One more bit

You'll remember my advice from a while ago: never write anything the days immediately before or after an age increment. This has been a simple yet effective guard against the most obvious, and unrewarding, strains of self-reflection and flagellation. Well, we're past that point enough now for me to try to bring some sobriety to the scene, but wouldn't you know it, I reach into my mind for a thought and my hand gets eaten up by the dark.

I've told myself this so many times it likely doesn't bear repeating, but I have nothing else to say anyway, so here goes: the meta-flaw I seem unable to conquer is obsessing over my myriad minor flaws. Without my quite realising it, it appears that every quiet moment when my consciousness isn't looking, part of me tallies up the mistakes I've made and keeps a fresh list at the ready for a moment of weakness. That's the only way I can explain what I did yesterday: a sad, and ultimately selfish release of my insecurities to a party unable to do anything with them except make note to never bring up anything of the sort with me again.

It's all the more surprising given that I thought I had...well, if not conquered these demons, then at least tamed them somewhat. You remember the separation of concerns, and all that. I'm not sure then what yesterday implies, other than that I seem to have been living in a form of blissful ignorance I didn't know I was capable of. And frankly, I'm largely ok with that -- some truths just aren't worth confronting or owning up to, provided they are never given the air to actualise. The latter, I think, is the key: how to stop these episodes of emotionally deluging some unsuspecting other?

I know it's a long way still for the next bit to drop, but last night and this morning, I couldn't quite see a future where that actually happened. How am I supposed to keep this up, day after day, night after night? Loneliness has never been a particularly good friend, but it seems the only one I have right now. And, wouldn't you know, it really hates new company.

So did she agree? Hah. Of course not. I must say that despite all my rough talk about my fundamental worthlessness, my actions betray a rather different sense of the self -- one laughably inflated in the other direction. It's why I now find myself feeling undone, where my past writings might suggest a complete lack of surprise to be the only logical response. I suppose I was one up on myself with those self-portraits dripping of deprecation and despair; that's clearly a much more honest picture of myself, at least, in how I am viewed by the outside world. What do I expect from a lifetime of sitting in the corner, avoiding eye contact, and going out of my away to shy away from any non-superficial interaction? It's only reasonable that my pathetic attempts at reaching out are seen as what they likely are, a last ditch attempt at grace by someone who doesn't seem to realise that he was damned a long time ago. So I hold no ill will. Thankfully, my little corner of the universe remains faithful to me. There's room enough here for me to spend the rest of my time, fading away bit by bit, day by day.

Away at last from the swirl of people running around, making excited plans for the future, proudly displaying to the world that they are in pursuit of a higher purpose. Their energy always gets me down, reminder as it is that maybe I was once like that. Or not; I don't really remember that well, but I'm not particularly inclined to get to the bottom of that matter. In any event, what matters is that right now, energetic is what I'm not. This evening, like many evenings, I feel like a piece of driftwood, aimlessly floating to whatever shore happens to be closest. Even writing down these thoughts takes up dangerously close to all the stamina I have left.

The glimmers of hope that trap themselves in my mind ever so often are swiftly exhumed by my overpowering sense of cynicism, which is now indistinguishable from my sense of reality. It's admirable to try to escape your fate, sure, but tonight, I wonder whether I'm not better off just accepting a few things once and far all. This journey I shall travel alone; my life's course isn't likely to change anytime soon; and happiness, while never totally elusive, is simply not mine to hold with any permanence.

That last one is particularly worth fronting up to. It's now 12 years since last I remember having a year where there weren't blocks of time lost to some combination of extreme self-loathing, misanthropy, and lack of any positive external influence. I don't doubt a lot of this is circumstantial, but those other two points are such that they mean these circumstances are unlikely to change radically. The pragmatist in me thus asks to simply be thankful for the days where I wake up with something to believe in, and to not be too dismayed to find myself confronted with gaping holes where the future is supposed to be. I ought to be used to that by now.

Why do I always seek the rip in a silver lining? I don't remember being born this way; rather, I seem to have grown up all wrong, never content with what I have, always lamenting what I have lost. I certainly wouldn't suggest to the bright young faces that such flaws can't be rooted out. But only while you're still young. Fat good all these trite realisations do me now, as everything I could've held onto has been taken away. My bed is made, and someone is forcing my eyes shut.

One of the uses of poetry is certainly in providing a glimpse into an inner life, both as it is lived and experienced. But is that the only use? I should say that this question is purely academic to me, because what I produce isn't poetry in any serious sense of the word -- these are private rhymes, secret phrases that carry weight in my memory. They serve no greater purpose than recording the moments that produced them, and have been a success measured solely by the fact that I can re-read them and remember an episode or emotion vividly. But hubris tempts me to ask whether they could ever be something more.

