Be safe - The Cribs.

One of those fucking awful black days when nothing is pleasing and everything that happens is an excuse for anger. An outlet for emotions stockpiled, an arsenal, an armour. These are the days when I hate the world, hate the rich, hate the happy, hate the complacent, the TV watchers, beer drinkers, the satisfied ones. Because I know I can be all of those little hateful things and then I hate myself for realising that. There's no preventative, directive or safe approach for living. We each know our own fate. We know from our youth how to be treated, how we'll be received, how we shall end. These things don't change. You can change your clothes, change your hairstyle, your friends, cities, continents but sooner or later your own self will always catch up. Always it waits in the wings. Ideas swirl but don't stick. They appear but then run off like rain on the windshield. One of those rainy day car rides my head implodes, the atmosphere in this car a mirror of my skull. Wet, damp, windows dripping and misted with cold. Walls of grey. Nothing good on the radio. Not a thought in my head.

Lets take life and slow it down incredibly slow, frame by frame with two minutes that take ten years to live out. Yeah, lets do that.

Telephone poles like praying mantras against the sky, metal arms outstretched. So much land travelled so little sense made of it. It doesn't mean a thing all this land laid out behind us. I'd like to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while. I'm disgusted with petty concerns; parking tickets, breakfast specials. Does someone just have to carry this weight? Abstract typography, methane inconvenience, linear gospel, Nashville sales lady, and torturous lice, mad Elizabeth. Chemotherapy bullshit.

The light within you shines like a diamond mine, like an unarmed walrus, like a dead man face down on the highway. Like a snake eating its own tail, steam turbine, frog farm, two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun, hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blowjob, deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories, movements, the movie unfeeling, unreeling, about to begin.

I've seen your hallway, you're a darn call away, I've hear your stairs creak. I can fix my mind on your yes, and on your no. I'll film you face today in the sparkling canals, all red, yellow, blue, green brilliance and silver Dutch reflection. Racing thoughts, racing thoughts. All too real, you're moving so fast now I cant hold your image. This image I have of your face by the window, me standing beside you arm on your shoulder. A catalogue of images, flashing glimpses then gone again.

Every clear afternoon now I'll picture you up in the air twisting your heel, your knees up around me, my face in your hair. You scream so well, your smile so loud it still rings in my ears.

Imitation. Distant, tired of longing. Clean white teeth. Stay the course. Hold the wheel. Steer on to freedom. Open all the boxes.

Open all the boxes.

Open all the boxes.

Open all the boxes.

Times Square midday: newspaper buildings, news headlines going around, you watch as they go, and hope that some good comes. Those tree shadows in the park they're all whistling chasing leaves. Around six pm, shadows across cobblestones, girl in front of a bathroom mirror she slowly and carefully and paints her face green and mask like. A portrait. A green stripe. Long shot through apartment window, a monologue on top but no girl in shot. The light within you shines like a diamond mine, like an unarmed walrus, like a dead man face down on the highway. Like a snake eating its own tail steam turbine, frog farm, two full closets burst open in disarray, soap bubbles in the sun, hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list, blowjob, deaths head, devils dancing, bleached white buildings, memories, movements. The movie unreeling, about to begin.

Alchemy.

I have tried self-development like a modern-day alchemy. Taken myself as the base metal, and applied a series of stresses and strains, in the hope this will act as a catalyst for miraculous transformation.

I have not transformed myself. Instead, I have ended up a charred and worn out version of my original - beaten by my own trials.

I face the obvious truth that change takes time - although I am not, and cannot be happy now should not mean I punish myself further.

Instead, I shall endeavour to pursue things which I believe to be positive; reading, writing, language and well-being - without inadvertently attacking or over-exerting myself.

je me suis perdu

21 part 1: Holidays.

I'll write this one simply so's not to forget.

My 21st celebrations started on the 27th of December. My Birthday is on the 13th of January, and I still have plans which spill into February. YESSS.

The Birthday in Glossop was fantastic. The mates I have grown up with stood around me, screaming 'FUCK YOUUUUUU' at the top of their lungs. I wouldn't have had it any other way. Poor Jenny got landed with after-party, which the pictures prove was pretty surreal.

Almost immediately after that we piled into a megabus bound for Edinburgh, for a adventurous New Year. Even that long coach journey goes down in the memory books- so hot, so late, so funny - if you have never played the Buzzcock's intro game in the middle of a coach full of people, you must.

We then marched across Edinburgh, feeling like there were hundreds of us (I think in reality there was 15 of us, but we seemed many more), then descended upon Alison's flat like very lazy locusts.

