We checked out from the La Luna inn on Lombard after waking up at 8am again.
I was really sorry to leave.
The relative luxury in the place made a nice comfort blanket.
It protected me from the worst of the early homesickness, and also seemed a safe haven from the outside world.
I love a cocoon, and I was definitely a little apprehensive about moving to the Mission district, even if it was only for 2 nights.
The jet lag has us beaten up a bit still but we slept soundly with ear plugs for a nice 8 hours.
Lombard is a busy street and the traffic starts at 6am and doesn't ease all day so the road noise is quite bad.
I was pretty hungover when I woke up.
Not puking and headachey hungover, just that cranky tired feeling that Sarah has had to put up with for so long.
I drank a lot of vodka last night to try and get drunk, but I couldn't get any sort of buzz on and fell asleep at 11:45 watching Family Guy.
Because of this goofing off last night, we had to pack our backpacks this morning before we checked out. I grabbed two coffees from the breakfast tray downstairs and packed everything up as quickly and rolled up and folded all my clothes to try and make them fit as snugly as possible in my overflowing lifepack.
I don't know how anyone can haul a big heavy backpack like mine around everywhere.
I know I don't want to do it much.
Backpacking and world travelling from hostel to hostel is something I think I could never enjoy. I don't feel like a backpacker. I'm too early-old and middle class to enjoy the grime of the city. I like to see the sights and hide from the seedier aspects of the area.
In many ways I am akin to an ageing American tourist.
I'm a bit disappointed with myself saying that, but I'm pretty sure that I will never be the kind of person who would never be comfortable roughing it.
I threw out some old clothes to make room for cigarettes and lighten the load a little bit.
My socks have gone nuclear since I got here, if Sarah smells them she might pass out. I'm used to it, and there comes a point where the smell of my socks gets so bad it's actually vaguely impressive.
Like how sometimes you can revel in the smell of your own gas.
I didn't want that smell permeating through my 65 litre bag, infecting the remainder of my clean clothes, so I was glad to see them go, and taking out a few of my heavier tee-shirts and anything I bought in Dunnes made for a much happier back when I had to throw the big bag over both shoulders.
It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to carry the laptop bag around too, but its worth it for music, and the fact that I can actually write no matter where I am.
I still can't believe how the writing is pouring out of me. I have to get everything down so quickly, to try and remember exactly what was special about this trip.
That's been bothering me lately too. This style of diary, mile a minute writing, there is no finesse to it. I can't rewrite and fix things. Though I always thought that the first draft is the honest one. And each rewrite introduces a new lie to the story, even if you are only lying to yourself.
But it is great to flex my personal writing muscles. I'm thinking that it might be something I will look back on when I'm old and useless and be proud of some of the travelling I did while I could.
So many times I have seen wonderful things, and for the want of a photo, or a little note to self, the memory of them flits away like an autumn bird, only to return in a fleeting dream, or just hiding over the tip of my tongue, tantalisingly out of my memory though I fight to reclaim it. But this is possibly just one small part of what definitely feels like a new stage in my life, I am beginning to feel really adult, and I am certain that I want to remember this experience forever.
We got a cab straight from the La Luna to the mission. wondering what was in store at the El Capitan hotel.
I'm really certain that the most interesting people in San Francisco are the cab drivers.
First off, the way they cut a swathe through the traffic is really impressive. Aside from that, for the ten dollars or so I give them, I generally like to ask a few questions, you know, find out a bit of local info straight from the horses'.
Is this restaurant nice?
Whats the music like here?
Basic stuff.
But as soon as you ask one question, there seems to be an automatic warmth built up, these crazy people are all on their way to something better, or people happy with their life, and they all seem to have great stories or attitudes or smells.
The cab driver we got to the Mission was one of the best.
He really reminded me of Hammy.
He played guitar, mandolin, ukulele, piano, just about everything. Told us he was moving to France next year with his girlfriend.
He was 61 and was going out with a french woman for 12 years.
I initiated by asking him if there were any Irish bars in the city, so we could catch the rugby, but as soon as I started him, he was off sprinting.
He began with tales of how he had played in a load of blues groups in the city and segued into his back catalogue of musical proficiency.
Pretty soon, he was telling us about how his mom died.
She left all of her 7 kids a little note telling them not to mourn, that it has to be this way, so get on with your life, live it and be happy.
This guy seemed really happy, and from nowhere, I suddenly hoped that his mother is happy too.
This is another sin that this city commits. My spirituality is coming to life, despite my cynical mind trying to keep it down.
I even hate the word spirituality. The non-specificity of it makes it a cliche. Particularly in America where spirituality refers to everything from healing crystals to Toyota Prius's. But somehow, I have a hunch that there is something, somewhere, keeping a general eye on us, content to watch, but occasionally intent on poking in the right direction. Its nice to feel that protection, particularly as we didn't buy travel insurance.
I turned to the cab driver as he was telling us how much he missed her, just missed talking to her about his life. For some reason I said a very catholic thing. I told him that he should still speak to her, because she will always listen even if she doesn't reply.
Its funny how the bond of mothers and sons can cross even that barrier. I remembered my mother in a stomach warming flash. It was calming to know that the Atlantic barrier we had could be traversed with a phone call or an email, and I know she will always listen too.
The cab driver kept telling us how lucky he was, and he had high hopes for France, which was to be his retirement home after all. He is retiring there to play in a band with some of his friends. He was also a native American, part of some tribe I don't remember, and he made jewellery in an Indian style. He had a cert to teach English as a foreign language . He also lived in Haight Ashbury in '67! He saw the summer of love.
I hope I end up like that guy. But I probably drink and complain too much.
We pulled up at the El Capitan and he helped us with our bags. It was a real beatdown place. From the outside it looked like an abandoned cinema, a place that had definitely seen better times. When we got to the reception the military guy that ran the place was very friendly, very matter-of-fact.
The room is pretty bare. We have a sink, a small bed and a cupboard. And a TV from the early '80s where the picture is predominantly red and never in focus. I always leave a TV on in the background. Like a lonely dog, the chatter is comforting to me if I'm alone or Sarah is quiet.
We were pretty happy with the place, but disappointed with the bare functionality in comparison with the La Luna, though neither of us would admit it to each other. It's great to feel that both of us are really trying to make the most of every situation. Even if we are both secretly unhappy about something, sometimes just ignoring it makes it go away, and soon we were laughing and I had a smile on my face again.
We owned up and both decided to head back to La Luna for the last 3 nights. I felt like a lost tribesman wandering in a rival's patch for some reason, like I really didn't belong in the Mission. I couldn't really weed out the anthropological reasons for my discomfort, but I was happy to run with it and call up the La Luna to book the last 5 nights there.
And its pretty cheap too, less than 50 dollars each a night. I will put it on credit card and worry about it when I get to Melbourne.
We went for breakfast, leaving our worries about the El Capitan behind as we crossed it's threshold.
I love American diners. The choice is fantastic.
Two types of mustard, ketchup, grey poupon, half and half, skimmed milk, cream, bacon crispy burnt or mild, eggs up, over, easy or medium, hash crispy or buttery, and coffee, lots and lots of good coffee with everything.
Why don't they have English muffins in England? Or Ireland for that matter. It is the final perfection of toast. The predator of toast. It will hunt down all white, brown, sourdough and baguettes and destroy them mercilessly without regard for creed, colour, or nutritional value. If Jimmy Page was a baker, his Stairway would be the English muffin.
I was full as hell after breakfast and lit up a cigarette as soon as we came out of the diner. The diner we chose was just over the street from the hotel, so as soon as I came out, I could see the entrance to the El Capitan. The main gate, a big steel edifice that was clearly put there for a reason, was obscured by a police car, lights flashing, no siren. Hairs on the back of my neck suddenly at half mast.
When we had a look in reception, it turns out some guy, late 40's, died in his sleep last night. His work called the hotel when he didn't show up last night.
I know all this because I eaves dropped on the military guy who runs the El Capitan talking to the police.
Well I'm trying to write, and I;m curious about everything and everyone, and death is pretty interesting stuff.
The guy who runs the hotel said it was the 11th person to die in the hotel in 6 years. He also said that the guy who died used to work security in the exact same hotel.
He must have known him well.
The dead man lived here permanently. Its kinda sad because its hard to imagine some guy dying alone in a small bedroom in a hostel in San Fran. Nobody would have known for days if his job hadn't called the hotel, probably angry about his no-show. I think he had a more pressing appointment that night I hope his employer will understand.
The real unfortunate thing was that when we left after collecting our maps from our room, when we passed the stairway to the exit, we also passed a corpse shaped white plastic bag, with a stretcher next to it and two EMT's sitting around silently.
The guy was easily 6 foot and probably about 15 or 16 stone. Stout like most security guards, but I wouldn't say fat. I guessed all this from the lumpy shape in the white plastic bag which was the only memorial left to this guy's mark on the world, other than a possibly unpaid rent cheque.
I left a note with the receptionist to tell Cormac and Meg which room we are in so they would know where to go when they arrive tonight. Looking forward to seeing them really. Its hard being so far away. I called my dad this morning and it seemed so weird to hear his voice so clearly from 5000 odd miles away.
Day One San Fran
The haight is dead man. The homeless generations that marched there have finally rolled their death knell, given up, passed the pipe and now works as a waitress in a Mc. Donalds downtown.
Don't bother telling me what you're thinking. I'm 24 and its 2007. As long as I can remember, the word "hippie" has been an insult. A joke. It's just another byword for kitsch, an identity for cooky teenagers to act out, a label, a slogan.
They use flower power to sell cars now.
Anyone who actually mattered in that scene in the sixties sleeps on the side of the road. Or six feet under.
I'm not talking about hippies here. I'm just pissed off because we have lost one more stage where we had the freedom to express freedom.
For anyone of the millions of disillusioned idiots like me, with dreams beyond dollar signs, it's just so funny to think, what killed the messages from the sixties? Who silenced the idea that the power of youth could become a force that mattered rather than a phase you pass through between drudgery?
Between school and work.
Between the warm hug of your dreams for yourself slowly turning to mediocrity.
The sense of a new evolution in human thinking, of hope in folly. Just dead like so many useless hippies.
I wonder what my dad would say if he ever read that. I see him laughing in my face or roaring at me for thinking that what was born there was ever anything more than a bunch of dirty drug addicts.
And yeah, he is right.
The cab dropped us on Lower Haight st. at about 2:30 today. The weather was beautiful too. 2 degrees too warm to wear a jumper, just breezy enough that pit stains weren't a problem.
For me, pit stains are a big issue. They can make or break my night. I'm nearly always nervous, or anxious, or pissed off, or carrying drugs.
So I sweat a lot.
I was truly delighted this morning.
Giddy.
I felt 16 again. With everything that has happened in the last two days. For some reason, the 20 hours of cars, planes, trains and busses that it took to get me here from Ireland had rebirthed my soul. It burned away the ire that hung over me like so much sweat in Limerick.
Why wouldn't I be happy? I landed a day ago. I've overcome the jetlag. I spent the morning walking in the park. This afternoon I had the best prawn I have ever eaten.
It came in a seafood linguini brought by a stoner waiter on Chestnut Ave. But even the waiter had some new tricks now. I felt the force of a million customer service seminars behind his every friendly movement. This guy, with the slits for eyes and the attitude that a stoner recognises in another, who when we told him we were going to the Haight told us he lived there, had his shit down when it came to maxing out our tip. Maybe it's just me, and I was a bit paranoid of any other human wanting to talk to me after so much time travelling, I don't know.
The point is, the poor guy lost our order. They were using one of those computer systems they have in restaurants to put our order through to the chef some 15 feet behind him. The computer froze, and in the minute or so it took to boot back up, he had forgotten our order. So yeah, he was definitely a stoner. Sarah even said it to me.
She noticed the second we came in. I was so hungry by the time we got to the restaurant that I wouldn't have even thought of it if she hadn't pointed it out. But when he came over to tell us, he did something really weird. The first thing he did was to kneel down, to our eye level as we were sitting down.
I know. Inconsequential.
Silly to even notice, let alone moan about it. But I'm telling you. I was there, and that little hunkerdown before he opened his mouth, that wasn't something any human would naturally do. He got down, peered into our eyes, and with every fake sense of apology he could throw into his slits-for-eyes, told us he had brainfarted the order. And it felt so unnatural, it left all three of us uncomfortable.
Of course I laughed it off. I couldn't care less that this poor bastard who has to work for tips lost my order. That's not my point. The guy served me the best plate of food I have eaten since Milan. And it cost ten dollars.
The point is, as soon as he took that three quarters of a second to pull his knees down and implore us on our level, I suddenly realised that the push of capitalism, dollar signs in someone's eyes, had gotten into this guy's soul and existed there, worrying about customer service, alongside everything else that our generation has to fret about. This guy was fretting about us. And the only reason was money.
That's not fair. He should be worrying about rent, about when he is next going to get laid, about if he has enough weed to last him to the weekend, about sport, or his girlfriend, or his health, or if his screenplay is ever going to get finished. He should be worried about something he cares about. Not about whether he cost a tourist two minutes of wait time for fantastic food
Someone told him that when you have to apologise to someone and you aren't sure how it will go, the best thing to do is hunker down and talk to them at their eye level. Somewhere in this guy's make-up, either his need for tips to pay his rent, or his bastard boss telling him so, he had altered his natural human state to try and manipulate others to smooth over problems. He didn't want to be blamed for anything. I understand that.
I really liked this guy.
We tipped 25%.
I'm still young enough to exist in counter culture though. The world hasn't beaten me down enough yet, sucked enough brain power out so I am happy with a growing bank account and some tv before bed.
I knew that after lunch, we would head back to the hotel for a nap, and then sometime, about two or three o'clock, we would land on Haight Ashbury. This fact alone was making me feel like a kid at Christmas.
For as long as I knew that we were coming to San Francisco, Haight Ashbury was the number one thing I was excited about. So excited that I demanded it was the first place that we visit.
That wasn't just because I knew we could score weed there. Actually, weed had nothing to do with it at all. The last time I was there, 4 years ago, Haight Ashbury, within ten minutes, became the spiritual home of every bit of childish freedom left in my soul. Because of the shambly buildings with their acid posters of Jimi and Janice and Jerry, and the shambly people, friendly, silly, childish, forgetful, and mostly entirely mad.
This time, when we landed on Lower Haight, about ten blocks from hippie hill, I opened the cab door and immediately something just felt wrong.
