Archive for November, 2006

Burning the Midnight candle once more.

I am caught in this spiral of tiredness that I myself am perpetuating. I can’t seem to break this cycle of late nights even though I suffer for it during the Sun’s rays. I could possibly strive to break the habit, perhaps by reducing the caffeine I consume, however I delight in the cover of darkness and stillness that the midnight candle exudes. As for performance levels during peak times there is something certainly lacking. I am allowed only one to delight in, at the detriment and sacrifice of the other. I choose this one namely because this time is mine and the grains that are owned by light are ruled by a different master.

Sometimes I stare out in the wide blue beyond whilst having a cigarrette in the garden courtyard, located past the foyer and lifts to the eastern side of the building where I work. I ponder freedom at such times and whether in essence I am free.
There’s a rail situated right on the eastern edge of the garden, before the building drops off onto the street below. The rail bears the resemblance of a bar not too disimilar to the familiarity of criminals, well perhaps it is a bar like a handrail but at times it takes on a grimacing and hostile bar of a gaol cell. I wonder am I free or merely a slave to the established norms. I need to earn money so that I may spend and consume and stay up burning the Midnight candle to play with an over glorified typewriter. However the cost of established normalcy is perhaps too high. It would appear to the sense of normalcy that the deeper I descend into the night the more that rail reminds me of a bar in a cell.

Perhaps it is the curse I reek upon myself. The curse of wax that burns at both ends until the inevitable faint twinkling of light is extinguished and I am forever born into the night and the darkness and the stillness of no more.

Will I now drag myself into the covers of sleep? Wait just one more click and then I will retire for the night. So the candle burns and I click and tomorrow the debt collector will knock at my red swollen eyes and my bones will creak with stiffness and my feet will fall in a mush of exhaustion while I click some more.

I am sitting at a nice clean desk. For that matter my flat is in a relatively clean state. Does that mean I am clean? A pure soul? Perhaps not. My soul is never clean because I never clean the place where I live. It isn’t my surroundings that I can find cleanliness but rather within the feeble cells of my body. Perhaps they are filthy with decay. I have neglected the place where I really live for the sake of what? Pride? Maybe I will be in a position to give myself a overhaul in the near future but as often is the case I will continue with the path of wretchedness.

Clean. What does it mean to be clean? Free from shame? Free from guilt? Free from the dusty old jacket that sits in the closet. Will I one day be clean? Is it important to be clean of body, mind and soul? Or is a general surface clean sufficient? Perhaps cleanliness must go deeper than wiping the dust off the surface, only then will the object of filth shine.

It is comforting to know that I am not alone in my semi despair whilst waiting for the clock to strike a tone signifying quitting time. Someone at work asked how I was going and I replied “pretty good and yourself?” And I received an answer by way of “okay…almost time to go home” It was mid afternoon, (a time for a smoko) when this little scene occured while awaiting the lifts to take us in our respective directions. Its pretty terrible that I await for the time when I can get home, when I have been at my current job for only six months, which relatively speaking, is a short time. However it seems like an eternity and every day seems to be a moment waiting in eternity.

Is it a sad state of being when most of our time is spent waiting for the clock to direct us where we should be and how we feel. Maybe I am alone in the motions of emotion dictated by the hands of a clock. It is probably not so much of a relief to be coming home anyway. I am caught within a grip of some existential tidings that I cannot simply wish away, I know this because I spend a considerable amount of time in this wishfull thinking mode and it really doesn’t work.

Acceptance is probably the solution to my dilemma but it is hard to come by. Alls I am achieving is a state of frustration and rage at something that will not go away by wishing it so. Perhaps I will find this ill fated acceptance or more likely stumble across it when looking for something else.

Well the chatter and noise is relentless. My quest to find some peace amongst the inner dialogue between my self and whomever it is talking with, is a futile endeavour. What drives this noise? It hardly ever says anything particularily nice and I am perplexed as to where this voice has come. It is as if one day it decided to rest in my head. Perhaps it has taken hostage of my self, gagged it and replaced the loving self with its own mimicry or version of my self with itself. Perhaps I prefer to listen to this stranger rather than the nice guy that was my self.

Who can really say but it seems evident that this self will more than likely refuse to leave. It may need some coercive action and more than a little rough handedness to remove this imposter. Perhaps I can’t even remember the self whom this poseur has usurped from its home. Well whose to say I have any right to evict this tenant, I may be the landlord however I may have inadvertently signed a lease by mistake. Perhaps there is some fine print in the contract that I am unaware of, it could have dire consequences if I were to just banish this person from where it has called home. I need to consult with my solictor, I need some clarification on where I stand with this visitor.

Do I really want this visitor to leave? Have I grown to love this self? Why is he so mean to me at times? Am I too caught up in my own insecurities to ask this companion to leave? Has my self esteem been so downtrodden that I am afraid to confront this alter ego? These questions are all probably true, however my self or rather it self is somewhat obstinate and shall we say selfish. Perhaps in the end it matters not if this guest is unwelcome because I am at loathe to let him go. I think he serves a purpose, which I have trouble finding myself. Well maybe I am slow to find it and perhaps this self in some obscure and twisted way is guiding me in my search. Who knows apart from it self. Or it self could be steering me in an entirely wrong direction. Perhaps I will find my way through the mire of haziness in good time. Today I must cope with the noise and perhaps learn to ignore it and maybe listen to a different noise, perhaps then my self will return. Once the stillness has been restored. One thing is almost certain, tomorrow will be another chance that the cross roads will be met, where the choice of direction can be made.

Not sure if I’ve used this title previously but is probably apt for the present. How many in this world can be considered a part of The Wretched? Perhaps there are many and I am but a small speck upon “the isle of torment and woe” . The journey I pledged to begin last week was a fairly ambitious sentiment, which is achievable, however I feel like a piece of drift wood that invariably finds itself moving with the currents onto the shores of wretchedness. Am I so wretched as I believe? Probably not! My life is pretty much the same as any other except deep within the wells of my soul lurks a mistress that loves to pull me into the shelter of darkness.

It is a hidden love, a shameful lust that I indulge with my consciousness. If I were to avert my gaze away from her alluring and amorous eyes, would I then be free from her spell? It is foreseeable that I dote upon those spendid dark eyes, brooding and melancholic in their hypnotic and soothing familiarity. I have grown to love the way she casts me away from the here and now into an other wordly realm where the winds whisper vicious vemon to poison an enemy which lays just ahead and beyond the mountains and across the azure sea. The enemy does not exist, and if it does then it is only me.

So it is, perhaps I can own some truth when my eyes are averted, the haze of a grey thunderous sky is parted, just enough for the faint light to eclipse the wretched and lay still the horrible torment. Yet will it be enough for me to sing my farwell to the girl that lays in shadow, the temptress of sorrow? Perhaps a quickening is in place as I found myself pondering the stillness of smiling flowers and contemplative silent trees swaying amongst the storm overhead, whilst I walked briefly in the silence and became aware that the only noise amongst the choir of stillness was that of my head engaging in a lovers spell.