Saturday 26 August 2006 at 4:30 pm
back in cambridge, tying some strings up in an odd mood. brooding over some old dark debris on a walk into town, I snapped out of it to find myself light of stride and grinning like a loon for no reason. seems whatever worries I may be nurturing, my body registers the anticipated relief of departure like a lifted veil.
packed up a year's worth of loose change from my top drawer this morning and discovered £84.44 in sub-pound denominations, over £170 in one- and two-pound coins. after an hour at the local natwest branch counting it all up in little piles and putting the heavy metals in little plastic bags for weighing, even the blue-clad security lady overcame her apparent suspicions that I might have mugged some inordinately successful homeless person, and joined in to help me. gave five pounds to a man looking for a cup of tea, bought a couple of computer games for the long autumnal break.
Saturday 19 August 2006 at 10:37 pm
it has been brought to my attention – by an involved party –
that not only do my bleak and sketchy descriptions leave much to be
desired as to their reflection of real conditions, but their tone
indicates an impertinent lack of appreciation for the gracious
hospitalities of which I currently find myself the recipient.
to correct this, I feel I must notify the reader that I do, in
fact, write while wrapped up to my chin in a warm and delightful cocoon
of skin-temperature affections, while a white-haired cherub with
dimpled cheeks rains jellybabies and gentle mockery on my head. I get
served fresh milky coffee in the mornings by a woman whose attentions
many men will go to their graves bemoaning the lack of. ‘tis, on the
whole, a set-up so memorably pleasant that were it widely known in its
details, I might be hunted down for sport by the envious masses.
[“see? see? can I have my draft back now please?”]
Thursday 17 August 2006 at 3:58 pm
the stress finally snapped my metabolic spine. riddled with illness, in the borderland of insane, I broke for the hills to london. I write now in a white room overlooking a lush green garden in Holloway, between multicoloured popcorn and episodes of twin peaks running in the top right corner of my screen. soft rain falls outside; clean quiet unfamiliar little people mull quietly through the doors. day by day I feel more human.
Thursday 10 August 2006 at 11:52 pm
Thursday 10 August 2006 at 6:06 pm
recognized myself in my own teethgrinding, and let slip of my anger of the last days. most of it had to do with a backdrop of composite mental stress - thesis, future, moving, rupture - against which a range of my buttons were pressed in an unfortunate and unwitting manner. particularly, a rather annoying situation I had been trying to deflate for a while exploded nonetheless. I had approached the problem with a patience that strained the patience of friends and confidantes - not just those directly involved, either. a month ago, one friend told me she would just have punched the 'problem' in the face. a lovely blonde woman told me to 'drop-kick her into the cam'. this is a small place, however, and I wanted to try and navigate to smooth waters.
I opted to keep my own rather savage opinion of the 'problem' to myself, and tried to avoid expressing my brutal, hurtful and irrevocable judgement: a judgement that the 'problem' was powerless to act on anyway, as it had to do with solid and integral things - matters of personality that no longer change very easily by a certain age. it hinged on one of those moments when someone unwittingly reveals something about themselves, the tip of a submerged iceberg, that makes you realize, with a sinking feeling, that you could never take them seriously except as a charity case.
disguising the judgement - because I still liked the person and wished them no ill - i tried by escalating means to make it clear that I wanted to disengage: ignoring emails, ignoring texts, screening phone calls, and writing e-mails that were dismissive to the point where the 'problem' referred to them as 'rancid'. rejection seemed to lead nowhere however; I still found myself 'trapped' in a one-sided relation of imagined intimacy with someone I felt not the vaguest sense of kinship for, and increasingly did not want as a friend. this is a kind of situation, and a kind of pressure, that I respond very badly to: I pick my friends carefully, precisely for that reason. in the end, my patience snapped and things were severed in an apocalyptic mode.
in retrospect, I wonder whether my protracted diplomacy was ill advised - should I have gone in from the start, guns ablaze and seeking conflagration by the shortest route? I am not sure it would have worked any better - some invulnerability to conventional firearms seems to have been involved.
Wednesday 09 August 2006 at 5:19 pm
last night I picked up a bag of peanuts at the bar, at 5 to 12. a man I knew from the first year noticed the conspicuous lumps of bluetack keeping my lenses in place. 'do you walk around with those, or only in wolfson?' head slightly tilted, I looked over at him. 'you must get some strange looks, huh?' I gave him a good-natured chuckle and left.
somewhere else, unseen, I was shaking my head. what I did not tell him was 'look at you in your little suit, with your little half-pint - you sad little slave. you're everything I don't want. you just gave me wolfson in a nutshell.'
this place, these people, their little 'bops' and their salsa nights. like most other things here, I credit them with the negative force of having compelled me to clarify to myself what is relevant, significant, challenging about the fact of existing as a human being. and it is not this anemic zoo of conformity and bland achievements, midnight half-pints and insignificant platitudes.
if nothing else, I leave this place with a clearly defined sense of negative purpose - something new. I would rather subsist sweeping floors or driving garbage-trucks, than endure in an atmosphere of things that feed my contempt.
this has something to do with other things. the air of this place reeks with bland but steel-infused standards - measures of achievement that I consider absurd. chasing success through the opinions of others would be a human failure. there are enough people here whose success comes at the expense of the invisible things I consider worthwhile.
my success is a private thing, measured against my own standards. it is a matter of untangling bindings, strengthening what is fragile and cracking what is brittle, confronting fear, recognizing the appropriate. walk without shelter, leave no sacred cows, become human. my success will be dying as an interesting man. prestige and recognition have nothing to do with this. most people are not equipped to recognize this, and so I give their opinions little heed.
Saturday 05 August 2006 at 04:13 am
...some people can't read the words 'BACK THE FUCK OFF' unless someone brands them on their damn forehead with a fresh cattle-iron.
and just for the record, this is the last time I ever cater to anyone else's ill-adjusted personality structure by removing content they've intentionally posted here. if you're not sure it can stand the test of time, then get the fuck out of my face and don't post it in the first place. I am about this close to posting a recent correspondence, but I won't because it is feeble and would amount to a character assassination.
to you, if you're reading this despite my IP-blocks: go away.