When the evidence of a fall becomes apparent, it is already too late to stop the dramatic plunge earthwards towards a new, lower resting place.
Once the foot slips on the ice, there is nothing more to be done except to intercept the ground and pick the bruises off yourself like ripe fruit. Once the avalanche takes hold, the only course of action is to wait to be burned to death in its whiteness, the tongue of the mountain reaching beneath the flesh to drink your blood.
When the depressive sees the first warning sign of a relapse, the horse bolted long ago. That first sign is loss of interest in that which maintains the make-believe structure of a significant and fulfilling life. I noticed it on Monday: wan footballers creating pretty patterns to no greater purpose, egged on by aggressive, tribalistic followers.
The futility of everything is drawn into sharp relief: the most important thing in the world is to get up before lunchtime and pull together the scraps of the day that remain, and yet the result, when accomplished, is met with disgust and disappointment. What is wanted is wanted until it is achieved, and then it is regarded with suspicion and drained of merit.
I don't know how far away the bottom is, or when I shall land there, frightened and broken. Every time, I promise that there will be no return to this pit, this distance, only to relapse eventually to my origins.
Could it be that the shock which pushes the depressive body off the edge of the cliff - again - is the residue of previous shocks which pushed the depressive body off the edge of the cliff? Like an idiotic, incomprehensible video sequence repeated forever, an invisible force causes a man to fall far enough to kill him, only for him to come back to life every single time, shaking off the muck and stasis of the grave.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Recurrence.
Three days after Christmas, and more than 18000 had turned up for the game - the stadium wasn't full, but the patches of empty red seats were smaller and fewer than normal.
The gate had been swelled by a good four or five thousand from the north-east, and to cut a long story short, I witnessed a stirring fightback from a home side whose resources and status were inferior to their opponents, who arrived with the cachet and squad of a very recent top-division side.
It was the kind of afternoon, with the winter and dark closing over Oakwell's maw, that I live for: eleven red upstarts re-affirming that where I come from might not be the most affluent or storied town on the planet, but its football team will turn you over with a low-budget mix of perceptive ball-play and fighting like cornered animals.
I should have been elated beyond normal parameters on my exit from the ground, but I was gripped by melancholia: the result didn't matter to me, because I was fixated on my own internal fluctuations. I don't know what happened - I'd undergone my usual struggle to get out of bed in the morning, rushing for the train after a very quick wash and cursory clean of my teeth.
I'd set the alarm for quarter past nine but didn't properly surface until just before eleven, a dark filament of sleep bridging the interim. All through the northward journey, I tried and failed to immerse myself in a book, never managing to break through its difficult shell to extract the clarity and drama flowing beneath.
The rapid, geometric events of the first half passed me by, except that I mused on the futility of my obsession with the game when the visitors scored: thousands of ecstatic supporters bouncing like jack-in-the boxes in the away end, telling us our support is fucking shit, and that their team is the greatest the world has ever seen.
When Barnsley inverted matters in the second half, there was no rush of excitement when either of the two (well-worked) goals went in. I stood politely and clapped, feeling the great void of the universe echo through my bones. No over-the-top exuberance at the end, no feeling of relief - the normal schemata of football-match attendance had been drained of almost everything: all that existed was turn up, go home again, and exclude the middle.
The gate had been swelled by a good four or five thousand from the north-east, and to cut a long story short, I witnessed a stirring fightback from a home side whose resources and status were inferior to their opponents, who arrived with the cachet and squad of a very recent top-division side.
It was the kind of afternoon, with the winter and dark closing over Oakwell's maw, that I live for: eleven red upstarts re-affirming that where I come from might not be the most affluent or storied town on the planet, but its football team will turn you over with a low-budget mix of perceptive ball-play and fighting like cornered animals.
I should have been elated beyond normal parameters on my exit from the ground, but I was gripped by melancholia: the result didn't matter to me, because I was fixated on my own internal fluctuations. I don't know what happened - I'd undergone my usual struggle to get out of bed in the morning, rushing for the train after a very quick wash and cursory clean of my teeth.
I'd set the alarm for quarter past nine but didn't properly surface until just before eleven, a dark filament of sleep bridging the interim. All through the northward journey, I tried and failed to immerse myself in a book, never managing to break through its difficult shell to extract the clarity and drama flowing beneath.
