Douglas Adams would love this.
On a completely random note, I was watching Project Runway for the umpteenth time and I have decided to give up atheism and adhere to the church of the living and breathing god that is Tim Gunn. I will follow your wisdom blindly, Tim. I will make it work.
Yesterday I went to Aldi with my mother. I hadn’t been to an Aldi since I was eleven and still harboured a love for their breakfast cereal and ice tea. To be honest, I still love all the shit they sell. There is nothing like a Leo bar that goes by the name of Olé and thus saving you as much as Tadjikistan’s GNP of the last century. You can get two pounds of potato croquettes for 50p there for Pete’s sake, that is cheap even by Zimbabwean inflation – which, by the way, is over 250 million percent; it is even estimated at eight quintillion by a man named John Robertson. That is 8 000 000 000 000 000 000. Damn.
Anyway, mum wanted to get a product that was on offer, and consequently, that product wasn’t there. They had most likely made it so cheap it went into negative price, so you would get money for taking it home with you. Queue up society’s Harpagons and Rab C. Nesbitts. So we are standing there, in the middle of an extremely busy Aldi, when we spot a shoddy pile of cardboard boxes. “Ugh. How very Aldi.” All you see is a yellow tile floor bathed in a sickly brown fluorescent light, littered with shit Aldi sells. Shit that is arranged into artful piles according to the main ingredient: sugar, milk or alcohol. Your gaze roams over the boxes and you wonder if this is what hobo heaven looks like. Probably not, as the boxes are filled. A main requisite in the elyseum of homelessness would be that they are empty. If the boxes are full, were would hobos sleep? A full-box afterlife would probably be hobo hell.
Probably the only Aldi with shelving.
But hark! What does my roaming eye spy? Wine! There are litres and litres of a certain very good Italian wine on sale. Wine that would cost you well over twenty-five quid at Oddbins. We go straight for the wine, pick up a bottle and head for the check-out. A route that takes us past the bargain bin, and what do we find there? Matches! A hundred for 10p! *Swipe* goes mum. Now we are close to the check-out, and to the flower stand. God, is there anything more pathetic and forlorn than supermarket flowers? Apart from having bought them for cheering yourself up while spending your Christmas with a Bernard Matthews meal and a christmas cake for one? No. Ok, maybe Gordon Brown on a down day. He just looks so sad, like a big St. Bernard behind a fogged-up, slobbered-over car window.
But back to the flowers. Mum decided to buy a bouquet. Now we had a shopping trolley that contained: one bottle of wine, a box of matches and red roses. Just conjure up that mental image for a minute. It is terribly heartwrenching.
When we left and I got the purchases out of the trolley, I felt like I was a bloke that had just shopped in preparation of a cheap date. Nothing like “I am only really hoping to get laid, you can forget expensive gifts, so have these slightly wilted supermarket flowers and a bottle of wine. No, it’s not from Waitrose. And oh, some matches. It was an afterthought. What do you mean, chocolates? That’s hardly original. I am original. Now, couch or bed?” It was a bit like that time I went to the supermarket for a courgette and a bottle of vodka at 4pm.
So I was standing there in the dim glow of a streetlight, waiting for mum to bring around the car, clutching that bottle of wine, and I felt a bit like Ricky Gervais as David Brent at the Office’s christmas party. So very sad. Later I watched Dara O’Briain: Live at the Apollo and the world was alright again. But now I know that if I were a man without hope, I would probably shop at Aldi.
I am being haunted by Van Morrison and Led Zeppelin. In the last three days, I have been ’skipping the light fandango’ in the cinema, in front of the tv and to my brother’s iTunes. I have bought at least four stairways to heaven.
Is it just me or does the snow make people melancholy, burrowing themselves in comfy cinema seats or worn sofas, absentmindedly munching popcorn and floating away on the soaring bars of ‘and so it was that later…’ ? ‘Tis the season to be merry? Nay, ’tis the season to be cocooning with a whole box of Cadbury Cream Eggs. ‘Tis also the season to wrap those classic songs around you like a soothing winter blanket, it seems. Or that is what the radio stations seem to think, at least. I agree.
Staring out at the yellow-grey air I frankly don’t want to do anything other than skipping the light fandango and turning cartwheels across the floor. I want to have Van Morrison making me just a tad bit sad and wistful, and I want to buy a stairway to heaven when I walk outside in the crisp snow, with ink-black sky above me and puffs of breath swirling around me. I also want to sink to the ground amidst the downy white covering and listen to the stillness of a late cold night while staring up at the streetlights.
Even though I want all of this, you will still find me inside, cradling my coffee infused with fabulous Orkney whisky, staring up at the snow flakes falling down until they seem to be falling up. And then I get melancholy. And then all I want is to watch her face turn a whiter shade of pale.
