This is a single simple moment that brought me much happiness

I have been needing happiness lately. It's been impossible to shake the weight of the shadow on my back, a constant reminder that I am, too, a shadow- without worth, without use- but also there is the frustration that is carried alongside that melancholy. The words that are mine, not that of my malicious bedfellows. You don't know me. You do not know me. In the company of those who do know me, there is no shadow. I am someone worth something. There is something worthwhile here.

Leonard Cohen Tribute

I didn't listen to a vast quantity of Leonard Cohen songs while he was alive, nor have I listened to that nany more since I heard the news of his passing, but I have for a few years owned a book of his written word- poems and songs written as poems- that was a gift from my stepbrother one Christmas (accompanied by two other books of poetry- I remember being incredibly happy with such an amazing and well-suited present). But the other night, with James and his younger brother Tristan, both of whom are quite devoted fans of Leonard Cohen, I recorded his 'Hallelujah' and here it is.

Lyrics

Meditations in the Longest Morning

If I could only stay unseen as if I were a ceiling. My shell is broken now, like gutters eroded by acid rainwater. Burning a moon on a bed-sheet, heaven is sharp with flickering stars.
It is the same patterns keeping a momentum, pumped in afraid and snow-thirsty. We have been doing this mirage or magpie store or measures upon measures or medicine for a while now, it has become blunt-toothed, spurious, darker. I hear bells, and attacks and frays. I have tried make-believe, telling arguably horrible lies. I can spare static and its landmine explosions, though they provide amputation of the most trouble. There, the closed window. Here, the wind. Transparent, haphazardly tenuous.
I am not right. No. I am a pile of bridges, dislocated a few inches too far away to touch. I do not think I want to feel connected, not to this world if it makes me shudder like this without any warning. When it won’t even show me it’s face, that monster. I don’t want to be stitched into the armour and chain-mail and bones. I have the only one I need here, his eyes fold around my unfounded sunbeams.
The engines get enough nowhere as it is and even they continue to poison. Do they know what they're flitting ? I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shoulder and my unformed radios. I'll be back, I'll lose, gap-toothed, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. It's only afternoon, there's a lot ahead. There won't be any strawberries. I distance on the screen and the stairwell turns.

T.S. Eliot Mirrored initially

A poem intentionally written to mirror T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock', but it didn't precisely achieve what I'd hoped, yet something else appeared:

We'll stay at home, together but alone
but for the mornings that crumple on the floor,
like waste paper printing headlines on the ceiling.
We'll stay behind the door, afraid to wander
in uncertainty, parallel to busy roads,
the voiceless excursions,
the plans for long soporific days in expensive homes
and fresh-aired kitchens filled with frying pans.
Without direction, the answers all lie behind.
Ask me the question; I'll try and make up my mind.

Elsewhere the city men all crowd together,
either not talking or talking about the weather.

The clarity in eyes that bless the walls,
The understanding in a dull gaze on the walls,
sprawling time packed up into a box or a fist,
hurrying on tiptoes everywhere the sunlight falls,
tripped up in the garden, an inevitable descent,
and oblivious to the clock-face, the crimson crepuscule,
disappeared again into the rushes. No one knows where it went.

But it doesn't matter what's been done.
The eyes, still and still clear, don't recognise time passed,
don't realise what they may have missed.
It will end in the same place that it had begun,
nerves tight around the second try as tight as the last,
no space for thoughts of new starts or possible debris,
not one thought for broken hearts, for the people we cannot be.
We'll share this absent-mindedness, between
the clutter of conviction and certainty,
and practicality and potentiality,
and other matters on which we can agree

Elsewhere the city men, all crowded together,
are not talking, or talking about the weather.

And if we are going to fall apart, then we will do.
Our facades will fracture, our fallen faces,
our lost grip on graces, our black and our blue, our lost places
in the queue. We create words for the fears we cannot name.
And although our landscape erodes with the years,
the cage is the same. The scenery is new,
but what we call history will happen again,
so how can there be anyone but ourselves to blame?
Break and build, create and burn,
the pride follows the fall when pride has taken its turn.

What's in a gaze?

But when they spoke, their eyes couldn’t come together.
You never know who is looking at you in the dark.

For how long can I continue to watch the tips of my shoes,
and the floor beneath them, and worry wordlessly about home?

It’s all peachy, really, it’s Video Killed the Radio Star.
Then again, it’s an unlit candle, an unmarked calendar,
or Ginsberg burning dollar bills in a bin, grinning behind
a grisly beard, or a man you only know vaguely from some talk
of a reality TV show becoming America’s next President.

People are incapable of concealing their latent resentments
When they are looking at something else, but at you?
What’s in a gaze anyway? What are you looking at, for whom?

If there was somebody, they have left already. Prior appointments
available only to high flyers, PowerPoint presenters, success stories.
Not available to you. You who are so aware that in a single minute
everything could be different. You who says goodbye but
never knowing how to leave. These moments are split, a smile
Splitting open a face that once scared you. See? See how different it is?

It’s different to be seen by different people, but are you ever seen?
If you are, you really shouldn’t be. Not on any road, in any doorway,
at any bus stop. But you have to get there somehow.

There are good people everywhere, doing terrible things,
and if I’m not going to be one of the good people, I don’t mind so much
being a terrible thing. If it means I’ll be looked for, used,
needed for whatever, even if I know that needs are fulfilled
and the things you think you need are usually what you want, actually,
or what you want to need. But probably the last thing you really need.

You really need to get that appointment. It isn’t enough
to put out the fires. Damage control- how sad, if it’s what you do best.
What you really do best is what other people tell you that you do best.

It doesn’t alter the experience, even one moment’s fragment of it,
if you know from the start how it’s going to end.

The thing that never happened

They never spoke about it but it happened, and thoughts
of what happened pushed into the soil only grew heavier and dirtier
when they pretended to strip the past of its indelible importance
and pretended that their early nights were the product
of productive days and not prescriptions, but they never had dreams
and they never took flight and they never felt the rush of wind
on their faces and their faces did not even feel theirs.
They stilled in their silence until silence sounded like a soundtrack.
If they had thought about it, they might have seen the faintest promise
of closure, enough to try for, enough to cry for. Cold and concrete
and the cure perhaps as painful as the poison itself but to come to a close
nonetheless. Instead they chose to tell themselves no closure was needed
for no wounds had been left open for nothing had wounded them,
and saw this as stoicism, as strength but it was strength mistaken,
in actuality it was slavery, and the bad guys got away,
and the robbers got rich, and what went around never would come back around
with some comeuppance. Their paths redirected, their plans and aspirations
and passions scribbled beneath a blanket of white noise they thought
was safety. They never again would take off their shoes to dance
or light candles in the summer or make someone's day by offering a smile
or offer anything much at all. Why would they, when they got nothing back?
A tombstone in every doorway, a bitterness in every bite,
a listlessness in every kiss and in that listless life, one big lie-
I am whole, I can be what I want to be because this never happened to me.
They throw their heads back and then they laugh. They watch Forrest Gump
with dry faces. They sometimes have nightmares like those of children,
of crocodiles and claws under the bed. When they wake, that means it's a new day
and that means nothing now. Tell me you know I exist, says the smallest voice,
a whisper, an echo, from somewhere buried so immeasurably deep under stones,
a voice that had been stoned to death. Tell me you'll save me, that
you'll pull me out of here, that you will give me a chance to survive,
I'm all bloodied up and broken but because of that I'm stronger now.
I know the meaning of strong, and I know that it all means something.
If they ever catch a breath of that small voice, they turn up the radio,
take another pill and swallow, change the channel to a game show,
check their phones and when the curtains are drawn, throw more stones.

