clinging to the wreckage

  There are moments of fear… not a fear of being alone, but a fear of being disconnected from everyone to the extent that, if I were to die right now, there would be no funeral, there would be no gathering, there would merely be sadness for my father and brother and a wondering at what happened. People say ‘give my name as your emergency contact’ but even I can’t get a response out of them. An emergency contact is someone who should suspect something is wrong. If that person doesn’t hear from you for a full day, they know something is wrong.                     It is difficult to relate to people. They seek marriage, children, ownership… they don’t like music, they lead such lives of convention. I have always been a loner. I have always sought and loved the solitude of a quiet room at home, far from the crowd. Inside the room, as a child, I would play with figures, making them play ‘soccer’. I...

  The wind howls in the black night. It seems almost to seek to gain entry through the window. The temperature drops and I think of the cat that sleeps outside. She is wise and knows what to do and where to go, but it is not exactly comfort. Dreams of loves long lost once more wake me at 4am and render me restless as I gaze into the dark and think of the past and long for one last embrace. A world of war and winter is what we have right now as the power-mad boomers cannot sit still… they press and press in their endless need for attention and control and domination. All boomer leaders are in some way weak. Perhaps it is simply that they cannot step aside, relax, and leave the world to the future… they think that they are the only ones capable of running things. Weakness masked as power. The super ego of the ‘me generation.’                     We lie in our beds, sit on our couches, drink in b...

  I sit in the waiting room, scared, and it suddenly dawns on me how many experiences I have had in life. Serious and sometimes terrifying ones, as well as many fun ones, of course. Sitting here, now, it’s funereal. Yes, it is like being at a funeral. Wearing a jacket. Nervous. But the nerves start to disappear upon thinking of all the intense experiences of my life. At one point, in my younger years, they were almost too much to bear. Now, they often stir very little feeling, which, in a way, is sad. We grow older and become desensitized. In youth, if we are humble, we realize that we are lost in a world in which adults have experience and understanding, which they use to knit together the fabric of society, making things function. In our older years, we have so much experience ourselves that, even though there is so much to learn, and we understand that there are so many people with more knowledge than us, we know that we can hold our own in discussion, we are educated, we are ex...

  Christmas Eve used to be my favourite day and, even yesterday, I was thinking ‘tomorrow is my favourite day of the year.’ This was because it historically marked the beginning of a holiday that lasted into the beginning of January. It marked a time that most of humanity slowed down… together, for once, and enjoyed some peace and quiet and celebration. It was also historically a night that I was with my family, and we would all sleep under the same roof to awake to presents and feasts and parties. In later years, it became a night often spent with a lover or girlfriend, a night spent cooking and drinking, talking and laughing, kissing and being romantic. Today I rode my bicycle to a nearby restaurant for lunch, I sat at the bar and had a beer and a pizza. However, before the pizza arrived, a strange guy arrived and, even though the bar was empty, came to sit next to me. I eventually escaped, went home, then walked back and went to my regular bar. It was peaceful and pleasant. The ...

  At 04:30 I give up trying to sleep and make a cup of coffee. It’s the 15 th of November and the window is open because the weather is so pleasant. There’s an ever so slight movement of the air that pushes the smell of coffee to me. I’m so tired that it feels almost like a pleasant drug-induced state. Most of my friends are in the UK and Europe, so there are people to chat to. The American night is silent… most people have already arrived home from their late nights, and the early risers have not yet risen. Many people believe that if they wake up at 5am they will automatically become rich. It makes me smile. Most people either don’t have the discipline to wake up at 5am or, if they do, they wake up and doom scroll through Instagram or similar on their phones. Typically, when I am awake in the night, I am researching the stock market, reading a book, writing, having a conversation with Europe, or watching videos about life in Japan or Vietnam. I also spend a lot of time studying ...

  I found a postcard that I had written 8 years ago, but, of course, I had never sent or delivered it. It was to a girl I worked with in Madrid. She was from Romania but was, essentially, Spanish. She had lived there for many years. I was enamoured, desirous… she was an absolutely spectacular being. The postcard captured some of the beautiful moments that we had shared; breakfast in a tiny kitchen in a quiet corner of the office, sharing cake that her mother had baked, talking at the bus stop, a long romantic walk, arm in arm, a cocktail in the shade under the Madrid sun whilst I touched the skin that showed through a fashionable tear in her jeans. She was magnetic. Absolutely irresistible. Yet, she was also wonderfully helpful and friendly. She helped me to cross-reference and validate the bibliography of my Master’s thesis, a task that I dreaded, and I was eternally grateful for that. Then I left Spain and moved to the USA. I visited her twice after that, but she seemed elusive a...