rioting and my thoughts

Because it is pertinent, I wish to muse slightly on the thoughts I’ve been having on the riots around the UK.

Whilst the majority of daily mail readers have been claiming that a breakdown of family values is to blame and the majority of guardian readers have been blaming runaway consumerism/poverty (which I was fully behind until I started thinking), I had a good long think this morning about it and came up with this.

The events of the last few days are really down to the concept of justice.

The rioters themselves, whilst perhaps not thinking this consciously, are enacting their own idea of justice. Flawed though it is, it is a retaliation to the injustice observed in authoritative bodies enacting power over them; be that the government, media, police or other less than ethical group. To the rioters the idea of taking things isn’t seen as a balanced equation, they are aware it is wrong but view ‘wrong’ as something which is corrected by the authorities and whilst the authorities are doing ‘wrong’, they think that their own ‘wrong’ is less wrong than the ‘wrong’ enacted by those higher in society. Besides, they are stupid enough to ignore the fact that something remains wrong if they are caught or not. A lot are self-justifying their actions. I shouldn’t wonder if this is an attempt to circumvent the guilt that they would be exposed to if they were to think about the people they have actually hurt (members of their own community and the next generation who will grow up with even less freedom).

Those in the media and those swallowing it are observing the events of the last few days and thinking about nothing except the present injustice. They are ignoring the fact that Cameron is a hypocrite who has himself enacted random acts of criminal damage in his own childhood. They are also ignoring the fact that there is an injustice at the heart of all this which, should one consider the issues, will uncover the real issue that society must face.

The idea of Liberty.

I am a person who is free to live my life as I see fit. My liberty is secure on condition that I do not impose force over another person and disrupt their liberty. It is ethically wrong to murder, enslave or steal from anther human being because these acts disrupt their liberty. It is ethically wrong to use force on anyone; whether is is by trickery, unfair transaction or by using violence. (*)

So now we come to government. I am at liberty to choose a leader. Those around me can choose to follow that same leader. In our country we have democracy, which isn’t perfect but it avoids a conflict of leadership amongst those in government. So leading from the idea of democracy, those that we choose to represent us are subject to the same rules as a single person. They are not above anyone, they are just chosen to do the job of protecting and providing a service to us.

They do not have the right to enact force against anyone in our name. (Lets ignore my thoughts on war in general, otherwise we will be here all day). So now we come to the crux of things.

People are calling for violence against those who are rioting and whilst we have the right to request others to defend us, we do not have the right to use violence done to us as an excuse to perpetrate the violence against another person/s.

People have lost sight of the purpose of the government and our own responsibilties as a society to ensure that the least of us are protected in every sense. We have a responsibility to walk through life with our eyes open.

So whatever the NUMEROUS causes for the riots (there will be as many reasons as there are rioters), let’s remember that we ignore philosophical issues at our peril and the longer we ignore justice and ethics the worse things will decline.

I’ve been thinking about a lot more, but I need a break from typing.

(*) I believe that the media tricks us and fools the masses on a daily basis, that the government steals from us in the form of taxes (more through the misuse of those funds to wage war and bail out bankers – actual schemes like the police (when acting ethically) and social care are a fair transaction), our employers are under the false assumption that they pay for our lives and not just our time and lastly that violence is perpetrated in our name on a moment by moment basis because we subscribe to an unregulated authority which does not consult us (though this is partly due to the shortcoming/failure of democracy.)

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.

oneward and upward

Okay. RIght. Testing, testing. Hope this is working.

It is.

Right.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this whole One and Other thing. I’ve done my smart thinking now, I’m over that. I’ve reasoned out things and I think I’m going to be okay. Just going to get up there, pose my ideas and then breathe it all in.

Been having a few emotional tantrums recently – my heart all a flutter.. ex-cetera … It all comes from me putting too much stock in this thing.

The truth is, I don’t need to get it ‘right’ or do anything to ‘please’ anyone. I’m smarter than needing to take my level from other people’s figures.

I wrote a little piece last night for my novel – “Feel bitter, feel like you want to hit me; but don’t deny the fact we made each other pretty happy. In the time we had.”

That’s what all this means, it is getting up there and just saying ‘This is me. What are you?

