how to be free

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The book I’m reading ‘How to be Free, by Tom Hodgkinson is without doubt the best novel I have come across since reading Jay Griffiths ‘Pip, Pip’ and ‘Wild: An Elemental Journey’ – it’s packed to the brim with useful facts that do what all good books should: open the mind.
His ideas are recycled and collated, rather than being original, but that doesn’t make them unworthy. I would not have known half the information that he has presented without this tomb. So I give thanks for his care and passion in writing it.

Rather than a self-help book aimed at fixing a broken life, he instead demonstrates that there is an innate wholeness within everyone and that we need to overcome certain modern obstacles in order to access our inbuilt fullness. Obstacles like TV and working life. Like newspapers and the adverts that infect our world. Hurdles like bills and the need to outsource in order to fix our problems. He’s not a crank, not some preacher. He’s well aware of his own limitations.

What he presents is an example of the things we can do to better our position in life. By tuning out the TV’s attempt to entertain and rely instead on our own creativity; whatever that may be. Picking up an instrument, learning a language, learning a craft. We can exercise our mind and souls and come out the other side without the faintest hint of boredom.

He knows that our modern world holds a great deal of pleasures, not least of all: drink, sex, music, film, tobacco, dance, photography. However we are often at the mercy of our jobs and cannot devote the time needed to truly extract joy from life.

How, in a nine-to-five profession, can we do anything but wake, work, eat and sleep. We complain about not having enough hours in the day. His answer, do less. It’ll turn out that you’re actually doing more. We consume out of lethargy. So why not use our idleness to our advantage. Rather than going to the effort of toiling away at a job, why don’t we just spent a couple of hours a day making something we can trade or sell.

TV is just a wind-down before sleep overtakes us again anyway. Nowadays, music is something we buy, rather than something we create. Ask any musician what they would rather be doing, working or playing music and there’s an obvious response. We needn’t have to buy music to enjoy it, instead we should venture into the streets and listen to buskers and go to gigs. We should drink and be merry and bring back the tavern. We need to turn our creative out-put into a means of permitting an ongoing lifestyle. We need to start producing rather than consuming. Self-sufficiency becomes the staple, the ideal, the tool to keep the wolf from the door. The wolves of tax inspectors, debt collectors and all other deplorable types.

What I have taken, though not what was detailed, is that instead of ‘my’ pack of cigarettes it is rather ‘our’ pack. Instead of ‘my’ money, it is ‘our’ money. Money that changes hands as quickly as we eat, travel, play and read. If I make something it is only ‘mine’ for the fact that someone else hasn’t made it first. What sort of idea is that? That the food I am eating was grown on land that actually belongs to all of us, not some private force. So I’m learning the harmonica, I’m not doing that to only play for myself. So I can use that to enrich other people’s lives and they will in turn enrich my own.

So from today, if someone asks me for a cigarette I will say – “sure, you can have one of our cigarettes.”

I will work to chip away my debt and learn a new way of earning money after that. It might be hard, but it’ll be a damn-sight more enriching than working in some crummy retail space for less money than my life is worth.

Anyway, the book is a joy. It is enlightening. Go read it!

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living with a rock at your face and a hard place somewhere else…

So I’m going to cut to the quick with this and let the marrow show.

I’m not well. I haven’t been for years. Its not a constant illness, a lot of the time I have a hard enough time believing it is there myself – let alone the people who love me, who seem to settle on the idea of my getting better like I’ve got a broken ankle and just need to get the plaster off.

I can’t sleep again. I know the signs. I’m going to wake up one day soon convinced (like never before, but just the same as every other time) that I’m different.

Just like the million times it has happened before. I’ll take my head from the pillow and a new adventure will begin, one where I change my name, my loves, my taste, my friends… everything is thrown out and I just linger on the hinge of sanity.

Fuck it.

Truth is. Every few weeks I’ll have a down spell and I’ll feel worse than hell. Every now and then (Once or twice a year) I’ll wake up and do something about it. Delusion will push me into a new skin.

Right now, I’m in the grip of this nasty, evil, vindictive and destructive emotional state. I could, in this way, be very well described as bound and gagged by life.

