Author: monkeywithgun

Re-calibrating success / copping out?

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

Maturing or selling out? I’m not sure. It feels like a bit of both. But here I am at 41 and it’s finally dawning on me that I’m probably not going to be the groupie-shagging, multi-platinum selling rock star (especially as I don’t play an instrument or sing…minor details.), and I’m unlikely to be a famous actor (can’t act) or a captain of industry (stuck in a middle management’ish role in a small’ish company)…these have been the lofty “ambitions” that I’ve pegged my measure of personal success to. You’ll see ‘ambitions’ in parentheses as if they’d been ambitions (without parentheses) I would have at least taken the relevant lessons at a minimum, but regardless fortune and fame are what I’ve wanted…and failed to find…and it’s been like a fat retarded monkey on my back poking me with a blunt knife for years, until recently. You see recently, and I mean in the last 12 months, the weight of that fat retarded monkey and the vigour with which he’s been poking me has gradually reduced and it’s an awesome feeling, but an ‘awesome feeling’ that comes with it’s own nagging demon – the ‘you’re selling out’ demon.

What’s deflating the monkey? I think it’s the pleasure that I’m learning to get out of the little things in life (largely because I’ve now got two amazing kids that force me to wonder at things like worms, flowers, clouds and muddy puddles). But I think it’s also because I finally have this growing realisation that I’m not immortal and that each day spent brings me a day closer to the end of the line, so it may as well be spent feeling grateful for what I’ve got and not feeding an already obese baboon with a desire to inflict maximum pain on my soul (that’s where he poke me with his knife).

That’s nice and fluffy I hear you say, but what does success look like to you now – now that you’ve finally pulled your head out of your rectum and taken a sniff of the reality finger? What does it look like now then? Well since you ask so nicely I’ll tell you. Success is now about being the best parent I can be to my girls. It’s about refusing to give in to what is threatening to become an ‘ever so slightly more than recreational use of cocaine’. It’s about choosing kindness over being right all the time, and it’s about trying hard to fix my relationship with my wife…oh, and making a comfortable living in the background.

The pressure of this re-calibrated view on success is quite daunting, but it’s all within my control. I’m not reliant of ‘right time, right place’, elusive ideas and even more elusive capital, record contracts and break out films…I’ve got everything I need to make this new success a reality and that’s a cool feeling….but it still feels like a cop out some days.

I guess there’s nothing to say that I can’t be a great father who happens to be a rock star, oscar winning captain of industry, but I can, for now, be totally happy just being the first bit.

 

Watching death rain down…from your sofa.

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I’ve been toying with this post, trying not to take sides and wondering if I should even publish. It feels raw and unpolished but it’s a dirty topic…so have hit the button regardless

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This is not about politics. This is not about history. This is not about religion. This is about is ‘how do humans get to the point where they will drag and set up furniture outside at vantage points to watch death rain down on their neighbours?’ Forget ‘neighbours’, substitute this with ‘other humans’, or even ‘enemies’…at what point do you get to thinking that this is OK?

The Romans used to do it in the name of sport. Get a few slaves and throw them to the gladiators and / or lions, and that ladies and gentlemen was entertainment and it was nearly 2,000 years ago. Surely nearly 20 centuries worth of civilisation should have bred that blood lust out of us? I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think in either of the World Wars that people at any point took it upon themselves to seek out front row seats to watch massacres unfold. It wasn’t done. And keep in mind we are discussing civilians here and not active soldiers. No matter how much you might have been told that the Germans / Brits / Americans / Japanese were the devil coming for you, there was still the understanding that there were German / British / American / Japanese soldiers and that yes they were sent to kill your soldiers, and that as civilians you might very well end up dying. But was it only inconvenient geography that prevented groups of English pulling their sofas out, getting tea and scones served whilst they watched bombs drop on German civilians, in the hope that some soldiers would die too? I might be wrong, but it seems improbable. 

The recent pictures beamed round the world of Israelis chatting, laughing, cheering and kicking back watching missiles pummel Gaza shocked and disgusted the world. They shocked and disgusted me…but then it got me thinking, the only real difference between what the Israelis have been doing and what the world at large did when the Americans went in and bombed the shit out of Bagdad, is that they don’t have a screen between them and the action. With Gaza being a stone’s throw away maybe they figured a TV wasn’t required.

You could argue that watching it on the news at least kept you informed…but it only gave you a single view and hand on heart would you have listened to it if there weren’t any pictures?