In a dream.

In a dream that I had, or maybe another life,
I'd never been bad, and you were proud.
I can't say it aloud- but every day I wish I wasn't myself.
and when you left the room, I'm sure I heard you say
'I wish she could be someone else.'
And I don't know anymore if it is you or me,
and I don't know why and I don't know how.
Look at me now. I can see all the reasons for your shame.
I'm stone in your shoe, a restless breeze in the hall
and I take the blame, I take it all,
All I can tell you I'm not what I seem,
and in my dream, we shared a phone call. I had the answers.
I could take some of the weight from you.
You told me you were leaving but you said, 'I'll wait for you.'
I don't know what it could mean.
I don't know what it could mean.
There must be some way I heal the wounds that I've made,
there must be a way I can turn it around.
Didn't make a sound, but I caused an earthquake.
I brought down your walls, wasn't around
to see them shake, coming to the floor.
And in the dream, I was caught in the rain, it started to pour.
but I had some keys and you were waiting when I opened the door.
We've done this before, but I wish I could do it over again.
I'd change everything.
I'd change everything for you.

Vespers

We spun out our nights lighting fires on the beach.
He smelled just like honey, the palm-reader’s son.
I fell in mad love when he went mad on the piano.
The sea has its limit but my desire had none.

Shakespeare and songs about sunsets past
sailed some hope upon my heart as it tossed in fear.
Too afraid to make friends, make amends, though I tried
to put the world to right, but was too quiet for it to hear.

A carnival ride

Our blueprinted fears, disconnected appliances,
sparking careless and unpredicted,
a narrow infrared beam for the moon rising.

It’s evening half-light, glistening on a collection
of machinery and whispers, the quiet moments,
the fish humming in coin fountains, gold,
red as fire hydrants against the indigo October.

Careless bookshelf bright with cries, at the window
the world is watching this funeral motorcade
crossing the soft, blank country, no solace.

Static crackling in the cat’s ear, thorny wool.
Evening grass rustles the silent delirium.
 Galaxies wheeling through a suburban bedroom.
This is the alchemy of guilt, falling into clean halves.

One heard horrors that she had misremembered,
the other did not wake so close to the edge of disaster.
My secret kingdom, she thought, and it lay buried.

And like a lazy connotation, grey morning came,
awestruck, and bells follow you and me
in an unbending line. It's a carnival ride,
our documentary world, an absurd illusion.

Memory is

Memory is a schoolyard, a racetrack, a Kandinsky, a UFO sighting, a scarcely-contained thrill, snake eyes and stone eyes and an infinity of eyes, the audience in red, the humming news at six o’clock, what is behind door number three, headlights, night-lights, mirrors and smoke, a forest of exquisite sentences, a prank, skylines I haven’t seen, a hundred thousand songs, a flat circle, films with gunfights, films with dogs, mountains and monuments, boxcars boxcars boxcars, of bars, of beaches, of brain, in fact already gone, a tripwire, a tantrum, an escape plan, a complex equation, this strangeness, frozen in radio, all the trains, a haunted factory, ferries I should ride, a terrible headache, a most beautiful alien, a gimmick, playing cards facedown, wilful confusion, our big reveal, a mountain they died climbing, the inevitable, sometimes no reason, the harbinger of burnout, the bringer of ageing, something we invented, facts not questions, a curse, light that comes from nowhere, retrospect, an ethos, blood-stained, the hinterlands, the moment gone forever.

Jamnesty- a concert for Amnesty International UK- Southend-On-Sea

I've comprised the first of two videos I am making for Amnesty International UK. This is the Amnesty theme song, 'I Shall Be Released', featuring performing musicians at the concert in Southend-On-Sea, organised to raise funds and awareness for the cause.

Rain gutter godliness

Evening lights hum with the sound of our voices
in this vacuum where,
from the place that is always moving,
the seasons blend into an unrecognizable landscape
of new faces and old buildings
and they all pull together, held by the warmth
of lamps on the street, gold in the dark,
the particles of hope that are born from all sorts of evil imaginable,
out of the rabbit hole, out through the looking glass.
And in the droplets of psychoactive reciprocity
the wasteland reflected betrays
the only claim
that the moment holds on
being holy.

This paper tiger's gonna break your heart

The Resistance Cont.

PREPARATION.
There are bruises and scars making an atlas of his arms and legs. They are badges from his days in training. He is a master swordfighter. He has severed the heads of seven men. He tells this to the younger generation who are now training under him. When he was in their position, no one had quite warned him that at night, he would dream a bloodbath. That he would come to feel alienated from everything he’d once derived pleasure from.
Now he was a mentor, he knew he had to prepare them. There was no margin for failure, for mistakes, for errors in judgement, for being a fraction of a second too late, for thinking that trying hard is enough, for leisure or affection or matters of the heart, for hope beyond the kill.
It’s for their own good, he told himself as he hardened against the eleven pairs of wide, frightened eyes looking up to him in the gymnasium. Prepare them now for what they are going to see and what they are going to do, and I have a better chance of saving them. Saving the galaxy? That was different. He had built his life around this fight, but he had never thought about the possibility of winning it.

APATHY.
Do it for your people, his mother would say. She had the idealism that he lacked, even though he was younger and ought to have been more naive. All he could see was it getting uglier and uglier. No victory, no mercy, just endless sacrifice, and for nothing.
But he went anyway. He did it because he had nothing and no one else, and because he couldn’t have tolerated himself if he ever saw her look at him with the same eyes she used on other people. Those who didn’t cooperate for the greater good were, in her eyes, just as bad as the enemy. He didn’t think he’d survive if he was ever on the receiving end of a look like that from her.
Without friends, having had a menial job at a telecommunications company that he had lost when the business was shut down, his existence was devoid of personal or professional pleasures, no reason to feel good about himself. All he could do was keep from disappointing her, keep her proud of him. If not proud, then at least not ashamed. So whenever she told him to go out into the desert, he went.
Go and get it back, she would say. Bring it back, what is rightfully ours. She told him how he needed to look for that which had been stolen out of the hands of those who had never held their own belongings for more than seconds at a time.
Be a good dog, she says. Her fingers rest on his shoulder, providing some tactile evidence of her connection to him, her dependence on him. Every time, just as he was leaving, saying goodbye, taking the pistol she made him carry- though he would never have used it, even in the direst, most threatening of situations, for he was not a fighter, despite what she wanted to believe about her son-
Every time, she said, Bite the bullet, or bite the dust.

BETRAYAL.
He named all his sons after Jupiter’s moons. As though this, beyond their blood connection to him in the dearth of any kind of connectivity that existed on their planet, would keep them true to their shared orbit. He never did find out which of them gave him up.
He never saw any of them again after the soldiers hauled him away one cold morning the sky was tinted green. But they saw him. His face rippled before them whenever they looked away or closed their eyes.


