(hi bluelighters...here is the foreword and first few chapters of something i'm writing - i would really appreciate any constructive comments as I'm a little unsure of where it's all going.......many thanks for your time and take care)
Foreword
Trying to make sense of some things is quite simply a total waste of time: the same as spending hours digging a really deep hole on the beach when you know the tide’s coming in would be.
Hope is what gives us the strength to keep digging.
Smilingly we stand there time after time after time; then stand, tight-lipped and head-shaking with knowing disbelief, and watch the tide surge forward and fill the hole up.
Anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns are more sophisticated and convincing then ever before; but no more effective than the “know your dope fiend” campaign in America was all those decades ago.
This is because logic cannot handle the illogical.
No one ever deliberately harms themselves, scars themselves or abuses themselves when they passively accept the lies which society sells them.
Love conquers everything.
Love beats the demon.
Love one another; it’s as simple and as difficult as that.
T.S.Eliot wrote that last one and he KNEW – just as anyone who struggles to love themselves (let alone anyone else) knows – what shaky foundations the supposedly solid structure of human “civilisation” precariously balances on.
The entire human condition is fighting: fighting to get back INTO the perfect world of the womb from the moment we’re unceremoniously evicted from it.
Life in the society most people know is all about chasing an ever-fleeting perfect feeling. All the mod-cons we buy; the friendships we nurture and cherish; the loves we enjoy with all our heart and then scream in agony over as our heart is slowly shredded with each failed romance: they are all jigsaw pieces which must be assembled together throughout our life – in the vain attempt to have a completed puzzle just in time for our death.
And the image this puzzle will show is………?
Yes! Us feeling magic and perfect and warm and beautiful and fed and feeling our mother’s heartbeat powering our own quicker heartbeat and not feeling failing and imperfect and shivering cold and lonely: a puzzle only complete during one perfect, unreachable time of life: never to be repeated again.
Lying there and concluding that; striving to make LOVE the word to live your life by no longer seems such a sensible path to choose.
Yet it remains the number one choice time after time after all these years: no matter what diversions have attracted it and distracted it; the human race has never found anything better.
To deny love is to deny life; to choose to feel or act in some other way when love is an option is death-affirming. LIFE is being lied to and stunted.
I write and conclude that: such information would be a million times more useful if we only had the strength to remain on the quest for love and not suddenly veer off in search of something quicker and easier to obtain whenever the urge takes us (read: almost every time we have to choose a response).
Selfless love when encountered "in action" - boiling out of somebody's hearts into those they touch - is an awesome masterpiece to encounter and experience: made so special and rare by the marked absence of such acts from 'most everyone's daily existence.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hanging onto the weekend by the coat tails; like some manic small dog with a strange person's leg in their jaws.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter One
Carl stood alone in the queue: surrounded by jostling bodies but numb and shivering in the coal-black, cold night-air. Outside security lights illuminated the crowd of party-people: revealing clouds of vapour appearing from their exhaling mouths for a fleeting second or two; before the little bubbles of steam vanished.
("Cold, so very cold")
Carl could feel his skin tightening and freezing in the frozen air as he gently jogged up and down on the spot; then gazed heavenward and with a wry grin on his face - as if issuing an obviously impossible-to-perform request to "him upstairs" - began silently shaking his head to himself, in quiet annoyance about how his nose-end and cheeks were by now bright red.
Then he indulged himself a blatant and huge grin of disbelief as he gazed around himself and marvelled at the utter humility of the grovelling, waiting punters: many of them happily willing to spend up to two hours outside in -10c temperatures; many of those on highly adventurous and pharmaceutically aided missions. All waiting for the privilege of paying 45 Euros (approximately 30 pounds sterling) to spend 4 hours in a packed and roasting nightclub and be forced to pay drinks prices so high that the bartenders sometimes appeared embarrassed upon stating the total to customers.
"Tonight'd better be worth it" he thought as the queue shuffled forward a metre or so: leaving the first security-manned entrance - through the courtyard perimeter fence - just 15 metres in front of Carl; or roughly 60 punters away, as he thought to himself.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You must be fucking kidding Carl!" His landlord, best friend and house mate had incredulously exclaimed just one hour earlier; as they'd met on the front door step: Carl leaving for the club and Joachim returning home from a twelve hour shift. Joachim was not happy about Carl's debt to him either: now outstanding for four months exactly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just walking into Carl's room it was immediately plain and clear he was not a "normal" everyday bod: no Claudia Schiffer posters or football regalia adorned his walls; no hip or happening bands' cds lived in the mounted, alloy silver, metallic rack just to the left of his stereo. In short, his room did not look anything like a "normal" 23-year-old man's room invariably would.
