Through a glass, darkly.

5. I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicants which lead to heedlessness.

My response when I first read this precept was a bitterly muttered, brow knitted ‘fuck that’.

It hasn’t really changed much since then.

This could be the one, the big one. More challenging than the lying and the stealing and the killing and the lusting that I have already quite openly admitted I indulge in. Those, push come to shove, I am prepared to forsake in the name of enlightenment and release from samsara. However, turning my back forever on a glass of Shiraz over a home cooked meal, or a crisp, ice cold bottled larger in the beer garden of my beloved local, I am not. At least not right now, anyway. And yes I know how lame that sounds.

I am not a booze hound but I like a drink. I would say I get fairly sloshed at least once or twice a week. If it was up to me I would drink something most nights. Especially wine, but I love most alcohol from stout to asti to whiskey to just plain run of the mill 3.99 bottles of plonk that are on offer at sainsburies. It’s the taste, yes, but not only that, it’s the intoxication. Definitely the intoxication. I like the numbness that spreads from the tips of your fingers and loosens your muscles and your tongue. I love the feeling of detachedness, I adore the way it makes me want to laugh and laugh and talk and talk and even, scarily, (at least for observers) dance. I am less into the whole vomiting- crying- arguing- depression vibe that sometimes comes along with it. But I, over the years and many bad trips have basically got to the point where I can control my drinking so I hardly ever get bummed out.

The catalogue of strict rules I have created to govern my drinking is quite impressive: I don’t drink when I’m having a bad day. I don’t drink when I’m depressed, or, god forbid, because I’m depressed. I don’t drink when I’m nervous or in a crowd of people I don’t feel comfortable with. I don’t drink in very busy places, I usually only drink with food. I don’t drink alone, unless it has been specifically cleared that I can and even then this is a very rare indulgence. I don’t drink neat spirits and treat spirits full stop with great caution. I don’t drink the day before something important. I don’t ever, ever, drink in the middle of an argument. I don’t drink on antibiotics or painkillers. I don’t mix my drugs; Valium and booze is a big no no. I very rarely mix my drinks, either, I tend to have a wine night or a beer night or whatever; I’ve just found it works better that way. I don’t drink and watch horror films. I don’t drink and listen to sad songs for hours on end. I don’t get sloshed in places I don’t know very well unless I’m with people I trust who do. I do drink a pint of water before I go to sleep. I fetch a bucket to keep by the bed; just in case. I do sleep on my stomach. I usually eat something before unconsciousness hits me. I do sleep straight through. I do set an alarm. I do eat breakfast. I don’t let the hangover wreck the next day, however bad I feel.

Each of these rules (of which I am sure there are many more) has a history and have been devised over many years of mistakes and practice. They may seem strict and not very rebellious, but I don’t mind keeping them, as they in turn keep me safe.

More importantly, they keep me drinking.

The beauty of booze to me in a nutshell is lubrication. I can do without the giggling, without the double vision and the crazy stupid dancing. But the systematic destruction of inhibition glass by glass, the way it turns an awkward group of strangers into a dancing, hugging, swaying rowdy crowd is just magic. Talking as someone who sometimes finds speech very difficult, alcohol has saved the day on many occasions. Even amongst close friends, I find there’s nothing better than the sensation of an alcohol induced revelation; the more shocking the better. The times when you confide, push boundaries, deepen friendships, delve deep into your psyche and your relationship and talk straight from the heart you are proudly wearing on your sleeve. It makes people closer and gets people talking. It kick starts an evening that otherwise may have collapsed from nerves and tension.

I totally know it’s a crutch that I am leaning on here. From a Buddhist point of view this reliance on alcohol is a massive hindrance to my happiness; taking me regularly away from the virtues of seeing true reality, clarity, and awakening. Hopefully I will do without it one day. The long term plan, in my own mind at least, is that I will get so strong in my meditation practice my personality will become properly integrated and I will become so self assured that the very idea of having to pour chemicals down my throat to cope with a night out seems ridiculous. But for now doing without it is beyond the realm of possibility. I have always turned to chemical assistance to avoid reality or at the very least to blur it. Alcohol and intoxicants to me have always been the mental version of taking my glasses off; in drunkenness everything seems that less bit dangerous, less intense as the edges blur and swirl into each other. Inside, the damn inner monologue shuts the hell up for a couple of hours. I usually pass out in a state of happy oblivion. It is bliss. Is that a sad admission?

As I write these words I suddenly hear the imaginary voice of my teacher ringing in my ear. He is as pesky as a gnat sometimes that man!

He sits down beside me, smiles that peaceful smile, adjusts his robes slightly, and speaks:

“Jen, there is a better way to seek bliss than at the bottom of a glass. You know that deep down or you wouldn’t have sought me out in the first place. Stop fighting, stop struggling. Just learn to let go. Through meditation I have taught you a way to still your thoughts and bring you release in a gentle way that will not rot your brain and your liver. Use it.

You know that the peace and confidence you seek can not be bought at an off license, but already lies within you. You know that the heart of this precept deals not with outlawing the odd glass of Chardonnay in the summer sun but eliminating the dependence and desperation you still feel when you are sober and a night of socializing stretches ahead of you.

You know where it is to be found; the real deal, not a chemical band aid. Strive for enlightenment in all you do, through that process you will find the peace you so desperately seek. ”

It is then that I realise that the root of this clinging to the bottle is not a love of a harmless beer with my chicken drumsticks at the family BBQ, it is much darker than that; it is my deep yearning for oblivion that I can’t relinquish. This is something that is hard for me to dwell on and is tricky to explain. It is a difficult thing for people to grasp that right now I am extremely happy, leading a fulfilled life with a loving partner and lots of friends and family. I have a very happy life and have no complaints. Yet for as long as I can remember; day in, day out, I have battled deep suicidal urges. Even when I have been incredibly happy I have had the visual image of myself as a dog chasing its own tail, going round and round in circles and a lot of the time I just think ‘enough’. I’ve had enough.

When I discovered Buddhism it was mind-blowing because here was a group of people who had this same image in their heads. Here was a religion that wasn’t demanding I rejoice in the splendor of all God’s glorious creation. Buddha said the first noble truth is that life is suffering. I can relate to those words more than anything. Not in a really miserable eeyore kind of way, I do laugh a lot and go outside and walk with the birds and in the mountains; I do so often enjoy a rich fulfilling life. Not either because I have a hard life. Yes I have a few health problems and I don’t lead the regular life of an average 25 year old. But I have, in many ways, had a very easy, comfortable existence. I was blessed with many talents, a wonderful family and now a fantastic husband. I am not materialistic, I think I have my priorities right in terms of how to be happy. I may be on speaking terms with despair, it is true, but in my life so far I have also experienced genuine joy and love. But it has always been there; even in the happy times this dull voice that says ‘enough’. It is not, actually, me or my life I have a problem with. It is the act of living itself I find so difficult. The process of birth, growth, decay, death. The suffering I see all around. The corrupt society. The miserable people. The madness. The greed. The lies. The disease. The eating, the shitting, the washing, the dressing, the walking, the endless endless talking. Even the laughter, sometimes, when it often rings so hollow. The act of breathing is so difficult, sometimes I just feel like I don’t ever want to take another one. The empty futileness of it all often weighs heavily on my heart.

Anyway, happy thoughts.

But that is why I drink I guess. That’s the root of it. It’s my own way of saying ‘enough’, of hovering for a couple of hours in the exit without actually going the whole hog and jumping off the Ouse bridge. If I didn’t have the release of alcohol then I’m scared where it would end up. Getting trashed is like a valve being released in a pressure cooker, at least sometimes, anyway. Not that I’m trying to paint a bleak picture, its not like I consciously think ‘oh I must get wasted tonight or I’ll kill myself’. It’s not like that at all. But I think the drinking does act as a release of these negative feelings and allow me to take a break from reality for a while, a reality that sometimes I find difficult to exist in.

Fortunately for me Buddha’s four noble truths do not end with the fact that life is suffering. In the rest of the truths and in fact in the whole body of his teachings he details a ‘cure’. It is the fact that Buddhism provides a practical system for finding genuine happiness (and eventually genuine oblivion, I suppose) detailing a way of escaping the cycle of suffering that makes it so appealing to me. I have already learnt so much from its teachings and found so many of them to be sound. I am already, since discovering the Buddhist path, that bit less desperate on a Friday night to get off my face. I am finding my teachers words to be the truth; through my meditation I am more peaceful, more satisfied and most importantly, now I have the goal of nirvana in my life, it makes the notion of suicide seem inferior and unappealing. My steps might be small, like those of an infant, but I am making progress all the time.