[I compiled the tales of some of the brave individuals who fought for freedom of speech and to reclaim their human rights in the wake of the universal governing bodies being usurped and taken over by an unnamed extremist group, hell-bent on absolute domination, abolishing democracy and enforcing a totalitarian regime. You can read it here: click]]

If Freud and Jung were to have a rap battle...

FREUD:
This is something you've probably read.
If you're messed up in the head,
Man, I feel you. I can heal you.
Consider your dreams interpreted.

I've got so many fans, like little Hans.
My influence only expands.
Every neuroscientist should know
This psychoanalyst put the super in super-ego.

JUNG:
No one doubts my authenticity
My metaphors of electricity
I’m not tainted by bad publicity
And that’s synchron-fucking-icity.

You can try to diss me,
but my patients want to kiss me.
Everyone in society
wants a piece of me,
consciously,
unconsciously
and collectively.

FREUD:
I can explain psychic pain, and all its effects.
The cause of every complex.
It all comes back to sex, yo.
(Just ask Anna O, yo).

If you've got a problem, try me.
I hold the key to your psyche.
Nobody can falsify me.
Not even mystics mystify me.

JUNG:
I don't know much about the brain,
but I maintain that if you're insane
and your wants and wishes
are obscene, feel unclean.
I can tell you what they mean.

Hey Freud, don't be annoyed.
You're just a weirdo with a beard, yo.
A little man with a very big cigar.
Trying to compensate for how small-minded you are?

FREUD:
If you don’t think that I’m the best,
it’s just repressed,
and you are secretly obsessed,
but you know it and you will show it
when your latent desires are made manifest.

a playlist

Not Going Home- The Elected
Cynical Beings- Anitek
Kettering- The Antlers
Tomorrow Never Knows- The Beatles
Hide From The Sun- Goat
Psycho Killer- Talking Heads
Artifact #1- Conor Oberst
For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti- Sujfan Stevens
Ode To Billie Joe- Bobbie Gentry
Ghost of Stephen Foster- Squirrel Nut Zippers

Members of The Resistance

WARRIOR.
She meets her father at the end of the world.
He's there among the stars, his face glowing from out of the dark dripping space, as if he had always been the moon. There are security cameras everywhere. This moment will be broadcast to each corner of the galaxy, so she makes sure to look him in the eye and smile. She squares her shoulders, trying to not to look like cared little girl on a desert planet. Trying not to look like she's a million light years from home. Trying to forget she was ever the girl who cowered underneath the bed while soldiers stamped through the safe-houses and tore bedrooms apart, pilfered safety boxes, broke windows, as the planes came overhead- you could never hear them coming. They shone bright lights into all the hiding places.
Does he recognise her now? She is a thief, a master con artist, a warrior. She had wanted to go to sea, long ago, and study the behaviour of whales. Now, she stands at the end of it all with a big gun and a bigger smile. The threats worsen as time passes, but her outer shell grows harder, hands steadier.
Time can work wonders, if you want it to.

JUSTICE.
Her starship gets stolen and she doesn't realise it until it's too late. She's running where strange plants grow, through grass that scratches her legs, waving her pistol, shouting in every language she knows: how could you do this? how could you take this away from me? how could you break open my chest, take out my heart, and then crush my skull with the weight of my own birthright?
Eventually, as the hulk of metal recedes into the disappearing distance, she stops and gives up, breathless. Red light bleeds into the sky. She has nothing to hold onto anymore, and nothing that stirs her to chase after something else.

QUIET.
They huddle together as they sleep. They had taken the pots and pans off the wall, put away the plates and cleared she shelves, for the walls would be shaken with the thrum of war, and everything in the house would clatter too loudly. We might as well paint a red mark on our door, his brother had said. When he is asleep, it's the only time he is able to pretend that he isn't going from place to place with no home. He isn't running for his life. They aren't being hunted. That there is a place somewhere in the galaxy where he can go and the predators won't find him. When he wakes up, the reality solidifies around him, colder every day, but for a few seconds before he opens his eyes he is still somewhere else.
This morning, as he comes out of sleep, he is for a moment in a different sort of huddle. He can hear his mother's voice- the sweetest voice- calling for him from the other side of the lake. How long will he be able to preserve that memory of the way she laughed- like the tinkling of polished glass? How long before they invaded his sleep and found him there?

RUTHLESS.
Her mentor had shaped her into a weapon- sharp mind, sharp blade, sharp vision, sharp instincts. This combination could be what brings the empire to its knees. To its bloody end. As she spit up blood, he would tell her that she was a device, that she had one purpose. Her teeth were like little daggers. She couldn't feel things that that used to be part of everyday, but she couldn't remember those things, and didn't miss them. Her purpose had become everything.
What do I do when I reach my target? She asked him.
You do what you do best, he said. Activate.

ESCAPE.
The last place he had been before going on the road again, he had met some of the locals who had stories about the Other World. No one knew how to get there, and the gates were barred and guarded, and you'd die trying to get anywhere near the walls at the edge. His knuckles whiten around his steering wheel, the morning fog billowing in. He drives into it, wondering if he will be the same when he comes out the other side. He presses down on the accelerator. Faster, faster. If he had hope, h would throw it to the wind. He doesn't know where he's going, but he will find that gate to the Other World, and when they kill him, at least he will die knowing that he tried.

RAGE.
The very moment their trap was sprung, he knew that they were all going to die. Arrows shot from crossbows, piercing flesh. Heads separated from bodies. Fire and noise and twisted metal and brutality- that was the world in its entirety.
Sword slipping from his grip, he ran into the thick of it. Battle was the only place for anger like his.
He was determined to fight with the might of his hatred, even if it would only speed up his end.

RESILIENCE.
People used to say that humans were destroying the earth. This was an arrogant belief. They didn’t need to worry. The earth was going to destroy them before they could harm it.
They could burn down forests, reduce civilisations to dust, but the earth never stopped regrowing, repairing the damage, and try as they may, they could not bring down the mountains, and they could not drain the sea.

TRADE.
He had forbidden his children from fighting. They saw him cleaning the barrels of his guns, go down to his underground bunker where they knew he was building explosives. Strangers came to him, gave him food or books or the parts he needed to build a radio in exchange for the weapons and armour that he made. He could give them gifts on their shared birthdays because of the demand for weapons. Even if fighting was the right thing to do, he told the twins that they weren’t to fight, they weren’t to go near the weapons. If he lost them, what would he have that was worth fighting for?
He slept with a revolver under his pillow. He cried in his sleep, and dreamt in black and white.

SACRIFICE.
They had decided to disobey their father. He would come nightly from his underground room to kiss them goodnight. When he was gone, one of them would climb into the other's bed. Only when in this close proximity could they sleep, feeling safe in the knowledge that they still had one another. They slept face to face. When they woke up, they wore one another’s faces.
One morning, their father would wake to find armour and guns missing. He raged at their stupidity, at their disobedience, and waited, He could do nothing else. He had to believe in them. And he did, until his son brought back a helmet, spattered with blood. He stopped speaking, after that. I couldn’t find her body, were his only and last words. I’m sorry.

