to those who didn’t know

my short stories are here now

http://mr-histrionica.blogspot.com/

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my usual pocket fillers

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this is what I take with me on a daily basis. without these things my life would stop at the door and I would burst into an autumn wind of auburn leaves. two small conkers the only thing left on the stoop.

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poetry

Last night I did an open mic night. It went very well.

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North

The same year I quit saying north and just started pointing,
was the year I gave up calling home.

So while Rapeseed turned the Wirral’s fields
the colour of American mustard.
While jets unpicked the sky, leaving mile-long scars.
Clouds; worn knees on fading denim.

All that time I left the phone unplugged from the wall
my mobile ignored in the deep pocket of my coat.
Heard nothing, the same way no one has really ever heard silence.

That year, though very near the death of it,
I lost my mind. Got driven back.
And god the sight of it!
Through the needlepoint of rain,
past embroidered streetlights
Nothing had changed, instead
I’d arrived in the future
by walking backwards.

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Fishing

When I think of love
I picture salmon.

Journey
driven by desire
the pink flesh
the blank stare.

A river slick with ambition
each one aiming
a schooled burst of muscle
to leap a barrier
but ending life
in the jaws of a bear.

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Seagulls

Angels step, bent-legged
against the shore.
Their calls the sound of Jericho’s walls
falling.
Or; a laugh
at a joke you’ll never get.

I was told they fell
from Triassic grace
but, when the tide comes in,
they still marvel at their reflections.

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a feeling not as fickle as love.

-

I know that I write so that I can make a living, some day. But now I’m worried about my characters. Even if they are real.

God.

Most of the people I write about are real. So when they die, that is that. So I need to write about them, to capture them (if I can).

Most of the time I do that, in my journals. I write people as they are, no shields up, no gimmicks.

Without a single declaration of love, there is no one I won’t try to save the way I save people. Even the people I hate, I save.

Right, back to the work.

I do love you.

You know who ‘you’ are.

I love you, but I can’t say it to your face and will never allow myself that close to another living being. So in the absence of calling it ‘love’, I cannot live without you. Even if you are far from me, there will always be the show of affection. There will always be the place in my heart. A feeling not as fickle as love.

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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ultra-bigimist-aholic

this is a non-extract from my new novella. this is completely its own thing, in the novella it is written from a different perspective. i hope you like it.

My ex girlfriend. By which I mean, the last girl I was in a long-term relationship with. The girl I was in a three year relationship with. That ex-girlfriend has just had a baby with another man.

It doesn’t really bother me. I’m a little put out that she got with a new guy and got pregnant. That she was part of a new family within a month and a half of us breaking up. I’ve always wanted to wake up one day with a family. To just not have a choice either way. That’s just how life goes sometimes. Some days are like torn condoms.

In the aforementioned month and a half, I slept with 4 women. So I know that I didn’t love her. I explain the three years to people as being a time when I couldn’t see that I didn’t love her for all the loving things I was doing. Its like not seeing the wood for the trees. Except you don’t see that you feel nothing, for trying to feel something.

What I never told her, because I was busy trying to love her, was that I was already dating someone when we met. I later learnt that the girl I was dating had loads more in common with me than my ex girlfriend. I sometimes think that if I had chosen differently I might not have had to fake love. ‘Might’.

My mother used to say that when you sleep with a woman, she stays with you. You are married to her by God. She always said the same thing about horror films, that once watched they never leave and you’ll have those images in your mind forever. She never warned me against romantic comedies. She should have.

Understanding this, to say I am a bigamist is an understatement. I’ve often though about having all the women I’ve slept with come together. There would be a festival of brides, because a church would be too small. Also because a lot of them would get on, so we’d get a few bands to play and have a laugh.

At the festival of brides I’d get up on stage and all the girls would file past me in one line. Just like the Pastor did at my old church. Each Sunday he’d welcome each person and they’d take the bread and wine. Except that I’d only kiss each girl. There would never be another last meal between us. I’d never ask them to do anything in remembrance of me.

If I had to choose between keeping all these wives, or trading them for one wife and a kid. Then I’d choose the baby with one. Except that is human nature. Its the same thing as hunger. An involuntary feeling. One you can ignore. In fact, if you asked me to choose then I’d sucker punch you in the gut. I’d say ‘I can do as I please!’ ‘There’s no God in control of me!’. I’d think hard and then say. ‘I don’t think I’m in control of me!’

