The End

The end 

“This is the end 

Beautiful friend “

When I chose the title of this blog some years ago it seemed appropriate ...Breathing Underwater. The point was ...and is...that it’s impossible ...unless you are a fish. At the time life was so difficult it seemed impossible...but it had to be lived so the idea was to try to find a way of doing the impossible. Getting through it and surviving. Like breathing underwater. 

I’ve decided to leave it aside for a while now ...not because i’ve solved the conundrum...if anything it’s even more impossible now than it was then...for different reasons. Back then i’d just come through a marriage break up and was trying to adjust to a life I didn’t want. Looking back now my estranged wife did me a favor though of course perspective only comes with...perspective. The water is deeper and colder and more impenetrable now than it was then. The shop is on the brink...the crushing  financial worry of that is a  noose around my neck....tightening by the day. My father is getting more frail  and i struggle with the practical implications of that as well as the emotional ones. I’m not in the best of health myself...the surgery i’m waiting for is delayed and to be honest i’m not particularily inclined to even push for it...if it happens it happens. I’m finding it difficult to cope mentally...im having difficulty concentrating and i’m feeling more and more detached. Walls are closing in. The vice is tightening. Pick your metaphor. I feel like i’m slowly disintegrating. Today I did something else that will no doubt backfire on me...maybe finally destroy me...but i had to risk it because I couldn’t go on the way I was...bottling stuff up...important stuff. Maybe more important than any of the rest...in a way. It’s a perfect storm. When I burn bridges I do it in style...i incinerate them while still on them. But I don’t know what else to do...or how else to be. I’m in a strange place ... it’s like i’m just clinging on. I sat in the bath earlier just staring into space and wishing it all would stop...that my mind would just shut down...that I wouldn’t have to face any of it any more. It’s getting more difficult to dig myself out of such despondency ...to battle through the mental fog and summon the strength of will to keep going. Some of these days I fear I won’t be able to. I’m not being dramatic...it’s just how it is...i’m one of many i’m sure. I find myself thinking more and more these days of my friend Mervyn who took his own life some years ago...i miss him. Not that we were close...not at all. But he was a constant ...a person of iron will or so it seemed. I admired his strength of mind and his intellect...I simply couldn’t believe it when I heard he had done what he did. It seemed ridiculous. If anyone could breathe underwater it was him. What lead him to succumb to his demons...or indeed what these demons were we will never know. I saw him a couple of days before it happened...he was his usual self...I can still see him walking up the street to his car after chatting to me over coffee...I had no idea that he was drowning. I don’t know if he was asking for help...or even if he was whether I could have done anything. I doubt it. I don’t recall anything different about him that day. They say once the decision is made the person is locked down and beyond reach. Who knows. Perhaps they simply do not want to be reached. 

Back to the point of this. Which is really to say that that’s all folks...for now anyway. I plan to stick around for a while yet ...i’ve come this far and I probably owe it to myself to grind on and see what happens. But i’ve shared enough for now I think. I’m talked out. I am not ending with any grand flourish. Except to say that it is the end. 

Take care of yourselves.  And remember to breathe. 

Breathing underwater

Well I looked my demons in the eyes

Lay bare my chest

Said do your best

To destroy me

Ray La Montaigne 

Enough

There’s some release in pain. At least that is what I tell myself. Sometimes you have to dredge everything up from the deepest darkest place and lay it bare...all of it...bloody and raw. All that’s good and bad and in between. No matter what it costs...because to let it fester there is a slow death. Even if it breaks you...or crushes you...or tears the very heart and sinew out of you. I hope that’s true. 

I really do. 

All in Code.

“I was longing to be wooed

I was ready to be humbled

By the words that you had written

By the syllables you mumbled

Yeah, I was ready in my heart

To have my heart invaded

By the fervour of your passion

Yes, I came to be persuaded”

Mike Scott. 

I started this blog to try to make sense of stuff...make sense of me. I thought that if I wrote stuff down it would help me deal with stuff and find some clarity. All the usual reasons people give. I reallly never expected people to read it...or cared very much who did. I suppose there is something of vanity in writing online ...rather than just putting it in a journal. But to be honest I rarely think of anyone reading it when i’m writing...well that’s not completely true...I do sometimes have someone in my head...that i’m sort of writing to...or at the very least I imagine them reading it. Maybe that’s not that unusual. Anyway the point is that it doesn’t really work...well not for me. Or at least not recently. The dealing with stuff I mean. Some things aren’t amenable to being dealt with...no matter how many words you type on a keyboard. Some things are just too raw. To painful. Too much. Too hard. Some things maybe just have to be parked in “no way of dealing with them” territory. Words are sort of my defence mechanism...or at the very least they are a distraction. I write a lot but don’t always say very much...i’m not alone in that of course. 

