tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38797006562069620132024-03-13T21:49:17.620-07:00Diary Of An Unborn WriterSimon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-31736997279126054292010-03-12T09:04:00.001-08:002010-03-12T09:38:32.943-08:00Diary of an Exported Writer<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kUKu8B0xAN0/S5p4ZlPcFkI/AAAAAAAAAEk/kY9cZvCFQrc/s1600-h/diaryscreenshot.png"></a>Dear friends,<div><br /></div><div>The Diaries are now nestling in a new project called Arjuna's Octupus where you'll find some <a href="http://diaryofanunbornwriter.wordpress.com">very good writing</a>. You'll find new posts already up!</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kUKu8B0xAN0/S5p4ZlPcFkI/AAAAAAAAAEk/kY9cZvCFQrc/s400/diaryscreenshot.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447799080146966082" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 168px; " /></span></div><div>The Whispering Rosebush has also moved to <a href="http://poetryholland.wordpress.com">Poetry Holland</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Please update your bookmarks. It's been fun here. </div><div><br /></div><div>Arjuna</div>Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-11022626167639214942010-03-02T16:11:00.000-08:002010-03-12T04:02:56.915-08:00Diary of an Unborn Writer #45 - Hanging all existential<p>Now resting on my Grandad's farm near Brisbane, Queensland, Oz. There is completely nothing to do but read and speak to the old man about his life and learnings. And these are deep. Treasured slow times, so after the relative pace of NZ (which by many measures was pretty slow - though internally a riot) I'm slowing down my psyche in this purgatorybetween the old and new. </p><p>It feels like a new life was revealed to me in NZ. Of potential and enjoyment and what can be done if we only do it slow enough - just what miracles can be achieved. There's the sort of optimism only a blank slate can give you. Ideas for the novel polished and developing, ideas for how to fill my time after the 3.5 days a week at my large blue-lettered employer. Funny how opportunity can produce such anxiety. A problem grappledwith by our friends Heidegger "et Sartre" (though I've recently discovered Heidegger turned into a Nazi propogandist after being elected rector of Freiburg University, arguing that Germans were not concerned enough with great men and struggle). </p><p>Looking at the tip of this anxiety it appears to have a taste of "anti-being" - a fear projected into the future so as to cover all expectation of future action. It cannot accept that life brims from the finger tips of this one as he writes or sleeps or enjoys another simple day in an impossible life. This impossibility is just what perplexes the"anti-being". It's all happening without it. The alienation going on without a hint of involvement in the surrounding events. The alienation removes itself from the world, and once this is seen, is as fragile as a bubble that goes pop and up lurches the realisation that it was never apart anyway, a little flow of space time that folded in on itself and denied its own superb existence. A keen thing that, to see that it was never apart. The flow is and always will be the same.</p><p style="text-align: center;">~o~</p><p><br /></p><p>Dark dawns</p><p>Represses facet </p><p>That is not felt nor said </p><p>But is expressed as release</p><p>Two poles of a sphere come together</p><p>Itself to disappear</p><p>This is the learning and the learned</p><p>The fighting and the sky</p><p>The love in a terrible beauty</p><p>The asking to be free</p><p> </p>Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-32509858764445099042010-02-15T17:29:00.000-08:002010-02-17T18:47:40.336-08:00Diary of an Unborn Writer #43<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Mount_Ruapehu_January2005.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 504px; height: 373px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Mount_Ruapehu_January2005.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Enough of these characters. I am a man not a writer. I am here in New Zealand. The people here call it AOTEAROA: The Land of Infinite Light.<br /><br />I have been on islands and in cities. Heard the breathing of lakes, the heartbeat of a mountain. The latter is Mt. Ruapehu and I am camping at his base.<br /><br />I am meeting Maori Wise Women and Masters of all colours: of dance, of music prepared to share their treasures and I sit like an empty box: receiving, receiving. Day by day turning into a new man.<br /><br />I meet people like Rose Pere. She is a Tahuna a wisdom keeper and speaks with the strength and directness of a large stick. She is optimistic about people and their connection to the land that must be restored or we will go. Not the land. We.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rhTaL3R8tmY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rhTaL3R8tmY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />I met Ojasvin, a dancing Master with his wife Iris who teach a Haka for Healing. They tell us to stand in joy and sing together.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/27uGQsVfJEc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/27uGQsVfJEc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Day by day, I also sit by my Guru, <a href="http://www.satsang.co.uk/">Prajnaparamita </a>who is leading me on this trip. She speaks with a clarity and softness of feathers that can shatter bricks. I have many bricks and her words float around me and deconstruct me inside.<br /><br />This is healing and out of this rich abundance of wisdom. Joy is surfacing. Like a seed through concrete cracks. Strength to fulfil good intentions is arising. I am travelling so the real test will be when I get home. But from this spot, free with each day and calling any new spot home, the rich fruit of life is calling me to enjoy it to the full and to take as many with me as I can.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-75329988123102097852010-01-28T04:22:00.000-08:002010-01-28T08:45:59.118-08:00Diary of an Unborn Writer #42 - the Universe and Everything<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></span></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:f48esRKyoQLTjM:http://www.furniturestoreblog.com/images/dining%2520table%2520solid%2520wood%2520century%2520traditional%2520furniture.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 102px; height: 138px;" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:f48esRKyoQLTjM:http://www.furniturestoreblog.com/images/dining%2520table%2520solid%2520wood%2520century%2520traditional%2520furniture.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><div><br /></div>What they said was nothing that had not been said before: You looked around the room at faces blank as if groaning, as singing is to a hum, with mouth closed. You heard the words: "You are not good enough" as the man at the top spoke to you from his black leather chair. Pools of light splashed onto the long table marking the journey of his voice from him to you.<br /><br />It's funny because those words left his mouth but they reverberated around your head as the faces conformed the judgement you were being asked:<br /><br />"Do you measure up?"<br /><br />"Are you one of us?"<br /><br />The answer to each was "No."<br /><br />The meeting told you that were accepted as part of the team but perhaps this was not the best place for you. You could spread your wings elsewhere and had you ever thought about acting? Because you have great ideas but difficulty on keeping them focused on the business message (defined last week in hot debate at the management team meeting, they ate a Chinese afterwards and told the news to us by email).<br /><br />You are careless stubborn and confused and we'll find you funny beause it's easier than taking you seriously . Your words might stick and cause discomfort and that is not what we are about.<br /><br />We are about you ignoring yourself.<br /><br />~ o ~<br /><br />Leaving the office that evening and negotiating glass doors, wooden floors and the forgotten concrete staircase down to the floor, he had never felt more free. Snow that had fallen for five weeks in Amsterdam had solidified as comfort in his mind. On the staircase he had passed a colleague on his way up heading back for some overtime, his face as white as your that morning. Steps echo and out in the car park/forecourt/luxury space for a city it's short steps to the cigar cocoon of a train and passengers reading identical newspapers. The new place will be good, he thinks, relieved he's been let go, it's all he can think of now. A woman across from him glances attractively and down at a book which you frustrate to see th cover of; she'll unsettle you for the journey and you won;t have the courage to ask.<br /><br />~ o ~<br /><br />Hers was a hip that ran like sand between your fingers. The train conversation had gone better (!) than expected and bubbling confident woman -Cindy - had felt it was the kind of night when innocent men on trains dined out on their luck. You were led and didn't push and she eased you into bars and Utrecht and pushed you with words about aspiration and high tec calibre if world understanding and you intrigued because you could match her on Beirut, on Haiti and even outscore her on Addis Ababa although the light in her eyes (green) suggested she knew more about these things by looking at you than you did yourself. Feminine mystique pouring all over you and lamps spewed yellow cotton tufts and forced its way into comfortable spaces and leather seats and the cement mortar gaps between layers of slate on the one wall. The entire other was a mirror.<br /><br />~ o ~<br /><br />Lady you shocked me with a lipas I passed you for the bathroom and now I am stumbling backwards with one hand to hold myself up on the table, hoping that too won't tilt and the bladder will have to wait and you have a hold of me on the leather seat next to you.