Home, ideally, is where the heart is. This winter, both me and my heart have been left in Glasgow. Meaning home for the past weeks has been an emptied flat. By busses and planes or boats and trains. To the reader it might seem sad. However, death, or loss it’s maybe better to say, has meant in this instance endurance. It pulls a person out of the trance of living. The way one was once caught by each emotion and activity wholeheartedly, ceases. Losing, by virtue of its definition as the absence of something once had, prevents a person from feeling that wholeness, no matter the organ engaged. Importantly, it has also been a superpower. The ability to transcend contemporary experience and become a strange surveyor of existing. Sat at the back of the theatre watching the actors play, far enough into the obscuring darkness to hide my pad and pen as it notes each fad and grin. Far enough back so as not to jump when the story suddenly stops. Every gut-wrench and heart-break I have ever seen has been victim to the all enduring power of this vast spiritual deficit or overcompensation, which I don’t know. What I do though, is that I haven’t cried in front of another person in the absence of a slow film or boring show since I was a child probably. If I have it must not have reached me with sufficiently profound croaking to emerge above the tide of information that has since gone inward.
What I am trying to say is that it has been fine being alone. I don’t feel sad that I am alone. Or at least didn’t until google docs suggested replacing ‘being alone’ with ‘lonely’. I say for laughter and not sympathy. I am starting to realise that I might not be the person I thought I was. I think a part of me always suspected I was the person I know I am, but never really wanted to acknowledge it. To be honest, I don’t fully know who the person I know I am is. I do know, however, with detail, who the person I know I am isn’t. I have been frequently reminded by expansive eyes and pity lies that I often am not the person others know I am. Friends suddenly seeming supremely surprised that the shadowy man with obstructed eyes was not the companion they comprehended him to be, but a voyeur in a suit in an observatory. Pretty rhymes wont undermine my life, which for the most part is one observable and observed at a distance. One foot out the door, with a cheek out the window, my head on the floor, and my knob on the knob.
It probably has been 3 days (in total) too many without coffee. My neurons aren’t bridging the way they used to. I slam into my keyboard like a chimp that makes more spelling mistakes than the average chimp, and yet continue to peel. Like bananas, and an onion that one time. I have been addicted to quitting all my vices in the past 6 months, and by that I mean all my addictions, and by that I mean all enjoyment. I hope I say for humour and not candour. I can remember the last time I was drunk - it hasn’t been that long - but I think it's worth noting that I can still feel how I felt that morning after. Shameful, full of shame. Maybe that is why I do this, because deep down I still have some point to prove. I don’t know to who, probably at this point just myself. It's obvious to me that it's about more than my health, which has never been better I think I should say. Or at least I think so. I could never recognise or list the different ways. That power that prohibits all sensation, good and bad - every fad, each grin- obscures the ability to account.
The morning after writing that and realising that I might be suffering for the wrong reasons I have had a weak coffee and some nicotine. I’m shivering and I can’t tell if it's because I haven’t had the heating on in a day or if I'm finally experiencing joy for the first time in the last three. What I have told myself immediately is that since polluting my mind with what my mind most desires, I have undermined my authentic ability to write. A concept that those who have read this far I’m sure are somewhat lost on. I clearly lack the answers. I couldn’t tell you if this great conflict with my vices is some analogy for my struggle with mortality. Someone different would likely tell you that all struggles are struggles with one's mortality, although that's probably the only thing of interest they will ever tell you, considering a life spent struggling to avoid struggle. It is difficult to find the answers when someone doesn’t know why they’re searching or what they’re searching for. If a beardy frail someone walked past me and slipped me the answer, I cannot confirm or deny that I would be satisfied. If there was a heaven or hell as the bible, the pope, and the spitty man on Buchanan street believe, I have no doubt that from today I would smoke and drink and sin to the day that I begin to burn for eternity.
The day after and night just before. The power of god that more closely resembles music. The means of movement which are entirely abstract and not capable of being quantified. It seems to me that this immediate moment is the only one that exists and ever will. It seems to me that this immediate moment now becomes polluted by those passing by and those which they pass on to. All those things that grab my attention. Why is my drug dealer so kind? Where does he buy his Christmas wrapping paper? Does he use the same paper for his family as he does for my weed? Why is it called stardog? The night before the day after nothing. Where nothing seemed to occur except for thoughts that went unquenched and remain deprived of root or cause. Does the bus driver feel anything when I look into their eyes? I wouldn’t say I was expecting romance or desperation, that being said I feel something when I look into theirs. Empty and sad, not for them, just generally. The in-betweenness of it. After stepping on the bus and before sitting down, after birth and before death, somehow a baby became a bus driver and now they are looking in my eyes. How do they feel about that fact? I feel something. I feel constantly and yet am not convinced I feel anything. Except for the strange buzz of existence which I am not convinced is entirely all bad and might actually be good if I could figure it out. To drink perchance to pee. To slip perchance to feel. The hard concrete slam into the base of the back of my skull, cracking and then draining it of its life force. I wonder what music I would hear then.
It's possible I have eaten too much cured meat today. It was a gift and maybe I was just showing my gratitude. Gratitude shown to none but my own gushing mouth.
It is new years eve now and suddenly I feel more awake than I have in days. Maybe because of the joint formerly abandoned outside of my flatmate's window, or probably because of the piano which that flatmate plays while I smoke it. I realise now that I wouldn’t be capable of coping with the opposite.
The time that has passed by since writing that last paragraph has taught me, amongst other things, that I do not like Edinburgh and definitely that nobody should. I am hungover, which means despite sitting and writing, most of what flows out of me currently is heat. Coming in various forms and from different outlets. It’s only in this state I can put confidence to my thoughts. What if everything I hope for comes true? What will I do on that day that I am no longer a university student? Just another man, unlabelled, untethered, and unnoticed. Who walks forward, searching for something in the horizon that cannot be put to words. Eyes drawn ahead, hoping to gain something lacked inside. Where there are no rules and I am no longer the future but living in it, the one I was supposed to create for myself.
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