I’m so distraught with the way I live. I’m always compensating for one or other element of my fractured character. Who the hell am I?

Am I Ric, the boy who wanted to be a grown up so bad that he sold innocent years trying every sin he could. Who was so in practice by the time that adulthood arrived he was driven to new and lower levels of sickness and depravity to get kicks, so desensitized to intimacy that he still now feels nothing from a kiss. That a fuck is a handshake to him.

Am I Richie, who traveled to many cities with a few people on his mind. Who got so close to giving in to a feeling that he jumped ship and escaped back to the city that was small enough that he was noticed, but big enough to get lost in. Who broke as many hearts as he did because love was meaningless – not least of all because its easy enough to kill it when you first feel it stir up. Who shaved his head to ditch a girl and met another the same afternoon. Who took out his upset at being ditched by his first university love, because she left him wanting more of her, on everyone he met who fell for his innocent looking blue eyes.

Am I Young Cup, the kid who had two dates lined up and shacked up with the one he got to fuck first. Who went out of his way to be a loving partner because it was easier to live with a happy woman than an unhappy one. Who two years later cheated on her out of spite and then went on a drinking binge out of guilt for something she never actually found out? The kid who knew she’d done the same to him, but he never spoke a damn word of contempt for it. Never treated her any less. Who had a down spell at the wrong moment and had the rug pull from his feet. Who fucked things up for trying his best to keep them going.

Am I Old Cup, the kid who being single and lonely found an anarchist to fuck senseless in the grip of such a life of senselessness. A girl who his best mate fell for (who she didn’t like). Who was outed by so-called friends for tearing an  Anarchist’s heart out and then (not one month later) fucking the same girl in my hometown because she was anything but heartbroken! She was a firecracker and sure she wanted more of me than I wanted to give, but that’s no-one’s fault! No friends left in the place he’d loved, because they didn’t have the good courtesy to ask me how it went down? A lost boy, who’s ex got the city and he got the boot.

Am I Jensen, the boy genius, who became an artist and traveled to the height of traffalgar square in support of some ill-thought out agenda? The boy who determined to surround himself with artists and writers of liverpool. Who went to every writers night and hippy hang-out and made friends with so many bands he was heavy with demo cds. Who’d live without a penny in his pocket, without a voice if he could wing it. Who wouldn’t eat for days because it mades him superhuman, and it still does. Who made a promise not to lie again and kept it.

Am I Richard, the friendly bookseller and lark-about who has no trouble making friends. If friends is what you call it. Who can deal with work for as long as it lasts. Who can just about shut out the noise of the rest of his life for the few short hours he’s in work?

Am I The Boyfriend? In a relationship where there’s never been a single crossed word, where we respect each other and anticipate most everything the other needs ahead of time. So in tune its a shame its anything but upbeat. The guy who can’t lie, so he just doesn’t tell her how bad he’s feeling. The guy who can’t hide what’s hurting, so he gives up the name of the lesser stress to hide the larger. The guy who still now doesn’t want to love, for the guilt and agony it causes him in his darker moments.

Am I The Fractured Man? Who wants so much for the world to melt away. Who is in agony for wanting the world to stay the same for just one day, to get to grips with the pace of it. Who can’t deal with an ounce of stress. Who buckles and flays his wrists at the first sign of depression. Who wants to shave his head, don rags, drink bottles and bottles of whatever booze he can conjure up. Who he has been since his second university year, where he gave up on living, but didn’t have the guts to finish his own sentence.

Truth is… there is far more of me than this.

Fact is… I fucking hate the lot of it and I don’t want to keep being so many shades of myself. Because I’m not stupid enough to think that I’m actually many different people, just I find it deadening to try to squeeze all of me into this tiny little slip of a body.

I’m tired.

I want to wipe the slate clean.

I want to hit reset and go back to year dot. I want to forgo love in favor of lasting friendship. I want to ditch desire for the better elements of feeling.

Here’s who I want to be.

