Public
Given that some time has passed and it makes me sad that no one can stumble on this blog any more, not to mention that at least three of my very small readership gave up because they couldn't get a feed any more, I intend to reopen it to the outside world shortly. I mean, it doesn't really matter to me because I've always written it strictly for myself, but I do feel a bit meh that no one can stumble on my archives and enjoy some of the things I've written. I know I moved a lot of it to Monkey Banana, but it doesn't feel the same to me.
I'm not sure though. There are decent reasons to keep it hidden too. I'd welcome views if anyone has them.
Yeah never
So R, the daycare woman, smiles and I smile and I wish I was brave enough to say to her, you should bottle that smile, because it seems like that would be nice and I like to brighten people's day. (No, really. Sometimes.)
But then I get to thinking, that's more likely to frighten her than brighten anything, and I put the notion away to the back of the mental cupboard. Because I am thinking, does anyone else have this problem about themselves, that they just don't know how others see them?
I imagine everyone has some idea how they are presenting themselves, what others see when they look at them. I don't mean what they physically see: I can be objective enough to recognise that they see a big man, carrying some middleage spread, greyhaired and a bit worn, fairly unwrinkled for a man of his age (less sun than most as a kid, rather than miracle skin, although until age started to creep patches of wtf over it, I had good skin), ordinary at best. I mean what they think of you.
The best I can come up with is slightly dull. But that doesn't really answer my question, because what I am asking is more like why anyone would bother with me. Because no one does and it bothers me.
I am not entirely lonely. Even on days that I don't see another person, I have company. I talk for hours with people online. I have no idea why they bother though. What am I giving them? Do they all simply enjoy being charitable? I know why I'm talking to them. I enjoy talking to A because she is wise and openminded and she will put up with me when I whine. I enjoy talking to P because she and I have surprisingly lots in common, and she is funny without trying too hard. I enjoy talking to S, although she doesn't often bother, because she feels like my intellectual peer, she is manipulative and clever, and because she writes so nicely that you can't help revelling in it. I enjoy talking to boots because he is a oneoff and I think that he is aware he's talking shit but cannot help smuggling the odd diamond into it. I enjoy talking to Tom because he does not think thinking is a crime, and he is an oldschool conversationalist, always able to think up stories or illuminations that add value. And I enjoy talking to K because she is the single nicest person to spend time with that I've ever known, and I value niceness above everything else, because underneath my shell is a small boy, who flinches at the anger and pain that fuel our world, and basks in the warmth of someone pleasant.
R seems nice, but all she sees is another dad, I'm sure, an old guy who she would laugh at the thought of spending time with. I am just physically lonely. I need someone proximate, someone I can hold, make feel good, lavish kisses on. I need a girlfriend because I want to be needed, and not just by a child who wants me to give it something, which the four people who do need me most all are. Someone said to me the other day what a pity it is that I need someone else to love me to feel validated (or words to that effect), but it's equally the case that I need someone to want me to love them. The monkey does not tell me that no one can love me. I know people love me, for whatever reason they do. It would be hard to force yourself to believe that when people say otherwise. He tells me that I have nothing to offer. That's much harder for people to prove to you.
I didn't always feel like that, and I am not condemned always to feel it. Of course I don't believe I would be fixed simply by acquiring a girlfriend, or by becoming acclaimed for one thing or another. But in the year before I first moved to Australia, I had a strong self-image. You would have liked me then. I knew what people saw when they looked at me and I knew they liked it. How did I do that? I became myself. I'll write about it some time, but the essence of it was I shed the accreted shit of my first *mumbles* years. I meditated, I ate well, I focused on what was good about me and I was convinced there was plenty. I had a job I enjoyed, friends who I enjoyed being with and didn't feel I had to try hard with. Simple.
So. But someone said to me, and I hope they won't mind my quoting them:
you feel trapped by forces beyond your control... This is making you see things all wrong, including the way you look at yourself.
and I know it's true. In the year before I came to Australia, I made myself happy. I was fucking great. I have to believe I still am, if I want to live, because I am sick of dying. It has been too little fun and the result has been, well, dying, which is not like life, however much you try to convince yourself that it is.
