love is life

love sounds like morning birdsong
love looks sunset pink
love feels as smooth as satin
love smells of summer roses
love tastes of strawberries and cream

love sounds breathless and urgent
love looks flushed and swollen
love feels hot and wet
love smells damp and sweaty
love tastes sharp and salty

love is fragile and ephemeral
love is elemental and immortal

end of an amazing chapter

Those who visited Michelle's previous blog and have read between the lines on here will know I have made a decision which affects the lives of a number of people. I will be returning to England at the end of this month. This decision has been one of the hardest of my life and one that I have thrashed round in my head endlessly.

The bottom line is I can't be happy in my new life and that is not fair on those closest to me. I will be leaving behind a little daughter and a young wife who somehow will manage in my absence. That is the way things happen. I am distinctly un-proud of myself and feel I have let many people down, not least Michelle and Maisie. That is a dramatic understatement, however, we are adults and rational, so remain friends.

l hope to rekindle my relationship with my two grown sons and start on a new path of quiet and calm. My exercise regime is injecting sufficient endorphins to keep gloom at bay although there are some bleak times. I have a new road bike waiting my return and will pedal my way to new horizons.

Fare well friends and "see you on the other side."

a fucking sad idiot

During my adult life I have lived with depression to varying degrees. I am frustrated at failing to fix all my anxieties by myself. For the past twelve months I have steadily opened my fears and worries. I had even begun to believe I might banish the dark depressive clouds and maintain a happy head. Just when I begin to feel level and calm a small worm creeps under my skin. A previously tranquil day becomes hell on earth inside my head.

If I am angry or sad or frustrated I want to try to say what is on my mind but my words appear condescending and sulky. So I retreat into my head and stay quiet all day harbouring resentment that the cause of my irritable mood ought to be obvious but isn’t.

No one loved me as a child. I was never given praise or made to feel valuable. With that background I try too hard to be honest and compassionate so I always sound reproachful and false. I am incapable of expressing my emotions.

I deserve to be the hated person that I am.

I realise I am unlovable.

I believe myself to be valueless.

I deserve ill fortune.

…..

Starting thirty years ago my wife and I had simple sex but we never made love. Twenty years ago my lover and I had lustful sex but still we never made love.

Now I make love but I am uncomfortable as the initiator. Rejection would ruin my already pitiable self-esteem. How could anyone wish to be intimate with such an ugly old fool as me?

I can’t make decisions – why would my ideas be liked anyway? My preferences are easily over-ridden as they are ridiculous and unimportant.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I am.


***
update 20 Jun 2014
Re-reading this causes me some embarrassment! It's fair to say that I had bouts of depression several years ago but there is little in my above diatribe that I recognise as me. Today I have a good deal more self-esteem than before.

Love

“If something is beyond your sphere of influence you should stop trying to control it.” This maxim makes logical sense but is a nearly impossible code to live by when it is very human to try to change something in order to improve it. When some factor stubbornly resists my efforts I feel anxious and fretful, even hurt. Everyone knows which things are indisputably beyond our power to alter (like gravity and the weather) but some things appear tantalisingly close enough to change. People, perceptions, places…

I hear you say, “There are only two certainties in life, taxes and death.” Everything else is a lottery, I know that, yet frustration sets in when I fail to improve factors which shape my daily existence. I am still learning to accept the beauty of things as they are and to stop striving for perfection. But if I regard much of my life as highly important am I doomed by the following formula? ANXIETY = UNCERTAINTY x IMPORTANCE

I suffer anxiety because I get wrapped up in a web of perceptions and misperceptions. What do people think, what do I think of people? Even those who say perceptions don’t matter are fibbing. Fundamentally the common man wants to be liked or at the very least to meet with approval. Fear of rejection makes us try to mould ourselves. Only the most selfish could truly care less.

Perhaps a new way to look at this is to say only the trivial falls short of perfection. The important things are already perfect. Like Nature, we can’t improve upon nature in all its majesty and glory. Art in all its forms only mimics nature so is close to perfection. Love is unconditional and forever – the very definition of perfection. One day soon I will learn to live in these true terms, in a state where anxiety melts away.

“But it all boils down to one quotable phrase,
if you love something give it away.”
Bright Eyes – One Foot in Front of the Other

Vanishing point...

... is reached sooner or later.

Ageless Love

dismantle my life
with precision
and love

wrap up my previous me
bequeath my treasures
before I go

it’s time to live fast
i am an outlaw now
tearing across the divide

arctic delta blues called
from a whisper to a scream
now I am inside you

i am leaving everything
behind for you
i am your pillar

ageless love
tomorrow when I am old
care for me

hold my hand
say my name
fuck forever

Bluesy Blues

Muscle and bone, just a routine miracle in carbon and water
stardust capable of greatness but condemned to obscurity.
Notionally intelligent while screaming insane.
Excuse me while I break my own heart.

Gimme a bitter placebo or slip me a strong panacea.
Just gimme pretend meds to mend my pretend head,
a wasted waster wasting his decades.
Excuse me while I numb my own heart.