ILLUMINATION.
He meets his daughter at the end of the world. She is smiling against a backdrop of stars. The dark, dripping space. He's come to know the darkness, but seeing her in it, she is light.
He is a revolutionary, a member of the resistance, a rebellion that stretches across the galaxy.
He has been the killer, in a kill or be killed world. He is a father. He had forgotten that.
Her smile has a wicked edge, and she stands differently, looks at him differently. She doesn't look up to him anymore, but straight at him. They are equals. But her eyes still look just like they did when she was born, when she needed him. He wants to tell her that he changed to protect her. That he broke something to be certain that she would never be broken again.
In her, he can see himself. A deadly mirror, an eternally complex puzzle, part of a whole but somehow a whole, and it scares him.
The more time passes, the easier it becomes to neglect the things that were once most important to you. You can’t imagine the things that, someday, you will have forgotten. In the reframing of your promises, you detach, the ache disappears. It stops hurting to remember the way it used to be.
Time can work wonders, even when you don’t want it to.

Life Has Always Been a Mystery to Me- the musings of an autistic man

I've tried counting stars but I'd need a tape measure.
If I had a friend, we would count them together
but people cross their words, always disagree.
People have always been a mystery to me.

Summer comes by later with each passing year.
Some yesterdays are distant, and others too near.
They say that time flies, and yet nothing is free.
Time has always been a mystery to me.

Put explanations together, pull them apart.
I'd like to know why but wouldn't know where to start.
With cause and effect, two plus two equals three.
Reasons have always been a mystery to me.

At Catholic school, I talked to him but he wouldn't speak.
Finding strength in blind believing just makes you weak.
I could never have faith in that which I can't see.
God has always been a mystery to me.

The moment you cross your heart, all hope has died.
If you can't deliver, does it not matter that you tried?
I learnt when I was very young to trust nobody.
Promises have always been a mystery to me.

There are secrets that hide behind other people's eyes.
Their voices sound truthful, even when they tell lies.
From what I've seen of love, it's nowhere I'd want to be.
Love has always been a mystery to me.

A Ballade

Left sun-poisoned by a summer, and all its hot spills,
that passed as if in blinks, in stills, not a blur.
They shared spaghetti, sun lotion, pillows and pills.
Outside, trees dropped eaves on their secrets,, leaves purr.
Outside, a clatter of noises, the engines that whirr
living in the belly of some huge city car.
Windows once rushed her to where others were.
She to him: Why would I leave now I’m where you are?

He to her: You are victory won by pillow or by a balloon.
She to him: You are the warm rush of blood to the cheeks.
He to her: You are the first ever step, out there on the moon.
She to him: You are the first touch, after three parted weeks.  
He told her that someday they’d visit the mountain’s top peaks
and they’d write their names in the light of a star.
She dreamt flecks of stardust, leaving galaxies on her cheeks.
He to her: Anything’s possible when I’m here, where you are.

She knew that she had talked too much of the past
but it was not because there was something to miss.
She to him: You give me more than I could ever have asked.
You took my ignorance, and left me with bliss. 
My imagination at first glance, my breath at first kiss.
She asked: forever? He said: Forever isn’t as far
as where we are headed. / What for? /  For this.
I’m here. You’re there. There, here you are

The Doctrine of the Changing Lightbulb

I wrote an article, sort of- I'm not really sure what it is. I'm reluctant to say that they are jokes because I don't want to presume myself or my writing to be funny, but it is based on a joke- you know the old lightbulb and changing said lightbulb joke. But regardless, I enjoyed writing this. The link is here:

The Doctrine of the Changing Lightbulb

I can put it up here if anyone wants to read it and can't but it should all be copacetic.

Waste - Horatio James

With help and inspiration from James, I attempted to realise my creative vision and be experimental without being pretentious. It's different from anything I've done before but a great editing exercise and I very much like the finished product (the song is okay too).

Sailboats

His eyes were aged and brown from years of dreaming. About sailboats, he said. He said that there was only one place worth escaping to, and that only sailboats could take you there. I never knew where that place was. We drank sweet tea on the pier and took walks, collecting seashells on the way home. I stopped feeling sick about the space between stars when we shared our own space in the warm evenings that turned into nights only marginally cooler. Strangely, we were louder then. Trying to learn the songs of sailors and drinking songs and the songs that belonged to travellers. Our days were spent in a sincere, cosy sort of silence.
But as is ever, things regressed towards the mean. He started telling me things I knew that I was secretly thinking, as if he could read my thoughts alongside sentences in his book named The Elegant Universe, which was about dimensions in hiding and superstrings and a quest for the ultimate theory. When I told him that we should perhaps just be friends, he set fire to all his sailboats. I never did tell him that the love I had for him put his oceanic expeditions to shame. That even if he did float away, one constant would remain, and still, even if there were hundred of miles between us: loving him would always be my biggest and favourite adventure.

a growing up poem

Coming home on an evening in august, cool air puffing up in the sleeves of your shirt.
You were always a neurotic kid, too young for paranoia but this is how it goes-
nobody likes me everybody hates me, chewed fingertips, shredded bottle labels,
nothing tidy and wanting to go under the bedsheets to feel safe.

We like to pretend that we have magical powers, that we are somehow special,
 and we play in the rainfall of sycamore leaves and seeds,
weather that lets you know that everything will end soon, a slap to the face.

You wonder what you would look like with shorter hair but could never part with
what you've grown. You never quite realise how much there is ahead of you.

thoughts

Remember,
remember that a thought can never die.
The neurons that fired while it was made
will scatter into ether,
they will fade and piece the message together
elsewhere.

Nothing will be revealed until it breaks, so here
we have the real start- iridescent wings
drowning, shimmering in waves
that make a glittering
nothing-

a splash, and nobody hears.

Thoughts spiralling in and out, weaving through
the retina, a cocoon that curls in the brain,
an agent of change.

I shed myself kaleidoscopic.
I dig in my heels and I will not flicker out.

Dinner Table

In the new and unsettled heat of city summer
you, my darling darling, are like a ghost
seeking communion, with unfinished business

and wearing a crown that you made of daisies
because you do not want to admit that you are
in love with those stories, and with learning

to lose yourself in the guises of knights, and
someone else's love. It's about learning that
and learning to swallow. My darling,

don't be precious, your God isn't really in
the food that you eat or whatever you drink
but you are so, so good at pretending, and

when you shut your eyes at night you see
a dining table with three chairs, but one of them
is broken. Mother sits in one, you take the other

and your sister, you think, maybe, sits in the
last one. She is like looking in a mirror, but
you are wiser. Still, the chairs at the table

are broken, and no matter how loudly the talk
rackets between the walls and paintings, you can
never fix the chair with the broken legs. You don't

even want to anymore.

Films

I'm going to film school in October. Celebrating Sofia Copolla and Cate Shortland...

Cluster A

So I decided to try and put the different personality disorders in little rhyming parcels with accompanying pictures. Here is how I chose to communicate the Cluster A disorders.

