clinging to the wreckage

After seeing small snippets of the Paralympics yesterday at work I dreamt last night that one of my cats was a woman with no legs and one arm. I picked her up and put her on the arm of the chair and saw a look of immense sorrow in her eyes. I realised that she was dying of loneliness. I asked her how she was and she began to talk and tell me about how she was feeling. As she spoke, the sorrow seemed to lift from her face… it was almost as if the sorrow were transferring to me, for I suddenly began to feel a deep sense of sadness and disgust with myself for neglecting this person for so long. At the same time I felt fear… a fear of the future and how to deal with this situation. I realised I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, spend my time talking to her (or anyone) in the evenings… that was why I chose cats over people… but what could I do? She was my responsibility and it was no longer a matter of feeding, stroking, playing… it was now a human issue… it was like being married.

I read a poem by Bukowski this morning, as I do most mornings, and I can’t recall the name of it right now as I am at my desk at work and the book is at home on the floor in my room. However, in the poem, Bukowski writes about sitting at his desk writing and how he hears someone on the news say ‘We need Oil and Energy for the Future of America.’ Bukowski writes: ‘I think: “Fuck you, buddy”.’ I read on with a smile on my face as he then described walking over to the little fridge in his writing room; ‘Seven steps… that’s one step for every decade I have been alive…’ to get another drink.  Ah, with a light heart and a smile upon my ugly face, I got up prepared to face another day in this dog eat dog world. I drove along the highway and saw people racing and pushing and fighting to get to their office, sipping their Starbuck as they raced. I even saw a guy eating his breakfast with a spoon as he drove along in a sweat to overtake me.

I have spent most of the week thinking about death. This is not necessarily an unusual thing, it just seems much closer to home and relevant right now. Many people fear finding out that they are going to die relatively soon but, in a sense, isn’t that preferable to suffering a sudden and tragic demise? If you know that the days are limited, you can tell people how you felt about them. You can write and record things that you want people to read or hear once you’re gone and you can spend your time doing things more valuable than sitting in an office. Which leads me to the pertinent question; why do we not spend our time doing this before discovering that the end is nigh? Oh, I know… it is because we don’t want to be homeless and hungry. Fair enough. Speaking of which; those positivity posters are bullshit. Always. Every last one of them. Bullshit. Also… people try so hard to impress. A random conversation and they throw in ‘oh, I have read this… oh, I have done that’… why try so

The ghost of you still haunts these halls. Not a physical death but more a metaphysical one. A tragic ripping from the very fabric of my existence. It’s not often that you say anything but when you do it offers nothing of the truth. And then you discuss the things I say, the bits of my heart and mind that I reveal truthfully, with random people, but you paint it black and leave me fading in a negative light. So these people withdraw and a life alone becomes more lonely in the wake of the damage caused by you. And yet, for some reason, I still reach out to you and hope for some form of reciprocal understanding/compassion/care. I now know that died when you locked the door.

I don’t understand why it is that people constantly seek the company of other people. They phone, they visit, they message, they send letters, they hope and hope and hope that people will meet up with them and that every minute will be occupied with the company of other people. Do they not realise that people do not give a fuck? Do they not realise that people are not interested? Sure, once the request is made it is only polite to say yes but, ultimately, they would rather not meet. Why not spare people the pain of having to say no and just stop asking. Be alone. Spend time alone. ALONE. Do you even understand the fucking word? Spend some time alone and enlighten yourself. Enjoy yourself. Discover yourself.                 Do you actually want to learn and listen from these other people or do you want to talk and talk and talk and give of yourself to these other people? If you want to give of yourself, what makes you believe that you have something to offer? What do you lack as a

The light shines through ever so rarely but today that light shines through for no particular reason. And this even on a day that a Russian Female punk band is sentenced to three years imprisonment for singing a peaceful protest song, news that I find terrifying and sad. Never the less, something within feels childlike again… I am looking forward to the weekend in the way I looked forward to weekends when I was a school kid. A weekend that will be shortened by the fact that I work tomorrow. Never the less, work often makes going out afterwards seem better than it would have had I not worked. So, I shall work from home and at 4:30pm I will head out into Guildford town for drinks with a friend. I’m looking forward to it.

