Tag: suffering

Get Used To It – 11th September 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Get used to it, it’s not going to change
Settle on down til it’s no longer strange
Culture shock, not worth fighting against
It’s upsetting but not worth taking offence
Getting used to it, going along for the ride
Hiding in the open is the best place to hide
Running away or kicking against the pricks
Means never teaching this old dog new tricks

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Today I’m grateful for:
Receiving some comfortable new sandals that at least attempt to give me some arch support.
The best thing about today was:
Walking home from Utopia in the light drizzle. It was just the right rain not to get too wet and to keep the temperature down. The air felt supremely fresh and reinvigorating. I really enjoyed the walk.

I took this picture because the clouds amongst the mountains looked amazing and reminded me of windswept moors of England.

The Poems of a Ridiculous Man – 7th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

So here’s the last of my Dostoevsky cool quotes for now, this time from the fantastic The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Despite being quite dark and moody I feel like my poems came out a little more on the positive side – perhaps a reflection on how I was feeling when I wrote the poems compared with when I was inspired by the quotes as I was reading the story.

Acknowledgement to Husker Du and Rob Crow/Heavy Vegetable for some relevant phrases and ideas and, as before, the poems borrow heavily from the text.

Searching for a picture for this post also lead me to finding this hand painted animation of the story.

Ah, it’s so hard to be the only one to know the truth! But they won’t understand it. No, they won’t.

No Truth

Only I know the truth
They sure won’t understand
I carry this burden
It is just as I planned
Truth is in the saying
The truth will set you free
But I will never share
The truth is just for me

Maybe it was the result of the conviction that dawned upon me quite independently of my will that nothing made any difference in this world.

Conviction

I tried and tried and tried and tried
To make a difference before I died
Close to the end a sudden dawning
Independently and without warning
Your time is pointless, meaning, none
A pinprick in millions more to come
So make the best and start believing
Despite the sentence we’re all receiving

…eternally dear to the hearts of her most ungrateful children.

Realm

This earthly realm
Where it all starts
Never ending, eternally
Dear to the hearts
….of her most ungrateful children

We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering. We don’t know how to love otherwise; we don’t know any other love. I want to suffer so that I may love.

Love and Suffering

I wanted it all, wanted it so badly
Staring out of misted windows like a fool
To love this love is to suffer it gladly
Our twisted hearts make us look so cruel
This love, true love, it knows no other way
Crushed and broken hearts not spoken thereof
Life lived without it, not for another day
I must, I want to suffer so that I may love

My hatred for the people of our earth had always contained a feeling of despair – why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?

World of Masochism

My hatred for the people of our earth
Has always contained a feeling of despair
Why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
Why did I have to care?
Some days I’m just in KEN Mode
A rage of pure hate and seething
Other days I wish for utopia
A paradise full of our dreaming
Which way will it go today?
Which side of the bed did I wake?
Every thought is masochism
No matter which path I take

They grew to appreciate the beauty of untruth…the germ of the lie penetrated their hearts, and they took a fancy to it.

A Good Lie

Sometimes a lie is like a lover
A beauty to be believed
The untruth penetrates the heart
Willingly deceived

…they experienced suffering, and came to love it; they declared that suffering was the only way to Truth. Then science spread among them.

To Suffer

He felt he’d suffered enough
So the Buddhist jumped from the roof
Science says ‘he’s dead’
He thought it the way to truth

Each became so jealous of his individuality that he had to do his best to belittle and humble the individuality of others….

Tall Poppy

You’ve reached the greatest height
Like it’s some crowning achievement
Society brings you down to earth
Where everyone is in agreement

Voluntary slavery in which the weak submitted to the strong of their own free will, if only in order to gain their support to oppress those who were even weaker than themselves.

Shit Trickles Down

Submit to the strong by your own free will
Eat the shit until you’ve had your fill
So you may enslave those below you
Pass on the shit your master throws you
The human centipede, a fitting analogy
A voluntary agreement to this economy
A vicious circle made of 7 billion pieces
The pyramid scheme of human faeces

We’re striving for the same things; we’re all, from the sage to the worst criminal, making our way toward the same objective. Only we’re trying to get there by different roads.

Different Roads

You take the high, I’ll take the low
It’s the same whichever way you go
You take the low, I’ll take the high
Arriving together, just in time to die

Let’s say paradise will never come about! I know myself it won’t – yet I’ll still go on preaching.

Right Turn

Never stop believing
Counter negative traits
Never stop the search
Paradise awaits
It will never come
In your lifetime’s fight
You know what is right
Be doing what is right

Afterword:

Man’s desires are not reasonable and often make him act against his own interest and common sense, but they are what makes him human.

