San Francisco International Airport, where crying had ceased to be a reaction and turned into a process.
No long, exhausting howls of pain here; no, I sat with my dust-grey sweatshirt and two bottles of lemonade, and re-invented the whole thing.
A bit of crying; a sip of drink; and the sweatshirt clearing the eyes; a bit of crying; a sip of drink; and the sweatshirt clearing the eyes; the liquid from the lemonade sustaining the fuel for the tears, and this was the case for a good half-an-hour.
People had stopped by my seat to ask if I was alright on a couple of occasions, at which I nodded slowly or grunted, assured them there was nothing to be concerned about, and at once continued the cry-drink-dry repertoire.
No-one took their line of questioning any further after I had dismissed them in the cold, practised way I have, for talking to a distressed person is difficult and unrewarding anyway, and this is more still the case when the distressed individual shows no desire to communicate.
No-one took their line of questioning any further, that is, until I was approached by two American employees of British Airways: Pamela and Maria.
Pamela and Maria refused to leave me alone until I had told them my story - yeah, I came here and contrived to fail in the most magnificent way; yeah, I got mugged when I was blogging on a bench - but the reason I am going home early is to do with the former and not the latter.
Maria hugged me and told me it isn't the end of the world, and she is of course correct. Relationships more substantial than the one which never happened in San Francisco come to an end every hour of every day.
She and Pamela tried to get a free upgrade for my flight back to London, and put me in one of the pre take-off executive lounges, where I could console myself with food and alcohol courtesy of the airline.
Pamela and Maria were on hand to demonstrate that, even when all seems lost, friendship can be found in the darkest corners; they showed empathy for a lost and heartbroken fellow human being at the point when it was needed most; they surpassed any corporate imperative with their cuddles and good humour.
Pamela and Maria are the unlikely saviours of a man who had refused to distribute his misery amongst others despite their best efforts - if an atheist is permitted to throw off his world-view for a moment and postulate the existence of angels, then this is the time to do so.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Horses.
Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco and the heat-haze silvered all the cars as far as my struggling eyes could see.
It was too sickeningly hot for any European that day; I had no thermometer but estimated that the temperature must have exceeded a hundred. Being weighed down by luggage and misery made it seem warmer still.
This was as good a time as any to die, I imagined - might as well get hit on the short journey from Stonestown to the nearest municipal train stop, or be cut to ribbons by a nimble chancer, obvious tourist that I am, on the ride from Balboa Park to the airport.
What a romance there is in the idea of dying far away from home: dessicated on a street corner even as the sun searches without success for more moisture to suck away. He died for an idea, people would say, and this place would serve as both a warning siren and a magnet for those who are still to come.
The mind is like a pair of racehorses - one at the peak of its powers which corresponds to ideas, hurdling them all with ease and rushing along to the next jump, always higher than the one preceding it. The second is past its best and canters at a more sedate pace, and this horse corresponds to how events evolve in front of the eyes.
It is for me to rein in the horse which corresponds to ideas, and to encourage the other horse which trots instead of gallops.
It is for me to put the brakes on the wild horse which suggests I could conceivably dehydrate in the middle of San Francisco; and, more importantly, it is for me to force the second horse to match the pace of the former.
When this is done, and the two creatures are neck-and-neck, then what is experienced and what is idealised will be equated - and strange San Francisco, or anywhere else, will not be as fearsome in future.
It was too sickeningly hot for any European that day; I had no thermometer but estimated that the temperature must have exceeded a hundred. Being weighed down by luggage and misery made it seem warmer still.
This was as good a time as any to die, I imagined - might as well get hit on the short journey from Stonestown to the nearest municipal train stop, or be cut to ribbons by a nimble chancer, obvious tourist that I am, on the ride from Balboa Park to the airport.
What a romance there is in the idea of dying far away from home: dessicated on a street corner even as the sun searches without success for more moisture to suck away. He died for an idea, people would say, and this place would serve as both a warning siren and a magnet for those who are still to come.
The mind is like a pair of racehorses - one at the peak of its powers which corresponds to ideas, hurdling them all with ease and rushing along to the next jump, always higher than the one preceding it. The second is past its best and canters at a more sedate pace, and this horse corresponds to how events evolve in front of the eyes.
