The depths of water Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

The depths of water
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014


When I was a young boy I was a  timid boy, very much in the hands of my mother and my father to a lesser extent. I came and went, on holidays, through seasons and school semesters, but never really gave much to intellect itself. I was all imagination, caught in the games of my mind, cartoons, drawings, fantasies, castles and forests came alive. I look back with great awe and thankfulness and finally years later- when the full cascade of adulthood has come with force- from these days of youth I believe that my modus Operandi of thought and lifestyle was a great blessing in disguise. For all the scorn and misunderstanding I have received by many children and adolescents over time, they cannot take the satisfaction that I have grown to know...that my fantasies and my adventures in youth were wonderful. I was and am still, different, but my book- my life- is no accountant's manual, no textbook, no generic guide, nor simple, read between the lines material, it is the mysterious life of a romantic and adventurer who has turned his mind to writing to make the fantasies come real in some sense, as they leap out upon the page of the reader's book.

It was easy being a boy- having most of your daily and annual needs dealt with, I think when I was a child I had somebody else doing the worrying for me...now these days I am the world champion of worrying...and adulthood has its responsibilities...it is not a rush to rights...but often the sluggish and reluctant crawl to obedience and responsibility. The boulder comes back again and again upon the weary man, who learns the worries of the world, but needs in reality to learn the full powerful importance, the why behind the acts we do in our everyday life. My life at times has been that cataclysmic paralysis of sense and reason over towering fears that took me like Trojan horses -let in by my own weaknesses and doubts- and filled me full of mourning for years to come.

The notions of trust to me, bring back memories of childhood. Many times I would intrepidly fear the water and intrepidly quake at the notion of being thrown into the deep end. I would gaze at the cool water by the swimming pool and just wonder to what depth and width the water measured. On many occasions I was both afraid and excited by what would happen if I went into he water, perhaps not to the shallow beginning to the pool, but to the deep end of the pool. My father would say "jump and I will catch you", or "just launch yourself into the water and I will hold you". I did doubt him and I did detest the the thought of having to do what I did not want to do.

No person ever told me that adulthood would be the immensity of having to do all things for yourself, trying to figure out "what I want to be" when I am already who I am but, just need to know how to be who I was born to be. It seems to me that we adults wear our masks very well, born for the role perhaps of masquerading our former childhood and making taut and difficult decisions in a world quite often ruthless and far from our childhood odysseys of fun and games. We must become sculptors who work with rough and rigid rock, carving pieces here and there perhaps from our choices but it is God who carves the rock and moulds the soul for what its worth, to a character that will walk on the ever rocky road to perfection.

As a Christian, I see an analogy in the story I mentioned earlier on the depths of the waters. We for who we are, being of flesh and blood, in all that we are -like Shakespearean characters on the stage, like the players that come and go- are a testing of the waters, that begin with the shallows of our earliest steps into life but we increasingly grow in depth, weight and measure as troubles come upon us in time. We being human, are mortal and filled with the fragility of a fragile nature that is all around us bounded in weakness, we can be educated in the depths of this unknown. For some reason life is not unknown to us at first until we learn more about its probabilities and its complications. But there is a learning process. You may ask yourself, why do I wade through the depths? Why do I climb and wearily ascend such heights....I long to see the views of what lie bellow, to see the full extent for which I have climbed and breathe the mountain air-aspiring in victory

The parable of the sower from St.Luke's Gospel speaks on the volume and the depth of a person's faith in the face of persecution, it speaks of different types of people, of different character, measure and depth within. It is the measure of the person or the hardy seed in this case to sprout let alone flourish against the weeds and thorns, the thistles and brambles that choke and twist themselves around the necks of the budding plant that flowers in the moment of victory over trouble. But how difficult it is to overcome, we must go further from the shallows to the depths and learn to love the depths in time, for adulthood requires its measuring rod of all that is seen outside and inside, of heart, of soul, of perseverance in the face of testing. As a Christian I believe Christ to be the accomplished and fulfilled man -role model- in the face of time and persecution, living with both divine responsibilities and very human fears to be tended and conquered. From the river Jordan he went and waded through much tribulation at the plunging fears of Gethsemane -on that very dark night and confession of fear and loneliness- to the wave that built and took him on the road to Golgotha and unto the unthinkable...the unnatural...the unworldly...that which lies beyond the sea and its choking depths...LIFE!

Have we waded out into the ocean, where there are no sand banks, no arms of mercy and heavenly benevolence? Are we the adults in a kingdom of water? Is the water too deep for us to rest for a moment of peace? Or has the water engulfed us again? Will we return to the land of childhood bliss, fun and frivolity? We will become children again and shall learn to never fear the water again. I myself have learnt the to swim and enjoy the tranquil benefits that come with water and the fun involved in swimming. Although I nearly drowned, I survived and flourished, despite it all, thank God. But I do pray, my Lord, do I pray when the choking tide comes again....its my supplication and my food that gets me through the day.

Against the Acid rain Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Against the Acid rain

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

WE HAVE TO CARRY ON!
despite dragging our legs
to doctors day and night
kicking and screaming
through back hedges
and front doors to troubles
and tomorrows

WE HAVE TO CARRY ON!
despite the windy
and the windless nights

WE HAVE TO CARRY ON!
despite the loveless cul de sac
we find ourselves within
from time to time
pins and needles
draw blood
from the motions
of a duel
between brother and another
between visible and invisible
Men! Oh Men!
Are captives to the fortress of fear
and her incredible armies

WE HAVE TO CARRY ON!
from the city of the mannequin
Art Thou made of cardboard
or Art Thou made of Steel?
But my does a man bend
in the burning acid rain

Is it alright to feel
this hurt
to touch this wound
and Carry on?
I walked in the valleys
of the leveled men
who limp with leveled minds
they limped for the gaping
hunger of love
and wandered into fields
of acid rain
it burned they're faces
with pot-marks
like foul memories
but my they
turned from youths
into veterans
of the world
and its unkind entourage


Soldiers of steel
are taught to be
and less to feel
for creatures
with a beating heart,
fester
roam
and learn in love
learn it well
and your heart
shall be a heart of gold
But God is it the toughest
of toughs
TO CARRY ON!

