December 22

Twenty two is in the last run, all that rains is festivity and party, present and feasts, cracker and jokes that may not be particularly funny but at which we will all laug by, or perhaps groan.

And she asked again, by this time I was paying her scanty attention, and though I knew she would never use the information I still wanted to be accurate. Then the stranger got involved. And the argument rose until they screemed and tore each other to pieces.

What does it mean anyway? Discombobulated, I guess that is how I feel but I would have to be in much clearer focus to say this strange and long word is how I feel, perhaps what I want us to know there is a word, however long or strange it may be, that describes how I feel as if the word exists then this feeling is not uniquely bizarre.

Weary, and at the end of the day I feel like there is no movement towards doing anything more, for life is about doing more, and watching the television, or tiktok is about distraction and procrastination. There is more to be done but can I do it?

And now adding colour, do you remember the meat packing glitteratti? Do you remember when you were the main actor in your life, filled with hope and expectation, filled with privelidge? Now, you have to sing to avoid the spiral into darkness, the dank darkness spiral.

The wind blows the rain to the core, making the fool who went out without enough layers shiver and shake and say it was never this cold, the forecast did not predict what is now real. Why forecast if it is just a guess.

Posturing, covering up the insecurities and fears with bravado, but perhaps I should no longer care about this posturing, perhaps I should not care about appearing denuded, under your scrutiny, your severe gaze, perhaps I should just get on with what I want to be, rather that what you, they, say I should be.

And again the time between clearing and cleaning after the meal and an early night seems to have wobbled and warped with the aid of the television and turned the early into a late, and so tomorrow will be sticky and mean, if only I had more discipline.

Is monogamy such a strange concept, is it like a whale stranded in the high street, is it a ghastly kind of twisted magic, in which we pretend to be beyond it all while acting like Rabbids in our fantasies masturbating furiously but alone. Are we really alone in it all anyway, alone in a genetic drive for this biological machine with a greater willpower than our own.

Sometimes, not often, I feel like I haven't slept no matter how long I have slept for. Nights when I lie awake, thinking, wondering if I shall ever fall asleep and just as I am feeling the heaviness approach I am wide awake, but when I look at the clock it is an hour later, another hour later.

Sometime later I will awaken into this story, then I shall only remember the other, not the sleep, I shall only remember the awake.

There seems to be this disconnect between the reality as I observe it, the hierarchy and order of thing, and, of course, my beliefs and ideal; yes, there is a disconnect between my thoughts and my actions. Why is this, why am I so dreadfully needy, and constantly in search of reassurance. Cock-y-cock cock.

What I would like to say is there is nothing you can do to help or make it better, but perhaps you could explain why when he said it was best for me not to tag along you said ok. Because I don't care if he doesn't want me to tag along, but it does make me sad that you don't care if I tag along or not.

The fine art of a conversation, it is about bringing together the moment while keeping the movement flowing and not letting the other side show, not letting the ugly and the plain dominate the give and take, not the take and give

There was a small flutter, a tiny distraction, then we were left without an option, when there are so many things we want to change, so many changes to make but what is it that we can do, nothing. We are doing nothing. Nothing.

So what is this all about, this guilt I feel about having an easy life only to be balanced by my denying myself joys and delights, my having a plain and restricted life but this makes me feel hard done by so I compulsive comfort consume the plain subsistence I have restricted myself too. False economy.

What is it all about, so what is the significance of this moment, what is the sum of those significant moments aggregated, added together into a life's work? And with these peoples whose significant aggregates affect you and me, what is that all about? And now?

There was a time of laughter, and there was a time without. Sometimes it feels like the time of laughter is when I am without. Sometimes it feels like I have to work especially hard to try to be quick and witty when I am feeling without to be in the time of laughter.

When I was young I was the person in the book wanting to tell my life through poems I was writing about an interesting thing, or a myth, or an atrocity, for we lived in atrocious times, but really the poem was meant to be about me. But I could never work out which myth or atrocity to choose so I wrote nothing. Nothing of concequence.

The silent twins had each other to talk to and other than a stoned moment or two it was enough to keep them silent for years, maybe thirty years. Even with each other that takes self control. I hope I have the self control to remain silent for a couple weeks.

When having fun, like those folks in the Argentine capital, then the time flies. Today it flew twice, at different periods, but then it floundered, parhaps we need a saying for when time flounders, maybe.

There is a place, on the mainland of their world, where education aims to develop well rounded individuals who can contribute to the betterment of their society and who want to. I don't know if it is a better place than this city I live in, but they certainly hope for a better start in life. Though as I have never been there an only one person has told me about there, I don't really know how close to iddyl it is.

And so soon we will be embarking on another cooking adventure, but it will be just the same as the last cooking adventure, surely I should be trying to make new and unusual adventures rather than repeating these. Is this called contentment, and why does this contentment annoy me so.

This is now when the next starts, this is this and that is that, but while I know that I am here with us I feel like I am them. I don't feel like an old song or like a new rhythm, and I don't feel like an ear worm, I feel like an ear ache.

And now we push, and now we push, and maybe it feels like I have been pushing for so long it seems that now we need to push. And now we push. And I pushed harder because we all were pushing but now it seems to be just me. And now I push. A little more and now I push.

There is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from fixing and reusing, be it the bike that is repaired again or the wood that was saved when breaking through the wall, which spent some time in storage finally to be combined with the wood from the shed to make the bike shed into a work of art, in my eyes anyway.

And then it felt like I belonged, but maybe it was just the warmth of the red wine warming my sense of belonging, cuddling my ideas of home, and I wondered if the hours of work was worth it, especially as one the moment moved on I was left behind.

Sometimes, although more often than I would like to admit, I find myself terribly weary. I was weary today, and thought to myself, well who else would I think to, I thought perhaps I should give up paying interest in football as then I would not need to stay up late to watch the highlights show. Priorities change, assessments of needs may change too.

Habits and rituals have such a strong place in lubricating the social, when there has been a gap then the rituals are more noticeable, more notably different to yesterday, or the day before. But some of those rituals are a little bad, ways to avoid the inevitable.

There were moments in the pleasure when I felt a sadness, a loss, a general premonition that this will all be coming to an end. In a sense it is a question of giving up, slightly, a little, thinking I am unlikely to carry on trying to make things better so, thus, things will get worse.

Existence is said to inspire an angst, a dread, a deep anxiety usually an unfocused one. But surely the feeling existence inspires is despondency or ever depression, the pointlessness of the individual other than that of a data point, one more or less makes no difference to the whole.

Shortly it will be the moment when we change the number on the year when we write it on forms, administration forms. And we will say to each other what are you changing, and I will say I don't know, but really there is so much I want to change but fear I shall fail so do not start.