For the first time in my life, I saw three black guys sitting on the steps to a building about a half a block away, and I wanted to cross the street. They were crackheads, but still, they meant me no harm I am sure.
But I still crossed the street before I got there.
As soon as I got a block away from them, I told myself that the only reason I crossed was because the sun was thumping down on our Irish skin, and this side of the street was in shade. That was just one of those pretty lies you tell yourself to feel a bit happier about being an asshole.
I felt the fear of someone different and acted. Animalistically, I don't know. But from that point, it didn't really get any better. I don't know why it even matters, except to let you know that the whole thing had me feeling uneasy, and that was the last thing I expected, there of all places.
All the hippie shops were still there. All the bongs and vinyl, tee-shirts and posters. But before, it seemed like a quirky neighbourhood, like camden town squared.
Now the shops, and by extension entire blocks, just seemed like cynical ploys to extort dollars from wallets.
The only remnants of the messages left by great artists were stores, selling shirts with their pictures on them, selling the fact that they once walked around the place, just making a quick buck off of something they had nothing to do with whilst kindly bastardising everything important those same artists had ever said.
But, you know the first time I was there years ago, I took the bus all the way to upper Haight. But this time, when the cab dropped us off, I didn't realise that that was still ten blocks away and I had never been to lower Haight before.
I still had images of the guitar store I had bought Christine from, Amoeba records and finding Led Zeppelin bootlegs I had never seen before, even the punks sitting on the side of the road. Upper Haight was burned into my brain. So I was looking forward to seeing that, and presuming that once we got a few blocks past this new and unfriendly terrain, the feeling of unease would be replaced with fondness and hope.
It wasn't.
Block by block and as I started to recognise things, I ticked off from the list in my brain and everywhere that had inspired dreams, and fondness, and wishes to be there, just seemed dead.
When we finally got to the Mc. Donalds that marks the gap between Haight st. and Hippie hill and the start of Golden Gate park, I actually felt like crying.
Some guy asked me for some spare change. I sat down next to him and his girlfriend and said sure. I handed him a dollar bill and asked him where he could score us some weed.
He said he didn't know, and he really didn't want to talk to us about it.
Before, in that same spot, people would practically have weed stalls set up.
His girlfriend said that there were still loads of people selling in the park, and if we gave her a few bucks she would walk with us and find someone. We agreed.
This girl was nice, and under the dirt that had accumulated from living rough, she was pretty and had a good body too.
She smiled at us, and under her smile I could definitely see intelligence and pain shine through. I don't know how, but something in the twinkle of her eyes told me she was smart, and could be trusted. She wasn't a drug addict at all or any kind of real vagrant, just another soul that had lost her way between school and work.
The park was 200 feet away, the part of the park where people always sell weed is quite open and there is no way that we could get mugged in broad daylight. The daily footfall alone would prevent most crime there, and if she started leading us anywhere dark or strange, we could just walk off, so I felt totally safe.
She was definitely nervous though.
At least until she heard our Irish accents, she thought that we were plain clothes cops. As soon as she ascertained for certain that we weren't, she eased up and started talking.
And she could really chatter, smiling and telling us about how she just had to pay 50 bucks to get her dog out of the pound, and about how three of her friends were busted for selling weed to undercover police.
Despite how friendly she was, by this stage I was just pissed off.
There was nothing to be gained from being there and no sense of fun. But at least if I could score some weed it wouldn't be a wasted trip.
She walked me up a little hill in the park and introduced me to a guy called Eddy, skinny, down-at-heel and leatherclad, possibly homeless, who just looked really tired.
She whispered something in his ear, and he said no, he didn't have any.
I realised after that the reason he said no was the same reason she was nervous. He was certain that I was a cop too.
She realised right away and blurted
"Come on man, its ok, they're from Ireland."
He looked me up and down and smiled.
"Irelanders? You're a long way from home man!"
He threw something on the ground.
It was a bag of weed.
I stepped on it and asked him how much it was, and he said 50 bucks.
I took the crumpled 50 I had set aside in my back pocket and dropped it casually. He stepped on that. Then we both made a play of tying up our laces.
Once that dance was done, I thanked him profusely, introduced myself and said that I hoped I would see him again.
He said that he had two kids, and that even though he hated it, he was here everyday selling weed, and if I wanted to score, he would be there waiting. With this, his eyes got sadder, so we parted.
I met back up with Sarah, we walked straight out of the park and hailed the first cab we saw.
There wasn't any other reason to stay.
I don't really know how or when that spirit that flitted on long after the sixties died finally got put out. I don't know if it is just me and that I had gotten older, or that there were no tourists there, or what it was that ruined the Haight.
One thing i know for sure though, the fierce freedom that birthed there checked out like a homeless man in a dumpster.
x=?
Spent most of today looking for answers. Here are some I want to share, but I havent found the right one. Honest to god. Words let me down now.
"If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves. "
Douglas Adams
"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Douglas Adams
"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
Albert Einstein
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
Harvey Fierstein
"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round."
David Lodge
In my head, I have tried for a million years to write and move on. But this million years got lost, somewhere between head and hand. Feeling the desparation of a man who has gone through and won the race with his passions, I have no idea where to go from here.
Intellectually, I am an open book, but philosophically, that book is burned. And there is no production, for all this pain.
"If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves. "
Douglas Adams
"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Douglas Adams
"If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
Albert Einstein
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
Harvey Fierstein
"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round."
David Lodge
In my head, I have tried for a million years to write and move on. But this million years got lost, somewhere between head and hand. Feeling the desparation of a man who has gone through and won the race with his passions, I have no idea where to go from here.
Intellectually, I am an open book, but philosophically, that book is burned. And there is no production, for all this pain.
Why Megatron is more important than God.
Its a crisis of lost words. Its strange, i never thought I would be one of those people who dont have something to say. I cant quite turn the phrase anymore. Im missing the dick and balls of the story. I think Im looking for a white elephant.
http://www.anime-link.com/mysteriousgold/
So instead of worrying what to say, and what not to say, and hyping every decision, and reacting badly to changes, Im gonna learn to move with the times, embrace change as its happening, not when its too late. I must learn to transform who I am into a springboard for who I want to be. And maybe when I hit into this new pool, I will leave myself behind on the spring board.
The planet Cybertron is inhabited by robotic lifeforms called Transformers. The Transformers are split into political or ideological factions, and have been at war with each other for a very long time. Millions of years, in most of the stories. The factions are usually called Autobots (good guys) and Decepticons (bad guys), but not always.
Many Transformers stories involve an evil, all-powerful being called Unicron. Unicron is titanically enormous: he has a humanoid robot form like the Transformers do, but his other form is a planet. A whole planet. And he eats other planets. In some stories there is a dichotomy between Unicron and a being called Primus. In stories where he exists, Primus is the creator-god of the Transformer race, and is the eternal enemy of Unicron.
In nearly every series of Transformers there has been an Optimus Prime (good) and a Megatron (bad). Although characters with these names keep showing up, they are not always the same characters. They usually have similarities, but even the extent of that similarity varies. It trades on our preconceptions. Prime is "good". Megatron is "bad", and this doesnt change. While every aspect of their characters change our conceptions of who is good and who is evil never does. Megatron is occasionally a heroic loser, helpless as a plaything of Unicron, occasionally he stands up to the Gods themselves in a heroic last battle he knows he has no hope of winning. He has within himself the power for great sympathy, he is a fantastic tactical leader. He is a better orator, and his troops are motivated and are all willing to die for him.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Megatron has changed every aspect of his character again and again to become a true gladiator worthy of respect. But despite his transformation (Even his body and voice changed) He will never change our pre-conceived ideas about megatron.
http://www.anime-link.com/mysteriousgold/
So instead of worrying what to say, and what not to say, and hyping every decision, and reacting badly to changes, Im gonna learn to move with the times, embrace change as its happening, not when its too late. I must learn to transform who I am into a springboard for who I want to be. And maybe when I hit into this new pool, I will leave myself behind on the spring board.
The planet Cybertron is inhabited by robotic lifeforms called Transformers. The Transformers are split into political or ideological factions, and have been at war with each other for a very long time. Millions of years, in most of the stories. The factions are usually called Autobots (good guys) and Decepticons (bad guys), but not always.
Many Transformers stories involve an evil, all-powerful being called Unicron. Unicron is titanically enormous: he has a humanoid robot form like the Transformers do, but his other form is a planet. A whole planet. And he eats other planets. In some stories there is a dichotomy between Unicron and a being called Primus. In stories where he exists, Primus is the creator-god of the Transformer race, and is the eternal enemy of Unicron.
In nearly every series of Transformers there has been an Optimus Prime (good) and a Megatron (bad). Although characters with these names keep showing up, they are not always the same characters. They usually have similarities, but even the extent of that similarity varies. It trades on our preconceptions. Prime is "good". Megatron is "bad", and this doesnt change. While every aspect of their characters change our conceptions of who is good and who is evil never does. Megatron is occasionally a heroic loser, helpless as a plaything of Unicron, occasionally he stands up to the Gods themselves in a heroic last battle he knows he has no hope of winning. He has within himself the power for great sympathy, he is a fantastic tactical leader. He is a better orator, and his troops are motivated and are all willing to die for him.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Megatron has changed every aspect of his character again and again to become a true gladiator worthy of respect. But despite his transformation (Even his body and voice changed) He will never change our pre-conceived ideas about megatron.
My helpful comments for O2's web design team.
I am writing to you with the news that I am delighted, ecstatic, over-the-moon, because I no longer ever, ever have to use your horrendous website. Not ever again. And I truly and honestly am delighted by this.
For a good 4 fears of having an o2 mobile phone, and an Email account with you, I have suffered through your website (or is it websty?), for the dubious benefits of free email, and free web-texts, and I am writing to tell you that I will no longer deign to use your web portal. I know you are a large multi-national company, but I have seen vomit on O' Connell street that is designed better than your truly awful website. I have seen homeless people on heroin, reading the old testament upside-down, who would make better web developers than the ones currently flinging crap at each other in some far-off never visited, hopefully locked office at your company. I hate your website so much that you have not only lost my web business, you will also very soon be losing my billpay business, and that of anyone who asks me, purely because of this service. Doubtless you have already stopped reading this mail, because websites are expensive, and dont make you much money, so you probably dont care, but just for the hell of it I am going to give you just a small selection of the problems I have found with your site since my introduction to it.
When registering my first pre-paid phone. It didnt in fact register, or ever give me any free credit. And when I went back, week after week, to register on your stupid bastard of a site, it told me I had already registered. Even when I rang your very helpful (No sarcasm, theyare very helpful) customer care team, and they passed the problem on to the afore-mentioned low-life web development crew, my problem was never solved. Nobody ever got back to me, and your piss-poor web portal went on as normal. I know the problem was never fixed as a friend of the family had the exact problem not two months ago.
I have frequently sat down at work to check my email, and typed in www.o2.ie, or web.o2.ie, or whatever URL actually works for your expletive of a site, and waited for internet explorer's little blue bar to fill up, and time out, because your server had crashed, your website was nowhere to be seen for hours on end, or perhaps I was waiting for one of your web team to photograph their privates, or drink water from the urinal. So much so, that in my college days, I remember one particular night of playing a drinking game of trying to down a pint before your website crashes or times out. I suggest your web development team try the same with bleach.
When I once made the mistake of actually relying on your email service for business reasons, I waited some 7 hours, during which time I rang your customer care team 6 times, who continually informed me that there was no delay and your email server was not in fact down. I sent myself numerous test emails from work. Not one has ever arrived. I only hope that they found a home somewhere.
I have used your free webSMS service, and I will let you in on a secret, that obviously, your web development monkeys dont know. It doesnt F***ing work. It just doesnt f***ing work. I used it for group sms for my local soccer team for a change in training time. We didnt train that week. I dont know how many people actually got that sms, but I know for a fact that it was less than half. If I had attempted a psychic link to the lads to explain why training had to be moved, rather than your web-sms, it would have fared better. I have also frequently logged in to web-sms, had a look at my phone book, and realised that none of the numbers in the phone book are my own, but some-one elses, who is much more creative with nick-names. Hmmm.. Who needs saved phone numbers anyway?
Then I tried to use your online shop to buy a phone. I went on there and had a look, and could not for the life of me find one price. Merely a conundrum of links that brought me all over the place, but not to any phone I wanted and not to one actual price, nor to a simple explanation of how it works. Then I requested an upgrade code from the internet for my bonus upgrade. It didnt f***ing work. This sounding familiar? So I rang your still helpful customer care team, and they got me the upgrade code, and I went on to the O2 Online Shop again, ever hopeful, put in my upgrade code, and it didn't work. Couldnt avail of your online offers, couldnt buy a phone online, couldnt even look at a price. Still.
I have also spent inordinate amounts of time on hold, because apparently I typed in the password for my email account wrong three times so my account got locked out. And some genius on your web design crew decided to lock it out after three wrong log in attempts. So now when your stupid website does not realise that yes, in fact I can remember an 8 digit password and have the mental capacity to type it in, I have to ring one of your still helpful, now long suffering customer care team to unlock it. Frequently the unlock procedure that they use doesnt work, at which point I am too busy foaming at the mouth and punching walls to call in and demand to speak to the defecating monkeys who design your website, in order that I might try to understand the stupidity that goes into such a huge leap forward in the fields of ineptness and uselessness.
Design wise, I despise it. Anyone who has used an Internet browser invented in the last 3 years hates it. Your de-evolved, quite low in the food chain web team uses pop-ups. Every browser I know uses "Pop up Blockers". Guess why? Because everyone, in the whole web-based universe despises POP UPS!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!! Maybe moving the f*** on from Pop-ups after 5 years might be mentioned to someone on your web development team who might actually be able to read and write. In terms of your interface, I would rather spend my evening having my crack waxed than look for a single specific item on your site. It doesnt work. You click on one link, pop-ups fly, links are pissed up on screen randomly, text and information flies at you from all angles. The style changes on every page making it impossible to intuitively use your site.
Perhaps I am incorrect. Perhaps your website is some sort of satirical post-modern joke. It endeavours to amuse your customers with its unbalanced and ludicrous actions. Its design aimed at tricking the user into a false sense of security and then WHAM, practical joke laid. I dont know. But as a serious user of services such as hotmail, gmail, hushmail, and Quios, I have seen the alternatives, both in other communications companies, who actually took the time to find a web design team who had been introduced to a computer before, and other service providers, and I will never use your website again, and it is a large part of the reason as to why my billpay service will be switching as soon as my contract is up.