Existentialism and Christianity Extract 2 Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Existentialism and Christianity Extract 2

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014


I myself was once heavily influenced by existentialism and it is a seductive doctrine to believe in. It can be a wallowing, self-pitying, self centred doctrine that lauds defeatism and doom for generations of bored and frustrated students. The “absurd” as Camus called it is only the pride of human character and organisation, the worldly flexing of the political muscles to force and curse others into a falsehood of hopelessness. The absurd exists in Sartre’s pompous commercial dictations to the media about how terrible life is and how awful man is to man. He provides neither a solution to such reckless violence- for which generations wilted away with the headlines of genocides and massacres. The love of man has grown cold to man, but the pessimism and self-pity of existentialism is unreal and that’s why I was once so adulated with its core ideas, especially when I was sick myself. We are repulsed by the course in which civilisation has turned, its raison d'etre, its motives and inhibition to love, but the existentialists themselves counter such or mirror such with a bellowing cry of self-pity, selfishness, pompousness and "individualism."

All men were designed for the purpose of a society, but for which one? That is the question. Each man has his trade, his morals to bring to the worth of a town, a nation or a collective body

Prose piece- The bath Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Prose piece- The bath
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

When winter comes, I enjoy the therapeutic habits of bathing my tired and weary body in the bath. I gaze at the frosted glass and contrast it with the fine bellows of vapour and steam that rise from my bath like smoke signals in the mist of the condensation. Lavender oils are a bodily tonic, a wet facecloth placed at my brow and a cup of camomile at my side are a spiritual tonic.

Outside in the suburban desert there are dramas being lived out, lives being raised up and lowered, promotions and doleful news reports circulating throughout the populous but the cold of callous winter drags on against the forgetting season of forgetfulness.

The imagination- Aphorism Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

 The imagination- Aphorism
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

A lack of imagination in every situation is like a lack of sight, blindness in proportion to what we face. To imagine the greater, the massive, the colossal should not be daunting but impressive so long as you can imagine to what extent it relates to you, you are a thinking creature and therefore the caves, the mountains, the stars and moons are decorations and furnishings in a universe of great perspective, colour and emotion, but your intelligence is greater than an unresponsive star!
With a good imagination you see the proportion of all things, with all that is seen and unseen, for what is unseen has great relation to what you strive for, desire for and what your character and functions were made for.

Existentialism and Christianity....an extract Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Existentialism and Christianity....an extract
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

The narrator and the central character of Dostoyevsky’s Dream of a ridiculous man is laughed at and mocked by those around him for his proclamations of loving one’s enemies in the midst of a cynical and predatory society, which is based on instincts for lust, power and wealth. The “ridiculous man” is moved by something greater than himself –outside his own torment for suicide- we have his profound vision of a perfect civilization, uncorrupted and bound in the law and the order of love with an original harmony and order that came hence before socialism, nihilism, anarchism and the brotherhoods and doctrines which Dostoyevsky himself condemned as “demonic”, retrogressive and totally harmful to the frail core of society and its values. Dostoyevsky’s canon of literature can be seen as a defence for structures of belief and meaning, towers of existent truths, that surpass the philosophical mix of man’s centennial change in belief systems. Themes cover redemption and salvation -seen with the transformation of Rashkolnikov the murderer in Crime and punishment- the condemnation of man made ideals in anarchism and nihilism –showing the fundamentally dangerous notions of false utopias- come to bear their nature in a Shakespearian mass murder of the characters in the novel Devils.
What is the standard that the ridiculous man reaches out for or practices? What does he believe, in contrast and opposition to the nature and livelihood of the murderers found in Devils?
The ridiculous man loves his enemies, denies his own self after having an encounter with an impoverished street child and a powerful hallucinogenic vision of a far flung paradise in space and time. The man comes to promulgate the message that has been “preached a billion times before” and that is to love one’s enemies as oneself, he renounces his maddened desire for self-destruction and instead reaches out for something greater than himself…in return he finds joy, like it were the first day in the new creation.

In my waltz Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

In my waltz

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Alone again

In my waltz

Again and again

From here to there

She spins her threads

Of linen lies

A deception in male hearts

Alone again

In my waltz

Holding breath

Before the ocean

Like a boy

Playing marbles

Back in time

Alone again

In my waltz

With the dreams

That rose like

Plucky doves

And fell like lead balloons

Alone again

In my waltz

Where I was in yesteryear

Again and again

Picking dreams

Dead heading roses

for the furnace

Alone again

In my waltz

Hoping to hold you

Hoping to hold you

Murphy an Elderly bachelor- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2008

Murphy an Elderly bachelor

A one act play

Cast

Murphy-    An elderly bachelor, about 60 years old, big, buff and gregarious

   Farrell- Another bachelor, about 53 years of age, small, stocky, naïve and good natured in personality

     Barman- A frail skeletal figure with a yellowish tinge to his complexion, with a thin wispy moustache

