The Devil Wants You For a Sex Toy...

I wish I were more like Lemmy, but in reality- I'm mostly like Pooh Bear.  Always getting my fat arse stuck in tight spots looking for the honey pot. 

I guess in the end...all you can do is be yourself.  Play to your strengths...learn from your weaknesses.  One day you won't know the difference. 

So suck it up, roll the dice, let the chips fall where they may, mix all your metaphors and play like the devil wants you for a sex toy.

Because he does.

Snake Oil Salesman

Sometimes I crap on as If I'm some kind of guru. 

I go back over old stuff and read it- & I see this. 

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself- but I don't think so. 

My bullshit detector is sharp, and I'm always on the lookout for it. 

At home...and away. 

That's fair- don't you think?

Sometimes I speak of 'letting go' as if I'm some kind of fucking expert.

But I think I ought to tell you...

Every day I struggle with my base self.

Every goddamn day- every second of the day...

Listen to this; only five minutes ago, I almost said something unkind to someone.

It came from a hateful, spiteful self satisfied egotistical holier than thou kind of place.

Not at all from a loving, gentle, kind place.

I had to bite the tongue in my head before I spat the poison out.

Who cares where it came from; faulty parenting or the formaldehyde in my lager. 

It comes up...a little more often than I like.

And I have to be on my guard, all the time- so it doesn't get out. 

Like a basket full of snakes- & I really STRUGGLE to control them. 

It's just habit; I guess I can set the basket down...but I have been carrying them for so long...

I actually have myself convinced it is preferable to carrying nothing at all.

Until I set the basket down...I can never hope to love.

And love- like Latin- is a dying language
 
Part of that struggle- what helps me- is this blog.

This blog is pretty much exactly as I intended it to be- right from the very start.

A kind of diary, filled with messages, observations lessons for ME.

It's written like it's for everyone...

(Actually I'm not sure why that is.) 

Maybe because...I figured if I wrote it like I was aiming it at everyone else...

It would seem like it came from someone who knew what they were talking about.

Instead of me. 

Because most of this stuff is NOT what I do...

But what I aspire to do. 

And be. 

Every day.

I WRITE DOWN the man I want to be...

So that one day...it will stick.

So when I say 'let go'...

I'm mainly talking to me.

And it's no picnic. 

Negativity plagues me.

I cannot sleep lately; I'm not sure what the problem is.

But I can tell you this...those negative thoughts slither in like bad company.

And I spend the night trying to fight them, block them, cuddle them...

Yes, even make friends with them...

Until I don't know what to do.

And then, when I get too tired for words...

I pass out. 

I try to let love in...

But it 'aint that easy.

It takes time.

I think I miss the PHYSICAL side of love.

I cuddle a teddy.

Yes...A TEDDY.

Like I did when I was a boy.

It's OK...but I miss having a person, flesh and blood to cuddle.

If you don't cuddle someone occasionally...

You wither up and die.

The boffins have proven this- somehow.

The irony is...until the snakes are all gone....

Love will be too frightened to take residence.

& I don't blame her.

So what do I do?

I keep this blog.

There it is.

I might sound like I know what I'm talking about...

But I write like a person being chased by things that want to take a bite outta' my arse.

Because they do.

One day...

It'll all come together.

Or so Teddy tells me...

 

Intercourse With The Dead.

Broken promises... 

Words so full of possibility, without substance...they break over time in little increments.

Our bones, the brittle child-like sense of expectation, that finally snap with the realisation...

Twas all for naught.

the bitter memory we carry of the casual, careless utterances that sail triumphantly from the mouths of fools- flawed vessels on waves of empty passion that break on the shores of our vulnerability.

Like compound fractures- we can carry them around like nonsense memory.

The dull ache of the pain of a lost hope...

we carry around with us...

Words that once seemed like a new born infant, stagger on like zombies eternally, kept alive by our child like belief in them.

They can stunt our growth, and we walk eternal with the limp of bitter disappointment.

In time, if we hold onto these fractures long enough, we become conversant ourselves in the art of the broken promise. 

And others limbs we break in turn.

A world of staggering disability & disbelief.

We need to be so very careful that the language of the fractured expectation is not the only language we become conversant with. 

There are many languages out there.

Lies are one.  Truth another. 

Faith, peace and hope.

And if we must hold onto the bitter pain of the broken promise- & many among us MUST- then we would do well to ensure we do not break the most important promises of all. 

The ones we make with ourself.

To attempt to keep a promise with another without doing it for oneself- like trying to love another without first having self love- is like having intercourse with the dead.

Without their consent.  

Perverse.

My Life Lesson...

Learning

Spurning

Burning

Yearning.

