I love history

I love that it is my last class of the week. There is something about it that leaves me happy and makes me think creatively, I don’t get that with any other subject, everything else leaves me overwhelmed, but history makes me understand everything. I can’t really explain it. Today it even solved a problem I was having in another subject, history made everything clear and it’s interesting. I wouldn’t want to experience a lot of it, but to find out about it is intriguing.

As far as my knowledge of history is concerned, it’s like a puzzle with pieces missing. I know about some things in detail, I know about a lot of things generally and how they relate to other things but not in great detail and then there are still some things I need to learn everything about. Each little bit of new knowledge I get, adds another piece to the history puzzle in my head, when the puzzle is complete, every bit of history for the whole world will be on it and when you put all the pieces together it will be a picture of today’s world, as all history combined shows us how we got to today, that is one of the reasons history is so fascinating. Now I know I will never complete that puzzle, no one can, but still, I do love puzzles, and just getting a few more pieces helps make the picture clearer.

Today I couldn’t understand what we were doing in class, everyone else seemed to get it but I didn’t. The fact that I didn’t hear the instructions could not have helped, but still everyone with me got to work straight away and I didn’t. It made my head hurt. It took me most of the lesson to figure out that I couldn’t follow it or everyone else because I needed to look at it in a different form, so I rewrote it the way I would understand it and when I showed that to my group they all copied it down and said that they were having trouble getting it all the other way too. That made me feel better. I did know what the topic was covering though, I hadn’t actually studied it before, but had acquired a lot of knowledge on it over the years and I had done the readings. Even with the confusion for most of the lesson, I still walked away feeling happy. History makes me happy. Learning makes me happy too.

I don’t remember if history made me feel like that in school or whether it is just a modern occurrence. There is just something about history that fascinates me, I can never know enough, and unfortunately I know I will never remember everything about it that I learn, but I still love to learn it and to teach it. To fill in the pieces of my puzzle and help other start their own.

The battle

Here I sit, knife in hand.
Staring at you from across the table
Our makeshift no-mans-land
You look back equally armed
And we both know it will be amazing
If either of us walk away unharmed
I scowl at you and spit forth threats
You sneer back and literally spit
While those watching are placing bets
I weigh the odds, I have a chance
there will be no backing down
I grin and say "Let's dance."
So confident, so eager to try
So much violence and greed
Fighting over the last piece of pie.

Phone bound future

Those of you that know me will know that I had the same phone for about ten years. I got a new phone last November, top of the range one too. I like every other technology addict have enjoyed the games, the social network, the immediate access to crap I never wanted to know. I still however, detest people that pull phones out when seated at the table with you, or constantly use their phone to try to dispute every single thing you say. No one can be 100% right all the time, and just because you look it up on your phone does not make you right, The phone is right, but you're still a twat.
Phones were originally made to increase communication and socialising, how ironic it is that they now make us more antisocial than ever. No one talks to strangers anymore.
I was in a car driving recently, I was stopped at the lights and the guy in the car next to me said hello, now today's social response is to ignore him, and I nearly did, thinking him some kind of nutter, but than I stopped myself and said, 'no, this might be one of the few 'real' human beings left in todays society.' I said hello, and in those fleeting moments before the lights changed we had a brief conversation. I drove off smiling. Happy to know there are still people in Sydney like that, of course I naturally assumed he must be from out of town.
I went away recently to another country, I turned off my state of the art brand new fully equipped phone, it would have cost a fortune to run over there. I pulled out the 10 year old one, dusted it off and took that with me. I also had to take a camera with me, but I didn't mind. I prefer a real camera to a phone one any day. The batteries are made to last in cameras. Over there I only used my phone when I lost contact with the group, in a foreign country that is a necessity. My room mate used it more than I did, and she didn't use it that much either. I actually found it annoying that I had to carry the damn thing around. I would have been fine without it. Modern society binds you to your phones, makes you dependant on them, but you don't really need them, hell, before the 70's most people didn't even have land lines and they got on fine, they were tough back then and yet somehow from that we've all become phone dependant yuppie weaklings. I confess even I have an Internet gaming addiction, I am a weakling too.
When I returned to this country the first thing I did was turn my new phone back on, no it was not to use the features, it was to see if anyone cared enough to drive an injured person home. Alas no, I caught the train. As I was waiting for the train, I flicked through the phone book of my old phone one last time, looked at all those dead numbers that I never memorised, that would never ring again. I still morn the passing of the people behind those numbers, but I also think maybe they are being saved from something by not seeing how pathetic we have become and no doubt how much more pathetic we will be in the future.