So one day maybe I will be writing this not with a vodka lemonade in my hand, as I am so accustomed to but a cup of green tea. Maybe I will take this precept or maybe I won’t. What I would like to live without though is the need to escape. I would like to face reality and myself without the crutch that alcohol gives me. Maybe one day I will actually listen to my wise, wise teacher and seek my release in more constructive ways than drinking. But for now I am drawn to the allure of the booze: Tom Waits is on the radio and Bukowski is in my bookshelf. I realise that for the time being, at least just yet, I’m not quite ready to hop on the wagon and ride into the sunset.

Get Forked

I love rain. When I’m caught in a torrential downpour, I feel so alive. I love it when the heavens open and just let rip. Thunderstorms, the perfect combination of falling rain and deadly electrical forks are beautiful and thrilling. I never quite feel so lucky as when the hair stands up on my arms and I walk through the warm rain with flashes in the sky and deafening crashes of thunder watching the drama of nature unfold all around me. I love the smell in the air, the charge in the atmosphere, the fear in people’s eyes as they all scurry home to their brick boxes where they feel safe and protected. I love not being one of the scurriers, but one who flings her arms out with the sheer joy of it all, dances through puddles and opens my mouth to drink the heavy metallic tasting rain. I get scared, more so than in any horror movie but I somehow love feeling that I could die at any moment, that I am dicing with death. Yes, of course I am reassured by the odds of the situation, but still we’ve all seen the tree split down the middle, we’ve all heard the rumours of the kid who never made it home.

To me a walk in the thunder encapsulates both the sheer miracle of life as well as it’s transient nature; it makes me realise that I am not in charge here, that there are greater forces of work. I understand why humans have always given their head gods the thunderbolts. To see a fork of lightening, and be physically shaken by the many deafening claps of energy is both terrifying and exhilarating. You realise how tiny and fragile your body is, how at the mercy of chance you are every day you are alive. It makes you ask those kind of questions, the wondrous questions that you will probably never answer but are shaped in fascinating and beautiful ways simply by asking. To me, a walk in a thunderstorm is the spiritual equivalent of drinking ten cans of red bull, I come home from one of my long strolls feeling like I am bursting out of my own skin, like I have connected with the essence of energy itself. So, if there is one thing I would recommend for you to do this summer, especially if you have not done it before, go and walk in one of the steaming summer thunderstorms. Go alone, and take your time, but not an umbrella. Sing. Shout. Get somewhere quiet. Go out to nature. If possible, walk near water. There is nothing more spectacular than watching the lightening reflect in the lapping waves of a lake or river. Take my advice; get truly and properly forked up this summer. You will not regret it.

The Wall of Pain.

This excellent blog by my friend Dave got me thinking about what he terms ‘emotional porn’. It’s one of those things that now my eyes are open I have started seeing evidence of it everywhere. Including when I’m least expecting it…

Owen got given some book tokens as a present when he left his last workplace so yesterday we went to Borders to spend them. It was about 6 o clock and eerily quiet which made for some good, if slightly unnerving browsing. Now, I’m not much of a fan of Borders. Not just because it is a huge corporate brand that is pushing the independent bookstores of York out of business, but also because it is often hugely crowded and I tend to find it hard to track down the things I need on the rare occasions I do shop there. It is just too damn big! The vouchers, though, were only redeemable in the Borders franchise, so that’s where we went.

Now we both are guilty of this, but Owen in particular takes hours and hours and hours to spend money. Mostly because we don’t have a lot of it and so when we get some spare we like to be careful that we are spending it wisely. Bear in mind that he has had these vouchers since February and he has been pondering over what to spend them on ever since. It’s actually quite a fun process; that ten pound note that your Nan sends you in the post for your birthday opens up a huge world of possibilities to be deliberated and chewed over during long strolls down the river and lingering coffee breaks. It’s more fun anyway, in our minds, to really give these things some serious thought rather than simply spending it on what ever shiny thing catches your eye- soon to be forgotten about. The Jowen method makes a little go a long way, it makes the anticipation almost as fun as the event and from an ethical and frugal point of view it makes you remember the value of money. It means that whatever you end up with, you know yes I really wanted this. When I have ten pounds to spend, I often think about the implications of the note in my hand; ‘Owen would have to work two whole hours to earn this, so is X really worth that? In five years will I still be valuing this, or at least its memory? I picture Owen’s aching back, his tired eyes and throbbing head, then think ‘Do I need to spend this?’ My antidote to advertising has always been the power of careful thought and a deliberate harnessing of my imagination. But anyway, I am digressing miles from what I was supposed to be talking about. Back to the story…

When Owen finally felt mentally prepared to actually go to the shop and wrestle with the big decision of what to purchase, he warned me when we got there (with that look in his eyes) that it could take ‘some time’. Sigh. So we agreed to meet up an hour later and see how he’d got on. In the meantime I went round the shop. I spent most of my time in philosophy and religion, but also swung by gender studies, erotic fiction, and the cookbook section. In the space of fifty five minutes, I went from Socrates to Jamie Oliver and back again. Then, on my way back to the DVD section to meet O, I noticed the psychology wall. Now, it’s been a while since I last browsed a well stocked psychology section and I have my reasons for that. But something caught my eye. One whole subsection, wall to floor, was covered in a particular kind of book.

You would know the kind if you saw it. They are always white, usually with a blurred picture of a child hunched over looking scared or teary. They have a jagged font and a punchy title. Quite eye catching, really. The craze was started by an autobiography called ‘A Child called It’ and by the looks of it there have now been literally hundreds of spin offs and copycats. I had no idea there was such a market for these hundreds of tales detailing bleak, graphic, horrific abuse. Yet I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. This trend is nothing new. We have always, as a nation, been a bit obsessed by the neglected child. In terms of literary history look at David Copperfield, Oliver Twist or the recent spate of gritty nostalgic biographies inspired by Angela’s Ashes. Even modern day Children’s heroes like Tracey beaker and Harry Potter are renowned for their hard lives and the books don’t skirt around issues of abuse, hardship and neglect. The books I read yesterday, though, take the obsession to another level. I looked at the wall to ceiling display and felt profoundly nauseous. There was something not quite right about all this, not right at all.

I read the back of one of the books. There was one of the most graphic descriptions of child abuse I have ever read. It was a boy having his face pushed in the fire and branded with a poker. Then I read another one, it was a creepy description of a girl about to be raped by her father. I read another; it was the story of a five year old child having their hand smashed with a hammer. I probably read about ten of these dust jackets, each to design to shock and horrify, and… titillate? Surely not. As I read the covers, I became aware of a sort of competitiveness that was going on between the books. There was a definite vying for top dog. Each was trying to be the most shocking, the most horrific, the most stomach turning. I got the distinct impression that the authors and publishers were appealing to a certain audience; the people who were reading these books were enjoying the shock.

When I, as a writer, examined the language, it was written to hook, to thrill, to entice. Of course these are books; commercial entities and the publishers need to sell copies. So there’s got to be some kind of emotional worm dangling as bait. But I think it goes deeper than that. All the while, I was just thinking to myself, this phenomenon is pornographic. Emotionally pornographic. People are getting big kicks out of this shit and not the legendary men in long coats who hide behind school bus shelters but middle aged women who knit jumpers for jumble sales and middle class students who read this stuff on the bus on the way to college. Maybe, I thought, trying to be generous, these books are serving a purpose in educating us about the horrors of child abuse. This is such a taboo that maybe I’m reacting to it in a funny way, maybe I’m seeing it as pornographic when it is just a highly charged emotional subject, one of the highest charged in this society and consequently I’m not being fair. After all, abuse is emotive. Hence the emotional packaging, right? Or maybe the intended readers of these books are the many millions of people who have lived through abuse themselves and reading such graphic descriptions might be, in the long run, cathartic and healing. They might help you to come to terms with the deep wounds and long lasting scars, safe in the knowledge that there are others who have been to hell and back.

I tried to be fair, I really did.

But none of my theories rang true. The display just seemed more and more horrific the more I looked at it. It stank of profiteering, not healing; it was one flea ridden cash cow right there in the middle of the bookshop. And people were lapping it up. Even at such a quiet time at least four or five people came and picked up one of these books in the time I was browsing. They were not reacting to these stories with solemnity and reflection on the evils of abuse and pedophilia, but responded to them like the soulless commodities they were; flicking through, reading the juicy bits, occasionally raising eyebrows, putting them down again.

