My Ophelia.

Lustrous dark red hair like newly burnished copper,
Glinting in the late afternoon sun.
Her piercing blue eyes,
Closed now,
Succumbed to the drowsy warmth,
The comfortable glow that envelops us both.
Her lips rounded, full, pouting, and slightly parted.
Her breath even and gentle now.
Her long locks cascading around her head,
And falling over her shoulder to cover one perfect , pert, breast.
I steal furtive glances.
Lest she catch me staring and become self conscious.
Her beauty almost painful to behold.
I am filled with the urge to just reach out and touch her.
To stroke her hair,
To run my finger across the line of her full lips.
Trace her jaw, her neck.
If it where not for the fact that I may wake her,
And to be thrown off the train and banned would be a little embarrassing as well.
Never fall in love on public transport.

Dedicated to yet another unknown beauty. Un-talked to, another beautiful ship passed close and left to continue it's voyage, unmolested. Actually that sounds bad, by unmolested I of course don't mean I physically bother people on the train, but I have been known to talk to the odd one or two and perhaps dislodge their psyche from the safe protected rails they have assumed were the way all people lived and thought, before encountering me. Even there I am not being honest. What I'm trying to say is, yet again I saw what I thought was a stunningly beautiful woman, and did the usual, dreamt and speculated but didn't actually talk to her. I could say another opportunity missed, but in all honesty I stick by the axiom that not every opportunity is an opportunity for me, no matter how enticing it appears. There is no joy nor profit made in spending your life pondering the what could have been, for reference see Ian Dury's “What a waste!”
Also refer to a TFL poster that simply said “If you are unhappy with your life, change it!”
Easy to say but difficult to do! I think not. It is you who builds the bars of your own cage. It is you who limits the expansion of your own life. Much as I do mine. We all have a monkey on our backs. the nagging doubt, the depression, the voice that assures us we cant be that good, that interesting, that attractive. What we fail to realise is that the other people around us have exactly the same doubts, the same fears. Some just hide them better than we do.
For instance. I am a man who lost a large portion of my hair by the time I was thirty. Now I live with comments and insults all the time. Even a one point when I was talking to a very attractive young lady at a bar. The barman (who was actually a friend of mine) made a comment along the usual lines of “oh my god what do you want with a slap head like him?”
I of course faltered and didn't pursue the matter any further. Two things. One, I was short, fat, balding, and older than the young lady before we had started the conversation, so why should it bother her just because he mentioned it now. My friend, the barman, was following an instinct that was ancient, the attempt to prove he was the alpha male. secondly (and to all individuals who think having a full head of hair is some advantage), if hair were really a factor in females finding a mate, then baldness would have been eradicated by natural selection millions of years ago. If women really cared they would not mate with bald men, there fore not reproducing the gene, there fore removing it from the gene pool. Quite simply bold blokes would not get laid, they would not have children, they would not reproduce.
To all you full head of hair (fascist) individuals, the day of the wig and the comb-over are gone. We no longer buy your bull shit. Don't stand there thinking that your hair is all it takes to win a woman. If all women thought like you then the only men that would exist are people that are all identical to you (i.e. vacuous tossers). Now you may think that's a good thing but I for one thank the gods your wrong.
I still didn't talk to her.

Technorati Tag: Red Head, Pre-Raphaelite, Love, Lust, Baldness, Futility, Hope, Attractiveness, Comb-Over, Ophelia, Sadness, Slap Head, meekon5.

Writing And The Loss Of Love.