Act 1 scene 1

The scene is set in the almost vacant, wooden furnished perimeter of Reily’s bar on a darkened Thursday night. The room is filled with wooden furniture lying adjacent to a pair of old, pine made, circular tables which are laid precisely in the centre of the pub. Stacks of chairs lie in the right hand  corner of the pub, like ornaments with old cobwebs gathering slowly over time. In the extreme right      hand side of the room there lies a hidden barely visible doorway, blockaded by two stacks of chairs in front. To the left of the door within its close proximity there is a small wooden bench, two small armchairs and a table with beer mats housed on top. The ambiance of the scene is non-existent and at the far side of the pub, centre stage, the long wooden, rectangular structure of the bar counter, the pub taps, several presses and the bartender himself can be seen. The barman is wearing a dickie bow, and a white and black suit and he is standing and leaning over, while his eyes are affixed on the cash register before him where he make his estimations on the pubs takings. On the top of the presses behind the bar counter, there are varies different bottles of bourbon, Irish whiskey, Scotch, vodka, Gin and Bacardi. At the far left hand corner of the pub, the entrance to the bar, is seen through the opaque, tinted glass door.

-suddenly the door opens and two gentlemen dressed in spring raincoats enter the pub. They remove the hoods from their heads, and one of them the older and taller of the two, clasps his hands and rubs them together to try and make some kinetic heat. The other man, the stocky younger approaches the bar counter, while the other older gentleman stands near the doorway surveying the atmosphere for just a brief moment. The bar man is no longer distracted counting his takings and suddenly he looks up at the two gentlemen and forges a smile to greet the rare rewards of two paying customers.

Barman: Ah lads! It’s a divil of a day! It’s a day to warm the aul cockles up with a glass of Jameson and a pint of Guinness am I right?

Farrell: Well the weather is predictably bad      (smiles at the barman, who stands before him leaning over the counter)

Barman: You’re wet, soaking wet, I’ll take you’re coats and dry them on the radiators in the

back room if you like.

Farrell: I don’t want to trouble you with minding coats

Barman: No, it’s no trouble at all. I must first concern myself with the needs and troubles of my paying customers so to make a successful business. (Smiles for a minute)

Farrell: No thanks I’ll manage. I don’t want to forget them anyway; I have a terrible tenancy to forget things when I go out at night. I can be terribly absent minded.

Barman: Oh you can say that again! I forgot to ring the brewery again today, so I am out of lager once again. The barrel is dried up!

Farrell: Oh well were only human.

Barman: You’re right (Both laugh in a show of false pretence)

Barman: So what will it be gents?

Farrell: Two pints of ale and two double measures of Bushmills with plenty of ice please.

Barman: No problem gents.

(Barman stops still and glances over at the older, taller gentleman who now sits at the centre of the bar at one of the large awkward wooden tables, opposite him)

(Barman waves quietly to the gentleman at the table)

Barman: Murphy! My favourite and best paying customer, finally you’ve returned to me. I thought the pigeons had flown. (He speaks in an excited tone of delight)

You haven’t graced me with you’re presence for over two months. Since you’ve left business had been awful, in fact it’s plummeted completely.

(Murphy looks over to the barman and waves to him, with great reluctance and a hidden feeling of discomfort, wrought within him)

Murphy: Oh! Bill, hello!                            (He stands upright and walks several paces towards the counter)

Barman: You don’t paint the town red these days?   (Smiles with a creepy corpse like grin)

Murphy: No, I’m getting old, and I’m set in my ways and I certainly don’t want to go boozing after all my problems and a bad, rotten marriage behind me.

Barman: Nah! You’ve got to do what you feel like, but still try and enjoy you’re retirement whatever way you feel best.

(He pulls two pints of ale away from one of the taps at the bar and pours two measures of whiskey from a bottle into two small glasses at the front of the counter)

Murphy: Business doesn’t seem to come these days for you.

Barman: Oh no it’s drab. I had to sack to several of my staff, including two French boys, who are students working over here, you know the pair whom I incessantly argued with. Damn blow in’s from the continent.

Murphy: (Nodds) Oh yeah, I think I can faintly remember them.

Barman: As well as that my old regulars, aul Nora Sullivan from up the road, roaring red faced Willy Brown, Mr Lawlor and his misses and young Peter Moore have all suddenly stopped coming here.

By the way did aul Willy Brown ever give up the drink? I don’t see him anymore.

Murphy: He gave up the ghost, let alone the drink. I don’t see him anymore. I reckon he’s moved from the area.

Barman: Well that’s a shame. (Changes the subject)

Sit you’re self down, make you’re self comfortable, stay as long as you like, no need to rush while you’re in the company of friends, isn’t that right

(He laughs mechanically out loud to himself)

Murphy: Right whatever (He looks facing down, sighs briefly and frowns)

  (The two men stand on either side of the bar standing silent, while the barman starts to clean the    counter with a jay cloth. Then Murphy pays the barman, while both the men carry their drink over to the centre of the pub, to the table)

  Farrell: He’s a sandwich short of a picnic, definitely not the full shilling (He looks bemusedly at Murphy)

        Murphy: Tell me about it, once you enter the vicinity of the pub, you can never leave. Well you can’t leave until he’s plagued you into buying more drink.

Farrell: Is he an old acquaintance of yours? (Sips on his drink)

 Murphy: Him? No way! I’ve been kind enough to keep his business going, as a sort of charity fund for a man on his bleedin knees.

Farrell: What do you mean?