In conclusion, I would ask you to please, please, release your web team back into the wild, because I am personally opposed to all forms of imprisonment of animals. For more information on the rights of yor web team, please get in contact with PETA, and adjust your companies policy accordingly.
I thank you for your time.
For a good 4 fears of having an o2 mobile phone, and an Email account with you, I have suffered through your website (or is it websty?), for the dubious benefits of free email, and free web-texts, and I am writing to tell you that I will no longer deign to use your web portal. I know you are a large multi-national company, but I have seen vomit on O' Connell street that is designed better than your truly awful website. I have seen homeless people on heroin, reading the old testament upside-down, who would make better web developers than the ones currently flinging crap at each other in some far-off never visited, hopefully locked office at your company. I hate your website so much that you have not only lost my web business, you will also very soon be losing my billpay business, and that of anyone who asks me, purely because of this service. Doubtless you have already stopped reading this mail, because websites are expensive, and dont make you much money, so you probably dont care, but just for the hell of it I am going to give you just a small selection of the problems I have found with your site since my introduction to it.
When registering my first pre-paid phone. It didnt in fact register, or ever give me any free credit. And when I went back, week after week, to register on your stupid bastard of a site, it told me I had already registered. Even when I rang your very helpful (No sarcasm, theyare very helpful) customer care team, and they passed the problem on to the afore-mentioned low-life web development crew, my problem was never solved. Nobody ever got back to me, and your piss-poor web portal went on as normal. I know the problem was never fixed as a friend of the family had the exact problem not two months ago.
I have frequently sat down at work to check my email, and typed in www.o2.ie, or web.o2.ie, or whatever URL actually works for your expletive of a site, and waited for internet explorer's little blue bar to fill up, and time out, because your server had crashed, your website was nowhere to be seen for hours on end, or perhaps I was waiting for one of your web team to photograph their privates, or drink water from the urinal. So much so, that in my college days, I remember one particular night of playing a drinking game of trying to down a pint before your website crashes or times out. I suggest your web development team try the same with bleach.
When I once made the mistake of actually relying on your email service for business reasons, I waited some 7 hours, during which time I rang your customer care team 6 times, who continually informed me that there was no delay and your email server was not in fact down. I sent myself numerous test emails from work. Not one has ever arrived. I only hope that they found a home somewhere.
I have used your free webSMS service, and I will let you in on a secret, that obviously, your web development monkeys dont know. It doesnt F***ing work. It just doesnt f***ing work. I used it for group sms for my local soccer team for a change in training time. We didnt train that week. I dont know how many people actually got that sms, but I know for a fact that it was less than half. If I had attempted a psychic link to the lads to explain why training had to be moved, rather than your web-sms, it would have fared better. I have also frequently logged in to web-sms, had a look at my phone book, and realised that none of the numbers in the phone book are my own, but some-one elses, who is much more creative with nick-names. Hmmm.. Who needs saved phone numbers anyway?
Then I tried to use your online shop to buy a phone. I went on there and had a look, and could not for the life of me find one price. Merely a conundrum of links that brought me all over the place, but not to any phone I wanted and not to one actual price, nor to a simple explanation of how it works. Then I requested an upgrade code from the internet for my bonus upgrade. It didnt f***ing work. This sounding familiar? So I rang your still helpful customer care team, and they got me the upgrade code, and I went on to the O2 Online Shop again, ever hopeful, put in my upgrade code, and it didn't work. Couldnt avail of your online offers, couldnt buy a phone online, couldnt even look at a price. Still.
I have also spent inordinate amounts of time on hold, because apparently I typed in the password for my email account wrong three times so my account got locked out. And some genius on your web design crew decided to lock it out after three wrong log in attempts. So now when your stupid website does not realise that yes, in fact I can remember an 8 digit password and have the mental capacity to type it in, I have to ring one of your still helpful, now long suffering customer care team to unlock it. Frequently the unlock procedure that they use doesnt work, at which point I am too busy foaming at the mouth and punching walls to call in and demand to speak to the defecating monkeys who design your website, in order that I might try to understand the stupidity that goes into such a huge leap forward in the fields of ineptness and uselessness.
Design wise, I despise it. Anyone who has used an Internet browser invented in the last 3 years hates it. Your de-evolved, quite low in the food chain web team uses pop-ups. Every browser I know uses "Pop up Blockers". Guess why? Because everyone, in the whole web-based universe despises POP UPS!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!! Maybe moving the f*** on from Pop-ups after 5 years might be mentioned to someone on your web development team who might actually be able to read and write. In terms of your interface, I would rather spend my evening having my crack waxed than look for a single specific item on your site. It doesnt work. You click on one link, pop-ups fly, links are pissed up on screen randomly, text and information flies at you from all angles. The style changes on every page making it impossible to intuitively use your site.
Perhaps I am incorrect. Perhaps your website is some sort of satirical post-modern joke. It endeavours to amuse your customers with its unbalanced and ludicrous actions. Its design aimed at tricking the user into a false sense of security and then WHAM, practical joke laid. I dont know. But as a serious user of services such as hotmail, gmail, hushmail, and Quios, I have seen the alternatives, both in other communications companies, who actually took the time to find a web design team who had been introduced to a computer before, and other service providers, and I will never use your website again, and it is a large part of the reason as to why my billpay service will be switching as soon as my contract is up.
In conclusion, I would ask you to please, please, release your web team back into the wild, because I am personally opposed to all forms of imprisonment of animals. For more information on the rights of yor web team, please get in contact with PETA, and adjust your companies policy accordingly.
I thank you for your time.
Whats past still present in future.
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
Gerald R. Ford
At Christmas, when the gawdy banners shake,
Or easter when winter weather breaks,
Or in the summer as the sun lets fly,
I will love you,I will always try.
When dawn cracks the grey of sleepless nights,
And tired leper eyes face the daylight,
And life seems too far away to run,
I will love you, till hope cracks through the sun.
When sickness crawls through our bodies weak,
And we have no heart or soul to speak,
And ulcers form where love there used to be,
I will see the truth and let what has been be.
And when the warm sun finally dulls,
When winters dark mists fall forever,
I must steadfast walk away,
take one, hear this, there will not be another.
***
This fledgling force of childish love,
This spirit from the sky above,
Holds now to stab, this bond lost.
***
***
And the grey clouds form,
On the now dull sky,
As if they were all that had ever been.
Gerald R. Ford
At Christmas, when the gawdy banners shake,
Or easter when winter weather breaks,
Or in the summer as the sun lets fly,
I will love you,I will always try.
When dawn cracks the grey of sleepless nights,
And tired leper eyes face the daylight,
And life seems too far away to run,
I will love you, till hope cracks through the sun.
When sickness crawls through our bodies weak,
And we have no heart or soul to speak,
And ulcers form where love there used to be,
I will see the truth and let what has been be.
And when the warm sun finally dulls,
When winters dark mists fall forever,
I must steadfast walk away,
take one, hear this, there will not be another.
***
This fledgling force of childish love,
This spirit from the sky above,
Holds now to stab, this bond lost.
***
***
And the grey clouds form,
On the now dull sky,
As if they were all that had ever been.
Dawn cracks and the sky is grey,
The writings clearly on the wall.
As strangers look the other way
I stop and stare and hope and stall.
If I never move again, it will
Force them all to see like me,
How time can simply stand stock still,
How perfect moments could ever be.
No movement then, except a smile,
A statue's nameless ode to love,
A heart that treats me like a child,
A sense of something great above,
That time itself can never save,
I'll take this moment to my grave.
The writings clearly on the wall.
As strangers look the other way
I stop and stare and hope and stall.
If I never move again, it will
Force them all to see like me,
How time can simply stand stock still,
How perfect moments could ever be.
No movement then, except a smile,
A statue's nameless ode to love,
A heart that treats me like a child,
A sense of something great above,
That time itself can never save,
I'll take this moment to my grave.
Virginity
I posted back her flower. A tiny dried iris, crumpled and earthy, slowly rotting away to nothing. She gave it to me years ago. We were 16 when she left it in my bed. She was throwing it away anyway, so I took it.
But later, when that time was over, and we grew up, we realised what love was. And how much we weren't in love.
I really didn't understand how expensive that commodity was.
We broke up. And though we werent in love, I had never hurt more. She was not the one but the only.
The day to day hurt, where I thought I was getting on fine, not thinking about it, and then I'd see a dried flower that reminded me of her, and the wound was opened again fresh, a rending jagged hole, in the root of my stomach, slowly spreading upwards, infecting the lungs, so I couldn't breathe, except in brief painful sobs and moans. And moving on from that immediate pain, where a shadow cast on my soul when I saw her picture, or heard her name in conversation, or just thought of her when there was nothing fresher to feel down about. I became a loner, My head became my home. People meant danger.
Because we were so happy to need each other, we were lost in the unreality of teen addiction. We needed the esteem, the friend, and the hope. Because without hope, you don't survive your teens. So we ignored the face in the mirror for so long, we couldn't face them anymore. Until one day she faced reality, and it was over. She did it for the both of us.
I'm so proud of her for that. I could never face the end. So she faced it for me. And she let me blame her, and blame her, and blame her. She just let it happen, she knew I couldn't move on, she knew my storm wouldnt break. Until, like a wave crashing on a shore, things became brutal. We were tossed out into the world, swung about on the waves, clawing for breath and kicking for grip. Thoughts turned away from love, because just breathing became too important.
But later, when that time was over, and we grew up, we realised what love was. And how much we weren't in love.
I really didn't understand how expensive that commodity was.
We broke up. And though we werent in love, I had never hurt more. She was not the one but the only.
The day to day hurt, where I thought I was getting on fine, not thinking about it, and then I'd see a dried flower that reminded me of her, and the wound was opened again fresh, a rending jagged hole, in the root of my stomach, slowly spreading upwards, infecting the lungs, so I couldn't breathe, except in brief painful sobs and moans. And moving on from that immediate pain, where a shadow cast on my soul when I saw her picture, or heard her name in conversation, or just thought of her when there was nothing fresher to feel down about. I became a loner, My head became my home. People meant danger.
Because we were so happy to need each other, we were lost in the unreality of teen addiction. We needed the esteem, the friend, and the hope. Because without hope, you don't survive your teens. So we ignored the face in the mirror for so long, we couldn't face them anymore. Until one day she faced reality, and it was over. She did it for the both of us.
I'm so proud of her for that. I could never face the end. So she faced it for me. And she let me blame her, and blame her, and blame her. She just let it happen, she knew I couldn't move on, she knew my storm wouldnt break. Until, like a wave crashing on a shore, things became brutal. We were tossed out into the world, swung about on the waves, clawing for breath and kicking for grip. Thoughts turned away from love, because just breathing became too important.
The cold air cuts my eyes.
My vision swirling red,
And I walk through it,
Lost and easily led.
The future lies in ruins,
While I destroy the past,
The war is over, You have won,
It has beaten me at last.
But loss will always save the day,
Kicking me hard where it hurts,
As I lay blinded in the mud,
My mouth the taste of blood and dirt,
Where a broken smile slowly appears,
Because my time is almost done,
Done with coping, despite it all,
Done with dreaming and standing tall.
This boy's race is run.
My vision swirling red,
And I walk through it,
Lost and easily led.
The future lies in ruins,
While I destroy the past,
The war is over, You have won,
It has beaten me at last.
But loss will always save the day,
Kicking me hard where it hurts,
As I lay blinded in the mud,
My mouth the taste of blood and dirt,
Where a broken smile slowly appears,
Because my time is almost done,
Done with coping, despite it all,
Done with dreaming and standing tall.
This boy's race is run.
Lyrics
I watched him as he blew out the candle and then left quietly.
He was there when we arrived, alone at a table for two.
"This used to be our table" he told the waiter, who stared at him and then left. I knew what he meant, he was just too tired to make any sense. I could see it in his eyes. anyone could. He sat alone for two hours, and left his salad and whiskey untouched.
His face hid fresh pain. An unconscious assumption though I couldnt put my finger on why. It was mostly his eyes, which were never in the light. The rings around them were just that bit too big, the black holes he peared from a little too wide with pain. He had died a little today.
I felt consumed by this. I needed to know what his story was. My malaise mirrored in his, and I felt like a fraud. He had a reason for his pain. He had a person to hate, or a love lost to greive, he had something. I sat, eating my steak, with an acute sense of desperate misery, and to it, I could attach no reason, or recognition of a problem, misery, without a point, misdirected, useless. He had a reason, and i hated him for it.
He was there when we arrived, alone at a table for two.
"This used to be our table" he told the waiter, who stared at him and then left. I knew what he meant, he was just too tired to make any sense. I could see it in his eyes. anyone could. He sat alone for two hours, and left his salad and whiskey untouched.
His face hid fresh pain. An unconscious assumption though I couldnt put my finger on why. It was mostly his eyes, which were never in the light. The rings around them were just that bit too big, the black holes he peared from a little too wide with pain. He had died a little today.
I felt consumed by this. I needed to know what his story was. My malaise mirrored in his, and I felt like a fraud. He had a reason for his pain. He had a person to hate, or a love lost to greive, he had something. I sat, eating my steak, with an acute sense of desperate misery, and to it, I could attach no reason, or recognition of a problem, misery, without a point, misdirected, useless. He had a reason, and i hated him for it.
Plan B? We have a Plan B?
I thought of another escape. Panic slithered up my spine as my stomach churned with the poison I had fed it. Everything was mixing too much and I didnt like it.
This firework had just exploded.
I pictured myself driving across south america, and oh yeah I could feel it. Gringo, and the women. And the mota... Or walking through Japan, lumbering across the country as life sped by in a haze of neon. Or maybe break away from here, escape this, to Norway on a bicycle. Eyes paining me. Something else too.
It was raining on me as I typed. I had my eyes closed, concentrating on wherever everything was. No point trusting my eyes, not now. Maybe not ever again. A spatter of rain spiderwebbed across my forehead.
What is this, water torture now? What are they doing?
They're trying to drive me crazy.
I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. They had broken the skylight. I was sure of it. More noise. Maybe they had gotten in. I looked across the room.
Thank god.
Lyle. Holding a bible, with blood dripping down his arm. He was smeared in dirt from the plant which was watching us from the corner of the room, grunting and primal, stuck in his own trip. He was reading the book upside down, squinting occasionally, and catatonically lurching, as if being poked by hot coals.