This past while has been...challenging. The business is seriously struggling ...i’ve had health issues...my dads health is going only one way...it’s like a mountain of pain is building and building and it’s going to bury me under its weight. I don’t sleep much...I dread going in to work...I am constantly anxious and on edge...my mind plays out one disasterous scenario after another...almost on an hourly basis. The spin cycle is in overdrive...and it’s churning me up. Sometimes...especially in the night...I feel like my head is going to burst with it all...I actually feel the edges of my sanity start to warp and bend...i’m seriously afraid of losing my mind completely. Other times I think it would be a relief...for it all to end...to stop. I wish at times I had the courage to let go...to finally succumb to the darkness...to embrace it and be carried away by it into oblivion. Nothing if not poetic. But it’s how I actually feel. I have friends but even the best of them cannot really help...no one can get inside your head. No one can be you...not even fleetingly. There is someone who gets it...this someone was there for me when I was at a low ebb in the past...despite their own ongoing nightmare they showed me love and kindness and empathy ...they probably don’t realise just how much they meant...mean to me...not really. I’m not sure I would have survived had it not been for them. And that’s not the half of it. They touched me in so many ways...and still do. As much as ever. Every bit. 

I’ve always been afraid. From as long as I can remember even as a child...fear was always at my shoulder...it hung around me like a bad smell. Afraid of rejection...of what others thought....of getting hurt...of taking chances...of letting go emotionally. I guess it’s common enough and I’m not that unusual but your own fear always seems worse. That last one ...the not letting go emotionally...it’s the one that I now consider the most damaging. The most painful. You become hardened to things or at least you think you do. You don’t let things touch you but certain things  always get through. You close it all off and shut it all down and keep going...well i’ve said all this before. It doesn’t work and maybe it’s just as well. But it’s always still my default. Until something comes along that won’t play by the rules. Something that burns itself deep into your psyche...that roots itself so firmly that it simply won’t shift...something so powerful and overwhelming and captivating that there is simply no defence against it...it plough’s through your walls and batters down your doors...it is all consuming and grips like a vice...and you don’t want it to be otherwise if you are honest with yourself. It conquers every part of you...except your deepest fears. They prove strangely resilient. They are implacable and terrible. They defy almost anything...and part of how they work is that they convince you that it is for the best. That such things are not for you...but only for those who deserve them ...or are sufficiently attractive to inspire them. I’m aware that such thinking is messed up yet it has great power and effect. And perhaps it is not entirely messed up at the end of the day. People are broken and flawed. I should know. 

I am writing in code...in a way. I am trying to say something without saying it. I fear rejection. I fear my own limitations and failings. I fear what I know is coming. Some things can’t be borne ...I think i’m on a collision course with the most unbearable of things. I’m like a coiled spring...but any release will be terrifying. It will cause hurt...and confusion...and pain. I can’t win this one. There are just degrees of loss. 

None of this will make sense ...it barely does to me. 

Sometimes words only make things worse. 

Stars

“We are all made of stars”

Moby. 

“She was Aphrodite, Helen, Thetis

Eve among the satyrs

She was Venus in a v-neck sweater

She was all that ever mattered”

Mike Scott 

The Long Strange Golden Road. 

Words. 

I’ve been told i’m good with them...in that I can string them together. However I am not really that good with them. I am especially bad of late...at finding the right ones I mean. They seem to hover just out of reach...to be clutched at like straws in the breeze. I’m sitting here in Poyntzpass waiting for my daughter to come out of the tutors...rain is hammering on the windscreen. I sit for about an hour and a half with no internet...just my thoughts. Words drop around me in the same way...or I wish they did...tumbling out of the sky to earth..More words are a swirl...inside my head...never quite forming in the way I need them to...never settling out in a way that i’m satisfied with...that convey what I want them to. Words are friend and enemy...often both at the same time. When I write I try to put down what I feel...but I rarely do. I’m not honest enough maybe...or rather i’m afraid to be. Honesty is seeet poison. Sweet but potentially lethal. The problem of course isn’t the words but the feelings and emotions behind them. It’s those I struggle with and the words ...or lack of them...are the outworking of that. The feelings run very deep and seare the very core of who I am...they twist and turn and rend my emmotions...they play havoc with my imagination...they scorch the very deepest part of me with fire that burns harder the more I try to douse it...like pouring petrol on flames. My whole being (not a term i’m accustomed to using but that’s another story) is writhing in those flames...I torture myself with thoughts and images that I cannot bear to see but that I cannot keep from my imagination. It’s something that was awakened inside me a long time ago ...an almost physical ache of love and longing...and pure,  burning, outrageous desire...it hit me like a train at the time and parts of me are still lying on the track. But it was worth the rending of flesh and bone...I needed pulled apart and reassembled...and I wanted it...the need was so strong at times I could taste it...I wanted to give myself over to it utterly and be consumed by it. To be lost in it...in her. Flesh and bone and mind and soul. The intensity of the feelings shocked me...stunned me. They also opened me up...exposed me to the full glare of my own emmotions perhaps in a way that had never happened before. 

