[02-05-20]

Origami

Like the Japanese art of folding paper, this life has folded itself into a bind and I cannot see what it is to become. I have held on to each corner and lived through each crease as I believe I construct the life ahead of me, but now I am not sure if I am its creator. The next fold is the most difficult, and I hope that it does not tear the delicate material of my heart, because that cannot be healed with just a piece of sticky tape.
 She was always too rough and impatient, only trying to shape me the way she wanted, and sometimes I resisted her, which caused seams in all the wrong places. Now I look old and wrinkled before my time – there is no way to iron out these creases. If I ever try to be folded by another, those marks of the past will always remain. They are the scars of my experience and I must wear them with pride.
 The once vibrant colour of this old paper has faded from a brilliant red to a pathetic pink hue as it sits half folded and discarded by frustration with Japanese culture – please, do not leave me unfinished. I cannot face the end without knowing the truth of what I was to become, even if it only becomes clear in the last fleeting moments. My destiny, to be a cheap trinket of somebody else’s design, abandoned with all questions unanswered and all hope crushed into a ball of irritation before being thrown into the bin.

[25-04-20]

Skin

Sometimes I drift off into thoughts of skin – how the light catches the smooth nature of its beauty; how my mind turns it into pleasure. Her skin was always enough to calm my mind, to take away the negative from reality and replace it with a wondrous sense of connexion. In solitude moments I remember this and keep myself sane, if only for a brief moment, before I continue toward something I do not know. In some ways the days are harder, because that is when the light would have shown her the best; when each little ripple of age would show off her wisdom in the form of beauty.
 An empty space, in my bed, my home, and in my mind, has left an unbearable loneliness in my life. I question the purpose of myself now – where does one go after love, after life? Is it enough to keep repeating the same mistakes until fate takes everything away, or do we have a choice in the matter. I cannot turn my back on myself again just because someone could not see eye-to-eye with such simple choices in my life. Why do they tell me they love me and leave? Am I only worth love without the commitment?
 Fuck it! Fuck them and fuck you! I will dance if I want to, I will run if I need to and I will yearn for something greater than myself. I must take the lead for once and lay my own path – but like a man who does not know how to build, I must first learn. Today’s sun is bright and the depth of light’s contrast is all around me, but I keep my eyes focused in 2-D, without shadow, and without the far reaching dimensions of her, or the loss of her. But I kid myself because even these fighting words are only the antonym of her – they would not exist if she never existed.
 Soft, and delicate to touch, hers was more to me than anyone else’s, and memory will always make it so. Everytime I look at another’s flesh it only connects my mind to hers, to intimate moments of touch and sense that inspire me. How sad to think I will never know it again, at least not with hers. I should bury her skin, my weakness, before it rots in the humidity, but I predict I will keep it much longer than I should.
 Perhaps sharing these thoughts will cure me of her infection, this lover’s disease, but there is no way to know. Sure enough my desire will probably keep this sickness in my body, those thoughts of light playing with perfection as it draws smooth outlines in my mind. Infatuation with nature’s creativity, with its art, will be the death of me, because I keep her skin in my mind – some things I cannot let go.

[24-10-19]

