The genesis of metamorphosis

FLASH FICTION

One story from when paper and ink were rationed, written sparingly at one word per weekday over a whole year, a chapter for every two months of one history. As life changes daily, it shouldn’t be a surprise that a species can re-evolve in a year…

SEEDS

(i)

“Most of us are fake people. We never wanted to be, we just ended up hiding so many emotions that we started wearing a mask. We do this so easily now that we’ve taught ourselves to believe these lies are truth. It’s quite the opposite actually. We are so fake that we don’t even remember our true identity…”

I

“…It’s why we’re all locked inside now, contemplating ourselves. We’ve been forced by authority to obey for our own good. And actually, we shouldn’t resist…”

II

“…Political divisions are forgotten as quickly as new language evolves, and a dictatorial government shifts its rhetoric to one of a nation together, rather than nationalism. Old foes are united against a common new enemy and the citizens largely accept the restrictions placed upon them…”

III

“…and when we emerge, no matter how we look at it, we’ll be different. It’ll be a new world, which we approach cautiously, as we learn a new way of life. None of us will forget this, because it affected every single one of us. We’ll say it was a unifying human experience…”

IV

“…We should stay where we are for now, do as we’re told, while there’s such an opportunity to find ourselves and each other inside. We’ll need that when we all get out of here. Maybe we’ll eventually remove the masks, like we could when we were locked in together…”

V

“…A safe journey to all those who made a new humanity, and with our gratitude. You do not go in vain. We will forever remember the sentinels who changed us.”

VI

“And that’s how you indoctrinate a populace, all the while suppressing resistance, by sowing the seeds of martyrs.”

© Steve Laker, 2020

“I give it two weeks before we see martial law, unless everyone calms the fuck down and starts behaving as they’re told,” said a liberal socialist.

A sense of taste deprivation

FICTION

A place I found glancing around my mind, this is a flash fiction (500 words) trip, a story of an introvert recluse, and a parable of paranoia in a world where humans are merging with technology, but where a place is preserved for nostalgia…

NightmareToys.com

THE FLAVOUR OF AIR

The writer’s life is a solitary one, usually writing alone and only connecting with others when they read his work. In such a lonely place, being an author has its advantages: In a place of sensory deprivation, the writer can create people, places and events. He (in my case) can escape into situations he creates, and he can make places an extension of his real world so that he can better explore them. Alone and dealing with much in his mind, the writer gains support in his venture when readers want to know what he’s writing.

Welcome to my world, just one of many of I made. Sometimes I re-visit those old planets, but this is a new place, created around the life inside my head. This is a fictional world made real because I’ve written it. I might come back in future, or only visit briefly once.

It’s neither warm nor cold here. If the feeling of the place could be painted, it would be green. It’s fairly dark, an ambience of dawn mist hanging in streets lit by fluorescent tubes with peeling paint.

It’s best to be out in the village at night, as that’s when the mechabugs swarm windows. They look in every window with someone behind it. They form clouds at the front of the MetroMart, as us villagers stock up on what’s fresh that day.

Today there’s an offer on gourmet cat food. I don’t have a cat but the posh stuff can be passed off in a cottage pie. Some mushrooms complete that day’s single meal.

The flies disperse when the sun rises, a light grey orb behind clouds of dirty cotton wool, and the villagers return home. The village is deserted by day, the odd homeless person drifting through but never staying long.

Land sharks swim in the monochrome daylight, sharp fins of flint able to cut through granite. A few of the older villagers are amputees, mainly of one leg. At least one lost both legs and an arm to a land shark’s fin scything through the road.

We keep our curtains closed to the light, as a break in the clouds carries trillions of nano machines on the sun’s photons. They’re small enough to pass through solid materials at a molecular level but layers add filters. I use three layers to block out the sun, so my techninfection is fairly low compared to the average out there.

I know all this as tales reach me from the village. I don’t go out at night, so another villager pops in as I’m about to start writing, then drops my shopping off in the morning. He brought me a gift today, something not on my shopping list. He said it would remind me of outside.

Alone and dealing with much in his mind, the writer hopes his voice will be heard, that people will read what he’s written and know what he’s thinking.

Outside tastes of lime milkshake.

© Steve Laker, 2019

An outlying region of humanity

THE WRITER’S LIFE

As I’ve written this, I’ve realised how almost indistinguishable some of my fantasy can be from real life. The surreal and out-there sci-fi aside, I’m a horror writer. I deliberately write a lot of fiction to be life-like, to draw the reader in, and I write much which is fact within my stories. This took as long to write as it did to find the end, then it was just like giving a statement to the police.

“Hit me with your rhythm sticks…”

OUTLINE

I’m trying to work out how guilty I should feel about the death of my associate. I’m trying to calculate my level of responsibility for his demise, my reasons to be cheerful.

Whether friends or enemies, your proximity to your next-door neighbour is dictated by masonry. Mine and me didn’t always bring out the best in one another. While we shared many common interests in film and music, our politics were poles apart.

My neighbour was a caricature of himself, representing much of what I’m opposed to. A more engaging character might have been a good debating partner, but his views on life nevertheless had a place in his head.

He’d seen active service and was a damaged man, like so many others thrown into social housing with little support. Over time, I became that reluctant crutch. He was schizophrenic, sometimes needing my help and often resenting it later, after he’d had time to brew on whatever mixed in his head, and with no-one else to blame it on, he’d go next door.