Stinging tears screamed and howled away on racing rubber.
Needle reaches vertical and my knee trails the blacktop
leaning hard into a long fast bend.
Excuse me while I smash my own heart.

An ocean evening hot and humid, deep and tight, wet and smooth,
shuddering. Sparkling waves, deliciously soft pressing sand.
Rolling to stare at the cold "maybe" stars.
Excuse me while I stamp on my heart.

Biting the top off a bottle would be so fucking simple.
Calendar, yearbook, milestones and pledges swallowed.
A screeching halt at the precipice edge.
Excuse me while I consider my heart.

"There goes my hero, he’s ordinary…"
Foo Fighters - My Hero

Guilty as Charged

The last piece of promised repetition is here.

The bike is a 750 Yamaha which I rode from 1982 to 1986 by when responsibilities finally overwhelmed me and brought me to heel. However the image of the PC screen at the foot of the post was rather more recent. I positioned two events like book ends. You all know I use colour coding to distinguish fact from fiction but in these stories the pretense at fiction only thinly veils autobiography...

She lay back watching me pull on my leathers. Her skin soft and white against the burgundy sheets. “I will see you again, won’t I?” Her enquiring eyes followed my hand as I picked up my key-ring and wallet.
“You always ask that, yet you know I can never give you up!” I leaned down and as she closed her eyelids I kissed first one then the other with a tenderness that brought a lump to my throat. “Besides, I haven’t yet mastered the art of disappearance!” I grinned in a lame attempt to lighten the crushing emotional atmosphere.

I lowered my crash helmet before leaving her house and closed the front door with a soft click. The 750 was an anonymous black hulk in the shadows. It was after midnight and neighbours’ houses were unlit. A glance up at her window located the ghostly shadow I loved with my life. I lifted a black-gloved hand in silent goodbye and eased the bike off its stand. Pushing my steed to the end of her short close was my way of showing respect. She liked that.

Away from prying eyes I thumbed the starter and the Yamaha burst alive. Twisting the power on I launched into the black night with a cone of white light speeding ahead of me. The race home was my usual suicide dare. I took the racing line between high hedges, centre stand grazing the blacktop through each tight bend, front wheel pawing the air as the big bike unleashed fabulous acceleration.

I shouldn’t ride like this but then I shouldn’t fuck like this either. The random possibility of death on two wheels was my penance for sins of the flesh. Only the skills of balance and reaction kept the breath in my lungs. 2 large tins of Special Brew were waiting in the refrigerator as reward for making it home alive.

As always I jumped the crossroads on red, fast. Russian Roulette in the dark was narcotic, like my beautiful lover. I flicked my eyes down at the orange dials to see both needles pointing straight up. No traffic on these country roads so I wound up the four-stroke howl to 120mph and felt the hurricane blast pushing me backwards. A deer stood motionless ahead and I flashed by before really registering it. Fuck it, that’s the sort of chance you take when you ride with the devil.

My road was in darkness too. I killed the engine as I coasted up the driveway. The 750 began its familiar loud, metallic clicks of cooling that meant safety after a hard ride. I closed my own front door softly, slipped off my boots and padded up the hall in socks. From the lounge I could see a faint blue glimmer. I crept up and stood in the doorway.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, the shape in front of my PC resolved into my wife. “So where have you been...?” I felt the hammering in my chest. “Well...?”

My life had reached its crescendo. I didn’t reply. My throat was dry and I thought of the refrigerator. I dropped my gloves to the floor. The gorgeous salty scent of her sex was still strong and fresh on my fingers. I could not look at my wife, instead my eyes were drawn to the PC. I frowned, wondering why my e-mail page was open. Suddenly an ominous ‘ping’ cut the air and announced a new incoming message:

The heart-stopping words ‘I love you’ hovered over the plasma screen. A branding-iron, burning white-hot pain into the flesh of the damned.

“You're moving through rough waters, motor boy,
and swimming in your sleep.”
REM – So Fast So Numb

Love and Music

I own up that my childhood was grey and bland and I harboured a bitterness for most of my adult life. How can you show love if you feel unloved? It has taken me to age forty seven to figure out that expressing love is a beautiful thing.

Parents should raise children with loving discipline. Teach them right from wrong, correct them, reward them but never ever ignore them. Tell them you love them and ask their opinions. Make them matter. I grew up in my parents’ house, they never told me if they loved me. I still don't know and guess what, I don't care any more. My mum died and I never heard her use the word 'love' in any context. My dad remains insular and unresponsive.

I married in 1978 but off and on from 1982 to 1986 I had an intense affair. My up-bringing had left me ill-equipped to handle the emotional battering it dealt out. I relied on alcohol to numb me so I could live under the weight of the dilemma. I could not resist the pull of my mistress because I believed I was experiencing the fullest love I ever had or would. When I knew that destruction of my life and my family was near, I chose to follow my head not my heart. Yet even then I couldn't accept the decision I had made and regressed into a world of denial, rewarding myself for giving up love by drinking every day until I passed out.

