Garden State and circumstances of birth

To-day March 8th, 2008 has been a good for me, for the football supporters of Portsmouth and Barnsley. It was also a day when curiosity was fired up once more about the circumstances of my birth, and more particularly about my birth certificate. I obtained confirmation that my second birth name was Joseph when in 1957 at the age of 18 years I was provided with a shortened version of my birth certificate. Later I obtained a longer version and this confirmed the previous information and that no entry had been made under the name of father. When I was told the truth about who he was for the first time in 1999, and remembered that my copy of the full certificate had not been returned after it was sent somewhere, I requested another. This confirmed the address of where my mother had lived but contained an anomaly which struck me as odd as it differed from previous information in that in addition to my second name of Joseph was a number 15 and then below this Josephine which was crossed out. I was puzzled that if the individual who had typed the copy from the handwritten entry had made a mistake which it had not been corrected. I assumed that perhaps an error had been made at the time of the registration which was then corrected but given the circumstance which led to getting the certificate, I decided to leave this aspect to another day. As part of assembling documents and other information for the work about the relationship between my biological and care mothers, I decided to seek another copy of the certificate which arrived this morning, only to find that the information is presented in the same way as nine years ago. Perhaps someone will be able to explain this anomaly despite the passage of time. It is difficult to write an honest and accurate account of things where there are so many unanswered questions.

I did not watch the whole of Manchester United V Portsmouth in quarter finals of the FA Cup because given the way Manchester has played throughout this season I assumed they would have a convincing win and from early on it appeared this would be the situation. I therefore did not see live the incident which Manchester United claim was a penalty and certainly I have seen penalties given in similar situations. Nor was the penalty given to Portsmouth which led to the replacement goal keeper being sent off not as clear cut as some have suggested. It is therefore understandable that the Club Management, the Players and their supporters should feel unhappy that Portsmouth managed to survive the closing moments to gain their place in the semi finals which will be played at Wembley. Sir Alec is not unknown to have temper tantrums and to express his feelings to the media. He is also someone who holds grudges. He has become the greatest football manager of the Premiership years and one of, if not the greatest managers of all time, His outburst on Sky TV subsequently echoed by his Assistant Manager to the BBC, as Sir Alec refuses to talk to the BBC direct, was inexcusable and had it come from a lesser man, I would expect the Football Authorities to punish in the severest possible terms, with his club chairman requesting an immediate public apology or giving the man the sack. What a role model he has set!

Because I am going to watch a football match tomorrow and will take my car, I decided to drink my bottle of bubbly today, over lunch continuing through the afternoon, forgetting that Newcastle was playing a match at Liverpool, just as well because they lost 3.0, but decided that I would watch Barnsley home quarter final i.e. with the present Cup holders Chelsea, I have visited the Barnsley ground on several occasions as it is possible to travel there and back in a day and given its location my memories are of a cold, windy and bleak ground whatever the result. The victory of Barnsley at Liverpool in the previous round was well earned but no one including the Barnsley club or their supporters believed they would be able to give a repeat performance with a repeat result against Chelsea. OK Chelsea fielded a different team from that which had won in the Champions League Cup earlier in the week and they were away from home against a team they had not played before, and OK the Barnsley players were all fired up and well prepared as were their supporters. But no one could have expected the level of their performance, or that they would be able to sustain throughout the first half when it mattered during the second. It has been twenty eight games since the chosen centre forward scored his last goal but his continued selection of a reflection of his all round play. When he goal was scored and most of football outside of Chelsea erupted with delight we still did not believe this would be the winning goal 15 minutes later and as wave upon wave of Chelsea players through themselves into the attack, it did not seem, that Barnsley could hold out, but they did to the excitement of everyone, except the Chelsea club and their supporters, many of whom are calling for the head of their manager. Jose Murinho could be heard laughing all the way from his homeland.

The less said about England's performance in the first Test against New Zealand the better.

Garden State has become branded as a twenties something film because this $2 million 25 days of shooting first feature by young man who acts and directs a project devised while he was in college, because it swept into the big time grossing over ten times as much as the cost in USA box office receipts alone from word of mouth as young people travelled distances to pack cinemas where it was being shown. While the film recaptures important aspect of my own experience during that period of my life, it seems to me a fundamental expression of USA values in transition as the gap between how Americans would like to see themselves, their families and their communities change into a more realistic presentation.

