Bring a bucket and a mop...

I have believed for most of my life that the only way to move forward is to cut certain people out of my story. To shed the excess skin and be born anew. But today, I think I have realised that this is not how it actually works. Perhaps leading a meaningful existence is not cutting ties with people in order to walk with ease in the future. The journey home isn't running away from obstacles. It is learning to stand where you are and handle people, assert yourself, set boundaries and never feel your happiness is dependent on another person's approval of your choices, beliefs or needs. So for once, I am not walking away. I will stay here with you, talk it through, and see where we end up. Is that alright with you? 

Laugh now, cry later...

If I woke up without you,

don't know what I would do.

Thought I could be single forever, 

until I met you.

Savage love - 

is it time to break a heart?

Seven days a week...

No darkness could stay forever; such was life. All the great stories were filled with struggle, and there would always be a way to conquer the shadows, even if all seemed lost as it did now. There would always be a new dawn and a new day; the sun would rise, and so would I if I didn’t give up on myself. It was for the bright days, the ones filled with love and laughter, that I had to keep fighting. It was for the people and the places and the things I loved that I had to continue onward. Nothing would ever be the same after I had given up, but to still have the courage to forgive - that was real bravery, the bravery people talked about in stories and tales.

I'm insane to complain...

 

Seven days a week...

I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at almost 30, I still hate losing, for loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.

A marvellous time ruining everything...

Having adventures on my own...

But we are something, don't you think so?

Roaring twenties, almost over, 

tossing pennies in the pool.

And if my wishes came true,

it would be you.

In my defense, I have none,

for never leaving well enough alone.

But it would really be fun

if you would be the one.

Fire in my lungs...

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. Stories I have written, and even more importantly, stories I have managed to survive. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by the culmination of everything you have ever done. Nothing can be forgotten or erased. Our consciousness remembers. It leaves imprints and road signs towards the ending of it all. How good we are at following these omens ... well that's a whole different story.

The devil on my tongue...

 

One that was born to run...

The sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes being pushed back by the sheer determination to never appear weak or sad as I go on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Kissed my love goodbye, chatted with my co-workers, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears all tried up in my eyes. Tick. Tick. Tick. The passing of time is the only thing I can hear clearly, despite not knowing what the hell to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats me up and I just want to be fine. Yet there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental. You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost in your thoughts in part from the panic of realising the size of that imagined leviathan.

His heart is giving out...

This much I do know - I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices and chaotic passions that have led me towards numerous triumphs, but also countless defeats. And I have started to wonder if I can accomplish any of the things I hope for, without destroying myself in the process. I ask myself often if it's time for me to quit. If my time has simply passed and I have now officially not become the man I wanted to be. I am at a point where the exhaustion of getting to the goal has somehow made me forget the elation effect of trying to achieve it. And because that's the case, I fear that I will forfeit both, crash into the ground and deep within my settled grave. 

This is me trying...

They told me all of my cages were mental,

so I got wasted like all my potential,

and my words shoot to kill when I'm mad,

I have a lot of regrets about that.

I was so ahead of the curve, 

the curve became a sphere.

Fell behind all my peers and I ended up here,

pouring out my heart to a stranger

but I didn't pour the whiskey.

Once in twenty lifetimes...

Whenever you're ready...

Hit the ground running...

The world is a wide place where he stumbles like a child learning to walk. It's a bright mosaic where I learn how to see, where my little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and colour and detail as they can. The world is a coaxing whisper when the wind lips the trees, when the sea licks the shore, when animals burrow into earth and people look up at the sympathetic stars. The world is an admonishing roar when gales chase rainclouds over the plains and whip up ocean waves, when people crowd into cities or intrude into dazzling jungles.

… and the story as it plays out in my mind is that I became a writer when I started to realise that I wasn't loved and that maybe I never would be. I was nineteen and epic stories were snaking out of me because I felt badly treated, or I was newly aware that I'd colluded in my self-annihilation and the love I had sought up until then was a lie. I became a writer when I learned that I was a person and not just a figure inside another person's libidinal imagination - I am still not entirely that, though, a person; still part of my brain is lobotomised by the fantasy of glory and worthiness in libidinal abjection and I have to somehow live with that.

Under the sheets of my bed...

I have found that time was like rain, glittering as it fell, changing the world, but something that could also be taken for granted. Until you loved another. Then time became gold in a miser's hands, every bright year counted out carefully, infinitely precious, and each one slipping through your fingers. Because people don't know how warm you are and how warm they are with you, not until they're cold. People think a bonfire is something they can build anywhere. It's not. It takes wood, an open space, ideally stars in the sky. They can't fabricate that. They don't know how warm you are until they're cold. They don't know you're a star until you're not there.