(paranoid)

(schizotypal)

(schizoid)

(anti-social)

a preoccupation of words

 

(collective nouns I made up)

I was considering how to write books for curious children would be a dream come true, and then I had an idea for an illustrated series of sorts, which could be enjoyed by readers of all ages but most of all just gave me an excuse to indulge my love of words....

a mask of beautiful blue.

Two haikus, no need to choose.

My boy laughs easy.
He makes my heart sing in two
different languages.

----------------------------------

And above all things
I want my mother to know
how much I love her.

A story for kids

A dead body

Death horrified me only insofar that it horrified me.

Later I would come to learn from Cecilia, who told me with her nose a little upturned, that this is called tautology. Then, it was the only thing I knew for certain. I wasn't as grounded in moral grievances as Rachel, and I wasn't angry like Ollie, and yet I didn't remain white and clammy for weeks afterwards before disappearing entirely, the way Polly did. When it came to murder, I guess I didn't know how to respond- neither my brain nor my body had its own strong-willed sense of direction, so I reacted as I always used to when faced with circumstances that were more than a little confusing (not getting into music school, the aftermath of my first kiss, hearing the news of my great aunt Joan's passing)- I threw up next to the toes of my shoes, wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, had a glass of water. And that was that.

It was repulsive on a purely physical level. Surely that's not surprising. It was a horrific thing to look at- clotted blood and slack jaw. A dead body was and is a dead body, but that was and is all there is. The problem is in the context of it. Once you start considering heaven, hell, ethics, karma, justice, and the ripple effect of the event- the emotional impact it would have on all that surrounded it- it becomes more than that. More than it has to be.

A dead body is a dead body. That's possibly why I was not immediately averse to Ollie's suggestion that we needed to do something. With the body. Despite a lot of loud whispering, spitting and crying, we all found ourselves on the beach in the half-light of that morning, armoured with the no-man-left-behind attitude that we somehow managed to retain right through until the very end. There were lights starting to flick on in the windows of the houses that clustered along the bay. Boats were docked by the lifeguard station- he wasn't there, and wouldn't be for some time, for at best he was absent-minded, and at worse he was negligent, dangerous. No more dangerous than us, I suppose. But then again there had been three drownings in seven months. I've only tallied one so far. The one that Ollie and I carried in a black bag between us. It's still surprising how we managed to hold it up, just us two, with the others too overcome with something or other to touch it. It didn't matter, I thought, who touched it. If we were going to hell for this, we were already damned, and nothing we did from then on was going to do a bit to change that. Still, fear is an amazing thing, the way it fills you with the kind of godlike strength you only have the opportunity to experience once or twice in your life, probably, because it only comes in a welcome rush when you have got yourself in a trap so deep you need something like god to pull you back out.

If Cecilia, or even Polly, had been the one to tell you this story, the whole affair would have been more poetic. Lyrical. I don't think that this would alter the narrative even in the least. The way I see it, aesthetics can soften the blow, but like I said, dead weight is dead weight. This is how it went: we got the body into the boat that Cecilia untied, heard it sound hollow in the base, put some bricks into the bag, and then me, Ollie and Cecilia rowed out while Polly watched, white-faced, from the shore. She was looking at her watch, a nervous tic that I came to miss after she had gone. It made me wish that there existed some kind of search engine that was linked to a database categorising a host of people by their nervous habits. The ghosts of your past and their annoying, charming, identifying idiosyncrasies. Polly had so many, she could have broken the algorithm. So Ollie, Cecilia, the body and I rowed out. Ollie, Cecilie and I rowed back. We didn't say goodbye to one another. We all returned to our homes.

You might believe that because I seem impassive about all of it then I am more at fault than the others. But aren't the only true things- the only things we can be judged by- are actions? Actions are surely the only true things in the whole world.  By this logic, any words that are spoken in an attempt to change these actions can't be anything but lies. We murdered a boy. It doesn't matter whether I regret it or not. It stays the same. It will always be the same. All the feelings that you attach to a dead body, the same way that you attach feelings to a work or art or literature, are just interpretations. Like I said, a dead body is a dead body.

sinking stone and blinking sands

Beds and Birdsongs

the village of reason

Moving images

In a face-on collision, the head lights are the first to go.

Something clumsy and indefinite throwing its shadow,

which goes tripping over tangled shoelaces and legends, or lies.

Blunt memories slide off a cassette ribbon. A birthday surprise.

Some things should never be said out loud, ever, even if they are true,

and the scripted lines you need to learn aren’t always spoken to you.

and growing pains and hunger pains can often be confused.

Bedside songs from an open mouth, open door, shiny and black,

and matching shoes, and matching shoes. 

Talking Cure

The truth hits, after several years of ‘the talking cure’ that requires one to take oneself very seriously and ruminate on very long-ago events that are, of course, unchangeable and all the potential reasons why you seem to be intent on, and increasingly good at, ruining things that are good in your own life- all the people you could blame, all the ‘whys’ behind all your ‘issues’, all the theories concerning the possible antecedents in your past that could pose as explanations for your present day behaviour that has, for whatever reason, been evaluated as misguided, or maladaptive, or malicious, or masochistic- after all of this furrowing and finger-pointing and finding that your life has been full of reasons for you to be a fuck-up, and that knowing this doesn’t do anything to fix you or fulfill you, eventually, the truth hits. The truth is that there could be a real reason why there is a problem- why you are a problem- or there could be thousands of potential causes for these problems, but there could also be absolutely no reason at all. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The truth is that you can talk for hours about your past but that any ‘breakthroughs’ in therapy, where you confront (by talking about) the ghosts of your past that seem to still be haunting you, can’t mend anything. The talking cure can’t clean up the messes that you’ve made. Sure, you can get some things off your chest. If you’re walking around with a secret that’s eating away at you because you haven’t shared it, it’s healthy to talk about it. Or if talking is what it takes for you to finally give voice to things about yourself you’d rather not admit, it’s beneficial to say those things aloud so that you can fully realise them, because it’s only in realising them that you can see to change them. The problem, and the sad truth about talking therapies, is that no one is going to push you to say the words you really need to say. If there is some self-knowledge that you don’t have, if you are not ready to know it because it’s not what you want to know, or you’re not brave enough to see it because it’s ugly, then you won’t gain it, and all the talking in the world isn’t going to help you acquire it. It seems that all the theorising and re-thinking and re-living and finding fault that is accomplished in talking therapy sessions is to identify what was wrong, or who else might have done you wrong, and how that made you feel, how it still does make you feel. That would be a great thing if those things or those people could suddenly cease to have ever existed. Because that’s not possible, and because you can’t wipe your slate clean and if you haven’t realised it yet then you soon will realise that you don’t want anything wiped because your past is also responsible for whatever is good in your life and for whatever is good about you, all that you have gained and everything that you love, and have loved- you stumble upon the understanding that whatever meaning you think you have found is worth nothing to you. You are still exactly the same person as you were before the talking began. Your life looks the same, feels the same, and the problem remains. Being armed with reasons to explain why there’s a problem does nothing to protect you. The truth is that no one cares. Your therapist doesn’t care. You are their workload. They say that talk is cheap. In talking therapy, talk is worthless.

