clinging to the wreckage

  After a week in France, a mixture of stress and joy... the stress of giving a presentation juxtaposed with the joy of walking beside the sea at night, drinking delicious wine and eating amazing food, it was time to take a week off in Spain. People move, change, get married, have kids, go silent, disappear, but Madrid still goes on as it always has. People leave and disappear because Madrid is a party city… it is a city for the single, for the traveller, for the adventurer. It is also no longer a cheap city. It leaves an emptiness to visit a city in which one has lived and experienced so much love and adventure only to discover that all of that is deeply in the past. People hide… or simply don’t bother to reply… until after one has departed.                     Suddenly the silence sinks into a peaceful solace. I am grateful to be free to explore freely and spend the day as I please, without ...

  Sitting on the metro in Madrid, travelling from Ventas to Plaza de España… the first or second stop brought a vision of beauty beyond belief at the window. She was waiting to board the train and I could not help but smile at her. She smiled back. She stepped onto the train coyly and, after a little twirl and swirl, sat beside me. I was struggling to breathe and to cope with my heartbeat speed. I looked at our reflection in the window and we both had a grin on our face. The heat rose from within and I was staring at her shoes, her socks, I was seeking something… something to say. She started to message on her phone but almost as if she was trying to show me what was on the screen. My eyes flickered over it and I could see that her messages were in English. I pulled my headphones off and she seemed expectant. I looked at her face, it was beautiful, with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. And, yet, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t speak. We pulled into Sol and she got up and left. ...

  I use social media to let people know I am still alive when I don’t show up at the bar in Dallas. Beyond that, I find myself increasingly disconnected from, and troubled by, social media. It’s the era of everyone believing they are a star… the whole world is watching them every moment of the day. No talent or training required, no unique character needed.   Alas, I am currently in Madrid, Spain, after a week in the South of France. France was work, this is holiday… but I am surrounded by people who are at a company event, and it makes me feel like I am working. It should not trouble me, the view is beautiful and the alcohol is flowing. Madrid is a wonderful city, my old home, one I cannot get tired of. It seems a little busier these days, but that may be because I am used to living in Texas where there is more space and less people.                     In terms of global events, it was ...

  25 years ago I wrote my name in a book I had just bought. I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma (I wrote Oklahoma like a drunk guy, but did not drink at the time). At the time the book was 82 years old and now it is 107. Demian, by Hermann Hesse. The book is about finding meaning and one’s inner self in a world that is on the brink of war. Two months after reading it, I flew American Airlines over the twin towers in New York, exactly two weeks before they were destroyed. 25 years later, I’ve just re-read the book. We are at war. I’m in Madrid, Spain, but now live as a British American in the USA. Times passes rapidly and so many suffer in this unspeakably cruel world. Yet there is also profound beauty, and all we can do is to try to make the most of it along the way. be kind to people. Smile. Survive.

  Everything is a reflection of the times. Popular culture reflects what people are feeling. In the 1890s we had Frankenstein and Dracula because it was not possible, then, to speak directly about the geo-political situation and the changes that drove society to fear. The railroads were taking over, nature was being destroyed, and mankind was terrified. If you launch your streaming platforms of choice today you will discover that most films are some form of gothic horror… this is because mankind is once more terrified of things such as AI, but, even more so, a leadership of ‘the most powerful nation on earth’ that is simply pathetic in its volatility due to insecurity. Just open the ‘GIFs’ section of any app that you are using, and they reflect what is happening at the present time. Memes, too. Through memes we can see that people really hate their jobs, they hate waking up early to commute through traffic to sit in an office. However, due to the extensive lay offs we are seeing, p...

  They drive home from their 16-hour shift in the office and pull into the carpark… then they sit in their cars, engine running, lights on… they sit and sit. What are they doing? It becomes clear, they simply don’t want to go home. They are afraid of the boss all day in the office, and they are afraid all night of the lack of privacy they have in their home. So, that period in the car park after parking their car is the only period of freedom that they have in their day.                     Couples always want single people to date and ‘find a partner’. That is because they want single people to be as miserable as they are. They see the happiness and contentment of a single person and their envy makes them want to destroy it.  

