bore-dozer*

She takes my hand and pulls me towards the counter “you don’t want to go home, that lollipops excuse isn’t very believable”. I give a weak smile from beneath lead-heavy eye-lids, it’s not believable because it was supposed to be funny. I just wasn’t arsed with the delivery, maybe you’re too drunk to see that. Or maybe I’m not that witty. But I do want to go home, that much is for certain. Any other day I’d feel different, tomorrow I’ll feel different, but tonight, tonight I need to sleep.

I don’t say this, mind, just proffer up a hug. Too tired to say it, and all too aware that I have to repeat this exact conversation a dozen times more before I leave. The icy rain drops outside, when it gets cold enough they fall alone, with maybe a second or two between each one. Miserable threatening bastards. That’s the smoking area done.

Upstairs, with it’s misshapen togas sewn using safety pins on the verge of surrender, looks like the scene of a failed orgy; or magdellan-themed porno. It’s all half-naked and lounging, but without a single pointed lunge. Still, I do my rounds. Taking time to slag the generically angsty emotions, pouring out of some seventeen year old in the far room. It’s shit, though it will get you laid, so the market for such tripe will never be exhausted. The cynics in the hall agree, give their blessing even, before I hugged and left them aswell. A strange kiss just below my jawline, where neck becomes face, that I think was meant for my cheek. Silly, drunk and covered in gold paint, I leave them to it.

Down through the kitchen again, I aim for the door. M’s there, we debate the mundane while I wait for Diamond. Then I wait outside. Because I want to hear the wind, and hope the raindrops might wake me up.

*new word I just made up, noun, a boring object that ploughs through parties crushing all life, light and happiness. Eventually the bore-dozer either collapses in a corner, goes home or traps some self-destructively polite soul in some insufferably boring  and utterly inescapable conversation. The company of a bore-dozer can thus be described as akin to watching grey paint dry, alone and in a room with neither furniture nor windows. We’ve all been a bore-dozer at least once in our lifetime. If you find yourself afflicted with such a condition it is simply best that extract yourself immediately, having alienated as few people as possible.

Poxy pontificating poncing about

We have net emmigration for the first time since 1995. Lucky diggers, I want off of this fucking island too! I realised this morning that I haven’t advanced as a person since the age of seventeen. In fact, I’d say that I’ve regressed. Gotten a bit better at writing maybe, certainly gotten hungrier*, but that’s about it.

Now that I’m within touching distance of a degree though, Japan has once more become an option. It’s so gloriously far away, quite possibly the only place left which is far enough away to still be considered exotic. I don’t particularly care about their culture, history or people-I just see air miles. I’m straining at the leash here, desperate, to get away.

Dublins depressing me, it’s the same old shit all the time. I feel like I’m stuck, and starting to get resentful. Got angry enough to give up the sup, seriously, bar two shit pints on Arthurs Day and a can yesterday I haven’t had a drop in a fortnight. Since this hangover to be precise. And I haven’t looked back. I may have the odd glass of Black Bush but, for now at least, I’m done with the stuff.

This circular lifestyle and the associated depression also carries with it a certain sense of doom. I’m too young to be this bored, I’m 22 for fucks sake! I’m too young to feel like I’m wasting my life, which is how I feel. Get so angry with myself sometimes. I’m supposed to be better than this.

There’s a form of depression that sets in among people who grow up during an economic boom. It was first documented in Canada, where an entire generation were brought up to believe in endless possibilities only to graduate at the end of a doll queue. The force of collective disappointment brought on, often crushing, cynicism and disillusion.

Now, I’m not moping on about suffering from this. What I am saying however, is that if things don’t change radically in the next two years I’ll be a very unhappy person. I say two years only because I’ve resigned myself to the next six or seven months of hard graft being shit, and there being absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Which maybe speaks of a broader problem, I can’t do anything about anything. I feel helpless and it’s getting me down. Cunts all, enough moping for one day. Sorry about this terrible post, and the last few terrible posts.