I think I'll remember our stay in Edinburgh for as long as I live. Adults are often accused of losing the ability to have fun, but that's exactly what Edinburgh was, pure, concentrated, ecstatic fun. And sleeplessness.

We birthday-ed (Alison's 21st!) And then New Year-ed - New Year was brilliant, thousands of people doing incomprehensible scottish dancing and grinning at everyone in sight. Fireworks at midnight from every direction. Perfect.

On New Year's Day we walked up to Arthur's Seat and let off chinese lanterns. Which was beautiful, special and silly as well. The beauty side of it got slightly over-shadowed by a competition to make them fly 'the best' towards the end, a competition which we clearly won by making ours do a double somersault.

We all knew that after Edinburgh we would be obliged to return back to our separate corners of the world and so getting to spend time with each other in such high-spirits was completely invaluable.

Too soon though I was alone on a train, heading south, with the ultimate aim to be on a plane, heading much further south, seperated only by a night with my family to say goodbye.

Will end here and split this rambling tale into two parts for convenience's sake.

a precious cage.

I have spent my life
spooling behind me a silk thread,
tracing outlines
in a slow, spinning sway.

This thread has become an
infinitely intertwining web,
holding together everything
I have ever known,
or ever was,
or thought.

Some have become boughs which
hang above me,
laden with the weight
of repeated experience.
Others glint and sparkle,
still raw and newly formed.

I was proud,
to weave and thread
my time away,
safe in the faith
I was building something real.

Now I see
all I have created is a cocoon,
the delicate silk
a precious cage,
which holds me to my world.

The lonely life of a language assistant.

I grew up in the countryside, and my childhood is a blur of running through fields with other children, collecting spiders and examining slugs.

So I can't believe I now long for the city. It feels like a betrayal of that wide-eyed boy, telling his parents knowingly that he too would live in the country when he grew up.

What happened? I suppose University did. My student-hood is a blur of running through streets with other students, collecting friends and examining the opposite sex.

And now, so freshly converted to the rush of the city, I find myself back in the fields. Admittedly this time the fields of a different country.

Life here is more challenging than I thought it would be. My main problem is making friends. Ever since the I arrived, I have been part of a close circle of assistants in Gap, and a wider circle of assistants in surrounding towns. They are superb - we have lots of fun together, they are the ones most likely to understand how you feel, and have the same ridiculous amount of spare time.

But then, the majority of us are out here to practice our French, so you begin to look around for French friends. I simply can not seem to do it. I have tried to make myself available. Done stupid things like go to Judo classes and go snow-shoeing, met up for drinks with 18 year old IT students and even offered free individual conversation classes. To no avail.

The closest I have come to friendship with the natives is playing squash wish two French guys every week. This is progress I admit, but as I pointed out to a friend, we are not relaxing at each other's houses, we are hitting a rubber ball against a wall and then shaking hands. My point is that it is hardly a deep friendship.

As Christmas draws closer, for me the focus falls on the fact that I have failed to make friends here. I do not forget my assistant friends - but I understand that they too have their battle to make a life here, which can't simply be a series of anglophone nights in.

So, what am I supposed to do? Write angry letters? Advertise in the local newspapers that I am alone? Or come back in the New Year with a daft resolution to befriend a stranger every single day.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I believe finding friends out here MUST BE possible, I'm just tired of not knowing how, and not knowing where to look.

ALP.

The Sun is a Man, final draft.

In not all but most mythologies,
the sun is a man. The sun is a man
who sets in drag the furrowed skies,
chained fast to the deeply scarred earth.

Unlike Icarus, who is
neither man nor sun. Neither man nor sun,
he is freed between starred sky and sea,
for just half a world's turn.

In not all but most mythologies
The sun is a god. The sun is a god
who paves the untilled sky,
gauging channels deep into sacred land.

Like Daedalus, who is
both god and man. Both god and man
whose son's rise became his downfall,
his creations became his prison.

In not all but this mythology,
God is a man. God is a man.

the sun is a man.

In not all but most mythologies
The sun is a man. The sun is a man
who sets in drag the furrowed skies
chained fast to that deep scarred land

unlike Icarus
Neither man nor sun. Neither man nor sun
freed under the cool darkness
for just half a world’s turn

In not all but most mythologies
The sun is a god. The sun is a god
who paves the untilled sky
channels fast gouged into sacred land

like Daedalus
Both god and man. Both god and man
whose son’s rise was his downfall
his creations his prison

In not all but this mythology
God is a man. God is a man