Diary of an unborn writer #11

So I'm into the new job. Faces aren't so grey, lunchtime conversation not so bad.

Actually I'm loving it - suits and stimulation from the latest corporate development - a buzz about where we're going, what happens next, how it impacts the bottom line and wonderful serried excuses about our contribution to the human cause.

And oddly they may not be all wrong.

The many cornerhouses of civilisation require strange bricks and stranger folk to man them. Take the techie - the wizard solving the problem of the everyday and depositing it consumer-sized ready-solved and underestimated. The amount of work these guys do on brilliantly complex problems. And there we pick up a phone, send an email from an elegant graphic interface and muse on simplicity. The techie knows otherwise.

My job is to offer people advice on the fitness area of their life. I'm constrained in what I can say because it's new but I've become an uncommon cog in vast apparatus. No job has ever existed like this before. But there I am. Bathed in the suit a thousand generations have worn, spilling tales to frustrated strangers - an outlet for their concerns, in the tiniest way, offering hope.

Of course things haven't always been this good. I write a lot outside the diary - sudden spasms of frustration that don't make it to the keyboard - and too many events for a man to describe - but this I wanted to share from 12 December - happening to be on the midpoint on the numerical scale to the current entry...

~o~

Diary of an unborn writer 5.5

The disillusion muddies on – a life so empty I’m having trouble speaking in anything below abstract.

I have established the unnerving habit of flinching every time I see clock. What’s the countdown to?

Somewhere inside is the nervous knowledge that things aren’t going as planned.
I’m out of bed at 10am.

Gayatri mantra

Shower

Breakfast ~some days I’ll read and stay in bed a little longer – but days are feeling more productive. I apply for two jobs per day.

Write, communicate with friends, attend satsang, meditate between times. Variety’s increasing. Theatre last week, concert this.

I’m having trouble seeing what does what. What calls or relaxation would help make the turn. I have very little energy for anything and the effort required for the smallest thing is immense.

I eat well, sleep too much but health doesn’t improve. Dry eyes, consistent cold, nerves at touch point, even in sleep.

The miners and Sheffield steel workers had whole communities of malaise. Now we hide ourselves in scattered city apartment blocks, the edge of squats, cups of tea to punctuate the day. Industry’s an underrated thing – personal or wide scale.

I’d like to get it back.

I fear the stiff overtake of obsolescence.

~o~

I’m tired by the look of pity
Patronising negatives when I’m trying to get by

Bored of observations of my red and yellow eyes

Scruffed appearance and condemned to compassionate inferiority

I’m tired of people noticing the panic in my eyes as another door slams shut

For a guy to taking simple steps, this community has the shortest arms

~o~

Alma Mater folded her arms and gave me the heave ho – withering idealism in the boil of a continuous “NO!”

Forming a boil actually; the packet of pus that sits on my ass threatening to burst each time I sit down. Move on, weary son, despite the screams and threats to rip it off and spray its contents in the face of naysayers (praysayers).

“You’re raging in a dream cage”

they sagely say as the yellow scab forms and dries stinging ten times worse than before.

Well Fuck You if I can;t see the cage and fuck you twice for not showing me the way out

Maybe I like it here

You’re right. It sucks and depresses me more than all your achievement and smug art of mediocratic life.

“You should put down roots”

Another wise thumb sucker

“Want some savlon for your ass?”

And all this in halting English, acerbic with blame for our miscommunication. For a narrow-minded continent, the Dutch are its doyennes. Unprepared to embrace that which lies outwith their network of understanding.

The famed liberality I’ve heard summed up thus:

Drugs? Homosexuality? Suicide? Go Ahead!

Leave your bins out on the wrong day however....
~

There’s a point in the listening – a dead drop in the eye, you can almost see it click - when you’re judged to be not worth the effort.

The point at which they offer you the savlon.

And so are my frustrations living in Holland.