The above probably sounds over the top...i’m not used to putting such thoughts down in words and I may not even post this. I don’t really believe in the soul...well not in the religious sense ...I turned my back on all that when I divested myself of religious faith. It’s to big a subject for here...for now...I guess i’m with Bertrand Russell these days when he said that love is no less real or meaningful because it’s not eternal. Well that was more or less it...I must dig up the original quotation. We are our brain chemistry but those synapses and chemical reactions can take us to remarkable places...in our experience of the world our emmotions and feelings do not require a spiritual dimension to be real or intense.  Passion is passion...desire is desire...love is love..it matters little what label you put on the framework around it all. . God’s or devils are an irrelevance...a point on the margin not really worth arguing about. It’s likely that Mobys succinct song line is as near to the truth as anything...if so I will take it. 

As for the aforementioned feelings...well

their grip has never really loosened...i’ve just managed to keep a lid on them...press them down...keep them just beyond reach. A strategy that is always doomed to fail...but I know this and always have. I’ve accepted it. But that doesn’t make it any easier. Especially now. 

I once had a star named after me...as a gift...it was some time ago now. I didn’t realize  at the time you could do that and was slightly taken aback. It was the loveliest most imaginative of things to do...and i’ve never forgotten it. The fact that it would even enter anyone’s head to do something like that for someone like me was...well it was a bit humbling to be honest. It was and is special-well it is to me. Nothing anyone ever does for me will mean as much. 

I’ve never been the romantic sort...not the flowers and chocolates type. Maybe it comes from being a bit of a loner ...maybe not. My notions of love...in so far as I had them...were more weighty...or so I liked to tell myself. Not that I had much experience of it...I fancied girls at school etc but I was the one with girls who were friends rather than girlfriends. I was incredibly self conscious ...shy...awkward...wracked with self doubt and not comfortable in my own skin. Not much has changed.  From an early stage in my life I recall that I tended to avoid looking at my own reflection...I didn’t like what I saw. And I was pretty sure if I didn’t like it no one else would. Especially not the female sex. So it was easier to simply be friends...to be around women in a way that took the pressure off...if you have no expections you cannot be disappointed. Of course nothing is that simple. All you do is internalise the pain you are striving to avoid...i’m no psychologist but i’m pretty sure that’s what I did. You make do with how things are but it eats away at you all the same...at your self esteem. You are doing it to yourself in the main...to protect yourself...but you know deep down that it is necessary. That fundamentally no one could want you...not really. Maybe being a man made me focus on the physical...or maybe the absolute certainty that  no one would want to be with me in that way underscored the emmotional neediness. I learnt all I knew about sex and lovemaking from the pages of young adult Marvel comics...or from books. I was fascinated by women and often in awe of particular ones but I was well in my twenties before I embarked on a relationship...and that was with the the person I married. Oddly...or perhaps not...I was besotted...almost obsessional at times. Looking back now i’m pretty sure she didn’t feel the way I did...and if i’m honest I probably knew that at the time. I also don’t really understand why I felt like I did...maybe it was because I had an obsessive personality or 

 was just too intense. Whatever it was it’s a mystery to me now as I’m sure it is to her. Or perhaps I was attracted to the idea of love...or was in love with love as someone once said.  Or I just wanted to be wanted...possibly. Whatever it was it all seems a bit alien to me now...like it was a different person in a different life. Maybe i’ve just wised up...had a sharp dose of reality to bring me to my senses. Or maybe i’m just a bit screwed up emotionally and always was. I do know I am selfish. I tell myself it’s because of fear and that I try to protect myself from hurt and rejection but that’s only partly true. There’s a lot of things I don’t like about myself and selfishness probably tops the list. 