Neither did Carl himself, for that matter, look as most "regular" 23 year olds would: 6 feet 2 inches and slim as an anorexic female model; this delicate, fragile frame juxtaposed with a striking, attractive face but not immediately so - rather its beauty grew on the viewer as did the merits of Carl himself. An encounter with Carl was rarely normal, everyday or forgettable: be it with a best friend, a ticket-inspector, the hot-dog man or the lady from the house next door.
As Joachim stood blank-faced looking around Carl's room it suddenly struck him just how wearying any kind of interaction with Carl had become recently:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Come on, man!" Carl had protested to him, as they'd argued on the front lawn. "You KNOW I've been trying to sort out the rent: seriously, check out the bags under my eyes: I haven't slept in 48 hours and haven't smiled for a lot longer than that....."
Joachim had conceded to his mate that he did indeed look like shit. When you know someone for several years you get used to them looking a certain way; if one day they look different you will notice it and more than likely it will disturb you every time you meet each other: things between you never feel quite right ever again - even more so if you have witnessed a good friend succumbing to the lure of drugs; between the actual poisoning qualities of most abused drugs and the precarious lifestyle which almost inevitably accompanies the regular and substantial consumption of said substances, very few can hide the damage done to themselves and Carl was no exception.
"But Carl" Joachim had blurted out angrily "you've been sorting out the rent for fucking ages now and I still haven't seen any sign of my 12 000 kronor!"
"I'm WORKING on it!" Carl stressed the syllables of "working" as he said it: making it sound as if he were working on a masterpiece painting, or symphony.
Joachim was blocking the front gate and the two men stood inert and full of emotions staring at each other; Carl's eyebrows raised and lips pressed tightly together in a grim smile of pleading at his friend. There was nothing to say to each other. Joachim raised his hands upward in silent despair and stood aside.
Carl - giving off embarrassment and shame - swept past with a guilty and unconvincing "I'll sort you out tomorrow; I PROMISE mate. Thanks man. You know I'm sorry.....". His voice suddenly gone and muffled by the white
sound- proofing all around on road and trees; the cold and falling snow neutralising the uncomfortable human clash between the two friends.
It struck Joachim how ludicrous it all was. He did indeed KNOW - beyond a doubt - that Carl was desperately sorry for the situation; but Carl's behaviour was still unacceptable and after all, once people find themselves in situations "outside the law" (concerning, say, overdue rent - paid in cash to a landlord who is himself fiddling various state benefits) then a whole new set of rules, procedures and sanctions come into play and suddenly everyone's feeling around in the dark for the way forward: and Joachim was only too aware of how serious the situation surrounding Carl (his tenant, best friend and dealer) had become.
He stumped up to his still open front door; stamped most of the snow off his boots and walked wearily into his house, slamming the door violently behind him. "I need a drink" he told the empty hall and marched into the kitchen where he found a bottle of Absolut in the fridge and a short, heavy whiskey glass from the work surface. Sniffing the glass cautiously and wincing, he ran it under the tap for a minute until satisfied that it was clean enough and poured a very generous measure into it from the ice-frosted bottle burning his left hand. "Hope it's a good night mate" he toasted his friend out loud. Then quieter and worriedly shaking his head he repeated the words hollowly and unconvinced.
Chapter 2
The images outside the train flashing back whilst the grey, foreboding sky leaves us alone in the night; such were the brain processes of Carl sitting in his front-facing smoking seat on the 18.15 train to Uppsala.
Carl was on his way to Morten's place; somewhere he visited, almost without fail, on a fortnightly basis. The last time he'd been there the dark cloud of depression that seemed to constantly hover over Morten had appeared particularly foreboding:
"But honestly Carl, just tell me this much: how on earth can there be some kind of kind, powerful father figure-type God watching my ass when I seem destined to be constantly stressed and watching my back?
"I mean all day long the media vomits out image after image of the types of human being that we should all be striving to become (thin and athletic; wealthy and healthy; with pension; covered with private health insurance; driving this car; eating that margarine; drinking that wine; popping those pills; not popping those)......."
