At least I’m getting the hell out of this gay city soon

I knew that I would feel this way, and yet I went there anyway. I did it I did it, and now I am stuck in a room all grey. I can’t even find it within myself to write something coherent, I won’t sit here all day. That’s not true yes I will, but I won’t spend it typing, dwelling in ink. Code more like, because I don’t truly write. I type. None of that means anything, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just TYPING things out trying to say something and I’ll stop when I’ve covered all the things that are making me hurt. I know I shouldn’t, hurt I mean, but I does be. Can you ever guess why?

Right now, I have a hangover but a mild one only. I always make sure to drink enough water now, after bad experiences resulted from not doing so years ago. I’m perfect, I was asked why last night but not by one I wish would think of me so. Actually I don’t wish that, no one wants to be with perfect they want to be with “just like me”, going easy, won’t throw up in my boyfriend’s car. Fucking kill me. It was in response to this wish to avoid day after dehydration that this accusation of perfectness was hurled at me, quite unexpectedly. The pent up wonder at my careful carelessness I believe. In some sense I am glad that through mild drunkenness it was revealed that my efforts do go noticed; though by her tone I can see perhaps not in the way I have held in my head it must be.

This exchange was at a flat, four of us the same as last time abandoned by the rest, at an hour I would usually long have been asleep. Or at least lying in the dark tossing and turning, or staring up at the ceiling, kept company only by uncomfortable memories. The flat in question, occupied by the girl or woman I would (not) like to have called me perfect, her partner who was very friendly and probably deserves her, and at least one trouserless Hungarian who only wanted to use the washing machine. The house of one of the abandoners was close by, some jokes were made about that. She told me she sometimes sees him in the early hours and swerves behind a car, she motioned, in order to avoid him.

This walk, about ten minutes from the station to the residence, was the highlight of the evening for me. I had a plastic bag of sickly sweet almond liqueur which she gave to me to carry, and I liked that. It felt like some kind of recognition of my masculinity, because it was done unthinkingly particularly. Unconsidered, and therefore real. I walked with her on my right, and though stilted there was conversation. She told me that she likes to watch shows, she said I like to watch shows to relax. Unprompted. And there was a sadness. I don’t want to project, but the implication seemed to be that she does yearn for something else. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t, I turned to look at her and she looked up at me and so I would have something rather than nothing I asked to clarify the name of the show she said she had just finished recently that she told me about.

It’s a sci fi show, she pronounced it sky fi which was charming. “Oh, you like that sort of thing?” I asked, the emphasis not judgemental but meant to suggest I was learning something about her. It was a moment like that which I had been yearning for myself, if I’m being honest. I just wish I could stay in that moment, her warm brown eyes staring at mine and bashful smile. I just feel so much better when she’s there, close by. The walk was a wasted opportunity I think to myself, there were stretches where we didn’t talk and I wanted to desperately wanted to say something but I didn’t know what to. The illusion I’ve held for the last few months was shattered there on that dark stretch of not quite suburbia yet also, when I did say something and was misheard.

I asked something about the cigarette she was smoking, I don’t smoke myself but I do quite like the smell, I don’t recall exactly what but it was a question which is the important thing. She responded as if I made a statement, “oh, really?”, and broke my heart. Maybe I should stop with the melodrama, it was more of a disappointment, but it did hurt when it happened. I had this idea that with her that didn’t happen, it was what I thought was one of the reasons I fell for her. Everyone mishears me, especially people who have English as a second language which is actually quite a few of the people I find myself surrounded by ironically. If not ironically then coincidentally, whatever.

She always made the effort, or didn’t need to, but then at this point quite clearly and a few other points that were less cut and dried I found out this was not the case. My only hope is that maybe I was speaking even more softly than I do most of the time that evening, which I do feel might actually have been the case but I don’t know why. I tried to speak up, but I just can’t do it. Throughout, everyone had to lean in whenever I was asked a question or trying to say something. At the first pub, over the dinner table, at the second pub, on the train, etc. There’s someone else grabbing hold of my vocal chords, and every time I attempt to increase my volume his grip tightens. The bastard, he’ll doom me. I would uproot him if I could and revenge myself upon him for the years worth of damage he has caused.

I don’t feel anywhere near as awful as I did last time I made a post like this, well not like this mess but alike in subject matter, I will see her tomorrow for ten minutes and it will be lovely as always. It’s so pathetic, it’s so unbelievably pathetic, I wish I had other words to use but I just hear pathetic over and over in my head ringing out. I can’t help how I feel, when in her company however briefly I just feel better. Even though I paradoxically also find that it hurts to be there because of moments like those walking last night (this morning) where I find myself in a classic case of the porcupine’s dilemma. So desperate to reach out, not physically but to bridge an emotional gap yet refraining because I know that if I do I’ll be walking into a wall of spears.

I learned some foreign swear words, but I forgot them all. I remember how to say thank you in her language though, not that it will come in much use to have such knowledge. Then again, what use is any of the trivia I’ve collected over the years? It’s Valentine’s Day shortly after I get back, that subject came up at one point during the evening. I’m not getting the day off, because I won’t need it. I was asked if I have any plans “a secret admirer perhaps?”. Really funny stuff. Actually, I’m too harsh it was kind of funny in the moment and I did laugh. I laughed a lot, not the kind of full hearted near to tears pain in my side wheezing laughter I have with my close friends but closer to that than I’ve ever been with these people before. Usually at these work meetups I smile, I chuckle politely, but I genuinely found myself amused on a fair few occasions last night.

I had a good time, for the most part. It’s complicated, I was switching back and forth a lot in my feelings about the events while they were occurring. At first I was nervous, shaking actually, trying to get comfortable but failing. The one who I can’t stop thinking about seemed pretty disappointed that one of the two guys who cancelled last minute wasn’t going to be there, I really hate to say it because envy is so ugly to me and something I’ve always done a good job of not falling for, but I did feel a tinge of jealousy. I know that the two words are not synonymous, but I’m not sure which one described my feeling in that moment. Envy is the desire for something you don’t have, and jealousy is the fear that you will lose something, nowadays the implication tending to be that this will happen because someone else will take it.