Void of love or life or even signs of intelligence. Insomnia does not trouble some, for insomnia is a disease of the troubled and the mentally active. Those with low mental activity are very infrequently troubled. Those whose main concern is what is showing on TV do not remain awake through the night contemplating the value of remaining alive in a loveless, greedy world of cruelty, suffering, sorrow and injustice. Every single thing that brings joy is transient. It flickers out and dies in a relatively short time. Some are able to move on almost instantly from this and therefore the pain is barely felt. Others, on the other hand, are left drifting through an emptiness of pain and despair because what they have lost meant so much to them, was unique and irreplaceable to them, they aren’t able to simply move on as if they are replacing a stale loaf of bread. There is no point reaching out… reaching out simply translates to ‘being a pest.’ Being a p

As the masses sit back and weep with patriotic emotion, I sit here listening to music, drinking wine, and the word rotating in my brain is ‘bullshit’. Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe it is a great spectacle. In fact, yes, it is... it is a great spectacle. It is a once in a lifetime event. Never the less, anything that causes such intense mass hysteria is not for me. It is so hyped up and extremely commercial. They simply may not rock the boat. The sweet, cute, comfy, well-dressed royals sit there in the crowd and lap it up.                 I appreciate people becoming interested in things. I think that hobbies are essential. But why does everything have to become a fanaticism? Why does everything become a complete obsession? People become interested in writing and then they are not capable of discussing anything other than writing and their entire existence revolves around writing. People begin to run and their entire lives become consumed with running. Dieting... cycling... swimming...

I walk past them... the crowd... the huddled masses... as they sit outside in the blazing heat, the blazing sunshine, and I notice they are drinking coffee. My eyes flick feverishly from table to table as my palms begin to sweat and my heart beats. I wonder what is wrong with me. Why does it upset me... why does it make me so anxious to see them drinking coffee? They are sat in the blazing heat in their casual clothing on a Thursday afternoon and they are drinking coffee? The thought suddenly occurs to me to call the police. I should call the police and report them. ‘But what are they doing, sir?’ ‘They are drinking COFFEE.’ ‘Are they disturbing you, sir?’ ‘Yes, they are disturbing me more than you could possibly know.’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, we cannot do anything about people drinking coffee.’                 I NEED HELP! I cannot live in a world such as this.

There are periods of time... moments... days... where it feels as if the lump in my throat will explode and drown the town in a flood of tears. I can’t quite describe the exact problem but i haven’t particularly been feeling happy since I heard of Tony Sly’s sudden death last week. Friday night turned out to be a decent night out but it brought with it guilt and longing and confusion and a wave of memories that washed me into the weekend and resulted in beautiful dreams which only serve up more misery once awake. But, then, reality dawns once more and I realise that I am no longer capable of the restriction of the conservative relationship. Not because I want to have more than one person, not at all, simply because I want the freedom to think, to write, to do nothing, to drink, to go out (alone), to travel (alone) and not to have to adhere to someone’s family/home/car goals and ambitions.

I arrived home and began to casually read through facebook status updates. Then I stumbled upon one which I simply could not believe, one which I refused to believe; the news that Tony Sly had passed away earlier in the day. Tony Sly, whose solo albums have been on perpetual repeat in my car and home for the last couple of years. Every holiday, every high, every low has been navigated with the help of a line, a song, an album. His lyrics and music have been with me for such a long time that I felt as if someone had just informed me that my best friend had died. I immediately thought of the lyrics to his (No Use For A Name’s) song ‘Feels like Home’: ‘It’s too late to talk to you and it’s too soon to say goodbye…’ and as this thought crossed my mind, that very song started to play on my itunes shuffle (from thousands of random songs). Gooesbumps shot over my head and down my spine and I stopped reading, put my head down, closed my eyes, and listened to the song. I was afr