All the weekend’s refereeing was off because of frozen pitches and snow so I had fresh legs for the Sunday night five-a-side. I needed them: it was the last game of the season and we needed a win to finish top of the league; anything less and we would have ended up third and without a medal or promotion. We did it – but talk about last minute drama. We were 3-1 down and then got it back to 4-4 at half-time. Nicked a goal ahead and then went a goal behind. Got to 7-6 and looked like we were starting to dominate, and then let in another sloppy one. They were tiring but it was still 7-7 with five minutes to go. No medal, no promotion. Then Jamie went on a run and managed to dink one over the keeper, which he’s been trying to do for months. This time he did it. Fitting. Carl knocks in one more and it finishes 9-7 and we’ve won the league on goal difference. The team we beat came second and another team were a further point behind. Always the hard way: it reminds me of our London
In other football news I went to check out further this coaching opportunity that’s come up, and I guess I’m going to go for it. It feels a little bit out of my depth, and I’m hesitant, but I guess that’s the way it always goes. No point only doing things you’re comfortable with. Could be the start of something special. Ironic that it’s something in total contradiction to what I would have planned myself. But, like I said, I was expecting a door to open and perhaps this is the one. What’s to lose? Not much – except the commitment to being in Leeds September to December when I’d figured I might be off bumming around in the sun of Mexico and my hot springs
Still, there’s a contentment here in Leeds . Things I enjoy. None of those thoughts of ‘what the hell am I doing with my life?’ Perhaps it is time finally to stop with the gadding about and be the kind of guy who lives somewhere and has a home. To stop living a life based on fantasy books and start living a life based on life. Leeds and fish and chips and squash till I’m sixty and boys chasing a ball and planting your garden and being there when the flowers grow and looking at someone and saying, gee, we’ve seen each every week for the last ten years and even grown somewhat older together. That sort of thing.
But fantasy dies hard: I shared what I thought was my last looking back and the next day I woke up at five a.m. with a head full of ‘supermarket girl’ and more missed opportunities. And instead of just observing as the final flailings of the old thought patterns as I have done with all the other things I instead plotted in my head incredible synchronistic re-meetings and foolish Hollywood-style romantic dreams. In a nutshell, I refused to let it go. Two or three dreams then followed and I even dug out that daft dentist’s phone number from a few years back, now that I’ve got my international SIM…
The pretty much complete story I recapped a few years ago here. But then there came a weird slight addendum in that, two years back, when I was in Baja, I got picked up hitch-hiking by a real old ancient couple who said they were sure this girl worked at a dentists in the town where they lived in Colorado
Goddamn: I’ve gone crazy. I live in Leeds with a wonderful girlfriend and here I am composing foolish romantic stories about people long gone from my long distant past. I don’t even live here: I live in the dreams in my head from my long ago youth on the roads of America
I’ll ring the dentists today. They’ll say, sorry, no one ever worked here of that name, and I’ll tick it off my list. I’ll be a football coach in Leeds instead of a beat lost wanderer hacking through the bear-infested woods of Montana Leeds . Where will be in ten years time if we continue down this road? What price foolish escaping Buddha prince dreams in reality, huh? If I’d never read a book, would I think the way I think? What need of anything except the instruction: do what’s in your heart to do? Because everything else just distracts and confuses. A tree puts out a branch without any need for conscious thought – and the branch always inhabits the space it was destined for. The tree existed even before the seed hit the floor. It’s just a matter of time.
Elsewhere this week I got the first of last month’s assignments back and the grade was 64, which was about what I was expecting/hoping for. I hadn’t wanted to look – had decided it would be better not to – but it was right there displayed in my inbox when I came to it. Had realised that nothing good would come of looking, you see: if I got 68+, I would be thinking about making the effort to get a first; if I’d got less than 60, I would be depressed; and if I got something in between, I would be the same as I was without knowing. Certainly no bonus in any case. But luckily I got the one most palatable, and I relaxed knowing that a first is probably beyond me now and so I don’t have to try so hard – can continue being chill about things – and also know that my chill is about good enough.
