Books: Part 8

All grown-ups were children once – although few of them remember it.

The Little Prince is a book I’ve had since I was a small boy. I remember my mum reading it to me when I was maybe six or seven years old, over about a week, before bed every night. I particularly remember the couple of days where we were at the point in the story where the prince is travelling to various small planets, the imagery of it has stuck with me my whole life. I’m not the only one either, I’ve seen it show up in all kinds of interesting places. For example, there’s a company in this country called British Gas (natural gas in this country used to be nationalised, hence the uninspired name) and they had an advertising campaign that ran for years which blatantly ripped off that whole visual concept. If you’re interested just look up “british gas planet home” on youtube, planet home was the name of the initiative. I have to admit some of these ads were really well put together, even if the entire thing is incredibly manipulative as most advertising is.

Anyway, as I was saying this planet hopping part of the book is incredibly memorable and comforting, the idea of us all having our own little planet like the Prince does really tugs at a lot of the feelings I’ve talked about before. That we might all have our own little world to escape to. The rest of the book I have to say however, I remembered far less well when coming back to read it again recently. It all came back to me as I read through it (it’s a very short novella, you can finish it all in an evening) of course, but I was surprised by how much I was being reminded of. Only two things had really stayed with me, the planet hopping section and the personality of the titular character. In a sense I’ve been trying to emulate this character my entire life, since before I read the book myself at least but maybe that time it was read to me as a little boy impacted me more than I consciously realise.

Now it’s not like I woke up one morning and decided to try and method act as him, rather I’ve always admired the various characteristics that make this character and have tried to be like that myself. I didn’t even have the actual character of the little prince himself in my mind while doing this most of the time, it was actually only in re-reading the book just over a month ago that I really noticed the connection. Somehow there’s been this disconnect, where on the one hand I’ve had this personal conception of the character in my mind and always admired him, and on the other this person I would like to be, and yet I didn’t see the clear parallels. I didn’t see that the archetype that the prince represents, is the same one that I have (again, not entirely deliberately) tried to model myself on as I’ve grown up. Now I don’t even find myself trying, at this point in life (I’m 22) I have for the most part simply become this type.

When you’re growing up, there are all these different things pulling you in various directions. Competing impulses, who you spend time with and how you should respond to various circumstances for example. The choices you make during this period of time, will essentially define the kind of person you’ll be as an adult, at least in my opinion. I’ve talked before for example about how I was always kind of fascinated with lonely figures in fiction even when I was quite young, and hadn’t ever really experienced loneliness yet, and always saw something of myself in them. I think what I said in one post was that I could kind of sense that even though the circumstances hadn’t allowed for it yet, those kind of people were the most like me and I would end up like them. Again, perhaps this was even started when I had this book read to me all those years ago. I won’t ever be able to know if this is the case, but it would make a lot of sense.

The little prince is one of those characters, very possibly one of the first I encountered in fiction, he lives alone on his planet for who knows how long until the rose arrives. Sitting up there in his home in the sky, you can’t help but think of this golden haired young boy as a divine figure. The parallels with Apollo are certainly hard to miss. Because of this lonely existence of his, there’s this melancholy in everything he says and does that you can’t miss. I definitely have that now, and in fact it’s probably one of my worst traits, and I imagine it plays a role in people keeping away from me in life. It’s a vicious cycle because the two things both reinforce one another, whichever came first is rather irrelevant. I didn’t always have this offensively gloomy aura though, I think I used to kind of put it on a little. I had romantic ideas of despondent young men and world weary old souls who hate company in mind. And I, only half knowingly, shaped myself in their image.

The prince is quite unlike most of those sorts of people (fictional and real) in one way though, in that he also has a wonderful brightness to counterbalance it, that youthful naivety and openness. I was going to say it’s paradoxical, but actually in thinking about it that’s not right. These two elements of his character are not contradictory, in fact it makes a lot of sense that they would come hand in hand. By being apart from the world of “grown ups” of course on the one hand there is a sadness, but there is also the fact that you haven’t been exposed to a lot of the things that make men cynical. This is also something that I’ve tried a lot to emulate, possibly in part as a reaction against my father who is a very bitter and cynical man. He is also quite a loner generally speaking, but more like the Travis Bickle type I was referring to earlier, jaded by experience.

It’s possible that there is a genetic component, my surname which I share with my dad (and grandfather, and great grandfather, etc.) is an occupational one. That is, it originally described the occupation of the person who held that name. There’s loads of names like this, so a lot of people can figure out from their surname that their ancestors for some time would have been Blacksmiths or Stonemasons or Butchers, and so on. And these professions were kept in the family, you would have done what your father did and his father before him. I don’t want to give my name here, I like keeping semi-anonymous online, but the occupation my surname implies my ancestors (in my paternal line) engaged in would have been a rather solitary one. At least from what I understand about it, I could be completely wrong about all of this, but it does kind of make sense. Traditional professions seem to have gone hand in hand with certain character types, or at least over time they bred a certain temperament.

Back on topic though, I’m not like my dad or these more embittered and resentful types. I am reluctantly judgemental of people, because this modern world requires it, but I also do always try to suspend any prejudice I may have about a person on first interaction. My instinct, or perhaps that’s not the best word as it may be a learned tendency rather than a natural one as I’ve been saying, is to be trusting of a new person when I first meet them. I do generally assume an individual I meet is a good person until proven otherwise, whoever they may be, unlike my dad who does the opposite. This is more like the prince, he is open to others so much so that it kills him.

Fortunately my openness hasn’t killed me yet (or maybe unfortunately), but it has hurt me. It’s an old trope that people like me are easily taken advantage of, and even though I’m very reclusive I’ve still had that happen on more than one occasion. Only in one case has it seriously negatively impacted my life, and even then I got over it pretty quick, but nevertheless it did happen. I could even write an entry or two for this blog about these events, but honestly I don’t actually dwell on these memories too much. I’m not resentful about what happened, in a strange way it validates this view of myself I have and so I’m kind of glad things happened the way they did. A lot of people feel incredibly insulted when they feel like they’ve been taken advantage of, they hold on to that resentment their entire lives, but I suppose I’m too preoccupied with other unhealthy mental fixations.

So yes I have this sadness about me, but I think I also have a rare benignity (although I feel a little weird saying that about myself) that radiates out as well. Again it may seem contradictory at first, I was just saying that the sadness that sometimes shows through this affectionate exterior tends to keep people away. Yet people do tend to like me a lot at the same time, somehow. People have always described me with words like “sweet”, “kind”, “innocent” and so on. Which of course always only reinforces this self perception I have of myself, and seeing as it’s what people respond well to encourages me to embrace this aspect of my character even more firmly. Basically, the people who know me are glad I (and therefore, people like me) exist, but they don’t actually want much to do with me personally.

One time at work this guy came up to me while I was sitting out in the front of the shop. In the summer sometimes it gets really warm inside, so when it’s not busy I just sit outside. He sat next to me, on the ground looking up at me a little as I was on the step, and smiled. We had a brief conversation, he was having a bad day because he had missed both a train and a bus and was therefore very late getting to where he needed to go, but I mostly just listened because I’m incredibly awkward and never know what to say to people. He left after a short while, when his bus arrived, but before leaving he told me something. He said that just staring at my face helped him calm down (very weird thing to say), and that he could tell I was a good person.

Now it’s pretty unusual for someone to be this explicit, and I think he might have been high on some drug, but the general sentiment is not too unusual a thing for me to inspire in someone. And the thing is, I like it. Maybe I’m even somewhat delusional, and that I’m actually entirely wrong about other people’s perception of me. It’s possible I’m just projecting out what I want people to think, but then something like the story above happens and that stops the doubt for a while. Again usually it’s not as clear as that, often just a comment from one of the customers or a feeling I get from how people treat me. I feel like I have more to say but I’m lost for words and I’m really veering off topic.

I’m going to hold on to this book, it’s so short that I imagine I will certainly read it again some day. I wish I had more to say, but I’m not interested in the usual things that come up when people talk about this book. I’m not here to tell you about the importance of “embracing your inner child” or whatever silly interpretations people have that you can find a thousand other articles and blog posts already telling you, I think that kind of analysis really misses the point. Frankly I think that a lot of people use a distorted interpretation of such a message to justify behaviours that aren’t very cute or childlike at all, but are actually rather obnoxious, impulsive and solipsistic. People do all sorts of things that are very much adultlike, under the guise of “childlike curiosity”.

A lot of articles and essays I was able to find tend to say that the purpose of the two drawings right at the start for example, is to show how with adulthood we lose our imagination. Later the various people the prince visits on his interplanetary tour are there to show that as we grow up we tend to become much more focused on the mundane, and that we lose an ability to see with our heart rather than our eyes. Indeed that is a line that another character says, or something very similar, the fox. Now I agree that this is the purpose of these parts of the story, but then there’s this leap that everyone takes which I can’t understand. That therefore we should reject growing up, and remain perpetual children. That all will be well in the world should we simply remember how to think as children do.

I don’t see it, and frankly that would put a rather positive tone (sickeningly positive that is, very hippie-ish) on a book which for me is punctuated throughout with melancholy. I think rather that the book is a lament, for as sad as it is to lose this childlike nature it must happen. The message is not that we need to try and get back in touch with our childlike nature at all, but that we all must grow up. As sad as it may be to say so. Indeed the narrator manages to survive the crash in the Sahara not because he learns once again to see the elephant inside that hat or some equally kitsch plot point, but because of his mechanical knowledge and experience. His personal specialisation is what defines him, just like the man on the lamp post planet is defined by his role. To be sorrowful about something, to have this sorrow be the message of a story, is not necessarily an argument for resisting it.

I think that this book serves people of all ages. To the very young it is this wonderful tale that follows laws only a young child could understand. Flying to different planets with the help of migrating birds, talking plants and animals, being sent across space by a snake’s bite. To the older child/ young teen, it serves as a reminder to enjoy what remains of your childhood years and savour them rather than being so desperate to grow up. It shows you that the freedom you associate with adulthood is not what it seems, indeed in many ways you’re freer at this time than you’ll ever be. Being somewhat grown at this point, you might not take the ending passage with the snake so literally. Indeed if this book exists to mourn the necessary death of childhood, and the prince is the archetypal child, what might this ending symbolise I wonder?