 Murphy: Ah to tell the truth, I used to not give a damn where I drank, just so I could drink by myself  after coming home from the Irish Times. Any pub would do. I became familiarised with the pub, got acquainted and that’s another story! (Both smile to each other in jest)

Farrell: This dive is dying a death

Murphy: This pub was dying in its unwanted dreary birth, let alone its death (Both men sip on their drinks)

Farrell: So why do come here? It’s ludicrous for me to dwell on the fact!

Murphy: I come here to remind myself what age is all about, the loss of fulfilment, waste, sorrow, reflection, buried hopes that abscond our lives and of course I genuinely want to be alone, but sometimes he comes over to me and everything is lost! (Laughs)

(Raises his eyebrows up to the heavens)

Farrell: You’re a sentimentalist and a peculiarity, who knows what floats in that fish bowl brain of yours.

Murphy: Well I have always been very enigmatic to women, until they see my true colours, then they usually come after me with a hatchet.

Farrell: Really? (Says sarcastically)

Murphy: No not really, I fabricated the last part, about women and hatchets.

(Both men sip contently on their pints)

(While the men converse, the barman proceeds over to the counter and starts vigorously to clean and wipe down the counter and the surfaces of the bar, paying close attention to his work)

Farrell: Do you want a pack of peanuts?

Murphy: No I’m grand

Farrell: Well I want some (Looks over at the barman)

Have you got any peanuts? (Speaks loudly)

Barman: I haven’t had any for two months? (He doesn’t look up from his cleaning chores)

Farrell: Well I’ll have a packet of Cheese and onion crisps instead, please.

Barman: I haven’t got any left, there’s no demand for them I’m only trying to avoid the bailiffs these days and not stock up on some crazed commodities for strange new customers to my pub!

(He continues to clean the surfaces)

Farrell: (Looks at Murphy beside him) whatever happened to the needs of the customer!

I didn’t make a strange request at all!

Murphy: No, Not at all. You have to adjust to the situation; he’s not so grand and cheery behind that sulking mass of wrinkles and absurd behaviour.

Farrell: No! He didn’t graduate from the charm academy.

Murphy: Not at all.           (Both of the men frown)

(The barman walks to the extreme right hand side of the room and starts to remove the stacks of chairs which blockade the door before him. He places the chairs to his right and walks through the door and switches the on the light bulb before he disappears behind the door)

Murphy: He goes off on a tangent of his own!

Farrell: It’s a wonder how his place hasn’t been robbed yet, anyone could shaft this aul sod.

Murphy: What’s there to rob! Who wants that rotten pine furniture, who would bother to pocket his pennies.

Farrell: (Laughs in jest) literally! Who would rob his pennies?

Murphy: No one

Farrell: (Nods in approval) Exactly! Well said

Murphy: His coiffeurs are empty, his customers naught and that’s the forecast for the future for the establishment.

Farrell: You’re premonition

Murphy: My own premonition

Farrell: Let’s just change the subject please (Putting emphasis on the word please)

By the way do you remember Lara Flynn?

Murphy: Vaguely.

Farrell: I was just reminiscing on my past. I always wanted to go with her; I had a mad crush on her which I took years to get over. She was a wild, rebellious, scantily dressed devil and I was a timid, book inducing hermit. I went to live with her brother in Düsseldorf during my college days at the end of my summer semester. Do you remember her?

Murphy: Oh Helen of Troy herself, I think I remember that mare, did she have jet black hair?

Farrell: Oh yes, and a fine Hispanic complexion, to match her fine sultry summer regalia.

Murphy: Many a man would wet himself in the burning passion of excitement and a fine mare in all her formed beauty can bring about the greatest game of sporting chivalry and jest in a huddled congregation of male admiring devotees.

Farrell: I tried to ask her out, but of course my instincts were warded off by sight of older more rugged and robust men going out with her.

Murphy: How do you know she was seeing them?

Farrell: She would link them, hold hands and kiss behind the lockers, while the janitor would indulge and watch in secrecy.

Murphy: What was she doing with two fellas?

Farrell. No she didn’t date them at the same time; she dated them on different occasions.

Murphy: You don’t need ladies like her. Have you forgotten I’m Butch Cassidy and you’re the Sundance Kid? Were as tough leather me and you, with steel made determination. We can have any woman we want, were the troubadours who serenade and infatuate damsels with our very presence.

Farrell: But in reality were not!

Murphy: No, were not! (Shakes his head and laughs)

Certainly not!

Were a pair of old smelly socks, a pair of red nosed, whiskey drinking wafflers, still harbouring old grudges and distasteful interests from our past.

Farrell: Well I’m not old at all, I’m a middle aged man with a fine muscular tone to my body.

(Both men finish the last of their whiskey to drain the glasses completely)

(The hungry, voracious howls of the wind are heard outside near the entrance)

(The barman is still nowhere to be seen, since he has not returned from the back room)

Farrell: Is he alive? (Sarcastically)

Murphy: Yes somewhere or other. I suspect that he’s rummaging around, looking for his old dartboard, hoping to extend our custom.

Farrell: Well he can deceive himself all he likes, but I’m leaving now. (Stands up)

Murphy: (Gestures to Farrell to sit down) Sit down, I’m having another double measure of whiskey and so are you.

Bill come out here! I need a whiskey and the same for my good man here. (Calls out loud)

Farrell: (Frowns) you’re getting a bit too boisterous for my liking.

(The clatter of the barman’s activities are heard, with an immediate but brief silence)

(Barman then appears at the doorway)

Barman: coming up, anything for my two favourite customers

(The barman goes behind the counter and pours two double measures of whiskey into two small glasses and then proceeds towards the two gentlemen)

(Murphy then pays the barman and collects the drink. He then sits down next to Farrell and hands him his drink)

Murphy: two glasses of whiskey measure my consolation in life, four glasses are to help me forget my legacy in life, while five glasses of whiskey and a pint of ale measure happiness in all its brief but bliss existence.

