After the Dream

He’s gone and now I can snuggle down into the bedclothes. Where he was they are damp and so I move away from that part of the bed and put a pillow between me and his vacant place. I love to lie still and quiet in the dark and remember things. It is so easy to slip back, my little gift, almost everyone I know struggles with memory as if those times are gone but to me they grow with my care. My mum struggled; she was a traditional and stolid woman. To her memories were bitter wells, where stories which didn’t need to be told again and again could be pulled up with real effort. Rarely profane she would sometimes say ‘what’s the point of polishing shit?’ I have somehow become the opposite. Even this apparent negative image of her flies me back to her love, her angry condemnation, her tidiness and the food she put on the table. Her parable was solitude and surrender and she truly believed it was the only way.

I’ve had a few husbands now. This one’s my third; he’s bright and wishful but not very practical. He’s made a bit of a hash of things the last few years and he frets about what will happen next. We had a good time while it lasted I tell him, it’ll come right again and if it doesn’t we’ll manage. I think back to when we met both us high on late flowering sexuality. It’s strange to get all the way through to one’s thirties and then discover what makes that connection. We exploded into our early relationship. Our hormone highs made for some pretty doubtful behaviour but we were hell bent on pleasure. I would still fuck about for a while; the power I felt at having more than one man want me was intoxicating, having more than one man on the same day and mixing them up inside me addictive, the immorality haunting. But within the harsh world of ‘I desire, I take, I consume’ there was also delicate beauty. This one was passionate about me and he used words to seduce me. He would drive me endlessly to places in my own back yard, places that I never knew existed and place my hand upon things so that I could sense their history and their place in the world. And physically he knew how to love me which others didn’t. I discovered that there is a big difference between pleasure that results from my insatiability and the pleasure that I gain from submission.

Today is a perfect day for me. No work, time with a friend. What I don’t want is to have a day of introspection, picking over the past. I want to be content and at peace. I know that I shall have to tread carefully, now there’s a recurring theme over the years, with my Dad I’d have to be very careful though he wasn’t there for long. First things first, some more sleep. That will get me through until mid morning and then I can get the dog out for a walk before heading into town and with some skill avoid the demons of despair that will corner me and pick a fight if I’m not careful. I afford myself a little smile of contentment as I fade back into my hidden mind.

Ending of a Dream

I was sleeping soundly until a vicious stab of memory propelled me upright, it rushed out of my dream, leaving my cold and sweating body, the irritation of its passing ending my unconsciousness, and the horror rushed out and into the dark.

As I woke and reality started to metamorphose out of my dream sensations manifested themselves. Deep arrhythmic breathing, impatient muscle tensions, a hand through my hair revealed it to me as gritty with sweat, the bedclothes as plastic wrapping binding my legs.

Something of the dream’s memory began to coalesce. I am driving a powerful locomotive out of a siding pulling many wagons behind fully laden. The engine screams and whines it thunders and hammers at my ears bones and flesh. I am vicariously powerful for a moment and feel pride. The power to move is mine and I am calling it to do my will. But at that moment a hideous crash against the windscreen twists my perception cruelly and pulls it hard by the roots. Blood and hair, a flash of a face smashed and horrified. And then I see you crushed too, lying on the road and what you are experiencing is a complete negative of my dream. Silent on lookers are shocked into stone, you have no way of preventing your death and your body is becoming immobilised as your breathing subsides.

I feel you stir in the bed next to me and for a moment you are even conscious enough to ask me what the matter is. I don’t answer and soon enough you slip back into wherever you are. I get out of bed and go downstairs to the kettle and while I wait for it to boil change into something dry. I think of my daughters sleeping who knows where; back at their mothers, with their boyfriends, or maybe out in the world. Wherever it is it is unknown to me. I sit down with tea and check four different message sources, nothing of importance or kindness is there. I nurse the smoky Lapsang mug.

Over by the kitchen table is a little desk, one which you use to organise us and make sure all of our papers are accessible. Folders colour coded, pens in trays, photographs of the kids. But because you are not here all day you do not know what the postman brings and you cannot bring order to what is hidden. There are things I that hide. Letters with a momentum that increases daily and soon their tide will be beyond the breakers, too high to resist. I go to the pocket of my coat and pull out one from yesterday. More than three years salary owed if I had a salary which I don’t, and that’s not all.

