Never Stop Noticing..💗
Dipping through my dead Dad's memoir EYEBROWS AND OTHER FISH a creative account of my imagination, memories and reactions.
If you like your newsletters without politics or preconceptions or seeking a break from the norm you may have just found your new hangout
7 March 2024
Dear Chaser!💗
First of all let me thank you for your patience in waiting for me to update you on how things are going within my relationship. I will no doubt be back soon with many more observations, complaints and chaotic accounts of random escapades between the two of us in the near future. “Riveting” I hear you grumble. Well, I hope it will be. How are you doing anyway? What’s been happening with you? Have you notice that I am writing this one directly to you and nobody else this time. It’s Chaser! Not Chasers! (plural) - this is because I have been missing the mark of why I started to write newsletters in the first place. I wanted to get closer to people who might understand where I am coming from and appreciate the words spilling out on the page in front of them and like myself, wouldn’t mind the direct intimacy and company of a complete stranger that doesn’t want to phone you up at 4:00 am in the morning to complain about the lack of sex they’re (not) having or knock on your door mid-week and miver (bother) you with all their unsettled drama floating around inside a stupid little head because they don’t have a soul in the world to talk to or seek advice from and fuck it - you do wish you could listen to them and help them but like me again - pressing a heart from the comfort of your own home with your feet up, bra off and glass of wine in your hand whilst looking at the rest of the bottle (knowing that you don’t have to share a glass with the poor bitch up in your inbox) then you’ll understand this now. My need to connect but from a distance. A safe distance but I really hoped for intimacy too.
I feel like, when I first started writing to ‘the masses’ - I raced in feet first - stood up on my soapbox and yelled from the rafters “Everyone Look At MEeee!” and then flopped when nobody did look because they sussed me out straight away as being a shit public speaker. My writing wasn’t the problem but my false air of confidence and over familiarity and lack of warmth in my delivery.. I made everyone feel like this was some sort of self- promotional, cathartic act of narcissism. It drove a wedge between us and did the exact opposite to what I want and need and what I think you would like also, or you wouldn’t be here.
Thank you for giving me this chance to reach out to you again on a more personal level (I have opened comments up as well as knocking the ‘S’ off the end of your ‘‘names’’ I love you my one and only wonderful two dimensional (2d?? did I get that right? like - flat?) I don’t know! I just know that I want you here. You are my perfectly lovely person, who happens to be gorgeously tipsy, a little bit too tired for my shit but trying and so fucking good looking - I am so lucky that you are still my Chaser! You know who you are! I don’t but I have a few images in my head as I write this to you. Please save a place for me in your heart land thank lucky starts I’m not sitting at your dinner table. Speaking of dinner.. let’s get to the meat of this mad adventure. It’s 1.34am and I’m sat up writing whilst waiting for my takeaway to say it’s processing and then I’m going to be racing against the driver getting to the restaurant. So, far it Just says ‘order received’. I digress..a wee tangent. Meat. I was talking about the chewy bits of this newsletter update. It’s not going to be very coherent. I guess I’m like the Just Eat app…. not showing up as having processed anything yet.
The things I will be talking about are still raw - even since 2017 when I lost him. This is NOT the first time I have talked about the legacy he left (and even now it won’t be much of a lasting legacy revelation! here either ). Shit.. the driver is on the way. I am going to go through bits of Dad’s book and drag out some memories and ideas. Inspiration for times like this when all is happy in the house of sadness. My relationship is doing great and plain sailing and I can only write whenever I’m ‘going through something hard and tough or sad and crazy’ - I must be a miserablist writer… I’ll take that.
The first instalment is going to be cut extremely short because I have just finished my kebab and I am exhausted now. I hate anything sat marinating in my drafts so if you’re reading this on 7 March 2024 - that means I quit before.. actually it doesn’t because it’s only 2:00am. If this arrives to you after 7 March 2024 then hopefully I have pieced some stuff together in one essay, published it and put it to bed. If I have sent you this as an instalment they’ll be more to come. Regardless of if I write anything much else now, I feel like we have had a lovely wee chat.