Then, as I was turning away, one woman reader tutted to herself and shook her head.

And I just thought; 'that just bloody well sums it up, doesn’t it?' Yes, I accept that people read these books for a variety of reasons, but I believe many buy them to gain themselves a hollow victory. Through reading the hardback highs and lows of some poor bastard’s misfortune they attempt to salvage some posititivity about their own lives. People read these so they can be assured of their own morality and so called happiness. They think ‘Thank god my life is so much better than that. True my daughter may hate me and my husband drinks a bottle of wine a night and we hardly speak to each other. I may hate my life, but God, I never poked his eyes out with a nail gun and even though when my baby girl kept me up for two years straight I wanted to throw her out the window because I was so exhausted, I never did. I’m a good person. I’m a good person. I’m a good person.’

So we fall into the trap that the ruling parties and state apparatus (of which major publishing houses are a part) have set for us. We read, devour (and maybe collect) this emotional pornography rather than facing our own problems or examining the genuine injustices in the world and the systems and attitudes that make abuse such a common place thing in our society. We think poor sod and like the woman in the bookshop we shake our heads and say that’s terrible, maybe rant about it to our friends later. Maybe, in rare cases, we go and give ten quid to the NSPCC. We do this not out of a state of genuine compassion and empathy, but simply to make ourselves feel better, maybe even to make us feel something. After all, as any psychiatrist in the world will tell you; a lot of people go through life feeling emotionally numb and these books which use language so skillfully to drum up deep emotions are almost like drugs to some of us. That is why when I went on Amazon to examine some of these books again, I noticed in the reviews a trend; there are a lot of people out there who are reading a lot of these books. There are people who are ‘into’ the child abuse genre. These people are not sick or depraved; it is much more complex than that. They are just the extreme end of people who are addicted to this widespread emotional pornography and they need help.

As a society we need to learn to face our own genuine emotions, even when they are dark and scary. We need to learn to stop demonizing people and seeing the world in such black and white bipolar terms. Whilst this attitude may temporarily give us an ego boost, the I’m a good person effect, it doesn’t get to the root of the matter and leaves us genuinely unsatisfied. Emotions are deep, complex things. Pornography, by its very nature is surface based and fantastical. That is why emotional pornography is seductive, but ultimately is an empty promise. It never really grapples with the heart of the problem and is designed to always leave you wanting more: the next thrill, the next drama, the next more graphic book. It distorts the deepest truths of human existence and turns deep suffering into a simple commodity, to be sold as fixes to us, the numb dumb masses. We are junkies, plain and simple and as long as we are hooked on this shit, believing the lies, we will never know true compassion, or wisdom. To be happy both as a society and as individuals we need to kick the habit of emotional porn and start to wrestle with the huge complex grey areas of our existence. Human experience is rich in depth and intensity, encompassing a huge rang of emotions. How sad then that most of our focus is on the negative ones, such as sadness, anger, jealousy and endless, endless craving. We must learn to renounce this pornographic quick fix, see it for the trap that it is and settle for the real deal. We must come to terms with our own feelings and not be afraid to express our genuine thoughts. Just as a sexual pornography addict must learn how to enjoy genuine flesh on flesh contact again we also have to learn how to connect. Authentic emotions expressed within connected communities of interdependent people is the way out of this sad situation. Most of all, we must learn to face ourselves; otherwise if we’re not careful our inner lives will be reduced to the emotional equivalent of an unfulfilling and lonely mess in a tissue.

Pants on Fire

4. I undertake the precept to refrain from false speech (lying).

{OK, I admit it. This is the big one. The one I was nervous about facing, the one I’m a bit reluctant to delve into. Not only because I have friends who read this thing and I’d hate for this to affect their trust of me, but because sometimes there are things about yourself that you don’t like to dwell on. But, I decided to write this blog in the spirit of honesty, and on a subject like this it would be irony of ironies that it was now that I shied away from the truth.}

I’ll start by saying this:

I was instantly attracted to my husband for three main reasons.

1) He had long hair, a big brain and a nice, kind face.
2) I could talk to him about anything and felt immediately that I could trust him.
3) He didn’t tolerate my bullshit, and my lies.

Of course, as time went on, the list of ‘things that are great about O’ got larger and larger, but these initial three were the reasons that I went on when I decided to ask him out. In some ways, Owens’ love and devotion to facts, truth and honesty can mean he is a difficult man to talk to and get on with. He is rubbish at sycophantic smalltalk or polite niceties for their own sake. But in those first few days of the relationship, it was the thing I fell head over heals in love with and the thing I knew I needed to be a central guiding influence in my life were I ever to be a happy, well adjusted person again.

Back then, my head was more concerned with fantasy than facts. For many of my teenage years I had been best friends with a pathologically compulsive liar, and some of her behaviour had, over the years, gradually rubbed off on me. Although, unlike my friend, I don’t think my lying ever got to the stage of illness, I was certainly not grounded in reality. I was deeply in love with melodrama, exaggeration, daydreams, fiction. I was not into the hard hitting truth, I was not into mundane existence, as I saw it. Unlike my friend, I would rarely invent things that were totally not true but I was very fond of embellishing things, polishing them, editing them to my favour. I am a perceptive, imaginative woman and was generally pretty good at doing this realistically without getting caught (although like many liars I could have been delusional that I was fooling everyone).

I had been a very honest child, and I think I am fairly honest by nature, but during my teenage years I somehow lost the spirit of telling the truth. At the end of the day, it was just more interesting, more exciting to say you had drank ten pints than two, told your teacher to fuck off rather than ‘yes sir’, to say you had kissed five boys, rather than none. I’m not saying I had a serious problem, and I know that many teenagers do the same thing. It’s just that for me, I have always prized honesty so highly in my life, my family and other friends are very honest people, in fact most of the people I have been close to over the years have had painfully honest, self aware streaks. Yet I developed an unhealthy habit of deviating from the truth and each time I did so, I got a bit further away from myself. After a few years of this, it got to the stage where realised I would need serious help in breaking the habit and finding my way back.

Then Owen came along. We met on the first day of university and from the word go he would just call me on my bullshit. He stamped it out as soon as he saw it, whenever he recognised it. He both encouraged and praised the times when I was honest and chastised my deceitfulness with great force. He was acutely perceptive at telling the difference. He shaped me; he was both firm and plain speaking in his demands; ‘if you want to be with me, if you want this relationship to go the distance then you are going to have to put love of truth, rather than excitement and drama, at the centre of your world. I just can’t be with someone who has it any other way.’ I am not used to ultimatums and God, it sent shivers down my spine (the good kind). It made me sit up and listen.

He claimed, and stands by this claim to this day, that despite what I might think, I am actually ten times more interesting when I’m sweating it out and wrestling with the truth of a matter than when I’m off in fantasy land. He said that he loved me more when I was just being myself and hanging out with him; even when life was humdrum, rest assured he didn’t find me boring in any way. That to seek truth and love honesty might not always be the easiest path, but was always the right, more fulfilling way. That my own personal truths when I discovered them would be more thought provoking and impressive than any half cooked exaggeration or tall tale I could come up with.

That was pretty much the nicest, most inspiring vote of confidence that anyone has ever said to me and I took his words on board. I did this, not because of his ultimatum, although by then I wanted to be his lifelong partner more than anything I have ever wanted, but because I recognised that following his guidance would make me a better, happier person. Because more than anything I was terrified of winding up like my friend, who was getting more delusional by the day. I would speak to her on the phone and she didn’t even know who she was anymore, and her lies had escalated to the extent that she was claiming ridiculous and scary things: that she was giving blowjobs to serial killers in prison, had a heroin addict stalker and was working for the government as a spy. It sounds strange to say this now, but Owen’s upfront truthfulness was the antidote to what could have been seriously dangerous territory. It was like the lighthouse beacon warning me off the rocks, a guiding light to save me from the course I was set on. His integrity was to me back then the most important and challenging thing I had ever witnessed, and to this day, it is the thing I treasure and value most about my husband.

His plan to make an ‘honest woman’ out of me has (mostly) been successful, and despite the odd setback I continue to grow in truthfulness and integrity everyday, but the path hasn’t always been easy. I still fall into old ways sometimes. I find myself saying the silliest of things, like the bus fare was four pounds instead of three pounds fifty. Or saying I’ve done things when I haven’t. It’s stupid, petty, and basically a bad habit that I am still working on.