Snow Owls

Until recently (two years after the second millennium was welcomed by humankind holding its breath) the snowy owl was thought to be the solo member of Nyctea scandiaca, a distinct genus that set them apart from all other owls. But when the millennium came, as the owls saw it, humans came newly equipped with smaller syringes and swabs, more wires that connected more machines, and yet the machines took up less space. The machines had ideas, and these ideas were what took up the space. Things could happen without collective human input, the owls noticed. Trees were coming down and no one knew who was deciding it, and the world over, these machines made humans less able to see further afield, and more desirous to be somewhere they couldn't even visualise. They had come and done tests and snowy owls were soon declared to be related, by genetic make-up, to the horned owls. Nyctae scandiaca was no longer special, suddenly a snowy owl was just another Bubo. The snowy owls mostly stay in their summer home, north of the point of latitude at 60 degrees north. Their nests are built in the northernmost reaches of the Arctic tundra- Alaska, Canada and parts of Eurasia. But renegade families have stayed south or else flown back down, as far as the American gulf states, Russia's deepest south, and then places not so far south but off the regular map for any snowy owl- remote regions among the outer hebrides where the British Isles lie. All the snowy owls moving in arctic circles caught wind of what happened to one of their kind who, flying in isolation, landed tragically in the tangles of a big ship with Ulunda written on its vast flanks, spitting steam. The owl had made it to Nova Scotia but couldn't come back to tell the tale (though none of the owls claimed to be missing a mate or family member, so none were sure who this lost owl would escape back home to). The lost owl was captured and later stuffed, filled up with human chemicals so it would linger on the brink of decomposition, and remains trapped in a suspended state of living death behind a sheet of glass in a place where humans can come just to stare through the pane. (This story is told in such a tone to warn young snowy owls from going rogue during migration periods or even migrating when no other owls were migrating). Ten and one years after the second millennium, or maybe ten and two years after (some of the stretch in between) there was a migration of snowy owls that winter, which went down in history. It was a mass migration, and thousands disappeared. They made new homes for themselves in an array of new places scattered across the American States. This was a shock to many, but it seemed to have started a new feeling, a new zeitgeist for spontaneous exploration in the place of regimented migration. There didn't have to be a reason anymore, and they didn't have to share the same destination goal. A year and another winter on, another even larger mass migration happened. Some snowy owls even got to Florida. There are theories among the snowy owls that this new attitude grew as a result of being stripped of their individual identity and broken out of their insular circle, made to be seen and evaluated not as snowy but as horned. And even if they were still being valued by humans for being snowy, they were written in human law books in the same category, with the same value, as the horned owls. Some snowy owls believe that the destruction of their special grouping, with all its specialness, led to the destruction of their long-standing grouping behaviours. Rituals no longer adhered to. Standard routes no longer taken. Snowy owls moving south, away from arctic places, finding new uncharted grounds to make their nests. Dreams about places such as Florida became more commonplace for the snowy owl. The new millennium had meant the start of upheavals, turnarounds, rapid changes, exceptions rather than rules, and the accelerating rate of change. It was a crescendo, an exponential curve. More changes, more quickly, and no time to try and prepare, no space in the mind to conceive of how to prepare for new circumstances yet to be thought of, but surely soon to become realised.

A quick poem

It is a swimming pool lit up at night that your eyes remind me of,

or maybe a glass-bottomed boat, the underneath being

an adventure, rather than the measured depth of fear.

There was a time when my eyes were haunted, I am told

in retrospect. In truth, I was only hungry.

In mirrors I saw them as the inside of a snow globe. 

Whatever it was that was stuck inside my head 

for so many winters, falling to bits like the fake snow

inside that snow globe that was unmentionably large

and at the same time very small and soft.

Here i am, trying to undo what I’ve done by doing better,

and imagining the eyes that flit away from me

as jewels, turning into berries, turning into marbles,

turning into dwarf stars, 

turning into all the ways I wanted to leave. 

and the days are not long enough

sleep walks.

You are a...

You are a piece of music unlikely to be made.

A song about... potential, promise, promises.

Notes are samples of unusual sounds like... doors opening and shutting, birds coughing, humming heartbeats, sleeptalking, pills rattling in boxes, pages turning.

Written by... your boyfriend.

Recorded in... a basement.

An out-of-the-ordinary instrument played for your performance... pan pipes.

Produced by... an unknown individual.

Two genres combined to best describe you... acapella & experimental.

You are a game.

Called... Carriwitchet.

The primary theme is... word play.

The number of players is... 2 plus.

Components required to play are... a pen, paper, the mind.

The length of the game is... eternal unless you stop it.

Lessons learnt from playing may be... friendly mendaciloquence, and the limitlessness of language.

The winner... can get there by the stretches of their imagination and variation in use of vocabulary.

You are living with multiple personality disorder.

The tragedy that led to this was... an atypical incident, a random antecedent.

The number of personalities you have is... 9.

Most prominent personality is... sentimental, emotionally imbalanced, erratic and enigmatic.

First became aware of it when... I began to be an angry lesbian.

The good that comes of this is... I see through many different eyes.

The biggest fear surrounding this is... that I will become the angry lesbian.

Treatment is... Validation Treatment (used for dementia, though it has very little/no empirical evidence in support of it, concepualised by Naomi Feil in 1992)

When the least prominent personality looks in the mirror she/he/it sees... a bored person with a ponytail and too much foundation to conceal acne.

You are an instrument.

The instrument is... percussive and on a scale, like a glockenspiel

Played by... someone who is still learning.

Most commonly used to play... lullabies or songs that you can sing along to.

Made of... tinny metal.

Looks like... an arrangement of haphazardly arranged keys, not necessarily in order of length, that are knocked on with a spoon.

Played most often... in solitude, at dusk.

A famous musician that might play it would be... Fiona Apple.

Never used to play... R'n'B

Kept... on a shelf.

Someday used to write a song called... The Black Echo, The Gold Coin

You are aging in reverse.

When born, you appear... either 38 or 87.

Marriage will be... potentially a part of my life.

The handicap associated with old age you are born with is... poor mobility and bad eyesight.

You will date people of an age... that doesn't matter so will vary between the people I date.

Scientists will be allowed to study you because... of my willingness to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Strangers don't get told about your condition because... it sounds mad to explain it.

You will live out your childlike death... wherever I end up, with people I end up loving.

When you die you wish to appear... in my early 20s.

Number of children you will have is... zero.

You are homeless.

Your cardboard sign reads... "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." or, "Any books or blankets you can spare would be greatly appreciated", or, "A friend needed."

The street corner you frequent most is... the warmest one.

The last person to offer you a place to stay before homelessness was... John.

You sleep... hideaways on the Heath, like the hollow tree, in any hallways I can talk myself into, anywhere indoors I can exchange for unpaid work, probably with a few strangers, and otherwise anywhere that is warm or where I won't be picked up and put in a garbage truck.

You were kicked out of your last home because... I was messy.

You lost your job because... I was bad at it.

Your greatest fear as a homeless person is... winter.

The most common amount of money you are given is... either nothing or a considerably generous sum.

The hardest part of being homeless is... the cold.

You are a genie.

You look like.... a magical version of myself, dressed in a cloud made of sparkly raindrops.

