LOSING ALL MY MIRTH
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I, 1-3
Reading the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno, it is easy to imagine he was, at the time, a TEFL teacher. Those of us who plough on in the trade despite advancing years all reach the dark forest, the TEFL Wall, like lightly trained marathon runners off Blue Peter. The wisest of us get ourselves qualified in something other than speaking, reading and writing English and get a real job, whilst the more naïve, perhaps fantasising we are still in our carefree twenties, suddenly find we are cantering towards forty with little chance of leaping from our speeding donkey.
My acupuncturist recently told me that I’m “explosive”. “What the f*ck are you on about?” I snapped, swatting his hand away churlishly. “I am having a lot of gas, admittedly…” I began, but he chuckled ironically as he held me down by the throat and explained that I am breaking into a seething rage with great facility. This is why I love acupuncture – by taking a few pulses they can diagnose emotional factors that western medicine rarely considers. Western medicine sees the human body as a machine that either works or it doesn’t, whereas eastern techniques take into account emotions and have a more holistic outlook.
The point on the top of my head, which when pressed feels like somebody is banging a six-inch nail into my pate, is making hairstyling a misery exactly because of my tendency towards tumultuous indignation at the drop of a hat, or more commonly, the wearing of one. It doesn’t take much at all to set me off, and I can be found wandering the streets with my dog, muttering and railing to myself like a delirious drifter in a delusive road movie. It’s all related to the meridian of the liver, apparently, problems with which are often related to anger. Interestingly, the adjective “liverish” appears to confirm this contention.
Only yesterday whilst out walking my teeth champed at an imaginary bit as a complete baseball-capped dick in a red Volkswagen Golf with lowered suspension arrived at an obvious road block, squeezed his vehicle through the barriers and accelerated raucously away with a volume of noise inversely proportional to the size of his manhood - another case of a brainless arse thinking the rules are for everybody else. It didn’t even matter that he found his path blocked by a JCB digger along with accompanying hole the width of the road and was forced into making a humiliating reversing manoeuvre, my humour was already blackened, and I made rude hand gestures towards the driver from behind a parked lorry.
I don’t know why, but I took such offence that I just wanted to grab a megaphone, stand on a nearby car roof and declare, “Hear ye, Brazilians! Stop acting like you’re contestants in a tropical-penal-colony-based reality show and start following some rules and joining the community of nations! The Australians have almost done it, and they used to be a penal colony. They’re even good at cricket and produce a couple of decent lagers. They like barbecues like you do, so if they can do it, so can you!” But then of course the Polícia Militar come, confiscate your megaphone, beat you about the legs with sticks and revolution feels much the same as a broken femur.
The point is I need to learn to control my anger. In late 1997, over ten long years ago, I had reached a point of equilibrium in my life that I long to achieve once more. Having become interested in meditation, I’d been practising daily the cultivation of compassion, reaching the point of not seeing students as invaders of my privacy any more, but as friendly beings towards whom I could express kindness and generate happiness for them and for me. I felt top notch, all the time. Nothing disturbed my contentment. Then over time, things changed, laziness engulfed me, procrastination held sway, until now, even seeing a baseball cap for sale in a shop is enough to make me have to have a sit down for five minutes.
So today I am going to find a quiet five minutes, sit and meditate. I need to do something before the six-inch nail in the top of my head becomes a six-inch nail in somebody else’s.
Do you get angry easily? How do you control your negative emotions? Do you feel like you’ve got a six-inch nail in the top of your head? Have you ever instigated revolution with a megaphone, or other Public Address system? What are you looking at? You got some kind of problem…?
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I, 1-3
Reading the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno, it is easy to imagine he was, at the time, a TEFL teacher. Those of us who plough on in the trade despite advancing years all reach the dark forest, the TEFL Wall, like lightly trained marathon runners off Blue Peter. The wisest of us get ourselves qualified in something other than speaking, reading and writing English and get a real job, whilst the more naïve, perhaps fantasising we are still in our carefree twenties, suddenly find we are cantering towards forty with little chance of leaping from our speeding donkey.
