clinging to the wreckage

  Monday morning moves in and, after a sparky flourish, the day settles into one of calm reflection. Sleep was mostly elusive and the night awake was spent listening to, and trying to make sense of, noises that seemed to stem from the apartment below. It’s difficult to describe the sound, something like that of a drawer being opened and closed every few seconds. At other times, it is like a hard ball being rolled up against a wall, as if a cat is playing, but it doesn’t last long enough to be this. Thoughts drift to 7am meetings which ultimately get cancelled. By the time they are cancelled, I have already woken early, showered, and started to work in anticipation.                   The day drifts on and I am a waste of space. Slow, and struggling to concentrate due to the lack of sleep, but also because I am excited about the trip to San Diego next week and, for the first time in months, a change ...

  None of us become famous while we are alive… very few of us become famous after we die. It matters not, just continue to do what you love, even if you can only do it in your spare time. Continue to write, continue to paint, continue to take photos… travel when you can, slow down and see everything aro und you.                     I went to the bar and we all shared songs on the jukebox, had a chat, laughed, and genuinely enjoyed the day. Yes, we are appalled by the renaming of a lake, but we understand that is just a weak leader trying to make a ripple in the water as he slowly drowns. What amazes us is how there are still people who even want that side to win the midterms, or any election, why? What is being offered? Is there anything being said or done or promised that will help the people of America? Is there any policy being promoted to try to win an election? There is nothing There is j...

  It suddenly strikes me… like a slap across the face. Normal reasoning fails because his supporters don’t care about forests, animals, climate, the homeless, the hungry, the poor… they only care about getting rich, and everyone else is lazy… or it is a hoax. Sadly, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. Most people only care about money and looking good. I strive to build wealth, too, and I am actively and aggressively doing so… but that does not mean that I do not contribute to help those in need. People are displaced by war, left unable to work by injury or illness, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and it is not ‘laziness’ that means they cannot afford food or even a home. We currently live in a society that treats its members like criminals whilst the real criminals are left to rule as they wish.                   And so a weekend that I was looking forward to starts badly. It begins with t...

  Even on days when you think there is nothing more that can be said or done to drive up your blood pressure, you hear talk of renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and threats to demolish the JFK Center. Absolute childish nonsense that must be created to annoy people and nothing else because it simply brings no value to anyone anywhere. And, even if you renamed a lake that is half in Canada and half in the USA… why on earth would you choose such an uncreative and unimaginative name as ‘Lake America’? I am honestly stupefied. In ordinary times it would be considered digging one’s own political grave, but when every crime seems to be forgiven and attempts to block legitimate voters and voting methods appear to be encouraged, we have a desperate fight on our hands. It troubles me daily to think where we could have been now under Kamala Harris. We were heading towards such improved global relationships and trade along with progressive thought and support at home… but it’s all been bro...

  A blood red sun rises over the lake as the earth once more starts to shake in fear of the heat that will bake into it again, relentlessly for the innumerable day in a row. The scorched ground is cracked in desert fashion, all is parched. The only thing more parched than the soil is my love life… but that is a story for another day. It’s calm and pleasant in the office, there is some humour and companionship. However, having arrived at 06:30, I left at midday and walked home to work for a couple of hours in peace and quiet. I logged a ticket to ask maintenance not to remove the cat’s bowls… then discovered they had not removed them.                     An eerie sense of positivity has crept in. Actually, that is more dramatic than it sounds, since turning 40, almost thirteen years ago, I have been mostly positive throughout that time. This is simply the result of learning to simplify my life ...

 The acronym becomes a synonym for ‘I am important and know what I am doing.’ How many times is it the case that we simply don’t know what we are doing? It is often. This is why a team is essential. A leader’s job is not to try to guide everything in the direction that they want, it is to listen to their team and then to support and help in any way possible to progress in the direction that the team has chosen based on the input of various experts. When someone pays no heed to their team of experts, and beyond, you can rest assured that there is a power hungry, secretive, leader at the helm… and it never leads to any good. This is my thought for the day.  It seems that the summit of the mountain of heat has been reached and now we slowly begin to descend into Autumn and winter. Of course, temperatures in Texas are not like those in other places. A heat warning in San Diego for 31 degrees Celsius seems somewhat humorous when considering that the same temperature is the low in...

He hates the mail in ballot as much as any baby boomer hates remote work, the death of the fax machine, the cloud, LGBTQ+, anything remotely progressive. He, like most late Gen X and Baby Boomers, can’t understand these things because he simply lacks the ability to see life from the perspective of anyone else. Like all narcissists. If remote work does not work for them (because they can’t act like a dominant boss in front of their family) then remote work doesn’t work for anyone. If cloud technologies mean that their local team don’t have to be on 24/7 stand by, then it means life may become better for people and that upsets them because they ‘had to suffer’ when they were younger and therefore want everyone else to suffer for the rest of time. He is a weak and pathetic man with many weak and pathetic supporters. Dominance, control, hierarchy, that is what they crave. Control is their main desire… they want to control because they feel they are superior in every way and, therefore, the...

