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Came to the machine cold. I am drunk and stoned, hoping to find a rhythm and in my new position. The new age music I am downloading (and listening to) may not help in the long run. I feel a chop and change coming on. Moments of doubt and distraction. I went straight into Dreamweaver and am finding the spell checker cumbersome.
Seven and a half days left before I am back in the office. To 'Dam on Thursday. New Year.
I find it easier to let something penetrate me - to go through to the core of my being, the seat of my imagination, the source of my creativity, what there is of it.
And a need too to flower into something.
Sounds bad doesn't it.
I was up early, as usual. I was almost certainly having a disturbing dream, an elegant variant on the simple nightmare that will touch on one of my deeply personal vulnerabilities. But so much for vulnerabilities - they may be facets of some 'crystal of cultural convention' - or in other words - you might all be nuts. Anyway, I was up early and killed some time. I was picked up by a work friend at 9:45 and driven to Chilworth for a four-mile walk up and down St.Martha's Hill. There were ten of us in all and we dined afterwards at the carvery in The Percy Arms - which I found to be excellent. Curiously all the bar staff were the psychological sub-species of ultra thin, tall, cool, ethnic-necklace-wearing non-virgin public-school/middle-class/skunk-smoking humanoids. There were many of them.
It was an energetic walk, and I was pleased that I didn't have a heart attack. I was chauffeured back home and hit The Clubhouse. Slightly tricky time in there. I had a coffee and a double Irish. I listened to my iPod and read The Times out the back. The death toll from this Tsunami may be mind-blowing but the planet always seems to get angry in faraway places. People feel sympathy, but it doesn't give us the shits so any move to collective empathy is probably impossible. It's always the small-minded getting hit. People who's lives are miserable anyway. Bigots. Religious crazies.
We tend not to see the moments of tenderness, heroic action, imagination, or joy. We see people tearing their hair out, wailing like beasts or fighting for their lives - always with the most meagre resources or the most pathetic devices.
It bugs me, this lack of a connection between Us and Them.
Time for a break. My concentration is flashing in and out. I have been here for nearly an hour. It's 21:23.
...
Back to the music. Time waits for no man. Assume the position, wait for inspiration. 21:30. I need a serious break. Must keep it self-contained.
Photographs taken this morning before dinner with my parents.
Keep violence in the mind
Where it belongs
- Brian Aldiss
From my notebook, last night...
One thing I have noticed recently; my inability to conquer the pen. I chose the Parker, as the Quink is near and the ergonomics are acceptable.
Many men and women, of course, have conquered the pen, or the quill. I find it difficult, but I must stay away from the machine - there is too much pain there.
Although it seems nonsensical that I should fix this moment in time, or give it some possibly spurious context, I should mention that yesterday was the occasion of the Revenues & Benefits Christmas Do. I wore my Tuxedo for the first time in nine years, which is also to say, the first time ever.
I suppose I was sickened by the whole thing. I was uncomfortable, disorientated, more alone and more afraid. Somebody backstabbed a friend last night. I don't know who it was, and that is fortunate for them because I would have wanted to get them against the wall.
I was the Gimp of course, The Weirdo. Spun out, patches under the eyes, that sickly slash of red lips. The weak expression. The lost look.
I came home at eight, launched two of my three pre-made torpedoes, got into bed and wept.
This must surely be my last stand. It is unendurable. I have lost. I admit that. I hand in my chips. Well done and best of luck. I go into the hills now.
Seems a bit harsh. I did dance with her, and under the circumstances, that was enough.
The chair I am sitting in is killing my back. Am trying with the keyboard on my lap. Time for a speech. Try something different. Change the physiological and the psychological landscape.
Hatred is probably not the way forward. You defend yourself and your friends and find it is a heavy price to pay - to be embattled much of the time. Not in the political sense, but in the broadest sense. Better all round then to have no 'friends' and give up yourself: Throw yourself into the night and stay on the que vivre in a permanent state of paranoia.
Ah well - it's misfiring.
Try again then.
I love you.
Hello Tourist.
