FREE LOVE IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

After I left the Provisionals and Newry, I spent several months, travelling the roads of most parts of Ireland, until I came to the Island of Inisfree, off the coast of Donegal. It was a commune based on the theories of Primal Scream, which I found, was essentially about having no secrets, particularly emotional, such as jealousy, anger, love, etc.. There was no such thing as personal owner ship, which extended to sexual partners and the group operated collectively, as a self supporting Vegan community, without drugs or alcohol. It was for me a worthwhile experience but one which would not appeal to me permanently, probably because I am too selfish and self centered.

My main issue with the group and my principal reason for leaving, was that while the ethos was based on total honesty, I found the primary females, who could co-operate together as a group, far better than competitive men, were manipulate and sneaky. I wound up telling them with love, they were a shower of bitches. They would collectively as women, choose their alternating partners for the night and choose fresh ones next day.

This of course produced a reaction in the males, which would be similar to Primal Apes, who would then, beat their chests in rage and rant on at the top of their voice, to their replacement male, that he had stolen his woman, which in the context of a commune without ownership, was of course ridiculous, to the point of pure entertainment, particularly for the manipulating females, who used this to domineer the group in a very  effective manner. 

We cut our own turf, had the island to ourselves, had goats milk, cheese and baked our own bread. We had our own boat to cross to the mainland, when the weather was good. We spent a lot of the time, repairing a very old a ship, to take us to South America. To be fair to the commune, I was in a really bad space at the time and going through a personal crisis, after my political activity in the North and the breakup of my marriage. Other than this complaint, I was treated well and would recommend it to anyone, seeking an alternative experience. Below is and article about the group, followed by another on polyamory.

' Screamers '

It was a grisly end to an idyllic, idealistic childhood. And the saddest chapter yet in the story of a hippie "cult" dogged by bad luck. Tristan James, a gentle lad of 18 who had been raised in the Atlantis commune in the Colombian rainforest, was to return to Ireland, the country of his birth, for a gap year. But before he went, he wanted to say goodbye to his 17-year-old brother Brendan, who was living in the country's highlands, southwest of Bogota, with a local family. He also wanted to glimpse one more time the organic farm in the forest from which his community had been evicted by rebels the year before.

It was a grisly end to an idyllic, idealistic childhood. And the saddest chapter yet in the story of a hippie "cult" dogged by bad luck. Tristan James, a gentle lad of 18 who had been raised in the Atlantis commune in the Colombian rainforest, was to return to Ireland, the country of his birth, for a gap year. But before he went, he wanted to say goodbye to his 17-year-old brother Brendan, who was living in the country's highlands, southwest of Bogota, with a local family. He also wanted to glimpse one more time the organic farm in the forest from which his community had been evicted by rebels the year before.

Only one eyewitness has talked about the horrific events that unfolded on 9 July when Tristan and his friend, a 19-year-old called Javier Nova, stopped for a drink at the hamlet of Hoya Grande in the Incononzo region. That witness, a woman who insisted on anonymity, has since fled the area, which is racked by bloody civil war. Everyone else is simply too terrified to talk.

According to the witness, the hapless teenagers were seized by four drunken gunmen, who there and then convened a macabre mock trial in which they were accused of spying for right-wing paramilitary groups. It was a farcical scene, but what happened next was gruesome in the extreme. The woman told how the men slit Tristan's throat - and as his life ebbed away, cut off his head.

While Tristan's blood was being spilt, his friend was made to watch. Then it was his turn: Javier's throat was also slit, and he was also beheaded. The woman recalled that the gunmen yelled: "We shall kill this gringo for bringing the death squads into this area..." Afterwards the bodies were doused with petrol and set alight. No one seems to doubt the eye witness's story. The boys were never seen again and no bodies have been found.

Violence is nothing new in Colombia, where the government, with $1bn from the United States, is waging war on leftist rebel forces, who are financed in turn by vast local opium and coca crops. This year alone, 1,389 Colombians have officially been slain by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries in 314 separate massacres. On forest paths, villagers regularly find bodies which bear the "necktie" signature of the right-wing militias - where a victim's tongue has been pulled through his slit throat, as a warning to peasants who support the rebels.