I don’t know what it was, do I just feel envious? Do I just wish that she would feel similarly if I were to have not turned up? Would she I wonder as well, I really don’t know. If so, then it would be closer to jealousy, and if not then I suppose it is envy. I really do wonder just what she thinks of me, it’s so hard to tell. Sometimes I feel like I make her uncomfortable or she doesn’t want me to be there, a micro expression here or a comment there gives me this feeling, and it hurts. Then she laughs when I speak or say something, both when I try to be funny (and in my opinion fail, but apparently not hers) and often when I’m just talking normally. She does seem the type to laugh a lot, but I do think it’s a little more frequent with me than when I’ve seen her talking one on one with any of the others from work. This is very possibly a fabrication of my ego though, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that in fact the opposite is true and I make her laugh less.

She doesn’t flinch or seem uncomfortable in any way when I touch her. When we were there in the pub, she had some kind of stain on her elbow from the table and I grabbed it to look, and she didn’t mind at all. That was quite unlike me by the way, I had not had much to drink yet at this point and I’m usually so incredibly frightened about crossing people’s personal boundaries, to a degree that is rather comical, and yet without even having time to think as soon as I noticed her examining the mark I found myself reaching out. It wasn’t a sexual or creepy thing of course, there’s nothing particularly erotic about holding a clothed elbow in your hand for less than ten seconds, if I were to grab her waist she’d probably freak out. Of course I would never do anything of the sort, again I’m actually really quite surprised I even just grabbed her arm like that. It’s a bit concerning, if I were to see some other guy who isn’t her boyfriend do that I’d find it suspect.

Am I going to become a lecher, a groper, a fiend who women from all across the world will fear. They joked about these sorts of men, they wanted to go to a nightclub and we almost did. It would have been a gay nightclub, because the guys at normal places are apparently too touchy feely. I’m glad we didn’t go, instead I would have been the one who faced the grotesque creeping hands of slimy men. A friend of mine once warned me, and me specifically, that if I ever find myself in such an environment I will be groped. I’m not sure if he was complimenting me on my looks, he does occasionally make remarks of that sort I think because he believes it will boost my confidence, or if he was talking about how I look quite young and by doing so remarking on the predatory vibes that the “gay scene” is known for.

I would have felt so out of place there, on the one hand I enjoyed myself more than expected at the local club I went to in December and maybe would have danced again given enough alcohol, but it would be too degenerate for me I feel, apparently drag queens are even known to make an appearance at the place that was suggested. It’s a weird thing, to operate as a sane mind in modern Britain. But what can you do? To even suggest that all the various different sorts who collect under the LGBT banner are anything other than wonderful is social suicide. When the lovely girl who maybe hates me was teaching us swear words in her language she told us the word for faggot, in a rather awkward way, she said “this is like the word for “gay” but in a not good way” or something like that. Fine with me, based actually. But then one of the other girls said something along the lines of “we don’t say that here” or “we don’t have that one”… So uncomfortable, but it was a very brief moment.

I noticed as well that I caught her staring at me far less often than on other occasions like this. I often turn around to face her very suddenly when I’m finished talking to someone else or if I’ve just been doing nothing staring at the ground, and like to find her looking in my direction sometimes smiling other times looking away like a child who has been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Maybe I’ve done that one too many times, and she has decided to make a concerted effort to focus elsewhere when I am present, or perhaps I have a self serving memory and the frequency of such a thing is actually less than I recall. I want it to be true, but I shouldn’t. Even though I have no intention of making a move I still feel so awful just for even desiring a taken woman.

I feel awful he was honestly a really nice guy, he drove me all the way home at half past three in the morning, over half an hour’s drive and even though I said he could drop me off early he insisted on taking me right to the front entrance. He had a friendly demeanour and look, his physiognomy and behaviour tells me that he is a decent individual. And they’ve been in a relationship for a long time, they’ve been living here in England for five years at least. There was another awkward moment when she was asked about marriage and she acted like it was a crazy question, noteworthy because she’s functionally married already. Maybe the relationship isn’t perfect, maybe she doesn’t see herself growing old with him.

You see? This is why the situation is awful, I hate that there is a part of me that wants to see a relationship fail. Yet I have to want that, an unwanted want it may be but that doesn’t make me feel much better. I spend so much time thinking about how she would feel if she found out how I do, if she were to see all this thought I’ve put into every minor interaction that she herself must have long forgotten. I wonder if she suspects something already, which is why she feels more distant since I’ve seen her recently. She’s been quicker to leave when we switch over at work the two times since she’s come back from her trip home, though still very friendly admittedly.

She did invite me into her home though, I feel like if she was concerned about me getting ideas or as a potential stalker, which I am obviously fucking not, she wouldn’t do. Yes she invited three of us, but still the suggestion came totally out of the blue. Before I left to meet everyone that evening I wouldn’t have thought for a second that the night would have gone the way it did. If only I lived alone, we could have come round to my flat. Perhaps next time the chance arrives I will be, I can only hope. She also seemed to want me to come along specifically, when she first suggested we go to her place I was a little hesitant as it is so far from where I live, but she asked me specifically to come and said I’d get home safe. I’m just rambling.

I tried to cover all the moments most memorable, the chronology not so important, I don’t know if there’s any others I’ve forgotten. A certain individual who may have unknowingly played a crucial role in this blog’s creation was brought up at one point. Referred to as “my friend” weirdly enough, the implication of which I’m still in doubt about. A suggestion that my feelings and even the scrap of goodbye I hid for her are known of? Or more of a complaint that those two had some kind of hostility to one another, and nothing about me was meant. Preferable, and probably more likely, I just like to torture myself with worry over every tiny thing because at least it’s better than the dead grey walls and the dead grey sky and the sludge of life. Terror always trumps tedium, I think.

Oh of course, how could I forget! Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, the not-a-novel I mentioned in the post previous. I received a copy as a gift, when we all gave gifts to one another. Well, those of us who were present. Two three four at the pub, five at the restaurant, four after that until six, briefly, before five again and finally one. It might sound like a shocking coincidence, but in actual fact the guy who bought me the gift had asked me in advance for a list of things I would like because he was struggling to find a good present (he also passed around a list of things he wanted for himself, for his “secret santa” to find) and that book was one of the ten suggestions. Nevertheless, it is rather interesting which choice he made. Maybe he is more of an understanding individual than I first thought.