<br /><br />Turned, I can't can't resist and do not wish to as we pull back and giggle and pay and leave and now your hand rests on her hips and gently she's awake and it's 4am and the two of you slept contentedly in folds but then a stir and a half street light on your faces you're reaching for eachother and cascading morning soaks the two of you in sheets cast aside as you search for the other in a cacophony of whisper-coated glances an grins subside to moans and kindness and resting again in folds: the hope and tragic parting you're encountering, even while together, becuase it cannot be like this again. The sweet pain of a sunrise of holding and Oh God, please don't let it be like this again. And all the rest can only be a memory - a reliving of the sweetness of this night.<br /><br />Did I mention her hair? It was brown and long, eyes like the green of summer and you told her in shadows that if she felt like another she could take his number and call at any time.<br /><br />She did and bought you icecream and politely told you no.<br /><br />It wouldn't happen because like waves rolling into a beach and reflected off a cliff face you had met, crested and rolled on your way.<br /><br />Funny how the boss had not put it that way and rolling on you're contented down a different set of stairs, a more tragically paved street. You're free again and all the wishing brings you down.<br /><br />And besides. Kristy said she would marry you and her appartment is a block and a half away. You'll pop in after a coffee by the river.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-10018064141039325432010-01-07T09:42:00.001-08:002010-01-28T04:21:29.635-08:00Diary of an unborn writer #40 - midlife crisisWhat perplexes me, he said, is that if there is a state of being that is beyond all change, and I am supposed to working towards that, how come events have such an impact on how I feel day to day and the things that I am able to do?<br /><br />A comment that someone needs me, a compliment from my manager, a phone call from a girlfriend, a really great piece of writing. These have an impact on how I actually am and what I able to then do. IE the energy from a walk in the forest gives me power to do well at work.<br /><br />I guess the issue is a lack of trust that there I cannot experience this independent quality and then when I have glimpsed it, it is so delicate that is beyond the reach of every day. That there is not a confidence in THAT in all that I do.<br /><br />I am so struck that delicacy of this all consuming power, how a whisper can break it, an eyelash remove it from view.<br /><br />And I deeply long for it and know that longing itself is what keeps it obscure.<div><br /></div><div>Presses down onto the tabletop with his thumb. It goes white and he looks at me straight with the open anguish of a man who does not doubt his words.</div>Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-44365290334045696042009-12-29T06:20:00.000-08:002010-01-28T08:44:57.279-08:00Diary of an unborn writer #39 - Power goes in waves and finds nodes to seep throughI've been thinking of Copenhagen and a supposed failure of the world to do what is right. I have been thinking fo the interests involved and find it surprising that many heavy weights are launched behind environmentalism. This does not make them our allies, beloved friends, remember who they are and what interests they present.<br /><br />Remember Al Gore and his niche as political saviour all the while touting the establishment of a mechanism that distorts the flow of money from development to God knows where. I am referring here to the $4.3bn that was raised for $100 bn of on the ground projects.<br /><br />And this before the fact we consider the hypocrisy of using a market to cure something that is essentially market-created.<br /><br />The trading of carbon of done because it is easy to measure and has diffrentials of output around the world. If we're going to get environmental, let's a make a fast busk of it. Or else, create labyrinthine structures so obscure no one knows who wins. I pick Gore because he was one of the chief proponents. I am sure he's not alone: this is a mechanism bigger than any he could propose.<br /><br />What happens in a carbin market is that the those with excess supply of carbon (equiliberally defined) and excess demand for carbon will not lose. The market creators will. The financiers, and traders and advisers on policy who...<br /><br />just happen to have funded the election of Barack Obama. His creation by the people is a myth. His record on small sum donations was worse than George Bush.<br /><br />Barack Obama had no interest in forcing through a deal at Copenhagen, even if the US Senate had granted him the privilege. The goodwill generated by Copenhagen, though temporarily thwarted, will be used to take the next best (though first best for his funders) route: carbon trading.<br /><br />As George W. Bush made a party for his friends in Iraq, so will Barack in the upper echelons of high finance, with marginal benefits for the environment.<br /><br />I don't blame Barack for this, he's doing as any president has done in the past and most in the future will but let's clear the bubble of expectation if it has not already popped. His interests are not yours, not are they aligned to the common good of humanity.<br /><br />As if to underline my point, the Yemenis are receiving his special forces help. Overtly it's for training the army of the near to failed state but likely they'll be cooking up some juice of their own.<br /><br />And why? This is part of the Pentagon's Long War. No brain child of Obama's but published by the Pentagon in 2006. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, did however devote a whole book in favour of the topic. It is the 21st century's equivalent of the Project for the New American Century, but in place of Shock and Awe they have Stealth and wealth.<br /><br />By providing security to many vulnerbale countries, Barack will have them in his pocket and his markets under his belt. By reiterating the myth of the war on terror the scene is set for an endless war against an unseen enemy. And special forces escalations in supossedly vulnerable countries will create a fast-reaction network of awesome power and incredible global reach.<br /><br />It's the ultimate zeitgeist - out of sight and everywhere - and the man's still being praised to high heaven because we don't know where else to put our hope.<br /><br />It's not that I want to create fury, just to dispel a lie and I am sick to the hind teeth of people making excuses for a charlatan with big words.<br /><br />Wake up for yourselves, change your selves, transform your communities. Don't waste years clinging on to the hope of another idle dictator and use your inspiration to benefit each other not the short-termist ambitions of another desperate emperor.<br /><br />~~~<br /><br />China too has been in the news, on Western front pages for the lock up of a human rights activist who was too outspoken about political freedoms in China. The issue of Len X__ is not an issue, but the way it is reported is.<br /><br />Of th west's remainign ideals, democracy is unquestionable. It does not matter how contrived, how influenced or how much it is controlled, we are able to trot out the doctrine that democracy is best. At risk of sounding like Churchill, it probably is, but not with the dismal levels of participation and transparency we currently enjoy. However, the Times can get haughty about it and don't forget those free voters are free consumers and freer markets can be overtaken as surely as day becomes night.<br /><br />It is a universal truth, the desire to be free and no doubt China will one day open its doors to another grade of governance that better expresses the will of its people. But it enrages me to think of a haughty Western press, lazily comatose in their superior vision of the world, thinking that our system is free from control. It is deep and embedded in constructs just outside of your vision to make you think you're making a decision. In the large part it will be happy, but repetitive so collectively we choose to be over-entertained and underwhelmed by the lack of what is important. The real wealth: conditions for a good life, so its peaceful happy accidents can happen. This is the business of governments but the psychic deluge we're subjected to is nothing more than to comfort us with an uneasy peace. And cloak us from what's really going on. Which is...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />more than I am succinctly able to say or understand. Whenever I've gone down that track I find myself embedded in folk-lore and at straws to explain gross conundrums. David Icke and his kin give much food for thought and occupy space the other outlets ignore. But in as much as they inspire us to question that what is presented is unlikely to be what is going on, I am happy to go no further, just relay my impression of the tide of forces as I see them.<br /><br />I'll try not to be so political next time.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-51402595868983668902009-12-17T06:25:00.000-08:002010-01-28T04:04:34.711-08:00Diary of an unborn writer #39.4 - midlife crisisYou're better as a mystery, you tell yourself after wondering for the 15th time what to do next year.<br /><br />You're better as a mystery and excuse yourself for inaction, disregard and getting knocked off balance by unanswered questons.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-41910261784133155532009-11-26T05:03:00.000-08:002010-01-28T05:10:14.800-08:00Diary of an Unborn Writer # 38.2 - Happenstance<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FycssLWJt3A/S0ZdQEh-NnI/AAAAAAAAAtY/ZZ_I7wTAsW4/s400/DSCF0294.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FycssLWJt3A/S0ZdQEh-NnI/AAAAAAAAAtY/ZZ_I7wTAsW4/s400/DSCF0294.JPG" /></a> <div></div><div><div>The artist is arrogant because he has seen what it is to do nothing and be beautiful.<br /><br />But at some point the spring ran dry and artist was left doing nothing and drinking with his friends. The friends that inspired him less than the old ones and required more drink to tolerate.