The rapid, geometric events of the first half passed me by, except that I mused on the futility of my obsession with the game when the visitors scored: thousands of ecstatic supporters bouncing like jack-in-the boxes in the away end, telling us our support is fucking shit, and that their team is the greatest the world has ever seen.
When Barnsley inverted matters in the second half, there was no rush of excitement when either of the two (well-worked) goals went in. I stood politely and clapped, feeling the great void of the universe echo through my bones. No over-the-top exuberance at the end, no feeling of relief - the normal schemata of football-match attendance had been drained of almost everything: all that existed was turn up, go home again, and exclude the middle.
Saturday, 26 December 2009
Ebenber.
Ebenber 25 in the year 2309 is what would have been Christmas Day, until the Ebenistas came along and overthrew the old religion, killing their calendar as a humiliating afterthought.
Clad in half-blue and half-red, thousands of Eben's adherents took to the streets of Rome in the latter days of the 23rd century, intent on tipping the Pope out of his gilded cart and turning his face into the dirt with the soles of their boots.
But Rome did not fall easily - the cardinals had to be shaken out of their aesthetic splendour like salt from a cellar, and the debilitating, drawn-out process took a decade or more. The wall of hired, sinewy muscle drafted in on the minimum wage to fight Catholicism's battles was capable of administering a nasty blow from a meaty fist or a short-range weapon. Even God Himself needs the assistance of a thug with thick forearms from time to time.
Every day the same staging of the same conflict under the same conditions - two great, lumbering beasts locked together in an orgasmic, static rage. It was not sheer military might or weight of numbers that turned the war away from the established church, but the zeal of the new order which had yet to become embedded; which was not yet such a part of the common vernacular that its propagation was guaranteed to be handed down with conception.
Clad in half-blue and half-red, thousands of Eben's adherents took to the streets of Rome in the latter days of the 23rd century, intent on tipping the Pope out of his gilded cart and turning his face into the dirt with the soles of their boots.
But Rome did not fall easily - the cardinals had to be shaken out of their aesthetic splendour like salt from a cellar, and the debilitating, drawn-out process took a decade or more. The wall of hired, sinewy muscle drafted in on the minimum wage to fight Catholicism's battles was capable of administering a nasty blow from a meaty fist or a short-range weapon. Even God Himself needs the assistance of a thug with thick forearms from time to time.
Every day the same staging of the same conflict under the same conditions - two great, lumbering beasts locked together in an orgasmic, static rage. It was not sheer military might or weight of numbers that turned the war away from the established church, but the zeal of the new order which had yet to become embedded; which was not yet such a part of the common vernacular that its propagation was guaranteed to be handed down with conception.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Nightmares.
Nightmares.
The seeds of nightmares invariably lie dormant, only to bloom into upsetting episodes weeks or months later, just when they have been forgotten about.
I've had a run of them since the weekend, most of which involve falling from a high structure and hurtling through the atmosphere at terminal velocity.
I am interested in what it is that causes nightmares to be frightening - when I was four years old I had one whose engine was obvious, and yet still continues to puzzle me. A girl, sitting beneath a tree, smiling, and as innocent-looking as you would expect the dream-contents of a child to be - and yet I woke up, more-or-less screaming the house down.
As I try to articulate it now (I remember the nightmare vividly) the best I can manage is that there was 'something evil' about the girl beneath the tree. Despite the exterior appearance of harmlessness, the 'dreamscape' pulsated with imminent terror and destruction - at which point my sleep came to an abrupt halt.
In the case of my falling off the tops of high buildings and bridges etc. (did I jump? was I pushed?) it is the sense of acceleration towards the ground, experienced as a sinking feeling in the stomach, which jolts me awake.
For now, the only common ground I can find between every nightmare I can recall (I'm told that the ones which leave no imprint on the waking mind are the worst) is the loss of control - the mind with which I act is temporarily hijacked, and I am forced to endure images which I have no wish to be exposed to. It is the process of the nightmare at all, as opposed to specific details, which causes feelings of distress.
I ask, in addition, why the 'seeds' of the nightmare choose to discharge their unpleasantness now and not at some other point in time? Is it to do with the departure of Bluefish, and this is a delayed reaction? Is it hinting at some internal crisis, the nature of which I can only guess? Or is it 'just' the periodic fluctuations of an over-worked imagination?