Panic subsided and I felt safe again. I took a quick swig of whatever was in the bottle nearest to me. I was trying to make out the name, but more sentences formed above and below and it was impossible. Too many symbols from my past, just floating there in space, and this bottle was somehow the key. I drained it dry. I tried to put myself somewhere else. Just for a few hours. Just till this hideous fever subsided and I could get something done. Something...
From those glorious hazy days, slipping further and further away.
2 years. 3 years maybe, since that haze faded. That glorious tingle that felt like we were all at the centre of something, that life would really work out for us, that we were basking in the sunshine, and somehow, it would never set.
It was something to be part of, the growing friends, stories, ideas and dreams. Creating roots, linking them, so they would never die.
It was all coming together over us, and we were just waiting for the world, we could take on anything. We had no fear.
From that great time of free thought, many years after that way of life imploded, and there could be no going back, to now, the reality.
We hadnt changed the world. Our mighty roots died and withered with time. We had gotten so far away from the world, it seemed impossible to start again, to return to families, get a job, work hard for little money and be a part of a society we had spent so long ignoring.
The only laws we broke were drug laws. We didnt want to change the world, we didnt want to change anything, we just thought that we could find a way round.
So many days, since way back then, when panic crept up my spine. It infected my brain, drunk on fear, with nothing else.
But society does not easily suffer dreamers, and so I was, three years after the world stopped making sense. A degree on the wall, a head full of drugs, a half tank of petrol, and an empty feeling like everything I had worked for was destroyed, had never existed.
And I was playing their game again.
Feeling like I won't survive by playing by their rules.
This firework had just exploded.
I pictured myself driving across south america, and oh yeah I could feel it. Gringo, and the women. And the mota... Or walking through Japan, lumbering across the country as life sped by in a haze of neon. Or maybe break away from here, escape this, to Norway on a bicycle. Eyes paining me. Something else too.
It was raining on me as I typed. I had my eyes closed, concentrating on wherever everything was. No point trusting my eyes, not now. Maybe not ever again. A spatter of rain spiderwebbed across my forehead.
What is this, water torture now? What are they doing?
They're trying to drive me crazy.
I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. They had broken the skylight. I was sure of it. More noise. Maybe they had gotten in. I looked across the room.
Thank god.
Lyle. Holding a bible, with blood dripping down his arm. He was smeared in dirt from the plant which was watching us from the corner of the room, grunting and primal, stuck in his own trip. He was reading the book upside down, squinting occasionally, and catatonically lurching, as if being poked by hot coals.
Panic subsided and I felt safe again. I took a quick swig of whatever was in the bottle nearest to me. I was trying to make out the name, but more sentences formed above and below and it was impossible. Too many symbols from my past, just floating there in space, and this bottle was somehow the key. I drained it dry. I tried to put myself somewhere else. Just for a few hours. Just till this hideous fever subsided and I could get something done. Something...
From those glorious hazy days, slipping further and further away.
2 years. 3 years maybe, since that haze faded. That glorious tingle that felt like we were all at the centre of something, that life would really work out for us, that we were basking in the sunshine, and somehow, it would never set.
It was something to be part of, the growing friends, stories, ideas and dreams. Creating roots, linking them, so they would never die.
It was all coming together over us, and we were just waiting for the world, we could take on anything. We had no fear.
From that great time of free thought, many years after that way of life imploded, and there could be no going back, to now, the reality.
We hadnt changed the world. Our mighty roots died and withered with time. We had gotten so far away from the world, it seemed impossible to start again, to return to families, get a job, work hard for little money and be a part of a society we had spent so long ignoring.
The only laws we broke were drug laws. We didnt want to change the world, we didnt want to change anything, we just thought that we could find a way round.
So many days, since way back then, when panic crept up my spine. It infected my brain, drunk on fear, with nothing else.
But society does not easily suffer dreamers, and so I was, three years after the world stopped making sense. A degree on the wall, a head full of drugs, a half tank of petrol, and an empty feeling like everything I had worked for was destroyed, had never existed.
And I was playing their game again.
Feeling like I won't survive by playing by their rules.
Cleanout: A plug in a trap or drain pipe that provides access for the purpose of clearing an obstruction.
The clackalack was torture now.
Dulled jingling and jangling forcing its way through my head, oscillating fiercely so I couldn’t think. Eyes bleary, rubbed-red and grating; work had been a nightmare. I daydreamed away the day and nothing had been done.
This job is killing me. There’s too much on the table now, the deal so close to its conclusion and so much left to do, and what then? I knew that this would all be on my shoulders, and I knew that it sickened me to do it.
I could feel my stomach squirm at the thought of tomorrow, ulcers forming there. Two days at the most till the deal was closed, but tomorrow, it was D-day.
Until then, I needed focus, but could find none.
No focus to take the spotlight from me, except the dim and uncertain feelings of self disgust. My day flashing through memory, shunting like a skipping CD, ignoring all logic to flood the mind with the pithy acid of remorse, the most pathetic of all drugs.
And always, interruption, clackalack, clackalack, and I couldn’t think.
It had started two days ago. Fiercely at first, but always the same pattern. Three clacks with a long gap of silence between each, then three clacks, in quick succession, then a gap, then three more quick taps. Always at the same rhythm, never ceasing or stopping.
It was coming from the pipes.
They were an ancient maze that had ran through the building since its erection. They climbed walls and scurried across ceilings, brass and dirty green, covered in globules of ancient dust and grime that would never be cleaned.
And for the last two days they had greeted me as soon as I stepped into the apartment with their incessant jingle. I had told the janitor after some fourteen hours of a sleepless night, but said he had called when I was out and could hear nothing.
I had already called him twice more, I was sure he would come running soon.There was little point hiding from it though. I knew there was no way I was sleeping tonight, pipes or no, and It wasn’t going to kill me. I turned out the lights, and settled down to unsettled squirming. Six hours until work. I started counting the cracks in the ceiling.
In the morning it had stopped. It was replaced with the loneliness of a lost heart beat. I waited for a half an hour, holding my breath until my heart leapt up and hammered my lungs, forcing in sharp inhalations that hurt my chest.
I realised I was hoping it would start again.
Dulled jingling and jangling forcing its way through my head, oscillating fiercely so I couldn’t think. Eyes bleary, rubbed-red and grating; work had been a nightmare. I daydreamed away the day and nothing had been done.
This job is killing me. There’s too much on the table now, the deal so close to its conclusion and so much left to do, and what then? I knew that this would all be on my shoulders, and I knew that it sickened me to do it.
I could feel my stomach squirm at the thought of tomorrow, ulcers forming there. Two days at the most till the deal was closed, but tomorrow, it was D-day.
Until then, I needed focus, but could find none.
No focus to take the spotlight from me, except the dim and uncertain feelings of self disgust. My day flashing through memory, shunting like a skipping CD, ignoring all logic to flood the mind with the pithy acid of remorse, the most pathetic of all drugs.
And always, interruption, clackalack, clackalack, and I couldn’t think.
It had started two days ago. Fiercely at first, but always the same pattern. Three clacks with a long gap of silence between each, then three clacks, in quick succession, then a gap, then three more quick taps. Always at the same rhythm, never ceasing or stopping.
It was coming from the pipes.
They were an ancient maze that had ran through the building since its erection. They climbed walls and scurried across ceilings, brass and dirty green, covered in globules of ancient dust and grime that would never be cleaned.
And for the last two days they had greeted me as soon as I stepped into the apartment with their incessant jingle. I had told the janitor after some fourteen hours of a sleepless night, but said he had called when I was out and could hear nothing.
I had already called him twice more, I was sure he would come running soon.There was little point hiding from it though. I knew there was no way I was sleeping tonight, pipes or no, and It wasn’t going to kill me. I turned out the lights, and settled down to unsettled squirming. Six hours until work. I started counting the cracks in the ceiling.
In the morning it had stopped. It was replaced with the loneliness of a lost heart beat. I waited for a half an hour, holding my breath until my heart leapt up and hammered my lungs, forcing in sharp inhalations that hurt my chest.
I realised I was hoping it would start again.
A placebo where a smile should be.
Rain pelted the windscreen as I squinted into the distance.
Dread crawled in every direction.
Black and dirty muddy reds slowly reached up through the grey, fighting, like anger and depression, for the brunt of my attention. Trees flitted by, out of focus, the wind heckling through the leaves.
Driving though, and I didnt want to let go of these feelings. Too powerful to let go of.
This time, anger was home.
Anger was pushing the car. Anger was driving. Anger was me, a silent purple hatred cannoning the world with my mind. I wanted to destroy everything in sight. Every life and smile was enemy, breathing was no-mans-land.
The rain spat down.
I've been so used to accepting that I was wrong, overfilled with an invalid emotion, it takes away from the equity of life, steals the beauty of existence. But Jesus, I've been trying to let it go. Ive been trying to let these ulcerous sores heal and become the person that everyone feels I should be, and deserve to be.
Ive been trying to be happy, and to play by the rules for as long as I have had this mind of my own to question with.
I have been trying to be happy.
Good guess. It's not working. It doesnt help. And no need for the sympathy either, the its not that bad pat on the back, the you know you'll be fine hug, the concerned supportive grins. I dont need it.
And in it all, I'm still striving, in my own way to succeed in life. Human nature. Still pushing to find some corner of happiness I can capture, some "happily ever after", if just for a year or two.
But in every endeavour I am left unsatisfied, and it just hit home why.
Im trying to push these agendas of mine forward, but it feels like moving house. My life is trapped in a million different boxes and the more I see of myself, the less I recognise.
Not my life, the happy life of the wellpaid workforce. Nor mine the empty mindlessness of a junkie, nor mine the warmth of wealth, nor the honesty of poverty, nor any niche cut out for me, because I only see hatred in it all. And talent washes away in seconds as I see all I want to acheive in a eulogy that will never be written, because certainty and fate have told me, it will not be long now.
As a being, I am a great and wonderful thing. My life is a force like no other. Unique to a fault, and no other could touch what I have acheived. In the fields of self-doubt, self-hatred and loathing, I have made more progress in four years than most make in a lifetime. My home is the red and cold greys of misery that form numerous pits and chasms throughout my day. Sometimes, I miss these pits, and live my day. Others I fall and slowly climb out. But sometimes, the dirt from that pit clings to me, and I carry it forever. The weight of every worry and fear I have ever had is getting too much now though. I cant push others out, lead them to safety, crack a joke and a smile anymore. No. Too much me is showing up and I know they can all see it. Too close together now, my home and my head, my friends and my sickness, and it has to hit home.
Im not impressing anybody.
Not anymore.
The heady days of feeling like I deserved this are over. Those lost times of oneness, and incredible nights of dreams, hopes and well wishes are all over. All others who thought my existence incedible too are gone, a lesson learned because I would never stop teaching them how pointless I was. They play to me like a charity case now, but all kinship is pushed further and further away, because true friends know when to cull out the herd. And man they are some incredible people. I dont blame them or hold a thing against them. I do not know a single person that I would rather feel alienated from than those that I am.
Not irrational, or fickle, or full of hatred for a world that pushed me away, because its not true.
I did all the pushing.
I saw the high walls of kinship unfold before me, marked out forever as a testament to wellbeing, crafted by those glorious enough and wonderful enough to care about me, to worry for me, and think of me, as I berated them all with problem after problem until eventually I broke them, healed them, pushed them off my cold and empty island to find something more. Pushing them away from me, as though the ship were sinking, and one day soon we would all be taken with it.
And youre thinking run, run you idiot before its too late.
But it is already.
Its too late.
Its too late.
Dread crawled in every direction.
Black and dirty muddy reds slowly reached up through the grey, fighting, like anger and depression, for the brunt of my attention. Trees flitted by, out of focus, the wind heckling through the leaves.
Driving though, and I didnt want to let go of these feelings. Too powerful to let go of.
This time, anger was home.
Anger was pushing the car. Anger was driving. Anger was me, a silent purple hatred cannoning the world with my mind. I wanted to destroy everything in sight. Every life and smile was enemy, breathing was no-mans-land.
The rain spat down.
I've been so used to accepting that I was wrong, overfilled with an invalid emotion, it takes away from the equity of life, steals the beauty of existence. But Jesus, I've been trying to let it go. Ive been trying to let these ulcerous sores heal and become the person that everyone feels I should be, and deserve to be.
Ive been trying to be happy, and to play by the rules for as long as I have had this mind of my own to question with.
I have been trying to be happy.
Good guess. It's not working. It doesnt help. And no need for the sympathy either, the its not that bad pat on the back, the you know you'll be fine hug, the concerned supportive grins. I dont need it.
And in it all, I'm still striving, in my own way to succeed in life. Human nature. Still pushing to find some corner of happiness I can capture, some "happily ever after", if just for a year or two.
But in every endeavour I am left unsatisfied, and it just hit home why.
Im trying to push these agendas of mine forward, but it feels like moving house. My life is trapped in a million different boxes and the more I see of myself, the less I recognise.
Not my life, the happy life of the wellpaid workforce. Nor mine the empty mindlessness of a junkie, nor mine the warmth of wealth, nor the honesty of poverty, nor any niche cut out for me, because I only see hatred in it all. And talent washes away in seconds as I see all I want to acheive in a eulogy that will never be written, because certainty and fate have told me, it will not be long now.
As a being, I am a great and wonderful thing. My life is a force like no other. Unique to a fault, and no other could touch what I have acheived. In the fields of self-doubt, self-hatred and loathing, I have made more progress in four years than most make in a lifetime. My home is the red and cold greys of misery that form numerous pits and chasms throughout my day. Sometimes, I miss these pits, and live my day. Others I fall and slowly climb out. But sometimes, the dirt from that pit clings to me, and I carry it forever. The weight of every worry and fear I have ever had is getting too much now though. I cant push others out, lead them to safety, crack a joke and a smile anymore. No. Too much me is showing up and I know they can all see it. Too close together now, my home and my head, my friends and my sickness, and it has to hit home.
Im not impressing anybody.
Not anymore.
The heady days of feeling like I deserved this are over. Those lost times of oneness, and incredible nights of dreams, hopes and well wishes are all over. All others who thought my existence incedible too are gone, a lesson learned because I would never stop teaching them how pointless I was. They play to me like a charity case now, but all kinship is pushed further and further away, because true friends know when to cull out the herd. And man they are some incredible people. I dont blame them or hold a thing against them. I do not know a single person that I would rather feel alienated from than those that I am.
Not irrational, or fickle, or full of hatred for a world that pushed me away, because its not true.
I did all the pushing.