Farrell: Well whatever you’re into

Murphy: exactly! (They both laugh together)

(The barman stares over at them affixed on the two men)

Barman: I think I found an old bottle of beer at least four years old, if you’re interested.

Farrell: No I don’t want to be poisoned any time soon

Barman: What did you say; it’s hard to hear in this left ear

Murphy: He said he’s fine; he’s nursing his whiskey instead.

Barman: alright take you’re time, relax and unwind, stay as long as you like.

(Barman returns to his position behind the bar counter. He resumes his work of cleaning the counter)

Murphy: I’d nearly expect some tumbleweed to go by slowly through the centre of the pub

Farrell: Who comes to this pub?

Murphy: The regulars

Farrell: Who are the regulars?

Murphy: Oh woodlice, beetles, spiders cohabiting in the presses and a family of moths living underneath the carpet near the toilet.

Farrell: What’s the toilet like?

Murphy: Scary enough! Its over there (Points) past the doorway, if you want to see for you’re self.

Farrell: No I’ll leave it to my imagination

Murphy: Come on drink up and we’ll leave this place and shake the dust off our feet.

(Farrell looks over at the barman at the counter, who is busy lifting out two pints of ale which he has just pulled from the bar taps)

Farrell: Oh no! He’s trying to get us to stay

Murphy: Oh feckin hell! (Looks over)

Barman: (approaches the table carrying two pints of ale) Here you go gentlemen just as you like it, two fine pints of ale to your satisfaction. Stay awhile and I’ll get the Juxbox going, we’ll have a lad’s night in, three friends together. No one can complain about my bar, all the good times are remembered at O’Reily’s.

(Murphy and Farrell stand up in protest and place their raincoats around their shoulders as they prepare to leave)

Murphy: Goodbye and good riddance (speaks in disgust)

Barman: No don’t leave Murphy! I’ll give you a free drink, I’ll give you the keys to the bar if you stay, I’ll give you all the drink you can handle, just don’t go please don’t go.

(Both men walk quickly to the door and ignore his calls)

Barman: I need you Murphy! Don’t you know that I need you (shouts after them although they have gone through the door)

Barman: Come back don’t leave you’re best friend to rot in this musty, beer stinking hell!

Barman: Oh hell!

(The barman walks to the extreme right hand side of the bar and walks through the door and closes it behind him)

(The light is turned off, all is silent)

(The sight of one of the wooden tables collapsing can be seen in the centre of the bar)

Libation Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

 Libation

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

One must hold his breath

And fear

To speak the truth

Less he may be hated

But be hated

Better to be hated for the truth

Than be loved as a liar

Better to be hated for your integrity

Than to be loved as a fool

Better to be a poor Wiseman in rags

That a rich fool in worldly apparel

Great is he who makes it through the blizzard

and finds reward, for he knows his endurance

 show that his is a character of great resilience

On Victor Frankl- Taken from the philosophy of mental health Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

 On Victor Frankl-  Taken from the philosophy of mental health

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

Viktor Frankl, survived the monstrosities of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, was made a mere dehumanising number, left to bury the dead and to work to his extinction.  He was also left to starve in the squalor for the human will to hate. He indeed contemplated the force by which humans can act and perpetrate when they focus their tiny little minds on the narrow thoughts of hatred. The greater potential to love is rid, the sight of nature is banished, as the concrete constructs, walls, watchtowers, the grey prosaic sculptures built by human hands for the hideousness of human civilisation went up when hatred is actively at work for the destruction of other peoples. Creativity is banished, individuals become mere numbers, humans burn in the furnaces that belch the charred remains of entire families into the air, that is the setting for Frankl’s greatest test, his long drawn moment for self revelation, for courage and determination. He simply wanted to live, had accepted the fact the possibility of immanent death and yet he surrendered to the memories of his beloved wife, his days as a psychologist before the war and his observations from camp life and how one had to adopt or simply die to the camp routine. 

Perhaps it is true that when life seems close to us, it is clear that it is waiting to be shattered or driven from us, all the same the irony is known to us, the invidious acceptance, is the warmest embrace as childhood memories, coming flooding back and feelings of love and gratitude come into being, we have a worthy perspective that all the petty products, accessories and possessions for which we showed our malice and insatiable lust for, have been removed, we have been cleansed of sloth and pride and now we are content to merely live for the basic reasons of wonderment and happiness. In such cases an individual becomes a child and the arrogance of the ego is humbled forever more.  His story is one of accepting fate, a story of how he had through his own mind, to readjust himself, to set goals on a daily basis –however small or mighty they may be and how he stated that he wanted to find meaning, even in these bleakest moments, to find meaning and reason for survival. Despite the acknowledgement Frankl made, that both his wife and parents had been murdered, while was still incarcerated, he still affirmed to life, to the notion of surviving the most horrific experiences one can possibly experience, he still sought meaning and sought for hope in any way possible.

Frankl was one of the blessed one’s, truly blessed indeed, his camp was liberated in 1945 by the advancing American army in Germany. He kept his head down, he laboured and he examined his own experiences and his own life. His greatness as a psychologist came in this case study, and this was the case study of his own existence and the universal sense of human suffering and how one individual can fight, can accept and nourish their mental capacity in a state of turmoil and immediate suffering. The transitory state of pain and suffering can be escaped by a momentary search for the cathartic meaning of self-assertion. Frankl’s meaning came with his psychology,

His power to transcend momentary disorder and his ultimate longing, to tell his story for the inspiration and the courage of others –who may be imprisoned in a state of misery and pain- to overcome their struggle and assert their meaning. 

