clinging to the wreckage

I've been traveling so much of late that I've not had a chance to write. So, here, upon this flight from Madrid to London, I'll pen a few words. So much comes to mind that I’m almost at a loss. It feels great… familiar and strange to be back in Madrid. The city that was home for three years and still feels like a home is a wonderful place and yet, as always, people can be disappointing. Traveling, seeing friends, vacation, it should be one of the greatest moments of my life, and it is, but I'm also suffering an inescapable sadness. I'm plagued by horrific thoughts. Thoughts of war, of death, of heartbreak, of the way we treat animals, of poverty and starvation, neglect and abuse. It's not helped by the turbulence that keeps interrupting my writing on this plane.                   Back in Madrid now after an incredible John Moreland concert in London on Monday and then a Micah P Hinson concert...

The story of the spare wheel remains consistent and it remains true. As Morrissey once wrote, ‘in my own strange way I have always been true to you.’ In my own strange way I have always been true to Morrissey. Tonight I went for a drink with a very lovely French lady of Vietnamese descent in the inviting area of Davis Square and had a great time. I had been thinking about this lady during my recent travels to France and was looking forward to getting to know her more upon my return. As we were speaking she revealed that she would like to live in London and so I asked why. ‘My boyfriend lives there.’ It was not a surprise nor was it hurtful, it was just the standard thing to hear. After all, is there a single person alive who remains single? After one beer we walked together for a while until we reached our separate destinations upon the path and there went our own way. A few minutes down the path my phone buzzed and it was a message from the Linguist (a Californian lady ...

A whisper pierces the night from beyond the corner of the room. It’s the rusty whisper, or sigh, of sadness… like a fleeting memory of a happy and beneficial friendship now buried in the sand of past time and marked as nothing more than a communal grave… a mass burial ground for all of the friends and lovers that I lost by being too friendly or not friendly enough. The love for another human being which took flight upon the wind, burnt, and fell to the floor as ash and nothing more, only for hatred and intolerance for others to rise like the proverbial phoenix… love’s embers merely relics of the past. Cause and effect. Love and pain are synonymous. For, to love is to swallow pain as a fire eater swallows flame. To give freedom is to show ultimate love and is the key to reciprocal love, and yet the natural urge is to protect… to fear the loss of all that is so dear.

The linguist reappeared and brought a smile to my very soul. I had suspected that she had fled instead and had recoiled in horror at the thought of my existence. Apart from the fact that I am older than her, we have many things in common… a love of words and their usage, the meanings that are derived from their different usages, the way that different cultures do not have certain words for certain objects because those objects simply do not exist in their cultural environment, the way grammatical differences in language stem from what is more important to the culture to which the language belongs… such as a cheese sandwich or a sandwich with cheese. We love the concept of books… the paper, the words, the story, the literary tools, the history of the author and the reason for writing. The night we went to a concert we both loved the adventure, the music, the beer and the seafood dinner with which we ended the night. Over a cup of tea one recent afternoon she descri...

You posted a memory from three years ago and, even though I had seen the photo before, when you originally posted it, something about it struck me for the first time. In the photo your running gear is neatly laid out upon your bed prior to the marathon and the bed sheet on your bed is one that I gave to you. It was one that my parents gave to me. It came from South Africa to England and then to Madrid where I gave it to you. The photo reminded me of how you asked me to help you to prepare for the marathon and for one month how we exhausted ourselves working to the schedule that you had set. You were impressed that someone twelve or thirteen years older than you could keep up. However, I was not able to do the marathon… I didn’t even try, you did that alone. I also didn’t have the additional strength and motivation that you showed whilst preparing for the event… you would run further than the training schedule required whilst I wanted to stick strictly to it, possi...

These days I cling to things, little pieces of happiness like the renewal of credit on a travel card or the arrival in the post of an envelope containing shuttle bus passes for the month. These pieces of happiness exist in direct opposition to the equal moments of mini-despair when the credit on one’s travel card dwindles towards zero and the last boxes of the last shuttle bus pass are ticked. I feel sadness in something so slight as the moment of saying goodbye to a friend in the evening knowing full well that I will see them again in the morning. Does everyone feel with this intensity? Does everyone feel a sense of loss for what once was long before we had cellular phones, facebook, twitter, whatsapp and the plethora of other social media through which cheap and often meaningless communication is shared.             And so, sitting on a train travelling from New Haven, Connecticut, back to Boston I feel a t...

Tonight the rain falls heavily. It has done so all day long. It is beautiful and a bit scary at the same time. Possibly scary because my apartment in Madrid leaked so frequently when it rained this heavily. I lie here tonight and wonder if the people living on the top floor of this building are facing leaks. Looking out of the window I see the rain fall past the light and the scene reminds me of that from an old film, The Omen. Living in Madrid there was a perpetual blue sky and the streets and parks were constantly dry. I often longed for rain and grey skies reminiscent of those of my home, England. Here in New England, the fluctuations are quite dramatic. Rain, sun and snow often appearing in the same day. It is wonderful even if there are days like yesterday when my friends in Madrid video call me and show me the stretching blue horizon whilst I walk along the wind battered streets of Cambridge. I walked these beautiful streets capturing scenes of America and those symbols ...