By Arthur Schopenhauer

Love interrupts at every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds.  It does not hesitate to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned.  It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts.  It sometimes demands the sacrifice of health, sometimes of wealth, position and happiness.

So love is dead.  I overheard a 16 year old girl talking with her friends and she said: “I’ve seen to many people get their hearts broken thinking they were with the one.  I am beginning to believe there isn’t such a thing.  I don’t want to get involved.”

Some times I stress myself out for no good reason at all.  I forget the prophetic words of wisdom of Mr Marley:

Dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:)

And maybe that’s it.  I’ve been getting up at 4am and going straight to work.  I haven’t watched the sunrise, or listened to the birds in my back garden sing their lovely morning tunes in the past 2 months.  That can’t be a good thing.

Yesterday, my mechanic announced my truck a dead truck driving.  The gearbox needs fixing. Something is wrong with the handbrake, and the rear differential something or another is leaking.  He informed me that it is a big job and unless I am in love with my truck, it probably isn’t worth the expense to fix it considering its age and the number of miles I have racked up on the odometer.  He said the best thing to do is drive it until it packs in.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I love my truck, but I do like it.  We’ve been through a lot together.  I will have to get a second opinion.  Maybe there is hope.

In addition to working an ungodly amount of hours, I have also been pushing myself pretty hard physically with my running and weightlifting regime.  My body is morphing into a different shape.  My clothes are falling off of me.  Soon I will be hard as woodpecker lips again.  But at what cost?

I think today I will take some time to smell the roses.

I finally got my hands on a copy of Neil Gaiman‘s book, American Gods, so I’ll spend some time with it today as well, maybe even wander into town and pick up some new threads.

peace, out

This story has fallen into my hands courteous of Paulo Coelho from his blog.  I know he won’t mind me posting it here because he ends all his blog posts with:

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

And he is, in fact, giving a speech today at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the very topic of a free Internet and the value of sharing content.

Anyway, I’m passing this story on because it ties in with some thoughts I had in the shower this morning.  You see, I am one of these people who has been cursed with an insatiable drive to find an answer to the question, ‘What is it all about, this thing called life?’

‘Why are we here?’

‘Why am I here?’

Of course, I have to take time out to do practical things like work to earn money so I can eat and pay the bills, but always just below the surface there’s this splinter in my mind’s eye that gnaws away at me like a Rottweiler on a steak bone.

Some times I have these moments of clarity in which I swear I have reached a state of enlightenment and know without doubt what the answer to the question is.  But those moments disappear like a snowflake on a hot engine.

Other times, the question drives me to the brink of despair and I want to throw in the towel and tell God I quit.

And then there are times like today when I think to myself, ‘Who cares?’

‘Does it really matter if I know time?’

Forget the question, just get on with life – whatever that is?

They say that when the student is ready the teacher will appear.  And the teacher can come in many guises.  This time, an anecdote:

Three people passing in a small caravan saw a man contemplating the late afternoon in the Sahara Desert, from the top of a mountain.

‘It must be a shepherd who has lost a sheep,’ said the first.

‘No, I don’t think he’s looking for anything, much less at a sunset, when the view is hazy.  I think he’s waiting for a friend.’

‘I guarantee that’s a holy man, and is looking for enlightenment,’ commented the third.

They began to talk about what the man was doing, and became so engrossed in the discussion that they almost fought over it. Finally, in order to resolve the matter, they decided to climb the mountain and go to the man.

‘Are you looking for your sheep?’ asked the first.

‘No, I have no flock.’

‘Then you are surely waiting for someone,’ said the second.

‘I’m a lonely man who lives in the desert,’  was the answer.

‘Since you live in the desert in solitude, you must be a saint searching for God’s signs, and are meditating’ said the third man, delighted.