With the work of Frankl, one sees with an omnipotent awareness, when one has survived the train wreak, ventured past the wilderness of pettiness, to see the grander picture. In such examples human society comes full circle or perhaps it is elongated and it evolves beyond the human notion of strength and weakness. The tiniest of things become luxuries and blessings when one craves to simply live. Then life itself is the art within the process.

 Frankl himself stated that one chooses one's thoughts and that is the foremost freedom and perhaps can be the final and only freedom we have when we are condemned and hated for being ourselves for the unreasonable beliefs of madness and murder -which make all notions of logic go out the window- then we have our thoughts and our beliefs tucked up in our heart, they can come out in moral choices and commitments.

 

Taken from the Philosophy of mental health- Extract Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

 Taken from the Philosophy of mental health- Extract

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

I myself have congregated and associated myself with the older generations and have been treated to the extraordinary insights and moments of self-renewal through conversing with my elders. I have met such people in hospital twice, on different courses, which I have

partook in. The stories are magical, they are my memories of bliss, the only, singularly present light that beams like a vibrant pulse of energy, through a pitch dark moment or period in my life. I have formed friendships with such people, with older generations with whom I found the common denomination between such affable and sociable human beings in their entirety. 

As I have struggled in the past two years since my release from hospital, I have had to familiarize myself with the old world of routine, self discipline, a professional standard and a determinism to work and try things anew. Over so many days I would wake half exhausted, half emotionally wrought, raved by depression, a breathlessness from my anxiety, shooting pains and muscular aches –my psychosomatic illness took leverage over my habits and motives- and all in all dizzy spells were forecast at least several times a week. Throughout many weeks I spent much of my time in bed, trying to convalesce, I grew intrepid through both depression and excitement and there was always a fresh crisis around the corner for me to tackle. I wrote my diary entries to a melancholic flavour of my dissipating mind, with a growing pathos often for the community of those who suffered from similar illnesses and even of those with ASD, whom I have gotten to know in a greater capacity as the years have gone by. I have never taken surveys in my life on different peoples and their particular tastes and associations, but I do remember distinctly the kindnesses from which I have met from some of the most profound people, people who come from all walks of life. 

Their stories –as I mentioned earlier- stay with me, I may unfortunately forget their name, but never their story, and I have met with narcotic addicts, alcoholics, schizophrenics, people termed psychotic, people with behavioural disorders, bipolar disorder, attempted suicides, people who have spent time in padded cells, sufferers of vicious abuse of many kinds and I have met courage and beauty in the stories and the individuals that bore the spirit and the goodness to still feel and give love, despite the very negligence and the ignorance of those who have manhandled them. I also know many other people –my beloved- who suffer not specifically from mental illnesses but from crippling physical conditions –those who have been neglected and left for the hospital bed waiting lists- I have known and still know these people, these names, flesh and blood alike and have come to a contemplative conclusion, they have come to their own conclusions on the mysteries of life, what it brings, what it gives and what it takes alike. 

I have thought it is so wonderful, so lamentable and yet so strange how often it is the healthy and the wealthy who abuse their position vicariously and rather prejudicially, to reap reward, to bask in social notoriety and accumulation and how it is the deprived, the afflicted, the wounded, the troubled men and women of the world who have the resilience and the depth that many cannot know, for the rich never rarely see the other side of the coin, in the world of poverty and desperate need. So too the healthy should not be ignorant of the blessings, the capabilities, the honours and the privileges one bears and possesses when one is in the full prime of one’s life. I am rather pique and rather lost when I see the youth of today –my contemporaries- showing no regard for civil liberty and bodily integrity, no respect for seniors or the responsibilities and the codes of good conduct that bring honour to those who obey them respectively. 

As I said earlier you may laugh today but you will quite possibly weep tomorrow, for anyone who takes their own health for granted and their abilities, by not making the most of their days, by being thankful and grateful, for doing the best they can, when they can, they will be left to their terrible disadvantage and will be forced to learn of the frailties, the costliness, the hardship and the community that can emerge through suffering and through conquering. But I must admit the days bring fresh challenges even for me and I will confess that it can be particularly difficult for to survive a day when we clutching to straws, and the world seems not to understand for its indifference is no illusion but our affirmation to positive change is the difference and we should find comfort and solace in our own ability to problem solve and locate the sources of our abilities.

I have lived through times of political and social unrest, turmoil and recession –every age has their national and supranational crises to bear-, I have listened despondently and wholeheartedly ignored the common rigmarole of the media and yet I have come back around full circle to my own self realisation, time and time again I have to live life at my own pace, the world it seems has gone awry long ago, I cannot find solace in the world or. 

When a man comes to an important juncture or stage in his life and realises that he cannot know everything from his own tastes, desires and fantasies and accepts that often he learns much of the lustre of his own capabilities from his friends –the ones he loves and cares for- life is that much more sentimental and rather luscious with its surprises when one finds support and pleasure from friends on a mutual basis. I myself have found a circle of dependant comrades, intellects that mimic the youthful search for learning and living. I cannot stop praising those men who belong to the minority out there –those who are not absorbed in a corruptive popular culture that relishes in stereotypes and cliques, that acts to endorse and make profit over the uneducated through cheap tricks and kicks- I really find that where there is a certain element of alienation between the sexes which is potently based more on culture and pithily I state it is all fashion trend and business. What have the sexes in common, that the boutiques and the fashion designers have not exploited?

