Grab your Côte you’ve pulled

Sailing

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There is hardly a feeling like that of steering the tiller as you lead a wayfarer on its way through the water. Sails are filled lungs, as they drag the blade of the keel and send us clipping along. Ropes are released, grasped tightly and then tied off with what I must describe as ‘passion’ rather than ‘precision’. Likewise the effort of ducking the boom during tacking is one of increasingly comedic value.

Me: “Ready about?”

Father: “Ready.”

Me: “Lee-Ho!”

*THUMP*

We’d lashed the sheets on land, pulled the sail to a snare-drum tightness, checked and rechecked the brace for the rudder and tiller. Dad ran around the vessel, mentally collating the tools needed for a successful launch. Finally connected to the back of the Land Rover, we were away.

We reversed down a heavily crowded slipway and halted the car as the back trolley wheels dipped themselves into the water. Unfixing it was completed after the winch had been secured. We then lowered the boat backwards, click by click into the water.

Once in, there was nothing to stop the stern from drifting and it took a swift mind to wet the feet in time and brace it against the impending calamity. Removing the trolley we negotiated the boat round the slipway wall to the docking area and each climbed in.

The Kingfisher was away, but not quite sailing, as we pushed off from the shore. We hugged the coast unable to catch the wind. Drifting with the current we made our way through fishing wires, cast out by leather-skinned men with angry faces. The lines freed themselves without piercing the sail and we soon caught breeze enough to put some distance between us and the sea wall.

Entering the wider sea we lined up and started sailing beautifully. That is that really. My first self-reliant voyage in a boat. What a blissful afternoon.

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In other news.

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My mind is still reeling (excuse the pun). I can’t get it to stop. I’m reading books and books and books. Which isn’t a bad thing! However the ideas they are stirring up are beyond my ability to pace.

In Glyph by Percival Everett there is a quote that runs to explain my current condition.

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“I cannot even say that I am smart, only that my brain is engaged in constant frantic activity.”

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It is a euphoric state you can enter after a while. It is a state that I’m trying to steer away from. Heck, I’d even anchor myself on the idea of brain-numbing medication to avoid the level that theses ups can lead me to.

See, having a brain that is running quickly is a wonderful feeling. Except that after a while you lose yourself slightly at the back of your own mind. Ideas that raced, now flood your brain – which itself is less of a buoy floating on top of this deluge, but rather it is a shipping container dropped overboard – straining against the pressure as it sinks to the seabed.

It will hold out. It will perceiver against the enormous forces met out against its sides. Except there will come a moment when its integrity fails. The surrender is made between the atmosphere inside and the tons of sea-water that seek to replace it. At this point, it is fair to say, I lose touch with reality.

It is a very temporary thing. It might only last a few hours, but I become drunk and irresponsible. I’ll most likely be alone, but if I am with someone then the connections start being verbally translated.

I can remember a very good example of this and it was while on a car journey to Falmouth. I was in the back of the car and talking to the two people beside me. After a few moments of talking about poetry I was flung onto a circuit. I looped over many subjects and began making connections (mostly coincidental) about the people involved. Subjects and dates and ideas flung at them as they came to me. After 20mins I came back to my senses. The rest of the journey I tried to stay as quiet as I could.

It’s a balancing act this. Making sure I can harness the energy that is generated by the reeling (sorry, I love the word) of my mind and also that I don’t fall into the realm of possession. That I’m not abstracted from the capability to see how useful my observations are. That I don’t lose sight of the fact that sometimes a coincidence is exactly that. That sometimes people don’t mean to be distance, they just have their own things to deal with. That there is no logical reason why a person should be privy to the same knowledge that I am. That they are not less valuable for not understanding what I am talking about, because what I am talking about in this state is mostly just irreverent crap.

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I am reading.

(click books for descriptions).

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

Glyph by Percival Everett

Filed under: Existence, Family, Reality, Travel, about me, anxiety, books , afternoon, brain, drifting, fishing, land rover, mind, ocean, reading, rudder, sailing, sails, sea, sheets, tiller, voyage, wayfarer, wind

songs about me

So I’m still not feeling fulfilled.

I have a great life. No need to work. No deadlines. No stress. But I still don’t feel like I actually can be bothered breathing.

That isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m very happy at a lot of things in my life. Great relationships with people, great deal of success already with my projects.

I’ve taken to making jewellery and that is going really well.

I can now juggle. I can make my funky art. I can write (i’m really producing some amazing work). I can make clothes. Upholster chairs. Sail the family boat. Travel when i like.