The future has become an illusion, one way or another, and it's probably a good thing. I am off to 'Dam in a few weeks. We planned the itinerary on Saturday over four bottles of wine. It was hilarious.
Things are looking up at work. A couple of months ago I was offered a secondment to the Web Team - 3 days a week. It gets me away from the main office and back to old York House. I am tussling with web pages, FrontPage and PhotoShop nearly every day now. I have been given access to Ariel. I am surrounded by whizz-kids - pure geeks at that.
I spend most of my evenings thinking, dreaming. I am in a financial mess, but I have a steady job, so it isn't too bad. I work quite hard. I get in early these days - and the Clubhouse doesn't open till 5.30. I started watching a bit of TV a week or two ago. I am pretty sickened by it (again) now - so DVD hunting became an ancillary mission on today's shopping spree in Richmond. I bought a gold double-sided cigarette case, one of these, a big map of 'Dam, the latest Get Lost Guide, three boxes of Tea (mostly organic) and a vacuum sealed pack of 'Winter Warmer' flavoured coffee. The DVD was The Outlaw Josey Wales - of which there has been much talk of in the pub recently.
I need to finish that Glastonbury thing. I need to get my tent repaired.
Check out High Fire Hell by Crazy Girl. It's the weird elephant with the umbrella on his head. {Also available on this site. 021104}
Have a good night. No doubt I will be thinking about you.
For the moment, my baby. {This link may be bad vugum according to the Wiki Karma. Just go to Wikipedia and search for Twickenham. 060105}{Some ripped from the local museum. 151104}
Discovered batch processing in Photoshop. Almost got it to work. Took some more photographs today. Apologies for the duplicates. Back soon. Need to start writing again.
Part of one of my front teeth broke off on Friday, which chipped at what objective reality I can muster. I had it repaired the same day. But last night, which may be two nights ago, it fell off. I tried to glue it back on with superglue, but it didn't work.
I took my parents out on Sunday for a roast at The Clubhouse.
I fell asleep at about 10 this morning and had a meat locker dream. I was cut up pretty badly.
I went out earlier and bought a double scart extension for the new digital television we have here and two DVD's on a buy-one-and-get-one-free deal at Woolworth's; the two disk boxed set of MASH and a copy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was the only other film in the offer I was remotely interested in buying. The extras on the MASH disk were truly awful. Stark contrast to the brilliant Alien extras.
I ate some clearance sandwiches from Marks and Spencers. They went through me pretty quickly.
Fell asleep again at about 5 and woke up a couple of hours ago.
I start work in a different office and job tomorrow, which, under the circumstances, is a good thing.
Objective Reality. Away from the self, away from the ego trip, away from the fear. There must be some other way. I can't rely on something happening.
I've just realised that this site is very good. On the subject: Something very bad happened to The eXile; Sammie is looking good at the mo and it seems that these {Dead link to an 'Escort Agency.' 040205} people operate in sleepy little Twickenham (where there has recently been a murder). I would actually like to get away somewhere before the year is out, maybe here. And a place I went to some years ago, on one of the best breaks of my life, got hammered in the Boscastle flood. Good site. Shame about the horizontal scroll.
On we go.
The following was posted on a really good board I hang out on...
"As to whether I have been deceived, disillusioned .... The answer is yes, I suppose. I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans - the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue-print. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress - but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal." - The Air Conditioned Nightmare - Henry Miller.
I wrote a trite response to the original topic. I'm Howie, of course...
Exactly two months since I last posted. Getting about 2 or 3 hits a day. Google have wiped out my PageRank. I’ve not been idle - I have been working hard on the Glastonbury story. I’m currently about 3,500 words in. Feel free to view the work in progress.
There will be a pause of sorts, as I need to make a superhuman effort to apply for another job. It could be any other job, but in this instance it’s for an organisation that needs a copy-writer with HTML and Dreamweaver skills. Potentially a dream job – despite the commute into London (I live 5 minutes from my current office). Historically, the City - the World City no less – has always terrified me. From my earliest days at drama school London has always seemed too ruthless, too rough or too posh. There have been moments when I could delude myself into the believing myself an indigenous citizen - London Man - walking hand-in-hand with Dick Whittington, Shakespeare, Pepys and Sherlock Holmes - but these episodes are rare. One way or another, I must escape. Sometimes it’s bad to know the people you work with – to be a player in the political scene – not to mention feeling depressed and angry with the annoying people around you. Even more sad to see the people you like screwed as badly, if not worse, than you have been.
