Goodbye Old Chaos. Hello New Chaos!

It is a little over twelve month since I began this erratic record of a dysfunctional life that was quietly gurgling down a will-sapping maelstrom of anxiety and depressive negativity. My intitial coping strategy had been the mind-numbingly vacuous activity of doing nothing. In strict and pedantic terms of course I am aware of a certain ironic, not to say oxymoronic, non sequitur; of course I also realise that I have now fallen foul of the tautology as well. Such are the trials of the motor-mouth who spews vocabulary as a substitute for sharing confidences.

None of which explains my de-chrysalisization [Sic] which has occurred this week but that is a longer yarn and one that deserves a longer and fuller examination in words, partly for my own savour and partly for honesty. Honesty because the catalyst for the sudden track-switching was a certain rather dishonest transaction of mine and the consequential unexpectedly beneficial outcome. I shall maybe never fully succeed in convincing myself of my own worth as a writer -- I too often describe myself as a writer manqué anyway -- but any writer, good or bad, will agree that no experience is without value when it comes to that odd mental filing system we use as a repository for ideas and germs for ideas for bits of writing. So those who write blogs will quickly recognise the immense value, for a writer, of being arrested by the police. I have racked up more than half a century of living in a rule-raddled society without breaking any of the more serious arrestable ones and then just when I thought it was safe to assume I was past my best in terms of my opportunities for a life of crime, that larger Life (the one with the capital L) ups and drops a surprise in my lap and I found myself in a police cell wondering how the hell anyone manages to smuggle an item past the custody officers' body search with which to carve grafitti in the chipped paintwork that passes for decor suitable for those held in that innocent limbo between absolute freedom and "prisoner" while police enquiries ensue and a legal advocate located. I suspect that it does not need to be mentioned that the grafitti almost exclusively dwelt upon the artist's undoubted innocence.

My crime was rather serious. The absence of the flippancy of quotation marks indicates an uncommon (for me) nod in the general direction of serious. It was theft. I sold something that did not belong to me. For the last few weeks I have been in an irritating and stressful hiatus between one home and another. I acquired a tenancy on a run-down but otherwise sound and sturdy bungalow with plenty of garden and a neat, peacable neighbouring community. In contrasr, my place of residence for the last 9 years has become an increasingly depressing burden to me. A place of mounting debts and structural deteriorations (from ant infestations to earthquake subsidence). My recent depression further compounded the matter by adding to the dismal atmosphere, inside and outside the property, by my own neglect of the place in regard to simple housekeeping. Windows got grimier, floors got dustier and the kitchen ... I suspect that new forms of intelligent life may yet be evolving in some nooks and crannies therein. Meanwhile I was just a tenant. A tenant with no legal rights because the landlord was in absentia leaving me without a rental agreement and (being only absent for 2 years or so) without even the dubious luxury of a squatter's rights. The landlord was my former partner.

So I must talk about that "property" that was not mine. There was a garage, in which was kept a motorcycle. I considered it junk, in the way and frankly, a nuisance. I made no secret of my attitude toward it in my conversations with neighbours and one day a few weeks ago I was approached by some "gentlemen" at my door who informed me they had heard of my dilemna and expressed a willing desire to purchase this item from me. A sum was mentioned. Cash money was held out in front of my eyes. It was almost as much money as I had lent to my former partner almost 6 years ago, while we were still on relatively friendly terms; a loan that had never been repaid, or even formally acknowledged. Well I may be secretive and (like most of us, I suspect) prone to small dishonesties, but I do not admit ever to have indulged in fraudulent deception. I declined to sell and to accept the cash. The property was not mine to sell. I could offer no legal title, no bill of sale, no receipt. Such a sale was out of the question because the buyer would be in possession of a useless, illegal motorised vehicle that could not be legally registered for use. I was told that the junkified, decrepit and rusted-to-buggery machinery was not wanted as a possible runner but for spare parts and breaking. At a stroke my fraud or deception veto was trumped the emptor was utterly self-caveated ... with my part in the construction of the caution a relative sideshow. Beside the smell of a wad of slightly used 20's, which were doubtless fresh out of an ATM, was still wafting pleasantly into the nostrils of my purse, in which unpaid bills cowered in terror of (re)discovery.

The transaction, then, was simple. I accepted a modest but useful sum of cash and with little further reflection of a remorseful nature, I turned my back on the deed. Shameful. I deserved to be locked up for such a crime. Little did I think that incarceration was a real possibility. The only real puzzle, for me, is would I have conducted my affairs between then and the date of my arrest any differently had I obtained the gift of foresight? I have had a day or two to calm down and to reclaim a sufficiently firm grip on the handles of sanity to believe that I would not. The experience was actually deliciously funny and -- counter to my prior expectations -- I find that I am neither ashamed of nor contrite for my experience at the hands of good old British Justice.

But I wish to make this a record of fact as well as one of amused detachment and for that I am planning to save my powder and to publish my best account of the events that led to my arrest, my subsequent treatment and my later flight to a safe and, mercifully, anonymous new location. Justice has been done and it was seen to be done by all who were involved. Nothing is quite so satisfying as taking a large portion of cold revenge upon a person who is to all intents and purposes beyond all reach. I once described him as the least blackmailable person I have ever known. A man who thought himself without a single vulnerability ... but there was one and I found it. It was worth hanging around, like rabbit caught in the headlights of a truck, waiting for my crime to be discovered and to take "the consequences of my actions" (so sanctimonious are the declamations of the deservedly, but technically innocent, aggrieved). It was worth it because elsewise I would not have seen the expression on his face when he discovered that his precious bit of antique british engineering was no more than an oily patch on the dusty concrete floor. And writer or not I am unwilling to attempt a description of it. A major aspect of literature is that it depends in some measure for its success upon the imagination of the reader. I hate so to read tripe that hackneys out the same old metaphors for rage ... or any other condition of emotional extreme, don't you.