The guy who cares enough and is courageous enough to say so. Who doesn’t hold back his feeling because he wants to look like he’s a tough guy. I want to be anything but a tough guy. I want to be a guy that doesn’t lie, because the truth is hard enough. I want to be calm, content and able to challenge myself. I want to be able to deal with a pinch of stress now and then without getting ulcers, quivering hands and headaches. I want to make friends and not worry that they hate me, because that’s what I’ve been faced with up till now. The sudden removal of faces from my life. I want to be able to rely on people, not just myself (barely). I want to make friends and not get paranoid about them changing team, becoming the enemy. I want to admit that I loved people. Not lie to myself and everyone because it means I failed at staying in that great way of being. I want to be the guy who doesn’t just chuck about ‘sorry’ but that adds a little weight to it with some honesty.

‘I’m sorry, I was sick’ just doesn’t cut it. Truth is, sickness is no account for action. I did some horrible things because I chose to do them, because I wanted to feel something, or I wanted to prove that I didn’t. I did things because if I didn’t do something I’d have lost the fight a long time ago. I have done awful things, but I need to bury them and I need your blessing to do it. Everyone should know that I suffer for my sins, if you read this blog at all then that much is clear.

I just roll the pattern over and over in my head. Or it is a bitter pill on the tongue. Whatever cliche works best.

I’m the cause of most every one of my troubles, yet I can’t seem to turn things around. I feel like a time traveller, like every mistake I try to fix causes a bigger one. I feel like everything I do just brings its own troubles.

I’m still here, a month away from the anniversary of my first real attempt to get some help, to get better, to change. I’ve not had any appointments because the NHS is shit. I’m not a woman and I haven’t actually tried to kill myself, so in the eyes of the medical world I DON’T EXIST!

Except, I’m still here aching. I’m no better, though I am better off. I’ve a great life, except I still don’t think I deserve it. I still want to end things before they’ve even begun. I’m 23 for god’s sake!! I should be half as experienced at life as I am. I know people who are 10 years further down the road of life and haven’t had 1/100 of the life I’ve had.

Except it isn’t a matter of pride. Its just disbelieve. I can’t understand why I’ve not cracked the code of life. I’ve gone through a run of combinations and still don’t know a single way that works. I want to have it easy, but easy is hard to find.

I don’t want to start my life 9 years from now, when I enter my own Rosy Crucifixion saga. (I’m reading Miller)

Either I’m a better man now, or I’m just not worse than I’ve been so far.

Only time will tell, but god help me! I want some sort of sign – I want some idea that what I’m after is achievable. Otherwise it’ll just be another few years of holding on, before I work up the courage to let go.

I’ve never held anything back from this blog.

This is truth, this is me (all of me), laid bare.

(This was written at 3am 09/12/09 – please forgive the typos and the lyrical style is just because I’ve been writing a lot of poetry recently.)

My Hour as Art: The calculations of a Soft Machine.

One must always bare in mind the often overlooked power of a single thoughtful person. Though we are often unaware of the impact we can potentially make, we must attempt to prepare ourselves. This thought was brought to me from my recent experience as a plinther. That is, being a lucky participant in One and Other, Antony Gormley’s new art installation.

Being up on the Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was one of the most unprepared moments of my life. It was like approaching one of the seven wonders, or the peak of a mountain; there is simply no way of knowing how you will react.

When confronted by such opportunities, a more refined soul might have gone up with a speech prepared. I might have preached, screamed, recited or otherwise constructed some form of sentiment that would have undoubtedly taken the moment away from me. I might well have run for an hour like a robot, speaking words that I’d pawed over for weeks in advance. Not so for the willful creature that I am.

Instead I listened a little too intently to a small voice from within that said ‘you need only ‘be’!’ I decided to go up, no props, no gimmicks – just a lone soft machine, held aloft for an hour.

I would say even now, that was/is enough.

Art itself (for the most part) cannot alter its form to better suit the audience before it. Once it is produced it is cast in that form. The painting cannot gain another few brushstrokes, to add more colour here or focus the eye there, just because the person seeing it would find it easier to understand. It can but assume a lasting posture and only stand by and weather the praise and criticism it receives with equal solemnity.

