F**k It Therapy

by John C. Parkin

  Which brings us back to Simeon Langford, our real prisoner in a modern prison with his plastic fork.

  When I first read the article, I thought hurrah, like an excited boy in an Enid Blyton novel. (For anyone not British and of a certain age, Google it. The books are dark and edgy tales for children, and introduce the shadow side of life… the kind of thing Tim Burton would love to adapt into a film.) So I thought ‘hurrah’ because he was a real prisoner doing what I thought only the imaginative prisoners trapped in my head would do. Here’s a man tunneling out with a fork, not just any fork, a plastic fork, I thought. Wonderful. It must have taken him months, covering the hole with papier-mâché. Ingenious. Though I still want to know more about this story. The information ‘papier-mâché’ isn’t enough for me. Was the wall painted plaster or bare brickwork?

  Either way, how did he make the papier-mâché match the hue and texture of the wall? Did he have paints, too? Who is this man? Is he a set designer who went off the rails? What was his crime? Did he tunnel into a bank vault with a plastic drill? Did he explode the safe door with firecrackers? Did he replace the stolen banknotes with Monopoly money so that no one would notice? Did he use a dodgem as a getaway vehicle? Did he go on the run dressed as Ronald McDonald (no one would think HE would rob a bank!)? Did he lie low by sitting in the one place no one would expect him to hide: in the police station waiting room?

  Or did he have a fetish for forks (he found just the word so NAUGHTY), and lifted a handful of forks from every eatery he set foot in? Reported to the police on numerous occasions, he was given warnings (this is not a dangerous crime, after all), but just couldn’t resist, so was finally imprisoned because of his threat to the cutlery budget of small and struggling local restaurants.

  I want to know more. So, if anyone knows more, or if you, Simeon Langford, are reading this, please get in touch. I don’t know if it’s altogether impossible. Simeon is there trying to turn over a new leaf in prison (or by the time he reads this, maybe, on the outside again), so getting a self-help book with a prison theme might really help.

  Back to your exploits, Simeon. Brilliant work with all that digging. Brilliant work with that papier-mâché ruse. But then you went and pushed all the rubble out through the hole so that a guard noticed it under your window. Simeon:

  Have you not seen Escape to Victory and numerous other movies, where they take the dust and rubble, put it in their pockets, and release it slowly in the yard? No? Well, if you ever get sentenced again – and I hope that’s not the case – spend a few days downloading prison movies. Get a pizza in. Enjoy using a metal knife for the last time in a while.

  I know what you’re saying now: ‘How could you get that brick dust out anyway with a fork?’ Simeon, Simeon. You needed a SPOON – a plastic SPOON. If you’d just thought to lift a plastic spoon as well as a plastic fork from the canteen, victory and freedom could have been yours for the taking.

  But then, Simeon, as one reads more of this very short summary of your escapological antics, one does find the revelation of a fact that is beyond belief. May I remind you?

  Langford was being held on remand after attacking three warders at another prison four days before he had been due to be released from an earlier sentence.

  Four days? You couldn’t wait four days to be released? Was that why you resolved to learn the art of patience? Did you think: As a test of my newfound quality of patience, I will dig my way out of this Victorian prison-house using only… A PLASTIC FORK?

  Simeon, I hope you make it out next time (via the gate having served your sentence, rather than through the wall). And I hope you use your obvious abilities in constructive ways on the outside, and lead a fulfilling life. I’d even send you a book if I knew where to send it, and I’d sign it –

  Fork It.

  If you prefer, you can go straight to Breaking Through the Wall of the Story.

  1 A ‘70s UK sitcom set in the fictional Slade Prison and second home to Fletch (played by Ronnie Barker), a kindly and lovable rogue; ‘Doing porridge’ is British slang for serving a prison term, and the phrase refers to the traditional breakfast served to prisoners.

  We threw out two chapters here, because there wasn’t room in the end.

