The Ballads Of Mister Rhodes

I can’t recall. Was there ever a decision reached, as to whether or not one should embark upon -or refrain from- writing under these conditions? I know there was plenty said about writing drunk and editing sober, or simply not writing drunk at all. That was Carver or Hemingway, or both. This is something different. I don’t have any recollection of anything being said concerning writing under the immediate influence of a situation or letting it pass and then reflecting upon it.  It seems to me that it is much easier to tell a story. To turn a memory into words. I have never been particularly interested in ‘easy’. I have always wanted to take the feelings as they come and let them form their own sentences, and then paragraphs. You see, there is nothing there. Just a sensation. As if my blood was carrying battery acid and little salt crystals around my body. Then an emptiness. At first, I thought it was in my stomach, but having sat quietly with it for some time now, I have learned th...

 I have always made a point of waiting until it is necessary. To allow things to tick away until they sit me down, much like how I am sitting now. After an uncertain amount of time, thoughts will refuse to exist as thoughts. I was weary about writing anything so close to the new year for fear of ending up with one of those dreadful 'seminal' lumps of prose. As luck shouldn't have it, in four more days, I will have been alive for four decades, so I figured I am obligated to loosely attempt to sum up what I make of that. Or perhaps, more to the point, what it makes of me. There are things about me that surprise me. They are most unlike who I have once been, and who many might know me as. I am wearing a wedding ring on my left ring finger. Three evenings ago I touched my last drop of alcohol, and in the next few hours, I will smoke my last cigarette. I never had a timeline in mind for marriage, but shortly after I met my wife I realised that I was at a point where I could trul...

  “ Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”   - Nikos Kazantzakis Do you think, at a few weeks shy of forty, one is qualified to talk about how much they’ve seen the world change? Is it old enough to have some authority on such a matter? Perhaps it is still a decade shy of the wisdom we associate with ageing. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable, but I’d like to begin with “how much I’ve seen the world change.” It seems to be that, for the most part, these creatures calling themselves human beings have become increasingly less aware of how they cause ripples in a lake. It is a form of selfishness, but it is not deliberate, nor is it intentionally malicious. It is, as I said, a lack of awareness. The result of stupidity and pride fitting together so well. They hold each other at night, kissing one another's necks. Their fingers interlocked, dreaming the same dreams. I recall the time a man at a bar tried to borrow my attention to tell me how dreadful his life had ...

"They're lining up the prisoners And the guards are taking aim I struggle with some demons They were middle class and tame I didn't know I had permission To murder and to maim You want it darker."   - Leonard Cohen (You Want It Darker) Perhaps this is just a feeling and not something that can be written down. A moment of softness that one tries to move away from as quickly as possible for fear that it might be interpreted as fragility or vulnerability. Some sort of admission that the ground is shaky and the compass needle is having a momentary crisis. One of those, in which, if you allow yourself to think, you realise that it started before you were even here. There are things that we pull into today that we didn't even realise we were ever attached to. I am shown videos of a man I used to live with a decade ago. He is alive and happy. Playing with his grandkids. Walking his dog. Holding his wife. From what little I knew of this man, he was one of a rare breed. Ex...

I have to tackle this chronologically. It’s too easy for us to get lost in the notion that there is anything more than time that connects us, ultimately. So, to begin, I stretched out over the concrete block and stared up at the sky. That place, where, at times, I can neither see nor hear anything of the human world. The waves, birdsong, my dogs playing. That is the soundtrack. In that absence of the human world, there is a stillness that I often do not know what to do with. It brings on nausea and a little lightheadedness. I count my breaths and try not to get wrapped up in the idea that there is something to release, although I am sure there is. In a clear blue sky, I can see so many markings on the lenses of my eyes. I wonder for a moment if these will eventually lead to blindness. I also find a little peace in the fact that, at almost forty, I am beginning a physical decline, and that is something that I must find peace with. Whilst the dogs are playing my mind reminds me that the ...

“there isn't enough of anything as long as we live.  But at intervals  a sweetness appears  and, given a chance,  prevails.”   - Raymond Carver I unleashed the dogs and sauntered over to the usual concrete block -it makes do as a seat amidst the sand and dirt. Additionally, it’s large enough to lay back on and have a complete panorama of nothing but the sky. I think it’s a drain cover of some kind. Part of an abandoned development. There are unfinished foundations a few feet away. The architectural ghosts of COVID. The skeletons of over-frivolous excitement. Laying on my back, I escaped the twitch of anxiety, or perhaps it was a soft sort of existential dread, that I had been feeling earlier. The distance between the rolling thunder and I put me at ease. An ambulance and two police cars had driven past me earlier in the day. I messaged my wife to make sure she was okay. Many of the drivers here are reckless, and there seems to be little conscious thought for the...