damnation lamentation

 Just checking in really, not much to report. I think that's what happens once you hit 30, there's a steep decline in life type things seriously not much is happening .... long pause ... more silence .... tumbleweeds etc etc.

 

Trying to organise trendy Hoxtony drinks next Saturday but will probably go pear shaped cause everyone who is going lives far away and thus will want to leave early, the flat will be too packed with bods that weekend to let anyone stay (unless they're hot ;)) otherwise it coulda been fun. I'll see if we can at least fit a gig in to the night too.

 

I need to get me some art on! Not been since the Summer and am itching to go, I really enjoyed the National Portrait Gallery so will start there plus it's free so you know, yay.

 

Anyway back to  the grindstone.

blop

OK, I'm still alive, I think (therefore I am blah blah blah nonsense).  Got completely wasted on Saturday like I said I would and spent the next day in bed not being. I don't think I'll be doing that again anytime soon (that was a lie, of course I'm going to do it again soon).

 

Someone told I weren't their type the other day but they didn't mean physically which was refreshing. They said I was soft as opposed to someone they could fight with, I'm passed fighting so wasn't offended but did feel the slight twinge of rejection even though I wasn't asking if you know what I mean.

 

I'm thinking of asking someone out but they live really far away. I think she is very attractive and has a warm personality but wonder if it's worth losing the fledgling friendship when she will inevitably say no. I'm not "in love" so there's less emotional investment at stake so when she says no it will hurt less, even though I haven't decided on doing it yet. Reading back I'm most definitely insane la la la.

 

More craziness coming this way very soon!!!

 

Saturday night's alright for fighting

I don't mind working on Saturdays generally but today I feel fucked. Got roughly 2 hours kip last night, mainly because I can't stop my racing mind and partly because I just started watching Prison Break Season 1, oh the joys of insomnia and good drama!

 

Gonna have a drink after work, a leaving do, not drank for 10 days so will be pished very quickly. Don't really wanna go but needs must and so on.

 

All the trains were fucked this morning which was fun. anyway time to do some work

 

 

 

 

Fucked, forlorn

I thought I was coming close to something only for my psyche to plunge me back in to the mire that is my depression

It just is

When she says it, it is not an order it is just a fact. One of the few things I believe

 

It feels like the last light and one that is fading from me, like running down a hall where the last door is always the same distance from you no matter what you do

 

She saw the doors open and believed what she saw inside laid bare in front of her

 

I wonder if she will help me, I've put her on a pedestal

 

I hope I don't fuck it up

Pushing through the market square

The pressure is creeping back, pushing in to my chest and head. I wonder if I'm welcoming the familiar feeling, enjoying it in a perverse way. It seems such a ridiculous thing to imagine but maybe there is a grain of truth, better the devil you know and all that. Being happy seems like hard work or maybe I'm making it hard for myself. As previously discussed I don't believe I deserve it, check me out retreading old ground though I have to because I still haven't found the answer. Funnily enough the more avenues I close the further I feel from finding the truth, trial and error is clearly not working and I feel like a stuck record.


I should really concentrate on the good things in my life the few friends and family who will always be there to put up with my foolishness. Seriously self deprecation is an art and I've been practising for a good decade at least, defense/coping mechanism I know but is it any worse than pretending to be confident or happy, I'm not fooling myself.


Sorry this all sounds disjointed just freestyling as it were.




It's been one week since I drank, not a great achievement just a fact. I've been reading a lot and have about seven books on the go at the same time that goes to show the state of my concentration levels.




I haven't seen my best friend in about ten days and the longer I go with out contact the more my mind plays tricks on me, that's optimism right there (as opposed to the possible truth she doesn't care), we don't have the sort of relationship where we call each other every five minutes but when I see her it feels intense all the same. I miss her and I worry about the pressure I put on her to sustain me despite reassurances that it's all good.




Blood, when you hear the sirens coming

~
Better run when you hear the sirens coming


They epitomise the irrational fears that plague my being. along with the pneumatic drills and the cries from Big Issue sellers they make me wanna hide or go deaf or scream in to my pillow.