Perhaps admitting their existence in the public domain is merely fuel to the fire, and I shall now be dogged with nightmares for months on end as revenge for tipping out the dustbin of the unconscious. But I hold the view that these processes are fair game for discussion, and take the decision to publish and be damned.
The seeds of nightmares invariably lie dormant, only to bloom into upsetting episodes weeks or months later, just when they have been forgotten about.
I've had a run of them since the weekend, most of which involve falling from a high structure and hurtling through the atmosphere at terminal velocity.
I am interested in what it is that causes nightmares to be frightening - when I was four years old I had one whose engine was obvious, and yet still continues to puzzle me. A girl, sitting beneath a tree, smiling, and as innocent-looking as you would expect the dream-contents of a child to be - and yet I woke up, more-or-less screaming the house down.
As I try to articulate it now (I remember the nightmare vividly) the best I can manage is that there was 'something evil' about the girl beneath the tree. Despite the exterior appearance of harmlessness, the 'dreamscape' pulsated with imminent terror and destruction - at which point my sleep came to an abrupt halt.
In the case of my falling off the tops of high buildings and bridges etc. (did I jump? was I pushed?) it is the sense of acceleration towards the ground, experienced as a sinking feeling in the stomach, which jolts me awake.
For now, the only common ground I can find between every nightmare I can recall (I'm told that the ones which leave no imprint on the waking mind are the worst) is the loss of control - the mind with which I act is temporarily hijacked, and I am forced to endure images which I have no wish to be exposed to. It is the process of the nightmare at all, as opposed to specific details, which causes feelings of distress.
I ask, in addition, why the 'seeds' of the nightmare choose to discharge their unpleasantness now and not at some other point in time? Is it to do with the departure of Bluefish, and this is a delayed reaction? Is it hinting at some internal crisis, the nature of which I can only guess? Or is it 'just' the periodic fluctuations of an over-worked imagination?
Perhaps admitting their existence in the public domain is merely fuel to the fire, and I shall now be dogged with nightmares for months on end as revenge for tipping out the dustbin of the unconscious. But I hold the view that these processes are fair game for discussion, and take the decision to publish and be damned.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Anniversary.
In the past year I have:
"In the past year, we, with the aiming of tending the non-physical but nevertheless tangible third party that constitutes our relationship, have...."
For, of course, this is all about we, and how we go about bridging distances, doing our best to maintain the structure and discipline of a short-range relationship when we are anything but, and the third party of our relationship is even more fragile than normal.
One year on from the seismic moment which turned everything on its head, when you were the first flash of lightning and I the rod, I spend the dying moments of our first anniversary thinking of you, the random, chaotic way in which we met, two gas atoms bouncing about urgently until we finally connected; the paranoia and nerves as I went to meet you at the airport for the first time; the broken halves we leave behind when we are separated.
It has been hard at times but the most demanding climb leads to the most breathtaking views during the journey. After a year of pushing on, I would like to continue the ascent, for my eyes and mind and being are at peace whenever I stop for a moment to contemplate the fruits of our labour.
Happy anniversary, Bluefish!
- discovered the exchange rate between the currencies of Great Britain and Australia - one Frazzle dropped into your mouth is sufficient remuneration for one kiss (at least when on Swiss soil);
- heard you sing that you come from a land Down Under, alternated with the idea that Australians are all ostriches;
- fallen out of a train in Vienna - frightening Germanic words and high, bare, rumbling Germanic engineering;
- been so sickened at your imminent departure that I found myself incapable of eating;
- slalomed through the streets of Budapest, without a word of Hungarian, in pursuit of a flight which I genuinely thought was going to leave without us;
- made you the birth spark of every single word of this blog - the revealing, the derivative, the obvious and the thought-provoking alike;
- giggled to myself at the unprovoked invocation of the word 'antipodean,' my guarantee of mock rage from you;
- realised that strawberry milk is our elixir, and promised that the tap will remain shut off until we are together again;
- read with joy about the non-existence of Ern Malley.
"In the past year, we, with the aiming of tending the non-physical but nevertheless tangible third party that constitutes our relationship, have...."
For, of course, this is all about we, and how we go about bridging distances, doing our best to maintain the structure and discipline of a short-range relationship when we are anything but, and the third party of our relationship is even more fragile than normal.