So horrific murder is a fact of life, and civilians are mostly too terrified to protest, even when their loved ones become victims. But Tristan's murder was different - for instead of keeping quiet, his grandmother, Jenny James, and a fellow commune member, Donegal-born Anne Barr, are demanding information from every quarter even risking their lives by appearing on television and naming the killers.

The formidable matriarch of the female-dominated commune, Jenny James has always cut her own path. It was she who, more than 20 years ago, scandalised conservative Catholic Ireland when she decamped from her Brixton commune to the quaint fishing village of Burtonport, in Donegal, to found the back-to-nature community which became notorious in 1970s Ireland for its members' sexual promiscuity and practice of "primal-scream therapy". And it was she who, 13 years ago, brought the Screamers to Colombia from Ireland. Now she has turned her energies to breaking through "the wall of terrified silence" which surrounds her grandson's murder.

Back in Ireland, meanwhile, Tristan's mother, Rebecca Garcia, and her half-sister, Louise, are trying to push the European end of their campaign for justice, helped by Mary Kelly, a long-time commune member with three sons in Colombia. In a small, cluttered flat in Cork, Garcia explained that she had not seen Tristan for two years - having returned to Ireland to help repair the commune's sailing ship, in preparation for an ambitious voyage back to Colombia, and to sell its old Burtonport headquarters. Atlantis's remaining ties with the old country were being severed and eventually the women planned to return to the rainforests.

Rebecca says that for a very brief period in July she clung to the hope that Tristan had been kidnapped, before accepting that he was dead. Commune life has made her oddly unwilling to make Tristan's murder her own special loss. "I gave birth to Tristan," she told me. "But I really feel for the kids he grew up with. The saddest thing is that Tristan's life was just beginning."

On the walls of the little Cork flat, and in the "family" photo albums, there are pictures of Tristan, clad in crimson, and the other commune kids, Louise, Alice and Katy, all pretty and blonde, performing in the commune's theatre group. Their "gringo" band has performed all over Colombia. There are also pictures of the girls - in ethereal white costumes - practising yoga in the rainforest. In another the three sisters are being drenched under a stunning Colombian waterfall. It all seems as bohemian as Isadora Duncan, as idealistic as Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie The Beach.

But Louise, who is now 19 and who returned to Ireland two years ago to study dance, says it would be wrong to think of commune life as pure pleasure, and members as dreamers. Surviving in the rainforest, she says, is tough, particularly with the violence, which has become so bad that at times the group has had to arm itself.

Louise has been upset by the way the media has focused more on the commune's Screamer past than Tristan's murder. Rebecca, though grieving, has had calls from tabloids only interested in the old "free love" days when commune-members changed partners with alarming regularity. In Ireland, Mary says, at least the community was allowed to shed its Screamer baggage long ago and move into the environmental mainstream.

"All this stuff about the 1970s," says Louise. "It was all before Tristan and I were even born." But many who remember how the Screamers lived, are fascinated by their unexpected reappearance, two decades later, at the centre of the Colombian civil war.

Jenny James was already 33 when she arrived in Donegal in September 1974 to buy a new home for "her tribe". The middle-class daughter of Communist parents, she later wrote romantically of the west of Ireland with its "warm mist, rough roads... and cottages crumbling back into the earth they came from".

This was the perfect isolated spot, she believed, in which to create the perfect community and experiment with anti-psychiatry therapies. The three-storey building in Burtonport, purchased by James for £10,000, soon rang with screams. Sleepy little Burtonport must have had its moments. But, clearly, the new neighbours took it by surprise. Atlantis House's exterior was speedily re-painted with astrological signs, ruining the village's uniform whitewash and enraging the local council. Then the visitors, many emotionally distressed, began to arrive. And with them came scandal.