I went up there to ask the world questions more directly than most art does, to be a mirror that might allow people to see something of themselves whilst speaking a language they themselves spoke in. I went up there to do what art does, not interact with the audience around me, but to get the audience to engage with itself.

The truth is we make art to remind us of what will always remain important. We don’t make it as a target for our insults, or produce it so that it will locked away. We want it to be shown to an audience, to tell a story, to make a point, to request more of ourselves than is polite to ask in person. We use art to crack open the human spirit.

Of course I am referring to art as generalized art, that of the gallery displays (paintings primarily, or perhaps music also, certainly the photograph), rather than the more innovative methods that artists now engage in. I know full well that art does not stick to its definitions, by definition it is endlessly re-educating us of limitless features.

So, I got up on that stone pillar with the idea that I’d more clearly do what art does. So that I might connect more directly with people and get the message across. My mission was to Raise Awareness for Awareness. I wanted people simply to start asking themselves questions.

Back to the experience itself, once up there I lost my words and almost my balance.

We cannot know our qualities until we have been tested to our limit. So all I could comfortably expect of myself was that I would continue to breathe and that my heart would beat (albeit madly).

When I got up there I had no idea that I would lose much of myself to nerves. There is a lot to be said for the written language (and much has been); however, I more admire anyone who can stand to speak and explain their message with clarity. I do not have the ability to speak easily in public, though I do now intend to improve.

In any case I am happy that, with that small sight of my limits, I was inspired.

I’ve come off the plinth with a renewed acknowledgment of myself, but also of the influence and inspiration I have to offer. I met and spoke with many people and the reactions have been incredible.

People do want to talk, people do want to learn why things are the way they are. Even those who initially became hostile in the face of art, grew later (after conversation/explanation) to understand. They too added their own voice and perspective to the endeavor.

I may have been alone, an example of a young man with a lot (perhaps too much) on his mind; but no-one was unworthy of a place there on that plinth and those who asked questions took their place alongside me.

Now uniquely aware of how much impact a single soft machine can make when placed in the right location. My plan is to go on putting myself in challenging places, to do what I think is good and right and just. To ignore the voices that want me down on their level and to use my own to lift others out of the flood of indifference.

I’ve shaken a dozen hands, hugged people who were strangers, dealt with the irrepressible masses and I have come out of the experience; not better, nor worse, but different.

what is the point of change?

What is the point of change? Is it for yourself? Or for others?
At what point do we change? When we learn our lessons? Or when we act on them?

I’m growing. As ever, I’ve been reflecting on self again, but in way of a preface to this post I will say something.

I believe, or am coming to believe, that a major reason for my ongoing difficulty lies in my inability to resolve myself to myself. I have been brainwashed by a religion, and by relationships I have had, into thinking that I care only for myself and no one else. That to do what is best for you is to act out of self-interest and that is inherently a bad road to take. This is a hard thing to wriggle free from. However I think I have reasoned toward an explanation.

I am aware of myself and my impact on the world. That does not make me egotistical. I am not self-interested as much as I am interested in myself and what I am. I am capable of love and adoration for people around me. I close myself off to those around me so that I do not infect them with my sadness. That is a selfless move. I am normal.

So many things are driving my change. As ever the continued focus is self-development, whether I should consider myself egotistical, or if I am not unreasonable to assume that I must be aware of myself. Is it really egotism or just an important self-awareness?

To that end I’ve started a new blog askyourselfaquestion in which I will pipe my enquiries and ask questions and see through the investigation.

Very quickly here I will explain two main inspirations. The first being Socrates ideas. 

Socrates theory is that the soul is ‘mutilated by wrong actions and benefited by right ones.’ He means those actions undertaken by the self, rather than those undertaken by others.

One striking thing about it is that it doesn’t appeal to the altruistic, but rather to the germ of self-interest.

His idea cannot be realized by the greedy and self-interested alone; but instead putting self-improvement above all other motive. Neither does this unusual ethics rest on any hope of heavenly reward or the fear of its opposite conclusion.

The benefits of virtue are reaped more or less immediately, for ‘to live well means the same thing as to live honorably’ and ‘the just [man] is happy and the unjust miserable.’