I think alcohol doesn’t exactly kill brain cells. It renders them temporarily inactive through a vodka-induced stupor, and it isn’t until you get embarrassing flashbacks of the night before that you realize alcoholic dementia doesn’t last and the bloody brain buggers are still alive. Damn you, vodka shots, you promised me oblivion and all I got was severe dehydration and a sudden craving for chicken tikka masala five hours later. And yet, I seem to be the worst recalcitrant. How I look forward to an English fry-up at three in the afternoon! How my body craves caffeine to the point that I end up shaking on my feet and being directed towards the coffee machine by pure muscle memory lest I forgo my daily dose!
A drunk student’s resolutions go straight down the nearest gutter with his lamb korma. Many a hard-working office employee have I seen losing his dignity along with five pints of lager, two bitters, a packet of crisps and some roasted peanuts. What drives one to involuntarily showing the contents of his stomach, his genitals and/or his middle finger to all passers-by? Why does it seem like such a good idea to tell the police to kiss yer arse, ye bunch of fookin’ tossers?
Deserted streets – the only way home.
What feels like a medal of honour at two a.m. is a dunce hat and a badge of shame in your eleven a.m. morning class or your two o’clock business meeting. Bessie mates from the night before only vaguely remember having shared a spontaneous acapella performance of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’, and to be quite frank, don’t want to be reminded. There goes the only moment of chummy nostalgia.
When backpacks or neat ties replace the conspicuous stains on your clothes, tales will already have spread far and wide and no respectable average or recommendation can stop them. Only one solution then: begrudgingly admit to shameful behaviour and exploits of the night past, or look for people that revel in the praise and glory nights on the town earn them. You won’t feel at home in either group of people. You feel like a pariah in the first, and like an IQ-divested primate in the second. Maybe there is another solution: laying off the drink. But will a fry-up ever taste so good again?
It is that time of year again when exams are upon everyone happily – or not very much so - trotting along in the education system that is university. I have ploughed through what is not even a fraction of what I am supposed to be struggling through, but I think it is safe to say that we all know that feeling.
When you know everything should speed up and you are supposed to go into highly-caffeinated, sleep-deprived mode, but you fail to do so and everything just slows down. You, others, the world around you. Oodles and oodles of time, when the air is warm and comfortable and sleep lulls on the breeze like a song tinkling from a music box – so very captivating and enchanting.
If not for that calendar on my wall that stares at me with angry red numbers, I would stay in this eerie calm forever, have the hours seemlessly tick away into summer like time unmarked. The soft hum in the back of my head that I recognize as panic and stress has not yet made its way to the surface, and therein lies the harm that carries the eye of the storm.
For the life of me, I cannot concentrate; so it is to spending hours and hours of browsing whatever I can browse I turn, anything to take my mind off the impending exams. Leaping from one thing to the next, and this time I have ended up on literature. That seems to happen more often than not.
I feel quite melancholic, hence the highly dramatic content of the following snippets.
N’enquerrez de sepmaine
Où elles sont, ne de cest an
Q’à ce refrain ne vous remaine
Où sont les neiges d’antan?
~
Nulla rosa est.
~
On the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
~
Et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant
maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.
~
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silenced and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crow black, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
~
It is too late now to retrieve
A fallen dream, too late to grieve
A name unmade, but not too late
To thank the gods for what is great:
A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart
Is greater than a poet’s art.
And greater than a poet’s fame,
A little grave that has no name.
~
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.
~
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~
I am armed with more than complete steel – the justice of my quarrel.
~
And a word of courage (or rather despair) to those who feel like the stacks of books are only getting higher:
Priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre.
Pretty rough if you are an atheist like me.
What do you do when you have got a paper due in under twenty-four hours? Exactly: nothing. I didn’t know you could get writer’s block on a paper; bother for me! Meh, no stress, I will finish it tonight. I might even get ’round to doing some other stuff for university; stare at books, maybe arranging them in stacks, line them up. Scribble down a few words, underline. Nothing like feeling productive without actually being it: fulfillment at its best!
Yesterday I took out my bike and went cycling, just because. The weather is still absolutely wonderful, and it is pretty pointless sitting inside and doing fuck-all, so I figured I could go waste time outside. I had no set destination, but intuitively I cycled towards childhood memories. The problem is that by returning to those places that gave birth to my memories, you add to them or alter them, leave them with just a little bit less of their perfectness. The neighbourhood I grew up in, the routes I used to cycle with my parents, the places I used to pass on my way to my family…It is the same but not at all the same. Eventually I ended up on the cemetery and in front of the farm that is the cradle of my childhood. Wistful.
Black: childhood. Blue: what ruined it from age seven. I hate you with a passion, tomato factories.
It is rather sad when you don’t have one, but two graves to visit in the same cemetery at not even twenty years of age. Being confronted with death on such a beautiful day was all my own doing of course, and it is not like I am the only person in the world to have ever lost someone. Two is nothing. But the fact that I lost the people most dear to me, that is what really cuts me up. All pain is relative and time heals all wounds – the stoic who really believes that might want to protect their most private parts, I have a pretty fierce kick.