One year on from the seismic moment which turned everything on its head, when you were the first flash of lightning and I the rod, I spend the dying moments of our first anniversary thinking of you, the random, chaotic way in which we met, two gas atoms bouncing about urgently until we finally connected; the paranoia and nerves as I went to meet you at the airport for the first time; the broken halves we leave behind when we are separated.
It has been hard at times but the most demanding climb leads to the most breathtaking views during the journey. After a year of pushing on, I would like to continue the ascent, for my eyes and mind and being are at peace whenever I stop for a moment to contemplate the fruits of our labour.
Happy anniversary, Bluefish!
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Birthday (I).
A list of birthday wishes, precluding all barriers and improbabilities:
-For humanity to continue the relentless chase for knowledge. My instincts say there are some categories of learning so esoteric and abstract that they can probably never be grasped without the application of principles which are yet alien to us. As a non-scientist, I suspect that scientists are attacking questions at the edge of current understanding with tools which are stone-age in comparison to those required. Yet one day, thumping at the surface of a dilemma with an outdated instrument will lead to the insight necessary to produce a new means with which to attack. It is the consignment of certain people, then, to be disappointed; to bash away relentlessly without the consolation of triumph. This is the weight which pins you to the floor, that you speak of with a devastated love, yet without it you would float away.
-I want to appeal to dreamers to keep dreaming, even as you struggle to communicate those dreams. Such wishes, drawn from the very shaft of the soul, do not commit themselves easily to words. Speak of them only loosely, then, but never let the dream itself stray too far from your side.
-Don't fear to admit that the patterns formed in the brain are many times quicker than the oscillations of the tongue. And when the tongue beats the synapses to the gun and you stand, temporarily confused and embarrassed, don't be scared to admit that either.
-Realise the paradox that we face as a species: we pursue an infinite amount of knowledge in a finite amount of time. That is - one day, I expect our race to be obliterated. The odds of it not happening (again, my inner fountain of all knowledge tells me) are astronomical. And if we slalom around danger upon danger for the next five billion years, then we'll need to recolonise on a different planet before the sun's last gasps erase us.
-I wish for the abolition of all religion and all religious sentiment, but I realise that in the subsequent vacuum of irreligiosity, a more virulent strain of deity would spring up.
-Know that my inner fountain of knowledge is inherently flawed. Go to the bookmaker at once and place a bet on the human race lasting at least another five billion years.
-I want to believe that love lasts forever. I want to believe that it is a contract between two conscious entities which isn't revoked upon argument, or even death. If this is the case then we have no need for eternal life.
-I want to believe that I'll be here in another 12 months, writing more of the same, and that Bluefish will be upstairs complaining that I'm a bloody drongo who keeps very awkward sleeping hours, and that I should retire to bed now. So the warning goes, it is only another three hours (at the most) until her confused internal clock begins to wake me up again from the nap I had barely started.
-For humanity to continue the relentless chase for knowledge. My instincts say there are some categories of learning so esoteric and abstract that they can probably never be grasped without the application of principles which are yet alien to us. As a non-scientist, I suspect that scientists are attacking questions at the edge of current understanding with tools which are stone-age in comparison to those required. Yet one day, thumping at the surface of a dilemma with an outdated instrument will lead to the insight necessary to produce a new means with which to attack. It is the consignment of certain people, then, to be disappointed; to bash away relentlessly without the consolation of triumph. This is the weight which pins you to the floor, that you speak of with a devastated love, yet without it you would float away.
-I want to appeal to dreamers to keep dreaming, even as you struggle to communicate those dreams. Such wishes, drawn from the very shaft of the soul, do not commit themselves easily to words. Speak of them only loosely, then, but never let the dream itself stray too far from your side.
-Don't fear to admit that the patterns formed in the brain are many times quicker than the oscillations of the tongue. And when the tongue beats the synapses to the gun and you stand, temporarily confused and embarrassed, don't be scared to admit that either.
-Realise the paradox that we face as a species: we pursue an infinite amount of knowledge in a finite amount of time. That is - one day, I expect our race to be obliterated. The odds of it not happening (again, my inner fountain of all knowledge tells me) are astronomical. And if we slalom around danger upon danger for the next five billion years, then we'll need to recolonise on a different planet before the sun's last gasps erase us.