Mary Kelly says the scandals - accusations of kidnap, brainwashing and sexual promiscuity - that engulfed Atlantis were exaggeration and prejudice, eagerly seized upon, and by, a conservative establishment which saw Atlantis as a threat to religious and family values. In They Call Us the Screamers, Jenny James claims it was a split between an Irish couple staying at the commune that led to a man claiming his two children had been kidnapped and his wife brainwashed by a "cult". Questions were asked in the Dail and MPs called for the "English" Atlantis community to be deported. Even the IRA got involved, issuing kneecapping threats and bomb warnings.

Journalists and film crews trekked west and were invited in to witness tearful therapy sessions. While some condemned Atlantis as completely fruity, others actually joined the commune. The group tried to get away by moving to the nearby island of Innisfree, where they lived without electricity, but the west coast Eden was already spoiled.

A new paradise had to be found. Louise bristles at the suggestion that her mother wafted down to South America, Katy still in nappies, utterly naive and unprepared. James already had a degree in South American studies and had learned the native Indian language, Quechua. And she had money in her pocket, the profits from the commune's cottages rented to holidaymakers on Innisfree.

In her book, James occasionally comes over as a Svengali, unsympathetic to Irish families who "lost" their children to the group. And those who saw Atlantis as nothing but an excuse for sexual promiscuity were treated to the details of numerous partner changes.

Mary, Rebecca and Louise come over as level-headed. But some of Atlantis's early practices now seem quite bonkers. In one memorable passage Jenny James describes how the female-dominated commune is haemorrhaging men and how she and two other women spend all morning weeping in each other's arms in Becky's room while "Becky [Rebecca, then 14] does her homework".

But as Louise points out, it was another time. Primal therapy may not been jettisoned by the group but it is no longer centre stage. Louise does not talk of therapy sessions but of environmental lobbying and of Atlantis's attempts to get Colombian peasant farmers to save the rainforest by switching from poppies and coca to organic food production.

What cannot be denied is that James has vision and stamina, and enough charisma to have kept a small core group of followers together across continents and the passing of two decades. Twenty years ago Jenny James was, however, misguidedly pushing for the "truth". After Tristan's murder, she says, that's what she still wants.

In Cork Louise says she knows the campaign her mother is waging in Colombia is dangerous. But idealism is obviously contagious. Why stay in Colombia now that the farms have been confiscated and Tristan and Javier are dead? Surely the Colombian dream, like the paradise in Donegal, is over. "Colombia is completely chaotic just now," she says. "But it is so very beautiful and we believe we have a chance of changing it into an ideal society."

Polyamory

Over the past few years, polyamory has become a more widely known term and practice. And perhaps inevitably, certain misconceptions and misunderstandings about what "polyamory" means have become widespread as well. It would be unfortunately difficult to say which among these misunderstandings is the most common, or the most hurtful to polyamorous folks. But there's one in particular that I'd like to discuss: the idea that "polyamory" means "committed couple who have casual partners on the side."

There has been much talk about "open marriage" and "open relationships" in recent years, with some even paradoxically dubbing non-monogamy "the new monogamy." In this open-marriage conception of non-monogamous relationships, there is still a central, committed (often legally married) couple, who allow one another to engage in purely sexual (or at least quite casual) outside relationships. Generally, any discussion about the benefits of such practice revolves around how it strengthens and/or reinvigorates the central couple in question. I want to be perfectly clear that I don't see anything wrong with strictly sexual non-monogamy so long as it's genuinely fulfilling and consensual for all involved, including the outside partners. But for those of us living in polyamorous families, it can be incredibly frustrating when people use those concepts of open marriage to make assumptions about the structure of our relationships.

