something it's not

time wasting

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:17:45 GMT

When I woke this afternoon I tore the pages from my book...
Catharsis is an artistic word.
I have laid claim to all the words.
You may silently plead but I shall never reliquish these dirty little letters.
Look at how they make you feel, all shallow and fruitless
all angry at their misuse.
Oh, don't worry. I am caring for them appropriately.
They are being discarded onto the walls I have locked myself inside.

Sometimes I question the meaningfulness of this little experience.
Ripped from the bosom of my mother and having my brains dashed out,
oh it's all very romantic.

He hasn't got it. He doesn't really get blogging! It's shit.

It's shit.

I'm going to paint my bedroom. I was thinking of making it more colourful.
Nothing film noir about the camo pants and playstation 3 is there... Last night
I dreamed of her again. You'd think the time would heal the wounds but bullshit.
I've been trying to avoid her photographs and facebook profile.
I've been actively stopping myself from calling her at all times of the day.
I can't get that little voice out of my head, which isn't hers. The voice is mine
but it's addressing her. I saw "be kind, rewind" last week. The puerto-rican (or something)
girl says, "you know you love someone when you talk to them in your head for 20 minutes a day."
I thought it was a bit of a clinical method for analysis but in the next few days I
kept hearing my thoughts addressing her. Apologies, rage filled rants, pleas.
Oh God it's so pathetic, but I guess it's all about me in the end isn't it?
Isn't that why Karen Taylor parodies MySpace as mememespace?
Isn't that why you're having trouble following my thoughts?
Isn't it funny that this is too long?
My next post will be less time consuming, and aimed at the only person who actually reads this thing. Mememe!

finding caleb first chapter first draft

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:52:07 GMT

Sometimes he wished he could live like Hendrix, a short burst of genius followed by an eerie silence. He would be the fireworks at the Guy Fawkes party confounding them all with his disappointing anticlimax, during which all the partygoers question their reasons for attending. We should all live our lives like fireworks, screaming toward the stars then bursting into glorious incandescence before falling gracelessly to Earth. Joe was tired of all the pretensions of normality, he didn’t know how anyone wouldn’t be. Maybe he was not normal and that’s why he was tired. In his neutral bedroom (the estate agents prefer them that way) everything had a tint of beige, or was it green? Joe had smoked his way through an eighth of something his dealer recommended. It burned slowly, reminding him of the cigarettes he gave up yesterday. Joe was waiting for his fuse to be lit, he felt like this was the quiet before the storm. He hoped it was. It had all been a bit boring so far; like at the start of the story when everything that came before is condensed into flashbacks, he wished this was his first page. Tomorrow it would be a new start, a fresh beginning away from the bored class b drug abuse of university (something he’d been told was an atypical experience, most of them socialise). No worries, tomorrow he would be a productive member of society; no longer bleeding it dry of its finances, no longer using tax payers money to fund his casual drug habit, no longer a leech. Tomorrow Joe’s room would be a blank canvas for another deluded second year to inhabit. The poster of Jimi would be ripped from his wall and the desk would be cleared of the stalks which facilitated his stoned stupor. He would even vacuum the ash from the floor. The carpet was brown, saving him from losing his deposit by assimilating everything he poured into its crevices. He would have preferred to have lost the money and remember the stains. We all hope to make a memorable mark, one dirty great splodge to remind the world of our existence. There was something beige about Joe, he was either beige, brown or somewhere in-between. If he had taken off all his clothes and lay on the dirty carpet he’d probably just have blended in, like all the other mistakes that graced its fine fibres. He couldn’t imagine the look on his Mum’s face if she’d wandered into his room to find him stoned and naked on the floor. He remembered the time he’d covered himself in chocolate and fairy lights and waited for Michelle to come home. That shocked look on her face as she came in, that precious smile, then the disappointed disillusionment that graced her (painfully obvious) beautiful features when she realised it was just a way to fuck her after she’d finished work without having to make her dinner. “Traitorous bitch.” he said aloud. “Not that this is the way to deal with the break-up, I should just fuck around like I was doing when I met her.”

