Friends Reunited

Well, it may have taken almost a year but I am ready to listen to Tom Waits again.

But how could I have doubted I wouldn’t be - he is an artist I have never seen live but have listened to regularly for nigh on 30 years. There is no way I could live the rest rest of my life without that driving rhythm, the words that fit together like a beautiful puzzle, the occasional hint of spaghetti western, the sense of humour that echoes my own, and of course that feeling of melancholy and hopelessness that is the flipside of western living.

The way he wrings whatever sound he needs from the instruments to get the desired effect has influenced my writing style for a long, long time now - we may have never met but together we have both aged and grown wise . . .

Sorry Nicola, I'll try to keep the volume low . . .

(ps - Life is never dull when you are married to the dancing queen . . .)

Questions

Tuesday morning, a quarter to eight. I need a car today so have dropped Nicola off to swim before work and now I am in Starbucks waiting for the shops to open at nine. It’s quiet, peaceful, grey. Distant, distracted people pass the window absorbed inside their own worlds. I am here with it all, calm, relaxed.

I think about work and the feeling changes. MY heart beats, butterflies flutter inside and I become anxious, slightly rushed, edgy . . . Why?

It could be the coffee but it’s not. I sit still but cannot pin down the cause. It could be the unknown, the uncertainty. It could be the closeness to other people, being within their personal space and mine. I am suddenly uncomfortable and cannot settle.

So I think about a couple of friends of ours, Dave and Carol. They seem to have this open calmness about them, receptive, ready to observe things, think and then act. To act without uncertainty, or to accept uncertainty as part of it all. As I picture the two of them I see myself being the same way. The butterflies suddenly multiply and swarm through me along with a voice from deep within.

“What if I am wrong? Just like I am always wrong. How will I explain that?”

“What will people say?”

“More likely they’ll say nothing won’t they? - I am not worth it, who would want to talk to me, to risk being associated with a strange one like myself?”

I stick with it and the feeling subsides to a nervous emptiness.

The feeling I have at work.

Ripples on the Sea of Life

Happiness comes and goes. I have been watching myself recently and my mood changes more quickly than Nicola changes her clothes in the morning (yes that often!). I can wake up at six and be happy. By eight for no apparent reason I can be unhappy. If I leave for work early I am happy. When I see the roadworks ahead I start worrying . . . and as they magically clear before me I cheer up again. Once I arrive at work for the day and look at my appointment list for the day I can relax and be happy, until somebody else gets booked in and changes my mood. Or conversely I can see a certain person booked in and my heart sinks until that is they cancel, and life is good again. So it goes, minute by minute, hour by hour throughout the day.

But there is more, there is something deeper. My moods are like the waves on the ocean ever changing, ever rising and falling. Living by the Pacific Ocean as I do I see the waves daily and yet underneath there are deeper much more powerful currents that you can only experience if you immerse your self in the water. And so it is with my moods, underneath lie deeper powerful emotions that in my case seem to be my own particular fusion of melancholy and happiness.

How do you immerse yourself to find these deeper currents you ask? . . . Meditate.

Relapse . . . again

6am. Suddenly it all seems so pointless again.

I wake up and my tummy is slowly writhing, my body cannot settle and my hands shake. In my anxiety my brain works overtime searching for a cause. I am surrounded by bills. They keep coming in and yet I am not earning enough to pay the ones I already have . . . I will lose everything . . . various comments a couple of people have made recently about my working part time come back to me - I am just malingering really aren’t I. They may have been joking but it is true, if they can do it why can’t I ? I’ve always known I am a pretty useless person, so why bother at all?

It would be so easy to give in, to find some excuse to stay in bed and hide. But part of me is still functioning sensibly. It occurs to me that the feelings, the anxiety came first, then I searched around and found a reason for them outside of myself. Holding on to this thought I get up and have a shower. All I have to do is carry on. I do not have to change anything, nothing has to be “better” that can all wait, just carry on. This way things will remain the same, if I hide it will all get worse and the cycle the blackness will begin again.

I get dressed and I write this. It helps . . .

ps if you are in the same position reading this then do what I - keep going, I have have lots of these setbacks recently (you only have to look at the similarity of this post to my last one). It may feel like walking slowly and confidently past a group of hungry lions when inside you just want to run but if you want to recover it is the only way, believe me.

Vampire Reflections

Am I the burning in my fingertips as I cradle my early morning cup of tea? Just too hot, sitting on the edge pleasure, while the warmth penetrates my body. Or am I the pale grey light of dawn that creeps into the bedroom, mesmerisingly slowly whilst I sit enveloped in silence, the only one awake?

Sometimes I am no more than a list of things to be done one by one, becoming each one in turn. At work I am the dentist, conforming to a vision I have of what a dentist is and hopefully a pleasant surprise to those with a different view. Once home again I am a father, imaginative and slightly silly but hopefully inspiring and fun to be with. The same with Nicola, the man she fell in love with (and I with her), the man who said things outloud that she only thought silently to herself. Yet at the same time irritatingly unconcerned the the day to day practicalities of life.

At different times and places I am one and all of these things. But when I sit alone, what am I then? If there is anything there beyond a response to what happens around me, I cannot find it. I have looked. If I look at my hand I become my hand, if I step I become my foot pressing against the pavement but beyond thatI have yet to find anything, and the more I look the less there is.

Yet there must be something because I am here . . . but If you held a mirror up in front of me would I see any reflection?

Strange really . . .