Instead of a lamp,  you are rubbed out of... a paperweight.

The number of wishes granted to each individual is... 48.

The one thing no one is allowed to wish for is... something that compromises the free will of another.

You refuse wishes to... psychopaths and anyone under the age of 17 unless their situation is critical.

The percentage of wishes to actually make a positive effect on the world is... 15%.

Introduced as... a transient well-deserved miracle.

Became a genie because... I died and came back as one.

You are able to breathe underwater.

Most of your time is spent...  filming shipwrecks.

The sunken treasure you seek out is... somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.

Your chosen body of water for a home is... a lagoon.

The body of water you spend least time in is... rivers.

The underwater creature that haunts you is... a trigger fish or spiteful stingray.

You discover an ancient underwater city and name it... Drowned Town or Over-Spill City.

The newspapers call you... Gill Girl.

You can safely swim... 80,000 leagues under the sea.

You take a pet and it is a... an anglerfish because it will light the way at night.

You are having a recurring dream about alien abduction. 

The investigation into the validity of these dreams... never happens.

Most willing to conclude that you are actually being abducted are... John, William and Adnan.

In the dreams the purpose for abduction is... to provide information for the aliens.

The most common things that aliens say is... 'Do not panic, homosapien.'

The famous person abducted with you is... Sasha Baron-Cohen because they confused him with his cousin.

The aliens have not made themselves known to all humans because... they are running an observational study.

You are singled out because... of the possession of a vulnerable & malleable unconscious mind.

The number one question you ask them is... 'Are wars fought on your planet?'

Human food they like most is... sushi, toast and hot dogs.

Aliens look like... something very similar to us.

You are your own parents.

Something you do differently is... never marry.

You do not change... my conception.

You name your actual self... the same, but I'm Daisy Christabel King from birth.

More often, you... adapt to become more open-minded.

Less often, you... disappear or detach from the past.

The secret to being a good parent is... empathy, supportiveness and open-mindedness.

The dream you follow in spite of parenting is... being a psychotherapist.

You are bring a dead person back to life.

This will be done by... inexplicably-presented opportunity.

The person that will die to accomplish this is... myself.

You bring back... Ella.

Close second is... James' uncle.

You bring them back because... they needed more time.

The biggest fear attached to this is... playing God and its consequences.

You suspect that this person will describe the afterlife as... that which cannot be communicated or understood by the living.

If this person does not remember who you are... it will not matter because I will be dead.

You are a building.

You have... 6 floors and an attic.

On your roof... birds make nests and rain collects and the ghosts of chimney sweeps leave sooty trails from midnight dance parties.

The purpose of you is... non-existent. I am not useful.

The tragedy that took place inside you that caused you to be haunted involved... accidental falls down flights of stairs.

When torn down, the building you would like to replace you is... a school.

Your most unique feature is... behind-bookcase secret rooms.

You are located... somewhere cramped between other buildings.

Your average temperature is... below 5 degrees usually.

You are dedicated to... a fictional character.

You are a ghost. 

You died... either by choking on a small piece of food or in an accident of some kind that was the result of my poor proprioception and clumsiness and/or impulsivity.

You haunt... people I knew, in a benevolent way.

You are seen by... the select few people who have hurt me considerably, glimpsed behind them in mirrors.

Your unfinished business is... finishing up making it up.

You physically interact with the world around you by... leaving symbolic objects places, tying up shoelaces, or writing messages on dusty surfaces/condensation.

The ghost to keep you company is... someone who died on the same day but who is much older.

You are yourself in a previous life.

You are located... on a pirate ship.

Your profession is... a cabin boy.

In a past life before this one you were... a concubine.

In your lives, you have given to the world... time to hear people in it.

The best thing about this life is... camaraderie onboard.

The worst thing is... getting scurvy.

You are currently related to this past self in... issues with food, messiness, respect for authority figures, attention needs.

Your names have had... Omar, Oksana, Bertrand, Mohammed, Johan, Kjeldsen, Emerald, Peggy, Clifford, Flavia, Septimus, Kitty, Joan, Elijah, Vakhtang, Wilhelmina, Xu, Bob, Mavis, Prudence, Friedrich, Miguel, Iqbal, Rochelle, Seo-Jun & Christabel.

Be good or be gone

I'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore.
If you do, and if you have a spare second, could you leave a comment?

I love this song, so after the cover was recorded I put together some old footage to go with it.

Edie pulling faces

Star-birth

In the darkened basement rooms, in between stacks of knick-knacks
from dated telephones to sculpted Tutankhamun heads to racks of clothes
dragged out of previous centuries (or from off of other film sets),
among the shelves of cameras, tripods, lenses, structures on wheels
and small cranes, with my eyes getting caught on every sight,
a perpetual snag, and the moths that pound their thousands of wings
in my chest, that make it so tight, flapping at vibration rate
in the place of a steady beat. But I find they completely placate
when the tall guy with the long hair and the Indian girl
with the dimples offer me their gazes and their smiles, silently
cheering for me and for the film they are making in the air-conditioned
subterranean space while the sun bakes on parks outside and people
sleep deliriously in pools of sweat, at home, on transport, in offices,
on lawns, in the big world of seasons, in the big world of social grace
and of reasons-- it's enough to make anyone forget, it's unreasonable--
and here, away from it all, I glimpse the creation of another world-
as whole and as seasonable, made out of midnight musing and
coffee-break conversations, built out of an arrangement of heavy
black blankets and angled light bulbs, everywhere light falls
the space it is intentionally orchestratedly using to throw just so
the shadows and illuminate the life into an idea. Those ideas that patiently wait
in the noisy room that I can't allow to open its door today.
Not today, but when I do, there will be so much light, I know
that it will seem that a star has become, not of me,
because I am not a star, and nor did I ever really want to be,
I just wanted people around me to be happy and laugh when they
looked at me. I wanted to light up their dark so things wouldn't be the way
they seemed to be, but they seemed to stay when night came
and fell and fell on me and my spark was blotted out, I tried but
could never spark the same. People would say they missed it, just
missed the chance to see it, but I was turning transparent,
I was feeling that I ought to be invisible, like dust, and I was too
much of an intrusion, a burden, an obstacle, too much and too apparent
and I told myself I was an eyesore until my eyes got sore too
and if there were stars, I couldn't have seen them. I saw only threat
where I'd left a vacant place where I should have had an identity.
In those basement rooms, I almost hear the crowds behind the noisy door
and the moths too, all communicating in a hum, 'Soon, not yet.'
But a star will become of me. That night that came and fell before
will get up and walk elsewhere willingly, shadows will shrink away, afraid,
and the shadows will no longer have faces or features to frighten me,
they will not be blind places. There is so much to be made
that is star-flecked, part of the star army, the night's apostles,
I could feel it, even in the darkened basement rooms, the light on me.