First my personal identifications. I went away from my hometown because it was constraining but mainly because I needed to find my true self away from the family and its environment and from how I had behaved and represented myself to that point. A major reason for feeling alienated from my early environment because I believed the media presentation of the norm of happy adjusted white mother and father with two point 4 children actively involved in their church and community and knowing lots of people was the norm. In my adolescence and late teens I commenced to discover that what I believed was the norm was not so, and that many others possessed a similar view of families, relationships and the world at large as I did, first through my involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Direct Action and then at Ruskin College, but those with whom I had contact were recognised as a minority

It was only in my mid twenties that I discovered that most young people have issues with one or both parents and with their brothers and sisters and extend family members. Because of my training and through work I also understood that one's views, and more importantly ones feelings tend to be myopic and that few during their twenties are able to view their parents in particular in the round, although grand parents can be an important bridge, as well as of practical help, when young adults move from their transitional life and take on the duties and responsibilities of marriages, children, homes and work requirements. While I had an unusual upbringing and had unusual experiences, I discovered that in general we all has similar feelings about ourselves and the important things of life.
The parents shown in the film Garden State are weird, abnormal, perverted, mad, odd balls etc. The main character is played by the film's director and writer Zach Braff. Zach was born into a Jewish family where his father was trial lawyer and significantly his mother a clinical psychologist who divorced and married others during his childhood. As a ten year old he was diagnosed obsessive compulsive and it is important to know how far the assessment and labelling of himself so young was because of the occupation of the mother or how it otherwise arose. In the film his father is a medical psychiatrist and his mother is disabled where an accidental incident in which he is involved during his childhood affects her physically and leads him to be diagnosed and medicated by his father, (which is always unprofessional and dangerous). The film is about his return home when his mother dies, in an accident but where it was likely she committed suicide, covered up by his father, with whom he has had no direct contact, for years (Sir Ian Holme). On coming home and admitting he has been experiencing brief sharp headache brain surges, his father arranges him to see a colleague, to whom Zach admits he admits he has stopped taking the medication, and while at the hospital he meets a girl with a compulsion to lie. The girl's mother appears normal one discovers that in the garden there is a pet cemetery with a couple of dozen graves as the daughter is told to bury the latest victim of their pet keeping incompetence.

One of the things I missed in my growing up was being part of a school community once I moved from the small preparatory school with only a dozen or so pupils in every class to the regional Independent Catholic Boys school with ambitions to become a Public school, and where most travelled some distance by car, bicycle and public transport and where to my knowledge I was the only boy from Wallington in my year and who attended my Catholic Church. While I did meet up with two friends from school on one or two instances, I only ever met one other boy from the John Fisher School class year in Wallington when one Sunday after leaving school and walking in a local Park I found that he was in goal for a visiting Football team. There were three streams in the initial class year and two in the subsequent two years, some sixty to seventy boys and I had been in each of three streams for a time. In Garden State although Zach has been away for nearly a decade, he is recognised by former school friends everywhere he goes and this kind of being part of something reoccurs so often in USA films that it believe it reflects a reality outside of the city centre and other residential areas where the inhabitants move in and out and about frequently. I have always regretted that I was never part of such a situation and did not maintain links with those befriended during the various periods of my life.

One of those Zack meets on his return home is a former close friend who works as a grave digger and burier who he meets at his mother's funeral and this young man takes him to the grand home of another school friend where he meets others from his past. The mother of the grave digger embarrasses her son by having a succession of young lovers one of whom works wearing a knight in armour outfit and Zach wakes up in his friend's house with BALLS scrawled on his face and other writings on his body put their by the mother. Such are also the older generation guests at the funeral wake, several of whom closely resembled some of my relations if you swap Jewishness for Catholicism or vice versa. One relative produces a shirt she has made which matches the pattern of the wall covering in the toilet. I still have some hand knitted jumpers from the hand of my mother and aunts, although in fairness these were often made to order in later years and are still wearable, which is amazing given how much extra weight I have put on.