Caedmon's Hymn

The oldest poem in the English language is a song of creation, known as Caedmon's Hymn. The story goes that whenever Caedmon, a worldy established man and maybe a shepherd, was called upon to sing amongst his fellow men at drinking and feast gatherings, occasions of joy, he was overcome with shame and embarrassment. He knew no words or stories and felt ashamed as this was an essential part of belonging to his people and of sharing that joy. One night after leaving his fellow people in silence once again he retired and fell asleep. He was visited by an Angel who asked:

"Caedmon, sing me something?" and when he replied "I cannot and that is why I left, I do not know how to sing" the Angel replied "Nevertheless you must".

Caedmon asked what he should sing about and the Angel said: "sing to me of the first creation". And Caedmon sang in words that he had never heard:

Nu we sculon herigean, heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte, ond his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.

The translation is unimportant to me. The writing is from Bede, a seventh century English monk from Whitby who may have borrowed at least elements of the story from extant folklore and embellished it with Caedmon's story, one of piety and godliness. I just love way it sounds, that is what matters to me. It is beautiful. Whether these words are of Caedmon, Bede, or God spoken through a man is less important than the narrative connection. This is part of who I am, I can feel it, believe it. I am not alone when I hear speak these words, I can understand.

I will try to find a way of posting what this sounds like when I read it aloud, until then here is a link, and many thanks to http://kayray.org/ for the LibriVox recording. She recites it beautifully.

Caedmon's Hymn

MP3 search on RAPID4ME.com

Sleeping

Yesterday evening my life took a cruel downward spiral and as a result I slept outside last night in a darkened world of thoughts and unmet promises. No mysterious forces prevailed upon me, neither at midnight nor at any other time was I approached by spirits. I am now, I will say, well and truly rooted in the real world and well and truly alone.

My world now has renewed margins, margins defined with highly immediate clarity: anger, violence, disappointment and discontent. The parameters which identify me are creations of both me and my now estranged wife. This is not to say that we should both take all of the blame; much of our situation has been visited upon us by forces greater than the resistance that we could marshal. In the midst of life we are in debt, doubt, personal history and emotional tyranny. But I would accept that the greater majority of our situation is our own creation, one way or another.

I would ask that you don’t jump to conclusions about all of this, who does what and when is always mired in a distorted narrative, I am aware of that and would hope that any reader is too, I don’t have time for black and white and I don’t have much time anymore for people who cannot see the world as grey. This is incongruous and contradictory, believing in grey at face value should coincide with a peaceful characterisation, but it is a question of who we wish to be with in life. Black and white people have no heart, nor do they care for another’s heart. Is it a cliché to say one should only be with people who both set out to treat one’s heart with respect, to be benevolent and munificent with it? Well, if it is a cliché so be it. Black and white is no doubt good for business, science and many other disciplines; but for the heart it is a disaster.

It is enough to say for now, defensively, that it was not I that was violent. I did react strongly to what I perceived as poor treatment, but only with words, and the quality of the treatment that I received was certainly debatable. In doing so I unleashed a demonic tirade of hatred, fists, degradation and a shoe. I am pleased that it was only a shoe; a little earlier it had potentially been a dumbbell threatening to crash into my skull; but even a shoe, recently re-healed, was enough to leave a three inch cut in my scalp. It’s not deep, and doesn’t even feel sore today, so it clearly wasn’t such a big deal physically. The intent behind the battering it was meting out, mostly behind my unresisting but self-protecting arms, was lost in a lack of control and the result was an inability to exercise restraint. When it was finished I knew that I had to act. I packed some things, too much really because my car is now far too much like a poor episode of a bad sitcom, and just left. Bizarrely my wife went downstairs and watched television throughout my packing.

It wasn’t difficult to find somewhere safe to park and sleep. In my first hidden spot after an uncomfortable half hour a car came in to my English Nature-nature reserve bedding place and turns to face mine. The driver revs aggressively and flashes his lights. I think that this is an invitation, or a signal coded to identify a like minded soul. A dog-less dog walker lost in the night. I get up from the back seat and the driver takes off, clearly I wasn’t what they were after, although maybe it was my misted windows that led them on.