I am the art that can ask questions of itself, as much as of the observer. Now that is a revolution!

This morning I got a call from a mental health team member and they have invited me over to get checked over on Wednesday. I’m going to go along and tell them everything. I will write a little something for them first. A little history maybe. Something to explain better than I might be able to.

Oneward and upwards with things.

“And even later, more recently.”

“And even later, more recently.”

Tribute to Tom Lowe Taylor

You wrote to save your ass

from a dark emptiness

that followed its own linguistic urge.

What was obsolete

you sought

to write and newly sort,

unconscious

but wholly wary of yourself - 

a drunken rage of self-righteousness to overwhelm.

Made afraid to be alone

with your own genius,

or genus,

who can say?

But one word after another

one in another’s wake

to fuel the next

and on and on toward that

unfurnished house.

~~~




Will work on this some more – this is my first draft.

kissing? really?

Mistaken Intentions.

Been a while since i’ve written on here about my misadventures.

Spurred into thought by the recent happenings on Big Brother I was thinking about the whole ‘friend with benefits’ thing. Throughout university I seemed more than capable of keeping said type of relationship alive. However, the main contender for the role of ultimate ‘friend with benefits’ has to go to…

And you thought I’d name her.

No.

It was a good thing and I still count her as a great friend. She never failed to entertain. We’d go on nights out together and have a wicked time necking at the end of the night. It was great. Without it I might have been more unfaithful to the then girlfriend.

God I was a prick back then. Maybe I still am.

Anyway.

The question on the show was can it work. Can the friend’s with benefits thing really work out. Well after knowing the girl for about 3 years, the answer is – yes.

So don’t doubt it.

I still think sex is a handshake.

A trivial meeting of flesh.

So, what do you think? Does it work for you?

some people never learn lessons, other lessons aren’t worth learning…

I’ve learnt lesson in life recently. Bluebird, Robin and AIG have all given me a lot of advice. That I can’t beat myself up for being me and that I just have to get over myself and get on with things. I can’t make things better for the people in my past, I just have to move forward and stop lying and cheating people out of knowing me. Also, there is nothing wrong with getting over love by being a young man and getting solace from women. In fact, AIG gave me a song by Nada Surf recently that helped a lot. It has some great great advice in it.

Three important rules for breaking up

Don’t put off breaking up when you know you want to

Prolonging the situation only makes it worse

Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly

Don’t make a big production

Don’t make up an elaborate story

This will help you avoid a big tear jerking scene

If you wanna date other people say so

Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected

Of course the same goes for a flip of gender. I failed badly when my last relationship ended, instead of getting smart and getting it over and done with back in October, I struggled on getting more and more unhappy. More and more annoyed with her for not being lovable enough. Which is stupid because it really was my failing not Her’s.

I kept up the pretense of love so that I didn’t lose a friend. But, in the end, she didn’t want to help me and wasn’t that good a friend. She didn’t stay in contact, she was too self-involved, which doesn’t help when I am too. We always were very similar – she wont talk to people if they don’t make the effort to talk to her often and neither do I – I just give up on them.

So hopefully she’ll understand that and not hate me. Maybe she will understand that being apart is better this way because we wont annoy each other. I can get on with my fun and not have her all upset that I’m not getting ‘better’ by her standards. I’ve got a lot of respect for the kid, I’m more angry at myself for not having balls to be a real man about things. For confusing myself into a mess. I wont make that mistake again.

Throughout the relationship I just couldn’t shake the feeling that we might grow to understand each other better with time. Not annoy each other quite so much. Even tried to make her see how I thought, the process, so she could understand. Didn’t work. I hoped that she might mean a lot to me one day… but I didn’t ever let myself ‘fall in love’ her. Being too scared of getting hurt. What you don’t realize is that you hurt yourself anyway, because no one is close enough to lift you up when you are sad.

I prolonged things, I made a big song and dance number and I told elaborate stories – I lied and cheated and I’m sorry I did, because it made me feel rotten at the end. I wasted time when what I could have done is ended it long ago and maybe salvaged something from it. We could have been friends and I could have stayed in Bath. I have no real regrets, as if I did then I would be disrespecting those new connections I have made. Instead I have come to terms with it and moved on.

