Well I guess that’s about the end of what feels like my dumbest month ever: the passport didn’t materialise, I gave up on Canadian/American impromptu dreams – the last day of the reasonably priced tickets were Friday – and I reached the end of the tether called ‘not living anywhere madness’. It all limped to a slow crumpling halt when, after an almost sleepless night haunting various university floors and corridors, I awoke to a shaking shivering fever and cried helplessly frozen dressed in homeless man’s clothes to my ex. She took me in and made me feel better; I then raced off to pass a referee’s exam, before late at night the fever returned. Ex had already invited me to stay at hers but I must necessarily wait for her to return from singing in a café – and where wait? I hear you ask. Wait in the shed, she said. Cold and shivering and close to vomitus and tears I crawled into her shed and – glory be! – what did I find there but a pile of binbags full of clothes and a large, cuddly shark. I collapsed into the binbags as best I could; lay a few on my legs; and balanced the shark along the length of my back, for warmth. And that was where she found me.
“Why did you leave me in the shed?” I whimpered.
But truth was, the shed was good; I even slept some. About the best sleep I’d had in days.
Yes! There was fever. And: yes! There was more silly madness and going wildly out of my mind trying to navigate this dumb ridiculous minefield of not having anywhere to live and feeling simultaneously bound to Leeds but also with half a stupid foot on board a jet plane to Canada, checking tickets endlessly, even with passport still unfound by Thursday thinking, ah, but if it should appear today there’s still a chance to get that Friday flight – but of course, it don’t, and destiny is fulfilled. Life helps out and takes away the things one doesn’t need – but how much easier to surrender when the things aren’t that much wanted anyway. But when it’s young boy’s fantasies of bare-kneed adventures through the bear-lovin’ woods and visions and dreams of a youth long passed standing on American roads waving at flaxen-haired girls all now wrinkly and with teenage daughters of their own; how difficult sometimes to let these things go – even when own wisdom and I Ching and Great Grand Life Itself are directing and pushing and shoving you that way –
But to surrender to Morrison’s charms and the dirty streets of Leeds from whence I came, once more to a life of fish and chips and television when I had such Buddha dreams and lived the sun and smiles of Mexico and all those shiny New Age Californians –
Yes, it’s hard to let it go.
But I am here. I took a room. I’m back in Leeds . I have no work. I have no girlfriend. I didn’t get the job. I –
The job! The job! Now there’s a travesty if there ever was one: the whole (pretty much) goldarned reason I stayed in Leeds in the first place, thinking of this wondrous job and how it was meant to be, and meant for me, and how it would answer the question of, “what the hell do I do with my life?” for the next two years, at least – what a weight off one’s mind! – but…the job didn’t happen. The job was working in Sports Development at the university – which I would have loved, been awesome at – but the job also included a funded Masters in Communications Studies. Well, whatever, I want the job and it can’t hurt to have another MA, I guess I’ll do it too: just a wee little Masters on the side. But! What I found upon enduring interview was: it weren’t no Masters on the side, it was a dumbass Masters with a sweetass job on the side. WTF! Why put sweetass job as a side dish to pointless, academic-ass Masters? But that’s what they did. So all this time that the sports people were making me feel like a shoe-in and that the job was a cert of the very deadest kind, it turned out it was the weird brainy woman pulling the MA strings that was in charge. And that’s what all the questions were about. And the biggest question of all was, “why do you want to do this MA?” – and the answer to that was, of course, “I don’t, it sounds like some major boring bullshit, I just want the job but I suppose I’ll toss this off if I have to.”