When the campaign kicked off and Bagdad lit up like some ‘goddamn 4th of July show’ we were all glued to our screens. We all watched 1,000s of innocent Iraqis get blown apart (collateral damage) in the shock and awe blitz. We weren’t outside on a hill, we were in the warmth of our lounges and we watched and watched and watched until it got a little boring. Some morons probably cheered, got a little rowdy and felt a swell of pride…who knows, but what’s the difference? Is there one? I don’t know. Does dragging yourself out into the action vs having the action beamed into your environment change anything?

There’s no judgement here on race or religion, all I’m pointing out is that as human beings we’re in a pretty sorry place right now. Tit-for-tat wars all over the planet, generally to do with defending one improbable god over another, or this bit of dirt from those people over there on that bit of dirt. We seem to be regressing on all fronts. If we spent a 1/10th of the time and effort and money on trying to feed the world, rather than trying to wipe each other out the world would be a very different place, but I don’t think that it is in our nature to do so. Or it could be in our personal nature but that counts for little when it’s governments and corporations calling the shots.

It feels like ‘that’ time

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I’m not a pessimist and I don’t sit around waiting for bad things to happen…but I don’t blind myself to the fact that bad /. unfortunate / sad things to happen and for some time now I’ve had this ominous feeling, like sludge backing up a drain, or  a dark stain squatting just over the horizon, that something’s coming.

If you’ve read / suffered through any of my previous ruminations you’ll know that I’m in a happy place. Life is great. I have 2 wonderful kids and a wife. I’ve been given a second to chance to live in a country that I love. All four limbs and five senses are in working order. I’ve got old friends I’ve reconnected with. Life is good, but I can’t shake the feeling.

If I do little else this year I want to learn how to live in the present – how to stop my mind getting stuck in the sidings and derailing, or shooting ahead of the tracks themselves…when really all that has any impact is the right now…so in all of this, the presence of this dark stranger is forcing me to lie on my own couch and bare myself to, um, myself.

Is it because I’ve got so little to complain about in life right now that I’m feeling that I should have. That things are too good? Because that’s a fairly, if not completely, pathetic world view and I don’t mind saying it. Does the absence of bad shit mean that bad shit must be coming, or that if I was swamped in bad shit already that it wouldn’t matter…so I wouldn’t be worried. And given I can’t do anything about this tonne of hurt that’s supposedly barreling my way, what the fuck am I giving it airtime for anyway…damn it!

Then I take a breath and the myself that’s on the couch rises slightly to one elbow and adjusts itself to a more comfortable position as posits thus…

Maybe it’s because you’re getting old? You’re finally becoming aware of the march of time and the effect of it’s dirty footprints on you and your friends? You’re no longer the bullet proof superheros you thought you were and that little sea of ‘pre-cancerous’ cells you just learned about in that latest Tim Ferriss podcast has got you spooked? If these are the reasons for the dark passenger you’re cruising with, then you’ve probably got good reason to have him there…but you still can’t do anything about it, so shake it.

You know what I find myself replying, to myself, you might just have nailed it. The fun may start at forty, but so does the dying. It’s just life. Your group is likely to thin slightly every couple of years from now – if you’re lucky you’re the one noticing the ‘thinning’…if not, no need to worry, because you can’t…worry that is, when you’re fertilizer for someone’s grass patch or favorite tree.

So just maybe this ominous feeling is just a result of becoming more aware, and now that I’m aware I need to become more present…because when all’s said and done what will be will be and why waste time worrying about it. Nuff said…now I’m worried about this post having gone live before it was done…oh well. From the schitzophrenic hip’s what you’re getting.

Rehab gives you greens

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‘It’s like this.’ he says. We’re sitting at a bar on a Sunday and the air is cloyed with tobacco smoke. ‘I’ve hit the wall. I’m checking in to rehab.’ His hands are shaking and he looks like a man who’s looked evil in the eye. ‘ I’ve fucked up. I’m telling my wife tonight.’

I’m hearing the words but the enormity is not sinking in. What does he mean he’s hit the wall? I let him continue, half thinking he’s over-reacting as he often does and that this is some kind of wind up.

‘You’re not going to say anything?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ I ask ‘How bad is it?’ I mean how bad can it be. This is a friend I’ve know for 10 years and one that always made me feel like I didn’t really have my shit together in the work world and my own marriage. We did a lot of recreational Coke and various other narcotics together but he seemed to be in control of his life more so than I ever was. ‘When?’

‘Next week, just as soon as I’ve let her know. And it’s bad.’

‘Quantify bad.’

‘All savings gone. Maxed out debt. Relationships trashed. 5 grams a day bad.’