Because we live in such a monogamy-centered society, it makes sense that many people can only conceive of non-monogamy in what ultimately still amounts to monogamous terms. There is a common misconception that a polyamorous relationship is really no different from an open-relationship agreement: one committed couple, with some lighthearted fun on the side. But the word "polyamory," by definition, means loving more than one. Many of us have deeply committed relationships with more than one partner, with no hierarchy among them and no core "couple" at the heart of it all. To me, this notion that there must be one more important relationship, one true love, feels a lot like people looking at same-sex couples and thinking that one person must be the "man" in the relationship and the other must be the "woman." After all, both of these misunderstandings result from people trying to graft their normative conceptions of love and relationships onto people who are partnering in non-normative ways. It seems that it is somewhat easy for many people to acknowledge that humans are capable of loving one person and still enjoying sex with others (assuming, of course, that the terms of their relationship make such behavior acceptable). But it is much harder for people to think outside the fairy-tale notion of "the one" and imagine that it might be possible to actually romantically love more than one person simultaneously.

The unfortunate result of this is that, for those of us in more than one serious and meaningful relationship, the world around us insists on viewing one of those relationships as less valid than the other, especially when one relationship happens to predate others. I have been with my husband for 17 years, legally married for 11. But I am also deeply in love with and committed to my boyfriend of two and a half years, and it hurts that people make assumptions about that relationship simply being something frivolous and recreational outside my marriage.

Another side effect of this misunderstanding is that people often wonder why we poly people need to talk openly about "what happens behind closed doors." I have heard many times that there should be no reason to disclose one's polyamorous relationships with parents, children, or the neighbors. That might seem logical if what we're talking about is strictly extramarital sexual partners. But my life with my partners isn't reducible to "what happens behind closed doors" any more than any serious, long-term relationship is. We share a home and a life; we are a family. Openly, publicly acknowledging my boyfriend as my partner is not just saying that we have sex. It's saying that, like my husband, he is my partner in every sense of the word. He loves me and supports me and respects me. He sees me at my worst and still wants to spend his life with me anyway. It would be unimaginable to me to hide the nature of our relationship, to pretend that he is merely a friend or roommate, to not have him by my side at weddings and funerals and family holiday gatherings. But this is exactly what people are expecting of me when they ask why I feel the need to be so "open" about my "private business."

Not all polyamorous people have multiple equally committed relationships, and many do designate a more central (typically live-in) relationship as "primary." But my partners and I are hardly unusual among polyamorous folks. Many share homes in configurations like ours, or as committed triads or quads or complex networks of five or more. Many have deep and lasting relationships with no cohabitation at all. To project traditional conceptions of love and commitment onto these relationships, to view them only as a slight variation on monogamy, is to deny all of the many varied ways that polyamorous people form relationships and families.

If you have polyamorous friends, relatives, or acquaintances, please don't make assumptions about their lives based on what you think all non-monogamous configurations look like. Let them tell you how they define their relationships. And if they identify multiple people as their partners, don't try to read into who is more important than whom, imagining hierarchies even if you're told there are none. Though it might not fit with how you conceptualize love, offer polyamorous relationships the same validation that you would offer any other. And remember what a common human thing it is to want to be able to tell the world -- and not be told by the world -- whom we love.

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EVOLUTION OF SYSTEMIC CHILD ABUSE

"Beneath this thin veneer of civility lurks a savage. You scratch my skin and draw blood, I will inevitably retaliate." Quote - Christy Higgins


Since I was forced as a young boy, to pour water over, what appeared to my child's eyes as my mother's dead body, lying on a concrete floor, in the west of Ireland, I internalized my anger to the point of where it became frozen rage. After I discovered the extent of the problem, both personally and in Irish society, after I put down the drink and went to associate recovery groups in the Jellinek Clinic in the Netherlands, I started to slowly, deal with my many anger issues in my relationships with other people. I learned that I was as sick as my secrets and in order to recover, my internalized rage needed fresh air or as some would say the Sunlight of the Spirit. It still does and perhaps this has something to do with motivation for this blog.


Anyway, after I returned to Ireland, many years before the child abuse issue, went mainstream, I re-acquainted myself with my bad ass friend Christy, and had to share with him, what I was learning and that it appeared to me, to be an endemic problem in Ireland, that bothered me greatly. Now both for Christy's sake and my own, I have to be fair and mention, that in our own cases, it did not extend to any sexual abuse. In fact one of the reasons I was attracted to Christy's guidance, is that I witnessed a very happy home. Anyway I shared with Christy my disturbed feelings, about the extent of it and how uncomfortable it made me feel, in that I was picking up this rage vibe everywhere I went from people around me in Ireland.


