Death was just a simple glance across a dim lit room

And those eyes did it

Those three words did it

Those three words killed him

And I surrender to it all

Between you and me, I surrender to you

Forgive me for the sadness

And the bringing of you down

I just needed a lover and I needed a friend

And there you were

Running from forever like all the rest

Three simple words bled me dry

Three simple words bled us dry, bled us dry

I love you

(Heaven In Her Arms)

Listening to Like Herod in my old bed in my old room in my old house, swimming on the waves of sound and watching my memories run through my fingers as I raise my cupped hands above where my body becomes submerged. Watching a slight yet steady stream of my past flow out of my hands, returning to this sea made of two parts song to every one part of genuine nostalgia.
It's ending now, and the feedback dies away, slowly forming a collage with the real-life sounds around me. The creaking in the floorboards and walls isn’t the secrets leaking out like I used to think, it’s simple physics as the atoms they are made of expand en masse with the changing temperatures of day becoming night becoming midnight becoming a cold December morning.
There’s a bubbling too, the sound of hot water flooding cold pipes. If someone was here, someone who wasn’t me (I am deaf to the sounds that my heart makes, though maybe before I wanted to listen, I could have heard) could they hear the blood pumping around my veins? My blood is warm, my body is cold, and so I think it would make a sound, what with it working on the same principles.
I think the only way for someone to really find out would be for them to listen really close to my heart. They’d probably have to put their head on my chest, and be really, really quiet. Maybe even silent. And I’d have to be quiet too, silent even. And we’d both have to just lie there, still and silent, so this person could listen to my heart beating for them, until this person could tell me that my blood is pumping in my veins and making a sound, or that it is, and it isn't.
Either way, I'd be alive, and there would be someone who cares enough to listen to my heart lying next to me, so I would be happy.

If what went on inside your head affected what went on on the outside of it, I think I'd look like a Picasso.

It's not something I think I've really ever talked about here, (and I'm not talking about it here, I'm not talking about it anywhere) but ever since people in my life started dying, they haven't really stopped.

This is something which plays horrible games with me, more than what I guess is the granted mind-fuck of having a succession of friends past and present, as well as family, die. A thought has crept into my head and stayed there, black and acidic, that somehow I'm involved like some sort of conduit for whatever it is that people believe in; fate, providence or whatever intangible factor it is we blame when someone we love leaves us.

That last sentance makes me seem positively insane. I'm not; I fully recognise that in reality, it's just a savage mix of coincidence and the inherent tragedy of being human, but still, I'm me, and if you've been keeping score, that means I'm liable, if not likely, to wreck my own head.

The cancers, the suicides, the illnesses, the accidents and those who simply grew old: I am saying sorry. Both as a condolence, and an apology, for what I know I didn't do, but am irrationally terrified I did. Now please let me go.

This is definately one of my stranger posts; it's even earned an italic footnote from me, which I avoid at all costs. But I want to assure you all, I've not gone off the deep end. I've just had this recurring thought in my head for about a year now, and tonight for some reason I felt comfortable enough to try and exorcise it.

"So here's a message, to let you know I still exist"

At least, I think I do. It all got a bit blurry today, and so it depends on how you define existing. I think I'm existing... I'm not sure that I'm living though. I've talked about it here before, but theres still just a numbness in me where I know other people have heartbeats and feelings and dreams and all those things you're meant to have. I've been kidding you all that I'm fine, sometimes pretty badly, but it's been because I've had to kid myself that I'm fine.

Last night through to today I kind of broke down. The life I've been living caught up with me and I realised that for all I think I've learnt and become, this void is still there.

I'll try to be better in the new year. Theres not much of this one left, and what remains of if feels like a write off anyway.

Sorry everyone.

Music is my medicine.

Certain songs aren't neccessarily what we'd listen to every day, but when you hear them, maybe for the first time in ages, you're back somewhere, or with someone, or just generally reminded of something. In a bit of a change to the usual programming of personal trauma and near tragedy, I'm going to just list a few songs that do this to me-

Gangstarr- Full Clip- Ahh man, 'way back when', skating was the shit for me. And for all the memories such a lifestyle brings, nothing for me is as synonymous with the summers spent rolling around as this. Fucking supreme hip hop, confident and swaggering yet laid back, this song is skating to me. Plus it soundtracked Josh Kalis' part on the DC video, one of my favourite things to watch ever. Just, cool.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XYAsGH6P_QM

Jimmy Eat World- The whole album Bleed American. I bought this on the first time I really ever went out with a girl (just into town, typical early teenage mini-win, ha ha). I'm not sure if it was fate or irony or my subconscious or what, but this album subsequently served... no, serves as what it sounds like to be falling in love in your youth. I'm not old enough to be over what pressing play on this record brings, and I think that's ok.

Metallica- Sad But True- Never my favourite song of theirs, but significant because it's the first time I realised guitars didn't have to be in standard tuning. I don't imagine it's the first song I ever heard out of EADGBE, but its definately the first one I recall being unable to play properly as I was just starting to play guitar, until I went down to drop D. Not necessarily a great story, but hey, fuck you, it's just a little anecdote about me remembering the first time I detuned a guitar.


Sigur Rós- Popplagio, Saeglopur & Gobbeldigook- These ones are rooted in the live performances. Shared, importantly, with the most important people in my life present, either physically or in my mind, these are binding experiences for me, almost indescribable in their personal significance, which kind of defeats the purpose of this post so sorry I guess. I can say this though, I never want to forget the way I felt as the water fell or the air was filled with colours on those nights. Popplagio, by the way, is probably the most powerful song I have ever heard, live or on record.

I might do this again time to time, I liked it.

So it took 23 hours without sleep to make me see straight, but for the first time in about a week and a half, I feel driven to do something. Nothing specific, I suppose, just theres now motivation to be active whereas before there was none. This is good.
I'm not going to over react and say it was her that kicked me out of it, but I was lost in vices because I had nothing to work towards, and her words hit me as hard as i needed them to, despite her having nothing but the softest of intentions for me, and so now I'm back and I want to pretend the last week and a half never happened.
I was afraid I'd lost myself and afraid that because of this, I'd forgotten how to talk to her, but to my relief and joy, it's not difficult at all despite times and distances. She makes me laugh too, she makes me catch myself unawares, which not many people can do. Barriers down now, and masks aside, I've got to get back to being me again, and I'm looking forward to it for the first time since I got here.

I must admit, I felt a kick in my stomach as I saw the first few miles clock up. Aborting my plans never was going to be easy, but eventually, sat in the passenger seat (as I had been all summer, it felt), I realised this termination had been coming a long time, and was for the best. And so:

- Feeling it all go as every second passes makes the feeling more vivid.
- Literal journeys as metaphorical ones.
- Seeing your life in boxes laid out before you.
- Making a house a home.
- Haunting the places you used to for the first time in a long time.
- Meeting the person you wanted to see the most, when you thought you'd see them the least.
- Not remembering going to sleep, but loving waking up.