But was that the answer I gave them? Even when I very nearly did? Was it hell: the answer I gave them was lies and blags and sweettalks and trying to wheedle my way in and satisfy the requirements as I’ve always done and usually succeeded thinking it didn’t really matter and – afterwards, I’ll tell you what, I felt sick to my stomach as though I’d sold my very soul. I cried for it – not literally – the lost opportunity to be truthful and the way I’d spieled such bullshit and exposed myself in front of cold-hearted librarians, the way dear sweet Emma who I laugh and joke with sat stone-faced through the interview as though pretending to be some judge on high! I feel like such a child and I can’t understand why people feel the need to put on hats and faces when you’re like, but I know you, we have giggles and funs, and now you’re acting like you’ve forgot who I am, and I’m wearing some weird sombre outfit that I would never normally wear – why suit and tie? more soul-selling (and black shoes, two sizes too big, that I found in a bin, like a clown’s shoes) – and…
Yeah, I felt real sad – and that was even before they told me I didn’t get it, au natural, for it was plain to see I wasn’t into the Masters. Well, who could be? And there was relief that I wasn’t going to have to write any more stupid essays or try and wrap my head around highfalutin’ concepts drawn up by eggheads and weird-brained losers in the midsts of opium and alcohol-fuelled genius episodes when convinced that things that don’t mean anything actually mean something, but unlike some poor coke-spieler’s victims, a section of the world buys into it. Yes, even before I got the no I was hoping for the no to avoid the weirdness of modules called “de-Westernising the media” and endless stuff on Arabs and politics and theories of God knows what.
It looked like the worst thing in the world – and what, pray tell, had it to do with organising football tournaments and getting young, happy, gay, beer-swilling youths excited about sport? I loves being a student and being surrounded by all that easy-living university freedom – but, Goddamn, some of the stuff these academics come up with to fill their brainspace really takes the biscuit. And not only that, it makes me sad too.
So there I was, relatively homeless and at that present time up at the glamping place near York, passport nowhere to be seen, mourning, as ever, the decision to uproot myself from my flat, a headful of women, and right in the midst of all that comes crashing down the vision of my future: September 2012 to August 2014: two whole years of employment and foundation and routine and reason to exist and freedom from having to create a life and, also, sport and fun and still being a student and still having my sportspass and still being able to play squash and football and get involved with things and…
And now it’s all gone. So what am I? And why am I here? And yet here I am – because I’ve been saying it for too long, life wants me in Leeds . But why, goddamnit? For there is no life in Leeds for me, as far as I can see, and the prospect of the coming months is scary. Sure, the football season will start, and I’ll be back to reffing once more; and, sure, I’ll get my home back and have my comfortable basement base and dwell in there alone and away from prying eyes and other people’s boring chatter, hopefully – but, what else?
Well, I suppose that’s me getting ahead of myself – this time last year I was just getting the news that I’d be back in Leeds full stop, having just won the bursary. And back then my head was full of dreams of where my current writing MA would take me – somewhere great, I hoped; in the event, it hasn’t – and also I had my new girlfriend and ideas of her and us and, you know what, the best thing about being in Leeds – the refereeing and all the squash I’ve played – wasn’t even on the radar, ended up being totally unexpected and out of the blue. So perhaps there’s a lesson there too.
But: oh, I will tell you this also: when I had my fever and lay shivering homeless on the postgrad room couch feeling seven kinds of miserable and wanting to vomit and cry, and later realising that my arsehole was bleeding, even without any kind of poo-action, and bleeding quite profusely too, I smiled inside and imagined some kind of colon cancer or maybe even leukaemia and saw then blesséd release and the end of this journey: an angel from on high singing, come home Rory, you’ve done all you can, there’s no more you could do in this limited, beaten, unloved and poorly-brought up body. You’ve taken it fair distance and done your best but I can see you’re done with this world – with the weirdness of it – with never being able to find your place – and so we’ve arranged for you to come home. In fact, a few days before that, I had a dream in which I was playing the character of Frank N. Furter in an amateur production of Rocky Horror Picture Show and just before I woke I was singing that sad song about him realising he’s going home (to Transylvania) although he’s actually about to get killed and that’s exactly what I thought when I opened my eyes: that I’m going home; that I’m going to die.