Then to the young adult, still struggling to adapt to adult life, you might have the realisation I’ve had on my most recent reading. That as sad as it is to move on, to struggle against becoming an adult is futile. You’re fighting against something that will always overwhelm you in time. As for older people, I can’t help but be reminded of the quote I took from the dedication note in the book and posted at the start of this entry. Perhaps one day I’ll need reminding, and so for that reason I plan to hold on to this book for now. It’s such a charming story, and it does mean a lot to me. This copy in particular, with it’s browned pages and bent corners, has been part of my life for such a long time. I can’t get rid of it, and as I just said I do believe that I will still have some use for it yet.

Link to Part 7

Link to Part 9

Socrates the Diligent

I’ve recently finished reading Conversations with Socrates, which is the name for the Penguin Classics collection of Xenophon’s four Socratic dialogues. Translated into English of course, by Robin Waterfield. In this post I’m primarily going to talk about two of the four works in here, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus (re-titled in this collection as Memoirs of Socrates and The Estate Manager respectively), only however. And in fact I really think they should be placed together as one work, but I’ll get around to explaining why I feel this way later. Now please bear in mind, you few readers I have, that this is not an essay and I am not an academic. I’m just a brainlet with a lot of free time, and so I’m simply giving my thoughts on these works as I go through them.

In life you’ll often read a lot, and then forget a great deal about what you read. My Books series is really driving that point home for me as I am struggling to recall a lot as I go through all these books I read years ago. My goal in writing about the books I read going forward is that I will be able to take what thoughts they inspire and make them more permanent, so I have something to return to that can jog my memory. Hopefully as well, even though I am not studying philosophy as I said but simply reading it as a hobby, some of the insights I have will be of interest to anyone reading this. And even if I do look like a complete idiot who is totally out of his depth, it doesn’t matter so much because this blog is anonymous.

So I’ll quickly talk about the other two works in here, just to give an idea of why I’m not focusing on them. The first one is simply very short, it’s essentially just a pamphlet that was primarily written to counteract the propaganda against Socrates that was going around after his trial and death. At least, this is how Xenophon perceived it but we weren’t there so who can say for sure what the truth was. It seems in particular he was trying to present an opposing perspective to one given by another pamphlet that was circulating in Athens at the time, written by a certain Polycrates. The work itself is a short dialogue, featuring Socrates of course. First in conversation with one of his followers, Hermogenes, where he explains that he went into the trial fully expecting to be condemned to die and content that he lived a good life.

Then going on to depict his speech in front of the jury and an exchange with one of his primary accusers, Meletus, which is where Xenophon takes the opportunity to argue against the accusations being levelled against Socrates. That’s not to say that the speech is entirely fabricated, certainly there would have been one, but we know that Plato’s account of the very same speech differs quite drastically so why assume one or the other is the more accurate of the two? In fact I believe it makes sense to assume that neither were accurate, or that they were even meant to be intended as so by the readers of these dialogues. After all, the entire literary genre of the Socratic Dialogue (and that’s what it was, a genre) doesn’t seem to have ever tried to suggest that the various different versions of Socrates used as characters were representations of the real Socrates and what he believed.

One of the only things that we can say we know for sure about Socrates is that he questioned people, and he associated with the kinds of people we might call intellectuals. Even if it was because he spent all day arguing with such people, due to his associations he eventually became a kind of figurehead in the eyes of the regular Athenian citizenry for this group. This probably came to a head when he was literally portrayed this way in a play, written by the comic (closer to what we’d call a satirist today perhaps) playwright Aristophanes, called The Clouds. The play still exists to this day and you can read the script if you’re interested, there are translations online that are easy to find. It’s not entirely about Socrates, he is a secondary character in the play.

In this play he is presented as someone who takes money for lessons, something which Plato, Xenophon and I believe even Aristotle (who was born after Socrates died but would have still known far more than we do today about him) claimed he refused to ever do. He’s also used to express the ideas of various other philosophers that existed at the time, but reduced to absurdity, so as to make them all look like a bunch of old fools with their heads stuck in the clouds.. get it? There has been a lot written about how the trial was not so much about Socrates, but rather about sending a political message to this group, many of whom had anti-democratic views. Plato (one of Socrates’ followers and therefore also part of this loose group of individuals) certainly puts some of the blame at the feet of Aristophanes for Socrates being pushed into this role, but he also portrays Socrates and Aristophanes as friends in one of his dialogues.

Now here comes my own speculation, I think that the response of this disparate group was to create the Socratic Dialogue format as a way of memorialising Socrates. The dialogue format more generally speaking is a great way to flesh out a philosophical concept after all, because you can present various perspectives, and now they had this character (who in the eyes of the average citizen was just a stand in for “smart guy”) to be the character who asks the most pressing questions and has all the right answers. This was not only a fantastic way of getting complex ideas across though, it was also a message sent in response to the one meant by the execution of Socrates. “Us and our ideas will long outlive you and yours”. Again pure speculation, there’s absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever, but it’d be cool.

I will say that it seems that it was really only those who were friendly to Socrates, rather than this entire group of intellectuals, who developed this genre at first. However if my little theory has any truth to it, the effort paid off because the style did take off. Soon all kinds of people were writing such dialogues, people who never met Socrates. Aristotle supposedly wrote some, and even as far ahead as the early middle ages the format was still being used. So, I kind of went on a tangent there even though I said I would hardly talk about these other works. You read my blog title though, I ramble. I don’t plan these out I just write down my thoughts as they come, nothing more.

So anyway my point is that just because this first dialogue in the collection describes a much more real event than most of them, it doesn’t mean it’s any less like the other works in this genre. This is not meant to be a depiction of the trial of Socrates, which Xenophon wasn’t even present for as he was off fighting in Persia at the time, but a fictional work based on the event that was written with the goal of defending against the slander that was going around about Socrates. Or at least what Xenophon thought was slander. It is an attempt to rehabilitate his memory, which in my opinion is admirable.

The other work I won’t really talk about is the Symposium, again retitled in this collection as The Dinner Party. This is the most self contained work in here, and also the most similar to one of Plato’s dialogues. In fact it’s apparently very similar to a work of the same name by Plato, and they both primarily deal with the same subject. At least on the surface they do, and that subject is love. Now I haven’t read Plato’s Symposium yet, but from what I understand it is an examination of what love is. Even though most people haven’t read the work, the term “Platonic love” is something we’ve all heard before. It’s a common phrase, at least in English. So I have to assume that his conclusions somehow align with what is meant by that phrase, which generally means a love that is true or pure in a sense. I guess I’ll find out soon enough, when I read the work for myself.

Xenophon’s Symposium is really only using the subject to further define his idea of the “truly good man”. Among other things that is, the work describes an entire evening’s events (which makes it quite historically interesting, I certainly enjoyed reading the descriptions of the food they ate and party games they played, and so on) and several conversations. The discussion of love is just the one that is most fleshed out, and it takes up a significant portion of the text. He makes this quite clear, in the very first paragraph he explains that the purpose of this work is to present how a truly good man behaves not in serious activity as in many of his other works, but in a more recreational one. In this case a dinner party, or symposium as they were called.

This idea of the truly good man is Xenophon’s real core philosophical idea, and even though he uses that exact expression over and over it wasn’t until the end of the Oeconomicus that I really “got it”. The reason being that the Memorabilia is presented similarly to the Apology, the work I talked about at the start, in that it claims to have been written to defend Socrates’ name. The first of the four “books” that it’s divided into is an introduction explaining that the purpose of the work is to present through various short conversations why Socrates was in fact a truly good man and not the nefarious character people were making him out to be in the period following his trial and death.

Unlike the Apology though, which was short and concise, this work goes on to explain why Socrates was in fact a truly good man in excruciating detail. Really, I have to be honest, this work (which is by far the longest of the four) was incredibly dull and took me a really long time to finish. As I said it’s mostly a collection of many short conversations between Socrates and other Athenians, including some names I recognised from the books I read about the Peloponnesian war. He talks to Pericles and Alcibiades and some other characters, but most of the dialogues are between him and his followers. Plato of course, but many others who’s own writings are now completely lost.

A lot of these conversations are almost certainly made up, in fact the translator’s introduction points out that some are provably made up because they feature Socrates talking with people about events that happened after both their deaths. Now I don’t think the translator gave much of an opinion on this, but from my perspective this tells us that it was a way for Xenophon to communicate the real purpose of the work. Because everyone alive at the time would have known this, and as well as this there are conversations in here that are more intimate like between Socrates and his own sons, that Xenophon couldn’t have possibly been around the observe. The real purpose of the work I think, being to give a thorough description of what a truly good man is, and why.

So the Memorabilia is split into four “books” as they’re called, but really the separation doesn’t make much sense. The first book I can understand being made separate, as it is an introduction of sorts that doesn’t feature any actual dialogues. The others however, while they all start by saying they’ll focus on one particular thing, are all over the place. For example, Xenophon opens the second book by saying he will now talk about how Socrates practiced self discipline in all areas of life. The thing is, there are many conversations which aren’t really about that in this book, and there are conversations which you think would relate to the stated subject that are left for other books. It’s all over the place, totally unfocused and hard to follow.

There is actually speculation that this isn’t the original structure, and that the text has been re-edited by some other individual in the centuries following Xenophon’s death, or even that there may be additional writings that were part of the work that have been lost. It would certainly make a lot of sense, and in fact as I said I think that the Oeconomicus may have originally been the final book. If not, then it should have been because it clarifies the Memorabilia so well. In fact from what I understand scholars do believe that it was originally part of the work but then Xenophon decided to turn it into a work of it’s own. Because it starts with no introduction, but rather like the various other shorter conversations in the Memorabilia. The first line of the Oeconomicus is “I once heard him discussing estate management…” which is a line he uses over and over to introduce a new conversation in the Memorabilia. It’s his way of saying, and now on to the next example.