I'm going to do this more often, the walk home from work has been cold and dark and beautiful, rather than tense and worrying and anxious. It's like living in a film, the unconscious cinematography and mis-en-scene being re-interpreted by their soundtrack. Perfect interaction of stage and actor, art and audience.

Even the couples exhaling like they're smoking cigarettes between their kisses make me smile where I would have simmered and seethed, they're beautiful not because of what they might look like, but because of what they are.

Today I wrote a thousand words as a bird, flying the nest for the first time. Cautious, but ready to launch into the unknown. Yet I found I simply couldn't write the one final crucial word that meant the most of all. I stepped outside myself. Looked. What are you afraid of?

I am afraid of showing how I feel, which is ridiculous, because the whole point is to show how I feel. So today, standing outside myself, I took my own hands and I wrote. I folded. I sealed, and I posted.

Four letters, one word, a whole new way to live.

I listened to them on the way home, cast against a pink sky. The Christmas lights are on now, blue and white and gold, and the reds, oranges and greens of traffic lights punctuated my journey. Colours everywhere, and they were the perfect soundtrack for showing me that the world can simply be a wonderful, beautiful place. As they always have been. And, I like to think, as it always has been.

I see them again tonight. Last time I saw them, two weeks or so ago, I made my way through a storm to where they were playing, and when they finished and I left and went outside into the real world again, it took a while to realise the storm had gone away. There's no storm tonight, not even a hint of one, and so whilst last time I had needed the shelter and a place to gather myself, tonight I'm going not because I need respite and warmth, but because I want to celebrate the fact that all the things I tried to find, I did, two weeks ago, and now I can find beauty in whatever I choose, because it is a choice and I know this again for the first time in a while.

I fell asleep with her photo in my hands the other night. The only thing that stopped me taking in everything about her, over and over again, was how I eventually couldn't keep my eyes open. And even then I didn't stop seeing her face. She's got me good, and I love it, because this time it's not difficult, and it's not an effort, and (you know what? I'm going to say it in all its simplistic glory) maybe she genuinely likes me too.


Backtrack


I'm the happiest I've been in months. In years. Ever. A song of impossible joy is all I can hear, and confetti is all I can see, and I put my clapping hands in the air as high as they can go and I smile, not because I've been told to, or because I think it's what I should do, but because it feels right.


Everything I needed to lose, I left in that hall. This is a new start. Watch me.

You are being written about here for the last time, this sentence is one big long full stop.

I'm glass and I'm tumbling through space. Not in the sense of a lack of something, in the sense of planets and stars and beauty.
Anyway, I'm glass and I'm tumbling through space, and below me, miles below me, I can see the Earth.
And I fall through the atmosphere, the unimaginable cold of nothingness being tempered with intolerable heat as I burn up. But I don't change, I remain. Glass.
Now I'm in the sky, still falling, and a panic builds in my legs and works its way up to my head and down my arms, but at the same time I'm panicking, I'm unafraid because I know I'm going to shatter, and its the knowing that makes it okay. It feels like I'm falling ever so slowly too, I don't know why though.
I hit the ground and I smash into a million tiny pieces and there's not even a dent in the ground where I've fallen but it's okay because this is what I hear as my glass head, and my glass ears, and my glass brain becomes nothing more than dust. Sharp little snowflakes in the air, blowing across a field which has taken a life that was only ever glass to begin with and there's no sign anything ever happened here and I think I'm fine with that, I really do so be happy for me.

I don't know about others, maybe it comes easy, but for me the journey from liking someone to actually doing something about it takes a hell of a lot out of me. I get tired, I get ill, I get all sorts of things going on that I don't like having to deal with, but force myself through because of what they might be for.

In that sense, I suppose you could say I'm all kinds of naive. To wreck yourself for a chance of happiness, or to be more accurate, and as I've mentioned before, just being not unhappy. It's not like I'm blackened all the time, ok, it's more like theres a lightbulb flickering above my head and if I could just jump up high enough to knock it and make it stay on, that would be perfect and (haha) everything would be illuminated.

(If you got that, it means nothing major, it's just a stupid private-ish joke that presented itself.)

Anyway, this is just to get out through my fingertips how I've already done this once this summer; how I've already harvested all of the energy and patience I had as far as love is concerned (for a nothing of my own choosing, I will add), and now that the seeds have grown into something once more, how much I'm not going to like the decisions I'm now going to have to make.

Open up your mouth, breathe the night into my home
Let my words be bombs, dropping silently across your heart.
Let this room be our canvas, our Guernica, our warzone
Let your touch be the colour, let our bodies be each other's art.

You will know me by the fact I am on fire for you.

Speak these words aloud so they may take up space in the air in your room, and then imagine that the shapes they make are my arms, around you.

http://intendedtobescreamed.blogspot.com/

I'm sorry.
I won't retract my words because they remain valid of themselves but I will atone for them because they are not how I want this to end and not how I feel any more.
You will be missed, of course you will. I have known you for longer, and we have shared more of each other between ourselves, but it is because of this I feel I gain license to say such things as those I now no longer want to stand by.
I know you are on my side though. When the tables finally turned last night, you were on my side when I had not been on yours. And for this, I love you.

Realising how much you will be missed hit me like a punch to the stomach just now.
And I hope that when you realise how much I will be glad to be away from you, it makes you sit down and think about who you are.
And I think we could have been so much, if things had been different. You and I, you and I; we could have been so close.

And you.

You could have been it.

But now I don't know if I even remember who you are.

Forgive us not our trespasses, we're only betraying ourselves, kick us when we're down, and teach us how to become better people.
Let the moon make us howl, let the sun make us burn, we are the kind of people that give this town a bad name.
What happens in the streets follows us home into our beds, and all that's left in the morning is a whisper and a sense of dread.
Drive that wedge ever deeper with every weighted word.
Smash your hammers down and crack our weak foundations.
Fucking with this is the worst thing any of us could do right now.
But we've all got our reasons, and that's the reason we're falling apart.

Never burn a bridge until you've got off of it.
The ground beneath our feet is cracking, we're all to blame.

This doesn't feel like mine, I don't think it really ever could. You all talk of ghosts and call up phantoms, and I am quiet, and I laugh with everyone else because it's more awkward if I don't. I love you all, but this is temporary. This is temporary and sometimes this is a fact that makes me glad when I wish it didn't. You all have a head start and a history and right now I can't wait to get home.

It was an airport departure lounge in Portugal, and it was a pocketful of euros, which changed the life of a fourteen year old me. Checking in early coupled with an overestimation of airside facilities. Two hours with nothing to do except try and spend the last few notes and coins of the holiday.

A record shop, stocked with the typical exotic foreign sounds you'd expect to hear abroad, and the usual international stars, the kind that you can never escape no matter where you go in the world. The artwork on the sleeves held the colours of safety, of popularity; of nothing I felt.