About K
Dear you
I dreamt of you last night. The monkey is not totally in control. Sometimes I wrest the wheel of the car from him and drive free. It was brief but joyous. We were laughing together as you showed me some clothes you had bought. The time you were giving me was only for me and I was happy.
D.
Rare bird
Dear you
I remember a day when I came to meet you at the hospital you were working at. You were very businesslike and offhand with me, but I wasn't offended. I wasn't doing anything special and you were, but you were sparing time to be with me.
That was one of the days that made me love you the way I do. You were so proud of yourself, what you were capable of, who you are. And I was proud of you too. My high opinion of you wasn't based simply on your good looks!
You merited it. And I am hurting because you still do. I want to believe I do too. I want to believe that you too have a song inside you that sings my name and that you cannot ignore it. I know that those songs are full of danger for us: mine is too. But mine is full of joy: the simple joy I have in seeing your name in my inbox, the joy of knowing I can make you smile. I want to believe I bring you joy too. And if I do, I don't want you to put it aside.
It's rare. Do you remember, on our trip, we stopped to take a walk. In the forest, we saw a lyre bird. Not clearly, just among the trees, so that we were not sure. I have never seen one since. And as we drove, near the state border, an echidna crossed the road in front of us. You do not know when these things will happen. It was not convenient! It would have been better had he walked across our path as we walked in the bush. But he was in that road, and we had to stop and look, because they too are rare.
I don't know any other way to say it. I am sorry that it is hurting you too, and I know it must be. But I cannot help hoping that I am right that my name sings in you, however softly, and that you will listen to that song, will not be able to close your ears to it, because the chorus -- man! the chorus! -- is fucking great.
D.
About K
Dear you
The sun has come out this morning and there will be blue skies. But I will sit in the dark in my basement and count off another lonely day.
I suppose that in the hours I spend on my own a stray thought of you will enter my head, but I will do my best to chase it away, and remind myself that I did not deserve any part of you.
I cannot stop loving you, any more than the uncomprehending animals can not love the sunshine. But the sunshine doesn't care. It does not even know it makes them content.
I know the memory of your face will fade. I can look at your photo and remind myself but that is not the same. When you touch a photo it is flat and meaningless. But you made me sing inside and the song may grow faint, but won't fade to nothing.
I am sorry I'm not feeling inspired this morning. Even the sunshine has not warmed me. Realising it is illusory, that there was no sun, I was just making believe there was, makes it harder to bear that it has stopped shining, when you would think it would make it better. But it's no comfort to know you do not love me. And I know you would say you do. But love is not just a word, not just something you say to someone to make them feel good. Love is what would hurt you too much to do this. Even pity would hurt too much.
I often wondered about S. She didn't pay any price for knowing me, but I did for knowing her, and she didn't care about that. She quickly found other things to fill her days and had not a scrap of remorse for hurting me. Eventually you realise it's you. When you are stuck in a tough spot, of course you appeal to the universe, to your god if you have one, that you did not deserve it. And it answers back, if you listen carefully, and says, you did. No matter how much love you have for them, no matter how great a desire to make them happy, you are too small to be anything more than a ripple in the sea of their life.
I talk about a monkey, but really, it's just my sense of how it is that talks to me. It says, how could you imagine...? And really, given how little imagination I have, how could I?
D.
About K
Dear you
In my dream, we are sitting on a park bench laughing, pretending that we are strangers telling each other jokes. You are more beautiful in my dream than you ever were, but that simply reflects the reality that you have ripened like a pear in the sun.
But I will not dream about you any more. The monkey forbids it. He knows that I do not deserve the comfort of dreams. You know it too and I'm sorry for that.
Just for a moment, foolishly, I believed he was wrong. I believed that you would choose to love me and the broken pieces of my life would be reassembled into a shape that was not hideous. I do not wish you had not made me believe that. I only wish you had not been so weak. It is the only thing I didn't like about you. Do you remember I wrote about it?
