Here it goes again…

where not being able to sleep becomes less of a bother and more of a problem.

Yesterday, as mentioned, was my final day of relaxation before plunging headfirst into slides and notes of a class that I probably should’ve really turned up to. But ah well.

I had made it my goal of today to have as much fun as possible. This included lying on the grass and reading a good book or listening to good music, chilling out with friends and baking slowly in the sun. However, as the fates conspire against me, it rained and was cloudy and boohoo. However, I decided that should no put a dampener on my day and set out with overly curly hair and a pocket full of wonderful wonderful money. Met everyone in the bar in the cinema and started off with a kick of good old fashioned alcohol to set me up for the suffering of the really really shit film we watched. It was so shit that it was funny and good, but then it turned shit again.

Afterwards, in the toilet, I was flanked on both sides of the urinal by elderly, obese men. They both unzipped at the same time, and they both shook their farewells at the same time, so, to be honest, I had no idea which one of them stank of sex. There was this waft of it constantly bombarding me, and for a moment I thought it was me smelling of sex, but then I realised that I haven’t had any for about a week now so that was totally out of the question. So it must’ve been one of them.

Headed to a bar afterwards and got fairly away with it. Decided to stop over at Pizza Hut for food and ended up on the receiving end of more than a few looks after our loud discussion of giving handjobs to old, blind men.

We (all eight of my followers) were knocked back from another bar for being too drunk so we migrated to Jame’s flat where we watched soft porn and laughed ourselves breathless as I tried to dissuade everyone not to continue my new nickname of “Mini Mercer”.

And now I’m home, staying up because I can’t sleep and wondering to myself what I find more fun; lying in the sun with a book, chilling out with friends in a bar, or wandering the night-lit streets of my city with a flask of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes. They’re all fun, but different kinds. I realise suddenly that I experience these separate events with very different people. Or maybe that’s not right. They’re the same people, but different circumstances. No, that doesn’t make sense.

I get in these moods. I have these feelings. Sometimes I want to write and write these feelings away, but at the same time I just want to live them. There’s so many beautiful moments out there, you know? I feel as though I’m missing them.

Isn’t it strange when I switch styles mid blog?

Oh, and I smoked twenty cigarettes today. Go me.

This is probably why I’m going to fail psychology. Ha ha ha I don’t really care anymore.

As the results have shown, gender is a significant attribute in a person’s spatial awareness whilst handedness is not.

The gender section of the experiment has showed that men are, characteristically, more aware of their surroundings and navigation than women are. This may seem of little use, but it could help the leader of an expedition choose who to entrust the map to, or to help a blind woman understand why she is finding it hard to cope compared to her similarly blind counterpart.

The handedness section of the experiment might not seem like it was worth it, but it does add knowledge to the list of things that is known about the mind. By doing this experiment and knowing that handedness does not affect spatial perception, another psychologist has been saved the time and effort to find out for themselves. This does not sound like much, but by knowing that this experiment has already been carried out, that psychologist will no longer have to do it and will move on to another subject of spatial awareness that will help further understanding of it. Again, this does not sound like much, but psychology cannot be filled with breakthrough after breakthrough, it has to be filled slowly and incrementally, with little segments of information gently increasing our knowledge of the brain like rain increases the volume of the ocean.

A problem found in the experiment would be the effect that the gender of the participant could have upon the handedness section of the experiment. By using two groups that have been proved to affect spatial ability in different ways, the results of the handedness experiment could have been skewed. However, the handedness experiment was not significant at all, so it is doubtful that the gender of the participant could have affected it to such a serious degree. Yet, it is something to consider in future iterations of this experiment, and in any experiment using two factors to govern an outcome.

The window had been painted shut, but we released it from its prison and it thanked us by carrying the swirls of smoke over the river. I lobbed the glass I was holding out into the brightening gloom and heard it tinkle on the ground below.

it’s a nice day my companion remarked as he sat perched on the ash ridden ledge.

lets go for a walk

yeah?

yeah the butt of the cigarette arced the same route as the glass.