-I wish for the abolition of all religion and all religious sentiment, but I realise that in the subsequent vacuum of irreligiosity, a more virulent strain of deity would spring up.
-Know that my inner fountain of knowledge is inherently flawed. Go to the bookmaker at once and place a bet on the human race lasting at least another five billion years.
-I want to believe that love lasts forever. I want to believe that it is a contract between two conscious entities which isn't revoked upon argument, or even death. If this is the case then we have no need for eternal life.
-I want to believe that I'll be here in another 12 months, writing more of the same, and that Bluefish will be upstairs complaining that I'm a bloody drongo who keeps very awkward sleeping hours, and that I should retire to bed now. So the warning goes, it is only another three hours (at the most) until her confused internal clock begins to wake me up again from the nap I had barely started.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Suicide.
In what is likely to be the least surprising news of 2009, it was confirmed on Monday that my mother's friend, who died last week, had actually committed suicide.
Anyone who'd ever met her knew that the image of her own death followed her very closely - indeed, she'd tried to end her life on a couple of occasions, only to be pulled back from the brink of obliteration at the last possible moment.
The third time, though, there was no dramatic rescue act. Like the cat who had nine times to die (of course those words are not mine) finally the numbers stacked up. Nobody knows how many co-codamol she took, each one another bullet to a fragile body which had long ago taken enough punishment - but the important thing, from her perspective, is that there were enough to do the job.
It took her a fortnight to die, leaking blood, and organs failing successively like a set of dominoes. To be prepared to sacrifice oneself because there is no longer anything to live for is the ultimate resetting of consciousness - I have done all there is for me to do, and I hereby express the wish to become again my constituent atoms before nature otherwise would decree it.
Speculating wildly for a moment, though, what if that isn't it? What if she is condemned to be spat out, disappointed and shocked, once again into the world? I was reminded of this possibility - be it eternal repetition or eternal re-incarnation - as a colleague and I stayed back late at work last night.
The South African, my ex-girlfriend, was a staunch believer in re-incarnation, even devising a system by which she could estimate the age of a person's soul: nah, she's a new soul. Look at her, floating like a bubble. He on the other hand, has been here and back many times before - an endless journey.
What if it's true? It's unverifiable, but what if it's true? Every eighty years or so, springing up like a jack-in-the-box or a flower? It makes suicide - which I've always regarded as the last cry of defiance, the final blinding burst of light - even more futile than purchasing a lottery ticket.
The 14 million-to-one probability of winning the jackpot suddenly looks like a hell of a bet compared to taking one's own life - the first has almost zero chance of ever coming up, but with the second you've already been beaten before your body is even cold.
Oh, how easily the certainties by which we move from one day to the next are overturned! How simple it is to take a cherished truism and invert it! Suicide is no longer the falling of the hero, but the tossing of a loaded coin. It is the gun in which every chamber - and none of them - contains live ammunition.
Anyone who'd ever met her knew that the image of her own death followed her very closely - indeed, she'd tried to end her life on a couple of occasions, only to be pulled back from the brink of obliteration at the last possible moment.
The third time, though, there was no dramatic rescue act. Like the cat who had nine times to die (of course those words are not mine) finally the numbers stacked up. Nobody knows how many co-codamol she took, each one another bullet to a fragile body which had long ago taken enough punishment - but the important thing, from her perspective, is that there were enough to do the job.
It took her a fortnight to die, leaking blood, and organs failing successively like a set of dominoes. To be prepared to sacrifice oneself because there is no longer anything to live for is the ultimate resetting of consciousness - I have done all there is for me to do, and I hereby express the wish to become again my constituent atoms before nature otherwise would decree it.
Speculating wildly for a moment, though, what if that isn't it? What if she is condemned to be spat out, disappointed and shocked, once again into the world? I was reminded of this possibility - be it eternal repetition or eternal re-incarnation - as a colleague and I stayed back late at work last night.
The South African, my ex-girlfriend, was a staunch believer in re-incarnation, even devising a system by which she could estimate the age of a person's soul: nah, she's a new soul. Look at her, floating like a bubble. He on the other hand, has been here and back many times before - an endless journey.