It is for me to rein in the horse which corresponds to ideas, and to encourage the other horse which trots instead of gallops.
It is for me to put the brakes on the wild horse which suggests I could conceivably dehydrate in the middle of San Francisco; and, more importantly, it is for me to force the second horse to match the pace of the former.
When this is done, and the two creatures are neck-and-neck, then what is experienced and what is idealised will be equated - and strange San Francisco, or anywhere else, will not be as fearsome in future.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Exeunt.
Pier 39 in San Francisco, where the gulls cry, and the sea-lions shunt comically back and forth on the raised platforms where they have lived since the earthquake in 1986.
I hear the gulls, over me and around me, their voices holding in the air, and think it is the saddest sound I have ever heard.
What music could someone with the correct gift produce with the long seagull-notes as the basis of an elegy? How serious, how moving, would it be to write the music of San Francisco's seagulls?
This will be my abiding memory of the city, for I cut my visit here short, miserable and frustrating creature that I am, and return to England tomorrow.
Since Saturday, I had not been able to shake the idea that I had no business here. Heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, silent and difficult company, the fear of the unknown was always stronger than the desire to explore, experiment, get lost, learn, interact.
Fear bolts me to the present; fear defines the psychological problems from which I undoubtedly suffer. Fear has triumphed again, as it usually does. It is stronger than I am, more resilient, bigger, and I can find no way around it.
Since booking the early flight home, I cried, felt better, and went out to do things, without a care in the world. It is only when the game is nearly up that I can summon the energy to topple the demon who laughs endlessly at me. He fell over with barely a fight, and just as I am ready to start an adventure, it is all over. Now I sit under the starlight and type myself into something approaching stability, with fear seeming to be a distant and unlikely adversary.
This version of me might have even been worth loving - open, able, creative, proximate. It only ever happens when it is already too late, for paralysis sets in while the opportunity is still live.
Your author's experience of life is that of pressure - a self-inflicted, illogical pressure which has no bearing on the situation at hand. At Pier 39, I was free to think, and speak pleasantly to strangers, and imagine what might happen if I knew anything at all about music.
Now the situation is beyond help, and I must exeunt.
I hear the gulls, over me and around me, their voices holding in the air, and think it is the saddest sound I have ever heard.
What music could someone with the correct gift produce with the long seagull-notes as the basis of an elegy? How serious, how moving, would it be to write the music of San Francisco's seagulls?
This will be my abiding memory of the city, for I cut my visit here short, miserable and frustrating creature that I am, and return to England tomorrow.
Since Saturday, I had not been able to shake the idea that I had no business here. Heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, silent and difficult company, the fear of the unknown was always stronger than the desire to explore, experiment, get lost, learn, interact.
Fear bolts me to the present; fear defines the psychological problems from which I undoubtedly suffer. Fear has triumphed again, as it usually does. It is stronger than I am, more resilient, bigger, and I can find no way around it.
Since booking the early flight home, I cried, felt better, and went out to do things, without a care in the world. It is only when the game is nearly up that I can summon the energy to topple the demon who laughs endlessly at me. He fell over with barely a fight, and just as I am ready to start an adventure, it is all over. Now I sit under the starlight and type myself into something approaching stability, with fear seeming to be a distant and unlikely adversary.
This version of me might have even been worth loving - open, able, creative, proximate. It only ever happens when it is already too late, for paralysis sets in while the opportunity is still live.
Your author's experience of life is that of pressure - a self-inflicted, illogical pressure which has no bearing on the situation at hand. At Pier 39, I was free to think, and speak pleasantly to strangers, and imagine what might happen if I knew anything at all about music.
Now the situation is beyond help, and I must exeunt.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Farce.
The second time, history repeats itself as farce.
The lure of San Francisco proved too much in the end - what a betrayal of Bluefish that I should have even travelled here at all.
How is it possible to betray someone who is but a distant dot located somewhere in 2009, space increasing with every breath that is taken? Ah, but the dot is the eye of the storm, quietly seething as events coalesce around it; an organising principle emerging from chaos.
Even when occurrences fall into the void of history, as they all do in the end, the principles which caused them to hang together in their pomp can still be violated, and we can still be criticised for our lack of respect.