Morten looked intense and broken as he compulsively rolled up yet another spliff: meticulously and mechanically cutting up the crystalline light-green weed and leaving it ready in a little sparkly mound of chopped leaves; then precisely and delicately rubbing his thumb and forefinger together through the cigarette to gradually pour out the tobacco from the Prince Light cigarette into the waiting king-size paper on the metal drinks tray balanced in his lap.
".......and yet the great irony is that once you buy into that lifelong mission of conforming, of trying to fit in you are selling your soul and forfeiting any right to succeed! It's complete and utter bullshit Carl.....consumerism; capitalism; all systems which are designed to keep those with the money and power content....
..........and those without chasing; chasing the ever-elusive dream of happiness; that bullshit ideal which appears to promise happiness and comfort to all; fails miserably time and time again; but yet is still revered as something worth living for!!"
Morten stood up slowly and put the tray onto the table. Carl watched his friend cut off a small strip from the empty cigarette packet; roll it into a little cardboard filter; put said filter into one end of the spliff; sprinkle the pile of ready-chopped-weed evenly along the piled tobacco and then concentrate on rolling the spliff - teasing the paper between his fingers and then licking along its length before gently and firmly sticking ever millimetre of the paper down; cutting off the excess paper from the filter end; twisting the other end tightly so that one end looked like a tightly wrapped cigarette sweetie....................... before inspecting his handiwork closely and, upon appearing satisfied, then handing it seriously to the watching Carl on the other sofa.
Carl had often been struck by the enormous irony concerning the correlation between smoking marijuana and holding decent values: ironic because the huge majority of marijuana smokers would never, ever find themselves in jobs or positions of power where their decent values could be spread amongst the wider populace. Instead the burden of responsibility (or, at the very least, the lion's-share of said responsibility) for such dissemination invariably was borne by the right-wing tabloid press and politicians; neither party being famed for its pure and moral outlooks on life.
_____________________________________________________________________
As the train pulled into the station and Carl joined the pointlessly-formed queue for the door he hoped against hope that Morten would (a) be feeling well-disposed towards him and that (b) Morten be in possession of what Carl needed and would be willing to give it to Carl.
Carl was not an optimistic guy by nature but was continually disappointed by folks' usual inability to live up to almost any of the standards Carl maintained when it came to who he trusted; and who he didn't trust.
Foreword
Trying to make sense of some things is quite simply a total waste of time: the same as spending hours digging a really deep hole on the beach when you know the tide’s coming in would be.
Hope is what gives us the strength to keep digging.
Smilingly we stand there time after time after time; then stand, tight-lipped and head-shaking with knowing disbelief, and watch the tide surge forward and fill the hole up.
Anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns are more sophisticated and convincing then ever before; but no more effective than the “know your dope fiend” campaign in America was all those decades ago.
This is because logic cannot handle the illogical.
No one ever deliberately harms themselves, scars themselves or abuses themselves when they passively accept the lies which society sells them.
Love conquers everything.
Love beats the demon.
Love one another; it’s as simple and as difficult as that.
T.S.Eliot wrote that last one and he KNEW – just as anyone who struggles to love themselves (let alone anyone else) knows – what shaky foundations the supposedly solid structure of human “civilisation” precariously balances on.
The entire human condition is fighting: fighting to get back INTO the perfect world of the womb from the moment we’re unceremoniously evicted from it.
Life in the society most people know is all about chasing an ever-fleeting perfect feeling. All the mod-cons we buy; the friendships we nurture and cherish; the loves we enjoy with all our heart and then scream in agony over as our heart is slowly shredded with each failed romance: they are all jigsaw pieces which must be assembled together throughout our life – in the vain attempt to have a completed puzzle just in time for our death.
And the image this puzzle will show is………?
Yes! Us feeling magic and perfect and warm and beautiful and fed and feeling our mother’s heartbeat powering our own quicker heartbeat and not feeling failing and imperfect and shivering cold and lonely: a puzzle only complete during one perfect, unreachable time of life: never to be repeated again.
Lying there and concluding that; striving to make LOVE the word to live your life by no longer seems such a sensible path to choose.
Yet it remains the number one choice time after time after all these years: no matter what diversions have attracted it and distracted it; the human race has never found anything better.
To deny love is to deny life; to choose to feel or act in some other way when love is an option is death-affirming. LIFE is being lied to and stunted.