Like I say, I very rarely out and out lie these days but one of the remaining problems I have with false speech revolves around the way I handle my health. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I have suffered mental health problems for years and until very recently I’ve dealt with them, basically, by lying my ass off. “I’m fine” was my mantra, chanted to everyone I met in the street, to my friends, to my family… even to Owen. Unless I was drunk and banging my head against a wall, or so depressed I could hardly breathe, I would basically try and put on a smiley front. I think a lot of people who know me think of me as a ‘happy depressive’ and that, my friends, is because I lie. I’m not saying I always succeed in convincing people. But I always try. This ‘coping’ method that I would halfheartedly defend (who wants to hear all my fucked up twisted thoughts? I’ll have no friends left) was exposed for the sham it really was last year.

When I attempted suicide in October, ten minutes previously I had been on the phone to my own father, saying the same hollow phrase; ‘I’m fine’. My head was in pieces, I was literally tearing my hair out, but I simultaneously laughed at all his jokes and the conversation was light-hearted and normal. We talked about the Sheffield Wednesday scores, what I was having for lunch and the relative merits of crackerbread over ricecakes. Then I put the phone down and emptied the contents of my lithium bottle down my throat. That, right there, is the danger of false speech. That is because when you are not honest about your feelings, when you lie, when you do the whole bottling/ stiffupperlip/ braveface/ bullshit, it always ends up badly. Maybe not always as dramatically as that, but always badly. After that incident my relationships with those closest to me were damaged hugely, as none of them really knew anymore whether what I was saying was anywhere near the truth. It is only now, months later, that the wounds are even starting to heal and I think in the case of my father the trust between us has been damaged almost irreparably. I should have just faced the truth, and confided in those around me; the many friends and family who love me dearly rather than relying on my acting skills and my lies in a vain attempt to cover up the truth. Painful as it is to admit you’re not coping, it is more painful to die of liver failure, surely?

So, taking this precept is of vital importance to me, in fact I would take it tomorrow. I have already made gigantic strides in this area, and I work hard every day to become a more truthful person. I would say, out of all the precepts, this is the one that makes the most sense, speaks to me most powerfully and is ethically not much of a dilemma. I have learnt the hard way that lying is damaging, that your own false speech hurts both yourself and those around you. The ones you love the most are always at the epicentre. I have witnessed that those who tell lies, even white lies, lose the trust of those around them and this eventually brings them great pain; the loss of a friendship, or even a partner. Lies are corrosive and manipulative by nature, and even when they are well intentioned often do more harm than good in the long run. Personally, I am proud to say that I am more truthful than I have ever been, but I seriously have to learn to tell the truth about the shit that’s going on in my head, my mental state. I have to stop trying to protect those around me by telling cushioning lies and be open about my feelings and my thoughts. I guess you could even say my life depends on it.

In the beginning....

On one of the websites I’ve been reading this week the question has been raised; ‘when did you first realise you were a feminist or interested in feminist issues?’ My thoughts were too long to post, so I thought it would make a good blog. Here then, is my response to that:

One of the most seminal moments of my childhood came a few days before my seventh birthday. My parents sat me down and told me that, no, however much I nagged, this year (or any year) they weren’t prepared to buy me a sex change so I could be ‘the same’ as my brother and my best friend James. Neither were they, they insisted, prepared to call the depoll office (like I had researched) and change their daughters’ lovely and feminine hand picked name to ‘Jamie’. They were very nice about it, very reasonable. They suggested that I could have a very trendy Walkman instead, or even, (holy grail of holy grails) a tent. But a sex change? Out of the question. Anyway, why did I get these silly notions in my head? I was a girl, their little girl, and I had to get used to it. They loved me just the way I was. It was the way God had made me. Now go and play football with your brother.

It was all fairly harmless really. I don’t identify as a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body,’ or anything like that, I never desperately wanted a penis for it’s own sake or hated my physical appearance. My militant rejection of my gender was something, (as predicted by mum and dad) that I did eventually grow out of. I am not talking to you now harboring secret longings to be called Gerard with a beer gut and a big bushy beard. I am glad my parents reacted the way they did and didn’t hall me off to a psychiatrist or God forbid, the plastic surgery clinic I wanted.

But I understand gender confusion, I really do. This sex change notion was not a silly week long whim, it was part of my long term struggle to accept the fact that I was female. From being a toddler to about the age of puberty at 13 I was a diehard tomboy, complete with short hair, grazed knees and a firm anti dolls, dresses, makeup, fashion, boy bands, ponies, ballet and shopping policy (that mostly continues to this day). I refused to take part in girlie things at school; poured scorn on the daisy chain and skipping brigade and hung around mainly with the boys. I cried for days when they refused to let me, as a girl, into cub scouts with all my male friends (a policy that has rightfully been rectified). My childhood, when I wasn’t obsessively reading, consisted of endless hours of war games, cowboys and Indians, kung Fu fighting, football, water fights, den building, cops and robbers, etc. I just couldn’t identify with sitting and looking pretty or brushing your hair for fun (in fact, brushing your hair was stupid full stop). Playing ‘house’ or ‘mummies and daddies’ was equally pointless, I had a perfectly good house and a mummy and daddy. Come to think of it, they were both pretty boring. My idea of a good time was dissecting a dead frog in the road with the scalpel from my microscope set. Or playing a penalty shoot out with my two brothers until the sun went down and we all went inside to have a burger eating competition.

I was very strong willed, and wouldn’t do anything that compromised my ‘tomboy’ label, even if it meant putting up with bullying and abuse at school. Even if it meant I spent a lot of time feeling confused and alone. Aged nine I went as far as putting in a formal complaint to the school office against one of the dinnerladies who told me I was unladylike and had to wear a t shirt when playing football- it wouldn’t do to have me topless like all the boys in the summer heat. I said (in my terribly precocious manner) that it was discrimination against tomboys, and I didn’t tell her what to wear so she should ‘stuff off’. I think my punishment was being forbidden to play football for a week, topless or not. No one ever sides with the kids.

At the age of about eleven, I started to deduce that my problems with being a girl were not to do with myself. My issue was not my relationship to my newly discovered clitoris, my widening hips, budding breasts, or even my personality. Essentially it was with other people. This was a major epiphany that brought massive relief. It wasn’t, therefore, disgust at what I was but at what society expected me to be. It was (although I didn’t think of it in this precise terminology) the gender role I was so naturally horrified by, the heavy expectations put on little girls to be a certain way, to like certain things, to be quiet and pretty and demure. I don’t know whether it was nature or nurture that made me this way, but I certainly am not quiet, demure or even very pretty. As a child I was boisterous, opinionated, intelligent and passionate and didn’t see why I should strive to be someone I wasn’t just because it was the done thing. Yes, I realised, it was people’s attitudes that needed to alter, not me. A sex change was not the answer. Feminism, even though I’d never heard of it back then, certainly was.

I always instinctively identified with the suffragettes and women’s libbers I had heard about in history but I didn’t know a lot about them. I certainly didn’t know that there was a contemporary movement. Then, when I was twelve or thirteen I made the wonderful discovery that was the Independent on Sunday. From my weekly cover to cover readathons, I soon got a basic handle on this controversial movement called feminism. I found, through the printed words of feminist journalists and writers that I was far from the only one who had wrestled with gender issues; I wasn’t the first who had rebelled. I studied hard and learnt important words that tripped off my tongue like bullets; patriarchy, oppression, liberation, sisterhood. As I learnt about the issues involved and the historic depth of female suffering I sometimes sat under my favourite tree in the back garden and cried at the unfairness of it all. On other days I sometimes laughed out loud from the sheer joy of having found kindred spirits; even if I was still a freak at school, there was a sisterhood of women out there, who, like me, wouldn’t be put in a box and told to shut up. They were inspirational, radical, empowering, a godsend to my troubled mind. I don’t even really remember most of their names now even though I would keep cuttings of their articles in a special box under my bed and read them with utmost devotion. Although they are forgotten to me now, the point is that these women existed; I was not alone. I might have been the only girl at my school with short hair and a Sheffield Wednesday obsession, but there had been others before me who broke the mold.