I was right. Sick read, eh? I'm sorry that I don't have any more poems in me for you. I'm just not feeling inspired today.
GOING TO AUSTRALIA.
wail and weep
creep
creep into my arms
unravel all
your splendid charms
I know a word.
I know a joke about
how all I had
spilled about
I know a good joke.
we're like sheep
bound into life
by a million words
commitments & promises
we can't let go,
and what we truly feel
we cannot let it show.
wail and weep, creep,
your motherfucking heart is weak.
But I know
that when once you look
into the depths
of where you want to be
you will see,
you will still want me.
D.
About K
Dear you
I knew you only loved the idea of loving someone. That is all.
D.
Drowning
Sometimes I have thought I will walk out of the door, go around the corner and never come back. I do not know what is around the corner but the day when I would have been afraid to find out is gone.
You would never hear from me again. I think I would fade. Faster for some than for others, but it would not take long before no one remembered me except as a name, something like a smell that they sometimes thought they knew when they smelled it, but when it was gone, they realised they did not know at all.
I've thought about doing that for this person or that. Simply never bothering them again, so that it is as though I had walked away. One of the great pities of my life is that I am vain, so the truth that they would not care that I had disappeared prevents me from doing it. I want to be cared about. That is the heart of the vanity that partly powers my life.
I say powers my life, but my life barely has any motion. Other people decide what I may or may not have in it, and mostly they do not care what I want. Or if they care, they utterly disregard it. I don't know why that is. I don't even want much. I never have, really.
***
I have been in my basement for nine hours today. If I hope to finish this book on schedule, I will need to stay in here for another five hours. Earlier, Naughtyman came down with a packet of pasta. He wanted me to make him macaroni. It would only take 15 minutes but I won't do it. It's not the time. I don't want to be around Mrs Zen. I am not feeling able to put a nice spin on life for her, and she is in the mood to needle me. At least I am safe in my basement. Very little can affect me here.
I am a terrible father. You could imagine that I am planning to suffer for my children--because for sure I am going to suffer and it is because I want to be part of their lives. It would be easy to walk away, and I would at least have some hope of finding someone to be with. But I can't. I have to be with them. And I realise I am not noble; I am not suffering for them. I am suffering because I do not want to lose them and because I have hopes for them that I fear will be destroyed by Mrs Zen. I do not know what those hopes are, but I know that I want them to know I love them, and I don't know how they would know that if I disappeared.
***
I don't know why I am writing this. I am just so flat. Someone reached out to me a couple of days ago, and I was able to be there for them, and it felt really good--I was at the peak of a manic spell and I felt capable and strong. Then they confronted me
hard with reality and the wind went out of my sails.
Whenever I feel any hint of joy, any hint of the possibility of happiness, I get smacked down. Even my job, a hint of life in that I got to get out of the house and go to an office, even that someone decided I wasn't going to be allowed to have.
I don't think Mrs Zen appreciates, even realises, how much I feel I gave up by accepting being a freelance so that I could make a living, and so that I could support her when she needed it. It's a large part of why my life went so sour here. I don't care what she appreciates any more, to be honest with you, and I am able to surrender bitterness because I simply don't care about her any more than I need to just to get by. I feel deeply ashamed that that is true, as though I have committed a crime in it, but I don't see the point in being dishonest to myself about it.
They also took my pleasure in blogging. It had dwindled for one reason or another, but I still liked to express myself. Now I can't. Now I have to watch as people who don't like me poke and pry, try to find things to hate me for. And I write some great things, but they don't make any impression on the people I write them for, and I realise that I made a big mistake on the day I stopped writing only for myself and started believing that I had any power at all just because I can turn a pretty phrase.
I do not. I feel completely disempowered. I have totally lost the ability to tell what is right. Because if this is right, I just never knew. I look at how some people have treated me, and I think if this is right, I just don't have a clue. Because I cannot stop believing that the world will be just to me--not merely that it should be just, but that at least as far as I'm concerned, it
is just--and I do not understand how I deserved it. I must have done, but I do not know how.