I saw the high walls of kinship unfold before me, marked out forever as a testament to wellbeing, crafted by those glorious enough and wonderful enough to care about me, to worry for me, and think of me, as I berated them all with problem after problem until eventually I broke them, healed them, pushed them off my cold and empty island to find something more. Pushing them away from me, as though the ship were sinking, and one day soon we would all be taken with it.
And youre thinking run, run you idiot before its too late.
But it is already.
Its too late.
Its too late.
Coughing up cough medicine
No signposting destiny.
No directions to fate.
No closer to getting nowhere.
No fortune cookies, No tarot readings, No insights, no plans,
Just long, lazy days of nothingness blinking one to the next.
Occasionally marked out in pain, sometimes with aggravation, always sanding and grating the soul.
But mostly just an unspoilt calm slick as I slide from day off to day off, mildly sedated, entirely unwilling and wholly unaware of the external realities of my life.
But I get my exercise too; I imagine.
I imagine my name flicking through computers, possibly 3 or 4 a day. On a quickly scrolling list, alive on the screen for just a second, my name, and then nothing. Occasionally highlighted for an offer, correspondance, an unpaid bill. Occasionally removed from nothingness by this gaudy lettering, thats my exercise, as I lie there unmoving. My name, out there on a computer, completely out of my control.
I am information. Compiled data.
Entertaining.
Slowly, the sleeping beast is awakening.
I am beginning to see great and wonderful things.
No directions to fate.
No closer to getting nowhere.
No fortune cookies, No tarot readings, No insights, no plans,
Just long, lazy days of nothingness blinking one to the next.
Occasionally marked out in pain, sometimes with aggravation, always sanding and grating the soul.
But mostly just an unspoilt calm slick as I slide from day off to day off, mildly sedated, entirely unwilling and wholly unaware of the external realities of my life.
But I get my exercise too; I imagine.
I imagine my name flicking through computers, possibly 3 or 4 a day. On a quickly scrolling list, alive on the screen for just a second, my name, and then nothing. Occasionally highlighted for an offer, correspondance, an unpaid bill. Occasionally removed from nothingness by this gaudy lettering, thats my exercise, as I lie there unmoving. My name, out there on a computer, completely out of my control.
I am information. Compiled data.
Entertaining.
Slowly, the sleeping beast is awakening.
I am beginning to see great and wonderful things.
The heart beats a quick life,
And stops prematurely.
About 17 times a day.
Balancing on a slick knife,
stepping precariously,
Always the wrong way.
The candle quickly snubbed out,
No dancing flame is left,
A shortened life to fly with us,
Its wings flitting bereft.
But moments of sweet sunshine
Burnt into the horizon,
Following flights of angels,
Prompting this decision.
Fly away little starling, fly away.
And stops prematurely.
About 17 times a day.
Balancing on a slick knife,
stepping precariously,
Always the wrong way.
The candle quickly snubbed out,
No dancing flame is left,
A shortened life to fly with us,
Its wings flitting bereft.
But moments of sweet sunshine
Burnt into the horizon,
Following flights of angels,
Prompting this decision.
Fly away little starling, fly away.
Magyar Porszag
I got this postcard yesterday. It was addressed to someone else, someone I dont live with, so I read it anyway. Some pictures of places I havent been to but look nice. A name and address, some kind words. So unimportant that it doesnt even need to be private. My life. Wish you were here.
Yeah, sum it up in three sentences, so nobody needs to really know.
Nice weather, everybody happy, See you soon, wish you were here.
Fucking sure. Wish you were here. On the road, look at me go. no plans, a degree I hate leading to a job I hate, UPROAR all around, sleeping about oh 23 minutes a week, smoking, drinking, talking, moaning, and punching walls too much. Guitar down the pan, writing down the pan, feeling useless in everything I do, vague sense of dulled disillusionment about the world, feeling like god is dead and nothing matters, alienating friends, passive aggressive, mentally torturing myself, nice weather, wish you were here.
Got the sword hanging over my head, hoping it will fall soon to end this. Its getting darker and darker every day. Say hi to everyone for me, I hope I see you again soon, wish you were here.
Trying to say no to the demon again, but he's winning as Im smiling crazily, Sun and booze, best stay away for a while, Wish you were here.
Think youre all crazy for living like this. Fed up of the world with a price on every single thing, destroyed by a money grabbing ego driven control system. Nice weather, wish you were here.
Lost the will to actually try and change anything about this fucked up world because I wouldnt even know where to start, hope this finds you well, wish you were here.
Or I wish I could say this how I mean it. Piss off in every general direction, fuck the world, none of us have any more hope than the other, wish YOU were here.
Force of anger, blind with rage, pointless emotions swirling like a hurricane, weather was nice yesterday though, wish you were here.
No answers yet, wondering what to do with myself. Will be staying here for the foreseeable future, if u are ever going down this path give me a shout, wish you were here.
Yeah, sum it up in three sentences, so nobody needs to really know.
Nice weather, everybody happy, See you soon, wish you were here.
Fucking sure. Wish you were here. On the road, look at me go. no plans, a degree I hate leading to a job I hate, UPROAR all around, sleeping about oh 23 minutes a week, smoking, drinking, talking, moaning, and punching walls too much. Guitar down the pan, writing down the pan, feeling useless in everything I do, vague sense of dulled disillusionment about the world, feeling like god is dead and nothing matters, alienating friends, passive aggressive, mentally torturing myself, nice weather, wish you were here.
Got the sword hanging over my head, hoping it will fall soon to end this. Its getting darker and darker every day. Say hi to everyone for me, I hope I see you again soon, wish you were here.
Trying to say no to the demon again, but he's winning as Im smiling crazily, Sun and booze, best stay away for a while, Wish you were here.
Think youre all crazy for living like this. Fed up of the world with a price on every single thing, destroyed by a money grabbing ego driven control system. Nice weather, wish you were here.
Lost the will to actually try and change anything about this fucked up world because I wouldnt even know where to start, hope this finds you well, wish you were here.
Or I wish I could say this how I mean it. Piss off in every general direction, fuck the world, none of us have any more hope than the other, wish YOU were here.
Force of anger, blind with rage, pointless emotions swirling like a hurricane, weather was nice yesterday though, wish you were here.
No answers yet, wondering what to do with myself. Will be staying here for the foreseeable future, if u are ever going down this path give me a shout, wish you were here.
Do not gently into that good night...
How could it be different,
When we have always been at war.
Nothing else has ever been,
Nor could be anymore.
Those grey dawns are so fleeting,
So easy to lose touch,
And I haven't been too grateful,
Or helped you very much.
I wish that I was better,
in everything I do.
But I will try much harder.
I wont surrender you.
If only it was easy,
like it used to be before,
To wake up in the morning,
And not be dressed for war.
I know the me that you hate,
And trust me, I hate him too.
I wish I could destroy him,
But he's hanging onto you.
The me that brings the grey dawn,
The me that starts the war,
I wish that we could bury him,
And carry on as before,
But no matter if we lay down arms,
He will still be there,
With his grimacing reality,
His fixed and evil stare.
I wish that I could promise
that I will always treat you right,
But I know just like you do,
This only lasts till the next fight.
So Im fighting my last demon,
Im fighting him for you,
Dont get caught out like I did,
Or surrender to him, like I do.
I hope one day the sun will rise,
And We will fight no more,
But I will no longer hide him,
Behind my cellar door.
I just want you to remember,
As we drag out our war
And the casualties mount up,
And we cant fight anymore,
That no war is worth losing,
Unless you dont know what its for,
And we wouldnt have begun at all,
Unless we are worth fighting for.
When we have always been at war.
Nothing else has ever been,
Nor could be anymore.
Those grey dawns are so fleeting,
So easy to lose touch,
And I haven't been too grateful,
Or helped you very much.
I wish that I was better,
in everything I do.
But I will try much harder.
I wont surrender you.
If only it was easy,
like it used to be before,
To wake up in the morning,
And not be dressed for war.
I know the me that you hate,
And trust me, I hate him too.
I wish I could destroy him,
But he's hanging onto you.
The me that brings the grey dawn,
The me that starts the war,
I wish that we could bury him,
And carry on as before,
But no matter if we lay down arms,
He will still be there,
With his grimacing reality,
His fixed and evil stare.
I wish that I could promise
that I will always treat you right,
But I know just like you do,
This only lasts till the next fight.
So Im fighting my last demon,
Im fighting him for you,
Dont get caught out like I did,
Or surrender to him, like I do.
I hope one day the sun will rise,
And We will fight no more,
But I will no longer hide him,
Behind my cellar door.
I just want you to remember,
As we drag out our war
And the casualties mount up,
And we cant fight anymore,
That no war is worth losing,
Unless you dont know what its for,
And we wouldnt have begun at all,
Unless we are worth fighting for.
No strings attached.
Whispy clouds garnished the sky as I lay there with my eyes shut. Vivid blobs of red floating across my eyelids from the piercing blades of the sun. If only I could get her out of my head. Just looking back, and man, I was treated so badly. I was treated with so much disrespect. I never knew anyone could scream so much. It shocked me.
So I had to stop her.
Just two days later though, they came. I know it was bad before, but at least I had control. If I wanted to walk, I could walk, if I wanted to talk I could talk.
Just since it has happened I have become delighted with life. Its like a holiday that must end soon. And you dont want to sit by the pool forlorn and just wait to go home, you want to enjoy every last second and every little experience.
Because I know I'm going to end it soon.
I often wonder how nobody could ever notice. How nobody could ever see the strings attached. I often even hear their voices too. But so far nobody has said anything, a living doll.
When I brush my teeth its them, above me, pulling the strings. They control me. I have my mind still, but its a powerless dominion, for a man to have his mind, and heart and soul, and not be able to move his mouth to speak, or move his legs to run. I am a watcher now. Everything I do, I am an observer. They tell me what to say, they control my feet from above. They tell me how to dress, when to sleep, when to eat. I am a prisoner in my own head.
I envy so much the prisoners of autism, lost in a world they invented and created, they are gods in their own reality. I am less than a slave. My whole life is a plaything for an unknown controller since that day.
And I never saw them coming. When I fell asleep I was free, when I awoke, the strings and voices. They were in complete control. I had to relearn how to walk. I couldnt move. Gulliver in Lilliput.
The first days were the worst. They were out of practice (Am I their first victim?) And they knew nothing of my needs. The smell of piss and shit and emaciation and stale blood clung to me for weeks till they let me shower.
I find it so funny that nobody ever notices. I see the strings they rule me with, a human puppet, how ridiculous. I hear their voices, arguing above me, ever watchful, ever disdainful of my existence. But nobody ever notices.
I dream of the day they will let me die. The thought of just one slip from a razor, when they let the strings slack. I dream of the day I get a limb free, when the string eventually wears and breaks, and the chance, just one chance to escape this. I dream of the day they let me control my mouth, like they are promising. But its only the end approaching. My murder will free me. So until then, I must taste my last of life, a life without a body. But every day until then, every limb is controlled in a vice grip. My mouth snapped too tight.
Only life left here, no human.
So I had to stop her.
Just two days later though, they came. I know it was bad before, but at least I had control. If I wanted to walk, I could walk, if I wanted to talk I could talk.
Just since it has happened I have become delighted with life. Its like a holiday that must end soon. And you dont want to sit by the pool forlorn and just wait to go home, you want to enjoy every last second and every little experience.
Because I know I'm going to end it soon.
I often wonder how nobody could ever notice. How nobody could ever see the strings attached. I often even hear their voices too. But so far nobody has said anything, a living doll.
When I brush my teeth its them, above me, pulling the strings. They control me. I have my mind still, but its a powerless dominion, for a man to have his mind, and heart and soul, and not be able to move his mouth to speak, or move his legs to run. I am a watcher now. Everything I do, I am an observer. They tell me what to say, they control my feet from above. They tell me how to dress, when to sleep, when to eat. I am a prisoner in my own head.
I envy so much the prisoners of autism, lost in a world they invented and created, they are gods in their own reality. I am less than a slave. My whole life is a plaything for an unknown controller since that day.
And I never saw them coming. When I fell asleep I was free, when I awoke, the strings and voices. They were in complete control. I had to relearn how to walk. I couldnt move. Gulliver in Lilliput.
The first days were the worst. They were out of practice (Am I their first victim?) And they knew nothing of my needs. The smell of piss and shit and emaciation and stale blood clung to me for weeks till they let me shower.
I find it so funny that nobody ever notices. I see the strings they rule me with, a human puppet, how ridiculous. I hear their voices, arguing above me, ever watchful, ever disdainful of my existence. But nobody ever notices.
I dream of the day they will let me die. The thought of just one slip from a razor, when they let the strings slack. I dream of the day I get a limb free, when the string eventually wears and breaks, and the chance, just one chance to escape this. I dream of the day they let me control my mouth, like they are promising. But its only the end approaching. My murder will free me. So until then, I must taste my last of life, a life without a body. But every day until then, every limb is controlled in a vice grip. My mouth snapped too tight.
Only life left here, no human.
Dreaming of you.
It's incredibly dark. No noise except for distant breezes, and misdirected noises, breathing, creaking, the everyday groans of the house's pains and pleasures. The cup blinked. In so much as a cup could seem sleepy, this one did. It had been dormant for some 45 years. In a flash he remembered his past, the balance, the triumphs and failures. No emotion now, only determination.
"Every resurrection begins with the same warm darkness. It is home to me now for as long as I have begun paying attention to the passing of time. " he thought. The cup was self-assured. No longer nervous at this awakening, it had occured countless times throughout the centuries. He knew his existence was tied with the universe, and in essence, he could never die. That tended to make your average vessel slightly less worried about the odd chip or crack.He looked up at his audience. No applause, no chanting, no ceremony. They seemed quite disinterested really, not moving against the gloom of the cupboard."My power has spread. " "Though my explanation is blunted by this language man has invented, I will attempt to inform you of all to be. Explain my role in the dawn of spiritual eventuality. I came to this plane before the impairment of the spiritual vision of modern man. We walked hand in hand, before man lost the ability to understand my existence, and lost the reality of deity. Before the covetous greed of man forced this sleuth existence, as they hunt feverishly for evidence of my presence. I have returned in many forms when needed most, to enforce the divine controls of our predecessors. I have changed appearance and existence as needed to accomplish this. Your kind will never understand my work, but you must understand its importance. It is intertwined with the very basic fabrics of our reality and existence. I have struck balance and spoken for their species, ever since the great spiritual battles were finally lost by man. I oversaw the theological downfall of this species. Since the existentialist birth of hope, the beginning of the good ideas, to the stagnation of philosophy, mired in doctrine, to the death of spirituality and the dawn of the nihilist age. I greived the death of Astarte, mourned the loss of Aristotle, oversaw the passing of Jesus, guided the jews through the desert. As a spirit I oversaw the dawn of All. " "I know of time, but as a static ally, never a race. Intrinsically I will always be. The unwinding of my existence would mean the intrinsic gaps between spirituality and physics would no longer be bridged. I symbolise union on levels you could never understand. My spirit will never end. But why have I been awakened?" He ended his speech there, for the plates were staring at him with disbelief and horror, the bowls were completely disinterested, and it was clear that virtually none of his speech actually had an audience capable of understanding it. He would have to ponder this question himself. But first, he must escape this ceramic prison. "Of course in the reality of this plane, it is not to my efforts that create this universal balance. It is merely my existence. So here I will wait until I am freed."
