clinging to the wreckage

She lies beside me, so silent and peaceful. I'm awake, reading, drinking coffee. I need less sleep because I'm a lot older than her. Her skin, pale, soft, firm and her hair beautiful and dark to form a gothic contrast. A magnificent beauty. A powerful intellect. A creative and independent force that will not bend. She holds my heart in her hand and I hope that when she crushes it she does it gently and swiftly. And, amazingly, the day after writing the above, she appeared, a black shadow, lurking in the dark corner, and coldly told me it was over. It seemed that things had finally started to go wonderfully well but, of a sudden, all is lost, love is dead. ‘tis time to move on, alone, once more.

A lonely drop of ink stains a pure blank white page. But pen and paper is no longer the way, merely forgotten pleasures. Thus a troubled finger hovers over a desolate keyboard. Signals, signs, speech and speechlessness are the codes that we must decipher and use in order to interact with others on this planet that we co-inhabit. We have whatsapp, facebook, linkedin, twitter, tumblr, tinder, google plus and a plethora of other social media apps and sites that help us to find ‘friends’ and yet do we communicate and connect on a deep level or are we deeply lost within ourselves and an online world rapidly increasing our ability to discontinue conversation with the click of a mouse button? I have danced at 3am to Irish Punk Rock on the streets of Madrid with an old Spanish man; I have passed out in alleys in London Town; walked along Malibu beach holding hands with a friend I was deeply in love with; walked the streets of Lille bare-footed, drunk, in the middle of the day with...

The party for me is at home, surrounded by books in a room often filled with music. The words left on pages by those now gone soothe and remind me that I am not the first to feel a total lack of desire for the crowd and their popular consensus.   Poetic prose that ponders our place on the planet, and how I wish I had those gifts, but how this lifts me none the less and inspires me to proceed through all of the muck and filth of this tumultuous existence. Everyone else seems to be looking for the best offer and therefore can never feel content with the current situation. They are forever wondering if there is something better happening somewhere else with better people. Don’t you know that people everywhere are just looking for sex and company without regard for intellect or character?

I struggle with my grip on reality. It loosens and I find myself falling through spiralling prisms of sounds and sights making no sense. I fail to relate to or make sense of anything. Sitting alone in a silent room I feel distant from everything that exists… people, the chair upon which I sit, the table before me. Lonely yet somehow numb to it I light a candle and sip a drink. The glass is tangible and firm in my hand and yet I feel estranged to it. It is smooth and cold and has weight but it is an object and I am indifferent to its purpose, its existence.             My mother once said to me ‘You can travel all over the world but you will never escape yourself.’ I was silenced and forced into thought… I realised that she was correct. The most troubled relationship that I have ever experienced in my life is the one with myself, especially myself in love. In love I am lost… hopeless… a castaway. My weaknesses ...

Moving slowly along these piss-stained streets towards an unwelcoming door…. moments before I felt your hug, a hug that said ‘I don’t want you but I don’t want you to be sad’. I stop at the Chinese store, a Spanish delight, to buy beer and wine so that I can self medicate. Once inside my apartment, I cut my hair – you hate it when I do but I suspect you care less and less about it now – and then shower. I pour a beer into a glass and then admire the beads of condensation as they form and fall like the tears I try to keep inside. It’s always death. I always return to the same, stable companions; this glass in my hand and the music that constantly fills the room. Placing the glass upon the table I lift another book that deals with loss, with isolation, with lost hope and the meaninglessness of everything. We seek meaning and yet we are carbon-based wastage.

The conflict rages on within me. I see the conservative, traditional, conventional lifestyles around me and I feel repulsed at the suffocating banality of it all. And, at the same time, I fall headlong into love and cling to the one I love, all the while realising that I am as guilty as anyone and everyone for causing this suffocation. I’ve lost faith… and yet still I cling. It is simply not possible to be satisfied mentally, emotionally, and physically by one person and therefore we constantly pine for all the things that we do not have. It manifests in many ways and we become a mass mess of wanting that which lies beyond us. All the while, I suspect, the answer may be directly before us in the shape of remaining an individual, compassionate, single and free. It is natural to seek love but we tend to build walls of confinement around this and become ensnared within our own traps – marriage, children, home ownership, etc. From within the white walls of our vanilla confinement ...

There is a silent sadness in your eyes that defies your smile and reveals more to me than the family photo ever could or should. It’s been too long and there is no longer a spark of desire or love or true happiness. I sense unfulfilled longing and desire. There is repression. There is the blankness of sterile acceptance. The fate of so many… that bland acceptance that saps us of life and vigour and hope. And yet so many prefer it to a short stab of pain followed by freedom. So many fear that freedom because it means that they don’t have a perpetual partner to listen to their every thought and ensure that the appearance of ‘normality’ is retained. The fear of the unknown and of being alone is greater than the desire to escape a life of grey emptiness.