Day Three hundred and thirty five - Moonlight shadow

You know how sometimes artists - and I'm referring to musicians here - or bands only are really important to you in a very specific period of your life? Granted, there will always be those bands that come into your life and, whenever that may have been, they will remain with you for as long as you live. But there will always be some that remain tied to that one part of your life, and you don't necessarily know their discography that well - maybe you only listened to a couple of tracks here and there, and they resonated deeply with you, and you thought why not try and listen to the whole album, and is turns out to be not that great. But that does not hinder your love for those songs, and neither does it move you to want to listen to more by whichever band it was. Right? Well, for me - out of many examples I could produce - the guilty party is one Mike Oldfield. According to Wikipedia, Mike is a multi-instrumentalist who plays progressive rock / world / folk / classical / ambient / new-age / pop / experimental / minimalist music. And all that may be true - I wouldn't know. He already had a fairly large discography by the time I first learned about his music, and back never since then have I had any real interest in exploring his body of work since I first listened to one of his songs. Though retroactively I've come to learn that in fact, even younger, I'd listened to one of his songs - his most famous, quite likely - when I saw the trailer for a little known horror movie called 'The Exorcist' and the song featured prominently in it. But let's go to a little later, shall we? Let's go to 1983.

It's 1983, and I am starting to develop a love for music. There always was music in my house, mainly of the pop variety, but then there were also stuff like Santana - whose 'Abraxas' had a cover that scared the bejesus out of me - as well as Pink Floyd, and Genesis, and Dire Straits, and Queen, and to be fair, all of that was pop to me. I hadn't yet learned that there were different genres of music. But I was devouring everything I could get my hands on, and on saturdays there was this show on TV that listed the top selling records for that week, and some of those would have videos for the songs. It was a ritual for me and my family to always watch that show, usually after lunch, and on one of those magical afternoons, I saw the video for a song called 'Moonlight Shadow' for the first time. It was love at first sight. It was love at first listen. I immediately wanted to listen to the song on repeat, but I'd only be able to catch the song occasionally on the radio - we didn't have a tape recorder yet, or a stereo system - or sometimes the video would play again. And I burned that video in my brain - or so I thought. Maybe about a year or so later, maybe a bit more, I started seeing the posters for a movie called 'Amadeus', and that poster scared the living shit out of me, for some reason I still can't understand today. And in my mind, the video for 'Moonlight Shadow' involved a shadowy, masked figure shooting someone - perhaps in a duel. The truth is that the video does involver someone shooting someone else, indeed in a duel. But no masked figure, of which I could've sworn I could vividly remember multiple different shots of. And what with the advent of the internet, of course I had to look up the video - it contains no such shots, and there are no alternate cuts to it, other than an edit that omits a verse. I've watched the video countless times since then, and while I can see where my young mind might've superimposed imagery from 'Amadeus' and maybe other sources, what I had pictured for so long had never been there.

But the song itself has remained with me, all these long years. I'd be lying, though, if I said it's my favourite of his. Then again... to the best of my knowledge, I've only listened to three other songs of his. And I say this with a caveat : I did have one album of his - 'Crises', where 'Moonlight Shadow' was featured, and eh, I didn't love it. I never felt that urge to return to it, and eventually I'd just end up recording the song by itself on a mixtape or the other. And it was probably through those mixtapes - we'd by then gotten a crappy stereo system, of which only the turntable still exists - that I got to know some more of his songs. These songs are called 'To France', 'Five Miles Out' and 'Islands', this one with the great Bonnie Tyler on vocals. And I love these songs to death, they're still featured in one of my playlists. I don't listen to them daily, or that often really, but every now and then I put them on, and I'm taken back to that era between '83 and maybe '86 or '87, where they were my favourite songs. They'd soon be losing their prominence in my listening habits, though. It would be around this time that Iron Maiden would come to dominate my imagination. Still, I hold these songs in such high regard. And I do know that Mike Oldfield has a legendary and celebrated career, and there's a bit of me that wonders if I'll ever have the patience and the time to get to know that discography.

Day Three hundred and thirty four - In keeping secrets of silent earth : 3

Something which I did not ever foresee, when I started this project of mine, was for me to have an audience. You know how sometimes you wish people came with an instruction manual? Well, a part of me saw this as 'here, this is the story of my life, these are pretty much everything important that's ever happened to me, here's my baggage, the whole shebang.', because - and if I'm completely honest - I grew so tired of telling the same stories. But I realize now - and actually only realized about halfway through - that I actively made no provisions to keep my writings secret or private. My blog was never hidden and neither was it invite only. I knew that when I first started this blog years ago, there were a handful of people who visited it and read my posts. But since I'd all but abandoned this blog, I didn't for one second think that anyone would still be reading it. And for months on end I rarely had a hit on my blog - I check the views regularly, and sometimes I'd get maybe one or two hits a day, but most days no hits at all. That mattered not to me at all, I wasn't writing for an audience, I was writing for myself. But then in July something happened, something I'm undecided whether I should write about or not, and the hits kept on coming. Suddenly, I was being read, and I was getting views from multiple countries. Mainly Europe, but a lot of U.S. and Canada too. There are days where I get over one hundred views, there are days where my posts are read almost ten times - and hey, that's almost ten times more than I'd have expected. 

I know who, at least, a couple of my readers are. Maybe three. The others, I have no idea who they are. There's no interaction between me and anyone who visits, no comments on my posts, and that's ok - I never was expecting any of that. I don't have a single follower, and I still have posts with zero views. Honestly, I came in expecting nothing whatsoever. But could the pyramids in ancient Egypt have had a helping hand in their creation from beyond the stars? Could it be that the mythical Anunnaki of legend had a clear presence among humanity thousands of years ago? And if so, what could that mean for the history of humankind? Ancient Alien Theorists suggest that this is the unopposable evidence that extraterrestrials have always lived among us. What? This was just a test. I wanted to know if you're reading. Leave a like, follow and subscribe! (We now return to our regularly scheduled transmission.)

Day Three hundred and thirty three - Somebody

With a little over a month to go until the end of the year, and the conclusion of this project of mine, why not break another bit of kayfabe? Kaywhat? Kayfabe. We good? Good. I don't think it's any sort of secret, really, but every single post's title is the name of a song. Is it obvious? I think it was. When I made the first post of the year, it was supposed to just be 'Day One', and then move forward as I went along. But what happened is that I found myself thinking about a book by Nick Hornby called '31 Songs'. Way back in the late 90's/early 00's I got myself in a huge Hornby kick, and I read and re-read his books numerous times. One such book was the aforementioned '31 Songs', where he waxes about his well, favourite, 31 songs. Some years after I first read that book, in one of my first blogs - the long defunct Souvenirs d'un autre monde - I re-used that same concept and wrote about what I thought were my then favourite songs. I can't remember which songs I chose, other than a small handful. Many of them, though still songs I adore, would hardly feature now in an all-time favourites list. What I tried to do then was explain why each song was important to me, how I first came across it, and if there was a story tied to it, I'd tell it. 

It's a funny thing, but the only time I ever told a specific story about something that happened in my life was during that time I was writing about the songs. I never told it to anyone afterwards, I will not tell it here, and nor shall I be telling it ever again. And for the life of me, I can't even remember what song the story might've been attached to. For the vast majority of that project, my writings were of the slice of life variety, but at least a couple I tried to write some fiction around the song I chose. I tried to tie some form of narrative to the emotional pull I felt coming from the song. There was only the one post I felt proud of having written, and no wonder it's the one post still extant on that blog. When I started writing for the first post, and having pondered about what I just wrote about, I thought why the fuck not, why wouldn't I add a title to the post? Why not a song? And let me tell you - coming up with a different song every day is not as easy as it sounds. Sure, I've repeated bands a lot of times, and every now and then I find that the song I'd picked for that day's post, I'd already used months ago. As far as I know, I do not have any duplicates. So for quite a while, I was just using the song titles - and these would often be from songs that I'd just heard - and they weren't tied at all to what I was writing. It took a bit for me to realize that - and especially from a certain point of my life on - I could use the songs titles to my advantage. The titles became a herald for what the post would be. Still, some did not come easy - at all.

A part of me hoped that I could stretch the telling of my life's story for the duration of the year, but alas - my life really has been that dull and uneventful. I experienced a moment of panic as I approached the last few posts about my story, not knowing what would come after. Something - though now I would not be able to specify just what - moved me to fiction once again. And I don't dislike a lot of what I wrote. It's not great, it's barely passable, but there were some good moments here and there. For the fiction part of things, the song titles - and the songs themselves, I'd immerse myself in them for hours - became paramount. I always let what the songs made me feel inside guide my hand. I'd say that for the most part I achieved what I set out to do. This leaves me thinking about how sometimes a song can be intrinsically tied to one person - and not necessarily in a good way. Today's post is titled after one of my favourite songs of all time - 'Somebody', by Depeche Mode. And Depeche Mode, though I had known of them, and to be sure, knew a lot of their songs without knowing it was them who was playing, don't really come into my life until 1995, when I was dating Dora, who was a big fan. And it was through listening to them - especially the superb '101' live album - that I fell in love with the band in general, and with 'Somebody' in particular. And it's obviously a love song, a very tender ballad sung by Martin Lee Gore, which speaks of (and I'm speculating here) a form of idealized love that must be his own, and that came to inform and shape my own idea of love. My first relationship, when I was with my son's mother, though we liked each other a lot, it wasn't really love. And love became something I actively sought after for a long time, and when you seek something, and are desperate to find it, sometimes you'll confuse something for what it isn't.

