The gap between When and Now...

Musical accompaniment: Sevendust - Waffle

Over the last week or two, after months of multi-threaded, nose-to-the-grindstone, eye-on-the-prize "Ideate -> Plan -> Execute", I've noticed that my mental To Do List has been gradually atrophying as tasks get competed, ticked off, and disappear with a cheerful *Pling!*. Somehow that cheerfulness has failed to infect my demeanour, but that's far from unexpected; I am after all, in the statistical context of the last decade, "a miserable cunt". Nonetheless, as the items on my list transition from 'Activity' to 'History', the one at the bottom remains stubbornly at "0% Complete". Every time I check it glares back mockingly: 

Title: Get a life

Deliverables: 

• Fucked if I know; 
• You're supposed to be The Smartest Motherfucker In The Room; and
• Sort yourself out, dumbfuck. 

It would seem my Executive Function Assistant is sick of my shit; I'd fire him, but can I really blame him? He's an arsehole, but I've got a point. 

"Life," said Allan Saunders, "is what happens to us while we are making other plans," which sounds like a whole-cloth-bullshit cop-out to me, cut from the same bolt as "one day I'm gonna...", "maybe next year when I get that promotion...", and "there but for the grace of God go I." 

Somewhere in the 00's I seized the opportunity presented by what I saw at the time as utter tragedy and in a barely-considered grief-driven moment of clarity I declared "well fuck you God, I thought we'd made a fucking deal, and whilst we're at: it fuck Grace, fuck me, and fuck the rest of you. Hold my... no fuck that as well," drained my pint, and as I started accelerating in a direction not so much forwards or backwards, but in no uncertain terms 'away', "I'm fucking going." 

A decade later I decided to run away again, from the circus this time, to go join 'the real world'. That worked out about as well as one would expect; it turns out Hollywood has been lying to us all this time and "what she's having" is just another little death wrapped in a different texture of misery, and if you order that you get it as well as the one you already have, not instead of, and twice as hard. 

"No more running away," I committed myself, and I'll be the first to admit that it was not an utter end-to-end catastrophe. I nailed my feet to the floor, built what I've been reliably informed was "a life" with someone, and it might have been more "Tyler & Marla" than "Ozzie & Harriet", but at least it wasn't "Sid & Nancy". For a while I got to eat in the warm, softly-lit restaurant full of happy-looking diners with the small-but-prominent sign on the door which reads "Solo diners will not be accommodated: We only accept parties of two or more," instead of gazing in longingly with eyes as hungry as my stomach, and as empty as my heart. 

It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't so imperfect that I didn't try again because surely I couldn't make the same mistakes twice. I was correct; I went on to make entirely different mistakes. 

"Life," I decided, "is what happens between crises," but as one crisis rolled into the next, and they began to overlap, I realised I was mistaken again because if you bite into any of them they all taste the same. 

Friday 28/07/2023 10:31

That sat in Drafts for two fucking months before I came back to it, distracted by one thing after another. It wasn't until I had another three stillborn thoughts racked up, each of which I wanted to avoid facing more than the last, that I came back to see if I could work out where I was going with it. 

My, don't I waffle on? 

Two days turned into two weeks turned into two months and I've no idea, so moving right along: All That Remains - Two Weeks

I was hoping that by re-reading, and correcting the typo's, whilst replaying the music I was listening to at the time I could reset to that mood and play it forward again, but things have moved on. I know I was building towards a "reframe"; I'd created the circumstance for re-creation, but instead of reinvention my resurrection seemed to be more of a restart, reset on the same set of rails which would see me running up that same road and down that same hill that I seem to push shit up again and again. 

But life moves on, and like tears in rain the moment seems to have been lost in time. 

Wherever I was, I'm certainly not there any more. A week or so ago the latest bubblegum crisis popped and kicked me out of "where am I going?" straight into the Go I was absolutely not Ready to. It's been another adrenaline- and amphetamine-fuelled surge of levers flipped, triggers pulled, and escape-hatches blown, with risks recalculated in real-time because who gives a fuck whether you're too cool to look at explosions, ain't nobody got time for that. 