I became adept at judging his intent at the doorway, then gradually skilled at guiding him either in or away. Nevertheless, I could never judge his mood before I answered the door.

So although we’d become begrudging friends, every visit brought a fear of the unknown, which all humans share. I’d never know what awaited me as I opened my door. Sometimes its was a tirade about the way I’d looked at him a week ago; other times a random meandering through a day out he’d returned from; and sometimes he’d bring me a gift (the last one was a welcome addition to my David Bowie library).

In daily encounters and a chapter which spans over three years, I couldn’t move away, and latterly I wouldn’t want to. He never confided in me, because he didn’t have the vocabulary or capacity to express himself. He really needed more than me for help.

Sometimes he’d fill my doorway three times a day, bald and with a belly, somewhat phallic and unable to coherently vocalise himself. Then he might not need anything for a few days. I’d enjoy the silence while wondering what was brewing, and how and when it would be served. Sometimes it would be to borrow some sugar, but always with an agenda. He was as paranoid as me.

There were four of us in this old building, all divorcees, ex-offenders, addicts, or a cocktail of the three. Mix that in with the mental problems which men keep to themselves when they keep themselves to themselves, and it can become quite volatile. Although there were no serious physical exchanges, there was much verbal and psychological torment. As the main recipient of the former, part of the guilt in my mind is my instigation of the latter.

Some of the confusion was how he thought little of encroaching on my space for his own reason, yet he respected my existence. He was a paradox. He knew I’m nocturnal and would always wait until he heard me plodding around before troubling me with requests or unsolicited advice. That being said, I sometimes sensed he’d need me as he made frequent and unnecessary visits to the communal hallway outside our flats (bedsits) without knocking.

There’d be times when I’d hear him around my door, and I’d snore. Invariably I’d then wake to a note on the door, asking me if I could do some shopping for him. Despite being aggressive when he was out under his own steam, he was as anxious as me about going out, even locally. But he never thought to ask what was wrong with me. Instead, I’d get the blame and have to give a refund for anything I wasn’t able to get and had substituted. The balance of gratitude would be restored when he’d returned from one of his drinking days and procured me a gift (it was a tobacco tin before the Bowie book).

The last note was on an electricity bill envelope, scrawled in green highlighter (he had a writer next door, but never asked for stationery):

Steve,

Have to stay in. Doctor’s orders. Chest infection. Give me a knock if you go to Tesco.

I didn’t knock as I wasn’t going to Tesco that day. Nevertheless, once he heard I was up, he was at my door:

“You going to Tesco?”

“No,” I replied, “probably tomorrow.”

“Fucksake. Why didn’t you knock?”

“Because you said to knock if I was going to Tesco, and I’m not. But I’m going tomorrow.”

That was typical. That’s the clash of logic in a door slammed in your face. He didn’t need me to collect medication, just to do his shopping. Always happy to in the past, it’s always been on my terms; when I go out, then I’ll attend to his will; but I won’t submit to his whim when I’m not going out anyway. Now I don’t have to worry.

He got one of our other neighbours to get his orange juice that day, so he survived the night. The next day, he went to Tesco himself. I’d told him the day before that I was going that day (the day after), but judging by the number of shopping bags he returned with (four: all 5p carrier bags, as he never used his own bags), he was planning to stay in for a while. I asked him if he’d remembered sugar.

“Oh, for fuck sake.”

Don’t worry, I said. I was going round there today anyway. I told you.

So I got him some sugar. He came to the door, took the sugar and went back inside, bolting the door behind him. I didn’t mention the inside bolt before, because you get used to the sound of it over three years; the clink from within a cage. I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I saw him breathing.

This all happened just over a week ago. After that, I had a day out with my kids in London, returned home and expected a knock at the door. When it wasn’t forthcoming, I watched TV, played some poker, then slept.

The next three nights were good for banking sleep. I was uninterrupted, by footsteps around the door; unburdened with the lack of notes; and enjoying the blankness.

On Thursday I was up even later than my usual nocturnal hours. I’d stored up some sleep and found myself still awake at 6am. I’d watched a couple of films and was playing poker, when I heard a noise. I can’t come up with the onomatopoeia, because it was neither a thump nor a crash. It could have been the drunken thuds I often heard from next door as he moved furniture around at any hour, sometimes waiting for me to wake up (because he needed my help in his own mind), or the coffee shop downstairs placing empty chairs at tables.

I slept.

When there’s a power cut, it’s impossible to get white noise from my fan. In the event of such a breakdown, I have a portable DAB radio which also picks up FM broadcasts. Just like the nest of bees on an old TV set, the hiss of the radio contains the noise of the original Big Bang which gave rise to us all, connected by quantum apparatus inaudible to the human ear.

As a result of previous trauma I have a narrowed oesophagus, which means I’m prone to choking. Because of this, I manage my diet and I know how to perform the Heimlich on myself (use the arm of the sofa in place of someone else’s fists). Because I’m a heavy smoker, I’d find it easy to detect a choking cough over a smoker’s, or one with a chest infection. I’d heard nothing to alarm me from my neighbour.

I was in a place of peace. If he wanted me, he’d never hesitated to call round in the past. By the same token, when he wasn’t at my door, I wouldn’t disturb whatever he was brewing up next door. Better to wait for a bullet to find you than hit it with a hammer, when it’s in someone else’s place and it has your name on it. Best to just wait it out.