‘Does everything on Earth have to have an explanation? Then I shall explain: I am merely looking at the sunset. Is that not enough to give sense to our lives?’

depressed, the headlines have
me sinking in despair, is there
no way out, i am stressed

i turn the page

wall street took another blow
the dow hit a five year low
icelandic boss, shakes his head
says coolly, sorry for the billion dollar loss

i turn the page

i’m confused by the news
of banks that refuse to give
the people back their money,
this shit isn’t funny, if it were
you or i, they’d take our homes
our cars, our color TV’s
leave us living in the street
to beg, borrow, and steal
to make the ends meet

i turn the page

the words don’t get any better,
investment banker stands before
congress, smiles like the Cheshire
Cat, he says i confess i made a fucking
mess and left the economy and the
taxpayer to discover they’re in a
fucking quagmire from which they’ll not
soon recover, i guess i’ll retire,
live out my days flying across the airways,
from paris to milan to catch the ballets
with the money i took from the company
as i watched the MTHR FCKR
burn to the ground, while me and
the boys played another round

i turn the page

we’ve gone from economic enjoyment
to mass unemployment, pundits predict
millions of people will loose their jobs
victims of the meltdown, engineered by
a few clowns at the top of the hill
politicians think they can fix this with a bill

i turn the page

people are bracing for hard times
there’s chaos in the stores, folks
rushing to buy cases of lager on
sale for a fiver so they can go home
and sit on the sofa and sulk and
watch reruns of MacGyver, they
make empty toasts to prosperity past
and hope the bad times won’t last

i turn the page

born Beth Israel Hospital, play time, almost lose my eye, eat sand, father away on a ship, man shot in front of me bleeding stripped to his underwear, orgies, broken plates, dead bird caused by my hand, big park, Pablo, monkey man,  lemon cream cookie thief, books = friends, army men, gigi, dog down incinerator, fight = survival, grandmother dies of cancer, riots, murder, death, move home, move home, move home, move home, live with grandfather, bats, grandfather hit in the head with a can of beans, eat raccoon, southern fried chicken, scared in the dark, Sunday paper, cornflakes, baby sister, moth balls, dad comes, dad goes, dad comes back again.

I lost the craving
for my dad’s favor
I can stop misbehaving
I know he’s not my savior

I want God I want poetry I want real danger I want freedom I want goodness I want sin I want love I want hate I want passion I want tears I want joy I want pain.

In short, I want it all or nothing at all.

I want to impress my girl with my new Gucci underwear.

I race to the bedroom and get undressed before she makes it to the top of the stairs.  She spends a half an hour in the bathroom.  If it were any other night, I would be asleep by now.  Some times I swear she stays in there that long on purpose.

I catch a glimpse of my new Gucci underwear in the mirror.  They are red, hot, and damn sexy.  I think they make my package look bigger too.

She brushes.  She spits.  She rinses, then spits again.  She gargles 15 times and spits.  She flushes the toilet for a third time. Silence.  I hear the bathroom door handle rattle.  I dive on to the bed.  It squeaks and moans.  I settle into the middle of the bed and lay spread eagle.

My new Gucci underwear glow in the dim light.

I hear her footsteps stop just outside the bedroom door.  She gives it a tentative push, then changes her mind.  I hear the creak of the stairs, and then the click of the kitchen light.  A few seconds later, I hear the woompf of the refrigerator door open, bottles clink.  Sloop. The fridge door shuts.

My new Gucci underwear are cool.

Silence.

She will be up any second now.  I yawn.  I rest my eyes for a moment.  I close my eyes and imagine I am the male model in the magazine I saw my new Gucci underwear in.  The gorgeous blond in short shorts is there too.  She has no shirt or bra on.  She presses up against me.  Finally some action.  She likes my new Gucci underwear.  The smile on her face says so.

“Harold,” she whispers.  “Harold move over you’re taken up too much space.  I get all philosophical on her, “how much space do you need?”  Something sharp pokes me in the ribs.  “Ouch,” I groan.  I roll on my side and pull the covers over my new Gucci underwear.  Tomorrow they will be just another pair of funky underwear.

She smells like onions. It turns me on. I can tell by the way she walks that she has been walking through her daddy’s fields. I had to build up the courage to ask her out. We dated for about a month. Then one day she came over to my flat, and she smelled like roses. So I had to let her go.

A good friend of mine, Tim Clague, tagged me with the song meme.  I don’t usually do the memes, but Tim is like a demi-god so I thought I’d better do it or face his god like vengeance.  Anyway here are the instructions:

Find a song that sums up what you think it means to be a writer and post the lyrics on your blog and why you’ve chosen it. NB: It doesn’t have to be your favourite song, it just has to express how you feel about writing and/or being a writer. It can be literal, metaphorical, about a particular form or aspect of writing – whatever you want. Then tag 5 others to do the same (reprint these instructions).