He returned later with three guys, each smiling through the exhaustion and drink. We ran to the park, leaping over bollards and spinning on our heels everybody wake up (wake up) everybody everybody wake up it’s time to get down echoing from our throats. An abandoned play park was our first destination with frosted slides that catapulted us across the ground. A cordoned off slide tempted us with its serpentine coils and we dared the ice glazed and chilling ladders to throw ourselves down its black hole. The slipping and sliding led us to a deserted skate park with names emblazoned on the smooth concrete as we rolled and ran and flipped and laid with our backs in puddles watching yellow cigarette smoke framed by blue sky and laughing horsely with every utter of ladies. There was a fountain that sunk my ankles in water floating with cigarette butts and my friend’s legs dangled over nothingness as his fingers gripped an ornate cherub. The sun was rising as we pulled each other up to the upper most boughs of a solid oak tree. The sky grew a violent orange and we laid back in the branches and took silhouettes. serenity someone said from within the tree, beautiful another voice chorused, ladies the third one uttered and we all fell into laughter, my knuckles dirty with fear of falling dying from laughter i said, holding on for dear life is there a better way to go? and then someone said ladies and I would’ve died right then if it weren’t for them below me, holding my legs while I barreled off the trunk.

And we headed back. The sun beat across our faces as we walked in our line, in our troop. I checked my watch and announced that it was 7am on the dot, guys, 7am and we leaned on the bridge and talked with the sun in our laughs and the promise of Guitar Hero to keep us awake to last us across the road.

… ladies

Home is a sticky floor and pictures of a stripper spreading cream over the wall by slapping her ass. The faint smell of pizza and cigarettes. Weed and plastic cups strewn over tables and cocktails in the carpet. Home is the deep crevases of a familiar bed with soft sheets and clothes hid under the dusty frame. The countless sheafs of notes, letters, stories littering the desk, the lava lamp hidden in the cupboard, the fedora hat perched precariously on the edge of the bookcase.

Or is it?

Could it be that home is somewhere that is not, indeed, home? Perhaps home is within the base of an improvised chocolate cake, snugly squashed between the honey and maple syrup. Or maybe it’s between the cushions of a deep white couch with a delusioned budgie chirping human overhead. On a park bench, pondering future hispanic lovers, tragic car crashes and experimental lesbianism. No, wait. If it was anywhere then it’d be in the folds of cookie-crumbed sheets with fingers grasping whiter-than-white knuckles and faces falling gently asleep on shoulders.

Home seriously appears to be where your heart is.

Usually, I’m quite an opinionated person. Most things concerning life, the universe, and everything I’ve got an opinon on. But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes when votes are tallied and people take sides, I abstain. Yes. Abstain. It doesn’t mean that I don’t know either side of the debate, and it doesn’t mean that I can’t argue for either way, it just means that I don’t care.

Some people don’t understand this though. They don’t understand that caring isn’t a necessary thing in life. I don’t care about global warming, I don’t care about endangered species, I don’t care about the treatment of chickens. I don’t care. Say it with me.

So when a lobby of eleven people vote that they agree that protesting is worthwhile, zero vote against and I vote to abstain, it does not mean that I’m slow or confused or retarded. I just don’t care, but I feel the need to convey that I don’t care enough to vote because I think that debating about the power of protesting is a fucking waste of time.

But they don’t understand. Not at all.

Consumption today:

Two slices of cheesecake (accumulating to approximately one third of the entire circle)

Two Crunch bars

One beer (Budweiser)

I should really come up with a better diet than that…

Today is Monday. It is two days after Saturday and one day before Tuesday. On Mondays I have approximately three hours to kill between doing things. On Tuesdays I also have three. Wednesdays are mine until four in the afternoon. Thursdays I have five, Fridays I have another three (if I can care). Saturdays and Sundays are open ended horizons. Each day consists of roughly two hours traveling, of which I read books in, and thirty minutes eating, in which I also read books in. I work for five hours a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at a job where I would write if it weren’t for the obsessively lonely girl sitting next to me.

All this accumulates to roughly fifty hours worth of free time per week in which I must;
write essays
read books
continue social activity
play videogames
write
do the washing up
clean my clothes
buy food
manage budget
phone people
keep up to date with the world
listen to music (and I mean really listen)
think

If I allocate roughly four hours to each task (fifty-two hours) per week then I can equally manage each task, with each task falling short of its required amount I will have about five hours per week to myself. This can be spent in any which way I want.

I want to learn to play saxophone, but that has the added expenditure of money which also is the case with learning to drive. Each of these tasks would be perfectly suited to fit my five free hours a week, but unfortunately my financial status is nothing to brag about.