Wipe Your Muddy Boots, You Look Like a Pilgrim...

 

 

We don't HAVE to do a thing. 

Not a bloody thing. 

Obligation is something we picked up somewhere out there in the wild, like shit on our boots. 

I'll bet that in most cases- like me- obligation is based upon the expectations of others. 

Not our own. 

If I'm wrong- scrape me off your boots like all the other crap. 

But if I'm right...lets do something about it. 

Today. 

Right now.

We don't want to track this shit all over the bloody house.

LET YOURSELF GO...

 

 

People are NEVER going to do what you want them to do...

be what you want them to be...

Nor should you expect them to. 

So unless you pay them, sign a contract or somehow otherwise hold them to ransom...

then let them go.

They owe you NOTHING.

NO ONE owes you a goddamn thing.

You owe yourself the gift of liberation.   

Every time you feel yourself yearning for some unfulfilled promised...

Groaning under the weight of expectation..

Feel a twinge of pain at their failure to fulfil some vague emotional contract...

Let it go. 

Let them go. 

LET YOUSELF GO. 

It's truly liberating.

Real freedom.

Try it. 

You won't be sorry.   

TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK HOARDER

My friend Tim has prompted me to make a confession. 

It is high time I came 'out of the closet'...and confessed to the world...

I am a collector of books...

but very SELDOM a reader! 

I AM an avid ARCHIVER, who has read only a FRACTION of his collection! 

In a way- I am a fraud. 

I admit it.

I just LOVE buying books, and putting them on shelves! 

I love collecting them, leafing through them, reading snippets of them...but so very rarely do I read them right through! 

I feel a twinge of guilt when I hear of others voraciously devouring the written word...

Those who work the golden seam of knowledge, creativity, ideas...

The eternal dialogue. 

I write plenty of my own words...but seldom absorb others. 

I confess, there is a part of me that worries that the writing of others might somehow dilute my own work- take something away from my own voice. 

That I might start to sound like someone else. 

It has taken me a LIFETIME to find my own inner voice...

to listen to it...

LET ALONE to record it with any kind of accuracy!!

I have a latent fear (i guess from childhood conditioning) of being a copy-cat- so I resist the influence of others, that my own style might remain pure. 

I have a feeling that the words I have read to date have furnished me with the sufficient tools for carrying out the art or writing satisfactorily, & the only task remaining is to hone my own voice, and retain it's integrity, it's purity.

If it might indeed boast such a thing.

But my sense of 'integrity' feels somehow challenged when I look at my vast army of untried, untested pulp & ink soldiers. 

Why do I do it?

It has to be more than some sense of artistic sanitation. 

It HAS to be. 

Even the greatest writers dip into the words of others at regular intervals. 

Why don't I??

Because I think also, at my core- I am strictly a book aesthete. 

I cannot bear the thought of an abandoned book.

I never could.

Nothing breaks my heart more than a book in a bin.

I don't care what it is...what subject, matter...I have to rescue it.

I cannot bear to be in a shop, and see a bargain...a book that is beautiful, in it's first run, in good condition, obviously of substance, fairly cheap, one that I will likely never read...

and allow it to just sit there!! 

A recent purchase of a beautiful mint condition edition of the life of George Gershwin...

I have only a passing interest and acquaintance with the man and his work...

& yet for a dollar I simply HAD to give it a home!!

My home is an orphanage for abandoned books! 

A repository of ideas! 

I cannot handle a volume without thinking...

"My GOD!!  The work that went into this!  The man hours devoted to fashioning such a wonderful piece of art!  THIS IS A SLICE OF SOMEONES EXISTENCE!"

And I have to take it home with me.

I am a HOARDER of the printed page!

My first job was a Librarian- perhaps I am still one!

Like the character in the Brautigan book The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966



a man whose home was a 7/11 repository for the collective unconscious- a place for occasional scribes to submit their work for storage...

In the name of posterity...

A safe deposit box of true wealth. 

A bank of beauty. 

I delight in it...and yet somehow, carry a certain degree of shame! 

Like I am somehow a kind of fraud! 

Freud suggested that abused children 'collect' things and surround themselves in an attempt to hold onto...something...

we line our shelves with them, as a kind of protective wall against the oppressive, cruel outside world.  We live in a cave fashioned of our own sense of beauty...

insulated by friendly non toxic material- the one place we can function. 

We line our living space with materials that will remain; that will not desert, or let us down. 

And books will never do that. 

People let me down constantly, so I have given up relying on them; but books NEVER do. 

Whether it is an illness, an addiction, or just plain glorious madness...

I simply LOVE books.

My name is John; & I'm a biblioholic...