  Stepping outside for a moment, hoping for a quiet view of downtown Dallas… there is a person standing on the roof, looking down at me, a car darts past me on its way down, then another car… but there is a car coming in, too. Oh, the entering car sees the space close to the door is open and immediately turns to dive into it. Headlights in my face, I simply give up and close the door. 9pm Sunday night, car park Armageddon. I have never seen a car park so active in all of my life. It is the 5 th floor of the building, it takes 10 minutes to get up here, but I have never been outside when there is not a car coming in or going out. I go back inside, lie down on my bed, start sending some text messages, but nobody replies… perhaps they are driving in and out of a car park somewhere, too.                     Monday midday in the pool with a book. It’s the kind of break that you can’t take when you...

  A jog, a swim, a trip to the supermarket… sushi and mimosas for brunch. Soccer is a disaster, but the day is beautiful, the solitude is beautiful. The lady at the super market prepared fresh sushi for me and it was incredible. In an hour or so I will walk to the Ginger Man Pub for a beer or two and to see my neighbours before returning home to laze the afternoon away and attempt to avoid existential dread and despair. It is easier to fight that off when the night is peaceful and calm.                     I set myself the goal of writing and publishing every day, and I have done so for two months or so now… but there are days like today that I think I may not make it haha. I also fear the pain and boredom that people may feel when they read these entries. They serve as a ‘poetic’ nod to posterity. You see, The Ginger Man turned out to be quite social and a great discussion about music, litera...

  In my final year of high school, we took great risks… in our final exams we passed around notes. However, these notes had nothing to do with the exams, my closest friends and I had formed a band and we were sharing lyrics. We were trying to form a humorous metal band, we called ourselves Grandfathers of Destruction (GOD). This particular day, I received the note and opened it… I read the opening lines and could not contain my laughter… ‘I pull out my sword and Satan crawls in fear.’ We risked expulsion from the final moment of high school graduation and all for the desire to share lyrics that were beyond absurd.                     Our peers were experimenting with drugs and alcohol, we were travelling out into the darkest downtown and going to extreme concerts and raves and nightclubs. The next day we’d show up to school in a daze of exhaustion and lack of sleep. I was by no means a party p...

  On the couch with an ancient copy of To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. The copy was given to me by a gentleman I met in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2010 when I was visiting from England to see friends. He gave it to me the day before my birthday sixteen years ago, 7 September 2010, and he wrote a note on the inner sleeve, ‘To my friend across the pond.’ I cherish it. I say ‘ancient’, but this copy was printed in 1966, the same year that England last won the World Cup.   Literature is the archaeology of human suffering. We can excavate the traces of this suffering from within the pages of global works throughout millennia of literature. From cruelty, enslavement, war, racism, infidelity, ennui, family relationships, it is all there to see. The keys to happy living could be mapped out from these findings and yet we tend to repeat the same mistakes in endless cycles because we struggle to break away from tradition and ‘how it has always been.’ One of the saddest things in literature...

  Three years ago, on this day, I was in Europe. I did it right… I went for a work trip to France and then took vacation in France and Spain. This time last year, I was in Europe again, but I did it wrong. I took a vacation first in Spain, then France, and had to cut it short to work. This also meant that my vacation was spent thinking a little bit about work and my preparation for that as I had to present several times during the work period. Having learned from that mistake, in March this year I went again and really did it right. I worked from France, then took a vacation in France and Madrid and really was able to relax and enjoy the time.                     This year I have travelled less than most years in the last twenty years… that is because I am saving every penny I can to build an empire. The Empire of the Hermit. An Empire of solitude and peace and distance. One that recognizes th...

His face appearing on the screen is vomit inducing. His voice is an unbearable scratching of nails on the chalk board. His announcements could even raise a Buddhist Monk to a furious rage. Turning from this to look around at society… it seems there is sadness everywhere. I often think that much of this sadness is self-inflicted in the sense that expectation results in disappointment and, ultimately, sadness. For example, so many single people in their late thirties and early forties are so desperate for marriage and children that they will either race into something that is not suitable or they will remain alone and, instead of focusing on the positive things they can do, they wallow in pain and shame and misery because they were ‘left on the shelf.’ So many get married and have children and find it is worse than being alone. Then there are those who have purchased homes and are sad because it is a heavy burden. Added to this, people are commuting great distances in traffic to sit in a...

  There is a personality type… it’s a despicable one… that is the embodiment of ‘do as I say and not as I do.’ They will not tolerate other people doing the things that they themselves frequently do. For example, someone who comes and goes freely in and out of their office most days but then gets upset, angry, sarcastic, aggressive when someone else does the same thing. Or someone who always cancels meetings but becomes distrustful of others who cancel meetings. These patterns are interesting when you discover that hypocritical individuals tend to follow very specific patterns in life in terms of banking, shopping, voting, relationships, family values, treatment of animals and people whom they consider to be lesser than themselves, and laws. It’s a consistent and easily readable trend.                     Moving on… the apartment building has new ownership, and their first cleaning act was to ...