via GIPHY

Desperate from Data Collection Seeking Participants, Willing or Begrudging

We were saying goodbye at my door. We’d had one of our arguments- not the more serious kind that bores a trench so deep between us that I don’t even try to reach over it, and he can’t for he is too occupied with the pain he later describes to me that he feels in my absence, the inability to grasp my words and enter my thoughts (‘i just love you’ he says, ‘i miss you’) causes him to hurt all over, and no matter how many drugs he takes and new friends he makes for one night alone, never a fling or romantic dalliance but only a drunk and desperate attempt to make a connection and feel liked, feel loved. I understand it all, everything he does, even if it’s harmful or exceeds the breadth of my imagination, in which case I usually find myself in a storm of tears until he reassures me there will be no harm done. I understand and even though my visceral responses to some of his anecdotes from the past or contemplations of the present suggest that my morals stand so strongly against them; despite the fact that I feel such actions, negotiations, schemes and pure means of survival are reprehensible, I understand why he has done what he has done. I don’t know the extent to which he is involved in that world of violence and cold blood, all in pursuit of money and for every individual involved, perhaps, something else such as an ongoing need for vengeance that can’t be vanquished because the object of their revenge is someone they cannot reach, leaving them only to try and satisfy their need for it through exacting it on strangers; or some other need, for respect, for power, for the thrill of it, for the desire to live on the very edge of being human and being another thing entirely. That other thing is either dead to the world without anything to show it love and therefore no way of feeling love at all, or it is a monster who stands above humanity because it has no capacity to love. The parts of its brain implicated in loving of any kind, and the network that allows people to see and feel the pain of others, to experience guilt, to struggle with conscience, to refrain from inflicting pain- that part, long deteriorated, and at this level of damage, the monster can feel no connection to a human, though it was probably human once.
No, he is no monster. Even in his monstrous past, he was human, feeling pain almost perpetually. Drinking his guilt into oblivion. Suffering behind bars. Traumatised by the ways the world he grew up hating threw hatred back at him, even threw evil- abuse, lies that confused and misdirected him, or forms of terrorism- the cellmate who woke him at night with a razor blade to his throat. He still has dreams about that cell. His old girlfriend told me he would wake up violent and yelling at her and with threats meant for this someone else. I have seen him cry in his sleep.
I understand because of what the world turned him into. I understand that parts of him are still steeped in what he came to embody. I also feel from him the deep-seated hatred of the world and everything in it, rotting at his core. But I feel it is unravelling as he is surprised by acts of kindness, when  he realise people will accept and not turn away from him, when he finds to his immense shock that he can trust somebody, for that’s one thing he’d never been able to do. He trusts me, he says, nobody else, and that is why our arguments can be so painful for him I won’t ever leave him behind, and there’s a resolution after every argument, but he believes in those times he can’t reach out for me and find me there for him with a smile and open door that I must be harbouring hate or I shall never be his friend again.
But we’d resolved this argument almost as rapidly as it had fired up, and it’s usually me who ignites the match. In something he says, or a repeated discrimination I disagree with, or due to the contradictions in his convictions that I shouldn’t get angry about but confuse me, and I am upset when he tells me to put it to rest immediately  (a sort of shut up) or when he won’t explain the truth behind what he says. Because he tries to forge an armour around him that reflects the importance of truth. He is impenetrable because he speaks the truth, he hates lies, he only knows the truth. This is of course an illusory armour and he is, of course, not protected when he gets caught in his own lies, lies to himself, or tells them, as we all do. As I said before, he is human, he is not a monster. But with his ideals of how he wants the world to see him breaking down when he blunders over matters of honesty, I feel myself sparked to challenge him for the truth. The arguments often start there. We haven’t had many, we’ve had about three quite big ones that were less argumentative and more silence and distance. He explains this is torture. I tell him he makes me feel guilty by implying I torture him in this way, for I never would want to hurt him. I am just for some reason— since I was about 21 I think I have been— strongly averse to being witness to, bing asked to entertain, or personal experiences of self-deception. The ways we delude ourselves are ingenious. They are also dangerous. If I see it in him, I feel close enough now to point it out, which often ends in conflict, which often ends in his slow contemplation and realisation of what I’d alerted him to. Though I hate arguments, especially with him because he finds it hard to let go of the memories they seem to leave him with, the invisible scars (but the kind that fade, unlike the others that criss-cross every inch of his body that will never go away), these conflicts have somehow changed something about his way of thinking. He challenges himself, he doubts his own convictions, and he said to me fairly recently that due to my presence in his life his view of humankind had actually been altered, and I believed him, and it was a moment I can’t describe because it existed only between us- two very different people who are connected in so many ways  that cannot be made with other people.
So we stood at my doorway, and James waved goodbye from the sofa, and I said goodbye, come back soon, and he put his arm around my shoulders, squeezed me tightly and kissed the top of my head.
I can’t put into words what happened next. It wasn’t a vision or a memory. It wasn’t anything tangible either like a pain or a somatic marker. All I can offer is a metaphor, or a picture i’ve constructed in my mind to somehow communicate what I experienced as I closed the door behind him after that hug and immediately began to cry. Imagine a big empty space, the kind that exists in a person, an absence of something that can be filled up with other things, but will always feel something like that cup that was a touch too empty. Imagine a chasm in the ground. The word ‘Daddy’ echoing from inside the place where it’s dark.
His reassuring shoulder squeeze, his paternal loving kiss where my hair parts at the crown of my head, the tears in his eyes, and the gentle knowing that everything was going to be okay between us even when it wasn’t. I felt my father there. The stranger I never liked and certainly never loved. Who had never given me a hug with a squeeze that was reassuring. Who never gave an impromptu kiss because his affections were calculations, or impulses. The ones I was given in that moment of goodbye were heartfelt in their entirety, they were honest, they were what he did when the meaning was love, and protectiveness, and the tenderness felt towards something or someone precious, irreplaceable, someone or something you have come to need and love, in equal measures or not, but that isn’t important.
I climbed into James’ lap and I cried on his t-shirt for a while and I didn’t understand it or rather, I didn’t know how to vocalise it, or if I could vocalise it, or if I even wanted to. Because my father isn’t a part of my life and that has been a blessing not a loss. Eventually I said that I’d felt my father. I realise in retrospect that I hadn’t felt my father in my friend, but I’d been reminded of everything I had never had from a father, and to have it then, for one moment, was too overwhelming for me to explain. Even this explanation falls far from being a clarified, comprehensible explanation.
But how can you explain a feeling you have for a moment that you have never had before, and cannot compare to any other feeling or thought or event; something that is so new that you don’t have the language to give it an explanation, as you’ve never needed to use that language before.
How does one describe a feeling like that? Poetry can’t even do it for me and I can’t write the words that make sense of it because they never make sense. I will give up trying to explain it. I just will always remember it, and try to keep reassuring myself I am not damaged by this chasm being there, that I have and always have had enough. Because I do believe that. I just for a moment saw the other side of that.
I’m going to call my friend today to ask him to be my counter-signatory for my passport application. He’d be very happy to do that, I think, and when I get my passport he’s taking me to Ireland where my family live. He says that I put his family back together. Though his mother is still distant, I found her and was there during their first conversation in years. I communicate with her through emails and ask about her life. He is afraid, I think, and has every reason to be. I will protect him from any more disappointments as far as I can. He says that among his family in Ireland I am famous. I tell him often that to be famous is my worst nightmare (or one of my many terrible nightmares), but I know he needs me there to reunite with them, and I am happy to be there for him when it happens.