Sunday's times and fortune's cookies are bereavement counsellors, I think...

So Sunday's here and even though I've got to go to Wales right now – as in, I'm already three hours late – I still thought I'd try and maintain the discipline and put a little something online. And mainly what I think I want to say is how glad I am to be writing again, and how quickly I've noticed the improvement in my actual day-to-day life because of it. I don't know why but something happens – and it's not just because of the expression of thoughts, or even the wish-jar phenomenon, but something else besides. Something about how the sharing of the embarrassments of my actual life here, in front of you – and not even in front of real life friends – suddenly makes it all too real, and makes me want to let go of it. Like…I can confess my Risk-playing habits to my partner (now ex-) and to my closest friends, or talk about how much I want to do certain things, but it doesn't seem to change anything – and yet, here, it does. Maybe because this is me getting real in front of my self, in front of the universe. Or maybe someone else can come up with the answer...

The point is: I've had a good week! Suddenly I've done something good every day. Suddenly, I've barely done anything bad (eg, seven pointless hours of computer nonsense until dawn when I've got work in the morning). No, instead I've got myself out there, had a bit of greenery and some interaction – and only one game of Risk the whole week! Monday I went down this local lake and danced and sang a bit in the dark night and enjoyed that lots, and saw some people I haven't seen for years; Tuesday I spent the evening in a beautiful churchyard in Barwick-in-Elmet playing gee-tar and humming to myself; Wednesday I went off in the daytime for this massive walk just randomly exploring the countryside 'round Wakefield, and ended up in this stunning country park/golf course, with woods and a stream, and even the sound of no-cars, and all barely three miles from where I sit now! (and then I watched Liverpool lose in the Champions' League); Thursday I worked and then played football with this chap I may be getting together with, music-wise; and Friday I drove around a bit exploring and then went over to South Elmsall to see a good old chum I haven't seen in five years, and we stayed up till 2ish chatting and a jolly a good time it was indeed; and yesterday I spent with a lady (and this morning too!)

And that was my week – and maybe that's just a normal week for most people, but for me it ain't, and it actually took real effort – or, at least, remembrance – to do those social and nature things, and not stay in this habit where I've come in from work, slapped the computer on and then six hours later stumbled upstairs and fell asleep cursing myself for the wasted life that is t'internet and online gaming and all that other stuff that's actually worse than death when you think about it, because at least when you die there's some kind of movement, some kind of momentum, whereas after six hours of Risk there's absolutely nothing to show for it, and never could be, and all I've done is make a machine out of myself, detach the human and become something that could never grow in any way at all, if you know what I mean. So, in a nutshell, it was good, and better, and I do believe I owe it all to my writing here, and the strange alchemical process that takes place when I take my thoughts and experiences and transform them into black squiggles and shapes on a white background and press 'post'.

And now, I suppose, I really ought to go to Wales and have four days in the countryside, on a farm, getting away from all this and just digging whatever awaits me there. Ciao!

PS I had my car stereo nicked yesterday – and my immediate boss is really bugging me at the moment – so…I just thought I'd mention that, that's all, get it off my chest, etc. Can't say it didn't bring me down – I don't like hassles – but, hey ho, that's life I suppose! See ya!

But...PPS Myspace is wank! Why is it so bloody hard to post an entry!? Why does it change what I've written and add stupid things and refuse to do proper line breaks and alter the font sizes and make it look total pants. My God, how I'd love to earn a billion dollars by being this shoddy! I tell ya...

A list of things to do...

So I fancy a write – not a Sunday kind of, get-it-off-your-chest write – but a sharing of some of the ideas and thoughts that have come to me this past week, since I re-rentered the world of 'internet blogging' (as it's come to be known – and am I alone amongst old skool 'online diarists' in hating that word 'blogging' or, as I suspect, do those of us who were doing it ten years ago feel that it just ain't the same as it was 'back in the day', that it was somehow more real, more cutting edge, more anarchic back then? I suppose, honesty, we're just a little less special now there are several million of us…) Anyway, the thing is, what writing on the 'net does for me is somehow cathartic, somehow liberating – and it affects my actual, real life in quite interesting and unusual ways. Maybe that's the way it is for everybody; certainly it is for me. Journaling/blogging/sharing here ain't just about connecting with others/making new friends (he says, fingers rushing down throat), it's about moving my life on, expressing (pushing out) my thoughts and turning them into words – and then turning them again into deeds. It's not even really about having it read – although, of course, I do like that, and probably check these silly comment things as compulsively as anyone – but it's about having a space to release the myriad fish-words that are constantly swimming around in my head and giving them here to the universe – and in that, somehow, as if by magic, in wonderment, miracles are made. It's always been that way for me. It's like my own personal, dream-come-true, really-does-work wish jar…