The Oeconomicus is much more focused, and it is split into two parts. The first is a conversation much like all the others in the Memorabilia, between Socrates and one of his followers. And the second is framed within the context of that first conversation, as Socrates retelling a story from his younger years of when he met a man known as Ischomachus who was a wealthy estate owner/ farmer. This is where it really gets interesting, because up until this point Xenophon’s description of a “truly good man” essentially lines up with a kind of generic traditional/ conservative view on how to live. That’s why I haven’t really explained it in this post, because it’s something you’ve already heard before.

Of course, Xenophon was one of the earliest prose writers in European history so we should be a little forgiving, but to a contemporary reader it does feel like you’ve heard it all before. So even though I’m kind of that way inclined personally, and I found myself largely in agreement with him when he had Socrates talk about the things like exercising restraint and self discipline, I did find it quite boring to read about as I said. I also think that Socrates came off much more like a lecturer than the inquistive character that we tend to see him as thanks to Plato’s portrayal of him. He does ask a lot of questions in the Memorabilia, but for the most part they’re very leading questions that are all trying to move the conversation to where he can make his final point. A lot of the people he talks to don’t have much personality either, outside of a few notable exceptions most of the followers are presented as yes men who kind of just go along with whatever he says.

So the second conversation is between a young Socrates and Ischomachus as I said, and on the surface the discussion is about how best to run a farm and make it profitable. It’s not particularly hard to grasp that this is an elaborate analogy for how to live what Xenophon would have considered the life of a truly good man. Through it he talks about the different but complementary roles of men and women (ever heard that one before?), the way to behave around subordinates and superiors, the importance of physical fitness and discipline, and most interestingly of all about how conscientiousness rather than either innate talent or learned skill is most important for success.

As well as all that however the work is also kind of an extolment of the virtue of the profession of farming/ agriculture, which is something Xenophon clearly has a great deal of respect for. He seems to think of it as one of the most noble professions, and as well as this he also thinks that it is the most natural. A large portion towards the end of the second conversation deals with Ischomachus explaining to Socrates that you don’t need to learn agriculture, it’s essentially in your nature already and anyone with a little common sense can hypothetically have a farm as profitable as someone who studied the subject of farming for years. Now of course, this isn’t quite true as we now understand that agriculture took a couple hundred thousand years to develop, but that’s not important.

His point of view, is actually one that a lot of conservative minded people still seem to have today funnily enough. Which is that rural living is more natural and healthy, and city living has a sort of hazy and hard to define but clearly damaging affect on both the body and soul. This final part of the work has a fair bit of detail on farming techniques, which does drag on a little, but it’s not a treatise on agriculture really. Someone couldn’t read this book today, and then understand how to run a farm. However the analogy still works, because the greater point he’s making is worth hearing. Which is this idea that those who pay attention and actually put in the work they know is required, possess the truest virtue.

This is where it all comes together, and why I think that the Memorabilia (and to a lesser extent the other works I talked about) works so much better with the Oeconomicus to clarify it. Because this idea, which doesn’t really come up until this point, is the through line that connects everything else he says about what makes a good or bad person. When I got to the end of the Oeconomicus, I was able to retroactively appreciate the Memorabilia (which I had disliked when reading it) a whole lot more. As I’ve said it was kind of all over the place, very scattershot and even the translator pointed this out about it in his introduction. Now though, it’s all tied together and it makes a sort of sense. There’s an underlying philosophy to Xenophon, and if you were to have say only read one of these works you might have missed it. I certainly would have.

Now I don’t entirely agree that this one characteristic is what makes a good man, I would say I disagree with Xenophon actually because that’s very reductive, but it’s interesting that he does. Conservatively minded people do tend to score higher for the trait conscientiousness when taking personality tests and things like that, it’s not the most reliable thing in the world but it’s something. I’m also reminded of one of my older posts, Thinking about thinking about things. It’s from very early on so please forgive it being such an unfocused mess, but in there I kind of talked about this trait without really naming it. In thinking more though, conscientiousness really does describe what I was talking about back then, among other things.

It’s funny because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately, which is why when I was reading through the Oeconomicus I had this “aha!” moment. There was something that happened that got me thinking about this exact subject, and I was thinking about trying to write a whole post about it but then I kind of got distracted as you might realise if you’ve been following my recent uploads. See I live with my dad as I’ve said before, and a few weeks ago I was making a sandwich for lunch and I decided to put some lettuce in there. So I picked some leaves off and went to wash each leaf in the sink, and my dad came in and saw me and then laughed about how I wash each lettuce leaf individually. I’ve always done it this way, and I’ve even explained why when he’s mocked me for it before.

The reason being that simply holding all the leaves under the tap together doesn’t clean them properly, it’s not exactly hard to grasp. Also if you just tear a bunch of leaves off of the whole plant you ruin the ones you don’t take, which is exactly what he always does, and if you carefully pluck the few leaves you want one at a time this is avoided. It seems silly when I explain it like this, and of course when I explain it in person it sounds even more funny because it’s an odd thing to talk about, but it’s not like I put a great deal of thought into it. Whenever I reached the age where I was able to make a sandwich for myself, I just developed this way of doing things.

It’s such a insignificant event, but it exemplifies the difference between myself (and I think I can be described as rather conscientious) and my father. Once you notice the difference you see it everywhere, when I wash up the plates and cutlery I take slightly longer than he does, but almost every time he does it he leaves bits of food and stains on things so they need to be washed a second time and I never have this problem. I spend a lot longer in the shower, but I feel like I need all the time I take to wash myself properly. This can only mean that, at least following the standards I hold myself to, he’s not washing properly. Mostly though this temperamental difference shows itself through very small things, the way he wipes down a counter or how he’ll leave crisp packets and used napkins lying around for days.

This and a thousand other things I am starting to realise may have played more of a role in the issues I’ve had with him since we started living together after my mum passed away than anything else. I find him disgusting to live around honestly, and I hate to say it because he is my father and it’s not like I don’t love him like any other child loves a parent. This post isn’t for me to vent about my relationship with my dad though, already done that, and may again but not today. My point is that we are fundamentally very different people, which is odd because a lot of people tend to be very similar to their parents, and the difference is really primarily because of this trait. Now imagine if I had to live with someone like this, and I didn’t even have that familial bond to temper my resentment about his slothfulness.

That is how someone grows to hate a certain kind of person, and in time to glorify their opposite as well. In response to this negative reaction, one might put undue emphasis on trying to be as different from that person as possible. Indeed I have myself done this to an extent, over the last seven years since we’ve been living together. I’m trying to psychoanalyse a two and a half thousand year old man, but it’s something to think about. I also don’t like it when people use philosophy as self help, or to try and interpret something in their own life, that’s not what I’m doing. It’s just funny that I was thinking about this subject myself, and then this quite similarly minded writer touched on the same thing. He really does, the thing underpinning his ideal figure of the truly good man is this diligence.

It’s not like it doesn’t make sense either, it’s very easy to understand why he would see things this way. It’s not a guarantee, as my own failures go to show, but this trait almost certainly is a requirement for success in life. The kind of inattentive, easy going attitude that Xenophon’s Socrates rails against is a characteristic of peasants and slaves. The disagreement I might have is that perhaps too much importance is granted to this quality, and other things are also important. Not to say Xenophon praises this to the exclusion of everything else, but it is of primary importance to him. Or at least, that is how it seems. The other disagreement I have is that this can be learned, I don’t think so. I think this is a core personality trait, and that nothing can really be done to change it. I don’t think most people would want to change for that matter.

Pilgrimage for a feeling

The experience two weeks ago (described in my last post) is still on my mind, but not in the same way. At first I was just desperate to relive it, to not forget it, and I’m glad that that feeling was there to inspire me to write my last post. I’m quite happy with how my last post came out, but that worry or concern is over now. In part because I went back again last sunday (I’ve now been five times in total, and plan to regularly visit as long as I live nearby) and had an experience that was very similar in some regards, and so I actually can hypothetically relive the feeling or something like it again. In part also though, because time has simply passed. And as well because I was able to record what happened, and how I felt about it at the time, so I am not concerned with that initial moment being lost.

This will be a sort of follow up post, which I said I might make. I’ve tried going about this in quite a few different ways, but failed at every attempt. I tried explaining/ elaborating on certain things I said, and then after deleting everything I wrote a few times because it just didn’t work I tried writing about why I couldn’t or shouldn’t be explaining things, but that was a mess too. This made me think that maybe I shouldn’t even do a follow up post, maybe what I’ve already written regarding that experience is enough, but then why do I have this feeling that I should write a follow up? In thinking about the answer to that question, I realised what I should write about.

The answer to that question, is that this event has changed my perspective on things. I’m not saying I’ve had a drastic change in my worldview, but it’s an important event that will almost certainly affect my life going forward even if only in a few very small and insignificant seeming ways. I’m going to be going back there frequently as I’ve said, that’s already a change to what has been my normal routine for years. I haven’t spent an entire day inside for probably over a month now, because first I was going to the small park nearby and now I’m back to work and visiting this larger park on my days off. The real significant change however, is that I’ve decided that the pursuit of aesthetic experiences like that one is a valuable endeavour in and of itself.

Those few hours were the best I’ve felt, the happiest I’ve felt, in a really long time. Certainly since my first psychedelic experience, shortly before starting this blog so just over a year ago, but if we don’t count that then maybe since I was 15. None of my more recent “experiments” with psychedelic drugs have had such an effect that’s for sure. No, I was happy because everything came together so well, it all made sense. Not rational or logical sense, but aesthetic sense. Why would that music, and that weather, and that part of that park in that city, and those people, create the feeling they did? Maybe you could explain it scientifically, perhaps there is a reason that you could potentially uncover for why people find beauty in the places they do, and why it can be quite different for different people. On the other hand maybe that question shouldn’t be asked, lest we unintentionally lose something that makes these experiences so special.