My acupuncturist recently told me that I’m “explosive”. “What the f*ck are you on about?” I snapped, swatting his hand away churlishly. “I am having a lot of gas, admittedly…” I began, but he chuckled ironically as he held me down by the throat and explained that I am breaking into a seething rage with great facility. This is why I love acupuncture – by taking a few pulses they can diagnose emotional factors that western medicine rarely considers. Western medicine sees the human body as a machine that either works or it doesn’t, whereas eastern techniques take into account emotions and have a more holistic outlook.The point on the top of my head, which when pressed feels like somebody is banging a six-inch nail into my pate, is making hairstyling a misery exactly because of my tendency towards tumultuous indignation at the drop of a hat, or more commonly, the wearing of one. It doesn’t take much at all to set me off, and I can be found wandering the streets with my dog, muttering and railing to myself like a delirious drifter in a delusive road movie. It’s all related to the meridian of the liver, apparently, problems with which are often related to anger. Interestingly, the adjective “liverish” appears to confirm this contention.
Only yesterday whilst out walking my teeth champed at an imaginary bit as a complete baseball-capped dick in a red Volkswagen Golf with lowered suspension arrived at an obvious road block, squeezed his vehicle through the barriers and accelerated raucously away with a volume of noise inversely proportional to the size of his manhood - another case of a brainless arse thinking the rules are for everybody else. It didn’t even matter that he found his path blocked by a JCB digger along with accompanying hole the width of the road and was forced into making a humiliating reversing manoeuvre, my humour was already blackened, and I made rude hand gestures towards the driver from behind a parked lorry.
I don’t know why, but I took such offence that I just wanted to grab a megaphone, stand on a nearby car roof and declare, “Hear ye, Brazilians! Stop acting like you’re contestants in a tropical-penal-colony-based reality show and start following some rules and joining the community of nations! The Australians have almost done it, and they used to be a penal colony. They’re even good at cricket and produce a couple of decent lagers. They like barbecues like you do, so if they can do it, so can you!” But then of course the Polícia Militar come, confiscate your megaphone, beat you about the legs with sticks and revolution feels much the same as a broken femur.
The point is I need to learn to control my anger. In late 1997, over ten long years ago, I had reached a point of equilibrium in my life that I long to achieve once more. Having become interested in meditation, I’d been practising daily the cultivation of compassion, reaching the point of not seeing students as invaders of my privacy any more, but as friendly beings towards whom I could express kindness and generate happiness for them and for me. I felt top notch, all the time. Nothing disturbed my contentment. Then over time, things changed, laziness engulfed me, procrastination held sway, until now, even seeing a baseball cap for sale in a shop is enough to make me have to have a sit down for five minutes.
So today I am going to find a quiet five minutes, sit and meditate. I need to do something before the six-inch nail in the top of my head becomes a six-inch nail in somebody else’s.
Do you get angry easily? How do you control your negative emotions? Do you feel like you’ve got a six-inch nail in the top of your head? Have you ever instigated revolution with a megaphone, or other Public Address system? What are you looking at? You got some kind of problem…?
posted by M C Ward | 11:11
7 Comments:
I have got a six-inch nail in my head, the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding at Mad Vlad's Tattoo and Piercing Parlour. It doesn't so much make me angry as make my eyes crossed and my tongue flop out.
A small price to pay for access to the BBC World Service/Voice of America without a wireless, I would have thought. I hope the Romanians don't assume we all look like you, though... ;-)
No, they assume we all look like Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple! They'd think that Hinge and Bracket was a documentary. ;-)
It's quite understandable that you find students intolerable. I heard that Dante's main reason for writing The Inferno was to slag off his colleagues. You should be forgiven for whatever helps you get through the night.
I have serious "anger ishoos", as our Human Resources department has pointed out. Having a department called Human Resources is one of the things that make me angry.
I deal with it, as I do with all of life's woes and whale-ups, by drinking horinca, horilka and other Carpathian goat-juices.
When they've run out, I take my printer onto the patio and beat it with a stick.
If all else fails, I visit liberal blogs and point out the proximity of the Fuehrer's birthday.
I used to work in Human Resources, which probably explains a lot of my ire - it's a horrible business for all concerned. I'm going to plough on with the meditation - if Mongolians went from a nation of pillagers and arsonists to a gentle, nomadic people who have long-distance horse races and drink fermented yak's milk for kicks, I think the world should sit up and listen (or sit down and try to concentrate).
I think they also do a strange form of wrestling there; so maybe grappling with a lard-arse in the bollock-freezing cold is also an essential step on the path to Nirvana.
I've got the lard, now I just need to put in the training. I'll try anything.
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