<br /><br />He needs to do something now, not to tolerate but to find again his spring of non-wishing that when it sprang gave him more than the world could ever need. It ran in rivulets on canvas spreads and writing books.<br /><br />But now he's drinking with his friends and they take less and less notice of him.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Picture courtesy of <a href="http://hesqautumnseason09.blogspot.com/">Hesq</a>. Thanks.</div></div>Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-3942867309753206022009-11-20T05:58:00.001-08:002009-11-22T10:23:05.189-08:00Diary of an unborn writer # 38 - The worst named decade of the centuryThe herd was loping in a muddled indescript kind of way.<br /><br />We were keeping close together and trying hard against the light, not to see it. The plain was wide but we stayed close together and winds blown up by gods aided our ensemble.<br /><br />'<a href="http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&ved=0CBEQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.masanga.com%2Fpress.html&ei=c3QJS-miE9HI-Qbg_t3FDQ&usg=AFQjCNGmkjnTPvj4zf50-qKxrXMMCSgS3g&sig2=jbMpCocAQcX8SGZTacbdGg">Masanga</a>' the close-by tribesman would say.<br /><br />And then they began to drift apart.<br /><br />Though the wind was strong it was possible to turn aside and see the plain from a different angle. The herd was moving, slowly and gently to a cliff. So we began to make a noise, but mistaking it for breeze the herded ones closed their eyes again, folded their ears and kept moving on their way.<br /><br />The breeze was one of many colours. Sights, sounds, swirls and tastes. Thought streams ushered past by the Gods and in order to not relent, in order to keep the move afloat the herd had, as one, shut down its sense.<br /><br />But the cliff was coming near and a few spied themselves long enough to jump out the way and others saw their friends and did the same and all of us, right now, pulling ourselves back from a hideous collapse of our species because we stopped looking for too long.<br /><br />This is not climate (only). This is not capitalism (only). Nor is it social degradation or direst poverty existing, nor all powerful corporations, nor the <a href="http://www.google.nl/search?q=trilateral+commission&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a">inter-corporate and governmental bodies</a> that decide our fate (only). Its not <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/biodiversity-loss-darwin-edward-wilson">biodiversity plummetting</a> (only) or another war fought for geo-politics and the fate of precious housewives' fears before the hundreds of thousands lives in another country.<br /><br />But weaving through all of this, has been the stream. The wind. The vast god-blown edifice that is the information deluge that our decade more than any other has been subjected to. We're colouring it, you and I, with our blogging and gentle protest chants and our conviction that correction can only come from inner realisation that these colours are our friends.<br /><br />We're getting better at decoding, deciphering the swarm around. Cherry-plucking inspiration from the dirge and the misery and the stink that suffices for entertainment and the news. We're singing in the rain, telling funny stories again and in candle-lit corners serving organic food, our play is taking shape.<br /><br />It's a play of longing, of desperation looking again to the stars and not the belly. Feeling in the depths of your very soul that all that was and has been told could be woven right now with a stroke of your pen, or brush or love caress or question to a politician that things might not be as he sees, jaded as he is, becoming the more grey. They deluge hit him most and now governments are starved of ideas, abandoned by their populi who looked elsewhere.<br /><br />The edifice is crumbling.<br /><br />They thought the banks were our masters and Barack he thought the same - withholding poverty reducing measures to keep his friends in play. The <a href="http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTobin_tax&ei=wXIJS-q4Lo7Y-Qabo_zFDQ&usg=AFQjCNHqIqSMltrK_f17gRbxyaQUEFbZlw&sig2=TxAqgmiwZk_42vnSVuKU2A">Tobin tax</a> has a way to put things right by shaving off small sums from vast transactions it forces folk to stop and - heavens, no! - think.<br /><br />But Barack knows who put him their and on whose noose he will be hung. Another saint goes the way the devil's lure. He made a bargain after all and will keep it until the blood runs dry in Afgahnistan and mothers of victims of vultures screams ask what they saw in him. Again.<br /><br />The Bush was the one who catapulted our age from OK to disaster with the flick of a retributive switch. We cannot know what was in his mind but it missed important aspects of us and blew up ones we'd rather have seen away some time ago.<br /><br />Blair in Britain, meanwhile, did his dismal damndest to subject the state to more control and shovel up welfare in the hands of a few. A Labour politician we were told. He certainly made sure those who voted for him kept working beyond reasonable suspicion of his tricks and now hospital parking lots and other frauds charge where before they let you. He corporatised and villfied free thinking. And yes, backed a war that may not have happened if he said no. The long game, said his press secretary. And now Barack whispers about the long and silent war executed by CIA drones and conscripts of terrorists for the cause. Like his grandfather and great grandfather presidents before him. Will we ever learn? Maybe. We're just coming on a little slow.<br /><br /><br />The Strokes were a happy dawn and the Kings of Leon still sing on. In amongst them Mum and David Syvian have graced this ones ears and pleased while he was doing something else. We had TV shows that addicted more than before, brought raw our social disgraces and made them circuses of the carnal, the stubborn the ashamed. Contests for talent, for before we couldn't find any and home cookery to sophisticate and make <a href="http://www.jamesbarlow.co.uk/jamie-oliver039s-ugandan-diet">social entrepreneurs</a> of its stars.<br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EiqwcP_RJm8&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EiqwcP_RJm8&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />We found in books and seminars that the system was not there for your benefit, but for you to become afraid. Entertainment was OK because it made you relieved and didn't see the stinking creep and it avalanched into wars and dining tables - ignorance all round.<br /><br />Sing it quietly while you can but the revolutions come already, it's happening all around. Each time you see a man stop, or a child look puzzled or a free star looking up from their sofa bed and asking why did you have the right to film the murder of my mother, then you'll know it's happening.<br /><br />The gentle waking up.<br /><br />The crash.<br /><br />The unfolding.<br /><br />The heart's sweet answer to all the mess that it, and not that, is what is permanent. Not the lying, not the rules, the law or the sacrament. The fear, the dying, the wishing and the hope. Not the rage, and not the answer, not the devil's tainted rope. Not you and me, though we're included, as has all that's gone before. And recognising with sweet smile that we're not OK. We're fucked. And dancing in the cracks of that earthquake realisation, we'll find our way to be free.<br /><br />In this the <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=noughties">worst named decade of the century</a>, perhaps we've slowly found our way.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-56122360847196055762009-11-18T10:36:00.000-08:002010-01-28T04:19:10.006-08:00Diary of an Unborn Writer # 37.3 - Bill Nighy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.nicoladove.com/SECTIONS/PORTRAITS/Images/01Bill-Nighy.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 423px; height: 420px;" src="http://www.nicoladove.com/SECTIONS/PORTRAITS/Images/01Bill-Nighy.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />"<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/19/bill-nighy-poliakoff-glorious-39">In the theatr</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">e</span></span>, there are always a couple of shows where you just forget. Somehow you turn off that part of your mind which is out to get you, the bit that undermines you, the self-conscious bit, and everything happens by magic, everything flows, everything's good, every single action you perform, every word you speak, every time you react to something, it all seems to fly. That's the holy grail."<br /><br />(Picture courtesy of <a href="http://www.nicoladove.com/">Nicola Dove</a>)Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-26701084301553791412009-11-16T13:57:00.001-08:002009-11-16T14:39:34.197-08:00Diary of an unborn writer # 37 - could it really all be music?Life's moving in confusing streams.<br /><br />There are connections made and unmade.<br /><br />And most of all a warming, satisfying lull in the pit of my stomach that insulates against the swarm.<br /><br />I found myself on Sunday night with my arms around a girl I had fallen asleep thinking about the previous week (<a href="http://doauw.blogspot.com/2009/11/diary-of-unborn-writer-36.html">entry #36 </a>for those with close attention!). Andrew Bird was on stage holding a violin, the second time a maestro has made it into an entry this early. He was magnificent - like a court jester tipping his toes on electric pedals, looping violin threads and in a suit. He had no shoes on, just socks so he could accurately loop and swoop layer upon layer of strings, plucked or played, though I am not sure if he played a Stradivarius. No one was around to tell me this time<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wLyQgBFl7mc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wLyQgBFl7mc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Except B. a little bug in front of me and swaying to Andrew and his support act <a href="http://www.jescahoop.