  But you can read them and other chapters that we had to throw out, and a whole load of interesting stuff that we can’t think of now, but will have added by the time you get to read this book…

  Here on our website:

  www.thefuckitlife.com/extras

  H BLOCK: BELIEVING IT’S REAL

  H Block is filled with the materialists, rationalists, literalists, and the atheists along with all those who don’t believe anything until a committee of experts and scientists has confirmed it’s true. All other apparent evidence to the contrary is discounted as hokum. However, the hokum really enjoys poking fun at H Block by surrounding it and filling it with peculiar phenomena. H Block is where the fairies have their fun, where the angels get some time off from being good, where the wickedest ghosts haunt, and alien entities taunt, where the astonishing coincidences that happen to most people once in a blue moon happen during every cycle of the moon.

  However, the H-blockers have a remarkable ability to ignore anything that doesn’t cohere with their pre-existing model of how things are.

  H Block is like a very sophisticated haunted-house attraction at an amusement park, but populated by graying rationalists who wander around insisting they know how everything is done. Their childhoods are long forgotten. There’s no room for magic. And no room for any possibility other than how they think it is.

  In one day, a ghost dressed as a guard walked through a prison wall. The prisoner convinced herself she’d imagined it. A fairy went for a swim in Harrison Fairweather’s soup, looked him in the eye, and then spurted soup in his face. Fairweather went back to the serving hatch and insisted there was a fly in his soup. For one hour, the spirit of telepathy granted the highest-level telepathic powers to the prisoners, so that everyone knew what every one else was thinking, or knew what they were about to say before they said it. A lot of prisoners spent the hour saying, ‘I knew you were going to say that.’ But they didn’t once suspect they’d been the recipients of a gift of phenomenal paranormal perception.

  Later in the day, when one prisoner fell and cut his leg, one of the guards clicked his fingers and the wound instantly healed. The prisoner assumed that the frequent portions of boiled spinach explained the remarkable effect on his blood cells’ clotting ability. Jimmy Wagfinger, who had been in a wheelchair since a motorcycle accident in his 20s, got up and danced a Highland jig1 for a bet. But once the money was paid, he lost his incentive to dance, so sat down, never to get up again for the rest of his life. Those who saw it wondered whether he’d got hold of some potent drugs, then thought no more of it.

  Close to dinnertime, it looked like a storm was on its way. Sure enough the heaviest, darkest storm engulfed H Block. It was ferocious but short. And when the sun came out, if anyone had cared to look out through the barred windows, they’d have seen the prison was now surrounded by an emerald sea, lapping at a beach of golden sand, which before was just the gravel yard. But no one cared to look out.

  During the night, the ghosts of those lost on the Titanic made an official tour of the block as part of their world benevolence tour; griffins made a huge fire in the gym out of back issues of Elves Weekly and danced round it until dawn; God popped in for a flying visit and did a huge crap in the warden’s private bathroom; and the prison’s pet mouse spontaneously combusted. Luckily, all the sparks from the combustion became tiny baby mice, but with a superior DNA to their mother, which allowed them to squeeze through the eye of an ant sitting on top of a needle balanced on an aniseed ball.

  And that was just one day (and night).

  If you prefer, you can go straight to Breaking Through the Wall of the Story.

  1 A traditional dance in Scotland usually performed by burly men wearing kilts.

  BREAKING THR
OUGH THE WALL OF THE STORY

  We all have a story, of course we do. Some are good. Some are bad. Most are mixed. And if you’re an A Blocker, you’ll be stuck in yours.

  One interesting element of having to talk to the media after the launch of F**k It was that I realized it was possible to tell your story in many different ways. As someone who doesn’t often look back or talk about myself, it was weird to be constantly asked about my story (yes, people always wanted to know what my F**k It story was). The thing is, they wanted to hear my story in just two minutes or 200 words, before going on to the next feature or article, to the next story. And the media, and for the large part, other people, aren’t interested in an ordinary story. They want sound bites, highlights, and newsworthy tidbits, stories condensed into headlines. And that’s not to criticize the media or other people. We live in a market of information, bombarded with thousands of bits of information (stories), and it’s only natural to want the most entertaining ones condensed into delicious, bite-size, memorable morsels.

  So, I sliced up my past to see what made a nice story. I was the chronically sick man who said F**k It to fully healing and miraculously healed overnight.

  True, but is it my whole story?