Of course there’s objective beauty too, there are things that are almost universally considered beautiful and probably for some evolutionary reasons, but I’m talking about the second kind of beauty. Maybe beauty isn’t even the right word, but either my vocabulary or the English language is lacking. The second kind of beauty that really is subjective, where one is entranced by a certain sight and another person next to him is entirely unmoved. Sure that could hypothetically be explained as well, as in one day we might have the technology, and understanding of memory and psychology, necessary to understand and even predict what aesthetic elements will have what affects on what people. However we don’t have that right now, and I’m glad for that again because I fear that excessive scrutiny (ironic I know, as “excessive scrutiny” could easily be an alternative title for this blog) can potentially dampen the effects of experiences of this sort.

A long time ago, when I was quite young, I had a friend who lived in a very big house in a really nice part of the city. It wasn’t actually very far from where I lived, a fairly short walk away from the place behind the town hall I’ve mentioned before (there are several because lots of parts of the city used to be separate towns before being incorporated into the city), but still much nicer. Anyway, on the way walking there once me and my mum took a slightly different route than normal, because as I said it was a nice area with lots of greenery and nice trees and buildings. Somewhere along the way we walked past this one enclosed crossroads area that I felt kind of similarly about as I do about this area of the park I’ve been visiting a lot recently.

I don’t know why, and I was about seven or eight at the time so I was even less equipped to explain my feelings than I was last week talking about the more recent experience of this sort. All I really knew what to say was that I liked it there, and something about it made me feel nice. I insisted we return, I made my mum take me back there going home just so I could stand there for a while. I made sure we went back there a couple more times in the following weeks, but gradually the feeling was lost and then it just became like any other normal street. I tried to figure out what it was that made it so nice, but I really couldn’t, I was just a small boy. I’d completely forgotten about this until recent events jogged my memory though, it’s been many years since I’ve even thought about this place.

It’s possible that in time my appreciation for this little part of the park I’ve found will also fade, as it did for that little spot by the crossroads. It’s a much larger area, and in this case the feeling is more complex as there’s also the music and everything else I talked about, but I believe eventually it will lose what it has. As I’ve said I’ve been there several times since, and testing things out for example time of day (I’ve been there after dark, earlier in the morning, etc) and day of the week, or weather, what music I listen to, what route I take or where I go to sit, etc. So you can view this place like a mineral deposit, and all these factors as the means of extraction, but ultimately the feeling I’m trying to “mine” will be exhausted.

So that implies that novelty plays a role in this, and I already talked about that a bit. I referred to my last post as an anniversary celebration of sorts because it has been a year since I started this blog and the first serious post I made was very similar to the one I’m reflecting on here in that they both describe a walk I took. Well I said in that old post from a year ago that seeing all these places in the city that I had seen before was a very negative experience. Even places that had nice or pleasant memories attached, just made me feel ill when I saw them. And that this very positive experience I got from seeing an area that despite being very near to where I live I couldn’t recall, was almost like an inversion of that first experience.

The thing is, at the very same time I would say that another part of what made the experience described in my last post what it was, was a feeling of familiarity. I can remember it still very clearly, that even though I didn’t remember ever seeing that place before, it felt very familiar. In the post I talk (on multiple occasions I believe, although I did not end up including everything I wrote initially in the final draft) about how I was reminded or brought to thinking about my childhood and my grandparents. I was also brought to thinking about another park, some distance away which was near to where I lived when I was first born and until I turned five years old. So it wasn’t so much that I actually was remembering this area, which would have probably not been pleasant, but that through it I was able to remember other areas and not be upset by it. In fact quite the opposite clearly.

This very familiarity I can also remember feeling back when I was visiting that little shaded crossroads area. Even though it, just like the park more recently, was somewhere I hadn’t been to before. In this older case of the crossroads I don’t really remember the effect talked about above either, where I was reminded of other places. So there’s more behind this feeling of familiarity than that. Although that certainly does play a role. The only thing I can think of, is that when I was very young all places were new to me and so finding somewhere new is what reminds me of being young. The very feeling of unfamiliarity, of seeing a place for the first time, is what I find so familiar and comforting. Of course during your youngest years most places you visit are being seen for the first time, but as you grow up and stay put that happens less and less.

So I went to this thing last Saturday, I don’t want to get into the details. I did consider writing a post all about it, but I’ve decided not to. Quick explanation for context though, I returned to a place I last visited when I was 14 years old for a big celebration I was invited to by some family friends (the same ones from south America I mentioned a few posts ago) and where the incident with the Iranian girl mentioned in my Blackpill Nights entry took place. She wasn’t there this time, not sure if I’m glad or disappointed, but for other unrelated reasons the evening was just pretty miserable for the most part. I didn’t get home until it was starting to get light out either, so I had very little sleep that night which is something I’m getting concerningly used to, and I woke up the next day feeling tired and still quite sad.

Now, usually when I’m really feeling shitty and I just need time to move forward so I care less about the current situation, my cope is to look at the art of Moebius. Jean Giraud is the artist’s real name, Moebius is a synonym that I believe he only used for his science-fiction and comic book work, but that’s where the best stuff is. I’ve talked about the artist before, I’ve used his stuff in header images (like in this very post) before, and what I like so much about his work isn’t something I can easily explain. All I can say that it has a unique beauty to it, and that the worlds and locales he creates are able to draw me in like no other similar artist can. Of course I’m able to appreciate great works of art, I’ve used le old European meme paintings when appropriate as header images as well, but this old French illustrator from the late 20th century with his simple style just appeals to me more than anyone else.

Even though his style is slightly cartoony, it feels less like a static thing I’m staring at and more like a real breathing universe being captured than any other science fiction or comic book artist’s work does. More than any other artist full stop for that matter, and it probably is in part because of his work in comics. I’m not sure if there’s even a specific technique or method that he uses to accomplish this, but when I look at his best stuff I’m there… figuratively. I’m not thinking about whatever is happening (or not happening) in my own life, I’m not even really thinking about “real life” at all. I realised something though, while looking through some of my favourite stuff of his I have saved (it’s mostly splash images taken from graphic novels he worked on and stuff like that, I don’t think he released very many standalone titled pieces), which is that I also get this feeling of familiarity I’ve just been talking about from his work.

I only really realised that it was the same feeling, because of this recent park experience. If I hadn’t had that, I would never have even thought there may be some connection between those crossroads from oh so long ago and this artist’s work. Or any other time I may have experienced this feeling, I’ve been really searching my memories trying to remember if I have but I’m not getting much. I’ll talk about the one other memory I can think of in a second though. Back to what I was talking about, you might wonder if novelty is important why haven’t I got bored of Moebius then. Well, first off I don’t look at his work very often at all. I have as much that is of good quality that I can find online saved, but it’s really only something I’ll actually just pull up to simply look at a few times a year. If you’ve ever seen his stuff posted in a /comfy/ thread on /r9k/ though, it was probably me.

More importantly all his stuff is difficult to find online. There are very few high quality prints floating around, if you go to /wg/ you’ll eventually see all of them, so most of his stuff I haven’t even seen yet, but every once in a while a new one starts circulating. If you really want to see most of his work, you’ll need to buy physical copies. That is, graphic novels he worked on or trade paperback collections, and so on. Even then a lot of his stuff still hasn’t been translated, he was French and mostly worked on French comics, but if you just care about the art maybe that doesn’t matter. There are also some albums of his stuff which collects only things like big splash pages or has certain panels with the speech bubbles removed that I’ve heard are pretty good.

I hadn’t actually bought anything of his until very recently though, in fact that same morning when I had this realisation that his work was somehow providing this same “resource” as the park had was when I finally decided to just go for it. I’ve always avoided it since finding out about him years ago, because I just don’t really buy graphic novels anymore. I used to, I still have loads from my last two years of school when I was 13 to 15 years old. Me and my friend would go to this huge shop, Forbidden Planet, every Friday after school and I bought loads of graphic novels and comic books over the course of those visits. Then when I turned 16 and we drifted apart I gradually lost interest. In fact I really should get rid of most of them, maybe they should get an entry in my Books series.

So I was sitting there, and I just decided on a whim that I should buy something he worked on. I decided on The Incal, which is a graphic novel he worked on with the film director Alejandro Jodorowsky (I’m not going to go on a whole tangent talking about this guy, look him up he’s also done some very cool stuff. I recommend the film El Topo, and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune) and probably the most famous comic series he was involved in. I was following the very thing I said earlier in this entry, that aesthetic pursuits are an end in and of themselves. His work provides me with something that I can’t find easily, and I’m going to pursue this feeling wherever it takes me.

Now I’ve focused a lot in this post on this feeling that I’ve described as a kind of familiarity, but clearly there’s more than that. I also love Moebius’ art for other reasons, as I talked about very briefly, and during that visit to the park a couple of weeks ago that feeling was just one part of the experience. There are other things in life, places and music and artwork, that can provide those things as well. Or some combination of them, and what I mean when I use this term “aesthetic experience” is the experience of stumbling upon these things. I’ve got a whole list of potential ways one could seek out such experiences, some much grander in scope than others, but I’ve decided against simply listing them off otherwise this post will end up twice as long as it should because I’ll inevitably end up going down a long tangent trying to explain my reasoning. I do however, have a vague plan to perhaps make a few posts for some of the individual things on this list.

Now for the last thing I wanted to talk about. Which is that arguably, these experiences are not too different from certain drugs (as I did kind of talk about last time) in that these encounters do seem to lead to an altered state of consciousness. If you accept that when you drink alcohol, or take LSD, the experience can be described as an altered state of consciousness. Then you have to also accept that how I was feeling two weeks ago in that park, was an altered state of consciousness. I was experiencing and responding to the world around me in a way that I wouldn’t do during what you might call mundane circumstances. Yet the only thing that was different from say, my walk to work, were the visual and audial differences.

Whatever the case, this experience recently has really affected me and I can’t say anything certain yet, but it may entirely change the path I’m taking in life. Or, it might change nothing, both very possible outcomes. I am aware that it might seem like I’m just jabbering about nothing of any real meaning, but if you read through the last two posts and didn’t think so then I hope that you can find some similar experience out there. Thank you for reading.

