Parklife

I love Stanley Park. In any weather, during any season, it never fails to look beautiful. Take today, for example. Most people hate this weather. It's grey, the sky, a grey that is almost green with the sheer weight of the water in the clouds. They are so heavy they are not raining, but falling, dragged earthwards by their own vapour. They cling to your skin as you walk through them, the potential rain catching in your hair and on your eyelashes,gathering in shimmering pearls,and touching your bare skin hundreds of times a minute, each contact singular and individual- like a tiny, cold kiss.
Yes, it's damp. But it's velvety, thick and soft. The trees around me, those that aren't sleeping, feel like they are giving out comfortable, heavy sighs. The plants below them rustle though there is little movement in the air, their noise whispering around me, hinting at their secrets and protesting at the occasional droplet the falls from the branches of their sheltering tree.
Yes, it's grey. But so are the squirrels who bound across the leaf strewn grass before me, their already silvery fur made all the more metallic and magical by the light hitting the beads of moisture covering them as they rummage through the grasses, hunting for stores for winter. They give me a pointed glance as they come so close I could touch them, as if reproaching me for not remembering to fetch them nuts, and continue on their way, vanishing into the mists.
Yes, it's cloudy. But it makes the green around me so much more vibrant, the reds and yellows of the exiting Autumn so vivid that they seem to have a halo in the dim light, glowing like flames scattered untidily on the ground.
People stay in on days like this. They imagine somehow that the world can only be enjoyed in the sun. But give me the damp days, when the fog deadens the sound of the cars and the noise of the surrounding town. Give me the grey days, when the cries of the birds are uninterrupted by your world. Give me the rain, and let me watch nature use the wonder of water as intended. I will watch this beauty as the cold strikes me, and the wet creeps into my hair, and I will see the parts of this place that you would never know.

Interesting Times

Sunset is always the best time to start something new. A lot of people witter about mornings as new beginnings but that never made much sense to me, especially in average life in modern day. It’s so hard to find a moment in the morning in between waking to the hated alarm and toast and morning rush to work to think, let alone begin anything. Sunset is the onset of leisure time (for most, at least), alone time, own time, free of a set structure or an obligatory position or situation, kids go to bed, all that malarkey.
I have neither standard daytime work or children to organise at home, and yet appreciate the coming of night. The quiet, dark times when one can be alone, uninterrupted and free of the vile starkness of the unforgiving day. I always feel somehow unlike myself when I sleep at night and wake in the morning, as if conforming to the societal norm is a betrayal of my own personality, which given this preference, I suppose it is in a way. But everyone does in some way, don’t they? Whether it’s living with the resentments, desires or secrets, each of us holds part of ourselves back, sure that the great hulking beast of acceptance will find us wanting and bring the crushing weight of disapproval or judgement slamming down and make some dreadful irreversible impact on our existence.
Only they so rarely do, you know. These secrets we keep, silently fearing the inevitable discovery and subsequent chaos, they are so seldom as they seem. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying they don’t cause pain or destruction, far from it. But they rarely kill innocent people, they don’t tear great holes in the fabric of time, they don’t have some devastating effect on gravity. Anything we do is less than nothing, but yet, it is also everything. Which is more limiting? The thought that the entirety of every effort expended in your lifetime amounts to nothing at all in the scheme of the universe, or the crippling knowledge of the effect of anything you do on everyone else?
I seem to be constantly conscious of both, and it’s something like being a space between two atoms so close that to the rest of existence they are bonded. It’s so hideously limiting, but the knowledge of the effect on my surroundings is a terrifying control. The result would be a mere reaction between two of the smallest parts of the very universe, probably nothing else within it would even know, but for those distorted briefly by the ripples around what I do. But the chance of some unimaginable and horrific chain reaction is there, impossibly remote, but there. So here I stay.
There are easier ways to explain it, and probably I could come up with better analogies, but now, sat in the half light in this tired room with the generic radio and pub sounds seeping in around me, it seems the most suitable.

