LOST IN A MEGA-RICH FOG

If the cap fits wear it!

 

We have been henpecked by capitalism.

Britain had a great tradition of eccentric  

Individualism but the film: ‘A Long- 

Good Friday’, has become a reality 

and we live now in a world of greed 

taken over by the American dream.

 

Our souls are moneybags labeled 

with A brand name. It’s no longer ok 

just to Win ten thousand pounds on a game show.

We want to win a hundred million and get

sucked into a million-pound drop.

 

We are dropping to a level where you

don’t need Knowledge and art anymore

All that matters is the money in your pocket.

We are lost in a gambling haven Sanctioned 

by a government that takes gains from drugs 

drink and gambling. When I went to school 

they taught and promoted individualism, now 

they teach business and greed.

 

I don’t have answers my only way is to reject

 greed. We have already Been swamped by the

 dream, it is Taking us down

the road to nowhere.

Heres my website:  adrianfox.org

DIS-ABILITY-19/9/2014

 

This is the very reason why I’m a non-voter, I was

 very saddened to hear the news from my care

 giver’s that Scotland got the “NO” vote. 

I was very sad for Scotland, they stood up and took

 it on the chin but I was saddened for humanity,

 maybe this should have been a world wide web

 referendum. 

 

This was the first time in my life that there was a

 shift towards a true democracy but now I don’t

 even know the meaning of that word.  It feels like

 I’m right back at the start in a highchair not 

a wheelchair but I’m standing or sitting firmly in 

the fact that I know everything I’ve got in life, I got

 myself because I have true democracy and truth in

 my heart and as the “YES” vote said trust for each

 other humanity.

 

 Good on Scotland they took the world’s first step,

 just a shame they didn’t have the balls to follow

 through. We live in a molly-coddled nanny state,

 watched over by a sweet old lady that’s full of

 sentimentalism. I’ll stand up to sit down in this

 wheelchair for my rights in any country, when 

I took the stroke, and I woke unable to walk 

or talk paralyzed down the right side. 

 

It seemed to me that I was damaged goods

that they should have let die.  Their ethics of

 medicine and their moral judgment kept me alive,

 what about humanity.  No wonder our economy

is going down the drain. I have lived now for 

years since the stroke in this wheel-chair, really

 when you take me down to my basic form of

 humanity, I am just a brain

and a left hand. 

 

Living in a welfare state, it has cost the powers

 that be almost two hundred thousand pounds to

 keep me alive.  Not one second of my life has been

 any better than before the stroke, do you call this

 living?  If I had been given the choice of life and

 death I would have chosen death, we have the

 power to save life but it would cost billions or 

even trillions to build a disabled infrastructure.  

I would choose death not on the grounds of 

the ethics of medicine or moral judge-

meant but humanity.

 

That old wives tale is still alive and kicking

and that old crusade that we pump billions

into defense.  It doesn’t matter what land 

you’re from, this was a world debate 

and the world hasn’t got the balls to move on 

and be themselves. A Scottish friend sent me a

 pensée about always turning left 

that’s the right road.

 

 

PLACEBO EFFECT

AMENDED

 

 

 Each time I write this, I get closer to that state of being. 

I have no memory of this; I find it very hard these days 

to focus on positivity. Alina Feld said in her study of melancholy. 

'The self knows its light only by knowing

darkness". My darkness is projected from within. 

I live in a state of melancholy, but I hope 

this essay shines a little light in the dark 

and can help other stroke sufferers.

 

A way to accept this blemished acceptance and find hope. 

I live in the right hemisphere and write a blog each day as 

I must keep reminding myself. The Portuguese poet said 

in a poem called The Dream of Being Alive, this

is a blog about being alive.

 

@apfox1961.blogspot.com

 

 

I woke up after my stroke in a cold sweat, in a state of hallucination. 

The drugs that were keeping me alive were making my mind trip like 

nothing else on earth.

 

In the drug world, they talk of a bad trip and a whitey 

this was a trip you didn't want to go on. 

Words can't convey those moments. 

There was a crowd of

 doctors around me administering drugs, a fatal dose.

Hallucination; it seems I had a glimmer of hope, but now 

I think death was knocking on my door. There was 

no great light, but I think the neurons in

 your brain fire, and images resemble how films portray your life flashing before your eyes. 

I was out there locked in limbo.

 

I had no control. I have seen brutality and gore growing up 

in North Belfast, but not on this level. Just when 

they were injecting, I gripped the blankets

 with all my might and took the ride to hell. 

Only I had to take this ride to live or die. 

I was flickering between states of my brain injury 

has now damaged my holographic projector.

The brain flips it like a trip switch; it's survival. 

I was locked-in a locked-in syndrome.

They say I died for seconds in intensive care, and they declared me dead, and after the adrenalin 

stroke boost, I sat upright. It must have been harrowing 

for my family. I recall seeing my reflection 

in my son's eye as he leaned over to kiss me goodbye. 

I looked like a shadow of my former self. 

I saw my face again on the stainless steel elevator 

going to the ward. I had lost three 

and a half stone. Looked like The Walking Dead.