  I was the man who hit a crisis in my life, physical and emotional, and ended up blubbing like a baby on a train, but realized in a flash of desperate realization that I no longer cared what anyone thought of me, and it changed my sense of self in relation to others forever.

  True, but is it the whole story?

  I was the son of Christian preacher parents, and I’d explored numerous Eastern spiritual traditions, and fused all the best stuff together into a philosophy based around the Western profanity F**k It.

  True, but is it the whole story?

  I was the advertising creative and writer who gave up a glamorous career to set up a retreat in Italy. And I was the owner of ‘Europe’s Best Retreat,’ who gave it up to do what I loved best – teaching F**k It through books, gigs, and occasional retreats (in other venues).

  True. True. True. True.

  So why doesn’t it feel like the whole story? Why doesn’t any of it feel like the real story? Because the real story – the real-time, evolving story called LIFE – is not like that, just as a game of football isn’t adequately represented by the 20 seconds of highlights on the sports slot of the late news program. The actual game might not be reflected in either the score or the highlights. One team might have dominated for most of the game – but not scored. The whole game could have been dominated by mediocre play, boring set moves, foul tactics, but the last five minutes saw two such beautiful goals from the most angelic, light-footed players that they will be replayed on TV screens, and iPads, and future pads into eternity. Did they represent the game? No, but they’re good to watch.

  I am not my story. Even though, the more I’m asked about my story, and the more I have to try to keep it consistent (even if it’s boring for me sometimes), the more real it seems to become. I am not my story. And you are not your story. You are a living (usually – my readers do tend to be alive, although I heard recently from Gordon Smith, the medium and author, recently that I have quite a few fans in the spirit world, too), learning, changing, evolving, inconsistent, mixed-up, sometimes f**ked up human being.

  Everything around us tends to demand that the story is consistent (just like the media wouldn’t like it if I chose a separate ‘slice’ of my life every time they interviewed me). We want to be consistent. We’re not like we were as kids, are we? We had no desire to be consistent then, or notion of what our character was, not when we were young kids anyway. But then people go and spoil it don’t they? They tell you what you’re like:

  ‘Oooh, you’re such a good boy/girl.’

  ‘You are kind, thank you for being so thoughtful.’

  Or:

  ‘Do you have to be so selfish?’

  ‘Why can’t you just behave like everyone else?’

  And you soon become the good, thoughtful boy/girl. Or the selfish, misbehaving freak boy/girl. What you actually are/were is a good/selfish/thoughtful/misbehaving/kind/freak/normal boy/girl.

  We all are/were.

  It’s only this daft idea that we should have a consistent, entertaining story. We probably go through a patch when we try to resist being typecast for life. It usually happens as teenagers. But it’s hard work. After a while most of us probably internalize the external desire for the consistent self, and settle into something okay, some median approximation of our many selves, like a tedious politician chosen to represent the many disparate elements of the constituency of Self.

  Well, F**k It. If your story is one of your ‘Its,’ as it probably is, then F**k It.

  Yes, you will always have a story. And sometimes you’ll enjoy telling it. You’ll even enjoy believing it. But don’t ever forget that it’s just a story. Don’t ever forget that you’re not your story. Story is ego. It’s okay, but it can be boring. Life is also ID. No, not the fashion magazine. Google It. Google them both, ‘ID magazine,’ and ‘ID Freud.’ ID is the F**k It State.

  Hey – and don’t worry. You don’t have to try very hard with a lot of this. Let it in one ear, and even if some of it goes go straight out the other side, enough of it will settle in the bit in-between to make a difference. A permanent difference.

  Now, have I told you that when I was a young man I was nominated for a special prize for the…

  Crowd shouts: ‘Boring. Get off.’

  And he got off. And all that was left on the stage was ID. No, not the magazine.Give in to creepdom

  At the moment I am totally in love with the song ‘Creep’ by Radiohead, and I often play it in our groups. (If you don’t know it, we’ve put a link on our site so you can download it – www.thefuckitlife/extras.)

