Journal ~ Closing Down (Prose Version)

Journal

This version in prose is simply from the original version written as a poem when I was living in Liverpool. I’ve tidied it up this evening, in light of it attracting attention in Chiba, Japan. This is one of the great things about the website, at least for me, in that because it is followed by 103 countries, I find myself on my own whistlestop tour of the planet. I learn so much along the way, the most important being to be ever aware of all cultures.

You know what? I’m very tired. Tired of Melodrama. Tired of damage inflicted through virtual friendship, faceless ‘Friends’ I would not recognise in the street! Tired of stalkers, tired of mind games played between people, tired of mediating, then lambasted.

Sage advice a friend gave me years ago, stands as true today as the day she spoke them over coffee at the ancient kitchen table …

‘Look! Beware pillow talk.’[i]

What do you mean?

‘People who fall out will each come to you. You try to keep the peace and you end up apparently accidentally siding with one more than with the other. Then they get back together and THAT’s when, in the heat of lovemaking, notes are compared. In a moment you’ve become the villain of the piece.’[ii]

Never is this truer than in sham - social media – friendships. Many are true. Many more a sham. Thousands do not even exist except in the keyboard mind of espionage and intrigue, the deceit that edges closer as the incoming surf, in cyber and artificial intelligence.

A world of make-believe. A pretend world convinced of their authenticity. What on earth motivates a mind to make demands for recompense and then threaten if a word is breathed to anyone?!

Criminality. Delusion. The deluded mind is the most dangerous stalker of all. Let us return to the real world! Make real friends! Let us cease creating misery through this medium of unreal friendship.

Accept forgiveness and leave the matter at that. Don’t seek the Varys Whisper.[iii] Stop trying to control these virtual friendships. I am NOT interested in receiving silly blessings. It is wrong … I say again … IT IS WRONG. Tired of that lonely, windswept turgid road to Coventry.[iv]

Es ist Falsch! Punkt![v]

End Notes

[i] Pillow talk is the relaxed, intimate conversation that often occurs between two sexual partners, sometimes after sexual activity, usually accompanied by cuddling, caresses, kissing, and other physical intimacy.

[ii] villain of the piece is someone or something that is seen as being the cause of trouble on a particular occasion. The expression is an informal idiom.

[iii] Varys, also called the Spider, is a eunuch and courtier who serves as Master of Whisperers, the spymaster for the king of the Seven Kingdoms at the royal court in King's Landing. As Master of Whisperers, he is on the small council. He is feared by nobles and common people alike.

[iv] If people send you to Coventry, they avoid speaking to you whenever they meet you, as a way of punishing you for something that you have done. [British]. It originated during the English Civil War (1642-1651). The city of Coventry, Warwickshire, in the West Midlands, was a Parliamentary stronghold. Charles I’s soldiers were reviled, so when captured, Royalist prisoners would be deliberately ignored. In modern parlance, to be sent to Coventry is when a workplace deliberately shuns a person to the extent that it appears that they do not even physically exist. They will be talked of, as if they are not present, reviled and mocked, again, as if they are not present. Whilst the saying is ‘quaint’, the reality is that it is an especially cruel aspect of human nature.

[v] Es ist Falsch! Ende des Themes. It is false. End of subject. The German noun ‘Punkt’ meaning ‘point’, has become an english idiom used as a one syllable word that makes it clear, often with the hand firmly emphasising in gesture, that the matter is closed, is not for discussion, and is the ‘end of subject!’

2 June 2023
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