I cannot stop feeling like this. I try, but I see the years ahead of me and they're so ugly and barren. And I know I could have been happy but no one wants it for me who can make it be. I don't blame them for it. We are all doing the best we can by our lights.
I made myself very sad transferring my posts to Monkey Banana. I read some and I enjoyed how funny I used to be, how warm and friendly I was, how good I felt I was to know. That person disappeared. I don't know where he went. I want this one to disappear too. I don't like him and no one else does either.
***
This is my way of saying goodbye. I will not disappear, but this person will. I cannot sustain him any more, that bewildered boy. I let him down and gave him this future and I know that that cannot be just. It just cannot. He didn't hurt anybody. He never had it in him. I will mostly be blogging on Monkey Banana because I intend to bury him in an avalanche of lies and that isn't what I do here.
I mean that I will stop loving him. It is the only way I know that I can stay alive.
Famous for today and tonight
My fame spreadsA researcher from Channel 7's Today Tonight wants to talk to me about it. If I tell you that
Today Tonight is the visual equivalent of the
Courier-Mail, you can guess what I think about that.
Also
the Australian. I have to say that Fagan is a fool. Of course I was improving the copy! I linked to it elsewhere and you'll see it's in pretty good shape. I wrote a five-minute email to my blog about the paper. Who has never written an email critical of their workplace? Anyone want to claim they've never written their mates to complain about a shitty day at work, or how boring their job is that day? No, didn't think so.
The tank full
So I'm at 110 on Stein Rd before I hit the dip and I think if I hit 120 the car will leave the ground.
And how fucking cool will that be! To fly on a sunny day, to fly away.
There is a man ahead in the road. I slow down. He is a man in a turban. You see all sorts of things, but this is odd. A man in a turban in the exurbs, just walking up Stein Rd.
I am listening to the mix I made for this trip and it's perfect for the day. This spring has been quite lovely here: there has been some rain and the trees are green and alive, the jacarandas are in bloom and there are hints of wildflowers. Through the polarised lenses of my new shades, the world is warm and inviting.
The first song up is How I escaped my certain fate by Mission of Burma. It's to set the tone (because this is a postpunk mix, with most of the songs dating from the early eighties, when punk mutated into a creative and intelligent artform that to this day speaks to me because it was made by (mostly) men like me, or who at least I flatter myself are like me). I am singing -- shouting -- along:
Can I count on you
if I fall apart
if I fall
if I fall apart?
And I did fall apart, and I had no one I could sing that to, because I was too crazy to love anyone enough to trust them or for them to trust me, except the person I did love, who was crazier than even I was.
Next up is Fragile, which is S's song. I mean, it's a song that makes me think about her. I have probably mentioned it before but I have songs like that: it's not that they invoke memories in particular; it's more that they invoke the person. I didn't put it in my mix because of her though, but because it is such a perfect example of what punk became when clever, arty boys took on the form and made it into a more arch commentary on our times. What I think I love about this genre above all (apart from the crunchy guitars) is its willingness to
be complicated. It appealed to me as a young man, that other young men should be glad to say about themselves that they were confused, unhappy, alienated, scared of their own feelings and those of others:
I have a feeling of love
scorches where it lands
Fragile
Which is quite so. But what can follow such a great song? Well, you can't have a postpunk mix without Joy Division, that's clear. I chose Transmission, because this mix is upbeat on the whole, although I'm feeling a bit more like Atmosphere these days. But Transmission is fairly early Joy Division, so it has more punk bite and less of the deep, hollow high art that they later created. Also, who doesn't love to sing along with that great last verse and chorus:
Well I could call out when the going gets tough
The things that we've learned are no longer enough
No language, just sound, is all we need know
To synchronize love to the beat of the show
And we could dance
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio
It feels good to be out on a spring day, the tank full, the car running well. Freakscene is burning the air. I don't know whether it counts as postpunk but, well, it came after punk and couldn't exist without it. It's one of those archetypal indie songs, which everyone into this kind of music knows intimately. And I think we are only ever truly sad when we cannot think of anyone we could sing this to:
Sometimes I don't thrill you
Sometimes I think I'll kill you
Just don't let me fuck up will you
'Cause when I need a friend it's still you
Sigh.
