clinging to the wreckage

  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...