I write and conclude that: such information would be a million times more useful if we only had the strength to remain on the quest for love and not suddenly veer off in search of something quicker and easier to obtain whenever the urge takes us (read: almost every time we have to choose a response).
Selfless love when encountered "in action" - boiling out of somebody's hearts into those they touch - is an awesome masterpiece to encounter and experience: made so special and rare by the marked absence of such acts from 'most everyone's daily existence.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hanging onto the weekend by the coat tails; like some manic small dog with a strange person's leg in their jaws.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter One
Carl stood alone in the queue: surrounded by jostling bodies but numb and shivering in the coal-black, cold night-air. Outside security lights illuminated the crowd of party-people: revealing clouds of vapour appearing from their exhaling mouths for a fleeting second or two; before the little bubbles of steam vanished.
("Cold, so very cold")
Carl could feel his skin tightening and freezing in the frozen air as he gently jogged up and down on the spot; then gazed heavenward and with a wry grin on his face - as if issuing an obviously impossible-to-perform request to "him upstairs" - began silently shaking his head to himself, in quiet annoyance about how his nose-end and cheeks were by now bright red.
Then he indulged himself a blatant and huge grin of disbelief as he gazed around himself and marvelled at the utter humility of the grovelling, waiting punters: many of them happily willing to spend up to two hours outside in -10c temperatures; many of those on highly adventurous and pharmaceutically aided missions. All waiting for the privilege of paying 45 Euros (approximately 30 pounds sterling) to spend 4 hours in a packed and roasting nightclub and be forced to pay drinks prices so high that the bartenders sometimes appeared embarrassed upon stating the total to customers.
"Tonight'd better be worth it" he thought as the queue shuffled forward a metre or so: leaving the first security-manned entrance - through the courtyard perimeter fence - just 15 metres in front of Carl; or roughly 60 punters away, as he thought to himself.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You must be fucking kidding Carl!" His landlord, best friend and house mate had incredulously exclaimed just one hour earlier; as they'd met on the front door step: Carl leaving for the club and Joachim returning home from a twelve hour shift. Joachim was not happy about Carl's debt to him either: now outstanding for four months exactly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just walking into Carl's room it was immediately plain and clear he was not a "normal" everyday bod: no Claudia Schiffer posters or football regalia adorned his walls; no hip or happening bands' cds lived in the mounted, alloy silver, metallic rack just to the left of his stereo. In short, his room did not look anything like a "normal" 23-year-old man's room invariably would.
Neither did Carl himself, for that matter, look as most "regular" 23 year olds would: 6 feet 2 inches and slim as an anorexic female model; this delicate, fragile frame juxtaposed with a striking, attractive face but not immediately so - rather its beauty grew on the viewer as did the merits of Carl himself. An encounter with Carl was rarely normal, everyday or forgettable: be it with a best friend, a ticket-inspector, the hot-dog man or the lady from the house next door.
As Joachim stood blank-faced looking around Carl's room it suddenly struck him just how wearying any kind of interaction with Carl had become recently:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Come on, man!" Carl had protested to him, as they'd argued on the front lawn. "You KNOW I've been trying to sort out the rent: seriously, check out the bags under my eyes: I haven't slept in 48 hours and haven't smiled for a lot longer than that....."
Joachim had conceded to his mate that he did indeed look like shit. When you know someone for several years you get used to them looking a certain way; if one day they look different you will notice it and more than likely it will disturb you every time you meet each other: things between you never feel quite right ever again - even more so if you have witnessed a good friend succumbing to the lure of drugs; between the actual poisoning qualities of most abused drugs and the precarious lifestyle which almost inevitably accompanies the regular and substantial consumption of said substances, very few can hide the damage done to themselves and Carl was no exception.
"But Carl" Joachim had blurted out angrily "you've been sorting out the rent for fucking ages now and I still haven't seen any sign of my 12 000 kronor!"
"I'm WORKING on it!" Carl stressed the syllables of "working" as he said it: making it sound as if he were working on a masterpiece painting, or symphony.
Joachim was blocking the front gate and the two men stood inert and full of emotions staring at each other; Carl's eyebrows raised and lips pressed tightly together in a grim smile of pleading at his friend. There was nothing to say to each other. Joachim raised his hands upward in silent despair and stood aside.
Carl - giving off embarrassment and shame - swept past with a guilty and unconvincing "I'll sort you out tomorrow; I PROMISE mate. Thanks man. You know I'm sorry.....". His voice suddenly gone and muffled by the white
sound- proofing all around on road and trees; the cold and falling snow neutralising the uncomfortable human clash between the two friends.