I think it was the rack furthest on the left, and two sections down, where I found it though. The snake in the corner, barely visible. The pitch black which engulfed the case and even though effectively created a blank canvas, held an incredible power over my gaze. I turned over the record, and read the titles of the songs, and knew this was for me. The album was untitled, and it was by a band I'd never actually listened to, but had been told were something I'd like.

They were called Metallica.

An ambition, to be nothing you admire. How far can it go, this experiment that lingers behind the eyes? It must breach my skin, descend and push past gritted teeth.
Just a test, an exercise in depravity and self indulgence. Bridges will burn, and the trail will trace back to my burning hand.
Live the dream, of living in a waking nightmare. Indulge every thought, never say no, except to spite you.
Dedication, to fucking up the things you love just to see what will happen. I'm on a knife edge, and everyone is going to get cut.

Pick a place, pick an end, pick a coastline, you've found a reason to live, but taken a part of mine away.
Rely on love, to bring out the melodramatist in us all. Rely on love, to tear us apart. Rely on love, to engender our wildest dreams and endanger our reasoned thoughts. Rely on providence for nothing.

"... Anyway, back to my thudding personal blankness. It's probably a bonus. On the one hand, I... am essentially just a blinking, shuffling mannequin watching events in his life merely drift past like underwhelming prizes on the Generation Game conveyor belt. And on the other, I just don't give a shit. It's a win-win situation. Or it would be, if I had any concept of 'winning' in the first place...
And it's hard to see what the cure might be. If you've fallen out of love with life- not to the point of actually disliking it, you understand, but to such a degree that you merely tolerate rather than welcome each passing day- it's surely impossible to get the spark back."

"There are no more barriers to cross... I do not hope for a better world for anyone, I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. "

"It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.
I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence.
I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do."

Brooker, Bateman (not Ellis) and Rollins. But where am I?

On a music message board.
Reading a thread about favourite album titles.
There is a post which reads "It's the Ones Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through, by Jeffrey Lewis."

It's the Ones Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through.

I may never hear the actual record, or even know who Jeffrey Lewis is, but what a fantastic thought.

Not all, but most of us, will grow old. And some of us will truly fall in love, some of us us will die alone, but maybe most of will settle for spending our lives with someone we merely tolerate more than anybody else.

And some of us will have children, and give up everything to make their lives better. And some of us won't. And some of us will, because it feels like the thing you're supposed to do at a certain age.

When a lot of the people I know get married and have children, I hope that I'm invited to weddings and christenings. And when some of the people I know get married and have children, I hope I never find out. And if I find out, I hope I can find a way to live with it.

I've been running up a hill for so long and so hard, that if it turns out that it's actually a cliff, my momentum will surely carry me over the edge.

I don't believe in love, I believe in fear, I believe in desperation and I believe in ego.

This doesn't bother me.

I am a passionate drunk. You are my lullaby, and you taste of smoke and dust. If I can just make it to sleep tonight feeling like this I think I might be fine.

I fall in love, every town I travel to. (This has to stop, you're getting hurt all the time, you're not built to withstand the damage) The road is starting to walk all over me.

If we could just stay in the same place, at the same time, for long enough, we could be the best of friends at the least.

This time I have nothing to say. Finally. And so, I have/am lost.

I would talk to you until my mouth ran dry, not with anything to say, but because I know that sometimes, you simply need my voice. These arms were built to hold you, they will find you in our sleep. I love the way you weigh down the left side of this broken bed. The way gravity pulls us together. A constant, something that cannot be defied. A force.

I have started and ended days with this scene in my eyes. Give me more.

Weight/wait.

My friend has roadmaps in her arms, they tell stories of how she's travelled, and though it's an awful thing to say, sometimes I'm glad for them to be there, because she followed them and found me.

Sometimes it's hard to stay positive. Things fall out of place after you've taken so long to put them together, and then the people who are meant to help you fix it all come along and stumble, kicking them further out of reach, or at least making you more aware of how it's gone wrong.

But it's like unwrapping a Christmas gift you'd forgotten you saw in your parents' cupboard months ago, when you get to the end of your day and stop, breathe, count to ten, and realise at somewhere around eight that, in fact, everything is vaguely ok. Better than it could have been, at least. Certainly better than it would have been before you made the decision to put up a fight from now on.

"...it would have felt like everything was simply alright for once, and for as long as it's been worth remembering, that has been all I could ever want. Imagine that; the best you can hope for, your ultimate ambition, being for things to be just ok. And then imagine that being in view. And then imagine having your eyes struck out."

That's how I felt not too long ago; thats how I occasionally feel even now. But thats not how I want to feel; I wouldn't imagine it's how anyone would. And for all the times that I have had things fall apart, or perhaps because of them, I am becoming better at not getting myself to this place where I am willing to simply settle for narrow escapes, and resting on the edge of the dark. I am becoming unafraid to want something better than just ok, and what's more, I am becoming unafraid to act upon this want. Because I know now that the majority of people will not help me. And because I believe that I deserve something better. I believe we all do and I believe it is a shame, an absolute waste of living, if we don't try and make our surroundings, on whatever scale, transcend tolerable, and become something we can enjoy as both communities and individuals.

What I have just expressed might seem to contradict itself, but it's meant well. I am no longer caught up with hate for the world, and maybe I never really was. Maybe I'm angry, and always have been; angry that we could so easily make so much of ourselves, and that we don't. Desperate for everyone to stop complaining about things they could so easily change, and take their lives into their own hands, and for better or worse, do as much as they can and just marvel at what happens when you get a little perspective, put in a little effort, and start crossing out the reasons to complain.

Not an hour ago I was being backlit by flickers of electric blue in the sky, like a character in a film reel running out on itself through a projector. Every third or fourth footstep was enough to shake the air, it seemed, and the rain traced the veins in my arms, slowly gliding down my warm skin like a lover's touch until it reached my hands, and my knuckles, and my fingertips, and then finally my pockets.

And here's where I don't think the storm becomes what you think it's going to be. The choice to take it and use it as a hackneyed illustration of some internal conflict, some emotional dilemma rendered microcosmic by it's surroundings, is tempting, but this is a place for truth, and the truth right now is that I haven't got any duelling choices tearing me apart. Instead, seeing all the chaos which, you know, isn't chaos, but as natural as can be, taking place around me, cut loose a different animal, a new bull in my own private china shop.

If it is. (The other Three Words which turn me on). If it is natural for such things to happen, then, gosh, its meant to be. And if it is meant to be, then who am I to deny it. I'm no-one, really. Nothing. Just one in two hundred million who spent nine months waiting to be one of six billion and counting. So if it is just the way of the world that the air can roar and the sky can spit sparks of their own accord, I don't really think there's much I can do but to accept that. It's like how I was talking to friends this weekend, and the question came up about whether we were all scared to die. I was surprised that everyone was, that everyone dreaded what was inevitable, except me. Because if it is unavoidable that we are all going to die, the only thing to fear is not doing enough with your life. And in the face of all the things that are natural and meant to be, I don't for a second believe that myself, or anyone else, can't do precisely what they want with their life. As much as we all exist on this canvas, we can fill in the brushstrokes ourselves, however we want to. If we can do that, we haven't got to be afraid of death.