Tough idea to swallow. It doesn’t hold water in the way you think. He is highlighting the idea of the health of the soul being paramount, above the importance of the body.

His idea is of practicing moderation to secure a future of good health, instead of hedonism to secure a few more immediate ones.

This strikes me and asks fundamental questions of me. Namely my own motivation of change – do I act solely for myself? Or does it bring a greater good? By being more aware of myself and my impact on the world, will that make me more sympathetic to others. I think it has so far. I feel a lot more in tune with things by being more comparative in my reasoning.

The next point is to talk about how I will develop myself. I think it is not nearly enough to tone one part of the self. So… Frank Harris puts it like this.

I made up my mind to train my will by exercise as I would train a muscle, and each day I proposed to myself a new test. For example, I liked potatoes, so I resolved not to eat one for a week, or again I foreswore coffee that I loved for a month, and I was careful to keep to my determination.

Celui qui vuet, celui-là peut: ‘He who wills, can.”

To explain this in its effect on me is to say, ‘I have realised pretty late that I need not punish myself for not being immediately able to control myself. I need to train myself to be slowly and accumulatively better.’


So I’ve set myself the aim of exercising my mind first, as it is the part of me that is most refined to this point. Hopefully the change and development will be reward enough to insist that I continue with my project. Next will be the body. I feel it is something I take for granted. I’m not sure I can say I’m healthy now, certainly more so than I was, but I do want to be more of a temple and treat myself with more care.

So ‘mind.’

Indeed – questions i’m wrestling with are… 

Why do I sway toward the conclusion of a divine creation/will? – Is it childhood teaching; or a force-infomed conclusion, like gravity?

What does a creator mean? Does it require worship? Does it define goodness inherently?

My question for today – why do i want there to be a god?? To relinquish responsibility for my existence? or to have an explaination for it??

Does my wish for there to be a rule or order to things come from a spirit of self-interest? Do i wish for rules so i can learn/utilise them?

not happier but doing something

Today is just the same as yesterday in terms of mood, but something happened last night.

I know it is a tired fact that I start a new novel every week, but this one isn’t new.

This one has taken shape in my mind over the last three years. This one I have lived.

So everyone who has known me over the last three years, you might feature in my new novel.

I’ll not be posting anything up. It is far too sordid to do in anything but a clean surgical incision.

Publication is the aim. I have written the outline already (I usually never have a plan).

The first line is a gem. It isn’t making me happier to write it, but it is at least something to do.

absurdity revised…

This has always been a place for honesty, it remains that way.

The pills stopped working 3-4 weeks ago. I’ve been running up-hill ever since. Every day is a new effort to stay on top of my mood.

The doctor has doubled my dose. Little effect has been felt over the past 3 weeks, not even a superficial improvement.

I can’t tell if I’m getting worse, or if I’ve been sad all along and it has been buried. It could just as well mean that the pills never helped and I had just gone back to my default again. Just as many times before; I have recovered from a bout of depression after a month or two of rest. I sail through the storm, rather than calming it in any real sense. Calm water mistaken for a persistent force.

Now I’m back to the stage I was at before, that black hole of sadness to the side of me – stretching to swallow me, but for now just remaining a peripheral threat.

I can be intensely happy, I can run about and scream and make noises. I can read for hours and hours, keeping focus. I can play stupid little games on the Wii with a semblance of satisfaction. It seems that when I am around people I can just forget it all. Except, when it comes to trying to sleep I just lie there getting stressed. I have to take my sleeping pills to make any attempt at sleep. Otherwise I’ll lay awake and my head will just endlessly play out encounters and projects and then start to hurt.

Headaches. I’ve never had them before and now I get one a day, usually around 5-6pm. It isn’t unwelcome. It keeps me focused on physical pain rather than the inertia of melancholia. At times it will feel like my brain is breathing with the same futile effort of a bulldog.

I’m still not any nearer, thanks to this slug-like NHS, to getting any real help. The consensus is ‘swallow these and wait.’