I am basically stating that a good friendship –to say it eerily enough- when it has been given a temperament for openness offers the devotion and the understandings that monogamy can never forge throughout a lifetime, because it is not based on traditional restrictions, gender roles, cliques and culturally implies terms. True freedom is spontaneous, self searching, questioning, defies the shrunken superstitions of each society. I must state that it is a sorry case when we find ourselves surrounded in a city of strangers, for that is what we are –we are not brothers in this land of ours-

without community spirit, without that contemplative power of reasoning in life, the majority will always fill the adhesive roles as labourers and shop keepers that toil and exhaust themselves for cheap pleasure –as the means and ends of their existence- while- and hardly question and wonder on the abstract boundaries that shape their existence. Blessed is he who stops pacing two and fro and roars “Why”!

I tell all and even the hypocrite in myself...to never take anything for granted, for there are two ways of looking at things...its either a blessing or just mere luck, which we can dismiss and dispose of when we want...but in the end the nights are truly blacker than they should be and for me as a Christian it is the crest of the wave that carries me through...the joy of joy's...love of loves...hope of hopes..the fighter in you needs a good coach and a good right hook if he or she is going to fight...for we have to be fighters in order to live and live good...but for me as a Christian, I believe that my own life is a duty for the greater good of my faith to God and that I must look outside myself and be an example of such behaviour, for truth is truth but it must be lived out and learned the hard way, it is not written on paper nor washed away when the majority get tired of its labours and responsibilities. Solzhenitsyn once remarked during his famous Harvard address that "We are all ready to talk about rights but less so about responsibilities." This is prophecy in the making and which we will follow in time as a quagmire of liberalism is ruins the tenets of states, traditions and principles, selfishness is the reality here, responsibilities, duties, loyalties, traditions, graces and good will are in short demand in an age that shops and swaps its dogmas as it goes, but it is a vociferously anti-Christian age and that is why Christians must be prepared to draw the highly visible line in the sand and make a stand against the hell-bent dogmas of the age, that want to water down and question the very kernel and heart of our social virtues to death..and whether you like it or not...most of such come from the very teachings of Christ.

Extract from... Education Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

 Extract from... Education

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2009

Those who are given everything on a silver platter, those live in their mansions may have more emptiness within themselves than the full and satisfied life of an impoverished carer, for so long as the carer is caring for others, his poverty means less to him than it does for his affluent contemporary, but his love for others, means the world to him and this altruistic cycle of giving in greater measure to his receiving fuels the education or ideology by which the impoverished man has found a sense of security and belonging with his way of life and his way of life is an education to him through the vital experience of everyday life.

Too much in our world is modelled on the ambitious image of the celebrity world at large. We revolve too a large extent on the consumerist society we have been born into and both the celebrities and their and the products they endorse are part of this image which we affiliate and measure ourselves to. Too many want the easy life, we seek riches, pleasures, pretty people, good times, a fancy house, with a big driveway, two cars and a high flying carer to fund our pleasures. 

This illusory existence, this idealised world which we have too often conjured up is often out of reach for too many, it is the alienated, all too comfort world of an idler to a certain degree, only where it has separated us from the experiences from the greater community we live with. Of course where such an enclosed life has left us ungrateful, materialistic to a larger extent and completely lost in the bureaucracy of an office life. A generic life is so limited, it is spiritually wasted, it knows of facts, obscure notions and reasons but has no sense of the meaning behind these notions and no knowledge of the experience of a more fully rounded life, that denies and overcomes the modern aspirations for pleasure, profit and accumulation. The generic life relies almost completely on the media for its sources of information, a public complacency hangs over the heads of the people and the people are happy not knowing too much. 

Knowing disturbs the peace and destroys the comfy little world of the common consumerist. Too many people in the impoverished districts and enclaves of a slavish life of labour throughout the third world, have seen and lived a life which is fundamentally different to the that of the average westerner. The servant class watches the world from their television, the nouveau riche dominate, through galvanising their means of business, purporting the product to effectively sell and profiteer, while the servant class are sedated, without the means of intellectual, economic and financial power to think for themselves and to affront the modern liberties, privileges and powers of growing prestige of the business class. The sloth of a minority dominates the masses, because the masses have never been educated through vital experience, or to be more specific, without self realisation, there can be no self awareness that the copious amounts of marketable produce is not needed nut an alienable vestige of modern gobbledygook

religion of consumerism and materialism, modern man may not believe in the indestructible but he may come to feel, invincible in his airy fairy notions aspirations for property and pleasure.

What the oriental lacks in material limitations, he learns in his skills and qualities of life, he labours to survive on a daily basis and is grateful for having surviving the day alone. Wise is he who prays for the strength to make it through the day, for he is the wisdom and the gratitude in body and spirit to see all the blessings and the benefits that allow him to live. A certain wisdom of the more refined calibre is required for a human life to endure in the most appalling capacities and predicaments a human being can tolerate. The psychologies we adopt along with the lifestyle we tailor are the tools by which we can make life a little more tolerable and holistic in our own right.

If we attain a wisdom, by which we thrive off, then such a way of life keeps the sufferer together, it is the adhesive of the believer, the knower, the doer and the achiever. All our pain it seems is elementary, but in actual fact it is not, we need to learn and grow a perception of awareness around the reasons and the limits of our acute suffering. The perception of pain may be secondary to the pain itself but it is nonetheless the means by which we amplify our responses and how we build a lifestyle around the problems of our daily life. It is really a case of mind over matter or purpose over pain in many cases, if we choose to see it that way.