Maybe the storm has ended up being what you thought it would be; a metaphor for a collision perhaps. And maybe this isn't the best-explained piece on here, there are holes in my argument, and there are flaws to be chipped away at, but this isn't something based on logic. This is something based on feeling, born from the heart and not the head, and spat on a page like the sky with its sparks. This is from walking home in the rain and thinking everything is how it should be, and yes, things are going to be alright. Because I will make them alright.

I did it. And it would be a lie to say I didn't wish you could have seen me, that your smile had greeted me, but it's alright because you were there, because I was there, and I am nothing if not an ever growing sum of your parts.
I play on the instruments you passed down. Every time I sit and lay hands, I hear the same notes that grew from your touch. When I was a child, I watched you, I heard you, and before I knew that your love would become my love, I was in awe of you. And now I cannot form a chord without feeling your hand guide mine, and hearing your patient voice conducting my stuttering melodies.
They have not gathered dust, your toys. They have become mine, and they are no longer playthings as I once saw them. I understand why now, and how. How they saw you through. They are keys that I can work, but they are also keys that can work me, and they have opened parts of me that few other things are able to. From them, from you, I have found something to spend a life on.

It was a dream but I felt your arms.

I am your boy.

And I hope I make you proud.

We have both become each others parasites, now we are becoming each others everything and surely this will only end in blood and tears. The way we've interweaved is something quite unnatural, a blessing from the providence I don't quite believe in yet. A mirror, some kind of reflection. The glass is not cracked, it's a perfect double. The fracture is inescapable but no longer insurmountable, and for that, I let hope smoulder in the base of my mind.

A chasm which cuts to the core of the characters we play. We are our own rocks, suspended in nothingness, frustrated, anxious and aimlessly circling, alive in the dark.

We are intertwined, we are choking each other in our sleep as a reflex brought on by the words we share. At the same time hands made out of syllables tighten their grip through screens, at the same time our lungs are filled with each others sounds via telephone wires, we know we will share a single heart whenever yours or mine gets broken again and so we close our eyes and we wake with the sun. This is our comfort, this is our trap, sometimes I think to myself this is an accident waiting to happen. But we carry on. We persist. Because this is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is. This is what love is.

I actually really need, need, need, something good to happen soon.

You're a fucking fraud, the worst kind of liar. That's right, I am spitting venom for the first time at you, and I hope it hits you right between the eyes again and again. Living anxiously inside your straw house you built in the hope that someone would blow it down, so you could put pen to paper and so you could profit. Then repeating the process.

The knife was in my back and it took days, weeks, months before I felt it, it just took the right twist for me to bleed. Persistence gets me nowhere, gets you everything you wanted. It's only fitting you put on so many masks, you act with such abandon, in such an old fashioned way that we've all forgotten how to pre-empt the narrative.

How will I EVER get back to where I was? If my fire was set to the tiniest grains of your sand, I know we would only grow into glass and become able to shatter. But the shards would be beautiful, they would be sharp, they would be something I'd hold onto until they got under my skin like you did.

The movies told you anything but the truth. They wanted the worst for you because it was best for them. Populating the child with hollow men and women, empty words born from bankrupt ideas. I think you should feel like the biggest star of all. I am your audience, and I want my money back, and I want my time back, and I want so much back, and I want you gone right now.

This is starting to feel like a set up. Clue me in, I'd laugh if I got the point.

So, this was originally written a little while ago, and while it might not reflect where I am now, it certainly sums up how I felt when I wrote it. I sort of think it's one of the better written things I've done. I don't know, I just like this one, and felt like fucking off modesty and being a little proud for once.

--------------------------------------------------------

Oh I know they're made of cards but I'll still wish a plague on both your houses.
Get myself clean by infecting the king and queen of this fucking scene.
Oh and so it might sound hard but I just want to say to you your death rattle's gorgeous.
It will lull me to a decent nights sleep for the first time in weeks maybe months maybe years.

And I could dream
Of spotlights and searchlights and highlights and lows.
And I could scream
Or I could keep it all shut up and locked up and silent.
Quiet like a snake in the grass, like a snake in your heart.

Attention, seekers, I think I have found just the stage you were looking for
I know you've got a social ladder to climb but give thinking a thought.
How do you feel about life, love and literature?
How do you feel about another drink when you pick your white face off the mirror?

The king and queen are ridden with disease, taking applause, taking whatever they need.
The priorities of pointless hierarchies come to the fore at the coolest parties.

Playing dumb isn't cute anymore, so just as well you're no longer just playing.
Bring out the vultures.
You bring out the vulture in me.
We pick the meat from your bones, we're eating, but you're paying.

----------------------------------------------------
I'll try to make the next one not be a song.

Don't look at me now with different eyes.
I can still be all I was.
I will still be all I was to you.
I never ever told you lies
I just didn't need to say
I never needed to say the truth

Father, mother, sisters, brother, friends, lovers
How do you like me now
That I am standing tall and proud
With my head in these black clouds

They are my halo
And so I think I can get away with anything
They are my halo
And if it slips down it can become my noose.

Father, mother, sisters, brothers, friends, lovers
I am what has become of the boy you knew,

And I don't mean to break your hearts
But there's nothing I can do.

Nurses, doctors, listeners, talkers, ghosts, survivors
I have heard you all but I have not learned.

How will you like me then,
When I have become your son again.
When I am a brother, a lover, a friend
When I have made my way to the end
When I have made it.
Home.

How do you like me now
That I am standing tall and proud
In spite of all that should pull me down
My head is in the clouds
And they are my halo
I'm coming home.

I want to fucking scream in the faces of the ones I love.
Break their hearts a little with my secrets.
Father, mother, sisters, brother, friends, lovers, how do you like me now?
You're stood away watching clouds gather over my head like a halo.

And the nurses and survivors do nothing but show me scars and tell me stories.
How I can keep on, and what it looks like I will become.

I feel kind of bad for posting this, but it's precisely what I was trying to write for the past hour or so, except worded better than anything I could come up with. So:

Am I correct to defend the fist that holds this pen?
It's ink that lies, the pen, the page, the paper
I live, I learn you will always take what I have earned
And so aid my end while I believe I'm winning
Our friends speak out in our defense
Pay ten deaf ears for two months rent
We burn the gallows they erect
And cut the nooses they tie for our necks
You constantly make it impossible to make conversation
We're comatose but audible
But I liked it the farther I get out
We passed it off, but it's all on us
Well common conversation, it took everything I got
And I liked it the farther I get out
Once said always said
I will hold the past over your head
I'll speak my mind whenever I feel slighted
I am hellbent on extracting all of my revenge
So take heart, sweetheart
Or I will take it from you
I slip concealed back to the keep
Concede to do the work for free
We prey as wolves among the sheep
And slit the necks of soldiers while they sleep
You constantly make it impossible to make conversation
We're comatose but audible
And I liked it the farther I get out
We passed it off, but it's all on us
Well common conversation, it took everything I got
And I like it the farther I get out.

