clinging to the wreckage

  I’m a materialist. Not like Madonna, the material girl living in a material world, I simply believe in physical matter and not the spiritual realm. However, in recent times, there have been moments that I have felt my mother has been trying to communicate with me from beyond. Firstly, a sequence of books that I read in a row in which the protagonist dealt with the relationship with their mother (or children) causing me to revisit my own relationship with my mother and reassess many events and conversations. Then, last night, locked in a fever dream, hearing my mother call out ‘I know you are Michael, and I just want to see if I can help you in any way.’ But, even in the dream, I was too sick to respond. Finally, I regained strength and called out to her. I entered from outside into a kitchen (one from my teenage home) and she was calling back ‘where are you?’ When I walked into the living room, I saw her sitting on the couch close to the balcony door. I was standing in front of h...

  The balcony is calm and beautiful, but the sound of gun shots from the nearby shooting range is consistent. Intermittently reading and writing I receive a message from a former lover in Taiwan to say that she recently had a baby. We exchange a few lines and have a laugh at a memory of her rolling her eyes. It was one of her idiosyncrasies. It was cute. Now the gun shots somehow remind me just how far away everyone is. Family and friends. Even here… there is no one at the pool, there is no one on their balcony, there is just me and if it were not for the gunshots, I’d feel like I was the last survivor in a post-apocalyptic world. As I continue to read, I realise that sensitive scenes in films and books hurt me so much these days. When I was younger it simply seemed like fiction, but I know the suffering is real.                     Now I sit at The Ginger Man pub and sip a beer. The weather i...

  On this day, one year ago, I was in Salt Lake City for the first time. The 2 nd of august was the day of the Bad Religion concert that I used as an excuse to travel. It was an interesting time because the city is beautiful, it is well connected to the airport with a clean, efficient, and cheap train, it has a beautiful natural history museum and great bars and restaurants… but I found the people to be a little bit strange. They seemed to be either hippies who appeared to have come down from the mountains or they were extremely conservative religious types. There was no in between. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful trip and I have fond memories of riding on the bus up into the hills to visit the Natural History Museum. I also recall riding Lime Scooters around and even riding one to a sushi restaurant close to the music venue before riding the scooter to the venue to watch Bad Religion. I rode the same scooter from the concert to my hotel later that night.     ...

  The tiki social… a beer after a bike ride in the deathly heat. Is a fascinating social study. I feel like I could earn a PhD in anthropology from sitting at this bar. There is not a single man wearing a shirt. The women are all on video calls at the bar. What a world. I pay and hop onto my bicycle to venture to the next bar. Familiar people and a beautiful manager dancing through the day. A frozen margarita washes away the day’s heat and a few hours are spent in blissful retreat.     Looking around it is more apparent than ever… some people are lost. Engulfed in a world wave of tradition and trying to keep up with the neighbours. A taste of freedom at the bar turns them into a wild storm. A grin the size of the sun appears as a beer is placed before them. For a few moments, they forget that they have a spouse and a child and debt and so many responsibilities.   The day has been a wild one. Alcohol has been flowing. A pub crawl by bicycle. Some things concern me, su...

  Friday morning is sadly clouded by nausea. Hoping that fresh air will revive the spirits and the body, I take a walk to feed the ducks. There are some large ones that live permanently at the lake, they are loved by the community. I laughed out loud as one of them ran towards me when I held out my hand. The way a duck runs is very unique.                         Walking back, I felt a sense of pleasure at the thought of solitude. An empty apartment in which I can simply sit back and do nothing… or listen to music, read a book, watch a film, sing, dance, sleep… all in the blissful silence of solitude. I did my banking and some investing. Keeping a budget file, I calculate my finances precisely and invest immediately when I get paid. This has been life changing. After this, I call my dad and help him with his banking.                ...

  Sleep is a distant daydream… only a daydream because I don’t sleep enough to dream of it. It’s 03:38am and the temperature is 29 degrees C (84F). The cat is hiding; I just walked out onto the roof to see if I could see her. However, there is a beautiful full moon and the Dallas skyline in the distance is showing off an array of colours. I have a meeting at 6am, which doesn’t help. Opening the fridge at 4am, I see a bottle of Aperol, and it looks like fruit juice, I almost take a swig. Sanity prevails and I reach for the milk to add to my coffee. I stare at a sentence for fifteen minutes, remove a comma, then I add it back and close the laptop.                     Walking to the office in the 5am darkness, I think that I am clever in wearing soccer shorts to remain as cool as possible, but as I step into the office, I discover that I have left my trousers at home in the bag I had placed them ...