I was, by the age of about fourteen, a committed feminist. Discovering the movement was such a relief to me, I have always been proud to identify with it and its history, even the bits that are troubling or difficult. I believe wholeheartedly in Feminism’s essential truths and I devour any information relating to it with great interest and urgency. As a writer, I have always written about feminist issues (and sometimes struggled with them at great length). I have tried to contribute to the movement in any way I can; encouraging other women to see both the wonderful things we have achieved and the massive mountain we still have to climb. Feminism, for me, was an instinctual thing. I have such a strong sense of equality, diversity and fair play, and such a healthy sense of rebellion that I could never see the world in any other way. For me, it wasn’t like I had a feminist epiphany where I read Germaine Greer and my life turned around. It was more like I would read feminists and think, ‘yeah, I think that too’. Discovering the feminist movement was like a homecoming, it gave me a supportive, nurturing space to put down roots so I could grow proudly into myself, my female self, and gradually out of Jamie.

Face Value

I have one thing to say today and one thing only. If I ever get to such an advanced state of delusion and paranoia that I actually invest twenty pounds or more of my hard earned cash in a pot of anti wrinkle cream (or age reversal moisturing products as they’re tactfully labeled to avoid the W word.) If that occurs, then you, dearest readers of this blog, have my express permission to shoot me. I think if I ever sink to such a moral and intellectual low, even if I am starting to have a face like an elephants behind, then I will be so far gone and so far removed from sanity that the only kind thing to do would be to put me out of my misery.

Seriously though, I was waiting for a phone call this lunchtime and eased the hanging around by watching some daytime TV. This is something I have an explicit policy not to do, but hell, I was feeling rebellious and bored and thought ‘fuck it’. In hindsight, I wish I had thought ‘read Shakespeare’ or ‘listen to the new Grinderman album’ (which is excellent by the way) or even ‘go for a shit’ but no, instead I thought “let’s watch ‘This Morning.’ That will kill a few minutes.” Anyway, I didn’t even get as far as watching Fern Whatsherface and Suited Man because when I switched on it was the adverts. In one break there were about three commercials for anti aging products, each more stupid than the last. By the time I turned the TV off five minutes later I had lost faith in humanity. Not middle aged women; in some ways they’re the people I blame the least. They’re just the victims of this stupid manipulative, pseudo scientific, anti integrity, paranoia feeding and hate spreading propaganda. As express targets of this highly charged emotional headfuckery, I feel that sort of diminishes their responsibility to see through it. But why are we, as sons and daughters and friends of these women not attempting to point out the whole stupidity of the ridiculous scientific claims the adverts make, why are we not telling them the truth? Why do we buy them these products for Christmas even when we personally think they are nonsense? At the risk of sounding weird why do I, when I go home to stay for weekends, always sneakily have a sniff of my mum’s moisturiser that she keeps on the bathroom shelf and feel comforted? Hell, why are we not complimenting their wrinkles, they’re only folded bits of skin after all?

I have been thinking about these questions, and whilst things like career advancement, fashion and social pressures answer some of the questions, the answer that cuts right to the heart of the matter is expressed in the following equation

Age + wrinkles= imminent death.

Most people are terrified of death. Most people are also terrified of their wives, their girlfriends, their friends or their mothers dying. We love them, we need them. Wrinkles are a very visable sign of the aging process and therefore transform the hidden taboo of death into an surface marker of decay that nobody can ignore. We generally recoil at things that are taboo. Including wrinkles. What an anti wrinkle cream offers, in a not so subtle way, is a magic potion, complete with a modern scientific formula, that promises to prolong life and maybe even elude death. It’s very, very seductive and cuts right to the core of our psyches. So even if we suspect it might be nonsense we all play ball. Hence the multi billion pound industry. Hence ‘Oil of Olay’ being the number one Christmas present for mums. After all, it’s morbid to dwell on death. Much better to pretend aging and death isn’t happening, and now you have a secret weapon to help you. Much better to act like an ostrich than face the fact that life is, as my meditation teacher jokes, a ‘100% terminal sexually transmitted disease’. There ain’t no potion that’s going to help cure it, let alone a face cream based on ‘Aloe Vera and micronutrients from crushed pearls’.

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. YOUR LOVED ONES ARE GOING TO DIE.

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

The Buddha said,

‘Contemplate death like your turban is on fire’

I doubt wiser words have ever been said. As a culture we need face our own mortality. We hide signs of aging with creams and under layers of botox, foundation and makeup. Then, as the ‘disease’ progresses we commit atrocities like locking those 'suffering' from its advanced stages in virtual prisons letting them rot unseen and unheard. Rather than doing this, we should listen to the dying man, talk to the old woman, prepare ourselves for what, one day we will all have to go through. If we did it with great urgency rather than telling ourselves we’re Peter Pans, then maybe we would have a more peaceful death and a less delusional life. One thing I can tell you for sure, this Christmas my mother isn’t getting her usual Boots moisturiser wrapped under the tree. And one of these days, when I’m feeling brave enough, she’s going to get a compliment on her wrinkles.

Buddhing Sexuality

Warning, friends of Jen, I am going to talk frankly about sex in the following article. If you think you might find this disturbing, look away now!

3. I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct (adultery, rape, exploitation, etc).

Number three, the way I interpret it is simple, and will, I think, be easy to keep. Buddha, if he was teaching now, however, might disagree. The way I see it though, I do refrain from sexual misconduct; I am a married woman and even when temptation has sometimes come along, I have never cheated on O and hopefully never will. I define cheating as sleeping with somebody else, or doing anything sexually (even kissing) with somebody else behind his back. As for the heavy stuff, I have never raped anyone, sold someone in to sex slavery, prostitution or supported someone who did. Just to clear that up! I don’t even watch porn very often, hardly at all. I think, sexually, I am reasonably ethical. I try to be a caring, considerate lover, in the bedroom and out. I put O's needs first, and am enthusiastic about making sure he is satisfied. Sure, there’s the whole lust thing. I have a (very) dirty mind and sometimes get the occasional crush on people other than O, and once or twice I’ve, hand on heart, got a bit too carried away; started wondering if I should propose a threesome to get it out of my system! But, at least so far, its all been strictly mental activity only. To be fair, I have always told O honestly about how I’m feeling and never tried to conceal anything from him. And he tells me when he has a silly crush himself, and I have always been understanding about that in return.

After all, we’re human, we have human urges, and I believe that a lot of problems happen in relationships when you start lying about those urges or pretending to yourself that they’re not happening. Even in the past when those urges have got a bit out of hand, I’m glad that I was honest about them rather than covering them up. So I guess that if I’m going to have a problem with any of this precept, it’s going to be if people start demanding that I’m mentally pure. Fuck that. I love O more than myself, he knows that, and we are going to be together forever, but, newsflash, it’s not only men who have problems keeping their eyes to themselves. I can’t help but notice the fit Rastafarian businessman who uses the pool at the same time as me. I can’t stop my eyes lingering over his body and pausing in certain interesting places. Call it weakness, call it nature, call it what you will, sometimes I simply can’t help myself.

As well as a wonderful, loving and exciting sex life with O, I also have a healthy relationship with my vibrator, and if Buddha is going to have a problem with that, then I might have a problem with him. Fantasy and imagination are a big part of my sexual drive, and masturbation plays a big role in that, and always has. And guess what? My sexual fantasies aren’t all big bunches of flowers and running through long grass being kissed under the old Oak tree by a tall dark stranger like Mills and Boon writers would have you believe. I do not, either, as Ann Summers suggests, fantasise about a stripper with an oiled chest, a 13” cock and an even bigger ego. These, in my experience are not what most women fantasise about. In reality we’re often a lot darker, a lot more twisted than that. As the title of a certain best selling book goes: ‘screw the roses, send me the thorns’, and I think a lot of women can relate to that.

You know what else? I’m unapologetic for this. I don’t feel guilt or shame, that’s one of the reasons I can post this on such a public forum. I think its part of a healthy, natural sexual life and part of being a liberated woman is allowing yourself to come to terms with these desires. I can’t imagine anything worse than the bland, missionary focused orgasm faking sex life that frankly, so many women in Britain have to endure on a daily basis. By having a sexual relationship with myself, as well as with my husband I am able to be more explorative, mentally and physically, and more satisfied as I know my own body better and how it works so well. I don’t know where Buddhism really stands on issues like this, but if he is foolish enough to attempt it, Buddha is going to have one hell of a time trying to separate me from my rabbit! So yes, precept three is very much a matter of interpretation. I suspect my concepts of sexuality may differ somewhat from the Buddha’s who did not live in an age of sex toys and pornography. However, I hope that if I were in conversation with him today, he could see that, in my sexual conduct, I do try to be ethical, loving, and respectful even if it’s not the way things have traditionally been done.