I'll lament existential about my inability to affect meaningful change in my life when I have the luxury of shit being a whole lot less on fire, yo. 

But that's a story for tomorrow when I've reached the amorphous landmass marked on the map as Outrageous Fortune, not two months' worth of yesterdays ago when the opposition hadn't switched their slings and arrows for Pete-seeking missiles and started throwing them out of the pram along with the rest of their toys, forcing me to phase shift straight from walking Christ-like to running like hell on a sea of troubled water beneath which I can see dragons writhing through the blur of my feet on our outbound flight from Paradise Never Had. 

Deadman + Change = Resurrection?

Musical accompaniment: Karnivool - Deadman 

Motherfucking... 

I walk into the bottlo over on Lonsdale St earlier this evening and find my eyes drawn to a pretty girl enjoying a wine tasting in the entryway. We make eye contact, and she she smiles at me.
I head down to the back and spend some time picking out a couple of stouts for my Friday Night anaesthesia.
The same thing happens as I approach the counter; she catches my eye, and catches my look, and smiles.
Somehow my usually iron-clad self-control slips and I find myself glancing over my shoulder as I'm leaving (he who hesitates is lost), only to receive another smile.
I actually trip over the threshold; I'm certain she saw that, but I catch my balance, keep moving, and escape into the street. 

3 heartbeats later and I'm standing outside, one door down, lighting a cigarette whilst typing the above into my phone in a message to Ricky. 

"I keep walking, right?
I'm pretty sure that's what I'm supposed to do."

I get through half my cigarette before my feet start to move, but they beat a path the long-way home which leads me past the bottlo again. If she left whilst I was standing here I'll never know; a runaway truck or blaring police siren wouldn't have compelled me to look up from the glowing screen in my hand whilst I stood there frozen in nervous-lockdown. Nonetheless, I stare at the pavement in front of my feet as I walk past the window and don't break stride through two left-hand turns onto Mort St. 

"I love that you tripped over from her smile," she later replied. 

"Oh fucking fuck what the fuck I'm fucked," I think as, hands shaking, I tag through the Get Smart doors, up the elevator, and ride my autopilot-driven feet into my anxiety- and meowing-cat-filled apartment, my hands empty my pockets, putting the contents into their specified places and empty the beer out of my backpack into the fridge. I reach the end of my pre-programmed takeMeHome(); subroutine and they stop, leaving me standing, shaking, my heart pounding, just past the kitchenette, completely at a loss for what to do next. 

I am not OK, but we knew that; I haven't been for two and a half years. 

Some might suggest that this is a step in the right direction, but none of those sons of bitches were there to tell me how to proceed. My legs were locked in their full-upright position, my belt of self-control fastened, my pocket-lint stowed and secured, but in my inner-sensorium my head was wedged between my knees in the brace position kissing my arse goodbye. 

Fucking Deal With It Airlines welcomes you aboard flight FU42 from A Fragile Illusion, Peace to Life Sucks, Wear A Hat. We give zero fucks whether you enjoy the trip and your comfort is of no importance to our crew whatever. The in-flight entertainment will be Your Most Embarrassing Memories played on high rotation broken at random intervals by irrelevant announcements, self-flagellation, and abnegation of whatever self-respect you still have remaining. The meal service will commence shortly offering a choice of Shit Sandwich and Humble Pie, but until then sit back, suck it up, and stop being a little bitch. 

A couple of weeks ago I woke up in a way which was less "gradual emergence into the dawn of a new day", more "traumatically breaking through the surface of a suffocating and bottomless well of oblivion". In my flailing, I rolled over and my hand landed on a soft, rumbling ball of need called Beckett. Stiff, arthritic fingers melted into his plush furry back, so I pulled him to my chest like a drowning man clutching a squirmy pool noodle and just before he nope'd the fuck out to sing his song of hunger from the bedroom doorway I found myself thinking "man, wouldn't it be nice to wake up and throw my arm over someone who nuzzled me back?" 