You can laugh at the idea of Yugoslavia if you want - what utter insanity it was to draw together six disparate countries and yoke them all under the one flag, these Christians, Muslims and Orthodox Serbs - and defend your giggling on the basis of lessons learned since the early part of the 1990s.
There is a difference between laughing at the failure of something, and mocking representations of it. You should never laugh at Doris Dragovic singing the old national anthem, Hej Jugosloveni, not even when she reaches the line about nothing ever being able to break the blue unity.
You should never laugh at the raising of the Yugoslav flag, even as you detect the punchline inherent in its central feature, the red star. One by one, all the star's points were snapped off, and all that remains are the old videos, and the memories, both invented and real.
This is the debt owed to old girlfriends: you can laugh at the hilarious circumstances which brought you together, and take the piss out of the history itself; but the little river of sentiment which perseveres after death, if you like, is sacrosanct.
Yet here I am in San Francisco, with perhaps the last person you would have ever have wished for me to spend time with. I am awkward and quiet and out-of-place. A redfish out of water, no less, and longing for the grit and rain and misery of England.
This repetition of history is farce, at once hilarious and sad, simultaneously significant and meaningless, everything and nothing.
The lure of San Francisco proved too much in the end - what a betrayal of Bluefish that I should have even travelled here at all.
How is it possible to betray someone who is but a distant dot located somewhere in 2009, space increasing with every breath that is taken? Ah, but the dot is the eye of the storm, quietly seething as events coalesce around it; an organising principle emerging from chaos.
Even when occurrences fall into the void of history, as they all do in the end, the principles which caused them to hang together in their pomp can still be violated, and we can still be criticised for our lack of respect.
You can laugh at the idea of Yugoslavia if you want - what utter insanity it was to draw together six disparate countries and yoke them all under the one flag, these Christians, Muslims and Orthodox Serbs - and defend your giggling on the basis of lessons learned since the early part of the 1990s.
There is a difference between laughing at the failure of something, and mocking representations of it. You should never laugh at Doris Dragovic singing the old national anthem, Hej Jugosloveni, not even when she reaches the line about nothing ever being able to break the blue unity.
You should never laugh at the raising of the Yugoslav flag, even as you detect the punchline inherent in its central feature, the red star. One by one, all the star's points were snapped off, and all that remains are the old videos, and the memories, both invented and real.
This is the debt owed to old girlfriends: you can laugh at the hilarious circumstances which brought you together, and take the piss out of the history itself; but the little river of sentiment which perseveres after death, if you like, is sacrosanct.
Yet here I am in San Francisco, with perhaps the last person you would have ever have wished for me to spend time with. I am awkward and quiet and out-of-place. A redfish out of water, no less, and longing for the grit and rain and misery of England.
This repetition of history is farce, at once hilarious and sad, simultaneously significant and meaningless, everything and nothing.
Repetition.
History repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
First, there was a South African woman. She was the first experience of history as I mean it here.
The greatest humiliation, steering a shopping trolley around a car-park and being screamed at, in public, as though I was an ill-behaving child, and not, instead, someone doing his best with the very limited tools with which I had to work.
With a sigh, in the present, I reflect sadly on the limited tools I speak of.
Your author is capable of much - I can produce stellar academic essays in a single evening; I can at times write with clarity and purpose; I can become sometimes so close to other people or animals that it is enough to draw tears.
And yet, just as those talents seem certain to flower without limit, I am immolated by an inability to perform everyday, obvious tasks.
It is beyond me to steer a shopping-trolley in the right direction, even when mentally steeling the self for the task ahead; even with the caveat that such a simple task cannot possibly fail to be accomplished. With a pump of the fist and an invocation, I inevitably fail, every time. There is a inverse break between the magnitude of a task, and the efficiency with which it is carried out. At 13, I could speak perfect French, but could not draw a circle with a compass, dress myself, or tie up my shoelaces.
History repeated itself with Bluefish. I made it my obsessive goal to immortalise her. I will write you into permanence, my darling, even if it should kill me. You were born in the waters of a creation-myth, but your name is not writ upon water.