I Miss My Friend

It’s strange how we are reminded of things in life. When some inconsequential thing makes a connection in our mind to some part of our past, whether it’s a smell that reminds us of a person or a task that reminds us of someone’s advice. I few of my own examples include when I use screws and I remember how my father taught me to tighten screws gradually and not just one all at once, or when my friend explained that sleeping on your back makes you snore and ever since then I have only slept on my side. Even as I think of this occurrence of memory, and all the times I have thought about it, I remember the same moment in a supermarket where I smelled my friend’s mother’s perfume and it reminded me of sleepovers at his house, which I only remember as an example of this process.
 I write about this now because sat at the next table are, I assume, a father and son, and the son bears a resemblance to a friend of mine who tragically took his own life. It is not surprising that I remember him, even eleven years after he made that decision, but I am always curious about the triggers that remind me of him. He was an intriguing friend, the kind of person who would never behave like others would expect, adventurous and curious, which I never questioned growing up with him. It was later in life that I began to understand the complexities of his life and the causes for his not-so-normal behaviour. I always remember a time when we were talking on the phone and I said something, playfully, about his appearance that offended him – he became defensive and sensitive, referring to his cleft palate and how I had made him feel different because of it, but I had never even thought about it. I instantly apologised, but after that I began to see the challenges he faced. His childhood was filled with doctor’s appointments and hospital visits, as the hole in the roof of his mouth was addressed as an issue that needed fixing, just as I expect he began to feel about himself – an issue that needed fixing.
 As life passed by and we grew up, these struggles became more and more apparent, especially in our teenage years and puberty, where appearance and attraction became all the more important. Our only big fight happened around the time I met my first serious girlfriend, and as I grew closer to her, he became more and more frustrated until eventually it came to blows – we didn’t actually fight, but there were a few moments when I ran away in fear. I don’t blame him, there is no reason why I could. I see now that as well as feeling on the wrong side of attraction, he also felt a little more alone in his ongoing struggles. If I weren’t in the process of maturing myself, I might have recognised this and been more supportive, but at the time all I saw was a jealous friend.
 It was some time before we reconnected, after I had suffered a tragedy, and he reached out to me. I was relieved that after so long we could go back to being friends. Now I wonder if things would have been different if we had not fallen out for so long, if I had been a part of his life for longer, but questions like that are easy to ask and impossible to answer. Either way I am always grateful that I was a part of his life again before his end. Perhaps it was that time apart that stopped me from seeing the pain he suffered, but in hindsight that pain was never hidden, and it was my lack of experience that stopped me from recognising the warning signs. Nobody tells you what to look for or what you should be concerned about, at least not when I was younger, and that innocence has reverberated throughout my life as I have struggled to understand many difficult things – one of which has always been that time and the choices I made. I guess that’s why I am intermittently reminded of him, whether it is in dreams or in the faces of people on the street, because my time with him will always be significant throughout my life and will be so long into the future, and I am happy about that.

[21-10-19]

What Is an Ending?

Recently I have been trying to finish editing a poetry book that I wrote over a long, difficult period, but as I reach the final part I begin to lose sight of what my ending is supposed to be. This is not uncommon for a writer, to become too involved with the work, especially if it is personal, or even worse to read something so many times that you cannot see the truth of your own creation.
 In this instance I have certainly read it too much, fussed over the grammar and punctuation to excess, and drowned in mixed meanings, but given its personal relationship to me I am not surprised. The process on the whole has been a cathartic exercise – as I came out of the dark, I found many obstacles in where I am now in life, and these words I have written have helped to heal me. But perhaps it is the unending process of rehabilitation that causes my inability to find an ending – absolute closure can only exist when the consciousness ceases to be able to think, so if not enlightenment then true release would be death, but I don’t think that is an option.
 As I think about it further, I discover more and more parts of my life that are unfinished, either because they are still happening, or simply because there is no end to them whilst there is breath in me. My relationships with friends and family, passions, wants and needs, aspirations, thoughts, feelings, work, endless projects abandoned for time or money, all unfinished, and the list goes on. Although this open ended thought fills me with unease, it begs me to question, ‘What is an ending?’
 Often an ending is perceived as the finite culmination of something, the place where a line can be drawn between that which came before and that which follows. But now I wonder if it is in fact something else that defines an ending. Like this short piece of writing I feel myself building to a conclusion, a final thought that would answer the overall body of meaning here, so in this way I believe my ending is doubled – my answer is that an ending is the lesson learned. But does this help me to finish my book?