After a while the silence which you’ve grown used to becomes more disconcerting, because of the peace which it brings to an island of reflection.

It was on Saturday that I sat on my quiet beach, almost ready to welcome a fascist invader on my shores; one I’d repelled so many times when ideologies had clashed in the doorway. One I’d retreated from, closed the door on; one who’d done the same to me; a man I’d wished dead in my head, like he’d told me to my face in not so many words.

You know the ending: He’s dead. I’m telling this and you’re writing it down. I’m writing and you’re reading.

I phoned the landlord. Long story short, he came round on Sunday. Even longer story shorter, he needed a witness if he broke into the flat (bedsit) next door. First he knocked.

“Do you not think I’ve tried that?” I wondered.

There was no answer, so the landlord tried his key. The door was bolted from the inside. My paranoid neighbour was almost certainly in.

When people find dead bodies in squalor in films, they normally recoil at the door. There was no smell, other than that of my neighbour having been a smoker. I’d only called the landlord because my sense of hearing was wanting, somehow my neighbour.

An extraterrestrial lay there, grey and cold. On discovering such a thing. One might also call the appropriate emergency services, police and ambulance. It’s another paradox that the ambulance is picking up someone beyond help, and that the police have to attend; and that police have to respond to a corpse, but an ambulance as redundant as the body needs to be there. Such are the intricacies.

“Is the patient breathing?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s cold and grey…”

And so on.

All the while, a government strangles public services so that the underclass has to take care of its own.

There were no sirens, no fanfare. I sat outside with the landlord, mainly smoking. The paramedics arrived first. Unsurprisingly to all present, they declared a death on the block.

The police were next, questioning all but the paramedics about who’d seen whom last. I was the last one to see him alive and the second to see him dead.

The two police officers’ ages almost certainly didn’t add up to mine. One of them said this was his first. At least I knew those youngsters had support in their friends and colleagues. I’d just lost my nearest tormentor but my closest friend.

The police gave me a moment to wish my colleague a safe journey, once he was in his bag. He was on a stretcher, destined for the local hospital. I wondered aloud what they might be able to do for him.

No body removal is complete without comedy potential, and this story is made complete by the undertakers banging the head of the deceased on a door post.

And then he was gone, just that patch on the floor where he’d laid for however long before we found him.

I don’t know how long he’d been there waiting. If my concern had arisen sooner, while I was enjoying some peace, perhaps I might have saved him. If I’d not attributed onomatopaeia to elsewhere, maybe I’d have gone to his door to see if he was okay. If I’d listened beyond the doorway, I might have heard him calling.

Often, after I’d closed my door in his face, I’d mutter something inaudible, just to get the last word. Once I’d wished him dead. I’m sure he did the same as he shut the door behind him.

Inter-personal space is a very tricky thing to define, and to negotiate outside a social democracy. Dealing with this has played with my mind. Blurring it is a coping mechanism. There are three of us living here now, all leading solitary lives on the fringe of society, and unlikely to know if the others are in trouble. The room next door will be host to someone else I don’t really know. No-one knows much about people in social housing anyway. The greatest human fear is the unknown.

Look out for your neighbour. Break down their door if you have to, even if you may not be welcome. I’ll just keep keeping myself to myself, on the edge of humanity. Only he’ll know if I killed him by not doing enough.

A momentary lapse of location

THE WRITER’S LIFE | FLASH FICTION

It’s been a while since I wrote anything, mainly because the battle to regain my personal independence from the Department for Work and Pensions is still ongoing, and becoming more like dealing with Vogon democracy by the day. But more of that another time. For now, this is a return from self-imposed social isolation.

Huffpost: from an article on technology and social isolation

Like playing truant from school, the longer I go without writing, the harder it is to come back, and the deeper I have to dig to pull myself out. But something dawned on me yesterday: I was effectively surrendering to the government’s social cleansing and economic murder machinery, by allowing them to stop me from writing, by weighing down my mental baggage.

Whatever holds you back from what you want to do is a demon. Don’t let that consume you, cast it out, like so much toxicity in your life. How? By realising it’s doing you no good for as long as it’s in your head, because it’s consuming you. When you realise that, you’ll see what’s in your head like you probably haven’t before (you were blind to it), and you’ll hate it. It’s been hating you all along, like a memory which taunts you by cheating on you. Don’t feed the trolls.

Some things I can’t write about autobiographically, but neither can I be censored as a fiction writer able to capture parallels. The story below is part analogy of the effect the social machine has had on me, and an exorcism.

This is where I’ve been. It’s short, but each word carries hours of feeling from being away. So many things banging in my head that I placed them into a single entity.

THE ORIGIN OF RECALL

I first became aware of my neighbours when I realised I could listen to them through the wall. I grew closer to them as I got older, but it I couldn’t meet them. My self-containment meant it would be a long time before I fully understood them.

At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying, their voices muffled by our adjoining wall. I learned that voice inflections, volumes and tones, belie a mood in any native tongue, and that anger is the same in any language. They made more sense as I heard them grow louder with every passing day, as though my hearing was improving. His name was Jonas, but I never learned hers.

I’d never seen them. Perhaps we’d meet outside one day, but for now I wasn’t ready to go beyond my comfort zone. Noisy neighbours slamming doors can be intimidating, and I had no wish to be a part of any argument beyond that internal wall.