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Jesca</span> Hoop</a> -a damsel of lightning her self. Our cups of red wine resting on the stage and blowing the smoke from our joint into the feet of the crowd to avoid detection in the smokeless venue, lit up by lights and music, Andrew's charm and the notes he plays covering everybody in a satisfying silk.<br /><br />Andrew was the end of a successful weekend. Successful because it was chaotic and exhausting, involved deep interactions with around 45 people, <a href="http://quotationsbook.com/quote/1908/">wine, women </a>and a great deal of joy. I was in Edinburgh - the Mother - whose broad arms from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Calton</span> Hill to Arthur's seat (the left) and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Pentlands</span> (the right) embraced me for five or more errant summer's and I dare say some Winters too but we spent those mostly alone and in doors and you never did come round unless I called. There have been a few experiences in Edinburgh and the ghost streets murmur up the names and yesterdays and chorus song of forgotten lovers - on this trip you met 3 - and drinks with old time friends. Warm whiskey in the belly, heart full and futile with conversation. These kinds and their crews you gave up hoping for, for a time - the you that is I, I'm playing with perspective, it hangs looser like a thread - but now back in front of you, their cares, their pleasures merge again in your own, and you find yourself moving from Doctor's pub (where your ancestor's name is written in brass) to the Royal Oak. The belly of Edinburgh where few dare to tread. Your rocking along Infirmary road and a muted jazz trumpet beckons you through the half open door - packed wall to wall with four copies of the <a href="http://www.scotsbarons.org/english.htm">Declaration of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Arbroath</span></a> (which made you chill to admit your English-hood) hang on shapes that revealed the tobacco stains when they took the pictures down four years ago for the ban. The ban that drove conversation and the smokers out on to cold streets, except on busy nights like tonight when the band sits in a corner, guitar violin and muted trumpet and you're handed a whiskey glass (painfully loaded with ice) before you make it to the bar and the room goes silent as a man begins to sing the lines of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Galway</span> shawl you've heard in the passionate, raw, shrill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">voxicon</span> of that room a dozen times before.<br /><br />The evening blurs and you merge with it to return to your host's house for cheese and bread before the plane trip home.<br /><br />A sleep, a dash and tram ride and you're at B.'s house. The night unfolds and Andrew is sublime and he turns the two of you in to each other and out again. She takes the tram home and you head back to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Braam</span>. This is new, this is easy and like the weekend, flows in an undertow of melody.<br /><br />Could it all be music?<br /><br />No. The next 9am sees you back at your desk. The grey penetrates the gold little by little and you pour yourself a third cup of coffee to survive.<br /><br />It's warm.<br /><br />Today will be OK.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-28432368407047093262009-11-16T07:56:00.000-08:002010-01-28T04:03:54.223-08:00Diary of an unborn writer #33.1 - Could it really all be music?Sitting at your desk it is Monday and you're humming to Jesca Hope who croons and swoons through one ear and the dirge of office is around.<br /><br />OK - it's not a dirge. There are good people here and they want good things but the contrast is a little much. Contrast with what?<br /><br />Dear reader, listen?<br /><br />Last night you were dancing with B. as the Master Andrew Bird delivered a performance of vurtuoso proportions. You saw him three months ago and this is entirely different, except the joy is the same. He has a suit on and is standing proud with violin under chin and shoes off - the better to press pedals with his feet. He loops sample after sample and cascades over with swings of that fine violin bow. The room is stilled and wonder surrounds the lit up faces from lights reflected off the stage.<br /><br />You share a joint with B. and surreptitiously. There's a ban in here so you blow the smoke into the floor. She's short, so there's no problem for her but you need to crouch over her shoulder as you take a tug andd the room settles into its comfort a little more. The music swirls around your head a little more and red wine sits in a plastic cup and trickles richly down your throat a little more easily than before.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-18040779348005340412009-11-08T06:32:00.001-08:002009-11-22T13:45:15.958-08:00Diary of an unborn writer # 36 - a night's escapadeThere's creativity in Amsterdam. You can feel it walking down any canal, or nosing up against the window of small holding art sellers, massage therapists, pipe shops and saunas. Even the red light district with its ancient cathedrals to sin speaks of craft.<br /><br /><object width="400" height="300"> <param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fmortenarstadfoto%2Fshow%2Fwith%2F4088524555%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fmortenarstadfoto%2Fwith%2F4088524555%2F&user_id=26926314@N08&jump_to=4088524555"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649"> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="offsite=true&lang=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Fmortenarstadfoto%2Fshow%2Fwith%2F4088524555%2F&page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Fmortenarstadfoto%2Fwith%2F4088524555%2F&user_id=26926314@N08&jump_to=4088524555" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><br /><br />(Photos kind courtesy <a href="http://www.arstad.nl/" target="_blank">Morten Årstad</a>)<br /><br />There are some moments, though, when the creativity scoops all of us and dumps us in a room, a mini-festival curated by a man who played violin from the top of Sydney Opera House on the millenium eve. Even now, in yellow pumps, a dress and a trilby, he sports a Stradivarius violin, with brown zebra stripes criss-crossing the chestnut wood. He's not the main show, though and 30-40 people are listening to a sitar player being accompanied by a slam poet, Brazilian be-dreaded, whirling his hands around a face in a kind of trance and uttering syllable beats you can only just catch before the next ricochet phrase takes you again a comet-space trip.<br /><br />The man could dance and have a whole room slapping thighs to <span style="font-style: italic;">words</span>. Weaving colours he's accompanied by a <a href="http://museumofthebohemian.blogspot.com/">backdrop of wine boxes</a> the inside of each has been made into a tiny work of art and placed on display. The audience is dressed in the suits, dresses, wooly jumpers you would expect of bohemia; glitter in hair and faces radiant with the art they look upon.<br /><br />It is so honest, so open, so receptive and beautiful that performance can be witnessed in this way. Unjudging. To be more deeply felt.<br /><br />Our performer with his little band claims in conversation after, still sweating from the show, to be from the poetry lineage of Saul Williams <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jzY2-GRDiPM&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jzY2-GRDiPM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>. These men are mystics parading with words and weaving an elevated language of the cosmos and experience to give us an idea of the kind of what we can enjoy if we let it all drop and....<br /><br />LOVED.<br /><br />There's plenty of love in the room tonight. To the sides, on a the adjacent wall to the myriad wine boxes filled with : sheep's hearts in resin, toy story wonder shows with cotton wool clouds, bric-a brac pastiche charades of purses, letters and golden painted nails; Buddhas in contented pose, Sri Ramana Maharishi*<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://lotussutra.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/ramana20rosto.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 415px; height: 532px;" src="http://lotussutra.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/ramana20rosto.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />, ballerina, paintings and newspaper clippings, strings dancing in coils and little flashing lights, like I say all on one wall. On the adjacent one is a table with hot soup, served with turkish bread and butter and bacon. Next to that a simmering pot of <span style="font-style: italic;">gluwein </span>and fridges of beer and happy people serving them. The environment is a blissful space to spend time, perform and be performed to.<br /><br />I get a little chance at this reading <a href="http://whisperingrosebush.blogspot.com/2009/11/kiss-middle.html">some</a> small <a href="http://whisperingrosebush.blogspot.com/2009/11/machines-break-free-or-la-libertad-de.html">poems </a>which the audience enjoyed. More than that. Listened to. Quite a thing to be listened to, I recommend it any time and you can feel these simple words words weaving -again the weaving - through all of us. Happy little dance rhymes uniting and exploding joy wheels in tiny cells and hearts full, eyes shining, they are listening again and ask for more.<br /><br />What a joy after thirty minutes of effort, a little more to edit and ten minutes on a stage offers such a reward. People are genuinely moved, as I have been by their attention and well the gift that keeps on giving is running through all of us and enjoying itself once more in our tiny little cells.<br /><br />We move on in a parade of bicycles. Actually I got waylaid. Walking through Amsterdam with a Norwegian-looking man who is thorughly Norwegian, though in a three piece suit; and a dazzling Bulgarian with brown eyes like darts. I got lost. I was being led and completely lost my way. I was walking through and led down streets I had never been before and pointed to cafes and coffee houses sparkling in a way I had not seen. Mother Amsterdam opening her arms a little wider to an errant son who had been wandering a little lost for most of his first year here.