He prepared himself for a long wait. His soul could only be freed when separated from the physical manifestation of his mental self, so in order for this cup to fly, he would have to be broken. To this end he would need patience before moving on. It would take time before he could reach safety and receive his instructions.
The cup exists now as a balance in the universe. Like an intergalactic remover of remainders. It balances equations, orbits, space time, spiritual forces, inspires the needy, balances emotional space, outerspace and inner space. It flies through our existence mopping up messes and mistakes on our behalf. Like the good cop of philosophy, an existential companion to the universe, annoyed that none of his kin in the cupboard were acknowledging his existence.
*****************
The evening gloom was gaining ground on the dry white cloud cover as I stared out my window. I could see the fog roll across the grass in the park across the street, spreading like a rumour. As I watched the dirty grey take hold, and beat the cloudy gloom into retreat for the evening, I felt the first pangs. I began to realise what was coming. It would be a few hours yet before I would look forward to it.
I started lifting weights, trying to work this out, repeating my mantra. I was really trying, but it was all a cloud, a misinterpretation. I lifted a new weight every day, I made them myself.
Staring at the mirror, a compulsion hit me, and I swung hard,crunching my fist into my jaw. I felt a little inspired, and dropped my weight to the floor. I didnt know if it was another demon or a manifestation in my stomach. Perhaps a warning from the future or some sort of karmic heads up. Smoke clouded my eyes as the hopelessness began to set in.
Dont do it tonight. I swung again.
There was no hope of stopping. I grinned.
I could taste the blood, cold determination in my mouth. Everything foul and ulcerous now, and that lukewarm, almost friendly air of hopelessness, my oldest companion. My hands felt hardened and rotten, dead branches, long since bereft of the trees they suckle. My lips were cracked and sore, but warmth and pain was spreading through, reviving them. My stomach felt hard and impenetrable, resolute against what I was about to test it with. Before it would have been a gooey cunundrum, a mixture of bile, waiting to geyser up in the sky in a blaze of self-destruction. I punched my weight in the air again, same motion as always, hand to mouth, hand to mouth. I counted them off. Eyes closed, chanting the mantra, trying to free myself, to clear my head. It wasnt working, so I dropped the weight to the floor.
Three words, this isnt healthy, floating around in my head, but bereft of any meaning to me. Hold back, just hold back. Dont do this to yourself again. But then the demon danced up. Seducing my brain with my own destruction.
"Not tonight Nick huh?"
"You gonna calm down huh?"
"You with me tonight, huh?"
He was in control. Jibing me, dancing around me, raining punches down, elusive and moving too fast. I am a shadow now. There's not much hope of moving on until I get him off my shoulder, out of my head. Tomorrow I would be me, but tonight he could find me anything I wanted. Tonight I would breathe diesel, drink death and piss fire. I grasped the weight again, hand to mouth, hand to mouth, until I felt lightheaded. Stained and euphoric.
My comfort came from hatred. Of my friends, my home, myself, This town. This town desperately trying to be a city. A suburban maze, on a saturday night, every toxin of any market value on offer. I could get anything. And the thought quickly occured to me, I wanted everything. More smiles, prompted by him. My mind a dumpster now. My head was clear, with one thought laughing and dancing around inside, a mental patient in a soundproof room.
I am scum.
I picked up another weight. Hand to mouth, until I was dizzy and breathing hard, forcing myself to do one more, one more, and hoping to cross through to oblivion. To avoid tonight.
I gathered together my ziplocked rations for the assault, the dregs of the college year, collecting bits of string and lint in my stash, getting staler and less potent as the months trundled on. Now I would feel no buzz from these, just dizzyness, sickness, isolation, and a hell of a bad day tomorrow.
I sat there in my room, on the ground, hunched in the frame of the door, trying to breathe. I was praying for an abort button for the evening. I tried to get my head above water again, to let myself bubble back to the surface Desperate for any alternative, I forced down the last of my wine and threw it at my bin with a dull heavy glass thud.
It didnt shatter.
I felt it throb through my veins, and I knew, right there, in that bottle is his strength. He has me now. I cant win.
He took me there too. I walked there in the dark. Shivering against the cold, I could see the path in front of me lit up by the lights coming from closed windows, and creeping through gaps in shut curtains. I spent most of the walk wondering. What was I doing? What will I do? What do I want to do?
Fuck it.
No answers.
Just this image of a huge, hulking gentle giant crossed my head and I thought of my uncle again.
My poor uncle, that would lift me over his shoulders and toss me about like a rag doll when I was a kid. His giant arms, the way he played with me, and indulge me, and generally treat me so gently and decently it nearly makes me cry to think of it. I thought him and my dad were the strongest people alive. But more than my father, hardened by the world, I feared for my uncle. I dont think that an evil thought could ever exist in his head, I hated the thought of what his life is like now, with his crazy tiny wife, that stands near him for comic relief, him 18 stone and tall, her 5 foot 1 and a former anorexic, and how different he was the last time I saw him. It had been years since I saw him last, and he barely fit my memories. This gentle beast had been chewed up, and spat out, and he was still smiling, he was still himself. He had naively taken everything the world could throw at him, he had walked into it smiling, and after everything, crazy drunken years, a struggling business, married trouble, getting old and turning sour, he was still smiling.
He is the strongest person I know.
I got there and slid open the door. There was no need to knock, and with the music blasting out from every corner of the house, nobody would have heard me if I did. I stole in, and tossed the room a grimace, because I only wanted two answers, where's the beer, and where's the dealer? People looked up, then turned back again, uneffected by my presence. That amused me.
Bass was buzzing in my ear from stale Dance, salty in my lungs with the sweaty hooks, turns and inhuman twists of those infected by it. I watched them with utter contempt. Contempt for their happiness. I thought I was better, because I was callous. Their jaws pumping on chewing gum, screaming at each other, hugging each other, hooked like the rest on that fake little feeling. Ecstasy. I felt nothing. Not for anyone there, not for any music, or conversation, or old friend. The demon was pumping hatred to my brain, fuel for my night, and I was blinded with a treasured, lazy hatred that flooded my thoughts.
No way I could be me tonight.
All I was here for was poison. just the poison. I didnt want a fake happy trance, fake energy and fake friends for the night. I just wanted to feel genuine, and that only ever meant feeling like shit.
I saw them approach right away. I was standing awkwardly, near the door, and they were about 20 feet away, at the window, and closing. One bearded, both as shabby as I, both twisted, but happy.
Envy again tsunamied round my chest and ebbed out again, sucking the grit and dirt worn from my soul with it. A torrent of emotion, then a calm before another storm.
My own head, now defiling me.
I know they mean well. These are the good guys, maybe they can stop me. And I know, that deep down they loved me too. Or loved how I used to be.
Before...
They thought they understood. And while they didnt have a clue, it still made me feel hopeful that they thought there was something to understand.
As they sidled up, I noticed that subconsciously I had braced myself against the hard wood of the door, and I could feel my back whitening with the force I was using. Buzz was hitting me now, and I wasnt ready to start being human again.
I saw the hunter in their eyes.
Pupils wide, guess why? And their heads, neck and eyes darting and circling the room, prey spotting, target practice. I saw them swish their eyes over
I didnt want to hurt them either.
"Hey Man, You already set up for tonight?"
"mmhmm."
"Do you know is the party staying here or moving along later?"
I shrugged. I dunno.
"Man you okay? Those eyes looking a little doughy."
"Are you all messed up again man?"
"Mmhmm."
All messed up he called me. All messed up again. As if it would disappoint him to find me sober. What and he isn't all messed up? No, of course not. The stuff he is taking is not a problem at all, but what I'm taking is? Contempt filling up now, wishing they could understand, but I knew i had lost them.
His head was morphing strangely. This made it worse.
He was right. Bastard.
I began to not take notice of the words, though I could see each word fall out of his mouth, it flitted out and flew off before I could note it. Words flowed into eachother and nothing made sense. But I knew he wasnt the enemy. Soon he had his arm around me, smiling cheering. He wanted me with them, he wanted me to smile. I did my best impression, held up my drink, popped another dram of poison into my mouth, and he let me be.
My lips hardened against my tongue, betraying my determination for the first time that night. I looked around again, and saw everyone differently, just for one, crazy slowmotion second. I saw how honest they were, in a blur of dancing faces, each frozen to my view with ecstatic expressions. My heart, for the first time that night, found an emotion to fight the rage with. Envy flowed in a green river through my veins. I knew that that was it then. I was out of control. Wrong way down the motorway, 200 miles an hour, with a blindfold on.
I would be an instrument of hatred.
Just until I died, Just until the morning.
I wanted out, so I left them with their party and found another room. Quiet and dark upstairs. It smelt stale as old sleep. I closed the door behind me, and lit the room with the streetlight outstide. I started again with the weight, made one up, and hand to mouth hand to mouth again, trying to glean comfort from the repetition, working myself into the daze.
I wanted to know what it was to be the most foul base person I could be. I wanted to know what it was like to be ruthless. I wanted to know what it was like to end something.
She was something.
The touch, just one brushing, bruising touch, but it was too much for me. My brain was a shadow, my body a force, pure and single-minded, set to kill. I was the very worst, fucking meanest person I knew how to be. I was drunk, I was fucked up, messed up, dirty, alone. Just me and my demon and I had no allies. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth. Just keep lifting.
I went downstairs again, feeling the speakers hit my spine as I got closer and closer to the speakers. Before entering the sitting room, I turned, and moved instead to the empty kitchen. I needed water. Just water and to get out of here. I looked across the greasy kitchen tops for a cup or a glass but couldnt find any, so I started rummaging anxiously in presses as my throat groaned and whined at me to slake its thirst. Finally in a cupboard full of delph I pulled out a cup. Filling it with water, i drained it off in seconds.
And just for a moment, I felt an oasis of calm and balance, for the first time that night, i wasn't feeling the fear. But it only lasted for a moment. Seized bodily by a compulsion, I tightened my grip on the cup, and smashed it into the corner of the room. It exploded upon impact and scattered shards flew across the floor.
I left alone.
My determination to hurt myself had never been stronger.Chemicals rushing round my body and I felt a wired buzz from head to toe, strange pockets of energy powered by emotion. What was messing with my head, and what could I do to fix it? I stared at the greying sky, old milk leaking further and further across the horizon. I was disgusted by it. The shit and green of the park in front of my house, the grey cracked pavement, the chalky clouds against the unreality of the early morning haze, mixed like puke with the street lights. Not a hint of grandeur, or pride, in the red and grey brick silhouette, not a hint of warmth in the dawn, there was no soul in this place. There was no beauty left in this town.
My shadow was tall. It looked proud. Ironic. I cracked a rye smile looking at it. It looked so surefooted and proud it nearly made me giggle, the compulsion a hangover from the lunacy I though I had control of again. But then the demon again.
I wasn't in this state for fun. It hit me all of a sudden, lightbulb, I didn't particularly want to survive tonight. I didnt want to wake up. A bottle of single malt in one hand, and a pained look on my face. I was determined to fuck myself up too. A new weight in my hand, repeating my mantra, hand to mouth, hand to mouth. It was late on, 5 in the morning maybe, but I could still think, and the last fucking thing I wanted to do right now was think. I wanted to shock her. I wanted to grab her neck with my fingers, shake her, hurt, pain.
I dropped the weight and watched it fizzle out.
The lights were low. My mind was reeling with the perversions I could see flashing before me. Nothing i had ever found desirable before. I felt like an altar of depravity. My body a bullet, zooming to insanity. She lay slyly on the far side of the room. A tiny curtain of light surrounded her. Giving her this fake brochure beauty, and I fucking hated it.
I wanted to do it all to her right then. I wanted to feel dirty, nasty, base. This was a night of abuse. Lights out, and before a word was said it was hands and breath and spit, groping in the blindness, shuddering with the reality of what I was doing even as I did it. I had her in my grip now. That fucking bitch. My hands on her neck. I didnt even squeeze. She couldnt struggle and I wanted to feel the evil power of her knowing it was all over. The last thing I remember was raising her clear over my head, and slamming her down hard on my knee. After that, nothing. Fuzzy warmth and blood, shards of wood all over the floor, sleep, rest.
Sleep.
When I woke up I stared at what I had done.
Remorse became terminal. I had killed her. Oh. Well.
The scene on the floor was a nightmare. I picked up her body, her neck and head nowhere to be seen. I picked out the pick ups from her chest, took the strings still connected to the headstock. I couldnt believe she was broken. Maybe with it I had broken the demon, I thought. But I knew it was a lie. I could blame him forever. But I knew, deep down, he was me, and I was him, and there would be no escape.
I thought again of my uncle. I thought of what my mum used to say about him, and my aunt. I remember the stories my mom told me about the flaming rows, about how my aunt threw him out of the house, beat him with crockery and furniture, abused him all the time. But more than that I remember what she told me about their wedding night. My aunt and uncle never had kids. I asked my mom why recently, when we were both drunk one night and having one of those bonding conversations. Apparently My Uncle, the strongest man in the world, and my crazy aunt had to go to a specialist to learn how to have sex. When they got married they didnt know how to have sex.
When I first heard this, well I laughed.
But the more I thought about it, the sicker I got, the more depressed I got, the more the demon grew in my head.
The origins of our entire social structure is based on procreation and being able to breed safely and provide for the offspring. But for 100 years or so, in Ireland, (and beyond) society had come full circle. It was beating itself out of existence. I read up more about it. About the culture of the time, the attitude towards sex. It was never talked about, it was feared. There were no words, dirty to the taste, but satisfying to say, like cunt, pussy, cock, dick, nor emotions to back them. Sex, thanks to the Church, became a curse word. The act of conception of life, the ultimate celebration of our existence, was now our dirtiest secret. I wept, for my heroes, dead or dead to me, until my lungs hurt, and my ears throbbed out the time.