We finish our beers and go our ways. I’m feel an unexpected rumbling of emotion, the main one being anger. How the fuck had it happened and why the fuck didn’t I know?’ I felt betrayed and bizarrely hurt. But it was what it was and those were selfish, churlish thoughts. I had no idea of the fall out coming. He was the first in the group to go at 39. Surely this shit happened in your twenties?’

Our group had all flirted with various vices and lifestyles and we each had our own and collective views on who might fall and need nursing back….mine had been totally wrong…and I’m sure the bets on me had been quite high at certain points in time…but I’d always felt there was too much at stake.

Most of us seem to be doing OK. Sure we have our low grade addictions / vices which we do battle with on occasion…but we’re winning, sort of…as much as you can win in these things.

Fast forward three or four months. He’s beginning to surface from tumbling in the deep conflicting and confronting waters of early stage rehab and we meet for a coffee (no beer this time) and I’m expecting to hear that he’s making amends and , realising the hurt he’s caused and all that healing type talk, and half expecting an apology, but instead…

‘I’m getting in with a real fox. She’s fun and loaded. 43.’

‘You’re banging someone?’

‘It’s just sex. She gets me. I feel wanted. She’s a fox. Why not?’

‘What’re you thinking?’ I find myself saying, knowing none of us is blemish free. His wife’s a friend and I’m mad. ‘You don’t think you should be doing everything possible to make good with your wife and kids instead of fucking some woman with issues? Kicking your wife while she’s down don’t you think?’

I break eye contact and shrug it off. feeling to push it harder would be pointless. We finish our coffees under strained conversation.

It just happens that I’m watching the Dexter series and the parallels are blinding. It certainly seems that rehab gives you greens.

It’s several weeks later and we happen to be a the same dinner party. We end up at one end of the table and he’s leaning in conspiratorially whispering about some other recovering addict milf that he’s fucking. It’s like he wants this wife to hear and I’m not interested in being implicated. This time my anger is battling with another emotion…it’s a tinge of jealousy. I don’t like what he’s become and I can’t relate.

‘I’m glad this happened’ he’s telling me. ‘I’ve got a new life now. I share at meetings and the chicks just open up. You should try it.’ He’s laughing.

Here’s a guy who’s fucked up royally, suddenly gaining this exciting, passionate secret life whilst his family and friends are picking up the pieces of what turns out to have been years of deceit. Is that what rehab’s about? Getting you to love yourself again to the point where the damage done is swept under the carpet? Because you’re not a bad person you just made mistakes? It’s not right and I’m pissed. My body language speaks and he gets my gist and the conversation moves to more mundane topics like sport and films…and I try to pick up chat with others around the table.

It’s 12 months now and the fall out seems complete. He’s stayed on the wagon and now goes on ‘golfing weekends’. We don’t speak about the women, but it’s clearly not over.

The good that’s come from this, for me, is my healthy appreciation for what I have and the full life I lead. Every day with my daughters is a gift. I’ve teetered on the brink but watching the hell unfold when you loose control to Coke opened up a window to one of my potential futures and I’ve slammed it shut. My low level but lively addiction has been pulled into focus.

Who knows how his life will pan out. I wish him well and hope that one day we can connect on the level that we once did. I hope his wife gets the life and support that she deserves and if she finds out about the extracurricular activity at band camp that she doesn’t freeze me out for not having the balls to tell her.

 

 

Too old for Facebook?

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It’s 3am, I can’t sleep so I’m on Facebook. Why? What’s so fucking fascinating that I need to be on Facebook at this time? Nothing, but it’s my go to place when insomnia grabs me by the short and curlies. I’m not ignorant. I know by sticking a backlit blue screen in my face in the lonely wee hours is not helping matters. In fact it’s ensuring that I can’t go back to sleep by turning on regions of my brain that shouldn’t be…but I can’t help myself.

I cottoned on to Facebook early on, living in London, feeling unremarkable and bored with life. It’s been an on again off again relationship ever since…and there’s a definite correlation to my state of mind for whom ever cares to track it. Bouts of over sharing and contribution interspersed with brief periods of rabid consumption and flat out frustration – set to repeat.

I remember very well the heady excitement of the now unlimited connection. Now I could pepper my days with looking up old friends, party people, girls I wish I had but hadn’t and so on. For the latter group Facebook felt like a tool from God to put nagging ‘what ifs’ to bed…and I certainly wasn’t alone in seeing it for that. The newspapers were reporting on the lunatic rash of infidelity unfolding. The mad reunions. The Facebook affairs, flings and marriages. The unions and the separations enabled by a connected world. The good and the bad. This was awesome stuff to a bloke flopping listlessly from one dead end relationship to another. I did my looking. I poked and poked some more. Got shut down and opened up to in equal measure. I Asked questions and told lies…and engineered a definite answer to my most nagging ‘what if’…and that answer was a resounding and sweaty ‘yes’ in the form of a ‘athletic’ night in a top end hotel off The Strand with some girl I’d once shared an E with on the side of a mountain in Africa 5 years earlier. We never spoke again and didn’t need to. Facebook had answered a nagging question for us both. Magic!