And so, with that ill thought-out and poorly composed paragraph out of the way, I thought I might make a list of the things that it has occurred to me to do of late. To whit, A List of Things It Has Occurred To Me To Do of Late (In No Particular Order):

1. Tidy my bedroom (50% done)
2. Get out more into greenery (the last 3 days running now!)
3. Sell some surplus bits from my car (just uploaded onto eBay)
4. Stick a saucy video of me – yet to be made – on yuvutu.com
5. Investigate doing an MA in Creative Writing (begun first tentative steps)
6. Play my music in front of a crowd more regularly
7. Record my best songs really well
8. Trim my beard
9. Plant my magic onions
10. Stick all my uni writing together in one nice, ready-to-print-out booklet, called 'Rory writes! The University Years' (Oh, how cheesy!)
11. Wean myself off internet Risk (no game since Sunday! Wahey!)
12. Look into getting some sort of certification for spiritual healing (NFSH)
13. Find a nice place to live (somewhere near Leeds?) (Though seems less important now that I'm getting more green and less comp…)
14. Sort out my woman/mother issues (Some headway)
15. Play squash
16. Fix my bicycle
17. Write on here (Various lists; various recaps; various thoughts on the future; whatever else occurs to me)
18. Rehearse for Countdown (should be on within the next few months)
19. Get myself organised, workwise (because even though I'm jolly good at selling – takings up about 35% - my bureaucracy is shoddy to say the least)
20. I think that's about it

And, you know, typing that it seems, really, I haven't that much to do. I guess that's the beauty of making lists. For weeks now I've been walking 'round thinking, I've got to do this, I've got to do that – but when I set it out in black and white there's not really anything there. How amusing! How strange! And, sure, a little bit embarrassing, because it's not exactly interesting – and I guess I could just leave it here, in Word, un-internetted, but I won't – but, hey, I think it just might have served it's purpose! Even just actually thinking about writing this stuff up here has made me start doing it!

Have I ever told you how much I love to type? :-)

And while I'm in the mood...

First things first, I think, a recap on where I've been the last five years, taking my deletion of the old webpage in Dublin as a starting point - because even though I have written on the web since then, it never really feels to me that I have, that it always ended there. I'm not sure why. (Maybe I'm just writing this for one specific person, one eager beaver reader who hasn't heard from me since then and, like really needs this information for some hitherto unknown reason that will make itself all too apparent by the time I get to the bottom of this page or something. Or not, as the case may be. Or something. Etc...)

So...

February '02 I flew to Dublin - this is after my two month visit to Canada, where I met up with Sara again, after a series of prophetic dreams and messages and... - and I stayed with my friend John for what turned into several months, sometimes wonderful (our insane busking down the Temple Bar dressed in parachutes and feathers and dancing to penny whistles and finger cymbals neither of us could play) and often maddening, because, as usual, I didn't have a clue what I was doing with my life...

By May - after a brief and unhappy trip to Paris - I was back in Yorkshire, spurred on by a message - a real, live phone, non-woowoo message from Mother Meera - to get myself a job, and I thought getting right back to where it all started from seemed to be the answer. Then I started seeing postmen on their red bikes and in their red vans and feeling bizarrely jealous, and it occurred to me that that's what I should do, so I applied for a few postie jobs, including one in Dereham, Norfolk, while on a weekend to visit an old high-school friend there. That one I got, and I promptly moved to Norfolk, staying first with my friend, and then in a rented room, and then - sickened by the feelings 'four walls' inspired - in the lovely local graveyard, which was more my cup of tea (though the post office weren't too happy when they found out). I spent my spare time in the company of lots of teenagers in another local churchyard, singing songs, doing healings, having giggles and getting merry on holy water, disappointed as I was by what I perceived of a lack of imagination in the adult population to see no further than the TV and the pub, and boring 'adult' conversation. It was a wonderful time - although I was, basically, mad. From it all, however, through one of the postmen's mums, I met a teacher, accepted an invite to go on a school trip, accepted another invite to help out a bit in the classroom, and then decided that I wanted to be a teacher, that this was my vocation. For that, though, I was told I needed a degree - so, despite lack of necessary qualifications and it being very much 'the last minute', I bagged myself a place at the University of Kent in Canterbury to do a degree in Religious Studies (I thought at the time I would teach RE in schools and blow people's minds and open them up to the marvels of spirituality beyond mere old dry religion - how naive I was!)