And suddenly I recall the dream I had last night. I had put it to the back of my mind because it was a bit frightening. Lightsabre cocksucking blues, by Mclusky, is next up, but it's not right for this moment, so I forward it on. The next song is not right either, but the dream is short enough for me to recall it and move on mentally, or try to. So while He's a whore, by Big Black, is playing, and I am singing along at the absolute top of my voice, because I'm a whore! And I'll do anything for money, and I'm not in the least bit ashamed of it, I am thinking it over. I am in a car with K. It's not this car. And it's weird that I'm driving, because I think she will be someone like Mrs Zen, who does not like to be driven, but likes to drive, and I've never really cared, so I just be the passenger, but maybe K has wanted me to take control, and I feel like I'm in control. And we are negotiating the promises we will make and the lies we will tell -- the promises for us and the lies for others, because if we promise each other, we will have to lie to others, and let me tell you something, I never did much of either before I came to this place, because I didn't like to make promises I couldn't keep, and I was proud to be honest -- and it feels good because I am in a car with K! And it doesn't feel unreal or forced, as dreams obviously often do. It feels like it could some time happen, is not impossible or unlikely.
It's a bigger car than mine, that's what is different, so that we are not touching each other, and it would be a strain to bother. But that's okay, because we are together in a way that doesn't need touching.
Then, out of the blue, there is a voice in my head. A weary voice that sounds like someone who has been patient with me, and still has reserves of love for me that I cannot fathom, but is disappointed. And although I could not articulate why, I know exactly why. And all it says is my name,
David, just like that, barely louder than a whisper. It's a real voice. I am not dreaming it; I am hearing it as though someone has awoken me by talking to me.
I should probably consider swearing off the weed because God does not often talk to me in my dreams. But it feels good; this morning I felt uplifted, because I realise that even I am not beyond redemption, that what I have failed to do is allow my heart to set my course, and that made me unable to stay in one piece.
Next is Tom boy, by Bettie Serveert. The more widely travelled reader will recognise that that is a Dutch name, and Bettie Serveert are, I fear no contradiction, the only good band ever to come of Holland, with the possible exception of Focus, but they only had
one decent song, amirite? Tom boy is one of my songs for Naughtyman (the other is The broads by Minotaur Shock) and it's a belter. Tom boy is an outsider anthem, an extended fuck you from Carol van Dijk to the haters, or at least it seems to be:
They call me a Tom Boy and I let them
'Cause only a Tom Boy could forget them
And simply change it
They call me a Tom Boy and I love it
'Cause only a Tom Boy could stand above it
By simply changing
I suppose you could complain that I strayed from the postpunk vibe, but for me it's not as narrow as punky sort of bands that happened along in 1978-80, but would be wide enough to encompass alt.rock bands that could not have existed without punk. So R.E.M. scrape in, because before they became a sucky stadium-oriented borefest, they were a smart postpunk band. I chose Superman because a/ I love covers that surpass the original and b/ I feel it applies:
I am, I am, I am Superman and I know what's happening
I am, I am, I am Superman and I can do anything
You don't really love that guy you make it with now do you?
I know you don't love that guy
'Cause I can see right through you
It seems like exactly how I feel about life just now. I am not feeling downtrodden or hurt, although I should be. I'm feeling capable and alive. Yes, the serotonin is through the roof. I must have eaten some good cheese! This is why I'm never, and I mean never, getting treatment for whatever ails me. Well, there are two reasons. One, depression sucks, obv., but mania is as good as it gets. Some mornings it's like someone pumped me full of coke (the white stuff, not the horrid fizzy drink) and set me loose. I really wish you could be with me right now, if you think you would like to be with me, because I am great to be around, as long as you like to listen instead of talk. I become capable of anything, and so warm you could use me as a stove! This is a good time to hit me up for a loan, or ask me to help you move home, because I feel boundless and able.