But 'Somebody' I also connect to two other people I've known, one of whom I can no longer recall her name - a Danish girl I worked with back when I was living in London for the first time. Super beautiful, super nice, super good smelling, and for some reason - super into me. There was a line that I hadn't been willing to cross, though, and I rebuffed all her entreaties. For Christmas in 2000, she gave me a CD she'd bought for me, a tribute to Depeche Mode called 'For the Masses'. I still remember that December morning when I got to work and she saw me coming in, and went down the stairs with me, and when we got to our break room, she rushed to get it for me. Why can't I even remember her name? Damn. And I treasured that CD for years, I listened to it a lot, though I wasn't a fan of every single cover there. I do love covers, but some work, and some don't. And here there were quite a few let downs. But what's good there, is actually really, really good. And in it, you can find a cover version to 'Somebody' by Veruca Salt, who, if anything, produce an even slower, mellower, more tender version of the song, and I've loved it since the first listen. But it's intrigued me since then, because they put their own personal stamp on the song by means of a spoken interlude. And for the longest time, I couldn't quite grasp what was being said. Thank the lord for the internet, though, and many years later I found a transcript of the actual words, and the song gained a new, deeper dimension for me : 

'Every time we talk, every time we fight

 Every time we forget each other
 I know it won't quite work out.
 At the beginning when I was no one
 And now that I am, all that you've taught me and more
 You revise me when I'm dead
 You invite me 'cause I'm the last choice.'

It's funny how time flows, because only a couple of years later - though both instances seem at once lifetimes ago, and separated by a lifetime - I would be talking about this very song with another girl - Carla. I worked with her at a big department store, and her husband worked with me in music, while she worked in the books section. We were friendly enough at the time, but not real friends. But both of them were an invaluable help in late 2002 when my relationship with Dora finally had run its course. They were people who were at my side when needed, and it was to Carla that I'd confided my adoration for one of our co-workers, a girl called Ana. I don't think I mentioned her at all when I wrote about this time of my life, but for a brief period of time I was wildly in love with a girl I worked with - Ana. But she was dating one of my bosses at the time, and I kept things mum. But blimey, what an amazing girl she was - and still is, I like to imagine. One day something weird happened at work : the guy she was dating - who was also one of my higher ups - was caught stealing, and that precipitated the end of their relationship. Which, coincidentally, happened around the end of mine, and we were these sort of kindred spirits, lost at sea, not really knowing what the future held for us, and for just the briefest of moments, that kinship developed into the possibility of a togetherness - something that, naturally, never came to pass. Oh, what dreadful poetry I wrote to her. But getting back to Carla, we shared a love for all things dark and gloomy, and Depeche Mode was one of her favourites. In one of those occasions when we were talking about the band, I spoke at length about my love for 'Somebody', and she listened to me raptly, even commenting on and praising my (admittedly) very romantic take on the song. But as things are wont to, sometimes break downs happen, people drift apart - whatever. And eventually - for some reason I never quite got - me and Carla weren't exactly on the friendliest of terms. I suppose now that the reason was that her relationship was on the rocks as well, and maybe she had little time or patience for anything else. And the outcome of that was a heated conversation where she ended up chastising me for the romantic views I held, and how they'd never translate to real life. Something started dying inside me that day.

I return to this song often, though now not as often as I once did. In fact, the whole of '101' used to be in heavy rotation, it's probably one of my most listened to records ever. But I never stopped being that kid that read those words, and wanted those words to be true. I hoped they'd true one day, and for a time they were. I wasted those opportunities. But there is not a single day where I don't hear Martin's sweet and delicate voice singing to me, inside my head, 'And when I'm asleep I want somebody who will put their arms around and kiss me tenderly' - and by God, how much I miss that. How much more I will miss it from this point on. Not sex - though obviously I miss it - but intimacy. It's all gone now, like so much dust in the wind.

Day Three hundred and thirty two - Step by step

I didn't want this year to end, and me having made the decisions that will be in effect as of next year, without feeling that I had at least  tried. That I had given it all I got, that I had shot my shot, that I had seen the possibilities of what could never realistically never be again. So, to that end, this past month I went on two dates, and those went just as I expected they would. It ended with me paying for dinner on both occasions, something which I don't mind, but I knew fairly soon that nothing else would be on the cards. More than feeling that the person I was with was wrong, in some way, for me - I felt that I was absolutely wrong for them. It's a feeling I have, that I have had for a long time, even when I was at my prime I still felt that bitter pang deep within my core. And now I feel it doubly so, what with me being so far from my true self still, not myself but an echo of a whisper that knew my name, a ghostly apparition gazing forlorn at distant shores, and there am I, so far from shores I've yet to reach. What, in me, can be found appealing? Nothing, and it truly matters not. 

I came home yesterday feeling tired and sad, and to keep my mind from going haywire, I buried my head in work - I only stopped to start writing this because my company's system closes down for updates for a couple of hours. If I'm busy at work, I am not lost in thought, but what do I do now? I think, and overthink. And I'm remined of something I told my last date as we walked about after dinner, where I told her that my midlife crisis had occurred - I'm pretty sure - when I turned 30. There were two concurrent things that were causing me stress back then : my budding relationship which wasn't budding at all, but rather maybe ought to have been pruned at a far earlier date; I wasn't ready to settle down, in any way shape or form, and that would have been my fate, should I have chosen it. I did not. But also I had decided that, as I went into this new stage of my life, I would do away with all negative things I had been carrying, and that meant forgiving some very bad things that had happened to me family-wise. Even before I got to do that, though, what happens? I get into a tiff with my brother, and all those resolutions fell by the wayside. And that left my mind in a not really great place - at the time I was unhappy with pretty much everything in my life, especially with myself. And I thought, fuck it, I'll just become a robot, I'll just become this emotionless, uncaring machine, that looks like and thinks like everyone else. I'll happily accept the role of the cog on a wheel, undistinguishable from so many others. I never did give in to those urges. I could never, ever be content with being something other than myself, though even then there were already some important bits missing. I only felt whole in my life once again after that, and never again since those long gone days.

What sparked my train of thought that led me to this post was, in fact, me reminiscing about the second date I went on, where - besides the midlife crisis talk - we discussed matters of faith and belief. When I wrote this post some four year ago, I wrote a little about my relationship with higher powers. My belief remains unchanged, I know where I see God, and where I feel God. But since the time of that writing I've felt somewhat disconnected from the divine, and I am certain that it's something that has deepened due to absence of love in my life. That's something I've come to accept, and understand, and in the future must come to accept completely. But there is yet love in me, and there is yet a connection to the divine. There is yet a hope that hope might bloom, though I do not actively hope for it. It is in those solitary moments where I find myself engrossed in verse or prose, or in the melody of those Euterpe has blessed with her light, that I find solace. Solace, but not true peace. Quiet, but not true purpose. Contentment, but not true happiness. There is love, yes, but not true love. Though I read and re-read Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Windhover', and feel my heart swell with love, and feel connected to something higher, feel moved, feel lifted, I realize more and more that maybe only a severe form of asceticism will take me further towards where I have to be. Where I want to be. Where I need to be. Away, alone, northwards.

Day Three hundred and thirty one - I'm not okay (I promise)

Shit, today has been an uncannily bad day. So much so that I'm feeling completely destroyed right now. It's been a shitty day heaped on a string of shitty days and I'm feeling emptied of me, of everything. All because I had a doctor's appointment, and good golly me, I wasn't told anything that I wasn't expecting. In fact, all the things that are wrong with me I already know, I've already known for far too long, but I have been working on fixing them, on fixing myself. And that takes time, as well as effort, and a will that must be ironclad. And days like today, days like today I find it incredibly hard to be strong. So I wasn't, I boke down, I let it overwhelm me, consume me, and be paralyzed by it.

I suppose the trick is using today's events to teach me that, even though a part of me feels like an utter waste of space, this was just one day. Just one day. And tomorrow, tomorrow I pick myself up again, and start again, and move forward. I must move forward, forward, upwards, north. 

Maybe a day such as this was needed to fuel the crucible in which the next 'me' will be forged. Maybe a day such as this will serve as an indication of what is to come. But I'd be lying if today wasn't a day where I felt the loneliest. I needed, and missed, having someone to talk to. I dare never disturb those closest to me whenever I have such a bad day, but how I wish things had been different, that my choices had been others when I was younger. How I wished I could have come back home and gotten a warm hug. How I scold myself for thinking I'm deserving of one. Atonement is a motherfucker, old man, and you pay for the sins you committed. I feel so sad inside my heart. I feel so sad inside my soul.

Day Three hundred and thirty - I'm fine

As the year finally draws to a close, and so too this little experiment of mine, I am - as has been patently obvious - struggling to find something to write about every day. But today it strikes me that I may not yet have written about this project's secret origin. You see, my initial idea - one whose genesis occurred sometime in 2023 - was to write a book. I wanted to write a novel, and maybe I'd initially serialize it in chapters here on the blog. But I was worried about possible copyright issues, and that was enough to cripple my initial musings. I also became aware just how not great of a writer I am, and that's ok. Not everyone has to be exceptional. I much preferred to be true to myself. Now, the idea for the novel itself - and its title would have been 'The House of Sorrow and Regret' - would be a multigenerational story about the house I've lived in ever since I was a child, the house where my mother grew up in, and the house where my maternal grandparents lived in. Of course, this being a story that would revolve around and involver my family, a great deal of research would have been in order, something I wouldn't be able to rightly do, for reasons all my own. I then decided I'd do something completely fictional - though still based of a modicum of truth. It became far too big a story, the scope grew and grew, and it became a hurdle I could not manage to overcome. I couldn't find a structure for the story that pleased me, and what meager writings I did for it, were very disjointed and unpleasant. They were unpleasant for me to write, and were unpleasant for me to read. Though every now and again I revisit those ideas, and try to edit them into something usable, maybe I just give up the ghost on that one for good and all.