And so, in September '02 - after a trip to Germany to see Mother Meera - I landed in Canterbury, Kent, £3.50 in my pocket, and nothing but a guitar and a sleeping bag to my name. My plan was to live in a caravan somewhere beautiful and cheap (so as to avoit the dreaded 'student debt') - and within a few days I had found a man who owned a pinetum - a reserve for rare pine trees - which he would let me live on for five pounds a week. A few days later I bought a caravan for £60 (given to me when I opened a student back account) and I was set. I lived there my entire first year, chopping wood, cooking on open fires, running naked through the frosty morning grass, freezing my ass off through the winter, always alone, but always with lovely visitors for Sunday soup around the fire and treats brought by Sharon the American girl from her job in a cafe in town. And beautiful it was. I also went to uni, struggled with my hatred of academia, and academics, and authority, and did little work - though I did get a proper job, selling cakes - and got fairly decent grades. I overcame my need to move - almost impossibly hard at times; I hadn't stayed in one place for more then three months in over five years - and I got settled into things. I also got myself something of a girlfriend - beginning when, one day in January '03, I walked out of a class on Science Fiction and became gripped with an urge to buy a plane ticket to Canada; I consulted the I Ching, in the hope that it would disuade me, but all it could say was, "it furthers one to cross the great water" and, twenty-four hours later I was there. A few days after that I went to bed with Sara - Sara from Mexico '99, Sara from British Columbia '01 - and we got ourselves into something - initially long-distant, punctuated by fortnights together here and there, and then, starting in May '04, something more permanent. We lived in China for a few months that year, and then I took a year out from my studies to live in Ontario after that, while she finished her degree, and then in September '05 we both moved back to Canterbury so that I could finish mine. In the mean time, by hook and by crook, I had switched my degree to English and Creative Writing - which felt so right, when compared to Religious Studies - and spent my second year living in a large student house with six others - another important step in my ongoing process of getting back on the Earth - and equally as hard as breaking through the barrier of needing to always be moving somewhere new. But there was light on the other side. And in June 2006 I graduated from UKC with a 2:1 in English and American Literature and Creative Writing and, as it turned out, I wasn't even that far off a first (if only I had tried...) I also had a short story published in an anthology called 'Bracket' (Comma Press, 2005) and wrote about 20 percent of my book. And that brings us to...

June 2006, when I started work as a teacher of English in a secondary school in Folkestone - the culmination, I suppose, of what I had set myself up for four years previously. And it was good, too, at times - but incredibly and increasingly hard at others, and I only lasted until Christmas, at which time I said goodbye to the kids and to the school and to Canterbury and to Kent and I decided it was time for pastures new, and Yorkshire, and I managed to get myself a job managing an Oxfam shop in Leeds. She too got herself a job in Leeds - starting the same day - but some time between landing it and starting it something changed - something between us, I suppose - and when an offer of a better job in a better part of the country came up, she took it, and we decided to break up. It was a strange break-up really: no hard feelings, no real accusations and recriminations and massive blow-ups and fights - indeed, the week before we decided to call it quits, we had a lovely ten days in Morocco, and one last lovely weekend in Canterbury, and all was as well as it had ever been. So...strange, really - especially after all the signs and wonders and stories associated with it, but...there you go. There it goes. It goes. It's gone. Now I live alone in Wakefield - unless you count my brother - and life begins anew, and continues the same as it ever did; I moved here on February 4th; I started my new job with Oxfam the next day; I appeared on and won a Channel 5 quiz show about three weeks after that; I've acquired a new lover and re-met some old friends somewhere along the way - and I've struggled at times to adjust, to accept this loss, to get to grips with my new life, my new surroundings. I've hated it occassionally - and had fleeting thoughts about wanting to get away. Right now, though, writing this to you - writing, always, it always has to be writing - I feel suddenly okay and right with the world, like it's all in place, like things aren't really that bad after all. I crave that feeling so much - of being on track, of being where and when and how I should be - and just this moment I have it. Maybe it's the trees; maybe it's the words, the expressions, the realisations...maybe it's something else. And maybe that's just empty poetry and maybe I'm starting to dwindle now...maybe I've said all I need to say for one night...

Have I got everything? I'm sure you'll let me know if I've missed anything important! (You couldn't check my spelling/typos while you're at it, could you?) :-)

Lots of love!

Rory

Terminally ill hamster strikes discord into the hearts of minions and also turnips (twice)

Ah. So. Blogging. Well. Here we are again, Rory at a keyboard and another thought about getting back on line, about saying what I want to do – to write every Sunday, etc – and about catching up on where I've been. But…been there before and…I know my head and…so many places to start at and start at the beginning and just let it flow, have a go and…that's enough for one night, I'm tired – I feel my emotions start to open up already – I think I've had enough…

I don't want to open up because then I'll cry, and crying's messy, and…[something or other] will be gone. Well, we all die, don't we? (I don't know what that means).