So I drove off and had a thought. I know a place where the road has recently been closed off creating a country cul de sac within a village. Down a little lane and away from the houses, far enough to be dark and quiet close enough to be safe and away from prying eyes. So that is where I slept. Not brilliantly, it was bit cold and for tonight I need to get a blanket or two, but I think that I got four or five hours. I had taken a flask of coffee with me, so I woke up to a little comfort and I had taken some shorts and a tea shirt or two. So at seven fifteen I was in the gym, worked out for an hour and a bit, used the showers to freshen up including shaving and then off to the supermarket to buy a few things for breakfast. And now like no doubt so many before me I am in a coffee shop, with a laptop, killing time with nowhere permanent to go. I have decisions to make, accommodation to find, a life to rebuild and a relationship to take apart with a woman who has well and truly lost it with me. If I am going to sleep in the car for a few days until I decide what to do I think I need a few hidden and safe places so that I can rotate them and not draw attention to myself. Whatever next I ask myself.

Haiku

I wrote this on a whim. Montaigne believed marriage to be a cage and I believe that all of us married know this idea. Some cages are traps, some give us voluntary captivity, some we are free to leave for a while and return, some we can bend the bars to fit if poorly made.

I guess that the Haiku could be expanded in consecutive verses each in the 5/7/5 form. I have an idea to try that, to see if I can create a more complete perspective. This is too pessimistic.


Come to me my love
Within my cage my anger
Waits alone for you

Voyeur

“What if the door is locked?”

“And what if it’s not? Your constant pessimism is so wearing”. He scrapes at the ground with a twig, not purposefully but negatively wearing away at the earth, flicking stones away, digging in to root out a channel. “Why should everything be against us?”

“Well you just assumed that it’s alright, no one said that said we can”.

It is two hours since I was disturbed, forced to hide, but I’ve managed to remain unnoticed, I have learnt to do this.

Crouching, uncomfortable and wet, my calf muscles aching under the compression my posture is placing on them, my lower back is tight and painful. It has taken weeks for me to lose the urge to dampen my fingers with my tongue, a magnetic habit that I had acquired before adulthood, but the dirt ingrained in my fingers is drawing them toward my mouth. I perceive stress as dryness in my hands; even though I am no stranger to filth I feel dirt the same way. A dry branch has caught against my sleeve and if I move there will be a sure consequence, a snap, a cause so simple as to effect my discovery.

I cannot see them but their voices sound weak, I picture them emaciated, lank hair matted, with lice, like me. Both of them have the bitterness of strong people no longer able to be the source of their own determination colouring the timbre of their voices. I wonder if once they had all of their material lusts satiated, were considered beautiful among their peers. Beauty lost becomes a source of suffering; poor beauty becomes incarnate.

“Do you think that guy who use to own this place is around? I’ve heard that he’s still here somewhere.”

The question brings a light and casual laugh and he pauses before saying “You know, I think I wish he were, now.”

His sudden change in mood seems to give her confidence. “Me too, I’m sure we could all help each other. He knows every brook and gully”.

“Hey do you remember when you first bought me up here and we found him, meditating? We had that fabulous Lamb that you roasted and he had that crazy smoke.”

So I know them, God that’s disconcerting, I am frightened and hopeful. I don’t remember that time, but I do remember their voices now; I think that we were friends though I have my doubts the term is appropriate. I discovered this place much earlier than any of my temporary acolytes; I was seeking refuge, to recede from an incessant life but, weak, came to hope that strangers would arrive. They did of course pulled-in by the parties that I put on. They weren’t exactly wild but there was enough of everything to fill whatever short term emptiness arose. I was happy to fund it all.
Those who came were younger people predominately, some seeking to retain a carefree spirit in their hatch-battened corporate lives, some just hedonists, others thinking that this part of the world may hold a secret. I never held much truck with mysticism.

“Look it’s getting late, have you any idea where we are going or shall we pick our way back?” The frustration in her voice is rendering her hatefully.

“Does it matter? The time I mean? We’ll know exactly where we are in the morning, and then we can get to the cabin, make a fire, take a wash and have a good sleep. God, it’s only one night in the open, we know that we’re safe here; we could hear anyone coming for miles if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“So much for a fun time then”

She says this with such resignation, her broken heart had hoped for something on which to rest, a few days of visions, childlike, slowly entering her consciousness but car, bed and shower are strong forces.

Within the cage there is kindness
And other forces some unknown
I lean against an old wall waiting
With tricks to play wood on stone.

It’s a song that I wrote when people listened. I thought that they always would.

“Once these things mattered to you” he said.