Then I came up with the rather novel and original idea of telling the story of my life, though at first I entertained the notion of doing a very fictionalized version of it. There was a gist to it, a germ of an idea, that I initially quite liked it, and there were a few tentative writings about it. Everything out of order, of course, with no set timeline, and my idea was to write it that way and then build a puzzle around the story. But it became far too fictional, I started taking things too far - at one point I'd turned my brother into a serial killer and there was this whole chapter where I was explaining to my young son why we never talk about my brother. Ah, a byproduct of those early days of confinement when all I did was listen to true crime podcasts, something which, I guess, we all did. I was never happy with that story, and though some of what I wrote there wasn't that atrocious, and bits here and there I repurposed and refashioned for some of what I ended up posting here, ultimately I decided to forego with that idea. And I almost gave up even before I started, it felt more like a dreadful imposition rather than something natural - which at times it does still feel like - and it took me writing some posts for myself, to try and figure out how confessional I felt like being, to decide to pursue this iteration of the idea. I'm not... wholly pleased with how it turned out, but in late December I shall be analyzing my journey here (hopefully) in a more thorough manner. Now it's time to return to Gerard Manley Hopkins, and maybe tomorrow's post will be about revisiting that old favourite of mine.

Day Three hundred and twenty nine - Closer to free

I spent the better parts of the wee hours of this morning re-reading an email thread, dated from 2019, wherein me and my friends were doing a 31 day challenge about comic books. I mentioned this challenge in yesterday's post, and after re-reading the thread I had to revisit some of S's picks - especially the works of Raymond Briggs, Scott McCloud and Tom Hart. I had to do a little bit of research beforehand, and I actually found out that Hart had illustrated a book called 'Daddy Lightning', and as a prelude for my readings, I thought it would be a good idea to begin with this one. And maybe I thought that thematically this book would have been similar in tone to 'Rosalie Lightning', I found myself not feeling entirely captivated by the whimsy of the story. It has its merits, but it was certainly not a work that really moved me. 

And then I moved on to 'Rosalie Lightning', and... well. It's a devastating read. I found myself thinking about the same fears I faced when my son was an infant. Thinking of nights spent wide awake, paying attention to the cadence of his breath. Thinking about how I felt that that half second between inhaling and exhaling, when his wee chest would stay absolutely still, was completely terrifying. The most morbid part of me has always entertained that terrible thought - a thought that lasts unto this very day - of one day getting a call, or a message, with news that something awful had happened. I've always tried to imagine how broken I'd be, and the truth is that I could never see me as a person, but rather as a shapeless blob, not unlike Hart illustrates himself as in the book.

I know the pain, the sorrow, the loss I have felt and harboured all these many years is something that cannot be equated. Ending a relationship cannot be compared to the loss of a child, or a loved one. And I have never been one to deal well with loss - everything becomes overwhelmingly dramatic and heavy. Back when I was going through the darkest period of my life, I had to go to a psychiatric hospital to get some therapy - which was mainly being prescribed a cocktail of chemicals to numb my brain. The depths of the despair I felt in my soul back then were unfathomable. Just a few months prior, I dreamt of a future that seemed all but guaranteed, and just like that I found myself out of a job, penniless, and my relationship didn't exist anymore. My son truly helped me get through some of the darkness, but he saw that I existed in the depths of an unending abyss. I was broken, at the time, and I never recovered from it fully. That's why I've given up on the notion of ever being with someone else again - for as much as I miss some things, the truth is that it's not fair for someone to be with like this, shattered, a puzzle whose pieces don't fit and will always be missing. All of my recent past is testament to this fact, and maybe that explains why I elected to destroy myself slowly for so, so long.

When I went to the psych ward, I'd always leave there feeling worse than I felt coming in. It's never an easy place to find yourself in, there's an oppressive heaviness in the air - and their policy of giving freedom for the patients to roam about, though not without its merits, always left me deeply affected. I think it may have contributed to worsening the anxiety I already felt, and the fact that I had to find myself amidst people with deeply incapacitating issues made me underestimate mine own issues. The person that was responsible for my therapy basically only upped the amount of medication I was taking. There never was a deeper analysis of what I was going through, and I reasoned that it was because I was just not worthy of such an effort, that there were people with far more serious issues than me.

For some reason, there was a day when I was waiting for my appointment in the waiting room - a summer's day, immensely hot, and the waiting room had no air conditioning - and everything about it mande me think of Meursault's trip to attend his late mother's funeral. All I knew is that this had to be the last time. I could not ever come back. All I knew was that there was less and less of me. Sometime later, in early September, I ran into my friend S - and he broke the good news : he'd just gotten married. That was the day I decided not to go back to the psych ward. Having this brief moment of light and happiness for someone whom I love so dearly was what I needed. Little did I know that the worst was still to come for me. I went into a downward spiral in the months that followed, there grew in me an increasing feeling of despair, I was still unemployed and I didn't feel any form of motivation to find one, and I ended having to sell my then record collection. I got to December that year without a penny to my name, and for the first time in my life I found myself unable to get my son something for his birthday and for christmas. I realize - I've always realized - that there are people out there who have it much worse than me, and that this form of despair is known to many parents the world over, none of us want to not to be able to provide their children with what they deserve. That December was particularly cruel and hard, so much so that I looked forward to new year's eve, where I'd wade into the sea, and let the undertow carry me away. That way, I deemed, I wouldn't be a weight to anyone anymore. Even as recently as a couple of years ago, I found myself sitting by a steep cliff that fell sheer to raging sea below, and as the sun set on the horizon, I wondered just how easy it would be for me to let myself fall and be embraced by the waves.

I have told the story of myself far too many times, to too many people. I've already told the same stories many, many times. One of the reasons I think why people opt not to have me in their lives is because they think I'm still clinging onto something from my past. I would not disavow them of that notion. But maybe I never managed to explain myself correctly. There are people who've been in my life that would think that I miss someone from my past, that I miss Silvia, or that I miss Sofia, or whomever. I miss me. And how do you explain that to someone? How do you explain - and make sure you're understood - to someone that there are bits of you missing, yet you can remember how you were, when you were more, when you were complete? When you were fully capable, when you had it in you to fight for anything - ANYTHING!, when you sacrificed what you logically shouldn't be able to sacrifice to travel abroad just to provide a loved one with a moment of respite from the pain they were going through, when you gave up on the most basic things just so you could give them to the one you loved, and that all those bits are now shattered or completely absent? I learned, in time, that you don't. You don't explain. No one really cares. No one really can relate.

I didn't endure the loss that Hart did, of course. It's beyond comparison. What he went through is my number one nightmare. And yet, there were times where I could see myself there, in that book. In how divorced one feels from what's real. In how hollow one feels. How many times did I find myself wandering aimlessly about without a care in the world, without care for my personal safety, and secretly hoping that a bus or a runaway truck would hit me? The book, and its companion piece 'PTSD : The wound that never heals', written and illustrated by Hart's wife, Leela Corman, are works of art I'll always treasure. They are works of art that make me think. They make me think about how there are some things that you never ask about, or at least are never easily asked. Even between friends. All of us have that more reserved and intimate side to us that we rarely show someone else. No one teaches us how to be vulnerable. No one really prepares us for the demands of adult life, and no one ever tells us that sometimes we find ourselves keeping the ones we love out of the loop, just to not feel like we are dead weight to them.

There was a semblance of me in this book. And just like Mount Eerie's 'A Crow Looked At Me', this is something I can't often return to. It's too much, too heavy. Too beautiful. In a very sad sense, it's beautiful, but a beauty that cuts deep down to the soul. It touched me greatly, and changed me, and made me grow as a person.

Day Three hundred and twenty eight - When I take out the garbage at night

Who : Mount Eerie

Album name : A Crow Looked at Me

Formed : 2003

From : Anacortes, Washington, U.S.

What does he play :Indie folk / indie rock / experimental / lo-fi (at least according to Wikipedia)

Release date : March 24, 2017

Now, I can't, for the life of me, remember how this album came into my life. I'd know about the band before, yes, though I don't think I ever listened to a single song of theirs before. And to be honest, I haven't listened to any other of their records other than this one. If I look back at when this album came out - 2017 - I can only speculate that because of what I was listening to a lot at the time, that being The Antlers 2009 record 'Hospice', a record which I adore beginning to end, and which is a very serious contender for a desert island disc pick, an album that I had begun revisiting a couple of years prior, and maybe I went out and searched for something that was similar in tone to it, something similar in spirit to it. Because, ultimately, this album does share some of the same sentiment - though its scope and execution greatly differs.

