Flying High - May 2017

Flying over Europe, a sudden shroud of calm and equilibrium spread across my entire skin- as if my being was a sponge. I adore flying. It resassitates my decaying veins.

I had an overwhelming urge to put this zen into words.

Flying high

As I look inside, knowing & seeing;

I ache & pine; a void in my being.

In this life, I stammer and mumble;

Trudging through, I falter and stumble.

Through strife or even a lack of fuss,
The sad veracity is so thus:

Inside my core - deficient of self worth;

As I walk & drudge, this baffling earth.

Yet amongst the clouds and sky so blue;

Nothing's wrong, there's nothing left to rue.

The glorious tall, sweet spot of flight,

A biting point, both flawless & right.

Only up high - at thousands of feet;

I finally feel: fully complete.

March 2017 - International Happiness Day

It’s like being placed in a glass tank and you can’t be heard. Trapped from the outside world, you hammer the sides with your fists until they are vermillion blurs, but no one can hear. No one can even see, as if the walls are somehow so translucent in their clarity, they morph into the surroundings like a prison cell of invisibility.

But that is where the old me is - cast away into purgatory, lost forever swirling in a black hole of despair.

The frustration is a smouldering volcano ready to erupt. Things feel so out of sync. Out of control.

And yet also strangely within grasp. It’s like the dropped catch in cricket - you almost had it all in your palm, but you messed up, lost your cool. Your eye was distracted, your mind maybe scanned a different thread for an atom of time, and the next thing you know the ball has slipped between your unresponsive fingers.

And its gone.

What do you do when you are a different person? Do you throw up the white flag? Or do you soldier on in the hope of some kind of miracle?

The odd sensation of no longer existing makes me feel like I am floating, and yet I feel weighed down in my very own special iron diving suit. The sparks that used to ignite my veins can no longer catch. Worse, the motor will no longer start because someone has thrown away the key.

Describing the loneliness is the blackest of ski runs; climbing an emotional Everest. It’s a hollowing out of your being; scooping yourself out like an avocado until all that remains is the hard skin shell. It’s frighteningly disconcerting. It’s standing at the extremest point of the edge... of the largest edge in the world.

And yet even then it doesn’t even come close to explaining it. How tragically pathetic it makes you feel, how articulating the sensation can make you feel the most gigantic loser.

Where to go? Where do all the broken things go. Things that cannot be fixed.

I have woken up with amnesia, only forgotten to lose my memory.

22 February - Storm Doris

When you feel as vacant as a dormant volcano crater; as lifeless as an extinct fossilised dinosaur bone, and invisible as world peace.

11 February

Today is a day of princess and the pea syndrome, only I'm not lying in bed - the bed is just existence itself.

Walking amongst people on the street - can they not see the gaping holes? Can they not see the darkness? How can they not be as disgusted.

The world is in monotone today; a broken shopping trolley abandoned on the side of the road, rusting away, its wheel refusing to go any direction other than - no.

31st January - British library treasures

In London the other day, I went to the British Library to look at the wonderfully named "Treasures".

Despite the fact they're not, sadly, in a chest covered in sand having just been dug up where X marked the spot, they really are treasures.

A wealth of literary manuscripts and priceless documents - not just monetary value, but in terms of their importance to the world. As I went around the room, I was astounded at what I was seeing. From the musical sections - Mozart, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams' handwritten compositions. Original Beatles lyrics scribbled down on bits of paper. To the classics - Thomas Hardy's rough drafts, his writing incredibly awkward to decipher. Jane Austen's letters and early stories; Beowulf, George Elliot.

Just as I saw one and was agog, the next popped up in the next display cabinet, expanding my mind's wonderment onto galaxy levels. My eyes felt like they coming out of their sockets on stalks.

It wasn't even just necessarily literary greats but documents of scientific (even cultural) importance - Captain Scott's Diary (for me, personally, particularly poignant  - I have long been fascinated with Scott and his expedition), Alexander Flemings notes from when he discovered Penicillin.

There is something special about seeing these documents, writings and items in the person's own hand. My stomach fluttered as I looked at the Handel's Messiah written out in the composer's own hand. Thomas Hardy's writing, although difficult to actually read, was fascinating - the crossing out, the editing. It was seeing the processes, the thought, of the literature being created. These were papers the person touched and marked. And ever the romantic, I feel a sense of wonder at this.

What will future generations have that will equal this? I am writing this now on my computer. Edits are made and lost instantly as the software auto saves and replaces. My own thought stepping stones and processes, my workings out are often lost into the ether.
Not that I am comparing myself to literary greats, but it does make me wonder as we write physically less, and type digitally more, what trails we as humans and the future literary greats will be leaving for our children's children to enjoy. They will lose that personal connection to an object, to a drab of ink, and will miss the beauty in the errors - as well as that safe knowledge that even geniuses get it wrong.

29 January - Music

This week is best left to the footnotes of history. I wish I could drag and drop days to the trash can icon, so that I never have to think about them again. Apart from, that is, having been to two excellent gigs the last few nights. Martha Wainwright and Gruff Rhys.

It sounds naff but I am a huge fan of both. I hate the word fan as a description of your admiration to someone or thing. It feels something flippant, or childish. It seems often synonymously used with the music industry, and I scold myself for using it here in lazy writing.

Martha was brilliant. She always is, in a way that almost diminishes how good she is. It seems so effortless and expected. Her brother Rufus is the same. And music is one of the few things feeding me successfully - it keeps me nourished, it makes me feel like my heart is finally beating. Live music especially.  

I find it odd sometimes listening to Martha and Rufus' music now. Their incredible music carried me through a particularly dark time a few years ago. An ambulance constructed of heartfelt crotchets and bridges. 

Listening to those songs now scoops me up in a large open topped fender and sends me flying back to that time. Its a tiny bit uncomfortable and yet also very comforting. It's like bumping into your ex. Hashtag awkward-but-kinda-nice. 

The worst part for me I guess, was the reminder that in someways, I have come full circle again. I've moved on so much and yet have somehow managed to end up back at the start line. 

And that is, singularly, the most heaviest weight to carry. If you had told me this during that time, that after all this that was the outcome, I'm not sure I would have been strong enough to have resisted the sirens of death drive.

23rd January - Oil

There's a mysterious cryptic squeak emitting from my bike, and I cannot uncover the source. I'm failing GCSE Sherlock Holmesing.

It's most infuriating, at first I thought I was imagining it. Then I thought I was being followed by a hoarse crow. A very persistent, repetitive and relentless bird.

Imagine being an endless squeak in a machine. Forever chirping away, desperate for a drink, but no one can be bothered to buy a round in. Everyone can hear you, but everyone pretends to ignore, despite the relentless bellowing of annoy.

I have flashbacks to that car advert from the 1980s, and it could well end up that actually, one of my earrings needs oiling.