She continues in her resigned mode, the same as contentment just moved along, same life, same actions, but a different tonal centre. It is now so dark that I cannot see a thing. She begins to hum the tune to my song. The compulsion to lick my fingers strengthens with the compulsion to show myself too. I am so frightened of being exposed I am held in stasis. As each desire grows the other keeps it firmly in check.

“They do matter. Still. Look, if we head back to car we should meet that trail, the one which leads up to the ridge. It’s a clear sky now, the moon should be up soon, we can hopefully see the copse and then make our way down to the hut. I want to do this, for you, for us. I wish he’d never sold it, especially to those two bores.

“Good girl, that’s the spirit. And if we can’t work it out from the ridge, we’ll head back to the car, sleep there overnight and find our way in the morning.”

He’s pleased, his enthusiasm is almost unbridled. I can hear him take hold of her, the whispered intimacies. They crunch away across the floor of leaves and rotting wood, back the way they came.

I wait for maybe five minutes so as to be sure that they have gone. Numb limbs, stiffened and sore it takes me a long time to make my body move freely again. The hut is only a few metres distant. I pick my way at ninety degrees to the path they took, up the hill and find a more comfortable place to watch and wait. I hope that they will find it again. I want to see who they are, see if I remember them.

I sold the hut because I didn’t want to be responsible. Loneliness is cause for despair though it is better than death and some lives are so deathly.

Amateur dramatics

It's been a few days since I have posted, and I can't say that there is a justifiable reason. Minor friction between me and my wife today, not articulated, not explicit but palpable with our history to provide context and understanding. So, I wrote a poem to try and describe, this is a draft and so maybe a revision or a few readings will create new knowledge about what is happening between us. One never knows. Here it is, if you read let me know what it says to you.


I alone: twixt desire and being tardy
She upstairs: withdrawn and supine
We, married: still and yet drifting
You (to me): "should do something!"
Me, with disdain: "what, like you?".
“He worries me”, you say to a friend.
Me? But I’m fine just groping within
For clutter and things to throw out.

21/01/10 Wheldrake, York.

Dog Walk

The sun is a fragment of circle, diffuse and greyed. From high-up it is a window into a room gloomy behind a flapping curtain . In the mind of the rook as it circles, I see the wind and I hear the future uncertain, I must eat or I will starve in the winter. I walk on a page between the lines where new snow has made the way less treacherous, a white page road dirtied by journeys very recently borne upon it. Ten minutes from home, the village church clock chimes ten and the distinct ring of the bells travels through the January sky to land damped on the ears, reminiscent of a clock locked in a forgotten room.

There is no one on the road but me.

On a parallel path the sound of a car travelling away from me is harsh incongruent and catalysing, no doubt a journey with a purpose. I shuffle my feet in the snow, and ask myself directly and harshly what I should do with my day, implying self condemnation. Directly consequent thoughts are hesitant; cleaning, baking, exercise and others are mumbled in an internaly rambling list, some items repeated, and all the while guilt admonishes me to do better. When it has gained a temporary hold on my recalcitrant nature a curse falls out and I tell myself that, for god’s sake, look for work, find an income, put some bloody effort in. That sort of thing.

The dog has run on ahead, there is no need to worry it; it is safe even when cars come by unless I shout at just the inappropriate moment causing it to change direction and run towards me. As I look down the road I see that there is someone walking toward me, some distance off. I’ve seen her before: a young woman walking away from the village. If it is her she’ll be in clothes ill matched to the surroundings, dressy, flamboyant, and glamorous even. We’ve never acknowledged each other before and as we step closer to each other I find myself wanting to greet her. Ten years ago I would have been smiling and walking toward her with a positive intent. Now I am not interested other than in the most basic sense and for that reason I make sure not to look her in the face. As we pass I notice that she is dressed quite sombrely and I forget that I am not to take her in. I glance up and see tears on her face. I do smile, weakly, and say hello. She reciprocates with out a smile and we pass continuing on, in our separate ways.

The rest of my walk is uneventful although for a minute or two the sun became a full circle of washed out light. No vehicles passed by and I didn’t have to call the dog under control until we were very close to home and before crossing the main road into our estate. I promised myself coffee and toast on my return and I am looking forward to it. The bells chime eleven now and their metallic resonance has regained its sharp timbre now I am much closer. I think that I’ll clean a bit and go to the gym. Maybe tomorrow I’ll see her again.