I find myself yet again over burdened by the futility of life.
I'm watching a film about writers (“the tenants”), I'm watching a film about writers falling in love (the same film) with the same girl. I'm finding myself unmoved, but uncomfortable. Both by the aspect of love and the aspect of the writers. The main character is putting his life on hold for an eventuality (to use his phrase) “once I've finished my book!”
Recently I keep finding myself watching films, and plays, and other programmes about writers. Finding myself more and more depressed by them.
The reason I find this film disturbing is, on the one hand identifying with the writing aspect (if not in reversal), the other hand is not identifying with the love aspect.
Continuously through the film the main character is putting all aspects of his life on hold (as I mentioned to finish his book). Not being able to allow for any aspect of his life to change, lest it disturb his creative flow. He is the last tenant of a block of flats because he refuses to move as all other tenants have. I identify probably because I keep coming up with excuses as to how, and why, not to write. I identify with the dysfunctional aspect of not admitting it's me that is stopping me write, or committing to the writing.
I often talk about the long term study I am making of symbolism, and how people apply it to themselves, with particular emphasis on occult symbolism.
Why do I mention this? 
On the love aspect, probably bolstered by the fact I've spent the afternoon watching detective programs (particularly Morse, and Frost). Who seem to be incredibly lonely and isolated, even dysfunctional, when it comes to women at least. As I watched the film all I felt at the romantic parts was a hollowness. I am beginning to think that perhaps it's another area of my life where I put things on hold for too long.
I think I am focusing on their dysfunction, and loneliness because that is how I'm beginning to feel myself. I'm seeking the similarity, and identifying with that which I am beginning to see is wrong with my life at the moment.
I have spent quiet a few years remaining conspicuously single on purpose. Mostly from the point of view that a relationship built from combined effort to combat problems, tends to fall apart once the opposition has been surmounted. Say if you spend years struggling to pay debts, or overcome money worries, once the problem is solved the bond in the relationship breaks down.
To this end, by my own particularly twisted little logic, I have spent years trying to get a reasonable job, decent money, and cover the mortgage without worrying too much. to this end I have avoided (apart from a couple of drunken indiscretions and what I can only describe as a very confusing period when I wasn't going out with someone, a sort of not relationship, funnily enough not the first not relationship I've been involved in) any sort of relationship, choosing to turn down any offers from friends or family to set me up with anyone.
It's this that is beginning to worry me. Perhaps I have spent too long alone to start actually feeling anything for anyone. I am beginning to feel further and further disassociated. I'm worried that I no longer know how to start the process again now that I feel I should.
OK it's back to my plain pasta (with black pepper and butter), and “Practical Magic” on the telly. Yet again (to quote Sandra Bullock) “at times my heart feels so empty, I'm sure if you put your ear to my chest you could hear the sea!”
If only magic were as simple as they portray it here. A quick rhyme, the throwing of some herbs, burn a candle and that's that. Sod all my preparation both physical and mental, drawing circles and incanting.
If only the “Buffy Wiccan” thing worked. I'll have a pinch of Eris, a little of Freya, spirit of the sky, spirit of fire, spirit of water, spirit of earth, a meeting of minds, a length of time, and a companion to hold.
I still await the next person to walk into my life with that look that just takes my breath away.
May all your gods smile upon you.

Technorati Tag: love, loss, Morse, Frost, Buffy, Buffy Wiccan, Love Spell, Witch Craft, relationships, meekon5.

And The World Gets Me Down.