So this time I’m just rolling with that side of me. That I have a problem letting people get close, I put up barriers and now I wont.

I know that I can’t feel all-loving at the moment… I can have great respect for people, treat them well, care for them – but romantic love is beyond me, for the moment.

AIG has said that I shouldn’t betray myself the opportunity to find someone wonderful by shutting myself away and pining – instead I should dress up smart, get out there and take a stab at finding someone to love.

So that is what I’m doing. Not setting out to hurt, but not sparing people at the expense of my own happiness either.

old flames

So back after my VERY VERY bad Easter Weekend…

I was talking to a friend yesterday about the limitations one has to accept when it comes to writing characters. It isn’t that you can’t flesh them out, make them believable… etc… but rather that there will always be a face missing, some small part that wont be expressed because it would take more than a thousand novels to encompass the human being. We’re multi-faceted in the extreme.

I’ve come to the same conclusion when it comes to blogging – that there are people who know me (or think they do), and people who don’t, that will read this blog and think that it a condensed version of me. Somehow the subject matter, or the manner in which I present things, justifies their views. Puts context to their compartmental vision of me.

This carpel-tunnel world of blogging, invariably then, has its risks. What if a woman comes on here in a year’s time? What if I like said woman and she deems my outpourings to be abhorrent and vile and therefore concludes that I am unworthy of her… all these ‘what if’s will be the death of me, but lets just say that I’m right. Do I care? Yes. Can I do anything? No.

Bring it on home that whole idea of people liking me for me – if said woman came here and didn’t understand my motivations then I’ll be damned if she’s right for me – just like the last.

So this idea of me coming across as something short of myself got me thinking about everything really. As much as I’ve put things to bed.. So to speak.. I do have to say that certain elements of my character are coming together to show me as anything but an honest, caring and kind man. Not least to everyone, but mostly to myself. See, I’m such a self-deceiving creature. But you knew that.

Anyway – so getting on with life… this whole breaking away from the loss of Bath and life down there. Its taken me off facebook and taken away my one mode of constant communication with the world back there behind me. It’s a good thing too, because the old lovers were already starting to feel brazen! Old flames leaving suggestive messages on my wall, the odd filthy reply to an unassuming statement. Laura might just have put two and two together to work out when and where and with whom. So I’m glad that is all behind me. Now I can move on to new pastures with a clean slate. Chalking line after line on that board above me. Remembering.

I intend to start my education of myself by starting with history. I’ve opened up various memories and I’m taking a good look at what makes me. I have nostalgia abound. Zounds man, I might even have unleashed a realization or two.

I know that what I had in Bath was a best friend and various distractions. Not to play them down, we got closer toward the end (hence the sadness at parting) but since then I’ve more than replaced them and feel in a better place than I ever did. Lying in the sun this morning saw that I understood what was important. It was the second moment I’ve truly felt content in the here and now of here.

The funny thing is that the people I have met in the last 2 months have been better friends to me than anyone else I have ever met. They know me better too. I could have one person here in Liverpool take on a team of every person I have known for the past 4 years in Bath and they’d win a quiz on me hands down. (Save for Dom of course, who remains the only man I’ve ever confided truth in.) I’ve opened my heart to some of the loveliest people imaginable and all they’ve done is pay in kind. So I have to admit, scary as it sounds, I was wrong. (Gosh, didn’t that make you tingle inside??) I was wrong to hate my home so much. Wronger still, to think that the world ended when my little false life in Bath hit the fan.

But more, much more than this… I feel like I’ve gotten better. I’m not second guessing the old relationships like I used to. I used to lie in bed with Laura beside me and listen to songs that took me back to other women I’d known. Back to Jenny the Stalker and my inability to love her. Back to Patty and my inability to love her. Back to every woman I’d ever known and my inability to love them. But always the same feeling of regret and the need to retrace those steps. The feeling that there is a girl beside me that is beautiful, but I feel more for these old flames than I do for her. This is what brought me to wanting to leave her back in October, what had me almost there so many times. Before the idea of moving to Cardiff gave me the stupid idea that a change of scene might bring a change of heart.