It’s weird: I feel this degree is just about over. We’ve two modules left and one is a 6000-word piece due in May, and another 12000 words due in September, and that’s basically it. Both are on self-proposed subjects and both can be creative pieces too. In my head I’m thinking it could, at a minimum, be a couple of weeks work. Actual classes, too, are effectively over, with maybe just six or seven scheduled between now and the middle of June. I know I’m a terrible student but, also, uni sure is a weird old thing.
If my tutors were reading this I’m sure I’d be in for a hiding. And as a bursary student I probably ought to be giving a little bit more. But the problem is that all the things that interest me in writing don’t fit with the program, and I’m too far gone not to put my focus on them. I’m thinking long projects. Books. Autobiographical musings. I don’t have the talent for fiction nor do I even really believe in it. What’s the point of yet another short story, another poem, another novel even? Just reports from a made-up world to divert someone’s attention for a few hours so that they don’t have to think about themselves. Newspapers are pretty much the same, I suppose – except the world’s slightly less made-up.
Yes, a bad student, like I say.
But, in other writing news, I managed to brave myself up enough to peek into the ‘book’ I started before Christmas – those 20000 words in three days, remember – and, as always happens, I actually really liked it. I managed to complete the chapter that I’d left it at and liked that too – just a brief addition, but another 1500 words – and I think I can probably get on with that again this week. If I can get flowing on it – curse Christmas! curse uni projects! and curse my inhibition and reluctance and fear! – then maybe it’ll get done in no time.
The other thing I did this week was finally Kindle-ise Discovering Beautiful – I’d tried it several times before but the formatting always went completely cuckoo and seemed like it would take dozens of hours to fix. Well they must have improved the conversion software, ‘cos it came out pretty much okay and so hopefully will be up there soon, priced only 99¢. Save some trees huh? And perhaps do the same with the one above – and the one after that, and the one after that…
A whole raft of ridiculous, quickly-typed autobiographical books that don’t make any sense and don’t fulfil any purpose except in fulfilling my desire of writing down every little stupid thing I did and thought in this life and then I can leave it for the world to shrug its shoulders and say, huh? so what? and then slink off into oblivion – or die on mountaintop ragged – or merely continue the whole thing all over again until weird old mad cursed with addiction to typing out his brain.
Man, if I wasn’t so good looking and suave and Fonz-like with the ladies what a fruity and alone loon I would be!
(he jests and jokes, and knows it’s true, and weeps for his poor non-Fonzie brother who is the him that he would be without all the bluster and guitaring and footballing and confidence and face – just two alone boys, really, who like their own rooms and would play in them forever like autistic puppets drawing league tables and dreaming of spaceships if they could)
Did I ever tell you about that cricket game I invented? Wherein you roll a dice and if you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 that’s what the batsman scores, and if you roll a 5 you’re out. Roll an odd number, of course, and they change ends. Write down the names of the eleven players. Have county sides and international teams. One day matches and Test matches. Leagues and knock-out cups. Compile end-of-season averages and have a record book to keep tally of highest scores, lowest scores. Mad innings where one man might hit 51 – but the rest of his team scores only 10 between them. Willing on your favourite players and sad when they roll a five and so maybe occasionally cheat. All this taking place while the sun shines outside and you’re thirteen and with tongue poking out neatly drawing with your ruler on A4 paper in a big lever-arch file – and then file upon file, and exercise book upon exercise book, reams and reams of carefully scribed numbers, hundreds and hundreds of sheets of it. Totally and utterly mad – but, oh, how I wish I had them now just to look and wonder and reminiscently hug that saintly weird teenage boy so happy and content occupied rolling over and over that dice and even getting excited by it. And I know I wasn’t the only one.