[19-10-19]

Interruptions

Once again I have been interrupted. I strive to find a way to work, to give my inner voice an outer voice, but this is something that has been a lifelong struggle. Like most, I feel that the people around me create the boundaries that hold me back, either by not giving enough support or by directly interfering with my creative process – those moments when I am asked to do something, and when I protest I am reminded that ‘this is reality, you have to do these things’. As if I am silly to want to work hard on something that I am passionate about and ignore important everyday things, but those things are only important in moments, and the moment where I am trying to work is not the time I should have to give for that.
 Of course, I am directing my blame outside because the truth is I am the person who blocks me from becoming who I want to be. I don’t mean that I can have all the fame and fortune, but rather that I can be the person I want to be – a writer. To do that I only have to do one thing. All my life I have dreamed of expressing thoughts and feelings, sharing my words in the hope that someone, even if it really is only one person, will take those words and benefit in some small way. I have always felt that our ability to write and share knowledge has been wrongfully used to shape people into formulas and predictable types, rather than bringing about positive change. All of life’s secrets can be found in words, the trouble is whose do we listen to?
 But I digress, like an interruption unto myself. The challenge for me now, the same one that has always been, is to push beyond those moments of self-doubt and confusion, to find a place where I seek only my own approval to write and become the person I want to be. So for all the writers, artists, creatives, builders, makers, craftsmen (and women), and anyone who wishes to simply be the person they want to be – shut up and let us work!

[18-10-19]

Tinnitus Tusks

In the quiet of early morning slumber, the dead of night’s silence still lingers as life has not yet escalated into the usual low hum of passing traffic and disruptive deliveries. Eyes closed, the cinema’s projector retains the fantastical visuals of the night – a public school, lessons in computer code, and a continuous struggle to walk down the school’s grand, out-of-place stairs that would better suit the images conjured by a historical museum in London city. The bell rings and class is over, but I am 32 and in attendance with teenagers to learn what counts for a modern curriculum today, computer coding (something I was learning before I went to sleep). I understood the basics, but as hard as I tried, over and over, I could not not draw a simple dividing line across the screen. As we pack up our things, the cool kids talk cooly about cool stuff as I pretend to be a part of the conversation in my head (yes, even though I am twice their age with a big bushy beard, I still seek a retrospective popular approval deep in my subconscious). We crowd down the stairs to join the hoards of other classes in the big mid-period exchange on the grand staircase – my class always veered round to the left side of the double, curved stairs that lead down into the main entrance hall around the large lion statue. Wide, worn wooden steps, deeper than the average pair of shoes, span so far you could never fall down them. I stay close to the popular girls, but as I try to move one foot in front of the other my legs are unable to stretch, like they have been tied together with glue, and I embarrass myself in the way both I and they expect. I am not a loser, but I have yet to establish my place with this crowd – quiet and reclusive, I still linger on the outside of popularity, but this might just be the thing I tell myself so I do not have to accept my dismissed, unattractive position in secondary education’s seemingly important elite.
 Either way, I cannot move my feet, the class has me beat and I am left behind with a feeling of defeat. The girls inconsequentially comment on my lack of movement as they pass by, followed by hundreds of others, before I am the only one left, stuck on the stairs, just before I wake.
 High-pitched tone pierces my ear like an elephant’s tinnitus tusk, as I tut at my rut, and feel the same. Rudely awakened, I wait for the feeling to pass – an empty echo in the chasm of my ear canal, the thought of progressive hearing loss and a deep contemplation of all the sounds that might be lost. Close my eyes and drift off, back at school again, now I can find out what I am really made of.

[17-10-19]

Welcome to Weird

There is a sense of freedom in letting words flow from the mind to the fingers. I sit and type now without concern for who will read these naked thoughts, just like you sit, stand, or lie as you read ‘mindlessly’ in your protective space, the one you create on a train or bus, in a class or a café, out in the open or behind closed doors. That place where your concentration becomes detached from outside influence and floats freely in a place of wonder – you know, where words trigger images of imagination fluidly flowing into reservoirs of connected thoughts, throwing up like vomit flashes of memory and desires, good feelings and bad ones, hope and fear. Fear, yes, especially those lived moments we keep in us always as an excuse never to start the things we want to do so desperately it is all we think about. As I lay on my back, I vomit fear like a fountain up into the air and watch it splatter all over my face and body – the place that all of me comes from; the catalyst for all my hopes and dreams – and with a panicked breath I scream out the words…

…sorry, somebody distracted me for a moment. Where was I?