So my ex girlfriend has had a baby and named him after a singer who killed himself. I’m of the opinion that this is asking for trouble. If I had to choose to name my kid after someone who killed himself, then I’d choose someone who was at least very successful first. Otherwise what hope’s the kid got?

In truth, I don’t worry for the kid. She’ll be a great mother. I know I didn’t love her, but the kid has too. I’m glad that she’s found a guy she can be happy with. I’m getting on with things. Sleeping my way through the phonebook. As Jim puts it.

When the festival of brides rolls into town, there will be no ex girlfriend with her baby and new boyfriend. There will only be me and the women I never loved. The women I lied to. Out of hope, not out of cruelty.

spontaneous

I met a girl on the train this morning. I say ‘met’ when I mean ‘saw’. I rarely meet girls. They aren’t easy to talk to and never say hello to me. So I met (saw) this girl and she was beautiful. Which is another reason I did not talk to her. Or, perhaps, the reason she did not talk to me.

I know very little about her, but told my friend Jim anyway. He said I should describe her to him. Jim always describes the women he meets. He does actually meet them. Jim sleeps with them. Jim is spontaneous. I am not. So I told him she had long brown hair, big blue eyes and a very big nose. I told him I didn’t care about her nose, because lots of people have faults and love doesn’t see big noses. He said that love might not see big noses, but that if she was a Jew then she’d never love me. Jim doesn’t think that the Hebrew people can love. Except Jim has never met one. He calls it a ‘fact’ when really he means it is an ‘idea’ he has.

I think tomorrow, when I meet her, I’ll take a Torah with me. Women like nice jewish boys. Even if they are not jewish themselves. This I have noticed.

My manager took me aside today and asked me to be a ‘greeter’ at the door, which means he wants me to stand at the entrance to the shop and welcome people. I don’t work in a supermarket, I thought, I work in a bookstore.

Jim says later, that when my manager puts people in job positions that aren’t right for them it is called ‘Muppet Shuffling’. I’m shuffled quite often, I feel like I’m the 3 of clubs. I am not an ace.

Half way through the day I take my bright red lunch-box out to a little courtyard near to work. I light a cigarette and pretend I’m a detective. I have my own office. There is no courtyard. There is only a little office with a filing cabinet, a desk, a swivel chair and my name on the door. Everything is black and white.

I pretend I’m Sam Spade. I pretend this because the cigarette ash does what it does in the book. “The ashes on the desk twitched and crawled in the current.” I think about spontaneous combustion. I check my temperature. I think that if someone wrote about my life, then they would write ‘he “twitched and crawled”’.

Sometimes I’ll imagine I’m going to explode. That every bit of me will be lit up like the embers from the end of a cigarette. I will be walking along and a strong gust will cause me to dissolve into the wind.

At the end of the day I haven’t had a chance to buy a Torah, but she is on the train all the same. She gets onto the carraige and sits down across from me. I can smell her perfume. She smells like flowers, but I don’t know flowers well enough to know which ones she smells like.

I’m half-way home and the train jerks forward sending my book flying to the floor. We both bend down to retrieve it. It is like a film. When the two characters reach down to pick something up, usually a dropped book like this one. Probably not ‘Penthouse XXX’ though. Their eyes meet and somewhere in the space between their noses, they fall in love. If we were to fall in love now, there wouldn’t be much room between our noses. Her nose is very, very big.

Except, what happens, is more like a nightmare than a movie. We bump heads.

We both sit up and look at each other in the confusion that is caused by two heads hitting each other by mistake. We both sit up and look at each other and I’m bright red. My cheeks are the colour of my lunch-box.

This isn’t my stop but, when the train stops, I get up. I try to say ‘I love you, you are beautiful and I don’t care about your big nose.’ Except that a woman screams and fate decides that she only hears the last two words. And the woman screamed because at that moment, just as the door opened, I stopped being solid. I turned into a swarm of embers.

extract.

I don’t often do this… place my work online. I wrote this for my application to return to study Writing at university.

–=–

Nothing happens the way you read in the history books. In war there aren’t two armies, there is only a field of men. There is no number of dead; but individual lives snuffed out. That is what the subject of history is, years shelved and decimalized. Birth and death, graphed to the simplicity of lines. Great wars a footnote to the next great war. The achievements of men and women plotted out against the bookmark of day, month and year.

And somewhere amongst this, my mother breathed. Somewhere danced in now long-closed nightclubs, laughed at jokes told by a younger version of my Father. And then the unpin-able moment she fell in love with him, after which she would have sworn there was no moment, that she’d always loved him.