The base appearances of the world, the officialdom and the accepted creeds, the boisterous activities of celebrities, the scandals of the rich and powerful, speak more to me of the vanities and the shallowness, the superfluous and deceptive power of instant appeal and how it fools too many. For a beautiful woman in question may be more deceitful than an ugly man and it depends upon the level of honesty and openness with which one is ready to accept and adapt to. I mean to state that one may get an image of a certain politician or celebrity as a good family man and learn in good time that he is in fact a serial adulterer and abandoner of many children. One may learn that a Venus fly trap is not just pretty to the fly, but a deadly adversary and a predator when ready to strike and entice the prey to its’ own destruction.

Like with these two –merely vague- examples I simply state that human beings learn the depth and the receptiveness of life on a greater extent than others, some learn of skills and qualities and even less learn of good morals, to bear a healthy conscience.

As it was stated in the Gospel of Luke,

“He who laughs today shall be weeping tomorrow”, and that is true to the sense that if we don’t learn anything at all from the experiences we go through, if we have no gratitude for what truly sustains our live force intact and what has perhaps even helped us to recover, then we shall come falling down with a mighty crash.

It is not wealth and notoriety that make a happy and meaningful life, but a deep satisfaction for our sense of purpose and meaning and an intellectual and spiritual enrichment of life, through involvement and a daily participation in the world achieve a deep and resonating satisfaction that fills the hunger of inquirer. Life is not all about pleasure, it has its expensive lessons to be bore as well, but about realistic measurements and lifestyles by which we yield to and gain by, all is pristine and opaque to a man who has come back fully to a state of metanoia (this is the state and sense of redemption and self-correction).

We must banish the fairy tales we have been fed as children, for we as adults are firmly more knowledgeable on the grounds of reality. Real life has depth, nature has depth, she has a complexity, true spiritual life needs correction, edification, contemplation, self searching and yet soul bonding with others. The world to me has meaning if I believe it to have meaning, the paradoxes of the world are intangible to me and to many, but just as real and as important as any other critical decision, which I have to make, the lifestyle of change can only be affirmed by through the choice we make to abide by and to live by the changes we make. We should see ourselves as human beings with the chrysalis of nature and time, God and perception, awaiting the transformation from the cocoon of our limited and wholly negligent perceptions on ourselves and the external world which we are contained within.

Throughout history, philosophers and theologians alike have tried to find a credible and sustainable answer to the question of pain and suffering. All have highlighted the blight of nature’s disposition to the inherent weaknesses of human nature, all have pointedly given their opinions and have fallen short on a fully rounded answer on the universal factors of pain and suffering amidst the animal kingdom and in the fully conscious world of human life. Too many have been quick to summarize and conclude life as hopeless, as a mere shoreline on an encroaching tide, to view all life as entropy and shaped solely by the inanimate forces of the natural world. The view itself is more chaotic in my opinion than the actual forces of nature; the observation is more detrimental than the object of examination. 

What if we were to view pain and suffering in a new light, to see things in a wholly revised perspective, as life is transitory and yet meaningful if we see it to be such. We must surely see ourselves as the intelligent creatures that observe and absorb the world at large, and the planets in orbit. There is life within us, and the life contained within us is just as important as the world of the astrophysicist and the subject of dark matter, black holes and neutron stars. It easy for us, to base our assumptions on the unfinished sciences of our age, we will choose our philosophy for life, affirm to it and obstinately refuse to believe in anything other than a mechanical view of our existence as a purely accidental mesh of atoms, matter, electrons, ions and molecules. The rash and fickle judgments in our time have left too many intrepid to think more clearly outside the box of popular opinion and contemporary views to a large extent. I must admit that in the beginning I knew so little as a child, my naiveties were crushed by the weight of the world, my dream was flooded by the cynicism and the cruelties of my peers, my complacency was a weakness and I knew nothing about the world and the ways of men, but I did have my imagination, I endured and was free in my world of fantasy and play, no matter how alternative my methods and motives seemed to the neighbourhood boys and girls. I did not want to grow up so fast, but live has been so implacably cruel and yet I have ripened like a vintage wine and have drunk the grapes of a very innovative experience. But I was fool to think that I would escape from the cruelties of the world, I was softened up like a turkey to be snuffed and bled dry by the future that came with unexpected events. 

My comforts were shattered, my peace of mind and bodily pleasures were removed from my daily life and instead, panic, terror, anxiety, trauma, incessant pains and aches came and burst this idealised little bubble of what I once pictured the world to be and even what I thought I was. It goes like this if I have not lived enough, then I cannot judge on life in its totality, if I have not experienced the notion itself then I cannot even speculate what sense and what meaning can derives from the experience in question. The sense of matters are important, the words are meaningless in the order of powers of perception, when no sense and no meaning of their logic and their formality is given. This is the relationship between an object and its subject, one correlates unto the other and man is the subject that examines the objects of nature and yet no education is achieved nor thrilled in, until a sense of the meaning and the logic behind the examined object can be found and understood.

Are we merely marching one by one in line...living another man's life or are we really living

as God has has given us breath and breadth of vision.

Are we living for a promotion, gripped by the sensationalism of media and mere gossip.

Can we go against the grain and be hated for being ourselves, for bearing a principle which goes beyond what they deny, what they hate in this liberal age of ours...in this age of tearing down traditions and old morals...can we stand against the tide and say "No more!" to the tide that comes with a violence unmatched in all the ages. Can we protect the truth...if it really is the truth...against the sea of nay sayers...who deny simply for the sake of protestation. We cannot appease all parties...and that is indeed the heart of the liberal case itself

Do we call anything sacred at all? Our are we merely the men who burn the books of law and sacred appeal to all mankind in whole.