It was not unusual to hear Joseph Green talking to himself; his flat, deep voice could be heard from any room in the house at any time despite the fact he was often alone. It was mostly indecipherable, the mumblings of someone who doesn’t believe their own words. He often sung the songs in his head, telling the world his problems by repeating the lines which resonated most. “How long before the right one? How long before the last one?” He was preoccupied by love, especially then. There was something about Canterbury which encouraged romance, particularly in the Summer. There was nothing about Luton which encouraged romance, maybe that was why he felt that passion so acutely at university; in his chest, wishing her near. In Luton nothing felt like love. He had tried to bring her back but it felt like there were oceans between them, after a little while he had decided to let her go feeling the pressure he was exerting would end up breaking one of them. “She’s driving me mad.” he would say. It was those blue eyes, they haunted his dreams and waking hours in equal measure. He traipsed about that tall, lonely house in his tight jeans and Nike hoody wondering what his next girlfriend would like him to wear, wondering what she’d look like, wondering how she’d fuck. He always came to the same conclusion, he wanted her to fuck like Michelle. He frequently told the story of when they had sex in her bedroom back home, Michelle screaming, “Oh God! I love it when you fuck me hard!” At the time he was unsure of what turned him on more, that she had called him God or that he had heard her brother climbing the stairs whilst she clearly hadn’t. He now knew it was not one thing or the other, but everything. The smell of her Chanel perfume mingled with her sweat, the pink light pouring through her blinds, her nails in his back, his grip on her hair, maybe even the box of her ex’s things he could see at the foot of her wardrobe. Joseph concluded he was perverse. Toking once more on the fading joint, Joe glanced around his bedroom. There were empty wine and beer bottles in the corners, not all his own. He tried to maintain a passable social life. The social networking sites wouldn’t forgive a lack of publicly known activities, he needed a few photographs to quell the concerned messages of his old friends: “Hey, haven’t seen you much lately, how are things? Are you still with Michelle? When do we get to meet her?”

There was a knock at the door. Rare as they were, they came. Everyday there would be someone more bored than Joe who waited for his voice to call out to them, “Entrée!” not that he knew what it meant, but it sounded more cheery than, “Fuck off!” He sighed, he wanted to hear Michelle’s South Manchester accent call through the door and tell him he was a knob, tell him to say something less pretentious, something he understood. “Come in.” He was too stoned for conversation but maybe he could satisfy his visitor with the offer of the last few puffs of his J. They could sit together and remember times they had been wasted before, or maybe if it was one of his closer friends they could just sit and watch nature programs until one of them realised they’d seen it before. Everything had started to feel that way, like it had been done before. Joseph could barely face another minute of the tedium, let alone another year. When the lecturers had asked him to pursue a Masters degree he had declined with as diplomatic an answer as he could, he didn’t want to lose the references. The door opened slowly, apologetically; everyone always entered that way, as if they feared what was inside. Allowing a plume of smoke to spiral out of the room, the tall, wide figure of Reuben wandered tentatively into the space in front of Joe’s full length floor mirror. The angle of the mirror showed a towering figure reaching close to the ceiling. There was something on Reuben’s youthful face which showed determination, something which demanded attention. “You look serious, somebody dead?” Joe was far too stoned to hold this conversation, he smiled vacantly and slowly realised Reuben’s silence had lasted far too long, maybe something serious had happened. “Want a smoke?” Reuben seemed to relax, the weight rolling off his shoulders in an impressive fashion which accentuated his large build and obvious strength. He walked purposefully to the side of the bed and lowered himself onto the space between Joe and his pile of unwashed clothes, “Mate, your room is filthy.” Joe took a long toke, holding the smoke in his lungs until he was unable to hold it there any longer and it was forced out of him in a cough which blurred his vision with water. “Yeah, well your girl’s filthy.” Joe was laughing, alone, again. He had begun to laugh more to himself than with the others after things had broken down between him and Michelle, he noticed straight away that the only thing that kept him sober was the promise of her company at the end of the night. “I think I better stay off it tonight mate,” Reuben was looking edgy, confused almost.