Sometimes I feel like we've reached those dystopian societies they talk about in all those books I've been reading and I wish for simpler times so far gone I can barely remember them.



In that song Five Years by Bowie I always think of Bigg market in Newcastle. I don't know why, I've only been there once. It was for my stag do a few years ago (can't remember which as all the years are blending in to the mulch that is my memory) the market square was where everybody congregated after clubbing to buy hot dogs or catch taxis. I only really see it through a haze of alcohol. I didn't drink a lot but was very nervous and a rash developed which entirely covered the backs of my legs from ankle to groin I was vivid red (took a photo but wifey destroyed it for reasons known only to her). I enjoyed my stag do more than I thought I would and I regret not letting the boys have there fun, They all dived in to my room at god knows what time and covered my face in black marker and tried to give me an enema with a fire extinguisher, they wanted to strip me and send me down in the lift to the lobby but I managed to escape and emptied a fire extinguisher over one of my mates. I had to sleep in the bath because my mattress was soaked as was the carpet, I don't think they'll let us back anytime soon.



I wasn't nervous the day I got married, I suppose I should've taken that as a sign it would all come crashing down. Nerves are natural and I think they mean things are right.



I made an admission the other day, it went the way I thought it would but that didn't stop me fretting for weeks over something so trivial. I had a dream/daydream (was 'tween sleeping and waking at the time which made it all the more surreal) where I kissed my friend at work, I sat upright in a cold sweat thinking no no way. She's attractive but I don't see her that way or anyone else for that matter (which has been cause for concern on it's own). She understood and we're still all good but I'm still curious as to where the thought even came from.



I read a book about dogging the other day and the protagonist came up with an interesting philosophy about being post ambitious and in some respects I like it and see myself in the same position just on a lower scale (he was in a high powered job and left to work in the civil service). I don't feel the need for lots of money or prestigious job titles, I feel past it and the more I accept that the more content I become. so who knows maybe this is the way forward, bar the dogging obviously.

Five years!

Bowie spun round and round. His voice pulsing through the room as the poison pulsed through my damaged, failing body. The beat kept me focused on nothing but the music. The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and of my chest. My lungs gasping for air through lips mouthing his words. Words I'd mouthed many times before. I was in love with the music my faithful mistress fucking for forty minutes. My heart raced but I was still, fighting the urge to bounce off the walls. My senses felt heightened like i was hyper-aware, even though it was dark all the furniture scattered around the room was in sharp focus, the sheets on my bed felt crisp to touch and the spiders from mars were crystal clear. I felt calmer when we got to Suffragette City and I was ready to commit Rock and Roll Suicide.

I was neither high nor low just still, wondering about the equilibrium and precarious a fulcrum it was balanced on.

My mind drifted to the back streets of Clerkenwell on a mild Sunday morning where I felt at peace. My back to St Paul's, I took in the architecture, the skyline created and then turned my head to study the flagstone and tarmac and everything else that made up the surface I pounded. The same as every other street in London but the cracked and broken flags and the yellow lines felt more real here like they'd been trodden upon by those more deserving of life. They left a permanent invisible mark which I'd accidentally stumbled across. It fascinated me no end. I would sit on the curb and breathe it all in trying to suck up the remnants of deserved lives maybe hoping I deserved to live too.

3030303030303030

I didn't think I'd feel so affected by this milestone and nothing more. Is it my middle age? midlife crisis? fear of an unknown era? all three? who knows? I just want to lose myself in my twenties and maybe never return , played darts today and kicked everybodies arse, wonders if the fun will cease with the new era?

Rationally there is no need to worry and generally I'm laid back so it's against the flow for me to worry.

Keep dreaming of Bella and co, it's absolutely fucking bizarre. I've nearly finished Eclipse and I keep dreaming of a vampire Bella who doesn't crave blood and fits right in with the stat quo.

Feeling rather shitty in general but sure I will get over it and last into my thirties some way at least.

