My great and longest standing buddy, Dan Ellis, has been battling thymic cancer for several years now. It was discovered, alas, at what they call, Stage 4.
He posted an update on his current status yesterday. On the one hand it sounds pretty awful: constant pain, lots of quite invasive and draining treatments.
On the other it’s quite positive: he has a loving family and devoted wife, and a well remunerated and supportive/understanding job; a very fine oncologist; and his treatments thus far have been very effective ; i.e. he’s still alive.
Not that long ago a stage four diagnosis meant imminent death.
When I first learned of his illness, I tried to go and see him weekly. Sadly since then my own life issues have intervened and made that much harder to do. And these days I hardly ever see him.
I posted a comment to his latest update, and a screenshot of his wife Amy’s response is stop this post.
I was tempted to say Dan is ‘in our prayers daily‘. But I opted instead to say ‘in our thoughts daily.’ And that’s for me thinking about what prayer might actually be.
One definition of prayer is that we are asking for intercession from a supernatural source – most popularly in our present culture the ‘all powerful’ being called God – to alter the course of reality in our favour.
That’s quite obviously poppycock. And a fools’ recourse. At least in my opinion.
But another definition of prayer might be simply the speaking out of a thing ‘devoutly’ or keenly wished for.
Well, things got too much for me, and Monday evening I snapped, or let go, or whatever.
I wilfully ‘got fucked’. Partly as a response to constant work/money issues. Partly other stuff; which I’ll simply call general depression (arising from numerous causes; least said, soonest mended).
On this occasion it was just booze that I abused: a small-ish bottle of gin, and a standard bottle of red wine. The intended aim? Oblivion. Which I succeeded in. But not without dire consequence.
I smashed a picture frame, cutting my hand, and raged and raved, behaving pretty atrociously, by all accounts. The oblivion I sought was found, such that some of this sorry episode – perhaps I should be grateful? – is entirely lost to me.
I posted a message to FB – obviously both venting and a cry for help – which is, obviously, very embarrassing once the fit has passed.
Since this occurred I’ve confined myself to bed, and ‘recovery mode’. Near enough sleeping around the clock. Or just resting. Reading a bit, if I can muster the wherewithal.
Yesterday (Wednesday) I managed to do several hours of telephone based admin work, that desperately needed sorting. All of which revolved around sorting a working mobile phone (my latest iPhone SE not working has, it turns out, been part of the lack of work issue taking so long to resolve).
A new phone has been procured, via an insurance claim, costing me £55 (at a time when I’m totally broke), and should be arriving today. And all the documentation Amazon have requested – and which I was unable to successfully supply via the old/broken SE – has, via a secondary/backup iPhone 6S, now been sent.
So, hopefully, I’ll be back to delivering, fairly soon; could still take ‘up to five working days’! That’ll bring this current period of unemployment to a full month. Or £1200+ out of pocket.
I’m trying – tho’ barely managing (or more accurately not managing) to succeed in doing so – to sell some more drum stuff. I’ve got as far as getting it all down from the attic. But I have yet to place adverts, or whatever else I might do to sell the stuff.
Not as easy as one might think…
I’ve had – as I always do, when things go south – a constant loop of self-destructive thoughts playing in my mind. One reason I’m confined to bed is that if I did get up and go out, it might be in search of rope and a tree.
Not a method available to me.
Teresa remains my rock. She stayed home on Tuesday, to keep an eye on me. Which I think was very necessary. That got me through the worst post-meltdown period. I called Samaritans several times that day. Probably spent a total of about two hours talking to them. Thank goodness they are there!
Having just got and read Tolkien’s Lay of Aotrou & Itroun, I think it’s (fairly?) safe to say that it touched a raw nerve, for me, re our childlessness. Whilst Tolkien’s doomed Lord takes a potion to bring forth issue, my ‘potion’ merely seeks oblivion. But both have dire results.
I don’t want to go into this aspect of my current struggles. But the Tex Avery pics, and Tolkien’s tale, I think, will convey something of the issue.
Rather tragically, for me, at least as I see it, my fate must needs be more that of an ascetic monk than a princess-rescuing dragon-slaying adventurer.
It seems that I’m a hyper-sensitive endorphin junkie. And that to manage my ‘condition’, if I want to survive (never mind ‘prosper’, which seems an outcome that remains totally beyond reach) I must abstain from everything my pleasure-seeking self longs to indulge in.
I’m currently bed-bound, after a mini-breakdown. I think it was Monday evening, I kind of, erm… snapped?
Anyway, I’d ordered the book that is the subject of this post a few days ago (see this earlier post). And it’s now arrived.
It seems eerily apt, for me/us, as it’s the sad story of a childless couple.
Cove near The Lizard, Tolkien.