I had to lie a little to explain how he could have known which book to get, I said it was already a favourite of mine and that I used to have a copy but lost it. When we were guessing who bought whose gifts I said I had told the guy who bought me the book that it was my favourite, which was why he knew to get me a copy and why it must be him. I will take the book with me to Rome next month, for the plane, if I get it back before then. I left it behind at her house. There was a big bag with all of the gifts in, so they were all left behind there. I wonder what she’ll think of it, I saw her flicking through it and reading a page at one point. Which is fine, more than fine I hope she reads through it a little before bringing it in to work. I really would be interested to hear what she thinks about it.

And while I would like to bring it with me, part of me also thinks perhaps it’s best saved as something to comfort myself with when I return. After all I will probably be sad that the trip and my time with the person I’m visiting is over, it’s inevitable. We subject ourselves to the pain of something coming to an end because we are taking a gamble that the thing itself will be worth the upset to come. Being immediately thrust back into the things I’m running away from won’t be much fun either. So maybe I’ll ask if she wants to borrow it, assuming she doesn’t just bring everything with her immediately and actually seems interested in the book. Or maybe I won’t.

Unexpected journey

This coming Saturday there is an evening planned with everyone I work alongside, much like the one I went to and described in this entry just over a month ago. I don’t think it will follow the exact same routine as last time, for one thing the boss (a middle aged man with a wife and children) will be there this time which means we’re unlikely to end up at a nightclub at three in the morning. I could be wrong, but I feel like it’s probably not his scene. Then again, it’s not mine either. I kind of glossed over this in that entry as I was rather preoccupied with trying to talk about one thing in particular, but that night was actually the first time I’ve ever been to one before. I’m sure that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows even a little bit about me. I’ve been in similar kinds of environments a few times before, but never an actual proper “club”.

It wasn’t a typical experience of course, in fact to see me there accompanied by three women I must have appeared quite different from the complete loser I really am. It’s rather an amusing image given that context. The typical nightclub experience from what I understand, is of same sex packs of men and women, seeking to get as drunk as possible and secure a one night stand. Normie favourite top 40 choons provide the soundtrack as the hierarchy of attractiveness is formulated under dim lighting through the medium of crude dancing, it’s like an absurd game. The abrasive flashing lights and overly loud music the artificial obstacle, the self sorting of people the ultimate objective. In my case the music was there and the lights, but the game was something I was only a spectator of. Me and my co-workers found ourselves in a corner some distance from everyone else in the place.

I did dance, briefly with the girl who was the focus of the entry I wrote about that evening, but we were really just goofing around. I didn’t sense the same connotations as I did when seeing the normies grinding on one another, if anything in my mind I was taken back to times spent dancing around as a little kid with my friends. I haven’t seen here since that night actually, I will see her tomorrow for the first time. Hopefully I can finish this entire entry tonight, if not I at least hope to have it finished before Saturday and the staff get together. This time without being around her has been good, because it’s helped me to get back to normal. In fact some part of me thinks maybe it would be better if I never saw her again, if she hadn’t have come back to work and instead decided to remain back home.

I don’t want to be the person who wrote that entry linked at the start of this one, which is the same person who wrote the very earliest stuff you’ll find on this blog. I want to be someone who remains clear headed. I don’t mean to be excessively self deprecating, but reading that post conjures up an image of someone who is contemptible to me. If I imagine it having been written by someone else that is. I understand that a lot of people reading like that kind of post from me the most, the kind where I am most emotional and expressive, and I do admit there is something there that is rather moving in a way that my other posts aren’t. I’m not intending to hide my feelings, this blog is where I can comfortably share that sort of thing anonymously and I actually do think that something about being in that more emotive state does improve my writing.

I’m really talking more specifically here about the exact feeling about which that post was written, oneitis or whatever you want to call it. I’ve long grown past the age where such thoughts are appropriate, historically speaking I’m of marrying age and yet I’m still experiencing crushes like a barely pubescent boy. People I went to school with have had children, it’s like they’ve had a whole life I never even knew. I’m about the same age Elliot Rodger was on the Day of Retribution, and aside from the murderousness I’m in a pretty similar situation. I really don’t want these feelings, I feel like there’s something wrong with me when I do. I’ve explored the feeling in depth, long time readers will know I’ve talked about on quite a few occasions, I know that it comes from a place of desperation and I hate that.

It’s particularly annoying because after this one post in particular where I tried to examine the idea of “oneitis” in as detached a way as possible, I really thought I had rationalised the feeling away permanently. Oh how foolish I can be sometimes. So now I’m just anticipating having another day like the one I wrote that entry on, all those feelings all over again. I’m really not looking forward to it, I’m half considering pretending to be feeling ill and not showing up on Saturday. I want to go though, we’re all exchanging presents (a game of secret santa, left this late because several people are only just now back from visiting home), I have bought one for someone and will be recieving one. I also just enjoy it, I’m one step removed from being a complete hikki I take what little human interaction I can get.

I wish I could just enjoy it, this will be the sixth of these little meetups we’ve had since I’ve started this job and all the ones which were not accompanied by any of these sort of feelings were actually really nice even with my usual social awkwardness. In fact I talked about the other two previous to the one around Christmas time in older posts on this blog here and here. Neither of those posts were exclusively about those evenings, the second one I don’t think had more than a line or two in reference to it, I just feel the need to always link a post if I mention it just in case anyone is curious. There are a lot more new people reading these now for some reason, who perhaps might be interested in going back to read my older posts. So by all means feel free, but do bear in mind that there are quite a few of them that are pretty crappy.