In 1986 I bought "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits. It turned out to be my last purchase until 1995. I drank, I shunned family and friends and I saw no point in music. I adopted a position of suspended animation. The world saw me walking and talking but I was angry, lost and bitter. I carried a hollow core in my belly. So you see in the words of Pete Doherty of the late and (by me) desperately lamented 'Libertines,' I had "lost my faith in love and music."
 

*****
 

For nine years I sloped around in a kind of living death. I was in Rigor Mortis. Love and music seemed irretrievably lost. I barely opened my mouth to my family and offered them grim company. My life was devoid of love because I wouldn't let my wife and boys break through my stone wall. Eventually I stopped the yearning for my mistress. I ceased drinking in 1993 and over several years I learned to love my family a little. With sobriety came clear thinking and music edged its way back into my routines. I sifted through the years of releases I had ignored, discovering new bands who were already history. It was a start. Radiohead attracted my attention and I fell under the spell of their first three albums (forget the subsequent rubbish they released.)

There are now only two things that matter to me, Love and Music. Today music plays a vital part in my life. My admiration for the sweet simplicity of favourite lyrics is matched by the gut-wrenching pull of a pure melody. I listen to music several times each day picking songs to match my mood.

The morning commute is a time for fresh new indie rock and I am reminded that the worries and fears of the new generation are the same as my own. At lunchtime I close my eyes to the heartbreak of Counting Crows or Hope of the States. Going home I nudge up the volume on Kings of Leon or The Stills. If I get an evening alone I pull off the shelves whatever the fuck I want and play it loud. Immersion in the experience has to be absolute. I need to feel the sound-waves shaking my insides. The volume must drown out all distractions.

My tiny real world circle is now rich in love. I have two adult sons and my wife. But equally I have two deep personal friends who love me and I love them. But I am full of grief that there may be so little time left to enjoy them. I yearn for many more decades because I have regained my faith in love and music.

"If you've lost your faith in love and music
The end won't be long."
Libertines - The Good Old Days

Counting Crows

Today I pondered a curious deep empathy with a fragile friend far away. I thought of that soul struggling with a profound sadness, yearning to be valued and wanted. I sat on my lunchtime park bench counting crows. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, etc... They can be called magpies.

Sometimes a connection stops you in your tracks. Eleven years ago I would have thought, "I need to get me a little oblivion" but these days I accept my emotions. Black and white feathers strut about me inspecting the ground for scraps. They come singly and in pairs causing me to smile and re-start the familiar rhyme. I lean back and turn up the volume on my mp3 player. The man sings, "Omaha. Somewhere in middle America."

 

The crows come and go, flapping and squabbling. I turn the music louder and suddenly think of crying. The park is tiny and invariably empty but I resist the feeling. Then the man sings "Yeah we stare at the beautiful women. She's perfect for you. Man, there's got to be somebody for me" and I feel a huge lump in my throat. Eyes unblinking, I sink into the music.

I stare out over my usual stretch of water which shimmers like silver today. "And I'll walk on water every chance I get." Why the fuck am I relating to these songs so powerfully? I lock my emotions away don't I? Well I am certainly 'all or nothing' I won't sit on the fence. As a soft rain starts to fall the man sings "I am anywhere but in between." Now I don't think I can go back to work this afternoon.

I glance at my watch and see 1.50pm, the rain gets heavier. Funny how you get used to the volume of music. I nudge it higher and am reminded that it's raining in Baltimore "I need a phone call, I need a raincoat." My friend is clear in my mind and I think they are listening to good music too. I get up and walk.

"I'd like to hear a little guitar,
I think it's time to put the top down."
Counting Crows - Raining in Baltimore

Remembering Green Eyes

Like it was only yesterday, do you ever get that feeling? So fresh you can hear and smell it. Certain people, places and times have left that indelible mark on my soul. I can’t wash away the sentiments and they don’t fade with age. I move on but carry the past with me on my shoulders. I drank them into oblivion but they resurfaced. And they’re still here a millimetre beneath the surface and they came out today. This is someone I knew twenty years ago.

If you can tell all that from the piece below then I’ve made myself as clear as I can or you must be a mind reader.

Green Eyes

Fingers lightly tracing my cheek
Green eyes inches from mine.
Entwined hours after meeting,
Soul lovers weeping for real.
Matched as only a pair can be
Dovetailed and blinkered to consequence.
Aching I remember your presence
My white-hot painful repentance.

Are you content now or restless
Your new car, new dog and house.
Trappings like those make you edgy
You need a friend not a spouse.
I condemned myself with a glass for our sin,
Your husband, my wife, both bled.
Am I over you now, do I give you a thought?
I can't get you out of my head.

I probably never said goodbye,
Just left you to scream on your own.
I sped to the edge and collapsed,
I couldn’t live with what we had done.
Gin soaked memories daily
Of a virgo scorpio affair.
I’m sure I don’t love you now green eyes
I just need to know where you are.

When you call me, you have to be dying.
Was that an unspoken code?
One day there’ll be no tomorrow
To carry this crippling load.
Our lives are running out so fast
It’s late but it’s not the last call.
I don’t need to know where you live,
Just don’t die, don’t cry, walk tall.

"We were lovers
We were kissers
We were holders of hands
We were make believers"
The Stills – Still in Love Song