To begin with you always take the options handed to you, because you’ll try anything to climb out of where you are. You’ll clutch at the straws of wishful thinking and convince yourself you are getting better, when really you are just subtly forgetting your fault lines run where they do.

I’m still reading. I’m still writing. I’m still taking photos. I’m sailing. I’m managing to eat a little when I can. I’m exercising. I’m alive.

None of it gives me real lasting pleasure. I’m trapped in the talons of this sickness. There is no reasoning with myself, I will just find myself sad and wishing that life would stop. It feels like I’m wired up to the taproot of human misery, I’d give anything for a little of my usual apathy. I’d give anything to have my ego reclaim me. The thing is that I just don’t care.

Selfishness, I guess. Therein lies the dilemma.

Am I so self-involved that a perceived misery is unconquerable in the face of all the joys laid out ahead of me?

In the light of all the misery in the world, what makes mine seem acute in comparison? Do I have a right to ache?

Is pain relative or is that egotistical? Is pain in fact on a scale from one extreme to a far greater one?

Is comparison to other perceived ‘greater pain’ helpful? Or does it just make one wallow even more in your own limitations and self-centered attitude?

Most recently my life has been especially given over to other people. I have put myself second in the greatest of my efforts and helped (often beyond my means). I have not done so for gain. Except that I have gained friendships that I value and make me regretful for not establishing with similar candidates in my history. I have not lied. I’m not even proud, I care very little about what people get from me. My misanthropy has now been turned on myself only. I retain my skill of apathy as a challenge to myself, making more and more elaborate efforts to assist people. I suppress my selfishness when it rears up, forcing myself to do more and more beyond my comfortable inclination. I feel I am better for reducing those unpalatable parts of myself.

It gives me a question… can you be a good person by suppressing your sinful attitudes?

Can you be human and be free from selfishness? Or is it just a quieter voice over time?

These are all questions that mean very little to me. Before they’d have driven me to madness, but now (with a little help from Camus) I have seen that they are all absurd questions. They will never be answered to any great or helpful point. What matters is that I ask them and continue to act in a way that comforts me. It comforts me to ask these pointless questions because it focuses my aims. I am content to be a good force in the world where previously I have been a negative force.

I understand that it is in my nature to be sad. That is who I am. For a reason unknown, I must ache. It is not an obstacle, merely a feature of my landscape. Just as a mountain is not an obstacle to a mountaineer, but a victory he attempts to claim. The man seeks not to climb over it, but to conquer it in the name of joy. Just as to a fisherman a sea is not an obstacle, but a landscape of harvest. Not to be skipped, but endured to obtain a bounty.

Still this truth brings no real conclusion. I am a captive of myself and to myself I must bear witness.

I continue to grow, even if there are pains in doing so.

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.

Wide Sargasso Sadness

“Very soon she’ll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they’ve got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it’s a long, long line. She’s one of them. I too can wait – for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie…”

Last page of Part Two. Wide Sargasso Sea. – Jean Rhys

What wakes in me is the knowledge that I am very similar to Antoinette in this novel. (Perhaps we all are and that is the glorious moot point to this whole journey. Each of us have our own yearning for a place to be comfortable. Each of us, the need to escape persecution from a life we have not chosen.) I dread to go on, as I do, about Bath – except that it is still at the core of my subject. The centre of my recent sadness. So I must re-conjure it, yet only in the explorative sense – no hint of the nostalgic.

Bath is a picture to me, a movie, a reel of film. Non, it remains as a negative for me to hold against the light. Raised as a sample. A solution, contained within a petri dish, which I will match against a depression I cannot hope to master. Trying to determine if it would make for a good culture of inoculation. A vaccination against future bouts of restlessness. I know I cannot change who I am, though I can choose a lesser pain and use it to vaccinate myself against further heartache. Allow myself to learn; teach my immune system a way of fighting off every sign of sadness.

I get restless when I am not fulfilled – as we all do – I begin to fear a lack of feeling. Then a fear of feeling too much. I rush around and try to re-ignite my own passion for life. Distract myself from what is undoubtedly on its way. I start to sit and contemplate how I have reached this point in my life. Then I am overwhelmed.