And so I had a vivid dream:

She pierced my skin with fifty needles
Each one tipped with a promise from the earth
And as the steel entered the skin I turned my eyes within
And welcomed visions of my birth

She held me in her arms as I laughed like a child
As new colours flowed in my veins
In her cradle I knew love, I knew gratitude
And I knew nothing could ever be the same.

To dream about dreaming.
To call forth on the chemistry which creates the sights we see in sleep.
To discover your meaning.
To control the central cause of who we all are underneath.

It's in all of us
It's in all of us
The most feared and illegal
Is legitimated by our very being

If we could pick the lock to these chains we are taught to embrace.
We could build shrines to ourselves and be our own gods to venerate.

It's in all of us
It's in all of us
The very thing we can never have resides in all our minds
And when we sleep we dream, and so we taste it each night.

We taste freedom each night
And wake to invisible slavery at the hands of all we 'love'

All the debris of the day to day
Destroyed and diminished and faded away
All the constructs that distract, man made, must be reduced
(We must journey through our own bodies to find our purpose)
We must travel in four dimensions, outside conventions of human thought, to discover the truth.

"Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is a naturally occurring potent psychedelic drug, found not only in many plants, but also in trace amounts in the human body wherein its natural function is undetermined. Structurally, it is analogous to the neurotransmitter serotonin. In the central nervous system, serotonin plays an important role as a neurotransmitter in the modulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, sexuality, appetite, and metabolism.
Several speculative and as yet untested hypotheses suggest that endogenous DMT, produced in the human brain, is involved in certain psychological and neurological states. As DMT is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and other tissues of humans, and other mammals, some believe it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural dreaming, and also near death experiences and other mystical states. A biochemical mechanism for this was proposed by the medical researcher J.C Callaway, who suggested in 1988 that DMT might be connected with visual dream phenomena, where brain DMT levels are periodically elevated to induce visual dreaming and possibly other natural states of mind.
Writers on DMT include Terence McKenna. Though most scientists who study psychedelic drugs treat their writings with skepticism. McKenna writes of his DMT experiences with a decidedly less skeptical slant, often presuming that the drug's "intoxication" is indicative of realms of consciousness equally as valid as waking-life if not moreso.

DMT is classified in the United Kingdom as a Class A drug."

My bed is a sofa bed, and I always have it folded up into a couch until right before I go to sleep. It's innocuous enough, but I hate having it all flattened out, because it's a double bed, and so literally every night, every single night, the last thing there is to see is the space where someone else should be. The emptiness that should be someone who loves you instead.
At the time I should be most at rest, I'm at my worst. Literally face to face with the flood of thoughts that comes rushing to form the shape of a face, of a warm body. I should be resting, but I'm fighting for my life. In the dark. Silently. Alone. And the question I'm always left asking is: how did it come to this?

Also, I've started to grow more aware of people actually reading these, and thats fucking with me too. When they look and me, and they know, what are they thinking?

We could have sailed on in this fragile little boat but we hit the rocks time and time again
Until a patchwork hull became all that was between us and the end.
Our lungs would fill to the brim with the ocean, we would lie leagues below the surface
I am adrift in your seas, I do not deserve this.

When the skyline got dark, I could have taken us safe to shore
We would shelter together, out of the weather, hidden from the passing storm
But the stars tell stories, and they have written that I shall sleep alone tonight
And that you shall rest your head on pillows that are not mine, living another life.

It was all going so well, too. A little holiday in my head, from myself. I was building, and I was ready to grow.

I feel a little sick when I think too hard today. Really. Since I woke up it's been a constant effort to distract myself from the one or two things which have made themselves bold in my mind, and while it's worked for the most part, I can tell that they are there. Physical things I can normally do, like songs I can normally play, have become harder or impossible in parts. On the one hand it's remarkable to consider that how the mental can affect the physical so strongly, but on the other it's frustrating and a little scary. And this is partnered by the sad fact that I've come to accept this as how it is. Rise and fall, and keep falling til you stop and start to climb again, with no one to really help you because they're all at the peak watching cluelessly, and you can't really shout for help because it's them you're climbing for, and if you really show how much you need their help they might go on without you. It feels like walking around in a bubble, and someone is slowly pumping the air out until theres nothing to breathe.

Fuck, I wish it was simpler to articulate the mess that's in my head sometimes. Like, I wish I could just paint a canvas a certain colour, and say 'thats how I feel', and have people understand completely. Thats the way. All the problems I find with this stupid 'hold-on-you're-talking-about-not-being-able-to-talk' thing, and the cowardice which gets further compounded by this backhand way of delivery, they would all be gone if only I could paint a colour, or create a sound, to show everyone what it is I waste so much time and so many words struggling to say.

Fuck.

I realised today that if I'm buying an album or dvd which I think is embarassing, then I get it online because of the anonymity.

If I'm buying an album or dvd which I think makes me look cool, I buy it from a shop, and try to get served by the person who I think will appreciate my choice the most.

When I go to bookshops, I sometimes pick up books that I think will make me seem smart or trendy, and skim through the pages without actually paying attention. Coffee table shit about pop art, or aging literature which is lost on me, because in fact, I want to go to the graphic novel section, or the music biographies.

If I can't be brave enough to follow up my ideals, if I can't forsake something I don't even like, and in not doing so, relenquish someone I love, then how can I feel hard done by? All the hopeful words that I have spoken, all the naive promises to myself that I exhaled became air, and dissipated. It's nature, simply put, and I can't see how I thought I could evade it, even just this once. I never have before.

Even now, this is cowardice; If this goes unseen, I will claim a failed effort, a wasted plea. I will be a liar; this is no profession; this is a secret, a hidden outburst designed to live in the dark. If she reads this, she'll either be too far away, or she'll be on the edge of leaving. These are the words no-one should be unable to respond to, and yet with my timing, and half hearted intent, that is exactly what they shall become. I don't feel like I've won anything, and nor should I. No tables have been turned, no blame has been shifted. I remain the idiot I've always been, I am in the wrong no matter what my instinct for wellbeing tells me, and now I am merely able to add calculated spite and well positioned callousness, disguised to some perhaps as a self-aware cry for pity, to my pallette.

I fear coming across as a victim here, even though you could argue against me and say that I am. I am not a victim of her, this is for certain, and I will not hear otherwise. She has done nothing except live the life I wish I could be brave enough to lead. We are cut from the same ragged cloth and yet I unravel whilst she floats on the breeze. In the quiet part of my mind which never speaks up loud enough to be listened to, I knew this would happen. For so long, all my dreams have ended up Catholicised abortions, murdered when they should have lived, and it is I who am the killer.