Roll on adulthood I assume

Well, Happy Birthday to me &c

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I wasn't bothered before, about turning 30, but now it seems to be bearing down on me. I suppose maybe I'm just anxious to get it over with. To mark "the end of an era" as it where there will be a gathering I'm not particularly looking forward to. I don't do too great with more than one or two people at a time and there is plenty of scope for disaster in fact I'm a serious flight risk. One of the few people I wanted to see won't be there which makes me sad. This is the last landmark birthday for a long time so maybe the greater emphasis is cause for greater anxiety.

Been listening to a lot of CDs recently. Martha Wainwright, Norah Jones, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Biggie & 2pac and so on. While reading the Twilight books wondering or wishing for a Cullen to turn me eternally twenty nine.

Work keeps throwing up a few surprises, making firmer friendships which I'd kinda given up on attempting to start really.

Will try to post before the end.

so long

Books this year update

I read a few plays and poetry as a bit of a cheat they are not in any particular order:

1 20 Fragments of a Raveous Youth - Xiaolu Guo. 20 chapter translation of a girl who goes to Beijing to find her fortune.

2 A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers - Xiaolu Guo. Written as if the author is learning English getting better as the novel progresses, nice thoughts on what it must be like to live in an entirely new place not knowing the language, was built on a bit of a shoddy premise though.

3 Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw. A lot more harsh than the musical adaptation.

4 The City of Dreaming Books - Walter Moers. A fabulous world of literary dinosaurs and strange one eyed cave dwellers intent on learning a particular authors complete works, great adventure.

5 Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote.

6 Look We Have Coming to Dover! - Daljit Nagra. Good poetry mainly about being Asian in Britain and getting on with life

7 The Colossus - Sylvia Plath. Very dark but I identified with what I could understand.

8 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - Elizabeth Smart. Beautiful poetic prose about an affair and what it meant to the author very depressing at times, she wanted to en her life an awful lot, I sympathised greatly.

9 On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan. The story of the wedding night and each partners anxieties of what was about to happen, set in an odd time I thought 1962 seemingly between eras, probably just me.

10 Atonement - Ian McEwan. Beautifully written story of two sisters and a young man who's' life was changed by the juvenile jealousy of the younger sister.

11 The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs - Irvine Welsh. Two opposite men one super confident the other shy and geeky end up swapping bodies trying to ruin eachothers lives

12 If You Liked School You'll Love Work - Irvine Welsh

13 Come On In: New Poems - Charles Bukowski. My first exposure to Bukowski, was very impressed with the realism and flow of the work

14 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda. Bought for the song of despair, but that's just me. Very simple so easy to translate and even so very evocative of the feelings of love.

15 Rapture - Carol Ann Duffy. Beautiful collection by Duffy also very simple and evocative.

16 The Good Soul of Szechuan - Bertolt Brecht

17 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - Edward Albee. Didn't get a lot of the dark humour or the older couples relationship at first, grasped it towards the end though, very good.

18 Rumo - Walter Moers. Adventure about a dog cum deer trying to find then save his love and find his place in the world.

19 Crime - Irvine Welsh. Great book about a cop on holiday in Florida who comes across these guys attempting to kidnap a kid to abuse her. all this after cracking a similar case back home.

20 The Outsiders -S.E. Hinton. Amazing, wish I'd read it as a teen

21 The Vortex - Noel Coward*

22 London's Forgotten Children - Gillian Pugh*

23 The Slow train to Milan - Lisa St Aubin de Terán. Still don't know why this book is so good but is a great escape. About a girl who runs off with these guys all over Italy and France just seemingly going with the flow.

24 The 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear - Walter Moers. Another great Moers Fantasy in which a blue bear writes his demi-autobiography some great adventures.

25 The Captain's Verses - Pablo Neruda. More great poetry from Neruda, published anonymously for a few years before deciding to put his name to it all about the same girl I think.

26 For You A libretto - Ian McEwan

27 Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

28 Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel. Stopped reading halfway through as I empathised way too much with Elizabeth. Finished eventually was glad of a brighter ending.

29 New Moon - Stephenie Meyer*

*reading at the mo.