Objects, emotion and memory

I turn over my hand and discover a mark that I had not seen before. My skin is slackening and its pores seem darker. The contrast with my mainly white edged with pink and blue veined background accentuates the dry lines made by the cold air and too much washing that I have been doing. The mark is redder than the pink in my hands but not so much as to be red. It is a little sore. I put it to my lips and draw it and the surrounding skin into my mouth a little. The wet of my mouth feels vey cool, my finger almost itches. If I diffuse my concentration I cannot feel a difference between the two physical sensations: mouth and finger. That feels good, the soreness is alleviated.

I would hate to lose any of my hands' function. A little of my sight and hearing is already impaired. Ringing, haziness; I notice no defect in the quality of my enjoyment. I have to adjust my habits somewhat but it is no hardship. I pick up my guitar and feel the neck, the frets' repetitive underpinning of the strings, the resonance of the body when I play. I can play. It is a marvel. I love to watch and hear expert players, there is beauty in the pivoting damping flowing that matches the notes and articulation. Nothing can match Bach on the guitar. Limited tool of emotion and expression that it is, sonority timbre and percussive acceptance integrate over a seemingly infinite range. The guitarist’s fingers are so much more than a bow or a piano's hammers.

I begin to play. I can feel the mark on my hand just against the lower neck, catching against the highest string. A few scales, stretches and chords to loosen tendons and create life. And then I am off. Today all is right. The hum of boiler and fan, the chill in my lower back, even the birds and the bell of the village church are left behind. I am submerged in the word of God in a godless universe. Each cadence moving counterpoint fixes time which begins to flow harmonically. Dissonance stretches the relationship rhythm anchors it to oscillating parallels. My moment is momentarily lost. A memory attempts to surface. Recently I have found recollection harder. Yesterday, how could I not be able to remember the name of my favourite poet? An enormous 'Yes' leaps out and then his name follows. We used to read to each other, poetry, newspapers, brief paragraphs a simile for that period of our lives. Now we are submerged in novels read separately, you with your favourites me with mine. I used to write for you until debt caused you to be angry with poetry, which in truth is not much use when a business is struggling. After that I stopped for a while, but not forever, I secretly harbour ambition you know.

I have almost completed my piece. I drove in fog through much of it appearing at the coda with a small element of surprise. I am smiling with joy at a temporary shift in key, I know how it is resolved but that sure knowledge and its impending achievement, memorised notes will make it happen, only amplifies the pleasure and succeeds in persuading memory to subside. There, it is done, the final chord. I put down the guitar and look at my hand once again, the mark has gone.

Memory and Positive Thinking

Here's a link to this week's Radio 4 programme 'Start the Week'. Andrew Marr with Orhan Pamuk, Barbara Ehrenreich, Simon Schama and Susan Richards. Orhan Pamuk and Simon Schama drew me in. Barbara Ehrenreich has something fascinating to say about the fascism of positive thiking. Susan Richards annoyed the hell out of me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pqfjh/Start_the_Week_11_01_2010/

I got to thinking and writing and this is the result. Maybe later I'll revist and rework.

Rub together two fingers and the roughness you feel, let it multiply a few times in your mind. Concentrate upon the sensation alone and whatever it is that you wish to do put it aside for awhile and imagine loss. After you part your fingers both the impression of touch and that of loss remain, like diminishing and wistful itches, slipping away into the future. If you now stroke your hands together gently soft courageously there is a memory of that original marking. Put your hand to your face and feel its warmth, part your lips and breathe out gently, dampness on the palm and fingers; if your lips are not moving it can seem as if there is no separation between the sensation felt in the lips or the hands. Smell your breath as a lover would smell it. Know where you are soft and where you are coarse. Our face is a record of our time, contoured routed a death mask in life.

Physical specificity is very truthful; it integrates space and time in our senses and we cannot deny it. Physicality can catalyse memory. Remembering is an act filtered through time, pinning down details; one memory can spin off into many new worlds. I have borrowed these words as I have borrowed the knotted place and moment that I occupy. One day I will have to give it back.

It is said that I want to pin my life down to its impulses, to create the opposite of an idea and discover an electric centre where obsessive love resides, and where I am peripheral. It is said that if one cannot see a golden future then it is you that is at fault, as life cannot be to blame. Well let me tell you that life is bloody well to blame. To control every aspect of life is non-sensical, there is too much to take in. Only in the desert, if living the life of an ascetic, could the material life be separated sufficiently from the spiritual to allow sense to be made of it all. And even then the material could harm. No positive thought could make it better. No positive thought can make it better.