<br /><br />We wander into a cocktail bar and there are flames jumping up against the back wall. A couple sits in the corner, amidst black lights and neon illuminations, fire dancing on their faces as they caress and touch each other, fuelled by martinis and the heat. They are in their mid-40s and it is not a pretty sight. We are a littel less hot in our corner but the shots and tall glasses flow stacked with ice and fruit and combinations of tonics and spirits and coloured, spicy sugared rims. We talk in one of thise huddles as if the world has ended. We connect and share and a happy evening delves a little more glowier, a little more satisfiedly along its lines.<br /><br />They depart, the soon-about-to-be lovers, and I head along the way. Praising Amsterdam and its sweetness, its electrifying antiquity as old houses and new shop frontings co-mingle with the night and bar goers and stealers from the red-tinted windows, faces huddled in jackets until they are at least ten steps away.<br /><br />I've been directed to a club that the bohemian parade has moved on to. It's an old squatted place where a password is required at the door. It used to be a sauna for gays. Along a back wall in a back room, after being led through the smoke and folk swaying to minimal beats from the bass - mercifully, they sell prosecco - there are bays set aside in which to have sex. The middle one has a sticker plastered across the door with a warning 'Safe Only' and inside there are shelves to lean up against and black vinyl paint for easy clean hygiene and a convenient space between the walls and the ceiling to look on at other couples. They are empty when my self and an Australian Jim take a tour and it may have been the ultra violet lights on black vinyl paint, but you could not help feel that the walls and floor were sticky. How about some cushions, a bit of incense to make this more of a zone for love than fuck?<br /><br />Holland never fails to deliver.<br /><br />We dance and rub shoulders again in the happy pack, there are dancers and fashion designers and people with big hair and it's difficult not to get distracted and amazed by the beauty on show. I talked to quite a bit of it. A French girl throws her arms around me saying she 'LOVED' the poetry and it's authentic. We're not wishing we're something or trying to be a different show. We have been genuinely moved in a room together and take our togetherness and stack it on streets and wall filled with wine boxes, and insignificant ex-gay sauna back room clubs with lights that dance across chests and faces and glittered hair and dance in the bubbles of prosecco I nurse in a glass talking to Elaine, who's trumpet playing boyfriend is out of town. She handles a beer mat like a cock and keeps me at arm's length, kissing me wryly on the cheek as she says goodbye, flirting more heavily because of her unattainability. The single lady never plays like that... damn the sheilas and their games.<br /><br />I dutifully accept a joint as the evening turns past three and it involves later a mistake when I jump into a taxi howling which way to my home town; 40 km away in the early hours. This brings into focus the tightness of decision, and the need for survival and the instict when you are stoned. He takes me to the station where I plan to sleep on a bench until 5.30 for the first Sunday train but in the warm car his persuasion that he take me to my front door and the removal of so many steps between myself and the train, the train and my bed, does not seem to be an over-priced choice when he quotes me 70 euros for the task. "OK, OK" I relent "but I need food first. Take me to a kebab".<br /><br />As a Turk, the driver knows the best place to go and I get special service through a window the drivers have stitched up with the restuarant. The taxi driver yells instructions to the man shaving meat from a skewer and I get my sandwich in double quick time, as I stand swaying in the breezeless steet lamp lit night, beneath the sky of a clear moon. A nice warm meat and garlic sauce and salad, dutifully sprayed in my lap to the concern of the cab driver and we're on our way home. The warm of the taxi and the food sitting heavily and comfortable in my belly knock me out and I wake up outside the front door of my house with 103.60 glowing in red digital numbers on the meter.<br /><br />Scheming bastard must have kept it running while I was getting the kebab, and then pressed the 'Executive' button while I was asleep. No matter. I hand the cash over and giggle to myself as I lie in bed with the clock not nearly at 4.30 am. Perhaps it was worth it all the same. The escapade, the night, the food and the contented rustle of the voice a girl named Britney shuttle through my thoughts as I sleep.<br /><br />(picture <a href="http://lotussutra.wordpress.com/">thanks to</a> Lotus)Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-10050905818545488872009-11-06T15:04:00.001-08:002009-11-06T15:17:37.009-08:00Diary of an unborn writer # 35aWe sat down together and it was fine. And her son rolled up on a yellow BMX and asked if this was the one that had been out with Evelyne. She probed you gently for details of the tie but easily you replied that she was sweet and that it ended some time ago.<br /><br />Evelyne, it seems, had gone on speaking about it for a while.<br /><br />The spilling of emotion from one to another and over again. Missing each other and breaking apart and along. Misaligned. It was not the time Evelyne for you & I to shine.<br /><br />But she was a pretty one. Beautiful to her depth and it made you think at the time that you could not tolerate anything so pure. You also wanted more of your weekends free and in little over a month together had cheated on her once. Errant soul. She read the blog entry reporting so much and cried and let it pass.<br /><br />So you are on the bench and she's offering cake that by chance you had in your hand when you sort of accidentally stepped into the organic shop where she works and observed her weighing cheese. She looks up and pretends not to be startled and you pretend you didn't notice and you both grin like fools.<br /><br />You catch your nerves jangling and hope you don't pull out the reserved Englishmen persona that entertains but is so safe, but it comes out all the same. She just sparkles away in that method that she has and says she'll be free in five minutes. You browse amongst teas and soy-based things and she continues to enjoy looking over to where you stand, and you the same.<br /><br />You have twenty minutes together, and it's punctuated by her son and no sparks fly, no desperate longing revealed and it's <span style="font-style: italic;">fine</span>. And with a normal kiss goodbye, you feel the glow of her cheek softly fading on yours as you walk into a grey Autumn afternoon swiftly becoming night.<br /><br />You're having dinner next Thursday. She booked a babysitter. And it's fine.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-79141200352702388922009-11-06T12:02:00.000-08:002009-11-06T12:34:50.293-08:00Diary of an unborn writer # 35The days are falling back in free flow kind of way. I generally enjoy them.<br /><br />Work and music. Music and drinking. Drinking and watching the Wire online. Friends, colleagues and UK bands in Amsterdam (singing Hey hey hey hey! GM baby I don't know if that's OK! to expert chord plunges and reawakening my excitement in punk) flitting in and out of view. Daily ambitions living and dying, a lot of good food, Buddhist texts, stolen bikes, large appartment, 7 types of tea in the cupbaord, ideas for a novel disappearing, disappearing if I don't catch them fast...<br /><br />It is a happy, quiet, busy period. Plans for travel in February and finally getting together a collection of these scribbles playing mostly on my mind.<br /><br />Oh, and a women. But she'll remain unspoken of until she knows she is being spoken of and then it'll be too late for y'all to ruin the surprise.<br /><br />The collection - hitherto a floating ramble - is, I promise, coming together. The chief prompt is Dostoyevsky, who else. I am hauling myself through <span style="font-style: italic;">Demons </span>which I find alternately turgid and delightful. <span style="font-style: italic;">Fyodor</span>, I wish to say,<span style="font-style: italic;"> I'm yearning for your depth of insight to start crackling in 150 pages time but must we spend hours prattling around Russian society with a trail of in jokes that ran out of steam circa 1870?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">We must</span> says Fyodor, and in the arrogance of death, refuses to change a thing.<br /><br />It was the serials what done it. Former writers earned their crust through publication in monthly editions of high brow magazines. The more serials, the more money and so they would drag out hilarious social commentaries and set pieces revealing of human nature over pages and yards and years, planting seeds that would fully sprout in 570 pages time by which time their army of readers were hooked and revelling in every whim, wit and blemish of the characters on show.<br /><br />A lot like my beloved Wire. Though that has 47 writers each week. Fyodor was alone and took years.<br /><br />I am having dream-talks with Dostoyevsky, trying to get tips on how to wade through the trough of his wit and still barely past page 71 up pops Stephan Tromfimovich and the complains that he has all the necessary materials to begin but just cannot sit down to write...<br /><br />I shoot up from my chair, carefully balance the morning's choice of tea and realign a weekend, otherwise spent idle in the countryside, around the furious tapping of keys.<br /><br />No one is to be spoken to. All long over due projects will again be postponed.