An unintentional anniversary entry

Ok, now in this post I’m going to be writing about an experience I had today in some detail. Today is Sunday the 1st of September 2019, but I certainly won’t finish the post tonight as I’m going to try to get to sleep in an hour and I’m working until late tomorrow night. Nevertheless, so the post doesn’t have weird pacing or become convoluted I will continue to write all of it (apart from a possible addendum, although I might just do a follow up post, you’ll understand why shortly) as if I were writing tonight. You might wonder why I don’t just wait a couple days and start this post after having had some time to reflect, but I fear that I might wake up tomorrow and already have lost this experience to doubt. By starting tonight with it still fresh in my mind I believe I might be able to have something permanent that will allow me to bring myself back in some way to how I felt earlier.

So to start, I woke up this morning having finally had a decent night’s sleep after two four hour nights previously (my insomnia has been especially bad the last few weeks), and therefore I was a bit groggy because I had been getting acclimatised to less sleep. The sky was also much more grey and overcast than it has been in a while, so I was going about my morning routine but it was both colder and darker than what I’ve been used to. I wasn’t even entirely cognizant of it at the time I don’t think, as I said I was groggy and feeling off, but the flat (apartment) just felt different. I did my usual thing, cup of tea and a shower then breakfast, and then I took my clothes out of the washing machine which I had loaded right after waking up, and hung the stuff up. That might be another reason the flat felt different, all the doors had sheets or duvet covers hanging from them, or those things together created the effect.

I decided I would leave at around two o’clock to go to the small park right nearby to read for a couple hours as I have been doing lately, but my dad reminded me that the park would likely be shut as there was a football match at the stadium right near where I live today. They lock the park up because otherwise people would leave beer cans and food containers everywhere. Sometimes they forget though, and so I decided I would go anyway and if the park was locked I’d simply go for walk for a couple hours. In fact my thinking was that a walk would be preferable as it might help me get to sleep easier having used up more energy.

As soon as I stepped outside of course, I saw it was very busy with people. The building I live in is up on the podium but most days it’s practically deserted. There might be a few tourists, maybe kids skateboarding or people jogging, and people from the same building as me coming and going, that’s really it. I’ve been living here since the age of eight though, so I’m usually not at all surprised to see an army of football supporters swarming around me when I go outside on a match day. And I wouldn’t really say I was surprised today either, but about an hour or so before leaving I had looked out from the balcony and it had seemed a lot less busy than I was expecting, so I was unprepared you could say. When I walked out there I was just ever so slightly taken aback for a second.

I know these details may seem unnecessary by the way, but as I kind of explained already I want this post to be something I can return to in order to help relive the experience I’m about to get to writing about when it inevitably fades from memory. These little reminders of how I was feeling throughout the day will, I’m hoping, aid in that. Yes I’m putting this up on the internet for anyone to see, and hopefully whoever reads this gets something from it even if just an interesting story, but this time I am writing for myself primarily. Usually there’s some idea of a reader other than myself, albeit an abstract one, I have as my priority.

Going back in time very briefly, on Thursday I met my uncle at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. It wasn’t my actual birthday on Thursday, but I was busy on my actual birthday so this was just the only other day he was also free. It was really nice, in fact the waiter was probably one of the friendliest waiters I’ve ever met in my entire life. He was funny, and actually stayed to chat with us a couple times, and at the end of the evening he gave us a free shot of limoncello each on the house. So, that combined with the half bottle of wine I had made me quite drunk and that’s probably what started this latest series of bad nights. I’m not sure why, and this is definitely a new thing I’ve noticed, but it seems that after I drink a significant amount of alcohol it actually causes a lot of difficulty for me when trying to sleep. You’d think it should be the other way around, and it used to be, but not anymore.

Anyway, he gave me a few presents while we were there including two CDs. He also gave me, two science fiction novels. Of course, I haven’t used a CD in years and my laptop doesn’t even have a disc drive, but I said I would listen to them. One was Surfer Rosa, the first Pixies album which is great but I’ve heard many times. The other, was Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits. Now, I’ve heard of Tom Waits before but never listened to anything from him, so I decided that for this walk I would listen to the album. I didn’t take the CD, perhaps I’ll listen to it some day, but I have spotify so I just let it play as soon as I got out of the door with my phone and headphones.

Now as I said, it was busier and for a second that shook me. That went away quickly, but the self consciousness that I always get around crowds remained. In fact it wasn’t so bad at first, I put my headphones on and started the first track on the album and it was as I reached the big bridge I need to cross to get down to street level that I really started to become aware of all the people around me. I think I saw my shadow on the ground in front of me and found the silhouette looked funny. To explain, I was wearing these heavy grey wool East-German military trousers from the 70s that I bought pretty cheaply second hand. The thing is they were probably always quite baggy, but over time they’ve become far more so I believe. Now even with the belt pulled tightly they can look more like tracksuit bottoms or those unbelievably ugly things I’ve started to see in the last few years with the huge crotch area, joggers I think they’re called. In the silhouette it actually looked like I was wearing something like one of those things.

On top I was wearing something like what I almost always wear, a green and white casual button up shirt (in this case with a check pattern, but half of the ones I own are just one colour), and my light blue jumper. Which, obviously made for a kind of stylistic mismatch and I became painfully aware of this on the bridge and began to think that everyone was staring at me. Usually I wear fairly loose fitting wool or cotton trousers, I have a couple pairs of cords that I really like in particular, and they tend to fit much better into my overall style. Usually with the military surplus trousers I’ll just wear a shirt on it’s own tucked in, to go for a more consistent “fashy” or at least militant look. My usual style 90% of the time though, is more idk /comfy/ I suppose. In this case I felt like I looked like a complete freak, but I just tried to listen to the music and pretend there was no one there.

Speaking of the music, I wasn’t really enjoying it at first. It’s a very strange record, and of course now I think it might be one of the best I’ve ever heard but on very first impression it was quite weird and a little abrasive. I walked down the stairs from the bridge and towards the small park to see if it was locked, and it was, so I just followed the road in the direction I would usually take if I were walking up to visit my uncle and cousins. It was actually a lot more sunny and warm outside than it had been earlier that morning, so some way up the road I paused the music and took my jumper off. I also had a bottle of water with me, and I drank some of that. I stayed there for a few minutes, just across the road from a small primary school.

Eventually I put the music back on, and continued in the direction I usually go in. The plan at this point was to walk around a fairly large park I usually need to cut through to get to my uncle’s place but that I haven’t actually spent any real time in in probably 15 years. I was not sure I wanted to though, because it would just bring up loads of old memories. And as I’ve explained before in my first proper post for this blog (and one that was quite like this one), even nice or happy memories can give a me a rather unpleasant feeling in my stomach. So instead of following the usual route, at some point just a short while before getting to the park I went up a road I’d never been up before. It was quite sunny, and I needed some more water, so I decided to find somewhere to sit down.

Luckily, this road I was walking along was pretty short and it came to a T-junction after a minute with a very nice and quiet road with a low railing I could sit on, on the other side, blocking off a little grassy area. As I walked up this road before reaching the one with the railing by the way, I had found the first song I was able to kind of enjoy. I’m probably not going to really talk about the specific songs in great detail on this album at any point, for me the album as a whole provides a very special experience that any individual track couldn’t give. So I can’t tell you the name of the song I was listening to at this point, because I don’t know it, but it was early on and noticeably more groovy than the ones previous.

I didn’t really have much of a plan at this point, I was still considering going to that park actually. I opened my bag to get my bottle of water out, and I also decided that I would take my jumper which I’d been carrying and just put it in there as well. So the bag has two main sections, and I almost never used the front one but I thought it would be a good place to put my jumper this time. As soon as I opened it however, a grasshopper jumped right out and into the middle of the street. I’m not sure if it was in my bag, and if so it must have been in there for a few days, or if it had jumped from the grass behind me right as I opened the bag. That would be quite the coincidence though, and it was acting very odd just laying there on it’s side on the pavement so I’m thinking it had been in my bag and was very weak because there was no food or sunlight in there.

Luckily there was no one around really, the street was almost completely empty, you couldn’t tell that there were thousands of football fans only five minutes walk away. In fact I think I did forget, because thinking on it I don’t remember even being aware of the game for the entire afternoon until I was walking back home and back amongst the crowds again. There was one woman who was walking in my direction, but I wasn’t really paying attention to her and when she walked past me I was still staring quite intently at the grasshopper. I squirted a little bit of water at it, to try and get it to move or something, and it jumped a little but that’s it. I decided I would walk in the opposite direction from the woman who had just walked past me, going wherever she had come from.

I didn’t want to leave the grasshopper in the open though, where he might get stood on or something, and I felt a little responsible for his current weakened state as I probably had unwittingly caused it by taking him out of his natural environment. I got up, put my headphones back on, and started the record where I had left it. Using my bottle I moved him in the direction of the grass, the only way to get him to move was to nudge him at which point he would jump in the exact opposite direction. After a few attempts, he landed in the grass and I felt comfortable leaving him. I must have looked like a complete madman from a distance, and in fact as I was leaving an old brown guy (probably Arabic/ Muslim) crossed the road and stood exactly where I had been, stooped over and peering into the grass.

I crossed back over to the other side of the road, I’m not sure why thinking back, and started walking. The road reminded me a great deal of the area my grandparents (on my mother’s side) used to live in before they passed away. I haven’t been there since I was seven years old so I only have a vague feeling of what it was like, but there are some places I go to where that same feeling is evoked. This road, was one of those places. I’m surprised I’ve never seen this road before, there’s even a primary school on this road that I had no idea even existed before. I was not really paying much attention to the music at this point, but I know I still wasn’t really into it. The road went on for quite a bit longer than I expected, I’d always assumed when looking up at it while going to visit my uncle that it was not even a road but just a small car park or enclosed housing area.

I walked up for a while, and as I got further up it seemed to get a little busier. Some cars drove past me and there were people on both sides of the road. There was a guy walking right behind me for a while, but he turned down one of the side roads at some point. I also remember it getting more “wild” as I got further down. At first there were just a few trees, and then there were trees lining the road, and then it felt like there were branches coming right out in front of me and it was almost like I was walking under a jungle canopy. Then they began to thin out again after I kept going some more, until it was just like it had been on the other side. The last thing I remember seeing on this road was a hotel, on my left hand side. It was a very run down looking place, but it reminded me of the various small B&Bs and hotels I’ve stayed at around the country while on holidays with my dad when I was quite young.