But I digress. That’s not what this post is about. This post is about my more recent feelings towards the social behemoth and what it says about me and my closer friends. I find myself taking photos of the kids that have a purposeful glimpse of the pool in the background, or making sure the cars’ steering wheel badge is clear in the bottom corner of any staged photos to show how fucking hot it is on the car’s digital thermometer (it’s a Merc since you ask). Pathetic, I know. I find myself trying to out wit other parents with the captions under photos of my kids, as if anyone really cares…and this is the bit that gets me. People genuinely pretend to give a shit…and when I take a step back to consider, I lose a little respect for them each time they do.

I’m a social media hypocrite, and I’m online selfish. I refuse to ‘like’ dumb shit that my 300 odd friends post (they’re not all odd, but it’s an odd number because nobody has 300 friends), but I like being ‘liked’. If I feel they’re being insincere or only posting for show, I make a point of not reacting (it’s like pretending not to be home when the door bell goes – you’re the only one that knows it). I don’t ‘like’ to make people feel good. Facebook brings out the churlish side of me. The side that people don’t see face to face. It’s easier to be a non-responsive prick when you’re on the other side of the world…

…and it’s this level of dissection and wasted cerebral flexing that makes me think I might be too old for Facebook. Or am I too immature for meaningful digital relationships? Who knows, but 10 bucks says when the insomnia snags me in about 6 hours from now, I’ll be glued to the punishing blue screen making sure my photos from today are suitably filtered and accompanied by wit…and going out of my way not to ‘like’ those who look to be having more fun than me.

Kids know it

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You can’t hide greatness – especially from kids. We’d spent the winter solstice (+ 1) at a kid friendly wine farm. Weather was spectacular. Kids and adults had a great time. Loads of jungle gym type things to keep the daughters entertained. At various stages throughout the day I tried to get some photos of daughter 1 at play because I love taking them and more importantly because I’ve noticed she’s getting very shy as she grows up. She’s gone from wanting to be in front of whatever camera happened to be around to not wanting to be near one. Could be just a stage or she’s beginning to develop issues with her self-esteem. Who knows. She’s only 4 and a half. Every attempt to get a photo was thwarted with a turned head, pulled face, whinge. I gave up in the end. Skip to end of day and daughter 1 and I are walking to the car whilst everyone else  said packed up. To the left stood a 10 foot high statue of Nelson Mandela with one of his loud shirts and a walking stick in his hand. Daughter 1 grabbed me ‘Daddy please take a some photos of me with Nelson Mandela. Please’ She shot off and planted herself next to him, standing bolt upright with her little chest puffed out and smiling. I took a picture. Her head came up just above his knee. ‘Take another one. This time I want to hug him.’ She hugged his calf tight and I snapped away. ‘Now I want to stand in front of him and hug him again.’ I did what I was told, my mind racing. ‘Daddy I want you to put the pictures on Facebook so everyone knows I love Nelson Mandela.’ ‘Sweetie of course I will.’ She laughed and skipped back to me. Nelson Mandela died about 6 months after we moved back to South Africa. He was not a part of her life in Sydney. She hadn’t heard of him. So this well aimed love for a man she’d only heard about recently was staggering. She wasn’t fawning over One Direction or Katy Perry it was Madiba. How awesome is that? You can’t hide greatness. Especially from kids.

41 year old virgin

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I’ve got a gun in my face and a steely-eyed 21 year old at the other end of it roughing me up and barking orders. My t-shirt’s ripped and I’m sweating like a pig. He shoves the gun harder between my eyes, I grab, twist and lock his arm whilst dispatching 3 quick kicks to his groin…and nobody bats an eyelid, for I’m just another self-defense virgin having their intro session to the ways of Krav Maga. ‘What the fuck’s that?’ you say, ‘sounds like a Vietnamese sauce or some vengeful Hawaiian god.’