  The hangover’s grip starts to loosen as I sit beside the pool with headphones on listening to Sepultura’s “A Hora e a Vez do Cabelo Nascer”. Prior to venturing down to the pool, I had a large coca cola filled with ice and that as something of an elixir. When I first got to the pool, I submerged myself under water for a while and then read a few pages whilst in the water. I assumed I was alone only to look up and see a lady sitting on the other side of a little flower bed that juts out into the pool. I felt grateful that I had not been singing. A family arrived with children at that point and so I moved to one of the deck chairs beside the pool and put my noise cancelling headphones on. After a short while, however, the heat was too much so I left and returned to the safety of my apartment.             Insanity gripped me as the afternoon sauntered through waves of heat wrapped in tunnels of blinding bright light and I got ont...

  As soon as a crowd forms, I need to disappear.                     I cycled over to the Toyota Music Factory and had a frozen Margarita with the lovely Irma at Gloria’s. Contemplating my next step, I got sunburn whilst trying to decide… and eventually cycled over to The Ginger Man, my regular local pub. It was just one couple and me and it was wonderful. Then, like magic, groups and couples started to arrive in droves. I no longer felt at peace and so I went to the bar, paid, and left. And yet, after a few hours, I ventured back out to the night market at the music factory and the bar that is there, The Reservoir. It was spectacular. Live music, beautiful people, a pleasant atmosphere. Even so, I did not stay too long, of course. The crowd becomes overwhelming.                     The morning arrives, h...

  A walk in the woods at sunrise. Awakened by birdsong and tree branches swaying lightly in the breeze. It is 7am and the day is just about cool enough to walk now… later it will not be the same. Sauntering home to collapse into the pool, swim a few lengths... and the day stretches out before me in beautiful solitude. No plans. No commitments. I see a fascinating article, apparently Christians claim they are persecuted because Coca Cola won’t print ‘Jesus is King’ on a can. It makes me think back to last night at the bar with a couple of colleagues. They arrived more than one hour late and, upon arrival one asked what brand of Ginger Beer they had and how much sugar this brand contains. The server was astonished, said he had no idea, and my colleague settled on a diet coke with a slice of lemon and a glass of water ‘light on the ice’ haha. It’s another realm for some people.   After that, I watched a film called ‘The Invite’. It was a very bizarre film, but it did remind me of...

  Trying to describe a ‘pram’ to an American colleague… what’s the word? The thing you push a baby in. ‘A stroller’. Yes, a stroller. And the baby has a dummy. What’s a dummy? Hmm, the thing you give to a baby to calm it. ‘A pacifier?’ Ah, yes, a pacifier.   A weird conversation that I had yesterday that made me feel like I was speaking to someone who spoke a different language. In many other ways, Americans and English can be very similar. Today is one of those days I feel grateful to be where I am… in Texas. The heat can be insane, and then we have severe ice storms in winter, but, in general, the weather is good.                     I ventured out to Midori Sushi for lunch and had to struggle with guilt as the cat was under my car, asleep, and I had to wake her up to safely move her to another cool and shaded spot. The sushi was incredible, the atmosphere was great, and I even had a Sa...

  Increase the Pressure is an album by English punk band, Conflict. When I was 15 or 16 years old, I got hold of a copy on cassette, it had been recorded hundreds of times from cassette to cassette, and the sound quality was terrible. But I loved it. In the years that followed, I strived to find it on vinyl (this was before CD) but that album was impossible to find or to get hold of. This was 1988, 1989… there was no internet allowing us to simply jump online and purchase or stream an album. Today, at the age of 52, in 2026, I sit in my home office, working, and I am listening to Increase the Pressure after purchasing it from the iTunes store for $9.99. It still transports me to my youth, it is still an album that I love, and it astonishes me how simple and easy it was to obtain a digital copy.                     I am grateful to have grown up in the time before cell phones and mass interne...

  Today would have been my mother’s 78 th birthday. Sadly, she passed away just under three years ago after a lengthy period of trouble related to years of spinal surgery and, ultimately, damage to nerves that prevented her from walking. My only consolation is that I got to spend the last Christmas and New year of her life with her, and it was a happy time. We ate out, we drank wine, we laughed and we talked.  My mother inspired me throughout life with her kindness, compassion, generosity, vision, intelligence, and understanding of the human condition. She was extremely sensitive and suffered tremendously from the suffering of other people and animals, and she gave everything she had to give to provide my brother and I with the best possible life we could have. And it was a good one.  To this day, my father is benefitting from the financial decisions that my mother made and some of the foundations that she built, and, following her ways, I have also built significant pra...