It’s a reasonably fatalistic argument inviting all sorts of hopelessness, this sort of talk, which is strange, because my rage at apathy is so strong today. So much fury, tiresome, righteous fury, keeps rolling through me as people display their proud ignorance, their cruelty. Take the situation at my little family commune, for instance. But to be able to show what they HAVE, and ...wont have, and are wasting on typical humdrum negativity. It raises such ire in me, to see someone sitting, doing nothing, letting minutes that could be filled with life slip away, or rather flood away in great waves, doing nothing more than feeling sorry for themselves. But why? Why spend the minutes lamenting that they are passing? DO SOMETHING! Build, travel, create, talk, laugh, cry, explore! Tell the people you love that you love them, savour every taste, get on a train with no knowledge of the destination, visit places you’ve never heard of, paint your car with polka dots, go horse riding, anything. Just don’t lapse into bitterness, pain and hate.
Please.
I…don’t want to remember you that way.
I was told today I was heartless for resenting the wasted time. But some never got that time. Carla, Melissa, Mark…they didn’t get a warning. A year, a month, even a fucking day before, just that whisper there, that chance. What is the good of giving time if someone will just sit upsetting other people? There’s no justice. There’s just ME. But at least there should be the respect to live as much as you can until you are gone…in honour of the people who didn’t get that choice.
Maybe that sounds hypocritical of me. After all, most people know of my indifference regarding survival. But at the same time, I live my life as best I can to try and do things for other people, though I tend to fail disastrously for the most part. So many times I try only to find not only have I failed, but I’ve made everything that bit worse.
But I don’t stop trying.
It seems the only respectful thing to do with a life I don’t really want but can’t give to the people I want to have it. Unless you count giving blood.
Which I do.
Please don’t think my thoughts on the subject mean I don’t care. Please don’t think it doesn’t hurt.
It’s been hurting since I knew what it was to fear this. But there is no point being afraid anymore.
Ranty day today. Well, most days really.
But to attempt to end on a positive, I can see the tower lights from here and they are my most coveted deepest blue.

December.

What a horrible week, in my horrible month. Even my normally indestructible outdoor countenance is taking a beating this time round. Very dark times, not least politically, with Julian imprisoned and demonised and WikiLeaks struggling, the loathsome Tories shafting every vulnerable part of our society with all the finesse an Eton schoolboy can muster,it's not sounding cheerful.
Of course I can't get out of this bloodstained arsehole of a country either, thanks to my comittments and responsibilities and that it Not Good. I suppose people like the EDL and the Tories should be opposed and I should stay and fight the good fight and all that, jolly good fwah fwah fwah.
Ugh.
Sometimes I would give a lot to live on a landmass so immense there were patches where you could just sort your own politics, but that's just idealism, because no matter how peaceful and well run your ideas are there will be people who come and seek to destroy the walls of your little world, and then all the peaceful ideals you try to live by have to postponed as you defend yourself, or you get ripped to bits over and over again. Don't I know it.

Ben very open with people this week. More so than normal, even, and learnt some stuff about other people, which has ended violently internally, if I'm honest and left parts of me dead, dying or critically wounded. But it's led to an epiphany that I've had before, but is always a shock when I realise it again. I'm living my own hated cliches and it's infuriating going through the motions when I could be alive, passionate and sparkling. Well, maybe not sparkling. I tend to stick to matt black, after all. I'm so faded at the moment. Poor Spook is getting the brunt of it too, as he is here most he gets my sullenness and boredom and I think it probably gets to him more than he lets on. I need to go away somewhere or just get myself straight somehow, but I've not got the time, I've got work next week and then Christmas. Maybe I can persuade it to rest for a couple of weeks.Hate December.

