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Blog
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The worst decision I made all week.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of ‘The worst decision I made this week’ and here’s your host, I am!
The worst decision I made this week was considering cancelling plans with a friend. As you may have gathered I am no social butterfly. When I leave the house it is for work or Kate as a general rule. I realise this sounds like an awful way to conduct oneself. I also spend a lot of time in queues if that makes you feel better about it.Last night I just couldn’t be bothered. I had a full on day at work and I just wanted to go home and wallow. The ball wasn’t in my court though fortunately.
The friend I had planned to meet up with is my longest serving friend, he top trumps the lot of you. I don’t know what I’m going to say about him so we will just initial this one. My friend S had tried calling me a couple of times during the day. I text him and had not received a response by the time I left work. I started towards the train station figuring it gave him another half hour to get his arse in gear while I either walked to our arranged meeting place or jumped on a train. I was very undecided.
He called and there was just something in his voice. I realised we hadn’t seen each other in two years and there was too much unsaid we needed to catch up on.
After a couple of beers in Soho I confessed to him I had thought about ducking out or cancelling or taking a rain check whatever the fuck that means. He understood completely. We both work in quite highly strung industries and he agreed there are days when you need to just lock yourself away and respect your own privacy.
He’s right, as usual, but I sometimes go too far the other way.S has always been the outgoing powerhouse of the pair of us but seeing him last night I could tell something had changed. He still has the spirit and we talked about it at great length but he is being heavily oppressed and put upon by those above. I hate seeing him like that and the areas we are both working in are no what we should be doing at all but a man has gotta eat.
So eat we did.After eight beers we wandered the confused side streets of east London until we found a Mexican cantina. This might be the booze talking but wow, that was some good Mexican. I’m pretty sure we were taken for being a couple but I could do an awful lot worse.
It was nice to see the pressure of the day leave our shoulders, all of that stuff becomes nothing when you’re with a friend who shares the dream and shares the drive and just gets it.
I’m very lucky we have managed to stay so connected when months tick by in the way they do.
No matter where we get to and what we are doing there is something going back and forth and long may it continue.
My parting words were “don’t let the bastards grind you down”.
I hope you get to read this one S, and I’ll see you soon.
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Satori In Paris.
I’m currently reading what I understand to be Kerouac’s last book. I’m struggling with it for the same reason I struggled with the documentary What Happened To Kerouac? which I reviewed for Screen Geek way back when.
While the book offers an insight into how Kerouac sees himself and Paris, it just highlights what a shambling drunkard he became. That’s not to say it isn’t a good book or I don’t appreciate the kind folks who bought it for me, it’s just different from the beat poet stuff I love.
He reminds me of a drunk Shatner, hitting on girls young enough to be his daughters, frightening locals and being kicked out of hotels.
There was a time when I would have thought this kind of thing brilliant and rock n roll and whatever else but seeing how he died shortly after from an internal haemorrhage doesn’t make it all that rosy. He didn’t light up the sky like the Roman candles of On The Road, he just began a caricature drunk he could write about. -
On gay marriage.
Last night I got into a discussion on gay marriage. It’s incredible we still exist in a world where there is a discussion to be had on the subject. While I appreciate I am coming at this from the view of a straight mid-twenties male I am ready to be silenced by anyone who feels they have more of a right to air their views on the subject. I would classify this as any gay man or woman who wishes to get married.
People talk an awful lot about the sanctity of marriage. I don’t see how who people choose to marry being against the sanctity of marriage, if anything it is purely sanctimonious. The sanctity of the church has been questioned in recent years. I don’t think given the advances in culture (questionably) and science (definitely) we can consider anything to be made of the bible as a verbatim piece. As Captain Barbossa would say, “think of it more as a guideline”.
I don’t understand how we can put aside animal sacrifice (Lev 1:9), selling our children into slavery (Exodus 21:7) and murdering anyone who works on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) but somehow two people of the same sex aren’t allowed to be married in a church.
I think it should be entirely down to personal choice. I would like to one day get married. I don’t necessarily want to do that in any kind of religious building because of the backwards and vindictive state of religion in the world today.
The fact there are couples who are denied the option in the first place does not make sense to me.
It seems fine for people of the cloth to finally come clean on their sexuality (that almost reads like a pun, sorry) but two people can’t get married in a church because “marriage should be between a man and a woman”? What has that got to do with anything.
I thought sex should be between consenting adults but that hasn’t been the way of the church for centuries.
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The Bell Jar.
Last night I finished Plath’s only novel. It was my first dalliance into her world aside from the poetry Kate sometimes frequents upon my ears. It was an incredible book, dark and terrifying in places but with an excellent sense of humour.
Plath’s barely fictional Esther Greenwood is a surprisingly forward-thinking and empowering character considering the time she existed. The story follows her travelling from her home in Boston to take up a magazine apprenticeship one Summer. Completely separate from the world she is expected to enjoy Esther feels lost and disorientated at the prospect of just being a wife and a mother. Upon her return home she intends taking up a writing course but is instantly dismissed by letter. She attempts to write a novel herself but her fear of her lack of life experience prevents her from doing so.
Esther’s depression begins to rise until she is institutionalised and then titters on the edge of what is real and what she wants.It’s a brave novel, and one I am very glad to have read.
It’s hard to read completely objectively given Plath herself committed suicide a month after the book was published. There are so many warning signs she is truly suffering and yet it wasn’t a time when such states of depression could be readily identified and dealt with.
All the same it’s an insight into how sometimes no offer can be good enough. -
Near year.
I started this blog at the end of February 2012, the 27th to be precise. Since then I have covered most things that have happened to me. It’s served to introduce me to a lot of people and ideas and things but like all good things it will eventually end. Stop crying.
I wanted to write a years worth of blogs and I’ve nearly done it. I know what I’ll do with it all after but still have some stuff to sort out in that regard.
The things writing every day has taught me are incredible, especially to someone who wants to be a writer. I can’t recommend it enough. It doesn’t matter how inane a thought or how dull a day, I write it down and there’s something to be gained from that.
Just write and see where it goes. -
Ison Cometh.
I just read about the Ison Comet which is due to be visible from the Earth later this eye. It is set to be the astrological high point of 2013, in November possibly appearing brighter than the moon in the night sky.
I love space. I find the whole unknown of it all fascinating and while I have never held a scientific mind, those incredible points of interest like a comet or satellite footage of planets captures the adventure child within.
I grew up watching Star Wars and the like. While my birth was a decade behind the beginning of the original trilogy my Dad made sure I was up to (light)speed on all things in the Force. It’s very easy to disregard the incredible things that happen above our heads. I’m hoping the Ison will be visible while I am away from the light pollution in the Sahara in October.
Maybe I could write to the government and ask them to cut the lights on a particular date so we could all enjoy the show.
Paul Schiernecker 