Successors.
For me there’s nothing so rousing, so crushing and inspirational as a failure.
My education, not schools, but learning was a foundation in falling short and getting up.
For 12 years I have been chasing the shadow of success: the depths of my character have yearned for a ‘win’. I have been spurred on by the offers of wins. All too abstract! But, that’s an honest start, try to taste it, before I take us to walk on concrete.
I started learning when I was told I couldn’t and when I was told that it was beyond me. That boy, the boy told “no”, was, in truth, beneath most things. He was beneath grammar, he was beneath science he was beneath mathematics. And he was mostly indifferent to those things.
As that boy grew he hoped, aimlessly, to be comfortable and surrounded by those he admired. By then those in privileged positions, teachers, parents and the ‘empowered’ would tell me-that boy, that he had reached the extent my capabilities. I was full of hatred, violent and silently rebellious.
From a reverie, maybe a film, maybe Matilda, I began to believe that intellect was the ticket out, and the gong of my success. I was desperate, not eager, desperate, breathlessly, without any other vision, desperate, to escape and while doing so I had to scare and hurt the ‘empowered’ on my departure.
I wanted something so beyond my reach, some talisman of my power, of my brightness, that it would blind, and stun the grown ups in their ruts with their definite ideas about me and about life.
I, with a voice and a barely tapped rage. I had grown knowing death was racing at me, I grew knowing strength was convincing the clever or leading the weak. I knew that feelings left and bitterness lingered and stung. I made myself, like the waking-warm, turned from my comforts.
I hated my horrid small beginnings, my paltry ‘achievements’ poor grades little thinking and nothing on the horizon but ill health, poverty and anger, these achievements marked me in the mirror, showing my simplicity and naivety and failure to impress those I hated.
Of success
Many years later I had done all I was told I could not and all that I said I would, and more...and less. I had decided, 14, decided being a barrister was the thing for me, those accidental, clever, grubby minds, the ones that broke rules with rules were the ones I could love and be loved by. Best of all they were feared and admired by those I hated.
I wrongly taught myself that success was an end point, something external and resounding. Success to me was having enough to shut my now imagined detractors’ silly mouths. I learned to forget to set my own standards. I was lustful for the blood of my victory. Too abstract! To be a barrister I had to:
1. Do a degree in law to such a standard as to impress barristers (which required learning: Learning to read; slowly not quickly, write-proper, subject in context, grammar, tone, and content, think, each step not just conclusions (so i turned to philosophers and thinkers to teach what was matter and ephemera, what were rules and conventions etc and to learn to impose my thinking and writing). My first education left me with little but counting and reading-reading for funs for freedoms and secrets).
2. Do other clever things like, talk to clever people, read hard books, and stand before people and convince them, help others to learn.
3. Work to show my compatibility with all sorts of other people.
4. Do interesting things like climb, travel, read and so on.
5. Study more and pay a lot for it. Which meant borrowing a lot to do it, which I did, against the advice of many, many guiders (who I had long ago rejected).
6. Mingle with, eat alongside and not attack those who, by parentage, accent and education were entitled to the thing, the life I hoped to usurp.
7. Display capacity and affinity to emulate those who already had what I wanted.
8. Be accepted by those who already had what I wanted, so that they could teach me to be them.
I was Mr. 1 to 7. And at 7 I stopped. At around 5 and 6 I forgot that I was already better than this scheme, and for that matter better than the shackle of everyone else’s constraints and limits. I forgot to remember that this was not a dream in and of itself, but a bauble to be won and laughed at.
At 2,3 and 4 I encountered kind, silly clever and generous people and I unknowingly, truly, wanted to be like them. But I pushed through those trivial wantings, now I was part way into my victory, I had a goal and fuck to hell if I was stopping to hear the jeering past or the voidy, fearfilled future.
Now Mr. 7 and no one wanted me and fittingly number 8 was the one thing I could not do myself. Being now doubly poor I found a stop gap. I extended No. 7 and I offered myself to those I had once thought beneath me. I offered them my mind and my time for money. I did law for big lawyers and thought it would be no. 7, number 7, No. Seven so as to woo 'those who already had what I wanted'.