In Bath – after I realized my lack of romantic love for Much – it became clear that I was rushing around and burying myself in other people – so that I wouldn’t lose my good mood. In January things took a nose-dive out of that revelation. So that I wouldn’t dip any lower than I was I buried myself in drink and social things. Invited myself along with American students that I met randomly. Got numbers from them. Planed on sleeping with one. Except even that didn’t save me, it was too late to raise myself.

It didn’t work because, when I reached the understanding that I’d only been treading water – that eventually I’d be drowned, I couldn’t help but reel back and lose control.

So home I went. But I packed away that understanding of myself. Took it with me to pull it out when I was strong enough to look at it. I only need to refine it now. Learn from it. Move forward.

I know what helps me.

Nightingale helps me, she understands my weakness because she has already begun the journey I am now starting. I’ve learnt from her, or rather… her voice is allowing me to hear my own.

Exercise helps me. Just a little a day helps keep those blues away.

Chemistry helps me – understanding that to help myself I need to believe I am simply a mess of chemicals – that there is an equation behind and yet controlling my emotions and I can curtail any lowering of it by simply adding more seasoning. A hint more distraction. A pinch of passion. A sprinkling of spontaneous energetic activity.

As clear as it is that I am preoccupied with Bath and the last few months. As mad as it makes me appear. As obsessive and compulsive and nostalgic as I might come across. I can’t help thinking that actually, it isn’t a negative thing to examine a sadness that could save me. If I didn’t – if I just buried it – then I’d only make the same mistakes.

Much like I did many years ago, leaving the Wirral for university (leaving my first girlfriend), I buried the pain and ignored it. I became a new person like a snake shedding its skin. I’m good at it; I’ve done it many, many times since. It was the wrong thing to do. I should have been smart enough to work out that there was something to gain from understanding ‘why’ I was unhappy with things the way they were.

Maybe it is maturity. Another plateau reached on the struggle to the peak of wisdom. You know, before I lose all logical cognitive function and fall off the other side into senility.

Antoinette moved from her island home – into marriage – and back to her island again. A honeymoon in a hell that she loved. It was her, as she was it. What I read from that decision is the old idea of returning to the scene of the crime.

As she, I have come back to the place of my childhood – a place that has forced such unnumbered pains upon me. As she, I have managed to find a renewed admiration for such a wonderful place. As she, I will face my hardships head-on.

Unlike she, I will overcome the forces met out against me. Unlike she, I will bow to the unconquerable, retreat and repair, so that I may return with redoubled vigor. Unlike she, I  will win a real victory – rather than surrendering to a fact that is unreconcilable.

Antoinette had a childishness about her that never fully lifted. Antoinette retreated into herself – rather than healing, for her, came the notion of hiding. I mean to break the spell of madness.

The book held a lot of goodness in it. I will write more on it.

“Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Adieu. Never Adieu.”

explanation and exasperation…

Now there’s an offer I can refuse. Although you’re clearly a child, women aren’t toys, and that’s your total loss as I’m the best entertainment you could ever have. And I wouldn’t go to that shite-hole, even if you paid for the ticket (as any gentlemen would have done). The natives are lowering and bestial and the TV signal arrives by second-class mail. ~ resolutiongirl

With this comment its time for a bit of honesty.

I don’t think women are toys. Not in the sense resolutiongirl thinks that I do. I am quite crass sometimes, but that’s because this is a blog and I enjoy being a little brutal at times because it makes me feel less weak and prone to emotional heartache. This really would be a crappy blog if I was all sullen 100% of the time.

I’m not out to hurt people, bring women down a peg, or start any games… i just want to keep moving, keep active and keep distracted.

I’m only 23 I don’t have the answers, so perhaps I’ve still got lessons to learn, how else am I going to learn them without growing up and experiencing what people have to show me.

I want to find a few woman that I really connect with and adore. There is no harm as long as I am upfront and honest with them, as long as I say where I am at every step of the way. If they get the wrong idea, then ‘they’ got the wrong idea. I’ve not lied to anyone recently. All I want is to keep connecting with people until I meet someone that I can love.