Christy as usual, explained to me in his usual down to earth way, the realities of what he saw around him. If you ever visit the very beautiful Achill Island in County Mayo, off the west coast of Ireland, you will find rows and rows of old stone houses, falling into disrepair, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, some of which, date back to pre-holocaust days in Ireland and before the mass exodus that emptied our land. There is considerable debate about the extent of this matter, with many realistic claims, that the numbers of Irish lives lost, being on an even greater scale than the Jewish holocaust.


You will also notice if you visit, how tiny most of these homes are and if you are familiar with the history of obstructed birth control in Ireland, you will learn, that quite regularly, an Irish family often extended up to 20 persons. Christy simply asked me, what I thought frequently happened, with whole families sleeping up on top of each other, in such small one roomed abodes, particularly if you factor in, the regular Irish diet of the time, that included vast quantities of poitin, otherwise known as the untaxed, "peoples whisky"or what the old Celtic Irish monks called "uisce beatha," meaning when translated, 'water of life', which is currently at a premium in Ireland, thanks to what Gerry Adams refers to as, our great and glorious leader from Mayo, "Sliabheen" or Mountain man. Yes, we may have a beautiful land, but few visitors, are aware of the cruelty that lies just under surface of its veneer or real history and even fewer still, of the native Irish, talk about it, under pain of death or at a minimum, forced emigration. 'Don't let the side down' is Ireland's greatest enabler of Child Rape.



My father, as a teenage boy, broke rocks with a lump hammer, from the dawn of day until sunset, to help put bacon on the table of the large family he came from. He was paid something paltry by the horse and cart load. He battered rocks, until his own heart became as hard as the rocks themselves. He joined the fascist blueshirts, which were Ireland's equivalent of Hitler and Mussolini, from other Roman Catholic cultures in Europe. It killed any bit of nature that was in the man. My mother's family on the other hand, took wounded Irish rebels across the river Shannon in Meelick, to try to recover. She was a strong minded woman, the equal of any man, in any rural field of Ireland, at that time. She was not of a submissive nature. Hence the war zone within the four walls of my childhood home. 

She was of a time before women's liberation, that after sufficient batterings and with males being the sole adjudicators of power in the Ireland of that time, i.e. the local sergeant, the local doctor, in fact all of the local bureaucracy,with the exception of the midwife, she was eventually locked up with nervous breakdowns, treated with crude electric shock treatment, incorrectly medicated, to the point, that a lot of the local patriarchal society, deemed her mad, as many today would term myself her son, for having the audacity to write  publicly about all of this. She recovered some of her sanity eventually, paradoxically through religion, I prefer a more pagan form of Spirituality myself.

Now at this point I have to be very careful and sparing with my words, in order to to be fair to other people. I too, like my father had to emigrate to the great metropolis of London, for several complex reasons, such as the material, escape from such an emotionally incestious culture, along with my developing alcoholism. I had spent most of my childhood, doing a man's work on the farm, which some would term as being a muck savage, working a spade for a lot of it. After working in London, digging holes under the supervision of other Irish muck savage, 'ganger men,' I eventually found a job under an English one, who was a decent enough man. Unlike my previous supervisors, when it rained, he called us in out of the rain and treated us fairly. However we almost came to blows one day, when he told me, that I didn't know how to work a spade properly. I had worked with one all of my childhood life,"How phuking dare he say such a thing!"