That I could not do so is still painful. There should have been a book written at least two years ago, a story of a pretty Australian woman's metamorphosis into the prophetic, painful Bluefish, and the stages of development therein. I wanted to save you, and observe with sad eyes and held breath the astonishing creature you had become. It never happened.
On a flight to Budapest, I shamed myself by being unable to stow our luggage into an overhead locker. I stood, watching others do it, and when it came to our turn, I failed magnificently. Don't fail by a whisker, do it properly; turning around and looking hopelessly, staring at the floor, shaking the head. Yet I used to be able to express you with such intensity that you would cry, and the wedding vows we got part of the way to constructing were heart-breaking, at least for us.
History repeated, first time as tragedy.
I lost you over nothing. It was a temporary blip, I think, and I wouldn't permit it, even though I told you to expect them from me.
Superior and haughty, I would declare - the fact is that I orbit you, Bluefish, and, like the planets, my orbit is elliptical. Some days I am in such intimate proximity to you that you'll be aware of it every moment that you wake, and at other times I am more difficult to detect. Be patient, and I shall inevitably swing back towards you.
I could not allow you to have an orbit of your own. No, you must be static, else I shall begin to fear that you no longer love me. Be static, else I'll kill us with my striated, polymorphous inadequacies. I lost you when I typed the words: get out of my life! after a drunken evening when the pain of the previous few days had at last caught up with the private, internal imperatives which had been hammering at the consciousness, and we never spoke again. The jolt into action comes at the moment when pain superimposes itself on the imperative which asks: for how much longer can this be allowed to continue?
Then, for night after night, I wound myself, snake-like, around the leg of the kitchen table, and screamed my loss at the ceiling, the indifferent ceiling. No God existed up there to listen to my cries. Even up in the heights, wherein the religious figures are supposed to be, there was no consolation whatever.
First, there was a South African woman. She was the first experience of history as I mean it here.
The greatest humiliation, steering a shopping trolley around a car-park and being screamed at, in public, as though I was an ill-behaving child, and not, instead, someone doing his best with the very limited tools with which I had to work.
With a sigh, in the present, I reflect sadly on the limited tools I speak of.
Your author is capable of much - I can produce stellar academic essays in a single evening; I can at times write with clarity and purpose; I can become sometimes so close to other people or animals that it is enough to draw tears.
And yet, just as those talents seem certain to flower without limit, I am immolated by an inability to perform everyday, obvious tasks.
It is beyond me to steer a shopping-trolley in the right direction, even when mentally steeling the self for the task ahead; even with the caveat that such a simple task cannot possibly fail to be accomplished. With a pump of the fist and an invocation, I inevitably fail, every time. There is a inverse break between the magnitude of a task, and the efficiency with which it is carried out. At 13, I could speak perfect French, but could not draw a circle with a compass, dress myself, or tie up my shoelaces.
History repeated itself with Bluefish. I made it my obsessive goal to immortalise her. I will write you into permanence, my darling, even if it should kill me. You were born in the waters of a creation-myth, but your name is not writ upon water.
That I could not do so is still painful. There should have been a book written at least two years ago, a story of a pretty Australian woman's metamorphosis into the prophetic, painful Bluefish, and the stages of development therein. I wanted to save you, and observe with sad eyes and held breath the astonishing creature you had become. It never happened.
On a flight to Budapest, I shamed myself by being unable to stow our luggage into an overhead locker. I stood, watching others do it, and when it came to our turn, I failed magnificently. Don't fail by a whisker, do it properly; turning around and looking hopelessly, staring at the floor, shaking the head. Yet I used to be able to express you with such intensity that you would cry, and the wedding vows we got part of the way to constructing were heart-breaking, at least for us.
History repeated, first time as tragedy.
I lost you over nothing. It was a temporary blip, I think, and I wouldn't permit it, even though I told you to expect them from me.
Superior and haughty, I would declare - the fact is that I orbit you, Bluefish, and, like the planets, my orbit is elliptical. Some days I am in such intimate proximity to you that you'll be aware of it every moment that you wake, and at other times I am more difficult to detect. Be patient, and I shall inevitably swing back towards you.