But back to the star. The person who gifted it to me is simply extraordinary. Way more than she realises. She will probably read this and I’m not really sure what she will make of it. She has moved on and will perhaps be disconcerted ..even angered...by my clumsy and somewhat incoherent ramblings. Where she is concerned I find a lot of my words are inadequate...they are brittle and unwieldy and somehow lacking the substance to convey what I want to. They only skim the surface of feelings that are not easily or neatly expressed...or suppressed. They are at times worse than useless. But words are all I have. Their inadequacy and futility seem to mock me...especially now. 

Or perhaps after all I am just mad. That is a distinct possibility. A madman with a star named after him. Perhaps that will have to be enough

Things poetic.

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

I’ve always had a bit of an affinity with poetry...I can’t remember when it really started...I presume it was at school but I remember no specific poem that stands out...or that started the ball rolling...not really. I recall the likes of Wordsworths Daffodils of course and the wandering lonely as a cloud...but that wasn’t what made the connection...in fact it is probably one of my least remembered pieces...perhaps a bit twee and lacking any punch...to me anyway. A bit too pleasantly anodyne for my tastes. If I did have to pin it down to a poet then i’d probably say Wilfred Owen...the visceral rawness of his work appealed to me...not just the gore (which was why he was popular at school) but the starkness of it...I remember that one of the earliest emmotional gut punches I got from a poem was the line in Strange Meeting...”I am the enemy you killed, my friend/I knew you in this dark for so you frowned/yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed/I parried but my hands were loath and cold”. Perhaps that was indeed it...the moment when I grasped the essential nature of poetry...it’s capacity to engage the intellect and the emmotions as one...and to impact both in a way that was ...and is...difficult to define. You just feel it. As when something takes the breath from you ...or roots you to the spot. Of course the whole point is that you cannot explain it...if you have to explain it it tends to invalidate it to some degree...or at the very least diminish it. So while I enjoyed reading poetry I was not a particular fan of studying it formally...taking it apart and dismantling it. I just wanted it to touch me...to reach in and grip tightly...even painfully. I was not that keen on rhyming poetry either...I preferred prose every time...as with art I was no expert but I knew what I liked...even if I was not entirely sure why. William Blake ...Yeats...TS Elliot...Dylan Thomas...Emily Dickenson... more recently Auden and Ted Hughes ...a select bunch. The more red in tooth and claw the better...that word visceral crops up again. Some  poetry really  does it for me...some leaves me completely cold. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I like certain poets rather than poetry as such...if there is a difference. One that comes to mind in particular ...and he’s more novelist than poet is Thomas Hardy. For some reason these lines from Ode to an Unborn Pauper Child lodged itself in my brain almost immediately after I read it...leaving such an immediate imprint that I did not even need to repeat it over...to this day I can call it forth without effort..

“Had I the ear of wombed souls

Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls 

And thou wert free to cease or be

Then would I tell thee all I know

And put it to thee

Wilt thou take life so?” 

I remember nothing else of his ...though I do recall my admiration for his writing. There’s a scene in Under the Greenwood Tree where the main character and the object of his affections are washing their hands together in a basin of water...it’s an innocent scene but incredibly sensuous as he describes the interlocking of their fingers in the water...the image did more for my appreciation of the opposite sex than anything more directly explicit ...funny how these things stick with you but I digress. 

The quotation at the top from Hughes...a poet who provokes some controversy in certain quarters...is one of those ones that says something fairly familiar and unrevelatory but does so with a bit of linguistic panache thus elevating it beyond merely stating the obvious. As with many such things I find myself in two minds about the sentiment expressed. It would be churlish to suggest that he is overstating the case....and that it is all very well in theory...or in the pages of a book. And yet despite the force and singlemindedness of what’s expressed one can’t help but feel it’s a bit lacking in nuance...that life is perhaps a little more complicated. Or perhaps I’m just overthinking it too much...and i’d be better simply to allow myself to be caught up in the momentum of the quotation and go where it leads.

So it is with poets and their work. 