What else did I do this week? More squash, of course. Oh, and I linoed a game, which was pretty dull. And a young student said something rude to me and it bothered me for something like thirty-six hours (though I haven’t thought of it since). And the girlfriend…
She sad. She not liking work and leaving for it later and later every day. She not getting out of bed nice and early no more, staying in till way past the last minute. And she starting to think maybe she don’t want to be with me – but still wants my babies – and still feels happy in most ways.
We talk openly and honestly and we’re deconstructing romantic notions of relationships and getting to the bottom and of what relationships are – but I think I find this easier than her, being a non-romantic bloke and everything.
She wants to talk about love. Love not important. Harmony and getting on and encouragement more important. Love but a temporary feeling that not necessarily useful. Unless love what I just said – harmony, etc – and actually something you do. She maybe thinks that too but wants the words, all hung up on that. Who cares about the words? Easy to say – so then why not just say ‘em?
Can’t.
Love. Girlfriend. Beautiful mad giggles we had the other morning when I was blowing my nose and coughing and – had cold all week – hocked up some phlegm just as she bent over slightly in front of kitchen sink (I was at other side of room) and I suddenly had this image (she was fully clothed) of me hocking my lump of phlegm right up her bumhole – which was such a mad image I had to share it with her and then as I was sharing and demonstrating how she was bent over I bent over and in that moment farted and there I was, this hocking, farting, disgusting mad human male telling crazy tales of spitting phlegm up someone’s bum and we just laughed and laughed and laughed, everything was so crazy funny. What an image to have! Thirty-six years on the planet and never in my wildest dreams had I conceived of such as image – never read it in a book – or seen it in a movie – or heard anyone talk of it – but suddenly it popped into my head and I had to wonder: is this the first time in the history of the universe that someone has had the thought of hocking phlegm up another person’s weirdly open bumhole? What if it was? Some totally unique and new idea after four billion years of creation? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Disgusting, too. What am I? You let me loose on a woman who’s cool with everything – who laughs at everything – and you see what a fine specimen of man I am. Hocking, farting, pissing, boiking (burping) – and loving and laughing at it all.
But luckily she thinks it’s pretty funny too.
She cool like that.
But also – perhaps lets me get away with too much. The above: good. Let your man get away with that. But on other matters…you’ve got to chide him a little, make him do a bit of work. Not too much – lord knows, not too much – but…well, yeah, just feeling that part of her that’s thinking maybe she’s wasting her life in Leeds when she could be off adventuring in the sun somewhere and doesn’t need me after all…makes me want her; of course it does.
Stupid, I know.
And I guess I’m not making any sense to you am I?
Sorry about that: I’m just more in love with watching my fingers fly than caring about being understood this morning, that’s all. Gone interminable again – even as McCarthyism seemed to have me blogging snappier and more coherently.
Oh well. This is for me. Ain’t no audience anyhow. And even if there was – still for me.
Finally, the other thing I did this week was re-read Dolores Cannon’s ‘Jesus and The Essenes’, which I was pretty unsure about given its dubious origins and how I’ve moved away from that stuff, but just as before I thought it a wonderful book. Made me long for a life like the main character’s, Suddi’s, and a time when knowledge and wisdom and secrets and mysticism was a part of life, and not just buying golfing umbrellas and listening to people talk about how much beer they can drink. I’ve touched on that kind of life, and dream of it muchly, but how far away from it I am, and in reality always was and always will be. Yet surely it must exist out there somewhere, still today. Imagine that! People doing cool things that actually matter in the grand scheme of things. Yes, I do believe it is happening, somewhere.
In the meantime I’ll blow my whistle and feed my body and furrow my brow over plumbing and fill hours with mediocre movies and then grow old and die and look back and say “ah” and maybe do the whole thing all over again, and when I’m stood at a gas station crossroads in New Mexico I’ll swallow my fear – no, I’ll express it, in full – and maybe leap aboard the red pill express and journey into the unknown gladness of “what happens next? we really don’t know.”
Boring, isn’t it? When you know what’s going to happen next.
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