In asking that, I am immediately shut down by a familiar reality -- to write something personal is trivial; but to write something externally emotive is not. Certainly others have shown that the two can be present simultaneously, but their creation remains a mystery to me. How does one get outside one's own consciousness, hopelessly warped and solipsistic as it is, and even hope to convey something to another person? Whenever the hopeless fantasy of sharing these writings crosses my mind, I think of any normal reaction to their content and context, and am forced to conclude that if judged by how clearly they express feelings for others to digest, they are an abject failure.

What does any of this matter, you ask? I don't actually think there's anything wrong per se with keeping writings private. I do suspect, though, that like with most things, there is value in having thoughts converted from the personal to the universal (or something resembling that). For a start, it might convince me that there is a world outside my own, and that there's nothing particularly special about my view of it. Whether this hypothetical mature version of me would have anything useful to say, though, is up in the air.

Somebody's Baby Now

I thought a poem
Could win a heart
Or if not
Then cure the blues;
But tonight
I write alone
When I'd rather
Be with you.

Happy for You

And truly I can bear
To never take his place
Each time I see you wear
The smile that lights your face.

My claim is not to know more about music than the people I spend most of my life with. It simply is that I seem to think more deeply about a particular strain of music than any of them likely imagine possible.

There are times when this seems like another adolescent hangover that I should have shedded a long time ago. But then I come upon another album, another song, another turn of phrase that makes me remember the large body of work I've taken so much pleasure from the past decade or so. I make no special claims about their structural depth; my taste firmly and unabashedly lies with the deft manipulation of words, set to pliable melodies. Where once I would have naively claimed that these assuredly belong to the world of poetry, now I'd just assert that what ever the world may think of them, I know only that this mind and body is particularly attuned to the skilled exponents of this craft. And I'm content with that.

These structural limits of the format, ironically, seem to act to the benefit of the composers. On the written page, the absolute freedom on offer seems to have compelled practitioners into a direction that elevates structure over feeling. It could also be that I just like nothing more than a good rhyme, and again this seems to have been eschewed on paper in favour of a variety of other devices that my untrained eyes simply do not respond to.

More broadly, I think it's also the subject matter. There is in a way a lack of pretentiousness in rock poetry, simply in its quotidian selection of topics. I'd certainly agree that elevating the everyday experience as something greater than it is would be a mistake. But a remarkably large spectrum of thought and feeling is to be found within these songs. I'm probably well beyond being able to better myself in knowledge of enough of the antiquities and history to fully appreciate the verse that is set in that style. Perhaps that would be a far more enriching experience, and are far more enriching life. But I'll deal with the life I've got.

Too Much of One Thing

Symptomatic of a larger malaise I possess is that I shirk from wholesale commitment to anything that brings me pleasure. Whenever I happen upon anyone praising something I enjoy, but going the extra mile that I didn't realise was there -- that's when I pause, stop, and turn around. Not that I turn my back completely, just that I maintain an air of aloofness that I think is a betrayal of the depths of my feeling.

True enough, sometimes, I can't convince myself this isn't rational, though. Take music, and my distaste for the levels of obsessive fandom that have a following unto themselves. I've spoken before of the danger of all this, namely, elevating eclecticism unjustly. Then again, maybe I'm just too closed minded. What, after all, differentiates my eccentric picks over anyone else's? Just that I don't praise them to the same extent?

Final Fig

My candle is spent
Its flame at end
But sadder still
The sight
Of a wick
Still strong and thick
Yet never set
Alight.

What do I do when I'm not working? An innocuous question, to which my only feasible reply is invariably: Not a lot. I stress feasible rather than honest, because the truth is a little more complicated. It's true enough that a lot of my time is spent in pursuit of admittedly juvenile thrills, which have historical roots in my seeking to bleach out the once painful act of everyday living. But whatever little of it is spent productively - and there is a little of it, not none entirely - is in devotion to something immensely private. These writings for example have seen sufficient attention that by any reasonable definition, they would constitute something approaching a hobby. Yet there's precious little here that I can reasonably share with anyone I know in any personal capacity: the edges are too sharp, the references too oblique.

Where, I wonder, did those figs go? Once I had the thought of writing beautiful, universal words that would make up a rich tapestry of an inner life. I seem unable however to put my experiences in a language that anyone else can understand, or even cared to listen to. If I were forced to guess, I'd wager it's a simple consequence of my perennial sin of elevating my own consciousness above everyone else's. I can curse the words for ending up the way they have done; but at the same time, I can't quite conclude what I could have done differently. If the aim was to chronicle my true self, I think I've done a pretty good job.