I’ve been thinking this a lot lately. Not in a suicide, depressed kind of way, but in a happy, complete, I’m done and I’m kind of tired and bored kind of way. I suppose, I’m sure, there is more of life out there and it’s my own lazy fault for not being able to find it – but, there you go, that’s the way I feel, and the way I’ve been feeling a lot lately – for so much of this world I just don’t find interesting, nor able to do – not women, not work, not interaction or socialisation or making it in any kind of way or even wanting to be or do anything in particular – which is even more heightened than ever, what with the writing coming to a conclusion and not for the first time in years chasing or wanting women or any other particular idea at all. If only I could drift off into war film-watching, cigarette-smoking oblivion like my dad and grow fat on a sagging, stinking couch eating takeaways and thinking not…
The night before my Frank N. Furter dream I woke in the middle of an episode of sleep paralysis: I always think of Mother Meera when I do this, either that she’s there or that she can help me, cos it usually feels like there’s some bad juju afoot. Probably that’s just an imagined condition. But, whatever, I think of her, and it helps. Although I do occasionally wonder if she isn’t bad juju herself. Sometimes I feel something – I imagine it to be her – when I’m lying immobile on my front, pinned, and it’s like one of those things from The Matrix is being inserted into the back of my neck – invisible, non-physical, yet physically felt nonetheless. I fight it. Then I think, maybe it’s okay, and try and relax into it, which isn’t easy. Sleep paralysis is a weird and scary thing: I think there’s some culture where people actually die from it, from the fear cos they think it’s a witch. It always feels like there’s someone else there. And they always think it’s a woman. Maybe there are evil spirits after all (I don’t think I really believe that).
I’ve gone off the track. I’ve contemplated lately not writing this blog anymore, or, at least, trying to make it more normal again and about things that actually happen and also intelligible and not difficult to understand but – well, I don’t seem to have the ability. Maybe when life is somewhat settled. Maybe when I start doing things again and actually have something to report, other than the contents of my own mad head. Or maybe I’ve just lost the ability, don’t care what comes out, have been taken over by the master of the fingers and his own crazed agenda. He just wants to type – the bee speaks! – and he doesn’t care for no audience wishes or ears and eyes that scream, stop! Just say something that makes sense! Quit it with the gibberish already! And I am his puppet: when I serve his needs, he gives me happiness and a clear head – temporarily, at least. He says, here, sit down, let it all splurge out and I’ll take the troubles of your life – give them unto me – and progress you through them. Give me your three hours and I’ll take all those days of backlog and burden and set you free, and rocket you into something new. But, he says, like some crossroads devil, your soul is now mine, and you must keep coming back, lest I cast you into the pit of wretchedness – that is, you won’t feel good unless you do it – for I draw my power from the tap-tap of your fingers on these keys and you get your reward and linked to every word you express and every thought and feeling you put on that screen are wires attached to hamster wheels attached to the fiery furnaces of hell – which is how I keep my house warm.
Writers sell their hours to keep the devil’s hot water tank and central heating system piped up and in return receive the feelgood liberation factor of expression and Catholic confession-style release from woes and it can never, ever end. It’s my job. I don’t know where I signed up to this – but it’s what he wants.
It’s not so bad, I guess: a few hours typing each day – a few hours taking mad dictation from an invisible and infinite lineage of ever-shrinking bees – in exchange for gladness and answers and relief.
But woe for the eternal cycle of it all! The never reaching a stop! The endlessly turning hamster wheel merry-go-round!
For what when a man wants to get off – wishes to rest – has had enough? And yet dragged back, ever more, to the keyboard, to life?
Did I really commit my soul to this? Did I really sign up and say “I Do”?
In other news, wasn’t it nice to see Andy Murray cry at Wimbledon ? And didn’t he do well? And isn’t it good to see Roger Federer not quite dead yet? And what about Spain ? Sheesh, they sure know how to win a football match – but still very boring to watch, in my opinion. I like Episodes, the TV show with Matt LeBlanc, and I’ll miss it now it’s finished. I’m not sure the second series was as good as the first but it was still good and had some really fine moments. Also sad that they cancelled Shooting Stars again – easily the funniest show in history. Vic and Bob are two geniuses: probably all good British comedy of the last twenty years stems from them. When they die, the world will mourn and realise what prophets, what royalty, what gods they were.
I think I’ll lie down now.
xx
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