I have chosen a spoken word performance that I think summarizes my current thinking on me as a writer.  You will have possibly seen this posted on my blog before, but it’s so damn good it can bare repeating:

[youtube]8QgwHNrNX5o[/youtube]

I’ll think of some folks to pass this on to later.  Right now it’s time for some whiskey.

I had a spell of enlightenment.  I chased that down with a cold patch of dark madness.  I found my head again, but now I am fighting boredom.  I want peace, love, and harmony on the one hand; and on the other, I want beer, battle, and bitches.  I keep thinking there has to be a middle ground in there somewhere, but maybe there isn’t.  Inspired.  Grumpy.  Did I mention bored?  Creative.  Determined. Curious.  I keep searching for the doors that lead between the known and the unknown, but I am tired of all this pussy ˜New Age” stuff.  I want to be a man again – caveman style!  I want to eat nails and shit rust.  Do you know what I am talking about?

She is young.  She is single.  She has no ties.  She could up and leave at a moments notice.  She could travel the world if she wanted to.  Every day she sits in the same coffee house, at the same time, drinking the same drink, wearing the same dark blue colors.  She sits talking to the same elderly woman.  Each day she tells the elderly woman how much freedom she has to do what she wants to do.  Even the economy doesn’t effect her. She knows what time it is.  Each day she returns to the same coffee house, at the same time, and orders the same drink.

tick tock

tick tock

listen to the sound of the clock

that’s your life ending one tick tock at a time

I met a girl named Josephine today.  She reminded me of the old army cadence we used to sing about a girl named Josephine and it went something like this:

Hey Hey Josephine
How do you do
Do you remember me baby
Like I remember you

We used to meet out yonder
Behind your old man’s barn
And every time it rained
You used to call my name

Hey Hey Josephine
How do you do
Do you remember me baby
Like I remember you

We used to meet out yonder
Behind the railroad tracks
And every time you came
You used to call my name

There are probably a hundred different versions of this cadence.  I first learned it at Fort Knox, Kentucky during the summer of 1991 while on loan from West Point, doing my summer training as a drill cadet.

I heard the door close on three good friendships this week.

As I listened to their footsteps stagger down the street, I paused to reflect as to why.  Friendships, it seems to me, tend to gently drift apart over the course of time.  Unless, of course, the friendship ends because of some injustice perceived between the friends in question.  Then it tends to end with a bang.  But more often than not, the friendship ends quietly.  They fade away under the guises of a shortage of time, or perhaps one friend moves away to a distant city, or simply each has found other interests that draws the friendship apart.

Of my three friendships, one has been phasing out over the course of several months, lack of time, lack of shared interests.  One has fallen victim to the moving to a distant city syndrome.  Of course there is always good intentions of staying in touch, but we know time and proximity will see the friendship fade.  And the other friendship has probably ended over a misunderstanding and lack of communication and my stupid pride won’t allow me to take steps to bridge the gap that has opened up beneath us.  And soon we will go into free fall and that will be end of it.

I guess I will always be friends with these people, but the intimacy of our friendship will probably never be the same.

Anyway these turn of events inspired me to write this poem.

I am old enough to know
friends come and go
I thought our friendship would last
but like the others, you slipped into my past

No time for goodbyes, I guess
friendship is something you can’t possess
it storms into your life like a monsoon
then drifts away like a cold cup of coffee in the afternoon

Perhaps it’s the beginning, not the end
the intimacy is gone, but you’re still my friend
we’ll have our memories to share
like abandoned cars left on a highway in disrepair

I watch the sky turn an imperial red
and I wonder what lies ahead
on this twisted road for you and I
as the evening spreads out across the sky

(Dedicated to all the friends and lovers who have come and gone in my life.  I want to say good luck and good bye and may our paths meet again some day.  If you’re out there on the road somewhere and you come across this poem, think of me and the times we shared.  If the spirit moves you drop me a line some time.)

I sit here in Starbucks.  I watch the crowd of people make their way to work.  Wouldn’t it be better if they, if we, were all headed to our own Woodstock to share love for one another in perfect peace and harmony?  Or is that too tame?

Does anybody have the game controls so I can stop this game before my head explodes and I drown in a sea of my own thoughts?