I’ve really missed this page. The people and the process. I love writing to you here. Enjoy!
(saying enjoy sounds a bit morbid considering the way I am writing this out about my late father- that’s as sensitive and as sensible as I think I can be with this essay without losing any sincerity.
Yours humbly, (and forever weirdly) yet considerably yours! HA! Love, Chasey Delaney💗 _ I’m here when you need me.
Eyebrows And Other Fish
by Anthony Scally (1965-2017)
Dad’s sitting comfortably in a cushioned metal hospital standard chair looking directly at the trick-cyclist opposite him who hasn’t yet looked up from his file, not his file but my Dad’s file. This magnolia folder, held together by slack rubber bands and oversized paper clips, carries the key to Dad’s psychological history. I picture him smiling, hands firmly holding his knees down to prevent his legs from shaking uncontrollably. He isn’t scared or intimidated he is merely excitedly waiting to discuss himself and these feelings causation of thoughts he has been thinking. This is Dad’s spotlight, a place to shine, he tries to shine a light on everything he is experiencing and enlighten the medical faculties with ‘probably’ new insights with the information he is still reciting in the quiet storm which is his brain. He is here to tell them everything.
Everything but the darkest depths of his brain’s inner workings, everything that troubles him now, not at home, everything that can already be explained by him and discussed with him and he is not stranger to the advice which will be executed to him; he already knows everything… he will talk and educate the authorities and be a good little out-patient taking his medication, he is ready for anything and everything.. Everything but the truth. He keeps the truth hidden in the secret department of his padded ginger-haired skull, in his own compartmentalised lock-up which he keeps closed without a key in the ‘KISAMO BOX’ that nobody gets to see. He doesn’t keep it locked too much, locks can be picked - he should know - but I know his password and now that he and his box have reached their demise, destroyed in ashes behind those red gold trim curtains as his favourite song plays us all out of the crematorium. I turn back to thank him for sparing me those details, only I am lying about that. He told me enough for me to put all the ducks in a row. I end up telling myself this:
“ I just couldn’t or wouldn’t pry him for information, my dissociation made memories dissolves immediately as they were made but one thing he did not take with him was the message, the holy grail of his life’s hidden truths and the KISAMO BOX a figment of his imagination and his own recollection exploration(s) and experiences still linger within the corridors of thoughts in my own brain. He may has given me every tool in the box to pick those locks to work it out to set his truths free; I didn’t twig and didn’t believe how it would come to be so soon before I scratched about the death of my Dad to uncover the final meaning behind the public password he always gave everybody, like hiding access in plain sight, I know his password.. SERENDIPITY. “
Right now he is noticing the eyebrows are like dolphins conversing with one another as the trick-cyclist is talking. Twitching blue and grey spikes with fins and eyes and noses floating on an empty space of an emotionless face… like sharks or dolphins missing the ocean. He settles on the uncontrollable bodily functions like wake-snoring, legs shaking, hands-trembling side effect responses from all the strong antipsychotic medications and now this.. *burst of laughing* uncontrollable hysterics have nothing to do with any symptoms or misregulation in mannerisms. Dad had manners, good manners, studious standards and prude expectations of reciprocating manners. For all this ‘crazy’ hysteria nothing was to blame other than Dad’s own imagination and those fucking dolphins. Dad told me he felt extremely cautions after that adn because he entire life he felt like he was under caution.. the title was bourne (or am I just being fancy? - born?) yada yah.
Note: The tag line on the front cover and the inside title cover. Strangely, although the official cause of death on Dad’s death certificate says left ventricular failure… (heart attack).. I strongly believe that he did in fact induce that heart attack by killing himself - somehow but we will get to that later. These are my own opinions which I have only shared with two people. I can’t get other members of the family upset about my conspiracy theories or ‘accusations’ as I often get called out whenever I question things; even if they’d just think that it’s ‘just chase and her paranoia. Can’t trust anything a schizophrenic like her says or thinks. It’s probably the shock and grief’.
Very cool