work, as they were not part of the uniform. Heaven forbid anyone should confuse Body Care with The Body Shop, and ask if the reason I was not wearing a Poppy was because I had been told I couldn't wear one. That would be awful. That would...make for a decline in sales! Which is deeply undemocratic.

I confess to having a stubborn streak. When I am told to do something, I want to know why. I want a good reason. Be it believing in God, wearing a certain dress code or not being allowed into somewhere. I don't see this as unusually as others do. Some people think I just like to cause trouble, that I should put my head down and go with the flow.

But here's the thing. If they'd put their head down and gone with the flow, black people would still have to drink from separate fountains. Gay people would be in jail or internment camps. Women would still be tied to the kitchen, not allowed to vote. The Aztecs thought the Spanish invaders were gods, so they put their heads down and worshipped, and look where that got them.

When I bring forth my views about why I don't wear a Poppy, I'm looked at in shock like I'm some kind of monster. Surely these freedoms that men have died defending include the right to not wear a Poppy? There's something deeply hypocritical about these "freedom" we live in, this post 9/11 crusade where you must have an American flag on your porch and a Poppy on your lapel or otherwise you're some sort of traitorous extremist.

Lest we forget. Lest we forget, most of the young men were sent to war against their will, and the ones who simply wanted peace were sent to jail and humiliated with white feathers. Lest we forget, an eye was turned when children signed up to military service, lying about their age. Lest we forget, Britain turned the other eye when stories about the horrors at Auschwitz were brought to the country. Lest we forget, it was the Soviet troops who discovered the concentration camps and freed the Jews.
Lest we forget, whole families were torn apart for the sake of sending fodder to the front lines.

Lest we forget, we have a government who sends people to war, and then relies on a charity to take care of them when and if they come home, because they're too busy spending our money sending more people to war and buying even more weapons.

There's this idea that if we don't fight and kill, we'll suddenly be taken over by the threat from "outside". There is no alternative to this, nobody is seeking an alternative to this and there's a perfectly good reason why. It is not because war works so well. If war worked perfectly, there would only have been one many years ago and none since then. It is because war is a wonderful business. It sells papers and missiles and battle armour, it sells guns and bombs to either side. Yet again, lest we forget, the Taliban were trained by the USA as a way of fighting against the Soviets. That one didn't quite work out very well did it.

It's always weird to me when we talk about soldiers being killed in war with so much surprise. It is certainly upsetting, and I don't discount the emotion of it. It is an incredible waste. But...when you sign up to run with the bulls in Pamplona you expect to get trampled. You might wrap it up in defending civil liberties but when you sign up with the Army you are going out to be trained to kill, and there is a ridiculously high chance you are going to be killed in return. We see a soldier and we are expected to feel proud, but that man or woman is carrying a gun, and that gun is full of bullets and those bullets are going to rip through someone's vital organs.

I bet there are people completely willing to rip my head off for the statements I am making. I know this because like no other subject, I have had people scream at me for talking this way. How dare I. Who do I think I am. I am disrespectful and uncaring of our troops. This is a lie. I care about our troops so much, I want them to come home and not die. I want them to never have to fight a war again. I want them reunited with their families, and given a job where they are not threatened with death and injury and murder on a daily basis. I know, I'm a complete monster.

Why is it so controversial to talk about not agreeing to war? I hate this view people have whereby they spout "if it wasn't for our brave troops, we'd all be speaking German now". I am not siding with Germany here, I am not some form of Nazi sympathiser but it seems like there are only these two extremes when it comes to talking about any war. You are either with us, or against us. A lover of freedom or a dirty Muslim. Now get that bloody Poppy on your chest and raise your arm in salute...oh wait, I got a little confused there for a moment.