It's when I make my best plans. And I've had the creeping notion that I will visit America. I've always wanted to, and I started thinking about it a lot. Partly, that's because I have been having (very mild and I'm pretty sure muscular) chest pains. And I started thinking, I could die soon and I'd really regret not seeing San Francisco. So I will, if I can get the money together, maybe next month, maybe early next year (and maybe never, of course). Maybe also Portland, Oregon, and Vegas if I can, and if I'm welcome in the first and have the money for the latter.
Vegas! Mecca, innit.
But maybe not. I told Mrs Zen and she was pretty pissed off. She wants me to want family holidays, not to do things for myself. That's not totally unreasonable but hello? We've been married for 14 years and you never noticed I am the kind of person who needs to do things without you? It's not even about her. I am that kind of person. You could call it self-absorption, if you like. You could call it selfishness. But I am just someone who feels I spend a lot of my time satisfying others in one way or another and sometimes want to satisfy myself.
Aren't we all, if we're honest?
It's odd, listening to Sixteen again, by the Buzzcocks, because it's punk, plain and simple, yet it fits very well into this sort of mix. But the Buzzcocks were not about anarchy or anger; they were all about love. Pete Shelley wrote some truly great love songs, all about the kind of love that exhilarates and excites you: headlong, wonderful love, forbidden, crazy love, loving someone you shouldn't, loving someone who doesn't love you. Ah me, but of course I chose none of his love songs. I think Sixteen again is all about how we never age if we never let ourselves, how inside us we still hold those gauche children, their hearts yet to be broken. Well, maybe not, but I was another year older yesterday and I do sometimes wish I could turn the clock back.
And then I stop with that shit, because there is nothing wrong either with being older and wiser, and in some ways I am, and I know that I can be sixteen again if...
Long before the Cure became dreary Goff whingers, they were teen punks. They actually weren't very good punks and would have disappeared without trace, likely, without Boys don't cry. It's something of an update on Tears of a clown:
I try to laugh about it
Cover it all up with lies
I try and
Laugh about it
Hiding the tears in my eyes
'cause boys don't cry
But we do, sometimes. We are required to shoulder our burdens manfully, and we usually succeed, and we learn to be strong in a way that makes us somewhat rigid. But if we allow it, there is still within us something fragile, which when it is touched, can leave us unable to maintain our facade. Sometimes it is as little as a song that has meaning for us that will be the last straw; sometimes we need to be severely hurt; sometimes we can only allow ourselves to grieve when we have real cause for grief.
For me, it is the realisation that I could find happiness but never will that creates a yearning in me so deep and broad that I cannot prevent tears from falling. Sometimes, it feels like between you and others there are chasms infinitely deep, infinitely wide, so that you cannot ever hope to reach across them, and sometimes you realise that they are just as wide as the width of two arms and all you need is that they reach out at the same time. Yet you cannot find the way to have them do it; which is not to cry over -- what is truly heartrending is the impossibility of knowing whether there is a way.
Having had a snivel, we feel washed out, so what's better than So run down, by the Psychedelic Furs? The Furs are all about our wasted lives, the shit we bother with that is meaningless and empty:
sometimes she says she loves me
i just don't believe it
all day she says
my set it plays
love songs all day
it sells toothpaste
razors band-aids
it sells love
and it sells hairspray
ha ha all day
monday monday
I once saw the Furs at Glasto. I was off my face on acid and Butler was about thirty feet tall with a coat of neon lightbulbs. I don't remember any of the songs they played and it's entirely possible that I was completely deaf at the time.
Winding down, I choose Bed of nails, by Husker Du. The Warehouse album that features it is like a journal of heartbreak: wistful, yearning, hurt in parts, uplifting too. Bed of nails is the sound of a man who has been cast down a well and does not know how he can climb back out. I know that sound. It is also about how you are forced sometimes to tiptoe on a highwire, to keep everything just so, to hold it together so that your life can be liveable. Who writes stuff like this:
Sometimes i just pretend that all the lies are true
And i know i might depend on you
But if my concentration breaks
I'm washed away with pain
And then my feet begin to bleed upon my only bed of nails
And i'm stuck here in the middle of a sea of lies
Inside my bed of nails
From years and years of practice
I know just how to stand
Alone with perfect balance, hand in hand
Prepared with boards and hammers
And several bags of nails
I could build a wall to lean on
Roof above my mind
I can see you've got your own plans
Please don't drive your nails into this heart of mine
It's wrenching stuff, but I think what moves me most is that Bob Mould was able to climb out of his well and become happy.
