Richard Pierce

Richard Pierce – author, poet, painter

Life, Politics, Writing

Day 59

I did manage to put the gravel where I wanted it. I didn’t find the chisel, though. Not that I looked very hard. I am not on of nature’s natural DIYers. And I’ve corrected yesterday’s post – it now correctly reads 16th century instead of 15th century. Accuracy error. That takes me back to a job I last did 16 years ago, but that’s another story.

Despite the mad flurry of activity in simple things yesterday, I didn’t sleep well at all, and actually finished that book about the 16th century at 1 am. And still sleep wouldn’t come. So I’m slightly rough at the edges this morning. First World problems. Barely more than one thousand miles away, poets like me have been awake in a war zone, attacked by a country it’s increasingly apparent is led by a murderous madman. ne thousand miles away is supposed to the the First World, too.

There are ironies all around. That the West feared it would be Trump who would accidentally or deliberately, in his madness, push the button. That the West’s racists and white supremacists are made in the image of Putin. That it’s taken a war in Ukraine to show that the EU does hold together, act together, and is a bloc of like-minded nations. It’s not ironic that the UK is being shown to be a third-rate country, with no serious influence or impact on the Europe it decided to leave and the Eastern Europe it decided to abandon. Our government’s policy is that you can only be a refugee to the UK from a war zone if you’re prepared to become a fruit picker. Maybe the irony is that Putin’s inhumanity is at the same level as Boris Johnson’s.

I took a break. I’m lucky to be able to take breaks.

This morning is not easing me gently into the new week. Bad weather forecast after a glorious weekend. The weather affects my moods. People’s words affect my moods. Ren said yesterday she marvelled at all the worlds I manage to keep in my head. That made me feel good, but then I think about the fact that none of them are real worlds, and that I have a real problem keeping the real world in my head, that I have a real problem with the real world, full stop. I remember, as a child, reading something in my parents’ right-wing newspaper about a woman being allergic to the 20th century and wondering how that was even possible. As I’ve grown older, I realise that it’s very possible for the mind to be allergic to any reality at all. That’s probably why I’m stuck in those imaginary worlds of mine most of the time. It’s just a good thing M and the children know how to find me in there.

 

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 16

 

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2 Comments

  1. Ren Powell

    1st March 2022 at 07:22

    What a gift. And yep M and the kids and all of us out here, actually, know where to find you and it is a comfort to all of us. A kind of filtering that softens the real world without making it untrue.

    1. Richard Pierce

      1st March 2022 at 09:11

      I don’t actually know what to say to that <3

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