Sunday 9 December 2012

Sandstone tile encased generic yet, high spec, pod. Amongst the under sink crap: several back dated copies of Men's Health, ionic fluid and a selection of prescribed, and some self-prescribed meds.

An alcove caved into the mirror above the sink allowed for the careful positioning of a small MP3 player, or iPhone. And for a while, a week...perhaps three, I would listen to Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's classic: Running Up that Hill. Whilst in the shower I would turn the temperature to core, thirty seven degrees, and then to thirty nine, and I would add two degrees for every chorus. This would sometimes continue for fifteen or twenty minutes, and repeat with each increment of the song.

I'd often imagine falling, breaking teeth on the harsh floor. Blood mixing with water, swirling, running in the channels carved between the tiles, before sinking into the gridded drain. I took the cover off now and then. I would often lay on the floor, staring into the source of water, from which a thick steam would disperse and fill the room, condensing on glass and wall. And in the fogged mirror I would write myself messages: "I'll be yours". "I'm not having any fun". And wipe them away to reveal bloodshot, tearful eyes staring into at mine.

Saturday 24 November 2012

I will always question my sanity, and I guess thats healthy; as is there are always flames I will carry for people and places I will remember for the seasons. There will always be events I call to question because of actions, reactions, periods of time where I doubt my ability to cope. The winter in Berlin, the argument in Jüdischen Museums. A sabbatical in Rome, the touch of your skin, the play of shadow from overhead canopy, the bank of the Tiber.

The glazed eyes of Churchill stare across the room in the bedroom in which I grew up in, neighbouring the bust of Thatcher and other trinkets, blanketed in dust, and stored here; out of site of the main dinning room, and the entertaining spaces below. A pile of magazines, National Geographical, Architects Journal, abut my faithful desk. The eyes of Frank Lloyd Wright bleakly staring at toward and through the Venetian blinds the divide between the bleak outside and the bleak within.

A blinking light calculates the time on the Bose, and resumes - The Devil and God are Raging Inside of Me - and its been four years since this track has played, and the line "What did you do those three days you were gone" skips and plays continuously. And like Jesse I often believe I'm missing out, and fear my blight is to sly to hold back all my dark.

Outside the rain puts an end to what we've know of the English summer, and this is the fourth consecutive day. During my travel, I would often sit at a darkening window, shadows and lights flailing outside, staring at the face in the glass, whose eyes I once knew. And one simple phone call bought me here, and I wonder how long it will take to tare me away.

Saturday 21 July 2012

It's somewhere between 0145 and 0212 and I am cursing around the streets of the inner city, watching drunk couples stumble in and out of bars and clubs, men with blood on their shirts, and the classic short skirt cellulite girls on the corner of kebab shops. And I'm thinking when did it all get so fucked up.

At the 24/7, where we used to by straights for reformation into joints, I buy a bottle of vodka (home brand) and a mints, and solely walk from the service hatch to my pavement mounted car, unscrewing the tinny cap and pushing the mints into the liquid.

City and Colour, Sometimes, has been on repeat for 21 days, and is my cruise music of choice. Dallas has a way of talking directly at you, whilst egotistically singing about himself, and even though the music is evidently about a type of love that I have never felt, I imagine that I have, that I am.

The lights wash over the City from the observatory streaking an amber stain into the midnight sky, the neon floodlights of the Cumberland basin bouncing reflections on to the cliff edge. And Dallas is singing of blank stares and empty threats, the acoustics enhanced by the solid gorge as the car sits embankment above, headlights spilling over the scene. And I'm swigging on the vodka, and my watering eyes cause the lights to blur, and I'm thinking of all the people who keep calling me now we aren't at university, all that nostalgic bullshit about how "we should keep in touch" and how many times I'm going to have to click "reject", and how I promised to myself that I'd have left by now, be on some beach somewhere near my home town, some fishing village, and why I'm still here when clearly there are better things to be had.

And really I guess I listen to Sometimes to remind me of the City that I left behind, and the people that I left behind when I decided to move to Bristol, on the basis that I'd be with friends, many of whom I no longer speak to. And I guess this feeling is regret mixed with anxiety and anticipation, and I imagine where five years previous and then five ahead. The vast differences spread before me like a ocean. And I think of all the situations which I now regret, and all the people I have met, or haven't met, and all the people I have slept with, and how I could have had it all, and didn't want it. And all the people I've doubled crossed, or strung along. And I take the scalpel blade that I've been thumbing from my pocket and carve the words "Disappear Here" over the name, on the brass plaque on the bench beneath which inscribed, rather aptly, 2012.

These two words, a motto of mine, a summary of the feelings I have felt for this city a city in which I expected to make no lasting acquaintances. And as I finger the fresh edit I contemplate playing Disappear Here - a game which evolved from my unique skill to ditch unfavourables in nightclubs - and I think I am finally ready, four weeks later than planned.

Monday 18 June 2012

Sunday 3 June 2012

nothing good ever comes to the man that stands still

Wednesday 30 May 2012

In the sixty three days that I have been absent, inspiration has come and gone and there is very little to fill time in this city. The streets and the buildings are wearing very much thin. And the majority of my days are spent nostalgically trying to recreate moment in which I felt...what one must only describe as hopeless, and drunk.

I pondered for a period of time if office work, as described by London Preppy, was mundane as he eluded, and in truth, it is. But I have come to appreciate the mundaneness of every day living. My life very much runs around my new professional routine. And in the corner shop, I am often mistaken for the opposite of which ever personality I am portraying; the drunk, the suit or the prep.

I lived life, not long ago, very much as a prostitute. Not whoring myself for money (which in hindsight may have been a better idea) but for attention, and the connection. But it is through this that I have realised myself, and have very much secured my position in the Clifton Elite, acquainted with businessmen, waiters and barmen. They say there is no such thing as a free lunch, but I beg to differ.

Had you have asked me sixty two days ago where I would be on the first of June 2012, and the answer would have been anywhere but here. In a way, it still is. However I have grown to realise that professional interests, can quickly overtake personal. And this, like many of us I assume, is something I already grow to regret. There was a time, four years ago, that I promised to leave this city, if only asked by a certain someone, but realistically, real life got in the way.

I have eight boxes on the living room floor, and no pictures on the walls.

Thursday 29 March 2012

On the balcony which hangs from the Georgian façade of my quarter-of-a-million Clifton crash pad I realise that, in the four years I have lived here, so has this bay tree. Each winter it is covered in a thick later of white. And around this time of year, it emerges, unscathed. On the work surface of my desk which now faces the office across the road (The blonde woman there, who sits on Facebook all day, enjoys watching me dress, drink and dance) is: a note with the lists of academic references, scrawled words I can no longer comprehend; a original copy of Newer Sarum 1949, and two books pending review. And I guess what I am trying to say is, Hey. Once this is over, I am all over this.

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Do you remember when we drove along Kingsway A259, and we listened to Casey's Song, and the windows where covered in condensation, and the sat nav spoke French. And how we sat in your car for an hour or so, reading and rereading contracts. And the traffic lights on the highstreet by the furniture store, and something with the name Sun?