Just reading through that first post of those two I just linked, I’ve been reminded that I didn’t just talk about how I enjoyed the evening so much because I didn’t have feelings for anyone there, but I also kind of predicted the exact feeling I’m dreading experiencing this coming Saturday. In some sense any interaction with her will feel tainted by my feelings, and insincere because of course I’m hiding them. When before as described in that very entry I was really pleased at being able to just enjoy the company of these people I work with without there being any kind of hidden desire being held. I was just appreciating the company of others, and I went home feeling perfectly content because there was nothing I had felt I had to achieve by being there other than merely being there.

Last time just before Christmas however, I spent most of the evening wondering what she was thinking and just longingly staring at her like a simpering pet, it really was pathetic. And even though I am not, and was not at the time, affording any validity to the idea that there will ever be anything between me and this girl (or woman I suppose, she is in her late 20s) I still felt a failure after the evening was over. That is the problem with this feeling, I call it oneitis but I suppose the more widely used term is unrequited love, every interaction with the object of it ends with you feeling like a failure. These evenings much more intensely so than the brief ten minute interactions we usually have most weeks, but it’s definitely there for every single one to some extent. It has been a breath of fresh air to have that dissipate as she’s been away, and I do not welcome it’s return.

I wasn’t experiencing it for that long before that last evening out though, it has been relatively recent. Perhaps the feelings I have began to develop again only a month or two before that evening, it’s not like they’ve been there all along and I was just lying (either on this blog which I have no reason to do as it’s completely anonymous, or just to myself) when I said that I had exorcised any budding interest for her after she first started and I found out she had a boyfriend. I really did manage that somehow, and it’s important I make this clear because I don’t want that post I was just talking about a couple of paragraphs ago to be invalidated by the more recent one. At the time it was written, those were my honest feelings. It’s a shame that things didn’t stay that way, but they were that way. The question is, why didn’t they stay that way?

I know it can be annoying when I keep referencing back to older things I’ve written, but in that one post I linked earlier where I tried to really analyse the idea of oneitis in as detached a way as possible (naively thinking it was something I wouldn’t experience again, and that it was something I could choose to stop feeling), one of the main conclusions was that in most cases the person experiencing the feeling doesn’t actually really like or know much about the person they claim to have feelings for. I was mostly drawing on my own experiences, though I have read a lot of greentext stories about these kinds of things over the years as well. Yet now I really do feel like I genuinely like this girl. I don’t know a great deal about her, but I know far more than I did about any of the other girls I’ve called oneitis.

More importantly we get along, I feel comfortable in her company and not awkward at all which is pretty weird for me. Even if I don’t know much about her interests or anything like that, it doesn’t matter because those things are kind of superficial anyway. I know I like the person I’m interacting with, her temperament and demeanour around me inspires a fondness that I do think is genuine. Then I start to wonder what the chances of that really are. I write a post and find myself with this new revelation that I never really truly liked any of my past crushes and then a few months later I just happen to find someone that I really do genuinely like this time. I can’t even trust reality, I can’t even be sure if I’m actually experiencing the things I think I’m experiencing.

One thing I’m sure of is that oneitis is an evolutionary strategy designed to inspire those who are not currently procreating to… do so. There’s a reason that the phenomenon is associated with my fellow losers from 4channel.org rather than billionaires and movie stars. Of course we are complicated creatures and so all our personal baggage complicates the feeling, but at it’s core that is why the experience exists in humans. It’s also pretty much a male phenomenon only, again because for the most part women can get laid or find a partner if they want to so there is no need for this “push in the right direction” that I think oneitis essentially originally developed to function as. How powerful is this feeling though? Is it genuinely capable of convincing me I actually like a person that I otherwise wouldn’t? Because that is actually quite a scary prospect if you think of the implications.

It would mean that you can’t trust any of your feelings, anything opinion you have at all in fact. This is why I hate these kinds of evolutionary explanations for feelings or behaviour, the all emotions are just chemicals in your brain bro rick and morty talk. It really does depress me when I’m forced to think about it, I don’t like the idea that my thoughts and feelings are anything other than what they appear to be. Even though that does seem to be the case. I really do feel different with her though, and I noticed this before I started to develop feelings for her this more recent time. I know that she’s very friendly with people as a rule and so for her part nothing is different when interacting with me than with anyone else, but for me I do find myself acting differently.

I’d like for her to be secretly harbouring similar feelings, and because I’m a narcissistic mental case part of me thinks she might even though there is no good reason to, but I am also capable of thinking rationally and I realise that it’s incredibly unlikely for reasons I’ve gone into already before. So her being easy to talk to and very friendly might partly explain why she isn’t interested in me, but it doesn’t explain why I don’t find it awkward interacting with her when I do with almost everyone else. In fact I recently talked about how few people there are who I can really relax and be comfortable around in another post, and other than her they’ve all been male. I’ve known plenty of very friendly and open people both male and female, and them being that way didn’t help me feel any less awkward around them.

There’s this awful normie term to describe it when two people are somehow compatible, they say “they have chemistry”. Another similar term is “sexual tension”. I wouldn’t say that I have that with her, I just don’t have that energy and I never will in any circumstance. I’m not that kind of person, I have this naïve vibe that I can’t ever shake and honestly I don’t really want to. Even when in an environment with a woman who I know for a fact is attracted to me, because they’ve asked me out, there is no chemistry or tension I don’t believe. I’m too obsessed with purity, I am in all senses anti-sleaze. There’s something though, something that may very well be entirely one sided, and it’s making me doubt everything for reasons I’ve just explained. I don’t want to deal with it, and all the other feelings that I was dealing with this time just over a month ago that might come bubbling back up again after Saturday.

I just need to get away from everything, from all the people I know and everything that is familiar to me. Luckily I will be, I’m going to be leaving soon. I actually already attempted this right after writing that post I’m responding to in this one. After the feeling continued for several days I couldn’t take it any more and the only means of escape I could think of was the most literal kind. There’s only one place in the world other than the city I live in where I know anyone, Rome (I also happen to really find Roman history fascinating so that’s a bonus too), and so I began making plans to leave as soon as the decade started. I was going to leave on the first Monday of January, but I was told that I was really needed at work as we were understaffed already.