Staring at the ceiling with what I can only imagine was a haunted look in my eyes, and the second verse of "My food bowl is empty and I'll love you right up until it's not" by Beckett Meow-riner & The Obligate Carnivores filtering through the earplugs I habitually sleep with, I realised I was at the end of the peace offered by the Psalm of Pete #23: 

Solitude is my shepherd; I shall not want for more. It maketh me to lie down in green pastures: it leadeth me beside the still waters.
It restoreth my soul: it leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for its own sake. 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Loneliness art with me; thy cold and thy emptiness they comfort me.
They preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: they anointest my head with melancholy; my cup runneth over. 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of mine self-sufficiency for ever.  

Nothing Lasts Forever; all this shall pass.
Finding oneself Lost, Weightless In Space can be a comfort, gazing unblinking at the Embroidered Cloths of the Cosmos laid out before you promising depthless wonder; in space, no one can tread on your dreams.
It's the friction of re-entry that burns. 

This is what you get for wanting things; for things to be other than what they are, you have to give up the static crystalline cold, and allow yourself to burn bright, knowing that every shooting star will inevitably burn out. To have one, you must accept the other. 

This is the way. 

To experience life is to experience Change; I moved across the country and managed to not move a fucking inch, but I insisted on living so I had to have a life. In making that choice I broke my stalemate with Dostoyevsky, Buddah, and God, and they ganged up to ensure I paid the price of my hubris. Even Nietzsche put the boot in with a chuckling "Du dachtest du wärst schlau, doch du bist ein Dummkopf," echoing derisively and hollowly across the void. 

The thing is, for all that I've been quite merrily self-sufficient, doing it for myself, alone, has been starting to get to me in all sorts of little ways. 

Like the little conversations you have when you see the same person all the time; you tell your stories in real-time, as they happen, rather than having to stitch together a patchwork-background giving context to the latest event or minutia. It's the part of a shared journey no one really talks about, the comfortable familiarity which creates a texture to a friendship akin to that je ne sais quoi which makes a 'house' a 'home'. I have my substitutes - people I call regularly, send emails to, or chat with online, but it's an incomplete experience; so many 'start's, and 'end's, but lacking that plush hollow halo of 'middle'. 

Or the casual affection that comes as part of a shared bond. Outside of the occasional obligatory hug it's so long since I've been touched I've become... actually uncomfortable with the idea. I almost can't remember what it feels like, but I remember a time when I did. 

Comfort being the operative word; that concept which defies design. logic, or engineering, which I can neither completely comprehend, nor consciously create, corporeal only when I close my eyes, confounds capture, and collapses under consideration. Coming to Canberra was cold comfort indeed. 

Emphasis on the word "cold". 

The move over from Perth really rammed home how much doing everything alone has been wearing on me, too. There were plenty of people who helped along the way, but there were a lot of things I couldn't outsource. For weeks on end I was packing, organising, working, and still having to keep myself and Beckett alive. If I didn't do it, it didn't get done, which is a problem when you're so exhausted you just want to curl up into a ball but you haven't quite got to sorting out inconsequential stuff like... y'know, food. There's nothing like being part of a team, and humans have come to thrive specifically because we form communities; a community of one can survive, but for all that I may be singularly competent even I am not so arrogant to believe that I, alone, can thrive. 

The hardest part for me tho, the hurdle I always struggle to overcome, is knowing that whilst I can be self-reliant and self-motivated, I'm rarely motivated by my self. Cooking's one of those things that trips me up every time - I love cooking, creating, making something delightful, but I'll almost never do it for myself. Most days food is a chore for which I must cease more meaningful activity to laboriously consume a balanced variety of substances which provide my failing meatsack with the chemical energy to ensure that it fails a little more slowly. I swear, if there was a Bachelor Chow Food Pellet I could get on a subscription... but for all its efficiency it would be a miserable existence, because food is a joy; I just take no joy from it unless it's shared. 

So I find myself sitting on the beach with the waves lapping at my ankles, holding a bottle in one hand and a scrap of paper on which I might write a message in the other pondering what, if I were to write one, it might say. 

