crawlers

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday. I wrote and baked bread and stole away for a pint at my local while the bread cooled. I sat at the end of the bar and made some scribbles in a notebook, outlining a chapter with some details, happy with the flow of it. There were arrows and bullet points and even something verging on a diagram. It's the 'history' chapter of the book. Since it isn't a fiction, I feel more comfortable doing all this laying out of things. It wouldn't do for me to put the Battle of Dunkirk (very different from the evacuation) before the Albigensian Crusades in a fit of writing fervour, as the former took place nearly 400 years after the latter. 

While scribbling notes and sipping a pint, an army of neck-tied student pub-crawlers invaded the quiet confines of the local. I think it was a rowing team, but if so there were too many coxes. They were loud and drank Fosters and every time I thought that must be all of them, more arrived. Soon the bar was packed, and they just seemed to get louder. One or two gave a couple of locals a bit of lip, and for a split second it looked like it would get a bit messy at the other end of the bar. I just kept scribbling.

They left faster than they arrived, off to annoy some other folks enjoying a quiet Sunday pint. The echo of the door shutting behind them was followed by a loud 'What a bunch of cocks' from on of the guys at the other end of the bar. I shut my notebook and nursed the very end of my pint, remembering that it wasn't all that long ago that I was like that. Bursting into bars, thinking I owned the place. Possessing no volume control and the firm belief that everything I uttered was important.

I always drank better beer, of course, but still. 

And now I'm the quiet, grumpy one at the bar, trying to ignore them, cursing their invasion of my little corner of the world. And they don't give a shit.

Which is fine. When I was their age, I didn't give a shit either.

 

ikea desks and bad bookshelves

There's no rain to wait for today, but still I sit here with a coffee and ponder awhile before heading out for my run. I wrote around things yesterday rather than through them, but it cleared enough of the to-do list to give me some breathing room.

I'm sat at my dad's desk instead of my own. Mine's in my room and I find it somewhat tough to work when I know my bed is behind me. My father's retired and so his desk goes much unused. It's become a storage shelf for the mountains of paperwork having a pension generates. There's also an unused MacBook Air, one of the "Fenway Bricks" with his name inscribed along with the years that he was a batboy for the Red Sox. It's not his proper old desk, sadly. That's in storage. This thing came from Ikea. I helped my mom build it some years ago. On the wall to my left is a large, Victorian print of Boston from the air. It's only just occurred to me that it must have been sketched from a hot-air balloon. On the wall in front of me is my dad' degree from The Naval Academy, the odd commendation and a beautifully calligraphed print of The Prayer of a Midshipman. Next to these is a window that looks out onto the back garden, where the leaves seem greener than they should at this time of year. The other half of the room is the library, though it represents so small a percentage of the family's books that it seems a bit of a misnomer. The rest are in storage. Next to the horrid black bookshelves are tall stacks of volumes for which there is no room. There's a tv in here as well, but you'd barely notice it if it wasn't on. 

We moved in here in a rush, in 2006. Our old house sold and we had nowhere to go. I found this place for my folks as kind of a stop-gap, as somewhere nearby to set up home until something better came along. We didn't want to sell the old place, but shit happens.

I don't feel quite at home here, which is fine, I won't be here for long. I'm used to a sense of displacement. 

But nor do my parents, which is a shame as it is their home, or what's passing for it at the moment. 

poor lager and cocktail sausages

I'm waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can go for a run without drowning. The cat is feeling mischievous and lingers just around the corner, or peeking out from under a chair, somewhere he feels unobserved, where he can watch and plot. As soon as he realises I've seen him, he bolts, disappearing up the stairs. Or he just starts nonchalantly licking a forepaw, as though he was never really interested anyway. 

Last night I brought a few wines to my local, wines that I'd made, as they'd asked to try them. The owner and the manager liked them. I liked them. It was that nice time in a pub just before it gets busy on a Friday. Everyone walking through the door genuinely happy to be there, to be finished with the week. We sat and we chatted and tasted and folks arrived and drank their beer while we sipped wine in the corner. A spittoon made a brief appearance but was put away because it was a Friday evening, and there's little point spitting on a Friday evening.

After the pub and wine I went to a friend's office for beer and nibbles. Friends and strangers milled about and when the good beer ran out, the bad beer was drunk. It was late when I left and the walk home seemed particularly long. I was full of poor lager and cocktail sausages. It wasn't raining, but the streets sounded damp and wet. 

The rain's just got harder. I ate some eggs and bacon so have to wait a bit longer if I want to run. By then it will be dark and the mud along the river thick. The cat's not hiding anymore. He's napping on a chair behind my desk. 

It seems the perfect sort of day for ignoring everything I have to do.

stop. hermit-time.

There's a dangerous friction between the number of words I have to write in the coming weeks and the amount of times I'm expected to appear in either a social or professional context. I'm not good at saying no to people. I like seeing my friends, raising a glass or two. I'm easily flattered - the idea of being needed professionally plays well to my vanity, and having spent a year unemployed (freelancing, of course), I'm loathe pass up on opportunities to help out, and even get paid for it.

I like being useful, and around friends. 