Contradictions

I am respectable, yet not reasonable
My flaws are the things that make me
My desires maybe contradictions
This human interest will not break me

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the daily struggle of thinking of something to write here, without repeating myself. During the day something will pop into my mind to write but when I sit down to do it I struggle to remember. As days are somewhat repetitive at the moment I keep coming up with the same ideas. So anyway, I am grateful that I have this first-world problem.

In Empathy – 6th August 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I cannot close my eyes
to the injustices I see;
unable to make a difference,
it’s just frustrating me.

Whilst others suffer,
happiness is an illusion;
I can’t wrap my head around
this disappointing conclusion.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the availability of almost any book I desire to read. If I can’t buy a physical book I can usually find a digital copy.

Reading ‘The King Never Smiles’ is a saddening experience. Each night, I read about 10 pages, and I am enlightened more and more about the reality for Thai people. They have been totally manipulated and tricked into submission – not even submission – it’s like Stockholm Syndrome.

They have learned to love their captor. Every protest and uprising in the last 100 years has amounted to exactly the same thing – a useless government hamstrung by palace politics and corruption. Governments can barely last a few years, sometimes not even making it to their first day. It’s so frustrating that it makes one wish for private fighter jets to go and eliminate evil.

Whilst mine and Amy’s lives here are beyond comfortable, we are struggling through empathy for the rest of the population, deluded and ignorant or not. When Amy says she wants to leave, I can’t help but feel it is a case of wanting to stick one’s head in the sand. If it can’t be seen, then it has no effect.

Unfortunately for me, I have always felt empathy for people around the world suffering in this way, no matter where I reside. I have been, and still do, enjoy my time here, and the suffering I see for the people here doesn’t lessen my concern for those suffering in Brazil or the USA, anywhere else.

With the rules and laws here, though, trying to fight back against them is very dangerous if you live here. The ones desiring radical change are forced overseas to speak their mind and often lose the local population’s confidence by being abroad. A catch-22 easily exploited by the powerful. It’s sickening and saddening and pushes one to the dark corners of nihilism.

There seems little hope for humanity despite these comparatively good times we live through.

Become – 4th June 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

To put our laws in a palace
Or to keep them in our mind
How should we punish malice?
Is it just natural to be unkind?
The many differences between us
Don’t need to keep us apart
You really should have seen us
How we were at the start
If we look deep inside
We can feel we are all as one
Push connections far and wide
Let’s walk together – let’s become

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to read about the dog tied to a cart and how struggling against it will cause suffering. This little tail highlights one of my problems – always fighting against the cart instead of going with the flow. I can detach myself from the cart later – when my time comes.

Fear of life – 6th March 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Pic: Nick Blinko



My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.

Edvard Munch

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for our wheelbarrow and shovel. They helped me move rocks around Amy’s cactus garden. Sometimes I can’t believe I own a wheelbarrow. All the other components of being grown up seem minor in comparison. A wheelbarrow!

Baby, I love you, but I’m too loaded to love you properly – 10th May 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Things are still a blur to me now. I can’t seem to concentrate on anything for longer than a few minutes. It took me three sittings just to write one letter to old pal Joe in Boston. I started to write bits and pieces here and there too, at work and at home but I never seem to get stuck into it for long enough. I’m all tensed up right now and feel ready to explode.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s trip to Newport and Thursday’s day off work. We went window shopping for laptop computers and camcorders on the weekend which was fun, and round to Rosemary’s on Sunday afternoon and played with Jade, her beautiful granddaughter. ‘Come on’ she says and ‘wee wee’ quite a lot too. We watched her fall asleep as she ran and leapt and dozed in snores within seconds of being wide-eyed.

Kerry’s dad passed away on Saturday night but Kerry and mum seem to be coping okay so far – a relief in some ways after many weeks of suffering.

I’m a bit down really, fed up with work and biting back at my baby at home. I don’t feel much in control of myself sometimes. I know all this so why don’t I do something about it! Hmph. Did much more in these five days but am unable to continue right now. Bye bye.

Veggie – 21st September 1984

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

You call me veggie cos I don’t eat meat
So I can call you animal cos you think it’s a treat
Blood is pouring off your sterilised plate
But you can never sterilise my hate
You animal
Meat means murder
So what if you’ve heard it before
You never thought twice
Cos you don’t listen anymore

29th June 2023 – I was a staunch inarticulate vegetarian at this time. In small-town England alternative views were a battleground and expressing anything like this could see you vilified or beaten. I’m not militant about eating a vegetarian diet these days and slowly more people are conscious of the suffering their own lifestyles bring to other beings. Do what you can.