I’ll tell you. Here’s the skinny. Krav Maga is a is a martial art and self-defense system developed for the military in Israel. It’s a practical set of moves to help you get out of shitty situations like a gun being shoved in your face or some crack addict / pyscho / assassin bearing down on you with a knife…or any other scenario you can think of. The key is the ‘practical’ – you don’t need to be wearing silk pants and a rope belt, wheeling roundhouse kicks and flinging metal stars, or doing triple back-flips and running up walls. Krav Maga is practical, so practical that it hurts, and that’s what it’s designed to do, hurt alot and then incapacitate / break / kill your attacker. There’s nothing fluffy to see here folks.

Skip forward 30 mins and I’m starting to feel pretty handy. I’m disarming the 21 year old more often than he’s shooting me or I’m shooting myself and I get to thinking why it is that I’m doing this. I’m 41. I’ve never been remotely interested in  martial arts (not to be confused with marital arts which I’m not very good at either). I like to keep in shape, but I’ve not got a violent bone in my body…so I try to tell myself that I’m doing it simply to keep fit in a more useful way, which is kind of true, but sitting, niggling just below that veneer is the very real thought that one day, in this country I love dearly and have moved my family to, I could very well need to know this stuff. The stats are plain to see. South Africa is a violent place and enough of my friends have been touched by that violence for it not to be an abstract concept or simply stuff that happens to other people. I don’t ;like admitting that because that means I’ve accepted that I’ve put my family in a more dangerous location than we’ve been used to…and now it feels real enough that I need to do something about it, like get kicked around around by a 21 year old who could kill me with a flick of his wrist.

Looking around it’s a mixed bag – there’s no one type – women in their 30’s are tossing around men in their 40’s – Gen Y is well represented and seem to be quite nifty at it all. Early stage beer bellies flop against chiseled abs and forearms. The instructor has full control of this motley crew.

Anyhow, that was yesterday and today I hurt, and hurt a lot, but feel slightly less defenseless and a bit more useful than the day before, although I’ve never thought of it that way. I’m going to sign up. I enjoyed it but now feel obliged. Knowing that there is this super practical defense course available to me; something that will give me more of a chance to protect my family and me if one of those shitty, but not too rare, situations finds me / us. It wouldn’t feel right not to verse myself in it’s ways…and I don’t need to buy silk pants to do so.

Fathers’ day stuff

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It was the day before fathers’ day and daughter 1 came and found me in the study. She had something tucked behind her back and was biting her lower lip, her little cheeks puffed out. She does that when she’s proud of something. Thank God I was paying attention and didn’t brush her off with an ‘I’m busy’.

It was amazing, the little hand scribbled card that she thrust in front of my face. ‘For you Daddy. Happy Daddies’ day. I did it myself. Look inside it’s a heart and says I love my Daddy (wobbly lines over dotted letters my wife had drawn out). Crayon and felt pen spirals and lines all over.

‘Sweet heart, it’s awesome. I love it.’ Her little chest swelled and we hugged. ‘It’s from me Daddy…Just me.’ The point being made and the one taken was that her little sister had nothing to do with it.

‘Thanks. I’ll stick it in the special place where I keep all the things you give to me.’ We hugged and inside I chuckled at her making the point that it was HER gift to me and that it was NOT from daughter 2. Angling for bonus points so early in her little life.

Fast forward to the day after Fathers’ Day. I’m lying with a bottle of red by the fire and Daughter 2 waddles up to me, with the tripping gate of a 1 and a half year old with a full nappy. She has a big plastic bag which she drops on my face. Daughter 1: ‘What’s that?’ Me: ‘No idea Peanut. Let’s open it.’ Daughter 2 is pulling the cat’s tail and no longer interested.

Turns out the bag is laden with Fathers’ Day arts and crafts and cards and an ‘I love Daddy T-shirt. It’s just been dropped off by Duaghter 2’s nursery school teacher as I missed the Daddies’ Day morning they had.

I hug Daughter 2, who’s oblivious and look across to Daughter 1 who’s now busy making sure I know that all this stuff is from her too and that she told her little sister how to do it and my heart breaks for her. The little chest swollen with pride is now panting with the effort of jostling for a bit of this delayed Fathers’ Day action and all I want to do is to hug her and tell it’s not about how big things are  or how many things there are, and that nothing can take away from the incredible card she made for me a couple of days ago…but it falls on deaf ears.

It’s bed time and I’m popping Daughter 1 into her pyjamas and we’re getting ready for a story…’Daddy.’ ‘Yes Honey?’ ‘I didn’t help her with any of her cards. She did them all.’

My turn for a little chest swell and throat lump ‘I know. Now come here.’

It’s late and I’m turning in and my head’s full of thoughts about how much goes on in little, really little kids’ minds and how it’s so easy to unwittingly tread on their pride and what’s so important to them…too damn easy and to not even know…