  We all want to be ‘special’ (like the song says) in this wild world: we want to be perfect. But the reality is that we are incoherent; we are always less than we’d like to be; we don’t make sense and we can’t make sense of our lives; we can’t quite ever prove to ourselves that we are good enough.

  You see, we are creeps and weirdos.

  The moment we realize that, we can give up trying to be normal.

  The sooner we stop wanting that flawless body and that immaculate soul, the sooner we start having fun.

  The sooner we give in to our creepdom, the better. Because being a creep gives us all the freedom in the world to f**k up, get lost, look real, just be. And it’s sexier than you think (in that uncompromising way).

  BREAKING THROUGH THE WALL OF FEAR

  If, as a prisoner of B Block, you peeled away the plaster of the walls of fear, beneath all those scary facts and warnings, lies one huge, scary fact: YOU AND THOSE YOU LOVE ARE GOING TO DIE.

  Beneath everything you’re scared of, everything I’m scared of, everything nearly every single human on this planet is scared of, is the simple fear of death and loss: the constant undercurrent of awareness that this is not forever. And what a bloody pain it is. Last night I watched an episode of Family Guy that was all about death. (Funny, given I knew I’d be writing this chapter this morning.) Peter Griffin’s wife finds a lump in his ‘breast’ and they think immediately it could be cancer. He initially wants to ignore it, like we all would, but he goes to the doctor. Later, after he’s been given the all clear, he’s having dinner with his family; he’s so happy to be alive and appreciates what he’s taken for granted. But there’s a knock at the door. You know it’s coming, but Chris (his son) opens the door to Death, the grim reaper, come to take his father away. So Peter has to say goodbye to his family. He gets to tell them all he loves them. His family gets to say goodbye to him. Of course, this is an animated comedy, so it’s funny. But… But I felt very sad as he was saying goodbye. I was thinking: this is remarkable, it’s just a cartoon, I don’t even know these characters, but I still feel deeply sad. Of course, I was projecting the scene onto my life; what it would be like to have to say a final goodbye to Ga
ia and my boys. But that must have been happening more deeply, because what I was feeling in the moment was sadness for him, his wife, and his kids – him, a drawing!

  I don’t want to go. I don’t ever want to go. I don’t want to ever have to say goodbye to my family. I want life to last forever.

  That’s the truth. I want it to last forever. And anything that reminds me that it won’t, hurts me. And so many things remind me and us that it’s not going to last forever. In fact, almost everything reminds us that it’s not going to last forever. And not just the scaremongering media. Even fall makes me feel slightly sad: it’s the end of the long, joyous summer – no more lazy days on the beach, no more late evenings eating outside. The fall is the death of summer. Everything in nature retreats and begins to look as if it’s dead (though often it isn’t dead, it’s usually sleeping).

  And it’s possible to feel that sadness, at loss and potential loss, almost everywhere you look. EVERYTHING MUST GO is the sign in the window of one of the stores on the road outside this hotel. And it’s true: EVERYTHING must go, eventually. Not just the cheap bits of furniture in the store that’s closing down, but the store’s boss, and the building. And every brick of this street and city. Every single person, with their hopes and dreams, and all their family and friends will go. Every living thing, every inanimate thing, every creature, every spoon, every king, every worker, every football player, every watch, every phone, every thought, every memory, every love letter, every tear… must go.

  I have a heavy and astonishing book on my desk at home called Panoramas of Lost London. And it’s heavy and astonishing in myriad ways. It contains photographs of a ‘lost’ London between 1870 and 1945. Photographs of buildings that no longer exist; places that aren’t even a memory for those who inhabit the same space 100 years later; people caught in one moment in their now-passed lives. This book fascinates me. The scenes and the people are familiar enough to relate to: after all, these are our great-grandparents’ generation. It’s not like looking, for example, at photographs of the Romans in Rome 2,000 years ago (though that would of course be astonishing and mind-blowing in itself, and would make an excellent though expensive photographic project). This is recent history. But it’s also another world. The places have changed beyond recognition. The people are long gone. But not just that – their ways of living, the houses they lived in, the stores they shopped in, have long gone, too. It’s that intersection of familiarity and lost-forever strangeness that makes the photographs fascinating, moving, and, yes, sad.