December

The month of dark realisation. Of darkness and misery. Of helplessness, hopelessness, and need. I'd hate it if the frost on the trees wasn't so beautiful. I lose so much every December, be it blood or friends or trust, I can't seem to evade its spiked white needles in my brain. People get festive. People...bake, and have trees and sparkly things.
I try all that too, but my fastive traditions seem to run more along the lies of lashing out and alienating people, drowning my sorrows so successfully that they become marinated, or dripping the red stuff all over my clothes. Not particularly festive, and I can't understand why. I've always had big extravagant family Christmas's and presents and things...maybe seasonal Affective Dohicky has a degree of it but I don't know what else.
I notice things more. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's the realisation of how many lies I live, how many smiles I fake, and how many pretenders I know, and I do know you. The liklihood of you reading this is stupidly low, but I won't dignify you with your names. I try not to think of you often. You don't think of me, after all.
Maybe it's the knowledge that no one ever feels about me how I feel about them.
Maybe it's the knowledge of the idiocy of my idealism as the dead months take their casualties, the unfortunate become the dead, freezing on the shopfronts, thinking warm thoughts to try and get through the icy nights.
Maybe it's the children who get beatings for Christmas, the poor, tiny little souls that are tainted, deformed or ripped away in a haze of alcohol and hatred.
Maybe it's simply people and their stupidity. The ignorance displayed at every second of every day with all the blind confidence of a true moron.
Maybe it's the waste I've made of my life.
Who knows! The point being, I can't modulate my own mood in December, and I've started offending people with my whip tongue. Again.

Me

I just realised what hesitations have cost me in this circle, staring at a destination that I always aim for and too often miss. It hurts to think about courage that I should have had and have lost somewhere. I can't remember who I am anymore. Why am I here, and whos life am I living?
These people are all me, somehow, but at the same time they are wholly unlike anything I associate with myself and are not me at all. Each of them mourns another when they are who I am...
I just can't work out which of me to stay true to and with each indecision I lose another inch, another point of me. Another night. Another kiss. Another memory. Another me. But should I be me anyway?
I don't understand myself- I never really did but there was a path among the hopeless tracks that was black and straight and going my way. It's still there but if I follow it I lose things. But if I don't, I lose me.
I need to be me. But I don't know how to be me without losing me.
I just need to be me.

.

Helplessness is such an infuriating thing.
To stand there and need with all your heart to stop someone hurting, to stop something going wrong and knowing that no matter how much you care and how much you need to change things for them that you just don't hold enough sway when alls said and done points out to you that sometimes you are just helpless. There is nothing you can do.
And it hurts sometimes. It hurts to know that when you are struggling I am never going to be able to help hold you up.It hurts knowing that despite the effort I do and will always put in that I will never be the one you reach out to.
It makes a lot of sense because I have always maintained the opinion of myself that winds into this feeling of total uselessness. Maybe I am creating my own weakness.
It's selfish, too, but everyone is selfish no matter how good they are at being charitable and stuff deep down when the shit hits they are all selfish. We save what is the most important to us, the things we need. Even if its the opinions of others its still what we need to give ourselves purpose.
It's stupid to let someone else become one of your purposes, but people can't help but do it.
There are so many things I wish I could change.Times to go back to, impulses to act on, words to say.
How do you begin to accept there is nothing you can do? Should you accept it? Or should you keep trying to change things that you can't change just because of how you'd feel if you accepted it?

Circles.

I didn't think I'd be here again.
Once, on another blog, I explained to someone, exactly how revolting their behaviour was when they abandoned their child.
This child was a child I knew well...a child I love very much, in fact. A goddaughter, who enchants pretty much everyone she meets and fills me with pride as I watch her grow day by day.
When her father abandoned her...I've never known anything more painful than watching her mother answer her questions of why her daddy didn't love her anymore. We all experience heartbreak, and it's a horrible experience. To watch a four year old try and come to terms with it was unspeakable, and I will never forgive him for what he's done to her young psyche.
To know that shortly there will be another child trying to understand that... A child without my astounding goddaughters resourcefulness, support and strength- a child who is already delicate, and needs care...how can I begin to form words to describe what it would take to do this to her?
I am lost for words.