This is a record about grief, something I was heavily pondering about at the time. It's a train of thought I've followed, even unto today. I examine my feelings of sadness, my loneliness, my very infrequent anger at myself, and the disgust and self-loathing I feel for falling prey to shortcuts. It took me many years to realize that I was but grieving for something lost long ago. And music has been my only constant form of catharsis throughout - especially the music that seems to speak directly to my soul. I latch on to those songs and they become permanent fixtures on my playlists. Some songs, I don't go a single day without listening to them. I can't say the same about this album, though. I listened to it a couple of times only when I discovered it, and then I only returned to it in 2019 when me and my friends were doing a 31 day challenge about our favourite comics. In one of the replies, my good friend S. talked about his choice for the day, the heartbreaking 'Rosalie Lightning' by Tom Hart, an autobiographical story about the sudden and unexpected death of his almost two year old daughter. And because the themes of grief and loss weighed heavy on that book, I found myself reaching out for 'A Crow Looked At Me' again.

So what is this album about, after all? Well, it was written after the passing of the wife of the solo artist behind the project - Phil Elverum - due to pancreatic cancer, and in it he speaks about her illness, her death, his grief and his relationship with their small child. As you can imagine, it doesn't make for easy listening. It's heavy and dark and it disturbs you, it makes you think about life and the small things we take for granted and the void they leave when we can never have them again. It speaks to you about the deep, dark places of the soul when grief all but threatens to consume you, or destroy you. This is not something that you slot in a playlist for you to listen to at the gym, and neither is this something you play when you go for a walk in the rain. No, this is a record to be listened to in the dark, maybe while sipping a glass of fine red wine. You want to let the record play, and you want to breathe and think, and maybe allow yourself to shed those tears you've been saving up. This is an exercise in resilience, one that will test you. And maybe, maybe you come out a better person for it.

Not something I will ever go regularly for, or actively seek out, but for those special cathartic moments when you need something to help you along, this one is a must. Five out of five crows.

Day Three hundred and twenty seven - Igloo

 'Hey.'

'Hi.'

'I could use a story.'

Day Three hundred and twenty six - Pieces of eight

'Beyond yon ridge', she said, 'there is a river, and when we ford it, we must go over the hill to where the door lies. We'll go together, past the trees that will stretch their arms to enfold us as they whisper our names, and after we leave the woods with the prayer of Orion on our lips, then, and only then will I give you the heart-shaped key. You'll see a door, once we're atop the hill, faint and shimmering in the distance. It'll almost like it's not there at all, that it's only a trick of the light, but as you approach it it will become - in a sense - more real. You will then see it is not just a door, it is the gateway to my realm, and we will be greeted by its keeper. He was known as The Long Man in ages past, some have called him Wendel, I call him kin. As you follow me, I will seem but a ghost to you, but you will be granted safe passage through the gate, and the fair lands will be safe haven to you from then on.' 

It's four o'clock on a rainy thursday afternoon, and I sit beneath the outstretched canopy of a yew tree. The Silkie beside me speaks in a tongue that is as alien to me as mine own would be to one of my forebears centuries ago. Sometimes, I think I can make out some words from the jumble of noises I hear, maybe old english or pig latin, sometimes the words seem to scratch my soul, like nails being dragged across a chalkboard. 'More tea?', the mad hatter asks, and I nod. I have no idea what this tea is, but it is very, very good. I also think I may be hallucinating. I can hear Cheshire's laughter echo all around us, his wet moon smile flashing in and out of sight. 'What is this tea?', I ask, as the mad hatters tops me up. 'Psilocybe tea', says he, a mischievous glee in his voice. As I look up, the tree has become the universe, I am adrift in the cosmos, my mind expanding, growing, I'm travelling without moving, and I see the stars, so many of them, a galaxy, an infinite multitude of them, spinning, dancing, always in harmony, never in time, oh but what music they make, the sound of galaxies. Me and the Silkie waltz through the skies; we dance and the music dies. I look deep in her eyes, her doe eyes, it's not eyes, it's stars, stars again, and the mad hatter asks me if I want more tea. I ask him what tea this is, and he says 'Psilocybe tea', 'What?', I ask, and he says 'Psilocybe tea', 'What?' I ask and he says 'Psilocybe tea', 'What?', I ask, and he says 'Psilocybe tea', 'What?', I ask, and he says 'Psilocybe tea', 'What?', I ask. 'Psilocybe tea', says he. 'Psilocybe tea?', asks I.  'Psilocybe tea', says he. 'Psilocybe tea'. 'Psilocybe tea'. 'Psilocybe tea'. 'Psilocybe tea'. He says this over and over again, and I swear I can hear the sounds of a piano coming from somewhere else. It's coming from his voice but but from him. 'Psilocybe tea', and as he says it his voice gets dimmer and dimmer, and the piano grows louder. It's not a piano, never a piano. It's the sound of an alarm blaring, it's the dying of the dream, the waking up to the loneliness of solitude. I close my eyes, and this is yesterday.

Day Three hundred and twenty five - Love like blood

I had plans for this past week. I had a little over a week off, and I wanted to do things, and keep on doing what I already was doing. But along the way I managed to get a little bit ill, and though medication allowed me to pull through the worst of it, I still felt physically depleted. I could have dealt with just that, but I was mentally depleted as well, and that came about from me being mostly bed-ridden these past few days, and spending what free time I had swiping people left and right. It was conducive to me having not only a bad day, one isolated bad day, but a string of bad days that culminated in me doing something I'd sworn I'd never do again, which was drink myself stupid. And not only didn't it even taste good, the booze, I got so hungover that I'm still reeling physically. Rank stupidity on my part. 

I lost focus, I allowed myself to lose focus, and I now feel like I took a major stumble on my road to where I want and have to be. But that's ok, it's done and I won't chastise myself over it. I'll learn from this, and tomorrow I resume my path forward. There are lessons here, and at least now I know - and with added certainty - what not to do. What temptations to avoid. I don't want to go back to where I've been for the past few years, I can't - I won't - survive another such year. From now on I must not stray from the path, ever again, and though I know that soon I'll be put to the test again, it's ahead I must look at. Ever ahead, always ahead, ever north.

Day Three hundred and twenty four - DHX 2

This world of online dating shit... it's awful. I feel disgusted with myself every time I use it, senselessly swiping people left or right, and it's mostly left, how can there be so many dull, uninteresting, unoriginal people out there? The bios - oh god, the bios. Look, I know we all have our preferences. I get that. But some of the stuff I've seen just goes beyond the pale. I'll never get the need for people list everything about them, using all the buzzwords du jour. It's completely beyond me, and to make matters worse, all these people seem to have an infinite number of interests - Jesus H. Christ, I know it looks cool when you paint yourself as an eclectic, cultured and impossibly active person, but come on, we all know how much time we waste doomscrolling.

I just can't, I don't want to do this anymore. My experience so far resulted in one (1) whole person showing an interest in me, and that will - with a very high degree of likelihood - yield nothing fruitful. I detest that I have allowed myself to become this callous, this distant - and yet there is no other hope. And maybe, maybe it's time I gave up on hope altogether. Hope, I cannot hope to hope, I dare not hope, it brings me nothing and takes, takes, takes and gives Nihil back. Nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil. Why do I do this to myself? Why, god damn it, why?

Day Three hundred and twenty three - True love waits

Yesterday I went out to have a meal with my friend S and his beautiful family - it's always a delight being with them. It replenishes the soul, it fills the heart, lifts up the spirit, and I wish I could do it more often, though I know that it doesn't ultimately depend on my will - we're all grown-ups, we all have our lives and we allot what free time we have to what we consider to be our priorities. Even so, it was a great evening spent with some of my best friends, and afterwards me and S still felt like grabbing a drink or two, and we ended up in this dive not far from where we had our meal. And in this place there were two couples having their meals. God damn, the beautiful girls just were looking so adoringly at their respective fellas, and that just about broke my heart right there and then. It was such a beautiful thing, and I found myself deeply envying them, and why, oh my god, was I envious of them? From whence was this bile festered? Have I not prayed to thee, god above, to deliver unto my arms, a love good and true? Have I not beseeched thee, o Lord, and lo these many years, for finality, for permanence? Why am I chastised thus? If true love waits, if it truly waits, when, my god, when? Have I not longed for thee enow? Ah, my heart, my heart, how old my heart, I know, I know.

Day Three hundred and twenty two - Conium maculatum

There was a moment when things could have happened differently between us. It was still fairly on in our relationship, and one day I texted you, and maybe I was feeling a little bit insecure, or something like that, but I asked you if you really liked me, and you said 'I'm afraid so', and that there was what brought us to be sitting down at a table, across from each other, after a long, long time. It was good seeing you again, and though in the years that passed we'd sometimes - though very irregularly - communicate with each other, it rarely ever was anything else than a curt birthday message or seasonal well-wishing. What always wounded me the most was how we'd not managed to even remain friends, and I told you as much sometime after our meal had arrived, and the booze had start to flow. Then you stun me and ask me if we'd ever been friends, and you say that we'd gone from being complete strangers to being in a relationship after a date or two, and of course I say we were friends, we must have been, we wouldn't have stayed together for so long had there not been friendship between us, right? But now I don't know, I mean, we were very friendly to each other most of the time, and sometimes we acted like we downright resented one another and hated each other's guts, but things had always been civil between us. Was that friendship, though, you ask, and I always thought it was or maybe it had been enough of it. But before we get lost in those intrusive thoughts, you laugh everything away, say the past is just the past, and let bygones be bygones. How can I say no to the wine you pour, and to the promises I see dancing in your eyes? I should know much better by now, we both should, and it's no wonder that after we talk too much, and reminisce too much, and drink too much, we end up finding solace in each other's lips, a melody of flesh and desire incensing the senses, we're senseless now, helpless now, inside you now, over me now, under you now, that earthy musk our sex generates filling the air, my head's spinning, I plunge myself inside you, your nails etching deep grooves in my back, blood running down my back, semen running down your breasts, I'm spent, you're spent, we fucked up by fucking our brains out. It feels so good. So, so good. It feels right, but in all the wrong ways. You turn out the light, and we kiss goodnight, and when I begin to wake up, when I start to leave the lands of summer's twilight, I realize it had been a dream all along, just that - a dream... this dream is almost ending.