By this point a week or so had passed and I was starting to feel normal again, but I knew that the feelings would likely return as the dinner we’re going to this weekend was already planned back then, and upon thinking about it I realised the trip would be a nice idea regardless, and so I rescheduled it by a month. So, on the first Monday of February Anon is going to Rome. The eternal city, not just the once great capital of European civilisation but to this day the heart of Christendom. The city I live in is also very important historically, but it’s a very different place. It’ll be a really interesting experience I think, and if nothing else I’ll be able to get away from this godforsaken situation I’ve been living in for way too many years briefly.

I was intending to spend quite a bit of time in this entry talking about the idea of travel, specifically travel or travelling/ tourism in the 21st century, as it is something I have quite a lot to say about. I think I’m going to leave it though, I’ll write about that to be sure but I’ll give the subject it’s own separate post. Spoiler alert, I’m going to come off like a cynical and bitter faggot when I do write it, but I won’t be as harsh as some people on /r9k/ tend to be regarding the subject. I’m also not going to bring my laptop with me, so as well as being away from everything else in my life I’m going to be away from this blog for the first time since I started it. Which is something I am not entirely happy about, but I know that even if I took my laptop with me on the plane I’d still have very little time to write anyway. I will bring a notebook with me to keep notes, and hopefully the trip will inspire a good post or even several when I return.

I’m hesitant about it because over the last couple of months I’ve very suddenly grown an audience almost out of nowhere. I’ve been essentially writing to myself for over year, there have been a couple of you since the beginning but at all times there was the thought in the back of my mind that any day could be the day I stop getting visitors for good. I frequently went weeks without anyone visiting, but now I get multiple visitors every day. It’s strange, and I’ve been wondering if it’s actually the same people coming back or if for some reason I’m being promoted somewhere without realising it. Either the wordpress reader could be doing it, or some search engine, or who knows. So I know you people don’t comment, but I’ve made a poll to try and figure out what’s happening here and if you could just quickly respond to it I’d appreciate it.

Here’s the link https://www.strawpoll.me/19290209/. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to become a tradition it’ll be a one time thing. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the sudden change not begin harvesting your data for the Chinese government. There probably won’t be another upload before I leave, I’m working five days next week and will be making some preparations for the trip, so it may very possibly be three weeks or slightly over until there is. It’s going to be difficult for me to see the visitors every day on the stats page if current trends continue, the one good thing about having almost no audience was that I didn’t feel like I’d be letting people down by not posting frequently enough. I’ve announced it as clearly as I can though, so at least I know that no one is expecting anything.

Maybe I’ll have time to write the next section for the Pre-Socratics post, I’ll probably read the next chapter over the next couple of days, and I’ll maybe at least start the next full post before leaving which will give me something to quickly resume and upload after I return. It is going to be quieter around here than usual though. Thanks for reading, as always.

Books: Part 12

Before I get into this post, I just want to preface it by saying that I know this one took quite a while. I have been quite busy at work, as I will be for the rest of this month actually, so I have had less free time than usual. I also spent a couple evenings writing the most recent update to the post I’m working on which covers various pre-Socratic philosophers, which of course also meant I couldn’t be writing on the next full upload those nights. I do want to spend more time adding to that post, because it is really where my interest is primarily right now, so I might upload slightly less frequently for a little while because I will be adding to that. Now that’s out of the way, I hope this post is a worthwhile read. It’s a little on the shorter side compared to some of the stuff I’ve been uploading lately, but I didn’t have too much to say.

____________________________________________________________

The reason I started this series was in order to decide what books of mine I was holding on to for no good reason, and therefore should be thrown away or donated. I thought it would take an afternoon, but soon it will have been a whole year and I doubt I’ll be finished even then. Because of this, there has been a pile of books waiting to be taken away in the corner of my bedroom that has slowly grown to be quite a nuisance. So just over a month ago, I decided to start getting rid of these books and clear some space again. Come to think of it, there was no good reason for me to have held on to them all this time, if the plan was just to get rid of them either way. I don’t know why I felt like it had to be all at once. Regardless, when I was taking them away I found that there was one book amongst the pile that I couldn’t bring myself to discard.

In the third part of this series, which I uploaded some time early last year, I briefly mentioned a book called The Crying of Lot 49. This was back when I wasn’t really dedicating a whole post to one book but just sort of going through the pile I have a few at a time. I hadn’t really developed a structure for this series yet. It’s very likely you’ve heard of it before, it’s a very famous book, but I was quite dismissive of it. It was a gift though, and more than that I never did actually read beyond the first chapter. So seeing it and being annoyed at myself for getting pleb filtered, I decided that instead of throwing it away I would give it a second chance and read it through entirely. Well I’ve finished it now, it’s a fairly short novel, and I have to say I really regret being so dismissive because it was quite good.

I’m not going to attempt any kind of serious literary analysis, because I am incapable, I am just going to give my thoughts on it. My thoughts being, essentially, that this book is beautifully written. Pynchon is able to do something with the English language that I couldn’t have even envisaged until seeing it done. There is a plot unlike what I said before, and also unlike what I said about it before once you get accustomed to Pynchon’s unusual style it’s very easy to follow, but where the book really comes into it’s own is when it goes down these very brief asides. It’s hard for me to really illustrate it in my own writing, because I am no Pynchon, but I actually believe that the cover art on the copy I have (pictured below) actually represents the style rather well in visual form.

The meandering nature of the telling of this story is very much like a dream, which is really what makes this book so enjoyable. I have always been drawn to art that is able to somehow capture the experience of dreaming, or some part of that experience at least, in it’s own way. I was fascinated for a time by Surrealist artists like Dali and Magritte even as a young boy, shortly after I remember my mum taking me to a surrealist art exhibition. My favourite film of all time is Brazil, as I’ve probably stated on this blog before a couple times, and that film is literally the closest thing I’ve found to a dream being captured on film. I really should write a whole post about it some day. I’ve talked about Ariel Pink a few times, who is able to capture something from the dream experience in his music in a way that really intrigues me.