<br /><br />And this is my joy. Words are flowing, they are funny, they are clever, they are planting seeds that will not be discovered until several diaries time and even within the same entry I am discovering parts of myself I never knew existed. I can be morose. I can veer wildly off track. And no one is waiting with a big stick or lamp to persuade or show me where the track is or admonish my morosity.<br /><br />I begin to compile my oeuvre piece by piece. Making sense of two years of random word spilling and cohere it into a work. I read sometimes in rapture, sometimes in thrilling self-disgust at what a self-involved tosser can produce. I make it a duty to pre-wince before my readers can, to somehow draw their sting. Although, it mainly brings me down.<br /><br />I can otherwise surprise myself at the profundity and wit that glistens and goes over the head of 90% of the reading public. This is my fury, this is my castle to cast from and destroy the naysayers, the ferry boaters, the whimsicalists and the blog fiends whose surfing time is so precious they will not have made it down this far (there are only three blogs I have ever spent more than 3 minutes on so I hold them in perfect understanding but, still, contempt).<br /><br />In looking for pieces to put into the book, I continue to get distracted by those parts unwritten. Those I can perfect. A phrase pops into my mind, and I find myself 714 words later reeling to allow a particular text to flow back on track.<br /><br />I am now contented that it has.<br /><br />Dostoyeksky will be my goad, and you, dear reader are my runaway bride running threw the sheets I have cast aside like tissues from a lonely morning spent too long in bed.<br /><br />It's good you stuck around. Make it back again, you know, for coffee and a rehash.<br />UWSimon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-8871445838289170742009-10-24T10:34:00.000-07:002009-10-24T11:57:17.051-07:00Diary of an unborn writer # 34<span style="font-size:78%;">(thanks for the pictures goes to <a href="http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ecswong/trip/amsterdam.htm">ECS Wong</a> - the writer of an amusing travel article - and the Dakota Voice which publishes a horrific story - <a href="http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/04/celebrating-the-earth-the-right-way/">Celebrating the Earth - The Right Way</a> - thanking God for Man's use of His resources. Joyously randomly ironic it found its way into this entry, tying several of its themes in an orgy of descriminating Godhood . Thanks also to our overmaster <a href="http://google.com/">Google</a>, for making all of this possible. Dakota Voice has yet to celebrate that. Ahem...to business...)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ecswong/trip/centraalstation.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ecswong/trip/centraalstation.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" ><br />Something must be done</span><br /><br /><br />Outside the central station amidst the Saturday throng, a cello player throbs strings to the sound of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, stopping to thank the passers by that reach down to drop coins in his instrument case. Close by, but far enough to not compete, a squat Chinese lady in a puff body warmer parades around with many signs:<br /><br />“Only Jesus saves”<br /><br />“Pray or be damned”<br /><br />“God never meant it to be this way”<br /><br />In the cat squeak of her countrymen she aims to enthuse passers-by with her own gospel rhythm: “No wife do it for you, no cigarette; only Jesus, hear me!”<br /><br />With each ignoring glance her pitches rises in greater thrall to the divine and the Church-speak continues – concatinations of manipulation and the misunderstood drink it like envy and sow its hot humiliating tones on the pedestrians of Amsterdam.<br /><br /><br /><br />The rainforest is withdrawing at an unprecedented rate – half of it gone in the last thirty years. Beef and soy products – one feeding the other – clearing swathes to feed further bellies to feed grief and anger over a lost heritage we decided wasn’t there for a time. The scope of the disaster is roared out through misplaced headlines and aghast conversations at dinner party tables, consecutive lines daring to out-horror the next in grim sophisticated knowledge of just what is going on.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.dakotavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/forestfire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 448px; height: 298px;" src="http://www.dakotavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/forestfire.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />More species have died in the last century that at any time since humans took to the Earth. We were born into abundance and see it now as torn sacks before our eyes, breathing pity on the disaster we’re too horrified to see. This is not animals or plants or a tragedy for science. It is you and I and forgetting our nature. Of that the Chinese lady at least was aware.<br /><br />The horror lies in scars as large as your Mother’s forehead, macheted across before she was raped. It lies in turnstile behaviour, the furrowing of crowds down lines others saw fit to imagine for them and have nothing whatever to do with joy. It begins in want and ends in disaster, your Mother may cry but soon she’ll be rid of you, if you turn out the same.<br /><br />Teenage protestors in long flower dresses stand in hate lines before police and believe their’s is a more sophisticated hunger, a purer sense of anger than that which they are struggling to rip free. Mother weeps as the crowds struggle to defend themselves. Pepper sprayed across the face, arms whipped with batons by servants of the peace. Joanna’s gut curdling shriek that this cannot go on, reported as she peels the label back from her third bottle of the night. Flourescent lights dance across her face and she’s in rage at what she terms the ignorance of police.<br />She despairs that it will never be enough but knows that trying is all that she and the rest have left. Olive skin glistening on summer morning battle lines. Furious letters sent. She glows in experiences – the dancing, drinking, pleasure in colours kind – loves deeply, cares sincerely but can’t shake the hunger that shakes it all adrift.<br /><br />We’re in horror at the passion play of a ball set off before our time, how our Mother’s face was ripped and pissed upon, now anxious to make things sane. The anxiety of a million screams for relief, spilling on their Mother’s face yet more guilt and anger and putrid fumes the same that they protest against, by battling the beast they confirm his existence even more.<br /><br />By battling the beat they lose the rhythm that spoke them free.<br /><br />If we’re looking for solutions, find a treasure chest to open or walk an unfamiliar way. Because this shattered destiny fix – this horror show make shift and all things better we’ll have ourselves drift in is a treachery of alternative, manipulated by interests we’re not wide enough to see. One empire builds itself in the ashes of another and the builders care not for us, or our Mother, or fairly traded coffee nicely but not too much because you'll bring all of us crashing down. The pillar tipped the moment we forgot that there is more than our survival or summer holidays at stake.<br /><br />Obama’s smile the better to slash our Mother and waste yet another vain hope cemetery of years.<br /><br />If we’re looking for solutions as to how all this was begun, please give up that desert cry – the kind that baby-boomer anxious whines dismiss and cry about. That politicians lament over as they create and crucify with cogent blood stain sweeps. And Mother cries the tears that they would torture immigrants to speak.<br /><br />If we’re looking for solutions as to how all this was begun, please give up that desert cry – the kind sweltering over coloured orphans and off-shot on tourist photographs, marvelling at the intensity of experience poverty provides to our over-privileged, under cut and insufficiently satisfiable lives -<br /><br />If we’re looking for solutions as to how all this was begun please let’s give up that desert cry<br /><br />As all that is lost was once won<br /><br />Please let’s give up that desert cry<br /><br />That something must be done<br /><br />Something must be done.<br /><br />~~~Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-70196858061904126042009-10-24T09:04:00.000-07:002009-10-24T09:40:09.229-07:00Diary of an unborn writer # 33He’s sitting down to write at a desk. It’s the weekend and gazing at himself a year ago, quite a lot has changed. He has written yards and yards of more and less worthy text but looking at the desk is all you need to know about where he’s at. It’s clean. It’s 5pm and he’s not wearing a dressing gown. A picture of his friends back home sits on his desk a pile of book he’s beginning to type out for the long-waited-for collection he’s been promising to get done.<br /><br />He’s drinking a glass of vitamin juice – the fizzy kind you dissolve in glass. He works eight or nine hours a day as a coach, urging people to get fit. He spends evenings exhausted reviving himself with TV and the occasional cigarette. He has a garden and lives by the countryside. His apartment, all to himself, is large enough to house a few of his past others. He is just beginning to get used to being alone.<br />He takes walks in the forest, is less alienated by housework. Finds the company of a few friends is enough. His colleagues don’t exhaust him as much as they used to. His manager finds him a little less frustrating but still can’t work him out.<br /><br />He reads the Guardian online every day. He surrounded by stories of substandard writers and is amazed that something as important as the news is frequently conveyed by entertainment journalists, although it keeps him reading all the same. He turns to Dostoyevsky from time to time, delights in a few passages but finds its length a dirge. He’ll have loved it by the end and grins that it is so juxtaposed to blogging and quick fix stimulation of an internetted life. Though it gives brief happiness from the other dirge of his working day.