Day Three hundred and twenty one - The leavers dance

I'm unsure whether or not I've written about this before, because I think I did, but not necessarily here. I think I wrote something along the same lines on an online forum I go to because of - yes - sports results. And because the forum itself is fairly eclectic and besides the sports bits they have a bunch of other rooms, I sometimes like to go to some very specific ones and write a bit there - especially the ones who draw heavily from nostalgia. I also know that when what I'm about to write happened, I also discussed it, albeit in a slightly different way, with some friends of mine who share some of the same passions, some of the same interests and hobbies. Though my family life was relatively good and mostly uneventful when I was a kid, our life was not one of luxury. No, though we never lacked for anything, my parents were mostly of the practical sort. Toys were given only on special occasions, and if me or my brother misbehaved or didn't do well in school, they could be easily taken away. All this to say that while we did have our toys - and this is just my point of view, naturally - we never had as many as we wished or asked for. 

So sometime in the mid-to-late 80's I was introduced to The Transformers, though I am fairly certain that I'd had a transforming toy before. But the moment I looked at them, in a supermarket toy aisle, I fell in love with them. I wanted them all, even the ones who didn't particularly catch my eye that day - how I wished I could've taken them all with me that day. But in a rare moment of generosity, my father, my actual father, allowed me to take one of my choice. Now, try as I might I can't exactly recall what was on offer, because to be fair - it seemed like they just went on and on and on. A part of me wants to say that not only were all the original G1 there, but also quite a few of the ones which I know came out a little further down the line. I want to say that the Insecticons were there, that Shockwave was there, that Sky Lynx was there, that Ultra Magnus was there, that the Constructicons were there... but I can't be sure. But what I do know was there were the Dinobots. Those I know for sure were there, because as soon as I saw them I knew I wanted none other than a dinosaur that could transform into a freaking robot and back. There were five of them : Grimlock, who could transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Slag, who turned into a Triceratops. Sludge, who transformed into a Brontosaurus. Snarl, who became a Stegosaurus. And last, but never the least - Swoop, the winged beast, who transformed into Pteranodon. Now, though I wanted them all, I knew that only the one was coming home with me. Which meant that I had to prioritize and quickly. The two I fancied the most were Grimlock and Swoop, and obviously I went with the one that said 'Dinobot Commander' on the box... Grimlock. 

As the years went on, I continued collecting Transformers, though I never did have that many. They were expensive, moreso than most other toys, and I could rarely either justify to myself - let alone my parents - such an exorbitance, and neither was saving up to get them something I could actually do, because I'd rather buy cheaper toys and have more of them. But a day I'll never forget is the day when I went to a shopping center near where I live, and man alive, the toy stores there were some of the best I'd ever seen, and between them they had pretty much everything a young boy could want. But it also seemed top me that in that intervening time, they had gotten much more expensive, and the prices they were being sold for all but made them prohibitive to me. And, being unable to get what I wanted, being unable to afford what I wanted, I did a lot - and I mean a lot - of windowshopping. Somewhere along the way this toy store had a new batch of Transformers, and as soon as I saw them... my heart sank. I wanted all of them. But they were super pricy, and I couldn't even hope to have one, let alone the five that were necessary to combine into one bigger robot - a combiner, which is a gestalt of five different beings. They were called the Predacons, and they were the biggest, baddest, most beautiful toys I'd ever seen. Oh how I wanted them... but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. Neither then nor in the near future would they have been things I could have afforded, and by the time I started working, they were neither a second thought for me - let alone a priority - and nor were they available anymore. But in my heart of hearts I never forgot them, and I knew full well that one day our paths would cross again.

Though I felt tempted these past many years to venture into that hobby again - toy collecting - I resisted the temptation. I was aware of what was on the market, I was an admirer of just how far technology had pushed toys to be much better in terms of quality, articulations, details, and occasionally I'd go to some specialty websites to see what was on offer. But I always had other priorities, other desires, other reasons. And it was this year only that I finally gave in and started collecting again. It took some degree of trial and error, but I finally figured out that what I really wanted were those toys from my youth, rather than the modern versions. And thankfully, I found out that you could find modern reproductions of those same toys - the same molds, the same colours, the same box, the same everything. And I leapt at those, getting a few - a choice few - that I always wanted. And one of my very first purchases was the mighty Predaking - the combined form of the aforementioned Predacons - which came in one nifty giftset.

This very small thing - hah, that's what she said! - made me realize that sometimes, just sometimes, realizing one of your lifelong dreams doesn't have to mean that you found the one and settled down, or bought that house or got that car. Sometimes it's just enough to do something which you've yearned to do for a long time, and the timing was never right until you finally do it. In a sense, these small acts of kindness towards myself - something that had been in short order for a very, very long time - serve as a beacon that lights my path forward. The year is coming to an end, this experiment is coming to an end, and what comes next will not be easy. But it's a road I must travel down for the rest of my life, one I'll walk down alone.

Day Three hundred and twenty - The wake of the angel

There's a feeling I get about myself and my purpose in life, it's something that I have felt for many, many years now, and no matter what - nothing I experience seems to dissolve that train of thought from my reasoning. So, probably since my mid-twenties, I started detecting a pattern in the lives of the people who I was in relationships with. And granted, this is not something that always happened, but it happened often enough that I started to take notice : almost always after me, whoever it was I'd been with previously would end up meeting someone who would come to be of utmost importance to them, they'd be their spouses or they'd have children together, that sort of thing. And for a long while, though I was aware of the pattern, I couldn't rightly rationalize or even verbalize it. It would be only about a decade ago or so that I realized that I was all but a stepping stone for whomever crossed my life, and they'd inevitably be on their way to something better. I realized that the pattern extended to not only people who were physically present in my life at one point or the other, but also to those who I knew only on a virtual, digital level. My presence - and the consequences thereof - would serve as enabler and facilitator of relationship ending crises and though a part of me always wished that I'd somehow be given a chance, or even the ghost of a chance, it never came. And why would it? For far too long I felt sad and dejected for not being seen as a viable option, but I am now fully aware why. The coming year will be an important one, with a major, major decision to be done fairly early on. I just need my heart to still itself, to steel itself, for what comes next will be something that will last the rest of my life.

Day Three hundred and nineteen - Tide walks

This day was needed. This year was needed. This is is what propels me forward, this is what pushes me to the next stage, this is what - hopefully - moves me further north. In a short space of time - less than twenty-four hours - I found myself not once, not twice but thrice in situations where I actively knew I might come across people who - in some way or another - were important to me, and though I felt a burning anxiety deep inside me, a feeling that screamed at me not to go this way but that way, to take one road rather than the other, I braved that despair and went ahead only to not see any of the people I feared I might come across. I spent those hours lost among the cosmos, among the arts, and among nature. There is a significant part of my soul that feels better - I'd venture to say almost 'healed' - but my heart, ah my my heart... my heart still aches. It aches from loneliness and... jesus fuck. It aches from me being me. I am far too much 'me'. But there are lessons here, there are valuable lessons. Painful and real, yet necessary all the same. 

Day Three hundred and eighteen - That dress and summer skin

There are still places that are secret and sacred to me, though. The places I never took anyone to, because the occasion never arose, or maybe because I didn't want to share them with anyone. But I had plans, back then I had plans, to take you to one of those places I know, deep in the woods, past thickets of brambles, over black briar thorns that threaten to nip at our heels should we not be careful, and then, in that lone grove where naught but birdsong lives, we'd be there, just the two of us, and under the canopies of the tress overhead, I'd take you in my arms, and slip off that dress of yours, taking in the scent of you and us, the perfume of sex and cunt and semen intertwined with that of mother nature. Naked, we'd lay on a bed of leaves of grass, the hum of the earth beneath us beating in time with our hearts. In my dreams, you held me. You hold me. How I wish it was forever you would hold me. Forever. Forever.

Day Three hundred and seventeen - Can't bee

Who : Moonspell

Album name : The Butterfly Effect

Formed : 1992

From : Amadora, Portugal

What do they play : Gothic metal / industrial metal (at least according to Wikipedia)

Release date : September 13, 1999.

Two things right off the bat : those who know me, know of my disdain and dislike for this album pretty much since day one. I'll expand upon why further down the line. And the other thing is, how in the name of fuck did this thing come out twenty-five years ago? That's a whole quarter of a century! What madness is this? And then I remember that - yes - this album came out three months before my son was born, and he too turns twenty-five this year. So it helps put it into perspective why I really didn't pay that much attention to it when I first bought it - and believe me, I bought it right when it came out. I had other priorities, my mind was elsewhere, my life was changing - I had no patience whatsoever to listen to music. I think I listened to it only the once at the time, but my heart wasn't in it because I absolutely detested the first single - 'Butterly FX' - which reeked of Marilyn Manson-esque sounds, and I have never been a fan of that. So that first listen really didn't do anything for me, I only found myself enjoying one song there - 'Can't bee' - and I wouldn't give it another chance for a number of years.