*I haven’t actually eaten since December 2002

It’ll happen every once in a while

Two years ago now, around early August, I was running alongside the rail lines just behind Monkstown Station. It’s a lovely spot, sandwiched between the sea and the tracks. Beauty and the beast, Arsenal and Wigan. It was nearing the end of my run, around the stage you choose between pushing harder, hardest, and giving up. A wheelchair incarcerated man came into view, probably had motor neuron or something.

I only stopped because I thought there was some emergency, he was interrupting my training. He looked panicked, squirming and noise making in a motorized wheelchair, he’d have grabbed my arm if he could. Sweating bullets, heaving and hauling air through any available opening, I reached around around and pulled out his letter board.

“D”. I was nearly delirious with fatigue. His hand flew to the other side of the board, overshooting the mark twice before resting on an “O”. I was looking at his fingers, all crooked and mangled, the muscles spasmically pulling them into inescapable cramps. It’s a short hop to the “N”. Poor bastard, I hope I’m not wasting his time. He’s struggling now, can’t reach the one he’s looking for, Jesus Christ this is cruel to watch. Eventually, “T”. He takes a breath and aims for the “G”. He then misses “I” three times.

I hope he’s not trying to write a novel. Then chastise myself internally for making a joke, then chastise myself internally for being such a little PC bitch. I’m so busy giving out to myself that I nearly miss his quest for the letter “V”. He doesn’t quite make the “E” but circles it enough for me to get it, I nod, he smiles. Swinging wildly across the board and back, “U” and “P” join the others.

I’m so tired I have to take a minute to add it all up. D-O-N-T-G-I-V-E-U-P. “Don’t Give Up”. I repeat it out loud. Then buckle and burst out laughing, it was either that or knees and tears. Bastard’s gotten me. He looks up at me with his big, manic, toothless smile. Fuck me, you’re some cunt.

Suddenly I have to get going, the wind is starting to catch and chill the sweat. And I’m inspired. Not in some wanky MTV way, with slow motion and coldplay. But genuinely, because I’ve met someone who might have more in the tank than me. Might, because I’ve never been tested like he has. I fold over his letter board, slot it in the back and say good bye. I don’t want to give him the chance to respond.

As I jog off I feel like I should do an extra few miles in his honor. Instead I just make it over the rail bridge before slowing to a walk, hands on hips, eyes to the ground. It’s not an extra lap that he wants from me, but another sentence. I know it, there’s no escaping it. I walk all the way home feeling cold and small.

I’ve never been so thankful for legs to carry me, arms to lift me and a mouth to speak for me. Some of us don’t get to choose the challenges we face. They’re, well, y’know what I mean.

Before I lay me down to sleep…

I take off my socks and shoes first. Then I take off three bandages. One for the blister on my right foot, one for the matching blister on my left foot and a third. A third on my shoulder, where they injected two chemicals into the joint this morning. All I know is that one was an anaesthetic and the other has kept me awake till now. A throbbing, bulging third shoulder. The swelling makes everything stiff, like the fingers of a corpse.

acute concern

Tripped out twice today, I’m a little worried about it. Only voices, granted, but stronger than they’ve been in months. Actually, fuck months, stronger than since the worst days. They’re deafening and disorientating, the second one today nearly made me throw up. I’m so confused, it was only a minute ago, if only I could work out what they were saying.

It’s not fair, I haven’t taken anything in ages. I barely even drink now. But still, I get voices in my head that drown out everything else. My bedrooms started filling up with ghosts again too, every other night. Cunts, they don’t scare me. I know its just in my head.

The Doctor warned me, I need lots of sleep. Sugar helps too, in fact, its probably a lack of sugar over the past few days. I’ve eaten nothing but bread and meat and veg. Healthy for most people but health comes at a price for me. And I’ve been working too hard aswell. Picked up a cold just from exhaustion, just a warning. 

I get stoned for free, only problem is that I can’t choose when. Still, I wouldn’t trade this shite for innocence. I wanted to know my limit, and I found it.

Now I need a holiday before I lose it altogether.

