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On Alcohol & Suffering

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I can’t quite remember how long ago it was, but I seldom forget who I was and wasn’t. At 41, I am still aware of the person who has walked closely behind me, but at least the larger parts of him are dead now. Just the odour of what rots inside the past. It is somewhat important to preface this with a small admission: I can’t promise you a flowing prose-piece highlighting how easy and serendipitous this has been. It has been a different version of difficult. Perhaps, that’s just me. I think it’s silly for me to ever entertain the notion that I might be a ‘recovering alcoholic’. There is no pull from the past. No warm memories to reminisce over. There is no yearning to escape, that way. At 41, I understand that there is no escape in any cocktail of drinks, just delay and amplification. I see no fun in it. I see hiding. I see lonely people feeling a sense of togetherness amongst paper bonds. What brings them together chains them to something else. Some might call it blindness.  Why am...
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The 101st Anniversary of the Opening of the Scopes Monkey Trial

  On becoming a man? What use could crying possibly have for me now? What difference would wet or dry eyes make to this vicious cycle of waking up and churning through a list of tasks handed down to me -designed to enrich the lives of those near me, unnoticed. Unthanked. The few moments that are spare come with sickness or inescapable noise. I put things designed for the prolonged use of heavy machinery into my ears at night so that I can sleep, but it is still there. The noise, not so much, but the knowledge of it. I have met these people individually. They have limp handshakes, their breath smells of beer and ashtrays. Frames that would not serve them well in collisions or violence. Yet, they end almost every one of my days with the decibels of their lack of meaning. Am i annoyed more by them or that in a street full of people I am the only person to confront them?  Once in a while there will be a moment -short-lived- at the foot of a mountain or by the sea. Every ripple...
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Dear Artist, Is the Algorithm Your Pimp?

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Over the course of the last decade I have witnessed the ethereal spark behind the eyes of humanity —the spark we affectionately refer to as “the soul”— all but disappear. This is a generalisation of sorts, I have caught glimpses here and there -exceptions. I consider myself lucky in that regard. The light, it dwindles.   I last wrote you on August, 30th of last year. Spurred into action by a strange and meaningful dream. This time I am entirely outward facing. Reporting back to you from my duties as a “watcher”. It is given very little weight. Like trying to stir a pot of already set concrete. Diagnosing a curable illness once rigor mortis has already set in. That is where we are now. Well into the final stages of this. Contorted, ready for the final act. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I can tell you what has happened. When COVID happened the vast majority of us clutched social media like a lifeline. It changed, not only how we spent our days, but who we were. It changed how w...
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My father, my dog, a dream, and I.

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I suppose YOU might call this ‘journalling’. You, who must be here because -much like the tree that falls in the woods- without you being here, nor would I. To an extent at least. Perhaps to many. I do hope that none of this comes off like those scheduled sessions of absent-minded self-reflection that form part of an all-inclusive journey toward immaculate well-being. Will you just look at me hyphenating my way through life. How silly. I am not on the brink of self-discovery, sat at some cafe near my resort in Bali, drinking overpriced avocado coffee. On the contrary, I am fresh from a walk in the rain, as more of it pours down outside, silencing the populace. Their cloud is my silver lining. That's just how I've grown to be.  This morning, I was awoken by the tears in my eyes, and one of those deep choking sensations that you'd associate with deep loss. I span myself round so that the wife and I were top-and-tail. I pulled Huxley -my dog- close to me and kissed his head. W...
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Sitting Alone, Below the Weight of Things

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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...
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Two Steps to the Right of What’s Left of God

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 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...
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A futile something for those who do not read

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  “ 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 ...
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