But I should add that the band itself - Moonspell - is one that is very, very important to me, in a specific period of my life. I fell in love with their music as early as their very first E.P., and their first three albums are albums that I love and listen to this day. 'Wolfheart', 'Irreligious' and 'Sin/Pecado' are all excellent records, filled with some great, catchy songs - yes, even if we're talking about a darker sort of metal they were playing then, they were producing some definitely catchy songs. And for me, their masterwork has always been the aforementioned 'Sin/Pecado', a record that for me is just about one song away from perfection - there's a song there called 'Eurotica' that I will always wish wasn't there at all, that's how bad it is. And that album, which had only come out over a year and a half before, lived rent free in my mind. I loved the romanticism of it, I loved how well written the songs and the lyrics were, I loved how ambitious its scope was. And everything it was.... 'The Butterfly Effect' was not.

Throughout the years - about every five years or so, I guess - I'd try to listen to it, but it never managed to sway me. All the faults I found in it - the ones that are true and the ones that are imagined - have always been present in all my listens. As recently as about a year and a half ago I had to listen to it because I recorded a podcast episode with some friends of mine and we talked about the band, and still it did nothing for me. I kind of gave up ever liking the album. And then a few days ago, when I was leaving the restaurant, and decided to go for a long walk, I was listening to 'Sin/Pecado' on Apple Music, and as it ended, instead of putting on one of my curated playlists, I let it play as it moved on to 'The Butterfly Effect'. And as I walked alone, that chilly November night, still feeling slightly ashamed and low, I finally got the album. That moment, everything in it finally made sense to me. And granted - there are some songs there that I'm absolutely not crazy about, whether because they sound weird or because they have an odd structure, but I found myself actually enjoying the album. Even the dreaded 'Butterfly FX' was strangely listenable. I listened to that record a couple more times before I got home, that night, and have revisited it a few more times since. It's certainly a grower - something that often happens to me. I just never had one that took me this long to really grow on me. 

I'm not sure that I would rate as highly as I rate 'Sin/Pecado', but I now have a much greater appreciation for this record. Again, it's a me thing, and I always think that records can be edited or pared down a bit to make them that much better, that much tighter, maybe one or two songs could have stayed on the cutting floor, but as it stands? I'll give this one four out of five moons.

Day Three hundred and sixteen - Up north

I overlay all these stories, and the sea of words become a jumble of letters, a jungle of sentences, sentenced not to make sense, senseless and senselessly incensed. The words have no meaning, and they have all the meaning. It's an alchemy between all I wrote and all I didn't write, and it's this vast panorama of language which feeds the creation of this palimpsest. I pick and choose from as I march forward, adapting, creating, co-opting, and with extant pentimenti, I trace a vision from here to then, ever then, ever near, ever north. It's a line that will take me from now to then, from south to north, and with this line I'll mark the past as a symbol of forgiveness.

The memories, the love, the sorrow - these I carry as periapts that will always be etched deep in my soul. I shall call upon them when the crucibles become harder to bear, I will call upon them when the cold becomes colder than cold, I will remember, and I will not forget, and I will forge - both myself and ahead, ever ahead, ever onwards, ever north. I will remember, I promise. Know this, I will always know. Remember, just remember : I know. And because I remember, I will always have gratitude for what once was. I will be where I will be because of what once was. I will be because we were. And I will be... far from here. Far from the sun. Far from you. Far from all. I will be ever north. 

Day Three hundred and fifteen - Whatever that hurts

Last night I did something I haven't done in god knows how long : I took myself out to dinner. There used to be a time in my life when I did things like these all the time, have dinner on my own, or go to the movies alone, and even travelling alone. I got so used to doing things on my own that it just sort of became second nature. But then, somewhere along the way, I stopped doing these things. I don't rightly know what caused it to happen, maybe it was a gradual process, but I do know that in the last seven or eight years I all but stopped doing these things. And yesterday I wasn't feeling well at all - I'm still reeling from a nasty bout of the flu or some shit like that - but having spent the last couple of days feeling like I was run over by a truck, and in turns either sweating profusely or feeling intense cold, I felt like I needed to not be home, and go out. So I showered, got dressed, and after a while I decided I'd go and have a meal by myself. I was walking by an area with a bunch of restaurants, and there's one there where I've been to a bunch of times with friends in the past, so I thought that would be a good option. It was packed to the gills, though, with a number of people waiting to go in whenever there was a free table. But me being on my own meant that I could sit on a high stool by the bar, where they also serve food, and where I once had a meal with my friend Sérgio.

So I went and sat down, and pretty soon there was a waitress handing me the menu. I already knew what I was going to be having, ordered it, and a beer to help wash it down. I'm sitting, listening to music, trying not to pay any attention to my surroundings, when all of a sudden I feel an overwhelming sense of shame for being there completely alone, while everyone else was there with their friends or their dates or their loved ones. I felt like such a loser, a part of me thought that I was being eyed by everyone else there, wondering what that freak at the bar was up to, the gall of him, look at him, such a disgusting thing, sitting there all alone, unwanted, unloved. I felt like my back had a bullseye painted on it and everyone was aiming knives tinged with shame at me. My head sank low, and I sat looking at the phone screen until my food arrived. While I waited, I fell into a a spiral of self-loathing, cursing myself for putting myself in this position, wanting to leave the restaurant with my tail tucked between my legs, cursing myself as a coward for staying. And I know I'm not someone whose sense of self-worth hasn't really ever been that high, but I also know that one of the legacies of my relationship with Silvia - and this because of how everything turned out, and because of the things I did to her, and my behaviour - is a diminishing sense of that self-worth, almost to a point of it being non-existent. In a very real way, I lost the ability to like myself, which helps account to how much I was willing to destroy myself for so, so long. In all honesty, there was ever only one moment in these past many years where I liked who I was, and actively wished to be better - and that was when I existed under the grace of Sofia's love. I finished my meal, left the restaurant, and then went for a long walk, my mind still lost in thought. I was trying to think if I could find the moment in my life where I'd stopped doing these sorts of things, but couldn't manage to. And then, completely unbidden, I recalled a conversation I had with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the crazy songstress from, jeez, a decade back now, where she asked me what pland I had for christmas and new years' eve, and I said nothing, I don't celebrate those days, not anymore, and neither did I celebrate my birthday. And she was royally pissed off at me, she told me she didn't find it acceptable that someone she cared for so much didn't celebrate those 'special' days. She said that she was going to make sure that I, as her 'boyfriend', would always have cause to celebrate those days.

And of course, of course, it was a lie, all a lie. I wasn't her boyfriend, and I barely qualified as a 'boyfriend', I was just a side hustle she could easily maneuver into getting what she needed from me, but I place the blame on my goddamned naivete, I have this childish ability to believe in everything people tell me. Maybe it's that guileless side of me when it comes to people that also allows me to believe in all the lies I told myself. I convinced myself I don't deserve to be happy many years ago, and I still haven't managed to convince myself otherwise.

Day Three hundred and fourteen - Emily

Who : Joanna Newsom

Album name : Ys

From : California, U.S.A.

What does she play : Progressive folk, indie folk, baroque pop, avant-pop, indie rock (at least according to Wikipedia)

Release date : November 14, 2006

This is a tough one, for a number of reasons. But it's easier to start at the beginning, I suppose. It's somewhere in late 2006, and my relationship with Silvia, though still in its infancy, was already fraught with problems. Mostly - if not exclusively - from my part, but they were there nonetheless. And yet, there were still some moments to be treasured. I'll never forget the house she lived in when we first met, it's the kind of place I'd always envisioned myself living in, if ever I'd had gone down that road. It was pretty small, just a smidge above tiny, and as you went in through the front door, you went straight into the kitchen, with only a small hallway to the left before it, where she had a couple of bookcases, with books stacked upon books. Then, to the right of the kitchen was her room and the bathroom. And it was in that room, that tiny, amazing room, almost spartan, with just a bed, a desk for her to work on, and a radio. It's funny how some songs you can remember every single detail about when you first heard them, who you were with, what you were doing. And listening to music with someone else by my side is a rarity - it's always been one of my go-to forms of escapism, just putting on those headphones, and going for a walk, and listen to music until my soul feels clean. There rarely ever was a connection between that side of me and someone else, but here it was very present. But we had very differing tastes in music, I think. Though we mostly sort of liked the same things, she was into these more... eh... pastoral, boring, types of music that for me, at the time, seemed to go nowhere. I found a lot of what she listened to to be deathly dull, but that's not on her - rather, it's on me. Because, and to be honest, I think that by 29 - that''s how old I was then - I think I was entering my midlife crisis. Not when I turned 40, and not - at least I don't think - when I turn 50 in a few years. But that transition from 29 to 30 was terrible for me. It did a number of my mind, I felt restless, impatient, I wanted nothing, I wanted everything, and I felt restrained by the burden of a relationship that in my mind would signal the end of everything for me. I couldn't accept that she would be the last woman I'd ever have sex with, I couldn't accept that she would be last woman I'd ever kiss - and yet, some time later I would have died for all that to have been true. But it was already far too late, even at that early stage, we already were doomed. I made sure we were, one way or the other.