Handling expectations

She seems to think I’m some sort of artist. This wrecks my head, I don’t believe in artists. They’re like fairies; magical, made-up and in silly clothes.

So if you must use the word, use it to describe anyone capable of painting butter on toast and not putting the knife through. Because, at the very least, that’s a skill rooted in practicality-and no, before you say it, not everyone can do it.

In the summertime

I have been assured of couches in both New York and Aya Knacker. All I have to do is get enough money together to pay for flights……suppose that means I’ll be staying in Dublin for the summer then.

Curses, what would mystery* do?

 

*please, do not ask how I stumbled across the existance of this pirate  hero man

Policy change

I’ve come to the conclusion that stumbling around the internet listening to ska is not the most efficient way to study. I’ve also developed an addiction to shit browser games and Wormux.

I’m bored, but everyone seems to be studying like I’m supposed to be. Don’t want to study, its shit. I want to go out, get fuckedy fucked and listen to something other than ska. I don’t even want to go drinking, I just want to some fun.Y’know fun? As in stuff you can do without a computer-with other people.

Hedging your bets, or something

Generally speaking, and I think it’s only fair to say that, your dinner should make an impact. Well the only impact my rushed orange made was to stain my fingers and sticky my grip, like the clammy hand of a child after Halloween. Or Christmas, or Easter or any of the other gorging festivals of chocolate porn.

Damp from hazy rain at the top and back of my own bus home, bored stiff and bitter about it too. Because you know all adventure dies when you feel carpet under your feet, and that’s exactly where we’re going.

A burnt out house on Leason street catches my eye. Not sure if it’s the house or the poor bastard desperately trying to preserve its Georgian front, with a 2 story sheet of feeble plastic, that caught me. Either way they’re both fucked, and the neighbors are only as disinterested as the passers by. Funny, it’s the second burnt out building I’ve seen today. The first was bright blue and of an adult variety. What burns faster, Georgian chandeliers or twelve inch double ended purple dildos? It’s like the start of a bad joke.

I blame the recession. Because nothing else seems to matter these days.

The bus lumbers on past that Island at the end of Leason, y’know the one, “someone-you’ve-never-heard-of bets here”. I really want to go into that pub sometime, anywhere with such a ridiculous front must have either quality stout or characters in abundance.

Some mid-thirties pudding, his bald patch visible from the bus top, crosses from the far footpath onto the island. Unable to make it the whole way across in one go he turns and struts, and I mean struts, right down the middle. He makes it look like he wants to be there, as if it was his plan all along. Stalling the big jump in front of my bus lane. Ironically hiding indecision with a definite decision to advance no further, brilliant in it’s simplicity. But vain lunacy nonetheless.

An office girl makes the same non-committal crossing, but from the other end. Now things could get interesting, it’s a narrow island made narrower by a lost and confused tree. A brick splitting bottleneck at just the point where they are about to pass. It’s either a rom-com or a game of low stakes chicken. This could be the most entertaining thing I see for the rest of the day. They’re nearly there and…

…All of a sudden they both look away, distracted, by nothing. The strutter is reigned in slightly, and politely, they both step onto the road either side of the bottleneck. Allowing the other to pass as if they were never there. It’s a cop out.

Bored and bitter about it, I close up my notebook and go back to the dreams soundtracked by my i-pod.

 

 

P.S. I apologise, wholeheartedly, for the lack of a theme to this post. I just didn’t want to expose myself to any criticism is all. Mediocrity is such safety.

Unhealthy?

I don’t argue with my ma anymore. Well, I don’t shout back anyway. Preferring to just stand there and take it. She gets herself so worked up she can’t see. I keep my mouth shut to protect her, because my tempers just as bad. The two of us going full on would cause an earthquake.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this is absolutely the unhealthiest possible response. I feel like punching walls, adding scars. Angry now, I just want the house to empty out for the night. I’ve got a headache.

Tried shouting back, didn’t work. Tried talking, didn’t work. Tried backing down, didn’t work. Trying non-engagement, not enjoying it in the least

She just burst out laughing from the other side of the house. For time saved alone I’d consider this day a result.