I try to place things, to tell the story to myself, but you cannot know the story of a life; you can only tell a new story from theirs, as one cannot speak with another’s tongue.

Whilst other children would be given sweets, I would have to excavate them. Taught to choose plots on a map of the sandpit outside, my Father overseeing the dig from a deck-chair; playing ‘hotter/colder’ until I made a find.

We lived for History, my father and I. My bedtime stories were tales of Waterloo, The Somme, The Crusades. Though I had no nightmares because of it. There was always a happy ending, however bleak the tale. So that Napoleon grew closer to his family while in exile on the island of Saint Helena. That while a centimeter cost the lives of two allied fighters, The Somme gave knowledge enough to win the war – brave men have given their lives for less, my father said. And whilst The Crusades themselves cannot be reveled in, they did at least give Cecil B. DeMille another epic to direct. One that birthed the solid memory, that once my Mother, Father and I sat together; watching armor shine as bright as the actor’s smiles.

The ultimate theft is one letter from the act of giving. ‘Gave’, becomes ‘grave’ with a stroke; and that is how my mother left us. Blood drowning her memories, until her body held no more knowledge. Until there was no understanding of breath; and then, an unpin-able moment later, there was no recognition of spirit.

After my mother passed, we moved to a small flat in the centre of the city and so we no longer had the yard. Instead my father gave me centuries to play in. The new game became one of memorising dates to win sherbet lemons and sour apples.

At the time I was a child and at that age you cannot understand loss – perhaps you never do. It just becomes a fact of life. One that reers itself up at odd moments and doesn’t take the form of grief. How can you grieve for a face you remember as a dream, for to dream again is to replace them.

Instead I learnt by example. My father, with his sadness, taught me to horde buttons, as she had done. One jar half-filled, where she’d left off and then a row of others, as if she would return and marvel at our progress. Another thing her daughter and her would have in common. As if there would not already be enough to unite us. My Father and I proved that a loss shared is not halved, but doubled.

Inspiration seems to be resurrection; the common miracle, a person gathered beneath the someone else’s skin. The body is a tube carriage, our whole lives a long rush hour. Our own spirit sat alongside Nabokov, Camus and countless musicians. Death merely a change at the next station before we go on; in the body of a child, lover or fan-base.

So she became my muse and I began to do the same weekly crossword that she enjoyed. Filled in the words with red ink. I own her old records, with only a few extra crackles added to those she would have heard, dance to them with an empty coat as a partner. I’ve eaten cake with a teaspoon ever since I learnt that my mother did so. It was these, as well as countless other quirks, which men would fall in and out of love with me over. An inherence of small habits, the currency of a life without her.

I see myself as a moth, with no view of the sky. Blindly searching for a scrap of moonlight. She was the moon, that Mother above us and I searched tirelessly. Trying to hold on to the feeling of her, as she raised the tide of my blood, before she was lost again.

If she was there it was just around the next corner, a word on the next page. Like my Father said “Tomorrow never comes, its always today and then today again.” My Mother’s spirit felt like this; each corner, each page reached and she was already behind the next.

In the year I left for university my Father took a job as a researcher, rather than choosing to retire. He said it took his hours by the hand and led them away from him, but this was a blessing to him. I’d often picture him hunched over some dusty book, a slow motion fellow in a world of hushed hurrying as students darted in and out of shelves around him.

I often try to reason why he chose this; perhaps as a way to journey backward, past his own memories. Into the territory of other people’s victories and miseries. Where the future held only days without her, the past held the certainty of days already seen through to their end. Days already paid for, exempt from the debt of regret.

On February 6th he brought me a belated housewarming gift. He placed the bell-jar shaped gift on the table and instructed me to unwrap it.
A moment later and a sudden morning brought a yellow canary into song. A small life flitting back and forth out of fright, or expectation. He’d given me a bird, but I learnt it was the cage that was important. He told me it was to remember Hindenberg, so that is what I called the canary. Where other’s might have named a canary Banana, or Tweetie – I named mine after a tragedy.

He explained that the airship fell to earth like a meteor and with it died one dream of flight. From that moment the age of the airplane took-off. A huge balloon, a talisman of flight, burnt down to the ribs of a birdcage.
There was a long pause, as I looked at the cage and then at my Father, the man who never spoke of his grief, though it was at the core of every silence.

— And the bird? I asked.

— He’s to help you remember that dream of flight, that humans never let a tragedy stop them from moving on, or else we’d have called it a day after Icarus fell.