It had been two years ago, around the same time as Joe had met Michelle, that Reuben and Joseph first crossed paths. Coming out of the seminar they both realised there was something strange about this place, the children all looked the same, they all sounded the same, they didn’t sound like Reuben and Joe. Reuben had walked over to Joe and asked him, “D’you blaze mate?” Joe had nodded and followed. The hooded figures were intimidating to those who didn’t know the reason behind the clothes, those who had grown up in towns like Canterbury feared dark alleys where Joe and Reuben stalked like dealers or muggers. The truth was that the appearance meant nothing, they were both university students after all; neither of them had ever mugged a stranger nor sold drugs. They walked back to Reuben’s halls, they were dark and dilapidated. Kitchen cupboards lay on the floor, the locks smashed off by a hungry, heavy handed resident of the universities budget accommodation. “They call this bit the dark side,” Reuben said, rolling a joint expertly between nimble fingers. Joe was more stoned than he ever had been, trying desperately not to laugh too much at the jokes Reuben was telling which reminded him of family. Billy two pipes had entered shortly after, laughing about the chair he had thrown through a window the night before whilst off his face on coke.

This was a million miles from the world Joe was a part of now, a world which revolved around paranoia. Now Reuben pitied the diminished frame which sat next to him on dirty sheets. “It’s about Mich boss.” Joe’s chest felt that familiar sensation again, a tightening which constricted his breathing so that he gasped for air. Joe’s mother was asthmatic, pointing toward her bedroom midst spluttering coughs for the purple inhaler. Joe refused to accept that he, the once healthy young athlete of the year could ever have developed such a debilitating illness. Of course he hadn’t. Michelle’s name prompted a series of reactions from Joe: dismissal, fear, occasional euphoria, more frequently it was depression and often a mixture of them all. On that day it had been depression which struck first; ominous and obvious, it had settled on him like fog. Again the joint reached his lips, it’s last hot toke burning his lips with a searing reminder of the damage he was doing to his young body. He didn’t know what his youth meant to him anymore, he was (he felt) at that stage where unrealised potential began to turn slowly to lethargy and finally disappointment. The questions he had asked of his parents as a child became more and more irrelevant and the dreams he held became more and more elusive. He had been torn, law or fame? Now those two wild fantasies seemed ridiculous for different reasons, he had broken them down to being a question between heart and head. This was long before he realised that this was a life of compromise. Dreams were targets deliberately set too high. Even if he failed at these nigh impossible tasks, at least second best would be somewhat of a compensation. When had hope turned to bitterness and fear? He turned and looked at Reuben, remembering the subject of their conversation with a jolt.

“She told me to be sensitive about it Joe. I just don’t see how I can. I’m gonna be straightforward with you blood, we’re together now and she wants you out of her life. So do I.” Joe’s head swum, the smoke made it hard to tell the words from the lips from the words in his head. Jumbled somewhere in the crossword puzzle of thoughts was a statement which would stay with Joe forever, a sentence which taught him lessons, some he would learn to forget. The weed helped him forget. There were occasions when words would evade him for hours, diving in and out of sight, presenting themselves uselessly when the statements had long since become lost in the incomprehensible maze of his altered mental state. He forgot the things which happened to him yesterday, things which happened last week, but he always remembered the big picture. He could see the burning wreck of his life falling irrecoverably out of the sky into the sea; a sea made of the tears of other disillusioned hopefuls, eventually deep enough to drown in. The news had been devastating, the betrayal enough to break his heart once more. It had healed before.

The life of a young man chasing perversion

Sat, 24 May 2008 09:32:39 GMT

Wait watchers, we're willing weary women
to touch toes, kiss pillows, wake up dreaming.
It's only young hopefulness keeps us going
when dope doesn't dose us, our efforts slowing.

Catch ourselves following full figured feminines;
shallow pockets, stagnant lives stop us from getting in.
All chasing rewards that have long been lost,
things left behind are the obvious cost.