Midnight

I have had the opportunity to enjoy a great deal of time alone these last few days but I haven't made best use of it.

I am toying with the idea of starting a novel. I know that this seems glib of me seeing as the idea would require action alongside things such as my tendency for inaction, my musical escapades, the imperative of looking for work, living under the threat of a financial implosion and managing the fall-out from my ever reacting marriage.

I want to write. I quite like the idea of being an impoverished artist for a while. Not forever though. Some material comfort does have an appeal especially as I can glimpse the coming of my advanced age, a place in time where physical comfort is definitely proportionate to wealth. I am reading around novel writing at the moment: E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, John Mullan's How Novels Work. Very daunting. Credibilty and Beauty are success criteria, but must not be the objects of pursuit. These things can only occur when that most unnatural medium, the novel, becomes a thing completely natural of itself. One thing I've learnt from Forster is that:

Plot = Story + Cause; Story = Character + Action + Time; Natural = Believeable Characters (Flat and Round) + Logic and Mystery.

There's a sort of irony in this as I seem to be all cause and no story. I have lots that I want to say but am at the place where I need character to say it. And I need Characters to say it too. One thing I think I can do with this blog is being to create a scrap-book of people, behaviours, situations, things that may help with my yet un-written desires.

I'll think about it. Good Night World.

Falling Asleep

I have an idea that maybe the elements of our consciousness wax and wane in a reciprocal harmony. I suspect that the oscillations are many dimensional. One dimension I will call evil because my vocabulary is too limited to name it correctly. So I put forward the idea that we exist in a universe where one of the critical measurements required to fix our position needs to be plotted on an axis of evil. I deliberately borrow from GWB. If I may also borrow from Hannah Arendt then another dimension is banality, amply demonstrated by Bush. These things will call us to account if we fall asleep on our watch.

I am as bleak today as the frozen road.

I am as bleak today as the frozen road,
The compacted path a concealed cliché,
My way is as hard as rails. The low sun
Rushes to my eye, unrefracted and white
Concealing dirt beneath tracks pristine.

Summer suffocates. Its butterflies'
Fluttering stench seeks awakening.
What will it find? Hard winter is clean.
Something dark sleeps fitfully within:
Safe now, care is requisite in spring.

Edited 7th Jan 2010

To write is to err and to err is divine.

I know that you are awake. Your breathing gives you away and it angers me. Although we have become so well known to each other it's paradoxically the small details about you that I despise. Not the casual everyday indiscretions that we all have, immature unhygienic behaviours, willful moments of selfishness. God knows I can be selfish too, but no. These things can and do annoy me but I am perfectly able to put them aside and continue in the charade of togtherness and love that we have tricked into being. Again no, what I despise is your confidence. You're not an overtly arrogant man, you're not prone to bragging, though your tendency to speak a little too forcefully and on subjects about which you know too little embarrasses me but again I have learnt to accept that. Maybe I should say learned as I've had to do it again and again but nevermind. It's the way that your self confidence is tenacious, whatever happens, whatever role you play even if it leads to damage you just sit by and acquiesce without blame or doubt.

I feign sleep to avoid conversation, we have said it all and what is left we know we cannot mention. On these matters we are silent, as we should be after all these years. Yesterday for a while I even thought you attractive again. Not enough to make me want you or even be a dutiful wife but the way you held yourself and conversed causally with people was still acceptable to me. It was a good evening, for a while until I became a bit drunk and aggressive. Slipping in and out of sleep I think about myself. Most days I find myself castigating myself for my lack of control, giving in to temptation. Today I feel good, I am pleased with the amount and quality of food that I have eaten. Portion control and balance are my mantras and it seems to be working. Last night before I had to rush into my pyjamas I'd admired myself in our bedroom mirror. You were coming and I wanted to avoid any advances, with my back slightly arched, one heel flat one raised and my waist tucked-in I felt really happy with my body for the first time in ages, I rubbed my hands across my belly and my waist and stood sideways on to the mirror, hands on hips.