However for once, putting reason before reaction and thinking about pay day, I watched him demonstrate, how to let the actual spade, do most of the work. I had to admit, that he was correct. I learned an important lesson that day, primarily not to let prejudice, close my mind. Anyway during this time, I was further politicized by the deaths of two Irish republican hunger strikers, Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg in British Gaols in England. It was a reactionary instinctual matter, along with the jailing of several other innocent Irish, such as Gerry Conlon and further experiences, around a relationship, with my first wife from Occupied Ireland, in London, that I eventually, reluctantly volunteered, for the first time, to join the IRA. With the wisdom of hindsight, it was a reactionary form of political motivation for me personally, that I now realize, was not pro-active or progressive, as it sometimes is with other Irish republicans. I will make many enemies with that statement but then I have already made many enemies with my own written experiences of my truth, particularly with the British Secret Services.


Anyway, we eventually wound up back in Newry and tried to rear five children, in an Irish town with more than 80% unemployment, that was calculatedly gerrymandered and politically engineered. Such an environment, from my own experiences in such places, brings out both the best and the worst in many people. I became a political activist and again witnessed the deaths of 10 more Irish hunger strikers. The best way I can describe this experience is, that it was traumatizing. I used to go at the end of my day, to a local pub with Irish music, to try to chill out. My family as a result of my time consuming activity and drinking, suffered from paternal neglect and poverty, which my wife mostly managed on her own. The matter climaxed one day, when Eamon Gilmore, the owner of the local supermarket at that time and with a background in the Official Republican Movement, otherwise known as the Stickies, arrived at my door. Yes the same Eamon Gilmore who later became an Irish Labour Party politician and in the Government of Ireland, held the offices of Tánaiste ( deputy Prime Minster) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, from March 2011 until July 2014. He was also to become the Leader of the Labour Party from September 2007 to July 2014.


Anyway the bould Eamon stood at my door asserting, in a very plausible manner, that my two oldest sons, who would have been respectively aged 7 and 5 at that time, had cashed two social security checks, stolen from the letter boxes of various neighbours. I was dumbfounded and incredulous but he persisted. While he was of opposing political views to me in many respects I could see no good reason, why he was not being truthful and I told him, I would deal with the matter. Now after growing up in my own childhood home, I tried as best I could, to ensure that such things were not to be repeated in my own home. In fact when I was 16 I made a solemn vow to myself, that one day I would grow up and my home would be very different. Anyway I closed the door and while suffering from a hangover, I proceed to interrogate my two young sons, in the most civilized way that I could. They persisted to deny Mr. Gilmore's claims.

I persisted as patiently as I could under the circumstance, to interrogate them, until at length I lost my patience and ordered them, to lower their pants and I proceeded to use my belt to chastise them, until they were red. They still refused to admit guilt. After reflection that day, I decided I was a failure as a father and made the decision, that it was best for everyone, to leave. It was heart breaking but I used drink as my medicine. I might add, that leading up to that time, I had many visits, which I still regard as spurious, from British Social Services, regarding child neglect. Thirty years later I still don't know the truth of the matter but I might add, that I had many neighbours who were politically aligned with that party.  Please forgive me if I include at this point, my usual glimpse of sanity.

Paradoxically today, my best friend, is an unashamed English capitalist, with Cornish blood in his veins and a socialist heart. We argue a lot. After many years, I have come to the conclusion that the English are a very clever people. At one stage in the south of England, I was a salesman, knocking on tens of thousands of doors in the south of England for several years. I can honestly say that at the height of the Irish troubles being brought to London, I was always treated with courtesy and respect, with just the one exception. The Industrial revolution happened in England, before it happened in the rest of the world. I believe it gave them an edge in the modern world. Previously unlike Ireland they learned and applied much, from their conquest by the Roman Empire. They applied it so successfully, that they conquered and ruled the seven seas. As I previously mentioned, the sun never set on the British Empire because God couldn't trust an Englishman in the dark. The best summation I have heard of their Empire ruled by the City of London, is that they are a nation of Pirates. It still however begs the question, of how such a relatively small island, can still pull the strings in a Commonwealth, that extends to the other side of their world.