I finish off with The hardest walk, by the Jesus and Mary Chain. Man, that is the sound of my youth! Phil Spector with feedback, the Ronettes with a heroin habit. Looking back, particularly with the accretion of the rest of their (awful) records, it's hard to recall how invigorating and wonderful Psychocandy was. Until you listen to it! And man, it still rings the same bell for me.
And this is such a fucking great song! I want you to love it too. Give it a shot:
And I'm stuck in a shack
Down the back of the sea
Oh and I'm alive and I'm alone
Inside a sick sick dream
Oh is it me
Is it me that feels so weak
I cannot deceive but I find it hard to speak
The hardest walk you could ever take
Is the walk you take from A to B to C
I walk
Oh honey I talk
Don't want you to want me
Don't want you to need me
That last verse... man, it's as good as pop gets, confused, desperate, in love, and if your life has been like mine, your heart sings along and you find yourself pulling into your drive in this quiet suburb, scaring the neighbours' dogs because you cannot stop yourself from singing along as though your life depended on it, and if it depends on anything, it does.
So you know, there it is. The engine's running, the tank is full and I'm going for a drive. Hop in. Don't worry about where we're going. We'll know when we get there, baby.
***
If by some chance I've made these songs sound worth a listen (and you actually made it to the end of that blather, or more realistically, skimmed down to the link), the
mix is here. In the unlikely event that copyright holders find this and don't like me sharing their music with my friends, the email addy is top right etc etc.
Sheared
So I had a run-in with the clippers and now I could be an extra in a Guy Ritchie film. If he was casting ugly people.
Why do I flatter myself that anyone would want me? What do I have to offer? I am as interesting to talk to as I am good to look at. I am not even good at companionable silence because before long the vacuum becomes too much for me and I fill it with noise.
At least I don't look so old. Mrs Zen sheared off most of the whitest hair, and my roots are still dark. It has taken, oooooh, at least 18 months, two years off. So now I only look 57.
No. I am not actually 57. Some days I even feel relatively young.
But I am not. I am old and I'm in a shitty spot.
Do you know, I still think I should in some ways be desirable. It's tragic. The last five, six jobs I applied for, I thought I should have a great chance of all of them. None of them even replied to my application. Not even fuck off.
No woman wants me. I fear I will never kiss a woman again, never touch a woman, never feel good again. You'd think I would. You'd think there'd at least be a woman who was desperate, someone who thought, fuck,
he'll do. But even the women who want me don't want me.
I know, you should not wallow in self-pity. I do know that.
But when I wake up tomorrow, I have to be me. I have to live this life. I am feeling down because it is like I have been jailed and can see the blue sky through the bars. I know it doesn't have to be like this. Things could be a lot better. I know that, because I've seen it. I've had the sun on my face and it felt great. But then they slammed the door and days like today, I fear they threw away the key.
She is beautiful
She is beautiful to me, like no other. I don't know why. But if I have a type, she is my type.
If you say to me, what should a woman's hair be like, I will tell you, like her hair.
If you say to me, what should a woman's eyes be like, I will tell you, like her eyes.
And if you say to me, whose face thrills you just to look at it, I will tell you, her face thrills me just to look at it. And I could do that all day long and never tire of it.
But if I can make her smile, I do not know a better thing to see. When I dream, I dream that I will make her smile, and these are the sweetest dreams a man can have.
She is beautiful to me, because something beautiful inside her reached out to something inside me, and we chimed like bells. And that part of me that sings her name will resonate forever, a beautiful slice of the music of the spheres, the way her name rings out within me.
More blather
For those of you who cannot get enough of me, I am also going to be blogging in a more family-friendly way, iykwim. The quality of the posting will not be improved, but you won't see me calling anyone a motherfucker.