I picked up a packet of rizla, pulled out the three skins and started making today's weight.
Hand to mouth, hand to mouth.
"Every resurrection begins with the same warm darkness. It is home to me now for as long as I have begun paying attention to the passing of time. " he thought. The cup was self-assured. No longer nervous at this awakening, it had occured countless times throughout the centuries. He knew his existence was tied with the universe, and in essence, he could never die. That tended to make your average vessel slightly less worried about the odd chip or crack.He looked up at his audience. No applause, no chanting, no ceremony. They seemed quite disinterested really, not moving against the gloom of the cupboard."My power has spread. " "Though my explanation is blunted by this language man has invented, I will attempt to inform you of all to be. Explain my role in the dawn of spiritual eventuality. I came to this plane before the impairment of the spiritual vision of modern man. We walked hand in hand, before man lost the ability to understand my existence, and lost the reality of deity. Before the covetous greed of man forced this sleuth existence, as they hunt feverishly for evidence of my presence. I have returned in many forms when needed most, to enforce the divine controls of our predecessors. I have changed appearance and existence as needed to accomplish this. Your kind will never understand my work, but you must understand its importance. It is intertwined with the very basic fabrics of our reality and existence. I have struck balance and spoken for their species, ever since the great spiritual battles were finally lost by man. I oversaw the theological downfall of this species. Since the existentialist birth of hope, the beginning of the good ideas, to the stagnation of philosophy, mired in doctrine, to the death of spirituality and the dawn of the nihilist age. I greived the death of Astarte, mourned the loss of Aristotle, oversaw the passing of Jesus, guided the jews through the desert. As a spirit I oversaw the dawn of All. " "I know of time, but as a static ally, never a race. Intrinsically I will always be. The unwinding of my existence would mean the intrinsic gaps between spirituality and physics would no longer be bridged. I symbolise union on levels you could never understand. My spirit will never end. But why have I been awakened?" He ended his speech there, for the plates were staring at him with disbelief and horror, the bowls were completely disinterested, and it was clear that virtually none of his speech actually had an audience capable of understanding it. He would have to ponder this question himself. But first, he must escape this ceramic prison. "Of course in the reality of this plane, it is not to my efforts that create this universal balance. It is merely my existence. So here I will wait until I am freed."
He prepared himself for a long wait. His soul could only be freed when separated from the physical manifestation of his mental self, so in order for this cup to fly, he would have to be broken. To this end he would need patience before moving on. It would take time before he could reach safety and receive his instructions.
The cup exists now as a balance in the universe. Like an intergalactic remover of remainders. It balances equations, orbits, space time, spiritual forces, inspires the needy, balances emotional space, outerspace and inner space. It flies through our existence mopping up messes and mistakes on our behalf. Like the good cop of philosophy, an existential companion to the universe, annoyed that none of his kin in the cupboard were acknowledging his existence.
*****************
The evening gloom was gaining ground on the dry white cloud cover as I stared out my window. I could see the fog roll across the grass in the park across the street, spreading like a rumour. As I watched the dirty grey take hold, and beat the cloudy gloom into retreat for the evening, I felt the first pangs. I began to realise what was coming. It would be a few hours yet before I would look forward to it.
I started lifting weights, trying to work this out, repeating my mantra. I was really trying, but it was all a cloud, a misinterpretation. I lifted a new weight every day, I made them myself.
Staring at the mirror, a compulsion hit me, and I swung hard,crunching my fist into my jaw. I felt a little inspired, and dropped my weight to the floor. I didnt know if it was another demon or a manifestation in my stomach. Perhaps a warning from the future or some sort of karmic heads up. Smoke clouded my eyes as the hopelessness began to set in.
Dont do it tonight. I swung again.
There was no hope of stopping. I grinned.
I could taste the blood, cold determination in my mouth. Everything foul and ulcerous now, and that lukewarm, almost friendly air of hopelessness, my oldest companion. My hands felt hardened and rotten, dead branches, long since bereft of the trees they suckle. My lips were cracked and sore, but warmth and pain was spreading through, reviving them. My stomach felt hard and impenetrable, resolute against what I was about to test it with. Before it would have been a gooey cunundrum, a mixture of bile, waiting to geyser up in the sky in a blaze of self-destruction. I punched my weight in the air again, same motion as always, hand to mouth, hand to mouth. I counted them off. Eyes closed, chanting the mantra, trying to free myself, to clear my head. It wasnt working, so I dropped the weight to the floor.
Three words, this isnt healthy, floating around in my head, but bereft of any meaning to me. Hold back, just hold back. Dont do this to yourself again. But then the demon danced up. Seducing my brain with my own destruction.
"Not tonight Nick huh?"
"You gonna calm down huh?"
"You with me tonight, huh?"
He was in control. Jibing me, dancing around me, raining punches down, elusive and moving too fast. I am a shadow now. There's not much hope of moving on until I get him off my shoulder, out of my head. Tomorrow I would be me, but tonight he could find me anything I wanted. Tonight I would breathe diesel, drink death and piss fire. I grasped the weight again, hand to mouth, hand to mouth, until I felt lightheaded. Stained and euphoric.
My comfort came from hatred. Of my friends, my home, myself, This town. This town desperately trying to be a city. A suburban maze, on a saturday night, every toxin of any market value on offer. I could get anything. And the thought quickly occured to me, I wanted everything. More smiles, prompted by him. My mind a dumpster now. My head was clear, with one thought laughing and dancing around inside, a mental patient in a soundproof room.
I am scum.
I picked up another weight. Hand to mouth, until I was dizzy and breathing hard, forcing myself to do one more, one more, and hoping to cross through to oblivion. To avoid tonight.
I gathered together my ziplocked rations for the assault, the dregs of the college year, collecting bits of string and lint in my stash, getting staler and less potent as the months trundled on. Now I would feel no buzz from these, just dizzyness, sickness, isolation, and a hell of a bad day tomorrow.
I sat there in my room, on the ground, hunched in the frame of the door, trying to breathe. I was praying for an abort button for the evening. I tried to get my head above water again, to let myself bubble back to the surface Desperate for any alternative, I forced down the last of my wine and threw it at my bin with a dull heavy glass thud.
It didnt shatter.
I felt it throb through my veins, and I knew, right there, in that bottle is his strength. He has me now. I cant win.
He took me there too. I walked there in the dark. Shivering against the cold, I could see the path in front of me lit up by the lights coming from closed windows, and creeping through gaps in shut curtains. I spent most of the walk wondering. What was I doing? What will I do? What do I want to do?
Fuck it.
No answers.
Just this image of a huge, hulking gentle giant crossed my head and I thought of my uncle again.
My poor uncle, that would lift me over his shoulders and toss me about like a rag doll when I was a kid. His giant arms, the way he played with me, and indulge me, and generally treat me so gently and decently it nearly makes me cry to think of it. I thought him and my dad were the strongest people alive. But more than my father, hardened by the world, I feared for my uncle. I dont think that an evil thought could ever exist in his head, I hated the thought of what his life is like now, with his crazy tiny wife, that stands near him for comic relief, him 18 stone and tall, her 5 foot 1 and a former anorexic, and how different he was the last time I saw him. It had been years since I saw him last, and he barely fit my memories. This gentle beast had been chewed up, and spat out, and he was still smiling, he was still himself. He had naively taken everything the world could throw at him, he had walked into it smiling, and after everything, crazy drunken years, a struggling business, married trouble, getting old and turning sour, he was still smiling.
He is the strongest person I know.
I got there and slid open the door. There was no need to knock, and with the music blasting out from every corner of the house, nobody would have heard me if I did. I stole in, and tossed the room a grimace, because I only wanted two answers, where's the beer, and where's the dealer? People looked up, then turned back again, uneffected by my presence. That amused me.
Bass was buzzing in my ear from stale Dance, salty in my lungs with the sweaty hooks, turns and inhuman twists of those infected by it. I watched them with utter contempt. Contempt for their happiness. I thought I was better, because I was callous. Their jaws pumping on chewing gum, screaming at each other, hugging each other, hooked like the rest on that fake little feeling. Ecstasy. I felt nothing. Not for anyone there, not for any music, or conversation, or old friend. The demon was pumping hatred to my brain, fuel for my night, and I was blinded with a treasured, lazy hatred that flooded my thoughts.
No way I could be me tonight.
All I was here for was poison. just the poison. I didnt want a fake happy trance, fake energy and fake friends for the night. I just wanted to feel genuine, and that only ever meant feeling like shit.
I saw them approach right away. I was standing awkwardly, near the door, and they were about 20 feet away, at the window, and closing. One bearded, both as shabby as I, both twisted, but happy.
Envy again tsunamied round my chest and ebbed out again, sucking the grit and dirt worn from my soul with it. A torrent of emotion, then a calm before another storm.
My own head, now defiling me.
I know they mean well. These are the good guys, maybe they can stop me. And I know, that deep down they loved me too. Or loved how I used to be.
Before...
They thought they understood. And while they didnt have a clue, it still made me feel hopeful that they thought there was something to understand.
As they sidled up, I noticed that subconsciously I had braced myself against the hard wood of the door, and I could feel my back whitening with the force I was using. Buzz was hitting me now, and I wasnt ready to start being human again.
I saw the hunter in their eyes.
Pupils wide, guess why? And their heads, neck and eyes darting and circling the room, prey spotting, target practice. I saw them swish their eyes over
I didnt want to hurt them either.
"Hey Man, You already set up for tonight?"
"mmhmm."
"Do you know is the party staying here or moving along later?"
I shrugged. I dunno.
"Man you okay? Those eyes looking a little doughy."
"Are you all messed up again man?"
"Mmhmm."
All messed up he called me. All messed up again. As if it would disappoint him to find me sober. What and he isn't all messed up? No, of course not. The stuff he is taking is not a problem at all, but what I'm taking is? Contempt filling up now, wishing they could understand, but I knew i had lost them.
His head was morphing strangely. This made it worse.
He was right. Bastard.
I began to not take notice of the words, though I could see each word fall out of his mouth, it flitted out and flew off before I could note it. Words flowed into eachother and nothing made sense. But I knew he wasnt the enemy. Soon he had his arm around me, smiling cheering. He wanted me with them, he wanted me to smile. I did my best impression, held up my drink, popped another dram of poison into my mouth, and he let me be.
My lips hardened against my tongue, betraying my determination for the first time that night. I looked around again, and saw everyone differently, just for one, crazy slowmotion second. I saw how honest they were, in a blur of dancing faces, each frozen to my view with ecstatic expressions. My heart, for the first time that night, found an emotion to fight the rage with. Envy flowed in a green river through my veins. I knew that that was it then. I was out of control. Wrong way down the motorway, 200 miles an hour, with a blindfold on.
I would be an instrument of hatred.
Just until I died, Just until the morning.
I wanted out, so I left them with their party and found another room. Quiet and dark upstairs. It smelt stale as old sleep. I closed the door behind me, and lit the room with the streetlight outstide. I started again with the weight, made one up, and hand to mouth hand to mouth again, trying to glean comfort from the repetition, working myself into the daze.
I wanted to know what it was to be the most foul base person I could be. I wanted to know what it was like to be ruthless. I wanted to know what it was like to end something.
She was something.
The touch, just one brushing, bruising touch, but it was too much for me. My brain was a shadow, my body a force, pure and single-minded, set to kill. I was the very worst, fucking meanest person I knew how to be. I was drunk, I was fucked up, messed up, dirty, alone. Just me and my demon and I had no allies. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth. Just keep lifting.
I went downstairs again, feeling the speakers hit my spine as I got closer and closer to the speakers. Before entering the sitting room, I turned, and moved instead to the empty kitchen. I needed water. Just water and to get out of here. I looked across the greasy kitchen tops for a cup or a glass but couldnt find any, so I started rummaging anxiously in presses as my throat groaned and whined at me to slake its thirst. Finally in a cupboard full of delph I pulled out a cup. Filling it with water, i drained it off in seconds.
And just for a moment, I felt an oasis of calm and balance, for the first time that night, i wasn't feeling the fear. But it only lasted for a moment. Seized bodily by a compulsion, I tightened my grip on the cup, and smashed it into the corner of the room. It exploded upon impact and scattered shards flew across the floor.
I left alone.
My determination to hurt myself had never been stronger.Chemicals rushing round my body and I felt a wired buzz from head to toe, strange pockets of energy powered by emotion. What was messing with my head, and what could I do to fix it? I stared at the greying sky, old milk leaking further and further across the horizon. I was disgusted by it. The shit and green of the park in front of my house, the grey cracked pavement, the chalky clouds against the unreality of the early morning haze, mixed like puke with the street lights. Not a hint of grandeur, or pride, in the red and grey brick silhouette, not a hint of warmth in the dawn, there was no soul in this place. There was no beauty left in this town.
My shadow was tall. It looked proud. Ironic. I cracked a rye smile looking at it. It looked so surefooted and proud it nearly made me giggle, the compulsion a hangover from the lunacy I though I had control of again. But then the demon again.
I wasn't in this state for fun. It hit me all of a sudden, lightbulb, I didn't particularly want to survive tonight. I didnt want to wake up. A bottle of single malt in one hand, and a pained look on my face. I was determined to fuck myself up too. A new weight in my hand, repeating my mantra, hand to mouth, hand to mouth. It was late on, 5 in the morning maybe, but I could still think, and the last fucking thing I wanted to do right now was think. I wanted to shock her. I wanted to grab her neck with my fingers, shake her, hurt, pain.
I dropped the weight and watched it fizzle out.
The lights were low. My mind was reeling with the perversions I could see flashing before me. Nothing i had ever found desirable before. I felt like an altar of depravity. My body a bullet, zooming to insanity. She lay slyly on the far side of the room. A tiny curtain of light surrounded her. Giving her this fake brochure beauty, and I fucking hated it.
I wanted to do it all to her right then. I wanted to feel dirty, nasty, base. This was a night of abuse. Lights out, and before a word was said it was hands and breath and spit, groping in the blindness, shuddering with the reality of what I was doing even as I did it. I had her in my grip now. That fucking bitch. My hands on her neck. I didnt even squeeze. She couldnt struggle and I wanted to feel the evil power of her knowing it was all over. The last thing I remember was raising her clear over my head, and slamming her down hard on my knee. After that, nothing. Fuzzy warmth and blood, shards of wood all over the floor, sleep, rest.
Sleep.