My sleep was sporadic, I was unable to settle into any kind of routine, never knowing when I’d be woken by the neighbours. Days drifted into sleep through exhaustion, and I slept when they did, when the walls weren’t pounding in my head. There I’d sometimes dream of getting out.

The earth is billions of years old, and humankind have only walked on this planet for a fleeting moment. Given that we have so little time here, shouldn’t we all question what’s around us? At least then, our children will be able to continue conversations which we started, like so many small human legacies.

When the noise started again, I didn’t want to open my eyes. When I’d dreamed, I found the human senses are connected, not with one compensating for another if it’s lost, but withdrawing together in solidarity. The longer I closed my eyes, the less I could hear, and so I could sleep.

The last time they woke me, I’d still not met them, never ventured out into that corridor. He was pounding on the wall again, their voices so loud that no barrier could cushion the anger.

I knew I was what they were arguing about. I was “that fucking thing in there,” and I feared my reception if we ever met outside. The anger was punching through now, knocking against my head and chipping the paint from the wall.

I had an almost overwhelming urge to get out of there, but feared anything outside of my confines. I’d had time to think, learn and dream in there, and I couldn’t leave.

They say kids develop their formative memory at around two years old, and before that they know nothing and are subject to conditioning. We are all different, but we’re born the same, with memories which we forget, long before we’re able to talk. Knowledge boils while curiosity evaporates.

Maybe I should have got out when I could, improving my chances outside by being premature. But I stayed. Born still, I was free. I did everyone a favour. Natural selection, preserved in ultrasound images.

They hadn’t decided on a name for me: either Jonas or Joan, depending on what I came out as. If I was a boy, I’d have been named after him. I was Jonas.

© Steve Laker, 2019

So that was me exorcising the demons who would prevent me from doing what keeps me living. I won’t give up. I’ll keep writing, and I shan’t surrender to the mind beating.

Shooting battered cod and chips

THE WRITER’S LIFE

Today is five weeks since my PIP assessment and I’ve still been told nothing. DWP acknowledged that they have all they need to assess my claim, so part of me thinks no news is good news. Based on previous experience though, most of me suspects they’ll conclude that I’m not entitled. If so, it’s taken five weeks to play a pretty sick trick on someone they know is vulnerable. But it’s all part of the Tory social cleansing machinery.

It’s anxiety and paranoia, and the reassessment process makes it worse. It heightens my conditions, like taking a Stabilo Boss to all the Post-It notes pinned to my head. Benefits claimants are fish in barrels at the best of times, but I’m simultaneously out of the water.

I saw the kids yesterday, so I now I have separation anxiety. I do miss them, every day, but the days after I’ve seen them are the hardest as they’re fresher in my mind. Everyone but me ended up in a better place after my breakdown, over five years ago now. It’s a testament to my ex-wife and the kids’ second dad that I now have two very engaging and curious young people to share the odd Sunday with.

I can think about plans but not make them. Visiting my parents and my kids costs money, which PIP has helped with over the last four years. With my mind confused and unknowing, I can’t write, or not coherently enough to hold all but the most surreal stories together.

I know I should broaden my horizons and maybe take up a new hobby, perhaps even one which might get me out more. The problem with being outside is, there are other people there. Maybe then a solitary pursuit, like fishing. But then there’d be some tosser (one who casts lines) who’s been doing it for years, telling me I’m doing it all wrong without actually helping (you know the kind of smug, elitist type, often train conductors or lorry drivers in their day jobs). So perhaps I’d get a boat, then float alone, fishing on a lake. It’s where my name came from after all. Then I realise I don’t have the money or the courage, so I stay as I am. Less a Laker (one who fishes from lakes) and more the ponder.

Gir by Thekeyofe

The only thing I have patience for is poker. I’ve been coaching and playing my sole regular visitor, my kid sis Courtney (‘The Courts’, or ‘WE33 WIDOW’ at the table), and she’s holding me to a 14-14 score line in our tournament of tournaments, albeit with some handicapping earlier on. She’s 21 today, she’s come a long way and gone through as much machinery as me, and we both kept the other alive at times. Sometimes we’ll have fish with our poker chips, and PIP helps with thanking a friend for their support with a take-away (and ensuring I eat something). Playing poker relies on having someone to play with. I can play online, but not having someone to talk to means my attention wanders and I could end up playing losing games and forgetting to eat, so I stick to live play.

The Courts and me started playing poker at the squat, and in some ways, this waiting game is like being back on the streets, when my only output was transcribing a few pages of handwritten notes I’d made as I led my transient life, never able to settle anywhere. Back then, I started writing as it was all I had (no TV, not even a radio, and I daren’t borrow too many library books for fear they’d be lost or stolen), so I wrote. Now I have more to do, but no patience to do it; everything around me, but no interest in it. I’ve become even more withdrawn, and withdrawal drills into deeper thoughts. Yet after all that, after all the talk about being depressed and in a rut; because of all that, I can see something.

I read something on the train yesterday, on my way to meet the kids. Essentially it said, be grateful of your own company if it’s all you have. Don’t waste time chasing other people, less so wondering when you might hear from them. Don’t put your life on hold for too many others, live the one you have left with whomever you can.

Right now, that’s just me and my adopted sister sometimes for a game of cards. Once a month, it’s precious time with the children their mum and step dad have brought up so well. Once this period of limbo ends, it’ll be more regular trips to spend time with my parents. Until then, I wait, like I have for five weeks. And during that month and a bit, I’ve written a lot which doesn’t make sense in pieces, but I can see how it will come together.