We are on an aggressive defence. Now that the project is over we all feel depressed, I think. Various broadsides have been launched – including one from me - with torpedoes. I pray to the goddess that I am on my way out. I want no part of it anymore. There will be no presentation. I want to leave quietly.
I have not felt the ticket over the last few days. There have been a few sessions, including one good night on the riverside in Richmond. A few weeks ago I went back to Holloway for the evening. I barricaded myself into a guest room with my lap-top and over a hundred hours of music. I went to the Happy Man on arrival. It looks dreadful in there now. I had the worst Lasagne of my life. It’s game over for The Man now. Only a miracle can save it.
I am 38 next month, and I realised two nights ago that there has been another anniversary this year: I have been writing fairly constantly for the last 20 years. And the Battle of the Boyne came and went – effectively representing 15 years of ‘schizophrenia.’
I am still listening to Terence McKenna. I finished True Hallucinations a few weeks ago. I am now reading Terence’s Archaic Revival and Miller’s Sunday After The War. Will then move on to The Invisible Landscape. Am reading The eXile regularly, and have sent them some drunken emails.
Must go now. Take care.
It may be that no-one will read this. I have to accept that as a possibility. One of many.
Kitten has an interesting quiz at the Walled City.
Terence McKenna - wmv file (7.12Mb)
Lord I can’t change.
This isn’t going to be easy. I’m at a loose end – in a state of contingency. Work has been really been getting me down recently. The project to install the new system is pretty much done. We went partially live on the 10th and fully live a few days later. Two years work is over. The fat cats will get their bonuses. We now go back to data entry. Much of the administration has been taken out of our hands. It seems we can’t be trusted. I feel depressed, disenfranchised and, as I say - somewhat lost. There is no focus now.
I may be taking my posters down from the walls of the office in the morning. We were going to move our gear tomorrow to the humourless hell hole of the main office in preparation for a new start as the ‘control team’ on Monday, but another ‘showstopper’ crisis today may entail a delay for the move and more ‘business critical’ emergency overtime for the weekend. The dust has yet to settle from the ‘big bang.’ One of us might still lose it. It could be me. I may decide to rip someone’s fucking head off and walk out the door – and so join the ranks of those I respect.
The reality - which we all knew from the beginning - is that the shit will never end until we literally drop dead, and maybe not even then. There will be more bullshit, backstabbing, bad breath and petty bitching. I favour the direct approach: Our only hope is that we cause so much aggravation after the move that the petty-minded drones around us find us intolerable. If you are one of them and you are reading this – I don’t give a fuck. I fart in your general direction.
There will be more manoeuvring no doubt. Again, I don’t care. Why should I? After all, there is nothing I can do about it.
I have booked Monday and Tuesday off.
I have the first week of June off too. Then the election, then - goddess help me - Glastonbury again. I am already dreaming about it.
I am back on 5 milligram fast acting capsules. The spansules didn’t work out for me.
I wrote this last night in The Clubhouse after seeing the front pages of the Telegraph and the Times. I revised it this lunchtime – again, in The Clubhouse…
“Well the world seems to have gone slightly more insane than normal. Nick Berg has just had his head hacked off, screaming, and Iraqi “prisoners” have been subjected to a regime of “abuse” – beatings, piss and probably torture or worse.
It appears that the received premise for the war – and much of the coverage by “the media” – was pure nonsense peddled by professional, suited bullshitters.
The faked celebrations at the end of the war may have consisted mostly of ex-pat Iraqis flown in by the U.S. authorities to make the numbers up.
The American president appears to be a beady-eyed puritanical throwback of some kind.
Blair is an empty husk. There is nothing there. Possibly the remnants of a prick.
The media now says nothing – or rather – what the media now says amounts to nothing.
We need to pull out.