But I like writing more. I love it. It's what I want my work to be. I like having my cup of tea next to my keyboard, my notebook open while I try to decipher my scribbled missives and improve on the words as I transcribe them. I like wearing my big headphones and listening to Miles Davis or Beethoven. I still find it hard to write to music with lyrics. The only words I want to hear are my own. I like the give of the keys beneath my fingers, the abstract rhythm they reveal when the letters turn to words turn to sentences turn to paragraphs turn to chapters turn to a book.

I lose myself in it, and that's a good thing. 

Time to decline invites. Switch my phone to airplane mode and make sure my polite 'no's' will not be easily converted into 'just the one'. It's time to go back to the writing hermit that I was 6 years ago, to place the book in front of everything else save maybe remembering to breathe and wash. 

Time to remember what I love doing, and do that. 

fleeting

Once again the weekend went too quickly, and I find myself having crossed out nothing from my rather long to-do list. In fact, quite a few things got added to it. Big things, important things. The road isn't so much forking as it is dividing exponentially. As a recovered comic book reader, it's as though I'm staring at a multiverse of futures, with the only constants being irksome, inescapable truths. 

And so I wake up on a Monday with a clenched chest and play decision-tennis in my head while I sip my espresso, munch on toast and catch up on Twitter. And then I look at the clock and see these brief moments to myself have taken too long, the decision-tennis rally is on-going, like those old Sampras/Agassi Nike adverts. 

So I write something, anything, to break the rally. To be doing instead of pondering and worrying. 

And so I'm late.

saturday morning notes

I didn't bring any wine or whisky back this time. My train was early, and goodbyes at this point seem as clichéd as commenting on the weather, or asking whose round it is. I thought maybe while I was up there I would set in stone a date for my return, but I didn't. There are possibilities, some quite close, but nothing solid. Like a spun out yo-yo, there's nothing yanking me back up. Well, nothing except nostalgia and missing my mates. 

We ate at the local last night. My oldest sister's over from Ireland, and while I'm sure she's still crazy, it was lovely to see her. The pub was warm and all the tables seemed happy with their respective company. It was loud and lovely and the food, beer and wine all tasted great. 

The future's a little clearer. Well, parts of it are. The book and the books that follow are no longer mirages in the distance. Slowly, potential new adventures take shape. 

It was raining earlier and now it's not. Instead, a grey Saturday with puddles to dodge and closed umbrellas. Might go for a run. From downstairs I can hear the espresso machine pushing out coffee and I think maybe I'll have a cup first.

The last of the coloured leaves cling to the branches, holding on to the autumn and refusing to let winter blow them away. 

 

Buy My Book. Please.

visiting rights

A somewhat barren and grey autumnal England gave way to some sun north of the border and white horses riding the waves of the sea to the east. I have two small rucksacks with me and that's all I'll be bringing back after this brief visit to Scotland. Both may be laden with wine, but there won't be any more baggage. What's there will just be heavier. 

This trip was planned awhile ago, before I left the last time with a van full of all my stuff. I knew I would be back for this. I'd sorted out a place to stay, two lunches and a nice bottle for my host. As of yet, though, I've no return planned. When I leave Thursday morning, that's it until next time, and I don't know when that next time is.

 

And that's a little strange for me.

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back on the path

The following was written Sunday, 11 November, but I thought the Vonnegut quote more apt to post that day:

It rained last night. Quite a lot, as it happens. It woke me up in the wee hours and I got up to shut the window. The cat wasn't too bothered. He thought maybe for a moment that I was getting up at 4 in the morning to feed him, but then he's not very bright. He's just a cat, after all.

It had stopped by the time I rolled out of bed. I put my running kit together without too much of a problem. Everything where I left it over a month ago. I wore a hoody over my t-shirt because it's November. I selected the short run playlist on my iPod. 

It was muddy, damp and crowded. My legs felt caked in rust; muscles, tendons and joints shrieked in discord and disharmony. Two miles in and my lungs got used to it, at least. It felt wretched. Every other runner was faster, and seemed a great deal less on the verge of death.

I tripped at one point, and somehow managed to right myself with out careening head first into the mud. Ninja-like reflexes revealed themselves that have never been there before and I doubt will appear again.

I reached the end and staggered through my cool down walk. Armies of runners passed me; fitter, faster. 

But I made it. And I'll do it again. And it will get easier. 

Or that's what I keep telling myself. 

…and all music is"

From Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions' - 

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

There are some quotes, some pieces of writing, that I cling to; that I clutch in my head and heart and hold tight. I call on them to remind me of the beauty and truth of great writing. This seemed a good time to share this one.

away from it all

I woke up with a bit of a start this morning. The cat was delighted, thinking my purpose was to fawn over and feed him. Instead I rolled out of bed and checked my phone to see the results. Getting info like that from Twitter is hilarious, because often the 'news' tweet is lost in the endless stream of reaction tweets. You don't find out what's happening, just what people think of what's happening. 

I voted over a month ago. Scoured the web regarding all the little, poorly written amendments to work out what they actually meant. Checked the record on the judges up for reelection and whatnot. Tried to be thorough and make an informed enough decision. Some of them required more research than others. 

My home nation seems a very different place these days. Some different for the better, some different for the worse. It's never not strange to be so detached from it and yet still be able to look in. To watch The Daily Show, read the NYT, Boston Globe or Washington Post. To see the news as it happens, to watch the thoughts of millions pouring out into the internet and yet not be in it, not really.

To feel a sense of pride, but from a distance.

 

Buy My Book. Please.