I have done nothing to deserve a love that is anything more than unrequited. I have done nothing to earn that which I want most, and I have thrown away every chance I have ever been given. Despite what else can be said about me elsewhere, here, I have failed over and over again. And these phrases, laid down to beguile, all these words gathering speed until they hit the full stop and explode, blasting coloured shrapnel from the page, are just distractions from this.

At 1.03am, tonight, I can't think about much except giving up, and this is more serious than it has ever felt.

You who would jump in my boat and steer me to the rocks, you must stand now and bask in the sun til you burn. Come from under your rock, wear your own face. You stepped firmly but falsely, and it was I who fell. Give me back my time and trust, not in equal, but a direct return of all that I gave you. All the smiles and confessions I gave you. Strike them from our history, and then strike the whole thing. Stand down from your nest, I am not yours to protect. I am my own, and I wanted ease. I wanted night time sweat and touch, and simple day time silence if we met. If I would have been hurt it would have been my doing, and I would have been better for it. I remain unscarred, and you remain proud. I remain unscarred, but I look at her and I wonder. And then I look at her and sigh. And then I look at you and see good intentions in bad practice. I see selfishness, and I see youth.

And you, who would take and never give when I would send you your heart if you asked. I would have delivered all you could need when you needed it, but now I am open eyed. I don't think you see though, I don't think the thought ever even enters your head sometimes. The day has many hours, and the days never really end, but they have, and there was never enough time for you to spend time with me.
I will keep listening against my better judgement, because I think that's what love is. You are a mess of broken glass, which isn't finished until everyone's cut.

The Swiss Navy. Monuments. Saints. All potential names for a project I'm going to be working on over the coming months; partially to kill time, partially to keep me sane/distracted. I can't think of a sophisticated way to describe what I'm trying to do without cringing, so I'm going to be boring and use plain English:

Post-rock in the vein of Explosions In The Sky, Russian Circles, Cult Of Luna, with lyrics which, right now, I'm thinking are based around the sea. I've noticed a lot of what I've already written down without this in mind has ended up being about the sea anyway, so I'm going to go with that.

However, I'd also like to do at least one song where the words are sent in by friends of mine, with the intention being that the finished thing would be something that, in a disjointed sort of way, sort of makes sense concpetually. If anyone reading wants to contribute, leaving something as a comment seems to be the most sensible way to do so. It doesn't have to be written especially, just something you're proud of, or means something to you. If you can figure out how, you can even keep anonymous. It could be like a musical post secret or something, I don't know.

I'll keep posting here intermittently about how this whole thing goes, even if no-one really cares. It'll be fun/interesting to see how this pans out.

Whilst I'm talking about musical ventures, I'd also really like to play a part in some sort of fucking mental punk/hardcore band, or something super-energetic where I'll end up covered in at least sweat, probably bruises, and possibly blood. It's not some latent-self-harm-tortured-artist type thing, it's just that the idea of being loud and passionate seems awesome. If anyone cares; The Bronx, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Cursed, and (odd one out!) the first Brand New album are all the sort of thing I mean. Again, get involved if you want.

I don't feel like mourning. So tonight let's raise the dead
With voices loud and songs sung proud and reverie in our heads.

I don't feel like grieving. Tomorrow let's leave home and light a fire.
And if the phone rings no one say a thing and then no one will be the liar.

This is a brand new feeling. Nail shut the coffin, open the door.
Eulogise nothing, synthesise nothing, nothing is over, not like before.

One night, three strikes, I'm down and out.
I know it makes me look bad but you really bring it on sometimes.
I can't keep on forgiving, you need to try a different perspective, see why I say what I do.
I hate to phrase it in rhythm, it dilutes the meaning when I should be fucking screaming at you. (But it's just how my hands punch this page)
When I should be screaming at you, I always bite my lip til it bleeds, I grind my teeth.
Being a friend means telling the truth sometimes, but sometimes being a friend means shutting your fucking mouth.
Being a friend means doing the right thing. Last night you should have shut your fucking mouth.

Remember how you tilted my head to see stars in the sky?
I will tilt the world to keep up the night
And I will learn to walk on the moon’s white light
To get
To you.

Remember how you pressed your hands to the glass?
I will press through storms to match your palms
And if I sink then I will learn to walk this ocean floor
To get
To you.

I will set foot on these shores
And I will bring to you
All you’ve searched the world to find.
Did you forget it was coming home soon?

You will dream one night
And then live it the next day.
Dream of love, dream of me.
And come back, and stay.

We got bored so we played with knives.
Because we knew when the tide turned and came in we’d have to run for our lives.
We sharpened our little blades on the nearest stones.
Til we drew blood from them, and then we sat, and waited to run back home.

We drew rivers with our tips.
We touched fingers, formed an ocean shaped like love, then touched each others lips.
Soft kisses, soft nicks at the skin, your skin and bones
If I can breathe you in tonight, then I won’t spend the summer alone.

If I can be with you tonight
You will be with me no matter where you go.

If the tide catches us and we’re drowning
I know hand in hand our bodies could float.

The knives are out to fight the tide that's coming in.
We don't have a hope.

I don't like the end to this one, I might change it later. Take away the last six lines and replace them, possibly in a different format. They don't quite fit in with what I'm getting at, and if I leave it as it is, it'll bug me.

Listen to Sigur Rós.

I'm holding a beaten up sheet of paper that has the words to a song I know by heart now written on it. I don't need it anymore, but I'm going to keep it because it smells of smoke and salt and as long as I have it, something's never going to leave me.

I'm sat here drinking one of a plethora of improbably stolen J20's, and even though it's midnight as I write, it feels like midday. My sleeping pattern is delicate anyway, and now it's probably wrecked for the next few days. Still, getting off a smoky beach at 5am will do that, as will only claiming sleep as your own to spite the dawn chorus. It was worth it, too.

Yesterday me and my guitar went to a barbeque on the grass by the sea down here, and though I didn't really know many people there, I was unafraid and unshy. I know I'm a good player, it's just the audience that does me in sometimes. Plus I'd much rather just play than sing. The irony here though, is that even now, as the Real World looms, and at an age when I'm sure right minded parents would think 'grow out of it', the only thing in my life I am sure of is that I want to play music, and I want to make people happy when I do so.

The reason I was so ready this time, I don't know. The only thing that comes to mind at this moment is the fact that I'm starting to stop caring; or perhaps some of out of character backbone. It doesn't matter, because despite entering into this whole thing sight unseen, what I was looking for, I found. And so the afternoon became the night, and the night became the morning, and I played and sang and saw the smiles and heard the voices sing with me. The fire never died until we killed it, and the sun came up to take its place as our warmth and light.

The last time I felt this same kind of shine moving around me, was the morning after being sat on a front room floor. Sat with a different group of people, but with the same hearts and hopes being floated in the air as the ones riding those ashen embers dancing on the breeze last night. I've been a fool for not doing this sooner, and to an extent I'm still a fool for doing it now, frantic in the face of all that's coming to take me away. I keep getting the feeling this is commonplace for the people I shared last night with, and that they seem fairly inured to it. But to me, it's new and beautiful and giving me many things I've been looking for for years and as much I'm going to mourn it for myself, I'm also going to hope they still understand how wonderful this thing that they are part of is, and remember that their luck in having it is something that should not be overlooked.