The above is the artwork that’s also used on the cover. A beautiful thing. As is so much of Tolkien’s creative work, be it art or literature.
The book is only a little over 100 pages. And easily read in a single day. I love it. It’s fascinating to see how Tolkien evolves his ideas.
The book comprises the titular ‘lay’, two shorter Corrigan poems, and lots of other material, directly related to the lay and it’s evolution.
As well as Tolkien’s own writing there’s quite a lot of commentary, describing how the linked ideas that form these pieces arose; their sources, and evolution.
If you love Tolkien, and I certainly do, it’s very absorbing and fascinating. It’s often repeated herein that these works – the lay especially – are from the ‘darker side’ of Tolkien’s creative oeuvre.
Well, yes. But at the same time I think they also underscore a deep vein of melancholy that characterises pretty much his entire output.
I think I also love Tom Waits and Jack Kerouac a great deal because there’s so much wistful nostalgia for vanishing worlds in their work. And Tolkien, whilst ostensibly operating in a different milieu, I feel partakes of a very similar ‘rear-view mirror blues’ aesthetic.
Whether it’s the loss of the innocence of one’s own youth, or the changing of whole cultures, there’s very often a deep sadness underlying a lot of Tolkien’s work.
His work as a philologist in itself situated him in the citadel of academia, as the chill winds of history blew through the bones of the dead languages he studied.
We often pass through Wilburton. Which means we often pass St Peter’s. I’ve long meant to stop and have a look. Today I finally did so.
There were a couple of ladies inside, doing some cleaning. Presumably local volunteers?
Sadly my iPhone’s camera isn’t really up to zooming in on some of the details, such as the carved heads up in the roof.
There’s some unusually brightly coloured tiling in the floor, up around the altar. And what look like fossils, in some of the marble. I must find out what these odd artefacts are.
Yet another humbly beautiful and powerful building.
After the church, I found a little public footpath. And had a short ramble. So glad I did! It was very uplifting. When I rounded a corner and saw the view pictured immediately below, my spirits soared.
It’s always a surprise – although it really ought not to be – every time I take a moment out, to savour such places as these, how nourishing and enriching the experience is.
We woke up at 5.30 am, to be up and out, and at the Skylark car boot for 7 am. It was nice to see the ‘rosy-fingered dawn’. Fortunately, it’s still £7, just as it was years ago, last time I had a pitch there. Before Covid!
I’m chuffed that Teresa was with me. She enjoyed it. I got her a mini-hand-sewing-machine, for her troubles. And she scored three free (!?) ceramic knick-knacks. Always lovely to see her smiling.
A happy lass!
And Antonio got back from Spain today.
LATER ON…
Well, after a pretty tough spell of days turning to weeks, today’s car boot sale was something of a respite. We came home around midday. And both napped briefly, in the garden.
A few hands of rummy have been played, lunch and dinner eaten. And after a bit of an impromptu Wallace & Gromit binge, we finished off this evening with episode five of The Rings of Power.
Utterly delightful.
For some reason the latter started to ‘freak me out’. I suspect actually it’s just the underlying stress of lack of income resurfacing. So tomorrow’s first job is to pay in the car boot earnings.
And after that, I must sedulously seek further means of creating more income. Be that selling more stuff, alternative employment, benefits, or getting this whole ridiculous Amazon impasse cleared up.
But somehow, it’s absolutely imperative that I dial down stress levels.
To that end, I started listening to the above. I loved it so much, I decided to do a 30 day free trial with Audible (again!), and thereby get a free audiobook. I opted to get the unabridged version, read by the venerable Michael Hordern.
The current no-work scenario is proving to be a major downer. We’re trying to tidy the home a bit, and sift through stuff to take to a car boot sale tomorrow.
But even that is massively depressing, as I don’t have anything much of real value, at least that I want to part with, nor do we have the wherewithal to set up a stall at the car-boot.
Everything feels like such hard work. And not at all worth the effort. I’m at a very, very, very low ebb. And whilst I’m mostly tee-total these days, I just bought this:
Poss a bad idea whilst hyper-depressed?
But I’m in the fuck it all zone, to be honest.
Some time later…
Well, the plan remains to do Skylark car boot tomorrow. Which means an appallingly early start. And I don’t really have either the stuff to sell, or the means to display it. I’m actually a bit worried it might be a waste of time, energy, and poss’ even money… if I don’t recoup what it costs to get in as a ‘trader’!
I’ve got some books. Some DVDs. Some DIY type tools, and some model kits. That’s it! And not very much in any of those categories. But I’m getting desperate.
If work – as in Amazon Flex – doesn’t come good very soon, I’ll have to sign on, as unemployed.
And it’s soooo hard to do anything. And I literally mean anything, when you’re as depressed as I am. Motivation disappears. And is replaced by exhaustion, lethargy, torpor, etc.