Baby tales

Blood softly glided down the wall of the nursery and dripped into a forming puddle under the baby’s crib. No cries were heard in the room; in fact it was almost silent, just the scratching of a branch rustling against the window as it blew back and forth in the cold night breeze. The cold clung to the room too, as if deaths icy hand had touched the entire room and left a chill to linger over all that remained. 
The body lie sprawled out across the centre of the room, the head so caved in from the bloodstained hammer that lie beside it that it almost looked like no head at all, just a pile of red attached to a body. A figure slinked silently into the room, the darkness concealing almost everything about it, except for the fact that it held a saw in its hand. It knelt down beside the body and placing the saw over the body’s shoulder, began to work the saw, slowly severing the limb. The only sound that could be heard was the heavy breathing of the worker and the scraping sound of saw cutting slowly through bone over and over again. 
When the figure was finished, it stood up, holding onto the freshly severed arm that still dripped blood down onto the now soaked carpet. The arm was tipped upright to stop the dripping and then it was carried out of the room. This occurrence happened over and over until only the remains of the head and the torso were left. The figure having returned once more, stared down at the body in the darkness knowing there was no quiet or subtle way to remove it from the room. It was two big and the figure was too small. Giving up, the figure tossed the saw down onto the body in anger. The figure ran out of the room, but soon returned having cleaned all the blood off of it and gotten clean clothes on. It tiptoed softly across the room, and stepping over what was left of the body, the figure climbed up into the crib, then began crying for its mother to come and find the body.

I hate what I am.
What am I?
I am weak.
I am pathetic.
I hate me.
This is not what I wanted.
What did I want?
I hate me.
I want to be noticed.
I want to be remembered,
But I am nothing.
I hate me.
When did I become
This self-loathing fool?
Surely there was something better out there for me.
I hate me.

broken feet.

Feel them burn, are they on fire?
Walk on them across the pire.
Push on feet though you are bruised and broken
Don't complain, not a single word spoken
Bare foot and bleeding
Aching and needing
a bandage for binding
And others not minding
The blood trail behind
and the pain now trapped in my mind

A quick writing exercise

Writing words and singing songs, he did anything to take his mind off it. Nothing worked. There in the back of his head it niggled at him. He ran a bath, he did some gardening, he cooked some meat and masturbated but still it was there. Eating at his brain. He wanted a cigarette but he had quit. What a time to quit. The stress was mounting inside him as he thought about what he had done and what he must do. He couldn’t block it out now. He had focused on it for a second and now it was there. Prominent in his mind he could not escape it, but what to do. He searched the cupboards for a smoke, anything to relax his mind. He found a bottle of rum. He skulled it down, the liquid burnt his stomach but did nothing to calm his mind. He found a smoke and lit it. He went through it in just over a minute and was already looking for another. It would not do. He had to face it, deal with it some how. He walked back to the room. Slowly. Not slow enough for his liking. He reached the room and opened the door. He had hoped the door would block it out; shutting the door would shut his mind to it. He was wrong. He stood there staring, a blank expression on his face. He wasn’t feeling anything, not because he was emotionless but because he didn’t know what to feel. Maybe it hadn’t sunk in yet, he said to himself. It was a lie. He knew it was a lie. He could lie to everyone else but one thing he couldn’t do was lie to himself. Not while staring at all that blood. There was so much, too much. He would have to clean it. He had never cleaned blood from a carpet before. Why did the carpet have to be cream coloured? He was ill equipped to deal with this situation. He wanted to call someone, but whom could he call? He couldn’t tell anyone or he would have to kill them too. No, he was on his own for this one. He snapped out of his reverie and went to the shed to fetch a shovel. It was dark; it hadn’t been dark when he had done the deed. How long had he avoided it, and how long did he have before his crime was discovered? He fumbled in the shed before grasping the shovel and carrying it to a suitable plot in the back yard. He dug a hole. He dug it deep. Much deeper than was necessary but he didn’t want the smell seeping out, didn’t want the rain uncovering it. Hours later he dragged himself out of the hole and returned to the room. It was starting to stink or was he paranoid? He couldn’t tell. With the body gone would the smell remain? Was he doing all this for nothing? He had thought of saying it was an accident. He accidentally hit her on the head ten times with a ballpoint hammer. Who would believe that? Even he wasn’t that stupid. He had let her get to him and he had lost control. Not for long, just long enough to kill her and splatter her blood all over the room. He stood there staring at her lifeless body again. He didn’t want to touch her. The rug. The blood soaked rug. He wrapped it round her body and picked it up. It felt so light in his arms. A body shouldn’t be so light. He took it out the back and dropped it in the hole. There were no tears. No remorse. He went back to the room and scrubbed everything. Even when the blood was gone he kept scrubbing. He could still smell it. That rotting decay of dead flesh, it was stuck in his nose, even when he breathed through his mouth the smell still haunted him. Eventually he collected the cleaning rags and took them out the back. They too went in the hole and then he filled it in. He sighed in relief when the job was done now all he needed was a story. Something believable. He went inside and sat down. He waited for someone to come. No one did, he woke when the sun was high on the horizon. There was a knocking at the door. It echoed in his head. The alcohol he had consumed last night had given him a headache, along with the knocking was a ringing in his ears. All at once every memory of the previous night came rushing back into his head. What he did and what was dead. He got up and walked to the door, he creaked it open and looked outside. Police. His mind instantly panicked. How could they know? They just stared at each other, him and the policeman. The policeman looked down, in his hand was a jacket. He handed through the door and said something but the words got lost. He couldn’t hear a word of it; he just looked at the jacket that was now in his hands. There was blood on it, his wife’s blood. Oh cruel fate, he had killed her dog to gain more of her attention and had sent her out so she wouldn’t know that he was hiding the body. Now he would never see her again. Never confess his crime to her or his love for her. He hugged the jacket and something jingled. He heard it. He searched through the jacket and found it in a pocket.
A new collar for the bloody dog.