Go on. You can finish this one of yourself

This is probably the worst thing to say to a woman in bed. I've only said it once.
Oh god she deserved it though. I remember just getting so bored of her  poor sexual skills. I'm not great in bed myself. Just not enough practice. But I make an effort and I always want a woman to climax. She on the other hand was...well....lazy. Never made the effort. I think she thought sex was just fucking or something. Her idea of foreplay was what a man did.

I admit a degree of anger but more frustration. I suppose it's just a lack of my communication skills.

But I wonder what she told other people? I wonder if she told any of her female friends about what I'd said. I never told her she was crap in bed so she'd have thought "Go on. Finish yourself of" was said out of male
 laziness or something.

There's a time when a girl I loved who was a friend of hers looked at me awry when I made a joke along the lines of "Go on. You can finish this one off yourself" referring to a joke I couldn't be bothered finishing. Now she may have looked at me funny because she was amused by an off the cuff comment that made innuendo out of a normal phrase that could be mentioned in the office, or perhaps my ex-loved one had told this person what I'd said.

There's this thing called Theory of the Mind. It's interpretation of people's intentions often based on little gestures. Apparently schizophrenics have poor ToM. I stay away from attempting to interpret these little tells because they're not explicit. I'd like to ask the person I joked with but whose reaction to the joke I couldn't interpret but I don't trust her and she doesn't value me.

It's a shame because I'd like to know. Really just for a blog piece about a "How good are you in bed?" mobile phone application of the future. It's relevant because gossip becomes formalised using this sort
 of application. Imagine people could rate their partners and other people could access these. After all, we can rate companies and products. Why not public ratings of people once the technology matures?

I miss her

I found this unsent blog post. I don't remember who I was thinking of when I sent this.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	I miss her
Date:	Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:46:00 +0100

I just wish you were here with me right now. Your being is a light in my  life. I shall admire from afar. x 

A lesson for me

I've been concerned my photography has got worse over the last 6 months. That may or may not be true.

I took this about a year and a half ago. It's a significant photo. I took it on the night I got together with an amazing person. Oh how I miss you my love. Whenever I see this image I'll always think of you.

I wondered if it was my equipment. The lens I used to use was a professional Canon lens and since it broke I've had to make do without a replacement.

I used to take a lot longer with my images. This is one of two versions of this image. Some images I'd do several version of then choose the best through a lengthy process. I'd take time to correct a shot carefully and do the fine detail work. This image took about an hours work and I hope the work that's gone into it can't be seen.

I think it's the latter and not the former. Good work takes time.

--

Canon 40D and Canon 28-70mm f2.8 L

A surprising result on love

I'd expected a search of articles in Google Scholar with "love" in the title to give a tiny number of studies compared to the number with "depression" in. In fact there are barely twice as many academic sources on depression as there are on love.

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=love&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_sdt=1.&as_sdtp=on&as_sdts=5&hl=en

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?sourceid=chrome&q=allintitle:%20depression&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=ws

However since 2000 there are just over three times as many on depression as on love.

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle:+love&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0

http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle:+depression&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0

And drops back to around 2 times looking at sources from 2009.

There still significant. If I included "depressive", "melancholia" and other broad synonyms for intense unhappiness there may be a bigger effect.

The point I was going to make is that unhappiness is thoroughly medicalised however love doesn't seem to be. There'd be an interesting pub debate on whether is should be medicalised. In a way excessive love is - stalking may be considered a form of mental illness though I'm not sure under what diagnosis. I think there's a diagnosis in DSM-IV related to women who can't achieve orgasm. Liking sex too much is also in the American diagnostic criteria.

There certainly isn't a diagnosis for lack of love or avoidance of falling in love as far as I am aware. Living without that essential part of human life is something that many people live with, even people in relationships. The sadness of that makes me want to medicalise their sorrow, even if they don't recognise that they're missing out on a beautiful part of life.

The point I was hoping to make but I don't have the evidence to support it is that depression is medicalised because it affects people's work capability. A lack of love may cause depression but that is of little concern to medicine. It certainly offers no treatments. There are therapists who might advocate love as a treatment however they get struck off.

Would there ever be a society that could have "love leave" where a person needs to take time off because they've fallen in love and they want to enjoy that feeling and for it to blossom. I doubt I'd see that in my lifetime. It will be many decades before the shackles of Victorian conservatism and prudishness are overcome by progress towards the truer nature of humankind. The pub banter of "bet that person would chill out if they just had a shag" is where the wisdom remains.

I'm not sure if the barrier to a prescription of love (or sex in the jokey pub quote) becoming a regular treatment option is the prudish morality or the fact that the mental health care is becoming a system to keep people employed rather than anything to do with genuinely making life better for anyone. Certainly in the UK the people are seen as meat for the machine of society and improvements in mental healthcare are mainly in behavioural modification to get them back into whatever mindnumbing, soul crushing drivel that most people have to spend most of their adult lives doing.

Another post I have yet to write or perhaps I've written already is what I consider the next mental health system to be: unending, unconditional love for everyone by everyone. Its an insane idea but it comes from an understanding of why the second major mental health system (psychiatry) developed. Unconditional love for all means there would never have been the outcasts that were created as society changed during the Industrial Revolution/Age of reason. Homosexuality wouldn't have been treated as an illness. Psychosis would be an experience manageable in the community. Schizophrenia wouldn't exist.

I might as well as for heaven on earth....

What's love like for a mad person?

My head is heavy tonight. Its been one of those four seasons in one week weeks. Highs, lows, brutal crashes. My heart now feels torn asunder but the drink will salve that pain like it salves so many others. The medication of the hypocritical.

Last night someone asked me if I loved someone I shouldn't and I answered truthfully. It really hurt. The reason for the hurt is simply a realisation of what I already knew though, manifest through other people's paranoia.

What is love is something for another post. Its an interesting topic debated by many philosophers and fools. I know its feeling and I think many people never do. I allow it to happen because it is a wonderful and painful feeling that makes life worth living and losing. Its part of life and misconstructed social norms mean the most beautiful of emotions is fettered by outmoded ideas of morality.

Love has a purpose. To bring two people together. To lay the foundations for a relationship. To unite two souls that once drifted endlessly alone through the ether.

It has no purpose to me other than the feeling itself. What point is there when when I fall in love I value that person and as soon as I do I know there's no point. When I fall in love I know that nothing can come of it because I know I'm not good for them. Only in moments of irrationality or mania do I make the mistake of having a relationship.

Some idiot counsellor would try and tell me that that's not true but I know better. I know I'm not a good person. I know that when I'm a mess I can be a real mess. I go through times where I lose the plot entirely, where my madness overtakes and there's nothing anyone can do. I have nothing to offer anyone in terms of the constructs of long term relationships. I fit few of the 'essential criteria' that people use to judge a person worth of a relationship. Self harm scars seem to only be attractive to a very small minority of people. And while I'm not suicidal now nor have been actively so in some time I live with the knowledge that I will take my own life.

My life is a total mess but its my life. I'd never inflict it on a person I love. I ask for no sympathy because I do ok without that hope. I survive and I thrive without that thing that others have and consider an essential part of existence, and I survive with a smile on my face.

But being accused by someone who barely knows me about something that is a silent burden for me is heartbreaking. Thank fuck for my true lover, my companion, my only friend in this sick twisted thing called life. Oh alcohol, I love you.

The pain and pleasure of unrequited love

Its an old friend of mine.

I know it well. I know the joy it brings me so fertile and enriching. The pain of repressing and impotence is equally so. The sweetness of the pangs of what could be but never will be are like a perfect riff played on the guitar strings of my soul.