What if it's true? It's unverifiable, but what if it's true? Every eighty years or so, springing up like a jack-in-the-box or a flower? It makes suicide - which I've always regarded as the last cry of defiance, the final blinding burst of light - even more futile than purchasing a lottery ticket.
The 14 million-to-one probability of winning the jackpot suddenly looks like a hell of a bet compared to taking one's own life - the first has almost zero chance of ever coming up, but with the second you've already been beaten before your body is even cold.
Oh, how easily the certainties by which we move from one day to the next are overturned! How simple it is to take a cherished truism and invert it! Suicide is no longer the falling of the hero, but the tossing of a loaded coin. It is the gun in which every chamber - and none of them - contains live ammunition.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Airport.
The fifth of December, and Heathrow had already put on her Christmas outfit.
Soft blue lighting arranged in the manner of a snowfall hung from the ceiling of Terminal Four; and the food outlets were serving turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches.
It didn't feel much like Christmas, though, as I sat opposite Bluefish in one of the aforementioned outlets with one of the aformentioned sandwiches -it had gone 4pm, and we were both aware that our time together was now short.
Our three weeks together had elapsed, and she was leaving England at just after eight o'clock. I estimated that, with her needing to check in and jump through the hoops required to board, we'd got a couple of hours left and no more.
I got the idea in my head that my lips were a timing device - every utterance slicing off another chunk of whatever remained, knives instead of the hands of a clock - so I was sparing with my words.
Words, anyway, are difficult when one's fate is already decided. The only meaningful sequence in such circumstances is a statement asserting that you embrace the inevitable. Everything else is nonsense.
We were fairly quiet, then, when the elderly lady asked if she could sit at our table. Of course, we consented, you're more than welcome. I expected her to just sit quietly while I trained my gaze upon Bluefish, trying to take 'photographs with my eyes,' so that I might recall them as I'm falling to sleep, as I wake up again.
The lady, though, was anything but quiet. A non-exhaustive list of her topics of conversation in the space of some 30 minutes or so: the Meredith Kercher murder trial; her own forthcoming trip to India; the reasons why I wasn't accompanying Bluefish to Australia; whether or not cartons of orange juice can be taken on aeroplanes; previous visits to the far east; her knowledge of Australian geography.
Bluefish did the bulk of the talking; I sat there dumb as a post. I felt simultaneously sad and relieved: sad because the pure agony of the inevitable was denied to us, two hearts thumping in unison like synchronished stop-watches. Relieved because I didn't have to experience the unique and difficult pain of separation.
Soft blue lighting arranged in the manner of a snowfall hung from the ceiling of Terminal Four; and the food outlets were serving turkey-and-cranberry sandwiches.
It didn't feel much like Christmas, though, as I sat opposite Bluefish in one of the aforementioned outlets with one of the aformentioned sandwiches -it had gone 4pm, and we were both aware that our time together was now short.
Our three weeks together had elapsed, and she was leaving England at just after eight o'clock. I estimated that, with her needing to check in and jump through the hoops required to board, we'd got a couple of hours left and no more.
I got the idea in my head that my lips were a timing device - every utterance slicing off another chunk of whatever remained, knives instead of the hands of a clock - so I was sparing with my words.
Words, anyway, are difficult when one's fate is already decided. The only meaningful sequence in such circumstances is a statement asserting that you embrace the inevitable. Everything else is nonsense.
We were fairly quiet, then, when the elderly lady asked if she could sit at our table. Of course, we consented, you're more than welcome. I expected her to just sit quietly while I trained my gaze upon Bluefish, trying to take 'photographs with my eyes,' so that I might recall them as I'm falling to sleep, as I wake up again.
The lady, though, was anything but quiet. A non-exhaustive list of her topics of conversation in the space of some 30 minutes or so: the Meredith Kercher murder trial; her own forthcoming trip to India; the reasons why I wasn't accompanying Bluefish to Australia; whether or not cartons of orange juice can be taken on aeroplanes; previous visits to the far east; her knowledge of Australian geography.
Bluefish did the bulk of the talking; I sat there dumb as a post. I felt simultaneously sad and relieved: sad because the pure agony of the inevitable was denied to us, two hearts thumping in unison like synchronished stop-watches. Relieved because I didn't have to experience the unique and difficult pain of separation.
Friday, 11 December 2009
Awakening.