Snow

Babe I got you bad

Dreaming blood-wet dreams

only madmen have

Baby I got you bad

I wish to God I never had

And it makes me feel so sad,

O, Baby I got you bad

Yeah, Babe I got you bad

Nick Cave

People tell me it's a sin

To know and feel too much within

I still believe she was my twin but I lost the ring

She was born in spring but I was born too late

Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

Bob Dylan 

I think too much. At least that’s what i’ve always thought. I examine things from too many angles...pick them apart and reassemble them. I suppose it’s just the way my head works. Or maybe it’s just that i’m a coward. Or maybe a bit of both. This is going to be a difficult one...as much as anything because i’m not really sure what i’m trying to say. Or how to say it. It’s heavy snow here today so i’m not at work and i’m restless...on edge. Words are hard to find presently...just out of reach in that way that sometimes happens. I need to say things but I can’t...and i need to find a way to deal with that. I’m good at burying things...an expert. At shutting down feelings. I’ve gotten good at it...i’ve needed to. At least that’s what I tell myself...it’s my favorite narrative. You do a lot of things to survive in this world...or at least to keep sane...to keep going. With me it’s locking things down...or out...namely emotions. I may have always done it but it’s become my default response in recent years. I feel things but I manage to keep it all at arms length somehow...it’s like it’s someone else whose experiencing this stuff...and i’m watching. Sounds crazy i know but there it is. I suppose it’s easier to deal with emmotions if you can keep them just at a little bit of a remove...not allow them full access. Sometimes you just daren’t...or you will break apart...utterly. 

I’m very selfish ...again another defence mechanism in its way. I don’t particularly like myself much of the time if i’m honest. But i’m afraid to change. Some time ago I allowed fear and self doubt to smother something very special...I walked away from it because I couldn’t handle what I was feeling...and was scared of where it was taking me. I told myself it was for the best...that I could bury it and move on. And I did to some extent. But not fully. I held on to certain feelings...feelings that were too good to completely let go of. Something was awakened in me that wasn’t going to simply lay down and die however much I ignored it...largely because I didn’t want it to. I wanted to hold on to it...to keep it with me...a reminder of something extraordinary that left its mark on my psyche...at all sorts of levels.  I was coping with that arrangement...the deal i’d made with myself. I could handle it...keep it under wraps and get on with things...even have a measure of contentment. But I was wrong...not for the first time. Some things won’t stay buried...they find a way of working themselves to the surface..seeping out. Good things are more painful than bad ones sometimes...ridiculous though that sounds. Desire...longing...needing...wanting...these things paw mercilessly at the will and are hard to fend off...especially when a part of you doesn’t really want to. Even when you know it’s pointless and there is pain in it ...a pain that will only get worse with time. None of this will

make any sense. I’m trying to say things without saying them. To square a circle. I know what I have to do to survive...to keep going. To stay sane. It will be harder this time than before. But I can’t see any other way. 

“In the end I wish it all would burn...”

Decision.

Clarity is hard to find. 

In all of my life I can’t recall really ever experiencing that moment of clarity when the scales fall off, the fog lifts and you see things with absolute precision. At least i can’t think of it offhand if it’s ever happened. Perhaps it’s just a nice idea ...one of those concepts that we aspire to but that doesn’t really exist in the confusion and mess of real life. A slightly less dramatic version of the old idea of looking for a sign perhaps. What’s for sure is that you can never find it when you need it...clarity that is. My thought processes have always been a bit convoluted to be honest...i’ve always tended to over think things and have never been adept at making decisions...any decisions. I’m the prevaricator’s prevaricator. Faced with a fork in the road i will look for a spoon as well. My “paths not taken” would fill a small volume. I’ve always envied people who were decisive...who have that knack of seeing clearly a way ahead through the thickest of mist...almost like they possess built in radar. They haven’t of course they are just more courageous ...or have better instincts ...or are simply bigger risk takers. That will always depend on what you are risking of course. So much goes into decision making and context is everything. Most of my business decisions have been made under pressure of some form...usually that pressure has been financial. Other times it’s been a matter of choosing a least worst option. I’ve rarely had the luxury of real choice...it’s always been contingent on various factors. And most of the decisions have been complicated. They are rarely straightforward. When it comes for instance to the direction of a business it can be a bit like shooting in the dark...well it has been for me. Sometimes you just point and fire. It’s a bit like that presently. I’m running out of decent options and I need to decide what to do...and soon. I can’t stall much longer. There is a part of me that is borderline wreckless...that’s the part that rarely gets an outing. Perhaps now is the time to let it out of the cage. Perhaps not...which is the problem.  The difficulty is that despite my best efforts i invest decisions with emotion...I can’t seem to find that objectivity that the best decision makers tap into naturally. The other difficulty is that none of the decisions or possible outcomes are particularily appealing ...all involve considerable risk and are rife with failure and frustrated ambitions. They are all painful...it is just a matter of degree. 