When I woke up I stared at what I had done.
Remorse became terminal. I had killed her. Oh. Well.
The scene on the floor was a nightmare. I picked up her body, her neck and head nowhere to be seen. I picked out the pick ups from her chest, took the strings still connected to the headstock. I couldnt believe she was broken. Maybe with it I had broken the demon, I thought. But I knew it was a lie. I could blame him forever. But I knew, deep down, he was me, and I was him, and there would be no escape.
I thought again of my uncle. I thought of what my mum used to say about him, and my aunt. I remember the stories my mom told me about the flaming rows, about how my aunt threw him out of the house, beat him with crockery and furniture, abused him all the time. But more than that I remember what she told me about their wedding night. My aunt and uncle never had kids. I asked my mom why recently, when we were both drunk one night and having one of those bonding conversations. Apparently My Uncle, the strongest man in the world, and my crazy aunt had to go to a specialist to learn how to have sex. When they got married they didnt know how to have sex.
When I first heard this, well I laughed.
But the more I thought about it, the sicker I got, the more depressed I got, the more the demon grew in my head.
The origins of our entire social structure is based on procreation and being able to breed safely and provide for the offspring. But for 100 years or so, in Ireland, (and beyond) society had come full circle. It was beating itself out of existence. I read up more about it. About the culture of the time, the attitude towards sex. It was never talked about, it was feared. There were no words, dirty to the taste, but satisfying to say, like cunt, pussy, cock, dick, nor emotions to back them. Sex, thanks to the Church, became a curse word. The act of conception of life, the ultimate celebration of our existence, was now our dirtiest secret. I wept, for my heroes, dead or dead to me, until my lungs hurt, and my ears throbbed out the time.
I picked up a packet of rizla, pulled out the three skins and started making today's weight.
Hand to mouth, hand to mouth.
Why would you turn on a broken TV?
I existed in a place far away from my body. It had been sluiced through by rays of light hitting the blinds on my window and exploding all over me. It lay, for a brief time, in seventeen unmoving pieces smouldering in the shadows. My spirit, ever so briefly, soared far far above your heads, far above consciousness and above a viewable dimension darting from unreality to unreality until there was nowhere else to go but home.
Now I stare at my broken TV looking for messages in the scrambled nothingnesses. Electrons sputtering out in all directions like bullets from the gun of a dying soldier. Directionless, pointless, the final acts of desperation resulting in the pure randomness of misfiring electrons. The screen swells and flows, ebbs back and squeezes out, the speaker splutters and gasps its final grainy breaths. I watch intent, with no idea what to look for, with shapes forming for a second and disappearing forever. Eyes sore, testament to the omnipotence of the media. My eyes. my eyes. my eyes telling me Im still alive.
This TV is dead. But I stare slackjawed, watching it splutter, cough and smoulder its way to the end of its short life, trying to tap into any TV station, clawing at any chance of life, any chance of reconnecting with the vast consciousness that it has forever lost. Like a hit and run victim, coughing up blood, spastically swinging back and forth on the bed, permanently braindamaged, fervently trying to reconnect with life, that elusive force that it has lost forever. The savage, base reality of the violent demise of the TV reflects the reality of mortality for anything, or anyone. It knows, somewhere deep down that there can be no rebirth, there can be no new life, its useful existence on this plane is over forever. I think its intriguing because it reflects the most basic truths in all of our lives. We are only borrowing these emotions. We feed from them for a brief time and then we die. The emotions themselves live forever. We have tapped into them through this human vessel, but when that ends, the emotions do not. Just because we feel them does not mean we can ever own them.
Now I stare at my broken TV looking for messages in the scrambled nothingnesses. Electrons sputtering out in all directions like bullets from the gun of a dying soldier. Directionless, pointless, the final acts of desperation resulting in the pure randomness of misfiring electrons. The screen swells and flows, ebbs back and squeezes out, the speaker splutters and gasps its final grainy breaths. I watch intent, with no idea what to look for, with shapes forming for a second and disappearing forever. Eyes sore, testament to the omnipotence of the media. My eyes. my eyes. my eyes telling me Im still alive.
This TV is dead. But I stare slackjawed, watching it splutter, cough and smoulder its way to the end of its short life, trying to tap into any TV station, clawing at any chance of life, any chance of reconnecting with the vast consciousness that it has forever lost. Like a hit and run victim, coughing up blood, spastically swinging back and forth on the bed, permanently braindamaged, fervently trying to reconnect with life, that elusive force that it has lost forever. The savage, base reality of the violent demise of the TV reflects the reality of mortality for anything, or anyone. It knows, somewhere deep down that there can be no rebirth, there can be no new life, its useful existence on this plane is over forever. I think its intriguing because it reflects the most basic truths in all of our lives. We are only borrowing these emotions. We feed from them for a brief time and then we die. The emotions themselves live forever. We have tapped into them through this human vessel, but when that ends, the emotions do not. Just because we feel them does not mean we can ever own them.
If only I could say what I really meant, and not have to use a language.
Deeply mistrustful of my own words.
For they dont tell you how I feel.
It purges me! This urge to write,
But not a vowel of this is real,
Except I.
Because it isnt real.
All of this, a pretty lie.
This isnt what I'm trying to say,
Even right now, even these words.
The meanings lost along the way
From the heart to the mouth to the world.
And language is our tool, our sword,
Blunted by these ambiguous times.
And in it all there is no word,
To explain the sickness of Nick O'Brien.
And the heart is screaming. Dont you see?
If you want to know me come and live in me.
Because words do not exist
Not in english and not in men.
Not to understand our pains,
I'll twist my tongue and thoughts till then.
For they dont tell you how I feel.
It purges me! This urge to write,
But not a vowel of this is real,
Except I.
Because it isnt real.
All of this, a pretty lie.
This isnt what I'm trying to say,
Even right now, even these words.
The meanings lost along the way
From the heart to the mouth to the world.
And language is our tool, our sword,
Blunted by these ambiguous times.
And in it all there is no word,
To explain the sickness of Nick O'Brien.
And the heart is screaming. Dont you see?
If you want to know me come and live in me.
Because words do not exist
Not in english and not in men.
Not to understand our pains,
I'll twist my tongue and thoughts till then.
Every fret of my guitar is marked with a bruise from my life with it. I hope some day I'll remember them all.
I remember when I scratched fret one.
In my heart and soul I didnt care,
the mirror grimaced at what I'd done,
Then returned my impassive stare.
One absent minded night at home,
strumming to death when drunk and alone.
Stared at the mirror, lost in its eyes.
Frustrated more with each sound I made,
And watching the dawn's sun slowly rise.
A finale on the 2nd fret,
a bent and broken string.
That came too early on the 2nd song
For me to let the talent ring,
Onstage on trial and everything.
(As I sang my final note,
And find the me that others see,
the me I dont know how to be,
The reflection in the mirror.)
The 3rd fret grazed by love.
No need for details here.
But playing on the strings of love,
And my guitar was too near.
This scratch I hold dear.
The 4th fret slightly out of shape,
A compromise from overwork,
Just playing wear into the wood,
Worn down by songs misunderstood,
Not playing music like I should,
My gift to the guitar.
The fifth fret forked with sadness.
Bent the notes of the loss of love,
that fill the heart with emptiness.
Reminds of times of lonelyness.
The sadness of a midwinter day,
Of all those words I had to say.
Learned to grow, and to live on,
And how to write the saddest songs.
Everything I need to know,
tattooed into that little groove.
Fret number six stands out unmarked,
A testament to composition,
A proud and varnished inch of wood,
From my rare moments of precision.
No story in its unmarked state,
No scratch or tear or hurt to date.
Fret number seven, lucky,
Just a little scorched black graze,
A falling rock fell from above,
While I was in a daze.
And branded my mark forever with
Reminders of a smokey haze,
Of how I passed those college days.
Fret eight marks out my first bad song,
A minor thing, a little flourish,
The memory of which long since gone.
A memory I'd never cherish,
A song of pain written alone, of
My eyes lost on a little thing,
A little pretty aged 16 thing,
Not a girl but an evil dream,
A paradigm of how love seemed,
Till she ripped my young heart out
And asked me to forgive her
but still she was a bitch,
And still I have my guitar.
Fret nine and ten and on again,
Tell tales of more recent times,
Coming to terms with the world of men,
Of rights I never saw in rhyme,
Of ups and downs since adulthood,
And fights I had no right to fight.
Up to twelve, beyond and flying,
A solo time in life and dreams,
With 22 frets for 22 years,
22 stories, and 22 dreams,
None to fruition, and none are dead,
I'm not behind but neither ahead.
But these grazes are why I play songs,
A memory I play on and on,
How each mark on my guitar,
Tells the tale of my life so far,
My silent brother in my arms,
When we fall we'll fall together,
What I've forgotten my guitar remembers.
In my heart and soul I didnt care,
the mirror grimaced at what I'd done,
Then returned my impassive stare.
One absent minded night at home,
strumming to death when drunk and alone.
Stared at the mirror, lost in its eyes.
Frustrated more with each sound I made,
And watching the dawn's sun slowly rise.
A finale on the 2nd fret,
a bent and broken string.
That came too early on the 2nd song
For me to let the talent ring,
Onstage on trial and everything.
(As I sang my final note,
And find the me that others see,
the me I dont know how to be,
The reflection in the mirror.)
The 3rd fret grazed by love.
No need for details here.
But playing on the strings of love,
And my guitar was too near.
This scratch I hold dear.
The 4th fret slightly out of shape,
A compromise from overwork,
Just playing wear into the wood,
Worn down by songs misunderstood,
Not playing music like I should,
My gift to the guitar.
The fifth fret forked with sadness.
Bent the notes of the loss of love,
that fill the heart with emptiness.
Reminds of times of lonelyness.
The sadness of a midwinter day,
Of all those words I had to say.
Learned to grow, and to live on,
And how to write the saddest songs.
Everything I need to know,
tattooed into that little groove.
Fret number six stands out unmarked,
A testament to composition,
A proud and varnished inch of wood,
From my rare moments of precision.
No story in its unmarked state,
No scratch or tear or hurt to date.
Fret number seven, lucky,
Just a little scorched black graze,
A falling rock fell from above,
While I was in a daze.
And branded my mark forever with
Reminders of a smokey haze,
Of how I passed those college days.
Fret eight marks out my first bad song,
A minor thing, a little flourish,
The memory of which long since gone.
A memory I'd never cherish,
A song of pain written alone, of
My eyes lost on a little thing,
A little pretty aged 16 thing,
Not a girl but an evil dream,
A paradigm of how love seemed,
Till she ripped my young heart out
And asked me to forgive her
but still she was a bitch,
And still I have my guitar.
Fret nine and ten and on again,
Tell tales of more recent times,
Coming to terms with the world of men,
Of rights I never saw in rhyme,
Of ups and downs since adulthood,
And fights I had no right to fight.
Up to twelve, beyond and flying,
A solo time in life and dreams,
With 22 frets for 22 years,
22 stories, and 22 dreams,
None to fruition, and none are dead,
I'm not behind but neither ahead.
But these grazes are why I play songs,
A memory I play on and on,
How each mark on my guitar,
Tells the tale of my life so far,
My silent brother in my arms,
When we fall we'll fall together,
What I've forgotten my guitar remembers.
Dendrite Squash
I just poured sugar on my chips. From a sugar jar, versus salt from a salt cellar. There could be no way of rationally confusing the two. This is after losing my mobile phone battery for 20 minutes before checking my mobile to see if it was there. I have also had a combined total of fuck all sleep in the last three days on top of a weekend consisting entirely of sleeping. I've been on three calls this morning where I realised about 5 minutes in that I had no idea what I was saying, and I had even less idea why the customer called in the first place. Honest to God Im not stupid, and this is not a regular thing for me. I don't quite know whats going on. I think my mind is just permanently elsewhere today. Its not letting me be easygoing, and even though I have all the will in the world, I still feel an irrational anger and fear rise from me, taking over any ambition I had to relax, to learn to take it easy, to let things be.
Believe me, I could start listing the things that are pissing me off now and not stop for about three hours, but thats true every day, not just today, so why the sugarring chips? And why the irrational mobile phone battery hunt? And why cant i do my job?
My brain is more than scattered today, It's more than random mind distortion brought about by lack of sleep and the most unsettled home and work life since Fred Flintstone got a new pet T-rex.
If you dont see me soon it'll be because my head will most likely soon explode. Literally explode. Fuelled by continuous chemical reactions from months of warring and ulcerous emotions misfiring around my head. Feelings are locking arms to battle and murder other emotions, mating and creating new nasty emotions, cheating on emotions, stealing, murdering, begging to be the evil King nasty emotion of my newly rotten and evil head. Months of pressure and anger, worry and care, worsening attitudes, jealousy, impatience, annoyance, regret, fear of the future fear of the past, wondering what might have been and hatred has finally ended its battle royale and exploded randomly as I was walking to or from someplace unimportant. just nothing and then BLAAM! Spewing out cognitive mush, deep fried brain bits, dendrite squash, and lumps of bloody skull in every direction, creating a fifteen feet arc of nick blood like a geyser losing its virginity with a satisfying Squwoosh Splatter sound that covers everyone and thing near me at the time with the last of my life juice and creating stains that will never clean or come out.
Believe me, I could start listing the things that are pissing me off now and not stop for about three hours, but thats true every day, not just today, so why the sugarring chips? And why the irrational mobile phone battery hunt? And why cant i do my job?
My brain is more than scattered today, It's more than random mind distortion brought about by lack of sleep and the most unsettled home and work life since Fred Flintstone got a new pet T-rex.
If you dont see me soon it'll be because my head will most likely soon explode. Literally explode. Fuelled by continuous chemical reactions from months of warring and ulcerous emotions misfiring around my head. Feelings are locking arms to battle and murder other emotions, mating and creating new nasty emotions, cheating on emotions, stealing, murdering, begging to be the evil King nasty emotion of my newly rotten and evil head. Months of pressure and anger, worry and care, worsening attitudes, jealousy, impatience, annoyance, regret, fear of the future fear of the past, wondering what might have been and hatred has finally ended its battle royale and exploded randomly as I was walking to or from someplace unimportant. just nothing and then BLAAM! Spewing out cognitive mush, deep fried brain bits, dendrite squash, and lumps of bloody skull in every direction, creating a fifteen feet arc of nick blood like a geyser losing its virginity with a satisfying Squwoosh Splatter sound that covers everyone and thing near me at the time with the last of my life juice and creating stains that will never clean or come out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