In literature though, I’ve never really found anything that was able to do it. I read a book by Haruki Murakami after a recommendation to from a friend back in 2015, Kafka on the Shore, and in some respects there is a dreamlike quality to it. It’s not really within the writing itself though, but rather the plot. Well more like plots plural, because from what I remember it’s like two different novels that the author switches back and forth between. Anyway the characters in these stories, and from what I understand most of his books are similar, have a tendency to ignore or be unfazed at least by things which are in fact kind of fantastical or even magical. Which is rather like a dream, if you think about it.

When you sleep, you enter a world that makes no sense at all. Yet we never seem to really notice, until after we wake. The locations are unfamiliar, yet feel like places we know intimately. People move and behave in ways that are impossible, or out of character, and we don’t even seem to care. I think KotS did a good job of recreating that, and maybe I should read some of his other books. Pychon however, not only does this as well though much more overtly as I’ll try to explain later, but also captures this within his very writing. The way he drifts from subject to subject, only for a second before moving on again, it creates this very dreamlike flow.

His writing is a bit overwhelming at first, there are sentences that run on to be the length of a short paragraph. Where you’ll reach the end and have forgotten what the context was at it’s start. The language itself is rich, I even had to look up what a word meant a few times and I think I have a reasonably sizeable vocabulary though I could definitely benefit from learning more. It’s not like there isn’t a lot I still could learn, English has more words than any other language in the world. In fact I may have even said this before, but one of the reasons I’m hesitant to attempt to learn another language is because in a way I still feel like I’m learning English. I do love the English language and I think it is more complex and beautiful than it tends to get credit for. Indeed this very book I’m talking about is a monument to what it is capable of with the right mind. Although maybe that’s partly a cope, I’m also just too lazy and dumb to learn another language.

Anyway staying on topic, once you do adjust to his style then the book really opens up and you just find yourself being drawn along this winding story which takes you from one wacky scene to the next and you just accept it. As do the characters themselves, so it’s not only that the plot and the way the characters are presented is as if they are in a dream or dreamlike state, but the experience of reading the book puts the reader into one also in a sense. Or at least it recreates that one aspect of the dream experience for you, and this is achieved with the written word alone which I find to be a rather impressive achievement. It’s so well done, and this hypnagogic feel that the book has is the result of multiple different literary choices.

There is one chapter in particular which is where this book reaches it’s peak, artistically speaking, in my opinion. It’s towards the end where the protagonist, an adultress so hardly a likeable character, Oedipa Maas (all the names of all the characters in this book are equally weird, my personal favourite being Mike Fallopian) wanders around a city at night in a sleep deprived haze questioning whether the events of the story so far are trustworthy or if she is being set up in some way. I won’t go into any detail about the events of the story here, but to give some explanation the book tells a detective story of sorts and has the main character attempting to track down two mysterious private postal service companies who have been feuding with one another for centuries.

In this chapter, she wanders the city at night and begins to see the symbol of one of the two companies (Thurn and Taxis, a real postal company from history that became a princely house in the Holy Roman Empire and who are still an incredibly wealthy family of the German aristocracy to this day) everywhere. The reason she begins investigating them in the first place being that she stumbled onto the sign in a public bathroom, at first she just thinks that she’s seeing the sign more frequently as the book continues because she knows what to look for. In this chapter though, it becomes clear that in at least some cases she’s clearly hallucinating, and the places she notices the symbol in become stranger and stranger.

It’s a fantastic little book, and I’m definitely going to hold onto it because I think I very well might read it again now I’ve gotten accustomed to Pynchon’s style more and I might better be able to enjoy the early chapters which I read while still easing into the book. I should read other books of his though, partly because as brilliant as this one was it’s not where his passion was apparently. Indeed from interviews it seems that he considered this book to be a “potboiler”, a work designed to sell well and provide him with the funds to live comfortably and work on what he considered to be his real life’s work. It’s kind of demoralising to read that, that this book which is better written and more clever than anything I might write was just a means to an end for the one who wrote it. He is a very intelligent individual though, apparently starting a degree in physics at 16 but quitting to serve in the military according to Wikipedia.

I say it’s demoralising because recently, and indeed primarily as a result of reading this book, I’ve started to wonder again if perhaps I could ever write something myself. Of course I write every week for this blog, but I mean fiction/ a novel or short story or something like that. That’s what I wanted to do when I was very young, I used to love writing little stories and even later on going into secondary school I wrote some awful poems to share with my friend. I think I talked a little about this already in one of the earlier parts of this series. Generally speaking though, I’m not a particularly artsy/ creative type of person. I’m just not that way inclined, I can sometimes be profoundly affected by art and I have a reverence for what it can sometimes be, but I don’t have this urge to just “create” that some people seem to have.

I like what art, and particularly writing (perhaps because the medium is so old, and has had it’s potential explored with a great deal of thoroughness) is capable of, and the idea that I could express my ideas and thoughts through it somehow, but I don’t have this real need for it that some people talk about having. I could live my life without ever writing a novel, or painting a picture, or doing anything in whatever other creative outlet you can think of. Some people I think would rather leave something awful than leave nothing at all, whereas I would prefer to leave something rather than nothing but if I am only capable of mediocrity or worse then I would prefer not to leave anything. Of course, if I were to do anything it would have to engage this fascination with the ethereal that I have.

Reading this book, it’s just reminded me of what literature is capable of being. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a really special little book that I’m glad I read. I think I should try to read more, I used to read so much as I’ve talked about here. I have started reading more lately, last year I read the most I had since I was 16, but it’s mostly been history and philosophy (non-fiction). I’ve been reminded that writing can be beautiful and evocative and funny and charming etc etc etc. I wonder if I could ever do something like that, in my own small way because of course I’m no Pynchon. If not professionally, not someone who is published or who is able to make a living from writing, could I at least have this blog be more than what it is right now?

As well as being a place to share my thoughts, to talk about my silly first world troubles, could it actually have some greater aesthetic value one day? I don’t know, I think my writing has certainly improved since I started this blog. I’ve said this more than once already recently in fact. Although because I had forgotten so much, it’s more like I have simply returned to the level I was at when I finished secondary school. I don’t think that my prose is any better than something a teenager could produce, but I can continue to improve. Or I can try at the very least, and reading more will only aid in this endeavour. I will have to see what happens, as will those of you who are following and interested to see what happens with this blog.