Standing here alone in the shop with far too much time to think through various options is hardly conducive to being decisive. Clarity of mind ..assuming it exists...is a forlorn hope...yet i’ve never needed it more. In some ways it might be a relief for all this to be taken out of my hands ...the decision made for me ...but such relief would be short lived. It’s generally much easier to give in than it is to fight. To fight requires effort and stamina and focus...it means dredging up mental resources from somewhere ...when you’d rather just disappear...yes fighting places considerable demands upon the exhausted psyche. But I have to fight ...that much is clear. 

Perhaps after all I should just point and shoot. 

Rags and Bone.

Rags and Bones 

A friend told me once they lived too much inside their own head...it’s one of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me. They were describing me as much as them (though they didn’t really know it) and it is the source of most of my issues with myself and my interaction with the world. I don’t think much about my childhood...to be honest this past few years i have been so focused on simply fire fighting and keeping things going i don’t think much about anything other than the immediate problem to be faced or the situation to be dealt with. The shop...my father...my health...I move from one weekend to the next without looking up from the ground at times...metaphorically if not literally. It’s dangerous (especially literally) and not the best way to be but it’s how it is...i don’t know any other way to survive. At the heart if it is fear of course. The fountainhead of all woes. Roosevelt was partially right about fearing fear itself...i’d take issue with the “nothing” part but i get the gist. But back to the point...of sorts. I was an only child and in Newry where i lived for the first fourteen years of my life that was even more isolating...i was a Prod in a republican stronghold at the height of the troubles...it wasn’t a comfortable place to be and where we lived was right in the heart of the “wrong” bit...the Armagh Road opposite St Joseph’s School and just across from Derry Begg (nickname Beirut) on one side and Linnen Hall Sqare on the other. Suffice it to say I didn’t go out much...the local youths used to burn stolen cars on the patch of waste ground across the road from our sitting room (we were elevated from the street looking down on things) while our windows were frequently broken by the stones aimed at the various passing army patrols ...i’d say about once a month we were gathering them from the bottom of the front lawn. The back of the house was well hidden from the road...a sort of haven that extended all the way up to an area of ground and a half acre hayfield field beyond where we periodically kept the odd pony...it was well closed off from the front road and accessed only by a long lane backing at least 4 other houses which exited some distance up the road. That was my domain...i rarely played or even ventured round to the front of the house and was always a bit nervous