Two days ago I watched Mike solve a rubix cube within ten minutes. Two months ago I saw him pick up a keyboard and play it. A day ago I watched two guitarists jam to the Alton Towers theme and then become scared shitless by a videogame. Tomorrow I will watch a girl craft a story out of thin air then slide her feet on a polished dance floor. Twenty-one years ago a man was on board a naval ship in far and hostile waters. Five years later he married his mistress. Between now and then he learned to juggle, to excel in accounting, and to make the world his enemy. Two years ago a boy learned to juggle in two days. Four years ago I learned to see the world; two years ago I learned to see it differently.

I want to run in my five hours. Not to make myself fit or to increase my stamina, but just to have the sensation of running. There are locked doors that I want to kick open; there are strangers I want to talk to. Six months ago there was a stranger sitting on some steps crying her eyes out, and I talked to her. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life, watching her cry and putting a friendly arm round her shoulder as she bubbled incoherently into her chipped fingernails. Five months later I did the same thing, but this time there was no trail of mascara etching its way into their cheek.

In my five hours I want to make a difference. Not a save the world difference. I want to make someone see something. The world is human, I will tell them, you are not alone in your solitude. I want them to stop and take stock of everything they’ve ever known, or if I can’t do that then I just want to jar their thinking for ten minutes. Ten singular minutes in my five hours per week I want to stop someone in their tracks and show them.

I have all this free time to free the world. If I wasn’t such an arrogant son-of-a-bitch I might just do that.

Maybe I’ll just learn to play the saxophone instead.

My heart sinks with my eyes as I spy a glimpse of white on a thing that should be nothing but black. Confusion, shock, horror, desolation. Emotions ran wildly through my face, manipulating the muscles to convey the car wreck of thoughts I was experiencing. Wool sprouted from the tear in my leather jacket and I fingered it gently to see how bad the damage was. I wish I could say i got it by defending some poor old lady from a gang of knife wielding youths, or even grabbing someone out of the way of a speeding car and pulling them away in the process, but no; i just fell down. And so I held my leather jacket, prized possession of a year and a half, and wept.

On the bright side of things, I have now found a new use for electrical tape.

Heaving bodies join on a liquid floor, two people so consumed by the bass that their bodies refuse to stop their marionette swings as they cannibalise each other. By their feet a girl dies with her eyes watching her brain and a strike across the cheek. Feet slide and arms wrap round stomachs as bodies are worn away by grinding, perfume leaks into noses and kisses escape down necks. There’s the eyes closed, head back terror of becoming lost in everything and being momentarily free. Gone is the body, gone is the mind, gone is the requited lonliness that these two things nurse. All that’s left is sweat and a pulversing bass line that abolishes all forms of thought and feeling. There’s all that freedom in a void.

All that horrible horrible freedom.

I decided to be practical yesterday and took a walk round the Necropolis in Glasgow. There was a dense fog and crows harked within the gray curtain, making me feel genuinely spooked as I made my way between the ancient gravestones. My shoes were damp with dew, and I stumbled a few times as I tripped over more than one gravestone hidden in the undergrowth. I smoked, and when I was finished I spat into a tissue and stuck it into my pocket. It wouldn’t have mattered much though. The occasional crackle under my feet told me about the broken vodka bottles and a few used Johnnies here and there told me more than I wanted to know.

I was researching for a story. It struck me a while ago that you can’t write something with only half knowledge of it, making up the rest as your pen flows with ink. Most of the good books I’ve read have included in depth detail into the most arbitrary of subjects. I bring up the examples of Fight Club with bomb making, The Black Dahlia for police politics, and Amsterdam for both orchestra composing and newspaper editing. So I was researching grave digging.

There was the strangest gravestone that I came across though. To be perfectly honest, I fell across it. The sun managed to pierce the fog for a moment and I was so dazzled that I completely caught my foot on the stone, sending me falling to the ground with my knees hitting off my assailant. I turned over and examined the stone to find a worn down slab of marble in the shape of an open book. Saying it was made of marble is a sheer guess though. The stone was so whithered by rain and age that it had turned a rough gray, and it was half buried under rich smelling earth and grass that played in the breeze. From the pages of the book I could only make out four words; “Sabell” and “also their family”. It made me wonder just who I was standing on.

Graveyards always give me a strangely surreal feeling. I’m alive, and you’re not ha ha ha isn’t it funny? No probably not, but its still humorous that I’m standing with two feet firmly planted where your coffin is buried. I wonder what your life is like all the way down there surrounded by earth. No one would really come to visit you, you know, since you died about a hundred and fifty years ago. What do you look like?

Hmm. Sounds like the makings of a good story.