But we need the oil.
Badly.
The stench of it all is phenomenal. I feel our only hope is that people start gagging from the stink so badly that they cannot perform basic functions, like eating, fucking, wanking and perhaps, as in the League of Gentlemen, we collectively start bleeding gouts of blood from our noses.
Or something along those lines.”
I was upset. And now it makes no sense. Perhaps it is too obvious.
Yes, that’s it. There is another story to tell…
I busted a nut over this piece.
“Not to know one’s true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing – a golem. And, indeed, this image, sickeningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryptofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by their daily television fix, they are the living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.”
Terence McKenna – Food of the Gods
Roughly two hours till I have to make my way to York House.
Morning air. Rosy dawn and blue-grey lilac sky. Chorus of birdsong intermittent now. Sip of cold coffee and American Spirit cigarettes. Still on slow time. Maybe a late start this morning.
If I could get through the day without feeling a mixture of anger and paranoia it would be a personal miracle. I fully expect, by the time I get home this afternoon, to be depressed and furious – which is to say: tired in a bad way. I am fearful.
I feel far from ready to engage with people. Less than an hour now to pull myself together - raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, double lock the gate and post the guards. Unseen and invulnerable. Or maybe hide in a hole in the ground like a Trapdoor spider. Invisible and silent.
I have been reading Belle de Jour.
I had another locus dream last night (last night for me was Saturday). This time it was the Holloway campus. Sometimes it is Glastonbury, sometimes the old flat. Never Twickenham it seems.
The campus was alive, as if it were rag week, the summer ball, and a completely different demographic of residents combined. Wild horses galloped around the grounds. I looked for a room, visited the Union. Everyone seemed crazed.
I must go now. The Miscellaneous page has been updated. Will try to post again soon.
I never see a weekend. I see 48 hours. Take care. I hope you survive this day too.
“We are the cutting edge of becoming.” – Terence McKenna
It’s dark and cold. I just heard a truck rumble down Wharf Lane. I have my retro-style metal desk fan on setting 1 not much more than an arms length away. It is not blowing on me, thank fuck, because it is no more than 15 degrees C in here and, with the exception of my Campus Clothing Company’s ‘Class of ‘98’ Royal Holloway T-shirt, I am naked. I need the fan on for white noise. Sometimes it is on for days.
It’s 20:07 at the moment. I must find something to say.
20:10
Time goes slower in here, and I am less afraid and annoyed. Although I have a number of problems: The more I see of this town the less I like it. I find it difficult to shop. Pubs are unnecessarily tense environments. There is only one reliable take-out in the town (La Baguetterie) and I am bored with it. My job is getting me down. Apparently 75% of the people in the country, or in London, I can’t remember, ‘hate’ their jobs. I am just like everyone else then, in that respect.
Ah well…so much for that.
The web site has changed – location and design. This is about the best I am capable of. I was passionate about white on black. I thought it was sexier, and was easy on the eyes. But for several reasons, some of them possibly psychotic, this stark scheme suits me more now.
The old hit counter, which was running at about 13,000 hits, was made wildly inaccurate after a bizarre run-in, I’m told, with one or more Cisco Systems networks. At the most I think I had about 2000 hits. I doubt many people have read this page. Perhaps many of those that did thought it was embarrassing, clichéd or just bullshit. People are mostly preoccupied with their own problems. I must find something else to give them.
In any case - we start again. I’ve had 2 hits in the last few hours, which has surprised me.
The site is now hosted by Dreamhosts. I transferred the URL from freeparking.co.uk and the content from Demon’s Homepages.
I have added some new graphics. These are pictures that I took with my old Fujifilm in September of last year. They have not been ‘Photoshopped’ – apart from resizing. I have a Pentax now. It is, as our American friends might say, the shit.
More snaps are available on this page.
And so much for that. I must try this again soon - when I have something to say. I wanted to talk about the weekend in Egham and then connections, but I guess it's my time now.
I believe this is it for the new design. Just one thing I need to add - some clever (for me) css and javascript. Yep - this is it.
Still trying to find a grove.
Am seeing if this works.
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