***

Good morning my love I say to myself but I don't touch you or make a sound. I remember back to when we were separated for a while six years ago. I'd gone on holiday alone and was sitting in a café nursing a coffee. I really missed you then and what I missed most was our companionship, before we screwed it up with stress and difficulty I thought we had had such beauty together. I believed that we would have these times again if we could only construct our relationship differently. I felt hurt but I didn't want the pain to drive hasty decisions. I thought about your need for security, I thought we needed each other and that by going through a separation I'd become a better man. But in truth those were your words not mine.

I thought that going away would teach me a lot about myself. I don't think that it did. You had your lover. You asked me if I could cope with the emotions of being a alone while you were sleeping with him, I'd joked that we both swing to the rhythms of different lusts. Sometimes yours for safety, somtimes yours for men to covet and desire you. Other times you need to be loved for your heart and your mind, am I right?

I'd recommended you a song: 'baby, oh baby, you're my drug, come on baby let me get fucked up'. Such a male thing to sing but this is a woman's words. I thought if it came from someone else you'd understand. She understands. Love the high but long to be clean. I hoped that you'd feel some of this too? You wrote to me in explict detail about the things the two of you did to each other and you told me you felt like a whore, giving good value to your affluent older man. I think that it made you feel wonderful to for while, but only once you'd let me in on your secrets, only when you'd linked it to me. I could palpably feel your sexual excitement when you wrote those things.

And then in a flash it hurt you. You didn't want him anymore and the excitement became too much to bear. You spoke of carrying a weight of desire that would crush us if we didn't let it down to the ground. But the exquisite pleasure of being crushed still makes me want to take an extra step. Nothing's changed since. I still wish we could return to that time and for the way that your domination cocooned me to continue. For me you rang the changes much too soon. I didn't get my fantasy. You said that couldn't keep it going until then. It would have hurt me and in a way it always has, even though it didn't happen. I say I love you so much and more all the time. I love the loves of each other's lives, this is us to me.

Clarification of Position

Such incongruity. We correspond
About a book and yet where I am,
Cold and old age achieve an effect
Not unlike the bullets and beatings
They are meting out where you are.

Let us think of who we are awhile.
Distance, culture, peace, age, death
Many dimensions divide another:
You are where it’s real and I am not.
My body's at home safe and sound.

Vanity is a Powerful Drug.

Call me slow, but at forty six I have just discovered that vanity has a number of insidious side effects.

Firstly it hides me from myself. I can get quite angry at perceived injustice, when in reality I am usually at least partially responsible for what I receive. I think that this is partly as a result of seeing myself as being intelligent or attractive**, whilst any self-belief that would result in either description seems to negate the delusion by definition.

Secondly it leads to an expectation of superiority. This is usually expressed as a desire for equal treatment. But the self cannot accurately measure equality, it's a little like the uncertainty principle, the complexity of human equality seems to dissolve into a morass of varying probabilities and potential outcomes. Vanity leads us to measure our experience of fairness with a bias that aims to ensure a better than average success rate.

Much is said about Male and Female vanity, and it now becoming a more common trait amongst men. I think I'll say nothing about that except that men have always been vain, it's just that to hide the implied insecurity they have tended to point the finger at feminine vanity. The painting is titled Vanity by Frank Cadogan Cowper, the 'last of the pre-raphaelites'.

** Although please note that I oscillate between + and - with an unduly large proportion of my time spent in a limbo of self-medianity. Distinctly different from mediocrity which has connotations of negativity. I cannot work out whether I am electrically charged or connected to the the personality earth.

Something to consider, please?

You seem to find me very negatively placed. You are right that I am not really a sociable animal. I don't really see the point of being with people just to recycle the same trivialities seemingly for narcissistic reasons. I'm thinking of particularly dull people that we know here.

I find that a lot of what happens to me disappointing i.e. the way I can be treated, ignored, disrespected etc. But in truth I am not treated any differently from anyone else, and no doubt I can treat others just the same, and I know that you have felt similarly. I try not to let it get me down, or if it does I can be fed up for a while but I can find enough peace within me to put it behind me. Treating people badly seems to be the way of the world. It's not for me though.