I’m not really sure how to end this entry, but I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to when I started writing this morning. Except for one thing actually, which I wanted to try and fit in when I was talking about the book but I guess kind of works here as well. The ending of the book itself. See, the book slowly builds up tension throughout as Oedipa gets closer to finding out the truth of the mystery she’s following (outside of a couple of brief asides like when she has to visit her therapist/ husband’s MKUltra handler in the middle of a shootout with the police) and it concludes with her standing in a room with a man who is just about to reveal himself as one of the figures involved. The moment is about to arrive, she is shaking and preparing for how to react, and that’s where the book ends. Almost like, you’re being woken up.

Link to Part 11

Link to Part 13

A low-key start to the New Year (and decade)

I wanted to write something really meaningful or at least somewhat special to mark the beginning of the new decade that lies ahead of us, but for the last three evenings I’ve sat down to write and my mind has gone blank. I thought maybe it would be interesting to reflect on the last ten years, after all many of my most formative experiences took place in that period, and it also feels like the world around me has changed quite a bit (although the changes I’m thinking of really began around 2007/08) in that time. So I made a few attempts at something like that but was unable to really get anywhere and I deleted everything I had written more than once. I suppose I’ve already reflected on both my own life over the last decade and the wider world quite a bit since starting this blog, so maybe it is better to use this time to think about what the future might hold instead, I thought.

Again I tried to write about how the world will continue to change over the next ten years, and I also tried to keep things more personal and write about how my own circumstances may, but I got no further than I had when dwelling on the past and so I deleted everything I wrote in those attempts also. I’m sorry to have to say so, but I’m afraid this isn’t going to be one of my best posts. I feel compelled to write something to mark the occasion though, which is why I am going to somehow produce something worth uploading one way or another rather than just ignoring the date completely. It would feel weird to upload my next post without at least acknowledging the importance of the New Year, and as I think I did a reasonably good job of explaining last year, it is important.

There is a real significance to it, and given that we’re at the start of (and also the end of) a whole decade, that significance is even more pronounced this year than it usually is. And it’s not like I have nothing to say, I’m just struggling to find the right way to do so. In fact it’s that there is so much one could say that makes it so difficult to maintain focus, I have noticed now I have over a year of blog posts to look back over that the ones which are narrower in scope tend to be the best. They tend to be the ones that are best written, that feel the most heartfelt and intelligent, and so on. I get too ambitious sometimes, I try to say too much and it just handicaps me. I guess that’s something to keep in mind, a New Year’s resolution I can try to hold to going forward, to maintain focus when writing new posts for this blog. Of course getting taken by a tangent is something which makes my posts interesting, as my writing style is kind of “stream of consciousness”, but I can do a better job of keeping that controlled without losing it altogether.

Speaking of New Year’s resolutions, and specifically ones which relate to this blog/ my writing, I set some for myself last year so let’s see how I’ve lived up to those. I remember that I wanted to make my writing more accessible to “normies”, I had only had the blog for a few months this time last year so I was still accustomed to the only kind of writing I had been doing for years which was posting on 4chan. My earliest posts here were a complete mess, the paragraphs were huge blocks of text longer than the screen which I would break from at rather arbitrary points, and I was really steeped in the jargon and culture of that site. I still am of course, I still spend hours there most days, but I have managed to clear my mind of that a little and writing for this blog has been largely responsible for helping me do that.

I think that nowadays anyone could visit this blog and understand what I’m talking about, whereas the stuff I wrote in that first “phase” would have been gibberish to a lot of people. When I do use some kind of odd chan specific term now, either out of habit or because it’s actually the best way to explain a feeling or phenomenon or whatever, it’s infrequent enough that it doesn’t prevent you from being able to understand what I’m talking about. I’m not really writing for people on 4chan (well in one sense I am, several of the regular readers are from there I believe), nor anyone else, nor myself even, not exclusively anyway. I’m just writing. Indeed in recent weeks I’ve actually been getting more normie visitors than ever, I haven’t had a single day without at least one person visiting my page in a whole month. Only half a year ago I think it was, I was going weeks at a time with no one at all checking in.

Of course it would be just my luck now I’ve said that for all the new visitors to disappear suddenly. Indeed I’m probably not going to finish this post until a couple days after the start of January, as much as I would like to get it up by the 1st, so by the time it’s uploaded maybe that statement won’t even be true anymore. Nevertheless it is true right now as of the 30th, and as well as having no days without at least someone reading what I’ve written it’s pretty common to have multiple visitors a day. I’m really happy with this current situation. Now given that it doesn’t tell me anything about those people who visit other than the country I can’t know for sure how many people are return visitors, but my best estimate is that there’s somewhere between ten and twenty. Which as I’ve said from the very start is a perfect amount of people, and the exact amount I was always hoping to have.

I really like having a small group of people who are genuinely interested in reading what I write and who will reliably return to read more, it makes me feel like I’m doing something valuable. If the numbers stay at exactly where they are now for the remainder of my time writing this blog (however long that may be, I certainly have no plans to stop as of now), I will consider it to have been a success. Of course if more people find me, that’s perfectly fine as well. The only thing I really wish would change is for there to be more actual responses to what I write, though I’ve already written about this plenty of other times so I won’t go on about it too much now. All I’ll say is that I’m surprised, given that a lot of you seem to come from 4chan where people are often all too eager to speak their mind, that I’m never able to actually generate any kind of discussion about the things I write about.

____________________________________________________________

It’s now the 1st of January, I’ve entered the next decade. Maybe I was in the middle of something with this post, I’m not sure. I don’t want to delete everything I’ve written so I’ve put a line separating what I wrote a couple nights ago from what I’ll write tonight, and perhaps tomorrow night as well if I don’t feel finished this evening, this way it wasn’t a waste of time. So what I’ve been thinking about over the last few days is how awful the last ten years have been, the worst decade of my life. Now that’s not saying much because I’ve only lived through one other decade in it’s entirety and a few years of another, but nevertheless it’s been mostly miserable and I won’t soon forget it. Almost everything bad in my life took place in this last decade, my mother’s death, the loss of most (very nearly all) of my friends, my turning into a complete recluse, the spectacular failure that was my further education experience, and overarching it all the experience living with my dad and the gradual degradation of the relationship I had with him as a boy.

