My head was spinning slowly and there
was the dim beginning of physical pain, just about everywhere. I
decided to go out for a walk about, fill the time creatively with
something, maybe take photographs and avoid the weather. Soon I was
wandering on a stony, muddy beach but the dimmed pain was getting
stronger and I felt panicky, coming up like a tropical storm on the
horizon. Quivering as if in anti-gravity boots I stumbled, there was
a warm flush, physical pain gives way to physical weakness. I have
been in a car crash, it happened a few days ago but it was real, only
now, much later am I beginning to feel the shock. Is that me? So
desensitised, so uncoupled from feeling that I take a punch like a
dinosaur. The punch is landed, the blow presses the flesh and
triggers the nerves but the scream and electricity and pain travels
so slowly from the source on the long and winding distance to the
centre a huge portion of time elapses before anything registers. How
can that be? I conclude that I'm wired up in a way that lends it's
self towards the dysfunctional, perhaps it's a gift. It may have
been drugs or witnessed family trauma, years of religion and cod
philosophy, or being nurtured in the best working class hopelessly
emotionally stunted traditions, maybe read too few or the wrong
books, now I'm lost inside myself.
Naturally I contemplated some kind of inner suicide, a
easy way to run away that, in the plan, always has some pleasurable
activity factored in there as a prelude to the final awful ending. A
pleasant golden frame into which the unspeakable act is conveniently
placed. These are generally complex, warm and foreign activities,
like a holiday but with an end that's the end. They've been rolled
around and developed over years, thumbed like some business
contingency plan written when there was a staff surplus and a big box
had to be ticked. They follow the “Star is Born” model (the black
and white version) and promise the dreamer a suitable and almost
dignified conclusion, “shaking off futility or just punishing
somebody”, so that's about it for that. The experience is like
visiting a parking lot but not being able to find your car so you
have to shuffle to the exit and rely on public transport or make a
quick phone call to be rescued by a family member. It's an
embarrassing audition and rehearsal sequence that will not lead to a
performance but the script remains familiar and well thumbed over
before it's finally filed away.
Once I'd stopped trembling from the
most likely age related stumble I felt better, strangely the sun came
out and I started taking badly composed flimsy photographs and
fiddling with the phone. It was a useful distraction but I still felt
that illicit urge to run, like I was walking around with a target
across my chest. I responded as per normal, turned my back on sunny
highways and ideal quiet airports and went home. I self harmed with a
packet of plain crisps in the kitchen, they seemed extra oily and
greasy. This helped my inner loathing just a bit. Then I flopped, the
couch conveniently caught me.
I don't know where stuff comes from.
Perhaps I should make honest lists or fill notebooks. Here I am and
I've no idea where I'm going. Life's directions has become caught up
in flotsam and jetsam theories and methodology. Like yellow bath
ducks or ping pong balls thrown onto the tides and now circulating
around the globe, probably in the Pacific Ocean by now.
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