The Birthday Blues

Oh God, how much I love The Guardian. Or The Observer as it is called on this long soapy showering, real coffee drinking, should be eating hot buttery croissants (but actually eating lukewarm ready break) day of rest. And God, how much I love the fact that it is free for me to read on the internet. I truly hope it always stays that way. There are some thought provoking articles in there this Sunday, including this article about Prozac, which got me thinking:

Prozac is twenty years old this week. Somehow I didn’t think it was as old as that, but then don't listen to me, occasionally I still go to write 1999 when signing in the date box next to my name. Sometimes I think I might, on some level, not have fully left behind my A level years. Part of me, somewhere, still longs for a headspace free of responsibilities. I hark back to a time when I carried around volumes of my mispelt stoner poetry that, naturally, was on the verge of getting published. Back then, everything that was happening to me was the first time it had happened to anyone. I was so irresistible that my religious studies teacher was about to leave his much loved wife and kids for me. I just knew I could get straight A’s without doing any work. Of course I could single-handedly bring down conservative Christianity, Patriarchy, and Right wing politics in general just by reading Bukowski, Nietzsche’s ‘The Antichrist’ and Greer’s ‘The Female Eunuch’ like they had only just been published and were written for me alone. Back then, consuming Marlborough reds, tenner deals of petrol laced ‘rocky’ and whole bottles of Jack Daniels comprised the highlights of my tiny self absorbed existence. Delusion was piled upon delusion but I never quite managed to kid myself. Inside me a tornado whirled and consequently the year 1999, the last of my school career, was also the date I first got treated for depression.

The doctor’s appointment was short. That’s mostly what I remember. I was very nervous, my hands were shaking. I think, although I am embarrassed to admit it, it might have been the first time I had been to the doctors without one of my parents present and I was terrified. In hindsight now I know my symptoms were pretty mild. I wasn’t sleeping well, was feeling agitated and distracted, couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork and was off food. My thoughts, although often intense, had been getting darker and bleaker in nature. In short, I just wasn’t feeling my usual chirpy self. It was like I was trying to run a race with treacle on my shoes. I also was worrying a bit obsessively about some stuff that had gone on in the past, and this was manifesting itself in some ways even I knew were strange; like not being able to sleep unless I counted to a hundred twenty five times without missing a count and if I did then starting back at the beginning (hence the not sleeping). But in no way was I chronic. I was not suicidal, I did not self harm, I was functioning in my day to day life. I wasn’t crying non stop, my mood wasn’t all that low a lot of time, even my attentive parents hadn’t really noticed a dramatic change.

In other words, the weird counting thing aside, most of my symptoms could have just been put down to A’ level stress or teenage angst. Maybe in a different age they would have been. But there are three key details I remember about that doctor’s appointment:

a) There was a Prozac clock on the wall tick tocking away as we spoke.
b) The doctor was writing with an Eli Lilly pen.
c) Her coffee, which smelt nice, was contained in a mug that proudly displayed the word ‘Prozac’.

And less than five minutes later, I left her room, clutching a piece of paper in my hand that said words which amounted to the same thing: ‘Fluoxetine: 20 mg (one to be taken twice a day)’

Questions asked to me in that interview:

What’s the problem? (I told her the above symptoms)
Are you feeling suicidal (I laughed and said no)

Diagnosis after that literally three minute assessment:

Mild to moderate clinical depression. Possible obsessive compulsive disorder.

Treatment:

Prozac for six months to a year. Then come back and see me.

I don’t even think this is a bad diagnosis in terms of our health care system. Something wasn’t quite right with me and I think many psychiatrists and doctors up and down the country would have made the same call. As skeptical as I am about the psychiatric classification system you have to have some kind of guidelines for diagnosis, I suppose. The real beef I have is with the thoroughness and type of treatment that was offered to me and the care that was available. First of all, taking three minutes to diagnose someone with a mental illness, even if it is one of the milder so called common colds of the mental health spectrum is simply not good enough. The patient education and aftercare system was appalling, after being diagnosed with what to me was quite a significant problem, I was just left to get on with my life. Not even a fucking leaflet or a Samaritans phone number. This is worsened further by the fact that I was, technically at this time, a child. I had just turned seventeen years old and I was very confused about the whole thing. I was somewhat educated, I knew from reading bits and bobs on the internet and from knowing friends of the family with similar problems that having this diagnosis didn’t make me ‘nuts’. But no one, not even the doctor checked to make sure I knew that.

When I left that appointment, and for months afterwards, I felt dramatically more ill than I had done before I went in, simply because my symptoms had been given a name and had been categorically brought into the realm of ‘sickness’. It reminded me of when, as a kid, you went to the doctors with a sore throat thinking you might, if you’re lucky get given a day off school and then are told you have tonsillitis and need antibiotics. From that moment on, even if previously you had been feeling okish, for the next week it takes a crowbar to prise you from the sofa, you feel like you have swallowed sandpaper and all you can eat is ice cream and tomato soup. It's genuine, but it is also, to a certain extent, psychosomatic. Firstly, this is a very common reaction to being diagnosed with any illness, but especially mental illnesses, and someone should have been there to talk me through that. Secondly, I’m not saying my symptoms should have been ignored, but by medicalising them and giving me a diagnosis when I was so young, sending me into the wider world with a label (always a dangerous thing to give a teenager), rather than to a counsellor to talk about some of the stuff that was bothering me and thoroughly assessing my case, was, in my opinion, wrong. Also, unhealthy aspects of my life that I now know were having a massive impact on my mental health, such as my bad diet, my excessive alcohol and drug use and lack of exercise, were never even mentioned, let alone explored. If all the ‘common sense’ stuff had been dealt with before telling me I was sick and pouring Prozac down my neck, well things could have turned out very differently.

They talk about cannabis being a gateway drug for heroin and crack. Now, I don’t personally follow that logic, but if I did then I’d have to concede that Prozac was my psychiatric gateway drug. Since that day I got written the prescription, nearly a decade ago, I have not been off psychotropic drugs. In a typical dealer fashion, they have got harder and harder, pushed with more and more force and coercion. As my mental health deteriorated further over the years following that appointment, I moved from Prozac and Seroxat to Lithium and Valium to Risperdone, Stelazine, Beta Blockers, and dozens more. It’s got to the point now where I’m practically a drugs connoisseur.

There are, it seems, two ways of looking at this:

1) The official line. My episode, at the age of seventeen was clearly worrying, with the potential to develop into something disastrous. The experienced doctor who had seen this thing many times before was good to pick up on these signs and treat them accordingly. Drug treatment is the most quick acting and effective treatment for depression recommended by the NHS, and Prozac one of the most effective in this family of drugs, especially considering the OCD type symptoms I was displaying. The doctor followed what was the recommended course of action at the time. It was simply unfortunate that I was resistant to Prozac, and many of the other drugs she and subsequent doctors threw at me, My illness, now rediagnosed as the more chronic and lifelong bipolar disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, and with hindsight, it is unsurprising that a small dose of Prozac didn’t make me better. However, the doctor, not knowing those facts, acted correctly.

Or

2) My line. If I had been offered counseling in that first appointment which had been the course of action I wanted (I was, in fact astounded that it was that easy to get a prescription) rather than the tablets that the drug pushing companies pressure their GPs to prescribe, then I may have got to the root of the problem a lot quicker and never needed drugs. Also, If my symptoms had been treated as normal and teenage, rather than sick and mentally ill, at least in the first instance, then I may have thought of the situation in a whole different light and who knows where it would have ended up. I just have this nagging feeling in my head that without all the mind fucking chemicals that were relentlessly pumped in experimental cocktails and huge quantities into my head at such an early age, my brain could be a very different place right now. Also, from a psychological point of view, without all the confusing (and often conflicting) diagnostic labels being stuck on me like superglue, maybe I would have a better self image and be leading a healthier, happier life. There is something fundamentally damaging to be told your brain and personality isn’t working right before you even hit your eighteenth birthday. After all, self perception is of paramount importance. As a young woman to be told by those in authority that you are sick in the head, with all the stigma and implications of such a diagnosis, could be something that, in itself, makes you sicker. In other words, maybe I’d be better if I’d have never gone to the damn doctors in the first place.

I’ll never prove it of course. The establishment will always argue that I needed the medicine, that it has been good for me, that without it I might even be dead. And maybe they’re right. But I will never forget that doctor sipping from the Prozac mug, and the way she didn’t even pause for thought before signing the brain of a child away to a chemical that, I later learnt, was surrounded even back then by controversy and doubt. So happy birthday, Prozac. You may have saved a lot of lives, but you’ve also helped trivialize and oversimplify a complex and dehabilitating illness, and have changed the face of psychiatry to one dominated by branding, advertisements, and false, false promises. Once, back in 1999, I believed them. Now I can’t help but feel a little bitter. Forgive me if I don’t sing whilst you blow out your candles.