Every Silver lining has a cloud!
This morning I feel like an old man. I seem to have gotten to that point in life where, when any illness strikes, I begin to worry it is permanent. A few weeks back I had an ear infection that caused both ears to block, and the first thought that I had was to worry about how I would live my life deaf.
I don't know if it's because it's Friday, mid month (as good as), and most of my money is already spent (as usual). Or if it's just some existential ennui, but I just feel like a stranger in my own land. Even there I still, after all these years, don't feel England is quiet where I come from. Maybe all “Forces Brats” feel the same (especially when they were born overseas)!
Listen to the radio and frequently the “Ashes” are mentioned at the moment (with the cricket being played in Wales) and I feel nothing. I endured the tennis and was not moved by the inclusion, nor beating of an Englishman in the men's finals.
Whilst walking to work this morning one of the radio's in the market stalls, setting up for the day, was blaring out the cult, and the line “and the world gets me down!”
I should be careful, my life is not a bad thing at the moment. I am paid a reasonable amount of money (don't get me wrong, I can always take more if you want to pay me it). My job is actually interesting, even if I may have a little to much to do at the moment. I have friends, a house and some sort of (minimalist) social life. Careful because I am almost wishing for some excitement to enter my life. Careful because I may get what I'm wishing for, “be careful to wish for what you need not what you want, as you may well get it!” Is an axiom I try to live by.
The almost constant barrage of everyone else’s problems , with jobs, love lives, houses, money, children, that though I don’t suffer at the moment, I have and can easily sympathise (trying not to take their troubles home with me though I do worry for them), the calm collected nature of my voice being a soporific to their troubled minds.
I am just filled with the urge to pack a couple of bags and wonder off into the sunset. Time to move, time to change time to shake it all up.
Maybe its just loneliness. Every day I travel to and from work, and I blush to think how many times I see some attractive young person (see I even sound old now), and how often I fall in love. A good friend said to me years ago as I was to travel back to England, “Simon, when you fall in love on the ferry, at least try and get their name!”
The surprise contact of an old friend brings back memories of loves lost, should have been, could have been, but never were. Not to be a “what if” sort of person, but one can’t help but wonder once in a while, as one sits alone in ones lounge talking to the empty chairs about whatever film, or TV show is on.
Maybe it's the fact that I've spent the last week in an office by myself at work. Part isolation syndrome, part guilt that I could have been doing so much more.
It's just the line from Leonard Cohen “see that line across the station, I was one of those!” I frequently see myself as the subject of that comment as I shuffle through the tube stations, or rush (relative term) to get on the evening train with the rest of my fellow commuters. The endless grind, pushing shoving, trying not to take on their stress at you not being as fast, nor as important as they, and still in their way.
It could be the fact I don't feel well. There are ten spots on my fore arm (in a tight isolated group) that don't look like the usual stress induced eczema. Maybe they're chicken pox, and I should have taken the week off myself.
Or the slightly queasy feeling I have this morning, the probable result of the chicken sandwich from the “WH Smiths”, in the station last night. Note to self must really stop buying them at the end of the day, had too many food poisoning incidents from similar.
Or maybe it's just this pain in my ankle. I have been limping for quiet some time now. There is a swelling (careful nursie) at the ankle as though I have sprained a ligament and it just doesn't seem to want to get better. I was blaming it on sleeping in odd positions on the train.
I just find I am doing and saying things that are making me feel more and more bizarre, and as a result more isolated. In the morning I have breakfast before I put my shirt on, so as not to go to work wearing both (the breakfast and the shirt). The other morning I only noticed I split breakfast down my shirt when I was trying to clean up the fruit juice I'd also spilt. Massive juice bottle opening failure led to dribbling.
Maybe that's it. I should just relax into the Zen of the whole thing. Stop worrying and become that strange smelling weird old man that is lusting after girls a quarter of his age. Yes I can hear you “What do you mean become?” I feel I'm already there.
Fade to grey!

Technorati Tag: love, loss, cricket, ashes, solitude, no regret, commuting, work, relationships, meekon5.

Musing With Leonard Cohen.

There's an honesty to Leonard Cohen that has always impressed me. Even as a teenager first finding my feet in the world of music, testing and tasting, trying to savour as much as possible. He was always the bitter sweet pill that, though most times if at the least pulling at your heart strings, at the best reducing you to tears. 

I foolishly passed on the opportunity to experience him live recently when I saw an advert for his concerts in London in the papers, and failed to go and see him.

This evening I followed up on a whim and sat until the dark hours watching documentaries, concert footage (some from the concert I would have seen if I'd had my head together enough), and recording artists (or media notaries) compare their love, of the man himself.

Sitting here (in my lounge) at times in tears, at times laughing out loud, I remembered what it is, and why it is, I write.

The clipped phrases, the rhythm, the obvious beauty that he finds in his own words. The grace and modesty with which he performs. The stripped down nerve end rawness, the emotion laid bare for you to see and to experience if you can dare to risk the exquisite pain, and the brutal honesty.

I sit here now like a newly flayed nerve ending, raw and exposed, but wanting to write again with passion.

Cold as a new razor blade.

It's so long since I thought of you last.
Red hair shining in the summer sun.
Staring at me with those big green eyes.

I smiled,
At your less than subtle attempts to seduce me.
As if I would resist.

I took your drinks,
As you tried to get me drunk.
Not knowing there was no need to try.

I took your hand,
When you offered yourself to me.
With your suggestion of mutual pleasure.

And I took your heart,
With a graceful ease,
That even now makes me blush.

I never promised you anything,
But never contradicted the hope you showed me.
Just to play the game.

I held your hand walking down the street,
And felt nothing of it.
Even when spotted by someone else.

You offered me your everything,
You did whatever I asked,
When I asked for it.

I took what I wanted from you,
When I felt like it,
Which only fed your delusion.

Did you think introducing me to your mother would change my mind?
I gave you nothing.
You came running back for more.

You begged me to stay,
But I kept my word
And I did what I told I would.

I broke your heart,
And just walked out.

Technorati Tag: capitalism, greed, Leonard, Cohen, Leonard Cohen, razor, poetry, love, loss, inspiration, meekon5.