The edge of vision otherwise dark I have a blind mind’s eye.
I don’t see mental images. It’s incredibly difficult to describe what I do see, but certainly not the vivid mental imagery that I’m told others experience.[1]I’ve also recently figured out I am a broadly visual learner. Which renders my memory next to useless. Since if I learn through imagery, and yet my image recall is short circuited…I can’t very well learn anything can I!
I love Rock’n’Roll. I love its its younger darker sibling Heavy Metal. I am something of a closeted metalhead. No longer!
It ain’t real music without guitar — Hey Ho, Hinder
From a ‘pure music’ standpoint, I love the guitar riffs and frantic drumlines. I have a particular soft spot for female vocalists (Halestorm, In This Moment) for the contrast they provide to the heavy instrumental.
Shove your kiss straight through my chest — In This Moment
I’ve been doing a lot (a whole lot!) of self reflection lately. It’s probably reflected — Hah! (Sorry1) — in my writings.
I’m trying to figure out who I am. And what I do. Big questions. But ones I want answers to.
Not least because of the series of relationship explosions I’ve undergone recently. In particular I’m trying to identify and neutralise toxic behaviours I either already had or developed in those relationships.
Like metronomic and distorted cackling laughter the idea-spiders skitter. Piercing clatter of a thousand million worming thoughts. Each one keens in its own way, hungry for freedom. Each one glibly promising sprawling webs of crystalline creativity. Each one truthful to a volatile degree.
Not literally, you might catch something1 Let me tell you a little secret I learned. There is one fundamental truth. One truth in this maelstrom. In universal entropy one thing remains…
…
Life. Is. Shit.
… No really that’s it. And I gleefully invite you to argue otherwise. Good luck with that.
And don’t you try telling me to have hope. Don’t you dare.
Life is Shit Shit’s fucked man. There will be resource wars within my lifetime.
Or is it? I have a bit of a reputation for near instant replies. It’s another of the double edged swords that besides Perfectly Awful Timing provides the cornerstone to my ‘brand’ for want of a better word.
Fast replies demonstrate ‘I have nothing better to do’. And that can certainly be a good or a bad thing…
To a degree it is because I have nothing better to do. But I’m not obsessed with my phone in the same way others might be.
Foreword: I’ve been gestating this story for a long time. Because the events of it transfigured me. And that’s why I’m so sure it is worth telling, even if objectively it may not be ‘all that’. Now, YOU can be the judge of that.
I fell out of my first relationship, rolled down several (metaphorical, mostly) flights of stairs and ended up straight in another. At the very least I should be glad I learnt all that I have as early as I have.
I’ve mused before about my irreconcilable dual philosophy. The part of me that inspires the ‘Neither do I’ in my “Adrenaline Junkie afraid to die…doesn’t make sense, neither do I” — it’s not just there for the rhyme!
In the shower1 just now it hit me what that is.
It’s a Jekyll and Hyde philosophy.
Sometimes, I attempt optimism with earnest. I see the world for what it could be, rather than the twisted anarchy that it is.
She flew.
Though not on wings.
Crouched astride a gleaming machine, she flew with gasoline.
Flew between lumbering bubbles of steel. Just so many birdcages. And one hawk soaring among them.
They meandered to destinations unknown. While she flew, destination undetermined. Destination unimportant.
Photo by KEVIN CLYDE BERBANO on Unsplash She flew, and she screamed.
She howled into the night. A fierce sound of primal anguish. Impaled with emotion. A beast of passion and turmoil, barely contained.