I was reaching the end of the road when I saw a busy main road in front, and what looked like greenery on the other side. By a main road I mean one with no shops or things like that along the side, with a narrow pavement, and cars going fairly fast. Not one you’d want to cross other than at the actual crossing. I was half thinking about turning back at this point, I had an idea now of where I was and I wasn’t sure that was where I wanted to go. I was right in my assumption, that the greenery in front was the park near where I work, but I kept going anyway. It’s a huge park this one, and I’ve walked all around it possibly a hundred or more times, but still not seen much of it.

The main road I was on was also one I know fairly well, but I actually find it quite pleasant for some odd reason. As I explained it’s a pretty empty road with no shops or anything, just some houses (some of which are quite nice to look at) and more cheap hotels like the one I described earlier lining the one side and the park fence on the other. Nevertheless, this little stretch between the pedestrian area where I work and the area on the other end of this road, has some aesthetic appeal to me that I can’t quite explain. I decided to turn right, and walk in the direction opposite from where I work for reasons that should be clear, and follow this road. I was debating at this point whether I should try and cross over and go for a walk in the park or just follow the road indefinitely.

I know I passed a bus stop at one point, and I sat down there for a minute to think about what to do but couldn’t decide. Slightly further on I saw some railings on my right and on the other side of them a small stone courtyard about 20ft below. There were some tables with lots of toys and other odd pieces of junk, and two fat women sat behind them chatting. I realised there was some kind of yard sale, and then in front of me appeared an older woman (my guess is she was in her late 60s) trying to speak to me. I paused the record again and took my headphones off. It turned out she was also somehow involved in the yard sale below, and she asked if I wanted to go down there. I made up some excuse about how I had somewhere to go, but I think it was clear I had been wandering aimlessly because she repeated “somewhere to go” to me with a knowing smile and then laughed. It was a warm and understanding laugh though, not a bitter one. I saw the stairs leading down, and a sign for the yard sale, as I walked on and put the music back on.

Looking across the road I saw there was a small entrance into the park, and as I moved my head back to face forward I also saw there was a crossing right in front. I know this is a weird detail, but it’s memorable that I noticed the entrance first and then the crossing. I decided that this means I should go into the park, like it was a sign or something. I went to the crossing, pressed the button and waited. As I was waiting a woman came and stood to my left, I believe she had come from a side road just behind the crossing. She was walking a small light brown sausage dog, presumably her pet. She had a rather bright pink jacket on, and straight black hair, and in my opinion she looked quite Eastern European/ Slavic. That is, her facial features reminded me of people I’ve seen who are from that part of the world and I do meet quite a few of them where I work. That being said, I never spoke to her or heard if she had an accent so this is complete speculation.

The light went green, and we began to cross. The dog was running ahead as much as it could, and as she turned to enter the park it yapped quite loudly and excitedly a few times. I was able to hear it over the music, which says a lot. I was walking fairly slow, so I saw this from behind. I walked through the entrance eventually though, and the picture below this paragraph is what I saw. Well not quite, it looks a lot more flat in that image but try and imagine the hills in the far distance as slightly more elevated. There are also wide open fields on either side as you can kind of tell, so it was a lot more “full” if you understand. I was immediately struck by how nice it looked, the photo really doesn’t do it justice actually, and I stood there for second just taking it all in. I hadn’t ever been to this section of the park I realised, I’d never seen this part before even though it’s close to the end that’s near where I live.

Now just ahead of those hills, and basically all around in any forward and leftward direction, I was surrounded by areas of the park I had seen many many times, but somehow this little patch I had never come to before. In fact you can’t see it in this photo, but in person standing at the end of this short path where it splits in three directions just over the hills in front you can spot bits of the playground poking up. I stood at this point, and deciding to go forward towards the area I recognised I pointed my finger in that direction with my thumb up like a finger gun. Before going forward I looked around and saw the woman with the dog standing quite close by (just past the tree on the right in the midground of the photo) standing there facing me, she looked at the hand gesture I made and then very quickly up at my face before turning around with what seemed to me to be an almost disappointed expression on her face and walking off in the opposite direction.

I know it sounds totally ridiculous, but in that moment it felt like she had been waiting for me. See when anyone (but especially a pretty woman) shows me some kind of recognition, or even just merely appears to have done so like perhaps in this case, I can’t help but slightly obsess over it. I imagine this is something quite common for a lot of young men, and possibly some women as well, where you’ll end up reading far too much into a simple interaction with a stranger. She wasn’t the prettiest or most attractive woman I saw that day, but because of this brief moment she was the only one that really left any impression on me. There were other people both male and female that I’ve been thinking about since seeing them this day, but only in retrospect and more as part of the overall experience I had here rather than in relation to myself.

At first I didn’t think too much of what had happened with this woman and I simply continued forward as I intended to without really giving it any thought. As I said and as you can see in the image, at the end of the short path there is a three way split and I took the one that goes forward and slightly leftward. I turned left completely very shortly after though, and basically just walked up to that pavilion structure that you can see in the top left hand corner of the photo. I was planning to sit down on one of the seats there, but a woman and her young daughter got there before me and I thought it would be weird if I sat with them. Instead I just stood in front of it, on the far side from the perspective of the photo in front of a little panel which had some information about the park.

I stood there reading that for a couple of minutes, and then I walked just slightly further to the left where I had a view over the entire main entrance area of the park. This area I have seen and walked through many times, but I’d never seen it from this angle. It was a really pretty sight, and I stood there for what felt like quite a while, but was more likely only a minute or two. See it was around this point where things began to get a little weird, particularly my perception of time. I’m partly wondering if my recollection is just wrong, because there’s a few tracks around the middle of the record (one which has some bagpipes, one which sounds like a marching band, and one which sounds “French”) which I’m sure were playing at around this point. The thing is, they start right after the song I described as “groovy” way back when I was still with the grasshopper.

Now I also realise that the whole walk between the grasshopper and where I was at this point was actually pretty short, but it felt like it had been quite long. In fact in total the entire experience of my time at this park felt like it lasted hours and hours, but in reality I listened to the album twice only and it’s about 40 minutes long. So I was actually only there for an hour or so, as I started the album the first time after leaving my flat not after arriving at the park. I think part of this feeling is that the weather changed quite a lot, so it was sunny when I arrived at the park but then became quite overcast while I was there (as it had been earlier that morning) so it gave the appearance of early evening when in fact it was still only around four when I left to return home.

For some unknown reason, and thank god for it whatever it is, I decided after standing where I had been for a while to loop back around and instead follow the rightward path from that three way split way back when. So I did so and I was greeted with what you can see in the photo above this paragraph. Not exactly, because this particular photo I took on Thursday the 5th not Sunday like all the other photos, but it’s still the same location for the most part. There has been a slight change, but I’ll explain that later. Again of course it doesn’t quite capture the beauty of it, I’ve tried my best but no photo really can recreate what it’s like here for me. I really do think it’s one of the most visually pleasing places I’ve ever seen in all my time living in this city, but most of my photos don’t capture that at all. Still, I’m including them just to try and give some idea of what it looks like here.

I followed the path, with the original one I entered the park along on my right, and again my timeline is all messed up but there’s a track which has a wooden sounding instrument (maybe a xylophone?) that I’m pretty sure was playing as I followed this path. Now the three previous tracks which I’ve just described I loved, they were the ones where I first really started paying attention to the album. Which is why I’m sure I remember correctly where I was when they started playing, but who knows as the experience from this point forward keeps getting weirder as I said. So I look up around after a while and realise that this path look beautiful, and so I had to stop and take the first photo I took that day.

Now I think this photo is one of the better ones I took, but (and this is the last time I’ll say it) it still doesn’t quite capture what it really looked like to me at the time. I do remember waiting for it to seem clearer, but thinking back I don’t know why I did that because part of what made this sight so beautiful to me was the people. There were married couples walking with their children and everyone just seemed happy. Honestly I’m seriously wondering if this experience I had was somehow related to the LSD I took a few weeks ago, because in retrospect it was very much like what I’ve heard low/ micro doses of acid can be like. This isn’t just something I’ve considered since though, later on during this experience I wondered the same thing.

Of course that’s impossible, drugs don’t work that way, at least not LSD. It doesn’t stay in your system dormant for weeks only to suddenly hit again, at least not as far as I’m aware. Yet that is exactly how the experience began to feel, and it really started as I walked down this path. I suddenly began to not worry about any of the usual things I worry about, or care about the things I often fret or obsess over. Instead of the feelings of sadness I nowadays get when seeing happy young couples, I was just pleased for them. They added to the beauty of this long path, their smiles and warmth were like another colour alongside the bright yellows and blues and greens. I saw people, and I saw life and I felt life. I felt alive myself, I felt like I was somehow rejuvenated by the life force of these people all around me. Happy people enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon, one of the last this summer perhaps.

There was a woman wearing a long red skirt and a white blouse just happily reading on one of the benches as I walked past, two married couples pushing prams with other small children running alongside, some old people just sat on one bench chatting together, and so on and so on. People just out there existing, despite everything. People in groups, people on their own, I was almost vindicated myself for being there. I didn’t feel like a weirdo as I sometimes can when just walking around the city, I often feel like everyone else is out there with a purpose, but this time I felt like everyone around me was out there simply for the sake of it just like me. And it was so lovely, I really don’t ever want to forget the feeling. In fact I want to feel like that again, I want to feel that way forever. The way I felt while there, for what felt like hours but again was only about one hour or slightly longer (again, this distorted perception of time is very much like a psychedelic effect), is how I want to feel for the rest of my life.

