Blog entries, fully fledged, that never made the journey from my keyboard to the blogosphere:
"Antiseptic vs. anaesthetic"
"Baby Love"
"Specimen X"
"Beauty, Entropy"
What does this say about how life is in the Nicosphere? That I've been thinking a lot about the trade-off between dealing with shit or just shrugging it off; that I'm feeling all manner of emotions in waiting for my nephew/niece to be born (any day now); that I've become more and more aware of how enslaved we are by modern conventions of the beautiful; and that somewhere between articulation and the "publish" button, I dropped my desire to let these thoughts be known and fell away in anger again. Everything happens, nothing gets said. None the better, none the wiser, ever more confused by it all.
But what's happening?
I guess the most important thing to happen is Summer. All of a sudden, the sun is out, the tennis championships are about to begin just down the road, and the onset of temperatures of 30C+. I like Summer, most of the time. Once the two-week assault of hayever abates, it's great - the light is much loved, people are looser, colours mingle, shorts and dresses are in abundance. It also, however, brings on periods of deep gloom - as if the sun suddenly emerges to illuminate concerns forgotten in the dark recesses of the Winter. I read in the news that the onset of summer coincides with a spike in the suicide rate. Whilst nowhere near the edge of that particular abyss, I am fascinated by the promptings of the bright summer light and this reported tendency to plummet...
I'm lapsing into work... it always happens this way. Work has been where I feel strongest, most capable of solving things. After my troublesome years of self-destruction at fifteen, my late teens and my twenties have been punctuated by taking refuge in application. It's not like I leapt up and sought work out, it kind of took me hostage and made me succumb, a bit like... er, Patty Hearst?! I load up tasks for myself, and think about nothing else - maybe as a means of deflecting darker thoughts about boredom and the cruelty of the modern world.
All alongside this, I am waiting patiently for unclehood. Amidst my darker moments, this is something that makes me happier - it could be redemptive. Life, from nothing, will emerge. That's pretty cool, I think - it's powerful, creation of life, from nothing, just potential. My sister is heaving, and it looks so painful, with the prospect of yet more pain before the happy resolution of this little issue. Despite not having had the best of sibling relationships with my sister, this has mellowed the clash of personalities - you cannot help but feel compassion. Fingers are crossed.
And, I miss people. Which is ironic, because I am the worst person for keeping in touch with people. Just because I don't call, or write, doesn't mean I don't think about friends and cousins, old flames and newer objects of desire. I wish I said more to these people, articulated the reluctant emotive forces that feel like encroaching weaknesses. Instead, I'm casting a naked voice into a wide open space, into my minor corner, where they won't hear a thing.
This all sounds very morose, but I assure you, I'm not moping. If I'm honest with myself, things are pretty secure - looks as though I'll get my old job back with a secondment to the Institute; I'm loving sculpture; I have a roof over my head that's my own. It could be so much worse, and at a time where we're all thinking about the inequities of global poverty it feels wrong to be so unenthusiastic about living in the world.
