So ?...
So I head for the great wall of books, extending from floor to ceiling, from left to right, and arrrrround the bend, all along the bedroom wall. My bedroom wall. If you sit cross-legged at the foot of the bookshelves in my room, and look up, you get intellectual vertigo. On the top shelves, where the air is thin, its tough out there. The wind blows harsh up there on the top shelf, and there is a real risk of death - from exposure. So high - to the sky - they stretch - forever - worlds - and books - of possibilities. Every book I read. Every book completed - understood - absorbed - breathed-in, written on, strengthens my force field. A force field that protects me; like rubber padding, from the unpredictability of the world, and the caprices of its bipedal inhabitants. With every book I read I ingest the person that wrote it. I swallow them. And thus I have become many people - plural - destroyer of worlds. I am invincible. Reading has made me so. I am a superhero. I have in me the souls and minds of many men. Many of them dead - but a flicker; a faint candle of what they were once - burns in me. Nothing can harm me now. I cannot be hurt no more. I feel no want or lack thereof. It's all inside - my wealth. Everything I need is within me. Nowadays I am always smiling, though you will not see this on my face. The smile is etched on my mind. The strength of it though, if you look closely, radiates through my eyes. Next time take a peek. Look how my eyes shine so bright. But do wear sunglasses if you plan to stare at them. They shine like gold dust on the rings of saturn.
To write well, is to write truly. To write truly, is to search deep and hard - for eternal things. I do not wish to impress with elaborate Gaudi-esque wordplays. I want to write so that when you read me - you feel that I am writing to you. And to you only. I am profoundly interested in the nature of man and the nature of existence. That is my subject - everything. I want to stand outside of man and step out of existence - and watch from the sidelines. Watch man at play. Man at war. Man at love. Watch what he does. Watch how he does. Understand why he does what he does. It is difficult; I admit, to be objective because I am as much a part of that which I wish to understand. I am man and I exist and this makes me part of the subject I wish to study. So it is difficult to see through the veil. But there are times however - moments actually, when the veil lifts momentarily, like tufts of cloud burnt off on a sunny day, and I see then with such clarity and force and vision, things of such comprehensible truth - that it leaves me stunned.
At such moments it feels as if I am untethered from the umbilical cord of the world. As if I am floating freely in my own watery tank of muffled sounds - with nothing to hold me down fast. With naught to belong to me but my thoughts. People don't belong to me at such moments, nor lovers, nor friends, nor anything else. I feel like a child that has nothing serious going on in its life. But then what is so special about serious anyway? It does make me a little melancholy though - to see people but me, firmly rooted in life. Firmly planted: children to take to school, things to do, doctors appointments, family visits, colleagues to slag off, careers to climb, ladders to fall down, walls to paint, garages to visit, washing machines to fix, moments to share. My time is spent thinking about things that matter to no one but me. Like the moons of Jupiter for example - and what it would be like to live on them. I think about the 'thin blue line' of our atmosphere - and how something so tenuous, this slither of blue, could be the only thing that protects us from the cold and life-unfriendly vacuum of space. In trains, looking out of the window, I see green plants and imagine their photosystems arrayed like radio telescopes pointing to the sun - eating it up.
When I have lunch I don't just eat my Pret 'topside beef with mustard and rocket' artisan baguette. I think about it! Oh yes! I think about the beef that came from a bovine creature that has evolved from a fish, I think about the rocket leaves and their chloroplasts with their thylakoid membranes stacked together, and the fact that the rocket leaves came on the morning flight from Italy. The baguette makes me think of (I don't know why) sun-basking wheatstalks bobbing in the breeze! When I see a pretty girl (and I do see plenty of these) I don't wish she was mine. Instead I smile at the silliness of the brain inside my skull that makes me want to have her. I do find her attractive. I can't help it. I am after all human! Many times I wish I could escape and not be buffeted by these random capricious winds that blow my way - nudging me, bothering me, picking on me, making my heart jump through endless hoops, making me blush, making me hungry, making we want, making me love, making me desirous of things. If only I could switch all such things off and be at peace for once. Sometimes I can be so sensitive to stuff - like a lightning rod charged with static. Sometimes I just want to hide in my bed, close my eyes, shut out the world and me
...and pretend not to exist.
and still she pops into my bed, smiles a little, and melts my heart,
into a puddle,
that's licked up by a dog...
called 'Spite'.
_________