I’ve not lost the ability to write, just the means to edit my thoughts and make them coherent. While I reconstruct myself, I can at least see ahead and know that I have a lot of stories to tell, once I can stitch them together as analogies for the horrors of going through the social cleansing machinery, and how it can be used to find things in the mind you’d normally be too busy to be troubled by.

In future fiction, within the next 2-3 years, a number of technologies could combine and reduce in cost to become something really cool:

Take an AI home assistant (Siri, Alexa…), put it in a humanoid or other robot physical form, and you’ve got home help for lifting and assisting with physical tasks.

Introduce an app to design your own personification of a home help robot, send it to a 3D printer (which will also print the circuitry), and each AI becomes even more individual and a part of the designer.

I’d like to print one of these:

Shark Rex by Heckthor

To be continued…

Talking Pi with Simon Fry

THE WRITER’S LIFE | FICTION

I was meant to have dinner with a friend last night, but I failed. We didn’t actually get around to eating. It’s a bit like me in real life, buying food and aspiring to fine meals, but only looking at produce as it gradually grows less fresh. We enjoyed a fictional meal nonetheless.

Pi: The endless constant (FiveThirtyEight)

Simon Fry was just as he’d been the last time I imagined him, and I probably hadn’t changed much in his eyes. His flat looked very much as I’d left mine, so I felt at home, even before he’d asked me to sit down. With me seated comfortably and uninvited, Simon went to a fridge very much like my own.

“What food’s in there?” I wondered.

“Enough to make some fine meals,” Simon replied, “and just enough for two.”

“There has to be, given my appetite.”

“Eh?”

“I can’t buy portions small enough.”

“But there’s some nice food in here.”

“Less waste. I pay more for less of the premium stuff. Sometimes I even cook it.”

“And otherwise?”

“I plan meals, imagine cooking and eating them, then don’t get around to it.”

“Why?”

“No-one to cook for, other than myself.”

“And me?”

“Are you offering?”

“No.”

“Good. Fewer fictional dishes.”

So with dinner out of the way, Simon and I talked.

“Yours is a life,” Simon said, “of possibilities. Except you dwell on them, imagining what might be, but never living it.”

“I never go out.”

“Where are you now?”

“At yours.”

“Exactly. So you need to keep imagining, but you need to share what you see with others. Then maybe they can see what I can.”

“Something I’ll never see,” I replied. “I sometimes compare life to love, when often they’re interchangeable; there must be very few people who’ve never been to that place. The best part of life is falling in love. It doesn’t matter that I never will again, just so long as others keep doing it. Being in love is a wonderful feeling, like your world is full of happiness. But falling there, and the anticipation, the feelings you’d forgotten since you last lived.”

“Like eating food?”

“Like planning a meal, perhaps with someone. As an objectivist, and having not fallen for some time, I can transcend it and write about it in a fictional sense. They say there’s a part of the writer in every story, but I left my heart in enough already. Sometimes it’s best just to let things go. You’d rather have seen how things went, but you can still imagine what might have been. No-one will ever know and you can keep that for yourself.”

“Like not finishing a story. And not eating.”

“When you’re in love with someone, you’re in love with the world. You’re loving living. When your greatest love ends, so does your life. I’m not in love with anyone; a lot of people a little bit, but only maybe one in another life. It’s always been difficult to separate fact from fiction in the lone writer’s story.”

“The one you’re writing. The non-fiction one needs to eat.”

“Maybe I’m too into it. Perhaps I actually am falling in love. But only with someone I’ve created as a character, or the person that actor came from? I’d never make a fictional character conform, as most of fiction is about conflict.”

“That would be life then. You’re falling back in love with being a writer, and you need to keep writing about it.”

“Eating it, instead of looking at it.”

“Exactly. But you do have an eating disorder to add to your list of ailments.”

There are very few people who could have pointed that out to me, in a way which made others see. Perhaps I’ll have a midnight snack.

It’s tomorrow now. I sit at my writing desk, gazing out of the window and wondering what the world is eating.

Any day begins with mourning

THE WRITER’S LIFE

“Grief is the price we pay for love, it’s what happens when the love has nowhere to go”. When I first read that quote, I was surprised to learn that the author was Queen Elizabeth II. She had a point, and she’d know. I’d add that each day lived alone, is a day of mourning. Not just a personal sentiment, it’s how many others might try to explain depression on a daily basis.

The roots of my daily guilt are the fallout I caused from my drunken breakdown. I hate the person I was, so much that I compare him to the current UK government: a selfish, self-serving fascist, wilfully inflicting self-harm on all around me. Long since forgiven by most, those blackouts of the mind in the past frequently return to haunt the conscience of the present self.

Depression is as individual to the carrier as the vessel which tries to contain it. Having an above-average IQ can be a poison chalice, but it means I can write. These are just the things which manifest mine, but how they make me feel is much the same as anyone else trapped in the nothingness, alone.

When you care about so many people, every non-reciprocation or forgotten acknowledgement of a good deed feels like an insult and further punishment. When you long for someone to call you, just to say hello, but they probably hate you because you never call them, not wishing to impose. But I fear instigating something, or establishing a precedent, a friendship I can’t maintain.