What does this have to do with the album itself? Well, the first time I listened to the song that names this post - 'Emily' - was precisely in that room I just described. It would have been a weekend, quite likely a Sunday. I'd almost always sleep in on Sundays, especially if it was my day off. I'd usually DJ on Saturday nights, and most nights Silvia would stay with me until the end of my set. And even though we went to bed late, she'd always manage to get up fairly early in the morning and go out shopping while I slept. I'd only wake up after she got back, and the smell of freshly baked bread - or croissants, sometimes - would waft into the bedroom and I'd begin to stir. Then - and only then - would she turn on the radio, and it was always the same station - one that played indie and alternative music. And it was a very eclectic station - it could be playing something very indie, or something very electronic, or something which I found - far too often for my liking - to be just unlistenable drivel. And in one of those times, the radio played a song that immediately made me roll my eyes. 'What is this shit?', I might have said then, or at least something to that effect. And the song went on and on and on, the girl would not stop singing, jesus christ, how long does this song go on for? Aaaaannnddd... I hated it. I hated the song, I hated the fact that Silvia liked it, and I never ever wanted to listen to it ever again. Ever.

Cue 2011, and as I deal with a post-Silvia life, I'm trying to find myself again, to reassert myself again. In time, I find myself listening to a lot of new music, especially because at the time I was *addicted* to downloading music and filling my external hard drives - none of which are now extant - with as much music as I could. I recall my iTunes at that time stating that I had years of uninterrupted listening if I so chose it. I downloaded a lot of stuff - and I do mean a lot of stuff - and one day I came across Joanna Newsom's discography, and thought why not. I don't think it was immediately that I got to it, no, it's likely something that only happened in 2012, but I decided one day to give this one a go. It still did nothing for me. I mean, I was able to appreciate the artistry and the talent, but it was just still so damn... dull. I wouldn't mind listening to a few minutes of it, but listening to the whole thing was almost impossible a task for me.

A strange thing, then, to state that this album never fully left me. And if I said that I knew that this year it would find its way into my life again, would you believe me? There's a bit from 'Emily' that's always stuck with me - 'You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger, though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed, in December.' - and very early on in the year I remember having a dream about being somewhere - somewhen - else and looking at a winter's night sky, and watching the Pleiades above. I knew that eventually I'd have to work my way to this record. But the timing had to be right. I'd have to be in the right frame of mind, and though this past week has been rough for me, pretty much the only bright spots were when I listened to this album. Granted, I didn't listen to it very many times, no. I listened to it maybe 2 or 3 times. It's a record, I find, that demands your attention, one to be listened to in peace and quiet, in the dark, with your headphones on. It's how I listened to it, and I rather doubt that this is something I'll listen to in any other way. It's testament to how much I've grown to appreciate this type of music, and though some of the songs here can be somewhat daunting in length - 'Emily' is 12 minutes long and 'Only Skin' almost 17 - as someone who's also been listening to a lot of prog these past few years, where bands usually have these sprawling side-long epics, it's rather easy to just go along. That said, though now I do enjoy the record - and if I'm honest, this is the only thing of hers I know - I don't see myself reaching for it often. I'll maybe revisit it, sure, somewhere down the line, especially because I now know it better and have a deeper appreciation for it. And I'm glad I went back to it, for sure. Never a desert island disc for me, but pretty damn good nevertheless.

I'll give this a good 4 out of 5!

Day Three hundred and thirteen - A time and a place

See, how this works is that sometimes I'll have one of my crazy dreams, and it's usually a somewhat recurring one, and then I try to see how much of it I still remember and can use as the groundwork for whatever that day's post turns out to be. Then there are times when I'm listening to a specific song, and out of nowhere I get what I think is a brilliant idea, but it's just dreck that I turn into sentimental drivel. So, quite often, I have a solid idea of what I'm about to write, sometimes with days in advance. But I've been ill for the past couple of days, and my head is pretty much mush right now. I've been feeling very tired for about a month now, though I do think I know why - it has to do with the amount of exercise I've started doing since October, where I pretty much doubled my daily dose of it, but physical exhaustion I can handle and manage quite well. The mental sort of exhaustion is something that I have, to be quite frank, unable to deal with lately. And that's maybe because on top of more exercise I still work far more hours than I righty should, and when I do have time off, I just feel too tired to properly unwind.

But I'll be having about a week and half off work right now, and I do plan on recharging quite a bit. For a start, there are three places that I really want to go to, all different in their nature, all much needed and welcome balms to my soul. One will connect me with the stars, the other will connect me with art, and the other will connect me with nature itself. All these endeavours - small they may be - are crucial for me to be able to withstand the rest of the year. Next year will be a different one, with hopefully new routines, new sights, and with any luck - very far from here. I just have to be patient, keep on working on what needs to be done, and then I'm off.

Day Three hundred and twelve - Holding on

That I am someone capable of doing stupid things is a given. That I am also prone to doing the monumentally kind of stupid things ought to shock no one, least of all myself. To be perfectly honest, this past month or so has not been easy for me, insofar as what I have to work very hard to keep at bay - my loneliness - I have not been able to do very well, or at all. Most of it it's my fault, I put myself in situations where I feel like yeah, maybe I could be a part of this game, and then... disappointment, once more, rears its ugly head. So I go home, and I stay in, and I keep to myself. And most of the time I can feel perfectly content doing this routine, I can find something to distract me long enough until sleep claims me. But then there are times like now where it's so hard that I end up giving in to despair. Case in point - and I do say this with an immense sense of shame - I went and created a Tinder profile. It's something I used before - that's how I met Carina back in 2017, if I am not mistaken, because I truly am not sure whether it was from there or from Instagram - but I had long ago stopped using it. And it was desperation, truly, that forced my hand. And I regretted it almost instantly.

I had no idea how much the app had changed, I seemed to remember that swiping left or right mechanic, with any luck you'd be matched up with someone who was as desperate as you were, you''d get a notification saying that the app had found a match, then you'd talk to the person, they'd maybe reply, and with any luck things would happen. That's the gist of it, right? And, I suppose, it's still the gist of it now, only now everything's locked behind a paywall. Someone likes you? You don't even know who they are unless you get a premium version of the app. You won't know who they are, what they look like, what they're into or whatever - unless you pay a weekly fee. And that left me feeling disgusted with myself, it left me feeling so low and worthless. It's a testament to how lonely and disconnected people feel these days that they would pay money just for the slimmest chance of connection. And that's something I'll never do, I'll never pay for sex, and I sure as hell will not pay money to beg for some bit of fleeting affection.

Increasingly I feel that nothing about this modern way of doing things is for me. Everything feels fake and synthetic and void of life. I don't think I was made for these times. I don't think I was made for any time, really. I always, always end up falling over me.

Day Three hundred and eleven - It's never over (hey Orpheus)

Who : Arcade Fire

Album name : Reflektor

Formed : 2001

From : Montreal, Canada

What do they play : Indie rock / chamber pop / art rock / baroque pop / symphonic rock (at least according to Wikipedia)

Release date : October 28, 2013.

Well, no wonder I paid no attention to this album, just look at when it came out. October 2013 I was going through my very special kind of hell, one from which I did not escape unscathed. Be that as it may, yes - it really escaped my notice. Oh, I listened to the first single - 'Reflektor' - and eh, I didn't really fancy it. Just from the get-go I was so ready to hate this album, because I'd read that they's enlisted LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy to produce the record, and while I don't mind the odd LCD Soundsystem song here and there, I never managed to get through a single record of theirs from end to the other. It's the kind of band that is just not for me, and apologies to those who I am about to offend, it's a band that people who are incredibly smug and think themselves oh so clever like. There was also another thing that left me feeling wary about the record - it's a double album, a triple album even - if you listen to the deluxe edition, something I've not yet managed to do. So when it came out, it just passed me by, and I didn't mind it. I didn't need it in my life. But when I got to fall in love with 'The Suburbs' back in 2015-16, I decided to give this one a go. And... yeah, pretty much everything I feared came to pass. It's bloated, and with good, critical editing, it could have been a pretty decent single disc album. I think that the first disc is almost all of it filler, with maybe a couple of exceptions. So many songs there are bland, and feel lifeless, and cold - at least to me. I wouldn't be able to hum 99% of the songs on that first disc. Disc two, however, is much better. And funnily enough, it features not one, but two of my all-time favourite Arcade Fire songs - 'Afterlife', such an anthemic club song, and 'It's never over (Hey Orpheus)'. Love those songs. 'Supersymmetry' is pretty decent as well. Again, the second disc would have been better placed on the first one, replacing quite a a few of those duds. I listened to the record again lately and it still doesn't grip me at all. Maybe one day in the future, it will, but not now, not as yet. It's funny to think that this one was an album I actually paid a premium price for the vinyl version - I think that for a time some years back it was a scarce commodity, and when I found it, I scooped it up - though it came at a high cost.

And honestly? I find this album to be so kinda mid that I give it an unimpressive five out of 10.

Day Three hundred and ten - Rose in the vase

It's not that the universe doesn't have its ways of showing me exactly where I stand and what to expect, but the truth is that it's me who creates the avenues for these things to happen. I'm always the one to fire the opening salvos, and who can I blame but myself when I am met with disappointment? I should be used to it by now. Early Sunday, as I came back home and got to bed just before the sun started to break, I -once again - entertained the idea of just... disappearing. And if I did, who would miss me? Who would notice? To be sure, a very small portion of people would know first hand, but not many. A few. I think I'd try to explain my reasons. Maybe I'd just say my goodbyes. But I'd be no more than a distant memory, in time. My name but a sigh in the wind. There are things I just can't put myself through anymore. I can't see that look of disappointment on someone else's face again. I can't hear 'maybe we should just be friends' again. I'm tired, and I'm old, and I don't like it here anymore. There's nothing left in me, nothing left to give. I shan't offer myself up this way again, and who would welcome a puzzle, anyway? Especially one with missing pieces and pieces that don't fit anywhere. I'm too much, I'm not enough, what a let down. To think I once thought myself poetry in motion. But in truth it's the kind of poetry that has bad grammar and comma splices. Dangling participles and run-on sentences. Plural problems and incorrect tenses. Everything is wrong. I'm wrong. I'm inadequate. I don't make sense, someone who doesn't like to take pictures doesn't make sense, who would want someone like that? Who would miss someone like that? No one.