I have a 32inch hd tv in my room. Surround sound. Dvd player. Laptop. Camera. Camcorder. Guitar. Typewriter. Sewing Machine. Mountains of books and dvds. I have material things to make one tear your own material to pieces in lamentation.

I’ve taken up photography and that is going really really well – as i’ve been offered a fair few opportunities of late to take photos of all sorts of events etc.

Just to touch on writing again. I’ve written the most exciting pieces of fiction ever recently!

I’ve not gotten drunk in weeks and weeks and weeks. So i know i’m not an alcoholic. I’m just a bit of twat when it comes to knowing my limit. So i learnt that lesson! lol – (On the flip side, due to not drinking i’ve picked up on inherent social anxiety, so i think that is why i drank a lot – to lubricate the old personality and push away the fact i get scared in big groups. I draw a lot of energy from people, but crowds really upset me and get me timid. Hence many times leaving parties and street festivals and declining to go on trips off to outdoor festivals too..  when i then lied and came up with some lame excuse. Least now i’m honest enough to admit i’m just a pussy when it comes to large groups.)

But it all amounts to a hill of beans when even on these bloody pills I still can’t seem the conjure up a will to live.

I had a song written about me a while back and the idea of it was – that Much came “to realise that it is life that you (I) despise.“

I’m sure that isn’t true, as much as it is too strong a thing for me to feel toward life. I’m not crying out for help, nor even really making much of an assertion past the simple honest truth.

I don’t care.

I really couldn’t care less.

With that is freedom and oblivion – but i really have no opinion on the matter of life and its vice and virtue.

The last relationship fell on a sword of my uncaring. I’d given up hiding behind a mask made of smiles. Showed a little too much of what it means to live near me. That there is very little that can stir up a case of genuine joy.

Maybe pills are making me apathetic and i’m looking back on life through these eyes, but i think i’ve pretty much always had this outlook.

She goes on to ask why I “must be so blue.” – It used to be up on last.fm, but it has been taken off now – but it is still a damn good song, despite the personal nature of it.

I really don’t try to be. I’m the life and soul. I’m happy and moving like a blur and i still can’t seem to shake this apathy.

Perhaps it is to give me a little wall between my mind and the worry of death? I used to worry about that a lot as a kid. Death became a sort of monster to me, stalking the land, killing indiscriminately, no proof of hereafter, of continuation. I feared a lack of a thereafter more than anything else. Here i am, several years later – not caring.

Perhaps i got bored of the question.

Unsolved questions will drive you mad – unless you temper it with some disinterest.

I’m quite able to hold myself out of the top floor window in my house and not fear the fall. Is that scary? Should i have vertigo to prove i mean to continue?

I’m not sure. I just get the sense that all these wonderful opportunities and skills and talents etc… are just wasted on me. I’m too ambivalent about them all.

Or maybe that isn’t true, maybe what i mean to say is that i can’t hold on to the joy of it for long? I have short bursts of intense happiness and then bam, nothing.

I don’t know, fuck it. At the end of the day it isn’t important. Except i do ache for a little purpose. I’m considering making up a god and just following that blindly. I’ve already taken up Buddhist meditation. That is too much the absence of God, but it meets with the fact i don’t care a stitch for all this junk in my room.

p.s. I’m still pretty lonely and need to meet more people to keep me entertained and motivated.

Filed under: Bath, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Friends, Future, Girls, Happy, Lonely, Travel, Women, Youth, about me, anxiety, childhood, cracks, hopes, much, prose, the novel, undervalued, vacuum, work, writing, writing the novel

been away a day or two

so where do i begin? after near on a month how have i done?

okay. really!

got loads of great photography done. made loads of new friends.

been working on taking apart a Furby and other electronic related geekery.

read and written a lot of really great stuff.

currently working on 101 things to do before i die. also 101 things to do in the next few years.

i find that i’ve got so many opportunities opening up for me. my parents have bought a boat that i can sail away on. loads more things. things, things, things. (even the option of following my dad on his business trips to European cities – he’ll work, i’ll take photos and drink coffee)

i’m really really happy, even without working (because i’m not spending a lot)

just being positive that there is life after a life lost. been a bit regretful – but then, when aren’t i?

anyway.

more will follow as i detail more about my movings.

as ever. follow me on twitter. @jensenwilder

Filed under: Bath, Day-to-day, Depression, Existence, Family, Friends, Home, Nightingale, Poetry, Travel, about me, books, compass, hopes, job, prose, writing the novel , 101 things, boat, electronics, follow, Furby, Happy, life, photography, positive, twitter