 of being round there for any length of time...you felt oddly exposed at the top of the sloping lawn and steps looking out across the grim seventies vista of the odd burnt out vehicle and pro IRA graffiti  scrawled on the grey surfaces opposite. If I did spend time there I stayed up the top well away from the road...an irrational fear perhaps but one grounded in the atmosphere and vibe of the time. At the back , but for the outline of Camlough mountain peppered with housing estates in the distance you could have been in the country...blissfully oblivious to the gulag like vista and potential dangers (real or imagined) at the front of the property. That was my world...and it was mostly mine. Most of my school friends lived in the “prod” part of Newry which was way over on the far side out the Belfast road...which to me might as well have been on another planet. So I rarely had anyone round...and going to someone’s house usually want a fair bit of organising. So began the inhabiting of my own imaginary world that was to characterize my mental and psychological outlook well beyond those relatively care free days in my hidden haven on the Armagh Road. And they were relatively care free...I had a fairly content childhood without major trauma. I was alone rather than lonely. I made my own entertainment and developed the world of the imagination accordingly. When you don’t have much company your own takes on a different perspective...you are forced to build worlds in your mind and to put yourself at the center of them. Over time however I moved from the center to the periphery...I became the observer ...almost the narrator in a way...the characters were my characters but they in some way were not fully me...it’s hard to explain. There may be a number of reasons for this. In an odd way I felt more comfortable in a detached role...I mean looking back on it. I read a lot as a kid...before the age of ten mostly comics...and mostly Marvel comics which were aimed at a young adult readership. The visual aspect was integral to my thinking...those panels from artists like Barry Windsor Smith and Jim Steranko plus a host of others framed my early life and instilled in me an abiding sense of the visual...and not just comic book art. It was through Marvel that I discovered WB Yeats and from that an interest in poetry  (lines from The Second Coming on page one of an old Defenders story) and it was through those super hero stories and characters that I learned to conceptualise ...to understand about relationships...about love and loss...and yes about sex. I was reading well above my age range...especially the American imports which were like hens teeth and which were considerably more graphic and adult in their themes than the UK reprints of the time. I recall the “Song of Red Sonja” from Conan the Barbarian circa 1974 or thereabouts and the strange warm feelings that some of those beautifully drawn panels evoked...Smith’s art was like a series of paintings and his evocation of the female form is not something i’ve forgotten...even if at the time i wasn’t entirely clear what was going on. The point is those comic books (as they were called) with their visual panache and relative literary prowess more than anything else shaped my imagination and and my understanding of the world...albeit a fantasy one. I did read books but I preferred the visual stimuli of words combined with pictures.  I transposed those influences to my real world...or the one I created for myself till everything blurred together. I also watched a lot of television...mostly science fiction from Star Trek to Blake’s 7...and developed an interest in cinema ...i recall in my very early teens reading about Kubrick and Kurosawa..or pouring over the art direction of the likes of Alien...which further fueled this sense of the visual...my life was like a film peopled with actors with myself in the directors seat. Though mostly i confess i felt more like i was in the audience watching it unfold on screen. Its a sense that has remained with me to this day...of being both of in front of and behind the camera at the same time. I often wonder how unique that perspective is...not being able to get inside others heads of course is a big obstacle to knowing. This sense of being on the outside looking in cannot be just me...a result of all those years of playing out relationships in my head fueled by images and words on a page...or watching characters interplay on a screen big or small. The characters i was drawn to were always the loners...the slightly dubious ones you were never quite sure about...Logan in Wolverine (i disliked Captain America intensely )...Avon in Blake’s 7 always on the cusp of betrayal ( Blake did nothing for me) but in the end the one who is betrayed by the “hero”....the darker more complex characters always fascinated me more than the straight forward heroic types...the archetypal antihero was my outline for character formation in my world of imagination...my preferred perspective if you like in these created worlds. Such characters were in some sense morally superior ...because they were honest about themselves perhaps...they knew their demons and had accepted them...made accommodation with them...were single minded and ruthless but also capable of emotional depth and empathy when necessary...complex and contradictory. Such characters are always more interesting than the straightforward hero or do gooder ...at the time though I was attracted to something in them that was not a result of such critical analysis but something deeper and more instinctive. I suppose I felt a bit like an outsider...a fish out of water...or in the wrong water...it’s a feeling i’ve never shaken. I told someone the other day that i’ve never been comfortable in my own skin...and it’s a deep truth. I don’t know when that started and whether those early years playing in worlds of imagination contributed to the feeling...the isolation of being my own best company a lot of the time playing its part maybe. I did see other kids ...I had a few close friends...but in the main they were slightly odd like myself...also I suspect lost in their own imaginary worlds a lot of the time. Or maybe it was just me. And possibly i’m overstating things. Everyone has their hang ups brought about by a myriad combination of traits and circumstances. Nothing unusual there but yiur own are always defining. Mine haunt me down the years. But to get back to the point at the start of all this...if one could call it such...namely living in ones own head. It is perhaps inevitable to some degree given how our brain chemistry functions (we are our brains are we not) ...there is only what is inside our heads as we cannot see from any other point of view. We are all perhaps the main character in our own narrative behind the eyes...our version of reality projected through our perception filters. I can’t speak for others. Maybe it’s just that I think or second guess things too much. In some ways i’m still that kid in Newry creating imaginary worlds...worlds greatly preferable to the “real” one. Worlds in which I am looking for something that i cannot readily define...something that will answer questions i haven’t thought to ask yet...that will provoke such questions. Or something like that. Another friend of mine said the other day that when we fall in love or think of love it is an idea we fall in love with as much as a person...and I think in a way i can’t quite explain he is at least partly right. We project our ideal or our idea (subtle difference) onto the object of our affection and it is that which we truly love. When we come up against the reality then the cracks appear and the rift opens. Again i struggle for clarity with such things. 

And the title? It’s from Yeats poem “The Circus Animals Desertion”...in the poets mind I believe it is to do with the origins of poetry itself but it has perhaps also the connotation of love that comes adrift...or the letting go of valued things by necessity and the return to the dark beginnings of inspiration...a reset almost of the mind at the deepest level of compulsion and need. I am I think being propelled towards such a reset...and I believe it will be as gruelling as they come. 

“Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

Or maybe it means something else entirely. It is a poem after all. 

Hells Half Acre

Hells half acre. 