<br /><br />In that he’s finding more. Learning to shrug pressure and still engage with daily tasks. He asking himself if he needs to think about the future quite as much, or will it all happen for him. He thinks it’s somewhere in between.<br /><br />He misses friends and dearly-loved ones but is frightened on seeing them that they are remote from what he values – or perpetuate the same valued things ad infinitum and without variety. He is told that this is what constitutes living, and guiltily concedes that his own life is the same and berates himself this is the case.<br />He likes to ponder. Loves to write but kills himself that inspiration doesn’t come on demand. He cannot figure out how to construct a life that is useful while still receives the pearls when they come. He’s even more confounded as to how to make it sell.<br /><br />He loves God, he never knew he did so much until one day he found himself talking like a Jehovah’s witness to a scared wide-eyed friend. He is touched by the infinite and can’t use words to describe how each day is relieved, blessed and inspired by the knowledge that his is a discontented drop in a wide ocean of bliss, and that the latter will sometimes provide a glimpse.<br /><br />His head sometimes feels like a glass jar with a rubber seal around the edge and experiencing the moments of the glorious let go – when the lid pops and breath surges into the lungs is almost worth the pain of being confined.<br /><br />Almost.<br /><br />He would rather write than go to church.<br /><br />He would rather cry than laugh along.<br /><br />Cruel jokes seem funnier in the end.<br /><br />Simple things perplex him mostly.<br /><br />Long days frighten him so much that he cannot find anything to do.<br /><br />He is paranoid of living in a trench though berates himself for not jumping in.<br /><br />His favourite day is a breakfast and meditation and sitting to write at his latop where inspiration flows like waves and focus does not waver for a second. He hopes to touch the hearts of many as he writes, and could not bear to think that this is a tapestry of his own self-indulgence. He tells himself he must illuminate himself before the world gets his rays.<br /><br />He’s disappearing down a deep and desperate hole.<br /><br />He knows it’s the best thing for him and happily...<br /><br />He relents.<br /><br />He is taken by a wisdom that the least control is the way to get ones way. It’s merely a matter of knowing that getting one’s way is not at all what you think and should rather be surprised by instead of determining the next steps. The organised ones live in a pit of non-surprise, rationalise in terms of their own responsibility and therefore sink or float of seas of guilt, provided for them by those that hope they can be controlled.<br /><br />There is no control. The tall ones just sit and let the other conrol themselves, then sip on the fine juices of guilt and money spent on its relief. It’s a sick game really and we’re all so blind to the fact that even those that pull its strings believe that they do it for the best of all. Puppets, puppeteer, puppet-maker all locked in a swirling embrace and no one can see that it’s just a play.<br /><br />He wishes he didn’t take himself so seriously, or that others did not try to do the same to him.<br /><br />He hates to be treated as a joke.<br /><br />He loves that he can laugh as others wince and laughs that others can love through so much pain.<br /><br />Love presents to him enough pain on its own, without the need for a face.<br /><br />His scars are perjuries to the tomorrow he would like to carve. He needs to feel its pain before he can open into clear blue skies of flying. Otherwise he’ll have trouble leaving the ground.<br /><br />He skims across the lives of others, cannot bear to feel them as deeply as his own.<br />Arrogance is a defence against despair at other’s lost-ness. Mirroring his own, his preference is to keep quiet and not be impinged upon or fall over so he may impinge.<br />He can talk and a whole room can fall silent, until he realises he’s being listened to and stumbles on his words. Amazing that such a thing should be so feared.<br /><br />He’s a slave to an unspoken past but in speaking makes him feel like a spoiled brat.<br />It was too much and never enough. Congestion of social intercourse gives him pain in his chest.<br /><br />He grants that not many see him as illumined as he sees himself though he feels that this is because they do nit listen and in not listening to them, he only ignores himself the more. He is both cursed and bathed in social company.<br /><br />He would like to be seen as non-complex.<br /><br />He is preferring to get used to not wanting to be seen. It’s like an itch that he must not scratch.<br /><br />He would like to write a novel and can see it is being written. He wonders if he’s lazy in not having written more. It’s set in Amsterdam and lasts for twelve hours. It is about him, and friends and fantastical scenes that slip into the sides of every day. He has a feeling he has seen some things because he sat around long enough as others moved on, though realises that others saw as much in moving, or would do in their time.<br /><br />He finds that wisdom is breathed. Talking about it also gives him pain.<br />Many people find him five years older than he is.<br /><br />Others five years the other way.<br /><br />He has wrinkles under the eyes fro too many computer screens stared at for too much of each day. When he’s at home he feels relaxed and without need to do anything.<br />Except housework, which he is less alienated by.<br /><br />He is confused that he writes in an American accent.<br /><br />He withers in self-pity and rises in joy.<br /><br />He has stepped in dog shit too often in the same place for a young man<br />He is only now beginning to smell his shoes.<br /><br />He will enjoy your company but please leave as you sense his mood begin to change. He will not ask you but merely roll his eyes inwardly at everything you say and cut himself with mental taunts that he doesn’t like you just for now.<br /><br />When he’s vague he’s thinking. If he’s thinking he’s avoiding and if it’s self-disgust it’s better you were not around.<br /><br />Writing this is giving him pain throughout his body.<br /><br />He wonders if a life lived for any reason is enough. Even experience lost its shine the last time he was in France drinking wine and walking in the sun, cooled by the breeze. Dark clouds in his writing could be easily obscured when you talk to him. That’s when he’s being vague.<br /><br />He’ll be light and forget himself. In times with you and serried others. He’ll embrace you in smiles and steer conversations to benefit all assembled at risk to his own pride. He wonders if it’s possible to make these occasions happen or if we should accept them like gifts.<br /><br />He wonders and ponders and still the thing’s not done. He’s alone at his desk, in mercy he’ll be found...<br /><br />Found away and remorsed in himself. Remorse given a place in long fields and covered by the insights he's seen fit to place aside. Warm sun on his face he's realised what they said in great works was true.<br /><br />There is nothing but love<br /><br />And nothing but you.<br /><br />And in this you he likes to type and tell a story that he hopes will touch another's heart. For this comes deeply from his own.<br /><br />He is only just beginning to trust.<br /><br />Trust in the power of words to turn a being this way and this. Trust not that it is OK, but that it is deeply wonderful, in ways he can’t allow himself to see.<br />This writing around the outsides of himself is helping a little bit.<br /><br />He feels it’s like a slope down which you must keep dead-centre as you ski. The slope is always moving and it’s not clear how to stay on your feet. But you do as long as you keep moving down and don’ look back or you’ll tumble into nonsensicality which may be entertaining for you but it frustratingly obscure.<br /><br />Still, Beckett got away with it, though that kind of jealousness will keep him at the desk and miss what Beckett held and allowed to flow through him, in spite of any inch of himself.<br /><br />Sacrifice, he's finding, is a good way to stumble through the haze.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-49983652487631829222009-10-16T06:54:00.001-07:002009-10-16T06:56:03.693-07:00would it be ok if you went away for a time<br /><br />all of you<br /><br />don't speak<br /><br />don't breathe<br /><br />i'm fine here<br /><br />it's better i had never sad anything<br /><br />or you felt the need for a reply<br /><br />it only made things worseSimon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-75806957631823360972009-10-16T06:46:00.000-07:002009-10-24T08:57:28.897-07:00I fell into something last week. The idea that things could be a certain way and having it torn away is more painful than many experiences i can remember. I am naked in the wind and words lose their grip on me.<br /><br />She was sweet, but she bit like an acid rose.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-62579118483582094612009-10-14T01:46:00.000-07:002009-10-14T02:15:34.730-07:00Diary of an unborn writer #32<span style="font-weight: bold;">On the way to the Neverending Cafe</span><br /><br />He was running around in Leidseplein with large gun in his hand. Red nose and a beautiful costume - shoes like planks and makeup fringing on burlesque with curves and eyes and swirls> Wide yellow and black <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">checked</span> bow tie and paisley shaped eye make up around in each eye - one sloped up the other sloped down. A tear fell from the downward sloping corner of the left eye, so delicate and intricately painted in white and blue you could see the swirls of oceans and eddies of sadness curling on his cheek, that would swell and fall with the clown's expression.