Ever think that it could be this good forever? Not really, I think I'm too grounded or pessimistic for that. Sometimes I refuse to dream, because I'm scared they'll end up nightmares. I'm scared I'll never be able to cope with that part of myself.

Ever think that it could be this good again? I hope so, and sooner than it probably will be.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

I've always liked that poem.

It's just a shame that it's becoming more and more relevant every day now.

Someone who can listen to can listen to frantic, blasting, deranged technical music and quietly come forward and say it's beautiful. Someone who can be lost in the vastness of intense instrumental twenty minute epics and then, merely via a shared glance, let me know that it's life affirming. Someone who will silently sit through an entire record of a man, his guitar and his secrets, speaking only a confessional when the record ends, and even then with a tear in their eye.

Someone who can lose themselves in the words and sounds that colour my dreams.

Bring me this girl, please.

Not so much a proper blog, more a collection of random thoughts this time:

Based on voice alone, Beth from Portishead? I would. Third is amazing; I might be a real geek in the near future and compile a list of best vocal albums, guitar albums etc. Third is in the vocal one for certain, and yes, when I watched High Fidelity for the first time I did see a worrying amount of myself in there.

I went to Brighton today. That city never fails to amaze me, on the pier there was a little boy fully tearing it up on an Ibanez (electric guitar, means business). People on those flexible stilts, possibly called something like Moonwalkers, were running down the main road, somersaulting and jumping over cars. On fucking stilts. And, just like every other time I've been there, beautiful girls everywhere.

I think I do mention girls and love and all that a bit too much here, it makes the place monotonous but it's only because here is where I come to put down all the things I can't talk about, which is mostly, wouldn't you know it, girls and love and all that. I mean, I can discuss them, just not in relation to myself. I'm sure I'll go into detail here eventually; I can feel it in my fingertips right now in fact, but there are more diverse things to talk about.

I got locked out my house last night. For the second time in a week. Not that I'd forgotten my keys or anything; my house 'mates' were too fucking ignorant and short sighted again, putting across the safety chain despite it being fairly obvious I wasn't in. This meant I had to: 1) call a friend at 2am, waking them in the process. 2) Sleep in my clothes. 3) Sit on a train for two hours, meet my parents, walk around Brighton, and then get the two hour train home which was now infested with the kind of people you sort of want to be neutered, all wearing the clothes I'd slept in because even at 9am the fucking chain was still on and I still couldn't even get into my own fucking house to change clothes or even get some food.

9am's fairly early, I accept, but if you can wake up at half 7 to put on the washing machine right outside my room and wake me up when I have no lessons at all that day, I'm going to think of you as an early riser.

It's absolutely insane, when I journey anywhere, I always gaze out the window and think of the people who I see for a brief moment, then I imagine what they're doing that has brought them to intersect with me in a camouflaged and irrelevant way. There are 24 hours in the day, and I'm sharing them with six billion people, yet I have no real clue what anyone's doing except for me, and even thats a little hazy sometimes. I don't know if that's clear, I hope it is though. Like, when there's a photo of you and your friends and their friends on a night out, theres you. You know what you were doing, and have every second of the night as part of your experience. Then theres your friends. They might have wandered off at some point, but they came back and you left with them. Their friends, you don't know too well, you just met, but you shared some time together and inhabited the same location and time together. They think of you in the same way, and that's what I mean, and it amazes me.

I feel like this has been a rather pointless and inarticulate one today. But maybe that's just because I'm not talking about things which make me want to sit down and turn the lights out and sleep to turn off.

Permit me to take this route; actually, fuck it; you don't get a choice. You've come here to read what I have to say, and therefore whatever I write is what you will read. That's just how it works. Anyway, this one's probably going to come across as tangential and irrelevant to you, but to me, it matters a great deal, both in terms of superficiality and symbolism.

I don't want technique. Technique stifles the emotion. Breathing in, breathing out, regulating and exercising; fuck that. I want exorcising. I want doubled up on the floor, screaming into a microphone as if you could banish all the bad out and down that cable, through that amp. I want looking into the masses and seeing nothing because all there is, is you and how you feel. I want a disregard for your own external wellbeing because it's more important to you that your insides get cleansed on that stage.

Take all the things you can never touch, turn them into screams. Turn them into soundwaves and let them crash upon both your ears and mine. Let us both know we're alive, we're hurt, but there is a way up, and a way out.

Don't want to go to bed. There's never anyone there. It's not what you might suspect that bothers me though.

It's the safety, the way that what you both understand goes unsaid precisely because you both understand it anyway. The way you feel you're protecting them yet at the same time stealing something private when you wake before they do and silently watch them sleep. And how when you open your eyes and turn to see them gazing at you, it feels as normal as anything you can think of in the world.

It's the way that minutes don't matter when you're trying to get up without waking them, slowly and quietly, using their breathing and motion to gauge when to stop still, and when to move carefully towards the edge, and then out. It's being gently corrected and reset in the dark when you shuffle onto your side or reclaim your arm from across their chest, and going with it because even when half asleep, you can feel yourself lazily smile at their touch.

Don't want to stay awake. There's too many people here.

I've just watched a documentary called Paradise Lost; The Robin Hood Hill Murders. It concerns the murders of three primary school age boys in Bible belt America, and the subsequent convictions of three teenagers, based exclusively, from what I ascertained, to be a confession crafted by the police officers and then fed through the mouth of one of the suspects, who is mentally handicapped, and also the fact that these suspects, by wearing black, listening to heavy metal, and generally shunning the expectations held by the community for people their age, provided an easy scapegoat; a place to lay the blame.

Obviously, the film goes into much more depth than I can here and so I'd recommend this be watched, and carefully considered, by anyone who considers themselves, or even thinks they might be considered by others, as being away from the mainstream. In the wake of what's happened in Lancashire recently, theres a certain resonance to this film which makes me upset and indignant; but most of all, resolute.

Maybe it doesn't matter that you thought you were doing the right thing at the time, because what was 'wrong' was actually better for you. All the laws you never broke, drugs you never took, all the people you didn't fuck, all the promises you kept to yourself, were all mistakes.

Every time you thought of the consequences, you were thinking too hard, and now you only get to think of what you could have had.

The horizon is on fire, the sun has kissed the sea goodnight
With midas' lips and a blaze is now burning beyond the skyline.
It will not reach me, but it will keep me warm for a while
Long enough for the lovers and the lonely to both feel alive.

The waves will stand up tall and sing
They will cry out, crest and sink
My fingers will press on strings
I will lie down, rest, and think.

An afternoon of throwing stones into the sea,
Wishing each one was a memory.
Hardened little heartaches that could just be cast away
By soft hands that miss how you feel.