Day Three hundred and nine - Faraday cage

There's a large bookcase in my bedroom that is now home to not a single book, but on its lower half there are doors, one to either side, and inside those doors I have boxes full of old stuff that I have been meaning for a very long time to sort through. Sometimes, when it fancies me, I'll try and get them out and sort of sift through them, to see what I want to keep and/or throw away. But for some reason doing this always leaves me feeling (more) exhausted. Because there's plenty of stuff there that brings back memories. Not necessarily good, and nor necessarily bad, but memories nevertheless. Last time I went through those boxes, I ended up throwing away a bunch of stuff I'd been holding on to for about twenty years or so, but it was nowhere nearly enough. So this Sunday evening I decided to have another run at it, and I came across something that I had not seen in years - a spindle full of CDs and DVDs, as well as some inside slim slipcases. Now, I do not now have a computer or anything else that can read or play them, so for its most part I have no idea what's in them. I can tell, though, that they have been burned, and they have something in them. It's probably music, or even comics. They're a relic of a time gone by. But some - a handful - I do know what they have, because those are the ones inside the slipcases. And I know precisely what's in them, when I burned them, why I burned them, and for who I burned them for. It's a weird testament to a really rough bit of my life - and to put it in perspective I'm talking about 2005 here, Christmas 2005 to be more precise. I had return from a stay in London but recently, and I felt like giving something to all my friends - something I found important, something valid I felt I needed to share. So what I did was compile my favourite records from the past couple of years, and I knew these would not be bands that they'd know, and put them all on one disc so they'd listen to them and hopefully enjoy them and maybe think of me - perhaps fondly - whenever they played them. I didn't burn many, less than ten to be sure, and maybe just a little more than half that number. And I don't think I ever did give them all, certainly I couldn't have seeing as I still have some. But maybe I gave out just a couple, though to who I could not now say, and I highly doubt that whoever I gave them to ever listened to them. Ah well, something else that got chucked in the bin.

Day Three hundred and eight - Diving with your hands bound (nearly flying)

And Jo was so ready for everything to be over, for the pain, for the loneliness, for the notion that one day she's going to run into him and he'll be with someone else, and he'll be happy again, that when they spoke that day she barely heard what he said. She nodded in agreement, though as to what she could not precisely say. He was crying, and she was crying, and then came silence. This is it. This is it. This is it. This is it. The end was always coming and now it's here. And she tells Jake he's finally free of her, she's giving him what he wants. He asks her if this is what she wants. It's not, and if there was ever a time to say so, it's now, but she just says that she understands why he wants to leave, though Jake had never said anything of the sort. He's lost amidst a sea of tears, their tears are becoming a sea, an ocean of noise. 'But I need, Jake, to tell you that I love you, it never rests.', she says, she finally says, and the love that had never ever gone from them blooms once more. They sleep together again that night, and all nights afterwards. They are each other's home, being with Jake was like returning to that 'cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer.', it was like walking back into Satis House once more, or being the light that brought life to Thornfield Hall after years of gloom. It was Elvenhome, Lyonesse and Hy-Brazil, the promised land that was theirs alone, and that they almost let slip from their hands.

Day Three hundred and seven - Everwake

Try though she might, Jo just can't catch any sleep. There's something on her mind, something she needs to do, something she's got to get off her chest, and she was so certain that yesterday when she got home that she was going to finally sit down with Jake and have that long awaited talk. But work kept her for longer than she wanted, and by the time she got home she already felt depleted, no energy whatsoever. Her resolve was strong though, and on the way home she practiced all the things she wanted to say, she had everything down pat. It would hurt, it would hurt a lot and probably for a long time, but if she leaves then maybe Jake can be happy again. She saw him sleeping on the couch already when she arrived, and though she moved to where he lay to wake him up and get everything sorted out, she just couldn't. The words would not come, her arms could not be roused to wake him from his slumber. There was such peace in his sleep, such stillness. She sat on the chair across from where he was sleeping, and in the dimness of the bedroom, she could see his chest rising and falling. Her breath synced up with his own, and together they stayed in that sacred silence, so silent it hurts to listen. Then there was a moment when Jake woke up - and that startled her. She saw the confusion in his eyes, the pain in his eyes. He sat down on the couch, and turned a wee light on, and looked at her. Jo saw him mouth the word 'what?', barely audible, and shook her head, tried to speak, and just... just failed. She didn't want him to see her cry, and she just got up from the chair and went to her bedroom.

What Jo hoped for when she got the bedroom didn't happen. On the one hand, she hoped she could just fall asleep, after all, didn't she feel exhausted, drained? Surely sleep would come to claim her soon. But on the other hand she really wanted Jake to knock at the door, and ask to come in, and they'd talk and everything would finally come clean. No, scratch that, what she wanted was for him to come into the room, and lay down beside her, and hold her and tell her that he'd never let her go, just like he had so many times before. None of that came to pass. She tried to distract herself, but she just couldn't manage to do so. She tried watching the TV, but her mind drifted easily from it. Then she tried to read a book, but every time she read a paragraph, she had to go bad to the beginning and read it again. There's no way she can focus, not tonight. So she turns off the light, closes her eyes, and tries to summon sleep. She tosses and turns, gets up, lays back down, paces across the bedroom, rehearses those words time and time again. It's past three a.m. when she decides that not only won't she be able to get any sleep, but that she can finally take that step forward now, and open the door and go and have that conversation. She can see the light from the living room coming in, through the crack of the door. That means Jake's up already, and getting ready to go to work. She knows he gets up earlier than he has to so he can have some extra free time. All she has to do now is open the door, and cross to the living room. She takes a deep breath, and puts her hand on the door handle. But then she hears footsteps coming closer, and she senses Jake stopping right outside. So close, and yet so far. Just turn the door handle, Jo, you can do it. She can't do it. She hears the sound of something scraping the floor, and she looks down and sees a note being pushed through, towards where she was. She waits until Jake turns to leave, and hears the door to the house being shut behind him. Then, and only then, does she pick up the note. She clutches it with both hands, and slides down to the floor, her back against the bedroom door. She opens the note. It just says 'We need to talk.' 

Day Three hundred and six - The thrash of naked limbs

Jake always gets home just before four in the afternoon, unless he has to do some shopping first. It's a desolation that greets him every single time, their house that's no longer a home, emptied of life, emptied of light, emptied of hope, emptied of love. But that's not true, he knows he's full to bursting with love for Jo, but he often gets the feeling that she just doesn't love him back. In a bit, he's going to call his mum, and they'll be on the phone for half an hour or so, and she's going to ask him again to fix things. There's a sing his mum used to sing to him when he was a kid, and he hums it every day. 'It's so funny how we don't talk anymore', words he couldn't understand at that age, and that now he finds absolutely devastating, and not surprisingly, not funny at all. He finds it sad that he and Jo somehow both decided to give up on what they had. Had they grown tired of each other? When did she stop loving him? Jake asks himself these questions every night before he cries himself to sleep on the couch. And how did he end up there, after all? Had there been an inciting incident between them that led him to make the decision of not sleeping in their bed? Not really, there were just a hell of a lot of little things that had started going wrong, and then maybe one night he just didn't feel welcomed or wanted, and he left.

After he's done talking to his mum, Jake checks the house to see what needs to be done before Jo arrives. She's getting home later and later, he's noticed. Sometimes he thinks she's met someone else, and that she's just biding her time until she leaves him for good. There's a masochistic part of him - because entertaining these thoughts always hurt him a lot - that hopes she's found someone else. That's how much he wants her happiness, that if someone else could make her happy, then he too, would feel happy. Miserable, to be sure, but happy. He's barely eating these days, usually fixing himself only a couple of sandwiches, or grilled cheese toasties on occasion. He feels tired, far too tired for anything complicated. He's usually ready to go to sleep around seven or eight, sometimes even earlier than that. Before he goes to sleep, though, he always go to what once was their bedroom, and sits down for a little while on their bed. He misses being here with her - he remembers how it felt to have her in his arms, how sweet she smelled, how her heart beat next to his. Mementos of days gone by, he fears.

There was a time when they'd both sit down on this couch, and they'd read or watch something together. Often, especially in the beginning, they'd have sex here. He'd sit pretty much where he is now sitting, and she'd sit on top of him, swaying up and down. How limitless everything felt then. How impossible the thought of her one day loathing his very touch. This is how their communication goes these days : on the off chance they see each other, they just briefly look at each other in the eye, sometimes nod, sometimes mumble something, and how did it come to this, and why does it stay like this? It hurts him, and maybe it's time to give up the ghost. Maybe it's time to set them both free. It's probably going to kill him, but it's time to face the truth. There won't be no sweeping exits, no Hollywood endings. Just two broken souls that once upon a time loved each other more than life itself.