<br /><br />He was swirling on one foot, with the other leg standing at a right angle and even in those boots he made it a ballet. The gun would fall to his side, point haphazardly at strangers and swirl around with his dance, which was slow at first. Arcs of feet and hands and a head: now looking through legs, now curled on the end of the neck and twisted round to the back of him. He was a snake under those comedy clothes - red and black squares on a puffy suit. The face and intricate make up would sneer and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">grimace</span> and laugh and swirl almost like the eddies in the tear and in morphing it was seamless. Not one followed by another but one endless changing expression.<br /><br />As the dance progressed the gun whirled faster and face kept up its gnarled then joyful then passive then remorseful poise, whirling in and out of legs the gun changed from hand to hand he's holding it now like a cop, now against his head and now BANG@! he lets <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">a</span> shot off at the crowd. They jump at the blank. The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">whirls</span> intensify and the shots ring off in stacatto bursts, he's shouting now, the clown and the mania isn't funny any more, or beautiful, except in its most abstract and you want to turn away as the grotesque <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">overreaching</span> arms take the man in folds and contort him ripping off his clothes ripping off his suit, his hat, though makeup and shoes left intact. The gun has fallen to the ground.<br /><br />He's standing in white all-in-one underwear, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">belly</span> pouting to the breeze and crowds, half in horror, half scared and the mix challenged as to what will happen next. Will you save us with your act dear clown? Or leave us hanging in the reaches of paralysed despair - your arcs our enemy and your pastiche the frustrated whirls of our every day?<br /><br />Sadly, he's standing. Challenging the breeze, challenging the whispers of the crowd, challenging each to move away or meet him with a gaze and the gay man, the happy sad man with an outward pouted lip, red nose and eddies on his face flops his upper half to the ground and picks up the gun. Tears springing - really - from his face, smearing swirls - white paint stained with a clear tear and posing, pouting places the gun to his head. Parents take their children away. We watch stunned.<br /><br />But he doesn't pull the trigger. He just stands waiting until he becomes a standing shows, passers-by remarking on the clothes scattered around and the funny tragic man who's showed us our destiny for a time.<br /><br />Dear man - you walk away. The next day he was gone.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-24916338149182659322009-10-08T08:36:00.000-07:002009-10-08T08:41:48.970-07:00Diary of an unborn writer #32"You are not the centre of the world and there are some things in life you can't control"<br /><br />He said.<br /><br />I asked him about spirituality and he said that.<br /><br />You know the big great all absorbing thing.<br /><br />And he said that.<br /><br />He's a Spanish man with a bigger being and more sparkly eyes than many care to notice. Humble to the extreme and deeply confident while shy. He was a monk for six years, following the order of Mother Teresa before skipping off in Manchester to work in a prison there.<br /><br />Now he's landed in a large multinational with a goal of reaping profits from the legions of the rich.<br /><br />There are whispers, whispering that the New Time has come but that was over a beer and we were way too tired to head out dancing so slept until noon. The Spanish man forgotten, Pixie's red hair falls across my chest.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-31763130145150444672009-10-06T02:07:00.001-07:002009-10-06T02:11:24.451-07:00JoycelynShe was like a window on a blessed soul that had chosen to engage with you for a time. Joycelyn, the red hair, fair skin angel of a woman. She coloured your life in February, stayed through MArch and by June you were virtually inseperable. An easy, easy time. She would nibble you knuckles as you cupped her hand around her chin, a jaw line delicate enough to break. She had eyes like sapphire, impossible to describe and evry time you look at her you get the shock that she's really there. Joycelyn, waiting for tonight at the black lagoo. Angel face, fire hair, a lady to collapse your soul back in on itself.<br /><br />Beauty never came so rare and for the time it poured onto your life, you've been a happy sailor that ever spilled rum on to the sea. The pure salt soaking up the alcohol until all that was left was calm.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-60457274091450263422009-10-06T01:07:00.000-07:002009-10-06T01:09:14.353-07:00Fluffy said<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2009/9/29/1254235537236/Patients-without-medical--001.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 460px; height: 276px;" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2009/9/29/1254235537236/Patients-without-medical--001.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://fluffyeconomist.blogspot.com/2009/10/hollywood-my-love.html">Hollywood, my love...</a>Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-48000021507841101902009-09-29T08:37:00.001-07:002009-09-29T08:37:23.165-07:00Diary of an unborn writer #31I feel like I'm stretching wings but finding it difficult to leave the ground. Current social contacts I have with friends and co-workers have evolved in a way that keeps me down and redressing these takes a lot of energy. I don't feel my voice is equally heard at work and I'm puzzled as to why this is. Part of this is my sensitivity to being challenged. It knocks the confidence and the forum in which this is done makes it difficult to get subtle ideas across, and less space to defend them. Everything is safe, stable and uncreative. Hugely uncreative actually, which gives me little room to fly. I am considered a cage rattler and comments greeted in this way instead of being something that can benefit the group as is intended.<br /><br />Coupled to this, I have a defense mechanism that kicks in whenever challenged. I jump into retreat rather than defending ideas. I have an innate belief that my point of view is shared and find it difficult to find a way to share ideas without being dogmatic. Confidence seems to be the key. Nevertheless, in this conservative setting, radicalism is not encouraged.<br /><br />Emotionally the group is also a little low level and working together seems more about protecting each other than moving on the combined interest. There's not much of a perspective on what indeed is the combined interest - it's very narrow - and offering ideas perceived to be without its scope - ie broadening the field of view - are often shot down. Again, this has to do with improving my confidence in ideas put across.<br /><br />I place a lot of importance on my ideas. Why? I think they are very good. I am able to see things that others aren't but often lack the quickness to describe this scope of detail beofre the point is shot down.<br /><br />Meetings that are less like bunfights would help.<br /><br />As would a change of situation. I'm not sure serving the wider corporate interest is my field. Especially on days like today<br /><br />But your know what - I am damn tired of walking. I feel like I've been strugglig for weeks. Things keep happening - positive and negative - that shake me to my bones. I need some stable ground as time after time - I feel like I'm losing the plot.<br /><br />I feel exceedingly isolated also. My mission is to become a big strong independent man, though at present I feel like an ice house. There is not one person that can relate to the things I experience except my guru - who is often out of reach.<br /><br />I feel at sea and tumbling out of control often and rather than taking positive steps, I feel inclined to roll in a ball until it all fades away. I have expectation that this is not enough and that life demands my participation, but the burden of this crushes me more.<br /><br />I feel my spiritual aspirations weigh more heavily than they enlighten. This is not quite true but I certainly apply more pressure to eevry day tasks than is necessary.<br /><br />I wish I knew that there was some progress on the score of enlightenment. It's impossible and the psychological disintegration it involves is desired but makes for a wild ride.<br /><br />I try not to dramatise as I write and intuitively, I know this period of wobble is flaking away uncertainty to stand in something deeper - that is the hateful-to-the-mind reality of absolute uncertainty and it's this I'm coming to understand. Until I get there though, I would like to record: the aches in my stomach, the whirling in my head and the mistrust of virtually every individual that I know.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879700656206962013.post-52808315556808843112009-09-27T14:01:00.000-07:002009-09-28T08:32:49.389-07:00The word was influence she used and it ran through you like a hollow brick.<br /><br />"I'm worried for the influence she has over you" referring to your Guru, which of course meant lack of influence from her. This is perilous for a woman seeking a relationship with a man. more so if she prided herself on immovability previously. There was a zone of yours that was beyond her reach and love seduced her to want to own it, though it was not necessary. He would have her, as totally as she would allow, though she could not accept that in him, lay all her passions and desires and to not be allowed to control them was for her the deepest self-betrayal.<br /><br />Love left it quietly for a time, he softly whispered to himself, musing over a cup of coffee, alone in an apartment on a regular Sunday. Love left it quietly and then in loud thunder clashes made itself obvious to both of us, that in our deepest yearning, we find it impossible to break free.<br /><br />Though more love, more peace than you have ever felt anywhere, and with her makes it an impossible goodbye.Simon Hodgeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00045940364682507474noreply@blogger.com0