I haven't decided whether to offer resistance, or capitulate and go with the flow; can I keep pretending to be an island when the smile of a pretty girl is enough to make me stumble in the street? Can I lie to myself when I know that the climate is changing, the seas are rising, and the gentlest of storms will wash that island away? 

Logic dictates that I face the facts, punch myself in mine, build a bridge, and get over it. I'm going to have to re-learn how to "dating". 

Gods, all of you, help me; Gods help us all. 

Convergent catalysing co-evolution...

Musical accompaniment: Blink-182 - Here's Your Letter

Beckett has learned to be circumspect. Getting kicked because I have a habit of having ANC earbuds in, not turning the lights on at night, and his having a need to lead the parade despite having no idea where it's headed, not to mention my sight not being as good as his will do that to you, which is why he was to the left of my trajectory as I passed, meowing at me. 

This time the noise in my ears had paused which meant the noise in my head was building back to crescendo, so he got picked up and cuddled because... 

What the fuck do you take me for? I might be a sociopath, but he's cute, his belly is soft, and for all that I built my church on the rock of logic, I'm not made of stone. 

Holding him to my chin in repose whilst his rumbling purr transmitted through my mandible it struck me how we, Beckett and I, had learned to communicate despite neither of us being capable of vocalising, let alone understanding, each other's language. That language isn't exactly what one would call "complex" or "highly nuanced". Mostly it consists of various iterations of: 

At its deepest and most existential, our communication has reached an equivalent intellectual and metaphysical level of my ultimate- and penultimate-ex's: 

and: 

Sticking my Jabra earbuds in my ears this morning and poking the button marked "Just pick up where you fucking left off seriously just make me less miserable what the fuck please?" which my phone handily abbreviates to the single, sardonic word "Play", I hit the pavement and the song which started, obvously following after the one after the one which had ended when I last stopped listening, kicked off with Mark Hoppus' unmistakable bass-riffs and vocals.  

The 95.45:1 ratio of relevant/irrelevant lines caught me in the amygdala and I filed it away under "shit to deal with more when you're drunk because in vino veritas, and you're way too sober to deal with this shit". 

Turns out that time was 12 hours, a day in the office on a random-but-not-inconsequential-for-that-Wednesday, and a bottle of discount Shiraz later, because i've taken to indulging in the habit I tried to detox myself from in my early 20's of "listening to the same song on repeat to keep me in that moment". 

I remember a completely-deserved breakup after which I listened to "Unsent Letter" by Machine Gun Felatio for a day and a half, to the point where my Aspgers housemate decided it was worth asking "R U OK?"
I remember being in London and listening to 'Cosmonaut" by At The Drive-In and "It's Myself vs Being A Man" by Inhale Exhale back and forth until one day became indistinguishable from the next. 

I remember listening to "Me, Myself, and I" by Oliver Tree again and again to help me concentrate on capturing the conceptual-synchronicity of convergent-experience of "Ian vs Being Myself" after a 2:39-hour phone call during which he told me his partner of 8ish years had dumped him. 

"Aw fuck, I mean... Jenny's nothing if not Mercurial, but.... shit. man." 

<insert some ultra-noble. self-effacing, sincerely-Ian shit right here> 

"Man, there's a blog-post in this somewhere... hang about, I'm gonna go find it." 

A little while later: 

Because if you want to declare yourself "The Smartest Motherfucker In The Room", it's a double-down. If something goes against you, regardless of what, it can never be anyone else's fault, it's mine. 

Yes, my self-reflection is self-defeating. 

Thanks for noticing! 
Your noticing has been noticed and referred to our #FuckedIfIveAFuck & #AlsoYou'reACunt Departments! 
Have a Luminescent Day! 

Now go fuck yourself in the optic nerve with a pool-cue! 

Fuck, (this isn't how I wanted it to go but) I can't let this kill me, let go
I need some more time to fix this..."

Fuck, if only I could say that without invoking TS "He Wanker" Elliot I'm sure I'd be fine. Thus spake Zarascoundrel.