The Political is Personal.

At the moment I am busy listening to Tori Amos’ latest offering, American Doll Posse. I have been excited by the concepts behind it for some time after seeing and reading interviews with her in different places (including ‘Loose Women’ of all programmes- I don’t think they quite knew what to make of her!) On a first listen I am pretty impressed, but I imagine as with most of Tori’s work, it will be a grower.

Things I like about Tori Amos:

• She is, first and foremost, a musician; a classically trained pianist to be exact. She is also a songwriter, and, when she’s on form, one of the finest ones in contemporary music. This as opposed to being a singer of other peoples songs (usually men’s) like so many world class women artists are, or worse, being foremostly a model or dancer with not much musical talent.

• She is an interesting character with strong opinions about life, art and the world. I don’t always agree with her, I sometimes find her pretentious and annoying, but I can never tear my attention away from her when I watch her perform, or in an interview.

• Her lyrics rock the house. She is a poet who is not afraid to experiment with language, form and style.

• She is unashamedly political.

• She is not afraid to be herself and since ‘Little Earthquakes’ was released has fought for control of her own sound and image in an age where artists are more and more dictated to by record companies. Kudos to someone who would rather turn down their first significant record deal rather than have her record and musical vision massacred.

• She can be silly, whimsical, earnest and poignant within the same song, sometimes even in the same breath.

• She makes me think

• I like her voice.

• She tackles taboos.

• For example: She explores female sexuality in an honest, genuine way. This is all too rare in an age where despite an abundance of page three models and Ann summers shops, an exploration of woman’s true sexual psychology and drive is a deeply taboo subject.

• She has a sense of fashion and aesthetic style that even I can appreciate is interesting.

• She pours scorn on the fickle ‘celebrity’ lifestyle.

• I believe she genuinely cares about her fans.

• She pushes the boundaries of her own music in her live performances, and never plays the same show twice.

I could go on, but won’t. Anyway, when I am excited about an album, especially an album from an artist with a lot of depth, I like to read a bit about it first. So before listening to American Doll Posse I went on Wikipedia to see what it had to say. The thing that really caught my eye was this quote from Amos herself:

‘The main message of my new album is: the political is personal. This as opposed to the feminist statement from years ago that the personal is political. I know it has been said that it goes both ways, but we have to turn it around. We have to think like that. I’m now taking on subjects that I could not have been able to take on in my twenties. With Little Earthquakes I took on more personal things. But if you are going to be an American woman in 2007 with a real view on what is going on, you need to be brave, and you need to know that some people won’t want to look at it.’

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the first time I have heard this kind of argument. Recently, Natasha Walter wrote an entire book on the subject, and there has been (especially post 9/11) a call from within the feminist world to become more linked with wider issues than feminism has traditionally focused on. More and more articles and books are being written by feminist authors on a diverse range of subjects, including what I call ‘big P’ politics.

I say, right on. To this direction, to all of this.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the personal is political, I blatantly do. If it is already not obvious from the small amount of posts I have written, then I will spell it out: thinking about the significance of my day to day actions is of tremendous importance to me. I believe that the devil is in the detail, as they say, and huge victories can be won by focusing on what might initially seem like small aspects of your daily routine. You know, the whole Rosa Parks thing. The greatest injustices, I have always found, often manifest themselves in a whole range of day to day inequalities and it has only been by reclaiming this personal sphere, and politicising it, that feminists have managed to make the gains they have.

However, I read a lot of feminist blogs and over the last couple of years have been more and more concerned by the fact that the overwhelming majority of posts, especially by young feminists, seem to revolve around traditionally ‘female’ spheres. For example, feminist posts on fashion, makeup, food, family, relationships, motherhood, domestic chores, childcare, body hair and at the more radical end of the spectrum, sexual issues like abortion, pornography and rape can all be found in abundance. But the feminist bloggers and journalists who are writing about law (that’s not abortion law), science, Party and international Politics, global news stories, religion, critiques of capitalism, human rights, war and conflict, technology, space travel, economics, philosophy etc. Where are they? I don’t come across them very often, and when I do it’s the same few names again and again. I find this compartmentalising of the feminist movement very worrying. Life is a rich tapestry, yet the vast majority of the feminist movement seems to just focus on things designated as ‘women’s issues’, and by focusing on such narrow topics we seem to get into such wars amongst ourselves.

Sometimes, the personal can become too political. We get obsessed with tiny little details and lose sight of the bigger picture. We turn on each other and forget that there are different ways to live life, different ways to express feminism. We forget completely the concept of sisterhood, and instead behave more like cliques at a high school, obsessed with dogma, labels and outward codes of behaviour rather than the true spirit of liberation. Anti porn or sex positive, Pro choice or pro life, to wed or not to wed? Yes, the personal is political and I’m not disagreeing that these issues are important to many many women (including me). However, I’m right there with Tori on this one, there is so much more to the feminist vision than simply debating for hours whether having hairy armpits make you an authentic feminist or a hardcore loony that gives the women’s movement a bad reputation. After all, there surely comes a time where you have to say to yourself a hairy armpit is just that. Women are dying and starving all over the world. Atrocity after atrocity is being committed on our behalf and in our names. There comes a time that, as western feminists we should stop fighting amongst ourselves. Then, with or without a Venus razor, we should stand up, united, and do something to help.

Love and Theft

I undertake the precept to refrain from stealing. (lit. "taking what is not offered")

When I first read this Buddhist precept my reaction was: “That’s easy peasy. I’m not a thief. “

Then I started thinking.

The first thing that sprang to mind is that I have stolen things, at least in my early life, mostly shoplifting when I was a teenager. This was mostly due to the peer pressure of some rebellious ‘friends’ I was trying to impress at the time who thought that kind of thing was cool. I didn’t, but was sick of being bullied and needed some allies so I went along with the crowd. This lack of conviction and deep suspicion that what I was doing was wrong meant that I was never very good at it. During our illicit sprees at Meadowhall shopping centre I would turn bright red and shake when I was doing it (always very clumsily), look incredibly suspicious when I was leaving the shop (looking over my shoulder every two seconds with a look of blind panic on my face then stumbling towards the exit). Afterwards, I would feel so guilty I would worry all the way home on bus and then go straight up to my bedroom and cry myself to sleep. Once I actually went back the next day and put the thing back on the shelf.

Then there’s the stealing from my parents. As I have mentioned before, I smoked for many years of my life. I mostly funded this by part time work, but when my own money ran out it was not unknown for me to, in the midst of a morning craving, dip into my parent’s money pot. They trustingly left it on the table for transport, food and essential things but I would often help myself to a couple of quid for a packet of Marlborough reds. I felt guilty about this too, very guilty, but I would justify it by telling myself that I would put the money back, one day, when I was richer. It was just a loan, a secret loan, granted, but it wasn’t stealing, not from my own parents. Anyway, I thought, if the bastards hadn’t have stopped my allowance (when they discovered I was smoking) then I wouldn’t have had to borrow the money. Needless to say, to this day I haven’t put the money (which probably amounts to several hundred pounds) back, although I fully intend to, when I am rich. Who knows if I will though. I haven’t stolen from my parents since I left home, nearly eight years ago. However, I still feel bad about this betrayal of trust. I know its something that most teenagers do at some point or other, especially if they have a semi serious nicotine and pot habit to feed, but still, I feel bad.

In more recent times I have stopped such blatant stealing, in such black and white terms but there are still instances I can think of where I frequently take what’s not offered. Recently me and O had a huge argument because he discovered I was eating chocolate bars and pasties when I was out in town, despite an agreement we had that junk food is off limits for both of us. It was made doubly bad because it’s him who is earning all the money and working hard paying for things like my gym membership so I can lose this damn weight. Hardly ethical living there, Jen.

Then you get onto the very, very, very difficult issue of downloading and copyright. A lot of our music is pirated and to some extent I agree with O’s strong views on the stupidity and unjustness of the copyright laws. Downloading has made me way more knowledgeable about the music industry than I could have ever afforded to be if I was actually paying for my tunes. I know more artists, am more experimental with my tastes and less taken in by hype and packaging. Still, I have never felt that easy about doing it. It is technically theft, even though nearly all of my generation do it at some point in their lives. It is undoubtedly, from a Buddhist point of view, taking what is not offered, therefore if I were to take the precepts, I guess I would have to stop.
This is where it all gets a bit tricky in my head.