Ancient sociology, dating as far back as ancient Egypt, of which I am mostly ignorant, primarily through their art, records the common existence of various deviances, such as sex with children and animals as it still is legal is several countries to this day. I first came across this peronally, working as an activist for several years managing an Advice Centre in British Occupied Ireland. I initially could not comprehend it. Years later, in the course of trying to pass on my recovery to newcomers, some people came and confided in me with regard to this matter. They seemed otherwise, to be very sincere and gentle people. Again reluctantly I had to inform them, that I had no specific experience of these matters and from what I learned from others, I therfore was in no position to help them. I had to let them go and point them in the direction of people where they might get help. 

Recently Pitcairn, the remote Pacific island that was settled by mutineers from the British Royal Navy ship Bounty in 1789, became a focus of attention, when most of its men were put on trial on child sexual abuse offences and now has, its first female mayor. Britain sent jailers to the remote Pitcairn Island. From my own personal experience in Occupied Ireland, I believe this example, holds the key to how Britannia Rules the Waves but then who am I to judge. I simply want the children of the Island of my birth liberated, where they can get a genuine education about these critical facts of life and evolution. Where they can grow up, to be women and men free from sexual, mental and material slavery.

Olympics London 2012 : SADISTIC SEXUAL GAMES BRITISH OCCUPIED IRELAND

 IT'S WORKING FOR BURMA, WHY NOT BRITISH OCCUPIED IRELAND?


                   Marian Price Ireland's Interned Aung San Suu Kyi


                      BURMA IRELAND "SAME SAME"

This small excerpt is from,  “The Grave of the Hundred Head”,  by Kipling after Burma on his way back to England in 1889. He and his friends made an unscheduled stop at Moulmein on the coast of Burma, where elephants, pagodas, tinkling bells, and a beautiful Burmese girl left a deep mark on Kipling. :

" When I die I will be a Burman, with twenty yards of real King’s silk, that has been made in Mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips. I will wave the cigarette to emphasise my conversation, which shall be full of jest and repartee, and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. (From Sea to Sea, p. 221 line 19) "




With the global financial collapse and the  onrush of Armageddon at Olympic London 2012, I haven't been feeling myself lately. I'm recovering my strength here in bed in Aden the gateway to the former British empire, today I am reflecting on another of their former colonies, Burma, Maybe it's all the sexual innuendo in this blog, perhaps I need to explain a  little. My sleep patterns are disturbed, I still wake up in the middle of the night wondering about things like the meaning of the great cosmic game and what exactly do geopolitics have to do with my existential void? I ask myself about Olive and Pui,  it's all so confusing and even though they are aware its an open relationship sort of thing. So many conflicting points of view and ideologies these days its difficult keep it simple if you know what I mean. I have a confession to make which I haven't told Olive or Pui about because they haven't noticed.



Now the Aung San Suu Kyi conflict thing in Burma, was always a big issue with me and I couldn't wait for the sanctions to be lifted so I could visit Rangoon, Thankfully they are, so I visited last month before our protest trip on the Galway Whooker to Olympic London 2012 . There was a spring in my step as soon as I landed. Some old beggar in my face didn’t upset me and I I gave him something small, It felt good, I used to be a beggar myself years ago. Now don’t laugh, after Olive and Pui I never thought it would happen again, if I am honest. Some people say I'm a hard bastard, particularly after I split up with my wife, I was not in the mood. I’m not totally daft if that’s what your thinking, I’ve read a few books on Burma and researched Rangoon before I came and I heard all the stories. You can call me cynical but I know how to have fun emerging world or not. Ok I know what you’re thinking, taking advantage and no fool like an old fool right ? 



But believe me first bar in Rangoon, first woman but she really is different.  Now I have a friend who has known me a long time, who says I would get upon a frog...hmm is he really a friend? It started  the way it usually does. She comes to sit with me, gorgeous!, I buy her a drink not really thinking much and she just sits there looking right at me. I’d just had a blow job yesterday so I was n’t  really looking for action but I hadn’t any objections either. So here we go again I'm thinking, another night in an Asian city, ladies, drink, bar-fine, hotel, shower, blow job, usual shag but when I actually got her on the bed something odd happens. She has nice tits, a very nice ass, with perfectly cute puss but the way she looks at me does something. I cannot explain but I instinctively know it's not a one off. 