  They wake up at the same time every day, get dressed, get into their cars, drive the same route, arrive at the office at the same time, sit at their desks all day, hating everything until they drive home at the same time every day, along the same route in the same traffic to get home to the same faces in the same house and prepare to repeat it all again the next day. They exist in fear that they may lose their job, and this routine and their income will be taken away. Meanwhile, the owners of the companies for which they work are sitting on balconies overlooking oceans or seas or lakes or vast cities, sipping mimosas and eating crafted pancakes. The owners check the stock market and sigh a little as the volatility increases because they are ‘letting people go’ and experimenting wildly with AI. Just keep on giving until it is all taken away.  

  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...

Everyone simply rushes back to the office… and it is chaos. Everything is chaos. The roads are full, the elevators are full, the toilets are full. It’s a mess and no one is happy. It’s a tragedy that so many live a life of misery because they need money to pay for bills.                     The past dies. During the pandemic in 2020, we grasped for the past and longed to return to 2019. However, by 2021’s end we were forging a new life, a better life. We were returning, more grateful, and we were changing our way of life to match our own goals and desires. We were striving for a balance that would allow us to work and contribute whilst also traveling or spending time with family or doing household chores that would free up more time in the evenings and the weekends. Companies were just as productive, if not more so, and people were happier.           ...

You say ‘I miss you’ or ‘I love you’, but you don’t… you want to feel forgiven for the wrongs you have done. You claim to help people… you simply want to know about their lives, their salaries, their hopes and dreams, and, in the end, you want them to feel that they owe you something. You try to control everyone and everything. You pretend to be calm, charming, and funny, but inside you are burning with rage. It fills you with rage when someone lives differently to how you feel life should be lived. You think that everyone is lazy and immature and incapable of doing the work that you do. But what do you do? It seems your goal is only to control, to seek power, to break up friendships, to kill anything that motivates, inspires, and engages people. I understand now why you voted the way that you did. Selfish people vote for selfish people. Narcissists vote for people who remind them of themselves.                 ...

  03:33am and sleep is merely a vision, a wish, a dream. A day of work lies ahead and yet, here in bed, there is no rest. There was a reconnection, a revival of a love long lost, but it was brief and flickering and, as usual, something popped up suddenly to sever the connection as rapidly as it was regained. The ship sails on, silent and alone in the night. Who would have thought that a fuck in the French night could rekindle so many feelings… from love to despair. And a forgotten one: the feeling of becoming less significant when one’s lover finds someone more interesting via a chance encounter.  

A page, a palimpsest, a text written again and again over the previous text. The story is old and grows out of context as the author ages. It’s one of disappearance. Disappearance of youth and of love. I spend my minutes watching videos of how to configure a thermostat. The rest is all about the end… how every country is ending, the world is ending, how we will all die in chains in a dystopian nightmare. This is what they tell us.   In the meantime, old photos are like a haunting portrait from the Picture of Dorian Gray but, in real life, it is in reverse, of course, the portrait remains the same as we grow older, lose our youth and, if we ever had it, beauty.                     I took a bus out to the Natural History Museum at the foot of the mountains in Salt Lake City, Utah. I accidentally got off the bus too early and had a fair distance to walk in the heat and direct sun. Nevertheless, ...

  The ghost of love lingers in the halls. It was once a living, breathing thing that brought excitement, anticipation, company, and passion, but it is long since dead. Its emaciated ghost haunts me in the dead of night. I rise from my pit of insomnia and take a short walk outside to see if the cat is around, and I find it stretched out on top of a car the same colour as its fur. We stare at each other for a short while and then she stretches out once more as if declaring ‘I am bored now’ and attempts to go back to sleep. Back inside, wide awake, I begin to ruminate on the change of feelings over time and how, now, I don’t even feel the desire to make an effort to try to chat or date or get involved in any way. And yet, I still pine for certain people from the past.  

  10pm, Saturday night. I’m sitting outside with the cat. The cat dislikes people, and I fail to understand them. 10pm Saturday night… why are you driving? Shouldn’t you be having fun at a party? Shouldn’t you be too drunk to drive? If not, if you don’t drink, shouldn’t you be at home? Why is there an endless flow of cars pulling into our parking garage at 10pm on Saturday night? We are not a nightclub. We are not a disco. Why are you in your car? I simply cannot fathom it.                     Giving up on peace, I return to my apartment and hide inside. Saturday night and so many people are out there looking to fulfil their needs. Many looking for sex, many using it in the hope of finding more. Most simply there because they cannot bear to be alone, the way that I am every night. After a few hours out in the afternoon, I am satiated.           ...

Would you like to buy a book for $1.99 that captures the ramblings of loves long lost from my years spent living in Spain? if so, here it is:  Memoirs of the Damned: The Spanish Years