MSc, PhD, dent in my wallet,
job that's soul sucking so what can I call it?
Investment in a future stuck pushing paper.
Resents and regrets that won't disappear later.

A pad in my hand that tracks thoughts unknown,
a ticket in my pocket valid just one zone,
a card in my wallet, 'nuff for one good meal,
brain in my head struggling to see what's real.

Opening the Door

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:06:45 GMT

I can't be the way to your glossy dreams,
give them up now or leave me here alone.
Inside my heart there is no charity
and the cave's entrance is obscured by stone.

"I can see you but I can never reach you."

You think that sadness is lodged somewhere in the middle, around the gut perhaps. You are a woman whose eyes bleed experience. You took the pink pills and they led you here. And where do I lead you? Ask yourself where the writers are going, they circle like vultures from their elevated positions. I am the questions, not the answers. They come from inside.

The phantom is your father's ghost, his death was premature (he shows the way to justice). Follow the path, it only leads one way. Are there choices to be made? Are you man enough to make them? It is laid out before us like a blood red carpet, decisions (decisions). Turn back, I dare you to look into your father's eyes and show him who you really are...

I grow tired of waiting for it to start. It seems the prelude is finally nearing its beginning. There are sounds like the strings, there are cymbals waiting to be burst.

[If I liked it a lot I hope it doesn't hurt to say so. You are a humanist and understand it all but I'm still asking questions of anatomy. I like you more than I let on]

Secrets

Mon, 05 May 2008 01:20:08 GMT

It's a broken window. It wasn't meant to happen but it did. She was beautiful then, cliched glances and text messages. There were eyes that seemed to stare forever until we slept. It's not the same without her, never will be again.

I see your smile, it's tearing me apart...

We had a few too many that night. In the bed I knew she saw the others, I think Seb heard it all (the headphones weren't in). We carried on anyway, I think she liked it. Slug was pretending to be asleep. When it became a bit too loud I asked her if she wanted to go somewhere more private. I'll never know why she declined, reputations I guess. I walked Kelly to her door. Summer was always my favourite time for romance.

-

In the dark the view from the eighth floor was mesmerising, trains idled into and out of view floating away from the city's priorities. There were no promises.

-

In the cold room we were touching as if nothing had happened. The first night was different, then we had morals and hope. Rachel told me she liked my trainers. My hand crept up her thigh.

-

In the bunk bed, the bars which stopped me rolling out kept Laura from opening her legs. It was [ ], there we were in the silence.

-

I happened twice, Penny wanted pizza the second time. It was a conquest and a measure, it was loving, vengeful, dangerous and wrong. It was unavoidable.

There were reasons it wasn't going to work. In the end the sum of all its ills was too great a pressure to take. When we spoke recently she sounded well.

Me against the World

Sat, 03 May 2008 10:44:42 GMT

Intelligence is linked directly to self-awareness. Once anything (in light of luddite films like The Terminator and iRobot) becomes self-aware there is a realisation that there are only really two things in the world, itself and everything else. Based on this knowledge, sentient, self-aware beings are capable of forming one key instinct, survival instinct. The understanding that existence in this reality is central to experience is one which we all (religious folk included) take on as the basis to the way we approach nature. Man's struggle against nature is a survival instinct.

The strongest threat to man (individual man, not mankind) is the world which over time seeks to deprive us of our looks, fertility and eventually our mental faculties. Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse sees a man learn to eventually accept that mortality is the only certainty in this life. Far from taking this as a death sentence, he understands that coming to terms with death is the only way we can begin to enjoy our limited time on this Earth. Our lives are so short, we must learn to take advantage of that which will never be a given. Essentially this is a religious argument, take on sin and experience the world, or remain innocent in the hope (faith) that life will be a precedent to something greater.

In the moments of absolute clarity I see friends…
Only the closest of friends and loves I never knew.
I understand the universe and see the stars…
In the moments of darkness I see the pigs
Crawling into my peripheral vision and ripping
Out the heart of all I desire and all I aspire to.
Is this only a lust for life?