I’ve known a lot of really beautiful women in my life and I treated them all, at the time, as though they were a piece in my puzzle – rather than a light to work under. They were short-term soul-mates, some of whom became habits that I stuck with until it became too difficult to keep going. One or two I got with, out of a deluded idea that I could be happy with them in time… given time I was soon proven wrong.

And that’s it for this blog post… more to follow, beg and borrow. I mean… tomorrow…

The PolarTropicals

Chatting, in Cafe Nero, on a bright morning with Fritz – it was so damn stuffy we had to pries open the window, use a coffee cup to hold it from shutting, just to breath clean air – we were chatting about the simplicity of horse racing; each omitting the fact we’d lost near a years wages between us, because it was – all said and done – just down to luck. It was when we were in the middle of a gripe about Jack Quick – a heavy against, which had proven itself a loser time and again – that we noticed Erin. (I’ll not pretend at this stage that we knew her, it was simply a name that we later held on our tongues and savored.)

Cupid lifted our chins at the moment she swaggered in – the cruel bastard drew our eyes from sandals to hair clips, before he sent us – inert – towards the figure of her boyfriend. It was Charlie – a three time runner up, in each of the three fights we’d had – a thin branch of an arm lay at her hip and the other pressed a cellphone into the side of his face.

Clean shaven, clean spoken and whiter than white teeth, that was Charlie entirely summed up. A cocky little inbred, with Daddy’s notes in his wallet and Mommy’s ‘love ner-ending’ and her looks to-the-letter. The two of them took a seat, hidden in plain view, and the waiter breezed over to take their order – taking special care to drop his gaze down her top – then scuttled away. Erin was a sweep of shoulder length black hair – slender neck, with a dark mole elegantly placed on the cusp of her shoulder-blade – and eyes, god she had eyes, eyes I can’t describe.

So we watched them, Fritz and me, in-between more mindless chatter, until something lifted her chin to look at us. With a greeting of smiles, we knew that she knew our game. We were fans – were connoisseurs  of her curves – aficionados of her attractiveness – enthusiasts of her elegance – et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam… in summery, your honors’, we meant no harm – it was flattery. 

Still unsure of what devil lifted Charlie’s chin – made him wise to the happenings – I’d like to say he took it on what he lifted and turned cheek. That he knew our jest and we had no real gripe against a man we could easily do in. Sadly, no, he took offense and put up fisticuffs, for a fourth attempt at victory. It was Erin that made him re-think the equation – two against one – so he simmered down after a spattering of reassuring kisses. Charlie invited us over, not to get a better look, but to catch up.

His plan became an example of clarity – he wanted us next to him, because comparison was a given – he imagined, it would undoubtedly lead to Erin taking heel with him… the lesser of assembled evils. His plan fell at the hurdle of book titles.

Erin is a well-read broad – a fanatic when it comes to the well-known Subterraneans – we aching-jawed it, until closing time and dragged Charlie to a bar to continue until last orders were swallowed. (This is where the main focus of these scribblings hones to an ant-burning precision.)

We tell her about our new love for the self-titled ‘stylized interview’ form. How we gleaned it partly from the form taken by the few articles you can unearth between the tundra of advertisements in men’s mags. Took a pinch of the noir in detective fiction and mixed it with our over-wrought idolization of musicians and movie stars. We aimed to write ourselves and our friends into the next cult characters of a changing era. 

“Then you should put up a site for yourselves!” She protested.

The idea stuck, we’ve started up on our quest. Fritz and me have already bought the domain and started on the first few articles. (This is an invitation to join, a sort of reward for reading this far.) Charlie wont be involved, but we have recruited Evan, Nicholas, Gene, Ginny and Laura from the ‘Literary Barbershop of Bath’, otherwise known as our friends.

Let it be made clear… This is a call to arms for ALL – no matter what country you live in – those who are underprivileged, rejected, denounced and demagnified when it comes to literary endeavor, all who are looking for a leg-up to notoriety. We’ll write so skillfully and with such magic that our friend’s bands will be signed a day or two later, our writer friends will be published and our photographer friends will have something to do.

We’re starting slowly – slowly and lowly – but we aim to rage against our dying lights. Here’s to creating a new destiny. Here’s to the PolarTropicals.

Here’s to getting Erin’s digits and an open-ended invitation to her flat.

www.polartropic.co.uk