The waves will stand up tall and sing
They will cry out, crest and sink
My fingers will press on strings
I will lie down, rest and think.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started to recognise faces of people I don't know. By this, I mean I'm becoming familiar with the cast of strangers who regularly buzz around the hub of town. However, one stranger is more familiar than the others, whilst still being someone I don't know.

A few months ago I was at a party, and as is often the case, became seperated from my friends. No problem, right, because its a party and therefore part of the point it to socialise. In this case however, I didn't socialise as much as I spent the evening talking to a particularly nice girl, discovering we had a surprising amount in common.

To provide a frame for this picture, know that such a thing is a rare occurance; I am neither adept nor experienced in the field of talking to girls I find attractive, or at least, not in a way that makes my affections known. Normally, I'll strike up a conversation and proceed to inadvertently go through the checklist of fail, which is as follows: The opening three part process of pointless remark, self deprecating follow up, attempt to regain facade of self esteem followed by an awkward silence, a hurried mundane question, and then eventually the bitten tongue, stifled proposition or a forced cheerful adjournment. The end result is a dismal invisible pallor which I wear too often, and almost inevitably in situations like the one this tangent has meandered from.

Think of this as directions for a film, perhaps. A script. 'Cut back to the party.'

We must have been talking for two hours or more, non stop, with candour and honesty from both of us which I secretly found astonishing. There was none of the usual fear that disagreeing with someone you've just met can bring either, which I find to be rare. Not a single box on the checklist of fail had been ticked; she'd even managed to slip into the conversation that she wasn't with a boyfriend, which if you buy into these sorts of theories, is a 'sign' or something equally as assumptive and basic.

Cutting to the chase (I don't want to write another long post, especially as this isn't actually a big deal; it's intended more to be funny than anything else), her friends decided it was time to leave, and by virtue of this, so did she. Just as I was starting to consider asking for some way of getting in touch with her at a later date, or maybe even trying for a kiss. I say that now, but I'd imagine I was busy being indecisive, and that her taking off 'suddenly' made my mind up for me. Futile, of course, but thats how I work.

Now, going back to the beginning of this self indulgent little anecdote, a few months have gone by and now she's literally everywhere I go. In town, in the library, in the street. We share eye contact every now and then, but I wonder if its just a succession of casual glances that we all issue daily; looking but not seeing, if you will, or if she remembers me.

We've only ever shared two hours, but still I think these things and remember that evening fondly. She told me her name just the once, but I could still tell you what it is. I could still call to her if I wanted to.

It's ridiculous, completely ridiculous, but then isn't that the point?

Maybe sometimes when people hug you, it's because they want to be held as much as they want to hold.

I'm approaching a point where everything's going to go away and I have no say in it. What's worse, is that I'm meant to be celebrating this, even though I don't know a single person who is in the same situation as me and feeling anything less than numbness. I think dread is the most common factor. And I also think that behind this numbness and dread is a panic and a fear about loss. The loss of freedom, the loss of friends, the loss of the bonds that it's taken literally years to weave and tighten. They're all going to be cut away.

It's something that, no matter what I'm doing physically, has been dominating my mentality for a while now. I'm sorry to say that, if you've been speaking to me over the course of the last week and a half or so, the words have been reflexes, instinctively filling in the silences between your sounds. At times I've literally had no idea what I was saying, purely because my mind was entirely devoted to considering what you mean to me. (I nearly used the past tense then; 'meant', and it felt like a jab to the ribs). I've walked out of pubs and clubs with people, laughing and smiling, and then as soon as I turned the corner away from them, tucked my chin to my chest, put my hands in my pockets and hurried home, where the distractions are, all the while babbling to myself, verbalising concepts and thoughts in an insane attempt to format and expel the mounting sense of grief I can see being inevitable in a few months time.

I got home today, and did something I do every so often. It's not a seizure because I incite it myself, and it's very much a more vivid rendition of the regular twitching and tweaking I do throughout the course of my waking hours, and probably even in my sleep (I wake up in strange distorted positions sometimes). It's hard to describe, but it jars and strains me, tension and release takes place. I climb furniture, I double up and shake violently, I stand tall and hurl myself around my room. It's always in my room, never around others. It's not the most elegant or mature of actions, I'm pretty sure.

It lets out the stress a little however, and as unorthodox as it may seem, I like doing it. It makes me stop thinking about the kind of things I mentioned above. All the same, I can't help but worry how utterly deranged I would look should anyone see. And more to the point, how right they might be.

I get the feeling that writing all this down won't do much to alleviate whats wrong here, and that I'll still be under this cloud for a few more days. I usually am, and it's fucking annoying because I always thought catharsis was meant to make you feel better.

An explanation.

It's always struck me, until now, that blogging was something horribly self important and pretentious. Much like writing a note on facebook, or creating a livejournal entry (does that count as intertextuality? I do love a bit of intertextuality), making a blog was just another way of blathering on about the mundanities of your day, or manifesting some kind of semi passive aggressive plea for attention. The act of placing private feelings into a public forum, by default, seems to imply a wish for them to be taken heed of, and paid attention to. And if that's your thing, fine. I just think sometimes, that a stunning lack of awareness is present on the behalf of those who glorify in writing their every activity or emotion. I think that because I do the same, and I often recognise the feelings written about so often in myself. Which in turn, leads me to think why should I, in all honesty, give a fuck about what you've done when its as simple and common as what it eventually boils down to?

But today I altered my view, (as made evident by this even actually existing). Perhaps instead of the fault lying with others, it's mine. Or at least, it's shared. Understanding what people are really thinking and feeling is uncomfortable, but only because everyones so afraid to say what they truly have operating inside them that such openness is seen as unusual, while in my stupid naive and romanticised view of things, I'd like to see it as the standard.

I'll admit to hypocrisy here and now, on a massive scale. Not only am I hurling my innards into the ether in such a familiar style as thousands of others, and all in the hope someone will care, but I would also admit to being the biggest culprit of this kind of well-intentioned fraud. It's only through the pseudo-anonymity of the screen (because, to be honest, the only people reading it will probably be those who know me) and the cold removal of having to take in reactions that I can be true.

And so we get to the point, and the purpose of me starting this.

I am not always a well or happy person, and I would tentatively call that an understatement. I do not believe I operate or think in the same way as the majority, and in a way, I hope that's true because if to be normal is to feel how I do sometimes, the world must be filled with people who are fucked.

But in an effort to try and allow a way in, here is where I want to have no boundaries or restrictions. This will be full externalisation of the internal. Chances are it won't be pretty or fun a lot of the time, and I still feel a little like I'm becoming part of some machine which indulges in self pity and only pauses to congratulate itself but I'm ignoring that right now, and trying to negotiate with myself about the validity of me doing this. I intend to make this known only to a select few, chosen on the basis of how much they mean to me. They are the people whom I feel have only my best interests at heart, and so I want to hide nothing from them; it feels like it would be doing wrong by them if I did.

I've just realised: The fact I've gone into such paranoid depth about something as simple as this kind of says all you need to know, really.