Anyway…

I had this idea, that I'd write here every Sunday, that I needed a place to express myself, to share my thoughts, to get things off my chest, and I needed to write. And Sunday seemed like a good day for it, because, for some reason, all that expression and communication business seemed to roll around quite naturally when Sunday came in that 4-year relationship I was in that just finished, and that made me all think maybe in the religion of the future Sunday's not the day for rest but the day for getting things said, for sitting down with your loved one, for clearing away the week just gone and making space for the week to come and…there I go, blabbing again. But I'm not sorry; to say I was sorry would be to say that I haven't said anything useful – and to say that would say, I've wasted your time, and I don't want that. In any case, I don't like that. It's just that…focus, that's what I need – to bring some focus to the proceedings. But then isn't it just jolly nice to be able to blab, string it together, make no sense, stream of yadda-yadda stylee? Maybe. Depends on the purpose, I suppose.

I had this idea, I'd write down the things I wanted to do – the things I keep saying I'd like to do – and think that maybe having them here in some kind of concrete form might be of some benefit to me, get the ball rolling, etc – because, for sure, the ball needs to get rolling: I'm stuck. I'm stuck internally, stuck in my head, stuck…stuck. Stuck. And now I could just sit here typing that word over and over – but I won't , because already…

My, I've done a lot of things – and now I don't know where to go; I'll be honest with you, the world holds little appeal to me; it's hard to get excited about anything these days. I crave the new – but what new is there? Except kids, of course. Wow-ee, that would be something. But not much chance of that now my relationship with Sara has ended. Oh well. I guess that's been the big thing these past few years – that and…well, that, really – and now that it's over, just on the brink of seriousness and wedding bells and children – then it's a whole new world again. A blank canvas. A new start. An empty page. But what to write, to draw, to create? Man, I haven't even written a song in five years, I just don't have the words any more. But maybe this will help. Anyways, I like it so far!

I love to type, I do. Did I ever tell you that? Or did you just know from reading my words? Are you mad at me that I deleted the eight-hundred-thousand? Or are you excited for the future, to see how they will be reborn and take shape anew? Perhaps I am too – but just not yet; the time ain't now. No, now's the time for…for specifics? For the down-to-Earth? For the here-and-now? Like…the humdrum?! Ah, okay…

I live in Wakefield; Wakefield sucks! Wakefield's like a void, a cultural vacuum – and, alas, I live with the grandmaster of all that is Wakefield, my terminally depressed brother, who sucks the life out of everything, the ghoul-who-walks, the dead. That can't be good for a man, can it!? No, I'd like to live in Leeds; I'd like to share a place with some funky (clean-livin') bohemians and have talk 'n' discussion and creativity and excitement. Something to come home to other than internet Risk, fish finger sandwiches and muesli. Hard to believe I'm living like this. Me! Ha!

I work for Oxfam; I like my job. It's cool – and if I lived in Leeds, I'd live even closer, could sell my car, good get a bit more out of life. Leeds is nice – there's a line you cross somewhere between the two and I really feel the difference. Yes, moving to Leeds would be the answer to all my problems (he jests) (in some seriousness/hope) (he jests again)…

Is that enough for one day? Or you want me to pretend that I'm writing now for the people who used to read The Rubadub and who've been wondering what I've been up to these past five years since I deleted it all in Dublin library? And then I went 'bit loopy – and then I wanted to work – and then I got a job as a postman – and then I lived in a graveyard – and then I went to uni – and then I became a teacher – and then I hated that – and then I moved to Yorkshire – and then I sat down here – and then I typed this sentence – and then I told you about the bits in between.

About Sara. And about the four years we had together – and about how we got together – and about how we suddenly became 'no longer together' kinda out of the blue after a lovely holiday to Morocco three months ago and for no apparent reason – and all the stuff that entails. Also I tell you about uni, and getting my degree, and…oh, man, I seemed so young back then – and not that I'm even anything but young now but, wow! how 26 seems so young now that you're 31 – and, of course, you must bear with me because all this will settle down in due time, once things have…well, settled down. (Oh, what a way with words!)

The other thing is: oh my God, have I really become addicted to internet Risk (and all things internet in general)!!? Oh, it's so desperately sad! (lol) Oh, how it ever came to this (he smiles ruefully and shakes his head, not without some amusement but also with what is sure to be a huge regret one day when arms are brittle and falling off and flimsy lips want to tell young jack-o-me-lad, "youth's wasted on the young, you know"). Well it is, I guess – but what to do with all this youth, all this young? Here in Wakefield? In this day-and-age? Oh, how I miss those open American highways and my sleeping bag and tent my only friend!

And, oh, how I love my drama (in words), he smiles ruefully once again.

Hey, this is fun – a damn sight more fun than internet Risk, that's for goddamned sure. I think I might do this again next week. Ciao!

PS What I really wanted to write about: how do you choose a woman? I mean, discounting love - whatever that is - how do you judge it? What wins? Companion or prospective mother? Boobs and sexability or communication? Humour or nipples? Aid-in-growth or non-naggingness? Face or the bumfun factor? Yes, I really am that shallow! 'Shame time and memory and discretion got the better of that line of thought, eh?

And now it really is ciao.