Live in the moment – or – you live in my moments please
I’m thinking
I don’t do many things that aren’t selfishly motivated.
I’m sober and having my second night in
You know – when you are being good to yourself and you eat couscous from Morrisons out the packet and feel quite smug because it has a couple of sultanas in it
and anyway
I overheard my best friend say
That I was a really good mate for bringing groups of people together
and if I had the money I’d lend anyone anything, buy anyone dinner, and listen to
ANYONE
for hours – or four hours
But, she said, she knew that I was interested in these generous gestures because –
I’d take anything I wanted too
Like that sneaky make-up wipe steal in the morning
Everyone knows that’s me
Or the dry shampoo – it’s gone again – you know that was me,
And the entire pot of peanut butter, yes that was me,
but I accused you of doing it instead.
You are doing ‘protein world’
I thought the idiocy of this choice warranted an accusation
Protein world is a diet and it comes in a yellow box and the worst part of it looks to be -
The protein pancake.
To expand: I think it would be fair to say, I’ve been feeling, a little
stressed out.
So – I think I mentioned - I’ve retreated to my room.
Outside
There is a man sitting (living) on the pavement talking to himself...
Don’t make me nervous –
He says
I’m holding a baseball bat.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he doesn’t have a baseball bat
But he does have two kinds of chalk and he is writing –
‘it is my 32nd birthday today’!
The letters are white and he has outlined them in green.
People walk past and don’t look
and I wonder
how there isn’t a lot more murder.
Don’t know if you’ve noticed but
I am having a few of those
REVALATORY MOMENTS
(which seem to happen at least five times a day)
I think … I want to get rich…
or engineer a successful version of socialism
Shortly followed by
I think… I am going to try …and drink less
Because someone said to me they think of my face and
they can’t help but
think
of a glass of pino and then they hysterically laughed
they actually said – a glass of pino would be your self portrait
And someone else agreed
And I thought - : I will be sober and then you will all only have
yourselves to blame for your own alcoholism, flaws, and in
general confessional behaviour whilst
‘under the influence’
On the subject of addiction
Tony is a man who lives on the same estate as me
and the protein world
box.
His parents live next door to me and I can hear him cackling
outside the ground floor window.
His brother and sister work in the city
and visit his parents and bring
round useful things like
The Asda Shop (because they don’t like doing it online
because they are
distrustful of the internet)
Tony takes crack, and Ashvin my landlord told me
this is because
Tony & his twin brother sniffed glue
in the park when they were fourteen
and his twin brother died in front of him
Tony is now about forty and always pisses on our bin
And our landlord says, please don’t call the police if Tony
is aggressive,
or perhaps... steals a car, call me.
And we do, because we do not trust the police and Ashvin
is dependable
even though he took advantage
of the right to buy scheme and our rent
is a rip off,
He still looks out for Tony
This saga is on-going.
In the mornings outside Darnell kicks over the bin
(because he doesn’t like wearing his tie and his mother cannot make
him put the tie on)
Between the piss
and the kicking
the bin is rendered a rather unfortunate character -
I’m interrupted from thinking about the neighbours with a phone call.
My friend calls to say; I have no life, so I’ve got no questions to ask
Instead I read books…
I worry about this book exchange
(although I don’t say this to her because sometimes I’m polite)
Have you read this? Yes I have, but have YOU read THIS?
And which part of that are YOU actually living, outside
IN THE REAL WORLD
The rest of the conversation goes something like this:
Have you seen pride and prejudice?
Because I feel like the common one every
time I am at an art opening
whilst all the posh people stand at the edge,
whispering about each other and doing sideways glancing
and YES chlamydia
is like a pet you get given that you don’t want
and still have to take care of
and I still can’t sleep - and no I haven’t tried
listening to whale music -
because that is more stressful than insomnia.
I’m still wide awake sitting in my room and
Hannah in my street is kicking her boyfriend’s car in again
And you are crying on webcam it's dark, I’m tired,
the content of everything around me is stressful and I think
It’s important to make
A friendship here
I felt quite jealous when I met you
(and you here is plural for many other people)
and concerned for you and others and the unpaid labour time
that goes into
the creation of an online personality
And the horrible name drop exchanges
and the willingness we have to
Commodify trauma and then commodify stridency
In the hope that we all might
(And perhaps I am projecting here)
Live a life that seems somewhat fulfilled
Now – I’m thinking about truth
You see - when you tell lies,
each time you tell one,
you separate yourself from the person you tell it to
You become isolated and it is easier to disassociate
and live out
a fiction in reality
and what does THE TRUTH really matter anyway
Webs of projected fictions make survivors
And yeah yeah they may be slightly,
you know,
borderline
borderline is in some senses a completely successful
(no sorry - sexist diagnosis)
which depends on rigid binary definitions
AND
Remember… you said to me in the pub once;
‘I like such and such
because she is a liar and I am a liar and do you know what
you are probably a liar too’
and I said; I am
And that was honest.