Next day when we wake up she says it spontaneously. "You nice man. I want to stay with you." So my cynical part is thinking, more bullshit..like..sick buffalo... old mum hospital...boyfriend up the street. “I have no family in Yangon." She says,  So I ask a few questions and she tells me she’s just arrived in Yangon from Mon state. She’s living with some girls, she does n’t particularly like and would it be ok if she stayed with me until she gets sorted. I ask her how much she wants and she says ‘up to you’. So I take her for noodle soup and I watch her look around the place. The way she’s looking, I can tell she is straight off the farm. She still hasn’t asked me for any money for last night. Before we leave I pass her a large banknote. She gives me a thank you gesture, tucks the money away and I put her in a taxi.



I go looking  around the city but I change me mind because I can’t concentrate. To cut a long story short I took a bit of a nap in the afternoon but when I wake up I'm thinking about her. Part of me knows this is stupid but another part says so what? Right so here we go again and as I get near her bar she’s already seen me. Her smile lights up the plaza, she comes over, I give her a hug, not too obvious. There is a problem however. A couple of guys down the bar are watching. One has got his eye on her and this is what I don’t like. Anyone with a bit of money can phuck her. I ask her why she likes me and I can see she does n’t really like answering questions like this but she says, ‘You like father me.’ That's fair enough, I can be sugar daddy no problem but  she know I like that little furry thing between her legs. I pay a bar-fine again. Is this artificial and sincere at the same time like we can talk about love and peace but underneath everyone there is a darker side with sympathy for the devil and I can feel the evil rising. 



Olympic London 2012  Richard tells me will be, Yanks, Arabs, Pakis, Poles, Chavs, 4x2s you name it and he especially can’t stand the flash City types he calls ‘getters’. When Richard gets a bit much we switch to the future time, AD, dated from the discovery of the Book Of Richard. What’s left of the UK exists on a little island pf communities where the people speak in tongues.This world is ruled by a geyzer called Livingstone III,  the night sky is called dashboard, children ride "motos" and food is called curry. There’s some good laughs in it too but after a while it gets zany and it’s nice to switch back to the real world where the characters are more believable. Writing about London these days is not easy, its a dump.



Where was I ? Oh yes I was telling you about Fon, I was paying her bar fine for about a week. We usually stay in bed till around midday, got some noodles and maybe did a bit of shopping. Then she trotted off and I would see her in the evening at the bar.  Life is odd, you think when you find someone special that’s the end right? But it’s a beginning too and I do love Olive and Pui. I get too philosophical sometimes or maybe Fon’s right. I just think too much. I would never meet a woman like her in Ireland in a million years. First off, Irish women these days are all mouth and very fat. Fat, noisy, pushy but maybe I'm talking about what you mostly find in the pubs these days. A lot of Irish lads are amazed when they come to Asia to find women like Fon. You get some rough ones here also but a woman like Fon can work in a bar, be polite, ladylike and make a lad feel good. It just seems to come naturally to Asian women. Most of them don’t even realize how cute they are. 



I love Ireland but I now love Asia too. The sex is great and there is no hurry but just lying in bed with her is cool too and watching the way she folds her clothes and rinses out her panties. I love the way she lets me look at her body when we’re having sex but she is still quite shy, dressing behind a towel. I ask her what she wants and she says ‘I want velly good man’. She is not really a bar girl at all or what I mean is she’s not really on the game, I go through the options but to telling the truth is all I can do these days. I can keep paying her barfine but that’s daft. How long can two people live in a hotel room anyway ? My visa’s up in a few days and then what? It just started,  I can’t blame her, If it was n’t  me it would be some other bloke.... just sitting there like fruit on a tree,,,but like Adam and Eve  I didn’t have to pick the fruit. So how will it end?Anyway I go to the bar one evening and no Fon . I mention it casual like to one of her friends. ‘Fon she go village,’ I catch my plane out of Rangoon next day.






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