My father, the man who never took his own advice.

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.)

Margin:0.0px or maybe ?0.o?

“  City of Birth

Much of the place is now just a flourish of the mind. Rivers and streets have altered position and where you might follow one in real life and come out at its proper exit, in my mind it turns about and you arrive elsewhere altogether. The whole city is a fading dream, less and less factual as the months wear on.

Except the truth is that I do not strive to remember, the death of it suits me. Rather than not leaving me at all, gradually is an accepted evil. However I lament that it could not have been torn away in one swipe. I wish the whole place burnt away, its ash caught and carried off by a wind of forgetfulness. I wish nothing ill on the inhabitants of that city in its real and present form, but its form in my heart is a solid lump that runs to the throat if I consider it for too long. I mean it not to remind me of my own failures.

In truth the city is merely the scapegoat for my own shortcomings, for my own mistakes. It is a laden creature, cast out and laboring under the burden of blame for injuries I’ve suffered. The city did nothing directly, supplant me and my life to another with the same set of circumstances and I’d be sure of similar results. The same progression of cruelty, neglect and eventual isolation. The same reasons for the breakdown of relationships with almost everyone. My own ego and lack of humility. My envy of other people’s talents and embarrassment at my own lack of courage.

No, I cannot blame a city for what was my own doing. The truth is that I lost my sight, my judgement clouded. Or, more rightly, my vision was distorted by a thin film over the eyes. An idea of how the world looked, except that in that way of seeing I could not perceive the slow corruption of my life. Each time I rallied myself and thrust forward with my creative projects, I was in fact just shuttling along in a blinkered, eager rush. I shut out the distraction of friends and lovers. Then, when I’d collapsed into the sense of futility that seems to run through me like a core, I was surprised that they’d moved on to better things.

It is a great and painful process for a man to learn of his own failings. More-often he might bury the facts under a layer of disbelief. Or else under the debris of the facts themselves; as he picks each apart with lies and self-justification. Delusion is the tonic for most things.

Myself, I’m no less the fool. Even knowing what I do I cannot bring myself to believe I was to fault. I too ignore these things and move on with what I do agree to take with me. So from these lessons comes the genesis of a new self. I do not wish to remember my sins, though I will learn from them. It is hypocritical indeed to ignore the legitimacy one’s crimes and yet still take wisdom from them; though to have the position reversed would be far worse an error.   “

—-

The above is the beginning of the novel I was speaking of, not too long ago. The tale of my life. A way to purge myself of the old crimes and explain how things progressed and perhaps absolve myself slightly through showing how I’ve bettered myself. It will however be ‘warts and all’, I hope – if I have courage enough to paint myself in my true (past) monstrous form. All names altered, no great revelations about the other people involved. I will stay in the bounds of my own head, the things that I saw and thought – I will not attempt to second guess the people around me, nor anything of their opinions of me at that time. What I do not want it to be, is a way of explaining away the evil I have done, but rather to seek to hold onto it – lest I forget – and remind myself of how far I have come so that I do not retrace the same steps. I also don’t want it to hurt anyone from the past, hence the only alterations will be to the unsavory portions of lives of others and not to my own life, wherever possible.

The NaNoWriMo novel is far more accomplished, though I do wish to return to the previous novel soon. I’m a little behind in terms of the monthly goal – though it has proven itself as necessary and so I will be moving forward with it. I’m not all too bothered about the NaNo win because NaNo has been a bit of a joke as far as I’m concerned. There’s been no proper management or communication with those involved, so the community fun was sucked dry long ago. I’m just glad that I’ve got a wonderful manuscript out of it and I can break on through with the knowledge that I can write about 2,000 words a day with very little hassle, so long may it continue. Fuck NaNo.

Nevermind.

I’m loving quite a few bands at the moment.

1) The Bicycle Thieves

2) Cocoon (‘Hey Ya’, ‘I don’t give a shit’)

3) Soko (‘I’ll kill her’)

4) The Thermals (‘Now we can see’)

5) Fresh body shop (‘My artificial sun‘)

And in terms of poetry?

1) Derek Walcott (‘Elsewhere’, ‘For Adrian’)

And I’m reading…

1) 2666 by Roberto Bolano

2) Omeros by Derek Walcott

3) The Book of Shadows Don Paterson

4) Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (again)

In other news. I’ve made a promise with myself to write a poem, take a roll of photos (34 photos), make a short film and read a book every week from now on.

Further updates will follow.