clinging to the wreckage

  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...