It is just one of these truths in life that are not true at all – if it is a comforting lie, well, then it fails to accomplish its goal.
You see, I am very rational, practical and calculated to the point of machiavellian, all for ‘the show must go on’. The queen of the blank, arrogant face. A blatant liar. But I could never tell another person to his face that wounds will heal. Sure, scar, dull, but never really heal. Time might numb pain, but it still feels like a remote, throbbing ache.
And in a way, I find that ache more comforting than being devoid of any memory or feeling of an inflicted wound. Maybe it is just me, but I rather live with that pain and never forget, than be left with a perfectly smooth surface. Perfectly smooth surfaces aren’t even devoutly to be wished. That is what makes calamity of so long life. It is more soothing being able to return to that small kernel of grief and to blow it up beyond proportion when you feel like it. When you feel like you need to feel. You don’t have to blank it out, like so many other things. You guessed it, I would rather bear those ills I have than fly to ones I know not of. I will be a coward, then.
Also, part of me should really have been born just before the turn of the twentieth century – I can be the epitome of spleen sometimes.
After a grey, dreary, miserable winter that wasn’t much like winter at all, and that had been dragging on into spring long enough to cause mass depression, yesterday felt like the first real day of spring. Cloudless sky, seemingly neverending sunlight…I had almost forgotten that it would get dark and cold around nine-ish again.
I cycled to work, making my way through the city as slow as possible. Not on purpose, but because everyone else was slow, strangely bordering on languid. The feel of warm, dry, comforting air and bright sunshine was utterly soporific – it made you want to plop down on the nearest patch of grass, close your eyes and slowly drift to sleep, the breeze as your blanket.
City sounds weren’t aggressive or startling but more like a subdued din, almost not a din at all. Life felt very carefree; I cruised through the swarms of tourists, over the cobbles, past cars and buses, across bridges and around corners, completely relaxed, moving but not really realizing it. I seemed to be making no progress at all, but looking at the belfry to keep an eye on the time, I was still as fast as always – I just didn’t feel like I was hurrying along.
Best place to be on a sunny day.
And then, somewhere in the haze that was mid-Thursday morning, I had to go all philosophical on myself. I had been thinking about Spanish, and wondered about ser and estar. As a general rule, you use the first for permanent situations and the latter for things that are temporary. But when someone is married, frick, even dead, you use estar. How temporary does death sound to you? Not very.
Sounds like marriage is only fleeting, that it will pass; like you would say estoy enferma, I am sick, but don’t worry, a cold doesn’t last that long – some honey to soothe the throat and you will live through it. Then again, you also use estar for being divorced or widowed. So life goes on, no permanency in anything.
Saying uncle John está muerto, is dead, is a little different. Not like he would rise from the grave bright and chipper after a good night’s sleep, but rather like it isn’t over, really. Estar fits perfectly if you think there is something after having six feet of earth chucked on top of you. Being locked in a box under the ground is pretty permanent. So is never breathing again. And still, you ‘only’ estás muerto. Comforting for those left behind, no?
Good thing a friend sitting on a bridge I had just crossed shouted ‘hey!’ before my mind wandered off into further dissecting the Spanish language – took me ten metres to register that friend was supposed to be going into work with me, so I stopped semi-daydreaming, made a middle-of-the-road u-turn and reminded my colleague to go get his bike.
I made it to work in time.
I found a diary entry from a couple of days ago (for those who know me, yes, I write in English). Wipe the grimy window with your sleeve and have a little peek inside my life:
Good-fricking-afternoon! What a fucking day, eh? I woke up this morning, feeling as out of bed as my hair. I have just transcribed and translated two Bible texts, with shitloads more to go, but hey, I have got plenty of time and a lot of ‘whateverness’ to fill it with.
I listened to almost all of my Oasis this morning, to accompany Hebrew. Strange, because I only listen to all of my Oasis in one go when drunk. I know parts of songs by heart, but don’t ask me their title. It sounds like one amazingly long line of music, with variations in tunes and words. It reminded me of how much I love this band – if I could cut and paste bits of their songs, it would make up my life in lyrics and music notes. And mentally, that is what I do. “I hope you know, it’s touch and go; sail them home with acquiesce. And hey, do you keep the receipts for the friends that you buy? Be on your way and stop crying your heart out. She knows it’s too late as she’s walking on by, where did it all go wrong? Talking to the songbird yesterday, someday you will find me; the answer is in the looking glass.”
There are two empty bottles of wine reminding me of yesterday – I have got a hunch this might explain the out-of-bed hair. Lately I have been a bit of a mess that extends further than my locks; since the start of this semester everything has felt like being stuck in a whirlpool, I get so whoozy of being slung all over the place that it seems like being glued to a wonky merry-go-round, and life is washing over me sanding off all the edges. For now, it is a spot I don’t mind being in, but I know that maybe, sometime this year, I might want to drag myself ashore somewhere, preferably where it is warm, safe and sunny.
This could really use those ridiculous quotation marks you have on Tumblr.