I’m not going to sit on my hands and get all lonely waiting for the next great women to drop into my lap. What if the next one is only a week away, I’d sooner get out there and find her than get myself all upset and lonely.

The world seems a little unwise to the fact that life is for enjoying – that I’m not really hurting anyone. This is a blog for private thoughts – yes, I’ve treated women badly in the past but I’ve learned from it – but I’ve also been very lovely to women, which will come out more in the coming months as I compile my past into something more literate.

I don’t see the sense in beating myself up for a past that I can’t go back and alter. I’m getting on.

So resolutiongirl, I’m sorry to hear you don’t want to come and see me – despite the knuckle-draggers there are quite a few lovely people up here. More than I was expecting to meet when I first learnt that I had to come back here.

Do try to find a little hope in my future posts for the race known as Male. We will get better, or at least I will.

The most heartless man to ever own a pulse…

Consider the weekend dust being bitten. And so, another one shows her lack of understanding. Another deems me the villain in my own story.

I had a good weekend and then the whole thing is destroyed when the girl gets all emotional. Bloody women. Oh well.

Seriously these pills, my god, these pills make everything ok. I can think about things, but it is like there is a filter that is removing the emotional significance of it all. Right now I should be deeply hurt that a woman I shared a lot of myself with determines to hurt me by calling me a ‘user’. I mean, that’s the catch-phrase of the moment. Ex-friends, Ex-lovers… ex-cetera… all of them calling me a ‘monster’. And what for, I hear you cry?

For telling the god-damned unabashed truth.

For saying, ‘you know what, this isn’t working.’ Or ‘I never loved you, so I’m going to start hitting the field.’ Or ‘I’m going to start drinking again, because you made me out of be an alcoholic when really I was just unhappy.’

All these wonderfully monstrous confessions. How I can say… ‘i enjoy sex.’ And that is read as, ‘i used you for sex.’

The thing I’m learning is that people feel too much, too little and too late in the reverse order. They don’t realize their own objectives. This latest one took a last ditch effort to change me into a man who could love her. FAIL. It’s temporarily beyond me.

The only thing that the text gave me… because I know you’ll read this… is a distinct dislike for you. You learnt me well enough to say something hurtful to me… you don’t care for me if you treat me like this, so I’m not going to waste my time on you. Goodbye. Great life.

Onwards and outwards. Another thing that the weekend has afforded me is a closure on my sexual-escapades… or for now, anyhow… I’m tired out at the thought of randomly shagging my way around Liverpool… so now my objective is to stick it out as single and just do some fun dating. No sex, just relax, take things slowly and stop saying no to feelings.

I think slowly is the key. If I keep things nice and arm’s length for the time being then it will at least stir me into the right type of thinking, without hurting anyone in the process.

Except god knows every woman I have ever been out with has always fallen for me inside a week and is confessing their love not long after. Its a symptom of being too irresistible. Don’t protest… I joke, I jest, I play the fool.

Today I started reading Miller again to perk up what little chauvinistic skill remained intact. I read about his life and the ‘rosy crucifixion’ portion of his existence – where he moved away from everything he knew to begin again. Much like myself. Actually there is quite a lot of parallels to see when it comes to his prose. Certainly his life speaks a direct epiphany.

Regardless this is just one more reason I should be grateful for being free. At least I haven’t gotten myself in too deep. Gotten used to loving anyone or anything like that. That would be tragic, the old Jensen might well have taken to some model he managed to discuss marxism with. Or taken the number from a girl only to call her the wrong name down the phone. Or similarly fallen into the trap of some honey with a mind of mush and a great body, one that he couldn’t help but wish to be with because of their ‘connection’ and then, not long later, finds she’s dating another guy too. Spreading the odds. As well as her legs.

I’ve done nothing I can really be upset about. Instead I’ve held it together pretty well and… if I don’t have any more undue surprises… I think I’ll be well on the way to a happy day with some beaming broad one day soon.

See, the more time that passes without me needing to apologize, the less I have to be sorry for.

No man in a sorry-state can be happy, nor can he attract someone to share an evening with… in any true format of proclivity.