Sometimes, though, I manage to shake it off and do a little something that's productive - let's say, work on some of my old short stories - and then I almost feel good, and feel like I'm using rather than pissing away my time. Like yesterday. Soon, I feel, my 'to do' list - the list that had all those great ideas on it about new books and publishing other people - is gonna get whittled down to just pushing out a collection of stories and poems already written and then...maybe leaving this world once more: already, I'm dreaming of Guatemala or Tibet or New Zealand or something. I've only been 'back' two months. But the fact is, in England, I'm a waster. I'm not interested. I don't fit in. What is life here? Life is squawking babies and jobs you probably don't like and conversations about boring subjects and way too much busyness, and one day just to buy a house and then spend the rest of your foreseeable future paying for it and 'doing it up'. At least, that's how it seems to me. At least, that's how the people I'm surrounded by are living now. On the road I...I feel at home.
It's weird to be a wanderer. I don't want this normal life. I thought I did but I don't. I get bored so quickly. I feel whatever remains of my youth slipping away. I tell myself I ought to learn how to get settled, be 'normal', work and earn and stop moving and do the partner and child thing - and within weeks I feel like I've lost myself and my only respite is addiction to this computer. I tell myself to get rid of it - but then what? Lonely walks on the beach contemplating stuff and feeling even more bored? For sure, it would propel me out of here even quicker. I find this so, so hard.
And so...we'll see. Time will tell. Blah blah blah. I do know I have to produce something of the things I'd set myself up for in Mexico - but if it's just a collection of short stories and maybe Mikey's blog then so be it. The book about Derren Brown's already out the window - I tried it a little and didn't like it. Other things, too. And once more it seems it's not so much about ticking things off a list by doing them, it's about looking at them and realising that I don't want them at all. Rory thinks he wants babies? Well, shall we give him babies or shall we stick him in a house with kids and show him how noisy and annoying they are? And Rory thinks he wants England? So let's send him there, in the bleak mid-winter, and give him it, and let him experience it and see. You could have kept me in Mexico - but that wouldn't have taught me anything, I would have just longed, as always, for the grass on the other side of the fence. But this grass sucks; the grass everywhere sucks. And so what remains?
- A dream of Israel. Ten years ago a woman who claimed to be a prophet told me I should go there, walk in the footsteps of Jesus, go on some divine journey. I've never let this go. And a year ago, when I was plotting to get away, I was writing about it and in came my girlfriend singing, 'oh little town of Bethlehem' and in another time and place that would've been the sign I needed. Instead, I eventually went to Mexico - and there I met an Israeli - my first Israeli friend - and that sort of seemed to put the seal on it. I don't know what's there - but it's on my list, and there's no real way to take it off other than by going there.
- Suddenly, though, there's an offer of a free flight to Guatemala, by way of a volunteer drug study. That's quite tempting. That could happen any time between now and September, and I could go for anywhere between a week and six months. It, of course, is totally impractical, but - what the hey! It's free!
- My ex who I used to play music with has started lining me up for some gigs with her, which on the one hand is cool, 'cos it's an extraordinary amount of money for very little work, and on the other it's commitment to dates and places in the future, which is a pain when I'm feeling like this. I never ditch out on anybody, though - not when it might drop them in the shit, not when I've said I'll do it - but if I have to, then I have to. I really have to look after myself. And, to be honest, it would take her about twenty minutes to find herself a much better guitar player than me.
- Books: I might as well do Mikey's blog (even though I haven't worked on it for two weeks) and I might as well do some sort of collection of my short stories and poems and stuff (have been working on that, and it feels sort of good and fulfilling and I like them). Other than that, I've lost interest. I can't even remember what was on my list. Maybe it will happen. Maybe I should just wait for a publisher to get interested - and if they don't, then fuck it. I've also lost interest in the idea of publishing other people.
- Still, I am looking for jobs around here, and that may totally change everything. I know I don't cope well with having too much time on my hands - especially in a cold and dreary and concrete urban environment. Perhaps one day I'll find somewhere more natural to live!
- I thought I had one person reading this - but now I think I was wrong about that. That's okay though, I'm not proud of what a downer I've been in these words. Maybe if I had someone to talk to in real life - but my friends here are way too busy with their kids and other things to have 'conversations', and everyone else I guess I just feel this pressure to be something other than 'down' - the supporter, the cheery one, the one who has it all together. Probably ego stuff, that is. Plus, it's just a bit shameful, really, when there's nothing really wrong and so much of what I feel is just disapproving, negative, anti-this, anti-that. Hell, my one imagined reader nearly died in a car crash and she doesn't seem so glum. In fact, nobody does. Just me. And so I hide and hide and I wonder if I'm becoming more and more like my reclusive, autistic, angry brother by the day. Now that would be scary. Oh, what is this thing called life! Where is it! Why me, my youth dripping away, wasted, as the oldies always say it is, and nothing nothing nothing to do with it, to save me, no one, no thing, no where. Bored! And frustrated! And anxious and lazy and disappointed and disappointing, and totally, totally lacking that part of a person that won't take no for an answer, that gets up and gets doing it, that makes the things they want happen - and finds things they want. But what is there in this world for me? What, what, what?
That's kind of how I feel, really: a real lack of interest in the world. And in life, even - for once upon a time my inner-life would have sustained me, the changes that I observed there, the things that I worked on and saw come to fruition, awareness and attention and growth. But now, none of that either. I ought to be righting things about myself, I suppose - but I really can't be arsed. I lack motivation. I'm mostly okay - when compared to my former self - and I guess I feel no need to push myself beyond it, not like in the days of meditation and vipassana and vision quests and inner-growth. But maybe that's where it's at. Except...nothing in me - so what do I want?
- I want to feel good. Whatever that takes, that's what I want. Even if it means giving up thinking, giving up wanting, giving up hope. Of course, this isn't consciously what I want - but it's true, I suppose. At least I think it is...
- For once upon a time I would've said God - but God eludes me and I don't even know what that is. Once upon a time it was everything - now, it's nothing. Now, it seems like something of the past. But, oh, to meet someone who knows 'my God' and could spark that flame again!
- Wife and kiddies? Ha! So much of my last travels I thought about that, and thought about the ones who could make it happen, and was resolved to it - and within weeks of being back in England it was nowhere. Oh, my mind! Such a trickster!
- To travel. Yeah, sure, I'll go off to Israel, and maybe even try the 'round the world with eighty quid thing', and probably one day go to New Zealand. I don't like England, I don't think. Too busy. Nobody has any time. My friend's husband is from Nepal and he marvels at us crazy Brits, working 'only eight hours a day' and still having so much less time for each other than they have in his native land. No time sucks.
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