So I got to the end of this path and on my right was the area you can see pictured in the header image right at the top. In front of me was this big open area which the path led directly onto which you can kind of see a little bit of in the foreground of that photograph, and beyond that another path kept going further forward. Running right across this big open section was a small group of ultra orthodox jewish girls, at least I think they were but they might have been Mormons or something. There is a community of them who live around this area though, but it’s weird I’ve never seen them allow their children to just go out to the park on their own. I thought it was against their rules or something, especially the daughters. Some of them were very small, and I’d say they were all somewhere between the ages of 7 to 14. They crossed and seemed to be heading out of the park going past that café with the red garden umbrellas and pretty lights.

I continued forward and crossed to the other side of this big open area, and ahead of me was what you can see pictured below this paragraph. I began walking in this direction, and I was suddenly reminded of the woman in the pink jacket walking her dog. I began to wonder if this was the direction she had gone down, and then I started thinking back to that moment and her facial expression. I decided I didn’t want to go that way anymore, not actually because of that woman but because for some reason it didn’t have the same aesthetic quality that the area I was in had. It didn’t have that unfamiliar familiarity. I decided I quite liked it where I was, and that I should take some photos. So I took the one below, and then I looked across the path to the other side and saw a gap between two trees and some buildings behind them that I thought looked quite good together.

Those little girls were back, instead of leaving the park it seemed they wanted to go in the direction that I had chosen to avoid. They all stopped for a while right under the gap I wanted to take the photo of though, and one of them in particular stood there staring at me while I had my phone held up. I don’t know what she was thinking, perhaps that I was taking a photo of them? I wasn’t, and eventually they did keep moving, but the one staring at me was the last to leave. It took me a while to get a good photo after that, and I know I said I wouldn’t keep saying this but even the one I did get doesn’t quite show you what I saw. In person I found the old fashioned 19th century style house and the modern looking half built towers behind were juxtaposed quite nicely. I’m clearly not very good at photography, but you’re not following this blog for my photos.

So while all this happened the loving and contented feeling I had walking up that wide path lined with trees had only continued to intensify, and I was enjoying the music more and more as well. There’s a very slow piano song that plays pretty close towards the end of the record which I can remember started around this point in the walk, with Tom Waits himself crooning over the twinkling piano, and I was completely struck by it. This was probably the beginning of the “peak” if you want to liken this experience I had to a trip. I think this was where I decided that this might be one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard, and it felt like I’d been listening to it for hours already even though as I said that’s impossible as the album is 41 minutes long. I took the photo used under this paragraph which is the view I had while this song played, and then the one in the header and then began to head back towards the path lined with trees I had walked up.

So honestly from this point forward I’m not really sure what my plans were when I try to think back, maybe I was intending to come home but I don’t think so because I was so happy. Truly happy, not happy as in pleased or happy thanks to some good thing, but simply happy. Entirely unperturbed for the first time in living memory, I was just alive and truly so. I existed in that moment and that moment stretched backwards and forwards in time eternally, all the usual concerns that worry me constantly about things I’ve done or things to come were evaporated. They never even existed, I had forgotten all about them. Or maybe not entirely, because I was aware of what it was like to be that way as I am normally and that how I felt right in that moment was unique and unusual. I just found it quite amusing, how I’m usually so bothered by other people and things that can’t be changed and the millions of other silly things that my usual angst is rooted in.

I looked at my phone, as I said I felt like I’d been listening to the album for ages and I was sure it must be coming to an end. There were two tracks left, a short janky spoken word kind of thing (there are a few of those on the record) followed by a very minimalistic instrumental piano piece which felt like it lasted an hour again but is actually only a few minutes long. See, I was following that path backwards and I saw this big open field to my left. I had seen the field right after arriving in the park of course, it was on my right as I entered and the woman in the pink jacket had cut across it, but I hadn’t really paid it much attention until this point. It just really stood out to me in this moment, and so I turned off from the path and walked right out into the middle of the field and began to walk along it to get to the entrance I had came in through.

I don’t think I was quite aware of it at the time, or I was in one sense but in another I hadn’t noticed if you understand, but the weather had changed quite suddenly. It had got a lot more cloudy, the sky had gone from blue to a murky grey, but I thought it made the place look even better. In fact it added to my confusion around the time, as it looked a little like what it might look like during early evening when it begins to get dark. Of course it wasn’t, much later (or perhaps, only a little later..) when I was just about to get home the sun came out again, but while I was there at the park I really felt like it was evening. I was aware that it was actually only four-ish, but yet also felt like it was six or seven. Aesthetically (and yes, I will be using that word quite a few times in this post) it was early evening, I felt the vibe of early evening. Not just because of the weather, because of the way people were behaving and how they felt to me.

I saw a guy with a beard and a grey hoodie on the side of the field right near the fence and the road on the other side, lying on his back and snoozing between two small trees. Apart from him though the field seemed empty, and as I got to the end of the field I turned around and looked back at it and I just couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be. I was in love with this field, this whole small area of the park, I had to stay a while longer. The final song on the album ended, and I decided to restart it from the beginning and listen to it through again. This time I enjoyed the earlier parts of the album far more, in fact this second experience of the album was so special I fear I might never quite enjoy it as much again.

I became quite overwhelmed, I knelt down in the grass facing outwards and took my bag off. I pulled my water bottle out and drank almost half of it. I then put it back in, zipped up the bag and threw it to the side. In front of me was a dandelion, I instinctively picked it and blew on it to let the little white heads fly. Something I did all the time as a little boy, but that was a long time ago. I threw the stem away, and pushed my right arm into the ground and lent on it. I felt tears, not an excessive amount but just a slight water around my eyes. I don’t know how long it’s been since I cried properly, or even just slightly like today in that field, but it felt lovely.

I started laughing, like an idiot probably but I didn’t care at all. There was no one around anyway I don’t think, but at the time I wouldn’t have minded even if there had been. The reason I laughed was because I heard this line, one of the lyrics to one of the early songs “and I was in bad, need of a shave” which Tom delivers in this really comical drawl. There was something about that line, coming in during this very intense emotional moment, that just seemed incredibly funny to me. I threw my head back, and I really must have looked half mad, and then I stood up and decided I had to have photo to remember this view of the field. It was starting to fill up ever so slightly by this point, there were two people throwing a ball back and forth and another guy walking towards me through the field as I had been.

This photo may just look like a normal empty field, and I’ll admit I wouldn’t be impressed by it if I were to stumble across it online somewhere like you reading this blog have. It’s only special because through it I can somewhat return to that spot, in that specific moment, under those specific circumstances. I’ve been thinking how to describe this experience, it’s not a spiritual or mystical experience at all even though those were the first terms that came to mind, no I think I can only describe it as an aesthetic experience. Something about the various elements when put together elicited something within me that is indescribable. The music, the odd weather, the specific people I saw, the little events that happened to or around me, all of those things and more came together somehow in a perfect storm.

It would have to be me as well, I imagine someone else with their own memories and sense of what sights sounds and senses are pleasing would not have the same response to these various elements. Perhaps a similar feeling could be had, but in a very different environment. So elements isn’t the right word, perhaps qualia works better. A complex interaction of various qualia that just managed to break me out of the gloom and existential dread that I usually live with. I actually made a thread on /r9k/ about the experience right after getting home, and perhaps it does an even better job than this post will of capturing how I felt as it was written so soon after the experience, but what I said in that thread was that I think I may have been “not depressed” for a few hours. I have experienced something similar to this on occasions, but it lasted a few moments rather than a few hours and was much less intense.

I’ve mentioned that I was paying more attention to the actual lyrics this second time through the album, but I wasn’t really focusing or doing so deliberately. Rather, certain lines that I found amusing or relevant to the moment just popped out at me. They seemed unavoidable, like that line about being in bad need of a shave. It’s not just the line itself either, his delivery is perfect on every song. At times funny and cynical, and at others very high spirited/ convivial, and again at others he would be rather sombre as on the piano tracks. It didn’t seem erratic though, it all blended together to create this wonderful record that paints such an incredibly evocative picture of the environment that produced it.

This is probably stuff that has been said about it many times over already, but think of the seedy underbelly of 70s New York and LA. I know I said I wouldn’t mention the songs individually, but there is one I have to talk about. The song Frank’s Wild Years, if you can even call it a song as he doesn’t sing but really just talks over a perfectly appropriate accompanying piece of music. Every line oozes this exact aesthetic. His voice all gravelly like from chain smoking for decades, that same sense of humour (my favourite line is “they were so happy” it’s delivered with this very amusing and bitter irony) and the way he describes it all. The colour and odd details, the self cleaning oven and specific restrictions on Frank’s loan. It’s just fantastic, it’s so good. It’s more Bukowski than Bukowski ever was, at least from what little of his stuff I’ve read and listened to. Frankly I found Charles Bukowski didn’t live up to the reputation he has, but Tom Waits lived up to it for him.

I think what made this song stand out to me so much on second listen, was again the combination of it with other responses I had to my surroundings. See for a while I stood there at the edge of the field peering in, just enjoying the music and the sight in front of me and this feeling within me. I was worried that if I even moved it would all come tumbling down, and I’d be normal again. I eventually decided to walk though, the reason I had come out was to walk in order to get to sleep later after all. So I stepped forward, and made my way across the field slowly. I found myself looking to the right, over the fence and across the road was this old red brick house. A really run down looking place, I wonder if anyone even lives there. With the music though, with this song and the world it brings you in to, I saw an old building just like the one Frank lived in. I can see it being split into apartments, a grizzled middle aged barfly stumbling home on a Saturday night with a cigarette in his hand fumbling with the keys to get inside.

I should have taken a picture of the house, but thinking about it I’d have the same problem as with all the other pictures I took. I kept walking across the field, past that guy in the grey hoodie still sleeping. I walked past the guys playing catch. I just took it all in, it was so peaceful. At the very end of the field was a blue tent, and a guy sitting next to it. He looked kind of beige with a completely bald head and heavy eyebrows, my guess would be he was Turkish or perhaps Greek. Does he live in this tent? I don’t know. In fact in my picture of the field, you can kind of make out the tent at the end. At least, you can if you zoom in on it. I got to the end, and turned back again and walked very slowly back across the field to the start. The same piano track (not the instrumental one the record finishes on, the one that played as I took the photo in the header) began to play as I reached the end of the field I had entered the park at again.