It struck Joachim how ludicrous it all was. He did indeed KNOW - beyond a doubt - that Carl was desperately sorry for the situation; but Carl's behaviour was still unacceptable and after all, once people find themselves in situations "outside the law" (concerning, say, overdue rent - paid in cash to a landlord who is himself fiddling various state benefits) then a whole new set of rules, procedures and sanctions come into play and suddenly everyone's feeling around in the dark for the way forward: and Joachim was only too aware of how serious the situation surrounding Carl (his tenant, best friend and dealer) had become.
He stumped up to his still open front door; stamped most of the snow off his boots and walked wearily into his house, slamming the door violently behind him. "I need a drink" he told the empty hall and marched into the kitchen where he found a bottle of Absolut in the fridge and a short, heavy whiskey glass from the work surface. Sniffing the glass cautiously and wincing, he ran it under the tap for a minute until satisfied that it was clean enough and poured a very generous measure into it from the ice-frosted bottle burning his left hand. "Hope it's a good night mate" he toasted his friend out loud. Then quieter and worriedly shaking his head he repeated the words hollowly and unconvinced.
Chapter 2
The images outside the train flashing back whilst the grey, foreboding sky leaves us alone in the night; such were the brain processes of Carl sitting in his front-facing smoking seat on the 18.15 train to Uppsala.
Carl was on his way to Morten's place; somewhere he visited, almost without fail, on a fortnightly basis. The last time he'd been there the dark cloud of depression that seemed to constantly hover over Morten had appeared particularly foreboding:
"But honestly Carl, just tell me this much: how on earth can there be some kind of kind, powerful father figure-type God watching my ass when I seem destined to be constantly stressed and watching my back?
"I mean all day long the media vomits out image after image of the types of human being that we should all be striving to become (thin and athletic; wealthy and healthy; with pension; covered with private health insurance; driving this car; eating that margarine; drinking that wine; popping those pills; not popping those)......."
Morten looked intense and broken as he compulsively rolled up yet another spliff: meticulously and mechanically cutting up the crystalline light-green weed and leaving it ready in a little sparkly mound of chopped leaves; then precisely and delicately rubbing his thumb and forefinger together through the cigarette to gradually pour out the tobacco from the Prince Light cigarette into the waiting king-size paper on the metal drinks tray balanced in his lap.
".......and yet the great irony is that once you buy into that lifelong mission of conforming, of trying to fit in you are selling your soul and forfeiting any right to succeed! It's complete and utter bullshit Carl.....consumerism; capitalism; all systems which are designed to keep those with the money and power content....
..........and those without chasing; chasing the ever-elusive dream of happiness; that bullshit ideal which appears to promise happiness and comfort to all; fails miserably time and time again; but yet is still revered as something worth living for!!"
Morten stood up slowly and put the tray onto the table. Carl watched his friend cut off a small strip from the empty cigarette packet; roll it into a little cardboard filter; put said filter into one end of the spliff; sprinkle the pile of ready-chopped-weed evenly along the piled tobacco and then concentrate on rolling the spliff - teasing the paper between his fingers and then licking along its length before gently and firmly sticking ever millimetre of the paper down; cutting off the excess paper from the filter end; twisting the other end tightly so that one end looked like a tightly wrapped cigarette sweetie....................... before inspecting his handiwork closely and, upon appearing satisfied, then handing it seriously to the watching Carl on the other sofa.
Carl had often been struck by the enormous irony concerning the correlation between smoking marijuana and holding decent values: ironic because the huge majority of marijuana smokers would never, ever find themselves in jobs or positions of power where their decent values could be spread amongst the wider populace. Instead the burden of responsibility (or, at the very least, the lion's-share of said responsibility) for such dissemination invariably was borne by the right-wing tabloid press and politicians; neither party being famed for its pure and moral outlooks on life.
_____________________________________________________________________
As the train pulled into the station and Carl joined the pointlessly-formed queue for the door he hoped against hope that Morten would (a) be feeling well-disposed towards him and that (b) Morten be in possession of what Carl needed and would be willing to give it to Carl.
Carl was not an optimistic guy by nature but was continually disappointed by folks' usual inability to live up to almost any of the standards Carl maintained when it came to who he trusted; and who he didn't trust.