 

I thought the nurses were out to kill me. I even

 tipped up a stainless-steel surgical table, thinking they were

killing a patient and I was following. I was so paranoid. 

Those were extraordinary times. I had nothing on my mind; it 

was empty, like a forty-five-year-old newborn who didn't know

 the difference between fantasy and reality.

 

Those first days were like being in a Stephen King novel. 

A man behind my bed was cutting bodies with 

a chainsaw and tossing body parts into a skip; these 

weren't dreaming states. They were between 

sleep and awake, drifting. My left hemisphere 

was wiped clean, and these images came in 

half-awake hallucination; Is, I was like that for days.

 

 

I have never seen anything like this; a million-dollar film 

director couldn't capture what I saw. I have never seen 

the likes of tripping on L.S.D. psychedelics. 

Aya Waska would need to look in. My long- term 

memory loss was like the film Leaving Las Vegas 

I was leaving humanity.

Hunter Thompson couldn't write this script.

I'm just lucky in a sense to have lost my long--

 term memory.

 

This was like something from the book, 'The Diving Bell 

and the butterfly, the man in the book, died from his stroke 

after reciting to his private nurse by blinking his eyes 

once for yes and twice for no.

For almost a year, I lived like that with no voice

 , just an alphabet board to the point and spelling the letters. 

It was so uncanny in that world of silence; I could see 

the words coming to my mind, but they wouldn't roll off my tongue. 

I have no memory of this, but I know I was there; my brain 

injury caused the blackness behind my eyes and aphantasia.

 

I don't know why or how I am still alive; I have aphasia, dysarthria, aphasia, I am paralyzed down the right half of my body, and 

I can't walk or talk, mumbling my way.

 

I also have a degenerative spinal cord disease now 

bedbound with bedsores, laying immobile due to COVID 

when all physio stopped, I was in bed for three years.

I can hardly move from side to side; I could go on 

but Schopenhauer was right in his study of pessimism 

when he said life is suffering, I would say life is

a suffering fucking hell, but not until we face this 

blemished acceptance can we find hope.    

 

Marguerite Dumas said when you find your

 self in a hole at the bottom of a hole, you

realize only writing can save you.

 

I know I repeat myself, but this the only hope is,

a Keats Ian negative capability, hope in a hopeless world. 

After a year in the hospital, the Royal Hospital did 

surgery on my damaged vocal cords called a Filin-go-plast. 

I was one the first in N.I. to undergo

this surgery, and my voice gradually came back to mumbling 

My left vocal cord is faintly damaged and beyond repair.

I can say all this without an emotional grasp on memory 

I can even deal with the grief of my mother's death 

and my sister's suicide; that's aphantasia. It helps me deal 

with trauma; I think it's a brain reaction of survival to help 

us deal with PTSD.  

I'm not seeking sympathy or pity, but you can keep it. 

All I ask is that you read this and determine your 

own answers, not one that's shoved down your throat, 

I really did believe I would go out in a wooden box.

 

          This is my placebo effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 THE GREENMAN

 

I was in the elevator going up in the lift to a ward, from intensive care where I died and rose from a stroke. The porter and nurse waffled on as I saw myself on Stainless steel. 

I looked like something scary I had seen before but there

 was nothing in on my mind. I had a massive stroke that

 wiped clean my left hemisphere, it was hard to get a fix in

 that vegetative state. They glided me beside an exit door, I

 lay there wrecking my broken mind. The nurses gave

 me drugs and left me to get a fix on life, as where I had

 seen that face in the lift appeared again played on my broken

 mind. Life was very surreal, a girl in a yellow uniform

 mopping up beside the bed.

 

I gestured water, I was parched and couldn’t talk and she

 uttered no English in a Balkan tongue and walked away only

 to return with a cup of water. A bit of humanity goes a long

 way. I will never forget her. I lay in a dead state for days, my

 only friend was a little green man above the fire exit door.

 Didn’t know where I was, it was as if they dosed

I with powerful drugs then left alone to live/die.

 

I couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, that little green man gave me my reason for living, on the ward the patients were dropping like flies. The nurses were there in case but you had to find your own footing. Mine came in the form of a little green man. For days I watched him. That little green gave me a fix on life, I figured out In my broken mind that if there was no green man I was hallucinating. If that little

 green man was there I was in reality. It gave me a fix on life.

 

One summer's day a nurse opened the door to air the ward a waft of greenery woke something in me. I saw the grass and

 the gate cars going by. A google like a map appeared in my

 mind for the first time I knew where I was, at the back of

 Craigavon Hospital and cars were heading up the Bluestone

 the road past lilo church where my mother and sister.

Just a simple little green man woke from a vegetative state. People look for a spiritual substance outside themselves but their determination is in them. That road and the cars going

 by opened a map of Northern Ireland. From that day forward

 I was on the road to stroke recovery. Being taken to another

 rehab hospital,i n the life I saw my reflecion on the cover of 

a Peter Gabriel record cover, I don't remember, I recall.