kulturbrille:amanuensis

There has to be a way out of completely giving my life over to a singular cause that will consume the rest of my third decade.

We are one. And finally, a full spread.

Food, naturally, after a month’s worth of occasional photos, spoilt lenses, obligations, erstwhile friends and happy dreams. There will be time to balance talk of the here and now. Oh, and: Werner’s Oven, Borgos, Ghim Moh. Yum.

Every day, even with Newsfire, I end up with a thousand or so posts that I can never read in full. Lethargy, apathy, circumstance, the litany of excuses for not being alive - not that reading every post in a devilishly simple newsreader is life - somehow gives me that feeling, that peculiar disconnectedness, isolation, that I’ve savoured in so many train stations around the world.  Tanjong Pagar, the old King’s Cross, Baltimore, Grand Central, York, Tampere (in Finland), Syracuse, dozens of open-air, identified-only-by-cyrillic-script platforms where trains could stop. At everyone, at some ungodly hour, laden with packs and books, a mind quelled and bursting, but knowing that for that short eternity between now and that time on the board, there is nothing. Nothing.

That’s for another time, though. I explain briefly the revival of del.icio.us, Pukka, Newsfire, the habit of marshalling links and devouring, consuming, waiting for the day when, like a balanced meal, there will be a cloud of tags bursting with colour, my inner leanings, and every spark that I ever knew somehow here again. Photos like only a mechanical, unseeing camera could capture, lines from scraps of plays, film, secret books and passing souls, and a symphony of knowledge, information, ideas that I have come to believe is possible with.

Be not afraid.

I’m amazed that I’m back in the army - for both wrong and right reasons. It’s a time of flux, of change and of that slow, languorous thrum of an engine pulling me into a shimmering, unattainable, distant sunset, and there are anecdotes and lives to revel in, in camp, away from everything else that presses in. It has given me a voice, reason to speak, pause to consolidate, even if there is a price to pay.

R has been startling, wonderful, lovely. I have learnt more, been through so much more, here with her, than I have ever experienced anywhere else; in a year, I have had my life turned inside out, with all the right questions, all the things I should have done, and a reason and impetus to straighten myself out. How could I ask for more?

Today, then, the stillness of a morning spent at home, for once, as I wait for the bustle to begin, again, somewhere out there, where men come and go. This is joy; a knowledge of being on the right path, going somewhere, and loving, and full of hope and faith, even if I can hear too many echoes, of, of shades, shadows, fallible man. Psychedelic, iridescent, coruscant, evanescent sunset, I come.

Having passed through London, Oxford, and finally arriving in Paris, all in the space of 24 hours, I am almost halfway through my week in a gorgeous, bracing, half-familiar city; so many have come before me that I have almost vicariously lived here, but it is made anew. Words, dreams, ideas, hopes all swim before my eyes; I am happy beyond measure.

I’ve bought the lens, made the arrangements, tied up as many loose ends as I could, and now it is just 3 days to go. At some point in the last week I finally ran out of steam; this year has ground me down to nothing at all. After all the dust and packing, moving and sorting, I’m now vaguely hay-feverish; I have not sat down to read for weeks, and surely this distended feeling is not going to be permanent. New subscriptions to the Economist, Prospect, New Humanist and Vanity Fair have sealed my fate; I am to become, once again, a careful word scribe and diarist, hurtling with reckless abandon to my doom. Soon, I will leave this barren mindscape behind. In the dregs of coffee and stains on wine glasses all over Europe.

By way of remembering. And hinting.

For two, three years I have startled myself by allowing myself to be consumed in a whirlwind of desire, ambition, secret hopes and wretched dreams; now that I am 27 it seems clear that none of it amounted to very much except for the ideals which remain pure and unblemished by prevarication, compromise, and shoddy teleology. I am blessed in having one shining light that reminds me day after day that there is good in this world, not just cosmically between the light and the dark, but also in all aspects of how we live, behave, connect and comprehend each other. Morality lives on; we must live as if we are more than mere constructs.

So, as I prepare for a new year, a new life, a return to the fold, and once again embrace all that was good and wonderful about humanity, I shall remember how and why, and who, helped me understand once more. It is, as was said, too little, too soon, too much, too late, but faith will see us through.

Thank you. You know a little of what you do, after all.

These were the little ones.

Last December, somewhere north:

Departure, No signboard, packing was excruciating. Xtorrent surfaced, time went by, the Budget Terminal. Lovely plain flight, extra long trip to Kamon, sleepy, miniminally commercialised town. Jazz festival.

Pleasantly simple. Westerners and straight perfect beaches. Buzzed at noon and Inside Enderby. Retirement for outcasts. Leaving it all behind and being intellectual.

Afternoons in languor; a life of purpose and activities that count in the long run. Running, swimming, eating, writing. Functional, pragmatic objects. A certain perfection, a defiant drive.

Days of gentle nothing.

In Phuket, it drizzled every afternoon, a sprinkling of holy water. Unfit, pudgy, pasty, swimming with Enderby, grimacing  at a rows of fuschia beach umbrellas, I stumble.

One understands more, now. Fixated on a certain consumption, unable to act and, with each committment, unable to go any further, this is me. In a week, Christmas, and I will be in an even more decrepit cafe, somewhere northeast, somewhere else. There will be pen, and paper, sore legs, and not much else.  I can’t read for the mosquitoes, can’t think for the chaos, so there is nothing to do but drink, mumble, and deny.

You see, there is no Muse, only a Void. By luck, or by chance, one generates meaning from fragments. A year’s worth of resolutions will always include losing weight, reading, writing, remembering every moment, line and face. Without fail, it falls away, limp and watery, though one is never sure if it is tears or rain, or a holy shower of purgatory.

The hours of each day should be apportioned and ideas ruthlessly torn apart. Just like that, just like that. No one will ever be sufficient, no year will ever be complete. But there are years to fill and lives to save.

I remember when I was in Iran, living and looking down at a soccer field, and typed madly on a stowaway. All lost, but in any case never to be read again. Cast, away. Perhaps one must sweep clean to make anew.

One last morning in Phuket, in a gleaming cafe with Bose speakers and hip-hop, and adjacent to a garish tour operator where a young thai woman endlessly powders her face. 50 metres away, happy brown people frolick in the surf. What more could I want? Worn down by the year, sedentary, inert. A holiday to forget, but every moment a reminder of the year past, mad and full of regret.

Perhaps I am too old for regret,  but I am still not conditioned sufficiently to wash it down in beer or hedonism; I am still very much a creature of this world, but not for long, I think, if the narratives of the Woo Yen Yens and Enderbys of this world are any measure. I am to become nothing.

The purpose of my holidays, then, are for me to surface for air, immerse myself in the wide, impossible expanse of this universe, remind myself of my mortality, and then return, rejuvenated and refreshed.

Alone, then, unworthy and incapable of any reasonable amount of human interaction, lost. Was it ever so hard to understand?

Bustling, the cafe prepares for Christmas. Tinsel (onomatopoeic word that it is), a stunted tree, and before long good Christmas cheer and sultry recorded singing. I hesitate, I am visiting a possible future. I will stay a little longer.

What self-respecting person would fly across half the world and sit at a cafe and stare at the beach. Ideas, narratives, existence, the broken shards of time past, all sitting comfortably amongst plastic tables and glistening rattan chairs. Is this what they dream of, in winter, in their grey offices and ghost-filled streets?