I stood there at the end of the field again, and two children came in through the same entrance I had and began to play at the corner of the field around the same place the pink jacket woman had cut across. I supposed it was probably time to head back, I just didn’t want to leave though. I really was, so happy. Not a conditional kind of happiness, just happy. Behind me were two people, one was a slightly overweight woman and I think it was a man with her but I can’t recall for sure. They came from the field on the other side of the starting path, and as I began to walk across the main field so did they. I don’t think they were a couple, but I’m not sure why. I just had this feeling that they were actually relatives, that they were family. I don’t know how, but I could just sense that from them. I wonder if this is how normies are most of the time, if they can sense things that I can’t. The nature of relationships between small groups of strangers, the intentions of people. Maybe when people talk about someone seeming friendly, or creepy, they really can get that from a person. An intuitive sense, and for some reason I was able to access the same ability here.

They had a little black dog with them as well, it was very small almost as small as that brown sausage dog had been. It had long curly/ woolly fur (at least for a dog) and it was incredibly fast. It ran around quite far ahead of the people with it, it wasn’t on a lead, and then would run around in circles and loop back around to the two owners. At one point it ran ahead and tried to bite or catch a pigeon, which I started laughing at probably quite loudly. I looked to my left and saw the owners had walked ahead of me, I was walking really slowly, and they seemed to be laughing about it as well. Further up the field I saw a guy and his Asian gf lying down on a blanket or quilt thing, he rolled over and gave her a hug, before then they led there staring up at the sky. It was very sweet, although I couldn’t help but be a little amused by how much they fell into the stereotype of the nerdy looking guy with Asian gf. He was a little overweight, wearing a white graphic tee and glasses, with a bit of a beard. I think she had a grey hoodie on, and purple leggings.

The tent guy was still sitting there, and I turned around as I reached his tent to cross back and finally return home. I was aware that it was only around five o’clock, but I was also still in that weird state where I also felt it was coming up to sundown. Somehow this contradiction didn’t matter at the time, in fact it didn’t even cross my mind. You may remember earlier I briefly mentioned a woman wearing a long red skirt and white blouse who had been reading, on one of the benches along the tree lined path. Well she had stayed there reading this whole time, I noticed her both times walking up the field. In fact I unintentionally captured her in the photo of the field, maybe you can only see it if you zoom in like with the tent, but on the far left hand side sitting on one of the benches she’s there.

Now though, she had walked into the field herself and was just lying on the grass on her back, with one leg out to the side. I passed by her, she was just to the right of me as I went by. She reminded me of myself during this break from work, when I would go out to the park nearby to read. I couldn’t help but feel like a loser doing so, not that I wasn’t enjoying my book or the park, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that I wouldn’t choose to do this if I had other options. I felt guilty for feeling this way, and I didn’t want it to be true. Seeing a pretty young woman doing something similar, who I think I can definitely say has other things to do should she so choose, kind of made me think that perhaps I would still have chosen to do so after all, were my options more numerous.

The final instrumental piece had started, and so I realised that the experience must soon end. I got to the end of the field and looked back as the song played out. I began to feel quite sad immediately, and thought about staying longer, but decided I should go as I was getting hungry. The song ended, and I turned around to go out and leave through the entrance I came in by, but I decided to turn around and look one last time at the field. I had decided I would return, but I was not sure if returning again would allow me to have a similar experience. I looked out over the field, saw the red and white woman, and the sleeping hoodie guy, and the guy with his Asian gf in the distance, and then out into the field walked the woman with the pink jacket.

She seemed to notice me right away, she slowed down and tilted her head to one side as if she was checking to see if I was the same person from earlier. I wasn’t sure at first if it was her either, so I did the same thing which is why I realised that’s what she was doing. Then she smiled at me, and continued to walk towards the entrance at the same slowed down pace. I don’t know why, but even though that couldn’t have been a more obviously friendly act I was worried she might think I was some weird creep who had been waiting for her the whole time or something. We saw each other at almost the exact same spot respectively as when I had seen her last you see, although of course I wasn’t waiting for her, and had hardly thought about her. Because of this, I decided to walk through the park some more and go out through the entrance further down near to where I work and then go home as I do after a day at work instead.

So I did, I began to head in that direction and as I was doing so I looked back around and saw her leaving through the small entrance we had both come in through. I began to think that she must have been walking that dog for ages, my friend has a similar sized dog which also seems to be similarly energetic, and he walks it for about ten minutes at a time. I felt like I had been in the park for hours, as I’ve repeatedly said. I looked at my phone and realised the album was only 41 minutes long though, and the sun was also starting to come back out slowly. I was still cloudy, but a little less dark. I guess one walk for about and hour and a half is the same as several shorter walks throughout the day, but more importantly seeing the album length kind of started the process of breaking me out of this weird trance like state I had been in for that hour and a half.

So I was walking down with the other field mentioned at the start when I entered the park on my left. That is, it was on my left when I walked in, although it was also on my left as I was walking home too. It was also a very pleasant thing to see, and there were a lot more people in this one. In particular I noticed another woman reading, leant against a thin tree right on the other side near to the fence and road with a costa coffee cup by her side. And as well, a large group of guys (maybe 15 or 20 in total) a little further along all chatting and laughing together. I got to the end of the path, and into a more familiar area of the park that I’ve been through many times before. I walked out through the entrance, and I just remember thinking that this had been a really interesting day to end my work break with.

I walked out into the street and saw it was filled with crowds of people, everywhere you looked the streets were packed. The football game of course, I had completely forgotten about it. To be fair, from where I was in the park you wouldn’t have been able to tell there was a huge match that day no more than a couple of miles away. It’s amazing actually, how drastic the change was from one side of the park gate to the other, like crossing between two worlds. And so I began the last part of my walk home, navigating the crowds and slowly returning to my normal mental state as the sun came back out in full and revealed that it was actually only the beginning of late afternoon.

When I had looked at my phone to see the album length a little bit earlier on, I had decided to play Frank’s Wild Years a third time, and from there on I just let the album play out, but it ended as I was still walking home and as the mood was over I didn’t feel like playing any more of the record. I listened to a few songs from Bona Drag (a compilation album from Morrissey’s early solo career), Everyday Is Like Sunday and then the next few songs after that in the tracklist. I don’t really know why, because I haven’t listened to anything from Morrissey in probably a year or longer, but I was just reminded of that specific song and felt that it was appropriate. So that was what played as I arrived home, and then as I walked up the hall of my block of flats (apartment building) the very last remnants of whatever it was I had went away.

I got in, and I went into my room and I felt terrible. I’ve been thinking about this day ever since. I said I would write this post as if it were the same night, which was when I started this post, but I’ve finished the description now and shall try and make the addendum as quick as possible. This has easily become my longest post on this blog, and I don’t know if I’ll ever even write another one that ends up being half as long as this, but seeing as this was one of the most interesting experiences of my adult life maybe that’s appropriate. In a weird way this mirrors my first post as well, or my second but the first real post (linked right at the start of this actually), in that it’s also describing an experience I had mostly just walking around a certain part of the city. I wrote that post, and had the walk it’s based on, last September as well.

I’ve been back to the park since, I went on Thursday afternoon at the same time. I played the same record, which I deliberately avoided listening to between the two visits even though I really wanted to thinking that I might somehow ruin things, and followed the same route both getting to the park and while there at first. The first thing I noticed was that the field has been taken over for some motorsport festival that’s coming up soon, so most of the field was inaccessible due to all the equipment and things being set up. It was a grey and cloudy day, as you can see in the second photo I posted (not including the header) which was the only photo I took this second trip. You can also see more of the equipment for this festival on the edge of the image, I tried to not include it but it was impossible.

Other than that though it was still very beautiful to me, this area of the park really does stand out for whatever reason. I didn’t have the same experience, in fact I know I didn’t because I remember going to the same café and seeing a young couple in there and being quite upset by it. Not in the way Elliot Rodger would get upset, I wasn’t angry or motivated to squirt orange juice at them, but just kind of saddened by it. I think seeing young couples doing mundane things is what gets me the most, more than public displays of affection or sex scenes in films or the many other things that often people on /r9k/ say makes them sad. No, for me it’s seeing that next step in adult life that I was never able to get to. Just going to get lunch with your gf.

Seeing the way they smiled at each other, seeing them just chat together over the menu. It really ruined my mood, if I’m being honest. Whereas if I had seen them on Sunday, that wouldn’t have been my reaction, this is when I knew that despite the fact that I did feel happier here than at home I still hadn’t achieved the same state as I did on Sunday. I think what really stood out was how much the girl reminded me of one of my co-workers, the one who you may remember me mentioning started around the time I started this blog. They didn’t look alike, they looked similar-ish as they were presumably both from the same part of the world (eastern Europe) but they looked quite different nevertheless, no it was more the body language and demeanour. They also dressed quite similarly, this girl in the café had a style that instantly reminded me of my co-worker. It was odd.

I went out of the park, to stand on the street outside near the entrance to this café. I considered going in there for lunch, I’ve never been to a café or restaurant on my own before but it is a lovely looking place. I didn’t go in, but I’m thinking about going back. I’ll certainly go back to this part of the park again. I’m kind of obsessed with this experience, part of the reason I’ve let this post become so long is because I feel like once I finish writing it that’ll be my last connection to the experience gone. I’ve been thinking about it constantly, before I go to sleep every night I’ve been looking through the photos I took to help relax.

I think that this second trip goes to show that my hypothesis has some truth to it at least. That all the various little things, together with my own baggage and personal aesthetic values, somehow just came together and kind of knocked me backwards a little. I’ve since listened to the album a whole load more times, at work, walking to work, at home, and it really is fantastic. That first experience was something else though, I think maybe next time I’ll listen to a different album of his maybe that might help bring me closer to this place again. Maybe I’ll only listen to a record of his for the first time while in this part of the park. I’ve also considered taking acid while there, I still have two 100ug tabs left so I could take just one or even perhaps a half tab for a more mild experience. I just want to feel like I did that day again and I’m not sure if I ever will.