I could not allow you to have an orbit of your own. No, you must be static, else I shall begin to fear that you no longer love me. Be static, else I'll kill us with my striated, polymorphous inadequacies. I lost you when I typed the words: get out of my life! after a drunken evening when the pain of the previous few days had at last caught up with the private, internal imperatives which had been hammering at the consciousness, and we never spoke again. The jolt into action comes at the moment when pain superimposes itself on the imperative which asks: for how much longer can this be allowed to continue?
Then, for night after night, I wound myself, snake-like, around the leg of the kitchen table, and screamed my loss at the ceiling, the indifferent ceiling. No God existed up there to listen to my cries. Even up in the heights, wherein the religious figures are supposed to be, there was no consolation whatever.
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Truth.
An ocean away, but the recurrence of age-old mental tics continues.
They recur here, in San Francisco; even as I hoped they would be left behind in crisis-torn, chilly Europe.
Europe as we know it is set to splinter apart at any moment, that much is inevitable. It is the banks, this time, and those with some sort of knowledge hold out no hope. Nations seem to exist at an almost-permanent crossroads, tipping one way or the other, and the promise made that this hiatus is the last one before glory, before the coming-together of ambitious historicised plans. Hold your nerve, Europeans: the day is near.
I recur in San Francisco, existing at the last crossroads before glory, but the day remains as far away as ever. How many millions of souls have expired without ever crossing the last hiatus, and given up out of sheer disappointment?
Here, the nervous foreigner is not to be understood, and exists as a perpetual outsider. Even the food conspires against him, bursting apart like a bomb. Uncomprehending and unsteady, I take the form of a human but have the essence of something else; something less.
A person removed once; removed twice. Once from the species, and the second time from all that is famIliar.
This is what it is like to be mad - to travel to an English-speaking country, and to emit garbled and incomprehensible streams of rubbish. To your own ears, it makes sense to ask for a specific coffee, at a listed, fixed price, but the look of astonishment tells you the request has not been understood.
Astonishment's half-life turns to pity, and stabilises at disgust. Fucking stupid Englishman, weighed-down by ancient and obsolete values. No wonder your continent's wheezing its death-rattle if this is the sort of citizen it turns out.
Sylvia Plath had it right all along, in her clear, North American tones. How ironic that I should think of you just as your homeland accentuates the banality and churlishness of the tourist.
You can never escape the bell jar, not even for a moment. Its canopy is too enormous and too heavy to lift, and the attempt leads to exhaustion. You can never escape, and so you might as well go back to England - as sad as ever, but at least able to speak there.
They recur here, in San Francisco; even as I hoped they would be left behind in crisis-torn, chilly Europe.
Europe as we know it is set to splinter apart at any moment, that much is inevitable. It is the banks, this time, and those with some sort of knowledge hold out no hope. Nations seem to exist at an almost-permanent crossroads, tipping one way or the other, and the promise made that this hiatus is the last one before glory, before the coming-together of ambitious historicised plans. Hold your nerve, Europeans: the day is near.
I recur in San Francisco, existing at the last crossroads before glory, but the day remains as far away as ever. How many millions of souls have expired without ever crossing the last hiatus, and given up out of sheer disappointment?
Here, the nervous foreigner is not to be understood, and exists as a perpetual outsider. Even the food conspires against him, bursting apart like a bomb. Uncomprehending and unsteady, I take the form of a human but have the essence of something else; something less.
A person removed once; removed twice. Once from the species, and the second time from all that is famIliar.
This is what it is like to be mad - to travel to an English-speaking country, and to emit garbled and incomprehensible streams of rubbish. To your own ears, it makes sense to ask for a specific coffee, at a listed, fixed price, but the look of astonishment tells you the request has not been understood.
Astonishment's half-life turns to pity, and stabilises at disgust. Fucking stupid Englishman, weighed-down by ancient and obsolete values. No wonder your continent's wheezing its death-rattle if this is the sort of citizen it turns out.
Sylvia Plath had it right all along, in her clear, North American tones. How ironic that I should think of you just as your homeland accentuates the banality and churlishness of the tourist.
You can never escape the bell jar, not even for a moment. Its canopy is too enormous and too heavy to lift, and the attempt leads to exhaustion. You can never escape, and so you might as well go back to England - as sad as ever, but at least able to speak there.
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