Life is a daily trial, missing people who used to play a bigger part in mine. Thanks to my drinking, I never got to see my kids grow up. For a whole year, I didn’t see them at all, and now I see them once a month, as geography and finances dictate. I’m sad most days, as each is another when I didn’t see them, because I got drunk.

I caused my parents more grief than most. Bridges were rebuilt long ago, and they’ve even gone so far as to say they’re proud of me. But since I robbed dad of his liberty by reporting him missing (lost) in his car, I’ve not seen him. That event came in the midst of his treatment for fluid on the brain – now better – but he’ll have to re-apply for his driving license (which I doubt he will). As a result, I’ve robbed him of his freedom, mum of transport, and my auntie and myself of visitors. No-one will ever know if I saved his life that night I reported him, because he got picked up by the police and taken home safely.

As I find getting out difficult, I’ve not done a lot to help myself see other people. Rather than one who thinks they’re the life and soul of the party, I’m the one who comes with a mental health warning. I travel with my own atmosphere, and I feel like the elephant in the room, so I don’t impose, which makes me seem uncaring.

We don’t feel sad, we feel empty. We find it difficult to talk, because we don’t understand it. We act irrationally too: We’ll psyche ourselves up to walk two minutes to the supermarket for food, then admire the food we’ve bought, or think about what we can do with it, before it’s out of date and we throw it away, unused. That makes me feel guilty.

It’s because I think about things so much, perhaps with a tendency to overdo it and complicate matters unnecessarily. All of which stirs up my paranoia, and convinces me that I’ve done the world a disservice, but no-one will tell me what I did. It may be irrational, but it’s how I and many others feel, every single day. Welcome to our lonely planet.

It’s that poison chalice again, the double-edged sword. It’s the mind which effectively allows me to commune with the dead through scientific faith, but which prevents me from talking to live people. Writing is my only outlet, and readers among my few friends.

No-one owes me anything, and there will never be enough time to pay back what I owe. Every day starts with mourning, and tomorrow is just another one.

“We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.”

-Somerset Maugham

A many-mirrored mind

THE WRITER’S LIFE

I did a lot of thinking while I was waiting for news of my dad and not writing much, and I let myself go a bit, mentally. I got fed up with being the only person around here who cooks, does the shopping, pays the bills and cleans the place. I live alone, but still…

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room – Hymn of Life, 2015

The sole occupant of a life can have a tendency to over-think things, especially when so many other people inhabit their mind. When that person has mental health issues, those can become self-pollinating. And when the person’s a writer, some might think that makes things easier. It does and it doesn’t, because writers think more than average, they have a reputation to maintain in reporting those thoughts, and the more they think about the right prose, the more they’re obliged to think. It’s the proverbial vicious circle and yet another paradox in the life of the writer with depression. Sometimes I feel I should just go out and meet people. Then I remember, I don’t like many people and I don’t enjoy going out. My life, in a box, which I decided to take a look around.

Writing is a very lonely game anyway, more so when you’re someone with many different people in your mind. Some might think a writer with depression is a sadomasochist, but when you have anxiety too, it’s the only way to live. If I’m to keep living, I have to keep writing. It’s a self-propagating paradox.

I thought I’d found some kindred spirits in a few Facebook writing groups, then the one I favoured closed down because of an admin’s family bereavement, and paranoia tells me everyone I touch turns to shit. It’s a reflection of my real life, where I erect barriers to prevent anyone getting too close. Sometimes I let the barriers down but end up kicking people away, when they subsequently invade my personal space, inadvertently because they’re on my mind.

Some of the writing groups were challenge-based, and I’m stuck for words as often as I have too many to put into decent prose (very much the manic depressive, bipolar writer). Sometimes I set my own targets, and have nowhere to put them, so they go here. When I’m working freelance, I’m in charge, and with so many people in my head, it’s easy to find one to boss. Other times, I’m lost for words, let myself down, and simply lost in life.

I wouldn’t return to drink, as I never found myself there, only when I dried out. As well as losing all that I did before (and more, and on a more permanent basis), I’d lose this whole new brain function I’ve found, but which sometimes drives me to distraction or to switch off. I do have a drink to hand (I’m a functioning alcoholic), but I prefer a nice cup of French coffee and a croissant, sometimes with a cannabis joint, and I think some more. Sometimes, good fiction will arise, and others a full-blown existential crisis. My life in the mirror.

I’m 48 this year, which means I’ll have caught up with Douglas next year. I was born in May 1970, and it occurred to my reflection that in 2020 I’ll be entering my seventh decade: Conceived in the 60s, born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s, lived the 90s, married the noughties, and finally found myself in the teens. It was 2013 when I found myself on the streets, before becoming counsellor and friend to all those young strays who found the squat.

Last time I checked, there were only two or three people who truly understand real me: My kid sister, Courtney, and a couple of the young girls who adopted me in lieu of a father figure in their lives when I was on the streets. These are the ones the plastic police and defective detectives used to wind themselves up about, as they imagined what went on in the squat (if they’d bothered to come in themselves, like the real police used to, they’d be wiser). Those were mutual adoptions, which have proven symbiotic since. We remained friends, because I let my barriers down and didn’t feel a need to raise them again. These are friends I trust, because they placed so much trust in me, and who can read me as I can them. Courtney can listen to a list of perceived issues I have – A, B, and C – then suggest option D: That I’m being paranoid, and invariably she’s right. Those girls can somehow get me to look inside myself in a different way to my everyday.