1. I like music and don’t want to have no access to it. Especially since I have no money to pay for it.

2. I believe that by buying music from major record labels you are supporting a corporation rather than an artist. I also believe that most of the major corporate record labels have actually done more harm than good to the music industry. It’s better, if you want to actually support the artist, to go and see them live as much more of your money will go straight to their pocket.

3. However, since I have chosen him to be the primary moral guide in my life, based on my knowledge of his actions and his teachings, it is important to ask:

Q: Would Buddha, if teaching now, have used Limewire?

A: Probably not.

Which leads me to:

4. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a kleptomaniac, but considering I have indulged in stealing, albeit guiltily, for a large part of my life, do I actually believe that all theft is wrong? Am I at one with the Buddha on this, or are we at loggerheads? After all, my absolute childhood hero (apart from Just William) was Robin Hood, who, as the legend goes, ripped off the rich to feed the poor. Part of me still loves that idea. There is so much injustice in the world. Why not take from those who have screwed you and your beloved planet over? Why not get the corporate fatcats where it hurts?

But when I say these words, I get the same feeling I do when I was talking to the rebellious kids in Meadowhall shopping centre. I start to feel uncomfortable, overwhelmed by that sense of over justification and lack of real conviction. Despite it being the so called radical thing to say, this is not what I really believe.

Blame it on a childhood overdose on Jesus if you want, but in my heart of hearts I think theft is wrong. I don’t feel proud of all the stealing I’ve done in my life, in fact, quite the opposite. I can’t simply make myself feel at ease with it all by saying to myself :‘all property is theft’. At the end of the day, I think stealing is a negative action, and when you steal someone always ends up getting hurt. It may not be the person you think and the pain could be financial, emotional, psychological or physical. I believe that inflicting pain is wrong, whoever you inflict it upon. There is no such thing as a person who deserves pain or deserves to suffer. Even if they by their actions have harmed other people, this wrong is not solved by harming them. At the end of the day one of the Buddha’s central guiding teachings is that you should treat all beings equally and do harm to none. In my eyes theft is a harmful action, and so should be avoided.

I also believe in treating other people how I would like to be treated myself, (that old chestnut) and the times I have been stolen from have hurt me. The pain ranged from panic and rage when I had my wallet stolen to just vague annoyance that people in my halls of residence had been at my milk again. Whatever the depth of your reaction though, being stolen from is never a pleasant experience. When I think of my own stealing, of my parents maybe not being able to afford a meal out because I had swiped the last tenner, when talented bands I love lose their record contract because of declining sales, when Owen can’t have that book he wanted because I spent 3 pounds on a bacon and sausage sandwich, I think you selfish selfish bitch. That’s the crux of the matter for me, stealing is a very self centered act where you put your own desires over those of another being. In doing so you are, at least in Buddhist terms, not acting in the spirit of compassion and generosity but in terms of your own ego’s hoarding and selfishness.

Once again though, as with many of these precepts, it’s put your money where your mouth is time. Am I really ready to make the commitment and turn my back on free downloads? Am I really sure I’m sure? Its one thing believing and quite another to do. I am very attached to music and the music scene and the idea of going without it not only scares me but goes against the grain as well.

So you see, thinking about these precepts is really challenging me. O thinks the whole concept of subscribing to a formula of set precepts is outdated and ridiculous, but that’s an entry for another time. For now, its just good to be thinking these things through, and wrestling with moral issues, which, if I’m honest, I had been avoiding doing since leaving the church all those years ago.

In Praise of Omelette Makers

The feminist movement has a slogan, I don’t know who coined it or anything but it’s on a hell of a lot of the T shirts and posters that are out there. It reads: “Well behaved women rarely make history.”

This is one of the truest things I have read and these are words I hold close to my heart. Partly because I believe they are true and partly because I think they hold a great challenge for me in my life.

An incident that happened yesterday can illustrate the point nicely:

There is a woman who I work with (I call it work but it’s really volunteering, and most of that seems to be taken with tea breaks) who is fairly obviously a committed feminist. I’ve never really spoken to her about her beliefs in great detail as the opportunity has never arisen, but all the signals are there. Anyway, I really like her, she’s a good 30 years older than me and whether she’d technically call herself a feminist or not she’s a really good example of a woman who is self reliant, opinionated and totally committed to both her family (she has 6 kids!) and her career. She’s caring and clever and genuinely assertive; not in an insecure loud way but in a solid, self assured kind of manner. All in all, I have come to view her as a bit of a role model. Her independence shines through in everything she does, she’s not afraid to take the lead, crack a bad joke, organise the team, and speak her mind. The funny thing is though, when I first met her she really got my back up. I think she gets other people’s backs up too, it is quite challenging having such a strong woman in our midst. The guys in the group are flummoxed. They hold the door open for her, she waves them in first. They offer her a chair, she firmly refuses it. She won’t laugh at their jokes when she doesn’t think they’re funny, she tells them when she thinks they’re wrong.

Yesterday, one of the guys got quite upset by something she said, which wasn’t anything mean, but was just a forceful disagreement with something he had asserted. As bad feeling settled around the room and she looked blissfully unbothered, it triggered me to look at myself, almost like I was in a mirror. Yes, she’s a lot older than me and has the confidence that age and experience often brings but the differences between us are quite resounding. Whereas I have admired her as a forceful character, which she certainly is, I am more “well behaved” in many of my social circles. Going with the work example, I am well liked within the group. Partly because I am gentle and kind and ask a lot of questions about other peoples lives and then respond with lots of sympathy. Also, I think they appreciate me for giggling like a school girl at many of the bad jokes that the men proudly banter around (the group is 90% male). I often just nod my head and smile even when they are saying ridiculous things. I am afraid to take the lead, to organise, to boss. Very few of them know what I am really like; speaking my mind is usually the opposite of what I am doing. I do not really assert my will onto the group, even when I have an idea that could make it run better. Often, I am too cowardly to even mildly dissent.

Yes, I know there are different personality types. I’ve read Jung, I’ve taken the Myers- Briggs test (I am an INFJ) I also know I we all have different strengths and weaknesses and you can run yourself ragged or even make yourself ill comparing yourself to other people. I am not beating myself up for this, per say. I know my diplomatic nature has often helped further the feminist cause in many other areas, and my empathy and tolerance are qualities that I quite like about myself. But there is a distinct difference between being diplomatic and a doormat. There is something to be said for standing up for your beliefs at whatever cost. I believe it is important to face conflict and say what you really think, even if it offends the other person or could lose you something. I think in some of my social circles I am simply too well behaved, too fucking polite, too scared of the consequences. It’s not just about whether or not I’ll make history, it’s not my legacy I care about. It’s thinking about those terribly cliched but still resoundingly true phrases like ‘all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing’. It’s about nodding to these, then realising that in a lot of your life you could be doing good work; challenging ignorant opinions, changing minds, really living what you believe when in reality you are simply going with the status quo for fear of rocking the boat.

So, you see, if I were to get a tattoo right now, it would probably read “well behaved women rarely make history”. The message for me is clear and it throws down the gauntlet in a lot of ways. It means stand and be counted, put your money where your mouth is! If you want to change the world, like you so often wish for, you have to resist resist resist and that’s not going to happen by simply writing long rants in personal diaries or publishing a little read internet blog. You have to act in the real world, with real people. You should be taking risks, raising eyebrows, generating anger and if it comes to it, losing real friends. You know the thing about the necessity of breaking eggs to make an omelette, well that’s the truth. At the moment I am carefully carrying my half- dozen free range eggs around with me (each wrapped individually in cotton wool) too scared to commit them to the hot sizzling oil of the frying pan. The problem is that when you don’t break eggs, they eventually rot inside their delicate shells and then what good are they to anyone?

I don’t like conflict but I am so at odds with this society. That in itself is a strange position to be in. There is so much I think is wrong going on right under our noses. I am sure there are many of us who feel the same. Above all, we must learn to speak out against the injustices we see. Being well behaved, whether you be a man or a woman, is the path that they, (the people who are most profiting from all this misery) want you to take. Toeing the line and simply doing as we’re told is paving the way to a fear filled world full of oppression, control, and paralysing terror. We must strive to cultivate a questioning, free mind and learn to say the important word that is ‘no’.

Here’s to all the brave omelette makers of the world who are standing up and putting their necks on the line for what they think is right. I’d like to think that one day, even I might add my eggs into the mix.