The dark shell of the house looms over my arched neck, as I sit wondering why I ever bother to write anything at all.
What despairing prod compels the unwilling finger to discharge the mind's incoherent kaleidoscope, still churning out its chaotic dream-states even as they are poured from digit to page?
The self is no longer autonomous, aligned definitely with its conscious goals. It instead is parasitized, deflected, and floating in the recesses of itself.
To create is to endlessly re-arrange the same small stock of symbols and force new combinations from old material, and the urge to create is the imperative, cried from within the self, to replenish barren resources.
Now my prone body lies limp in the chair, a dessicated starfish, and I say: no more! no more shuffling of the same deck of cards! Yet the implacable voice demands that I produce something, that the eye must cajole the mind into smashing together a river and a sonnet in the hope of experiencing an almost-smile.
To truly create is to annihilate every thought, and begin again, child-like and vulnerable. Adult cynicism means I can never destroy everything, but I can sometimes pick away at the clouds which obscure the vision, and apprehend the universe with clarity - but only ever for a moment.
What despairing prod compels the unwilling finger to discharge the mind's incoherent kaleidoscope, still churning out its chaotic dream-states even as they are poured from digit to page?
The self is no longer autonomous, aligned definitely with its conscious goals. It instead is parasitized, deflected, and floating in the recesses of itself.
To create is to endlessly re-arrange the same small stock of symbols and force new combinations from old material, and the urge to create is the imperative, cried from within the self, to replenish barren resources.
Now my prone body lies limp in the chair, a dessicated starfish, and I say: no more! no more shuffling of the same deck of cards! Yet the implacable voice demands that I produce something, that the eye must cajole the mind into smashing together a river and a sonnet in the hope of experiencing an almost-smile.
To truly create is to annihilate every thought, and begin again, child-like and vulnerable. Adult cynicism means I can never destroy everything, but I can sometimes pick away at the clouds which obscure the vision, and apprehend the universe with clarity - but only ever for a moment.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Vienna.
I now realise the paradox which is at the heart of many human transactions - yet I lack the words to describe it fully.
Bluefish has been and gone: the house is strewn with her possessions, and I am working my way through the book about Ern Malley which she bought for me.
It is, in other words, almost as though she is still here: memories still breathing, more real than anything I've ever dreamed. There is a connection between events and my recollection of them which will certainly decay over the course of the next few months:-
I was scared of the Bratislava-Vienna train. The door was heavy, alien, and there was no obvious way of getting it open once it had slammed shut. I didn't like the sheer drop between the edge of the carriage and the platform - a good foot or eighteen inches further off the floor than on English trains.
So when we arrived at the station, my instinct was to put distance between myself and the strange vehicle which had carried me there. As soon as the door opened - I struggled to make it do so, not seeing the push-button over my left shoulder - I leapt out of it, complete with one piece of luggage, maybe two.
I landed awkwardly, scattering people on the platform as they tried not to bump into the gibberish-speaking, angry-looking foreigner who had just fallen out of the door.
Bluefish couldn't stop laughing, and, once I'd got over the initial realisation of what an idiot I
must have looked, enjoyed mocking myself as well.
Without too much strain on my behalf, I am able to recall quite specific details about the moment when I made a fool of myself. It is this proximity to the very recent past which sets the trap of the paradox - when memories are alive and breathing, the events to which they refer are not closed.
It is as if the consequences and conclusions which are the natural endpoints to past events are yet to be fully realised - as though they are provisional. It would seem that it takes time for a memory to fully 'set' - the past in some way re-arranging the present and even the future with its ghostly appendages.
The time between an event occurring and its memory 'setting' brings (for me) a closeness to the objects and people which composed the event. So I feel as though I orbit Bluefish particularly closely in these days - a house pockmarked with things belonging to her, and a recent history which has still to fully reveal itself.
Bluefish has been and gone: the house is strewn with her possessions, and I am working my way through the book about Ern Malley which she bought for me.
It is, in other words, almost as though she is still here: memories still breathing, more real than anything I've ever dreamed. There is a connection between events and my recollection of them which will certainly decay over the course of the next few months:-
I was scared of the Bratislava-Vienna train. The door was heavy, alien, and there was no obvious way of getting it open once it had slammed shut. I didn't like the sheer drop between the edge of the carriage and the platform - a good foot or eighteen inches further off the floor than on English trains.