There are barriers, of course, even if what we were once suspected of is legal now the girls are older. They’re still young girls, so it’s a one way street: I give a shit about them, but I don’t intrude on their private lives unless they bring them to me. It’s a life of ‘Do not disturb’ (I’m disturbed enough already), but I welcome the odd disturbance.

In writing, my peer groups are reflective of real life too: Never a core member of many things, but on the fringes of many more. Cyrus Song was me reaching out, when every day of guilt laden sobriety might cause a less occupied person to lapse. It’s a good job I have writing, but I need people to read, so that more might understand me and help me understand myself. All writers hope that what they do is worthwhile.

Barring another wobble, I have a lot lined up, if I can keep my mind on the job. I’ve got some short stories planned, and some already drafted or in process; I have a list of research projects for later blog posts; and now that dad’s on the mend, I can get back to the family history book, albeit now with a revised publication schedule.

I’m still a bit lost, in life and in writing, but both are the same, just as my real and virtual lives blur and merge. So I carry on in my writer’s life because what other is there? I seem to thrive in captivity, like a snake.

I was interrogating Captain Mamba, as I’m plotting Cyrus Song II as well. We discussed the snakes’ future plans for humanity, and as today is Valentine’s, we discussed snake and human birth control. We agreed that we both already employ an effective method: Being who we are as people.

The mind is a many-mirrored room when you look around it, then just write it down as you see it and read it back.

Breaking the mind cycle

THE WRITER’S LIFE | DEAR DIARY

I said I’d be more open when I could, and now I can write more honestly about a few things which have been keeping me quiet lately…

Top of the vox pops has been my dad, who’s been unwell. He’s home now and all the evidence suggests he’s much better. Long story short, he was having problems with his memory and sense of direction. It had been a process so gradual that it was barely noticed by those closest to him, until one night when he went missing.

A keen and able driver with 60 years of incident-free motoring behind him, and a man who would invariably be early for any meeting, appointment or gathering, it was unusual for my dad to be late home. So when my mum phoned me to say dad was an hour late, alarm bells began to toll in the distance.

I spent at least ten minutes on the phone to mum, during which she kept popping outside the front door to see if he was coming up the road. It was getting dark and it was a Saturday. Dad was never keen on driving in the dark, and there’d be something on TV he’d scheduled to be home for (probably a transport, engineering or emergency services documentary), now finished.

Eventually I phoned the police, and in doing so, I knew I was robbing my dad of his main liberty: his car and the freedom to drive it. I was also taking away my mum’s ride, and their means of visiting me and others. I asked mum several times if I should grass the old man, when there might be a perfectly valid reason for him being late, but none seemed likely. I knew – and I told mum – that as soon as I reported dad missing, the police would put out an alert, dad would trigger an ANPR camera and probably get a TPAC by three fed cars (I watch a lot of police procedurals myself). After a couple more checks on his whereabouts outside, she agreed, better that than a starring role in 24 Hours in A&E.

As it turned out, it wasn’t that dramatic. Dad did indeed trigger a camera, and was soon lit up by blue lights from behind. He pulled over to let an emergency vehicle pass, then quickly realised it was him the police were after. “Your son reported you,” they’d said, so that was nice of me. One officer then drove dad home in his car, tailed by her colleague in the Battenberg. I found this all out when dad phoned me when he got home, to thank me for getting him there. But I knew there’d be fallout.

Dad’s 75, so his slight doddering might have been put down to simple ageing. But when it became life-affecting, thoughts turned to senility and degenerative neurological conditions. I’d been aware of his ongoing decline when I reported him, and dad’s health had been one of the police’s concerns. He was at the consultation stage at the time, but it was serious enough for him to have to surrender his driving license, for his own safety (and that of others). I felt like shit.

Further tests and scans revealed a build up of fluid around dad’s cerebellum, causing pressure on his brain. Dementia couldn’t be ruled out, but it was likely that relieving the pressure would restore his cognitive functions. This was at the end of last year, so any treatment would be in the new year. I’d displaced my whole family over Christmas, as my dad was the only one with a car. Everyone was going to have a shit Christmas, because of me.

Early this year, dad had the first of two operations, initially to drain the build up of fluid around his brain stem. Later he may need a stent, but the first procedure was a success. Very soon after, dad regained a lot of himself, and he was reading, watching TV, and even got some fine-detail colouring books. It was quite incredible to witness someone return so suddenly from something which had been so gradually debilitating. Then it all went tits up.

Just a few days after returning home, dad was hit with an infection, specifically at the site where the excess cerebral fluid had been drained (he’d had a spinal tap, after all). Infections are never welcome interlopers, but the ones who attack the brain and central nervous system can be particularly worrisome. Earlier dad had been picked up by a police car, now he was being carted away in an ambulance (to the best of my knowledge, my parents don’t play with matches).

Dad was in hospital for three weeks and I didn’t see him once. It would be a five-stage journey for me, by public transport or taxi. Social anxiety aside, I simply couldn’t afford it, and I had no-one to give me a lift. But in some respects, I’m glad I stayed away, if only to witness my parents becoming much closer. Mum gets free travel, so she was at the hospital every day and I spoke to her as regularly as I thought appropriate, caring, but at the same time, not wanting to be in the way. Now dad’s home, where he can recover quicker, and after 50 years of marriage, him and mum are still very much in love.