No idea why i’ve called it that ....I wanted to get “hell” into the title i suppose. I think it’s a film or a book but i could be wrong. People talk about being in the eye of the hurricane...how it’s quiet there ( well that could be bollocks but anyway) ...that’s where i sort of am at the minute.  I say sort of as to be honest i’m not really sure how to express the way I feel in any meaningful sense...nothing new there then. I feel the need to write...if only to take my mind off things...or at least deflect the panic...stem the terror....fill my head as much as possible with the noise of something else. I have decisions to make. Decisions I don’t want to make.  None of the options before me are palatable.  Some are less palatable than others.  To even call them “options” is pushing it. They are outcomes.  What i decide will affect them but to some degree they’ve already been decided.  That may make little sense but again that’s not unusual.  I was never cut out for retail.  When i ran away from university and back to the comforting arms of the family business i began the process of denial...of caving in to the easier option.  Maybe i’d always done it but that was the first really big cave in. Of course at the time it made sense.  Well i can tell myself that.  Deep down I knew i was running away...that i was making a mistake...that i was giving up because i could. Must do is a great master as they say and they are mainly right. I had a get out...an option....and i took it. I hated Queens. I’d great hopes for university but when i actually got there i discovered it was not what i was expecting.  I’m not sure what i was expecting and maybe that’s part of the problem. When you are 18 and a bit of a loner with very little self confidence expectations can be ...well a bit blurry.  I’ve no idea why this is even getting a mention as i haven’t thought of Queens in years ...i certainly hasn’t intended to mention it or think about it. But there it is ...just sitting there in my memory bank...waving to me.  Drawing me back to that first of many failures...well the first major one.  And it was a biggie.  Not just because of the academic consequences (i’d very possibly have failed to complete the course) but more because it set a pattern. Once you get on a certain path it can be difficult to get off it. My failure was not so much in quitting but in not attaching enough import to the act.  It was too easy. I quit because I could.  It was a test and i failed.  And that failure stalks me to this moment sitting here in the dark thirty five years later. I vividly remember the huge relief that came over me when i decided to get on the bus and not come back that day in 1983. Making the decision brought relief...at least temporarily. I can remember walking down Newry Street to the shop feeling that a great weight had been lifted.  Little did I know. I was exchanging one weight for another of an entirely different heft.  I could not have known in fairness as i did not know much in those days. I only knew i did not have to go back.  That was enough.  My parents were no doubt disappointed but supportive.  They did not make it difficult.  I did play around with the idea of going back...in fact that was sort of the plan..yes sort of again.  Once i’d gotten over the initial euphoria of leaving i decided to give it another go. I suspect i knew i wouldnt but it was  convenient to have the option still available ...and Queens were obliging in that regard. I maintained the fiction to myself that i would return and do what i’d originally intended ..Law. A year or so later I went back and this time stayed a week.  The first time i’d stayed three months. On the way down to Belfast to the halls of residence on the Sunday afternoon (my father had managed to get me a bed in Union College through a minister friend) to leave off my stuff I started to have second thoughts. I’m pretty sure i’d had them before that but i don’t remember...i only remember that car journey and by the time i was coming back up the motorway i’d pretty much decided i wasn’t going back. I went in the following morning and having bumped into a friend from school (he was the year below me but we were now on the same level...both newbies) began to waver...at least i did until lunchtime.  By tea time i’d made the decision and i was gone by the Friday.  It wasn’t for me. The year spent in the shop had changed my perspective on things and i couldn’t face the prospect of four years of study. Maybe it had just made me lazy.  Or maybe it was something of the old homesickness...the dislocation from the familiar that had tripped me up the first time.  Or maybe i just didn’t know what i wanted.  Whatever it was that was that.  I left again this time for good. For the second time it was easier to leave than to stay.  To stay would have been the tougher option...the riskier one...or so i believed.  In the end we make our own risk and we don’t always recognize it even if it’s in our face.  I did the easier thing.  There’s a pattern here. Many  years later I fell into the same trap and it cost me my marriage. I took the easier option ...or rather i avoided the difficult decisions. I played it safe and i paid the price. Safe is a relative concept.  It’s always easy to convince yourself that doing nothing is for the best...because doing nothing is always easier than doing something.  What should i have done? Too long a story.  The point is i trades risk for what i thought was safety. But it wasn’t.  My safer ground opened up and swallowed me down whole.  I’ve never really faced things.  Not really. Or key things at any rate.  I don’t know what would have happened had i stayed at Uni...in a way it doesn’t matter.  It’s not the point.  I don’t actually dwell on it.  I’m not sure why it’s come to the fore  now.  I’ve never really gotten a grip on regret...a wasted and pointless  emotion.  That’s if it is one.  When you put things down in writing you can go off on tangents and maybe that’s what this is.  A tangent.  I’m faced with decisions again.  This time there are no easy options.  It’s not like then.  And yet maybe it’s not that different in a way. I still don’t face things.  It’s my achilles heel.  It has cost me a lot. It will cost me more before i’m finished.