I can see that you see me as being lonely. I'm not. New work when it comes will bring new social opportunities, there's the pub, Mike, the kids, it's enough for now. I am generally happy to accept people as they are and if people aren't perfect, well I'm not either. The temporary nature of work related friendships tends to suit me. If I am to have longer term or more frequent relationships I want them to be based upon something shared and not just navel gazing or Dave and Ted's banal and immature pub crawling pussy hunts. I know that isolates me and I know that being opinionated can compound this. I try to be kind, generous and a good listener; much more so that many I some across, and most people only want their own self to prevail, I guess I get bored with that and that's why I don't see many people.I know that a lot of what you project onto me is a reflection of your past, my weaknesses and faults filtered through your values, our situation with its frustrations and uncertainties. But I think that you fell out of love with me a long time ago and sometimes I wonder if you ever did.

Yesterday I was happy to see you, was happy with my day, there was no problem. Of course life could be better, in our situation that's a given. Like you I cannot be super positive all the time. You clearly want a different life than we have had for some time, with the social aspects such as yesterday's lunch, Julie, your course, Tammy and the kids etc, that's fine by me I'm not possessive (I can be nervous about being hurt but that's a different matter) but please don't denigrate me becuase I want different things from life. I love you, we have until Thursday night before we're really together again. Let's not load it with too much expectation though. I just want you to be happy, if we can be happy together then that's what marriage is about.

A Start of Something?

My name is Richard Mutt and I am not yet fifty though I have made substantive progress in attaining that age by believing in good, in right, in love and beauty. As I get older things pivotal to the enjoyment of the remainder of my days oscillate, my weight, my desires, my kindnesses and commitments all in disordered dimensions parallel to the scales of intent and resignation which weigh my contentment. So does purpose for instance and today I cannot get up. The sky today, a winter dawn, somewhere around eight is intense, a cloud low dark long moves from left to right across my bedroom window, a snake in my eye. Framed with dark red curtains foreboding pink high cloud is eclipsed by rapidly moving wisps of black. The sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty seventh day of my life begins. The cheeky boy with the handsome smile is alone beside his wife, she snores softly, somewhere front or back the cat calls to be let in from the night. Today looms large. I stretch myself, feel the sore muscles of my inactive body go as far as they safely will. Right handed my right shoulder and neck are, together with a spot just above my right hip the most unforgiving. They reflect the tension I display, picking, typing, bowing, touching. I don't relax into these things and even when conscious of my rigidity I find it impossible to become physically at peace.It's almost Christmas too, green and red, gaudy and cheap adorns my world for a few weeks. Both my wife and my mistress love this time. Once I chose my mistress because I thought her and my wife so unalike. Now they are as binary stars orbiting each other and I am their invisible centre of gravity, binding them, tracing the groove in time through which they pass, holding it all together. They shop, I shop, my women I cannot stop. It's quite a blissful place really. Quietly and serenely enabling their consumption. I wonder how many people hope that I have gone from their lives and will never return?

God, Reason and Love

Beauty and intelligence can be curses when they are qualities possessed in isolation, alien to prevailing desires. The profane pursuit of the beautiful, the tyrannical domination of reason by emotion. But what are these if not the common experiences of man?

Imagine science as a route to enlightenment in place of religion, reason and logic as the moral code necessary to control our negative and unenlightened impulses and imagine the pursuit of beauty and love as our goals. For God we would have reason, for naked self interest we would have beauty, love is the human manifestation of beauty, when we act beautifully we act with love, when we perceive only the pure beauty of another, then we are in love.

For God would become reason, reason is reborn from time to time but is sacrificed, reason preaches to us and logic is it's moral code. Success in our search for God is to be measured by the beauty of the answer to each individual question used to lift a corner of the veil. The journey is art and science. We are but tools. Maybe there is no other sentient life but us, maybe there is. Maybe the race is to become God.

Religion is correct in as much as it seems in it's purest forms to seek enlightment, seeks to give answers. Religion is correct in the same way that Newton was i.e. only partly. It only partly lifts the veil because it is based on flawed premises. a limited understanding based upon limited perception. Also Leibniz was hurt because love was not Newton's way, stealing ideas does not lead to truth. Religion steals the truth of God. Religion seeks the rules to guide us. Religion is a less refined view of the universe than the absolute truth of existence and its governing rules, and current science too suffers in the same way. Both suffer because we, in our state of only partial knowledge, are fallible. We seek to know the infinite, but our view is necessarily partial, because of our imperfections we can mistakenly pursue their aims and in doing so amplify them.

Control

A 19th century comment from Marx hints that he believed that it was the Britisher's desire to be bourgeois that holds British society back from radicalism. That's very prescient and just as relevant today.