So when we arrived at the station, my instinct was to put distance between myself and the strange vehicle which had carried me there. As soon as the door opened - I struggled to make it do so, not seeing the push-button over my left shoulder - I leapt out of it, complete with one piece of luggage, maybe two.
I landed awkwardly, scattering people on the platform as they tried not to bump into the gibberish-speaking, angry-looking foreigner who had just fallen out of the door.
Bluefish couldn't stop laughing, and, once I'd got over the initial realisation of what an idiot I
must have looked, enjoyed mocking myself as well.
Without too much strain on my behalf, I am able to recall quite specific details about the moment when I made a fool of myself. It is this proximity to the very recent past which sets the trap of the paradox - when memories are alive and breathing, the events to which they refer are not closed.
It is as if the consequences and conclusions which are the natural endpoints to past events are yet to be fully realised - as though they are provisional. It would seem that it takes time for a memory to fully 'set' - the past in some way re-arranging the present and even the future with its ghostly appendages.
The time between an event occurring and its memory 'setting' brings (for me) a closeness to the objects and people which composed the event. So I feel as though I orbit Bluefish particularly closely in these days - a house pockmarked with things belonging to her, and a recent history which has still to fully reveal itself.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Politics.
In Bratislava's historic centre, several large boxes decorated with images of communism, and more still through the peep-holes cut into their surfaces.
Each one commemorating the fall of an ideology, city by city: this one Budapest, this one Warsaw, this one Berlin.
The most striking image was that of Bucharest - thousands of Romanians pouring into the street to celebrate the removal of the hated foot from their windpipe.
During such a great outpouring of joy, it is easy to forgive citizens for not asking themselves what they had left behind, and what surprises were in store for them in the future, for the ecstasy of triumph is all-consuming, at least for a short while.
I am trying to imagine what it must be like to go to sleep, and wake up with everything one is accustomed to suddenly inverted. Was there ever a group of psychiatrists to help stunned Romanians come to terms with their new world? Was there ever a doctor to dispense a metaphorical slap around the face and say: this is not a dream?
How would a person make the necessary transformation from living under one system to its total opposite? One where the new thinking simultaneously says that flawlessness is within one's grasp, and as far away as the stars?
The Bratislava rectangles gave me no clue as to how I might answer these questions. Faces frozen with joy from 20 years ago, trapped in their moment forever. Singular images standing as representations of whole countries, as general principles.
All of it is, of course, history now. The sick and the dead and the damned in their Slovakian obelisks - each one signifying everything and signifying nothing.
I need not write, for I have only a sketchy grasp of that which I am writing about. I know no more about Communism than I do ballistics, for I lived not in their moment. I look at the dead eyes of Romanians through the dead aperture of another person's camera, and I think of history in my own naive and ignorant way.
Each one commemorating the fall of an ideology, city by city: this one Budapest, this one Warsaw, this one Berlin.
The most striking image was that of Bucharest - thousands of Romanians pouring into the street to celebrate the removal of the hated foot from their windpipe.
During such a great outpouring of joy, it is easy to forgive citizens for not asking themselves what they had left behind, and what surprises were in store for them in the future, for the ecstasy of triumph is all-consuming, at least for a short while.
I am trying to imagine what it must be like to go to sleep, and wake up with everything one is accustomed to suddenly inverted. Was there ever a group of psychiatrists to help stunned Romanians come to terms with their new world? Was there ever a doctor to dispense a metaphorical slap around the face and say: this is not a dream?
How would a person make the necessary transformation from living under one system to its total opposite? One where the new thinking simultaneously says that flawlessness is within one's grasp, and as far away as the stars?
The Bratislava rectangles gave me no clue as to how I might answer these questions. Faces frozen with joy from 20 years ago, trapped in their moment forever. Singular images standing as representations of whole countries, as general principles.
All of it is, of course, history now. The sick and the dead and the damned in their Slovakian obelisks - each one signifying everything and signifying nothing.
I need not write, for I have only a sketchy grasp of that which I am writing about. I know no more about Communism than I do ballistics, for I lived not in their moment. I look at the dead eyes of Romanians through the dead aperture of another person's camera, and I think of history in my own naive and ignorant way.
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