Don't open the door, just crack a window

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:23:14 GMT

Thom Yorke compares being in love to being an animal in a hot car. He has captured the angst and frustration created by one of life's most beautiful emotions in an image which seems completely incompatible with the old fashioned romantic image of love. It's a picture we (a modern audience) can easily appreciate for its subtle depiction of positives and negatives. The heat, the passion, the fervour, the desperation, the fear, the vulnerability, the trust.

There is something else, there is a security. Locked inside our cages, nothing can hurt us except the person with the key. Love is the final barrier to the outside world, we can convince ourselves that nothing else matters, place our future in the hands of another and hope they will never let it fall. Sometimes we get it wrong.

Human nature and nurture means we will never give up looking. She asked me if I thought there would be a point where it was all too much, she wondered what would happen if a person couldn't take any more. I don't know. I've never felt that way before so I couldn't answer convincingly. (Do you feel that way?)

I grasp the shadows
Too much light on your darkness
You are unfinished.

The Blogging Beginning

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:29:05 GMT

It all started a little confused. There were a million questions with answers that were just as elusive as the adulthood I sought to obtain. Like any generation Y kid I headed for the resources I knew had almost limitless potential. A hundred years ago anyone would search the Bible for answers but two millennia of wars has taught us, if nothing else, that there’s very little but delusion and confusion in organised religion. So where do I find the answers to all the questions posed by the most inquisitive and brilliant minds?

The internet has created a generation like no other. We are self publishing, instantly connected with billions and credited with nothing (at least nothing physical). It is our key to the universe, I do not explore the world with senses, I contemplate the cosmos through a computer screen. And after all what’s the matter with that? Time has given humanity more creative ways to share our information with each other and now I carry in my mobile phone all the workings of humankind's greatest minds. Meritocracy has finally perished, in amongst the piles of worthless wonderings and the endless mediocrity of musings by a misguided and overly ambitious population, the greatest of works can be overlooked. Scouring Google resulted in little but sponsored resolutions and a capitalist desire which will never be satisfied by the directionless meanderings of a person whose understanding of himself is ill formed.

We call out to the millions and are heard by none… And why should I be listened to when all individuals are drowned out by the incessant whirring of the billion dollar industries which rule our judgement? I want a coke, I want a pair of jeans, I need a car. So here’s the turning point. From inside this box (a box in a box, all lined up in tidy columns and functioning perfectly) came the answer to all life’s ponderings. Search results, the collection of all the answers from our new Google God.

I refined my search, algebraic equations coupled with grammatical correctness would culminate in the perfect answer. (“What am I supposed to do next?” + answers). Amazing, a search which took me the best part of 22 years with no results, returned hundreds in only 0.32s. I scour the page, dismissing those irrelevants with the speed and skill of a honed seeker. Computer game walkthroughs, apparently it is important to navigate our way through virtual lives as well modern society. A well known and well paid futurist predicts that within 50 years our virtual lives will be integrated into our real lives, he dislikes the term virtual reality, acknowledging that it is an oxymoron. Finally stumbling upon something that resembles a question similar to my own I began to wonder what answers might accompany this query.

No answers, just the religion tainted mumblings of a high school leaver who seemed a little more confused than I am. Also the I of his blog seemed to be unsubstantiated. So here is clarification and definition for all the OED abusers out there.

I am. I am a male. I am 21 years old. I am from Luton, Bedfordshire, England. I am a statistic. I am the result of infinite searches and answers. I am a definition in myself. I exist. I am not the imaginings of anyone. I feel the cold air from my open window creeping slowly up my spine and lodging itself firmly in my heart. I am a virus. Infecting those around me with information and spreading across the world. I am a computer virus. I am a computer. I process and conclude. One day I will exist no more and the results of my most important search will roam the world seeking their own contemporary solutions. I am tired of waiting. I am like you. I am like your brother, sister and mother. I am a question. So tell me, who am I? I confess, I am a still a little confused.