Indeed the decade is really defined by the experience of living with him, when I think of the image that defines my personal experience of the last ten years I picture myself sitting in my room in front of a computer screen trying to ignore the noise he’s making in the other room. Whether the 2020s are destined to be the decade in which I “make it” (although I really have my doubts about that, and I certainly don’t believe we’re all going to do so I’m afraid to say) or instead they will take the much darker route which I speculated about rather recently, they will not be defined similarly. It’s fitting how I ended things I suppose, I didn’t go anywhere of course and instead spent the evening at home with him.

I was working that day, as everyone else I work with didn’t want to do that shift (though I have to say, the tips were very good), and I didn’t get home until about nine in the evening. I arrived home, ate some dinner and then we watched a film, and it ended right before the clock struck midnight actually. The fireworks went off all over the city, and the decade ended. Other than that last part it was basically just a normal evening, there was no kind of celebration and me and my dad just tersely wished each other Happy New Year and then said goodnight. He went to sleep, and I did myself after about an hour, and so the decade died as it had lived. It’s been hell, but it’s over now. A decade from now I can be certain that whatever happens, if I’m still alive, it won’t end like this one did.

In fact not even next year will end this way, because he’s not going to be living here anymore by then. Even if I spend it alone, which I hope isn’t the case of course, it will be far preferable to this. The other guy who was working that morning before I arrived told me he would spend the night alone, he didn’t seem to upset about it. Well he was a little upset or he wouldn’t have felt the need to share it with me, but only a little, he joked about it. In fact it would make sense for me to be alone, because I am going to be going into this decade alone, and it will probably be defined by this in the same way that the 2010s will always be defined in my mind by the presence of my father. It’s time for me to strike out, to make my own way in the world. I’d say to be a man, but I still feel like a boy. Perhaps to become one then, maybe at the end of this decade I will be able to see myself as an adult finally.

Because right now I feel like I’ve barely changed since 2014, and in turn in 2014 I felt the same way as if I was no different than the person I had been at the start of the decade. Now looking back in total I do feel like quite a different person than I was at the start of the 2010s, but nevertheless this clearly shows that the decade in general has been a very stagnant one. I mean, for most people their mid teens and early 20s are a time of huge life changes and personal development, but that’s not been the case for me. Instead of experiencing life I retreated away from the world, it was a monastic experience in a way, but I now must leave the cocoon. This decade in comparison to the last has felt very short, I mean when I think back to the 2000s it feels like they were three or four times as long. To be fair, I probably lived three or four times as much so that makes a sort of sense.

I can’t remember the way I ended the 2000s exactly, I know I was with my mother and that family of south americans I’ve talked about on this blog a couple of times. In fact I very nearly ended up spending the New Year with them at their place again this time even though the last few years they haven’t invited me, but the girl my age (who is sort of a friend, but we don’t ever hang out anymore other than when I visit the whole family) actually needed to go to sleep early that night because she was working the next morning. Another person who had a pretty boring/ sad New Year huh.. I guess everyone is just miserable these days. Anyway as I was saying I don’t remember the details but I was with my mother, and that family to end the last decade which is also fitting in retrospect. Because if this decade is defined by my experience living with my dad, then I suppose that decade is really defined by my relationship with and experience living with my mum.

Thinking about it now I haven’t written anything on this blog about my relationship with my mum, and maybe I will one day though not right now, all I’ll say is that it was not always great. I was a difficult child, we argued a lot, but I never had this feeling I have with my dad where I just want to get away from him. I just can’t stand to be around him anymore, everything he does, every little movement or the way he speaks, it makes me so unbelievably angry and upset. I don’t even understand it, it’s like I’ve somehow put all my bitterness about life and the things that have happened on him. And to be fair he is not entirely free of responsibility, but neither is he entirely to blame. That being said, this is the way things are now and I can’t stand being around him. The idea that we would still be living together by this time next year is intolerable, I would rather die than have that be the case.

That last paragraph makes me sound like such an awful person, but I think if you understood the full context you would at least be able to sympathise with my position. It’s over though, I’m finally going to be free of him. The next decade is mine to fail or succeed in. Not to say that a lot of the failures of the last one were not my fault, they were mostly because of me. It was because of me that I became such a loser, it was because of me that I fucked up my education. If I had actually been more intelligent or hard working I might have ended up going to university as everyone expected of me from the day I was born. Going to university is kind of like the first step in the cursus honorum for middle class brits. My point here is that I’m going to be on my own, free of all this dead weight that is trying to drag me down into the mud.

This post has a really depressing tone to it, even though it should be hopeful. It’s just taken a toll on me, I’m not going to just get over the last ten years in an evening. Also, the changes aren’t all going to come right away. He’s still going to be living here until perhaps as late as the summer, and while I do have plans for some things to begin the process of growth or whatever relatively soon that means there’s still some time living like this left for me. The timing doesn’t match up perfectly, this end of the year thing is just kind of symbolic. This whole decade has really made a mark on my psyche, I mean even this narrative I’ve formed for the next decade is kind of defined by not being like the one that just passed. It’s one thing for the seeds of the next decade to be sown in the last, but maybe to define it entirely in reaction to what happened means I’m never going to truly get over it.

I don’t think I have anything else to say, this post is a bit of a crap one but it’s better than nothing. I do have plans though, there will be posts that are just as good as my best so far if not better in the future. Things may get better, and things may get worse, but at least they won’t stay the same. I remember thinking last night, after my dad had gone to bed and I was alone in my room, that I should listen to a song to start the New Year before going to sleep. I was really not sure what to choose, and I wanted it to have some meaning. Eventually I got to thinking about what I’ve ended up making this post about, how my life basically fell apart over the last ten years, but then a more positive thought popped into my head. You know what, I’m still here. And for that, I figured that I had earned some Congratulations.

Thanks to those of you who’ve been reading these from the start, and to more recent readers as well, have a Happy New Year and I hope you stick around until the next one.