Then, in those golden seveny days, those who already had the thing I now ‘truly’ wanted began offering me their success. But for all of the offers, for all of the fleeting acceptance of my adequacy (adequacy and nothing more) It left.
You should know at this point that a robe of barristers will whisper, they will whisper to one another all of their collective insecurities. And I either fed them or challenged their silent fears, either way I was enough to be beneath them. And far too little to be one of them.
Had I been Mr. 0, or even Mr. -5 I would have been content to fuck them, to tell them I was above their insecurities and laugh and quip about their intellects being anchored in a long dead age, before leaving. But now; oh hell was I Mr. 7 and doubly poor. I still knew working hard was for despiseables. I, like Mr. 0, still knew that death was a promise. But competing with that was something so insipid it felt like sincerity. I was now Mr. double poverty, and my failure to shock and stun my once real grown ups was putting everything into a grey contrast, their failures were becoming mine. I dug in. This was war and I had no fear of trenches. If I held out, I was sure it would be ‘over by Christmas’, and I would crow crow crow.
By now, you must realise I was no long only fighting my ghost-detractors, now I had a new foe. One I knew as myself, 'those who already had what I wanted’. They had to be taught; I was as good as them, by effort rather than birth. They had to know that I, the once great, now limited by a 'not-a-dream', was good enough to have what they had because I could do it, maybe better. They were the foe to the front, distracting me from the foe to the back.
Not too long (3 blinked away years) after, I was offered the ‘success’. I was told by one who had it, the thing I wanted, I was told that all of 'those who already had what I wanted’ would accept me. I was told that I would stop being doubly poor, that I was enough to get what I wanted and that I was good enough, but slightly different to the norm. I bought it, of course, how could I not? I knew I was enough, this, this was my intelligence, my medal to take back from the trenches. “Look, look how clever that I jumped all of your hoops, set higher and higher to keep me out” and now I was there, ready to be enough.
Only, I was told that some of those on the other-side of the hoop would doubt me. “Nothing to be doubted of course, but best to quieten them”. I needed only prove I was good enough. Think the right thoughts and say them the right way, the write the right thoughts to show you think them the right way. ‘Wrong schools, right mind, that’s me’.
And as Mr. 7.5 did I ever prove my right mind! I ran, pillar to post, tip to base. Saying my thoughts, writing my thoughts. They told me, and kind of them to say "those thoughts and words were right", i writed good.
All of my kind loving good people that I collected 1 to 7, they told me I would always have made it, they told me, told me that I could have done it and more. But loving them meant I couldn't trust them. No. 8 would prove them and prove that I was intelligent.
But, there was a hole in the rug, I lost my 0.5. I had won only to lose. Despite my right words, they weren’t enough to jump the last hoop: no. 8 was not, as I thought, bathed in fire but in grease and I wasn't dry enough, wasn't educated in the right places enough to clear that hoop. And it was gone again, back to 7. Down the snake.
Each time I have lost no. 8 I have remembered Mr. 0, remembered fleetingly that jobs is jobs and they will not assuage or delay a death. Only, I AM Mr. double poverty and one more try won’t hurt. I could be bathed in golden light and walk with my head high. It's worthy of hatred, trying to turn the worm of rejection.
But Mr. 7 as I am; I am no longer rageful and the ghostly foes from the rear have no power over me and the double poverty can take nothing from me that I don’t have.
So now I am Mr. 0, once more.
What to do? That’s a terror. To BE, that’s a joy. Only to be happy and proud, away from rage and too clever to believe in failure; So now, Mr. 0
Not as a capitulation or some second place, at least I don’t think so. Now ‘lost’ is a success. I have had to fail to succeed AND now I can’t lose or fail, those are the boundaries of an angry scared boy who is dead. I have to learn to live.
By the way this is you too. If you’re No. 8 you have probably failed, in getting your goal you failed to realise you must chose your success, draw your battle lines. If you are no. 1 you can turn, turn, turn. Forget the worm, forget the ghosts. You can’t, I suppose. I certainly couldn’t, but no.8 is not the win you dream of. Mine wasn’t. But Hey I was only Mr. 7. I am only Mr. 0 now.