Teresa has very stoically tried to help me rally my spirits. And I feel guilty towards her, on account of my implacable misery. She has even managed to lift them a little here and there. But the my mind goes back to the harsh fiscal reality of current circs, and I’m right back in the doldrums.
We stopped outside St Wendreda’s, earlier, after scavenging for cardboard boxes (for the boot sale), and it was beautifully sunny. But as pleasant as it was, it didn’t really make a dent in my depression.
Watching what is allegedly the very last Grand Tour instalment, One For The Road, distracted me from my blues a bit. We’ve had a bath and come to bed now. I’m going to watch the last 30 minutes of Jezza and co now. Hopefully help me to decompress a bit before snoozeville?
I’m currently stuck in a typically modern dystopian loop.
Since my driving license expired, a few weeks ago – and despite immediately sorting a new one, which has now (after approx’ two weeks) finally arrived – I’m unable to deliver for Amazon. Currently my only income.
The utterly ridiculous scenario is this: my account has been ‘temporarily disabled’. To re-enable it, I must submit photos of my new driving license. But I can’t do that – the Flex app simply won’t do it – until my account is reinstated.
Or put another way, to re-activate my account, I’m asked to do something I simply cannot do, until my account is re-activated. Say wha’!?
I’ve called Amazon’s off-road support team three of four times in the last 24 hours. And, just like trying to submit my photos – which isn’t working via the app or via the suggested alternative (the Flex support email) – it’s exactly like banging my head against a brick wall. Painful, and getting me absolutely nowhere.
The continually repeated automated robot response to my telephone calls – including repeated requests that the issue be ‘escalated’ – is to upload photos via the app. But I can’t do that!
I’ve been doing this job for about two years now. And throughout that I’ve maintained a near perfect record, on the ‘Standing’/Dashboard.
In a job with zero security, this scenario hardly makes one feel valued. And, as so often in recent times, it triggers my depression, leaving me at my wits end.
We’re watching The Rings of Power, Season Two. And we’re enjoying it. But I do confess, I wish these movie-makers wouldn’t fuck around with their source material so much.
Or, if they really – as they invariably do – feel they have to, at least to do so in a manner more in keeping with that source material. When that source is Tolkien, I feel it deserves more respect.
But I can’t be arsed to expend any energy pulling apart the myriad ways this departs from Tolkien’s ’canon’. In some respects it’s a bastardised realisation of something I believe he wanted to achieve.
I recall reading that in creating his Middle Earth mythology, Tolkien aspired to create a form of British or indigenous alternative to the faulty weak mishmash of Arthurian type stuff.
Something more akin to the darker more complex Northern tales he studied in his philological work. And something that could be built upon by others. Well, the genie’s out of the bottle.
Quite what Tolkien would make of how his legacy is evolving, I’m not sure. I think in some respects he might be pleased. At least that folk thought his myths compelling enough to further elucidate.
But I also think he might be more than a little horrified, at having spawned rapidly evolving empires of imaginary worlds, and the rather capitalist ’product’ type nature of it all.
From Game of Thrones to what is being done to his legacy. I may be wrong. But I think, for all his stuff about ‘fairey’, that he was primarily concerned with culture. Not just entertainment.
And certainly not the hollow pursuit of big bucks.
Tolkien, the original Hobbit.
FOOTNOTE:
It’s fascinating how much of a Tolkien’s work is being dredged through, in the search for yet more publishing bucks. Hopefully there’s also genuine love for and interest in it, as well as the relentless pursuit of profit?
Personally I’ve really enjoyed how his offspring have helped finish some of his unfinished fiction. And I’ve also loved how some of his academic work, or stuff related to it, such as the Sigurd & Gudrun stuff, has been published.
In posting this article – a review, I suppose? – I’ve become aware of yet more posthumous Tolkienian publishings, such as this:
The pictures above show the state of utter carnage that currently prevails in the shed workshop. This shed, shed #1 (so called because it’s the first shed we had, on moving in here; we inherited it) is intended to be our art studio as soon as poss’.
Where the light was…Where the light is.
Pictured above, I moved a light that was previously just sat on a work surface, to the ceiling. Much better! It’s still carnage in the shed. But progress has been made. A fair amount of stuff has been moved out, or binned. And what remains is starting to be a bit more organised. Another similar blitz tomorrow ought to see things substantially improved.
So, after a delish pasta dinner (watching Portillo week-ending in the amazing city of Prague), we came out into the garden, for a fire and a coffee. A lovely way to round off the day!
SURVIVAL FOOTNOTE:
My driving license finally arrived today. We were overjoyed. I can resume work. Or can I? I’m unable to update my driving license via the Flex app, and trying to do so directly, via email, so far, has not worked either. Gaaah!