The most endearing of the older generation, although not much older, is a couple that live in a kind of ark house with their child above a chasm of at least two miles in depth which was discovered where a new shopping mall was to have been built. (This reminds that when I went to the post I discovered dangerous structure notices the council or its agents have put up near my house, I think to cover footpath paving stones, possible as the majority party is in a panic because one of their number is likely to lose their seat in the elections this May). The couple are being employed to guard the site while a legal battle take place on whether the Mall can still be built or the area declared to be of long term geological interest. This philosophical couple, who make additional money from antique jewellery, are in fact working undercover to gain evidence for the environmental group involved in stopping the Mall and their only abnormality appears to be that of living in an Ark, which was anyway appropriate as torrential rain descended on everyone in their area.
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The reason for claiming this is a film about the rejection by twenties something's of the values of their older generation is that most of those who attend the party, and put into words by the former best friend, are not interested in working hard to provide for the future or settling down. They just want to live a little, smoke a little pot and something stronger, have sex and party. The only thing missing from my time is the belief that you can change the world for the better and had a responsibility to care for those not as fortunate as oneself. Alas it is my fate that I did not smoke pot, have lots of sex or go to many parties, I wrote this well into my third glass of wine fizz, to make the point it is never too late though. The party is held in a large house with a large heated swimming pool owned by another former contemporary who has sold a patent to make a more efficient form of Velcro. He party's because he is bored and continues to do so after his brother committed suicide in the house only a couple of weeks back. The main these or message of this film is that one should always be truth to oneself as soon as you fund out what that is and not try to live up to parental expectations or the image of what you should be like given you through in the media. This is personified by a young police man who pulls up Zack for not wearing his crash helmet who is also another former friend who was last seen taking drugs. The policeman is married with a child and defends his change in roles by saying that he has great insurance cover if he gets shot. He openly admit he is acting the role as he thinks it is required of him.

I want to also to say something about the film's creator Zach Braff and his obsessive compulsive diagnosis as a child and echoed in the film. Dabbling in psycho social concepts is not to be recommended especially by those who can see bits of themselves in every set of symptoms, This is so with OCD Obsessive compulsive disorder. For example although infatuation, fixation and perfectionism, together with ritualised behaviour are features of this condition, many people become infatuated or fixated with a film star, rock or pop star or footballer, or with a team and spend their lives reading about them, collecting stuff, attending films or concerts, spending vast amounts funds, without it being a psychological need or psychotically problem over which they have no control. It provides them with pleasure and usually does not harm to others except in terms of time and money which would otherwise be used. That I am using my remaining year to create a work which no one may ever see or enjoy can rightly be considered an infatuation with an idea or fixation on an idea. Almost all human beings experience infatuation that condition of intense feelings which defies reason and mixed with anxiety about the feelings being reciprocated, something which most football fans in the North East only know too well. Infatuation is used in the context where the feelings are not reciprocated or unrealistic. This is also so for passion. I may have a passion for someone or something that is not recognised or reciprocated but it may also be.
Another aspect of OCD is perfectionism and far from this being a problem condition, if only more individuals did the work required to try and achieve perfection, the better quality of life they and all of us will experience. I tend to try and complete activities I set out on and to do as originally intended. This may suit aspects of my character although it also means that I find myself committed to some action or activity long after I would like to move onto something else. My position is also reason based and when I worked in local government I took the view if something was democratically arrived at I had a duty to try and put into practice in the way intended, and if this was not possible because of insufficient funding and staffing or for some other reason I went back and said so. I caused some humour and a little uproar once when asked to explain over spending, I said not enough money was in the first place (muttering under my breath, as I pointed out toe everyone at the time). I have also been greatly influenced by Aldous Huxley's Book Ends and Means which confirm my own belief and understanding that it is more important how you do something than what you set out to do because you will never achieve objectives if your preparations and methods are false. However there are aspects of OCD that I intend to follow up because they involve physiological conditions some possibly inherited.

The football prevented me from seeing the whole of Life is not a Fairy Tale, the story of Fantasia Barrino who won season four of American Idol and where only brief aspects of her background were disclosed during the series, although more may have been disclosed in the general media in the USA. The young woman, a devout evangelical Christian, was raped when she was sixteen and then became pregnant by a feckless individual who showed no interest in his daughter but continued to have influence over her for a time. There was a campaign against her potential success, because she was black and because she was a single parent but she won the final vote recording 55 million phone calls. I will repeat that, Americans in their millions telephoned, or voted by other electronic means fifty five million times. So far this season the recorded total votes as the finalists were reduced from twenty four to twelve has risen to the mid thirty million. Such is life in America. Something to celebrate I think.