I’m told I shouldn’t feel guilty for taking my dad’s liberty, and that I’m not to blame for his ill health (his cognitive decline brought on by my breakdown and subsequent conduct), so I must just be paranoid.

Paranoia breeds and cross-pollinates my other neurological inflections, anxiety and depression, and together they form the unholy trinity in my mind, which many others suffer. I live alone and I’m left alone, so few have to suffer me.

I’m an alcoholic, who lives with a guilt complex. I could probably get utterly pissed and get away with it, and no-one would notice because few call or visit. But I made this situation, by not wanting anyone too close, so if I lapsed, I’d be the only one who noticed.

It wasn’t because I lapsed in anything other than myself, that this blog has been less dynamic than usual lately. Now that I have my greatest fear – that of losing my father – lessened, I can start to make plans again. Among those plans are to write more, so that I’m less alone now that my mind isn’t so tied up with myself.

Like my dad, it’s like I can hear myself again. I hope others can too.

The perks of being a cult

THE WRITER’S LIFE

I wrote recently about co-operatives of writers supporting each other. I noted how few of us are likely to be read in any great volumes, let alone see mainstream success (however brief). Us indies are stuck on the fringes, a huge collective talent, but who don’t fit the commercial publishing mould. Being an indie and having a following makes you feel a bit of a cult (spellcheck is on), which may be all the attention my writing gets (or needs).

We’re unlikely to be recognised in public (which suits someone like me), and it’s unlikely we’ll be bestsellers, but we have each other, and our discerning followers. Previously I made a commitment to kindred spirits, to read one book a month and write a considered review. I’m not a prolific reader and others might offer to do more, but I thought this more valuable than chasing likes or followers. Then I checked my own book sales, got depressed and fucked off for a sulk.

I’ve chosen a book for this month, and it’s being shipped from the USA. I’ll post a review here and in other appropriate places online (the bookseller’s site), and hope it increases interest in another writer.

We all love our followers and readers, we hope they’ll buy our books and tell other people about us. I value my readers, however few, because when I’ve hardly any human contact in the physical world, my loyal band of followers are the closest I want to get to anything normal. What I and other writers value most, is an online review. For the socially anxious writer, it’s like having a spokesperson on your side.

I’ve been told I’m unique. My short stories can certainly be weird, and my sci-fi novel is most definitely strange (“An extraordinary juggling act”, as one reviewer put it). I like them like that, so if that makes me a cult (it’s still on), so be it. It’s the way I write and that’s what some other people like.

Whatever kind of writer (or indeed, person) I am, I had to get back into character after my recent sulk (it was a genuine depressive episode, but I was still wallowing in myself). I inhabit my characters and stories, just as my virtual online persona is more real than the physical one, and my published writer’s life is that of the cracked actor, trying to transcend depression.

The key to getting my writer’s hat back on, was unlocking my studio from what it had become: Just my home, and not that of the writer, as I’d hit a block and given up for a while. It was a wobble like any other depressive might get, and it’s being a writer which helped, therapeutically giving me a means of outlet. I had to occupy my writer’s life again to deal with the real one it masks.

As a flat, my studio is not everyone’s idea of a des res, but my social landlord is to be congratulated for squeezing one more flat in, where someone with little choice will gladly live. It’s a 12 foot square room, which would be dominated by a bed, so I don’t have one. I have a futon, and for various reasons, it’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever had: For starters, it’s mine. I bought it new, and it’s only ever had me in it. It’s like sleeping on a padded packing pallet, which somehow reminds me of being homeless. I don’t know why that would be a good thing, but after I’d slept on concrete floors, park benches and once in a bin, wooden pallets were quite the luxury. Then it folds up and makes a comfy chair to match the sofa. There’s a small kitchen, and the toilet and shower rooms are in a communal corridor, but for my exclusive use. The neighbours here are all social tenants too, so it’s not like they’d judge someone on having an outside lav (and anyone who did would not be welcome to use mine).

Put all of that into an office, and you’ve got a pretty cool place to work. So thinking of my studio more as a writer’s office, is better than moping around in a poky flat with not much else to do (huge DVD and music collections, but no attention span). The writer’s life really is the only one I can live, or I’d be more insane than I already am.

I walked back into my imaginary world, where all of my imagination lives. Simon Fry might as well have been sitting on my sofa, as parts of this studio mixed with others I’ve lived in, make Simon’s flat in Cyrus Song. Any minute, Hannah might call him, just as the girl she’s based on now texts and calls me more, since she understood what we’re all about. Sometimes I even imagine that fucking rabbit hopping around, plugging him into the hi-fi and listening to him in German through the Babel fish.

If I had the gumption to travel to London, I could visit the many incarnations of The Unfinished Literary Agency, where so many stories evolve and revolve. To Lewisham too, and to Mountsfield Park. I could visit London Zoo and dine at August Underground’s. Or I could use quantum mechanics to build a ship to take me to the many other worlds I’ve created.

The tragedy is it’s all here, in this studio, at the desk, in the typewriter, in me and in my books; my imaginary life my only one. A person trapped inside themselves but grateful of their inner writer for escape. What I can’t see, hear or feel; where I dare to venture, I imagine, and I write, while few read. But I’m socially anxious, so I don’t want to be mainstream. I just have to keep telling myself I’m a cult, and making sure spellcheck is on.