Not often anyway. So rush over to
monkey banana for more tedious blather with a lot less motherfucker and probably nothing
ever about anyone I work for, have worked for or might work for.
A harbour
Dear you
Last night I dreamt you love me. Not like a dog, although that too would be good, because when we say we love a dog, we are saying we are responsible for their wellbeing, and I do not have anyone who cares much that I am well. Nothing as casual as that: you love me in a way that is inescapable and does not permit you to choose not to.
For me, "I love you" are not just words, they are a mandate, a compulsion to do whatever I can to bring you happiness. I cannot imagine another way to love (and of course I know that is likely a failing on my part) and I know that people who I do not care whether they are happy, even if I do not wish them unhappiness, I do not love.
So in my dreams you are always smiling because there is no cause for unhappiness in your life. It is as beautiful as I would wish it to be for you. For me too, there is no sadness. You love me and that is enough for me to be happy. I am as simple as that. I do not know why the world conspires to make something so simple so impossible.
It is okay. I know that dreams are not real. I know that you would rather drown in unhappiness than allow yourself a degree of freedom. It is natural that we dream that others are not how they are. If the change in them is slight, they are good dreams; if it is very big, I do not think they are dreams at all: they are directives we send to our lives to stop hurting us the way they do. My dreams are good. You are just who you are in them with the only thing added that you love me.
We are not doing anything special. We are just laughing because we have a simple joy that the other exists. This is the happiest dream I ever have had because in it I am content just to be. It makes me happy even that I am able to imagine that that is possible, even if in the cold light of day I know it is not.
In the dream I have of you, I hold you and it feels like the whole of the warmth of the summer afternoon we are sharing emanates from you. I feel like I will not let you go and you will not ever want to be let go, because you are as safe with me as I am with you. It makes me happy to imagine that we have a harbour, a place of rest, and that I need not consist of anything beyond what I consist in, that that is enough, and you are enough for me.
D.
Judge and jury
Man, I love that boy! We were going wrong, I don't know why, but he didn't like me, and I started just doing the right thing, and now we are in love with each other. He comes to me and asks for cuddles; he looks to me for succour and I am there for him.
Man, I love him! You think you love your boy but you don't love yours like I love that boy!
So M is saying to me, we are judge, jury and executioner with our own families, and I agree with him. Because I believe that too. I am a pacifist, a gentle, kind man, but let me tell you.
Let me tell you. If someone fiddled with Zenella or Zenita, I would take the knife from the kitchen door, go to their house and hack them down.
I will kill you if you hurt my girls. And I won't feel bad about it. I will laugh as I kill you.
You underestimate us. Small men. Quiet men. Our little, pointless lives. We live them and we're forgotten by all that do not love us.
Mrs Zen says, before you had kids you were never like that.
Yeah, true. Before I had kids, I never knew the depths of love. I never knew how much you could love a person. I never knew what I was.
I would kill you in front of the police station, in front of fifty witnesses, in front of a TV crew, on the six o'clock news. And I would laugh while I did it.
And if you are good to my kids? If you love my beautiful Naughtyman? If you hold him close and make him feel good to be alive?
Well, you need not ask. We will be friends forever. We will be lovers because we love him.
Let us love each other! I have plenty to spare. I realised, in the course of having children, that I am a man who has enormous reservoirs of love. I am not as small as I thought.
***
I was among friends today. I felt warm and loved, comfortable, at home. Everything I said was good, sure footed, real, right on the money. I didn't fuck up in any way. I nailed every conversation, every aside. I made everyone who interacted with me feel better for it. I uplifted and warmed everyone who was there. They were lucky, would have felt lucky, to be there, to know me.
My Naughtyman, my star, came and sat on my knee, and he didn't say anything, he just laid his head on my shoulder, he didn't have to say anything, I understood him perfectly. I didn't care about anything bad about my life just at that moment; all I knew was how much I love that boy. My life will never be bad. Never. My life will never be bad if I am loved. I truly believe that.
